Firestarter(85)

"Where are you people?" he screamed. There was no answer. He heard-or thought he heard-a single faraway shout, and then there was silence. His fingers found the picture he had tripped over and he threw it across the room, furious at it for hurting him. It struck the end table beside the couch, and the now-useless lamp that stood there fell over. The lightbulb exploded with a hollow sound, and Andy cried out again. He felt the side of his head. More blood there now. It was crawling over his cheek in little rivulets.

Panting, he began to crawl, one hand out to feel the wall. When its solidity abruptly ended in blankness, he drew in both his breath and his hand, as if he expected something nasty to snake out of the blackness and grab him. A little whhh! sound sucked in past his lips. For just one second the totality of childhood came back and he could hear the whisper of trolls as they crowded eagerly toward him.

"Just the kitchen door, for f**k's sake," he muttered raggedly. "That's all."

He crawled through it. The fridge was to the right and he began to bear that way, crawling slowly and breathing fast, his hands cold on the tile.

Somewhere overhead, on the next level, something fell over with a tremendous clang. Andy jerked up on his knees. His nerve broke and he lost himself. He began to scream. "Help! Help! Help!" over and over until he was hoarse. He had no idea how long he might have screamed there, on his hands and knees in the black kitchen.

At last he stopped and tried to get hold of himself. His hands and arms were shaking helplessly. His head ached from the thump he had given it, but the flow of blood seemed to have stopped. That was a little reassuring. His throat felt hot and flayed from all his screaming, and that made him think of the ginger ale again.

He began to crawl once more, and he found the refrigerator with no further incident. He opened it (ridiculously expecting the interior light to come on with its familiar frosty-white glow) and fumbled around in the cool dark box until he found a can with a ringtab on top. Andy shut the fridge door and leaned against it. He opened the can and swilled half the ginger ale at a draft. His throat blessed him for it.

Then a thought came and his throat froze.

The place is on fire, his mind told him with spurious calmness. That's why no one's come to get you out. They're evacuating. You, now... you're expendable.

This thought brought on an extremity of claustrophobic terror that was beyond panic. He simply cringed back against the refrigerator, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a grimace. The strength went out of his legs. For a moment, he even imagined he could smell smoke, and heat seemed to rush over him. The soda can slipped from his fingers and gurgled its contents out onto the floor, wetting his pants.

Andy sat in the wetness, moaning.

6

John Rainbird thought later that things could not have worked better if they had planned it... and if those fancy psychologists had been worth a tin whistle in a high wind, they would have planned it. But as it happened, it was only the lucky happen stance of the blackout's occurring when it did that allowed him to finally get his chisel under one corner of the psychological steel that armored Charlie McGee. Luck and his own inspired intuition.

He let himself into Charlie's quarters at three thirty, just as the storm was beginning to break outside. He pushed a cart before him that was no different from the ones most hotel and motel maids push as they go from room to room. It contained clean sheets and pillow slips, furniture polish, a rug-shampoo preparation for spot stains. There was a floor bucket and a mop. A vacuum cleaner was clipped to one end of the cart.

Charlie was sitting on the floor in front of the couch, wearing a bright blue Danskin leotard and nothing else. Her long legs were crossed in a lotuslike position. She sat that way a great deal. An outsider might have thought she was stoned, but Rainbird knew better. She was still being lightly medicated, but now the dosage was little more than a placebo. All of the psychologists were in disappointed agreement that she meant what she said about never lighting fires again. The drugs had originally been meant to keep her from burning her way out, but now it seemed sure that she wasn't going to do that... or anything else.

"Hi, kid," Rainbird said. He unclipped the vacuum cleaner. She glanced over at him but didn't respond. He plugged the vacuum in, and when he started it, she got up gracefully and went into the bathroom. She shut the door.

Rainbird went on vacuuming the rug. He had no plan in mind. It was a case of looking for small signs and signals, picking up on them, and following them. His admiration for the girl was unalloyed. Her father was turning into a fat, apathetic pudding, the psychologists had their own terms for it "dependency shock," and "loss of identity," and "mental fugue," and "mild reality dysfunction" but what it all came down to was he had given up and could now be canceled out of the equation. The girl hadn't done that. She had simply hidden herself. And Rainbird never felt so much like an Indian as he did when he was with Charlie McGee.

He vacuumed and waited for her to come out maybe. He thought she was coming out of the bathroom a little more frequently now. At first she had always hidden there until he was gone. Now sometimes she came out and watched him. Perhaps she would today. Perhaps not. He would wait. And watch for signs.

7

Charlie sat in the bathroom with the door shut. She would have locked it if she could. Before the orderly came to clean the place, she had been doing some simple exercises she had found in a book. The orderly came to keep it orderly. Now the toilet seat felt cold under her. The white light from the fluorescents that ringed the bathroom mirror made everything seem cold, and too bright.