Page 33 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

He crept toward the window and the erstwhile Debra.

Beyond her reposed a Yamaha motorcycle with a sidecar, the former driverless, but the latter occupied by a mutilated horror that was almost certainly Debra’s beloved.

He figured Jeff had been dying from the superflu, and Debra had ventured here because the pharmacy had been plundered, but in her haste to get inside, she’d botched her mission and bled to death.

Baker grasped her hair and lifted, and sure enough, a glass wedge the size of a pizza slice had implanted itself in the soft tissue under her chin.

He was surveying the pool of congealed blood on the floor when something brushed his pant leg.

He nearly kicked out before he realized it was a tiny black kitten.

He sagged against a medicine rack and shut his eyes until a rhythmic slurping forced them open again.

The kitten was lapping at the blood spill.

“Ah, man ,” Baker groaned. He was about to turn away when he discovered an object glinting within the puddle.

Tortoiseshell spectacles.

Taking care not to disturb the kitty’s feast, he suppressed his revulsion long enough to try the glasses on.

Debra had been as blind as a mole rat, yet when he brought a medicine box close to his face he could read the label.

He spotted the word dewormer and chucked it aside.

CHERISTIN , the next box read. Some kind of flea treatment.

Cursing, Baker moved down the aisle, primarily to find an antibiotic, but also to put some distance between him and the slurping feline, who was purring so rapturously he felt he should offer it some privacy.

He spotlighted the topmost shelf and distinguished the word AMOXICILLIN .

He’d have whooped for joy if not for the corpses and an atavistic dread of being eaten alive by feral cats.

The place was giving him the willies, so he gathered as many boxes as he could and, eyes aching from Debra’s overzealous lenses, he returned the spectacles and got the hell out of there.

The amoxicillin didn’t touch Lenora’s fever.

For much of the night, she tremored so violently he worried she’d combust in his arms. She wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t drink.

She wasn’t even interested in the horror movies he screened for her.

In desperation, he toted out the record player and a dusty LP of Chubby Checker’s The Twist .

He could hardly look at the album cover because it reminded him of his son.

And when he dropped the needle and the first notes sounded, he decided this was a terrible mistake.

But Lenora was watching him from the La-Z-Boy, her ears pricked up.

“You like it?” he asked.

Her eyes widened, the sickness fog perhaps clearing a smidge.

Baker swayed his hips, and Lenora sat up straighter.

He started to sing, but his voice came out croaky.

He swallowed, tried again, and this time it was better.

He was no Chubby Checker, but under the gruffness of disuse, the melody was there.

Lenora rose unsteadily.

He finished the first verse, gyrating as vigorously as his body would allow, and crooned the chorus. Lenora tilted her head, fascinated.

Baker bopped over to her and twisted for a few beats.

Lenora seemed to vibrate, her hooves jittering in place.

Baker executed a spin, and all of a sudden the room took on a paler hue.

It wasn’t until he was falling that he realized how woozy he was.

He smacked the floor—butt, skull, and shoulder blades all at once—and for a time he lay there, delirious and achy.

The song ended, but Baker scarcely noticed.

Superflu , he thought. Or he was just a dumbass who hadn’t eaten enough today.

Something brushed his cheek. He blinked until his eyes refocused.

Lenora stared down at him. He could’ve sworn she was smiling. Before he could get his hands up, she darted in and licked his nose. He laughed and spluttered, but Lenora didn’t seem to mind. She was too busy licking him.

They spent the next day pigging out, watching horror flicks, and reading a novel called I Am Legend .

He’d planned on getting to it for years and figured now was as good a time as any for a story about the last man on earth.

Lenora munched the lettuce he hand-fed her, but she didn’t go wild until he broke out a fresh pack of Nutter Butters.

At five thirty that afternoon, she sneezed for the first time.

Baker shot her a sharp glance, heart thudding, and waited for the next sneeze.

It didn’t come. Dust, he told himself. He really ought to tidy up the place, especially now that he was a father again.

About ten minutes later, Lenora let loose with a double-sneeze, and this time there was shiny stuff ringing her nostrils.

Mouth dry, Baker hastened into the kitchen and rifled through the medicines with shaking hands.

Aside from the amoxicillin, what could he give her?

He microwaved some soup, tested it to make sure it wouldn’t scald her, and positioned it on the La-Z-Boy.

She glanced at it, turned away like the world’s harshest food critic, and nested her chin on her foreleg.

She sneezed again.

Cold terror washed over him.

Baker snatched up the dog book and hurried back to the kitchen.

No use letting Lenora see how worked up he was.

Just paranoia. Understandable in such dreadful times.

He scanned the list of human medicines that dogs could ingest, but the only one he owned was aspirin.

He crushed half a pill and mixed it with sugar water.

By the time he’d put on a brave face and reentered the living room, Lenora was breathing hard and looking at him imploringly. It knocked Baker’s wind out.

No , he thought.

He offered her the bottle, but she ignored it. Her labored respiration made his stomach clench, the phlegmy rattle of it too much like Pastor Wiggins’s.

“Goddammit, no .”

He stroked her fur, and that seemed to calm her for a time, but then she burst out with a flurry of sneezes. He choked back a sob.

“It’s okay, girl,” he murmured. “It’s okay.

” He caressed her back, kissed the tuft of hair between her ears, whispered words of encouragement.

She looked at him appealingly. He got her mucus on his fingers, and he didn’t give a damn.

If this was superflu, she could very well have gotten it from Dead Ed, and wouldn’t that be the worst fucking joke in history?

This wonderful girl cut down by a shit stain like Dedaker?

Lenora scrambled up, her breathing rapid. He worried she was hyperventilating and had no idea what to do for her. Should he find a paper bag for her to breathe into? Did he own any paper bags?

He placed his hands on her sides and pressed his forehead to hers. “Stay with me, girl. Stay with me.”

Her breathing grew shallower. Within a couple hours she was whimpering and struggling to take in air. Shortly after that, she was gone.

Baker held Lenora in his arms all night.

He didn’t sleep, didn’t doze. Just cradled her in his recliner and wept soundless tears.

At six that morning, the dawn overbright and the heat already closing over the countryside like a fist, he carried her to the backyard, where he stood with her amid the scorched ruin of the old house.

It wasn’t fair. He might not deserve better, but Lenora did. By God, if anyone deserved to survive this plague, it was her.

He bared his teeth. Goddammit , he thought. GODDAMMIT!

Baker sank down, settled Lenora’s body on the grass, and rested his forehead on her silky fur.

“Bring her back,” he said.

No answer. The clearing was breezeless, the heat oppressive despite the early hour. His perspiration soaked into Lenora’s pelt. He rocked back on his heels, a hand on her little head.

“I said bring her back .”

No response from the clearing.

Baker trudged to the garage, returned with a shovel, and buried Lenora deep enough that nothing would disturb her.

He yearned to eulogize her, but didn’t trust himself to do her justice.

He flung the shovel aside and strode to the Ranger.

He fired it up, clicked the garage door opener, and rolled inside.

There, he shifted into park, thumbed the button to shut the garage door, but left the pickup running.

Darkness enshrouded him. The engine rumbled.

How long would it take? Five minutes? Ten? It didn’t matter. Lenora was gone and so was the world, and this death was as good as any other.

He glanced at the glowing dashboard clock.

7:17.

The garage was stifling, the Ranger pumping heat as well as poison into the air. He grew drowsy. He distinguished the clock through bleary eyes.

7:23.

He recalled the book he’d read Lenora, the loneliness of the main character and the way he’d tackled the problem of a world-ending plague. But Baker’s only skill was repairing small appliances. He doubted he could save the world by fixing toaster ovens.

He caught himself nodding off. His vision carouseled, and when his eyes refocused he was astonished to find it was already 7:30.

So it was happening. Baker was about to close his eyes for good, when something in the other garage stall caught his gaze.

The red wagon.

Baker’s chest burned, but he didn’t think it was the carbon monoxide.

He began to weep, his tears raw, ungovernable.

He sobbed against the steering wheel and groped for the ignition.

He found the key at last, twisted it, and heard the engine go silent.

He slumped there, his body shuddering, and let it all flood out.

The fire. The beautiful years that preceded it.

His wife, his children. Petey. Such a good dog.

Lenora.

Baker reached up and pressed the garage door opener.

When his vision normalized, he climbed out of the Ranger and shuffled back to the house. It took him twenty minutes to load the truck. That done, he backed out of the garage and drove away.

He encountered a menagerie of corpses on his cruise through town.

An elderly lady’s slippered feet jutted through a tangle of tomato vines, varicose veins threading her calves like plum-colored calligraphy.

An affluently dressed couple sat putrefying inside a factory-new sterling silver Cadillac.

A naked man sprawled face down in a flower bed, the phlox and bluebells seeming to sprout from the crack of his ass.

The sun pummeling the Ranger, Baker motored on.

When he passed the veterinary clinic, he tried to suppress images of Dr. Weizak and the doomed lovers.

There was an idea nibbling at him, but he couldn’t quite grab hold of it.

After a time, he found himself gravitating toward the bank.

He parked the Ranger there, wondered briefly if the perspiration slicking his skin was from the heat or the superflu.

It was entirely possible he’d contracted it from Dedaker or Lenora.

Or perhaps he wasn’t sick at all. It didn’t really matter.

He loaded the wagon, trundled it down the sidewalk, then halted and closed his eyes. When he opened them, the vague idea that had been nagging at him crystallized.

He turned and beheld the navy-blue saltbox house.

He rolled the wagon up the sidewalk, hefted it onto the porch, and cupped his hands against a sidelight.

A deceased woman lounged on the sofa, her throat bulging like an amorous bullfrog.

Prostrate on the floor was a girl of no more than six.

Baker assumed she’d expired, too, but when he tapped the glass, she stirred, her eyes finding his through a tangle of auburn hair.

For a long moment, they just stared at each other.

She drifted to the door, and after tussling with the lock, drew it open and regarded him through the dusty screen.

“Everyone’s dead,” she said. “Mom. My brothers. Dad lives somewhere else, but he hasn’t called.”

Baker didn’t comment.

The girl wiped her nose. “You sick?”

He thought it over. The sweating, the weariness.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

She lowered her eyes. “Don’t know if I am, either. I don’t feel very good.”

“Had any sleep?”

“Some. I keep dreaming of a cornfield.”

Baker glanced at her sharply and again experienced that magnetic westward tug. He wondered if she’d be comfortable in the wagon, should the roads become impassible.

What he said was “Are you hungry?”

She shrugged. Nodded.

He moved aside so she could see the wagon. “I’ve got Nutter Butters.”

She frowned. “What are those?”

“Health food.”

Her eyes seemed a bit livelier. “Wanna come in?”

Baker took in the shininess on her upper lip, the bruisy discoloration under her eyes. Maybe the girl had it. Maybe she didn’t. In the end, it didn’t really matter.

He mulled it over. Gazed up at the brilliant blue sky and remembered the one who’d saved him at the end of the world. “Okay, Lenora,” he murmured.

He faced the little girl, who watched him with large brown eyes.

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Juliet. What’s yours?”

“Baker. Want to help me with these cookies?”

Now she did give him a smile. Just a small one.

She held the door open for him, and he towed the wagon into the house.