25
Stackhouse heard screams from the roof of admin, and the firing from there ceased. He turned and saw something he could not at first credit. Front Half was rising. A swaying figure on the roof stood silhouetted against the moon, arms outstretched in an effort to maintain balance. It had to be Gladys.
This can’t be happening, he thought.
But it was. Front Half rose higher, crunching and snapping as it parted company with the earth. It blotted out the moon, then dipped like the nose of a huge and clumsy helicopter. Gladys went flying. Stackhouse heard her scream as she disappeared into the shadows. On the admin building, Zeke and Dr. Richardson dropped their guns and cringed against the parapet, staring up at something out of a dream: a building that was slowly climbing into the sky, shedding glass and chunks of cinderblock. It pulled most of the playground’s chainlink fence with it. Water from broken pipes poured from the building’s tangled underside.
The cigarette vending machine tumbled from the broken door of the West Wing lounge into the playground. George Iles, gaping at the underside of Front Half as it rose into the sky, would have been crushed by it if Nicky hadn’t yanked him out of the way.
Doug the chef and Chad the caretaker came through the screening trees, their necks craned, their mouths open, their guns hanging from their hands. They might have assumed that anyone in the bullet-riddled Suburban was dead; more likely, they had forgotten it entirely in their wonder and dismay.
Now the bottom of Front Half was above the admin building’s roof. It came on with the stately, cumbersome grace of an eighteenth-century Royal Navy gunship under sail in a light breeze. Insulation and wires, some still sparking, dangled like broken umbilical cords. A jutting piece of pipe scraped off a ventilation housing. Zeke the Greek and Dr. Felicia Richardson saw it coming and ran for the hatch they had come up through. Zeke made it; Dr. Richardson did not. She put her arms over her head in a gesture of protection that was both instinctive and pitiful.
That was when the access tunnel—weakened by years of neglect and the cataclysmic levitation of Front Half—collapsed, crushing children who were already dying of chlorine poisoning and mental overload. They maintained their circle until the end, and as the roof came down, Avery Dixon had one final thought, both clear and calm: I loved having friends.
26
Tim didn’t remember getting out of the Suburban. He was fully occupied with trying to process what he was seeing: a huge building floating in the air and sliding over a smaller building, eclipsing it. He saw a figure on the roof of that smaller building put its hands over its head. Then there was a muffled crumping sound from somewhere behind this incredible David Copperfield illusion, a great cloud of dust arose… and the floating building dropped like a rock.
A huge thud shook the ground and made Tim stagger. There was no way the smaller building—offices, Tim supposed—could take the weight. It exploded outward in all directions, spraying wood and concrete and glass. More dust billowed up, enough to obscure the moon. The bus alarm (who knew they had them?) went off, making a WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP sound. The person who had been on the roof was dead, of course, and anyone who had still been inside was now nothing but jelly.
“Tim!” Luke had grabbed his arm. “Tim!” He pointed to the two men who had come out of the trees. One was still staring at the ruins, but the other was raising a large pistol. Very slowly, as if in a dream.
Tim raised his own gun, and a lot faster. “Don’t do it. Put them down.”
They looked at him, dazed, then did as he said.
“Now walk to the flagpole.”
“Is it over?” one of the men asked. “Please tell me it’s over.”
“I think so,” Luke said. “Do what my friend says.”
They plodded through the billowing dust toward the flagpole and the bus. Luke picked up their guns, thought about tossing them into the Suburban, then realized they wouldn’t be driving that bullet-riddled, blood-spattered vehicle anywhere. He kept one of the automatics. The other he threw into the woods.
27
Stackhouse took a moment to watch Chad and Chef Doug walk toward him, then turned to regard the ruins of his life.
But who could have known? he thought. Who could have known they had access to enough power to levitate a building? Not Mrs. Sigsby, not Evans, not Heckle and Jeckle, not Donkey Kong—wherever he is tonight—and certainly not me. We thought we were working with high voltage, when in fact all we tapped was a trickle current. The joke was on us.
There was a tap on his shoulder. He turned to regard the misguided hero. He was broad-shouldered (as an authentic hero should be), but he was wearing glasses, and that didn’t fit the stereotype.
Of course there’s always Clark Kent, Stackhouse thought.
“Are you armed?” the man named Tim asked.
Stackhouse shook his head and made a weak gesture with one hand. “They were supposed to take care of that.”
“Are you three the last?”
“I don’t know.” Stackhouse had never felt so weary. He supposed it was shock. That, and the sight of a building rising into the night sky, blotting out the moon. “Maybe some of the staff in Back Half are still alive. And the docs there, Hallas and James. As for the children in Front Half, though… I don’t see how anyone could have survived that.” He gestured toward the ruins with an arm that felt like lead.
“The rest of the children, though,” Tim said. “What about them? Weren’t they in the other building?”
“They were in the tunnel,” Luke said. “He tried to gas them, but the tunnel collapsed first. It collapsed when Front Half rose up.”
Stackhouse thought of denying this, but what good would it do, if the Ellis boy could read his mind? Besides, he was so tired. So completely used up.
“Your friends, too?” Tim asked.
Luke opened his mouth to say he didn’t know for sure, but probably. Then his head jerked around, as if he had been called. If so, the call had come inside his head, because Tim only heard the voice a space of seconds later.
“Luke!”
A girl was running across the littered lawn, skirting the rubble that had exploded outward in a kind of corona. Three others were following her, two boys and another girl.
“Lukey!”
Luke ran to meet the girl in the lead and threw his arms around her. The other three joined them, and as they hugged in a group embrace, Tim heard the hum again, but lower now. Some of the rubble stirred, pieces of wood and stone rising into the air, then falling again. And didn’t he hear the whisper of their mingled voices in his head? Maybe just his imagination, but…
“They’re still putting out juice,” Stackhouse said. He spoke disinterestedly, like a man passing the time of day. “I hear them. You do, too. Be careful. The effect is cumulative. It turned Hallas and James into Heckle and Jeckle.” He gave a single bark of laughter. “Just a couple of cartoon magpies with high-priced medical degrees.”
Tim ignored this and let the children have their joyous reunion—who on God’s earth deserved one more? He kept an eye on the Institute’s three adult survivors. Although they did not, in fact, look as if they were going to give him any trouble.
“What am I going to do with you assholes?” Tim asked. Not really talking to the survivors, just thinking aloud.
“Please don’t kill us,” Doug said. He pointed to the group hug that was still going on. “I fed those youngsters. I kept them alive.”