by Stephen King
“Even before. The tank . . . boosted it higher. But I’m still not . . .” He massaged the back of his neck. This was hard to explain, and their voices, so low and so calm, were getting on his nerves, which were already raw. Soon he would be as nuts as they thought he was. Still, he had to try. “But I’m still not very strong. None of us are, except maybe for Avery. He’s awesome.”
Tim said, “Let me make sure I have this straight. They kidnap kids who have weak psychic powers, feed them mental steroids, then get them to kill people. Like that politician who was planning to run for president. Mark Berkowitz.”
“Yes.”
“Why not Bin Laden?” Wendy asked. “I would have thought he’d be a natural target for this . . . this mental assassination.”
“I don’t know,” Luke said. He sounded exhausted. The bruise on his cheek seemed to be growing more colorful by the minute. “I don’t have a clue how they pick their targets. I talked about it one time with my friend Kalisha. She didn’t have any idea, either.”
“Why wouldn’t this mystery organization just use hit men? Wouldn’t that be simpler?”
“It looks simple in the movies,” Luke said. “In real life I think they mostly fail, or get caught. Like the guys who killed Bin Laden almost got caught.”
“Let’s have a demonstration,” Tim said. “I’m thinking of a number. Tell me what it is.”
Luke tried. He concentrated and waited for the colored dots to appear, but they didn’t come. “I can’t get it.”
“Move something, then. Isn’t that your basic talent, the one they grabbed you for?”
Wendy shook her head. Tim was no telepath, but he knew what she was thinking: Stop badgering him, he’s disturbed and disoriented and on the run. But Tim thought if he could break through the kid’s cockamamie story, maybe they could get to something real and figure out where to go from there.
“How about the take-out bag? No food in it now, it’s light, you should be able to move it.”
Luke looked at it, his brow furrowing more deeply. For a moment Tim thought he felt something—a whisper along his skin, like a faint draft—but then it was gone, and the bag didn’t move. Of course it didn’t.
“Okay,” Wendy said, “I think that enough for n—”
“I know you two are boyfriend and girlfriend,” Luke said. “I know that much.”
Tim smiled. “Not too impressive, kiddo. You saw her kiss me when she came in.”
Luke turned his attention to Wendy. “You’re going on a trip. To see your sister, is it?”
Her eyes went wide. “How—”
“Don’t fall for it,” Tim said . . . but gently. “It’s an old medium’s trick—the educated guess. Although I’ll admit the kid does it well.”
“What education have I had about Wendy’s sister?” Luke asked, although without much hope. He had played his cards one by one, and now there was only one left. And he was so tired. What sleep he’d gotten on the train had been thin and haunted by bad dreams. Mostly of the immersion tank.
“Will you excuse us for a minute?” Tim asked. Without waiting for a reply, he took Wendy over to the door to the outer office. He spoke to her briefly. She nodded and left the room, taking her phone from her pocket as she went. Tim came back. “I think we better take you to the station.”
At first Luke thought he was talking about the train station. Putting him on another freight, so he and his girlfriend didn’t have to deal with the runaway kid and his crazy story. Then he realized that wasn’t the kind of station Tim meant.
Oh, so what? Luke thought. I always knew I’d end up in a police station somewhere. And maybe a small one is better than a big one, where they’d have a hundred different people—perps—to deal with.
Only they thought he was just being paranoid about that guy Hollister, and that wasn’t good. For now he’d have to hope they were right, and Hollister was nobody special. They probably were right. After all, the Institute couldn’t have guys everywhere, could they?
“Okay, but first I need to tell you something and show you something.”
“Go for it,” Tim said. He leaned forward, looking intently into Luke’s face. Maybe he was just humoring the crazy kid, but at least he was listening, and Luke supposed that was the best he could expect for now.
“If they know I’m here, they’ll come for me. Probably with guns. Because they’re scared to death someone might believe me.”
“Duly noted,” Tim said, “but we’ve got a pretty good little police force here, Luke. I think you’ll be safe.”
You have no idea what you might be up against, Luke thought, but he couldn’t try to convince this guy anymore just now. He was just too worn out. Wendy came back and gave Tim a nod. Luke was too beat to care about that, either.
“The woman who helped me escape from the Institute gave me two things. One was the knife I used to cut off the part of my ear that had the tracker in it. The other was this.” From his pocket he drew out the flash drive. “I don’t know what’s on it, but I think you should look at it before you do anything else.”
He handed it to Tim.
12
The residents of Back Half—the front half of Back Half, that was; the eighteen currently in Gorky Park remained behind their locked door, humming away—were given twenty minutes of free time before the movie started. Jimmy Cullum zombie-walked his aching head to his room; Hal, Donna, and Len sat in the cafeteria, the two boys staring at their half-eaten desserts (chocolate pudding tonight), Donna regarding a smoldering cigarette she seemed to have forgotten how to smoke.
Kalisha, Nick, George, Avery, and Helen went down to the lounge with its ugly thrift-store furniture and the old flatscreen, which showed only prehistoric sitcoms like Bewitched and Happy Days. Katie Givens was there. She didn’t look around at them, only at the currently blank TV. To Kalisha’s surprise, they were joined by Iris, who looked better than she had in days. Brighter.
Kalisha was thinking hard, and she could think, because she felt better than she had in days. What they had done to Helen’s headache—Avery, mostly, but they had all pitched in—had helped her own. The same was true of Nicky and George. She could see it.
Take the place over.
A bold and delicious idea, but questions immediately arose. The most obvious was how they were supposed to do it, when there were at least twelve caretakers on duty—there were always more on movie days. The second was why they had never thought of this before.
I did, Nicky told her . . . and was his mental voice stronger? She thought it was, and she thought Avery might have also played a part in that. Because he was stronger now. I thought about it when they first brought me here.
That was as much as Nicky could manage to tell her mind to mind, so he put his mouth to her ear and whispered the rest. “I was the one who always fought, remember?”
It was true. Nicky with his black eyes. Nicky with his bruised mouth.
“We’re not strong enough,” he murmured. “Even in here, even after the lights, we only have little powers.”
Avery, meanwhile, was looking at Kalisha with desperate hope. He was thinking into her head, but hardly needed to. His eyes said it all. Here are the pieces, Sha. I’m pretty sure all of them are here. Help me put them together. Help me build a castle where we can be safe, at least for awhile.
Sha thought of the old, faded Hillary Clinton sticker on the back bumper of her mom’s Subaru. It said STRONGER TOGETHER, and of course that was how it worked here in Back Half. That was why they watched the movies together. That was why they could reach across thousands of miles, sometimes even halfway around the world, to the people who were in the movies. If the five of them (make it six, if they could work on Iris’s headache the way they had worked on Helen’s) were able to create that united mental force, a kind of Vulcan mind meld, shouldn’t that be enough to mutiny and take Back Half over?
“It’s a great idea, but I don’t think so,” George said. He took her hand and gave it a bri
ef squeeze. “We might be able to screw with their heads a little, maybe scare the hell out of them, but they’ve got those zap-sticks, and as soon as they jolted one or two of us, it would be game over.”
Kalisha didn’t want to admit it, but told him he was probably right.
Avery: One step at a time.
Iris said, “I can’t hear what you guys are thinking. I know you’re thinking something, but my head still hurts bad.”
Avery: Let’s see what we can do for her. All of us together.
Kalisha looked at Nick, who nodded. At George, who shrugged and also nodded.
Avery led them into Iris Stanhope’s head like an explorer leading his party into a cave. The sponge in her mind was very big. Avery saw it as blood-colored, so they all saw it that way. They ranged themselves around it and began to push. It gave a little . . . and a little more . . . but then it stopped, resisting their efforts. George backed out first, then Helen (who hadn’t had all that much to contribute, anyway), then Nick and Kalisha. Avery came last, dealing the headache-sponge a petulant mental kick before withdrawing.
“Any better, Iris?” Kalisha asked, without much hope.
“What’s better?” It was Katie Givens. She had drifted to join them.
“My headache,” Iris said. “And it is. A little, anyway.” She smiled at Katie, and for a moment the girl who had won the Abilene Spelling Bee was in the room.
Katie turned her attention back to the TV. “Where’s Richie Cunningham and the Fonz?” she asked, and began rubbing at her temples. “I wish mine was better, my headache hurts like poop.”
You see the problem, George thought to the others.
Kalisha did. They were stronger together, yes, but still not strong enough. No more than Hillary Clinton had been when she ran for president a few years back. Because the guy running against her, and his supporters, had had the political equivalent of the caretakers’ zap-sticks.
“It helped me, though,” Helen said. “My own headache is almost gone. It’s like a miracle.”
“Don’t worry,” Nicky said. Hearing him sound so defeated scared Kalisha. “It’ll be back.”
Corinne, the caretaker who liked to slap, came into the room. She had one hand on her holstered zap-stick, as if she had felt something. Probably did, Kalisha thought, but she doesn’t know what it was.
“Movie time,” she said. “Come on, kiddies, move your asses.”
13
Two caretakers, Jake and Phil (known respectively as the Snake and the Pill), were standing outside the screening room’s open doors, each holding a basket. As the kids filed in, those with cigarettes and matches (lighters weren’t allowed in Back Half ) deposited them in the baskets. They could have them back when the show was over . . . if they remembered to take them, that was. Hal, Donna, and Len sat in the back row, staring vacantly at the blank screen. Katie Givens sat in a middle row next to Jimmy Cullum, who was lackadaisically picking his nose.
Kalisha, Nick, George, Helen, Iris, and Avery sat down front.
“Welcome to another fun-filled evening,” Nicky said in a loud announcer’s voice. “This year’s feature, an Academy Award winner in the category of Shittiest Documentary—”
Phil the Pill slapped him across the back of the head. “Shut up, asshole, and enjoy the show.”
He retreated. The lights went down, and Dr. Hendricks appeared on the screen. Just seeing the unlit sparkler in his hand made Kalisha’s mouth dry up.
There was something she was missing. Some vital piece of Avery’s castle. But it wasn’t lost; she just wasn’t seeing it.
Stronger together, but not strong enough. Even if those poor almost-gorks like Jimmy and Hal and Donna were with us, we wouldn’t be. But we could be. On nights when the sparkler is lit, we are. When the sparkler is lit, we’re destroyers, so what am I missing?
“Welcome, boys and girls,” Dr. Hendricks was saying, “and thank you for helping us! Let’s begin with a few laughs, shall we? And I’ll see you later.” He wagged the unlit sparkler and actually winked. It made Kalisha feel like vomiting.
If we can reach all the way to the other side of the world, then why can’t we—
For a moment she almost had it, but then Katie gave a loud cry, not of pain or sorrow but of joy. “Road Runner! He’s the best!” She began to sing in a half-screaming falsetto that drilled into Kalisha’s brain. “Road Runner, Road Runner, the coyote’s after YOU! Road Runner, Road Runner, if he catches you you’re THROUGH!”
“Shut it, Kates,” George said, not unkindly, and as Road Runner went meep-meeping down a deserted desert highway, and as Wile E. Coyote looked at him and saw a Thanksgiving dinner, Kalisha felt whatever had almost been in her grasp float away.
When the cartoon was over and Wile E. Coyote had once more been vanquished, a guy in a suit came on the screen. He had a microphone in his hand. Kalisha thought he was a businessman, and maybe he was, sort of, but that wasn’t his main claim to fame. He was really a preacherman, because when the camera drew back you could see a big old cross behind him outlined in red neon, and when the camera panned away you could see an arena, or maybe it was a sports stadium, filled with thousands of people. They rose to their feet, some waving their hands back and forth in the air, some waving Bibles.
At first he did a regular sermon, citing chapters and verses from the Bible, but then he got off onto how the country was falling apart because of OPE-e-oids and for-ni-CAY-tion. Then it was politics, and judges, and how America was a shining city on a hill that the godless wanted to smirch with mud. He was starting about how sorcery had bewitched the people of Samaria (what that had to do with America was unclear to Kalisha), but then the colored dots came, flashing on and off. The hum rose and fell. Kalisha could even feel it in her nose, vibrating the tiny hairs in there.
When the dots cleared, they saw the preacherman getting on an airplane with a woman who was probably Mrs. Preacherman. The dots came back. The hum rose and fell. Kalisha heard Avery in her head, something that sounded like they see it.
Who sees it?
Avery didn’t answer, probably because he was getting into the movie. That was what the Stasi Lights did; they got you into it bigtime. Preacherman was hitting it again, hitting it hard, this time from the back of a flatbed truck, using a bullhorn. Signs said HOUSTON LOVES YOU and GOD GAVE NOAH THE RAINBOW SIGN and JOHN 3:16. Then the dots. And the hum. Several of the empty movie theater seats began to flap up and down by themselves, like unmoored shutters in a strong wind. The screening room doors flew open. Jake the Snake and Phil the Pill slammed them shut again, putting their shoulders into it.
Now the preacherman was in some kind of homeless shelter, wearing a cook’s apron and stirring a huge vat of spaghetti sauce. His wife was by his side, both of them grinning, and this time it was Nick in her head: Smile for the camera! Kalisha was vaguely aware that her hair was standing up, like in some kind of electrical experiment.
Dots. Hum.
Next, the preacherman was on a TV news show with some other people. One of the other people accused the preacherman of being . . . something . . . big words, college words she was sure Lukey would have understood . . . and the preachman was laughing like it was the biggest joke in the world. He had a great laugh. It made you want to laugh along. If you weren’t going crazy, that was.
Dots. Hum.
Each time the Stasi Lights came back, they seemed brighter, and each time they seemed to delve deeper into Kalisha’s head. In her current state, all the clips that made up the movie were fascinating. They had levers. When the time came—probably tomorrow night, maybe the next—the kids in Back Half would pull them.
“I hate this,” Helen said in a small, dismayed voice. “When will it be over?”
Preacherman was standing in front of a fancy mansion where a party seemed to be going on. Preacherman was in a motorcade. Preacherman was at an outdoor barbecue and there was red, white, and blue bunting on the buildings behind him. People were eating corndogs and big
slices of pizza. He was preaching about perverting the natural order of things which God had ordained, but then his voice cut out and was replaced by that of Dr. Hendricks.
“This is Paul Westin, kids. His home is in Deerfield, Indiana. Paul Westin. Deerfield, Indiana. Paul Westin, Deerfield, Indiana. Say it with me, boys and girls.”
Partly because they had no choice, partly because it would bring a merciful end to the colored dots and the rising and falling of the hum, mostly because now they were really into it, the ten children in the screening room began to chant. Kalisha joined in. She didn’t know about the others, but for her, this was the absolute worst part of movie nights. She hated that it felt good. She hated that feeling of levers just waiting to be yanked. Begging for it! She felt like a ventriloquist’s dummy on that fucking doctor’s knee.
“Paul Westin, Deerfield, Indiana! Paul Westin, Deerfield, Indiana! PAUL WESTIN, DEERFIELD, INDIANA!”
Then Dr. Hendricks came back on the screen, smiling and holding the unlit sparkler. “That’s right. Paul Westin, Deerfield, Indiana. Thank you, kids, and have a good night. See you tomorrow!”
The Stasi Lights came back one final time, blinking and swirling and spiraling. Kalisha gritted her teeth and waited for them to be gone, feeling like a tiny space capsule hurtling into a storm of giant asteroids. The hum was louder than ever, but when the dots disappeared the hum cut off instantly, as if a plug had been pulled on an amplifier.
They see it, Avery had said. Was that the missing piece? If so, who was they?
The screening room lights came up. The doors opened, Jake the Snake on one and Phil the Pill on the other. Most of the kids walked out, but Donna, Len, Hal, and Jimmy sat where they were. Might sit there lolling in the comfortable seats until the caretakers came to shoo them back to their rooms, and one or two or maybe even all four might be in Gorky Park after the show tomorrow. The big show. Where they did whatever was supposed to be done to the preacherman.
They were allowed another half hour in the lounge before being locked in their rooms for the night. Kalisha went there. George, Nicky, and Avery followed. After a few minutes, Helen shuffled in and sat on the floor with an unlit cigarette in her hand and her once bright hair hanging in her face. Iris and Katie came last.