The Stand

“Sure—on your hands and knees you was checkin, dinkweed. I’ll clear your motherfuckin coast. Stand up here.”

Trashcan somehow gained his feet and kept them by holding on to the doorhandle of a car on his right. The twin bores of The Kid’s matched set of .45s looked every bit as big as the twin bores of the Eisenhower Tunnel. He was looking at death now. He knew that. There were no right words to avert it this time.

He offered up a silent prayer to the dark man: Please… if it be your will… my life for you!

“What’s up there?” The Kid asked. “A wreck?”

“A tunnel. It’s jammed solid. That’s why I came back, to tell you. Please—”

“A tunnel,” The Kid groaned. “Jesus-hairy-ole-baldheaded-Christ! ” The scowl returned. “Are you lyin to me, you fuckin fairy?”

“No! I swear I’m not! The sign said Eeesenhoover Tunnel. I think that’s what it said, but I have trouble with long words. I—”

“Shut your dough-hole. How far?”

“Eight miles. Maybe even more.”

The Kid was silent for a moment, looking west along the turnpike. Then he fixed Trashcan Man with a glittery gaze. “You trine to tell me this traffic jam’s eight miles long? You lyin sack of shit!” The Kid thumbed the triggers on both guns up to half-cock. Trashcan, who wouldn’t have known half-cock from full cock and full cock from a bag of frogs, screeched like a woman and put his hands over his eyes.

“No kidding! ” he screamed. “No kidding! I swear! I swear! ”

The Kid looked at him for a long time. At last he lowered the hammers on his guns.

“I’m gonna kill you, Trashy,” he said, smiling. “I’m gonna take your motherfuckin life. But first we’re gonna walk back to that pileup we squeaked by this morning. You’re gonna push the van over the edge. Then I’m gonna go back and find another way around. Not gonna leave my fuckin car,” he added petulantly. “Nohow no way.”

“Please don’t kill me,” Trashcan whispered. “Please don’t.”

“If you can get that VW van over the side in less’n fifteen minutes, maybe I won’t,” The Kid said. “You believe that happy crappy?”

“Yes,” Trash said. But he had gotten a good look into those preternaturally glittering eyes, and he did not believe it at all.

They walked back to the pileup, Trashcan Man walking in front of The Kid on wobbling rubber legs. The Kid walked mincingly, his leather jacket creaking softly in its secret folds. There was a vague, almost sweet smile on his doll-like lips.

By the time they got to the pileup, dusk was almost gone. The VW Microbus was on its side, the corpses of the three or four occupants a tangle of arms and legs that was mercifully hard to see in the fast-failing light. The Kid walked past the van and stood on the shoulder, looking at the place they had edged by some ten hours before. One of the deucey’s tire tracks was still there, but the other had crumbled away with the embankment.

“Nope,” The Kid said with finality. “Never make it by here again unless we do some movin and groovin first. Don’t tell me, I’ll tell you.”

For one brief moment, Trashcan Man entertained the notion of rushing at The Kid and trying to push him over the edge. Then The Kid turned around. His guns were drawn and pointing casually at Trashcan’s midriff.

“Say, Trashy. You was thinkin evil thoughts. Don’t try to tell me no different. I can read you like a motherfuckin book.”

Trashcan shook his head violently back and forth in protest.

“Don’t you make a mistake with me, Trashy. That’s the one thing in this wide world you don’t want to do. Now get pushing on that van. You got fifteen minutes.”

There was an Austin parked nearby on the broken centerline. The Kid pulled open the passenger door, casually ripped out the bloated corpse of a teenage girl (her arm came off in his hand and he tossed it aside with the absent air of a man who has finished with the turkey drumstick he has been nibbling on), and sat down on the bucket seat with his feet out on the pavement. He gestured good-humoredly with his guns at the slumped, shuddering form of the Trashcan Man.

“Time’s a-wastin, good buddy.” He threw back his head and sang: “Oh… here comes Johnny with his pecker in his hand, he’s a one-ball man and he’s OFF to the ro-dee-OH … that’s right, Trashy, ya fuckin wet end, getcha back into it, only twelve minutes left… alamand left an alamand right, come on, ya fuckin dummy, getcha right foot right—”

Trash leaned against the Microbus. Bunched his legs and pushed. The Microbus moved perhaps two inches toward the drop. In his heart, hope—that indestructible weed of the human heart—had begun to bloom again. The Kid was irrational, impulsive, what Carley Yates and his pool-hall buddies would have called crazier than a shithouse rat. Maybe if he actually got the van over the side and cleared the way for The Kid’s precious deuce coupe, the lunatic would let him live.

Maybe.

He lowered his head, gripped the edge of the VW’s frame, and shoved with all his might. Pain flared in his recently burned arm, and he knew that the fragile new tissue would soon rip open. Then the pain would become agony.

The bus moved three inches. Sweat dripped from Trashcan’s brow and ran into his eyes, stinging like warm engine oil.

“Oh, here comes Johnny with his pecker in his hand, he’s a one-ball man and he’s OFF to the ro-dee-OH! ” The Kid sang. “Well, alamand left an alamand r—”

The song broke off like a brittle twig. Trashcan Man looked up apprehensively. The Kid had come out of the Austin’s passenger seat. He was standing in profile to Trash, staring across their half of the turnpike toward the eastbound lanes. A rocky, brushy slope rose beyond them, blotting out half the sky.

“What the fuck was that?” The Kid whispered.

“I didn’t hear anyth—”

Then he did hear something. He heard a small rattle of pebbles and stones on the other side of the highway. His dream recurred to him in sudden, total recall that froze his blood and evaporated all the spit in his mouth.

“Who’s there? ” The Kid shouted. “You better answer me! Answer, goddammit, or I start shooting! ”

And he was answered, but not by any human voice. A howl rose up in the night like a hoarse siren, first climbing and then dropping rapidly down to a guttural growl.

“Holy Jesus!” The Kid said, and his voice was suddenly thin.

Coming down the slope on the far side of the turnpike and crossing the median strip were wolves, gaunt gray timberwolves, their eyes red, their jaws gaping and adrip. There were more than two dozen of them. Trashcan, in an ecstasy of terror, made wee-wee in his pants again.

The Kid stepped around the trunk of the Austin, leveled his .45s, and began firing. Flame licked from the barrels; the sound of the shots echoed and reechoed from the mountain faces, making it sound as if artillery were at work. Trashcan Man cried out and poked his index fingers in his ears. The night breeze tattered the gunsmoke, fresh and ripe and hot. Its cordite aroma stung his nose.

The wolves came on, no faster and no slower, at a fast walk. Their eyes… Trashcan Man found himself unable to look away from their eyes. They were not the eyes of—ordinary wolves; of that he was quite convinced. They were the eyes of their Master, he thought. Their Master and his Master. Suddenly he remembered his prayer and he was afraid no longer. He took his fingers out of his ears. He ignored the wetness spreading at his crotch. He began to smile.

The Kid had emptied both of his guns, dropping three of the wolves in so doing. He holstered the .45s without making an attempt to reload and turned west. He went about ten paces and then stopped. More wolves were padding down the westbound lanes, weaving in and out of the dark hulks of the stalled cars like tattered streamers of mist. One of them raised its snout to the sky and howled. Its cry was joined by a second, the second by a third,