"We should have! We should have known!" She buried her face against the good darkness of his shoulder. More tears, hot and scalding. He held her, bent over awkwardly because the electrically powered hospital bed would not crank up.
"I don't want you blamin yourself, Frannie. It's happened. I'm telling you there's no way anybody - except maybe a bomb-squad detective - could make something out of a few snips of wire and an empty box. If they'd left a couple of sticks of dy***ite or a blasting cap around, that would have been a different proposition. But they didn't. I don't blame you, and nobody else in the Zone is going to blame you, either."
As he spoke, two things were combining, slowly and belatedly, in her mind.
Those were the only three from inside... it's like a miracle.
Mother Abagail... she's come back... oh, she's in terrible shape... we need a miracle!
With a little hiss of pain, she drew herself up a little so she could look into Stu's face. "Mother Abagail," she said. "We all would have been inside when it went off if they hadn't come up to tell us - "
"It's like a miracle," Stu repeated. "She saved our lives. Even if she is - " He fell silent.
"Stu?"
"She saved our lives by coming back when she did, Frannie. She saved our lives."
"Is she dead?" Fran asked. She grabbed his hand, clutched it. "Stu, is she dead, too?"
"She came back into town around a quarter of eight. Larry Underwood's boy was leading her by the hand. He'd lost all his words, you know he does that when he gets excited, but he took her to Lucy. Then she just collapsed." Stu shook his head. "My God, how she ever walked as far as she did... and what she can have been eating or doing... I'll tell you something, Fran. There's more in the world - and out of it - than I ever dreamed of back in Arnette. I think that woman is from God. Or was."
She closed her eyes. "She died, didn't she? In the night. She came back to die."
"She's not dead yet. She ought to be, and George Richardson says she'll have to go soon, but she's not dead yet." He looked at her simply and nakedly. "And I'm afraid. She saved our lives by coming back, but I'm afraid of her, and I'm afraid of why she came back."
"What do you mean, Stu? Mother Abagail would never harm - "
"Mother Abagail does what her God tells her to," he said harshly. "That's the same God murdered his own boy, or so I heard."
"Stu!"
The fire died out of his eyes. "I don't know why she's back, or if she has anything left to tell us at all. I just don't know. Maybe she'll die without regaining consciousness. George says that's the most likely. But I do know that the explosion... and Nick dying... and her coming back... it's taken the blinkers off this town. They're talking about him. They know Harold was the one who set off the blast, but they think he made Harold do it. Hell, I think so too. There's plenty who are saying Flagg's responsible for Mother Abagail coming back the way she is, too. Me, I don't know. I don't know nothing, seems like, but I feel scared. Like it's going to end bad. I didn't feel that way before, but I do now."
"But there's us," she said, almost pleading with him. "There's us and the baby, isn't there? Isn't there? "
He didn't answer for a long time. She didn't think he was going to answer. And then he said, "Yeah. But for how long?"
Near dusk on that day, the third of September, people began to drift slowly - almost aimlessly - down Table Mesa Drive toward Larry and Lucy's house. Singly, by couples, in threes. They sat on the front steps of houses that bore Harold's x -sign on their doors. They sat on curbs and lawns that were dry and brown at this long summer's ending. They talked a little in low tones. They smoked their cigarettes and their pipes. Brad Kitchner was there, one arm wrapped in a bulky white bandage and supported in a sling. Candy Jones was there, and Rich Moffat showed up with two bottles of Black Velvet in a newsboy's pouch. Norman Kellogg sat with Tommy Gehringer, his shirtsleeves rolled up to show sunburned, freckled biceps. The Gehringer boy's sleeves were rolled up in imitation. Harry Dunbarton and Sandy DuChiens sat on a blanket together, holding hands. Dick Vollman, Chip Hobart, and sixteen-year-old Tony Donahue sat in a breezeway half a block up from Larry's tract house, passing a bottle of Canadian Club back and forth, chasing it with warm 7-Up. Patty Kroger sat with Shirley Hammett. There was a picnic hamper between them. The hamper was well filled, but they only nibbled. By eight o'clock the street was lined with people, all of them watching the house. Larry's cycle was parked out front, and George Richardson's big Kawasaki 650 was parked beside it.
Larry watched them from the bedroom window. Behind him, in his and Lucy's bed, Mother Abagail lay unconscious. The dry, sickly smell coming from her filled his nose and made him want to puke - he hated to puke - but he wouldn't move. This was his penance for escaping while Nick and Susan died. He heard low voices behind him, the deathwatch around her bed. George would be leaving for the hospital shortly to check on his other patients. There were only sixteen now. Three had been released. And Teddy Weizak had died.