Page 30 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand
To hell with that mangy creature. He was sixty-six and had no friends or family, but that didn’t mean he was ready to strangle to death on phlegm. He slammed the back door and locked it just to be sure.
He was dozing in his recliner, dreaming about his son’s first birthday, when he heard a whispery sound. Baker palmed drool from his chin and swiveled his head to discover the dik-dik loitering in the kitchen, the rubber flap in the doggy door just coming to rest.
“Out,” he said, rising. He strode down the hallway. “You can take your ass right—”
The dik-dik padded toward him. Baker went rigid, palms out to ward her off, while a nightmare reel of his town visit unspooled: a German shepherd decomposing under a haze of bluebottle flies; the stench from the looted pharmacy so putrid he had to forego the liquor aisle; Milt Markovich drooped in a rocking chair outside his barbershop, his puffy throat slit from earlobe to earlobe in a gleaming black grin.
The dik-dik ventured closer.
Baker backpedaled, overturned a coatrack to barricade the doorway, and for one ghastly moment he was certain the animal would vault it.
Instead, she embarked on a leisurely ramble around the kitchen, her tiny hooves clittering on the linoleum.
Baker grimaced. Of all the rooms for her to stage an occupation.
The dik-dik paused and lowered her head, her hind legs bracing wider.
“Now hold on,” he said.
She appeared to concentrate.
“Don’t you even—”
Her eyes never leaving his, the animal pissed on the floor.
Three hours later, the furry little asshole was still in his kitchen.
It wasn’t the inconvenience that bothered him so much; it was her germs. Accordingly, he’d cut the air-conditioning to prevent the contagion from circulating, and the living room now hovered at a ball-sweating eighty-eight degrees.
He fed the VCR a worn-out copy of The Thing , hoping the wintry setting would soothe him, but halfway into the movie it was still sweltering and he was obsessing about how swiftly the characters got infected.
Baker clicked off the TV. He craved a drink, but that required a trip to the kitchen. He’d kill for a bag of Orville Redenbacher. Goddammit, this was his house. He needed that animal gone. He shoved out of his chair and stormed down the hall.
But halted at the coatrack. The dik-dik was curled in a brown ball in the center of the kitchen, asleep.
He took a moment to examine her auburn pelt. Where there was fur, it was glossy with black and white pinstripes, but there were bare patches, too, valleys of pink skin. Like scourge marks.
Baker heaved a sigh. Scratched his ass and contemplated. If the animal wouldn’t leave willingly, he’d have to flush her out.
He trooped up to his bedroom and raided his stash of Nutter Butter cookies. Returning, he opened the front door, scattered some on the porch, and sprinkled a trail all the way to the kitchen. Then, his eyes never leaving the dik-dik, he righted the coatrack and flicked some cookie crumbs at her.
The animal jarred and clambered up, but she paid no mind to the crumbs.
“Eat,” he commanded.
She didn’t move.
“You’re probably thirsty,” he muttered. “Well, hold on.”
He snatched up his bourbon glass and hustled to the back bathroom. He filled the glass, stepped into the hallway, and yelped.
The dik-dik gazed up at him.
Hands trembling, he bent and deposited the glass on the floor.
“Drink,” he said.
The animal crept forward as if to comply. Then she tensed, threw a glance over her shoulder, and bounded toward him. Baker plastered himself to the wall as she scampered past. If he had a goddamn brain cell left, he’d have strapped on a dust mask before allowing her out of the kitchen.
But what had her so spooked?
He trailed after her, but faltered at the threshold of the first bedroom. His son’s.
Not really. All his son’s stuff had gone up in the fire, but Baker had reproduced it as well as he could.
A quilt embroidered with the MLB team logos.
A pair of trophies, one a Little League runner-up, the other a Most Improved Player award.
A poster of Chubby Checker because his son had loved “The Twist.” Baker remembered the boy doing the dance in his diaper, remembered how they’d twisted together while his wife looked on and laughed.
No sound from his son’s room. The dik-dik wasn’t in there.
Baker moved on to the reproduction of his daughter’s room.
An empty hamster cage. A paint-by-numbers horse Baker had fucked up royally, the eyes smudged and the mane sticking straight out like the animal had stepped on a power line.
A gymnastics plaque with a blank brass plate.
His daughter had loved to tumble on the mat, but she’d been too young for competitions.
The chuff of anxious breathing. He waded into the gloom and tried to ignore the dust-dank scent that haunted this shrine.
A stirring under the bed. The rasp of hooves on oak?
He crouched and screwed up his eyes, but the space was too murky. “You under there, Bambi?”
An answering scrape. Careful not to startle the little girl, he hunkered down and raised the bedspread and found a pair of chestnut eyes peering out at him.
Baker was forcibly reminded of how his daughter used to select this exact spot each time they played hide-and-seek, and he couldn’t help but smile.
“You don’t have to be scared of me. Why don’t you come out and—”
A creak behind him. Baker’s flesh bunched into nodes, and his bowels performed a slow roll.
He pushed to his feet and spun, but the stock of his twelve-gauge was already whistling toward him.
The last thing he saw before impact was the vicious sneer on Dead Ed Dedaker’s face and a flash of tombstone-white teeth.
Not for the first time, Baker dreamed of a cornfield.
Of heading west. The images were fuzzy, insubstantial, but for some reason they comforted him.
When he became aware of the tack-sharp pain in his temple, he wished he could remain unconscious a mite longer.
He cracked his eyes to slits and was greeted with a formless blur.
He made to sit up, but his limbs wouldn’t cooperate.
After a moment’s toil, he realized his hands and feet were bound.
That got Baker’s eyes open.
“There he is,” Dedaker said.
Dedaker idled in the La-Z-Boy with the dik-dik in his lap. Even from a dozen feet, Baker could see the animal quivering.
“Look, darlin’,” Dedaker said to her. “Sleeping Beauty decided to join us.”
Dedaker looked like death. His pale blue eyes were bloodshot and wreathed with crepey skin, and what flesh showed through his salt-and-pepper stubble had a sickly green undertone.
His denim jacket was ill-chosen for the heat, but for all that he was still perspiring too freely.
Below the rucked-up cuff of one blue-jeaned ankle, Baker spied a holster and the nose of a pistol.
“You’ve got the flu,” Baker murmured.
Dedaker snorted. “ Shit . This is just allergies. I get ’em every—” He exploded in a messy sneeze, his saliva stippling the dik-dik’s fur.
Something in Baker ached.
Dedaker dragged a hand over his nose. “Even if I do have it, I ain’t gonna be like Frankie and the others. They haven’t invented a bug yet whose ass I can’t kick.” A sly wink. “Don’t you fret about me, Bake. I’m right as rain.”
Uh-huh , Baker thought.
He took stock of himself. The news wasn’t good. Ankles trussed with nylon rope. Wrists, too, the latter so fucking taut he had no feeling in his hands. But at least they rested in his lap rather than behind his back. That was something.
The dik-dik almost slipped through Dedaker’s grasp before he hauled her down and cinched her in a body lock. “Easy there, darling. Easy . You leave now, you’ll miss the fun.”
Baker opened his mouth to speak, but the unhinging of his jaw drove a railroad spike through his temple.
“Je- sus , Bake,” Dedaker muttered. “You look like dog shit.” He put his lips next to the dik-dik’s ear. “Wanna hear about Baker Ludlow? Everything he touches dies.”
“Let her go,” Baker said.
Dedaker grinned, his whiskery face satanic in the waning daylight.
“Care about her, do you?” He stroked the animal without finesse, the poor girl quivering harder and harder.
A nod at Baker. “This loser had himself a good woman, name of Annie. I tried to court her, but by the time ol’ Ed came on the scene, she was already in love with this sad sack.
” He reached over and patted a picture frame, the one photograph Baker still had of his wife.
It was age-spotted and curled from being in his wallet, but it displayed him and Annie at a cookout, her in his lap, him looking like he’d always felt—bemused that such a remarkable woman should choose him, but grateful for his good fortune all the same.
Baker tightened. “Don’t touch that.”
Dedaker chuckled, but it dissolved into a ragged coughing fit. Baker bucked until his back was propped against the sofa.
“Dude used to have it all,” Dedaker said in a musing voice. “Wife, couple of urchins, pretty new house. But you know what he didn’t have?” He leaned toward the dik-dik. “A working smoke detector!”
It went through Baker like a spear.
“Near as anyone can tell,” Dedaker went on, “when he woke up, the house was already full of smoke. Fire started downstairs, where his kids were. One of them probably set it.”
Baker’s throat tingled. The dik-dik whimpered and writhed in Dedaker’s grip.
“Stairs were an inferno, so Bake and Annie tried a window. They got out, all right. Bake landed in the bushes, but poor Annie smacked the porch.” Dedaker made a clicking sound. “Broken neck.”
“Enough,” Baker said.
Dedaker scratched the animal between the ears. She flinched at his touch. “According to the papers, Bake tried the front door—no go, too hot—then attempted to climb through his daughter’s window. That’s why his hands look like Freddy fucking Krueger’s.”