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
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.
“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.
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.