by Stephen King
“Where is he?” she asked.
“Around,” Lloyd said grimly. His face was pale and shiny. His amulet lay in the open V of his shirt. “You’ll wish he wasn’t before long.”
“Lloyd?”
“What.”
“I gave you VD, Lloyd. The bad kind. I hope it rots off.”
He kicked her just below the breastbone, knocking her on her back.
“I hope it rots off, Lloyd.”
“Shut up and get dressed.”
“Get out of here. I don’t dress in front of any man.”
Lloyd kicked her again, this time in the bicep of her right arm. The pain was tremendous and her mouth drew down in a quivering bow but she didn’t cry out.
“You in a little hot water, Lloyd? Sleeping with Mata Hari?” “Come on, Lloyd,” Whitney Horgan said. He saw murder in Lloyd’s eyes and now stepped forward quickly and put a hand on Lloyd’s arm. “We’ll go in the living room. Jenny can watch her get dressed.”
“And what if she decides to jump out the window?’*
“She won’t get the chance,” Jenny said. Her broad face was dead blank.
“She can’t anyway,” Ace High said. “The windows up here are just for show, didn’t you know that? Sometimes big losers at the tables get wanting to take a high dive, and that would be bad publicity for the hotel. So they don’t open.” His eyes fell on Dayna, and they held a touch of compassion. “Now you, babe, you’re a real big loser.”
“Come on, Lloyd,” Whitney said again. “You’re going to do something you’ll be sorry for later if you don’t get out of here.”
“Okay.” They went to the door together, and Lloyd looked back over his shoulder. “He’s going to make it bad for you, you bitch.” “You were the crappiest lover I ever had, Lloyd,” she said sweetly. He tried to lunge at her, but Whitney and Ken DeMott held him back and drew him through the doorway. The double doors closed with a low snicking sound.
“Get dressed, Dayna,” Jenny said.
Dayna stood up, still rubbing the purpling bruise on her arm. “You like people like that?” she asked. “Is that where you’re at?” “You were the one sleeping with Lloyd, not me.” Her face showed an emotion for the first time: angry reproach. “You think it’s nice to come over here and spy on folks? You deserve everything you’re going to get. And sister, you’re going to get a lot.”
“I was sleeping with him for a reason.” She drew on her panties. “And I was spying for a reason.”
“Why don’t you just shut up?”
Dayna turned and looked at Jenny. “What do you think they’re doing here, girl? Why do you think they’re learning to fly those jets out at Indian Springs? Those Shrike missiles, do you think they’re so Flagg can win his girl a Kewpie doll at the county fair?”
Jenny pressed her lips tightly together. “That’s none of my business.”
“Is it none of your business if they use the jets to fly over the Rockies and the missiles to wipe out another community?”
“I hope they do. It’s us or you people, that’s what he says. And I believe him.”
“You don’t believe him. You’re just scared gutless of him.”
“Get dressed, Dayna.”
Dayna pulled on her slacks, buttoned them, zipped them. Then she put her hand to her mouth. “I ... I think I’m going to throw up
. . . God! . . Clutching her long-sleeved blouse in her hand, she turned and ran into the bathroom and locked the door. She made loud retching noises.
“Open the door, Dayna! Open it or I’ll shoot the lock out of it!” “Sick—” She made another loud retching noise. Standing on tiptoe, she felt along the top of the medicine cabinet, thanking God she had left the knife and its spring clip up here, praying for another twenty seconds—
She had the clip. She strapped it on. Now there were other voices in the bedroom.
With her left hand she turned on the water in the basin. “Just a minute, I’m sick, dammit!”
But they weren’t going to give her a minute. Someone dealt the bathroom door a kick and it shuddered in its frame. Dayna clicked the knife home. It lay along her forearm like a deadly arrow. Moving with desperate speed, she yanked the blouse on and buttoned the sleeves. Splashed water on her mouth. Flushed the toilet.
Another kick dealt to the door. Dayna twisted the knob and they burst in, Lloyd looking wild-eyed, Jenny standing behind Ken DeMott and Ace High, her pistol drawn.
“I puked,” Dayna said coldly. “Too bad you couldn’t watch it, huh?”
Lloyd grabbed her by the shoulder and threw her out into the bedroom. “I ought to break your neck, you cunt.”
“Remember your master’s voice,” she said. “All of you, remember your master’s voice.” She buttoned the front of her blouse, sweeping them with her flashing eyes. “He’s your dog-god, isn’t that right? Kiss his ass and you belong to him.”
“You better just shut up,” Whitney said gruffly. “You’re only making it worse for yourself.”
She looked at Jenny, unable to understand how the openly smiling, bawdy day-girl could have changed into this blank-faced night-thing. “Don’t you see that he’s getting ready to start it all over again?” She asked them desperately. “The killing, the shooting ... the plague?” “He’s the biggest and the strongest,” Whitney said with curious gentleness. “He’s going to wipe you people off the face of the earth.” “No more talk,” Lloyd said. “Let’s go.”
They moved to take her arms, but she shook her head. “I’ll walk.”
The casino was deserted except for a number of men with rifles, sitting or standing by the doors. They seemed to find interesting things to look at on the walls, the ceilings, the bare gaming tables, as the elevator doors opened and Lloyd’s party stepped out, herding Dayna along.
She was taken to the gate at the end of the rank of cashiers’ windows. Lloyd opened it with a small key and they stepped through. She was herded quickly through an area that looked like a bank: There were adding machines, wastebaskets full of tapes, jars of rubber bands and paper clips. Computer screens, now gray and blank. Cash drawers ajar. Money had spilled out of some of them and lay on the tile floors.
At the rear of the cashiers’ area, Whitney opened another door and she was led down a carpeted hallway to an empty receptionist’s office. Tastefully decorated. Free-form white desk for a tasteful secretary who had died some months ago. A picture on the wall that looked like a Klee print. A mellow light brown shag rug. The antechamber to the seat of power.
Fear trickled into the hollows of her body like cold water, stiffening her up, making her feel awkward. Lloyd leaned over the desk and flicked the toggle switch there. Dayna saw that he was sweating lightly.
“We have her, R.F.”
She felt hysterical laughter bubbling up inside her and was helpless to stop it—not that she cared. “R.F.! R.F.! Oh, that’s good! Ready when you are, C.B.!” She went off into a gale of giggles, and suddenly Jenny slapped her.
“Shut up!” she hissed. “You don’t know what you’re in for.”
“I know,” Dayna said, looking at her. “You and the rest, you’re the ones who don’t know.”
A voice came out of the intercom, warm and pleased and cheerful. “Very good, Lloyd, thanks. Send her in, please.”
“Alone?”
“Yes indeed.” There was an indulgent chuckle as the intercom cut off. Dayna felt her mouth dry up at the sound of it.
Lloyd turned around. A lot of sweat now, standing out on his forehead in large drops and running down his thin cheeks like tears. “You heard him. Go on.”
She folded her arms below her breasts, keeping the knife turned inward. “Suppose I decline?”
“I’ll drag you in.”
“Look at you, Lloyd. You’re so scared you couldn’t drag a mongrel puppy in there.” She looked at the others. “You’re all scared.
Jenny, you’re practically making in your pants. Not good for your complexion, dear. Or your pants.”
“
Stop it, you filthy sneak,” Jenny whispered.
“I was never scared like that in the Free Zone. I felt good over there. I came over here because I wanted that good feeling to stay on. It was nothing any more political than that. You ought to think it over. Maybe he sells fear because he’s got nothing else to sell.”
“Ma’am,” Whitney said apologetically, “I’d sure like to listen to the rest of your sermon, but the man is waiting. I’m sorry, but you either go through that door on your own or I’ll drag you.”
“You won’t have to do that.”
She forced her feet to get started, and then it was a little easier. She was going to her death; she was quite sure of that. If so, let it be so. She had the knife. For him first, if she could, and then for herself. She turned the knob and stepped through into Flagg’s presence.
The office was large and mostly bare. The desk had been shoved up against the far wall, the executive swivel chair pinned behind it. The pictures were covered with dropcloths. The lights were off.
Across the room, a drape had been pulled back to uncover a window-wall of glass that looked out on the desert. Dayna thought she had never seen such a sterile and uninviting vista in her life. Overhead was a moon like a small, highly polished silver coin. It was nearly full.
Standing there, looking out, was the shape of a man. He continued to look out long after she had entered, indifferently presenting her his back, before he turned. How long does it take a man to turn around? Two, maybe three seconds at the most. But to Dayna it seemed that the dark man went on turning forever, showing more and more of himself, like the very moon he had been watching. She became a child again, struck dumb by the dreadful curiosity of great fear. For a moment she was caught entirely in the web of his attraction, his glamour, and she was sure that when the turn was completed, unknown eons from now, she would be staring into the face of her dreams: a Gothic cowled monk, his hood shaped around total darkness. A negative man with no face. She would see and then go mad.
Then he was looking at her, walking forward, smiling warmly, and her first shocked thought was: Why, he’s my age!
Randy Flagg’s hair was dark, tousled. His face was handsome and ruddy, as if he spent much time out in the desert wind. His features were mobile and sensitive, and his eyes danced with high glee, the eyes of a small child with a momentous and wonderful secret surprise.
“Dayna!” he said. “Hi!”
“H-H-Hello.” She could say no more. She had thought she was prepared for anything, but she hadn’t been prepared for this. Her mind had been knocked, reeling, to the mat. He was smiling at her confusion. Then he spread his hands, as if in apology. He was wearing a faded paisley shirt with a frayed collar, pegged jeans, and a very old pair of cowboy boots with rundown heels.
“What did you expect? A vampire?” His smile broadened, almost demanding that she smile back. “A skin-tumer? What have they been telling you about me?”
“They’re afraid,” she said. “Lloyd was . . . sweating like a pig.” His smile was still demanding an answering smile, and it took all her effort of will to deny him that. She had been kicked out of bed on his orders. Brought here to . . . what? Confess? Tell everything she knew about the Free Zone? She couldn’t believe there was that much he didn’t know.
“Lloyd,” Flagg said. “Lloyd went through a rather bitter experience in Phoenix when the flu was raging. He doesn’t like to talk about it. I rescued him from death and . . His smile grew even more disarming, if that was possible. “A fate worse than death is the popular idiom, I believe. He’s associated me with that experience to a great degree, although his situation was not of my doing. Sit down, dear.”
She looked around doubtfully.
“On the floor. The floor will be fine. We have to talk, and talk truth. Liars sit in chairs, so we’ll eschew them. We’ll sit as though we were friends on opposite sides of a campfire. Sit, girl.” His eyes positively sparkled with suppressed mirth, and his sides seemed to bellows with laughter barely held in. He sat down and crossed his legs and then looked up at her appealingly, his expression seeming to say: You're not going to let me sit all alone on the floor of this ridiculous office, are you?
After a moment’s debate she did sit down. She crossed her legs and put her hands lightly on her knees. She could feel the comforting weight of the knife in its spring clip.
“You were sent over here to spy out the land, dear,” he said. “Is that an accurate description of the situation?”
“Yes.” There was no use denying it.
“And you know what usually befalls spies in time of war?”
“Yes.”
His smile broadened like sunshine. “Then isn’t it lucky we’re not at war, your people and mine?”
She only looked at him.
“But we’re not, you know,” he said with quiet sincerity.
“But . . . you . . A thousand confused thoughts spun in her head. Indian Springs. The Shrikes. Trashcan Man with his defoliant and his Zippos. And that lawyer, Eric Strellerton. Wandering in the Mojave with his brains burned out.
All he did was look at him.
“Have we attacked your Free Zone, so called? Made any warlike move at all against you over there?”
“No . . . but—”
“And have you attacked us?”
“Of course not!”
“No. And we have no plans in that direction. Look!” He suddenly held up his right hand and curled it into a tube. Looking through it, she could see the desert beyond the window-wall.
“Nevada. Arizona. Some of us are in California and Oregon. A smattering in Washington, around the Seattle area. A fistful each in Idaho and New Mexico. We’re too scattered to even think about taking a census for a year or more. We’re not as many as your people, and we’re not all together. We’re much more vulnerable than your Zone. The Free Zone is like a highly organized hive or commune. We are nothing but a confederacy, with me as the titular head. There’s room for both of us. There will still be room for both of us in 2180. That’s if the babies live, something we won’t know about for some months. If they do, and humanity continues, let our grandfathers fight it out, if they have a bone to pick. Or their grandfathers. But what in God’s name do we have to fight about?”
“Nothing,” she muttered. She felt dazed. And something else . . . was it hope? She was looking into his eyes. She could not seem to tear her gaze away, and she didn’t want to. She wasn’t going mad. He wasn’t driving her mad at all. He was ... a very reasonable man.
“There are no economic reasons for us to fight, no technological ones either. Our politics are a bit different, but that is a very minor thing, with the Rockies between us . . .”
He’s hypnotizing me!
With a huge effort she dragged her eyes away from his and looked out over his shoulder at the moon. Flagg’s smile faded a bit, and a shadow of irritation seemed to cross his features. Or had she imagined it? When she looked back (more warily this time), he was smiling gently at her again.
“You had the Judge killed,” she said harshly. “You want something from me, and when you get it, you’ll have me killed, too.”
He looked at her patiently. “There were pickets all along the Idaho-Oregon border, and they were looking for Judge Farris, but not to kill him. Their orders were to bring him to me. I was in Portland until yesterday. I wanted to talk to him as I’m now talking to you, dear: calmly, reasonably, and sanely. Two of my pickets spotted him in Copperfield, Oregon. He came out shooting, mortally wounding one of my men and killing the other outright. The wounded man killed the Judge before he himself died. I’m sorry about the way it came out. More sorry than you can know or understand.” His eyes darkened, and about that she believed him . . . and felt that coldness again.
“That’s not the way they tell it here.”
“Believe them or believe me, dear. But remember I give them their orders.”
“If you don’t mean war, why the jets? And all the other stuff that’s go
ing on out at Indian Springs?”
“Defensive measures,” he said promptly. “We’re doing similar things at Searles Lake in California, and at Edwards Air Force Base. There’s another group at the atomic reactor on Yakima Ridge in Washington. Your folks will be doing the same thing ... if they’re not already.”
Dayna shook her head, very slowly. “When I left the Zone, they were still trying to get the electric lights working again.”
“And I’d be happy to send them two or three technicians, except I happen to know that your Brad Kitchner already has things going nicely. They had a brief outage yesterday, but he solved the problem very quickly. It was a power overload out on Arapahoe.”
“How do you know all that?”
“Oh, I have my ways,” Flagg said genially. “The old woman came back, by the way. Sweet old woman.”
“Mother Abagail?”
“Yes.” His eyes were distant and murky; sad, perhaps. “She’s dead. A pity. I really had hoped to meet her in person.”
“Dead? Mother Abagail is dead?”
The murky look cleared, and he smiled at her. “Does that really surprise you so much?”
“No. But it surprises me that you know. And it surprises me that she came back.”
“She came back to die.”
“Did she say anything?”
For just a moment Flagg’s mask of genial composure slipped, showing black and angry bafflement.
“No,” he said. “I thought she might . . . might speak. But she died in a coma.”
“Are you sure?”
His smile reappeared, as radiant as the summer sun burning off ground-fog. “Let’s talk of more pleasant things, such as your return to the Zone. I’m sure you’d rather be there than here. I have something for you to take back.” He reached into his shirt, removed a chamois bag, and took three service station maps from it. He handed them to Dayna, who looked at them with growing bewilderment. They showed the seven western states. Certain areas were shaded in red. The hand-lettered key at the bottom of each map identified them as the areas where population had again begun to spring up.
“You want me to take these?”
“Yes. As a gesture of good faith and friendship. And when you get back, I want you to tell them this: that Flagg means them no harm, and Flagg’s people mean them no harm. Tell them not to send any more spies. If they want to send people over here, have them call it a diplomatic mission ... or exchange students ... or any damn thing. But have them come openly. Will you tell them that?”