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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.”
“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.
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