Poster for the short adaptation
Night Surf is a short story written by Stephen King. The story was originally published in the Spring 1969 issue of Ubris, then in August 1974 issue of Cavalier magazine, and was later included in King's own 1978 collection Night Shift.
Plot Summary[]
The story follows one evening on a place called Anson Beach, New Hampshire, with a group of teens, survivors of a catastrophic virus called A6, or "Captain Trips", that has wiped out virtually the entire population. The virus was said to have originated in Southeast Asia. The teenagers are shown to have a rather sinister nature in that they run into a middle-aged man who has driven up to the Anson Beach parking lot and has advanced signs of A6, and one of the teens who was reading a book called Raising Demons, suggests that he be "burned to the dark gods as a protection against A6".
The main character of the story, named Bernie, reflects upon this new world and frequently daydreams about "the time before" when he went to Anson Beach in his younger years before the A6 outbreak. Bernie confides to Needles, another member of the group, that while the man they killed would have likely spread A6, burning him alive was still a cruel act and he should have spoken up, later being haunted by nightmares of what the group did. A reference is made to a previous virus called A2, which the teens had all survived, leading them to think they were immune to A6's lethal effect.
Bernie also reflects on how issues of the pre-apocalyptic world make little sense in a time like now. Another member of the group had come from a well-to-do family, but this mattered little in that he owned an expensive radio and its only use now is to play music or listen to pirate radio stations. Bernie also looks at the beach and sees it for how it is; an abandoned lifeguard chair that looks like a giant skeletal finger pointing toward Heaven, and the night surf crashing against the shore, likely having come in from England the night before. Bernie then remembers it with images associated with summer vacations: "people playing volleyball, families frolicking in the water, beautiful girls sunbathing, little kids running about with fat baggy grandmothers." With it came hot dog baskets, hamburger wrappers, and Popsicle sticks left in the sand, mixed with the stench of seaweed, Hawaiian Tropic suntan lotion, and exhaust from the parking lot.
"But now all the litter and crap was gone. The ocean had eaten it, all of it, with the same casual attitude that you would eating a handful of Cracker Jacks. There were no people to come back and dirty it up again, with the exception of us, but our group was too small to make much mess." Bernie briefly gets another flashback; in this case thinking about his mother and how she would take him and his friends to a fun park when he was little. The group makes a fire, and Bernie reflects on Needles, one of the group's members. Needles is starting to get triangular marks on his face, the first signs of A6, but Bernie cannot tell him that even when Needles asks to be honest with him. Bernie says how the group met Needles in Providence, where he "was playing Leadbelly tunes on a Gibson he looted from some Guitar World. The sounds reverberated up and down Gano Street as if he was playing Carnegie Hall."
Bernie is often paired with Susie, a girl in need of constant reassurance that she is loved. Though Bernie does not, he puts up with her for the sake of keeping the group together. They proceed to an abandoned concession stand, where they retire to a small overhead apartment that was once occupied by the manager of the concession stand. While they go to bed together, it is platonic, as Bernie also reflects on how "scoring the game", i.e. treating sex as recreation, makes little sense now. Prior to retiring for the night, Bernie looks inside the concession stand to see an inventory of items once for sale that nobody had bothered to loot when society broke down, such as sweatshirts with "Anson Beach" emblazoned on them, joke gags, "badly painted ceramic Madonnas", "sparklers to celebrate a Fourth of July that never was", beach balls, bathing suits, and a beach towel "showing a voluptuous girl in a bikini". There is also a sign "Try Our Clam Cake Special". This triggers yet another flashback at the exact same spot eight years ago, when Bernie was dating a girl named Maureen. "She wore a gingham-style one-piece swimsuit. I kept telling her it made her look like a tablecloth. We would walk barefoot in this spot. We had never tried the clam cake special."
Connections to other works[]
Captain Trips is the name of the super virus from The Stand, and was the first appearance in the King universe. Although not mentioned, it is strongly implied the events of this story possibly take place in parallel to the some of the events in The Stand. Unlike Stand, however, this world is shown is to survive a bit longer, as it has been months since the outbreak and two radio stations can still be heard run (haphazardly) by survivors. There is also no mention of an earlier, less deadly disease in The Stand.
Publications History[]
- Ubris (Spring 1969)
- Cavalier (August 1974)
- Night Shift (February 1978)