CHAPTER 67
The Walkin Dude was back in Vegas. He had gotten in around nine-thirty in the morning. Lloyd had seen him arrive. Flagg had also seen Lloyd, but had taken no notice of him. He had been crossing the lobby of the Grand, leading a woman. Heads turned to look at her in spite of everyone's nearly unanimous aversion to looking at the dark man. Her hair was a uniform snow-white. She had a terrible sunburn, one so bad that it made Lloyd think of the victims of the gasoline fire at Indian Springs. White hair, horrible sunburn, utterly empty eyes. They looked out at the world with a lack of expression that was beyond placidity, even beyond idiocy. Lloyd had seen eyes like that once before. In Los Angeles, after the dark man had finished with Eric Strellerton, the lawyer who was going to tell Flagg how to run everything. Flagg looked at no one. He grinned. He led the woman to the elevator and inside. The doors slid shut behind them and they went up to the top floor.
470 For the next six hours Lloyd was busy trying to get everything organized, so when Flagg called him and asked for a report, he would be ready. He thought everything was under control. The only item left was tracking down Paul Burlson and getting whatever he had on this Tom Cullen, just in case Julie Lawry really had stumbled onto something. Lloyd didn't think it likely, but with Flagg it was better to be safe than sorry. Much better. He picked up the telephone and waited patiently. After a few moments there was a click and then Shirley Dunbar's Tennessee twang was in his ear: "Operator." "Hi, Shirley, it's Lloyd." "Lloyd Henreid! How are ya?" "Not too bad, Shirl. Can you try 6214 for me?" "Paul? He's not home. He's out at Indian Springs. Bet I could catch him for you at Baseops." "Okay, try that." "You bet. Say, Lloyd, when you gonna come over and try some of my coffee cake? I bake fresh every two, three days." "Soon, Shirley," Lloyd said, grimacing. Shirley was forty, ran about oneeighty... and had set her cap for Lloyd. He took a lot of ribbing about her, especially from Whitney and Ronnie Sykes. But she was a fine telephone operator, able to do wonders with the Las Vegas phone system. Getting the phones workingthe most important ones, anyway-had been their first priority after the power, but most of the automatic switching equipment had burned out, and so they were back to the equivalent of tin cans and lots of waxed string. There were also constant outages. Shirley handled what there was to handle with uncanny skill, and she was patient with the three or four other operators, who were still learning. Also, she did make nice coffee cake. "Real soon," he added, and thought of how nice it would be if Julie Lawry's firm, rounded body could be grafted onto Shirley Dunbar's skills and gentle, uncomplaining nature. She seemed satisfied. There were beeps and boops on the line, and one highpitched, echoing whine that made him hold the handset away from his ear, grimacing. Then the phone rang at the other end in a series of hoarse burrs. "Bailey, Ops," a voice made tinny by distance said. "This is Lloyd," he bellowed into the phone. "Is Paul there?" "Haul what, Lloyd?" Bailey asked. "Paul! Paul Burlson!" "Oh, him! Yeah, he's right here having a Co-Cola." There was a pause-Lloyd began to think that the tenuous connection had been broken-and then Paul came on. "We're going to have to shout, Paul. The connection stinks." Lloyd wasn't completely sure that Paul Burlson had the lung capacity to shout. He was a scrawny little man with thick lenses in his glasses, and some men called him Mr. Cool because he insisted on wearing a complete three-piece suit each day despite the dry crunch of the Vegas heat. But he was a good man to have as your information officer, and Flagg had told Lloyd in one of his expansive moods that by 1991 Burlson would be in charge of the secret police. And he'll be sooo good at it, Flagg had added with a warm and loving smile. Paul did manage to speak a little louder. "Have you got your directory with you?" Lloyd asked. "Yes. Stan Bailey and I were going over a work rotation program." "See if you've got anything on a guy named Tom Cullen, would you?" "Just a second." A second stretched out to two or three minutes, and Lloyd began to wonder again if they had been cut off. Then Paul said, "Okay, Tom Cullen... you there, Lloyd?" "Right here." "You can never be sure, with the phones the way they are. He's somewhere between twenty-two and thirty-five at a guess. He doesn't know for sure. Light mental retardation. He has some work skills. We've had him on the clean-up crew." "How long has he been in Vegas?" "Something less than three weeks." "From Colorado?" "Yes, but we have a. dozen people over here who tried it over there and decided they didn't like it. They drove this guy out. He was having sex with a normal woman and I guess they were afraid for their gene pool." Paul laughed. "Got his address?" Paul gave it to him and Lloyd jotted it down in his notebook. "That it, Lloyd?" "One other name, if you've got the time." Paul laughed-a small man's fussy laugh. "Sure, it's only my coffee break."
471 "The name is Nick Andros." Paul said instantly: "I have that name on my red list." "Oh?" Lloyd thought as quickly as he could, which was far from the speed of light. He had no idea what Paul's "red list" might be. "Who gave you his name?" Exasperated, Paul said: "Who do you think? The same person that gave me all the red list names." "Oh. Okay." He said goodbye and hung up. Small-talk was impossible with the bad connection, and Lloyd had too much to think about to want to make it, anyway. Red list. Names that Flagg had given to Paul and to no one else, apparently-although Paul had assumed Lloyd knew all about it. Red list, what did that mean? Red meant stop. Red meant danger.. Lloyd lifted the telephone again. "Operator." "Lloyd again, Shirl." "Well, Lloyd, did you—" "Shirley, I can't gab. I'm onto something that's maybe big.,, "Okay, Lloyd." Shirley's voice lost its flirtiness and she was suddenly all business. "Who's catching at Security?" "Barry Dorgan." "Get him for me. And I never called you." "Yes, Lloyd." She sounded afraid now. Lloyd was afraid, too, but he was also excited. A moment later Dorgan was on. He was a good man, for which Lloyd was profoundly grateful. Too many men of the Poke Freeman type had gravitated toward the police department. "I want you to pick someone up for me," Lloyd said. "Get him alive. I have to have him alive even if it means you lose men. His name is Tom Cullen and you can probably catch him at home. Bring him to the Grand." He gave Barry Tom's address and then made him repeat it back. "How important is this, Lloyd?" "Very important. You do this right, and someone bigger than me is going to be very happy with you." "Okay." Barry hung up and Lloyd did too, confident that Barry understood the converse: Fuck it up and somebody is going to be very angry with you. Barry called back an hour later to say he was fairly sure Tom Cullen had split. "But he's feeble," Barry went on, "and he can't drive. Not even a motorscooter. If he's going east, he can't be any further than Dry Lake. We can catch him, Lloyd, I know we can. Give me a green light." Barry was fairly drooling. He was one of four or five people in Vegas who knew about the spies, and he had read Lloyd's thoughts. "Let me think this over," Lloyd said, and hung up before Barry could protest. He had gotten better at thinking things over than he would have believed possible in the pre-flu days, but he knew this was too big for him. And that red list business troubled him. Why hadn't he been told about that? For the first time since meeting Flagg in Phoenix, Lloyd had the disquieting feeling that his position might be vulnerable. Secrets had been kept. They could probably still get Cullen; both Carl Hough and Bill Jamieson could fly the army choppers that were hangared out at the Springs, and if they had to they could close every road going out of Nevada to the east. Also, the guy wasn't Jack the Ripper or Dr. Octopus; he was a feeb on the run. But Christ! If he had known about this Andros what's-his-face when Julie Lawry had come to see him, they might have been able to take him right in his little North Vegas apartment. Somewhere inside him a door had opened, letting in a cool breeze of fear. Flagg had screwed up. And Flagg was capable of distrusting Lloyd Henreid. And that was baaaad shit. Still, he would have to be told about this. He wasn't going to take the decision to start another manhunt upon himself. Not after what had happened with the Judge. He got up to go to the house phones, and met Whitney Horgan coming from them. "It's the man, Lloyd," he said. "He wants you." "All right," he said, surprised by how calm his voice was-the fear inside him was now very great. And above all else, it was important for him to remember that he would have long since starved in his Phoenix holding cell if it hadn't been for Flagg. There was no sense kidding himself; he belonged to the dark man lock, stock, and barrel. But I can't do my job if he shuts off the information, he thought, going to the elevator bank. He pushed the penthouse button, and the elevator car rose swiftly. Again there was that nagging, unhappy feeling: Flagg hadn't known. The third spy had been here all along, and Flagg hadn't known.
472 "Come in, Lloyd." Flagg's lazy smiling face above a prosy blue-checked bathrobe. Lloyd came in. The air conditioning was on high, and it was like stepping into an open-air suite in Greenland. And still, as Lloyd stepped past the dark man, he could feel the radiating body heat he gave off. It was like being in a room which contained a small but very powerful furnace. Sitting in the corner, in a white sling chair, was the woman who had come in with Flagg that morning. Her hair was carefully pinned up, and she wore a shift dress. Her face was blank and moony, and looking at her gave Lloyd a deep chill. As teenagers, he and some friends had once stolen some dynamite from a construction project, had fused it and thrown it into Lake Harrison, where it exploded. The dead fish that had floated to the surface afterward had had that same look of awful blank impartiality in their moon-rimmed eyes. "I'd like you to meet Nadine Cross," Flagg said softly from behind him, making Lloyd jump. "My wife." Startled, Lloyd looked at Flagg and met only that mocking grin, those dancing eyes. "My dear, Lloyd Henreid, my righthand man. Lloyd and I met in Phoenix, where Lloyd was being detained and was consequently about to dine on a fellow detainee. In fact, Lloyd might already have partaken of the appetizer. Correct, Lloyd?" Lloyd blushed dully and said nothing, although the woman was either gonzo or stoned right over the moon. "Put out your hand, dear," the dark man said. Like a robot, Nadine put her hand out. Her eyes continued to stare indifferently at a point somewhere above Lloyd's shoulder. Jesus, this is creepy, Lloyd thought. A light sweat had sprung out all over his body in spite of the frigid air conditioning. "Pleestameetcha," he said, and shook the soft warm meat of her hand. Afterward, he had to restrain a powerful urge to wipe his hand on the leg of his pants. Nadine's hand continued to hang laxly in the air. "You can put your hand down now, my love," Flagg said. Nadine put her hand back in her lap, where it began to twist and squirm. Lloyd realized with something like horror that she was masturbating. "My wife is indisposed," Flagg said, and tittered. "She is also in a family way, as the saying is. Congratulate me, Lloyd. I am going to be a papa." That titter again; the sound of scampering, light- footed rats behind an old wall. "Congratulations," Lloyd said through lips that felt blue and numb. "We can talk our little hearts out around Nadine, can't we, dear? She's as silent as the grave. To make a small pun, mum's the word. "What about Indian Springs?" Lloyd blinked and tried to shift his mental gears, feeling naked and on the defensive. "It's going good," he managed at last. " `Going good'?" The dark man leaned toward him and for one moment Lloyd was sure he was going to open his mouth and bite his head off like a Tootsie Pop. He recoiled. "That's hardly what I'd call a close analysis, Lloyd." "There are some other things—" "When I want to talk about other things, I'll ask about other things." Flagg's voice was rising, getting uncomfortably close to a scream. Lloyd had never seen such a radical shift in temperament, and it scared him badly. "Right now I want a status report on Indian Springs and you better have it for me, Lloyd, for your sake you better have it!" "All right," Lloyd muttered. "Okay." He fumbled his notebook out of his hip pocket, and for the next half hour they talked about Indian Springs, the National Guard jets, and the Shrike missiles. Flagg began to relax againalthough it was hard to tell, and it was a very bad idea to take anything at all for granted when you were dealing with the Walkin Dude. "Do you think they could overfly Boulder in two weeks?" he asked. "Say... by the first of October?" "Carl could, I guess," Lloyd said doubtfully. "I don't know about the other two." "I want them ready," Flagg muttered. He got up and began to pace around the room. "I want those people hiding in holes by next spring. I want to hit them at night, while they're sleeping. Rake that town from one end to the other. I want it to be like Hamburg and Dresden in World War II." He turned to Lloyd and his face was parchment white, the dark eyes blazing out of it with their own crazy fire. His grin was like a scimitar. "Teach them to send spies. They'll be living in caves when spring comes. Then we'll go over there and have us a pig hunt. Teach them to send spies." Lloyd found his tongue at last. "The third spy—"
473 "We'll find him, Lloyd. Don't worry about that. We'll get the bastard." The smile was back, darkly charming. But Lloyd had seen an instant of angry and bewildered fear before that smile reappeared. And fear was the one expression he had never expected to see there. "We know who he is, I think," Lloyd said quietly. Flagg had been turning a jade figurine over in his hands, examining it. Now his hand froze. He became very still, and a peculiar expression of concentration—stole over his face. For the first time the Cross woman's gaze shifted, first toward Flagg and then hastily away. The air in the penthouse suite seemed to thicken. "What? What did you say?" "The third spy—" "No;" Flagg said with sudden decision. "No. You're jumping at shadows, Lloyd." "If I've got it right, he's a friend of a guy named Nick Andros." The jade figurine fell through Flagg's fingers and shattered. A moment later Lloyd was lifted out of his chair by the front of his shirt. Flagg had moved across the room so swiftly that Lloyd had not even seen him. And then Flagg's face was plastered against his, that awful sick heat was baking into him, and Flagg's black weasel eyes were only an inch from his own. Flagg screamed: "And you sat there and talked about Indian Springs? I ought to throw you out that window!" Something—perhaps it was seeing the dark man vulnerable, perhaps it was only the knowledge that Flagg wouldn't kill him until he got all of the informationallowed Lloyd to find his tongue and speak in his own defense. "I tried to tell you!" he cried. "You cut me off! And you cut me off from the red list, whatever that is! If I'd known about that, I could have had that fucking retard last night!" Then he was flung across the room to crash into the far wall. Stars exploded in his head and he dropped to the parquet floor, dazed. He shook his head, trying to clear it. There was a high humming noise in his ears. Flagg seemed to have gone crazy. He was striding jerkily around the room, his face blank with rage. Nadine had shrunk back into her chair. Flagg reached a knickknack shelf populated with a milky-green menagerie of jade animals. He stared at them for a second, seeming almost puzzled by them, and then swept them all off onto the floor. They shattered like tiny grenades. He kicked at the bigger pieces with one bare foot, sending them flying. His dark hair had fallen over his forehead. He flipped it back with a jerk of his head and then turned toward Lloyd. There was a grotesque expression of sympathy and compassion on his face-both emotions every bit as real as a three- dollar bill, Lloyd thought. He walked over to help Lloyd up, and Lloyd noticed that he stepped on several jagged pieces of broken jade with no sign of pain... and no blood. "I'm sorry," he said. "Let's have a drink." He offered a hand and helped Lloyd to his feet. Like a kid doing a temper tantrum, Lloyd thought. "Yours is bourbon straight up, isn't it?" "Fine." Flagg went to the bar and made monstrous drinks. Lloyd demolished half of his at a gulp. The glass chattered briefly on the end table as he set it down. But he felt a little better. Flagg said, "The red list is something I didn't think you'd ever have to use. There were eight names on it-five now. It was their governing council plus the old woman. Andros was one of them. But he's dead now. Yes, Andros is dead, I'm sure of it." He fixed Lloyd with a narrow, baleful stare. Lloyd told the story, referring to his notebook from time to time. He didn't really need it, but it was good, from time to time, to get away from that smoking glare. He began with Julie Lawry and ended with Barry Dorgan. "You say he's retarded," Flagg mused. "Yes." Happiness spread over Flagg's face and he began to nod. "Yes," he said, but not to Lloyd. "Yes, that's why I couldn't see—" He broke off and went to the telephone. Moments later he was talking to Barry. "The helicopters. You get Carl in one and Bill Jamieson in the other. Continuous radio contact. Send out sixty-no, a hundred men. Close every road going out of eastern and southern Nevada. See that they have this Cullen's description. And I want hourly reports." He hung up and rubbed his hands happily. "We'll get him. I only wish we could send his head back to his bum-buddy Andros. But Andros is dead. Isn't he, Nadine?" Nadine only stared blankly. "The helicopters won't be much good tonight," Lloyd said. "It'll be dark in three hours." "Don't you fret, old Lloyd," the dark man said cheerfully. "Tomorrow will be time enough for the helicopters. He isn't far. No, not far at all." Lloyd was bending his spiral notebook nervously back and forth in his hands, wishing he was anywhere but here. Flagg was in a good mood now, but Lloyd didn't think he would be after hearing about Trash.
474 "I have one other item," he said reluctantly. "It's about the Trashcan Man." He wondered if this was going to trigger another tantrum like the jade-smashing outburst. "Dear Trashy. Is he off on one of his prospecting trips?" "I don't know where he is. He pulled a little trick at Indian Springs before he went out again." He related the story as Carl had told it the day before. Flagg's face darkened when he heard that Freddy Campanari had been mortally wounded, but by the time Lloyd had finished, his face was serene again. Instead of bursting into a rage, Flagg only waved his hand impatiently. "All right. When he comes back in, I want him killed. But quickly and mercifully. I don't want him to suffer. I had hoped he might... last longer. You probably don't understand this, Lloyd, but I felt a certain... kinship with that boy. I thought I might be able to use him-and I have-but I was never completely sure. Even a master sculptor can find that the knife has turned in his hand, if it's a defective knife. Correct, Lloyd?" Lloyd, who knew from nothing about sculpture and sculptors' knives (he thought they used mallets and chisels), nodded agreeably. "Sure." "And he's done us the great service of arming the Shrikes. It was him, wasn't it!" "Yes. It was." "He'll be back. Tell Barry Trash is to be... put out of his misery. Painlessly, if possible. Right now I am more concerned with the retarded boy to the east of us. I could let him go, but it's the principle of the thing. Perhaps we can end it before dark. Do you think so, my dear?" He was squatting beside Nadine's chair now. He touched her cheek and she pulled away as if she had been touched with a red-hot poker. Flagg grinned and touched her again. This time she submitted, shuddering. "The moon," Flagg said, delighted. He sprang to his feet. "If the helicopters don't spot him before dark, they'll have the moon tonight. Why, I'll bet he's biking right up the middle of I-15 right now, in broad daylight. Expecting the old woman's God to watch out for him. But she's dead, too, isn't she, my dear?" Flagg laughed delightedly, the laugh of a happy child. "And her God is, too, I suspect. Everything is going to work out well. And Randy Flagg is going to be a da-da." He touched her cheek again. She moaned like a hurt animal. Lloyd licked his dry lips. "I'll push off now, if that's okay." "Fine, Lloyd, fine." The dark man did not look around; he was staring raptly into Nadine's face. "Everything is going well. Very well." Lloyd left as quickly as he could, almost running. In the elevator it all caught up with him and he had to push the EMERGENCY STOP button as hysterics overwhelmed him. He laughed and cried for nearly five minutes. When the storm had passed, he felt a little better. He's not falling apart, he told himself. There are a few little problems, but he's on top of them. The ball game will probably be over by the first of October, and surely by the fifteenth. Everything's starting to go good, just like he said, and never mind that he almost killed me... never mind that he seems stranger than ever...
Lloyd got the call from Stan Bailey at Indian Springs fifteen minutes later. Stan was nearly hysterical between his fury at Trash and his fear of the dark man. Carl Hough and Bill Jamieson had taken off from the Springs at 6:02 P. M. to run a recon mission east of Vegas. One of their other trainee pilots, Cliff Benson, had been riding with Carl as an observer. At 6:12 P. m. both helicopters had blown up in the air. Stunned though he had been, Stan had sent five men over to Hangar 9, where two other skimmers and three large Baby Huey copters were stored. They found explosive taped to all five of the remaining choppers, and incendiary fuses rigged to simple kitchen timers. The fuses were not the same as the ones Trash had rigged to the fuel trucks, but they were very similar. There was not much room for doubt. "It was the Trashcan Man," Stan said. "He went hogwild. Jesus Christ only knows what else he's wired up to explode out here." "Check everything," Lloyd said. His heartbeat was rapid and thready with fear. Adrenaline boiled through his body, and his eyes felt as if they were in danger of popping from his head. "Check everything! You get every man jack out there and go from one end to the other of that cock- knocking base. You hear me, Stan?" "Why bother?" "Why bother?" Lloyd screamed. "Do I have to draw you a picture, shitheels? What's the big dude gonna say if the whole base—" "All our pilots are dead," Stan said softly. "Don't you get it, Lloyd? Even Cliff, and he wasn't very fucking good. We've got six guys that aren't even close to soloing and no teachers. What do we need those jets for now, Lloyd?" And he hung up, leaving Lloyd to sit thunderstruck, finally realizing.
475 Tom Cullen woke up shortly after nine-thirty that evening, feeling thirsty and stiff. He had a drink from his water canteen, crawled out from under the two leaning rocks, and looked up at the dark sky. The moon rode overhead, mysterious and serene. It was time to go on. But he would have to be careful, laws yes. Because they were after him now. He had had a dream. Nick was talking to him and that was strange, because Nick couldn't talk. He was M-O-O-N, that spelled deaf-mute. Had to write everything, and Tom could hardly read at all. But dreams were funny things, anything could happen in a dream, and in Tom's, Nick had been talking. Nick said, "They know about you now, Tom, but it wasn't your fault. You did everything right. It was bad luck. So now you have to be careful. You have to leave the road, Tom, but you have to keep going east." Tom understood about east, but not how he was going to keep from getting mixed up in the desert. He might just go around in big circles. "You'll know," Nick said. "First you have to look for God's Finger..." Now Tom put his canteen back on his belt and adjusted his pack. He walked back to the turnpike, leaving his bike where it had been. He climbed the embankment to the road and looked both ways. He scuttled across the median strip and after another cautious look, he trotted across the westbound lanes of I-15. They know about you now, Tom. He caught his foot in the guardrail cable on the far side and tumbled most of the way to the bottom of the embankment beside the highway. He lay in a heap for a moment, heart pounding. There was no sound but faint wind, whining over the broken floor of the desert. He got up and began to scan the horizon. His eyes were keen and the desert air was crystal clear. Before long he saw it, standing out against the starstrewn sky like an exclamation point. God's Finger. As he faced due east, the stone monolith was at ten o'clock. He thought he could walk to it in an hour or two. But the clear, magnifying quality of the air had fooled more experienced hikers than Tom Cullen, and he was bemused by the way the stone finger always seemed to remain the same distance away. Midnight passed, then two o'clock. The great clock of stars in the sky had revolved. Tom began to wonder if the rock that looked so much like a pointing finger might not be a mirage. He rubbed his eyes, but it was still there. Behind him, the turnpike had merged into the dark distance. When he looked back at the Finger, it did seem to be a little closer, and by 4 A. M., when an inner voice began to whisper that it was time to find a good hiding place for the coming day, there could be no doubt that he had drawn nearer to the landmark. But he would not reach it this night. And when he did reach it (assuming that they didn't find him when day came)? What then? It didn't matter. Nick would tell him. Good old Nick. Tom couldn't wait to get back to Boulder and see him, laws, yes. He found a fairly comfortable spot in the shade of a huge spine of rock and went to sleep almost instantly. He had come about thirty miles northeast that night, and was approaching the Mormon Mountains. During the afternoon, a large rattlesnake crawled in beside him to get out of the heat of the day. It coiled itself by Tom, slept awhile, and then passed on.
Flagg stood at the edge of the roof sundeck that afternoon, looking east. The sun would be going down in another four hours, and then the retard would be on the move again. A strong and steady desert breeze lifted his dark hair back from his hot brow. The city ended so abruptly, giving up to the desert. A few billboards on the edge of nowhere, and that was it. So much desert, so many places to hide. Men had walked into that desert before and had never been seen again. "But not this time," he whispered. "I'll have him. I'll have him." He could not have explained why it was so important to have the retard; the rationality of the problem constantly eluded him. More and more he felt an urge to simply act, to move, to do. To destroy. Last evening, when Lloyd had informed him of the helicopter explosions and the deaths of the three pilots, he had had to use every resource at his command to keep from going into an utter screaming rage. His first impulse had been to order an armored column assembled immediately— tanks, flametracks, armored trucks, the whole works. They could be in Boulder in five days. The whole stinking mess would be over in a week and a half. Sure.
476 And if there was early snow in the mountains passes, that would be the end of the great Wehrmacht. And it was already September 14. Good weather was no longer a sure bet. How m hell's name had it gotten so late so fast? But he was the strongest man on the face of the earth, wasn't he? There might be another like him in Russia or China or Iran, but that was a problem for ten years from now. Now all that mattered was that he was ascendant, he knew it, he felt it. He was strong, that was all the retard could tell them... if he managed to avoid getting lost in the desert or freezing to death in the mountains. He could only tell them that Flagg's people lived in fear of the Walkin Dude and would obey the Walkin Dude's least command. He could only tell them things that would demoralize their will further. So why did he have this steady, gnawing feeling that Cullen must be found and killed before he could leave the West? — Because it's what I want, and I am going to have what I want, and that is reason enough. And Trashcan Man. He had thought he could dismiss Trash entirely. He had thought Trashcan— Man could be thrown away like a defective tool. But he had succeeded in doing what the entire Free Zone could not have done. He had thrown dirt into the foolproof machinery of the dark man's conquest. I misjudged— It was a hateful thought, and he would not allow his mind to follow it to its conclusion. He threw his glass over the roof's low parapet and saw it twinkling, end over end, out and out, then descending. A randomly vicious thought, a petulant child's thought, streaked across his mind: Hope it hits someone on the head! Far below, the glass struck the parking lot and exploded .. so far below, the dark man could not even hear it. They had found no more bombs at Indian Springs. The entire place had been turned upside down. Apparently Trash had booby-trapped the first things he had come to, the choppers in Hangar 9 and the trucks in the motor pool next door. Flagg had reiterated his orders that the Trashcan Man was to be killed on sight. The thought of Trash wandering around out in all that government property, where God knew what might be stored, now made him distinctly nervous. Nervous. Yes. The beautiful surety was still evaporating. When had that evaporation begun? He could not say, not for sure. All he knew was that things were getting flaky. Lloyd knew it too. He could see it in the way that Lloyd looked at him. It might not be a bad idea if Lloyd had an accident before the winter was out. He was asshole buddies with too many of the people in the palace guard, people like Whitney Horgan and Ken DeMott. Even Burlson, who had spilled that business about the red list. He had thought idly about skinning Paul Burlson alive for that. But if Lloyd had known about the red list, none of this would have— "Shut up," he muttered. "Just... shut... up!" But the thought wouldn't go away that easily. Why hadn't he given Lloyd the names of the top- echelon Free Zone people? He didn't know, couldn't remember. It seemed there had been a perfectly good reason at the time, but the more he tried to grasp it, the more it slipped through his fingers. Had it only been a slystupid decision not to put too many of his eggs in one basket-a feeling that not too many secrets should be stored with any one person, even a person as stupid and loyal as Lloyd Henreid? An expression of bewilderment rippled across his face. Had he been making such stupid decisions all along? And just how loyal was Lloyd, anyway? That expression in his eyes Abruptly he decided to push it all aside and levitate. That always made him feel better. It made him feel stronger, more serene, and it cleared his head. He looked out at the desert sky. (I am, I am, I am, I AM—) His rundown bootheels left the surface of the sundeck, hovered, rose another inch. Then two. Peace came to him, and suddenly he knew he could find the answers. Everything was clearer. First he must— "They're coming for you, you know." He crashed back down at the sound of that soft, uninflected voice. The jarring shock went up his legs and his spine all the way to his jaw, which clicked. He whirled around like a cat. But his blooming grin withered when he saw Nadine. She was dressed in a white nightgown, yards of gauzy material that billowed around her body. Her hair, as white as the gown, blew about her face. She looked like some pallid deranged sibyl, and in spite of himself, Flagg was afraid. She took a delicate step closer. Her feet were bare. "They're coming. Stu Redman, Glen Bateman, Ralph Brentner, and Larry Underwood. They're coming and they'll kill you like a chicken-stealing weasel." "They're in Boulder," he said, "hiding under their beds and mourning their dead nigger woman."
477 "No," she said indifferently. "They're almost in Utah now. They'll be here soon. And they'll stamp you out like a disease." "Shut up. Go downstairs." "I'll go down," she said, approaching him, and now it was she who smiled—a smile that filled him with dread. The furious color faded from his cheeks, and his strange, hot vitality seemed to go with it. For a moment he seemed old and frail. "I'll go down... and so will you." "Get out." "We'll go down," she sang, smiling... it was horrible. "Down, doowwwn . "They're in Boulder!" "They're almost here." "Get downstairs!" "Everything you made here is falling apart, and why not? The effective halflife of evil is always relatively short. People are whispering about you. They're saying you let Tom Cullen get away, just a simple retarded boy but smart enough to outwit Randall Flagg." Her words came faster and faster, now tumbling through a jeering smile. "They're saying your weapons expert has gone crazy and you didn't know it was going to happen. They're afraid that what he brings back from the desert next time may be for them instead of for the people in the East. And they're leaving. Did you know that?" You, lie," he whispered. His face was parchment white, his eyes bulging. "They wouldn't dare. And if they were, I'd know." Her eyes gazed blankly over his shoulder to the east. "I see them," she whispered. "They're leaving their posts in the dead of night, and your Eye doesn't see them. They're leaving their posts and sneaking away. A work-crew goes out with twenty people and comes back with eighteen. The border guards are defecting. They're afraid the balance of power is shifting op its arm. They're leaving you, leaving you, and the ones that are left won't lift a finger when the men from the East come to finish you once and for all—" It snapped. Whatever there was inside him, it snapped. "YOU LIE!" he screamed at her. His hands slammed down on her shoulders, snapping both collarbones like pencils. He lifted her body high over his head into the faded blue desert sky, and as he pivoted on his heels he threw her, up and out, as he had thrown the glass. He saw the great smile of relief and triumph on her face, the sudden sanity in her eyes, and understood. She had baited him into doing it, understanding somehow that only he could set her free— And she was carrying his child. He leaned over the low parapet, almost overbalancing, trying to call back the irrevocable. Her nightgown fluttered. His hand closed on the gauzy material and he felt it rip, leaving him only a scrap of cloth so diaphanous that he could see his fingers through it-the stuff of dreams on waking. Then she was gone, plummeting straight down with her toes pointed toward the earth, her gown pillowing up her neck and over her face in drifts. She didn't scream. She went down as silently as a defective skyrocket. When he heard the indescribable thud of her hard landing, Flagg threw his head back to the sky and howled. It made no difference, it made no difference. It was still all in the palm of his hand. He leaned over the parapet again and watched them come running, like iron filings drawn to a magnet. Or maggots to a piece of offal. They looked so small, and he was so high above them. He would levitate, he decided, and regain his state of calm. But it was a long, long time before his bootheels would leave the sundeck, and when they did they would only hover a quarter of an inch above the concrete. They would go no higher.
Tom awoke that night at eight o'clock, but there was still too much light to move. He waited. Nick had come to him again in his sleep, and they had talked. It was so good to talk to Nick. He lay in the shade of the big rock and watched the sky darken. The stars began to peep out. He thought about Pringle's Potato Chips and wished he had some. When he got back to the Zone-if he did get back to the Zone-he would have all of them he wanted. He would gorge on Pringle's chips. And bask in the love of his friends. That was what was missing back there in Las Vegas, he decidedsimple love. They were nice enough people and all, but there wasn't much love in them. Because they were too busy being afraid. Love didn't grow very well in a place where there was only fear, just as plants didn't grow very well in a place where it was always dark. Only mushrooms and toadstools grew big and fat in the dark, even he knew that, laws, yes. "I love Nick and Frannie and Dick Ellis and Lucy," Tom whispered. It was his prayer. "I love Larry Underwood and Glen Bateman, too. I love Stan and Rona. I love Ralph. I love Stu. I love—" It was odd, how easily their names came to him. Why, back in the Zone he was lucky if he could remember Stu's name when he came to visit. His thoughts turned to his toys. His garage, his cars,
478 his model trains. He had played with them by the hour. But he wondered if he would want to play with them so much when he got back from this... if he got back. It wouldn't be the same. That was sad, but maybe it was also good. "The Lord is my shepherd," he recited softly. "I shall not want for nothing. He makes me lie down in the green pastures. He greases up my head with oil. He gives me kung-fu in the face of my enemies. Amen." It was dark enough now, and he pushed on. By eleventhirty that night he had reached God's Finger, and he paused there for a little lunch. The ground was high here, and looking back the way he had come, he could see moving lights. On the turnpike, he thought. They're looking for me. Tom looked northeast again. Far ahead, barely visible in the dark (the moon, now two nights past full, had already begun to sink), he saw a huge rounded granite dome. He was supposed to go there next. "Tom's got sore feet," he whispered to himself, but not without some cheeriness. Things could have been much worse than a case of sore feet. "M-O-ON, that spells sore feet." He walked on, and the night things skittered away from him, and when he laid himself down at dawn, he had come almost forty miles. The Nevada-Utah border was not far to the east of him. By eight that morning he was hard asleep, his head pillowed on his jacket. His eyes began to move rapidly back and forth behind his closed lids. Nick had come, and Tom talked with him. A frown creased Tom's sleeping brow. He had told Nick how much he was looking forward to seeing him again. But for some reason he could not understand, Nick had turned away.