The Prisoner's Dilemma (35 page)

As it happened, Milligan was on the roof. He had arrived there by scraping away old mortar with his utility tool to create finger holds. Painstakingly, laboriously, he had made his way up the side of that wall, inch by inch and brick by brick, only to discover that the ever-cautious McCracken had locked the metal door to the stairs. Ordinarily this wouldn’t have mattered; Milligan would have picked the lock or pried open the doors to the elevator. But his fingers—indeed his entire arms—were trembling violently from the arduous climb (it’s no easy matter clinging to the side of a wall) and at the moment Milligan could scarcely grip his utility tool, much less wield it effectively.

And yet he must do something! Kate had saved him so that he could save
her,
and Milligan would do anything in the world not to fail her.

Looking down into the courtyard, he saw McCracken lining the children up. There was no question what he meant to do. Milligan cast about for something heavy to throw. He found various sharp pencils and other small implements, but nothing he could throw with any accuracy from this height, certainly not with his useless trembling fingers.

Precious seconds had passed. Another glance into the courtyard. Now McCracken was shaking those enormous arms… he was holding up his palms… the children were cowering together…

Desperately Milligan looked about him one last time for something to throw.

There was nothing.

“You’d better enjoy this,” Kate was saying, her teeth clenched. “Because Milligan’s going to make you pay pretty heavily for it.”

“Oh, you can be sure I’ll enjoy it,” McCracken said with a wink. “And why don’t you just let me worry about Milligan? For now, sleep well, my little cheeries!”

An electric whine filled the air, and all the children closed their eyes except Kate. It was only Kate, then, who saw McCracken suddenly flattened to the ground—struck from above by something very large indeed. Everyone heard the incredible
whump!,
however, and their eyes flew open to see McCracken lying unconscious before them. To their astonishment they saw that on top of McCracken was another person, also unconscious.

Milligan, having found nothing else to throw, had thrown himself.

“Oh, Milligan, not again!” cried Kate, rushing to his side as the boys stood helplessly by.

Milligan’s eyelids fluttered open, and his gaze settled upon Kate’s face. He opened his eyes wide and blinked several times, trying to focus.

Kate laid her hand against his cheek. “Why do you keep doing this? Why do you keep getting hurt?”

“Bad habit,” Milligan mumbled. “How’s McCracken?”

“You knocked him out,” said Kate. “He seems to have broken his Pandora’s box with his face.”

It was true. Bits of wire and spring were scattered all about the Ten Man’s huge square jaw, some of them still twitching and making weird twanging sounds. Perched in a nest of coiled wire were two AA batteries. Pandora had been a terrifying threat, but evidently an empty one.

“Can you move?” Kate asked.

Milligan thought a moment, then raised his right arm. “I can move this,” he said, wincing. “But never mind about me—you need to get out of here. It’s much too exposed, and I can’t protect you now. Go on, Kate. I don’t want to have fallen four stories for nothing.”

“We can’t leave you! I’ll—I’ll rig something up with that broken desk…”

“No,” Milligan said firmly. “No sledges this time. This isn’t a race, Kate, it’s cat-and-mouse. Just give me McCracken’s laser pointer. Don’t worry, I don’t have to last long. Help is on the way, and anyway, it’s you Mr. Curtain wants—he’ll try to use you to bargain his way out of this. The crucial thing is for you to avoid being caught.”

“But?—”

“You’ll only draw fire on me if you stay here, Kate. The safest thing for all of us is if you go.”

This might have been a ploy, but it did the trick. “Well… but where should we go?” Kate asked reluctantly.

“Anywhere but here. Just keep moving, don’t get cornered, and don’t go near the Whisperer. Do you think Constance can tell you when someone’s coming?”

She turned to Constance, who was curled up in a ball, shivering and whimpering.

“Maybe?” Kate said.

“Doubtful,” said Sticky.

“Then keep your eyes open,” Milligan said. “And your noses, too. When the other sentries arrive the Ten Men will sound an alarm. When you hear that, make your way toward the gate—but you still have to avoid being seen, is that clear?”

Kate nodded. “Oh, Milligan, it’s clear, but…”

“We’ll talk about how hard this was when it’s all over, okay? Right now what I need from you is action, Kate.”

That did it. Kate kissed him and stood up quickly, and the boys wished him luck. Then they helped poor Constance onto Kate’s back, and the four of them hurried out of the courtyard, stopping only to look back one last time at Milligan. He waved to them from where he lay, looking perfectly relaxed, as if he had just settled down for a bit of a rest, and as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be using a Ten Man for a pillow.

“L
et’s check the gate,” Reynie said when they had gone inside. “If it’s clear, why not get out now?”

“We could scout it out from the roof,” Sticky suggested.

“No, the elevator’s jammed,” Kate said. “I think Moocho and Ms. Plugg are in there. I hope so, anyway, because I didn’t see them on the roof.”

“What about the stairs?” Sticky asked.

“Too risky, don’t you think? We might get trapped up there, and there’s no other way down except the way Milligan came.”

“Okay, forget the stairs,” Sticky said.

“Come on,” Reynie said. “We’ll sneak as close as we can to the gate and take a peek.”

And so, with their eyes peeled and their noses in the air, the Society set off. Running furtively down corridor after corridor, peeking around corners before hurrying on, they found their way at last to the building’s main entrance at the front of the prison complex. There was an empty lobby there, with an empty reception desk and empty, dusty chairs. But the place was full of sound—shocking, enormous, violent sound—and as they crept forward to peer out through the front doors (large double doors with windows in them, like the courtyard entrances), the children already knew that the path to the gate wouldn’t be clear. The incredible screeching, squealing, and banging warned of complete mayhem outside. And sure enough, looking out, they beheld a most intense and curious battle taking place.

Hertz, the Ten Man in the seersucker suit, was in a fight with two vehicles. Spinning, running, lashing out with his necktie (which he held like a bull whip), Hertz snarled and laughed as a sleek black van and the Ten Men’s fake ambulance maneuvered around him like angry elephants—roaring, charging, backing up, and blaring horns. One moment Hertz’s tie would wrap around a door handle and he would start to yank the door open; the next he would have to give up the attack and leap aside as the other vehicle bore down on him. The van kept sounding its horn, and the ambulance its siren, apparently in an attempt to disorient him. His briefcase lay open on the ground, but the vehicles weren’t giving the Ten Man any chance to reach into it; the best he could do was kick it out of the way whenever one started to roll over it.

Through the windows they gaped with wide eyes and wrinkled noses (the odor of burnt rubber reached them even inside the building), trying to determine whether it would be possible to make it to the gate unnoticed. But some seconds passed before they could make any sense of the spectacle—not least because smoke from the madly spinning tires drifted in clouds over the scene, now obscuring one vehicle, now the other. But then a gust of wind momentarily cleared the air, and with a jolt they recognized the drivers of the vehicles: Rhonda and Number Two.

“Whoa!” Kate said.

“They’re unbelievable!” said Reynie.

Sticky nodded, but he was already turning away. “We can’t possibly go out there, though. So what do we do?”

“Let’s go out the back,” Kate said, trotting past him to take the lead. “I’m getting an idea.”

Again they sneaked through the empty corridors, pausing to listen at every odd sound, and at one point narrowly avoiding discovery as two Ten Men burst out of a room and walked quickly toward the front of the prison. (“Are you serious?” one was asking the other. “But wouldn’t that diminish the market value?” The other shrugged and said he only knew what he’d been told.) Luckily the children had smelled cologne in the corridor and slipped through a different doorway just in time.

At last they reached the rear of the prison complex. Peeking out another set of double doors, they saw S.Q. Pedalian loping along in the distance, speaking into his radio as he hurried around a corner of the building. He was carrying Garrotte’s briefcase, the one Milligan had dropped from the roof. Then he was gone, and save for the widespread demolition debris and the looming crane near the wall, the area seemed clear.

Kate pursed her lips, listening, then led the boys toward the building’s opposite corner, away from the one S.Q. had rounded. On a mound of rubble along the way she discovered her half-crushed bucket, its fliptop dangling by a sliver of metal—she removed the fliptop with a jerk, as one removes a loose tooth—and despite its poor condition she belted it on again as a matter of principle.

At the side of the building they saw the large open-sided shed she’d told them about. The Salamander was still there, sitting in plain view and seemingly unattended.

“Constance,” Reynie whispered as they stole toward the shed, “is anyone hiding in the Salamander?”

Constance snorted, shuddered, and looked up with wild eyes. Several strands of Kate’s ponytail clung to her damp face. “What?”

Reynie cringed, laid a finger to his lips, and repeated the question.

“Who cares?” Constance muttered, and buried her face in Kate’s ponytail again. It was unclear whether she’d actually been awake. But obviously she wasn’t going to be of much use.

Kate laid her gently on the ground and tiptoed over to inspect the Salamander. With a look of relief, she motioned the boys over. “I know how to drive it,” she said, “but it would be great if we could activate the noise-cancellation thingy, wouldn’t it? We could break out without anyone even noticing.” She pointed to a complicated panel of switches and buttons.

Reynie looked at Sticky. “Can you figure it out?”

Sticky bent close to the panel, studying it. “I think this will do it,” he said, throwing two switches and turning a dial. “It ought to?—” His mouth kept moving, but no more words came out, for all sound around them ceased. It was the strangest sensation, like having one’s ears plugged by invisible fingers. They looked at one another and nodded.

The boys took seats on benches near the front, their movements utterly, eerily silent. Kate leaped down and retrieved Constance, then started the engine—they could
feel
the vibrations but heard nothing—and took the wheel. The Salamander backed silently out of the shed, jerked to a stop, and eased toward the rear of the complex.

As they moved along, Sticky continued to study the panel of switches. Something had caught his attention—a curious little antenna he couldn’t account for—and he started to mention it to Reynie and Kate, but of course he couldn’t. The Salamander rounded the corner, and Kate pointed toward a section of the prison wall that seemed ready to buckle. Weblike fissures ran outward from a damaged, crumbling portion about ten feet up. Reynie looked from the wall to the gigantic metal beam suspended from the crane nearby. He suspected Kate was right; something had gone wrong with the crane, and that beam had struck the wall. As they drew closer he noticed the yellow hazard tape wrapped around the operator’s cab of the crane, warning people away.