“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.”
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.
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.
“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?”
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.
“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 after you’re dead,” he told her, “that’s nasty. I’ll just choke you unconscious. I won’t kill you until I’m fin—”