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"We'll listen to what she has to say."
"Fine. You listen for both of us. I'm leaving."
"Little girl."
"Don't call me that!"
Her hand shot out and closed around Frannie's wrist. Fran went rigid. Her eyes closed. Her head snapped back.
"Don't D-D-Don't ... OH MY GOD-- STU-- "
"Here! Here!" Stu roared. "What are you doing to her?"
Mother Abagail didn't answer. The moment spun out, seemed to stretch into a pocket of eternity, and then the old woman let go.
Slowly, dazedly, Fran began to massage the wrist Mother Abagail had taken, although there was no red ring or dent in the flesh to show that pressure had been applied. Frannie's eyes suddenly widened.
"Hon?" Stu asked anxiously.
"Gone," Fran muttered.
"What ... what's she talking about?" Stu looked around at the others in shaken appeal. Glen only shook his head. His face was white and strained but not disbelieving.
"The pain ... the whiplash. The pain in my back. It's gone." She looked at Stu, dazed. "It's all gone. Look." She bent and touched her toes lightly: once, then twice. Then she bent a third time and placed her palms flat on the floor without unlocking her knees.
She stood up again and met Mother Abagail's eyes.
"Is this a bribe from your God? Because if it is, He can take His cure back. I'd rather have the pain if Stu comes with it."
"God don't lay on no bribes, child," Mother Abagail whispered. "He just makes a sign and lets people take it as they will."
"Stu isn't going west," Fran said, but now she seemed bewildered as well as frightened.
"Sit down," Stu said. "We'll listen to what she has to say."
Fran sat down, shocked, unbelieving, lost at sea. Her hands kept stealing around to the small of her back.
"You are to go west," Mother Abagail whispered. "You are to take no food, no water. You are to go this very day, and in the clothes you stand up in. You are to go on foot. I am in the way of knowing that one of you will not reach your destination, but I don't know which will be the one to fall. I am in the way of knowing that the rest will be taken before this man Flagg, who is not a man at all but a supernatural being. I don't know if it's God's will for you to defeat him. I don't know if it's God's will for you to ever see Boulder again. Those things are not for me to see. But he is in Las Vegas, and you must go there, and it is there that you will make your stand. You will go, and you will not falter, because you will have the Everlasting Arm of the Lord God of Hosts to lean on. Yes. With God's help you will stand."
She nodded.
"That's all. I've said m'piece."
"No," Fran whispered. "It can't be."
"Mother," Glen said in a kind of croak. He cleared his throat. "Mother, we're not 'in the way of understanding,' if you see what I mean. We're ... we're not blessed with your closeness to whatever is controlling this. It just isn't our way. Fran's right. If we go over there we'll be slaughtered, probably by the first pickets we come to."
"Have you no eyes? You've just seen Fran healed of her affliction by God, through me. Do you think His plan for you is to let you be shot and killed by the Dark Prince's least minion?"
"But, Mother--"
"No." She raised her hand and waved his words away. "It's not my place to argue with you, or convince, but only to put you in the way of understanding God's plan for you. Listen, Glen."
And suddenly, from Mother Abagail's mouth, the voice of Glen Bateman issued, frightening them all and making Fran shrink back against Stu with a little cry.
"Mother Abagail calls him the devil's pawn," this strong, masculine voice said, originating somehow in the old woman's wasted chest and emerging from her toothless mouth. "Maybe he's just the last magician of rational thought, gathering the tools of technology against us. Maybe he's something more, something darker. I only know that he is. And I no longer think that sociology or psychology or any other ology will put a stop to him. I think only white magic will do that."
Glen's mouth hung open.
"Is that a true thing, or are those the words of a liar?" Mother Abagail said.
"I don't know if it's true or not, but they're my words," Glen said shakily.
"Trust. All of you, trust. Larry ... Ralph ... Stu ... Glen ... Frannie. You most patic'ly, Frannie. Trust ... and obey the word of God."
"Do we have a choice?" Larry asked bitterly.
She turned to look at him, surprised. "A choice? There's always a choice. That's God's way, always will be. Your will is still free. Do as you will. There's no set of leg-irons on you. But ... this is what God wants of you."
That silence again, like deep snow. At last, Ralph broke it. "Says in the Bible that David did the job on Goliath," he said. "I'll be going along if you say it's right, Mother."
She took his hand.
"Me," Larry said. "Me too. Okay." He sighed and put his hands on his forehead as if it ached. Glen opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, there was a heavy, tired sigh from the comer and a thud.
It was Lucy, whom they had all forgotten. She had fainted.
Dawn touched the edge of the world.
They sat around Larry's kitchen table, drinking coffee. It was ten to five when Fran came up the hall and stood in the doorway. Her face was puffy from crying, but there was no limp as she walked. She was, indeed, cured. "She's going, I think," Fran said.
They went in, Larry with his arm around Lucy.
Mother Abagail's breathing had taken on a heavy, hollow rattle that was horribly reminiscent of the superflu. They gathered around the bed without speaking, deep in awe and afraid. Ralph was sure that something would happen at the end that would cause the wonder of God to stand before all of them, naked and revealed. She would be gone in a flash of light, taken. Or they would see her spirit, transfigured in radiance, leaving by the window and going up into the sky.
But in the end, she simply died.
There was a single final breath, the last of millions. It was drawn in, held, and finally let out. Her chest just didn't rise again.
"She's done," Stu muttered.
"God have mercy on her soul," Ralph said, no longer afraid. He crossed her hands on her thin bosom, and his tears fell on them.
"I'll go," Glen said suddenly. "She was right. White magic. That's all that's left."
"Stu," Frannie whispered. "Please, Stu, say no."
They looked at him--all of them.
Now you must lead, Stuart.
He thought of Arnette, of the old car carrying Charles D. Campion and his load of death, crashing into Bill Hapscomb's pumps like some wicked Pandora. He thought of Denninger and Deitz, and how he had begun to associate them in his mind with the smiling doctors who had lied and lied and lied to him and to his wife about her condition--and maybe they had lied to themselves, as well. Most of all, he thought of Frannie. And of Mother Abagail saying, This is what God wants of you.
"Frannie," he said. "I have to go."
"And die." She looked at him bitterly, almost hatefully, and then to Lucy, as if for support. But Lucy was stunned and far-off, no help.
"If we don't go, we'll die," Stu said, feeling his way along the words. "She was right. If we wait, then spring comes. Then what? How are we going to stop him? We don't know. We don't have a clue. We never did. We had our heads in the sand, too. We can't stop him except like Glen says. White magic. Or the power of God."
She began to weep bitterly.
"Frannie, don't do that," he said, and tried to take her hand.
"Don't touch me!" she cried at him. "You're a dead man, you're a corpse, so don't touch me!"
They stood around the bed in tableau as the sun came up.
Stu and Frannie went to Flagstaff Mountain around eleven o'clock. They parked halfway up, and Stu brought the hamper while Fran carried the tablecloth and a bottle of Blue Nun. The picnic had been her idea, but a strange and awkward silence held between them.
"Help me spread it," she said. "And watch out for those spiny things."
They were in a small, slanting meadow a thousand feet below Sunrise Amphitheater. Boulder was spread out below them in a blue haze. Today it was wholly summer again. The sun shone down with power and authority. Crickets buzzed in the grass. A grasshopper leaped up and Stu caught it with a quick lunge of his right hand. He could feel it inside his fingers, tickling and frightened.
"Spit n I'll let you go," he said, the old childhood formula, and looked up to see Fran smiling sadly at him. With quick, ladylike precision, she turned her head and spat. It hurt his heart, seeing her do that. "Fran--"
"No, Stu. Don't talk about it. Not now."
They spread the white lawn tablecloth, which Fran had glommed from the Hotel Boulderado, and moving with quick economy (it made him feel strange to watch her supple grace as she bent and moved, as if there had never been a whiplash injury and sprained back at all), she set out their early lunch: a cucumber and lettuce salad dressed with vinegar; cold ham sandwiches; the wine; an apple pie for dessert.
"Good food, good meat, good God, let's eat," she said. He sat down beside her and took a sandwich and some salad. He wasn't hungry. He hurt inside. But he ate.
When they had both finished a token sandwich and most of the salad--the fresh greens had been delicious--and a small sliver of apple pie each, she said: "When are you going?"
"Noon," he said. He lit a cigarette, cupping the flame in his hands.
"How long will it take you to get there?"
He shrugged. "Walking? I don't know. Glen's not young. Neither is Ralph, for that matter. If we can make thirty miles a day, we could do it by the first of October, I guess."
"And if there's early snow in the mountains? Or in Utah?"
He shrugged, looking at her steadily.
"More wine?" she asked.
"No. It gives me acid indigestion. It always did."
Fran poured herself another glass and drank it off.
"Was she God's voice, Stu? Was she?"
"Frannie, I just don't know."
"We dreamed of her, and she was. This whole thing is part and parcel of some stupid game, do you know that, Stuart? Have you ever read the Book of Job?"
"I was never much on the Bible, I guess."
"My mom was. She thought it was very important that my brother Fred and I have a certain amount of religious background. She never said why. All the good it ever did me, so far as I know, was that I was always able to answer the Bible questions on 'Jeopardy.' Do you remember 'Jeopardy,' Stu?"
Smiling a little, he said: "And now here's your host, Alex Trebeck."
"That's the one. It was backward. They gave you the answer, you supplied the question. When it came to the Bible, I knew all the questions. Job was a bet between God and the Devil. The Devil said, 'Sure he worships You. He's got it soft. But if You piss in his face long enough, he'll renounce You.' So God took the wager. And God won." She smiled dully. "God always wins. God's a Boston Celtics fan, I bet."
"Maybe it is a bet," Stu said, "but it's their lives, those folks down there. And the guy inside you. What did she call him? The chap?"
"She wouldn't even promise about him," Fran said. "If she could have done that ... just that ... it would have been at least a little bit easier to let you go."
Stu could think of nothing to say.
"Well, it's getting on toward noon now," Fran said. "Help me pack up, Stuart."
The half-eaten lunch went back into the hamper with the tablecloth and the rest of the wine. Stu looked at the spot and thought of how there were only a few crumbs to show where their picnic had been ... and the birds would get those soon enough. When he glanced up, Frannie was looking at him and crying. He went to her.
"It's all right. It's being pregnant. I'm always running at the eyes. I can't seem to help it."
"It's okay."
"Stu, make love to me."
"Here? Now?"
She nodded, then smiled a little. "It will be all right. If we watch out for the spiny things."
They spread the tablecloth again.
At the foot of Baseline Road she made him stop at what had been Ralph and Nick's house until four days ago. The entire rear of the house was blown away. The back yard was littered with debris. A shattered digital clock radio sat atop the shredded back hedge. Nearby was the sofa under which Frannie had been pinned. There was a patch of dried blood on the back steps. She looked at this fixedly.
"Is that Nick's blood?" she asked him. "Could it be?"
"Frannie, what's the point?" Stu asked uneasily.
"Is it?"
"Jesus, I don't know. It could be, I suppose."
"Put your hand on it, Stu."
"Frannie, have you gone nuts?"
The frown-line creased her brow, the I-want line that he had first noticed back in New Hampshire.
"Put your hand on it!"
Reluctantly, Stu put his hand on the stain. He didn't know if it was Nick's blood or not (and believed, in fact, that it probably wasn't), but the gesture gave him a ghastly, crawly feeling.
"Now swear you'll come back."
The step seemed rather too warm here, and he wanted to take his hand away.
"Fran, how can I--"
"God can't run all of it!" she hissed at him. "Not all of it. Swear, Stu, swear it!"
"Frannie, I swear to try."
"I guess that will have to be good enough, won't it?"
"We have to get down to Larry's."
"I know." But she held him more tightly still. "Say you love me."
"You know I do."
"I know, but say it. I want to hear it."
He took her by the shoulder. "Fran, I love you."
"Thank you," she said, and put her cheek against his shoulder. "Now I think I can say goodbye. I think I can let you go."
They held each other in the shattered back yard.
CHAPTER 60
She and Lucy watched the undramatic start of their quest from the steps of Larry's house. The four of them stood there on the sidewalk for a moment, no packs, no bedrolls, no special equipment ... as per instructions. They had all changed into heavy walking shoes.
" 'Bye, Larry," Lucy said. Her face was shiny pale.
"Remember, Stuart," Fran said. "Remember what you swore".
"Yes. I'll remember."
Glen put his fingers into his mouth and whistled. Kojak, who had been investigating a sewer grating, came running.
"Let's go then," Larry said. His face was as pale as Lucy's, his eyes unusually bright, almost glittery. "Before I lose my nerve."
Stu blew a kiss through his closed fist, something he could not remember doing since the days when his mother saw him off on the school bus. Fran waved back. The tears were coming again, hot and burning, but she did not let them fall. They began. They simply walked away. They were halfway down the block now, and somewhere a bird sang. The midday sun was warm and undramatic. They reached the end of the block. Stu turned and waved again. Larry also waved. Fran and Lucy waved back. They crossed the street. They were gone. Lucy looked almost sick with loss and fear.
"Dear God," she said.
"Let's go in," Fran said. "I want tea."
They went inside. Fran put the teapot on. They began to wait.
The four of them moved slowly southwest during the afternoon, not talking much. They were headed toward Golden, where they would camp this first night. They passed the burial sites, three of them now, and around four o'clock, when their shadows had begun to trail out long behind them and the heat had begun to sneak out of the day, they came to the township marker spotted beside the road at the southern edge of Boulder. For a moment Stu had a feeling that all of them were on the verge of turning together and going back. Ahead of them was darkness and death. Behind them was a little warmth, a little love.
Glen took a bandanna out of his back pocket, whipped it into a blue paisley rope, and tied it around his head. " 'Chapter Forty-Three, The Bald-Headed Sociologist Dons His Sweat-Band,' " he said hollowly. Kojak was up ahead, over the line into Golden, nosing his way happily through a splash of wildflowers.
"Ah, man," Larry said, and his voice was almost a sob. "I feel like this is the end of everything."
"Yeah," Ralph said. "It do feel like that."
"Anybody want to take five?" Glen asked without much hope.
"Come on," Stu said, smiling a little. "Do you dogfaces want to live forever?"
They went on, leaving Boulder behind them. By nine that night they were camped in Golden, half a mile from where Route 6 begins its twisting, turning course along Clear Creek and into the stone heart of the Rockies.
None of them slept well that first night. Already they felt far from home, and under the shadow of death.
THE STAND
SEPTEMBER 7, 1990-JANUARY 10, 1991
This land is your land,
this land is my land,
from California
to the New York island,
from the redwood forests,
to the Gulf stream waters,
this land was made for you and me.
--Woody Guthrie
"Hey, Trash, what did old lady Semple say when you torched
her pension check?"
--Carley Yates
When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we'll see,
I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand by me.
--Ben E. King
CHAPTER 61
The dark man had set his guardposts all along the eastern border of Oregon. The largest was at Ontario, where I-80 crosses over from Idaho; there were six men there, quartered in the trailer of a large Peterbilt truck. They had been there for more than a week, playing poker the whole time with twenties and fifties as useless as Monopoly money. One man was almost sixty thousand dollars ahead and another--a man whose working wage in the pre-plague world had been about ten thousand dollars a year--was over forty grand in the bucket.
It had rained almost the whole week, and tempers in the trailer were getting short. They had come out of Portland, and they wanted to get back there. There were women in Portland. Hung from a spike was a powerful two-way radio, broadcasting nothing but static. They were waiting for the radio to broadcast two simple words: Come home. That would mean that the man they were looking for had been captured somewhere else.