CHAPTER 20
1
Around midnight central time, a fracas broke out between a small group of Crips and a much larger contingent of Bloods at a Chicago bar called Stoney’s Big Dipper. It spread from there, becoming a city-wide gang war that Internet news sites described variously as apocalyptic, unprecedented, and “fucking humungous.” No one would ever know which member of which gang actually lit the match that ignited what became known as the Second Great Chicago Fire, but it started in West Englewood and spread from there. By dawn, large parts of the city were in flames. Police and fire department response was nearly nonexistent. Most of the cops and hose-jockeys were at home, either trying to keep their wives and daughters awake, or watching over their cocooned bodies while they slept, hoping against hope.
2
“Tell me what you saw,” Frank said. He and Don Peters were standing in back of the Squeaky Wheel, where things had finally begun to wind down—probably because Pudge Marone’s supply of alcohol was running low. “Exactly what you saw.”
“I was in the Booth, right? That’s the prison’s nerve-center. We got fifty different cameras. I was looking into what they call the soft cell, which is where they put the new one. She’s down as Eve Black, although I don’t know if that’s her real name or just—”
“Never mind that now. What did you see?”
“Well, she was in a red top, like all the new intakes are, and she was falling asleep. I was interested to see the webs come out of her skin, because I knew about it but hadn’t seen it. Only they didn’t.” Don grasped the sleeve of Frank’s shirt. “You hear what I’m saying? No webs. Not a single thread, and by then she was asleep. Only she woke up—her eyes snapped wide open—and she stared right into the camera. Like she was staring at me. I think she was staring at me. I know that sounds crazy, but—”
“Maybe she wasn’t really asleep. Maybe she was faking.”
“All relaxed and sprawled out like she was? No way. Trust me.”
“How come she’s there? Why not in the lockup downtown?”
“Because she’s as crazy as a shithouse mouse, that’s why. Killed a couple of meth cookers with her bare fucking hands!”
“Why aren’t you at the prison tonight?”
“Because a couple of ratfucks framed me!” Don burst out. “Fucking framed me and then fucking canned me! Warden Coates and her buddy the headshrinker, the sheriff’s husband! Being married to her is how he probably got the job at the prison in the first place! Had to be a fucking political deal, because he doesn’t know his ass from a doorknob!”
Don plunged into the story of his innocent crucifixion, but Frank didn’t care what Coates and Norcross claimed this Peters had done. At that moment Frank’s mind was a frog on hot rocks, leaping from one idea to the next. Leaping high.
An immune woman? Right here in Dooling? It seemed impossible, but he now had a report of her waking from two people. If there was a Patient Zero, she had to be somewhere, right, so why not here? And who was to say there weren’t other immunes scattered around the country and the world? The important thing was that if it was true, this Eve Black might offer a cure. A doctor (maybe even his new buddy Garth Flickinger, if Flickinger could get straight and sober) might be able to find something about her blood that was different, and that might lead to . . . well . . .
A vaccine!
A cure!
“—planted evidence! Like I’d want anything to do with some husband murderer who—”
“Shut up a minute.”
For a wonder, Don did so. He stared up into the taller man’s face with booze-shiny eyes.
“How many guards at the prison right now?”
“Officers is what we call em, and I dunno for sure. Not many, with everything so screwed up. Depends on who’s coming and who’s going, too.” He squinted while he did the math—not a pretty sight. “Maybe seven. Eight if you count Hicks, nine if you add in Mr. Shrinky Dink, but those two ain’t worth a fart in a high wind.”
“What about the warden?”
Don’s eyes shifted away from Frank’s. “I’m pretty sure she went to sleep.”
“Okay, and how many of the ones on duty now are female?”
“When I left, just Van Lampley and Millie Olson. Oh, and Blanche McIntyre might still be there, but she’s just Coatsie’s secretary, and she’s like a hundred and one.”
“Which leaves mighty few, even counting Hicks and Norcross. And you know something else? The sheriff is also a woman, and if she’s able to keep order another three hours, I’d be amazed. I’d be amazed if she’s even awake in another three hours.” Under sober circumstances, these were thoughts that Frank would have kept to himself—he certainly wouldn’t have shared them with an excitable twerp like Don Peters.
Don, computing, ran his tongue around his lips. This was another unattractive visual. “What are you thinking?”
“That Dooling is going to need a new sheriff soon. And the new sheriff would be perfectly within his rights to remove a prisoner from Correctional. Especially one that hasn’t been tried for anything, let alone convicted.”
“You think you might apply for the job?” Don asked.
As if to underline the question, a couple of gunshots went off somewhere in the night. And there was that pervasive smell of smoke. Who was seeing to that? Anyone?
“I’m pretty sure Terry Coombs is the senior man,” Frank said. The senior man currently so deep in his cups he was on the verge of getting underneath them, but Frank didn’t say that. He was exhausted and high, but he finally realized he needed to be careful what he let out.
“He’s going to need help picking up the slack, though. I’d certainly put my name forward if he needed a deputy.”
“I like that idea,” said Don. “Might throw my name in the hat, too. Looks like I’ll need a job. We should talk to him about going up there and getting that woman right away, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” Frank said. In an ideal world, he didn’t think he’d let Don Peters wash out a dog cage, but because of his knowledge of the prison, they might need him. “Once we all get some sleep and sober up.”
“Well all right, let me give you my cell number,” Don said. “And let me know what you and Terry are thinking.” He took out the pen and notebook he used to write up cunts who gave him trouble and needed to go on Bad Report.
3
Not long after the first reports of Aurora, rates of male suicide ticked upward sharply, doubling, then later tripling and quadrupling. Men killed themselves loudly, jumping from the tops of buildings or putting guns into their mouths, and men killed themselves quietly, taking pills, closing garage doors and sitting in their running cars. A retired schoolteacher named Eliot Ainsley called a radio show in Sydney, Australia, to explain his intentions and his thinking before he cut his wrists and went to lie down alongside his sleeping wife. “I just can’t see the point of continuing on without the gals,” the retired teacher informed the disc jockey. “And it’s occurred to me that perhaps this is a test, of our love for them, of our devotion for them. You understand, don’t you, mate?” The disc jockey replied that he did not understand, that he thought Eliot Ainsley had “lost his fookin mind”—but a great many men did. These suicides were known by various names, but the one that became part of the common usage was coined in Japan. These were the Sleeping Husbands, men who hoped to join their wives and daughters, wherever they had gone.
(Vain hope. No men were allowed on the other side of the Tree.)
4
Clint was aware that both his wife and son were staring at him. It was painful to look at Lila, and even more so to look at Jared, who wore an expression of complete bewilderment. Clint saw fear in Jared’s face, too. His parents’ marriage, a thing so seemingly secure that he had taken it for granted, appeared to be dissolving right before his eyes.
Over on the couch was a little girl cocooned in milky fibers. On the floor beside the girl was an infant, snug in a laundry basket. The infant in the basket didn’t look like an infant, however. It looked like something that a spider had wrapped up for a future snack.
“Bump, lock, clap-clap,” Lila said, though she no longer sounded like she cared all that much. “I saw her do it. Stop pretending, Clint. Stop lying.”
We need some sleep, Clint thought, Lila most of all. But not until this sitcom idiocy was resolved. If it could be, and there might be a way. His first thought was of his phone, but the screen wasn’t big enough for what he wanted.
“Jared, the Internet’s still up, right?”
“Last time I checked.”
“Get your laptop.”
“Why?”
“Just get it, okay?”
“Have I really got a sister?”
“No.”
Lila’s head had begun to droop, but now she brought it up. “Yes.”
“Get your laptop.”
Jared went to get it. Lila’s head was sinking again. Clint patted first one of her cheeks, then the other. “Lila. Lila!”
Her head rose again. “Right here. Don’t touch me.”
“Have you got any more of that stuff you and Linny took?”
She fumbled in her breast pocket and brought out a contact lens case. She popped up one of the plastic compartments. Inside was a little powder. She glanced at him.
“It’s strong,” she said. “I might claw your eyes out. Cocoon or no cocoon. I’m sad, but I’m also extremely pissed.”
“I’ll chance it. Go on.”
She bent, closed one nostril, and snorted the powder up the other. Then she sat back, eyes wide. “Tell me, Clint, was Shannon Parks a good lay? I thought I was, but she must have been better, if you had to go hot-dogging back to her when we were only married a year or so.”
Jared returned, his closed face saying I didn’t hear that last part, and set his laptop down in front of his father. He was careful to maintain a separation from Clint when he did it. Et tu, Brute?
Clint powered up Jared’s Mac, went on Firefox, and searched for “Sheila Norcross Coughlin basketball.” The story came up. And the picture of the girl named Sheila Norcross. It was a damned good head and shoulders shot, showing her in her basketball jersey. Her pretty face was flushed with on-court hustle. She was smiling. Clint studied the picture for almost thirty seconds. Then, without a word, he turned the laptop so Jared could look. His son did so with a tight mouth and his fists clenched. Then they slowly relaxed. He looked at Lila, more bewildered than ever. “Mom . . . if there’s a resemblance, I don’t see it. She doesn’t look anything like me. Or dad.”
Lila’s eyes, already wide from the fresh ingestion of magic powder, widened even more. She uttered a harsh caw of a laugh. “Jared, please, don’t. Just don’t. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Jared winced as if he had been slapped, and for an awful moment Clint was on the verge of hauling off on his wife of seventeen years. What stopped him was another look at the photo of the smiling girl. Because if you wanted to find it, there was a faint resemblance, whether Jared saw it or not: the long jaw, the high forehead, and the dimples that punctuated the corners of her smile. None of these features really matched Clint’s own, but he could see how they suggested an association.
I love your dimples, Lila had sometimes told Clint when they were first married. Often in bed, after making love. Touching them with her fingers. All men should have dimples.
He could have told her what he now believed, because he thought he understood everything. But there might be another way. It was four in the morning, an hour when almost everyone in the Tri-Counties would ordinarily have been sleeping, but this was no ordinary night. If his old friend from the foster system wasn’t in a cocoon, she would be able to take a call. The only question was whether or not he could reach her. He considered his cell, then went to the phone hanging on the wall instead. He got the buzz of an active line; so far, so good.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Lila asked.
He didn’t answer, simply dialed 0. After six rings he was afraid no one was going to answer, which would hardly be surprising, but then a weary female voice said, “Yeah? What?”
Clint very much doubted if that was the way Shenandoah Telecom instructed its operators to respond to customer calls, but he was simply grateful to get a human voice. “Operator, my name is Clinton Norcross, from Dooling, and I badly need some help.”
“Tell you what, I doubt that,” she responded in a drawl that could (and probably did) come straight from the toolies of Bridger County. “It’s the women need help tonight.”
“It’s a woman I need to reach. Her name is Shannon Parks. In Coughlin.” If she was listed at all. Single women often went the unlisted route. “Can you look for me?”
“You could dial 611 for that information. Or check y’damn computer.”
“Please. Help me if you can.”
There was a long silence. The connection hadn’t been broken, but suppose she’d gone to sleep on him?
At last the operator said, “I have an S. L. Parks on Maple Street in Coughlin. That the lady you’re looking for?”
It almost had to be. He grabbed the pencil hanging from the memo board so hard it snapped the string. “Thank you, operator. Thank you so much. Can you give me the number?”
The operator did, then broke the connection.
“I won’t believe her, even if you get her!” Lila cried. “She’ll lie for you!”
Clint dialed the number without replying, and didn’t even have time to hold his breath. It was picked up halfway through the first ring. “I’m still awake, Amber,” Shannon Parks said. “Thanks for call—”
“It’s not Amber, Shan,” Clint said. His legs suddenly felt weak, and he leaned against the refrigerator. “It’s Clint Norcross.”
5
The Internet is a bright house standing above a dark cellar with a dirt floor. Falsehoods sprout like mushrooms in that cellar. Some are tasty; many are poisonous. The falsehood that began in Cupertino—which was stated as absolute fact—was one of the latter. In a Facebook post titled AURORA TRUTH, a man who claimed to be a doctor wrote the following:
AURORA WARNING: URGENT!
By Dr. Philip P. Verdrusca
A team of biologists and epidemiologists at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center have determined that the cocoons surrounding women afflicted with the Aurora Sleeping Sickness are responsible for the spread of the disease. The respiration of those afflicted passes through the cocoon and becomes a transmission vector. This vector is highly contagious!
The only way to stop the spread of Aurora is to burn the cocoons and the sleeping women inside! Do this immediately! You will give your loved ones the rest they long for in their semiconscious state, and stop the spread of this pestilence.
Do it for the sake of the women who are still awake!
SAVE THEM!!!
There was no doctor named Philip Verdrusca on the staff of the Kaiser Permanente facility, or at any of its adjuncts. This fact was quickly posted on TV and online, along with rebuttals from dozens of reputable doctors, and the Atlanta Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Cupertino Hoax became the lead story on the news networks as the sun rose over the East Coast of America. But the horse was out of the barn, and Lila Norcross could have predicted what followed. In fact, she had predicted it. While people might hope for the best, Lila, closing in on twenty years in a blue uniform, knew that what they believed was the worst. In a terrified world, false news was king.
By the time dawn rose in the midwestern states, Blowtorch Brigades were roaming cities and towns all over America and the world beyond. Cocooned women were hauled to dumps and fields and stadium lawns, where they went up in gouts of fire.
The work of “Philip P. Verdrusca” had already begun as Clint explained the Norcross family’s current situation to Shannon, and then silently extended the telephone to his wife.
6
At first Lila said nothing, only looked mistrustfully at her husband. He nodded to her as if she had spoken, and took his son gently by the arm. “Come on,” he said. “Give her some privacy.”
In the living room, on the TV, the Public Access woman continued doing beadwork—would do so, it seemed, even unto the end of the world—but the sound was mercifully muted.
“You’re not that girl’s father, are you, Dad?”
“No,” Clint said. “I am not.”
“But how could she have known the Cool Shake we used to do in Little League?”
Clint sat down on the couch with a sigh. Jared sat beside him. “Like mother like daughter, they say, and Shan Parks was also a basketball player, although never in high school or on an AAU team. She wasn’t into anything where they made you take a number or run through paper hoops at pep rallies. That wasn’t her style. She stuck to playground pickup games. Boys and girls together.”
Jared was fascinated. “Did you play?”
“A little, for fun, but I was no good. She could blow by me any old time she wanted, because she had a ton of game. Only she didn’t have to, because we never played against each other. We were always on the same team.” In all ways, he thought. It wasn’t just how we rolled, it was how we survived. Survival was the real milkshake, the one we both fought for. “Shan invented the Cool Shake, Jere. She taught it to me, and I taught it to you boys when I was coaching.”
“That girl you knew invented the Shake?” Jared sounded awed, as if Shannon had pioneered not a handshake but molecular biology. It made Jared seem so terribly young. Which of course he was.
“Yep.”
The rest he didn’t want to say to Jared, because it would sound wildly conceited, but he hoped Shannon was telling his wife now. He thought she would, because Shannon would know both women could be erased from the world in a matter of days, or even hours. That made telling the truth imperative, if not necessarily easier.
Shan had been his best friend, and they had been lovers, but only for a few months. She had been in love with him—head over heels. That was the truth. Clint knew it now, and he supposed in the deepest corner of his heart he had known it then and chosen to ignore it because he didn’t feel the same, and couldn’t let himself feel the same. Shannon had given him the lift he needed, and he would always owe her for that, but he had not wanted to spend his life with her, had never even considered it. What they had was the bald matter of survival—his survival and hers. Shannon belonged to a life where he had been hurt and scarred and almost broken. She had convinced him to stay on the path. Once he was on it, Clint needed to keep going. She would have to find someone to help her, but it couldn’t be him, and was that cruel? Was that selfish? Yes to both.
Years after they parted, she had met a guy and got pregnant. What Clint believed was that the father of Shannon’s daughter was a man who looked a little like the boy she had been in love with as a teenager. She had borne a child who carried a tiny bit of that resemblance.
Lila came into the living room at a slow plod and stood between the couch and the TV. She looked around as if unsure where she was.
Clint said “Honey?” and Jared said “Mom?” at the same time.
She smiled wanly. “It seems that I have some apologizing to do.”
“The only thing you have to apologize for is not coming to me with this sooner,” Clint said. “For letting it fester. I’m just glad I could get hold of her. Is she still on the line?” He nodded toward the kitchen.
“No,” Lila said. “Oh, she wanted to talk to you, but I hung up on her. Not very nice, but I guess I’m still getting some residual vibration from my jealous bone. Besides, a lot of this is her fault. Giving her daughter your name . . .” She shook her head. “Idiocy. God, I’m tired.”
You had no problem taking my name, or giving it to your son, Clint thought, and not without resentment.
“The real father was some guy she met at the bar where she used to waitress. All she ever knew about him was his name, and who knows if he gave her his real one. In the story Parks told the kid, it’s you, except you died in a car crash during the pregnancy. Not that the girl will ever know any better.”
“She went to sleep?” Jared asked.
“Two hours ago,” Lila said. “Parks is only staying awake herself because of her best friend, Amber somebody. Who’s also a single mother. They practically grow on trees around here, don’t they? Everywhere, I guess. Never mind. Let me finish this stupid little story, shall I? She moved to Coughlin for a fresh start shortly after the baby was born. Claims she didn’t know you were anywhere in the area, which I don’t believe for a second. My name is in the Herald every goddam week, and as you yourself pointed out, there are no other Norcrosses in the area. She knew, all right. She’s still hoping you can work something out someday, I’d bet anything on it.” Lila’s jaws cracked open in a huge yawn.
Clint considered this ragingly unfair, and had to remind himself that Lila—raised in a comfortable middle-class home, with cheery parents and siblings out of an old 1970s sitcom—could not comprehend the nine flavors of hell he and Shannon had been through. Yes, the naming business had been neurotic behavior, no argument, but there was one thing Lila either didn’t see or didn’t want to see: Shannon had been living only a hundred and fifty miles away, and had never tried to make contact. He could tell himself it was because she’d never known he was close, but as Lila had pointed out, that was farfetched.
“The shake,” Lila said. “What about that?”
Clint told her.
“All right,” Lila said. “Case closed. I’m going to make some fresh coffee, then go back to the station. Jesus, I’m so fucking tired.”
7
When she had her coffee, Lila hugged Jared and told him to take care of Molly and the baby, and to hide them well. He promised he would, and she moved from him as quickly as she could. If she hesitated she’d never be able to leave him.
Clint followed her into the vestibule. “I love you, Lila.”
“I love you, too, Clint.” She supposed she meant it.
“I’m not angry,” he said.
“I’m glad,” Lila said, restraining herself from adding, Whoopee-ding.
“You know,” he said, “the last time I saw Shannon—years ago, but after we were married—she asked me to sleep with her. I told her no.”
The vestibule was dark. Clint’s glasses reflected the light through the window at the top of the door. Coats and hats hung on the hooks behind him, a row of abashed spectators.
“I told her no,” Clint said again.
She had no idea what he wanted her to say—good boy, maybe? She had no idea about anything.
Lila kissed him. He kissed her back. It was just lips, skin on skin.
She promised to call him when she got to the station. She went down the steps, then stopped and looked back at him. “Never told me about the pool,” she said. “Just went ahead and called a contractor. I came back one day to a hole in the yard. Happy fucking birthday.”
“I—” He stopped. What was there to say, really? That he thought she’d want it, when the truth was he wanted it?
“And when you decided to ditch your private practice? We never discussed that, either. You asked some questions, I thought maybe you were researching a paper, or something, and then, boom. Done deal.”
“I thought it was my decision to make.”
“I know you did.”
She waved a vague farewell and walked to her cruiser.
8
“Officer Lampley said you wanted to see me.”
Evie bounded to the bars of her cell so rapidly that Assistant Warden Hicks did a quick reverse two-step. Evie smiled radiantly, her black hair tumbling around her face. “Lampley is the only female officer left awake, isn’t she?”
“Not at all,” Hicks said. “There’s also Millie. Officer Olson, I mean.”
“No, she’s asleep in the prison library.” Evie continued to smile her beauty queen smile. And she was a beauty, there could be no arguing that. “Facedown on a copy of Seventeen. She was looking at the party dresses.”
The assistant warden didn’t even consider Evie’s claim. She couldn’t know such a thing. Beautiful as she was, she was in the Romper Room, as the soft cell was sometimes called, and for a reason. “You’re messed up in the head, inmate. I’m not saying that to try and hurt your feelings, I’m saying it because it’s true. Maybe you should go to sleep, see if that doesn’t clear out some of the cobwebs.”
“Here’s an interesting tidbit for you, Assistant Warden Hicks. Although the earth has made a little less than a single turn since what you call Aurora began, well over half of the women in the world have gone to sleep. Almost seventy percent already. Why so many? Lots of the women never woke up in the first place, of course. They were asleep when it started. And then a great number tired and drowsed off despite their best efforts to stay awake. But that’s not all of them. No, there’s also a significant portion of the female population that just decided to hit the hay. Because, as your Dr. Norcross undoubtedly knows, dreading the inevitable is worse than the inevitable itself. Easier to let go.”
“He’s a shrink, not a medical doctor,” Hicks said. “I wouldn’t trust him to treat a hangnail. And, if there’s nothing else, I have a prison to run and you need a nap.”
“I understand completely. You go ahead, just leave me your cell phone.” All of Evie’s teeth were on view. Her smile seemed to get bigger and bigger. Those teeth were very white, and looked very strong. The teeth of an animal, Hicks thought, and of course she was an animal. Had to be, considering what she had done to those meth cookers.
“Why do you need my cell phone, inmate? Why can’t you use your own personal invisible cell phone?” He pointed to the empty corner of her cell. It was almost funny, the mix of stupid and crazy and arrogant that this woman was serving up. “It’s right over there and it has unlimited minutes.”
“A good one,” said Evie. “Very amusing. Now your phone, please. I need to call Dr. Norcross.”
“No can do. It’s been a pleasure.” He turned to go.
“I wouldn’t leave so soon. Your company wouldn’t approve. Look down.”
Hicks did, and saw he was surrounded by rats. There were at least a dozen of them, looking up at him with marble-hard eyes. He felt a scream rising in his chest, but stifled it. A scream might set them off, make them attack.
Evie was holding a slim hand out through the bars, palm up, and even in his near panic Hicks noted a terrible thing: there were no lines on that palm. It was entirely smooth.
“You’re thinking about running,” she said. “You can do that, of course, but given your adipose condition, I doubt if you can run very fast.”
The rats were squirming over his shoes now. A pink tail caressed one ankle through his checkered dress sock, and he felt that scream rising again.
“You’ll be bitten several times, and who knows what infections my small friends may be carrying? Give me your cell phone.”
“How are you doing it?” Hicks could barely hear his own words over the blood rushing from his heart.
“Trade secret.”
With a shaking hand, Hicks removed his phone from his belt and placed it in that horrible lineless palm.
“You can leave,” Evie said.
He saw that her eyes had turned a bright amber color. The pupils were black diamonds, cat pupils.
Hicks walked gingerly, high-stepping among the circling rats, and when he was beyond them, he ran for Broadway and the safety of the Booth.
“Very well done, Mother,” Evie said.
The largest rat stood on her hind paws and looked up, whiskers twitching. “He was weak. I could smell his failing heart.” The rat dropped to the floor and scurried toward the steel door of the shower closet further down A wing. The others followed in a line, like children on a school outing. There was a gap between the wall and the floor, a flaw in the cement that the rats had widened to an entry point. They disappeared into the dark.
Hicks’s cell was password protected. Evie entered the four-digit code with no hesitation, nor did she bother consulting his contacts before tapping in Clint’s cell number. He answered promptly, and without saying hello.
“Cool your jets, Lore. I’m on my way back soon.”
“This isn’t Lore Hicks, Dr. Norcross, it’s Evie Black.”
Silence at the other end.
“Situation normal at home, I hope? Or as normal as can be, under the circumstances?”
“How did you get Hicks’s cell phone?”
“I borrowed it.”
“What do you want?”
“First, to give you some information. The torching has begun. Men are burning women in their cocoons by the thousands. Soon it will be by the tens of thousands. It’s what many men have always wanted.”
“I don’t know what your experiences with men have been. Rotten, I suppose. But whatever you may think, most men don’t want to kill women.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
“Yes, I suppose we will. What else do you want?”
“To tell you that you are the one.” She laughed cheerily. “That you are the Man.”
“I’m not getting you.”
“The one who stands for all mankind. As I stand for all womenkind, both those sleeping and those awake. I hate to wax apocalyptic, but in this case I must. This is where the fate of the world will be decided.” She mimicked the momentous drums of television melodrama. “Bum-bum-BUM!”
“Ms. Black, you are in the grip of a fantasy.”
“I told you, you can call me Evie.”
“Fine: Evie, you are in the grip of a—.”
“The men of your town will come for me. They will ask me if I can revive their wives and mothers and daughters. I will say it’s certainly possible, because, like young George Washington, I cannot tell a lie. They will demand that I do it, and I will refuse—as I must. They will torture me, they will rend my body, and still I’ll refuse. Eventually they will kill me, Clint. May I call you Clint? I know we’ve only just started working together, so I don’t want to overstep.”
“You might as well.” He sounded numb.
“Once I’m dead, the portal between this world and the land of sleep will close. Every woman will eventually go nighty-night, every man will eventually die, and this tortured world will breathe an enormous sigh of lasting relief. Birds will make nests in the Eiffel Tower and lions will walk through the broken streets of Cape Town and the waters will drink up New York City. The big fishies will tell the little fishies to dream big-fishie dreams, because Times Square is wide open, and if you can swim strong enough against the prevailing current there you can swim against it anywhere.”
“You’re hallucinating.”
“Is what’s happening all over the world a hallucination?”
She left him a gap, but he didn’t take it.
“Think of it as a fairy tale. I am the fair maiden pent in the castle keep, held in durance vile. You are my prince, my knight in shining armor. You must defend me. I’m sure there are weapons in the sheriff’s station, but finding men willing to use them—to perhaps die defending the creature they believe has caused all this—will be more difficult. I have faith in your powers of persuasion, though. It is why . . .” She laughed. “. . . you are the Man! Why not admit it, Clint? You’ve always wanted to be the Man.”
He flashed on that morning, his irritation at the sight of Anton, the melancholy he’d felt as he inspected his sagging stomach. As depleted as he was, her insinuating tone made Clint want to punch something.
“Your feelings are normal, Clint. Don’t get down on yourself.” She turned sympathetic, gentle. “Every man wants to be the Man. The one who rides in, says nothing but yup, nope, and draw, cleans up the town, and rides away again. After sleeping with the prettiest wench in the saloon, of course. Which ignores the central problem. You men butt your horns and the banging gives the whole planet a headache.”
“Can you really end it?”
“Did you kiss your wife goodbye?”
“Yes,” Clint said. “Just a moment ago. We’ve had better ones, but I tried. She did, too.” He inhaled. “I don’t know why I’m telling you any of this.”
“Because you believe me. And I actually know you kissed her. I was watching. I’m a terrible peeper. I should stop, but I’m a sucker for romance. I’m glad you worked everything out tonight, too, got it all on the table. It’s what’s left unspoken that can really damage a marriage.”
“Thank you, Dr. Phil. Answer my question. Can you end it?”
“Yes. Here’s the deal. Keep me alive until, oh, sunrise next Tuesday. Or maybe a day or two later, I can’t tell for sure. Should be at sunrise, though.”
“What happens if I—if we—do that?”
“I might be able to fix things. So long as they agree.”
“So long as who agrees?”
“The women, silly. The women from Dooling. But if I die, no agreement they come to will matter. It can’t be one or the other. It has to be both.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about!”
“You will. Eventually. Perhaps I’ll see you tomorrow. And by the way, she was right. You never discussed the pool with her. Although you did show her a few pictures. Guess you thought that would be enough.”
“Evie—”
“I’m glad you kissed her. I’m very glad. I like her.”
Evie broke the connection and placed Hicks’s cell phone carefully on the little shelf meant for her personal belongings—of which she had none. Then, she lay down on her bunk, rolled onto her side, and soon fell asleep.
9
Lila fully intended to go directly to the sheriff’s station, but when she backed down the driveway and swerved onto the street, her headlights spotted a white thing sitting in a lawn chair on the opposite side. Old Mrs. Ransom. Lila could hardly blame Jared for leaving her there. He’d had the little girl to think about, the one now lying upstairs in the spare bedroom. Holly? Polly? No, Molly. A fine drizzle was falling.
She pulled into the Ransom driveway, then went around back and rummaged through the crap in the rear seat for her Dooling Hound Dogs baseball cap, because the drizzle was thickening to a steady light rain. It might put the fires out, and that was good. She checked Mrs. Ransom’s front door. It was unlocked. She crossed to the lawn chair and lifted the cocooned woman into her arms. She was prepared for a burden, but Mrs. Ransom weighed no more than ninety pounds. Lila could press more than that in the gym. And what did it matter? Why was she even doing this?
“Because it’s the decent thing,” she said. “Because a woman is not a lawn ornament.”
As she climbed the steps, she saw fine threads detach themselves from the white ball surrounding Mrs. Ransom’s head. They wavered as if in a breeze, but there was no breeze. They were reaching for her, for the sea of sleep just waiting behind her forehead. She blew them away, and struggled backward down the hall to the old lady’s living room. Open on the rug was a coloring book with a scattering of markers around it. What was that little girl’s name again?
“Molly,” Lila said as she pulled the encased woman up onto a couch. “Her name was Molly.” She paused. “Is Molly.”
Lila put a throw pillow beneath Mrs. Ransom’s head and left her.
After locking the old lady’s front door, she went to her cruiser and started the engine, reached for the gearshift, then dropped her hand. Suddenly the sheriff’s station seemed like a pointless destination. Furthermore, it seemed at least fifty miles away. She could probably get there without hitting a tree (or some woman trying to jog away sleep), but what was the sense?
“If not the office, what?” she asked her car. “What?”
She took the contact lens case from her pocket. There was another wake-up shot in the other container, the one marked L, but the question recurred: What was the sense in fighting it? Sleep would catch her eventually. It was inevitable, so why postpone it? According to Shakespeare, it knitted up the raveled sleeve of care. And at least she and Clint had gotten some of that fabled closure he was always going on about.
“I was a fool,” she confessed to the police car’s interior. “But Your Honor, I plead sleep deprivation.”
If that was all it was, why hadn’t she confronted him sooner? With everything that happened, it seemed unforgivably small. It was embarrassing.
“All right,” she said, “I plead fear, Your Honor.”
But she wasn’t afraid now. She was too spent to be afraid. She was too spent to be anything.
Lila yanked the mic from its prongs. It actually felt heavier than Mrs. Ransom—how weird was that?
“Unit One to Base. Are you still there, Linny?”
“Still here, boss.” Linny had probably been into the powdered goodies again; she sounded as chipper as a squirrel sitting on a pile of fresh acorns. Also, she had gotten a full eight hours the night before, instead of going all the way to Coughlin in McDowell County and driving aimlessly until dawn, thinking bad thoughts about a husband who had turned out to be faithful after all. Ah, but so many of them weren’t, and was that a reason or only an excuse? Was it even true? Could you find statistics about fidelity on the Internet? Would they be accurate?
Shannon Parks had asked Clint to sleep with her, and he had said no. That’s how faithful he was.
But . . . that was what he was supposed to be, wasn’t it? Did you get medals for keeping your promises and living up to your responsibilities?
“Boss? Read me?”
“I won’t be in for awhile, Linny. Got something I need to do.”
“Roger that. What’s up?”
This was a question Lila chose not to answer. “Clint needs to go back to the prison after he has a little rest. Give him a call around eight, will you? Make sure he’s up and ask him to check in on Mrs. Ransom on his way out. He needs to take care of her. He’ll understand what that means.”
“Okay. Wake-up calls aren’t my specialty, but I don’t mind branching out. Lila, are you all r—”
“Unit One out.”
Lila racked the mic. In the east, a faint line of Friday morning light had appeared on the horizon. Another day was about to dawn. It would be a rainy one, the kind made for sweet afternoon naps. The litter of her trade lay on the seat beside her: camera and clipboard and Simmons radar gun, banded stacks of fliers, her citation book. She took this last, tore off the top sheet, and turned it over to the blank side. She printed her husband’s name in big capital letters at the top, and then: Put me and Platinum and Mrs. Ransom and Dolly in one of the empty houses. Keep us safe. There might not be any coming back from this, but maybe there is. She paused, thinking (it was hard to think), then added: Love you both. She added a heart—corny, but so what?—and signed her name. She took a paperclip from the little plastic caddy in the glove compartment, and attached the note to her breast pocket. As a small girl, her mother had attached her milk-money, sealed in a small envelope, to her shirt every Monday, in just the same way. Lila couldn’t remember it, but her mother had told her.
With that chore taken care of, she sat back and closed her eyes. Sleep rushed at her like a black engine with no headlight, and oh the relief. The blessed relief.
The first delicate threads spun out of Lila’s face and caressed her skin.