The Stand

dragged her chair up beside Ralph. She sat down again and took his hand with her own cold fingers.

“God didn’t bring you folks together to make a committee or a community,” she said. “He brought you here only to send you further, on a quest. He means for you to try and destroy this Dark Prince, this Man of Far Leagues.”

Ticking silence. In it, Mother Abagail sighed.

“I thought it was Nick to lead you, but He’s taken Nick—although not all of Nick is gone yet, it seems to me. No, not all. But you must lead, Stuart. And if it’s His will to take Stu, then you must lead, Larry. And if He takes you, it falls to Ralph.”

“Looks like I’m riding drag,” Glen began. “What—”

“Lead?” Fran asked coldly. “Lead? Lead where—?”

“Why, west, little girl,” Mother Abagail said. “West. You’re not to go. Only these four.”

“No! ” She was on her feet in spite of the pain. “What are you saying? That the four of them are just supposed to deliver themselves into his hands? The heart and soul and guts of the Free Zone?” Her eyes blazed. “So he can hang them on crosses and just walk in here next summer and kill everyone? I won’t see my man sacrificed to your killer God. Fuck Him.”

“Frannie! ” Stu gasped.

“Killer God! Killer God! ” she spat. “Millions—maybe billions —dead in the plague. Millions more afterward. We don’t even know if the children will live. Isn’t He done yet? Does it just have to go on and on until the earth belongs to the rats and the roaches? He’s no God. He’s a daemon, and you’re His witch.”

“Stop it, Frannie.”

“No problem. I’m done. I want to leave. Take me home, Stu. Not to the hospital but back home.”

“We’ll listen to what she has to say.”

“Fine. You listen for both of us. I’m leaving.”

“Little girl.”

“Don’t call me that! ”

Her hand shot out and closed around Frannie’s wrist. Fran went rigid. Her eyes closed. Her head snapped back.

“Don’t D-D-Don’t… OH MY GOD—STU—”

“Here! Here!” Stu roared. “What are you doing to her?”

Mother Abagail didn’t answer. The moment spun out, seemed to stretch into a pocket of eternity, and then the old woman let go.

Slowly, dazedly, Fran began to massage the wrist Mother Abagail had taken, although there was no red ring or dent in the flesh to show that pressure had been applied. Frannie’s eyes suddenly widened.

“Hon?” Stu asked anxiously.

“Gone,” Fran muttered.

“What… what’s she talking about?” Stu looked around at the others in shaken appeal. Glen only shook his head. His face was white and strained but not disbelieving.

“The pain… the whiplash. The pain in my back. It’s gone.” She looked at Stu, dazed. “It’s all gone. Look.” She bent and touched her toes lightly: once, then twice. Then she bent a third time and placed her palms flat on the floor without unlocking her knees.

She stood up again and met Mother Abagail’s eyes.

“Is this a bribe from your God? Because if it is, He can take His cure back. I’d rather have the pain if Stu comes with it.”

“God don’t lay on no bribes, child,” Mother Abagail whispered. “He just makes a sign and lets people take it as they will.”

“Stu isn’t going west,” Fran said, but now she seemed bewildered as well as frightened.

“Sit down,” Stu said. “We’ll listen to what she has to say.”

Fran sat down, shocked, unbelieving, lost at sea. Her hands kept stealing around to the small of her back.

“You are to go west,” Mother Abagail whispered. “You are to take no food, no water. You are to go this very day, and in the clothes you stand up in. You are to go on foot. I am in the way of knowing that one of you will not reach your destination, but I don’t know which will be the one to fall. I am in the way of knowing that the rest will be taken before this man Flagg, who is not a man at all but a supernatural being. I don’t know if it’s God’s will for you to defeat him. I don’t know if it’s God’s will for you to ever see Boulder again. Those things are not for me to see. But he is in Las Vegas, and you must go there, and it is there that you will make your stand. You will go, and you will not falter, because you will have the Everlasting Arm of the Lord God of Hosts to lean on. Yes. With God’s help you will stand.”

She nodded.

“That’s all. I’ve said m’piece.”

“No,” Fran whispered. “It can’t be.”

“Mother,” Glen said in a kind of croak. He cleared his throat. “Mother, we’re not ‘in the way of understanding,’ if you see what I mean. We’re… we’re not blessed with your closeness to whatever is controlling this. It just isn’t our way. Fran’s right. If we go over there we’ll be slaughtered, probably by the first pickets we come to.”

“Have you no eyes? You’ve just seen Fran healed of her affliction by God, through me. Do you think His plan for you is to let you be shot and killed by the Dark Prince’s least minion?”

“But, Mother—”

“No.” She raised her hand and waved his words away. “It’s not my place to argue with you, or convince, but only to put you in the way of understanding God’s plan for you. Listen, Glen.”

And suddenly, from Mother Abagail’s mouth, the voice of Glen Bateman issued, frightening them all and making Fran shrink back against Stu with a little cry.

“Mother Abagail calls him the devil’s pawn,” this strong, masculine voice said, originating somehow in the old woman’s wasted chest and emerging from her toothless mouth. “Maybe he’s just the last magician of rational thought, gathering the tools of technology against us. Maybe he’s something more, something darker. I only know that he is. And I no longer think that sociology or psychology or any other ology will put a stop to him. I think only white magic will do that.”

Glen’s mouth hung open.

“Is that a true thing, or are those the words of a liar?” Mother Abagail said.

“I don’t know if it’s true or not, but they’re my words,” Glen said shakily.

“Trust. All of you, trust. Larry… Ralph… Stu… Glen… Frannie. You most patic’ly, Frannie. Trust… and obey the word of God.”

“Do we have a choice?” Larry asked bitterly.

She turned to look at him, surprised. “A choice? There’s always a choice. That’s God’s way, always will be. Your will is still free. Do as you will. There’s no set of leg-irons on you. But… this is what God wants of you.”

That silence again, like deep snow. At last, Ralph broke it. “Says in the Bible that David did the job on Goliath,” he said. “I’ll be going along if you say it’s right, Mother.”

She took his hand.

“Me,” Larry said. “Me too. Okay.” He sighed and put his hands on his forehead as if it ached. Glen opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, there was a heavy, tired sigh from the corner and a thud.

It was Lucy, whom they had all forgotten. She had fainted.

Dawn touched the edge of the world.

They sat around Larry’s kitchen table, drinking coffee. It was ten to five when Fran came up the hall and stood in the doorway. Her face was puffy from crying, but there was no limp as she walked. She was, indeed, cured. “She’s going, I think,” Fran said.

They went in, Larry with his arm around Lucy.

Mother Abagail’s breathing had taken on a heavy, hollow rattle that was horribly reminiscent of the superflu. They gathered around the bed without speaking, deep in awe and afraid. Ralph was sure that something would happen at the end that would cause the wonder of God to stand before all of them, naked and revealed. She