Page 14 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

“Shut up,” he muttered, digging his nails into his palms. “Just shut the fuck up.”

Either way, his best buddy was gone, a fact confirmed by his subsequent dash out into the street to check for him.

He walked up and down the street, calling for Bluto at the top of his lungs, until he was hoarse from screaming, until all he could think to do was return to the house and collapse into immobile self-pitying misery all over again.

Goddammit. I’m sorry, Bluto , he thought, tears welling in his eyes. I’m an asshole. A worthless piece of shit. I might as well eat a goddamned bullet.

That same voice cried out yet again, loud enough and close enough now to finally snag Corey’s attention and snap him back to the present moment. Glimpsing a blur of rapid movement in his peripheral vision, he came to an abrupt halt, glancing to his left with an immediate jolt of apprehension.

A girl he recognized was running straight at him.

He knew her in the sense that he saw her around from time to time in the neighborhood, but he didn’t actually know her.

She was pretty, but that wasn’t why she’d made enough of an impression for her face to stick in his memory.

He thought he’d sometimes seen her in the company of a grade A piece of shit named Jared Montgomery, one of a group of older kids from the neighborhood who’d tormented him when he was younger.

That was years ago, back before he even had hair on his balls, but the memory of those times was still a deep wound.

The girl was out of breath as she lurched to a stop a few feet away from him. “Damn, dude…” She inhaled and exhaled a few times, making quite the show of being winded. “Jesus… Are you deaf or something, Corey?”

He frowned. “Um…”

After a moment of befuddlement, it came to him that this girl was either a friend or former friend of his sister. That was the other reason she was familiar. She and Angie were classmates, and he used to see her at their house now and then, but that’d been a while ago. A few years, at least.

She smiled. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

He shrugged. “I fucking hope not. That would hurt.”

She laughed. “You’re funny. I’m Kristen.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, an automatic sense of distrust coloring the way he perceived every aspect of their interaction.

Much of this feeling had to do with her association with his childhood bully, but it was also because he was unaccustomed to girls as hot as her accosting him in what he supposed still marginally qualified as a public place, even if there were precious few other people around to bear witness to the event.

She said, “Dude, come on, relax. I promise I don’t bite. I just thought maybe you’d like to hang with us.”

Corey’s frown deepened.

Who was this us she was talking about?

Then he looked past her and saw two other people, a boy and a girl, lounging nearby on the rusted-out merry-go-round that was part of the park’s shabby playground area.

The guy saw him looking and casually flipped a hand at him, a half-hearted gesture of greeting.

The other girl sat at the edge of the merry-go-round, feet dangling a few inches above the ground as she leaned against one of the corroded rails and stared at the ground with a blank expression.

They were both the approximate age of the girl who’d approached him, a few years his senior, early twenties, maybe.

A torn-open suitcase carton of Budweiser cans sat between them on the rusted metal disk.

Corey looked at Kristen and sighed. “I don’t know. I was just on my way home.”

She snorted. “What for?”

He frowned again. “Because it’s where I fucking live. Where else would I go?”

A strange look crossed her face, one he needed a moment to recognize as something akin to pity. “But nobody’s there.”

He became wary again, taken aback by her proclamation. “Yeah? And how would you know that?”

A crease formed in the middle of her brow, deepening his impression of being pitied. “I know because I talked to Angie early this morning, right before she… you know, took off.”

Now she had his full attention.

“Yeah? She say anything about that?”

Her tone became more solemn as she said, “She told me about your folks dying, that she was leaving town. So, you know, condolences or whatever.” She laughed again, but this time there was a ragged quality to it, like it was one small emotional nudge from becoming a sob.

“We’re all losing our people. I’m all alone, too, now.

” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder, indicating the pair lounging on the merry-go-round. “Except for them, I mean.”

Corey grunted. “Where did you see Angie?”

“At J.J.’s Market. You know, over by the Great Escape. She was loading a bunch of shit into your stepmom’s station wagon. Just going in and out of the store with armloads of shit. The place was open, but no one was around.”

Corey’s confusion intensified. “Are you saying she was robbing the place?”

“Way to assume the worst about your own flesh and blood.” That crease in the middle of her brow became more pronounced.

“And, no, it wasn’t like that. I mean, not really.

Angie was only doing what everyone else has been doing.

The ones still alive, anyway. In case you hadn’t noticed, a lot of the people who used to run things, like probably the owner of J.J.

’s, are dead now. People have just been walking into places and taking whatever they need.

Some places are locked up tight, but others are wide open.

You can’t rightly call it theft when the people you’re quote-unquote ‘stealing’ from aren’t still breathing. ”

Corey figured she had a point. “Yeah, okay. So… did Angie say anything about me?”

She shook her head. “No, not really, dude. I guess it’s kinda shitty how she just took off and left you all alone, huh?”

He grunted. “I guess it kinda is, yeah.”

Kristen reached out and touched his arm. “Seriously. Come hang a while. Have some beers. What else have you got to do?”

For the first time, Corey took full note of the sense of aching need in her voice. Need and desperation. Hearing this made him feel sorry for her, eroding some of his resistance. He nonetheless hesitated a beat longer, craning his head around and seeing no one else in the vicinity.

He met her gaze again. “Where’s Jared?”

She grimaced. “He’s dead. Fucking Captain Trips took him away.”

A part of Corey rejoiced at this news, while another part was aghast at this gut reaction. It made him feel like a ghoul, but he couldn’t help it.

So long, Jared , he thought. Rest in pieces, you fucking asshole .

Now Kristen really was crying, silently, her thin shoulders shaking as tears trickled down her cheeks.

Corey surrendered, feeling bad in light of his private thoughts on Jared’s demise. “Okay. I’ll hang out a while.”

She brightened immediately, smiling as she took his hand and led him over to the merry-go-round.

As soon as they were within range, the lanky, long-haired male half of the lounging couple reached into the open carton and extracted a dripping-wet can of Bud.

He tossed the can at Corey with another casual flip of his hand, sending it sailing through the air on a high, arcing trajectory that forced Corey to jog a few steps to his right and jump to snag it out of the air.

The lanky guy laughed. “He shoots, he scores. Wait, wrong fucking sport. Touchdown. That’s it, right?” He glanced at Corey again, an eyebrow raised as if seeking confirmation that he had it right. “Or whatever the fuck.”

He laughed again.

The guy sounded three sheets to the wind already, and it was only the middle of the afternoon.

He shifted around on the edge of the big disk, leaning the back of his head against another of the rails.

His eyes were red-rimmed and his hair was greasy, as if he hadn’t showered in days.

The other girl hadn’t reacted to Corey’s presence at all yet and was still doing that thousand-yard-stare thing.

She wore faded ripped jeans with large holes at the knees, and her fingers kept pulling at the loose threads of one of them, a nervous habit that was steadily making the hole bigger, unraveling the garment strand by strand.

Corey popped open the beer and foam rushed through the opening. He shook the moisture from his fingers and took a sip. “Thanks.”

The lanky guy smirked, his eyes at half-mast as his head lolled to one side. “No prob.”

Kristen said, “Guys, this is Corey Adams. You probably know his sister, Angie.”

A smile came to the lanky guy’s face. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Angie fucking Adams. She’s one fine mama jama. You guys live over on Phillips Street, yeah?”

Corey nodded. “Yeah.”

Kristen glanced at him, smirking as she said, “And these future members of Alcoholics Anonymous are Sean Hicks and Rebecca Robinson.”

Corey acknowledged this information with a grunt before taking another, larger sip of beer. The names were unfamiliar to him, not that it mattered. He fully expected to never see any of these people again after today.

Sean Hicks laughed. “An alcoholic I may be, but there ain’t no AA anymore, I’m pretty fuckin’ sure. All the drunks are dying off, just like everybody else. Just like us soon, maybe.”

Rebecca’s gaze came away from the ground for the first time. “Just like me, for sure,” she said, sniffling. “My clock’s already ticking.”

Corey was unable to suppress a wince upon glimpsing the large dark smudges under her eyes, a hideously stark contrast to her milk-white skin. Her eyes were red and her face was shiny with perspiration. Mucus leaked steadily from her nostrils, like water trickling out of a slightly open spigot.

Captain Trips. No fucking doubt about it.

Corey felt a sharp tug of bitter sorrow. “I’m sorry.”