Page 38 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

The electric grid was still holding up, but the boys were unsure how long that would last, so they had raided the truck stop for a power inverter and every 12V car battery they could find, making sure each was fully charged.

Alan had even designed a windmill battery charger that he put a little time into building each day to make sure that when the time came, and the grid failed, they would have enough juice to run a TV and VCR for the foreseeable future.

As ranch hands, they could handle the heat and they could handle warm beer; what they could not abide was living without movies.

Derek and Alan always loved walking the aisles of the store, even the ones they knew like the back of their hand.

There was a bit of sadness in their hearts, knowing that there was unlikely to ever be another New Release Day there in the store (Tuesdays, when all the new movies came in).

Not that there wouldn’t be a Tuesday anymore, but rather that Tuesday, Wednesday, Sunday, none of it mattered.

For Derek and Alan, every day was Friday.

They got up, cared for Spike’s cattle, did their daily tour through the town to clean up any remains, hit the video store, then crushed a twelve-pack of Bud watching a double feature before retiring to bed and doing it all over the next day.

But that night was different. After selecting a pair of carefully considered horror gems, the two went back to their place on Spike’s ranch (they felt it would be disrespectful to move from the ranch hands’ quarters into the main house so quickly), cracked open their beers, and sat on the couch just as there came a knock at the door.

“This is like that old story,” said Derek.

“Which one?”

“The last man on earth hears a knock at the door.”

“We ain’t the last yet, dumbass,” said Alan.

“I’m just sayin’.”

Alan answered to see Bill standing there, six-pack of his own in hand. Stroh’s. He held it up.

“I know it ain’t Bud,” he said. “But it was bought and paid for in my fridge.”

“Beer down at the market is free these days,” called Derek from the couch.

“Didn’t seem right to steal a peace offering,” said Bill. “Sorry about the whole shotgun thing. You know how it is.”

“Forgotten,” said Alan. “Have a seat.”

“Thank you much.”

That’d be the last thing Bill said all night. Not because of Captain Trips or anything, but just because it was his way. He took a seat in a ragged armchair to the side of the couch and made himself comfortable.

This was Catholic Horror Night. The boys had borrowed The Seventh Sign and The Unholy , both new releases they hadn’t gotten to.

Bill sat in silence, taking the whole thing in wordlessly, the only sound he made being the cracking open of another cold one every half an hour or so.

At the end of the night, he stood up, nodded, and said, “Thanks for the evening, boys.” And he left, driving carefully, slowly, half-drunk, through the dark, silent town.

Derek and Alan thought they might run into him around town here or there over the next few weeks and certainly did not anticipate seeing him once again, seven p.m. sharp the next day, on their doorstep, sixer of Stroh’s in his hand.

“Bill,” said Alan, holding the door open for him.

“Boys,” said Bill before entering and sitting in the same chair he had the night before.

This was Slime Trail Night. The boys had discovered a movie titled Slugs and felt the proper way to chase it down would be with Night of the Creeps , one of Alan’s recent favorites.

Bill didn’t think much of Slugs —the boys liked it just fine—but he really enjoyed Creeps.

Thought it was pretty funny and started to really wrap his head around the “watching horror movies together” thing the boys had going on.

Bill went the whole night without a word, thanked the boys on his way out, and was there, six-pack in hand, seven p.m. sharp the following night for Italian Zombie Night. “The good news is your dates are here,” he said with a smile.

“The bad news is they’re dead,” cackled Alan, welcoming Bill back into their home.

This went on for about a week, until the boys rolled up to Moonrise Video right at the stroke of six to find Bill sitting in the parking lot waiting for them.

“Can I ask you something?” asked Bill as he walked the stacks with the boys, eyeing the ten thousand or so videos Gil had accrued over the years.

“Sure,” said Derek. “What do you wanna know?”

“Why movies?”

“Why movies, what?” asked Derek, confused.

“You boys could have been doing anything all this time. Playing video games, going to the bar, driving to Austin for concerts, hell, woodworking. Why movies?”

Derek and Alan exchanged baffled looks. They liked movies. Hell, they loved movies. The why of it hadn’t really crossed Derek’s mind. But it had crossed Alan’s.

“You know,” said Alan, “I read somewhere that humans invented beer about ten thousand years ago, give or take.”

“Really?” asked Bill.

“Yeah. Wasn’t exactly the same as it is now, but same concept. I learned about it when I started looking into home brewing.”

“Brewing your own beer?”

“Yeah. It’s a thing. There’s a shop in Fredericksburg that sells everything you need.

I thought it might be fun and, you know, cheaper, to make my own.

Makes more sense now, what with there only being so much beer left in the local stores.

Anyhow, for ten thousand years, man has made beer.

And every day, after a long day of hunting or gathering or farming, man would sit down with his friends around a campfire and tell stories. ”

“Yeah, I get that,” said Bill.

“Well. It ain’t a campfire, but I reckon sitting around a glowing box with friends and letting it tell us stories is about the same. ’Cept of course, this way we don’t hear the same story about that time Derek got drunk with Sissy Heiser from over in Flatsbury and she let him do butt stuff.”

“She did,” said Derek. “Ain’t no lie.”

“Didn’t say there was. Just that I’ve heard that story about eighty times and I’d like something new every now and again.”

“Can’t all be butt stuff,” said Bill, agreeing.

“Exactly,” said Alan. “So, for us, videos is our campfire.”

“And we’re happy to have you join us around it,” said Derek.

Bill walked in silence with them for a moment, before breaking it once again. “Can I be real honest with you guys?”

“Shoot,” said Derek.

“I mean nothin’ by this, but I used to think y’all were two weird little assholes. It turns out y’all are just good, decent folk.”

Derek and Alan shared a strained look with one another before bursting into laughter. “Well, truth is,” said Derek through both chuckles and guffaws, “we are weird little assholes.”

Then Alan piped in, “But we reckon being that and good folk ain’t exactly mutually exclusive.”

Bill laughed. Then he nodded, asking, “So what are we watching tonight?”

The three returned to the boys’ place shortly thereafter with Friday the 13th 3D, A Nightmare on Elm Street , and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre .

The boys reckoned it was about time Bill got a proper education in horror and that meant starting with the heavyweights—the all-time best slasher killers ever to grace the screen.

It was Friday after all and no one exactly had work in the morning, so a triple feature was in due order.

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Bill, mid-discussion. “So the hockey mask guy—”

“Jason,” the boys said together.

“Yeah, him. You mean he ain’t even in the first movie?”

“No, his mom is the killer in that one,” said Derek. “I mean he kinda shows up at the end, but that is like a dream or something.”

“And he doesn’t actually get his mask until this one,” said Alan.

“Part Three?” asked Bill.

“Yeah,” said Alan.

“So why does everyone call him the hockey mask guy?” asked Bill.

“They call him Jason,” said Derek.

“But he’s the hockey mask guy,” said Bill.

“Yeah,” the boys answered.

“And he’s dead,” said Bill.

“Not yet,” said Alan. “He dies in Part Four. Then he’s resurrected in Part Six.”

“Shit,” said Derek. “We’re gonna have to explain Part Five, aren’t we?”

“I think it’s just best if we show him,” said Alan.

“We should have just started with the first one.”

“Yeah, but Jason isn’t really in that one and we wanted to show him the best of the baddies.”

“I still contend no list of slashers is complete without Pinhead,” said Derek.

“And I still contend that that is a conversation for another time,” said Alan.

The three sat in silence, watching the triptych of horror classics, Bill’s eyes glued to the screen as body after body dropped in gruesome fashion.

Not all the kills were bloody, but each one was brutal, in some cases much more brutal than the last. As the night wore on and the number of beers in the fridge grew thin, Bill looked more and more perplexed.

And once the movies had run their course, Alan and Derek stood up to bid Bill adieu, only to find Bill still in his seat, watching the credits roll.

“I don’t get it,” said Bill.

“Get what?” asked Alan.

“Why do you like these guys?” asked Bill. “Like, I get why you guys like horror movies. I’m really liking a lot of them as well. But these guys. Freddy, Jason, Leatherface. Why them? They’re not the good guys.”

Derek nodded, smiling. “No, that’s what’s cool about them.”

“That they’re the bad guys,” said Bill.

“Yeah,” said Derek, as if that was self-evident.

Bill just stared at the rolling credits, puzzled. Then Alan put on the stone-faced demeanor of a college professor.

“There are two types of horror,” he said. “I mean, there are a lot of subgenres—the slasher, the thriller, the alien invasion, body horror, creature feature, the monster within… it’s an endless array.”

Both Bill and Derek stared at Alan, wondering who the fuck just possessed Alan’s body and began working him like a ventriloquist’s dummy.