The Stand

came the sound of Leo playing “Sister Kate” like Tom Rush.

“But if it’s got to be Al, it’s got to be. I only see two choices anyway. We have to take the pair of them out of circulation. But I don’t want to put them in jail, goddammit.”

“What does that leave?” Larry asked.

It was Fran who answered. “Exile.”

Larry turned to her. Stu was nodding slowly, looking at his cigarette.

“Just drive him out?” Larry asked.

“Him and her both,” Stu said.

“But will Flagg take them like that?” Frannie asked.

Stu looked up at her then. “Honey, that ain’t our problem.”

She nodded and thought: Oh, Harold, I didn’t want it to come out like this. Never in a million years did I want it to come out this way.

“Any idea what they might be planning?” Stu asked.

Larry shrugged. “You’d have to get the whole committee’s thoughts on that, Stu. But I can think of some things.”

“Such as?”

“The power plant. Sabotage. An assassination attempt on you and Frannie. Those are just the first two things that occur to me.”

Fran looked pale and dismayed.

Larry went on: “Although he doesn’t come right out and say it, I think he went hunting for Mother Abagail with you and Ralph that time in hopes of getting you alone and killing you.”

Stu said, “He had his chance.”

“Maybe he chickened.”

“Stop it, can’t you?” Fran asked dully. “Please.”

Stu got up and went back into the living room. There was a CB in there hooked up to a Die-Hard battery. After some tinkering, he got Brad Kitchner.

“Brad, you dog! Stu Redman. Listen. Can you round up some guys to stand watch at the power station tonight?”

“Sure,” Brad’s voice came, “but what in God’s name for?”

“Well, this is kind of delicate, Bradley. I heard one way and another that somebody might try doing some mischief up there.”

Brad’s reply was blue with profanity.

Stu nodded at the mike, smiling a little. “I know how you feel. This is just for tonight and maybe tomorrow night, so far as I know. Then I guess things’ll be ironed out.”

Brad told him he could muster twelve men from the Power Committee without going two blocks, and any one of them would be happy to geld any would-be mischief-maker. “This something Rich Moffat’s up to?”

“No, it ain’t Rich. Listen, I’ll be talking to you, okay?”

“Fine, Stu. I’ll have them on watch.”

Stu turned off the CB and walked back to the kitchen. “People let you be just as secret as you want to be. It scares me, you know? The old bald-headed sociologist is right. We could set ourselves up like kings here if we wanted to.”

Fran put her hand over his. “I want you to promise me something. Both of you. Promise me we’ll settle this once and for all at the meeting tomorrow night. I just want it to be over.”

Larry was nodding. “Exile. Yeah. It never crossed my mind, but it might be the best solution. Well, I’m going to collect Lucy and Leo and get home.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Stu said.

“Yeah.” He went out.

In the hour before dawn on September 2, Harold stood on the edge of Sunrise Amphitheater, looking down. The town was in a ditch of blackness. Nadine slept behind him in the small two-man tent they had picked up along with a few other camping supplies as they crept out of town.

We’ll come back, though. Driving chariots.

But in his secret heart, Harold doubted that. The darkness was upon him in more ways than one. The vile bastards had stolen everything from him—Frannie, his self-respect, then his ledger, now his hope. He felt that he was going down.

The wind was strong, rippling his hair, making the tight canvas of the tent snap back and forth with a steady machine-gun popping sound. Behind him, Nadine moaned in her sleep. It was a scary sound. Harold thought she was as lost as he was, maybe worse. The sounds she made in her sleep were not the sounds of a person having happy dreams.

But I can keep sane. I can do that. If I can go down to whatever’s waiting for me with my mind intact, that will be something. Yes, something.

He wondered if they were down there now, Stu and his friends, surrounding his little house, if they were waiting for him to come home so they could arrest him and throw him in the cooler. He would go down in the history books—if any of those sorry slobs were left to write them, that was—as the Free Zone’s first jailbird. Welcome to hard times. HAWK CAGED, wuxtry, wuxtry, read all about it. Well, they would wait a long time. He was on his adventure, and he remembered all too clearly Nadine putting his hand on her white hair and saying, Too late, Harold. How like a corpse’s her eyes had been.

“All right,” Harold whispered. “We’re going through with it.” Around and above him, the dark September wind drummed through the trees.

The Free Zone Committee meeting was rapped to order some fourteen hours later in the living room of the house Ralph Brentner and Nick Andros shared. Stu was sitting in an easy chair, tapping an end table with the rim of his beer can. “Okay, folks, we better get started here.”

Glen sat with Larry on the curving lip of the freestanding fireplace, their backs to the modest fire Ralph had kindled there. Nick, Susan Stern, and Ralph himself sat on the couch. Nick held the inevitable pen and pad of notepaper. Brad Kitchner was standing just inside the doorway with a can of Coors in his hand, talking to Al Bundell, who was working a Scotch and soda. George Richardson and Chad Norris were sitting by the large window-wall watching the sunset over the Flatirons.

Frannie was sitting with her back propped comfortably against the door of the closet where Nadine had planted the bomb. Her pack, with Harold’s ledger inside it, was between her folded legs.

“Order, I say, order!” Stu said, rapping harder. “That tape recorder working, baldy?”

“It’s fine,” Glen said. “I see your mouth is in good working order, too, East Texas.”

“I oil her a little and she do just fine,” Stu said, smiling. He glanced around at the eleven people spotted around the big combination living room/dining room area. “Okay… we’ve got a right smart of business, but first I’d like to thank Ralph for providing the roof over our heads and the booze and the crackers—”

He’s really getting good at it, Frannie thought. She tried to judge just how much Stu had changed since the day she and Harold had met him, and couldn’t do it. You get too subjective about the behavior of the people you’re close to, she decided. But she knew that when she had first met him, Stu would have been stricken at the thought of having to chair a meeting of almost a dozen people… and he probably would have jumped straight up to heaven at the thought of chairing a mass Free Zone meeting of over a thousand people. She was now watching a Stu that never would have been without the plague.

It’s released you, my darling, she thought. I can cry for the others and still be so proud of you and love you so much —

She shifted a little, propping her back more firmly against the closet door.

“We’ll have our guests speak first,” Stu said, “and after that we’ll have a short closed meeting. Any objections to that?”

There were none.

“Okay,” Stu said. “I’ll turn the floor over to Brad Kitchner, and you folks want to listen close because he’s the guy that’s going to put the rocks back in your bourbon in about three days.”

This generated a hearty round of spontaneous applause. Blushing furiously, tugging at his tie, Brad walked to the center of the room. He came very close to tripping over a hassock on his way.