But what could I have done about it? he thought. Nothing. There is only this.

The Suburban appeared at the head of the driveway. Stackhouse remained standing between the bus and the flagpole, arms outstretched like Christ on the cross. The hum had reached a near deafening level, and he wondered if Rosalind was still holding her position or if she had been forced to flee. He thought of Gladys and hoped she was ready to start the mix.

He squinted at the shape behind the Suburban’s wheel. It was impossible to make out much, and he knew Doug and Chad wouldn’t be able to see jackshit through the darkened rear windows until they were blown out, but the windshield was clear glass, and when the Suburban closed the distance to twenty yards—a little closer than he had hoped for—he saw the expansion band of the turned-around cap cutting across the driver’s forehead, and let go of the flagpole. The driver’s head began to shake frantically. One hand left the wheel, pressing a starfish shape against the windshield in a stop gesture, and he realized he’d been deked. The trick was as simple as a kid escaping by crawling under a fence, and just as effective.

It wasn’t the misguided hero behind the wheel. It was Mrs. Sigsby.

The Suburban stopped again, then began to back up. “I’m sorry, Julia, no help for it,” he said, and raised his hand.

The shooting from admin and the trees began. At the rear of Front Half, Gladys Hickson removed the covers from two large buckets of bleach positioned under the HVAC unit which provided heating and cooling to Back Half and the access tunnel. She held her breath, dumped the bottles of toilet bowl cleaner into the buckets of bleach, gave each a quick stir with a mop handle, covered the buckets and the unit with a tarp, then sprinted for Front Half’s East Wing with her eyes burning. As she ran across the roof, she realized it was moving under her feet.

22

“No, Trevor, no!” Mrs. Sigsby screamed. She was shaking her head back and forth. From his position behind her, Tim saw her raise one hand and press it against the windshield. She used her other hand to put the Suburban in reverse.

It had just started to move when the shooting began, some of it coming from the right, in the woods, some from ahead and—Tim was pretty sure—from above. Holes appeared in the Suburban’s windshield. The glass turned milky and sagged inward. Mrs. Sigsby became a puppet, jerking and bouncing and making stifled cries as bullets hit her.

“Stay down, Luke!” Tim shouted when the boy began to squirm beneath him. “Stay down!”

Bullets punched through the Suburban’s rear windows. Shards of glass fell on Tim’s back. Blood was running down the rear of the driver’s seat. Even with the steady hum that seemed to be coming from everywhere, Tim could hear the slugs passing just above him, each one making a low zzzz sound.

There was the sping-spang of bullets punching through metal. The Suburban’s hood popped up. Tim found himself thinking of the final scene in some old gangster movie, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow doing a death-dance as bullets ripped into their car and into them. Whatever Luke’s plan had been, it had gone disastrously wrong. Mrs. Sigsby was dead; he could see her blood spattered on the remains of the windshield. They would be next.

Then, screams from ahead and shouts from the right. Two more bullets came through the right side of the Suburban, one of them actually twitching the collar of Tim’s shirt. They were the last two. Now what he heard was a vast, grinding roar.

“Let me up!” Luke gasped. “I can’t breathe!”

Tim got off the boy and peered between the front seats. He was aware that his head might be blown off at any second, but he had to see. Luke got up beside him. Tim started to tell the boy to get back down, but the words died in his throat.

This can’t be real, he thought. It can’t be.

But it was.

23

Avery and the others stood in a circle around the big phone. It was hard to see because of the Stasi Lights, so bright and so beautiful.

The sparkler, Avery thought. Now we make the sparkler.

It coalesced from the lights, ten feet high and spitting brilliance in every direction. The sparkler wavered back and forth at first, then the group mind took firmer control. It swung against the phone’s gigantic receiver and knocked it from its gigantic base. The dumbbell-shape landed askew against the jungle gym. Voices in different languages spilled from the mouthpiece, all asking the same questions: Hello, do you hear me? Hello, are you there?

YES, the children of the Institute answered, and in one voice. YES, WE HEAR YOU! DO IT NOW!

A circle of children in Spain’s Sierra Nevada National Park heard. A circle of Bosnian children imprisoned in the Dinaric Alps heard. On Pampus, an island guarding the entrance to Amsterdam’s harbor, a circle of Dutch children heard. A circle of German children heard in the mountainous forests of Bavaria.

In Pietrapertosa, Italy.

In Namwon, South Korea.

Ten kilometers outside the Siberian ghost town of Chersky.

They heard, they answered, they became one.

24

Kalisha and the others reached the locked door between them and Front Half. They could hear the gunfire clearly now, because the hum had abruptly stopped, as if somewhere a plug had been pulled.

Oh, it’s still there, Kalisha thought. It’s just not for us anymore.

A groaning began in the walls, an almost human sound, and then the steel door between the access tunnel and Front Half’s F-Level blew outward, smashing Rosalind Dawson before it and killing her instantly. The door landed beyond the elevator, twisted out of shape where its heavy hinges had been. Above, the wire mesh guarding the overhead fluorescent tubes was rippling, casting crazy underwater shadows.

The groaning grew louder, coming from everywhere. It was as if the building were trying to tear itself apart. In the Suburban, Tim had thought of Bonnie and Clyde; Kalisha thought of the Poe story about the House of Usher.

Come on, she thought at the others. Fast!

They ran past the torn door with the torn woman lying beneath it in a spreading pool of blood.

George: What about the elevator? It’s back there!

Nicky: Are you crazy? I don’t know what’s happening, but I’m not getting in any goddam elevator.

Helen: Is it an earthquake?

“No,” Kalisha said.

Mindquake. I don’t know how—

“. . . how they’re doing it, but that’s what . . .” She took a breath and tasted something acrid. It made her cough. “That’s what it is.”

Helen: Something’s wrong with the air.

Nicky said, “I think it’s some kind of poison.” Those fuckers, they never stop.

Kalisha shoved open the door marked STAIRS and they began to climb, all of them coughing now. Between D-and C-Level, the stairs began to shake beneath them. Cracks zig-zagged down the walls. The fluorescents went out and the emergency lights came on, casting a flat yellow glow. Kalisha stopped, bent over, dry-retched, then started up again.

George: What about Avery and the rest of the kids still down there? They’ll strangle!

Nicky: And what about Luke? Is he here? Is he still alive?

Kalisha didn’t know. All she knew was they had to get out before they choked. Or before they were crushed, if the Institute were imploding.

A titanic shudder went through the building and the stairway tilted to the right. She thought of what their situation might be right now if they had tried the elevator, and pushed the thought away.

B-Level. Kalisha was gasping for breath, but the air was better here, and she was able to run a little faster. She was glad she hadn’t got hooked on the vending machine cigarettes, there was that, at least. The groaning in the walls had become a low scream. She could hear hollow metal crumping sounds, and guessed the piping and electrical conduits were coming apart.

Everything was coming apart. She flashed on a YouTube video she’d seen once, a horrible thing she hadn’t been able to look away from: a dentist using forceps to extract somebody’s tooth. The tooth wiggling while blood seeped out around it, trying to stay in the gum but finally pulling free with the roots dangling. This was like that.

She came to the ground level door, but it was slanted now, surreal, drunken. She pushed on it and it wouldn’t open. Nicky joined her and they pushed together. No good. The floor rose beneath them, then thudded back down. A piece of the ceiling came free, crashed to the stairs, and slid away, crumbling as it went.

“It’s going to squash us if we can’t get out!” Kalisha shouted.