Ending, the Stand. A Fan Fiction of the Novel by Stephen King. Chapter 1

Eliza Blue

Eliza Blue, to  the Free Zone had come.

If this story was told in the long-ago languages, that sing that she cameth, hit cymþ, áhefean styrung, áhebban andan, áhrisian brégnes, ástýrian egesa, áþweran þracu.  This is not an ancient song.

Eliza Blue - it seems she was here in the Free Zone always.  Although she's not from Colorado, we knew that, she said she wasn't.  'Course she wasn't Eliza Blue then, nor was there much to say of the Free Zone itself, mind.  I forget her real name, and most things about her back then.  Not spooky li'l gal, but not much notable.  Nothing really to see.

Captain Trips had lain waste America barely a week or two before, when she came up in the rosy-fingered dawn, up out of the morgue that was Denver; wind blew up the high prairie from Oklahoma; the charnel smell, people put bandannas across their faces so peppermint oil cleaves the smell, not to vomit.  Upriver she had cometh, we knew that, from Santa Fé to Alamosa; thence up by Colorado Springs.  

Of the Jornada del Muerto del Norte, the days of journey of the dead before Alamosa, she wouldn't tell.  She was a Western girl, laconic.  She would get on well with a girl from Vermont some; they was just some very young women that was pals, and it was the only time you would see __, still can't recall her name, but you would see her smile, or even laugh, which was all girly and tinkly and joyful.  They were just two folks who bonded and lay spirit into the new Boulder, some foundation, and a good thing.  Two folks.

She called it the Texas Plague back then.  It started around Juneteenth where she lived.  And yes, she did dream, and dreamed like the others did dream, of Mother coming who was not yet there, and the Dark One, which set her face grim, and she would speak nothing of him, other than "I will fight him.  I will break him," such as many who were angry and frightened would say.  But she was not angry or frightened.

She had come up through, it being summer, and stocked up remarkable, like a mountaineer or woodsman.  In a big Dooley pickup, with jump tanks for gas, and dragging on a shorty covered trailer, what was made up for a Move Out To Nowhere, which was what her run to Boulder was, not knowing any more than the rest.

She was right jealous about that trailer, as it was nobody's business.  She did allow that she hauled about 10,000 rounds of .22 for needs be, and later on, an elk gun that she could use smartly.  I only recall hearing that gun twice, and both times, there was a fine elk roast that evening down at the campground that was the old park before there was the Free Zone.

Otherwise, the trailer sat on the north side of her house, and walk on through her house anytime of the day, or night if she wasn't there - the door wasn't locked, ever, as she was a mountain girl.  But don't go nosin' around the north side.  You'd get a scolding, and that from a girl who drops elk at 600 yards, it makes you think.

Except for one or two pals, she pretty much kept to herself, just not much of nothin' - plain.  Plain not the kind the mean girls say, not pretty or big nose or such.  Plain like the Old Order, don't use anything unless it's needed, don't use it unless you use it up, some such.

The Dooley, she lent free out to anyone who was making a haul up out of Denver, but not the trailer.  And the next thing to get going was a truck shop, because woe on ye who damaged the Dooley, not a fender or something, but put the winch back with mud on it, and you'd get a scolding, and I mentioned about her scoldings.  She wasn't shrieky or petulant, but the blue eyes, Judy blue eyes - that's it, her name was Judy, they just bored through you like a drill bit in sandstone, and you were sorrier than sorry could be for what you done, and that was about it.  You hopped to fixing it, right away, no fuss, no threats.  Judy blue eyes, just like the song.  Yep.

[To be continued]