This Is the Way the World Ends, Ch. 46
Author: Semaphore
Pairing: Billy/Dom
Rating: R, overall for violence, language and sexual situations.
Warning: Heavy angst!
Summary: The world of Lotrips mingles with Stephen King’s The Stand (and The Dark Tower). For those that have survived Captain Trips, life has become dangerous and strange.
Feedback: is much loved and appreciated.
Disclaimers: This is entirely fictional. No disrespect is intended. The Stand was written by Stephen King. The title comes from T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men." This chapter features several characters created by Stephen King and much, but not all, of their dialogue was written by him.
A/N: This one was a bitch to write, since a lot of it is Stephen King remixed. The events more or less follow those in The Stand (with an important addition), but the descriptions are mine, and implications of the dialogue have been heavily tampered with. I hope the seams aren’t too obvious.
Previous chapters:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45
This Is the Way the World Ends, Part 46
Once he’s cast off, Dom expects to find himself far away--only he isn’t. He’s in the same room at Wellsprings that he’s shared with Billy, and when he’d thought Billy angry with him, it turns out that he’s been more of an idiot than usual, because Billy’s here, touching him, obviously beside himself.
He hasn't told Billy goodbye properly.
This is different from any way he’s been before, and Dom’s not certain how he feels about it. Or how he feels at all, for that matter. He can see-there’s a nice change-and hear. When he runs his fingertips over the sheets there’s the silkiness of high-count cotton. There’s warmth from the sunlight coming through the small window.
On the other hand, there’s his body, thin and pale, curled up abandoned on the bed, and there’s Billy on his knees, bending over him with his eyes red and blurred with tears, brushing the hair out of the body’s eyes, kissing the body’s cool, colorless fingers. That’s unnerving, to say the least.
It gives him an awful pang, too-what such a sight must be doing to Billy, after their separation, after watching the other Dom die so recently. He’s one heartless bastard to put his céile through it. Still, he’d like to call Billy’s attention to the fact that the body’s breathing, albeit slowly. That the eyes move slightly behind their closed lids. If Billy felt, Dom would like to point out, he’d find the pulses at the wrists and throat.
Actually, he’s not sure pointing out anything would do much good, Billy’s too distraught, so he bends down to kiss Billy’s cheek instead, to whisper in his ear, “It’s okay, Bills. I haven’t gone far. I’m right here.”
Billy doesn’t hear him, though: one of Billy’s tears spills over onto the body’s cheek. It’s nearly enough to drive Dom back in, back where he can blink his eyes, and stir, and say, “Ha! Fooled ya, Billy. See, here I am. Right here.”
That’s not the way it’s to be though, and Dom knows it. He has a choice. He could return to his body. He can do exactly what he wants to do every step of the way.
Luckily, though, he’s made it to thirty years of age not needing always to get his own way.
And having accepted his mission, quest, assignment, whatever it is, he accepts that this is the way it’s to be: he can see Billy, and he can see himself, but Billy’s only contact, for now, will be with his body. There aren’t to be any distractions.
“Love you more than life, céile,” Dom tells him. “Look after my body, won’t you? Don’t let me be shot, or run over, or anything?”
Billy takes the body’s left hand between his own and kisses it. On reflection, Dom can see why Bill’s been acting a bit funny around him: he looks like shit, half gone, like the life’s been nearly drained out of him. Is that because this part of him, the soul part of him-if that’s what he is just now--has gone walkabout, or is this the way he’s been looking?
Curious, Dom moves to the mirror. What does a soul look like anyway?
The face that looks back from the glass is undeniably his: same crooked jaw and quizzical mouth, same sticking-out ears and-as Billy would call it, giving a bit of a flip to the tip-leprechaun nose. His own eyes look back at him seriously, kindly. They look older than he remembers. Not in terms of lines, or actual age, really. It’s just that they’ve seen more.
At the moment, they’re clearly saying, “Time to go, Dominic.”
“Yes,” he tells the face in the glass. “It’s time we were going.”
The one funny thing about that face is, it’s bright. Kind of glinting round the edges, as if he’s standing with the sun behind him. He likes it, that brightness. It’s encouraging. He likes the way it sparkles when he speaks, or when his face changes.
He’s watching it in the glass, just watching it, thinking idly of the men from the Free Zone and the block set up across the Utah road, the Utah police cars set up nose to nose and the eight men crouching behind them, the way he and Matt and their friends would crouch behind their cushion forts, playing soldiers when they were very small boys.
He remembers giggling, preparing to storm the other side, secure in knowledge that Karl-Heinz, though the largest member of the opposing forces, would always go down before a determined assault of tickling.
When, he wonders, did life become so deadly, and so serious, whilst remaining equally ridiculous? We build our forts, we choose up sides, the only thing we’ve forgotten is how to end up good friends.
Dom shuts his eyes and takes a step forward, and that’s when the voices begin.
"Are they going to shoot us?" The tallest of the three men asks, calmly, like he’s just starting a conversation. He’s a big bloke, with the look of someone who’d only recently got thin. Ralph Brentner, an unheard voice prompts him.
"I don't know." This one Dom knows without outside help: it’s Larry Fucking Underwood. Of “Baby Can You Dig Your Man” fame-but Dom’s almost willing to forgive him for that, with reservations.
The third man’s smaller than the others, older by quite a bit. He looks like a teacher, the same way his dad always looked like a teacher, as if all the questions and answers and chalkdust have somehow worked their way into his veins, making him over again. This one’s Glen Bateman, and it hurts Dom how very much like his dad the old man is, as if his father’s going to die all over again, and this time he’ll be a witness.
He’d give anything in that moment to have Austin beside him, holding his hand
They’re talking about their enemies’ guns, but they don’t stop walking, all the way down into the flash of sun off scopes, of sun off chrome and glass and random bits of metal. Dom can’t help but feel that he’s lagging behind, hurrying to catch up to the others.
He watches as the men join hands, squeezing tightly. Friends. Brothers.
By his guess, the roadblock can’t be more than a kilometre away. It feels as if it’s rushing up toward them.
"They're not going to shoot us outright," the big man, Ralph, says. "They would have done it already."
They’re close enough now that the men below have faces and bodies: there’s one with a thick beard, another young bloke who’s bald as an egg, a third in a hideous yellow vest shirt with a picture of a smirking camel, a fourth tiny little man who looks like he’s been brought in to do the taxes, so nervous with his Dirty Harry gun he’s about ready to shoot off his own feet.
"They don't look no different from our guys," Ralph says.
"Sure they do," Glen answers. "They're all packing iron." Dom grins, admiring Glen’s cheek. He’s putting on a show for his friends, talking like a tough guy in a forties movie, because it’s harder to feel afraid if none of it’s real.
They’re closer now, no more than five or six metres away when everyone stops, standing there awkwardly, no one knowing what comes next, no one wanting to take the next step. That’s the sad part, really. These are Flagg’s men, yes, but they aren’t evil. Not any more evil, really, than anyone else. They just made crap choices, turned west when they should have gone east.
Larry fidgets a bit, shifting from foot to foot, before he blurts out, sounding strangely like someone’s grandma, “How-do."
The little man like a chartered accountant steps forward, jiggling his gun. Dom expects it to jump out of his hand at any moment. "Are you Glendon Bateman, Lawson Underwood, Stuart Redman, and, Ralph Brentner?"
"Say, you dummy," Ralph drawls, "can't you count?"
There’s laughter, but the man hasn’t miscounted at all. Dom suspects he’s visible sometimes, sometimes not-he can see it in the sideways glance of the accountant’s eyes, as if he’s seen a ghost, but doesn’t want to say, “Don’t you see it? Just there!” Instead he scowls and blushes dark read, muttering, “Who's missing?"
"Stu met with an accident on the way here,” Larry says, flipping back his long hair and sounding cheeky as hell. If he’s afraid, he’s got bollocks the size of Stonehenge and doesn’t let on the least bit. “And I do believe you're going to have one yourself if you don't stop fooling with that gun."
The little bloke’s friends laugh at him, and his hands shake as he tucks the big gun into his belt. His eyes are on the ground-he knows he’s made himself look a perfect twat, but what can he do about it? Nothing.
“My name is Paul Burlson," he says, obviously trying to make his voice unnaturally deep, “And by virtue of the power vested in me, I arrest you and order you to come with me."
"In whose name?" Glen snaps back. He’s not a forties tough guy now: his voice is low and dangerous, but it carries.
The little man glances up again, trying to take on that toughness, trying to make himself look anything but afraid. “You know who I speak for."
”Then say it.” The old man’s voice has the strength of a thousand lessons, a thousand lectures, but there’s kindness in it too, and an insistence that won’t be denied.
Burlson’s hands clench until the knuckles go white. He doesn’t say anything.
"Are you afraid?" Glen asks him. The kindness is stronger still. He looks from one to another of the eight of them. "Are you so afraid of him you don't dare speak his name? Very well, I'll say it for you. His name is Randall Flagg, also known as the dark man, also known as the tall man, also known as the Walkin’ Dude. Don't some of you' call him that?"
Dom’s drawn to him, drawn to the old man’s kindness and his strength. He lays his hand upon Glen’s shoulder and for a moment could almost swear Glen’s staring right at him, into his eyes, as his voice continues to climb, as his words ring through the clear Utah sky. Flagg’s men are shuffling, their faces drawn, some close to weeping, and Dom imagines he’s visible to some of them too.
Burlson stumbles back a step, his hand going to his mouth as if he’s about to be sick.
"Call him Beelzebub, because that's his name, too,” Glen cries out. The old man’s hand is covering Dom’s now, knotted with arthritis and heavily veined, like his gran’s before she died. “Call him Nyarlahotep and Ahaz and Astaroth. Call him R'yelah and Seti and Anubis. His name is legion and he's an apostate of hell and you men kiss his ass."
His voice drops low again. He’s shaking, spent, but he smiles, and the smile’s warm and charming, delivered to Dom personally. "Just thought we ought to have that out front."
“Good,” Dom tells him, and smiles in return.
“Glad to be of service,” the old man says, and smiles again. “And to think that I spent all my life not believing in you.”
“What’s that,” Dom laughs, “Englishmen in general or Mancunians in particular?”
“Or perhaps you’re only a hallucination,” Glen says. “That’s the rational explanation, isn’t it?”
"Grab them," Burlson shouts, gesturing like a little Hitler. "Grab them all and shoot the first one that moves."
No one moves, though-the Free Zone men stand waiting to be seized, Flagg’s men huddle in a little cluster, still stunned from Glen’s speech. After a moment, Larry starts laughing.
"Who are you kidding, you little scumbucket?” he chuckles, nearly falling about, “We want to go. That's why we came."
It’s like a cartoon then, the seven scrambling into motion as if they’d been waiting for Larry to give them their orders. He and Ralph are pushed into one of the Utah state patrol cars, Glen into the other. Dom follows him into the back, behind the steel grill. It reminds him of the Low Men’s car in a way: no handles on the inside, and that sense of being utterly trapped. He has to remind himself that Glen is trapped because he must be, and that makes it no trap at all.
Still the back of that car smells of gunpowder, old sweat, and despair.
Despite himself, Dom’s curious to see Vegas. He’s been there, of course, on a mad lost weekend with Lijah, back in the days when Billy was with Ali and he was trying to make believe that he could survive with half his soul amputated. His memory’s all bright lights strung like jewels along the thoroughfare, too much noise, too many people, too much too drink until he was blind, ridiculous and throwing money away-which was all the point of it, wasn’t it?
He remembers some flash young man in a velvet jacket giving him a handjob in the gents’ toilets and afterwards sitting in a stall alone with his head in his hand and puke on his shoes sobbing, “Billy, Billy, Billy,” until Elijah was able to track him down.
He remembers being hungover, miserable and ashamed in the dry Nevada heat, hanging over the back of someone’s car to throw up for what felt like the thousandth time whilst Elijah stood a bit away from him, looking disgusted and sympathetic. Elijah telling him, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."
“I hate this city,” Dom says softly, as the desert gives way to Las Vegas proper. There are people on the streets, more people than he’s seen since before Captain Trips, the lights are on and there’s no debris, not an abandoned car to be seen. For a moment he’s thrown off balance, as if it’s the old days again-but it isn’t. On the surface everything’s fine. It’s after work and people are outside enjoying the evening air, strolling the pavements and sitting on the lawns. They should be at ease, talking and laughing, arguing the way people do. Their eyes, though, are uneasy, their faces taut. It’s in the set of their shoulders and the swing of their arms: these people are unhappy.
Their faces are the faces of people who are watched by something cruel and arbitrary. The mice can’t play when the cat sits ready right outside their holes.
“I’ve always hated what this city stood for,” Glen says, as the patrol car rolls by. “And that was before. Now I find it intolerable. Does it strike you so, dear figment?”
“Dominic.” Dom turns sideways on the seat, reaching out his right hand. Glen seems able to see it well enough, but not to focus on it completely.
“’Servant of God.’ Appropriate.”
“My parents were Catholic.”
Glen smiles. It’s a lovely smile and takes the tense anger right out of his face.
“I don’t actually believe in God,” Dom says. “I don’t think. Things have been fucking strange recently.”
The old man laughs a long time, richly and heartily, causing the man in the yellow camel shirt to beat on the grating with his gun. “Shut up back there! Do you need me to make you afraid?”
Dom touches his finger to his lips as the patrol car stops behind a blank square building.
“City jail,” Glen says. He’s quiet now, but the edges of amusement still glint in his eyes. “I’m interested to see what happens next. Will you be my companion, Dominic?”
“All the way to the end, mate,” Dom says, watching gratitude spark where the amusement had been.
Camel shirt wrenches open the door and hauls Glen out-unnecessarily, as Glen’s already making every effort to emerge on his own. The other car’s beaten them there: Larry and Ralph stand on the pavement with their hands in cuffs, barely-restrained rage on their faces. There’s another man with them too, not one of the ones from before: he looks official, in a way they didn’t.
Camel shirt pushes Glen over toward them, so hard the old man stumbles and nearly falls.
"What are you shoving him around for?" snaps the official-looking man.
"If you had to listen to six hours of this guy's bullshit, you'd do some pushing, too," complains one of camel shirt’s cronies-the one with the beard.
“Yeah,” camel shirt puts in. “Then, at the end, he was talking and laughing to himself. It was creepy, man.”
"I don't care how much bullshit you had to listen to, keep your hands to yourself. Now get them out of here," he says evenly. "Separate cells, separate wings."
Glen’s cell is like every cell Dom’s ever seen in any American prison film. The floor’s concrete. There’s a cot bolted to one wall and a steel loo with no seat. The cot has a single flat pillow, a foam mattress that looks none too clean and a blanket that won’t be warm. Not surprisingly, though he must be tired, Glen doesn’t feel like sleeping.
“Can’t say as I blame you,” Dom says. “Not what I’d call inviting.”
“That’s not it, son, and you know it. If these are to be my last hours on this wreck of an earth, I intend to breathe, think and write through them. It’s an old man’s vanity.”
“’Do not go gentle into that good night,’” Dom quotes.
“On the night he died, Dylan Thomas claimed to have drunk forty shots of whiskey.”
“That’s bleeding ludicrous.”
“That it is.” With a groan, the old man sits on the floor.
Dom starts uneasily off the end of the cot. “I could… That is, you should have…”
“Sit, young man. Sit. I’m on a quest.” He forages under the bunk and comes up, surprisingly, with a bit of charcoal. “Now, how did I know that would be there?”
“You are old and very wise?” Dom says.
Glen laughs again. “And you, my friend, are good company. Why are you with me now, and not with the others?”
Dom shrugs. “Dunno. Just seems right, I suppose.” He shifts forward on the bunk, resting his forearms on his knees. “I went to a party at Larry’s once and he was an utter prat. Didn’t care to repeat the experience.”
“He’s changed, our Larry.”
“I thought he might have done,” Dom answers. “I have too.”
“I haven’t,” Glen says. “I was a stubborn, opinionated old cuss before Captain Trips and I intend to go to my grave that way. Is that a bad attitude? From your point of view, that is?”
“From my point of view, it’s brilliant,” Dom answers.
They’ve spoken late into the night, though despite his intentions Glen is an old man and falls asleep in the end. He’s written something on the wall with his bit of charcoal and after, as he lies sleeping, his hand in Dom’s hand, Dom reads the words:
I am not the potter, not the potter's wheel, but the potter's clay;
is not the value of the shape attained as dependent upon the intrinsic
worth of the clay as upon the wheel and the Master's skill?
Dom ponders that, and wonders if it might be true-he thinks perhaps it is, and whatever the wheel is, and whoever the Master, he knows the clay here in this cell is good and true.
Glen’s hand tightens in his, as if the bones are aching. He can see the lines of pain etched on Glen’s face and knows the end is coming soon. Not that the final end’s for Glen, but he’ll have his own testing.
The morning’s well advanced when the old man wakes, groggily, stumbles to the loo for a piss and then to the basin to splash water over his face. It’s only then he glances toward the bunk, as if surprised to see Dom by light of day.
“You’re with me, then?”
“Until the end.” Dom meets his eyes, and holds them. It’s soon now. Soon, that the end is coming. Soon that Flagg will appear, in his malevolence and glee.
“Until the end,” Glen echoes. He looks terribly weary, but still unbowed, his eyes bright and ferocious. “And yes, before you ask, I will be able to face him.”
Dom nods. “I knew you would.”
“Can you stay with me?”
“It’s what I was sent for, Glen.”
“Dominic.”
“Hmn?” Dom turns, and it’s a moment before he realizes Glen’s teasing him with his name. “Yeah. Right. Very funny.”
The old man’s laugh is dry, quiet, amused. He seats himself on the floor of his cell, cross-legged despite his aching bones, and waits.
It’s not long before Flagg comes, and with him the man Dom saw in his vision of Orli. He’d looked tall then, looking down on Orli, with his black stone around his neck, the flaw at its center, reminding Dom of Sauron’s eye. He’d seemed in control. With Flagg, though, he’s diminished, looking at his master the way Billy’s spaniel bitch looks at Billy.
Glen shivers, as if the temperature’s dropped twenty degrees. His hand reaches out blindly and Dom takes it, holding the spare, knobbed fingers firmly, warmly. He can see the pain gouged into Glen’s face and knows Flagg’s done this, Flagg’s made the old man hurt-not because he needs to, just because he can. The face Glen turns to Flagg, though, is politely interested, perhaps slightly bored, with the sort of smile Dom’s dad reserved for faculty cocktail parties.
“It’s okay,” Dom tells him. “It’ll be okay.” He shifts to sit beside Glen on the floor, his knee just brushing Glen’s knee.
"Well, there you are," Glen says to the big man on the far side of the bars. "And you're not half the boogeyman we thought you must be."
Dom’s only seen Flagg in visions, and he supposes this is the closest he’ll ever get to seeing him in the flesh-Flagg’s flesh, that is. Not his own, obviously. He has a sneaking suspicion the Smiling Man’s made himself larger for the occasion. He’s certainly dressed in his best: his usual jeans, yes, but with them a white silk shirt that glows like moonlight. He’s grinning, grinning, grinning so hard it must hurt, so hard he looks like a mental case, and he sounds like one too when he starts giggling.
"I'd like you to meet my associate," he says. "Lloyd Henreid, meet Glen Bateman, sociologist, Free Zone Committee member, and single existing member of the Free Zone think tank now that Nick Andros is dead."
"Meetcha," Lloyd murmurs. Dom can almost feel, now, the pain grinding through him.
"How's your arthritis, Glen?" Flagg asks, with a sort of smarmy sympathy that makes Dom want to kick his bollocks next door to his tonsils. His eyes sparkle with a mad, cruel, rapacious joy.
“I know,” Dom’s muttering. “I know, I know. It hurts, I know, but don’t let him.”
Glen’s eyes glance into his momentarily, with sympathy and gratitude. He opens and closes his hands slowly, nonchalantly, giving Flagg the gentlest of smiles. Dom finds, as Glen does so, that his own hands are clenching, filled with pain.
"Fine," he says sunnily. "Much better for sleeping indoors, thank you."
Flagg's smile sours, and his eyes shift. Dom knows he’s been invisible ‘til then-but does the Smiling Man glimpse him, only for a moment? The thought terrifies him, and he will not allow himself to be terrified. He shifts until he’s kneeling before the old man, facing him.
“If it gets too bad, Glen,” he says, “Just look at me. Don’t look at him. Look at my face. There’s nothing to fear.” He leans forward, his hands on Glen’s hands, his eyes fixed upon the old man’s eyes. His heart hurts so much it feels as if it’s bleeding.
He knows, absolutely, what’s coming.
"I've decided to let you go," Flagg says cheerily. Dom can hear the smile, like a knife set to shred things. "Haven't I, Lloyd?"
"Uh . . . sure," Lloyd stammers. "Sure nuff."
"Well, fine." Glen’s smiling too, but his own smile is resigned, gentle. Dom feels the pain with him, like ice, like fire, but it doesn’t matter.
"You'll be given a small motorbike and you may drive back at your leisure."
"Of course I couldn't go without my friends,” Glen says.
"Of course not. And all you have to do is ask. Get down on your knees and ask me."
Dom tips him a grin. “Bollocks, eh, mate?”
Laughing, Glen shakes his head, then throws back his head and laughs again, long and hard and free, until the fears gone and the pain’s gone and everything’s good and pure and right again. No more deception. No more fear.
“Christ, but I’m sorry, Glen,” Dom says. “I wish there could be another end. I wish I could have shared a pint with you in Boulder and we could have had a good laugh over this.”
Glen’s wise old eyes say, Oh, Dom, I wish that too.
To Flagg, he chuckles, “Oh, you're a card.”
The old man leans forward. "I tell you what you can do. Why don't you find a nice big sandpile, get yourself a hammer, and pound all that sand right up your ass?"
The air inside the cell seems to darken and grow dense, filling with the sizzling smell of lightning. From behind Dom there’s a sound almost of a wolf’s low growl, but it’s really metal tearing, the lock coming off of the cell door. Orange flame leaps at the edges of Dom’s sight and sparks shower through him, leaving a trail of dark punctuation on the floor.
Lloyd, Flagg’s spaniel, yelps.
“Stop laughing!” Flagg roars, grabbing the bars and throwing back the door.
Glen laughs harder. Tears of mirth stand in his eyes.
"Stop laughing at me!"
"You're nothing!" Glen says, wiping his streaming eyes and still chuckling. "Oh pardon me . . . it's just that we were all so frightened . . . we made such a business out of you . . . I'm laughing as much at our own foolishness as at your regrettable lack of substance . . ."
Dom’s weeping too, though it’s not with laughter-it’s because of the old man’s bravery.
Flagg’s voice drops low, and his words grate out, "Shoot him, Lloyd."
Dom can picture his face: that yellow-eyed monster face he saw before, that’s really nothing but a child’s Halloween mask, that’s really nothing but the bits and scraps of latex glued together to form the Wolfman, or an Uruk-hai. Why are they so afraid-because Flagg has a bag of nasty tricks to call on? Because he can bring out the worst in handfuls of weak-minded women and men? What’s that, held up against the likes of Billy or Viggo, Mother Abagail or Glen?
What’s the worth of something, if the clay it’s made from's shit?
“That’s all he is, Glen,” Dom says. “Right pile of shit. You, mate, you’re real. You’re the real clay, and I’m proud to have known you. Even if it’s like this.”
The old man’s eyes smile at him.
"Oh, kill me yourself if you're going to kill me," Glen says to Flagg. "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! "
"Shoot him!" the Dark Man roars at Lloyd.
Dom turns then, watching the little man, Flagg’s dog, as he fumbles and shakes, tries to get a grip on the pistol, almost drops it getting it out of his belt, then finally gets it pointed in the right direction. Glen’s standing now, facing the door, his hand on Dom’s shoulder.
"If you have to shoot somebody, Mr. Henreid,” Glen tells him gently, nodding toward Flagg. “Shoot him."
"Do it now, Lloyd!"
Fumbling again, Lloyd pulls the trigger and manages to miss entirely. The noise is huge in that enclosed space, the echoes deafening, but the bullet only nicks the cement over Glen’s right shoulder, ricochets off a rivet and wobbles on again-ridiculously, it reminds Dom of the Toon bullets in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and he’s thankful to be incorporeal, because he’d have been drilled through at least twice before he could move an inch.
"Can't you do anything right?" Flagg rages. "Shoot him, you moron! Shoot him! He's standing right in front of you!"
"I'm trying-"
Glen's smile barely wavers, even when the bullet doing its acrobatics. "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."
“Shoot one of us, anyhow, Lloyd," Flagg says. He’s grown huge, still, dark, like a man-shaped hole in the air. "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 says: "Mister, you don't fool me. It's like Randy Flagg says."
"But he lies. You know he lies." Glen’s voice is calm and patient, like a father talking to a son-Dom’s heard that tone in his own dad’s voice a thousand times, when he was being bullheaded, when his stubbornness was teetering him on the edge of doing wrong. When he just couldn’t back down.
"He told me more of the truth than anyone else bothered to in my whole lousy life," Lloyd says, raises the gun waveringly, and shoots Glen three times.
They’re high caliber bullets and Glen’s not a big man. They drive him backward, twist and turn him in the air, almost like he’s dancing, almost like he’s dancing for joy in the thin red film of his blood. When that force is gone he stikes the cot, bounces off and hits the floor with a wet final sound.
“Oh,” Dom finds himself breathing, no more than a metre away from Lloyd and looking him straight in the eyes. “What did you do? What did you do?”
In that moment, he swears Lloyd sees him, a sudden ghost in the darkened cell. His jaw drops and his eyes pop, and he seems far, far beyond words.
"It's all right, Mr. Henreid.” Dom had thought Glen dead, killed instantly, but he isn’t dead-he’s hauled himself up on one elbow. "You don't know any better."
"Shut up, you mouthy old bastard!" Lloyd screams. He fires, destroying Glen’s face, again and Glen’s body jumps lifelessly, again and he’s crying, crying, tears streaming down his sunburned cheeks while Dom watches helplessly.
It’s done and it’s wrong and Dom can’t, for the life of him, understand why things have to be this way.
"All right," Flagg says softly. "All right. Well done. Well done, Lloyd."
Dom’s seen enough. He gathers himself, and slips away.
Pairing: Billy/Dom
Rating: R, overall for violence, language and sexual situations.
Warning: Heavy angst!
Summary: The world of Lotrips mingles with Stephen King’s The Stand (and The Dark Tower). For those that have survived Captain Trips, life has become dangerous and strange.
Feedback: is much loved and appreciated.
Disclaimers: This is entirely fictional. No disrespect is intended. The Stand was written by Stephen King. The title comes from T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men." This chapter features several characters created by Stephen King and much, but not all, of their dialogue was written by him.
A/N: This one was a bitch to write, since a lot of it is Stephen King remixed. The events more or less follow those in The Stand (with an important addition), but the descriptions are mine, and implications of the dialogue have been heavily tampered with. I hope the seams aren’t too obvious.
Previous chapters:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45
This Is the Way the World Ends, Part 46
Once he’s cast off, Dom expects to find himself far away--only he isn’t. He’s in the same room at Wellsprings that he’s shared with Billy, and when he’d thought Billy angry with him, it turns out that he’s been more of an idiot than usual, because Billy’s here, touching him, obviously beside himself.
He hasn't told Billy goodbye properly.
This is different from any way he’s been before, and Dom’s not certain how he feels about it. Or how he feels at all, for that matter. He can see-there’s a nice change-and hear. When he runs his fingertips over the sheets there’s the silkiness of high-count cotton. There’s warmth from the sunlight coming through the small window.
On the other hand, there’s his body, thin and pale, curled up abandoned on the bed, and there’s Billy on his knees, bending over him with his eyes red and blurred with tears, brushing the hair out of the body’s eyes, kissing the body’s cool, colorless fingers. That’s unnerving, to say the least.
It gives him an awful pang, too-what such a sight must be doing to Billy, after their separation, after watching the other Dom die so recently. He’s one heartless bastard to put his céile through it. Still, he’d like to call Billy’s attention to the fact that the body’s breathing, albeit slowly. That the eyes move slightly behind their closed lids. If Billy felt, Dom would like to point out, he’d find the pulses at the wrists and throat.
Actually, he’s not sure pointing out anything would do much good, Billy’s too distraught, so he bends down to kiss Billy’s cheek instead, to whisper in his ear, “It’s okay, Bills. I haven’t gone far. I’m right here.”
Billy doesn’t hear him, though: one of Billy’s tears spills over onto the body’s cheek. It’s nearly enough to drive Dom back in, back where he can blink his eyes, and stir, and say, “Ha! Fooled ya, Billy. See, here I am. Right here.”
That’s not the way it’s to be though, and Dom knows it. He has a choice. He could return to his body. He can do exactly what he wants to do every step of the way.
Luckily, though, he’s made it to thirty years of age not needing always to get his own way.
And having accepted his mission, quest, assignment, whatever it is, he accepts that this is the way it’s to be: he can see Billy, and he can see himself, but Billy’s only contact, for now, will be with his body. There aren’t to be any distractions.
“Love you more than life, céile,” Dom tells him. “Look after my body, won’t you? Don’t let me be shot, or run over, or anything?”
Billy takes the body’s left hand between his own and kisses it. On reflection, Dom can see why Bill’s been acting a bit funny around him: he looks like shit, half gone, like the life’s been nearly drained out of him. Is that because this part of him, the soul part of him-if that’s what he is just now--has gone walkabout, or is this the way he’s been looking?
Curious, Dom moves to the mirror. What does a soul look like anyway?
The face that looks back from the glass is undeniably his: same crooked jaw and quizzical mouth, same sticking-out ears and-as Billy would call it, giving a bit of a flip to the tip-leprechaun nose. His own eyes look back at him seriously, kindly. They look older than he remembers. Not in terms of lines, or actual age, really. It’s just that they’ve seen more.
At the moment, they’re clearly saying, “Time to go, Dominic.”
“Yes,” he tells the face in the glass. “It’s time we were going.”
The one funny thing about that face is, it’s bright. Kind of glinting round the edges, as if he’s standing with the sun behind him. He likes it, that brightness. It’s encouraging. He likes the way it sparkles when he speaks, or when his face changes.
He’s watching it in the glass, just watching it, thinking idly of the men from the Free Zone and the block set up across the Utah road, the Utah police cars set up nose to nose and the eight men crouching behind them, the way he and Matt and their friends would crouch behind their cushion forts, playing soldiers when they were very small boys.
He remembers giggling, preparing to storm the other side, secure in knowledge that Karl-Heinz, though the largest member of the opposing forces, would always go down before a determined assault of tickling.
When, he wonders, did life become so deadly, and so serious, whilst remaining equally ridiculous? We build our forts, we choose up sides, the only thing we’ve forgotten is how to end up good friends.
Dom shuts his eyes and takes a step forward, and that’s when the voices begin.
"Are they going to shoot us?" The tallest of the three men asks, calmly, like he’s just starting a conversation. He’s a big bloke, with the look of someone who’d only recently got thin. Ralph Brentner, an unheard voice prompts him.
"I don't know." This one Dom knows without outside help: it’s Larry Fucking Underwood. Of “Baby Can You Dig Your Man” fame-but Dom’s almost willing to forgive him for that, with reservations.
The third man’s smaller than the others, older by quite a bit. He looks like a teacher, the same way his dad always looked like a teacher, as if all the questions and answers and chalkdust have somehow worked their way into his veins, making him over again. This one’s Glen Bateman, and it hurts Dom how very much like his dad the old man is, as if his father’s going to die all over again, and this time he’ll be a witness.
He’d give anything in that moment to have Austin beside him, holding his hand
They’re talking about their enemies’ guns, but they don’t stop walking, all the way down into the flash of sun off scopes, of sun off chrome and glass and random bits of metal. Dom can’t help but feel that he’s lagging behind, hurrying to catch up to the others.
He watches as the men join hands, squeezing tightly. Friends. Brothers.
By his guess, the roadblock can’t be more than a kilometre away. It feels as if it’s rushing up toward them.
"They're not going to shoot us outright," the big man, Ralph, says. "They would have done it already."
They’re close enough now that the men below have faces and bodies: there’s one with a thick beard, another young bloke who’s bald as an egg, a third in a hideous yellow vest shirt with a picture of a smirking camel, a fourth tiny little man who looks like he’s been brought in to do the taxes, so nervous with his Dirty Harry gun he’s about ready to shoot off his own feet.
"They don't look no different from our guys," Ralph says.
"Sure they do," Glen answers. "They're all packing iron." Dom grins, admiring Glen’s cheek. He’s putting on a show for his friends, talking like a tough guy in a forties movie, because it’s harder to feel afraid if none of it’s real.
They’re closer now, no more than five or six metres away when everyone stops, standing there awkwardly, no one knowing what comes next, no one wanting to take the next step. That’s the sad part, really. These are Flagg’s men, yes, but they aren’t evil. Not any more evil, really, than anyone else. They just made crap choices, turned west when they should have gone east.
Larry fidgets a bit, shifting from foot to foot, before he blurts out, sounding strangely like someone’s grandma, “How-do."
The little man like a chartered accountant steps forward, jiggling his gun. Dom expects it to jump out of his hand at any moment. "Are you Glendon Bateman, Lawson Underwood, Stuart Redman, and, Ralph Brentner?"
"Say, you dummy," Ralph drawls, "can't you count?"
There’s laughter, but the man hasn’t miscounted at all. Dom suspects he’s visible sometimes, sometimes not-he can see it in the sideways glance of the accountant’s eyes, as if he’s seen a ghost, but doesn’t want to say, “Don’t you see it? Just there!” Instead he scowls and blushes dark read, muttering, “Who's missing?"
"Stu met with an accident on the way here,” Larry says, flipping back his long hair and sounding cheeky as hell. If he’s afraid, he’s got bollocks the size of Stonehenge and doesn’t let on the least bit. “And I do believe you're going to have one yourself if you don't stop fooling with that gun."
The little bloke’s friends laugh at him, and his hands shake as he tucks the big gun into his belt. His eyes are on the ground-he knows he’s made himself look a perfect twat, but what can he do about it? Nothing.
“My name is Paul Burlson," he says, obviously trying to make his voice unnaturally deep, “And by virtue of the power vested in me, I arrest you and order you to come with me."
"In whose name?" Glen snaps back. He’s not a forties tough guy now: his voice is low and dangerous, but it carries.
The little man glances up again, trying to take on that toughness, trying to make himself look anything but afraid. “You know who I speak for."
”Then say it.” The old man’s voice has the strength of a thousand lessons, a thousand lectures, but there’s kindness in it too, and an insistence that won’t be denied.
Burlson’s hands clench until the knuckles go white. He doesn’t say anything.
"Are you afraid?" Glen asks him. The kindness is stronger still. He looks from one to another of the eight of them. "Are you so afraid of him you don't dare speak his name? Very well, I'll say it for you. His name is Randall Flagg, also known as the dark man, also known as the tall man, also known as the Walkin’ Dude. Don't some of you' call him that?"
Dom’s drawn to him, drawn to the old man’s kindness and his strength. He lays his hand upon Glen’s shoulder and for a moment could almost swear Glen’s staring right at him, into his eyes, as his voice continues to climb, as his words ring through the clear Utah sky. Flagg’s men are shuffling, their faces drawn, some close to weeping, and Dom imagines he’s visible to some of them too.
Burlson stumbles back a step, his hand going to his mouth as if he’s about to be sick.
"Call him Beelzebub, because that's his name, too,” Glen cries out. The old man’s hand is covering Dom’s now, knotted with arthritis and heavily veined, like his gran’s before she died. “Call him Nyarlahotep and Ahaz and Astaroth. Call him R'yelah and Seti and Anubis. His name is legion and he's an apostate of hell and you men kiss his ass."
His voice drops low again. He’s shaking, spent, but he smiles, and the smile’s warm and charming, delivered to Dom personally. "Just thought we ought to have that out front."
“Good,” Dom tells him, and smiles in return.
“Glad to be of service,” the old man says, and smiles again. “And to think that I spent all my life not believing in you.”
“What’s that,” Dom laughs, “Englishmen in general or Mancunians in particular?”
“Or perhaps you’re only a hallucination,” Glen says. “That’s the rational explanation, isn’t it?”
"Grab them," Burlson shouts, gesturing like a little Hitler. "Grab them all and shoot the first one that moves."
No one moves, though-the Free Zone men stand waiting to be seized, Flagg’s men huddle in a little cluster, still stunned from Glen’s speech. After a moment, Larry starts laughing.
"Who are you kidding, you little scumbucket?” he chuckles, nearly falling about, “We want to go. That's why we came."
It’s like a cartoon then, the seven scrambling into motion as if they’d been waiting for Larry to give them their orders. He and Ralph are pushed into one of the Utah state patrol cars, Glen into the other. Dom follows him into the back, behind the steel grill. It reminds him of the Low Men’s car in a way: no handles on the inside, and that sense of being utterly trapped. He has to remind himself that Glen is trapped because he must be, and that makes it no trap at all.
Still the back of that car smells of gunpowder, old sweat, and despair.
Despite himself, Dom’s curious to see Vegas. He’s been there, of course, on a mad lost weekend with Lijah, back in the days when Billy was with Ali and he was trying to make believe that he could survive with half his soul amputated. His memory’s all bright lights strung like jewels along the thoroughfare, too much noise, too many people, too much too drink until he was blind, ridiculous and throwing money away-which was all the point of it, wasn’t it?
He remembers some flash young man in a velvet jacket giving him a handjob in the gents’ toilets and afterwards sitting in a stall alone with his head in his hand and puke on his shoes sobbing, “Billy, Billy, Billy,” until Elijah was able to track him down.
He remembers being hungover, miserable and ashamed in the dry Nevada heat, hanging over the back of someone’s car to throw up for what felt like the thousandth time whilst Elijah stood a bit away from him, looking disgusted and sympathetic. Elijah telling him, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."
“I hate this city,” Dom says softly, as the desert gives way to Las Vegas proper. There are people on the streets, more people than he’s seen since before Captain Trips, the lights are on and there’s no debris, not an abandoned car to be seen. For a moment he’s thrown off balance, as if it’s the old days again-but it isn’t. On the surface everything’s fine. It’s after work and people are outside enjoying the evening air, strolling the pavements and sitting on the lawns. They should be at ease, talking and laughing, arguing the way people do. Their eyes, though, are uneasy, their faces taut. It’s in the set of their shoulders and the swing of their arms: these people are unhappy.
Their faces are the faces of people who are watched by something cruel and arbitrary. The mice can’t play when the cat sits ready right outside their holes.
“I’ve always hated what this city stood for,” Glen says, as the patrol car rolls by. “And that was before. Now I find it intolerable. Does it strike you so, dear figment?”
“Dominic.” Dom turns sideways on the seat, reaching out his right hand. Glen seems able to see it well enough, but not to focus on it completely.
“’Servant of God.’ Appropriate.”
“My parents were Catholic.”
Glen smiles. It’s a lovely smile and takes the tense anger right out of his face.
“I don’t actually believe in God,” Dom says. “I don’t think. Things have been fucking strange recently.”
The old man laughs a long time, richly and heartily, causing the man in the yellow camel shirt to beat on the grating with his gun. “Shut up back there! Do you need me to make you afraid?”
Dom touches his finger to his lips as the patrol car stops behind a blank square building.
“City jail,” Glen says. He’s quiet now, but the edges of amusement still glint in his eyes. “I’m interested to see what happens next. Will you be my companion, Dominic?”
“All the way to the end, mate,” Dom says, watching gratitude spark where the amusement had been.
Camel shirt wrenches open the door and hauls Glen out-unnecessarily, as Glen’s already making every effort to emerge on his own. The other car’s beaten them there: Larry and Ralph stand on the pavement with their hands in cuffs, barely-restrained rage on their faces. There’s another man with them too, not one of the ones from before: he looks official, in a way they didn’t.
Camel shirt pushes Glen over toward them, so hard the old man stumbles and nearly falls.
"What are you shoving him around for?" snaps the official-looking man.
"If you had to listen to six hours of this guy's bullshit, you'd do some pushing, too," complains one of camel shirt’s cronies-the one with the beard.
“Yeah,” camel shirt puts in. “Then, at the end, he was talking and laughing to himself. It was creepy, man.”
"I don't care how much bullshit you had to listen to, keep your hands to yourself. Now get them out of here," he says evenly. "Separate cells, separate wings."
Glen’s cell is like every cell Dom’s ever seen in any American prison film. The floor’s concrete. There’s a cot bolted to one wall and a steel loo with no seat. The cot has a single flat pillow, a foam mattress that looks none too clean and a blanket that won’t be warm. Not surprisingly, though he must be tired, Glen doesn’t feel like sleeping.
“Can’t say as I blame you,” Dom says. “Not what I’d call inviting.”
“That’s not it, son, and you know it. If these are to be my last hours on this wreck of an earth, I intend to breathe, think and write through them. It’s an old man’s vanity.”
“’Do not go gentle into that good night,’” Dom quotes.
“On the night he died, Dylan Thomas claimed to have drunk forty shots of whiskey.”
“That’s bleeding ludicrous.”
“That it is.” With a groan, the old man sits on the floor.
Dom starts uneasily off the end of the cot. “I could… That is, you should have…”
“Sit, young man. Sit. I’m on a quest.” He forages under the bunk and comes up, surprisingly, with a bit of charcoal. “Now, how did I know that would be there?”
“You are old and very wise?” Dom says.
Glen laughs again. “And you, my friend, are good company. Why are you with me now, and not with the others?”
Dom shrugs. “Dunno. Just seems right, I suppose.” He shifts forward on the bunk, resting his forearms on his knees. “I went to a party at Larry’s once and he was an utter prat. Didn’t care to repeat the experience.”
“He’s changed, our Larry.”
“I thought he might have done,” Dom answers. “I have too.”
“I haven’t,” Glen says. “I was a stubborn, opinionated old cuss before Captain Trips and I intend to go to my grave that way. Is that a bad attitude? From your point of view, that is?”
“From my point of view, it’s brilliant,” Dom answers.
They’ve spoken late into the night, though despite his intentions Glen is an old man and falls asleep in the end. He’s written something on the wall with his bit of charcoal and after, as he lies sleeping, his hand in Dom’s hand, Dom reads the words:
I am not the potter, not the potter's wheel, but the potter's clay;
is not the value of the shape attained as dependent upon the intrinsic
worth of the clay as upon the wheel and the Master's skill?
Dom ponders that, and wonders if it might be true-he thinks perhaps it is, and whatever the wheel is, and whoever the Master, he knows the clay here in this cell is good and true.
Glen’s hand tightens in his, as if the bones are aching. He can see the lines of pain etched on Glen’s face and knows the end is coming soon. Not that the final end’s for Glen, but he’ll have his own testing.
The morning’s well advanced when the old man wakes, groggily, stumbles to the loo for a piss and then to the basin to splash water over his face. It’s only then he glances toward the bunk, as if surprised to see Dom by light of day.
“You’re with me, then?”
“Until the end.” Dom meets his eyes, and holds them. It’s soon now. Soon, that the end is coming. Soon that Flagg will appear, in his malevolence and glee.
“Until the end,” Glen echoes. He looks terribly weary, but still unbowed, his eyes bright and ferocious. “And yes, before you ask, I will be able to face him.”
Dom nods. “I knew you would.”
“Can you stay with me?”
“It’s what I was sent for, Glen.”
“Dominic.”
“Hmn?” Dom turns, and it’s a moment before he realizes Glen’s teasing him with his name. “Yeah. Right. Very funny.”
The old man’s laugh is dry, quiet, amused. He seats himself on the floor of his cell, cross-legged despite his aching bones, and waits.
It’s not long before Flagg comes, and with him the man Dom saw in his vision of Orli. He’d looked tall then, looking down on Orli, with his black stone around his neck, the flaw at its center, reminding Dom of Sauron’s eye. He’d seemed in control. With Flagg, though, he’s diminished, looking at his master the way Billy’s spaniel bitch looks at Billy.
Glen shivers, as if the temperature’s dropped twenty degrees. His hand reaches out blindly and Dom takes it, holding the spare, knobbed fingers firmly, warmly. He can see the pain gouged into Glen’s face and knows Flagg’s done this, Flagg’s made the old man hurt-not because he needs to, just because he can. The face Glen turns to Flagg, though, is politely interested, perhaps slightly bored, with the sort of smile Dom’s dad reserved for faculty cocktail parties.
“It’s okay,” Dom tells him. “It’ll be okay.” He shifts to sit beside Glen on the floor, his knee just brushing Glen’s knee.
"Well, there you are," Glen says to the big man on the far side of the bars. "And you're not half the boogeyman we thought you must be."
Dom’s only seen Flagg in visions, and he supposes this is the closest he’ll ever get to seeing him in the flesh-Flagg’s flesh, that is. Not his own, obviously. He has a sneaking suspicion the Smiling Man’s made himself larger for the occasion. He’s certainly dressed in his best: his usual jeans, yes, but with them a white silk shirt that glows like moonlight. He’s grinning, grinning, grinning so hard it must hurt, so hard he looks like a mental case, and he sounds like one too when he starts giggling.
"I'd like you to meet my associate," he says. "Lloyd Henreid, meet Glen Bateman, sociologist, Free Zone Committee member, and single existing member of the Free Zone think tank now that Nick Andros is dead."
"Meetcha," Lloyd murmurs. Dom can almost feel, now, the pain grinding through him.
"How's your arthritis, Glen?" Flagg asks, with a sort of smarmy sympathy that makes Dom want to kick his bollocks next door to his tonsils. His eyes sparkle with a mad, cruel, rapacious joy.
“I know,” Dom’s muttering. “I know, I know. It hurts, I know, but don’t let him.”
Glen’s eyes glance into his momentarily, with sympathy and gratitude. He opens and closes his hands slowly, nonchalantly, giving Flagg the gentlest of smiles. Dom finds, as Glen does so, that his own hands are clenching, filled with pain.
"Fine," he says sunnily. "Much better for sleeping indoors, thank you."
Flagg's smile sours, and his eyes shift. Dom knows he’s been invisible ‘til then-but does the Smiling Man glimpse him, only for a moment? The thought terrifies him, and he will not allow himself to be terrified. He shifts until he’s kneeling before the old man, facing him.
“If it gets too bad, Glen,” he says, “Just look at me. Don’t look at him. Look at my face. There’s nothing to fear.” He leans forward, his hands on Glen’s hands, his eyes fixed upon the old man’s eyes. His heart hurts so much it feels as if it’s bleeding.
He knows, absolutely, what’s coming.
"I've decided to let you go," Flagg says cheerily. Dom can hear the smile, like a knife set to shred things. "Haven't I, Lloyd?"
"Uh . . . sure," Lloyd stammers. "Sure nuff."
"Well, fine." Glen’s smiling too, but his own smile is resigned, gentle. Dom feels the pain with him, like ice, like fire, but it doesn’t matter.
"You'll be given a small motorbike and you may drive back at your leisure."
"Of course I couldn't go without my friends,” Glen says.
"Of course not. And all you have to do is ask. Get down on your knees and ask me."
Dom tips him a grin. “Bollocks, eh, mate?”
Laughing, Glen shakes his head, then throws back his head and laughs again, long and hard and free, until the fears gone and the pain’s gone and everything’s good and pure and right again. No more deception. No more fear.
“Christ, but I’m sorry, Glen,” Dom says. “I wish there could be another end. I wish I could have shared a pint with you in Boulder and we could have had a good laugh over this.”
Glen’s wise old eyes say, Oh, Dom, I wish that too.
To Flagg, he chuckles, “Oh, you're a card.”
The old man leans forward. "I tell you what you can do. Why don't you find a nice big sandpile, get yourself a hammer, and pound all that sand right up your ass?"
The air inside the cell seems to darken and grow dense, filling with the sizzling smell of lightning. From behind Dom there’s a sound almost of a wolf’s low growl, but it’s really metal tearing, the lock coming off of the cell door. Orange flame leaps at the edges of Dom’s sight and sparks shower through him, leaving a trail of dark punctuation on the floor.
Lloyd, Flagg’s spaniel, yelps.
“Stop laughing!” Flagg roars, grabbing the bars and throwing back the door.
Glen laughs harder. Tears of mirth stand in his eyes.
"Stop laughing at me!"
"You're nothing!" Glen says, wiping his streaming eyes and still chuckling. "Oh pardon me . . . it's just that we were all so frightened . . . we made such a business out of you . . . I'm laughing as much at our own foolishness as at your regrettable lack of substance . . ."
Dom’s weeping too, though it’s not with laughter-it’s because of the old man’s bravery.
Flagg’s voice drops low, and his words grate out, "Shoot him, Lloyd."
Dom can picture his face: that yellow-eyed monster face he saw before, that’s really nothing but a child’s Halloween mask, that’s really nothing but the bits and scraps of latex glued together to form the Wolfman, or an Uruk-hai. Why are they so afraid-because Flagg has a bag of nasty tricks to call on? Because he can bring out the worst in handfuls of weak-minded women and men? What’s that, held up against the likes of Billy or Viggo, Mother Abagail or Glen?
What’s the worth of something, if the clay it’s made from's shit?
“That’s all he is, Glen,” Dom says. “Right pile of shit. You, mate, you’re real. You’re the real clay, and I’m proud to have known you. Even if it’s like this.”
The old man’s eyes smile at him.
"Oh, kill me yourself if you're going to kill me," Glen says to Flagg. "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! "
"Shoot him!" the Dark Man roars at Lloyd.
Dom turns then, watching the little man, Flagg’s dog, as he fumbles and shakes, tries to get a grip on the pistol, almost drops it getting it out of his belt, then finally gets it pointed in the right direction. Glen’s standing now, facing the door, his hand on Dom’s shoulder.
"If you have to shoot somebody, Mr. Henreid,” Glen tells him gently, nodding toward Flagg. “Shoot him."
"Do it now, Lloyd!"
Fumbling again, Lloyd pulls the trigger and manages to miss entirely. The noise is huge in that enclosed space, the echoes deafening, but the bullet only nicks the cement over Glen’s right shoulder, ricochets off a rivet and wobbles on again-ridiculously, it reminds Dom of the Toon bullets in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and he’s thankful to be incorporeal, because he’d have been drilled through at least twice before he could move an inch.
"Can't you do anything right?" Flagg rages. "Shoot him, you moron! Shoot him! He's standing right in front of you!"
"I'm trying-"
Glen's smile barely wavers, even when the bullet doing its acrobatics. "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."
“Shoot one of us, anyhow, Lloyd," Flagg says. He’s grown huge, still, dark, like a man-shaped hole in the air. "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 says: "Mister, you don't fool me. It's like Randy Flagg says."
"But he lies. You know he lies." Glen’s voice is calm and patient, like a father talking to a son-Dom’s heard that tone in his own dad’s voice a thousand times, when he was being bullheaded, when his stubbornness was teetering him on the edge of doing wrong. When he just couldn’t back down.
"He told me more of the truth than anyone else bothered to in my whole lousy life," Lloyd says, raises the gun waveringly, and shoots Glen three times.
They’re high caliber bullets and Glen’s not a big man. They drive him backward, twist and turn him in the air, almost like he’s dancing, almost like he’s dancing for joy in the thin red film of his blood. When that force is gone he stikes the cot, bounces off and hits the floor with a wet final sound.
“Oh,” Dom finds himself breathing, no more than a metre away from Lloyd and looking him straight in the eyes. “What did you do? What did you do?”
In that moment, he swears Lloyd sees him, a sudden ghost in the darkened cell. His jaw drops and his eyes pop, and he seems far, far beyond words.
"It's all right, Mr. Henreid.” Dom had thought Glen dead, killed instantly, but he isn’t dead-he’s hauled himself up on one elbow. "You don't know any better."
"Shut up, you mouthy old bastard!" Lloyd screams. He fires, destroying Glen’s face, again and Glen’s body jumps lifelessly, again and he’s crying, crying, tears streaming down his sunburned cheeks while Dom watches helplessly.
It’s done and it’s wrong and Dom can’t, for the life of him, understand why things have to be this way.
"All right," Flagg says softly. "All right. Well done. Well done, Lloyd."
Dom’s seen enough. He gathers himself, and slips away.