CHAPTER 59
Birds. She could hear birds. Fran lay in darkness, listening to the birds for a long time before she realized the darkness wasn't really dark. It was reddish, moving, peaceful. It made her think of her childhood. Saturday morning, no school, no church, the day you got to sleep late. The day you could wake up a little at a time, at your leisure. You lay with your eyes shut, and you saw nothing but a red darkness that was Saturday sunshine being filtered through the delicate screen of capillaries in your eyelids. You listened to the birds in the old oaks outside and maybe smelled sea-salt, because your name was Frances Goldsmith and you were eleven years old on a Saturday morning in Ogunquit Birds. She could hear birds. But this wasn't Ogunquit; it was (Boulder) She puzzled over it in the red darkness for a long time, and suddenly she remembered the explosion. (?Explosion?) (!Stu!) Her eyes flashed open. There was sudden terror. "Stu!" And Stu was sitting there beside her bed, Stu with a clean white bandage wrapped over one forearm and a nasty-looking cut dried on one cheek and part of his hair burned away, but it was Stu, he was alive, with her, and when she opened her eyes the great relief came on his face and he said, "Frannie. Thank God." "The baby," she said. Her throat was dry. It came out a whisper. He looked blank, and blind fear stole into her body. It was cold and numbing. "The baby," she said, forcing the words up her sandpaper throat. "Did I lose the baby?"
421 Understanding came over his face then. He hugged her clumsily with his good arm. "No, Frannie, no. You didn't lose the baby." Then she began to cry, scalding tears that flowed down her cheeks, and she hugged him fiercely, not caring that every muscle in her body seemed to cry out in pain. She hugged him. The future was later. Now the things she needed most were here in this sun-washed room. The sound of birds came through the open window.
Later she said, "Tell me. How bad is it?" His face was heavy and sorrowful and unwilling. "Fran..." "Nick?" she whispered. She swallowed and there was a tiny click in her throat. "I saw an arm, a severed arm—" "It might be better to wait—" "No. I have to know. How bad was it?" "Seven dead," he said in a low, husky voice. "We got off lucky, I figure. It could have been much worse." "Who, Stuart?" He held her hands clumsily. "Nick was one of them, honey. There was a pane of glass, I guess— you know, that iodized glass—and it... it..." He stopped for a moment, looked down at his hands, then up at her again. "He... we were able to make identification by... certain scars..." He turned away from her for a moment. Fran made a harsh sighing noise. When Stu was able to go on he said, "And Sue. Sue Stern. She was still inside when it went off." "That... just doesn't seem possible, does it?" Fran said. She felt stunned, numbed, bewildered. "It's true." "Who else?" "Chad Norris," he said, and Fran made that harsh sighing noise again. A single tear slipped from the corner of her eye; she brushed it away almost absently. "Those were the only three from inside. It's like a miracle. Brad says there must have been eight, nine sticks of dynamite hooked up in that closet. And Nick, he almost... when I think he might have had his hands right on that shoebox .." "Don't," she said. "There was no way to know." "That doesn't help much," he said. The other four were people who had come up from town on motorcycles-Andrea Terminello, Dean Wykoff, Dale Pedersen, and a young girl named Patsy Stone. Stu did not tell Fran that Patsy, who had been teaching Leo how to play the flute, had been struck and nearly beheaded by a whirling chunk of Glen Bateman's Wollensak tape recorder. Fran nodded, and it hurt her neck. When she shifted her body, even a little, her entire back seemed to scream with pain. Twenty had been wounded in the blast and one of them, Teddy Weizak of the Burial Committee, had no chance to recover. Two others were in critical condition. A man named Lewis Deschamps had lost an eye. Ralph Brentner had lost the third and fourth fingers on his left hand. "How badly am I hurt?" Fran asked him. "Why, you have a whiplash and a sprained back and a broken foot," Stu said. "That's what George Richardson told me. The blast threw you all the way across the yard. You got the broken foot and the sprained back when the couch landed on you." "Couch?" "Don't you remember?" "I remember something like a coffin... a padded coffin..." "That was the couch. I yanked it off you myself. I was raving and... pretty hysterical, I guess. Larry came over to help me and I punched him in the mouth. That's how bad off I was." She touched his cheek and he put his hand over hers. "I thought you had to be dead. I remember thinking that I didn't know what I'd do if you were. Go crazy, I guess." "I love you," she said. He hugged her-gently, because of her back-and they remained that way for some time. "Harold?" she said at last. "And Nadine Cross," he agreed. "They hurt us. They hurt us bad. But they didn't do anywhere near the damage they wanted to do. And if we catch him before they get too far west..." He held his hands, which were scratched and scabbed over, out in front of him and closed them with a sudden snap that made the joints pop. The hamstrings stood out on the insides of his wrists. A sudden cold grin surfaced on his face that made Fran want to shudder. It was too familiar. "Don't smile like that," she said. "Ever." The smile faded. "People have been scouring the hills for them since daybreak, " he went on, no longer smiling. "I don't think they'll find them. I told them not to go further than fifty miles west of
422 Boulder no matter what, and I imagine Harold was smart enough to get them further than that. But we know how they. did it. They had the explosive hooked up to a walkie-talkie—" Fran gasped, and Stu looked at her with concern. "What's wrong, babe? Is it your back?" "No." She was suddenly understanding what Stu had meant about Nick having his hands on the shoebox when the explosive was detonated. Suddenly understanding everything. Speaking slowly, she told him about the snips of wire and the walkie-talkie box under the air hockey table. "If we'd searched the whole house instead of just taking his damn b-book, we might have found the bomb," she said, and her voice began to choke and break. "N-Nick and Sue would be a-a-alive and—" He held her. "Is that why Larry seems so down this morning? I thought it was because I punched him. Frannie, how could you know, huh? How could you possibly know?" "We should have! We should have known!" She buried her face against the good darkness of his shoulder. More tears, hot and scalding. He held her, bent over awkwardly because the electrically powered hospital bed would not crank up. "I don't want you blamin yourself, Frannie. It's happened. I'm telling you there's no way anybody—except maybe a bomb-squad detective-could make something out of a few snips of wire and an empty box. If they'd left a couple of sticks of dynamite or a blasting cap around, that would have been a different proposition. But they didn't. I don't blame you, and nobody else in the Zone is going to blame you, either." As he spoke, two things were combining, slowly and belatedly, in her mind. Those were the only three from inside... it's like a miracle. Mother Abagail... she's come back... oh, she's in terrible shape... we need a miracle! With a little hiss of pain, she drew herself up a little so she could look into Stu's face. "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. "Stu?" "She saved our lives by coming back when she did, Frannie. She saved our lives." "Is she dead?" Fran asked. She grabbed his hand, clutched it. "Stu, is she dead, too?" "She came back into town around a 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. "That's the same God murdered his own boy, or so I heard." "Stu!" The fire died out of his eyes. "I don't know why she's back, or if she has anything left to tell us at all. I just don't know. Maybe she'll 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
423 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 Hammett. 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. Same old Larry—keeps his head while others all around him are losing theirs. 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, Susan had died, and he had been unhurt. Yeah; same old Larry Underwood. 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 plug vent 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 ledger. 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 on an air hockey table. With Larry that line of reasoning just didn't hold up. He had seen Harold's brilliant improvisations before. One of them had been written on the roof of a barn in letters almost twenty feet high, for Christ's sweet sake. 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... one he could never bring himself to tell anybody about. 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. Yes—in the background there was always Flagg, the dark puppet master, pulling the strings on Harold, Nadine, on Charlie Impening, 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. And who had sent her to Harold, if not Flagg? But before she had gone to Harold 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 Sue, along with Frannie, 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
424 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. Yes, that's what she was now, not a mother but a mummy. There was only that harsh sigh of her respiration, like a light breeze through hay-stubble. 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 himself 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, a thing only waiting for a puff of wind to blow it away forever. 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, and pinched his lips shut to keep it in. 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? "Good night, Larry, Lucy," Dick said. They went out. Larry drifted back to the window. Outside, everyone had come to their feet, watching. Was she alive? Dead? Dying? Perhaps healed by the power of God? 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. When they reached the corner they accelerated, turning toward the hospital. The exhaust of their bikes crackled and echoed back, hitting buildings and bouncing off them, finally fading away to nothing. 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.
425 In mine I was in a subway station and he was the tickettaker, only I couldn't see his face. I was scared. I ran into the subway tunnel. Then I could hear him, running after me. And gaining. In mine I was going down cellar to get a jar of pickled watermelon slices and I saw someone standing by the furnace... just a shape. And I knew it was him. Crickets began to chirrup. Stars spread across the sky. The chill in the air was duly commented on. Drinks were drunk. 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 a peck of 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. Dig a hole, then jump in and pull it over you. And around ten o'clock Stu Redman, Glen Bateman, and Ralph Brentner came among them, talking quietly and giving 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. All of them went home to get what sleep they could. Perchance to dream.
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, not nearly as nervous as he had been the night before last, and was greeted by 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 him 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. It had gotten so close to the end of the summer that, in a way, that was just what he was. But at last the applause subsided. "We're going to switch on at noon, and I'd like to have every one of you at home and ready. Ready for what? Four things. Listen up now, this is important. First, turn off every light and electrical appliance in your own house that you're not using. Second, do the same for the unoccupied houses around yours. Third, if you smell gas, track down the smell and shut off whatever is on. Fourth, if you hear a fire siren, go to the source of the sound... but go safely and sanely. Let's not have any necks broken in motorcycle accidents. Now—are there any questions?" There were several, all of them reconfirming Brad's original points. He answered each one patiently, the only sign of nervousness the way he bent his little black notebook ceaselessly back and forth in his hands. When the questions had slowed to a trickle, Brad said: "I want to thank the folks who busted their humps getting us going again. And I want to remind the Power Committee that it isn't disbanded. There are going to be lines down, power outages, oil supplies to track down in Denver and haul up here. I hope you'll all stick with it. Mr. Glen Bateman says we may have ten thousand
426 people here by the time the snow flies, and a lot more next spring. There's power stations in Longmont and Denver that are going to have to come on line before next year's done with—" "Not if that hardcase gets his way!" someone shouted out hoarsely in the back of the hall. There was a moment of dead silence. Brad stood with his hands clutching the lectern in a deathgrip, his face pasty white. He's not going to be able to finish, Stu thought, and then Brad did go on, his voice amazingly even: "My business is power, whoever said that. But I think we'll be here long after that other guy's dead and gone. If I didn't think that, I'd be wrapping motors over on his side. Who gives a shit for him?" Brad stepped away front the podium and someone else bellowed, "You're goddam right!" This time the applause was heavy and hard, nearly savage, but there was a note to it Stu didn't like. He bad to pound with his gavel a long time to get the meeting back under control. "The next thing on the agenda—" "Fuck your agenda!" a young woman yelled stridently. "Let's talk about the dark man! Let's talk about Flagg! It's long overdue, I'd say!" Roars of approval. Shouts of "out of order!" Disapproving babble at the young woman's choice of words. Rumble of side-chatter. Stu whacked at the block on the podium so hard that the mallet-head flew off his gavel. "This is a meeting here!" he shouted. "You're going to get a chance to talk about whatever you want to talk about, but while I'm chairing this meeting, I want... to have... some ORDER!" He bellowed the last word so loudly that feedback cut through the auditorium like a boomerang, and they quieted at last. "Now," Stu said, his voice purposely low and calm, "the next thing is to report to you on what happened up at Ralph's on the night of September second, and I guess that falls to me, since I'm our elected law enforcement officer." He had quiet again, but like the applause that had greeted Brad's closing remarks, this wasn't a quiet Stu liked. They were leaning forward, intent, their expressions greedy. It made him feel disquieted and bewildered, as if the Free Zone had changed radically over the last forty-eight hours and he didn't know what it was anymore. It made him feel the way he'd felt when he had been trying to find his way out of the Stovington Plague Center-a fly caught and struggling in an invisible spider's web. There were so many faces he didn't recognize out there, so many strangers... But there was no time to think about it now. He described the events leading up to the explosion briefly, omitting Fran's last-minute premonition; with the mood they were in, they didn't need that. "Yesterday morning Brad and Ralph and I went up and poked through the ruins for three hours or more. We found what seemed to be a dynamite bomb wired up to a walkie-talkie. It appears that this bomb was planted in the living room closet. Bill Scanlon and Ted Frampton found another walkie-talkie up in Sunrise Amphitheater, and we assume the bomb was set off from there. It—" "Assume, my ass!" Ted Frampton shouted from the third row. "It was that bastard Lauder and his little whore!" An uneasy murmur ran through the room. These are the good guys? They don't give a shit about Nick and Sue and Chad and the rest. They're like a lynch-mob, and all they care about is catching Harold and Nadine and hanging them... like a charm against the dark man. He happened to catch Glen's eye; Glen offered him a very small, very cynical shrug. "If one more person yells out from the floor without bein recognized, I'm gonna declare this meeting closed and you can talk to each other," Stu said. "This is no bull session. If we don't keep to the rules, where are we?" Ted Frampton was staring up at him angrily, and Stu stared back. After a few moments, Ted dropped his eyes. "We suspect Harold Lauder and Nadine Cross. We have some good reasons, some pretty convincing circumstantial evidence. But there's no real hard evidence against them yet, and I hope you'll keep that in mind." A sullen eddy of conversation rippled and disappeared. "I only said that to say this," Stu continued. "If they happen to wander back into the Zone, I want them brought to me. I'll lock them up and Al Bundell will see to it that they're tried... and a trial means they get to tell their side, if they got one. We're... we're supposed to be the good guys here. I guess we know where the bad guys are. And being the good guys means we have to be civilized about this." He looked out at them hopefully and saw only puzzled resentment. Stuart Redman had seen two of his best friends blown to hell, those eyes said, and here he was, taking up for the ones who did it. "For what it's worth to you, I think they're the ones," he said. "But it's got to be done right. And I'm here to tell you that it will be."
427 Eyes boring into him. Over a thousand pairs, and he could feel the thought behind each one: What's this shit you're talking, anyway? They're gone. Gone west. You act like they were on a two- day bird-watching trip. He poured a glass of water and drank some, hoping to get rid of the dryness in his throat. The taste of it, boiled and flat, made him grimace. "Anyway, that's where we stand on that," he said lamely. "What's next, I guess, is filling the committee back up to strength. We're not goin to do that tonight, but you ought to be thinkin about who you want—" A hand shot up on the floor and Stu pointed. "Go ahead. Just identify yourself so everybody'll know who you are." "I'm Sheldon Jones," a big man in a wool-plaid shirt said. "Why don't we just go ahead and get two new ones tonight? I nom'nate Ted Frampton over there." "Hey, I second that!" Bill Scanlon yelled. "Beautiful!" Ted Frampton clasped his hands and shook them over his head to scattered applause, and Stu felt that despairing, disoriented feeling sweep over him again. They were supposed to replace Nick Andros with Ted Frampton? It was like one of those sick jokes. Ted had tried the Power Committee and had found it too much like work. He had drifted over to the Burial Committee and that had seemed to suit him better, although Chad had mentioned to Stu that Ted was one of those fellows who seemed able to stretch a coffee break into a lunch hour and a lunch hour into a half-day vacation. He had been quick to join yesterday's hunt for Harold and Nadine, probably because it offered a change. He and Bill Scanlon had stumbled on the walkie-talkie up at Sunrise through sheer luck (and to give Ted his due, he had admitted that), but since the find he had acquired a swagger that Stu didn't like at all. Now Stu caught Glen's eyes again, and could almost read Glen's thought in the cynical look there, the slight tuck in the corner of Glen's mouth: Maybe we could use Harold to stack this one, too. A word that Nixon had used a lot suddenly floated into Stu's mind, and as he grasped it, he suddenly understood the source of his despair and feeling of disorientation. The word was "mandate." Their mandate had disappeared. It had gone up two nights ago in a flash and a roar. He said, "You may know who you want, Sheldon, but I imagine some of the other folks would like to have time to think it over. Let's call the question. Those of you who want to elect two new reps tonight say aye." Quite a few ayes were shouted out. "Those of you who'd like a week or so to think it over, say nay." The nays were louder, but not by a whole lot. A great many people had abstained altogether, as if the topic had no interest for them. "Okay," Stu said. "We'll plan to meet here in Munzinger Auditorium a week from today, September eleventh, to nominate and vote on candidates for the two empty slots on the committee." Pretty crappy epitaph, Nick. I'm sorry. "Dr. Richardson is here to talk to you about Mother Abagail and about those folks that were injured in the explosion. Doc?" Richardson got a solid blast of applause as he stepped forward, polishing his eyeglasses. He told them that there were nine dead as a result of the explosion, three people still in critical condition, two in serious condition, eight in satisfactory condition. "Considering the force of the blast, I think that fortune was with us. Now, concerning Mother Abagail." They leaned forward. "I think a very short statement and a brief bit of elaboration should suffice. The statement is this: I can do nothing for her." A mutter ran through the crowd and stilled. Stu saw unhappiness but no real surprise. "I am told by members of the Zone who were here before she left that the lady claimed one hundred and eight years. I can't vouch for that, but I can say she is the oldest human being I myself have ever seen and treated. I'm told she has been gone for two weeks, and my estimation—no, my guess—is that her diet during that period contained no prepared foods at all. She seems to have lived on roots, herbs, grass, and other things of a similar nature." He paused. "She bas had one small bowel movement since she returned. It contained a number of small sticks and twigs." "My God," someone muttered, and it was impossible to tell if the voice belonged to a man or a woman. "One arm is covered with poison ivy. Her legs are covered with ulcerations which would be running if her condition were not so—" "Hey, can't you stop it?" Jack Jackson hollered, standing up. His face was white, furious, miserable. "Don't you have any damn decency?" "Decency is not my concern, Jack. I'm only reporting her condition as it is. She's comatose, malnourished, and most of all, she's very, very old. I think she's going to die. If she was anyone else, I would state that as a certainty. But... like all of you, I dreamed of her. Her and one other."
428 The low mutter again, like a passing breeze, and Stu felt the hackles on the nape of his neck first stir and then come to attention. "To me, dreams of such opposing configurations seem mystical," George said. "The fact that we all shared them seems to indicate a telepathic ability at the very least. But I pass on parapsychology and theology just as I pass on decency, and for the same reason: neither of them is my field. If the woman is from God, He may choose to heal her. I cannot. I will tell you that the fact that she is still alive at all seems a miracle of sorts to me. That is my statement. Are there any questions?" There weren't. They looked at him, stunned, some of them openly weeping. "Thank you," George said, and returned to his seat in a dead sea of silence. "All right," Stu whispered to Glen. "You're on." Glen approached the podium without introduction and gripped it familiarly. "We've discussed everything but the dark man," he said. That mutter again. Several men and women instinctively made the sign of the cross. An elderly woman on the lefthand aisle placed her hands rapidly across her eyes, mouth, and ears in an eerie imitation of Nick Andros before refolding them over the bulky black purse in her lap. "We've discussed him to some degree in closed committee meetings," Glen went on, his tone calm and conversational, "and the question came up in private as to whether or not we should bring the question up in public. The point was made that no one in the Zone really seemed to want to talk about it, not after the funhouse dreams we all had on the way here. That perhaps a period of recuperation was needed. Now, I think, is the time to bring the subject up. To drag him out into the light, as it were. In police work, they have a handy gadget called an Ident-i-Kit, which a police-artist uses to create the face of a criminal from various witnesses' recollections of him. In our case we have no face, but we do have a series of recollections that form at least an outline of our Antagonist. I've talked to quite a few people about this and I would like to present you with my own Ident-i-Kit sketch. "This man's name seems to be Randall Flagg, although some people have associated the names Richard Frye, Robert Freemont, and Richard Freemantle with him. The initials R. F. may have some significance, but if so, none of us on the Free Zone Committee know what it is. His presence—at least in dreams—produces feelings of dread, disquiet, terror, horror. In case after case, the physical feeling associated with him is one of coldness." Heads were nodding, and that excited hum of conversation broke out again. Stu thought they sounded like boys who had just discovered sex, were comparing notes, and were excited to find that all reports put the receptacle in approximately the same place. He covered a slight grin with his hand,' and reminded himself to save that one for Fran later on. "This Flagg is in the West," Glen continued. "Equal numbers of people have `seen' him in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland. Some peopleMother Abagail was among them-claim that Flagg is crucifying people who step out of line. All of them seem to believe that there is a confrontation shaping up between this man and ourselves, and that Flagg will stick at nothing to bring us down. And sticking at nothing includes quite a lot. Armored force. Nuclear weapons. Perhaps... plague." "I'd like to catch hold of that dirty bastard!" Rich Moffat called shrilly. "I'd give him a dose of the everfucking plague!" There was a tension-relieving burst of laughter, and Rich got a hand. Glen grinned easily. He had given Rich his cue and his line half an hour before the meeting, and Rich had delivered admirably. Old baldy had been right as rain about one thing, Stu was discovering: a background in sociology often came in handy at large meetings. "All right, I've outlined what I know about him," he went on. "My last contribution before throwing the meeting open to discussion is this: I think Stu is right in telling you that we have to deal with Harold and Nadine in a civilized way if they're caught, but like him, I think that is unlikely. Also like him, I believe they did what they did on this man Flagg's orders." His words rang out strongly in the hall. "This man has got to be dealt with. George Richardson told you mysticism isn't his field of study. It isn't mine, either. But I tell you this: I think that dying old woman somehow represents the forces of good as much as Flagg represents the forces of evil. I think that whatever power controls her used her to bring us together. I don't think that power intends to forsake us now. Maybe we need to talk it over and let some air into those nightmares. Maybe we need to begin deciding what we're going to do about him. But he can't just walk into this Zone next spring and take over, not if you people are standing watch. Now I'll turn the meeting back to Stu, who'll chair the discussion." His last sentence was lost in a crash of applause, and Glen went back to his seat feeling pleased. He had stirred them with a big stick... or was the phrase played them like a violin? It didn't really matter. They were more mad than scared, they were ready for a challenge (although they might not be so eager next April, after they'd had a long winter to cool off in)... and most of all, they were ready to talk.
429 And talk they did, for the next three hours. A few people left as midnight came and went, but not many. As Larry had suspected, no good hard advice came out of it. There were wild suggestions: a bomber and/or a nuclear stockpile of their own, a summit meeting, a trained hit squad. There were few practical ideas. For the final hour, person after person stood up and recited his or her dream, to the seemingly endless fascination of the others. Stu was once again reminded of the endless bull sessions about sex he had participated in (mostly as a listener) during his teenage years. Glen was both amazed and heartened by their growing willingness to talk, and by the charged atmosphere of excitement that had taken over the dull blankness with which they had begun the meeting. A large catharsis, long overdue, was going on, and he was also reminded of sextalk, but in a different way. They talk like people, he thought, who have kept the huddled-up secrets of their guilts and inadequacies to themselves for a long time, only to discover that these things, when verbalized, were only life-sized after all. When the inner terror sowed in sleep was finally harvested in this marathon public discussion, the terror became more manageable... perhaps even conquerable. The meeting broke up at one-thirty in the morning, and Glen left it with Stu, feeling good for the first time since Nick's death. He left feeling they had gone the first hard steps out of themselves and toward whatever battleground there would be. He felt hope.
The power went on at noon on September 5, as Brad had promised. The air raid siren atop of the County Courthouse went on with a huge, braying whoop, scaring many people into the streets, where they looked wildly up into the blameless blue sky for a glimpse of the dark man's air force. Some ran for their cellars, where they stayed until Brad found a fused switch and turned the siren off. Then they came up, shamefaced. There was an electrical fire on Willow Street, and a group of a dozen volunteer flrepeople promptly rushed over and put it out. A manhole cover exploded into the air at the Broadway-and- Walnut intersection, went nearly fifty feet, and came down on the roof of the Oz Toyshop like a great rusty tiddledywink. There was a single fatality on what the Zone came to call Power Day. For some unknown reason, an auto-body shop on outer Pearl Street exploded. Rich Moffat was sitting in a doorway across the street with a bottle of Jack Daniel's in his newsboy's pouch, and a flying panel of corrugated steel siding struck him and killed him instantly. He would break no more plate-glass windows. Stu was with Fran when the fluorescents buzzed into life in the ceiling of her hospital room. He watched them flicker, flicker, flicker, and finally catch with the old familiar light. He was unable to look away until they had been glowing solidly for nearly three minutes. When he looked at Frannie again, her eyes were shiny with tears. "Fran? What's wrong? Is it the pain?" "It's Nick," she said. "It's so wrong that Nick isn't alive to see this. Hold me, Stu. I want to pray for him if I can. I want to try." He held her, but didn't know if she prayed or not. He suddenly found himself missing Nick very much, and hating Harold Lauder more than he ever had before. Fran was right. Harold had not just killed Nick and Sue; he had stolen their light. "Shh," he said. "Frannie, shh." But she cried for a long time. When the tears were finally gone, he used the button to raise her bed and turned on the night table lamp so she could see to read.
Stu was being shaken awake, and it took him a long time to come all the way around. His mind ran over a slow and seemingly endless list of people who might be trying to rob his sleep. It was his mother, telling him it was time to get up and light the stoves and get ready for school. It was Manuel, the bouncer in that sleazy little Nuevo Laredo whorehouse, telling him his twenty dollars was used up and it would be another twenty if he wanted to stay all night. It was a nurse in a white all-over suit who wanted to take his blood pressure and a throat culture. It was Frannie. It was Randall Flagg. The last thought brought him up like a dash of cold water in the face. It was none of those people. It was Glen Bateman, with Kojak at his knee. "You're a hard man to wake up, East Texas," Glen said. "Like a stone post." He was only a vague shape in nearly total darkness. "Well, you could have turned on the damn light to start with." "You know, I clean forgot all about that." Stu switched on the lamp, squinted against the sudden bright light, and peered owlishly at the wind-up alarm clock. It was quarter to three in the morning. "What are you doing here, Glen? I was sleepin, in case you didn't happen to notice."
430 He got his first good look at Glen as he put the clock down. He looked pale, scared... and old. The lines were drawn deeply into his face and he looked haggard. "What is it?" "Mother Abagail," Glen said quietly. "Dead?" "God help me, I almost wish she were. She's awake. She wants us." "The two of us?" "The five of us. She—" His voice roughened, went hoarse. "She knew Nick and Susan were dead, and she knew Fran was in the hospital. I don't know how, but she did." "And she wants the committee?" "What's left of it. She's dying and she says she has to tell us something. And I don't know if I want to hear it."
Outside the night was cold-not just chilly but cold. The jacket Stu had pulled from the closet felt good, and he zipped it all the way to the neck. A frosty moon hung overhead, making him think of Tom, who had instructions to come back to them and report when the moon was full. This moon was just a trifle past the first quarter. God knew where that moon was looking down on Tom, on Dayna Jurgens, on Judge Farris. God knew it was looking down on strange doings here. "I got Ralph up first," Glen said. "Told him to go over to the hospital and get Fran." "If the doctor wanted her up and around, he would have sent her home," Stu said angrily. "This is a special case, Stu." "For someone who doesn't want to hear what that old woman has to say, you seem to be in an all-fired hurry to get to her." "I'm afraid not to," Glen said.
The jeep drew up in front of Larry's house at ten minutes past three. The place was blazing with light-not gaslamps now, but good electric lights. Every second streetlamp was on, too, not just here but all over town, and Stu had stared at them all the way over in Glen's jeep, fascinated. The last of the summer bugs, sluggish with the cold, were beating lackadaisically against the sodium globes. They got out of the jeep just as headlights swung around the corner. It was Ralph's clattering old truck, and it pulled up nose to nose with the jeep. Ralph got out, and Stu went quickly around to the passenger side, where Frannie sat with her back resting against a plaid sofa cushion. "Hey, babe," he said softly. She took his hand. Her face was a pale disk in the darkness. "Bad pain?" Stu asked. "Not so bad. I took some Advil. Just don't ask me to do the hustle." He helped her out of the truck and Ralph took her other arm. They both saw her wince as she stepped away from the cab. "Want me to carry you?" "I'll be fine. Just keep your arm around me, huh?" "Sure will." "And walk slow. Us grammies can't go very fast." They crossed behind Ralph's truck, more shuffling than walking. When they reached the sidewalk, Stu saw Glen and Larry standing in the doorway, watching them. Against the light they looked like figures cut from black construction paper. "What is it, do you think?" Frannie murmured. Stu shook his head. "I don't know." They got up the walk, Frannie very obviously in pain now, and Ralph helped Stu get her in. Larry, like Glen, looked pale and worried. He was wearing faded jeans, a shirt that was untucked and buttoned wrong at the bottom, and expensive mocs on bare feet. "I'm sorry like hell to have to get you out," he said. "I was in with her, dozing off and on. We've been keeping watch. You understand?" "Yes. I understand," Frannie said. For some reason the phrase keeping watch made her think of her mother's parlor... and in a kinder, more forgiving light than she had ever thought of it before. "Lucy had been in bed about an hour. I snapped out of my doze, and-Fran, can I help you?" Fran shook her head and smiled with an effort. "No, I'm fine. Go on." "—and she was looking at me. She can't talk above a whisper, but she's perfectly understandable." Larry swallowed. All five of them were now standing in the hallway. "She told me the Lord was going to take her home at the sunrise. But that she had to talk to those of us God hadn't taken first. I asked her what she meant and she said God had taken Nick and Susan. She knew." He let out a ragged breath and ran his hands through his long hair. Lucy appeared at the end of the hall. "I made coffee. It's here when you want it."
431 "Thank you, love," Larry said. Lucy looked uncertain. "Should I come in with you folks? Or is it private, like the committee?" Larry looked at Stu, who said quietly, "Come on along. I got an idea that stuff don't cut ice anymore." They went up the hall to the bedroom, moving slowly to accommodate Fran. "She'll tell us," Ralph said suddenly. "Mother will tell us. No sense fretting." They went in together, and Mother Abagail's bright, dying gaze fell upon them.
Fran knew about the old woman's physical condition, but it was still a nasty shock. There was nothing left of her but a pemmican-tough membrane of skin and tendon binding her bones. There was not even a smell of putrescence and oncoming death in the room; instead there was a dry attic smell... no, a parlor smell. Half the length of the IV needle hung out of her flesh, simply because there was nowhere for it to go. Yet the eyes had not changed. They were warm and kind and human. That was a relief, but Fran still felt a kind of terror... not strictly fear, but perhaps something more sanctified-awe. Was it awe? An impending feeling. Not doom, but as though some dreadful responsibility was poised above their heads like a stone. Man proposes-God disposes. "Little girl, sit down," Mother Abagail whispered. "You're in pain." Larry led her to an armchair and Fran sat down with a thin, whistling sigh of relief, although she knew even sitting would pain her after a while. Mother Abagail was still watching her with those bright eyes. "You're quick with child," she whispered. "Yes... how..." "Shhhhh..." Silence fell in the room, deep silence. Fascinated, hypnotized, Fran looked at the dying old woman who had been in their dreams before she had been in their lives. "Look out the window, little girl." Fran turned, her face to the window, where Larry had stood and looked out at the gathered people two days before. She saw not pressing darkness but a quiet light. It was not a reflection of the room; it was morning light. She was looking at the faint, slightly distorted reflection of a bright nursery with ruffled check curtains. There was a crib-but it was empty. There was a playpenempty. A mobile of bright plastic butterflies-moved only by the wind. Dread clapped its cold hands around her heart. The others saw it on her face but did not understand it; they saw nothing through the window but a section of lawn lit by a streetlight. "Where's the baby?" Fran asked hoarsely. "Stuart is not the baby's father, little girl. But his life is in Stuart's hands, and in God's. This chap will have four fathers. If God lets him draw breath at all." "If he draws—" "God has hidden that from my eyes," she whispered. The empty nursery was gone. Fran saw only darkness. And now dread closed its hands into fists, her heart beating between them. Mother Abagail whispered: "The Imp has called his bride, and he means to put her with child. Will he let your child live?" "Stop it," Frannie moaned. She put her hands over her face. Silence, deep silence like snow in the room. Glen Bateman's face was an old dull searchlight. Lucy 's right hand worked slowly up and down the neck of her bathrobe. Ralph had his hat in his hands, picking absently at the feather in the band. Stu looked at Frannie, but could not go to her. Not now. He thought fleetingly of the woman at the meeting, the one who had put her hands rapidly over her eyes, ears, and mouth at the mention of the dark man's name. "Mother, father, wife, husband," Mother Abagail whispered. "Set against them, the Prince of High Places, the lord of dark mornings. I sinned in pride. So have you all, all sinned in pride. Ain't you heard it said, put not your faith in the lords and princes of this world?" They watched her. "Electric lights ain't the answer, Stu Redman. CB radio ain't it, either, Ralph Brentner. Sociology won't end it, Glen Bateman. And you doin penance for a life that's long since a closed book won't stop it from coming, Larry Underwood. And your boy-child won't stop it either, Fran Goldsmith. The bad moon has risen. You propose nothing in the sight of God." She looked at each of them in turn. "God will dispose as He sees fit. You are not the potter but the potter's clay. Mayhap the man in the West is the wheel on which you will be broken. I am not allowed to know." A tear, amazing in that dying desert, stole from her left eye and rolled down her cheek. "Mother, what should we do?" Ralph asked.
432 "Draw near, all of you. My time is short. I'm going home to glory, and there's never been no human more ready than I am now. Get close to me." Ralph sat on the edge of the bed. Larry and Glen stood at the foot of it. Fran got up with a grimace, and Stu 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 Nickalthough 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
433 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 would be gone in a flash of light, taken. Or they would see her spirit, transfigured in radiance, leaving by the window and going up into the sky. But in the end, she simply died. There was a single final breath, the last of millions. It was drawn in, held, and finally let out. Her chest just didn't rise again. "She's done," Stu muttered. "God have mercy on her soul," Ralph said, no longer afraid. He crossed her hands on her thin bosom, and his tears fell on them. "I'll go," Glen said suddenly. "She was right. White magic. That's all that's left." "Stu," Frannie whispered. "Please, Stu, say no." They looked at him-all of them. Now you must lead, Stuart. He thought of Arnette, of the old car carrying Charles D. Campion and his load of death, crashing into Bill Hapscomb's pumps like some wicked Pandora. He thought of Denninger and Deitz, and how he had begun to associate them in his mind with the smiling doctors who had lied and lied and lied to him and to his wife about her condition-and maybe they had lied to themselves, as well. Most of all, he thought of Frannie. And of Mother Abagail saying, This is what God wants of you.
434 "Frannie," he said. "I have to go." "And die." She looked at him bitterly, almost hatefully, and then to Lucy, as if for support. But Lucy was stunned and far-off, no help. "If we don't go, we'll die," Stu said, feeling his way along the words. "She was right. If we wait, then spring comes. Then what? How are we going to stop him? We don't know. We don't have a clue. We never did. We had our heads in the sand, too. We can't stop him except like Glen says. White magic. Or the power of God." She began to weep bitterly. "Frannie, don't do that," he said, and tried to take her hand. "Don't touch me!" she cried at him. "You're a dead man, you're a corpse, so don't touch me!" They stood around the bed in tableau as the sun came up.
Stu and Frannie went to Flagstaff Mountain around eleven o'clock. They parked halfway up, and Stu brought the hamper while Fran carried the tablecloth and a bottle of Blue Nun. The picnic had been her idea, but a strange and awkward silence held between them. "Help me spread it," she said. "And watch out for those spiny things." They were in a small, slanting meadow a thousand feet below Sunrise Amphitheater. Boulder was spread out below them in a blue haze. Today it was wholly summer again: The sun shone down with power and authority. Crickets buzzed in the grass. A grasshopper leaped up and Stu caught it with a quick lunge of his right hand. He could feel it inside his fingers, tickling and frightened. "Spit n I'll let you go," he said, the old childhood formula, and looked up to see Fran smiling sadly at him. With quick, ladylike precision, she turned her head and spat. It hurt his heart, seeing her do that. "Fran—" "No, Stu. Don't talk about it. Not now." They spread the white lawn tablecloth, which Fran had glommed from the Hotel Boulderado, and moving with quick economy (it made him feel strange to watch her supple grace as she bent and moved, as if there had never been a whiplash injury and sprained back at all), she set out their early lunch: a cucumber and lettuce salad dressed with vinegar; cold ham sandwiches; the wine; an apple pie for dessert. "Good food, good meat, good God, let's eat," she said. He sat down beside her and took a sandwich and some salad. He wasn't hungry. He hurt inside. But he ate. When they had both finished a token sandwich and most of the salad-the fresh greens had been delicious-and a small sliver of apple pie each, she said: "When are you going?" "Noon," he said. He lit a cigarette, cupping the flame in his hands. "How long will it take you to get there?" He shrugged. "Walking? I don't know. Glen's not young. Neither is Ralph, for that matter. If we can make thirty miles a day, we could do it by the first of October, I guess." "And if there's early snow m the mountains? Or in Utah?" He shrugged, looking at her steadily. "More vane?" she asked. "No. It gives me acid indigestion. It always did." Fran poured herself another glass and drank it off. "Was she God's voice, Stu? Was she?" "Frannie, I just don't know." "We dreamed of her, and she was. This whole thing is part and parcel of some stupid game, do you know that, Stuart? Have you ever read the Book of Job?" "I was never much on the Bible, I guess." "My atom was. She thought it was very important that my brother Fred and I have a certain amount of religious background. She never said why. All the good it ever did me, so far as I know, was that I was always able to answer the Bible questions on `Jeopardy. ' Do you remember `Jeopardy,' Stu?" Smiling a little, he said: "And now here's your host, Alex Trebeck." "That's the one. It was backward. They gave you the answer; you supplied the question. When it came to the Bible, I knew all the questions. Job was a bet between God and the Devil. The Devil said, `Sure he worships You. He's got it soft. But if You piss in his face long enough, he'll renounce You. ' $o God took the wager. And God won." She smiled dully. "God always wins. God's a Boston Celtics fan, I bet." "Maybe it is a bet," Stu said, "but it's their lives, those folks down there. And the guy inside you. What did she call him? The chap?" "She wouldn't even promise about him," Fran said. "If she could have done that... just that... it would have been at least a little bit easier to let you go." Stu could think of nothing to say. "Well, it's getting on toward noon now," Fran said. "Help me pack up, Stuart."
435 The half-eaten lunch went back into the hamper with the tablecloth and the rest of the wine. Stu looked at the spot and thought of how there were only a few crumbs to show where their picnic lead been... and the birds would get those soon enough. When he glanced up, Frannie was looking at him arid crying. He went to her. "It's all right. It's being pregnant. I'm always running at the eyes. I can't seem to help it. ' "It's okay." "Stu, make love to me." "Here? Now?" She nodded, then smiled a little. "It will be all right. If we watch out for the spiny things." They spread the tablecloth again. At the foot of Baseline Road she made him stop at what had been Ralph and Nick's house until four days ago. The entire rear of the house was blown away. The back yard was littered with debris. A shattered digital clock radio sat atop the shredded back hedge. Nearby was the sofa under which Frannie had been pinned. There was a patch of dried blood on the back steps. She looked at this fixedly. "Is that Nick's blood?" she asked him. "Could it be?" "Frannie, what's the point?" Stu asked uneasily. "Is it?" "Jesus, I don't know. It could be, I suppose." "Put your hand on it, Stu." "Frannie, have you gone nuts?" The frown-line creased her brow, the I-want line that he had first noticed back in New Hampshire. "Put your hand on it!" Reluctantly, Stu put his hand on the stain. He didn't know if it was Nick's blood or not (and believed, in fact, that it probably wasn't), but the gesture gave him a ghastly, crawly feeling. "Now swear you'll come back." The step seemed rather too warm here, and he wanted to take his hand away. "Fran, how can I—" "God can't run all of it!" she hissed at him. "Not all of it. Swear, Stu, swear it!" "Frannie, I swear to try." "I guess that will have to be good enough, won't it?" "We have to get down to Larry's." "I know." But she held him more tightly still. "Say you love me." "You know I do." "I know, but say it. I want to hear it." He took her by the shoulder. "Fran, I love you." "Thank you," she said, and put her cheek against his shoulder. "Now I think I can say goodbye. I think I can let you go." They held each other in the shattered back yard.