Mom grew larger, became the Miracle Woman again, white and hot and angry, and all the ghosts of the deadscape spilled from their secret spaces, swarmed into the Miracle Woman, became a large shining globe, brighter than a billion stars, and now it was Mom, as big as the world, burning Dad, scorching him, and Dad's soul screamed and scattered and a scrap of thought flew into Freeman's mind, and Freeman and Vicky held together in the face of this strange explosion, the Big Bang of a separate universe, the simultaneous birth and death of a place that couldn't exist.
Freeman triptrapped, Vicky with him, everywhere at once, the gift grown large, and he saw Starlene blink awake, look through fogged eyes at Dad standing over the computer, her hand clawing for the pistol, then she had it and she raised to her elbow and fired at the computer, hoping to destroy it, but the shot went wide and glanced off Dad's shoulder and struck a large tank that stood against the wall.
As the tank hissed from the puncture, Freeman and Vicky triptrapped Starlene and told her together:
Run up the stairs and quick, don't worry about us, we'11 be just fine, we 're together and the bridge doesn't have to break and there's always hope with a thousand roads to healing and good-bye Then Dad's final thought cut in and Freeman wondered if Dad would ask to be forgiven.
Dad said, "You carry your dead with you, Trooper," and then he was gone, his brain frozen, and the deadscape shimmered, became something strange and wonderful, and he suffered the slightest fear, but then Vicky's hand, her real hand was in his as the cold settled around, the cold that seeped under the cell door, a cold that stole their breath and took away their pain. Together they said a final farewell to flesh and walked into a landscape of their own.
FlFTY-ONE
Starlene stood at the gate of Wendover, looking back at the cold stones and unblinking windows of the building. The children had been evacuated and now milled around as if it were a holiday, playing under the trees, throwing pine cones at each other, yelling as the trucks drove past and around the building. The clouds had broken up and the world was bright with autumn, full of the promise of change.
"What did you do?" Isaac asked her.
"I'm not sure. All I know is I pulled the trigger and Freeman and Vicky told me to run. I was in the stairwell and I thought they must have escaped and gone ahead because it sounded like their voices were far away. Some kind of gas was hissing from the tank, so I closed the door to the stairs, then came out and saw you guys, and the guards were bringing the other kids out of the gym."
"The door," Isaac said. "It locks automatically."
Starlene felt the blood leave her face. "They were trapped-"
"It wasn't your fault," Isaac said. "Blame it on the idiots who put the brain cookers down there."
Dipes shook his head. "I didn't see this one. Not with Freeman and Vicky and all the rest of them down there."
"Where are they?"
The boy smiled. "I can't see anymore. Once the machines shut down, the future was gone. But I think they're going to be okay Something about second chances."
Had she killed them? How could she ever forgive herself? Starlene wiped at her eyes, ignoring the clenched fist of pain around her heart, making herself be strong for the children. "I hope you're right."
"Well," Dipes said. "Some futures, nobody knows about."
"God knows," Starlene said. "God knows everything."
Paula Swenson was talking to Bondurant in the driveway, and a shaken Bondurant nodded and rubbed at his head. He pulled a silver flask from his pocket and Swenson smiled in approval as he took a gulp. He shivered his eyes bloodshot and bis skin pale.
Starlene approached them. She overheard Swenson say, "You were drunk the whole time, got it? They're going to ask you questions but you don't know anything."
"I don't know anything," Bondurant said. "Believe me, I don't know anything. You can say that again. I don't know anything." He tilted the flask again, and it flashed in the afternoon sun.
Swenson turned to Starlene. "You have no idea what you've done." Her voice was cold harsh, and she was not at all the giggly, girlish thing she'd been before. Starlene saw a pistol tucked into her waistband.
"I think I have some idea. But I guess I'll never know the rest."
"You already know too much. We can get rid of the machines, and we've got the data on file, so at least Kracowski's work won't be wasted."
"You're in it with them, aren't you? What Freeman called the 'Trust'?"
"The Trust doesn't exist."
"What I'm wondering is how you're going to explain this to the authorities."
Swenson gave a tired smile. She looked old, wrinkled around the eyes. "You mean, how did six people freeze to death on a warm September day? I guess we'll have to call in a few favors. And count on you to keep your mouth shut. Or maybe we'll just blast your memory to pieces. You wouldn't want to end up in a mental ward, would you?"
"You wouldn't dare."
"Oh, I forgot. You're the self-sacrificing type. Religious. Into the whole martyr bit. Well, let's try another way. You don't want anything bad to happen to these kids, do you?"
Starlene looked around at the children playing, at Dipes and Isaac watching her from the gate, Two men in suits carried a stretcher to a van. Deke lay on the stretcher, his face dead and pale. She glanced at the barbed wire and then across the grounds, at the lake where the dead man had walked, at the crumbling building where crews were frantically hauling equipment up from the basement. Then she looked to the mountains beyond.
What would she say to the police or DSS? That a secret agency had conducted mind control experiments and brought the dead back to life? That insane ghosts had risen from the floor? That she had communicated telepathically with the dead? And that she had helped kill six people, some of mem innocent and some of them guilty?
She would end up in the loony bin if she told the truth. It all seemed like a strange nightmare, and even though she could still hear the echoes of Freeman's and Vicky's final thoughts, they were fading, and she couldn't be sure they had ever existed. She couldn't be sure she had visited the land of the dead. And she didn't know for certain which truth was me real one.
Maybe the Trust had already scrambled her memory and she didn't know it.
She shuddered. She hoped, with all her heart, that God knew and understood. And she reminded herself that God didn't send you anything that you couldn't handle.
"Okay, here's the deal," she said to Swenson. "You leave the kids alone. You get rid of Bondurant. They'll shut this place down, but the kids will go to another group home. All of them, together. And I go with them. If your Trust has as much pull as I think, you should be able to swing that easy."
Swenson waved at a panel truck that was coming up the driveway. She motioned it though the gate and watched as it headed down the gravel road, kicking up small clouds of dust that danced like ghosts before being swept away by the breeze.
"Deal. We'll make the pistol disappear, too," Swenson said. "We're good at making things disappear. Remember that."
Starlene's eyes grew watery. Swenson sighed and handed her a wadded-up napkin from her pocket. "Get a grip. Nothing happened, remember? Do your God thing and hold on for them. I don't want to have to come after you. I'd enjoy it, but it would be a real pain in the ass."
"I was just thinking of something Freeman told me. He said, 'You carry your dead with you.'"
"Good one. Ought to come in handy during your next skull session. Now, excuse me. I have a lot of work to do. We can't keep this incident secret forever, and we want to make sure the truth ends up just the way we want it."
Swenson started to walk away, but Starlene grabbed her arm. Swenson's face was blank, as impassive as the stones of Wendover.
"Tell them to give it up," Starlene said. "People shouldn't try to play God."
"Who's playing? You set us back a few years, but you know what else Freeman said? On one of the tapes, when he was six, and Kenneth Mills was first teaching him ESP?"
Starlene looked back at the kids. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.
"He said, 'Daddy, is this what it's like when God talks to you?'"
Starlene looked at the sky, a large blue thing stretching beyond imagination, endless and unforgiving, built of impossible pieces.
"Now get the hell out of here," Swenson said. "From now on, this is none of your business."
Starlene went to Dipes and Isaac and put her arms around them. "We need to talk," she said.
FIFTY-TWO
"Charlie."
"Yeah?" Charlie was in a bad mood. Nothing new there. His wife was diddling around with a manufactured home salesman, and the eleven Miller Lites had been great last night, but weren't so hot this morning. He'd busted his thumb with a hammer and, worst of all, this week's paycheck was already spoken for. So the last thing he wanted was a jaw session with Jack Eggers.
Jack wiped gypsum dust from his nose. "Look at this."
Charlie's hip was pressed against a piece of sheet rock, holding the weight until he could get some nails in. "Come on, let's get this room hung and get out of here."
"This is fucked up."
You 're the fucked-up one, Jack.
Charlie pounded some six-penny nails into the sheet rock. Once the piece was tacked in place, he slipped his hammer into the sheath on his tool belt. He ran his tape measure to the ceiling. One more sheet and they'd be in the hall. And that was fine with Charlie, because this room was giving him the creeps, even with the quartz work lamps blazing hot enough to spike his eyeballs.
"Give me a hand here," Charlie said. Jack didn't answer.
Charlie turned. Dust swirled in the glow of their lamp. Jack stood in the center of the room, the light throwing his stooped silhouette onto the unfinished gray wall. Jack's hair was white from the gypsum. He was staring at the floor.
"Ain't got time for this." Charlie's hangover pulsed through his sore thumb like a truck barreling through a garden hose. "We got to get it taped and sanded. Painters will be in by Friday, and nobody can fuck up a subcontract like a painter. I want to get my check and be gone, else it'll be 'Fix this' and 'Patch that' till hell freezes over."
Jack continued staring at the floor. "You can cover it up, but it'll still be there."
Charlie shivered, even though sweat trickled down his back, the dust making a paste on his skin. He and Jack had hung a bedroom once for the widow of an ex-cop. The cop had blown his head off with a twelve-gauge, got brains and slime and blood all over the wall. All in the wall, because the studs, insulation, and siding had been pocked with dried meat. They'd slapped three-quarter-inch sheet rock over it, taped and troweled the cracks, but that smell of death had been just as strong as before.
You can cover it up, but it'll still be there. That's what the cop's widow had said.
"What the hell, Jack, it's coffee break." Charlie's throat was dry from the dust. He had a couple of fingers of Jim Beam resting in the bottom of his thermos, just waiting for ten-thirty.
"Nobody's been in here, have they?" Jack said.
"Nobody but us chickens." A crew was hanging some windows upstairs in the building's west wing, but they were so far away that Charlie only heard an occasional shouted cussword or dropped tool.
"Then how did that get there?" Jack pointed to the floor.
Charlie's tape measure slid into its box, rattling like a metallic snake.
Don't look, Charlie ordered himself. Damn you, don't look.
He'd seen plenty enough funny stuff in the two days they'd been hanging this section of the basement. Little movements out of the corner of his eye. Sometimes he'd turn to catch them, but there'd be nothing but the softly spinning dust. That wasn't so bad, he could chalk that up to the swimming eyes that came from hoisting a few too many.
Except he'd heard those rumors about the kids. What had happened here, and why the building's new owners were so desperate to give it a facelift and move it on me market. To make it go away.
Charlie swallowed, the dust like gravel going down.
Jack said, "You're in such a pissy mood today I didn't figure you for jokes."
"I ain't joking today, I'm working. You ought to be, too."
Jack looked up at Charlie. Jack's tongue was set between his teem as if he were thinking hard. Usually, Jack couldn't get lost in thought if you gave him a Chinese map with nothing but left turns.
"You didn't do it, did you?" Jack asked, then turned and stared at the floor again.
"All right, goddamn it." Charlie's voice bounced off the flat, empty walls and the echo slapped his eardrums. He set down the sheet rock and stomped over to Jack. "Now what me hell is it I didn't do?"
Jack pointed.
Charlie looked at the floor. His balls shrank and his heart took an accounting of a lifetime of cigarette smoking.
You can cover it up, but it'11 still be there.
Whatever happened here still lived in the walls, just like at that suicide cop's house. Charlie's hands shook, and he knew the two fingers in the thermos wouldn't be nearly enough. He'd be knocking off early today, calling the contractor and playing sick from the safety of his apartment couch. Maybe if he drank enough, he wouldn't be sick anymore. Maybe he'd drink himself sane.
The floor was covered in a fine silt of dust, marked by their footprints.
Among them, scrawled so that the concrete floor showed cleanly, was a single word:
Free.
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