by Stephen King
“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 a staring eye.
“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 face-down.
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 them— shrank 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 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 crowd—his 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 hair-trigger, 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 still 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 falling . . .
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 late-arriving 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 that 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.
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 driven 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 A-bomb,” Trash said happily. He began to rock back and forth on the seat of the electric cart like a convert at a revival meeting. “The A-bomb, it’s a big one, the A-bomb, 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 boots—standing 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 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.
Chapter 64
Stu woke up from a night of broken rest at dawn and lay shivering even with Kojak curled up next to him. The morning sky was coldly blue, but in spite of the shivers he was hot. He was running a fever.
“Sick,” he muttered, and Kojak looked up at him.
He began to feed the fire with the last of the wood on hand and then sent Kojak out for a dozen more sticks. Soon the fire was blazing. Even sitting close would not drive the shivers away, although sweat was rolling down his face. It was the final irony. He had the flu, or something very like it. He had come down with it two days after Glen, Larry, and Ralph left him. For another two days the flu had seemed to consider him—was he worth taking? Apparently he was. Little by little he was getting worse. And this morning he felt very bad indeed.
Among the odds and ends in his pockets, Stu found a stub of pencil, his notebook (all the Free Zone organizational stuff that had once seemed the vital stuff of life itself now seemed mildly foolish), and his keyring. He had puzzled over the keyring for a long time, coming back to it over the last few days again and again, constantly surprised by the strong ache of sadness and nostalgia. This one was to his apartment. This one was his locker key. This one was a spare for his car, a 1972 Dodge with a lot of rust—so far as he knew it was still parked behind the apartment building at 31 Thompson Street in Arnette.
Also attached to the keyring was a cardboard address card encased in Lucite. He took the keys off the ring, bounced them thoughtfully on the palm of his hand for a moment, and then threw them away. He slipped the cardboard address card out of the Lucite, and then ripped a blank page from his notebook.
Dear Frannie, he wrote at the top. He told her all that had happened up until he had broken his leg. He told her that he hoped to see her again, but that he doubted it was in the cards. The best he could hope for was that Kojak would find the Zone again. He wiped tears absently from his face with the heel of his hand and wrote that he loved her. I expect you to mourn me and then get on, he wrote. You and the baby have to get on. That’s the most important thing now. He signed, folded it small, and slipped the note into the address slot in the Lucite square. Then he attached the keyring to Kojak’s collar.
“Good dog,” he said when that was done. “You want to go look around? Find a rabbit or something?”
Kojak bounded up the slope where Stu had broken his own leg and was gone. Stu picked up the 7-Up can Kojak had brought him on one trip yesterday in lieu of a stick. He had filled it with muddy water from the ditch. When the water stood, the mud silted down to the bottom. It made a gritty drink, but as his mother would have said, it was a whole lot grittier when there was none. He drank slowly, slaking his thirst bit by bit. It hurt to swallow.
He lay back, splinted leg in front of him, and dozed.
He woke with a start about an hour later, clutching at the sandy earth in sleepy panic. A nightmare? It seemed it must be, because the ground was moving slowly under his hands.
Earthquake? We got an earthquake here!
For a moment he clung to the idea that it must be delirium, that his fever had come back while he dozed. But looking toward the gully, he saw that dirt was sliding down in small, muddy sheets. Bouncing, bounding pebbles flashed mica and quartz glints at his startled eyes. And then a faint, dull thudding noise came—it seemed to push its way into his ears. A moment later he was heaving for breath, as if most of the air had suddenly been pushed out of the gully the flash flood had cut.
There was a whining sound above him. Kojak stood silhouetted against the western edge of the cut, hunkered down. He was staring west, toward Nevada. “Kojak!” Stu cried in panic. That thudding noise had terrified him—it was as if God had suddenly stamped his foot down on the desert floor somewhere not too distant.
Kojak bounded down the slope and joined him, whining. As Stu passed a hand down the dog’s back, he felt Kojak trembling. He had to see, he had to. A sudden feeling of surety came to him.
“I’m going up, boy,” Stu muttered.
He crawled to the eastern edge of the gully. It was a little steeper, but it offered more handholds. He had thought for the last three days that he might be able to get up there, but he hadn’t seen the point. He was sheltered from the worst of the wind at the bottom of the cut, and he had water. But now he had to get up there. He had to see. He dragged his splinted leg behind him like a club. He got up on his hands and craned his neck to see the top. “Can’t do it, boy,” he muttered to Kojak, and started trying anyway.
A fresh pile of rubble had piled up at the bottom as a result of the ... the earthquake. Or whatever it was. Stu pulled himself over it and then began to inch his way up the slope, using his hands and his left knee. He made twelve yards and then lost six of them before he could grab a quartz outcropping and stop his slide.
“Nope, never make it,” he panted, and rested.
Ten minutes later he started again and made another ten yards. He rested. Went again. Came to a place with no holds and had to inch to the left until he found one. Kojak walked beside him, no doubt wondering what this fool was up to, leaving his water and his nice warm fire.
Warm. The fever must be coming up again, but at least the shivering had subsided. Fresh sweat was running down his face and arms. His hair, dusty and oily, hung in his eyes.
Lord, I'm burning up!
He happened to glance at Kojak. It took almost a minute for what he was seeing to sink in. Kojak was panting. It wasn’t the fever, because Kojak was hot, too.
Overhead, a squadron of birds suddenly flocked, wheeling and squawking.
He began to crawl again, fear lending him additional strength. An hour passed, two. He fought for every foot, every inch. By one o’clock that afternoon he was only six feet below the edge. He could see jags of paving jutting out above him. Only six feet, but the grade here was very steep and smooth. He tried once to just wriggle up, but loose gravel, the underbedding of the Interstate, had begun to rattle out from beneath him, and now he was afraid that if he tried to move at all he would go all the way to the bottom again, probably breaking his other damn leg in the process.
“Stuck,” he muttered. “Good fucking show. Now what?”
Now what became obvious very quickly. Even without moving around, the earth was beginning to shift downward beneath him. He slipped an inch and clawed for purchase with his hands. His broken leg was thudding heavily, and he had not thought to pocket Glen’s pills.
He slipped another two inches. Then five. His left foot was now dangling over space. Only his hands were holding him, and as he watched they began to slip, digging ten little furrows in the damp ground.
“Kojak!” he cried miserably, expecting nothing. But suddenly Kojak was there. Stu flung his arms around his neck blindly, not expecting to be saved but only grabbing what there was to be grabbed, like a drowning man. Kojak made no effort to throw him off. He dug in. For a moment they were frozen, a living sculpture. Then Kojak began to move, digging for inches, claws clicking against small stones and bits of gravel. Pebbles rattled into Stu’s face and he shut his eyes. Kojak dragged him, panting like an air compressor in Stu’s right ear.
He slitted his eyes open and saw they were nearly at the top. Kojak’s head was down. His back legs were working furiously. He gained four more inches and it was enough. With a desperate cry, Stu let go of Kojak’s neck and grabbed an outcrop of paving. It snapped off in his hands. He grabbed another one. Two fingernails peeled back like wet decals, and he cried out. The pain was exquisite, galvanizing. He scrambled up, pistoning with his good leg, and at last —somehow—lay panting on the surface of 1-70, his eyes shut.
Kojak whined and licked his face. Slowly then, Stu sat up and looked west. He looked for a long time, oblivious of the heat that was still rushing against his face in warm, bloated waves.
“Oh my God,” he said at last in a weak, breaking voice. “Look at that, Kojak. God, it’s all gone.”
The mushroom cloud stood out on the horizon like a clenched fist on the end of a long, dusty forearm. It was swirling, fuzzy at the edges, beginning to dissipate. It was backlighted in sullen orange-red, as if the sun had decided to go down in the early afternoon. The firestorm, he thought.
They were all dead in Las Vegas. Someone had fiddled when he should have faddled, and a nuclear weapon had gone off . . . and one hellish big one, from the look and the feel. Maybe a whole stockpile of them had gone. Glen, Larry, Ralph . . . even if they hadn’t reached Vegas yet, even if they were still walking, surely they were close enough to have been baked alive.
Fallout. Which way is the wind going to blow it?
Did it matter?
He remembered his note to Fran. It was important that he add what had happened. If the wind blew the fallout east, it might cause them problems . . . but more than that they had to know that if Las Vegas had been the dark man’s staging area, it was gone now. The people had been vaporized along with all the deadly toys that had just been lying around, waiting for someone to pick them up. He ought to add all of that to the note.
