Page 115 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

Logs into the stove, some rabbit stew in his belly, days-old bread to sop it up.

Leaf normally didn’t think much about food, but he at least could clock whether he was full or still hungry (and the answer was, usually, still hungry).

But now his mind wandered as he looked out the front window of their little Gunnison Avenue house, the house tucked away close to the old industrial center of town—beyond it, a tree-lined street long-shattered by the urging elbows and knees of roots, the old pipe and supply beyond it, now used as stables.

Most of the houses in this part of town were occupied.

They said that five thousand people lived here now.

And yet, to Leaf, it all felt so strangely fragile.

Like they were on a rickety bridge swaying in the wind.

How easy it would be for it all to fall.

His father’s words haunted him a little—Pop did not seem to entirely trust Mother May I’s intentions.

But Leaf had to. He had to trust. Because the thousands of people here were here in part because of her.

Because of what she helped build, because of how she kept it all standing.

Leaf wanted to help keep it standing, too.

Because if he didn’t, they might all fall into the dark chasm beneath them.

The world fell there once, and he didn’t want it to fall in again. Not in his lifetime.

It was two weeks later, knee-deep into February, when she came to their door.

Mother May I didn’t have to say much. Pop welcomed her in, of course, and she offered the old man a choice cut of the bull elk that Leaf had shot—a good-sized hunk of roast, frozen. Pop asked her as she drank the dandelion tea he offered, “I hope I’ll still have my son to share this with—”

Leaf cut him off sharply. “ Pop! ”

Mother May I put a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

From her to him, a soft smile and a gentle nod: an almost telepathic transmission of It’s fine, I understand.

To the old man, May said, “That is my sincerest hope, Clade. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure your boy comes back.

But I make no promises because life affords us no certainty, only precarity. ”

That was all she had to say on the matter.

What was done was done. Fifteen minutes later, he was packed and ready.

Pop stopped him as he was coming out of his room and put something in his hands. Something tucked in the soft buttery swaddle of deer leather.

“Pop?” he asked.

“Happy birthday.”

“Not my birthday, Pop.”

“Will be soon enough. A month away now? Go on. May is waiting.” These last words he said with a faint vibration of urgency in them. Or was it fear?

Leaf unrolled the leather, and found within a hunting knife tucked in a belt sheath. The knife had as its handle a length of elk antler, pale at the surface, dark in its twisted niches. The blade was six inches and gleamed like lake water.

“Did you…”

Pop shook his head. “I’m no craftsman. I just load the ammo, boy.

But I’ve cultivated a few favors here and there.

Jim Moore, down at the tannery, for the leather.

Ben Haber, he made the blade, you remember him?

Yeah, the one eye. And that girl, Possum, that girl you’re a bit sweet on?

The one from Montrose. She made the, ah, the handle—the hilt. From your elk, you see.”

“Pop, this had to cost you—”

“Like I said, favors. It cost me favors. Favors I’ve done and banked.”

“Thanks, Pop.”

“You need a knife in case the rifle doesn’t work. Rifle’s for long work. Knife will do the work up close. Besides, bullets aren’t everything. Powder isn’t steady anymore.”

Leaf nodded. Then he hugged his father—a rare moment. So rare he couldn’t remember the last time they’d embraced. They had no hate for one another, but the love between them was ill-fitting, off-kilter. As it was, perhaps, between fathers and sons sometimes.

“May’s waiting on you,” Pop said. And she was. Silent and still as the red rock of the canyon lands to the west. “Be good, Leaf. Above all else, be good.”

It was time to go, and so they went.

“The circle and the cross,” May said to the four gathered around, her face wreathed in the ghosts of whiskey warmed in a pot over the fire.

The night sat blue behind her, a great, grave expanse.

They’d already left Grand Junction and were a good ten miles south of town when it was time to set up camp for the night.

May held the whiskey in front of her like a prayer as she continued on, saying: “The circle is the circle, the snake biting down on its own tail. All things, moving in their cycle, birth and life and death and rebirth. The seasons, the rain and snow and sun, day and night and back into day, the feelings in our heart chasing each other—it’s all a cycle.

And good and evil are on that cycle, you see?

Goodness prevails for a time. Righteousness rules.

And then the wheel turns on its axis. Goodness softens.

Weakens. It holds its vigil, but soon it needs a little shut-eye, just a bit , and when it does, the darkness moves closer.

Evil gathers at the edges. Just outside the firelight, waiting for its chance. ”

At that, the logs on the fire popped with a firecracker snap. Leaf about jumped out of his skin. May’s cadence was steady and slow, rhythmic like the rushing of a river— Or the beating of my own heart , he thought. The snap-pop of the logs stirred his heart to a swifter hoofbeat.

May continued: “This is the way it was, the way it is, and always will be. But it is the cross that matters. Not merely the Christ cross, but the intersection, the crossroads. Evil moves one way, and good must cross it. You see? It must run at it, meeting it in the middle. The Devil at the crossroads, yes, but the angel, too. And we will be the angels, the five of us. The angels to meet the Devil.”

Leaf looked around at the three others who were part of this team:

Danny Brightfeather—one of May’s own personal guards, a man like a scarecrow made of rough pemmican.

Story went he was a drunk, once, but managed to thwart someone coming into town to kill May—even zapped on the lightning that was white whiskey at the time.

And he’d been with her ever since, sober as a judge, and loyal as Leaf’s own mule.

Cin Haber—Ben Haber’s wife, not a blacksmith but, rather, a glassblower. She was built like a coke oven. Leaf didn’t know why she was here, exactly—she didn’t strike him as the type for this, but here she was, and looked serious.

And finally, the German—Otto Wampler. Not German at all, apparently, but Swiss?

Leaf didn’t know much about the rest of the world and didn’t care, as none of it would ever be accessible to him, here, in this place and this time.

Wampler was small and sharp, like a human kidney stone.

Both trapper and trader, he wasn’t always in town, often out there, alone.

A bit feral, Leaf had heard, though he’d never encountered the man before.

“Where we headed?” the German asked, his English strong, but his accent apple-crisp. “Besides south. And what are we to do there?”

“Telluride,” May said. “What we are to do there is an act of faith, an act of correction. Evil is reborn and we are to end it.” Her scouts, led by Brightfeather, found that a new group had set up shop in Telluride—dark-hearted souls gathering to protect someone at their center.

A leader they call John Low. “These people, this Cult of Low, they’re gathering power.

Stockpiling ammunition. Killing local folks, and”—here she seemed truly rattled for a moment, and when something rattled May, well, Leaf knew that should have the same effect on him tenfold—“eating them. To take their power, their life-force—the way of old, dark, forgotten spirits. So we will lay waste to this cult by removing John Low from its center. Because if we don’t, I have seen it, the way his poison, his darkness, will flow to us, will corrupt us. ”

They all glanced at one another; their faces painted by the orange light of the fire. Only one who didn’t seem worried was Brightfeather, who held the same look he always had: the empty look of a long, dark, broken highway.

In the distance rose the mad whinny of a screech owl. The horses shifted uncomfortably at the sound, snorting and stomping. Like they knew what was to come. Like they could sense it on the wind.

Morning came and with it, a breakfast of creamed einkorn and sweetened with suikerstroop —beet sugar syrup.

Empurpled the gruel, red as blood. They ate fast and headed out, all of them on horses that were theirs, excepting Leaf, whose horse—a skewbald ride called Gremlin—came from May’s own stable in the old Walmart Supercenter at the middle of town.

The day was bright, with the sun on the snow washing everything out. Made it hard to see, almost. But Brightfeather knew where they were going, and the horses were glad to follow the beast that was his black mustang.

May explained that the trip to Telluride would not be a direct one—though it would’ve been nice and easy to follow the old roads from the Spur Highway, west of town.

But that way was plagued by guards, she said.

So they’d come in from the northeast, where there was no road.

Otto said, “I know the way, yes. South through Ouray. Then onto the trails, past the Camp Bird Mine, around Mendota Peak. Two days ride, maybe three if there’s weather.

We will eat good on the way. Especially with this one’s eye, yes?

” He laughed and reached across the gap between horses to clap Leaf on the shoulder.

Leaf did not know if Otto was mocking him or complimenting him, so he just laughed along nervously and nodded.