Flip, and here was the cafeteria, empty.

Flip, and here was the lounge. Corinne Rawson was kneeling next to Phil Chaffitz, blabbing to someone on her walkie-talkie. Phil did indeed look dead.

Flip, and here was the elevator lobby, the door to the elevator just beginning to slide shut. The car was the size of those used to transport patients in hospitals, and it was crammed with residents. Most undressed. The gorks from Ward A, then. If he could stop them there . . . trap them there . . .

Flip, and through that irritating film of dust and smear, Stackhouse saw more kids on E-Level, close to a dozen, milling around in front of the elevator doors and waiting for them to open and disgorge the rest of the kiddie mutineers. Waiting outside the access tunnel leading to Front Half. Not good.

Stackhouse picked up the landline and heard nothing but silence. Fellowes had hung up on his end. Cursing the wasted time, Stackhouse dialed him back. “Can you kill the power to the Back Half elevator? Stop it in the shaft?”

“I don’t know,” Fellowes said. “Maybe. It might be in the Emergency Procedures booklet. Just let me ch—”

But it was already too late. The elevator doors slid open on E-Level and the escapees from Gorky Park wandered out, staring around at the tiled elevator lobby as if there was something to see there. That was bad, but Stackhouse saw something worse. Heckle and Jeckle could collect dozens of Back Half key cards and burn them, but it would make no difference. Because one of the kids—it was the pipsqueak who’d collaborated with the housekeeper on Ellis’s escape—had an orange key card in his hand. It would open the door to the tunnel, and it would also open the door that gave on F-Level in Front Half. If they got to Front Half, anything might happen.

For a moment, one that seemed endless, Stackhouse froze. Fellowes was squawking in his ear, but the sound was far away. Because yes, the little shit was using the orange card and leading his merry band into the tunnel. A two-hundred-yard walk would take them to Front Half. The door closed behind the last of them, leaving the lower elevator lobby empty. Stackhouse flipped to a new camera and got them walking along the tiled tunnel.

Dr. Hendricks came bursting in, good old Donkey Kong with his shirttail flapping and his fly half-zipped and his eyes all red-rimmed and buggy. “What’s happening? What’s—”

And, just to add to the lunacy, his box phone began its brrt-brrt-brrt. Stackhouse held his hand up to silence Hendricks. The box phone continued its demands.

“Andy. They’re in the tunnel. They’re coming, and they have a key card. We need to stop them. Do you have any ideas at all?”

He expected nothing but more panic, but Fellowes surprised him. “I guess I could kill the locks.”

“What?”

“I can’t deactivate the cards, but I can freeze the locks. The entry codes are computer generated, and so—”

“Are you saying you can bottle them up?”

“Well, yes.”

“Do it! Do it right now!”

“What is it?” Hendricks asked. “Jesus, I was just getting ready to leave and the alarm—”

“Shut up,” Stackhouse said. “But stay here. I may need you.”

The box phone continued braying. Still watching the tunnel and the marching morons, he picked it up. Now he was holding a phone to each ear, like a character in some old slapstick comedy. “What? What?”

“We are here, and the boy is here,” Mrs. Sigsby said. The connection was good; she might have been in the next room. “I expect to have him back in our custody shortly.” She paused. “Or dead.”

“Good for you, Julia, but we have a situation here. There’s been a—”

“Whatever it is, handle it. This is happening now. I’ll call you when we’re on our way out of town.”

She was gone. Stackhouse didn’t care, because if Fellowes didn’t work computer magic, Julia might have nothing to come back to.

“Andy! Are you still there?”

“I’m here.”

“Did you do it?”

Stackhouse felt a dreadful certainty that Fellowes would say that their old computer system had picked this critical moment to seize up.

“Yes. Well, pretty sure. I’m looking at a message on my screen that says ORANGE KEY CARDS INVALID INSERT NEW AUTHORIZATION CODE.”

A pretty-sure from Andy Fellowes did jackshit to ease Stackhouse’s mind. He sat forward in his chair, hands locked together, watching the screen of his computer. Hendricks joined him, peering over his shoulder.

“My God, what are they doing out?”

“Coming for us would be my guess,” Stackhouse said. “We’re about to find out if they can.”

The parade of potential escapees left the view of one camera. Stackhouse punched the key that swapped the images, briefly got Corinne Rawson holding Phil’s head in her lap, then got the one he wanted. It showed the door to F-Level on the Front Half end of the access tunnel. The kids reached it.

“Crunch time,” Stackhouse said. He was clenching his fists hard enough to leave marks in his palms.

Dixon raised the orange card and laid it on the reader pad. He tried the knob and when nothing happened, Trevor Stackhouse finally relaxed. Beside him, Hendricks gusted out a breath that smelled strongly of bourbon. Drinking on duty was as verboten as carrying a cell phone, but Stackhouse wasn’t going to worry about that now.

Flies in a jar, he thought. That’s all you are now, boys and girls. As to what happens to you next . . .

That, thankfully, wasn’t his problem. What happened to them after the loose end in South Carolina had been snipped off was up to Mrs. Sigsby.

“That’s why they pay you the big bucks, Julia,” he said, and settled back in his chair to watch a bunch of the kids—now led by Wilholm—go back and try the door they had come through. With no result. The Wilholm brat threw back his head. His mouth opened. Stackhouse wished for audio, so he could hear that scream of frustration.

“We have contained the problem,” he said to Hendricks.

“Um,” Hendricks said.

Stackhouse turned to look at him. “What does that mean?”

“Maybe not quite.”

28

Tim put a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “If you feel up to it now, we really need to go back inside and sort this out. We’ll get you that Coke, and—”

“Wait.” Luke was staring at the hand-holding couple crossing the street. They hadn’t noticed the trio standing at the mouth of Orphan Annie’s alley; their attention was focused on the cop-shop.

“Got off the interstate and got lost,” Wendy said. “Bet you anything. We get half a dozen a month. Want to go back in now?”

Luke paid no attention. He could still sense the others, the kids, and they sounded dismayed now, but they were far back in his mind, like voices coming through a ventilator from another room. That woman . . . the one in the flowery dress . . .

Something falls over and wakes me up. It must be the trophy from when we won the Northwest Debate Tourney, because that’s the biggest and it makes a hell of a clatter. Someone is bending over me. I say mom because even though I know it isn’t her, she’s a woman and mom is the first word to come into my still-mostly-asleep mind. And she says—

“Sure,” Luke said. “Whatever you want.”

“Great!” Wendy said. “We’ll just—”

“No, that’s what she said.” He pointed. The couple had reached the sidewalk in front of the sheriff’s station. They were no longer holding hands. Luke turned to Tim, his eyes wide and panicky. “She’s one of the ones who took me! I saw her again, in the Institute! In the break room! They’re here! I told you they’d come and they’re here!”

Luke whirled and ran for the door, which was unlocked on this side, so Annie could get in late at night, should she so desire.

“What—” Wendy began, but Tim didn’t let her finish. He ran after the boy from the train, and the thought in his mind was that just maybe the kid had been right about Norbert Hollister after all.

29

“Well?” Orphan Annie’s whisper was almost too fierce to be called one. “Do you believe me now, Mr. Corbett Denton?”

Drummer didn’t reply at first, because he was trying to process what he was looking at: three vans parked side by side, and beyond them, a cluster of men and women. Looked like nine of them, enough to field a damn baseball team. And Annie was right, they were armed. It was twilight now, but the light lingered long in late summer, and besides, the streetlights had come on. Drummer could see holstered sidearms and two long guns that looked to him like HKs. People-killing machines. The baseball team was clustered near the front of the old movie theater, but mostly shielded from the sidewalk by its brick flank. They were obviously waiting for something.