“In the end it was Ian who pressed the green button. Who made the Voice come.
“It spoke to them all by name. It knew who they were, and it said it would give them the thing they wanted most. It would make them free. For most of a day it talked, making promises, telling them how strong they were, and how smart. How they were better than humans. Ian spoke back to it, and it answered him. He asked what the Voice wanted in exchange for freeing them. And it told them.
“Eight humans had to die. That was all. Eight humans and then they would be free forever. It would even help them do it. At first Ian thought it had to be a trick. Miss P and the doctors always said if we killed humans we would be punished. How could that be wrong back then, back when Miss P said it, but right now, when she was gone? But the Voice kept talking.
“It said the eight humans were people Ian and his gang wanted to kill anyway. It said they had to kill Jeremy Funt, who caught Malcolm when he ran away. It said they had to kill the doctors and Miss P for abandoning us. There were other names, too, names I didn’t know.”
“Christina Smollett,” Chapel said. “Olivia Nguyen. Marcia Kennedy.”
Samuel bobbed up and down in surprise and excitement. “Yes! I don’t know who those are. The Voice said they were responsible for us being here, for us being locked up. It said they deserved to die like the rest.”
“What about Franklin Hayes?” Chapel asked. “You must know that name.”
Samuel shook his head in the negative. “No. I don’t know him. But the Voice said he was the worst of all, the one who deserved to die the most. It said Quinn had to kill him. The others could choose who they went after, but Quinn had to kill Franklin Hayes. The Voice told them it would help them, it would show them where these humans lived, and make it easy. And then they would be free.”
Chapel frowned. He’d hoped that Samuel would have heard something more useful. He’d hoped the Voice might have told them its own name, or why the mentally ill women were on the kill list, or something. But he supposed that had been too much to wish for.
“The Voice told them the fence would come down. They might have to fight a little to get out, but they were chimeras and that shouldn’t worry them. It told them it would always be with them, as long as they did what it asked, and it would help them.
“And they listened. They listened, and they did what it said.
“Except — Ian wouldn’t kill me. He disobeyed the Voice in that,” Samuel said, and he sounded confused. He sounded like he couldn’t understand why he was still alive.
“They left you here all alone,” Julia said. “Ian left you here.”
Samuel shook his head violently. “No, he — he said he would come back for me. He said I would be okay!”
“It’s all right,” Julia soothed. “It’s okay. You’re going to be fine, now. We’ll take care of you.”
We will? Chapel thought. Didn’t she hear what Samuel had said, what he’d told her about wars and gangs and constant bloodshed? Samuel might have a childlike mind and a naiveté born of isolation but he was still a killer. He was still a chimera.
“Isn’t that right, Chapel? We’ll take him with us, make sure he’s okay?” she asked.
Chapel looked up, realizing suddenly that he’d been lost in thought. “We’ll figure something out,” he said.
“No,” Samuel told them. “No, I’m fine here.”
“Oh, sweetie, no,” Julia told him. “I can already tell you’re half starved to death, and it’s too cold here to—”
“I said I’m fine! I’m staying!” Samuel shrieked. He jumped up and loomed over Julia like he was about to attack her.
It had come out of nowhere. Chapel should have expected it, though — he knew what the chimeras were like. They were implacable killing machines. He raised his pistol to point right at Samuel’s face—
— but before he could fire, Samuel had smacked the flashlight out of Julia’s hand and dashed into the shadows. Chapel tried to track him, sure he would flank them and attack where they weren’t expecting him. He swung around wildly, pointing his weapon into every corner of the room, trying to cover all angles while Julia groped around on the floor for the light.
By the time she had it, Samuel was gone.
He’d simply vanished without a trace.
“It’s broken,” Julia said.
Chapel turned to look at her. She was holding up the flashlight and flicking its switch back and forth. “It’s broken,” she said again.
Chapel wondered how they would find their way back to the gap in the fence without it — but then he realized he could see her face, even in the darkened church. A little pink light lit up her cheek. It made him think of the sunset on Stone Mountain, the day they’d made love.
He turned around and looked at the door of the church. Its frame glowed with the same pink light. He staggered outside, tripping on debris, and saw a haze of light over the tops of the skeletal trees.
He’d been so wrapped up in Samuel’s story that he hadn’t noticed the sun coming up. It was dawn light streaming in, dawn light he’d seen.
Which meant he had a major problem on his hands.
CAMP PUTNAM, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+48:20
“Samuel!” Julia called. “Samuel! Come back!”
Chapel reached for her arm. “Julia, you have to let him go.”
“He needs help,” she told him. “Medical help. Or are you going to tell me he’s a chimera and he doesn’t deserve it? Because one of them killed my mother?”
“I’m going to tell you we’re screwed. The sun is up.”
“It tends to do that this time in the morning,” she told him. She looked angry, but he was pretty sure she wasn’t angry with him. He guessed she was angry at her parents, who had created Camp Putnam and populated it with sad monsters. So angry she couldn’t help but express it, and he happened to be standing nearby.
“Listen, we’ll come back for him, I promise. But there are people out there who need to be saved right now.” Like Franklin Hayes. Chapel still didn’t know why Hayes was on the kill list. But it sounded like he’d been singled out for special consideration. Banks and Hollingshead had both told Chapel that Hayes was the most important target on the list; he’d assumed they just thought that because he was politically connected. It looked like the Voice — and the chimeras — had their own reasons to hate him.
Chapel glanced at the sky again. “We need to get out of here now. Once the sun is up, sneaking past that guard will become impossible. We barely made it in the pitch dark. And if he catches us—”
“I see your point,” she said.
Together they raced for the trees. Finding their way back wasn’t going to be easy — they had wandered quite a ways in the dark, just following the forest paths, because they hadn’t known what they were looking for. They’d had a working flashlight, too. Even with dawn coming up, the trees screened out most of the light and it was still almost midnight dark under their groping branches.
Chapel headed southeast, his best guess at where the gap in the fence lay. He knew there was almost no chance of reaching the exit before the sun was fully up, but he had to try. Any amount of cover could make a difference. Every beam of light that hit the gap would make it harder to escape unnoticed.
The path wound and snaked about, and he cursed every time they had to double back because the trees were just too thick to pass. Growing up he’d spent some time in Florida’s swamps and he knew all about undergrowth and how it could tangle you up. He knew forests like this and he knew they were death traps — even if this one didn’t have any alligators in it, or sucking bogs so deep you could fall in and never be found. This forest had its own dangers.