Lloyd Henreid (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
babyfacedkiller) wrote2014-10-03 11:40 am
babyfacedkiller) wrote2014-10-03 11:40 am
Entry tags:
Bits o' Canon - Las Vegas
When the Trashcan Man swam out of sleep on the evening of August 5, he was still lying on the blackjack table in the casino of the MGM Grand Hotel. Sitting backward on a chair in front of him was a young man with lank straw-blond hair and mirror sunglasses. The first thing Trash noticed was the stone which hung about his neck in the v of his open sport-shirt. Black, with a red flaw in the center. Like the eye of a wolf in the night.
He tried to say he was thirsty and managed only a weak "Gaw!" sound.
"You sure did spend some time in the hot sun, I guess," Lloyd Henreid said.
"Are you him?" Trash. whispered. "Are you-"
"The big guy? No, I'm not him. Flagg's in L.A. He knows you're here, though. I talked to him on the radio this afternoon."
"Is he coming?"
"What, just to see you? Hell, no! He'll be here in his own good time. You and me, guy, we're just little people. He'll be here in his own good time." And he reiterated the question he had asked the tall man that morning, not long after Trashcan Man had stumbled in. "Are you that anxious to see him?"
"Yes . . . no . . . I don't know."
"Well, whichever way it turns out to be, you'll get your chance."
"Thirsty . . ."
"Sure. Here." He handed over a large thermos filled with cherry Kool-Aid.
Trashcan drained it at a draught, then leaned over, holding his belly and groaning. When the cramp had passed, he looked at Lloyd with dumb gratitude.
"Think you could eat something?" Lloyd asked.
"Yes, I think so."
Lloyd turned to a man standing behind them. The man was idly whirling a roulette wheel, then letting the little white ball bounce and rattle.
"Roger, go tell Whitney or Stephanie-Ann to rustle this man up some fries and a couple of hamburgers. Naw, shit, what am I thinking about? He'll ralph all over the place. Soup. Get him some soup. That okay, man?"
"Anything," Trash said gratefully.
"We got a guy here," Lloyd said, "name of Whitney Horgan, used to be a butcher. He's a fat, loud sack of shit, but don't that man know how to cook! Jesus! And they got everything here. The gennies were still running when we moved in, and the freezers're full. Fucking Vegas! Ain't it the goddamndest place you ever saw?"
"Yeah," Trash said. He liked Lloyd already, and he didn't even know his name. "It's Cibola."
"Say what?"
"Cibola. Searched for by many."
"Yeah, been plenty people searchin for it over the years, but most of em go away sort of sorry they found it. Well, you call it whatever you want, buddy---looks like you almost cooked yourself gettin here. What's your name?"
"Trashcan Man."
Lloyd didn't seem to think this a strange name at all. "Name like that, I bet you used to be a biker." He stuck out a hand. The tips of his fingers still bore the fading marks of his stay in the Phoenix jail where he had almost died of starvation. "I'm Lloyd Henreid. Pleased to meet you, Trash. Welcome aboard the good ship Lollypop." Trashcan Man shook the offered hand and had to struggle to keep from weeping with gratitude. So far as he could remember, this was the first time in his life someone had offered to shake his hand. He was here. He had been accepted. At long last he was on the inside of something. He would have walked through twice as much desert as he had for this moment, would have burned the other arm and both legs as well.
"Thanks," he muttered. "Thanks, Mr. Henreid."
"Shit, brother-if you don't call me Lloyd, we'll have to throw that soup out."
"Lloyd, then. Thanks, Lloyd."
"That's better. After you eat, I'll take you upstairs and put you in a room of your own. We'll get you doing something tomorrow. The big guy's got something of his own for you, I think, but until then there's plenty for you to do. We've got some of the place running again, but nowhere near all of it. There's a crew up at Boulder Dam, trying to get all the power back on. There's another one working on water supplies. We've got scout parties out, we've been pulling in six or eight people a day, but we'll keep you off that detail for a while. Looks like you've had enough sun to last you a month."
"I guess I have," Trashcan Man said with a weak smile. He was already willing to lay down his life for Lloyd Henreid. Gathering up all of his courage, he pointed at the stone which lay in the hollow of Lloyd's throat. "That-"
"Yeah, us guys who are sort of in charge all wear em. His idea. It's jet. Not really a rock at all, you know. It's like an oil bubble."
"I mean . . . the red light. The eye."
"Looks like that to you too, huh? It's a flaw. Special from him. I'm not the smartest guy he's got, not even the smartest guy in good ole Lost Wages, not by a long shot. But I'm . . shit, I guess you'd say I'm his mascot." He looked closely at Trash. "Maybe you too, who knows? Not me, that's for sure. He's a close one, Flagg is. Anyway, we heard about you special. Me and Whitney. That's not the regular drill at all. Too many comin in to take special notice of many."
He paused. "Although I guess he could, if he wanted to. I guess he could take notice of just about anybody."
Trashcan Man nodded.
"He can do magic," Lloyd said, his voice becoming slightly hoarse. "I seen it. I'd hate to be the people against him, you know?"
"Yes," Trashcan said. "I saw what happened to The Kid."
"What kid?"
"The guy I was with until we got into the mountains." He shuddered. "I don't want to talk about it."
"Okay, man. Here comes your soup. And Whitney put a burger on the side after all. You'll love it. The guy makes great burgers, but try not to puke, okay?"
"Okay."
"Me, I got places to go and people to see. If my old buddy Poke could see me now, he'd never believe it. I'm busier'n a one-legged man in an ass-kickin contest. Catch you later."
"Sure," Trashcan said, and then added, almost timidly: "Thanks. Thanks for everything."
"Don't thank me," Lloyd said amiably. "Thank him."
---
"You . . . we . . . nail him up?" Trashcan managed at last. "Is that what this is about?"
Lloyd reached suddenly into the pocket of his faded shirt. "You know, I got something for you. He gave it to me to give to you. I can't make you take it, but it's a goddam good thing for me that I remembered to at least make the offer. Do you want it?"
From his breast pocket he drew a fine gold chain with a black jet stone on the end of it. The stone was flawed with a tiny red spot, as was Lloyd's own. He dangled it before Trashcan Man's eyes like a hypnotist's amulet.
The truth was in Lloyd's eyes, too clear not to be recognized, and Trashcan Man knew he could never weep and grovel-not before him, not before anybody, but especially not before him-and claim he hadn't understood. Take this and you take everything, Lloyd's eyes said. And what's apart of everything? Why, Heck Drogan,of course. Heck and the cement-lined hole in the ground, the hole just big enough to take the butt end of Heck's crosstree.
He reached for it slowly. His hand paused just before the outstretched fingers could touch the gold chain.
---
He was sitting on the wide desk, his legs crossed, his hands on the knees of his jeans. He was looking over Lloyd's head, out into space. There was a draft, and Lloyd saw that the window-wall was smashed in the middle. The jagged edges of the hole were sticky with blood.
Resting on the floor was a huddled, vaguely human form wrapped in a drape.
"Get rid of that," Flagg said.
"Okay." His voice fell to a husky whisper. "Should I take the head?"
"Take the whole thing out to the east of town and douse it in gasoline and bum it. Do you hear me? Burn it! You burn the fucking thing!"
"All right."
"Yes." Flagg smiled benignly.
Trembling, cotton-mouthed, nearly groaning with terror, Lloyd struggled to pick up the bulky object. The underside was sticky. It made a u in his arms, slithered through them, and thumped back to the floor. He threw a terrified glance at Flagg, but he was still in a semi-lotus, looking outward. Lloyd got hold of it again, clutched it, and staggered toward the door.
"Lloyd?"
He stopped and looked back. A little moan escaped him. Flagg was still in the semi-lotus, but now he was floating about ten inches above the desk, still looking serenely across the room.
"W-W-What?"
"Do you still have the key I gave you in Phoenix?"
"Yes."
"Keep it handy. The time is coming."
"A-All right."
He waited, but Flagg did not speak again. He hung in the darkness, a mind-boggling Hindu's fakir trick, looking outward, smiling gently.
Lloyd left quickly, happy as always just to go with his life and his sanity.
---
"Hey, Dinny!" Lloyd called.
"Yoyd! Yoyd!" Dinny cried. He ran to the edge of the crap table, jumped down, and ran to him. Lloyd picked him up, swung him, and hugged him hard.
"Got kisses for Lloyd?" he asked.
Dinny smacked him with noisy kisses.
"I got something for you," Lloyd said, and took a handful of foil-wrapped Hershey's Kisses from his breast pocket.
Dinny crowed with delight and clutched them. "Yoyd?"
"What, Dinny?"
"Why do you smell like a gasoline pile?"
Lloyd smiled. "I was burning some trash, honey. You go on and play. Who's your mom now?"
"Angelina." He pronounced it Angeyeena. "Then Bonnie again. I like Bonnie. But I like Angelina, too."
"Don't tell her Lloyd gave you candy. Angelina would spank Lloyd."
Dinny promised not to tell and ran off giggling at the image of Angelina spanking Lloyd. In a minute or two he was back on the DON'T COME line of the crap table, generating his army with his mouth crammed full of chocolate. Whitney came over, wearing his white apron. He had two sandwiches for Lloyd and a cold bottle of Hamm's.
"Thanks," Lloyd said. "Looks great."
"That's homemade Syrian bread," Whitney said proudly.
Lloyd munched for a while. "Has anybody seen him?" he asked at last.
Ken shook his head. "I think he's gone again."
Lloyd thought it over. Outside, a stronger-than-average gust of wind shrieked by, sounding lonely and lost in the desert. Dinny raised his head uneasily for a moment and then bent back to play.
"I think he's around somewhere," Lloyd said finally. "I don't know why, but I do. I think he's around waiting for something to happen. I dunno what."
Whitney said in a low voice, "You think he got it out of her?"
"No," Lloyd said, watching Dinny. "I don't think he did. It went wrong for him somehow. She . . . she got lucky or she outthought him. And that doesn't happen often."
"It won't matter in the long run," Ken said, but he looked troubled just the same.
"No, it won't." Lloyd listened to the wind for a while. "Maybe he's gone back to L.A." But he didn't really think so, and his face showed it. Whitney went back to the kitchen and produced another round of beer. They drank in silence, thinking disquieting thoughts. First the Judge, now the woman. Both dead. And neither had talked. Neither had been unmarked as he had ordered. It was as if the old Yankees of Mantle and Maris and Ford had lost the opening two games of the World Series; it was hard for them to believe, and frightening.
The wind blew hard all night.
---
Carl Hough had brought the news. He had been pissed off to a high extreme, and he was not a man to be taken lightly. He had been a pilot for Ozark Airlines before the plague, was an ex-Marine, and could have broken Lloyd in two pieces with one hand while making a daiquiri with the other if he had wanted to. According to Carl, he had killed several men during the course of his long and checkered career, and Lloyd tended to believe him. Not that Lloyd was physically afraid of Carl Hough; the pilot was big and tough, but he was as leery of the Walkin Dude as anyone else in the West, and Lloyd wore Flagg's charm. But he was one of their fliers, and because he was, he had to be handled diplomatically. And oddly enough, Lloyd was something, of a diplomat. His credentials were simple but awesome: He had spent several weeks with a certain madman named Poke Freeman and had lived to tell the tale. He had also spent several months with Randall Flagg, and was still drawing air and in his right mind.
---
"Are you going to arrest him?" Julie asked.
Lloyd looked at her. "I'll arrest you if you don't get off my case," he said.
"Nice fucking guy!" Julie Lawry cried, her voice rising shrewishly. She jumped to her feet, glaring at him. In her tight white cotton shorts, her legs seemed to go all the way up to her chin. "Try to do you a favor!"
"I'll check it."
"Yeah, right, I know that story."
She stomped off, fanny swinging in tight little circles of indignation. Lloyd watched her with a certain weary amusement, thinking there were a lot of chicks like her in the world-even now, after the superflu, he was willing to bet there were a lot around. Easy to slap the make on, but watch out for the fingernails afterward. Kissing cousins to those spiders that gobble up their mates after sex. Two months had gone by and she still bore that mute guy a grudge. What did she say his name was? Andros?
Lloyd pulled a battered black notebook from his back pocket, wet his finger, and paged over to a blank sheet. This was his memory book, and it was chock-full of little notes to himself-everything from a reminder to take a shave before meeting with Flagg to a boxed memorandum to get the contents of Las Vegas' pharmacies inventoried before they started to lose morphine and codeine. It would be time to get another little book soon.
---
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.
---
"I'd like you to meet Nadine Cross," Flagg said softly from behind him, making Lloyd jump. "My wife."
Startled, Lloyd looked at Flagg and met only that mocking grin, those dancing eyes.
"My dear, Lloyd Henreid, my righthand man. Lloyd and I met in Phoenix, where Lloyd was being detained and was consequently about to dine on a fellow detainee. In fact, Lloyd might already have partaken of the appetizer. Correct, Lloyd?"
Lloyd blushed dully and said nothing, although the woman was either gonzo or stoned right over the moon.
"Put out your hand, dear," the dark man said.
Like a robot, Nadine put her hand out. Her eyes continued to stare indifferently at a point somewhere above Lloyd's shoulder. Jesus, this is creepy, Lloyd thought. A light sweat had sprung out all over his body in spite of the frigid air conditioning.
"Pleestameetcha," he said, and shook the soft warm meat of her hand.
Afterward, he had to restrain a powerful urge to wipe his hand on the leg of his pants. Nadine's hand continued to hang laxly in the air.
"You can put your hand down now, my love," Flagg said. Nadine put her hand back in her lap, where it began to twist and squirm. Lloyd realized with something like horror that she was masturbating.
"My wife is indisposed," Flagg said, and tittered. "She is also in a family way, as the saying is. Congratulate me, Lloyd. I am going to be a papa." That titter again; the sound of scampering, light-footed rats behind an old wall.
"Congratulations," Lloyd said through lips that felt blue and numb.
---
"The third spy--"
"No;" Flagg said with sudden decision. "No. You're jumping at shadows, Lloyd."
"If I've got it right, he's a friend of a guy named Nick Andros."
The jade figurine fell through Flagg's fingers and shattered. A moment later Lloyd was lifted out of his chair by the front of his shirt. Flagg had moved across the room so swiftly that Lloyd had not even seen him. And then Flagg's face was plastered against his, that awful sick heat was baking into him, and Flagg's black weasel eyes were only an inch from his own.
Flagg screamed: "And you sat there and talked about Indian Springs? I ought to throw you out that window!"
Something -- perhaps it was seeing the dark man vulnerable, perhaps it was only the knowledge that Flagg wouldn't kill him until he got all of the information - allowed Lloyd to find his tongue and speak in his own defense.
"I tried to tell you!" he cried. "You cut me off! And you cut me off from the red list, whatever that is! If I'd known about that, I could have had that fucking retard last night!"
Then he was flung across the room to crash into the far wall. Stars exploded in his head and he dropped to the parquet floor, dazed. He shook his head, trying to clear it. There was a high humming noise in his ears.
Flagg seemed to have gone crazy. He was striding jerkily around the room, his face blank with rage. Nadine had shrunk back into her chair. Flagg reached a knickknack shelf populated with a milky-green menagerie of jade animals. He stared at them for a second, seeming almost puzzled by them, and then swept them all off onto the floor. They shattered like tiny grenades. He kicked at the bigger pieces with one bare foot, ending them flying. His dark hair had fallen over his forehead. He flipped it back with a jerk of his head and then turned toward Lloyd. There was a grotesque expression of sympathy and compassion on his face-both emotions every bit as real as a three-dollar bill, Lloyd thought. He walked over to help Lloyd up, and Lloyd noticed that he stepped on several jagged pieces of broken jade with no sign of pain . . . and no blood.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Let's have a drink." He offered a hand and helped Lloyd to his feet. Like a kid doing a temper tantrum, Lloyd thought. "Yours is bourbon straight up, isn't it?"
"Fine."
---
Lloyd left as quickly as he could, almost running. In the elevator it all caught up with him and he had to push the EMERGENCY STOP button as hysterics overwhelmed him. He laughed and cried for nearly five minutes. When the storm had passed, he felt a little better.
He's not falling apart, he told himself. There are a few little problems, but he's on top of them. The ball game will probably be over by the first of October, and surely by the fifteenth. Everything's starting to go good, just like he said, and never mind that he almost killed me . . . never mind that he seems stranger than ever . . .
---
Whitney Horgan found Lloyd in his room, lying on the big round bed he had most recently shared with Dayna Jurgens. There was a large gin and tonic balanced on his bare chest. He was staring solemnly up at his reflection in the overhead mirror.
"Come on in," he said when he saw Whitney. "Don't stand on ceremony, for Chrissake. Don't bother to knock. Bastard." It came out as bassard.
"You drunk, Lloyd?" Whitney asked cautiously.
"Nope. Not yet. But I'm gettin there."
"Is he here?"
"Who? Fearless Leader?" Lloyd sat up. "He's around someplace. The Midnight Rambler." He laughed and lay back down.
Whitney said in a low voice, "You want to watch what you're saying. You know it's not a good idea to hit the hard stuff when he's--"
"Fuck it."
"Remember what happened to Hec Drogan. And Strellerton."
Lloyd nodded. "You're right. The walls have ears. The fucking walls have ears. You ever hear that saying?"
"Yeah; once or twice. It's a true saying around here, Lloyd."
"You bet." Lloyd suddenly sat up and threw his drink across the room. The glass shattered. "There's one for the sweeper, right, Whitney?"
"You okay, Lloyd?"
"I'm all right. You want a gin and tonic?"
Whitney hesitated for a moment. "Naw. I don't like them without the lime."
"Hey, Jesus, don't say no just because of that! I got lime. Comes out of a little squeeze bottle." Lloyd went over to the bar and held up a plastic ReaLime. "Looks just like the Green Giant's left testicle. Funny, huh?"
"Does it taste like lime?"
"Sure," Lloyd said morosely. "What do you think it tastes like? Fuckin Cheerios? So what do you say? Be a man and have a drink with me.
---
"Lloyd," Whitney said in a low, choked voice. "Listen to me."
Lloyd leaned forward, concerned. "What? What's the trouble, old hoss?"
"I didn't even know if I'd have the guts to ask you," Whitney said. He was squeezing his glass compulsively. "Me and Ace High and Ronnie Sykes and Jenny Engstrom. We're cutting loose. You want to come? Christ, I must be crazy telling you this, with you so close to him."
"Cutting loose? Where are you going?"
"South America, I guess. Brazil. That ought to be just about far enough." He paused, struggling, then plunged on. "A lot of people have been leaving. Well, maybe not a lot, but quite a few, and there's more every day. They don't think Flagg can cut it. Some are going north, up to Canada. That's too frigging cold for me. But I got to get out. I'd go east if I thought they'd have me. And if I was sure we could get through." Whitney stopped abruptly and looked at Lloyd miserably. It was the face of a man who thinks he has gone much too far.
"You're all right," Lloyd said softly. "I ain't going to blow the whistle on you, old hoss."
"It's just . . . all gone bad here," Whitney said miserably.
"When you planning to go?" Lloyd asked.
Whitney looked at him with narrow suspicion.
"Aw, forget I asked," Lloyd said. "You ready?"
"Not yet," Whitney said, looking into his glass.
"I am." He went to the bar. With his back to Whitney he said, "I couldn't."
"Huh?"
"Couldn't!" Lloyd said sharply, and turned back to Whitney. "I owe him something. I owe him a lot. He got me out of a bad jam back in Phoenix and I been with him since then. Seems longer than it really is. Sometimes it seems like forever."
"I'll bet."
"But it's more than that. He's done something to me, made me brighter or something. I don't know what it is, but I ain't the same man I was, Whitney. Nothing like. Before. . . him . . . I was nothing but a minor leaguer. Now he's got me running things here, and I do okay. It seems like I think better. Yeah, he's made me brighter." Lloyd lifted the flawed stone from his chest, looked at it briefly, then dropped it again. He wiped his hand against his pants as though it had touched something nasty. "I know I ain't no genius now. I have to write everything I'm s'posed to do in a notebook or I forget it. But with him behind me I can give orders and most times things turn out right. Before, all I could do was take orders and get in jams. I've changed . . . and he changed me. Yeah, it seems a lot longer than it really is. `When we got to Vegas, there were only sixteen people here. Ronnie was one of them; so was Jenny and poor old Hec Drogan. They were waiting for him. When we got into town, Jenny Engstrom got down on those pretty knees of hers and kissed his boots. I bet she never told you that in bed." He smiled crookedly at Whitney. "Now she wants to cut and run. Well, I don't blame her, or you either. But it sure doesn't take much to sour a good operation, does it?"
"You're going to stick?"
"To the very end, Whitney. His or mine. I owe him that."
He didn't add that he still had enough faith in the dark man to believe that Whitney and the others would end up riding crosstrees, more likely than not. And there was something else. Here he was Flagg's second-in-command. What could he be in Brazil? Why, Whitney and Ronnie were both brighter than he was. He and Ace High would end up low chickens, and that wasn't to Lloyd's taste. Once he wouldn't have minded, but things had changed. And when your head changed, he was finding out, it most always changed forever.
"Well, it might work out for all of us," Whitney said lamely.
"Sure," Lloyd said, and thought: But I wouldn't want to be walking in your shoes if it comes out right for Flagg after all. I wouldn't want to be in your shoes when he finally has time to notice you down there in Brazil. Riding a crosstree might be the least of your worries then . . . Lloyd raised his glass. "A toast, Whitney."
Whitney raised his own glass.
"Nobody gets hurt," Lloyd said. "That's my toast. Nobody gets hurt."
"Man, I'll drink to that," Whitney said fervently, and they both did.
Whitney left soon after. Lloyd kept on drinking. He passed out around nine-thirty and slept soddenly on the round bed. There were no dreams, and that was almost worth the price of the next day's hangover.
---
"Shoot him, Lloyd." Flagg had turned to the other man. His face was working horribly. His hands were hooked into predator's claws.
"Oh, kill me yourself if you're going to kill me," Glen said. "Surely you're capable. Touch me with your finger and stop my heart. Make the sign of the inverted cross and give me a massive brain embolism. Bring down the lightning from the overhead socket to cleave me in two. Oh . . . oh dear . . . oh dear me!"
Glen collapsed onto the cell cot and rocked back and forth, consumed with delicious laughter.
"Shoot him!" the dark man roared at Lloyd.
Pale, shaking with fear, Lloyd fumbled the pistol out of his belt, almost dropped it, then tried to point it at Glen. He had to use both hands.
Glen looked at Lloyd, still smiling. He might have been at a faculty cocktail party back in the Brain Ghetto at Woodsville, New Hampshire, recovering from a good joke, now ready to turn the conversation back into more serious channels of reflection.
"If you have to shoot somebody, Mr. Henreid, shoot him."
"Do it now, Lloyd."
Lloyd blindly pulled the trigger. The gun went off with a tremendous crash in the enclosed space. The echoes bounced furiously back and forth. But the bullet only chipped concrete two inches from Glen's right shoulder, ricocheted, struck something else, and whined off again.
"Can't you do anything right?" Flagg roared. "Shoot him, you moron! Shoot him! He's standing right in front of you!"
"I'm trying--"
Glen's smile had not changed, and he had only flinched a little at the gunshot. "I repeat, if you must shoot somebody, shoot him. He's really not human at all, you know. I once described him to a friend as the last magician of rational thought, Mr. Henreid. That was more correct than I knew. But he's losing his magic now. It's slipping away from him and he knows it. And you know it, too. Shoot him now and save us all God knows how much bloodshed and dying."
Flagg's face had grown very still. "Shoot one of us, anyhow, Lloyd," he said. "I got you out of jail when you were dying of starvation. It's guys like this that you wanted to get back at. Little guys who talk big."
Lloyd said: "Mister, you don't fool me. It's like Randy Flagg says."
"But he lies. You know he lies."
"He told me more of the truth than anyone else bothered to in my whole lousy life," Lloyd said, and shot Glen three times. Glen was driven backward, twisted and turned like a ragdoll. Blood flew in the dim air. He struck the cot, bounced, and rolled onto the floor. He managed to get up on one elbow.
"It's all right, Mr. Henreid," he whispered. "You don't know any better."
"Shut up, you mouthy old bastard!" Lloyd screamed. He fired again and Glen Bateman's face disappeared. He fired again and the body jumped lifelessly. Lloyd shot him yet again. He was crying. The tears rolled down his angry, sunburned cheeks. He was remembering the rabbit he had forgotten and left to eat its own paws. He was remembering Poke, and the people in the white Connie, and Gorgeous George. He was remembering the Phoenix jail, and the rat, and how he hadn't been able to eat the ticking out of his mattress. He was remembering Trask, and how Trask's leg had started to look like a Kentucky Fried Chicken dinner after a while. He pulled the trigger again, but the pistol only uttered a sterile click.
"All right," Flagg said softly. "All right. Well done. Well done, Lloyd."
Lloyd dropped the gun on the floor and shrank away from Flagg. "Don't you touch me!" he cried. "I didn't do it for you!"
"Yes, you did," Flagg said tenderly. "You may not think so, but you did." He reached out and fingered the jet stone around Lloyd's neck. He closed his hand over it, and when he opened the hand again, the stone was gone. It had been replaced with a small silver key.
"I promised you this, I think," the dark man said. "In another jail. He was wrong . . . I keep my promises, don't I, Lloyd?"
"Yes."
"The others are leaving, or planning to leave. I know who they are. I know all the names. Whitney . . . Ken . . . Jenny . . . oh yes, I know all the names."
"Then why don't you-"
"Put a stop to it? I don't know. Maybe it's better to let them go. But you, Lloyd. You're my good and faithful servant, aren't you?"
"Yeah," Lloyd whispered. The final admission. "Yeah, I guess I am."
---
It was Lloyd who moved. He took one step forward, then another. "Trashy . . . Trash, baby . . ." His voice was a croak.
That single eye moved, painfully seeking Lloyd out. "Lloyd? That you?"
"It's me, Trash." Lloyd was shaking violently all over, the way Whitney had been shaking. "Hey, what you got there? Is it--"
"It's the Big One," Trash said happily. "It's the A-bomb." He began to rock back and forth on the seat of the electric cart like a convert at a revival meeting. "The A-bomb, the Big One, the big fire, my life for you!" .
"Take it away, Trash," Lloyd whispered. "It's dangerous. It's . . . it's hot. Take it away . . ."
"Make him get rid of it, Lloyd," the dark man who was now the pale man whined.
"Make him take it back where he got it. Make him--"
Trashcan's one operative eye grew puzzled. "Where is he?" he asked, and then his voice rose to an agonized howl. "Where is he? He's gone! Where is he? What did you do to him?
Lloyd made one last supreme effort. "Trash, you've got to get rid of that thing. You--"
And suddenly Ralph shrieked: "Larry! Larry! The Hand of God!" Ralph's face was transported in a terrible joy. His eyes shone. He was pointing into the sky.
Larry looked up. He saw the ball of electricity Flagg had flicked from the end of his finger. It had grown to a tremendous size. It hung in the sky, jittering toward Trashcan Man, giving off sparks like hair. Larry realized dimly that the air was now so full of electricity that every hair on his own body was standing on end.
And the thing in the sky did look like a hand.
"Noooo!" the dark man wailed.
Larry looked at him . . . but Flagg was no longer there. He had a bare impression of something monstrous standing in front of where Flagg had been. Something slumped and hunched and almost without shape-something with enormous yellow eyes slit by dark cat's pupils.
Then it was gone.
Larry saw Flagg's clothes--the jacket, the jeans, the bootsstanding upright with nothing in them. For a split second they held the shape of the body that had been inside them. And then they collapsed.
The crackling blue fire in the air rushed at the yellow electric cart that Trashcan Man had somehow driven back from the Nellis Range. He had lost hair and thrown up blood and finally vomited out his own teeth as the radiation sickness sank deeper and deeper into him, yet he had never faltered in his resolve to bring it back to the dark man . . . you could say that he had never flagged in his determination.
The blue ball of fire flung itself into the back of the cart, seeking what was there, drawn to it.
"Oh shit we're all fucked!" Lloyd Henreid cried. He put his hands over his head and fell to his knees.
Oh God, thank God, Larry thought. I will fear no evil, I will f
Silent white light filled the world.
And the righteous and unrighteous alike were consumed in that holy fire.
He tried to say he was thirsty and managed only a weak "Gaw!" sound.
"You sure did spend some time in the hot sun, I guess," Lloyd Henreid said.
"Are you him?" Trash. whispered. "Are you-"
"The big guy? No, I'm not him. Flagg's in L.A. He knows you're here, though. I talked to him on the radio this afternoon."
"Is he coming?"
"What, just to see you? Hell, no! He'll be here in his own good time. You and me, guy, we're just little people. He'll be here in his own good time." And he reiterated the question he had asked the tall man that morning, not long after Trashcan Man had stumbled in. "Are you that anxious to see him?"
"Yes . . . no . . . I don't know."
"Well, whichever way it turns out to be, you'll get your chance."
"Thirsty . . ."
"Sure. Here." He handed over a large thermos filled with cherry Kool-Aid.
Trashcan drained it at a draught, then leaned over, holding his belly and groaning. When the cramp had passed, he looked at Lloyd with dumb gratitude.
"Think you could eat something?" Lloyd asked.
"Yes, I think so."
Lloyd turned to a man standing behind them. The man was idly whirling a roulette wheel, then letting the little white ball bounce and rattle.
"Roger, go tell Whitney or Stephanie-Ann to rustle this man up some fries and a couple of hamburgers. Naw, shit, what am I thinking about? He'll ralph all over the place. Soup. Get him some soup. That okay, man?"
"Anything," Trash said gratefully.
"We got a guy here," Lloyd said, "name of Whitney Horgan, used to be a butcher. He's a fat, loud sack of shit, but don't that man know how to cook! Jesus! And they got everything here. The gennies were still running when we moved in, and the freezers're full. Fucking Vegas! Ain't it the goddamndest place you ever saw?"
"Yeah," Trash said. He liked Lloyd already, and he didn't even know his name. "It's Cibola."
"Say what?"
"Cibola. Searched for by many."
"Yeah, been plenty people searchin for it over the years, but most of em go away sort of sorry they found it. Well, you call it whatever you want, buddy---looks like you almost cooked yourself gettin here. What's your name?"
"Trashcan Man."
Lloyd didn't seem to think this a strange name at all. "Name like that, I bet you used to be a biker." He stuck out a hand. The tips of his fingers still bore the fading marks of his stay in the Phoenix jail where he had almost died of starvation. "I'm Lloyd Henreid. Pleased to meet you, Trash. Welcome aboard the good ship Lollypop." Trashcan Man shook the offered hand and had to struggle to keep from weeping with gratitude. So far as he could remember, this was the first time in his life someone had offered to shake his hand. He was here. He had been accepted. At long last he was on the inside of something. He would have walked through twice as much desert as he had for this moment, would have burned the other arm and both legs as well.
"Thanks," he muttered. "Thanks, Mr. Henreid."
"Shit, brother-if you don't call me Lloyd, we'll have to throw that soup out."
"Lloyd, then. Thanks, Lloyd."
"That's better. After you eat, I'll take you upstairs and put you in a room of your own. We'll get you doing something tomorrow. The big guy's got something of his own for you, I think, but until then there's plenty for you to do. We've got some of the place running again, but nowhere near all of it. There's a crew up at Boulder Dam, trying to get all the power back on. There's another one working on water supplies. We've got scout parties out, we've been pulling in six or eight people a day, but we'll keep you off that detail for a while. Looks like you've had enough sun to last you a month."
"I guess I have," Trashcan Man said with a weak smile. He was already willing to lay down his life for Lloyd Henreid. Gathering up all of his courage, he pointed at the stone which lay in the hollow of Lloyd's throat. "That-"
"Yeah, us guys who are sort of in charge all wear em. His idea. It's jet. Not really a rock at all, you know. It's like an oil bubble."
"I mean . . . the red light. The eye."
"Looks like that to you too, huh? It's a flaw. Special from him. I'm not the smartest guy he's got, not even the smartest guy in good ole Lost Wages, not by a long shot. But I'm . . shit, I guess you'd say I'm his mascot." He looked closely at Trash. "Maybe you too, who knows? Not me, that's for sure. He's a close one, Flagg is. Anyway, we heard about you special. Me and Whitney. That's not the regular drill at all. Too many comin in to take special notice of many."
He paused. "Although I guess he could, if he wanted to. I guess he could take notice of just about anybody."
Trashcan Man nodded.
"He can do magic," Lloyd said, his voice becoming slightly hoarse. "I seen it. I'd hate to be the people against him, you know?"
"Yes," Trashcan said. "I saw what happened to The Kid."
"What kid?"
"The guy I was with until we got into the mountains." He shuddered. "I don't want to talk about it."
"Okay, man. Here comes your soup. And Whitney put a burger on the side after all. You'll love it. The guy makes great burgers, but try not to puke, okay?"
"Okay."
"Me, I got places to go and people to see. If my old buddy Poke could see me now, he'd never believe it. I'm busier'n a one-legged man in an ass-kickin contest. Catch you later."
"Sure," Trashcan said, and then added, almost timidly: "Thanks. Thanks for everything."
"Don't thank me," Lloyd said amiably. "Thank him."
---
"You . . . we . . . nail him up?" Trashcan managed at last. "Is that what this is about?"
Lloyd reached suddenly into the pocket of his faded shirt. "You know, I got something for you. He gave it to me to give to you. I can't make you take it, but it's a goddam good thing for me that I remembered to at least make the offer. Do you want it?"
From his breast pocket he drew a fine gold chain with a black jet stone on the end of it. The stone was flawed with a tiny red spot, as was Lloyd's own. He dangled it before Trashcan Man's eyes like a hypnotist's amulet.
The truth was in Lloyd's eyes, too clear not to be recognized, and Trashcan Man knew he could never weep and grovel-not before him, not before anybody, but especially not before him-and claim he hadn't understood. Take this and you take everything, Lloyd's eyes said. And what's apart of everything? Why, Heck Drogan,of course. Heck and the cement-lined hole in the ground, the hole just big enough to take the butt end of Heck's crosstree.
He reached for it slowly. His hand paused just before the outstretched fingers could touch the gold chain.
---
He was sitting on the wide desk, his legs crossed, his hands on the knees of his jeans. He was looking over Lloyd's head, out into space. There was a draft, and Lloyd saw that the window-wall was smashed in the middle. The jagged edges of the hole were sticky with blood.
Resting on the floor was a huddled, vaguely human form wrapped in a drape.
"Get rid of that," Flagg said.
"Okay." His voice fell to a husky whisper. "Should I take the head?"
"Take the whole thing out to the east of town and douse it in gasoline and bum it. Do you hear me? Burn it! You burn the fucking thing!"
"All right."
"Yes." Flagg smiled benignly.
Trembling, cotton-mouthed, nearly groaning with terror, Lloyd struggled to pick up the bulky object. The underside was sticky. It made a u in his arms, slithered through them, and thumped back to the floor. He threw a terrified glance at Flagg, but he was still in a semi-lotus, looking outward. Lloyd got hold of it again, clutched it, and staggered toward the door.
"Lloyd?"
He stopped and looked back. A little moan escaped him. Flagg was still in the semi-lotus, but now he was floating about ten inches above the desk, still looking serenely across the room.
"W-W-What?"
"Do you still have the key I gave you in Phoenix?"
"Yes."
"Keep it handy. The time is coming."
"A-All right."
He waited, but Flagg did not speak again. He hung in the darkness, a mind-boggling Hindu's fakir trick, looking outward, smiling gently.
Lloyd left quickly, happy as always just to go with his life and his sanity.
---
"Hey, Dinny!" Lloyd called.
"Yoyd! Yoyd!" Dinny cried. He ran to the edge of the crap table, jumped down, and ran to him. Lloyd picked him up, swung him, and hugged him hard.
"Got kisses for Lloyd?" he asked.
Dinny smacked him with noisy kisses.
"I got something for you," Lloyd said, and took a handful of foil-wrapped Hershey's Kisses from his breast pocket.
Dinny crowed with delight and clutched them. "Yoyd?"
"What, Dinny?"
"Why do you smell like a gasoline pile?"
Lloyd smiled. "I was burning some trash, honey. You go on and play. Who's your mom now?"
"Angelina." He pronounced it Angeyeena. "Then Bonnie again. I like Bonnie. But I like Angelina, too."
"Don't tell her Lloyd gave you candy. Angelina would spank Lloyd."
Dinny promised not to tell and ran off giggling at the image of Angelina spanking Lloyd. In a minute or two he was back on the DON'T COME line of the crap table, generating his army with his mouth crammed full of chocolate. Whitney came over, wearing his white apron. He had two sandwiches for Lloyd and a cold bottle of Hamm's.
"Thanks," Lloyd said. "Looks great."
"That's homemade Syrian bread," Whitney said proudly.
Lloyd munched for a while. "Has anybody seen him?" he asked at last.
Ken shook his head. "I think he's gone again."
Lloyd thought it over. Outside, a stronger-than-average gust of wind shrieked by, sounding lonely and lost in the desert. Dinny raised his head uneasily for a moment and then bent back to play.
"I think he's around somewhere," Lloyd said finally. "I don't know why, but I do. I think he's around waiting for something to happen. I dunno what."
Whitney said in a low voice, "You think he got it out of her?"
"No," Lloyd said, watching Dinny. "I don't think he did. It went wrong for him somehow. She . . . she got lucky or she outthought him. And that doesn't happen often."
"It won't matter in the long run," Ken said, but he looked troubled just the same.
"No, it won't." Lloyd listened to the wind for a while. "Maybe he's gone back to L.A." But he didn't really think so, and his face showed it. Whitney went back to the kitchen and produced another round of beer. They drank in silence, thinking disquieting thoughts. First the Judge, now the woman. Both dead. And neither had talked. Neither had been unmarked as he had ordered. It was as if the old Yankees of Mantle and Maris and Ford had lost the opening two games of the World Series; it was hard for them to believe, and frightening.
The wind blew hard all night.
---
Carl Hough had brought the news. He had been pissed off to a high extreme, and he was not a man to be taken lightly. He had been a pilot for Ozark Airlines before the plague, was an ex-Marine, and could have broken Lloyd in two pieces with one hand while making a daiquiri with the other if he had wanted to. According to Carl, he had killed several men during the course of his long and checkered career, and Lloyd tended to believe him. Not that Lloyd was physically afraid of Carl Hough; the pilot was big and tough, but he was as leery of the Walkin Dude as anyone else in the West, and Lloyd wore Flagg's charm. But he was one of their fliers, and because he was, he had to be handled diplomatically. And oddly enough, Lloyd was something, of a diplomat. His credentials were simple but awesome: He had spent several weeks with a certain madman named Poke Freeman and had lived to tell the tale. He had also spent several months with Randall Flagg, and was still drawing air and in his right mind.
---
"Are you going to arrest him?" Julie asked.
Lloyd looked at her. "I'll arrest you if you don't get off my case," he said.
"Nice fucking guy!" Julie Lawry cried, her voice rising shrewishly. She jumped to her feet, glaring at him. In her tight white cotton shorts, her legs seemed to go all the way up to her chin. "Try to do you a favor!"
"I'll check it."
"Yeah, right, I know that story."
She stomped off, fanny swinging in tight little circles of indignation. Lloyd watched her with a certain weary amusement, thinking there were a lot of chicks like her in the world-even now, after the superflu, he was willing to bet there were a lot around. Easy to slap the make on, but watch out for the fingernails afterward. Kissing cousins to those spiders that gobble up their mates after sex. Two months had gone by and she still bore that mute guy a grudge. What did she say his name was? Andros?
Lloyd pulled a battered black notebook from his back pocket, wet his finger, and paged over to a blank sheet. This was his memory book, and it was chock-full of little notes to himself-everything from a reminder to take a shave before meeting with Flagg to a boxed memorandum to get the contents of Las Vegas' pharmacies inventoried before they started to lose morphine and codeine. It would be time to get another little book soon.
---
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.
---
"I'd like you to meet Nadine Cross," Flagg said softly from behind him, making Lloyd jump. "My wife."
Startled, Lloyd looked at Flagg and met only that mocking grin, those dancing eyes.
"My dear, Lloyd Henreid, my righthand man. Lloyd and I met in Phoenix, where Lloyd was being detained and was consequently about to dine on a fellow detainee. In fact, Lloyd might already have partaken of the appetizer. Correct, Lloyd?"
Lloyd blushed dully and said nothing, although the woman was either gonzo or stoned right over the moon.
"Put out your hand, dear," the dark man said.
Like a robot, Nadine put her hand out. Her eyes continued to stare indifferently at a point somewhere above Lloyd's shoulder. Jesus, this is creepy, Lloyd thought. A light sweat had sprung out all over his body in spite of the frigid air conditioning.
"Pleestameetcha," he said, and shook the soft warm meat of her hand.
Afterward, he had to restrain a powerful urge to wipe his hand on the leg of his pants. Nadine's hand continued to hang laxly in the air.
"You can put your hand down now, my love," Flagg said. Nadine put her hand back in her lap, where it began to twist and squirm. Lloyd realized with something like horror that she was masturbating.
"My wife is indisposed," Flagg said, and tittered. "She is also in a family way, as the saying is. Congratulate me, Lloyd. I am going to be a papa." That titter again; the sound of scampering, light-footed rats behind an old wall.
"Congratulations," Lloyd said through lips that felt blue and numb.
---
"The third spy--"
"No;" Flagg said with sudden decision. "No. You're jumping at shadows, Lloyd."
"If I've got it right, he's a friend of a guy named Nick Andros."
The jade figurine fell through Flagg's fingers and shattered. A moment later Lloyd was lifted out of his chair by the front of his shirt. Flagg had moved across the room so swiftly that Lloyd had not even seen him. And then Flagg's face was plastered against his, that awful sick heat was baking into him, and Flagg's black weasel eyes were only an inch from his own.
Flagg screamed: "And you sat there and talked about Indian Springs? I ought to throw you out that window!"
Something -- perhaps it was seeing the dark man vulnerable, perhaps it was only the knowledge that Flagg wouldn't kill him until he got all of the information - allowed Lloyd to find his tongue and speak in his own defense.
"I tried to tell you!" he cried. "You cut me off! And you cut me off from the red list, whatever that is! If I'd known about that, I could have had that fucking retard last night!"
Then he was flung across the room to crash into the far wall. Stars exploded in his head and he dropped to the parquet floor, dazed. He shook his head, trying to clear it. There was a high humming noise in his ears.
Flagg seemed to have gone crazy. He was striding jerkily around the room, his face blank with rage. Nadine had shrunk back into her chair. Flagg reached a knickknack shelf populated with a milky-green menagerie of jade animals. He stared at them for a second, seeming almost puzzled by them, and then swept them all off onto the floor. They shattered like tiny grenades. He kicked at the bigger pieces with one bare foot, ending them flying. His dark hair had fallen over his forehead. He flipped it back with a jerk of his head and then turned toward Lloyd. There was a grotesque expression of sympathy and compassion on his face-both emotions every bit as real as a three-dollar bill, Lloyd thought. He walked over to help Lloyd up, and Lloyd noticed that he stepped on several jagged pieces of broken jade with no sign of pain . . . and no blood.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Let's have a drink." He offered a hand and helped Lloyd to his feet. Like a kid doing a temper tantrum, Lloyd thought. "Yours is bourbon straight up, isn't it?"
"Fine."
---
Lloyd left as quickly as he could, almost running. In the elevator it all caught up with him and he had to push the EMERGENCY STOP button as hysterics overwhelmed him. He laughed and cried for nearly five minutes. When the storm had passed, he felt a little better.
He's not falling apart, he told himself. There are a few little problems, but he's on top of them. The ball game will probably be over by the first of October, and surely by the fifteenth. Everything's starting to go good, just like he said, and never mind that he almost killed me . . . never mind that he seems stranger than ever . . .
---
Whitney Horgan found Lloyd in his room, lying on the big round bed he had most recently shared with Dayna Jurgens. There was a large gin and tonic balanced on his bare chest. He was staring solemnly up at his reflection in the overhead mirror.
"Come on in," he said when he saw Whitney. "Don't stand on ceremony, for Chrissake. Don't bother to knock. Bastard." It came out as bassard.
"You drunk, Lloyd?" Whitney asked cautiously.
"Nope. Not yet. But I'm gettin there."
"Is he here?"
"Who? Fearless Leader?" Lloyd sat up. "He's around someplace. The Midnight Rambler." He laughed and lay back down.
Whitney said in a low voice, "You want to watch what you're saying. You know it's not a good idea to hit the hard stuff when he's--"
"Fuck it."
"Remember what happened to Hec Drogan. And Strellerton."
Lloyd nodded. "You're right. The walls have ears. The fucking walls have ears. You ever hear that saying?"
"Yeah; once or twice. It's a true saying around here, Lloyd."
"You bet." Lloyd suddenly sat up and threw his drink across the room. The glass shattered. "There's one for the sweeper, right, Whitney?"
"You okay, Lloyd?"
"I'm all right. You want a gin and tonic?"
Whitney hesitated for a moment. "Naw. I don't like them without the lime."
"Hey, Jesus, don't say no just because of that! I got lime. Comes out of a little squeeze bottle." Lloyd went over to the bar and held up a plastic ReaLime. "Looks just like the Green Giant's left testicle. Funny, huh?"
"Does it taste like lime?"
"Sure," Lloyd said morosely. "What do you think it tastes like? Fuckin Cheerios? So what do you say? Be a man and have a drink with me.
---
"Lloyd," Whitney said in a low, choked voice. "Listen to me."
Lloyd leaned forward, concerned. "What? What's the trouble, old hoss?"
"I didn't even know if I'd have the guts to ask you," Whitney said. He was squeezing his glass compulsively. "Me and Ace High and Ronnie Sykes and Jenny Engstrom. We're cutting loose. You want to come? Christ, I must be crazy telling you this, with you so close to him."
"Cutting loose? Where are you going?"
"South America, I guess. Brazil. That ought to be just about far enough." He paused, struggling, then plunged on. "A lot of people have been leaving. Well, maybe not a lot, but quite a few, and there's more every day. They don't think Flagg can cut it. Some are going north, up to Canada. That's too frigging cold for me. But I got to get out. I'd go east if I thought they'd have me. And if I was sure we could get through." Whitney stopped abruptly and looked at Lloyd miserably. It was the face of a man who thinks he has gone much too far.
"You're all right," Lloyd said softly. "I ain't going to blow the whistle on you, old hoss."
"It's just . . . all gone bad here," Whitney said miserably.
"When you planning to go?" Lloyd asked.
Whitney looked at him with narrow suspicion.
"Aw, forget I asked," Lloyd said. "You ready?"
"Not yet," Whitney said, looking into his glass.
"I am." He went to the bar. With his back to Whitney he said, "I couldn't."
"Huh?"
"Couldn't!" Lloyd said sharply, and turned back to Whitney. "I owe him something. I owe him a lot. He got me out of a bad jam back in Phoenix and I been with him since then. Seems longer than it really is. Sometimes it seems like forever."
"I'll bet."
"But it's more than that. He's done something to me, made me brighter or something. I don't know what it is, but I ain't the same man I was, Whitney. Nothing like. Before. . . him . . . I was nothing but a minor leaguer. Now he's got me running things here, and I do okay. It seems like I think better. Yeah, he's made me brighter." Lloyd lifted the flawed stone from his chest, looked at it briefly, then dropped it again. He wiped his hand against his pants as though it had touched something nasty. "I know I ain't no genius now. I have to write everything I'm s'posed to do in a notebook or I forget it. But with him behind me I can give orders and most times things turn out right. Before, all I could do was take orders and get in jams. I've changed . . . and he changed me. Yeah, it seems a lot longer than it really is. `When we got to Vegas, there were only sixteen people here. Ronnie was one of them; so was Jenny and poor old Hec Drogan. They were waiting for him. When we got into town, Jenny Engstrom got down on those pretty knees of hers and kissed his boots. I bet she never told you that in bed." He smiled crookedly at Whitney. "Now she wants to cut and run. Well, I don't blame her, or you either. But it sure doesn't take much to sour a good operation, does it?"
"You're going to stick?"
"To the very end, Whitney. His or mine. I owe him that."
He didn't add that he still had enough faith in the dark man to believe that Whitney and the others would end up riding crosstrees, more likely than not. And there was something else. Here he was Flagg's second-in-command. What could he be in Brazil? Why, Whitney and Ronnie were both brighter than he was. He and Ace High would end up low chickens, and that wasn't to Lloyd's taste. Once he wouldn't have minded, but things had changed. And when your head changed, he was finding out, it most always changed forever.
"Well, it might work out for all of us," Whitney said lamely.
"Sure," Lloyd said, and thought: But I wouldn't want to be walking in your shoes if it comes out right for Flagg after all. I wouldn't want to be in your shoes when he finally has time to notice you down there in Brazil. Riding a crosstree might be the least of your worries then . . . Lloyd raised his glass. "A toast, Whitney."
Whitney raised his own glass.
"Nobody gets hurt," Lloyd said. "That's my toast. Nobody gets hurt."
"Man, I'll drink to that," Whitney said fervently, and they both did.
Whitney left soon after. Lloyd kept on drinking. He passed out around nine-thirty and slept soddenly on the round bed. There were no dreams, and that was almost worth the price of the next day's hangover.
---
"Shoot him, Lloyd." Flagg had turned to the other man. His face was working horribly. His hands were hooked into predator's claws.
"Oh, kill me yourself if you're going to kill me," Glen said. "Surely you're capable. Touch me with your finger and stop my heart. Make the sign of the inverted cross and give me a massive brain embolism. Bring down the lightning from the overhead socket to cleave me in two. Oh . . . oh dear . . . oh dear me!"
Glen collapsed onto the cell cot and rocked back and forth, consumed with delicious laughter.
"Shoot him!" the dark man roared at Lloyd.
Pale, shaking with fear, Lloyd fumbled the pistol out of his belt, almost dropped it, then tried to point it at Glen. He had to use both hands.
Glen looked at Lloyd, still smiling. He might have been at a faculty cocktail party back in the Brain Ghetto at Woodsville, New Hampshire, recovering from a good joke, now ready to turn the conversation back into more serious channels of reflection.
"If you have to shoot somebody, Mr. Henreid, shoot him."
"Do it now, Lloyd."
Lloyd blindly pulled the trigger. The gun went off with a tremendous crash in the enclosed space. The echoes bounced furiously back and forth. But the bullet only chipped concrete two inches from Glen's right shoulder, ricocheted, struck something else, and whined off again.
"Can't you do anything right?" Flagg roared. "Shoot him, you moron! Shoot him! He's standing right in front of you!"
"I'm trying--"
Glen's smile had not changed, and he had only flinched a little at the gunshot. "I repeat, if you must shoot somebody, shoot him. He's really not human at all, you know. I once described him to a friend as the last magician of rational thought, Mr. Henreid. That was more correct than I knew. But he's losing his magic now. It's slipping away from him and he knows it. And you know it, too. Shoot him now and save us all God knows how much bloodshed and dying."
Flagg's face had grown very still. "Shoot one of us, anyhow, Lloyd," he said. "I got you out of jail when you were dying of starvation. It's guys like this that you wanted to get back at. Little guys who talk big."
Lloyd said: "Mister, you don't fool me. It's like Randy Flagg says."
"But he lies. You know he lies."
"He told me more of the truth than anyone else bothered to in my whole lousy life," Lloyd said, and shot Glen three times. Glen was driven backward, twisted and turned like a ragdoll. Blood flew in the dim air. He struck the cot, bounced, and rolled onto the floor. He managed to get up on one elbow.
"It's all right, Mr. Henreid," he whispered. "You don't know any better."
"Shut up, you mouthy old bastard!" Lloyd screamed. He fired again and Glen Bateman's face disappeared. He fired again and the body jumped lifelessly. Lloyd shot him yet again. He was crying. The tears rolled down his angry, sunburned cheeks. He was remembering the rabbit he had forgotten and left to eat its own paws. He was remembering Poke, and the people in the white Connie, and Gorgeous George. He was remembering the Phoenix jail, and the rat, and how he hadn't been able to eat the ticking out of his mattress. He was remembering Trask, and how Trask's leg had started to look like a Kentucky Fried Chicken dinner after a while. He pulled the trigger again, but the pistol only uttered a sterile click.
"All right," Flagg said softly. "All right. Well done. Well done, Lloyd."
Lloyd dropped the gun on the floor and shrank away from Flagg. "Don't you touch me!" he cried. "I didn't do it for you!"
"Yes, you did," Flagg said tenderly. "You may not think so, but you did." He reached out and fingered the jet stone around Lloyd's neck. He closed his hand over it, and when he opened the hand again, the stone was gone. It had been replaced with a small silver key.
"I promised you this, I think," the dark man said. "In another jail. He was wrong . . . I keep my promises, don't I, Lloyd?"
"Yes."
"The others are leaving, or planning to leave. I know who they are. I know all the names. Whitney . . . Ken . . . Jenny . . . oh yes, I know all the names."
"Then why don't you-"
"Put a stop to it? I don't know. Maybe it's better to let them go. But you, Lloyd. You're my good and faithful servant, aren't you?"
"Yeah," Lloyd whispered. The final admission. "Yeah, I guess I am."
---
It was Lloyd who moved. He took one step forward, then another. "Trashy . . . Trash, baby . . ." His voice was a croak.
That single eye moved, painfully seeking Lloyd out. "Lloyd? That you?"
"It's me, Trash." Lloyd was shaking violently all over, the way Whitney had been shaking. "Hey, what you got there? Is it--"
"It's the Big One," Trash said happily. "It's the A-bomb." He began to rock back and forth on the seat of the electric cart like a convert at a revival meeting. "The A-bomb, the Big One, the big fire, my life for you!" .
"Take it away, Trash," Lloyd whispered. "It's dangerous. It's . . . it's hot. Take it away . . ."
"Make him get rid of it, Lloyd," the dark man who was now the pale man whined.
"Make him take it back where he got it. Make him--"
Trashcan's one operative eye grew puzzled. "Where is he?" he asked, and then his voice rose to an agonized howl. "Where is he? He's gone! Where is he? What did you do to him?
Lloyd made one last supreme effort. "Trash, you've got to get rid of that thing. You--"
And suddenly Ralph shrieked: "Larry! Larry! The Hand of God!" Ralph's face was transported in a terrible joy. His eyes shone. He was pointing into the sky.
Larry looked up. He saw the ball of electricity Flagg had flicked from the end of his finger. It had grown to a tremendous size. It hung in the sky, jittering toward Trashcan Man, giving off sparks like hair. Larry realized dimly that the air was now so full of electricity that every hair on his own body was standing on end.
And the thing in the sky did look like a hand.
"Noooo!" the dark man wailed.
Larry looked at him . . . but Flagg was no longer there. He had a bare impression of something monstrous standing in front of where Flagg had been. Something slumped and hunched and almost without shape-something with enormous yellow eyes slit by dark cat's pupils.
Then it was gone.
Larry saw Flagg's clothes--the jacket, the jeans, the bootsstanding upright with nothing in them. For a split second they held the shape of the body that had been inside them. And then they collapsed.
The crackling blue fire in the air rushed at the yellow electric cart that Trashcan Man had somehow driven back from the Nellis Range. He had lost hair and thrown up blood and finally vomited out his own teeth as the radiation sickness sank deeper and deeper into him, yet he had never faltered in his resolve to bring it back to the dark man . . . you could say that he had never flagged in his determination.
The blue ball of fire flung itself into the back of the cart, seeking what was there, drawn to it.
"Oh shit we're all fucked!" Lloyd Henreid cried. He put his hands over his head and fell to his knees.
Oh God, thank God, Larry thought. I will fear no evil, I will f
Silent white light filled the world.
And the righteous and unrighteous alike were consumed in that holy fire.