“Plague is here and we’ve got to make a stand, that’s obvious.”

Albert Camus. The Plague. 1947.

This is the point where the chronological part of this project gets all kinds of f*cked up. The Stand, which King notes in On Writing to be what many fans rate their favorite work of his, was originally published in 1978. King worked on most of it while he was still on sojourn in Colorado (probably explaining why a significant part of it, like The Shining, is set there), but he had moved back to his native Maine by the time he finished it. Tracking an epic superflu pandemic and its fallout (literally, as we shall see), the tome is certainly appropriate subject matter for our current times. The trailer for the new limited series adaptation dropped a couple of days ago; the 1994 TV miniseries that this is rebooting is currently available. (King himself wrote the 1994 miniseries, and his son Owen is apparently in the writers’ room for the new one.)

The chronology problem is twofold: first, I just plain f*cked up the publication order and read The Stand, originally published in October of 1978, before I read King’s story collection Night Shift, published in February of 1978, King’s publisher violating their one-King-title-a-year policy that year. Night Shift has a story called “Night Surf” following a first-person narrator in a flu-induced apocalypse that is supposedly the basis for The Stand, though there are some noticeable differences in the nature of the pandemic in the two narratives.

The second problem is multiple editions: I did not read the version of The Stand published in October of ’78, which is no longer in print. The one that the King consumer will most likely find when searching for this title now is the “Complete & Uncut” edition, published on January 1, 1990. In his characteristically chatty preface to this ’90 edition, King describes how the version he submitted to his publisher in the 70s had to be cut by some 400 pages, and this version was reinstating some (albeit not all) of that material. He also notes that some people thought the original version was already too long so…buy at your own peril, basically.

I did find a version of the original on Amazon (there were surprisingly few available to make comparisons).

King did more than just add sections back in; he basically line-edited the pre-existing parts as well. The story’s the same, but the text is rife with references to the 80s, though in some Presidential references only the name was changed. (This person has done a pretty thorough job cataloguing the changes between the two editions.) That King wrote the teleplay for the ’94 miniseries gave him another crack at compressing and rearranging pieces of this narrative, while at the same time seeming to demonstrate how his “cinematic” style lends itself to the silver screen and how King’s influences are almost a 50/50 confluence of written and visual texts. (My primary example of this would be the Blue Oyster Cult song “Don’t Fear the Reaper” playing during the opening credits, which King used as one of his many epigraphs.)

At any rate, the scope of this narrative and its cast makes it more difficult to summarize in paragraph form, so I’m outlining it–the Uncut version–by chapter.

Prologue: “The Circle Opens”

Charlie Campion, a guard on a military base where something’s gone wrong and killed a bunch of men, escapes due to a malfunction, retrieves his wife and daughter, and flees the state.

Book I “Captain Trips” June 16-July 4, 1990

Ch. 1 In Arnette, Texas, Campion crashes into some gas pumps at a Texaco where Stu Redman and some other men are gathered; Campion’s wife and daughter are dead and Campion is almost dead.

Ch. 2 In Ogunquit, Maine, Frannie Goldsmith tells her boyfriend Jess Rider she’s pregnant; he doesn’t take it that well.

Ch. 3 In Arnette, Joe Bob the deputy warns the men who were at the Texaco that the health department wants to put them under quarantine. One of the men, Norm, and his family, start getting sick.

Ch. 4 At the military base where the “accident” happened, a general, Starkey, is looking at dead people on monitors and considering the chain of coincidences that led to Campion’s escaping the base.

Ch. 5 Larry Underwood returns from California to his mother’s in NYC after releasing a successful single on the radio (“Baby Can You Dig Your Man”) but then getting in debt to a drug dealer.

Ch. 6 Frannie tells her father she’s pregnant and prepares to tell her much more judgmental mother.

Ch. 7 Vic Palfrey from Arnette is dying, but Stu Redman, held in the same facility, seems fine. Stu refuses to cooperate with medical personnel until they tell him what’s going on.

Ch. 8 In Arnette, Joe Bob the deputy unknowingly spreads the sickness, and from there it spreads farther and farther.

Ch. 9 In Shoyo, Arkansas, Nick Andros, who is deaf and dumb, is assaulted by several townies, then ends up in jail. He explains himself to Sheriff Baker via writing, and the sheriff agrees to help him prosecute his assailants.

Ch. 10 Larry wakes up after a bender at a dental hygienist’s he slept with the night before; she starts throwing stuff at him when he abruptly leaves, telling him “you ain’t no nice guy.”

Ch. 11 Larry visits his mother at work to apologize for staying out all night without calling; she tells him he’s a “taker” but agrees to let him stay and gives him money for the movies.

Ch. 12 In her mother’s sacred parlor, Frannie tells her mother she’s pregnant; her mother flips out and her father tries to intervene to little avail.

Ch. 13 Another doctor, Colonel Dietz, comes to talk to Stu and gives him enough info about how many people have died that he agrees to cooperate with their tests.

Ch. 14 Dietz narrates a report to Starkey about how little progress they’ve made against the virus.

Ch. 15 A nurse at Stu’s facility unknowingly spreads the virus.

Ch. 16 Poke and Lloyd Henreid are on a multi-state crime spree; when they try to knock over a gas station, Poke dies in a violent shootout and Lloyd is arrested.

Ch. 17 Starkey gets word that some reporters from Houston are getting ready to report on the spread of the disease, and okays a plan to deal with it. The reporters are stopped on the road and killed by soldiers.

Ch. 18 Nick starts working at the sheriff’s station after his assailants are arrested (except the main one, Ray, who fled), and has to keep an eye on them when the sheriff gets sick (during which time Nick writes out his life story). The sheriff dies and the town doctor tells Nick lots of people are dying and the town seems to be quarantined by soldiers.

Ch. 19 Right after Larry hears he’s got some money in the bank, his mother gets sick. When he tries to call the hospital, no one answers.

Ch. 20 After Fran breaks it off with her baby’s daddy Jess, her father tells her her mother has gotten sick, then calls back, hysterical, when she gets worse.

Ch. 21 Stu, now being kept at a facility in Stovington, Vermont, watches the news and ponders escape.

Ch. 22 Starkey tells an underling the situation is out of control and to execute a plan to do something with “vials” in other parts of the world. Then he goes down to the dead men in the cafeteria he was watching on the monitors earlier and shoots himself.

Ch. 23 Randall Flagg is walking down the highway thinking about his vaguely remembered history and how he’s recently become capable of magic again.

Ch. 24 Lloyd talks to his lawyer in prison who tells him he’s very likely to get the death penalty very soon thanks to a particular law.

Ch. 25 Nick tends to Sheriff Baker’s wife until she dies while Shoyo deteriorates, and after two out of three of his assailants in the jail die, he lets the third one go.

Ch. 26 An omniscient chapter tracking resistance to the government’s narrative that the flu pandemic is under control.

Ch. 27 Sitting in Central Park thinking about his past and recently deceased mother, Larry meets the older and wealthy Rita Blakemoor.

Ch. 28 Frannie, her parents both dead now, is visited by Harold Lauder, her dead best friend’s off-putting younger brother. He leaves her alone to bury her father.

Ch. 29 Stu is visited by a man named Elder who presumably has orders to kill him, but Stu manages to kill Elder instead and then escapes the Stovington facility, where most of the remaining people are dead.

Ch. 30 A brief description of an abandoned Arnette.

Ch. 31 Sick in Boulder, Colorado, Christoper Bradenton is visited by the man he knows as Richard Fry, who shows up and retrieves the car that Bradenton procured for him registered to Randall Flagg.

Ch. 32 In his prison cell, Lloyd has bloodied his hands trying to unscrew a cot leg that he uses to kill a rat he hides as possible food, since all the guards are gone and he might starve.

Ch. 33 When the power finally goes out in the sheriff’s station, Ray Booth breaks in and tries to kill Nick and seriously wounds him, but Nick manages to kill Ray.

Ch. 34 In Gary, Indiana, Donald Merwin Elbert, aka the Trashcan Man, a (possibly schizophrenic) pyromaniac who’s now free from prison, lights some giant oil tanks on fire, injuring himself in the process.

Ch. 35 Larry and Rita head out of NYC, with Rita’s helplessness increasingly irritating Larry. They fight when her feet turn bloody from her impractical sandals, and he abandons her and crosses through the dark Lincoln Tunnel, shooting at someone following him who turns out to be Rita.

Ch. 36 Frannie and Harold leave Ogunquit with plans to head for the disease center in Stovington; Harold paints a sign on a barn saying where they’re going.

Ch. 37 Stu meets sociologist Glen Bateman and his dog Kojak; Glen postulates on possible fates for the remainder of the human race, emphasizing the importance of technological knowhow. Both men are having nightmares.

Ch. 38 Omniscient chapter about a small percentage of superflu survivors dying in other random ways in the pandemic’s aftermath. (The “No great loss” chapter.)

Ch. 39 Randall Flagg frees the nearly starving Lloyd Henreid from prison and makes him his Number Two.

Ch. 40 Nick treats his wound, dreams of Mother Abagail, and leaves Shoyo on a bicycle.

Ch. 41 Larry discovers Rita has choked on her own vomit (from pills) in the tent next to him while he was asleep. He doesn’t bury her but leaves on a motorcycle that he crashes into a horse trailer, making him paranoid and more cautious.

Ch. 42 On their way to Stovington, Frannie and Harold cross paths with Stu Redman; Harold is hostile and doesn’t want to believe what Stu says about Stovington, but Stu manages to convince Harold to let Stu join them by promising he’s not interested in Frannie.

Book II “On the Border” July 5-September 6, 1990

Ch. 43 Nick meets the mentally challenged Tom Cullen in May, Oklahoma. Nick lets Tom join him, and Tom helps save him from a tornado. A few towns later, Nick meets the nymphomaniac Julie Lawry, who turns on him when he won’t sleep with her a second time to the point he has to drive her away with a gun; then she shoots at them and they flee, and are picked up in a truck by Ralph Brentner.

Ch. 44 Larry eventually meets the pair following him, Nadine and Joe, when Joe tries to kill him with a knife. Larry wins him over when they find a guitar. They see Harold’s sign in Ogonquit and follow their trail on motorbikes. They pick up Lucy Swann and determine they’re having the same dreams, though Nadine suspiciously denies she is (and denies Larry’s advances). When they get to Stovington they see another sign from Harold directing them west to Nebraska.

Ch. 45 In Hemingford Home, Nebraska, Abagail Freemantle, the oldest woman in the state, has her coffee and toast and thinks about her family’s past, including her being the first negro to sing at the town hall. She asks god to take this cup from her, and that night has a dream that the dark man disrupts her town-hall singing. Nick and Tom’s party arrive and eventually they all depart for Boulder, the place where they’ll settle to take their stand against the dark man.

Ch. 46 Passages from Fran’s POV alternated with passages from her diary (that are farther back chronologically than the non-diary passages, starting back in Stovington); their group picks up a couple, Mark and Perion, who both die, Mark from appendicitis (after Stu tries to operate) and then Perion from suicide. The group debates about the significance of their having similar dreams.

Ch. 47 Fran’s group encounters an ambush on the road and the four attacking men are killed in a shootout, along with one of the women they were keeping hostage; the three other women join them. Back to Fran’s diary (and back in time) for a passage where Harold tries to kiss her and she rejects him. Frannie and Stu finally get together and try to hide it from Harold but he sees them. Harold starts secretly reading Fran’s diary at night.

Ch. 48 Two alternating timelines with Trashcan Man: his arrival in Vegas, and his journey there with the Kid. The Kid sodomizes him with a .45 pistol, and in the mountains when the Kid refuses to abandon his prized car in a traffic jam and keeps threatening Trash, the dark man sends timberwolves to corner the Kid in a car and lead Trash west. Trash is welcomed in Vegas and helps to crucify a man for using drugs, then meets Randall Flagg, who tells him there’s great work for him in the desert.

Ch. 49 Larry and Nadine’s group is now bigger, headed toward the Boulder Free Zone (after hearing transmissions from Ralph Brentner’s CB radio) and Nadine’s still denying she’s having any dreams, resisting Larry’s advances in order to save herself for the dark man.

Ch. 50 In Boulder, Stu and Glen Bateman discuss how to set up a new society run by an ad hoc committee of seven, with Glen wanting to ratify all the founding documents of the old one. Mother Abagail thinks she’s been prideful from people venerating her due to their dreams. When she welcomes Larry Underwood and his party, she has a weird interaction with Nadine. Nick and Ralph make preparations for their committee and Nick won’t let Harold on it. Larry visits Frannie to tell her about his obsession with Harold. Harold embraces his hate by writing in his ledger and plans to leave the Boulder Free Zone.

Ch. 51 Larry meets Harold in person and there are some contrasts with his expectations. Stu asks Larry to join the committee. Remarking on the recent changes in Harold (like his constant grin), Frannie looks over her diary again and sees Harold’s unmistakable chocolate thumbprint on it. The ad hoc committee of seven meets that night and debates and then all vote to send three spies to the west: a 70-year-old judge who came in with Larry, Dayna Jurgens, and Tom Cullen.

Ch. 52 Mother Abagail leaves Boulder to pay penance for her sin of pride. Stu goes out with Harold looking for her and Frannie breaks into Harold’s to look for anything suspicious. Harold plans to kill Stu while they’re looking for Abagail but then misses his chance; he goes home and sees the footprint of someone who broke in. Kojak the dog shows up (wounded, having battled the dark man’s wolves on his way).

Ch. 53 The whole Zone meets with Stu leading the meeting, and Harold motions for their committee to be voted in in toto. Nadine visits Larry asking to sleep with him (so she can stay in Boulder and not go to the dark man) but since he’s with Lucy Swann now he resists. Nadine gets a planchette, remembering a time in college a spirit communicated with her through one.

Ch. 54 The committee has another meeting and elects Stu marshal. Harold works on the burial committee and resists the pull of kinship with the other men. Nadine shows up at Harold’s and has everything but vaginal sex with him, saving that for the dark man.

Ch. 55 The judge heads west. Nick, Stu, and Ralph hypnotize Tom to go west, and Tom somehow knows Mother Abagail is still alive. Harold confirms Frannie broke in from her shoe print and continues to nurse his resentment.

Ch. 56 News comes that newborns died of what may or may not have been the superflu. Nadine moves out of her house into Harold’s, causing Joe to regress. They have another big meeting, at which the judge’s absence is noticed. Dayna and Tom head west (separately). Harold builds a bomb.

Ch. 57 Leo tells Larry that Nadine and Harold are working for the dark man. Brad Kitchner gets the power back on momentarily. Larry and Frannie break into Harold’s house and take his ledger. After Nadine plants the bomb in the house where the committee will meet, she feels the dark man penetrate her and her hair turns white. The dark man tells her their cover is blown and they have to leave Boulder.

Ch. 58 Though Larry, Stu, and Frannie suspect Harold will attempt some kind of sabotage, the Free Zone Committee meets as planned. Frannie gets a bad feeling during the meeting, and then a bunch of people show up with news that Mother Abagail’s come back. Nick gets a feeling there’s something in the closet and is looking for it when the bomb goes off (activated by Harold’s voice via walkie talkie). A couch lands on Frannie. Harold and Nadine flee west.

Ch. 59 Nick and Sue Stern were killed in the explosion, but Stu, Frannie, Larry and Glenn survive because they made it outside. With Mother Abagail in a coma, they have another town meeting and put off electing new committee members but talk about the dark man. The power comes back on. Mother Abagail wakes up and tells the remaining committee members that Larry, Glenn, Stu and Ralph have to go west to face the dark man themselves.

Ch. 60 The four men head west.

Book III The Stand September 7, 1990-January 10, 1991

Ch. 61 The judge runs into the dark man’s scouts and they kill him, though when one, Bobby Terry, fails to preserve the judge’s face so his head can’t be sent back, the dark man kills him (via teeth).

Ch. 62 Dayna is sleeping with Lloyd, who’s giving her some intel about their weapons, and she noticed Tom Cullen at one point. She hears about the judge’s death, and then they come for her too, and she meets the dark man alone; he wants her to give her the name of the third spy, which he can’t see, but she kills herself before he can make her.

Ch. 63 Julie Lawry sees Tom in Vegas and recognizes him from her run-in with him and Nick.

Ch. 64 Harold is dying, writing his final ledger entry after he crashed his vespa and shattered his leg and Nadine abandoned him, saying it was the dark man’s plan; he almost managed to shoot her but she got away. Harold shoots himself.

Ch. 65 The dark man meets Nadine in the desert and has sex with her to the point that she becomes catatonic. He senses Tom pass him that night when the moon is full but can’t see him, and senses the four are coming.

Ch. 66 In Vegas Lloyd Henreid gets word from one of their pilots that Trashcan Man blew up some of their vehicles after some of the men made offhand remarks about him being a firebug. Julie Lawry tells Lloyd she suspects Tom Cullen is a spy. Tom leaves Vegas.

Ch. 67 Lloyd tries to round up Tom and finds him gone. Trashcan Man blows up the remainder of their pilots. Lloyd talks to Flagg, doubting him now that Flagg doesn’t know about Tom or Trash, and they put out a search. Then Nadine comes out of her catatonia long enough to bait Flagg into killing her (and his unborn baby).

Ch. 68 In the desert, Trashcan Man seeks redemption for turning on his friends when he inadvertently snapped. He finds an Air Force base.

Ch. 69 Lloyd gets drunk but stays loyal to Flagg by refusing an offer to leave. Tom continues to make progress.

Ch. 70 Trash discovers an atomic bomb at the base.

Ch. 71 Flagg casts his eye out into the desert and sees it’s true the four are coming as Nadine told him.

Ch. 72 The four—Ralph, Larry, Stu, and Glen (with Kojak)—make steady progress, sticking to Mother Abagail’s instructions of staying on foot. (They see the Kid’s corpse on the way.) When they have to cross a steep gully, Stu breaks his leg, and after a long debate with Larry, they leave him behind.

Ch. 73 Kojak stays with Stu and gets him food, and the other three are picked up by Flagg’s men and driven to Vegas and put in jail cells. Flagg and Lloyd visit Glen the next day; Glen baits Flagg by mocking him until Flagg makes Lloyd shoot Glen. The day after that, Larry and Ralph are taken out in front of everyone in Vegas and put in cages where they’re going to be pulled apart; Flagg tries to blame Trash Can’s sabotage on them. When Whitney Horgan tries to protest, Flagg burns him with fire from his finger that turns into a fireball and drifts away as Trashcan Man, almost dead from radiation poisoning, rides up toting an A-bomb. Flagg wants Lloyd to make him get rid of it, but then the fireball drifts back down and the A-bomb goes off.

Ch. 74 Stu, sick, feels the bomb go off and with Kojak’s help drags himself to the top of the ravine and sees the mushroom cloud. Then Tom Cullen finds him and drags him until they find a car Stu manages to start.

Ch. 75 Stu and Tom hole up in a hotel and Tom nurses Stu back to health (with the help of advice from Nick in a dream) until Stu’s leg is well enough for them to try to head for Boulder. They make it back right after Frannie’s had her baby.

Ch. 76 Stu and Frannie reunite in her hospital room.

Ch. 77 Frannie’s son Peter has Captain Trips, but manages to fight it off and survive.

Ch. 78 That May, Frannie tells Stu she’d like to go to Maine; Stu’s amenable since the Free Zone seems to be returning to the old political ways, and they take Peter with them. Lucy had Larry’s twins.

“The Circle Closes”

Flagg, now “Russell Faraday,” washes up on the shore of an island with little memory (but with his boots). He tells the “brown, smooth-skinned folk” he finds there that he’s come to civilize them.

-SCR