A party of nine came down the steps. Hector Drogan was in the center. He was fighting like a tiger caught in a net. His face was dead pale except for two hectic blots of color riding high up on his cheekbones. Sweat was pouring off every inch of skin in rivers. He was mother-naked. Five men were holding on to him. One of them was Ace High, the kid Heck had been ribbing about his name.
"Ace!" Hector was babbling. "Hey, Ace, what do you say? Little help for the kid, okay? Tell them to quit this, man - I can get clean, I swear to God I can clean up my act. What do you say? Little help here! Please, Ace!"
Ace High said nothing; simply tightened his grip on Heck's thrashing arm. It was answer enough. Hector Drogan began to scream again. He was dragged relentlessly across the pavilion and toward the fountain.
Behind him, walking in line like a solemn undertaker's party, were three men: Whitney Horgan, carrying a large carpetbag; a man named Roy Hoopes, with a stepladder; and Winky Winks, a bald man whose eyes twitched constantly. Winky was carrying a clipboard with a typed sheet of paper on it.
Heck was dragged to the foot of the cross. A horrible yellow smell of fear was radiating out from him; his eyes rolled, showing the muddy whites, like the eyes of a horse left out in a thunderstorm.
"Hey, Trashy," he said hoarsely as Roy Hoopes set up the stepladder behind him. "Trashcan Man. Tell em to cut it out, buddy. Tell them I can get clean. Tell them a scare like this is better'n all the f**kin rehabs in the world. Tell em, man."
Trashcan stared down at his feet. As he bent his neck, the black stone swung out from his chest and into his field of vision. The red flaw, the eye, seemed to be staring up at him fixedly.
"I don't know you," he mumbled.
From the tail of his eye he saw Whitey down on one knee, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, his left eye squinted against the smoke. He opened the carpetbag. He was taking out sharp wooden nails. To Trashcan Man's horrified gaze, they looked almost as big as tentpegs. He laid the nails on the grass and then removed a large wooden mallet from the carpetbag.
In spite of the murmuring voices all around them, Trashcan Man's words seemed to have penetrated the panicky haze in Hector brogan's mind. "What do you mean, you don't know me?" he cried wildly. "We had breakfast together just two days ago! You called the kid there Mr. High. What do you mean you don't know me, you chickenshit little liar? "
"I don't know you at all," Trash repeated, a little more clearly this time. And what he felt was almost a sense of relief. All he saw here in front of him was a stranger, a stranger who looked a bit like Carley Yates. His hand went to the stone and curled around it. Its coolness reassured him further.
"You liar! " Heck screamed. He began to struggle again, his muscles flexing and pumping, the sweat trickling down his bare chest and arms. "You liar! You do so know me! You do so, you liar! "
"No I don't. I don't know you and I don't want to know you."
Heck began to scream again. The four men holding him bore down, panting and out of breath.
"Go ahead," Lloyd said.
Heck was dragged backward. One of the men holding him stuck out a leg and tripped him. He landed half on the cross and half off it. Meanwhile, Winky had begun to read the typed sheet on his clipboard in a high voice that sliced through Heck's screams like the howl of a buzz-saw.
"Attention attention attention! By the order of Randall Flagg, Leader of the People and First Citizen, this man, Hector Alonzo Drogan by name, is ordered executed by an act of crucifixion, this penalty so ordered for the crime of drug use."
"No! No! No! " Heck screamed in frenzied counterpoint. His left arm, greasy with sweat, escaped Ace High's hold, and instinctively Trash knelt and pinned the arm back down, forcing the wrist against an arm of the cross. A second later, Whitey was kneeling beside Trashcan with the wooden mallet and two of the crude nails. The cigarette still hung from the corner of his mouth. He looked like a man about to do a little job of carpentering in his back yard.
"Yeah, good, hold him just like that, Trash. I'll staple him. Won't take a minute."
"Drug use is not allowed in this Society of the People because it impairs the user's ability to contribute fully to the Society of the People," Winky was proclaiming. He spoke fast, like an auctioneer, and his eyes bunched and scrunched and wiggled. "Specifically in this case, the accused Hector brogan was found with freebasing paraphernalia and a large supply of cocaine."
Now Heck's screams had reached a pitch that might well have shattered crystal, if there had been any crystal around to shatter. His head lashed from side to side. There was foam on his lips. Ribbons of blood coursed down his arms as six of them, Trashcan Man included, lifted the cross into the cement pit. Now Hector Drogan was silhouetted against the sky with his head thrown back in a rictus of pain.
" - is done for the good of this Society of the People," Winky screamed relentlessly. "This communication ends with a solemn warning and greetings to the People of Las Vegas. Let this bill of true facts be nailed above the miscreant's head, and let it be marked with the seal of the First Citizen, RANDALL FLAGG by name."