Page 31 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

A tear leaked down Baker’s face. He drew up his knees, and as he did he noticed something he hadn’t before: the rope around his ankles wasn’t completely snug.

“When the fire trucks arrived, he was half-dead. Kept askin’ where Annie was.” Dedaker brayed laughter, but that set off a fusillade of sneezes.

Baker began to work his feet back and forth.

“Jesus,” Dedaker muttered, and wiped his nose.

“Isn’t that hilarious, darlin’? Dumbshit thought he’d saved her, but she was lyin’ on the porch, dead as a hammer.

” The dik-dik strove to wriggle away, but Dedaker vised her tiny body to his chest. “Know what this freak did then? He took the insurance money and rebuilt the same exact house.”

“Please stop,” Baker said.

“Rumor has it he furnished it with all the same shit his family had before.” Dedaker looked around. “Spookier than a wax museum.”

The dik-dik began to squeak, the sound shrill and birdlike: “ Zee wuh! Zee wuh!”

“Still don’t fancy me, darlin’?” Dedaker asked. “After all this time?”

Her cries became frantic: “ Zee wuh! Zee wuh!”

“Now stop that,” Dedaker snapped. “You know how that noise pisses me off.”

Baker thought of the scars latticing the dik-dik’s hide. Dedaker gave her a rough shake, but the sounds persisted.

“Goddamn you,” Dedaker said and unhooked something from the belt of his jeans. Blond wood haft, blade like a miniature scythe. A linoleum knife, though the thing was so caked with gore you could barely identify it. He recalled what Wiggins said about the pet farm, the animals strung up and gutted.

“I saw you dragging the sheriff,” Baker said.

Dedaker eyed him with renewed interest. “You were in town? Hell, you should’ve let me know. I would’ve offered you a ride, too.”

At the memory of the sheriff’s glistening seaweed feet, Baker’s stomach lurched.

Dedaker showed his teeth. “Four.” At Baker’s look, he explained.

“How many I’ve killed. At least, before Captain Trips.

Now the total’s probably three times that.

But before the outbreak, only four.” He stroked the animal.

“Everyone liked to speculate, so I let ’em.

Sookie, he’d jump a mile every time I appeared.

Maybe that’s why he kept me around… because I scared the bejesus out of him.

” He fixed Baker with a shrewd look. “And because he knew I’d do whatever was necessary to procure his precious animals. ”

Dedaker tottered to his feet and stood swaying. The dik-dik continued to squeak and twist in his arms.

“You need medicine,” Baker said.

“What I need is to shut this bitch up,” Dedaker replied. He took a step toward the kitchen, but halted as a coughing fit seized him.

Baker strained against his ankle bindings.

The dik-dik squeaked: “ Zee wuh! Zee wuh!”

“ I said shut the fuck up! ” Dedaker shouted into the animal’s face. She scrambled against him, hooves digging at his neck. Dedaker grappled with her. “Now hold—”

The dik-dik sprang into the air and crashed down on a kerosene lamp, the antique glass shattering and flooding the room with an acrid stench. The animal flailed amid the strew of shards. Dedaker snatched at her, but she bounded toward the kitchen. Coughing, Dedaker lurched after her.

Baker dug his elbows into the sofa and got his legs under him. Beneath Dedaker’s hacking, he could hear the dik-dik’s alarmed cries. He rose up, damn near toppled backward, and stood there a second, his equilibrium wonky.

“Get back here!” Dedaker growled. “You little”— cough —“fucking”— cough —“cunt!”

There was maybe an inch of give in the ankle binding, but it permitted Baker to rotate clumsily around. As Dedaker shambled toward the kitchen, Baker hopped over and grabbed the linoleum knife. The keen blade sheared through the ankle rope in three swipes.

Dedaker lumbered into the kitchen, where the dik-dik cowered, her cries pitiful and wheezy. As Baker started forward, his hamstrings cramping, Dedaker bent down, fumbled with his pant leg, and came up with a pistol. He leveled it at the animal.

“Squeak at this, you little—”

Baker slashed hard at Dedaker’s back. The knife ripped a diagonal swath through the jacket from shoulder to hip.

The gun went off, and Dedaker roared, his arms splayed like a parishioner in the throes of holy ecstasy.

Blood splurted from his back. Baker raised the blade again, but Dedaker’s flailing arm whacked him in the jaw.

Baker tried to catch himself, but his bound wrists failed him, and he face-planted, half in, half out of the kitchen.

Dedaker’s mad eyes blazed down at him. “ You stupid cockknocker! ” He pointed the gun at Baker’s head.

The dik-dik launched herself at Dedaker. She rebounded off his knee, but it was enough to distract him. Dedaker pivoted and took aim at the animal.

Baker swiped the knife at Dedaker’s shin. The blade sliced through skin and bone with a meaty schlink . Dedaker howled and the gun cracked and searing pain sizzled through Baker’s left shoulder. Wincing, he craned his head around in time to see the dik-dik’s hind legs vanish through the doggy door.

Good , he thought.

Still squalling, Dedaker banged into the refrigerator and crumpled to the floor. Baker flopped over and army-crawled toward him. One of Dedaker’s veiny hands was clamped over his shin, the blood burbling between his fingers. His other hand still clutched the pistol.

Baker closed the distance. He pushed up between Dedaker’s spraddled work boots and raised the knife.

Dedaker’s eyes shot wide. “Don’t—” he started, but Baker whipped the blade sideways, cleaving the man’s stretched cheeks.

Scarlet sprayed everywhere, but Baker blinked it away and plunged the knife into Dedaker’s larynx.

Blood geysered over them both, and Dedaker slouched, fingers scrabbling at the embedded blade.

Baker shoved away from the man’s scissoring legs and went to work on his wrist binding.

Dedaker’s blood had lubed the fabric, so after some struggle he was able to slip his hands free.

A wave of lightheadedness billowed through him.

He rolled onto his belly. Dedaker’s death gurgles had ceased, but the slaughterhouse smells of blood and feces clogged Baker’s nostrils.

Jesus , he thought. Jesus .

The house was utterly silent. Evidently, the animal had run away for good.

Smart girl , he decided. The farther she got from here, the better.

He lay there a long time, so long he scarcely heard the doggy door bow inward.

When he opened his eyes, the dik-dik stood before him.

He watched, amazed, as her long snout dipped, hesitated, then brushed against his bloody fingers.

He dragged Dedaker’s carcass through the yard and made it a few feet past the tree line before dizziness overtook him. He staggered back to the house, took one look at the grisly bloodbath in his kitchen, and vomited into the sink.

The dik-dik attending his steps, he hobbled to the bathroom and showered.

An inspection of his shoulder disclosed an inch-long trough where the bullet had grazed him, so he dumped half a bottle of peroxide on it and hissed as it bubbled white.

That done, he drew a bath, wrestled the dik-dik into the tub, and with a considerable amount of fuss managed to scrub away the kerosene stink.

The lamp glass had harrowed her hide, so after tweezing out several slivers, he drizzled the rest of the peroxide on her wounds, and this time she sprang right out of his grasp and clattered about the bathroom squeaking in pain.

After she got it out of her system, he wrapped her in a towel and situated her in the kitchen doorway.

It took him the better part of an hour to collect the broken glass and mop up Dedaker’s blood.

The animal watched the whole process with interest.

He ventured into the attic, and after a great deal of rummaging and cursing, located the baby things he’d repurchased.

The stuffed animals tore at his heart, but he soldiered through until he unearthed the bottles.

He filled one with water, sprinkled in a pinch of sugar, and gathered the dik-dik into his lap.

The laceration on her flank made him uneasy, but if she didn’t get some liquids soon, infection wouldn’t matter.

She refused to drink.

As he rocked the La-Z-Boy and stroked her fur, the lamplight revealed how wretched a state she was in.

Old scars. Hairless grooves inflicted by a whip or a slender branch.

He ran his fingers through her fur and detected welts too pronounced for bug bites.

More likely from the brutal edges of work boots.

Baker compressed his lips.

“Come on, girl,” he murmured, brushing the bottle’s rubber nipple against her mouth.

The dik-dik turned away and nuzzled his thigh.

Baker sighed. “Every word that dickweed said is true. Look at this.” He pinched the back of his hand, where the flesh was so runneled with scars you couldn’t discern his knuckles.

“See? Doesn’t even hurt. What hurts,” he said, drawing up a sleeve to expose unmarred flesh, “is this.” He squeezed the skin.

“I don’t deserve this. Don’t deserve any goddamn thing. ”

The dik-dik lolled her head and licked his scarred hand.

“Don’t,” he said, but he didn’t stop her.

He nodded toward the kitchen. “Know that door you’ve been using?

I installed it for Petey, a Rottweiler who showed up ten years ago.

At first I didn’t let him in because he looked mean as hell.

But at some point I started putting out a water dish for him and chopping up bologna.

People are afraid of Rottweilers, but Petey was as gentle as a June breeze.

I took him in. Bought him all kinds of toys.

He used to watch Happy Days and Three’s Company with me. ”

The dik-dik continued to lap at his scars.