The Stand (Original Edition) Read Free

buzzed around them, lighting in the mucus, crawling in and out of their open mouths. Stu had been in the war, but he had never seen anything so terribly pitiful as this. His eyes were constantly drawn back to those linked hands.
    He and Vic backed away and looked blankly at each other. Then they turned to the station. They could see Hap, jawing frantically into the pay phone. Norm was walking toward the station behind them, throwing glances at the wreck over his shoulder. The Chev’s driver’s side door stood sadly open. There was a pair of baby shoes dangling from the rear-view mirror.
    Hank was standing by the door, rubbing his mouth with a dirty handkerchief. “Jesus, Stu,” he said unhappily, and Stu nodded.
    Hap hung up the phone. The Chev’s driver was lying on the floor. “Ambulance will be here in ten minutes. Do you figure they’re—?” He jerked his thumb at the Chevy.
    “They’re dead, okay,” Vic nodded. His lined face was yellow-pale, and he was sprinkling tobacco all over the floor as he tried to make one of his shitty-smelling cigarettes. “They’re the two deadest people I’ve ever seen.” He looked at Stu and Stu nodded, putting his hands in his pockets. He had the butterflies.
    The man on the floor moaned thickly in his throat and they all looked down at him. After a moment, when it became obvious that the man was speaking or trying very hard to speak, Hap knelt beside him. It was, after all, his station.
    Whatever had been wrong with the woman and child in the car was also wrong with this man. His nose was running freely, and his respiration had a peculiar undersea sound, a churning from somewhere in his chest. The flesh beneath his eyes was puffing, not black yet, but a bruised purple. His neck looked too thick, and the flesh had pushed up in a column to give him two extra chins. He was running a high fever; being close to him was like squatting on the edge of an open barbecue pit where good coals have been laid.
    “The dog,” he muttered. “Did you put him out?”
    “Mister,” Hap said, shaking him gently. “I called the ambulance. You’re going to be all right.”
    “Somebody’s got the books,” the man on the floor grunted, and then began to cough, racking chainlike explosions that sent heavy mucus spraying from his mouth in long and ropy splatters. Hap leaned backward, grimacing desperately.
    “Better roll him over,” Vic said. “He’s goan choke on it.”
    But before they could, the coughing tapered off into bellowsed, uneven breathing again. His eyes blinked slowly and he looked at the men gathered above him.
    “Where’s . . . this?”
    “Amette,” Hap said. “Bill Hapscomb’s Texaco. You crashed out some of my pumps.” And then, hastily, he added: “That’s okay. They was insured.”
    The man on the floor tried to sit up and was unable. He had to settle for putting a hand on Hap’s arm.
    “My wife ... my little girl. . .”
    “They’re fine,” Hap said, grinning a foolish dog grin.
    “Seems like I’m awful sick,” the man said. Breath came in and out of him in a thick, soft roar. “They were sick, too. Since we got up two days ago. Tahoe . . .” His eyes flickered slowly closed. “Sick . . . guess we didn’t move quick enough after all. . .”
    Far off but getting closer, they could hear the whoop of the Arnette Volunteer Ambulance.
    “Man,” Tommy Wannamaker said. “Oh man.”
    The sick man’s eyes fluttered open again, and now they were filled with an intense, sharp concern. He struggled again to sit up. Sweat ran down his face. He grabbed Hap.
    “Are Sally and LaVon all right?” he demanded. Spittle flew from his lips and Hap could feel the man’s burning heat radiating outward. The man was sick, half crazy, he stank. Hap was reminded of the smell an old dog blanket gets sometimes.
    “They’re all right,” he insisted, a little frantically. “You just ... lay down and take it easy, okay?”
    The man lay back down. His breathing was