by Stephen King
“What do you mean—”
It was Hendricks’s turn to say shut up, and instead of being angry, Stackhouse felt a certain admiration. Whatever the good doctor was up to, he thought it was important.
Hendricks took the microphone, then paused. “Is there a way to make sure those escaped children don’t hear what I’m going to say? No sense giving them ideas.”
“There are no speakers in the access tunnel,” Stackhouse said, hoping he was correct about that. “As for Back Half, I believe they have their own separate intercom system. What are you up to?”
Hendricks looked at him as if he were an idiot. “Just because their bodies are locked up, that doesn’t mean their minds are.”
Oh shit, Stackhouse thought. I forgot what they’re here for.
“Now how does this . . . never mind, I see.” Hendricks depressed the button on the side of the mic, cleared his throat, and began to speak. “Attention, please. All staff, attention. This is Dr. Hendricks.” He ran a hand through his thinning hair, making what had been crazy to begin with crazier still. “Children have escaped from Back Half, but there is no cause for alarm. I repeat, no cause for alarm. They are penned up in the access tunnel between Front Half and Back Half. They may attempt to influence you, however, the way they . . .” He paused, licking his lips. “The way they influence certain people when they do their jobs. They may attempt to make you harm yourselves. Or . . . well . . . to turn you against one another.”
Oh, Jesus, Stackhouse thought, there’s a cheerful idea.
“Listen carefully,” Hendricks said. “They are only able to succeed in such mental infiltration if the targets are unsuspecting. If you feel something . . . if you sense thoughts that are not your own . . . remain calm and resist them. Expel them. You will be able to do this quite easily. It may help to speak aloud. To say I am not listening to you.”
He started to put the mic down, but Stackhouse took it. “This is Stackhouse. Front Half personnel, all children must go back to their rooms immediately. If any resist, zap them.”
He flicked off the intercom and turned to Hendricks. “Maybe the little fucks in the tunnel won’t think of it. They’re only children, after all.”
“Oh, they’ll think of it,” Hendricks said. “After all, they’ve had practice.”
32
Tim overtook Luke as the boy opened the door to the holding area. “Stay here, Luke. Wendy, you’re with me.”
“You don’t really think—”
“I don’t know what I think. Don’t draw your gun, but make sure the strap is off.”
As Tim and Wendy hurried up the short aisle between the four empty cells, they heard a man’s voice. He sounded pleasant enough. Good humored, even. “My wife and I were told there are some interesting old buildings in Beaufort, and we thought we’d take a shortcut, but our GPS kinda screwed the pooch.”
“I made him stop to ask for directions,” the woman said, and as Tim entered the office, he saw her looking up at her husband—if that was what the blond man really was—with amused exasperation. “He didn’t want to. Men always think they know where they’re going, don’t they?”
“I tell you what, we’re a little busy just now,” Sheriff John said, “and I don’t have time—”
“It’s her!” Luke shouted from behind Tim and Wendy, making them both jump. The other officers looked around. Luke shoved past Wendy hard enough to make her stagger against the wall. “She’s the one who sprayed me in the face and knocked me out! You bitch, you killed my parents!”
He tried to run at her. Tim caught him by the neck of his shirt and yanked him back. The blond man and the flower-dress woman looked surprised and puzzled. Completely normal, in other words. Except Tim thought he’d seen another expression on the woman’s face, just for an instant: a look of narrow recognition.
“I think there’s some kind of mistake,” she was saying. She tried on a bewildered smile. “Who is this boy? Is he crazy?”
Although he was only the town night knocker and would be for the next five months, Tim reverted to cop mode without thinking, as he had on the night those kids had stuck up the Zoney’s and shot Absimil Dobira. “I’d like to see your IDs, folks.”
“Really, there’s no need of that, is there?” the woman said. “I don’t know who that boy thinks we are, but we’re lost, and when I was a little girl, my mom used to tell me that if you get lost, ask a policeman.”
Sheriff John stood up. “Uh-huh, uh-huh, that may be true, and if it is, you won’t mind showing us your drivers’ licenses, will you?”
“Not at all,” the man said. “Just let me get my wallet.” The woman was already reaching into her purse, looking exasperated.
“Look out!” Luke shouted. “They have guns!”
Tag Faraday and George Burkett looked astounded, Frank Potter and Bill Wicklow perplexed.
“Whoa a second!” Sheriff John said. “Hands where I can see them!”
Neither of them paused. Michelle Robertson’s hand came out of her purse holding not her driver’s license but the Sig Sauer Nightmare Micro she had been issued. Denny Williams had reached behind him for the Glock in his belt rather than his wallet. Both the sheriff and Deputy Faraday were reaching for their service weapons, but they were slow, slow.
Tim was not. He pulled Wendy’s gun from her holster and pointed it with both hands. “Drop the weapons, drop them!”
They did not. Robertson aimed at Luke, and Tim shot her a single time, driving her backward against one of the station’s big double doors hard enough to crack the frosted glass.
Williams dropped to one knee and aimed at Tim, who had just time to think, This guy’s a pro and I’m dead. But the man’s gun jerked upward, as if pulled by an invisible cord, and the bullet meant for Tim went into the ceiling. Sheriff John Ashworth punted the blond man in the side of the head, sending him sprawling. Billy Wicklow stomped on his wrist.
“Give it up, motherfucker, just give it—”
That was when Mrs. Sigsby, realizing things had gone wrong, told Louis Grant and Tom Jones to open up with the big guns. Williams and Robertson weren’t important.
The boy was.
33
The two HK37s filled DuPray’s formerly peaceful twilight with thunder. Grant and Jones raked the brick front of the sheriff’s station, raising puffs of pinkish-red dust, blowing the windows and the glass door panels inward. They were on the sidewalk; the rest of Gold team was standing spread out behind them in the street. The only exception was Dr. Evans, standing off to one side, his hands over his ears.
“Yeah!” Winona Briggs shouted. She was dancing from foot to foot, as if she needed to go to the bathroom. “Kill their asses!”
“Go!” Mrs. Sigsby shouted. “All of you go now! Take the boy or kill him! Take him or—”
Then, from behind them: “You’re not going anywhere, ma’am. I swear by the Savior a bunch of you goan be dead if you try. You two fellas up front, put down those grease guns this minute.”
Louis Grant and Tom Jones turned, but did not put down the HKs.
“Do it fast,” Annie said, “or you’re dead. This isn’t playin, boys. You’re in the south now.”
They looked at each other, then put the autos carefully down on the pavement.
Mrs. Sigsby saw two unlikely ambushers standing beneath the Gem’s sagging marquee: a fat bald man in a pajama top and a wild-haired woman in what looked like a Mexican serape. The man had a rifle. The woman in the serape had an automatic in one hand and a revolver in the other.
“Now the rest of you folks do the same,” Drummer Denton said. “You’re covered.”
Mrs. Sigsby looked at the two yokels standing in front of the abandoned theater, and her thought was both simple and weary: Would this never end?
A gunshot from inside the sheriff’s station, a brief pause, then another. When the yokels glanced that way, Grant and Jones bent to pick up their weapons.
“Don’t you do it!” the woman in the serap
e shouted.
Robin Lecks, who not so long ago had shot Luke’s father through a pillow, took that small window of opportunity to draw her Sig Micro. The other members of Gold team dropped, to give Grant and Jones a clear field of fire. This was how they had been taught to react. Mrs. Sigsby stood where she was, as if her anger at this unexpected problem would protect her.
34
As the confrontation in South Carolina began, Kalisha and her friends were sitting in slumped postures of disconsolation near the access door to Front Half. The door they couldn’t open because Iris was right: the lock was dead.
Nicky: Maybe we can still do something. Get the staff in Front Half the way we got the red caretakers.
Avery was shaking his head. He looked less like a little boy and more like a weary old man. I tried. Reached out to Gladys, because I hate her. Her and her fake smile. She said she wasn’t listening and pushed me away.
Kalisha looked at the Ward A kids, who were once more wandering off, as if there were anywhere to go. A girl was doing cartwheels; a boy wearing filthy board shorts and a torn tee-shirt was knocking his head lightly against the wall; Pete Littlejohn was still getting his ya-ya’s out. But they would come if called, and there was plenty of power there. She took Avery’s hand. “All of us together—”
“No,” Avery said. We might be able to make them feel a little weird, dizzy and sick to their stomachs . . . “. . . but that’s all.”
Kalisha: But why? Why? If we could kill that bomb-making guy way over in Afghanistan—
Avery: Because the bomb-making guy didn’t know. The preacher, that Westin guy, he doesn’t know. When they know . . .
George: They can keep us out.
Avery nodded.
“Then what can we do?” Helen asked. “Anything?”
Avery shook his head. I don’t know.
“There’s one thing,” Kalisha said. “We’re stuck here, but we know someone who isn’t. But we’ll need everybody.” She tilted her head toward the wandering exiles from Ward A. “Let’s call them.”
“I don’t know, Sha,” Avery said. “I’m pretty tired.”
“Just this one more thing,” she coaxed.
Avery sighed and held out his hands. Kalisha, Nicky, George, Helen, and Katie linked up. After a moment, Iris did, too. Once again, the others drifted to them. They made the capsule shape, and the hum rose. In Front Half, caretakers and techs and janitors felt it and feared it, but it wasn’t directed at them. Fourteen hundred miles away, Tim had just put a bullet between Michelle Robertson’s breasts; Grant and Jones were just raising their automatic rifles to rake the front of the sheriff’s station; Billy Wicklow was standing on Denny Williams’s hand with Sheriff John beside him.
The children of the Institute called out to Luke.
35
Luke didn’t think about reaching out with his mind to knock the blond man’s gun up; he just did it. The Stasi Lights came back, momentarily blotting out everything. When they began to fade, he saw one of the cops standing on the blond man’s wrist, trying to make him let go of the gun in his hand. The blond man’s lips were stretched in a snarl of pain, and blood was pouring down the side of his face, but he was holding on. The sheriff brought his foot back, apparently meaning to kick the blond man in the head again.
Luke saw this much, but then the Stasi Lights returned, brighter than ever, and the voices of his friends hit him like a hammer blow in the middle of his head. He stumbled backward through the doorway to the holding area, raising his hands as if to ward off a punch, and tripped over his own feet. He landed on his butt just as Grant and Jones opened up with their automatic rifles.
He saw Tim tackle Wendy and bring her to the floor, shielding her body with his own. He saw bullets tear into the sheriff and the deputy standing on the blond man’s hand. They both went down. Glass flew. Somebody was screaming. Luke thought it was Wendy. Outside, Luke heard the woman who sounded weirdly like Mrs. Sigsby shout something that sounded like all of you now.
For Luke, dazed from a double dose of the Stasi Lights and the combined voices of his friends, the world seemed to slow down. He saw one of the other deputies—wounded, there was blood running down his arm—pivot toward the broken main doors, probably to see who had been shooting. He seemed to be moving very slowly. The blond man was getting to his knees, and he also seemed to be moving slowly. It was like watching an underwater ballet. He shot the deputy in the back, then began turning toward Luke. Faster now, the world speeding up again. Before the blond man could fire, the redheaded deputy bent down, almost bowing, and shot him in the temple. The blond man flew sideways and landed on top of the woman who had claimed to be his wife.
A woman outside—not the one who sounded like Mrs. Sigsby, another one with a southern accent—shouted, “Don’t you do it!”
More gunfire followed, and then the first woman yelled, “The boy! We have to get the boy!”
It is her, Luke thought. I don’t know how it can be, but it is. That’s Mrs. Sigsby out there.
36
Robin Lecks was a good shot, but the twilight was deepening and the distance was long for a handgun as small as the Micro. Her bullet got Drummer Denton high in the shoulder instead of hitting him center mass. It drove him back against the boarded-up box office, and her next two shots went wild. Orphan Annie stood her ground. She had been raised that way in the Georgia canebrakes by a father who told her, “You don’t back down, girl, not for nothin.” Jean Ledoux had been a crack shot whether drunk or sober, and he had taught her well. Now she opened fire with both of Drummer’s handguns, compensating for the .45 auto’s heavier recoil without even thinking about it. She took down one of the automatic riflemen (it was Tony Fizzale, who would never wield a zap-stick again), never minding the three or four bullets that whizzed past her, one of them giving a flirty little flick to the hem of her serape.
Drummer came back and aimed at the woman who had shot him. Robin was down on one knee in the middle of the street, cursing her Sig, which had jammed. Drummer socked the .30–06 into the hollow of the shoulder that wasn’t bleeding and put her down the rest of the way.
“Stop shooting!” Mrs. Sigsby was screaming. “We have to get the boy! We have to make sure of the boy! Tom Jones! Alice Green! Louis Grant! Wait for me! Josh Gottfried! Winona Briggs! Hold steady!”
Drummer and Annie looked at each other. “Do we keep shooting or not?” Annie asked.
“Fuck if I know,” Drummer said.
Tom Jones and Alice Green were flanking the battered doors of the sheriff’s station. Josh Gottfried and Winona Briggs walked backward, likewise flanking Mrs. Sigsby and keeping their guns on the unexpected shooters who had blindsided them. Dr. James Evans, who had not been assigned a position, assigned his own. He walked past Mrs. Sigsby and approached Drummer and Orphan Annie with his hands raised and a placating smile on his face.
“Get back here, you fool!” Mrs. Sigsby snapped.
He ignored her. “I’m not a part of this,” he said, speaking to the fat man in the pajama top, who looked to be the saner of the two ambushers. “I never wanted to be a part of this, so I think I’ll just—”
“Oh, sit down,” Annie said, and shot him in the foot. She was considerate enough to do it with the .38, which would cause less damage. In theory, at least.
That left the woman in the red pant suit, the one in charge. If the shooting started again, she would probably be cut to pieces in the crossfire, but she showed no fear, only a kind of pissed-off concentration.
“I’m going into the station now,” she said to Drummer and Orphan Annie. “There doesn’t need to be any more of this nonsense. Stand pat and you’ll be fine. Start shooting and Josh and Winona will take you out. Understood?”
She didn’t wait for an answer, simply turned away and walked toward the remains of her force, low heels clacking on the pavement.
“Drummer?” Annie said. “What do we do?”
“Maybe we don’t have to do anything,” he s
aid. “Look to your left. Don’t move your head, just cut your eyes.”
She did, and saw one of the Dobira brothers hustling up the sidewalk. He had a pistol. Later he would tell the State Police that although he and his brother were peaceful men, they had thought it wise to keep a gun in the store since the holdup.
“Now to the right. Don’t move your head.”
She cut her eyes that way and saw the widow Goolsby and Mr. Bilson, father of the Bilson twins. Addie Goolsby was in her robe and slippers. Richard Bilson was wearing madras shorts and a red Crimson Tide tee-shirt. Both had hunting rifles. The cluster in front of the sheriff’s station didn’t see them; their attention was on whatever business they’d come here to transact.
You’re in the south now, Annie had told these gunned-up interlopers. She had an idea they were about to find out just how true that was.
“Tom and Alice,” Mrs. Sigsby said. “Go in. Make sure you get the boy.”
They went.
37
Tim pulled Wendy to her feet. She looked dazed, not entirely sure where she was. There was a shredded piece of paper caught in her hair. The shooting outside had stopped, at least for the moment. It had been replaced by talking, but Tim’s ears were ringing, and he couldn’t make out the words. And it didn’t matter. If they were making peace out there, good. It would be prudent, however, to expect more war.
“Wendy, okay?”
“They . . . Tim, they killed Sheriff John! How many others?”
He shook her. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Y-Yes. I think s—”
“Take Luke out the back.”
She reached for him. Luke evaded her and ran for the sheriff’s desk. Tag Faraday tried to grab his arm, but Luke evaded him, too. A bullet had clipped the laptop, knocking it askew, but the home screen, although cracked, was still up, and the flash drive’s little orange ready light was blinking steadily. His ears were also ringing, but he was close to the door now, and heard Mrs. Sigsby say Make sure you get the boy.