Stephen King - The Stand

Stu had brought back all six of the movies which had been playing in the Grand Junction Cinema complex. After supper that evening, Stu said casually: “Come on over to the Convention Hall with me, Tom.”

“What for?”

“You’ll see.”

The Convention Hall faced the Holiday Inn across the snowy street. Stu handed Tom a box of popcorn at the doorway.

“What’s this for?” Tom asked.

“Can’t watch a movie without popcorn, you big dummy,” Stu grinned.

“ MOVIE? ”

“Sure.”

Tom burst into the Convention Hall. Saw the big projector set up, completely threaded. Saw the big convention movie screen pulled down. Saw two folding chairs set up in the middle of the huge, empty floor.

“Wow,” he whispered, and his expression of naked wonder had been all Stu could have hoped for.

“I did this three summers at the Starlite Drive-In over in Braintree,” Stu said. “I hope I ain’t forgot how to fix one of these bastards if the film breaks.”

“Wow,” Tom said again.

“We’ll have to wait in between reels. I wasn’t about to go back and grab a second one.” Stu stepped through the welter of patch cords leading from the projector to the Honda generator in the electrical closet, and pulled the starter cord. The generator began to chug cheerfully along. Stu shut the door as far as it would go to mute the engine sound and killed the lights. And five minutes later they were sitting side by side, watching Sylvester Stallone kill hundreds of dope-dealers in Rambo IV: The Fire-Fight . Dolby sound blared out at them from the Convention Hall’s sixteen speakers, sometimes so loud it was hard to hear the dialogue (what dialogue there was)… but they had both loved it.

Now, thinking about that, Stu smiled. Someone who didn’t know better would have called him dumb—he could have hooked a VCR up to a much smaller gennie and they could have watched hundreds of movies that way, probably right in the Holiday Inn. But movies on TV were not the same, never had been, to his way of thinking. And that wasn’t really the point, either. The point was simply that they had time to kill… and some days it died goddamned hard.

Anyway, one of the films had been a reissue of one of the last Disney cartoons, Oliver and Company , which had never been released on videotape. Tom watched it again and again, laughing like a child at the antics of Oliver and the Artful Dodger and Fagin, who, in the cartoon, lived on a barge in New York and slept in a stolen airline seat.

In addition to the movie project, Stu had built over twenty models, including a Rolls-Royce that had 240 parts and had sold for sixty-five dollars before the superflu. Tom had built a strange but somehow compelling terrain-contoured landscape that covered nearly half the floor space of the Holiday Inn’s main function room; he had used papier-mâché, plaster of paris, and various food colorings. He called it Moonbase Alpha. Yes, they had kept busy, but—

What you’re thinking is crazy .

He flexed his leg. It was in better shape than he ever would have hoped, partially thanks to the Holiday Inn’s weight room and exercising machines. There was still considerable stiffness and some pain but he was able to limp around without the crutches. They could take it slow and easy. He was quite sure he could show Tom how to run one of the Arctic Cats that almost everyone around here kept packed away in the back of their garages. Do twenty miles a day, pack shelter halves, big sleeping bags, plenty of those freeze-dried concentrates…

Sure, and when the avalanche comes down on you up in Vail Pass, you and Tom can wave a pack of freeze-dried carrots at it and tell it to go away. It’s crazy!

Still…

He crushed his smoke and turned off the gas lamp. But it was a long time before he slept.

Over breakfast he said, “Tom, how badly do you want to get back to Boulder?”

“And see Fran? Dick? Sandy? Laws, I want to get back to Boulder worse than anything, Stu. You don’t think they gave my little house away, do you?”

“No, I’m sure they didn’t. What I mean is, would it be worth it to you to take a chance?”

Tom looked at him, puzzled. Stu was getting ready to try and explain further when Tom said: “Laws, everything’s a chance, isn’t it?”

It was decided as simply as that. They left Grand Junction on the last day of November.

There was no need to teach Tom the fundamentals of snowmobiling. Stu found a monster machine in a Colorado Highway Department shed not a mile from the Holiday Inn. It had an oversized engine, a fairing to cut the worst of the wind, and most important of all, it had been modified to include a large open storage compartment. It had once no doubt held all manner of emergency gear. The compartment was big enough to take one good-sized dog comfortably. With the number of shops in town devoted to outdoor activities, they had no trouble at all in outfitting themselves for the trip, even though the superflu had struck at the beginning of summer. They took light shelter halves and heavy sleeping bags, a pair of cross-country skis each (although the thought of trying to teach Tom the fundamentals of cross-country skiing made Stu’s blood run cold), a big Coleman gas stove, lamps, gas bottles, extra batteries, concentrated foods, and a big Garand rifle with a scope.

By two o’clock of that first day, Stu saw that his fear of being snowed in someplace and starving to death was groundless. The woods were fairly crawling with game; he had never seen anything like it in his life. Later that afternoon he shot a deer, his first deer since the ninth grade, when he had played hooky from school to go out hunting with his Uncle Dale. That deer had been a scrawny doe whose meat had been wild-tasting and rather bitter… from eating nettles, Uncle Dale said. This one was a buck, fine and heavy and broad-chested. But then, Stu thought as he gutted it with a big knife he had liberated from a Grand Junction sporting goods store, the winter had just started. Nature had her own way of dealing with overpopulation.

Tom built a fire while Stu butchered the deer as best he could, getting the sleeves of his heavy coat stiff and tacky with blood. By the time he was done with the deer it had been dark three hours and his bad leg was singing “Ave Maria.” The deer he had gotten with his Uncle Dale had gone to an old man named Schoey who lived in a shack just over the Braintree town line. He had skinned and dressed the deer for three dollars and ten pounds of deermeat.

“I sure wish old man Schoey was here tonight,” he said with a sigh.

“Who?” Tom asked, coming out of a semidoze.

“No one, Tom. Talking to myself.”

As it turned out, the venison was worth it. Sweet and delicious. After they had eaten their fill, Stu cooked about thirty pounds of extra meat and packed it away in one of the Highway Department snowmobile’s smaller storage compartments the next morning. That first day they only made sixteen miles.

That night the dream changed. He was in the delivery room again. There was blood everywhere—the sleeves of the white coat he was wearing were stiff and tacky with it. The sheet covering Frannie was soaked through. And still she shrieked.

It’s coming , George panted. Its time has come round at last, Frannie, it’s waiting to be born, so push! PUSH!

And it came, it came in a final freshet of blood. George pulled the infant free, grasping the hips because it had come feet-first.

Laurie began to scream. Stainless-steel instruments sprayed everywhere—

Because it was a wolf with a furious grinning human face, his face, it was Flagg, his time come round again, he was not dead, not dead yet, he still walked the world, Frannie had given birth to Randall Flagg—