by Stephen King
I can do this, she told herself. Another fifty yards.
She made the fifty yards, told herself she could make another fifty, and continued that way until she heard voices ahead. Then there was an explosive whoosh, followed by Little Lowell Griner and his brother Maynard whooping and slapping each other on the back.
“I wasn’t sure it’d have the range, brother, but looka that!” one of them cried. The response was a rebel yell.
Van cocked Meshaum’s pistol, and moved toward the sounds of redneck celebration.
2
Clint would have believed the phrase his heart sank was nothing but a poetic expression until his actually did it. Unaware that he had left the cover provided by the southwestern corner of the main building, he stared, slack-jawed, at the concrete showering down from C Wing. How many of the sleeping women in that cellblock had been killed in the blast, incinerated or torn to pieces in their cocoons? He barely heard something buzz past his left ear, and didn’t feel the tug as another bullet, this one thrown by Mick Napolitano from behind the second bulldozer, tore open one of his pants pockets and spilled loose change down his leg.
Willy Burke seized him by the shoulders and yanked him back so hard Clint nearly fell over. “You crazy, Doc? You want to get yourself killed?”
“The women,” Clint said. “There were women up there.” He swiped at his eyes, which were smarting from the acrid gas and welling with tears. “That son of a bitch Geary put a rocket launcher or something up on that knoll where the little graveyard is!”
“Nothing we can do about it now.” Willy bent over and gripped his knees. “You got one of the bastards, anyway, and that’s a start. We need to be inside. Let’s get to the back door, pull Billy in with us.”
He was right. The front of the building was now a free-fire zone.
“Willy, are you all right?”
Willy Burke straightened up and offered a strained smile. His face was pale, his forehead dotted with sweat. “Well, shoot a pickle. Might be having a little heart episode. Doctor told me to give up the pipe after my last checkup. Shoulda listened.”
Oh no, thought Clint. Oh . . . fucking . . . no.
Willy read the thought on Clint’s face—there was nothing wrong with his eyes—and clapped him on the shoulder. “I ain’t done yet, Doc. Let’s go.”
3
From his position outside the visitors’ room, now most surely gutted by the dynamite blast (along with whoever had been inside), Frank saw Jack Albertson go down with his gas mask torn askew. There was nothing but blood where his face had been. His own mother wouldn’t recognize him, Frank thought.
He lifted his walkie-talkie. “Report! Everybody report!”
Only eight or so did, mostly those who had been using the bulldozers for cover. Of course not all of the men had walkies, but there should have been at least a few more responses. Frank’s most optimistic guess was that he had lost four men, including Jack, who had to be as dead as dirt. In his heart, he guessed it might be five or six, and the wounded would need hospitalization. Maybe the kid, Blass, whom they had left at the roadblock with Miller, could drive them back to St. Theresa’s in one of the buses, although God knew who might still be on duty at St. Terry’s. If anyone. How had it come to this? They had the bulldozers, for God’s sake. The dozers were supposed to end it fast!
Johnny Lee Kronsky grabbed his shoulder. “We need to get on in there, buddy. Finish them off. With this.” His backpack was still unzipped. He pushed aside the towel he’d wrapped the dynamite in and showed Frank the Griner brothers’ bump of C4. Kronsky had shaped it into something that looked like a child’s toy football. Embedded in it was an Android.
“That’s my phone,” Kronsky said. “I’m donating it to the cause. It was a piece of shit, anyway.”
Frank asked, “Where do we go in?” The teargas was blowing away, but he felt as if his mind was full of it, obscuring all thought. The daylight was strengthening, the sun rising red.
“Right up the gut would be best,” Kronsky said, and pointed at the half-crushed Fleetwood RV. It was tilted against the building, but there was room to squeeze through and reach the main doors, which had been smashed inward and twisted off their hinges. “Struthers and those bulldozer guys’ll give us cover. We go in, and we keep moving until we get to the bitch that caused all this.”
Frank was no longer sure who had caused all this, or who was in charge, but he nodded. There seemed to be nothing else to do.
“Gotta set the timer,” Kronsky said, and powered up the phone embedded in the C4. There was a wire plugged into the cell’s headphone port. The other end was attached to a battery pack stuck in the explosive. Looking at it made Frank remember Elaine preparing Sunday dinners, pulling the roast out of the oven and sticking in a meat thermometer.
Kronsky whapped him on the shoulder, and not gently. “How much time, do you think? And think about it careful, because when the count gets down to single numbers, I’m gonna throw it, no matter where we are.”
“I guess . . .” Frank shook his head, trying to clear it. He had never been in the prison, and had expected Don Peters would give them all the layout they needed. He just hadn’t realized how useless Peters was. Now that it was too late, that seemed like a glaring oversight. How many other things had he overlooked? “Four minutes?”
Sounding like a crabby high school teacher faced with a thick-headed pupil, Kronsky said, “Are you asking me or telling me?”
They heard spatters of gunfire, but the attack seemed to have fallen into a lull. The next thing might be his men deciding to fall back. That could not be allowed.
Nana, Frank thought, and said: “Four minutes. I’m sure.”
Frank thought, In four minutes I’ll either be dead, or this will be on the way to being over.
Of course it was possible the woman herself would be killed in the final assault, but that was a chance he would have to take. That made him think of his caged strays, their lives held hostage to forces they did not understand.
Kronsky opened an app, tapped the screen, and 4:00 appeared. He tapped again and the numbers began to count down. Frank watched, fascinated, as 3:59 became 3:58 became 3:57.
“You ready, Geary?” Kronsky asked. In his manic grin, a gold tooth glimmered.
(“What are you doing?” the sonofabitch agitator had called to Kronsky that day in the Ulysses Energy’s Graystone #7 mine. “Quit lagging.” The sonofabitch agitator had been at least twenty yards down the hall. In the deep black of the underground, Kronsky hadn’t been able to see the dumb bastard’s face, let alone his Woody Guthrie tee-shirt, just his headlamp. Power in a union, the sonofabitch agitator liked to say. More power in a dollar, and the man from Ulysses Energy had given Johnny Lee Kronsky a few crisp ones to take care of their problem. “Fuck you, your union, and the horse you rode in on,” Kronsky had told the sonofabitch agitator, before throwing the dynamite and running like hell.)
“I think we ought to—” Frank began, and that was when Lowell Griner fired the bazooka for the first time. There was a whooshing sound almost directly overhead. Frank had a blurred glimpse of something flying. Some projectile.
“Hit the deck!” Kronsky screamed, but didn’t give Frank a chance to do so; just grabbed him around the neck and yanked him down.
The bazooka shell hit C Wing and exploded. In the world beyond the Tree, fourteen former Dooling Correctional inmates disappeared, flashing once, before clouds of moths spilled into the open air where they had stood.
4
Although he had a walkie, Drew T. Barry was one of those who had not responded to Frank’s command to report in. He didn’t even hear it, because he had turned the walkie off. He’d gotten as high up as he could while maintaining cover, and unslung his Weatherby. The angle wasn’t quite as good as he’d hoped. Through the Weatherby’s scope, he could see a corrugated metal shed. The back door to the prison was open—light spilled out in an oblong—but that guy was behind the shed, defending the way in.
Barry saw an elbow . . . a shoulder . . . part of a head, but quickly withdrawn after a single peek at where Elmore Pearl and Don Peters were still stationed. Drew T. Barry had to put that guy down, and itched to take the shot—yes, his trigger finger was literally itching—but he knew that no shot was better than a bad one. He had to wait. If Pearl or Peters would throw another rock, that might make the guy down there stick his whole head out to see what was happening, but Drew T. Barry did not expect this to happen. Elmore Pearl was too cautious, and that fat little shit Peters was as numb as a pounded thumb.
Move, you sucker, Drew T. Barry thought. Two steps would be enough. Maybe just one.
But although he cringed into a crouch when the bundle of dynamite went off, Billy Wettermore held his position behind the shed. It took the exploding bazooka shell to get him on his feet. He stepped out from behind the protection of the shed, looking toward the sound, and that gave Drew T. Barry the clean shot he had been waiting for.
Smoke was billowing above the prison. People were yelling. Guns were firing—wildly, no doubt. Drew T. Barry had no patience with wild shooting. He held his breath and squeezed the trigger of his rifle. The result was entirely satisfactory. In his scope he saw the defender fly forward, his shirt billowing out in shreds.
“Got him, by God,” Drew T. Barry said, looking at the remains of Billy Wettermore with a species of doleful satisfaction. “Was a good shot, if I do say so myse—”
From the trees below came another gunshot, followed by the unmistakable voice of Deputy Elmore Pearl: “Oh, you fuckin idiot, what did you do? WHAT DID YOU DO?”
Drew T. Barry hesitated, then ran back toward his mates, keeping low, wondering what had gone wrong now.
5
Clint and Willy saw Billy Wettermore thrown in the air. When Billy came down he was boneless. One of his shoes flew from his foot, spun up, and banged off the lip of the shed roof. Clint started toward him. Willy Burke’s hand pulling him back was surprisingly strong.
“Nope, nope,” Willy said. “Back it up, Doc. That way’s no good now.”
Clint tried to think. “We might be able to get into my office through the window. The glass is reinforced, but not barred.”
“I can take care of the window,” Willy said. “Let’s go.” But instead of moving, he bent over and grasped his knees again.
6
Don Peters hardly heard Elmore Pearl shouting at him. Down on his knees, he was staring at his erstwhile Zombie Patrol partner, who was spreadeagled on the ground with blood gushing from a hole in the base of his throat. Eric Blass stared up at him, gagging on more blood.
“Partner!” Don shouted. His football helmet slid down, obscuring his eyes, and he pushed it back up with the heel of his hand. “Partner, I didn’t mean to!”
Pearl hauled him to his feet. “You dumb asshole, didn’t anybody ever teach you to see what you were shooting at before you pulled the trigger?”
Eric made a thick glugging sound, coughed out a fine spray of blood, and pawed at the ruins of his throat.
Don wanted to explain. First the roar of the dynamite, then a second explosion, then the rustling bushes behind him. He had been sure it was more of that fucking shrink’s men. How was he supposed to know it was Blass? He had shot without thinking, let alone aiming. What evil brand of providence had caused the shot to hit Blass as he came through the trees to join them?
“I . . . I . . .”
Drew T. Barry appeared, his Weatherby slung over his shoulder. “What in hell’s name—”
“Wild Bill Hickok here just shot one of ours,” Pearl said. He socked Don in the shoulder, driving him down beside Eric. “Kid was coming to help out, I guess.”
“I thought he was back at the buses!” Don gasped. “Frank told him to stay back in case there was wounded, I heard him!” This much was true.
Drew T. Barry hauled Don to his feet. When Pearl balled up a fist to hit the weeping, white-faced man again, Barry grabbed him. “Beat him all you want later. Beat him like a red-headed stepchild, for all of me. Right now we might need him—he knows the lay of the land in there, and we don’t.”
“Did you get him?” Pearl asked. “The guy down there by that shed?”
“I got him,” Drew T. Barry said, “and if this ever winds up in a courtroom, remember you gave me the green light. Now let’s end this.”
From a knoll above the prison, they saw a flash of bright light, and a contrail of white smoke. This was followed by another explosion on the other side of the prison.
“Who in fuck is shooting rockets from up on that hill?” Pearl asked.
“Don’t know and don’t care,” Barry said. “Being as how we’re behind the prison, we’ve got a thousand or so tons of concrete between us and them.” He pointed down the hill and across the track. “What’s inside that door, Peters?”
“The gym,” Don said, eager to atone for what he was already coming to believe had been a justifiable mistake, the sort of thing anyone might have done. I was trying to protect Pearl as well as myself, he thought, and when this madness is over, Elmore will see that. Elmore will probably thank me and buy me a drink down at the Squeak. And hey, it was just Blass, a lunatic delinquent if ever there was one, lighting that poor homeless bag on fire before Don could stop him.
“It’s where the cunts play basketball and volleyball. The main corridor starts on the other side, what we call Broadway. The woman’s in a cell in A Wing, down to the left. Not far.”
“Then let’s go,” Pearl said. “You lead, Quickdraw. I got clippers for the fence.”
Don didn’t want to lead. “Maybe I ought to stay here with Eric. He was my partner, after all.”
“No need,” Drew T. Barry said. “He has expired.”
7
A year before Aurora, when Michaela had still been relegated to taping filler features for NewsAmerica—stuff like dogs that could count and twin brothers meeting by accident after fifty years of separation—she had done a story about how people with large collections of books had lower heating bills than non-readers, because books made good insulation. With this in mind, she repaired to the prison library once the shooting started, scurrying with her head low. What she discovered was mostly shelves of battered paperbacks, not exactly the insulation she’d had in mind, and when the dynamite bundle exploded in the room next door, she was pelted with Nora Roberts and James Patterson novels as the wall buckled.
She ran back onto Broadway, this time not bothering to duck but pausing, horrified, to look into the visitors’ room, where what remained of Rand Quigley was puddled on the floor and dripping from the ceiling.
She was totally disoriented, on the verge of panic, and when the bazooka shell hit C Wing and a cloud of dust billowed toward her (reminding her of news footage she’d seen following the collapse of the Twin Towers), she turned to go back the way she had come. Before she managed three steps, a strong arm encircled her throat, and she felt a cold steel edge press against her temple.
“Hey there, sweetcheeks,” Angel Fitzroy said. When Michaela did not immediately respond to this greeting, Angel pressed harder with the chisel she’d borrowed from the furniture shop. “What the fuck’s going on out there?”
“Armageddon,” Michaela managed in a gasping voice that sounded nothing like her chirrupy TV tones. “Please stop choking me.”
Angel let go and turned Michaela to face her. The smoke drifting down the corridor carried the bitter tang of teargas, making them cough, but they could see each other well enough. The woman with the chisel was pretty in a narrow, intense, predatory sort of way.
“You look different,” Michaela said. Possibly a supremely stupid comment with the prison under attack and a convict brandishing a chisel in front of her eyes, but all she could think of. “Awake. Really awake.”
“She woke me up,” Angel said proudly. “Evie. Same as she did you. Cause I had a mission.”
“What mission would that be?”
“Them,” Angel said, and pointe
d as two female creatures came shambling down the corridor, seemingly untroubled by the smoke and gunfire. To Michaela, the shreds of cocoon hanging from Maura Dunbarton and Kayleigh Rawlings looked like bits of rotted shroud in a horror movie. They passed by without looking at Michaela and Angel.
“How can they—” Michaela began, but a second bazooka shell hit out front before she could finish her question. The floor shook, and more smoke billowed in, black and stinking of diesel fuel.
“Don’t know how they can do anything, and don’t care,” Angel said. “They got their job and I got mine. You can help out, or I can put this chisel in your gizzard. Which would you prefer?”
“I’ll help,” Michaela said. (Journalistic objectivity aside, it would be hard to report the story later if she was, you know, dead.) She followed Angel, who at least seemed to know where she was going. “What’s the job?”
“Gonna protect the witch,” Angel said. “Or die trying.”
Before Michaela could reply, Jared Norcross stepped out of the kitchen, which was adjacent to the prison laundry where Michaela had left him. Angel raised the chisel. Michaela grabbed her wrist. “No! He’s with us!”
