The Stand

of his gun.

The screen door opened and he turned, thinking it would be Frannie. It wasn’t; it was Larry.

“What’s up, Stu?”

“Don’t know. But we better get them out.”

Then the cycles were winding their way into the driveway and Stu relaxed a little. He could see Dick Vollman, the Gehringer kid, Teddy Weizak, others he recognized. Now he could allow himself to recognize what his chief fear had been: that behind the blazing headlights and snarling motorcycle engines had been the spearhead of Flagg’s forces, that the war was about to start.

“Dick,” Stu said. “What the hell?”

“Mother Abagail! ” Dick roared over the motors. More and more cycles filled the yard as the members of the committee crowded out of the house. It was a carnival of swinging headlights and merry- go-round shadows.

“What? ” Larry screamed. Behind him and Stu, Glen, Ralph, and Chad Norris crowded out, forcing Larry and Stu to the foot of the steps.

“She’s come back! ” Dick had to bellow to make himself heard over the cycles. “Oh, she’s in terrible shape! We need a doctor… Christ, we need a miracle! ”

George Richardson pushed through them. “The old woman? Where?”

“Get on, Doc!” Dick shouted at him. “Don’t ask questions! Just for Christ’s sake be quick!”

Richardson mounted the cycle behind Dick Vollman. Dick turned in a tight circle and began to weave his way back through the cluster of motorcycles.

Stu’s eyes met Larry’s. Larry looked as bewildered as Stu felt… but there was a gathering cloud in Stu’s head, and suddenly a terrible feeling of impending doom engulfed him.

“Nick, come on! Come on! ” Fran cried, seizing his shoulder. Nick was standing in the middle of the living room, his face still, immobile.

He couldn’t talk, but suddenly he knew. He knew. It came from nowhere, from everywhere.

There was something in the closet.

He gave Frannie a tremendous push.

“Nick !”

GO!! he waved at her.

She went. He turned to the closet, pulled open the door, and began to rip madly at the tangle of things inside, praying God that he wasn’t too late.

Suddenly Frannie was next to Stu, her face pallid, her eyes huge. She clutched at him. “Stu… Nick’s still in there… something… something…”

“Frannie, what are you talking about?”

“Death! ” she screamed at him. “I’m talking about death and NICK IS STILL IN THERE! ”

He pulled aside a handful of scarves and mittens and felt something. A shoebox. He grabbed it, and as he did, like malign necromancy, Harold Lauder’s voice spoke from inside it.

“What about Nick? ” Stu shouted, grabbing her shoulders.

“We have to get him out—Stu—something’s going to happen, something awful—”

Al Bundell shouted: “What the hell is going on, Stuart?”

“I don’t know,” Stu said.

“Stu, please, we have to get Nick out of there! ” Fran screamed.

That was when the house blew up behind them.

With the SEND button depressed, the background static disappeared and was replaced by a smooth, dark silence. Void, waiting for him to fill it. Harold sat cross-legged on the picnic table, summoning himself up.

Then he raised his arm, and at the end of the arm one finger pointed out of his knotted fist, and in that moment he was like Babe Ruth, old and almost washed up, pointing to the spot where he was going to hit the home run, pointing for all the hecklers and badmouths in Wrigley Field, shutting them up once and for all.

Speaking firmly but not loudly into the walkie-talkie, he said: “This is Harold Emery Lauder speaking. I do this of my own free will.”

A blue-white spark greeted This is. A gout of flame shot up at Harold Emery Lauder speaking. A faint, flat bang, like a cherrybomb stuffed into a tin can, reached their ears at I do this, and by the time he had spoken the words of my own free will and tossed the walkie-talkie away, its purpose served, a fire-rose had bloomed at the base of Flagstaff Mountain.

“Breaker, breaker, that’s a big ten-four, over and out,” Harold said softly.

Nadine clutched at him, much as Frannie had clutched Stu only seconds ago. “We ought to be sure. We ought to be sure that it got them.”

Harold looked at her, then gestured at the blooming rose of destruction below them. “Do you think anything could have lived through that?”

“I… I d-don’t kn… ooow, Harold, I’m—” Nadine turned away, clutched her belly, and began to retch. It was a deep, constant, raw sound. Harold watched her with mild contempt.

She turned back at last, panting, pale, wiping at her mouth with a Kleenex. Scrubbing at her mouth. “Now what?”

“Now I guess we go west,” Harold said. “Unless you plan to go down there and sample the mood of the community.”

Nadine shuddered.

Harold slid off the picnic table and winced at the pins and needles as his feet struck the ground. They had gone to sleep.

“Harold—” She tried to touch him and he jerked away. Without looking at her, he began to strike the tent.

“I thought we’d wait until tomorrow—” she began timidly.

“Sure,” he jeered at her. “So twenty or thirty of them can decide to fan out on their bikes and catch us. Did you ever see what they did to Mussolini?”

She winced. Harold was rolling the tent up and cinching the ground-cords tight.

“And we don’t touch each other. That’s over. It got Flagg what he wanted. We wasted their Free Zone Committee. They’re washed up. They may get the power on, but as a functioning group, they’re washed up. He’ll give me a woman who makes you look like a potato sack, Nadine. And you… you get him. Happy days, right? Only if I were wearing your Hush Puppies, I would be shaking in them plenty.”

“Harold—please—” She was sick, crying. He could see her face in the dim fireglow, and felt pity for her. He forced it out of his heart like an unwelcome drunk who has tried to enter a cozy little suburban tavern where everybody knows everybody else. The irrevocable fact of murder was in her heart forever—that fact shone sickly in her eyes. But so what? It was in his, as well. In it and on it, weighing it down like stones.

“Get used to it,” Harold said brutally. He flung the tent on the back of his cycle and began to tie it down. “It’s over for them down there, and it’s over for us, and it’s over for everybody that died in the plague. God went off on a celestial fishing trip and He’s going to be gone a long time. It’s totally dark. The dark man’s in the driver’s seat now. Him. So get used to it.”

She made a squeaking, moaning noise in her throat.

“Come on, Nadine. This stopped being a beauty contest two minutes ago. Help me get this shit packed up. I want to do a hundred miles before sunup.”

After a moment she turned her back on the destruction below—destruction that seemed almost inconsequential from this height—and helped him pack the rest of the camping gear in his saddlebags and her wire carrier. Fifteen minutes later they had left the fire-rose behind and were riding through the cool and windy dark, heading west.

For Fran Goldsmith, that day’s ending was painless and simple. She felt a warm push of air at her back and suddenly she was flying through the night. She had been knocked out of her sandals.