Page 131 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

They had their suspicions; could feel our eyes on their backs.

Accidentally, they were killing our kind.

Leaving virus on supplies, tainting our water, our air.

Out of self-preservation, we made ourselves known.

They answered swiftly. As if we were the threat, they fenced us in.

We agreed to live within these encampments.

In return, they promised that if wild and lawless immune marauders broke into our assigned land, they’d send their army to defend us.

More importantly (because so far, invaders had not come), they’d simply stay away.

We’d live. It would be in a cage, but we’d live.

In word, they keep this truce. In deed, they ignore it. Every few years, a well-meaning student of science or a self-made anthropologist infringes. One of our own gets sick and passes that sickness like a line of fallen dominoes. We’re too tempting. Too great a fascination.

Their arrogance is our annihilation.

We hope for better times. For a day when the curse against us is lifted and we walk again by day.

Another dusk, but this one’s cloudy and without color.

I’m ready with my pack and the GoodWill offerings for the month.

Ferris meets me at the top of Mulholland.

We’re not a ceremonial tribe; no one sees us off, though I do see a blue ribbon tied around a tree, its presence new. An anonymous good journey.

It’ll take us two nights to reach the altar.

“You came,” he says with surprise.

“You’re my partner,” I answer.

Ferris nods with uncertainty. He’s not able to meet my eyes. How does a person so sensitive survive this world? He’s a throwback from a different time. It occurs to me that it’s not his incompetence that provokes the rest of us, but his tenderness. “I release you,” he says.

“I know I don’t have to come,” I say, but this is a lie.

It’s not my nature to leave people, especially fragile people.

Look what happened to Maple, and she wasn’t even fragile.

She was tough. She sneaked out on a supply run without telling any of us.

Just a note on her sleep sack. I have that note. I keep it in my sleep sack now.

As if reading my mind, Ferris says, “I’ll be fine.”

“Stop talking,” I say.

I walk. He follows. There are no more words for at least two miles.

The Chosen can feed themselves better than we ever could.

As a result, our offerings have changed over the years.

We knit baskets from palm fronds. We make pottery.

These are relatively light and easy to carry.

We leave them on altars at the walls of their town in Malibu.

Sometimes they leave notes for us or contact us over the radio.

They ask for more color in their bowls, which sell for high prices in their towns.

They offer the penicillin from their laboratory, but we can no longer accept their gifts.

We can’t trust them to be careful enough to wipe away the infection.

Two cars pass us on our first night. We hide both times.

I realize the difference between us. My eyes have gotten keen at discerning movement in the dark; the distinctions between wind and a burrowing bird; a coyote and a deer.

It’s not just the sounds, but the absence of those sounds, the vibrations you anticipate, the different stillnesses that indicate prey or predator.

Ferris doesn’t notice these things.

“You have bad eyes,” I say. “That’s why you trip. That’s why you’re so loud.”

“Do I?” he asks, as if he’s never considered it.

“Do you see that? What does it say?” I ask, pointing at a distant green road sign, whose white prismatic beads glow.

“You can read that?” he asks.

“It says Betty Deering Trail. Anybody could read that. The letters are huge.”

“Huh,” he says.

“But you can read?”

He laughs softly. “Yeah. I can’t do much. But I can read.”

“You should pick a different job than hunting and gathering. You should do wash or camp repair. You’re smart, so you could do info relay or radio. Those would work.”

He nods, but doesn’t say more. He’s got a hard jawline. His brow is thick and his eyes deep set. “Your foot’s bothering you,” he says.

“What?”

“Your foot. You’re favoring your left leg.”

“Oh. Yeah. My shoes are failing.”

“We should stop.”

I slow down. It hadn’t occurred to me that he was capable of noticing and adhering to such a practicality. But he’s right. I’ve got a blister brewing and it’ll only get worse. It’s been eight miles. Now is as good a time as any to stop for a meal.

We’ve both packed the same thing: jerky and oranges.

We chew quietly. He doesn’t try to sit next to me this time.

Though it’s dark, the clouds have lifted.

The sky is open and cavernous. Compared to this, our hillside feels closed and trapped.

Our assigned territory would be barren, if not for the underground river flowing beneath the mountains.

It’s got no resources and is too steep to settle.

No copper or old stores worth looting. The Chosen don’t want it, which is why we have it.

Because there’s been so much sickness, our birth rate is almost zero.

It’s not just that we don’t want to bring a new cursed generation into the world.

It’s that we’ve lost the occasions for physical contact.

We don’t know how to do it properly, how not to be frightened of saliva and semen and blood.

In my twenty-five years, I’ve made this GoodWill run to Malibu a dozen times. Every time, when I get to the closed gates, I wish for a mad second that they’ll open. I’d walk inside and be one of the Chosen. It’s a kind of self-hate, but I can’t stop it. I don’t want to be what I am.

As I cut a hole into my moleskin, I feel his eyes on me. Watching and curious. I find myself talking, just to break the uncomfortable spell. “Who was your partner before me?”

Ferris waits until he’s done chewing to talk. He’s got old world manners. “Rotates. I’ve never had a consistent one.”

“Why?”

“You’ll have to ask them,” he says, and it’s an answer I respect. He doesn’t bad-mouth anybody. Now that I think about it, he’s had bad luck. I remember that his last partner was Mattie, who hates everybody. And his partner before that was Grim. Grim was genuinely crazy. Shot himself in the head.

I should have stopped sooner or borrowed better shoes. The blister is red and swollen and the moleskin won’t prevent infection.

I feel something before I see it in my peripheral vision. It’s Ferris, holding out a tube of antibiotic ointment. “For your foot.”

I take it and our fingers touch, charged. I can’t remember the last time I touched anyone. Not Maple. The last person I touched was my mom.

“You’ve been leaving territory?”

He nods. “I’m careful. You won’t get sick.”

He watches with preacher eyes as I apply the stuff, rubbing it into the swell.

We make it another eight miles before the dawn, then spend the day under trees on the side of the road, each taking watch. Closer to the ocean, the brush is thicker, the trees bigger.

The way we sleep isn’t so different from back home.

Though there are small houses cut into the granite that we could occupy, our people have been nomadic for so long that none of us wants a ceiling instead of a sky.

What’s more, houses confine the air, making it stagnant. Infection spreads in stagnant air.

By night, my foot is worse. I limp and try to hide it. Ferris says nothing, though his gait slows. Without words, he offers to carry my pack by tugging on it. I refuse, but tell him, “Thanks.”

The ocean comes up on us like a surprise: Malibu.

We see the lights, smell remnants of snuffed fires that recently cooked rabbit and deer.

Dotting the valley below are lonely yellow glints in lonely bedrooms—the insomniacs.

They live in houses here. They have a radio station and gas stations and cars. The Chosen have everything.

Ahead, a few hundred feet before the gate, the altar.

Though this entrance is only for us, is supposed to stay clear of immune, it’s still important to be careful.

We won’t touch anything. We’re quiet, so the curious don’t hear us and investigate.

We leave our offerings, each of us lightening our packs.

I’m used to doing this with Maple, so I kneel down as if to pray, like she used to.

Oh Lord, forgive us. Oh Lord, choose us, so we can be free , she used to say.

Ferris stays standing and I find I don’t want to say Maple’s words. They don’t belong to me.

“It’s not God who exiled us,” he says. “It’s just bad luck. We don’t deserve this.”

He’s the only person I’ve ever heard express this. We’re all so tired, the rest of us, that it’s not a thought worth having. What does it matter whether we deserve this? It’s happening and there’s nothing we can do.

“If they’re God’s people, then God is a monster. They have everything. We have nothing,” he says.

“They say they’re working on a cure for us,” I answer, but I’m not sure I believe this.

“If they wanted to help us, they’d have given us a city. A hospital. They’d have cleared it out for us. They don’t want to help. They don’t care.” He’s angry. I wouldn’t have guessed awkward Ferris Landing had it in him to be angry.

“Don’t talk like that. You’ll cut yourself against it. There’s nothing we can do.”

He lowers his head and I have the feeling people have said this to him before: Stop talking. Stop thinking. I can’t handle what you’re saying. I don’t like that I’m now one of those people.

I stand up again. The sky is dim and thick. Beads of rain fall light at first, and then heavy.

Wet, we walk back. I can’t hide my limp anymore. The pain is a line of heat that stretches all the way to my knee. He puts his arm around me and I lean my weight. It’s strange at first. Unpleasant. I think of sickness and coughing and blood. But I need the help, so after a while, I don’t mind it.