At 9:06 the guest parking lot in front of Whispering Pines contained only one car. Visiting hours ended at nine.
They hadn’t locked the front door yet. Billy pushed inside, crossed to the main nurses’ station.
Two nurses were behind the counter. He knew them both. He said, “I made arrangements to stay—”
The overhead lights went out. The parking-lot lights died, too. The main hall was almost as black as a lava pipe.
He left the nurses in confusion and followed the corridor toward the west wing.
At first he hurried, but within a dozen steps, in the dark, he collided with a wheelchair, grabbed at it, felt the shape of it.
From the chair, a frightened old woman said, “What’s happening, what’re you doing?”
“It’s all right, you’ll be okay,” he assured her, and went on. He didn’t move as fast now, arms in front of him like a blind man feeling for obstructions.
Wall-mounted emergency lights flickered on, then off, pulsed again and died.
An authoritative male voice calmly called out, “Please stay in your rooms. We will come to you. Please stay in your rooms.”
The emergency sconces tried to function again. But they pulsed at onethird brightness, and erratically.
299
These flares and leaping shadows were disorienting, but Billy could see well enough to avoid the people in the halls. Another nurse, an orderly, an elderly man in pajamas, looking bewildered…
A fire alarm issued an electronic ululation. A recorded voice began to give evacuation instructions.
A woman in a walker intercepted Billy as he approached her, plucked at his sleeve, seeking information.
“They’ve got it under control,” he assured her as he hurried past. He turned the corner into the west wing. Just ahead, on the right. The door stood open.
The room was dark. No auxiliary sconce in here. His own body blocked what little light pulsed in from the west hall.
Slamming doors, a cacophony of slamming doors, which weren’t doors at all, but his heart.
He felt his way toward the bed. He should have reached it. He went two steps farther. The bed wasn’t here.
He pirouetted blindly, sweeping his arms through the air. All he found was the barstool.
Her bed was on wheels. Someone had moved her.
In the hallway again, he looked left, looked right. A few of the ambulatory patients had come out of their rooms. A nurse was marshaling them for an orderly exit.
Through the dance of light and shadow, Billy saw a man pushing a bed at the far end of the hall, moving fast toward a flashing red EXIT sign. Dodging patients, nurses, phantoms of shadow, Billy ran.
The door at the end of the hall banged open as the man slammed the bed through it.
A nurse grabbed Billy by the arm, halting him. He tried to pull loose, but she had a grip.
“Help me roll some of the bedridden out of here,” she said.
“There’s no fire.”
“There must be. We’ve got to evacuate them.”
“My wife,” he declared, though he and Barbara had never married, “my wife needs help.”
300
He tore loose of the nurse, nearly knocking her off her feet, and hurried toward the flashing exit sign.
He shoved through the door, into the night. Dumpsters, cars and SUV’s in a staff parking lot.
For a moment, he didn’t see the man, the bed. There. An ambulance waited thirty feet away, to the left, its engine running. The wide rear door stood open. The guy with the bed had almost reached it.
Billy drew the 9-mm pistol but didn’t dare use it. He might hit Barbara. Crossing the blacktop, he holstered the pistol, fumbled the Taser out of an inner coat pocket.
At the last instant, Steve heard Billy coming. The freak had a pistol. He fired twice as he turned.
Billy was already coming in under Steve’s arm. The gun boomed over his head.
He jammed the business end of the Taser into Steve’s abdomen and clicked the trigger. He knew it would work through thin clothing, a shirt, but he had never checked to be sure that it contained fresh batteries. Zillis spasmed as the electric charge cried havoc along the wires of his nervous system. He didn’t merely drop his gun but flung it away. His knees buckled. He rapped his head on the bumper of the ambulance as he fell. Billy kicked him. He tried to kick him in the head. He kicked him again. The fire department would be coming. The police. Sheriff John Palmer, sooner or later.
He put his hand to Barbara’s face. Her breath feathered his palm. She seemed to be all right. He could feel her eyes moving under her lids, dreaming Dickens.
Glancing back at Whispering Pines, he saw that no one had yet evacuated through the west-wing exit.
