by Stephen King
Her phone vibrated. Coates set her bag on the floor and walked to the vacated couch. She considered how much she disliked the person whose ass had last been planted there, and sat down to the left of the dent in the center cushion.
“Hi, Mom.” Behind Michaela’s voice was the sound of other voices, some shouting, and sirens.
Coates put aside her initial impulse to skin her daughter for not calling in three weeks. “What’s wrong, honey?”
“Hold on.”
The sounds became muffled and Janice waited. Her relationship with her daughter had had its ups and downs. Michaela’s decision to quit law school and go into television journalism (as big a bullshit factory in its own way as the prison system, and probably just as full of criminals) had been a valley, and the nose job that followed had taken them way, way below sea level for awhile. There was a persistence to Michaela, however, which Coates had gradually come to respect. Maybe they weren’t as different as it seemed. Daffy Magda Dubcek, the local woman who had babysat for Janice when Michaela was a toddler, once said, “She’s like you, Janice! She cannot be denied! Tell her one cookie, she make it her personal mission to eat three. Smile and giggle and sweet you up until you cannot say no.”
Two years ago, Michaela had been doing puff pieces on the local news. Now she was on NewsAmerica, where her rise had been rapid.
“Okay,” Michaela said, coming back on. “Had to get someplace quiet. They’ve got us outside the CDC. I can’t talk long. Have you been watching the news?”
“CNN, of course.” Janice loved this jab and never missed a chance to use it.
This time Michaela ignored it. “You know about the Aurora Flu? The sleeping sickness?”
“Something on the radio. Old women who can’t wake up in Hawaii and Australia—”
“It’s real, Mom, and it’s any woman. Elderly, infant, young, middle-aged. Any woman who sleeps. So: don’t go to sleep.”
“Pardon?” Something wasn’t tracking here. It was eleven in the morning. Why would she go to sleep? Was Michaela saying she should never sleep again? If so, it wasn’t going to work out. Might as well ask her to never pee again. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Turn on the news, Mom. Or the radio. Or the Internet.”
The impossibility lingered between them on the line. Janice didn’t know what else to say except, “Okay.” Her kid might be wrong, but her kid wouldn’t lie to her. Bullshit or not, Michaela believed it was the truth.
“The scientist I just talked to—she’s with the feds, and a friend, I trust her—is on the inside. She says that they’re estimating that eighty-five percent of women in the Pacific standard time zone are already out. Don’t tell anyone that, it’s going to be pandemonium as soon as it hits the Internet.”
“What do you mean out?”
“I mean, they aren’t waking up. They’re forming these—they’re like cocoons. Membranes, coatings. The cocoons seem to be partly cerumen—ear wax—partly sebum, which is the oily stuff on the sides of your nose, partially mucus, and . . . something else no one understands, some kind of strange protein. It reforms almost as quick as it comes off, but don’t try to take it off. There have been—reactions. Okay? Do-not-attempt-to-remove-the-stuff.” On this last matter, which made no more sense than the rest, Michaela seemed uncharacteristically severe. “Mom?”
“Yes, Michaela. I’m still right here.”
Her daughter sounded excited now—keen. “It started happening between seven and eight our time, between four and five Pacific standard, which is why the women west of us got hit so hard. So we’ve got all day. We’ve got just about a full tank.”
“A full tank—of waking hours?”
“Bingo.” Michaela heaved a breath. “I know how crazy this thing sounds, but I am in no way kidding. You’ve got to keep yourself awake. And you’re going to have some hard decisions to make. You need to figure out what you’re going to do with your prison.”
“With my prison?”
“Your inmates are going to start falling asleep.”
“Oh,” Janice said. She suddenly did see. At least sort of.
“Have to go, Mom, I’ve got a stand-up and the producer’s going crazy. I’ll call when I can.”
Coates stayed on the couch. Her gaze found the framed photograph on her desk. It showed the late Archibald Coates, grinning in surgical scrubs, holding his infant daughter in the crook of his arm. Dead of a coronary at the impossibly unfair age of thirty, Archie had been gone now almost as long as he had lived. In the picture there was a bit of whitish afterbirth on Michaela’s forehead, like a scrap of web. The warden wished she’d told her daughter that she loved her—but the regret only held her still for a few seconds. There was work to be done. It had taken a few seconds to get a hold on the problem, but the answer—what to do with the women of the prison—did not seem to Janice to be multiple-choice. For as long as she could, she needed to keep on doing what she had always done: maintain order and keep ahead of the bullshit.
She told her secretary, Blanche McIntyre, to buzz their PAs again at their homes. After that, Blanche was to call Lawrence Hicks, the vice-warden, and inform him that his recovery time from wisdom tooth surgery was being curtailed; he was required on the premises immediately. Finally, she needed Blanche to notify each of the officers on duty in turn: due to the national situation everyone was pulling a double. The warden had serious concerns about whether or not she could count on the next rotation coming in. In an emergency people were reluctant to leave their loved ones.
“What?” Blanche asked. “The national situation? Did something happen to the president? And you want everyone for a double? They aren’t going to like that.”
“I don’t care what they like. Turn on the news, Blanche.”
“I don’t understand. What’s happening?”
“If my daughter’s right, you’ll know it when you hear it.”
Next, Coates went to get Norcross in his office. They were going to check on Kitty McDavid together.
5
Jared Norcross and Mary Pak were sitting on the bleachers during Period Three PE, their tennis rackets put aside for the time being. They and a bunch of Silly Sophomores on the lower tiers were watching two seniors playing on the center court, grunting like Monica Seles with each hit. The skinny one was Curt McLeod. The muscular redhead was Eric Blass.
My nemesis, Jared thought.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said.
Mary looked at him, eyebrows raised. She was tall, and (in Jared’s opinion) perfectly proportioned. Her hair was black, her eyes were gray, her legs long and tanned, her lowtops immaculately white. Immaculate was, in fact, the best word for her. In Jared’s opinion. “And that would be apropos what?”
As if you don’t know, Jared thought. “Apropos you going to see Arcade Fire with Eric.”
“Um.” She appeared to think this over. “Lucky you’re not the one going with him, then.”
“Hey, remember the field trip to the Kruger Street Toy and Train Museum? Back in fifth grade?”
Mary smiled and brushed her hand, the nails painted a velvety blue, through her long hair. “How could I forget? We almost didn’t get in, because Billy Mears wrote some nasty ink on his arm. Mrs. Colby made him stay on the bus with the driver, the one who had the stutter.”
Eric lofted the ball, went up on his toes, and whacked a killer serve that barely topped the net. Instead of trying to return it, Curt flinched back. Eric raised his arms like Rocky at the top of the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps. Mary clapped. Eric turned toward her and bowed.
Jared said, “It was MRS. COLBY EATS THE BIG ONE on his arm, and Billy didn’t put it there. Eric did. Billy was fast asleep when he did it, and kept his mouth shut because staying on the bus was better than getting beaten up by Eric at a later date.”
“So?”
“So Eric’s a bully.”
“Was a bully,” Mary said. “Fifth grade was a long time ago.”
/> “As the twig is bent, so the bough is shaped.” Jared heard the pedantic tone his father sometimes adopted, and would have taken it back if he could.
Mary’s gray eyes were on him, appraising. “Meaning what?”
Stop, Jared told himself, just shrug and say whatever and let it go. He often gave himself such good advice, and his mouth usually overrode him. It did so now.
“Meaning people don’t change.”
“Sometimes they do. My dad used to drink too much, but he stopped. He goes to AA meetings now.”
“Okay, some people do. I’m glad your father was one of them.”
“You better be.” The gray eyes were still fixed on him.
“But most people don’t. Just think about it. The fifth grade jocks—like Eric—are still the jocks. You were a smart kid then, and you’re a smart kid now. The kids who got in trouble in fifth are still getting in trouble in eleventh and twelfth. You ever see Eric and Billy together? No? Case closed.”
This time Curt managed to handle Eric’s serve, but the return was a bunny and Eric was vulturing the net, almost hanging over it. His return—a clear net-foul—hit Curt in the belt-buckle. “Quit it, dude!” Curt shouted. “I might want to have kids someday!”
“Bad idea,” Eric said. “Now go get that, it’s my lucky ball. Fetch, Rover.”
While Curt shuffled sulkily to the chainlink fence where the ball had come to rest, Eric turned to Mary and took another bow. She gave him a hundred-watt smile. It stayed on when she turned back to Jared, but the wattage dimmed considerably.
“I love you for wanting to protect me, Jere, but I’m a big girl. It’s a concert, not a lifelong commitment.”
“Just . . .”
“Just what?” The smile was all gone now.
Just watch out for him, Jared wanted to say. Because writing on Billy’s arm was a minor thing. A grade-school thing. In high school there have been ugly locker room stunts I don’t want to talk about. In part, because I never put a stop to any of them. I just watched.
More good advice, and before his traitor mouth could disregard it, Mary swiveled in her seat, looking toward the school. Some movement must have caught her eye, and now Jared saw it, too: a brown cloud lifting off from the gymnasium roof. It was large enough to scare up the crows that had been roosting in the oaks surrounding the faculty parking lot.
Dust, Jared thought, but instead of dissipating, the cloud banked sharply and headed north. It was flocking behavior, but those weren’t birds. They were too small even for sparrows.
“An eclipse of moths!” Mary exclaimed. “Wow! Who knew?”
“That’s what you call a whole bunch of them? An eclipse?”
“Yes! Who knew they flocked? And most moths leave daytime to the butterflies. Moths are fly-by-nights. At least, usually.”
“How do you know all that?”
“I did my eighth grade science project on moths—mott, in Old English, meaning maggot. My dad talked me into doing it, because I used to be scared of them. Someone told me when I was little that if you got the dust from a moth’s wings in your eyes, you’d go blind. My dad said that was just an old wives’ tale, and if I did my science project on moths, I might be able to make friends with them. He said that butterflies are the beauty queens of the insect world, they always get to go to the ball, and the poor moths are the ones who get left behind like Cinderella. He was still drinking then, but it was a fun story just the same.”
Those gray eyes on him, daring him to disagree.
“Sure, cool,” Jared said. “Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Make friends with them.”
“Not exactly, but I found out lots of interesting stuff. Butterflies close their wings over their backs when they’re at rest. Moths use theirs to protect their bellies. Moths have frenulums—those are wing-coupling devices—but butterflies don’t. Butterflies make a chrysalis, which is hard. Moths make cocoons, which are soft and silky.”
“Yo!” It was Kent Daley, riding his bike across the softball field from the tangle of waste ground beyond. He was wearing a backpack and his tennis racket was slung over his shoulder. “Norcross! Pak! You see all those birds take off?”
“They were moths,” Jared said. “The ones with frenulums. Or maybe it’s frenula.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. What are you doing? It’s a school day, you know.”
“Had to take out the garbage for my ma.”
“Must have been a lot of it,” Mary said. “It’s already Period Three.”
Kent smirked at her, then saw Eric and Curt on the center court and dropped his bike into the grass. “Take a seat, Curt, let a man take over. You couldn’t hit Eric’s serve if your dog’s life depended on it.”
Curt ceded his end of the court to Kent, a bon vivant who did not seem to feel any pressing need to visit the office and explain his late arrival. Eric served, and Jared was delighted when the newly arrived Kent smashed it right back at him.
“The Aztecs believed that black moths were omens of bad luck,” Mary said. She had lost interest in the tennis match going on below. “There are people out in the hollers who still believe a white moth in the house means someone’s going to die.”
“You are a regular moth-matician, Mary.”
Mary made a sad trombone noise.
“Wait, you’ve never been in a holler in your life. You just made that up to be creepy. Good job, by the way.”
“No, I didn’t make it up! I read it in a book!”
She punched him in the shoulder. It kind of hurt, but Jared pretended it didn’t.
“Those were brown ones,” Jared said. “What do brown ones mean?”
“Oh, that’s interesting,” Mary said. “According to the Blackfeet Indians, brown moths bring sleep and dreams.”
6
Jared sat on a bench at the far end of the locker room, dressing. The Silly Sophomores had already departed, afraid of getting whipped with wet towels, a thing for which Eric and his cohorts were famous. Or maybe the right word was infamous. You say frenulum, I say frenula, Jared thought, putting on his sneakers. Let’s call the whole thing off.
In the shower, Eric, Curt, and Kent were hooting and splashing and bellowing all the standard witticisms: fuck you, fuck ya mother, I already did, fag, bite my bag, your sister’s a scag, she’s on the rag, et cetera. It was tiresome, and there was so much high school left before he could escape.
The water went off. Eric and the other two slapped wet-footed into the area of the locker room they considered their private preserve—seniors only, please—which meant Jared only had to suffer a brief glimpse at their bare butts before they disappeared around the corner. Fine with him. He sniffed his tennis socks, winced, stuffed them into his gym bag, and zipped it up.
“I saw Old Essie on my way here,” Kent was saying.
Curt: “The homeless chick? The one with the shopping cart?”
“Yeah. Almost rode over her and fell into that shithole where she lives.”
“Someone ought to clean her out of there,” Curt said.
“She must have busted open her stash of Two Buck Chuck last night,” Kent said. “Totally out cold. And she must have rolled in something. She had cobwebby crud all over her face. Fucking nasty. I could see it moving when she breathed. So I give her a yell, right? ‘Hey Essie, what’s up, girl? What’s up, you toothless old cunt?’ Nothing, man. Fuckin flatline.”
Curt said, “I wish there was a magic potion to put girls to sleep so you could bang em without having to butter them up first.”
“There is,” Eric said. “It’s called roofies.”
As they bellowed laughter, Jared thought, That’s the guy taking Mary to see Arcade Fire. That guy right over there.
“Plus,” Kent said, “she’s got all kinds of weird shit in that little ravine she sleeps in, including the top half of a department store mannequin. I’ll fuck just about anything, man, but a drunk-ass homeless bitch covered in spiderwe
bs? That’s where I draw the line, and that line is thick.”
“My line is totally dotted right now.” There was a wistful note in Curt’s voice. “The situation is desperate. I’d bone a zombie on The Walking Dead.”
“You already did,” Eric said. “Harriet Davenport.”
More prehistoric laughter. Why am I listening to this? Jared asked himself, and it occurred to him again: Mary is going to a concert with one of these sickos. She has no idea what Eric is actually like, and after our conversation on the bleachers, I’m not sure she’d believe me if I told her.
“You would not bone this chick,” Kent said. “But it’s funny. We ought to go by after school. Check her out.”
“Never mind after school,” Eric said. “Let’s cut out after sixth period.”
Whacking sounds as they slapped hands, sealing the deal. Jared grabbed his gym bag and left.
It wasn’t until lunch that Frankie Johnson sat down next to Jared and said the weird female sleeping sickness that used to be only in Australia and Hawaii had shown up in DC, Richmond, and even in Martinsburg, which wasn’t that far away. Jared thought briefly of what Kent had said about Old Essie—spiderwebs on her face—then decided it couldn’t be. Not here. Nothing that interesting ever happened in Dooling.
“They’re calling it Aurora,” Frankie said. “Hey, is that chicken salad? How is it? Want to trade?”
CHAPTER 5
1
Unit 12 of A Wing was bare except for the single bunk, the steel toilet, and the camera bulbs in the corners of the ceiling. No painted square on the wall for posting pictures, no desk. Coates had dragged in a plastic chair to sit on while Clint examined Kitty McDavid, who lay on the bunk.
“So?” asked Coates.
“She’s alive. Her vitals are strong.” Clint stood from his crouch. He unsnapped his surgical gloves and carefully placed them in a plastic bag. From his jacket pocket he took out a small pad and a pen and began to jot notes.