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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

 

 

www.hodder.co.uk

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

www.hodder.co.uk

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.