Sleeping Beauties: A Novel

by Stephen King

  Angel was giving Jared her best Stare of Death. “Are you? Are you with us? Will you help protect the witch?”

  “Well,” Jared said, “I was planning to go clubbing and drop some E, but I guess I could change my plans.”

  “I told Clint I’d protect you,” Michaela said reproachfully.

  Angel brandished her chisel and bared her teeth. “No one gets protection today but the witch. No one gets protection but Evie!”

  “Fine,” Jared said. “If it helps my dad and gets my mom and Mary back, I’m in.”

  “Is Mary your girlfriend?” Angel asked. She had lowered the chisel.

  “I don’t know. Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly.” Angel seemed to chew on that for a moment. “You treat her right? No pushing, no hitting, no yelling?”

  “We need to get out of here before we choke,” Michaela said.

  “Yeah, I treat her right.”

  “Damn well better,” Angel said. “Let’s get truckin. Evie’s in the soft cell down on A Wing. Soft cell, but hard bars. You gotta stand in front of her. That way, anyone that wants to get to her will have to go through you.”

  Michaela thought that sounded like a terrible plan, which might explain why Angel was talking “you” instead of “us.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “Commando mission,” Angel said. “Maybe I can drop a few before they get this far.” She brandished her chisel. “I’ll be with you soon, don’t fear.”

  “A few guns might help, if you really—” Jared was drowned out by the loudest explosion yet. This time shrapnel—mostly pieces of wall and ceiling—rained down. When Michaela and Jared straightened up again, Angel was no longer with them.

  8

  “What the fuck was that?” Frank asked in the seconds after the first bazooka shell hit C Wing. He got to his feet, brushing dust, dirt, and a few crumbles of cement out of his hair. His ears weren’t ringing, exactly; what he heard was the high, steely whine he sometimes got in his head after taking too much aspirin.

  “Someone’s shooting off ordinance from up on yonder knoll,” Kronsky said. “Probably the same ones who took out the sheriff’s station. Come on, Mr. Acting Sheriff. Time’s a-wasting.” He once more bared his teeth in a gold-twinkling grin so cheerful it looked surreal. He pointed at the screen of the phone imbedded in the plastic explosive. 3:07 became 3:06 became 3:05.

  “Okay,” Frank said.

  “Remember, don’t hesitate. He who hesitates is butt-fucked.”

  They headed for the crushed front doors. In his peripheral vision, Frank could see the men who had come in behind the bulldozers, watching them. None seemed eager to join this particular assault, and Frank did not blame them. Probably some were wishing they had left with Terry Coombs.

  9

  As the battle for Dooling Correctional approached its climax, Terry was parked in his garage. The garage was a small one; the door was closed; Unit Four’s windows were open and its big V8 engine was running. Terry inhaled exhaust in long, chest-filling gulps. It tasted bad to begin with, but you got used to it pretty fast.

  It’s not too late to change your mind, Rita said, taking his hand. His wife sat beside him in the passenger seat. You might still be able to take control out there. Impose a little sanity.

  “Too late for that, hon,” Terry said. The garage was now blue with toxic vapor. Terry took another deep breath, stifled a cough, and inhaled again. “I don’t know how this is going to come out, but I see no good ending. This way is better.”

  Rita squeezed his hand sympathetically.

  “I keep thinking of every mess on the highway I ever cleaned up,” Terry said. “And that guy’s head, pushed right through the wall of that meth-cooker’s trailer.”

  Dimly, across the miles, from the direction of the prison, came the sound of explosions.

  Terry repeated, “This way is better,” and closed his eyes. Although he knew he was alone in Unit Four, he could still feel his wife squeezing his hand as he drifted away from Dooling and everything else.

  10

  Frank and Johnny Lee Kronsky were working their way between the wreckage of Barry Holden’s RV and the wall of the prison. They were almost to the smashed main doors when they heard the second bazooka shell whistling toward them.

  “Incoming!” Kronsky shouted.

  Frank looked over his shoulder and saw an amazing thing: the bazooka shell struck the parking lot on its rear fin, bounced high without exploding, and dropped nose-down toward the bulldozer that had been piloted by the late Jack Albertson. The roar of its detonation was deafening. The driver’s seat was blown through the thin shell of the dozer’s roof. Disintegrating treads rose in the air like steel piano keys. And one of the iron shields that had been placed to guard the cockpit doors shot outward, punching through the RV ahead of it like the peen of a giant’s sledgehammer.

  Frank stumbled over the twisted base of one of the main doors, and thus his life was saved. Johnny Lee Kronsky, still upright, was not just decapitated by a flying wedge of the Fleetwood’s siding; he was cut in two at the shoulders. Yet he staggered on two or three more steps, his heart beating long enough to send two gaudy jets of blood into the air. Then he collapsed. The C4 football fell from his hands and wobbled toward the security station. It came to rest with the embedded Android phone visible, and Frank saw 1:49 become 1:48 become 1:47.

  He crawled toward it, blinking concrete dust out of his eyes, then rolled to one side and into the shelter of the half-collapsed reception desk as Tig Murphy leaped up behind the security station’s bulletproof glass and fired his sidearm through the slot where visitors were supposed to surrender their IDs and phones. The angle was bad, and Tig’s slug went high. Frank was okay if he stayed down, but if he tried to go forward, toward the doors leading into the prison proper, he’d be a sitting duck. Going back, ditto.

  The lobby was filling with diesel smoke from the burning bulldozer. Added to this was the high, nauseating stench of Kronsky’s spilled blood—gallons of it, from the look. Beneath Frank was one of the reception desk’s legs, its splintered end digging into his back between his shoulder blades. Lying just out of Frank’s reach was the C4. 1:29 became 1:28 became 1:27.

  “There’s men all around the prison!” Frank shouted. “Give up and you won’t be hurt!”

  “Suck shit! This is our prison! You’re trespassing, and you got no authority!” Tig fired another shot.

  “There’s explosive! C4! It’s going to blow you to pieces!”

  “Right, and I’m Luke fucking Skywalker!”

  “Look out! Look down! You’ll see it!”

  “So you can try putting one in my gut through the slot? Think I’ll pass.”

  Desperate, Frank looked around toward the doors he’d come through, partially blocked by the remains of the RV. “You guys out there!” he shouted. “I need some covering fire!”

  No covering fire came. No reinforcements, either. Two of the men—Steve Pickering and Will Wittstock—were in full retreat, carrying the wounded Rupe Wittstock between them.

  On the littered floor of the lobby, almost at the base of the security station manned by Tig Murphy, the cell phone continued to count down toward zero.

  11

  Seeing Billy Wettermore undeniably dead made Don Peters feel a little better. Don had gone bowling with him once. The little princess had rolled a 252 and taken twenty bucks off Don. It was pretty obvious that he’d used some sort of doctored bowling ball, but Don had let it pass, the way he let so many things pass, because that was the kind of easygoing guy he was. Well, sometimes the world tilted the right way, and that was a fact. One less fag in the world, he thought, and we all say hooray.

  He hustled toward the gymnasium. Maybe I’ll be the one to get her, he thought. Put a bullet right into Evie Black’s quacking mouth and end this for good. They’d forget all about that mistake with Junior, and I wouldn’t have to buy a drink down at the Squeak for the rest of my life.

 
He stepped toward the door, already imagining Evie Black in his sights, but Elmore Pearl shoved him away. “Stand back, Quickdraw.”

  “Hey!” Don bleated. “You don’t know where you’re going!”

  He started forward again, but Drew T. Barry grabbed him and shook his head. Barry himself had no intention of being first inside, not when he didn’t know what was waiting. Probably the one he’d shot had been their only rearguard, but if there was someone, Pearl had a better chance of knocking him down than Peters, whose only kill this morning had been one of their own.

  Pearl was looking over his shoulder at Don and grinning as he stepped into the gym. “Relax, and let a man lead the w—”

  That was as far as he got before Maura Dunbarton’s cold hands gripped him, one by the neck and the other by the back of his head. Elmore Pearl gazed into those soulless eyes and began to screech. He didn’t screech for long; the reanimated thing that had been Maura stuck her hand into his mouth, ignored his biting teeth, and yanked straight down. The sound of his upper and lower jaws parting company was like the sound of a drumstick being torn off a Thanksgiving turkey.

  12

  “Damn if we ain’t a couple of lucky sonsabitches!” Maynard Griner exulted. “Any more distance and them shells’d just explode in the parking lot. Did you see that last one bounce, Low?”

  “I saw it,” Low agreed. “Skipped like a stone on a pond and took out a bulldozer. Not bad, but I can do better. Reload me.”

  Below, the prison was boiling smoke from the hole in the western wall. It was a glorious sight, reminiscent of the gush that came out of a mine when a blast went off, except much better obviously, because they weren’t cracking rocks. They were cracking a goddam state facility. It would have been worth doing even if they hadn’t needed to close Kitty McDavid’s snitching mouth.

  May was reaching into the ammo bag when he heard a branch snap. He whirled, reaching for the gun stuffed into his belt at the small of his back.

  Van fired the pistol Fritz Meshaum had tried to kill her with. The range was short, but she was exhausted, and instead of taking Maynard in the chest, the bullet only clipped his shoulder and sent him sprawling over the depleted bag of bazooka shells. His unfired gun fell into some bushes and caught by the trigger guard. “Brother!” he shouted. “Shot! She shot me!”

  Low dropped the bazooka and snatched up the rifle lying beside him. With one of them out of commission, Van could afford to focus. She secured the butt of the pistol at the center of her considerable bosom, and pulled the trigger. Little Low’s mouth exploded, his brains exited the back of his skull, and he aspirated his teeth with his final breath.

  “Low!” Maynard screamed. “Brother!”

  He grabbed the gun hanging in the bushes, but before he could bring it to bear, his wrist was gripped by something more like an iron manacle than a human hand.

  “You should know better than to point a gun at an arm-wrestling champ, even when she’s been awake for a week,” Van said in an oddly gentle voice, and twisted. From inside May’s wrist came a sound like breaking twigs. He shrieked. The gun dropped from his hand and she kicked it away.

  “You shot Low,” Maynard blubbered. “Kilt him!”

  “So I did.” Van’s head was ringing; her hip was throbbing; it felt like she was standing on a deck in rough waters. She was near the end of her considerable endurance, and she knew it. But this had been a sight more useful than killing herself, no doubt about that. Only now what?

  May had the same question, it seemed. “What are you going to do with me?”

  I can’t tie him up, Van thought. I’ve got nothing to tie him up with. Am I just going to go to sleep and let him get away? Probably after he puts a few rounds in me while I’m growing my cocoon?

  She looked down at the prison, where a crushed RV and a blazing bulldozer blocked the main doors. She meditated on the hole the first bazooka shell had put in C Wing, where dozens of women had been sleeping, defenseless in their cocoons. How many had been killed by these two country-fried assholes?

  “Which one are you? Lowell or Maynard?”

  “Maynard, ma’am.” He tried on a smile.

  “You the stupid one or the smart one, Maynard?”

  His smile grew. “I’m the stupid one, no doubt. Failed out of school in the eighth grade. I just do whatever Lowell says.”

  Van returned the smile. “Well, I guess I’ll just let you go, Maynard. No harm and no foul. You’ve got a truck down there. I took a peek, and the keys are in the ignition. Even driving one-handed, I think you could be most of the way to Pedro’s South of the Border by noon, if you don’t spare the horses. So why don’t you get going, before I change my mind?”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  May started jogging back among the tombstones of the little country graveyard. Van briefly considered following through on her promise, but the chances were fair to good that he’d double back and discover her sleeping beside his dead brother. Even if he didn’t, they’d been laughing over their dirty ambush like boys throwing baseballs at wooden bottles during county fair week. She didn’t dare let him get far, either, because she no longer trusted her aim.

  At least he won’t know what hit him, she thought.

  Van raised Meshaum’s pistol and—not without regret—put a round in May’s back. “Oof,” was his final word on mother earth, as he tripped forward into a pile of dry leaves.

  Van sat down with her back against a leaning gravestone—so old the name once carved thereon was almost completely worn away—and closed her eyes. She felt bad about shooting a man from behind, but this feeling was quickly smothered beneath a rising wave of sleep.

  Oh, it felt so good to give in.

  Threads began to spin from her skin. They blew prettily back and forth in a morning breeze. It was going to be another beautiful day in mountain country.

  13

  The glass was supposed to be bulletproof, but two close-range shots from the M4 Willy was toting blew Clint’s office window out of its frame. Clint hauled himself in, and landed on his desk. (It seemed to him that he had sat behind it writing reports and evaluations in another lifetime.) He heard screams and shouting from the direction of the gymnasium, but that was nothing he could deal with now.

  He turned to assist Willy and saw the old man leaning against the building with his head lowered. His breathing was harsh and rapid.

  Willy raised his arms. “Hope you’re strong enough to pull me in, Doc, because I ain’t gonna be able to give you much help.”

  “Give me your gun first.”

  Willy handed up the M4. Clint put it on his desk with his own weapon, atop a stack of Good Report forms. Then he seized Willy’s hands and pulled. The old man was able to help after all, pedaling his workshoes against the building below the window, and he practically flew in. Clint went over on his back. Willy landed on top of him.

  “This is what I’d call pretty goddam intimate,” Willy said. His voice was strained, and he looked worse than ever, but he was grinning.

  “In that case, you better call me Clint.” He got Willy to his feet, handed him the M4, and grabbed his own gun. “Let’s get our asses down to Evie’s cell.”

  “What are we going to do when we get there?”

  “I have no idea,” said Clint.

  14

  Drew T. Barry couldn’t believe what he was seeing: two women who looked like corpses and Elmore Pearl with his mouth pulled into a yawning cavern. His lower jaw seemed to be lying on his chest.

  Pearl staggered away from the creature that held him. He made almost a dozen steps before Maura caught him by the sweat-soaked collar. She drew him against her and stuck a thumb deep into his right eye. There was a pop, like a cork coming out of a bottle. Viscous liquid spilled down Pearl’s cheek, and he went limp.

  Kayleigh turned jerkily toward Don Peters, like a wind-up toy with a tired spring. He knew he should run, but an incredible lassitude seemed to have filled him. I have gone to sleep, he reas
oned, and this is the world’s worst nightmare. Has to be, because that’s Kayleigh Rawlings. I put that bitch on Bad Report just last month. I’ll let her get me, and that’s when I’ll wake up.

  Drew T. Barry, whose life’s work involved imagining the worst things that could happen to people, never considered the old I-must-be-dreaming scenario. This was happening, even though it seemed like something straight out of that show where rotting dead people came back to life, and he had every intention of surviving it. “Duck!” he shouted.

  Don might not have done so if the plastic explosive hadn’t detonated at that instant on the other side of the prison. It was actually more of a fall than a duck, but it did the job; instead of grasping the soft meat of his face, Kayleigh’s pallid fingers slapped off the hard plastic shell of the football helmet. There was a gunshot, amplified to monstrous levels in the empty gymnasium, and a point-blank round from the Weatherby—a gun that could literally stop an elephant—did the job on Kayleigh. Her throat simply exploded and her head lolled back, all the way back. Her body crumpled.

  Maura cast Elmore aside and lurched toward Don, a boogeylady whose hands opened and snapped closed, opened and snapped closed.

  “Shoot her!” Don screamed. His bladder let go and warm piddle coursed down his legs, soaking his socks.

  Drew T. Barry considered not doing it. Peters was an idiot, a loose cannon, and they might be better off without him. Oh well, he thought, okay. But after this, Mr. Prison Guard, you’re on your own.

  He shot Maura Dunbarton in the chest. She flew back to center court, landing beside the late Elmore Pearl. She lay there a moment, then struggled up and started toward Don again, although her top and bottom halves no longer seemed to be working together very well.

  “Shoot her in the head!” Don screamed. (He seemed to have forgotten that he had a gun himself.) “Shoot her in the head like you did the other one!”