Nick Andros

[close] A 22-year-old deaf-mute drifter originally from Caslin, Nebraska, Nick is beaten and robbed outside of (fictional) Shoyo, Arkansas, by some local thugs shortly after the start of the epidemic. Moderately injured, he is befriended by the local sheriff and his wife and watches them die as the epidemic unfolds. As the epidemic progresses, as the newest deputy (due to the lack of any other healthy people around), Nick also watches two of the four thugs who beat him die of the plague in the local jail. He later frees the third, only to be confronted by the fourth, the fugitive Ray Booth, who has returned to kill him. He very nearly dies as a result of a minor gunshot wound he received during the scuffle with Booth; Nick, in a panic, accidentally fires the gun holstered on his belt. The bullet scrapes his leg and becomes infected. (This entire episode with Ray Booth returning to kill him is only in the uncut version of the novel.)

Nick eventually recovers and begins his journey to Hemingford Home, Nebraska. Along the way he meets Tom Cullen, and later Ralph Brentner, June Brinkmeyer, Gina McCone, Dick Ellis, and Olivia Walker, and they become a surrogate family to him. Nick leads the growing band of survivors to Nebraska and Mother Abagail, who guides them to Boulder. Nick serves on the Free Zone Committee, of which he is the leading thinker, and eventually recruits Tom Cullen to spy out West. Nick is killed by Harold Lauder's assassination attempt on the Committee, and it is later revealed that it was Nick who was meant to lead the stand against Randall Flagg. Nick’s spirit appears to Tom Cullen after his death, guiding him on his way home and showing him how to save Stu Redman’s life during Stu's bout with illness.

In the Complete and Uncut edition, Nick loses sight in one eye for a period of time when he is attacked by Booth, the leader of the four thugs. Booth is shot and killed by Andros, but the resulting damage causes Nick to wear an eyepatch for almost the rest of the story.