The Stand

The clock touched midnight; time to get going.

She left the nurses’ station and walked down the hallway toward the white room where she would first be sprayed and then helped into her suit. Halfway there, her nose began to tickle. She got her hankie out of her pocket and sneezed lightly three times. She replaced the handkerchief.

Intent on dealing with cranky Mr. Sullivan, she attached no significance to her sneezes. It was probably a touch of hay fever. The directive in the nurses’ station which said in big red letters, REPORT ANY COLD SYMPTOMS NO MATTER HOW MINOR TO YOUR SUPERVISOR AT ONCE , never even crossed her mind. They were worried that whatever those poor people from Texas had might spread outside the sealed rooms, but she also knew it was impossible for even a tiny virus to get inside the self-contained environment of the white-suits. Nevertheless, on her way down to the white room she infected an orderly, a doctor who was just getting ready to leave, and another nurse on her way to do her midnight rounds.

A new day had begun.

Chapter 16

A day later, on June 23, a big white Co

The trail that Co

Interstate fugitives. Lloyd Henreid liked the sound of that. Gangbusters. Take that, you dirty rat. Have a lead sandwich, ya lousy copper.

So they had turned north at Deming, now on 180; had gone through Hurley and Bayard and the slightly larger town of Silver City, where Lloyd had bought a bag of burgers and eight milkshakes (why in the name of Christ had he bought eight of the motherfuckers? they would soon be pissing chocolate), gri

Past Silver City and roaring through Cliff, the road now bending west again, just the direction they didn’t want to go. Through Buckhorn and then they were back in the country God forgot, two-lane blacktop ru

“We’re gettin low on gas,” Poke said.

“Wouldn’t be if you didn’t drive so fuckin fast,” Lloyd said. He took a sip of his third milkshake, gagged on it, powered down the window, and threw out all the leftover crap, including the three milkshakes neither of them had touched.

“Whoop! Whoop!” Poke cried. He began to goose the gas pedal. The Co

“Ride em cowboy!” Lloyd yelled.

“Whoop! Whoop!”

“You want to smoke?”

“Smoke em if you got em,” Poke said. “Whoop! Whoop!”

There was a large green Hefty bag on the floor between Lloyd’s feet. It held the sixteen pounds of marijuana. He reached in, got a handful, and began to roll a bomber joint.

“Whoop! Whoop!” The Co

“Cut the shit!” Lloyd shouted. “I’m spillin it everywhere!”

“Plenty more where that came from… whoop!”

“Come on, we gotta deal this stuff, man. We gotta deal this stuff or we’re go

“Okay, sport.” Poke began to drive smoothly again, but his expression was sulky. “It was your idea, your fuckin idea.”

“You thought it was a good idea.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know we’d end up drivin all over fuckin Arizona. How we ever go

“We’re throwin off pursuit, man,” Lloyd said. In his mind he saw police garage doors opening and thousands of 1940s radio cars issuing forth into the night. Spotlights crawling over brick walls. Come on out, Canarsie, we know you’re in there.

“Good fuckin luck,” Poke said, still sulking. “We’re doin a helluva job. You know what we got, besides that dope and the guns? We got sixteen bucks and three hundred fuckin credit cards we don’t dare use. What the fuck, we don’t even have enough cash to fill this hog’s gas tank.”

“God will provide,” Lloyd said, and spit-sealed the bomber. He lit it with the Co

“And if you want to sell it, what are we doing smokin it?” Poke went on, not much mollified by the thought of God providing.

“So we sell a few short ounces. Come on, Poke. Have a smoke.”

This never failed to break Poke up. He brayed laughter and took the joint. Between them, standing on its wire stock, was the Schmeisser, fully loaded. The Co

Poke and Lloyd had met a year before in the Brownsville Minimum Security Station, a Nevada work farm. Brownsville was ninety acres of irrigated farmland and a prison compound of Quonset huts about sixty miles north of Tonopah and eighty northeast of Gabbs. It was a mean place to do short time. Although Brownsville Station was supposed to be a farm, nothing much grew there. Carrots and lettuce got one taste of that blaring sun, chuckled weakly, and died. Legumes—and weeds would grow, and the state legislature was fanatically dedicated to the idea that someday soybeans would grow. But the kindest thing that could be said about Brownsville’s ostensible purpose was that the desert was taking a Christless long time to bloom. The warden (who preferred to be called “the boss”) prided himself on being a hardass, and he hired only men he considered to be fellow hardasses. And, as he was fond of telling the new fish, Brownsville was mostly minimum security because when it came to escape, it was like the song said: noplace to run to, baby, noplace to hide. Some gave it a shot anyway, but most were brought back in two or three days, sunburned, glareblind, and eager to sell the boss their shriveled raisin souls for a drink of water. Some of them cackled madly, and one young man who was out for three days claimed he saw a large castle some miles south of Gabbs, a castle with a moat. The moat, he said, was guarded by trolls riding big black horses. Some months later when a Colorado revival preacher did a show at Brownsville, this same young man got Jesus in a big way.

Andrew “Poke” Freeman, in for simple assault, was released in April 1989. He had occupied a bed next to Lloyd Henreid, and had told him that if Lloyd was interested in a big score, he knew about something interesting in Vegas. Lloyd was willing.

Lloyd was released on June 1. His crime, committed in Reno, had been attempted rape. The lady was a showgirl on her way home, and she had shot a load of teargas into Lloyd’s eyes. He felt lucky to get only two to four, plus time served, plus time off for good behavior. At Brownsville it was just too fuckin hot to misbehave.