by Stephen King
“Hey Hawk, you pullin overtime?”
Harold looked up, smiling. “Yeah, I thought I’d get some,” he told Weizak. “I clocked you when I came in. You made six bucks already.”
Weizak laughed. “You’re a card, Hawk, you know that?”
“I am,” Harold agreed, still smiling. He began to relace his boots. “A wild card.”
Chapter 46
Stu was on his way home at the end of the workday, and he had reached the small park opposite the First National Bank when Ralph hailed him over. He parked his cycle and walked over to the bandshell where Ralph was sitting.
“I’ve kind of been looking for you, Stu. You got a minute?”
“Just one. I’m late for supper. Frannie’ll be worried.”
“Yeah. Been up to the power station wrapping copper, from the look of your hands.” Ralph looked absent and worried.
“Yeah. Not even workmen’s gloves do much good. My hands are wrecked.”
Ralph nodded. There were maybe half a dozen other people in the park, some of them looking at the narrow-gauge railway train that had once gone between Boulder and Denver. A trio of young women had spread out a picnic supper. Maybe marshaling won’t be so bad, he thought. At least it’ll get me off that goddam assembly line in east Boulder.
“Why you so down at the mouth, Ralph?”
“I got some news on my radio,” Ralph said. “Some of it’s good, some of it . . . well, some of it’s not so good, Stu. I want you to know, because there’s no way to keep it secret. Lots of people in the Zone with CBs. I imagine some were listening while I was talking to these new folks coming in.”
“How many?”
“Over forty. One of them’s a doctor, name of George Richardson.” •
“Well, that’s great news!”
“He’s from Derbyshire, Tennessee. Most of the people in this group are sort of mid-southern. Well, it seems they had a pregnant woman with them, and her time come up ten days ago, on the thir—
teenth. This doctor delivered her of them—twins, she had—and they were fine. At first they were fine.” Ralph lapsed back into silence, his mouth working.
Stu grabbed him. “They died? The babies died? That what you’re trying to tell me? They died? Talk to me, dammit!”
“They died,” Ralph said in a low voice. “One of them went in twelve hours. Appeared to just choke to death. The other went two days later. Nothing Richardson could do to save them. The woman went loony. Raving about death and destruction and no more babies. You want to make sure Fran isn’t around when they come in, Stu. That’s what I wanted to tell you. And that you should let her know about this right away. Because if you don’t, someone else will.”
Stu let go of Ralph’s shirt slowly.
“This Richardson, he wanted to know how many pregnant women we had, and I said only one that we know of right now. He asked how far along she was and I said four months. Is that right?”
“She’s five months now. But Ralph, is he sure those babies died of the superflu? Is he sure?”
“No, he’s not, and you gotta tell Frannie that, too, so she understands it. He said it could have been any number of things ... the mother’s diet . . . somethin hereditary ... a respiratory infection ... or maybe they were just, you know, defective babies. He said it could have been the Rh-factor, whatever that is. He just couldn’t tell, them being born in the middle of a field beside the doggone Interstate 70. He said that him and about three others who were in charge of their group sat up late at night and talked it over. Richardson, he told them what it might mean if it was the Captain Trips that killed those babies, and how important it was for them to find out one way or the other for sure.”
“Glen and I talked about that,” Stu said bleakly, “the day I met him. If it was the superflu that killed those babies it probably means that in forty or fifty years we can leave the whole shebang to the rats and the houseflies and the sparrows.”
“I guess that’s pretty much what Richardson told them. Anyway, they were some forty miles west of Chicago, and he persuaded them to turn around the next day and take the bodies back to a big hospital where he could do an autopsy. He said he could find out for sure if it was the superflu. He saw enough of it at the end of June. I guess all doctors did.”
“Yeah.”
“But when the morning came, the babies were gone. That woman had buried them, and she wouldn’t say where. They spent two days digging, thinking that she couldn’t have gone too far away from the camp or buried them too deep, being just over her delivery and all. But they didn’t find them, and she wouldn’t say where no matter how much they tried to explain how important it was. Poor woman was just all the way off’n her chump.”
“I can understand that,” Stu said, thinking of how much Fran wanted her baby.
“The doctor said even if it was the superflu, maybe two immune people could make an immune baby,” Ralph said hopefully.
“The chances that the natural father of Fran’s baby was immune are about one in a billion, I guess,” Stu said. “He sure isn’t here.”
“Yeah, I guess it couldn’t hardly be, could it? I’m sorry to have to put this on you, Stu. But I thought you better know. So you could tell her.”
“I don’t look forward to that,” Stu said.
But when he got home he found that someone else had already done it.
“Frannie?”
No answer. Supper was on the stove—burnt on, mostly—but the apartment was dark and quiet.
Stu came into the living room and looked around. There was an ashtray on the coffee table with two cigarette butts in it, but Fran didn’t smoke and they weren’t his brand.
“Babe?”
He went to the bedroom and she was there, lying on the bed in the semigloom, looking at the ceiling. Her face was puffy and tear-streaked. “Hi, Stu,” she said quietly.
“Who told you? Who just couldn’t wait to spread the good news?”
“It was Sue Stern. She heard it from Jack Jackson. He’s got a CB, and he heard that doctor talking with Ralph. She thought she better tell me before someone else made a bad job of it. Poor little Frannie. Handle with care. Do not open until Xmas.” She uttered a little laugh.
He came across the room and sat beside her on the bed and stroked hair off her forehead. “Honey, it’s not sure. No way that it’s sure.”
“I know it’s not. And maybe we could have our own babies, even so.” She turned to look up at him, her eyes red-rimmed and unhappy. “But I want this one. Is that so wrong?”
“No. Course not/’
“I’ve been lying here waiting for him to move, or something. I’ve never felt him move since that night Larry came looking for Harold. Remember?”
“Yes.”
“I felt the baby move and I didn’t wake you up. Now I wish I had. I sure do.” She began to cry again and put an arm over her face so he wouldn’t see her doing it.
Stu took the arm away, stretched out beside her, kissed her. She hugged him fiercely and then lay passively against him. When she spoke the words were half-muffled against his neck.
“Not knowing makes it that much worse. Now I just have to wait and see. It seems like such a long time to have to wait and see if your baby is going to die before it’s spent a day outside of your body.”
“You won’t be waiting alone,” he said.
She hugged him tight again for that and they lay there together without moving for a long time.
The meeting at Munzinger Auditorium went well. A Census Committee was voted routinely with Sandy DuChiens in charge. She and her four helpers immediately began going through the audience, counting heads, taking names. At the end of the meeting, to the accompaniment of tremendous cheers, she announced that there were now 814 souls in the Free Zone, and promised (rashly, as it turned out) to have a complete “directory” by the time the next Zone meeting was called—a directory she hoped to update week by week, containing names in alphabetical order, ages, Boulder add
resses, previous addresses, and previous occupations. As it turned out, the flow into the Zone was so heavy and yet so erratic that she was always two or three weeks behind.
The elective period of the Free Zone Committee was brought up, and after some extravagant suggestions (ten years was one, life another, and Larry brought down the house by saying they sounded more like prison terms than those of elective office), the yearly term was voted in. Harry Dunbarton’s hand waved near the back of the hall, and Stu recognized him.
Bellowing to make himself heard, Harry said: “Even a year may be too much. I have nothing at all against the ladies and gentlemen of the Committee, I think you’re doing a helluva job”—cheers and whistles—“but this is gonna get out of hand before long if we keep gettin bigger.”
Glen raised his hand, and Stu acknowledged him.
“Mr. Chairman, this isn’t on the agenda, but I think Mr. Dunbarton there has an excellent point.”
/ just bet you think he does, baldy, Stu thought, since you brought it up a week ago.
“I’d like to make a motion that we have a Representative Government Committee so we can really put the Constitution back to work. I think Harry Dunbarton should head that committee, and I’ll serve on it myself, unless someone thinks I’ve got a conflict of interest.”
More cheers.
In the last row, Harold turned to Nadine and whispered in her ear: “Ladies and gentlemen, the public love feast is now in session.”
She gave him a slow, dark smile, and he felt giddy.
Stu was elected Free Zone Marshal by roaring acclamation.
“I’ll do the best I can by you,” he said. “Some of you cheerin me now may have cause to change your tunes later if I catch you doin somethin you shouldn’t be doin. You hear me, Rich Moffat?”
A large roar of laughter. Rich, who was as drunk as a hootowl, joined in agreeably.
“But I don’t see any reason why we should have any real trouble here. The main job of a marshal as I see it is stoppin people from hurtin each other. And there aren’t any of us who want to do that. Enough people have been hurt already. And I guess that’s all I’ve got to say.”
The crowd gave him a long ovation.
“Now this next item,” Stu said, “kind of goes along with the marshaling. We need about five people to serve on a Law Committee, or I’m not going to feel right about locking anyone up, should it come to that. Do I hear any nominations?”
“How about the Judge?” someone shouted.
“Yeah, the Judge, damn right!” someone else yelled.
Heads craned expectantly as people waited for the Judge to stand up and accept the responsibility; a whisper ran around the hall as people retold the story of how he had put in a pin in the flying saucer nut’s balloon. Agendas were put down as people prepared to clap. Stu’s eyes met Glen’s with mutual chagrin: someone on the committee should have foreseen this.
“Ain’t here,” someone said.
“Who’s seen him?” Lucy Swann asked, upset. Larry glanced at her uncomfortably, but she was still looking around the hall for the Judge.
“I seen him.”
A mutter of interest as Teddy Weizak stood up about three quarters of the way back in the auditorium, looking nervous and polishing his steel-rimmed spectacles compulsively with his bandanna. There was a barrage of questions from those around him, and Weizak flinched visibly.
Stu pounded with his gavel. “Come on, folks. Order.”
“I seen him two days ago,” Teddy said. “He had himself a Land-Rover. Said he was going to Denver for the day. Didn’t say why. That’s all I know.” He sat down, still polishing his spectacles and blushing furiously.
Stu rapped for order again. “I’m sorry the Judge isn’t here, I think he would have been just the man for the job, but since he isn’t, could we have another nomination—?”
“No, let’s not leave it at that!” Lucy protested, getting to her feet. She was wearing a snug denim jumpsuit that brought interested looks to the faces of most of the males in the audience. “Judge Farris is an old man. What if he got sick in Denver and can’t get back?”
“Lucy,” Stu said, “Denver’s a big place.”
An odd silence fell over the meeting hall as people considered this. Lucy sat down, looking pale, and Larry put his arm around her. His eyes met Stu’s, and Stu looked away.
A motion was made to table the Law Committee until the Judge got back and was voted down after twenty minutes of discussion. They had another lawyer, a young man of about twenty-six named A1 Bundell, who had come in late that afternoon with the Dr. Richardson party, and he accepted the chairmanship when it was offered, saying only that he hoped no one would do anything too terrible in the next month or so, because it would take at least that long to work out some sort of rotating tribunal system. Judge Farris was voted a place on the committee in absentia.
Brad Kitchner, looking pale, fidgety, and a little ridiculous in a suit and tie, approached the podium, dropped his prepared remarks, picked them up in the wrong order, and contented himself by saying they hoped and expected to have the electricity back on by the second or third of September.
This remark was greeted with such a storm of cheering that he gained enough confidence to finish in style and actually strut a little as he left the podium.
Chad Norris was next, and Stu told Frannie later that he had approached the thing in just the right way: They were burying the dead out of common decency, none of them would feel really good until that was done and life could go on, and if it was finished by the fall rainy season they would all feel so much the better. He asked for a couple of volunteers and could have had three dozen if he wanted them. He finished by asking each member of the current Burial Committee to stand and take a bow.
Harold Lauder barely popped up and then sat back down again, and there were those who left the meeting remarking on what a smart but very modest fellow he was. Actually, Nadine had been whispering things in his ear and he was afraid to do much more than bob and nod. He had an erection.
When Norris left the podium, Ralph Brentner took his place. He told them that they at last had a doctor, had George Richardson stand up (to loud applause; Richardson flipped the peace sign with both hands, and the applause turned to cheers), and then told them that, as far as he could tell, they had another sixty people joining them over the next couple of days.
“Well, that’s the agenda,” Stu said. He looked out over the gathered people. “I want Sandy DuChiens to come up here again and tell us how many we are, but before I do that, is there other business we should take up tonight?”
He waited. He could see Glen’s face in the crowd, and Sue Stem’s, Larry’s, Nick’s, and of course, Frannie’s. They all looked a bit strained. If someone was going to bring up Flagg, ask what the committee was doing about him, this would be the time. But there was silence. After fifteen seconds of it, Stu turned the meeting over to Sandy, who ended things in style. As people began to file out, Stu thought: Well, we got by it again.
Several people came up to congratulate him after the meeting, one of them the new doctor. “You handled that very well, Marshal,” Richardson said, and for a moment Stu almost looked over his shoulder to see who Richardson was talking to. Then he remembered, and suddenly felt scared. Lawman? He was an imposter.
A year, he told himself. A year and no more. But he still felt scared.
Stu, Fran, Sue Stem, and Nick walked back together, their feet clicking hollowly on the cement sidewalk as they crossed the C.U. campus toward Broadway. Around them, other people were streaming away, talking quietly, headed home. It was nearly eleven-thirty.
“It’s chilly,” Fran said. “I wish I’d worn my jacket.”
Nick nodded. He also felt the chill. The Boulder evenings were always cool, but tonight it could be no more than fifty degrees. It served to remind that this strange and terrible summer was nearing its end. Not for the first time he wished that Mother Abagail’s God or Muse or whatever It was
had been more in favor of Miami or New Orleans. But that might not have been so great, now that he stopped to think about it. High humidity, lots of rain . . . and lots of bodies.
“They jumped the shit out of me, wanting the Judge for the Law Committee,” Sue said. “We should have expected that.”
“Think people will be suspicious, Nick?” Stu asked.
Nick nodded. “They’ll wonder if he did go west. For real.”
They all considered this as Nick took out his butane match and burned the scrap of paper.
“That’s tough,” Stu said finally. “You really think—?”