Contents
About the Authors
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Epilogue
Acknowledgement
About the Artists
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
STEPHEN KING IS THE author of more than seventy books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Billy Summers, The Institute, The Bill Hodges Trilogy, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, Revival, Doctor Sleep, and Under the Dome. His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. He is the recipient of the 2014 National Medal of Arts and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.
RICHARD CHIZMAR IS THE co-author (with Stephen King) of The New York Times bestselling novella, Gwendy’s Button Box. Recent books include Chasing the Boogeyman, Gwendy’s Magic Feather, The Long Way Home, his fourth short story collection, and Widow’s Point, a chilling tale about a haunted lighthouse written with his son, Billy Chizmar, which was recently made into a feature film. Chizmar’s work has been been translated into nearly twenty languages throughout the world, and he has appeared at numerous conferences as a writing instructor, guest speaker, panelist, and guest of honor. Follow him on Twitter (@RichardChizmar) and Instagram (richard_chizmar) or visit his website at: RichardChizmar.com.
GWENDY’S FINAL TASK
Stephen King and Richard Chizmar
First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Stephen King and Richard Chizmar 2022
The right of Stephen King and Richard Chizmar to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Cover Artwork © 2022 by Ben Baldwin
Interior Artwork © 2022 by Keith Minnion
Interior Design © 2022 by Desert Isle Design, LLC
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
UK & Ireland eBook ISBN 978 1 399 70235 5
Open Market eBook ISBN 978 1 399 70537 0
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
For Marsha DeFilippo,
a friend to a couple of writers.
1
IT’S A BEAUTIFUL APRIL day in Playalinda, Florida, not far from Cape Canaveral. This is the Year of Our Lord 2026, and only a few of the people in the crowd standing on the east side of Max Hoeck Back Creek are wearing masks. Most of those are old people, who got into the habit and find it hard to break. The coronavirus is still around, like a party guest who won’t go home, and while many fear it may mutate again and render the vaccines useless, for now it’s been fought to a draw.
Some members of the crowd—again, it’s mostly the oldies, the ones whose eyesight isn’t as good as it once was—are using binoculars, but most are not. The craft standing on the Playalinda launch pad is the biggest manned rocket ever to lift off from Mother Earth; with a fully loaded mass of 4.57 million pounds, it has every right to be called Eagle-19 Heavy. A fog of vapor obscures the last 50 of its 400-foot height, but even those with fading vision can read the three letters running down the spacecraft’s side:
T
E
T
And those with even fair hearing can pick up the applause when it begins. One man—old enough to remember hearing Neil Armstrong’s crackling voice telling the world that the Eagle had landed—turns to his wife with tears in his eyes and goosebumps on his tanned, scrawny arms. The old man is Douglas “Dusty” Brigham. His wife is Sheila Brigham. They retired to the town of Destin ten years ago, but they are originally from Castle Rock, Maine. Sheila, in fact, was once the dispatcher in the sheriff’s office.
From the Tet Corporation’s launch facility a mile and a half away, the applause continues. To Dusty and Sheila it sounds thin, but it must be much louder across the creek, because herons arise from their morning’s resting place in a lacy white cloud.
“They’re on their way,” Dusty tells his wife of fifty-two years.
“God bless our girl,” Sheila says, and crosses herself. “God bless our Gwendy.”
2
EIGHT MEN AND TWO women walk in a line along the right side of the Tet control center. They are protected by a plexiglass wall, because they’ve been in quarantine for the last twelve days. The techs rise from behind their computers and applaud. That much is tradition, but today there’s also cheering. There will be more applause and cheers from the fifteen hundred Tet employees (the patches on their shirts, jackets, and coveralls identify them as the Tet Rocket Jockeys) outside. Any manned space mission is an event, but this one is extra special.
Second from the end of the line is a woman with her long hair, now gray, tied back in a ponytail that’s mostly hidden beneath the high collar of her pressure suit. Her face is unwrinkled and still beautiful, although there are fine lines around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. Her name is Gwendy Peterson, she’s sixty-four, and in less than an hour she will be the first sitting U.S. Senator to ride a rocket to the new MF-1 space station. (There are cynics among Gwendy’s political peers who like to say MF stands for a certain incestuous sex act, but it actually stands for Many Flags.)
The crew are carrying their helmets for the time being, so nine of them have a free hand to wave, acknowledging the cheers. Gwendy—technically a crew member—can’t wave unless she wants to wave the small white case in her other hand. And she doesn’t want to do that.