The Waking Dark

by Robin Wasserman

“Will you bring Cass home?” he’d asked Daniel.

  “Only if you do what you’re supposed to do and stay put,” Daniel said, and would have to hope that was good enough. It probably would be, for the morning. Milo was a good kid, and a smart one.

  But what was he supposed to do if Daniel never came back?

  Part of him wanted to turn around, rejoin his brother, lock them both into the panic space until the craziness had passed. But what would he tell Milo if they lit Cass on fire and watched her burn? What would he tell Milo, who’d trusted him to be the all-powerful big brother who saved the day?

  He’d tell him that he wasn’t a superhero, and Milo couldn’t expect him to act like one.

  Who wanted to admit that to their little brother?

  Jule was waiting for an answer.

  “Definitely not sure,” Daniel admitted. “But let’s go.”

  He advanced to the front door of the police station. From his previous visits, he knew there were unlikely to be more than two cops and an unarmed and generally oblivious receptionist. Jule, as they’d planned, slipped in through the side entrance, ready to cover him should the cops not be as receptive to a hostage situation as they’d hoped.

  This is me, storming a police station with a shotgun, he thought. Daddy would be so proud.

  The shotgun, he suddenly realized, was the gun from his nightmares, the one he’d woken to find in his hands as he stood in the drugstore, dazed and confused. He’d chosen it without thinking, because it seemed to have the right size and heft – it had called out to him as the right gun for the job.

  Or maybe called to him as the right boy for the gun. Maybe this was where he was supposed to be, not to do what was right or to carry out some nebulous vision of justice, but to fulfill a destiny of bullets and blood.

  It was the kind of thought that really would make his father proud, and so Daniel shut it out of his head. He dropped the weapon to his side so that an unobservant receptionist might not notice until it was aimed at her head, and entered the station.

  It was deserted.

  Jule didn’t know what she was doing. For seventeen years, she’d somehow managed to stay out of trouble, despite her family, despite her reputation, despite the multistate drug operation headquartered fifteen yards from where she pretended to sleep. And now, in one week, Jule had burned down a building, made out with a sociopath, stabbed a man, disposed of a body, and stormed a cop shop intending to take hostages and free a confessed murderer. So maybe it was fortunate someone else seemed to have done that last job for her.

  The station was a ghost town. They moved through slowly, weapons drawn, both expecting a trap. The empty offices had the pregnant air of a surprise-party-in-waiting, with all the guests tucked into closets or under desks, tensed and ready to pounce.

  “Maybe it’s some kind of Bermuda Triangle thing,” Daniel said. “Maybe the whole town’s about to disappear.”

  “I don’t have that kind of luck,” Jule said, trying to shake the feeling that he could be right. “They probably all got food poisoning or something. Moldy donuts.”

  “Cops and donuts? That’s the best you can do? It’s beneath you.”

  “Kind of preoccupied right now, remember?” She waved the gun – carefully. When she was a kid, she’d always wanted Scott to teach her how to fire one. By the time he deemed her old enough, she’d figured out she didn’t want her fingerprints anywhere near her uncles’ weapons, nor did she want any of their “lessons” mucking up her brain. Those had been the years she’d declared herself a pacifist, a vegetarian, a Democrat – anything she could think of to ruffle the Prevette feathers. The night she’d suggested she might become a cop, her mother had slapped her face, but otherwise, no one had much cared. Eventually she’d given up trying to bother them, as she’d given up imagining she could be anything but what she was: a trailer-park Prevette. Still, she’d never touched a gun. Until now. It was heavier than she’d expected, and more awkward than they made it look in the movies. She didn’t intend to fire it. The gun was for show. The knife, still tucked into her oversized pocket, was for use. It was strange, carrying it tucked against her stomach like that. It felt almost warm, almost alive – a strange and dangerous fetus, eager to greet the world. She could feel that, too. It was eager.

  The stairwell to the basement was dark, and there was no switch. Slowly they descended. The lights were out in the cell block, too. In the quiet, it was all too easy to hear the scratching and scraping in the dark. The sound of insectile arms clawing at the shadows. Spiders, she thought she could handle. But not cockroaches. And definitely not flying cockroaches that dropped from above, tangled themselves in your hair, shivered down your neck, picked and chewed at your skin.

  Better cockroaches than cops, Jule thought, and was sorry she did, because it was too possible. An ambush, cops streaming down the stairs, surrounding them, shoving them in a cell, locking the door, throwing away the key. Dying down here, medieval-dungeon-style, flesh falling off and rats nibbling their bones.

  “Cass?” Daniel said softly. Jule wanted to slap him for disturbing the silence – and whatever might be lurking in it.

  But she wasn’t a child, afraid of the dark. “Cass!” she shouted.

  There was no answer. “Hard to believe she rescued herself,” Jule said. But then, Cass Porter was presumably no longer the anal rule follower she’d been the year before. Maybe she’d picked up lock picking and prison breaking somewhere along the way.

  “She’s gone,” a woman’s voice said from the cell beside Cass’s. A moment later, a face appeared through the bars.

  “The doctor,” Daniel whispered.

  As if Jule would ever forget the woman she’d almost burned alive.

  “Dr. Cheryl Fiske,” the woman said. “And sorry to tell you, but she’s long gone. They took her over early, ‘for her safety.’” The woman’s laughter echoed through the dark.

  “We’ve got to get to the gym,” Daniel said. “Stop the trial.”

  Jule shook her head. Two of them against a stationful of cops? Those were underdog odds, which had a certain appeal. But two of them against every cop in town and a bloodthirsty mob? “That’s not noble, it’s suicidal.”

  “Whatever. Stay here. I’ll go myself.”

  The stubborn ass; she was almost inclined to let him. “No, we’ll go. But not like this, cowboy-style, guns blazing. There’s got to be a better way.”

  “There is,” the doctor said. “Take me with you.”

  “Why would we do that?” Jule said.

  This is my fault, the woman had told her.

  I’m sorry.

  “Because you want to stop the trial, and I can do it,” the doctor said. “If I tell the town what I know.”

  “And what’s that?” Daniel asked.

  “Not here. Get me out, then I tell you. And everyone. That’s the deal.”

  “What, you can’t say it twice?” Jule said.

  “I tell you now, you might just leave me here.”

  “We might leave you here anyway.”

  “Then good luck with your angry mob.”

  Daniel blew a burst of air through his teeth. “Let’s get out of here. She doesn’t know anything and we’re wasting time.”

  “You’re smarter than that, Daniel,” the doctor said.

  Jule hesitated. “How does she know your name?”

  “I’ve been here before,” Daniel said.

  “And I know you’re smarter than that, Jule.”

  “Once and for all, how do you know my name, lady?”

  “I know a lot about you, Juliet Prevette. Born to Annie Prevette, father unknown. Seventeen years old as of three weeks ago, and happy belated birthday, by the way. School records indicate attitude problems, difficulties with authority and anger management, inability to relate to peers, probably due to troubled home —”

  “Shut up,” Jule said. “Just shut up. How do you know any of that? Who are you?”

  “Someone who’s bee
n paying very close attention to both of you for some time now. But not as close as I have to Cassandra. And I’m telling you that it’s in all of our best interests to get her out of this town safely, and quickly. Get me out of here and I can make it happen. Or I can tell you more about yourselves. Daniel Ghent, age seventeen, who spends his days warring with child protective services and his nights cleaning up after a father who —”

  “I’ll go find keys,” Jule said.

  Daniel raised his father’s shotgun. “Don’t bother,” he said, and shot the lock off the door.

  It was Monday morning, eleven days after the storm, and under other circumstances, it would have been the first day of school. The Eisenhower High School gymnasium, which drew students from all over the county, held eight hundred folding chairs. Every one was filled. Onstage were the mayor, the deacon, Grace Tuck, the disgraced Ellie King, and a handful of cops – the latter mostly there for show. It was the ring of Watchdogs, stationed backstage and at regular intervals around the perimeter, who had most of the firepower. A makeshift courtroom had been assembled onstage, with the mayor and deacon occupying a judge-like spot atop a riser, and a witness seat at stage right, all of them facing the audience. Cass, brought on surrounded by three armed guards, was greeted with a chair-rattling roar of disapproval. The villagers carried neither spears nor torches, but they had left their polite faces at home, along with their grudges and their closeted skeletons. This was a day for blood, and it had – as the storm and quarantine could not – united the town.

  Ellie stood by her side, the designated “spiritual adviser,” but knew she’d only been allowed to attend because the deacon was hoping she had come to her senses. If she recanted her accusations against the deacon, if she endorsed his verdict, he would draw her back into the bosom of the town and the church and all that was righteous and good. Her family would reopen their doors and their hearts. All would be as it was. If.

  “We are the same,” Ellie had told Cass when they rousted her at dawn and marched her out of the cell. “Whatever judgment comes, we’ll bear it together.”

  Bold words could disguise the fear, but they couldn’t erase it.

  She watched her hands closely, searching for a tremble. Some telltale sign of indecision or weakness, evidence that her body knew she didn’t have it in her. To rise before the crowd, to raise her voice over those who would shout her down, to plead. For judgment; for wrath; for mercy. Which, she didn’t know – couldn’t, until the witnesses testified, until Cass confessed her story, until Ellie figured out whether there were some things that could be neither excused nor forgiven.

  What she did know: That she was afraid.

  That it didn’t matter.

  West stood with Baz on one side and Chuck Platch on the other, searching the crowd for his parents, unsure whether he was hoping to see them or not. He didn’t. Jason wasn’t there, either, and for that, too, he couldn’t decide whether he was grateful. There had been very little sleep the night before, stretched out on the wooden bench, wrestling with ghosts and nightmares. He’d woken that morning with two black eyes and a nose crusted with blood, his leg just barely able to support his weight. He wore his mustard-colored Eisenhower jacket, and in its left pocket, he carried Jason’s gun.

  He didn’t notice Jason in the wings, watching Baz, resisting temptation, longing for blood.

  Cass wanted to live. This is what she thought as they took her out of her cell. This is what she thought when they brought her to the high school, which she’d assumed she would never see again. This is what she thought when they paraded her onstage, where, in another life, she would have been standing as valedictorian. It was almost unreal, staring out at the crowd, drinking in hundreds of faces and voices, imagining herself into the crush of people. No matter how much they hated her, they were exhilarating – even the terror was exhilarating, after so many months of no one and nothing.

  It only made her more determined. Screw justice, screw penance: she wanted to live.

  Let them have their trial, if they were so eager. Let them get it all out, weep and moan and rend their clothes and berate her for her crime and themselves for letting her survive it.

  Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. Those were the stages, right? And she’d finally hit the last one. She was a killer: accepted. If she had to, if it meant getting out of this alive, she’d kill again.

  She believed she could do it.

  If she got the chance.

  Grace had believed that she could do it. And maybe she hadn’t missed on purpose. Maybe her reasons for setting the cops on Cass rather than handling it herself, in the shed, from the start, had been more logical than cowardly. She was, after all, thirteen, and it was the first time she’d fired a gun. Surely, it wasn’t out of the question that she would miss, even at point-blank range. Surely, she couldn’t be faulted for wanting to get the hell out of there before anyone showed up to arrest her, instead of trying again.

  But no one had made her throw away her father’s gun, and now she had nothing to use but words.

  She settled into the witness chair, ready. Words would have to be enough.

  “Do it now, before they get started,” Daniel whispered, tugging his hood tighter around his face. The jail housed a collection of abandoned clothes, left behind by decades of drunk-tank deadbeats. He’d picked out the least foul of the hooded sweatshirts for himself and tossed another to Dr. Cheryl Fiske, who wanted nothing less than to allow the stained, lice-ridden rag anywhere near her body. But she had to admit he was right: Lice would be bearable. Being recognized and returned to her cell – or worse – would not.

  Which made the prospect of climbing onstage and confessing her sins somewhat problematic.

  She straightened in the chair, willing her legs to stand and carry her forward. It was no good. They weren’t going to like it, the little hood rat and her scrawny champion. She didn’t much like it, either – she’d never considered herself a coward. But then, she’d never needed to consider the subject one way or another, not until the tornado had blown everything to hell.

  Trite but true: this wasn’t what she’d signed up for.

  She hadn’t wanted to move to Kansas; she hadn’t even wanted to take this job, not if it would mean relocating to the Midwest, cutting off all communication with friends and family, and experimenting on unwitting human subjects.

  Though, if she was going to be honest with herself, that last one hadn’t been high on her list of objections. Especially not once she’d gotten the salary offer.

  It was all in the service of making the world a safer place. That was how she slept at night – that, and the assurance that she would never have to set foot in the town itself. She would never have to face any of her subjects, beyond the one safely enclosed in a padded room, behind a foolproof lock. She’d been promised she would never be put at risk – but here she was, trapped in this filthy, godforsaken excuse for a town, surrounded by people she wouldn’t have trusted even under the best of circumstances.

  She was trapped in the zoo, waiting for the animals to attack. Maybe it was karma.

  She hadn’t intentionally lied. She’d honestly meant to take the stage and tell the truth. Her words would set off an explosion, and the subsequent chaos could give them all cover to escape. Or it could get them killed. Specifically, it could get her killed. Eight hundred animals against her – the one to blame. And nothing between them but a couple of teenagers who, once they knew the truth, would have even less inclination to protect her than they did now. As if they could if they tried: there’d been security at the door, and Daniel had been forced to relinquish his gun.

  Cheryl would never forget the things she had seen at the facility, after the containment breach: gutted bodies and steaming organs, beasts who looked human and flung themselves at death. She was a scientist, and she knew how to weigh facts, possibilities, cause and effect. For all she owed Cassandra Porter, she would not give the girl her life.

  �
�If I got up there and told the truth, it would cause a riot,” she whispered.

  “Isn’t that the point?” Daniel said.

  “We can’t risk it. You don’t understand, these people…”

  Daniel was nonplussed. “So you lied.”

  “I do want to help you,” she whispered.

  “What the hell good does that do us?”

  “Right now? Very little. But when we get Cassandra back and it’s time to get out of here —”

  “And when hell freezes over, you’ll be indispensable,” Jule whispered. They were starting to draw looks from the people around them. “In the meantime, shut up.”

  Cheryl noted the scowl on Daniel’s face and the way his hand twitched at an invisible trigger. She noted how everything in him loosened when Jule rested her hand on top of his. “Not till it’s right,” Jule whispered.