CHAPTER 73
The three of them camped sixteen miles west of the place where they had left Stu. They had come to another washout, this one minor. The real reason they had made such poor mileage was because some of the heart seemed to have gone out of them. It was hard to tell if it was going to come back. Their feet seemed to weigh more. There was little conversation. Not one of them wanted to look into the face of another, for fear of seeing his own guilt mirrored there.
496 They camped at dark and built a scrub fire. There was water, but no food. Glen tamped the last of his tobacco into his pipe, and wondered suddenly if Stu had any cigarettes. The thought spoiled his own taste for tobacco, and he knocked his pipe out on a rock, absently kicking away the last of his Borkum Riff. When an owl hooted somewhere out in the darkness a few minutes later, he looked around. "Say, where's Kojak?" he asked. "Now, that's kinda funny, ain't it?" Ralph said. "I can't remember seeing him the last couple of hours at all." Glen got to his feet. "Kojak!" he yelled. "Hey, Kojak! Kojak!" His voice echoed lonesomely away into the wastes. There was no answering bark. He sat down again, overcome with gloom. A soft sighing noise escaped him. Kojak had followed him almost all the way across the continent. Now he was gone. It was like a terrible omen. "You s'pose something got him?" Ralph asked softly. Larry said in a quiet, thoughtful voice: "Maybe he stayed with Stu." Glen looked up, startled. "Maybe," he said, considering it. "Maybe that's what happened." Larry tossed a pebble from one hand to the other, back and forth, back and forth. "He said maybe God would send a raven to feed him. I doubt if there's any out here, so maybe He sent a dog instead." The fire made a popping sound, sending a column of sparks up into the darkness to whirl in brief brightness and then to wink out.
When Stu saw the dark shape come slinking down the gully toward him, he pulled himself up against the nearby boulder, leg sticking out stiffly in front of him, and found a good-sized stone with one numb hand. He was chilled to the bone. Larry had been right. Two or three days of lying around in these temperatures was going to kill him quite efficiently. Except now it looked like whatever this was would get him first. Kojak had remained with him until sunset and then had left him, scrambling easily out of the gully. Stu had not called him back. The dog would find his way back to Glen and go on with them. Perhaps he had his own part to play. But now be wished that Kojak had stayed a little longer. The pills were one thing, but he had no wish to be ripped to pies by one of the dark man's wolves. He gripped the rock harder and the dark shape paused about twenty yards up the cut. Then it started coming again, a blacker shadow in the night. "Come on, then," Stu said hoarsely. The black shadow wagged its tail and came. "Kojak?" It was. And there was something in his mouth, something he dropped at Stu's feet. He sat down, tail thumping, waiting to be complimented. "Good dog," Stu said in amazement. "Good dog!" Kojak had brought him a rabbit. Stu pulled out his pocket knife, opened it, and disemboweled the rabbit in three quick movements. He picked up the steaming guts and tossed them to Kojak. "Want these?" Kojak did. Stu skinned the rabbit. The thought of eating it raw didn't do much for his stomach. "Wood?" he said to Kojak without much hope. There were scattered branches and hunks of tree all along the banks of the gully, dropped by the flash flood, but nothing within reach. Kojak wagged his tail and didn't move. "Fetch? F—" But Kojak was gone. He whirled, streaked to the east side of the gully, and ran back with a large piece of deadwood in his jaws. He dropped it beside Stu, and barked. His tail wagged rapidly. "Good dog," Stu said again. "I'll be a son of a bitch! Fetch, Kojak!" Barking with joy, Kojak went again. In twenty minutes, he had brought back enough wood for a large fire. Stu carefully stripped enough splinters to make kindling. He checked the match situation and saw that he had a book and a half. He got the kindling going on the second match and fed the fire carefully. Soon there was a respectable blaze going and Stu got as close to it as he could, sitting in his sleeping bag. Kojak lay down on the far side of the fire with his nose on his paws. When the fire had burned down a little, Stu spitted the rabbit and cooked it. The smell was soon strong enough and savory enough to have his stomach rumbling. Kojak came to attention and sat watching the rabbit with close interest. "Half for you and half for me, big guy, okay?" Fifteen minutes later he pulled the rabbit off the fire and managed to rip it in half without burning his fingers too badly. The meat was burned in places, half-raw in others, but it put the canned ham from Great Western Markets in the shade. He and Kojak gulped it down... and as they were finishing, a bonechilling howl drifted down the wash. "Christ!" Stu said around a mouthful of rabbit.
497 Kojak was on his feet, hackles up, growling. He advanced stiff-legged around the fire and growled again. Whatever had howled fell silent. Stu lay down, the hand-sized stone by one hand and his opened pocket knife by the other. The stars were cold and high and indifferent. His thoughts turned to Fran and he turned them away just as quickly. That hurt too much, full belly or not. I won't sleep, he thought. Not for a long time. But he did sleep, with the help of one of Glen's pills. And when the coals of the fire had burned down to embers, Kojak came over and slept next to him, giving Stu his heat. And that was how, on the first night after the party was broken, Stu ate when the others went hungry, and slept easy while their sleep was broken by bad dreams and an uneasy feeling of rapidly approaching doom. On the twenty-fourth, Larry Underwood's group of three pilgrims made thirty miles and camped northeast of the San Rafael Knob. That night the temperature slid down into the mid-twenties, and they built a large fire and slept dose by it. Kojak had not rejoined them. "What do you think Stu's doing tonight?" Ralph asked Larry. Larry said shortly, and was sorry when he saw the wince of pain on Ralph's homely, honest face, but he didn't know how to redeem what he had said. And after all, it was almost surely true. He lay down again, feeling strangely certain that it was tomorrow. Whatever they were coming to, they were almost there. Bad dreams that night. He was on tour with an outfit called the Shady Blues Connection in the one he remembered most clearly on waking. They were booked into Madison Square Garden, and the place was sold out. They took the stage to thunderous applause. Larry went to adjust his mike, bring it down to proper height, and couldn't budge it. He went to the lead guitarist's mike, but that one was frozen, too. Bass guitarist, organist, same thing. Booing and rhythmic clapping began to come from the crowd. One by one, the members of the Shady Blues Connection slunk off the stage, grinning furtively into high psychedelic shirt-collars like the ones the Byrds used to wear back in 1966, when Roger McGuinn was still eight miles high. Or eight hundred. And still Larry wandered from mike to mike, trying to find at least one he could adjust. But they were all at least nine feet tall and frozen solid. They looked like stainless steel cobras. Someone in the crowd began to yell for "Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?" I don't do that number anymore, he tried to say. I stopped doing that one when the world ended. They couldn't hear him, and a chant began to arise, starting in the back rows, then sweeping the Garden, gaining strength and volume: "Baby Can You Dig Your Man! Baby Can You Dig Your Man! BABY CAN YOU DIG YOUR MAN!" He awoke with the chant in his ears. Sweat had popped out all over his body. He didn't need Glen to tell him what kind of dream that had been, or what it meant. The dream where you can't reach the mikes, can't adjust them, is a common one for rock musicians, just as common as dreaming that you're on stage and can't remember a single lyric. Larry guessed that all performers had a variation on one of those before Before a performance. It was an inadequacy dream. It expressed that one simple overriding fear: What if you can't? What if you want to, but you can't? The terror of being unable to make the simple leap of faith which is the place where any artist-singer, writer, painter, musician-begins. Make it nice for the people, Larry. Whose voice was that? His mother's? You're a taker, Larry. No, Mom-no I'm not. I don't do that number anymore. I stopped doing that one when the world ended. Honest. He lay back down and drifted off to sleep again. His last thought was that Stu had been right: The dark man was going to grab them. Tomorrow, he thought. Whatever we're coming to, we're almost there.
But they saw no one on the twenty-fifth. The three of them walked stolidly along under the bright blue skies, and they saw birds and beasts in plenty, but no people. "It's amazing how rapidly the wildlife is coming back," Glen said. "I knew it would be a fairly rapid process, and of course the winter is going to prune it back some, but this is still amazing. It's only been about a hundred days since the first outbreaks." "Yeah, but there's no dogs or horses," Ralph said. "That just doesn't seem right, you know it? They invented a bug that killed pretty near all the people, but that wasn't enough. It had to take out his two favorite animals, too. It took man and man's best friends." "And left the cats," Larry said morosely. Ralph brightened. "Well, there's Kojak—" "There was Kojak." That killed the conversation. The buttes frowned down at them, hiding places for dozens of men with rifles and scopes. Larry's premonition that it was to be today hadn't left him. Each time they
498 topped a rise, he expected to see the road blocked below them. And each time it wasn't, he thought about ambush. They talked about horses. About dogs and buffalo. The buffalo were coming back, Ralph told them-Nick and Tom Cullen had seen them. The day was not so far off-in their lifetimes, maybe-when the buffalo might darken the plains again. Larry knew it was the truth, but he also knew it was bushwa—their lifetimes might amount to no more than another ten minutes. Then it was nearly dark, and time to look for a place to camp. They came to the top of one final rise and Larry thought: Now. They'll be right down there. But there was no one. They camped near a green reflectorized sign that said LAS VEGAS 260. They had eaten comparatively well that day: taco chips, soda, and two Slim Jims that they shared out equally. Tomorrow, Larry thought again, and slept. That night he dreamed that he and Barry Greig and the Tattered Remnants were playing at Madison Square Garden. It was their big chance-they were opening for some supergroup that was named after a city. Boston, or maybe Chicago. And all the microphone stands were at least nine feet tall again and he began to stumble from one to the other again as the audience began to clap rhythmically and call for "Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?" again. He looked down in the first row and felt a slapping dash of cold icewater fear. Charles Manson was there, the x on his forehead healed to a white, twisted scar, clapping and chanting. And Richard Speck was there, looking up at Larry with cocky, impudent eyes, an unfiltered cigarette jittering between his lips. They were flanking the dark man. John Wayne Gacy was behind them. Flagg was leading the chant. Tomorrow, Larry thought again, stumbling from one tootall mike to the next under the hot dreamlights of Madison Square Garden. I'll see you tomorrow.
But it was not the next day, or the day after that. On the evening of September 27 they camped in the town of Freemont Junction, and there was plenty to eat. "I keep expecting it to be over," Larry told Glen that evening. "And every day that it's not, it gets worse." Glen nodded. "I feel the same way. It would be funny if he was just a mirage, wouldn't it? Nothing but a bad dream in our collective consciousness." Larry looked at him with momentary surprised consideration. Then he shook his head slowly. "No. I don't think it's just a dream." Glen smiled. "Nor do I, young man. Nor do I." They made contact the following day.
At just past ten in the morning, they topped a rise and below them and to the west, five miles away, two cars were parked nose-to-nose, blocking the highway. It all looked exactly as Larry had thought it would. "Accident?" Glen asked. Ralph was shading his eyes. "I don't think so. Not parked that way." "His men," Larry said. "Yeah, I think so," Ralph agreed. "What do we do now, Larry?" Larry took his bandanna out of his back pocket and wiped his face with it. Today either summer had come back or they were starting to feel the southwestern desert. The temperature was in the low eighties. But it's a dry heat, he thought calmly. I'm only sweating a little. Just a little. He stuffed the bandanna back into his pocket. Now that it was actually on, he felt all right. Again there was that queer feeling that it was a performance, a show to be played. "We go down and see if God really is with us. Right, Glen?" "You're the boss." They started to walk again. Half an hour brought them close enough to see that the nose-to-nose cars had once belonged to the Utah State Patrol. There were several armed men waiting for them. "Are they going to shoot us?" Ralph asked conversationally. "I don't know," Larry said. "Because some of the rifles are wowsers. Scope-equipped. I can see the sun ticking off the lenses. If they want to knock us down, we'll be in range anytime." They kept walking. The men at the roadblock split into two groups, about five men in front, guns aimed at the party of three walking toward them, and three more crouched behind the cars. "Eight of them, Larry?" Glen asked. "I make it eight, yeah. How are you doing, anyhow?" "I'm okay," Glen said. "Ralph?"
499 "Just as long as we know what to do when the time comes," Ralph said. "That's all I want." Larry gripped his hand for a-moment and squeezed it. Then he took Glen's and did likewise. They were less than a mile from the cruisers now. "They're not going to shoot us outright," Ralph said. "They would have done it already." Now they could discern faces, and Larry searched them curiously. One was heavily bearded. Another was young but mostly bald-must have been a bummer for him to start losing his hair while he was still in school, Larry thought. Another was wearing a bright yellow tank top with a picture of a grinning camel on it, and below the camel the word SUPERHUMP in scrolled, old-fashioned letters. Another of them had the look of an accountant. He was fiddling with a . 357 Magnum, and he looked three times as nervous as Larry felt; he looked like a man who was going to blow off one of his own feet if he didn't settle down. "They don't look no different from our guys," Ralph said. "Sure they do," Glen answered. "They're all packing iron." They approached to within twenty feet of the police cars blocking the road. Larry stopped, and the others stopped with him. There was a dead moment of silence as Flagg's men and Larry's band of pilgrims looked each other over. Then Larry Underwood said mildly: "How-do." The little man who looked like a CPA stepped forward. He was still twiddling with the Magnum. "Are you Glendon Bateman, Lawson Underwood, Stuart Redman, and, Ralph Brentner?" "Say, you dummy," Ralph said, "can't you count?" Someone snickered. The CPA type flushed. "Who's missing?" Larry said, "Stu met with an accident on the way here. And I do believe you're going to have one yourself if you don't stop fooling with that gun." There were more snickers. The CPA managed to tuck the pistol into the waistband of his gray slacks, which made him look more ridiculous than ever; a Walter Mitty outlaw daydream. "My name is Paul Burlson," he said, "and by virtue of the power vested in me, I arrest you and order you to come with me." "In whose name?" Glen said immediately. Burlson looked at him with contempt... but the contempt was mixed with something else. "You know who I speak for." Then say it." But Burlson was silent. "Are you afraid?" Glen asked him. He looked at all eight of them. "Are you so afraid of him you don't dare speak his name? Very well, I'll say it for you. His name is Randall Flagg, also known as the dark man, also known as the tall man, also known as the Walkin Dude. Don't some of you' call him that?" His voice had climbed to the high, clear octaves of fury. Some of the men looked uneasily at each other and Burlson fell back a step. "Call him Beelzebub, because that's his name, too. Call him Nyarlahotep and Ahaz and Astaroth. Call him R'yelah and Seti and Anubis. His name is legion and he's an apostate of hell and you men kiss his ass." His voice dropped to a conversational pitch again; he smiled disarmingly. "Just thought we ought to have that out front." "Grab them," Burlson said. "Grab them all and shoot the first one that moves." For one strange second no one moved at all and Larry thought: They're not going to do it, they're as afraid of us as we are of them, more afraid, even though they have guns He looked at Burlson and said, "Who are you kidding, you little scumbucket? We want to go. That's why we came." Then they moved, almost as though it was Larry who had ordered them. He and Ralph were bundled into the back of one cruiser, Glen into the back of the other. They were behind a steel mesh grill. There were no inside doorhandles. We're arrested, Larry thought. He found that the idea amused him. Four men smashed into the front seat. The cruiser backed up, turned around, and began to head west. Ralph sighed. "Scared?" Larry asked him in a low voice. "I'll be frigged if I know. It feels so-good to be off m'dogs, I can't tell." One of the men in front said: "The old man with the big mouth. He in charge?" "No. I am." "What's your name?" "Larry Underwood. This is Ralph Brentner. The other guy is Glen Bateman." He looked out the back window. The other cruiser was behind them. "What happened to the fourth guy?" "He broke his leg. We had to leave him." "Tough go, all right. I'm Barry Dorgan. Vegas security." Larry felt an absurd response, Pleased to meet you, rise to his lips and had to smile a little. "How long a drive is it to Las Vegas?"
500 "Well, we can't whistle along too fast because of the stalls in the road. We're clearing them out from the city, but it's slow going. We'll be there in about five hours." "Isn't that something," Ralph said, shaking his head. "We've been on the road three weeks, and just five hours in a car takes you there." Dorgan squirmed around until he could look at them. "I don't understand why you were walking. For that matter I don't understand why you came at all. You must have known it would end like this." "We were sent," Larry said. "To kill Flagg, I think." "Not much chance of that, buddy. You and your friends are going right into the Las Vegas County Jail. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. He's got a special interest in you. He knew you were coming." He paused. "You just want to hope he makes it quick for you. But I don't think he will. He hasn't been in a very good mood lately." "Why not?" Larry asked. But Dorgan seemed to feel he had said enough-too much, maybe. He turned around without answering, and Larry and Ralph watched the desert flow by. In just three weeks, speed had become a novelty all over again.
It actually took them six hours to reach Vegas. It lay in the middle of the desert like some improbable gem. There were a lot of people on the streets; the workday was over, and they were enjoying the early evening cool on lawns and benches and at bus stops, or sitting in the doorways of defunct wedding chapels and hockshops. They rubbernecked the Utah S. P. cars as they went by and then went back to whatever they had been talking about. Larry was looking around thoughtfully. The electricity was on, the streets were cleared, and the rubble of looting was gone. "Glen was right," he said. "He's got the trains running on time. But still I wonder if this is any way to run a railroad. Your people all look like they've got the nervous complaint, Dorgan." Dorgan didn't reply. They arrived at the county jail and drove around to the rear. The two police cars parked in a cement courtyard. When Larry got out, wincing at the stiffness that had settled into his muscles, he saw that Dorgan had two sets of handcuffs. "Hey, come on," he said. "Really." "Sorry. His orders." Ralph said, "I ain't never been handcuffed in my life. I was picked up and throwed in the drunk tank a couple of times before I was married, but never was I cuffed." Ralph was speaking slowly, his Oklahoma accent becoming more pronounced, and Larry realized he was totally furious. "I have my orders," Dorgan said. "Don't make it any tougher than it has to be." "Your orders," Ralph said. "I know who gives your orders. He murdered my friend Nick. What are you doing hooked up with that hellhound? You seem like a nice enough fella when you're by yourself." He was looking at Dorgan with such an expression of angry interrogation that Dorgan shook his head and looked away. "This is my job," he said, "and I do it. End of story. Put your wrists out or I'll have somebody do it for you." Larry put his hands out and Dorgan cuffed him. "What were you?" Larry asked curiously. "Before?" "Santa Monica Police. Detective second." "And you're with him. It's... forgive me for saying so, but it's really sort of funny." Glen Bateman was pushed over to join them. "What are you shoving him around for?" Dorgan asked angrily. "If you had to listen to six hours of this guy's bullshit, you'd do some pushing, too," one of the men said. "I don't care how much bullshit you had to listen to, keep your hands to yourself." Dorgan looked at Larry. "Why is it funny that I should be with him? I was a cop for ten years before Captain Trips. I saw what happens when guys like you are in charge, you see." "Young man," Glen said mildly, "your experiences with a few battered babies and drug abusers does not justify your embrace of a monster." "Get them out of here," Dorgan said evenly. "Separate cells, separate wings." "I don't think you'll be able to live with your choice, young man," Glen said. "There doesn't seem to be quite enough Nazi in you." This time Dorgan pushed Glen himself.
Larry was separated from the other two and taken down an empty corridor graced with signs reading NO SPITTING, THIS WAY TO SHOWERS & DELOUSING, and one that read, YOU ARE NOT A GUEST.
501 "I wouldn't mind a shower," he said. "Maybe," Dorgan said. "We'll see." "See what?" "How cooperative you can be." Dorgan opened a cell at the end of the corridor and ushered Larry in. "How about the bracelets?" Larry asked, holding them out. "Sure." Dorgan unlocked them and took them off. "Better?" "Much." "Still want that shower?" "I sure do." More than that, Larry didn't want to be left alone, listening to the echoey sound of footfalls going away. If he was left alone, the fear would start to come back. Dorgan produced a small notebook. "How many are you? In the Zone?" "Six thousand," Larry said. "We all play Bingo every Thursday night and the prize in the cover-all game is a twenty-pound turkey." "Do you want that shower or not?" "I want it." But he no longer thought he was going to get it. "How many of you over there?" "Twenty-five thousand, but four thousand are under twelve and get in free at the drive-in. Economically speaking, it's a bummer." Dorgan snapped his notebook shut and looked at him. "I can't, man," Larry said. "Put yourself in my place." Dorgan shook his head. "I can't do that, because I'm not nuts. Why are you guys here? What good do you think it's going to do you? He's going to kill you dead as dogshit tomorrow or the next day. And if he wants you to talk, you will. If he wants you to tapdance and jerk off at the same time, you'll do that, too. You must be crazy." "We were told to come by the old woman. Mother Abagail. Probably you dreamed about her." Dorgan shook his head, but suddenly his eyes wouldn't meet Larry's. "I don't know what you're talking about." "Then let's leave it at that." "Sure you don't want to talk to me? Get that shower?" Larry laughed. "I don't work that cheap. Send your own spy over to our side. If you can find one that doesn't look like a weasel the second Mother Abagail's name gets mentioned, that is." "Any way you want it," Dorgan said. He walked back down the hallway under the mesh-enclosed lights. At the far end he stepped past a steel-barred gate that rolled shut behind him with a hollow crash. Larry looked around. Like Ralph, he had been in jail on a couple of occasionspublic intoxication once, possession of an ounce of marijuana on another. Flaming youth. "It's not the Ritz," he muttered. The mattress on the bunk looked decidedly moldy, and he wondered a little morbidly if someone had died on it back in June or early July. The toilet worked but filled with rusty water the first time he flushed it, a reliable sign that it hadn't been used for a long time. Someone had left a paperback Western. Larry picked it up and then put it down again. He sat on the bunk and listened to the silence. He had always hated to be alone-but in a way, he always had been... until he had arrived in the Free Zone. And now it wasn't so bad as he had been afraid it would be. Bad enough, but he could cope. He's going to kill you dead as dogshit tomorrow or the next day. Except Larry didn't believe it. It just wasn't going to happen that way. "I will fear no evil," he said into the dead silence of the cellblock wing, and he liked the way it sounded. He said it again. He lay down, and the thought occurred that he had finally made it most of the way back to the West Coast. But the trip had been longer and stranger than anyone ever could have imagined. And the trip wasn't quite over yet. "I will fear no evil," he said again. He fell asleep, his face calm, and he slept in dreamless peace.
At ten o'clock the next day, twenty-four hours after they had first seen the roadblock in the distance, Randall Flagg and Lloyd Henreid came to see Glen Bateman. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor of his cell. He had found a piece of charcoal under his bunk, and had just finished writing this legend on the wall amid the intaglio of male and female genitals, names, phone numbers, and obscene little poems: I am not the potter, not the potter's wheel, but the potter's clay; is not the value of the shape attained as dependent upon the intrinsic worth of the clay as upon the wheel and the Master's skill? Glen was admiring this proverb—or was it an aphorism?-when the temperature in the deserted cellblock suddenly seemed to drop ten
502 degrees. The door at the end of the corridor rumbled open. The saliva in Glen's mouth was suddenly all gone, and the charcoal snapped between his fingers. Bootheels clocked up the hallway toward him. Other footfalls, smaller and insignificant, pattered along in counterpoint, trying to keep up. Why, its him. I'm going to see his face. Suddenly his arthritis was worse. Terrible, in fact. It seemed that his bones had suddenly been hollowed out and filled with ground glass. And still, he turned with an interested, expectant smile on his face as the bootheels stopped in front of his cell. "Well, there you are," Glen said. "And you're not half the boogeyman we thought you must be." Standing on the other side of the bars were two men. Flagg was on Glen's right. He was wearing bluejeans and a white silk shirt that gleamed mellowly in the dim lights. He was grinning in at Glen. Behind him was a shorter man who was not smiling at all. He had an undershot chin and eyes that seemed too big for his face. His complexion was one that the desert climate was never going to be kind to; he had burned, peeled, and burned again. Around his neck he wore a black stone flawed with red. It had a greasy, resinous look. "I'd like you to meet my associate," Flagg said with a giggle. "Lloyd Henreid, meet Glen Bateman, sociologist, Free Zone Committee member, and single existing member of the Free Zone think tank now that Nick Andros is dead." "Meetcha," Lloyd mumbled. "How's your arthritis, Glen?" Flagg asked. His tone was commiserating, but his eyes sparkled with high glee and secret knowledge. Glen opened and closed his hands rapidly, smiling back at Flagg. No one would ever know what an effort it took to maintain that gentle smile. The intrinsic worth of the clay! "Fine," he said. "Much better for sleeping indoors, thank you." Flagg's smile faltered a bit. Glen caught just a glimpse of narrow surprise and anger. Of fear? "I've decided to let you go," he said briskly. His smile sprang forth again, radiant and vulpine. Lloyd uttered a little gasp of surprise, and Flagg turned to him. "Haven't I, Lloyd?" "Uh... sure," Lloyd said. "Sure nuff." "Well, fine," Glen said easily. He could feel the arthritis sinking deeper and deeper into his joints, numbing them like ice, swelling them like fire. "You'll be given a small motorbike and you may drive back at your leisure." "Of course I couldn't go without my friends." "Of course not. And all you have to do is ask. Get down on your knees and ask me." Glen laughed heartily. He threw back his head and laughed long and hard. And as he laughed, the pain in his joints began to abate. He felt better, stronger, in control again. "Oh, you're a card," he said. "I tell you what you do. Why don't you find a nice big sandpile, get yourself a hammer, and pound all that sand right up your ass?" Flagg's face grew dark. The smile slipped away. His eyes, previously as dark as the jet stone Lloyd wore, now seemed to gleam yellowly. He reached out his hand to the locking mechanism on the door and wrapped his fingers around it. There was an electric buzzing sound. Fire leaped out between his fingers, and there was a hot smell in the air. The lockbox fell to the floor, smoking and black. Lloyd Henreid cried out. The dark man grabbed the bars and threw the cell door back on its track. "Stop laughing." Glen laughed harder. "Stop laughing at me!" "You're nothing!" Glen said, wiping his streaming eyes and still chuckling. "Oh pardon me... it's just that we were all so frightened... we made such a business out of you... I'm laughing as much at our own foolishness as at your regrettable lack of substance..." "Shoot him, Lloyd." Flagg had turned to the other man. His face was working horribly. His hands were hooked into predator's claws. "Oh, kill me yourself if you're going to kill me," Glen said. "Surely you're capable. Touch me with your finger and stop my heart. Make the sign of the inverted cross and give me a massive brain embolism. Bring down the lightning from the overhead socket to cleave me in two. Oh... oh dear... oh dear me!" Glen collapsed onto the cell cot and rocked back and forth, consumed with delicious laughter. "Shoot him!" the dark man roared at Lloyd. Pale, shaking with fear, Lloyd fumbled the pistol out of his belt, almost dropped it, then tried to point it at Glen. He had to use both hands. Glen looked at Lloyd, still smiling. He might have been at a faculty cocktail party back in the Brain Ghetto at Woodsville, New Hampshire, recovering from a good joke, now ready to turn the conversation back into more serious channels of reflection.
503 "If you have to shoot somebody, Mr. Henreid, shoot him." "Do it now, Lloyd." Lloyd blindly pulled the trigger. The gun went off with a tremendous crash in the enclosed space. The echoes bounced furiously back and forth. But the bullet only chipped concrete two inches from Glen's right shoulder, ricocheted, struck something else, and whined off again. "Can't you do anything right?" Flagg roared. "Shoot him, you moron! Shoot him! He's standing right in front of you!" "I'm trying—" Glen's smile had not changed, and he had only flinched a little at the gunshot. "I repeat, if you must shoot somebody, shoot him. He's really not human at all, you know. I once described him to a friend as the last magician of rational thought, Mr. Henreid. That was more correct than I knew. But he's losing his magic now. It's slipping away from him and he knows it. And you know it, too. Shoot him now and save us all God knows how much bloodshed and dying." Flagg's face had grown very still. "Shoot one of us, anyhow, Lloyd," he said. "I got you out of jail when you were dying of starvation. It's guys like this that you wanted to get back at. Little guys who talk big." Lloyd said: "Mister, you don't fool me. It's like Randy Flagg says." "But he lies. You know he lies." "He told me more of the truth than anyone else bothered to in my whole lousy life," Lloyd said, and shot Glen three times. Glen was driven backward, twisted and turned like a ragdoll. Blood flew in the dim air. He struck the cot, bounced, and rolled onto the floor. He managed to get up on one elbow. "It's all right, Mr. Henreid," he whispered. "You don't know any better." "Shut up, you mouthy old bastard!" Lloyd screamed. He fired again and Glen Bateman's face disappeared. He fired again and the body jumped lifelessly. Lloyd shot him yet again. He was crying. The tears rolled down his angry, sunburned cheeks. He was remembering the rabbit he had forgotten and left to eat its own paws. He was remembering Poke, and the people in the white Connie, and Gorgeous George. He was remembering the Phoenix jail, and the rat, and how he hadn't been able to eat the ticking out of his mattress. He was remembering Trask, and how Trask's leg had started to look like a Kentucky Fried Chicken dinner after a while. He pulled the trigger again, but the pistol only uttered a sterile click. "All right," Flagg said softly. "All right. Well done. Well done, Lloyd." Lloyd dropped the gun on the floor and shrank away from Flagg. "Don't you touch me!" he cried. "I didn't do it for you!" "Yes, you did," Flagg said tenderly. "You may not think so, but you did." He reached out and fingered the jet stone around Lloyd's neck. He closed his hand over it, and when he opened the hand again, the stone was gone. It had been replaced with a small silver key. "I promised you this, I think," the dark man said. "In another jail. He was wrong... I keep my promises, don't I, Lloyd?" "Yes." "The others are leaving, or planning to leave. I know who they are. I know all the names. Whitney... Ken... Jenny... oh yes, I know all the names." "Then why don't you—" "Put a stop to it? I don't know. Maybe it's better to let them go. But you, Lloyd. You're my good and faithful servant, aren't you?" "Yeah," Lloyd whispered. The final admission. "Yeah, I guess I am." "Without me, the best you could have done was small shit, even if you had survived that jail. Correct?" "Yeah." "The Lauder boy knew that. He knew I could make him bigger. Taller. That's why he was coming to me. But he was too full of thoughts... too full of..." He looked suddenly perplexed and old. Then he waved his hand impatiently, and the smile bloomed on his face again. "Perhaps it is going bad, Lloyd. Perhaps it is, for some reason not even I can understand... but the old magician has a few tricks left in him yet, Lloyd. One or two. Now listen to me. Time is short if we want to stop this... this crisis in confidence. If we want to nip it in the bud, as it were. We'll want to finish things tomorrow with Underwood and Brentner. Now listen to me very carefully...
Lloyd didn't get to bed until past midnight, and got no sleep until the small hours of the morning. He talked to the Rat-Man. He talked to Paul Burlson. To Barry Dorgan, who agreed that what the dark man wanted could-and probably should-be done before daylight. Construction began on the front lawn of the MGM Grand around 10 P. m. on the twentyninth, a work party of ten men with welding arcs and hammers and bolts and a good supply of long steel pipes. They were assembling the pipes on two flatbed trucks in front of the fountain. The welding arcs soon drew a crowd.
504 "Look, Angie-mom!" Dinny cried. "It's a fireworks show!" "Yes, but it's time for all good little boys to be in bed." Angie Hirschfield drew the boy away with a secret fear in her heart, feeling that something bad, something perhaps as evil as the superflu itself, was in the making. "Wanna see! Wanna see the sparks!" Dinny wailed, but she drew him quickly and firmly away. Julie Lawry approached the Rat-Man, the only fellow in Vegas she considered too creepy to sleep with... except maybe in a pinch. His black skin glimmered in the bluewhite glare of the welding arcs. He was tricked out like an Ethiopian pirate-wide silk trousers, a red sash, and a necklace of silver dollars around his scrawny neck. "What is it, Ratty?" she asked. "The Rat-Man don't know, dear, but the Rat-Man got hisself an idea. Yes indeedy he does. It looks like black work tomorrow, very black. Like to slip away for a quick one with Ratty, my dear?" "Maybe," Julie said, "but only if you know what all of this is about." "Tomorrow all of Vegas gonna know," Ratty said. "You bet your sweet and delectable little sugarbuns on that. Come along with the Rat-Man, dear, and he show you the nine thousand names of God." But Julie, much to the Rat-Man's displeasure, had slipped away. By the time Lloyd finally went to sleep, the work was done and the crowd had drifted away. Two large cages stood on the back of the two flatbeds. There were squarish holes in the right and left sides of each. Parked close by were four cars, each with a trailer hitch. Attached to each hitch was a heavy steel towing chain. The chains snaked across the lawn of the Grand, and each ended just inside the squarish holes in the cages. At the end of each chain there dangled a single steel handcuff.
At dawn on the morning of September 30, Larry heard the door at the far end of the cellblock slide back. Footsteps came rapidly down the corridor. Larry was lying on his cot, hands laced at the back of his head. He had not slept the night before. He had been (thinking? praying?) It was all the same thing. Whichever it had been, the old wound in himself had finally closed, leaving him at peace. He had felt the two people that he had been all his life-the real one and the ideal one-merge into one living being. His mother would have liked this Larry. And Rita Blakemoor. It was a Larry to whom Wayne Stukey never would have had to tell the facts. It was a Larry that even that long-ago oral hygienist might have liked. I'm going to die. If there's a God-and now I believe there must be-that's His will. We're going to die and somehow all of this will end as a result of our dying. He suspected that Glen Bateman had already died. There had been shooting in one of the other wings the day before, a lot of shooting. It was in the direction that Glen had been taken rather than Ralph. Well, he had been old, his arthritis had been paining him, and whatever Flagg had planned for them this morning was apt to be very unpleasant. The footsteps reached his cell. "Get up, Wonder Bread," a gleeful voice called in. "The Rat-Man has come for yo pale gray ass." Larry looked around. A grinning black pirate with a chain of silver dollars around his neck stood at the cell door, a drawn sword in one hand. Behind him stood the bespectacled CPA type. Burlson, his name was. "What is it?" Larry asked. "Dear man," the pirate said, "it is the end. The very end." "All right," Larry said, and got up. Burlson spoke quickly, and Larry saw that he was scared. "I want you to know that this is not my idea." "Nothing around here is, as far as I can see," Larry said. "Who was killed yesterday?" "Bateman," Burlson said, dropping his eyes. "Trying to escape." "Trying to escape," Larry murmured. He began to laugh. Rat-Man joined him, mocked him. They laughed together. The cell door opened. Burlson stepped forward with the cuffs. Larry offered no resistance; only put out his wrists. Burlson attached the bracelets. "Trying to escape," Larry said. "One of these days you'll be shot trying to escape, Burlson." His eyes flicked toward the pirate. "You too, Ratty. Just shot trying to escape." He began to laugh again, and this time Rat-Man didn't join him. He looked at Larry sullenly and then began to raise his sword. "Put that down, you ass," Burlson said.. They made a line of three going out-Burlson, Larry, and the Rat-Man bringing up the rear. When they stepped through the door at the end of the wing, they were joined by another five men. One of them was Ralph, also cuffed. "Hey, Larry," Ralph said sorrowfully. "Did you hear? Did they tell you?"
505 "Yes. I heard." "Bastards. It's almost over for them, isn't it?" "Yes. It is." "You shut up that talk!" one of them growled. "It's you it's almost over for. You wait and see what he's got waiting for you. It's gonna be quite a party." "No, it's over," Ralph insisted. "Don't you know it? Can't you feel it?" Ratty pushed Ralph, making him stumble. "Shut up!" he cried. "Rat-Man don't want to hear no more of that honky bullshit voodoo! No more!" "You're awful pale, Ratty," Larry said, grinning. "Awful pale. You're the one who looks like graymeat now." Rat-Man brandished his sword again, but there was no menace in it. He looked frightened; they all did. There was a feeling in the air, a sense that they had all entered the shadow of some great and onrushing thing. An olive-drab van with LAS VEGAS COUNTY JAIL on the side stood in the sunny courtyard. Larry and Ralph were pushed in. The doors slammed, the engine started, and they drew away. They sat down on the hard wooden benches, cuffed hands between their knees. Ralph said in a low voice, "I heard one of them saying everybody in Vegas was gonna be there. You think they're gonna crucify us, Larry?" "That or something like it." He looked at the big man. Ralph's sweat-stained hat was crammed down on his head. The feather was frayed and matted, but it still stuck up defiantly from the band. "You scared, Ralph?" "Scared bad," Ralph whispered. "Me, I'm a baby about pain. I never even liked going to the doctor's for a shot. I'd find an excuse to put it off, if I could. What about you?" "Plenty. Can you come over here and sit beside me?" Ralph got up, handcuff chains clinking, and sat beside Larry. They sat quietly for a few moments and then Ralph said softly, "We've hoed us one helluva long row." "That's true." "I just wish I knew what it was all for. All I can see is that he's gonna make a show of us. So everyone will see he's the big cheese. Is that what we came all this way for?" "I don't know." The van hummed on in silence. They sat on the bench without speaking, holding hands. Larry was scared, but beyond the scary feeling, the deeper sense of peace held, undisturbed. It was going to work out. "I will fear no evil," he muttered, but he was afraid. He closed his eyes, thought of Lucy. He thought of his mother. Random thoughts. Getting up for school on cold mornings. The time he had thrown up in church. Finding a skin magazine in the gutter and looking at it with Rudy, both of them about nine years old. Watching the World Series his first fall in L. A. with Yvonne Wetterlin. He didn't want to die, he was afraid to die, but he had made his peace with it as best he could. The choice, after all, had never been his to make, and he had come to believe that death was just a stagingarea, a place to wait, the way you waited in a green-room before going on to play. He rested as easily as he could, trying to make himself ready.
The van stopped and the doors were thrown open. Bright sunlight poured in, making him and Ralph. blink dazedly. Rat-Man and Burlson hopped inside. Pouring in with the sunlight was a sound-a low, rustling murmur that made Ralph cock his head warily. But Larry knew what that sound was. In 1986 the Tattered Remnants had played their biggest gig-opening for Van Halen at Chavez Ravine. And the sound just before they went on had been like this sound. And so when he stepped out of the van he knew what to expect, and his face didn't change, although he heard Ralph's thin gasp beside him. They were on the lawn of a huge hotel-casino. The entrance was flanked by two golden pyramids. Drawn up on the grass were two flatbed trucks. On each flatbed was a cage constructed of steel piping. Surrounding them were people. They spread out across the lawn in a rough circle. They were standing in the casino parking lot, on the steps leading up to the lobby doors, in the turnaround drive where incoming guests had once parked while the doorman whistled up a bellhop. They spilled out into the street itself. Some of the younger men had hoisted their girlfriends on their shoulders for a better look at the upcoming festivities. The low murmuring was the sound of the crowdanimal. Larry ran his eyes over them, and every eye he met turned away. Every face seemed pallid, distant, marked for death and seeming to know it. Yet they were here. He and Ralph were nudged toward the cages, and as they went, Larry noticed the cars with their chains and trailer hitches. But it was Ralph who understood the implication. He had, after all, spent most of his life working with and around machinery.
506 "Larry," he said in a dry voice. "They're going to pull us to pieces!" "Go on, get in," Rat-Man said, breathing a stale odor of garlic into his face. "Get on up there, Wonder Bread. You and your friend goan ride the tiger." Larry climbed onto the flatbed. "Gimme your shirt, Wonder Bread." Larry took off his shirt and stood barechested, the morning air cool and kind on his skin. Ralph had already taken off his. A ripple of conversation went through the crowd and died. They were both terribly thin from their walk; each rib was clearly visible. "Get in that cage, graymeat." Larry backed into the cage. Now it was Barry Dorgan giving the orders. He went from place to place, checking arrangements, a set expression of disgust on his face. The four drivers got into the cars and started them up. Ralph stood blankly for a moment, then seized one of the welded handcuffs that dangled into his cage and threw it out through the small hole. It hit Paul Burlson on the head, and a nervous titter ran through the crowd. Dorgan said, "You don't want to do that, fella. I'll just have to send some guys to hold you." "Let them do their thing," Larry said to Ralph. He looked down at Dorgan. "Hey, Barry. Did they teach you this one in the Santa Monica P. D.?" Another laugh rippled through the crowd. "Police brutality!" some daring soul cried. Dorgan flushed but said nothing. He fed the chains farther into Larry's cell and Larry spit on them, a little surprised that he had enough saliva to do it. A small cheer went up from the back of the crowd and Larry thought, Maybe this is it, maybe they're going to rise up But his heart didn't believe it. Their faces were too pale, too secretive. The defiance from the back was meaningless. It was the sound of kids cutting up in a studyhall, no more than that. There was doubt here-he could feel it-and disaffection. But Flagg colored even that. These people would steal away in the dead of night for some of the great empty space that the world had become. And the Walkin Dude would let them go, knowing he only had to keep a hard core, people like Dorgan and Burlson. The runners and midnight creepers could be gathered up later, perchance to pay the price of their imperfect faith. There would be no open rebellion here. Dorgan, Rat-Man, and a third man crowded their way into the cage with him. Rat-Man was holding the cuffs welded to the chains open for Larry's wrists. "Put out your arms," Dorgan said. "Isn't law and order a wonderful thing, Barry?" "Put them out, goddammit!" "You don't look well, Dorgan—how's your heart these days?" "I'm telling you for the last time, my friend. Put your arms out through those holes!" Larry did it. The cuffs were slipped on and locked. Dorgan and the others backed out and the door was shut. Larry looked right and saw Ralph standing in his cage, head down, arms at his sides. His wrists had also been cuffed. "You people know this is wrong!" Larry cried, and his voice, trained by years of singing, rolled out of his chest with surprising strength. "I don't expect you to stop it, but I do expect you to remember it! We're being put to death because Randall Flagg is afraid of us! He's afraid of us and the people we came from!" A rising murmur ran through the crowd. "Remember the way we die! And remember that next time it may be your turn to die this way, with no dignity, just an animal in a cage!" That low murmur again, rising and angry... and the silence. "Larry!" Ralph called out. Flagg was coming down the steps of the Grand, Lloyd Henreid beside him. Flagg was wearing jeans, a checked shirt, his jeans jacket with the two buttons on the breast pockets, and his rundown cowboy boots. In the sudden hush the sound of those bootheels clocking their way down the cement path' was the only sound... a sound out of time. The dark man was grinning. Larry stared down at him. Flagg came to a halt between the two cages and stood looking up. His grin was darkly charming. He was a man completely in control, and Larry suddenly knew this was his watershed moment, the apotheosis of his life. Flagg turned away from them and faced his people. He passed his eyes over them, and no eye would meet his. "Lloyd," he said quietly, and Lloyd, who looked pale, haunted, and sickly, handed Flagg a paper that had been rolled up like a scroll. The dark man unrolled it, held it up, and began to speak. His voice was deep, sonorous, and pleasing, spreading in the stillness like a single silver ripple on a black pond. "Know you that this is a true bill to which I, Randall Flagg, have put my name on this thirtieth day of September, the year nineteen hundred and ninety, now known as The Year One, year of the plague."
507 "Flagg's not your name!" Ralph roared. There was a shocked murmur from the crowd. "Why don't you tell em your real name?" Flagg took no notice. "Know you that these men, Lawson Underwood and Ralph Brentner, are spies, here in Las Vegas with no good intent but rather with seditious motives, who have entered this state with stealth, and under cover of darkness—" "That's pretty good," Larry said, "since we were coming down Route 70 in broad daylight." He raised his voice to a shout. "They took us at noon on the Interstate, how's that for stealth and under cover of darkness?" Flagg bore through this patiently, as if he felt that Larry and Ralph had every right to answer the charges... not that it was going to make any ultimate difference. Now he continued: "Know you that the cohorts of these men were responsible for the sabotage bombing of the helicopters at Indian Springs, and therefore responsible for the deaths of Carl Hough, Bill Jamieson, and Cliff Benson. They are guilty of murder." Larry's eyes touched those of a man standing on the front rim of the crowd. Although Larry did not know it, this was Stan Bailey, Operations Chief at Indian Springs. He saw a haze of bewilderment and surprise cover the man's face, and saw him mouthing something ridiculous that looked like Can Man. "Know you that the cohorts of these men have sent other spies among us and they have been killed. It is the sentence then that these men shall be put to death in an appropriate manner, to wit, that they shall be pulled apart. It is the duty and the responsibility of each of you to witness this punishment, so you may remember it and tell others what you have seen here today." Flagg's grin flashed out, meant to be solicitous in this instance, but still no more warm and human than a shark's grin. "Those of you with children are excused." He turned toward the cars, which were now idling, sending out small puffs of exhaust into the morning. As he did so, there was a commotion near the front of the crowd. Suddenly a man pushed through into the clearing. He was a big man, his face nearly as pallid as his cook's whites. The dark man had handed the scroll back to Lloyd, and Lloyd's hands jerked convulsively when Whitney Horgan pushed into the clear. There was a clear ripping sound as the scroll tore in half. "Hey, you people!" Whitney cried. A confused murmur ran through the crowd. Whitney was shaking all over, as if with a palsy. His head kept jerking toward the dark man and then away again. Flagg regarded Whitney with a ferocious smile. Dorgan started toward the cook, and Flagg motioned him back. "This ain't right!" Whitney yelled. "You know it ain't!" Dead silence from the crowd. They might all have been turned to gravestones. Whitney's throat worked convulsively. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down like a monkey on a stick. "We was Americans once!" Whitney cried at last. "This ain't how Americans act. I wasn't so much, I'll tell you that, nothin but a cook, but I know this ain't how Americans act, listening to some murderin freak in cowboy boots—" A horrified, rustling gasp came from these new Las Vegans. Larry and Ralph exchanged a puzzled glance. "That's what he is!" Whitney insisted. The sweat was running down his face like tears from the brushy edges of his flattop haircut. "You wanna watch these two guys ripped in two right in front of you, huh? You think that's the way to start a new life? You think a thing like that can ever be right? I tell you you'll have nightmares about it for the rest of your lives!" The crowd murmured its assent. "We got to stop this," Whitney said. "You know it? We got to have time to think about what... what..." "Whitney." That voice, smooth as silk, little more than a whisper, but enough to silence the cook's faltering voice completely. He turned toward Flagg, lips moving soundlessly, his eye as fixed as a mackerel's. Now the sweat was pouring down his face in torrents. "Whitney, you should have kept still." His voice was soft, but still it carried easily to every ear. "I would have let you go... why would I want you?" Whitney's lips moved, but still no sound came out. "Come here, Whitney." "No," Whitney whispered, and no one heard his demurral except Lloyd and Ralph and Larry and possibly Barry Dorgan. Whitney's feet moved as if they had not heard his mouth. His sprung and mushy black loafers whispered through the grass and he moved toward the dark man like a ghost. The crowd had become a slack jaw and staring eye.
508 "I knew about your plans," the dark man said. "I knew what you meant to do before you did. And I would have let you crawl away until I was ready to take you back. Maybe in a year, maybe in ten. But that's all behind you now, Whitney. Believe it." Whitney found his voice one last time, his words rushing out in a strangled scream. "You ain't a man at all! You're some kind of a... a devil!" Flagg stretched out the index finger of his left hand so that it almost touched Whitney Horgan's chin. "Yes, that's right," he said so softly that no one but Lloyd and Larry Underwood heard. "I am." A blue ball of fire no bigger than the Ping-Pong ball Leo was endlessly bouncing leaped from the tip of Flagg's finger with a faint ozone crackle. An autumn wind of sighs went through those watching. Whitney screamed-but didn't move. The ball of fire lit on his chin. There was a sudden cloying smell of burning flesh. The ball moved across his mouth, fusing his lips shut, locking the scream behind Whitney's bulging eyes. It crossed one cheek, digging a charred and instantly cauterized trench. It closed his eyes. It paused above his forehead and Larry heard Ralph speaking, saying the same thing over and over, and Larry joined his voice to Ralph's, making it a litany: "I will fear no evil... I will fear no evil... I will fear no evil..." The ball of fire rolled up from Whitney's forehead and now there was a hot smell of burning hair. It rolled toward the back of his head, leaving a grotesque bald strip behind it. Whitney swayed on his feet for a moment and then fell over, mercifully facedown. The crowd released a long, sibilant sound: Aaaahhhh. It was the sound people had made on the Fourth of July when the fireworks display had been particularly good. The ball of blue fire hung in the air, bigger now, too bright to look at without slitting the eyes. The dark man pointed at it and it moved slowly toward the crowd. Those in the front row-a whey-faced Jenny Engstrom was among themshrank back. In a thundering voice, Flagg challenged them. "Is there anyone else here who disagrees with my sentence? If so, let him speak now!" Deep silence greeted this. Flagg seemed satisfied. "Then let—" Heads began to turn away from him suddenly. A surprised murmur ran through the crowd, then rose to a babble. Flagg seemed completely caught by surprise. Now people in the crowd began to cry out, and while it was impossible to make out the words clearly, the tone was one of wonder and surprise. The ball of fire dipped and spun uncertainly. The humming sound of an electric motor came to Larry's ears. And again he caught that puzzling name tossed from mouth to mouth, never clear, never all of one piece: Man... Can Man... Trash... Trashy... Someone was coming through the crowd, as if in answer to the dark man's challenge.
Flagg felt terror seep into the chambers of his heart. It was a terror of the unknown and the unexpected. He had foreseen everything, even Whitney's foolish spur-of-the-moment speech. He had foreseen everything but this. The crowdhis crowd-was parting, peeling back. There was a scream, high, clear, and freezing. Someone broke and ran. Then someone else. And then the crowd, already on an emotional hairtrigger, broke and stampeded. "Hold still!" Flagg cried at the top of his voice, but it was useless. The crowd had become a strong wind, and not even the dark man could stop the wind. Terrible, impotent rage rose in him, joining the fear and making some new and volatile mix. It had gone wrong again. In the last minute it had somehow gone wrong, like the old lawyer in Oregon, the woman slitting her throat on the windowglass... and Nadine... Nadine failing... They ran, scattering to all the points of the compass, pounding across the lawn of the MGM Grand, across the street, toward the Strip. They had seen the final guest, arrived at last like some grim vision out of a horror tale. They had seen, perhaps, the raddled face of some final awful retribution. And they had seen what the returning wanderer had brought with him. As the crowd melted, Randall Flagg also saw, as did Larry and Ralph and a frozen Lloyd Henreid, who was still holding the torn scroll in his hands. It was Donald Merwin Elbert, now known as the Trashcan Man, now and forever, world without end, hallelujah, amen.
He was behind the wheel of a long, dirty electric cart. The cart's heavy-duty bank of batteries was nearly drained dry. The cart was humming and buzzing and lurching. Trashcan Man bobbed back and forth on the open seat like a mad marionette.
509 He was in the last stages of radiation sickness. His hair was gone. His arms, poking out of the tatters of his shirt, were covered with open running sores. His face was a cratered red soup from which one desert-faded blue eye peered with a terrible, pitiful intelligence. His teeth were gone. His nails were gone. His eyelids were frayed flaps. He looked like a man who had diven his electric cart out of the dark and burning subterranean mouth of hell itself. Flagg watched him come, frozen. His smile was gone. His high, rich color was gone. His face was suddenly a window made of pale clear glass. Trashcan Man's voice bubbled ecstatically up from his thin chest: "I brought it... I brought you the fire... please... I'm sorry..." It was Lloyd who moved. He took one step forward, then another. "Trashy... Trash, baby..." His voice was a croak. That single eye moved, painfully seeking Lloyd out. "Lloyd? That you?" "It's me, Trash." Lloyd was shaking violently all over, the way Whitney had been shaking. "Hey, what you got there? Is it—" "It's the Big One," Trash said happily. "It's the A-bomb." He began to rock back and forth on the seat of the electric cart like a convert at a revival meeting. "The A-bomb, the Big One, the big fire, my life for you!" . "Take it away, Trash," Lloyd whispered. "It's dangerous. It's... it's hot. Take it away..." "Make him get rid of it, Lloyd," the dark man who was now the pale man whined. "Make him take it back where he got it. Make him—" Trashcan's one operative eye grew puzzled. "Where is he?" he asked, and then his voice rose to an agonized howl. "Where is he? He's gone! Where is he? What did you do to him? Lloyd made one last supreme effort. "Trash, you've got to get rid of that thing. You—" And suddenly Ralph shrieked: "Larry! Larry! The Hand of God!" Ralph's face was transported in a terrible joy. His eyes shone. He was pointing into the sky. Larry looked up. He saw the ball of electricity Flagg had flicked from the end of his finger. It had grown to a tremendous size. It hung in the sky, jittering toward Trashcan Man, giving off sparks like hair. Larry realized dimly that the air was now so full of electricity that every hair on his own body was standing on end. And the thing in the sky did look like a hand. "Noooo!" the dark man wailed. Larry looked at him... but Flagg was no longer there. He had a bare impression of something monstrous standing in front of where Flagg had been. Something slumped and hunched and almost without shape-something with enormous yellow eyes slit by dark cat's pupils. Then it was gone. Larry saw Flagg's clothes—the jacket, the jeans, the bootsstanding upright with nothing in them. For a split second they held the shape of the body that had been inside them. And then they collapsed. The crackling blue fire in the air rushed at the yellow electric cart that Trashcan Man had somehow driven back from the Nellis Range. He had lost hair and thrown up blood and finally vomited out his own teeth as the radiation sickness sank deeper and deeper into him, yet he had never faltered in his resolve to bring it back to the dark man... you could say that he had never flagged in his determination. The blue ball of fire flung itself into the back of the cart, seeking what was there, drawn to it. "Oh shit we're all fucked!" Lloyd Henreid cried. He put his hands over his head and fell to his knees. Oh God, thank God, Larry thought. I will fear no evil, I will f Silent white light filled the world. And the righteous and unrighteous alike were consumed in that holy fire.