Chapter 4

XX

A/N: My sincere thanks to AM83220, the best reader, reviewer and sounding board that a writer could ask for. You're the best. Also, to phorosz and fear2breathe, should you read this- you two have both inspired and encouraged me in my work on this fanfiction archive as well. The "Good Son" fanfiction 'community' may be small, but it's wonderful interacting with all of you.

XX

The rain was pouring down so hard John LaFleur could barely see where he was going. Following Route 25, he'd made it to Gorham and then to Standish in his first full day of marching, and then to Cornish on the next. He treated all the stalled and wrecked cars as if they were tombs, to be left undisturbed for all time. He felt no temptation to open any more car doors. The memory of the last time he'd tried that still scarred him, and probably always would.

John had not seen a single living human since Henry and Mark Evans had come to kill him. Mile after mile, town after town, the world had gone silent forever. There was simply no one left alive.

Under the heavy rain, John sighted a small gas station on the right and headed for it gratefully. He made it over, rapped sharply on the door several times with the M1 to see if anybody responded, then swung the stock and smashed the glass in. The CLOSED sign fell among the thousands of shards of glass, and John's boots crunched over them as he stepped inside. Setting the Garand down near the door, John unzipped his pants and urinated into a puddle outside. He'd had to go for hours, had marched for an hour even after the rain had begun. The fear that Henry and Mark might come back for him was powerful, inescapable; John had marched on through the downpour in the hopes that they wouldn't, that they would stop and wait.

Once he was done, John realized he wasn't. Oh, man… the idea of squatting with his back facing the way attackers would most likely come, from the road…

Well, there had to be back door. John zipped back up, shouldered the M1, and swept the store. It was standard countryside gas station fare, lots of junk food and a few loaves of bread that had already passed their expiration date. John noted the presence of a good stock of water bottles, even gallons, and-

Crunch!

SHIT!

John spun around and fired the M1 on sheer instinct. He pulled the trigger again and again, convinced that Henry and Mark had at last caught up with him, had tracked him even here. But his target was no longer there. Running footsteps, sneakers smacking on the tiled floor-

With a feral growl that grew into a wild scream, a boy leapt up and over from the next aisle. Even as John's ears rang from the three shots he had fired, the other boy swung a pistol at him, aiming for his face. John ducked away but the other boy collided with him, sending them both crashing to the floor. Desperate to keep his weapon, John held onto the M1 with both hands, twisted and rolled to get away. He took a blow to the side of the head, fired, kicked while the other boy was stunned by the blast of noise.

"Ugh!" the other boy exclaimed. He landed on his back two feet away, and the pistol fell from his hand. John sprang forward, the bayonet making the rifle seem even longer than it was, and screamed, "Hands up! Hands up! Hands up!"

"Fuck you!" the boy shouted. He bolted for the pistol, snatched it up, spun around. He fired once, shattering a glass refrigerator door. John ducked and yelled. "Hold on! Wait a minute!"

"What?"

"Jason Morgan! You're Jason Morgan! I recognize you!"

The dark-haired boy paused, visibly confused. He was trying to decide whether or not to shoot.

"I don't know you," he hissed.

"You went to school with me! I played soccer, you played football! Your best friend was Tony Summers-"

"Tony," the boy gasped. "How do you- you don't- who're you?"

"I'm John LaFleur."

Jason Morgan's aim wavered. He lowered the pistol slightly. "Put your fuckin' gun down, lemme see you. Come over to the door."

John lowered the barrel so it pointed at the floor, but kept the rifle firmly in his hands. He moved forward slowly, cautiously, and Jason backed up, still regarding John warily.

The other boy's eyes widened as John moved in front of the front door, where the light making it through the rain and clouds lit up his pale face, the slight flush in his cheeks, the swirly cut of black hair that he'd once kept so stylish and well-conditioned.

"John?"

"Yes."

"How are you still alive?"

"I don't know."

Jason lowered the handgun. "Have you seen Tony? Where is he?"

"I haven't seen him."

"Your family all dead?"

"Yes. Everyone. I buried my parents."

Jason paused. "I don't remember."

"You don't remember what?"

"Family. Home. I don't know. I made it here. Got in back. Ate some of the food. I don't know. I can't remember."

Jason talked in strange, jerky sentences, and he had an oddly distracted look about him. It was like certain files were deleted and he was trying to find them on his personal computer, but failing.

"I was hoping to stay out of the rain here," John offered.

"Well, I guess that's okay," Jason said. The dirty, confused kid holding the pistol bore no resemblance to the ultra-cool, confident young athlete John had gone to school with. The two boys had never really talked that much, but they saw each other around, and they were bonded in a way by a mutual admiration for the fun and irresistible energy of Anthony Summers.

Their mutual friend was vanished into the unknown regions of a dead world, the old world, and no one could call him back. That was, unless Anthony, too had survived, but John didn't think so. It was miraculous enough that four had survived among more than 64,000. It didn't seem likely that there would be a fifth.

John hesitated. "Look, I know we weren't friends before-"

"Before," Jason said. He jerked his head up. "Before? I don't remember that. I don't- what do you mean?"

"Well, I mean, like, we went to school together-"

"I know your face," Jason said, "but I don't know why. I don't- I don't wanna talk about this anymore."

Then Jason Morgan, the boy who'd bragged so much about his plans to go to the gym and lift weights and be a big ladies' man in high school, dropped to his knees and passed out. Mercifully, he fell so his face didn't land on the sea of shattered glass.

XX

John found Jason's makeshift sleeping quarters, hidden away in the compact storage and supply room this little store had maintained. He'd been using a sleeping bag, eating whatever he could find in the store, going to the bathroom in a corner. While Jason was out, John cleaned up the mess with materials he found in a janitor's closet, amazed that he hadn't been driven back out the front door by the smell.

When he woke up, Jason wouldn't talk about where he was from. He acknowledged that he knew John, but couldn't say where or how without stuttering to a halt, confusion and distress plain on his face. John wasn't sure if Jason was making a conscious choice to delete everything he'd known in Portland, or if sheer mental/emotional trauma was compelling him to in order to stay sane. But as long as he stayed off that topic, Jason would go back to looking at him distrustfully instead of talking in that halting, jerky manner and getting more wound up by the minute.

When John remembered his need to go again, he headed for the back door and Jason followed, watching curiously. Jason kept his pistol and watched as John, unwilling to get his main set of clothes soaked, stripped naked so he could go in the rain.

It was quite a surreal experience, stepping out into the downpour, naked as the day he'd been born, a classmate who didn't remember a damn thing watching him with a pistol. Had life gone on like it was supposed to, they would've both been at home, waiting for the next day of summer fun to begin, or maybe over at a friend's house, having a great time doing one thing or another. Their parents would've been running their schedules, keeping food on the table and the lights on and everything else that you took for granted as a kid. Now, John was waiting patiently so he could shit on the grass behind a random gas station off Route 25. The world had sure changed, all right.

As he defecated, John prayed that Mom and Dad wouldn't judge him too harshly for abandoning all dignity like this. He was going to the bathroom the only way he could, because there were no working toilets anymore, not for anybody, and Jason had claimed one corner already. Gradually, it dawned on John that there had been little point to this effort to keep his clothes dry; he'd been in the rain for an hour before getting here. Oh, well. This was sort-of getting him a bath, at least.

Once John came back inside and pulled his shorts back on, Jason looked at him. "You're in pretty good shape."

"Oh, uh, thanks."

Jason pointed at John's bare upper body, to his arms, shoulders, and chest. "That's not bad. But you need to go to the gym more."

"I'd like to, eventually."

"I'm gonna go to the gym when I get there."

"Where are you going?"

Jason frowned. "The man in the desert… he… he wants me to go to him. But I don't know. I could. But I think I could go to somewhere in Colorado… maybe they won't have so many rules there. I don't know. I don't think Las Vegas is much fun anymore."

John considered asking Jason what happened to him, why he didn't remember anything, why he talked so strangely at times. But then he already had enough to keep him awake at night for the rest of his life. Jason had walked through Hell as the world died around him. That was a given, and if he couldn't or wouldn't say more, then John wasn't going to bother him about it.

"You should come with me," John said as the rain drummed on the roof, on the ground, on the legions of dead cars outside. "You should go to Colorado."

"The Dark Man," Jason said suddenly. "He'll know. He sees everything. The Eye sees."

"I hope not," John said uneasily. "But I won't go to him. I'm not going there."

"He'll know. He'll see us. I know he will. He sees it all. Everything. All of heaven and earth." Jason's entire body trembled as he spoke those words. Then he sighed, and whatever had been in his eyes left. His shoulders slumped. "Tony's dead," he almost whispered. "I know he is. I miss him."

Then Jason put his head in his hands and bawled helplessly, like a child. When John tried to get closer, tried to put an arm around his shoulders, Jason bared his teeth and hissed savagely, shoved John away with surprising strength. He scurried off to the supply room, squatted in the corner to relieve himself, then hid in his sleeping bag with the pistol and a hunting knife beside him.

John took a seat behind the counter, the M1 at his side, watching the rain through the shattered door. He thought of Mom and Dad and cried miserably, wishing he could have been there for them, the way they would have done for him. He missed them. He missed his grandparents, his cousins, his aunts and uncles. All gone. Every friend, every neighbor, everyone he had ever seen or known.

All that was left was the traumatized, ruined, near-feral remains of the boy who had been Jason Morgan. A boy who shit and pissed in the corner of a cheap gas station supply room, talked strangely of a Dark Man and how he couldn't remember, and who didn't trust John and probably never would. He'd backed down from attempting to kill him, but that was about it. What fun.

Thunder crashed outside, and John dived below the counter, taking the M1 with him in one swift motion. He huddled there, waited and listened, and then fled for the supply room himself. Jason was asleep, but he gripped his pistol and growled at whatever was with him there in the dark. John quietly moved past him, shouldered his rifle, and used the cleaning supplies he'd gathered to clean up behind Jason again. He deposited the mess outside, then closed the back door, locked it, and propped himself up against it in an effort to keep it shut.

Hours of marching remained ahead, and John knew it. His eyes drooped shut, and he fell asleep dreaming of Freedom, New Hampshire, and the long journey west. That was how he started, at least. The dreams took him elsewhere before long.

XX

John's black paratrooper boots hit the ground right as he expected them to; he kept his legs pressed close together, knees bent, and executed a perfect parachute landing fall. As he stood up and unclasped his chute, he looked for Grandpa and found him already rallying men in the center of the road nearby. John had almost landed in the cornfield, in the endless sea of corn, and he knew the drop had been risky because of that. The narrow strip of road and the grass to either side was ideal. You could land in the corn, but you had to get out before dark, and it the sun was starting to drop…

"Hey!" Grandpa shouted. "Get over here!"

"Yes, sir!" John yelled, and foolishly went for his rifle. Gone! It was gone!

Then Grandpa was there, thrusting his M1, his rifle from the war, into John's hands.

"You're gonna need this," Grandpa said solemnly. "You're gonna need this, John. There's a hell of a rough road ahead."

Then thunder crashed, the sky went dark, and the wind picked up. John stood alone in the middle of the road. The men, the paratroopers with their 11th Airborne Division patches on their shoulders, they were all gone. John whirled around, afraid that he had missed them moving out. His eyes frantically scanned the corn. He hoped nobody was out there, injured after their landing.

Someone was playing a banjo- no, a guitar. Grandpa had one of those! Maybe he was out there. John hurried in the direction of the music, the M1 in his hands, helmet slipping down over his small head. He was a little kid, sure, but someone had summoned him for the fight. He was out west somewhere, far out west, in a place he had never seen before in his life. Yet the 11th Airborne had a mission, a job to do, and John needed to get to the rally point and stand with his Grandpa against whatever storms may come. That was one of his favorite phrases, John remembered, "Whatever storms may come."

John paused to fix a long blade bayonet on the Garand as he crept into the corn, ready to fight any Krauts or Japs up close if he had to. Grandpa had fought Japs, but he'd been ready to take on Krauts just the same. Grandpa Myron feared nobody.

A woman was singing, an old woman by the sound. Maybe she was a Jap, but John didn't think so. She sounded American to him, if his guess was worth anything. John crouched and crept out of the corn. He moved quickly up to the side of the old clapboard house, an ancient-looking place that had probably been built back when New York City was just a small town with a well.

"What a friend we have in Jesus," the old woman sang, playing the guitar as skillfully as Grandpa Myron ever had.

"Ma'am," John called out as he moved forward, "Ma'am, I'm- have you seen the rest of the soldiers out here?" He tried to sound confident, in control, aware that he was a little kid in a uniform.

As John moved cautiously out onto the front lawn, he saw the brown-skinned woman sitting in a rocking chair, guitar in her hands. She looked as ancient as the house. Her worn, wrinkled face broke into a brilliant smile as she saw John.

"Well, hello, there, John LaFleur! I wondered when you'd drop in." She chuckled, clearly enjoying her remark.

"I'm lost," John admitted. "Nobody else is here."

"Your Grandpa Myron fought his fight already, John," the old woman said. "His 11th Airborne had their fight, too. They came back to warn you."

"I don't want to fight," John pleaded. "I don't want to kill anyone. Too many people are dead. I miss my Mom and Dad."

"I can feel your hurtin' from here, child," the woman said gently. "But you got a soldier in you, and you need to let him come out. It's a rough road ahead. Your friend, he ain't ready for it. You gotta be there for both of you for now."

"Jason? Where- I don't see him."

"Don't let him go to the City of Sin, child. Stay clear of there. Don't believe them promises he makes. That storm's comin' and you better be ready."

"What storm, what-"

"Him! His storm!" the woman cried, as dark clouds, nearly black, swirled overhead. The wind howled, and red eyes glowed in the corn, moving closer.

John brought his rifle around, tried to raise it, couldn't. He stood rooted to the spot as a Dark Man, the Man With No Face, drew closer. The dark figure raised his arms, arms that dripped with blood.

"Get inside the house!" John shouted. "Stay inside!"

"Look," the Tall Man commanded, and John looked. He saw a boy clad in black, pale, cold eyes staring pitilessly as fire burned thousands before him. He saw himself.

"No!" John screamed.

"Heaven and earth," the figure said. "All of heaven and earth."

XX

John barely choked back a scream as he woke up. The M1 was still on his lap, and rain still fell outside. There was a leak inside, too, or- over in the corner, Jason Morgan was crouched, facing outward, urinating. He held the pistol in one hand, and John realized the other boy was naked. Jason saw John, hissed, and fled back to his sleeping back and dove inside. John got up, shifted his pack, and took it off. He drew out one of his cans of food, some cream of corn. He got out the can opener and a spoon, opened the can up and set the lid aside, and walked toward the sleeping bag. He set the can down, put the spoon in it, and went back to the door, where he unrolled his own bag and lay down on it.

Gradually, the sleeping bag across the room rustled, and the other boy carefully approached the can. Then he snatched it up, rapidly fed the contents to himself, scraped it clean, then threw the can away with a clatter and ran back to his bag.

John didn't know what to think. He couldn't take care of Jason, whatever had happened to him. He could barely take care of himself. Yet how could he abandon Jason? There was no way of knowing how he'd made it out this far, but he clearly showed no signs of going any farther. He might never leave this place on his own, and gas station snack food would not last him very long.

Jason was one of the strongest boys in my class, John thought, remembering. A natural athlete. You could already tell he was gonna be popular in high school. Real popular. And here he is, hissing and scavenging for food like an animal. What did he see before he got here? What happened to him?

There was no way to know, ever, unless Jason himself wanted to talk. His higher functions collapsed with sundown, it seemed. After dark, he was a feral. He'd talk during the day, some, if this first meeting was any indication. He'd even praised John's current fitness and encouraged him to do more. He'd talked of wanting to go to the gym once he "got there," wherever that was.

I wonder if I could run a YMCA with him, John thought. He seemed to speak and think at his best when he was on that topic. I should ask him about that more. When he isn't taking a shit in the corner of the supply room, that is.

Remember you don't know what he saw on his way here, a voice answered him. You know he's been through it as bad as you, maybe even worse. He wouldn't have become like this if he'd had any real choice.

As the rain fell outside, John wondered, distantly, what life might have been like had there been no plague. Henry Evans wouldn't have ever been anybody popular; that just wasn't possible. Cold and aloof, openly contemptuous of anyone who crossed him and quick to violence when riled, Henry was also known for doing… things. Throwing rocks at birds with unbelievable accuracy, smiling whenever he made sure one was dead. And he always made sure. "Creepy Henry," the kids called him, and his fierce hatred of that nickname only drove his alienated peers to apply it more.

Jason Morgan, John remembered, had been one of the ringleaders. He had really known little about Henry but found the nickname funny, and John supposed a mean and petty side of Jason had just enjoyed slapping the nickname on. And there was no reason to believe that wouldn't have continued into middle school, and then into high school. Henry would've stayed creepy, and Mark… John didn't know a single thing about Mark. That boy was an unknown factor, a mystery. But nothing he could've done would've been enough to reverse Henry's colossal social failure. Nobody liked Henry Evans.

Given time, Jason would've likely become the King of the Overconfident and Athletic Boys, a role he would have no doubt loved and relished. Now he was reverting to bare survival instincts, so devoted to staying safe and hidden that he relieved himself in a corner instead of going outside. It was crazy, but then the whole fucking world had gone crazy. Well, for a while it had, anyway. Now it was quiet. No, not even quiet. The world was just dead.

Like Mom and Dad, like all my friends, everybody, John thought. He wept, heartbroken and exhausted, and at some point he drifted off to a dreamless sleep.

XX

The blond boy was about twelve or thirteen, and he sat in the middle of the road, clutching his leg. As the band of survivors drew closer, he cried out. "Help! Please help me!"

An older man with a hunting rifle raised his hand, a signal for the rest of his group to halt. He and his people had business with the man in the desert, but they hadn't really planned on picking up more along the way. Still, the kid was clearly on his own, and he was whining too much to be able to pose any threat.

"Who are you, kid?" the man called.

"Henry," the boy answered. "I'm Henry. I hurt my leg and they said I was slowing them down. The people I was with, they- they left me behind!" As he wailed those last words, the boy moaned and rocked back and forth as if feeling unbearable pain. He cried and shook his head, muttering to himself.

"We got places to be, kid," the man said as he cautiously moved his people closer. "We can't carry you all the way out west."

"Please help me," the boy begged. "You have to help me."

"This kid's a waste of time," Tony, one of the vets in the group, remarked. "We should just shoot him and put 'im out of his misery."

"No, don't! Please, don't!" Henry wailed. "It wasn't my fault my leg got like this, I just need some help!"

"What, you break your leg or something?" Tony asked skeptically. He passed the older guy, pointed at the blood he could see on the boy's right leg. "You just look like you got a scrape."

"I can't stand up," Henry said. "Please, this hurts so bad."

"Where was your group heading, kid?" the older man asked.

"West, that's all I know, I swear. I wanted to go to the desert."

"How're you gonna be any good to the Walkin' Dude?" Tony asked. He drew a knife from his belt. "You're no good to anybody." He paused, and the hard look on his face softened slightly. "Listen, man… there's no reason not to do this. We can't take you with us and you'll die slow if we leave you here. Just hold still and I'll make it quick."

The boy laughed then, a high, mocking sound that startled everyone in the small band of nine that had come up this way from Connecticut, slowly heading west. Tony looked at the kid and wondered what the hell was going on.

"You're funny," Henry said to Tony. "You all are so stupid."

"Oh, yeah?" Tony demanded. "How's that, kid?"

"You guys are all standing there staring at me. And you guys're all bunched up."

"What?"

Too late, Tony and the older man realized they were being watched, and they spun outward, looking frantically around. Henry casually pulled out a pair of earplugs and put them in, and smiled gleefully as Mark deliberately dropped the MG-42's bipod on the hood of a car fifty feet away. They all turned, hearing the loud thunk of the bipod's legs on the sheet of metal, but Mark had started firing by then. As the machine gun roared, sending 7.92mm bullets downrange at a rate of 1,500 rounds per minute, Henry grinned. He had never had this much fun in all his life. The results of Hitler's Buzzsaw ripping into a group of people at close range couldn't be described, only seen, believed, and… enjoyed.

The bodies were all mangled, some beyond recognition, when the gunfire finally stopped. Blood and pieces of bone, brains and guts were everywhere. Henry had been sprayed with some of it, and he calmly took the earplugs out and caught the towel Mark threw him as the auburn-haired boy walked over.

"You used too much ammo, Mark," Henry said.

"Ah, who cares, man? Everybody fucking dead in a country that owns half the guns in the world or something? We'll just raid every Wal-Mart and gun store there is. We're never fucking running out of bullets."

"Still ought to be efficient," Henry replied. "Mark, you clipped that old dude with a bunch of rounds. I got to see his head fucking explode from a couple feet away. Thanks. That one was fun to see."

"Hey, how come I didn't get that when it was my turn to watch up close?" Mark indignantly objected.

"Plenty of chances to do this again, Mark," Henry said, cool and collected as ever. Mark had always been passionate and emotional; he was just directing his energy in a different direction now. A better direction. Henry was proud of Mark and the progress he had made, but even so, Mark needed a colder, more controlled mind to help guide him and temper his excesses. Henry was that mind.

"I know," Mark said. "Okay. Gimme more eye candy next time, when it's my turn again, okay?"

"I'll saw their goddamn fucking heads off," Henry said. He went to the car Mark had been hiding behind, picked up his pack and the Type 68. "How much further do you think he'll run from us before we catch him?"

Mark looked speculatively down the road, considered the question for a moment. He shrugged and turned to pick up his MG-42.

"Not far."

XX

A/N: 10-19-2019.

Surprise! Wrote another chapter yesterday, to be posted today.

It is an interesting process, looking up roads and towns you have never seen and know nothing about. In Stephen King's works, practically every event worth talking about, ever, happens in Maine somewhere at sometime. Because he lives there. See? Maine. It's where it all goes down. Even in "The Stand," where Captain Trips originates in the desert of southeastern California, the main protagonists we meet are all New Englanders ('cept for that Stu Redman) and most of those are from Maine.

I originally intended for Jason to actually be sick with the superflu when he appears, and to try and fail to murder Henry before he dies. Instead, I held off on that idea, and came up with this one instead. Jason winds up as something of an in-between to John LaFleur and Leo Rockway. John has stayed sane and his behavior and thinking is astoundingly 'normal' for all he has been through. Leo goes completely feral and does not even speak until he gets out to Boulder. Jason speaks some, but not at night, where he is no better off than Leo.

My guess is that Jason fears the dark most of all, both because it leaves him utterly alone to face his worst memories and imagined fears and because he is afraid of Randall Flagg. Jason has neither Henry and Mark's sociopathic nature nor John's inherently good moral compass. He is vain and selfish, but underneath it still human. He isn't comfortable with that, however; he needs, or needed, to believe in his own carefully-managed public image as the epitome of macho and cool. With everything he ever knew completely destroyed, taken from him quite brutally, Jason can no longer even try to cling to that. He has never nurtured or given much thought to who he really is or what he believes in deep down, and so he can't handle being forced to look at those things in a world where nothing else even exists anymore. Jason does hold some vague hope for the future, however, as shown in his comment to/praise for John being as fit as he currently is.

John's speculation about what would've happened had Captain Trips not killed 99.4% of the world population is not unreasonable. That's about what anybody who went to school with Henry Evans in the early 1990's would've likely predicted if you had asked them. I doubt that anybody saw it coming that Henry would not only reverse his status as a social failure but actually rise to become king of his high school alongside Mark. Jason certainly never expected it, and he was nursing a grudge over it well into 12th grade in "The Good Sons."

Henry and Mark have by now murdered two groups of immune survivors. One were innocents, likely headed to Boulder, CO, and the ones seen here were going to Las Vegas, NV. Both were taken by surprise, because they didn't believe Henry or Mark could pose any threat to them until it was too late. With minds and bodies pushed beyond normal limits for boys their age, Henry and Mark are going to be quite gifted at carrying out ambushes. Nobody is going to be ready for them, whether they follow Mother Abigail or Randall Flagg. I doubt even the Dark Man would be expecting them.

The line "All of heaven and earth" is originally said by Randall Flagg to Stu Redman in one of the latter's dreams that ultimately leads him to head out west.

All reviews are welcome.