Cell

'What are you doing?' Alice shouted. She stepped forward, squeezing the little sneaker convulsively in her hand. The cords in her forearm stood out strongly enough to make shadows like long straight pencil-strokes on her skin. 'What are you doing to the people down there?'

As if, Clay thought, there could be any doubt.

She raised the hand that still held a gun. Tom grabbed it and wrestled it away from her before she could pull the trigger. She turned on him, clawing at him with her free hand.

'Give it back, don't you hear that? Don't you hear?'

Clay pulled her away from Tom. During all of this Jordan watched from the entryway with wide, terrified eyes and the Raggedy Man stood at the tip of the arrow, smiling from a face where rage underlay humor and beneath the rage was . . . nothing, as far as Clay could tell. Nothing at all.

'Safety was on, anyway,' Tom said after a quick glance. 'Thank the Lord for small favors.' And to Alice: 'Do you want to get us killed?'

'Do you think they're just going to let us go?' She was crying so hard it had become difficult to understand her. Snot hung from her nostrils in two clear strings. From below, on the tree-lined avenue that ran past Gaiten Academy, there were screams and shrieks. A woman cried No, please don't please don't and then her words were lost in a terrible howl of pain.

'I don't know what they're going to do with us,' Tom said in a voice that strove for calm, 'but if they meant to kill us, they wouldn't be doing that. Look at him, Alice—what's going on down there is for our benefit.'

There were a few gunshots as people tried to defend themselves, but not many. Mostly there were just screams of pain and terrible surprise, all coming from the area directly adjacent to Gaiten Academy, where the flock had been burned. It surely didn't last any longer than ten minutes, but sometimes, Clay thought, time really was relative.

It seemed like hours.

30

When the screams finally stopped, alice stood quietly between clay and Tom with her head lowered. She had put both automatics on a table meant for briefcases and hats inside the front door. Jordan was holding her hand, looking out at the Raggedy Man and his colleagues standing at the head of the walk. So far the boy hadn't noticed the Head's absence. Clay knew he would soon, and then the next scene of this terrible day would commence.

The Raggedy Man took a step forward and made a little bow with his hands held out to either side, as if to say, At your service. Then he looked up and held a hand out toward Academy Slope and the avenue beyond. He looked at the little group clustered in the open door behind the melted boombox sculpture as he did this. To Clay the meaning seemed clear: Theroad is yours. Go on and take it.

'Maybe,' he said. 'In the meantime, let's be clear on one thing. I'm sure you can wipe us out if you choose to, you've obviously got the numbers, but unless you plan to hang back at Command HQ, someone else is going to be in charge of things tomorrow. Because I'll personally make sure you're the first one to go.'

The Raggedy Man put his hands to his cheeks and widened his eyes: Oh dear! The others behind him were as expressionless as robots. Clay looked a moment longer, then gently closed the door.

'I'm sorry,' Alice said dully. 'I just couldn't stand listening to them scream.'

'It's okay,' Tom said. 'No harm done. And hey, they brought back Mr. Sneaker.'

She looked at it. 'Is this how they found out it was us? Did they smell it, the way a bloodhound smells a scent?'

'No,' Jordan said. He was sitting in a high-backed chair beside the umbrella stand, looking small and haggard and used-up. 'That's just their way of saying they know you. At least, that's what I think.'

'Yeah,' Clay said. 'I bet they knew it was us even before they got here. Picked it out of our dreams the way we picked his face out of our dreams.'

'I didn't—' Alice began.

'Because you were waking up,' Tom said. 'You'll be hearing from him in the fullness of time, I imagine.' He paused. 'If he has anything else to say, that is. I don't understand this, Clay. We did it. We did it and they know we did it, I'm convinced of that.'

'Yes,' Clay said.

'Then why kill a bunch of innocent pilgrims when it would have been just as easy—well, almost as easy—to break in here and kill us? I mean, I understand the concept of reprisals, but I don't see the point in this—'

That was when Jordan slid off his chair and, looking around with an expression of suddenly blossoming worry, asked: 'Where's the Head?'

31

Clay caught up with jordan, but not until the boy had made it all the way to the second- floor landing. 'Hang on, Jordan,' he said.

'No,' Jordan said. His face was whiter, shockier, than ever. His hair bushed out around his head, and Clay supposed it was only because the boy needed a cut, but it looked as if it were trying to stand on end. 'With all the commotion, he should have been with us! He would have been with us, if he was all right.' His lips began to tremble. 'Remember the way he was rubbing himself? What if that wasn't just his acid reflux stuff?'

'Jordan—'

Jordan paid no attention, and Clay was willing to bet he'd forgotten all about the Raggedy Man and his cohorts, at least for the time being. He yanked free of Clay's hand and went running down the corridor, yelling, 'Sir! Sir!' while Heads going back to the nineteenth century frowned down at him from walls.

Clay glanced back down the stairs. Alice was going to be no help—she was sitting at the foot of the staircase with her head bent, staring at that fucking sneaker like it was the skull of Yorick—but Tom started reluctantly up to the second floor. 'How bad is this going to be?' he asked Clay.

'Well . . . Jordan thinks the Head would have joined us if he was all right and I tend to think he's—'

Jordan began to shriek. It was a drilling soprano sound that went through Clay's head like a spear. It was actually Tom who got moving first; Clay was rooted at the staircase end of the corridor for at least three and perhaps as many as seven seconds, held there by a single thought: That'snot how someone sounds when they've found what looks like a heart attack. The old man must have botched it somehow. Maybe used the wrong kind of pills. He was halfway down the hall when Tom cried out in shock—'Oh my God Jordan don't look'—almost as if it were one word.

'Wait!' Alice called from behind him, but Clay didn't. The door to the Head's little upstairs suite was open: the study with its books and its now useless hotplate, the bedroom beyond with the door standing open so the light streamed through. Tom was standing in front of the desk, holding Jordan's head against his stomach. The Head was seated behind his desk. His weight had rocked his swivel chair back on its pivot and he seemed to be staring up at the ceiling with his one remaining eye. His tangled white hair hung down over the chairback. To Clay he looked like a concert pianist who had just played the final chord of a difficult piece.

He heard Alice give a choked cry of horror, but hardly noticed. Feeling like a passenger inside his own body, Clay walked to the desk and looked at the sheet of paper that rested on the blotter. Although it was stained with blood, he could make out the words on it; the Head's cursive had been fine and clear. Old-school to the end, Jordan might have said.

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