The Stand

Late that same evening, Deitz is recording his report about survivors of the virus. Only Stu, whom he calls Prince, is still alive. One four-year-old girl seemed immune until she died that afternoon. Joe Bob received a vaccine that briefly made his condition better before he died too. Deitz can only find four anomalies in Stu’s condition that make him different from everybody else: 

Redman appears to have a great many moles on his body. He has a slight hypertensive condition, too slight to medicate right now. He develops a mild tic under his left eye when he’s under stress. And Denninger says he dreams a great deal more than average—almost all night, every night (139).

Nurse Patty Greer at the Plague Center has been watching over Hap and Stu for days. She begins to sneeze repeatedly but dismisses the symptoms as the common cold because the Plague Center is such a sterile environment. Nevertheless, as she makes her midnight rounds, she manages to infect three other members of the staff. 

On June 23, two criminals, Poke and Lloyd, drive around in a stolen Lincoln Continental. They are now on their way from Arizona to New York, with a car full of guns and drugs. Andrew “Poke” Freeman and Lloyd Henreid met on a Nevada prison work farm. After getting out of jail, a Mafia go-between hired them to perform a fake robbery. They steal his cache of weapons and dope but then decide to silence their confederate as well. Two car thefts and several murders later, the men rob a convenience store to replenish their supply of cash. Poke shoots two of the shoppers in the store and is himself killed by the proprietor. Lloyd attempts to flee, but a state trooper apprehends him and takes him the Apache County jail.

Starkey is reviewing the spread of the virus as it begins to infect other towns in Texas and Kansas. He learns of a new outbreak in Sipe Springs, Texas, and that reporters are on their way to cover the story. Starkey ponders the situation and decides that protecting the military is his first priority. This conclusion leads him to order extreme covert countermeasures.

Having gotten their big story, the reporter and photographer are speeding out of Sipe Springs when two men carrying military weapons intercept them. The men kill both the reporter and photographer. “There was no published report of disease or any other trouble in Sipe Springs, Texas, that day” (162).

Nick becomes friendly with Sheriff Baker and his wife after the sheriff succeeds in arresting three of the four men who beat Nick. The sheriff locks the men up in the local jail to await trial. Since the sheriff seems to be coming down with a bad cold, he deputizes Nick to look after the prisoners. Baker also asks Nick to write out his life story while he’s keeping his nightly vigil.

In the space of two pages, Nick tells how his father died, and his mother died in an accident. Placed into an orphanage, Nick met a kindly man who helped teach him how to write and communicate with the outer world. After the orphanage ran out of money and Nick couldn’t find a foster home, he left and has been on his own since he was 16.

Touched by his story, the Bakers take a liking to the young man and want him to remain in their town after the trial of his assailants is over. While the sheriff is home recovering from his cold, Nick spends the night on a cot in the jailhouse to keep watch over the prisoners.

He dreamed oddly, and all he could remember upon waking was that he seemed to have been walking through endless rows of green corn, looking for something and terribly afraid of something else that seemed to be behind him (177-78).

Larry has settled in to his mother’s flat in New York when he notices her complaining of a cold. After she calls in sick to work, Larry goes out for the day and phones his friend Wayne in Los Angeles. A secretary tells him that Wayne has caught the flu but that a savings account opened in Larry’s name contains $13,000 in royalties. Overjoyed at the news, Larry returns home to tell his mother. He finds her feverish and delirious. In a panic, he calls the hospital, but all the circuits are busy, so Larry runs and get help.  

Frannie is looking for housing during the summer of her pregnancy since she doesn’t want to live at home with her parents. A friend named Debbie invites her to share an apartment in Somersworth, and Frannie gratefully accepts. Later that day, she gets a call from Jesse, asking about her plans. When she says she’s going to keep the baby, he once again proposes, and she once again declines.

After this uncomfortable conversation ends, Peter calls. Over the past few days, Carla has come down with some sort of flu bug. She isn’t acting like herself and spends all night sitting up in the parlor. She’s since taken a turn for the worse and went to the hospital in an ambulance. Six other people are equally sick. Frannie and Peter arrange to drive to the hospital together to check on her.

After the Atlanta Plague Center faces contamination, its patients move to a smaller facility in Stovington, Vermont. Stu is nervous about the move because he feels as if he’s in jail instead of a hospital. Now, armed guards accompany the nurses. Stu notices stories creeping into the TV news that are worrisome. A flu epidemic in New York seems particularly difficult to control. Stu thinks, “He was surrounded by automatons who took his blood at gunpoint. He was afraid for his life, although he still felt fine and had begun to believe he wasn’t going to catch It, whatever It was” (210). Stu finds himself wondering if it might be possible to escape.

Len Creighton comes to meet with Starkey at the research center. It has now been 16 days since the beginning of the virus outbreak. Because the government blames Starkey for the breach, the president has relieved him of command. Starkey tells Len that it’s up to the latter to contain the situation going forward. Starkey insists that Len must reach his contacts in Russia and China to explain that this is nothing but a virulent form of the flu. Otherwise, they might get ideas about launching their own bio-terror programs. The two men bid goodbye. Starkey gives Len his West Point ring and wedding band for his daughter to keep. Then he goes down into the infected lab, still strewn with corpses, where he finds a revolver and shoots himself.

The dark man known as Randall Flagg is walking through the night. “He walked south, south on US 51, the worn heels of his sharp-toed cowboy boots clocking on the pavement; a tall man of no age in faded, pegged jeans and a denim jacket” (219). Flagg travels with the assistance of an underground network. He participates in a variety of crimes because it is his nature. With a growing excitement, he feels the world changing for the worse and anticipates a rebirth for himself. This includes an ability to do magic since Flagg has discovered that he can now levitate off the ground. His newfound supernatural powers convince him that he will play an important role in an upcoming disaster. “He could taste it, a sooty hot taste that came from everywhere, as if God was planning a cook-out and all of civilization was going to be the barbecue” (224).

Incarcerated in the Apache County jail, Lloyd finds himself to be a minor celebrity among the inmates. He’s in a cocky mood when he meets Devins, his attorney. His optimism ends abruptly when Devins explains that Lloyd is eligible for the death penalty in Arizona. His only hope will be to convince a jury that Poke threatened him to comply with the latter’s crime spree. Scared out of his wits, Lloyd agrees to cooperate with Devins’s line of defense and say that Poke was high on drugs and forced Lloyd at gunpoint to help with the robberies. 

Nick continues to keep watch over the prisoners in Sheriff Baker’s jail. The sheriff has already died, and his wife is gravely ill. Most of the townsfolk have left by now. When Nick arrives with the prisoners’ food, he finds one of them already dead and another soon to follow. He drags the bodies out of the cell and down to the basement.

When he goes to check on Mrs. Baker, Nick finds that she isn’t doing well. The doctor isn’t answering his phone, so Nick goes in search of help but finds nothing but dead bodies and a few frightened people shut up in their homes.

But most of the houses were only silent and cryptic, and at last he could do no more. That dream-sense of ominousness was creeping up on him and it became impossible to dismiss the idea that he was knocking on the doors of tombs (246).

Only one of the prisoners in the jail is still alive, and Nick decides to free him. The man instantly takes off for parts unknown. Back at the Baker house, Nick sits by Mrs. Baker’s bedside until she passes away. Her final request is to wear her favorite honeymoon dress. Nick performs this sad office and then carries her body to the funeral home.