Page 15 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

She sneered. “Why the fuck are you sorry? It doesn’t matter.

I’m not mad about it. Why would I want to stick around?

The world’s gone to shit and this might be my last halfway okay day.

So I’m gonna keep drinking and stay fuckin’ wasted as long as I can, and when I bite it, you all can just toss my ass in a dumpster and have a drink in my honor. ”

Her brittle tone belied the toughness of her words. She was trying hard to make herself believe she didn’t care, but she was clearly terrified.

Corey took a much larger gulp of beer.

He already wanted to be far away from these people. They weren’t his friends. Their problems weren’t his problems. He felt bad for this girl, but only in the way he’d feel reflexively for anyone on the cusp of enduring the worst stages of the superflu.

Kristen made a sound of profound annoyance. “Stop talking like that, bitch.”

Rebecca looked at her. “Like what?”

Kristen tossed up her hands, a frustrated gesture. “Like you’ve already given up. You might still just have a regular-ass cold. You don’t know. Not yet.”

Rebecca snorted and shook her head, but said nothing.

Corey had the sense they’d already had this same argument many times.

A silence of more than a minute elapsed.

Sean crushed his latest empty and belched as he tossed the can to the ground. “Guess I’m never gonna hear that new Guns N’ fuckin’ Roses album now. Man, I was so looking forward to that.”

He sang a few off-key lines from “Civil War,” a song the band had debuted on a televised live performance at Farm Aid a few months earlier.

Corey said nothing, but that was something he’d been hotly anticipating prior to the plague as well.

He’d watched his VHS recording of the Farm Aid performance times beyond counting.

What Rebecca had said was the truest thing he’d heard anybody say in a while.

The world had gone to shit. They weren’t just losing people.

They were losing all the things that had enriched everyone’s lives and made existence less tedious.

There’d never be any new books, movies, video games, or metal albums. All of which were things some might view as trivial compared to the massive loss of life, but Corey didn’t think they were trivial at all.

Even if he never contracted the superflu, the world would be a gray, dismal place.

Would it even be worth surviving in a place like that?

Another awkward silence stretched out.

Kristen grabbed him by the arm and started tugging him away from the merry-go-round. “Come with me.”

He frowned as he stumbled along with her. “Where are we going?”

She indicated a nearby line of trees with a tilt of her chin. “Right there. In the woods. I thought maybe we could fool around a little, and… maybe… who knows…”

She shrugged, seeming a little shy for the first time.

Corey laughed. “Already? You don’t want to get to know me first? Maybe see a movie, go on a date?”

She snorted. “Is that a joke? Look, fuck all that getting-to-know-you shit. Waste of time. Rebecca was right about one thing. The clock is ticking, probably for all of us. I think you’re cute and I want to feel something good while I still can. Wait. Have you ever been with a girl before?”

“Sure.”

This wasn’t a lie, but his experience in that area was limited. He hoped he wouldn’t be asked to elaborate, because the true details of his one and only sexual experience were embarrassing and he didn’t want to spin a false story just to seem cool. Fortunately, she didn’t press him on the matter.

They were almost to the trees when Corey heard something that made him come to a sudden stop.

He turned away from Kristen and stared off into the distance, his gaze oriented in a direction that would eventually take him to his house if he started walking and continued in a straight line for about a mile.

Kristen gripped him by a shoulder and tried turning him toward her, but he resisted, shrugging her hand off and moving a few steps away from her.

The entirety of his attention was still focused in the same direction, ears straining as he listened intently for even the faintest repetition of what he’d heard.

Only, now he was wondering if he’d truly heard it at all.

It might only have been a sadistic trick of his subconscious mind, an auditory hallucination conjured from gray, unknowable depths by the sheer magnitude of his grief and regret, because all he could hear now were Rebecca’s sniffles and the muted rustling of the breeze.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Kristen’s voice evoked exasperation. The previously soft and pleasing contours of her face took on a hard, chiseled look, betraying a capacity for severe anger. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you like me?”

Corey didn’t know if he liked her, but he was attracted to her.

He nonetheless would not allow base desire to sway his attention until he was certain he’d been wrong about what he thought he’d heard.

He remained immobile and unresponsive a little longer, his attention still fixed on the same open expanse of the park’s grounds.

From his current vantage point, he saw only a wide swath of green grass ringed by more trees.

He’d need to walk a significant distance and go over a couple of hills before catching a glimpse of the street and houses beyond the other side of the park.

Kristen grabbed hold of his arm again, turning him toward her more forcefully this time. “Hey, look at me. You’re real close to missing out on something pretty great, you know that?”

Corey sighed.

“I’m sorry. I thought I heard—”

The sound came again, still from far away, but slightly more distinct now.

Corey again turned away from Kristen. “That’s barking. There’s a dog out there somewhere.”

A silent beat passed.

Then Kristen said, “Yeah. Okay. I hear it, too. So what?”

He pulled free of her and started moving in the direction of the sound, his heart thudding so heavily behind his ribs he could feel his flesh vibrating.

The beer can slipped unnoticed from his fingers, splashing his feet with foam as it hit the ground.

A quivering smile pulled at the edges of his mouth as hope bloomed inside him.

There was a dog out there somewhere, perhaps not that far away, unfelled by the plague, a thing that felt miraculous after all the dead ones he’d seen today.

The odds against it being Bluto were astronomical, an inner voice warned him, and he knew it was right.

This was almost certainly a different dog, but the possibility of locating any living canine after all the relentlessly bleak shit he’d endured was something to celebrate.

He heard a voice somewhere behind him, someone yelling.

Multiple voices, actually.

He ignored them all and walked faster still. The voices fell silent, but soon he heard someone running, racing to catch up with him.

Kristen slowed her pace as she fell into step next to him, panting now, trying to catch her breath. “Serious question. Have you lost your goddamn mind?”

Corey kept his gaze straight ahead and picked up the pace A small pond came into view as they crested the hill.

The water’s still surface shimmered brightly, reflecting the light of the blazing sun.

Around the pond were a few benches, all of which were empty save for one, upon which sat a portly older man in a rumpled suit.

The man’s posture was awkward, his body listing sideways, head lolling in precarious fashion.

He’d either fallen asleep on the bench or he was dead.

The way things were now, Corey was inclined to believe the bleaker possibility was the likeliest one.

He moved quickly down the slope to the flatter ground surrounding the pond, and once again Kristen hurried to keep up with him.

“Could you please slow down?”

Corey didn’t answer, nor did he slow down even an iota, but he did glance toward the big man on the bench once they were within range.

Yep, definitely dead .

He kept up the brisk pace as they moved past the pond and again emerged onto a wider expanse of open ground.

“You’re starting to piss me off.”

Corey finally glanced at Kristen. “I don’t care.”

“You’re an asshole.”

He nodded. “You might be right about that.”

Kristen groaned. “Why are you so dead fucking set on finding some damn dog?”

He looked at her “I just am.”

She rolled her eyes. “Great answer. That’s some quality fucking insight right there.”

Corey didn’t respond.

They went up and over another hill, a significantly smaller rise than the previous one, but once they were on the downward slope Corey caught a glimpse of a residential street through a scattering of trees.

He saw cars parked at the curb on both sides of the street, including a silver compact that was missing a door.

The dog had been silent the last few minutes, a development that stirred anxiety in Corey.

Then the barking started back up, an agitated eruption.

Corey started running.

“Goddammit!” Kristen shouted after him.

He reached the edge of the park and weaved his way through the narrow band of scattered trees, emerging seconds later on a strip of white sidewalk.

He stopped there, breathing heavily as he craned his head around, looking up and down the street for signs of the animal, which had once again fallen silent.

The intermittent nature of its outbursts was maddening, impeding his ability to home in on the sound.