by Stephen King
He was locked in. Once upon a time it had seemed right that he should be. He was one of the bad guys. Not a really bad guy; Poke had been the really bad guy. Small shit was the worst he would have done without Poke. Still, he shared a certain amount of the blame. There had been Gorgeous George in Vegas, and the three people in the white Continental--he had been in on that, and he supposed he had owned some of that heat. He supposed he deserved to take a fall, do a little time. It wasn't something you volunteered for, but when they had you cold they gave you the bullet and you ate it. Like he had told the lawyer, he thought he deserved about twenty for his part in the "tri-state killspree." Not in the electric chair, Christ no. The thought of Lloyd Henreid riding the lightning was just... it was crazy.
But they had THE KEY, that was the thing. They could lock you up and do what they wanted with you.
In the last three days, Lloyd had vaguely begun to grasp the symbolic, talismanic power of THE KEY. THE KEY was your reward for playing by the rules. If you didn't, they could lock you up. It was no different than the Go to Jail card in Monopoly. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. And with THE KEY went certain prerogatives. They could take away ten years of your life, or twenty, or forty. They could hire people like Mathers to beat on you. They could even take away your life in the electric chair.
But having THE KEY didn't give them the right to go away and leave you locked up to starve. It didn't give them the right to force you into eating a dead rat and to try to eat the dry ticking of your mattress. It didn't give them the right to leave you in a spot where you might just have to eat the man in the next cell to stay alive (if you can get ahold of him, that is--doo-dah, doo-dah).
There were certain things you just couldn't do to people. Having THE KEY only took you so far and no farther. They had left him here to die a horrible death when they could have let him out. He wasn't a mad dog killer who was going to waste the first person he saw, in spite of what the papers had said. Small shit was the worst he had ever gotten into before meeting Poke.
So he hated, and the hate commanded him to live... or at least to try. For a while it seemed to him that the hate and the determination to go on living were useless things, because all of those who had THE KEY had succumbed to the flu. They were beyond the reach of his vengeance. Then, little by little, as he grew hungrier, he realized that the flu wouldn't kill them. It would kill the losers like him; it would kill Mathers but not that scumbag screw who had hired Mathers because the screw had THE KEY. It wasn't going to kill the governor or the warden--the guard who said the warden was sick had obviously been a fucking liar. It wasn't going to kill the parole officers, the county sheriffs, or the FBI agents. The flu would not touch those who had THE KEY. It wouldn't dare. But Lloyd would touch them. If he lived long enough to get out of here, he would touch them plenty.
The cotleg snagged in Trask's cuff again.
"Come on," Lloyd whispered. "Come on. Come on over here... camptown ladies sing dis song... all doo-dah day."
Trask's body slid slowly, stiffly, along the floor of his cell. No fisherman ever played a bonita more carefully or with greater wile than Lloyd played Trask. Once Trask's trousers ripped and Lloyd had to hook on in a new place. But at last his foot was close enough so that Lloyd could reach through the bars and grab it ... if he wanted to.
"Nothing personal," he whispered to Trask. He touched Trask's leg. He caressed it. "Nothing personal, I ain't going to eat you, old buddy. Not less I have to."
He was not even aware that he was salivating.
Lloyd heard someone in the ashy afterglow of dusk, and at first the sound was so far away and so strange--the clash of metal on metal--that he thought he must be dreaming it. The waking and sleeping states had become very similar to him now; he crossed back and forth across that boundary almost without knowing it.
But then the voice came and he snapped upright on his cot, his eyes flaring wide, huge and lambent in his starved face. The voice came floating down the corridors from God knew how far up in the Administration Wing and then down the stairwell to the hallways which connected the visiting areas to the central cellblock, where Lloyd was. It bobbed serenely through the twice-barred doors and finally reached Lloyd's ears:
"Hooooo-hoooo! Anybody home?"
And strangely, Lloyd's first thought was: Don't answer. Maybe he'll go away.
"Anybody home? Going once, going twice? ... Okay, I'm on my way, just about to shake the dust of Phoenix from my boots--"
At that, Lloyd's paralysis broke. He catapulted off the cot, snatched up the cotleg, and began to beat it frantically on the bars; the vibrations raced up the metal and shivered in the bones of his clenched fist.
"No!" he screamed. "No! Don't go! Please don't go!"
The voice, closer now, coming from the stairway between the Administration and this floor: "We'll eat you up, we love you so ... and oh, someone sounds so ... hungry." This was followed by a lazy chuckle.
Lloyd dropped the cotleg on the floor and wrapped both hands around the bars of the cell door. Now he could hear the footfalls somewhere up in the shadows, clocking steadily down the hall that led to the holding cellblock. Lloyd wanted to burst into tears of relief... after all, he was saved... yet it was not joy but fear he felt in his heart, a growing dread that made him wish he had stayed silent. Stayed silent? My God! What could be worse than starvation?
Starvation made him think of Trask. Trask lay sprawled on his back in the ashy afterglow of dusk, one leg stretched stiffly into Lloyd's cell, and an essential subtraction had occurred in the region of that leg's calf. The fleshy part of that leg's calf. There were teeth-marks there. Lloyd knew whose teeth had made those marks, but he had only the vaguest memory of lunching on filet of Trask. All the same, powerful feelings of revulsion, guilt, and horror filled him. He rushed across to the bars and pushed Trask's leg back into his own cell. Then, looking over his shoulder to make sure the owner of the voice was not yet in sight, he reached through, and with the dividing bars pressed against his face, he pulled Trask's pantsleg down, hiding what he had done.
Of course there was no great hurry, because the barred gates at the head of the cellblock were shut, and with the power off, the pushbutton wouldn't work. His rescuer would have to go back and find THE KEY. He would have to--
Lloyd grunted as the electric motor which operated the barred gates whined into life. The silence of the cellblock magnified the sound, which ceased with the familiar click-slam! of the gates locking open.
Then the steps were clocking steadily up the cellblock walkway.
Lloyd had gone to his cell door again after neatening up Trask; now he involuntarily fell back two steps. He dropped his gaze to the floor outside and what he saw first was a pair of dusty cowboy boots with pointed toes and rundown heels and his first thought was that Poke had had a pair like that.
The boots stopped in front of his cell.
His gaze rose slowly, taking in the faded jeans snugged down over the boots, the leather belt with the brass buckle (various astrological signs inside a pair of concentric circles), the jeans jacket with a button pinned to each of the breast pockets--a smiley-smile face on one, a dead pig and the words HOW'S YOUR PORK on the other.
At the same instant Lloyd's eyes reluctantly reached Randall Flagg's darkly flushed face, Flagg screamed "Boo!" The single sound floated down the dead cellblock and then rushed back. Lloyd shrieked, stumbled over his own feet, fell down, and began to cry.
"That's all right," Flagg soothed. "Hey, man, that's all right. Everything's purely all right."
Lloyd sobbed: "Can you let me out? Please let me out. I don't want to be like my rabbit, I don't want to end up like that, it's not fair, if it wasn't for Poke I never would have got into anything but small shit, please let me out, mister, I'll do anything."
"You poor guy. You look like an advertisement for a summer vacation at Dachau."
Despite the sympathy in Flagg's voice, Lloyd could not bring himself to raise
his eyes beyond the knees of the newcomer's jeans. If he looked into that face again, it would kill him. It was the face of a devil.
"Please," Lloyd mumbled. "Please let me out. I'm starving."
"How long you been shitcanned, my friend?"
"I don't know," Lloyd said, wiping his eyes with thin fingers. "A long time."
"How come you're not dead already?"
"I knew what was coming," Lloyd told the bluejeaned legs as he drew the last tattered shreds of his cunning around him. "I saved up my food. That's what."
"Didn't happen to have a chomp on this fine fellow in the next cell, by any chance?"
"What?" Lloyd croaked. "What? No! Christ's sake! What do you think I am? Mister, mister, please--"
"His left leg there looks a little thinner than his right one. That's the only reason I asked, my good friend."
"I don't know nothing about that," Lloyd whispered. He was trembling all over.
"How about Br'er Rat? How did he taste?"
Lloyd put his hands over his face and said nothing.
"What's your name?"
Lloyd tried to say, but all that came out was a moan.
"What's your name, soldier?"
"Lloyd Henreid." He tried to think what to say next, but his mind was a chaotic jumble. He had been afraid when his lawyer told him he might go to the electric chair, but not this afraid. He had never been this afraid in his entire life. "It was all Poke's idea!" he screamed. "Poke should be here, not me!"
"Look at me, Lloyd."
"No," Lloyd whispered. His eyes rolled wildly.
"Why not?"
"Because..."
"Go on."
"Because I don't think you're real," Lloyd whispered. "And if you are real... mister, if you're real, you're the devil."
"Look at me, Lloyd."
Helplessly, Lloyd turned his eyes up to that dark, grinning face that hung behind an intersection of bars. The right hand held something up beside the right eye. Looking at it made Lloyd feel cold and hot all over. It looked like a black stone, so dark it seemed almost resinous and pitchy. There was a red flaw in the center of it, and to Lloyd it looked like a terrible eye, bloody and half-open, peering at him. Then Flagg turned it slightly between his fingers, and the red flaw in the dark stone looked like ... a key. Flagg turned it back and forth between his fingers. Now it was the eye, now it was the key.
The eye, the key.
He sang: "She brought me coffee... she brought me tea... she brought me ... damn near everything... but the workhouse key. Right, Lloyd?"
"Sure," Lloyd said huskily. His eyes never left the small dark stone. Flagg began to walk it from one finger to the next like a magician doing a trick.
"Now you're a man who must appreciate the value of a good key," the man said. The dark stone disappeared in his clenched fist and suddenly reappeared in his other hand, where it began to finger-walk again. "I'm sure you are. Because what a key is for is opening doors. Is there anything more important in life than opening doors, Lloyd?"
"Mister, I'm awfully hungry..."
"Sure you are," the man said. An expression of concern spread over his face, an expression so magnified that it became grotesque. "Jesus Christ, a rat isn't anything to eat! Why, do you know what I had for lunch? I had a nice rare roast beef sandwich on Vienna bread with a few onions and a lot of Gulden's Spicy Brown. Sound good?"
Lloyd nodded his head, tears oozing slowly out of his overbright eyes.
"Had some homefries and chocolate milk to go with it, and then for dessert... holy crow, I'm torturing you, ain't I? Someone ought to take a hosswhip to me, that's what they ought to do. I'm sorry. I'll let you right out and then we'll go get something to eat, okay?"
Lloyd was too stunned to even nod. He had decided that the man with the key was indeed a devil, or even more likely a mirage, and the mirage would stand outside his cell until Lloyd finally dropped dead, talking happily about God and Jesus and Gulden's Spicy Brown mustard as he made the strange black stone appear and disappear. But now the compassion on the man's face seemed real enough, and he sounded genuinely disgusted with himself. The black stone disappeared into his clenched fist again. And when the fist opened, Lloyd's wondering eyes beheld a flat silver key with an ornate grip lying on the stranger's palm.
"My--dear--God!" Lloyd croaked.
"You like that?" the dark man asked, pleased. "I learned that trick from a massage parlor honey in Secaucus, New Jersey, Lloyd. Secaucus, home of the world's greatest pig farms."
He bent and seated the key in the lock of Lloyd's cell. And that was strange, because as well as his memory served him (which right now was not very well), these cells had no keyways, because they were all opened and shut electronically. But he had no doubt that the silver key would work.
Just as it rattled home, Flagg stopped and looked at Lloyd, grinning slyly, and Lloyd felt despair wash over him again. It was all just a trick.
"Did I introduce myself? The name is Flagg, with the double g. Pleased to meet you."
"Likewise," Lloyd croaked.
"And I think, before I open this cell and we go get some dinner, we ought to have a little understanding, Lloyd."
"Sure thing," Lloyd croaked, and began to cry again.
"I'm going to make you my right-hand man, Lloyd. Going to put you right up there with Saint Peter. When I open this door, I'm going to slip the keys to the kingdom right into your hand. What a deal, right?"
"Yeah," Lloyd whispered, growing frightened again. It was almost full dark now. Flagg was little more than a dark shape, but his eyes were still perfectly visible. They seemed to glow in the dark like the eyes of a lynx, one to the left of the bar that ended in the lockbox, one to the right. Lloyd felt terror, but something else as well: a kind of religious ecstasy. A pleasure. The pleasure of being chosen. The feeling that he had somehow won through... to something.
"You'd like to get even with the people who left you here, isn't that right?"
"Boy, that sure is," Lloyd said, forgetting his terror momentarily. It was swallowed up by a starving, sinewy anger.
"Not just those people, but everyone who would do a thing like that," Flagg suggested. "It's a type of person, isn't it? To a certain type of person, a man like you is nothing but garbage. Because they are high up. They don't think a person like you has a right to live."
"That's just right," Lloyd said. His great hunger had suddenly been changed into a different kind of hunger. It had changed just as surely as the black stone had changed into the silver key. This man had expressed all the complex things he had felt in just a handful of sentences. It wasn't just the gate-guard he wanted to get even with--why, here's the wise-ass pusbag, what's the story, pusbag, got anything smart to say?--because the gate-guard wasn't the one. The gate-guard had had THE KEY, all right, but the gate-guard had not made THE KEY. Someone had given it to him. The warden, Lloyd supposed, but the warden hadn't made THE KEY, either. Lloyd wanted to find the makers and forgers. They would be immune to the flu, and he had business with them. Oh yes, and it was good business.
"You know what the Bible says about people like that?" Flagg asked quietly. "It says the exalted shall be abased and the mighty shall be brought low and the stiffnecked shall be broken. And you know what it says about people like you, Lloyd? It says blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. And it says blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God."
Lloyd was nodding. Nodding and crying. For a moment it seemed that a blazing corona had formed around Flagg's head, a light so bright that if Lloyd looked at it for long it would burn his eyes to cinders. Then it was gone... if it had ever been there at all, and it must not have been, because Lloyd had not even lost his night vision.
"Now you aren't very bright," Flagg said, "but you are the first. And I have the feeling you might be very loyal. You and I, Lloyd, we're going to go far. It's a good time for people like us. Everything is starting up for us. All I need is your word."
"W-word?
"
"That we're going to stick together, you and me. No denials. No falling asleep on guard duty. There will be others very soon--they're on their way west already--but for now, there's just us. I'll give you the key if you give me your promise."
"I ... promise," Lloyd said, and the words seemed to hang in the air, vibrating strangely. He listened to that vibration, his head cocked to one side, and he could almost see those two words, glowing as darkly as the aurora borealis reflected in a dead man's eye.
Then he forgot about them as the tumblers made their half-turns inside the lockbox. The next moment the lockbox fell at Flagg's feet, tendrils of smoke seeping from it.
"You're free, Lloyd. Come on out."
Unbelieving, Lloyd touched the bars hesitantly, as if they might burn him; and indeed, they did seem warm. But when he pushed, the door slid back easily and soundlessly. He stared at his savior, those burning eyes.
Something was placed in his hand. The key.
"It's yours now, Lloyd."
"Mine?"
Flagg grabbed Lloyd's fingers and closed them around it ... and Lloyd felt it move in his hand, felt it change. He uttered a hoarse cry and his fingers sprang open. The key was gone and in its place was the black stone with the red flaw. He held it up, wondering, and turned it this way and that. Now the red flaw looked like a key, now like a skull, now like a bloody, half-closed eye again.
"Mine," Lloyd answered himself. This time he closed his hand with no help, holding the stone savagely tight.
"Shall we get some dinner?" Flagg asked. "We've got a lot of driving to do tonight."
"Dinner," Lloyd said. "All right."
"There's such a lot to do," Flagg said happily. "And we're going to move very fast." They walked toward the stairs together, past the dead men in their cells. When Lloyd stumbled in weakness, Flagg seized his arm above the elbow and bore him up. Lloyd turned and looked into that grinning face with something more than gratitude. He looked at Flagg with something like love.
CHAPTER 40
Nick Andros lay sleeping but not quiet on the bunk in Sheriff Baker's office. He was naked except for his shorts and his body was lightly oiled with sweat. His last thought before sleep had taken him the night before was that he would be dead by morning; the dark man that had consistently haunted his feverish dreams would somehow break through that last thin barrier of sleep and take him away.
