Sleeping Beauties: A Novel

by Stephen King

  “Will you please just shut up,” said Drew T. Barry. He sighted and blew a hole through Maura Dunbarton’s head that vaporized the upper left quadrant of her skull.

  “Oh God,” Don gasped. “Oh God, oh God, oh God. Let’s get out of here. Let’s go back to town.”

  Little as Drew T. Barry liked the pudgy ex-guard, he understood Peters’s impulse to run; even sympathized with it to a degree. But he had not become the most successful insurance man in the Tri-Counties by giving up on a job before it was finished. He grabbed Don by the arm.

  “Drew, they were dead! What if there are more?”

  “I don’t see any more, do you?”

  “But—”

  “Lead the way. We’re going to find the woman we came for.” And out of nowhere, a bit of Drew T. Barry’s high school French recurred to him. “Cherchez la femme.”

  “Churchy what?”

  “Never mind.” Drew T. Barry gestured with his high-powered rifle. Not exactly at Don, but in his general vicinity. “You go first. Thirty feet ahead of me should be good.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Drew T. Barry said, “I believe in insurance.”

  15

  While Vanessa Lampley was putting paid to Maynard Griner and Elmore Pearl was undergoing impromptu oral surgery from the reanimated corpse of Maura Dunbarton, Frank Geary was beneath the half-collapsed reception desk, watching as 0:46 became 0:45 became 0:44. There would be no help from outside, he knew that now. The remaining men out there were either hanging back or gone. If he was going to get past the goddam security station and into the prison proper, he would have to do it on his own. The only alternative was to scurry back outside on his hands and knees and hope the guy behind the bulletproof glass didn’t shoot him in the ass.

  He wished none of this had happened. He wished he was cruising one of the pleasant roads of Dooling County in his little truck, looking for someone’s pet raccoon. If a domesticated coon was hungry, you could coax him close enough to use the net with a piece of cheese or hamburger on the end of the long pole Frank called his Treat Stick. That made him think of the shattered desk leg poked into his back. He rolled on his side, grabbed it, and pushed it along the floor. The leg was just long enough to reach the lethal football. Nice to finally catch a break.

  “What are you doing?” Tig asked from behind the glass.

  Frank didn’t bother answering. If this didn’t work, he was a dead man. He speared the football with the jagged end of the leg. Johnny Lee had assured him that even driving over the stuff wouldn’t cause it to explode, and the stick didn’t set it off. He lifted the desk leg and leaned it just below the window with its ID slot. 0:17 became 0:16 became 0:15. Tig fired once, and Frank felt the bullet pass just above his knuckles.

  “Whoever you are in there, you better get gone,” he said. “Do it while you’ve got the chance.”

  Taking his own advice, Frank dove toward the front doors, expecting to take a bullet. But Tig never fired again.

  Tig was peering through the glass at the white football stuck on the end of the desk leg like a big piece of gum. He got his first good look at the phone, where 0:04 became 0:03. He understood then what it was and what was going to happen. He bolted for the door giving on the prison’s main corridor. His hand was on the knob when the world went white.

  16

  Outside the main doors, shadowed from the brightening sun by the remains of the Fleetwood RV—never to take Barry Holden and his family on camping expeditions again—Frank felt the badly mauled building shudder from the latest blast. Glass that had survived the earlier explosions thanks to reinforcing wire belched out in glittering shards.

  “Come on!” shouted Frank. “Any of you who are left, come on! We’re taking her right now!”

  For a moment there was nothing. Then four men—Carson Struthers, Deputy Treat, Deputy Ordway, and Deputy Barrows—trotted from cover and ran to the blasted front doors of the prison.

  They joined Frank and disappeared into the smoke.

  17

  “Holy . . . fucking . . . shit,” Jared Norcross breathed.

  Michaela was for the time being incapable of speech, but found herself wishing with all her heart for a film crew. Except a crew wouldn’t help, would it? If you broadcast what she was seeing, the audience would dismiss it as a camera trick. You had to actually be here to believe it. You had to actually see a naked woman floating a foot over her bunk with a cell phone in her hands; you had to see the green tendrils twisting through her black hair.

  “Hello, there!” Evie called cheerily, but without looking around. The better part of her attention was on the cell phone in her hands. “I’ll be with you in a minute, but right now I’ve got an important piece of business to finish.”

  Her fingers on the phone were a blur.

  “Jared?” It was Clint. He sounded both amazed and afraid. “What are you doing here?”

  18

  Leading the way (little as he liked it) now, Don Peters had reached the halfway point of the corridor leading to Broadway when Norcross and an old bearded fellow with red suspenders appeared out of the drifting smoke. Norcross was supporting his companion. Red Suspenders was plodding slowly in a hunch. Don guessed he’d been shot, although he couldn’t see any blood. You’ll both be shot in a minute, Don thought, and raised his rifle.

  Thirty feet behind him, Drew T. Barry raised his own rifle, although he had no idea what Peters had seen; the drifting smoke was too thick, and Peters was in the way. Then—as Clint and Willy headed past the Booth and down the short A Wing corridor leading to the soft cell—a pair of long white arms reached out of the infirmary and seized Don by the throat. Drew T. Barry watched, amazed, as, like a magic trick, Don vanished. The infirmary door slammed shut. When Barry hurried up to where Peters had been standing and tried the knob, he found the door locked. He peered through the wire-reinforced glass and saw a woman who looked like she might be high on drugs holding a chisel to Peters’s throat. She had stripped away the ridiculous football helmet; it lay overturned on the floor beside his gun. Peters’s thinning black hair was plastered to his skull in sweaty strings.

  The woman—an inmate wearing prison browns—saw Barry looking in. She raised her chisel and motioned with it. The gesture was clear enough: Get out of here.

  Drew T. Barry considered shooting through the glass, but that would draw any defenders who were left. He also remembered the promise he’d made to himself before shooting the second boogeylady in the gym: After this, Mr. Prison Guard, you’re on your own.

  He gave the crazy-looking inmate a little salute, plus a thumbs-up for good measure. Then he headed down the corridor. But cautiously. Before being grabbed, Peters had seen something.

  19

  “Oh, look who I found,” said Angel. “It’s the one who likes to grab girls’ tits and twist their nips and rub up against their hinies until he shoots off in his underwear.”

  When she had lifted her hand to wave off the insurance man, Don had slipped away, putting a little space between them. “Put that chisel down, inmate. Put it down this instant and I won’t have to write you up.”

  “That ain’t come on your pants this time,” Angel observed. “Too much of it, even for a jizzhound like you. You wet yourself, didn’t you? Mommy wouldn’t like that, would she?”

  At the mention of his sainted mother, Don threw caution to the wind and rushed forward. Angel slashed at him, and might have ended things right there, had he not stumbled over the football helmet; instead of cutting his throat, the chisel drew a deep gash across his forehead. Blood sheeted down his face as he went to his knees.

  “Ow! Ow! Stop it, that hurt!”

  “Yeah? See how this does,” Angel said, and kicked him in the stomach.

  Trying to blink blood out of his eyes, Don grabbed one of Angel’s legs and yanked her down. Her elbow struck the floor and jarred the chisel out of her hand. Don wriggled up her body and reached for her throat. “I ain’t gonna fuck you a
fter you’re dead,” he told her, “that’s nasty. I’ll just choke you unconscious. I won’t kill you until I’m fin—”

  Angel grasped the football helmet, swung it in a wide-armed arc, and brought it crashing into Don’s bleeding forehead. He rolled off her, clutching at his face.

  “Ow, no, you stop that, inmate!”

  That helmet-smashing stuff is also a big penalty in the NFL, Angel thought, but since no one’s showing this on TV, I guess I won’t lose any yardage.

  She hit Don with the helmet twice more, perhaps breaking his nose with the second blow. It was certainly bent badly enough. He managed to turn over and get to his knees with his ass sticking up. He was shouting something that sounded like Stop it, inmate, but it was hard to tell because the pig was panting so hard. Also, his lips were busted and his mouth was full of blood. It sprayed out with each word, and Angel remembered what they used to say when they were kids: Do you serve towels with your showers?

  “No more,” Don said. “Please, no more. You broke my face.”

  She cast the helmet aside and picked up the chisel. “Here’s your titty-rub, Officer Peters!”

  She buried the chisel between his shoulder blades, all the way up to the wooden handle.

  “Mom!” he cried.

  “Okay, Officer Peters: here’s one for your ma!” She ripped the chisel out and buried it in his neck, and he collapsed.

  Angel kicked him a few times, then straddled him and began to stab again. She went on until she could no longer lift her arm.

  CHAPTER 16

  1

  Drew T. Barry reached the Booth and saw what had stopped Peters before the woman grabbed him: two men, one of them possibly Norcross, the arrogant bastard who had instigated this mess. He had his arm around the other one. This was good. They had no idea he was here, and were probably on their way to the woman. To protect her. It was insane, given the size of the force Geary had mustered, but look how much damage they’d managed to inflict already. Good townspeople killed and wounded! They deserved to die just for that.

  And then, two more came out of the smoke: a woman and a younger man. All with their backs to Drew T. Barry.

  Better and better.

  2

  “Jesus Christ,” Clint said to his son. “You were supposed to be hiding.” He looked reproachfully at Michaela. “You were supposed to take care of that.”

  Jared replied before Michaela could. “She did what you told her, but I couldn’t hide. I just couldn’t. Not if there’s a chance we can get Mom back. And Mary. Molly, too.” He pointed to the woman in the cell at the end of the corridor. “Dad, look at her! She’s floating! What is she? Is she even human?”

  Before Clint could answer, a burst of music came from Hicks’s phone, followed by the proclamation of a tiny electronic voice: “Congratulations, Player Evie! You have survived! Boom Town is yours!”

  Evie dropped to her bunk, swung her legs onto the floor, and approached the bars. Clint would have thought he was beyond surprise at this point, but was shocked to see her pubic hair was mostly green. Not hair at all, in fact—it was some kind of vegetation.

  “I won!” she cried happily, “and not a minute too soon! I was down to the last two percent of battery. Now I can die happy!”

  “You’re not going to die,” Clint said. He no longer believed it, though. She was going to die, and when what remained of Geary’s force got here—which would be momentarily—it was likely that they were going to die with her. They had killed too many. Frank’s men wouldn’t stop.

  3

  Drew T. Barry slid around the side of the Booth, liking what he saw more and more. Unless some of the defenders were hiding in the cells, all that remained of Norcross’s little cabal was at the end of this corridor, clustered together like pins in a bowling alley. They had no place to hide, and they were all out of running room. Excellent.

  He raised the Weatherby . . . and a chisel pressed into his throat, just below the angle of his jaw.

  “No-no-no,” Angel said in the voice of a cheery primary school teacher. Her face, shirt, and baggy pants were stippled with blood. “Move and I’ll cut open your juggler vein. I got the blade right on it. Only reason you’re not dead already is you let me finish my business with Officer Peters. Put that elephant gun on the floor. Don’t bend, just drop it.”

  “This is a very valuable weapon, ma’am,” said Drew T. Barry.

  “Ask me if I give a shit.”

  “It might go off.”

  “I’ll take that chance.”

  Drew T. Barry dropped it.

  “Now hand me the one you got slung over your shoulder. Don’t try anything weird, either.”

  From behind them: “Lady, whatever you’re holding on his throat, put it down.”

  Angel snatched a quick look over her shoulder and saw four or five men with their rifles pointed. She smiled at them. “You can shoot me, but this one here will die with me. That’s a stone promise.”

  Frank stood, indecisive. Drew T. Barry, hoping to live a little longer, handed over Don’s M4.

  “Thank you,” Angel said, and hooked it over her own shoulder. She stepped back, dropped the chisel, and raised her hands to either side of her face, showing Frank and the others that they were empty. Then she backed slowly down the short hall to where Clint was standing with his arm still around Willy, supporting him. She kept her hands up the whole way.

  Drew T. Barry, surprised to be alive (but grateful), picked up his Weatherby. He felt lightheaded. He supposed anyone would feel lightheaded after having a lunatic female inmate hold a chisel to his throat. She had told him to put the gun down . . . then let him pick it up again. Why? So she could be on the killing ground with her friends? It seemed the only answer. A crazy one, but she was crazy. They all were.

  Drew T. Barry decided it was up to Frank Geary to make the next move. He had inaugurated this colossal shit-show, let him figure out how to clean it up. That was best, because to the outside world, what they had done in the last half hour would look a lot like a vigilante action. And there were parts of it—the walking corpses in the gym, for instance, or the naked green woman he spied standing at the cell bars a few steps behind Norcross—that the outside world would simply not believe, Aurora or no Aurora. Drew T. Barry felt lucky to be alive, and would be happy to fade into the background. With luck, the world might never know he’d even been here.

  “What the fuck?” said Carson Struthers, who had seen the green woman down the hall. “That ain’t right nor normal. What do you want to do with her, Geary?”

  “Take her and take her alive,” Frank said. He had never felt so tired in his life, but he would see this through. “If she really is the key to Aurora, let the docs figure her out. We’ll drive her to Atlanta and hand her over.”

  Willy started to raise his rifle, but slowly, as if it weighed a thousand pounds. It wasn’t hot in A Wing, but his round face was wet with sweat. It had darkened his beard. Clint grabbed the rifle away from him. At the end of the corridor, Carson Struthers, Treater, Ordway, and Barrows raised their own guns.

  “That’s it!” Evie cried. “Here we go! Shootout at the OK Corral! Bonnie and Clyde! Die Hard in a Women’s Prison!”

  But before the short A Wing corridor could become a free-fire zone, Clint dropped Willy’s rifle and yanked the M4 from Angel’s shoulder. He held it over his head for Frank’s group to see. Slowly, and with some reluctance, the men who had raised their guns now lowered them.

  “No, no,” Evie said. “People won’t pay to see such a poor excuse for a climax. We need a rewrite.”

  Clint paid no attention; he was focused on Frank. “I can’t let you take her, Mr. Geary.”

  In an eerily good John Wayne imitation, Evie drawled, “If ya hurt the little lady, you’re gonna have to answer to me, ya varmint.”

  Frank also ignored her. “I appreciate your dedication, Norcross, although I’ll be damned if I understand it.”

  “Maybe you don’t want to,” Cli
nt said.

  “Oh, I think I’ve got the picture,” Frank said. “You’re the one who’s not seeing clearly.”

  “Too much shrinky-dink shit in his head,” Struthers said, and this brought a few grunts of tense laughter.

  Frank spoke patiently, as if lecturing a slow pupil. “So far as we know, she’s the only woman on earth who can sleep and wake up again. Be reasonable. I only want to take her to doctors who can study her, and maybe figure out how to reverse what’s happened. These men want their wives and daughters back.”

  There was a rumble of agreement at this from the invaders.

  “So stand aside, tenderfoot,” Evie said, still doing the Duke. “Ah reckon—”

  “Oh, shut up,” Michaela said. Evie’s eyes flew wide, as if she had been unexpectedly slapped. Michaela stepped forward, fixing Frank with a stare that burned. “Do I look sleepy to you, Mr. Geary?”

  “I don’t care what you are,” said Frank. “We’re not here for you.” This raised another chorus of agreement.

  “You ought to care. I’m wide awake. So is Angel. She woke us up. Breathed into us and woke us up.”

  “Which is what we want for all the women,” Frank said, and this brought a louder chorus of agreement. The impatience that Michaela read on the faces of the men gathered before her was close to hate. “If you’re really awake, you should get that. It’s not rocket science.”

  “You don’t get it, Mr. Geary. She was able to do that because Angel and I weren’t in cocoons. Your wives and daughters are. That’s not rocket science, either.”

  Silence. She finally had their attention, and Clint allowed himself to hope. Carson Struthers spoke one flat word. “Bullshit.”

  Michaela shook her head. “You stupid, willful man. All of you, stupid and willful. Evie Black isn’t a woman, she’s a supernatural being. Don’t you understand that yet? After all that’s happened? Do you think doctors can take DNA from a supernatural being? Put her in an MRI tube and figure out how she ticks? All the men who have died here, it was for nothing!”