Page 134 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

I’m so damn proud of you, son , his dad had said, after showing him the car parked in the driveway of the crummy little apartment they shared . Getting into law school! I always told you how smart you were, didn’t I?

Dad. It’s. Thank you. But you can’t afford this.

Don’t worry about that. I got it on a deal.

That wild look in his eye. The kind he always got when he was doing something ill-advised. Something impulsive.

He handed his son the key, attached to a leather fob bearing two letters.

Who’s SL?

You are, dummy!

Dad. Those aren’t my initials.

Getting concerned now. His strange memory lapses had been getting more and more frequent… but this would be a big one.

Dad laughed. Clapped his son on the shoulders.

I know that! I know my boy’s initials. SL stands for—SuperLawyer.

A barely perceptible pause there. Covering a mistake? Was this the first real sign of the end? Or had he just gotten the key chain on some discount—maybe even a five-fingered one—and he couldn’t pass up a good bargain?

His dad suddenly gets very serious.

But you gotta leave the car here, SuperLawyer. Trust me on this. The car stays here.

He gestures to the odometer. An impossibly long number is displayed there.

Whoa. Lotta miles on this, Dad.

Those aren’t miles, dummy. That’s a second chance. This car’s gotta play its part, but maybe you can play a part, too, one d—

He snaps awake, sweaty and gasping. His mouth tastes lined with dirty cotton. He grimaces.

Fell asleep, he realizes. Staring at that damn key chain.

It’s stuffy and uncomfortable in the Plymouth. The air is stale and thin; he can smell the salty, waxy fast-food wrappers he’d hastily discarded into the passenger-side footwell earlier while driving.

As he reaches over to roll a window down, he realizes he fell asleep with his portfolio on his lap. Not only that, one of his drawings of SuperLawyer is out of its plastic sheeting and a pen is in his hand. He always keeps a pen or two in his pocket, and he must’ve grabbed one while he dozed.

“Nooooo,” he moans, seeing what else he did.

Something is scrawled across his drawing. A number. The same number he’d seen on the odometer in his already-fading dream.

978-1-66805-7551

No memory of writing it. No idea what it means. Furious at himself for defacing a perfectly good drawing.

Those aren’t miles, dummy…

His pulse begins to hammer. Knock.

I don’t like this. I really don’t like this. I object.

The knocking intensifies. Not just in his head. Someone is standing by the car, rapping gently on the side of the door to get his attention.

“Hey!” a voice outside says. “You alive in there or what?”

Her name is Susie and she’s quick to assure him she’s not crazy.

“I just haven’t seen anyone in a while and I… I don’t know. Got impulsive.”

The distaste with which she gives that word makes him relax a little. “I know the feeling.”

He folds the defaced drawing and stashes it into his breast pocket with a strange, muted shame. Gets out of the Plymouth to meet this new stranger.

She’s young. A teenager, really. Still baby fat on her cheeks. Dressed in retro fashion, a peasant blouse and cranberry bell-bottoms. Awkward, but, he’s almost immediately positive, harmless.

He tells her that his car has died—“Too many miles, probably”—and that he’s thinking of walking to the nearby gas station to look for a new one. She asks if she can go with him, and he says yes. They both do a poor job of hiding their relief at no longer being alone.

He’d also packed a couple of duffel bags in the trunk, so they divvy up his supplies to carry with them. He opts to carry the heavier bag, full of cans, and gives her the one with clothes. She seems inordinately touched by the consideration. She must not be used to such things.

“Shame about your car, though,” she says as they close the emptied trunk. “It’s pretty bitchin’.”

He gives the rear bumper a light kick. “It’s a piece of crap. Always hated it. And I was never good with manual transmissions.”

Still, he shoots a final look at the car as they head down Highway 70. So long, SL. So long, Dad’s albatross.

The car stays here. Again, that mysterious commandment in his mind. Not his father’s voice, though; somehow more elemental than that. Lower. Deeper. Wider. Great. The voice of God or something? He chuckles to himself. Yeah, sure. Why not?

Either way, he doesn’t bother arguing with it. Another thing every good lawyer knows: some arguments just aren’t worth your time.

As they walk down Highway 70, they do what all people who’ve been through a cataclysm do: swap horror stories.

He tells her about Phoenix. How the bodies started piling up. The smell of decay in the hot, dry air. The litany of lies and evasions on the TV and the radio. She nods along to the familiar tune.

She’d been living up in Maine. Then, everybody sing along: the bodies started piling up.

And the smell of decay in the hot, humid air.

And the litany of lies and evasions on the TV and the radio.

She and her boyfriend, Bernie—along with their friends Joan, Kelly, Corey, and the rather unpleasantly named Needles—kicked around aimlessly for a while, stirring up shit, listening to Corey’s oversized radio/tape player, enjoying a certain kind of freedom… until they started to die off, too.

One fleeting detail strikes him as curious when she refers to the flu as “A6.” It’s not a designation he’s familiar with, and he almost asks her about it—but then he realizes it’s just yet another nickname for the disease that’s turned the world on its head.

No more or less incomprehensible than “Captain Trips,” he supposes. No more or less useful, either.

He shakes his head with pity as she finishes her story.

“Wow. Experiencing all this as a kid. I just can’t imagine. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not a kid,” she says defiantly, the way a kid would.

“Maine’s a long ways away,” he says, impressed and a little appalled. “Have you just been walking the whole time?”

She gives an uncommitted, unreadable shrug. Before he can ask her a follow-up, she points her chin at the folder he’s holding close to his chest “What’s with that thing? You’re carrying it like we had to carry my dog when she got too old to walk.”

Once again, he’s surprised himself. He hadn’t realized he was still holding on to his notebook.

“Oh, uh. This is nothing, just… Well, I’ve actually never shown it to anyone before, but… What the hell.”

Cheeks flushing, he hands it over to her.

The drawings are impressive enough to stop her in her tracks.

“Whoa,” she says. “You did all these?” He nods. “These are good . Like, seriously good.” She steps off onto the shoulder to continue flipping through. He joins her. “I recognize some of these guys! That’s wild. Is this what you did before the world ended? Drew comics and stuff?”

“Yup.” Then, after a guilty beat: “No. I did corporate finance law. The most boring, useless crap in the world. I don’t know why I just lied.”

She hands his folder back. “Why’d you do boring, useless crap? You totally could’ve been an artist, man.”

“No thanks.” He grimaces. “My dad was… Well, some days he was an actor, some days he was a musician, some days—who knows. He was one of those ‘free spirits.’ Did whatever he wanted. Never planned. Never saved. Which I know might sound fun, but our lives were chaos. It was a horrible way to grow up. So, as soon as I could, I opted for something… stable. And it’s a good thing I did, because I was able to take care of him when he was dying. ”

“The flu?”

“Dementia. Early onset. Couple years ago.”

“Oof. Sorry. Dementia’s rotten. Brains and stuff? Terrifying.”

“Yeah.” Those aren’t my initials, Dad.

“Well, hey.” She offers him an infectious smile. “We’re gonna have to build the world up all over again, so… now you can be whatever you wanted to be! Somebody’s gotta draw the comic books, right? And what are people gonna do, check your references?”

He laughs. “True.” Then, deciding he can trust her with this precious cargo, he tucks the notebook into the duffel of soft goods she’s carrying.

“What’s your name, by the way?” She asks as he zips the duffel back up. “What do I call you on this great adventure?”

“Ezra,” he says without missing a beat. Without feeling the slightest pang for choosing a new identity. “Ezra Lawson.”

“A lawyer named Lawson? That’s like something out of a comic book,” she says.

He smiles.

No cars in the gas station parking lot. But two men are arguing inside the little convenience store.

Ezra and Susie freeze just as they walk in. The sound of other people’s voices is so unexpected, neither knows what to do.

The arguers don’t notice at first—their squabble continues, uninterrupted, on the other side of the store.

Ezra can make words out, though he can’t draw much sense from them.

The two men are frantically looking for…

a door, it sounds like? Their accents are strange.

Vaguely European, but ultimately unplaceable.

It’s the harried, desperate tone of the argument that makes Ezra quickly realize this might not be the safest situation. Before he can reach for the exit—

“Halt!” One of the men shouts, then both come into view, glaring at Ezra and Susie over the few aisles of supplies. Ezra raises his hands. Susie copies.

Each man is ragged. Filthy skin. Unkempt beards. Long hair, matted with dirt and threaded with grays. One is shorter and stouter. The taller man has a palpably subservient manner, despite his wild, raving eyes.

Strangest of all is their clothing. Animal skins. Fine leather straps. Ezra can’t be sure, but it looks like a sword is slung across one shoulder. They look more like refugees from Middle Earth rather than middle Utah.

The world’s already gone insane. Then, like a whisper in his mind: How long was I unconscious?

The shorter man steps into the aisle and what Ezra sees is so unexpected, so utterly absurd, he barely knows how to process it.