Page 112 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

“I think I know why you ain’t dreamin’,” Mal said after a glance to her injured friend.

“We were all in danger so many times. We weathered Captain Trips, we survived the chaos, and we made our pilgrimages to Vegas. But you ”—he shook Amy violently at this—“ you didn’t survive shit .

You ran away from your dead family and hid in a dorm for a year.

You didn’t have to survive half the shit the rest of us had to. We need to fix that.”

“Leave her alone!” Zeke said from the ground.

“You shut up now,” Mal replied lightly. “I have important work to do. Glorious, biblical kinda stuff, you see. He’s out there, waiting to tell us what to do next. He always had a plan and we need to know where we fit in that plan, how we can be of service to it.”

“If you’re so devout, why did you run away?” Zeke asked, his voice hoarse. “If your faith in that grinning freak is so deeply rooted, why did you abandon his great city and his great plan there in the desert?”

Mal let go of Amy’s chin so that he could glare better at Zeke.

“It’s because you’re a coward,” Zeke continued. “Glorious purpose or not, you’re too chickenshit to ever carry something out to completion. You ran away. What makes you think you’d ever be chosen for a purpose?”

Mal smiled and made a gesture, inviting Zeke to continue.

“We’re alone out here. There is no higher power with a plan to guide us,” Zeke said, trying to rise to a standing position. “And this one’s not gonna dream up your new orders because there’s no one to make us dream! There’s no magic this time. It’s just us.”

Mal kicked a booted foot into Zeke’s crotch, sending him backward. Amy screamed and tried to run to keep him from rolling into the water, but hands grabbed her from behind and kept her in place. Mal turned back to her.

“Don’t you listen to him, now,” he said. “You’ve got important experiences to survive.” He glared at Zeke. “You’re lucky you’re needed here, sicko. We ain’t crucified anyone here. Yet.”

The rough hands that were gripping Amy now dragged her down to the creek.

Someone kicked the back of her leg and she fell to her knees at the water’s shallow edge.

She screamed, but was silenced when her face was slammed into the rocks and water.

The pain stunned her enough that she gasped, aspirating the brown water.

They pulled her out of the muck and she coughed until she vomited her meager breakfast.

“Trial by water,” Mal said and winked. “I bet you dream tonight.”

She was confused. What had just happened to her was more in line with what bullies would do to someone after school, not a grand ritual to bring about prophetic dreams. She’d spent so much time avoiding Mal that it hadn’t been clear to her before then that he was galactically stupid.

They left her there on the creek bank, staring at their backs and weeping. She helped Zeke through the woods and back to the house they once shared, a place she hadn’t visited since her effective banishment from their small society. She didn’t dare stay any longer than necessary.

Later, Amy sat on her big rock by the shack and watched the sunlight wink at her through the leaf canopy.

Animal sounds were all around her. Farther away were the sounds of the people talking, shouting, and slamming.

Ruining the sleepy peace of nature. She walked around again for a bit, avoiding the creek and the burn pit.

Soon, she was again perspiring and picking sweat bees off the back of her neck.

When the sun started its slow summer descent to the horizon and took on a copper hue, she heard footsteps approaching and tried to hide her disappointment when she saw that it was a woman who slept in the church with Mal.

She was a severe-looking, greasy person who thrust a pack of peanut butter crackers and a can of Sprite at Amy.

In a ravenous craze, she ate the food quickly and handed the garbage back to the woman, who then jerked her head toward the shack, directing Amy.

“It’s not dark yet,” Amy said. “I’m usually allowed to stay out until dark.”

“Get your ass in there,” the woman said in a surprisingly high-pitched voice.

Knowing how this could play out, Amy obeyed, bowing into the low structure. She sat in her usual corner and pulled her knees to her chest. The woman leaned into the entry and stared hard at her.

“You better hope you dream tonight,” the woman said. “If you don’t, Mal has plans for you.”

They looked at each other in silence before the woman finally stood up, giving Amy the relief of being free of her greasy face. She was locked in once again, left alone with the heat and tight quarters.

Mal has plans for you reigned in her thoughts and she was certain she wasn’t going to be able to sleep, let alone dream.

The what-ifs had their time, so, too, did the fantasies of overcoming her situation and running away with Zeke to find another, saner group to live with.

She thought of how her parents and sister would have dealt with her predicament, how they would advise her to thoroughly think through the problem before reacting.

But that wasn’t helpful. Logic was a useless weapon when belief was held in higher regard than fact.

What was a well-thought argument, based in fact, when put up against stubbornly held beliefs that people used as the basis for their entire existence? Nothing but hot air and frustration.

Sleep did eventually take her, and because of the excitement of the day, she slept deep.

She dreamed of being in school again, unprepared for the test put before her, and her long-dead dog, Filbert, was sitting in the hallway waiting for her.

There was no grinning man with buttons on his jean jacket, no old woman on a porch, as Zeke and a few others had told her about.

Whatever magic had touched all of Amy’s fellow survivors passed her over once more.

When various pains woke her up, and the soft gray light of morning once again touched the cracks of the shed, Amy started to cry. She knew that with the dawn, and yet another night without a prophetic dream, some bad punishment awaited her.

She wasn’t left alone with her fear for long. The noise of many people walking toward the shed put Amy in a panic and she pressed herself against the back panel of still-warm metal.

“Little girl,” Mal sang from the outside. “Little girl, tell me your secrets, tell me your dreams!”

The door opened and one of Mal’s men leaned in and looked at her.

“Get out or be dragged out,” he said simply.

An effective threat. Outside, she was greeted by at least a dozen people. Mal moved past them all and stood before her with a strange humor in his eyes.

“Well, little girl,” he began loudly, speaking to all gathered. “Did you dream of him last night?”

It occurred to her instantly that she could just lie.

Amy could say that she dreamed of a man who told her that Mal needed to shut up about Las Vegas and instead focus on getting the former Hepzibah up and running like before.

But she knew that, because of the secretive and hushed ways the dark man was always talked about, she didn’t know enough about him to craft a decent story.

Such a lie would earn a harsher punishment than the truth, a rule of the world that every kid knew.

She looked at her feet and shook her head. Frustrated noises came from those gathered.

“Another trial it is, then,” Mal said, sounding full of good will. “Come on, little girl.”

He led the group through the woods. Amy went willingly until she saw where they were headed, and her pulse went from a nervous thump to a terrified buzz. Her feet stopped moving and she was lifted and carried the rest of the way to the burn pile.

She was too frightened to make a noise, too scared of becoming another set of charred bones. She froze, but a terrified twelve-year-old girl wouldn’t be able to accomplish much next to a zealous adult and his violent acolytes. There was no choice.

Amy’s feet returned to hard earth in the pit, and she collapsed.

As she tried to rub away the ache in her arms from being roughly carried, Mal knelt in front of her.

He was sweating in the heat, but there was something in his eyes that wasn’t there before.

Something behind the craze that looked a little like fear.

Her eyes darted to the blackened rubble. She couldn’t see the baby skulls from where she was sitting, but she greatly feared her own hollowed-out head sitting among them.

“Yesterday it was water. Fire would be the next logical step, would it not?” Mal asked, standing and pacing around.

“But you’d be wrong, and that’s the point, little girl.

I can’t have you anticipating what’s next and I also can’t accidentally kill you in the course of these mind-opening trials. This one is much simpler.”

Strong arms circled around Amy’s middle, holding her in place as her left arm was extended.

Her wrist was twisted so that her elbow faced up.

Mal produced a black rubber mallet from behind his back.

She closed her eyes, knowing the hammer was swinging down, and cried out in surprise when it hit her.

The pain was immense, but she was petrified to open her eyes and see the damage that had been done to her.

“Look at it,” Mal said softly.

She shook her head.

“ LOOK AT IT! ” he screamed.

There was shouting coming from the direction of her shack. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, but listened as the shouts moved toward the burn pit.

It was Zeke, shrieking in panic. He was calling her name.