“Will it be none of your business if they use the jets to fly over the Rockies next spring and the missiles to wipe out everyone living there?”

“I hope they do. It’s us or you people; that’s what he says. And I believe him.”

“They believed Hitler, too. But you don’t believe him; you’re just scared gutless of him.”

“Get dressed, Dayna.”

Dayna pulled on her slacks, buttoned them, zipped them. Then she put her hand to her mouth. “I… I think I’m going to throw up… God!…” Clutching her long-sleeved blouse in her hand, she turned and ran into the bathroom and locked the door. She made loud retching noises.

“Open the door, Dayna! Open it or I’ll shoot the lock out of it!”

“Sick—” She made another loud retching noise. Standing on tiptoe, she felt along the top of the medicine cabinet, thanking God she had left the knife and its spring clip up here, praying for another twenty seconds—

She had the clip. She strapped it on. Now there were other voices in the bedroom.

With her left hand she turned on the water in the basin. “Just a minute, I’m sick, dammit!”

But they weren’t going to give her a minute. Someone dealt the bathroom door a kick and it shuddered in its frame. Dayna clicked the knife home. It lay along her forearm like a deadly arrow. Moving with desperate speed, she yanked the blouse on and buttoned the sleeves. Splashed water on her mouth. Flushed the toilet.

Another kick dealt to the door. Dayna twisted the knob and they burst in, Lloyd looking wild-eyed, Jenny standing behind Ken DeMott and Ace High, her pistol drawn.

“I puked,” Dayna said coldly. “Too bad you couldn’t watch it, huh?”

Lloyd grabbed her by the shoulder and threw her out into the bedroom. “I ought to break your neck, you cunt.”

“Remember your master’s voice.” She buttoned the front of her blouse, sweeping them with her flashing eyes. “He’s your dog-god, isn’t that right? Kiss his ass and you belong to him.”

“You better just shut up,” Whitney said gruffly. “You’re only making it worse for yourself.”

She looked at Jenny, unable to understand how the openly smiling, bawdy day-girl could have changed into this blank-faced night-thing. “Don’t you see that he’s getting ready to start it all over again?” she asked them desperately. “The killing, the shooting… the plague? ”

“He’s the biggest and the strongest,” Whitney said with curious gentleness. “He’s going to wipe you people off the face of the earth.”

“No more talk,” Lloyd said. “Let’s go.”

They moved to take her arms, but she stepped away, holding her arms across her body, and shook her head. “I’ll walk,” she said.

The casino was deserted except for a number of men with rifles, sitting or standing by the doors. They seemed to find interesting things to look at on the walls, the ceilings, and the bare gaming tables as the elevator doors opened and Lloyd’s party stepped out, herding Dayna along.

She was taken to the gate at the end of the rank of cashiers’ windows. Lloyd opened it with a small key and they stepped through. She was herded quickly through an area that looked like a bank: there were adding machines, wastebaskets full of paper tapes, jars of rubber bands and paper clips. Computer screens, now gray and blank. Cash drawers ajar. Money had spilled out some of them and lay on the tile floors. Most of the bills were fifties and hundreds.

At the rear of the cashiers’ area, Whitney opened another door and Dayna was led down a carpeted hallway to an empty receptionist’s office. Tastefully decorated. Free-form white desk for a tasteful secretary who had died, coughing and hacking up great green gobbets of phlegm, some months ago. A picture on the wall that looked like a Klee print. A mellow light-brown shag rug. The antechamber to the seat of power.

Fear trickled into the hollows of her body like cold water, stiffening her up, making her feel awkward. Lloyd leaned over the desk and flicked the toggle switch there. Dayna saw that he was sweating lightly. “We have her, R.F.”

She felt hysterical laughter bubbling up inside her and was helpless to stop it—not that she cared. “R.F.! R.F.! Oh, that’s good! Ready when you are, C.B.!” She went off into a gale of giggles, and suddenly Jenny slapped her.

“Shut up!” she hissed. “You don’t know what you’re in for.”

“I know,” Dayna said, looking at her. “You and the rest, you’re the ones who don’t know.”

A voice came out of the intercom, warm and pleased and cheerful. “Very good, Lloyd, thanks. Send her in, please.”

“Alone?”

“Yes indeed.” There was an indulgent chuckle as the intercom cut off. Dayna felt her mouth dry up at the sound of it.

Lloyd turned around. A lot of sweat now, standing out on his forehead in large drops and running down his thin cheeks like tears. “You heard him. Go on.”

She folded her arms below her breasts, keeping the knife turned inward. “Suppose I decline.”

“I’ll drag you in.”

“Look at you, Lloyd. You’re so scared you couldn’t drag a mongrel puppy in there.” She looked at the others. “You’re all scared. Jenny, you’re practically making in your pants. Not good for your complexion, dear. Or your pants.”

“Stop it, you filthy sneak,” Jenny whispered.

“I was never scared like that in the Free Zone,” Dayna said. “I felt good over there. I came over here because I wanted that good feeling to stay on. It was nothing more political than that. You ought to think it over. Maybe he sells fear because he’s got nothing else to sell.”

“Ma’am,” Whitney said apologetically, “I’d sure like to listen to the rest of your sermon, but the man is waiting. I’m sorry, but you either got to say amen and go through that door on your own or I’ll drag you. You can tell your tale to him once you get in there… if you can find enough spit to talk with, that is. But until then, you’re our responsibility.” And the odd thing is, she thought, he sounds genuinely sorry. Too bad he’s also so genuinely scared.

“You won’t have to do that.”

She forced her feet to get started, and then it was a little easier. She was going to her death; she was quite sure of that. If so, let it be so. She had the knife. For him first, if she could, and then for herself, if necessary.

She thought: My name is Dayna Roberta Jurgens, and I am afraid, but I have been afraid before. All he can take from me is what I would have to give up someday anyhow—my life. I will not let him break me down. I will not let him make me less than I am, if I can possibly help it. I want to die well… and I am going to have what I want.

She turned the knob and stepped through into the inner office… and into the presence of Randall Flagg.

The room was large and mostly bare. The desk had been shoved up against the far wall, the executive swivel chair pinned behind it. The pictures were covered with dropcloths. The lights were off.

Across the room, a drape had been pulled back to uncover a window-wall of glass that looked out on the desert. Dayna thought she had never seen such a sterile and uninviting vista in her life. Overhead was a moon like a small, highly polished silver coin. It was nearly full.

Standing there, looking out, was the shape of a man.

He continued to look out long after she had entered, indifferently presenting her his back, before he turned. How long does it take a man to turn around? Two, maybe three seconds at the most. But to Dayna it seemed that the dark man went on turning forever, showing more and more of himself, like the very moon he had been watching. She became a child again, struck dumb by the dreadful curiosity of great fear. For a moment she was caught entirely in the web of his attraction, his glamour, and she was sure that when the turn was completed, unknown eons from now, she would be staring into the face of her dreams: a Gothic cowled monk, his hood shaped around total darkness. A negative man with no face. She would see and then go mad.