Hallas, shocked back to an approximation of his once-upon-a-time rationality, told Stackhouse what he had seen. As he was nearing the end of his story, the Institute’s general alarm began to go off.
“Christ, did you turn that on, Everett?”
“No, no, not me, it must have been Joanne. Dr. James. She was in the crematory. She goes there to meditate.”
Stackhouse was almost sidetracked by the bizarre image this raised in his mind, Dr. Jeckle sitting crosslegged in front of the oven door, perhaps praying for serenity, and then he forced his mind back to the situation at hand: the Back Half children had raised some kind of half-assed mutiny. How could it have happened? It had never happened before. And why now?
Heckle was still talking, but Stackhouse had heard all he needed. “Listen to me, Everett. Get every orange card you can find and burn them, okay? Burn them.”
“How… how am I supposed to…”
“You’ve got a goddam furnace on E-Level!” Stackhouse roared. “Use the fucking thing for something besides kids!”
He hung up and used the landline to call Fellowes in the computer room. Andy wanted to know what the alarm was about. He sounded scared.
“We have a problem in Back Half, but I’m handling it. Feed the cameras from over there to my computer. Don’t ask questions, just do it.”
He turned on his desktop—had the elderly thing ever booted up so slowly?—and clicked on SECURITY CAMERAS. He saw the Front Half cafeteria, mostly empty… a few kids in the playground…
“Andy!” he shouted. “Not Front Half, Back Half! Stop fucking arou—”
The picture flipped, and he saw Heckle through a film of lens dust, cowering in his office just as Jeckle came in, presumably from her interrupted meditation session. She was looking back over her shoulder.
“Okay, that’s better. I’ll take it from here.”
He flipped the image and saw the caretakers’ lounge. A bunch of them were cowering in there with the door to the corridor closed and presumably locked. No help there.
Flip, and here was the blue-carpeted main corridor, with at least three caretakers down. No, make it four. Jake Howland was sitting on the floor outside the screening room, cradling his hand against his smock top, which was drenched with blood.
Flip, and here was the cafeteria, empty.
Flip, and here was the lounge. Corinne Rawson was kneeling next to Phil Chaffitz, blabbing to someone on her walkie-talkie. Phil did indeed look dead.
Flip, and here was the elevator lobby, the door to the elevator just beginning to slide shut. The car was the size of those used to transport patients in hospitals, and it was crammed with residents. Most undressed. The gorks from Ward A, then. If he could stop them there… trap them there…
Flip, and through that irritating film of dust and smear, Stackhouse saw more kids on E-Level, close to a dozen, milling around in front of the elevator doors and waiting for them to open and disgorge the rest of the kiddie mutineers. Waiting outside the access tunnel leading to Front Half. Not good.
Stackhouse picked up the landline and heard nothing but silence. Fellowes had hung up on his end. Cursing the wasted time, Stackhouse dialed him back. “Can you kill the power to the Back Half elevator? Stop it in the shaft?”
“I don’t know,” Fellowes said. “Maybe. It might be in the Emergency Procedures booklet. Just let me ch—”
But it was already too late. The elevator doors slid open on E-Level and the escapees from Gorky Park wandered out, staring around at the tiled elevator lobby as if there was something to see there. That was bad, but Stackhouse saw something worse. Heckle and Jeckle could collect dozens of Back Half key cards and burn them, but it would make no difference. Because one of the kids—it was the pipsqueak who’d collaborated with the housekeeper on Ellis’s escape—had an orange key card in his hand. It would open the door to the tunnel, and it would also open the door that gave on F-Level in Front Half. If they got to Front Half, anything might happen.
For a moment, one that seemed endless, Stackhouse froze. Fellowes was squawking in his ear, but the sound was far away. Because yes, the little shit was using the orange card and leading his merry band into the tunnel. A two-hundred-yard walk would take them to Front Half. The door closed behind the last of them, leaving the lower elevator lobby empty. Stackhouse flipped to a new camera and got them walking along the tiled tunnel.
Dr. Hendricks came bursting in, good old Donkey Kong with his shirttail flapping and his fly half-zipped and his eyes all red-rimmed and buggy. “What’s happening? What’s—”
And, just to add to the lunacy, his box phone began its brrt-brrt-brrt. Stackhouse held his hand up to silence Hendricks. The box phone continued its demands.
“Andy. They’re in the tunnel. They’re coming, and they have a key card. We need to stop them. Do you have any ideas at all?”
He expected nothing but more panic, but Fellowes surprised him. “I guess I could kill the locks.”
“What?”
“I can’t deactivate the cards, but I can freeze the locks. The entry codes are computer generated, and so—”
“Are you saying you can bottle them up?”
“Well, yes.”
“Do it! Do it right now!”
“What is it?” Hendricks asked. “Jesus, I was just getting ready to leave and the alarm—”
“Shut up,” Stackhouse said. “But stay here. I may need you.”
The box phone continued braying. Still watching the tunnel and the marching morons, he picked it up. Now he was holding a phone to each ear, like a character in some old slapstick comedy. “What? What?”
“We are here, and the boy is here,” Mrs. Sigsby said. The connection was good; she might have been in the next room. “I expect to have him back in our custody shortly.” She paused. “Or dead.”
“Good for you, Julia, but we have a situation here. There’s been a—”
“Whatever it is, handle it. This is happening now. I’ll call you when we’re on our way out of town.”
She was gone. Stackhouse didn’t care, because if Fellowes didn’t work computer magic, Julia might have nothing to come back to.
“Andy! Are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
“Did you do it?”
Stackhouse felt a dreadful certainty that Fellowes would say that their old computer system had picked this critical moment to seize up.
“Yes. Well, pretty sure. I’m looking at a message on my screen that says ORANGE KEY CARDS INVALID INSERT NEW AUTHORIZATION CODE.”
A pretty-sure from Andy Fellowes did jackshit to ease Stackhouse’s mind. He sat forward in his chair, hands locked together, watching the screen of his computer. Hendricks joined him, peering over his shoulder.
“My God, what are they doing out?”
“Coming for us would be my guess,” Stackhouse said. “We’re about to find out if they can.”
The parade of potential escapees left the view of one camera. Stackhouse punched the key that swapped the images, briefly got Corinne Rawson holding Phil’s head in her lap, then got the one he wanted. It showed the door to F-Level on the Front Half end of the access tunnel. The kids reached it.
“Crunch time,” Stackhouse said. He was clenching his fists hard enough to leave marks in his palms.
Dixon raised the orange card and laid it on the reader pad. He tried the knob and when nothing happened, Trevor Stackhouse finally relaxed. Beside him, Hendricks gusted out a breath that smelled strongly of bourbon. Drinking on duty was as verboten as carrying a cell phone, but Stackhouse wasn’t going to worry about that now.