The Institute Read online

  Stackhouse stood in front of the bus. He put his right hand on its chilly, dew-jeweled surface. With his left he grasped the flagpole. Then he waited.

  19

  “Drive,” Tim said. He was on the floor behind the driver’s seat. Luke was beneath him.

  “Please don’t make me do this,” Mrs. Sigsby said. “If you’d just let me tell you why this place is so important—”

  “Drive.”

  She drove. The lights drew closer. Now she could see the bus, and the flagpole, and Trevor standing between them.

  20

  It’s time, Avery said.

  He had expected to be afraid, he had been afraid ever since waking up in a room that looked like his room but wasn’t, and then Harry Cross had knocked him down and he had been more afraid than ever. But he wasn’t afraid now. He was exhilarated. There was a song his mom played on the stereo all the time when she was cleaning, and now a line of it recurred to him: I shall be released.

  He walked to the Ward A kids, who were already circling. Kalisha, Nicky, George, and Helen followed. Avery held out his hands. Kalisha took one and Iris—poor Iris, who might have been saved if this had happened even a day earlier—took the other.

  The woman standing guard outside the door shouted something, a question, but it was lost in the rising hum. The dots came, not dim now but bright and getting brighter. The Stasi Lights filled the center of the circle, spinning and rising like the stripe on a barber pole, coming from some deep seat of power, going back there, then returning, refreshed and stronger than ever.

  CLOSE YOUR EYES.

  No longer a thought but a THOUGHT, riding the hum.

  Avery watched to make sure they were doing it, then closed his. He expected to see his own room at home, or maybe their backyard with the swing set and the aboveground pool his dad inflated every Memorial Day, but he didn’t. What he saw behind his closed eyes—what all of them saw—was the Institute playground. And maybe that shouldn’t have been a surprise. It was true that he had been knocked down there and made to cry, which was a bad beginning to these last weeks of his life, but then he had made friends, good ones. He hadn’t had friends back home. In his school back home they thought he was a weirdo, they even made fun of his name, running up to him and yelling “Hey Avery, do me a favory” in his face. There had been none of that here, because here they’d all been in it together. Here his friends had taken care of him, treated him like a normal person, and now he would take care of them. Kalisha, Nicky, George, and Helen: he would take care of them.

  Luke most of all. If he could.

  With his eyes closed, he saw the big phone.

  It was sitting next to the trampoline, in front of the shallow ditch Luke had squirmed through to get under the fence, an old-fashioned telephone at least fifteen feet high and as black as death. Avery and his friends and the kids from Ward A stood around it in their circle. The Stasi Lights swirled, brighter than ever, now over the phone’s dial, now skating giddily over its gigantic Bakelite handset.

  Kalisha, GO. Playground!

  There was no protest. Her hand left Avery’s, but before the break in the circle could interrupt the power and destroy the vision, George grasped Avery’s hand. The hum was everywhere now, surely they must hear it in all those faraway places where there were other children like them, standing in circles like this. Those children heard, just as the targets they’d been brought to their various Institutes to kill had heard. And like those targets, the children would obey. The difference was they would obey knowingly, and gladly. The revolt was not just here; the revolt was global.

  George, GO. Playground!

  George’s hand dropped out and Nicky’s took its place. Nicky who had stood up for him when Harry knocked him over. Nicky who called him the Avester, like it was a special name only friends could use. Avery gave his hand a squeeze and felt Nicky squeeze back. Nicky who was always bruised. Nicky who wouldn’t knuckle under or take their shitty tokens.

  Nicky, GO. Playground!

  He was gone. Now it was Helen gripping his hand, Helen with her fading punk hair, Helen who had taught him to do forward rolls on the trampoline and spotted him “so you won’t fall off and split your stupid head.”

  Helen, GO. Playground!

  She went, the last of his friends from down here, but Katie took the hand Helen had been holding, and it was time.

  Outside, faint gunfire.

  Please don’t let it be too late!

  It was his last conscious thought as an individual, as Avery. Then he joined the hum, and the lights.

  It was time to make a long-distance call.

  21

  Through a few remaining trees, Stackhouse saw the Suburban roll forward. The gleam of lights from the admin building slid on its chrome. It was moving very slowly, but it was coming. It occurred to him (too late to do anything about it, but wasn’t that always the way) that the boy might no longer have the flash drive, that he might have left it with the one he called Officer Wendy after all. Or hidden it somewhere between the airport and here, with a last-gasp call from the misguided hero to tell Officer Wendy where it was if things went wrong.

  But what could I have done about it? he thought. Nothing. There is only this.

  The Suburban appeared at the head of the driveway. Stackhouse remained standing between the bus and the flagpole, arms outstretched like Christ on the cross. The hum had reached a near deafening level, and he wondered if Rosalind was still holding her position or if she had been forced to flee. He thought of Gladys and hoped she was ready to start the mix.

  He squinted at the shape behind the Suburban’s wheel. It was impossible to make out much, and he knew Doug and Chad wouldn’t be able to see jackshit through the darkened rear windows until they were blown out, but the windshield was clear glass, and when the Suburban closed the distance to twenty yards—a little closer than he had hoped for—he saw the expansion band of the turned-around cap cutting across the driver’s forehead, and let go of the flagpole. The driver’s head began to shake frantically. One hand left the wheel, pressing a starfish shape against the windshield in a stop gesture, and he realized he’d been deked. The trick was as simple as a kid escaping by crawling under a fence, and just as effective.

  It wasn’t the misguided hero behind the wheel. It was Mrs. Sigsby.

  The Suburban stopped again, then began to back up. “I’m sorry, Julia, no help for it,” he said, and raised his hand.

  The shooting from admin and the trees began. At the rear of Front Half, Gladys Hickson removed the covers from two large buckets of bleach positioned under the HVAC unit which provided heating and cooling to Back Half and the access tunnel. She held her breath, dumped the bottles of toilet bowl cleaner into the buckets of bleach, gave each a quick stir with a mop handle, covered the buckets and the unit with a tarp, then sprinted for Front Half’s East Wing with her eyes burning. As she ran across the roof, she realized it was moving under her feet.

  22

  “No, Trevor, no!” Mrs. Sigsby screamed. She was shaking her head back and forth. From his position behind her, Tim saw her raise one hand and press it against the windshield. She used her other hand to put the Suburban in reverse.

  It had just started to move when the shooting began, some of it coming from the right, in the woods, some from ahead and—Tim was pretty sure—from above. Holes appeared in the Suburban’s windshield. The glass turned milky and sagged inward. Mrs. Sigsby became a puppet, jerking and bouncing and making stifled cries as bullets hit her.

  “Stay down, Luke!” Tim shouted when the boy began to squirm beneath him. “Stay down!”

  Bullets punched through the Suburban’s rear windows. Shards of glass fell on Tim’s back. Blood was running down the rear of the driver’s seat. Even with the steady hum that seemed to be coming from everywhere, Tim could hear the slugs passing just above him, each one making a low zzzz sound.

  There was the sping-spang of bullets punching through metal. The Suburban’
s hood popped up. Tim found himself thinking of the final scene in some old gangster movie, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow doing a death-dance as bullets ripped into their car and into them. Whatever Luke’s plan had been, it had gone disastrously wrong. Mrs. Sigsby was dead; he could see her blood spattered on the remains of the windshield. They would be next.

  Then, screams from ahead and shouts from the right. Two more bullets came through the right side of the Suburban, one of them actually twitching the collar of Tim’s shirt. They were the last two. Now what he heard was a vast, grinding roar.

  “Let me up!” Luke gasped. “I can’t breathe!”

  Tim got off the boy and peered between the front seats. He was aware that his head might be blown off at any second, but he had to see. Luke got up beside him. Tim started to tell the boy to get back down, but the words died in his throat.

  This can’t be real, he thought. It can’t be.

  But it was.

  23

  Avery and the others stood in a circle around the big phone. It was hard to see because of the Stasi Lights, so bright and so beautiful.

  The sparkler, Avery thought. Now we make the sparkler.

  It coalesced from the lights, ten feet high and spitting brilliance in every direction. The sparkler wavered back and forth at first, then the group mind took firmer control. It swung against the phone’s gigantic receiver and knocked it from its gigantic base. The dumbbell-shape landed askew against the jungle gym. Voices in different languages spilled from the mouthpiece, all asking the same questions: Hello, do you hear me? Hello, are you there?

  YES, the children of the Institute answered, and in one voice. YES, WE HEAR YOU! DO IT NOW!

  A circle of children in Spain’s Sierra Nevada National Park heard. A circle of Bosnian children imprisoned in the Dinaric Alps heard. On Pampus, an island guarding the entrance to Amsterdam’s harbor, a circle of Dutch children heard. A circle of German children heard in the mountainous forests of Bavaria.

  In Pietrapertosa, Italy.

  In Namwon, South Korea.

  Ten kilometers outside the Siberian ghost town of Chersky.

  They heard, they answered, they became one.

  24

  Kalisha and the others reached the locked door between them and Front Half. They could hear the gunfire clearly now, because the hum had abruptly stopped, as if somewhere a plug had been pulled.

  Oh, it’s still there, Kalisha thought. It’s just not for us anymore.

  A groaning began in the walls, an almost human sound, and then the steel door between the access tunnel and Front Half’s F-Level blew outward, smashing Rosalind Dawson before it and killing her instantly. The door landed beyond the elevator, twisted out of shape where its heavy hinges had been. Above, the wire mesh guarding the overhead fluorescent tubes was rippling, casting crazy underwater shadows.

  The groaning grew louder, coming from everywhere. It was as if the building were trying to tear itself apart. In the Suburban, Tim had thought of Bonnie and Clyde; Kalisha thought of the Poe story about the House of Usher.

  Come on, she thought at the others. Fast!

  They ran past the torn door with the torn woman lying beneath it in a spreading pool of blood.

  George: What about the elevator? It’s back there!

  Nicky: Are you crazy? I don’t know what’s happening, but I’m not getting in any goddam elevator.

  Helen: Is it an earthquake?

  “No,” Kalisha said.

  Mindquake. I don’t know how—

  “. . . how they’re doing it, but that’s what . . .” She took a breath and tasted something acrid. It made her cough. “That’s what it is.”

  Helen: Something’s wrong with the air.

  Nicky said, “I think it’s some kind of poison.” Those fuckers, they never stop.

  Kalisha shoved open the door marked STAIRS and they began to climb, all of them coughing now. Between D- and C-Level, the stairs began to shake beneath them. Cracks zig-zagged down the walls. The fluorescents went out and the emergency lights came on, casting a flat yellow glow. Kalisha stopped, bent over, dry-retched, then started up again.

  George: What about Avery and the rest of the kids still down there? They’ll strangle!

  Nicky: And what about Luke? Is he here? Is he still alive?

  Kalisha didn’t know. All she knew was they had to get out before they choked. Or before they were crushed, if the Institute were imploding.

  A titanic shudder went through the building and the stairway tilted to the right. She thought of what their situation might be right now if they had tried the elevator, and pushed the thought away.

  B-Level. Kalisha was gasping for breath, but the air was better here, and she was able to run a little faster. She was glad she hadn’t got hooked on the vending machine cigarettes, there was that, at least. The groaning in the walls had become a low scream. She could hear hollow metal crumping sounds, and guessed the piping and electrical conduits were coming apart.

  Everything was coming apart. She flashed on a YouTube video she’d seen once, a horrible thing she hadn’t been able to look away from: a dentist using forceps to extract somebody’s tooth. The tooth wiggling while blood seeped out around it, trying to stay in the gum but finally pulling free with the roots dangling. This was like that.

  She came to the ground level door, but it was slanted now, surreal, drunken. She pushed on it and it wouldn’t open. Nicky joined her and they pushed together. No good. The floor rose beneath them, then thudded back down. A piece of the ceiling came free, crashed to the stairs, and slid away, crumbling as it went.

  “It’s going to squash us if we can’t get out!” Kalisha shouted.

  Nicky: George. Helen.

  He held out his hands. The stairwell was narrow, but the four of them somehow crammed together in front of the door, hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder. George’s hair was in Kalisha’s eyes. Helen’s breath, foul with fear, was in her face. They fumbled and joined hands. The dots came and the door screeched open, taking a section of the overhead jamb with it. Beyond was the residence corridor, now canted drunkenly to one side. Kalisha escaped the crooked doorway first, popping free like a cork from a champagne bottle. She went to her knees, cutting one hand on a light fixture that had fallen, spraying glass and metal everywhere. On one wall, askew but still hanging in there, was the poster of the three kids running through a meadow, the one that said it was just another day in paradise.

  Kalisha scrambled up, looked around, and saw the other three doing the same. Together they ran for the lounge, past rooms where no stolen children would ever live again. The doors of those rooms were flying open and clapping shut, the sound like lunatics applauding. In the canteen, several of the vending machines had fallen over, spilling snacks. Broken nip bottles filled the air with the pungent aroma of alcohol. The door to the playground was twisted out of shape and jammed shut, but the glass was gone and fine fresh air came in on a late-summer breeze. Kalisha reached the door and froze. For a moment she forgot all about the building that seemed to be tearing itself apart all around them.

  Her first thought was that the others had gotten out after all, maybe through the access tunnel’s other door, because there they were: Avery, Iris, Hal, Len, Jimmy, Donna, and all the rest of the Ward A kids. Then she realized she wasn’t actually seeing them at all. They were projections. Avatars. And so was the huge telephone they were circling. It should have crushed the trampoline and the badminton net, but both were still there, and she could see the chainlink fence not just behind the big phone but through it.

  Then both the kids and the phone were gone. She realized the floor was rising again, and this time it wasn’t thumping back down. She could see a slowly increasing gap between the lounge and the edge of the playground. Only nine inches or so for now, but it was growing. She had to give a little jump to get outside, as if from the second step of a staircase.

  “Come on!” she shouted to the others. “Hurry! While you still can!”


  25

  Stackhouse heard screams from the roof of admin, and the firing from there ceased. He turned and saw something he could not at first credit. Front Half was rising. A swaying figure on the roof stood silhouetted against the moon, arms outstretched in an effort to maintain balance. It had to be Gladys.

  This can’t be happening, he thought.

  But it was. Front Half rose higher, crunching and snapping as it parted company with the earth. It blotted out the moon, then dipped like the nose of a huge and clumsy helicopter. Gladys went flying. Stackhouse heard her scream as she disappeared into the shadows. On the admin building, Zeke and Dr. Richardson dropped their guns and cringed against the parapet, staring up at something out of a dream: a building that was slowly climbing into the sky, shedding glass and chunks of cinderblock. It pulled most of the playground’s chainlink fence with it. Water from broken pipes poured from the building’s tangled underside.

  The cigarette vending machine tumbled from the broken door of the West Wing lounge into the playground. George Iles, gaping at the underside of Front Half as it rose into the sky, would have been crushed by it if Nicky hadn’t yanked him out of the way.

  Doug the chef and Chad the caretaker came through the screening trees, their necks craned, their mouths open, their guns hanging from their hands. They might have assumed that anyone in the bullet-riddled Suburban was dead; more likely, they had forgotten it entirely in their wonder and dismay.

  Now the bottom of Front Half was above the admin building’s roof. It came on with the stately, cumbersome grace of an eighteenth-century Royal Navy gunship under sail in a light breeze. Insulation and wires, some still sparking, dangled like broken umbilical cords. A jutting piece of pipe scraped off a ventilation housing. Zeke the Greek and Dr. Felicia Richardson saw it coming and ran for the hatch they had come up through. Zeke made it; Dr. Richardson did not. She put her arms over her head in a gesture of protection that was both instinctive and pitiful.