The Flight of the Campions

The Flight of the Campions is a major event in the Complete and Uncut Edition of The Stand by Stephen King. As the inciting incident and the first to happen chronologically (excluding some flashbacks), it occurs in almost all subsequent adaptations.

Story
At 2:15 a.m. on or about June 14, 1990, Charles Campion rushes home early from his tour watching the north tower of the military base known as the Reservation. He tells his wife Sally something has gone wrong, but he does not know what, although it killed everyone else in the north tower within minutes. He says he only escaped likely due to a malfunction of the maglocks that were supposed to lock him in under just a circumstance so he could die with everyone else. He says they need to leave immediately and head east.

As they hurriedly pack their belongings and collect their 3-year-old daughter Baby LaVon, Charles has a slight cough, which is the first symptom of Captain Trips, the plague which will soon wipe out all of humanity. Charles expects the guard to close the gate on them, but the guard is oblivious, and they escape the base in their beat-up old Chevy without incident. As they drive through Nevada after sunrise, Charles' cough has grown steadily worse.

How many other stops they make - and therefore how many people they infect - is unknown, but they must make some stops, because the trip ends 1,700 miles later, just outside the small town of Arnette, Texas, when a dying Charles crashes into a gas pump at the Texaco owned by Bill Hapscomb. By this point, Sally and Baby LaVon are dead, the first civilian victims of the plague.

Five more victims over the coming days will be the men at the gas station - Hapscomb, Norman Bruett, Tommy Wannamaker, Henry Carmichael and Victor Palfrey. Only Stuart Redman is immune and still alive two weeks later.