shoes, the spots of blood there.
"Again: what are you doing here?"
Chapter 16
"Taking a look around," Teddy said. "A couple of minutes, and we'll be gone."
The kid took some time considering that, and Teddy could feel the previous two years of his life - losing Dolores, honing in on Laeddis, finding out about this place, stumbling across George Noyce and his stories of drug and lobotomy experiments, making contact with Senator Hurly, waiting for the right moment to cross the harbor like they'd waited to cross the English Channel to Normandy - all of it hanging in the balance of this kid's pause.
"You know," the kid said, "I've worked a few rough places. Jails, a max prison, another place was also a hospital for the criminally insane..." He looked at the door and his eyes widened as if with a yawn except that his mouth didn't open. "Yeah. Worked some places. But this place?" He gave each of them a long, level gaze. "They wrote their own playbook here."
He stared at Teddy and Teddy tried to read the answer in the kid's eyes, but the stare was of the thousand-yards variety, flat, ancient. "A couple of minutes?" The kid nodded to himself. "All right. No one'll notice in all this fucking mayhem. You take your couple minutes and then get out, okay?"
"Sure," Chuck said.
"And, hey." The kid gave them a small smile as he reached for the door. "Try not to die in those few minutes, okay? I'd appreciate that."
THEY WENT THROUGH'the door and entered a cell block of granite walls and granite floors that ran the length of the fort under archways ten feet wide and fourteen feet tall. Tall windows at either end of the floor provided the only light, and the ceiling dripped water and the floors were filled with puddles. The cells stood off to their right and left, buried in the dark.
Baker said, "Our main generator blew at around four this morning. The locks on the cells are controlled electronically. That's one of our more recent innovations. Great fucking idea, huh? So all the cells opened at four. Luckily we can still work those locks manually, so we got most of the patients back inside and locked them in, but some prick has a key. He keeps sneaking in and getting to at least one cell before he takes off again."
Teddy said, "Bald guy, maybe?"
Baker looked over at him. "Bald guy? Yeah. He's one we can't account for. Figured it might be him. His name's Litchfield."
"He's playing tag in that stairwell we just came up. The lower half."
Baker led them to the third cell on the right and opened it. "Toss him in there."
It took them a few seconds to find the bed in the dark and then Baker clicked on a flashlight and shone the beam inside and they lay Vingis on the bed and he moaned and the blood bubbled in his nostrils.
"I need to get some backup and go after Litchfield," Baker said. "The basement's where we keep the guys we don't even feed unless there's six guards in the room. If they get out, it'll be the fucking Alamo in here."
"You get medical assistance first," Chuck said.
Baker found an unstained section of handkerchief and pressed it back over his wound. "Don't got time."
"For him," Chuck said.
Baker looked in through the bars at them. "Yeah. All right. I'll find a doctor. And you two? In and out in record time, right?" "Right. Get the guy a doctor," Chuck said as they left the cell.
Baker locked the cell door. "I'm on it."
He jogged down the cell block, sidestepping three guards dragging a bearded giant toward his cell, kept running.
"What do you think?" Teddy said. Through the archways he could see a man by the far window, hanging up on the bars, some guards dragging in a hose. His eyes were beginning to adjust to what there was of the pewter light in the main corridor, but the cells remained black.
"There has to be a set of files in here somewhere," Chuck said. "If only for basic medical and reference purposes. You look for Laeddis, I look for files?"
"Where do you figure those files are?"
Chuck looked back at the door. "By the sounds of it, it gets less
dangerous the higher you go in here. I figure their admin' has gotta be up."
"Okay. Where and when do we meet?"
"Fifteen minutes?"
The guards had gotten the hose working and fired a blast, blew the guy