“Sooner or later everybody comes around, is what I’m saying, Theo.”
“Why do you keep using my name?”
“I’m sorry? Theo, did you ask me something?”
He swallowed, tasting blood again, the foulness of his own mouth. His head was in his hands. “My name. You’re always saying it.”
“Just trying to get your attention. You haven’t been yourself much these last few days, if you’ll pardon my saying so.”
Theo said nothing.
“So okay,” the voice went on. “You don’t want me to use your name. Don’t see why not, but I can live with that. Let’s change the subject. What are your thoughts on Alicia? Because I do believe that girl is something special.”
Alicia? The voice was talking about Alicia? It simply wasn’t possible. But nothing was, that was the thing. The voice was always saying things that were impossible.
“Now, I thought it would be Mausami, the way you described her,” the voice went merrily on. “Back when we had our little talk. I was pretty sure my tastes would run in her direction. But there’s something about a redhead that just gets my blood boiling.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about. I told you. I don’t know anyone by those names.”
“You dog, Theo. Are you trying to tell me you put the wood to Alicia, too? And Mausami in the condition she is?”
The room seemed to tip. “What did you say?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. You didn’t hear? Now, I’m surprised she didn’t tell you. Your Mausami, Theo.” The voice lifted to a kind of singsong. “Got a little bunski in the ovenski.”
He was trying to focus. To hold the words he was hearing in place so he could grasp their meaning. But his brain was heavy, so heavy, like a huge, slippery stone the words kept sliding off.
“I know, I know,” the voice went on. “It came as a shock to me, too. But back to Lish. If you don’t mind my asking, how does she like it? I’m thinking she’s an on-all-fours-howl-at-the-moon kind of girl. How about it, Theo? Set me straight here if I’m wrong.”
“I don’t.… know. Stop using my name.”
A pause. “All right. If that’s how you want it. Let’s try a new name, shall we? How about: Babcock.”
His mind clenched. He thought he might be sick. He would have been, if there had been anything in his stomach to come up.
“Now we’re getting somewhere. You know about Babcock, don’t you, Theo?”
That was what was on the other side, the other side of the dream. One of Twelve. Babcock.
“What … is he?”
“Come on, you’re a smart fellow. You really don’t know?” An expectant pause. “Babcock is … you.”
I am Theo Jaxon, he thought, saying the words in his mind like a prayer. I am Theo Jaxon, I am Theo Jaxon. Son of Demetrius and Prudence Jaxon. First Family. I am Theo Jaxon.
“He’s you. He’s me. He’s everyone, at least in these parts. I like to think he’s kind of like our local god. Not like the old gods. A new god. A dream of god we all dream together. Say it with me, Theo. I. Am. Babcock.”
I am Theo Jaxon. I am Theo Jaxon. I am not in the kitchen. I am not in the kitchen with the knife.
“Shut up, shut up,” he begged. “You’re not making any sense.”
“There you go again, trying to make sense of things. You gotta let go, Theo. This old world of ours hasn’t made sense in a hundred goddamn years. Babcock isn’t about making sense. Babcock just is. Like the We. Like the Many.”
The words found Theo’s lips. “The Many.”
The voice was softer now. It floated toward him from behind the door on waves of softness, calling him to sleep. To just let go and sleep.
“That’s right, Theo. The Many. The We. The We of Babcock. You gotta do it, Theo. You’ve got to be a good boy and close your eyes and carve that old bitch up.”
He was tired, so tired. It was like he was melting from the outside in, his body liquefying around him, around the single overwhelming need to close his eyes and sleep. He wanted to cry but he had no tears to shed. He wanted to beg but he didn’t know what for. He tried to think of Mausami’s face, but his eyes had closed again; he had let his lids fall shut, and he was falling, falling into the dream.
“It’s not as bad as you think. A bit of a tussle at the start. The old gal’s got some fight in her, I’ll give her that. But in the end, you’ll see.”
The voice was somewhere above him, floating down through the warm yellow light of the kitchen. The drawer, the knife. The heat and smell and the tightness in his chest, the silence plugging his throat, and the soft place on her neck where her voice was bobbing in its rolls of flesh. I tell you, the boy isn’t just dumb. He’s been struck dumb. Theo was reaching for the knife, the knife was in his hand.
But a new person was in the dream now. A little girl. She was seated at the table, holding a small, soft-looking object in her lap: a stuffed animal.
—This is Peter, she stated in her little girl’s voice, not looking at him. He’s my rabbit.
—That’s not Peter. I know Peter.
But she wasn’t a little girl, she was a beautiful woman, tall and lovely, with tresses of black hair that curved liked cupped hands around her face, and Theo wasn’t in the kitchen anymore. He was in the library, in that terrible room with its stench of death and the rows of cots under the windows and on each cot the body of a child, and the virals were coming; they were coming up the stairs.
—Don’t do it, said the girl, who was a woman now. The kitchen table at which she sat had somehow traveled to the library, and Theo saw that she wasn’t beautiful at all; in her place sat an old woman, wizened and toothless, her hair gone ghostly white.
—Don’t kill her, Theo.
No.
He jerked awake, the dream popping like a bubble. “I won’t … do it.”
The voice broke into a roar. “Goddamnit, you think this is a game? You think you get to choose how this is going to go?”
Theo said nothing. Why wouldn’t they just kill him?
“Well, okay then, pardner. Have it your way.” The voice released a great, final sigh of disappointment. “I got news for you. You’re not the only guest in this hotel. You won’t like this next part very much, I don’t expect.” Theo heard the boots scraping on the floor, turning to go. “I had higher hopes for you. But I guess it’s all the same. Because we’re going to have them, Theo. Maus and Alicia and the rest. One way or the other, we’re going to have them all.”
FIFTY-FOUR
It was the new moon, Peter realized, as they made their way through the darkness. New moon, and not one soul about.
Getting past the guards had been the easy part. It was Sara who had come up with a plan. Let’s see Lish do this, she had said, and marched straight out the door across the square to where the two men, Hap and Leon, were standing by a fire barrel, watching her approach. She stepped up to them, positioning herself between them and the door of the hut. A brief negotiation ensued; one of the men, Hap, the smaller of the two, turned and walked away. Sara ran one hand through her hair, the signal. Hollis slipped outside, ducking into the shadow of the building, then Peter. They circled around to the north side of the square and took positions in the alleyway. A moment later, Sara appeared, leading the remaining guard, whose quick step told them what she’d promised. As she walked past them, Hollis rose from his hiding place behind an empty barrel, wielding the leg of a chair.
“Hey,” said Hollis, and hit the one named Leon so hard he simply melted.
They dragged his limp body deeper into the alley. Hollis patted him down; strapped to the man’s leg in a leather sheath, hidden under the jumpsuit, was a short-barreled revolver. Caleb appeared with a length of laundry line; they bound the man’s hands and feet and stuffed a wadded rag into his mouth.
“Is it loaded?” Peter asked.
Hollis had opened the cylinder. “Three rounds.” He snapped it closed with a flick of his wrist and passed the weapon to Ali
cia.
“Peter, I think these buildings are empty,” she said.
It was true; there were no lights anywhere.
“We better hurry.”
They approached the prison from the south, across an empty field. Hollis believed the entrance to the building was located on the far side, facing the main gate to the compound. There was, he said, a kind of tunnel there, the entrance arched in stone and set into the wall. They would attempt this if they had to, but it stood in full view of the observation towers; the plan was to look for a less risky way in. The vans and pickups were kept in a garage on the south side of the building. It would make sense for Olson and his men to keep their hard assets together, and, in any event, they had to look somewhere first.
The garage was sealed, the doors drawn down and secured with a heavy padlock. Peter looked through a window but could see nothing. Behind the garage was a long concrete ramp leading to a platform with an overhang and a pair of bay doors set in the prison wall. A dark stain ran up the middle of the ramp. Peter knelt and touched it; his fingers came away wet. He brought his fingers to his nose. Engine oil.
The doors had no handles, no obvious mechanism by which they could be opened. The five of them formed a line and pressed their hands against the smooth surface, attempting to draw it upward. They felt no sharp resistance, only the weight of the doors themselves, too heavy to lift without something to grip. Caleb scampered back down the ramp to the garage; a crash of glass and he returned a moment later, holding a tire iron.
They formed a line again, managing to lift the door far enough for Caleb to wedge the iron under it. A blade of light had appeared on the concrete. They drew the door upward and ducked through one by one and let it fall closed behind them.
They found themselves in some kind of loading area. There were coils of chain on the floor, old engine parts. Somewhere nearby water was dripping; the air smelled like oil and stone. The source of the light lay up ahead, a flickering glow. As they moved forward, a familiar shape emerged from the gloom.
A Humvee.
Caleb opened the tailgate. “Everything’s gone, except for the fifty-cal. There are three boxes of rounds for that.”
“So where are the rest of the guns?” Alicia said. “And who moved this in here?”
“We did.”
They swiveled to see a single figure step from the shadows: Olson Hand. More figures began to emerge, surrounding them. Six of the orange-suited men, all of them armed with rifles.
Alicia had drawn the revolver from her belt and was pointing it at Olson. “Tell them to back off.”
“Do as she says,” Olson said, holding up a hand. “I mean it. Guns down, now.”
One by one the men dropped the barrels of their weapons. Alicia was the last—though Peter noted that she didn’t return the gun to her belt, but kept it at her side.
“Where are they?” Peter asked Olson. “Do you have them?”
“I thought Michael was the only one.”
“Amy and Mausami are missing.”
He hesitated, appearing perplexed. “I’m sorry. This isn’t what I intended. I don’t know where they are. But your friend Michael is with us.”
“Who’s ‘us’?” Alicia demanded. “What’s going on, goddamnit? Why are we all having the same dream?”
Olson nodded. “The fat woman.”
“You son of a bitch, what did you do with Michael?”
With that, she raised the gun again, using two hands to steady the barrel, which she aimed at Olson’s head. Around them, six rifles responded in kind. Peter felt his stomach clench.
“It’s all right,” Olson said quietly, his eyes fixed on the barrel of the gun.
“Tell him, Peter,” Alicia said. “Tell him I will put a bullet in him right here unless he starts talking.”
Olson was gently waving his hands at his sides. “Everyone, stay calm. They don’t know. They don’t understand.”
Alicia drew her thumb down on the hammer of the revolver to cock it. “What don’t we know?”
In the thin lamplight, Olson appeared diminished, Peter thought. He seemed hardly the same person at all. It was as if a mask had fallen away and Peter was seeing the real Olson for the first time: a tired old man, beset by doubt and worry.
“Babcock,” he said. “You don’t know about Babcock.”
Michael was on his back, his head buried beneath the control panel. A mass of wiring and plastic connectors hung above his face.
“Try it now.”
Gus closed the knife switch that connected the panel to the batteries. From beneath them came the whir of the main generator spinning up.
“Anything?”
“Hang on,” Gus said. Then: “No. The starter breaker popped again.”
There had to be a short in the control harness somewhere. Maybe it was the stuff in the drink Billie had given him or all that time he’d spent around Elton, but it was as if Michael could actually smell it—a faint aerial discharge of hot metal and molten plastic, somewhere in the tangle of wires above his face. With one hand he moved the circuit tester up and down the board; with the other he gave a gentle tug at each connection. Everything was tight.
He shimmied his way out and drew up to a seated position. The sweat was pouring down. Billie, standing above him, eyed him anxiously.
“Michael—”
“I know, I know.”
He took a long swig from a canteen and wiped his face on his sleeve, giving himself a moment to think. Hours of testing circuits, tugging wires, backtracking each connection to the panel. And still he’d found nothing.
He wondered: What would Elton do?
The answer was obvious. Crazy, perhaps, but still obvious. And in any event, he’d already tried everything else he could think of. Michael climbed to his feet and moved down the narrow walkway connecting the cab with the engine compartment. Gus was standing by the starter control unit, a penlight tucked in his mouth.
“Reset the relay,” he instructed.
Gus spat the flashlight into his hand. “We’ve already tried that. We’re draining the batteries. We do this too many times, we’ll have to recharge them with the portables. Six hours at least.”
“Just do it.”
Gus shrugged and reached around the unit, into its nest of pipes, feeling his way blind.
“Okay, for what it’s worth, it’s reset.”
Michael stepped back to the breaker panel. “I want everybody to be very, very quiet.”
If Elton could do it, so could he. He took a deep breath and slowly released it as he closed his eyes, trying to empty his mind.
Then he flipped the breaker.
In the instant that followed—a splinter of a second—he heard the spin of the batteries and the rush of current moving through the panel, the sound in his ears like water moving through a tube. But something was wrong; the tube was too small. The water pushed against the sides and then the current began to flow in the wrong direction, a violent turbulence, half going one way and half the other, canceling each other out, and just like that everything stopped; the circuit was broken.
He opened his eyes to find Gus staring at him, mouth open, showing his blackened teeth.
“It’s the breaker,” Michael said.
He drew a screwdriver from his tool belt and popped the breaker from the panel. “This is fifteen amps,” he said. “This thing wouldn’t power a hot plate. Why the hell would it be fifteen amps?” He gazed up at the box, its hundreds of circuits. “What’s this one, in the next slot? Number twenty-six.”
Gus examined the schematic that was spread out on the tiny table in the engine’s cab. He glanced at the panel, then back to the drawing. “Interior lights.”
“Flyers, you don’t need thirty amps for that.” Michael jimmied the second breaker free and swapped it for the first one. He closed the knife switch again, waiting for the breaker to pop. When it didn’t, he said, “That’s it.”
Gus was frowning doubtfully. “That’s it?”<
br />
“They must have gotten switched. It’s got nothing to do with the head-end unit. Reset the relay and I’ll show you.”
Michael moved forward to the cab, where Billie was waiting in one of the two swiveling chairs at the windshield. Everyone else was gone; the rest of the crew had left just after dark in Billie’s pickup, headed for the rendezvous.
Michael took the other chair. He turned the key set in the panel beside the throttle; from below they heard the batteries spinning up. The dials on the panel began to glow, a cool blue. Through the narrow slit between the protective plates, Michael could see a curtain of stars beyond the open doors of the shed. Well, he thought, it’s now or never. Either there was current to the starter or there wasn’t. He’d found one problem but who knew how many others there might be. It had taken him twelve days to fix one Humvee. Everything he’d done here, he’d done in a little under three hours.
Michael lifted his voice to the rear of the car, where Gus was priming the fuel system, clearing any air from the line: “Go ahead!”
Gus fired the starter. A great roar rose from below, carrying the satisfying smell of combusting diesel. The engine gave a shuddering lurch as the wheels engaged and began to push against their brakes.
“So,” Michael said, turning to Billie, “how do you drive this thing?”
FIFTY-FIVE
In the end, they could only take Olson at his word. They simply had no choice.
They divvied up the weapons and split into two groups. Olson and his men would storm the room from ground level while Peter and the others entered from above. The space they called the ring had once been the prison’s central courtyard, covered by a domed roof. Part of the roof had fallen away, leaving the space open to the outside, but the original structural girders were intact. Suspended from these girders, fifteen meters above the ring, was a series of catwalks, once used by the guards to monitor the floor below. These were arranged like the spokes of a wheel with ducts running above them, wide enough for a person to crawl through.
Once they had secured the catwalk, Peter and the others would descend by flights of stairs at the north and south ends of the room. These led to three tiers of caged balconies encircling the yard. This would be where most of the crowd would be, Olson explained, with perhaps a dozen stationed on the floor to operate the fireline.
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