A year before Aurora, when Michaela had still been relegated to taping filler features for NewsAmerica—stuff like dogs that could count and twin brothers meeting by accident after fifty years of separation—she had done a story about how people with large collections of books had lower heating bills than non-readers, because books made good insulation. With this in mind, she repaired to the prison library once the shooting started, scurrying with her head low. What she discovered was mostly shelves of battered paperbacks, not exactly the insulation she’d had in mind, and when the dynamite bundle exploded in the room next door, she was pelted with Nora Roberts and James Patterson novels as the wall buckled.
She ran back onto Broadway, this time not bothering to duck but pausing, horrified, to look into the visitors’ room, where what remained of Rand Quigley was puddled on the floor and dripping from the ceiling.
She was totally disoriented, on the verge of panic, and when the bazooka shell hit C Wing and a cloud of dust billowed toward her (reminding her of news footage she’d seen following the collapse of the Twin Towers), she turned to go back the way she had come. Before she managed three steps, a strong arm encircled her throat, and she felt a cold steel edge press against her temple.
“Hey there, sweetcheeks,” Angel Fitzroy said. When Michaela did not immediately respond to this greeting, Angel pressed harder with the chisel she’d borrowed from the furniture shop. “What the fuck’s going on out there?”
“Armageddon,” Michaela managed in a gasping voice that sounded nothing like her chirrupy TV tones. “Please stop choking me.”
Angel let go and turned Michaela to face her. The smoke drifting down the corridor carried the bitter tang of teargas, making them cough, but they could see each other well enough. The woman with the chisel was pretty in a narrow, intense, predatory sort of way.
“You look different,” Michaela said. Possibly a supremely stupid comment with the prison under attack and a convict brandishing a chisel in front of her eyes, but all she could think of. “Awake. Really awake.”
“She woke me up,” Angel said proudly. “Evie. Same as she did you. Cause I had a mission.”
“What mission would that be?”
“Them,” Angel said, and pointed as two female creatures came shambling down the corridor, seemingly untroubled by the smoke and gunfire. To Michaela, the shreds of cocoon hanging from Maura Dunbarton and Kayleigh Rawlings looked like bits of rotted shroud in a horror movie. They passed by without looking at Michaela and Angel.
“How can they—” Michaela began, but a second bazooka shell hit out front before she could finish her question. The floor shook, and more smoke billowed in, black and stinking of diesel fuel.
“Don’t know how they can do anything, and don’t care,” Angel said. “They got their job and I got mine. You can help out, or I can put this chisel in your gizzard. Which would you prefer?”
“I’ll help,” Michaela said. (Journalistic objectivity aside, it would be hard to report the story later if she was, you know, dead.) She followed Angel, who at least seemed to know where she was going. “What’s the job?”
“Gonna protect the witch,” Angel said. “Or die trying.”
Before Michaela could reply, Jared Norcross stepped out of the kitchen, which was adjacent to the prison laundry where Michaela had left him. Angel raised the chisel. Michaela grabbed her wrist. “No! He’s with us!”
Angel was giving Jared her best Stare of Death. “Are you? Are you with us? Will you help protect the witch?”
“Well,” Jared said, “I was planning to go clubbing and drop some E, but I guess I could change my plans.”
“I told Clint I’d protect you,” Michaela said reproachfully.
Angel brandished her chisel and bared her teeth. “No one gets protection today but the witch. No one gets protection but Evie!”
“Fine,” Jared said. “If it helps my dad and gets my mom and Mary back, I’m in.”
“Is Mary your girlfriend?” Angel asked. She had lowered the chisel.
“I don’t know. Not exactly.”
“Not exactly.” Angel seemed to chew on that for a moment. “You treat her right? No pushing, no hitting, no yelling?”
“We need to get out of here before we choke,” Michaela said.
“Yeah, I treat her right.”
“Damn well better,” Angel said. “Let’s get truckin. Evie’s in the soft cell down on A Wing. Soft cell, but hard bars. You gotta stand in front of her. That way, anyone that wants to get to her will have to go through you.”
Michaela thought that sounded like a terrible plan, which might explain why Angel was talking “you” instead of “us.”
“Where will you be?”
“Commando mission,” Angel said. “Maybe I can drop a few before they get this far.” She brandished her chisel. “I’ll be with you soon, don’t fear.”
“A few guns might help, if you really—” Jared was drowned out by the loudest explosion yet. This time shrapnel—mostly pieces of wall and ceiling—rained down. When Michaela and Jared straightened up again, Angel was no longer with them.
8
“What the fuck was that?” Frank asked in the seconds after the first bazooka shell hit C Wing. He got to his feet, brushing dust, dirt, and a few crumbles of cement out of his hair. His ears weren’t ringing, exactly; what he heard was the high, steely whine he sometimes got in his head after taking too much aspirin.
“Someone’s shooting off ordinance from up on yonder knoll,” Kronsky said. “Probably the same ones who took out the sheriff’s station. Come on, Mr. Acting Sheriff. Time’s a-wasting.” He once more bared his teeth in a gold-twinkling grin so cheerful it looked surreal. He pointed at the screen of the phone imbedded in the plastic explosive. 3:07 became 3:06 became 3:05.
“Okay,” Frank said.
“Remember, don’t hesitate. He who hesitates is butt-fucked.”
They headed for the crushed front doors. In his peripheral vision, Frank could see the men who had come in behind the bulldozers, watching them. None seemed eager to join this particular assault, and Frank did not blame them. Probably some were wishing they had left with Terry Coombs.
9
As the battle for Dooling Correctional approached its climax, Terry was parked in his garage. The garage was a small one; the door was closed; Unit Four’s windows were open and its big V8 engine was running. Terry inhaled exhaust in long, chest-filling gulps. It tasted bad to begin with, but you got used to it pretty fast.
It’s not too late to change your mind, Rita said, taking his hand. His wife sat beside him in the passenger seat. You might still be able to take control out there. Impose a little sanity.
“Too late for that, hon,” Terry said. The garage was now blue with toxic vapor. Terry took another deep breath, stifled a cough, and inhaled again. “I don’t know how this is going to come out, but I see no good ending. This way is better.”