“Where? This empty area here?”
“There’s a clubhouse there. Brand-new, they opened it this summer.”
Fern said, “That’s four or five miles away.”
Kells folded the brochure and stuffed it into his coat pocket, ready to leave.
Terry, getting no satisfaction from his phone, collapsed it against the breast of his overcoat. “Five miles? In this weather?”
Kells nodded. “You’re going to get your shoes wet.”
Dr. Rosen said, “If we wait here, I’m sure help will come. If we leave, how will they find us?”
Darla’s blond hair was tucked under a head wrap, ski-lift passes dangling from her parka. “They let the guards go free.”
Kells looked at her. He seemed to be constantly in motion, even when standing still. “How many of those guards do you think were women?”
Darla blanched. Rebecca did too. Now all she wanted to do was run.
“Look!” said Coe.
He was pointing to the storm door. Blue lights spun through the snow and the trees. A cruiser was rolling along Post Road, but it was not the police.
Kells threw his bag strap over his shoulder and took up Fern’s bulky carpetbag and the rusted rifle. “Out the back. We go now.”
They rushed to the kitchen. Fern was the last to leave, blowing out the spiced candle on the reception desk and looking around one last time for Ruby. Rebecca called to her from the swinging doors.
They stole out into the backyard like criminals themselves, eleven fugitives blundering into the snow-muffled night. Some drifts reached Rebecca’s knees, pulling on her legs like a soft floor in a dream, her bag cutting into her shoulder. But with fear at her back she slogged ahead. At the tree line she glanced back once at the inn, faded into the snow except for a faint yellow light in an upstairs window. Bert-and-Rita glided past her on their long skis, arms pumping. Terry followed, struggling in his long coat, eventually dumping one of his Louis Vuitton garment bags. Kells was the last, breathing hard, toting his and Fern’s possessions. Their foot trail lay glaringly in the white expanse, but the wind and snowfall followed them late into the night. By morning all trace of their journey was obscured.
The third day
Chapter 9
Menckley, the arsonist, entered the clean, circular command Center, the technological brain of ADX Gilchrist. “The head count went better than expected,” he reported. “More than twenty confirmed dead. The Marielitos went after a couple more — vengeance scores. Some others went over the mountains.”
Luther Trait eyed the penitentiary monitors as Spotty stood next to him, impassive and broad. Cons roamed the halls freely, still basking in their liberation, exhilarated from running hard through the cold night. Trait switched on the facility intercom.
“Brothers,” he said, and watched their eyes go to the ceilings. “This is Luther Trait. I have accomplished the impossible. I have delivered you from your cages. This morning you are free men.” He saw their mouths twisted by their war-whooping, but the thick walls of the Command Center were soundproof. “You have done well by bringing the residents here. The breakout was a surprise to all of you, and since then you have been operating largely on faith. I accept your compliance as repayment for your freedom. Consider us even. I know you have concerns regarding government retaliation, but rest assured that we have anticipated everything. My address to the world will be broadcast over this same intercom in a few short minutes, so please — stay tuned.”
He switched off the microphone and watched the animals cheering throughout the facility.
Menckley worried his hands like a psoriatic. “Looting was widespread outside the town center,” he said. “Weapons and booze mostly. They’re drunk now, and happy, but it won’t last.”
“No, it won’t,” said Trait, turning to one of the men collecting rifles and tasers and mace from the room, an ex-con known as Burly. “How certain are you that all the residents have been rounded up?”
Burly, a murderer and strongman from Detroit, closely resembled the buzz-cut bank robber in police shooting galleries. “This town’s a ghost town,” he said confidently.
“All loaded onto trucks?”
“All loaded.”
Trait turned to Menckley. “Start video recording. Set the system for exterior lockdown and then drop the package. Make sure you leave yourself enough time to get out.”
Menckley was nervous but excited. “Don’t worry,” he said.
Trait glanced around at the Command Center. He was leaving ADX Gilchrist now, for the last time. But before he could, the police radio on his belt squawked.
It was DeYoung, his radioman back at the police station. “The FBI won’t talk to you live on the air. They say they’ll only speak to you privately.”
Trait nodded. “Good. Then they can just listen like the rest of the country.”
Chapter 10
The first hours all ran together. The march to the golf course was an odyssey of whipping wind and gluelike snow, the coldest night Rebecca had ever known. Dawn brought neither sun nor heat, only milky light bleeding into the sky.
Kells kicked in a window in the pro shop to gain access to the country club. There was a stone hearth in the center of the main lounge, shaped like a wide, shallow well, and they gathered newspapers and dry wood for a fire. The flume smoke was a risk overshadowed by the need for heat. They sat around the growing fire, exhausted and smarting, feeling the heat on their cold-hardened faces and awaiting the sear of human thaw.
Rebecca’s jaw defrosted, and she soon regained movement in her fingers and thumbs. She looked around. The lounge was all manufactured rusticity, dark wood and mounted moose heads and Indian hangings. Mia was staring deeply into the fire, her face florid. Darla was struggling to toe off her boots.
As Rebecca’s head began to clear, the march began to fade into memory, supplanted by the outrageous reality of the present. Gilchrist had been overrun by criminals. There were three hundred sociopaths on the loose.
Kells shed his parka and went behind the front desk to the manager’s office. Then he started away down the dark stone-and-timber hallway.
“Who is he?” said Terry, as soon as Kells disappeared around the corner at the long end. “Anybody know? Anybody talk to him?”
Blank stares, exhausted head shakes.
“What he does, where he’s from?” Still no response from the rest. “He was out driving around town after the riot started. You realize — we’re following this person, and we don’t know who or what he is.”
“He carries a gun,” said Fern.
Everyone looked at her, Rebecca included. Fern spoke with regret, knowing she was betraying a trust. “I saw it in his bag when I was changing his towels.”
Terry stood with effort, moving into the managers office. The voices startled them at first, but they were television voices, comforting, authoritative, and one by one they roused themselves to follow Terry. Rebecca was last, behind Coe and Fern, shuffling into the small office.
The screen showed ADX Gilchrist. The camera was set up outside the great fence, the view steady and peaceful, snow falling down.
Rebecca doped it out after a moment. “That must be CNN’s equipment,” she said. This was unprecedented, so far as she knew: The bad guys had broadcasting capability.
A man moved into view wearing prison blues. It was Luther Trait. Rebecca just stared.
He looked more commanding on television. He faced the camera and spoke into it without hesitation.
“Today is a great day,” he began.
“A great day!” said Terry. Everybody shushed him.