Chapter 18: Second Locks

Ward came through the service door on Emmett's shoulder, white to the lips.

He took one look at Hollis and went down on both knees.

"Pulse is fast and he's burned," Ward said. "He is not dying, and I'll hit anyone who says otherwise."

"Is he going to wake up?"

"He's going to be extremely stupid about it."

I laughed once, and it hurt.

I kissed Hollis's forehead, hard, and stood.

"Abel," I said.

Abel was in the corridor with the medical bag over his shoulder, pale and blinking.

"Triage," I said. "Kids first. Then the old, the sick, anyone pregnant. You'll have two hundred seats and about ten minutes. Can you do it?"

"I'm scared of everything," said Abel.

"I know."

"I can do it."

He took a whistle from his pocket and put it between his teeth.

I walked down the corridor to the gym.

The staff were on their feet.

They had heard the fence go and the roar outside, and they stood on their cots in clumps with their bags, staring at the main doors.

A line of deputies stood in front of them, with a heavy steel bar laid across the handles.

The shouting outside was coming through the metal now.

Fists pounded on the doors.

Somewhere behind them, a child was screaming for her mother.

I stepped out onto the middle of the basketball court, in the open, with my hands at my sides.

They glowed.

I had not tried to make them glow.

The deputies saw it, and some of them lifted their weapons, and none of them fired.

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