The Stand

The residents of Boulder hear about a new group arriving that includes a recently pregnant woman. She gave birth on the way to Boulder, delivering healthy twins who died a few days later. Rumors circulate that they succumbed to the plague though no one can be sure. Frannie is very worried about her own baby. One of the new arrivals is an ob-gyn named George Richardson. After he examines Frannie, he says that her baby is doing fine.

It’s now the end of August, and the governing committee has decided that it’s time to send their other two spies westward. Dayna has confided to her housemate Sue that she will try to kill Flagg if she gets the chance. Sue accompanies Dayna out of town and camps overnight after Dayna leaves. She discovers a female Irish Setter puppy near her campsite and lures it home with her. Glen is overjoyed that Kojak will have a companion.

Stu and Nick go to Tom’s house to activate his hypnotic programming. Ralph plans to take Tom on the back of his motorcycle all the way to the interstate. Tom will walk the rest of the way to Flagg’s headquarters from there. After he leaves, the other committee members feel guilty for sending him on this mission and pray for his safety.

Meanwhile, Nadine goes back to her old house to collect the last of her belongings before moving in with Harold permanently. While there, she finds Joe sitting in a rocking chair. He doesn’t speak but merely looks at her reproachfully. “His eyes were as they had been when she first met him, and this filled her with a creeping sort of terror” (957). Joe refuses to speak when Nadine prompts him. She tries to make excuses for abandoning him, but he says nothing. She gathers her things and flees as soon as possible. Back at home, Nadine finds Harold testing dynamite. He intends to plant a bomb to destroy everyone on the governing council during their next meeting on September 2.

The town of Boulder is making some progress in getting electrical power restored. Even though the engineers’ first test overloads the circuits because all the appliances and lights in town were still on, it still constitutes a minor victory. “And what people in the Zone remembered later about the first of September 1990 was that it was the day the power came back on—if only for thirty seconds or so” (992).

During the same day, Larry is sitting on the front porch with Leo. He’s concerned because the boy hasn’t spoken since he returned from Nadine’s house. When Larry finally coaxes him to talk, Leo seems to have intuited some disturbing information about Nadine and the dark man. He says, “It’s like he’s rubbing away the part of her brain that knows right from wrong. Little by little he’s rubbing that part away. And when it’s gone she’ll be as crazy as everyone else in the West. Crazier maybe” (984).

Leo urges Larry to talk to Frannie. She knows something about Harold that’s very important. When Larry asks her, Frannie tells him about her diary. Larry then mentions that he caught a glimpse of a ledger at Harold’s house. The two decide to sneak in while Harold and Nadine are away to search for the ledger. When they find it, its contents alarm both Larry and Frannie. “The first sentence in Harold’s ledger: My great pleasure this delightful post-Apocalypse summer will be to kill Mr. Stuart Dog-Cock Redman; and just maybe I will kill her, too” (998).

While Larry and Frannie are searching Harold’s house, Nadine is busy planting a bomb at Nick’s place. The governing committee is due to meet there the following evening. Once Nadine conceals the bomb in a closet, she has a chilling encounter with the dark man. He gets inside her head, and Nadine loses all sense of herself. “Hell was whiteness, the thesis to the dark man’s antithesis. She saw white, ivory, bleached-out nothingness. White-white-white. It was white hell, and it was everywhere” (1002).

Without knowing how she got there, Nadine finds herself at a drive-in theater where Flagg’s voice transmits through all the car speakers. He tells her that the Boulder committee knows everything about Harold now, except the fact that he built a bomb to kill them. He commands her to go to Sunrise Amphitheater and wait until the following night when Harold will detonate the bomb. Afterward, Nadine and Harold are supposed to come to him in Las Vegas. Nadine intercepts Harold on his way home and tells him their orders. Harold is shocked that Nadine’s hair has turned completely white after her psychic encounter with Flagg. He agrees to obey Flagg’s orders to leave town on September 2. 

Fran and Larry take Harold’s ledger and give it to Stu to read. They all agree that Harold is planning to harm them or the entire community, but nobody knows what his plan is. As a precaution, Stu gets several men to guard the newly functioning power plant. Then the governing committee goes to Nick’s house for their regular meeting. As the council discusses various agenda items, Frannie feels a growing sense that something is wrong. She tries to ignore an impulse that is urging her to get everyone out of Nick’s house.

Around 8:30 pm, the group hears the sound of motorcycles approaching. Frannie uses this interruption as an opportunity to make everybody leave immediately. The motorcycle convoy turns out to be a delegation that has come to announce Abagail’s return. She wandered back into town, where Leo found her and led her to Larry’s house. Now, she needs medical attention. All the council members gather outside to hear the full story, but Nick hangs back. He senses that something is in his closet that shouldn’t be there.

Several miles away, Harold and Nadine are camping and waiting for nightfall. Harold holds the walkie-talkie that will trigger the bomb in Nick’s house. When it gets dark enough, he switches the device on.

Then he raised his arm […] and in that moment he was like Babe Ruth, old and almost washed up, pointing to the spot where he was going to hit the home run, pointing for all the hecklers and badmouths in Wrigley Field, shutting them up once and for all (1019).

Harold makes one final announcement on his walkie-talkie to claim responsibility for the crime. Nick is the only one inside at the time, and he can’t hear Harold’s final words as the bomb rips his home apart and kills him. The bomb throws the rest of the committee clear of the building. Harold and Nadine watch the blaze coming from Boulder, and Harold concludes that he has succeeded in killing all seven members of the council. The pair then break camp and head west to join Flagg’s forces.

In addition to killing several people outside, the house explosion kills Sue Stern as well as Nick. Frannie suffers whiplash, a strained back, and a broken foot, though her baby is alright. Only five committee members now remain of the original seven. They rush Abagail to Larry and Lucy’s house, where she lapses into a coma.

The entire town is now speculating about the meaning of recent events and the role the dark man might have played in them. Stu tells Frannie:

I do know that the explosion … and Nick dying … and her coming back … it’s taken the blinkers off this town. They’re talking about him. They know Harold was the one who set off the blast, but they think he made Harold do it (1027-28).

At the next town meeting, everyone grows restless for some answers about Randall Flagg. The discussion soon turns from civic affairs to an open session in which people share their private dreams and visions of Abagail and the dark man. This frank disclosure proves to be cathartic. Glen thinks, “When the inner terror sowed in sleep was finally harvested in this marathon public discussion, the terror became more manageable … perhaps even conquerable” (1043).

As Abagail nears death, she awakens long enough to summon the five remaining council members to her room because she has something important to say. Ralph, Glen, Stu, Fran, and Larry assemble in Abagail’s room. In her gaunt and wasted condition, she summons the energy to give them a prophecy. The only chance of defeating Flagg will be if the four men walk west out of Boulder that very afternoon, taking nothing with them, to confront the powers of darkness. Frannie is to stay behind. Her baby is a threat to the dark man, and he may not want it to live. Abagail says, “God didn’t bring you folks together to make a committee or a community […] He brought you here only to send you further, on a quest. He means for you to try and destroy this Dark Prince, this Man of Far Leagues” (1049).

Both Frannie and Lucy are devastated at the thought of losing their men. Frannie hurls abuse at Abagail and her god until the old woman clasps her wrist and spontaneously heals all Frannie’s injuries from the explosion. The old woman says she doesn’t know the outcome of the battle between good and evil, but she says:

He is in Las Vegas, and you must go there, and it is there that you will make your stand. You will go, and you will not falter, because you will have the Everlasting Arm of the Lord God of Hosts to lean on. Yes. With God’s help you will stand (1051).

After making this pronouncement, Abagail expires. Frannie and Stu have one final picnic on Flagstaff Mountain. On the way back to Stu’s rendezvous with the others, the couple stops briefly at Nick’s house. Seeing a bloodstain on the siding, Frannie makes Stu place his hand over the stain and swear that he will return.  

Lucy and Frannie watch despondently as Larry, Stu, Glen, and Ralph march out of town. As Abagail instructed, they take nothing with them but the clothes on their backs. Glen whistles for Kojak, and the dog accompanies the strange party as they head toward Golden, Colorado, to make camp there for the night. “None of them slept well that first night. Already they felt far from home, and under the shadow of death” (1060).