Page 78 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

He knew mountains here talked to him in his sleep.

The old woman, darker than his mother with a shock of white hair as pure and bright as fallen snow, came to him in his dreams. She said her name.

She did her best to comfort him. And she called to him.

Called him and bade him take up his pack and come west. But not to California and not to Minnesota and absolutely not to Las Vegas.

She wanted him to come to her and take her to Boulder, Colorado.

And Woodrow would wake from these dreams confused and unquieted.

He’d never left Virginia. How was he supposed to find this old Black woman?

How was he supposed to get to Boulder, Colorado?

How was he supposed to leave his goddamn wife and his children for a dream?

For a fucking dream? Never mind the old ways.

Never mind the voice of the mountains. How was he just supposed to leave? How?

“HOW?!” he yelled. His voice ricocheted through the valley, bouncing off the trees and the rocks and then fading away into nothingness like an exorcised ghost. Woodrow took the pail back to the corncrib.

He was about to turn and go back in the house when he heard a familiar sound that filled him with fear.

There were voices coming up the road.

His driveway, or the road that led to his house, since he’d given Langston his truck, wound down the mountain for about two hundred yards until it hit the main highway that led you out of the county.

Most of the people left in Lee County were keeping to themselves.

Quarantining the way the government had asked them to do when Captain Trips first hit.

That’s what Joshua called it in the last letter they had received from him.

That was before Captain Trips had made his way up the mountain.

Before they lost touch with Joshua, who said he was being deployed in Washington, D.C.

“To protect the president. He’s a good man, Daddy. You’d like him. But I don’t think they tell him everything. Y’all best stay up on Brown Otter. Safer that way. I think,” Joshua had said in his letter.

But of course, people hadn’t stayed up on Brown Otter. Woodrow thought if the government had really wanted them to stay quarantined, they should have told folks to go into town and dance in the goddamn street.

So, hearing voices coming up the road set his nerves on edge.

His shotgun was in the closet, but his bowie knife was on his belt.

He reached down and touched the handle and felt the polished wood and the weathered leather scabbard.

The blade was wicked sharp. His own daddy had taught him the magic of a whetstone and concentration.

He figured he could cut a man’s throat with that knife and the man wouldn’t know it until he tried to drink a glass of water.

Woodrow walked past the corncrib and peered down the lane.

Three figures were approaching. Two of the figures were slight and had the loping walk of small but strong women.

The third figure was a man. Not as tall or as wide as Woodrow, but a solidly built man all the same.

They had backpacks and old tan boots. The women were Black and the man was Hispanic.

The three of them had their hands up and were smiling.

The closer they got, the higher they raised their hands and the wider their smiles got.

“Excuse me, sir, we don’t mean you no harm.

We’re just passing through, but we were wondering if you could maybe spare some water or some food or if you were feeling really generous a bit of both?

I’m Jorge and this here is Janice, and this lady to my right is Tina,” Jorge said.

They’d stopped about fifty feet from Woodrow.

Woodrow had sat with his own madness for months since Mae had passed.

It was an old friend who didn’t know he wasn’t welcomed.

He saw him in the mirror in the morning and behind his eyelids at night.

There was madness in this man’s smile. It was in all of their smiles.

Shining bright and deadly like quicksilver.

But….

Weren’t they all a little mad these days? Weren’t they all walking across the surface of a barely frozen lake that was their sanity? Everyone he’d ever known or loved was dead. Except for Joshua. Please, God, not Joshua.

If you weren’t a little crazy, were you even still alive?

“I got some water. Ain’t too much food, though. Just some taters and greens and some snap beans. Got a little deer jerky, but it’s a bit salty,” Woodrow said. He didn’t mention the ton of canned foods he had in the cellar or the shotgun he had in the closet.

“Well, sir, we would sure appreciate it. Thank you so much,” Jorge said.

Woodrow noticed something else about his smile and that of his two companions.

It never seemed to reach their eyes.

Later, they sat around Woodrow’s kitchen table.

He had boiled potatoes and snap beans and made them some tea with the last bit of sugar he had left.

They ate ravenously. Not as ravenously as the pigs, but pretty close.

Then they told him they had come up from Newport News.

Walked along Interstate 64 until they decided to take Interstate 81 and head west.

“We the last people left standing from Red Hill County,” Jorge said between bites of the potatoes.

“So, we heading west,” Tina said. Her voice was husky like she’d been smoking since her fifth birthday.

“Go west, young man,” Janice said.

She was staring at Woodrow the way he figured a spider looked at a fly. There was a frankness in her gaze that made him uncomfortable in ways that weren’t exactly unpleasant.

“You’re welcome to stay the night,” Woodrow said. The words were out of his mouth before he realized he was saying them. Janice licked her lips. Actually, licked them like a lion staring at a gazelle. Woodrow shivered on the inside.

“Well, that’s mighty kind of you. Thank you so much. It’ll be nice not to wake up with beetles in my hair,” Jorge said, and laughed. The laugh sounded like he hadn’t used it in a long, long time.

That night Woodrow slept in his bed with the shotgun on the floor under him and his knife on the nightstand beside him.

It took two hours after they had all laid down, after he’d blown out all the oil lamps and washed the dishes, before Janice came to his room.

She slipped through the door like a shadow made flesh.

Woodrow watched her approach his bed, naked and slick like a phantom cut from the very night itself.

She slipped into his bed.

“You’ve been alone a long time haven’t you, Woodrow?” she whispered.

He didn’t answer.

She took his hand and guided it between her legs. When he felt what she had there, felt his fingertips brush against her wetness, he let out a moan.

“You don’t have to be alone anymore. Come west with us. Come with us and meet the Man. The Ageless Stranger. The Walkin Dude,” she whispered as she guided his fingers inside her.

Woodrow tried to move his hand away, but Janice pushed his fingers in deeper.

He didn’t know who the Man was or the Ageless Stranger.

Or the Walkin Dude. All he knew was his hand was wet and Janice looked enough like Mae that he could lock his guilt away in a place where it couldn’t greet him in the dark.

He was dreaming.

He was standing near the pen. It was dark, but the pigs were milling about. He started into the shadows and saw that their snouts were stained red.

“It’s blood,” his dream self said.

The boar stomped to the door of the pen. His flat muddy brown eyes appraised him hungrily. His fat pink tongue slipped out like a fat greasy worm and licked at the blood on his snout.

“Woodrow Teller. You liked to fuck your wife in the ass. She did it because it’s what you wanted, but she hated it.

Hated it every time. You fucked Janice in the ass tonight and she didn’t mind.

Not one bit. Come to Vegas, Woodrow. You can get all the buggering you want there.

Women or men. Hell, boys or girls if you want it.

Just drop to your knees and promise me. Say the words.

Say, ‘Your life for me.’ Say it and you can forget all about your rotting wife and your dead children,” the boar said, but Woodrow’s dream self knew it wasn’t the boar.

It was him. It was his voice that came forth from the gullet of the big pink pig.

“He’s a liar. The hoary cripple with the malicious eye,” another voice said.

In his dream, Woodrow saw himself turn.

There was the old Black woman from his previous dreams. She was sitting in a rocking chair as the sky behind her roiled. First black then purple then finally red. Red as the gates of hell.

“He lies Woodrow. Whatever you and your wife did in your marriage bed you did for love. And for a little fun. No need to feel ashamed of that. Don’t let him seduce you, son. He speaks and breathes corruption,” the old Black woman said. She pulled out a fiddle and began to play a mournful tune.

“He is Legion,” she said.

Woodrow sat straight up in the bed.

“Mother Abagail,” he said in a hoarse moan. That was the old woman’s name. He knew it. He didn’t know how he knew it but he did.

He reached out for Janice.

Janice was gone.

The next morning the three travelers were standing on Woodrow’s porch with their backpacks full of deer jerky. Their canteens were full of water from Woodrow’s well.

“Safe travels,” Woodrow said.

Jorge smiled at him.

“We thank you for your hospitality. We really do. Thank you for the jerky and the water. But I can’t help but notice you got some mighty fat pigs over there.

What say we butcher one of them and split the meat?

The four of us working on it, it won’t take long at all.

One them fat fuckers could feed us for the whole winter,” Jorge said.

“We can kill them all and then you can come west with us,” Janice said.

Woodrow felt his face get hot.

“Thank you kindly, but I suppose you best be on your way. I don’t plan on going nowhere,” Woodrow said. Jorge smiled wider. Woodrow thought it was no longer a smile at all. It was like the man was baring his teeth at him like a mad dog.

“You got eight pigs, Woodrow. It’s a waste not to do something with all that meat,” Jorge said.

“It’s gotta taste better than the last meat we had,” Tina said.

“Yeah, the last meat we had was tough as shoe leather,” Janice said.

“Yes… yes it was. Gamey as all get out,” Jorge said.

“Shoe leather. That’s funny,” Tina said.

Woodrow felt like mice were running across his belly. The back of his throat felt raw as a skinned rabbit. The three travelers were standing on the porch, but they were loosely surrounding him.

“I’m not killing my pigs. You all best be moving on now,” Woodrow said.

“What size shoe you wear, Woodrow?” Tina asked.

Jorge pulled a pistol out of his pocket and pointed it at Woodrow.

“We gonna leave here with some meat. Up to you what kind,” Jorge said.

Woodrow bit his bottom lip.

“Okay. Okay. Let’s go,” he said. He brushed past Janice and walked over to the pen.

“I’m gonna open the gate. You shoot the first pig that comes out. We can’t shoot him and let him drop in the pen. They’ll be on him before you blink,” Woodrow said.

“You just get ready to cut his big ass up,” Jorge said.

As Woodrow approached the pigsty, the big boar raised his massive head.

His eyes were not muddy dirty brown anymore. They were hazel colored like drops of honey. It occurred to him that the old Black woman in his dreams had light eyes, too.

“You ready?” Woodrow said over his shoulder.

“Just open the pen,” Jorge said.

Woodrow caught the eyes of the oldest sow. Her eyes were light brown, too.

He pulled the catch and threw the gate open.

Woodrow hopped up on the rail as all eight of the pigs rushed out of the pen at once. Jorge’s gun went off once, then twice.

Then the screams began.

When the screaming stopped, Woodrow took one of the backpacks off what was left of one of the bodies. He packed up his wedding picture, the family Bible, and some moonshine. He placed the grave marker in the backyard. He put it at the head of Mae’s grave and went down to his knees.

He closed his eyes.

“I love you, Mae. I love you Mary-Ellen. I love you Junius,” he whispered. He got up and threw the backpack over his shoulder.

The pigs had moved on from the bodies and were standing at the tree line. The sows had already started walking into the woods. In a month they’d be feral. The boar stared at him. Woodrow stared back.

It licked its bloody snout and turned away from his gaze.

Woodrow took a paintbrush and a small can of oil-based red paint and wrote on his front door.

GONE WEST TO FIND MOTHER ABaGAIL. BEWARE OF WILD PIGS. WOODROW TELLER.

Then he headed down the lane with his shotgun over his shoulder.

He hoped Joshua was still alive.

He hoped Joshua wasn’t in Las Vegas.

He hoped he could find Mother Abagail.

He hoped there were more people like Mae and Joshua than Jorge and Tina and Janice.

He hoped he didn’t run across the Walkin Dude.

But he also hoped he’d be strong enough to make his stand if he did.