Page 86 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand
ACROSS THE POND
V. Castro
Every morning, Elizabeth walked across the now desolate Westminster Bridge sucking on her first cigarette of the day and stopped at the foot of the Big Ben clock tower.
Eddies of smoke rising into the air matched the churning Thames, though the river appeared cleaner than ever.
The golden hue of the clock’s brickwork seemed to brighten like a beacon on the occasional sunny days.
It still kept time, which felt like a small miracle.
Next to Big Ben were the Houses of Parliament with their daggered spires.
Across the street stood Westminster Abbey.
It housed dead royalty including Queen Elizabeth I—the Virgin Queen, and a very dead god she never prayed to.
After, she continued to walk along the Thames, salvaging food and any goods she might need from the abandoned shops that once served the millions of tourists who poured into the city.
Tattered and sun-bleached tabloid magazines and out-of-date newspapers remained on the shelves.
The red double-decker buses that once congested the roads remained where they had been abandoned.
On the opposite side of the river was St. Thomas Hospital.
Handy for the strong meds that weren’t for curing anything, but felt good to take.
More than a few times, she ventured into the small museum dedicated to Florence Nightingale that was only a few minutes’ walk from the hospital.
A life-sized Florence made from wood and wax stood at the entrance holding a lantern.
It made Elizabeth wish she had mattered more, had been someone like Florence instead of living a life worth a pittance.
She had been a year eight history teacher and utterly forgettable to the impoverished students who couldn’t care less about school, considering they could leave at sixteen to make money for smokes and cheap cider.
The ones who were desperate for love or attention were nice, but most of the others were cruel little gits.
A single note calling her Ms. Minging Minge stuck with her like the stink of the boy’s locker room.
All that was over. Something worse than the bubonic plague had killed them all. Death had visited this place before and come back to nearly finish the job.
With nothing to do since the collapse of the world, Elizabeth would spend hours in museums looking at pieces of art that had once been considered priceless, but were now less valuable than toilet paper or batteries.
Despite the widespread death, this world of disaster suited her fine.
There was nothing and no one to make her feel like her existence didn’t matter.
She left her apartment in a rundown council estate in Vauxhall and moved into the County Hall Hotel’s most expensive suite.
She woke up with the view of the Thames and Westminster Bridge.
All the luxuries she didn’t have before were for the taking.
She could live like a queen in this nightmare if she wanted to.
They say you find love when you aren’t looking for it and that’s exactly what happened to Elizabeth.
Just when she had begun to accept never seeing another soul again, never getting to fuck again, she began to experience lucid, dark dreams of a man named Flagg, with a distinct American accent.
At first, he seemed like a mirage, or a watercolor made with different shades of denim.
His presence felt overwhelming, larger than life.
Like his power could extend across the Atlantic and scoop her into his arms. Nothing like the working-class muppets she met at pubs before last call.
Their bloodshot eyes and noses with prominent spider veins made her despise them.
All they did was complain about the government and football.
But a warm bed was better than an empty one.
With eyes closed, her fingertips glided over her body, imagining what Flagg would feel like next to her in the super king-size bed not meant for one.
She awoke still alone. But that tracked with the story of her love life.
A series of fucks that left her frustrated in an endless cycle of loneliness and disappointment.
Since puberty, males had never noticed her at first glance.
She didn’t have nice skin with wide-set eyes or a made-you-look body.
Her hair was a frizzy mess the color of muddy water, and teenage acne had left scars.
Years of smoking and tea drinking had left her teeth discolored.
The English Rose gene somehow missed her.
That’s why she became what her students would call a slag.
What she lacked in pretty she made up for by being an eager lover.
At least it was some sort of affection, even if they never spoke to her again.
Then again, the pubs and nightclubs were always full.
Yet that seductive man with the heat of the desert and darkness of hell returned night after night in her dreams and made her orgasm in her sleep as his hands dug deeper into her flesh while she lay on an altar with ecstasy taking over.
She woke up invigorated and feeling alive, as if his energy flowed from his cock and into her body.
It could only be described as an out-of-body experience, or possession.
Standing nude in front of the bathroom mirror was where she talked to him.
Instead of her own face, she saw his. The longer she communed with him, the more she craved to see him and others—if there were any left.
She wanted to be touched again. His presence stirred deep longing and frustration.
“I can’t be the only survivor here. There has to be someone who can help me get to you,” she said to him as herself.
Her lips moved, yet she heard his voice in her mind. “ Be patient .”
“I will do anything you want me to as long as you help me!” she pleaded.
“ Patience ,” he replied.
Tears streamed from her eyes. “I’m lonely. You’re the only one I can turn to. Anything. I will do anything to fuck you.”
She closed her eyes, acutely aware of the coldness of the floor beneath her feet since the heating stopped working. Her nude body shivered, covered with goose pimples. Rain pelted against the window. That damn British rain she hated and wanted to escape her entire adult life.
“ How?! ” she screamed.
No response from him except the memory of her dream the previous night. It was a vision of her cheek against an altar covered in a white cloth. Both her hands were tied behind her back. Her gaze shifted toward the ornate, vaulted ceiling. She knew where that altar was located. It had to be a sign.
The following afternoon, Elizabeth stood in front of the Coronation Chair in St. George’s Chapel inside Westminster Abbey, wanting to feel the sensation that royals of old experienced.
Divine right. They believed each king and queen was imbued with God’s power and protection.
The divine lived through them. They were chosen .
To disobey meant you disobeyed God Himself.
Was this true? The modern monarchy had left much to be desired.
They had all seemed very ordinary and thick.
Nothing divine had lived in them. If it did, they would still be here instead of her.
It gave her a smug satisfaction. The dreams also made her feel this way.
There was something truly otherworldly about them, and Flagg. They could be the new gods.
Elizabeth touched the decrepit old wood and chipped gold paint of the Coronation Chair.
It had decayed just like the long-gone royals.
The throne only possessed the power of the one who sat on it.
History and war told that tale time and time again.
The urge to sit on it became stronger the longer she gazed on its pathetic state of ruin.
Who would stop her, and did it even matter anymore?
She had hoped the dream brought her here to meet others, yet the walk across Westminster Bridge was a lonely one. The Abbey was just as empty except for the dead.
To hell with it all. She sat on the Coronation Chair and closed her eyes.
Sunlight filtered into the cold building.
The warmth of it on her face made her think of the American desert.
In her mind’s eye, she imagined Flagg walking toward her, the famous Las Vegas sign behind him, ready to take her as his own.
She smiled thinking of him. She could feel her back straighten as she stretched out her hand.
“Finally, you are here. Dreams and reality have finally merged. My king, my dearest Flagg.”
“You hear him, too?”
She opened her eyes, startled by the sound of another voice. For an instant, she didn’t know if it was a real person in the physical realm or another manifestation like Flagg.
The young man looked about nineteen or twenty.
He wore a dirty collared shirt beneath a raincoat, and black trousers.
He carried a small rucksack on his back.
His smooth pale skin and dirty-blond hair falling across his face made him appear like a schoolboy, like the thirteen-year-olds she once taught.
Bright and round blue eyes glittered with crown jewel depth.
On his hip he wore a belt with an antique sheathed steel sword.
Perhaps he, too, wandered into the museums and took this treasure. But what would he do with it?
Her body tensed. She had nothing to defend herself with if he attacked. But why would he ask her about Flagg? She waited a beat before answering him.
“Yes. Do you?”