“I have a gun, you know!”
“So do I, lady,” George said. He grabbed his crotch, then turned to Avery. What’s up, Boss Baby?
Avery looked at them, one after another, and Kalisha saw he was crying. That made her stomach feel heavy, as if she had eaten something bad and was going to be sick.
When it happens, you have to go fast.
Helen: When what happens, Avery?
When I talk on the big phone.
Nicky: Talk to who?
The other kids. The far-away kids.
Kalisha nodded to the door. That woman has a gun.
Avery: That’s the last thing you have to worry about. Just go. All of you.
“We,” Nicky said. “We, Avery. We all go.”
But Avery was shaking his head. Kalisha tried to get inside that head, tried to find out what was going on in there, what he knew, but all she got were three words, repeated over and over.
You’re my friends. You’re my friends. You’re my friends.
17
Luke said, “They’re his friends, but he can’t go with them.”
“Who can’t go with who?” Tim asked. “What are you talking about?”
“About Avery. He has to stay. He’s the one who has to call on the big phone.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Luke.”
“I want them, but I want him, too!” Luke cried. “I want all of them! It’s not fair!”
“He’s crazy,” Mrs. Sigsby said. “Surely you realize that n—”
“Shut up,” Tim said. “I’m telling you for the last time.”
She looked at him, read his face, did as he said.
Tim took the Suburban slowly over a rise and came to a stop. The road widened ahead. He could see lights through the trees, and the dark bulk of a building.
“I think we’re here,” he said. “Luke, I don’t know what’s going on with your friends, but that’s out of our hands right now. I need you to get hold of yourself. Can you do that?”
“Yes.” His voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Yes. Okay.”
Tim got out, walked around to the passenger door, and opened it.
“What now?” Mrs. Sigsby asked. She sounded querulous and impatient, but even in the scant light, Tim could see she was afraid. And she was right to be.
“Get out. You’re driving the car the rest of the way. I’ll be in back with Luke, and if you try anything clever, like driving into a tree before we get to those lights, I’ll put a bullet through the seat and into your spine.”
“No. No!”
“Yes. If Luke is right about what you’ve been doing to those children, you’ve run up quite a bill. This is where it comes due. Get out, get behind the wheel, and drive. Slowly. Ten miles an hour.” He paused. “And turn your cap around backward.”
18
Andy Fellowes called from the computer/surveillance center. His voice was high and excited. “They’re here, Mr. Stackhouse! They’re stopped about a hundred yards from where the road turns into the driveway! Their lights are off, but there’s enough from the moon and the front of the building to see by. If you want me to put it up on your monitor so you can confirm, I—”
“That won’t be necessary.” Stackhouse tossed his box phone on the desk, gave the Zero Phone a final look—it had stayed silent, thank God for that—and headed for the door. His walkie was in his pocket, turned up to high gain and connected to the button in his ear. All of his people were on the same channel.
“Zeke?”
“I’m here, boss. With the lady doc.”
“Doug? Chad?”
“In place.” That was Doug, the chef. Who, in better days, had sometimes sat with the kids at dinner and showed them magic tricks that made the little ones laugh. “We also see their vehicle. Black nine-seater. Suburban or Tahoe, right?”
“Right. Gladys?”
“On the roof, Mr. Stackhouse. Stuff’s all ready. Only have to combine the ingredients.”
“Start it if there’s shooting.” But it was no longer a question of if, only of when, and when was now only three or four minutes away. Maybe less.
“Roger that.”
“Rosalind?”
“In position. The hum is very loud down here. I think they are conspiring.”
Stackhouse was sure they were, but wouldn’t be for long. They would be too busy choking. “Hold steady, Rosalind. You’ll be back at Fenway watching the Sox before you know it.”
“Will you come with me, sir?”
“Only if I can cheer for the Yankees.”
He went outside. The night air was pleasantly cool after a hot day. He felt a surge of affection for his team. The ones who had stuck with him. They would be rewarded no matter what, if he had anything to say about it. This was hard duty, and they had stayed behind to do it. The man behind the wheel of the Suburban was misguided, all right. What he didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, was that the lives of everyone he had ever loved depended on what they had done here, but that was over now. All the misguided hero could do was die.
Stackhouse approached the schoolbus parked by the flagpole and spoke to his troops for the last time. “Shooters, I want you to concentrate on the driver, all right? The one wearing his hat backward. Then rake the whole damn thing, front to back. Aim high, for the windows, knock out that dark glass, get head shots. Acknowledge.”
They did.
“Start firing when I raise my hand. Repeat, when I raise my hand.”
Stackhouse stood in front of the bus. He put his right hand on its chilly, dew-jeweled surface. With his left he grasped the flagpole. Then he waited.
19
“Drive,” Tim said. He was on the floor behind the driver’s seat. Luke was beneath him.
“Please don’t make me do this,” Mrs. Sigsby said. “If you’d just let me tell you why this place is so important—”
“Drive.”
She drove. The lights drew closer. Now she could see the bus, and the flagpole, and Trevor standing between them.
20
It’s time, Avery said.
He had expected to be afraid, he had been afraid ever since waking up in a room that looked like his room but wasn’t, and then Harry Cross had knocked him down and he had been more afraid than ever. But he wasn’t afraid now. He was exhilarated. There was a song his mom played on the stereo all the time when she was cleaning, and now a line of it recurred to him: I shall be released.
He walked to the Ward A kids, who were already circling. Kalisha, Nicky, George, and Helen followed. Avery held out his hands. Kalisha took one and Iris—poor Iris, who might have been saved if this had happened even a day earlier—took the other.
The woman standing guard outside the door shouted something, a question, but it was lost in the rising hum. The dots came, not dim now but bright and getting brighter. The Stasi Lights filled the center of the circle, spinning and rising like the stripe on a barber pole, coming from some deep seat of power, going back there, then returning, refreshed and stronger than ever.