“I wouldn’t try to justify anything you did here if you want to stay alive,” Tim said. “Shutting up might be the wisest course.” He turned his attention to Stackhouse. “Looks like we won’t need the bus after all, since you killed most of the kids—”
“We didn’t—”
“Are you deaf? I said shut it.”
Stackhouse saw what was in the man’s face. It didn’t look like heroism, misguided or otherwise. It looked like murder. He shut it.
“We need a ride out of here,” Tim said, “and I really don’t want to have to march you happy warriors through the woods to this village Luke says you have. It’s been a long, tiring day. Any suggestions?”
Stackhouse seemed not to have heard him. He was looking at the remains of Front Half, and the remains of the admin building squashed beneath it. “All this,” he marveled. “All this because of one runaway boy.”
Tim kicked him lightly in the ankle. “Pay attention, shithead. How do I get those kids out of here?”
Stackhouse didn’t answer, and neither did the man who claimed to have fed the kids. The other one, the guy who looked like a hospital orderly in his tunic top, spoke up. “If I had an idea about that, would you let me go?”
“What’s your name?”
“Chad, sir. Chad Greenlee.”
“Well, Chad, that would depend on how good your idea was.”
28
The last survivors of the Institute hugged and hugged and hugged. Luke felt that he could embrace them like this forever, and feel them embracing him, because he had never expected to see any of them again. For the moment all they needed was inside the huddled circle they made on this littered lawn. All they needed was each other. The world and all its problems could go fuck itself.
Avery?
Kalisha: Gone. Him and the rest. When the tunnel came down on top of them.
Nicky: It’s better this way, Luke. He wouldn’t have been the same. Not himself. What he did, what they did… it would have stripped him, like it did all the others.
What about the kids in Front Half? Are any of them still alive? If there are, we have to—
It was Kalisha who answered, shaking her head, sending not words but a picture: the late Harry Cross, of Selma, Alabama. The boy who had died in the cafeteria.
Luke took Sha by the arms. All of them? Are you saying all of them died of seizures even before that came down?
He pointed to the rubble of Front Half.
“I think when it lifted off,” Nicky said. “When Avery answered the big phone.” And when it was clear Luke didn’t fully understand: When the other kids joined in.
“The faraway kids,” George added. “At the other Institutes. The Front Half kids were just too… I don’t know the word.”
“Too vulnerable,” Luke said. “That’s what you mean. They were vulnerable. It was like one of the damn old shots, wasn’t it? One of the bad ones.”
They nodded.
Helen whispered, “I bet they died seeing the dots. How awful is that?”
Luke’s answer was the childish denial grownups smile at cynically and only other children can fully understand: It’s not fair! Not fair!
No, they agreed. Not fair.
They drew apart. Luke looked at them one by one in the dusty moonlight: Helen, George, Nicky… and Kalisha. He remembered the day he met her, pretending to smoke a candy cigarette.
George: What now, Lukey?
“Tim will know,” Luke said, and could only hope it was true.
29
Chad led the way around the destroyed buildings. Stackhouse and Chef Doug trudged behind him, heads down. Tim followed, gun in hand. Luke and his friends walked behind Tim. The crickets, silenced by the destruction, had begun to sing again.
Chad stopped at the edge of an asphalt track along which half a dozen cars and three or four pickup trucks were parked, nose to tail. Among them was a midsized Toyota panel truck with MAINE PAPER INDUSTRIES on the side. He pointed at it. “What about that, sir? Would that do you?”
Tim thought it would, at least for a start. “What about the keys?”
“Everybody uses those maintenance trucks, so they always leave the keys under the visor.”
“Luke,” Tim said, “would you check on that?”
Luke went; the others went with him, as if they couldn’t bear to be separated even for a minute. Luke opened the driver’s door and lowered the visor. Something dropped into his hand. He held up the keys.
“Good,” Tim said. “Now open up the back. If there’s stuff in there, empty it out.”
The big one called Nick and the smaller one named George took care of this chore, tossing out rakes, hoes, a toolbox, and several bags of lawn fertilizer. While they did it, Stackhouse sat down on the grass and put his head on his knees. It was a profound gesture of defeat, but Tim did not feel sorry for him. He tapped Stackhouse on the shoulder.
“We’ll be going now.”
Stackhouse didn’t look up. “Where? I believe the boy said something about Disneyland.” He gave a singularly humorless snort of laughter.
“None of your affair. But I’m curious. Where are you going to go?”
Stackhouse did not answer.
30
There were no seats in the rear of the panel truck, so the kids took turns sitting up front, starting with Kalisha. Luke squeezed in on the metal floor between her and Tim. Nicky, George, and Helen clustered at the back doors, looking out through the two small dusty windows at a world they had never expected to see again.
Luke: Why are you crying, Kalisha?
She told him, then said it aloud, for Tim’s benefit. “Because it’s all so beautiful. Even in the dark, it’s all so beautiful. I only wish Avery was here to see it.”
31
Dawn was still just a rumor on the eastern horizon when Tim turned south on Highway 77. The one named Nicky had taken Kalisha’s place in the front seat. Luke had gone into the back of the truck with her, and now all four of them were heaped together like a litter of puppies, fast asleep. Nicky also appeared to be asleep, his head thudding against the window every time the truck hit a bump… and there were a lot of bumps.
Just after seeing a sign announcing that Millinocket was fifty miles ahead, Tim looked at his cell phone and saw that he had two bars and nine per cent power. He called Wendy, who answered on the first ring. She wanted to know if he was all right. He said he was. She asked if Luke was.
“Yes. He’s sleeping. I’ve got four more kids. There were others—I don’t know how many, quite a few—but they’re dead.”
“Dead? Jesus, Tim, what happened?”
“Can’t tell you now. I will when I can, and you might even believe it, but right now I’m in the williwags, I’ve got maybe thirty bucks in my wallet, and I don’t dare use my credit cards. There’s a hell of a mess back there, and I don’t want to risk leaving a paper trail. Also, I’m tired as hell. The truck’s still got half a tank of gas, which is good, but I’m running on fumes. Bitch-bitch-bitch, right?”
“What… you… have any…”
“Wendy, I’m losing you. If you hear me, I’ll call back. I love you.”
He didn’t know if she heard that last or not, or what she’d make of it if she had. He’d never said it to her before. He turned off his phone and put it in the console along with Tag Faraday’s gun. All that had happened back in DuPray seemed long ago to him, almost in a life that had been led by another person. What mattered now were these children, and what he was going to do with them.