Page 113 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

“Zeke! We’re at the dump!” she cried out.

The hands holding her tightened painfully and her eyes popped open without her thinking.

With Mal’s attention on the woods behind her, Amy looked at her arm very much on instinct and against her will.

The pain that she was working hard to ignore slammed to the fore and sent a wail of shocked agony out of her.

The inside of her elbow was bulged out, the skin split open and bleeding.

She couldn’t tell if splintered bone was peeking through the skin—all she saw was blood and a very wrong angle.

“My elbow,” she said through tears. “It’s backwards.”

Zeke’s bellowing was very close and she jerked her body in a lackluster attempt to break free of the grip holding her. It didn’t work.

“Let her go, goddamn it!” Zeke said, panting.

“Go on,” Mal said to the people restraining her. “We’ve done what we needed to do.”

Amy was released and pushed forward. Because of having only one functioning arm, the left side of her head smashed into the garbage pile.

Something stabbed her cheek and she squealed in pain and fright.

There was a scuffle going on around her and Zeke was shouting, but Amy found that all she could focus on was pain.

She struggled to get her face out of the refuse, unable to put any weight on her injured arm, and she eventually got back to a seated position and pulled an indistinguishable sliver of metal, scaled with rust, out of her cheek.

Her right hand was slicked in blood and she sat there, all good sense gone, and stared at the shock of bright red until Zeke knelt before her and jerked her chin so that she was meeting his gaze.

“Come on,” he said, his tone demanding no back talk.

He helped her to her feet and led her through the woods. Despite their combined injuries, they made their way past her shack and to the creek, where they both sat gingerly by the shallow brown water.

“Let me see,” Zeke said, leaning over her to get a look at her destroyed elbow. He hissed through his teeth when he saw it. She was still crying, trying to keep from openly bawling. He looked away from her, at the bubbling, serene water before them.

“There’s so much you haven’t experienced, and won’t experience in this new, horrible world.

I’m sorry about that, kid. No high school graduation, no romance.

I didn’t have my first real love until I was in college.

My parents didn’t know, not ever. I met him at a movie night the theater department was hosting.

” He was trying to take her mind off the pain.

Amy stopped crying and listened, the pain still bright and sharp.

Zeke, she noticed, was playing with Mal’s rubber mallet.

She wondered if he’d been able to land a hit on any of the jerks who’d been dragging her through the woods. Maybe Mal himself. Good.

“He was an English major. He had dreams of moving to England and renting some old cottage and writing high-minded critiques of classical works of literature. I loved him. I’m glad I got to experience that.”

“Your family didn’t—”

“It’s not really important,” he interrupted. “Not now, not then. The world was a really fucking cruel place before people started coughing to death. Secrets were sometimes all we had to protect us from that cruelty.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately these days,” Zeke continued. “Wondering if maybe he survived, too, and maybe we’d meet again. But I know that’s not likely. He died of it, too—what did you call it around here?”

“Tube neck.”

“Tube neck,” he agreed. “Yeah, I’m gonna say he definitely didn’t survive.

And you know what? The more we linger here, the more I see and experience, I think the lucky ones went that summer.

A horrible way to go, but they didn’t witness how truly awful we as a species are to each other.

They didn’t have to try to make sense of a world where babies died awful, strangling deaths in their cribs, but crooked, terrible people breathed free air and decided against self-improvement.

” A soft sob escaped him, startling Amy.

“Flaggston is a failure,” he said. “There have been fights at the church between Mal’s followers and everybody else.

They can’t figure out how to get the power back on, and without power, we can’t work the well pumps for water.

We’re running out of supplies, and we’re not getting along like the big, happy family we thought we were. ”

“Geez,” she said, thinking back to Mal’s face earlier. She’d thought she saw fear, but she knew now it was desperation in his crazed gaze.

“They’ve started killing people, you know,” Zeke said, standing up. “They beat three people to death in the church because they were trying to leave, to move on. They…” Another sob. “They killed Carter in his chair. Said it was one less useless mouth to feed.”

Amy put her one good hand to her mouth and began crying again. The world would never again know the sweet sound of Carter, a man the group had found in Tennessee, singing his old hymns. Zeke started pacing along the water’s edge, slapping the palm of his hand with the rubber mallet.

“I don’t know how this would have worked out under better circumstances. I do know that I’m tired of it. The whole thing. Remember how we said maybe one day we’d move on and meet up with people more like us? More sane people?”

Amy nodded, but she flinched when she heard shouting. Turning toward the sound, she saw black smoke billowing above the trees. Something in town was on fire.

“The church won’t be there much longer,” Zeke said.

“I won’t get the last word, but I had my say nonetheless.

” The shouting continued, and then she heard screaming, sounds of fear, pain, and rage.

She wondered how much longer they’d be alone by the creek.

Fresh panic quickened her pulse and she felt very weak.

Others would come, and she had a terrifying image come to mind of her and Zeke tied to crosses overlooking the interstate.

They had enjoyed quiet, but that was definitely over now.

He gripped her shoulder hard, an assuring squeeze bordering on pain.

“Just know that I think you’re a good one,” he said. “And that I’m not going to let Mal near you ever again. Fuck dreams, fuck divine orders. We’re our own people and I’m going to protect you.”

She nodded, trying to hide the hiccups from crying so much. She was thankful for Zeke. Without him, she would have eventually let herself die in her sister’s dorm room. He was her family now, and she trusted him.

The shouts were getting closer. Zeke was sobbing behind her.

“Now close your eyes, kid. Close them. We’ll be done soon.”