Page 45 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

GRACE

Tim Lebbon

She smells rotting corn and hears a breeze shushing through dead crops, and somewhere far away an old woman plucks the strings of a guitar and sings an unknown song. The guitar is out of tune, and the song itches and stings like insects inside her skull. But Gemma knows this is only a dream.

Reality is closer and darker, and it knows her name.

Gemma, you disgrace me! Her father’s words, though he is over a decade dead, and these are spoken in mocking tones by another. The old fool was wrong, Gemma. You’re no disgrace. It was only fucking, after all, where’s the disgrace in that? And now you can make yourself free .

The voice is deep with a hint of terrible humor.

The man’s fingers scratch at the door… scrit, scrit … and though he is already there, Gemma hears the approach of worn boot heels, close, closer. As if he has always been coming for her.

“Gemma!” Matt shook her again, hard. Everyone on board the space shuttle Discovery was having nightmares, but they had to hold themselves together. They needed each other. “Gemma, wake––!”

Her eyes snapped open and for a moment she stared right through him, her pupils dilated, and glimmering red. Matt shifted position, and the red glow disappeared. Reflected light , he thought. That’s all.

“Hey, Gemma,” Lizzie said. She was beside him, holding on to one of the sleeping bags tethered against the bulkhead. Her voice was calm, and Matt was glad she was still with them. If Frank had taken her with him instead of Hans, Matt didn’t know what the fuck he would have done.

“I’m okay,” Gemma said, plainly not. She was shivering, and a bead of sweat lifted from the end of her nose and drifted between them. “Bad dreams, that’s all.”

“Bad dreams,” Matt said. He’d had a nightmare when he last slept, a rabid dog chasing him through a field of fading crops. And Lizzie said she’d slept fitfully, too. It was hardly a surprise.

They helped Gemma unstrap and she shoved herself across to the toilet, grabbing the handle and spinning herself around.

“Anything new?” she asked as she started undoing her suit. She left the door open and reached for her urine hose.

Matt turned away, hanging on to the ladder to the flight deck. Even with everything that was happening, they all deserved privacy and dignity.

“Plenty of transmissions on our last two orbits,” Matt said. “None of them good.”

“Such as?”

“Gemma, why don’t you have something to eat before––”

“You’re trying to protect me, Lizzie?” Gemma said, voice raised. “Seriously?”

Matt turned around. “Let’s keep it down. We can’t lose it.”

“I’m not losing it,” Gemma said, her voice softer. “But there’s no point hiding anything. Is there?”

Matt sighed. “No point.” He looked at Lizzie.

They’d been talking about Gemma while she slept, the things she mumbled in her sleep, disturbing whispers of two-headed snakes and rabid canines that struck a chilling chord with them both.

The similarity of their dreams was troubling, but he didn’t believe they were relevant to the current situation. They were simply a product of it.

“Most of the broadcasts from Europe suggest they’re a few days behind the U.S.,” Matt said. “There are widespread lockdowns, borders are closing, mass burials. There’ve been skirmishes in the English Channel.”

“Skirmishes?” Gemma asked.

“Naval battles.” He didn’t elaborate. The phrase was enough to shock them into a brief silence.

Matt glanced at the door to the air lock.

His two dead friends and crew members were beyond, wrapped up in their sleeping bags.

They’d pushed them into the air lock and through to the depressurized payload bay after their deaths.

Frank Mancini was from London. He’d slit his wrists, and in the tussle when they tried to stop him, Hans took a knife jab to the throat that pricked his carotid.

Some of their blood was still circulating the flight deck.

“But what about Kennedy?” Gemma asked. “They’ve been working on something. They can bring us down, right? Frank was the pilot, but you can fly this thing, too.”

“I’ve said before—not without help.”

Gemma zipped her suit and sanitized her hands, shaking her head, every movement angry.

“We’re not giving up hope,” Lizzie said. She and Matt swapped a glance, and Gemma turned to face them both.

“Kennedy,” she said.

“Last orbit, there was only one reply to our transmissions,” Matt said. “Tech guy I don’t know, name of Joslin. He could hardly breathe, could barely talk. He said a few people have died in Mission Control, but most have gone home to their families.”

“Abandoned us?” Gemma asked.

“Doing what any of us would do,” Matt said.

“Except Joslin, right?”

“He said he’s stayed there because he has no family, and all his friends are dead.”

“So, you asked him about us? About what we should do?”

Matt sighed. “He’s just a tech guy, Gemma. An engineer. He had no answers. He just said…” He drifted off, remembering Joslin’s clotted voice, his hopelessness.

“What?” Gemma asked.

“He said he wished he was up here with us, instead of down there in hell.”

Matt brushed aside floating blood as he pulled himself onto the flight deck.

It spread across the back of his hand, sticking in the hairs there, and he wondered whether it belonged to Frank or Hans.

Lowering into the commander’s seat and strapping in, he tried to blink away the memory of their violent deaths.

Earth was visible to his left, breathtakingly beautiful and awe-inspiring as ever, only now he saw it through different eyes.

In Discovery ’s payload bay was a large component for the fifth SDI satellite to be built, a multibillion-dollar venture to ensure safety and security down on earth.

Their mission was secret, and their cargo even more secretive than usual.

This SDI satellite was built to be offensive, with missle capabilities providing a rapid response to any attack.

Within ten meters of him were two fully armed nuclear missiles.

“Still beautiful,” Lizzie said. “You never tire of that view.” She moved forward to float above the pilot’s seat beside him, but did not strap herself in. That had been Frank’s place.

“How is she?”

“On the edge. Like all of us.”

“I’m not on the edge,” Matt said.

“Really? Your wife, your daughter? Aren’t they in New York?”

Matt stared at the Pacific Ocean passing beneath them, wondering if some of those islands might survive. Then he understood that Discovery was the remotest island of them all.

“I’m mission commander,” Matt said. “I can’t be on the edge.”

Lizzie laughed without humor. When Matt looked at her, she was blurred from the tears in his eyes.

“Maybe Frank did the right thing,” Lizzie said.

“Killing himself? Killing Hans?”

“Hans was a mistake.”

“No,” Matt said. “Not the right thing. Not at all.”

“But we’re…”

“We’re waiting,” Matt said.

“For what?”

“We have food and water for another twelve days. More, now that Hans and Frank…” He sighed. “By then, maybe something will have changed.”

“All that’s going to change in that time is more Captain Trips, more dead people, and less chance than ever of us bringing Discovery down.”

“Captain who?”

“It’s a name I heard for the flu. In France it’s ‘Gorge Noire.’ In New Zealand it’s ‘Whiu Hou.’ It’s everywhere , Matt. We can’t assume anyone gives a fuck about us, and we can’t just wait for a miracle.”

“You know what we’ve got on this boat.”

Lizzie shrugged. Her hair had come loose, strands floating around her head like unruly snakes.

“If I try to land and we come apart in low atmosphere, we’ll spread radioactive contamination over hundreds of miles.”

“We won’t come apart.”

“The chance of me landing Discovery successfully with no copilot and precisely no help from Mission Control––”

“Don’t say zero,” Lizzie said.

“––is five percent. Probably less.”

“And the chance of us dying up here is one hundred.”

They watched the beautiful, dying planet passing them by.

“That’s not chance,” Matt said. “That’s certainty.”

“Pedant.”

Gemma opens one of their food lockers and brings out the bags of freeze-dried rations. A spot of blood lands on her forearm and rolls across her skin like an excited bug. She blows on it. It lifts away, drifting. She is shaking.

… scritch… scritch…

She looks at the door to her left, leading into the air lock and payload bay beyond. Frank and Hans are through there, dead, wrapped in their sleeping bags, and something is scratching at the door.

… scritch…

“Go away,” she says. Soft, so the others won’t hear.

Why don’t you want them to hear? a voice asks from beyond the door. It’s impossible. But she has heard this voice before.

“Go away!”

They already hear you talking in your sleep, apologizing to your father when there is nothing to apologize for, you never meant to––

Gemma slams her hand on the locker, loud, and the voice ceases.

She runs her fingers across the top of the food packages, counting.

With Frank and Hans dead, there is more for them, and Matt has already said they can ration.

Twelve days, maybe more. Their mission was only supposed to be four days long, so their return is already two days overdue.

These extra packets were only ever in case of emergency.

Gemma laughs, and it comes out as a loud yelp. “Emergency!”

“Gemma, you okay?” Lizzie floats down from the flight deck.

… scritch… scritch…

“You hear that?” Gemma asks.

“Hear what?” Lizzie rights herself so they stand face-to-face. “Hey, Gemma. I’m here for you.”

“Who’s here for you?” Gemma asks. “Thirty-six meals. Plenty of water.”

“That’s good.”

“Why? A meal each per day. Twelve more days to look down and wonder what’s going on.” Gemma glances at her watch. “How long until we’re over Florida again? I want to talk to Joslin.”

She does, and she doesn’t. What she wants most is to get away from that voice––

They don’t trust you, they talk about you, you should never feel guilt for something you didn’t do.