Page 56 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

The towels were there—hastily spread out. The stuffed tiger was there, too, splayed out near the foot of the bed. But Danny was gone. I strained to look around the small, dark room.

“Danny?” I hissed his name, desperate and frightened. “Danny, donde estas ?”

I darted into the cramped bathroom. Nothing.

I moved back into the main room itself, the moonlight sneaking through the window serving as the only illumination.

There was only one place he could have gone.

I crouched down and looked under the bed. There he was, way back against the wall, the white of his eyes visible even in this darkness. He was clutching himself, trying to make himself as small as he could. I reached a hand out to him.

“Danny, come out,” I whispered. “We have to go.”

“ Mami , no, they’re coming— he’s coming,” Danny said, the fear plain on his face. His voice sounding off-balance and delirious, as if he were still mid-dream. “He’s coming to get me, Mami.”

I moved to the other side of the bed, which brought me a little closer to him, though he was still out of reach. I crouched down and tried to slide farther under the bed, but I couldn’t fit. I reached out my hand, palm up, and raised my voice slightly.

“Danny, we need to leave this place, right now, okay?” I said, trying to remain calm, trying to give off a sense that this was all part of the plan.

But Danny was smart. There was no plan anymore.

We were in hell, and we just wanted to try and survive.

“Please come out, sweetie, okay? I need to figure out how—”

Thump .

Louder. Closer.

I pushed myself under the bed, feeling my back lifting up the metal frame and squeezing myself through, the adrenaline muting whatever pain I’d feel later. If there was a later.

My hand roughly grabbed Danny’s arm and I tugged him toward me and out from under the bed, ignoring his squeal of surprise.

I stood up, panting, clutching him to me, my arm wrapped around him—my other hand still clutching the gun.

We were both breathing heavily in the darkened room, my eyes locked on the door.

I looked at the flimsy chair in the gloom, propped against the handle. The noise had stopped.

But the door handle was moving. Jerking up and down, faster each time.

I saw the metal handle turn down slightly, then back up, clicking and clacking, but not fully opening. Whoever was on the other side was desperate to get in, and we had nowhere else to go.

“ Mami , what—”

“Don’t worry,” I said, like a reflex—words I’d said so often they became almost mantra-like. “Get behind me.”

I looked around the darkened room—hoping I could find something, anything I’d missed before.

A secret tunnel. A ladder. A magical warp that would send us to another level far from this dank, terrible place where everything was broken, dirty, and cracked, where nothing felt right.

I wanted to curl up and cry for days—to just expel everything and then fade into the soil, to be recycled and fed into the earth so I could be of use to something again.

But, of course, I couldn’t do any of that.

I looked down at Danny, his arms now wrapped around my leg.

I could see his eyes watering. His bottom lip jutted out in that way it did when he was about to start bawling.

Please God, don’t cry now , I thought. I crouched down, the jangling of the door handle getting faster, and pulled him in close.

“We’re going to be fine,” I said, trying to keep my tone flat, my eyes locked on his. “Mommy won’t let—”

“It’s Daddy,” he blurted out.

“What?”

“It’s Daddy,” Danny said, looking past me now, toward the door. “He’s here. He’s coming for me. He wants me b—”

A clicking. I felt a coldness cover every inch of my body. The bolt lock. But how? I wondered.

I heard the creaking of the door—it was opening, it was opening —and I spun around.

I watched the door hit the chair and stop, the top of the chair locked under the handle, preventing it from opening any wider.

I heard that scratching sound again, against the door—and I started to get a better sense of what it was.

Nails on wood. Scraping. Clawing. Desperate to get inside.

Then I heard something else. Something I would never forget.

Breathing. Dank. Heavy. Labored. Like a dying animal crawling into the woods, eager to find a quiet, cool place to die.

I stood up and shoved Danny behind me, my hands raised, wrapped around the gun, which I was pointing toward the door. No. It wasn’t him. Couldn’t be him. Erik. That prick. He was dead. Like everyone else.

“ I’m coming …”

The voice, like a boot stepping on shattered glass—sharp and jagged, highs and lows blended together to make a monstrous sound. But a voice, nonetheless. A man’s voice.

“ I’m coming for …” it said, the door jostling now. I could see the chair shaking, slowly being dislodged from its place. The last bit of defense between us and whoever was on the other side. “ I’m coming for him …”

I’m coming for him.

No.

It couldn’t be.

Before I could give it another moment’s thought, the door finally slammed inward, the chair flipping back and away from the entrance.

It all happened so quickly. The shape charged in—human, big, certainly a man, something flapping around him like a cloak or a cape.

His heavy, strained panting cut through the silence and seemed to fill my eardrums.

“ I’m coming for him! ” the shape shrieked as it ran toward us. I fired then. Fired again.

I fired as the shape landed atop me and we rolled around.

Fired again as I felt sharp nails scratching at my face, stabbing my midsection.

I felt blood— my own , I thought. I felt pain across my back and side and face.

Fired as I was slammed against the far wall.

I heard Danny yelp in surprise. I felt myself being thrashed around, like on a roller coaster—except I didn’t see where the tracks were going.

Another shot. Another scream. Then silence.

Then black.

I didn’t know how long I was out.

It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.

I read somewhere that people were rarely unconscious for longer than that.

It wasn’t like a comic book or movie. But it could have been a lifetime.

The room was quiet. The thrashing was over, and every inch of me hurt.

I couldn’t get up—I felt my midsection and my hand came back wet and sticky with blood.

My head was pounding, like the worst hangover I’d ever had, multiplied a hundred times over.

I lifted my head slightly and noticed the shape at my feet. Large, bundled in dark clothes. Not moving. The monster. The creature that had stormed in—it’d just been a man. The man I thought I’d seen move when we first came inside.

Not la mala hora . Not Erik. Just a stranger—a barely alive man desperate for something.

I lingered on him for less than a second. I pushed myself up to my elbows and screamed from the pain. I knew I had some slashes in my midsection. Probably a concussion, too. But I needed to move. I needed to find—

Danny.

No.

Please God.

No.

I saw it on the peach carpet, even in the moonlit darkness, I could make it out. The streak was thick and red and heavy. Danny’s blood.

I saw his leg next. His foot, bare and untouched by his space-blue pajamas, sticking out from under the bed. Not moving.

I got up, ignoring the pain down my back, the blurring of my vision, the trickle of blood that seemed to burst from my face as I moved, and pushed myself toward the bed. My fingers wrapped over a side of the metal frame and I lifted, finding strength I never knew I had.

There he was. His tiny figure lit by the moon, his tiny foot jutting out, the rest of him curled up as if he were asleep. But he wasn’t. The streak of blood ended with him.

No.

I fought the urge to look for the gun. To see if there was another bullet in the chamber. One, saving grace, to pull me out of this hell—this endless, festering nightmare.

I couldn’t bring myself to look at him again, to look at my baby.

This poor, innocent creature that I’d brought into this world—a world that had been fucked up long before Captain Trips.

Long before the virus decimated us. A world full of corruption, lacking empathy, hope, and sincerity.

The kind of darkness we wouldn’t wish upon our worst enemy.

Danny had been my hope—that his innocence and kindness could help stem the tide.

But how can you stem a tide of hate and anger and desperation that feels insurmountable?

Everyone was dead and dying. And now Danny—

“ Mami …”

I looked down. His tiny voice. A scratchy, sleepy croak.

I moved in, letting the bed frame rest on my back as I reached for him, rolling him over gently. I looked at his eyes, barely open, but open. I felt his chest—waited for what felt like an eternity for it to fill with air, then let it out. I looked at his little mouth, still slightly open.

“Danny…” I said.

I felt his tiny hands weave into mine. I saw the bloody wound on his palm—a graze, I guessed, unable to see clearly. But still, nothing that couldn’t be fixed. Nothing that couldn’t be helped.

“Mami… was it… was that Papi?”

“No, baby,” I said, stammering. “He’s gone. He’s never coming for you. Never again.”

I pulled, almost dragged him out from under the bed and sat, crying into his shoulder, my mouth open, the sounds coming from my mouth like an animal braying for its pack, loud, meandering, aching.

Then he started to cry, too, from fear, but also something else.

Something deeper we’d been sidestepping for months as we made our way up through this hot, festering stretch of land. Through this world turned upside down.

They were tears of joy.