Page 100 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

“I remember this man, as old as I,” Khizar said on a rainy day, as they put up a tarp canopy on the mosque’s western wall and strung mosquito netting around their charpais.

August had arrived along with the monsoon season, and soon malaria would be in the air.

Or would it? Could the germ survive without people?

Nasir had never heard of a cat or dog getting malaria.

Hero seemed to be fine as he bounded around them, barking and begging to play fetch.

He and Palwasha had set up residence in one of the four-marla buildings across the road.

The ground floor used to be a bakery with the top floor reserved for the owner’s family, which they now took over, and the smell of yeast and spoiled bread occasionally caught them by surprise, even though they’d cleared away the shelves and cleaned out the storeroom.

“He was from Sargodha, traveling alone,” Khizar continued.

“This was a month or so after the wabaa began.

His name was Allah-Bakhsh. He had a walking stick and on his shoulder a schoolbag in which he carried his things.

He told me he was headed to the Wagah border so he could cross over into India.

Why India, I asked him. He said he was born there.

Spent his childhood in Amritsar. When the subcontinent broke into two, his grandmother brought him to Pakistan on a train in the middle of the night.

“But you take me to Amritsar train station,” he told me, “and I’ll take you straight back home.

The house where I grew up. Where I cussed out Mausi Bashiran’s nephew when he stole my lychees and took off on his bike, laughing, as I yelled and chased him.

Where my veer Nazir was born and died when he was five.

We left him there and came here. How his spirit must have cried and searched for us in those streets.

” Allah-Bakhsh’s eyes were rheumy when he said that.

“And now everyone I know is dead. My children and their children. I buried them all.

“So, I’m going back home. Across the border to my veer, to tell him I’m sorry we left him. To the place that continues to steal into my dreams.”

They prayed isha together. Old Allah-Bakhsh spent the night in the mosque, and in the morning, he was gone without a goodbye.

“I hope he made it home okay. I hope his dream was worth the journey,” Khizar said, gurgling his hookah, as they sat outside the mosque.

A scimitar moon sliced the monsoon clouds in the sky, silvering the fields.

Hero watched fireflies dance and weave through the dark with interest, and Palwasha, who had taken to the dog quickly, caressed his back with her toes.

Nasir had been cleaning and slicing the four partridges he had shot that morning. He dropped the birds in the bucket at his feet.

Dreams , he thought.

“Maulvi sahib,” he said. “Have you had any strange dreams since the wabaa began?”

Khizar pulled hard on his hookah and blew out a trembling ring that dissipated in the wind. “Why do you ask?”

“I’ve had really weird dreams. They started when we were in Islamabad.”

“Oh?”

“I know I’m not the only one. Palwashay has them, too.” He smiled at her. “You talk in your sleep.”

The girl shifted in her chair and trailed one hand across Hero’s fur.

“So, I’m wondering: Have you or anyone you knew had any out-of-the-ordinary dreams?”

“You ask dangerous questions.” Khizar picked up a twig and stirred the coals in the hookah’s cup. “Yes.”

It turned out that, about a month into the wabaa, all three of them (and others who’d passed by) began having similar dreams. They described to each other the strange-looking house in a cornfield in the middle of a strange country, the dusky woman who lived there, and her odd, soothing songs played on a guitar, sung with her face in shadow, always turned away from them.

They couldn’t understand her words, but all three had the feeling that they weren’t meant to. Her songs were for—someplace else.

“Amreeka, I think.” Nasir poured fresh water into the bucket of partridges and added salt into it until it wouldn’t dissolve anymore.

He pushed a ziplocked bag of ice into the water and let it settle on top of the meat.

“Before the wabaa we would have Amreekan guests stay at the hotel sometimes. They spoke like that woman, although her accent seems thicker. She is old , that one.”

“She is,” Palwasha said, watching the darkness of the fields. “Really old. She makes me feel safe, though. I like dreaming of her and her songs. But Nasir-lala, I don’t think she’s calling us . I don’t think we are meant to answer her call.”

Khizar nodded. “I believe our dear Palwasha has it right. I think we’re eavesdropping on an invite extended to others.

” He hesitated, his brow furrowed more than usual.

“When I was a child, I used to like watching wrestling matches in my father’s akhara.

And now I feel as if we’re watching the beginning of a wrestling match and the akhara is being set up, only this particular akhara and its players belong only to that faraway land.

It is not our land. And neither she nor that other are interested in us. ”

At this, Palwasha started and sat up, the jade of her eyes darkening. Her grip on Hero tightened, till the dog whimpered and twisted his neck to give her a watery look.

“I think you know whom I’m speaking of,” Khizar continued.

“I won’t talk about him much, that son of darkness.

He’s worse than any jinn or devil I’ve ever felt.

He’s been invading my dreams for as long as that old woman.

Nightmares that make me clench my jaw so hard some mornings I wake up with a bloody mouth.

He terrifies me, but again I don’t think his evil is meant to haunt us here.

Which is a damned relief, I must tell you. ”

“I’ve dreamed of him only once or twice. Mostly it’s been the old lady.” Nasir tossed some cut lemons into the brine bucket and watched them float. “And, a good thing, isn’t it, that we don’t have to go look for either of them.” He grinned. “Who the fuck would give us visas to visit Amreeka?”

They laughed at that, and Nasir was glad to see Palwasha settle into a serene silence.

Six weeks into their sojourn here the girl had turned fifteen, but her fears and nightmares were older and deeper than his and the mullah’s put together.

He’d seen her glance at shadows and mutter when she thought he wasn’t looking.

Was it a response to loss and terror? She had been utterly alone for nearly four weeks before he found her.

He reached over and pressed the girl’s hand. They smiled at each other, and again there was that feeling. That depth, that veil—as if she said less than she knew. As if the world itself was a mirage only her green gaze could pierce.

Soon the rains petered away, breaking the humidity’s back. October manifested quicker than a beggar’s curse, and suddenly GT Road was filled with people.

They came from every direction, traveling in groups of all sizes.

Solo travelers, ragtag bands, a few groups composed only of children, de novo families banded together for survival.

Lured by the muezzin’s call, they gravitated toward the trio hoping for abode and civilization and instead found a tiny town mosque run by a blind imam.

They offered a few collective prayers, slept a night or two in the sanctum, shared their meals and stories, and moved on.

Some stayed. An apprentice carpenter, two farmer cousins, a car mechanic, a former policeman with a sweetmeat belly and his new road wife, a group of teens and children led by a young schoolteacher named Ujala, who had a strong Punjabi accent and protected her wards fiercely with a long knife in her belt and a shotgun on her shoulder.

“They need lessons not just in survival, but also science, history, art, and empathy,” Ujala told them, smiling at old Khizar. “And who better to team up with me than a Quran teacher? Yes, we will stay with you, Maulvi sahib, if you will have us.”

A community of sorts blossomed around the mosque on GT Road, much like others must have along this grand road in the time of the great emperor Sher Shah and long before him, when the road was an ancient trade route sprouting from the mouth of the Ganges up to the northwestern edges of India and into Afghanistan.

“All roads are special. Magical,” said Ujala to her pupils in the mosque courtyard one morning, “but this road is sacred. It is older than our collective memory. And it is along this road that a new world will be born. No more borders will break its spine. Instead, it will pulse again with life, like an artery through the hearts of all the regions that once comprised India—the land of the Indus.”

At first Nasir was shocked at the teacher’s speculations, her reckless confidence.

This was Pakistan! A Muslim homeland procured with the blood of a million dead, for God’s sake.

But the more he listened to her—the more he watched the slow drift of humanity along the highway and thought what others across the border in Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Bhutan must be suffering, how they must slowly be developing their own communities—the more he began to be convinced that she was right.

Old borders wouldn’t work anymore. They would all return to little towns along roads and rivers.

They’d have a chance to fix things again, and maybe this time they wouldn’t fuck everything up. One could dream.

One morning he and Khizar came upon Palwasha mending a hole in her dupatta.

The weather was perfect, a soft cool breeze blowing from the north, the sky a deep blue striped with egg white.

Under the mosque’s canopy, Palwasha sat on the edge of her charpai stitching, chewing her lips, a faraway look in her eyes.

She stopped and looked up when they approached her.

“Sanga haal de?” Nasir said.