The Stand (Original Edition) (116 page)

Lloyd didn’t get to bed until past midnight, and got no sleep until the small hours of the morning. He talked to the Rat-Man. He talked to Paul Burlson. To Barry Dorgan, who agreed that what the dark man wanted could—and probably should—be done before daylight. Construction began on the front lawn of the MGM Grand around 10
p.m.
on the twenty-ninth, a work party of ten men with welding arcs and hammers and bolts and a good supply of long steel pipes. They were assembling the pipes on two flatbed trucks in front of the fountain. The welding arcs soon drew a crowd.

“Look, Mommy!” Dimmy cried. “It’s a fireworks show!”

“Yes, but it’s time for you to go to bed.” Angie Hirschfield drew the boy away with a secret fear in her heart, feeling that something bad, something perhaps as evil as the superflu itself, was in the making.

“Wanna see! Wanna
see!"
Dimmy wailed, but she drew him quickly and firmly away.

Julie Lawry approached the Rat-Man, who was the only man in Vegas she considered too creepy to sleep with . . . except maybe in a pinch. His black skin glimmered in the blue-white glare of the welding arcs. He was tricked out like an Ethiopian pirate—wide silk trousers, a red sash, and a necklace of silver dollars around his scrawny neck.

“What is it, Ratty?” she asked.

“The Rat-Man don’t know, dear, but the Rat-Man got hisself an idea. Yes indeedy he does. It looks like black work tomorrow, very black. Like to slip away for a quick one with Ratty, my dear?”

“Maybe,” Julie said, “but only if you know what all of this is about.”

“Tomorrow all of Vegas gonna know,” Ratty said. “You bet your sweet and delectable little sugarbuns on that. Come along with the Rat-Man, dear, and he show you the nine thousand names of God.”

But Julie, much to the Rat-Man’s displeasure, had slipped away.

By the time Lloyd finally went to sleep, the work was done and the crowd had drifted away. Two large cages stood on the back of the two flatbeds. There were squarish holes in the right and left sides of each. Parked close by were four cars, each with a trailer hitch. Attached to each hitch was a heavy steel towing chain. The chains snaked across the lawn of the Grand, and each ended just inside of the squarish holes in the cages.

At the end of each chain there dangled a single steel handcuff.

At dawn on the morning of September 30, Larry heard the door at the far end of the cellblock slide back. Footsteps came rapidly down the corridor. Larry was lying on his cot, hands laced at the back of his head. He had not slept the night before. He had been

(Thinking? Praying?)

It was all the same thing. Whichever it had been, the old wound in himself had finally closed, leaving him at peace. He had felt the two people that he had been all his life—the real one and the ideal one— merge into one living being. His mother would have liked this Larry. And Rita Blakemoor. It was a Larry that Wayne Stukey never would have had to tell the facts of life to. It was a Larry that even that long-ago oral hygienist might have liked.

I’m going to die. If there's a God—and now I believe there must be
—
that’s His will. We’re going to die and somehow all of this will end as a result of our dying.

He suspected that Glen Bateman had already died. There had been shooting in one of the other wings the day before, a lot of shooting. It was in the direction that Glen had been taken rather than Ralph. Well, he had been old, his arthritis had been paining him, and whatever Flagg had planned for them this morning was apt to be very unpleasant.

The footfalls reached his cell.

“Get up, Wonder bread,” a gleeful voice called in. “The Rat-Man has come for yo pale gray ass.”

Larry looked around. A grinning black pirate with a chain of silver dollars around his neck stood at the cell door, a drawn sword in one hand. Behind him stood the bespectacled CPA type. Burlson, his name was.

“What is it?” Larry asked.

“Dear man,” the pirate said, “it is the end. The very end.”

“All right,” Larry said, and got up.

Burlson spoke quickly, and Larry saw that he was scared. “I want you to know that this is not my idea.”

“Who was killed yesterday?”

“Bateman,” Burlson said, dropping his eyes. “Trying to escape.”

‘Trying to escape,” Larry murmured. He began to laugh. Rat-Man joined him, mocked him. They laughed together.

The cell door opened. Burlson stepped forward with the cuffs. Larry offered no resistance; only put out his wrists. Burlson cuffed him.

“Trying to escape,” Larry said. “One of these days you’ll be shot trying to escape, Burlson. You too, Ratty. Just shot trying to escape.” He began to laugh again, and this time Rat-Man didn’t join in. He looked at Larry sullenly and then began to raise his sword.

“Put that down, you ass,” Burlson said.

They made a line of three going out—Burlson, Larry, and the Rat-Man bringing up the rear. When they stepped through the door at the end of the wing, they were joined by another five men. One of them was Ralph, also cuffed.

“Hey, Larry,” Ralph said sorrowfully. “Did you hear? Did they tell you?”

“Yes. I heard.”

“Bastards. It’s almost over for them, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It is.”

“You shut up that talk!” one of them growled. “It’s you it’s almost over for. You wait and see what he’s got waiting for you.”

“No, it’s over,” Ralph insisted. “Don’t you know it? Can’t you feel it?”

Ratty pushed Ralph, making him stumble. “Shut up!” he cried. “Rat-Man don’t want
_r
to hear no more of that honky bullshit voodoo! No more!”

“You’re awful pale, Ratty,” Larry said, grinning. “Awful pale. You’re the one who looks like graymeat now.”

Rat-Man brandished his sword again, but there was no menace in it. He looked frightened; they all did. There was a feeling in the air, a sense that they had all entered the shadow of some great and onrushing thing.

An olive-drab van with LAS VEGAS COUNTY JAIL on the side stood in the sunny courtyard. Larry and Ralph were pushed in. The doors slammed, the engine started, and they drew away. They sat down on the hard wooden benches, cuffed hands between their knees.

Ralph said in a low voice, “I heard one of them saying everybody in Vegas was gonna be there. You think they’re gonna crucify us, Larry?”

“That or something like it.” He looked at the big man. Ralph’s sweat-stained hat was crammed down on his head. The feather was frayed and matted, but it still stuck up defiantly from the band. “You scared, Ralph?”

“Scared bad,” Ralph whispered. “Me, I’m a baby about pain. I never even liked going to the doctor’s for a shot. What about you?”

“Plenty. Can you come over here and sit beside me?”

Ralph got up, handcuff chains clinking, and sat beside Larry. They sat quietly for a few moments and then Ralph said softly, “We’ve hoed us one helluva long row.”

“That’s true.”

“I just wish I knew what it was all for. All I can see is that he’s gonna make a show of us. So everyone will see he’s the big cheese. Is that what we came all this way for?”

“I don’t know.”

The van hummed on in silence. They sat on the bench without speaking, holding hands. Larry was scared, but beyond the scary feeling, the deeper sense of peace held, undisturbed. It was going to work out.

“I will fear no evil,” he muttered, but he
was
afraid. He closed his eyes, thought of Lucy, and rested as easily as he could, trying to make himself ready.

The van stopped and the doors were thrown open. Bright sunlight poured in, making him and Ralph blink dazedly. Rat-Man and Burlson hopped up inside. Pouring in with the sunlight was a sound —a low, rustling murmur that made Ralph cock his head warily. But Larry knew what that sound was.

In 1978 the Tattered Remnants had played their biggest gig— opening for Arrowsmith and Led Zep at Chavez Ravine. And the sound just before they went on had been like this sound. And so when he stepped out of the van he knew what to expect, and his face didn’t change.

They were on the lawn of a huge hotel-casino. The entrance was flanked by two golden pyramids. Drawn up on the grass were two flatbed trucks. On each flatbed was a cage constructed of steel piping.

Surrounding them were people.

They spread out across the lawn in a rough circle. They were standing in the casino parking lot, on the steps leading up to the lobby doors, in the turnaround drive where incoming guests had once parked while the doorman whistled up a bellhop. They spilled out into the street itself. Some of the younger men had hoisted their girlfriends on their shoulders for a better look at the upcoming festivities. The low murmuring was the sound of the crowd-animal.

Larry ran his eyes over them, and every eye he met turned away. Every face seemed pallid, distant, marked for death and seeming to know it. Yet they were here.

He and Ralph were nudged toward the cages, and as they went, Larry noticed the cars with their chains and trailer hitches. But it was Ralph who understood the implication.

“Larry,” he said in a dry voice. “They’re going to pull us to pieces!”

“Go on, get in,” Rat-Man said. “Go on up there, Wonder bread.”

Larry climbed onto the flatbed.

“Gimme your shirt, Wonder bread.”

Larry took off his shirt and stood barechested, the morning air cool and kind on his skin. Ralph had already taken off his. A ripple of conversation went through the crowd and died. They were both terribly thin from their walk; each rib was clearly visible.

“Get in that cage, graymeat.”

Larry backed into the cage.

Now it was Barry Dorgan giving the orders. He went from place to place, checking arrangements, a set expression of disgust on his face.

The four drivers got into the cars and started them up. Ralph stood blankly for a moment, then seized one of the welded handcuffs that dangled into his cage and threw it out through the small hole. It hit Paul Burlson on the head, and a nervous titter ran through the crowd.

Dorgan said, “You don’t want to do that, fella. I’ll just have to send some guys up to hold you.”

“Let them do their thing,” Larry said to Ralph. He looked down at Dorgan. “Hey, Barry. Did they teach you this one in the Santa Monica P.D.?”

Another laugh rippled through the crowd. “Police brutality!” some daring soul cried. Dorgan flushed but said nothing. He fed the chains further into Larry’s cell and Larry spit on them, a little surprised that he had enough saliva to do it. A small cheer went up from the back of the crowd and Larry thought,
Maybe this is it, maybe they're going to rise up
—

But his heart didn’t believe it. Their faces were too pale, too secretive. The defiance from the back was meaningless—the kids cutting up in a studyhall. There was doubt here—he could feel it—and disaffection. But Flagg colored even that. These people would steal away in the dead of night for some of the great empty space that the world had become. And the Walkin Duke would let them go, knowing he only had to keep a hard core, people like Dorgan and Burlson. The runners and midnight creepers could be gathered up later, perchance to pay the price of their imperfect faith. There would be no open rebellion here.

Dorgan, Rat-Man, and a third man crowded their way into the cage with him. Rat-Man was holding the cuffs welded to the chains open for Larry’s wrists.

“Put out your arms,” Dorgan said.

“Isn’t law and order a wonderful thing, Barry?” 

“Put them out, goddammit!”

Larry put them out. The cuffs were slipped on and locked. Dorgan and the others backed out and the door was shut. Larry looked right and saw Ralph standing in his cage, head down, arms at his sides. His wrists had also been cuffed.

“You people know this is wrong!” Larry cried, and his voice, trained by years of singing, rolled out of his chest with surprising strength. “I don’t expect you to stop it, but I do expect you to remember it! We’re being put to death because Randall Flagg is afraid of us! He’s afraid of us and the people we came from!” A ris-mg murmur ran through the crowd. “Remember the way we die! And remember that next time it may be your turn to die this way, with no dignity, just an animal in a cage!”

That low murmur again, rising and angry . . . and the silence. “Larry!” Ralph called out.

Flagg was coming down the steps of the Grand, Lloyd Henreid beside him. Flagg was wearing jeans, a checked shirt, his jeans jacket with the two buttons on the breast pockets, and his rundown cowboy boots. In the sudden hush the sound of those bootheels clocking their way down the cement path was the only sound ... a sound out of time.

The dark man was grinning.

Larry stared down at him. Flagg came to a halt between the two cages and stood looking up. His grin was darkly charming. He was a man completely in control, and Larry suddenly knew this was his watershed moment, the apotheosis of his life.

Flagg turned away from them and faced his people. He passed his eyes over them, and no eye would meet his. “Lloyd,” he said quietly, and Lloyd, who looked pale, haunted, and sickly, handed Flagg a paper that had been rolled up like a scroll.

The dark man unrolled it, held it up, and began to speak. His voice was deep, sonorous, and pleasing, spreading in the stillness like a single silver ripple on a black pond. “Know you that this is a true bill to which I, Randall Flagg, have put my name on this thirtieth day of September, the year nineteen-eighty, now known as The Year One, year of the plague.”

“Flagg’s not your name!” Ralph roared. There was a shocked murmur from the crowd. “Why don’t you tell em your real name?” Flagg took no notice. “Know you that these men, Lawson Underwood and Ralph Brentner, are spies, here in Las Vegas with no good intent but rather with seditious motives, who have entered this state with stealth, and under cover of darkness—”

“That’s pretty good,” Larry said, “since we were coming down Route 70 in broad daylight.” He raised his voice to a shout. "
They took us at noon on the Interstate, how's that for stealth and under cover of darkness?”

Flagg bore through this patiently, as if he felt that Larry and Ralph had every right to answer the charges . . . not that it was going to make any ultimate difference.