The Stand

Dick Deitz is a government official who comes to speak with Stu in quarantine. Deitz says that Stu isn’t showing any signs of the disease though most of his other friends from Arnette are dead. Stu is outraged and demands to know who’s responsible. Deitz says, “On this one the responsibility spreads in so many directions that it’s invisible. It was an accident” (134). Stu is still angry when Deitz refuses to give him the details of the accident that caused the virus, but he grudgingly agrees to allow the Plague Center to run more tests on him. That night, Stu has a nightmare in which he finds himself in a cornfield, watched by a man with red eyes but no face.

Late that same evening, Deitz is recording his report about survivors of the virus. Only Stu, whom he calls Prince, is still alive. One four-year-old girl seemed immune until she died that afternoon. Joe Bob received a vaccine that briefly made his condition better before he died too. Deitz can only find four anomalies in Stu’s condition that make him different from everybody else: 

Redman appears to have a great many moles on his body. He has a slight hypertensive condition, too slight to medicate right now.