Page 111 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

He explained to her then for the very first time how the members of their current group all decided, based on dreams, to go to Las Vegas and follow the man with no face, with crow feathers in his hair.

He said that there were others who went to Colorado because they wanted to follow the woman in the corn.

Zeke hadn’t followed either—he’d stayed in Los Angeles with a small group of people, but they had been recruited by the man with no face to do technical work.

When the work was done, they were ordered to go to Las Vegas, but Zeke defected.

“I wanted to go to Scottsdale, Arizona,” he said.

“I had it in my head to get me a boyfriend and live in one of those fancy houses out there. But it’s hot as hell in Arizona, and without power and air-conditioning, it wasn’t livable.

I then ran into Mal and his group. They were all on the run, out of Vegas, and we decided to head east, form our own little town. ”

“Do you still dream of the man and woman?”

“The dreams stopped before we all met. I think they stopped for all of us. When the dreams stopped, any sense of picking sides sort of went away.”

“So what? What did the dreams mean?” It sounded to her like scared people were dreaming up heroes.

Zeke sighed loudly and shrugged. “Hell if I know, kid. It felt like a lot more than it ended up turning out to be. I mean, they were real, or at least everyone says they were. I never saw the woman, and I only ever saw the man from far away, but from what everyone here tells me… everyone but Mal, anyway… they say I’m better off not having gotten too close to him. ”

“Why?”

“He was scary,” Zeke answered. He said it quickly and then seemed to regret putting that thought into the air. “It doesn’t matter anymore. That part is over. Now we figure out how to survive. That’s real. Dreams aren’t.”

Amy didn’t think too much on that conversation after that.

She kept up with her daily chores, going to the houses and looking for various items. She would turn her findings in to Zeke, who would turn them over to Mal, who distributed the items from his residence in the Baptist church constituting the center of town.

It was a simple white building with an austere, wide, single steeple.

The very picture of a country church. He lived there with several others—people who, like Mal, seemed to regret leaving Las Vegas when they did.

They stayed together, talking always of the man who went by the name Flagg—the man they dreamed of and then found in the desert.

Everybody else shared the smattering of houses that surrounded that understood center.

Amy shared a house with Zeke and an elderly man named Carter, who spent most of his time in a tufted recliner by the front window.

She sat with Carter one day listening to him sing, something he sometimes did. It made her long for the time before old tube neck, when she would go to church with her grandma and sing old hymns like Carter did.

“They’re talkin’ about you, ya know,” he said to her after his hymn ended.

“They are? ’Bout what?”

“You didn’t dream when the plague was killin’ everybody,” he answered. He reached out and put his hand on her arm. “Mal’s talkin’ bad about you.”

She felt her stomach bottom out. She’d always preferred that Mal not notice her at all, but him talking about her in a bad way made Amy feel a fear that she hadn’t been face-to-face with since the last troublemaker at Alderson Broaddus had disappeared.

“Bad how?”

Carter removed his hand and turned back to the window.

“I don’t listen much to him. That man’s whole head turned sour.

But he’s got people who listen to him, who look on him like they did that faceless man in the desert.

Just be careful, especially when you’re out. Try not to be alone, you hear me?”

She nodded and licked her lips, finding her mouth dry and foul-tasting.

“Zeke’s been speakin’ on yer behalf,” Carter continued. “You gotta real good friend in him. You remember that.”

Later, when Zeke got home, looking haggard and wanting quiet, she pushed herself to knock lightly on his bedroom door.

“What is it?” his voice came from the other side. “I’m not good company right now.”

“Carter told me that Mal is talking about me,” she said. “What’s going on?”

He opened the door and waved her in. “What have you heard?”

“Carter said Mal heard about me not dreaming of the old woman or the man in the desert. Why is he all worked up about it?”

“Eh, Mal doesn’t make any sense, but the problem with him is that he’s convinced a lot of other people that he makes perfect sense.

It’s a shame that the whole fucking world died of the flu and we ended up in a community full of people so prone to suggestion and hysteria.

” Zeke’s tone was harsh, furious, and she was taken aback.

He must have seen that on her face because his eyes softened.

“I told someone in passing, like gossip, that you didn’t dream. That was all. And it got to Mal and now he’s saying some crazy stuff. I want you to know that I am very sorry for running my mouth like that and I never thought it would turn into something.”

“I didn’t think it was a big deal, either,” she said. “What’s it turning into? What’s the something?”

“You don’t need to hear it…”

“Yes, I do,” Amy asserted. “Yes, I fucking do, and you know it’s not fair to keep this from me. I deserve to know what he’s saying about me.”

“Okay. He thinks you’re a sign or something. No… maybe sign isn’t the best word. He thinks you’re like an oracle, and that you’ll be the answer to all of their questions regarding Flagg and Las Vegas.”

“Huh?”

Zeke rubbed a hand over his forehead and seemed to be thinking of how to explain the situation to her.

“He’s convinced that because you didn’t dream like the rest of us, that you’ll be the one to receive new dreams, new orders. He thinks that Flagg will tap you to be the new conduit for his plans.”

She looked into her friend’s face in the low candlelight, longing for his features to give sense to what he’d just said. He’d tried to simplify it for her, but while the individual words connected, it was ultimately a jumble of nonsense that she couldn’t parse to save her life.

But there was no time to ask Zeke to try and explain it again.

At that moment, their front door crashed open, and many heavy footsteps entered their peaceful home and several people flooded into Zeke’s bedroom.

He shouted for them to leave, but he was shoved back onto his bed and held down by one of Mal’s larger followers, a rough and greasy fellow they called Tinker.

Mal, who was the shortest of the assembled mob, strode through the crowded bodies and looked around casually.

His shaved head gleamed in the weak light.

“We’re here to fetch you, little girl,” Mal said, standing over her.

“Why?” was all Amy could get out.

“We need to get you away. Solitude and quiet is what you need. I know it, I just know it. I’ve still got a line to the big man, you know. I feel it,” Mal said, gesturing wildly.

“I don’t want to live in that church with you,” she said, scooting along the carpet. Amy wanted nothing more than to get away from his crazed gaze and heavy breathing.

Mal laughed and looked at those around him to make sure they were laughing, too. After some hesitation, they all joined him with wide, open mouths.

“Little girl, you’re getting special accommodations, I promise you that!”

She was dragged out of her cozy, safe home, the first she’d known since leaving her dead parents, and then taken to the metal shack in the woods.

Mal ordered that she was to sleep alone there at night so that her mind would be clear enough to receive the dreams needed to tell everyone what the next step in the plan would be.

She was to have little to no interaction with the others, spending her days in meditative solitude.

That had been four long months ago, when the nights were still cold enough to sink an ache in her bones that kept sleep elusive. Now it was summer, and the heat and humidity kept Amy sticky with sweat and covered in bugs. But at least sleep came to her most nights.

She took one last look at the blackened bones in the burn pile, a permanent example of Mal’s paranoia, and made her way to the creek so that she could wash the stink off of her.

The creek wasn’t deep enough for her to submerge completely, but she could sit on her rump and splash water on her head and face. She was lost in the moment, enjoying the sensation, her worries washing off along with her rancid sweat.

Something splashed in the water next to Amy, startling her out of her reverie. Zeke was on the bank, waving wildly, but not speaking. Curious, she stood and started to make her way to her friend, but shouts from the trees made her pause.

Mal emerged from the dense woods and pointed a finger at her.

“Get your ass outta that water and come here!” he screamed.

Terror gripped her, but Amy obeyed, catching Zeke’s stricken face as she passed him. Mal grabbed her roughly under her chin, jerked her face up to his, and his reddened eyes bored into hers.

“Why won’t you dream?” he growled in her face. “Why ain’t you on the frequency?”

She tried to look to Zeke for guidance, but Mal jerked her chin again. She whimpered.

“You’re the only one,” Mal said quietly. “All of us, we all dreamed of one or both of ’em, and you never did. It has to mean something—it has to.”

“Mal, she’s just a kid,” Zeke began, stepping closer to her. “Maybe the kids just didn’t dream—”

One of Mal’s followers kicked Zeke, hitting him in the side of his knee. Zeke cried out and fell to the root-turned ground.