The man who had been Ron Hanson sat at the wheel of PHSD bus 101, parked alongside one of Bellingham Hospital's rear exits.
The door opened and a patient in a hospital gown exited, followed by another, and another. Some of them had fresh blood on their gowns or coating their hands up to the elbows and all over the areas around their mouths. Hanson grabbed the handle that opened the bi-fold bus door and cranked it. One by one, silently, the patients entered. They sat, looking straight ahead, arms resting in their laps. When the last of them had taken his seat, Hanson cranked the door closed, put the bus in gear, and began the drive back to Pleasant Hills.
Kacey went over J.D.'s plan once more in her mind, wondering if there was any chance in hell that it might actually work. Who knew? All she knew was that they had to try.
J.D. had kept the sledgehammer from the cabin. He had also kept the quartz, but he hadn't felt like it would be enough. So she had driven him to the crystal shop and purchased more after dropping Hollis off at Home Depot. After the crystal shop, on their way to pick up Hollis, Kacey decided that it was time to say what she had begun to say back at the cabin.
"I shouldn't have left," she began. J.D. was silent in the passenger seat. "You have someone in your life now and I should be aware of that because I should be a part of your life... should have been a part of your life after mom and dad died. You were right; I ran. I wanted to... escape. I wasn't here for you and I'm sorry."
There was a long stretch of silence, long enough that Kacey thought J.D. might not respond at all, when he said "I'm sorry too." It took a minute, but there was more: "I've treated you like crap. After the accident I was so... angry. And I guess I had nowhere to direct it so I sent it all your way and that wasn't fair."
Kacey smiled at J.D. and clapped a hand on his knee. "Hey, this is good. This is progress." J.D. nodded. "When this is over," he said, "I'll introduce you to Sheryl. She's nice, you'll like her. We'll have you over for dinner to celebrate... celebrate being alive."
As Kacey pulled up to the front entrance of Home Depot and waved at Hollis, standing to one side next to two wheelbarrows full of gear, she said "That sounds perfect." And it did.
J.D. had no idea if his plan was going to work. It was an uncertainty that had plagued him throughout the day.
At Home Depot, they had loaded the supplies in the trunk and back seat but when J.D. saw the drill, he frowned. "This was all they had?" Hollis sighed. "Yeah, no masonry drills," he said. "Do you think that'll be enough?" J.D. had eyed it and said "It'll have to be." He had been hoping for more. The responsibility, the thought that his sister and this older man were putting their lives in his hands, weighed more heavily with each passing hour.
After Home Depot they had driven to a hunting supply store and picked up fishing vests. With the bulk of their shopping done they grabbed clothes from their homes and ended at Hollis's house. He received a phone call from his and Kacey's captain that chilled the blood in his veins: the Chosen patients, all of them, had disappeared from Bellingham hospital. And they had killed a nursing assistant in the process. Taken the poor man apart until there was almost nothing left.
With a renewed sense of urgency they had gotten dressed and gone over the plan once more before driving out to Coolidge Estate.
They unloaded all the gear but as Hollis pushed a wheelbarrow through the house to the sublevel, he stopped them. J.D. had shared his concern yet again about the drill they had brought and its ability to bore into the quartz. Hollis suspected that Coolidge might have stored an entire array of tools on the property.
A relatively quick search turned up the estate's workshop, which was more like a small house unto itself. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the place contained just about every tool under the sun. To J.D.'s surprise, they found a masonry drill. Among the other items in the shop was an array of fireworks. The good kind, J.D. thought, bought at the res. Their dad used to go onto the reservation every year to buy what Kacey had always called the "gnarly" fireworks-the kind that gave the biggest bang for the buck. J.D. promised that if they survived this, Kacey could take some of the fireworks as payment for saving the town. And maybe the world.
Having acquired the drill, they exited the shop and transported everything down to the recreation room. The time had come.
Kacey was stuffing quartz crystals into the pockets of her fishing vest when J.D. walked over and said "Hey... you know, me and Hollis, we could handle this." He looked over at Hollis, who was stacking items next to the secret door. He stopped and stared back, nodding his agreement. J.D. returned his attention to Kacey. "You don't have to go through with this. If you want to leave, now's the time."
J.D. could see the heat rising in Kacey's cheeks; he registered the offense in her hard eyes and he immediately kicked himself. He had done it again; spoken without thinking of how his words would be received.
Kacey lowered the vest in one hand and jabbed a finger at his chest with the other. "We were doing so good, and then you had to throw that in my face. You just couldn't resist, huh?
"That wasn't what I-"
"No, I'm not running, alright? We're all in this together, live or die. All or nothing. Got it?" J.D. nodded curtly and looked over at Hollis, who shrugged as if to say "I'm staying out of this."
They continued their preparations in silence.
After smashing through the outer gate, the bus cruised to a stop with a high-pitched screech of its brakes.
The man who had been Hanson opened the bi-fold door and one by one the patients stepped out onto the gravel outside the ruins of the Pleasant Hills Asylum. They proceeded silently, single file, through the door-less side entry and up grime-coated steps to the sixth floor.
There they gathered in a large open area near busted-out windows, thirteen of them standing in a circle, facing inward. Hanson stood at the entryway and waited. His role now was simply to stand guard.
Slowly, softly the Twilight Convocation chanted in chorus, uttering a language not heard by any living thing in over three thousand years.
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Well, how do you like Kacey, Hollis and J.D.'s chances? And what exactly is waiting for them beneath Coolidge Estate? Check back next week to find out!