The Stand (Original Edition) by Stephen King Read Free Book Online

create.
    99.4%.
    “Christ,” he said. “That’s it?”
    “Well—”
    “Go on. Finish.”
    Softly, then, Carsleigh said: “Hammer’s dead, Billy. Suicide. He shot himself in the eye with his service pistol. The Project Blue specs were on his desk. I guess he thought leaving them there was easier than writing a suicide note.”
    Starkey closed his eyes. Vic Hammer was . . . had been ... his son-in-law. How was he supposed to tell Cynthia about this? I’m sorry, Cindy. Vic took a high dive into a cold bowl of soup today. Here, have a “downer.” You see, there was a goof. Somebody made a mistake with a box. Somebody else forgot to pull a switch that would have sealed off the base. The lag was only twenty-three seconds, but it was enough. The box is known in the trade as a “sniffer.” It’s made in Portland, Oregon, Defense Department contract 164480966. The boxes are put together by female technicians, and they’re put together circuit by circuit so none of them really know what they’re doing. One of them was maybe thinking about what to make for supper, and whoever was supposed to check her work was maybe thinking about trading the family car. Anyway, Cindy, the last coincidence was that a man at the number four security post, a man named Campion, saw the numbers go red. He got his family and ran. He drove through the main gate just twenty-three seconds before the sirens started going off. Anyway, Cindy, what I’m trying to say is that this was a chain of coincidence on the order of winning the Irish Sweepstakes. None of it was Vic’s fault. But he was the head of the project, and he saw the situation start to escalate, and then—
    “Thanks, Len,” he said.
    “Billy, would you like—”
    “I’ll be up in ten minutes. I want you to schedule a general staff meeting fifteen minutes from now. If they’re in bed, kick em out.” “Yes, sir.”
    “And Len . . .”
    “Yes?”
    “I’m glad you were the one who told me.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Carsleigh left. Starkey glanced at his watch, then walked over to the monitors set into the wall. He turned on 2, put his hands behind his back, and stared thoughtfully into Project Blue’s silent cafeteria.

CHAPTER 5
    Larry Underwood pulled around the comer and found a parking space big enough for the Datsun Z between a fire hydrant and somebody’s trash can that had fallen into the gutter. There was something unpleasant in the trash can and Larry tried to tell himself that he really hadn’t seen the stiffening dead cat and the rat gnawing at its white-furred belly. The rat was gone so fast from the sweep of his headlights that it really might not have been there. The cat, however, was fixed in stasis. And, he supposed, killing the Z’s engine, if you believed in one you had to believe in the other. Didn’t they say that Paris had the biggest rat population in the world? All those old sewers. But New York did well, too. And if he remembered his misspent youth well enough, not all the rats in New York City went on four legs. And what the hell was he doing parked in front of this decaying brownstone, thinking about rats, anyway?
    Five days ago, on June 14, he had been in sunny southern California, home of hopheads, freak religions, the only c/w nightclubs in the world with gogo dancers, and Disneyland. This morning at quarter of four he had arrived on the shore of the other ocean, paying his toll to go across the Triborough Bridge. A sullen drizzle had been falling. Only in New York can an early summer drizzle seem so unrepentantly sullen. Larry could see the drops accreting on the Z’s windshield now, as intimations of dawn began to creep into the eastern sky.
    Dear New York, I’ve come home. Maybe the Yankees were in town. That might make the trip worthwhile. Take the subway up to the newly refurbished stadium, drink beer, eat hotdogs, and watch the Yankees wallop the piss out of Cleveland or Boston . . .
    His thoughts drifted off and when he wandered back to