a red caretaker with whom she was friendly, called Heckle and Jeckle high-functioning crazies. He said that eventually one or both of them would freak out, and then the topsiders would have to find fresh medical talent. That was nothing to Corinne. Her job was to make sure the kids ate when they were supposed to eat, went into their rooms when they were supposed to go to their rooms (what they did in there was also no concern of hers), attended the movies on movie nights, and didn’t get out of line. When they did, she slapped them down.
“The gorks are restless tonight,” Jake the Snake said. “You can hear them in there. Tasers at the ready when we do the eight o’clock feeding, right?”
“They’re always worse at night,” Phil said. “I don’t . . . hey, what the fuck?”
Corinne felt it, too. They were used to the hum, the way you got used to the sound of a noisy fridge or a rattling air conditioner. Now, suddenly, it ramped up to the level they had to endure on movie nights that were also sparkler nights. Only on movie nights it mostly came from behind the closed and locked doors of Ward A, also known as Gorky Park. She could feel it coming from there now, but it was also coming from another direction, like the push of a strong wind. From the lounge, where those kids had gone to spend their free time when the show was over. First one bunch went down there, those who were still high-functioning, then a couple Corinne thought of as pre-gorks.
“What the fuck are they doing?” Phil shouted. He put his hands to the sides of his head.
Corinne ran for the lounge, pulling her zap-stick. Jake was behind her. Phil—perhaps more sensitized to the hum, maybe just scared—stayed where he was, palms pressed to his temples as if to keep his brains from exploding.
What Corinne saw when she got to the door was almost a dozen children. Even Iris Stanhope, who would certainly go to Gorky Park after tomorrow’s movie, was there. They were standing in a circle, hands joined, and now the hum was strong enough to make Corinne’s eyes water. She thought she could even feel her fillings vibrating.
Get the new one, she thought. The shrimp. I think he’s the one driving this. Zap him and it might break the circuit.
But even as she thought it, her fingers opened and her zap-stick dropped to the carpet. Behind her, almost lost in the hum, she heard Jake shouting for the kids to stop whatever they were doing and go to their rooms. The black girl was looking at Corinne, and there was an insolent smile on her lips.
I’ll slap that look right off you, missy, Corinne thought, and when she raised her hand, the black girl nodded.
That’s right, slap.
Another voice joined Kalisha’s: Slap!
Then all the others: Slap! Slap! Slap!
Corinne Rawson began to slap herself, first with her right hand, then with her left, back and forth, harder and harder, aware that her cheeks were first hot and then burning, but that awareness was faint and far away, because now the hum wasn’t a hum at all but a huge BWAAAAAA of internal feedback.
She was knocked to her knees as Jake rushed past her. “Stop whatever you’re doing, you fucking little—”
His hand swept up and there was a crackle of electricity as he zapped himself between the eyes. He jerked backward, legs first splaying out and then coming together in a funky dance floor move, eyes bulging. His mouth dropped open and he plugged the barrel of his zap-stick into it. The crackle of electricity was muffled, but the results were visible. His throat swelled like a bladder. Momentary blue light shone from his nostrils. Then he fell forward on his face, cramming the zap-stick’s slim barrel into his mouth all the way to the butt, his finger still convulsing on the trigger.
Kalisha led them into the resident corridor with their hands linked, like first-graders on a school outing. Phil the Pill saw them and cringed back, holding his zap-stick in one hand and gripping one of the screening room doors in the other. Farther down the corridor, between the cafeteria on one side and Ward A on the other, stood Dr. Everett Hallas, with his mouth hanging open.
Now fists began to hammer on Gorky Park’s locked double doors. Phil dropped his zap-stick and raised the hand that had been holding it,