The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand

by Christopher Golden

Roosevelt was a certified ghost town long before Captain Trips paid it a visit. It was one of the places you would expect to see Trips last, if at all. Just shy of one hundred people lived on the swaths of land that flanked both sides of Interstate 10 on the long, flat stretch of road smack in the middle of an eight-hour drive from San Antonio to El Paso. What had started as a mining community had faltered, contracted, and become more of a glorified truck stop than a town. It was home to two sorts of people—those that owned or worked the handful of vast ranches, and those that served the highway and its myriad of travelers. In a way, the highway was far more important to the town than the ranchers, and thus it was folks like Violet May, Terrence McCready, and Old Gil who were in the chief seats of power in the town. Violet owned the combination gas station/diner, the single most frequented business fifty miles either way—she served a mean Salisbury steak with the best cheddar grits anywhere in Texas. Terrence owned the bar, which arguably brought in more money than Violet, though much of that was from locals, which did less for the economy overall. And Gil owned both motels along the highway, the first being the one he inherited from his father, the other bought from Garrett Meyer upon his retirement.

Toquerville