Stephen King - The Stand

Numbly, his feet found the pedals and he biked on, faster and faster, bending over the handlebars to cut down the wind resistance, picking up speed until he was nearly flying along. If he had come upon a wrecked car in his path, he would have pedaled into it full-tilt and perhaps killed himself.

But little by little he could feel that dark, hot presence falling behind him. And the greatest wonder was that that awful red Eye had glanced his way, had passed over him without seeing ( maybe because I’m bent over my handlebars so far , Tom Cullen reasoned incoherently)… and then it had closed again.

The dark man had gone back to sleep.

How does the rabbit feel when the shadow of the hawk falls on him like a dark crucifix… and then goes on without stopping or even slowing? How does the mouse feel when the cat who has been crouched patiently outside his hole for the entire day is picked up by its master and tossed unceremoniously out the front door? How does the deer feel when it steps quietly past the mighty hunter who is snoozing away the effects of his three lunchtime beers? Perhaps they feel nothing, or perhaps they feel what Tom Cullen felt as he rode out of that black and dangerous sphere of influence: a great and nearly electrifying sunburst of relief; a feeling of new birth. Most of all a feeling of safety scarcely earned, that such great good luck must surely be a sign from heaven.

He rode on until five o’clock in the morning. Ahead of him, the sky was turning the dark-blue-laced-with-gold of sunrise. The stars were fading.

Tom was almost done in. He went on a little farther, then spotted a sharp decline about seventy yards to the right of the highway. He pushed his bike over and then down into the dry-wash. Consulting the tickings and workings of instinct, he pulled enough dry grass and mesquite to cover most of the bike. There were two big rocks leaning against each other about ten yards from his bike. He crawled into the pocket of shade beneath them, put his jacket under his head, and was asleep almost at once.

The Walkin Dude was back in Vegas.

He had gotten in around nine-thirty in the morning. Lloyd had seen him arrive. Flagg had also seen Lloyd, but had taken no notice of him. He had been crossing the lobby of the Grand, leading a woman. Heads turned to look at her in spite of everyone’s nearly unanimous aversion to looking at the dark man. Her hair was a uniform snow-white. She had a terrible sunburn, one so bad that it made Lloyd think of the victims of the gasoline fire at Indian Springs. White hair, horrible sunburn, utterly empty eyes. They looked out at the world with a lack of expression that was beyond placidity, even beyond idiocy. Lloyd had seen eyes like that once before. In Los Angeles, after the dark man had finished with Eric Strellerton, the lawyer who was going to tell Flagg how to run everything.

Flagg looked at no one. He grinned. He led the woman to the elevator and inside. The doors slid shut behind them and they went up to the top floor.

For the next six hours Lloyd was busy trying to get everything organized, so when Flagg called him and asked for a report, he would be ready. He thought everything was under control. The only item left was tracking down Paul Burlson and getting whatever he had on this Tom Cullen, just in case Julie Lawry really had stumbled onto something. Lloyd didn’t think it likely, but with Flagg it was better to be safe than sorry. Much better.

He picked up the telephone and waited patiently. After a few moments there was a click and then Shirley Dunbar’s Tennessee twang was in his ear: “Operator.”

“Hi, Shirley, it’s Lloyd.”

“Lloyd Henreid! How are ya?”

“Not too bad, Shirl. Can you try 6214 for me?”

“Paul? He’s not home. He’s out at Indian Springs. Bet I could catch him for you at BaseOps.”

“Okay, try that.”

“You bet. Say, Lloyd, when you gonna come over and try some of my coffee cake? I bake fresh every two, three days.”

“Soon, Shirley,” Lloyd said, grimacing. Shirley was forty, ran about one-eighty… and had set her cap for Lloyd. He took a lot of ribbing about her, especially from Whitney and Ronnie Sykes. But she was a fine telephone operator, able to do wonders with the Las Vegas phone system. Getting the phones working—the most important ones, anyway—had been their first priority after the power, but most of the automatic switching equipment had burned out, and so they were back to the equivalent of tin cans and lots of waxed string. There were also constant outages. Shirley handled what there was to handle with uncanny skill, and she was patient with the three or four other operators, who were still learning.

Also, she did make nice coffee cake.

“ Real soon,” he added, and thought of how nice it would be if Julie Lawry’s firm, rounded body could be grafted onto Shirley Dunbar’s skills and gentle, uncomplaining nature.

She seemed satisfied. There were beeps and boops on the line, and one high-pitched, echoing whine that made him hold the handset away from his ear, grimacing. Then the phone rang at the other end in a series of hoarse burrs.

“Bailey, Ops,” a voice made tinny by distance said.

“This is Lloyd,” he bellowed into the phone. “Is Paul there?”

“Haul what, Lloyd?” Bailey asked.

“ Paul! Paul Burlson! ”

“Oh, him! Yeah, he’s right here having a Co-Cola.”

There was a pause—Lloyd began to think that the tenuous connection had been broken—and then Paul came on.

“We’re going to have to shout, Paul. The connection stinks.” Lloyd wasn’t completely sure that Paul Burlson had the lung capacity to shout. He was a scrawny little man with thick lenses in his glasses, and some men called him Mr. Cool because he insisted on wearing a complete three-piece suit each day despite the dry crunch of the Vegas heat. But he was a good man to have as your information officer, and Flagg had told Lloyd in one of his expansive moods that by 1991 Burlson would be in charge of the secret police. And he’ll be sooo good at it, Flagg had added with a warm and loving smile.

Paul did manage to speak a little louder.

“Have you got your directory with you?” Lloyd asked.

“Yes. Stan Bailey and I were going over a work rotation program.”

“See if you’ve got anything on a guy named Tom Cullen, would you?”

“Just a second.” A second stretched out to two or three minutes, and Lloyd began to wonder again if they had been cut off. Then Paul said, “Okay, Tom Cullen… you there, Lloyd?”

“Right here.”

“You can never be sure, with the phones the way they are. He’s somewhere between twenty-two and thirty-five at a guess. He doesn’t know for sure. Light mental retardation. He has some work skills. We’ve had him on the clean-up crew.”

“How long has he been in Vegas?”

“Something less than three weeks.”

“From Colorado?”

“Yes, but we have a dozen people over here who tried it over there and decided they didn’t like it. They drove this guy out. He was having sex with a normal woman and I guess they were afraid for their gene pool.” Paul laughed.

“Got his address?”

Paul gave it to him and Lloyd jotted it down in his notebook.

“That it, Lloyd?”

“One other name, if you’ve got the time.”

Paul laughed—a small man’s fussy laugh. “Sure, it’s only my coffee break.”

“The name is Nick Andros.”

Paul said instantly: “I have that name on my red list.”

“Oh?” Lloyd thought as quickly as he could, which was far from the speed of light. He had no idea what Paul’s “red list” might be. “Who gave you his name?”