The Prisoner's Dilemma (17 page)

A vain hope, as it turned out: Reynie could not help but think of all the empty space in the house beneath him. For some reason he imagined himself high in the crow’s nest of a ship, far above a treacherous sea. It was a lonely, scary, unnerving feeling, so much so that he had difficulty swallowing even the smallest bites of apple. And he had only managed two or three of these when the scary feeling got much worse—for suddenly, without warning, the lights went out.

Reynie heard the metallic twang of Kate releasing the hidden catch on her bucket’s fliptop. An instant later her flashlight beam swept across the room, falling first on Sticky’s face (rigid with fear) and then his own. He squinted and shielded his eyes.

“You boys okay?” Kate said, already moving toward the window.

“The… the last time…,” Sticky began. His voice faltered.

“I know,” said Reynie. How could any of them have forgotten the last time the lights went out? Two of Mr. Curtain’s men had broken into the house, looking for children to kidnap. The only thing that had stopped them was Milligan. And this time Milligan wasn’t here.

“It isn’t just our house,” Kate announced. “The whole street has lost power.”

“That seems good,” said Sticky hopefully. “Right? There’s just a line down, or else a problem with the neighborhood grid.”

The boys joined Kate at the window. Sure enough, the windows in all the nearby houses were dark. In some of them figures could be seen passing back and forth with lamps and flashlights.

“It seems darker than you’d expect,” Sticky said.

Reynie was gazing at the sky, where the night’s first stars twinkled more brightly than any other time he could recall—at least in the city—and with a sinking feeling in his belly he realized why. He pressed his face to the glass and peered toward downtown. “It isn’t just our neighborhood. It’s Stonetown.”

“The whole
city
?” cried Sticky. “The whole… the whole…” In his mind’s eye he saw darkness spreading out in all directions, impenetrable black ink spilling from an infinite inkwell.

“Look downtown,” Reynie said. “Normally you can see the tops of some buildings from here.”

Sticky couldn’t bring himself to look, but Kate saw that Reynie was right. Where there should have been lights shining from the top stories of Stonetown’s taller buildings, now there was only blackness.

In the distance a siren wailed; some of the neighborhood dogs began to howl along. Then they heard Mr. Bane and Ms. Plugg shouting back and forth to each other from opposite sides of the house. Mr. Bane, standing on the back steps, was saying something about his radio, which appeared to have stopped working. Ms. Plugg shouted back that hers was out, too.

“Their
radios
are out?” Sticky said. “Oh no, this isn’t normal. This isn’t right.”

They looked gravely at one another.

“I can’t hear you!” Mr. Bane shouted, and they watched him trot around to the front of the house.

No sooner had he rounded the corner than Reynie noticed something in the lane. A large, shadowy mass, darker than the darkness through which it moved. The shadow moved smoothly down the lane the way a car might, but it was much larger than a car. And unlike a car, it made absolutely no sound.

“Kate!” Reynie hissed. “Do you—”

“I see it!” Kate pointed her flashlight out through the darkness. By the time it reached into the lane the beam was wide and diffuse, but there was no mistaking the familiar shape it fell upon.

Sticky’s breath escaped him with an audible whoosh. He reached for Reynie’s arm only to find Reynie grabbing for his.

“Not good,” said Kate.

The Salamander was crowded with Ten Men.

As they fled the room Reynie kept seeing the terrifying image in his mind’s eye: the elegant men with their briefcases, standing in the armored vehicle like business executives on a commuter train.

“Head for the front door!” Kate said, slapping her flashlight into Sticky’s hand. “I’ll warn the chamber guards!”

The boys didn’t even think to argue. Stumbling and tripping in their panic, the flashlight beam skidding wildly across walls, ceilings, the floor again, they raced down the stairs, flight after flight. From above they heard Kate shouting her warning to the chamber guards (they were taken aback and she had to repeat herself twice), and then as they descended the final flight of stairs they felt a body rushing past them in the darkness—Kate sliding down the banister. She had her penlight clenched between her teeth; by the time the boys reached the bottom she was directing it at the alarm keypad by the front door.

The warning light was off. Kate’s fingers flew across the keys anyway, but there were no familiar chirping sounds. “Alarm’s out,” she said, speaking around the penlight.

No alarm, no radios, no power. No help.

The door flew open and Ms. Plugg filled the doorway. “What’s going on? I heard shouts!”

“Bad men in the lane!” Sticky gasped. “Very bad men!”

Ms. Plugg’s face hardened. “Get back inside and lock the door. We’ll—”

But Kate and the boys surprised her by hurrying down the front steps, at the bottom of which stood Mr. Bane, looking completely out of sorts. He was anxiously running the zipper up and down on his jacket and staring all around. Ms. Plugg spun on them and barked, “I said get
inside
! It’s not safe! Mr. Bane, for heaven’s sake, grab them!”

Mr. Bane stopped his zippering, but he only blinked at Ms. Plugg as if he didn’t understand.

“It isn’t safe inside!” Reynie cried. “The whole thing’s a setup, Ms. Plugg! You should run, too! There’s no stopping them now!”

Ms. Plugg’s eyes widened as his words sank in. But she shook her head resolutely. “No… no, I can’t run. You three go. Find a place to hide. I’ll—”

“Quiet!” Kate hissed, and in the sudden silence they heard heavy footsteps coming from the side of the house, moving toward the front. A large man, running purposefully.

Before the others could even register what they were hearing, Kate had snatched her flashlight from Sticky’s hand and—narrowing her eyes, calculating carefully—flung it toward the corner of the house. The flashlight hurtled twenty yards through the air, spinning end over end, and arrived at the corner at exactly the same moment as the Ten Man. There was a loud
crack,
and with a sharp cry the man dropped his briefcase and staggered backward out of sight, clutching at his head.

“Now, Mr. Bane!” roared Ms. Plugg, leaping down the steps. “Follow me!”

The children bolted for the gate. As Kate threw it open Reynie glanced back to see Ms. Plugg disappearing around the side of the house. Mr. Bane stared after her, his hand still frozen to his zipper. Reynie looked away, trying not to think of what was about to happen. Against a Ten Man, even a stunned one, Ms. Plugg stood no chance.

“Where do we go now?” Kate said, turning in the dark street.

“The cellar,” Reynie panted, pointing to the little house across the street.

Kate was off like a shot, streaking across the yard to the cellar doors, sliding the metal bolt, and lifting open one of the doors just as the boys caught up. Sticky ducked down the cellar steps into blackness while Reynie paused long enough to make sure they weren’t being watched. The courtyard was empty now, but there were shouts and crashes in the house—

Then Kate shoved him roughly through the door and jumped in after him, pulling the door closed. Reynie stumbled down the steps, bumping into Sticky at the bottom, and the two boys went sprawling onto the cellar floor.

“Stop groaning,” Kate whispered as they picked themselves up. “I saw Crawlings and Garrotte coming out the front door.”

The boys stopped groaning. They had encountered these Ten Men before and could picture them easily—Garrotte a bearded man with a face like a bat, Crawlings strangely spidery, leering, bald man missing an eyebrow. The thought of them here sent shivers through both boys.

Kate shone her penlight toward the steel door that led to the secret passage. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance that Milligan was careless…”

Fumbling his way through the blackness, Sticky tried the door. “No,” he said bleakly, “it’s locked.”

“Then we’d better hope they aren’t looking for us.”

Just then Garrotte’s voice rang out from a distance: “Which way did the chickies run? Did you see?”

“Oh, that’s
really
a shame,” whispered Kate, reaching into her bucket.

“Somewhere off in that direction,” replied Crawlings, followed by quick footsteps on pavement. The Ten Men were crossing the street. “It’s a pretty night for this, isn’t it? The stars are beautiful, and it’s so cool out. Feels like early spring.”

“It
is
early spring,” laughed Garrotte. “You can stop hibernating now, old fellow.”

The Ten Men’s voices, so unnervingly casual and relaxed, grew louder and more distinct as they walked into the yard.

Kate had the penlight in her mouth again; the boys could just see her face in the glow. She was squinting at the fastenings that held the sliding bolt to the wood, gauging the distances between them. Then she lifted something into the light—her magnet—and Reynie’s heart leaped as he realized what she was about to try.

With utmost concentration Kate placed the magnet against the cellar door. Then, like a thief cracking a safe, she pressed her ear to the flimsy wood as she slid the magnet up, then down… and then her eyebrows lifted. She’d heard what she wanted to hear. Steadily, carefully, ever so slowly, Kate slid the magnet along the wood.

They heard Crawlings again. “Look, Garrotte! A perfect hidey hole for scared little bunnies!”

Heavy footsteps, a disappointed grunt. “
Almost
perfect, my dear. You’ll notice the bolt is fastened from the outside.”

“Ah!”

“I suppose we should hurry back and help the others,” said Garrotte with a sigh. “A pity, though—he’d have been so pleased to have the urchins.”

“Think positively, Garrotte! His other plan may work. And perhaps we’ll find the fussy one before Benedict does! She’s the greatest catch, at any rate…”

The Ten Men’s voices faded as they withdrew.

“So they don’t have her yet,” Sticky whispered. “That’s something, at least.”

“But they’re looking for her,” Kate said. “And didn’t it sound like Mr. Curtain has some other plan for catching us?”

“It did,” said Reynie. “But you know the Whisperer’s being loaded into the Salamander at this very minute—the Whisperer and all its computers. So why would Mr. Curtain need
us
anymore? What would he need to bargain for?”

These and other unpleasant questions they considered for several minutes, sometimes whispering, sometimes sitting quietly in the dark. They dared not peek out of the cellar doors until they were sure the Ten Men had gone. After the initial sounds of conflict, no sound had come from the direction of Mr. Benedict’s house, but for all they knew the eerily silent Salamander was parked in the street.

“I never expected to see anything creepier than Mr. Curtain’s wheelchair rolling toward us without making any noise,” whispered Kate. “But the Salamander topped that and then some. It reminded me of an alligator gliding along through a swamp.”

“Obviously he’s improved his noise cancellation technology,” Sticky reflected. “And, of course, signal disruption in general.”

“Signal disruption?” said Kate.

“Oh yes,” said Sticky. “Knocking out Stonetown’s power is one thing—naturally he’d need spies in the right places, and probably a malicious computer program or two, but for Mr. Curtain it can’t have been all that hard. The communications, though? The fact that the guards’ radios failed? For that you need some awfully sophisticated technology, really high-power stuff.”

“That’s Mr. Curtain’s cup of tea,” said Reynie. “Energy, invisible signals, wave forms—”

“And creepiness,” Kate said. “And madman-iness…”

She went on like this, but Reynie heard none of it, for he was suddenly experiencing the most curious thing. All at once he had begun to feel strangely frightened—more frightened, that is, than he already was—as if there were some new threat in the darkness of which he’d previously been unaware. He felt his heartbeat quickening.

“Kate,” he breathed, interrupting her, “shine your penlight around the cellar, would you?”

His tone was unnerving and serious, and Kate quickly shone the light around in every direction. The cellar was empty.

“What’s the matter?” Kate asked, shutting the light off to spare the batteries.

“Nothing,” Reynie said, his heart still pounding. “Nothing, just a—a strange feeling.”

Even as he spoke, however, the sensation grew stranger still, and then out of nowhere a sequence of numbers and letters flashed into his mind:
133 N292
. What in the world? Was this a memory? If so, of what? Some kind of code? Reynie shook his head, trying to clear it, but the sequence still hung there in his mind, unchanging, shining brightly as if lit by neon. Not since his sessions with the Whisperer had he experienced anything like it.

Oh no,
Reynie thought, breaking into a cold sweat.
Oh no, oh not the Whisperer.

He tried to calm himself, tried to think clearly. Surely it couldn’t be the Whisperer causing this. Mr. Curtain hadn’t appeared to be in the Salamander, so there was no one who could be operating it—not yet, anyway. No… no, it must be a memory, something important he noticed somewhere. But where? And why was it so important? Reynie began to calm down a bit as his mind set to work on the problem. The sequence seemed vaguely familiar now, but perhaps only because he was getting used to it.

“Reynie?” Sticky said. “Do you still have that feeling? You have me kind of spooked.”

Reynie didn’t have a chance to answer, for though none of them had heard approaching footsteps, a man’s voice suddenly spoke from so close by he might have been inside the cellar with them.

“Now don’t attack me when I open the doors, Kate,” the voice said, and Reynie thought he might faint with relief.

It was Milligan.