Mr. Mercedes (Unnamed Trilogy #1)(126)

“Now listen, you crazy females. We’re all going to hold hands until we’re in our seats, okay? Let me hear your okay.”

“Okaay!” the girls shout, and grab hands. They’re tricked out in their best skinny jeans and their best sneakers. All are wearing ’Round Here tees, and Hilda’s ponytail has been tied with a white silk ribbon that says I LUV CAM in red letters.

“And we’re going to have fun, right? Best time ever, right? Let me hear your okay.”

“OKAAAYYYY!”

Satisfied, Tanya leads them toward the MAC. It’s a long walk across hot macadam, but none of them seems to mind. Tanya looks for the bald man in the wheelchair and spies him making his way toward the back of the handicapped line. That one is much shorter, but it still makes her sad to see all those broken folks. Then the wheelchairs start to move. They’re letting the handicapped people in first, and she thinks that’s a good idea. Let all or at least most of them get settled in their own section before the stampede begins.

As Tanya’s party reaches the end of the shortest line of abled people (which is still very long), she watches the skinny bald guy propel himself up the handicap ramp and thinks how much easier it would be for him if he had one of those motorized chairs. She wonders about the picture in his lap. Some loved relative who’s gone on? That seems the most likely.

Poor man, she thinks again, and sends up a brief prayer to God, thanking Him that her own two kids are all right.

“Mom?” Barbara says.

“Yes, honey?”

“Best time ever, right?”

Tanya Robinson squeezes her daughter’s hand. “You bet.”

A girl starts singing “Kisses on the Midway” in a clear, sweet voice. “The sun, baby, the sun shines when you look at me . . . The moon, baby, the moon glows when you’re next to me . . .”

More girls join in. “Your love, your touch, just a little is never enough . . . I want to love you my way . . .”

Soon the song is floating up into the warm evening air a thousand voices strong. Tanya is happy to add her voice, and after the CD-a-thon coming from Barbara’s room these last two weeks, she knows all the words.

Impulsively, she bends down and kisses the top of her daughter’s head.

Best time ever, she thinks.

28

Hodges and his junior Watsons stand in Brady’s basement control room, looking at the row of silent computers.

“Chaos first,” Jerome says. “Then darkness. Right?”

Hodges thinks, It sounds like something out of the Book of Revelation.

“I think so,” Holly says. “At least that’s the order she had them in.” To Hodges, she says, “She was listening, see? I bet she was listening a lot more than he knew she was listening.” She turns back to Jerome. “One thing. Very important. Don’t waste time if you get chaos to turn them on.”

“Right. The suicide program. Only what if I get nervous and my voice goes all high and squeaky like Mickey Mouse?”

She starts to reply, then sees the look in his eye. “Hardy-har-har.” But she smiles in spite of herself. “Go on, Jerome. Be Brady Hartsfield.”

He only has to say chaos once. The computers flash on, and the numbers start descending.

“Darkness!”

The numbers continue to count down.

“Don’t shout,” Holly says. “Jeez.”

16. 15. 14.

“Darkness.”

“I think you’re too low again,” Hodges says, trying not to sound as nervous as he feels.

12. 11.

Jerome wipes his mouth. “D-darkness.”

“Mushmouth,” Holly observes. Perhaps not helpfully.

8. 7. 6.

“Darkness.”

5.

The countdown disappears. Jerome lets out a gusty sigh of relief. What replaces the numbers is a series of color photographs of men in old-timey Western clothes, shooting and being shot. One has been frozen as he and his horse crash through a plate glass window.

“What kind of screensavers are those?” Jerome asks.

Hodges points at Brady’s Number Five. “That’s William Holden, so I guess they must be scenes from a movie.”

“The Wild Bunch,” Holly says. “Directed by Sam Peckinpah. I only watched it once. It gave me nightmares.”

Scenes from a movie, Hodges thinks, looking at the grimaces and gunfire. Also scenes from inside Brady Hartsfield’s head. “Now what?”

Jerome says, “Holly, you start at the first one. I’ll start at the last one. We’ll meet in the middle.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Holly says. “Mr. Hodges, can I smoke in here?”

“Why the hell not?” he says, and goes over to the cellar stairs to sit and watch them work. As he does, he rubs absently at the hollow just below his left collarbone. That annoying pain is back. He must have pulled a muscle running down the street after his car exploded.

29

The air conditioning in the MAC’s lobby strikes Brady like a slap, causing his sweaty neck and arms to break out in gooseflesh. The main part of the corridor is empty, because they haven’t let in the regular concertgoers yet, but the right side, where there are velvet ropes and a sign reading HANDICAPPED ACCESS, is lined with wheelchairs that are moving slowly toward the checkpoint and the auditorium beyond.