by Stephen King
That was when the access tunnel—weakened by years of neglect and the cataclysmic levitation of Front Half—collapsed, crushing children who were already dying of chlorine poisoning and mental overload. They maintained their circle until the end, and as the roof came down, Avery Dixon had one final thought, both clear and calm: I loved having friends.
26
Tim didn’t remember getting out of the Suburban. He was fully occupied with trying to process what he was seeing: a huge building floating in the air and sliding over a smaller building, eclipsing it. He saw a figure on the roof of that smaller building put its hands over its head. Then there was a muffled crumping sound from somewhere behind this incredible David Copperfield illusion, a great cloud of dust arose . . . and the floating building dropped like a rock.
A huge thud shook the ground and made Tim stagger. There was no way the smaller building—offices, Tim supposed—could take the weight. It exploded outward in all directions, spraying wood and concrete and glass. More dust billowed up, enough to obscure the moon. The bus alarm (who knew they had them?) went off, making a WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP sound. The person who had been on the roof was dead, of course, and anyone who had still been inside was now nothing but jelly.
“Tim!” Luke had grabbed his arm. “Tim!” He pointed to the two men who had come out of the trees. One was still staring at the ruins, but the other was raising a large pistol. Very slowly, as if in a dream.
Tim raised his own gun, and a lot faster. “Don’t do it. Put them down.”
They looked at him, dazed, then did as he said.
“Now walk to the flagpole.”
“Is it over?” one of the men asked. “Please tell me it’s over.”
“I think so,” Luke said. “Do what my friend says.”
They plodded through the billowing dust toward the flagpole and the bus. Luke picked up their guns, thought about tossing them into the Suburban, then realized they wouldn’t be driving that bullet-riddled, blood-spattered vehicle anywhere. He kept one of the automatics. The other he threw into the woods.
27
Stackhouse took a moment to watch Chad and Chef Doug walk toward him, then turned to regard the ruins of his life.
But who could have known? he thought. Who could have known they had access to enough power to levitate a building? Not Mrs. Sigsby, not Evans, not Heckle and Jeckle, not Donkey Kong—wherever he is tonight—and certainly not me. We thought we were working with high voltage, when in fact all we tapped was a trickle current. The joke was on us.
There was a tap on his shoulder. He turned to regard the misguided hero. He was broad-shouldered (as an authentic hero should be), but he was wearing glasses, and that didn’t fit the stereotype.
Of course there’s always Clark Kent, Stackhouse thought.
“Are you armed?” the man named Tim asked.
Stackhouse shook his head and made a weak gesture with one hand. “They were supposed to take care of that.”
“Are you three the last?”
“I don’t know.” Stackhouse had never felt so weary. He supposed it was shock. That, and the sight of a building rising into the night sky, blotting out the moon. “Maybe some of the staff in Back Half are still alive. And the docs there, Hallas and James. As for the children in Front Half, though . . . I don’t see how anyone could have survived that.” He gestured toward the ruins with an arm that felt like lead.
“The rest of the children, though,” Tim said. “What about them? Weren’t they in the other building?”
“They were in the tunnel,” Luke said. “He tried to gas them, but the tunnel collapsed first. It collapsed when Front Half rose up.”
Stackhouse thought of denying this, but what good would it do, if the Ellis boy could read his mind? Besides, he was so tired. So completely used up.
“Your friends, too?” Tim asked.
Luke opened his mouth to say he didn’t know for sure, but probably. Then his head jerked around, as if he had been called. If so, the call had come inside his head, because Tim only heard the voice a space of seconds later.
“Luke!”
A girl was running across the littered lawn, skirting the rubble that had exploded outward in a kind of corona. Three others were following her, two boys and another girl.
“Lukey!”
Luke ran to meet the girl in the lead and threw his arms around her. The other three joined them, and as they hugged in a group embrace, Tim heard the hum again, but lower now. Some of the rubble stirred, pieces of wood and stone rising into the air, then falling again. And didn’t he hear the whisper of their mingled voices in his head? Maybe just his imagination, but . . .
“They’re still putting out juice,” Stackhouse said. He spoke disinterestedly, like a man passing the time of day. “I hear them. You do, too. Be careful. The effect is cumulative. It turned Hallas and James into Heckle and Jeckle.” He gave a single bark of laughter. “Just a couple of cartoon magpies with high-priced medical degrees.”
Tim ignored this and let the children have their joyous reunion—who on God’s earth deserved one more? He kept an eye on the Institute’s three adult survivors. Although they did not, in fact, look as if they were going to give him any trouble.
“What am I going to do with you assholes?” Tim asked. Not really talking to the survivors, just thinking aloud.
“Please don’t kill us,” Doug said. He pointed to the group hug that was still going on. “I fed those youngsters. I kept them alive.”
“I wouldn’t try to justify anything you did here if you want to stay alive,” Tim said. “Shutting up might be the wisest course.” He turned his attention to Stackhouse. “Looks like we won’t need the bus after all, since you killed most of the kids—”
“We didn’t—”
“Are you deaf? I said shut it.”
Stackhouse saw what was in the man’s face. It didn’t look like heroism, misguided or otherwise. It looked like murder. He shut it.
“We need a ride out of here,” Tim said, “and I really don’t want to have to march you happy warriors through the woods to this village Luke says you have. It’s been a long, tiring day. Any suggestions?”
Stackhouse seemed not to have heard him. He was looking at the remains of Front Half, and the remains of the admin building squashed beneath it. “All this,” he marveled. “All this because of one runaway boy.”
Tim kicked him lightly in the ankle. “Pay attention, shithead. How do I get those kids out of here?”
Stackhouse didn’t answer, and neither did the man who claimed to have fed the kids. The other one, the guy who looked like a hospital orderly in his tunic top, spoke up. “If I had an idea about that, would you let me go?”
“What’s your name?”
“Chad, sir. Chad Greenlee.”
“Well, Chad, that would depend on how good your idea was.”
28
The last survivors of the Institute hugged and hugged and hugged. Luke felt that he could embrace them like this forever, and feel them embracing him, because he had never expected to see any of them again. For the moment all they needed was inside the huddled circle they made on this littered lawn. All they needed was each other. The world and all its problems could go fuck itself.
Avery?
Kalisha: Gone. Him and the rest. When the tunnel came down on top of them.
Nicky: It’s better this way, Luke. He wouldn’t have been the same. Not himself. What he did, what they did . . . it would have stripped him, like it did all the others.
What about the kids in Front Half? Are any of them still alive? If there are, we have to—
It was Kalisha who answered, shaking her head, sending not words but a picture: the late Harry Cross, of Selma, Alabama. The boy who had died in the cafeteria.
Luke took Sha by the arms. All of them? Are you saying all of them died of seizures even before that came down?
He pointed to the rubble of Front Half.
“I think when it lifted off,”
Nicky said. “When Avery answered the big phone.” And when it was clear Luke didn’t fully understand: When the other kids joined in.
“The faraway kids,” George added. “At the other Institutes. The Front Half kids were just too . . . I don’t know the word.”
“Too vulnerable,” Luke said. “That’s what you mean. They were vulnerable. It was like one of the damn old shots, wasn’t it? One of the bad ones.”
They nodded.
Helen whispered, “I bet they died seeing the dots. How awful is that?”
Luke’s answer was the childish denial grownups smile at cynically and only other children can fully understand: It’s not fair! Not fair!
No, they agreed. Not fair.
They drew apart. Luke looked at them one by one in the dusty moonlight: Helen, George, Nicky . . . and Kalisha. He remembered the day he met her, pretending to smoke a candy cigarette.
George: What now, Lukey?
“Tim will know,” Luke said, and could only hope it was true.
29
Chad led the way around the destroyed buildings. Stackhouse and Chef Doug trudged behind him, heads down. Tim followed, gun in hand. Luke and his friends walked behind Tim. The crickets, silenced by the destruction, had begun to sing again.
Chad stopped at the edge of an asphalt track along which half a dozen cars and three or four pickup trucks were parked, nose to tail. Among them was a midsized Toyota panel truck with MAINE PAPER INDUSTRIES on the side. He pointed at it. “What about that, sir? Would that do you?”
Tim thought it would, at least for a start. “What about the keys?”
“Everybody uses those maintenance trucks, so they always leave the keys under the visor.”
“Luke,” Tim said, “would you check on that?”
Luke went; the others went with him, as if they couldn’t bear to be separated even for a minute. Luke opened the driver’s door and lowered the visor. Something dropped into his hand. He held up the keys.
“Good,” Tim said. “Now open up the back. If there’s stuff in there, empty it out.”
The big one called Nick and the smaller one named George took care of this chore, tossing out rakes, hoes, a toolbox, and several bags of lawn fertilizer. While they did it, Stackhouse sat down on the grass and put his head on his knees. It was a profound gesture of defeat, but Tim did not feel sorry for him. He tapped Stackhouse on the shoulder.
“We’ll be going now.”
Stackhouse didn’t look up. “Where? I believe the boy said something about Disneyland.” He gave a singularly humorless snort of laughter.
“None of your affair. But I’m curious. Where are you going to go?”
Stackhouse did not answer.
30
There were no seats in the rear of the panel truck, so the kids took turns sitting up front, starting with Kalisha. Luke squeezed in on the metal floor between her and Tim. Nicky, George, and Helen clustered at the back doors, looking out through the two small dusty windows at a world they had never expected to see again.
Luke: Why are you crying, Kalisha?
She told him, then said it aloud, for Tim’s benefit. “Because it’s all so beautiful. Even in the dark, it’s all so beautiful. I only wish Avery was here to see it.”
31
Dawn was still just a rumor on the eastern horizon when Tim turned south on Highway 77. The one named Nicky had taken Kalisha’s place in the front seat. Luke had gone into the back of the truck with her, and now all four of them were heaped together like a litter of puppies, fast asleep. Nicky also appeared to be asleep, his head thudding against the window every time the truck hit a bump . . . and there were a lot of bumps.
Just after seeing a sign announcing that Millinocket was fifty miles ahead, Tim looked at his cell phone and saw that he had two bars and nine per cent power. He called Wendy, who answered on the first ring. She wanted to know if he was all right. He said he was. She asked if Luke was.
“Yes. He’s sleeping. I’ve got four more kids. There were others—I don’t know how many, quite a few—but they’re dead.”
“Dead? Jesus, Tim, what happened?”
“Can’t tell you now. I will when I can, and you might even believe it, but right now I’m in the williwags, I’ve got maybe thirty bucks in my wallet, and I don’t dare use my credit cards. There’s a hell of a mess back there, and I don’t want to risk leaving a paper trail. Also, I’m tired as hell. The truck’s still got half a tank of gas, which is good, but I’m running on fumes. Bitch-bitch-bitch, right?”
“What . . . you . . . have any . . .”
“Wendy, I’m losing you. If you hear me, I’ll call back. I love you.”
He didn’t know if she heard that last or not, or what she’d make of it if she had. He’d never said it to her before. He turned off his phone and put it in the console along with Tag Faraday’s gun. All that had happened back in DuPray seemed long ago to him, almost in a life that had been led by another person. What mattered now were these children, and what he was going to do with them.
Also, who might come after them.
“Hey, Tim.”
He looked around at Nicky. “I thought you were asleep.”
“No, just thinking. Can I tell you something?”
“Sure. Tell me a lot. Keep me awake.”
“Just wanted to say thanks. I won’t say you redeemed my faith in human nature, but coming with Lukey like you did . . . that took balls.”
“Listen, kiddo, are you reading my mind?”
Nick shook his head. “Can’t do it just now. Don’t think I could even move any of the candy wrappers on the floor of this heap, and that was my thing. If I was linked up with them . . .” He inclined his head toward the sleeping children in the back of the panel truck. “It’d be different. At least for awhile.”
“You think you’ll revert? Go back to whatever you had before?”
“Dunno. It’s not a big deal to me either way. Never was. My big deals were football and street hockey.” He peered at Tim. “Man, those aren’t bags under your eyes, those are suitcases.”
“I could use some sleep,” Tim admitted. Yes, like about twelve hours. He found himself remembering Norbert Hollister’s ramshackle establishment, where the TV didn’t work and the roaches ran free. “I suspect there are independent motels where they wouldn’t ask questions if cash was on offer, but cash is a problem, I’m afraid.”
Nicky smiled, and Tim saw the fine-looking young man he’d be—if God was good—in a few years. “I think me and my friends might be able to help you out in the cash department. Not entirely sure, but yeah, probably. Got enough gas to make it to the next town?”
“Yes.”
“Stop there,” Nicky said, and put his head back against the window.
32
Not long before the Millinocket branch of the Seaman’s Trust opened at nine o’clock on that day, a teller named Sandra Robichaux summoned the bank manager from his office.
“We have a problem,” she said. “Take a look at this.”
She seated herself at the ATM video replay. Brian Stearns sat down beside her. The unit’s camera slept between transactions, and in the small northern Maine town of Millinocket, that usually meant it slept all night, waking up for its first customers around six o’clock. The time-stamp on the screen they were looking at said 5:18 AM. As Stearns watched, five people walked up to the ATM. Four of them had their shirts pulled up over their mouths and noses, like bandit masks in an old-time Western. The fifth had a gimme cap pulled down low over his eyes. Stearns could see MAINE PAPER INDUSTRIES on the front.
“Those look like kids!”
Sandra nodded. “Unless they’re midgets, which doesn’t seem very likely. Watch this, Mr. Stearns.”
The kids joined hands and formed a circle. A few lines of fuzz ran across the picture, as if from momentary electrical interference. Then money began to spew from the ATM’s slot. It was like watching a casino slot machine pay off.
“What t
he hell?”
Sandra shook her head. “I don’t know what the hell, but they got over two thousand dollars, and the machine’s not supposed to give anybody more than eight hundred. That’s the way it’s set. I guess we should call somebody about it, but I don’t know who.”
Stearns didn’t reply. He only watched, fascinated, as the little bandits—they looked like middle-schoolers, if that—picked up the money.
Then they were gone.
THE LISPING MAN
1
On a cool October morning some three months later, Tim Jamieson strolled down the driveway from what was known as Catawba Hill Farm to South Carolina State Road 12-A. The walk took awhile; the driveway was almost half a mile long. Any longer, he liked to joke to Wendy, and they could have named it South Carolina State Road 12-B. He was wearing faded jeans, dirty Georgia Giant workshoes, and a sweatshirt so big it came down to his upper thighs. It was a present from Luke, ordered on the Internet. Written across the front were two words in gold: THE AVESTER. Tim had never met Avery Dixon, but he was glad to wear the shirt. His face was deeply tanned. Catawba hadn’t been a real farm for ten years, but there was still an acre of garden behind the barn, and this was harvest season.
He reached the mailbox, opened it, started to paw out the usual junk (nobody got real mail these days, it seemed), then froze. His stomach, which had been fine on the walk down here, seemed to contract. A car was coming, slowing down and pulling over. There was nothing special about it, just a Chevy Malibu smudged with reddish dust and with the usual budget of bugs smashed into the grill. It wasn’t a neighbor, he knew all their cars, but it could have been a salesman, or somebody lost and needing directions. Only it wasn’t. Tim didn’t know who the man behind the wheel was, only that he, Tim, had been waiting for him. Now here he was.