The Stand (Original Edition) (120 page)

The horn gave a loud honk. Okay then. If there was a key, take the shot. If there was no key, well . . .

He got the hood down and latched by leaning all of his weight on it. Then he hopped around to the driver’s door and stared in, fully expecting to see an empty ignition slot. But the keys were there, dangling from an imitation leather case with the initials S.L. on it. Bending in carefully, he turned the key over to accessory. Slowly, the gas gauge needle swung over to a little more than a quarter of a tank. Here was a mystery. Why had the car’s owner, why had S.L. pulled over to walk when he could have driven? In his light-headed state, Stu thought of Charles Campion, almost dead, driving into Hap’s pumps. Old S.L. had the superflu, had it bad. Final stages. He pulls over, shuts off his car’s engine—not because he’s thinking about it, but because it’s a long-ingrained habit—and gets out. He’s delirious, maybe hallucinating. He stumbles out into the Utah badlands, laughing and singing and muttering and cackling, and dies there. Three months later Stu Redman and Tom Cullen happen along, and the keys are in the car, and the battery’s relatively fresh, and there’s gas—

The hand of God.
Hadn’t that been what Tom had said about Vegas?
The hand of God came down out of the sky.

“Move over, Tom,” he said.

Tom did. “Can we ride?” he asked hopefully.

Stu pushed the driver’s seat down so Kojak could hop in, which he did after a careful sniff or two. “I don’t know. You just better pray that this thing starts.”

“Okay,” Tom said agreeably.

It took Stu five minutes just to get behind the wheel. He sat on a slant, almost in the place where a middle front-seat passenger was supposed to sit. Kojak sat attentively in the back seat, panting. The car was littered with McDonalds boxes and Taco Bell wrappers; the interior smelled like an old corn chip.

Stu turned the key. The old Plymouth cranked briskly for about twenty seconds, and then the starter began to lag. Stu tapped the horn again, and this time there was only a feeble croak. Tom’s face fell.

“We’re not done with it yet,” Stu said. He was encouraged; there was juice lurking inside that Sears battery yet. He pushed in the clutch and shifted up to second. “Open your door and get us rolling. Then hop back in.”

Tom said doubtfully: “Isn’t this car pointing the wrong way?”

“Right now it is. But if we can get this old shitheap running, we’ll fix that in a hurry.”

Tom got out and started pushing on the doorpost. The Plymouth began to roll. When the speedometer got up to 5 mph, Stu said: “Hop in, Tom.”

Tom got in and slammed his door. Stu turned the ignition key to the On position and waited. The speedometer needle crawled up to 10, 15, 20. They were rolling silently down the hill Tom had spent most of the morning dragging them up. Dew collected on the windshield. Too late, Stu realized they had left the travois behind. 25 mph now.

“It’s not running, Stu,” Tom said anxiously.

30 mph. High enough. “God help us now,” Stu said, and popped the clutch. The Plymouth bucked and jerked. The engine coughed into life, spluttered, missed, stalled. Stu groaned, as much with frustration as with the bolt of pain that shot up his shattered leg.

“Shit
-fire!”
he cried, and depressed the clutch again. “Pump that gas pedal, Tom! Use your hand!”

Tom got down on the floor and pumped the gas pedal twice. The car was picking up speed again, and Stu had to force himself to wait. They were better than halfway down the slope.

“Now!”
he shouted, and popped the clutch again.

The Plymouth roared into life. Kojak barked. Black smoke boiled out of the rusty exhaust pipe and turned blue. Then the car was running, choppily, missing on two cylinders, but really running. Stu snap-shifted to third and popped the clutch again, running all the pedals with his left foot.

“We’re going, Tom!” he bellowed. “We got us some wheels now!”

Tom shouted with pleasure. Kojak barked and wagged his tail. In his previous life, the life before Captain Trips when he had been Big Steve, he had ridden often in his master’s car. It was nice to be riding again, with his new masters.

They came to a U-tum road between the westbound and east-bound lanes about four miles down the road. OFFICIAL VEHICLES ONLY, a stem sign warned. Stu managed to manipulate the clutch well enough to get them around and into the eastbound lanes, having only one bad moment when the old car hitched and bucked and threatened to stall. But the engine was warm now, and he eased them through. He got back up to third gear and then relaxed a little, breathing hard, trying to catch up with his heartbeat, which was fast and thready. The grayness wanted to come back in and swamp him, but he wouldn’t let it. A few minutes later, Tom spotted the bright orange sleeping bag that had been Stu’s makeshift travois.

“Bye-bye!” Tom called in high good humor. “Bye-bye, we’re going to Boulder, laws, yes!”

I’ll be content with Green River tonight,
Stu thought.

They got to Green River just after dark, Stu moving the Plymouth carefully in low gear through the dark streets, which were dotted with abandoned cars. He parked on the main drag, in front of a building that announced itself as the Utah Hotel. It was a dismal frame building three stories high, and Stu didn’t think the Waldorf-Astoria had anything to worry about in the way of competition just yet. His head was jangling again, and he was flickering in and out of reality. The car had seemed stuffed with people at times during the last twenty miles. Fran. Nick Andros. Norm Bruett. He had looked over once and it had seemed that Chris Ortega, the bartender at the Indian Head, was riding shotgun.

Tired. Had he ever been so tired? “In there,” he muttered. “We gotta stay the night, Nicky. I’m done up.”

“It’s Tom, Stu. Tom Cullen. Laws, yes.”

“Tom, yeah. We got to stop. Can you help me in?”

“Sure. Getting this old car to run, that was great.”

“I’ll have another beer,” Stu told him. “And ain’t you got a smoke? I’m dying for a cigarette.” He fell forward over the wheel.

Tom got him out and carried him into the hotel. The lobby was damp and dark, but there was a fireplace and a half-filled woodbox beside it. Tom set Stu down on a threadbare sofa below a great stuffed moosehead and then set about building a fire while Kojak padded around, sniffing at things. Stu’s breath came slow and raspy. He muttered occasionally, and every now and then he would scream something unintelligible, freezing Tom’s blood.

He kindled a monster blaze, and then went looking around. He found pillows and blankets for himself and Stu. He pushed the sofa Stu was on a little closer to the fire and then Tom bedded down next to him.

Tom lay looking up at the ceiling, which was scrolled tin and laced with cobwebs at the corners. Stu was very sick. It was a worrisome thing. If he woke up again, Tom would ask him what to do about the sickness.

But suppose . . . suppose he didn’t wake up?

Outside, the wind had picked up and went howling past the hotel. Rain lashed at the windows. By midnight, after Tom had gone to sleep, the temperature had dropped another four degrees, and the sound turned to the gritty slap of sleet. Far away to the west, the storm’s outer edges were urging a vast cloud of radioactive pollution toward California, where more would die.

At some time after two in the morning, Kojak raised his head and whined uneasily. Tom Cullen was getting up. His eyes were wide and blank. Kojak whined again, but Tom took no notice of him. He went to the door and let himself out into the screaming night. Kojak went to the hotel lobby window and put his paws up, looking out. He looked for some time, making low and unhappy sounds in his throat.

“I almost died, you know,” Nick said. He and Tom were walking up the empty sidewalk together. The wind howled steadily, an endless ghost-train highballing through the black sky. It made odd low hooting noises in the alleyways.
Ha’ants,
Tom would have said awake, and run away. But he wasn’t awake—not exactly—and Nick was with him. Sleet smacked coldly against his cheeks.

“You did?” Tom asked. “My laws!”

Nick laughed. His voice was low and musical, a good voice. Tom loved to listen to
him
talk. “I sure did. The flu didn’t get me, but a little scratch along the leg almost did. Here, look at this.”

Seemingly oblivious of the cold, Nick unbuckled his jeans and pushed them down. Tom bent forward curiously, no different from any small boy who has been offered a glimpse of a wart with a hair growing out of it or an interesting wound or puncture. Running down Nick’s leg was an ugly scar, barely healed.

“And that almost
killed
you?”

Nick pulled up his jeans and belted them. “It wasn’t deep, but it got infected. Infection means that the bad germs got into it. Infection’s the most dangerous thing there is, Tom. Infection was what made the superflu germ kill all the people. And infection is what made people want to make the germ in the first place. An infection of the mind.”

“Infection,” Tom whispered, fascinated. They were walking again, almost floating along the sidewalk.

“Tom, Stu’s got an infection now.”

“No ... no, don’t say that, Nick . . . you’re scaring Tom Cullen, laws, yes you are!”

“I know I am, Tom, and I’m sorry. But you have to know. He has pneumonia in both lungs. He’s been sleeping outside for nearly two

weeks. There are things you have to do for him. And still, he’ll almost certainly die. You have to be prepared for that.”

“No, don’t—”

“Tom.” Nick put his hand on Tom’s shoulder, but Tom felt nothing .. . it was as if Nick’s hand was nothing but smoke. “If he dies, you and Kojak have to go on. You have to get back to Boulder and tell them that you saw the hand of God in the desert. If it’s God’s will, Stu will go with you ... in time. If it’s God’s will that Stu should die, then he will. Like me.”

“Nick,” Tom begged. “Please—”

“I showed you my leg for a reason. There are pills for infections. In places like this.”

Tom looked around and was surprised to see that they were no longer on the street. They were in a dark store. A drugstore. A wheelchair was suspended on piano wire from the ceiling like a ghostly mechanical corpse. A sign on Tom’s right advertised CONTINENCE SUPPLIES.

“Yes, sir? May I help you?”

Tom whirled around. Nick was behind the counter, in a white coat.

“Nick?”

“Yes, sir.” Nick began to put small bottles of pills in front of Tom. “This is penicillin. Very good for pneumonia. This is ampicillin. Also good stuff. And this is V-cillin, most commonly given to children, and it may work if the others don’t. He’s to drink lots of water, and he should have juices, but that may not be possible. So give him these. They’re vitamin C tablets. Also, he must be walked—”

“
I 
can’t remember all of that!”
Tom wailed.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to. Because there is no one else. You’re on your own.”

Tom began to cry.

Nick leaned forward. His arm swung. There was no slap—again, that feeling that Nick was smoke that had passed around him and possibly through him—but Tom felt his head rock back all the same. Something in his head seemed to snap.

“Stop that! You can’t be a baby now, Tom! Be a man! For God’s sake, be a man!”

Tom stared at Nick, his hand on his cheek, his eyes wide.

“Walk him,” Nick said. “Get him on his good leg. Drag him, if you have to. But get him off his back or he’ll drown.” “He isn’t himself,” Tom said. “He shouts ... to people who aren’t there.”

“He’s delirious. Walk him anyway. All you can. Make him take the penicillin, one pill at a time. Give him aspirin. Keep him warm. Pray. Those are all the things you can do.”

“All right, Nick. All right, I’ll try to be a man. I’ll try to remember. But I wish you was here, laws, yes, I do!”

“You do your best, Tom. That’s all.”

Nick was gone. Tom woke up and found himself standing in the deserted drugstore by the prescription counter. Standing on the glass were four bottles of pills. Tom stared at them for a long time and then gathered them up.

Tom came back in at four in the morning, his shoulders frosted with sleet. Outside, it was letting up, and there was a thin clean line of dawn in the east. Kojak barked an ecstatic welcome, and Stu moaned and woke up. Tom knelt beside him. “Stu?”

“Tom? Hard to breathe.”

“I’ve got medicine, Stu. Nick showed me. You take it and get rid of that infection. You have to take one right now.” From the bag he had brought in, Tom produced the four bottles of pills and a tall bottle of Gator-Ade. Nick had been wrong about the juice. There was plenty of bottled juice in the Green River Superette.

Stu looked at the pills, holding them closely to his eyes. “Tom, where did you get these?”

“In the drugstore. Nick gave them to me.”

“No, really.”

“Really! Really! You have to take the penicillin first to see if that works. Which one says penicillin?”

“This one does ... but Tom . . .”

“No. You have to.
Nick
said so. And you have to walk.”

“I can’t walk. I got a bust leg. And I’m sick.” Stu’s voice became sulky, petulant. It was a sickroom voice.

“You have to. Or I’ll drag you. Nick said.”

Stu lost his tenuous grip on reality. Tom put one of the penicillin capsules in his mouth, and Stu reflex-swallowed it with Gator-Ade to keep from choking. He began to cough wretchedly anyway, and Tom pounded him on the back as if he was burping a baby. Then he hauled Stu to his good foot by main force and began to drag him around the lobby, Kojak following them anxiously.

“Please God,” Tom said. “Please God, please God.”

Stu cried out: “I know where I can get her a washboard, Glen! That music store has em! I seen one in the window!”

“Please God,” Tom panted. Stu’s head lolled on his shoulder. It felt as hot as a furnace. His splinted leg dragged uselessly behind him.

Boulder had never seemed so far away as it did on that dismal morning.

Stu’s struggle with pneumonia lasted two weeks. He drank quarts of Gator-Ade, V-8, Welch’s grape juice, and various brands of orange drink. He rarely knew what he was drinking. His urine was strong and acidic. He messed himself like a baby, and like a baby’s, his stools were yellow and loose and totally blameless. Tom kept him clean. And dragged him around the lobby of the Utah Hotel. And waited for the night when he would awake, not because Stu was raving in his sleep, but because his labored breathing had finally ceased.