Page 46 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

––and the terrible scratching at the door, like something eager to be let in.

… scritch… scritch…

But I’m already inside , he says.

She shoves past Lizzie and grabs the ladder, pulling herself up toward the flight deck. Matt turns to her as she arrives.

“Hey, Gemma.”

She looks from the window, crouching to see past him. They are coming up on the West Coast.

“Joslin,” she says.

“I was just about to start trying him.”

For the first three times, the only response is static.

Lizzie comes in behind Gemma, and the two of them stand close by Matt’s chair.

Gemma breathes through her mouth, listening for the slightest hint of response.

She tries to imagine Mission Control empty, screen displays still flowing, lights flashing, computers humming, everything meant to keep them safe now playing to the dead.

As the landmass of the USA passes by beneath them at three hundred miles per minute, the static is replaced by a low, long rattle.

A breath , Gemma thinks. From behind her, down on mid-deck, she hears a loud laugh. She glances at Lizzie wide-eyed. She must have heard that!

“Is that someone breathing?” Lizzie asks.

No, she didn’t hear the laugh. Am I mad? Gemma thinks.

No, they’re mad , the muffled voice says from down through the hatch and beyond the air lock door. Scritch… scriiitch … as he speaks, as if determined to scratch his way through to her.

She feels those scratches against the inside of her skull.

“Joslin?” Matt asks. “That you, friend?”

“ Yeah ,” a voice says from the radio. It sounds like Joslin is speaking through a throatful of soup. “ Not doing so good here, Discovery.”

“Has anyone come back?” Lizzie asks. “Anyone come up with a plan to help us––”

“ Wish I could go… to her ,” Joslin says, drawing in agonized breaths. “ Wish I could… see. But he’s got his… hands on my throat. Squeezing. Feel hot. And cold. Got better ––”

“Who’s squeezing your throat, Joslin?” Matt asks.

“–– better yesterday, pulling through, then slept and… smells like death now, in here, and I think… I think it’s me .”

“Is there anyone else left?” Lizzie asks. Desperate. Leaning forward, as if to feed herself down along the radio waves.

Gemma watches the landmass of home passing beneath them. “No one,” she whispers.

“ Only you ,” Joslin says. “ Damn I feel so …” He says no more. His breathing is low and fast, wet and cloggy. Gemma hears a soft thud and imagines Joslin resting his head on the desk.

“Joslin?” Lizzie asks. “Joslin, what do we do? What do we do?!”

“We go round and round,” Gemma says. “Eight days, or twelve. A hundred orbits, or two. And we watch the world die.”

“No!” Lizzie says. “We take her down, right, Matt? We take Discovery down!”

Gemma drifts back down through the hatch, and this time she does not look away from the air lock.

There is no voice. The scratching has ceased, as if he’s allowing her grief. A graceful man , she thinks, without knowing why, but his grace is horrifying, like the dance of fire in zero gravity.

The Graceful Man’s silence is the worst thing she has ever heard.

Passing over the Atlantic Ocean they picked up a distress call from a cruise ship that was adrift with no crew left alive or able to work.

The call was from a seven-year-old child whose mother was telling her how to use the radio.

The girl was fine. She said her mommy was feeling poorly and a man had fallen over in the kids’ play area.

Approaching Europe, Matt tuned into several big news agencies and listened to the reports.

All of them were dreadful and tragic. None projected hope.

A French channel broadcast what appeared to be a series of public executions of government officials.

An English voice talked of skirmishes all along the south coast as boats from Europe attempted to land.

One Spanish radio station played frantic guitar music with the presenter coughing and shouting over the top.

Matt was pleased he didn’t speak Spanish.

He understood enough, though. He felt like that kid on the ocean liner, adrift and asking for help from a world that no longer had the ability to care. I’m mission commander , he thought, but the fact that there was no longer a mission and the only thing left to command was a dying crew…

He hated to think of them and himself like that, but it was the truth.

“I feel like that kid on the ship,” Lizzie said, and Matt laughed. There was no other way to react. “So, I’ve been thinking…” she said, but a noise from behind silenced her.

Gemma came up from mid-deck and gave them both a food packet. They were half-empty, the leftovers from yesterday. They’d stopped tasting of anything, but Matt still ate, and drank from the water bottle by his seat.

“Thinking what?” Gemma asked. She was quieter than ever now, eyes wide, the skin around them dark from exhaustion. She didn’t want to sleep, she said, because she wanted to grasp every minute left to them.

Matt heard the lie every time she spoke it, because she was grasping nothing. Gemma hung around on mid-deck most of the time, staring at the air lock entrance, sometimes with her head cocked. She watched them with those wide eyes, hardly saying anything.

“Nothing,” Lizzie said. “Just thinking.”

“Thinking about how we finish things,” Gemma said.

Lizzie caught Matt’s eye. He’d been thinking about that, too. There would soon come a day when the food ran out. It would be a long time before the water was gone, and he knew they could live for weeks without food, but they’d weaken, fade, and if they were going to do something…

“Yes,” Matt said. It needed saying. “Thinking about how we do that, when the time comes.”

“Time came days ago,” Gemma said. “Everything’s worse. Nothing’s better down there. Joslin’s rotting in Mission Control.”

“We can’t try to land,” Matt said. He was worried they were about to have that discussion again. But Gemma surprised him by nodding, smiling, and he thought it was the first time she’d smiled in a while.

“How long would we stay in orbit?” Gemma asked.

“A good while,” Lizzie said. “Years. Maybe a lot of years.”

“And our payload?” Gemma asked.

“Eventually our orbit will decay, and we’ll skim the atmosphere. Probably too shallow, and Discovery will come apart high up, and Matt says…” She looked at Matt, the truth that they’d already been discussing this now hanging between them.

“That high up, pollution from the warheads shouldn’t cause too much trouble down on the surface,” he said. “It’ll just be added to the upper atmosphere.”

“And so will we,” Gemma said. Matt and Lizzie followed her gaze through the window. “Kinda beautiful.”

“But that time’s not yet,” Matt said. “So how about you grab that illicit bottle of Jack I brought on board?”

Lizzie raised her eyebrows. “You’ve waited til now ?”

“In the small locker behind my sleeping bag.”

“I’ll get it,” Gemma said.

As she moves down to mid-deck, she feels them talking about her.

She doesn’t actually hear this, but senses it in her gut.

They sit up there and whisper, snicker, calling her a disgrace, scheming about how to get rid of her so that they can share her rations.

She sees it in their eyes. She hears it in their voices.

She opens the small locker and grabs the bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

Of course they talk about you, the Graceful Man says, and beyond the air lock door she hears his boot heels clacking at his steady approach, and then… scritch, scritch … against the door. They’re jealous. Because of what you’re going to do for me.

She stares at the bourbon bottle in her hand, but what she really sees is the memory of her disgrace.

She was in her bedroom with Paul Nevill.

They were both naked, hot, flustered, and it felt deliciously daring and vital, because she had never been this far with anyone before.

Neither had Paul, she knew that from his wide-eyed delight, his fluttery breaths.

He was hard in her hand. And as she tugged softly, urging him closer, their hottest parts meeting at last, the bedroom door slammed open.

Her father’s furious shout shattered her senses and echoed painfully in her skull, like a bullet fired into a tank. That scream never ran out of energy, and it is as powerful now as it was fifteen years before.

Gemma, you disgrace me!

And then her father is someone else and she sees him for the first time, standing in her bedroom doorway like a shadow given life, smiling. But that smile is terrible.

Poor Gemma. What an evil father. You never did anything wrong.

“But I did…” Gemma says, and she burns with the deep guilt that sustains her self-hate. Her silence around the house, unable to meet his eye. The awful names she called herself.

The dreadful thing she did.

What a bad man he was.

“No, he wasn’t bad, my dad was…”

Changing around medicine capsules in the cabinet by his bed, just to make him feel sick so that she could help him, show him that she wasn’t as bad, as disgraceful as he believed.

His eyes when they found him later that night, rolled back in his head as if in his final moments he chose to deny everything he had ever seen.

But I am good , the man says, smile filled with too many teeth, eyes aglow with the red light of eternity. And you know it, Gemma. A good man, a graceful man, and if you’re good for me, you’ll know that forever .

She’s squeezing the bourbon bottle too hard, afraid that it will shatter and cut her hands, splashing glass shards and booze and blood around the cabin.

And the small part of Gemma that clasps on to sanity realizes that this might be her last chance to make a decision of her own. She grips tighter, squeezing––

… scritch scritch SCRIIIIIITCH! …