The Stand

desert. Dayna thought she had never seen such a sterile and uninviting vista in her life. Overhead was a moon like a small, highly polished silver coin. It was nearly full.

Standing there, looking out, was the shape of a man.

He continued to look out long after she had entered, indifferently presenting her his back, before he turned. How long does it take a man to turn around? Two, maybe three seconds at the most. But to Dayna it seemed that the dark man went on turning forever, showing more and more of himself, like the very moon he had been watching. She became a child again, struck dumb by the dreadful curiosity of great fear. For a moment she was caught entirely in the web of his attraction, his glamour, and she was sure that when the turn was completed, unknown eons from now, she would be staring into the face of her dreams: a Gothic cowled monk, his hood shaped around total darkness. A negative man with no face. She would see and then go mad.

Then he was looking at her, walking forward, smiling warmly, and her first shocked thought was: Why, he’s my age!

Randy Flagg’s hair was dark, tousled. His face was handsome and ruddy, as if he spent much time out in the desert wind. His features were mobile and sensitive, and his eyes danced with high glee, the eyes of a small child with a momentous and wonderful secret surprise.

“Dayna!” he said. “Hi!”

“H-H-Hello.” She could say no more. She had thought she was prepared for anything, but she hadn’t been prepared for this. Her mind had been knocked, reeling, to the mat. He was smiling at her confusion. Then he spread his hands, as if in apology. He was wearing a faded paisley shirt with a frayed collar, pegged jeans, and a very old pair of cowboy boots with rundown heels.

“What did you expect? A vampire?” His smile broadened, almost demanding that she smile back. “A skin- turner? What have they been telling you about me?”

“They’re afraid,” she said. “Lloyd was… sweating like a pig.” His smile was still demanding an answering smile, and it took all her effort of will to deny him that. She had been kicked out of bed on his orders. Brought here to… what? Confess? Tell everything she knew about the Free Zone? She couldn’t believe there was that much he didn’t already know.

“Lloyd,” Flagg said, and laughed ruefully. “Lloyd went through a rather bitter experience in Phoenix when the flu was raging. He doesn’t like to talk about it. I rescued him from death and”—his smile grew even more disarming, if that was possible—“and from a fate worse than death is the popular idiom, I believe. He’s associated me with that experience to a great degree, although his situation was not of my doing. Do you believe me?”

She nodded slowly. She did believe him, and found herself wondering if Lloyd’s constant showering had something to do with his “rather bitter experience in Phoenix.” She also found herself feeling an emotion she never would have expected in connection with Lloyd Henreid: pity.

“Good. Sit down, dear.”

She looked around doubtfully.

“On the floor. The floor will be fine. We have to talk, and talk truth. Liars sit in chairs, so we’ll eschew them. We’ll sit as though we were friends on opposite sides of a campfire. Sit, girl.” His eyes positively sparkled with suppressed mirth, and his sides seemed to bellow with laughter barely held in. He sat down and crossed his legs and then looked up at her appealingly, his expression seeming to say: You’re not going to let me sit all alone on the floor of this ridiculous office, are you?

After a moment’s debate she did sit down. She crossed her legs and put her hands lightly on her knees. She could feel the comforting weight of the knife in its spring clip.

“You were sent over here to spy out the land, dear,” he said. “Is that an accurate description of the situation?”

“Yes.” There was no use denying it.

“And you know what usually befalls spies in time of war?”

“Yes.”

His smile broadened like sunshine. “Then isn’t it lucky we’re not at war, your people and mine?”

She looked at him, totally surprised.

“But we’re not, you know,” he said with quiet sincerity.

“But… you…” A thousand confused thoughts spun in her head. Indian Springs. The Shrikes. Trashcan Man with his defoliant and his Zippos. The way the conversation always veered when this man’s name—or presence—came into the conversation. And that lawyer, Eric Strellerton. Wandering in the Mojave with his brains burned out.

All he did was look at him.

“Have we attacked your Free Zone, so-called? Made any warlike move at all against you over there?”

“No… but—”

“And have you attacked us?”

“Of course not!”

“No. And we have no plans in that direction. Look!” He suddenly held up his right hand and curled it into a tube. Looking through it, she could see the desert beyond the window-wall.

“The Great Western Desert!” he cried. “The Big Piss-All! Nevada! Arizona! New Mexico! California! A smattering of my people are in Washington, around the Seattle area, and in Portland, Oregon. A fistful each in Idaho and New Mexico. We’re too scattered to even think about taking a census for a year or more. We’re much more vulnerable than your Zone. The Free Zone is like a highly organized hive or commune. We are nothing but a confederacy, with me as the titular head. There’s room for both of us. There will still be room for both of us in 2190. That’s if the babies live, something we won’t know about here for at least another five months. If they do, and humanity continues, let our grandfathers fight it out, if they have a bone to pick. Or their grandfathers. But what in God’s name do we have to fight about? ”

“Nothing,” she muttered. Her throat was dry. She felt dazed. And something else… was it hope? She was looking into his eyes. She could not seem to tear her gaze away, and she didn’t want to. She wasn’t going mad. He wasn’t driving her mad at all. He was… a very reasonable man.

“There are no economic reasons for us to fight, no technological ones either. Our politics are a bit different, but that is a very minor thing, with the Rockies between us…”

He’s hypnotizing me.

With a huge effort she dragged her eyes away from his and looked out over his shoulder at the moon. Flagg’s smile faded a bit, and a shadow of irritation seemed to cross his features. Or had she imagined it? When she looked back (more warily this time), he was smiling gently at her again.

“You had the Judge killed,” she said harshly. “You want something from me, and when you get it, you’ll have me killed, too.”

He looked at her patiently. “There were pickets all along the Idaho-Oregon border, and they were looking for Judge Farris, that is true. But not to kill him! Their orders were to bring him to me. I was in Portland until yesterday. I wanted to talk to him as I’m now talking to you, dear: calmly, reasonably, and sanely. Two of my pickets spotted him in Copperfield, Oregon. He came out shooting, mortally wounding one of my men and killing the other outright. The wounded man killed the Judge before he himself died. I’m sorry about the way it came out. More sorry than you can know or understand.” His eyes darkened, and about that she believed him… but probably not in the way he wanted her to believe him. And she felt that coldness again.

“That’s not the way they tell it here.”

“Believe them or believe me, dear. But remember I give them their orders.”

He was persuasive… goddamned persuasive. He seemed nearly harmless—but that wasn’t exactly true, was it? That feeling only came from seeing that he was a man… or something that looked like a man. There was enough relief in just that to turn her into something like Silly Putty. He had a presence, and a politician’s knack of knocking all your best arguments into a cocked hat… but he did it in a way she found very disturbing.

“If you don’t mean war, why the jets and all the other stuff you’ve got out at Indian Springs?”

“Defensive measures,” he said promptly. “We’re doing similar things at Searles Lake in California, and at Edwards Air Force Base. There’s another group at the atomic reactor on Yakima Ridge in Washington. Your folks will be doing the same thing… if they’re not already.”

Dayna shook her head, very slowly. “When I left the Zone, they were still trying to get the electric lights working again.”