by Stephen King
She gave him a high-voltage smile, all capped teeth and high cheekbones. “That’s right! A man gave a speech about how God was punishing women for wearing pants. It was very interesting.”
Eric said, “Could I have your autograph? It would be something cool to have after you . . .” He stopped in confusion.
“After I fall asleep?” she said. “I think the bottom may have fallen out of the autograph market, at least temporarily, but if Garth—Dr. Flickinger—has got a pen in his glove compartment, I don’t see why n—”
“Forget that,” Don said harshly. He was embarrassed by his young partner’s lack of professionalism. “I want to know why you were up at the prison, and you aren’t going anywhere until you tell me.”
“Of course, Officer.” She spotlighted him with her smile again. “Although my professional name is Morgan, my real name is Coates, and I’m from right here in town. In fact, the warden is—”
“Coates is your mother?” Don was shocked, but once you got past her nose, which was arrow-sharp while old Janice’s honker was crooked, he could see the resemblance. “Well, I hate to tell you this, but your mother isn’t with us anymore.”
“I know.” No smile now. “Dr. Norcross told me. We spoke to him on the intercom.”
“The man is an asshole,” the Flickinger guy said.
Don grinned, just couldn’t help it. “I’ll double down on that.” He handed back the paperwork.
“Wouldn’t let her in,” Flickinger marveled. “Wouldn’t even let her say goodbye to her own mother.”
“Well,” Michaela said, “the complete truth is that wasn’t the only reason I persuaded Garth to take me up there. I also wanted an interview with a woman named Eve Black. I’m sure you’ve heard the chatter about how she sleeps and wakes. It would have been quite a scoop, you know. The outside world doesn’t care about much these days, but it would care about that. Only Norcross said she was inside a cocoon, like all the rest of the inmates.”
Don felt compelled to set her straight. Women—even women reporters, it seemed—could be painfully gullible. “Pure bullshit, and everybody knows it. She’s different, special, and he’s holding onto her for some crazy reason of his own. But that’s going to change.” He dropped her a wink ponderous enough to include Garth, who winked back. “Be nice to me, and I might get you that interview once we spring her.”
Michaela giggled.
“I better look in your trunk, I guess,” Don said. “Just so I can say I did.”
Garth got out and wrenched open his trunk, which rose with a weary squall—Geary had taken a few swipes here, as well. He hoped this clown wouldn’t check beneath the spare tire; it was where he had sequestered the Baggie of Purple Lightning. The clown didn’t bother, just took a quick look and gave a nod. Garth closed the trunk. This produced an even louder squall, the sound of a cat with its paw caught in a door.
“What happened to your car?” Eric asked as Garth got back behind the wheel.
Garth opened his mouth to tell the lad that a crazed animal control officer had laid into it, then remembered the crazed animal control officer was now, according to Norcross, the acting sheriff.
“Kids,” he said. “Vandals. They see something nice and they just want to destroy it, don’t they?”
The clown bent down to look at the pretty lady. “I’m heading down to the Squeak when my shift is over. If you’re still awake, I’d love to buy you a drink.”
“That would be wonderful,” Michaela said, just as if she meant it.
“You guys drive carefully and have a good evening,” the clown said.
Garth dropped the transmission into drive, but before he could turn onto the main road, the kid shouted, “Wait!”
Garth stopped. The kid was bending down, hands on his knees, looking at Michaela. “How about that autograph?”
There was a pen in the glove compartment, it turned out—a nice one with GARTH FLICKINGER, MD stamped in gold on the barrel. Michaela scribbled To Eric, with best wishes on the back of a drug rep’s business card, and handed it over. Garth got rolling while the kid was still thanking her. Less than a mile down Route 31 toward town, they spotted a town cruiser coming toward them, moving fast.
“Slow down,” Michaela said. As soon as the cruiser disappeared over the hill behind them, she told him to step on it.
Garth did.
2
For two years Lila had pestered Clint to add her various contacts to his own, in case of trouble at the prison. Six months ago he had finally done it, mostly to get her off his case, and now he thanked God for her persistence. First he called Jared and told him to sit tight; if all went well, he told his son, someone would be along to pick him up before dark. Possibly in an RV. Then he closed his eyes, said a brief prayer for eloquence, and called the lawyer who had facilitated Eve Black’s transfer to the prison.
After five rings, as Clint was resigning himself to voicemail, Barry Holden answered. “Holden here.” He sounded uninterested and exhausted.
“This is Clint Norcross, Barry. Up at the prison.”
“Clint.” No more than that.
“I need you to listen to me. Very carefully.”
Nothing from Barry Holden.
“Are you there?”
After a pause, Barry replied in that same uninterested voice. “I’m here.”
“Where are Clara and your daughters?” Four girls, ages twelve to three. A terrible thing for the father who loved them, but maybe a good thing for Clint, awful as that was to think of; he didn’t have to talk about the fate of the world, only about the fate of Barry’s female hostages to fortune.
“Upstairs, sleeping.” Barry laughed. Not a real laugh, though, just ha-ha-ha, like a dialogue balloon in a comic book. “Well, you know. Wrapped up in those . . . things. I’m in the living room, with a shotgun. If anybody shows up here with so much as a lit match, I’m going to blow them away.”
“I think there might be a way to save your family. I think they could wake up. Does that idea interest you?”
“Is it the woman?” Something new crept into Barry’s voice. Something alive. “Is it true, what they’re saying? That she can sleep and then wake up? If it’s only a rumor, be straight with me. I can’t stand to hope unless there’s a reason to.”
“It’s true. Now listen. Two people are coming to see you. One’s a doctor, the other is Warden Coates’s daughter.”
“Michaela’s still awake? Even after all this time?” Barry had begun to sound like his old self. “Not impossible, I guess—Gerda, my eldest, held out until last night—but still pretty remarkable.”
“She’s not just awake, she’s totally awake. Unlike every other woman in the Tri-Counties who’s still got her eyes open. The woman we’ve got in custody up here did it. Just breathed down her throat and woke her up.”
“If this is a joke, Norcross, it’s in extremely bad ta—”
“You’ll see for yourself. They’re going to tell you everything, then ask you to do some pretty dangerous stuff. I don’t want to say you’re our only hope, but . . .” Clint closed his eyes, rubbed at his temple with his free hand. “. . . but that might be what you are. And time is very short.”
“I would do anything for my wife and girls,” Barry said. “Anything.”
Clint allowed himself a long exhalation of relief. “Buddy, I was hoping you’d say that.”
3
Barry Holden did indeed have a shotgun. It wasn’t new, having been handed down through three generations of Holdens, but he had cleaned it and oiled it, and it looked lethal enough. He listened to Garth and Michaela with it laid across his thighs. Beside him, on an end table decorated with one of Clara Holden’s lace doilies, was an open box of fat red shells.
Talking turn and turn about, Michaela and Garth told the lawyer what Clint had told them: how Eve Black’s arrival roughly coincided with Aurora’s first reported victims; how she had killed two men with her bare hands; how she had allowed herself to be taken i
nto custody without a struggle, saying it was what she wanted; how she had banged her face repeatedly into the protective mesh of Lila’s cruiser; how the bruises had healed with magical speed.
“Besides fixing me up, she knew things about me she couldn’t possibly have known,” Michaela said, “and they say she can control the rats. I know that’s hard to believe, but—”
Garth interrupted. “Another prisoner, Fitzroy, told us she used rats to get the assistant warden’s cell phone. And she does have a cell phone. I saw it.”
“There’s more,” Michaela said. “She claims to have killed Judge Silver. She claimed . . .”
She paused, reluctant to say it, but Clint had told them to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Remember that he may be grieving, Clint had said, but he’s still a lawyer, and a damned good one. He can smell a lie at forty yards, even upwind.
“She claimed she did it using moths. Because Silver was trying to bring in someone from out of town, and that’s not allowed.”
Michaela knew that a week ago, this was where Barry Holden would have decided they were either sharing a pernicious delusion or trying on the world’s worst and most stoned prank, and invited them to leave his house. But it wasn’t a week ago. Instead of telling them to get out, Barry handed his grandfather’s shotgun to Michaela. “Hold this.”
There was a laptop on the coffee table. Barry sat on the couch (also liberally decorated with his wife’s needlework) and began tapping away. After a moment, he looked up. “Bridger County police are reporting an accident on the Old Coughlin Road. One fatality. No name, but the vehicle was a Land Rover. Judge Silver drives a Land Rover.”
He regarded Michaela Coates. What they were telling him, essentially, was that the fate of every woman on planet Earth depended on what happened here in Dooling over the next few days. It was mad, but Warden Coates’s daughter, sitting there in Clara’s favorite bentwood rocker and looking at him earnestly, was the best argument that it was true. Possibly an irrefutable argument. A news report on CNN that morning had said that less than ten percent of the world’s women were estimated to still be awake on Aurora Day Five. Barry didn’t know about that, but he would have been willing to bet Grampa Holden’s shotgun that none of them looked like Michaela.
“She just . . . what? Kissed you? Like when the prince kissed Princess Aurora in the cartoon?”
“Yes,” said Michaela. “Like that. And she breathed down my throat. I think that’s what really did it—her breath.”
Barry switched his attention to Garth. “You saw this?”
“Yes. It was amazing. Mickey here looked like a vampire after a fresh transfusion.” And when he caught Michaela’s frowning stare: “Sorry, darling, maybe not the best metaphor.”
“That was actually a simile,” she said coldly.
Barry was still trying to get his mind around it. “And she says they’ll come for her? The cops? The townies? And that Frank Geary’s in charge?”
“Yes.” Michaela had left out everything Evie had said about the sleeping women having to make their own decision; even if true, that part was out of their hands.
“I know Geary,” Barry said. “I never defended him, but he’s been in District Court a couple of times. I remember a case where a woman complained that he threatened her for not keeping her Rottweiler on a leash. He has what you’d call anger issues.”
“Tell me about it,” Garth murmured.
Barry looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“Never mind,” Garth said. “Not important.”
Barry took back his shotgun. “Okay, I’m in. For one thing, I’ve got nothing else to do, with Clara and the girls gone. For another . . . I want to see this mystery woman with my own eyes. What does Clint want from me?”
“He said you have a Winnebago,” Michaela said. “To go camping in with your wife and girls.”
Barry smiled. “Not a Winnebago, a Fiesta. Sucks a ton of gas, but it sleeps six. The girls squabble almost non-stop, but we had some good times in that old thing.” His eyes abruptly filled with tears. “Some very, very good times.”
4
Barry Holden’s Fleetwood Fiesta was parked in a small lot behind the old-fashioned granite block of a building where he kept his office. The RV was a monstrous zebra-striped thing. Barry sat behind the wheel while Michaela climbed into the passenger seat. They waited for Garth to reconnoiter the cop-shop. The Holden family’s heirloom shotgun lay on the floor between them.
“Does this have any chance at all, do you think?” Barry asked.
“I don’t know,” Michaela replied. “I hope so, but I really don’t know.”
“Well, it’s nuts, no doubt about that,” Barry said, “but it beats sitting home and thinking bad thoughts.”
“You have to see Evie Black to really understand. Speak to her. You have to . . .” She searched for the right word. “You have to experience her. She—”
Michaela’s cell phone rang. It was Garth.
“There’s a geezer with a beard sitting under an umbrella on one of the benches out front, but otherwise the coast is clear. No cruisers in the side lot, just a few personal vehicles. If we’re going to do this, I think we’d better hurry up. That RV is not what I’d call unobtrusive.”
“Coming now,” Michaela said. She ended the call.
The alley between Barry’s building and the one next to it was narrow—there couldn’t have been more than five inches of clearance for the lumbering Fleetwood on either side—but Barry threaded its length with the ease of long experience. He stopped at the mouth of the alley, but Main Street was deserted. It’s almost as if the men are gone, too, Michaela thought as Barry made a wide right turn and drove the two blocks to the Municipal Building.
He parked the Fleetwood in front, taking three spaces marked OFFICIAL BUSINESS ONLY, OTHERS WILL BE TOWED. They got out and Garth joined them. The man with the beard got up and ambled over, holding the umbrella over his head. The stem of a pipe poked up from the bib of his Oshkosh overalls. He held out his hand to Barry and said, “Hello there, Counselor.”
Barry shook with him. “Hey, Willy. Good to see you, but I can’t stop to chew the fat. We’re in sort of a hurry. Urgent business.”
Willy nodded. “I’m waiting for Lila. I know the chances are good that she’s asleep, but I’m hoping not. Want to talk to her. I went back out to that trailer where those meth-heads got killed. Something funny out there. Not just fairy handkerchiefs. The trees are full of moths. Wanted to talk to her about it, maybe take her to see. If not her, then whoever’s supposed to be in charge.”
“This is Willy Burke,” Barry told Garth and Michaela. “Volunteer fire department, Adopt-A-Highway, coaches Pop Warner, all around good guy. But we’re really pressed for time, Willy, so—”
“If it was Linny Mars you came to talk to, you better hurry up.” Willy’s eyes flicked from Barry to Garth to Michaela. They were deep-set, caught in nets of wrinkles, but sharp. “She was still awake the last time I popped in, but she’s fadin fast.”
“No deputies around?” Garth asked.
“Nope, all out on patrol. Except maybe for Terry Coombs. I heard he’s a little under the weather. Struck drunk, don’t you know.”
The three of them started up the steps to the triple doors. “Haven’t seen Lila, then?” Willy called after them.
“No,” Barry said.
“Well . . . maybe I’ll wait a little longer.” And Willy wandered back to his bench. “Something funny out there, all right. All those moths. And the place has got a vibration.”
5
Linny Mars, part of the ten percent of earth’s female population still holding out on that Monday, continued to walk around with her laptop, but now she was moving slowly, occasionally stumbling and bumping into the furniture. To Michaela she looked like a wind-up toy that had almost run down. Two hours ago, that was me, she thought.
Linny walked past them, staring at her laptop with her bloodshot eyes, not seemin
g to realize they were there until Barry tapped her on the shoulder. Then she jumped, her hands flying up. Garth caught her laptop before it could crash to the floor. On the screen was a video of the London Eye. In slow motion it tottered and rolled into the Thames again and again. Hard to tell why anyone would want to destroy the London Eye, but apparently someone had felt a need to do so.
“Barry! You scared the dickens out of me!”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Terry sent me to get some of the hardware from the weapons room. I guess he wants it up to the prison. May I have the key, please?”
“Terry?” she frowned. “Why would he . . . Lila’s the sheriff, not Terry. You know that.”
“Lila, right,” Barry said. “It’s Lila’s order via Terry.”
Garth went to the doors and looked out, convinced that a sheriff’s department cruiser would pull up at any moment. Maybe two or three. They would be thrown in jail, and this lunatic adventure would be over before it even got started. So far there was no one but the bearded guy sitting out there under his umbrella, like Patience on her monument, but that couldn’t last.
“Can you help me out, Linny? For Lila?”
“Sure. I’ll be glad to see her back,” Linny said. She went to her desk and put her laptop down. On the screen, the London Eye fell and fell and fell. “That guy Dave is running things until she does. Or maybe his name is Pete. Confusing to have two Petes around. In any case, I don’t know about him. He’s very serious.”
She rummaged in her wide top drawer, and brought out a heavy ring of keys. She peered at them. Her eyes drifted closed. White threads immediately rose from her eyelashes, wavering in the air.
“Linny!” Barry said sharply. “Wake up!”
Her eyes snapped open, and the threads disappeared. “I am awake. Stop shouting.” She ran a finger along the keys, making them jingle. “I know it’s one of them . . .”
