The Stand

"Say what you mean, please. "

"It's Perion. The Veronal. She got the Veronal out of Glen's pack."

She hissed in breath.

"Oh boy," Stu said brokenly. "She's dead, Frannie. Oh Lord, ain't this some mess."

She tried to speak and found she could not.

"I guess I've got to wake the other two up," Stu said in an absent sort of way. He rubbed at his cheek, which was sandpapery with beard. Fran could still remember how it had felt against her own cheek yesterday, when she had hugged him. He turned back to her, bewildered. "When does it end?"

She said softly: "I don't think it ever will."

Their eyes locked in the early dawn.

From Fran Goldsmith's Diary



July 12, 1990

We're camped just west of Guilderland (NY) tonight, have finally made it onto the Big Highway, Route 80/90. The excitement of meeting Mark and Perion (don't you think that's a pretty name? I do) yesterday afternoon has more or less abated. They have agreed to throw in with us ... in fact, they made the suggestion before any of us could.

Not that I'm sure Harold would have offered. You know how he is. And he was a little put off (I think Glen was, too) by all the hardware they were carrying, including semi-automatic rifles (two). But mostly Harold just had to have his little song and dance ... he has to register his presence, you know.

I guess I have filled up pages and pages with THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HAROLD, and if you don't know him by now, you never will. Underneath his swagger and all those pompous pronouncements, there is a very insecure little boy. He can't really believe that things have changed. Part of him--quite a large part, I think--has to go on believing that all his high school tormentors are going to rise out of their graves one fine day and start shooting spitballs at him again or maybe calling him Whack-Off Lauder, as Amy said they used to do. Sometimes I think it would have been better for him (and maybe me too) if we hadn't hooked up back in Ogunquit. I'm part of his old life, I was best friends with his sister once upon a time, and so on and so on. What sums up my weird relationship with Harold is this: strange as it may seem, knowing what I know now, I would probably pick Harold to be friends with instead of Amy, who was mostly dizzy about boys with nice cars and clothes from Sweetie's, and who was (God forgive me for saying Cruddy Things about the Dead but it's true) a real Ogunquit Snob, the way only a year-round townie can be one. Harold is, in his own weird way, sort of cool. When he's not concentrating all his mental energies on being an asshole, that is. But, you see, Harold could never believe that anyone could think he was cool. Part of him has such a huge investment in being square. He is determined to carry all of his problems right along with him into this not-so-brave new world. He might as well have them packed right inside his knapsack along with those chocolate Payday candybars he likes to eat.

Oh Harold, jeez, I just don't know.

Things to Remember: The Gillette parrot. "Please don't squeeze the Charmin." The walking Kool-Aid pitcher that used to say, "Oh ... YEAAAAHHH!" "O.B. Tampons... created by a woman gynecologist. " Converse All-Stars. Night of the Living Dead. Brrrr! That last one hits too close to home. I quit.



July 14, 1990

We had a very long and very sober talk about these dreams today at lunch, stopping much longer than we should have, probably. We're just north of Batavia, New York, by the way.

Yesterday, Harold very diffidently (for him) suggested we start stocking up on Veronal and hitting ourselves with very light doses to see if we couldn't "disrupt the dream-cycle," as he put it. I went along with the idea so no one would start to wonder if something might be wrong with me, but I plan to palm my dose because I don't know what it might do to the Lone Ranger (I hope he's Lone; I'm not sure I could face twins).

With the Veronal proposal adopted, Mark had a comment. "You know," he sez, "things like this really don't bear too much thinking about. The next thing you know, we'll all be thinking we're Moses or Joseph, getting telephone calls from God."

"That dark man isn't calling from heaven," Stu sez. "If it's a toll-call, I think it's comin from someplace a lot lower down."

"Which is Stu's way of saying Old Scratch is after us," Frannie pipes up.

"And that's as good an explanation as any other," Glen sez. We all looked at him. "Well," he went on, a little on the defensive, I think, "if you look at it from a theological point of view, it does rather seem as if we're the knot in a tug-o-war rope between heaven and hell, doesn't it? If there are any Jesuit survivors of the superflu, they must be going absolutely bananas."

That made Mark laugh his head off. I didn't really get it, but kept my mouth shut.

"Well, I think the whole thing is ridiculous," Harold put in. "You'll be getting around to Edgar Cayce and the transmigration of souls before we know it."

He pronounced Cayce Case, and when I corrected him (you say it like the initials for Kansas City), he gave me a really HORRID HAROLD-FROWN. He isn't the type of guy who swamps you with gratitude when you point out his little flaws, diary!

"Whenever something overtly paranormal occurs," Glen said, "the only explanation that really fits well and holds its interior logic is the theological one. That's why psychics and religion have always gone hand in hand, right up to your modern-day faith-healers."

Harold was grumbling, but Glen went on anyway.

"My own gut feeling is that everyone's psychic... and it's so ingrained a part of us that we very rarely notice it. The talent may be largely preventative, and that keeps it from being noticed, too."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it's a negative factor, Fran. Have any of you ever read James D. L. Staunton's 1958 study of train and airplane crashes? It was originally published in a sociology journal, but the tabloid newspapers rake it up every now and again."

We all shook our heads.

"You ought to," he said. "James Staunton was what my students of twenty years ago would have called 'a real good head'--a mild-mannered clinical sociologist who studied the occult as a kind of hobby. He wrote any number of articles on the combined subjects before going over to the other side to do some first-hand research."

Harold snorted, but Stu and Mark were grinning. I fear I was, too.

"So tell us about the planes and trains," Peri sez.

"Well, Staunton got the stats on over fifty plane crashes since 1925 and over two hundred train crashes since 1900. He fed all the data into a computer. Basically, he was correlating three factors: those present on any such conveyance that met with disaster, those killed, and the capacity of the vehicle."

"Don't see what he was trying to prove," Stu said.

"To see that, you have to understand that he fed a second series of figures into the computer--this time an equal number of planes and trains which didn't meet with disaster."

Mark nodded. "A control group and an experimental group. That seems solid enough."

"What he found was simple enough, but staggering in its implications. It's a shame one has to stagger through sixteen tables to get at the underlying statistical fact."

"What fact?" I asked.

"Full planes and trains rarely crash," Glen said.

"Oh fucking BULLSHIT!" Harold just about screams.

"Not at all," Glen sez calmly. "That was Staunton's theory, and the computer bore him out. In cases where planes or trains crash, the vehicles are running at 61% capacity, as regards passenger loads. In cases where they don't, the vehicles are running at 76% capacity. That's a difference of 15% over a large computer run, and that sort of across-the-board deviation is significant. Staunton points out that, statistically speaking, a 3% deviation would be food for thought, and he's right. It's an anomaly the size of Texas. Staunton's deduction was that people know which planes and trains are going to crash... that they are unconsciously predicting the future.

"Your Aunt Sally gets a bad stomachache just before Flight 61 takes off from Chicago bound for San Diego. And when the plane crashes in the Nevada desert, everyone says, 'Oh Aunt Sally, that bellyache was really the grace of God.' But until James Staunton came along, no one had realized that there were really thirty people with bellyaches... or headaches ... or just that funny feeling you get in your legs when your body is trying to tell your head that something is getting ready to go way off-course."

"I just can't believe that," Harold sez, shaking his head rather woefully.

"Well, you know," Glen said, "about a week after I finished the Staunton article for the first time, a Majestic Airlines jet crashed at Logan Airport. It killed everyone on board. Well, I called the Majestic office at Logan after things had settled down a bit. I told them I was a reporter from the Manchester Union-Leader--a small lie in a good cause. I said we were getting a sidebar on airline crashes together and asked if they could tell me how many no-shows there were on that flight. The man sounded kind of surprised, because he said the airline personnel had been talking about that. The number was sixteen. Sixteen no-shows. I asked him what the average was on 747 flights from Denver to Boston, and he said it was three."

"Three," Perion sez in a marveling kind of way.

"Right. But the guy went further. He said they'd also had fifteen cancellations, and the average number is eight. So, although the headlines after the fact screamed LOGAN AIR CRASH KILLS 94, it could just as well have read 31 AVOID DEATH IN LOGAN AIRPORT DISASTER."

Well... there was a lot more talk about psychic stuff, but it wandered pretty far afield from the subject of our dreams and whether or not they come from the Big Righteous in the sky. One thing that did come up (this was after Harold had wandered away in utter disgust) was Stu asking Glen, "If we're all so psychic, then how come we don't know when a loved one has just died or that our house just blew away in a tornado, or something?"

"There are cases of exactly that sort of thing," Glen said, "but I will admit they are nowhere near as common ... or as easy to prove with the aid of a computer. It's an interesting point. I have a theory--"

(Doesn't he always, diary?)

"--that has to do with evolution. You know, once men--or their progenitors--had tails and hair all over their bodies, and much sharper senses than they do now. Why don't we have them anymore? Quick, Stu! This is your chance to go to the head of the class, mortarboard and all."

"Why, for the same reason people don't wear goggles and dusters when they drive anymore, I guess. Sometimes you outgrow a thing. It gets to a point where you don't need it anymore."

"Exactly. And what is the point of having a psychic sense that's useless in any practical way? What earthly good would it do you to be working in your office and suddenly know that your wife had been killed in a car-smash coming back from the market? Someone is going to call you on the telephone and tell you, right? That sense may have atrophied long ago, if we ever had it. It may have gone the way of our tails and our pelts.

"What interests me about these dreams," he went on, "is that they seem to presage some future struggle. We seem to be getting cloudy pictures of a protagonist... and an antagonist. An adversary, if you like. If that's so, it may be like looking at a plane on which we're scheduled to fly ... and getting a bellyache. We're being given the means to help shape our own futures, perhaps. A kind of fourth-dimensional free will: the chance to choose in advance of events."

"But we don't know what the dreams mean," I said.

"No, we don't. But we may. I don't know if a little tickle of psychic ability means we are divine; there are plenty of people who can accept the miracle of eyesight without believing that eyesight proves the existence of God, and I am one of them; but I do believe these dreams are a constructive force in spite of their ability to frighten us. I'm having second thoughts about the Veronal as a result. Taking it is very much like swallowing some Pepto-Bismol to quiet the bellyache, and then getting on the plane anyway."

Things to Remember: Recessions, shortages, the prototype Ford Growler that could go sixty miles of highway on a single gallon of gas. Quite the wonder car. That's all; I quit. If I don't shorten my entries, this diary will be as long as Gone with the Wind even before the Lone Ranger arrives (although please not on a white horse named Silver). Oh yes, one other Thing to Remember. Edgar Cayce. Can't forget him. He supposedly saw the future in his dreams.



July 16, 1990

Only two notes, both of them relating to the dreams (see entry two days ago). First, Glen Bateman has been very pale and silent these last two days, and tonight I saw him take an extra-large dose of Veronal. My suspicion is that he skipped his last two doses and the result was some VERY bad dreams. That worries me. I wish I knew a way to approach him about it, but can think of nothing.

Second, my own dreams. Nothing night before last (the night after our discussion); slept like a baby and can't remember a thing. Last night I dreamed of the old woman for the first time. Have nothing to add beyond what has already been said except to say she seems to exude an aura of NICENESS, of KINDNESS. I think I can understand why Stu was so set on going to Nebraska even in the face of Harold's sarcasm. I woke up this morning completely refreshed, thinking that if we could just get to that old woman, Mother Abigail, everything would be A-OK. I hope she's really there. (By the way, I'm quite sure that the name of the town is Hemingford Home.)

Things to Remember: Mother Abigail!





CHAPTER 47


When it happened, it happened fast.

It was around quarter of ten on July 30, and they had been on the road only an hour. Going was slow because there had been heavy showers the night before and the road was still slippery. There had been little talk among the four of them since yesterday morning, when Stu had awakened first Frannie, then Harold and Glen, to tell them about Perion's suicide. He was blaming himself, Fran thought miserably, blaming himself for something that was no more his fault than a thunderstorm would have been.

She would have liked to have told him so, partly because he needed to be scolded for his self-indulgence and partly because she loved him. This latter was a fact she could no longer conceal from herself. She thought she could convince him that Peri's death wasn't his fault... but the convincing would entail showing him what her own true feelings were. She thought she would have to pin her heart to her sleeve, where he could see it. Unfortunately, Harold would be able to see it, too. So that was out... but only for the time being. She thought she would have to do it soon, Harold or no Harold. She could only protect him so long. Then he would have to know ... and either accept or not accept. She was afraid Harold might opt for the second choice. A decision like that could lead to something horrible. They were, after all, carrying a lot of shooting irons.

She was mulling these thoughts over when they swept around a curve and saw a large housetrailer overturned in the middle of the road, blocking it from one end to the other. Its pink corrugated side still glistened with last night's rain. This was surprising enough, but there was more--three cars, all station wagons, and a big auto-wrecker were parked along the sides of the road. There were people standing around, too, at least a dozen of them.

Fran was so surprised she braked too suddenly. The Honda she was riding skidded on the wet road, and almost dumped her before she was able to get it under control. Then all four of them had stopped, more or less in a line which crossed the road, blinking and more than a little stunned at the sight of so many people who were still alive.

"Okay, dismount," one of the men said. He was tall, sandy-bearded, and wearing dark sunglasses. Fran time-traveled for a moment inside her head, back to the Maine Turnpike and being hauled down by a state trooper for speeding.

Next he'll ask to see our drivers' licenses, Fran thought. But this was no lone State Trooper, bagging speeders and writing tickets. There were four men here, three of them standing behind the sandy-bearded man in a short skirmish line. The rest were all women. At least eight of them. They looked pale and scared, clustered around the parked station wagons in little groups.

The sandy-bearded man was carrying a pistol. The men behind him all had rifles. Two of them were wearing bits and pieces of army kit.

"Dismount, goddam you," the bearded man said, and one of the men behind him levered a round into the breech of his rifle. It was a loud, bitterly imperative sound in the misty morning air.

Glen and Harold looked puzzled and apprehensive. That, and no more. They're sitting ducks, Frannie thought with rising panic. She did not fully understand the situation herself yet, but she knew the equation here was all wrong. Four men, eight women, her brain said, and then repeated it, louder, in tones of alarm: Four men! Eight women!

"Harold," Stu said in a quiet voice. Something had come up in his eyes. Some realization. "Harold, don't--" And then everything happened.

Stu's rifle was slung over his back. He dropped one shoulder so that the strap slid down his arm, and then the rifle was in his hands.

"Don't do it!" the bearded man shouted furiously. "Garvey! Virge! Ronnie! Get them! Save the woman!"

Harold began to grab for his pistols, at first forgetting they were still strapped into their holsters.

Glen Bateman still sat behind Harold in stunned surprise.

"Harold!" Stu yelled again.

Frannie began to unsling her own rifle. She felt as if the air around her had suddenly been packed with invisible molasses, treacly stuff she would never be able to struggle through in time. She realized they were probably going to die here.

One of the girls screamed: "NOW!"

Frannie's gaze switched to this girl even as she continued to struggle with her rifle. Not really a girl; she was at least twenty-five. Her hair, ash-blond, lay against her head in a ragged helmet, as if she had recently lopped it off with a pair of hedge-clippers.

Not all of the women moved; some of them appeared to be nearly catatonic with fright. But the blond girl and three of the others did.

All of this happened in the space of seven seconds.

The bearded man had been pointing his pistol at Stu. When the young blond woman screamed, "Now!" the barrel jerked slightly toward her, like a divining rod sensing water. It went off, making a loud noise like a piece of steel being punched through cardboard. Stu fell off his bike and Frannie screame