Page 47 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

Gemma shakes her head, afraid that he’s going to scratch and tear all the way inside. She can feel him looking right at her, through the solid door and its protective packing and across the impossible gulf between them, and there’s a frantic, animal eagerness in those deep, red eyes.

At last, the Graceful Man tells her what he wants.

Matt hoped that time might have settled Gemma’s dreams.

They took it in turns sleeping two or three hours at a time so that at least one of them monitored communication, in the vain hope that there might be some good news.

His own dreams were of a deep kindness sitting in the unseen distance like a rising sun.

He was sad, because however fast he ran, he knew he would never reach that place.

The rabid dog was just a shadow now, something left behind.

Lizzie had a similar dream. They must have talked about it enough for their minds to be working in sync, consciously or otherwise.

But Gemma’s sleep had remained light and very troubled, and she was growing more and more distant. He guessed they were all handling this nightmarish situation in their own way. Perhaps more time together might help them all.

As Gemma came back onto the flight deck with the bottle of Jack, Lizzie drifted across from the pilot’s seat and nodded for her to sit. Gemma seemed surprised at this act of kindness.

“Let’s raise a toast,” Matt said.

“To who?” Gemma asked as she lowered herself into the seat.

“Who, what, where, when,” Matt said. “Maybe just to us.” Gemma handed him the bottle and he popped the top, revealing the drinking nipple he’d already attached before smuggling it on board.

“You’d have been in so much trouble if Flight had caught you with that,” Lizzie said.

“Uh-huh. Last thing I’d want to be right now is in trouble.

” He chuckled, Lizzie laughed, and Gemma turned away, looking through the window at their dying world.

“So… I’ll make this to my wife and girls,” he said.

His voice caught and he blinked quickly, focusing only on the bottle in his hand, watching how light danced and burned in its auburn depths.

“Because I was always in trouble with them when I was chosen for one of these flights.” He raised the bottle quickly, and though he didn’t need to, he tipped his head back as if to hold in the tears.

The swig scorched deep and fine, warm and intimate, and the taste and smell brought good memories he held close.

Lizzie grabbed the bottle from him and held it up before her. “July ’69,” she said. “Moon landing. That was the moment I knew what I wanted from life, and here I am. With you guys.” She sucked from the bottle and swallowed, smacking her lips. Then she held it out to Gemma.

“It’s weird,” Gemma said, “it all still looks so beautiful. But there’s a fight going on down there. A war.”

“For survival,” Matt said, and he winced inwardly, because this moment was about them not surviving.

It was being together in their final days or hours.

But Gemma took the bottle and lifted it, and for that moment Matt believed that it really was going to be all right.

However they approached the end, whatever they decided their final moments might be, they would face that time together as a crew.

“To him,” Gemma said.

Matt frowned. “Who?”

Gemma flung the bourbon bottle toward Lizzie’s face, and at the same time thrust herself from the pilot’s chair toward Matt.

He brought his hands up to meet her, but she knocked his right arm aside with her left, then her other hand jabbed toward his face.

It was only in that final unbelievable moment that he saw what she was holding.

Then the blade that Frank had used to take his own life slit through Matt’s left eyelid and continued onward, deeper, destroying his vision and turning his head slightly before the pain sang in.

After the pain, nothing.

Gemma grabs the commander’s seat and pulls, kicking out against the control panel with her right foot, shoving the blade deeper into Matt’s eye.

His mouth is open and his other eye stares at her in shock, but already the life within is flickering and fading to nothing.

Blood and a clear fluid spurt from his ruptured socket.

She thinks of her father’s eyes rolled back in his head, and at last he can see no more.

“ Noooo! ” Lizzie screams.

Still holding the knife, using it as an anchor, Gemma forces her legs around and kicks Lizzie in the face.

Lizzie bounces back, her head turning to the side, her own legs lifting as her body starts to spin before striking the bulkhead beside the ladder face-first.

Gemma pushes away from Matt and the commander’s chair, the bloody blade in her hand trailing gobbets of gore, but her trajectory is off. She drifts to the left and hits the bulkhead, pushing off, spinning slowly as her hand comes around toward the other woman.

Lizzie is pulling herself down the ladder through the hatch leading to mid-deck.

Gemma lashes out and the knife flicks across the back of her thigh, parting material and skin, leaving a growing trail of blood as Lizzie disappears down through the hole.

The impact sets her into an uncontrolled spin, and Gemma hears a sickening thud as Lizzie cracks her head against one of the ladder’s struts.

Gemma grabs on and goes to follow, but then the Graceful Man says, All you need is here. Don’t be a fucking disgrace .

She pauses, breathing hard, blood hazing the air around her, and for a few seconds she tries to grab on to dregs of the old Gemma as they flit by. Her hands clasp tight, the knife slicing into the base of three fingers as she makes a fist.

The pain brings her senses alight and all they know is that man from her dreams. He smells of dust and sun-scorched highways and deep, deep age.

He tastes of long-buried memories and newly opened graves.

His fingertips are hot against her jaw as he turns her head toward Discovery ’s front windows, and the skin there bubbles into four burn blisters.

She hears his voice, deep and controlling.

And as she realizes that she is his, everything he desires is laid out before her in graceful, unending glory.

Gemma slams the hatch leading down into mid-deck, then pushes herself across to close the second opening. She glances down before she does so and sees Lizzie floating, bouncing off of surfaces, blood leaking from a gash above her right eye.

Maybe she’s dead already.

Gemma secures herself in the flight deck, and she hears a sigh of triumph from somewhere other than herself.

“I ain’t never going to meet you, girl, and for that I’m sorry,” the old woman said.

Lizzie couldn’t see her, but she knew the woman was very old, and frail, and her voice was weighted with responsibility.

“Reckon if we did meet, we’d be friends.

Ain’t had too many friends of late, but that’s lookin’ to change quite soon. Yes, Lord, change is coming.”

Lizzie felt herself adrift, as if floating in cool deep water, but she could breathe and move and listen.

“Thing is, there’s something I’d ask of you, even though you can’t come here to me.”

Lizzie felt a sudden rush of regret. This woman was the kindness she’d dreamed of, but she didn’t realize until hearing these words just how much she wanted to be with her.

Mother … she thought.

“Quiet now, girl,” the old woman said. “Don’t have long. And I’m tired, and ain’t proper sure you can even hear me.”

I hear you, Mother .

“That thing you’re on, it’s comin’ down. Steered by hands you don’t wanna comprehend, it’s aiming to spread its poison all across this place around me, the farm and all of Nebraska beyond. And if that happens, well… it’s done before it’s begun.”

It’s over anyway. We know that. We’ve been watching …

“You’ve been watchin’ the end of the beginning,” the old woman said, and her voice broke a little, growing weaker and more distant.

Mother? Mother?

“I gotta live just a little while longer, so help me, girl. And help everyone.”

Lizzie heard a soft breeze passing through endless crops, and then something closer and more tangible, shaking the ground beneath her, a horrible grumbling growl vibrating into her core.

Wake up! she heard and thought at the same time, and for that moment before coming to, her voice and that of the old woman were the same.

She opened her eyes, and a droplet of blood made her vision grow red.

“Matt,” she said, and she remembered his death, and Gemma coming for her. The pain from the cut in her leg was tactile and real, but more so was the voice of the old woman in her dream.

She groaned and held on, bringing her slow spin to a halt.

Her stomach churned. She thought she’d gathered herself, but then she puked, trying to make it to the toilet area first, but succeeding only in spraying vomit around mid-deck.

It splashed against bulkheads, spreading, coalescing again, floating and stinking and spreading across their sleeping bags.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. None of them would be sleeping there again. Gemma had gone insane, and something was driving her. Something dark.

“Gemma!” she shouted, looking up at the closed hatches into the flight deck. She probably couldn’t even hear. “Gemma!” There was no answer. And yet something was different. Lizzie paused and tilted her head, turning slowly left and right, and that growl came in again.

Low, almost subaudible, the altitude adjustment rockets were firing.

She’s taking us down , Lizzie thought. Gemma was a payload specialist, trained for eighteen months in the securing and deployment of the contents of their payload bay. She knew very little about flying the shuttle, and certainly nothing about landing.

For what she meant to do, that didn’t matter.