Wendy was coming back. She had a boxy device that Tim supposed was a phone. There were three bleeding scratches across the back of the hand that held it.

“She didn’t want to give it up. And she’s surprisingly strong, even after taking a bullet.” She handed Tim the gadget and looked back over her shoulder. Orphan Annie and Drummer Denton were supporting Mrs. Sigsby across the street. Although she was pale and in pain, she was resisting them as much as she could. At least three dozen DuPray townsfolk trailed behind them, with Doc Roper leading the pack.

“Here she is, Timmy,” Orphan Annie said. She was panting for breath, and there were red marks on her cheek and temple where Mrs. Sigsby had slapped at her, but Annie looked not the slightest bit discomposed. “What do you want us to do with her? I s’pose stringing her up is pretty much out of the question, but ain’t it an attractive idea.”

Doc Roper set down his black bag, grabbed Annie by the serape, and pulled her aside so he could face Tim. “What in God’s name are you thinking of?? You can’t transport this woman anywhere! You’re apt to kill her!”

“I don’t think she’s exactly at death’s door, Doc,” Drummer said. “Hit me a lick like to break my nose.” Then he laughed. Tim didn’t believe he had ever heard the man laugh before.

Wendy ignored both Drummer and the doctor. “If we’re going to go somewhere, Tim, we better do it before the State Police get here.”

“Please.” Luke looked first to Tim, then to Doc Roper. “My friends will die if we don’t do something, I know they will. And there are others with them, the ones they call the gorks.”

“I want to go to the hospital,” Mrs. Sigsby said. “I’ve lost a lot of blood. And I want to see a lawyer.”

“Shut your cakehole or I’ll shut it for you,” Annie said. She looked at Tim. “She ain’t hurt as bad as she’s trying to make out. Bleeding’s already stopped.”

Tim didn’t answer immediately. He was thinking of the day, not so long ago, when he had swung into Sarasota’s Westfield Mall to buy a pair of shoes, nothing more than that, and a woman had run up to him because he was in uniform. A boy was waving a gun around up by the movie theater, she said, so Tim had gone to see, and had been faced with a decision that had changed his life. A decision that had, in fact, brought him here. Now he had another decision to make.

“Bandage her up, Doc. I think Wendy and Luke and I are going to take these two for a little ride and see if we can straighten this thing out.”

“Give her something for pain, too,” Wendy said.

Tim shook his head. “Give it to me. I’ll decide when she gets it.”

Doc Roper was looking at Tim—and Wendy, her too—as if he had never seen them in his life. “This is wrong.”

“No, Doc.” It was Annie, and she spoke with surprising gentleness. She took Roper by the shoulder and pointed him past the covered bodies in the street and at the sheriff’s station, with its smashed windows and doors. “That’s wrong.”

The doctor stood where he was for a moment, looking at the bodies and the shot-up station. Then he came to a decision. “Let’s see what the damage is. If she’s still bleeding heavily, or if her femur’s shattered, I won’t let you take her.”

You will, though, Tim thought. Because there’s no way you can stop us.

Roper knelt, opened his bag, and took out a pair of surgical scissors.

“No,” Mrs. Sigsby said, pulling back from Drummer. He grabbed her again immediately, but Tim was interested to see that before he did, she was able to put her weight on her wounded leg. Roper saw it, too. He was getting on, but he still didn’t miss much. “You’re not going to do field surgery on me in this street!”

“The only thing I’m going to do surgery on is the leg of your pants,” Roper said. “Unless you keep struggling that is. Do that, and I can’t guarantee what will happen.”

“No! I forbid you to—”

Annie seized her by the neck. “Woman, I don’t want to hear no more of what you forbid. Hold still, or your leg’s the last thing you’ll be worrying about.”

“Get your hands off me!”

“Only if you’ll be still. Otherwise I’m apt to wring your scrawny neck.”

“Better do it,” Addie Goolsby advised. “She can be crazy when she gets one of her spells.”

Mrs. Sigsby stopped struggling, perhaps as much from exhaustion as the threat of strangulation. Roper scissored neatly around her slacks two inches above the wound. The pantleg collapsed around her ankle, exposing white skin, a tracery of varicose veins, and something that looked more like a knife-slash than a bullet hole.

“Well, sugar,” Roper said, sounding relieved. “This isn’t bad. Worse than a graze, but not much. You got lucky, ma’am. It’s already clotting.”

“I am badly hurt!” Mrs. Sigsby cried.

“You will be, if you don’t shut up,” Drummer said.

The doctor swabbed the wound with disinfectant, wrapped a bandage around it, and secured it with butterfly clips. By the time he finished, it seemed that all of DuPray—those who lived in town, at least—were spectating. Tim, meanwhile, looked at the woman’s phone. A button on the side lit up the screen and a message reading POWER LEVEL 75%.

He powered it down again and handed it to Luke. “You keep this for now.”

As Luke put it into the pocket containing the flash drive, a hand tugged his pants. It was Evans. “You need to be careful, young Luke. If you don’t want to have to hold yourself responsible, that is.”

“Responsible for what?” Wendy asked.

“For the end of the world, miss. For the end of the world.”

“Shut up, you fool,” Mrs. Sigsby said.

Tim considered her for a moment. Then he turned to the doc. “I don’t know exactly what we’re dealing with here, but I know it’s something extraordinary. We need some time with these two. When the state cops show up, tell them we’ll be back in an hour. Two, at most. Then we’ll try to get on with something at least approximating normal police procedure.”

This was a promise he doubted he would be able to keep. He thought his time in DuPray, South Carolina, was almost certainly over, and he was sorry for that.

He thought he could have lived here. Perhaps with Wendy.

39

Gladys Hickson stood in front of Stackhouse at parade rest, her feet apart and her hands behind her back. The fake smile that every child in the Institute came to know (and hate) was nowhere in evidence.

“You understand the current situation, Gladys?”

“Yes, sir. The Back Half residents are in the access tunnel.”

“Correct. They can’t get out, but as of now, we can’t get in. I understand that they have tried to . . . shall we say fiddle with some of the staff, using their psychic abilities?”

“Yes, sir. It doesn’t work.”

“But it’s uncomfortable.”

“Yes, sir, a bit. There’s a kind of . . . humming. It’s distracting. It’s not here in admin, at least not yet, but everybody in Front Half feels it.”

Which made sense, Stackhouse thought. Front Half was closer to the tunnel. Right on top of it, you could say.

“It seems to be getting stronger, sir.”

Maybe that was just her imagination. Stackhouse could hope so, and he could hope Donkey Kong was right when he insisted that Dixon and his friends couldn’t influence prepared minds, not even if the gorks were adding their undeniable force to the equation, but as his grandfather used to say, hope don’t win horse races.

Perhaps made uneasy by his silence, she went on. “But we know what they’re up to, sir, and it’s no problem. We got em by the short and curlies.”

“That’s well put, Gladys. Now as to why I asked you here. I understand that you attended the University of Massachusetts in the days of your youth.”

“That’s correct, sir, but only for three semesters. It wasn’t for me, so I left and joined the Marines.”

Stackhouse nodded. No need to embarrass her by pointing out what was in her file: after doing well in her first year, Gladys had run into fairly serious trouble during her second. In a student hangout near the campus, she had knocked a rival for her boyfriend’s affections unconscious with a beer stein and been asked to leave not just the joint but the college. The incident had not been her first outburst of bad temper. No wonder she’d picked the Marines.

“I understand you were a chem major.”

“No, sir, not exactly. I hadn’t declared a major before I . . . before I decided to leave.”

“But that was your intention.”

“Um, yes, sir, at that time.”

“Gladys, suppose we needed—to use an unjustly vilified phrase—a final solution concerning those residents in the access tunnel. Not saying it will happen, not saying that at all, but supposing it did.”

“Are you asking if they could be poisoned somehow, sir?”

“Let’s say I am.”

Now Gladys did smile, and this one was perfectly genuine. Perhaps even relieved. If the residents were gone, that annoying hum would cease. “Easiest thing in the world, sir, assuming the access tunnel is hooked up to the HVAC system, and I’m sure it is.”