Page 93 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

All of the dead, gone. The smell, gone. The memories, gone.

(Oh, the memories would assault her the rest of her life, but at least she would not be immersed in them from the time she woke each day.) Her joints shook with combined grief and ecstasy as the land began to look hazy.

Imaginary. Only the water was real. She hadn’t realized how hard it had been to breathe until she drew in salty air that bathed her lungs.

Had Granpè Jean felt this when he left Ayiti?

She was sure he had. She could almost feel his steady hands on her shoulders.

This was the sensible thing , he seemed to assure her. You’re in control of your future now .

For their first meal together, she spread out a white tablecloth she found folded in a drawer.

They already had five eggs, so Marie whipped up a Spam omelet for them to share, and it was pretty tasty even though Edmund drowned his in ketchup from the fast-food packets his uncle had left behind.

They ate at the cockpit table together like a family breakfast in Little House on the Prairie , laughing and smiling while the chickens clucked.

It’s working , she thought. We’re actually doing this.

A jinx if there ever was one.

“There you go,” the Boat Man said, looking at Marie. “I knew you had a smile in you.”

He winked at her again.. The idea that he was noticing whether or not she smiled made Marie lose her appetite.

“Wind’s good,” the Boat Man said. “Let’s unfurl those sails and knock off the engine. Gotta save our fuel.”

“Aye, aye, Captain!” Edmund said. He leaped from his seat mid-bite to go to the controls.

By lunchtime, she saw the clouds. Summertime was always the time for storms, so she wasn’t surprised when the clear skies began to fill with paint brush strokes of gray clouds that were only white at the edges, darkest in their bellies.

Rain had a smell, too, even before it began.

Storms were the main villain in all of Granpè Jean’s worst stories at sea.

“Look!” she said, pointing skyward.

The Boat Man wasn’t worried. He calmly called out instructions to help stay clear of the storm that Edmund was still eager to follow, hopping around like a monkey.

Marie said, “Aye, Aye, Captain” like Edmund, helping to tie everything down as the Boat Man told her—just in case.

After a time, when the clouds filled the sky in every direction and the wind picked up, the Boat Man wanted them to “reef” the three sails, furling them to a much smaller size to capture less wind.

The job took all three of them lashing ropes, and they worked so efficiently that Marie didn’t worry even as the skies grew dark too early in the day.

She eyed the emergency dinghy lashed behind the boat and felt reassured by its sight.

Her stomach lurched with the waves, but she had faith in her crew.

Lightning made the clouds glow. Thunder was a giant stalking above them.

But when the rain came, they opened their mouths and savored it, all of them drenched.

And that was all. The rainfall slowed, then stopped, and the Boat Man steered toward a wide gap in the clouds promising calmer skies ahead for the night sail.

Marie could not have been prouder of their group—herself most of all.

She’d had a nightmare about a storm, yet she hadn’t lost her head when a storm appeared. Her dreams did not control her.

The good feeling stopped as soon as she gave in to sleepiness and went down to her cabin, a bit unsteady on her feet as the boat swayed.

Edmund was already inside, and she was surprised to see half a dozen guns spread across the bare cushion.

The overhead bulb might have been loose, making Edmund’s movements look herky-jerky as he whipped around to look at her with accusation in the unsteady light.

“Did you take it?” he said.

“Take…?”

“My nine-millimeter is gone,” he said. “My Glock. It’s my favorite.”

“Are you sure you brought it?” The guns on the bed looked alike to her, only different colors. He had referred to each of them as his favorite at one time or another.

“Then it was him ,” Edmund said, ignoring her question. “He came in here and went through my stuff and he took it. He stole it!”

His voice was rising. The familiar clenching returned to Marie’s stomach, worse than the storm—that feeling that everything could go horribly wrong in an instant—so she rested her hands on Edmund’s bare, sun-reddened shoulders the way she had imagined Granpè Jean comforting her.

She tried to transfer reason to Edmund by osmosis through her palms.

“Edmund… everything has been fine so far. You’re working great with him.”

He yanked away from her, probably more violently than he’d meant to.

She’d forgotten how much his sunburn must hurt.

She lost her balance, bracing herself against the wall.

“That doesn’t mean he can touch my stuff.

He has no right ! We don’t need him with us anyway! You know he looks at you funny, right?”

“Shhhhh,” she said. She didn’t want the Boat Man to hear and come down to their cabin.

In his current state, Edmund might pick up the closest gun and shoot him.

How had she lulled herself into believing everything would be fine?

Edmund was Edmund. (And didn’t the Boat Man look at her funny? Edmund had noticed it, too.)

“I’ll go up and talk to him,” she said. Even as she said it, rain pelted the boat again, and the rocking grew urgent beneath her feet. The Boat Man had stayed above to keep an eye on the weather, and the deck was the last place she wanted to be.

“Yeah, let’s go right now—” Edmund said.

“Let me go alone. If he took it, I promise I’ll get it back.”

In the flickering light, Edmund’s face seemed to be squirming with his desire to hurt the Boat Man. “And he better say sorry! And he better never do it again!”

“Yes, yes,” she said. “I promise. Give me five minutes. Okay? Just stay right here.”

He bit his lip so hard that she thought he might draw blood. Then Edmund nodded. Thank goodness he trusted her; she still had that, at least.

Edmund snatched a gun from the bed and thrust this toward her. “Take this.”

“Stop it, Edmund—I won’t need it.” She mostly said this to show him what trust looked like, but she regretted it as she moved toward the galley empty handed.

What if the Boat Man had taken the gun? Edmund was fanatical about his weapons, so she doubted he had counted wrong.

She tried to imagine how a conversation might go if he argued. She would smile and be polite.

—I’m so sorry, Captain, but you have to give it back.

—I thought we said share and share alike. Y’all ate my eggs today.

—The food, yes. My water. Just not Edmund’s guns. Not unless he says so. He’s very sensitive about them. They belonged to his family. They’re like heirlooms to him.

–Oh, okay, I get it. Here ya go, girlie.

Hearing the conversation in her head made it feel plausible. She wouldn’t mind if he called her girlie this time, as long as he gave her the gun. As long as he didn’t turn out to be a mistake so soon.

Marie had just sighed away the tight feeling of dread in her chest when the room tumbled like a carnival ride to one side, bending her over the galley table with an Oof!

as the water cartons and dishes crashed to the floor.

Edmund cried out from the cabin, his guns clanking as they scattered and fell.

She heard the thunk of him landing hard, too.

Beyond the door above her, the Boat Man yelled and cursed. Something about a sail.

“Get the fuck up here!”

That she heard fine. And strange clanking sounds from the front of the boat she’d never heard before. She still didn’t know much about boats, but that sound wasn’t good news.

The boat briefly righted and then heeled right again ( starboard?

), the angle slightly less severe. Marie got over her surprise and kept clawing her way to the companionway, propelling herself with the edge of the table, then the kitchen counter, then the sturdy stair rail.

Her foot landed on the first step, then her left, and up.

Motion knocked her head against the wall, like a whip’s lash to her temple, but she didn’t lose her grip in the stairwell. Three steps felt like a hundred.

The door opened above her as lightning flared in the skies with bright veins. All she saw was his silhouette painted in the brightness behind him.

“—lost the headsail!” the Boat Man was saying. “The furling line snapped! The headsail was shit .”

He reached his hand out to her, and she took it without thinking. He hauled her up the last step and put his face too close to hers to shout in her ear above the storm. “I’ve gotta go up and secure that sail! Might be just a squall, but you two stay in the cockpit and do what I say!”

In the next flash of lightning, she saw the wildly swinging ropes of her nightmare. The tattered sail was making a whoo whoo whoo sound in the strong gusts, flapping wild.

Marie wasn’t sure, but she thought she might be wetting her pants.

“I need the gun!” she said. “You took it! I have to give it back to him.”

He slapped her face. Not hard—enough to get her attention. But the sting vibrated to Marie’s bones, paralyzing her. He shouted in her ear again, as painful as the slap. “Did you hear what I said? We lost the sail! Stay in the cockpit!”

A rope snapped ahead of them, dancing in the wind. The Boat Man’s head turned as if it had called to him. Still reeling with the boat’s wild rocking, he reached toward the metal bar to hoist himself toward the sail. Water sprayed just beneath him, splashing at her feet.

“I have to give it back!” she shouted.

He hesitated long enough to look back at her one more time with a terrible sneer, or at least it seemed like one in the night’s shadows.

“ Shut the fuck up and do as I say! ” His voice was a shriek, or was his voice the wind?

A lightning flash made him grow to the size of a giant, his beard coming to life on his face, twisting and writhing.

Were his eyes glowing bright red? How had she never seen his true image before? Only the storm revealed it.

When he turned away from her, reaching for the iron bar to support him, Marie ran toward him with all of her strength.

Only later did she realize she was screaming a war cry that honored her name— La Guerre —as she thrust out her palms and pushed him hard in the center of his bony back.

And he flew so far that she thought he might soar above her.

The Boat Man’s arms pinwheeled, trying to hold on to anything solid, as he somersaulted headfirst and fell into the inky water. The storm and flapping sail were so loud that she didn’t hear him splash—but his yell went silent in the churning sea.

Marie panted, stunned at herself. Stunned by the boat’s unruly rocking. A fever lifted from her, as if she had dreamed that the Boat Man was standing ever so close to her. Slapping her. Shouting in her ear. What had she done?

Marie might have stood there clinging for balance in the cockpit with the question rolling over in her mind for days—if not for the first gunshot.

The popping sound wasn’t as loud in a storm, but she recognized it and whirled around. Edmund had emerged from the galley, leaning over the railing where one unlucky jolt would send him tumbling into the water, too. He had put on his red leather jacket, bright in the muzzle flashes. Pop. Pop. Pop .

Edmund was firing into the water.

“We don’t need you!” Edmund was screaming. “We can go by ourselves!”

The popping sound gave way to clicks: he had emptied his gun. Marie grabbed Edmund by his jacket collar and pulled him away from the railing. Water pounding the side of the sailboat spilled over them both.

“We need to put on our harnesses!” she said. “And we gotta get that front sail down!”

Edmund stared up at her. In the lightning, she couldn’t tell if his face was only drenched or if he had tears in his eyes. He blinked as if he, too, were emerging from a dream.

“Edmund! Did you hear me?!” she said.

He leered an unholy grin at her. She prayed that her eyes did not look as wild as his, but surely, they did. She was not the sensible one, after all. Maybe no one was sensible anymore. Perhaps they were all just swimming as fast and as hard as they could, trying to stay in the eye of the storm.

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Edmund said.

He winked at her exactly like the Boat Man.