The Stand

Driver, where you taking us?

Nadine, beyond help or hope of succor, sat upright on the bench at the crest of Flagstaff Mountain in the black trench of morning, her eyes wide, that feeling of being on the border stronger than ever. She stared east, but felt his presence coming from behind her, pressing heavy on her, dragging her down like weights tied to the feet of a dead woman: Flagg’s dark presence, coming in steady, inexorable waves.

Somewhere the dark man was abroad in the night, and she spoke two words like an incantation to all the black spirits that had ever been—incantation and invitation:

“Tell me.”

And beneath her fingers, the planchette began to write.

Chapter 54

Excerpts from the Minutes of the Permanent Free Zone Committee Meeting

August 19, 1990

This meeting was held at the apartment of Stu Redman and Fran Goldsmith. All members of the Free Zone Committee were present.

Stu Redman offered congratulations to all of us, including himself, on being elected to the Permanent Committee. He made a motion that a letter of thanks to Harold Lauder be drafted and signed by each member of the Committee. It passed unanimously.

Stu: “Once we get the old business taken care of, Glen Bateman has a couple of items. I don’t know what they are any more than you do, but I suspect one of them has to do with the next public meeting. Right, Glen?”

Glen: “I’ll wait my turn.”

Stu: “That’s baldy for you. The main difference between an old drunk and an old bald college professor is the professor waits his turn before he starts talkin the ears off your head.”

Glen: “Thank you for those pearls of wisdom, East Texas.”

Fran said she could see Stu and Glen were having a wonderful time but wanted to know if they could get down to business, as all her favorite TV shows started at nine. This comment was greeted with more laughter than it probably deserved.

The first real item of business was our scouts in the West. To recap, the committee has decided to ask Judge Farris, Tom Cullen, and Dayna Jurgens to go. Stu suggested that the people who nominated each of them be the ones to broach the subject to their own nominees—that is, Larry Underwood asks the Judge, Nick will have to talk to Tom—with Ralph Brentner’s help—and Sue will talk to Dayna.

Nick said that working with Tom might take a few days, and Stu said that brought up the point of when to send them. Larry said they couldn’t be sent together or they might all get caught together. He went on to say that both the Judge and Dayna would probably suspect that we had sent more than one spy, but as long as they didn’t know the actual names, they couldn’t tattle. Fran said that tattle was hardly the word, considering what the man in the West might do to them—if he is a man.

Glen: “I wouldn’t be so gloomy, if I were you, Fran. If we give our Adversary credit for even a modicum of intelligence, he’ll know we wouldn’t give our—operatives, I guess one could call them—any information we considered vital to his interests. He’ll know that torture could do him very little good.”

Fran: “You mean he’ll probably pat them on the head and tell them not to do it anymore? I have an idea he might torture them just because torture is one of the things he likes. What do you say to that?”

Glen: “I guess there’s not much I can say.”

Stu: “That decision’s been made, Frannie. We’ve all agreed that we’re sending our people into a dangerous situation, and we all know that making the decision sure wasn’t any fun.”

Glen suggested that we agree tentatively to this schedule: The Judge would go out on August twenty-sixth, Dayna on the twenty-seventh, and Tom on the twenty-eighth, none of them to know about the others and each to leave on a different road. That would allow the time necessary to work with Tom, he added.

Nick said that, with the exception of Tom Cullen, who will be told when to come back by means of a post- hypnotic suggestion, the other two must be told to come back when their own discretion advises them to, but that the weather could become a factor—there can be heavy snow in the mountains by the first week of October. Nick suggested that each of them should be advised to spend no more than three weeks in the West.

Fran said they could swing around to the south if the snow came early in the mountains but Larry disagreed, pointing out that the Sangre de Cristo chain would be in the way, unless they swung all the way down to Mexico. And if they had to do that, we probably wouldn’t see them again until spring.

Larry said if that was the case, perhaps we ought to give the Judge a headstart. He suggested August 21, day after tomorrow.

That closed the subject of the scouts… or spies, if you prefer.

Glen was then recognized, and I am now quoting from the taped record:

Glen: “I want to move that we call another public meeting on August twenty-fifth, and I’m going to suggest a few things that we might cover at that meeting.

“I’d like to start by pointing out something that may surprise you. We’ve been assuming that we’ve got about six hundred people in the Zone, and Ralph has kept admirable, accurate records of the number of large groups that have come in, and we’ve based our population assumption on those figures. But there have also been people coming in by dribs and drabs, maybe as many as ten a day. So earlier today I went over to Chautauqua Park auditorium with Leo Rockway, and we counted the seats in the hall. There are six hundred and seven of them. Now does that tell you anything?”

Sue Stern said that couldn’t be right, because people had been standing in the back and sitting in the aisles when they couldn’t get seats. Then we all saw what Glen was getting at, and I guess it would be appropriate to say the committee was thunderstruck.

Glen: “We don’t have any way of accurately estimating how many standees and sittees we had, but my memory of the gathering is fairly clear and I’d have to say that one hundred would be a terribly conservative estimate. So you see, we really have better than seven hundred people here in the Zone. As a result of Leo’s and my findings, I motion that one of the items to go on the big meeting agenda is a Census Committee.”

Ralph: “Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch! That’s one on me.”

Glen: “No, it’s not your fault. You’ve got about a dozen irons in the fire, Ralph, and I think we’d all agree you’ve kept them turning nicely—”

Larry: “Boy, I’ll say.”

Glen: “—but even if we’ve only been getting four loners a day, that still adds up to almost thirty a week. And my guess is we’re getting more like twelve or fourteen. They don’t lust run up to one of us and announce themselves, you know, and with Mother Abagail gone, there’s no one place where you can count on them going after they arrive.”

Fran Goldsmith then seconded Glen’s motion that the committee put a Census Committee on the agenda for the meeting on August 25, said committee to be responsible for keeping a roll of every Free Zone member.

Larry: “I’m all for that if there’s some good, practical reason for doing it. But…”

Nick: “But what, Larry?”

Larry: “Well… don’t we have enough other things to worry about without hacking around with a bunch of diddly-shit bureaucracy?”

Fran: “I can see one valid reason right now, Larry.”

Larry: “What’s that?”

Fran: “Well, if Glen’s right, it means we’re going to need to hire a bigger hall for the next meeting. That’s one thing. If there are going to be eight hundred people here by the twenty-fifth, we’ll never cram them all into Chautauqua Auditorium.”

Ralph: “Jesus, I never thought of that. I told you guys I wasn’t cut out for this work.”

Stu: “Relax, Ralph, you’re doing fine.”

Sue: “So where are we going to hold the goddam meeting?”

Glen: “Wait a minute, wait a minute. One thing at a time. There’s a goddam motion on the goddam floor!”