The Stand (Original Edition) (92 page)

Something else occurred to her and she sat up straighter, wincing at the pain in her back. “Mother Abagail,” she said. “We all would have been inside when it went off if they hadn’t come up to tell us—”

“It’s like a miracle,” Stu repeated. “She saved our lives. Even if she is—” He fell silent.

“Is she dead?” Fran asked. She grabbed his hand, clutched it. “Stu, is she dead, too?”

“She came back into town around quarter of eight. Larry Underwood’s boy was leading her by the hand. He’d lost all his words, you know he does that when he gets excited, but he took her to Lucy. Then she just collapsed.” Stu shook his head. “My God, how she ever walked as far as she did . . . and what she can have been eating or doing . . . I’ll tell you something, Fran. There’s more in the world— and out of it—than I ever dreamed of back in Arnette. I think that woman is from God. Or was.”

She closed her eyes. “She died, didn’t she? In the night. She came back to die.”

“She’s not dead yet. She ought to be, and George Richardson says she’ll have to go soon, but she’s not dead yet.” He looked at her simply and nakedly. “And I’m afraid. She saved our lives by coming back, but I’m afraid of her, and I’m afraid of why she came back.” “What do you mean, Stu? Mother Abagail would never harm—’* “Mother Abagail does what her God tells her to,” he said harshly. “Stu!”

“I don’t know why she’s back, or if she has anything left to tell us at all. Maybe she will die without regaining consciousness. George says that’s the most likely. But I do know that the explosion . . . and Nick dying . . . and her coming back . . . it’s taken the blinkers off this town. They’re talking about
him.
They know Harold was the one who set off the blast, but they think
he
made Harold do it. Hell, I think so too. There’s plenty who are saying Flagg’s responsible for Mother Abagail coming back the way she is, too. Me, I don’t know. I don’t know nothing, seems like. But I feel scared. Like it’s going to end bad. I didn’t feel that way before, but I do now.”

“But there’s us,” she said, almost pleading with him. “There’s us and the baby, isn’t there?
Isn't there?”

He didn’t answer for a long time. She didn’t think he was going to answer. And then he said, “Yeah. But for how long?”

Near dusk on that day, the third of September, people began to drift slowly—almost aimlessly—down Table Mesa Drive toward Larry and Lucy’s house. Singly, by couples, in threes. They sat on the front steps of houses that bore Harold’s X-sign on their doors. They sat on curbs and lawns that were dry and brown at this long summer’s ending. They talked a little in low tones. They smoked their cigarettes and their pipes. Brad Kitchner was there, one arm wrapped in a bulky white bandage and supported in a sling. Candy Jones was there, and Rich Moffat showed up with two bottles of Black Velvet in a newsboy’s pouch. Norman Kellogg sat with Tommy Gehringer, his shirtsleeves rolled up to show sunburned, freckled biceps. The Gehringer boy’s sleeves were rolled up in imitation. Harry Dunbarton and Sandy DuChiens sat on a blanket together, holding hands. Dick Vollman, Chip Hobart, and sixteen-year-old Tony Donahue sat in a breezeway half a block up from Larry’s tract house, passing a bottle of Canadian Club back and forth, chasing it with warm Seven-Up. Patty Kroger sat with Shirley Hammet. There was a picnic hamper between them. The hamper was well-filled, but they only nibbled. By eight o’clock the street was lined with people, all of them watching the house. Larry’s cycle was parked out front, and George Richardson’s big Kawasaki 650 was parked beside it.

Larry watched them from the bedroom window. Behind him, in his and Lucy’s bed, Mother Abagail lay unconscious. The dry, sickly smell coming from her filled his nose and made him want to puke— he hated to puke—but he wouldn’t move. This was his penance for escaping while Nick and Susan died. He heard low voices behind him, the deathwatch around her bed. George would be leaving for the hospital shortly to check on his other patients. There were only sixteen now. Three had been released. And Teddy Weizak had died.

Larry himself had been totally unhurt.

The blast had thrown him across the driveway and into a flowerbed, but he had not sustained a single scratch. Jagged shrapnel had rained down all around him, but nothing had touched him. Nick had died, he had been unhurt, perhaps proving the old saying about how nice guys finish last.

Deathwatch in here, deathwatch out there. All the way up the block. Six hundred of them, easy. Harold, you ought to come on back with a dozen hand grenades and finish the job.
Harold.
He had followed Harold all the way across the country, had followed a trail of Payday candy wrappers and clever improvisations. Larry had almost lost his fingers getting gas back in Wells. Harold had simply found the plugvent and used a siphon. Harold was the one who had suggested the memberships in the various committees slide upward with population. Harold, who had suggested that the ad hoc committee be accepted in toto. Clever Harold. Harold and his grin.

It was all well and good for Stu to say no one could have figured out what Harold and Nadine were up to from a few scraps of wire. With Larry that just didn’t make it. He had seen Harold’s improvisations before. He should have guessed. Inspector Underwood was great at ferreting out candy wrappers, but not so great when it came to dynamite. In point of fact, Inspector Underwood was a bloody asshole.

Larry, if you knew
—

Nadine’s voice.

If you want, I’ll get down on my knees and beg.

That had been another chance to avert the murder and destruction. Had it really been in the works even then? Probably. If not the specifics of the dynamite bomb wired to the walkie-talkie, then at least some general plan.

Flagg’s plan.
In the background there was always Flagg, the dark puppet master, pulling the strings on Harold, Nadine, on Charlie Impening, maybe, God knew how many others. The people in the Zone would happily lynch Harold on sight, but it was Flagg’s doing . . . and Nadine’s. Besides, who had sent her to Harold, if not Flagg? But before she had gone to him she had come to Larry. And he had sent her away.

How could he have said yes? There was his responsibility to Lucy. That had been all-important, not just because of her but because of himself—he sensed it would take only one or two more fades to destroy him as a man for good. So he had sent her away, and he supposed Flagg was well pleased with the previous night’s work ... if Flagg was really his name. Oh, Stu was still alive, and he spoke for the committee—he was the mouth that Nick could never use. Glen was alive, and Larry supposed he was the point-man of the committee’s mind, but Nick had been the heart of the committee, and perhaps Sue had served as its moral conscience. Yes, he thought bitterly, all in all, a good evening’s work for that bastard. He ought to reward Harold and Nadine well when they got over there.

He turned from the window, feeling a dull throb behind his forehead. Richardson was taking Mother Abagail’s pulse. Laurie was fiddling with the IV bottles hung on their T-shaped rack. Dick Ellis was standing by. Lucy sat by the door, looking at Larry.

“How is she?” Larry asked George.

“The same,” Richardson said.

“Will she live through the night?”

“I can’t say, Larry.”

The woman on the bed was a skeleton covered with thinly stretched, ash-gray skin. She seemed without sex. Most of her hair was gone; her breasts were gone; her mouth hung unhinged and her breath rasped through it harshly. To Larry, she looked like pictures he had seen of the Yucatan mummies—not decayed but shriveled; cured; dry; ageless.

How could she still be alive? Larry wondered . . . and what God would put her through it? To what purpose? It had to be a joke, a big cosmic horselaugh. George said he had heard of similar cases but never of one so extreme, and he had never expected to see one. She was somehow . . .
eating herself
. Her body had kept running long after it should have succumbed to malnutrition. She was breaking down parts of herself for nourishment that had never been meant to be broken down. Lucy, who had lifted her onto the bed, had told him in a low, marveling voice that she seemed to weigh no more than a child’s box kite.

And now Lucy spoke from her corner by the door, startling all of them: “She’s got something to say.”

Laurie said uncertainly, “She’s in deep coma, Lucy ... the chances that she can ever regain consciousness . . .”

“She came back to tell us something. And God won’t let her go until she does.”

“But what could it be, Lucy?” Dick asked her.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said. “But I’m afraid to hear it. I know that. The dying ain’t over. It’s just got started. That’s what I fear.”

There was a long silence that George Richardson finally broke. “I’ve got to get up to the hospital. Laurie, Dick, I’m going to need both of you.”

You aren’t going to leave us alone with this mummy, are you?
Larry almost asked.

The three of them went to the door, and Lucy got them their coats. The temperature was barely sixty this night, and riding a cycle in shirtsleeves was uncomfortable.

“Is there anything we can do for her?” Larry asked George quietly.

“Lucy knows about the IV drip,” George said. “There’s nothing else. You see . . .” He trailed off. Of course they all saw. It was on the bed, wasn’t it?

“Goodnight, Larry,” Dick said.

They went out. Larry drifted back to the window. Outside, everyone had come to their feet, watching. Was she alive? Dead? Dying? Healed?
Had she said anything?

Lucy slipped an arm around his waist, making him jump a little. “I love you,” she said.

He groped for her, held her. He put his head down and began to shudder helplessly.

“I love you,” she said calmly. “It’s all right. Let it come. Let it come out, Larry.”

He cried. The tears were as hot and hard as bullets. “Lucy—”

“Shhh.” Her hands on the back of his neck; her soothing hands.

“Oh Lucy, my God, what is all this?”
he cried out against her neck, and she held him as tight as she could, not knowing, not knowing
yet,
and Mother Abagail breathed harshly behind them, holding on in the depths of her coma.

George drove up the street at walking speed, passing the same message over and over again: Yes, still alive. Prognosis is poor. No, she hasn’t said anything and isn’t likely to. You might as well go home. If anything happens, you’ll hear.

People did not go home. They remained standing for a while, renewing their conversations, examining each word George had said. Prognosis, now what might that mean? Coma. Brain-death. If her brain was dead, that was it. Might as well expect a can of peas to talk as a person with a dead brain. Well, maybe that would be it if this was a
natural
situation, but things were hardly natural anymore, were they?

They sat down again. Darkness came. The glow of Coleman lamps came on in the house where the old woman lay. They would go home later, and lie sleepless.

Talk turned hesitantly to the dark man. If Mother Abagail died, didn’t that mean
he
was stronger?

What do you mean, “not necessarily”?

Well I hold he’s Satan, pure and simple.

The Antichrist, that’s what I think. We’re living out the Book of Revelation right in our own time . . . how can you doubt it? “And the seven vials were opened . . Sure sounds like the superflu to me.

Ah, balls, people said Hitler was the Antichrist.

If those dreams come back, I’ll kill myself.

Crickets began to chirrup. Stars spread across the sky. The chill in the air was duly commented on. Pipes and cigarettes glowed in the dark.

I heard the Power people went right ahead turning things off.

Good for them. If they don’t get the lights and heat back on pretty quick, we’re going to be in trouble.

Low murmur of voices, now faceless in the gloom.

I guess we’re safe for this winter. Sure enough. No way he can get over the passes. Too full of cars and snow. But in the spring . . .

Suppose he’s got a few A-bombs?

Fuck the A-bomb, what if he’s got a few of those dirty neutron bombs? Or the other six of Sally’s seven vials?

Or planes?

What’s to do?

I don’t know.

Damn if I know.

Ain’t got a friggin clue.

And around ten o’clock Stu Redman, Glen Bateman, and Ralph Brentner passed among them, talking quietly and passing out fliers, telling them to pass the word on to those not here tonight. Glen was limping slightly because a flying stove dial had clipped a piece of meat out of his right calf. The mimeographed posters said:
FREE ZONE MEETING
*
MUNZINGER AUDITORIUM
*
SEPTEMBER 4 * 8:00 P.M.

That seemed to be the signal to leave. People drifted away silently into the dark. Most of them took the fliers. But quite a few were crumpled into balls and thrown away.

The auditorium was crammed but extremely quiet when Stu convened the meeting the following night. Sitting behind him were Larry, Ralph, and Glen. Fran had tried to get up, but her back was still much too painful. Unmindful of the grisly irony, Ralph had patched her through to the meeting by walkie-talkie.

“There’s a few things that need talking about,” Stu said with quiet and studied understatement. His voice, although only slightly amplified, carried well in the silent hall. “I guess there’s nobody here who doesn’t know about the explosion that killed Nick and Sue and the others, and nobody who doesn’t know that Mother Abagail has come back. We need to talk about those things, but we wanted you to have some good news first. Want you to listen to Brad Kitchner for that. Brad?”

Brad walked toward the podium through listless applause. When he got there he turned to face them, gripped the lectern in both hands, and said simply: “We’re going to switch on tomorrow.”

This time the applause was much louder. Brad held up his hands, but the applause rode over them in a wave. It held for thirty seconds or more. Later Stu told Frannie that if it hadn’t been for the events of the last two days, Brad probably would have been dragged down from the podium and carried around the auditorium on the shoulders of the crowd like a halfback who has scored the winning touchdown of the championship game in the last thirty seconds.