Mrs. Pak and Mary’s younger sister had both fallen asleep by Saturday morning, and her out-of-town father was still attempting to make his way back from Boston. Rather than stay home alone, Mary had tucked her mother and sister into bed and gone to join Jared. To the two teenagers, Clint had been honest—mostly. He had omitted some things. He had told them that there was a woman in the prison who slept and woke, and asked them to participate in the CDC rigamarole because he said he was worried that the staff would give up and walk if it didn’t seem like he was talking to someone and that help was imminent. The parts he’d left out were about Evie: her impossible knowledge, and the deal she’d offered him.
“My pee is pure Monster Energy drink, Mr. Norcross. When I move my arms fast, there are, like, traces in the air—that I see. Does that make sense? Oh, probably not, but whatever, I think this might be my superhero origin story and Jared is in his sleeping bag missing the excitement. I am going to have to dribble spit in his ear if he doesn’t wake up soon.”
This was the part where Clint increasingly flashed a show of annoyance. “That’s all fascinating, and I certainly hope you’ll take whatever steps are necessary, but let me repeat: we need you to come and extract this woman and get to work on whatever makes her different. Capisce? Call me as soon as you have a helicopter en route.”
“Your wife is okay,” Mary said. Her euphoria had abruptly dampened. “Well, not changed. You know, the same. Resting . . . um . . . resting comfortably.”
“Thank you,” said Clint.
The entire structure of logic he’d constructed was so rickety that Clint wondered how much Billy and Rand and Tig and Scott truly believed, and how much of it was the officers craving something to dedicate themselves to amid an emergency that was as amorphous as it was nightmarish.
And there was another motivation in play, simple but strong: the territorial imperative. In the view of Clint’s small cadre of shields, the prison was their patch, and townies had no business messing in it.
These factors had allowed them, for a few days at least, to keep doing the job they were accustomed to, albeit with fewer and fewer prisoners that needed attending. They found comfort in doing the job in familiar surroundings. The five men took shifts sleeping on the couch in the officers’ break room, and cooking in the prison kitchen. It also may have helped that Billy, Rand, and Scott were young and unmarried, and that Tig, the oldest of the bunch by twenty years, was divorced without kids. They had even seemed to acclimate, after some grumbling, to Clint’s insistence that everyone’s safety depended on no more personal calls being made. And, accordingly, they had abetted him in the most distasteful measure he’d been forced to make: under the pretext of “emergency security regulations” they had used tin snips to amputate the receivers from the three payphones available for the use of the prisoners, and deprived the population, in what might well be their last days, from any opportunity to communicate with their loved ones.
This precaution had led to the breaking out of a small riot on Friday afternoon when half a dozen prisoners had made a charge for the administration wing. It had not been much of a riot; the women were exhausted and, except for one inmate wielding a sock filled with dead batteries, they had been unarmed. The four officers had quickly put the insurrection down. Clint didn’t feel good about it, but if anything, the attack had probably served to strengthen his officers’ resolve.
How long the men would stay resolved, Clint couldn’t hazard a guess. He just hoped they could be persuaded to hang on until he could either change Evie’s mind and get her to cooperate in a way that made sense, or the sun rose on Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or whenever, and she was satisfied.
If what she claimed was true. If it wasn’t . . .
Then it didn’t matter. But until it didn’t matter, it did.
Clint felt bizarrely energized. A lot of bad shit had happened, but at least he was doing something. Unlike Lila, who had given up.
Jared had found her in Mrs. Ransom’s driveway. She had let herself fall asleep in her car. Clint told himself he didn’t blame her. How could he? He was a doctor. He understood the body’s limits. Once you went without sleep long enough, you fragmented, lost your sense of what was important and what wasn’t, lost your sense of what was even real, lost yourself. She’d broken down, that was all.
But he couldn’t break down. He had to make things right. Like he’d made things right with Lila before Aurora had taken her, by staying strong and persuading her to see reason. He had to try to resolve this crisis, bring his wife home, bring them all home. Trying was the only thing left.
Evie might be able to stop it. Evie might be able to wake Lila up. She might be able to wake all of them up. Clint might get her to see reason. The world might be returned to normal. Despite everything that Clint knew about the science of medicine—everything that said that Evie Black was just a madwoman with delusions of grandeur—too much had happened for him to entirely refute her claims. Madwoman or not, she had powers. Her lacerations had healed in less than a day. She knew things she couldn’t know. Unlike every other woman on the planet, she slept and woke.
The big man, Geary, slipped his fingers through the fencing of the front gate, and gave it an experimental shake. Then he crossed his arms and peered at an electronic lock the size of a boxing glove.
Clint saw this, noted how Terry had wandered off to toe the dirt at the roadside and nip at the flask, and concluded that serious trouble might be brewing down the road. And maybe not that far down.
He tapped the intercom. “Hi there. So are we all set? Terry? And Frank? You’re Frank, aren’t you? Nice to meet you. You got the picture?”
Instead of responding, the new deputy and the acting sheriff went back to their police car, climbed in, and departed. Frank Geary drove.
5
There was a scenic turnout halfway between the prison and the town. Frank swung in and cut the engine. “Isn’t this a sight?” he said in a low, marveling voice. “You’d think the world was just the same as it was last week.”
Frank was right, Terry thought, it was a fine view. They could see all the way to Ball’s Ferry and beyond—but it was hardly time to admire the countryside.
“Um, Frank? I think we should—”
“Discuss it?” Frank nodded emphatically. “Just what I was thinking. My take’s pretty simple. Norcross may be a psychiatrist or whatever, but his advanced degree must’ve been in bullshit. He gave us a classic runaround, and he’s going to keep on doing it until we refuse to accept it.”
“I guess.”
Terry was thinking of what Clint had said about drinking on the job. He was probably right, and Terry was willing to admit (if only to himself) that he was close to being drunk right now. It was just that he felt so overwhelmed. Sheriff was no job for him. When it came to law enforcement, he was strictly deputy class.
“What we need here is closure, Sheriff Coombs. Not just for us, for everyone. We need access to the woman in the picture he sent, we need to cut open the webs over her face, and make sure it’s the same face as the woman in the ID photo. If that turns out to be the case, we can go to Plan B.”
“Which is what?”
Frank reached into his pocket, produced a pack of bubblegum, peeled a piece out of its wrapper. “Fuck if I know.”