The Stand

alternated between Stu and Nick.

“Travel at night. Sleep in the day.” Very slowly, in the dusk, Tom added: “And see the elephant.”

Nick nodded.

Larry brought Tom’s pack up from where it had rested beside the steps. Tom put it on slowly, dreamily.

“You want to be careful, Tom,” Larry said thickly.

“Careful. Laws, yes.”

Stu wondered belatedly if they should have given Tom a one-man tent as well, and rejected it. Tom would get all bollixed up trying to set up even a little tent.

“Nick,” Tom whispered. “Do I really have to do this?”

Nick put an arm around Tom and nodded slowly.

“All right.”

“Just stay on the big four-lane highway, Tom,” Larry said. “The one that says 70. Ralph is going to drive you down to the start of it on his motorcycle.”

“Yes, Ralph.” He paused. Ralph had come back around the house. He was swabbing at his eyes with his bandanna.

“You ready, Tom?” he asked gruffly.

“Nick? Will it still be my house when I get back?”

Nick nodded vigorously.

“Tom loves his house. Laws, yes.”

“We know you do, Tommy.” Stu could feel warm tears in the back of his own throat now.

“All right. I’m ready. Who am I riding with?”

“Me, Tom,” Ralph said. “Down to Route 70, remember?”

Tom nodded and began to walk toward Ralph’s cycle. After a moment Ralph followed him, his big shoulders slumped. Even the feather in his hatband seemed dejected. He climbed on the bike and kicked it alive. A moment later it pulled out onto Broadway and turned east. They stood together, watching the motorcycle dwindle to a moving silhouette in the purple dusk marked by a moving headlight. Then the light disappeared behind the bulk of the Holiday Twin Drive-in and was gone.

Nick walked away, head down, hands in pockets. Stu tried to join him, but Nick shook his head almost angrily and motioned him away. Stu went back to Larry.

“That’s that,” Larry said, and Stu nodded gloomily.

“You think we’ll ever see him again, Larry?”

“If we don’t, the seven of us—well, maybe not Fran, she was never for sending him—the rest of us are going to be eating and sleeping with the decision to send him for the rest of our lives.”

“Nick more than anyone else,” Stu said.

“Yeah. Nick more than anyone else.”

They watched Nick walking slowly down Broadway, losing himself in the shadows which grew around him. Then they looked at Tom’s darkened house in silence for a minute.

“Let’s get out of here,” Larry said suddenly. “The thought of all those stuffed animals… all of a sudden I got a grade-A case of the creeps.”

When they left, Nick was still standing on the side lawn of Tom Cullen’s house, his hands in his pockets, his head down.

George Richardson, the new doctor, had set up in the Dakota Ridge Medical Center, because it was close to Boulder City Hospital with its medical equipment, its large supplies of drugs, and its operating rooms.

By August 28 he was pretty much in business, assisted by Laurie Constable and Dick Ellis. Dick had asked leave to quit the world of medicine and had been refused permission to do so. “You’re doing a fine job here,” Richardson said. “You’ve learned a lot and you’re going to learn more. Besides, there’s just too much for me to do by myself. We’re going to be out of our minds as it is if we don’t get another doctor in a month or two. So congratulations, Dick, you’re the Zone’s first paramedic. Give him a kiss, Laurie.”

Laurie did.

Around eleven o’clock on that late August morning, Fran let herself into the waiting room and looked around curiously and a little nervously. Laurie was behind the counter, reading an old copy of the Ladies’ Home Journal.

“Hi, Fran,” she said, jumping up. “I thought we’d see you sooner or later. George is with Candy Jones right now, but he’ll be right with you. How are you feeling?”

“Pretty well, thanks,” Fran said. “I guess—”

The door to one of the examining rooms opened and Candy Jones came out following a tall, stooped man in corduroy slacks and a sport shirt with the Izod alligator on the breast. Candy was looking doubtfully at a bottle of pink stuff which she held in one hand.

“Are you sure that’s what it is?” she asked Richardson doubtfully. “I never got it before. I thought I was immune.”

“Well, you’re not and you have it now,” George said with a grin. “Don’t forget the starch baths, and stay out of the tall grass after this.”

She smiled ruefully. “Jack’s got it too. Should he come in?”

“No, but you can make the starch baths a family affair.”

Candy nodded dolefully and then spotted Fran. “Hi, Frannie, how’s the girl?”

“Okay. How’s by you?”

“Terrible.” Candy held up the bottle so Fran could read the word CALADRYL on the label. “Poison ivy. And you couldn’t guess where I got it.” She brightened. “But I bet you can guess where Jack’s got it.”

They watched her go with some amusement. Then George said, “Miss Goldsmith, isn’t it? Free Zone Committee. A pleasure.”

She held out her hand to be shaken. “Just Fran, please. Or Frannie.”

“Okay, Frannie. What’s the problem?”

“I’m pregnant,” Fran said. “And pretty damn scared.” And then, with no warning at all, she was in tears.

George put an arm around her shoulders. “Laurie, I’ll want you in about five minutes.”

“All right, Doctor.”

He led her into the examining room and had her sit on the black-upholstered table.

“Now. Why the tears? Is it Mrs. Wentworth’s twins?”

Frannie nodded miserably.

“It was a difficult delivery, Fran. The mother was a heavy smoker. The babies were lightweights, even for twins. They came in the late evening, very suddenly. I had no opportunity to make a postmortem. Regina Wentworth is being cared for by some of the women who were in our party. I believe—I hope —that she’s going to come out of the mental fugue-state she’s currently in. But for now all I can say is that those babies had two strikes against them from the start. The cause of death could have been anything.”

“Including the superflu.”

“Yes. Including that.”

“So we just wait and see.”

“Hell no. I’m going to give you a complete prenatal right now. I’m going to monitor you and any other woman that gets pregnant or is pregnant now every step of the way. General Electric used to have a slogan, ‘Progress Is Our Most Important Product.’ In the Zone, babies are our most important product, and they are going to be treated accordingly.”

“But we really don’t know.”

“No, we don’t. But be of good cheer, Fran.”

“Yes, all right. I’ll try.”

There was a brief rap at the door and Laurie came in. She handed George a form on a clipboard, and George began to ask Fran questions about her medical history.

When the exam was over, George left her for a while to do something in the next room. Laurie stayed with her while Fran dressed.