by Stephen King
Luke tucked away names when he heard them. Dr. Evans was James, Dr. Hendricks was Dan, Tony was Fizzale, Gladys was Hickson, Zeke was Ionidis. If he ever got out of here, if this canary ever flew from its cage, he hoped to have quite a list for when he testified against these assholes in a court of law. He realized that might only be a fantasy, but it kept him going.
Now that he was marching through the days like a good little boy, he was sometimes left alone on C-Level for short periods of time, always with the admonition to stay put. He would nod, give the technician time to depart on his errand, and then leave himself. There were plenty of cameras on the lower levels, and these were all kept nice and clean, but no alarms went off and no caretakers came charging down the hall waving their zap-sticks. Twice he was spotted walking around and brought back, once with a scolding and once with a perfunctory slap to the back of his neck.
On one of these expeditions (he always tried to look bored and aimless, a kid just passing the time before the next test or being allowed to go back to his room), Luke found a treasure. In the MRI room, which was empty that day, he spied one of the cards they used to operate the elevator lying half-hidden under a computer monitor. He walked past the table, picked it up, and slipped it in his pocket as he peered into the empty MRI tube. He almost expected the card to start yelling “Thief, thief ” when he left the room (like the magic harp Jack the beanstalk boy stole from the giant), but nothing happened, then or later. Didn’t they keep track of those cards? It seemed they did not. Or maybe it was expired, as useless as a hotel key card when the guest it had been computer-coded for checked out.
But when Luke tried the card in the elevator a day later, he was delighted to find it worked. When Dr. Richardson came across him a day later, peering into the D-Level room where the immersion tank was kept, he expected punishment—maybe a jolt from the zap-stick she kept holstered under the white coat she usually wore, maybe a beating from Tony or Zeke. Instead, she actually slipped him a token, for which he thanked her.
“I haven’t had that one yet,” Luke said, pointing to the tank. “Is it awful?”
“No, it’s fun,” she said, and Luke gave her a big grin, as if he actually believed her bullshit. “Now what are you doing down here?”
“Caught a ride with one of the caretakers. I don’t know which one. He forgot his nametag, I guess.”
“That’s good,” she said. “If you knew his name, I’d have to report him, and he’d get in trouble. After that? Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork.” She rolled her eyes and Luke gave her a look that said I sympathize. She took him back to the elevator, asked him where he was supposed to be, and he told her B-Level. She rode up with him, asked him how his pain was, and he told her it was fine, all gone.
The card also took him to E-Level, where there was a lot of mechanical shit, but when he tried to go lower—there was a lower, he’d heard conversations about levels F and G—Miss Elevator Voice pleasantly informed him that access was denied. Which was okay. You learned by trying.
There were no paper tests in Front Half, but there were plenty of EEGs. Sometimes Dr. Evans did kids in bunches, but not always. Once, when Luke was being tested alone, Dr. Evans suddenly grimaced, put a hand to his stomach, and said he’d be right back. He told Luke not to touch anything and rushed out. To drop a load, Luke presumed.
He examined the computer screens, ran his fingers over a couple of keyboards, thought about messing with them a little, decided it would be a bad idea, and went to the door instead. He looked out just as the elevator opened and the big bald guy emerged, wearing the same expensive brown suit. Or maybe it was another one. For all Luke knew, Stackhouse had a whole closetful of expensive brown suits. He had a sheaf of papers in his hand. He started down the hall, shuffling through them, and Luke withdrew quickly. C-4, the room with the EEG and EKG machines, had a small equipment alcove lined with shelves full of various supplies. Luke went in there without knowing if hiding was an ordinary hunch, one of his new TP brainwaves, or plain old paranoia. In any case, he was just in time. Stackhouse poked his head in, glanced around, then left. Luke waited to be sure he wasn’t going to come back, then resumed his seat next to the EEG machine.
Two or three minutes later, Evans hurried in with his white lab coat flying out behind him. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes were wide. He grabbed Luke by the shirt. “What did Stackhouse say when he saw you in here by yourself? Tell me!”
“He didn’t say anything because he didn’t see me. I was looking out the door for you, and when Mr. Stackhouse got off the elevator, I went in there.” He pointed at the equipment alcove, then looked up at Evans with wide, innocent eyes. “I didn’t want to get you in any trouble.”
“Good boy,” Evans said, and clapped him on the back. “I had a call of nature, and I felt sure you could be trusted. Now let’s get this test done, shall we? Then you can go upstairs and play with your friends.”
Before calling Yolanda, another caretaker (last name: Freeman), to escort him back to A-Level, Evans gave Luke a dozen tokens and another hearty clap on the back. “Our little secret, right?”
“Right,” Luke said.
He actually thinks I like him, Luke marveled. How does that fry your bacon? Wait’ll I tell George.
2
Only he never did. There were two new kids at supper that evening, and one old one missing. George had been taken away, for all Luke knew while he himself was hiding from Stackhouse in the equipment alcove.
“He’s with the others,” Avery whispered to Luke that night as they lay in bed. “Sha says he’s crying because he’s scared. She told him that was normal. She told him they’re all scared.”
3
Two or three times on his expeditions, Luke stopped outside the B-Level lounge, where the conversations were interesting and illuminating. Staff used the room, but so did outside groups that sometimes arrived still carrying travel bags that had no airline luggage tickets on their handles. When they saw Luke—maybe getting a drink from the nearby water fountain, maybe pretending to read a poster on hygiene—most looked right through him, as if he were no more than part of the furniture. The people making up these groups had a hard look about them, and Luke became increasingly sure they were the Institute’s hunter-gatherers. It made sense, because there were more kids in West Wing now. Once Luke overheard Joe telling Hadad—the two of them were goodbuddies—that the Institute was like the beachfront town in Long Island where he’d grown up. “Sometimes the tide’s in,” he said, “sometimes it’s out.”
“More often out these days,” Hadad replied, and maybe it was true, but as that July wore on, it was definitely coming in.
Some of the outside groups were trios, some were quartets. Luke associated them with the military, maybe only because the men all had short hair and the women wore theirs pulled tight to the skull and bunned in back. He heard an orderly refer to one of these groups as Emerald. A tech called another Ruby Red. This latter group was a trio, two women and a man. He knew that Ruby Red was the group that had come to Minneapolis to kill his parents and snatch him away. He tried for their names, listening with his mind as well as his ears, and got only one: the woman who had sprayed something in his face on his last night in Falcon Heights was Michelle. When she saw him in the hall, leaning over the drinking fountain, her eyes swept past him . . . then came back for a moment or two.
Michelle.
Another name to remember.
It didn’t take long for Luke to get confirmation of his theory that these were the people tasked with bringing in fresh TPs and TKs. The Emerald group was in the break room, and as Luke stood outside, reading that poster on hygiene for the dozenth time, he heard one of the Emerald men saying they had to go back out to make a quick pickup in Missouri. The next day a bewildered fourteen-year-old girl named Frieda Brown joined their growing West Wing group.
“I don’t belong here,” she told Luke. “It’s a mistake.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Luke replie
d, then told her how she could get tokens. He wasn’t sure she was taking it in, but she’d catch on eventually. Everyone did.
4
No one seemed to mind Avery sleeping in Luke’s room almost every night. He was the mailman, and to Luke he brought letters from Kalisha in Back Half, missives that came via telepathy rather than USPS. The fact of his parents’ murder was still too fresh and hurtful for these letters to wake Luke from his half-dreaming state, but the news they contained was disturbing, all the same. It was also enlightening, although it was enlightenment Luke could have done without. In Front Half, kids were tested and punished for misbehavior; in Back Half they were being put to work. Used. And, it seemed, destroyed, little by little.
The movies brought on the headaches, and the headaches lasted longer and got worse after each one. George was fine when he arrived, just scared, according to Kalisha, but after four or five days of exposure to the dots, and the movies, and the hurty shots, he also began to have headaches.
The movies were in a small screening room with plushy comfortable seats. They started with old-time cartoons—sometimes Road Runner, sometimes Bugs Bunny, sometimes Goofy and Mickey. Then, after the warm-up, came the real show. Kalisha thought the films were short, half an hour at most, but it was hard to tell because she was woozy during and headachey afterward. They all were.
Her first two times in the screening room, the Back Half kids got a double feature. The star of the first one was a man with thinning red hair. He wore a black suit and drove a shiny black car. Avery tried to show this car to Luke, but Luke got only a vague image, maybe because that was all Kalisha could send. Still, he thought it must be a limousine or a Town Car, because Avery said the red-haired man’s passengers always rode in the back. Also, the guy opened the doors for the passengers when they got in and out. On most days he had the same ones, mostly old white guys, but one was a younger guy with a scar on his cheek.
“Sha says he has regulars,” Avery whispered as he and Luke lay in bed together. “She says it’s Washington, D.C., because the man drives past the Capitol and the White House and sometimes she sees that big stone needle.”
“The Washington Monument.”
“Yeah, that.”
Toward the end of this movie, the redhead swapped the black suit for regular clothes. They saw him riding a horse, then pushing a little girl on a swing, then eating ice cream with the little girl on a park bench. After that Dr. Hendricks came on the screen, holding up an unlit Fourth of July sparkler.
The second feature was of a man in what Kalisha called an Arab headdress, which probably meant a keffiyeh. He was in a street, then he was in an outdoor café drinking tea or coffee from a glass, then he was making a speech, then he was swinging a little boy by the hands. Once he was on television. The movie ended with Dr. Hendricks holding up the unlit sparkler.
The following morning, Sha and the others got a Sylvester and Tweety cartoon followed by fifteen or twenty minutes of the red-haired car driver. Then lunch in the Back Half cafeteria, where there were free cigarettes. That afternoon it was Porky Pig followed by the Arab. Each film ended with Dr. Hendricks and the unlit sparkler. That night they were given hurty shots and a fresh dose of the flashing lights. Then they were taken back to the screening room, where they watched twenty minutes of car crash movies. After each crash, Dr. Hendricks came on the screen, holding up the unlit sparkler.
Luke, grief-stricken but not stupid, began to understand. It was crazy, but no crazier than occasionally being able to know what was going on in other peoples’ heads. Also, it explained a great deal.
“Kalisha says she thinks she blacked out and had a dream while the crashes were going on,” Avery whispered in Luke’s ear. “Only she’s not sure it was a dream. She says the kids—her, Nicky, Iris, Donna, Len, some others—were standing in those dots with their arms around each other and their heads together. She says Dr. Hendricks was there, and this time he lit the sparkler, and that was scary. But as long as they stayed together, holding each other, their heads didn’t ache no more. But she says maybe it was a dream, because she woke up in her room. The rooms in Back Half aren’t like ours. They get locked up at night.” Avery paused. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore tonight, Lukey.”
“Fine. Go to sleep.”
Avery did, but Luke lay awake for a long time.
The next day, he finally used his laptop for something more than checking the date, IMing with Helen, or watching BoJack Horseman. He went to Mr. Griffin, and from Mr. Griffin to the New York Times, which informed him he could read ten free articles before he hit a pay wall. Luke didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but was sure he’d know it when he saw it. And he did. A headline on the front page of the July 15th issue read REPRESENTATIVE BERKOWITZ SUCCUMBS TO INJURIES.
Rather than reading the article, Luke went to the day before. This headline read PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFUL MARK BERKOWITZ CRITICALLY INJURED IN CAR ACCIDENT. There was a picture. Berkowitz, a US Representative from Ohio, had black hair and a scar on his cheek from a wound suffered in Afghanistan. Luke read the story quickly. It said that the Lincoln Town Car in which Berkowitz had been riding while on his way to a meeting with foreign dignitaries from Poland and Yugoslavia had veered out of control and hit a concrete bridge stanchion. The driver had been killed instantly; unnamed MedStar Hospital sources described Berkowitz’s injuries as “extremely grave.” The article didn’t say if the driver was a redhead, but Luke knew he had been, and he was pretty sure that some guy in one of the Arab countries was going to die soon, if he hadn’t already. Or maybe he was going to murder somebody important.
Luke’s growing certainty that he and the other kids were being prepped for use as psychic drones—yes, even inoffensive Avery Dixon, who wouldn’t say boo to a goose—began to rouse Luke, but it took the horror show with Harry Cross to bring him fully out of his sleep of grief.
5
The following evening there were fourteen or fifteen kids in the caff at dinner, some talking, some laughing, some of the new ones crying or shouting. In a way, Luke thought, being in the Institute was like being in an old-time mental asylum where the crazy people were just kept and never cured.
Harry wasn’t there at first, and he hadn’t been at lunch. The big galoot wasn’t much of a blip on Luke’s radar, but he was hard to miss at meals because Gerda and Greta always sat with him, one on either side in their identical outfits, watching him with shining eyes as he blathered away about NASCAR, wrestling, his favorite shows, and life “down Selma.” If someone told him to pipe down, the little Gs would turn killing looks on the interrupting someone.
This evening the Gs were eating on their own, and looking unhappy about it. They had saved Harry a seat between them, though, and when he came walking slowly in, belly swinging and glowing with sunburn, they rushed to him with shouts of greeting. For once he barely seemed to notice them. There was a vacant look in his eyes, and they didn’t seem to be tracking together the way eyes are supposed to. His chin was shiny with drool, and there was a wet spot on the crotch of his pants. Conversation died. The newest arrivals looked puzzled and horrified; those who had been around long enough to get a run of tests threw worried glances at each other.
Luke and Helen exchanged a look. “He’ll be okay,” she said. “It’s just worse for some kids than it is for—”
Avery was sitting beside her. Now he took one of her hands in both of his. He spoke with eerie calmness. “He’s not okay. He’ll never be okay.”
Harry let out a cry, dropped to his knees, then hit the floor face-first. His nose and lips sprayed blood on the linoleum. He first began to shake, then to spasm, legs pulling up and shooting out in a Y shape, arms flailing. He started to make a growling noise—not like an animal but like an engine stuck in low gear and being revved too hard. He flopped onto his back, still growling and spraying bloody foam from between his blabbering lips. His teeth chomped up and down.
The little Gs began shrieking. As Gladys
ran in from the hall and Norma from around the steam table, one of the twins knelt and tried to hug Harry. His big right hand rose, swung out, came whistling back. It struck her on the side of her face with terrible force, and sent her flying. Her head struck the wall with a thud. The other twin ran to her sister, screaming.
The cafeteria was in an uproar. Luke and Helen stayed seated, Helen with her arm around Avery’s shoulders (more to comfort herself than the little boy, it seemed; Avery appeared unmoved), but many of the other kids were gathering around the seizing boy. Gladys shoved a couple of them away and snarled, “Get back, you idiots!” No big fake smile tonight for the big G.
Now more Institute personnel were appearing: Joe and Hadad, Chad, Carlos, a couple Luke didn’t know, including one still in his civvies who must have just come on duty. Harry’s body was rising and falling in galvanic leaps, as if the floor had been electrified. Chad and Carlos pinned his arms. Hadad zapped him in the solar plexus, and when that didn’t stop the seizures, Joe hit him in the neck, the crackle of a zap-stick set on high audible even in the babble of confused voices. Harry went limp. His eyes bulged beneath half-closed lids. Foam drizzled from the corners of his mouth. The tip of his tongue protruded.