The Institute Read online

  They are never coming back, Avery thought. Their gears are too stripped to recover. Maybe Iris, too.

  George: But the rest of us might have a chance.

  Yes.

  Kalisha, knowing it was cold, also knowing it was necessary: In the meantime, we can use them.

  “What now?” Katie asked. “What now what now?”

  For a moment none of them answered, because none of them knew. Then Avery spoke up.

  Front Half. Let’s get the rest of the kids and get out of here.

  Helen: And go where?

  An alarm began to blare, whoop-whoop-whooping in rising and falling cycles. None of them paid any attention.

  “We’ll worry about where later,” Nicky said. He joined hands with Kalisha and George again. “First, let’s get some payback. Let’s do some damage. Anyone got a problem with that?”

  No one did. Hands once more linked, the eleven who had begun the revolt started back down the hall toward the Back Half lounge, and the elevator lobby beyond. The residents of Ward A followed in a kind of zombie shuffle, perhaps drawn by the magnetism of children who could still think. The hum had dropped to a drone, but it was there.

  Avery Dixon reached out, searching for Luke, hoping to find him in a place too far away to be of any help to them. Because that would mean at least one of the Institute’s child slaves was safe. There was a good chance the rest of them were going to die, because the staff of this hellhole would do anything to keep them from escaping.

  Anything.

  27

  Trevor Stackhouse was in his office down the hall from Mrs. Sigsby’s, pacing up and down because he was too wired to sit, and would remain that way until he heard from Julia. Her news might be good or bad, but any news would be better than this waiting.

  A telephone rang, but it was neither the traditional jingle of the landline or the brrt-brrt of his box phone; it was the imperative double-honk of the red security phone. The last time it had rung was when the shit-show with those twins and the Cross boy had gone down in the cafeteria. Stackhouse picked it up, and before he could say a word, Dr. Hallas was gibbering in his ear.

  “They’re out, the ones who watch the movies for sure and I think the gorks are out, too, they’ve hurt at least three of the caretakers, no, four, Corinne says she thinks Phil Chaffitz is dead, electrocu—”

  “SHUT UP!” Stackhouse yelled into the phone. And then, when he was sure (no, not sure, just hopeful) that he had Heckle’s attention, he said: “Put your thoughts in order and tell me what happened.”

  Hallas, shocked back to an approximation of his once-upon-a-time rationality, told Stackhouse what he had seen. As he was nearing the end of his story, the Institute’s general alarm began to go off.

  “Christ, did you turn that on, Everett?”

  “No, no, not me, it must have been Joanne. Dr. James. She was in the crematory. She goes there to meditate.”

  Stackhouse was almost sidetracked by the bizarre image this raised in his mind, Dr. Jeckle sitting crosslegged in front of the oven door, perhaps praying for serenity, and then he forced his mind back to the situation at hand: the Back Half children had raised some kind of half-assed mutiny. How could it have happened? It had never happened before. And why now?

  Heckle was still talking, but Stackhouse had heard all he needed. “Listen to me, Everett. Get every orange card you can find and burn them, okay? Burn them.”

  “How . . . how am I supposed to . . .”

  “You’ve got a goddam furnace on E-Level!” Stackhouse roared. “Use the fucking thing for something besides kids!”

  He hung up and used the landline to call Fellowes in the computer room. Andy wanted to know what the alarm was about. He sounded scared.

  “We have a problem in Back Half, but I’m handling it. Feed the cameras from over there to my computer. Don’t ask questions, just do it.”

  He turned on his desktop—had the elderly thing ever booted up so slowly?—and clicked on SECURITY CAMERAS. He saw the Front Half cafeteria, mostly empty . . . a few kids in the playground . . .

  “Andy!” he shouted. “Not Front Half, Back Half! Stop fucking arou—”

  The picture flipped, and he saw Heckle through a film of lens dust, cowering in his office just as Jeckle came in, presumably from her interrupted meditation session. She was looking back over her shoulder.

  “Okay, that’s better. I’ll take it from here.”

  He flipped the image and saw the caretakers’ lounge. A bunch of them were cowering in there with the door to the corridor closed and presumably locked. No help there.

  Flip, and here was the blue-carpeted main corridor, with at least three caretakers down. No, make it four. Jake Howland was sitting on the floor outside the screening room, cradling his hand against his smock top, which was drenched with blood.

  Flip, and here was the cafeteria, empty.

  Flip, and here was the lounge. Corinne Rawson was kneeling next to Phil Chaffitz, blabbing to someone on her walkie-talkie. Phil did indeed look dead.

  Flip, and here was the elevator lobby, the door to the elevator just beginning to slide shut. The car was the size of those used to transport patients in hospitals, and it was crammed with residents. Most undressed. The gorks from Ward A, then. If he could stop them there . . . trap them there . . .

  Flip, and through that irritating film of dust and smear, Stackhouse saw more kids on E-Level, close to a dozen, milling around in front of the elevator doors and waiting for them to open and disgorge the rest of the kiddie mutineers. Waiting outside the access tunnel leading to Front Half. Not good.

  Stackhouse picked up the landline and heard nothing but silence. Fellowes had hung up on his end. Cursing the wasted time, Stackhouse dialed him back. “Can you kill the power to the Back Half elevator? Stop it in the shaft?”

  “I don’t know,” Fellowes said. “Maybe. It might be in the Emergency Procedures booklet. Just let me ch—”

  But it was already too late. The elevator doors slid open on E-Level and the escapees from Gorky Park wandered out, staring around at the tiled elevator lobby as if there was something to see there. That was bad, but Stackhouse saw something worse. Heckle and Jeckle could collect dozens of Back Half key cards and burn them, but it would make no difference. Because one of the kids—it was the pipsqueak who’d collaborated with the housekeeper on Ellis’s escape—had an orange key card in his hand. It would open the door to the tunnel, and it would also open the door that gave on F-Level in Front Half. If they got to Front Half, anything might happen.

  For a moment, one that seemed endless, Stackhouse froze. Fellowes was squawking in his ear, but the sound was far away. Because yes, the little shit was using the orange card and leading his merry band into the tunnel. A two-hundred-yard walk would take them to Front Half. The door closed behind the last of them, leaving the lower elevator lobby empty. Stackhouse flipped to a new camera and got them walking along the tiled tunnel.

  Dr. Hendricks came bursting in, good old Donkey Kong with his shirttail flapping and his fly half-zipped and his eyes all red-rimmed and buggy. “What’s happening? What’s—”

  And, just to add to the lunacy, his box phone began its brrt-brrt-brrt. Stackhouse held his hand up to silence Hendricks. The box phone continued its demands.

  “Andy. They’re in the tunnel. They’re coming, and they have a key card. We need to stop them. Do you have any ideas at all?”

  He expected nothing but more panic, but Fellowes surprised him. “I guess I could kill the locks.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t deactivate the cards, but I can freeze the locks. The entry codes are computer generated, and so—”

  “Are you saying you can bottle them up?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Do it! Do it right now!”

  “What is it?” Hendricks asked. “Jesus, I was just getting ready to leave and the alarm—”

  “Shut up,” Stackhouse said. “But stay here. I may need you.”r />
  The box phone continued braying. Still watching the tunnel and the marching morons, he picked it up. Now he was holding a phone to each ear, like a character in some old slapstick comedy. “What? What?”

  “We are here, and the boy is here,” Mrs. Sigsby said. The connection was good; she might have been in the next room. “I expect to have him back in our custody shortly.” She paused. “Or dead.”

  “Good for you, Julia, but we have a situation here. There’s been a—”

  “Whatever it is, handle it. This is happening now. I’ll call you when we’re on our way out of town.”

  She was gone. Stackhouse didn’t care, because if Fellowes didn’t work computer magic, Julia might have nothing to come back to.

  “Andy! Are you still there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Did you do it?”

  Stackhouse felt a dreadful certainty that Fellowes would say that their old computer system had picked this critical moment to seize up.

  “Yes. Well, pretty sure. I’m looking at a message on my screen that says ORANGE KEY CARDS INVALID INSERT NEW AUTHORIZATION CODE.”

  A pretty-sure from Andy Fellowes did jackshit to ease Stackhouse’s mind. He sat forward in his chair, hands locked together, watching the screen of his computer. Hendricks joined him, peering over his shoulder.

  “My God, what are they doing out?”

  “Coming for us would be my guess,” Stackhouse said. “We’re about to find out if they can.”

  The parade of potential escapees left the view of one camera. Stackhouse punched the key that swapped the images, briefly got Corinne Rawson holding Phil’s head in her lap, then got the one he wanted. It showed the door to F-Level on the Front Half end of the access tunnel. The kids reached it.

  “Crunch time,” Stackhouse said. He was clenching his fists hard enough to leave marks in his palms.

  Dixon raised the orange card and laid it on the reader pad. He tried the knob and when nothing happened, Trevor Stackhouse finally relaxed. Beside him, Hendricks gusted out a breath that smelled strongly of bourbon. Drinking on duty was as verboten as carrying a cell phone, but Stackhouse wasn’t going to worry about that now.

  Flies in a jar, he thought. That’s all you are now, boys and girls. As to what happens to you next . . .

  That, thankfully, wasn’t his problem. What happened to them after the loose end in South Carolina had been snipped off was up to Mrs. Sigsby.

  “That’s why they pay you the big bucks, Julia,” he said, and settled back in his chair to watch a bunch of the kids—now led by Wilholm—go back and try the door they had come through. With no result. The Wilholm brat threw back his head. His mouth opened. Stackhouse wished for audio, so he could hear that scream of frustration.

  “We have contained the problem,” he said to Hendricks.

  “Um,” Hendricks said.

  Stackhouse turned to look at him. “What does that mean?”

  “Maybe not quite.”

  28

  Tim put a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “If you feel up to it now, we really need to go back inside and sort this out. We’ll get you that Coke, and—”

  “Wait.” Luke was staring at the hand-holding couple crossing the street. They hadn’t noticed the trio standing at the mouth of Orphan Annie’s alley; their attention was focused on the cop-shop.

  “Got off the interstate and got lost,” Wendy said. “Bet you anything. We get half a dozen a month. Want to go back in now?”

  Luke paid no attention. He could still sense the others, the kids, and they sounded dismayed now, but they were far back in his mind, like voices coming through a ventilator from another room. That woman . . . the one in the flowery dress . . .

  Something falls over and wakes me up. It must be the trophy from when we won the Northwest Debate Tourney, because that’s the biggest and it makes a hell of a clatter. Someone is bending over me. I say mom because even though I know it isn’t her, she’s a woman and mom is the first word to come into my still-mostly-asleep mind. And she says—

  “Sure,” Luke said. “Whatever you want.”

  “Great!” Wendy said. “We’ll just—”

  “No, that’s what she said.” He pointed. The couple had reached the sidewalk in front of the sheriff’s station. They were no longer holding hands. Luke turned to Tim, his eyes wide and panicky. “She’s one of the ones who took me! I saw her again, in the Institute! In the break room! They’re here! I told you they’d come and they’re here!”

  Luke whirled and ran for the door, which was unlocked on this side, so Annie could get in late at night, should she so desire.

  “What—” Wendy began, but Tim didn’t let her finish. He ran after the boy from the train, and the thought in his mind was that just maybe the kid had been right about Norbert Hollister after all.

  29

  “Well?” Orphan Annie’s whisper was almost too fierce to be called one. “Do you believe me now, Mr. Corbett Denton?”

  Drummer didn’t reply at first, because he was trying to process what he was looking at: three vans parked side by side, and beyond them, a cluster of men and women. Looked like nine of them, enough to field a damn baseball team. And Annie was right, they were armed. It was twilight now, but the light lingered long in late summer, and besides, the streetlights had come on. Drummer could see holstered sidearms and two long guns that looked to him like HKs. People-killing machines. The baseball team was clustered near the front of the old movie theater, but mostly shielded from the sidewalk by its brick flank. They were obviously waiting for something.

  “They got scouts!” Annie hissed. “See them crossing the street? They’ll be checking the sheriff’s to see how many are in there! Will you get your goddam guns now, or do I have to go get em myself?”

  Drummer turned, and for the first time in twenty years, maybe even thirty, broke into a full-out run. He mounted the steps to the apartment over his barber shop and stopped on the landing long enough to tear in three or four huge breaths. Also long enough to wonder if his heart would be able to stand the strain or if it would simply explode.

  His .30–06, which he planned to shoot himself with one of these fine South Carolina nights (might have done it already, if not for an occasional interesting conversation with the town’s new night knocker) was in the closet, and it was loaded. So were the .45 automatic pistol and .38 revolver on the high shelf.

  He took all three weapons and ran back down the stairs, panting and sweating and probably stinking like a hog in a steambath, but feeling fully alive for the first time in years. He listened for the sound of shooting, but so far there was nothing.

  Maybe they’re cops, he thought, but that seemed unlikely. Cops would have walked right in, showed their IDs, and announced their business. Also, they would have come in black SUVs, Suburbans or Escalades.

  At least that was the way they did it on TV.

  30

  Nick Wilholm led the ragtag troop of lost boys and girls back down the slightly slanted tunnel to the locked door on the Front Half side. Some of the Ward A inmates followed; some just milled around. Pete Littlejohn began to hit the top of his head again, yelling, “Ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya.” There was an echo in the tunnel that made his rhythmic chant not just annoying but maddening.

  “Join hands,” Nicky said. “All of us.” He lifted his chin to indicate the milling gorks, and added, I think it will bring them.

  Like bugs to a bug light, Kalisha thought. It wasn’t very nice, but the truth so seldom was.

  They came. As each one joined the circle, the hum became louder. The sides of the tunnel forced their circle into more of a capsule shape, but that was okay. The power was here.

  Kalisha understood what Nicky was thinking, not just because she was picking it up but because it was the only play they had left.

  Stronger together, she thought, and then, out loud to Avery: “Bust that lock, Avester.”

  The hum rose to that feedback scream, and if any one of them had
still had a headache, it would have fled in terror. Once again Kalisha had that sense of sublime power. It came on sparkler nights, but then it was dirty. This was clean, because it was them. The Ward A children were silent, but smiling. They felt it, too. And liked it. Kalisha supposed it was the closest to thinking they might ever get.

  There was a faint creaking noise from the door, and they could see it settle back in its frame, but that was all. Avery had been standing on his tiptoes, his small face clenched in concentration. Now he slumped and let out his breath.

  George: No?

  Avery: No. If it was just locked, I think we could, but it’s like the lock isn’t even there.

  “Dead,” Iris said. “Dead, dead, can’t be fed, that’s what I said, the lock is dead.”

  “Froze them somehow,” Nicky said. And we can’t bust through, can we?

  Avery: No, solid steel.

  “Where’s Superman when you need him?” George said. He scrubbed his hands up his cheeks, producing a humorless smile.

  Helen sat down, put her hands to her face, and began to cry. “What good are we?” She said it again, this time as a mental echo: What good are we?

  Nicky turned to Kalisha. Any ideas?

  No.

  He turned to Avery. What about you?

  Avery shook his head.

  31

  “What do you mean, not quite?” Stackhouse asked.

  Instead of answering, Donkey Kong hurried across the room to Stackhouse’s intercom. The top of the casing was thick with dust. Stackhouse had never used it a single time—it wasn’t as if he had to announce upcoming dances or trivia nights. Dr. Hendricks bent to inspect the rudimentary controls and flicked a switch, lighting a green go-lamp.