She had followed him, though. That was a fact. But she had been frantic to reach other people, not just because of Joe but because she had come almost to the point of deserting the boy and striking west on her own to find the man. Only years of ingrained responsibility to the children who had been placed under her care had kept her from doing that… and her knowledge that, left on his own, Joe would die.

In a world where so many have died, to parcel out more death is surely the gravest sin.

So she had gone with Larry, who was, after all, better than nothing or no one.

But it had turned out that there was a great deal more to Larry Underwood than nothing or no one—he was like one of those optical illusions (maybe even to himself) where the water looks shallow, only an inch or two deep, but when you put your hand in you’ve suddenly got your arm wet to the shoulder. The way he had gotten to know Joe, that was one thing. The way Joe had taken to him was another, her own jealous reaction to the growing relationship between Joe and Larry was a third. At the motorcycle dealership in Wells, Larry had bet the fingers of both hands on the boy, and he had won.

If they had not been concentrating their full attention on the lid covering the gasoline tank, they would have seen her mouth drop open in a slack o of surprise. She had stood watching them, unable to move, her gaze concentrated on the bright metal line of the crowbar, waiting for it to first jitter and then fall away. She only realized after it was over that she had been waiting for the screams to begin.

Then the lid was up and over and she was faced with her own error in judgment, an error so deep it was fundamental. In that case he had known Joe better than she, and without any special training, and on much shorter notice. Only hindsight allowed her to understand how important the guitar episode had been, how quickly and fundamentally it had defined Larry’s relationship with Joe. And what was at the center of that relationship?

Why, dependence, of course—what else could have caused that sudden jangle of jealousy all through her system? If Joe had depended on Larry, that would have been one thing, normal and acceptable. What had upset her was that Larry also depended on Joe, needed Joe in a way she didn’t… and Joe knew it.

Had her judgment been that wrong about Larry’s character? She thought now that the answer was yes. That nervous, self-serving exterior was a veneer, and it was being worn away by hard use. Just the fact that he had held them all together on this long trip spoke for his determination.

The conclusion seemed clear. Beneath her decision to let Larry make love to her, a part of her was still committed to the other man… and making love to Larry would be like killing that part of herself forever. She wasn’t sure she could do that.

And she wasn’t the only one who had dreamed of the dark man now.

That had disturbed her at first, then frightened her. Fright was all it was when she had only Joe and Larry to compare notes with; when they met Lucy Swann and she said she’d had the same sort of dream, fright became a kind of frenzied terror. It was no longer possible to tell herself their dreams only sounded like hers. What if everyone left was having them? What if the dark man’s time had come around at last—not just for her, but for everyone left on the planet?

This idea more than any other raised the conflicting emotions of utter terror and strong attraction within her. She had held to the idea of Stovington with a nearly panicky grip. It stood, by nature of its function, as a symbol of sanity and rationality against the rising tide of dark magic she felt around her. But Stovington had been deserted, a mockery of the safe haven she had built it up to be in her mind. The symbol of sanity and rationality was a deathhouse.

As they moved west, picking up survivors, her hope that it could somehow end for her without confrontation had gradually died. It died as Larry grew in her estimation. He was sleeping with Lucy Swann now, but what did that matter? She was spoken for. The others had been having two opposing dreams: the dark man and the old woman. The old woman seemed to stand for some sort of elemental force, just as the dark man did. The old woman was the nucleus the others were gradually cohering around.

Nadine had never dreamed of her.

Only of the dark man. And when the dreams of the others had suddenly faded away as inexplicably as they had come, her own dreams had seemed to grow in power and in clarity.

She knew many things which they did not. The dark man’s name was Randall Flagg. Those in the West who opposed him or went against his way of doing things had either been crucified or driven mad somehow and set free to wander in the boiling sink of Death Valley. There were small groups of technical people in San Francisco and Los Angeles, but they were only temporary; very soon they would be moving to Las Vegas, where the main concentration of people was growing. For him there was no hurry. Summer was on the downside now. Soon the Rocky Mountain passes would be filling with snow, and while there were plows to clear them, they would not be able to spare enough warm bodies to man the plows. There would be a long winter in which to consolidate. And next April… or May…

Nadine lay in the dark, looking up at the sky.

Boulder was her last hope. The old woman was her last hope. The sanity and rationality she had hoped to find at Stovington had begun to form in Boulder. They were good, she thought, the good guys, and if only it could be that simple for her, caught in her crazy web of conflicting desires.

Played over and over again, like a dominant chord, was her own firm belief that murder in this decimated world was the gravest sin, and her heart told her firmly and without question that death was Randall Flagg’s business. But oh how she wanted his cold kiss—more than she had wanted the kisses of the high school boy, or the college boy… even more, she feared, than Larry Underwood’s kiss and embrace.

We’ll be in Boulder tomorrow, she thought. Maybe I’ll know then if the trip is over or…

A shooting star scratched its fire across the sky, and like a child, she wished on it.

Dawn was coming up, painting the eastern sky a delicate rose color. Stu Redman and Glen Bateman were about halfway up Flagstaff Mountain in West Boulder, where the first foothills of the Rockies rise up out of the flat plains like a vision of prehistory. In the dawnlight Stu thought that the pines crawling between the naked and nearly perpendicular stone faces looked like the veins ridging some giant’s hand that had poked out of the earth. Somewhere to the east, Nadine Cross was at last falling into a thin, unsatisfactory sleep.

“I’m going to have a headache this afternoon,” Glen said. “I don’t believe I’ve stayed up drinking all night since I was an undergrad.”

“Sunrise is worth it,” Stu said.

“Yes, it is. Beautiful. Have you ever been in the Rockies before?”

“Nope,” Stu said. “But I’m glad I came.” He hoisted the jug of wine and had a swallow. “I got quite a buzz on myself.” He looked out over the view in silence for a few moments and then turned to Glen with a slanted smile. “What’s going to happen now?”

“Happen?” Glen raised his eyebrows.

“Sure. That’s why I got you up here. Told Frannie, ‘I’m gonna get him good n drunk and then pick his brains.’ She said fine.”

Glen grinned. “There are no tea leaves in the bottom of a wine bottle.”

“No, but she explained to me just what it is you used to be. Sociology. The study of group interaction. So make some educated guesses.”

“Cross my palm with silver, O aspirant to knowledge.”

“Never mind the silver, baldy. I’ll take you down to the First National Bank of Boulder tomorrow and give you a million dollars. How’s that?”