Stephen King - The Stand

He strode on at a steady, ground-eating pace. Two days ago he had been in Laramie, Wyoming, part of an ecotage group that had blown a power station. Today he was on US 51, between Grasmere and Riddle, on his way to Mountain City. Tomorrow he would be somewhere else. And he was happier than he had ever been, because—

He stopped.

Because something was coming . He could feel it, almost taste it on the night air. He could taste it, a sooty hot taste that came from everywhere, as if God was planning a cookout and all of civilization was going to be the barbecue. Already the charcoal was hot, white and flaky outside, as red as demons’ eyes inside. A huge thing, a great thing.

His time of transfiguration was at hand. He was going to be born for the second time, he was going to be squeezed out of the laboring cunt of some great sand-colored beast that even now lay in the throes of its contractions, its legs moving slowly as the birthblood gushed, its sun-hot eyes glaring into the emptiness.

He had been born when times changed, and the times were going to change again. It was in the wind, in the wind of this soft Idaho evening.

It was almost time to be reborn. He knew. Why else could he suddenly do magic?

He closed his eyes, his hot face turning up slightly to the dark sky, which was prepared to receive the dawn. He concentrated. Smiled. The dusty, rundown heels of, his boots began to rise off the road. An inch. Two. Three inches. The smile broadened into a grin. Now he was a foot up And two feet off the ground, he hung steady over the road with a little dust blowing beneath him.

Then he felt the first inches of dawn stain the sky, and he lowered himself down again. The time was not yet.

But the time was soon.

He began to walk again, grinning, now looking for a place to lay up for the day. The time was soon, and that was enough to know for now.

Lloyd Henreid, who had been tagged “the baby-faced, unrepentant killer” by the Phoenix papers, was led down the hallway of the Phoenix municipal jail’s maximum security wing by two guards. One of them had a runny nose, and they both looked sour. The wing’s other occupants were giving Lloyd their version of a tickertape parade. In Max, he was a celebrity.

“Heyyy, Henreid!”

“Go to, boy!”

“Tell the DA if he lets me walk I won’t letya hurt im!”

“Rock steady, Henreid!”

“Right on, brother! Rightonrightonrighton! ”

“Cheap mouthy bastards,” the guard with the runny nose muttered, and then sneezed.

Lloyd grinned happily. He was dazzled by his new fame. It sure wasn’t much like Brownsville had been. Even the food was better. When you got to be a heavy hitter, you got some respect. He imagined that Tom Cruise must feel something like this at a world premiere.

At the end of the hall they went through a doorway and a double-barred electric gate. He was frisked again, the guard with the cold breathing heavily through his mouth as if he had just run up a flight of stairs. Then they walked him through a metal detector for good measure, probably to make sure he didn’t have something crammed up his ass like that guy Papillon in the movies.

“Okay,” the one with the runny nose said, and another guard, this one in a booth made of bulletproof glass, waved them on. They walked down another hall, this one painted industrial green. It was very quiet in here; the only sounds were the guards’ clicking footfalls (Lloyd himself was wearing paper slippers) and the asthmatic wheeze from Lloyd’s right. At the far end of the hall, another guard was waiting in front of a closed door. The door had one small window, hardly more than a loophole, with wire embedded in the glass.

“Why do jails always smell so pissy?” Lloyd asked, just to make conversation. “I mean, even the places where no guys are locked up, it smells pissy. Do you guys maybe do your wee-wees in the corners?” He snickered at the thought, which was really pretty comical.

“Shut up, killer,” the guard with the cold said.

“You don’t look so good,” Lloyd said. “You ought to be home in bed.”

“Shut up,” the other said.

Lloyd shut up. That’s what happened when you tried to talk to these guys. It was his experience that the class of prison corrections officers had no class.

“Hi, scumbag,” the door-guard said.

“How ya doin, fuckface?” Lloyd responded smartly. There was nothing like a little friendly repartee to freshen you up. Two days in the joint and he could feel that old stir-stupor coming on him already.

“You’re gonna lose a tooth for that,” the door-guard said. “Exactly one, count it, one tooth.”

“Hey, now, listen, you can’t—”

“Yes I can. There are guys on the yard who would kill their dear old mothers for two cartons of Chesterfields, scumbucket. Would you care to try for two teeth?”

Lloyd was silent.

“That’s okay, then,” the door-guard said. “Just one tooth. You fellas can take him in.”

Smiling a little, the guard with the cold opened the door and the other led Lloyd inside, where his court-appointed lawyer was sitting at a metal table, looking at papers from his briefcase.

“Here’s your man, counselor.”

The lawyer looked up. He was hardly old enough to be shaving yet, Lloyd judged, but what the hell? Beggars couldn’t be choosers. They had him cold-cocked anyway, and Lloyd figured to get twenty years or so: When they had you nailed, you just had to close your eyes and grit your teeth.

“Thank you very—”

“That guy,” Lloyd said, pointing to the door-guard. “He called me a scumbag. And when I said something back to him, he said he was gonna have some guy knock out one of my teeth ! How’s that for police brutality?”

The lawyer passed a hand over his face. “Any truth to that?” he asked the door-guard.

The door-guard rolled his eyes in a burlesque My God, can you believe it? gesture. “These guys, counselor,” he said, “they should write for TV. I said hi, he said hi, that was it.”

“That’s a fuckin lie!” Lloyd said dramatically.

“I keep my opinions to myself,” the guard said, and gave Lloyd a stony stare.

“I’m sure you do,” the lawyer said, “but I believe I’ll count Mr. Henreid’s teeth before I leave.”

A slight, angry discomfiture passed over the guard’s face, and he exchanged a glance with the two that had brought Lloyd in. Lloyd smiled. Maybe the kid was okay at that. The last two CAs he’d had were old hacks; one of them had come into court lugging a colostomy bag, could you believe that, a fucking colostomy bag? The old hacks didn’t give a shit for you. Plead and leave, that was their motto, let’s get rid of him so we can get back to swapping dirty stories with the judge. But maybe this guy could get him a straight ten, armed robbery. Maybe even time served. After all, the only one he’d actually pokerized was the wife of the guy in the white Connie, and maybe he could just roll that off on ole Poke. Poke wouldn’t mind. Poke was just as dead as old Dad’s hatband. Lloyd’s smile broadened a little. You had to look on the sunny side. That was the ticket. Life was too short to do anything else.

He became aware that the guard had left them alone and that his lawyer—his name was Andy Devins, Lloyd remembered—was looking at him in a strange way. It was the way you might look at a rattlesnake whose back has been broken but whose deadly bite is probably still unimpaired.

“You’re in deep shit, Sylvester!” Devins exclaimed suddenly.

Lloyd jumped. “What? What the hell do you mean, I’m in deep shit? By the way, I thought you handled ole fatty there real good. He looked mad enough to chew nails and spit out—”