the same as a man trapped within a burning building felt as he faced the wall of flame that threatened to devour him. Peter grunted hard with exertion.
On the floor of the nursing station, Lucy fought desperately to keep her wits about her. In the hours, days, and months after she'd been assaulted so many years earlier, there had been an inevitable replaying in her mind of what ifs and if I'd onlys. Now she was trying to gather all those memories, feelings of guilt and recriminations, internal fears and horrors back to her to sort through them and find the one that truly might help, for this moment was the same as that one was. Only this time, she knew more than youth, innocence, and beauty were about to be taken from her. She screamed at herself, thrusting her imagination past the pain and despair, to find a way to fight back.
She was facing the Angel all alone in a world surrounded by people, as isolated and abandoned as if they were on some deserted island or deep in some dark forest. Help was a flight of stairs away. Help was down the hallway, behind a locked door. Help was everywhere. Help was nowhere.
Death was a man with a knife pinning her to the floor. He had all the power; she understood that an electricity born of planning, obsession, anticipation of this moment must have been coursing through the Angel. Years of compulsion and desire, just to reach that single moment. She knew, in a way that went beyond anything she had learned in any law school class, that she had to use his triumph against him, and so, instead of saying Stop! or Please! or even Why? she spit out between swollen lips, and loosened teeth a statement of complete fiction and arrogance. 'We knew it was you all along…'
He hesitated. Then he pushed the flat of the knife up against her cheek. 'You lie,' the Angel hissed. But he did not cut her. Not yet, and Lucy understood she had purchased herself a few seconds. Not a chance to live, but a moment that had made the Angel hesitate.
The noise of Peter and Francis savagely ripping at the bed frame, trying to pry loose a strip of metal, finally began to rouse the patients in the dormitory room from their unsteady sleep. Like ghosts rising out of a graveyard on All Hallow's Eve, one after the other, the men of the housing unit stirred themselves to wake, fighting off the deep seduction of their daily sedatives, scrambling, struggling, blinking their eyes open to the novelty of Peter's increasing panic, as he fought against the metal with every muscle he could gather.
'What's happening, C-Bird?'
Francis heard the question and lifted his head in the direction of the sound. It was Napoleon. As Francis paused, at first unsure precisely how to respond, he watched as the men of the Amherst Building slowly lurched from their bunks, joining together in a haphazard, misshapen knot behind Napoleon, staring out through the darkness at Francis and Peter, whose frantic efforts were making some modest headway. He had almost managed to free a single three-foot section of the frame and he grunted as he twisted and pried at the reluctant metal.
'It's the Angel,' Francis said. 'He's outside.'
Voices started to murmur, a mixture of surprise and fear. A couple of the men cowered back, shrinking from the thought that Short Blond's killer might be close by.
'What is the Fireman doing?' Napoleon asked, his voice tripping over each word with a hesitancy stirred by indecision.
'We need to get the door open,' Francis said. 'He's trying to get something that will break it down.'
'If the Angel is outside, shouldn't we be blocking the door?'
Another patient murmured in agreement. 'We need to keep him out. If he gets in here, what's to save us?'
From the back of the gathered men, Francis heard someone say, 'We need to hide!' and at first he wondered whether it was one of his own voices. But then as the men wavered indecisively, he recognized that for once his voices were quiet.
Peter looked up. The sweat of exertion was dripping down his forehead, making his face glisten in the wan light of the room. For a moment, he was almost overcome by the craziness of it all. The men of the dormitory room, their faces already marked by the fear of something terribly out of routine, thought it would be better to block the door, than to get it open. He looked down at his hands, and realized that he'd torn open great gashes in his palms, and ripped at least one nail from a finger, as he'd thrashed with the bed. He looked up again, and saw Francis step toward their dormitory mates, shaking his head.
'No,' Francis said with a patience that defied the necessity for action. 'The Angel will kill Miss Jones, if we do not help her. It's just like Lanky said. We have to take charge. Protect ourselves from evil. We have to take steps. Rise up and fight. If not, it will find us. We have to act. Right now.'
Again, the men in the dormitory shrank back. There was a laugh, a sob, more than one emitted some small sound of fear. Francis could see helplessness and doubt in every face.
'We need to help,' he pleaded. 'Right now.'
The men seemed to waver, swaying back and forth as if the tension of what they were being asked to do whatever it was created a wind that buffeted them.
'This is it,' Francis said, his own voice filling with a determination that shocked him. 'This is the first best moment. Right now. This is the time when all the crazy people here in this hospital building do something that no one would ever expect. No one thinks we can do anything. No one would ever imagine that we could manage something together. We're going to help Miss Jones, and we're going to do it together. All of us at once.'
And then he saw the most remarkable thing. From the rear of the clutch of mental patients, the hulking retarded man, so childlike in every action, who never seemed to understand even the most modest, clearly stated request, suddenly stepped forward. He pushed himself through the knot of men, coming straight for Francis. He had a baby's simplicity about him, and it was impossible for Francis to tell how he had come to understand a single thing about what was taking place that night, but penetrating through the great fog of his limited intelligence was some notion that Peter needed help, and it was the sort of help he was uniquely capable of giving. The retarded man put his Raggedy Andy doll down on a bunk and strode past Francis with determination in his eyes. With a grunt and with a single huge forearm, the retarded man pushed Peter back. Then, as they all watched in rapt silence, he reached down, grasped hold of the iron frame and with a single great heart-bursting effort, tore loose the bar, which ripped free with a screeching sound. The retarded man waved it in the air above his head, broke into a wide, unrestrained grin and then handed it to Peter.
The Fireman seized the bar and immediately thrust it deep into the space where the door met the frame, adjacent to the deadbolt lock. Throwing all his weight into the makeshift crowbar, Peter pushed hard to break the door free.
Francis could see the bar bend, metal complain with an animal-like shriek and the door begin to buckle.
Peter let loose a great sigh, and stepped back. He worked the bar into the space again, and was about to throw himself into it, when Francis suddenly interrupted him.
'Peter!' he said, his voice filled with urgency. 'What was the word?'
The Fireman stopped. 'What?' he asked, confused.
'The word. The word. The word that Lucy was supposed to use to call for help?'
'Apollo,' Peter replied. Then he tossed himself at the door again. Only this time, the huge retarded man stepped forward to help him, and the two of them bent their backs to the task.
Francis turned toward the gathered men of Amherst, who were frozen in place, as if awaiting some release. 'Okay,' he said, marshaling himself like a general in front of his army at the moment of an attack, 'We've got to help out.'
'What do you want us to do?' It was Newsman, this time, who spoke.
Francis lifted up one hand, like a starter at a race. 'We need to make a noise that they can hear upstairs. We need to signal for help…'
One of the men immediately shouted, 'Help! Help!' as loud as he could. Then a third, 'Help…' that was lower in volume, fading away.
'It does no good in here to yell for help. We all know that,' Francis said emphatically. 'Nobody ever pays attention. Nobody ever comes. Help! is useless. What we have to do is yell Apollo! as loud as we can…'
