A while back, I mentioned that we would be taking a detour through the universe of The Stand (1978; revised and expanded 1990) with the release of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand, edited by Christopher Golden and Brian Keene. But the delivery of my copy of the book was delayed, INK-King October was too much fun, and then my life was all Carrie (1974) all the time for a few weeks. But now I’ve got the book in hand and a bit of time to read it, so we’ll be taking our End of the World detour in the coming weeks as I work my way through what promises to be an incredibly strong collection. 

First impressions: this is a CHONKY book, with close to 800 pages of Stand-inspired stories. I can’t help but think of the critics who have lamented that The Stand (and some of King’s other books, in their estimation) are too long, but really, even in the revised and expanded edition of The Stand, it always feels like the stories we hear and the people we meet just scratch the surface of this apocalypse. There are so many other characters whose lives intersect briefly with those of Stu Redman, Frannie Goldsmith, and the others before moving on to have their own, almost always untold, adventures. Even with the main characters themselves, there are so many details of their stories and experiences that we as readers don’t see, including a post-Boulder “Frannie in the Well” story that King mentions in his introduction to The End of the World as We Know It and which later served as narrative inspiration for a segment of the 2020 CBS miniseries The Stand. As King notes in his introduction to The End of the World as We Know It, “Every now and then I’d wonder how many other stories there might be in a world either suffering the superflu or in its aftermath” (xvii-xviii). The stories that can be told in the world of The Stand are at least equal to—if not greater than—the number of those who are immune to Captain Trips, who survive the superflu. 

Golden and Keene have brought together a really remarkable group of authors to tell some of these stories. The authors represented here include some of contemporary horror’s brightest luminaries from across a diverse range of styles and traditions, including Joe R. Lansdale, Catriona Ward, Poppy Z. Bright, Alma Katsu, Josh Malerman, Tananarive Due, Paul Tremblay, Chuck Wendig, and Sarah Langan. King experts and collaborators Bev Vincent and Richard Chizmar have stories in this collection, and there are authors here who do not work predominantly in horror, like Meg Gardiner, who has written a range of wonderful thrillers, including the excellent Evan Delaney series (2002-2006). Several stories expand beyond King’s America, including “tales set in England, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Pakistan … even one harrowing visit, courtesy of Tim Lebbon, to a spacecraft in a decaying orbit” (King xviii). In addition to a wide range of authors, styles, and settings, The End of the World as We Know It is separated into four distinct stages of the apocalypse—“Part One: Down With the Sickness” features stories from the outbreak of Captain Trips and the waves of mass death sweeping the world, while other sections seemed poised to wrestle with the aftermath, how humanity reconciles itself to these horrors and goes on from there, including “Part Two: The Long Walk,” “Part Three: Life Was Such a Wheel,” and “Part Four: Other Worlds Than These,” the subtitles of which draw inspiration from King’s larger body of work, from the Bachman books to the Dark Tower series and beyond.  

This week, I read the first six stories: “Room 24” by Caroline Kepnes, “The Tripps” by Wrath James White, “Bright Light City” by Meg Gardiner, “Every Dog Has Its Day” by Bryan Smith, “Lockdown” by Bev Vincent, and “In a Pig’s Eye” by Joe R. Lansdale. As anticipated, each of these talented authors takes us to a different, heretofore unknown corner of the world in the immediate aftermath of Captain Trips, exploring what human beings are capable of, both good and bad. Some seem to have just been waiting for things to fall apart so that they can indulge in their darkest desires, like one of the characters from “Room 24,” while others were sadistic and abusive even before the virus and now have new reign to hurt, torture, and kill other people, like in “Bright Light City” and “In a Pig’s Eye.” These people are particularly prone to hearing the call of Randall Flagg and his invitation to come to Las Vegas. On the flip side, however, other people prove just as capable of acts of selfless heroism, willing to do whatever it takes to protect those who need it, who could be killed (or worse) without it. These forthright and good-hearted people are more likely to hear Mother Abagail calling in their dreams and see the green corn fields of Nebraska. The siren song of these two figures grounds every one of these stories firmly within the larger narrative web of King’s The Stand, orienting readers within this larger fictional universe. 

These stories are grounded in a range of settings, from an impoverished urban area that is no stranger to violence and death (“The Tripps”) to a now nearly abandoned Las Vegas (“Bright Light City”), the quiet suburbs (“Every Dog Has Its Day”), and an island of the coast of Maine (“Lockdown”), but there is a common humanity between them. The resources these individuals have at their disposal, the lived experiences that have prepared them for the end of the world (or failed to do so), and the immediate threats they face illustrate how even at the end of the world, there are haves and have nots, and all too often, the most vulnerable will still suffer the most. 

My personal favorite of these first six stories is Vincent’s “Lockdown,” which features the tough decisions made by the thirteen residents of an island off the coast of Maine, and what they’re willing to do to keep outsiders and potential infection safely at bay. It is reminiscent of King’s screenplay for Storm of the Century (1999) but I was reminded even more powerfully of King’s short story “Home Delivery” (in the 1993 collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes), in which the residents of Gennesault Island must marshall themselves against the return of the undead with the coming of the zombie apocalypse. 

Many of these stories are emotionally exhausting, as is surely to be expected from the end of the world. And while each tells a wholly new story within the universe of King’s The Stand, it is impossible not to speculate about how a particular character might get along with the Boulder Free Zone crew or what new and imaginative horrors a particular bad guy (or girl) could volunteer for Flagg’s disposal. Even though these are separate stories, independent and innovative, they feel like part of the cloth of the post-apocalyptic world of King’s novel. 

I can’t wait to see where the end of the world will take us next. 

[Page numbers from King’s introduction to The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales from Stephen King’s The Stand; Gallery Books, 2025]