Page 81 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

Then the world changed. Quickly. Irrevocably.

The major news networks downplayed the seriousness of Captain Trips to begin with.

CNN reported that it was a “particularly pesky” (and Russian) influenza virus that would mainly affect the very old and the very young.

Peter Jennings assured ABC World News Tonight viewers that a vaccine had been developed and would soon be widely available.

The pretense didn’t last long. It couldn’t , partly because people died faster than the rate at which even the most well-meaning misinformation could spread, but mostly because, within weeks, there was no news. America was off-air.

Through the flames of fear and suffering, Elise found something unexpected: hope. Some higher power had pressed society’s reset button. Everything would be different from here out. If ever there was a time for a new beginning, this was it.

Again, she went to Jason. Surely now he’d see reason. He’d avoided getting sick, but had woken up that morning—the last day of June—with a light fever and a cough. Just a smoker’s cough, he’d said, but it sounded wetter.

“It’s a ghost town out there. It’s scary.

” Elise normally addressed Jason with her hands behind her back and her head lowered, like some chastened nineteenth-century daughter.

Now she stood with her hands on her hips and her shoulders flared.

“Half the stores on Main Street have closed down. The other half have been looted.”

“I know.” Jason sat at the kitchen table with his Hardballer stripped and laid out in front of him, cleaning the individual parts with a soft white rag.

“Big Wheel’s closed, too. Buddy Stagg died this morning.”

“I heard.” Jason picked up the slide and ran his rag back and forth, inside and out, with a tenderness she didn’t see often. “Poor ol’ Buddy. He was good to me.”

“You don’t have a job anymore,” Elise said. “Not a legal one, anyway.”

“Mmhmm.”

“There’s nothing here for us, Jason. We need to put El Centro in the rearview.” Elise took a deep breath. She didn’t like the way her chest tremored. “We need to find people… opportunities. We need to start again.”

“Agreed,” Jason said, and stifled a cough with the back of his hand.

Elise shook her head as if she’d misheard, but no, Jason showed his teeth in a good way. She asked again, just to be sure.

“You agree?”

“I do.”

“Oh, baby.” All the tension went out of Elise’s chest. She stepped around the table, peeled a curl of hair off Jason’s warm brow, and kissed him there. “You don’t know how happy I am to hear that.”

“Mmhmm.”

“I was thinking… Now, I know it’s a long way, but hear me out…

I was thinking Nebraska.” She didn’t tell him about the dreams. If he knew that she’d suggested the Cornhusker State on the back of several (albeit vivid) dreams, he would shoot the idea down faster than a cat could lap chain lightning.

“We could get a little farm, maybe, grow our own vegetables. I heard that—”

“Nebraska?” Jason slid the clean barrel into the clean slide and put these finished pieces to one side. “Why the fuck would I ever want to go to Nebraska?”

Elise stepped back with one hand to her chest. The tension had returned, just like that. He’d said I , not we . Why the fuck would I ever want to go to Nebraska? He was thinking of himself, and only himself, the same as always.

“I just… I’ve got a good feeling about it, is all,” Elise said. “A good feeling for us . Me and you. A better life.”

“Yeah, well…” Jason coughed against the back of his hand again. “Heck’s got a good feeling about Vegas.”

“Heck Drogan ? Oh, baby, no. Not him.” She shook her head and fought back tears. “That’s not the new beginning we’re looking for.”

Jason looked at her, his smile subtly different, displaying his teeth in a less appealing way. “And Nebraska is? Up there with the hicks and cows? Call me crazy, but I think we’re better suited for Vegas. And it’ll for damn sure be more fun.”

Fun? The world had been knocked on its ass and he was thinking about having fun .

“You don’t get it, Jason.” Elise put her hands on her hips again.

She’d managed to keep the tears from spilling onto her cheeks, but there was so much disappointment in her voice.

“It’s not El Centro I want us to get away from.

It’s the life. These negative influences, the cocaine runs, the crime.

Vegas will be no different. Jesus, it’ll be worse. A thousand times worse.”

“We’ll be king and queen.”

“We won’t. We’ll be two rats in a city full of them.”

Jason started to say something, but broke off into a wild coughing fit, his chest and shoulders pumping, his face turning eggplant.

He lifted the rag to his mouth and spat a gristly plug of phlegm into it.

“Good Christ,” he said, and then, “It’s you who doesn’t get it, Elise.

You think you’re better than all this, but you’re not. Never have been. Never will be.”

“Don’t say that.”

“You can’t escape this life.”

“That’s not true.”

“Look at your old man. Three weeks out of prison before breaking his parole, then back inside he goes.” Jason folded the rag so that the phlegm wad was on the inside and kept cleaning. “Being bad is in your blood, Elise. You can’t run away.”

“I can.” Now the tears came, hard and bright. “I can and I will.”

Jason’s smile changed again. “The devil will find you.”

Elise walked out of the kitchen, a little dazed, a lot hurt, hoping in that moment that whatever Jason had was more than a smoker’s cough and hating herself for thinking that way.

She considered burying him. He wasn’t always so mean.

They’d shared many good moments in the time they were together.

She thought he’d like to be buried in the backyard of the home he grew up in, where he played as a child and had fond memories.

Elise was emotionally punched, though. Not dying, and watching everybody else die, was hard work.

The thought of hauling Jason’s dead weight out of their apartment and into the back seat of a vehicle, driving it to South El Centro, and then digging a hole large enough to drop it into, was simply overwhelming.

Arguably, he deserved better than a puke-stained sheet, but a puke-stained sheet was what he got.

His Bronco was unreliable. The transmission had been slipping for the past couple of weeks (he’d been meaning to fix it, but then got sick) and it had two bald tires.

Even if it had been fully roadworthy, Elise wouldn’t have taken it.

There was too much of Jason in there. His trove of cassette tapes.

The worn spots on the steering wheel made by his hands.

His oil, aftershave, and sweat smell. He’d be with her every mile, telling her to turn around, that being bad was in her blood.

Maybe the devil would find her, but Elise didn’t want to make it easy for him.

She opted for the neighbor’s Chevette because, of the four vehicles she’d checked, it was the only one with gas. Half a tank, in fact. More importantly, it was nondescript, unassuming, and she believed it would elicit less attention—an important factor in a world so suddenly thrown into chaos.

A gang of children patrolled Adams Avenue in a beaten up Econoline.

“La Raza” by Kid Frost blared through the open windows.

The driver looked no older than twelve and there were more preteens on the roof, some armed with machetes, others with semiautomatic rifles.

Elise avoided them without challenge. She saw a man dragging bodies into a pile on the corner of 8th and Main.

There was a five-gallon can of gasoline nearby.

She crossed Alejandro Ortega’s farmland and joined Villa Road heading east. It was late morning when she finally—and permanently, God willing—put El Centro behind her.

She found the girl a mile outside Caballo Blanco.

Caballo Blanco meant white horse in English, but the only horse Elise saw was a bay roan.

It lay dead in the middle of a trailer park and looked to have been stripped for meat.

The trailer park was called Días de Sol and constituted most of the town.

There were a few dusty buildings, a ranch, and a convenience store that had suffered recent fire damage.

Elise had pulled into Días de Sol and siphoned dregs of fuel from three vehicles, just enough to return the Chevette’s gauge to the halfway mark.

A fifty-something woman with greasy red hair looked on from the front step of her Airstream.

She’d painted black X’s on her eyelids that flashed warnings every time she blinked.

A one-lane gravel track led from Caballo Blanco to State Route 219.

The girl walked its verge with her head down.

She was thin and dirty. The laces of one sneaker were untied.

Elise drove past her, then a voice somewhere inside—her soul voice, which had been mostly suppressed in the two years she’d spent with Jason—called out.

She stepped on the brake pedal, reversed, and got out of the car.

The girl stopped walking and looked up, lifting a clump of knotted hair from in front of her eyes. She saw Elise and backed up a step.

“It’s okay,” Elise said, raising both hands palms out. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The girl didn’t look so sure.

“Hey. It’s okay.”

The girl stood still. Her jaw quivered. The early afternoon sunlight highlighted a bruise on her left cheek. Elise kept her hands raised and stepped closer.

“Do you live around here?” she asked, gesturing down the narrow track with a small nod. “The trailer park?”

The girl looked at her sneaker tops.

“Your family?” Elise asked.

A vague yet telling shake of the head. Elise sighed and looked around. Other than Caballo Blanco, which the girl was walking away from , there was nothing for miles. It was hot, even for Arizona in July. If Elise saw a thermometer reading anything less than 110, she’d believe it was broken.