Page 50 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

Several weeks later, after returning the book to the library—it was seriously overdue by that point and cost him nearly fifty cents in late charges—Tommy finally worked up the nerve to try to climb the water tower that was located only a half dozen blocks from his house.

Try being the operative word here… because that initial attempt had ended after only two or three minutes of climbing and, at most, a thirty-foot ascent.

He hadn’t lost his nerve at the last moment and chickened out, nor had he been caught by a member of the sheriff’s department and ordered to come back down.

His hands had simply gotten too sweaty and his fingers had begun slipping off the ladder’s metal rungs.

So, in the name of common sense and caution, he’d quickly aborted the mission, only to return several days later, wearing a pair of leather batting gloves he’d found at the bottom of his equipment bag.

And wouldn’t you know it, that minor adjustment did just the trick—providing him with an ample grip to make his way up the ladder with the speed and agility of a spider monkey.

A slight exaggeration perhaps, but you get the picture.

There’s no one quite so determined as a twelve-year-old boy with a head full of dreams and not even a speck of fear of death.

Once he’d reached the summit of the tower—resisting the overwhelming urge to look down as he climbed—he’d discovered a surprisingly spacious welded steel platform waiting for him.

Measuring nearly fifteen feet in length and almost as wide, the metal deck provided a breathtaking view of the town below, while also leading to a guardrail-protected catwalk that encircled the crest of the tower like a silver crown.

Both the deck and catwalk were splattered with yellowish-white splotches of bird shit, but that hadn’t bothered Tommy in the least. Feeling as though he were floating amid a dreamscape, he’d sat at the edge of the platform, legs dangling in the open air, and spent the next couple of hours surveying the town in which he’d been born in a way he’d never before imagined.

The schools, churches, grocery store, and library; Henderson Memorial Park and the post office, bank, and ball fields; Hanson Creek and the paper mill and his house on Cedar Drive with his mom’s apple-red Toyota parked crooked in the driveway—they were all there, stretched out in sun-dappled glory in front of him, looking for all the world like the miniature town his grandfather had built in his basement to go along with his electric train set.

Tiny cars and trucks traversed the streets below him.

Even tinier people strolled along sidewalks and fished in the creek and picnicked in the park.

At some point, the wind picked up, raising gooseflesh on his arms and blowing his hair into his eyes, and Tommy thought in a flush of absolute wonder: It’s like I’m God, sitting on a cloud, looking down over my creation.

A little later, when he realized he was going to be late for dinner, Tommy climbed down the ladder—forcing himself to take his time—and retrieved his bike from the weeds where he’d hidden it.

He pedaled home as fast as he could. His mother, standing in the kitchen wearing an apron, asked where he’d been and how his clothes had gotten so filthy.

Not wanting to tell her a lie, he’d quickly replied, “Climbing a ladder.” His father, already sitting at the head of the table with his napkin spread over his lap, said, “You be careful, son. You fall and break an arm and your baseball season is over before it gets started.” Tommy nodded and sat down in the chair across from him. All of a sudden, he was starving.

On the night of his father’s death, Tommy’s immediate plan of action was to bury his father in the garden, recite a quick prayer because he knew his mother would have wanted him to, and then go back inside and clean up the mess inside his parents’ bedroom.

Only it hadn’t worked out that way.

Each time he’d entered the hallway and approached the bedroom—the buzzing of hungry flies piercing his brain with a maddening symphony—his body had betrayed him.

With every step he took, his stomach roiled and his vision blurred.

Then the floor beneath his feet began to tilt back and forth, and he was forced to make a hasty retreat.

Three separate times he’d made the effort, and all three times he’d failed.

During his final attempt, just as the sun was peeking over the horizon, his hands had begun shaking so badly that he’d fumbled the bottle of Lysol and roll of paper towels onto the vomit-stained carpet.

He’d left them there and fled into the backyard.

After that, he’d spent most of the day roaming around town, the hot July sun beating down on his face and neck, suddenly desperate to make contact with another human being.

He’d hiked all the way out to what was left of the roadblock on the highway, but it was no use.

The town was silent and still. He was alone.

The last man standing. Or in his case, the last boy.

Later that night, unable to summon the energy—or courage—to reenter the house, he’d gone to sleep on an old air mattress on the floor of the shed.

When he awoke the next morning, there was a stray fishing lure protruding from his bare shoulder.

One final “fuck you” from his coward of a father.

The last few weeks, he’d been having weird dreams and tossing and turning most of the night.

He must have rolled over on it at some point and gotten snagged like a fat old catfish in Hanson Creek.

He’d needed pliers and a splash of rubbing alcohol to remove the treble hook from deep within his skin.

After several minutes of yanking and twisting, it finally pulled free.

There was quite a bit of blood, but no tears.

Tommy was convinced that after everything that had happened, he could no longer feel pain of any kind.

His heart was too numb for such luxuries.

Not knowing what else to do or where else to go, he’d wandered downtown and climbed the water tower shortly before noon—and spent the remainder of the day on the metal platform.

The view hadn’t changed much since happier times, but any sense of wonder had long ago abandoned him.

He’d held on to a sliver of hope that from this improved vantage point he might be able to spot someone passing through, but was once again disappointed.

Other than his father — “ He’s a righteous man…

”—it had been weeks since he’d seen another living soul, and today was no different.

As evening approached, he’d thought he spotted a plume of smoke coming from somewhere to the east, but it was just some clouds.

Finally, around eight, with his stomach growling and the jug of water he’d carried in his backpack drained dry, he’d slung the .

22 rifle over his shoulder and scuttled down the ladder, not really caring if he slipped and fell.

With the sun setting behind him, he made his way back to the house, smeared peanut butter on some Ritz crackers, and ate his dinner out back beneath the stars.

When he was finished, he didn’t even bother trying to enter his parents’ bedroom.

Instead, he sat at his father’s workbench in the shed and tried to find a working station on the radio.

As usual, there was nothing but static. Once again, he spent the night on an air mattress on the floor.

And once again, he dreamt of the old Black woman standing in the cornfield like an ancient scarecrow, a fat orange moon peeking over her bony shoulder.

As midnight came and went, the dream slipped away and he finally settled into a deep sleep.

Two long years after Tommy’s maiden ascent of the water tower, in a brand-new world that had sprung from a nightmare, it was from that heavenly perch atop the viewing platform that fourteen-year-old Tommy first spotted row after row of black body bags lined up in the parking lot outside of Bennington General Medical Center; watched the parade of olive-green army trucks flood into town on Highway 9; scores of armed soldiers wearing gas masks going house to house, storefront to storefront, escorting frightened townsfolk to the overflow village of hospital tents that had been set up in the field behind the closed-down high school; the government bulldozers, tailpipes burping black exhaust, working day and night, digging burial pits in Henderson Park; and it was from that metal deck in the sky that Tommy felt the sting of acrid smoke in his eyes and smelled the stench of burning flesh—his mother’s yellow scarf tied snugly around his neck, covering his nose and mouth—as truckload after truckload of dead bodies were dumped into the trenches, set ablaze with flamethrowers Tommy had only seen before in movies, and eventually buried beneath mounds of dark earth.

Later, after the soldiers were gone—nearly eighty percent of them wiped out by the flu, the survivors fleeing for the Canadian border in a caravan of army trucks—what remained of the population of Bennington abandoned the makeshift tent village and returned to their homes to die.

Or in some rare cases, to live and try to make sense of what came next.

There was no official count of how many townspeople had made it through those first few months alive, but the estimate Tommy overheard a deputy whisper to his father was seventy-one.

Seventy-one men, women, and children were all that was left. Everyone else was dead.