Desperation

On a desolate stretch of U.S. Highway 50 in the Nevada desert, Peter and Mary Jackson, a married couple from New York, are driving Peter's sister Deirdre's Acura back east when an enormous police officer from the tiny town of Desperation pulls them over. He discovers their rear license plate is missing and finds a bag of marijuana under the spare tire, planted by Deirdre. Despite the Jacksons' protests, the officer arrests them for possession with intent to sell, casually inserting "I'm going to kill you" (30) into the Miranda warning. The town is deserted, a dead dog hanged from the welcome sign. At the Municipal Building, the officer shoots Peter dead and forces Mary upstairs into a holding cell.

The Carver family from Ohio, Ralph, his wife Ellen, their eleven-year-old son David, and seven-year-old daughter Kirsten, are traveling to Lake Tahoe when the same officer disables their RV with a strip of nail-embedded mesh across the highway. Claiming a dangerous gunman is nearby, he herds the family into his cruiser. In Desperation, he pushes Kirsten down the Municipal Building stairs, breaking her neck, punches Ellen, knocks Ralph semi-conscious, and locks the surviving Carvers in cells alongside Tom Billingsley, an elderly local veterinarian.

John Edward Marinville, a famous but fading novelist crossing the country on a Harley-Davidson for a book of essays, is captured next. The officer flatters him as a literary fan, plants the same recycled bag of marijuana in his saddlebag, breaks his nose, and hauls him to the Municipal Building. Marinville manages a brief phone call to his road manager, Steve Ames, before losing the connection. In the cells, Billingsley identifies the officer as Collie Entragian.

When Entragian brings Mary upstairs, the prisoners urge her to grab a shotgun left on the guard's desk. She fires both barrels, but Entragian drops to his knees and the buckshot passes over his head. He batters Mary and locks her in a cell, then stations a coyote as a guard. During the struggle, a shotgun shell rolls against the bars of David's cell, and the boy discreetly pockets it.

David is the key to the group's survival. The previous fall, his best friend Brian Ross was struck by a car and left in a coma with no hope of recovery. David climbed to a tree platform he and Brian had built, which they called the Viet Cong Lookout, and prayed, promising God an open-ended IOU. A voice instructed him to leave his school "EXCUSED EARLY" pass on a nail in the tree. Brian woke that same afternoon. Since then, David has been studying the Bible under Reverend Gene Martin, a well-meaning but alcoholic Methodist minister who taught him that God is cruel but refining.

Entragian returns and takes Ellen from the cells at gunpoint. After he leaves, David strips, lathers himself with soap, and squeezes through the bars of his cell, a feat Billingsley says should have been physically impossible. After killing the coyote guard, he retrieves a keyring and revolver from the office of Jim Reed, the town's dead safety officer, and frees the remaining prisoners. He leads them to The American West, an old movie theater, where Steve and Cynthia Smith, a hitchhiker Steve picked up near Ely, join them. The pair had discovered abandoned vehicles and mass murder at the mining corporation before David reached them by phone.

As the survivors share their stories, the full picture emerges. Entragian is not acting of his own volition but is inhabited by Tak, an ancient, pre-human entity trapped in a subterranean chamber called the an tak, accessible only through a narrow well called the ini. Tak cannot pass through the ini but can project a vapor that enters and possesses humans. It wears out bodies at an accelerating rate: the first host lasted only hours, the second two and a half days, and Entragian nearly a week. Tak was released when modern mining accidentally uncovered the sealed China Shaft at the China Pit, where the entity had been imprisoned since 1859, when Chinese laborers collapsed the tunnel to contain it. As Entragian's body deteriorates, Tak transfers into Ellen, whom Entragian had taken to the pit.

The survivors' refuge quickly turns dangerous. Audrey Wyler, a mining geologist who joins them at the theater, has been corrupted by Tak's can tabs, small stone carvings that serve as conduits for its influence. She attacks David in the projection booth, nearly strangling him before Steve and Ralph tear her away. Separated from the can tabs, Audrey's body rapidly decomposes and she dies. A cougar sent by Tak kills Billingsley, and the creature inhabiting Ellen's body lures Mary out of the theater by mimicking Ellen's voice, then abducts her to the China Pit.

Marinville, overwhelmed by fear, abandons the group, though his wallet falls unnoticed from his pocket. While unconscious from Audrey's attack, David experiences a visionary journey through the Land of the Dead. A young man in a Yankees cap reveals the pit's history and tells David that God brought the survivors to Desperation to seal Tak's chamber using ANFO (ammonium nitrate and fuel oil) stored in the mine's powder magazine. When David finds Marinville's dropped wallet containing a photograph of a young Marinville outside a Vietnam bar called "The Viet Cong Lookout," he recognizes the man from his vision.

David finds Marinville at the mining office, where the writer has just killed a timberwolf with an impossible hammer throw. David shows him the photograph and tells him that God has raised him. Marinville falls to his knees and prays for the first time since Vietnam. He agrees to return, though he privately conceals a crucial understanding: The final sacrifice is his to make, not the boy's.

Mary, meanwhile, escapes the field office at the bottom of the China Pit, where Tak has stored her alongside the decomposing bodies of previous hosts, needing her intact as its next vessel. She tears through a wall, disables the vehicles in the pit, and begins climbing toward the rim, barely outrunning the failing body of Ellen.

The reunited group rescues Mary on the embankment road and loads bags of ANFO from the powder magazine. Marinville secretly pockets the shotgun shell David has been carrying, replacing it with a folded piece of paper. Inside the China Shaft, a golden eagle, Tak's final animal vessel, attacks from a concealed niche. Ralph throws himself over David, and the eagle kills him before the others destroy the bird. Marinville restrains the screaming David, tells him he is "excused early," and runs alone into the depths carrying the ANFO.

In the an tak chamber, brown-black vapor rises from the ini and tries to possess Marinville, but the face-shield of a motorcycle helmet blocks it. He pours both bags of ANFO into the ini's narrow throat, places the shotgun shell on top as a primer, and strikes it with a hammer. The explosion collapses the entire China Pit. Steve's truck barely clears the rim as the road crumbles behind them.

At dawn, the survivors reach Highway 50 and agree on a cover story that omits the supernatural elements. As David reaches for the car door, he finds the shotgun shell gone from his pocket, replaced by his EXCUSED EARLY pass, the one he left on a nail in the tree the previous fall. On it, in Marinville's handwriting, is a message: "David — Stay ahead of the mummy. I John 4/8 Remember!" (689). The Bible verse reads, "God is love." David breaks down weeping, then gets into the Acura with Mary. The two vehicles head west toward Austin as David closes his eyes and begins to pray.