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.”