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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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“She saved our lives by coming back when she did, Frannie. She saved our lives.”
“Is she dead?” Fran asked. She grabbed his hand, clutched it. “Stu, is she dead, too?”
“She came back into town around a quarter of eight. Larry Underwood’s boy was leading her by the hand. He’d lost all his words, you know he does that when he gets excited, but he took her to Lucy. Then she just collapsed.” Stu shook his head. “My God, how she ever walked as far as she did… and what she can have been ea...
She closed her eyes. “She died, didn’t she? In the night. She came back to die.”
“She’s not dead yet. She ought to be, and George Richardson says she’ll have to go soon, but she’s not dead yet.” He looked at her simply and nakedly. “And I’m afraid. She saved our lives by coming back, but I’m afraid of her, and I’m afraid of why she came back.”
“What do you mean, Stu? Mother Abagail would never harm—”
“Mother Abagail does what her God tells her to,” he said harshly. “That’s the same God murdered his own boy, or so I heard.”
“Stu!”
The fire died out of his eyes. “I don’t know why she’s back, or if she has anything left to tell us at all. I just don’t know. Maybe she’ll die without regaining consciousness. George says that’s the most likely. But I do know that the explosion… and Nick dying… and her coming back… it’s taken the blinkers off this tow...
“But there’s us,” she said, almost pleading with him. “There’s us and the baby, isn’t there? Isn’t there? ”
He didn’t answer for a long time. She didn’t think he was going to answer. And then he said, “Yeah. But for how long?”
Near dusk on that day, the third of September, people began to drift slowly—almost aimlessly—down Table Mesa Drive toward Larry and Lucy’s house. Singly, by couples, in threes. They sat on the front steps of houses that bore Harold’s x -sign on their doors. They sat on curbs and lawns that were dry and brown at this lo...
Larry watched them from the bedroom window. Behind him, in his and Lucy’s bed, Mother Abagail lay unconscious. The dry, sickly smell coming from her filled his nose and made him want to puke—he hated to puke—but he wouldn’t move. This was his penance for escaping while Nick and Susan died. He heard low voices behind hi...
Larry himself had been totally unhurt.
Same old Larry—keeps his head while others all around him are losing theirs. The blast had thrown him across the driveway and into a flower bed, but he had not sustained a single scratch. Jagged shrapnel had rained down all around him, but nothing had touched him. Nick had died, Susan had died, and he had been unhurt. ...
Deathwatch in here, deathwatch out there. All the way up the block. Six hundred of them, easy. Harold, you ought to come on back with a dozen hand grenades and finish the job. Harold. He had followed Harold all the way across the country, had followed a trail of Payday candy wrappers and clever improvisations. Larry ha...
It was all well and good for Stu to say no one could have figured out what Harold and Nadine were up to from a few scraps of wire on an air-hockey table. With Larry that line of reasoning just didn’t hold up. He had seen Harold’s brilliant improvisations before. One of them had been written on the roof of a barn in let...
Larry, if you knew —
Nadine’s voice.
If you want, I’ll get down on my knees and beg.
That had been another chance to avert the murder and destruction… one he could never bring himself to tell anybody about. Had it really been in the works even then? Probably. If not the specifics of the dynamite bomb wired to the walkie-talkie, then at least some general plan.
Flagg’s plan.
Yes—in the background there was always Flagg, the dark puppet master, pulling the strings on Harold, Nadine, on Charlie Impening, God knew how many others. The people in the Zone would happily lynch Harold on sight, but it was Flagg’s doing… and Nadine’s. And who had sent her to Harold, if not Flagg? But before she had...
How could he have said yes? There was his responsibility to Lucy. That had been all-important, not just because of her but because of himself—he sensed it would take only one or two more fades to destroy him as a man for good. So he had sent her away, and he supposed Flagg was well pleased with the previous night’s wor...
He turned from the window, feeling a dull throb behind his forehead. Richardson was taking Mother Abagail’s pulse. Laurie was fiddling with the IV bottles hung on their T-shaped rack. Dick Ellis was standing by. Lucy sat by the door, looking at Larry.
“How is she?” Larry asked George.
“The same,” Richardson said.
“Will she live through the night?”
“I can’t say, Larry.”
The woman on the bed was a skeleton covered with thinly stretched, ash-gray skin. She seemed without sex. Most of her hair was gone; her breasts were gone; her mouth hung unhinged and her breath rasped through it harshly. To Larry, she looked like pictures he had seen of the Yucatán mummies—not decayed but shrivel...
Yes, that’s what she was now, not a mother but a mummy. There was only that harsh sigh of her respiration, like a light breeze through hay-stubble. How could she still be alive? Larry wondered… and what God would put her through it? To what purpose? It had to be a joke, a big cosmic horselaugh. George said he had heard...
And now Lucy spoke from her corner by the door, startling all of them: “She’s got something to say.”
Laurie said uncertainly, “She’s in deep coma, Lucy… the chances that she can ever regain consciousness…”
“She came back to tell us something. And God won’t let her go until she does.”
“But what could it be, Lucy?” Dick asked her.
“I don’t know,” Lucy said, “but I’m afraid to hear it. I know that. The dying ain’t over. It’s just got started. That’s what I fear.”
There was a long silence that George Richardson finally broke. “I’ve got to get up to the hospital. Laurie, Dick, I’m going to need both of you.”
You aren’t going to leave us alone with this mummy, are you? Larry almost asked, and pinched his lips shut to keep it in.
The three of them went to the door, and Lucy got them their coats. The temperature was barely sixty this night, and riding a cycle in shirtsleeves was uncomfortable.
“Is there anything we can do for her?” Larry asked George quietly.
“Lucy knows about the IV drip,” George said. “There’s nothing else. You see…” He trailed off. Of course they all saw. It was on the bed, wasn’t it?
“Good night, Larry, Lucy,” Dick said.
They went out. Larry drifted back to the window. Outside, everyone had come to their feet, watching. Was she alive? Dead? Dying? Perhaps healed by the power of God? Had she said anything?
Lucy slipped an arm around his waist, making him jump a little. “I love you,” she said.
He groped for her, held her. He put his head down and began to shudder helplessly.
“I love you,” she said calmly. “It’s all right. Let it come. Let it come out, Larry.”
He cried. The tears were as hot and hard as bullets. “Lucy—”
“Shhh.” Her hands on the back of his neck; her soothing hands.
“Oh Lucy, my God, what is all this? ” he cried out against her neck, and she held him as tight as she could, not knowing, not knowing yet, and Mother Abagail breathed harshly behind them, holding on in the depths of her coma.
George drove up the street at walking speed, passing the same message over and over again: Yes, still alive. Prognosis is poor. No, she hasn’t said anything and isn’t likely to. You might as well go home. If anything happens, you’ll hear.