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\viewkind4\uc1\pard\f0\fs16 Seize The Night
\par 
\par By: Dean R. Koontz
\par 
\par 
\par 
\par 
\par  Friendship is precious, not only
\par in the shade, but in the sunshine of life. And thanks to a benevolent
\par arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine.
\par 
\par Thomas Jefferson
\par 
\par 
\par  First My name is Christopher Snow. The following
\par account is an installment in my personal journal. If you are reading it,
\par I am probably dead.
\par 
\par If I am not dead, then because of the reportage herein, I am now or soon
\par will be one of the most famous people on the planet. If no one ever
\par reads this, it will be because the world as we know it has ceased to
\par exist and human civilization is gone forever. I am no more vain than the
\par average person, and instead of universal recognition, I prefer the peace
\par of anonymity. Nevertheless, if the choice is between Armageddon and
\par fame, I'd prefer to be famous.
\par 
\par Elsewhere, night falls, but in Moonlight Bay it steals upon us with
\par barely a whisper, like a gentle dark-sapphire surf licking a beach. At
\par dawn, when the night retreats across the Pacific toward distant Asia, it
\par is reluctant to go, leaving deep black pools in alleyways, under parked
\par cars, in culverts, and beneath the leafy canopies of ancient oaks.
\par 
\par According to Tibetan folklore, a secret sanctuary in the sacred
\par Himalayas is the home of all wind, from which every breeze and raging
\par storm throughout the world is born. If the night, too, has a special
\par home, our town is no doubt the place.
\par 
\par On the eleventh of April, as the night passed through Moonlight Bay on
\par its way westward, it took with it a five-year-old boy named Jimmy Wing.
\par 
\par Near midnight, I was on my bicycle, cruising the residential streets in
\par the lower hills not far from Ashdon College, where my murdered parents
\par had once been professors. Earlier, I had been to the beach, but although
\par there was no wind, the surf was mushy, the sloppy waves didn't make it
\par worthwhile to suit up and float a board. Orson, a black Labrador mix,
\par trotted at my side.
\par 
\par Fur face and I were not looking for adventure, merely getting some fresh
\par air and satisfying our mutual need to be on the move. A restlessness of
\par the soul plagues both of us more nights than not.
\par 
\par Anyway, only a fool or a madman goes looking for adventure in
\par picturesque Moonlight Bay, which is simultaneously one of the quietest
\par and most dangerous communities on the planet. Here, if you stand in one
\par place long enough, a lifetime's worth of adventure will find you.
\par 
\par Lilly Wing lives on a street shaded and scented by stone pines.
\par 
\par In the absence of lampposts, the trunks and twisted branches were as
\par black as char, except where moonlight pierced the feathery boughs and
\par silvered the rough bark.
\par 
\par I became aware of her when the beam of a flashlight swept back and forth
\par between the pine trunks. A quick pendulum of light arced across the
\par pavement ahead of me, and tree shadows jumped. She called her son's
\par name, trying to shout but defeated by breathlessness and by a quiver of
\par panic that transformed Jimmy into a six-syllable word.
\par 
\par Because no traffic was in sight ahead of or behind us, Orson and I were
\par traveling the center of the pavement, kings of the road. We swung to the
\par curb.
\par 
\par As Lilly hurried between two pines and into the street, I said, "What's
\par wrong, Badger? " For twelve years, since we were sixteen, "Badger" has
\par been my affectionate nickname for her. In those days, her name was Lilly
\par Travis, and we were in love and believed that a future together was our
\par destiny.
\par 
\par Among our long list of shared enthusiasms and passions was a special
\par fondness for Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, in which the
\par wise and courageous Badger was the stalwart defender of all the good
\par animals in the Wild Wood. "Any friend of mine walks where he likes in
\par this country, " Badger had promised Mole, "or I'll know the reason why!
\par 
\par " Likewise, those who shunned me because of my rare disability, those
\par who called me vampire because of my inherited lack of tolerance for more
\par than the dimmest light, those teenage psychopaths who plotted to torture
\par me with fists and flashlights, those who spoke maliciously of me behind
\par my back, as if I'd chosen to be born with xeroderma pigmentosumall had
\par found themselves answering to Lilly, whose face flushed and whose heart
\par raced with righteous anger at any exhibition of intolerance. As a young
\par boy, out of urgent necessity, I learned to fight, and by the time I met
\par Lilly, I was confident of my ability to defend myself, nevertheless, she
\par had insisted on coming to my aid as fiercely as the noble Badger ever
\par fought with claw and cudgel for his friend Mole.
\par 
\par Although slender, she is mighty. Only five feet four, she appears to
\par tower over any adversary. She is as formidable, fearless, and fierce as
\par she is graceful and good-hearted.
\par 
\par This night, however, her usual grace had deserted her, and fright had
\par tortured her bones into unnatural angles. When I spoke, she twitched
\par around to face me, and in her jeans and untucked flannel shirt, she
\par seemed to be a bristling scarecrow now magically animated, confused and
\par terrified to find itself suddenly alive, jerking at its supporting
\par cross.
\par 
\par The beam of her flashlight bathe my face, but she considerately directed
\par it toward the ground the instant she realized who I was.
\par 
\par "Chris.
\par 
\par Oh, God."
\par 
\par "What's wrong? " I asked again as I got off my bike.
\par 
\par "Jimmy's gone."
\par 
\par "Run away? "
\par 
\par "No." She turned from me and hurried toward the house.
\par 
\par "This way, here, look." Lilly's property is ringed by a white picket
\par fence that she herself built. The entrance is flanked not by gate posts
\par but by matched bougainvillea that she has pruned into trees and trained
\par into a canopy.
\par 
\par Her modest Cape Cod bungalow lies at the end of an intricately patterned
\par brick walkway that she designed and laid after teaching herself masonry
\par from books.
\par 
\par The front door stood open. Enticing rooms of deadly brightness lay
\par beyond.
\par 
\par Instead of taking me and Orson inside, Lilly quickly led us off the
\par bricks and across the lawn. In the still night, as I pushed my bike
\par through the closely cropped grass, the tick of wheel bearings was the
\par loudest sound. We went to the north side of the house.
\par 
\par A bedroom window had been raised. Inside, a single lamp glowed, and the
\par walls were striped with amber light and faint honey-brown shadows from
\par the folded cloth of the pleated shade. To the left of the bed, Star Wars
\par action figures stood on a set of bookshelves. As the cool night air
\par sucked warmth from the house, one panel of the curtains was drawn across
\par the sill, pale and fluttering like a troubled spirit reluctant to leave
\par this world for the next.
\par 
\par "I thought the window was locked, but it mustn't have been, " Lilly said
\par frantically. "Someone opened it, some sonofabitch, and he took Jimmy
\par away."
\par 
\par "Maybe it's not that bad."
\par 
\par "Some sick bastard, " she insisted.
\par 
\par The flashlight jiggled, and Lilly struggled to still her trembling hand
\par as she directed the beam at the planting bed alongside the house.
\par 
\par "I don't have any money, " she said.
\par 
\par "Money? "
\par 
\par "To pay ransom. I'm not rich. So no one would take Jimmy for ransom.
\par 
\par It's worse than that." False Solomon's seal, laden with feathery sprays
\par of white flowers that glittered like ice, had been trampled by the
\par intruder. Footprints were impressed in trodden leaves and soft damp
\par soil. They were not the prints of a runaway child but those of an adult
\par in athletic shoes with bold tread, and judging by the depth of the
\par impressions, the kidnapper was a large person, most likely male.
\par 
\par I saw that Lilly was barefoot.
\par 
\par "I couldn't sleep, I was watching TV, some stupid show on the TV, " she
\par said with a note of self-flagellation, as if she should have anticipated
\par this abduction and been at Jimmy's bedside, ever vigilant.
\par 
\par Orson pushed between us to sniff the imprinted earth.
\par 
\par "I didn't hear anything, " Lilly said. "Jimmy never cried out, but I got
\par this feeling  ..." Her usual beauty, as clear and deep as a reflection
\par of eternity, was now shattered by terror, crazed by sharp lines of an
\par anguish that was close to grief. She was held together only by desperate
\par 
\par hope.
\par 
\par Even in the dim backwash of the flashlight, I could hardly bear the
\par sight of her in such pain.
\par 
\par "It'll be all right, " I said, ashamed of this facile lie.
\par 
\par "I called the police, " she said. "They should be here any second.
\par 
\par Where are they? " Personal experience had taught me to distrust the
\par authorities in Moonlight Bay. They are corrupt. And the corruption is
\par not merely moral, not simply a matter of bribe-taking and a taste for
\par power, it has deeper and more disturbing origins.
\par 
\par No siren shrieked in the distance, and I didn't expect to hear one. In
\par our special town, the police answer calls with utmost discretion,
\par without even the quiet fanfare of flashing emergency lights, because as
\par often as not, their purpose is to conceal a crime and silence the
\par complainant rather than to bring the perpetrator to justice.
\par 
\par "He's only five, only five, " Lilly said miserably. "Chris, what if this
\par is that guy on the news? "
\par 
\par "The news? "
\par 
\par "The serial killer. The one who ... burns kids."
\par 
\par "That's not around here."
\par 
\par "All over the country. Every few months. Groups of little kids burned
\par alive. Why not here? "
\par 
\par "Because it isn't, " I said. "It's something else." She swung away from
\par the window and raked the yard with the flashlight beam, as though she
\par hoped to discover her tousle-haired, pajama-clad son among the fallen
\par leaves and the curled strips of papery bark that littered the grass
\par under a row of tall eucalyptus trees.
\par 
\par Catching a troubling scent, Orson issued a low growl and backed away
\par from the planting bed. He peered up at the windowsill, sniffed the air,
\par put his nose to the ground again, and headed tentatively toward the rear
\par of the house.
\par 
\par "He's got something, " I said.
\par 
\par Lilly turned. "Got what? "
\par 
\par "A trail." When he reached the backyard, Orson broke into a trot.
\par 
\par "Badger, " I said, "don't tell them Orson and I were here." A weight of
\par fear pressed her voice thinner than a whisper, "Don't tell who? "
\par 
\par "The police."
\par 
\par "Why? "
\par 
\par "I'll be back. I'll explain. I swear I'll find Jimmy. I swear I will." I
\par could keep the first two promises.
\par 
\par The third, however, was something less meaningful than wishful thinking
\par and was intended only to provide a little hope with which she might keep
\par herself glued together.
\par 
\par In fact, as I hurried after my strange dog, pushing the bicycle at my
\par side, I already believed that Jimmy Wing was lost forever. The most I
\par expected to find at the end of the trail was the boy's dead body and,
\par with luck, the man who had murdered him.
\par 
\par When I reached the rear of Lilly's house, I couldn't see Orson.
\par 
\par He was so coaly black that even the light of a full moon was not
\par sufficient to reveal him.
\par 
\par From off to the right came a soft woof then another, and I followed his
\par call.
\par 
\par At the end of the backyard was a freestanding garage that could be
\par entered by car only from the alley beyond. A brick walkway led alongside
\par the garage to a wooden gate, where Orson stood on his hind legs, pawing
\par at the latch.
\par 
\par For a fact, this dog is radically smarter than ordinary mutts.
\par 
\par Sometimes I suspect that he is also considerably smarter than I am.
\par 
\par If I didn't have the advantage of hands, no doubt I would be the one
\par eating from a dish on the floor. He would have control of the most
\par comfortable easy chair and the remote control for the television.
\par 
\par Demonstrating my single claim to superiority, I disengaged the bolt
\par latch with a flourish and pushed open the creaking gate.
\par 
\par A series of garages, storage sheds, and backyard fences lay along this
\par flank of the alley. On the farther side, the cracked and runneled
\par blacktop gave way to a narrow dirt shoulder, which in turn led to a line
\par of massive eucalyptuses and a weedy verge that sloped into a canyon.
\par 
\par Lilly's house is on the edge of town, and no one lives in the canyon
\par behind her place. The wild grass and scattered scrub oaks on the
\par descending slopes provide homes for hawks, coyotes, rabbits, squirrels,
\par field mice, and snakes.
\par 
\par Following his formidable nose, Orson urgently investigated the weeds
\par along the edge of the canyon, padding north and then south, softly
\par whining and grumbling to himself.
\par 
\par I stood at the brink, between two trees, peering down into a darkness
\par that not even the fat moon could dispel. No flashlight moved in those
\par depths. If Jimmy had been carried into that gloom, the kidnapper must
\par have uncanny night vision.
\par 
\par With a yelp, Orson abruptly abandoned his search along the canyon rim
\par and returned to the center of the alleyway. He moved in a circle, as
\par though he might start chasing his tail, but his head was raised and he
\par was excitedly sniffing spoor.
\par 
\par To him, the air is a rich stew of scents. Every dog has a sense of smell
\par thousands of times more powerful than yours or mine.
\par 
\par The medicinal pungency of the eucalyptus trees was the only aroma that I
\par could detect. Drawn by another and more suspicious scent, as if he were
\par but a bit of iron pulled inexorably toward a powerful magnet, Orson
\par raced north along the alley.
\par 
\par Maybe Jimmy Wing was still alive.
\par 
\par It's my nature to believe in miracles. So why not believe in this one?
\par 
\par I climbed on my bike and pedaled after the dog. He was swift and
\par certain, and to match his pace, I really had to make the drive chain
\par hum.
\par 
\par In block after block, only a few widely spaced security lamps glowed at
\par the back of the residential properties that we passed. By habit I
\par steered away from those radiant pools, along the darker side of the
\par alleyway, even though I could have sailed through each patch of
\par lamplight in less than a second or two, without significant risk to my
\par health.
\par 
\par Xeroderma pigmentosumxp for those who aren't able to tie their tongues
\par in knots is an inherited genetic disorder that I share with an exclusive
\par club of only one thousand other Americans. One of us per 250, 000
\par citizens. XP renders me highly vulnerable to skin and eye cancers caused
\par by exposure to any ultraviolet radiation. Sunshine.
\par 
\par Incandescent or fluorescent bulbs. The shining, idiot face of a
\par television screen.
\par 
\par If I dared to spend just half an hour in summer sun, I would burn
\par severely, though a single searing wouldn't kill me. The true horror of
\par XP, however, is that even minor exposure to ultraviolet radiation
\par shortens my life, because the effect is cumulative. Years of
\par imperceptible injuries accumulate until they manifest as visible lesions,
\par malignancies. Six hundred minutes of exposure, spread one by one over an
\par entire year, will have the same ultimate effect as ten continuous hours
\par on a beach in brightest July. The luminosity of a streetlamp is less
\par dangerous to me than the full ferocity of the sun, but it's not entirely
\par safe.
\par 
\par Nothing is.
\par 
\par You, with your properly functioning genes, are able routinely to repair
\par the injury to your skin and eyes that you unknowingly suffer every day.
\par 
\par Your body, unlike mine, continuously produces enzymes that strip out the
\par damaged segments of nucleotide strands in your cells, replacing them
\par with undamaged DNA.
\par 
\par I must exist in shadows, while you live under exquisitely blue skies,
\par and yet I don't hate you. I don't resent you for the freedom that you
\par take for granted although I do envy you.
\par 
\par I don't hate you because, after all, you are human, too, and therefore
\par have limitations of your own. Perhaps you are homely, slow-witted or too
\par smart for your own good, deaf or mute or blind, by nature given to
\par despair or to self-hatred, or perhaps you are unusually fearful of Death
\par himself. We all have burdens. On the other hand, if you are better
\par looking and smarter than I am, blessed with five sharp senses, even more
\par optimistic than I am, with plenty of self-esteem, and if you also share
\par my refusal to be humbled by the Reaper ... well, then I could almost
\par hate you if I didn't know that, like all of us in this imperfect world,
\par you also have a haunted heart and a mind troubled by grief, by loss, by
\par longing.
\par 
\par Rather than rage against XP, I regard it as a blessing. My passage
\par through life is unique.
\par 
\par For one thing, I have a singular familiarity with the night. I know the
\par world between dusk and dawn as no one else can know it, for I am a
\par brother to the owl and the bat and the badger. I am at home in the
\par darkness. This can be a greater advantage than you might think.
\par 
\par Of course, no number of advantages can compensate for the fact that
\par death before the age of consent is not uncommon for those with XP.
\par 
\par Survival far into adulthood isn't a reasonable expectation at least not
\par without progressive neurological disorders such as tremors of the head
\par and hands, hearing loss, slurred speech, even mental impairment.
\par 
\par Thus far I have tweaked Death's cold nose without retribution.
\par 
\par I've also been spared all the physical infirmities that my physicians
\par have long predicted.
\par 
\par I am twenty-eight years old.
\par 
\par To say that I am living on borrowed time would be not merely a cliche
\par but also an understatement. My entire life has been a heavily mortgaged
\par enterprise.
\par 
\par But so is yours. Eventual foreclosure awaits all of us. More likely than
\par not, I'll receive my notice before you do, though yours, too, is in the
\par mail.
\par 
\par Nevertheless, until the postman comes, be happy. There is no other
\par rational response but happiness. Despair is a foolish squandering of
\par precious time.
\par 
\par Now, here, on this cool spring night, past the witching hour but with
\par dawn still far away, chasing my sherlock hound, believing in the miracle
\par of Jimmy Wing's survival, I cycled along empty alleys and deserted
\par avenues, through a park where Orson did not pause to sniff a single
\par tree, past the high school, onto lower streets. He led me eventually to
\par the Santa Rosita River, which bisects our town from the heights to the
\par bay.
\par 
\par In this part of California, where annual rainfall averages a mere
\par fourteen inches, rivers and streams are parched most of the year. The
\par recent rainy season had been no wetter than usual, and this riverbed was
\par entirely exposed, a broad expanse of powdery silt, pale and slightly
\par lustrous in the lunar light. It was as smooth as a bedsheet except for
\par scattered knots of dark driftwood like sleeping homeless men whose limbs
\par were twisted by nightmares.
\par 
\par In fact, though it was sixty to seventy feet wide, the Santa Rosita
\par looked less like a real river than like a man-made drainage channel or
\par canal. As part of an elaborate federal project to control the flash
\par floods that could swell suddenly out of the steep hills and narrow
\par canyons at the back door of Moonlight Bay, these riverbanks had been
\par raised and stabilized with wide concrete levees from one end of town to
\par the other.
\par 
\par Orson trotted off the street, across a barren strip of land, to the
\par levee.
\par 
\par Following him, I coasted between two signs, sets of which alternated
\par with each other for the entire length of the watercourse. The first
\par declared that public access to the river was restricted and that
\par anti-trespassing ordinances would be enforced. The second, directed at
\par those lawless citizens who were undeterred by the first sign, warned
\par that high water at a storm's peak could be so powerful and fast-moving
\par that it would overwhelm anyone who dared to venture into it.
\par 
\par In spite of all the warnings, in spite of the obvious turbulence of the
\par treacherous currents and the well-known tragic history of the Santa
\par Rosita, a thrill seeker with a homemade raft or a kayak or even just a
\par pair of water wings is swept to his death every few years. In a single
\par winter, not long ago, three drowned.
\par 
\par Human beings can always be relied upon to assert, with vigor, their
\par God-given right to be stupid.
\par 
\par Orson stood on the levee, burly head raised, gazing east toward the
\par Pacific Coast Highway and the serried hills beyond. He was stiff with
\par tension, and a thin whine escaped him.
\par 
\par This night, neither water nor anything else moved along the moonlit
\par channel. Not enough of a breeze slipped off the Pacific even to stir a
\par dust ghost from the silt.
\par 
\par I checked the radiant dial of my wristwatch. Worried that every minute
\par might be Jimmy Wing's last if, indeed, he was still alive i nudged
\par Orson, "What is it? " He didn't acknowledge my question. Instead, he
\par pricked his ears, sniffed the becalmed night almost daintily, and seemed
\par to be transfixed by emanations of one kind or another from some quarry
\par farther up the arid river.
\par 
\par As usual, I was uncannily attuned to Orson's mood. Although I possessed
\par only an ordinary nose and mere human senses but, to be fair to myself, a
\par superior wardrobe and bank account i could almost detect those same
\par emanations.
\par 
\par Orson and I are closer than dog and man. I am not his master. I am his
\par friend, his brother.
\par 
\par When I said earlier that I am brother to the owl, to the bat, and to the
\par badger, I was speaking figuratively. When I say I'm the brother of this
\par dog, however, I mean to be taken more literally.
\par 
\par Studying the riverbed as it climbed and dwindled into the hills, I
\par asked, "Something spooking you? " Orson glanced up. In his ebony eyes
\par floated twin reflections of the moon, which at first I mistook for me,
\par but my face is neither that round nor that mysterious.
\par 
\par Nor that pale. I am not an albino. My skin is pigmented, and my
\par complexion somewhat dusky even though the sun has rarely touched me.
\par 
\par Orson snorted, and I didn't need to understand the language of dogs to
\par interpret his precise meaning. The pooch was telling me that he was
\par insulted by my suggestion that he could be so easily spooked.
\par 
\par Indeed, Orson is even more courageous than most of his kind.
\par 
\par During the more than two and a half years that I've known him, from
\par puppyhood to the present, I have seen him frightened of only one thing,
\par monkeys.
\par 
\par "Monkeys? " I asked.
\par 
\par He chuffed, which I interpreted as no.
\par 
\par Not monkeys this time.
\par 
\par Not yet.
\par 
\par Orson trotted to a wide concrete access ramp that descended along the
\par levee wall to the Santa Rosita. In June and July, dump trucks and
\par excavators would use this route when maintenance crews removed a year's
\par worth of accumulated sediment and debris from below, restoring a flood
\par preventing depth to the dry watercourse before the next rainy season.
\par 
\par I followed the dog down to the riverbed. On the darkly mottled concrete
\par slope, his black form was no more substantial than a shadow.
\par 
\par On the faintly luminous silt, however, he appeared to be stone solid
\par even as he drifted eastward like a homeward-bound spirit crossing a
\par waterless Styx.
\par 
\par Because the most recent rainfall had occurred three weeks in the past,
\par the floor of the channel wasn't damp. It was still well compacted,
\par however, and I was able to ride the bicycle without struggle.
\par 
\par At least as far as the pearly moonlight revealed, the bike tires made
\par few discernible marks in the hard-packed silt, but a heavier vehicle had
\par passed this way earlier, leaving clear tracks. Judging by the width and
\par depth of the tread impressions, the tires were those of a van, a light
\par truck, or a sports utility vehicle.
\par 
\par Flanked by twenty-foot-high concrete ramparts, I had no view of any of
\par the town immediately around us. I could see only the faint angular lines
\par of the houses on higher hills, huddled under trees or partially revealed
\par by streetlamps. As we ascended the watercourse, the townscape ahead also
\par fell away from sight beyond the levees, as though the night were a
\par powerful solvent in which all the structures and citizens of Moonlight
\par Bay were dissolving.
\par 
\par At irregular intervals, drainage culverts yawned in the levee walls,
\par some only two or three feet in diameter, a few so large that a truck
\par could have been driven into them. The tire tracks led past all those
\par tributaries and continued up the riverbed, as straight as typed
\par sentences on a sheet of paper, except where they curved around a
\par punctuation of driftwood.
\par 
\par Although Orson's attention remained focused ahead, I regarded the
\par culverts with suspicion. During a cloudburst, torrents gushed out of
\par them, carried from the streets and from the natural drainage swales high
\par in the grassy eastern hills above town. Now, in fair weather, these
\par storm drains were the subterranean lanes of a secret world, in which one
\par might encounter exceptionally strange travelers. I half expected someone
\par to rush at me from one of them.
\par 
\par I admit to having an imagination feverish enough to melt good judgment.
\par 
\par Occasionally it has gotten me into trouble, but more than once it has
\par saved my life.
\par 
\par Besides, having roamed all the storm drains large enough to accommodate
\par a man my size, I've encountered a few peculiar tableaux. Oddities and
\par enigmas. Sights to wring fright from even the driest rag of imagination.
\par 
\par Because the sun rises inevitably every day, my night life must be
\par conducted within the town limits, to ensure that I'm always close to the
\par safely darkened rooms of my house when dawn draws near.
\par 
\par Considering that our community has a population of twelve thousand and a
\par student population, at Ashdon College, of an additional three thousand,
\par it offers a reasonably large board for a game of life, it can't fairly
\par be called a jerkwater burg. Nevertheless, by the time I was sixteen, I
\par knew every inch of Moonlight Bay better than I knew the territory inside
\par my own head. Consequently, to fend off boredom, I am always seeking new
\par perspectives on the slice of the world to which XP confines me, for a
\par while I was intrigued by the view from below, touring the storm drains
\par as if I were the Phantom prowling the realms beneath the Paris Opera
\par House, though I lacked his cape, cloche hat, scars, and insanity.
\par 
\par Recently, I've preferred to keep to the surface. Like everyone born into
\par this world, I'll take up permanent residence underground soon enough.
\par 
\par Now, after we passed another culvert without being assaulted, Orson
\par suddenly picked up his pace. The trail had gotten hot.
\par 
\par As the riverbed rose toward the east, it gradually grew narrower, until
\par it was only forty feet wide where it passed under Highway 1. This tunnel
\par was more than a hundred feet long, and although faint silvery moonlight
\par glimmered at the farther end, the way ahead was dauntingly dark.
\par 
\par Apparently, Orson's reliable nose didn't detect any danger. He wasn't
\par growling.
\par 
\par On the other hand, he didn't sprint confidently into the gloom, either.
\par 
\par He stood at the entrance, his tail still, his ears pricked, alert.
\par 
\par For years I have traveled the night with only a modest amount of cash
\par for the infrequent purchases I make, a small flashlight for those rare
\par instances when darkness might be more of an enemy than a friend, and a
\par compact cell phone clipped to my belt. Recently, I'd added one other
\par item to my standard kit, a 9-millimeter Glock pistol.
\par 
\par Under my jacket, the Glock hung in a supple shoulder holster. I didn't
\par need to touch the gun to know that it was there, the weight of it was
\par like a tumor growing on my ribs. Nevertheless, I slipped one hand under
\par the coat and pressed my fingertips against the grip of the pistol as a
\par superstitious person might touch a talisman.
\par 
\par In addition to the black leather jacket, I was dressed in black
\par Rockports, black socks, black jeans, and a black long-sleeve cotton
\par pullover. The black-on-black is not because I style myself after
\par vampires, priests, ninja assassins, or Hollywood celebrities.
\par 
\par In this town, at night, wisdom requires you to be well armed but also to
\par blend with the shadows, calling as little attention to yourself as
\par possible.
\par 
\par Leaving the Glock in the holster, still straddling my bike but with both
\par feet on the ground, I unclipped the small flashlight from the
\par handlebars. My bicycle doesn't have a headlamp. I have lived so many
\par years in the night and in rooms lit mostly by candles that my
\par dark-adapted eyes don't often need assistance.
\par 
\par The beam penetrated perhaps thirty feet into the concrete tunnel, which
\par had straight walls but an arched ceiling. No threat lurked in the first
\par section of that passage.
\par 
\par Orson ventured inside.
\par 
\par Before following the dog, I listened to the traffic roaring south and
\par north on Highway 1, far above. To me, as always, this sound was
\par simultaneously thrilling and melancholy.
\par 
\par I've never driven a car and probably never will. Even if I protected my
\par hands with gloves and my face with a mask, the ceaseless oncoming
\par headlights would pose a danger to my eyes. Besides, I couldn't go any
\par significant distance north or south along the coast and still return
\par home before sunrise.
\par 
\par Relishing the drone of the traffic, I peered up the broad concrete
\par buttress in which the river tunnel was set. At the top of this long
\par incline, headlights flared off the steel guardrails that defined the
\par shoulder of the highway, but I couldn't see the passing vehicles.
\par 
\par What I did seeor thought I saw from the corner of my eye, was someone
\par crouched up there, to the south of me, a figure not quite as black as
\par the night around him, fitfully backlit by the passing traffic. He was on
\par the buttress cap just this side of the guardrails, barely visible yet
\par with an aura as menacing as a gargoyle at the corner of a cathedral
\par parapet.
\par 
\par When I turned my head for a better look, the lights from a dense cluster
\par of speeding cars and trucks caused shadows to leap like an immense flock
\par of ravens taking flight in a lightning storm. Among those swooping
\par phantoms, an apparently more solid figure raced diagonally downward,
\par moving away from me and from the buttress, south along the grassy
\par embankment.
\par 
\par In but a flicker of time, he was beyond the reach of the strobing
\par headlights, lost in the deeper darkness and also blocked from view by
\par the levee walls that towered twenty feet above me. He might be circling
\par back to the edge of the channel, intending to enter the riverbed behind
\par me.
\par 
\par Or he might not be interested in me at all. Though it would be
\par comforting to think that galaxies revolve around me, I am not the center
\par of the universe.
\par 
\par In fact, this mysterious figure might not even exist. I'd gotten such a
\par brief glimpse of it that I couldn't be absolutely certain it was more
\par than an illusion.
\par 
\par Again I reached under my coat and touched the Glock.
\par 
\par Orson had padded so far into the passageway beneath Highway 1 that he
\par was almost beyond the reach of my flashlight.
\par 
\par After glancing at the channel behind me and seeing no stalker, I
\par followed the dog. Instead of riding my bike, I walked beside it, guiding
\par it with my left hand.
\par 
\par I didn't like having my right hand my gun hand occupied with the
\par flashlight. Besides, the light made me easy to follow and easy to
\par target.
\par 
\par Although the riverbed was dry, the walls of the tunnel gave off a not
\par unpleasant damp odor, and the cool air was scented with a trace of lime
\par from the concrete.
\par 
\par From the roadbed high above, the rumble-hum of passing cars and trucks
\par translated all the way down through layers of steel, concrete, and
\par earth, echoing across the vault overhead. Repeatedly, in spite of the
\par screening thrum of the traffic, I thought I heard someone stealthily
\par approaching. Each time I swung toward the sound, the flashlight revealed
\par only the smooth concrete walls and the deserted river behind me.
\par 
\par The tire tracks continued through the tunnel into another open stretch
\par of the Santa Rosita, where I switched off the flashlight, relieved to
\par rely on ambient light. The channel curved to the right, out of sight,
\par leading east-southeast away from Highway 1, rising at a steeper grade
\par than before.
\par 
\par Although houses still stippled the surrounding hills, we were nearing
\par the edge of town.
\par 
\par I knew where we were going. I had known for some time but was disturbed
\par by the prospect. If Orson was on the right trail and if Jimmy Wing's
\par abductor was driving the vehicle that had left these tracks, then the
\par kidnapper had fled with the boy into Fort Wyvern, the abandoned military
\par base that was the source of many of Moonlight Bay's current problems.
\par 
\par Wyvern, which covers 134, 456 acres far more territory than our town is
\par surrounded by a high chain-link fence supported by steel posts sunk in
\par concrete caissons, topped with helixes of razor wire. This barrier
\par bisected the river, and as I rounded the curve in the channel, I saw a
\par dark-colored Chevrolet Suburban parked in front of it, at the end of the
\par tracks we had been following.
\par 
\par The truck was about sixty feet away, but I was reasonably sure no one
\par was in it. Nevertheless, I intended to approach it with caution.
\par 
\par Orson's low growl indicated a wariness of his own.
\par 
\par Turning to the terrain we had crossed, I could see no sign of the
\par creeping gargoyle that I had glimpsed on the east side of Highway 1.
\par 
\par Nonetheless, I felt as though I were being watched.
\par 
\par I concealed my bike on the ground, behind a snarl of driftwood that had
\par gotten its teeth into a few dead tumbleweeds.
\par 
\par After tucking the flashlight under my belt, at the small of my back, I
\par drew the Glock from my holster. It is a safe-action pistol with only
\par internal safety devices, no little levers that need thumbing to ready
\par the gun for use.
\par 
\par This weapon has saved my life more than once, yet although it's a
\par reassurance to me, I am not entirely comfortable with it. I suspect I'll
\par never be able to handle it with complete ease. The weight and design of
\par the piece have nothing to do with my aversion to the feel of it, this is
\par a superb handgun. As a boy roaming the town at night, however, I was
\par subjected to some memorable verbal and physical abuse from bullies
\par mostly kids but also some adults old enough to know better and although
\par their harassment motivated me to learn how to defend myself and taught
\par me never to let an injustice pass without a firm response, these
\par experiences also instilled in me a loathing of violence as an easy
\par solution. To protect myself and those I love, I will use lethal force
\par when I must, but I'll never enjoy it.
\par 
\par With Orson at my side, I approached the Suburban. No driver or passenger
\par waited inside. The hood was still warm with engine heat, the truck had
\par been parked here only minutes.
\par 
\par Footprints led from the driver's door around to the front door on the
\par passenger's side. From there, they continued toward the nearby fence.
\par 
\par They appeared to be similar if not identical to the prints in the
\par planting bed under Jimmy Wing's bedroom window.
\par 
\par The silver-coin moon was rolling slowly toward the dark purse of the
\par western horizon, but its glow remained bright enough to allow me to read
\par the license plate on the back of the vehicle. I quickly memorized the
\par number.
\par 
\par I found where a bolt cutter had been used to breach the chain-link
\par fence. Evidently, this was accomplished some time ago, before the most
\par recent rain, because the water-smoothed silt was not heavily disturbed,
\par as it would have been by someone doing all that work.
\par 
\par Several culverts also link Moonlight Bay to Wyvern. Usually, when I
\par explore the former army base, I enter by one of those more discreet
\par passages, where I have used my own bolt cutter.
\par 
\par On this river-spanning fence as elsewhere along the entire perimeter and
\par throughout the sprawling grounds of Wyverna sign with red and black
\par lettering warned that although this facility had been shut down at the
\par recommendation of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission,
\par as a consequence of the end of the Cold War, trespassers would
\par nevertheless be prosecuted, fined, and possibly imprisoned under a list
\par of relevant federal statutes so long that it occupied the bottom third
\par of. the notice. The tone of the warning was stern, uncompromising, but I
\par wasn't deterred by it. Politicians also promise us peace, perpetual
\par prosperity, meaning, and justice. If their promises are ever fulfilled,
\par perhaps then I'll have more respect for their threats.
\par 
\par Here, at the fence, the kidnapper's tracks were not the only marks in
\par the riverbed. The gloom prevented me from positively identifying the new
\par impressions.
\par 
\par I risked using the flashlight. Hooding it with one hand, I flicked it on
\par for only a second or two, which was long enough for me to figure out
\par what had happened here.
\par 
\par Although the breach in the fence apparently had been made well ahead of
\par time, in preparation for the crime, the kidnapper had not left a gaping
\par hole. He'd created a less obvious pass-through, and tonight he had
\par needed only to pull the loosely hanging flap of chain-link out of his
\par way. To free both hands for this task, he had put down his captive,
\par ensuring against an escape attempt either by paralyzing Jimmy with
\par vicious threats or by tethering the boy.
\par 
\par The second set of tracks was considerably smaller than the first.
\par 
\par And shoeless. These were the prints of a child who had been snatched
\par barefoot from his bed.
\par 
\par In my mind's eye, I saw Lilly's anguished face. Her husband, Benjamin
\par Wing, a power-company lineman, had been electrocuted almost three years
\par ago in a work-related accident. He'd been a big, merry-eyed guy, half
\par Cherokee, so full of life that it had seemed as if he would never run
\par short of it, and his death had stunned everyone. As strong as Lilly was,
\par she might be broken if she had to suffer this second and even more
\par terrible loss so soon after the first.
\par 
\par Although she and I had long ago ceased to be lovers, I still loved her
\par as a friend. I prayed that I'd be able to bring her son back to her,
\par smiling and unharmed, and see the anguish vanish from her face.
\par 
\par Orson's whine was filled with worry. He was quivering, eager to give
\par pursuit.
\par 
\par After tucking the small flashlight under my belt once more, I peeled up
\par the flap of fence. A soft twang of protest sang through the steel links.
\par 
\par I promised, "Frankfurters for the brave of heart, " and Orson shot
\par through the gap.
\par 
\par As I followed the dog into the forbidden zone, the ragged edge of one of
\par the cut fence links snared my cap and pulled it from my head. I snatched
\par it off the ground, dusted it against my jeans, and put it on again.
\par 
\par This navy-blue, billed cap has been in my possession about eight months.
\par 
\par I found it in a strange concrete chamber, three stories underground,
\par deep in the abandoned warrens of Fort Wyvern.
\par 
\par Above the visor, embroidered in red, were the words Mystery Train. I had
\par no idea to whom the cap once belonged, and I didn't know the meaning of
\par the ruby-red needlework.
\par 
\par This simple headgear had little intrinsic value, but of all my material
\par possessions, it was in some ways the most precious. I had no proof that
\par it was related to my mother's work as a scientist, to any project of
\par which she was a par tat Fort Wyvern or elsewhere but I remained
\par convinced that it was. Though I already knew some of Wyvern's terrible
\par secrets, I also believed that if I were able to discover the meaning of
\par the embroidered words, more astonishing truths would be revealed.
\par 
\par I had vested a lot of faith in this cap. When I wasn't wearing it, I
\par kept it close, because it reminded me of my mother and, therefore,
\par comforted me.
\par 
\par Except for the cleared area immediately beyond the breach in the
\par chain-link, driftwood and tumbleweed and trash were piled against the
\par sifting fence. Otherwise, the bed of the Santa Rosita was as well made
\par on the Wyvern side as it was on the other.
\par 
\par Again the only footprints were those of the kidnapper. He had resumed
\par carrying the boy from this point.
\par 
\par Orson raced along the trail, and I ran close behind him. Soon we came to
\par another access road that sloped up the north wall of the river, and
\par Orson ascended without hesitation.
\par 
\par I was breathing harder than the dog when I reached the top of the levee,
\par even though, in canine years, fur face was pretty much my age.
\par 
\par How fortunate I've been to live long enough to recognize the subtle but
\par undeniable fading of my youthful stamina and spryness. To hell with
\par those poets who celebrate the beauty and the purity of dying young, all
\par powers intact. In spite of xeroderma pigmentosum, I'd be grateful to
\par survive to relish the sweet decrepitude of my eightieth year, or even
\par the delicious weakness of one whose birthday cake is ablaze with a
\par hundred dangerous candles. We are the most alive and the closest to the
\par meaning of our existence when we are most vulnerable, when experience
\par has humbled us and has cured the arrogance which, like a form of
\par deafness, prevents us from hearing the lessons that this world teaches.
\par 
\par As the moon hid its face behind a veil of clouds, I looked both
\par directions along the north bank of the Santa Rosita. Jimmy and his
\par abductor were not in sight.
\par 
\par Nor did I see a hunched gargoyle moving on the riverbed below or along
\par either side of the channel. Whatever it had been, the figure from the
\par highway embankment was not interested in me.
\par 
\par Without hesitation, Orson trotted toward a group of massive warehouses
\par fifty yards from the levee. These dark structures appeared mysterious in
\par spite of their mundane purpose and in spite of the fact that I was
\par somewhat familiar with them.
\par 
\par Although enormous, these are not the only warehouses on the base, and
\par although they would cover a few square blocks in any city, they
\par represent an insignificant percentage of the buildings within these
\par fenced grounds. At its peak of activity, Fort Wyvern was staffed by 36,
\par 400 active duty personnel. Nearly thirteen thousand dependents and more
\par than four thousand civilian personnel were also associated with the
\par facility. On-base housing alone consisted of three thousand
\par single-family cottages and bungalows, all of which remain standing
\par though in disrepair.
\par 
\par In a moment we were among the warehouses, and Orson's nose guided him
\par swiftly through a maze of service ways to the largest structure in the
\par cluster. Like most of the surrounding buildings, this one was
\par rectangular, with thirty-foot-high corrugated-steel walls rising from a
\par concrete foundation to a curved metal roof. At one end was a roll-up
\par door big enough to admit cargo-laden trucks, it was closed, but beside
\par it, a man-size door stood wide open.
\par 
\par Previously bold, Orson became hesitant as he approached this entrance.
\par 
\par The room past the threshold was even darker than the serviceway around
\par us, which itself was illuminated only by starlight. The dog seemed not
\par entirely to trust his nose to detect a threat in the warehouse, as if
\par the scents on which he relied were filtered beyond detection by the very
\par thickness of the murk inside the place.
\par 
\par Keeping my back to the wall, I sidled along the building to the doorway.
\par 
\par I stopped just short of the jamb, with my pistol raised and the muzzle
\par pointed at the sky.
\par 
\par I listened, holding my breath, nearly as silent as the dead except for
\par the faint gurgle of my stomach, which continued to work on a
\par pre-midnight snack of jack cheese, onion bread, and jalapeno peppers.
\par 
\par If anyone waited to ambush me just inside the entrance, he must actually
\par have been dead, because he was even quieter than I was.
\par 
\par Whether he was dead or not, his breath was no doubt sweeter than mine.
\par 
\par Though Orson was as difficult to see as a flow of ink across wet black
\par silk, I watched as he stopped short of the entrance. After a hesitation
\par that struck me as being full of puzzlement, he turned away from the door
\par and ventured a few steps across the serviceway toward the next building.
\par 
\par He, too, was silent no tick of claws on paving, no panting, not even any
\par digestive noises as though he were only the ghost of a dog. He peered
\par intently back the way we'd come, his eyes dimly revealed by a reflection
\par of star shine, the faint white points of his bared teeth were like the
\par unsettling phosphorescent grin of an apparition.
\par 
\par I didn't feel that his hesitancy was caused by fear of what lay ahead of
\par us. Instead, he no longer seemed to be certain where the trail led.
\par 
\par I consulted my wristwatch. Each faintly blinking second marked not only
\par the passage of time but the fading of Jimmy Wing's life force.
\par 
\par Almost certainly not taken for ransom, he had been seized to satisfy
\par dark needs, perhaps including savageries that didn't bear consideration.
\par 
\par I waited, struggling to suppress my vivid imagination, but when Orson
\par finally turned again to the open door of the warehouse without
\par indicating any greater confidence that our quarry was inside, I decided
\par to act. Fortune favors the bold. Of course, so does Death.
\par 
\par With my left hand, I reached for the flashlight tucked against the small
\par of my back. Crouching, I entered the doorway, crossed the threshold, and
\par scuttled quickly to the left. Even as I switched on the flash, I rolled
\par it across the floor, a simple and perhaps foolish ruse to draw gunfire
\par away from me.
\par 
\par No gunfire erupted, and when the flashlight rolled to a stop, the
\par stillness in the warehouse was as deep as the silence of a dead planet
\par with no atmosphere. Somewhat to my surprise, when I tried to breathe, I
\par could.
\par 
\par I retrieved the flashlight. Most of the warehouse was given over to a
\par single room of such length that the beam didn't penetrate from one end
\par to the other, it even failed to reach halfway across the much narrower
\par width of the building to illuminate either side wall.
\par 
\par As I scythe away the shadows, they regrew immediately after the beam
\par passed, lusher and blacker than ever. At least no looming adversary was
\par revealed.
\par 
\par Looking more doubtful than suspicious, Orson padded into the light and,
\par after a hesitation, seemed to dismiss the warehouse with a sneeze.
\par 
\par He headed toward the door.
\par 
\par A muffled clang broke the silence elsewhere in the building. The cold
\par acoustics caused the sound to resonate along the walls of this cavernous
\par chamber, lingering until the initial hard metallic quality softened into
\par an eerie, whispery ringing like the voices of summer insects.
\par 
\par I switched off the flashlight.
\par 
\par In the blinding dark, I felt Orson return to my side, his flank brushing
\par against my leg.
\par 
\par I wanted to move.
\par 
\par I didn't know where to move.
\par 
\par Jimmy must be near and still alive, because the kidnapper hadn't yet
\par reached the dark altar where he would play his ritualistic games and
\par sacrifice the lamb. Jimmy, who was small and frightened and alone.
\par 
\par Whose dad was dead like mine. Whose mother would be forever withered by
\par grief if I failed her.
\par 
\par Patience. That is one of the great virtues God tries to teach us by
\par refusing to show Himself in this world. Patience.
\par 
\par Orson and I stood still and vigilant until well after the final echo of
\par the noise faded. Just as the subsequent silence grew long enough to make
\par me wonder if what we'd heard had any significance, a voice arose, deep
\par toned and angry, as muffled as the clang had been. One voice.
\par 
\par Not a conversation. A monologue. Someone talking to himself or to a
\par small, frightened captive who dared not reply. I couldn't make out the
\par meaning, but the voice was as hollow and grumbly as that of a troll in a
\par fairy tale.
\par 
\par The speaker was neither approaching nor retreating, and clearly he was
\par not in this chamber with Orson and me. Before I was able to determine
\par the direction from which the growled words came, the troll fell silent.
\par 
\par Fort Wyvern has been closed only nineteen months, so I haven't had time
\par to learn each niche of it as thoroughly as I've acquainted myself with
\par every cranny of Moonlight Bay. Thus far, I've confined most of my
\par explorations to the more mysterious precincts of the base, where I'm
\par most likely to encounter strange and intriguing sights. Of this
\par warehouse, I knew only that it was like the others in this cluster,
\par three stories high, with an open-beam ceiling, and composed of four
\par spaces the main rooms in which we stood, one office in the far right
\par corner, a matching room in the far left corner, and an open loft above
\par those offices.
\par 
\par I was sure that neither the sudden noise nor the voice had come from any
\par of those places.
\par 
\par I turned in a circle, frustrated by the impenetrable darkness.
\par 
\par It was as pitiless and unremitting as the black pall that will fall over
\par me if, one day, cumulative light damage plants the seeds of tumors in my
\par eyes.
\par 
\par A louder noise than the first, a resounding crash of metal against
\par metal, boomed through the building, giving rise to echoes that rolled
\par like a distant cannonade. This time I felt vibrations in the concrete
\par floor, suggesting that the source of the disturbance might be below the
\par main level of the warehouse.
\par 
\par Under certain buildings on the base lie secret realms that were
\par apparently unknown to the vast majority of the soldiers who conducted
\par the ordinary, reputable army business of Wyvern. Doors, once cunningly
\par disguised, led from basements down to subbasements, to deeper cellars,
\par to vaults far below the cellars. Many of these subterranean structures
\par are linked to others throughout the base by staircases, elevators, and
\par tunnels that would have been far less easy to detect before the
\par facility, prior to abandonment, was stripped of all supplies and
\par equipment.
\par 
\par Indeed, even with some of Wyvern's secrets left exposed by its departing
\par stewards, my best discoveries would not have been possible without the
\par aid of my clever canine companion. His ability to detect even the
\par faintest fragrant drafts wafting through cracks from hidden rooms is as
\par impressive as his talent for riding a surfboard, though perhaps not as
\par impressive as his knack for occasionally wheedling a second beer from
\par his friends, like me, who know full well that he is incapable of
\par handling more than one.
\par 
\par Without question, this sprawling base harbors more installations that
\par remain well hidden, waiting to be revealed, nevertheless, as interesting
\par as my explorations have been, I've periodically refrained from them.
\par 
\par When I spend too much time in the shadow land under Fort Wyvern, its
\par disturbing atmosphere grows oppressive. I have seen enough to know that
\par this netherworld was the site of wide-ranging clandestine operations of
\par dubious wisdom, that numerous and diverse "black-budget" research
\par projects were surely conducted here, and that some of those projects
\par were so ambitious and exotic as to defy understanding based on the few
\par enigmatic clues that were left behind.
\par 
\par This knowledge alone, however, isn't what makes me uncomfortable in
\par Wyvern's underworld. More distressing is a perception little more than
\par an intuition but nonetheless powerful that some of what happened here
\par was not merely well-intentioned foolishness of a high order, not merely
\par science in the service of mad politics, but pure wickedness. When I
\par spend more than a couple of nights in a row under Wyvern, I'm overcome
\par by the conviction that unknown evils were loosed in its buried warrens
\par and that some still roam those byways, waiting to be encountered.
\par 
\par Then it isn't fear that drives me to the surface. Rather, it's a sense
\par of moral and spiritual suffocation as though, by remaining too long in
\par those realms, I will acquire an ineradicable stain on my soul.
\par 
\par I hadn't expected these ordinary warehouses to be so directly linked to
\par the hobgoblin neighborhoods below ground. In Fort Wyvern, however,
\par nothing is as simple as it first appears to be.
\par 
\par Now I switched on the flashlight, reasonably confident that the
\par kidnapper if that's who I was following was not on this level of the
\par building.
\par 
\par It seemed odd that a psychopath would bring his small victim here rather
\par than to a more personal and private place, where he would be entirely
\par comfortable while he fulfilled whatever perverse needs motivated him. On
\par the other hand, Wyvern had a mysterious allure akin to that of
\par Stonehenge, to that of the great pyramid at Giza, to that of the Mayan
\par ruins at Chichen Itza. Its malevolent magnetism would surely appeal to a
\par deranged man who, as was frequently true in these cases, got his purest
\par thrill not from molesting the innocent but from torturing and then
\par brutally murdering them. These strange grounds would draw him as surely
\par as would a deconsecrated church or a crumbling old house on the
\par outskirts of town where, fifty years ago, a madman had chopped up his
\par family with an ax.
\par 
\par Of course, there was always the possibility that this kidnapper was not
\par insane at all, not a pervert, but a man working in a bizarre but
\par nonetheless official capacity in regions of Wyvern that perhaps remained
\par secretly active. This base, even shuttered, is a breeding ground of
\par paranoia.
\par 
\par With Orson remaining close at my side, I hurried toward the offices at
\par the far end of the main room.
\par 
\par The first of them proved to be what I expected. A barren space.
\par 
\par Four plain walls. A hole in the ceiling where the fluorescent lighting
\par fixture had once been mounted.
\par 
\par In the second, the infamous Darth Vader lay on the floor, a molded
\par plastic action figure about three inches tall, black and silver.
\par 
\par I recalled the collection of similar Star Wars toys that I'd glimpsed on
\par the bookshelves in Jimmy's bedroom.
\par 
\par Orson sniffed at Vader.
\par 
\par "Come to the Dark Side, Luke, " I murmured.
\par 
\par 
\par A large rectangular opening gaped in the back wall, from which a pair of
\par elevator doors had been stripped by an army salvage crew. As a half
\par baked safety measure, a single two-by-six was bolted across the gap at
\par waist height. Several elaborate steel fittings, still dangling from the
\par wall, suggested that in the days when Fort Wyvern had served the
\par national defense the elevator had been concealed behind something
\par perhaps a slide-aside or swing-away bookcase or cabinet.
\par 
\par The elevator cab and lift mechanism were gone, too, and a quick use of
\par the flashlight revealed a three-story drop. Sole access was by a
\par maintenance ladder fixed to the shaft wall.
\par 
\par My quarry was probably too busy elsewhere to see the ghostly glow in the
\par shaft. The beam soaked into the gray concrete until it was barely
\par brighter than a seance-summoned cloud of spirit matter hovering above a
\par knocking table.
\par 
\par Nevertheless, I switched off the light and jammed the flashlight under
\par my belt once more. Reluctantly, I returned the Glock to the holster
\par under my coat.
\par 
\par Dropping to one knee, I reached tentatively into the inkiness that
\par surrounded me, which seemed as though it could be either the dimensions
\par of the warehouse office or billions of light-years deep, a black hole
\par linking our odd universe to one even stranger. For a moment my heart
\par rattled against my ribs, but then my hand found good Orson, and by
\par smoothing his fur, I was calmed.
\par 
\par He put his blocky head on my raised knee, encouraging me to stroke him
\par and to scratch his ears, one of which was pricked, the other limp.
\par 
\par We have been through a lot together. We have lost too many people we
\par loved. With equal emotion, we dread being left to face life alone. We
\par have our friends bobby Halloway, Sasha Good all, a few others and we
\par cherish them, but the two of us share something beyond the deepest
\par friendship, a unique relationship without which neither of us would be
\par quite whole.
\par 
\par "Bro, " I whispered.
\par 
\par He licked my hand.
\par 
\par "Gotta go, " I whispered, and I didn't need to say that where I had to
\par go was down.
\par 
\par Neither did I have to note that Orson's myriad abilities didn't include
\par the extraordinary balance required to descend a perfectly vertical
\par ladder, paw over paw. He has a talent for tracking, a great good heart,
\par unlimited courage, loyalty as reliable as the departure of the sun at
\par dusk, a bottomless capacity for love, a cold nose, a tail that can wag
\par energetically enough to produce more electricity than a small nuclear
\par reactor but like every one of us, he has his limitations.
\par 
\par In the blackness, I moved to the hole in the wall. Blindly gripping one
\par of the steel fittings that had secured the missing bookcase to a
\par wall-mounted track, I pulled myself up until I was crouching with both
\par feet on the sturdy two-by-six bolted across the opening. I reached into
\par the shaft, fumbled for a steel rung, snared one, and swung off the
\par two-by-six onto the service ladder.
\par 
\par Admittedly, I am less quiet than a cat, but by a degree that only a
\par mouse would appreciate. I don't mean to imply that I have a paranormal
\par ability to race across a carpet of crisp autumn leaves without raising a
\par crackle. My stealth is largely a consequence of three things, first, the
\par profound patience that XP has taught me, second, the confidence with
\par which I have learned to move through the bleakest night, third, and not
\par least important, decades spent observing the nocturnal animals and birds
\par and other creatures with whom I share my world. Every one of them is a
\par master of silence when it needs to be, and more often than not it
\par desperately needs to be, because the night is a kingdom of predators, in
\par which every hunter is also the hunted.
\par 
\par I descended from darkness into darkness distilled, wishing that I didn't
\par need both hands for the ladder and could, instead, swing downward like
\par an ape, swift and nimble, gripping with my left hand and both feet,
\par holding the pistol ready. But then if I were an ape, I would have been
\par too wise to put myself in this precarious position.
\par 
\par Before I reached the first basement, I began to wonder how my quarry had
\par gone down the ladder while encumbered with the boy. Across his shoulder
\par in a fireman's carry? Jimmy would have to have been bound at ankles and
\par wrists to prevent him from making a movement, either intentionally or
\par out of panic, that might dislodge his abductor. Even then, although the
\par boy was small, he'd have been a considerable burden and a relentless
\par backward drag that had to be diligently resisted every time the
\par kidnapper moved a hand from one rung to the next.
\par 
\par I decided that the man I was pursuing must be as strong, agile, and
\par confident as he was psychotic. So much for my fond hope that I was
\par chasing a soft-bellied librarian who, dazed and confused, had been
\par driven to this insane act by the stress of converting from the Dewey
\par decimal system to a new computerized inventory.
\par 
\par Even in the lightless murk, I knew when I had reached the gap in the
\par shaft where the basement elevator doors had once been, one floor below
\par the warehouse office. I can't explain how I could know, any more than I
\par can explain the plot line of the average Jackie Chan movie, though I
\par love Jackie Chan movies. Perhaps there was a draft or a scent or a
\par resonance so subtle that I was only subconsciously aware of it.
\par 
\par I couldn't be sure this was the level to which the kidnapper had taken
\par the boy. He might have gone farther down.
\par 
\par Listening intently, hoping to hear again the troll-deep voice or another
\par sound that would guide me, I hung like a spider on an obsessively well
\par organized web. I had no intention of gobbling up unwary flies and moths,
\par but the longer I remained suspended in the gloom, the more I felt that I
\par was not the spider, after all, not the diner but the dinner, and that a
\par mutant tarantula as big as an elevator cab was ascending from the pit
\par below, its sharp mandibles silently scissoring.
\par 
\par My dad was a professor of poetry, and throughout my childhood, he read
\par to me from the entire history of verse, Homer to Dr. Seuss, Donald
\par Justice to Ogden Nash, which makes him partly responsible for my baroque
\par imagination. Blame the rest of it on that aforementioned snack of
\par cheese, onion bread, and jalapefios.
\par 
\par Or blame it on the eerie atmosphere and the realities of Fort Wyvern,
\par for here even a rational man might have legitimate reasons to entertain
\par thoughts of giant ravenous spiders. The impossible was once made
\par possible in this place. If the hideous arachnid in my mind's eye was the
\par fault of just my dad and my diet, then my imagination would have
\par conjured not a simple spider but an image of the grinning Grinch
\par climbing toward me.
\par 
\par As I hung motionless on the ladder, the grinning Grinch rapidly became
\par an inexpressibly more terrifying image than any spider could have been,
\par until another hard crash boomed through the building, shaking me back to
\par reality. It was identical to the first crash, which had drawn me this
\par far, a steel door slamming in a steel frame.
\par 
\par The sound had come from one of the two levels below me.
\par 
\par Daring the maw of spider or Grinch, I went down one more story, to the
\par next opening in the shaft.
\par 
\par Even as I arrived at this second subterranean floor, I heard the
\par grumbling voice, less distinct and even less comprehensible than it had
\par been before. Unquestionably, however, it issued from this level rather
\par than from the final floor, at the base of the pit.
\par 
\par I peered toward the top of the ladder. Orson must be gazing down, as
\par blinded to the sight of me as I was to the sight of him, sniffing my
\par reassuring scent. Reassuring and soon ripe, I was sweating, partly from
\par exertion and partly from anticipation of the pending confrontation.
\par 
\par Clinging to the ladder with one hand, I felt for the shaft opening,
\par found it, reached around the corner, and discovered a metal handgrip on
\par the face of the jamb, which facilitated the transition from the ladder
\par to the threshold. No two-by-six safety barricade had been bolted across
\par the gap at this level, and I passed easily out of the elevator shaft
\par into the subbasement.
\par 
\par Out of a distillate of darkness into a reduction of darkness.
\par 
\par Drawing the Glock, I sidled away from the open shaft, keeping my back
\par against the wall. The concrete felt cold even through the insulating
\par layers of my coat and cotton pullover.
\par 
\par I was overcome by a prideful little flush of accomplishment, a curious
\par if short-lived pleasure to have made it this far without detection.
\par 
\par The flush almost at once gave way to a chill as a more rational part of
\par me demanded to know what the hell I was doing here.
\par 
\par I seemed insanely compelled, driven, to travel into ever darker
\par impossibly bleak conditions, to the heart of all blackness, where the
\par darkness was as condensed as matter had been the instant before the Big
\par Bang spewed forth the universe, and once there, beyond all hope of
\par light, to be crushed until my shrieking spirit was pressed from my mind
\par and from my mortal flesh like juice from a grape.
\par 
\par Man, I needed a beer.
\par 
\par Hadn't brought one. Couldn't get one.
\par 
\par I tried taking slow deep breaths instead. Through my mouth, to minimize
\par the noise. Just in case the hateful troll, armed with a chain saw, was
\par creeping closer, one gnarled finger poised over the starter button.
\par 
\par I am my own worst enemy. This, more than any other trait, proves my
\par fundamental humanity.
\par 
\par The air didn't taste remotely as good as a cool Corona or a Heineken.
\par 
\par It had a faintly bitter tang.
\par 
\par Next time I went chasing after bad guys, I'd have to bring a cooler full
\par of ice and a six-pack.
\par 
\par For a while I conned myself with thoughts of all the eight-foot glassy
\par waves waiting to be surfed, all the icy beers and the tacos and the
\par lovemaking with Sasha that lay ahead of me, until the feeling of
\par oppression and the claustrophobic panic gradually lifted.
\par 
\par I didn't fully calm down until I was able to summon a mental picture of
\par Sasha's face. Her gray eyes as clear as rainwater. Her lush mahogany
\par hair. The shape of her mouth curved by laughter. Her radiance.
\par 
\par Because I'd been cautious, the kidnapper was surely unaware that I was
\par present, which meant he would have no reason to conduct his business
\par without benefit of a lamp. Being unable to see his victim's terror would
\par diminish his twisted pleasure. The absolute darkness seemed proof to me
\par that he was not dangerously close but in another room, shut off from
\par here but nearby.
\par 
\par The absence of screams must mean that the child had not yet been
\par touched. To this predator, the pleasure of hearing would be equal to the
\par pleasure of seeing, in the cries of his victims, he would perceive
\par music.
\par 
\par If I couldn't detect the dimmest trace of the lamp by which he worked,
\par he wouldn't be able to see mine. I fished the flashlight from under my
\par belt and switched it on.
\par 
\par I was in an ordinary elevator alcove. To the right and around a corner,
\par I found a corridor that was quite long and perhaps eight feet wide, with
\par .
\par 
\par an ash-gray ceramic-tile floor and poured-in-place concrete walls
\par painted pale, glossy blue. It led in one direction, under the length of
\par the warehouse that I had recently traversed at ground level.
\par 
\par Not much dust had filtered down to this depth, where the air was as
\par still and as cool as that in a morgue. The floor was too clean to reveal
\par footprints.
\par 
\par The fluorescent bulbs and diffusion panels hadn't been pulled out of the
\par ceiling. They didn't pose any danger to me, because power was no longer
\par supplied to any of these buildings.
\par 
\par On other nights, I had found that the government's salvage operation had
\par stripped away items of value from only limited areas of the base.
\par 
\par Perhaps, in the middle of the process, the Department of Defense
\par accountants had decided that the effort was more expensive than the
\par liquidation value of the salvaged goods.
\par 
\par To my left, the corridor wall was unbroken. Along the right side lay
\par rooms waiting behind a series of unpainted, stainless-steel doors
\par without markings of any kind.
\par 
\par Even though I was currently unable to consult with my clever canine
\par brother, I was capable of deducing on my own that the slamming of two of
\par these doors must have produced the crashes that had drawn me down here.
\par 
\par The corridor was so long that my flashlight couldn't reveal the end of
\par it. I wasn't able to see how many rooms it served, whether fewer than
\par six or more than sixty, but I suspected that the boy and his abductor
\par were in one of them.
\par 
\par The flashlight was beginning to feel hot in my hand, but I knew the heat
\par wasn't real. The beam was not intense, and it was directed away from me,
\par I was keeping my fingers well back from the bright lens.
\par 
\par Nevertheless, I was so accustomed to avoiding light that, by holding
\par this source of it too long, I began to feel something of what hapless
\par Icarus must have felt when, flying too near the sun, he'd detected the
\par stink of burning feathers.
\par 
\par Instead of a knob, the first door featured a lever, and instead of a
\par keyhole, there was a slot for the insertion of a magnetic card.
\par 
\par Either the electronic locks would have been disabled when the base was
\par abandoned or they would have disengaged automatically when the power was
\par shut off.
\par 
\par I put one ear to the door. There was no sound whatsoever from within.
\par 
\par Gingerly, I pressed down on the lever. At best I expected a thin,
\par betraying skreek and at worst the "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's
\par Messiah. Instead, the lever worked as noiselessly as if it had been
\par installed and oiled only yesterday.
\par 
\par With my body, I pushed open the door, holding the Glock in one hand and
\par the flashlight in the other.
\par 
\par The room was large, about forty feet wide by eighty feet long.
\par 
\par I could only guess at the precise dimensions, because my small
\par flashlight barely reached the width of the space and could not penetrate
\par the entire depth.
\par 
\par As far as I could see, no machinery or furniture or supplies had been
\par left behind. Most likely, everything had been hauled off to the fog
\par wreathe mountains of Transylvania to re-equip Victor Frankenstein's
\par laboratory.
\par 
\par Strewn across the vast gray tile floor were hundreds of small skeletons.
\par 
\par For an instant, perhaps because of the frail-looking rib cages, I
\par thought these were the remains of birds which made no sense, as there is
\par no feathered species with a preference for subterranean flight. As I
\par played the flashlight over a few calcimine skulls and as I registered
\par both the size of them and then the lack of wing structures, I realized
\par that these must be the skeletons of rats. Hundreds of rats.
\par 
\par The majority of the skeletons lay alone, each separate from all the
\par others, but in places there were also piles of bones, as though a score
\par of hallucinating rodents had suffocated one another while competing for
\par the same imaginary hunk of cheese.
\par 
\par Strangest of all were the patterns of skulls and bones that I noted here
\par and there. These remains appeared to be curiously arranged not as though
\par the rats had perished at random dropping points, but as though they had
\par painstakingly positioned themselves with an intricacy similar to the
\par elaborate lines in a Haitian priest's voodoo veves.
\par 
\par I know all about veves because my friend Bobby Halloway once dated an
\par awesomely beautiful surfer, Holly Keene, who was into voodoo.
\par 
\par The relationship didn't last.
\par 
\par A ve ve is a design that represents the figure and power of an astral
\par force. The voodoo priest prepares five large copper bowls, each
\par containing a different substance, white flour, cornmeal, red brick
\par powder, powdered charcoal, and powdered tannis root. He makes the sacred
\par designs on the floor with these substances, allowing each to dribble in
\par a measured flow from his cupped hand. He must be able to draw hundreds
\par of complex veves freehand, from memory. For even the least ambitious
\par ritual, several veves are needed to force the attention of the gods to
\par the Oumphor, the temple, where the rites are conducted.
\par 
\par Holly Keene was a practitioner of good magic, a self-proclaimed Hougnon,
\par rather than a black-magic Bocor. She said it was maximum uncool to
\par create zombies by reanimating the dead, cast curses that transformed her
\par enemies' beating hearts into rotting chicken heads, and stuff like that
\par even though, as she made clear, she could do those things by renouncing
\par her Hougnon oath and getting a Bocor union card.
\par 
\par She was basically a sweet person, if a little odd, and the only time she
\par made me uneasy was when, with passionate advocacy, she declared that the
\par greatest rock-'n'-roll band of all time was the Partridge Family.
\par 
\par Anyway, the rat bones. They must have been here a long time, because no
\par flesh adhered to them as far as I could see or cared to look. Some were
\par white, others were stained yellow or rust red, or even black.
\par 
\par Except for a few scattered gray puffballs of hair, the rats' pelts
\par surprisingly had not survived decomposition. This led me to wonder
\par briefly if the creatures' bodies had been rendered elsewhere, their
\par boiled bones later arranged here by someone with more sinister motives
\par than those of Holly Keene, bikinied Bocor.
\par 
\par Then, under many of the skeletons, I saw that the tile floor was
\par stained. This vile-looking residue appeared to be gummy but must have
\par been brittle with age, because otherwise it would have lent an appalling
\par odor to the cool dry air.
\par 
\par In a deeply hidden facility on these grounds, experiments in genetic
\par engineering had been conducted perhaps were still being conducted with
\par catastrophic results. Rats are widely used in medical research.
\par 
\par I had no proof but plenty of reason to suppose that these rodents had
\par been the subjects of one of those experiments, though I couldn't imagine
\par how they had wound up here, like this.
\par 
\par The mystery of the ve ve rats was only one more of Fort Wyvern's
\par virtually infinite supply of enigmas, and it had nothing to do with the
\par more urgent mystery of Jimmy Wing's disappearance. At least I hoped it
\par didn't. God forbid that I should open another door, farther along the
\par hall, and discover the ritualistically arranged skeletons of
\par five-year-old boys.
\par 
\par I stepped backward, out of the rodents' equivalent of the legendary
\par elephants' graveyard, easing the door shut with a click so
\par preternaturally soft that it could have been heard only by a cat on
\par methamphetamines.
\par 
\par A quick arc of the flashlight, hotter than ever in my hand, revealed
\par that the corridor was still deserted.
\par 
\par I moved to the next door. Stainless steel. Unmarked. Lever handle.
\par 
\par Identical to the previous one.
\par 
\par Beyond was a room the size of the first, sans rat skeletons. The tile
\par floor and painted walls gleamed as if they had been spit-polished.
\par 
\par I was relieved by the sight of the bare floor.
\par 
\par As I backed out of the second room and silently eased the door shut, the
\par troll voice rose once more, nearer than before but still too muffled to
\par be understood. The corridor remained deserted both ahead and behind me.
\par 
\par For a moment the voice grew louder and seemed to draw closer, as though
\par the speaker was approaching a door, about to step into the hallway.
\par 
\par I thumbed off the flashlight.
\par 
\par The claustrophobic darkness closed around me again, as soft as Death's
\par hooded robe and with pockets almost as deep.
\par 
\par The voice continued grumbling for several seconds but then abruptly broke
\par off, seemingly in mid-sentence.
\par 
\par I didn't hear a door open or any sound to indicate that the kidnapper
\par had entered the hallway. Besides, light would betray him when at last he
\par came. I was still the sole presence he rebut instinct warned me that I
\par would soon have company.
\par 
\par I was close to the wall, facing away from the direction I'd come, toward
\par unexplored realms.
\par 
\par The extinguished flashlight was now cool in my hand, but the pistol felt
\par hot.
\par 
\par The longer the quiet lasted, the more it seemed bottomless. Soon it was
\par an abyss into which I imagined myself drifting down, down, like a
\par deep-sea diver festooned with lead weights.
\par 
\par I listened so hard that I was half convinced I could feel the fine hairs
\par vibrating in my ear canals. Yet I could hear only one sound, and it was
\par strictly internal, the thick, liquid thud of my own heartbeat, faster
\par than normal but not racing.
\par 
\par As time passed without a noise or a sudden wedge of light from an
\par opening door farther along the corridor, the likelihood grew that in
\par spite of what instinct told me, the troll voice had been receding rather
\par than approaching. If the kidnapper and the boy were on the move and
\par heading away from me, I might lose their trail if I didn't stay close
\par behind them.
\par 
\par I was about to switch on the flashlight again, when a shiver of
\par superstitious dread passed through me. If I had been in a cemetery, I
\par would have seen a ghost skating on the moon-iced grass between
\par tombstones. If I had been in the Northwest woods, I would have seen Big
\par Foot shagging among the trees. If I had been in front of any garage
\par door, I would have seen the face of Jesus or the Holy Virgin in a
\par weather stain, warning of the Apocalypse. I was in the bowels of Wyvern,
\par however, and unable to see any damn thing at all, so I could only feel,
\par and what I felt was a presence, an aura, like a pressure, hovering,
\par looming, what a medium or a psychic would call an entity, a spiritual
\par force that could not be denied, chilling my blood and marrow.
\par 
\par I was in face-to-face confrontation with it. My nose was only inches
\par from its nose, assuming it had a nose. I couldn't smell its breath,
\par which was a good thing, as its breath must smell like rotting meat,
\par burning sulfur, and swine manure.
\par 
\par Obviously, my nuclear imagination was nearing meltdown.
\par 
\par I told myself that this was no more real than my feverish vision of a
\par gigantic spider in the elevator shaft.
\par 
\par Bobby Halloway says my imagination is a three-hundred-ring circus.
\par 
\par Currently, I was in ring two hundred and ninety-nine, with elephants
\par dancing and clowns cartwheeling and tigers leaping through rings of
\par fire. The time had come to step back, leave the main tent, go buy some
\par popcorn and a Coke, bliss out, cool down.
\par 
\par I was ashamed to realize that I didn't have the guts to switch on the
\par flashlight. I was constrained by a fear of what might be eye-to-eye with
\par me.
\par 
\par Though part of me wanted to believe I was suffering a runaway chain
\par reaction of imagination, and though I probably was just jerking my own
\par chain, there was good reason to be afraid. Those aforementioned
\par experiments in genetic engineering some designed by my mother, who had
\par been a theoretical geneticist had ultimately not been controllable. In
\par spite of a high degree of biological security, a designer strain of
\par retrovirus had gotten out of the lab. Thanks to the remarkable talents
\par of this new bug, the residents of Moonlight Bay and, to a lesser extent,
\par people and animals in the wider world beyond have been ... changing.
\par 
\par So far, the changes have been disturbing, sometimes terrifying, but,
\par with a few notable exceptions, they have been subtle enough that
\par authorities have successfully concealed the truth about the catastrophe.
\par 
\par Even in Moonlight Bay, at most a few hundred people know what is
\par happening.
\par 
\par I myself learned only a month before this April night, upon the death of
\par my father, who knew all the dreadful details, and who revealed things to
\par me that I now wish I didn't know. The rest of the townspeople live in
\par happy ignorance, but they may not be out of the loop much longer,
\par because the mutations may not remain subtle.
\par 
\par This was the thought that had paralyzed me when, if instinct could be
\par trusted, I found myself facing some presence in the blind-dark
\par passageway.
\par 
\par Now my heart was racing.
\par 
\par I was disgusted. If I didn't get control of myself, I would have to
\par spend the rest of my life sleeping under my bed, just to be sure the
\par boogeyman couldn't slip beneath the box springs while I was dreaming.
\par 
\par Holding the unlit flashlight in a tight circlet of thumb and forefinger,
\par with my other three fingers extended, intending to prove to myself that
\par this superstitious dread enjoyed no basis in fact, I reached into the
\par tomb perfect darkness. And touched a face.
\par 
\par The side of a nose. The corner of a mouth. My little finger slid across
\par a rubbery lip, wet teeth.
\par 
\par I cried out and recoiled. As I stumbled backward, I managed to click on
\par the flashlight.
\par 
\par Although the beam was pointed at the floor, the backsplash of light
\par revealed the entity before me. It had no fangs, no eyes full of
\par crackling hellfire, but it was composed of a substance more solid than
\par ectoplasm. It wore chinos, what appeared to be a yellow polo-style
\par shirt, and a pecan brown sports jacket. Indeed, it wasn't something from
\par beyond the grave but something from the Sears men's department.
\par 
\par He was about thirty years old, maybe five feet eight, as stocky as a
\par bull standing on its hind feet in a pair of Nikes. With close-cropped
\par black hair, eyes as mad-yellow as those of a hyena, and thick red lips,
\par he seemed too formidable to have glided soundlessly through the seamless
\par dark. His teeth were as small as kernels of white corn, and his smile
\par was a cold side dish, which he served in a generous portion as he swung
\par the club that he was holding.
\par 
\par Fortunately, it was a length of two-by-four rather than an iron pipe,
\par and he was too close to execute a bone-shattering arc. Instead of
\par recoiling farther at the sight of the club, I stepped into the guy in an
\par attempt to minimize the impact, simultaneously trying to bring the Glock
\par to bear on him, figuring that the very sight of it would cause him to
\par retreat.
\par 
\par He swung the two-by-four not from overhead, not like a woodsman wielding
\par an ax, but low from his side, like a golfer teeing off.
\par 
\par It grazed my left flank and caught me under the arm. The blow wasn't
\par devastating, but it was unquestionably more painful than
\par Japanese-massage therapy.
\par 
\par The flashlight flew out of my hand, tumbling end over end.
\par 
\par His yellow eyes flared. I knew that he had registered the pistol in my
\par right hand and that it was an unpleasant surprise for him.
\par 
\par The tumbling flashlight struck the farther wall, bounced to the floor
\par without shattering the lens, and revolved like the pointer in a game of
\par spin the bottle, casting luminous spirals over the glossy blue walls.
\par 
\par Even as the flashlight clattered to the floor, my smiling assailant was
\par winding up to take another swing, handling the two-by-four like a
\par baseball bat this time.
\par 
\par Rocked by the first blow, I warned him, "Don't." His yellow eyes
\par revealed no fear of the gun, and the expression on his broad blunt face
\par was pitiless fury.
\par 
\par I squeezed off a shot as I twisted out of his way. The club cut the air
\par with sufficient force to have driven shards of bone and splinters of
\par wood into my left temporal lobe if I'd not been able to dodge it, while
\par the 9-millimeter slug ricocheted noisily but harmlessly from wall to
\par wall of the concrete passage.
\par 
\par Instead of pulling the blow, he followed all the way through, allowing
\par the momentum of the club to swivel him three hundred and sixty degrees.
\par 
\par As the spinning flashlight slowed, the attacker's distorted silhouette
\par pumped around the corridor, around and around, pumped like a carousel
\par horse, and out of his own galloping shadow, he rushed at me when I
\par stumbled backward against the featureless wall opposite the doors.
\par 
\par He was as condensed as a cube of squashed automobiles from a
\par salvage-yard compactor, eyes bright but without depth, face knotted and
\par florid with rage, smile fixed and humorless. He appeared to have been
\par born, raised, educated, and groomed for one purpose, hammering me to
\par pulp.
\par 
\par I did not like this man.
\par 
\par Yet I didn't want to kill him. As I said before, I'm not big on killing.
\par 
\par I surf, I read poetry, I do some writing of my own, and I like to think
\par of myself as a sort of Renaissance man. We Renaissance men generally
\par don't resort to bloodshed as the first and easiest solution to a
\par problem. We think. We ponder. We brood. We weigh the possible effects
\par and analyze the complex moral consequences of our actions, preferring to
\par use persuasion and negotiation instead of violence, hopeful that each
\par confrontation will culminate in handshakes and mutual respect if not
\par always in hugs and dinner dates.
\par 
\par He swung the two-by-four.
\par 
\par I ducked, slipped sideways.
\par 
\par The club cracked so hard against the wall that I could almost hear the
\par low vibrations traveling the length of the wood. The two-by-four dropped
\par from his numbed hands, and he cursed vehemently.
\par 
\par Too bad it hadn't been an iron pipe. The recoil might have been nasty
\par enough to loosen some of his milk-white baby teeth and make him cry for
\par mama.
\par 
\par "All right, that's enough, " I said.
\par 
\par He made an obscene suggestion and, flexing his powerful hands, snatched
\par the club off the floor, rounding on me.
\par 
\par He seemed to have little or no fear of the gun, probably because my
\par reluctance to fire it, other than to squeeze off a warning shot, had
\par convinced him that I was too chickenshit to blow him away. He didn't
\par impress me as a particularly bright individual, and stupid people are
\par often dangerously sure of themselves.
\par 
\par His body language, a sly look in his eyes, and a sudden sneer told me
\par that he was going to feint, fake another swing with the club but not
\par follow through. He would come at me some other way when I reacted to the
\par false move. Perhaps he'd drive the two-by-four like a pike straight at
\par my chest, hoping to knock me down and then smash my face.
\par 
\par While I like to think of myself as a Renaissance man, persuasion and
\par negotiation were unlikely to bear fruit in this situation, and I
\par manifestly do not like to think of myself as a dead Renaissance man.
\par 
\par When he feinted, I didn't wait to see what the bastard's real plan of
\par attack might be. With apologies to poets and diplomats and gentle
\par persons everywhere, I pulled the trigger.
\par 
\par I was hoping to hit him in the shoulder or arm, though I suspect it's
\par only in movies that you can confidently calculate to wound a man rather
\par than kill him. In real life, panic and physics and fate screw things up.
\par 
\par Most likely, more often than not, in spite of the best intentions, the
\par polite wounding shot drills through the guy's brain or bounces among his
\par ribs, off his sternum, and ends up dead-center in his heart or kills a
\par kindly grandmother baking cookies six blocks away.
\par 
\par This time, though I wasn't firing another warning shot, I missed his
\par shoulder, arm, heart, brain, and everything else that would have bled.
\par 
\par Panic, physics, fate. The bullet tore into the club, spraying his face
\par with splinters and larger fragments of wood.
\par 
\par Suddenly convinced of his own mortality and perhaps recognizing the
\par incomparable danger of confronting a marksman as poor as I am, the
\par weasel pitched his makeshift cudgel, turned, and ran back toward the
\par elevator alcove.
\par 
\par I juked when I saw he was going to throw the club, but my Big Bag of
\par Really Smooth Moves was empty. Instead of ducking away from the club, I
\par cunningly dodged straight into it, got rapped across the chest, and
\par fell.
\par 
\par I was getting up even as I was going down, but by the time I made it to
\par my feet again, my assailant was nearing the end of the hall. My legs
\par were longer than his, but I wasn't going to be able to catch up with him
\par easily.
\par 
\par If you're looking for someone to shoot a man in the back, I'm not your
\par guy, regardless of the circumstances. My attacker safely turned the
\par corner into the elevator alcove where he switched on a flashlight of his
\par own.
\par 
\par Although I needed to nail this creep, finding Jimmy Wing was an even
\par higher priority. The boy might have been hurt and left to die.
\par 
\par Besides, when the kidnapper arrived at the top of the ladder, a toothy
\par surprise would be waiting for him. Orson wouldn't let the guy get out of
\par the elevator shaft.
\par 
\par I scooped up the flashlight and hurried to the third in the line of
\par doors along the hall. It was ajar, and I pushed it all the way open.
\par 
\par Of the three chambers I'd thus far explored, this was the smallest, less
\par than half the size of the other two, so the light swept from wall to
\par wall. Jimmy was not here.
\par 
\par The only item of interest was a balled-up yellow cloth about ten feet
\par beyond the threshold. I almost ignored it, eager to try the next door
\par along the corridor, but then I ventured inside and, with the same hand
\par that held the gun, I plucked the rag off the floor.
\par 
\par It wasn't a rag, after all, but the soft cotton top from a pair of
\par pajamas. A crew-neck pullover. About the right size for a five-year-old.
\par 
\par Across the chest, in red and black letters, were the words Jedi Knight.
\par 
\par A sudden foreboding made my mouth go dry.
\par 
\par When I'd followed Orson away from Lilly Wing's house, I had already
\par reluctantly decided that her little boy was beyond saving, but
\par subsequently, against my better judgment, I had allowed myself to hope
\par too much. In this uncertain space between birth and death, especially
\par here at the end of the world in Moonlight Bay, we need hope as surely as
\par we need food and water, love and friendship. The trick, however, is to
\par remember that hope is a perilous thing, that it's not a steel and
\par concrete bridge across the void between this moment and a brighter
\par future.
\par 
\par Hope is no stronger than tremulous beads of dew strung on a filament of
\par spider web, and it alone can't long support the terrible weight of an
\par anguished mind and a tortured heart. Because I had loved Lilly for so
\par many years now as a friend, in other days, more deeply than one loves
\par even the dearest friend i had wanted to spare her from this worst of all
\par calamities, from the loss of a child. I had wanted this more desperately
\par than I'd realized and consequently I'd been running across a bridge of
\par hope, a high arched span, which now dissolved like gossamer and directed
\par my attention to the chasm beneath me.
\par 
\par Clutching the pajama top, I returned to the corridor.
\par 
\par I heard the boy's name, "Jimmy, " before I realized that I was the one
\par who had softly spoken it.
\par 
\par I called to him again, not sotto voce this time but at the top of my
\par voice.
\par 
\par I might as well have spoken in a murmur, because my shout drew no more
\par response than my whisper. No surprise. I hadn't expected a reply.
\par 
\par Angrily, I wadded the thin pajama top and stuffed it in a coat pocket.
\par 
\par With the illusion of hope dispelled, I could more clearly see the truth.
\par 
\par The boy wasn't here, not in any of the rooms along this hallway, not on
\par the level below this one or on the level above. I'd thought it must have
\par been difficult for the kidnapper to descend the maintenance ladder with
\par Jimmy, but Jimmy hadn't been with him. The yellow-eyed bastard had at
\par some point realized he was being followed by a ma nand a dog. He had put
\par Jimmy elsewhere before carrying the pajama top which was saturated with
\par the boy's scentinto the rat catacombs under the warehouse, hoping to
\par mislead us.
\par 
\par I remembered how uncertain Orson had become after leading me so
\par confidently to the warehouse entrance. He had wandered nervously back
\par and forth in the serviceway, sniffing the air, as though puzzled by
\par contradictory spoor.
\par 
\par After I'd entered the warehouse, Orson had remained loyally at my side
\par as we had been drawn by the noises rising from deeper in the building.
\par 
\par By the time I'd found the Darth Vader action figure, I'd forgotten
\par Orson's hesitancy and had become convinced that I was close to finding
\par Jimmy.
\par 
\par Now I ran toward the elevator alcove, wondering why I hadn't heard a
\par bark or a snarl. I'd expected the kidnapper to be surprised when he
\par found a dog waiting for him on the main level. But if he'd known that he
\par was being tracked and had taken the trouble to use the pajama top to
\par establish a false trail, perhaps he was prepared to deal with Orson.
\par 
\par When I reached the alcove, it was deserted. The shaft wasn't aglow with
\par the kidnapper's light, which I had glimpsed just before I'd gone into
\par the third room and found the pajama top.
\par 
\par I directed my flashlight up toward the warehouse, then down at the
\par bottom of the shaft, one floor below. There was no sign of my quarry in
\par either direction.
\par 
\par He might have descended. Maybe he was more familiar with this section of
\par the Wyvern maze than I was. If he knew of a passage connecting .
\par 
\par the lowest level of the warehouse with another facility, elsewhere on
\par the military base, he could have left by that back door.
\par 
\par Nevertheless, I intended to go upstairs and find Orson, whose continued
\par silence worried me.
\par 
\par I could risk climbing with one hand partly encumbered, but I couldn't
\par hold both the flashlight and the pistol and still keep my balance.
\par 
\par The Glock wouldn't be helpful if I wasn't able to see trouble coming, so
\par I holstered it and kept the light.
\par 
\par As I ascended from the second subterranean level toward the first, I
\par became convinced that the kidnapper had not gone all the way up to the
\par ground floor of the warehouse. He had climbed just one level, halfway.
\par 
\par He was waiting there. I was certain of it. He was waiting there like a
\par troll with a lemon-sour gaze. Going to ambush me as I clambered past the
\par next entrance to the shaft. Lean out, smile to reveal all his neat
\par doll-size teeth, and take a whack at my head with another club.
\par 
\par Maybe he'd even discovered a better weapon this time. An iron pipe.
\par 
\par An ax. A scuba diver's spear gun loaded with a barbed, explosive-tipped,
\par shark-killing bolt. A tactical nuclear weapon.
\par 
\par I slowed and finally stopped before I reached the rectangular black hole
\par in the shaft wall. From a few rungs below, I played the flashlight beam
\par into the alcove, but I was at an angle that allowed me to see little
\par more than the ceiling of that space.
\par 
\par Indecisive, I hung on the ladder, listening.
\par 
\par Finally I overcame my trepidation by reminding myself that any delay
\par could be deadly. After all, a humongous mutant tarantula was crawling
\par toward me from the pit below, poison dripping off its serrated
\par mandibles, fiercely angry because it hadn't gotten me on my way down.
\par 
\par Nothing gives us courage more readily than the desire to avoid looking
\par like a damn fool.
\par 
\par Emboldened, I quickly climbed past the first basement, to the main
\par level, into the office where I had left Orson. I was neither hammered
\par into mush by a blunt instrument nor shredded by giant arachnid jaws.
\par 
\par My dog was gone.
\par 
\par Drawing the pistol once more, I hurried from the office into the huge
\par main room of the warehouse.
\par 
\par Flocks of shadows flew away from me, then circled to roost in even
\par greater profusion at my back.
\par 
\par "Orson! " When circumstances left him no alternative, he was a
\par first-rate fighter my brother the dog and always reliable. He wouldn't
\par have allowed the kidnapper to pass, at least not without extracting a
\par painful toll.
\par 
\par I'd seen no blood in the office, and there was none here, either.
\par 
\par "Orson! " Echoes of his name rippled across the corrugated steel walls.
\par 
\par The repetition of those two hollow syllables was reminiscent of a church
\par bell tolling in the distance, which made me think of funerals, and in my
\par mind rose a vivid image of good Orson lying battered and broken, a glaze
\par of death in his eyes.
\par 
\par My tongue grew so thick and my throat so tight with fear that I could
\par barely swallow.
\par 
\par The door by which we'd entered was wide open, just as we had left it.
\par 
\par Outside, the sleeping moon remained bedded down in mattresses of clouds
\par to the west. Only stars lit the sky.
\par 
\par The cool clear air hung motionless, as sharp with dire promise as the
\par suspended blade of a guillotine.
\par 
\par The flashlight beam revealed a discarded socket wrench that had been
\par left behind so long ago it was orange with rust, from its ratchet handle
\par to its business end. An empty oil can waited for wind strong enough to
\par roll it elsewhere. A weed bristled out of a crack in the blacktop, tiny
\par yellow flowers rising defiantly from this inhospitable compost.
\par 
\par Otherwise, the serviceway was empty. No man, no dog.
\par 
\par Whatever might lie ahead, I'd deal with it more effectively if I
\par recovered my night vision. I switched off the light and tucked it under
\par my belt. "Orson! " I risked nothing by calling out at the top of my
\par voice. The man I'd encountered under the warehouse already knew where I
\par was.
\par 
\par "Orson! " Possibly the dog had split shortly after I'd left him. He
\par might have become convinced we'd followed the wrong trail. Maybe he had
\par caught a fresh scent of Jimmy, weighing the risks of disregarding my
\par instructions against the need to locate the missing child as quickly as
\par possible, perhaps he had left the warehouse and returned to the hunt. He
\par might be with the boy now, ready to confront the kidnapper when the
\par creep showed up to collect his captive.
\par 
\par For a two-bit philosopher full of smug homilies about the danger of
\par investing too much emotional capital in mere hope, I was laboring
\par mightily to build another of those gossamer bridges.
\par 
\par I drew a deep breath, but before I could shout again, Orson barked
\par twice.
\par 
\par At least I assumed it was Orson. For all I knew, it could have been the
\par Hound of the Baskervilles. I wasn't able to determine the direction from
\par which the sound had come.
\par 
\par I called to him once more.
\par 
\par No response.
\par 
\par "Patience, " I counseled myself.
\par 
\par I waited. Sometimes there is nothing to be done but wait. Most times, in
\par fact. We like to think we operate the loom that weaves the future, but
\par the only foot on that treadle is the foot of fate.
\par 
\par In the distance, the dog barked again, ferociously this time.
\par 
\par I got a fix on the sound and ran toward it, from serviceway to
\par serviceway, from shadow to shadow, among abandoned warehouses that
\par loomed as massive and black and cold as temples to the cruel gods of
\par lost religions, then into a broad paved area that might have been a
\par parking lot or a staging area for trucks delivering freight.
\par 
\par I had run a considerable distance, leaving the pavement and plunging
\par through knee-high grass lush from the recent rains, when the moon rolled
\par over in its bed. By the light that came through the disarranged covers,
\par I saw ranks of low structures less than half a mile away.
\par 
\par These were the small houses once occupied by the married military
\par personnel and their families who preferred on-base living.
\par 
\par Although the barking had stopped, I kept moving, certain that Orson and
\par perhaps Jimmy could be found ahead. The grass ended at a cracked
\par sidewalk. I leaped across a gutter choked with dead leaves, scraps of
\par paper, and other debris, into a street lined on both sides with enormous
\par old Indian laurels. Half the trees were flourishing, and the moonlit
\par pavement under them was dappled with leaf shadows, but an equal number
\par were dead, clawing at the sky with gnarled black branches.
\par 
\par The barking rose once more, closer but still not near enough to be
\par precisely located. This time it was punctuated by yawps, yelp sand then a
\par squeal of pain.
\par 
\par My heart knocked against my ribs harder than it had when I'd been
\par dodging the two-by-four, and I was gasping for breath.
\par 
\par The avenue I followed led among the dreary rows of decaying,
\par single-story houses. Branching from it was a large but orderly grid of
\par other streets.
\par 
\par More barking, another squeal, then silence.
\par 
\par I stopped in the middle of the street, turning my head left and right,
\par listening intently, trying to control my labored wheezing. I waited for
\par more battle sounds.
\par 
\par The living trees were as still as those that were leafless and rotting.
\par 
\par The breath I'd outrun caught up with me quickly. But as I grew quiet,
\par the night grew even quieter.
\par 
\par In its current condition, Fort Wyvern is most comprehensible to me if I
\par think of it as a theme park, a twisted Disneyland created by Walt
\par Disney's evil twin. Here the guiding themes are not magic and wonder but
\par weirdness and menace, a celebration not of life but of death.
\par 
\par As Disneyland is divided into territories main Street USA, Tomorrow land,
\par Adventure land, Fantasy landwyvern is composed of many attractions.
\par 
\par These three thousand small houses and associated buildings, among which
\par I now stood, constitute the "land" that I call Dead Town. If ghosts
\par walked in any neighborhood of Fort Wyvern, this would be the place where
\par they would choose to do their haunting.
\par 
\par No sound was louder than the moon pulling the clouds around itself once
\par more.
\par 
\par As though I had crossed into the land of the dead without having the
\par good manners to die first, I slowly drifted spirit-silent along the
\par starlit street, seeking some sign of Orson. So profoundly hushed and
\par lonely was the night, so preternaturally still, I could easily believe
\par that mine was the only heart beating within a thousand miles.
\par 
\par Washed by the faint radiance of far nebulae, Dead Town appears to be
\par merely sleeping, an ordinary suburb dreaming its way toward breakfast.
\par 
\par The single-story cottages, bungalows, and duplexes are revealed in no
\par detail, and the bare geometry of walls and roofs presents a deceptive
\par image of solidity, order, and purpose.
\par 
\par Nothing more than the pale light of a full moon, however, is required to
\par expose the ghost-town reality. Indeed, on some streets, a half-moon is
\par sufficient. Rain gutters droop from rusted fasteners.
\par 
\par Clapboard walls, once pristine white and maintained with military
\par discipline, are piebald and peeling. Many of the windows are broken,
\par yawning like hungry mouths, and the lunar light licks the jagged edges
\par of the glass teeth.
\par 
\par Because the landscape sprinkler systems no longer function, the only
\par trees surviving are those with taproots that have found some deep store
\par of water that sustains them through California's long rainless summer
\par and autumn. The shrubbery is withered beyond recovery, reduced to wicker
\par webs and stubble. The grass grows green only during the wet winter, and
\par by June it is as golden and crisp as wheat waiting for the thresher.
\par 
\par The Department of Defense doesn't have sufficient funds either to raze
\par these buildings or to keep them in good repair against the possibility
\par of future need, and no buyers exist for Wyvern. Of the numerous military
\par bases closed following the collapse of the Soviet Union, some were sold
\par off to civilian interests, transformed into tracts of houses and
\par shopping centers. But here along California's central coast, vast
\par reaches of open land, some farmed and some not, remain in the event that
\par Los Angeles, like a creeping fungus, should eventually cast spoors this
\par far north or the suburban circuitry of Silicon Valley should encroach on
\par us from the opposite direction. Currently, Wyvern has more value to
\par mice, lizards, and coyotes than to people.
\par 
\par Besides, if a would-be developer had placed an offer for these 134, 456
\par acres, he would most likely have been rebuffed. There is reason to
\par believe that Wyvern was never entirely vacated, that secret facilities,
\par far beneath its increasingly weathered surface, continue to be manned
\par and to carry out clandestine projects worthy of such fictional lunatics
\par as Doctors Moreau and Jekyll. No press release was ever issued
\par expressing compassionate concern for the unemployed mad scientists of
\par Wyvern or announcing a retraining program, and since many of them
\par resided on base and had little community involvement, no locals wondered
\par where they had gone. Abandonment, here, is but a refinement of the
\par sophisticated camouflage under which this work has long been performed.
\par 
\par I reached an intersection, where I stopped to listen. When the restless
\par moon rolled out of its covers yet again, I turned in a full circle,
\par studying the ranks of houses, the lunar-resistant darkness between them,
\par and the compartmentalized gloom beyond their windows.
\par 
\par Sometimes, prowling Wyvern, I become convinced that I am being
\par watched not necessarily stalked in a predatory way, but shadowed by
\par someone with a keen interest in my every move. I've learned to trust my
\par intuition. This time I felt that I was alone, unobserved.
\par 
\par I returned the Glock to my holster. The pattern of the grip was
\par impressed into my damp palm.
\par 
\par I consulted my wristwatch. Nine minutes past one o'clock.
\par 
\par Moving out of the street to a leafy Indian laurel, I unclipped the phone
\par from my belt and switched it on. I squatted with my back against the
\par tree.
\par 
\par Bobby Halloway, my best friend for more than seventeen years, has
\par several phone numbers. He has given the most private of these to no more
\par than five friends, and he answers that line at any hour. I keyed in the
\par number and pressed send.
\par 
\par Bobby picked up on the third ring, "This better be important." Although
\par I believed that I was alone in this part of Dead Town, I spoke softly,
\par "Were you sleeping? "
\par 
\par "Eating kibby." Kibby is Mediterranean cuisine, ground beef, onion, pine
\par nuts, and herbs wrapped in a moist ball of bulgur and quickly
\par deep-fried.
\par 
\par "Eating it with what? "
\par 
\par "Cucumbers, tomatoes, some pickled turnip."
\par 
\par "At least I didn't call when you were having sex."
\par 
\par "This is worse."
\par 
\par "You're way serious about your kibby."
\par 
\par "So entirely serious."
\par 
\par "I've just been radically clamshelled, " I said, which is surfer lingo
\par for being enfolded by a large collapsing wave and wiped off your board.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "You at the beach? "
\par 
\par "I'm speaking figuratively."
\par 
\par "Don't do that."
\par 
\par "Sometimes it's best, " I said, meaning that someone might be tapping
\par his phone.
\par 
\par "I hate this crap."
\par 
\par "Get used to it, bro."
\par 
\par "Kibby spoiler."
\par 
\par "I'm looking for a missing weed." A weed is a small person, and the term
\par is usually but not always used as a synonym for grommet, which means a
\par preadolescent surfer.
\par 
\par Jimmy Wing was too young to be a surfer, but he was indeed a small
\par person.
\par 
\par "Weed? " Bobby asked.
\par 
\par "A totally small weed."
\par 
\par "You playing at being Nancy Drew again? "
\par 
\par "In Nancy work up to my neck, " I confirmed.
\par 
\par "Kak, " he said, which along this stretch of coast is not a nice thing
\par for one surfer to call another, though I believed I detected a note of
\par affection in his voice that was almost equal to the disgust.
\par 
\par A sudden flapping caused me to leap to my feet before I realized that
\par the source of the sound was just a night bird settling into the branches
\par overhead. A nighthawk or an oilbird, a lone nightingale or chimney swift
\par out of its element, nothing as large as an owl.
\par 
\par "This is stone-dead serious, Bobby. I need your help."
\par 
\par "You see what you get for ever going inland? " Bobby lives far out on
\par the southern horn of the bay, and surfing is his vocation and avocation,
\par his life's purpose, the foundation of his philosophy, not merely his
\par favorite sport but a true spiritual enterprise. The ocean is his
\par cathedral, and he hears the voice of God only in the rumble of the
\par waves. As far as Bobby is concerned, little of real consequence ever
\par occurs farther than half a mile from the beach.
\par 
\par Peering into the branches overhead, I was unable to spot the now quiet
\par bird, even though the moonlight was bright and though the struggling
\par laurel was not richly clothe in leaves. To Bobby, I said again, "I need
\par your help."
\par 
\par "You can do it yourself. Just stand on a chair, tie a noose around your
\par neck, and jump."
\par 
\par "Don't have a chair."
\par 
\par "Pull the shotgun trigger with your toe." In any circumstance, he can
\par make me laugh, and laughter keeps me sane.
\par 
\par An awareness that life is a cosmic joke is close to the core of the
\par philosophy by which Bobby, Sasha, and I live. Our guiding principles are
\par simple, Do as little harm to others as you can, make any sacrifice for
\par your true friends, be responsible for yourself and ask nothing of
\par others, and grab all the fun you can. Don't give much thought to
\par yesterday, don't worry about tomorrow, live in the moment, and trust
\par that your existence has meaning even when the world seems to be all
\par blind chance and chaos. When life lands a hammer blow in your face, do
\par your best to respond to the hammer as if it had been a cream pie.
\par 
\par Sometimes black humor is the only kind we can summon, but even dark
\par laughter can sustain.
\par 
\par I said, "Bobby, if you knew the name of the weed, you'd already be
\par here." He sighed. "Bro, how am I ever going to be a fully realized,
\par super maximum, jerk-off slacker if you keep insisting I have a
\par conscience? "
\par 
\par "You're doomed to be responsible."
\par 
\par "That's what I'm afraid of."
\par 
\par "The furry dude is missing, too, " I said, meaning Orson.
\par 
\par "Citizen Kane? " Orson was named after Orson Welles, the director of
\par Citizen Kane, for whose films he has a strange fascination.
\par 
\par I made an admission that I found difficult to voice, "I'm scared for
\par him."
\par 
\par "I'll be there, " Bobby said at once.
\par 
\par "Cool."
\par 
\par "Where's there? " Wings thrummed, and another bird or possibly two
\par joined the one already roosting in the laurel.
\par 
\par "Dead Town, " I told him.
\par 
\par "Oh, man. You never listen."
\par 
\par "I'm a bad boy. Come in by the river."
\par 
\par "The river? "
\par 
\par "There's a Suburban parked there. Belongs to a mondo psycho, so be
\par careful. The fence is cut."
\par 
\par "Do I have to creep or can I strut? "
\par 
\par "Sneaky doesn't matter anymore.
\par 
\par Just watch your ass."
\par 
\par "Dead Town, " he said disgustedly. "What am I going to do with you,
\par young man? "
\par 
\par "No TV for a month? "
\par 
\par "Kak, " he called me again.
\par 
\par "Where in D Town?"
\par 
\par "Meet me at the movies." He didn't know Wyvern a fraction as well as I
\par did, but he would be able to find the movie theater in the commercial
\par area adjacent to the abandoned houses. As a teenager, not yet so
\par religiously devoted to the seashore that it had become his monastery, he
\par had for a while dated a military brat who lived on-base with her
\par parents.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "We'll find them, bro." I was on a perilous emotional ledge.
\par 
\par The threat of my own death troubles me far less than you might expect,
\par because from the earliest days of childhood, I've lived with an
\par awareness of my mortality that is both more acute and more chronic than
\par what most people experience, but I'm crushed flat by the loss of someone
\par I love. Grief is sharper than the tools of any torturer, and even the
\par prospect of such a loss now seemed to have severed my vocal cords.
\par 
\par "Hang loose, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "I'm just about untied, " I said thinly.
\par 
\par "That's too loose." He hung up and so did I. More wings beat a tattoo
\par through the dark air, and feathers rattled leaves as another bird
\par settled with the growing flock in the upper branches of the laurel.
\par 
\par None of them had yet raised a voice. The cry of the nighthawk, as it
\par jinks through the air, snapping insects in its sharp beak, is a
\par distinctive peent-peent-peent. The nightingale sings in lengthy
\par performances, weaving harsh and sweet piping notes into enchanting
\par phrases. Even an owl, mostly taciturn lest it alarm the rodents on which
\par it feeds, hoots now and then to please itself or to assert its continued
\par citizenship in the community of owls.
\par 
\par The quiet of these birds was eerie and disturbing, not because I
\par believed they were gathering to peck me to pieces in an homage to the
\par Hitchcock film, but because this sounded too much like the brief but
\par deep stillness that often settles upon the natural world in the wake of
\par sudden violence. When a coyote catches a rabbit and snaps its spine or
\par when a fox bites into a mouse and shakes it to death, the dying cry of
\par the prey, even if nearly inaudible, brings a hush to the immediate area.
\par 
\par Though Mother Nature is beautiful, generous, and comforting, she is also
\par bloodthirsty. The never-ending holocaust over which she presides is one
\par aspect of her that isn't photographed for wall calendars or dwelt upon
\par at loving length in Sierra Club publications. Every field in her domain
\par is a killing field, so in the immediate wake of violence, her
\par multitudinous children often fall silent, either because they have an
\par instinctive reverence for the natural law under which they existor
\par because they're reminded of the old girl's murderous personality and
\par hope to avoid becoming the next object of her attention.
\par 
\par Consequently, the mute birds worried me. I wondered if their silence was
\par in witness to slaughter and if the shed blood had been that of a small
\par boy and a dog.
\par 
\par Not a peep.
\par 
\par I left the night shade of the Indian laurel and sought a less disturbing
\par place, from which to make another telephone call.
\par 
\par Except for the birds, I continued to feel that I was unobserved, yet I
\par was suddenly uneasy about remaining in the open.
\par 
\par The feathered sentinels didn't leave their perches to pursue me.
\par 
\par They didn't even rustle the leaves around them.
\par 
\par I was being truthful when I said that I didn't believe they were going
\par to pull a Hitchcock, but I had not ruled out the possibility altogether.
\par 
\par After all, in Wyvernin all of Moonlight Bay, in fact even a creature as
\par unintimidating as a nightingale can be more than it seems and more
\par dangerous than a tiger. The end of the world as we know it may lie in
\par the breast of a chimney swift or in the blood of the tiniest mouse.
\par 
\par As I continued along the street, the light of the awakened moon was so
\par bright that I cast a faint shadow, which walked neither ahead of nor
\par behind me, but remained close by my side, as though to remind me that my
\par four-legged brother, who usually occupied that spot, was missing.
\par 
\par Half the cottages and bungalows in Dead Town have only stoops.
\par 
\par This was one of the other half, a bungalow enhanced by a set of brick
\par steps leading up to a front porch.
\par 
\par A spider had built a web between the pilasters flanking the top of the
\par steps. I couldn't see this construction in the dark, but it must not
\par have been the home of a giant mutant species, because the silk-thread
\par spokes and spirals were so fragile they dissolved around me without
\par resistance. Some of those fine-spun filaments clung to my face, but I
\par wiped them away with one hand as I crossed the porch, no more concerned
\par about the destruction that I had wrought than Godzilla is concerned
\par about the demolished skyscrapers he leaves in his wake.
\par 
\par Although events of recent weeks had given me a new and profound respect
\par for many of the animals with which we share this world, I'd never be
\par able to embrace pantheism. Pantheists regard all forms of life, even
\par spiders and flies, with reverence, but I can't ignore the fact that
\par spiders and flies bugs and worms and wriggly things in general will feed
\par on me when I'm dead. I don't feel compelled to treat any creature as a
\par fellow citizen of the planet, with rights equal to mine and deserving of
\par all courtesies, if it regards me as dinner. I'm confident that Mother
\par Nature understands my attitude and is not offended.
\par 
\par The front door, its peeling paint somewhat phosphorescent in the
\par moonlight, was ajar. The corroded hinges didn't creak but rasped like
\par the dry knuckle bones of a skeleton making a fist.
\par 
\par I stepped inside.
\par 
\par Because I had come in here for the express reason that I felt safer
\par under a roof than in the open, I considered closing the door.
\par 
\par Maybe the birds would suddenly shake off their eerie stupor and come
\par shrieking after me.
\par 
\par On the other hand, an open door is an avenue of escape. I left it open.
\par 
\par Although I was wrapped by silky blackness as effective as a blindfold, I
\par knew I was in the living room, because the hundreds of bungalows that do
\par have porches also share exactly the same floor plan, with nothing as
\par grand as a foyer or front hall. Living room, dining room, kitchen, and
\par two bedrooms.
\par 
\par Even when well maintained, these humble homes had offered the minimum
\par comforts to the mostly young military families who occupied them, each
\par family residing here for only a couple of years between transfers.
\par 
\par Now they smell of dust, mildew, dry rot, and mice.
\par 
\par The floors are tongue-and-groove wood covered with many coats of paint,
\par except for linoleum in the compact kitchen. Even under a self proclaimed
\par master of stealth like yours truly, they squeak.
\par 
\par The loose boards didn't concern me. They ensured that no one could enter
\par from the back of the bungalow and easily sneak up on me.
\par 
\par My eyes adapted to the gloom enough to allow me to see the front
\par windows. Although these panes were set under the porch roof, they were
\par visible even in the indirect moonlight, ash-gray rectangles in the
\par otherwise pervasive blackness.
\par 
\par I went to the nearest of the two windows, neither of which was broken.
\par 
\par The glass was dirty, and with a Kleenex I polished a cleaner circle in
\par the center of it.
\par 
\par The front yards of these properties are not deep, between the Indian
\par laurels, I had a view of the nearby street. I didn't expect to see a
\par parade go past, but since I find majorettes in short skirts to be as
\par much of a turn-on as anybody does, I thought it wise to be prepared.
\par 
\par I switched on my cell phone again and keyed in the number for the
\par unlisted back line that went directly to the broadcasting booth at KBAY,
\par the biggest radio station in Santa Rosita County, where Sasha Good all
\par was currently the disc jockey on the midnight-to-six air shift.
\par 
\par She was also the general manager, but since the station had lost the
\par military audience and thus a portion of its ad revenue with the closing of
\par Fort Wyvern, she was not the only one of the surviving employees to have
\par assumed double duty.
\par 
\par The back line doesn't ring in the booth but activates a flashing blue
\par light on the wall opposite Sasha's microphone. Evidently, she wasn't
\par doing on-air patter at the moment, because instead of leaving the call
\par to the engineer, she herself picked it up, "Hey, Snowman." I don't have
\par sole possession of the back-line number, and like many privacy-minded
\par people, I directed the phone company to prevent my number from
\par registering on caller ID, yet even when the call doesn't come through
\par her engineer, Sasha always knows if it's me.
\par 
\par "Are you spinning a tune? " I asked.
\par 
\par " A Mess of Blues."
\par 
\par "Elvis."
\par 
\par "Less than a minute to go."
\par 
\par "I know how you do that, " I said.
\par 
\par "Do what? "
\par 
\par "Say, Hey, Snowman, before I speak a word."
\par 
\par "So how do I do it? "
\par 
\par "Probably half the calls you ever answer directly on the back line are
\par from me, so you always answer Hey, Snowman."
\par 
\par "Wrong."
\par 
\par "Right, " I insisted.
\par 
\par "I never lie." That was true.
\par 
\par "Stay with me, baby, " she said, putting me on hold.
\par 
\par While I waited for her to come back, I could hear her program over the
\par phone line. She did a live public-service spot followed by a doughnut
\par spot recorded material at the front and back, with a live plug in the
\par center for a local car dealership.
\par 
\par Her voice is husky yet silky, soft and smooth and inviting. She could
\par sell me a time-share condominium in Hell, as long as it came with
\par air-conditioning.
\par 
\par I tried not to be entirely distracted by that voice as I listened with
\par one ear for a creaking floorboard. Outside, the street remained
\par deserted.
\par 
\par To give herself a full five minutes with me, she set up back-to-back
\par tracks. Sinatra's "It Was a Very Good Year, " followed by Patsy Cline's
\par "I Fall to Pieces." When she returned to me, I said, "Never heard such
\par an eclectic program format before. Sinatra, Elvis, and Patsy? "
\par 
\par "It's a theme show tonight, " she said.
\par 
\par "Theme? "
\par 
\par "Haven't you been listening? "
\par 
\par "Busy. What theme? "
\par 
\par " Night of the Living Dead, " she said.
\par 
\par "Stylin'."
\par 
\par "Thanks. What's happening? "
\par 
\par "Who's your engineer this shift? "
\par 
\par "Doogie." Doogie Sassman is a panoramically tattooed Harley-Davidson
\par fanatic who weighs more than three hundred pounds, twenty-five of which
\par are accounted for by his untamed blond hair and lush silky beard. In
\par spite of having a neck as wide as a pier caisson and a belly on which an
\par entire family of sea gulls could gather to groom themselves, Doogie is a
\par babe magnet who has dated some of the most beautiful women ever to walk
\par the beaches between San Francisco and San Diego. Although he's a good
\par guy, with enough bearish charm to star in a Disney cartoon, Doogie's
\par solid success with stunningly gorgeous wahineswho are not normally won
\par over by personality alone is, Bobby says, one of the greatest mysteries
\par of all time, right up there with what wiped out the dinosaurs and why
\par tornadoes always zero in on trailer parks.
\par 
\par I said, "Can you go canned for a couple of hours and let Doogie run the
\par show from his control panel? "
\par 
\par "You want a quickie? "
\par 
\par "With you, I want a forever."
\par 
\par "Mr. Romance, " she said sarcastically but with secret delight.
\par 
\par "We've got a friend needs hand-holding big time." Sasha's tone grew
\par somber. "What now? " I couldn't lay out the situation in plain words,
\par because of the possibility that the call was being monitored. In
\par Moonlight Bay we live in a police state so artfully imposed that it is
\par virtually invisible. If they were listening, I didn't want to tip them
\par to the fact that Sasha would be going to Lilly Wing's house, because
\par they might decide to stop her before she got there. Lilly desperately
\par needed support. If Sasha dropped in by surprise, maybe by the back door,
\par the cops would discover that she could stick like a five-barbed
\par fishhook.
\par 
\par "Do you know  ..." I thought I saw movement in the street, but when I
\par squinted through the bungalow window, I decided I'd seen only a moon
\par shadow, perhaps caused by the tail of a cloud brushing across one cheek
\par of the lunar face. "Do you know thirteen ways? "
\par 
\par "Thirteen ways? "
\par 
\par "The blackbird thing, " I said, wiping at the glass again with the
\par Kleenex. My breath had left a faint condensation.
\par 
\par "Blackbird. Sure." We were talking about Wallace Stevens's poem
\par "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." My father worried about how
\par I, limited by XP, would make it in the world without family, so he
\par bequeathe to me a house without a mortgage and the proceeds of a huge
\par life insurance policy. But he had given me another comforting legacy,
\par too, a love of modern poetry. Because Sasha had acquired this passion
\par from me, we could confound eavesdroppers as Bobby and I had done by
\par using surfer lingo.
\par 
\par "There's a word you expect him to use, " I said, referring to Stevens,
\par "but it never appears."
\par 
\par "Ah, " she said, and I knew she was following me.
\par 
\par A lesser poet writing thirteen stanzas relating to a blackbird would
\par surely use the word wing, but Stevens never resorts to it.
\par 
\par "You realize who I mean? " I asked.
\par 
\par "Yes." She knew that Lilly Wing once Lilly Travis had been the first woman
\par I had loved and the first to break my heart.
\par 
\par Sasha is the second woman I have loved in the most profound sense of the
\par word, and she swears that she will never break my heart. I believe her.
\par 
\par She never lies.
\par 
\par Sasha has also assured me that if I ever cheat on her, she'll use her
\par Black & Decker power drill to put a half-inch bit through my heart.
\par 
\par I have seen the drill. The bitsan extensive set that go with it are kept
\par in a plastic case. On the steel shank of the half-inch auger bit, using
\par red nail polish, she has painted my name, Chris. I'm pretty sure this is
\par a joke.
\par 
\par She doesn't have to worry. If I ever broke her heart, I would drill my
\par own chest and save her the trouble of having to wash her hands
\par afterward.
\par 
\par Call me Mr. Romance.
\par 
\par "What's the hand-holding about? " Sasha asked.
\par 
\par "You'll find out when you get there."
\par 
\par "Any message? " she asked.
\par 
\par "Hope. That's the message. There's still hope." I wasn't as confident as
\par I sounded. There might be no truth in the message I'd just sent to
\par Lilly. I'm not proud of the fact that, unlike Sasha, I sometimes lie.
\par 
\par "Where are you? " Sasha asked.
\par 
\par "Dead Town."
\par 
\par "Damn."
\par 
\par "Well, you asked."
\par 
\par "Always in trouble."
\par 
\par "My motto." I didn't dare tell her about Orson, not even indirectly,
\par using poetry code. My voice might crack, revealing the intensity of my
\par anguish, which I was striving mightily to contain. If she thought he was
\par in serious jeopardy, she would insist on coming to Wyvern to search for
\par him.
\par 
\par She would have been a big help. I'd recently been surprised to discover
\par Sasha possessed self-defense skills and weapons expertise that weren't
\par taught in any disc jockey school. Though she didn't look like an Amazon,
\par she could do battle like one. She was, however, an even better friend
\par than fighter, and Lilly Wing needed Sasha's sympathy and compassion more
\par than I needed backup.
\par 
\par "Chris, you know what your problem is? "
\par 
\par "Too good-looking? "
\par 
\par "Yeah, right, " she said sarcastically.
\par 
\par "Too smart? "
\par 
\par "Your problem is reckless caring."
\par 
\par "Then I better ask my doctor for some who-gives-a-damn pills."
\par 
\par "I love you for it, Snowman, but it's going to get you killed."
\par 
\par "This is for a friend, " I reminded her, meaning Lilly Wing.
\par 
\par "Anyway, I'll be all right. Bobby's coming."
\par 
\par "Ah. Then I'll start working on your eulogy."
\par 
\par "I'll tell him you said that."
\par 
\par "The Two Stooges."
\par 
\par "Let me guess we're Curly and Larry."
\par 
\par "Right. Neither of you is smart enough to be Moe."
\par 
\par "Love you, Good all."
\par 
\par "Love you, Snowman." I switched off the phone and was about to turn away
\par from the window, when I saw movement in the street again. This time it
\par wasn't merely the shadow of a cloud gliding across a corner of the moon.
\par 
\par This time I saw monkeys.
\par 
\par I clipped the phone to my belt, freeing both hands.
\par 
\par The monkeys were not in a barrel and not in a pack. The correct word for
\par monkeys traveling in a group is not pack or herd, not pride or flock but
\par troop.
\par 
\par Recently, I have learned a great deal about monkeys, not only the term
\par troop. For the same reason, if I were living in the Florida Everglades,
\par I would become an expert on alligators.
\par 
\par Here, now, deep in Dead Town, a troop of monkeys passed the bungalow,
\par moving in the direction I'd been headed. In the moonlight, their coats
\par looked silvery rather than brown.
\par 
\par In spite of this luster, which made them more visible than they would
\par have been otherwise, I had difficulty taking an accurate count.
\par 
\par Five, six, eight ... Some traveled on all fours, some were half erect, a
\par few stood up almost as straight as a human. Ten, eleven, twelve  ...
\par They were not moving fast, and they repeatedly raised their heads,
\par scanning the night ahead and on both sides, sometimes peering
\par suspiciously back the way they had come. Although their pace and alert
\par demeanor might signify caution or even fear, I suspected that they were
\par not afraid of anything and that instead they were searching for
\par something, hunting something.
\par 
\par Maybe me.
\par 
\par Fifteen, sixteen.
\par 
\par In a circus ring, costumed in sequined vests and red fezzes, a troop of
\par monkeys might inspire smiles, laughter, delight. These specimens didn't
\par dance, caper, tumble, twirl, jig, or play miniature accordions.
\par 
\par Not one seemed interested in a career in entertainment.
\par 
\par Eighteen.
\par 
\par They were rhesus monkeys, the species most often used in medical
\par research, and all were at the upper end of the size range for their
\par kind, more than two feet tall, twenty-five or even thirty pounds of bone
\par and muscle. I knew from hard experience that these particular rhesuses
\par were quick, agile, strong, uncannily smart, and dangerous.
\par 
\par Twenty.
\par 
\par Throughout much of the world, monkeys live everywhere in the wild, from
\par jungles to open grasslands to mountains. They are not found on the North
\par American continent except for these that skulk through the night in
\par Moonlight Bay, unknown to all but a handful of the populace.
\par 
\par I now understood why, earlier, the birds had fallen silent in the tree
\par above me. They had sensed the approach of this unnatural parade.
\par 
\par Twenty-one. Twenty-two.
\par 
\par The troop was becoming a battalion.
\par 
\par Did I mention teeth? Monkeys are omnivorous, never having been persuaded
\par by the arguments of vegetarians. Primarily they eat fruit, nuts, seeds,
\par leaves, flowers, and birds' eggs, but when they feel the need for meat,
\par they munch on such savory fare as insects, spiders, and small mammals
\par like mice, rats, and moles. Absolutely never accept a dinner invitation
\par from a monkey unless you know precisely what's on the menu. Anyway,
\par because they are omnivorous, they have strong incisors and pointy
\par eyeteeth, the better to rip and tear.
\par 
\par Ordinary monkeys don't attack human beings. Likewise, ordinary monkeys
\par are active in daylight and rest during the night except for the softly
\par furred douroucouli, an owl-eyed South American species that is
\par nocturnal.
\par 
\par Those who roam the darkness in Fort Wyvern and Moonlight Bay aren't
\par ordinary. They're hateful, vicious, psychotic little geeks. If given the
\par choice of a plump tasty mouse sauteed in butter sauce or the chance to
\par tear your face off for the sheer fun of it, they wouldn't even lick
\par their lips with regret at passing up the snack.
\par 
\par I had tallied twenty-two individuals when the passing tide of monkey fur
\par in the street abruptly turned, whereupon I lost count. The troop doubled
\par back on itself and halted, its members huddling and milling together in
\par such a conspiratorial manner that you could easily believe . one of them
\par had been the mysterious figure on the grassy knoll in Dallas the day
\par Kennedy was shot.
\par 
\par Although they showed no more interest in this bungalow than in any
\par other, they were directly in front of it and close enough to give me a
\par major case of the heebiejeebies. Smoothing the bristling hair on the
\par nape of my neck with one hand, I considered creeping out the back of the
\par house before they came knocking on the front door with their damn
\par monkey-magazine subscription cards.
\par 
\par If I slipped away, however, I wouldn't know in which direction they had
\par gone after breaking out of their huddle. I'd be as likely to blunder
\par into them as to avoid them with mortal consequences.
\par 
\par I had counted twenty-two, and I had missed some, There might have been
\par as many as thirty. My 9-millimeter Glock held ten rounds, two of which
\par I'd already expended, and a spare magazine was nestled in a pouch on my
\par holster. Even if I were suddenly possessed by the sharpshooting spirit
\par of Annie Oakley and miraculously made every shot count, I would still be
\par overwhelmed by twelve of the beasts.
\par 
\par Hand-to-hand combat with three hundred pounds of screaming monkey menace
\par is not my idea of a fair fight. My idea of a fair fight is one unarmed,
\par toothless, nearsighted old monkey versus me with a Blackhawk attack
\par helicopter.
\par 
\par In the street, the primates were still loitering. They were clustered so
\par tightly that they almost appeared, in the moonlight, to be one large
\par organism with multiple heads and tails.
\par 
\par I couldn't figure out what they were doing. Probably because I'm not a
\par monkey.
\par 
\par I leaned closer to the window, squinting at the moon-washed scene,
\par trying to see more clearly and to put myself in a monkey frame of mind.
\par 
\par Among the hey-let's-play-God crowd that worked in the deepest bunkers of
\par Wyvern, the most exciting and most generously funded research had included
\par a project intended to enhance both human and animal intelligence, as
\par well as human agility, speed, sight, hearing, sense of smell, and
\par longevity. This was to be accomplished by transferring selected genetic
\par material not just from one person to another but from species to
\par species.
\par 
\par Although my mother was brilliant, a genius, she was not trust me on this a
\par mad scientist. As a theoretical geneticist, she didn't spend much time
\par in laboratories. Her workplace was inside her skull, and her mind was as
\par elaborately equipped as the combined research facilities of all the
\par universities in the country. She kept to her office at Ashdon College,
\par only occasionally venturing into a lab, supported by government grants,
\par doing the heavy thinking while other scientists did the heavy lifting.
\par 
\par She set out not to destroy humanity but to save it, and I am convinced
\par that for a long time she didn't know the reckless and malevolent
\par purposes to which those at Wyvern were applying her theories.
\par 
\par Transferring genetic material from one species into another. In the hope
\par of creating a super race. In an insane quest for the perfect,
\par unstoppable soldier. Smart beasts of myriad design bred for future
\par battlefields. Weird biological weapons as tiny as a virus or as large as
\par a grizzly bear.
\par 
\par Dear God.
\par 
\par Personally, all this makes me nostalgic for the good old days when the
\par most ambitious big-brain types were content with dreaming up
\par city-busting nuclear bombs, satellite-mounted particle-beam death rays,
\par and nerve gas that causes its victims to turn inside out the way
\par caterpillars do when cruel little boys sprinkle salt on them.
\par 
\par For these experiments, animals were easily obtained, because they
\par generally can't afford to hire first-rate attorneys to prevent
\par themselves from being exploited, but, surprisingly, human subjects were
\par readily available, as well. Soldiers courts-martialed for particularly
\par savage murders and condemned to life sentences were offered the choice
\par of rotting in maximum-security military prisons or earning a measure of
\par freedom by participating in this secret enterprise.
\par 
\par Then something went wrong.
\par 
\par Big time.
\par 
\par In all human endeavors, something inevitably goes woefully wrong.
\par 
\par Some say this is because the universe is inherently chaotic. Others say
\par this is because we are a species that has fallen from the grace of God.
\par 
\par Whatever the reason, among humankind, for every Moe there are thousands
\par of Curlys and Larrys.
\par 
\par The delivery system used to ferry new genetic material into the cells of
\par research subjects to insert it in their DNA chains was a retrovirus
\par brilliantly conceived by my mom, Wisteria Jane Snow, who somehow still
\par had time to make terrific chocolate-chip cookies. This engineered
\par retrovirus was designed to be fragile, crippled that is, sterileand
\par benign, merely a living tool that would do exactly what was wanted of
\par it.
\par 
\par Once having done its job, it was supposed to die. But it soon mutated
\par into a hardy, rapidly reproducing, infectious bug that could be passed
\par in bodily fluids through simple skin contact, causing genetic change
\par instead of disease. These microorganisms captured random sequences of
\par DNA from numerous species in the lab, transporting them into the bodies
\par of the project scientists, who for a while remained unaware that they
\par were being slowly but profoundly altered. Physically, mentally,
\par emotionally altered. Before they understood what was happening to them
\par and why, some Wyvern scientists began to change ... to have a lot in
\par common with the research animals in their cages.
\par 
\par A couple years ago, this process suddenly became obvious when a violent
\par episode occurred in the labs. No one has explained to me exactly what
\par happened. People killed one another in a bizarre, savage confrontation.
\par 
\par The experimental animals either escaped or were purposefully released by
\par people who felt a strange kinship with them.
\par 
\par Among those animals were rhesus monkeys whose intelligence had been
\par substantially enhanced. Although I'd thought intelligence was related to
\par brain size and to the number of folds in the surface of the brain, these
\par rhesuses didn't have enlarged craniums, except for a few telltale
\par characteristics, they resembled ordinary members of their species.
\par 
\par The monkeys have been on the run ever since. They are hiding from the
\par federal and military authorities who are quietly trying to eradicate
\par them and all other evidence of what happened at Wyvern before the public
\par learns that its elected officials have ensured the end of the world as
\par we know it. Other than those involved in the conspiracy, only a handful
\par of us know anything about these events, and if we attempt to go public,
\par even though we possess no hard proof, they will kill us as righteously
\par as they would waste the rhesuses.
\par 
\par They killed my mom. They claim that she was despondent over the way in
\par which her work was misused, that she committed suicide by driving her
\par car at high speed into a bridge abutment just south of town. But my
\par mother was not a quitter. And she would never have abandoned me to face
\par alone the nightmare world that may be coming. I believe she intended to
\par go public, spill the truth to the media, in hope of building a consensus
\par for a crash research program, bigger than what's buried under Wyvern,
\par bigger than the Manhattan Project, commandeering the best genetic
\par scientists in the world. So they pushed her through the big door and
\par slammed it behind her. This is what I believe. I have no proof.
\par 
\par She was my mom, however, and about some of these issues, I'll believe
\par what I want, what I must.
\par 
\par Meanwhile, the contagion is spreading faster than the monkeys, and it's
\par unlikely that the damage can be undone or even contained. Infected
\par Wyvern personnel relocated all over the country, carrying the retrovirus
\par with them, before anyone knew there was a problem, before a quarantine
\par could have been effectively imposed. Genetic mutation will probably
\par occur in all species. Perhaps the only thing in doubt is whether this
\par will be a slow process that requires decades or centuries to unfoldor
\par whether the terror will rapidly escalate. Thus far, the effects have
\par been, with rare exception, subtle and not widespread, but this may be
\par the calm before the holocaust. Those responsible are, I believe,
\par frantically seeking a remedy but they are also expending a lot of energy
\par in an effort to conceal the source of the oncoming catastrophe, so no
\par one will know who's to blame.
\par 
\par No one at the top of the government wants to face the public's wrath.
\par 
\par They're not afraid of being booted out of office. Far worse than job
\par loss might await them if the truth gets out. They might be tried for
\par crimes against humanity. They probably justify the ongoing cover-up as
\par necessary to avoid panic in the streets, civil disorder, and perhaps
\par even an international quarantine of the entire North American continent,
\par but what really concerns them is the possibility that they will be torn
\par to pieces by angry mobs.
\par 
\par Perhaps a few of the creatures now milling in the street outside the
\par bungalow were among the twelve who had escaped from the labs on that
\par historic and macabre night of violence. Most were descendants of the
\par escapees, bred in freedom but as intelligent as their parents.
\par 
\par Ordinary monkeys are chatterboxes, but I heard no sound from these
\par thirty. They roiled together with what seemed to be increasing
\par agitation, arms flailing, tails lashing, but if they raised their
\par voices, the gabble wasn't audible either through the window glass or
\par through the open front door, only a few feet away.
\par 
\par They were plotting something worse than monkeyshines.
\par 
\par Although the rhesuses are not as smart as human beings, the advantage we
\par have isn't great enough to make me feel comfortable about playing a
\par high-stakes game of poker with any three of them. Unless I could first
\par get them drunk.
\par 
\par These precocious primates aren't the primary threat born in the
\par laboratories at Wyvern. That honor must go, of course, to the
\par gene-swapping retrovirus that might remake every living thing. But as
\par villains go, the monkeys constitute a damn fine backup team.
\par 
\par To fully appreciate the long-term threat of these redesigned rhesuses,
\par consider that rats are dreadful pests even though they are a tiny
\par fraction as intelligent as we are. Scientists estimate that rodents
\par destroy twenty percent of the food supply worldwide, in spite of the
\par fact that we are relatively effective at exterminating colonies of them
\par and keeping their numbers manageable. Imagine what might happen if rats
\par were even half as smart as we are, and were able to compete on fairer
\par footing than they now enjoy. We'd be engaged in a desperate war with
\par them to prevent massive starvation.
\par 
\par Watching the monkeys in the street, I wondered if I was seeing our
\par adversaries in some future Armageddon.
\par 
\par Aside from their high level of intelligence, they have another quality
\par that makes them more formidable enemies than any rodents could be.
\par 
\par Though rats operate entirely on instinct and have insufficient brain
\par power to take anything personally, these monkeys hate us with a black,
\par bitter passion.
\par 
\par I believe they are hostile toward humanity because we created them but
\par did a half-assed job. We robbed them of their simple animal innocence,
\par in which they were content. We raised their intelligence until they
\par became aware of the wider world and of their true place in it, but we
\par didn't give them enough intelligence to make it possible for them to
\par improve their lot. We made them just smart enough to be dissatisfied
\par with the life of a monkey, we gave them the capacity to dream but didn't
\par give them the means to fulfill their dreams. They have been evicted from
\par their niche in the animal kingdom and cannot find a new place to fit in.
\par 
\par Cut loose from the fabric of creation, they are unraveling, wandering,
\par lost, full of a yearning that can never be mended.
\par 
\par I don't blame them for hating us. If I were one of them, I'd hate us,
\par too.
\par 
\par My sympathy wouldn't save me, however, if I walked out of the bungalow
\par and into the street, tenderly grasped a monkey paw in each of my hands,
\par declared my outrage at the arrogance of the human species, and sang a
\par rousing rendition of "Yes, We Have No Bananas." In minutes, I would be
\par reduced to kibble.
\par 
\par My mother's work led to the creation of this troop, which they appear to
\par understand, They have stalked me in the past. She is dead, so they can't
\par take vengeance on her for the anguished, outcast lives they lead.
\par 
\par Because I'm her only child, the monkeys nurture a special animosity
\par toward me. Perhaps they should. Perhaps their hatred of every Snow is
\par justified. Of all people, I have no right to debate the merit of their
\par grievance, though this doesn't mean I feel obliged to pay a price for
\par what, with the best of motivations, my mother did.
\par 
\par Remaining safely unkibbled at the bungalow window, I heard what seemed
\par to be the single reverberant toll of a large bell, followed by a
\par clatter. I watched as the churning troop parted around an object I
\par couldn't see. A scraping of iron on stone followed, and several
\par individuals conspired to raise the weighty thing onto its side.
\par 
\par Busy monkeys prevented me from immediately getting a clear view of the
\par item, although it appeared to be round. They began to roll it in a
\par circle, from curb to curb and back again, some watching while others
\par scampered beside the object, keeping it balanced on edge. In the
\par burnishing moonlight, it initially resembled a coin so enormous that it
\par must have fallen out of the giant's pocket from the top of Jack's
\par beanstalk. Then I realized it was a manhole cover they had pried from
\par the pavement.
\par 
\par Suddenly they were chattering and shrieking as though they were a group
\par exuberant children who had made a toy out of an old tire. In my
\par experience such playfulness was completely out of character for them.
\par 
\par Of my previous encounters with the troop, only one had been
\par face-to-face, and throughout that confrontation, they had acted less
\par like children than like a pack of homicidal skinheads wired on
\par PCP-and-cocaine cocktails.
\par 
\par They quickly tired of rolling the manhole cover. Then three individuals
\par worked together to spin it, as if in fact it were a coin, and with
\par considerable coordinated effort they eventually set it in a blur of
\par motion.
\par 
\par The troop fell silent again. They gathered in a wide circle around the
\par whirling disc, giving it space to move but watching it with great
\par interest.
\par 
\par Periodically, the three who had spun the cover darted to it, one by one,
\par judiciously applying enough force to keep it balanced and in steady
\par motion. Their timing revealed at least a rudimentary understanding of
\par the laws of physics and a mechanical skill that belied their ordinary
\par appearance.
\par 
\par The tightly rotating disc sang roughly, its iron edge grinding against
\par the concrete pavement. This low metallic song had become the sole sound
\par in the night, nearly a one-note drone, oscillating only faintly over a
\par half-tone range.
\par 
\par The spinning manhole cover didn't seem to provide sufficient spectacle
\par to explain the intensity of the troop's attention. They were rapt.
\par 
\par Almost in a trance. I found it difficult to believe that the disc,
\par merely by chance, could have achieved the precise rotational velocity
\par that, combined with exactly these oscillating tones, was hypnotic to
\par monkeys.
\par 
\par Perhaps this wasn't a game that I was witnessing, not play but ritual, a
\par ceremony with a symbolic significance that was clear to these rhesuses
\par but was an impenetrable mystery to me. Ritual and symbol not only
\par implied abstract thinking but raised the possibility that these monkeys'
\par lives had a spiritual dimension, that they were not just smart but
\par capable of brooding about the origin of all things and the purpose of
\par their existence.
\par 
\par This idea disconcerted me so much that I almost turned away from the
\par window.
\par 
\par In spite of their hostility toward humanity and their enthusiasm for
\par violence, I already had sympathy for these pathetic creatures, was moved
\par by their status as outcasts with no rightful place in nature. If they
\par indeed possess the capacity to wonder about God and about the design of
\par the cosmos, then they may know the exquisite pain that humanity .
\par 
\par knows too well, the yearning to understand why our Creator allows us to
\par suffer so much, the terrible unfulfilled longing to find Him, to see His
\par face, to touch Him, and to know that He is real. If they share this
\par quiet but profound agony with us, then I sympathize with their plight,
\par but I also pity them.
\par 
\par And while pitying them, how can I kill them without hesitation if
\par another confrontation requires me to do so in order to save my life or
\par that of a friend? In one previous encounter, I've had to meet their
\par ferocious assault with gunfire. Lethal force is easy to use when your
\par adversary is as mindless as a shark. And you can pull the trigger
\par without remorse when you are able to match your enemy's hatred with pure
\par hatred of your own. Pity engenders second thoughts, hesitation.
\par 
\par Pity may be the key to the door of Heaven, if Heaven exists, but it is
\par not an advantage when you are fighting for your life against a pitiless
\par opponent.
\par 
\par From the street came a change in the sound of the spinning iron, a
\par greater oscillation between tones. The manhole cover had begun to lose
\par rotational velocity.
\par 
\par None in the troop rushed forward to stabilize the whirligig. They
\par watched with curious fascination as it wobbled, as its song changed to a
\par steadily slowing wah-waah-waaah-waaaah.
\par 
\par The disc clattered to a halt, flat on the pavement, and at the same
\par instant the monkeys froze. A final note rang across the night, followed
\par by silence and stillness so absolute that Dead Town might have been
\par sealed inside a gigantic Lucite paperweight. As far as I could tell,
\par every member of the troop gazed with magnetized eyes at the iron manhole
\par cover.
\par 
\par After a while, as though waking from a deep sleep, they drifted dreamily
\par toward the disc. They slowly circled it, hunched low with the knuckles
\par of their forepaws grazing the pavement, examining the iron with the
\par pensive attitude of Gypsies analyzing wet tea leaves to read the future.
\par 
\par A few hung back, either because something about the disc made them
\par uneasy or because they were waiting their turn. These hesitant
\par individuals conspicuously directed their attention toward anything but
\par the manhole cover, on the pavement, on the trees that lined the street,
\par on the star-stippled sky.
\par 
\par One of the beasts glanced at the bungalow in which I had taken refuge.
\par 
\par I didn't hold my breath or tense up, because I was confident that
\par nothing about this structure lent it a character different from the
\par shabby and desolate appearance of hundreds of others throughout the
\par neighborhood. Even the open front door was not remarkable, most of these
\par buildings were exposed to the elements.
\par 
\par After dwelling on the house for only a few seconds, the monkey raised
\par its face toward the gibbous moon. Either its posture conveyed a deep
\par melancholyor I was overcome by sentimentality, attributing more human
\par qualities to these rhesuses than made sense.
\par 
\par Then, although I hadn't moved or made a sound, the wiry beast twitched
\par sprang erect, lost interest in the sky, and looked again at the
\par bungalow.
\par 
\par "Don't monkey with me, " I murmured.
\par 
\par In a slow rolling gait, it moved out of the street, over the curb, and
\par onto a sidewalk dappled with the moon shadows of laurel branches, where
\par it halted.
\par 
\par I resisted the urge to back away from the window. The darkness around me
\par was as perfect as that in Dracula's coffin with the lid closed, and I
\par felt invisible. The overhanging porch roof prevented moonlight from
\par directly touching my face.
\par 
\par The miserable little geek appeared to be studying not just the window at
\par which I stood but every aspect of the small house, as though it intended
\par to locate a Realtor and make an offer for the property.
\par 
\par I am excruciatingly aware of the interplay of light and shadow, which,
\par for me, is more sensuous than any woman's body. I am not forbidden to
\par know the comfort of a woman, but I am denied all but the most meager
\par light. Therefore, every form of illumination is imbued with a shimmering
\par erotic quality, and I'm acutely aware of the caress of every beam.
\par 
\par Here in the bungalow, I was confident that I was untouched, beyond
\par anyone's ken, as much a part of the blackness as the wing is part of the
\par bat.
\par 
\par The monkey advanced a few steps, onto the walkway that bisected the
\par front yard and led to the porch steps. It was no more than twenty feet
\par from me.
\par 
\par As it turned its head, I caught a glimpse of its gleaming eyes.
\par 
\par Usually muddy yellow and as baleful as the eyes of a tax collector, they
\par were now fiery orange and even more menacing in this poor light.
\par 
\par They were filled with that luminosity exhibited by the eyes of most
\par nocturnal animals.
\par 
\par I could barely see the creature in the laurel shadows, but the restless
\par movement of its jack-o'-lantern eyes indicated that it was curious about
\par something and that it still hadn't fixated specifically on my window.
\par 
\par Maybe it had heard the peep or rustle of a mouse in the grass or one of
\par the tarantulas native to this regionand was hoping only to snare a tasty
\par treat.
\par 
\par In the street, the other members of the troop were still engaged by the
\par manhole cover.
\par 
\par Ordinary rhesuses, which live primarily by day, do not exhibit eye shine
\par in darkness. Members of the Wyvern troop have better night vision than
\par other monkeys, but in my experience they aren't remotely as gifted as
\par owls or cats. Their visual acuity is only fractionally not geometrically
\par better than that of the common primates from which they were engineered.
\par 
\par In an utterly lightless place, they are nearly as helpless as I am.
\par 
\par The inquisitive monkeymy own Curious George scampered three steps closer,
\par out of the tree shadow and into moonlight again. When it halted, it was
\par less than fifteen feet away, within five feet of the porch.
\par 
\par The marginal improvement in their nocturnal sight is probably an
\par unexpected side effect of the intelligence-enhancement experiment that
\par spawned them, but as far as I have been able to discern, it isn't
\par matched by improvement in their other senses. Ordinary monkeys aren't
\par spoortracking animals with keen olfactory powers, like dogs, and neither
\par are these. They would be able to sniff me out from no greater distance
\par than I would be able to smell them, which meant from no farther than a
\par foot or two, even though they were unquestionably a fragrant bunch.
\par 
\par Likewise, these long-tailed terrorists don't benefit from paranormal
\par hearing, and they are not able to fly like their screeching brethren who
\par do dirty work for the Wicked Witch of the West. Although they are
\par fearsome, especially when encountered in significant numbers, they
\par aren't so formidable that only silver bullets or kryptonite will kill
\par them.
\par 
\par On the sidewalk, Curious George sat on his haunches, wrapped his long
\par arms around his torso as if comforting himself, and peered up at the
\par moon once more. He gazed heavenward so long that he seemed to have
\par forgotten the bungalow.
\par 
\par After a while, I consulted my wristwatch. I was worried that I would be
\par trapped here, unable to meet Bobby at the movie theater.
\par 
\par He was also in danger of blundering into the troop. Even a man as
\par resourceful as Bobby Halloway would not prevail if he had to face them
\par alone.
\par 
\par If the monkeys didn't move on soon, I'd have to risk a call to Bobby's
\par mobile number to warn him. I wasn't happy about the electronic tone that
\par would sound when I switched on my cell phone. In the hush of Dead Town,
\par that pure note would resonate like a monk breaking wind in a monastery
\par where everyone had taken a vow of silence.
\par 
\par Finally, Curious George finished contemplating the medallion moon,
\par lowered his face, and rose to his feet. He stretched his shaggy arms,
\par shook his head, and scampered back toward the street.
\par 
\par Just as I let out a sigh of relief, the little freak squealed, and his
\par shrill cry could have been interpreted only as a shriek of alarm.
\par 
\par As one, the troop responded, raising their heads, springing away from
\par the iron disc that had preoccupied them, craning their necks to see what
\par was happening.
\par 
\par Bleating, shrieking, scolding, gibbering, Curious George leaped into the
\par air, leaped and leaped, tumbled and flipped and twirled and capered,
\par beat upon the sidewalk with his fists, hissed and screeched, clawed at
\par the air as if it were cloth that could be rended, contorted himself
\par until he seemed to be looking up his own butt, rolled, sprang to his
\par feet, slapped his chest with his hands, hissed and spat and sputtered,
\par rocked and jigged, raced toward the bungalow, but exploded away from it
\par and scurried back toward the street, keening at a pitch that ought to
\par have cracked the concrete under him.
\par 
\par Regardless of how primitive their language might be, I was pretty sure I
\par got the message.
\par 
\par Even though most of the troop was forty feet from the bungalow, I could
\par see their beady shining eyes like a swarm of fat fireflies.
\par 
\par 
\par A few of them began to croon and hoot. Their voices were lower and
\par softer than Curious George's caterwauling, but they didn't sound like a
\par hospitality committee welcoming a visitor.
\par 
\par I drew the Glock from my shoulder holster.
\par 
\par Eight rounds remained in the gun.
\par 
\par I had the spare ten-round magazine in the holster.
\par 
\par Eighteen bullets. Thirty monkeys.
\par 
\par I had done the calculations before. I did them again. Poetry, after all,
\par is of more interest to me than math, so there was reason to double-check
\par my figures. They still sucked.
\par 
\par Curious George raced toward the house again. This time he kept coming.
\par 
\par Behind him, the entire troop erupted out of the street, across the lawn,
\par straight at the bungalow. Simultaneously, as they came, they all fell
\par into a silence that implied organization, discipline, and deadly
\par purpose.
\par 
\par I still didn't believe the troop could have seen me, heard me, or
\par smelled me, but they must have detected me somehow, because obviously
\par they were not merely expressing their distaste for the undistinguished
\par architecture of the bungalow. They were in a rage of a kind that I had
\par seen before, a fury they reserved for humanity.
\par 
\par Furthermore, by their schedule, dinnertime had probably arrived.
\par 
\par In lieu of a mouse or juicy spider, I was the meat dish, a refreshing
\par change from their usual fare of fruits, nuts, seeds, leaves, flowers,
\par and birds' eggs.
\par 
\par I turned a hundred eighty degrees from the window and headed across the
\par living room, hands out in front of me. I was moving fast, blindly
\par trusting in my familiarity with these houses. My shoulder clipped the
\par casing on a doorway, and I pushed through a half-open door into the
\par dining room.
\par 
\par Although the monkeys continued to restrain themselves, operating in
\par attack-status silence, I heard the hollow thumping of their paws on the
\par wooden floor of the porch. I hoped they would hesitate at the front
\par entrance, tempering their rancor with caution long enough for me to put
\par a little ground between us.
\par 
\par A tattered blind, though askew, covered most of the single window in the
\par small dining room. Too little light penetrated to bring meaningful
\par relief from the gloom.
\par 
\par I kept moving, because I knew that the door to the kitchen was directly
\par in line with the living-room door through which I had just entered.
\par 
\par This time, passing from room to room, I didn't even knock my shoulder
\par against the jamb.
\par 
\par No blinds or curtains covered the pair of windows over the sink in the
\par kitchen. Painted with a thin wash of moonlight, they had that ghostly
\par phosphorous glow of television screens just after you switch them off.
\par 
\par Under my feet, the aging linoleum popped and cracked. If any members of
\par the troop had entered the house behind me, I couldn't hear them above
\par the noise that I was making.
\par 
\par The air was thick with a foul miasma that made me want to retch.
\par 
\par A rat or some wild animal must have died in a corner of the kitchen or
\par in one of the cabinets, where it was now decomposing.
\par 
\par Holding my breath, I hurried to the back door, which featured a large
\par pane of glass in the upper half. It was locked.
\par 
\par When this was a military base, personal security had been assured, and
\par no one who lived inside the fence had reason to fear crime.
\par 
\par Consequently, the locks were simple, keyed only from the outside.
\par 
\par I felt for the doorknob, which would have a lock-release button in the
\par center. Found it. I would have turned it and torn open the door except
\par that the shadow of a leaping monkey flew up across the glass and fell
\par away just as my hand closed on the cold brass.
\par 
\par I quietly released the knob and retreated two steps, considering my
\par options. I could open the door and, pistol blazing, stride boldly
\par through the murderous monkey multitudes as though I were Indiana Jones
\par minus bullwhip and fedora, relying on sheer panache to survive.
\par 
\par The only alternative was to remain in the kitchen and wait to see what
\par happened next.
\par 
\par A monkey leaped onto the sill of one of the windows above the sink.
\par 
\par Gripping the casing to keep its balance, it pressed against the glass,
\par peering into the kitchen.
\par 
\par Because this mangy gremlin was silhouetted against moonlight, I could
\par see no details of its face. Just its hot-ember eyes. The faint white
\par crescent of its humorless grin.
\par 
\par Turning its head left and right and left again, it rolled its eyes,
\par squinted, then went wide-eyed once more. By following its questing gaze,
\par which roamed the kitchen, I deduced that it couldn't see me in the
\par darkness.
\par 
\par Options. Stay here and be trapped. Plunge into the night only to be
\par dragged down and savaged under the mad moon.
\par 
\par These weren't options, because either choice guaranteed an identical
\par Outcome. The worst kook surfer knows that whether you get sucked over
\par the falls on a fully macking shore break or just get pitched off the
\par board and do a face plant in some seaweed soup, the result is the same,
\par wipeout.
\par 
\par Another monkey leaped onto the sill at the second window.
\par 
\par Like most of us in this movie-besotted, Hollywood-corrupted world, if I
\par succumbed to the narcissist in me and listened to my mind's ear, I could
\par probably hear a film score underlying my every waking moment, gluey
\par sentimental string-section indulgences when I am stricken by sadness or
\par sorrow, tear-evoking, heart-stirring full-orchestra rhapsodies when I
\par enjoy a triumph, droll piano riffs during my not infrequent spells of
\par foolishness. Sasha insists that I look like the late James Dean, and
\par even though I don't see the resemblance, I am appalled and ashamed to
\par say that at times I take pleasure in this supposed resemblance to such a
\par celebrated figure, indeed, it would require little effort for me to
\par conduct periods of my life with the edgy score of Rebel Without a Cause
\par swelling in my mind. At the door a moment earlier, when the monkey
\par shadow swooped up the window, Hear the violins shriek from the shower
\par scene in Psycho. Now, as I considered my next move, with monkeys closing
\par in all around me, Imagine low, ominous, pulsing tones plucked from a
\par bass fiddle, threaded through by a single attenuated but muted high note
\par from a clarinet.
\par 
\par Although I am as capable of self-delusion as the next guy, I decided
\par against the most cinematic of my options, electing not to swashbuckle
\par into the night. After all, though charismatic, James Dean is no Harrison
\par Ford. In the majority of his handful of movies, sooner or later he got
\par the crap beaten out of him.
\par 
\par I quickly sidled across the floor, away from the windows, but also away
\par from the entrance to the dining room. Within a few feet, I bumped into
\par cabinetry.
\par 
\par These cabinets would match those in every house in Dead Town, plain but
\par sturdy, with birch frames, their shiplap doors painted so often that the
\par shallow grooves created by the overlapping joints had all but
\par disappeared under the many coats. The work counters would be laminated
\par with one color or another of speckled Formica.
\par 
\par Before any of the troop entered the kitchen from the front of the house,
\par I needed to get off the floor. If I stood with my back to a wall,
\par pressed into a corner, dead motionless, breathing as noiselessly as a
\par fish passing water through its gills, I was still certain to give myself
\par away. The linoleum was so curled and so undermined by tiny pockets of
\par air that it would crackle and pop from any unintentional shift of
\par weight, from no more than a heavy thought. The betraying sound was sure
\par to come precisely when the monkeys were stone still and ready to hear
\par it.
\par 
\par In spite of darkness so thick that it seemed viscous, and in spite of a
\par stench of decomposition strong enough to mask any scent of me that they
\par might otherwise detect, I didn't think I'd have much chance of escaping
\par the troop's notice during a search of the kitchen, even if they
\par conducted it strictly by touch. Nevertheless, I had to give it a try.
\par 
\par If I climbed onto the countertop, I would be restricted by the narrow
\par space between the Formica and the upper cabinets. I'd have to lie on my
\par left side, facing out toward the room. After drawing my knees toward my
\par chest, curling compactly into the fetal position, so as to occupy as
\par small a space as possible and to make myself more difficult to locate, I
\par wouldn't be in an ideal posture to fight back if I was found by one of
\par those walking condominiums for lice.
\par 
\par By body contact alone, I followed the cabinetry to the corner, where the
\par kitchen in every one of these bungalows features a broom closet with a
\par tall lower compartment and a single shelf at the top. If I was able to
\par squeeze into that narrow space and close the door after me, at least I
\par would be off the treacherous linoleum and beyond easy reach if the troop
\par probed-poked-groped-tapped its way around the room.
\par 
\par At the end of the cabinet row, I discovered the broom closet where I'd
\par expected it to be but the door was missing. With dismay, I felt one bent
\par and broken hinge, then the other, and patted air where the door should
\par have been, as though just the right series of magical gestures would
\par charm the door into existence again.
\par 
\par Unless the horde of monkeys that had followed Curious George onto the
\par front porch was still huddled there, devising strategy or discussing the
\par price of coconuts, I was nearly out of time.
\par 
\par My hidey-hole was suddenly more hole than hidey.
\par 
\par Unfortunately, no alternative presented itself.
\par 
\par I fished the spare magazine of ammunition from its pocket in my holster
\par and clutched it in my left hand.
\par 
\par Holding the Glock ready in front of me, I eased backward into the broom
\par closet and wondered if the reek of death that saturated the kitchen might
\par have its maggoty source in this cramped space. My stomach slithered like
\par a ball of copulating eels, but nothing squished under my shoes.
\par 
\par The closet was just wide enough to admit me. To fit, I had to scrunch my
\par shoulders only slightly. Although I am nearly six feet tall, I didn't
\par have to hunch down, however, the underside of the storage shelf pressed
\par hard enough against my Mystery Train cap to impress the shape of the
\par crown button through my hair and into my scalp.
\par 
\par To avoid second thoughts and an attack of claustrophobia, I decided not
\par to pass the time by listing the ways in which my hiding place was like a
\par coffin.
\par 
\par As it turned out, I didn't have any time to pass. No sooner had I
\par stashed myself in the broom closet than monkeys entered the kitchen from
\par the dining room.
\par 
\par I heard them just beyond the threshold, revealed only by a barely
\par audible conspiratorial hissing and muttering. They hesitated, apparently
\par scoping the situation, then entered at a rush, lantern eyes aglow as
\par they fanned out to both sides of the door, like SWAT-team cops in a TV
\par drama.
\par 
\par The crackling linoleum startled them. One squeaked in surprise, and they
\par all froze.
\par 
\par As far as I could determine, this first squad consisted of three
\par members. I couldn't see anything but their shining eyes, which were
\par revealed only during the moments when they were facing in my direction.
\par 
\par Because they were standing still, swiveling just their heads as they
\par surveyed the black room, I could be sure that I wasn't seeing the same
\par pair of eyes as a single individual progressed from place to place.
\par 
\par I was breathing shallowly through my mouth, not solely because this
\par method was comparatively quiet. Using my nose would result in a more
\par sickening exposure to the vile stink. Already, a sludge of nausea oozed
\par back and forth in my belly. Now I was beginning to be able to taste the
\par foul air, which left a musty-bitter flavor on my tongue and induced a
\par flux of sour saliva that threatened to make me gag.
\par 
\par After a pause to analyze the situation, the bravest of the three monkeys
\par moved and then went rigid when the linoleum protested noisily again.
\par 
\par One of its pals took a step with the same result, and it, too, halted
\par warily.
\par 
\par A nerve began to twitch in my left calf. I hoped to God it wouldn't
\par develop into a painful cramp.
\par 
\par Following a lengthy silence, the most timid member of the squad issued a
\par thin whine. It sounded fearful.
\par 
\par Call me insensitive, call me cruel, call me a mutant-monkey hater, but
\par under the circumstances, I was pleased by the anxiety in its voice.
\par 
\par Their apprehension was so palpable that if I said "Boo, " they would
\par leap, screaming, straight to the ceiling and hang there by their
\par fingernails. Monkey stalactites.
\par 
\par Of course, totally pissed by that little trick, they would eventually
\par come down again and, with the rest of the troop, tear my guts out.
\par 
\par Which would spoil the joke.
\par 
\par If they were as spooked as I believed they were, they might conduct only
\par a token search and retreat from the house, whereafter Curious George
\par would be the troop's equivalent of the boy who cried wolf.
\par 
\par The increased intelligence conferred on these rhesuses is as much a
\par curse as a blessing to them. With higher intelligence comes an awareness
\par of the complexity of the world, and from this awareness arises a sense
\par of mystery, wonder. Superstition is the dark side of wonder.
\par 
\par Creatures with simple animal intelligence fear only real things, such as
\par their natural predators. But those of us who have higher cognitive
\par abilities are able to torture ourselves with an infinite menagerie of
\par imaginary threats, ghosts and goblins and vampires and brain-eating
\par extraterrestrials. Worse, we find it difficult not to dwell on the most
\par terrifying two words in any language, even in monkey talk, what if ..
\par 
\par .
\par 
\par I was counting on these creatures' being, right now, nearly paralyzed by
\par a daunting list of what-ifs.
\par 
\par One of the squad snorted as though trying to clear the stench out of its
\par nostrils, then spat with distaste.
\par 
\par The wimpy one whined again.
\par 
\par It was answered by one of its brethren, not with another whine, but with
\par a fierce growl that dispelled my cozy notion that all the monkeys were
\par too spooked to linger here. The growler, at least, was not intimidated,
\par and it sounded tough enough to ensure the discipline of the other two.
\par 
\par The three proceeded deeper into the kitchen, past the broom closet, and
\par out of my line of sight. They seemed to be full of trepidation, but they
\par were no longer inhibited by the noisy flooring.
\par 
\par A second squad, also composed of three members and also revealed only by
\par their eye shine, entered the room. They paused to survey the unpierceable
\par darkness, and one by one they looked in my direction without any
\par indication that they detected me.
\par 
\par From elsewhere in the kitchen arose the continuous crackle of the
\par brittle linoleum. I heard a scrabbling and a thump, noises no doubt made
\par by one of the first three monkeys as it climbed onto a counter.
\par 
\par The button on my cap was pressed so firmly between the crown of my head
\par and the shelf above me that I felt as though God's thumb was thrust
\par against my scalp in a not so subtle announcement that my number was up,
\par my ticket punched, my dime dropped, my license to live revoked.
\par 
\par If I could have hunched down an inch or two, the pressure would have
\par been relieved, but I was afraid that even with the monkeys making a
\par racket, I would still be heard as my back and shoulders slid along the
\par walls of the narrow closet. Besides, the twitching nerve in my leg had
\par quickly evolved into a mild cramp, as I had feared that it would, even a
\par minor change in my position might contract the calf muscle and cause the
\par pain to flare into intolerable agony.
\par 
\par A member of the second squad began to move slowly toward me, its bright
\par eyes sliding nervously from side to side while it felt its way through
\par the cloying murk. As the clever little beast approached, I could hear it
\par rhythmically slapping its right hand against the wall to keep itself
\par oriented.
\par 
\par In another corner of the room, rusted hinges squeaked. One of the
\par shiplap doors banged shut, its loose joints rattling.
\par 
\par Evidently, they were opening the cabinets and fumbling blindly inside.
\par 
\par I had hoped that they would not be intelligent enough to conduct a
\par thorough search or, conversely, that they would be too intelligent to
\par endanger themselves by poking blindly into places where an armed man
\par might be waiting to blast them to monkey hell. They were smart enough to
\par be thorough, all right, but too reckless to be as cautious as the
\par situation required. From past encounters, I had already known all this
\par about them, but having jammed myself into the broom coffin, having
\par regretted doing so almost as soon as I was encased, I'd been in denial.
\par 
\par The wall slapper was still coming toward me, no more than three feet
\par away. Its eyes continued to blaze at the gloom on all sides of it, not
\par just at me.
\par 
\par More hinges squeaked. A warped cabinet door stuttered open with some
\par resistance, and another door banged shut.
\par 
\par The cramp in my calf abruptly became more severe. Hot. Sharp.
\par 
\par I clenched my teeth to keep from groaning. I had a headache, too, The
\par cap button felt as if it had been pressed all the way through my skull,
\par into my brain, and had begun working its way out through my right eye.
\par 
\par My neck ached. My scrunched shoulders didn't feel too good, either.
\par 
\par I had a nagging pain in the small of my back, a spot of tenderness in
\par the gum at an upper right molar, a queasy feeling that I was developing
\par serious hemorrhoids at the tender age of twenty-eight, and was in
\par general feeling pretty much, you know, blah.
\par 
\par The wall slapper stopped slapping the wall when it reached the corner
\par and discovered the cabinetry. It was directly in front of me now.
\par 
\par I was almost four feet taller than this monkey, and a hundred twenty
\par pounds heavier. Though it was unnervingly intelligent, I was a lot
\par smarter than it. Nevertheless, I gazed down at it with dread and
\par loathing, cringing inwardly, with no less repulsion and fear for my life
\par than I would have felt if this had been a demon risen straight from
\par Hell.
\par 
\par It is easy to make jokes about the troop when you are at a comfortable
\par distance from them. Yet a close encounter reduces you to primal fear,
\par fills you with a heart-chilling sense of the alien, and infuses the
\par waking world with that acutely real yet simultaneously surreal
\par atmosphere of your most horrific nightmares.
\par 
\par The sympathy I'd had for them earlier was still with me, markedly
\par diminished, but I couldn't feel the pity at all. Good.
\par 
\par Judging by where its bright eyes were focused and by the fumbling sounds
\par its hands made, the monkey was exploring the face frame to which the
\par broom-closet door should have been attached.
\par 
\par The Glock weighed less than three pounds, but it felt as heavy as a
\par granite gravestone. I tightened my finger on the trigger.
\par 
\par Eighteen rounds.
\par 
\par Seventeen, really.
\par 
\par I would have to count the shots as I squeezed them off and save the last
\par round for myself.
\par 
\par Above the other sounds in the kitchen, I heard the monkey pluck at one
\par of the loose and broken hinges from which the broom-closet door had once
\par hung.
\par 
\par The total depth of my pathetic hiding place was only two feet, which
\par meant I was standing mere inches from the inquisitive primate. If it
\par reached inside, there was no chance whatsoever that it would fail to
\par discover me. Only the terrible stench in the kitchen prevented it from
\par smelling me.
\par 
\par The cramp in my left calf twisted like barbed wire through the muscle.
\par 
\par I was afraid that my foot was going to start twitching involuntarily.
\par 
\par Elsewhere in the room, a cabinet door banged shut.
\par 
\par Then another opened with a squeak of hinges.
\par 
\par Linoleum crackled under small, quick feet.
\par 
\par A monkey spat, as though trying to rid itself of the air's foul taste.
\par 
\par I had the curious feeling that I was about to wake up and find myself
\par safe in bed, beside Sasha.
\par 
\par My heart was racing, and now it hammered even faster when Sasha's face
\par bloomed in my mind. The possibility that I would never hear her voice
\par again, never hold her again, never look again into her kind eyes, This
\par was as frightening as the likelihood that I would be torn apart by the
\par troop. And more terrifying, still, was the thought of not being at her
\par side to help her cope with this strange and violent new world, of
\par leaving her alone when, at the next day's end, night returned home to
\par Moonlight Bay once more.
\par 
\par Before me, the monkey remained invisible except for its luminous eyes,
\par which seemed to grow brighter as it peered suspiciously into the broom
\par closet. Its attention traveled upward from my feet, across my body, to
\par my face.
\par 
\par Its night vision might be better than mine, but in this pure liquid
\par blackness, which was as unrelieved as that four miles down at the bottom
\par of the sea, I was sure that we were equally blind.
\par 
\par Yet our eyes locked.
\par 
\par We seemed to be in a staring contest, and I didn't believe that my
\par imagination was boiling over. The creature wasn't looking at my brow or
\par at the bridge of my nose, it was looking directly into both my eyes.
\par 
\par And it didn't look away.
\par 
\par Although I wasn't betrayed by eye shine, as the monkey was, my eyes might
\par be serving as mirrors in which its radiant glare was dimly reflected.
\par 
\par Perhaps it detected the merest pinpoint glimmers of its own fiery
\par scrutiny returned to it, wasn't sure that it saw anything at all, but
\par remained transfixed by the mystery.
\par 
\par I considered closing my eyes, letting the monkey's bright stare fall
\par upon my unreflective lids. But I was afraid that I would miss its sudden
\par blink of comprehension and would fail to shoot it before it launched
\par itself in at me and, perhaps, bit my gun hand or climbed my body to claw
\par and chew my face.
\par 
\par Meeting its gaze at this close range, with such intensity, I was
\par surprised that my fear and thick revulsion could coexist with a mess of
\par other powerful emotions, anger at those who had brought this new species
\par into existence, sorrow over the hideous oncoming corruption of this
\par beautiful world that God has given us, wonder at the inhuman but
\par undeniable intelligence in these strange eyes. Bleak despair, too.
\par 
\par And loneliness. And yet ... an irrational wild hope.
\par 
\par Standing in my line of fire, unaware that it was vulnerably exposed to
\par an emotional basket case with a handgun, the creature burbled softly,
\par more like a pigeon than a rhesus. The sound had an inquisitive quality.
\par 
\par One of the other monkeys shrieked.
\par 
\par I almost fired the Glock reflexively.
\par 
\par Two additional voices scolded the first.
\par 
\par In front of me, the monkey spun away from the broom closet. It scampered
\par deeper into the kitchen, drawn by the commotion.
\par 
\par In fact, the uproar indicated that all six were now gathered at the
\par farther end of the room. I saw no shining eyes turned in my direction.
\par 
\par They had found something of interest. I could imagine only that it was
\par the source of the putrid odor.
\par 
\par As I eased up on the trigger, I realized that a glutinous mass had risen
\par into my throat maybe my heart, maybe my lunch and I had to swallow hard to
\par get it down and to be able to breathe again.
\par 
\par While my eyes and the monkey's had been locked, I'd fallen into a
\par curious physical detachment so complete that I had ceased to feel the
\par spasms of pain in my cramping calf. Now the agony returned, worse than
\par before.
\par 
\par Because all the members of the search party were distracted and making
\par noise, I exercised the cramped muscle as best I could by shifting my
\par weight firmly back and forth from heel to toe of my left foot.
\par 
\par This maneuver relieved the pain somewhat, although not enough to ensure
\par that I would be able to move gracefully if one of the monkeys invited me
\par to waltz.
\par 
\par The conferring members of the search party began to jabber in louder
\par voices. They were excited. Although I don't believe they have a language
\par in remotely the sense that we do, their bleats and hisses and growls and
\par warbles were obviously argumentative. They appeared to have forgotten
\par what they had come looking for in the first place. Easily distracted,
\par quick to fall into disorganization, prone to put aside mutual interests
\par in favor of quarreling among themselves for the first time, these guys
\par seemed an awful lot like human beings.
\par 
\par The longer I listened to them, the more I dared to believe that I would
\par get out of this bungalow alive.
\par 
\par I was still rocking my foot, flexing and contracting my calf, when one
\par of the quarrelers broke away from the rest of the search party and
\par crossed the kitchen to the dining-room doorway. The instant I saw its
\par eye shine, I stopped moving and pretended to be a broom.
\par 
\par The monkey halted at the dining-room threshold and shrieked. It seemed
\par to be calling to other members of the troop, who were, presumably,
\par waiting outside on the front porch or searching the bedrooms.
\par 
\par Answering voices rose at once. They grew nearer.
\par 
\par The prospect of sharing this small kitchen with even more monkeys
\par possibly with the entire trooppunctured my half-inflated hope of
\par survival. As my shaky confidence rapidly gave way to confident
\par desperation, I examined my options and found no new ones.
\par 
\par The depth of my desperation was so abyssal that I actually asked myself
\par what the immortal Jackie Chan would do in a situation like this.
\par 
\par The answer was simple, Jackie would erupt out of the broom closet with
\par an athletic leap that landed him in the very midst of the search party,
\par drop kick one of them between the legs, karate-chop two of them in their
\par necks as he somersaulted to his feet, get off a cool one-liner, break
\par the arms and legs of multiple adversaries during an astonishing
\par pirouette of flashing fists and feet, execute a series of charming and
\par hilarious rubber-faced expressions the likes of which no one has seen
\par since the days of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, tap-dance across
\par the heads of the remaining members of the troop, crash through the
\par window above the sink, and flee to safety. Jackie Chan never gets calf
\par cramps.
\par 
\par Meanwhile, my calf cramp had become so painful that my eyes were
\par watering.
\par 
\par More monkeys entered the kitchen. They were chattering as they came, as
\par if the discovery of any decomposing critter was the ideal occasion to
\par call in all the relatives, open a keg of beer, and have a hootenanny .
\par 
\par I couldn't discern how many joined the original six searchers.
\par 
\par Maybe two. Maybe four. Not more than five or six.
\par 
\par Too many.
\par 
\par None of the newcomers showed the least interest in my corner of the
\par room. They joined the others around whatever fascinating mound of
\par rotting flesh they had discovered, and the lively argument continued.
\par 
\par My luck wouldn't hold. At any moment they might decide to finish their
\par inspection of the cabinets. The individual that had nearly discovered me
\par might remember it had sensed something odd in this vicinity.
\par 
\par I considered slipping out of the broom closet, creeping along the wall,
\par easing through the doorway, and taking refuge in a corner of the dining
\par room, as far away from the main traffic pattern as I could get.
\par 
\par Before they had entered the kitchen, the first squad of searchers must
\par have satisfied themselves that no one was lurking in that chamber, they
\par wouldn't thoroughly inspect the same territory again.
\par 
\par With my cramp, I couldn't move fast, but I could still rely on the cover
\par of darkness, my old friend. Besides, if I had to stay where I was much
\par longer, my nerves were going to wind so tight that I'd implode.
\par 
\par Just as I convinced myself that I had to move, one of the monkeys
\par sprinted away from whatever reeking pile they had gathered to discuss,
\par returning to the dining-room doorway. It shrieked, perhaps calling for
\par yet additional members of the troop to come here and sniff the vile
\par remains.
\par 
\par Even above the chattering and muttering of the crowd clustered around
\par the dead thing, I could hear an answering cry from elsewhere in the
\par bungalow.
\par 
\par The kitchen was only marginally less noisy than a monkey house at a zoo.
\par 
\par Maybe the lights would come on and I'd discover myself in a Twilight
\par Zone moment. Maybe Christopher Snow wasn't my current identity but
\par merely the name under which I had lived in a previous life, and now I
\par was one of them, reincarnated as a rhesus. Maybe we weren't in a Dead
\par Town bungalow but were in a giant cage, surrounded by people pointing
\par and laughing as we swung from ropes and scratched our bald butts.
\par 
\par As though I had tempted fate merely by thinking about the lights coming
\par on, a glow arose toward the front of the house. I was aware of it, at
\par first, solely because the monkey at the threshold of the dining room
\par began to resolve out of the blackness, the way an image gradually
\par solidifies on Polaroid film.
\par 
\par This development didn't alarm or even surprise the beast, so I assumed
\par that it had called for the light.
\par 
\par I wasn't as sanguine about these changing circumstances as the monkey
\par appeared to be. The shroud of darkness in which I'd been hiding was
\par going to be stripped away.
\par 
\par Because the approaching luminosity was frost white rather than yellow
\par and because it didn't throb like an open flame, it was most likely
\par produced by a flashlight. The beam wasn't focused on the doorway,
\par instead, the monkey standing there was illuminated by the indirect
\par radiance, indicating that the source was a two- or three-battery model,
\par not just a penlight.
\par 
\par Evidently, to the extent that their small hands could serve them, the
\par members of the troop were tool users. They had either found the
\par flashlight or stolen it probably the latter, because these monkeys have
\par no more respect for the law and property rights than they have for Miss
\par Manners' rules of etiquette.
\par 
\par The individual at the doorway faced the steadily brightening dining room
\par with a peculiar air of expectation, perhaps even with a degree of
\par wonder.
\par 
\par At the farther end of the kitchen, out of my line of sight, the rest of
\par the searchers had fallen silent. I suspected that their posture matched
\par that of the rhesus I could see, that they were equally fascinated or
\par even awed.
\par 
\par Since the source of the glow was surely nothing more exotic than a
\par flashlight, I assumed that something about the bearer of the light
\par elicited these monkeys' reverence. I was curious about that individual,
\par but reluctant to die for the satisfaction of my curiosity.
\par 
\par Already, a dangerous amount of light was passing through the doorway.
\par 
\par Absolute darkness no longer reigned. I could make out the general shapes
\par of the cabinets across the kitchen.
\par 
\par When I glanced down, I was still in shadow, but I could see my hands and
\par the pistol. Worse, I could see my clothes and shoes, which were all
\par black.
\par 
\par The cramp burned in my leg. I tried not to think about it. That was like
\par trying not to think about a grizzly bear while it gnawed off your foot.
\par 
\par To clear my vision, I was now blinking away both involuntary tears of
\par pain and a flood of cold sweat. Forget about the danger posed by the
\par rapidly receding darkness, Soon the troop was going to be able to smell
\par eau de Snow even over the malodor of decomposition.
\par 
\par The monkey at the dining-room threshold took two steps backward as the
\par light advanced. If the beast looked in my direction, it could not fail
\par to see me.
\par 
\par I was almost reduced to the childhood game of pretending with all my
\par might to be invisible.
\par 
\par Then, in the dining room, the bearer of the flashlight evidently halted
\par and turned toward something else of interest. A murmur swept through the
\par searchers in the kitchen as the glow diminished.
\par 
\par Oily gloom welled out of the corners, and now I heard the sound that had
\par captured the monkeys' attention. The drone of an engine.
\par 
\par Perhaps a truck. It was growing louder.
\par 
\par From the front of the house came a cry of alarm.
\par 
\par In the dining room, the bearer of the light switched it off.
\par 
\par The search party fled the kitchen. The linoleum crackled under their
\par feet, but they made no other sound.
\par 
\par From the dining room onward, they retreated with the stealth they had
\par exhibited when originally charging the bungalow from the street.
\par 
\par They were so silent that I wasn't convinced they had entirely withdrawn.
\par 
\par I half suspected they were toying with me, waiting just inside the
\par dining-room doorway. When I limped out of the kitchen, they would swarm
\par over me, gleefully yelling "Surprise, " gouge out my eyes, bite off my
\par lips, and conduct a fortune-telling session with my entrails.
\par 
\par The growl of the engine grew steadily louder, although the vehicle that
\par produced it was still some distance away.
\par 
\par During all the nights I had explored Fort Wyvern's desolate precincts, I
\par had never until now heard an engine or other mechanical sound.
\par 
\par Generally this place was so quiet that it might have been an outpost at
\par the end of time, when the sun no longer rose and the stars remained
\par fixed in the heavens and the only sound was the occasional low moan of a
\par wind from nowhere.
\par 
\par As I tentatively eased out of the broom closet, I remembered something
\par Bobby had asked when I'd told him to come in by the river, Do I have to
\par creep or can I strut?
\par 
\par I had said that sneaky didn't matter anymore. By that, I hadn't meant
\par that he should arrive with drum and LIFE. I had also told him to watch
\par his ass.
\par 
\par Although I had never imagined that Bobby would drive into Wyvern, I was
\par more than half convinced that the approaching vehicle was his Jeep.
\par 
\par I should have anticipated this. Bobby was Bobby, after all.
\par 
\par I'd first thought that the troop had reacted with fright to the engine
\par noise, that they had fled in fear of being spotted, pursued.
\par 
\par They spend most of their time in the hills, in the wild, coming into
\par Moonlight Bay on what mysterious missions I do not knowonly after
\par sundown, preferring to limit their visits to nights when they have the
\par double cover of darkness and fog. Even then, they travel as much as
\par possible by storm drains, parks, arroyos, dry riverbeds, vacant lots,
\par and perhaps from tree to tree. With rare exception, they do not show
\par themselves, and they are masters of secrecy, moving among us as covertly
\par as termites move through the walls of our houses, as unnoticed as
\par earthworms tunneling the ground under our feet.
\par 
\par Here on turf more congenial to them, however, their reaction to the
\par sound of an engine might be bolder and more aggressive than it would
\par have been in town. They might not flee from it. They might be drawn to
\par it. If they followed it without showing themselves and waited for the
\par driver to park and get out  ... The engine roar grew steadily louder.
\par The vehicle was in the neighborhood, probably only a few blocks away.
\par 
\par Abandoning caution, trying to shake the pain out of my leg as though it
\par were a biting mongrel that could be kicked loose, I hobbled out of the
\par kitchen and hurried blindly through the monkeyless dining room. As far
\par as I could tell, none of the flea farms lingered in the living room,
\par either.
\par 
\par At the window from which I had watched them earlier, I put my brow to
\par the glass and saw eight or ten members of the troop in the street.
\par 
\par They were dropping, one by one, through the open manhole, into which
\par their comrades had apparently already vanished.
\par 
\par Happily, Bobby wasn't in jeopardy of having his brain scooped out and
\par his skull turned into a flowerpot to beautify some monkey den. Not
\par immediate jeopardy, anyway.
\par 
\par As fast as flowing water, the monkeys poured into the manhole, gone in a
\par quicksilver ripple. In their wake, the tree-lined street appeared to be
\par no more substantial than a dreamscape, a mere illusion of twisted
\par shadows and secondhand light, and it was almost possible to believe that
\par the troop had been as imaginary as the cast of a nightmare.
\par 
\par Heading for the front door, I returned the spare magazine to the pocket
\par in my shoulder holster. I held on to the Glock.
\par 
\par When I reached the porch, I heard the manhole cover being slid into
\par place. I was surprised that the monkeys were strong enough to maneuver
\par that heavy object from the storm drain below, a tricky task even for a
\par grown man.
\par 
\par The engine noise reverberated through the bungalows and trees.
\par 
\par The vehicle was close, yet I saw no headlights.
\par 
\par As I reached the street, still working the last of the cramp out of my
\par leg, the manhole cover clanked into its niche. I arrived in time to see
\par the curved point of a steel grappling hook wiggle out of a slot in the
\par iron, extracted from below. City street-department crews carry such
\par implements to snare and lift these covers without having to pry them
\par loose from the edge. The monkeys must have found or stolen the hook,
\par hanging from the service ladder in the drain, a couple of them were able
\par to leverage the disc into place, covering their trail.
\par 
\par Their use of tools had ominous implications that I was loath to
\par consider.
\par 
\par Headlight beams flashed through the spaces between bungalows. The truck.
\par 
\par It was passing on the next street parallel to this one, behind the small
\par houses.
\par 
\par Although I hadn't seen any details of the vehicle, I was sure Bobby had
\par arrived. The pitch of the engine was similar to that of his Jeep, and it
\par was speeding toward the commercial district of Dead Town, where we were
\par supposed to meet.
\par 
\par I headed in that direction as the roar of the truck rapidly diminished.
\par 
\par The pain was gone from my calf, but the nerve continued to flutter,
\par leaving my left leg weaker than my right. With the cramp threatening to
\par recur, I didn't even try to run.
\par 
\par From above came the shearing sound of wings, cutting the air into
\par scimitar shapes. I looked up, ducking defensively, as a flock of birds
\par made a low pass, in tight formation, and vanished into the night ahead.
\par 
\par Their speed and the darkness prevented me from identifying their
\par species. This might have been the mysterious crew that had roosted in
\par the tree under which I'd placed my call to Bobby.
\par 
\par When I reached the end of the block, the birds were flying in a circle
\par over the intersection, as if marking time until I caught up with them.
\par 
\par I counted ten or twelve, more than had kept watch over me from the
\par Indian laurel.
\par 
\par Their behavior was peculiar, but I didn't feel that they intended any
\par harm.
\par 
\par Even if I was wrong and they posed a danger to me, there was no way to
\par avoid them. If I changed my route, they could easily follow.
\par 
\par As they passed across the face of the descendent moon, traveling more
\par slowly than before, I saw them clearly enough to identify them
\par tentatively as nighthawks. Because they live by my schedule, I am
\par familiar with this species, also known as night jars, which encompasses
\par seventy varieties, including the whippoorwill.
\par 
\par Nighthawks feed on insects moths, flying ants, mosquitoes, beetles and
\par dine while on the wing. Snatching tidbits from the air, they jink this
\par way and that, exhibiting a singular swooping-darting-twisting pattern of
\par flight that, as much as anything, identifies them.
\par 
\par The full moon provides them with the ideal circumstances for a banquet,
\par because in its radiance, flying insects are more visible.
\par 
\par Ordinarily, nighthawks are ceaselessly active in these conditions, their
\par harsh churring calls cutting the air as they feast.
\par 
\par The lunar lamp above, currently unobstructed by clouds, ensured good
\par hunting, yet these birds were not inclined to take advantage of the
\par ideal conditions. Acting counter to instinct, they squandered the
\par moonlight, flying monotonously in a circle that was approximately forty
\par feet in diameter, around and around over the intersection. For the most
\par part, they proceeded in single file, though three pairs flew side by
\par side, none feeding or issuing a single cry.
\par 
\par I crossed the intersection and kept going.
\par 
\par In the distance, the sound of the engine abruptly cut off. If it was
\par Bobby's Jeep, he must have arrived at our rendezvous point.
\par 
\par I was a third of the way into the subsequent block when the flock
\par followed. They passed overhead at a higher altitude than previously but
\par low enough to cause me to tuck my head down.
\par 
\par When I arrived at another intersection, they had again formed a bird
\par carousel, minus calliope, circling thirty feet overhead.
\par 
\par Although any attempt to take a count would have resulted in more vertigo
\par than waits in a bottle of tequila, I was sure the number of nighthawks
\par had grown.
\par 
\par Over the next two blocks, the size of the flock swelled until it wasn't
\par necessary to take a count to verify the increase. By the time I reached
\par the three-way intersection in which this street ended, at least a
\par hundred birds were circling quietly above. For the most part, they were
\par now grouped in pairs, and there were two layers to this flying feathered
\par ring, one about five to ten feet higher than the other.
\par 
\par I stopped, gazing up, transfixed.
\par 
\par Thanks to the circus between my ears, I can seize upon the smallest
\par disquieting observation and from it extrapolate a terror of cataclysmic
\par proportions. Yet, though the birds unnerved me, I still didn't believe
\par they were a threat.
\par 
\par Their unnatural behavior was ominous without implying aggression.
\par 
\par This aerial ballet, humdrum in its pattern yet inexpressibly graceful,
\par conveyed a mood as clear and unmistakable as any ballet ever performed
\par by dancers on a stage, as affecting as any piece of music ever meant to
\par touch the heart and the mood here was sorrow. Sorrow so poignant that it
\par pinched my breath and made me feel as though something more bitter than
\par blood were pumping through my veins.
\par 
\par To poets but also to those whose stomachs curdle at the mention of
\par poetry, birds in flight usually evoke thoughts of freedom, hope, faith,
\par joy. The thrum of these pinions, however, was as bleak as the keening of
\par an arctic wind coming across a thousand miles of barren ice, it was a
\par forlorn sound, and in my heart it coalesced into an icy weight.
\par 
\par With the exquisite timing and choreography that suggests psychic
\par connections among the members of a flock, the double ring of birds
\par fluidly combined into a single ascending spiral. They rose like a coil
\par of dark smoke, around and up and up through the flue of the night,
\par across the pocked moon, becoming steadily less visible against the
\par stars, until at last they dissipated like mere fumes and soot across the
\par rooftop of the world.
\par 
\par All was silent. Windless. Dead.
\par 
\par This behavior of the nighthawks had been unnatural, certainly, but not a
\par meaningless aberration, not a mere curiosity. There was calculation
\par therefore meaningin their air show.
\par 
\par The puzzle resisted an easy solution.
\par 
\par Actually, I wasn't sure I wanted to fit all the pieces together.
\par 
\par The resultant picture was not likely to be comforting. The birds
\par themselves posed no threat, but their bizarre performance couldn't be
\par construed as a good thing.
\par 
\par A sign. An omen.
\par 
\par Not the kind of omen that makes you want to buy a lottery ticket or take
\par a quick trip to Vegas. Certainly not an omen that would make you decide
\par to commit more of your net worth to the stock market. No, this was an
\par omen that might inspire you to move to rural New Mexico, up into the
\par fastness of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, as far from civilization as
\par you could get, with a hoard of food, twenty thousand rounds of
\par ammunition and a prayer book.
\par 
\par I returned the pistol to the holster under my jacket.
\par 
\par Suddenly I was tired, drained.
\par 
\par I took a few deep breaths, but each inhalation was as stale as the air I
\par exhaled.
\par 
\par When I wiped a hand across my face, hoping to slough off my weariness, I
\par expected my skin to be greasy. Instead, it was dry and hot.
\par 
\par I found a penny-size tender spot just below my left cheekbone.
\par 
\par Gently massaging it with a fingertip, I tried to remember whether I had
\par knocked against anything during the night's adventures.
\par 
\par Any pain without apparent cause is a possible early signal of a forming
\par lesion, of the cancer that I have thus far remarkably escaped. If the
\par suspect blemish or tenderness occurs on my face or hands, which are
\par exposed to light even though sheathe in sunscreen, the chances of
\par malignancy are greater.
\par 
\par Lowering my hand from my face, I reminded myself to live in the moment.
\par 
\par Because of XP, I was born with no future, and in spite of my
\par limitations, I live a full life perhaps a better oneby concerning myself
\par as little as possible with what tomorrow may bring. The present is more
\par vivid, more precious, more fulfilling, if you understand that it is all
\par you have.
\par 
\par Carpe them, said the poet Horace, more than two thousand years ago.
\par 
\par Seize the day. And trust not in tomorrow.
\par 
\par Carpe noctem works as well for me. I seize the night, wringing from it
\par all that it has to offer, and I refuse to dwell on the fact that
\par eventually the darkness of all darknesses will wring the same from me.
\par 
\par 
\par The solemn birds had cast down a dreary mood, like feathers molting from
\par their wings. I walked determinedly out of that fallen plumage, heading
\par toward the movie theater where Bobby Halloway was waiting.
\par 
\par The sore spot on my cheek might never develop into a lesion or a
\par blister. Its value, as a source of worry, had been solely to distract me
\par from the more terrible fear that I was reluctant to face, The longer
\par Jimmy Wing and Orson were missing, the greater the likelihood they were
\par dead.
\par 
\par Bordering the northern edge of Dead Town's residential district is a
\par park with handball courts at one end and tennis courts at the other.
\par 
\par In the middle are acres of picnic grounds shaded by California live oaks
\par that have fared well since the base closure, a playground with swings
\par and jungle gyms, an open-air pavilion, and an enormous swimming pool.
\par 
\par The large oval pavilion, where bands once played on summer nights, is
\par the only ornate structure in Wyvern, Victorian, with an encircling
\par balustrade, fluted columns, a deep cornice enhanced by elaborate
\par millwork, and a fanciful roof that drops from finial to eaves in
\par shingled scallops reminiscent of the swags of a circus tent. Here, under
\par strings of colored Christmas lights, young men had danced with their
\par wive sand then gone off to bloody deaths in World War II, the Korean War,
\par Vietnam, and lesser skirmishes. The lights still dangle from rafter to
\par rafter, unplugged and sheathe in dust, and often it seems that if you
\par squint your eyes just slightly on moonlit nights like this, you can see
\par the ghosts of martyrs to democracy dancing with the spirits of their
\par widows.
\par 
\par As I strode through the tall grass, past the community swimming pool,
\par where the chain-link fence sagged around the entire perimeter and was
\par completely broken down in a few spots, I increased my pace, not solely
\par because I was anxious to get to the movie house. Nothing has happened
\par here to make me fearful of the place, but instinct tells me not to
\par linger near this concrete-walled swamp. The pool is nearly two hundred
\par feet long and eighty feet wide, with a lifeguard platform in the center.
\par 
\par Currently, it was two-thirds full of collected rain. The black water
\par would be black in daylight, too, because it was thickened with rotting
\par oak leaves and other debris. In this fetid sludge, even the moon lost
\par its silver purity, leaving a distorted, bile-yellow reflection like the
\par face of a goblin in a dream.
\par 
\par Although I remained at a distance, I could smell the reeking slough.
\par 
\par The stench wasn't as bad as that in the bungalow kitchen, but it was
\par pretty close.
\par 
\par Worse than the odor was the aura of the pool, which could not be
\par perceived by the usual five senses but which was readily apparent to an
\par indescribable sixth. No, my overactive imagination wasn't overacting.
\par 
\par This is, at all times, an undeniably real quality of the pool, a subtle
\par but cold squirming energy from which your mind shrinks, an evil mojo
\par that slithers across the surface of your soul with all the tactility of
\par a ball of worms writhing in your hand.
\par 
\par I thought I heard a splash, something breaking the surface of the
\par sludge, followed by an oily churning, as if a swimmer were doing laps.
\par 
\par I assumed these noises were the products of my imagination, but
\par nevertheless, as the swimmer stroked closer to my end of the pool, I
\par broke into a run.
\par 
\par Beyond the park lies Commissary Way, along the north side of which stand
\par the enterprises and institutions that, in addition to those in Moonlight
\par Bay, once served Wyvern's thirty-six thousand active-duty personnel and
\par thirteen thousand of their dependents. The commissary and the movie
\par theater anchor opposite ends of the long street. Between them are a
\par barbershop, a dry cleaner, a florist, a bakery, a bank, the enlisted
\par men's club, the officers' club, a library, a game arcade, a
\par kindergarten, an elementary school, a fitness center, and additional
\par shops all empty, their painted signs faded and weathered.
\par 
\par These one- and two-story buildings are plain but, precisely because of
\par their simplicity, pleasing to the eye, white clapboard, painted concrete
\par blocks, stucco. The utilitarian nature of military construction combined
\par with Depression-era frugality which guided every project in 1939, when
\par the base was commissioned could have resulted in an ugly industrial look.
\par 
\par But the army architects and construction crews had made an effort to
\par create buildings with some grace, relying on only such fundamentals as
\par harmonious lines and angles, rhythmic window placement, and varying but
\par complementary roof lines.
\par 
\par The movie theater is as humble as the other buildings, and its marquee
\par rests flat against the front wall, above the entrance. I don't know what
\par film last played here or the names of the actors who appeared in it.
\par 
\par Only three black plastic letters remain in the tracks where titles and
\par cast were announced, forming a single word, WHO.
\par 
\par In spite of the absence of concluding punctuation, I read this enigmatic
\par message as a desperate question referring to the genetic terror spawned
\par in hidden laboratories somewhere on these grounds. Who am I? Who are
\par you? Who are we becoming? Who did this to us? Who can save us?
\par 
\par Who? Who?
\par 
\par Bobby's black Jeep was parked in front of the theater. The vinyl roof
\par and walls were not attached to the frame and roll bars, so the vehicle
\par was open to the night.
\par 
\par As I approached the Jeep, the moon sank behind the clouds in the west,
\par so close to the horizon now that it was unlikely to reappear, but even
\par from a block away, I could clearly see Bobby sitting behind the steering
\par wheel.
\par 
\par We are the same height and weight. Although my hair is blond and his is
\par dark brown, although my eyes are pale blue and his are so raven black
\par they have blue highlights, we can pass for brothers. We have been each
\par other's closest friends since we were eleven, and so perhaps we have
\par grown alike in many ways. We stand, sit, and move with the same posture
\par and at the same pace, I think this is because we have spent so much time
\par surfing, in sync with the sea. Sasha insists we have "catlike grace, "
\par which I think flatters us too much, but however catlike we may or may
\par not be, neither of us drinks milk from a saucer or prefers a litter box
\par to a bathroom.
\par 
\par I went to the passenger side, grabbed the roll bar, and swung into the
\par Jeep without opening the low door. I had to work my feet around a small
\par Styrofoam cooler on the floor in front of the seat.
\par 
\par Bobby was wearing khakis, a long-sleeve white cotton pullover, and a
\par Hawaiian shirt he owns no other styleover the thin sweater.
\par 
\par He was drinking a Heineken.
\par 
\par Although I had never seen Bobby drunk, I said, "Hope you're not too
\par mellow." Without looking away from the street, he said, "Mellow isn't
\par like dumb or ugly, " meaning the word too should never be used to modify
\par it.
\par 
\par The night was pleasantly cool but not crisp, so I said, "Flow me a
\par Heinie? "
\par 
\par "Go for it." I fished a bottle out of the ice in the cooler and twisted
\par off the cap.
\par 
\par I hadn't realized how thirsty I was. The beer washed the lingering
\par bitterness out of my mouth.
\par 
\par Bobby glanced at the rearview mirror for a moment, then returned his
\par attention to the street in front of us.
\par 
\par Braced between the seats, aimed toward the rear of the Jeep, was a
\par pistol-grip, pump-action shotgun.
\par 
\par "Beer and guns, " I said, shaking my head.
\par 
\par "We're obviously not Amish."
\par 
\par "You come in by the river like I said?"
\par 
\par "Yeah."
\par 
\par "How'd you drive through the fence? "
\par 
\par "Cut the hole bigger."
\par 
\par "I expected you to walk in."
\par 
\par "Too hard to carry the cooler."
\par 
\par "I guess we might need the speed, " I conceded, considering the size of
\par the area to be searched.
\par 
\par He said, "You smell maximum real, bro."
\par 
\par "Worked at it." From the rearview mirror dangled a bright-yellow air
\par freshener shaped like a banana. Bobby slipped it off the mirror and hung
\par it from my left ear.
\par 
\par Sometimes he is too funny for his own good. I wouldn't reward him with a
\par laugh.
\par 
\par "It's a banana, " I said, "but it smells like a pine tree."
\par 
\par "That old American ingenuity."
\par 
\par "Nothing like it."
\par 
\par "We put men on the moon."
\par 
\par "We invented chocolate-flavored breakfast cereal."
\par 
\par "Don't forget plastic vomit."
\par 
\par "Funniest gag ever, " I said.
\par 
\par Bobby and I solemnly clinked bottles in a patriotic toast and took long
\par swallows of beer.
\par 
\par Although I was, on one level, frantic to find Orson and Jimmy, on the
\par surface I fell into the languid tempo by which Bobby lives. He is so
\par laid back that if he visited someone in a hospital, the nurses might
\par mistake him for a patient in a coma, shuck him out of his Hawaiian
\par shirt, and slide him into a backless bed gown before he could correct
\par their misapprehension. Except when he's rocking through epic surf,
\par getting totally barreled in an insanely hollow wave, Bobby values
\par tranquility. He responds better to easy and indirect conversation than
\par to any expression of urgency. During our seventeen-year friendship, I've
\par learned to value this |i relaxed approach, even if it doesn't come
\par naturally to me. Calm is essential to prudent action. Because Bobby acts
\par only after contemplation, I've never known him to be blind sided by
\par anyone or anything. He may look relaxed, even sleepy at times, but like
\par a Zen master, he is able to make the flow of time slow down while he
\par considers how best to deal with the latest crisis.
\par 
\par "Bitchin' shirt, " I said.
\par 
\par He was wearing one of his favorite antique shirts, a brown Asian
\par landscape design. He has a couple hundred in his collection, and he
\par knows every detail of their histories.
\par 
\par Before he could reply, I said, "Made by Kahala about 1950. Silk with
\par coconut-shell buttons. Same shirt John Wayne wore in Big Jim Mclain.
\par 
\par " He was silent long enough for me to have repeated all the shirt data,
\par but I knew he'd heard me.
\par 
\par He took another pull at his bottle of beer. Finally, "Have you really
\par developed an interest in aloha threads, or are you just mocking me? "
\par 
\par "Just mocking you."
\par 
\par "Enjoy yourself." As he studied the rearview mirror again, I said,
\par "What's that in your lap? "
\par 
\par "I'm just way happy to see you, " he said.
\par 
\par Then he held up a serious handgun.
\par 
\par "Smith & Wesson Model 29."
\par 
\par "This is definitely not a barn raising."
\par 
\par "Exactly what is it? "
\par 
\par "Somebody took Lilly Wing's boy."
\par 
\par "Who? "
\par 
\par "Some abb, " I said, meaning an abnormal type, a sleazeball.
\par 
\par "Woofy, " he said, which is Australian surfer lingo for waves
\par contaminated by a sewage spill, but which has evolved other, related
\par meanings, none positive.
\par 
\par I said, "Boosted Jimmy right out of his bedroom, through a window."
\par 
\par "So Lilly called you? "
\par 
\par "I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, biking by right after
\par the abb did the deed."
\par 
\par "How'd you get from there to here? "
\par 
\par "Orson's nose." I told him about the abb, the kidnapper, whom I'd
\par encountered under the warehouse.
\par 
\par He frowned. "You said yellow eyes? "
\par 
\par "Yellow-brown, I guess."
\par 
\par "Shine-in-the-dark yellow? "
\par 
\par "No. Brownish yellow, burnt amber, but the natural color."
\par 
\par Recently, we'd encountered a couple of men in whom radical genetic
\par changes had occurred, guys in the process of becoming something more or
\par less than human, who appeared for the most part normal but whose
\par otherness was betrayed by brief but detectable flashes of animal
\par eye shine. These people are driven by strange, hateful needs, and they
\par are capable of extreme violence. If Jimmy was in the hands of one of
\par these, then the list of outrages to which he might be subjected was even
\par longer than the savageries that a standard-issue sociopath might have in
\par mind.
\par 
\par "You recognize this abb? " I asked Bobby.
\par 
\par "You say about thirty, black hair, yellow eyes, built like a fireplug?"
\par 
\par "Neat little baby teeth."
\par 
\par "Not my type."
\par 
\par "I never saw him before, either, " I said.
\par 
\par "Twelve thousand people in town."
\par 
\par "And this isn't a dude who's a beachhead, " I said, meaning we wouldn't
\par have seen him hanging out with surfers. "So he could still be local and
\par we wouldn't know." For the first time all night, a breeze sprang up, a
\par gentle onshore flow that brought to us a faint but bracing scent of the
\par sea. In the park across the street, the oaks became conspiratorial,
\par plotting together in whispers.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "Why did this abb bring Jimmy here of all places? "
\par 
\par "Maybe privacy. To do his thing."
\par 
\par "I'd like to do my thing, Cuisinart the creep."
\par 
\par "Plus the weirdness of this place probably feeds his dementia."
\par 
\par "Unless it's more directly connected to Wyvern."
\par 
\par "Unless. And Lilly's worried about the guy on the news."
\par 
\par "What guy?"
\par 
\par "Kidnaps kids, locks them away. When he gets three or five or whatever
\par from one community, then he burns them all at once."
\par 
\par "Stuff like this is why I don't listen to news these days."
\par 
\par "You've never listened to news."
\par 
\par "I know. But I used to have different reasons." Looking around at the
\par night, Bobby said, "So where would they be now?"
\par 
\par "Anywhere."
\par 
\par "Maybe this is more anywhere' than we can handle." He hadn't looked at
\par the rearview mirror recently, so I turned in my seat to check things out
\par behind us.
\par 
\par Bobby said casually, "Saw a monkey on the way in." Taking the air
\par freshener off my ear and looping its string over the mirror again, I
\par said, "Just one? I didn't know they traveled alone."
\par 
\par "Me neither. I turned a corner in Dead Town, and there it was, run rung
\par across the street, caught in the headlights. This little freakin' dude.
\par 
\par Not your ordinary evolutionary link, missing or otherwise."
\par 
\par "Different? "
\par 
\par "Maybe four feet tall." Apparently, there were refrigeration coils in my
\par spine.
\par 
\par All the rhesuses we had seen thus far had been about two feet tall.
\par 
\par They were trouble enough. At four feet, they would constitute a
\par different magnitude of threat.
\par 
\par "Major head, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "What? "
\par 
\par "Four feet tall, big head."
\par 
\par "How big? "
\par 
\par "I didn't try to measure it for a hat."
\par 
\par "Give me a guess."
\par 
\par "Maybe as big as yours or mine."
\par 
\par "On a four-foot body."
\par 
\par "Top-heavy. And misshapen."
\par 
\par "Grisly, " I said.
\par 
\par "Hard-core grisly." Bobby leaned forward over the steering wheel,
\par squinting through the windshield.
\par 
\par About a block away, something was moving. About the size of a monkey.
\par 
\par Slowly and fitfully approaching.
\par 
\par Putting one hand on the shotgun, I said, "What else? "
\par 
\par "That's all I saw, bro. It was way fast."
\par 
\par "Something new."
\par 
\par "Maybe soon there's gonna be a bunch of that."
\par 
\par "Tumbleweed, " I said, identifying the approaching object.
\par 
\par Neither of us relaxed.
\par 
\par With the moon down, it was easy to imagine that the park across the
\par street was swarming with phantasmagorical figures underand high in the
\par massive oaks.
\par 
\par When I described my encounter with the gang that had almost caught me in
\par the bungalow, Bobby said, "Thirty? Man, they're busy breeders." I told
\par him about their use of the flashlight and the manhole hook.
\par 
\par "Next, " he said, "they'll be driving cars, trying to date our women.
\par 
\par " He finished his beer and handed the empty bottle to me, which I
\par planted upside down in the ice chest.
\par 
\par From somewhere along the street came a soft, rhythmic creaking.
\par 
\par It was probably just one of the shop signs swinging on its mountings,
\par disturbed by the breeze.
\par 
\par "So Jimmy could be anywhere in Wyvern, " Bobby said. "What about Orson?"
\par 
\par "The last I heard him barking, I think it was coming from here in Dead
\par Town somewhere."
\par 
\par "Here on Commissary Way or over in the houses? "
\par 
\par "I don't know. Just this direction."
\par 
\par "Lot of houses over there." Bobby looked toward the residential streets
\par on the far side of the park.
\par 
\par "Three thousand."
\par 
\par "Say like four minutes a house ... Take us nine or ten days, searching
\par around the clock, to go through all of em. And you don't do day work."
\par 
\par "Orson's probably not in any of the houses."
\par 
\par "But we have to start somewhere. So where? " I didn't have an answer.
\par 
\par Besides, I didn't trust myself to speak without my voice cracking.
\par 
\par "You think Orson is with Jimmy? We find one, we find both? " I shrugged.
\par 
\par "Maybe this is one time we should tell Ramirez what we know, " Bobby
\par suggested.
\par 
\par Manuel Ramirez was the current chief of police in Moonlight Bay.
\par 
\par He had once been a good man, but like all the cops in town, he had been
\par coopted by higher authorities.
\par 
\par "Maybe, " Bobby said, "in this case, Manuel's interests are the same as
\par ours. He's got the manpower for a search."
\par 
\par "He's not just corrupted by the feds, " I said. "He's becoming.
\par 
\par " Becoming. That's the word some of the genetically afflicted use to
\par describe the physical, mental, and emotional changes that are taking
\par place in them but only once those changes have passed the subtle stage
\par and reached a crisis.
\par 
\par Bobby was surprised. "He tell you he's becoming? "
\par 
\par "He says he isn't.
\par 
\par But there's something wrong with him. I don't trust Manuel."
\par 
\par "Hell, I don't entirely trust me, " Bobby said, which put into words our
\par greatest fear that we might not merely become infected with the
\par retrovirus but that we might start becoming something less than human
\par without being aware of the changes taking place.
\par 
\par I sucked down the last of the Heineken, jammed the empty bottle into the
\par ice chest.
\par 
\par "We gotta find Orson, " I said.
\par 
\par "We will."
\par 
\par "Crucial, bro."
\par 
\par "We will." Orson is no ordinary dog. My mother brought him home from the
\par Wyvern lab when he was a puppy. Until recently, I didn't realize where
\par fur face had come from or how special he was, because my mom didn't tell
\par me and because Orson was good at keeping his secrets. The
\par intelligence-enhancement experiments were conducted on monkeys and on
\par hard case lifers transferred from military prisons, but also on dogs,
\par cats, and other animals. I've never given Orson an IQ test, pencils
\par aren't designed for paws, and because he lacks the complex larynx of a
\par human being, he isn't capable of speech.
\par 
\par He understands everything, however, and in his own way he makes himself
\par understood. He is smarter than the monkeys.
\par 
\par I suspect he possesses human-level intelligence. At least.
\par 
\par Earlier, I suggested that the monkeys hate us because we gave them the
\par ability to dream but not the means to fulfill their dreams, leaving them
\par lost outside the natural order. But if this explains their hostility and
\par thirst for violence, why should Orson, who is also outside the natural
\par order, be so affectionate and good-hearted?
\par 
\par He is trapped in a body that serves his enhanced intelligence less well
\par than the monkeys' bodies serve them. He has no hands, as they have, and
\par his vision is comparatively weak, as is that of any domesticated breed
\par of canine.
\par 
\par The monkeys have the communal comfort of the troop, but Orson endures in
\par a terrible solitude. Though more dogs as smart as Orson might have been
\par created, I've yet to encounter another. Sasha, Bobby, and I love him,
\par but we are too little comfort, because we can never truly share his
\par point of view, his experience. Because he is, at least for now, a
\par singularity Orson lives with a profound loneliness that I can perceive
\par but never fully comprehend, loneliness that is with him even when he is
\par among his friends.
\par 
\par Maybe his basic doggie nature explains why he doesn't share the monkeys'
\par hatred and rage. I think dogs were put in this world to remind humanity
\par that love, loyalty, devotion, courage, patience, and good humor are the
\par qualities that, with honesty, are the essence of admirable character and
\par the very definition of a life well lived.
\par 
\par In good Orson I see the hopeful side of my mother's work, the real
\par potential of science to bring light into an often dark world, to lift us
\par up, to stir the spirit and to remind us that the universe is a place of
\par wonder and infinite potential.
\par 
\par She did, in fact, hope to accomplish great things. She aligned herself
\par with a biological-weapons project solely because this was the only way
\par to obtain the high level of funding needed to realize her design for a
\par gene splicing retrovirus, which she believed could be used to cure many
\par illnesses and inherited disorder snot least of all, my XP.
\par 
\par You see, my mom didn't destroy the world without good reason.
\par 
\par She did it trying to help me. Because of me, all of nature is now poised
\par on the brink. Maternal love became the wellspring of ultimate terror.
\par 
\par So ... you want to talk about your conflicted feelings for your mother?
\par 
\par Orson and I are her sons. I am the fruit of her heart and womb.
\par 
\par Orson is the fruit of her mind, but she created him as surely as she
\par created me. We are brothers. Not just figuratively. We are bound not by
\par blood but by our mother's passions, and in that sense we share one
\par heart.
\par 
\par If anything were to happen to Orson, a part of me would die the purer
\par part, the better part and die forever.
\par 
\par "Gotta find him, " I repeated.
\par 
\par "Faith, bro, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par He reached for the key in the ignition, but before he could switch on
\par the engine, a sound arose, louder than the soft million-tongue flutter
\par of leaves in the breeze, swelling by the second.
\par 
\par Bobby put one hand on the Smith & Wesson in his lap.
\par 
\par I didn't draw my pistol because I knew what I was hearing. The beating
\par of wings. Many wings.
\par 
\par Like wind-torn shingles from Heaven's roof, the voiceless flock came out
\par of the night, tumbling down in a clatter and whirl of wings more than
\par half a block away, then flying parallel to the pavement, following the
\par street, streaking in our direction. The hundred birds I'd seen earlier
\par were surely part of this apparition, but another hundred had joined
\par them, perhaps two hundred.
\par 
\par Bobby decided against the revolver and snatched the shotgun from between
\par the seats.
\par 
\par "Ice it down, " I told him.
\par 
\par He gave me an odd look. Usually, he's the one advising me to stay cool.
\par 
\par Seventeen years of friendship ensure that he takes me seriously, but he
\par chambered a round in the shotgun nevertheless.
\par 
\par Spread the width of the street, the flock swept over us, no more than
\par six feet above our heads. I had the sense that they were flying with
\par astonishing precision, arranged in formations so orderly as to be
\par uncanny. An aerial view of the entire swarm might reveal patterns
\par intriguing because of their unnatural degree of complex order but also
\par disturbing because they would seem simultaneously meaningful and
\par indecipherable .
\par 
\par Bobby ducked, but I gazed up into the dark churning cloud of wings and
\par feathered breasts, trying to determine if there were species other than
\par nighthawks in these multitudes. The poor light and the blur of movement
\par made it difficult to conduct even a cursory census.
\par 
\par By the time the last of the enormous flock soared past, not a single
\par bird had dived at us or shrieked. Their passing had such an otherworldly
\par quality that I almost felt as though I had been hallucinating, but a
\par sprinkling of feathers in the Jeep and along the blacktop confirmed the
\par reality of the experience.
\par 
\par Even as the last small bits of fluffy down descended on the breeze,
\par Bobby threw open the driver's door and scrambled from the Jeep. He was
\par still gripping the shotgun when he turned to stare after the departing
\par flock, although he was holding the weapon in one hand now, muzzle
\par pointed at the pavement, with no intention of using it.
\par 
\par I got out of the Jeep, too, and watched as the birds swooped up from the
\par end of the street, arcing high across a sea of stars, disappearing into
\par the blackness between those distant suns.
\par 
\par "Totally awesome, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "Yeah."
\par 
\par "But  ..."
\par 
\par "Yeah."
\par 
\par "Feels a little sharky, too." I knew what he meant. This time the birds
\par radiated more than the sorrow that I had felt before. Although the
\par flock's choreography had been breathtaking, even exhilarating, and
\par although their amazing conspiracy of silence seemed to express and to
\par inspire an odd sort of reverence, something dangerous lay under their
\par performance, the same way that a sun-spangled blue sea could look so
\par totally sacred even while great whites churned in a feeding frenzy just
\par under the surface. This felt a little sharky.
\par 
\par Although the nighthawks had climbed out of sight, Bobby and I stood
\par staring at the constellation into which they had vanished, as if we were
\par in full-on early Spielberg, waiting for the mother ship to appear and
\par bathe us in white light only slightly less intense than God sheds.
\par 
\par "Saw it before, " I told him.
\par 
\par "Bogus."
\par 
\par "True."
\par 
\par "Insane."
\par 
\par "Maximum."
\par 
\par "When? "
\par 
\par "On my way here, " I said. "Just the other side of the park.
\par 
\par But the flock was smaller."
\par 
\par "What're they doing? "
\par 
\par "I don't know. But here they come again."
\par 
\par "I don't hear them."
\par 
\par "Me neither. Or see em. But they're coming." He hesitated, then slowly
\par nodded and said, "Yeah, " when he felt it, too.
\par 
\par Stars over stars under stars. A larger light that might have been Venus.
\par 
\par One, two, three closely grouped flares as small meteors hit the
\par atmosphere and were incinerated. A small winking red dot moving east to
\par west, perhaps an airliner sailing along the interface between our sea of
\par air and the airless sea between worlds.
\par 
\par I was almost prepared to question my instinct, when, at last, the flock
\par returned from the same part of the sky into which it had risen out of
\par sight. Incredibly, the birds swept down into the street and past us in a
\par helix, corkscrewing along Commissary Way, boring through the night in a
\par whirr of wings.
\par 
\par This exhibition, this incredible stunt, was so thrilling that inevitably
\par it inspired wonder, and in wonder is the seed of joy.
\par 
\par I felt my heart lift at this amazing sight, but my exhilaration was
\par constrained by the continuing perception of a wrongness in the birds'
\par behavior that was separate from the charming novelty of it.
\par 
\par Bobby must have felt the same way, because he couldn't sustain the brief
\par laugh of delight with which he first greeted the sight of the spiraling
\par flock. His smile dried out as his laugh withered, and he turned to stare
\par after the departing nighthawks with a cracking expression that was
\par becoming less grin than grimace.
\par 
\par Two blocks away, the birds twisted up into the sky, like the withdrawing
\par funnel of a fading tornado.
\par 
\par Their aerobatics had required strenuous effort, the beating of their
\par wings had been so furious that even as the drum like pounding
\par diminished, I could feel the reverberations of it in my ears, in my
\par heart, in my bones.
\par 
\par The birds soared out of sight once more, leaving us with just the
\par whisper of the onshore breeze.
\par 
\par "It's not over, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "No." Quicker than before, the birds returned. They didn't reappear from
\par the point at which they had vanished, instead, they came from high over
\par the park. We heard them before we saw them, and the sound that heralded
\par their approach was not the drumming of wings but an unearthly shrieking.
\par 
\par They had broken their vow of silence, exploded it. Screeching, chur
\par ring, whistling, screaking, shrilling, cricking, they hurtled down out
\par of the stars. Their tuneless skirling was sharp enough to make my ears
\par sting as though lanced, and the note of misery was so piercing that my
\par soul seemed to shrivel around the cold shank of this wounding sound.
\par 
\par Bobby didn't even begin to raise the shotgun.
\par 
\par I didn't reach for my pistol, either.
\par 
\par We both knew the birds weren't attacking. No anger resonated in their
\par cries, only a wretchedness, a desolation so deep and bleak that it was
\par beyond despair.
\par 
\par Plummeting behind this blood-freezing wail, the birds appeared.
\par 
\par They engaged in none of their previous aerobatics, forsaking even a
\par simple formation, swarming gracelessly. Only speed mattered to them now,
\par because speed alone served their purpose, and they dived, wings back,
\par using gravity like a slingshot.
\par 
\par With a purpose that neither Bobby nor I foresaw, they shrieked across
\par the park, across the street, and rocketed unchecked into the face of a
\par two-story building three doors from the movie theater in front of which
\par we stood. They hit the structure with such brutal force that the
\par pock-pock-pock of their bodies smashing against the stucco sounded like
\par relentless automatic-weapons fire, combined with their shrill cries,
\par this barrage nearly drowned out the brittle ringing of the shattered
\par window glass.
\par 
\par Horrified, sickened, I turned away from the carnage and leaned against
\par the Jeep.
\par 
\par Considering the speed of the flock's kamikaze descent, the hard rattle
\par of death could not have continued for more than seconds, but minutes
\par seemed to pass before the terrible noise ceased. The quiet that followed
\par was heavy with catastrophic import, like the hush in the wake of a bomb
\par blast.
\par 
\par I closed my eyes but opened them again when a replay of the flocks'
\par suicidal plunge was projected vividly onto the backs of my eyelids.
\par 
\par All of nature was on the brink. I had known that much for the past
\par month, since I'd learned what had happened in the hidden labs of Wyvern.
\par 
\par Now the perilous ledge on which the future stood seemed narrower than I
\par had thought, the height of the cliff far greater than it had seemed a
\par moment ago, and the rocks below more jagged than my worst imaginings.
\par 
\par With my eyes open, into my mind came a photographic memory of my
\par mother's face. So wise. So kind.
\par 
\par The image of her blurred. Everything around me blurred for a moment, the
\par street and the movie theater.
\par 
\par I took a shallow breath, which entered my chest with an ache, then a
\par deeper breath that hurt less, and I wiped my eyes with the back of one
\par jacket sleeve.
\par 
\par My heritage requires me to bear witness, and I can't shirk that
\par responsibility. The light of the sun is denied to me, but I must not
\par avoid the light of truth, which also burns but anneals rather than
\par destroys.
\par 
\par I turned to look at the silenced flock.
\par 
\par Hundreds of small birds littered the sidewalk. Only a few wings
\par shuddered feebly with rapidly fading life. Most of them had hit so hard
\par that their fragile skulls had shattered and their necks had broken on
\par impact.
\par 
\par Because they appeared to be ordinary nighthawks, I wondered what
\par internal change had swept through these birds. Although invisible to the
\par unassisted eye, the difference was evidently so substantive that they
\par believed continued existence to be intolerable.
\par 
\par Or perhaps their kamikaze flight had not been a conscious act.
\par 
\par Perhaps it had resulted from a deterioration of their directional
\par instincts or mass blindness, or dementia.
\par 
\par No. Remembering their elaborate aerobatics, I had to assume that the
\par change was more profound, more mysterious, and more disturbing than mere
\par physical dysfunction.
\par 
\par Beside me, the engine of the Jeep turned over, caught, roared, and then
\par idled as Bobby let up on the accelerator.
\par 
\par I hadn't been aware of him getting behind the steering wheel.
\par 
\par "Bro, " he said.
\par 
\par Although not directly related to the disappearance of Orson or to the
\par kidnapping of Jimmy Wing, the flock's self-destruction added urgency to
\par the already pressing need to find the dog and the boy.
\par 
\par For once in his life, Bobby appeared to feel the solvent of time passing
\par through him and swirling away, carrying with it some dissolved essence,
\par like water into a drain.
\par 
\par He said, "Let's cruise, " with a solemn expression in his eyes that
\par belied the laid-back tone of his voice and the casualness of his
\par language.
\par 
\par I climbed into the Jeep and yanked the door shut.
\par 
\par The shotgun was propped between the seats again.
\par 
\par Bobby switched on the headlights and pulled away from the curb.
\par 
\par As we approached the mounded birds, I saw that no wing fluttered any
\par longer, except from the ruffling touch of the gentle breeze.
\par 
\par Neither Bobby nor I had spoken of what we'd witnessed. No words seemed
\par adequate.
\par 
\par Passing the site of the carnage, he kept his eyes on the street ahead,
\par not glancing even once at the dead flock.
\par 
\par I, on the other hand, couldn't look away and turned to stare back after
\par we had passed.
\par 
\par In my mind's ear, the music came from a piano with only black keys,
\par jangling and discordant.
\par 
\par Finally I turned to face forward. We drove into the fearsome brightness
\par of the Jeep headlamps, but regardless of our speed, we remained always
\par in the dark, hopelessly chasing the light.
\par 
\par Dead Town could have passed for a neighborhood in Hell, where the
\par condemned were subjected not to fire and boiling oil but to the more
\par significant punishment of solitude and an eternity of quiet in which to
\par contemplate what might have been. As if we were engaged in a
\par supernatural rescue mission to extract two wrongfully damned souls from
\par Hades, Bobby and I searched the streets for any sign of my furry brother
\par or Lilly's son.
\par 
\par With a powerful handheld spotlight that Bobby plugged into the cigarette
\par lighter, I probed between houses lined up like tombstones.
\par 
\par Through cracked or partially broken-out windows, where the reflection of
\par the light glowed like a spirit face. Along bristling brown hedgerows.
\par 
\par Among dead shrubs from which leaped bony shadows.
\par 
\par Though the light was directed away from me, the backwash was great
\par enough to be troublesome. My eyes quickly grew tired, they felt
\par strained, grainy. I would have put on my sunglasses, which on some
\par occasions I wear even at night, but a pair of Ray-Bans sure as hell
\par wouldn't facilitate the search.
\par 
\par Cruising slowly, surveying the night, Bobby said, "What's wrong with
\par your face? "
\par 
\par "Sasha says nothing."
\par 
\par "She needs an emergency transfusion of good taste. What're you picking?"
\par 
\par "I'm not picking."
\par 
\par "Didn't your mom ever teach you not to pick at yourself? "
\par 
\par "I'm poking." While with my right hand I held the pistol-grip spotlight,
\par with my left I'd been unconsciously fingering the sore spot on my face,
\par which I had first discovered a little earlier in the night.
\par 
\par "You see a bruise here? " I asked, indicating the penny-size tenderness
\par on my left cheek.
\par 
\par "Not in this light."
\par 
\par "Sore."
\par 
\par "Well, you've been knocking around."
\par 
\par "This is the way it'll start."
\par 
\par "What? "
\par 
\par "Cancer."
\par 
\par "Probably a pimple."
\par 
\par "First a soreness, then a lesion, and then, because my skin has no
\par defense against it ... rapid metastasis."
\par 
\par "You're a one-man party, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "Just being realistic." Turning right into a new street, Bobby said,
\par "What good did being realistic ever do anyone? " More shabby bungalows.
\par 
\par More dead hedgerows.
\par 
\par "Got a headache, too, " I said.
\par 
\par "You're giving me a full-on skull-splitter."
\par 
\par "One day maybe I'll get a headache that never goes away, from
\par neurological damage caused by XP."
\par 
\par "Dude, you've got more psychosomatic symptoms than Scrooge Mcduck has
\par money."
\par 
\par "Thanks for the analysis, Doctor Bob. You know, you've never cut me any
\par slack in seventeen years."
\par 
\par "You never need any."
\par 
\par "Sometimes, " I said.
\par 
\par He drove in silence for half a block and then said, "You never bring me
\par flowers anymore."
\par 
\par "What? "
\par 
\par "You never tell me I'm pretty." I laughed in spite of myself. "Asshole."
\par 
\par "See? You're way cruel." Bobby stopped the Jeep in the middle of the
\par street.
\par 
\par I looked around alertly. "Something? "
\par 
\par "If I was wrapped in neoprene, man, I wouldn't have to stop, " he said,
\par neoprene meaning the wet suit that a surfer wears when the water temp is
\par too nipple for him to hit the waves in only a pair of swimming trunks.
\par 
\par During a long session in cold water, while sitting in the line waiting
\par for a set of glassy, pumping monoliths, surfers from time to time
\par relieve themselves right in their wet suits. The word for it is
\par urinophoria, that lovely warm sensation that lasts until the constant
\par but gradual flush of seawater rinses it away.
\par 
\par If surfing isn't the most romantic, glamorous sport ever, then I don't
\par know what is. Certainly not golf.
\par 
\par Bobby got out of the Jeep and stepped to the curb, with his back to me.
\par 
\par "I hope this bladder pressure doesn't mean I've got cancer."
\par 
\par "You already made your point, " I said.
\par 
\par "This bizarre urge to relieve myself. Man, it's ... it's mondo
\par malignant."
\par 
\par "Just hurry up."
\par 
\par "I probably held it too insanely long, and now I've got uric-acid
\par poisoning." I had switched off the spotlight. I put it down and picked
\par up the shotgun.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "My kidneys will probably implode, my hair'll fall out, my
\par nose'll drop off. I'm doomed."
\par 
\par "You are if you don't shut up."
\par 
\par "Even if I don't die, what wahine is going to want to date a bald,
\par noseless guy with imploded kidneys? " The engine noise, the headlights,
\par and the spotlight might have brought us unwanted attention if anyone or
\par anything hostile was in the neighborhood. The troop had hidden at the
\par sound of the Jeep when Bobby had first driven into Wyvern, but perhaps
\par they had done some reconnaissance since then, in which case they were
\par aware that we were only two and that even with guns we were not
\par necessarily a match for a horde of peevish primates.
\par 
\par Worse, maybe they realized that one of us was Christopher Snow, son of
\par Wisteria Snow, who perhaps was known to them as Wisteria von
\par Frankenstein.
\par 
\par Bobby zipped up and returned safely to the Jeep. "That's the first time
\par anyone's been prepared to lay down covering fire for me while I peed."
\par 
\par "De nada."
\par 
\par "You feeling better, bro? " He knew me well enough to understand that my
\par apparent attack of hypochondria was actually unexpressed anxiety for
\par Orson.
\par 
\par I said, "Sorry for acting like a wanker." Releasing the hand brake,
\par shifting the Jeep into drive, he said, "To wank is human, to forgive is
\par the essence of Bobbyness." As we rolled slowly forward, I put down the
\par shotgun and picked up the spotlight again. "We're not going to find them
\par like this."
\par 
\par "Better idea? " not entirely alien, worse, it was a disturbing hybrid of
\par the familiar and the unknown It seemed to be the wail of an animal, yet
\par it had a too-human quality, a forlorn note full of loss and yearning.
\par 
\par Bobby braked again. "Where? " I had already switched on the spotlight
\par and aimed it across the street, toward where I thought the scream had
\par originated.
\par 
\par The shadows of balusters and roof posts stretched to follow the beam of
\par light, creating the illusion of movement across the front porch of a
\par bungalow. The shadows of bare tree limbs crawled up a clapboard wall.
\par 
\par "Geek alert, " Bobby said, and pointed.
\par 
\par I swung the spotlight where he indicated, just in time to catch some
\par thing racing through tall grass and disappearing behind a long,
\par four-foot high boxwood hedge that separated the front lawns of four
\par bungalows from the street.
\par 
\par "What is it? " I asked.
\par 
\par "Maybe what I told you about."
\par 
\par "Big Head? "
\par 
\par "Big Head." During long hot months without water, the hedge had died,
\par and the quenching rains of the recent winter had not been able to revive
\par it.
\par 
\par Although not a lick of green could be seen, a dense snarl of brittle
\par branching remained, with wads of brown leaves lodged here and there like
\par bits of half-masticated meat.
\par 
\par Bobby kept the Jeep in the middle of the street but drove slowly
\par forward, parallel to the hedge.
\par 
\par Even stripped of new growth, the dead boxwood was so mature that its
\par spiny skeleton effectively screened the creature crouched beyond it.
\par 
\par I didn't think I was going to be able to pick out the beast at all, but
\par then I spotted it because, although it was a shade of brown similar to
\par the woody veil in front of it, the softer lines of its body contrasted
\par with the jagged patterns of the bare hedge. Through the interstices in
\par he many layers of boxwood bones, I fixed the beam on our quarry,
\par revealing no details but getting a glimpse of eye shine as green as that
\par of certain cats.
\par 
\par This thing was too big to be any cat other than a mountain lion.
\par 
\par It was no mountain lion.
\par 
\par Found, the creature bleated again and raced along the shielding dead
\par wood with such speed that I couldn't keep the light trained on it.
\par 
\par A break in the hedgerow allowed a walkway to connect a bungalow with the
\par street, but Big Heador Big Foot, or the wolf man, or the Loch Ness
\par monster in drag, or whatever the hell this was crossed the gap fast, an
\par Before I could respond, something screamed. The cry was eerie but
\par instant ahead of the light. I didn't get a look at anything but its
\par shaggy ass, and not even a clear view of that, though a clear view of
\par its ass might not have been either informative or gratifying.
\par 
\par All I had were vague impressions. The impression that it ran half erect
\par like a monkey, shoulders sloped forward and head low, the knuckles of
\par its hands almost dragging the ground. That it was a lot bigger than a
\par rhesus. That it might have been even taller than Bobby had guessed, and
\par that if it rose to its full height, it would be able to peer at us over
\par the top of the four-foot hedge and stick its tongue out at us.
\par 
\par I swept the spotlight back and forth but couldn't locate the critter
\par along the next section of boxwood.
\par 
\par "Running for it, " Bobby said, braking to a full stop, rising half out
\par of his seat, pointing.
\par 
\par When I shifted my focus beyond the hedgerow, I saw a shapeless figure
\par loping across the yard, away from the street, toward the corner of the
\par bungalow.
\par 
\par Even when I held the spotlight high, I couldn't get an angle on the
\par fast-moving beast, whose disappearing act was abetted by the intervening
\par branches of a laurel and by tall grass.
\par 
\par Bobby dropped back into his seat, swung toward the hedgerow, threw the
\par Jeep into four-wheel drive, and tramped on the accelerator.
\par 
\par "Geek chase, " he said.
\par 
\par Because Bobby lives for the moment and because he expects ultimately to
\par be mulched by something more immediate than melanoma, he maintains the
\par deepest tan this side of a skin-cancer ward. By contrast, his teeth and
\par his eyes glow as white as the plutonium-soaked bones of Chernobyl
\par wildlife, which usually make him look dashing and exotic and full of
\par Gypsy spirit, but which now made him look more than a little like a
\par grinning madman.
\par 
\par "Way stupid, " I protested.
\par 
\par "Geek, geek, geek chase, " he insisted, leaning into the steering wheel.
\par 
\par The Jeep jumped the curb, flashed under the low-hanging branches of two
\par flanking laurels, and crashed through the boxwood hard enough to rattle
\par the bottles of beer in the slush-filled cooler, spitting broken hedge
\par branches behind it. As we crossed the lawn, a raw, sweet, green odor
\par rose from the crushed grass under the tires, which was lush from the
\par winter rains.
\par 
\par The creature had disappeared around the side of the bungalow even as we
\par were blasting through the hedge.
\par 
\par Bobby went after it.
\par 
\par "This has nothing to do with Orson or Jimmy, " I shouted over the engine
\par roar.
\par 
\par "How do you know? " He was right. I didn't know. Maybe there was a
\par connection.
\par 
\par Anyway, we didn't have any better leads to follow.
\par 
\par As he swung the Jeep between two bungalows, he said, "Carpe noctem,
\par remember? " I had recently told him my new motto. Already, I regretted
\par having revealed it. I had the feeling that it was going to be quoted to
\par me, at opportune moments, until it had less appeal than a mutton
\par milkshake.
\par 
\par About fifteen feet separated the bungalows, and there were no shrubs in
\par this narrow sward. The headlights would have revealed the critter if it
\par was here, but it was gone.
\par 
\par This vanishment didn't give Bobby second thoughts. Instead, he pressed
\par harder on the accelerator.
\par 
\par We rocketed into the backyard in time to see our own private Sasquatch
\par as it sprang across a picket fence and disappeared into the next
\par property, once more revealing no more of itself than a fleeting glimpse
\par of its hirsute buttocks.
\par 
\par Bobby wasn't any more intimidated by the line of spindly wooden pickets
\par than he had been by the hedgerow. Speeding toward it, he laughed and
\par said, "Skeggin', " meaning having big-time fun, which most likely comes
\par from skeg, the name for the rudder like fin on the underside of a
\par surfboard, which allows you to steer and do cool maneuvers.
\par 
\par Although Bobby is laid back and tranquility-loving, ranking as high in
\par the annals of slackerhood as Saddam Hussein ranks in the Insane Dictator
\par Hall of Fame, he's another dude altogether, a huge macking tsunami, once
\par he's committed himself to a line of action. He will sit on a beach for
\par hours, studying wave conditions, looking for sets that will push him to
\par and maybe past his personal threshold, oblivious even to the passing
\par contents of bun-floss bikinis, so focused and patient that he makes one
\par of those Easter Island stone heads seem positively jittery, but when he
\par sees what he needs and paddles his board out to the lineup, he doesn't
\par wallow there like a buoy, he becomes a true raging slash master, ripping
\par the waves, domesticating even the hugest thunder crushers, going for it
\par so totally that if any shark mistook him for chum, he'd flip it upside
\par down and ride it like a longboard.
\par 
\par "Skeggin', my ass, " I said as we hit the fence.
\par 
\par Weathered white pickets exploded over the hood of the Jeep, rattled
\par across the windshield, clattered against the roll bar, and I was sure
\par that one of them would ricochet at precisely the right angle to skewer
\par one of my eyes and make brain shish kebab, but that didn't happen.
\par 
\par Then we were crossing the rear lawn of the house that faced out on the
\par next street in the grid.
\par 
\par The yard we had left behind was smooth, but this one was full of troughs
\par and mounds and chuckholes, over which we rollicked with such exuberance
\par that I had to clamp one hand on my cap to keep it from flying off.
\par 
\par In spite of the serious risk of biting all the way through my tongue if
\par we suddenly bottomed out too hard, I said, in a stutter worthy of Porky
\par Pig, "You see it? "
\par 
\par "On it! " he assured me, though the headlights were arcing up and down
\par so radically with the wildly bucking Jeep that I didn't believe he could
\par see anything smaller than the house around which he was steering us.
\par 
\par I'd switched off the spotlight, because I wasn't illuminating anything
\par except my knees and various galactic nebulae, and if I threw up in my
\par lap, I didn't care to scrutinize the mess under a high beam.
\par 
\par The terrain between bungalows was as rugged as the backyard, and the
\par ground in front of the house proved to be no better. If someone hadn't
\par been burying dead cows on this property, then the gophers must be as big
\par as Holsteins.
\par 
\par We rocked to a halt before reaching the street. There were no hedgerows
\par to hide behind, and the trunks of the Indian laurels weren't thick
\par enough to entirely conceal a bulimic super model, let alone Sasquatch.
\par 
\par I switched on the spotlight and swept it left and right along the
\par street. Deserted.
\par 
\par "I thought you were on it, " I said.
\par 
\par "Was."
\par 
\par "Now? "
\par 
\par "Not."
\par 
\par "So? "
\par 
\par "New plan, " he said.
\par 
\par "I'm waiting."
\par 
\par "You're the planning dude, " Bobby said, shifting the Jeep into park.
\par 
\par Another weird screamlike fingernails scraping on a chalkboard, the dying
\par wail of a cat, and the sob of a terrified child all woven together and
\par re-created on a malfunctioning synthesizer by a musician whacked on
\par crystal methbrought us out of our seats, not merely because it was eerie
\par enough to snap our veins like rubber bands, but because it came from
\par behind us.
\par 
\par I was not aware of pulling my legs up, swiveling, gripping the roll bar,
\par and standing on my seat. I must have done so, and with the swift grace
\par of an Olympic gymnast, because that was where I found myself as the
\par scream reached a crescendo and abruptly cut off.
\par 
\par Likewise, I wasn't consciously aware of Bobby grabbing the shotgun,
\par flinging open his door, and leaping out of the Jeep, but there he was,
\par holding the 12-gauge Mossberg, facing back the way we had come.
\par 
\par "Light, " he said.
\par 
\par The spotlight was still in my hand. I clicked it on even as he spoke.
\par 
\par No missing link loomed behind the Jeep.
\par 
\par The knee-deep grass swooned as a bare whisper of wind romanced it.
\par 
\par If any predator had been trying to squirm toward us, using the grass as
\par cover, it would have disturbed the courtly patterns drawn by the gentle
\par caress of the breeze, and it would have been easy to spot.
\par 
\par The bungalow was one of those that lacked a porch, fronted only by two
\par steps and a stoop, and the door was closed. The three windows were
\par intact, and no boogeyman glowered at us from behind any of those dusty
\par panes.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "It sounded right here."
\par 
\par "Like right under my butt." He had a solid grip on the shotgun.
\par 
\par Looking around at the night, as creeped out as I was by the deceptive
\par peacefulness of it, he said, "This sucks."
\par 
\par "It sucketh, " I agreed.
\par 
\par A look of high suspicion crimped his face, and he backed slowly away
\par from the Jeep.
\par 
\par I didn't know if he had glimpsed something under the vehicle or if he
\par was just operating on a hunch.
\par 
\par Dead Town was even more silent than its name implied. The faint breeze
\par was expressive but mute.
\par 
\par Still standing on the passenger seat, I glanced down along the side of
\par the Jeep, at the lazily undulating blades of grass. If some
\par foul-tempered freak erupted from beneath the vehicle, it could climb the
\par door and be at my neck before I would be able to locate either a
\par crucifix or an even halfway attractive necklace of garlic.
\par 
\par I needed only one hand for the spotlight. I slipped the Glock out of my
\par shoulder holster.
\par 
\par When Bobby had backed off three or four steps from the Jeep, he knelt on
\par one knee.
\par 
\par To throw a little light where he needed to peek, I held the spotlight
\par out of the Jeep and directed the beam toward the undercarriage on my
\par side, hoping to backlight whatever might be hiding there.
\par 
\par In the classic, wary half-kneel of the experienced monster hunter, Bobby
\par tilted his head and slowly lowered it to peer under the Jeep.
\par 
\par "Nada, " he said.
\par 
\par "Zip? "
\par 
\par "Zero."
\par 
\par "I was stoked, " I said.
\par 
\par "I was pumped."
\par 
\par "Ready to kick ass." We were Lying.
\par 
\par As Bobby rose to his feet, another scream tore the night, the same
\par scraping-fingernails-dying-cat-sobbing-child-malfunctioning-synthesizer
\par wail that had made us jump like lightning-struck cats only moments ago.
\par 
\par This time I had a better fix on the source of the scream, and I shifted
\par my attention to the bungalow roof, where the spotlight revealed Big
\par Head. There was no question now, This was the creature that Bobby had
\par called Big Head, because its head was undeniably big.
\par 
\par It was crouched at one end of the roof, right on the peak, maybe sixteen
\par feet above us, like Kong on the Empire State Building but recreated in a
\par direct-to-video flick that lacked the budget for a larger set, fighter
\par planes, or even a damsel in peril. With its arms covering its face as

\par though the sight of us hideous human beings frightened and disgusted it,
\par Big Head studied Bobby and me with radiant green eyes, which we could
\par see through the gap between its crossed arms.
\par 
\par Even though the beast's face was covered, I could discern that the head
\par was disproportionately large for the body. I also suspected that it was
\par malformed. Malformed not just by human standards but surely by the
\par standards of monkey beauty, as well.
\par 
\par I couldn't determine whether it had been spawned primarily from a rhesus
\par or from another primate. It was covered in matted fur not unlike that of
\par a rhesus, with long arms and hunched shoulders that were definitely
\par simian, although it appeared to be stronger than any mere monkey, as
\par formidable as a gorilla though otherwise nothing like one.
\par 
\par You wouldn't have required my hyperactive imagination to wonder if, in
\par certain aspects of the creature, you were glimpsing a spectrum of
\par species so broad that the genetic sampling had extended beyond the
\par warm-blooded classes of vertebrates to include reptilian trait sand
\par worse.
\par 
\par "Extreme geek-a-mo, " Bobby said as he edged back to the Jeep.
\par 
\par "Major geekster, " I agreed.
\par 
\par On the roof, Big Head turned its face skyward, as if studying the stars,
\par still concealing its features behind the mask of its arms.
\par 
\par Suddenly I found myself identifying with this creature. Its posture, its
\par very attitude, told me that it was covering its face out of
\par embarrassment or shame, that it didn't want us to see what it looked
\par like because it knew we would find it repulsive, which meant that it
\par must feel repulsive. Perhaps I was able to interpret its behavior and
\par intuit its feelings because I'd lived twenty-eight years as an outsider.
\par 
\par I'd never felt the need to hide my face, but as a small child I'd known
\par the pain of being an outcast when cruel kids called me Nightcrawler,
\par Dracula, Ghoul Boy, and worse.
\par 
\par Echoing in my mind was my own voice from a moment ago major geeksterand I
\par winced. Our pursuit of this creature reminded me of the way bullies had
\par chased me when I'd been a boy. Even when I had learned to defend myself
\par and fight back, they were sometimes not dissuaded, willing to risk a
\par drubbing merely for the chance to harass and torment me. Of course, with
\par Orson and Jimmy in peril, Bobby and I had good reason to follow any
\par lead. We hadn't been motivated by meanness, but what troubled me, in
\par retrospect, was the strange dark wild delight with which we had mounted
\par the chase.
\par 
\par The stargazer shifted its attention from the heavens and peered down at
\par us again, still hiding its face.
\par 
\par I directed the spotlight onto the asphalt shingles near the creature's
\par feet, letting the backwash illuminate it rather than directly assaulting
\par it with the beam.
\par 
\par My discretion didn't encourage Big Head to lower its arms. It did,
\par however, issue a sound unlike the previous screams, one at odds with its
\par fierce appearance, a cross between the cooing of pigeons and the more
\par guttural purr of a cat.
\par 
\par Bobby tore his attention away from the beast long enough to conduct a
\par three-hundred-sixty-degree sweep of the neighborhood around us.
\par 
\par I, too, had been stricken by the nape-crinkling feeling that Big Head
\par might be distracting us from a more immediate threat.
\par 
\par "Super placid, " Bobby reported.
\par 
\par "For now." Big Head's cooing-purring grew louder and then became a
\par fluent series of exotic sounds, simple and rhythmic and patterned, but
\par not like mere animal noises. These were modulated groups of syllables,
\par full of inflection, delivered with urgency and emotion, and it was no
\par stretch to think of them as words. If this speech wasn't complex enough
\par to be defined as a language in the sense that English, French, or
\par Spanish is a language, it was at least a primitive attempt to convey
\par meaning, a language in the making.
\par 
\par "What's it want? " Bobby asked.
\par 
\par His question, whether he realized it or not, arose from the perception
\par that the creature was not just chattering at us but speaking to us.
\par 
\par "No clue, " I said.
\par 
\par Big Head's voice was neither deep nor menacing. Although as strange as a
\par bagpipe employed by a reggae band, it was pitched like that of a child
\par of nine or ten, not entirely human but halfway there, edgy, eerily
\par lilting without being musical, with a pleading note that aroused
\par sympathy in spite of the source.
\par 
\par "Poor sonofabitch, " I said, as it fell silent again.
\par 
\par "You serious? "
\par 
\par "Sorrowful damn thing." Bobby studied this Quasimodo in search of a bell
\par tower and finally allowed, "Maybe."
\par 
\par "Certified sorrowful."
\par 
\par "You want to go up on the roof, give it a big hug? "
\par 
\par "Later."
\par 
\par "I'll turn on the Jeep's radio. You can go up there and ask it to dance,
\par make it feel attractive."
\par 
\par "I'll pity it from afar."
\par 
\par "Typical man. You talk a good game of compassion, but you can't play
\par it."
\par 
\par "I'm afraid of rejection."
\par 
\par "You're afraid of commitment." Turning away from us, Big Head dropped
\par its arms from its face.
\par 
\par On all fours, straddling the ridgeline, it raced across the bungalow
\par roof.
\par 
\par "Keep the light on it! " Bobby said.
\par 
\par I tried, but the creature moved quicker than a striking snake.
\par 
\par I expected it to launch itself off the roof and straight at us or
\par disappear across the peak and down the far slope, but it traveled the
\par length of the ridgeline and sprang without hesitation into the
\par fifteen-foot gap between this bungalow and the next. With catlike poise,
\par it landed atop the neighboring house, where it reared onto its hind
\par legs, cast a green-eyed glance back at us, then dropped low, sprinted
\par from gable to gable, leaped to a third roof, crossed over that
\par ridgeline, and disappeared onto the back of the house.
\par 
\par During its swift flight, captured repeatedly by the spotlight beam but
\par for only an instant at a time, the creature's face had been less than
\par half revealed in kaleidoscopic glimpses. I was left with impressions
\par rather than clear images. The back of its skull seemed to be elongated,
\par and like a cowl, its forehead appeared to overhang its large sunken
\par eyes. The lumpish face might have been distorted by excrescences of
\par bone. To an even greater degree than the head was disproportionate to
\par the body, the mouth appeared too large for the head. Cracking its
\par steam-shovel jaws, the creature revealed an abundance of sharp curved
\par teeth more wicked looking than Jack the Ripper's cutlery collection.
\par 
\par Bobby gave me a chance to reconsider my assessment of Big Head.
\par 
\par "Sorrowful? "
\par 
\par "I still think so."
\par 
\par "You're nothing but cardiac muscle, dude."
\par 
\par "Lub-dub."
\par 
\par "Anything moves that fast, teeth that bigits diet isn't just fruits,
\par vegetables, and whole grains." I switched off the handheld spot.
\par 
\par Although the beam had been directed away from me, I was groggy from a
\par surfeit of light. I had not seen much, yet I'd seen too much.
\par 
\par Neither of us suggested going on another Big Head hunt. Surfers don't
\par trade bite for bite with sharks, when we see enough fins, we get out of
\par the water. Considering this creature's speed and agility, we wouldn't
\par have a chance of catching it, anyway, not on foot or in the Jeep, and
\par even if we did find and corner it, we weren't prepared to capture or
\par kill it.
\par 
\par "Supposing we don't just want to sit here sucking down beer and trying
\par to forget we saw anything, " Bobby wondered as he got behind the wheel.
\par 
\par "Suppose."
\par 
\par "Then what was that thing? " Settling into the passenger seat again,
\par working my feet around the beer cooler, I said, "Could be an offspring
\par of the original troop that escaped from the lab. There might be bigger,
\par stranger mutations occurring in the new generation."
\par 
\par "We've seen beaucoup offspring before. And you saw a bunch earlier
\par tonight, right? "
\par 
\par "Yeah."
\par 
\par "They look like normal monkeys."
\par 
\par "Yeah."
\par 
\par "This was awesomely not normal." I knew now what Big Head was, where it
\par had come from, but I wasn't ready to tell Bobby quite yet.
\par 
\par Instead, I said, "This is the street where they trapped me in the
\par bungalow." Assessing the sameness of the houses around us, he said, "You
\par can tell one of these streets from another? "
\par 
\par "Mostly."
\par 
\par "Then you're spending a seriously psychotic amount of time here, bro."
\par 
\par "Nothing hot on TV."
\par 
\par "Try stamp collecting."
\par 
\par "Couldn't handle the excitement." As Bobby drove off the rutted lawn and
\par over the curb, into the street, I holstered the 9-millimeter Glock and
\par told him to turn right.
\par 
\par Two blocks later, I said, "Stop. Here. This is where they were spinning
\par the manhole cover."
\par 
\par "If they take over the world, they'll probably make that an Olympic
\par event."
\par 
\par "At least it's more exciting than synchronized swimming." As I got out
\par of the Jeep, he said, "Where you going? "
\par 
\par "Pull forward and park with one wheel on the manhole. I don't think
\par they're still here.
\par 
\par They've moved on. But just in case, I don't want them coming up behind
\par us while we're inside."
\par 
\par "Inside what? " I walked in front of the vehicle and directed Bobby
\par until he stopped with the right front tire squarely atop the manhole
\par cover.
\par 
\par He switched off the engine and, with the shotgun, got out of the Jeep.
\par 
\par The weak onshore breeze grew a little stronger, and the clouds in the
\par west, which had swallowed the moon, were gradually expanding eastward,
\par devouring the stars.
\par 
\par "Inside what? " Bobby repeated.
\par 
\par I pointed to the bungalow where I'd squeezed into the broom closet to
\par hide from the troop. "I want to see what was rotting in the kitchen."
\par 
\par "Want to? "
\par 
\par "Need to, " I said, heading toward the bungalow.
\par 
\par "Perverse, " he said, falling in beside me.
\par 
\par "The troop was fascinated."
\par 
\par "We want to lower ourselves to monkey level? "
\par 
\par "Maybe this is important." He said, "My belly's full of kibby and beer."
\par 
\par "So? "
\par 
\par "Just a friendly warning, bro. Right now I've got a low puke threshold."
\par 
\par The front door of the bungalow was open, as I had left it.
\par 
\par The living room still smelled of dust, mildew, dry rot, and mice, in
\par addition, there was now a lingering odor of mangy monkey.
\par 
\par My flashlight, which I'd not dared to use here before, revealed a series
\par of three-inch-long, yellowish-white cocoons fixed in the angle where the
\par back wall met the ceiling, home to developing moths or butterflies, or
\par perhaps egg cases spun by an exceptionally fertile spider. Lighter
\par rectangles on the discolored walls marked where pictures had once hung.
\par 
\par The plaster wasn't as fissured as you would expect in a house that was
\par more than six decades old and that had been abandoned for nearly two
\par years, but a web of fine cracks gave the walls the appearance of
\par eggshells beginning to give way to hatching entities.
\par 
\par On the floor, in a corner, was a child's red sock. It couldn't have
\par anything to do with Jimmy, because it was caked with dust and had been
\par here for a long time.
\par 
\par As we crossed to the dining-room door, Bobby said, "Got a new board
\par yesterday."
\par 
\par "The world's ending, you go shopping."
\par 
\par "Friends at Hobie made it for me."
\par 
\par "Hot? " I asked as I led him into the dining room.
\par 
\par "Haven't ridden it yet." In one corner, at the ceiling, was a cluster of
\par cocoons similar to those in the previous room. They were also big, each
\par three to four inches long and, at the widest point, approximately the
\par diameter of plump frankfurters.
\par 
\par Outside of this bungalow, I had never seen anything quite like these
\par silken constructs. I moved directly under them, fixing them with the
\par light.
\par 
\par "Not uncreepy, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par Within a couple of the cocoons were dark shapes, curled like question
\par marks, but they were so heavily swaddled in flossy filaments that I
\par could make out no details of them.
\par 
\par "See anything moving? " I asked.
\par 
\par "No."
\par 
\par "Me neither."
\par 
\par "Might be dead."
\par 
\par "Yeah, " I said, though I wasn't convinced. "Just some big, dead, half
\par made moths."
\par 
\par "Moths? "
\par 
\par "What else? " I asked.
\par 
\par "Huge."
\par 
\par "Maybe new moths. A new, bigger species. Becoming."
\par 
\par "Bugs?
\par 
\par Becoming? "
\par 
\par "If people, dogs, birds, monkeys ... why not bugs? " Frowning, Bobby
\par thought about that. "Probably wouldn't be smart to buy any more wool
\par sweaters." A cold quiver of nausea wound through me as I realized that
\par I'd been in these rooms in absolute darkness, unaware of the fat cocoons
\par overhead.
\par 
\par I'm not entirely sure why I found this thought so deeply disturbing.
\par 
\par After all, it wasn't likely that I'd been in danger of being pinned to
\par the wall by some bug and imprisoned in a suffocating cocoon of my own.
\par 
\par On the other hand, this was Wyvern, so perhaps I'd been in precisely
\par such danger.
\par 
\par Partly, the nausea was caused by the stench wafting from the kitchen.
\par 
\par I'd forgotten how fiercely ripe it was.
\par 
\par Holding the shotgun in his right hand, covering his nose and mouth with
\par his left, Bobby said, "Tell me the stink doesn't get worse than this."
\par 
\par "It doesn't get worse than this."
\par 
\par "But it does."
\par 
\par "Oh, yeah."
\par 
\par "Let's be quick." Just as I moved the flashlight away from the cocoons,
\par I thought I saw one of the dark, curled forms writhe inside its silken
\par sac.
\par 
\par I focused the beam on the cluster again.
\par 
\par None of the mystery bugs moved.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "Jumpy? "
\par 
\par "Aren't you? "
\par 
\par "As a toad." We ventured into the kitchen, where the linoleum cracked
\par and popped underfoot and where the reek of decomposition was as thick in
\par the air as a cloud of vaporized, rancid cooking oil in the kitchen of a
\par greasy-spoon restaurant.
\par 
\par Before searching for the source of the stench, I directed the light
\par overhead. The upper cabinets hung under a soffit, and in the angle where
\par the soffit met the ceiling, there were more cocoons than in the previous
\par two rooms combined. Thirty or forty. Most were in the three-to-four-inch
\par range, though a few were half again as large.
\par 
\par Another twenty were nestled around the boxy fluorescent fixture in the
\par center of the ceiling.
\par 
\par "Not good, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par I lowered the flashlight and at once discovered the source of the
\par putrescent smell. A dead man was sprawled on the floor in front of the
\par sink.
\par 
\par At first I thought he must have been killed by whatever made the
\par cocoons. I expected to see a wad of spun silk in his open mouth,
\par yellowish-white sacs bulging from his ears, wispy filaments trailing
\par from his nose.
\par 
\par The cocoons, however, had nothing to do with it. This was a suicide.
\par 
\par The revolver lay on his abdomen, where recoil and death spasm had tossed
\par it, and the swollen index finger of his right hand was still hooked
\par through the trigger guard. Judging by the wound in his throat, he'd put
\par the muzzle under his chin and fired one round straight up into his
\par brain.
\par 
\par Entering the lightless kitchen earlier in the night, I had gone directly
\par to the back door, where I'd halted with my hand on the knob when a
\par monkey shadow leaped up the glass. Approaching the door and backing away
\par from it, I must have come within inches of stepping on this corpse.
\par 
\par "This what you expected? " Bobby asked, voice muffled by the hand with
\par which he was trying to filter the sickening odor.
\par 
\par "No." I didn't know what I'd expected, but I was sure this wasn't the
\par worst thing that had been lurking in the deepest cellars of my
\par imagination. When I'd first seen the cadaver, I'd been relieved as though
\par subconsciously I had envisioned a specific and far worse discovery than
\par this, an ultimate horror that now I would not have to confront.
\par 
\par Dressed in generic white athletic shoes, chinos, and a red-and-green
\par plaid shirt, the dead man was flat on his back, his left arm at his
\par side, the palm turned up as though seeking alms. He appeared to have
\par been fat, because his clothes were stretched taut over parts of his
\par body, but this was the result of swelling from bacterial-gas formation.
\par 
\par His face was bloated, opaque eyes bulging from the sockets, swollen
\par tongue protruding between grimacing lips and bared teeth. Purge fluid
\par produced by decomposition and often mistaken for blood by the
\par inexperienced was draining from the mouth and nostrils. Pale green with
\par areas of greenish black, the flesh was also marbleized by hemolysis of
\par veins and arteries.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "Must've been here what? a week, two weeks? "
\par 
\par "Not that long. Maybe three or four days." The weather had been mild for
\par the past week, neither warm nor chilly, which would have allowed
\par decomposition to proceed at a predictable pace.
\par 
\par If the man had been dead much longer than four days, the flesh would
\par have been not pale green but green-black, with patches that were
\par entirely black. Vesicle formation, skin slippage, and hair slippage had
\par occurred but were not yet extreme, enabling me to make an educated guess
\par as to the date of the suicide.
\par 
\par "Still walking around with Forensic Pathology in your head, " Bobby
\par said.
\par 
\par "Still." My education in death dated to the year I was fourteen. By the
\par time they enter their teens, most boys have a morbid fascination with
\par gruesome comic books, horror novels, and monster movies.
\par 
\par Adolescent males measure progress toward manhood by their ability to
\par tolerate the worst gross-outs, those sights and ideas that test courage,
\par the balance of the mind, and the gag reflex. In those days, Bobby and I
\par were fans of H. P. Love craft, of the biologically moist art of H. R.
\par Giger, and of low-budget Mexican horror movies full of gore.
\par 
\par We outgrew this fascination to an extent that we didn't outgrow other
\par aspects of our adolescence, but in those days I explored death further
\par than did Bobby, progressing from bad movies to the study of increasingly
\par clinical texts. I learned the history and techniques of mummification
\par and embalming, the lurid details of epidemics like the Black Death that
\par killed half of Europe between 1348 and 1350.
\par 
\par I realize now that by immersing myself in the study of death, I had
\par hoped to accept my mortality. Long before adolescence, I knew that each
\par of us is sand in an hourglass, steadily running out of the upper globe
\par into the stillness of the globe below, and that in my particular
\par hourglass, the neck between these spheres is wider than in most, the
\par fall of sand faster. This was a heavy truth to have been carried by one
\par so young, but by becoming a graveyard scholar, I meant to rob death of
\par its terror.
\par 
\par In recognition of the steep mortality rate of people with XP, my special
\par parents had raised me to play rather than work, to have fun, to regard
\par the future not with anxiety but with a sense of mystery.
\par 
\par From them, I learned to trust God, to believe I was born for a purpose,
\par to be joyful. Consequently, Mom and Dad were disturbed by my obsession
\par with death, but because they were academics with a belief in the
\par liberating power of knowledge, they didn't hamper my pursuit of the
\par subject.
\par 
\par Indeed, I relied on Dad to acquire the book that completed my death
\par studies, Forensic Pathology, published by Elsevier in a series of thick
\par volumes written for law-enforcement professionals involved in criminal
\par investigations- This grisly tome, generously illustrated with victim
\par photographs that will chill the hottest heart and instill pity in all
\par but the coldest, is not on the shelves of most libraries and is not
\par knowingly provided to children. At fourteen, with a life expectancy
\par thought to be at that time no greater than twenty, I could have argued
\par that I was not a child but already past middle age.
\par 
\par Forensic Pathology covers the myriad ways we perish, disease, death by
\par fire, death by freezing, by drowning, by electrocution, by poisoning, by
\par starvation, by suffocation, by strangulation, death from gunshot wounds,
\par from blunt-instrument trauma, from pointed and sharp-edged weapons. By
\par the time I finished this book, I'd outgrown my fascination with death .
\par 
\par .. and my fear of it. The photos depicting the indignity of
\par decomposition proved that the qualities I cherish in the people I
\par love their wit, humor, courage, loyalty, faith, compassion, mercyare not
\par ultimately the work of the flesh. These things outlast the body, they
\par live on in the memories of family and friends, live on forever by
\par inspiring others to be kind and loving. Humor, faith, courage,
\par compassion these don't rot and vanish, they are impervious to bacteria,
\par stronger than time or gravity, they have their genesis in something less
\par fragile than blood and bone, in a soul that endures.
\par 
\par Though I believe that I'll live beyond this life and that those I love
\par will be where I go next, I do still fear that they will depart ahead of
\par me, leaving me alone. Sometimes I wake from a nightmare in which I'm the
\par sole living person on earth, I lie in bed, trembling, afraid to call out
\par for Sasha or to use the telephone, fearful that no one will answer and
\par that the dream will have become reality.
\par 
\par Now, here, in the bungalow kitchen, Bobby said, "Hard to believe he
\par could be this far gone in three or four days."
\par 
\par "Exposed to the elements, complete skeletonization can occur in two
\par weeks. Eleven or twelve days under the right circumstances."
\par 
\par "So at any time  ... I'm two weeks from being bones."
\par 
\par "It's a quashing thought, isn't it?"
\par 
\par "Major quash." Having seen more than enough of the dead man, I directed
\par the flashlight at the items that he evidently had arranged on the floor
\par around himself before pulling the trigger. A California driver's license
\par with photo identification. A paperback Bible. An ordinary white business
\par envelope on which nothing was written or typed.
\par 
\par Four snapshots in a neatly ordered row. A small ruby-red glass of the
\par type that usually contains votive candles, though no candle was in this
\par one.
\par 
\par Learning to live with nausea, trying to will myself to recall the scent
\par of roses, I crouched for a closer look at the driver's-license photo.
\par 
\par In spite of the decomposition, the cadaver's face had sufficient points
\par of similarity to the face on the license to convince me that they were
\par the same.
\par 
\par "Leland Anthony Delacroix, " I said.
\par 
\par "Don't know him."
\par 
\par "Thirty-five years old."
\par 
\par "Not anymore."
\par 
\par "Address in Monterey."
\par 
\par "Why'd he come here to die? " Bobby wondered.
\par 
\par In hope of finding an answer, I turned the light on the four snapshots.
\par 
\par The first showed a pretty blonde of about thirty, wearing white shorts
\par and a bright yellow blouse, standing on a marina dock against a backdrop
\par of blue sky, blue water, and sailboats. Her gamine smile was appealing.
\par 
\par The second evidently had been taken on a different day, in a different
\par place. This same woman, now in a polka-dot blouse, and Leland Delacroix
\par were sitting side by side at a redwood picnic table. His arm was around
\par her shoulders, and she was smiling at him as he faced the camera.
\par 
\par Delacroix appeared to be happy, and the blonde looked like a woman in
\par love.
\par 
\par "His wife, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "Maybe." Ir I Precisely because the subjects were so visibly happy in
\par these shots, the effect of the photos was inexpressibly sad.
\par 
\par "They're standing in front of one of these bungalows, " Bobby noted,
\par indicating the background of the fourth snapshot.
\par 
\par "Not one of them. This one."
\par 
\par "How can you tell? "
\par 
\par "Gut feeling."
\par 
\par "So they lived here once? "
\par 
\par "And he came back to die."
\par 
\par "Why? "
\par 
\par "Maybe ... this was the last place he was ever happy." Bobby said,
\par "Which also means this was where it all started going wrong."
\par 
\par "Not just for them. For all of us."
\par 
\par "Where do you think the wife and kids are? "
\par 
\par "Dead."
\par 
\par "Gut feeling again? "
\par 
\par "Yeah."
\par 
\par "Me too." Something glittered inside the small red votive-candle glass.
\par 
\par I prodded it with the flashlight, tipping it over. A woman's wedding and
\par engagement rings spilled out onto the linoleum.
\par 
\par These items were all Delacroix had left of his beloved wife, other than
\par a few photographs. Perhaps I was reaching too far for meaning, but I
\par thought he had chosen the votive-candle holder to contain the rings
\par "She's wearing a wedding ring in the picture." because this was a way of
\par saying that the woman and the marriage were The third snapshot featured
\par two children, a boy of about six and an sacred to him.
\par 
\par elfin girl who could have been no older than four. In swimsuits, they
\par looked again at the photograph that had been taken in front of the stood
\par beside an inflatable wading pool, mugging for the camera.
\par 
\par bungalow The elfin girl's wide smile, with one missing tooth, was a
\par heart breaker.
\par 
\par "Jesus, " I said softly.
\par 
\par "Let's split, bro." I didn't want to touch these objects the deceased
\par had arranged around himself, but the contents of the envelope might be
\par important.
\par 
\par As far as I could see, it wasn't contaminated with blood or other
\par tissue.
\par 
\par When I picked it up, I could discern by touch that it didn't hold any
\par paper docu "Wanted to die surrounded by memories of his family, " Bobby
\par suggested.
\par 
\par The fourth snapshot seemed to support that interpretation. The blonde,
\par the children, and Delacroix stood on a green lawn, the kids in front of
\par their parents, posed for a portrait. The occasion must have been
\par special. Even more radiant here than in the other photos, the woman wore
\par a summery dress and high heels. The little girl flashed a gaptoothed
\par smile, clearly delighted by her outfit of white shoes, white socks, and
\par a frilly pink dress flaring over petticoats. So freshly scrubbed and
\par combed that you could almost smell the soap, the boy wore a blue suit,
\par white shirt, and red bow tie. In an army uniform and an officer's caphis
\par rank not easy to determine, perhaps a captain delacroix was the
\par definition of pride.
\par 
\par ments.
\par 
\par "Audiotape cassette, " I told Bobby.
\par 
\par "A little death music? "
\par 
\par "Probably his last testament." In ordinary times, before a slow-motion
\par Armageddon was unleashed in Wyvern's labs, I would have called the cops
\par to report finding a dead body. I would not have removed anything from
\par the scene, even though the death had every appearance of being a suicide
\par rather than a homicide.
\par 
\par These are not ordinary times.
\par 
\par As I rose to my feet, I slipped the envelope and tapeinto an inside
\par jacket pocket.
\par 
\par Bobby's attention snapped to the ceiling, and he took a two-hand grip on
\par the shotgun.
\par 
\par I followed his gaze with the flashlight.
\par 
\par The cocoons appeared unchanged, so I said, "What? "
\par 
\par "Did you hear something? "
\par 
\par "Like? " He listened. Finally he said, "Must've been in my head."
\par 
\par "What did you hear? "
\par 
\par "Me, " he said cryptically, and without further explanation, he moved
\par toward the dining-room door.
\par 
\par I felt bad about leaving the late Leland Delacroix here, especially as I
\par wasn't sure that I would report his suicide to the authorities even
\par anonymously. On the other hand, this was where he had wanted to be.
\par 
\par On the way across the dining room, Bobby said, "This baby's eleven feet
\par long." Overhead, the clustered cocoons remained quiescent.
\par 
\par "What baby? " I asked.
\par 
\par "My new surfboard." Even a longboard is rarely more than nine feet.
\par 
\par An eleven-foot monster with cool airbrush art was usually a wall hanger,
\par produced to lend atmosphere to a theme restaurant.
\par 
\par "Decor? " I asked. I "No. It's a tandem board." In the living room, the
\par cocoons were as we had last seen them.
\par 
\par Bobby cast wary glances upward as he went to the front door.
\par 
\par "Twenty-five inches wide, five inches thick, " he said.
\par 
\par Maneuvering a surfboard that size, even with two hundred fifty or three
\par hundred pounds aboard, required talent, coordination, and belief in a
\par benign, ordered universe.
\par 
\par "Tandem? " I said, switching off the flashlight as we crossed the front
\par porch. "Since when have you traded wave thrashing for cab driving?"
\par 
\par "Since never. But a little tandem might be sweet." If he was going to do
\par some tandem riding, he must have a partner in mind, a particular wahine.
\par 
\par Yet the only woman he loves is a surfer and painter named Pia Klick, who
\par has been meditating in Waimea Bay, Hawaii, trying to find herself, for
\par almost three years, since leaving Bobby's bed one night for a walk on
\par the beach. Bobby didn't know she was lost until she called from an
\par airliner on her way to Waimea to say the search for herself had begun.
\par 
\par She is as kind, gentle, and intelligent as anyone I have ever known, a
\par talented and successful artist. Yet she believes that Waimea Bay is her
\par spiritual home not Oskaloosa, Kansas, where she was born and raised, not
\par Moonlight Bay, where she fell in love with Bobbyand lately she claims
\par that she is the incarnation of Kaha Huna, the goddess of surfing.
\par 
\par These were strange times even before the catastrophe in the Wyvern labs.
\par 
\par We stopped at the foot of the porch steps and took slow deep breaths to
\par purge ourselves of the reek of death, which seemed to have permeated us
\par as though it were a marinade in which we had been steeping. We also took
\par advantage of the moment to survey the night before venturing farther
\par into it, looking for Big Head, the troop, or a new threat that even I,
\par in full hyperdrive of the imagination, could not envision.
\par 
\par Rolling off the loom of the Pacific, two strata of cross-woven clouds,
\par as twilled as gabardine, now dressed more than half the sky.
\par 
\par "Could get a boat, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "What kind of boat? "
\par 
\par "We could afford whatever."
\par 
\par "And? "
\par 
\par "Stay at sea."
\par 
\par "Extreme solution, bro."
\par 
\par "Sail by day, party by night. Drop anchor off deserted beaches, catch
\par some tasty tropical waves."
\par 
\par "You, me, Sasha, and Orson? "
\par 
\par "Pick up Pia at Waimea Bay."
\par 
\par "Kaha Huna."
\par 
\par "Won't hurt to have a sea goddess aboard, " he said.
\par 
\par "Fuel? "
\par 
\par "Sail."
\par 
\par "Food? "
\par 
\par "Fish."
\par 
\par "Fish can carry the retrovirus, too."
\par 
\par "Then find a remote island."
\par 
\par "How remote? "
\par 
\par "The sphincter of nowhere."
\par 
\par "And? "
\par 
\par "Grow our own food."
\par 
\par "Farmer Bob."
\par 
\par "Minus the bib overalls."
\par 
\par "Shit kicker chic."
\par 
\par "Self-sufficiency. It's possible, " he insisted.
\par 
\par "So is killing a grizzly bear with a spear. But you get in a pit with a
\par spear, put the bear in there with some tortillas, and that bear is going
\par to have Bobby tacos for dinner."
\par 
\par "Not if I take a class in bear killing."
\par 
\par "So before you set sail, you're going to spend four years at a good
\par college of agriculture? " Bobby sucked in a breath deep enough to
\par ventilate his upper intestine, and blew it out. "All I know is, I don't
\par want to end up like Delacroix."
\par 
\par "Every one ever born into this world ends up like Delacroix, " I said.
\par 
\par "But it's not an end. It's just an exit. To what comes next." He was
\par silent a moment. Then, "I'm not sure I believe in that like you do,
\par Chris."
\par 
\par "So you believe you can ride through the end of the world by growing
\par potatoes and broccoli on an uncharted tropical island somewhere east of
\par Bora Bora, where there's both insanely fertile soil and mondo glassy
\par surf but you find it hard to believe in an afterlife?
\par 
\par " He shrugged. "Most days, it's easier to believe in broccoli than in
\par God."
\par 
\par "Not for me. I hate broccoli." Bobby turned toward the bungalow. His
\par face crinkled as if he could still detect a trace of decomposing
\par Delacroix. "This here is one evil piece of real estate, bro."
\par 
\par Imaginary mites crawled between the layers of my skin as I remembered
\par the pendulant cocoons, and I had to agree with him, "Bad mojo."
\par 
\par "Looks super-burnable."
\par 
\par "Whatever they are, I doubt the cocoons are only in this one bungalow."
\par 
\par In their sameness and orderly placement, the houses of Dead Town
\par suddenly seemed less like man-made structures and more like the mounds
\par of termite colonies or hives.
\par 
\par "Burn this one for starters, " Bobby insisted.
\par 
\par Hissing in the knee-high grass, ticking-clicking in the dead twigs of
\par the withered shrubbery, buzzing and rasping in the leaves of the Indian
\par laurels, the breeze mimicked a multitude of insect sounds, as though
\par mocking us, as though predicting the inevitability of a future inhabited
\par solely by six-, eight-, and hundred-legged beings.
\par 
\par "Okay, " I said. "We'll burn the place."
\par 
\par "Too bad we don't have a nuke."
\par 
\par "But not now. It'll draw cops and firemen-from town, and we don't want
\par them in our way. Besides, there's not a lot of the night left.
\par 
\par We've got to get moving." As we followed the walkway toward the street,
\par he said, "Where? " I had no idea how to search more effectively for
\par Jimmy Wing and Orson in the vastness of Fort Wyvern, so I didn't respond
\par to his question.
\par 
\par The answer was tucked under the passenger-side windshield wiper on the
\par Jeep. I saw it as I was rounding the front of the vehicle. It looked
\par like a parking ticket.
\par 
\par I plucked the item from under the rubber blade and switched on the
\par flashlight to examine it.
\par 
\par When I got into the passenger seat, Bobby leaned over to study my
\par discovery. "Who put it there? "
\par 
\par "Not Delacroix, " I said, surveying the night, once more overcome by the
\par feeling that I was being watched.
\par 
\par I was holding a four-inch-square, laminated security badge designed to
\par be pinned to a shirt or to a coat lapel. The photograph on the right
\par half was of Delacroix, although this was a different picture from the
\par one on the driver's license we had found beside his body. He was
\par wide-eyed in this shot, startled, as though he had foreseen his suicide
\par in the flash of the camera. Under the photo was the name Leland Anthony
\par Delacroix. Listed on the left of the badge were his age, height, weight,
\par eye color, hair color, and social security number. At the top were the
\par words initialize on entry. Printed across the entire face of the badge,
\par in a three dimensional hologram that did not obscure the photograph or
\par the information under it, were three transparent, pale-blue capital
\par letters, DOD.
\par 
\par "Department of Defense, " I said, because my mom had possessed a DOD
\par security clearance, although I'd never seen a badge like this in her
\par possession.
\par 
\par " Initialize on entry, " Bobby said thoughtfully. "Bet there's a
\par microchip implanted in this." He's computer literate, but I never will
\par be. I have no need for a computer, and with my biological clock ticking
\par faster than yours, I have no time for one. Besides, while wearing
\par heavy-duty sunglasses, I can't easily read a monitor. Sitting for long
\par sessions in front of a screen, you are bathe in low-level UV radiation
\par no more dangerous to you than a spring rain, because of my
\par susceptibility to cumulative damage, however, exposure to those
\par emissions is liable to transform me into one giant lumpy melanoma of
\par such peculiar squishy dimensions that I'll never be able to find clothes
\par that are both comfortable and stylish.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "When he enters the facility, they initialize the microchip
\par in the badge, you know? "
\par 
\par "No."
\par 
\par "Initialize clear the memory on the microchip. Then every time he passes
\par through a doorway, maybe the chip in the badge responds to microwave
\par transmitters in the threshold, recording where he went and how long he
\par stayed in each place. Then when he leaves, the data is downloaded into
\par his file."
\par 
\par "You creep me out when you talk computer."
\par 
\par "I'm still the same full-on jerk-off, bro."
\par 
\par "I get evil-twin vibes."
\par 
\par "There's just one Bobby, " he assured me.
\par 
\par I glanced at the bungalow where we had found Delacroix, half expecting
\par to see eerie lights beyond the windows, frenzied bug-wing shadows
\par flitting up the walls, and a shambling cadaver crossing the porch.
\par 
\par Snapping a finger against the badge, I said, "Tracking every step he
\par makes even after they let him through the front doorthat's  maximum
\par paranoid security."
\par 
\par "This must've been on the floor beside the corpse with the other stuff.
\par 
\par Somebody went in the bungalow ahead of us, took it, and put it here.
\par 
\par Why? " The answer was to be found in the line at the bottom of the
\par badge.
\par 
\par Project Clearance, MT.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "You think this ID got him into the labs where they were
\par doing these genetic experiments, the very place where the shit hit the
\par fan? "
\par 
\par "Maybe. MT. Mystery Train? " Bobby glanced at the words embroidered on
\par my cap, then at the badge again. "Nancy Drew would be proud." I switched
\par off the flashlight. "I think I know where he wants us to go."
\par 
\par "Where who wants us to go? "
\par 
\par "Whoever left this under the wiper."
\par 
\par "Which is who? "
\par 
\par "I don't have "U the answers, bro."
\par 
\par "Yet you're positive there's an afterlife, " he said as he started the
\par engine.
\par 
\par "The big answers I have. It's just some of the little ones that elude
\par me."
\par 
\par "Okay, where are we going? "
\par 
\par "The egg room."
\par 
\par "So now we're in a Batman movie, and you're the Riddler? "
\par 
\par "It's not in Dead Town.
\par 
\par It's in a hangar on the north side of the base."
\par 
\par "Egg room."
\par 
\par "You'll see."
\par 
\par "He's not our friend, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "He who? "
\par 
\par "Whoever left that badge, bro, he's no friend of ours. We don't have
\par friends in this place."
\par 
\par "I'm not so sure of that." As he released the hand brake and shifted
\par into drive, he said, "Could be a trap."
\par 
\par "Probably not. He could've disabled the Jeep and been laying for us
\par right here when we came out of the bungalow, if all he wanted was to
\par waste us." Driving out of Dead Town, Bobby said, "Still could be a
\par trap."
\par 
\par "Okay, maybe."
\par 
\par "That doesn't bother you like it does me, cause you've got God and an
\par afterlife and choirs of angels and palaces of gold in the sky, but all
\par I've got is broccoli."
\par 
\par "Better think about that, " I agreed.
\par 
\par I consulted my watch. Dawn was no more than two hours away.
\par 
\par As dark and mottled as a strange fungus, spongy masses of clouds had
\par spread far into the east, leaving only a narrow band of clean sky in
\par which the bright stars looked cold and even farther away than they
\par actually were.
\par 
\par For more than two years, Wisteria Jane Snow's gene-swapping retrovirus
\par had been loose in the wider world beyond the laboratory. During that
\par time, the destruction of the natural order had progressed almost as
\par lazily as big fluffy snowflakes drifting out of a windless winter sky,
\par but I suspected that at last the blizzard was at hand, the avalanche.
\par 
\par The hangar rises like a temple to some alien god with a wrathful
\par disposition, surrounded on three sides by smaller service buildings that
\par could pass for the humble dwellings of monks and novitiates. It is as
\par long and wide as a football field, seven stories high, with no windows
\par other than a line of narrow clerestory panes just below the spring line
\par of the arched Quonset-style roof.
\par 
\par Bobby parked in front of a pair of doors at one end of the building,
\par switching off the engine and headlights.
\par 
\par Each door is twenty feet wide and forty high. Set in upper and lower
\par tracks, they were motor-driven, but the power to operate them was
\par disconnected long ago.
\par 
\par The daunting mass of the building and the enormous steel doors make the
\par place as forbidding as the fortress that might stand at the gap between
\par this world and Hell to keep the demons from getting out.
\par 
\par Taking a flashlight from under his seat, Bobby said, "This place is the
\par egg room? "
\par 
\par "Under this place."
\par 
\par "I don't like the look of it."
\par 
\par "I'm not asking you to move in and set up housekeeping." Getting out of
\par the Jeep, he said, "Are we near the airfield? " Fort Wyvern, which was
\par established as both a training and a support facility, boasts runways
\par that can accommodate large jets and those giant C-13 transports that are
\par capable of carrying trucks, assault vehicles, and tanks.
\par 
\par "Airfield's half a mile that way, " I said, pointing. "They didn't
\par service aircraft here. Unless maybe choppers, but I don't think that's
\par what this place was about, either."
\par 
\par "What was it about? "
\par 
\par "Don't know."
\par 
\par "Maybe it's where they held bingo games." In spite of the negative aura
\par around the building, in spite of the fact that we had perhaps been
\par induced here by persons unknown and possibly hostile, I didn't feel as
\par though we were in imminent danger.
\par 
\par Anyway, Bobby's shotgun would stop any assailant a lot faster than my
\par 9-millimeter. Leaving the Glock holstered, carrying only the flashlight,
\par I led the way to a man-size door set in one of the larger portals.
\par 
\par "Big surf coming, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "Guess or fact? "
\par 
\par "Fact." Bobby earns a living by analyzing weather-satellite data and
\par other information to predict surf conditions worldwide, with a high
\par degree of accuracy. His enterprise, Surf cast, provides information daily
\par to tens of thousands of surfers through subscriptions to a bulletin sent
\par by fax or E-mail, and through a 900 number that draws more than eight
\par hundred thousand calls a year.
\par 
\par Because his lifestyle is simple and his corporate offices are funky, no
\par one in Moonlight Bay realizes that he is a multimillionaire and the
\par richest man in town. If they knew, it would matter more to them than it
\par does to Bobby. To him, wealth is having every day free to surf,
\par everything else that money can buy is no more than an extra spoon of
\par salsa on the enchilada.
\par 
\par "Gonna be minimum ten-foot corduroy to the horizon, " Bobby promised.
\par 
\par "Some sets of twelve, pumping all day and night, every board head's
\par dream."
\par 
\par "Don't like this onshore flow, " I said, raising a hand in the breeze.
\par 
\par "I'm talking the day after tomorrow. Strictly offshore by then.
\par 
\par Gonna be waves so scooped out, you'll feel like the last pickle in the
\par barrel." The hollow channel in a breaking wave, scooped to the max by a
\par perfect offshore wind, is called a barrel, and surfers live to ride
\par these tubes all the way through and out the collapsing end before being
\par clamshelled.
\par 
\par You don't get them every day. They are a gift, sacred, and when they
\par come, you ride them until you're surfed out, until your legs are rubber
\par and you can't stop the muscles in your stomach from fluttering, and then
\par you flop on the sand and wait to see if you'll expire like a beached
\par fish or, instead, go scarf down two burritos and a bowl of corn chips.
\par 
\par "Twelve-footers, " I said wistfully as I opened the man-size entrance in
\par the forty-foot-high door. "Double overhead corduroy."
\par 
\par "Churning out of a storm north of the Marques as Islands."
\par 
\par "Something to live for, " I said as I crossed the threshold into the
\par hangar.
\par 
\par "That's why I mention it, bro. Boardhead motivation to get out of here
\par alive." Even two flashlights could not illuminate this cavernous space
\par on the main floor of the hangar, but we could see the overhead tracks on
\par which a mobile crane long since dismantled and hauled away had traveled
\par from one end of the building to the other. The massiveness of the steel
\par supports under these rails indicated that the crane had lifted objects
\par of tremendous weight.
\par 
\par We stepped over inch-thick steel angle plates, still anchored to the oil
\par and chemical-stained concrete, upon which heavy machinery had once been
\par mounted. Deep and curiously shaped wells in the floor, which must have
\par housed hydraulic mechanisms, forced us to follow an indirect path to the
\par far end of the hangar.
\par 
\par Bobby cautiously checked out each hole as though he expected something
\par to be crouching in it, waiting to spring up and bite off our heads.
\par 
\par As our flashlight beams swept over the crane tracks and their supporting
\par structures, complex shadows and flares of light were flung off steel
\par rails and beams, thrown to the walls and to the high curved ceiling,
\par where they formed faint, constantly changing hieroglyphics that
\par flickered ahead of us but quickly vanished, unreadable, into the
\par darkness that crept at our heels.
\par 
\par "Sharky, " Bobby said softly.
\par 
\par "Just wait." Like him, I spoke only slightly above a whisper, not so
\par much for fear of being overheard as because this place has the same
\par subduing effect as do churches, hospitals, and funeral parlors.
\par 
\par "You been here alone? "
\par 
\par "No. Always with Orson."
\par 
\par "I'd expect him to have more sense." I led him to an empty elevator
\par shaft and a wide set of stairs in the southwest corner of the hangar.
\par 
\par As in the warehouse where I'd encountered the ve ve rats and the thug
\par with the two-by-four, access to the floors below had surely been
\par concealed. The vast majority of the personnel who had worked in the
\par hangar good men and women who had served their country well and with
\par pride must have been oblivious of the infernal regions under their feet.
\par 
\par The false walls or the devices that had concealed entrance to the lower
\par floors had been stripped away during deconstruction. Although the
\par stairhead door was removed, a steel jamb was left untouched at the upper
\par landing.
\par 
\par Past the threshold, our flashlights revealed dead pill bugs on the
\par concrete steps, some crushed and some as whole and round as buckshot.
\par 
\par There were also the impressions of shoes and paws in the dust.
\par 
\par These overlaid tracks were both ascending and descending.
\par 
\par "Me and Orson, " I said, identifying the prints. "From previous visits."
\par 
\par "What's below? "
\par 
\par "Three subterranean levels, each bigger than the hangar itself."
\par 
\par "Massive."
\par 
\par "Mucho."
\par 
\par "What did they do down there? "
\par 
\par "Bad stuff."
\par 
\par "Don't get so technical on me." The maze of corridors and rooms under
\par the hangar has been stripped to the bare concrete. Even the
\par air-filtration, plumbing, and electrical systems have been torn out,
\par every length of duct, every pipe, every wire and switch. Many structures
\par in Wyvern remain untouched by salvagers.
\par 
\par Usually, wherever salvage was pursued, the operation was conducted with
\par an eye for the most valuable items that could be removed with the least
\par effort. The hallways and rooms under this hangar, however, were scraped
\par out so thoroughly that you might suspect this was a crime scene from
\par which the guilty made a Herculean effort to eradicate every possible
\par clue.
\par 
\par As we descended the stairs side by side, a flat metallic echo of my
\par voice bounced immediately back to me at some points, while at other
\par places the walls absorbed my words as effectively as the acoustical
\par material that lines the broadcasting booth from which Sasha spins night
\par music at KBAY.
\par 
\par I said, "They scoured away virtually every trace of what they were doing
\par here every trace but one and I don't think they were just concerned about
\par protecting national security. I think ... it's just a feeling, but
\par judging by the way they totally gutted these three floors, I sense they
\par were afraid of what happened here ... but not just afraid. Ashamed of
\par it, too."
\par 
\par "Were these some of the genetic labs? "
\par 
\par "Can't have been. That requires absolute biological isolation."
\par 
\par "So? "
\par 
\par "There would be decontamination chambers everywhere between suites of
\par labs, at every elevator entrance, at every exit from the stairwell.
\par 
\par Those spaces would still be identifiable for what they were, even after
\par everything was torn out of them."
\par 
\par "You have a knack for this detective crap, " Bobby said as we reached
\par the bottom of the second flight of steps and kept going.
\par 
\par , "Awesomely smooth deductive reasoning, " I admitted.
\par 
\par "Maybe I could be your Watson."
\par 
\par "Nancy Drew didn't work with Watson.
\par 
\par That was Holmes."
\par 
\par "Who was Nancy's right-hand dude? " Bobby wondered.
\par 
\par "Don't think she had one. Nancy was a lone wolfette."
\par 
\par "One tough bitch, huh? "
\par 
\par "That's me, " I said. "There's only one room down here that might have
\par been a decon chamber ... and it's full-on weird.
\par 
\par You'll see.
\par 
\par " We didn't speak further as we proceeded to the deepest of the three
\par subterranean levels. The only sounds were the soft scrape of our rubber
\par shoe soles on the concrete and the crunch of dead pill bugs.
\par 
\par In spite of the pistol-grip shotgun he carried, Bobby's relaxed demeanor
\par and the easy grace with which he descended the stairs would have
\par convinced anyone else that he was carefree. To some degree, he was
\par enjoying himself. Bobby pretty much always enjoys himself, in all but
\par the most extreme situations. But I'd known him so long that I and perhaps
\par only I could tell that he was not, at this moment, free of care.
\par 
\par If he was humming a song in his mind, it was moodier than a Jimmy
\par Buffett tune.
\par 
\par Until a month ago, I hadn't been aware that Bobby Hallowayhuck Finn
\par without the angst could be either rattled or spooked. Recent events had
\par revealed that even this natural-born Zen master's heart rate could
\par occasionally exceed fifty-eight beats per minute.
\par 
\par I wasn't surprised by his edginess, because the stairwell was
\par sufficiently cheerless and oppressive to give the heebiejeebies to a
\par Prozac-popping nun with an attitude as sweet as marzipan. Concrete
\par ceiling, concrete walls, concrete steps. An iron pipe, painted black and
\par fixed to one wall, served as a handrail. The dense air itself seemed to
\par be turning to concrete, for it was cold, thick, and dry with the scent
\par of lime that leached from the walls. Every surface absorbed more light
\par than it reflected, and so in spite of our two flashlights, we wound
\par downward in gloom, like medieval monks on our way to say prayers for the
\par souls of dead brethren in the catacombs under a monastery.
\par 
\par The atmosphere would have been improved even by a single sign featuring
\par a skull and crossbones above huge red letters warning of deadly levels
\par of radioactivity. Or at least some gaily arranged rat bones.
\par 
\par The final basement in this facility where no dust has yet settled and no
\par pill bugs have ventured has a peculiar floor plan, beginning with a wide
\par corridor, in the form of an elongated oval, that extends around the
\par entire perimeter, rather like a racetrack. A series of rooms, of
\par different widths but identical depths, open off one side of this
\par corridor occupying the infield of the track and through some of them you
\par can reach a second oval corridor, which is concentric with the first,
\par not as wide or as long as the first, it is nonetheless enormous. This
\par smaller racetrack rings a single central chamber, the egg room.
\par 
\par you can enter the innermost sanctum. This transitional space is a
\par ten-foot-square chamber accessed through a circular portal five feet in
\par diameter. Inside this cubicle, to the left, another circular portal of
\par the same size leads into the egg room. I believe these two openings were
\par once fitted with formidable steel hatches, like those in the bulkheads
\par between watertight compartments in a submarine or like bank-vault doors,
\par and that this connecting module was, in fact, an airlock.
\par 
\par Although I am certain that these were not biological-research labs, one
\par of the functions of the airlock might have been to prevent bacteria,
\par spores, dust, and other contaminants from being carried into or out of
\par the chamber that I call the egg room. Perhaps those personnel going to
\par and from that inner sanctum were subjected to powerful sprays of
\par sterilizing solution as well as to microbe-killing spectrums of
\par ultraviolet radiation.
\par 
\par My hunch, however, is that the egg room was pressurized and that this
\par airlock served the same purpose as one aboard a spaceship. Or perhaps it
\par functioned as a decompression chamber of the type deep-sea divers resort
\par to when at risk of the bends.
\par 
\par In any event, this transitional chamber was designed either to prevent
\par something from getting into the egg room or to prevent something from
\par getting out.
\par 
\par Standing in the airlock with Bobby, I trained my flashlight on the
\par raised, curved threshold of the inner portal and swept it around the
\par entire rim of this aperture to reveal the thickness of the egg-room
\par wall, five feet of poured-in-place, steel-reinforced concrete.
\par 
\par The entryway is so deep, in fact, that it is essentially a
\par five-foot-long tunnel.
\par 
\par Bobby whistled softly. "Bunker architecture."
\par 
\par "No question, it's a containment vessel. Meant to restrain something."
\par 
\par "Like what? " I shrugged. "Sometimes gifts are left for me here."
\par 
\par "Gifts? You found that cap here, right? Mystery Train? "
\par 
\par "Yeah. It was on the floor, dead center of the egg room. I don't think I
\par found it, exactly. I think it was left there to be found, which is
\par different. And on another night, while I was in the next room, someone
\par left a photograph of my mother here in the airlock."
\par 
\par "Airlock? "
\par 
\par "Doesn't it seem like one? " He nodded. "So who left the photo? "
\par 
\par "I don't know. But Orson was with me at the time, and he didn't realize
\par someone had entered this space behind us."
\par 
\par "And he's got the nose of noses." Warily, Bobby directed his flashlight
\par through the first circular hatchway, into the corridor along which we
\par had just come. It was still deserted.
\par 
\par I went through the inner portal, the short tunnel, crouching because
\par only someone under five feet could pass this way without stooping.
\par 
\par Bobby followed me into the egg room, and for the first time in our
\par seventeen years of friendship, I saw him stricken with awe. He turned
\par slowly in a circle, sweeping his flashlight across the walls, and though
\par he tried to speak, he couldn't initially produce a sound.
\par 
\par This ovoid chamber is a hundred twenty feet long and slightly less than
\par sixty feet in diameter at its widest point, tapering toward each end.
\par 
\par The walls, ceiling, and floor are curved to form a single continuous
\par plane, so you seem to be standing in the empty shell of an enormous egg.
\par 
\par All surfaces are coated in a milky, vaguely golden, translucent
\par substance that, judging by the profile around the entry hatchway, is
\par nearly three inches thick and is bonded so securely to the concrete that
\par the two appear to be fused.
\par 
\par The beams of our flashlights shimmered over this highly polished
\par coating, but they also penetrated the exotic material, quivering and
\par flickering to the depths of it, flaring off whorls of glittering golden
\par dust that were suspended like miniature galaxies within. The substance
\par was highly refractive, but light did not shatter through it in hard
\par prismatic lines as it might through crystal, rather, buttery bright
\par currents, as warm and sinuous as candle flames seduced by a draft,
\par flowed and rippled through the thick, glossy surface plating, imparting
\par to it the appearance of a liquid, purling away from us into the farther,
\par darker corners of the room, there to dissipate like pulses of heat
\par lightning behind summer thunderheads. Gazing down at the floor, I could
\par almost believe that I was standing on a pool of pale-amber oil.
\par 
\par Marveling at the unearthly beauty of this spectacle, Bobby walked
\par farther into the room.
\par 
\par Although this lustrous material appears to be as slick as wet porcelain,
\par it is not at all slippery. In fact, at times but not always the floor
\par seems to grip at your feet, as if it is gluey or exerts a mild magnetic
\par attraction even on objects that contain no iron.
\par 
\par "Strike it, " I said softly.
\par 
\par My words spiraled along the walls and ceiling and floor, and a cascade
\par of whispery echoes returned to my ears from more than one direction.
\par 
\par Bobby blinked at me.
\par 
\par I "Go ahead. Go on. With the barrel of the shotgun, " I prompted.
\par 

\par "Strike it."
\par 
\par "It's glass, " Bobby protested.
\par 
\par The extended sibilant at the end of his second word returned to us in a
\par wash of echoes as susurrant as gently foaming surf.
\par 
\par "If it's glass, it's not breakable." Hesitantly, he gave the floor near
\par his feet a gentle tap with the muzzle of the shotgun.
\par 
\par A quiet ringing, like chimes, seemed to arise simultaneously from every
\par corner of the huge chamber, then faded into a silence that was curiously
\par pregnant with suspense, as if the bells had announced the approach of
\par some power or person of great import.
\par 
\par "Harder, " I said.
\par 
\par When he rapped the steel barrel harder against the floor, the ringing
\par was louder and of a different character, like that of tubular bells,
\par euphonious, charming, yet as strange as any music that might be
\par performed on a world at some far end of the universe.
\par 
\par As the sound drained into another suspenseful silence, Bobby squatted in
\par order to smooth one hand across the floor where he had rapped the
\par shotgun barrel.
\par 
\par "Not chipped." I said, "You can bang on it with a hammer, scrape at it
\par with a file, chop at it with an ice pick, and you won't leave the
\par slightest scratch."
\par 
\par "You tried all that? "
\par 
\par "And a hand drill."
\par 
\par "You're a destructive imp."
\par 
\par "It runs in my family." Pressing his hand to the floor at a few
\par different points around him, Bobby said, "It's slightly warm." Even on
\par hot summer nights, the deep concrete structures of Fort Wyvern are as
\par cool as caverns, cool enough to serve as wine cellars, and the chill
\par sinks deeper into your bones the longer you haunt these places.
\par 
\par All other surfaces within these warrens, other than those in this ovoid
\par room, are cold to the touch.
\par 
\par "The stuff is always warm, " I said, "yet the room itself isn't warm, as
\par if the heat doesn't translate to the air. And I don't see how this
\par material could retain heat more than eighteen months after they
\par abandoned this place."
\par 
\par "You can almost feel ... an energy in it."
\par 
\par "There's no electrical power here, no gas. No furnaces, no boilers, no
\par generators, no machinery. All stripped away."
\par 
\par Bobby rose from a squat and walked deeper into the chamber, playing his
\par flashlight over the floor, walls, and ceiling.
\par 
\par Even with two flashlights and the unusually high refractivity of the
\par mysterious material, shadows ruled the room. Tracers, blooms,
\par girandoles, pinwheels, lady ferns, and fireflies of light swarmed across
\par the curving surfaces, mostly in shades of gold and yellow but some red
\par and others sapphire, fading to oblivion in far dark corners, like
\par fireworks licked up and swallowed by a night sky, dazzling but
\par illuminating little.
\par 
\par Bobby said wonderingly, "It's as big as a concert hall."
\par 
\par "Not really.
\par 
\par But it seems even bigger than it is because of how every surface curves
\par away from you." As I spoke, a change occurred in the acoustics of the
\par chamber.
\par 
\par The whispery echoes of my words faded away, swiftly became inaudible,
\par and then my words themselves diminished in volume. The air felt as if it
\par had thickened, transmitting sound less efficiently than before.
\par 
\par "What's happening? " Bobby asked, and his voice, too, sounded
\par suppressed, muffled, as though he were speaking from the other end of a
\par bad telephone connection.
\par 
\par "I don't know." Although I raised my voice almost to a shout, it
\par remained muffled, precisely as loud as when I'd spoken in a normal tone.
\par 
\par I would have thought I was imagining the increased density of the air if
\par I hadn't suddenly begun experiencing difficulty breathing.
\par 
\par Although not suffocating, I was afflicted severely enough to have to
\par concentrate to draw and expel breath. I was swallowing reflexively with
\par each inhalation, the air was virtually a liquid that I had to force
\par down.
\par 
\par Indeed, I could feel it sliding along my throat like a drink of cold
\par water. Each shallow breath felt heavy in my chest, as if it had more
\par substance than ordinary air, as though my lungs were filling with fluid,
\par and the moment I completed each inhalation, I was overwhelmed by a
\par frantic urge to get this stuff out, to eject it, convinced that I was
\par drowning in it, but each exhalation had to be forced, almost as if I
\par were regurgitating.
\par 
\par Pressure.
\par 
\par In spite of my rising panic, I remained clearheaded enough to figure out
\par that the air was not being alchemized into a liquid but that, instead,
\par the air pressure was drastically increasing, as if the depth of the
\par earth's atmosphere above us were doubling, tripling, and pushing down on
\par us with crushing force. My eardrums fluttered, my sinuses began to
\par throb, I felt phantom fingertips pressing hard against my eyeballs, and
\par at the end of each inhalation, my nostrils pinched shut.
\par 
\par My knees began to quiver and then buckle. My shoulders bent under an
\par invisible weight. Straight as plumb bobs, my arms were hanging at my
\par sides. My hands could no longer grip the flashlight, and it clattered to
\par the floor at my feet. It bounced silently on the glassy surface, for now
\par there was no sound whatsoever, not even the flutter of my eardrums or
\par the thud of my own heart.
\par 
\par Abruptly, all returned to normal.
\par 
\par The pressure lifted in an instant.
\par 
\par I heard myself gasping for air. Bobby was gasping, too.
\par 
\par He had dropped his flashlight but had managed to hold tight to the
\par shotgun.
\par 
\par "Shit! " he said explosively.
\par 
\par "Yeah."
\par 
\par "Shit."
\par 
\par "Yeah."
\par 
\par "What was that? "
\par 
\par "Don't know."
\par 
\par "Ever happen before? "
\par 
\par "No."
\par 
\par "Shit."
\par 
\par "Yeah, " I said, reveling in the ease with which I could draw cool, deep
\par breaths.
\par 
\par Though our flashlights were at rest on the floor, an increasing number
\par of Roman candles and pinwheels and serpents and sparklers and spirals of
\par light spread across the floor and up the walls.
\par 
\par "This place isn't shut down, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "But it is. You saw."
\par 
\par "Nothing's what it seems in Wyvern, " he said, quoting me.
\par 
\par "Every room we passed, every hallway stripped, abandoned."
\par 
\par "What about the two floors above this? "
\par 
\par "Just bare rooms."
\par 
\par "And there's nothing below? "
\par 
\par "No."
\par 
\par "There's something."
\par 
\par "Not that I've found.
\par 
\par " We picked up our flashlights, and as the beams moved across the floors
\par and walls, the flamboyant eruptions of light in the deep glassy surface
\par multiplied threefold, fourfold, a dazzling profusion of fiery blooms. We
\par might have been in a Fourth of July extravaganza, suspended from a hot
\par air balloon, with barrages of rockets bursting around us, whiz-bangs and
\par cracker bonbons and fountains and fizgigs, but all silent, all marvelous
\par glistering light and no bang, yet so reminiscent of Independence Day
\par displays that you could almost smell the saltpeter and the sulfur and
\par the charcoal, almost hear a stirring John Philip Sousa march, almost
\par taste hot dogs with mustard and chopped onions.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "Something's still happening."
\par 
\par "Split? "
\par 
\par "Wait." He studied the ceaselessly changing and increasingly colorful
\par patterns of light as though they held a meaning as explicit as that in a
\par paragraph of prose on a printed page, if only he could learn to read
\par them.
\par 
\par Although I doubted that the astonishingly luminous refractive bursts
\par were casting off any more UV rays than the flashlight beams that
\par produced them, I was not accustomed to such brightness. Radiant whorls
\par and drizzles and rivulets streamed across my exposed face and hands, a
\par storm of scintillant tattoos, and even if this rain of light was washing
\par a little death into me, the spectacle was irresistible, exhilarating. My
\par heart was racing, powered partly by fear but mostly by wonder.
\par 
\par Then I saw the door.
\par 
\par I was turning, so enthralled by the carnival of light around me that my
\par gaze traveled past the door, distracted by the pyrotechnics, before I
\par realized what I had seen. Massive, five feet in diameter, of
\par matte-finish steel surrounded by a polished-steel architrave, It was
\par similar to what you would expect to see at the entrance to a bank vault,
\par and no doubt it established an airtight seal.
\par 
\par Startled, I swung back toward the door but it was gone. Through a
\par pandemonium of gazelle-quick lights and pursuing shadows, I saw that the
\par circular hole in the wall was as it had been when we entered through it,
\par open, with a dark concrete tunnel beyond, leading to what had once been
\par an airlock.
\par 
\par I took a couple of steps toward the opening before I realized that Bobby
\par was speaking to me. As I turned toward him, I glimpsed the door again,
\par this time from the corner of my eye. But when I looked directly at the
\par damn thing, it wasn't there.
\par 
\par "What's happening? " I asked nervously.
\par 
\par Bobby had extinguished his flashlight. He pointed at mine.
\par 
\par "Douse it." I did as he asked.
\par 
\par The fireworks in the glassy surface of the room should have at once
\par vanished into absolute darkness. Instead, colorful star shells and
\par chrysanthemums and glittering pinwheels continued to arise within this
\par magical material, swarmed around the chamber, casting off a farrago of
\par lights and shadows, and then faded away as new eruptions replaced them.
\par 
\par "It's running by itself, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "Running? "
\par 
\par "The process."
\par 
\par "What process? "
\par 
\par "The room, the machine, the process, whatever it is."
\par 
\par "It can't be running by itself, " I insisted, in full-on denial of what
\par was happening around me.
\par 
\par "The beam energy? " he wondered.
\par 
\par "What? "
\par 
\par "The flashlight beams? "
\par 
\par "Can you be any more obscure? "
\par 
\par "Way more, bro. But I mean, that's what must've powered it up.
\par 
\par The energy in the flashlight beams." I shook my head. "Doesn't make
\par sense. That's almost no energy at all."
\par 
\par "This stuff soaked in the light, " he insisted, sliding one foot back
\par and forth on the radiant floor, "spun it into more power, used what it
\par absorbed to generate more energy."
\par 
\par "How? "
\par 
\par "Somehow."
\par 
\par "That's not science."
\par 
\par "I've heard worse on Star Trek."
\par 
\par "It's sorcery."
\par 
\par "Science or sorcery, it's real." Even if what Bobby said was trueand
\par obviously there was at least some truth in it the phenomenon was not
\par perpetually self-sustaining.
\par 
\par The number of bright eruptions began to decline, as did both the
\par richness of the colors and the intensity of the lights.
\par 
\par My mouth had gone so dry that I needed to work up some saliva before I
\par could say, "Why didn't this happen before? "
\par 
\par "Were you ever here with two flashlights? "
\par 
\par "I'm a one-flashlight guy."
\par 
\par "So maybe there's a critical mass, a critical amount of energy input,
\par needed to start it."
\par 
\par "Critical mass is two lousy flashlights? "
\par 
\par "Maybe."
\par 
\par "Bobby Einstein." With my concern not in the least allayed by the
\par subsidence of the light show, I looked toward the exit. "Did you see
\par that door?"
\par 
\par "What door? "
\par 
\par "Totally massive vault, like a blast door in a nuclear-missile silo."
\par 
\par "Are you feeling that beer? "
\par 
\par "It was there and not there."
\par 
\par "The door? "
\par 
\par "Yeah."
\par 
\par "This isn't a haunted house, bro."
\par 
\par "Maybe it's a haunted laboratory."
\par 
\par I was surprised that the word haunted felt so right and true, resonating
\par loudly in the tuning fork of instinct. This wasn't the requisite
\par decaying house of many gables and creaking floorboards and inexplicable
\par cold drafts, but I sensed unseen presences nonetheless, malevolent
\par spirits pressing against an invisible membrane between my world and
\par theirs, the air of expectancy preceding the imminent materialization of
\par a hateful and violent entity.
\par 
\par "The door was there and not there, " I insisted.
\par 
\par "It's almost a Zen koan. What's the sound of one hand clapping?
\par 
\par Where does a door lead if it's there and not there? "
\par 
\par "I don't think we have time for meditation just now." Indeed, I was
\par overcome by the feeling that time was running out for us, that a cosmic
\par clock was rapidly ticking toward the stop point.
\par 
\par This premonition was so powerful that I almost bolted for the exit.
\par 
\par All that kept me in the egg room was the certainty that Bobby would not
\par follow me if I left. He was not interested in politics or the great
\par cultural and social issues of our times, and nothing could rouse him
\par from his pleasant life of sun and surf except a friend in need. He
\par didn't trust those he called people with a plan, those who believed they
\par knew how to make a better world, which seemed always to involve telling
\par other people what they should do and how they should think.
\par 
\par But the cry of a friend would bring him instantly to the barricades, and
\par once committed to the cause in this case, to finding Jimmy Wing and good
\par Orsonhe would neither surrender nor retreat.
\par 
\par Likewise, I could never leave a friend behind. Our convictions and our
\par friends are all we have to get us through times of trouble.
\par 
\par Friends are the only things from this damaged world that we can hope to
\par see in the next, friends and loved ones are the very light that
\par brightens the Hereafter.
\par 
\par "Idiot, " I said.
\par 
\par "Asshole, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "I wasn't talking to you."
\par 
\par "I'm the only one here."
\par 
\par "I was calling myself an idiot. For not getting out of here."
\par 
\par "Oh. Then I retract the asshole remark." Bobby switched on his
\par flashlight, and immediately the silent fireworks dazzled across the
\par lining of the egg room. They didn't well up slowly but began at the peak
\par of intensity that they had previously achieved by degrees.
\par 
\par "Turn on your light, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "Are we really dumb enough to do this? "
\par 
\par "Way more than dumb enough."
\par 
\par "This place has nothing to do with Jimmy and Orson, " I said.
\par 
\par "How do you know? "
\par 
\par "They're not here."
\par 
\par "But something here may help us find them."
\par 
\par "We can't help them if we're dead."
\par 
\par "Be a good idiot and turn on your light."
\par 
\par "This is nuts."
\par 
\par "Fear nothing, bro.
\par 
\par Carpe noctem."
\par 
\par "Damn, " I said, hung with my own noose.
\par 
\par I switched on my flashlight.
\par 
\par A riot of fiery lights erupted within the translucent walls around us,
\par and it was easy to imagine that we were in the canyons of a great city
\par stricken by insurrection, bomb throwers and arsonists on every side,
\par blazing rioters ignited by their own torches and now running in terror
\par through the night, cyclones of tempestuous fire whirling along avenues
\par where the pavement was as molten as lava, tall buildings with orange
\par flames seething from the high windows, smoldering chunks of parapets and
\par cornices and ledges trailing comet tails of sparks as they crashed into
\par the streets.
\par 
\par Yet at the same time, with the slightest shift of perspective, it was
\par also possible to see this panoramic cataclysm not primarily as a series
\par of bright eruptions but as a shadow show, because for every
\par Molotov-cocktail flash, for every roiling mass of hot napalm, for every
\par luminous trail that reminded me of tracer bullets, there was a dark
\par shape in motion, begging interpretation as do the faces and figures in
\par clouds. Ebony capes billowed, black robes swirled, sable serpents coiled
\par and struck, shadows swooped like angry ravens, flocks of crows dived and
\par soared overhead and underfoot, armies of charred skeletons marched with
\par a relentless scissoring of sharp black bones, midnight cats crouched and
\par pounced, sinuous whips of darkness lashed through the bale fires, and
\par iron-black blades slashed.
\par 
\par In this pandemonium of light and darkness, wholly encapsulated by a
\par chaos of spinning flames and tumbling shadows, I was becoming
\par increasingly disoriented. Though I stood still, with my feet widely
\par planted for balance, I felt as if I were moving, twirling like poor
\par Dorothy aboard the Kansas-to-oz Express. Forward, behind, right, left,
\par up, downall rapidly became more difficult to define.
\par 
\par Again, from the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the door. When I looked
\par more directly, it was still there, formidable and gleaming.
\par 
\par "Bobby."
\par 
\par "I see it."
\par 
\par "Not good."
\par 
\par "Not a real door, " he concluded.
\par 
\par "You said the place wasn't haunted."
\par 
\par "Mirage." The storm of light and shadow gained velocity. It seemed to be
\par escalating toward an ominous crescendo.
\par 
\par I was afraid that the furious motion, the increasingly spiky and
\par disturbing patterns in the walls, foretold an onrushing event that would
\par translate all this energy into sudden violence. This ovoid room was so
\par strange that I was unable to imagine the nature of the threat rushing at
\par us, couldn't guess even the direction from which it might come.
\par 
\par For once, my three-hundred-ring imagination failed me.
\par 
\par The vault door was hinged on this side, therefore, it would swing
\par inward. There was no lock wheel to disengage the ring of thick bolts
\par that were currently seated in holes around the jamb, so the door could
\par be opened only from the short tunnel between this room and the airlock,
\par from the other side, which meant we were trapped here.
\par 
\par No. Not trapped.
\par 
\par Striving to resist a surging claustrophobia, I assured myself that the
\par door wasn't real. Bobby was right, It was a hallucination, an illusion,
\par a mirage.
\par 
\par An apparition.
\par 
\par I My perception of the egg room as a haunted place grew harder to shake
\par off. The luminous forms raging through the walls suddenly seemed to be
\par tortured spirits in a dervish dance of anguish, frantic to escape
\par damnation, as though all around me were windows with views of Hell.
\par 
\par As my heart pumped nearly hard enough to blow out my carotid arteries, I
\par told myself that I was seeing the egg room not as it was at this moment
\par but as it had been before the industrious gnomes of Wyvern had stripped
\par it and the entire facility around it to the bare concrete.
\par 
\par The massive vault door had been here then, but it was not here now, even
\par though I could see it. The door had been dismantled, hauled away,
\par salvaged, melted down, and recast into soup ladles, pinballs, and
\par orthodontic braces. Now it was purely apparitional, and I could walk
\par through it as easily as I had walked through the spiderweb at the top of
\par the porch steps of the bungalow in Dead Town.
\par 
\par Not intending to leave, wishing merely to test the mirage hypothesis, I
\par headed toward the exit. In two steps, I was reeling. I almost collapsed,
\par facedown, in a free fall that would have broken my nose and cracked
\par enough teeth to make a dentist smile. Regaining my balance at the
\par penultimate moment, I spread my legs wide and planted my feet hard
\par against the floor, as though trying to make the rubber soles of my shoes
\par grip as firmly as a squid's suckers.
\par 
\par The room was not moving, even if it felt like a ship wallowing in rough
\par seas. The movement was a subjective perception, a symptom of my
\par increasing disorientation.
\par 
\par Staring at the vault door in a futile attempt to will it out of
\par existence, trying to decide whether I should drop to my knees and crawl,
\par I registered an odd detail of its design. The door was suspended on one
\par long barrel hinge that must have been eight or ten inches in diameter.
\par 
\par The knuckles of the barrel, which would move around the center pinthe
\par pintlewhen the door was pushed open or drawn shut, were exposed in most
\par hinges, but not in this one. The knuckles were covered by a solid length
\par of armoring steel, and the head of the pintle was recessed in this
\par shield, as though to hamper anyone who might try to get through the
\par locked door from this side by prying or hammering at the elements of the
\par hinge. If the door could have swung outward, they would not have put the
\par hinge inside the egg room, but because the walls were five feet thick,
\par the door at this end of the entry tunnel could only swing inward.
\par 
\par This ovoid chamber and the adjoining airlock might have been designed to
\par contain a greater number of atmospheres of pressure and possible
\par biological contaminants, but all evidence supported the conclusion that
\par it had also been constructed with the intention, at least under certain
\par circumstances, of imprisoning someone.
\par 
\par Thus far, the kaleidoscopic displays in the walls had not been
\par accompanied by sound. Now, though the air remained dead calm, there
\par arose a hollow and mournful moaning of wind, as it might strike the ear
\par when blowing off barren alkaline flats.
\par 
\par I looked at Bobby. Even through the tattoos of light and shadow that
\par melted across his face, I could see that he was worried.
\par 
\par "You hear that? " I asked.
\par 
\par "Treacherous."
\par 
\par "Fully, " I agreed, not liking the sound any more than he did.
\par 
\par If this noise was a hallucination, as the door apparently was, at least
\par we shared it. We could enjoy the comfort cold as it might be of going
\par insane together.
\par 
\par The unfelt wind grew louder, speaking with more than one voice.
\par 
\par The hollow wail continued, but with it came a rushing sound as of a
\par northwester blowing through a grove of trees in advance of rain, fierce
\par and full of warnings. Groaning, gibbering, soughing, keening. And the
\par lonely tuneless whistling of a blustery winter storm playing rain
\par gutters and down spouts as though they were icy flutes.
\par 
\par When I heard the first words in the choir of winds, I thought that I
\par must be imagining them, but they swiftly grew louder, clearer.
\par 
\par Men's voices, half a dozen, maybe more. Tinny, hollow, as if spoken from
\par the far end of a long steel pipe. The words came in clusters separated
\par by bursts of static, issuing from walkie-talkies or perhaps a radio.
\par 
\par " ...  here somewhere, right here  ..."
\par 
\par " ...  hurry, for Christ's sake! "
\par 
\par " .. give ... don't ..."
\par 
\par " ...  Gimme cover.
\par 
\par Jackson.
\par 
\par gimme cover  ..." The rising cacophony of wind was almost as
\par disorienting as the stroboscopic lights and the shadows that kited like
\par legions of bats in a feeding - frenzy. I couldn't discern from which
\par direction the voices came.
\par 
\par " ...  group ... here ... group and defend."
\par 
\par " ...  position to translate  ..."
\par 
\par " ...  group, hell ... move, haul ass."
\par 
\par translate now! "
\par 
\par " ...  cycle, cycle it  ..." Ghosts. I was listening to ghosts. They
\par were dead men now, had been dead since before this facility had been
\par abandoned, and these were the last words they had spoken immediately
\par before they perished.
\par 
\par I didn't know exactly what was about to happen to these doomed men, but
\par as I listened, I had no doubt that some terrible fate had overcome them,
\par which was now being replayed on some spiritual plane.
\par 
\par Their voices grew more urgent, and they began to speak over one another,
\par " ...  cycle it! "
\par 
\par " ...  hear em? Hear em coming? "
\par 
\par " ... hurry ... what the hell  ..."
\par 
\par " .. wrong ... Jesus  ... what's wrong? " They were shouting now, some
\par hoarse and others shrill, every voice raw with panic, "Cycle it open!
\par Cycle it! "
\par 
\par "Get us out!"
\par 
\par "Oh, God, God, oh, God! "
\par 
\par "GET US OUT OF HERE! " Instead of words in the wind, there were screams
\par such as I had never heard before and hoped never to hear again, the
\par cries of men dying but not dying quickly or mercifully, shrieks that
\par conveyed the intensity of their prolonged agony but that also expressed
\par a chilling depth of despair, as though their anguish was as much
\par spiritual as physical.
\par 
\par Judging by their screams, they weren't just being killed, they were
\par being butchered, torn apart by something that knew where the soul
\par inhabits the body. I could hear or, more likely, imagined I could hear a
\par mysterious predator clawing the spirit out of the flesh and greedily
\par devouring this delicacy before feeding on the mortal remains.
\par 
\par My heart was pounding so fiercely that my vision throbbed when I looked
\par at the door again. From the design of that armored hinge, a frightening
\par truth could be deduced, but because of the distracting bedlam of sound
\par and light, it remained frustratingly just beyond my grasp.
\par 
\par If the barrel of the hinge had been left unshielded, you would still
\par have needed an array of heavy-duty power tools, diamond-tipped drill
\par bits, and a lot of time to fracture those knuckles and jack out the
\par pintle In every surface of the room, the war between light and darkness
\par raged more furiously, battalions of shadows clashing with armies of
\par light in ever more frenzied assaults, to the harrowing
\par shriek-hiss-whistle of the unfelt winds and the ceaseless, ghastly
\par screaming.
\par 
\par and even if the hinge could be broken, the vault door would be held in
\par place, because the bolts that secured it were surely snugged into evenly
\par spaced holes around the entire circumference of the steel jamb rather
\par than along one arc of it The screaming. The screaming seemed to have
\par substance, pouring into me through my ears until I was filled to
\par bursting with it and could contain no more. I opened my mouth as if to
\par let the dark energy of those ghostly cries pass out of me.
\par 
\par Struggling to concentrate, squinting to focus more clearly on the door,
\par I realized that a team of professional safe crackers would probably
\par never get through that barrier without explosives. For the purpose of
\par containing mere men, therefore, this door was absurdly over designed.
\par 
\par At last the fearsome truth came within my grasp. The purpose of the
\par redundantly armored door was to contain something in addition to men or
\par atmosphere. Something bigger, stronger, more cunning than a virus.
\par 
\par Some damn thing around which my usually vivid imagination was unable to
\par wrap itself.
\par 
\par Switching off my flashlight, turning away from the vault door, I called
\par to Bobby.
\par 
\par Mesmerized by the fireworks and the shadow show, buffeted by the wind
\par noises and the screams, he didn't hear me, although he was only ten feet
\par away.
\par 
\par "Bobby! " I shouted.
\par 
\par As he turned his head to look at me, the wind abruptly matched sound
\par with force, gusting through the egg room, whipping our hair, flapping my
\par jacket and Bobby's Hawaiian shirt. It was hot, humid, redolent of tar
\par fumes and rotting vegetation.
\par 
\par I couldn't identify the source of the gale, because this chamber had no
\par ventilation ducts in its walls, no breaches whatsoever in its seamless
\par glassy surface, except for the circular exit. If the steel cork plugging
\par that hole were, in fact, nothing but a mirage, perhaps these gusts could
\par have been coming through the tunnel linking the egg room to the airlock,
\par blowing through the nonexistent door, however, the wind blustered from
\par all sides, rather than from one direction.
\par 
\par "Your light! " I shouted. "Shut it off! " Before Bobby could do as I
\par wanted, the reeking wind brought with it another manifestation. A figure
\par came through the curved wall, as if five feet of steel-reinforced
\par concrete were no more substantial than a veil of mist.
\par 
\par Bobby clutched the pistol-grip shotgun with both hands, dropping his
\par flashlight without switching it off.
\par 
\par The spectral visitor was startlingly close, less than twenty feet from
\par us. Because of the swarming lights and shadows, which served as
\par continually changing camouflage, I couldn't at first see the intruder
\par clearly. Glimpsed in flickering fragments, it looked manlike, then more
\par like a machine, and then, crazily, like nothing else but a lumbering rag
\par doll.
\par 
\par Bobby held his fire, perhaps because he still believed that what we were
\par seeing was illusionary, either ghost or hallucination, or some strange
\par combination of the two. I suppose I was clinging desperately to the same
\par belief, because I didn't back away from it when it staggered closer to
\par us.
\par 
\par By the time it had taken three uncertain steps, I could see clearly
\par enough to identify it as a man in a white vinyl, airtight spacesuit.
\par 
\par More likely, the outfit was an adapted version of the standard gear that
\par NASA had developed for astronauts, intended primarily not to shield the
\par wearer from the icy vacuum of interplanetary space but rather to protect
\par him from deadly infection in a biologically contaminated environment.
\par 
\par The large helmet featured an oversize faceplate, but I wasn't able to
\par see the person beyond, because reflections of the whirling light-and
\par shadow show streamed across the Plexiglas. On the brow of the helmet was
\par stenciled a name, HODGSON.
\par 
\par Perhaps because of the fireworks, more likely because he was blinded by
\par terror, Hodgson didn't react as if he saw Bobby and me. He entered
\par screaming and his voice was by far the loudest of those still borne on
\par the foul wind. After staggering a few steps away from the wall, he
\par turned to face it, holding up both hands to ward off an attack by
\par something that was invisible to me.
\par 
\par He jerked as if hit by multiple rounds of high-caliber gunfire.
\par 
\par Though I'd heard no shots, I ducked reflexively.
\par 
\par When he fell to the floor, Hodgson landed on his back. He was propped
\par halfway between a prone and a sitting position by the air tank and by
\par the briefcase-size, waste-purification-and-reclamation system strapped
\par to his back. His arms fell limp at his sides.
\par 
\par I didn't need to examine him to know he was dead. I had no idea what
\par might have killed him, and I didn't have enough curiosity to risk
\par investigating.
\par 
\par If he'd already been a ghost, how could he die again?
\par 
\par Some questions are better left unanswered. Curiosity is one of the
\par engines of human achievement, but it's not much of a survival mechanism
\par if it motivates you to see what the back side of a lion's teeth look
\par like.
\par 
\par Crouching, I scooped up Bobby's flashlight and clicked it off.
\par 
\par An immediate drop in the ferocity of the wind seemed to support the
\par theory that even the minimal energy input from the beams of our
\par flashlights had triggered all this bizarre activity.
\par 
\par The stench of steaming tar and rotting vegetation was also fading.
\par 
\par Rising to my feet again, I glanced at the door. It was still there.
\par 
\par uge and shiny. Too real.
\par 
\par I wanted to get out, but I didn't head for the exit. I was afraid it
\par would actually be there when I reached it, whereupon this waking dream
\par might become a waking nightmare.
\par 
\par In every surface, the pyrotechnics continued undiminished.
\par 
\par Previously, when we'd doused the flashlights, this extraordinary
\par spectacle had been self-perpetuating for a short while, and it would
\par probably power itself even longer this time.
\par 
\par I regarded the walls, the floor, and the ceiling with suspicion.
\par 
\par I expected another figure to coalesce out of the bright, ceaselessly
\par changing cyclorama, something more threatening than the man in the
\par bio-secure gear.
\par 
\par Bobby was approaching Hodgson. Apparently, the disorienting effect of
\par the light show did not affect his equilibrium as it did mine.
\par 
\par "Bro, " I warned.
\par 
\par "Cool."
\par 
\par "Not." He had the shotgun. He believed it was protection.
\par 
\par I, on the other hand, figured that the weapon was potentially as
\par dangerous as the flashlights. Any lead pellets not stopped by the target
\par would most likely ricochet from wall to ceiling to floor to wall with
\par deadly velocity. And every time a bit of lead shot struck any surface in
\par the chamber, the kinetic energy of the impact might be absorbed by that
\par glassy material, further powering these weird phenomena.
\par 
\par The wind subsided to a breeze.
\par 
\par Carnivals and catastrophes still glittered and blazed through every
\par curving surface of the room, Ferris wheels of rotating blue lights and
\par orange-red spouts like volcanic eruptions.
\par 
\par The vault door appeared dauntingly solid.
\par 
\par No ghost had ever looked as real as the body in the spacesuit.
\par 
\par Not Jacob Marley rattling his chains at Scrooge, not the Ghost of
\par Christmas Future, not the White Lady of Avenel, not Hamlet's dad,
\par certainly not Casper.
\par 
\par I was surprised to find my balance restored. Maybe the brief disruption
\par of equilibrium hadn't been a reaction to the spinning lights and
\par shadows, but had been merely another transient effect similar to the
\par pressure that, earlier, had muffled our voices and made breathing
\par difficult.
\par 
\par The hot breeze and the stink it carried disappeared. The air was cool and
\par calm once more. The sound of the winds began to fade, as well.
\par 
\par Next, perhaps, the space suited man on the floor would dissolve into a
\par twist of icy vapor that would rise and vanish like a wraith returning to
\par the spirit world where it belonged. Soon. Before we had to take a close
\par look at it. Please.
\par 
\par Certain that Bobby couldn't be persuaded to retreat, I followed him
\par toward Hodgson's body. He was deep into the same stoked, gonzo mind set
\par with which he surfed twenty-foot, fully macking behemoths, a maximum
\par kamikaze commitment as total as his more characteristic slacker
\par indifference. When he was on this board, he would ride it all the way to
\par the end of the barreland one day straight out of this life.
\par 
\par Because the lights in the walls were contained within the surface layer
\par of glassy material and shed only a small fraction of their illuminating
\par power into the egg room itself, Hodgson wasn't well revealed.
\par 
\par "Flashlight, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "Not smart."
\par 
\par "That's me." Reluctantly, steeling myself to take a close look at the
\par back side of the aforementioned lion's teeth, I stepped cautiously to
\par the right of the body as Bobby moved less cautiously to the left. I
\par switched on one flashlight and played it over the far too solid ghost.
\par 
\par Initially the beam jiggled because my hand was shaking, but I quickly
\par steadied it.
\par 
\par The Plexiglas in the helmet was tinted. The single flashlight was not
\par powerful enough to let us see either Hodgson's face or his condition.
\par 
\par 
\par 
\par Heor possibly she was as still and silent as a headstone, and whether a
\par ghost or not, he seemed indisputably dead.
\par 
\par On the breast of his pressure suit was an American-flag patch, and
\par immediately below the flag was a second patch, featuring a speeding
\par locomotive, an image clearly from the Art Deco period of design, which
\par evidently had been adapted to serve as the logo for this research
\par project Although the image was bold and dynamic, without any element of
\par mystery, I was willing to bet my left lung that this identified Hodgson
\par as a member of the Mystery Train team.
\par 
\par The only other distinguishing features on the front of the suit were six
\par or eight holes across the abdomen and chest. Recalling how Hodgson had
\par turned to face the wall out of which he had appeared, how he had held
\par his hands up defensively, and how he had jerked as if hit by
\par automatic-weapons fire, I at first assumed that these punctures were
\par bullet holes.
\par 
\par On closer inspection, however, I realized that they were too neat to be
\par gunshot wounds. High-velocity lead slugs would have torn the material,
\par leaving rips or starburst punctures rather than these round holes, each
\par as large as a quarter, which looked as though they had been die cut or
\par even bored with a laser. Aside from the fact that we had heard no
\par gunfire, these were far too large to be entry wounds, any caliber of
\par ammunition capable of punching holes that big would have passed directly
\par through Hodgson, killing Bobby or me, or both of us.
\par 
\par I could see no blood.
\par 
\par "Use the other flash, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par Silence had replaced the last murmuring voices of the wind.
\par 
\par Explosive scripts of bright, meaningless calligraphy continued to scroll
\par through the walls, perhaps marginally less dazzling than they had been a
\par minute ago. Experience suggested that this phenomenon, too, was about to
\par wind down, and I was reluctant to stimulate it again.
\par 
\par "Just once, quick, for a clearer look, " he urged.
\par 
\par Against all instincts, I did as Bobby wanted, crouching over the
\par cumbersomely attired figure for a better view.
\par 
\par The tinted Plexiglas still partially obscured what lay beyond, but at
\par once I understood why, with the single flashlight, we hadn't been able
\par to see poor Hodgson's face, Hodgson no longer had a face. Inside the
\par helmet was a wet churning mass that seemed to be feeding voraciously on
\par the remaining substance of the dead man, a sickening pale tangle of
\par seething, squirming, slithering, jittering things that looked somewhat
\par soft-bodied like worms but were not worms, that also looked somewhat
\par chitinous like beetles but were not beetles, a greasy white colony of
\par something unnameable that had invaded his suit and overwhelmed him a r
\par with such rapidity that he had died no less abruptly than if he had been
\par shot straight through the heart. And now these twitching things
\par responded to the flashlight beam by surging against the inner surface of
\par the Plexiglas faceplate, teeming with obscene excitement.
\par 
\par Bolting to my feet, reeling backward, I thought I saw movement in some
\par of the holes in the abdomen and chest of Hodgson's violated pressure
\par suit, as though the things that had killed him were going to boil out of
\par those punctures.
\par 
\par Bobby split without firing the shotgun, which he might easily have done,
\par out of shock and terror. Thank God he didn't pull the trigger.
\par 
\par A shotgun blast or twoor tenwouldn't wipe out even half the hellacious
\par swarm in Hodgson's pressure suit, but it would probably pump them into
\par an even greater killing frenzy.
\par 
\par As I ran, I switched off the flashlights, because the fireworks in the
\par walls were gaining speed and power once more.
\par 
\par Although Bobby had been farther from the exit than I was, he got there
\par ahead of me.
\par 
\par The vault door was as solid as a damn vault door.
\par 
\par What I'd seen from a distance was confirmed close up, There was no wheel
\par or other release mechanism to disengage the lock bolts.
\par 
\par Back toward the center of the room, about forty feet away from the vault
\par door, Hodgson's pressure suit was where we had left it. Because it
\par hadn't collapsed upon itself like a deflated balloon, I assumed that it
\par was still filled out by the nightmare colony and by the remaining odds
\par and ends of Hodgson on which those squirming things were feeding.
\par 
\par Bobby tapped the barrel of the shotgun against the door. The sound was
\par as real as steel striking steel.
\par 
\par "Mirage? " I suggested, tossing his deficient explanation back at him as
\par I shoved one flashlight under my belt and jammed the other into a jacket
\par pocket.
\par 
\par "It's bogus." In reply, I slapped my hand against the door.
\par 
\par "Bogus, " he insisted. "Check your watch." I was less interested in the
\par time than in whether anything might be coming out of Hodgson's pressure
\par suit.
\par 
\par With a shudder, I realized that I was brushing at the sleeves of my
\par jacket, wiping at the back of my neck, scrubbing the side of my face,
\par trying to rid myself of crawling things that weren't really there.
\par 
\par Motivated by a vivid memory of the squirming horde inside the helmet, I
\par hooked my fingers in a groove along the edge of the door and pulled.
\par 
\par I grunted, cursed, and pulled harder, as though I might actually be able
\par to move a few tons of steel by tapping the store of energy I'd laid up
\par from a breakfast of crumb cake and hot chocolate.
\par 
\par "Check your watch, " Bobby repeated.
\par 
\par He had shucked back the sleeve of his cotton pullover to look at his own
\par watch. This surprised me. He had never before worn a timepiece, and now
\par he had one just like mine.
\par 
\par When I consulted the luminous digital readout on the oversize face of my
\par wristwatch, I saw 4,08 P. M. The correct time, of course, was short of
\par four o'clock in the morning.
\par 
\par "Mine, too, " he said, showing me that our watches agreed.
\par 
\par "Both wrong? "
\par 
\par "No. That's what time it is. Here. Now. In this place."
\par 
\par "Witchy."
\par 
\par "Pure Salem." Then I registered the date in a separate window below the
\par digital time display. This was the twelfth of April. My watch claimed it
\par was Mon Feb 19. So did Bobby's.
\par 
\par I wondered what year the watch would reveal if its date window had been
\par four digits wider. Somewhere in the past. A memorably catastrophic
\par afternoon for the big-brow scientists on the Mystery Train team, an
\par afternoon when the feces hit the flabellum.
\par 
\par The speed and brightness of the spiraling-bursting-streaming lights in
\par the walls were slowly but noticeably diminishing.
\par 
\par I looked toward the bio-secure suit, which had proved no more secure
\par against hostile organisms than a porkpie hat and a fig leaf, and I saw
\par that whatever inhabited it was moving, churning restlessly. The arms
\par flopped limply against the floor, and one leg twitched, and the entire
\par body quivered as though a powerful electric current was passing through
\par it.
\par 
\par "Not good, " I decided.
\par 
\par "It'll fade."
\par 
\par "Oh, yeah? "
\par 
\par "The screams did, the voices, the wind.
\par 
\par " I rapped my knuckles against the vault door.
\par 
\par "It'll fade, " Bobby insisted.
\par 
\par Though the light show was diminishing, Hodgsonrather, the Hodgson
\par suit was becoming more active. It drummed the heels of its boots against
\par the floor. It bucked and thrashed its arms.
\par 
\par "Trying to get up, " I said.
\par 
\par "Can't hurt us."
\par 
\par "You serious? " My logic seemed unassailable, "If the vault door is real
\par enough to keep us in here, then that thing's real enough to cause us
\par major grief."
\par 
\par "It'll fade." Apparently not having been informed that all its efforts
\par were pointless, due to its impending fade, the Hodgson suit thrashed and
\par bucked and rocked until it rolled off its air tank and onto its side. I
\par was looking at the dark faceplate again, and I could feel something
\par staring back at me from the other side of that tinted Plexiglas, not
\par simply a mass of worms or beetles, stupidly churning, but a cohesive and
\par formidable entity, a malevolent consciousness, as curious about me as I
\par was terrified of it.
\par 
\par This was not my feverish imagination at work.
\par 
\par This was a perception as unambiguous and valid as the chill I would have
\par felt if I'd held an ice cube to the nape of my neck.
\par 
\par "It'll fade, " Bobby repeated, and the thin note of dread in his voice
\par revealed that he, too, was aware of being observed.
\par 
\par I was not comforted by the fact that the Hodgson thing was forty feet
\par away from us. I wouldn't have felt safe if the distance had been forty
\par miles and if I'd been studying this spastic apparition through a
\par telescope.
\par 
\par The pyrotechnics had lost perhaps a third of their power.
\par 
\par The door was still cold and hard under my hand.
\par 
\par As the light show proceeded toward a final flourish, visibility
\par declined, but even in the slowly deepening gloom, I could see the
\par Hodgson thing rolling off its side, lying facedown on the floor, and
\par then struggling to get to its hands and knees.
\par 
\par If I'd correctly interpreted the gruesome sight I'd glimpsed through the
\par faceplate, hundreds or even thousands of individual creatures infested
\par the pressure suit, flesh-eating multitudes that constituted a nest or
\par hive. A colony of beetles might operate under a sophisticated structure
\par of divisional labor, maintain a high degree of social order, and work
\par together to survive and prosper, but even if Hodgson's skeleton remained
\par to provide an armature, I couldn't believe that the colony would be able
\par to form itself into a manlike shape and function with such superb
\par coordination, interlocked form, and strength that it could walk around
\par in a spacesuit, climb steps, and drive heavy machinery.
\par 
\par The Hodgson thing rose to its feet.
\par 
\par "Nasty, " Bobby murmured.
\par 
\par Under the flat of my damp palm, I felt a short-lived vibration pass
\par through the vault door. More peculiar than a vibration. More pronounced.
\par 
\par It was a faint, undulant ... tremor. The door didn't simply hum with it,
\par the steel quivered briefly, for a second or two, as though it were not
\par steel at all, as though it were gelatin, and then it became solid and
\par seemingly impregnable once more.
\par 
\par The thing in the pressure suit swayed like a toddler unsure of its
\par balance. It slid its left foot forward, hesitated, and dragged its right
\par foot after the left. The scraping of its boots against the glassy floor
\par produced only a whispery sound.
\par 
\par Left foot, right foot.
\par 
\par Coming toward us.
\par 
\par Perhaps more of Hodgson survived than just his skeleton. Maybe the
\par colony had not completely devoured the man, had not even killed him, but
\par had bored into him, nestling deep into his flesh and bones, into his
\par heart and liver and brain, establishing a hideous symbiotic relationship
\par with his body, while taking firm control of his nervous system from the
\par brain to the thinnest efferent fiber.
\par 
\par As the fireworks in the walls darkened into amber and umber and blood
\par red, the Hodgson thing slid its left foot forward, hesitated, then
\par dragged its right. The old Imhotep two-step, invented by Boris Karloff
\par in 1932.
\par 
\par Under my hand, the vault door quivered again and suddenly turned mushy.
\par 
\par I gasped when a painful coldness, sharper than needles, pierced my right
\par hand, as if I had plunged it into something considerably more frigid
\par than ice water. From wrist to fingertips, I appeared to be one with the
\par vault door. Although the egg-room light was rapidly fading, I could see
\par that the steel had become semitransparent, like a lazy whirlpool,
\par circular currents were turning within it. And in the gray substance of
\par the vault door were the paler gray shapes of my fingers.
\par 
\par Startled, I yanked my hand out of the door and had no sooner extracted it
\par than the steel regained its solidity.
\par 
\par I remembered how the door had first been visible only out of the corner
\par of my eye, not when I looked directly. It had acquired substance by
\par degrees, and it was likely to dematerialize not in a wink but in
\par installments.
\par 
\par Bobby must have seen what had happened, because he took a step backward,
\par as though the steel might suddenly become a whirling vortex and suck him
\par out of this place into oblivion.
\par 
\par If I hadn't extracted my hand in time, would it have broken off at the
\par joining point, leaving me with a neatly severed but spurting stump?
\par 
\par I didn't need to know the answer. Let it be a question for the ages.
\par 
\par The chill had left my hand the instant that I'd withdrawn it from the
\par door, but I was still gasping, and between each convulsive breath, I
\par heard myself repeating the same four-letter word, as if I had been
\par stricken by a terminal case of Tourette's syndrome and would spend the
\par rest of my life unable to stop shouting this single obscenity.
\par 
\par Advancing through dim bloody light and legions of leaping shadows, like
\par an astronaut returned from a mission to Planet Hell, the Hodgson thing
\par had crossed half the original distance between us. It was twenty feet
\par away, relentlessly dragging itself forward, obviously not offended by my
\par language, driven by a hunger almost as palpable as the stench of hot tar
\par and rotting vegetation that earlier had been borne on the wind from
\par nowhere.
\par 
\par In frustration, Bobby struck the door with the shotgun barrel.
\par 
\par That steel plug tolled like a bell.
\par 
\par He didn't even bother to point the weapon at the Hodgson thing.
\par 
\par Evidently, he, too, had reached the conclusion that the impact of stray
\par buckshot against the walls of the chamber might energize the place and
\par leave us trapped here longer.
\par 
\par The light show ended, and over us fell absolute darkness.
\par 
\par If I could have stilled my storming heart and held my breath, I might
\par have been able to hear the whispery slippage of rubber boot soles over
\par the glassy floor, but I was a one-man percussion section. I probably
\par couldn't have detected the sound of the Hodgson thing's approach if it
\par had been beating a bass drum.
\par 
\par When the luminous phenomenon in the walls had been extinguished, surely
\par the phantasmagoric engine had shut down altogether, surely we had come
\par all the way back to reality, surely the Hodgson thing had ceased to
\par exist as abruptly as it had appeared, surely Again, Bobby struck the
\par vault door with the shotgun. It didn't toll this time. The tone was
\par flat, less reverberant than before, as if he had slammed a hammer into a
\par block of wood.
\par 
\par Maybe the door was changing, in the process of dematerializing, but it
\par was still blocking the exit. We couldn't risk trying to leave until we
\par were certain we wouldn't be passing through it while it was in a state
\par of flux and possibly capable of taking some molecules from our bodies
\par with it when it vanished for good.
\par 
\par I wondered what would happen if the Hodgson thing had a firm grip on me
\par when its very substance began to transform. If, for even a moment, my
\par hand had become one with the steel of the vault door, perhaps part of me
\par would become one with the pressure suit and with the squirming entity
\par inside the suit, a close, too-personal encounter that might destroy my
\par sanity even if, miraculously, I survived with no physical damage.
\par 
\par Blackness pressed liquidly against my open eyes, as if I were deep
\par underwater. Although I strained to catch the slightest sign of the
\par approaching figure, I was as sightless here as I'd been in the corridor
\par outside the room where I'd found the ve ve rats.
\par 
\par Inevitably, I recalled the kidnapper with the white-corn teeth, whose
\par face I'd touched in the blinding dark.
\par 
\par As then, I now sensed a presence looming before me, and with more reason
\par than I'd had previously.
\par 
\par After all that had happened in this Mystery Train terminal, this
\par antechamber to Hell, I was no longer inclined to discount my fears as
\par the product of a hyperactive imagination. This time I didn't reach out
\par to prove to myself that my darkest suspicions were groundless, because I
\par knew that my fingertips would slide down the smooth curve of the
\par Plexiglas faceplate.
\par 
\par "Chris! " I jerked in surprise before I comprehended that the voice was
\par Bobby's.
\par 
\par "Your watch, " he said.
\par 
\par The radiant readouts were visible even in this soot-thick murk.
\par 
\par The green numbers in those displays were changing, counting forward so
\par rapidly that many hours were falling behind us in a fraction of a
\par second.
\par 
\par The letters in the day and month windows were passing in a blur of
\par continuously changing abbreviations.
\par 
\par Time past was giving way to time present.
\par 
\par Hell, in truth I didn't know exactly what was happening here.
\par 
\par Maybe I didn't understand this situation at all, and maybe a bend in the
\par fabric of time had nothing to do with what we'd witnessed. Maybe we were
\par entirely delusional because someone had spiked our beer with LSD.
\par 
\par Maybe I was at home, snug in bed, asleep and dreaming. Maybe up was
\par down, in was out, black was white. I knew only that whatever was
\par happening now felt right, felt a lot better than would a sudden embrace
\par from the thing in Hodgson's suit.
\par 
\par If, in fact, we had been more than two years in the past, if we were now
\par racing forward to the April night on which we had begun this bizarre
\par adventure, I thought I ought to have felt some change within myselfa
\par singing in my bones, a fever from the friction of the frantically
\par passing hours, a sense of growing back to my real age, something.
\par 
\par But a descent on a slow elevator would have had a greater physical
\par effect than this express ride along the rails of time.
\par 
\par On my wristwatch, the month suddenly stopped at Apr. A second later, the
\par day and date froze, and immediately thereafter, the time display
\par registered a clear, steady 3,58 A. M. We were home, minus Toto.
\par 
\par "Cool, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "Sweet, " I agreed.
\par 
\par The big question was whether we had a fellow traveler with us, a
\par wormy-faced companion in a pressure suit, like nothing Auntie Em or
\par anyone else in Kansas had ever seen.
\par 
\par Logic argued that the Hodgson thing was lost in the past.
\par 
\par It might be delusional, however, to assume that logic applied within
\par this singular situation.
\par 
\par I withdrew the flashlight from under my belt.
\par 
\par Didn't want to switch it on.
\par 
\par 
\par 
\par Switched it on.
\par 
\par The Hodgson thing wasn't face-to-face with me, as I had feared.
\par 
\par A quick sweep of the light revealed that Bobby and I were alone at least
\par in that portion of the egg room into which the flashlight beam would
\par reach.
\par 
\par The vault door was gone. I couldn't see it either when I looked directly
\par at the exit tunnel or when I relied on my peripheral vision.
\par 
\par Apparently, the room had become so sensitized to light that once again,
\par generated by the single beam, faint luminous whorls began to pulse and
\par wheel in the floor, walls, and ceiling.
\par 
\par I immediately switched off the flashlight and jammed it under my belt.
\par 
\par "Go, " I urged.
\par 
\par "Going." As darkness descended once more, I heard Bobby scrambling over
\par the raised threshold, feeling his way forward through the short,
\par five-foot-high tunnel.
\par 
\par "Clear, " he said.
\par 
\par Crouching, I followed him into what had once been the airlock.
\par 
\par I didn't turn on the flashlight again until we were out of the airlock
\par and in the corridor, where not one stray beam could find its way back to
\par the glassy material that lined the egg room.
\par 
\par "Told you it would fade, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "Why do I ever doubt you? " Neither of us spoke another word all the way
\par up through the three stripped subterranean floors of the facility,
\par through the hangar, to the Jeep, which stood under a sky from which
\par clotting clouds had purged all stars.
\par 
\par We drove southwest across Fort Wyvern, through Dead Town, past the
\par warehouses where I had confronted the kidnapper, switching off the
\par headlights as we reached the Santa Rosita, down the access ramp along
\par the levee wall, onto the dry riverbed, obeying not a single stop sign
\par along the way, ignoring every posted speed limit, with a loaded shotgun
\par in a moving vehicle, a concealed weapon in my shoulder holster even
\par though I possessed no license to carry, a cooler of beer between my
\par feet, trespassing in flagrant violation of the federal government's
\par Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act, while holding numerous
\par politically incorrect attitudes, of which a few might well be against
\par the law. We were two Clydes without a Bonnie.
\par 
\par Bobby had so expanded the gap in the river-spanning fence that we drove
\par through with room to spare. He parked immediately outside the grounds of
\par the military base, and together we got out of the Jeep and lowered the
\par flaps of chain-link, which he had rolled up and hooked to the top of the
\par fence.
\par 
\par A close inspection would reveal the breach. From a distance greater than
\par fifteen feet, however, the violation of the fence could not be seen.
\par 
\par We didn't want to announce that we had trespassed. Without doubt we
\par would soon be returning by this same route, and we would need easy
\par access.
\par 
\par The tire tracks leading through the fence betrayed us, but there wasn't
\par a way to erase them quickly and effectively. We had to hope that the
\par breeze would become a wind and obliterate our trail.
\par 
\par In a few hours, we had seen more than we could process, analyze, and
\par apply to our problem things that we ardently wished we'd never seen.
\par 
\par We would have preferred to avoid another sortie onto the base, but until
\par we found Jimmy Wing and Orson, duty required us to revisit this nest of
\par nightmares.
\par 
\par We were leaving now because we were temporarily at a dead end, not sure
\par where to continue the search, and we had to strategize. Besides, more
\par than two of us would be needed to comb even the known warrens of wern.
\par 
\par In addition, dawn was little more than an hour away, and I had not worn
\par my Elephant Man cloak, with hood and veil.
\par 
\par The Suburban, which the kidnapper had parked at the fence, was gone. I
\par was not surprised to see that it was missing. Fortunately, I had
\par memorized the license-plate number.
\par 
\par Bobby drove to the snarl of driftwood and tumbleweed that lay sixty feet
\par from the fence. I retrieved my bicycle from concealment and loaded it
\par into the back of the Jeep.
\par 
\par Passing through the dark tunnel under Highway 1, without headlights,
\par Bobby accelerated. Engine noise, like barrages from ack-ack guns,
\par rattled back to us from the concrete walls.
\par 
\par I remembered the mysterious figure that I had seen earlier on the
\par sloping buttress at the west end of this passage, and my tension grew
\par rather than diminished as the farther end became the nearer end.
\par 
\par When we raced into the open, I tensed, half expecting an assault, but
\par nothing was waiting for us.
\par 
\par A hundred yards west of the highway, Bobby braked to a halt and switched
\par off the engine.
\par 
\par We had not spoken since the corridor outside the egg room. Now he said,
\par "Mystery Train."
\par 
\par "All aboard."
\par 
\par "Name of a research project, huh? "
\par 
\par "According to Leland Delacroix's security badge." I fished that object
\par from a jacket pocket, fingering it in the dark, thinking about the dead
\par man surrounded by photographs of his family, the wedding ring in a
\par votive-candle holder.
\par 
\par "So the Mystery Train project was what gave us the troop, the
\par retrovirus, all these mutations. Your mom's little tea-and-doomsday
\par society."
\par 
\par "Maybe."
\par 
\par "I don't think so."
\par 
\par "Then what? "
\par 
\par "She was a theoretical geneticist, right? "
\par 
\par "My mom, apprentice god."
\par 
\par "Virus designer, creature creator." I "Medically valuable little
\par creatures, benign viruses, " I said.
\par 
\par "Except for one."
\par 
\par "Your folks are no prize, " I reminded him.
\par 
\par With a note of insincere pride, he said, "Hey, they would've destroyed
\par the world long before your mom ever did, if they'd just been given a
\par fair chance." They owned the only newspaper in the county, the Moonlight
\par Bay Gazette, and their religion was politics, their god was power.
\par 
\par They were people with a plan, with an unlimited faith in the
\par righteousness of their beliefs. Bobby didn't share their spooky vision
\par of utopia, so they had written him off ten years ago. Apparently, utopia
\par requires the absolute uniformity of thought and purpose exhibited by
\par bees in a hive.
\par 
\par "The point is, " he said, "that wacko palace of the weird back there.
\par 
\par .. They weren't doing biological research, bro."
\par 
\par "Hodgson was in an airtight suit, not tennis shorts, " I reminded him.
\par 
\par "He was in typical bio-secure gear. To protect him from being infected
\par by something."
\par 
\par "Totally obvious, yeah. But you said yourself, the place wasn't built
\par for mucking around with germs."
\par 
\par "Not laid out for essential sterilization procedures, " I agreed.
\par 
\par "No decontamination modules, except maybe for that one airlock.
\par 
\par And the floor plan is too open for high-security bio labs."
\par 
\par "That madhouse, that hyped-up lava lamp, wasn't a lab."
\par 
\par "The egg room."
\par 
\par "Call it what you want. It was never a lab with Bunsen burners, petri
\par dishes, and cages full of cute little white mice with scalp scars from
\par brain surgery. You know what that was, bro. We both know."
\par 
\par "I've been brooding about it."
\par 
\par "That was transport, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "Transport."
\par 
\par "They pumped mondo energy into that room, maybe a nuke's worth of
\par energy, maybe more, and when it was fully powered, really revving, it
\par took Hodgson somewhere. Hodgson and a few others. We heard them
\par screaming for help."
\par 
\par "Took them where? " Instead of answering me, he said, "Carpe cerevisi."
\par 
\par "Meaning? "
\par 
\par "Seize the beer." I took an icy bottle from the cooler and passed it to
\par him, hesitated, and then opened a beer for myself.
\par 
\par "Not wise to drink and drive, " I reminded him.
\par 
\par After taking a long swallow, I said, "I bet God likes beer. Of course,
\par He'd have a chauffeur." The twenty-foot-high levee walls rose on both
\par sides of us. The low and starless sky appeared to be as hard as iron,
\par pressing down like a kettle lid.
\par 
\par "Transport where? " I asked.
\par 
\par "Remember your wristwatch."
\par 
\par "Maybe it needs repair."
\par 
\par "Mine went nuts, too, " he reminded me.
\par 
\par "Since when do you wear a watch, anyway? "
\par 
\par "Since, for the first time in my life, I started feeling time running
\par out, " he said, referring not solely to his own mortality but to the
\par fact that time was running out for all of us, for the entire world as we
\par knew it. "Watches, man, I hate them, hate everything they stand for.
\par 
\par Evil mechanisms. But lately I start wondering what time it is, though I
\par never used to care, and if I can't find a clock, I get way itchy. So now
\par I wear a watch, and I'm like the rest of the world, and doesn't that
\par suck? "
\par 
\par "It sucketh."
\par 
\par "Like a tornado." I said, "Time was screwed up in the egg room."
\par 
\par "The room was a time machine."
\par 
\par "We can't make that assumption."
\par 
\par "I can, " he said. "I'm an assumption-making fool."
\par 
\par "Time travel is impossible."
\par 
\par "Medieval attitude, bro. Impossible is what they once said about
\par airplanes, going to the moon, nuclear bombs, television, and cholesterol
\par free egg substitutes."
\par 
\par "For the sake of argument, let's suppose it's possible."
\par 
\par "It is possible."
\par 
\par "If it's just time travel, why the pressurized suit? Wouldn't time
\par travelers want to be discreet? They'd be super-conspicuous unless they
\par traveled back to a Star Trek convention in 1980."
\par 
\par "Protection against unknown disease, " Bobby said. "Maybe an atmosphere
\par with less oxygen or full of poisonous pollutants."
\par 
\par "At a Star Trek convention in 1980? "
\par 
\par "You know they were going to the future."
\par 
\par "I don't know, and neither do you."
\par 
\par "The future, " Bobby insisted, the beer having given him absolute
\par confidence in his powers of deduction. "They figured they needed the
\par protection of the spacesuits because ... the future might be radically
\par different.
\par 
\par Which it evidently is." Even without the kiss of the moon, a faint
\par silvery blush lent visibility to the riverbed silt. Nevertheless, the
\par April night was deep.
\par 
\par Way back in the seventeenth century, Thomas Fuller said that it is
\par always darkest just before the dawn. More than three hundred years
\par later, he was still right, though still dead.
\par 
\par "How far in the future? " I wondered, almost able to smell the hot,
\par rancid air that had blown through the egg room.
\par 
\par "Ten years, a century, a millennium. Who cares? No matter how far they
\par went, something totally quashed them." I recalled the ghostly,
\par radio-relayed voices in the egg room, the panic, the cries for help, the
\par screams.
\par 
\par I shuddered. After another pull at my beer, I said, "The thing ..
\par 
\par .
\par 
\par or things in Hodgson's suit."
\par 
\par "That's part of our future."
\par 
\par "Nothing like that exists on this world."
\par 
\par "Not yet."
\par 
\par "But those things were so strange ...  The entire ecological system
\par would have to change.
\par 
\par Change drastically."
\par 
\par "If you can find one, ask a dinosaur whether it's possible." I had lost
\par my taste for the beer. I held the bottle out of the Jeep, turned it
\par upside down, and let it drain.
\par 
\par "Even if it was a time machine, " I argued, "it was dismantled.
\par 
\par So Hodgson showing up the way he did, out of nowhere, and the vault door
\par reappearing ... everything that happened to us ...  How could it have
\par happened? "
\par 
\par "There's a residual effect."
\par 
\par "Residual effect."
\par 
\par "Full-on, totally macking residual effect."
\par 
\par "You take the engine out of a Ford, tear apart the drive train, throw
\par away the battery no residual effect can cause the damn car to just drive
\par itself off to Vegas one day." Gazing at the dwindling, vaguely luminous
\par riverbed as if it were the course of time winding into our infinitely
\par strange future, Bobby said, "They tore a hole in reality.
\par 
\par Maybe a hole like that doesn't mend itself."
\par 
\par "What does that mean? "
\par 
\par "What it means, " he said.
\par 
\par "Cryptic."
\par 
\par "Styptic." Perhaps his point was that his explanation might be cryptic,
\par yes, but at least it was a concept we could grasp and to which we could
\par cling, a familiar idea that kept our sanity from draining away, just as
\par the alum in a styptic pencil could stop the blood flowing from a shaving
\par cut.
\par 
\par Or perhaps he was mocking my tendency acquired from the poetry in which
\par my father had steeped me to assume that everyone spoke in metaphor and
\par that the world was always more complex than it appeared to be, in which
\par case he had chosen the word solely for the rhyme.
\par 
\par I didn't give him the satisfaction of asking him to elucidate styptic
\par "They didn't know about this residual effect? "
\par 
\par "You mean the big-brain wizards running the project? "
\par 
\par "Yeah. The people who built it, then tore it down. If there was a
\par residual effect, they'd blow in the walls, fill the ruins with a few
\par thousand tons of concrete. They wouldn't just walk away and leave it for
\par assholes like us to find." He shrugged. "So maybe the effect didn't
\par manifest until they were long gone."
\par 
\par "Or maybe we were hallucinating everything, " I suggested.
\par 
\par "Both of us? "
\par 
\par "Could be."
\par 
\par "Identical hallucinations? " I had no adequate answer, so I said,
\par "Styptic."
\par 
\par "Elliptic." I refused to think about that one. "If the Mystery Train was
\par a time travel project, it didn't have anything to do with my mother's
\par work."
\par 
\par "So? "
\par 
\par "So if it didn't have anything to do with Mom, why did someone leave
\par this cap for me in the egg room? Why did they leave her photo in the
\par airlock on a different night? Why did someone put Leland Delacroix's
\par security badge under the windshield wiper and send us there tonight? "
\par 
\par "You're a regular question machine." He finished his Heineken, and I
\par shoved our empty bottles into the cooler.
\par 
\par "Could be that we don't know half of what we think we know, " Bobby
\par said.
\par 
\par "Like? "
\par 
\par "Maybe everything that went wrong at Wyvern went wrong in the
\par genetic-engineering labs, and maybe your mom's theories were entirely
\par what led to the mess we're in now, just like we've been thinking.
\par 
\par Or maybe not."
\par 
\par "You mean my mother didn't destroy the world? "
\par 
\par "Well, we can be pretty sure she helped, bro. I'm not saying your mom
\par was a nobody."
\par 
\par "Gracias."
\par 
\par "On the other hand, maybe she was only part of it, and maybe even the
\par lesser part." . s After my father's death from cancer a month earlier a
\par cancer I now suspect didn't have a natural causei had found his
\par handwritten account of Orson's origins, the intelligence-enhancement
\par experiments, and my mother's slippery retrovirus. "You read what my dad
\par wrote."
\par 
\par "Possibly he wasn't clued in to the whole story."
\par 
\par "He and Mom didn't keep secrets from each other."
\par 
\par "Yeah, sure, one soul in two bodies."
\par 
\par "That's right, " I said, prickling at his sarcasm.
\par 
\par He glanced at me, winced, and returned his attention to the riverbed
\par ahead. "Sorry, Chris. You're totally right. Your mom and dad weren't
\par like mine. They were way ... special. When we were kids, I used to wish
\par we weren't just best friends. Used to wish we were brothers so I could
\par live with your folks."
\par 
\par "We are brothers, Bobby." He nodded.
\par 
\par "In more important ways than blood, " I said.
\par 
\par "Don't set off the maudlin alarm."
\par 
\par "Sorry. Been eating too much sugar lately." There are truths about which
\par Bobby and I never speak, because all words are inadequate to describe
\par them, and to speak of them would be to diminish their power.
\par 
\par One of these truths is the profound depth and sacred nature of our
\par friendship.
\par 
\par Bobby moved on, "What I'm saying is, maybe your mom didn't know the full
\par story, either. Didn't know about the Mystery Train project, which might
\par be as much or more at fault than she was."
\par 
\par "Cozy idea. But how? "
\par 
\par "I'm not Einstein, bro. I just drained my brain." He started the engine
\par and drove down river, still leaving the headlights off.
\par 
\par I said, "I think I know what Big Head might be."
\par 
\par "Enlighten me."
\par 
\par "It's one of the second troop." The first troop had escaped the Wyvern
\par lab on that violent night well over two years ago, and they had proved
\par so elusive that every effort to locate and eradicate them had failed.
\par 
\par Desperate to find the monkeys before their numbers drastically
\par increased, the project scientists had released a second troop to search
\par for the first, figuring that it would take a monkey to find a monkey.
\par 
\par Each of these new individuals carried a surgically implanted
\par transponder, so it could be tracked and ultimately destroyed along with
\par whatever members of the first troop it found. Although these new monkeys
\par were supposedly unaware that they had been put through this surgery,
\par once set loose they had chewed the transponders out of one another,
\par setting themselves free.
\par 
\par "You think Big Head was a monkey? " he asked with disbelief. "A
\par radically redesigned monkey. Maybe not entirely a rhesus.
\par 
\par Maybe some baboon in there."
\par 
\par "Maybe some crocodile, " Bobby said sourly. He frowned. "I thought the
\par second troop was supposed to be a lot better engineered than the first.
\par 
\par Less violent."
\par 
\par "So? "
\par 
\par "Big Head didn't look like a pussycat. That thing was designed for the
\par battlefield."
\par 
\par "It didn't attack us."
\par 
\par "Only because it was smart enough to know what the shotgun could do to
\par it." Ahead was the access ramp down which I had traveled on my bike
\par earlier in the night, with Orson padding at my side. Bobby angled the
\par Jeep toward it.
\par 
\par Recalling the sorry beast on the bungalow roof and the way it had hidden
\par its face behind its crossed arms, I said, "I don't think it's a killer."
\par 
\par "Yeah, all those teeth are just for opening canned hams."
\par 
\par "Orson has wicked teeth, and he's no killer."
\par 
\par "Oh, you've convinced me, you absolutely have. Let's invite Big Head for
\par a pajama party.
\par 
\par We'll make huge bowls of popcorn, order in a pizza, put one another's
\par hair up in curlers, and talk about boys."
\par 
\par "Asshole."
\par 
\par "A minute ago, we were brothers."
\par 
\par "That was then." Bobby drove up the ramp to the top of the levee,
\par between the signs warning about the dangers of the river during storms,
\par across the barren strip of land to the street, where at last he switched
\par on the headlights. He headed toward Lilly Wing's house.
\par 
\par "I think Pia and I are going to be together again, " Bobby said,
\par referring to Pia Klick, the artist and love of his life, who believes
\par that she is the reincarnation of Kaha Huna, the goddess of surf.
\par 
\par "She says Waimea is home, " I reminded him.
\par 
\par "I'm going to work some major mojo." Mother Earth was busily rotating us
\par toward dawn, but the streets of Moonlight Bay were so deserted and
\par silent it was easy to imagine that it was, like Dead Town, inhabited
\par only by ghosts and cadavers.
\par 
\par "Mojo? You're into voodoo now? " I asked Bobby.
\par 
\par "Freudian mojo."
\par 
\par "Pia's way too smart to fall for it, " I predicted.
\par 
\par Although she had been acting flaky for the past three years, ever since
\par she had gone to Hawaii to find herself, Pia was no dummy. Before Bobby
\par ever met her, she had graduated summa cum laude from UCLA. These days,
\par her hyper realist paintings sold for big bucks, and the pieces she wrote
\par for various art magazines were perceptive and brilliantly composed.
\par 
\par "I'm going to tell her about my new tandem board, " he said.
\par 
\par "Ah. The implication being there's some wahine you're riding it with."
\par 
\par "You need a reality transfusion, bro. Pia can't be manipulated like
\par that. What I tell her isi got the tandem board, and I'm ready whenever
\par she is." Since Pia's meditations had led her to the revelation that she
\par was the reincarnation of Kaha Huna, she had decided that it would be
\par blasphemous to have carnal relations with a mere mortal man, which meant
\par that she would have to live the rest of her life in celibacy. This had
\par demoralized Bobby.
\par 
\par An elusive squiggle of hope appeared with Pia's subsequent realization
\par that Bobby was the reincarnation of Kahuna, the Hawaiian god of the
\par surf. A creation of modern surfers, the Kahuna legend is based on the
\par life of an ancient witch doctor no more divine than your local
\par chiropractor. Nevertheless, Pia says that Bobby, being Kahuna, is the
\par one man on earth with whom she could make love although in order for them
\par to pick up where they left off, he must acknowledge his true immortal
\par nature and embrace his fate.
\par 
\par A new problem arose when, either out of pride in being just mortal Bobby
\par Halloway or out of pure stubbornness, of which he has some, Bobby
\par refused to agree that he was the one and true god of the surf.
\par 
\par Compared to the difficulties of modern romance, the problems of Romeo
\par and Juliet were piffling.
\par 
\par "So you're finally going to admit you're Kahuna, " I said, as we drove
\par through pine-flanked streets into the higher hills of town.
\par 
\par "No. I'll play it mysterious. I won't say I'm not Kahuna. Be cool.
\par 
\par Wrap myself in enigma when she raises the subject, and let her make what
\par she wants of that."
\par 
\par "Not good enough."
\par 
\par "There's more. I'll also tell her about this dream where I saw her in an
\par awesomely beautiful gold-and-blue silk holoku, levitating over these
\par tasty, eight-foot, glassy waves, and in the dream she says to me, Papa
\par he'e naluhawaiian for surfboard." We were in a residential neighborhood
\par two blocks south of Ocean Avenue, the main east-west street in Moonlight
\par Bay, when a car turned the corner at the intersection ahead, approaching
\par us. It was a basic, late model, Chevrolet sedan, beige or white, with
\par standard California license plates.
\par 
\par I closed my eyes to protect them from the oncoming headlights. I wanted
\par to duck or slide down in the seat to shield my face from the light, but
\par I could have done nothing more calculated to call attention to myself
\par other than, perhaps, whipping out a paper bag and pulling it over my
\par head.
\par 
\par As the Chevy was passing us, its headlights no longer a danger, I opened
\par my eyes and saw two men in the front, one in the backseat.
\par 
\par They were big guys, dressed in dark clothes, as expressionless as
\par turnips, all interested in us. Their night-of-the-living-dead eyes were
\par flat, cold, and disturbingly direct.
\par 
\par For some reason, I thought of the shadowy figure I had seen on the
\par sloping buttress, above the tunnel that led under Highway 1.
\par 
\par After we were past the Chevy, Bobby said, "Legal muscle."
\par 
\par "Professional trouble, " I agreed.
\par 
\par "They might as well have had it stenciled on their foreheads." Watching
\par their taillights in the side mirror, I said, "They don't seem to be
\par after us, anyway. Wonder what they're looking for."
\par 
\par "Maybe Elvis." When the Chevy didn't double back and follow us, I said,
\par "So you're gonna tell Pia that in this dream of yours, she's levitating
\par over some waves, and she says, Papa he'e nalu."
\par 
\par "Right. In the dream, she tells me to get a tandem board we can ride
\par together. I figured that was prophetic, so I got the board, and now I'm
\par ready."
\par 
\par "What a crock, " I said, by way of friendly criticism.
\par 
\par "It's true. I had the dream."
\par 
\par "No way."
\par 
\par "Way. In fact, I had it three nights in a row, which weirded me out a
\par little. I'll tell her all that, and let her interpret it any way she
\par wants."
\par 
\par "While you play mysterious, not admitting to being Kahuna but exhibiting
\par godlike charisma." He looked worried. Braking at a stop sign after
\par having ignored all those before it, he said, "Truth. You don't think I
\par can pull it off? " When it comes to charisma, I have never known anyone
\par like Bobby, The stuff pours off him in such copious quantity that he
\par positively wades in it.
\par 
\par "Bro, " I said, "you have so much charisma that if you wanted to form a
\par suicide cult, you'd have people signing up by the thousands to jump off
\par a cliff with you." He was pleased. "Yeah? You're not spinning me?"
\par 
\par "No spin, " I assured him.
\par 
\par "Mahalo."
\par 
\par "You're welcome. But one question." As he accelerated away from the stop
\par sign, he said, "Ask."
\par 
\par "Why not just tell Pia that you've decided you're Kahuna? "
\par 
\par "I can't lie to her. I love her."
\par 
\par "It's a harmless lie."
\par 
\par "Do you lie to Sasha? "
\par 
\par "No."
\par 
\par "Does she lie to you? "
\par 
\par "She doesn't lie to anyone, " I said.
\par 
\par "Between a man and woman in love, no lie is small or harmless."
\par 
\par "You keep surprising me."
\par 
\par "My wisdom? "
\par 
\par "Your mushy little teddy-bear heart."
\par 
\par "Squeeze me, and I sing Feelings."
\par 
\par "I'll take your word for it." We were only a few blocks from Lilly
\par Wing's house.
\par 
\par "Go in by the back, through the alley, " I directed.
\par 
\par I wouldn't have been surprised to find a police patrol car or another
\par unmarked sedan full of granite-eyed men waiting for us, but the alleyway
\par was deserted. Sasha Good all's Ford Explorer stood in front of Lilly's
\par garage door, and Bobby parked behind it.
\par 
\par Beyond the windbreak of giant eucalyptuses, the wild canyon to the east
\par lay in unrelieved blackness. Without the lamp of the moon, anything
\par might have been out there, a bottomless abyss rather than a mere canyon,
\par a great dark sea, the end of the earth and a yawning infinity.
\par 
\par As I got out of the Jeep, I remembered good Orson investigating the
\par weeds along the verge of the canyon, urgently seeking Jimmy. His yelp of
\par excitement when he caught the scent. His swift and selfless commitment
\par to the chase.
\par 
\par Only hours ago. Yet ages ago.
\par 
\par Time seemed out of joint even here, far beyond the walls of the egg
\par room.
\par 
\par At the thought of Orson, a coldness closed around my heart, and for a
\par moment I couldn't breathe.
\par 
\par I recalled waiting by candlelight beside my father in the cold-holding
\par room at Mercy Hospital, two years ago this past January, waiting with my
\par mother's body for the hearse that would take her to Kirk's Funeral Home,
\par feeling as though my own body had been broken beyond repair by the loss
\par of her, almost afraid to move or even to speak, as though I might fly
\par apart like a hollow ceramic figurine struck with a hammer.
\par 
\par And my father's hospital room only a month ago. The terrible night he
\par died Holding his hand in mine, leaning over the bed railing to hear his
\par final whispered words fear nothing, Chris. Fear nothing and then his hand
\par going slack in mine. I had kissed his forehead, his rough cheek.
\par 
\par Because I myself am a walking miracle, still healthy and whole with XP
\par at the age of twenty-eight, I believe in miracles, in the reality of
\par them and in our need for them, and so I held fast to my dead father's
\par hand, kissed his beard-stubbled cheek, still hot with fever, and waited
\par for a miracle, all but demanded one. God help me, I expected Dad to pull
\par a Lazarus on me, because the pain of losing him was too fierce to bear,
\par the world unthinkably hard and cold without him, and I could not be
\par expected to endure it, must be granted mercy, so although I have been
\par blessed with numerous miracles in my life, I was greedy for one more,
\par one more. I prayed to God, begged Him, bargained with Him, but there is
\par a grace in the natural order of things that is more important than our
\par desires, and at last I'd had to accept that grace, as bitter as it
\par seemed at the time, and reluctantly I'd released my father's lifeless
\par hand.
\par 
\par Now I stood breathless in the alley, pierced again by the fear that I
\par would be required to outlive Orson, my brother, that special and
\par precious soul, who was even more an outsider in this world than I was.
\par 
\par If he should die alone, without the hand of a friend to comfort him,
\par without a soothing voice telling him that he was loved, I would be
\par forever haunted byruined by the thought of his solitary suffering and
\par despair.
\par 
\par "Bro, " Bobby said, putting one hand on my shoulder and squeezing
\par gently. "Gonna be all right." I hadn't spoken a word, but Bobby seemed
\par to know what fears had rooted me to the alleyway blacktop as I stared
\par into the forbidding blackness of the canyon beyond the eucalyptus trees.
\par 
\par Breath returned to me in a rush, and with it came a dangerously fierce
\par hope, one of those seizures of hope so intense it can break your heart
\par if it goes unfulfilled, a hope that was really a mad and unreasonable
\par conviction, which I had no right to indulge here at the end of the
\par world, We would find Jimmy Wing, and we would find Orson, untouched and
\par alive, and those who had meant to harm them would rot in Hell.
\par 
\par Through the wooden gate, along the narrow brick walkway, into the
\par backyard where the aroma of jasmine was as thick as incense, I worried
\par about how I was going to convey to Lilly Wing even a small measure of my
\par newfound faith that her son would be discovered alive and unharmed.
\par 
\par I had little to tell her that would support such an optimistic
\par conclusion.
\par 
\par In fact, if I recounted a fraction of what Bobby and I had seen in Fort
\par Wyvern, Lilly would lose hope altogether.
\par 
\par Bright lights were on toward the front of the Cape Cod bungalow.
\par 
\par In expectation of my return, only faint candlelight flickered beyond the
\par kitchen windows at the rear.
\par 
\par Sasha was waiting for us at the top of the back-porch steps. She must
\par have been in the kitchen when she heard the Jeep pulling behind the
\par garage.
\par 
\par The mental image of Sasha that I carry with me is idealized yet each time
\par I see her, after an absence, she is lovelier than my most flattering
\par recollection. Although my vision had adapted to the dark, the light was
\par so poor that I could not see the arrestingly clear gray of her eyes, the
\par mahogany shade of her hair, or the faintly freckled glow of her skin.
\par 
\par Nevertheless, she shone.
\par 
\par We embraced, and she whispered, "Hey, Snowman."
\par 
\par "Hey."
\par 
\par "Jimmy? "
\par 
\par "Not yet, " I said, matching her whisper. "Now Orson's missing.
\par 
\par " Her embrace tightened. "In Wyvern? "
\par 
\par "Yeah."
\par 
\par She kissed my cheek. "He's not just all heart and wagging tail.
\par 
\par He's tough. He can take care of himself."
\par 
\par "We're going back for them."
\par 
\par "Damn right, and me with you." Sasha's beauty is not just or even
\par primarily physical. In her face, I also see her wisdom, her compassion,
\par her courage, her eternal glory.
\par 
\par This other beauty, this spiritual beauty which is the deepest truth of
\par her sustains me in times of fear and despair, as other truths might
\par sustain a priest enduring martyrdom under the hand of a tyrant. I see
\par nothing blasphemous in equating Sasha's grace with the mercy of God, for
\par the one is a reflection of the other. The selfless love that we give to
\par others, to the point of being willing to sacrifice our lives for them as
\par Sasha would give hers for me, as I would give mine for her is all the
\par proof I need that human beings are not mere animals of self-interest, we
\par carry within us a divine spark, and if we choose to recognize it, our
\par lives have dignity, meaning, hope. In Sasha, this spark is bright, a
\par light that heals rather than wounds me.
\par 
\par When she hugged Bobby, who was carrying the shotgun, Sasha whispered,
\par "Better leave that out here. Lilly's shaky."
\par 
\par "Me too, " Bobby murmured.
\par 
\par He put the shotgun on the porch swing. The Smith & Wesson revolver was
\par tucked under his belt, concealed by his Hawaiian shirt.
\par 
\par Sasha was wearing blue jeans, a sweater, and a roomy denim jacket.
\par 
\par When we embraced, I'd felt the concealed handgun in her shoulder
\par holster.
\par 
\par I had the 9-millimeter Glock.
\par 
\par If my mother's gene-swapping retrovirus had been vulnerable to gunfire,
\par it would have met its match in us, the end of the world would have been
\par canceled, and we would have been at a beach party.
\par 
\par "Cops? " I asked Sasha.
\par 
\par "They were here. Gone now."
\par 
\par "Manuel? " I asked, meaning Manuel Ramirez, the acting chief of police,
\par who had been my friend before he had been co-opted by the Wyvern crowd.
\par 
\par "Yeah. When he saw me walk through the door, he looked like he was
\par passing a kidney stone." Sasha led us into the kitchen, where such a
\par hush prevailed that our soft footsteps were, comparatively, as loud and
\par as rude as clog dancing in a chapel. Lilly's anguish cast a shroud over
\par this humble house, no less tangible than a velvet pall on a casket, as
\par though Jimmy had already been found dead.
\par 
\par Out of respect for my condition, the only light came from the digital
\par clock on the oven, from the blue gas flame under the teakettle on one of
\par the cook top burners, and from a pair of fat, yellow candles. The
\par candles, which were set in white saucers on the dinette table, emitted a
\par vanilla fragrance that was inappropriately festive for this dark place
\par and these solemn circumstances One side of the table was adjacent to a
\par window, allowing space for three chairs. In the same jeans and flannel
\par shirt she'd been wearing earlier, Lilly sat in the chair facing me.
\par 
\par Bobby remained by the door, watching the backyard, and Sasha went to the
\par stove to check the teakettle.
\par 
\par I pulled out a chair and sat directly across the table from Lilly.
\par 
\par The candles in the saucers were between us, and I pushed them to one
\par side.
\par 
\par Lilly was sitting forward on her chair, her arms on the pine table.
\par 
\par "Badger, " I said.
\par 
\par Brow furrowed, eyes narrowed, lips pressed tightly together, she gazed
\par at her clasped hands with such fierce attention that she seemed to be
\par trying to read the fate of her child in the sharp points of her
\par knuckles, in the patterns of bones and veins and freckles, as if her
\par hands were tarot cards or I Ching sticks.
\par 
\par "I'll never stop, " I promised her.
\par 
\par From the subdued nature of my entrance, she already knew that I hadn't
\par found her son, and she didn't acknowledge me.
\par 
\par Recklessly, I promised her, "We're going to regroup, get more help, go
\par back out there and find him." At last she raised her head and met my
\par eyes. The night had aged her mercilessly. Even by the flattering light
\par of candles, she looked gaunt, worn, as if she'd been beaten by many
\par cruel years rather than by a few dark hours. Through a trick of light,
\par her blond hair seemed white. Her blue eyes, once so radiant and lively,
\par were dark now with sorrow, fear, and rage.
\par 
\par "My phone doesn't work, " Lilly said in an emotionless and quiet voice,
\par her calm demeanor belied by the powerful emotions in her eyes.
\par 
\par "Your phone? " At first I assumed that her mind had broken under the
\par weight of her fear.
\par 
\par "After the cops were gone, I called my mom. She remarried after Dad
\par died. Three years after. Lives in San Diego. My call couldn't be
\par completed. An operator broke in. Said long-distance service was
\par disrupted.
\par 
\par Temporarily. Equipment failure. She was lying." I was struck by the odd
\par and utterly uncharacteristic patterns of her speech, the clipped
\par sentences, staccato cadences. She seemed to be able to speak only by
\par concentrating on small groups of words, succinct bits of information, as
\par if afraid that while delivering a longer sentence, her voice would break
\par and, in breaking, would set loose her pent-up feelings, reducing her to
\par uncontrollable tears and incoherence.
\par 
\par "How do you know the operator was Lying? " I prodded when Lilly fell
\par silent.
\par 
\par "Wasn't even a real operator. You could tell. Didn't have the lingo
\par right. Didn't have the voice. Tone of voice. Didn't have the attitude.
\par 
\par They sound alike. They're trained. This one was jive." The movement of
\par her eyes matched the rhythms of her speech. She looked at me repeatedly
\par but each time quickly looked away, laden with guilt and a sense of
\par inadequacy, I assumed that she couldn't bear the sight of me because I'd
\par failed her. Once she'd shifted her attention from her clasped hands, she
\par was unable to focus on anything for more than a second or two, perhaps
\par because every object and surface in the kitchen summoned memories of
\par Jimmy, memories that would shatter her selfcontrol if she dared to dwell
\par on them.
\par 
\par "So I tried a local call. To Ben's mother. My late husband's mother.
\par 
\par Jimmy's grandma. She lives across town. Couldn't get a dial tone.
\par 
\par Now the phone is dead. No phone at all." From the far end of the kitchen
\par came the clink of china, then the rattle of spoons as Sasha searched
\par through the flatware in a drawer.
\par 
\par Lilly said, "The cops weren't cops, either. Looked like cops.
\par 
\par Uniforms.
\par 
\par Badges. Guns. Men I've known all my life. Manuel. He looks like Manuel.
\par 
\par Doesn't act like Manuel anymore."
\par 
\par "What was different? "
\par 
\par "They asked a few questions. Scribbled some notes. Made a plaster
\par impression of the footprint. Outside Jimmy's window. Dusted for
\par fingerprints, but not everywhere they should have.
\par 
\par It wasn't real.
\par 
\par Wasn't thorough at all. They didn't even find the crow."
\par 
\par "Crow? "
\par 
\par "They didn't ... care somehow, " she continued, as if she hadn't heard
\par my question, was struggling to understand their indifference.
\par 
\par "Lou, my father-in-law, used to be a cop. He was thorough. And he cared.
\par 
\par What's he have to do with this, anyway? He was a good cop. A kind man.
\par 
\par You always knew he cared. Not like ... them." I turned to Sasha for some
\par illumination about the crow and Louis Wing.
\par 
\par She nodded, which I took to mean that she understood and would clue me
\par in later if Lilly, in her distress, didn't make the connections for me.
\par 
\par Playing devil's advocate, I said to Lilly, "The police have to be
\par detached, impersonal, to do their job right."
\par 
\par "It wasn't that.
\par 
\par They'll look for Jimmy. They'll investigate.
\par 
\par They'll try. I think they will. But they were also ... managing me."
\par 
\par "Managing? "
\par 
\par "They said not to talk. Not to anyone. For twenty-four hours.
\par 
\par Talking jeopardizes the investigation. Child abductions scare the
\par public, see? Cause panic. Police phones ring off the hook. They spend
\par all their time calming people. Can't put full resources into finding
\par Jimmy. Bullshit. I'm not stupid. I'm coming apart here, coming apart .
\par 
\par .. but not stupid." She almost lost her composure, took a deep breath,
\par and finished in the same controlled, flat voice, "They just want to shut
\par me up. Shut me up for twenty-four hours. And I don't know why." I
\par understood Manuel's motivation for seeking her silence.
\par 
\par He needed to buy time until he could determine whether this was a
\par conventional crime or one connected to events at Wyvern, because he was
\par diligent about concealing the latter. Right now he was hoping that the
\par kidnapper was a common variety of sociopath, a pedophile or satanic
\par cultist, or someone with a grudge against Lilly. But the perpetrator
\par might be one of those who were becoming, a man whose DNA was so
\par disturbed by an aggressive infection of the retrovirus that his
\par psychology was deteriorating, his sense of humanity dissolving in an
\par acid of utterly alien urges and needs, compulsions darker and stranger
\par than even the worst of bestial desires. Or maybe there was another
\par connection to Wyvern, because these days so much that went wrong in
\par Moonlight Bay could be traced to those haunted grounds beyond the
\par chain-link and razor wire.
\par 
\par If Jimmy's kidnapper was one of the becoming, he'd never stand trial.
\par 
\par If captured, he would be taken to the deeply hidden genetics labs in
\par Fort Wyvern if they were, as we suspected, still operating, or he would
\par be transported to a similar and equally secret facility elsewhere, to be
\par studied and tested, as part of the desperate search for a cure. In that
\par event, Lilly would be pressured to accept an officially concocted story
\par of what had happened to her son. If she couldn't be persuaded, if she
\par couldn't be threatened, then she would be killed or railroaded into the
\par psychiatric ward at Mercy Hospital, in the name of national security and
\par the public welfare, though in truth she would be sacrificed for no
\par reason other than to protect the political eminences who had brought us
\par to this brink.
\par 
\par Sasha came to the table with a cup of tea, which she placed in front of
\par Lilly. On the saucer was a wedge of lemon. Beside the cup, she put a
\par cream-and-Sugar set on a matching china tray, with a small silver spoon
\par for the sugar.
\par 
\par Instead of grounding us in reality, these domestic details gave a
\par dreamlike quality to the proceedings. If Alice, the White Rabbit, and
\par the Mad Hatter had joined us at the table, I would not have been
\par surprised.
\par 
\par Apparently, Lilly had asked for tea, but now she seemed barely aware
\par that it had been put before her. The power of her repressed emotions ,
\par was growing so visible that she wouldn't be able to maintain her
\par composure much longer, yet for the moment she continued to speak in an
\par uninflected drone, "Phone's dead. Okay. What if I drive to my
\par mother-in-law's? To tell her about Jimmy. Will I be stopped? Stopped on
\par the way? Advised to be silent? For Jimmy's sake? And if I won't stop? If
\par I won't be silent? "
\par 
\par "How much has Sasha told you? " I asked.
\par 
\par Lilly's eyes fixed on mine, then moved at once away. "Something happened
\par at Wyvern. Something strange. Bad. In some way it affects us.
\par 
\par Every one in Moonlight Bay. They're trying to keep it quiet. It might
\par explain Jimmy's disappearance. Somehow." I turned to look at Sasha, who
\par had retreated to the farther side of the kitchen. "That's all? "
\par 
\par "Isn't she in greater danger if she knows more? " Sasha asked.
\par 
\par "Definitely, " Bobby said from his watch position at the rear door.
\par 
\par Considering the depth of Lilly's distress, I agreed that it was not wise
\par to tell her every detail of what we knew. If she understood the
\par apocalyptic threat looming over us, over all humanity, she might lose
\par her last desperate faith that she would see her little boy alive again.
\par 
\par I would never be the one who robbed her of that remaining hope.
\par 
\par Besides, I detected a dusting of gray in the night beyond the kitchen
\par windows, a precursor of dawn so subtle that anyone without my heightened
\par appreciation for shades of darkness was not likely to notice. We were
\par running out of time. Soon I would have to hide from the sun, which I
\par preferred to do in the well-prepared sanctuary of my own home.
\par 
\par Lilly said, "I deserve to know. To know everything."
\par 
\par "Yes, " I agreed.
\par 
\par "Everything."
\par 
\par "But there's not enough time now. We"
\par 
\par "I'm scared, " she whispered.
\par 
\par I pushed aside her cup of tea and reached across the table with both
\par hands. "You aren't alone." She looked at my hands but didn't take them,
\par perhaps because she was afraid that by putting her hands in mine, she
\par would lose her grip on her emotions.
\par 
\par Keeping my hands on the table, palms up, I said, "Knowing more now won't
\par help you. Later, I'll tell you everything. Everything.
\par 
\par But now .
\par 
\par .. If whoever took Jimmy has nothing to do with ... the mess at Wyvern,
\par Manuel will try hard to bring him back to you. I know he will.
\par 
\par But if it is related to Wyvern, then none of the police, Manuel
\par included, can be trusted. Then it's up to us. And we've got to assume it
\par will be up to us."
\par 
\par "This is so wrong."
\par 
\par "Yes."
\par 
\par "Crazy."
\par 
\par "Yes."
\par 
\par "So wrong, " she repeated, and her flat voice was increasingly eerie.
\par 
\par Her effort to maintain her composure left her face clenched as tight as
\par a fist.
\par 
\par I couldn't bear the sight of her in such acute pain, but I did not avert
\par my gaze. When she was able to look at me, I wanted her to see the
\par commitment in my eyes, perhaps she could take some comfort from it.
\par 
\par "You've got to stay here, " I said, "so we'll know where to get hold of
\par you if ... when we find Jimmy."
\par 
\par "What hope do you have? " she said, and though her voice remained flat,
\par a flutter passed through it.
\par 
\par "You against ... who? The police? The army? The government? You against
\par all of them? "
\par 
\par "It isn't hopeless. Nothing's hopeless in this worldunless we want it to
\par be. But, Lilly ... you've got to stay here. Because if this isn't about
\par Wyvern, isn't connected, then the police might need your help. Or might
\par bring you good news. Even the police."
\par 
\par "But you shouldn't be alone, " Sasha said.
\par 
\par "When we leave, " Bobby said, "I'll bring Jenna here." Jenna Wing was
\par Lilly's mother-in-law. "Would that be okay? " Lilly nodded.
\par 
\par She was not going to take my hands, so I folded them on the table, as
\par hers were folded.
\par 
\par I said, "You asked what they could do if you decided not to be silent,
\par not to play this their way. Anything. That's what they can do." I
\par hesitated. Then, "I don't know where my mother was going on the day she
\par died. She was driving out of town. Maybe to break this conspiracy wide
\par open. Because she knew, Lilly. She knew what had happened at Wyvern. She
\par never got where she was going. Neither would you." Her eyes widened.
\par 
\par "The accident, the car crash."
\par 
\par "No accident." For the first time since I'd sat across the table from
\par her, Lilly met my eyes and held my gaze for longer than two or three
\par words, "Your mother.
\par 
\par Genetics. Her work. That's how you know so much about this." I didn't
\par take the opportunity to explain more to Lilly, for fear she might reach
\par the correct conclusion that my mother was not merely a righteous
\par whistle-blower, that she was among those fundamentally responsible for
\par what had gone wrong at Wyvern. And if what happened to Jimmy was related
\par to the Wyvern cover-up, Lilly might take the next step in logic,
\par concluding that her son was in jeopardy as a direct result of my
\par mother's work. While this was probably true, she might leap thereafter
\par into the realm of the illogical, assume that I was one of the
\par conspirators, one of the enemy, and withdraw from me.
\par 
\par Regardless of what my mother could have done, I was Lilly's friend and
\par her best hope of finding her child.
\par 
\par "Your best chance, Jimmy's best chance, is to trust us. Me, Bobby,
\par Sasha. Trust us, Lilly."
\par 
\par "There's nothing I can do. Nothing, " she said bitterly.
\par 
\par Her clenched face changed, though it didn't relax with relief at being
\par able to share this burden with friends. Instead, the wretched twist of
\par pain that distorted her features drew tighter, into a hard knot of
\par anger, as she was overcome by a simultaneously dispiriting and
\par infuriating recognition of her helplessness.
\par 
\par When her husband, Ben, died three years ago, Lilly had left her job as a
\par teacher's aide, because she couldn't support Jimmy on that income, and
\par she had risked the life-insurance money to open a gift shop in an area
\par of the harbor popular with tourists. With hard work, she made the
\par business viable. To overcome loneliness and grief at the loss of Ben,
\par she filled her spare hours with Jimmy and with self-education, She
\par learned to lay bricks, installing the walkways around her bungalow, she
\par built a fine picket fence, stripped and refinished the cabinets in her
\par kitchen, and became a first-class gardener, with the best landscaping in
\par her neighborhood. She was accustomed to taking care of herself, to
\par coping. Even in adversity, she had always before remained an optimist,
\par she was a doer, a fighter, all but incapable of thinking of herself as a
\par victim.
\par 
\par Perhaps for the first time in her life, Lilly felt entirely helpless,
\par pitted against forces she could neither fully understand nor
\par successfully defy. This time self-reliance was not enough, worse, there
\par seemed to be no positive action that she could take. Because it was not
\par in her nature to embrace victimhood, she could not find solace in
\par self-pity, either. She could only wait. Wait for Jimmy to be found
\par alive. Wait for him to be found dead. Or, perhaps worst of all, wait all
\par her life without knowing what had happened to him. Because of this
\par intolerable helplessness, she was racked equally by anger, terror, and a
\par portentous grief.
\par 
\par At last she unclasped her hands.
\par 
\par Her eyes blurred with tears that she struggled not to shed.
\par 
\par Because I thought she was going to reach out to me, I reached toward her
\par again.
\par 
\par Instead, she covered her face with her hands and, sobbing, said, "Oh,
\par Chris, I'm so ashamed." I didn't know whether she meant that her
\par helplessness shamed her or that she was ashamed of losing control, of
\par weeping.
\par 
\par I went around the table and tried to pull her into my arms.
\par 
\par She resisted for a moment, then rose from her chair and hugged me.
\par 
\par Burying her face against my shoulder, voice raw with anguish, she said,
\par "I was so ... oh, God ... I was so cruel to you." Stunned, confused, I
\par said, "No, no. Lilly, Badger, no, not you, not ever."
\par 
\par "I didn't have ... the guts." She was shaking as if in the thrall of a
\par fever, words stuttering out of her, teeth chattering, clutching at me
\par with the desperation of a lost and terrified child.
\par 
\par I held her tight, unable to speak because her pain tore at me.
\par 
\par I remained baffled by her declaration of shame, yet, in retrospect, I
\par believe an understanding was beginning to come to me.
\par 
\par "All my big talk, " she said, her voice becoming even less clear,
\par distorted by a choking remorse. "Just talk. But I wasn't  ... couldn't .
\par 
\par .. when it counted ... couldn't." She gasped for breath and held me
\par tighter than ever. "I told you the difference didn't matter to me, but
\par in the end it did."
\par 
\par "Stop, " I whispered. "It's all right, all right."
\par 
\par "Your difference, " she said, but by now I knew what she meant.
\par 
\par "Your difference. In the end it mattered. And I turned away from you.
\par 
\par But here you are. Here you are when I need you." Bobby moved from the
\par kitchen onto the back porch. He wasn't investigating a suspicious noise,
\par and he wasn't stepping outside to give us privacy. His slacker
\par indifference was a shell inside which was concealed a snail-soft
\par sentimental Bobby Halloway that he thought was unknown to everyone, even
\par to me.
\par 
\par Sasha started to follow Bobby. When she glanced at me, I shook my head,
\par encouraging her to stay.
\par 
\par Visibly discomfited, she busied herself by brewing another serving of
\par tea to replace the one that had cooled, untouched, in the cup on the
\par table.
\par 
\par "You never turned away from me, never, never, " I told Lilly, holding
\par her, smoothing her hair with one hand, and wishing that life had never
\par brought us to a moment where she felt compelled to speak of this.
\par 
\par For four years, beginning when we were sixteen, we hoped to build a life
\par together, but we grew up. For one thing, we realized that any children
\par we conceived would be at too high a risk of XP. I've made peace with my
\par limitations, but I couldn't justify creating a child who would be
\par burdened with them. And if the child was born without XP, heor she would
\par be fatherless at a young age, for I wasn't likely to survive far into
\par his teenage years. Though I would have been content to live childless
\par with Lilly, she longed to have a family, which was natural and right.
\par 
\par She struggled, too, with the certainty of being a young widow and with
\par the awful prospect of the increasing physical and neurological disorders
\par that were likely to plague me during my final few years, slurred speech,
\par hearing loss, uncontrollable tremors of the head and the hands, perhaps
\par even mental impairment.
\par 
\par "We both knew it had to end, both of us, " I told Lilly, which was true,
\par because belatedly I'd recognized the horrendous obligation that I would
\par eventually become to her, all in the name of love.
\par 
\par To be honest, I might selfishly have seduced her into marriage and
\par allowed her to suffer with me during my eventual descent into infirmity
\par and disability, because the comfort and companionship she could have
\par provided would have made my decline less frightening and more tolerable.
\par 
\par I might have closed my mind to the realization that I was ruining her
\par life in order to improve mine. I am not adequate material for sainthood,
\par I am not selfless. She had voiced the first doubts, tentative and
\par apologetic, listening to her, over a period of weeks, I'd reluctantly
\par arrived at the realization that although she would make any sacrifice
\par for meand though I wanted to let her make those sacrifices what love she
\par still had for me after my death would inevitably be corroded with
\par resentment and with a justified bitterness.
\par 
\par Because I am not going to have a long life, I have a deep and thoroughly
\par selfish need to want those who have known me to keep me alive in memory.
\par 
\par And I am vain enough to want those memories to be cherished, to be full
\par of affection and laughter.
\par 
\par Finally I had understood that, for my sake as much as Lilly's, we had to
\par forgo our dream of a life together or risk watching the dream devolve
\par into a nightmare.
\par 
\par Now, with Lilly in my arms, I realized that because she had been the
\par first to express doubts about our relationship, she felt the full
\par responsibility for its collapse. When we'd ceased to be lovers and
\par decided to settle for friendship, my continued longing for her and my
\par melancholy about the end of our dream must have been dismally apparent,
\par because I'd been neither kind enough nor man enough to spare her from
\par them. Unwittingly, I had sharpened the thorn of guilt in her heart, and
\par eight years too late, I needed to heal the wound that I had caused.
\par 
\par When I began to tell her all this, Lilly attempted to protest.
\par 
\par By habit, she blamed herself, and over the years she had learned to take
\par a masochistic solace in her imagined culpability, which she was now
\par reluctant to do without. Earlier, I'd incorrectly believed that her
\par inability to meet my eyes resulted from my failure to find Jimmy, like
\par her, I'd been quick to torture myself with blame. This side of Eden,
\par whether we realize it or not, we feel the stain on our souls, and at
\par every opportunity, we try to scrub it away with steel-wool guilt.
\par 
\par I held fast to this dear woman, talking her into accepting exoneration,
\par trying to make her see me for the needy fool that I am, insisting that
\par she understand how close I had come, eight years ago, to manipulating
\par her into sacrificing her future for me. Diligently, I tarnished the
\par shining image she held of me.
\par 
\par This was one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do  ...
\par because as I held her and quieted her tears, I realized how much I still
\par cherished her, treasured her, and how desperately I wanted her to think
\par only well of me, though we would never be lovers again.
\par 
\par "We did what was right. Both of us. If we hadn't made the decision we
\par made eight years ago, " I concluded, "you wouldn't have found Ben, and I
\par would never have found Sasha. Those are precious moments in our lives
\par your meeting Ben, my meeting Sasha. Sacred moments."
\par 
\par "I love you, Chris."
\par 
\par "I love you, too."
\par 
\par "Not like I once loved you."
\par 
\par "I know."
\par 
\par "Better than that."
\par 
\par "I know, " I said.
\par 
\par "Purer than that."
\par 
\par "You don't need to say this."
\par 
\par "Not because it makes me feel rebellious and noble to love you with all
\par your troubles.
\par 
\par Not because you're different. I love you because you're who you are."
\par 
\par "Badger? " I said.
\par 
\par "What? " I smiled. "Shut up." She let out a sound that was more laugh
\par than sob, though it was composed of both. She kissed me on the cheek and
\par settled into her chair, weak with relief but also still weak with fear
\par for her missing son.
\par 
\par Sasha brought a fresh cup of tea to the table, and Lilly took her hand,
\par held it tightly. "Do you know The Wind in the Willows? "
\par 
\par "Didn't until I met Chris, " Sasha said, and even in the dim and
\par fluttering candlelight, I saw the tracks of tears on her face.
\par 
\par "He called me Badger because I stood up for him. But he's my Badger now,
\par your Badger. And you're his, aren't you? "
\par 
\par "She swings a hell of a mean cudgel, " I said.
\par 
\par "We're going to find Jimmy, " Sasha promised her, relieving me of the
\par terrible weight of repeating that impossible promise, "and we're going
\par to bring him home to you."
\par 
\par "What about the crow? " Lilly asked Sasha.
\par 
\par From a pocket, Sasha produced a sheet of drawing paper, which she
\par unfolded After the cops left, I searched Jimmy's bedroom. They hadn't
\par been thorough. I thought we might find something they overlooked.
\par 
\par This was under one of the pillows." When I held the paper to the
\par candlelight, I saw an ink sketch of a bird in flight, side view, wings
\par back. Beneath the bird was a neatly hand lettered message, Louis Wing
\par will be my servant in Hell.
\par 
\par "What does your father-in-law have to do with this? " I asked Lilly.
\par 
\par Fresh misery darkened her face. "I don't know." Bobby stepped inside
\par from the porch. "Got to split, bro." By now the coming dawn was evident
\par to all of us. The sun had not yet appeared above the eastern hills, but
\par the night was doing a fade, from blackest soot to gray dust.
\par 
\par Beyond the windows, the backyard was no longer a landscape in shades of
\par black but a pencil sketch.
\par 
\par I showed him the drawing of the crow. "Maybe this isn't about Wyvern,
\par after all. Maybe someone has a grudge against Louis." Bobby studied the
\par paper, but he wasn't convinced that this proved the kidnapping was
\par merely a crime of vengeance. "Everything goes back to Wyvern, one way or
\par another."
\par 
\par "When did Louis leave the police department? " I asked.
\par 
\par Lilly said, "He retired about four years ago, a year before Ben died."
\par 
\par "And before everything went wrong at Wyvern, " Sasha noted. "So maybe
\par this isn't connected."
\par 
\par "It's connected, " Bobby insisted. He tapped one finger against the
\par crow. "It's too radically weird not to be connected."
\par 
\par "We should talk to your father-in-law, " I told Lilly.
\par 
\par She shook her head. "Can't. He's in Shore haven."
\par 
\par "The nursing home?"
\par 
\par "He's had three strokes over the past four months. The third left him in
\par a coma. He can't talk to anyone. They don't expect him to live much
\par longer." When I looked at the ink sketch again, I understood that
\par Bobby's "radically weird" had referred not only to the hand-lettered
\par words but also to the crow itself. The drawing had a malevolent aura,
\par The wing feathers bristled, the beak was open as if to let out a shriek,
\par the talons were spread and hooked, and the eye, though merely a white
\par circle, seemed to radiate evil, fury.
\par 
\par "May I keep this? " I asked Lilly.
\par 
\par She nodded. "It feels dirty. I don't want to touch it." We left Lilly
\par there with a cup of tea and with hope that, if it could have been
\par measured, might not have equaled the volume of juice she could squeeze
\par from the lemon wedge on her saucer.
\par 
\par Descending the porch steps, Sasha said, "Bobby, you better bring Jenna
\par Wing back here as quick as you can." I gave him the sketch of the crow.
\par 
\par "Show her this. Ask her if she remembers any case Louis worked on  ...
\par anything that might explain this." As we crossed the backyard, Sasha
\par took my hand.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "Who's spinning music when you're here? "
\par 
\par "Doogie Sassman's covering for me, " she said.
\par 
\par "Mr. Harley-Davidson, the man-mountain love machine, " Bobby said,
\par leading us along the brick walk beside the garage. "What program format
\par does he favor head-banging heavy metal? "
\par 
\par "Waltzes, " Sasha said. "Fox-trots, tangos, rumbas, cha-chas.
\par 
\par I've warned him he has to stick with the tune sheet I gave him, cause
\par otherwise, he'd just play dance music. He loves ballroom dancing."
\par 
\par Pushing open the gate, Bobby stopped, turned, and stared at Sasha in
\par disbelief. To me, he said, "You knew this? "
\par 
\par "No."
\par 
\par "Ballroom dancing? " Sasha said, "He's won some prizes."
\par 
\par "Doogie? He's as big as a Volkswagen Beetle."
\par 
\par "The old Volkswagen Beetle or the new one?
\par 
\par 
\par "The new one, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "He's a big guy, but he's very graceful, " Sasha said.
\par 
\par "He has a tight turning radius, " I told Bobby.
\par 
\par The thing that happens so easily among us, the thing that makes us so
\par close, was happening again. The groove or rhythm or mood or whatever it
\par is we so routinely fall into with one another we were falling into it
\par again. You can handle anything, including the end of the world as we
\par know it, if at your side are friends with the proper attitude.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "I thought Doogie hangs out in biker bars, not ballrooms."
\par 
\par "For fun, he's a bouncer in a biker bar two evenings a week, " Sasha
\par said, "but I don't think he hangs out there otherwise."
\par 
\par "For fun? " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "He enjoys breaking heads, " Sasha said.
\par 
\par "Who doesn't, " I said.
\par 
\par As we followed Bobby into the alleyway, he said, "The dude is a way
\par skilled audio engineer, rides a Harley like he came out of the womb on
\par it, dates awesome women who make any Ms. Universe look like the average
\par resident of an oyster shell, fights drunken psycho bikers for fun, wins
\par prizes for ballroom dancing this sounds like a bro we want with us when
\par we go back to Wyvern." I said, "Yeah, my big worry has been what we'll
\par do if there's a tango competition."
\par 
\par "Exactly." To Sasha, Bobby said, "You think he'd be up for it?"
\par 
\par She nodded. "I think Doogie's always up for everything." I expected to
\par find a police cruiser or an unmarked sedan behind the garage, and
\par unamused authority figures waiting for us. The alley was deserted.
\par 
\par A pale gray swath of sky outlined the hills to the east. The breeze
\par raised a chorus of whispers from the windbreak of eucalyptus trees along
\par the canyon crest, as if warning me to hurry home before the morning
\par found me.
\par 
\par "And Doogie has all those tattoos, " I said.
\par 
\par "Yeah, " Bobby said, "he's got more tattoos than a drunken sailor with
\par four mothers and ten wives." To Sasha, I said, "If you're getting into
\par any hostile situation, and it involves a super-huge guy covered with
\par tattoos, you want him on your side."
\par 
\par "It's a fundamental rule of survival, " Bobby agreed.
\par 
\par "It's discussed in every biology textbook, " I said.
\par 
\par "It's in the Bible, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "Leviticus, " I said.
\par 
\par "It's in Exodus, too, " Bobby said, "and Deuteronomy." Alerted by
\par movement and by a glimpse of eye shine, Bobby snapped the shotgun into
\par firing position, I drew the Glock from my shoulder holster, Sasha pulled
\par her revolver, and we swung toward the perceived threat, forming a manic
\par tableau of paranoia and rugged individualism that would have been
\par perfection if we'd just had one of those pre-Revolutionary War flags
\par that featured a coiled serpent and the words Don't Tread on Me.
\par 
\par Twenty feet north of us, along the eastern side of the alley, making no
\par sound to compete with the soughing of the wind, coyotes appeared among
\par the trunks of the eucalyptus trees. They came over the canyon crest,
\par through the bunch-grass and wild flax, between bushy clumps of
\par goats beard.
\par 
\par These prairie wolves, smaller than true wolves, with narrower muzzles
\par and lighter variegated coats, possess much of the beauty and charm of
\par wolts, of all dogs. Even in their benign moments, however, after they
\par havfhunted and fed to contentment, when they are playing or sunning in a
\par meadow, they still look dangerous and predatory to such an extent that
\par they are not likely to inspire a line of cuddly stuffed toys, and if one
\par of them is chosen as the ideal photogenic pet by the next resident of
\par 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, we can be reasonably sure that the Antichrist
\par has his finger on the nuclear trigger.
\par 
\par Slinking out of the canyon, among the trees, into the alley in the
\par earliest ashen light of this cloud-shrouded morning, the coyotes looked
\par post-apocalyptic, like the hellish hunters in a world long past its
\par doomsday. Heads thrust forward, yellow eyes glowing in the gloom, ears
\par pricked, jaws cracked in humorless serrated grins, they arrived and
\par gathered and turned to face us in dreamlike silence, as though they had
\par escaped from a Navajo mystic's peyote-inspired vision.
\par 
\par Ordinarily, coyotes travel overland in single file, but these came in a
\par swarm, and once in the alleyway, they stood flank-to-flank, closer than
\par any canine pack, huddling together rather like a colony of rats.
\par 
\par Their breath, hotter than ours, smoked in the coolish air. I didn't
\par attempt to count them, but they numbered more than thirty, all adults,
\par no pups.
\par 
\par We could have tried to get into Sasha's Explorer and pull the doors
\par shut, but we all sensed that any sudden movement from us or any show of
\par fear might invite a vicious assault. The most we dared to do was slowly
\par reverse a step or two, until our backs were to some degree protected by
\par the pair of parked vehicles.
\par 
\par Coyote attacks on adult human beings are rare but not unknown.
\par 
\par Even in hunting pairs or in a pack, they will stalk and chase down a man
\par or woman only if desperate with hunger because a drought has lowered the
\par population of mice, rabbits, and other small wildlife.
\par 
\par Young children, left unattended in a park or in a backyard adjacent to
\par open range, are more often seized and savaged and dragged away, but
\par these incidents are also rare, especially considering the vast expanses
\par of territory that human beings and coyotes inhabit together throughout
\par the West.
\par 
\par I was most worried not by what coyotes might usually do, but by the
\par perception that these were not ordinary animals. They could not be
\par expected to behave as usual for their kind, the danger was in their
\par difference.
\par 
\par Although all their heads were turned in our direction, I didn't feel we
\par were the primary focus of their attention. They seemed to be raptly
\par gazing past us, toward something in the distance, though for its eight
\par or ten-block length, the alley was quiet and deserted.
\par 
\par Abruptly, the pack moved.
\par 
\par Although living in families, coyotes are nonetheless fierce
\par individualists, driven by personal needs, insights, moods. Their
\par independence is evident even when they hunt together, but this pack
\par moved with uncanny coordination, with the instinctive synchronization of
\par a cruising school of piranhas, as though they shared one mind, one
\par purpose.
\par 
\par Ears laid back flat against their skulls, jaws cracked wide as if to
\par bite, heads lowered, hackles raised, shoulders hunched, tails tucked in
\par and held low, the coyotes raced in our direction but not directly toward
\par us. They kept to the east half of the alley, most of them on the
\par blacktop but some on the dusty verge, gazing past us and straight ahead,
\par as if focused intently on prey that was invisible to human eyes.
\par 
\par Neither Bobby nor I came close to firing on the pack, because we were at
\par once reminded of the behavior of the flock of nighthawks in Wyvern.
\par 
\par At first the birds seemed to have gathered with malicious intent, then
\par for the purpose of celebration, and in the end their only violent
\par impulse was to self-destruction. With these coyotes, I didn't sense the
\par bleak aura of sorrow and despair that had radiated from the nighthawks,
\par I didn't feel they were searching for their own final solution to
\par whatever fever gripped them. They appeared to be a danger to someone or
\par something, but not to us.
\par 
\par Sasha held her revolver in a two-hand grip as the pack streamed toward
\par us. But as they began to pass without turning a single yellow eye in our
\par direction and without issuing one bark or snarl, she slowly lowered the
\par weapon until the muzzle was aimed at the pavement near her feet.
\par 
\par These predators, breath steaming from their mouths, appeared ectoplasmic
\par here on the cusp of dawn. If not for the slap of paws on blacktop and a
\par musky odor, they might have been only ghosts of coyotes, engaged in one
\par last haunt during the final minutes of this spirit-friendly night,
\par before making their way back to the rough fields and vales in which
\par their moldering bones awaited them.
\par 
\par As the final ranks of the pack poured past us, we turned to stare after
\par the swift procession. They dwindled into the distance, chased by the
\par gray light from the east, as though following the night toward the
\par western horizon.
\par 
\par Quoting Paul Mccartneyafter all, she was a songwriter as well as a
\par deejay sasha said, "Baby, I'm amazed."
\par 
\par "I've got a lot to tell you, " I said. "We've seen way more than this
\par tonight, stranger stuff."
\par 
\par "A catalog of the mondo weird, " Bobby assured her.
\par 
\par In the darker distance, the coyotes seemed to shimmer out of existence,
\par though I suspect that they slipped from the alleyway, over the canyon
\par crest, returning to the deeper realms from which they had ascended.
\par 
\par "We haven't seen the last of them, " Sasha predicted, and her voice was
\par shaded by a disquieting note of precognition.
\par 
\par "Maybe, " I said.
\par 
\par "Definitely, " she insisted with quiet conviction. "And the next time
\par they come around, they'll be in an uglier mood." Breaking open the
\par shotgun and shaking the shell from the chamber into the palm of his
\par hand, Bobby said, "Here comes the sun." He was not to be taken
\par literally, the day was overcast. The relentless morning slowly stripped
\par off the black hood of the night and turned its dead, gray face upon us.
\par 
\par A solid cloud cover affords me no substantial protection against the
\par destructive force of the sun. Ultraviolet light penetrates even black
\par thunderheads, and while the burn may build more slowly than on a
\par searingly bright day, the irreparable damage to my skin and eyes
\par nevertheless accumulates. Sunscreen lotions protect well against the
\par less serious forms of skin cancer, but they have little or no ability to
\par prevent melanoma.
\par 
\par Consequently, I have to seek shelter from even a daytime sky as gray
\par black as the char and ashes in the cold bowl of Satan's pipe after he's
\par smoked a handful of souls.
\par 
\par To Bobby, I said, "We're no good without a little sleep. Grab some
\par mattress time, then meet Sasha and me at my house between noon and one
\par o'clock. We'll put together a plan and a search party." [ "You can't go
\par back to Wyvern till sundown, but maybe some of us ought to get moving
\par sooner, " he said.
\par 
\par "I'm for that. But there's no point in quartering off Wyvern and
\par searching every foot of it. That would take too long, forever.
\par 
\par We'd never find them in time, " I said, leaving unspoken the thought
\par that we might already be too late. "We don't go back until we've got the
\par tracker we need."
\par 
\par "Tracker? " Sasha asked, fitting her revolver into the holster under her
\par denim jacket.
\par 
\par "Mungojerrie, " I said, tucking away my 9-millimeter.
\par 
\par Bobby blinked. "The cat? "
\par 
\par "He's more than a cat, " I reminded Bobby.
\par 
\par "Yeah, but"
\par 
\par "And he's our only hope."
\par 
\par "Cats can track? "
\par 
\par "I'm sure this one can." Bobby shook his head.
\par 
\par "I'm never gonna be at home in this brave new smart-animal world, bro.
\par 
\par It's like I'm living in a maximum-wacky Donald Duck cartoon, but one
\par where, between the laughs, dudes get their guts ripped out."
\par 
\par "The world according to Edgar Allan Disney, " I said. "Anyway,
\par Mungojerrie hangs out around the marina.
\par 
\par Pay a visit to Roosevelt Frost.
\par 
\par He should know how to find our tracker." Out of the pool of shadows in
\par the canyon east of us, the eerie ululant cries of coyotes rose, a sound
\par like no other on earth, like the tormented and hungry voices that
\par banshees would have if banshees existed.
\par 
\par Sasha put her right hand under her jacket, as if she might draw her
\par revolver again.
\par 
\par 
\par 
\par Such a frenzied choir of coyotes is a common sound at night, usually
\par signifying that a hunt has reached its bloody end, that some prey as
\par large as a deer has been brought down by the pack, or that the full moon
\par is exerting its peculiar pull, but you rarely hear such a chilling
\par chorus on this side of the sunrise. As much as anything that we had yet
\par experienced, this sinister serenade, which escalated in volume and
\par passion, filled me with foreboding.
\par 
\par "Sharky, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "White pointers, " I said, which is surfer lingo for great whites, the
\par most dangerous of all sharks.
\par 
\par I climbed into the passenger seat of the Explorer, and by the time Sasha
\par started the engine, Bobby pulled past us in his Jeep, heading for Jenna
\par Wing's house across town.
\par 
\par I didn't expect to see him for at least seven hours, but here at the
\par dawn of April 12, we didn't realize that we were entering a day of epic
\par bad news. The nasty surprises were coming at us like a long series of
\par triple overhead monoliths churned up by a typhoon in the far Pacific.
\par 
\par Sasha parked the Explorer in the driveway, because my father's car was
\par in the garage, as were boxes of his clothing and his personal effects.
\par 
\par The day would come, with his death far enough in the past, when I would
\par not feel that disposing of his belongings would diminish him in my
\par memory. I was not at that day yet.
\par 
\par In this matter, I know I'm being illogical. My memories of my dad, which
\par give me sustaining strength every day, are not related to what clothes
\par he wore on any particular occasion, to his favorite sweater or his
\par silver-rimmed reading glasses. His things do not keep him vivid in my
\par mind, he stays with me because of his kindness, his wit, his courage,
\par his love, his joy in life. Yet twice in the three weeks since I've
\par packed up his clothes, I've torn open one of the boxes in the garage
\par simply to have a look at those reading glasses, at that sweater.
\par 
\par In such moments I can't escape the truth that I'm not coping as well as
\par I pretend to be. The cataract of grief is a longer drop than Niagara,
\par and I guess I've not yet reached the river of acceptance at the bottom.
\par 
\par When I got out of the Explorer, I didn't hurry into the house, though
\par the grizzled morning was now almost fully upon us. The day did little to
\par restore the color that the night had stolen from the world, indeed, the
\par smoky light seemed to deposit an ash-gray residue on everything, muting
\par tones, dulling shiny surfaces. The cumulative UV damage I would sustain
\par in this shineless sunshine was a risk worth taking to spend one minute
\par admiring the two oaks in the front yard.
\par 
\par These California live oaks, beautifully crowned and with great canopies
\par of strong black limbs, tower over the house, shading it in every season,
\par because unlike eastern oaks, they don't drop their leaves in winter. I
\par have always loved these trees, have climbed high into them on many
\par nights to get closer to the stars, but lately they mean more to me than
\par ever because they remind me of my parents, who had the strength to make
\par the sacrifices in their own lives required to raise a child with my
\par disabilities and who gave me the shade to thrive.
\par 
\par The weight of this leaden dawn had pressed all the wind out of the day.
\par 
\par The oaks were as monolithic as sculpture, each leaf like a petal of cast
\par bronze.
\par 
\par After a minute, calmed by the deep stillness of the trees, I crossed the
\par lawn to the house.
\par 
\par This Craftsman-period structure features stacked ledger stone and
\par weather-silvered cedar under a slate roof, with deep eaves and an
\par expansive front porch, all modern lines yet natural and close to the
\par earth.
\par 
\par It is the only home I've ever known, and considering both the average
\par life span of an XPER and my talent for getting my ass in a sling, it's
\par no doubt where I'll live until I die Sasha had unlocked the front door
\par by the time I got there, and I followed her into the foyer.
\par 
\par All the windows are covered with pleated shades throughout the daylight
\par hours. Most of the lights feature rheostats, and when we must turn them
\par on, we keep them dim. For the most part, I live here in candlelight
\par filtered through amber or rose glass, in a soft-edged shadowy ambience
\par that would meet with the approval of any medium who claims to be able to
\par channel the spirits of the dead.
\par 
\par Sasha settled in a month previous, after Dad's death, moving out of the
\par house provided for her as part of her compensation as general manager of
\par KBAY. But already, during daylight hours, she moves from room to room
\par guided largely by the faint sunshine pressing against the lowered window
\par shades.
\par 
\par She thinks my shrouded world calms the soul, that life in the low
\par illumination of Snow land is soothing, even romantic. I agree with her
\par to an extent, though at times a mild claustrophobia overcomes me and
\par these ever present shadows seem like a chilling preview of the grave.
\par 
\par Without touching a light switch, we went upstairs to my bathroom and
\par took a shower together by the lambent glow of a decorative glass oil
\par lamp. This tandem event wasn't as much fun as usual, not even as much
\par fun as riding two on a surfboard, because we were physically weary,
\par emotionally exhausted, and worried about Orson and Jimmy, all we did was
\par bathe, while I gave Sasha a seriously condensed version of my pursuit of
\par the kidnapper, the sighting of Big Head, Delacroix, and the events in
\par the egg room.
\par 
\par 
\par I phoned Roosevelt Frost, who lives aboard Nostromo, a fifty-six-foot
\par Bluewater coastal cruiser berthed in the Moonlight Bay marina. I got an
\par answering machine and left a message asking him to come to see me as
\par soon after twelve o'clock as was convenient and to bring Mungojerrie if
\par possible.
\par 
\par I also called Manuel Ramirez. The police operator said that he was
\par currently out of the office, and at my request, she switched me to his
\par voice mail.
\par 
\par After reciting the license number of the Suburban, which I had
\par memorized, I said, "That's what Jimmy Wing's kidnapper was driving.
\par 
\par If you care, give me a call after noon." Sasha and I were turning back
\par the covers on the bed in my room when the doorbell rang. Sasha pulled on
\par a robe and went to see who had come calling.
\par 
\par I slipped into a robe, too, and padded barefoot to the head of the
\par stairs to listen.
\par 
\par I took the 9-millimeter Glock with me. Moonlight Bay wasn't as full of
\par mayhem as Jurassic Park, but I wouldn't have been entirely surprised if
\par the doorbell had been rung by a velociraptor.
\par 
\par Instead, it was Bobby, six hours early. When I heard his voice, I went
\par downstairs.
\par 
\par The foyer was dimly lighted, but above the Stickley-style table, the
\par print of Maxfield Parrish's Daybreak glowed as though it were a window
\par on a magical and better world.
\par 
\par Bobby looked grim. "I won't take long. But you have to know about this.
\par 
\par After I took Jenna Wing to Lilly's, I swung by Charlie Dai's house."
\par 
\par Charlie Daiwhose birth name in correct Vietnamese order was Dai Tran Gi,
\par before he Americanized itis the associate editor and senior reporter at
\par the Moonlight Bay Gazette, the newspaper owned by Bobby's parents. The
\par Halloways are estranged from Bobby, but Charlie remains his friend.
\par 
\par "Charlie can't write about Lilly's boy, " Bobby continued, "at least not
\par until he gets clearance, but I thought he ought to know. In fact  ... I
\par figured he might already know." Charlie is among the handful in
\par Moonlight Bay a few hundred out of twelve thousand who know that a
\par biological catastrophe occurred at Wyvern. His wife, Dr. Nora
\par Daiformerly Dai Minh Thuha is now a retired colonel, while in the army
\par medical corps, she commanded all medical services at Fort Wyvern for six
\par years, a position of great responsibility on a base with more than fifty
\par thousand population. Her medical team had treated the wounded and the
\par dying on the night when some researchers in the genetics lab, having
\par reached a crisis in the secret process of becoming, surprised their
\par associates by savagely assaulting them. Nora Dai knew too much, and
\par within hours of those strange events, she and Charlie were confronted
\par with accusations that their immigration documents, filed twenty-six
\par years ago, were forged. This was a lie, but unless they assisted in
\par suppressing the truth of the Wyvern disaster and its aftermath, they
\par would be deported without notice, and without standard legal procedures,
\par to Vietnam, from which they would never be able to return. Threats were
\par also made against the lives of their children and grandchildren, because
\par those who have orchestrated this cover-up do not believe in half
\par measures.
\par 
\par Bobby and I don't know why his parents have allowed the Gazette to be
\par corrupted, publishing a carefully managed version of the local news.
\par 
\par Perhaps they believe in the rightness of the secrecy. Perhaps they don't
\par understand the true horror of what's happened. Or maybe they're just
\par scared.
\par 
\par "Charlie's been muffled, " Bobby said, "but he's still got ink in his
\par veins, you know, he still hears things, gathers news whether he's
\par allowed to write all of it up or not."
\par 
\par "He's as stoked Oh the page as you are on the board, " I said.
\par 
\par "He's a total news rat, " Bobby agreed.
\par 
\par He was standing near one of the sidelights that flank the front door,
\par rectangular geometric stained-glass windows with red, amber, green, and
\par clear elements. No blinds cover these panes, because the deep overhang
\par of the porch and the giant oaks prevent direct sunlight from reaching
\par them. Bobby glanced through one of the clearer pieces of glass in the
\par mosaic, as if he expected to see an unwelcome visitor on the front
\par porch.
\par 
\par "Anyway, " he continued, "I figured if Charlie had heard about Jimmy, he
\par might know something we don't, might've picked up something from Manuel
\par or someone, somewhere. But I wasn't ready for what the dude told me.
\par 
\par Jimmy was one of three last night." My stomach clenched with dread.
\par 
\par "Three children kidnapped? " Sasha asked.
\par 
\par Bobby nodded. "Del and Judy Stuart's twins." Del Stuart has an office at
\par Ashdon College, is for the record an employee of the Department of
\par Education but is rumored to work for an obscure arm of the Department of
\par Defense or the Environmental Protection Agency, or the Federal Office of
\par Doughnut Management, and he probably spreads the rumors himself to
\par deflect speculation from possibilities closer to the truth.
\par 
\par He refers to himself as a grant facilitator, a term that feels as
\par deceptive as calling a hit man an organic waste disposal specialist.
\par 
\par Officially, his job is to keep outgoing paperwork and incoming funds
\par flowing for those professors who are engaged in federally financed
\par research. There is reason to believe that most such research at Ashdon
\par involves the development of unconventional weapons, that the college has
\par become the summer home of Mars, the god of war, and that Del is the
\par liaison between the discreet funding sources of black-budget weapons
\par projects and the academics who thrive on their dole. Like Mom.
\par 
\par I had no doubt that Del and Judy Stuart were devastated by the
\par disappearance of their twins, but unlike poor Lilly Wing, who was an
\par innocent and unaware of the dark side of Moonlight Bay, the Stuarts were
\par selfcommitted residents of Satan's pocket and understood that the
\par bargain they had made required them to suffer even this terror in
\par silence.
\par 
\par Consequently, I was amazed that Charlie had learned of these abductions.
\par 
\par "Charlie and Nora Dai live next door to them, " Bobby explained, "though
\par I don't think they barbecue a lot together. The twins are six years old.
\par 
\par Around nine o'clock last night, Judy is tucking the weeds in for the
\par night, she hears a noise, and when she turns around, there's a stranger
\par right behind her."
\par 
\par "Stocky, close-cropped black hair, yellow eyes, thick lips, seed-corn
\par teeth, " I said, describing the kidnapper I'd encountered under the
\par warehouse.
\par 
\par "Tall, athletic, blond, green eyes, puckered scar on his left cheek."
\par 
\par "New guy, " Sasha said.
\par 
\par "Totally new guy. He's got a chloroform-soaked rag in one hand, and
\par before Judy realizes what's happening, the dude is all over her like fat
\par on cheese."
\par 
\par "Fat on cheese? " I asked.
\par 
\par "That was Charlie's expression." Charlie Dai, God love him, writes
\par excellent newspaper copy, but though English has been his first language
\par for twenty-five years, he has not fully gotten a grip on conversational
\par usage to the degree that he has mastered formal prose.
\par 
\par Idiom and metaphor often defeat him. He once told me that an August
\par evening was "as hot as three toads in a Cuisinart, " a comparison that
\par left me blinking two days later.
\par 
\par Bobby peered through the stained-glass window once more, gave the day
\par world a longer look than he had before, then returned his attention to
\par us, "When Judy recovers from the chloroform, Aaron and Anson the twinsare
\par gone."
\par 
\par "Two abbs suddenly start snatching kids on the same night? " I said
\par skeptically.
\par 
\par "There's no coincidence in Moonlight Bay, " Sasha said.
\par 
\par "Bad for us, worse for Jimmy, " I said. "If we're not dealing with
\par typical pervs, then these geeks are acting out twisted needs that might
\par have nothing to do with any abnormal psychology on the books, because
\par they're way beyond abnormal. They're becoming, and whatever it is
\par they're becoming is driving them to commit the same atrocities."
\par 
\par "Or, " Bobby said, "it's even stranger than two dudes regressing to
\par swamp monsters. The abb left a drawing on the twins' bed."
\par 
\par "A crow? " Sasha guessed.
\par 
\par "Charlie called it a raven. Same difference. A raven sitting on a stone,
\par spreading its wings as if to take flight. Not the same pose as in the
\par first drawing. But the message was pretty much the same. Del Stuart will
\par be my servant in Hell."
\par 
\par "Does Del have any idea what it means? " I asked.
\par 
\par "Charlie Dai says no. But he thinks that Del recognized Judy's
\par description of the kidnapper. Maybe that's why the guy let her get a
\par look at him. He wanted Del to know."
\par 
\par "But if Del knows, " I said, "he'll tell the cops, and the abb is
\par finished."
\par 
\par "Charlie says he didn't tell them." Sasha's voice was laden with equal
\par measures of disbelief and disgust.
\par 
\par "His kids are abducted, and he hides information from the cops? "
\par 
\par "Del's deep in the Wyvern mess, " I said. "Maybe he has to keep his
\par mouth shut about the abb's identity until he gets permission from his
\par boss to tell the cops."
\par 
\par "If they were my kids, I'd kick over the rules, " she said.
\par 
\par I asked Bobby if Jenna Wing had been able to make anything of the crow
\par and the message left under Jimmy's pillow, but she had been clueless.
\par 
\par "I've heard something else, though, " Bobby said, "and it makes this
\par whole thing even more of a mind-bender."
\par 
\par "Like? "
\par 
\par "Charlie says, about two weeks ago, school nurses and county health
\par officials conducted an annual checkup on every kid in every school and
\par preschool in town. The usual eye exams, hearing tests, chest X-rays for
\par tuberculosis. But this time they took blood samples, too." Sasha
\par frowned. "Drew blood from all those kids? "
\par 
\par "A couple school nurses felt parents ought to give permission before
\par blood samples were taken, but the county official overseeing the program
\par flushed them away with a load of woofy about there's been a low-level
\par hepatitis outbreak in the area that could become epidemic, so they need
\par to do preventive screening." As I did, Sasha knew what inference Bobby
\par had drawn from this news, and she wrapped her arms around herself as if
\par chilled.
\par 
\par "They weren't screening those kids for hepatitis. They were screening
\par them for the retrovirus."
\par 
\par "To see how widely distributed the problem is in the community, " I
\par added.
\par 
\par Bobby had arrived at a further and more disturbing inference. "We know
\par the big brains are burning up gray cells around the clock, searching for
\par a cure, right? "
\par 
\par "Ears smoking, " I agreed.
\par 
\par "What if they've discovered that a tiny percentage of infected people
\par have a natural defense against the retrovirus? "
\par 
\par "Maybe in some people the bug isn't able to unload the genetic material
\par it's carrying, " Sasha said.
\par 
\par Bobby shrugged. "Or whatever. Wouldn't they want to study those who're
\par immune? " I was sickened by where this was leading. "Jimmy Wing, the
\par Stuart twins ... maybe their blood samples revealed they have this
\par antibody, enzyme, mechanism, whatever it is." Sasha didn't want to go
\par where we were going. "For research, they wouldn't need the kids. Just
\par tissue samples, blood samples, every few weeks." Reluctantly,
\par remembering these were people who had once worked with Mom, I said, "But
\par if you have no moral compunctions, if you used human subjects before,
\par like they used condemned prisoners, then it's a lot easier just to
\par snatch the kids."
\par 
\par "Less to explain, " Bobby agreed.
\par 
\par "No chance the parents won't cooperate." Sasha spat out a word I'd never
\par heard her use before.
\par 
\par "Bro, " Bobby said, "you know, in car-engine design, in airplane-engine
\par design, there's this engineering term, something called test to
\par destruction."
\par 
\par "I know where you're going with this. Yeah, I'm pretty sure in some
\par biological research there's something similar. Testing the organism to
\par see how much it can take of one thing or another, before it
\par self-destructs." Sasha spat out the same word, which I had now heard her
\par use before, and she turned her back to us, as if to hear and see us
\par discussing this was too disturbing.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "Maybe a quick way to understand why a particular subject why
\par one of these little kids has immunity from the virus is to keep infecting
\par him with it, megadoses of infection, and study his immune response."
\par 
\par "Until finally they kill him? Just kill him? " Sasha asked angrily,
\par turning to us again, her lovely face so drained of blood that she
\par appeared to be halfway through applying the makeup for a mime
\par performance.
\par 
\par "Until finally they kill him, " I confirmed.
\par 
\par "We don't know this is what they're doing, " Bobby said in an attempt to
\par console her. "We don't know jack. It's just a half-assed theory."
\par 
\par "Half-assed, half-smart, " I said with dismay. "But what does the damn
\par crow have to do with all this? " We stared at one another.
\par 
\par None of us had an answer.
\par 
\par Bobby peered suspiciously through the stained-glass window again.
\par 
\par I said, "Bro, what is it? Did you order a pizza? "
\par 
\par "No, but the town's crawling with anchovies."
\par 
\par "Anchovies? "
\par 
\par "Fishy types. Like the zombie club we saw last night, coming back from
\par Wyvern to Lilly's house. The dead-eyed dudes in the sedan. I've seen
\par more of them. I get the feeling something's coming down, something
\par super-humongous."
\par 
\par "Bigger than the end of the world? " I asked.
\par 
\par He gave me an odd look, then grinned. "You're right. Can't go down from
\par here. Where do we have to go but up? "
\par 
\par "Sideways, " Sasha said somberly. "From one kind of hell into another."
\par To me, Bobby said, "I see why you love her." I said, "My own private
\par sunshine."
\par 
\par "Sugar in shoes, " he said.
\par 
\par I said, "One hundred twenty pounds of walking honey."
\par 
\par "One hundred twelve, " she said. "And forget what I said about you two
\par being Curly and Larry. That's an insult to Larry."
\par 
\par "Curly and Curly? " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "She thinks she's Moe, " I said.
\par 
\par Sasha said, "I think I'm going to bed. Unless, Bobby, you have more bad
\par news that'll keep me from sleeping." He shook his head. "That's the best
\par I can do." Bobby left.
\par 
\par After locking the front door, I watched through the stained-glass window
\par until he got into his Jeep and drove away.
\par 
\par Parting from a friend makes me nervous.
\par 
\par Maybe I'm needy, neurotic, paranoid. Under the circumstances, of course,
\par if I weren't needy, neurotic, and paranoid, I'd obviously be psychotic.
\par 
\par If we were always conscious of the fact that people precious to us are
\par frighteningly mortal, hanging not even by a thread but by a wisp of
\par gossamer, perhaps we would be kinder to them and more grateful for the
\par love and friendship they give us.
\par 
\par Sasha and I went upstairs to bed. Lying side by side in the dark,
\par holding hands, we were silent for a while.
\par 
\par We were scared. Scared for Orson, for Jimmy, for the Stuarts, for
\par ourselves. We felt small. We felt helpless. So, of course, for a few
\par minutes we rated our favorite Italian sauces. Pesto with pine nuts
\par almost won, but we mutually agreed on Marsala before falling into a
\par contented silence.
\par 
\par Just when I thought she had drifted into sleep, Sasha said, "You hardly
\par know me, Snowman."
\par 
\par "I know your heart, what's in it. That's everything."
\par 
\par "I've never talked about my family, my past, who I was and what I did
\par before I came to KBAY."
\par 
\par "Are you going to talk about that now? "
\par 
\par "No."
\par 
\par "Good. I'm wiped out."
\par 
\par "Neanderthal."
\par 
\par "You Cro-Magnons all think you're so superior." After a silence, she
\par said, "Maybe I'll never talk about the past."
\par 
\par "You mean, even like about yesterday? "
\par 
\par "You really don't feel a need to know, do you? " I said, "I love the
\par person you are. I'm sure I'd also love the person you were. But it's who
\par you are that I have now."
\par 
\par "You never prejudge anyone."
\par 
\par "I'm a saint."
\par 
\par "I'm serious."
\par 
\par "So am I. I'm a saint."
\par 
\par "Asshole."
\par 
\par "Better not talk that way about a saint."
\par 
\par "You're the only person I've ever known who always judges people solely
\par on their actions. And forgives them when they screw up."
\par 
\par "Well, me and Jesus."
\par 
\par "Neanderthal."
\par 
\par "Careful now, " I warned. "Better not risk divine punishment.
\par 
\par Lightning bolts. Boils. Plagues of locust. Rains of frogs.
\par 
\par Hemorrhoids."
\par 
\par "I'm embarrassing you, aren't I? " she asked.
\par 
\par "Yes, Moe, you are."
\par 
\par "All I'm saying is, this is your difference, Chris. This is the
\par difference that makes you special. Not XP." I was silent.
\par 
\par She said, "You're desperately searching for some smart remark that'll
\par get me to call you an asshole again."
\par 
\par "Or at least a Neanderthal."
\par 
\par "This is your difference. Sleep tight."
\par 
\par She let go of my hand and rolled onto her side.
\par 
\par "Love you, Good all."
\par 
\par "Love you, Snowman." In spite of the blackout blinds and the overlapping
\par drapes, faint traces of light defined the edges of the windows. Even
\par this morning's overcast heavens had been beautiful. I yearned to go
\par outside, stand under the daytime sky, and look for faces, forms, and
\par animals in the clouds. I yearned to be free.
\par 
\par I said, "Good all? "
\par 
\par "Hmmm? "
\par 
\par "About your past."
\par 
\par "Yeah? "
\par 
\par "You weren't a hooker, were you? "
\par 
\par "Asshole." I sighed with contentment and closed my eyes.
\par 
\par Worried as I was about Orson and the three missing children, I didn't
\par expect to sleep well, but I slept the dreamless sleep of a clueless
\par Neanderthal.
\par 
\par When I woke five hours later, Sasha wasn't in bed. I dressed and went
\par looking for her.
\par 
\par In the kitchen, a note was fixed with a magnet to the door of the
\par refrigerator, Out on business. Back soon. For God's sake, don't eat
\par those cheese enchiladas for breakfast. Have bran flakes. Moe.
\par 
\par While the leftover cheese enchiladas were heating in the oven, I went
\par into the dining room, which is now Sasha's music room, since we eat all
\par our meals at the kitchen table. We have moved the dining table, chairs,
\par and other furniture into the garage so the dining room can accommodate
\par her electronic keyboard, synthesizer, sax stand with saxophone,
\par clarinet, flute, two guitars (one electric, one acoustic), cello and
\par cellist's stool, music stands, and composition table.
\par 
\par Similarly, we converted the downstairs study into her workout room. An
\par exercise bicycle, rowing machine, and rack of hand weights ring the
\par room, with plush exercise mats in the center. She is deep into
\par homeopathic medicine, consequently, the bookshelves are filled with
\par neatly ordered bottles of vitamins, minerals, herbs plus, for all I know,
\par powdered wing of bat, eye-of-toad ointment, and iguana-liver marmalade.
\par 
\par Her extensive book collection lined the living room at her former place.
\par 
\par Here it is shelved and stacked all over the house.
\par 
\par She is a woman of many passions, cooking, music, exercise, books, and
\par me. Those are the ones I know about. I would never ask her to rank her
\par passions in order of importance. Not because I'm afraid I'd come in
\par fifth of the major five. I'm happy to be fifth, to have any ranking at
\par all.
\par 
\par I circled the dining room, touching her guitars and cello, finally
\par picking up her sax and blowing a few bars of "Quarter Till Three, " the
\par old Gary U. S. Bonds hit. Sasha was teaching me to play. I wouldn't
\par claim that I f [ wailed, but I wasn't bad.
\par 
\par In truth, I didn't pick up the sax to practice. You might find this
\par romantic or disgusting, depending on your point of view, but I picked up
\par the sax because I wanted to put my mouth where her mouth had been.
\par 
\par I'm either Romeo or Hannibal Lecter. Your call.
\par 
\par For breakfast I ate three plump cheese enchiladas with a third of a pint
\par of fresh salsa and washed everything down with an ice-cold Pepsi.
\par 
\par If I live long enough for my metabolism to turn against me, I might one
\par day regret never having learned to eat for any reason but the sheer fun
\par of it.
\par 
\par Currently, however, I am at that blissful age when no indulgence can
\par alter my thirty-inch waistline.
\par 
\par In the upstairs guest bedroom that served as my study, I sat at my desk
\par in candlelight and spent a couple of minutes looking at a pair of framed
\par photographs of my mom and dad. Her face was full of kindness and
\par intelligence. His face was full of kindness and wisdom.
\par 
\par I have rarely seen my own face in full light. The few times I've stood
\par in a bright place and confronted a mirror, I've not seen anything in my
\par face that I can understand. This disturbs me. How can my parents' images
\par shine with such virtues and mine be enigmatic?
\par 
\par Did their mirrors show them mysteries?
\par 
\par I think not.
\par 
\par Well, I take solace from the realization that Sasha loves me perhaps as
\par much as she loves cooking, perhaps even as much as she loves a good
\par aerobic workout. I wouldn't risk suggesting that she values me as much
\par as she does books and music. Though I hope.
\par 
\par In my study, among hundreds of volumes of poetry and reference books my
\par own and my father's collections combined is a thick Latin dictionary.
\par 
\par I looked up the word for beer.
\par 
\par Bobby had said, Carpe cerevisi. Seize the beer. Cerevisi appeared to be
\par correct.
\par 
\par We had been friends for so long that I knew Bobby had never sat through
\par a class in Latin. Therefore, I was touched. The apparent effort that he
\par had taken to mock me was a sign of true friendship.
\par 
\par I closed the dictionary and slid it aside, next to a copy of the book I
\par had written about my life as a child of darkness. It had been a national
\par best-seller about four years ago, when I'd thought I knew the meaning of
\par my life, prior to my discovery that my mother, out of fierce maternal
\par love f and a desire to free me from my disability, had inadvertently
\par made me the poster child for doomsday.
\par 
\par I hadn't opened this book in two years. It should have been on one of
\par the shelves behind my desk. I assumed Sasha had been looking at it and
\par neglected to put it back where she'd found it.
\par 
\par Also on the desk was a decorative tin box painted with the faces of
\par dogs. In the center of the lid are these lines from Elizabeth Barrett
\par Browning, Therefore to this dog will I, Tenderly not scornfully, Render
\par praise and favor, With my hand upon his head, Is my benediction said
\par Therefore and forever.
\par 
\par This tin box was a gift from my mother, given to me on the day that she
\par brought Orson home. I keep special biscuits in it, which he particularly
\par enjoys, and from time to time I give him a couple, not to reward him for
\par a trick learned, because I don't teach him tricks, and not to enforce
\par any training, for he needs no training, but simply because the taste of
\par them makes him happy.
\par 
\par When my mother brought Orson to live with us, I didn't know how special
\par he was. She kept this secret until long after her death, until after my
\par father's death. When she gave me the box, she said, "I know you'll give
\par him love, Chris. But also, when he needs it and he win need it take pity
\par on him. His life is no less difficult than yours." At the time, I
\par assumed she meant nothing more than that animals, like us, are subject
\par to the fear and suffering of this world. Now I know there were deeper
\par and more complex layers of meaning in her words.
\par 
\par I reached toward the tin, intending to test its weight, because I wanted
\par to be certain that it was filled with treats for Orson's triumphant
\par return. My hand began to shake so badly that I left the box untouched.
\par 
\par I folded my hands, one over the other, on the desk. Staring down at the
\par hard white points of my knuckles, I realized that I had assumed the very
\par pose in which I'd first seen Lilly Wing when Bobby and I returned from
\par Wyvern.
\par 
\par Orson. Jimmy. Aaron. Anson. Like the barbed points on a razor-wire
\par fence, their names spiraled through my mind. The lost boys.
\par 
\par I felt an obligation to all of them, a fierce sense of duty, which
\par wasn't entirely explicable except that in spite of my good fortune in
\par parents and in spite of the riches of friendship that I enjoyed, I was
\par the ultimate lost boy, myself, and to some extent would be lost until
\par the day I passed out of my darkness in this world into whatever light
\par waits beyond.
\par 
\par Impatience abraded my nerves. In conventional searches for lost hikers,
\par for small aircraft downed in mountainous terrain, and for boats at sea,
\par search parties break from dusk to dawn. We were limited, instead, to the
\par dark hours, not merely by my XP but by our need to gather our forces and
\par to act in utmost secrecy. I wondered whether the members of conventional
\par search parties checked their watches every two minutes, chewed their
\par lips, and went slightly screwy with frustration while waiting for first
\par light. My watch crystal was etched with tracks, my lip was shaggy with
\par shredded skin, and I was half nuts by 12:45.
\par 
\par Shortly before one o'clock, as I was diligently ridding myself of the
\par second half of my sanity, the doorbell rang.
\par 
\par With the Glock in hand, I went downstairs. Through one of the
\par stained-glass sidelights, I saw Bobby on the front porch. He was turned
\par half away from the door, staring back toward the street, as though
\par looking for a police surveillance team in one of the parked cars or for
\par a school of anchovies in a passing vehicle.
\par 
\par As he stepped inside and I closed the door behind him, I said, "Bitchin'
\par shirt." He was wearing a red and gray volcanic-beach scene with blue
\par ferns, which looked totally cool over a long-sleeve black pullover.
\par 
\par "Made by Iolani, " I said. "Coconut-husk buttons, 1955." Instead of
\par commenting on my erudition with even as little as a roll of the eyes, he
\par headed for the kitchen, saying, "I saw Charlie Dai again." The kitchen
\par was brightened only by the ashen face of the day pressed to the window
\par blinds, by the digital clocks on the ovens, and by two fat candles on
\par the table.
\par 
\par "Another kid is gone, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par I felt a tremor in my hands once more, and I put the Glock on the
\par kitchen table. "Who, when? " Snatching a Mountain Dew from the
\par refrigerator, where the standard light had been replaced with a
\par lower-wattage, pink-tinted bulb, Bobby said, "Wendy Dulcinea."
\par 
\par "Oh, " I said, and wanted to say more but couldn't speak.
\par 
\par Wendy's mother, Mary, is six years older than I am, when I was thirteen,
\par my parents paid her to give me piano lessons, and I had a devastating
\par crush on her. At that time, I was functioning under the delusion that I
\par would one day play rock-'n'-roll piano as well as Jerry Lee Lewis, be a
\par keyboard-banging maniac who could make those ivories smoke. Eventually
\par my parents and Mary concluded and persuaded me that the likelihood of my
\par becoming a competent pianist was immeasurably less than the likelihood
\par of me levitating and flying like a bird.
\par 
\par "Wendy's seven." Bobby said. "Mary was taking her to school.
\par 
\par Backed the car out of the driveway. Then realized she'd forgotten
\par something in the house, went in to get it. When she came back two
\par minutes later, the car was gone. With Wendy."
\par 
\par "No one saw anything? " Bobby chugged the Mountain Dew, enough sugar to
\par induce in him a diabetic coma, enough caffeine to keep a long-haul
\par trucker awake through a five-hundred-mile run. He was legally wiring
\par himself for the ordeal ahead.
\par 
\par "No one saw or heard anything, " he confirmed. "Neighborhood of the
\par blind and deaf. Sometimes I think there's something going around more
\par contagious than your mom's bug. We've got an epidemic of the shut-up
\par hunker-down-see-hear-smell-speak-no-evil influenza. Anyway, the cops
\par found Mary's car abandoned in the service lane behind the Nine Palms
\par Plaza." Nine Palms was a shopping center that lost all the tenants when
\par Fort Wyvern closed and took with it the billion dollars a year that it
\par had pumped into the county economy. These days the shop windows at Nine
\par Palms are boarded over, weeds bristle from cracks in the blacktop
\par parking lot, and six of the namesake palms are withered, brown, and so
\par dead that they have been abandoned by tree rats.
\par 
\par The chamber of commerce likes to call Moonlight Bay the Jewel of the
\par Central Coast. The town remains charming, graced with fine architecture
\par and lovely tree-lined streets, but the economic scars of Wyvern's
\par closure are visible everywhere. The jewel is not as bright as it once
\par was.
\par 
\par "They searched all the empty shops in Nine Palms, " Bobby said, "afraid
\par they'd find Wendy's body, but she wasn't there."
\par 
\par "She's alive, " I said.
\par 
\par Bobby looked at me pityingly.
\par 
\par "They're all alive, " I insisted. "They have to be." I wasn't speaking
\par from reason now. I was speaking from my belief in miracles.
\par 
\par "Another crow, " Bobby said. "Mary called it a blackbird. It was left on
\par the car seat. In the drawing, the bird is diving for prey."
\par 
\par "Message? "
\par 
\par " George Dulcinea will be my servant in Hell." Mary's husband was Frank
\par Dulcinea. "Who the hell is George? "
\par 
\par "Frank's grandfather. He's dead now. Used to be a judge in the county
\par court system."
\par 
\par "Dead how long? "
\par 
\par "Fifteen years." I was baffled and frustrated. "If this abb is
\par kidnapping for vengeance, what's the point of nabbing Wendy to get even
\par with a man who's been dead fifteen years? Wendy's great-grandfather was
\par gone long before she was even born. He never knew her. How could you get
\par satisfaction from taking vengeance on a dead man? "
\par 
\par "Maybe it makes perfect sense if you're an abb, " Bobby said, "with a
\par screwed-up brain."
\par 
\par "I guess."
\par 
\par "Or maybe this whole crow thing is just cover, to make everyone think
\par these kids were snatched by your standard-issue pervert, when maybe
\par they're really being caged in a lab somewhere."
\par 
\par "Maybe, maybe, you're full of too damn many maybes, " I said.
\par 
\par He shrugged. "Don't look to me for wisdom. I'm just a wave-thrashing
\par board head. This killer you mentioned. The guy in the news. He leave
\par crows like this? "
\par 
\par "Not that I've read."
\par 
\par "Serial killers, don't they sometimes leave things like this? "
\par 
\par "Yeah.
\par 
\par They're called signatures.
\par 
\par Like a writer's byline.
\par 
\par Taking credit for the work." I checked my wristwatch. Sunset would
\par arrive in about five hours.
\par 
\par We would be ready to go back to Wyvern by then. And even if we were not
\par ready, we would go.
\par 
\par With a second bottle of Mountain Dew in hand, Bobby sat on the cellist's
\par stool, but he didn't pick up the bow.
\par 
\par In addition to all the instruments and the composition table, the former
\par dining room contained a music system with a CD player and an antiquated
\par audiotape deck. In fact, there were two decks, which allowed Sasha to
\par duplicate tapes of her own recordings. I powered up the equipment, which
\par added as much feeble illumination to the room as the dreary daylight
\par that seeped in at the edges of the blinds.
\par 
\par Sometimes, after composing a tune, Sasha is convinced that she has
\par unwittingly plagiarized another songwriter. To satisfy herself that her
\par work is original, she spends hours listening to cuts from which she
\par suspects she has borrowed, until finally she's willing to believe that
\par her creation has, after all, sprung solely from her own talent.
\par 
\par Her music is the only thing about which Sasha exhibits more than a
\par healthy measure of self-doubt. Her cooking, her literary opinions, her
\par lovemaking, and all the other things she does so wonderfully are marked
\par by a wholesome confidence and by no more than a useful amount of
\par second-guessing. In her relationship to her music, however, she is
\par sometimes a lost child, when she's stricken by this vulnerability, I
\par want more than ever to put my arm around her and to comfort her though
\par this is when she's most likely to reject comforting and to rap me across
\par the knuckles with her flute, her scaling ruler, or another handy
\par music-room weapon.
\par 
\par I suppose every relationship can be enriched by a small measure of
\par neurotic behavior. I certainly contribute a half cup of my own to our
\par recipe.
\par 
\par Now I slipped the tape into the player. It was the cassette I'd found in
\par the envelope beside Leland Delacroix's reeking corpse in the bungalow
\par kitchen in Dead Town.
\par 
\par I turned the chair away from the composition table and, sitting down,
\par used the remote control to switch on the cassette player.
\par 
\par For half a minute, we heard only the hiss of unrecorded magnetic tape
\par passing over the playback head. A soft click and a new hollow quality to
\par the hiss marked the beginning of the recording, which at first consisted
\par only of someonei assumed it was Delacroixtaking deep, rhythmic breaths,
\par as if engaged in some form of meditation or aroma therapy.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "I was hoping for revelation, not respiration." The sound
\par was utterly mundane, with not the least inflection of fear or menace, or
\par any other emotion. Yet the fine hairs stirred on the nape of my neck, as
\par though these exhalations were actually coming from some one standing
\par close behind me.
\par 
\par "He's trying to get a grip on himself, " I said. "Deep, even breaths to
\par get a grip on himself." A moment later, my interpretation proved true
\par when the breathing suddenly grew ragged, then desperate.
\par 
\par Delacroix broke down and began to weep, tried to get a grip on himself,
\par but choked on his pain, and let loose with great trembling sobs
\par punctuated by wordless cries of despair.
\par 
\par Although I'd never known this man, listening to him in such violent
\par throes of misery was disturbing. Fortunately, it didn't last long,
\par because he switched off the recorder.
\par 
\par With another soft click, the recording began again, and though Dela
\par croix's self-control was tenuous, he managed to speak. His voice was so
\par thick with emotion that sometimes his speech slurred, and when he seemed
\par in danger of breaking down completely, he paused either to take deep
\par breaths or to drink something, presumably whiskey.
\par 
\par "This is a warning. A testament. My testament. A warning to the world. I
\par don't know where to begin. Begin with the worst. They're dead, and I
\par killed them. But it was the only way to save them. The only way to save
\par them.
\par 
\par You have to understand ... I killed them because I loved them.
\par 
\par God help me.
\par 
\par I couldn't let them suffer, be used. Be used. God, I couldn't let them
\par be used that way. There was nothing else I could do ..." I remembered
\par the snapshots arranged beside Delacroix's corpse.
\par 
\par The elfin, gap-toothed little girl. The boy in the blue suit and red bow
\par tie. The pretty blonde with the appealing smile. I suspected that these
\par were the people who, to be saved, were killed.
\par 
\par "We all developed these symptoms, just this afternoon, Sunday afternoon,
\par and we were going to go to the doctor tomorrow, but we didn't make it
\par that far. Mild fever. Chills. And every once in a while this .
\par 
\par ..
\par 
\par fluttering ... this odd fiuttering in the chest ... or sometimes the
\par stomach, in the abdomen, but then the next time in the neck, along the
\par spine ... this fluttering like maybe a twitching nerve or maybe heart
\par palpitations or ... no, nothing like that. God, no, nothing I can
\par explain ... not severe ... subtle ...  a subtle uttering but so.
\par 
\par .. disturbing ...  nausea ...  couldn't eat much ..." Delacroix paused
\par again. Got control of his breathing. Took a swallow of whatever he was
\par drinking.
\par 
\par "Truth. Got to tell the truth. Wouldn't have gone to the doctor
\par tomorrow. Would've had to call Project Control. Let them know it isn't
\par over. Even more than two years later, it isn't over. I knew. I knew
\par somehow it wasn't over. All of us feeling the same way, and not like
\par anything we'd felt before. Jesus, I knew. I was too scared to face it,
\par but I knew. I didn't know what, but I knew something, knew it was Wyvem
\par coming back to me somehow, some way, Jesus, Wyvern coming back to get me
\par after all this time. Maureen was putting Lizzie to bed, tucking her in
\par bed ... and suddenly Lizzie started ... she was .
\par 
\par ..
\par 
\par she started screaming  ..." Delacroix swallowed more of his drink.
\par 
\par He banged the glass down as though it was empty.
\par 
\par "I was in the kitchen, and I heard my Lizzie ... my little Lizzie so
\par scared, so ... screaming I ran ... ran in there, into the bedroom.
\par 
\par And she was ...  she ...  convulsions ...  thrashing..
\par 
\par . thrashing and kicking ... flailing with her little fists. Maureen
\par couldn't control her. I thought ... convulsions ... afraid she was
\par biting her tongue.
\par 
\par I held her ... held her down. While I got her mouth open, Maureen folded
\par a sock ... going to use it ... a pad to keep Lizzie from biting herself,
\par But there was something ... something in her mouth .
\par 
\par .. not her tongue, something in her throat ... this thing coming up her
\par throat, something alive in her throat. And ... and then ..
\par 
\par .
\par 
\par then she had her eyes tight shut ... but then ... but she opened them .
\par 
\par .. and her left eye was bright red ... bloodshot  ... and something was
\par alive in her eye, too, some damn wriggling thing in her eye.
\par 
\par  ..." Sobbing, Delacroix switched off the recorder. God knows how long
\par the poor man required to get control of himself. Of course, there was no
\par lengthy blank section of tape, just another soft click as Delacroix hit
\par the record button and continued, "I run to our bedroom, to get ... get
\par my revolver  ... and coming back passing Freddie's room, I see him ...
\par he's standing by his bed.
\par 
\par Freddie ... eyes wide ... afraid. So I tell him  ... get in bed and wait
\par for me. In Lizie's room ... Maureen has her back against the wall, hands
\par pressed to her temples.
\par 
\par Lizzie ... she's still  ... oh, she's thrashing ... her face ... her
\par face all swollen ..
\par 
\par .
\par 
\par twisted  ... the whole bone structure ... not even Lizzie anymore ...
\par There's no hope now. This was that damn place, the other side, coming
\par through, like Lizzie was a doorway. Coming through. Oh, Jesus, I hate
\par myself I hate myself, I was part of it, I opened the door, opened the
\par door between here and that place, helped make it possible. I opened the
\par door.
\par 
\par And now here is Lizzie ... so I have to ... so I ... I shot.
\par 
\par .. shot her.
\par 
\par .. shot her twice. And she's dead, and so still on the bed, so small and
\par still ... but I don't know if something is alive in her, alive in her
\par though she isn't anymore. And Maureen, she has ... she has both hands to
\par her head ... and she says, The fluttering, and I know she means it's
\par inside her head now, because I feel it, too, a fluttering along my spine
\par ...  fluttering in sympathy with  ... with whatever was in Lizzie, is in
\par Lizzie. And Maureen says ... the most amazing  ... she says the most
\par amazing thing ... she says, I love you, because she knows what's
\par happening, I've told her about the other side, the mission, and now she
\par knows somehow I've been infected all along, everything dormant for more
\par than two years, but I'm infected, and now them, too, I've ruined us all,
\par damned us all, and she knows. She knows what I ..
\par 
\par . what I've done to them ... and now what I have to do ..
\par 
\par . so she says, I love you, which is giving me permission, and I tell her
\par I love her, too, so much, love her so much, and I'm sorry, and she's
\par crying, and then I shoot her once ... once, quiet my sweet Maureen,
\par don't let her suffer. Then I ... oh, I go ... I go back down the hall
\par ...  I go to Freddie's room. He's on his back in bed, sweating, hair
\par soaked with sweat, and holding his belly with both hands. I know he
\par feels the fluttering ... fiuttering in his tummy .
\par 
\par .. because I feel it now in my chest and in my left biceps, like in a
\par vein, and of all places in my testicles, and now along my spine again.
\par 
\par I tell him I love him, and I tell him to close his eyes ... close his
\par ...  close his eyes ... so I can make him feel better ... and then I
\par don't think I can do it, but I do it. My son. My boy. Brave boy. I make
\par him feel better, and when I fire the shot, all the fluttering in me
\par stops, just stops completely.
\par 
\par But I know it's not over. I'm not alone ... not alone in my body.
\par 
\par I feel ... passengers ... something ... a heaviness in me .
\par 
\par .
\par 
\par . a presence. Quiet. It's quiet but not for long Not for long I've
\par reloaded the revolver." Delacroix switched off the recorder, pausing to
\par get a grip on his emotions.
\par 
\par With the remote control, I stopped the tape. The late Leland Delacroix
\par wasn't the only one who needed to compose himself.
\par 
\par Without comment, Bobby got up from the cellist's stool and went into the
\par kitchen.
\par 
\par After a moment, I followed him.
\par 
\par Q I He was emptying his unfinished bottle of Mountain Dew into the sink,
\par flushing it away with cold water.
\par 
\par "Don't turn it off, " I said.
\par 
\par While Bobby threw the empty soda bottle in the trash can and opened the
\par refrigerator, I went to the sink. I cupped my hands under the faucet,
\par and for at least a minute, I splashed cold water on my face.
\par 
\par After I dried my face on a couple of paper towels, Bobby handed a bottle
\par of beer to me. He had one, too.
\par 
\par I wanted to have a clear head when we returned to Wyvern. But after what
\par I'd heard on the tape, and considering what else remained to be heard, I
\par could probably have downed a six-pack without effect.
\par 
\par ""That damn place, the other side, " Bobby said, quoting Leland
\par Delacroix.
\par 
\par "It's wherever Hodgson went in his spacesuit."
\par 
\par "And wherever he came back from when we saw him."
\par 
\par "Did Delacroix just go nuts, hallucinate everything, kill his family for
\par no reason? "
\par 
\par "No."
\par 
\par "You think the thing he saw in his daughter's throat, in her eye that was
\par real? "
\par 
\par "Totally."
\par 
\par "Me too. Things we saw in Hodgson's suit ... could that be what the
\par fluttering is about? "
\par 
\par "Maybe that. Maybe something worse."
\par 
\par "Worse, " I said, trying not to imagine it.
\par 
\par "I got the feeling wherever the other side is, it's a real zoo over
\par there." We returned to the dining room. Bobby to the stool. Me to the
\par chair by the composition table. After a moment of reluctance, I started
\par the tape.
\par 
\par By the time Delacroix had begun to record again, his demeanor had
\par changed. He wasn't as emotional as he had been. His voice broke now and
\par then, and he needed to pause to collect himself from time to time, but
\par for the most part, he was striving to soldier through what needed to be
\par said.
\par 
\par "In the garage I keep gardening supplies, including a gallon of
\par Spectracide. Bug killer. I got the can and emptied it on the three
\par bodies. I don't know if that makes sense. Nothing was  ... moving in
\par them. In the bodies, I mean. Besides, these aren't insects.
\par 
\par Not like we think of insects. We don't even know what they are.
\par 
\par Nobody knows.
\par 
\par Lots of big theories. Maybe they're something ... metaphysical.
\par 
\par Do you think? I siphoned some gasoline out of the car. I have a couple
\par gallons here in another can. I'll use the gasoline to start the fire
\par before ..
\par 
\par . before I finish myself. I'm not going to leave the four of us for
\par overeducated janitors at Project Control. They'll just do something
\par stupid. Like bag us and do autopsies. And spread this damn thing I'll
\par call the Control number after I go down to the corner and mail this tape
\par to you, before I set the fire and ... kill myself I'm all quiet inside
\par right now. Very quiet inside. For now. How long?
\par 
\par I want to believe that" Delacroix halted in mid-sentence, held his
\par breath as though he were listening for something, and then shut off the
\par recorder.
\par 
\par I stopped the tape. "He didn't mail the cassette to anyone."
\par 
\par "Changed his mind. What does he mean something metaphysical? "
\par 
\par "That was my next question, " I said.
\par 
\par When Delacroix returned to the recorder, his voice was heavier, slower,
\par leaden, as though he had fallen past fear, dropped below grief, and was
\par speaking from a pit of despair.
\par 
\par "Thought I heard something in one of the bedrooms. Imagination.
\par 
\par The bodies are ... where I left them. Very still. Very still.
\par 
\par Just my imagination. And now I realize you don't even know what this is
\par about.
\par 
\par I started this all wrong There's so much to tell you, if you're going to
\par be able to blow this wide open, but there's so little time. Okay.
\par 
\par What you've got to know, the bones of it, is that there was a secret
\par project at Fort Wyvern. The code name was Mystery Train. Because they
\par thought they were making a magical mystery tour. Morons.
\par 
\par Megalomaniacs.
\par 
\par Me among them. Nightmare Train would have been a better name for it.
\par 
\par Hellbound Train that would've been better yet. And me happy to climb on
\par board with the rest of em. I don't deserve any praise, big brother.
\par 
\par Not me.
\par 
\par So ..
\par 
\par . here are the key personnel. Not everyone. Just the ones I knew, or as
\par many as I remember right now. Several are dead. Many are alive.
\par 
\par Maybe one of the living will talt one of the upper-her bastards who
\par would know a lot more than I do. They all must be scared, and some of
\par them must have guilty consciences. You're good at finding the
\par whistle-blowers." Delacroix proceeded to list over thirty people,
\par identifying each man or woman as either a civilian scientist or a
\par military officer, Dr. Randolph Josephson, Dr. Sarabjit Sanathra, Dr.
\par Miles Bennell, General Deke Kettleman ... My mother was not among them.
\par 
\par I recognized only two names. The first was William Hodgson, who was no
\par doubt the poor devil we encountered in the bizarre episode in the egg
\par room. The second was Dr. Roger Stanwyk, who lived with his wife, Marie,
\par on my street, just seven houses east of mine. Dr. Stanwyk, a biochemist,
\par had been one of my mother's many colleagues, associated with the genetic
\par experiments at Wyvern. If the Mystery Train wasn't the project that grew
\par from my mother's work, then Dr. Stanwyk had been collecting more than
\par one paycheck and had done more than his fair share to destroy the world.
\par 
\par Delacroix's voice grew softer and his speech slower during recitation of
\par the last six or eight names, and the final name almost seemed as though
\par it would stick to his tongue and remain unrevealed. I wasn't sure if he
\par had reached the end of his list or had stopped without finishing it.
\par 
\par He was silent for half a minute. Then, with his voice abruptly
\par energized, he rattled out what seemed to be a few sentences in a foreign
\par language before switching off the recorder.
\par 
\par I stopped the tape and looked at Bobby. "What was that? "
\par 
\par "Wasn't pig Latin." I reversed the tape, and we listened again.
\par 
\par This wasn't any language I could identify, and though, for all I knew,
\par Delacroix might have been spewing gibberish, I was convinced that it had
\par meaning. It had the cadence of speech, and although no word was
\par recognizable, I found it curiously familiar.
\par 
\par After the thick, slow, depressed voice in which Delacroix had recited
\par the names of people involved in the Mystery Train project, he imbued
\par these sentences with evident emotion, perhaps even passion, which seemed
\par a further indication that he was speaking with purpose and meaning.
\par 
\par On the other hand, those in seizures of religious joy, who speak in
\par tongues, also exhibit great emotion, but there is no evident meaning in
\par the tongues they speak.
\par 
\par When Leland Delacroix began to record again, his voice revealed a
\par numbing and dangerous depression, so flat as to be virtually devoid of
\par inflection, so soft that it was barely more than a whisper, the essence
\par of hopelessness.
\par 
\par "There's no point in making this tape. You can't do anything to change
\par what's happened. There's no going back. Everything's out of balance now.
\par 
\par Veils ripped. Realities intersecting" Delacroix fell silent, and there
\par was only the faint background hiss and pop of the tape.
\par 
\par Veils ripped. Realities intersecting.
\par 
\par I glanced at Bobby. He seemed as clueless as I was.
\par 
\par "Temporal relocator. That's what they called it." I looked at Bobby
\par again, and he said, with grim satisfaction, "Time machine."
\par 
\par "We sent test modules through, instrument packages. Some came back.
\par 
\par Some didn't. Intriguing but mysterious data. Data so strange the
\par argument was for a far future terminus, a lot farther than anyone
\par expected. How far forward these packages went, no one could say or
\par wanted to guess. Video cams were included in later tests, but when they
\par came back the tape counters were still at zero. Maybe they taped .
\par 
\par .
\par 
\par .
\par 
\par then, coming back they rewound, erased. But finally we got visuals.
\par 
\par The instrument package was supposed to be mobile. Like the Mars rovers.
\par 
\par This one must've been hung up on something The package itself didn't
\par move, but the video cam panned back and forth across the same narrow
\par wedge of sky, framed by overhanging trees. There were eight hours of
\par tape, back and forth, eight hours and not one cloud.
\par 
\par The sky was red. Not streaky red like a sky at sunset. An even shade of
\par red, as the sky we know is an even shade of blue, but with no increase
\par or diminishment of light, none at all, over eight hours."
\par 
\par Delacroix's low, leaden voice faded to silence, but he didn't turn off
\par the recorder.
\par 
\par After a long pause, there was the sound of chair legs
\par scraping-stuttering across a tile floor, probably a kitchen floor,
\par followed by heavy footsteps fading as Delacroix left the room. He
\par dragged his feet slightly, physically weighed down by his extreme
\par depression.
\par 
\par "Red sky, " Bobby said thoughtfully.
\par 
\par A still and awful red, I thought uneasily, remembering the line from
\par Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a favorite poem of mine
\par when I was a young boy of nine or ten, in love with terror and with the
\par idea of remorseless fate. These days, it held no special appeal for the
\par very reasons that I had liked it so much then.
\par 
\par We listened to the silence on the tape for a while, and then we could
\par hear Delacroix's voice in the distance, evidently coming from another
\par room.
\par 
\par I cranked up the volume, but I still couldn't make out what the man was
\par saying.
\par 
\par "Who's he talking to? " Bobby wondered.
\par 
\par "Himself, maybe."
\par 
\par "Maybe to his family." His dead family.
\par 
\par Delacroix must have been roaming, because his voice rose and fell
\par independent of my use of the volume control.
\par 
\par At one point he cruised past or through the kitchen, and we could hear
\par him clearly enough to determine that he was speaking in that strange
\par language again. He was ranting with considerable emotion, not in the
\par flat dead voice he had last used when sitting at the recorder.
\par 
\par Eventually he fell silent, and a short while later, he came back to the
\par recorder. He switched it off, and I suspected that he rewound it to see
\par where he had interrupted himself. When he began to record again, his
\par voice was low, sluggish, once more crushed flat by depression.
\par 
\par "Computer analysis revealed that the red sky was an accurate color.
\par 
\par Not an error in the video system. And the trees that framed the view of
\par the sky ... they were gray and black. Not in shadow. That was the true
\par color. Of the bark. The leaves. Mostly black mottled with gray.
\par 
\par We called them trees not because they looked like trees as we know them,
\par but because they were more analogous to trees than to anything else.
\par 
\par They were sleek ... succulent ... less like vegetation than like flesh.
\par Maybe some form of fungus. I don't know. Nobody knew.
\par 
\par Eight hours of unchanging red sky and the same black tree sand then
\par something in the sky. Flying This thing Flying low. So fast. Only a few
\par frames of it, the image blurred because of its speed. Enhanced it, of
\par course. With the computers. It still wasn't entirely clear. Clear
\par enough. There were lots of opinions. Lots of interpretations.
\par 
\par Arguments. Debates. I knew what it was. I think most of us knew, on some
\par deep level, the moment we saw it enhanced. We just couldn't accept it.
\par 
\par Psychological block. We argued our way right through the truth, until
\par the truth was behind us and we didn't have to see it anymore. I deluded
\par myself, like all the rest, but I don't delude myself anymore." He
\par settled into silence. A gurgle and splash indicated that he was pouring
\par something out of a bottle into a glass.
\par 
\par He took a drink of it.
\par 
\par In silence, Bobby and I sucked at our beers.
\par 
\par I wondered if you could get beer in this world of the red sky and the
\par fleshy black trees. Although I like a beer occasionally, I would have no
\par difficulty living without it. Now, however, this bottle of Corona in my
\par hand was the avatar of all the countless humble pleasures of daily life,
\par of all that could be lost through human arrogance, and I held fast to it
\par as though it were more precious than diamonds, which in one sense it
\par was.
\par 
\par Delacroix began to speak in that incomprehensible tongue again, and this
\par time he murmured the same few words over and over, as though chanting in
\par a whisper. As before, though I couldn't understand one word, there was a
\par familiarity in these syllables and in the cadence of his speech that
\par sent a corkscrew chill through the hollows of my spine.
\par 
\par "He's drunk or kooking out, " Bobby said. "Maybe both." When I began to
\par worry that Delacroix would not continue with his revelations, he
\par switched to English.
\par 
\par "Should never have sent a manned expedition across. Wasn't on the
\par schedule. Not for years, maybe not ever. But there was another project
\par at Wyvern, one of many others, where something went wrong I don't know
\par what. Something big Most of the projects, I think  ... they're just
\par money burning machines. But something went too right in this one.
\par 
\par The top brass were scared shitless. Lot of pressure came down on us,
\par pressure for the Mystery Train to speed up. They wanted a good look at
\par the future. To see whether there was any future. They didn't quite put
\par it that way, but everyone involved with the train thought that was their
\par motivation. To see whether this screw up on the other project was going
\par to have major consequences. So against everyone's better judgment, or
\par almost everyone's, we put together the first expedition."
\par 
\par Another silence.
\par 
\par Then more rhythmic, whispery chanting. , Bobby said, "There's your mom,
\par bro. The other project, the one that !
\par 
\par got the top brass scared about the future."
\par 
\par "So she wasn't part of the Mystery Train."
\par 
\par "The train was just ... reconnaissance. Or that's all it was meant to
\par be. But something went way wrong there, too. In fact, maybe what went
\par wrong with the train was the worse of the two." I said, "What do you
\par think was on that videotape? The flying thing, I mean."
\par 
\par "I'm hoping the man is gonna tell us." The whispering continued for a
\par minute or more, and in the middle of it, Delacroix hit the stop button.
\par 
\par When he resumed recording, he was in a new location. The sound quality
\par wasn't as good as before, and there was a steady background noise.
\par 
\par "Car engine, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par Engine noise, a faint whistle of wind, and the hum of tires racing over
\par pavement, Delacroix was on the move.
\par 
\par His driver's license had given an address in Monterey, a couple hours up
\par the coast. He must have left his family's bodies there.
\par 
\par A whispering arose. Delacroix was talking to himself in such a low voice
\par that we could barely discern he was speaking in the unknown language.
\par 
\par Gradually, the muttering faded away.
\par 
\par After a silence, when he began to speak louder and in English, his voice
\par wasn't as clear as we would have liked. The microphone wasn't as close
\par to his mouth as it should have been. The recorder was either on the seat
\par beside him or, more likely, balanced on the dashboard.
\par 
\par His depression had given way to fear again. He spoke faster, and his
\par voice frequently cracked with anxiety.
\par 
\par "I'm on Highway 1, driving south. I sort of remember getting in the car
\par but not ... not driving this far. I poured gasoline over them.
\par 
\par Set them on fire. I half remember doing it. Don't know why I didn't .
\par 
\par ..
\par 
\par why I didn't kill myself Took the rings off her finger. Brought some
\par pictures from the album. It didn't want me to. I took the time .
\par 
\par ..
\par 
\par anyway. And the recorder. It didn't want me to. I guess I know where I'm
\par going I guess I know, all right." Delacroix wept.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "He's losing control."
\par 
\par "But not the way you mean."
\par 
\par "Huh? "
\par 
\par "He's not losing his mind. He's losing control to  ... something else."
\par As we listened to Delacroix weep, Bobby said, "You mean losing control
\par to ... ? "
\par 
\par "Yeah."
\par 
\par "To whatever was fluttering."
\par 
\par "Yeah."
\par 
\par "Every one died. Every one on the first expedition. Three men, one
\par woman.
\par 
\par Blake, Jackson, Chang, and Hodgson. And only one came back.
\par 
\par Only Hodgson came back. Except it wasn't Bill Hodgson in the suit."
\par 
\par Delacroix cried out with sudden pain, as if he'd been stabbed.
\par 
\par The tortured cry was followed by an astonishing spell of violent
\par cursing, every obscenity I had ever heard or read, plus others that
\par either weren't part of my education or were invented by Delacroix, a
\par vile torrent of rapid-fire vulgarities and blasphemies. This stream of
\par raw filth was venomously ejected, snarled and shouted with a fury so
\par blazing that I felt seared even when exposed to only the recording of
\par it.
\par 
\par Evidently, Delacroix's vocal outburst was accompanied by erratic
\par driving. His cursing was punctuated by the blaring horns of passing cars
\par and trucks.
\par 
\par The cursing sputtered to a stop. The last of the horns faded.
\par 
\par For a while Delacroix's raggedly drawn breaths were the loudest sounds
\par on the tape. Then, "Kevin, maybe you remember, you once told me that
\par science alone couldn't give us meaningful lives. You said science would
\par actually make life unlivable if it ever explained everything to us and
\par robbed the universe of mystery. We desperately need our mystery, you
\par said. In the mystery is the hope. That's what you believe. Well, what I
\par saw over on the other side.
\par 
\par Kevin, what I saw over there is more mystery than a million years of
\par scientists can explain. The universe is stranger than we ever conceived
\par ...  and yet, at the same time, it's eerily like our most primitive
\par concepts of it." He drove in silence for a minute or so and then began
\par to murmur to himself in that cryptic language.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "Who's Kevin? "
\par 
\par "His brother? Earlier, he referred to him as big brother. I think Kevin
\par might be a reporter somewhere." Still speaking what was gibberish to us,
\par Delacroix shut off the recorder.
\par 
\par I was afraid this was the last piece of an incomplete testament, but
\par then he returned.
\par 
\par "Pumped cyanide gas into the translation capsule. That didn't kill
\par Hodgson, or what had come back in Hodgson's place."
\par 
\par "Translation capsule, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "The egg room, " I guessed.
\par 
\par "We pumped all the atmosphere out. The capsule was a giant vacuum tube.
\par 
\par Hodgson was still alive. Because this isn't life ... not as we think of
\par life. This is anti-life. We kept the capsule operative, powered it to a
\par new cycle, and Hodgson, or whatever it was, went back where it came
\par from." He switched off the recorder. Only four entries remained in his
\par testament, and each was spoken in a more confused, fearful voice. I
\par sensed that these were Delacroix's few fitful moments of coherence.
\par 
\par "Eight of us on the second expedition. Four came back alive. Me among
\par them. Not infected. The doctors declared us free of all infection.
\par 
\par But now  ..." Followed by, " ...  infected or possessed? Wrus?
\par 
\par Parasite? Or something more profound ? Am I just a carrier ... or a
\par doorway? Is something in me ..
\par 
\par . or coming through me? Am I ... being unlocked  ... opened  ... opened
\par like a door? " Then, with decreasing coherence, " ...  never went
\par forward ... went sideways. Didn't even realize there was a sideways.
\par 
\par Because we all long ago ...  we stopped thinking about .
\par 
\par .
\par 
\par . stopped believing in a sideways ..." Finally, " ...  will have to
\par abandon the car ... walk in  ... but not where it wants me to go. Not to
\par the translation capsule. Not if I can help it.
\par 
\par The house. To the house. Did I tell you they all died? The first
\par expedition?
\par 
\par When I pull the trigger ... will I be closing the door ... or opening it
\par to them?
\par 
\par Did I tell you what I saw? Did I tell you who I saw? Did I tell you
\par about their suffering? Do you know what flies and crawls? Under that red
\par sky? Did I tell you? How did I get ... here? Here? " The last words on
\par the tape were not in English.
\par 
\par I raised the bottle of Corona to my mouth and discovered that I had
\par already emptied it. [ Bobby said, "So this place with the red sky, the
\par black treesis it your mom's future, bro? "
\par 
\par "Sideways, Delacroix said."
\par 
\par "But what does that mean? "
\par 
\par "I don't know."
\par 
\par "Did they know? "
\par 
\par "Doesn't sound like they did, " I said, pressing the rewind button on
\par the remote.
\par 
\par "I'm having some quashingly funky thoughts."
\par 
\par "The cocoons, " I guessed.
\par 
\par I "Whatever spun the cocoons did they come out of Delacroix? "
\par 
\par "Or through him, like he said. Like he was a doorway."
\par 
\par "Whatever that means. And either way, does it matter? Out of or through,
\par it's the same to us."
\par 
\par "I think if his body hadn't been there, the cocoons wouldn't be there,
\par either, " I said.
\par 
\par "Gotta get some angry villagers together and march up to the castle with
\par torches, " he said, his tone of voice more serious than the words he had
\par chosen to express himself.
\par 
\par As the tape rewound and clicked to a stop, I said, "Should we take the
\par responsibility on this one? We don't know enough. Maybe we should tell
\par someone about the cocoons."
\par 
\par "You mean like authority types? "
\par 
\par "Like."
\par 
\par "You know what they'll do? "
\par 
\par "Screw up, " I said. "But at least it won't be us screwing up."
\par 
\par "They won't burn em all. They'll want samples for study."
\par 
\par "I'm sure they'll take precautions." Bobby laughed.
\par 
\par I laughed, too, with as much bitterness as amusement. "Okay, sign me up
\par for the march on the castle. But Orson and the kids come first.
\par 
\par Because once we light that fire, we won't be as free to move around
\par Wyvern." I inserted a blank cassette into the second deck.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "Making a dupe? "
\par 
\par "Can't hurt." When the machines started working, I turned to him.
\par 
\par "Something you said earlier."
\par 
\par "You expect me to remember all the crap I say? "
\par 
\par "In that bungalow kitchen, with Delacroix's body."
\par 
\par "I can smell it vividly."
\par 
\par "You heard something. Looked up at the cocoons."
\par 
\par "Told you. Must've been in my head."
\par 
\par "Right. But when I asked you what you heard, you said, Me.
\par 
\par What'd you mean by that? " Bobby still had some beer. He drained the
\par remaining contents of his bottle "You were putting the cassette in your
\par pocket. We were ready to leave I thought I heard somebody say stay."
\par 
\par "Somebody? "
\par 
\par "Several somebodies. Voices. All speaking at once, all saying stay,
\par stay, stay."
\par 
\par "Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs."
\par 
\par "So you're studying to be a jock at KBAY. The thing is  ... then I
\par realized the voices were all my voice."
\par 
\par "All your voice? "
\par 
\par "Hard to explain, bro."
\par 
\par "Evidently."
\par 
\par "For eight, ten seconds I could hear them. But even later ..
\par 
\par . I felt they were still talking, just at lower volume."
\par 
\par "Subliminal?"
\par 
\par "Maybe. Something way creepy."
\par 
\par "Voices in your head."
\par 
\par "Well, they weren't telling me to sacrifice a virgin to Satan or
\par assassinate the pope."
\par 
\par "Just stay, stay, stay, " I said. "Like a thought loop."
\par 
\par "No, these were like real voices on a radio. At first I thought they
\par were coming ... from somewhere in the bungalow."
\par 
\par "You panned your flashlight over the ceiling, " I reminded him.
\par 
\par "The cocoons." The faint glow from the audio equipment was reflected in
\par his eyes.
\par 
\par He didn't look away from me, but he didn't say anything.
\par 
\par I took a deep breath. "Because I've been wondering. After I called you
\par from Dead Town, I started to feel vulnerable out in the open. So before
\par I called Sasha, I decide to go into a bungalow, where I wouldn't be so
\par exposed."
\par 
\par "Out of all those houses, why did you pick that one?
\par 
\par With Delacroix's body in the kitchen. With the cocoons."
\par 
\par "That's what I've been wondering, " I said.
\par 
\par "You hear voices, too? Saying, Come in, Chris, come in, sit down, come
\par in, be neighborly, we'll be hatching soon, come in, join the fun."
\par 
\par "No voices, " I said. "At least not any I was aware of. But maybe it
\par wasn't by chance I chose that house. Maybe I was drawn to that place
\par instead of the one next door."
\par 
\par "Psychic hoodoo? "
\par 
\par "Like the songs that sea nymphs sing to lure unwary sailors to
\par destruction."
\par 
\par "These aren't sea nymphs. These are bugs in cocoons."
\par 
\par "We don't know they're bugs, " I said.
\par 
\par "I'm way sure they aren't puppy dogs."
\par 
\par "I think maybe we got out of that bungalow just in time." After a
\par silence, he said, "It's crap like this that takes all the fun out of the
\par end of the world."
\par 
\par "Yeah, I'm starting to feel like a piece of chum in a school of
\par hammerheads.
\par 
\par " The tape was duped. I took the copy to the composition table and,
\par picking up a felt-tip pen, said, "What's a good neo-Buffett song title?"
\par 
\par "Neo-Buffett? "
\par 
\par "It's what Sasha's writing these days. Jimmy Buffett. Tropical bounce,
\par parrot head worldview, fun in the sun but with a darker edge, a
\par concession to reality."
\par 
\par " Tequila Kidneys, " he suggested.
\par 
\par "Good enough." I printed that title on the label and inserted the
\par cassette into an empty slot in the rack where Sasha stored her
\par compositions. There were scores of cassettes that looked just like it.
\par 
\par "Bro, " Bobby said, "if it ever comes to that, you would blow my head
\par off, wouldn't you? "
\par 
\par "Anytime."
\par 
\par "Wait for me to ask."
\par 
\par "Sure. And you me? "
\par 
\par "Ask, and you're dead."
\par 
\par "The only fluttering I feel is in my stomach, " I said.
\par 
\par "I figure that's normal right now." I heard a hard snap and a series of
\par clicks, followed by the same sounds again then the unmistakable creak of
\par the back door opening.
\par 
\par Bobby blinked at me. "Sasha? " I went into the candle lit kitchen, saw
\par Manuel Ramirez in his uniform, and knew the sounds I'd heard had been
\par from a police lock-release gun.
\par 
\par He was standing at the kitchen table, staring down at my 9-millimeter
\par Glock, to which he had gone directly, in spite of the dim light.
\par 
\par I had put the pistol on the table when Bobby's news about Wendy
\par Dulcinea's kidnapping had left me shaky.
\par 
\par "That door was locked, " I said to Manuel, as Bobby entered the kitchen
\par behind me.
\par 
\par "Yeah, " Manuel said. He indicated the Glock. "You buy this legally?"
\par 
\par "My dad did."
\par 
\par "Your dad taught poetry."
\par 
\par "It's a dangerous profession."
\par 
\par "Where'd he buy this? " Manuel asked, picking up the pistol.
\par 
\par "Thor's Gun Shop."
\par 
\par "You have a receipt? "
\par 
\par "I'll get it."
\par 
\par "Never mind." The door between the kitchen and the downstairs hall swung
\par inward.
\par 
\par Frank Feeney, one of Manuel's deputies, hesitated on the threshold.
\par 
\par For an instant, in his eyes, I thought I saw a veil of yellow light
\par billow like curtains at a pair of windows, but it was gone before I
\par could be sure that it had been real. "Found a shotgun and a . 38 in
\par Halloway's Jeep, " Feeney said.
\par 
\par "You boys belong to a right-wing militia or something? " Manuel asked.
\par 
\par "We're going to sign up for a poetry class, " Bobby said. "You have a
\par search warrant? "
\par 
\par "Tear a paper towel off that roll, " the chief said.
\par 
\par "I'll write one out for you." I Behind Feeney, at the far end of the
\par hall, in the foyer, backlit by the stained-glass windows, was a second
\par deputy. I couldn't see him well enough to know who he was.
\par 
\par "How'd you get in here? " I asked.
\par 
\par Manuel stared at me long enough to remind me that he was not a friend of
\par mine anymore.
\par 
\par "What's going on? " I demanded.
\par 
\par "A massive violation of your civil rights, " Manuel said, and his smile
\par had all the warmth of a stiletto wound in the belly of a corpse.
\par 
\par Frank Feeney had a serpent's face, one without fangs but with no need of
\par fangs because he exuded poison from every pore. His eyes had the fixed,
\par cold focus of a snake's eyes, and his mouth was a slit from which a
\par forked tongue could have flicked without causing a start of surprise
\par even in a stranger who'd just met him. Before the mess at Wyvern, Feeney
\par had been the rotten apple on the police force, and he was still
\par sufficiently toxic to cast a thousand Snow Whites into comas with a
\par glance.
\par 
\par "You want us to search the place for more weapons, Chief ? " he asked
\par Manuel.
\par 
\par "Yeah. But don't trash it too much. Mr. Snow, here, lost his father a
\par month ago. He's an orphan now. Let's show him some pity." Smiling as if
\par he had just spied a tender mouse or a bird's egg that would satisfy his
\par reptilian hunger, Feeney turned and swaggered down the hallway toward
\par the other deputy.
\par 
\par "We'll be confiscating all firearms, " Manuel told me.
\par 
\par "These are legal weapons. They weren't used in the commission of any
\par crime. You don't have any right to seize them, " I protested. "I know my
\par Second Amendment rights." To Bobby, Manuel said, "You think I'm out of
\par line, too? "
\par 
\par "You can do what you want, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "Your board head buddy here is smarter than he looks, " Manuel told me.
\par 
\par Testing Manuel's self-control, trying to determine if there were any
\par limits to the lawlessness in which the police were willing to engage,
\par Bobby said, "An ugly, psychotic asshole with a badge can always do what
\par he wants."
\par 
\par "Exactly, " Manuel said.
\par 
\par Manuel Ramirezneither ugly nor psychoticis three inches shorter, thirty
\par pounds heavier, twelve years older, and noticeably more Hispanic than I
\par am, he likes country music, while I'm born for rock-'n'-roll, he speaks
\par Spanish, Italian, and English, while I'm limited strictly to English and
\par a few comforting mottoes in Latin, he's full of political opinions,
\par while I find politics boring and sleazy, he's a great cook, but the only
\par thing I can do well with food is eat it. In spite of all these
\par differences and many others, we once shared a love of people and a love
\par of life that made us friends.
\par 
\par For years he had worked the graveyard shift, the top cop of the night,
\par but since Chief Lewis Stevenson died one month ago, Manuel had been head
\par of the department. In the night world where I had met him and become his
\par friend, he was once a bright presence, a good cop and a good man.
\par 
\par Things change, especially here in the new Moonlight Bay, and although he
\par now works the day, he has given his heart to darkness and is not the
\par person I once knew.
\par 
\par "Any one else here? " Manuel asked.
\par 
\par "No." I heard Feeney and the other deputy talking in the foyer and then
\par footsteps on the stairs.
\par 
\par "Got your message, " Manuel told me. "The license number." I nodded.
\par 
\par "Sasha Good all was at Lilly Wing's house last night."
\par 
\par "Maybe it was a Tupperware party, " I said.
\par 
\par Breaking the magazine out of the Glock, Manuel said, "You two showed up
\par just before dawn. You parked behind the garage and came in the back
\par way."
\par 
\par "We needed some Tupperware, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "Where were you all night? "
\par 
\par "Studying Tupperware catalogs, " I said.
\par 
\par "You disappoint me, Chris."
\par 
\par "You think I'm more the Rubbermaid type?
\par 
\par " Manuel said, "I never knew you to be a smartass."
\par 
\par "I'm a man of countless facets." A subdued response to his questioning
\par would be interpreted as fear, and any show of fear would invite harsher
\par treatment. We both knew that the perverse martial law in force during
\par this emergency had never been legally declared, and though it was
\par unlikely that any authority would ever hold Manuel or his men
\par accountable for high crimes or misdemeanors, he couldn't be certain
\par there would be no consequences for his illegal acts. Besides, he'd once
\par been a by-the-book lawman, and beneath all his self justification, he
\par still had a conscience. Wise ass remarks were my way and Bobby's way of
\par reminding Manuel that we knew as well as he did that his authority was
\par now mostly illegitimate and that pushed too hard, we would resist it.
\par 
\par "Don't I disappoint you, too? " Bobby asked.
\par 
\par "I've always known what you are, " Manuel said, dropping the pistol
\par magazine into one of his pockets.
\par 
\par "Likewise. You should change brands of face makeup. Shouldn't he change
\par brands of makeup, Chris? "
\par 
\par "Something that covers better, " I said.
\par 
\par "Yeah, " Bobby said to Manuel, "I can still see the three sixes on your
\par forehead." Without responding, Manuel tucked my Glock under his belt.
\par 
\par "Did you check out the license number? " I asked him.
\par 
\par "Useless. The Suburban was stolen earlier in the evening. We found it
\par abandoned this afternoon, near the marina."
\par 
\par "Any leads? "
\par 
\par "None of this is your business. I've got two things to say to you,
\par Chris. Two reasons I'm here. Stay out of this."
\par 
\par "Is that number one? "
\par 
\par "What?"
\par 
\par "Is that number one of the two? Or is that bonus advice? "
\par 
\par "Two things we can remember, " Bobby said. "But if there's a lot of
\par bonus advice, we'll have to take notes."
\par 
\par "Stay out of this, " Manuel repeated, speaking to me and ignoring Bobby.
\par 
\par There was no unnatural luminosity in his eyes, but the hard edge in his
\par voice was as chilling as animal eye shine. "You've used up all the
\par get-out-of jail-free cards you had any right to expect from me. I mean
\par it, Chris." A crash came from upstairs. A heavy piece of furniture had
\par been tipped over.
\par 
\par I started toward the hall door.
\par 
\par Manuel stopped me by drawing his billy club and slamming it hard against
\par the table. The rap was as loud as a gunshot. He said, "You heard me tell
\par Frank not to trash the place too much. Just relax."
\par 
\par "There aren't any more guns, " I said angrily.
\par 
\par "Poetry lover like you might have a whole arsenal. For public safety, we
\par have to be sure." Bobby was leaning against the counter near the
\par cook top, arms crossed on his chest. He appeared to be entirely resigned
\par to our powerlessness, willing to ride out this episode, so totally
\par chilled that he might as well have had lumps of coal for eyes and a
\par carrot for a nose. This pose no doubt deceived Manuel, but I knew Bobby
\par so well that I could see he was like a dry-ice bomb about to achieve
\par blast pressure. The drawer immediately to his right contained a set of
\par knives, and I was sure that he had chosen his position with the cutlery
\par in mind.
\par 
\par We couldn't win a fight here, now, and the important thing was to remain
\par free to find Orson and the missing kids.
\par 
\par When the sound of shattering glass came from upstairs, I ignored it,
\par reined in my anger, and said tightly to Manuel, "Lilly lost her husband.
\par 
\par Now, maybe, her only child. Doesn't that reach you? You of all people? "
\par 
\par "I'm sorry for her."
\par 
\par "That's all? "
\par 
\par "If I could bring her boy back, I would." His choice of words chilled
\par me. "That sounds like he's already dead or somewhere you can't go to get
\par him." With none of the compassion that once had been the essence of
\par Manuel, he said, "I told you stay out of it."
\par 
\par Sixteen years ago, Manuel's wife, Carmelita, died giving birth to their
\par second child. She had been only twenty-four. Manuel, who never
\par remarried, raised a daughter and son with much love and wisdom. His boy,
\par Toby, has Down's syndrome. As much as anyone and more than some people,
\par Manuel knows suffering, he understands what it means to live with hard
\par responsibilities and limitations. Nevertheless, though I searched his
\par eyes, I couldn't see the compassion that had made him a first-rate
\par father and policeman.
\par 
\par "What about the Stuart twins? " I asked.
\par 
\par His round face, designed more for laughter than for anger, usually a
\par summer face, was now full of winter and as hard as ice.
\par 
\par I said, "What about Wendy Dulcinea? " The extent of my knowledge angered
\par him.
\par 
\par His voice remained soft, but he tapped the end of the billy club against
\par his right palm, "You listen to me, Chris. Those of us who know what's
\par happened we either swallow it or we choke on it. So just relax and
\par swallow it. Because if you choke on it, then no one is going to be there
\par to apply the Heimlich maneuver. You understand? "
\par 
\par "Sure. Hey, I'm a bright guy. I understand. That was a death threat."
\par 
\par "Nicely delivered, " Bobby noted. "Creative, oblique, no jarring
\par histrionics although the bit of business with the club is a cliche.
\par 
\par psychotic Gestapo-torturer shtick from a hundred old movies. You'll be a
\par more credible fascist without it."
\par 
\par "Screw you." Bobby smiled. "I know you dream about it." Manuel appeared
\par to be one more exchange away from wading into Bobby with the club.
\par 
\par Stepping in front of Bobby so that the two of them wouldn't be face
\par to-face, and hoping miraculously to raise guilt from Manuel's graveyard
\par conscience, I said, "If I try to go public, try to mess where I'm not
\par supposed to mess, who puts the bullet in the back of my head, Manuel?
\par 
\par You? " A look of genuine hurt passed across his features, but it only
\par briefly softened his expression. "I couldn't."
\par 
\par "Very broly of you.
\par 
\par " Broly is surfer lingo for brotherly. "I'll be so much less dead if
\par it's one of your deputies who pulls the trigger instead of you."
\par 
\par "This isn't easy for either of us."
\par 
\par "Seems easier for you than me."
\par 
\par "You've been protected because of who your mother was, what she
\par achieved. And because you were ... once a friend of mine.
\par 
\par But don't push your luck, Chris."
\par 
\par "Four kids snatched in twelve hours, Manuel. Is that the going exchange
\par rate? Four other kids for one Toby? " Admittedly, I was cruel to accuse
\par him of sacrificing the lives of other children for his son, but there
\par was truth in this cruelty.
\par 
\par His face darkened like settled coals, and in his eyes was the livid fire
\par of hatred. "Yeah. I have a son that I'm responsible for.
\par 
\par And a daughter. My mother. A family I'm responsible for. It's not as
\par easy for me as it is for a smartass loner like you." I was sickened
\par that, once friends, we had come to this.
\par 
\par The entire police department of Moonlight Bay had been co-opted by those
\par higher authorities responsible for concealing the terrors spawned at
\par Wyvern. The cops' reasons for cooperating were numerous, fear foremost,
\par misguided patriotism, wads of hundred-dollar bills in prodigious
\par quantities that only black-budget projects can provide.
\par 
\par Furthermore, they had been impressed into the search for the troop of
\par rhesuses and human subjects that escaped the lab more than two years
\par ago, and on that night of violence, most had been bitten, clawed, or
\par otherwise infected, they were in danger of becoming, so they agreed to
\par be participants in the conspiracy, with the hope of being first in line
\par for treatment if a cure for the retrovirus was discovered.
\par 
\par Manuel couldn't be bought with mere money. His patriotism was not of the
\par misguided variety. Sufficient fear can bring any man to heel, but it
\par wasn't fear that had corrupted Manuel.
\par 
\par The research at Wyvern had led to catastrophe, but also to positive
\par discoveries. Evidently, some experiments have resulted in genetic
\par treatments that are promising.
\par 
\par Manuel sold his soul for the hope that one of those experimental
\par treatments would transform Toby. And I suspect he dreams of his son
\par achieving intellectual and physical transformation.
\par 
\par The intellectual growth might well be possible. We know that some of the
\par Wyvern work included intelligence-enhancement research and that there
\par were startling successes, as witness Orson.
\par 
\par "How's Toby doing? " I asked.
\par 
\par As I spoke, I heard a stealthy but telltale sound behind me. A drawer
\par sliding open. The knife drawer.
\par 
\par When I had interposed myself between Bobby and Manuel, I'd meant only to
\par defuse the escalating tension between them, not to provide cover for
\par Bobby to arm himself. I wanted to tell him to chill out, but I didn't
\par know how to do so without alerting Manuel.
\par 
\par Besides, there are occasions when Bobby's instincts are better than
\par mine. If he thought this situation was inevitably leading to violence,
\par perhaps he was right.
\par 
\par Apparently, my question about Toby had masked the sound of the drawer,
\par because Manuel gave no indication of having heard it.
\par 
\par A fierce pride, both touching and terrifying, couldn't drive out his
\par anger, the two emotions were darkly complementary. "He's reading.
\par 
\par Better. Faster. More comprehension. Doing better at math. And what's
\par wrong with that? Is that a crime? " I shook my head.
\par 
\par Although some people make fun of Toby's appearance or shun him, he's the
\par image of gentleness. With his thick neck, rounded shoulders, short arms,
\par and stocky legs, he reminds me of the good gnomes from the adventure
\par stories that delighted me in childhood. His sloped and heavy brow,
\par low-set ears, and soft features, and the inner epicanthic folds of his
\par eyes, give him a dreamy aspect that matches his sweet and gentle
\par personality.
\par 
\par In spite of his burdens, Toby has always been happy and content.
\par 
\par I worry that the Wyvern crowd will raise his intelligence far enough to
\par leave him dissatisfied with his life but not far enough to give him an
\par average IQ. If they steal his innocence and curse him with a
\par self-awareness that leaves him anguished, trapping him between livable
\par identities, they will destroy him.
\par 
\par I know all about unfulfillable longing, the fruitless yearning to be
\par what one can never be.
\par 
\par And although I find it difficult to believe that Toby could be
\par genetically engineered into a radically new appearance, I fear that if
\par any such attempt were made, he might become something he wouldn't be
\par able to bear seeing in the mirror. Those who don't perceive beauty in
\par the face of a Down's-syndrome person are blind to all beauty or are so
\par fearful of difference that they must at once turn away from every
\par encounter with it. In every face in even the plainest and the most
\par unfortunate countenances there is some precious aspect of the divine
\par image of which we are a reflection, and if you look with an open heart,
\par you can see an awesome beauty, a glimpse of something so radiant that it
\par gives you joy.
\par 
\par But will this radiance remain in Toby if he is redesigned by Wyvern
\par scientists, if a radical physical transformation is attempted?
\par 
\par "He's got a future now, " Manuel said.
\par 
\par "Don't throw your boy away, " I pleaded.
\par 
\par "I'm lifting him up."
\par 
\par "He won't be your boy anymore."
\par 
\par "He'll finally be what he was meant to be."
\par 
\par "He already was what he was meant to be."
\par 
\par "You don't know the pain, " Manuel said bitterly.
\par 
\par He was speaking about his own pain, not Toby's. Toby is at peace with
\par the world. Or was.
\par 
\par I said, "You always loved him for what he was." His voice was sharp and
\par tremulous. "In spite of what he was."
\par 
\par "That's not fair to yourself. I know how you've felt about him all these
\par years. You've treasured him."
\par 
\par "You don't know shit about how I felt, not shit, " he said, and he poked
\par the air in front of me with the club, as if driving home his point.
\par 
\par With sorrow as heavy as a rock on my chest, I said, "If that's true, if
\par I didn't understand how you felt about Toby, then I didn't know you at
\par all."
\par 
\par "Maybe you didn't, " he said. "Or maybe you can't bear to think Toby
\par could end up with a more normal life than yours. We all like to have
\par someone to look down ondon't we, Chris? " My heart contracted as if
\par around a thorn. The ferocity of his anger revealed such profound terror
\par and pain that I couldn't bear to respond to this mean-spirited
\par accusation. We had been friends too long for me to hate him, and I was
\par overcome only by pity.
\par 
\par He was mad with hope. In reasonable measure, hope sustains us.
\par 
\par In great excess, it distorts perceptions, dulls the mind, corrupts the
\par heart to no less an extent than does heroin.
\par 
\par I don't believe I've misunderstood Manuel all these years. High on hope,
\par he has forgotten what he loved and, instead, loves the ideal more than
\par the reality, which is the cause of all the misery that the human species
\par creates for itself.
\par 
\par Descending footsteps sounded on the stairs. I looked toward the hall as
\par Feeney and the other deputy appeared in the foyer. Feeney went into the
\par living room, the other man into the study, where they switched on the
\par lights and dialed up the rheostats.
\par 
\par "What's the second thing you came here to tell me? " I asked Manuel.
\par 
\par "They're going to get control of this."
\par 
\par "Of what? "
\par 
\par "This plague."
\par 
\par "With what? " Bobby asked. "A bottle of Lysol? "
\par 
\par "Some people are immune."
\par 
\par "Not everyone, " Bobby said as glass shattered in the living room.
\par 
\par Manuel said, "But the immune factor has been isolated. Soon there'll be
\par a vaccine, and a cure for those already infected." I thought of the
\par missing children, but I didn't mention them.
\par 
\par "Some people are still becoming, " I said.
\par 
\par "And we're learning there's only so much change they're able to
\par tolerate." I strove to resist the flood of hope that might have swept me
\par away.
\par 
\par "Only so much? How much? "
\par 
\par "There's a threshold ...  They become acutely aware of the changes
\par taking place in them. Then they're overcome by fear. An intolerable fear
\par of themselves. Hatred of themselves. The self-hatred escalates until .
\par 
\par .. they psychologically implode."
\par 
\par "Psychological implosion? What the hell does that mean? " Then I
\par understood. "Suicide? "
\par 
\par "Beyond suicide. Violent ... frenzied self-destruction.
\par 
\par We've seen .
\par 
\par .. a number of cases. You understand what this means? " I said, "When
\par they self-destruct, they're no longer carriers of the retrovirus.
\par 
\par The plague is self-limiting." Judging by the sound, Frank Feeney was
\par smashing a small table or chair against one of the living-room walls.
\par 
\par I guessed that the other deputy was sweeping Sasha's bottles of vitamins
\par and herbs off the shelves in the study. They were dutifully teaching us
\par a lesson and respect for the law.
\par 
\par "Most of us will get through this all right, " Manuel said.
\par 
\par But who among us will not? I wondered.
\par 
\par "Animals, too, " I said. "They self-destruct." He regarded me with
\par suspicion. "We're seeing indications. What have you seen? " I thought of
\par the birds. The ve ve rats, which had been dead a long time.
\par 
\par The pack of coyotes no doubt were nearing the threshold of tolerable
\par change.
\par 
\par "Why're you telling me this? " I asked.
\par 
\par "So you'll stay the hell out of the way. Let the right people manage
\par this situation. People who know what they're doing. People with
\par credentials."
\par 
\par "The usual big brains, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par Manuel poked the club in our direction. "You may think you're heroes,
\par but you'll just be getting in the way."
\par 
\par "I'm no hero, " I assured him.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "Me, hell, I'm just a surf-smacked, sun-fried, beer whacked
\par board head." Manuel said, "There's too much at stake here for us to
\par allow anyone to have an agenda of his own."
\par 
\par "What about the troop? " I asked. "The monkeys haven't selfdestructed."
\par 
\par "They're different.
\par 
\par They were engineered in the lab, and they are what they are. They are
\par what they were made to be, what they were born to be. They can still
\par become if they're vulnerable to the mutated virus, but maybe they aren't
\par susceptible. After this is all over, once people are vaccinated and this
\par outbreak self-limits, we'll track them down and wipe them out."
\par 
\par "Not much luck at that so far, " I reminded him.
\par 
\par "We've been distracted by the bigger problem."
\par 
\par "Yeah, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "Destroying the world is ass-busting work.
\par 
\par " Ignoring him, Manuel said, "Once we get the rest of this cleaned up,
\par then the troop ... their days are numbered." Lights flared in the
\par adjacent dining room, where Feeney had proceeded from the living room,
\par and I moved away from the brightness that fell through the connecting
\par doorway.
\par 
\par The second deputy appeared at the hallway door, and he was not anyone I
\par had seen before. I thought I knew all the police in town, but perhaps
\par the financiers behind the Wyvern wizards had recently provided the
\par funding for a larger force.
\par 
\par "Found some boxes of ammo, " the new guy said. "No weapons." Manuel
\par called to Frank, who appeared in the dining-room doorway and said,
\par "Chief? "
\par 
\par "We're done here, " Manuel said.
\par 
\par Feeney looked disappointed, but the new man turned away from the kitchen
\par and immediately headed along the hall toward the front of the house.
\par 
\par With startling speed, Manuel lunged toward Bobby, swinging the baton at
\par his head. Equally quick, Bobby ducked. The club carved the air where
\par Bobby had been, and cracked loudly against the side of the refrigerator.
\par 
\par Bobby came up under the baton, right in Manuel's face, and I thought he
\par was embracing him, which was weird, but then I saw the gleam of the
\par butcher knife, the point against Manuel's throat.
\par 
\par The new deputy had raced back to the kitchen, and both he and Frank
\par Feeney had drawn their revolvers, holding the weapons in two-hand grips.
\par 
\par "Back off, " Manuel told his deputies.
\par 
\par He backed off, too, easing away from the point of the knife.
\par 
\par For a crazy moment I thought Bobby was going to shove the huge blade
\par into him, though I know Bobby better than that.
\par 
\par Remaining wary, the deputies retreated a step or two, and they relaxed
\par their arms from a ready-fire position, although neither man holstered
\par his weapon.
\par 
\par The spill of light through the dining-room door revealed more of
\par Manuel's face than I cared to see. It had been torn by anger and then
\par knitted together by more anger, so the stitches were too tight, pulling
\par his features into strange arrangements, both eyes bulging, but the left
\par eye more than the right, nostrils flaring, his mouth a straight slash on
\par the left but curving into a sneer on the right, like a portrait by
\par Picasso in a crappy mood, all chopped into cubes, geometric slabs that
\par didn't quite fit together. And his skin was no longer a warm brown but
\par the color of a ham that had been left far too long in the smokehouse,
\par muddy red with settled blood and too much hickory smoke, dark and
\par marbled.
\par 
\par Manuel seethe with a hatred so intense that it couldn't have been
\par engendered solely by Bobby's smartass remarks. This hatred was aimed at
\par me, too, but Manuel couldn't bring himself to strike me, not after so
\par many years of friendship, so he wanted to hurt Bobby because that would
\par hurt me. Maybe some of his wrath was directed at himself, because he had
\par flushed away his principles, and maybe we were seeing sixteen years of
\par pent-up anger at God for Carmelita's dying in childbirth and for Toby's
\par being born with Down's syndrome, and I think-feel-know that some of this
\par was fury he could not would not, dared not admit feeling toward Toby, dear
\par Toby, whom he loved desperately but who had so severely limited his
\par life. After all, there's a reason they say that love is a two-edged
\par sword, rather than a two-edged Wiffle bat or a two-edged Fudgsicle,
\par because love is sharp, it pierces, and love is a needle that sews shut
\par the holes in our hearts, that mends our souls, but it can also cut, cut
\par deep, wound, kill.
\par 
\par Manuel was struggling to regain control of himself, aware that we were
\par all watching him, that he was a spectacle, but he was losing the
\par struggle. The side of the refrigerator was scarred where he had hammered
\par the billy club into it, but an assault on an appliance, even a major
\par appliance, didn't provide the satisfaction he needed, didn't relieve the
\par pressure still building in him. A couple minutes earlier, I had thought
\par of Bobby as a dry-ice bomb at the critical-evaporation point, but now it
\par was Manuel who exploded, not at Bobby or at me, but at the glass panels
\par in the four doors of a display cabinet, bashing each pane with the
\par baton, and then he tore open one of the doors and, with the stick, swept
\par out the Royal Worcester china, the Evesham set of which my mother had
\par been so fond.
\par 
\par Saucers, cups, bread plates, salad plates, a gravy boat, a butter dish,
\par a sugar-and-cream set crashed onto the countertop and from there to the
\par floor, porcelain shrapnel pinging off the dishwasher, singing off chair
\par legs and cabinetry. The microwave oven was next to the display cabinet,
\par and he hammered the club into it, once, twice, three times, four times,
\par but the view window was evidently made of Plexiglas or something,
\par because it didn't shatter, though the club switched on the oven and
\par programmed the timer, and if we'd had the foresight to put a bag of
\par Orville Redenbacher's finest in the microwave earlier, we could have
\par enjoyed popcorn by the time Manuel had worked off his rage. He plucked a
\par steel teapot off the stove and pitched it across the room, grabbed the
\par toaster and threw it to the floor even as the teapot was still bouncing
\par around tonk tonk tonkwith the manic energy of a battered icon in a video
\par game. He kicked the toaster, and it tumbled across the floor, squeaking
\par as though it were a terrified little dog, trailing its cord like a tail,
\par and then he was done.
\par 
\par He stood in the center of the kitchen, shoulders slumped, head thrust
\par forward, eyelids as heavy as if he had just woken from a deep sleep,
\par mouth slack, breathing heavily. He looked around as though slightly
\par confused, as though he were a bull wondering where the hell that
\par infuriating red cape had gone.
\par 
\par Throughout Manuel's destructive frenzy, I expected to see the demonic
\par yellow light shimmer through his eyes, but I never caught a glimpse of
\par it. Now there was smoldering anger in his gaze, and confusion, and a
\par wrenching sadness, but if he was becoming something less than human, he
\par wasn't far enough devolved to exhibit eye shine.
\par 
\par The nameless deputy watched cautiously through eyes as dark as the
\par windows in an abandoned house, but Frank Feeney's eyes were brighter
\par than those of Halloween pumpkins, full of fiery menace. Although this
\par uncanny glimmer was not constant, coming and going and coming again, the
\par savagery that it betokened burned as steady as a watch fire.
\par 
\par Feeney was backlit by the dining-room chandelier, and with his face in
\par shadows, his eyes at times glowed as if the light from the next room
\par were passing straight through his skull and radiating from his sockets.
\par 
\par I had been afraid that Manuel's violence would trigger outbursts in the
\par deputies, that all three men were becoming, and that a rapidly
\par accelerating dementia would seize them, whereupon Bobby and I would be
\par surrounded by the high-biotech equivalent of a pack of werewolves in the
\par grip of bloodlust. Because we had foolishly neglected to acquire
\par necklaces of wolfsbane or silver bullets, we would be forced to defend
\par ourselves with my mother's tarnished sterling tea service, which would
\par have to be unpacked from a box in the pantry and perhaps even polished
\par with Wright's silver cream and a soft cloth to be sufficiently lethal.
\par 
\par Now it appeared that Feeney was the only threat, but a werewolf with a
\par loaded revolver is a lycanthrope of a different caliber, and one like
\par him could be as deadly as an entire pack. He was shaking, glistening
\par with sweat, inhaling with a coarse rasp, exhaling with a thin and eager
\par whine of need. In his excitement, he had bitten his lip, and his teeth
\par and chin were red with his own blood. He held the gun with both hands,
\par aiming it at the floor, while his mad eyes seemed to be looking for a
\par target, his attention flicking from Manuel to me, to the second deputy,
\par to Bobby, to me, to Manuel again, and if Feeney decided that we were all
\par targets, he might be able to kill the four of us even as he was cut down
\par by his fellow officers' return fire.
\par 
\par I realized that Manuel was talking to Feeney and to the other deputy.
\par 
\par The pounding of my heart had temporarily deafened me. His voiced faded
\par in, " ...  we're done here, we're finished, finished with these
\par bastards, come on, Frank, Harry, come on, that's it, come on, these
\par scumbags aren't worth it, let's go, back to work, out of here, come on.
\par 
\par " Manuel's voice seemed to soothe Feeney, like the rhythmic lines of a
\par prayer, a litany in which his responses were recited silently rather
\par than spoken. The bale fire continued to pass in and out of his eyes,
\par though it was absent more than not and dimmer than it had been. He broke
\par his two-hand grip on the revolver, holding it in his right hand, and
\par then finally holstered it. Blinking in surprise, he tasted blood,
\par blotted his lips on his hand, and stared uncomprehendingly at the red
\par smear across his palm.
\par 
\par Harry, the second deputy, to whom Manuel had at last given a name, was
\par already to the foyer by the time Frank Feeney stepped out of the kitchen
\par and entered the hall. Manuel followed Feeney, and I found myself
\par following Manuel, though at a distance.
\par 
\par They had lost their Gestapo aura. They looked weak and weary, like three
\par boys who had been playing cops with great exuberance but were now
\par tuckered out, dragging their butts home to have some hot chocolate and
\par take a nap, and then maybe put on new costumes and play pirates.
\par 
\par They seemed to be as lost as the kidnapped children.
\par 
\par In the foyer, as Frank Feeney followed Harry X onto the front porch, I
\par said to Manuel, "You see it, don't you? " At the door he stopped and
\par turned to face me, but he didn't respond. He was still angry, but he
\par also looked stricken. By the second, his rage swam deeper, and his eyes
\par were pools of sorrow.
\par 
\par With light entering the foyer from outside, from the study, and from the
\par living room, I felt more vulnerable here than under the gun and the
\par yellow stare of Feeney in the kitchen, but there was something I needed
\par to say to Manuel.
\par 
\par "Feeney, " I said, though Feeney wasn't the unfinished business between
\par us. "You see that he's becoming? You aren't in denial about that, are
\par you? "
\par 
\par "There's a cure. We'll have it soon."
\par 
\par "He's on the edge.
\par 
\par What if you don't have a cure soon enough? "
\par 
\par "Then we'll deal with him." He realized he was still holding the billy
\par club. He slipped it through a loop on his belt. "Frank is one of ours.
\par 
\par We'll give him peace in our own way."
\par 
\par "He could have killed me. Me, Bobby, you, all of us."
\par 
\par "Stay out of this, Snow. I won't tell you again." Snow.
\par 
\par Not Chris anymore. Trashing a guy's house is dotting the final i and
\par crossing the final't in finito.
\par 
\par "Maybe this kidnapper is that guy on the news, " I said.
\par 
\par "What guy? "
\par 
\par "Snatches kids. Three, four, five little kids. Burns them all at once."
\par 
\par "That's not what's happening here."
\par 
\par "How can you be sure? "
\par 
\par "This is Moonlight Bay."
\par 
\par "Not all bad guys are bad just because they're becoming." He glared at
\par me, taking my observation personally.
\par 
\par I got to the unfinished business, "Toby's a great kid. I love him.
\par 
\par I worry about what's happening. There's such a terrible risk. But in the
\par end, Manuel, I hope everything turns out with him like you think it
\par will. I really do. More than anything." He hesitated, but then said,
\par "Stay out of this. I mean it, Snow." For a moment I watched him walk
\par away from my vandalized house into a world that was even more broken
\par than my mother's china. There were two patrol cars at the curb, and he
\par got into one of them.
\par 
\par "Come back anytime, " I said, as if he could hear me. "I've still got
\par drinking glasses you can smash, serving dishes. We'll have a couple
\par beers, you can bash the hell out of the TV, or take an ax to the better
\par pieces of furniture, pee on the carpet if you want. I'll make a cheese
\par dip, it'll be fun, it'll be festive." As sullen and gray and dark as the
\par afternoon was, it nonetheless stung my eyes. I closed the door.
\par 
\par When a loved one dies or as in this case is lost to me for another
\par reason i invariably make a joke of the pain. Even on the night that my
\par much-loved father succumbed to cancer, I was doing mental stand-up riffs
\par about death, coffins, and the ravages of disease. If I drink too deeply
\par of grief, I'll find myself in the cups of despair. From despair, I'll
\par sink into self-pity so deep that I'll drown. Self-pity will encourage
\par too much brooding about whom I've lost, what I've lost, the limitations
\par with which I must always live, the restrictions of my strange
\par night-bound existence ... and finally I'll risk becoming the freak that
\par childhood bullies called me. It strikes me as blasphemous not to embrace
\par life, but to embrace it in dark times, I have to find the beauty
\par concealed in the tragic, beauty which in fact is always there, and which
\par for me is discovered through humor. You may think me shallow or even
\par callous for seeking the laughter in loss, the fun in funerals, but we
\par can honor the dead with laughter and love, which is how we honored them
\par in life.
\par 
\par God must have meant for us to laugh through our pain, because He stirred
\par an enormous measure of absurdity into the universe when He mixed the
\par batter of creation. I'll admit to being hopeless in many respects, but
\par as long as I have laughter, I'm not without hope.
\par 
\par I quickly scanned the study to see what damage had been done, switched
\par off the light, and then followed the same routine at the entrance to the
\par living room. They had caused less destruction than Beelzebub on a
\par two-day vacation from Hell, but more than the average poltergeist.
\par 
\par Bobby had already turned off the lights in the dining room. By
\par candlelight, he was addressing the mess in the kitchen, sweeping
\par shattered china into a dustpan and emptying the pan into a large garbage
\par bag.
\par 
\par "You're very domestic, " I said, assisting with the cleanup.
\par 
\par "I think I was a housekeeper to royalty in a previous life."
\par 
\par "What royalty? "
\par 
\par "Czar Nicholas of Russia."
\par 
\par "That ended badly."
\par 
\par "Then I was reincarnated as Betty Grable."
\par 
\par "The movie star? "
\par 
\par "The one and only, dude."
\par 
\par "I loved you in Mother Wore Tights."
\par 
\par "Gracias. But it's way good to be male again." Tying shut the first
\par garbage bag as Bobby opened another, I said, "I should be pissed off."
\par 
\par "Why?
\par 
\par Because I've had all these fabulous lives, while you've just been you?"
\par 
\par "He comes here to kick my ass because he really wants to kick his own."
\par 
\par "He'd have to be a contortionist."
\par 
\par "I hate to say this, but he's a moral contortionist."
\par 
\par "Dude, when you're angry, you sure do get foulmouthed ."
\par 
\par "He knows he's taking an unconscionable risk with Toby, and it's eating
\par him alive, even if he won't admit it." Bobby sighed. "I feel for Manuel.
\par 
\par I do. But the dude scares me more than Feeney."
\par 
\par "Feeney's becoming, " I said.
\par 
\par "No shit. But Manuel scares me because he's become what he's become
\par without becoming. You know? "
\par 
\par "I know."
\par 
\par "You think it's true about the vaccine? " Bobby asked, returning the
\par battered toaster to the counter.
\par 
\par "Yeah. But will it work the way they think it will? "
\par 
\par "Nothing else did."
\par 
\par "We know the other part is true, " I said. "The psychological
\par implosion."
\par 
\par "The birds."
\par 
\par "Maybe the coyotes."
\par 
\par "I'd feel totally super-mellow about all this, " Bobby said, returning
\par the butcher knife to the cutlery drawer, "if I didn't know your mom's
\par bug is only part of the problem."
\par 
\par "Mystery Train, " I said, remembering the thing or things inside
\par Hodgson's suit, Delacroix's body, the testament on the audiotape, and
\par the cocoons.
\par 
\par The doorbell rang, and Bobby said, "Tell them if they want to come in
\par here and bust things up, we have new rules. A hundred-dollar cover
\par charge, and everyone wears neckties." I went into the foyer and peered
\par through one of the clearer panes in a stained-glass sidelight.
\par 
\par The figure at the door was so big that you might have thought one of the
\par oak trees had pulled up its roots, climbed the steps, and rung the bell
\par to request a hundred pounds of fertilizer.
\par 
\par I opened the door and stepped back from the light to let our visitor
\par enter.
\par 
\par Roosevelt Frost is tall, muscular, black, and dignified enough to make
\par the carved faces on Mount Rushmore look like the busts of sitcom stars.
\par 
\par Entering with Mungojerrie, a pale gray cat, nestled in the crook of his
\par left arm, he nudged the door shut behind them.
\par 
\par In a voice remarkable for its deep tone, its musicality, and its
\par gentleness, he said, "Good afternoon, son."
\par 
\par "Thank you for coming, sir."
\par 
\par "You've gotten yourself in trouble again."
\par 
\par "That's always a good bet with me."
\par 
\par "Lots of death ahead, " he said solemnly. "Sir?"
\par 
\par "That's what the cat says." I looked at Mungojerrie. Draped comfortably
\par over Roosevelt's huge arm, he appeared to be boneless. The cat was so
\par limp that he might have been a stole or a muffler if Roosevelt had been
\par a man given to wearing stoles and mufflers, except that his green feline
\par eyes, flecked with gold, were alert, riveting, and filled with an
\par intelligence that was unmistakable and unnerving.
\par 
\par "Lots of death, " Roosevelt repeated. "Whose? "
\par 
\par "Ours." Mungojerrie held my gaze.
\par 
\par Roosevelt said, "Cats know things."
\par 
\par "Not everything."
\par 
\par "Cats know, " Roosevelt insisted.
\par 
\par The cat's eyes seemed to be full of sadness.
\par 
\par Roosevelt put Mungojerrie on one of the kitchen chairs so the cat
\par wouldn't cut his paws on the splinters of broken china that still
\par littered the floor. Although Mungojerrie is a Wyvern escapee, bred in
\par the genetics labs, perhaps as smart as good Orson, certainly as smart as
\par the average contestant on Wheel of Fortune, smarter than the majority of
\par the policy advisers to the White House during most of the past century,
\par he was nevertheless sufficiently catlike to be able to curl up and go
\par instantly to sleep even though this was, by his prediction, doomsday eve
\par and though we were unlikely to be alive by dawn. Cats may know things,
\par as Roosevelt says, but they don't suffer from hyperactive imaginations
\par or prickly-pear nerves like mine.
\par 
\par As for knowing things, Roosevelt himself knows more than a few.
\par 
\par He knows football because he was, in the sixties and seventies, a major
\par gridiron star, whom sportswriters dubbed the Sledgehammer. Now, at sixty
\par three, he's a successful businessman who owns a men's clothing store, a
\par minimall, and half-interest in the Moonlight Bay Inn and Country Club.
\par 
\par He also knows a lot about the sea and boats, living aboard the fifty-six
\par foot Nostromo, in the last berth of the Moonlight Bay marina. And, of
\par course, he can talk to animals better than Dr. Do little, which is a
\par handy talent to have here in Edgar Allan Disneyland.
\par 
\par Roosevelt insisted on helping us clear up the remaining mess.
\par 
\par Although it seemed peculiar to be doing housework side by side with a
\par national monument and heir of Saint Francis, we gave him the vacuum
\par cleaner.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie woke when the vacuum wailed, raised his head long enough to
\par express displeasure with a quick baring of his fangs, and then appeared
\par to go to sleep again.
\par 
\par My kitchen is large, but it seems small when Roosevelt Frost is in-it,
\par regardless of whether he's vacuuming. He stands six feet four, and the
\par formidable dimensions of his neck, shoulders, chest, back, and arms make
\par it difficult to believe that he was formed in anything as fragile as a
\par womb, he seems to have been carved out of a granite quarry or poured in
\par a foundry, or perhaps built in a truck factory. He looks considerably
\par younger than he is, with only a few gray hairs at his temples. He
\par succeeded big time in football not merely because of his size but
\par because of his brains, at sixty-three he is nearly as strong as he ever
\par was and i'm guessing even smarter, because he's a man who's always
\par learning.
\par 
\par He also vacuums like a sonofabitch. Together, the three of us soon
\par finished setting the kitchen right.
\par 
\par It would never again be entirely right, I'm afraid, not with only one
\par shelf of Royal Worcester, Evesham pattern, remaining in the display
\par cabinet. The empty shelves were a sad sight. My mother had loved those
\par fine dishes, the soft colors of the hand-painted apples and plums on the
\par coffee cups, the blackberries and pears on the salad plates.
\par 
\par .
\par 
\par .
\par 
\par . My mother's favorite things were not my mother they were merely her
\par things yet, though we like to believe that memories are as permanent as
\par engravings in steel, even memories of love and great kindness are in
\par fact frighteningly ephemeral in their details, and we remember best
\par those that are linked to places and things, memory embeds in the form
\par and weight and texture of real objects, and there it endures to be
\par brought forth vividly with a touch.
\par 
\par There was a second set of dishes, the everyday stuff, and while
\par Roosevelt set the kitchen table with cups and saucers, I brewed a pot of
\par coffee.
\par 
\par In the refrigerator, Bobby discovered a large bakery box crammed full of
\par the pecan-cinnamon buns that are among my all-time-favorite things.
\par 
\par "Carpe crustulorum! " he cried.
\par 
\par Roosevelt said, "What was that? " I said, "Don't ask."
\par 
\par "Seize the pastry, " Bobby translated.
\par 
\par I brought a couple of pillows from the living room and put them on one
\par of the chairs, which allowed Mungojerrienow awaketo sit high enough to
\par be part of the gathering.
\par 
\par As Roosevelt was breaking off bits of a cinnamon bun and soaking them in
\par the saucer of milk that he had poured for the cat, Sasha came home from
\par whatever business she had been about. Roosevelt calls her daughter, the
\par way he sometimes calls me and Bobby son, which is just his way, though
\par he thinks so highly of Sasha that I suspect he would be pleased to adopt
\par her. I was standing behind him when he lifted her and hugged her, as
\par 
\par though she were a little girl, she entirely disappeared in his bearish
\par embrace, except for one sneaker-clad foot, which dangled an inch off the
\par floor.
\par 
\par Sasha brought the chair from her composition table in the dining room,
\par positioning it between my chair and Bobby's. She fingered Bobby's sleeve
\par and said, "Bitchin' shirt."
\par 
\par "Thanks."
\par 
\par "I've seen Doogie, " Sasha said. "He's putting together a package of
\par equipment, ordnance.
\par 
\par It's now ... just past three o'clock.
\par 
\par We'll be ready to go as soon as it's dark."
\par 
\par "Ordnance? " Bobby asked.
\par 
\par "Doogie's got some really fine tech support."
\par 
\par "Tech support? "
\par 
\par "We're going to be prepared for contingencies."
\par 
\par "Contingencies? " Bobby turned to me. "Bro, are you sleeping with G. I.
\par 
\par Jane? "
\par 
\par "Emma Peel, " I corrected. To Sasha-Emma, I said, "We may need some
\par ordnance. Manuel and two deputies were here, confiscated our weapons."
\par 
\par "Broke some china, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "Smashed some furniture, " I added.
\par 
\par "Kicked the toaster around, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "We can count on Doogie, " Sasha said. "Why the toaster? " Bobby
\par shrugged. "It was small, defenseless, and vulnerable." We sat down four
\par people and one gray catto eat, drink, and strategize by candlelight.
\par 
\par "Carpe crustulorum, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par Brandishing her fork, Sasha said, "Carpe furcam." Raising his cup as if
\par in a toast, Bobby said, "Carpe coffeum."
\par 
\par "Conspiracy, " I muttered.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie watched us with keen interest.
\par 
\par Roosevelt studied the cat as the cat studied us, and said, "He thinks
\par you're strange but amusing."
\par 
\par "Strange, huh? " Bobby said. "I don't think it's a common human habit to
\par chase down mice and eat them." Roosevelt Frost was talking to animals
\par long before the Wyvern labs gave us four-legged citizens with perhaps
\par more smarts than the people who created them. As far as I've seen, his
\par only eccentric belief is that we can converse with ordinary animals, not
\par just those that have been genetically engineered. He doesn't claim to
\par have been abducted by extraterrestrials and given a proctological exam,
\par doesn't prowl the woods in search of Big Foot or Babe the blue ox, isn't
\par writing a novel channeled to him by the spirit of Truman Capote, and
\par doesn't wear an aluminum-foil hat to prevent microwave control of his
\par thoughts by the American Grocery Workers Union.
\par 
\par He learned animal communication from a woman named Gloria Chan, in Los
\par Angeles, several years ago, after she facilitated a dialogue between him
\par and his beloved mutt, Sloopy, now deceased. Gloria told Roosevelt things
\par about his daily life and habits that she couldn't possibly know but with
\par which Sloopy was familiar and which apparently the dog revealed to her.
\par 
\par Roosevelt says that animal communication doesn't require any special
\par talent, that it isn't a psychic ability. He claims it's a sensitivity to
\par other species that we all possess but have repressed, the biggest
\par obstacles to learning the necessary techniques are doubt, cynicism, and
\par preconceived notions about what is possible and what isn't.
\par 
\par After several months of hard work under Gloria Chan's tutelage,
\par Roosevelt became adept at understanding the thoughts and concerns of
\par Sloopy and other beasts of hearth and field. He's willing to teach me,
\par and I intend to give it a shot. Nothing would please me more than
\par gaining a better understanding of Orson, my four-footed brother has
\par heard much from me over the last couple years, but I've never heard a
\par word from him. Lessons with Roosevelt will either open a door on
\par wonderor leave me feeling foolish and gullible. As a human being, I'm
\par intimately familiar with foolishness and gullibility, so I don't have
\par anything to lose.
\par 
\par Bobby used to mock Roosevelt's tete-a-tetes with animals, though never
\par to his face, attributing them to head injuries suffered on the football
\par field, but lately he seems to have shoved his skepticism through a
\par mental wood-chipper. Events at Wyvern have taught us many lessons, and
\par one of them, for sure, is that while science can improve the lot of
\par humankind, it doesn't hold all the answers we need, Life has dimensions
\par that can't be mapped by biologists, physicists, and mathematicians.
\par 
\par Orson had led me to Roosevelt more than a year ago, drawn by a canine
\par awareness that this was a special man. Some Wyvern cats and God knows
\par what other species of lab escapees have also sought him out and talked
\par his ear off, so to speak. Orson is the exception. He visits Roosevelt
\par but won't communicate with him. Old Sphim Dog, Roosevelt calls him, mute
\par mutt, the laconic Labrador.
\par 
\par I believe that my mom brought Orson to me for whatever reason after
\par falsifying the lab records to account for him as a dead puppy.
\par 
\par Perhaps Orson fears being taken by force back to the lab if anyone
\par realizes that he is one of their successes. Whatever the reason, he more
\par often than not plays his I'm just-a-good-old-dumb-dog game when he's
\par around anyone other than Bobby, Sasha, and me.
\par 
\par While he doesn't insult Roosevelt with that deception, Orson remains as
\par taciturn as a turnip, albeit a turnip with a tail.
\par 
\par Now, sitting on a chair, raised on a pair of pillows, daintily eating
\par milk soaked bits of cinnamon bun, Mungojerrie made no pretense to being
\par an ordinary cat. As we recounted the events of the past twelve hours,
\par his green eyes followed the conversation with interest. When he heard
\par something that surprised him, his eyes widened, and when he was shocked,
\par he either twitched or pulled his head back and cocked it as if to say,
\par Man, have you been guzzling catnip cocktails, or are you just a
\par congenital bullshit machine? Sometimes he grinned, which was usually
\par when Bobby and I had to reveal something stupid that we had said or
\par done, it seemed to me that Mungojerrie grinned way too often.
\par 
\par Bobby's description of what we glimpsed through the faceplate of
\par Hodgson's bio-secure suit seemed to put the feline off his feed for a
\par few minutes, but he was first and foremost a cat, with a cat's appetite
\par and curiosity, so before we finished the tale, he had solicited and
\par received from Roosevelt another saucer of milk-soaked crustulorum.
\par 
\par "We're convinced the missing kids and Orson are somewhere in Wyvern, " I
\par said to Roosevelt Frost, because I still felt weird about directly
\par addressing the cat, which is peculiar, considering that I directly
\par address Orson all the time. "But the place is just too big to search.
\par 
\par We need a tracker." Bobby said, "Since we don't own a reconnaissance
\par satellite, don't know a good Indian scout, and don't keep a bloodhound
\par hanging in the closet for these emergencies  ..." The three of us looked
\par expectantly at Mungojerrie.
\par 
\par The cat met my eyes, then Bobby's, then Sasha's. He closed his eyes for
\par a moment, as if pondering our implied request, then finally turned his
\par attention to Roosevelt.
\par 
\par The gentle giant pushed aside his plate and coffee cup, leaned forward,
\par propped his right elbow on the table, rested his chin on his fist, and
\par locked gazes with our whiskered guest.
\par 
\par After a minute, during which I tried unsuccessfully to recall the melody
\par of the movie theme song from That Darn Cat, Roosevelt said, "Mungojerrie
\par wonders if you were listening to what I said when we first arrived."
\par 
\par " Lots of death, " I quoted.
\par 
\par "Whose? " Sasha asked.
\par 
\par "Ours."
\par 
\par "Who says? " I pointed at the cat.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie managed to look like a swami.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "We know there's danger."
\par 
\par "He's not just saying it's dangerous, " Roosevelt explained.
\par 
\par "It's a .
\par 
\par . sort of prediction." We sat in silence, staring at the cat, who
\par favored us with an expression as inscrutable as that on the cats in
\par Egyptian tomb sculptures, and eventually Sasha said, "You mean
\par Mungojerrie's dairvoyant? "
\par 
\par "No, " Roosevelt said.
\par 
\par "Then what do you mean? " Still staring at the cat, who was now gazing
\par solemnly at one of the candles as if reading the future in the sinuous
\par dance of the flame upon the wick, Roosevelt said, "Cats know things."
\par 
\par Bobby, Sasha, and I looked at one another, but none of us could provide
\par enlightenment.
\par 
\par "What, exactly, do cats know? " Sasha asked.
\par 
\par "Things, " Roosevelt said.
\par 
\par "How? "
\par 
\par "By knowing."
\par 
\par "What is the sound of one hand clapping? " Bobby asked rhetorically.
\par 
\par The cat twitched its ears and looked at him as if to say, Now you
\par understand.
\par 
\par "This cat's been reading too much Deepak Chopra, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par Frustration pinched Sasha's face and voice. "Roosevelt? " When he
\par shrugged his massive shoulders, I could almost feel the cubic yard of
\par displaced air wafting across the table. "Daughter, this animal
\par communication business isn't always like talking on the telephone.
\par 
\par Sometimes it is just exactly as clear as that. But then sometimes there
\par are ... ambiguities."
\par 
\par "Well, " Bobby said, "does this ball-bearing mousetrap think we have
\par some chance of finding Orson and the kids, then getting back here
\par alive any chance at all? " With his left hand, Roosevelt gently scratched
\par the cat behind the ears and stroked its head. "He says there's always a
\par chance. Nothing is hopeless."
\par 
\par "Fifty-fifty chance? " I wondered.
\par 
\par Roosevelt laughed softly. "Mr. Mungojerrie says he isn't a bookmaker."
\par 
\par "So, " Bobby said, "the worst that can happen is that we all go back
\par there to Wyvern and we all die, get shredded and processed and packaged
\par as lunch meat. Seems to me, that's always been the worst that could
\par happen, so nothing's changed. I'm up for it."
\par 
\par "Me too, " said Sasha.
\par 
\par Obviously still speaking for the cat, which purred and leaned into his
\par hand as he petted it, Roosevelt said, "What if these kids and Orson are
\par somewhere we can't go? What if they're in The Hole? " Bobby said, "Rule
\par of thumb, Anyplace called The Hole can't be a good place."
\par 
\par "That's what they call the genetic research facility."
\par 
\par "They? " I asked.
\par 
\par "The people who work in it. They call it The Hole because ..
\par 
\par ." Roosevelt tilted his head, as if listening to a small quiet voice.
\par 
\par "Well, one reason, I guess, is that it's deep underground." I found
\par myself addressing the cat. "Then it's still functioning out there in
\par Wyvern somewhere, like we've suspected, still staffed and operational?"
\par 
\par "Yes, " Roosevelt said, stroking the cat under the chin.
\par 
\par "Self-contained ... secretly resupplied every six months."
\par 
\par "Do you know where? " I asked Mungojerrie.
\par 
\par "Yes. He knows. It's where he's from, after all, " Roosevelt said,
\par sitting back in his chair. "It's where he escaped from  ... that night.
\par 
\par But if Orson and the children are in The Hole, there's no way to get to
\par them or get them out." We all brooded in silence.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie raised one forepaw and began to lick it, grooming his fur.
\par 
\par He was smart, he knew things, he could track, he was our best hope, but
\par he was also a cat. We were entirely reliant on a comrade who, at any
\par moment, might cough up a hairball. The only reason I didn't laugh or cry
\par was that I couldn't do both at once, which was what I felt like doing.
\par 
\par Finally Sasha put the issue behind us, "If we have no chance of getting
\par them out of The Hole, then we've just got to hope they're somewhere else
\par in Wyvern."
\par 
\par "The big question is still the same, " I said to Roosevelt. "Is
\par Mungojerrie willing to help? " The cat had met Orson only once, aboard
\par the Nostromo, on the night my father died. They had seemed to like each
\par other. They shared, as well, an origin in the intelligence-enhancement
\par research at Wyvern, and if my mother was in some sense Orson's mother,
\par because he was a product of her heart and mind, then this cat might feel
\par that she was his lost mother, too, his creator, to whom he was in debt
\par for his life.
\par 
\par I sat with my hands clasped tightly around my empty coffee cup,
\par desperate to believe that Mungojerrie would not let us down, mentally
\par listing reasons why the cat must agree to join our rescue effort,
\par preparing to make the incredible and shameless claim that he was my
\par spiritual brother, Mungojerrie Snow, just as Orson was my brother, that
\par this was a family crisis to which he had a special obligation, and I
\par couldn't help but remember what Bobby had said about this brave new
\par smart-animal world being like a Donald Duck cartoon that for all its
\par wackiness is nevertheless rife with fearsome physical and moral and
\par spiritual consequences.
\par 
\par When Roosevelt said, "Yes, " I was so feverishly structuring my argument
\par against an expected rejection of our request that I didn't immediately
\par realize what our friend the animal communicator had communicated.
\par 
\par "Yes, we'll help, " Roosevelt explained in response to my dumb blinking.
\par 
\par We passed smiles, like a plate of crustulorum, around the table.
\par 
\par Then Sasha cocked her head at Roosevelt and said, ""We'? "
\par 
\par "You'll need me along to interpret." Bobby said, "The mungo man leads,
\par we follow."
\par 
\par "It might not be that simple, " Roosevelt said.
\par 
\par Sasha shook her head. "We can't ask you to do this." Taking her hand,
\par patting it, Roosevelt smiled. "Daughter, you aren't asking. I'm
\par insisting. Orson is my friend, too. All these children are the children
\par of my neighbors."
\par 
\par " Lots of death, " I quoted again.
\par 
\par Roosevelt counter-quoted the feline's previous equivocation, "Nothing's
\par hopeless."
\par 
\par "Cats know things, " I said.
\par 
\par Now he quoted me, "Not everything." Mungojerrie looked at us as if to
\par say, Cats know.
\par 
\par I felt that neither the cat nor Roosevelt should finally commit to this
\par dangerous enterprise without first hearing Leland Delacroix's
\par disjointed, incomplete, at times incoherent, yet compelling final
\par testament. Whether or not we found Orson and the kids, we would return
\par to that cocoon infested bungalow at the end of the night to set a
\par purging fire, but I was convinced that during our search, we would
\par encounter other consequences of the Mystery Train project, some
\par potentially lethal. If, after hearing Delacroix's bizarre tale told in
\par his tortured voice, Roosevelt and Mungojerrie reconsidered their
\par commitment to accompany us, I would still try to persuade them to help,
\par but I'd feel that I had been fair with them.
\par 
\par We adjourned to the dining room, where I replayed the original cassette.
\par 
\par The last words on the tape were spoken in that unknown language, and
\par when they faded, Bobby said, "The tune's good, but it doesn't have a
\par beat you can dance to." Roosevelt stood in front of the tape player,
\par frowning. "When do we leave? "
\par 
\par "First dark, " I said.
\par 
\par "Which is coming down fast, " Sasha said, glancing at the window blinds,
\par against which the press of daylight was less insistent than when Bobby
\par and I had first listened to Delacroix.
\par 
\par "If those kids are in Wyvern, " Roosevelt said, "they might as well be
\par at the gates of Hell. No matter what the risk, we can't leave them
\par there." He was wearing a black crewneck sweater, black chinos, and black
\par Rockports, as though he had anticipated the covert action that lay ahead
\par of us. In spite of his formidable size and rough-hewn features, he
\par looked like a priest, like an exorcist grimly prepared to cast out
\par devils.
\par 
\par Turning to Mungojerrie, who was sitting on Sasha's composition table, I
\par said, "And what about you? " Roosevelt crouched by the table, eye-to-eye
\par with the cat.
\par 
\par To me, Mungojerrie appeared to be supremely disinterested, much like any
\par cat when it's trying to live up to its species' reputation for cool
\par indifference, mystery, and unearthly wisdom.
\par 
\par Apparently, Roosevelt was viewing this gray mouser through a lens I
\par didn't possess or was listening to him on a frequency beyond my range of
\par hearing, because he reported, "Mungojerrie says two things.
\par 
\par First, he will find Orson and the kids if they're anywhere in Wyvern, no
\par matter what the risks, no matter what it takes." Relieved, grateful to
\par the cat for its courage, I said, "And number two? "
\par 
\par "He needs to go outside and pee." At twilight, I went into my bathroom,
\par failed to throw up though the urge was there, and instead washed my face
\par twice, once with hot water, once with cold. Then I sat on the edge of
\par the bathtub, clasped my hands on my knees, and endured a siege of the
\par shakes as violent as those that reportedly accompany malaria or an IRS
\par audit.
\par 
\par I wasn't afraid that the mission into Fort Wyvern would result in the
\par storm of death that our present pussycat had predicted or that I would
\par perish in the night ahead. Rather, I was afraid that I would live
\par through the night but come home without the kids and Orson, or that I
\par would fail in the rescue and also lose Sasha and Bobby and Roosevelt and
\par Mungojerrie in the process.
\par 
\par With friends, this is a cool world, without friends, it would be
\par unbearably cold.
\par 
\par I washed my face a third time, peed to show my solidarity with
\par Mungojerrie, washed my hands (because my mom, would-be destroyer of the
\par world, had taught me hygiene), and returned to the kitchen, where the
\par others were waiting for me. I suspect that, with the exception of the
\par cat, they had been through a ritual similar to mine, in other bathrooms.
\par 
\par Because Sashalike Bobby had noticed fishy types all over town and
\par believed something major was soon to go down, she had anticipated that
\par our house would be under surveillance by the authorities, if for no
\par other reason than our connection with Lilly Wing. Therefore, she had
\par arranged for us to meet Doogie Sassman at a rendezvous point far beyond
\par prying eyes.
\par 
\par Sasha's Explorer, Bobby's Jeep, and Roosevelt's Mercedes were parked in
\par front of the house. We would surely be tailed if we drove off in any of
\par them, we would have to leave on foot and with considerable stealth.
\par 
\par Behind our house, beyond our backyard, is a hard-packed dirt footpath
\par that separates our property and those flanking it from a grove of
\par red-gum eucalyptus trees and, beyond the trees, the golf course of the
\par Moonlight Bay Inn and Country Club, of which Roosevelt is half-owner.
\par 
\par Surveillance probably extended to the footpath, and there was no chance
\par that the watchers assigned to us could be bought off with invitations to
\par Sunday brunch at the country club.
\par 
\par The plan was to travel backyard to backyard for a few blocks, risking
\par the attention of neighbors and their dogs, until we were beyond the
\par purview of any surveillance teams that might have been assigned to us.
\par 
\par Because of Manuel's confiscation celebration, Sasha possessed the only
\par weapon, her . 38 Chiefs Special, and two speedloaders in a dump pouch.
\par 
\par She wouldn't relinquish the piece to Roosevelt or Bobby, or to me not
\par even to Mungojerrie. She announced, in a tone brooking no argument, that
\par she would take the risky point position.
\par 
\par "Where do we meet up with Doogie? " I asked as Bobby stowed the sole
\par remaining cinnamon bun in the refrigerator and I finished stacking cups
\par and saucers in the sink.
\par 
\par "Out along Haddenbeck Road, " Sasha said, "just beyond Crow Hill."
\par 
\par "Crow Hill, " Bobby said. "I don't like the sound of that." Sasha didn't
\par get it for a moment. Then she did, "It's just a place. How could it have
\par anything to do with those drawings? " I was more concerned about the
\par distance. "Man, that's seven, eight miles."
\par 
\par "Almost nine, " Sasha said.
\par 
\par "With all this new activity, there's nowhere in town we could meet
\par Doogie without drawing attention."
\par 
\par "It's going to take too long to cover that much ground on foot, " I
\par protested.
\par 
\par "Oh, " she said, "we'll only go a few blocks on foot, just until we're
\par able to steal a car." Bobby smiled at me and winked. "This here is some
\par moll you've got, bro."
\par 
\par "Whose car? " I asked her.
\par 
\par "Any car, " she said brightly. "I'm not concerned about style, just
\par mobility."
\par 
\par "What if we don't find a car with keys in it? "
\par 
\par "I'll hot-wire it, " she said.
\par 
\par "You know how to hot-wire a car? "
\par 
\par "I was a Girl Scout."
\par 
\par "Daughter's got herself a car-theft merit badge, " Roosevelt told
\par Mungojerrie.
\par 
\par We locked the back door on the way out, leaving blinds drawn and some
\par lights dialed low.
\par 
\par I didn't wear my Mystery Train cap. It no longer made me feel close to
\par my mother, and it certainly didn't seem like a good-luck charm anymore
\par The night was mild and windless, bearing a faint scent of salt air and
\par decomposing seaweed.
\par 
\par An overcast as dark as an iron skillet hid the moon. Here and there,
\par reflections of the town lights, like a rancid yellow grease, were
\par smeared across the clouds, but the night was deep and nearly ideal for
\par our purposes.
\par 
\par The silvered-cedar fence surrounding this property is as tall as I am,
\par with no gaps between the vertical pales, so it's as solid as a wall. A
\par gate opens onto the footpath.
\par 
\par We avoided the gate and went to the east side of the backyard, where my
\par property adjoins that of the Samardian family.
\par 
\par The fence is extremely sturdy, because the vertical pales are fixed to
\par three horizontal rails. These rails also would serve us well as a
\par ladder.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie sprang up the fence as if he were lighter than air.
\par 
\par Standing with his hind paws on the uppermost rail, forepaws on the top
\par of the pales, he surveyed the backyard next door.
\par 
\par When the cat glanced down at us, Roosevelt whispered, "Looks like no
\par one's home." One at a time, and with relative silence, we followed the
\par cat over the fence. From the Samardians' property, we crossed another
\par cedar fence, into the Landsbergs' backyard. Lights were on in their
\par house, but we passed unseen and stepped over a low picket fence into the
\par Perez family's yard, from there moving steadily eastward, past house
\par after house, with no problem except Bobo, the Wladskis' golden
\par retriever, who isn't a barker but makes every effort to beat you into
\par submission with his tail and then lick you to death.
\par 
\par We scaled a high redwood fence into the yard behind the Stanwyk place,
\par leaving the thankfully barkless Bobo slobbering, wagging his tail with
\par an air-cutting whoosh-whoosh, and dancing on his hind paws in
\par bladder-straining excitement.
\par 
\par I had always thought of Roger Stanwyk as a decent man who had lent his
\par talents to the Wyvern research for the noblest of reasons, in the name
\par of scientific progress and the advancement of medicine, much as my
\par mother had done. His only sin was the same one Mom committed, hubris.
\par 
\par Out of pride in his undeniable intelligence, out of misplaced trust in
\par the power of science to resolve all problems and explain all things, he
\par had unwittingly become one of the architects of doomsday.
\par 
\par That was what I'd always thought. Now I wasn't so sure of his good
\par intentions. As Leland Delacroix's tape had revealed, Stanwyk was
\par involved in both my mother's work and the Mystery Train. He was a darker
\par figure than he had seemed previously.
\par 
\par All of us two-legged specimens dodged from shrub to tree across the
\par Stanwyks' elaborately landscaped domain, hoping no one would be looking
\par out a window. We reached the next fence before we realized that
\par Mungojerrie wasn't with us.
\par 
\par Panicked, we doubled back, searching among the neatly trimmed shrubs and
\par hedges, whispering his name, which isn't easy to whisper with a straight
\par face, and we found him near the Stanwyks' porch. He was a ghostly gray
\par shape on the black lawn.
\par 
\par We squatted around our diminutive team leader, and Roosevelt switched
\par his brain to the Weird Channel to find out what the cat was thinking.
\par 
\par "He wants to go inside, " Roosevelt whispered.
\par 
\par "Why? " I asked.
\par 
\par Roosevelt murmured, "Something's wrong here."
\par 
\par "What? " Sasha asked.
\par 
\par "Death lives here, " Roosevelt interpreted.
\par 
\par "He keeps the yard nice, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "Doogie's waiting, " Sasha reminded the cat.
\par 
\par Roosevelt said, "Mungojerrie says people in the house need help."
\par 
\par "How can he tell? " I asked, immediately knew the answer, and found
\par myself repeating it with Sasha and Bobby in a whispered chorus, "Cats
\par know things." I was tempted to snatch up the cat, tuck him under my arm,
\par and run away from here with him as if he were a football. He had fangs
\par and claws, of course, and might object. More to the point, we needed to
\par have his willing cooperation in the search ahead of us. He might be
\par disinclined to cooperate if I treated him like a piece of sporting
\par goods, even if I had no intention of drop-kicking him to Wyvern.
\par 
\par Forced to take a closer look at the Victorian house, I realized the
\par place had a Twilight Zone quality. On the upper floor, windows revealed
\par rooms brightened only by the flickering light of television screens, an
\par unmistakable pulsing radiance. Downstairs, the two rooms at the back of
\par the house probably kitchen and dining room were lit by the orange, draft
\par shaken flames of candles or oil lamps.
\par 
\par Our Tonto-with-a-tail sprang to his feet and sprinted to the house.
\par 
\par went boldly up the steps and disappeared into the shadows of the back
\par porch.
\par 
\par Maybe Mr. Mungojerrie, phenomenal feline, has a well-honed sense of
\par civic responsibility. Maybe his moral compass is so exquisitely
\par magnetized that he cannot turn away from those in need. I suspected,
\par however, that his compelling motivation was the well-known curiosity of
\par his species, which so frequently leads to their demise.
\par 
\par The four of us remained squatting in a semicircle for a moment, until
\par Bobby said, "Am I wrong to think this sucks? " An informal poll showed a
\par hundred percent agreement with the it sucks point of view.
\par 
\par Reluctantly, stealthily, we followed Mungojerrie onto the back porch,
\par where he was scratching persistently at the door.
\par 
\par Through the four glass panes in the door, we had a clear view of a
\par kitchen so Victorian in its detail and bric-a-brac that I would not have
\par been surprised to see Charles Dickens, William Gladstone, and Jack the
\par Ripper having tea. The room was lit by an oil lamp on the oval table, as
\par though someone within were my brother in XP.
\par 
\par Sasha took the initiative and knocked.
\par 
\par No one answered.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie continued to scratch at the door.
\par 
\par "We get the point, " Bobby told him.
\par 
\par Sasha tried the knob, which turned.
\par 
\par Hoping to be thwarted by a dead bolt, we were dismayed to learn that the
\par door was unlocked. It swung open a few inches.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie squeezed through the narrow gap and vanished inside before
\par Sasha could have second thoughts.
\par 
\par "Death, much death, " Roosevelt murmured, evidently communicating with
\par the mouser.
\par 
\par I wouldn't have been surprised if Dr. Stanwyk had appeared at the door,
\par dressed in a bio-secure suit like Hodgson, face seething with hideous
\par parasites, a white-eyed crow perched on his shoulder. This man who had
\par once seemed wise and kind if eccentric now loomed ominously in my
\par imagination, like the uninvited party guest in Poe's "The Masque of the
\par Red Death." The Roger and Marie Stanwyk I had known for years were an
\par odd but nonetheless happy and compatible couple in their early fifties.
\par 
\par He sported muttonchops and a lush mustache, and was rarely seen in
\par anything but a suit and tie, you sensed that he longed to wear wing
\par collars and to carry a pocket watch on a fob, but felt these would be
\par eccentricities in excess of those expected of a renowned scientist,
\par nevertheless, he frequently allowed himself to wear quaint vests, and he
\par spent an inordinate amount of time working at his Sherlockian pipe with
\par tamp, pick, and spoon. Marie, a plump-cheeked matron with a rosy
\par complexion, was a collector of antique ornamental tea caddies and
\par nineteenth-century paintings of fairies, her wardrobe revealed a
\par grudging acceptance of the twenty-first century, although regardless of
\par what she wore, her longing for button-top shoes, bustles, and parasols
\par was evident. Roger and Marie seemed unsuited to California, doubly
\par unsuited to this century, yet they drove a red Jaguar, had been spotted
\par attending excruciatingly stupid big budget action movies, and functioned
\par fairly well as citizens of the new millennium.
\par 
\par Sasha called to the Stanwyks through the open kitchen door.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie had crossed the kitchen without hesitation and had
\par disappeared into deeper reaches of the house.
\par 
\par When Sasha got no answer to her third "Roger, Marie, hello, " she drew
\par the . 38 from her shoulder holster and stepped inside.
\par 
\par Bobby, Roosevelt, and I followed her. If Sasha had been wearing skirts,
\par we might have happily hidden behind them, but we were more comfortable
\par with the cover provided by the Smith & Wesson.
\par 
\par From the porch, the house had seemed silent, but as we crossed the
\par kitchen, we heard voices coming from the front room. They were not
\par directed at us.
\par 
\par We stopped and listened, not quite able to make out the words.
\par 
\par Quickly, however, when music rose, it became apparent that we were
\par hearing not live voices but those on television or radio.
\par 
\par Sasha's entrance to the dining room was instructive and more than a
\par little intriguing. Both hands on the gun. Arms out straight and locked.
\par 
\par The weapon just below her line of sight. She cleared the doorway fast,
\par slid to the left, her back against the wall. After she moved mostly out
\par of view, I could still see just enough of her arms to know she swung the
\par . 38 left, then right, then left again, covering the room.
\par 
\par Her performance was professional, instinctive, and no less smooth than
\par her on-air voice.
\par 
\par Maybe she's watched a lot of television cop dramas over the years.
\par 
\par Yeah.
\par 
\par "Clear, " she whispered.
\par 
\par Tall, ornate hutches seemed to loom over us, as if tipping away from the
\par walls, porcelain and silver treasures gleaming darkly behind leaded
\par glass doors with beveled panes. The crystal chandelier wasn't lit, but
\par reflections of nearby candle flames winked along its strings of beads
\par and off the cut edges of its dangling pendants.
\par 
\par In the center of the dining-room table, surrounded by eight or ten
\par candles, was a large punch bowl half full of what appeared to be fruit
\par juice. A few clean drinking glasses stood to one side, and scattered
\par across the table were several empty plastic pharmacy bottles of
\par prescription medication.
\par 
\par The lighting wasn't good enough to allow us to read the labels on the
\par bottles, as they lay, and none of us wanted to touch anything.
\par 
\par Death lives here, the cat had said, and maybe that was what had given us
\par the idea, from the moment we entered the house, that this was a crime
\par scene.
\par 
\par Upon seeing the tableau on the dining-room table, we looked at one
\par another, and it was clear that all of us suspected the nature of the
\par crime, though we didn't speak its name.
\par 
\par I could have used my flashlight, but I might have drawn unwanted
\par attention. Under the circumstances, any attention would be unwanted.
\par 
\par Besides, the name of the medication wasn't important.
\par 
\par Sasha led us into the large living room, where the illumination came
\par from a television screen nested in an ornate French cabinet with
\par japanned panels. Even in the poor light, I could see that the chamber
\par was as crowded as an automobile salvage yard, not with junked cars but
\par with Victorian excess, deeply carved and intricately painted neo-rococo
\par furniture, richly patterned brocade upholstery, wallpaper with
\par Gothic-style tracery, heavy velvet drapes with cascades of braided
\par fringe, capped with solid helmets cut in elaborate Gothic forms, an
\par Egyptian settee with beaded-wood spindles and damask seat cushions,
\par Moorish lamps featuring black cherubs in gilded turbans supporting
\par beaded shades, bibelots densely arranged on every shelf and table.
\par 
\par Amidst the layers on layers of decor, the cadavers almost seemed like
\par additional decorative items.
\par 
\par Even in the flickery light of the television, we could see a man
\par stretched out on the Egyptian settee. He was dressed in dark slacks and
\par a white shirt. Before lying down, he'd taken off his shoes and placed
\par them on the floor with the laces neatly tucked in, as though concerned
\par about soiling the upholstery on the seat cushions. Beside the shoes
\par stood a drinking glass identical to those in the dining roomwaterford
\par crystal, judging by appearance in which remained an inch of fruit juice.
\par 
\par His left arm trailed off the settee, the back of the hand against the
\par Persian carpet, palm turned up. His other arm lay across his chest.
\par 
\par His head was propped on two small brocade pillows, and his face was
\par concealed beneath a square of black silk.
\par 
\par Sasha was covering the room behind us, less interested in the corpse
\par than in guarding against a surprise assault.
\par 
\par The black veil over the face did not bellow or even flutter. The man
\par under it was not breathing.
\par 
\par I knew that he was dead, knew what killed him not a contagious disease,
\par but a phenobarbital fizz or its lethal equivalent yet I was reluctant to
\par remove the silk mask for the same reason that any child, having pondered
\par the possibility of a boogeyman, is hesitant to push back the sheets,
\par rise up on his mattress, lean out, and peek under the bed.
\par 
\par Hesitantly, I pinched a corner of the silk square between thumb and
\par forefinger, and pulled it off the man's face.
\par 
\par [ He was alive. That was my first impression. His eyes were open, and I
\par thought I saw life in them.
\par 
\par After a breathless moment, I realized that his stare was fixed.
\par 
\par His eyes appeared to be moving only because reflections of images on the
\par TV screen were twitching in them.
\par 
\par The light was just bright enough to allow me to identify the deceased.
\par 
\par His name was Tom Sparkman. He was an associate of Roger Stanwyk's, a
\par professor at Ashdon, also a biochemist, and no doubt deeply involved in
\par Wyvern business.
\par 
\par The body showed no signs of corruption. It couldn't have been here a
\par long time.
\par 
\par Reluctantly, I touched the back of my left hand to Sparkman's brow.
\par 
\par "Still warm, " I whispered.
\par 
\par We followed Roosevelt to a button-tufted sofa with carved-wood rails at
\par seat and crest, on which a second man lay, with hands folded across his
\par abdomen. This one was wearing his shoes, and his drained glass lay on
\par its side on the carpet, where he'd dropped it.
\par 
\par Roosevelt peeled back the square of black silk that concealed the man's
\par face. The light was not as good here, the corpse not as close to the
\par television as Sparkman, and I wasn't able to identify the body.
\par 
\par Two seconds after switching on my flashlight, I clicked it off.
\par 
\par Cadaver number two was Lennart To regard, a Swedish mathematician on a
\par four-year contract to teach one class a semester at Ashdon, which was
\par surely a front for his real work, at Wyvern. To regard's eyes were
\par closed.
\par 
\par His face was relaxed. A faint smile suggested he was having a pleasant
\par dream or was in the middle of one when death claimed him.
\par 
\par Bobby slipped two fingers under To regard's wrist, feeling for a pulse.
\par 
\par He shook his head, nothing.
\par 
\par Bat wing shadows swooped along one wall, across the ceiling.
\par 
\par Sasha spun toward the movement.
\par 
\par I reached under my jacket, but there was no shoulder holster, no gun.
\par 
\par The shadows were only shadows, sent flying through the room by a sudden
\par flurry of action on the television screen.
\par 
\par The third corpse was slumped in a huge armchair, legs propped on a
\par matching footstool, arms on the chair arms. Bobby stripped away the silk
\par hood, I flashed the light on and off, and Roosevelt whispered, "Colonel
\par Ellway." Colonel Eaton Ellway had been second in command of Fort Wyvern
\par and had retired to Moonlight Bay after the base was closed.
\par 
\par Retired. Or engaged in a clandestine assignment in civilian clothes.
\par 
\par With no additional dead men to investigate, I finally registered what
\par was on the television. It was tuned to a cable channel that was running
\par an animated feature film, Disney's The Lion King.
\par 
\par We stood for a moment, listening to the house.
\par 
\par Other music and other voices came from other rooms.
\par 
\par Neither the music nor the voices were made by the living.
\par 
\par Death lives here.
\par 
\par From the living room a chamber grossly misnamedwe cautiously crossed the
\par front hall to the study. Sasha and Roosevelt halted at the doorway.
\par 
\par A tambour door was open on an entertainment center incorporated into a
\par wall of bookshelves, and The Lion King was on the television, with the
\par volume low. Nathan Lane and company were singing "Hakuna Matata.
\par 
\par " Inside, Bobby and I found two more members of this suicide club with
\par squares of black silk over their heads. A man sat at the desk, and a
\par woman was slumped in a Morris chair, empty drinking glasses near each of
\par them.
\par 
\par I no longer had the heart to strip away their veils. The black silk
\par might have been cult paraphernalia with a symbolic meaning that was
\par comprehensible only to those who had come together in this ritual of
\par self-destruction. I thought, however, that at least in part, it might be
\par meant to express their guilt at being involved in work that had brought
\par humanity to these straits. If they felt remorse, then their deaths had a
\par degree of dignity, and disturbing them seemed disrespectful.
\par 
\par Before we had left the living room, I had once more covered the faces of
\par Sparkman, To regard, and Ellway.
\par 
\par Bobby seemed to understand the reason for my hesitancy, and he lifted
\par the veil on the man at the desk, while I used the flashlight with the
\par hope of making an identification. This was no one that either of us
\par knew, a handsome man with a small, well-trimmed gray mustache.
\par 
\par Bobby replaced the silk.
\par 
\par The woman reclining in the Morris chair was also a stranger, but when I
\par directed the light at her face, I didn't immediately switch it off.
\par 
\par With a soft whistle, Bobby sucked air between his teeth, and I muttered,
\par "God." I had to struggle to keep my hand from shaking, to keep the light
\par steady.
\par 
\par Sensing bad news, Sasha and Roosevelt came in from the hall, and though
\par neither of them spoke a word, their faces revealed all that needed to be
\par said about their shock and revulsion.
\par 
\par The dead woman's eyes were open. The left was a normal brown eye.
\par 
\par The right was green, and not remotely normal. There was almost no white
\par in it. The iris was huge and golden, the lens a gold-green. The black
\par pupil was not round but ellipticallike the pupil in the eye of a snake.
\par 
\par The socket encircling that terrifying eye was badly misshapen.
\par 
\par Indeed, there were subtle but fearsome deformities in the entire bone
\par structure along the right side of her once lovely face, brow, temple,
\par cheek, jaw.
\par 
\par Her mouth hung open in a silent cry. Her lips were peeled back in a
\par rictus, revealing her teeth, which for the most part appeared normal.
\par 
\par A few on the right side, however, were sharply pointed, and one eyetooth
\par seemed to have been in the process of reshaping itself into a fang.
\par 
\par I moved the beam of the flashlight down her body, to her hands, which
\par were in her lap. I expected to see more mutation, but both her hands
\par were normal. They were folded tightly together, and clasped in them was
\par a rosary, black beads, silver chain, an exquisite little silver
\par crucifix.
\par 
\par Such desperation was apparent in the posture of her pale hands, such
\par pathos, that I switched off the light, overcome by pity. To stare at
\par this grim evidence of her final distress seemed invasive, indecent.
\par 
\par Upon finding the first body in the living room, in spite of the black
\par silk veils, I'd known that these people had not committed suicide solely
\par out of guilt over their involvement in the research at Wyvern.
\par 
\par Perhaps some felt guilty, perhaps all of them did, but they participated
\par in this chemical hara-kiri primarily because they were becoming and
\par because they were deeply fearful of what they were becoming.
\par 
\par To date, as the rogue retrovirus has transferred other species' DNA into
\par human cells, the effects have been limited. They manifest, if at all,
\par only psychologically, except for telltale animal eye shine in the most
\par seriously afflicted.
\par 
\par Some of the big brains have been confident that physical change is
\par impossible. They believe that as the cells of the body wear out and are
\par routinely replaced, new cells will not contain the sequences of animal
\par DNA that contaminated the previous generation not even if stem cells,
\par which control growth throughout the human body, are infected.
\par 
\par This disfigured woman in the Morris chair proved that they were woefully
\par wrong. Hideous physical change clearly can accompany mental
\par deterioration.
\par 
\par Each infected individual receives a load of alien DNA different from the
\par one that anybody else receives, which means that the effect is singular
\par in every case. Some of the infected may not undergo any perceptible
\par change, mentally or physically, because they receive DNA fragments from
\par so many sources that there is no focused cumulative effect other than a
\par general destabilization of the system, resulting in rapidly
\par metastasizing cancers and deadly autoimmune disorders. Others may go
\par mad, psychologically devolve into a subhuman condition, driven by
\par murderous rages, unspeakable needs. Those who, in addition, suffer
\par physical metamorphosis will be radically different from one another, a
\par nightmare zoo My mouth seemed to be choked with dust. My throat felt
\par 
\par tight and parched. Even my cardiac muscle seemed to have withered, for
\par in my own ears, my heartbeat was juiceless, dry, and strange.
\par 
\par The singing and comic antics of the characters in The Lion King failed
\par to fill me with magic-kingdom joy.
\par 
\par I hoped Manuel knew what he was talking about when he predicted the
\par imminent availability of a vaccine, a cure.
\par 
\par Bobby gently draped the square of silk over the woman's face, concealing
\par her tortured features.
\par 
\par As Bobby's hands came close to her, I tensed and found myself
\par repositioning my grip on the extinguished flashlight, as if I might use
\par it as a weapon. I half expected to see the woman's eyes shift, to hear
\par her snarl, to see those pointed teeth flash and blood spurt, even as she
\par looped the rosary around his neck and pulled him down into a deadly
\par embrace.
\par 
\par I am not the only one with a hyperactive imagination. I saw a wariness
\par in Bobby's face. His hands twitched nervously as he replaced the silk.
\par 
\par And after we left the study, Sasha hesitated and then returned to the
\par open door to check the room once more. She no longer gripped the . 38 in
\par both hands but nonetheless held it at the ready, as though she wouldn't
\par have been surprised to discover that even a glassful of the Jonestown
\par punch, their version of a Heaven's Gate cocktail, was not poisonous
\par enough to put down the creature in the Morris chair.
\par 
\par Also on the ground floor were a sewing room and a laundry room, but both
\par were deserted.
\par 
\par In the hallway, Roosevelt whispered Mungojerrie's name, because we had
\par yet to see the cat since we'd entered the house.
\par 
\par A soft answering meow followed by two more, audible above the competing
\par sound tracks of the Disney movie, drew us forward along the hall.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie was sitting on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs.
\par 
\par In the gloom, his radiant green eyes fixed on Roosevelt, then shifted to
\par Sasha when she quietly but urgently suggested that we get the hell out
\par of here.
\par 
\par Without the cat, we had little chance of conducting a successful search
\par of Wyvern. We were hostage to his curiosity to whatever it was that
\par motivated him to turn his back to us on the newel post, sprint agilely
\par up the handrail, spring to the stairs, and disappear into the darkness
\par of the upper floor.
\par 
\par "What's he doing? " I asked Roosevelt.
\par 
\par "Wish I knew. It takes two to communicate, " he murmured.
\par 
\par As before, Sasha took the point position as we ascended the stairs.
\par 
\par I brought up the rear. The carpeted treads creaked a little underfoot,
\par more than a little under Roosevelt's feet, but the movie sound track
\par drifting up from the living room and studyand similar sounds coming from
\par upstairs effectively masked the noises we made.
\par 
\par At the top of the stairs, I turned and looked down. There weren't any
\par dead people standing in the foyer, with their heads concealed under
\par black silk. Not even one. I had expected five.
\par 
\par Six doors led off the upstairs hall. Five were open, and pulsing light
\par came from three rooms. Competing sound tracks indicated that The Lion
\par King was not the universal choice of entertainment for these condemned.
\par 
\par Unwilling to pass an unexplored room and possibly leave an assailant
\par behind us, Sasha went to the first door, which was closed. I stood with
\par my back to the wall at the hinged edge of the door, and she put her back
\par to the wall on the other side. I reached across, gripped the knob, and
\par turned it. When I pushed the door open, Sasha went through fast and low,
\par the gun in her right hand, feeling for the light switch with her left.
\par 
\par A bathroom. Nobody there.
\par 
\par She backed into the hall, switching off the light but leaving the door
\par open.
\par 
\par Beside the bathroom was a linen closet.
\par 
\par Four rooms remained. Doors open. Light and voices and music coming from
\par three of them.
\par 
\par I emphatically am not a gun lover, having fired one for the first time
\par only a month previously. I still worry about shooting myself in the
\par foot, and would rather shoot myself in the foot than be forced ever
\par again to kill another human being. But now I was seized by a desire for
\par a gun that was probably only slightly down the scale of desperation from
\par the urgency with which a half-starved man craves food, because I
\par couldn't bear to see Sasha taking all the risks.
\par 
\par At the next room, she cleared the doorway quickly. When there was not an
\par immediate outburst of gunfire, Bobby and I followed her inside, while
\par Roosevelt watched the hall from the threshold.
\par 
\par A bedside lamp glowed softly. On the television was a Nature Channel
\par documentary that might have been soothing, even elegiac, when it had
\par been turned on to provide a distraction for the doomed as they drank
\par their spiked fruit punch, but at the moment a fox was chewing the guts
\par out of a quail.
\par 
\par This was the master bedroom, with an attached bath, and though it was a
\par large chamber, with brighter colors than those downstairs, I felt
\par suffocated by the determined, slathered-on, high-Victorian cheerfulness.
\par 
\par The walls, the drapes, the spread, and the canopy on the four-poster bed
\par were all of the same fabric, a cream background heavily patterned with
\par roses and ribbons, explosions of pink, green, and yellow. The carpet
\par featured yellow chrysanthemums, pink roses, and blue ribbons, lots of
\par blue ribbons, so many blue ribbons that I couldn't help but think of
\par veins and unraveling intestines. The painted and parcel-gilt furniture
\par was no less oppressive than the darker pieces downstairs, and the room
\par contained so many crystal paperweights, porcelains, small bronzes,
\par silver-framed photographs, and other bibelots that, if considered
\par ammunition, they could have been used to stone to death an entire mob of
\par malcontents.
\par 
\par On the bed, atop the gay spread and fully dressed, lay a man and a woman
\par with the de rigueur black silk face coverings, which now began to seem
\par neither cultish nor symbolic but quite Victorian and proper, draped
\par across the awful faces of the dead to spare the sensitivities of those
\par who might discover them. I was sure that these twoon their backs, side
\par by side, holding hands were Roger and Marie Stanwyk, and when Bobby and
\par Sasha pulled aside the veils, I was proved correct.
\par 
\par For some reason, I surveyed the ceiling, half expecting to see five-inch
\par long, fat cocoons spun in the corners. None hung over us, of course. I
\par was getting my waking nightmares confused.
\par 
\par Struggling to resist a potentially crippling claustrophobia, I left the
\par room ahead of Bobby and Sasha, joining Roosevelt in the hallway, where I
\par was pleased though surprised to find there were Sun no walking dead
\par people with black silk hoods covering their cold white faces.
\par 
\par The next bedroom was no less gonzo Victorian than the rest of the house,
\par but the two bodies in the carved mahogany half-tester bed with white
\par muslin and lace hangings were in a more modern pose than Roger and Marie,
\par lying on their sides, face-to-face, embracing during their last moments
\par on this earth. We studied their alabaster profiles, but none of us
\par recognized them, and Bobby and I replaced the silks.
\par 
\par There was a television set in this room, too. The Stanwyks, for all
\par their love of distant and more genteel times, were typical TV-crazed
\par Americans, for which they were certainly dumber than they otherwise
\par would have been, as it is well known and probably proven that for every
\par television set in a house, each member of the family suffers a loss of
\par five IQ points. The embracing couple on the bed had chosen to expire to
\par a thousandth rerun of an ancient Star Trek episode. At the moment,
\par Captain Kirk was solemnly expounding upon his belief that compassion and
\par tolerance were as important to the evolution and survival of an
\par intelligent species as were eyesight and opposable thumbs, so I had to
\par resist the urge to switch the damn TV to the Nature Channel, where the
\par fox was eating the guts of a quail.
\par 
\par I didn't want to judge these poor people, because I couldn't know the
\par angst and physical suffering that had brought them to this end point,
\par but if I were becoming and so distraught as to believe that suicide was
\par the only answer, I would want to expire not while watching the products
\par of Empire Disney, not to an earnest documentary about the beauty of
\par nature's bloodlust, not to the adventures of the starship Enterprise,
\par but to the eternal music of Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, perhaps
\par Brahms, Mozart, or the rock of Chris Isaak would do, and do handsomely.
\par 
\par As you may perceive from my baroque ranting, by the time I returned to
\par the upstairs hall, with the body count currently at nine, my
\par claustrophobia was getting rapidly worse, my imagination was in full-on
\par hyperdrive, my longing for a handgun had intensified until it was almost
\par a sexual need, and my testicles had retracted into my groin.
\par 
\par I knew that we weren't all going to get out of this house alive.
\par 
\par Christopher Snow knows things.
\par 
\par I knew.
\par 
\par I knew.
\par 
\par The next room was dark, and a quick check revealed that it was used to
\par store excess Victorian furniture and art objects. In two or three
\par seconds of light, I saw paintings, chairs and more chairs, a
\par column-front cellarette, terra-cotta figures, urns, a Chippendale-style
\par satinwood desk, a break front as if the Stanwyks' ultimate intention had
\par been to wedge every room of the house so full that no human being could
\par fit inside, until the density and weight of the furnishings distorted
\par the very fabric of space-time, causing the house to implode out of our
\par century and into the more comforting age of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and
\par Lord Chesterfield.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie, to all appearances unaffected by this surfeit of death and
\par decor, was standing in the hallway, in the inconstant light that pulsed
\par through the open door of the final room, peering intently past that last
\par threshold. Then suddenly he became way too intent, His back was arched
\par and his hackles were raised, as if he were a witch's familiar that had
\par just seen the devil himself rising from a bubbling cauldron.
\par 
\par Though gunless, I was not going to let Sasha go through another doorway
\par first, because I believed that whoever entered this next room in the
\par point position would be blown away or chopped like a celery stalk in a
\par Cuisinart. Unless the last four bodies had been mutated in ways
\par concealed by clothing, we had not encountered another refugee from The
\par Island of Dr. Moreau since the woman slumped in the Morris chair
\par downstairs, and we seemed overdue for another close encounter of the
\par bowel loosening kind. I was tempted to pick up Mungojerrie and pitch him
\par into the room ahead of me, to draw fire, but I reminded myself that if
\par any of us survived, we would need the mouser to lead us through Wyvern,
\par and even if he landed on his feet unscathed , in the great tradition of
\par felines since time immemorial, he was likely thereafter to be
\par uncooperative.
\par 
\par I moved past the cat and crossed the threshold with absolutely no
\par cunning, adlibbing and adrenaline-driven, hurtling headlong into a
\par deluge of Victoriana. Sasha was close behind me, whispering my name with
\par severe disapproval, as though it really ticked her off to lose her last
\par best opportunity to be killed in this sentimental wonderland of filigree
\par and potpourri.
\par 
\par Amidst a visual cacophony of chintz, in a blizzard of bric-a-brac, a
\par television screen presented the cuddly cartoon creatures of the veld
\par capering through The Lion King The marketing mavens at Disney ought to
\par turn this into a bonanza, produce a special edition of the film for the
\par terminally distraught, for rejected lovers and moody teenagers, for
\par stockbrokers to keep on the shelf against the advent of another Black
\par Monday, package the videotape or DVD with a square of black silk, a pad
\par and pencil for the suicide note, and a lyrics sheet to allow the
\par self-condemned to sing along with the major musical numbers until the
\par toxins kick in.
\par 
\par Two bodies, numbers ten and lucky eleven, lay on the quilted chintz
\par spread, but they were less interesting than the robed figure of Death,
\par who stood beside the bed. The Reaper, traveling without his customary
\par scythe, was bending over the deceased, carefully arranging squares of
\par black silk to conceal their faces, plucking at specks of lint, smoothing
\par wrinkles in the fabric, surprisingly fussy for Hell's grim tyrant, as
\par Alexander Pope had called him, although those who rise to the top of
\par their professions know that attention to detail is essential.
\par 
\par He was also shorter than I had imagined Death would be, about five feet
\par eight. He was remarkably heavier than his popular image, too, although
\par his apparent weight problem might be illusory, the fault of the
\par second-rate haberdasher who had put him in a loosely fitted robe that
\par did nothing to flatter his figure.
\par 
\par When he realized that there were intruders behind him, he slowly turned
\par to confront us, and he proved not to be Death, the lord of all worms,
\par after all. He was merely Father Tom Eliot, the rector of St.
\par Bernadette's Catholic Church, which explained why he wasn't wearing a
\par hood, the robe was actually a cassock.
\par 
\par Since my brain is pickled in poetry, I thought of how Robert Browning
\par had described Death the pale priest of the mute people' which seemed to
\par fit this lowercase reaper. Even here in the animated African light,
\par Father Tom's face appeared to be as pale and round as the Eucharistic
\par wafer placed upon the tongue during communion.
\par 
\par "I couldn't convince them to leave their mortal fate in God's hands, "
\par Father Tom said, his voice quavering, his eyes brimming with tears. He
\par didn't bother to remark upon our sudden appearance, as if he had known
\par that someone would catch him at this forbidden work. "It's a terrible
\par sin, an affront to God, this turning away from life. Rather than suffer
\par in this world any longer, they've chosen damnation, yes, I'm afraid
\par that's what they've done, and all I could do was comfort them.
\par 
\par My counsel was rejected, though I tried. I tried. Comfort. That was all
\par I could give. Comfort. Do you understand? "
\par 
\par "Yes, we do, we understand, " Sasha said with both compassion and
\par wariness.
\par 
\par In ordinary times, before we had entered The End of Days, Father Tom had
\par been an ebullient guy, devout without being stuffy, sincere about his
\par concern for others. With his expressive and rubbery face, with his merry
\par eyes and quick smile, he was a natural comedian, yet in times of tragedy
\par he served as a reliable source of strength for others. I wasn't a member
\par of his church, but I knew his parishioners had long adored him.
\par 
\par Lately, things hadn't gone well for Father Tom, and he himself hadn't
\par been well. His sister, Laura, had been my mother's colleague and friend.
\par 
\par Tom is devoted to her and has not seen her for more than a year.
\par 
\par There is reason to believe that Laura is far along in her becoming,
\par profoundly changed, and is being held in The Hole, at Wyvern, where she
\par is an object of intense study.
\par 
\par "Four of those here are Catholic, " he said. "Members of my flock.
\par 
\par Their souls were in my hands. My hands. The others are Lutheran,
\par Methodist . One is Jewish. Two were atheists until ... recently.
\par 
\par All their souls mine to save. Mine to lose." He was talking rapidly,
\par nervously, as if he were aware of a bomb clock relentlessly ticking
\par toward detonation, eager to confess before being obliterated. "Two of
\par them, a misguided young couple, had absorbed incoherent fragments of the
\par spiritual beliefs of half a dozen American Indian tribes, twisting
\par everything in ways the Indians would never have understood. These two,
\par they believed in such a mess of things, such a jumble, they worshipped
\par the buffalo, river spirits, earth spirits, the corn plant. Do I belong
\par in an age where people worship buffalo and corn? I'm lost here. Do you
\par understand? Do you? "
\par 
\par "Yes, " Bobby said, having followed us into the room. "Don't worry,
\par Father Eliot, we understand." The priest was wearing a loose cloth
\par gardening glove on his left hand.
\par 
\par As he continued to speak, he worried ceaselessly at the glove with his
\par right hand, plucking at the cuff, tugging at the fingers, as if the fit
\par was not comfortable. "I didn't give them extreme unction, last rites,
\par didn't give them the last rites, " he said, voice rising toward a
\par hysterical pitch and pace, "because they were suicides, but maybe I
\par should have given unction, maybe I should have, compassion over
\par doctrine, because all I did for them ... the only thing I did for these
\par poor tortured people was give comfort, the comfort of words, nothing but
\par empty words, so I don't know whether their souls were lost because of me
\par or in spite of me." A month ago, the night my father died, I experienced
\par a strange and unsettling encounter with Father Tom Eliot, of which I've
\par written in a previous volume of this journal.
\par 
\par He'd been even less in control of his emotions on that cruel night than
\par he was here in the Stanwyk mausoleum, and I had suspected he was
\par becoming, though by the end of our encounter, he had seemed to be racked
\par not by anything uncanny but rather by a heart-crushing anguish for his
\par missing sister and by his own spiritual despair.
\par 
\par Now, as then, I searched for unnatural yellow radiance in his eyes, but
\par saw none.
\par 
\par The cartoon colors from the television patterned his face, so I seemed
\par to be looking at him through a constantly changing stained-glass window
\par depicting distorted animal shapes rather than saints. This inadequate
\par and peculiar light flickered in his eyes, as well, but it couldn't have
\par concealed more than the faintest and the most transient glimmer of
\par animal eye shine.
\par 
\par Still worrying at the glove, his voice as tight with stress as power
\par lines taut and singing in a storm wind, sweat shining on his face,
\par Father Tom said, "They had a way out, even if it was the wrong way, even
\par if it was the worst sin, but I can't take their way, I'm too scared,
\par because there's the soul to think about, there's always the immortal
\par soul, and I believe in the soul more than in release from suffering, so
\par there's no way out for me now. I have damning thoughts.
\par 
\par Terrible thoughts. Dreams.
\par 
\par Dreams full of blood. In the dreams, I feed on beating hearts, chew at
\par the throats of women, and rape ... rape small children, and then I wake
\par up sickened but also, but also, also I wake up thrilled, and there's no
\par way out for me." Suddenly he stripped the glove off his left hand. The
\par thing that slid out of the glove, however, wasn't a human hand. It was a
\par hand in the process of becoming something else, still exhibiting
\par evidence of humanity in the tone and the texture of the skin, and in the
\par placement of the digits, but the fingers were more like finger-size
\par talons, yet not talons precisely, because each appeared to be splitor at
\par least to have begun to split into appendages resembling the serrated
\par pincers of baby lobster claws.
\par 
\par "I can only trust in Jesus, " the priest said.
\par 
\par His face streamed with tears no doubt as bitter as the vinegar in the
\par sponge that had been offered to his suffering savior.
\par 
\par "I believe. I believe in the mercy of Christ. Yes, I believe.
\par 
\par I believe in the mercy of Christ." Yellow light flared in his eyes.
\par 
\par Flared.
\par 
\par Father Tom came at me first, perhaps because I was between him and the
\par doorway, perhaps because my mother was Wisteria Jane Snow. After all,
\par though she gave us such miracles as Orson and Mungojerrie, her life's
\par work also made possible the twitching thing at the end of the priest's
\par left arm. Though the human side of him surely did believe in the
\par immortal soul and the sweet mercy of Christ, it was understandable if
\par some other, darker part of him placed its faith in bloody vengeance.
\par 
\par No matter what else he was, Father Tom was still a priest, and my folks
\par had not raised me to take punches at priests, or at people insane with
\par despair, for that matter. Respect and pity and twenty-eight years of
\par parental instruction overcame my survival instinct which made me a
\par disappointment to Darwinand instead of aggressively countering Father
\par Tom's assault, I crossed my arms over my face and tried to turn away
\par from him.
\par 
\par He was not an experienced fighter. Like a grade-school boy in a
\par playground brawl, he threw himself wildly against me, using his entire
\par body as a weapon, ramming into me with a lot more force than you would
\par expect from an ordinary priest, even more than you'd expect from a
\par Jesuit.
\par 
\par Driven backward, I slammed hard into a tall armoire. One of the door
\par handles gouged into my back, just below my left shoulder blade.
\par 
\par Father Tom was hammering at me with his right fist, but I was more
\par worried about that weird left appendage. I didn't know how sharp the
\par serrated edges on those little pincers might be, but more to the point,
\par I didn't want to be touched by that thing, which looked unclean.
\par 
\par No. unclean in a sanitary sense. Unclean in the sense that the cloven
\par hoof or the hairless pink corkscrew tail of a demon might look unclean.
\par 
\par E As he pounded on me, Father Tom urgently repeated his statement of F
\par religious commitment, "I believe in the mercy of Christ, the mercy of
\par Christ, the mercy, I believe in the mercy of Christ! " His spittle
\par sprayed my face, and his breath was disconcertingly sweet with the
\par fragrance of peppermint.
\par 
\par This ceaseless chanting wasn't meant to persuade me or anyone else not
\par even God of the priest's unshaken faith. Rather, he was trying to
\par convince himself of his belief, to remind himself that he had hope, and
\par to use that hope to seize control of himself once more. In spite of the
\par malevolent sulfurous light in his eyes, in spite of the urge to kill
\par that pumped uncanny strength into his undisciplined body, I could see
\par the earnest and venerable man of God who struggled to suppress the
\par raging savage within and to find his way back toward grace.
\par 
\par Shouting, cursing, Bobby and Roosevelt clutched at the priest, trying to
\par tear him off me. Even as he clung fast to me, Father Tom kicked at them,
\par drove his elbows backward into their stomachs and ribs.
\par 
\par He hadn't been a skilled fighter when he launched himself at me, seconds
\par ago, but he seemed to be learning fast. Or perhaps he was losing the
\par struggle to subdue his new becoming self, the savage within, which knew
\par all about fighting and killing.
\par 
\par I felt something pulling at my sweater and was sure that it was the
\par hateful claw. The pincer serrations were snagged in the cotton fabric.
\par 
\par With revulsion thick in my throat, I grabbed the priest's wrist to
\par restrain him. The flesh under my hand was strangely hot, greasy, and as
\par vile to the touch as might be a corpse in an advanced state of decay.
\par 
\par In places, the meat of him was disgustingly soft, although in other
\par places, his skin had hardened into what might have been patches of a
\par smooth carapace.
\par 
\par Until now, our bizarre struggle had been desperate yet at least darkly
\par amusing to me, something that you couldn't laugh at now but at which you
\par knew you would laugh later, over a beer, on the beach, this round house
\par fight with a chubby clergyman in a chintz-choked bedroom, a Looney Tunes
\par collaboration between Chuck Jones and H. P. Love craft.
\par 
\par But suddenly a positive outcome didn't seem as assured as it had a
\par moment ago, and it wasn't amusing anymore, not slightly, not even
\par darkly.
\par 
\par His wrist joint was no longer like the wrist joint you study on a
\par skeleton chart in a general-biology class, more like something you might
\par see during advanced delirium tremens while drying out from a ten-bottle
\par bourbon hinge. The entire hand turned backward on the wrist, as no human
\par hand could do, as if it operated on a ball joint, and the pincers
\par snapped at my fingers, forcing me to let go before he had a chance to
\par cut me.
\par 
\par Although I felt as though I had been struggling with the priest long
\par enough to justify having his name tattooed on my biceps, he had been in
\par this pummeling frenzy for no more than half a minute before Roosevelt
\par tore him off me. Our usually gentle animal communicator communicated to
\par the animal inside Father Tom by lifting him off the floor and throwing
\par him as if he were no heavier than the real Death, who is, after all,
\par nothing but bones in a robe.
\par 
\par Cassock skirt flaring, Father Tom crashed into the foot board of the bed,
\par causing the pair of suicides to bounce as though with postmortem
\par delight, springs singing under them. He toppled facedown to the floor,
\par but instantly sprang to his feet with inhuman agility.
\par 
\par No longer chanting about his faith, now grunting like a boar, spitting,
\par making strange strangled sounds of rage, he seized a walnut chair that
\par featured tie-on cushions in a daffodil print and slip-on daffodil arm
\par protectors, and for an instant it seemed that he would use it to smash
\par everything around him, but then he pitched it at Roosevelt.
\par 
\par Roosevelt spun away just in time to take the chair across his broad back
\par rather than in the face.
\par 
\par From the television came the mellifluous and emotional voice of Elton
\par John, with full orchestral and choral accompaniment, singing "Can You
\par Feel the Love Tonight? " Even as the chair was cracking against
\par Roosevelt's back, Father Tom threw a vanity bench at Sasha.
\par 
\par She didn't dodge quickly enough. The bench clipped her shoulder and
\par knocked her over an ottoman.
\par 
\par As the furniture struck Sasha, the possessed priest was already firing
\par items off the vanity at me, at Bobby, at Roosevelt, and though bestial
\par sounds continued to issue from him, he also snarled a few broken but
\par familiar words, with a vicious glee, to punctuate his attack, a silver
\par hairbrush, an oval hand mirror with mother-of-pearl frame and handle in
\par the name of the Father a heavy silver clothes brush and the Son'a few
\par decorative enamel boxes and the Hoh, Spirit! "a porcelain bud vase that
\par hit Roosevelt so hard in the face he dropped as if he'd been smacked
\par with a ball-peen hammer, a silver comb. A perfume bottle sailed past my
\par head and shattered against a distant hulk of furniture, flooding the
\par bedroom with the fragrance of attar of roses.
\par 
\par During this barrage, ducking and dodging, protecting our faces with
\par raised arms, Bobby and I tried to move toward Tom Eliot. I'm not sure
\par why. Maybe we thought that together we could pin him down and hold the
\par pitiable wretch until this seizure passed, until he regained his senses.
\par 
\par If he had any senses left. Which seemed less likely by the second.
\par 
\par When the priest fired the last of the clutter from the arsenal atop the
\par vanity, Bobby rushed him, and I went after him, too, just a fraction of
\par a second later.
\par 
\par Instead of retreating, Father Tom launched himself forward, and when
\par they collided, the priest lifted Bobby off the floor. He wasn't Father
\par Tom at all anymore. He was something unnaturally powerful, with the
\par strength and ferocity of a mad bull. He lunged across the bedroom,
\par knocking over a chair, and slammed-jammed-crushed Bobby into a corner so
\par hard that Bobby's shoulders should have snapped. Bobby cried out in
\par pain, and the priest leaned into him, punching, clawing at his ribs,
\par digging at him.
\par 
\par Then I was in the melee, too, on Father Tom's back, slipping my right
\par arm around his neck, gripping my right wrist with my left hand.
\par 
\par Got him in a choke-hold. Jerked back on his head. Just about crushed his
\par windpipe, trying to pull him away from Bobby.
\par 
\par He retreated from Bobby, all right, but instead of dropping to his knees
\par and capitulating, he seemed not to need the air that I was choking out
\par of him, or the blood supply to the brain that I pinched off.
\par 
\par He bucked, trying to throw me over his head and off his back, bucked
\par again and more furiously.
\par 
\par I was aware of Sasha shouting, but I didn't listen to what she was
\par saying until the priest bucked a fourth time and nearly did pitch me
\par off. My choke-hold slipped, and he snarled as if sensing triumph, and I
\par finally heard Sasha saying, "Get out of the way! Chris! Chris, get out
\par of the way! " Doing what she demanded took some trust, but then it's
\par always about trust, every time, whether it's deadly combat or a kiss, so
\par I released my faltering choke-hold, and the priest threw me off even
\par before I could scramble away.
\par 
\par Father Tom rose to his full height, and he appeared to be taller than
\par before. I think that must have been an illusion. His demonic fury had
\par attained such intensity, such blazing power, that I expected electric
\par arcs to leap from him to any nearby metal object. Rage made him appear
\par to be larger than he was. His radiant yellow gaze seemed brighter than
\par mere eye shine, as if inside his skull was not merely a new creature
\par becoming but the elemental nuclear fire of an entire new universe
\par aborning.
\par 
\par 
\par 
\par I retreated, gasping for breath, stupidly groping for the gun that
\par Manuel had taken from me.
\par 
\par Sasha was holding a bed pillow, which she evidently had jerked out from
\par under the head of one of the suicides. This seemed as crazy as
\par everything else that was happening, as if she intended to smother Father
\par Tom or to batter him into submission with a sack of goose down.
\par 
\par But then, as she ordered him to back off and sit down, I understood that
\par the pillow was folded around her .38 Chiefs Special, to muffle the
\par report of the revolver if she was forced to use it, because this bedroom
\par was at the front of the house, where the sound might carry to the
\par street.
\par 
\par You could tell that the priest wasn't listening to Sasha. Maybe by this
\par time he wasn't capable of listening to anything except to what was
\par happening inside him, to the internal hurricane-roar of his becoming.
\par 
\par His mouth opened wide, and his lips skinned back from his teeth.
\par 
\par An unearthly shriek came from him, then another, more chilling than the
\par first, followed by squeals and cries and wretched groans, which
\par alternately seemed to express pain and pleasure, despair and joy, blind
\par rage and poignant remorse, as if there were multitudes within this one
\par tortured body.
\par 
\par Instead of ordering Father Tom to desist, Sasha was now pleading with
\par him. Maybe because she didn't want to be forced to use the gun.
\par 
\par Maybe because she was afraid his crazed shouting would be heard in the
\par street and draw unwanted attention. Her pleas were tremulous, and tears
\par stood in her eyes, but I could tell that she would be able to do
\par whatever needed to be done.
\par 
\par The shrieking priest raised his arms as if he were calling down the
\par wrath of Heaven upon all of us. He began to shake violently, like one
\par afflicted with Saint Vitus' dance.
\par 
\par Bobby was standing in the corner where Father Tom had left him, both
\par hands pressed to his left flank, as though stanching the flow of blood
\par from a wound.
\par 
\par Roosevelt blocked the hall door, holding one hand to his face, where
\par he'd been hit by the bud vase.
\par 
\par I could tell from their expressions I wasn't alone in believing that the
\par priest was building toward an explosion of violence far more fearsome
\par than anything we had witnessed yet. I didn't expect Father Tom to
\par metamorphose before our eyes, from minister to monster in one minute,
\par like a shape-changing alien in a science-fiction movie, half basilisk
\par and half spider, slashing-snapping-stinging-ripping its way through the
\par four of us, then swallowing Mungojerrie as if the hapless cat were an
\par after-dinner mint. Surely flesh and bone couldn't be transformed as
\par quickly as popcorn kernels in a microwave oven. On the other hand, such
\par a fantastic change, pastor to predator, would not have surprised me,
\par either.
\par 
\par The priest did surprise me, however, surprised all of us, when he turned
\par his rage against himself, though in retrospect, I realized I should have
\par remembered the birds, the ve ve rats, and Manuel's words about
\par psychological implosion. The cleric let out a wail that seemed to
\par oscillate between rage and grief, and though it wasn't as loud as the
\par preceding cries, it was even more terrifying because it was so devoid of
\par hope. To this marrow-freezing lament, he repeatedly bashed himself in
\par the face with his right fist, and also with the semblance of a fist that
\par he was able to make with his deformed hand, striking such solid blows
\par that his nose crunched and his lips split against his teeth.
\par 
\par Sasha was still pleading with him, though she must have realized that
\par Father Tom Eliot was beyond her reach, beyond the help of anyone in this
\par world.
\par 
\par As if trying to scourge the devil from himself, he began to claw his
\par cheeks, digging his fingernails deep, and with those pincers, he went at
\par his right eye as though to pluck it out of himself.
\par 
\par Feathers suddenly whirled through the air, spinning around the priest,
\par and I was briefly confused, astonished, until I realized that Sasha had
\par fired the . 38. The pillow couldn't have entirely muffled the shot, but
\par I'd heard nothing other than Father Tom's wail drilling my skull.
\par 
\par The priest jerked from the impact of the slug, but he didn't drop. He
\par didn't bite off that skirling lament or stop tearing at himself.
\par 
\par I heard the second shotwhumpand the third.
\par 
\par Tom Eliot crumpled to the floor, lay twitching, briefly kicked his legs
\par as if he were a dog chasing rabbits in his sleep, and then was
\par motionless, dead.
\par 
\par Sasha had relieved him from his agony but had also saved him from the
\par self-destruction that he believed would condemn his immortal soul to
\par eternal damnation.
\par 
\par So much had happened since the priest had thrown the chair at Roosevelt
\par and the vanity bench at Sasha that I was surprised to hear Elton John
\par still singing "Can You Feel the Love Tonight? " Before dropping the
\par pillow, Sasha turned toward the television and fired one more round,
\par blowing out the screen.
\par 
\par As satisfying as it was to put an end to the inappropriately uplifting
\par music and images of The Lion King, we were all alarmed by the total
\par darkness that claimed the room following a shower of sparks from the
\par terminated TV. We assumed that the becoming priest must be dead, because
\par any of us would be worm food, for sure, with three . 38 slugs in the
\par chest, but as Bobby had noted the previous night, there were no rules
\par here on the eve of the Apocalypse.
\par 
\par When I reached for my flashlight, it was no longer snugged under my
\par belt. I must have dropped it during the struggle.
\par 
\par In my imagination, the dead priest had already self-resurrected and had
\par become something that an entire division of marines couldn't kill.
\par 
\par Bobby switched on one of the nightstand lamps.
\par 
\par The dead man was still nothing more than a man, and still dead, a ruined
\par heap that didn't bear close inspection.
\par 
\par Holstering the . 38, Sasha turned away from the body and stood with her
\par shoulders slumped, head hung, one hand covering her face, collecting
\par herself.
\par 
\par The lamp featured a three-way switch, and Bobby clicked it to the lowest
\par level of light. The shade was rose-colored silk, which left the room
\par still mostly in shadow but bright enough to prevent us from succumbing
\par to an attack of the brain twitches.
\par 
\par I spotted my flashlight on the floor, snatched it up, and jammed it
\par under my belt again.
\par 
\par Trying to quiet my breathing, I went to the nearer of two windows. The
\par drapes were a heavy tapestry, as thick as an elephant's hide, with a
\par blackout liner. This would have suppressed the sound of gunfire almost
\par as effectively as the plush pillow through which Sasha had fired the
\par revolver.
\par 
\par I pulled aside one drape and peered out at the lamp lit street. No one
\par was pointing or running toward the Stanwyk residence. No traffic had
\par stopped in front of the house. In fact, the street appeared to be
\par deserted.
\par 
\par As far as I can recall, none of us said anything until we were all the
\par way downstairs and in the kitchen again, where the solemn cat was
\par waiting for us in the light of the oil lamp. Perhaps we simply didn't
\par say anything memorable, but I think that we did, indeed, make our way
\par through the house in numbed silence.
\par 
\par Bobby stripped off his Hawaiian shirt and black cotton pullover, which
\par were damp with blood. Along his left side were four slashes, wounds
\par inflicted by the cleric's teratoid hand.

\par 
\par That was a useful word from my mom's world of genetic science. It meant
\par something monstrous, described an organism or a portion of an organism
\par deformed because of damaged genetic material. As a kid, I was always
\par interested in my mother's research and theories, because she was, as she
\par liked to put it, searching for God in the clockworks, which I thought
\par must be the most important work anyone could do. But God prefers to see
\par what we can make of ourselves on our own, and He doesn't make it easy
\par for us to find Him on this side of death. Along the way, when we think
\par we've located the door behind which He waits, it opens not on anything
\par divine but on something teratoid.
\par 
\par In the half bath adjoining the kitchen, Sasha found first-aid supplies
\par and a bottle of aspirin.
\par 
\par | Bobby stood at the kitchen sink, using a fresh dishcloth and liquid
\par soap to clean his wounds, hissing between clenched teeth.
\par 
\par "Hurt? " I asked.
\par 
\par "No."
\par 
\par "Bullshit."
\par 
\par "You? "
\par 
\par "Bruises." The four cuts in his side weren't deep, but they bled freely.
\par 
\par Roosevelt settled into a chair at the table. He'd gotten some ice cubes
\par from the freezer and wrapped them in a dish towel. He held this compress
\par to his left eye, which was swelling shut. Fortunately, the bud vase
\par hadn't shattered when it hit him, because otherwise he might have had
\par splinters of porcelain in his eye.
\par 
\par "Bad? " I asked.
\par 
\par "Had worse."
\par 
\par "Football? "
\par 
\par "Alex Karras."
\par 
\par "Great player."
\par 
\par "Big."
\par 
\par "He run you down? "
\par 
\par "More than once."
\par 
\par "Like a truck, " I suggested.
\par 
\par "A Mack. This was just a damn vase." Sasha saturated a cloth with
\par hydrogen peroxide and pressed it repeatedly to Bobby's wounds. Every
\par time she took the cloth away, the shallow cuts bubbled furiously with
\par bloody foam.
\par 
\par I couldn't have ached in more places if I'd spent the past six hours
\par tumbling around in an industrial clothes dryer.
\par 
\par I washed down two aspirin with a few sips of an Orange Crush that I
\par found in the Stanwyks' refrigerator. The can shook so badly that I
\par drizzled more soda over my chin and clothes than I managed to drink
\par suggesting that my folks had been misguided when they allowed me to stop
\par wearing a bib at the age of five.
\par 
\par After several applications of the peroxide, Sasha switched to rubbing
\par alcohol and repeated the treatment. Bobby wasn't bothering to hiss
\par anymore, he was just grinding his teeth to dust. Finally, when he had
\par ground away enough dental surface to be limited to a soft diet for life,
\par she smeared the still-weeping wounds with Neosporin.
\par 
\par This extensive first aid was conducted without comment. We all knew why
\par it was necessary to apply as many anti-bacteriological agents as
\par possible to his wounds, and talking about it would only scare the crap
\par out of us.
\par 
\par In the weeks and months to come, Bobby would be spending more time than
\par usual in front of a mirror, checking himself out, and not because he was
\par vain. He'd be more aware of his hands, too, watching for something ..
\par 
\par . teratoid.
\par 
\par Roosevelt's eye was swollen to a slit. Nevertheless, he still believed
\par in the ice.
\par 
\par While Sasha finished wrapping Bobby's cuts with gauze bandages, I found
\par a chalk message slate and pegboard beside the door connecting the
\par kitchen to the garage. Sets of car keys hung on the pegs. Sasha wouldn't
\par have to hot-wire a car, after all.
\par 
\par In the garage were a red Jaguar and a white Ford Expedition.
\par 
\par By flashlight, I lowered the rear seat in the Expedition to enlarge the
\par cargo area. This would allow Roosevelt and Bobby to lie down, below
\par window level. We might draw more attention as a group than Sasha would
\par draw if she appeared to be alone.
\par 
\par Because Sasha knew exactly where we were going out on Haddenbeck Road,
\par she would drive.
\par 
\par When Bobby entered the garage with Sasha and Roosevelt, he was wearing
\par his pullover and Hawaiian shirt again, and moving somewhat stiffly.
\par 
\par "You be okay back here? " I asked, indicating the rear of the
\par Expedition.
\par 
\par "I'll grab some nap time." In the front passenger's seat, when I slumped
\par below the window line in a classic fugitive-on-the-lam posture, I became
\par acutely aware of every contusion, neck to toe. But I was alive. Earlier,
\par I'd been sure we wouldn't all leave the Stanwyk house with beating
\par hearts and brain activity, but I'd been wrong. When it comes to
\par presentiments of disaster, perhaps cats know things, but Christopher
\par Snow's hunches can't necessarily be trusted which is comforting,
\par actually.
\par 
\par When Sasha started the engine, Mungojerrie scrambled onto the console
\par between the front seats. He sat erect, ears pricked, looking forward,
\par like a misplaced hood ornament.
\par 
\par Sasha used a remote control to put up the electric garage door, and I
\par said, "You okay? "
\par 
\par "No."
\par 
\par "Good." I knew that she was physically unhurt and that her answer
\par referred to I her emotional state. Killing Tom Eliot, Sasha had done the
\par only thing she could do, perhaps saving one or more of our lives while
\par sparing the priest from a hideous frenzy of self-destruction, and yet
\par the firing of those three shots had sickened her, now she was living
\par under a grave weight of moral responsibility. Not guilt. She was smart
\par enough to know that no guilt should attend what she'd done.
\par 
\par But she also knew that even moral acts can have dimensions that scar the
\par mind and wound the heart.
\par 
\par If she had answered my question with a smile and assurances that she was
\par fine, she would not have been the Sasha Good all that I love, and I
\par would have had reason to suspect that she was becoming.
\par 
\par We rode through Moonlight Bay in silence, each of us occupied with his
\par or her own thoughts.
\par 
\par A couple miles from the Stanwyk house, the cat lost interest in the view
\par through the windshield. He surprised me by stepping down onto my chest
\par and peering into my eyes.
\par 
\par His green gaze was intense and unwavering, and I met it directly for an
\par eerily long time, wondering what he might be thinking.
\par 
\par How radically different his thinking must be from ours, even if he
\par shares our high level of intelligence. He experiences this world from a
\par perspective nearly as unlike ours as our perspective would be unlike
\par that of a being raised on another planet. He faces each day without
\par carrying on his back the weight of human history, philosophy, triumph,
\par tragedy, noble intentions, foolishness, greed, envy, and hubris, it must
\par be liberating to be without that burden. He is both savage and
\par civilized. He is closer to nature than we are, therefore, he has fewer
\par illusions about it, knows that life is hard by design, that nature is
\par beautiful but cold. And although Roosevelt says other cats of
\par Mungojerrie's breed escaped from Wyvern, their numbers cannot be large,
\par while Mungojerrie isn't as singular a specimen as Orson seems to be, and
\par while cats by nature are more adaptable to solitude than dogs are, this
\par small creature must at times know a profound loneliness.
\par 
\par When I began to pet him, Mungojerrie broke eye contact and curled up on
\par my chest. He was a small, warm weight, and I could feel his heartbeat
\par both against my body and under my stroking hand.
\par 
\par I am not an animal communicator, but I think I know why he led us into
\par the Stanwyk house. We were not there to bear witness to the dead.
\par 
\par We were there solely to do what needed to be done for Father Tom Eliot.
\par 
\par Since time immemorial, people have suspected that some animals have at
\par least one sense in addition to our own. An awareness of things we do not
\par see. A prescience.
\par 
\par Couple that special perception with intelligence, and suppose that with
\par greater intelligence comes a more refined conscience. In passing the
\par Stanwyk house, Mungojerrie might have sensed the mental anguish, the
\par spiritual agony, and the emotional pain of Father Tom Eliotand might
\par have felt compelled to bring deliverance to that suffering man.
\par 
\par Or maybe I'm full of crap.
\par 
\par The possibility exists that I am both full of crap and right about
\par Mungojerrie.
\par 
\par Cats know things.
\par 
\par Haddenbeck Road is a lonely stretch of two-lane blacktop that for a few
\par miles runs due east, paralleling the southern perimeter of Fort Wyvern,
\par but then strikes southeast, serving a score of ranches in the least
\par populated portion of the county. Summer heat, winter rains, and
\par California's most violent weatherearthquakeshave left the pavement
\par cracked, hoved, and ragged at the edges. Skirts of wild grass and, for a
\par short while here in early spring, an embroidery of wildflowers separate
\par the highway from the sensuously rolling fields that embrace it.
\par 
\par When we had traveled some distance without encountering oncoming
\par headlights, Sasha suddenly braked to a halt and said, "Look at this." I
\par sat up in full view, as did Roosevelt and Bobby, and surveyed the night
\par around us in confusion as Sasha rammed the Expedition into reverse and
\par backed up about twenty feet.
\par 
\par "Almost ran over them, " she said.
\par 
\par On the pavement ahead of us, revealed by the headlights, were enough
\par snakes to fill the cages of every reptile house in every zoo in the
\par country.
\par 
\par Leaning forward into the front seat, Bobby whistled softly and said,
\par "Must be an open door to Hell around here somewhere."
\par 
\par "All rattlers?
\par 
\par " Roosevelt asked, taking the ice pack off his swollen eye, squinting
\par for a better look.
\par 
\par "Hard to tell, " Sasha said. "But I think so." Mungojerrie stood with
\par hind paws on my right knee, forepaws on the dashboard, head craned
\par forward. He made one of those cat sounds that are half hiss, half growl,
\par and all loathing.
\par 
\par Even from a distance of only twenty-five feet, it was impossible to make
\par an accurate count of the number of serpents in the squirming mass on the
\par highway, and I had no intention of wading in among them to take a
\par reliable census. At a guess, there were as few as seventy or eighty, as
\par many as a hundred.
\par 
\par In my experience, rattlesnakes are lone hunters and do not, as a matter
\par of course, travel in groups. You'll see them in numbers only if you're
\par unlucky enough to stumble into one of their nest sand few if any nests
\par would contain this many individuals.
\par 
\par The behavior of these serpents was even stranger than the fact that they
\par were gathering here in the open. They twined over and under and around
\par one another, in a slowly seething sinuous mass, and from among these
\par slippery braids, eight or ten heads rose at any one time, weaving two,
\par three, four feet into the air, with jaws cracked, fangs bared, tongues
\par flickering, then shrank back into the scaly swarm as new and equally
\par wicked-looking heads rose from the roiling multitude, one set of
\par sentinels replacing another.
\par 
\par It was as if the Medusa, of classic Grecian myth, were lying on
\par Haddenbeck Road, napping, while her elaborate coiffure of serpents
\par groomed itself.
\par 
\par "You going to drive through that? " I asked.
\par 
\par "Rather not, " Sasha said.
\par 
\par "Close the vents, crank this buggy up to warp speed, " Bobby said, "and
\par take us for a ride on the rattlesnake road." Roosevelt said, "My mama
\par always says, Patience pays."
\par 
\par "The snakes aren't here because we are, " I said. "They don't care about
\par us. They aren't blocking us. We just happened to come through here at
\par the wrong time. They'll move on, probably sooner than later."
\par 
\par Bobby patted my shoulder. "Roosevelt's mom is a lot more succinct than
\par you are, dude." Every snake that rose into sentry position from the
\par churning host immediately focused its attention on us. Depending on the
\par angle at which the headlamps caught them, their eyes brightened and
\par flared red or silver, less often green, like small jewels.
\par 
\par I assumed that the light drew their interest. Desert rattlers, like most
\par snakes, are nearly as deaf as dirt. Their vision is good, especially at
\par night, when their slit-shaped pupils dilate to expose more of their
\par sensitive retinas. Their sense of smell may not be as powerful as that
\par of a dog, since they're seldom called upon to track down escaped
\par prisoners or to sniff out dope in smugglers' luggage, however, in
\par addition to a good nose, a snake has a second organ of smelljacobson's 
\par organ, consisting of two pouches lined with sensory tissue located in the
\par roof of the mouth. That's why a serpent's forked tongue flicks
\par ceaselessly, It licks microscopic particles of odor from the air,
\par conveying these clusters of molecules to the pouches in its mouth, to
\par savor and analyze them.
\par 
\par Now these rattlers were busily licking the air for our scents to
\par determine if suitably delicious prey might be found behind the
\par headlights.
\par 
\par I've learned a great deal about desert rattlesnakes, with which I share
\par the earlier and warmerpart of the night. In spite of their evil
\par appearance, they possess a compelling beauty.
\par 
\par Weird became weirder when one of the weaving sentries abruptly reared
\par back and struck at another that had risen beside it. The bitten rattler
\par bit back, the two coiled around each other and then dropped to the
\par pavement. The flexuous swarm closed over them, and for a minute, turmoil
\par swept through the braided multitude, which writhe not languorously, as
\par before, but in a frenzy, as supple and quick as lashing whips, twisting
\par and coiling excitedly, as though the urge to bite their own had spread
\par beyond the angry pair we'd seen strike each other, briefly sparking
\par civil war within the colony.
\par 
\par As the slithery horde grew calmer again, Sasha said, "Do snakes usually
\par bite one another? "
\par 
\par "Probably not, " I said.
\par 
\par "Wouldn't think they'd be vulnerable to their own venom, " said
\par Roosevelt, returning the ice pack to his left eye.
\par 
\par "Well, " Bobby said, "if we're ever condemned to live through high
\par school again, maybe we can make a science project out of that question.
\par 
\par " Again, one of the rearing rattlers, weaving above the rest and licking
\par the air for prey, struck at another of the sentries, and then a third
\par grew agitated enough to strike the first. The trio raveled down into the
\par swarm, and another siege of spastic thrashing whipped through the
\par undulant masses.
\par 
\par "It's the birds again, " I said. "The coyotes."
\par 
\par "The folks at the Stanwyks', " Roosevelt added.
\par 
\par "Psychological implosion, " Sasha said.
\par 
\par "I don't suppose a snake has much of a psyche to be logical about, "
\par Bobby said, "but yeah, it sure looks like part of the same phenomenon."
\par 
\par "They're moving, " Roosevelt noted.
\par 
\par Indeed, the squirming legions were, so to speak, on the march.
\par 
\par They began to move across the two-lane blacktop, across the narrow dirt
\par shoulder, vanishing into the tall grass and wildflowers to the right of
\par the highway.
\par 
\par The complete procession, however, consisted of more than the eighty or
\par one hundred specimens that we had been watching. As scores of snakes
\par disappeared into the grass beyond the right-hand shoulder, scores of
\par others appeared out of the field to the left of Haddenbeck Road, as if
\par they were pouring out of a perpetual-motion, snake-making machine
\par Perhaps three or four hundred rattlers, increasingly quarrelsome and
\par agitated, crossed into the southern wilds before the blacktop was clear
\par at last. When they were gone, when not a single wriggling form remained
\par on the highway, we sat in silence for a moment, blinking, as if we had
\par awakened from a dream.
\par 
\par Mom, I love you, and I always will. But what the hell were you thinking?
\par 
\par Sasha shifted gears and drove forward.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie made that sound of loathing again. He changed positions in
\par my lap, so his forepaws were on the door, and he gazed out the side
\par window, at the dark fields into which the serpent horde had slithered
\par toward whatever oblivion it was seeking.
\par 
\par A mile later, we reached Crow Hill, beyond which Doogie Sassman should
\par be waiting for us. Unless the snakes had crossed his path before they
\par crossed ours.
\par 
\par I don't know why Crow Hill is named Crow Hill. The shape of it in no way
\par suggests the bird, nor do crows tend to flock there more than elsewhere.
\par 
\par The name isn't in honor of a prominent local family or even a colorful
\par scoundrel. Crow Indians are located in Montana, not California.
\par 
\par No crowfoot grows there. And history has no record of braggarts
\par regularly trekking to the top of this mound to gloat and boast.
\par 
\par At the crown of the hill, an enormous outcropping of rock rises from the
\par surrounding gentle contours of the loamy land, a solitary gray-white
\par knob like a partially exposed bone in the skeleton of a buried behemoth.
\par 
\par Carved on one face of this monument is the figure of a crow, which is
\par not, as I once thought, the source of the name. Crude but intriguing,
\par this carving captures the cockiness of the bird yet somehow has an
\par ominous quality, as though it is the totem of a murderous clan, a
\par warning to travelers to find a route around their territory or risk dire
\par consequences. On a July night forty-four years ago, the image of the
\par crow was scored into the stone by a person or persons unknown.
\par 
\par Until curiosity had led me to learn the origins of the carving, I'd
\par assumed that it dated from another century, that perhaps it had been
\par chiseled into the rock even before Europeans set foot on this continent.
\par 
\par There is a disquieting aspect to the image of the crow, a quality that
\par speaks to mystics, who have been known to travel considerable distances
\par to view and touch it. Old-timers say this place has been called Crow
\par Hill since at least the time of their grandparents, however, and
\par references in time-yellowed public records confirm their claim. The
\par carving seems to embody some primitive knowledge long lost to civilized
\par man, yet the name of the hill predates it, and evidently the anonymous
\par carver meant only to create a pictorial landmark sign.
\par 
\par This image was not like the bird on the message left with Lilly Wing,
\par except that both seemed to radiate malevolence. As Charlie Dai had
\par described them, the crowsor ravens, or blackbirds left at the scenes of
\par the other abductions were also unlike this carving. Charlie would have
\par remarked on the resemblance if there had been one.
\par 
\par Nevertheless, the coincidence was creepy.
\par 
\par As we approached the crest, the crow in the stone appeared to be
\par watching us. The raised planes of the bird's body reflected white in the
\par headlights, while shadows filled the deep lines that had been cut by the
\par carver's tools. This was a colloidal stone, and chips of some shiny
\par aggregate perhaps nuggets of micawere scattered through it. The carving
\par had been artfully composed to position the largest of these chips as the
\par eye of the bird, which was now filled with an imitation of animal
\par eye shine and with a peculiar quality that some visiting mystics insist
\par is forbidden knowledge, although I've never understood how an inanimate
\par hunk of rock can have knowledge.
\par 
\par I noticed that everyone in the Expedition, including the cat, regarded
\par the stone crow with an uneasy expression.
\par 
\par As we drove past this figure, the shadows in the chiseled lines should
\par have shrunk from us in the rapidly diminishing light, as the entire
\par carving settled into darkness. But unless my eyes deceived me, for an
\par instant the shadows elongated, violating the laws of physics, as if
\par trying to follow the light. And as the crow disappeared into the night
\par behind us, I could have sworn the shadow pulled loose of the stone and
\par took flight as though it were a real bird.
\par 
\par As we headed down the eastern slope of Crow Hill, I restrained myself
\par from remarking on the unnerving flight of the shadow, but Bobby said, "I
\par don't like this place."
\par 
\par "Me neither, " Roosevelt agreed.
\par 
\par "Ditto, " I said.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "Humankind wasn't meant to travel this far from the beach."
\par 
\par "Yeah, " Sasha said, "we're probably getting dangerously close to the
\par edge of the earth."
\par 
\par "Exactly, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "You ever see any of those maps from the time when they thought the
\par earth was flat? " I asked.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "Oh, I see, you're one of those round-earth kooks."
\par 
\par "The map makers actually showed the edge of the earth, the sea just
\par cascading into an abyss, and sometimes they lettered a warning across
\par the void, Here there be monsters." After a brief but deep group silence,
\par Bobby said, "Bad choice of historical trivia, bro."
\par 
\par "Yeah, " Sasha said, gradually slowing the Expedition as she peered into
\par the dark fields north of Haddenbeck Road, evidently looking for Doogie
\par Sassman. "Don't you know any amusing anecdotes about Marie Antoinette at
\par the guillotine? "
\par 
\par "That's the stuff! " Bobby agreed.
\par 
\par Roosevelt darkened the mood by communicating what didn't need to be
\par communicated, "Mr. Mungojerrie says the crow flew off the rock."
\par 
\par "With all due respect, " Bobby said, "Mr. Mungojerrie is just a fuckin'
\par cat."
\par 
\par Roosevelt seemed to listen to a voice beyond our hearing. Then,
\par "Mungojerrie says he may be just a fuckin' cat, but that puts him two
\par steps up the social ladder from a board head." Bobby laughed. "He didn't
\par say that."
\par 
\par "No other cat here, " Roosevelt said.
\par 
\par "You said that, " Bobby accused.
\par 
\par "Not me, " Roosevelt said. "I don't use that kind of language."
\par 
\par "The cat? " Bobby said skeptically.
\par 
\par "The cat, " Roosevelt insisted.
\par 
\par "Bobby's only a recent believer in all this smart-animal stuff, " I told
\par Roosevelt.
\par 
\par "Hey, cat, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie turned in my lap to look back at Bobby.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "You're all right, dude." Mungojerrie raised one forepaw.
\par 
\par After a moment, Bobby caught on. His face bright with wonder, he
\par extended his right hand across the back of my seat. He and the cat gave
\par each other a gentle high five.
\par 
\par Good work Mom, I thought. Very nice. Let's just hope when all is said
\par and done, we end up with more smart cats than crazed reptiles.
\par 
\par "Here we are, " Sasha said as we reached the bottom of the hill.
\par 
\par She shifted the Expedition into four-wheel drive and turned north off
\par the highway, driving slowly because she had doused the headlights and
\par was guided only by the much dimmer parking lights.
\par 
\par We crossed a lush meadow, wove through a stand of live oaks, approached
\par the boundary fence surrounding Fort Wyvern, and stopped beside the
\par largest sports utility vehicle I had ever seen. This black Hummer, the
\par civilian version of the military's Humvee, had undergone customization
\par after being driven off the showroom floor. It featured over size tires
\par and sat even higher on them than did a standard model, and it had been
\par stretched by the addition of a few feet to its cargo space.
\par 
\par Sasha switched off the lights and the engine, and we-got out of the
\par Expedition.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie clung to me as though he thought I might put him down on the
\par ground. I understood his concern. The grass was knee-high.
\par 
\par Even in daylight, you'd have difficulty spotting a snake before it
\par struck, especially considering how fast a motivated serpent can move.
\par 
\par When Roosevelt reached out, I handed the cat to him.
\par 
\par The driver's door opened on the Hummer, and Doogie Sassman got out to
\par greet us, like a steroid-hammered Santa Claus climbing out of a
\par Pentagon-designed sleigh. He closed the door behind him to kill the
\par cabin light.
\par 
\par At five feet eleven, Doogie Sassman is five inches shorter than
\par Roosevelt Frost, but he is the only man I've ever known who can make
\par Roosevelt appear to be petite. The sass man enjoys no more than a
\par hundred pound advantage on Roosevelt, but I've never seen a hundred
\par pounds used to better effect. He seems to be not merely forty percent
\par larger than Roosevelt, but twice as large, more than twice, and taller
\par even though he isn't, a true leviathan on land, a guy who might discuss
\par the techniques of city destruction over lunch with Godzilla.
\par 
\par Doogie carries his massive weight with unearthly grace and does not
\par appear to be fat. All right, Doogie does look big, tres mondo, mondo
\par maximo, but he's not soft. You get the impression that he's made of
\par animate concrete, impervious to arteriosclerosis, bullets, and time.
\par 
\par There's something about Doogie that's every bit as mystical as the stone
\par crow at the top of Crow Hill.
\par 
\par Maybe his hair and beard contribute to the impression that he's an
\par incarnation of Thor, the god of thunder and rain once worshipped in
\par ancient Scandinavia, where they now worship cheesy pop stars like
\par everyone else. His untamed blond hair, so thick that it offends the
\par sensibilities of Hare Krishnas, hangs to the middle of his back, and his
\par beard is so lush and wavy that he couldn't possibly shave it off with
\par anything less than a lawn mower. Great hair can radically enhance a
\par man's aura of poweras witness those who have been elected to the
\par presidency of the United States with no other qualifications and I'm
\par sure Doogie's hair and beard have more than a little to do with the
\par supernatural impression that he makes, though the real mystery of him
\par cannot be explained by hair, size, the elaborate tattoos that cover his
\par body, or his gas-flame blue eyes.
\par 
\par This night he wore a zippered black jumpsuit tucked into black boots,
\par which should have made him look like a Brobdingn agian baby in Dr. Denton
\par pajamas. Instead, he had the presence of a guy who might be called down
\par to Hell by Satan to unclog a furnace chimney choked with the gnarled and
\par half-burnt contentious souls of ten serial killers.
\par 
\par Bobby greeted him, "Hey, sass man."
\par 
\par "Bobster, " Doogie replied.
\par 
\par "Cool wheels, " I said admiringly.
\par 
\par "It kicks ass, " he acknowledged.
\par 
\par Roosevelt said, "Thought you were all Harleys."
\par 
\par "Doogie, " Sasha said, "is a man of many conveyances."
\par 
\par "I am a wheel-o-maniac, " he admitted. "What happened to your eye,
\par Rosie? "
\par 
\par "In a fight with a priest." The eye was better, still swollen but not to
\par such a tight slit.
\par 
\par The ice had worked.
\par 
\par "We ought to get moving, " Sasha said. "It's weird out here tonight,
\par Doogie." He agreed. "I've been hearing coyotes like no coyotes I've ever
\par heard before." Bobby, Sasha, and I looked at one another. I recalled
\par Sasha's prediction that we hadn't seen the last of the pack that had
\par come out of the canyon beyond Lilly Wing's house.
\par 
\par The cathedral-quiet fields and hills lay under a shrouded sky, and the
\par breeze from the west was as feeble as the breath of a dying nun.
\par 
\par In the live oaks behind us, the leaves whispered only slightly louder
\par than memory, and the tall grass barely stirred.
\par 
\par Doogie led us around to the back of the customized Hummer and opened the
\par tailgate. The interior light was not as bright as usual, because half
\par the fixture was masked with electrician's black tape, but even the
\par reduced illumination was a beacon in these star-denied, moon-starved
\par grasslands.
\par 
\par Just inside the tailgate were two shotguns. They were pistol-grip,
\par pump-action Remingtons even sweeter than the classic Mossberg that
\par Manuel Ramirez had confiscated from Bobby's Jeep.
\par 
\par Doogie said, "I don't think either of you boardheads is likely to shoot
\par a hole in a silver dollar with a handgun, so these suit you better. I
\par know you're shotgun-familiar. But you'll be using magnum loads, so be
\par prepared for the kick. With this punch and spread, you buckaroos don't
\par have to worry about aiming, and you'll stop just about anything.
\par 
\par " He handed one shotgun to Bobby, the other to me, and also gave each of
\par us a box of ammunition.
\par 
\par "Load up, then distribute the rest of the shells in your jacket pockets,
\par " he said. "Don't leave any in the box. The last shell can be the one
\par that saves your ass." He looked at Sasha, smiled, and said, "Like
\par Colombia."
\par 
\par "Colombia? " I asked.
\par 
\par "We did some business there once, " Sasha said.
\par 
\par Doogie had lived in Moonlight Bay six years, and Sasha had been here
\par two. I wondered if this business trip had been recent or before either
\par of them settled in the Jewel of the Central Coast. I had been under the
\par impression that they had met at KBAY.
\par 
\par "Colombia, the country? " Bobby asked.
\par 
\par "Not the record company, " Doogie assured him.
\par 
\par "Tell me not drugs, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par Doogie shook his head. "Rescue operation." Sasha's smile was enigmatic.
\par 
\par "Interested in the past, after all, Snowman? "
\par 
\par "Right now, just the future." Turning to Roosevelt, Doogie said, "I
\par didn't realize you'd be coming, so I don't have a weapon for you."
\par 
\par "I've got the cat, " Roosevelt said.
\par 
\par "Killer." Mungojerrie hissed.
\par 
\par The hiss reminded me of the snakes. I looked around nervously, wondering
\par if the loco reptiles we had seen earlier would give us the courtesy of a
\par warning rattle.
\par 
\par Closing the tailgate, Doogie said, "Let's rock." In addition to the
\par cargo area just inside the tailgate which contained a pair of
\par five-gallon fuel cans, two cardboard boxes, and a well-stuffed
\par backpack the customized Hummer provided seating for eight. Behind the
\par pair of bucket-style front seats were two bench seats, each capable of
\par accommodating three grown men, although not three as well grown as
\par Doogie.
\par 
\par Thor Incarnate drove, and Roosevelt rode shotgun, figuratively speaking,
\par holding our long-tailed tracker in his lap. Immediately behind them, I
\par sat with Bobby and Sasha on the first bench seat.
\par 
\par "Why aren't we going into Wyvern by the river? " Bobby wondered.
\par 
\par "The only way to get down to the Santa Rosita, " Doogie said, "is on one
\par of the levee ramps in town. But tonight the town's crawling with a bad
\par element."
\par 
\par "Anchovies, " Bobby translated.
\par 
\par "We'd be spotted and stopped, " Sasha said.
\par 
\par With the way illuminated only by its parking lights, the Hummer passed
\par through a huge hole in the fence, where the ragged edges of the flanking
\par panels of chain-link were as snarled as masses of string left with a
\par playful kitten.
\par 
\par "You cut this open all by yourself? " I asked.
\par 
\par "Shaped charge, " Doogie said.
\par 
\par "Explosives? "
\par 
\par "Just a little boom plastic."
\par 
\par "Didn't that draw attention? "
\par 
\par "Shape the charge in a thin line, where you want the links to pop, and
\par you're using so little it's like one really big beat on a bass drum."
\par 
\par "Even if someone's close enough to hear, " Sasha said, "it's over so
\par quick, he'd never get a fix on the direction." Bobby said, "Radio
\par engineering requires way more cool skills than I thought." Doogie asked
\par where we were headed, and I described the cluster of warehouses in the
\par southwest quadrant of the base, where I had last seen Orson. He seemed
\par familiar with the layout of Fort Wyvern, because he needed few
\par directions.
\par 
\par We parked near the big roll-up door. The man-size door beside the larger
\par entrance stood open, as I had left it the previous night.
\par 
\par I got out of the Hummer, carrying my shotgun. Roosevelt and Mungojerrie
\par joined me, while the others waited in the vehicle in order not to
\par distract the cat in his efforts to pick up the trail.
\par 
\par Pooled with shadows, smelling vaguely of oil and grease, home to weeds
\par that sprouted from fissures in the blacktop, littered with empty oil
\par cans and with assorted paper trash and leaves deposited by the previous
\par night's wind, surrounded by the corrugated-steel facades of the hulking
\par warehouses, this serviceway had never been a festive place, not a prime
\par venue for a royal wedding, but now the atmosphere was downright
\par sinister.
\par 
\par Last night, the stocky abb with the close-cropped black hair, aware that
\par Orson and I were close behind him in the Santa Rosita, must have used a
\par cell phone to call for assistance perhaps from the tall, blond, athletic
\par guy with the puckered scar on his left cheek, who had snatched the
\par Stuart twins only hours before. He had handed Jimmy off to someone,
\par anyway, and then had led Orson and me into the warehouse, with the
\par intention of killing me there.
\par 
\par From an inside jacket pocket, I withdrew the tightly wadded top of Jimmy
\par Wing's cotton pajamas, with which the abb had confused the scent trail.
\par 
\par To be fair to Orson, who had been briefly baffled but never entirely
\par misled, I was the one suckered into the warehouse by odd noises and a
\par muffled voice.
\par 
\par The garment seemed so small, almost like doll's clothing.
\par 
\par "I don't know if this helps, " I said. "Cats aren't bloodhounds, after
\par all."
\par 
\par "We'll see, " Roosevelt said.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie sniffed the pajama top delicately but with interest.
\par 
\par Then he took a tour of the immediate area, smelling the pavement, an
\par empty oil can, which made him sneeze, and the tiny yellow flowers on a
\par weed, which made him sneeze again and more vigorously. He returned for a
\par brief inhalation of the garment, and then he tracked a scent along the
\par pavement once more, moving in a widening spiral, from time to time
\par lifting his head to savor the air, all the while appearing suitably
\par quizzical. He padded to the warehouse, where he raised one leg and
\par relieved himself against the concrete foundation, sniffed the deposit he
\par had made, returned for another whiff of the pajama top, spent half a
\par minute investigating an old rusted socket wrench Lying on the pavement,
\par paused to scratch behind his right ear with one paw, returned to the
\par weed with the yellow flowers, sneezed, and had just risen to the top of
\par my List of People or Animals I Most Want to Choke Senseless, when he
\par suddenly went rigid, turned his green eyes toward our animal
\par communicator, and hissed.
\par 
\par "He's got it, " Roosevelt said.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie hurried along the serviceway, and we set out after him.
\par 
\par Bobby joined us on foot, armed with his shotgun, while Doogie and Sasha
\par followed in the Hummer.
\par 
\par Taking a different route from the one I'd chosen the previous night, we
\par proceeded along a blacktop road, across an athletic field gone to weeds,
\par across a dusty parade ground, between ranks of badly weathered barracks,
\par through a residential neighborhood of Dead Town that I had never
\par explored, where the cottages and bungalows were identical to those on
\par other streets, and overland again, to another service area.
\par 
\par After more than half an hour at a brisk pace, we arrived at the last
\par place I wanted to go, the huge, seven-story, Quonset-roofed hangar, as
\par large as a football field, that stands like an alien temple above the
\par egg room.
\par 
\par As it became clear where we were headed, I decided it wouldn't be wise
\par to drive up to the entrance, because the Hummer's engine was noticeably
\par less quiet than the mechanism of a Swiss watch. I waved Doogie toward a
\par passageway between two of the many smaller service buildings that
\par surrounded the giant structure, about a hundred yards from our ultimate
\par destination.
\par 
\par When Doogie killed the engine and the parking lights, the Hummer all but
\par vanished in this nook.
\par 
\par As we gathered behind the vehicle to study the enormous hangar from a
\par distance, the dead night began to breathe. A few miles to the west, the
\par Pacific had exhaled a cool breeze, which now caused a loose sheet-metal
\par panel to vibrate in a nearby roof.
\par 
\par I recalled Roosevelt's words, relayed from Mungojerrie, outside the
\par Stanwyk house, Death lives here. I was getting identical but much
\par stronger vibes from the hangar. If Death lived at the Stanwyk place,
\par that was only his pied-a-terre. Here was his primary residence.
\par 
\par "This can't be right, " I said hopefully.
\par 
\par "They're in that place, " Roosevelt insisted.
\par 
\par "But we were here last night, " Bobby protested. "They weren't in the
\par damn place last night." Roosevelt scooped up the cat, stroked the furry
\par head, chucked the mungo man under the chin, murmured to him, and said,
\par "They were here then, the cat says, and they're here now." Bobby
\par scowled. "This reeks."
\par 
\par "Like a Calcutta sewer, " I agreed.
\par 
\par "No, trust me, " Doogie said. "A Calcutta sewer is in a class all by
\par itself." I decided not to pursue the obvious question.
\par 
\par Instead, I said, "If these kids were snatched just to be studied and
\par tested, snatched because their blood samples indicate they're somehow
\par immune to the retrovirus, then they must have been taken to the genetics
\par lab. Wherever that may be, it isn't here." Roosevelt said, "According to
\par Mungojerrie, the lab he came from is far to the east, in what appears to
\par be open land, where they once had an artillery range.
\par 
\par It's very deep underground, hidden out there.
\par 
\par But Jimmy, at least, is here. And Orson." After a hesitation, I said,
\par "Alive? " Roosevelt said, "Mungojerrie doesn't know."
\par 
\par "Cats know things, " Sasha reminded him.
\par 
\par "Not this thing, " Roosevelt said.
\par 
\par As we stared at the hangar, I'm sure each of us was remembering
\par Delacroix's audiotape testimony about the Mystery Train. Red sky.
\par 
\par Black trees. A f uttering within  ... Doogie removed the backpack from
\par the Hummer, slipped it over his shoulders, closed the tailgate, and
\par said, "Let's go." During the brief time that the cargo-hold light was
\par on, I saw the weapon he was carrying.
\par 
\par It was a wicked-looking piece.
\par 
\par Aware of my interest, he said, "Uzi machine pistol. Extended magazine."
\par 
\par "Is that legal? "
\par 
\par "It would be if it wasn't converted to full automatic fire." Doogie

\par headed toward the hangar. With the breeze stirring his blond mane and
\par wavy beard, he looked like a Viking warrior leaving a conquered village,
\par heading toward a longboat with a bag of plundered valuables on his back.
\par 
\par All he needed to complete the image was a horned helmet.
\par 
\par Into my mind's eye came an image of Doogie in a tuxedo and such a
\par helmet, leading a super model through a perfect tango in a dance
\par competition.
\par 
\par There are two faces to the coin of my rich imagination.
\par 
\par The man-size door, inset in one of the forty-foot-high steel hangar
\par doors, was closed. I couldn't remember whether Bobby and I had shut it
\par on our way out the night before. Probably not. We hadn't been in a
\par clean-up-after-yourself, turn-out-the-lights-and-close-the-door mood
\par when we'd fled this place.
\par 
\par At the door, Doogie extracted two flashlights from jumpsuit pockets and
\par gave them to Sasha and Roosevelt, so that Bobby and I would have both
\par hands free for the shotguns.
\par 
\par Doogie tried the door. It opened inward.
\par 
\par Sasha's crossing-the-threshold technique was even smoother than her
\par on-air patter at KBAY. She moved to the left of the door before she
\par switched on the light and swept the beam across the cavernous hangar,
\par which was too large to be entirely within the reach of any flashlight.
\par 
\par But she didn't shoot at anyone, and no one shot at her, so it seemed
\par likely that our presence was not yet known.
\par 
\par Bobby followed her, shotgun at the ready. With the cat in his arms,
\par Roosevelt entered after Bobby. I followed, and Doogie brought up the
\par rear, quietly closing the door behind us, as we had found it.
\par 
\par I looked expectantly at Roosevelt.
\par 
\par He stroked the cat and whispered, "We've got to go down." Because I knew
\par the way, I led the group. Second star to the right, and straight on till
\par morning. Watch out for the pirates and the crocodile with the ticking
\par clock inside.
\par 
\par We crossed the vast room under the tracks that once supported a mobile
\par crane, past the massive steel supports that held up these rails, moving
\par cautiously around the deep wells in the floor, where hydraulic
\par mechanisms had once been housed.
\par 
\par As we progressed, swords of shadow and sabers of light leaped off the
\par elevated steel crane rails and silently fenced with one another across
\par the walls and the curved ceiling. Most of the high clerestory windows
\par were broken out, but reflections flared in the remaining few, like white
\par sparks from clashing blades.
\par 
\par Suddenly I was halted by a sense of wrongness I can't adequately
\par describe, a change in the air too subtle to define, a mild tingle on my
\par face, a quivering of the hairs in my ear canals, as if they were
\par vibrating to a sound beyond my range of hearing.
\par 
\par Sasha and Roosevelt must have felt it, too, because they turned in
\par circles, searching with their flashlights.
\par 
\par Doogie held the Uzi pistol in both hands.
\par 
\par Bobby was near one of the cylindrical steel posts that supported the
\par crane tracks. He reached out, touched it, and whispered, "Bro.
\par 
\par " As I moved to his side, I heard a ringing so faint that I could not
\par hold fast to the sound, which repeatedly came and went. When I put my
\par fingertips against the post, I detected vibrations passing through the
\par steel.
\par 
\par Abruptly, the air temperature changed. The hangar had been unpleasantly
\par cool, almost cold, but from one instant to the next, it became fifteen
\par or twenty degrees warmer. This would have been impossible even if the
\par building had still contained a heating plant, which it did not.
\par 
\par Sasha, Doogie, and Roosevelt joined Bobby and me, instinctively forming
\par a circle to guard against a threat from any direction.
\par 
\par The vibrations in the post grew stronger.
\par 
\par I looked toward the east end of the hangar. The door by which we had
\par entered was about twenty yards away. The flashlights were able to reach
\par that far, though they couldn't chase away all the shadows. In that
\par direction, I could see to the end of the shorter length of the overhead
\par crane tracks, and all seemed as it had been when we'd first come into
\par the building.
\par 
\par The flashlights were not able to probe to the west end of the structure,
\par however, it lay at least eighty and perhaps as much as a hundred yards
\par away. As far as I could see, there was nothing out of the ordinary.
\par 
\par What bothered me was the unyielding blackness in the last twenty or
\par thirty yards. Not seamless blackness. Many shades of black and deepest
\par grays, a montage of shadows.
\par 
\par I had an impression of a large, looming object concealed in that
\par montage. A towering and complex shape. Something black and gray, so well
\par camouflaged in the gloom that the eye couldn't quite seize upon the
\par outline of it.
\par 
\par Bobby whispered, "Sasha, your light. Here." She directed it where he
\par pointed, at the floor.
\par 
\par The light gleamed off one of the inch-thick steel angle plates anchored
\par 
\par to the concrete, where heavy machinery had once been mounted.
\par 
\par These prickled up from the floor at many points in the room.
\par 
\par I didn't understand why Bobby had called our attention to this
\par unremarkable object.
\par 
\par "Clean, " he said.
\par 
\par Then I understood. When we had been here last nigh tin fact, on every
\par occasion that I had passed through this hangar these angle plates and
\par the bolts holding them down had been smeared with grease and caked with
\par dirt. This one was shiny, clean, as though someone had recently done
\par maintenance on it.
\par 
\par Holding the cat in one arm, Roosevelt moved his light across the floor,
\par up the steel post, across the tracks above us.
\par 
\par "Everything's cleaner, " Doogie murmured, and he meant not since last
\par night but just since we had entered the hangar.
\par 
\par Though I'd taken my hand off the post, I knew the vibrations in the
\par steel had increased, because I could hear that faint ringing coming from
\par the entire double colonnade that flanked us and from the tracks that the
\par columns supported.
\par 
\par I looked toward the far, dark end of the building, and I swore that
\par something immense was moving in the gloom.
\par 
\par "Bro! " Bobby said.
\par 
\par I glanced at him.
\par 
\par He was gaping at his wristwatch.
\par 
\par I checked mine and saw the digital readouts racing backward.
\par 
\par Sudden fear, like cold rain, washed through me.
\par 
\par A strange muddy red light rose throughout the hangar, evenly
\par distributed, with no apparent source, as if the very molecules of the
\par air had become radiant. Perhaps it was a dangerous light to an XPER like
\par me, but this seemed the least of my troubles at the moment. The red air
\par shimmered, and though the darkness retreated across the entire building,
\par visibility hardly improved. This odd light cloaked as much as it
\par revealed, and I felt almost as if I were underwater, in a drowned world
\par ...  in water tinted with blood.
\par 
\par The flashlight beams were no longer effective. The light that they
\par produced seemed to be trapped behind the lenses, pooling there, rapidly
\par growing brighter and brighter, but unable to pass beyond the glass and
\par penetrate the red air.
\par 
\par - Here and there beyond the colonnades, dark forms began to quiver into
\par existence where there had been nothing but bare floor.
\par 
\par Machines of some kind. They looked real and yet not real, like objects
\par in a mirage.
\par 
\par Phantom machines at the moment ... but becoming real.
\par 
\par The vibrations were getting louder, and their tone was changing, growing
\par deeper, more ominous. A rumbling.
\par 
\par At the west end of the room, where there had been a troubling darkness,
\par there was now a crane atop the tracks, and hanging from the boom was a
\par massive ... something An engine, perhaps.
\par 
\par Though I could see the shape of the crane in the dire red light, as well
\par as the object that it was lifting, I could also see through them, as if
\par they were made of glass.
\par 
\par In the low rumbling that had grown out of the faint high-pitched ringing
\par in the steel, I recognized the sound of train wheels, steel wheels
\par revolving, grinding along steel tracks.
\par 
\par The crane would have steel wheels. Guide wheels above the track, up stop
\par wheels below to lock it to the rails.
\par 
\par " ...  out of the way, " Bobby said, and when I looked at him, he was
\par moving, as if in slo-mo, out from beneath the tracks, sliding around a
\par support post with his back pressed to it.
\par 
\par Roosevelt, as wide-eyed as the cat he held, was on the move.
\par 
\par The crane was more solid than it had been a moment ago, less
\par transparent. The big engine or whatever the crane was transporting hung
\par from the end of the boom, below the tracks, this payload was the size of
\par a compact car, and it was going to sweep through the space where we were
\par standing as the crane rolled past overhead.
\par 
\par And here it came, moving faster than such a massive piece of equipment
\par could possibly move, because it wasn't really physically coming toward
\par us, rather, I think that time was running backward to the moment when we
\par and this equipment would be occupying the same space at the same
\par instant. Hell, it didn't matter whether it was the crane moving or time
\par moving, because either way the effect would be the same, Two bodies
\par can't occupy the same place at the same time. If they tried, either
\par there would be a fierce release of nuclear energy in a blast heard at
\par least as far away as Cleveland, or one of the competing bodies me or the
\par car size object dangling from the crane would cease to exist.
\par 
\par Although I started to move, grabbing at Sasha to pull her with me, I
\par knew that we had no hope of getting out of harm's way in time.
\par 
\par As we reeled toward a moment in the past when the hangar had been filled
\par with functional equipment, just as the oncoming crane appeared about to
\par click into total reality ... the temperature suddenly dropped. The muddy
\par red light faded. The rumble of big steel wheels became a higher-pitched
\par ringing.
\par 
\par I expected the crane to retreat, to roll back toward the west end of the
\par building as it grew less substantial. When I looked up, however, it was
\par passing over us, a shimmering mirage of a crane, and the burden that it
\par carried, which was once more as transparent as glass, hit Sasha, then
\par hit me.
\par 
\par Hit isn't the correct word. I don't really know what it did to me.
\par 
\par The ghost crane swept past overhead, and the ghost payload enveloped me,
\par passed through me, and vanished on the other side of me. A cold wind
\par briefly shook me. But it didn't even stir my hair. It was entirely
\par internal, an icy breath whistling between my very cells, playing my
\par bones as if they were flutes. For an instant I thought it would blow
\par apart the bonds among the molecules of which I'm composed, dispersing me
\par as though I'd never been anything but dust.
\par 
\par The last of the red light vanished, and the pent-up beams sprang out of
\par the flashlights.
\par 
\par I was still alive, glued together both physically and mentally.
\par 
\par Sasha gasped, "Raw! "
\par 
\par "Killer, " I agreed.
\par 
\par Shaken, she leaned against one of the track-support columns.
\par 
\par Doogie had been standing no more than six feet behind me. He had watched
\par the ghost payload pass through us and vanish before it reached him.
\par 
\par "Time to go home? " he wondered only half jokingly.
\par 
\par "Need a glass of warm milk? "
\par 
\par "And six Prozac."
\par 
\par "Welcome to the haunted laboratory, " I said.
\par 
\par Joining us, Bobby said, "Whatever was going on in the egg room last
\par night, it's affecting the entire building now."
\par 
\par "Because of us? " I wondered.
\par 
\par "We didn't build the place, bro."
\par 
\par "But did we start it up last night, by energizing it? "
\par 
\par "I don't think, just because we used two flashlights, we're major
\par villains here." Roosevelt said, "We've got to move fast. The whole place
\par is .
\par 
\par ..
\par 
\par coming apart."
\par 
\par "Is that what Mungojerrie thinks? " Sasha asked.
\par 
\par In ordinary times, Roosevelt Frost could fix you with a solemn look that
\par any undertaker would envy. With one eye still full of dark amazement at
\par what he had just seen, and with the other eye swollen half shut and shot
\par through with blood, he made me think I'd better pack my bags and get
\par ready to meet that glory-bound train.
\par 
\par He said, "It's not what Mr. Mungojerrie thinks. It's what he knows.
\par 
\par Everything here is going to ... come apart. Soon."
\par 
\par "Then let's go down and find the kids and Orson." Roosevelt nodded.
\par 
\par "Let's go down.
\par 
\par " In the southwest corner of the hangar, the empty elevator shaft was as
\par it had been the previous night. But the stainless-steel jamb and
\par threshold at the stairhead doorway overlooked by salvagers were free of
\par grease and dust, which they had not been at any time since I first
\par explored this structure, nearly a year earlier. In the beam from Sasha's
\par flashlight, the first several steps were not covered in dust any longer,
\par and the dead pill bugs were gone.
\par 
\par Either a kindly gnome was preceding us, making the world more pleasing
\par to the eye, or the phenomena that Bobby and I had witnessed in the egg
\par room, one night before, were leaching beyond the walls of that
\par mysterious chamber. My money was not on the gnome.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie stood on the second step, peering down the concrete
\par stairwell, sniffing the air, ears pricked. Then he descended.
\par 
\par Sasha followed the cat.
\par 
\par The stairs were wide enough for two people to walk abreast, with room to
\par spare, and I stayed at Sasha's side, relieved to be sharing the point
\par position risk with her. Roosevelt followed, then Doogie with the Uzi.
\par 
\par Bobby was our tail gunner, keeping his back to one wall, crabbing
\par sideways down the stairs, to make sure no one crept in behind us.
\par 
\par Aside from being suspiciously clean, the first flight of steps was as it
\par had been on my previous visit. Bare concrete on all sides.
\par 
\par Evenly spaced core holes in the ceiling, which had once been the end
\par points of electrical chase ways. Painted iron pipe attached to one wall,
\par as a handrail. The air was cold, thick, redolent with the scent of lime
\par that leached from the concrete.
\par 
\par When we reached the landing and turned toward the second flight, I put
\par one hand on Sasha's arm, halting her, and to our feline scout I
\par whispered, "Whoa, cat." Mungojerrie halted four steps into the next
\par flight and, with an expectant expression, looked up at us.
\par 
\par The ceiling ahead was fitted with fluorescent fixtures. Because these
\par lights weren't switched on, they posed no danger to me.
\par 
\par But they hadn't been here before. They had been torn out and carted away
\par when Fort Wyvern shut down. In fact, this particular structure might
\par have been scoured to the bare concrete long before the base was closed,
\par when the Mystery Train ran off the tracks and scared its designers into
\par the realization that their project had been pursued with a truly loco
\par motive.
\par 
\par Time past and time present existed here simultaneously, and our future
\par was here, too, though we could not see it. All time, said the poet T. S.
\par 
\par Eliot, is eternally present, leading inexorably to an end that we
\par believe results from our actions but over which our control is mere
\par illusion.
\par 
\par At the moment, that bit of Eliot was too bleak for me. While I studied
\par the fluorescent lights, trying to imagine what might wait ahead of us, I
\par mentally recited the initial couplet of the first-ever poetry about
\par Winniethe-Pooh'a bear, however hard he tries / Grows tubby without
\par exercise' but A. A. Milne failed to drive Eliot from my mind.
\par 
\par We could no more retreat from the dangers below, from this eerie
\par confusion of past and present, than I could return to my childhood.
\par 
\par Nevertheless, how lovely it would be to crawl under the covers with my
\par own Pooh and Tigger, and pretend that the three of us would be friends,
\par still, when I was a hundred and Pooh was ninety-nine.
\par 
\par "Okay, " I told Mungojerrie, and we continued our descent.
\par 
\par When we reached the next landing, which was at the doorway to the first
\par of the three subterranean levels, Bobby whispered, "Bro." I looked back.
\par 
\par The fluorescent-light fixtures above the steps behind us had vanished.
\par 
\par The concrete ceiling featured only cored holes from which the fixtures
\par and the wiring had been stripped.
\par 
\par Time present was again more present than time past, at least for the
\par moment.
\par 
\par Scowling, Doogie murmured, "Give me Colombia anytime."
\par 
\par "Or Calcutta, " Sasha said.
\par 
\par On behalf of Mungojerrie, Roosevelt said, "Got to hurry. Going to be
\par blood if we don't hurry." Led by the fearless cat, we slowly descended
\par four more flights, to the third and final level beneath the hangar.
\par 
\par We found no additional indications of hobgoblins or bugaboos until we
\par reached the bottom of the stairwell. As Mungojerrie was about to lead us
\par into the outer corridor that encircles this entire oval-shaped level of
\par the building, the muddy red light that we had first seen on the ground
\par floor of the hangar pulsed beyond the doorway. It lasted only an instant
\par and then was replaced by darkness.
\par 
\par A general dismay rose from our little group, mostly expressed in
\par whispered expletives, and the cat hissed.
\par 
\par Other voices echoed from somewhere in this sub-subbasement, deep and
\par distorted. They were like the voices on a tape played at too slow a
\par speed.
\par 
\par Sasha and Roosevelt switched off their flashlights, leaving us in gloom.
\par 
\par Beyond the doorway, the bloody glow pulsed again, and then several more
\par times, like the revolving emergency beacon on a police cruiser.
\par 
\par Each pulse was longer than the one before it, until the darkness in the
\par hallway retreated entirely and the eerie luminosity finally held fast.
\par 
\par The voices were growing louder. They were still distorted, but almost
\par intelligible.
\par 
\par Curiously, not one scintilla of the malign red light in the corridor
\par penetrated to the space at the bottom of the stairs, where we huddled
\par together. The doorway appeared to be a portal between two realities,
\par utter darkness on this side, the red world on the other side. The line
\par of bloody light along the floor, at the threshold, was as sharp as a
\par knife edge.
\par 
\par As in the hangar upstairs, this radiance brightened the space It filled
\par but did little to illuminate what it touched, a murky light, alive with
\par phantom shapes and movement that could be detected only from the corner
\par of the eye, creating more mysteries than it resolved.
\par 
\par Three tall figures passed the doorway, darker maroon shapes in the red
\par light, perhaps men but possibly something even worse. As these
\par individuals crossed our line of sight, the voices grew louder and less
\par distorted, then faded as the figures moved out of view along the hall.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie padded through the doorway.
\par 
\par I expected him to flare as if sizzled by a death ray, leaving no trace
\par behind except the stink of scorched fur. Instead, he became a small
\par maroon shape, elongated, distorted, not easily identifiable as a cat
\par even though you could tell that he had four feet, a tail, and attitude.
\par 
\par The radiance in the hall began to pulse, now darker than blood, now
\par red-pink, and with each cycle from dark to bright, a throbbing
\par electronic hum swelled through the building, low and ominous.
\par 
\par When I touched the concrete wall, it was vibrating faintly, as the steel
\par post had vibrated in the hangar.
\par 
\par Abruptly, the corridor light flashed from red to white. The pulsing
\par stopped. We were looking through the doorway at a hall blazingly
\par revealed under fluorescent ceiling panels.
\par 
\par Instantaneously with the change of light, my ears popped, as if from a
\par sudden decrease in air pressure, and a warm draft gusted into the
\par stairwell, bringing with it a trace of the crisp ozone scent that
\par lingers on a rainy night in the wake of lightning.
\par 
\par Mr. Mungojerrie was in the corridor, no longer a maroon blur, gazing at
\par something off to the right. He was standing not on bare concrete but on
\par clean white ceramic floor tiles that had not been there before.
\par 
\par I peered up the dark stairs behind us, which appeared to be firmly
\par anchored in our time, in the present rather than the past. The building
\par was not phasing entirely in and out of the past, the phenomenon occurred
\par in a crazy-quilt pattern.
\par 
\par I was tempted to sprint up the steps as fast as I could, into the hangar
\par and from there into the night, but we were past the point of no return.
\par 
\par We had passed it when Jimmy Wing was kidnapped and Orson disappeared.
\par 
\par Friendship required us to venture off the map of the known world, into
\par areas that ancient cartographers couldn't have imagined when they had
\par inked those words Here there be monsters.
\par 
\par Squinting, I withdrew my sunglasses from an inside jacket pocket and
\par slipped them on. I had no choice but to risk letting the light bathe my
\par face and hands, but the glare was so bright that it would have stung
\par tears from my eyes.
\par 
\par When we moved cautiously into the corridor, I knew beyond doubt that we
\par had stepped into the past, into a time when this facility had not yet
\par been shut down, before it had been stripped of all evidence. I saw a
\par grease-pencil scheduling chart on one wall, a bulletin board, and two
\par wheeled carts holding peculiar instruments.
\par 
\par The throbbing hum had not fallen silent with the disappearance of the
\par red light. I suspected that it was the sound of the egg room in full
\par operation. It seemed to pierce my eardrums, penetrate my skull, and
\par vibrate directly against the surface of my brain.
\par 
\par Metal doors had appeared on the previously doorless rooms that opened
\par off the inner wall of the curving hallway, and the nearest of these was
\par wide open. In the small chamber beyond, two swivel chairs were
\par unoccupied in front of a complex control board, not unlike the mixing
\par board that any radio-station engineer uses. On one side of this board
\par stood a can of Pepsi and a bag of potato chips, proving that even the
\par architects of doomsday enjoy a snack and a refreshing beverage now and
\par then.
\par 
\par To the right of the stairs, sixty or eighty feet farther along the
\par corridor, three men were moving away from us, unaware that we were
\par behind them. One wore jeans and a white shirt, sleeves rolled up. The
\par second was in a dark suit, and the third wore khakis and a white lab
\par coat. They were walking close together, heads bent, as if conferring,
\par but I couldn't hear their voices over the pulsing electronic hum.
\par 
\par These were surely the three maroon figures that had passed the stairwell
\par in the murky red light, so blurry and distorted that I had not been able
\par to tell whether they were, in fact, human.
\par 
\par I glanced to the left, worrying that someone else might appear and,
\par seeing us, raise an alarm. Currently, however, that length of the
\par corridor was deserted.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie was still watching the departing trio, apparently unwilling
\par to lead us farther until they had rounded the curve in the long
\par racetrack-shaped corridor or entered one of the rooms. This straightaway
\par was five hundred feet long, from curve to curve, and at least a hundred
\par fifty feet remained ahead of the three men before they would turn out of
\par sight.
\par 
\par We were dangerously exposed. We needed to retreat until the Mystery
\par Train staffers were gone. Besides, I was already nervous about the
\par quantity of light that was hammering my face.
\par 
\par I caught Sasha's attention and gestured toward the stairwell.
\par 
\par Her eyes widened.
\par 
\par When I followed her gaze, I saw that a door blocked access to the
\par stairs. From inside the stairwell, there had been no door, we had seen
\par straight through to the redand then to the fluorescent-drenched hallway.
\par 
\par We had passed directly from there to here without obstruction. From this
\par side, however, the barrier existed.
\par 
\par I went quickly to the door, yanked it open, and almost crossed the
\par threshold. Fortunately, I hesitated when I sensed a wrongness about the
\par darkness beyond.
\par 
\par Sliding my sunglasses down my nose, peering over the frames, I expected
\par concrete-walled gloom with steps leading up. Instead, before me was a
\par clear night sky, necklaces of stars, and a pendant moon. This sky scape
\par was the only thing out there where the stairs had been, as though this
\par door now opened high above the earth's atmosphere, in interplanetary
\par space, a long way from the nearest doughnut shop. Or perhaps it opened
\par into a time when the earth no longer existed. No floor lay beyond the
\par threshold, nothing but empty space jeweled with more stars, a cold and
\par infinite drop from the bright corridor in which I stood.
\par 
\par Sharsy.
\par 
\par I closed the door. I gripped the shotgun fiercely in both hands, not
\par because I expected to use it but because it was real, solid and
\par unyielding, an anchor in this sea of strangeness.
\par 
\par Sasha was now immediately behind me.
\par 
\par When I turned to face her, I could tell that she had seen the same
\par celestial panorama that had rocked me. Her gray eyes were as clear as
\par ever, but they were darker than before.
\par 
\par Doogie hadn't glimpsed the impossible sight, because he was holding the
\par Uzi at the ready and watching the three departing men.
\par 
\par Frowning, standing with his fists balled tightly at his sides, Roosevelt
\par studied the cat.
\par 
\par From his position, Bobby couldn't have seen through the doorway, either,
\par but he knew something was wrong. His face was as solemn as that of a
\par rabbit reading a cookbook recipe for hare soup.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie was the only one of us who didn't appear to be about to blow
\par out snarled springs like an overwound cuckoo clock.
\par 
\par Trying not to dwell on what I'd seen beyond the stairwell door, I
\par wondered how the cat could find Orson and the kids if they were in a
\par present-time place while we were stuck here in the past. But then I
\par figured that if we could pass from one time period to another, be caught
\par up in the time shifts taking place around us, so could my four-footed
\par brother and the children.
\par 
\par Anyway, from every indication, we hadn't actually traveled back in time.
\par 
\par Rather, the past and present and perhaps the future were occurring
\par simultaneously, weirdly pressed together by whatever force or force
\par field the engines of the egg room had generated. And perhaps it was not
\par only one night from the past that was bleeding into our present time,
\par maybe we were experiencing moments from different days and nights when
\par the egg room had been in operation.
\par 
\par The three men were still walking away from us. Ambling. Taking their
\par sweet time.
\par 
\par The rhythmic swell and recession of the electronic sound began to have
\par an odd psychological effect. A mild vertigo overcame me, and the
\par corridor this entire subterranean floor seemed to be turning like a
\par carousel.
\par 
\par My grip on the shotgun was too fierce. Unwittingly, I was exerting
\par dangerous pressure on the trigger. I hooked my finger around the trigger
\par guard instead.
\par 
\par I had a headache. It wasn't a result of being knocked around by Father
\par Tom at the Stanwyk house. I was sustaining a brain bruise from pondering
\par time paradoxes, from trying to make sense of what was happening. This
\par required a talent for mathematics and theoretical physics, but although
\par I can balance my checkbook, I haven't inherited my mother's love of math
\par and science. In the most general sense, I understand the theory of
\par leverage that explains the function of a bottle opener, why gravity
\par makes it a bad idea to leap off a high building, and why running
\par headlong into a brick wall will have little effect on the bricks.
\par 
\par Otherwise, I trust the cosmos to run itself efficiently without my
\par having to understand it, which is also pretty much my attitude toward
\par electric razors, wristwatches, bread-baking machines, and other
\par mechanical devices.
\par 
\par The only way to deal with these events was to treat them as supernatural
\par occurrences, accept them as you might accept poltergeist
\par phenomenalevitating chairs, hurtling knickknacks, doors slammed by
\par invisible presencesor the spectral appearance of a moldering and
\par semitransparent corpse glimpsed on a midnight stroll in a graveyard.
\par 
\par Thinking too much about time-bending force fields and time paradoxes and
\par reality shifts, straining to grasp the logic of it, would only make me
\par crazy, when what I desperately needed to be was cool. Calm.
\par 
\par Therefore, this structure was just a haunted house. Our best hope of
\par finding our way through its many rooms and back to the safer side of the
\par spook zone was to remember that ghosts can't hurt you unless you
\par yourself give them the power to harm you, unless you feed their
\par substance with your fear. This is the classic theory, well known to
\par spirit channelers and ghost busters all over the world. I think I read
\par it in a comic book.
\par 
\par The three ghosts were just fifty feet from the turn that would finally
\par take them out of sight, around one arc of the long racetrack corridor.
\par 
\par They stopped. Stood with their heads together. Talking above the
\par throbbing noise that flooded the building.
\par 
\par The specter in the jeans and white shirt turned to a door and opened it.
\par 
\par Then the other two wraithsthe one in the suit, the one in the khakis and
\par lab coat continued toward the end of the hall.
\par 
\par As he opened the door, the first spook must have registered us in his
\par peripheral vision. He swung toward us, as though he had seen ghosts.
\par 
\par He took a couple steps in our direction but then halted, maybe because
\par he noticed our guns.
\par 
\par He shouted. His words weren't clear, but he wasn't suggesting a tour and
\par complimentary lunch in the cafeteria.
\par 
\par Anyway, he wasn't calling to us but to the pair of phantasms strolling
\par toward the turn in the corridor. They spun around and gaped at us as
\par though they were stunned sailors gazing at the ghost ship Marie Celeste
\par gliding silently past in a light fog.
\par 
\par We had spooked them as much as they had spooked us.
\par 
\par The one in the suit evidently wasn't merely a well-tailored scientist or
\par a project bureaucrat, and certainly not a Jehovah's Witness pushing
\par Watchtower magazine in a tough territory, because he drew a handgun from
\par a holster under his jacket.
\par 
\par 
\par I reminded myself that ghosts couldn't hurt us unless we gave them power
\par by feeding them with our fear and then I wondered if this rule applied to
\par haunts packing heat. I wished that I could remember the name of the
\par comic book in which I'd chanced upon this wisdom, because if the
\par information had been in Tales from the Crypt, it might be true, but if
\par it was from an issue of Donald Duck adventures, then I was screwed.
\par 
\par Instead of opening fire on us, the armed apparition pushed past his two
\par phantom friends and disappeared through the door that the one in jeans
\par had opened.
\par 
\par He was probably running for a telephone, to call security. We were about
\par to be crunched, swept up, bagged, and put out for garbage collection.
\par 
\par Around us, the corridor rippled, and things changed.
\par 
\par The white ceramic floor tiles quickly faded beneath us, leaving us
\par standing on bare concrete, although I felt nothing move underfoot.
\par 
\par Here and there along the hall, patches of tile remained, the edges not
\par sharply defined, feathering into the concrete, as though these were
\par widely scattered puddles of time past that hadn't yet evaporated from
\par the floor of time present.
\par 
\par The rooms opening along the inner wall of the corridor no longer had
\par doors.
\par 
\par Shadows swarmed as the fluorescent panels began to disappear from the
\par ceiling. Yet, in an irregular pattern, a few fixtures remained,
\par brightening widely separated sections of the corridor.
\par 
\par I took off my sunglasses and pocketed them as the grease-pencil
\par scheduling chart dissolved from the wall. The bulletin board still hung
\par unchanged.
\par 
\par One of the wheeled carts faded away before my eyes. The other cart
\par remained, though a few of the odd instruments racked on it were becoming
\par transparent.
\par 
\par The ghost in blue jeans and the ghost in a lab coat really looked like
\par spirits now, mere ectoplasmic entities that had congealed out of a white
\par mist. They started hesitantly toward us, then began to run, perhaps
\par because we were fading from their view just as they were disappearing
\par from ours. They covered only half the ground between us before they
\par vanished.
\par 
\par The suit with the gun returned to the hallway from the office, having
\par raved to security about Vikings in jumpsuits and invading cats, but he
\par was now the weakest of revenants, a shimmering wraith. As he raised his
\par weapon, he departed time present without a trace.
\par 
\par The throbbing electronic noise was less than half as loud as it had been
\par at full power, but like some of the lights and floor tiles, it didn't
\par fade altogether.
\par 
\par None of us was relieved by this reprieve. Instead, as the past receded
\par into the past where it belonged, we were seized by a greater urgency.
\par 
\par Mr. Mungojerrie was dead right, This place was coming apart. The
\par residual effect of the Mystery Train was gathering power, feeding on
\par itself, extending beyond the egg room, rapidly seeping throughout the
\par structure. The ultimate effect was unknowable but sure to be
\par catastrophic.
\par 
\par I could hear a clock ticking. This wasn't the timepiece in Captain
\par Hook's omnivorous crocodile, either, but the reliable clock of instinct
\par telling me that we were on a short countdown to destruction.
\par 
\par With the ghosts gone, the cat sprang into action, padding to the nearby
\par elevator shaft.
\par 
\par "Down, " Roosevelt translated. "Mungojerrie says we have to go farther
\par down."
\par 
\par "There's nothing below this floor, " I said, as we all gathered at the
\par elevator. "We're on the lowest level." The cat fixed its luminous green
\par eyes on me, and Roosevelt said, "No, there're three levels beneath this
\par one. They required an even higher security clearance than these floors,
\par so they were concealed." During my explorations, I'd never thought to
\par look into the shaft to see if it served hidden realms that couldn't be
\par accessed by the stairs.
\par 
\par 
\par Roosevelt said, "The lower levels can be approached ... from some other
\par building on the base, through a tunnel. Or by this elevator.
\par 
\par The steps don't go down as far." This development posed a problem,
\par because the elevator shaft wasn't empty. We couldn't simply climb down
\par the service ladder and go where Mungojerrie directed. Like the scattered
\par floor tiles, like the few remaining fluorescent panels, and like the
\par softer but still ominous electronic hum that throbbed through the
\par building, the past maintained tenacious control of the elevator. A pair
\par of stainless-steel sliding doors covered the shaft, and most likely a
\par cab waited beyond them.
\par 
\par "We'll be quashed if we hang around here, " Bobby predicted, reaching
\par out to press the elevator call button.
\par 
\par "Wait! " I cautioned, stopping his hand before he could do the deed.
\par 
\par Doogie said, "Bobster's right, Chris. Sometimes fortune favors the
\par foolhardy." I shook my head. "What if we get in the elevator, and when
\par the doors close, the damn thing just totally vanishes under us like the
\par floor tiles did? "
\par 
\par "Then we fall to the bottom of the shaft, " Sasha guessed, but that
\par prospect didn't seem to give her pause.
\par 
\par "Some of us might break our ankles, " Doogie predicted. "Not all of us,
\par necessarily. It's probably only about forty feet or so, a mean drop but
\par survivable." Bobby, a Road Runner cartoon freak, said, "Bro, we could
\par have ourselves a full-on Wile E. Coyote moment."
\par 
\par "We've got to move, " Roosevelt warned, and Mungojerrie scratched
\par impatiently at the stainless-steel doors, which remained stubbornly
\par solid.
\par 
\par Bobby pressed the call button.
\par 
\par The elevator whined toward us. With the oscillating electronic hum
\par continuing to pulse through the building, I couldn't determine whether
\par the cab was descending or ascending.
\par 
\par The corridor rippled.
\par 
\par The floor tiles began to reappear under my feet.
\par 
\par The elevator doors slowly, slowly slid open.
\par 
\par Fluorescent panels reappeared on the corridor ceiling, and I narrowed my
\par eyes against the glare.
\par 
\par The cab was full of muddy red light, which probably meant the interior
\par of the shaft occupied a different point in time from the place or places
\par that we occupied. There were passengers, a lot of them.
\par 
\par We stepped back from the door, expecting the crowd in the elevator to
\par give us trouble.
\par 
\par In the corridor, the throbbing sound grew louder.
\par 
\par I could discern several blurry, distorted, maroon figures inside the
\par cab, but I couldn't see who or what they were.
\par 
\par A gunshot cracked, then another.
\par 
\par We were under fire not from the elevator but from the end of the
\par corridor where, earlier, the sonofabitch in the suit had drawn down on
\par us with a handgun.
\par 
\par Bobby took a bullet. Something peppered my face. Bobby rocked backward,
\par the shotgun flying out of his hands. He was still dropping as if in slow
\par motion when I realized that hot blood had sprayed my face. Bobby's
\par blood. Jesus, God. Even as I was swiveling toward the source of the
\par gunfire, I discharged my shotgun and immediately chambered another
\par shell.
\par 
\par Instead of the guy in the dark suit, there were two guards we had never
\par seen before. Uniforms, but not army. No service that I recognized.
\par 
\par Project cops. Mystery Train security. Too far away to be anything other
\par than annoyed by my shotgun fire.
\par 
\par Another piece of the past had solidified around us, and Doogie triggered
\par the Uzi as Bobby hit the floor and bounced. The machine pistol settled
\par the dispute totally and abruptly.
\par 
\par Sickened, I looked away from the two dead guards.
\par 
\par The elevator doors had closed before anyone stepped out of the crowded
\par cab.
\par 
\par The gunfire was sure to draw more security.
\par 
\par Bobby lay on his back. Blood was spattered on the white ceramic tile
\par around him. Too much blood.
\par 
\par Sasha stooped at his left side. I knelt at his right.
\par 
\par She said, "Hit once."
\par 
\par "Got biffed, " Bobby said, biffed meaning smacked hard by a wave.
\par 
\par "Hang in there, " I said.
\par 
\par "Totally thrashed, " he said, and coughed.
\par 
\par "Not totally, " I insisted, more terrified than I had ever been before,
\par but determined not to show it.
\par 
\par Sasha unbuttoned the Hawaiian shirt, hooked her fingers in the bullet
\par punctured material of Bobby's black pullover, and ripped the sweater to
\par expose the wound in his left shoulder. The hole was too low in the
\par shoulder, too far to the right, something you would have to call a chest
\par wound, not a shoulder wound, if you were going to be honest, which I was
\par by God not going to be.
\par 
\par "Shoulder wound, " I told him.
\par 
\par The throbbing electronic sound dwindled, the ceramic tiles faded under
\par Bobby, taking the spatters of blood with them, and the overhead
\par fluorescent panels began to vanish, though not all of them. Time past
\par was surrendering to time present again, entering another cycle, which
\par might give us a minute or two before more uniformed abbs with guns
\par showed up.
\par 
\par Rich blood, so deeply red that it was almost black, welled out of the
\par wound. We could do nothing to stop this type of bleeding. Neither a
\par tourniquet nor a compress would help. Neither would hydrogen peroxide,
\par rubbing alcohol, Neosporin, and gauze bandages, even if we'd had any of
\par those things.
\par 
\par "Woofy, " he said.
\par 
\par The pain had washed away his perpetual tan, leaving him not white but
\par jaundice-yellow. He looked bad.
\par 
\par The hallway had fewer lingering fluorescents and the oscillating hum was
\par quieter than during the previous cycle.
\par 
\par I was afraid the past was going to fade entirely out of the present,
\par leaving us with an empty elevator shaft. I wasn't confident that we
\par could carry Bobby up six flights of stairs without causing him further
\par damage.
\par 
\par Getting to my feet, I glanced at Doogie, whose solemn expression
\par infuriated me, because Bobby was going to be all right, damn it.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie scratched at the elevator doors again.
\par 
\par Roosevelt was either doing as the cat wished or following my own track
\par of reasoning, because he repeatedly jammed his thumb against the call
\par button.
\par 
\par The indicator board above the doors showed only four floorsg, B-1, B-2,
\par and B-3though we knew there were seven. The cab was supposedly up at the
\par first level, G for ground, which was the hangar above this subterranean
\par facility.
\par 
\par "Come on, come on, " Roosevelt muttered.
\par 
\par Bobby tried to lift his head to reconnoiter, but Sasha gently pressed
\par him back, with one hand on his forehead.
\par 
\par He might go into shock. Ideally, his head should be lower than the rest
\par of him, but we didn't have any means to elevate his legs and lower body.
\par 
\par Shock kills as surely as bullets. His lips were slightly blue.
\par 
\par Wasn't that an early symptom of shock?
\par 
\par The cab was at B-1, the first basement under the hangar floor.
\par 
\par We were on B-3.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie was staring at me as if to say, I warned you.
\par 
\par "Cats don't know shit, " I told him angrily.
\par 
\par Surprisingly, Bobby laughed. It was a weak laugh, but it was a laugh
\par nonetheless. Could he be dying or even slipping into shock if he were
\par laughing? Maybe everything would be okay.
\par 
\par Just call me Pollyanna Huckleberry Holly Go lightly Snow.
\par 
\par The elevator reached B-2, one floor above us.
\par 
\par I raised the shotgun, in case passengers were in the elevator, as there
\par evidently had been before.
\par 
\par Already, the pulsing hum of the egg room engines or whatever infernal
\par machines made the noise grew louder.
\par 
\par "Better hurry, " Doogie said, because if the wrong moment of the past
\par flowed into the present again, it might wash some angry, armed men with
\par It.
\par 
\par The elevator whined to a stop at B-3, our floor. The corridor around me
\par grew steadily brighter. As the elevator doors began to slide open, I
\par expected to see the murky red light in the cab, and then I was suddenly
\par afraid I'd be confronted with that impossible vista of stars and cold
\par black space I'd seen beyond the stairwell door. The elevator cab was
\par just an elevator cab. Empty. "Move! " Doogie urged.
\par 
\par Roosevelt and Sasha already had Bobby on his feet, virtually carrying
\par him between them, while trying to minimize the strain on his left
\par shoulder.
\par 
\par I held the elevator door, and as they took Bobby past me, his face
\par twisted with agony. If he had been about to scream with pain, he
\par repressed it and instead said, "Carpe cerevisi."
\par 
\par "Beer later, " I promised.
\par 
\par "Beer now, party boy, " he wheezed.
\par 
\par Slipping off his backpack, Doogie followed us into the big elevator,
\par which could probably carry fifteen passengers. The cab briefly swayed
\par and jiggled as it adjusted to his weight, and we all tried not to step
\par on Mungojerrie.
\par 
\par "Up and out, " I said.
\par 
\par "Down, " Bobby disagreed.
\par 
\par The control panel had no buttons for the three floors that were
\par supposedly below us. An unlabeled slot for a magnetic card indicated how
\par someone with the proper security clearance could reprogram the existing
\par control buttons to gain access to lower realms. We didn't have a card.
\par 
\par "There's no way to get farther down, " I said.
\par 
\par "Always a way, " Doogie demurred, rummaging in his backpack.
\par 
\par The corridor was bright. The loud throbbing sound grew louder.
\par 
\par The elevator doors rolled shut, but we didn't go anywhere, and when I
\par reached toward the G button, Doogie slapped my hand as though I were a
\par child reaching for a cookie without having asked permission.
\par 
\par "This is nuts, " I said.
\par 
\par "Radically, " Bobby agreed.
\par 
\par He sagged against the back wall of the cab, supported by Sasha and
\par Roosevelt. He was gray now.
\par 
\par I said, "Bro, you don't have to be a hero."
\par 
\par "Yeah, I do."
\par 
\par "No, you don't! "
\par 
\par "Kahuna."
\par 
\par "What? "
\par 
\par "If I'm Kahuna, I can't be a chickenshit."
\par 
\par "You aren't Kahuna."
\par 
\par "King of the surf, " he said.
\par 
\par When he coughed this time, blood bubbled on his lips.
\par 
\par Desperate, I said to Sasha, "We're getting him up and out of here, right
\par now." A crack and then a creak sounded behind me. Doogie had picked the
\par lock on the control panel and had swung the cover aside, exposing the
\par wiring.
\par 
\par "What floor? " he asked.
\par 
\par "Mungojerrie says all the way down, " Roosevelt advised.
\par 
\par I protested, "Orson, the kids we don't even know if they're alive!"
\par 
\par "They're alive, " Roosevelt said.
\par 
\par "We don't know."
\par 
\par "We know." I turned to Sasha for support. "Are you as crazy as the rest
\par of them? " She said nothing, but the pity in her eyes was so terrible
\par that I had to look away from her. She knew that Bobby and I were as
\par tight as friends can get, that we were brothers in all but blood, as
\par close as identical twins. She knew that a part of me was going to die
\par when Bobby died, leaving an emptiness even she would never fill. She saw
\par my vulnerability, she would have done anything, anything, anything, if
\par she could have saved Bobby, but she could do nothing. In her
\par helplessness, I saw my own helplessness, which I couldn't bear to
\par contemplate.
\par 
\par I lowered my gaze to the cat. For an instant I wanted to stomp
\par Mungojerrie, crush the life out of him, as if he were responsible for
\par our being here. I had asked Sasha if she was as crazy as the rest of
\par them, in truth, I was the one who was kooking out, shattered by even the
\par prospect of losing Bobby.
\par 
\par With a lurch, the elevator started down.
\par 
\par Bobby groaned.
\par 
\par I said, "Please, Bobby."
\par 
\par "Kahuna, " he reminded me.
\par 
\par "You're not Kahuna, you kak." His voice was thin, shaky, "Pia thinks I
\par am."
\par 
\par "Pia's a dithering airhead."
\par 
\par "Don't ths my woman, bro." We stopped on the seventh and final level.
\par 
\par The doors opened on darkness. But it wasn't that view of starry space,
\par merely a lightless alcove.
\par 
\par With Roosevelt's flashlight, I led the others out of the elevator, into
\par a cold, dank vestibule.
\par 
\par Down here, the oscillating electronic hum was muffled, almost inaudible.
\par 
\par We put Bobby on his back, to the left of the elevator doors. We laid him
\par on my jacket and Sasha's, to insulate him from the concrete as much as
\par possible.
\par 
\par Sasha fiddled in the control wiring and temporarily disabled the
\par elevator, so it would be here when we returned. Of course, if time past
\par phased completely out of time present, taking the elevator with it, we'd
\par have to climb.
\par 
\par Bobby couldn't climb. And we could never carry him up a service ladder,
\par not in his condition.
\par 
\par Don't think about it. Ghosts can't hurt you if you don't fear them, and
\par bad things won't happen if you don't think them.
\par 
\par I was grasping at all the defenses of childhood.
\par 
\par Doogie emptied stuff out of the backpack. With Roosevelt's help, he
\par folded the empty bag and wedged it under Bobby's hips, elevating his
\par lower body at least slightly, though not enough.
\par 
\par When I put the flashlight at Bobby's side, he said, "I'll probably be
\par way safer in the dark, bro. Light might draw attention."
\par 
\par "Switch it off if you hear anything."
\par 
\par "You switch it off before you leave, " he said. "I can't." When I took
\par his hand, I was shocked at the weakness of his grip.
\par 
\par He literally didn't have the strength to handle the flashlight.
\par 
\par There was no point leaving him a gun for self-defense.
\par 
\par I didn't know what to say to him. I had never been seriously speechless
\par with Bobby before. I seemed to have a mouth full of dirt, as if I were
\par already lying in my own grave.
\par 
\par "Here, " Doogie said, handing me a pair of oversize goggles and an
\par unusual flashlight. "Infrared goggles. Israeli military surplus.
\par 
\par Infrared flashlight."
\par 
\par "What for? "
\par 
\par "So they won't see us coming."
\par 
\par "Who? "
\par 
\par "Whoever's got the kids and Orson." I stared at Doogie Sassman as if he
\par were a Viking from Mars.
\par 
\par Bobby's teeth chattered when he said, "The dude's a ballroom dancer,
\par too." A rumbling noise rose, like a freight train passing overhead, and
\par the floor shook under us. Gradually, the sound diminished, and the
\par shaking stopped.
\par 
\par "Better go, " Sasha said.
\par 
\par She, Doogie, and Roosevelt were wearing goggles, with the lenses against
\par their foreheads rather than over their eyes.
\par 
\par Bobby had closed his eyes.
\par 
\par Frightened, I said, "Hey."
\par 
\par "Hey, " he replied, looking at me again.
\par 
\par "Listen, if you die on me, " I said, "then you're king of the assholes.
\par 
\par " He smiled. "Don't worry. Wouldn't want to take the title away from
\par you, bro."
\par 
\par "We'll be back fast."
\par 
\par "I'll be here, " he assured me, but his voice was a whisper.
\par 
\par "You promised me a beer." His eyes were inexpressibly kind.
\par 
\par There was so much to be said. None of it could be spoken. Even if we'd
\par had plenty of time, none of what was in my heart could have been spoken.
\par 
\par I switched off his flashlight but left it at his side.
\par 
\par Darkness was usually my friend, but I hated this hungry, cold, demanding
\par blackness.
\par 
\par The fancy eye wear featured a Velcro strap. My hands were so unsteady
\par that I needed a moment to adjust the goggles to my head, and then I
\par lowered the lenses over my eyes.
\par 
\par Doogie, Roosevelt, and Sasha had switched on their infrared flashlights.
\par 
\par Without the goggles, I had not been able to see that wavelength of
\par light, but now the vestibule was revealed in various shades and
\par intensities of green.
\par 
\par I clicked the button on my flashlight and played the beam over Bobby
\par Halloway.
\par 
\par Supine on the floor, arms at his sides, glowing green, he might already
\par have been a ghost.
\par 
\par "Your shirt really pops in this weird light, " I said.
\par 
\par "Yeah? "
\par 
\par "Bitchin'." The freight-train rumble rose again, louder than before. The
\par steel and concrete bones of the structure were grinding together.
\par 
\par The cat, with no need for goggles, led us out of the vestibule.
\par 
\par I followed Roosevelt, Doogie, and Sasha, who might have been three green
\par spirits haunting a catacomb.
\par 
\par The hardest thing I'd ever had to do in my life harder than attending my
\par mother's funeral, harder than sitting by my father's deathbed was to
\par leave Bobby alone.
\par 
\par From the vestibule, a sloping tunnel, ten feet in diameter, descended
\par fifty feet. After reaching the bottom, we followed an entirely
\par horizontal but wildly serpentine course, and with every turn, the
\par architecture and engineering progressed from curious to strange to
\par markedly alien.
\par 
\par The first passageway featured concrete walls, but every tunnel
\par thereafter, while formed of reinforced concrete, appeared to be lined
\par with metal. Even in the inadequately revelatory infrared light, I
\par detected sufficient differences in the appearances of these curved
\par surfaces to be confident that the type of metal changed from time to
\par time. If I'd lifted the goggles and switched on an ordinary UV
\par flashlight, I suspect that I would have seen steel, copper, brass, and
\par an array of alloys that I couldn't have identified without a degree in
\par metallurgy.
\par 
\par The largest of these metal-lined tunnels were about eight feet in
\par diameter, but we traveled some that were half that size, through which
\par we had to crawl. In the walls of these cylindrical causeways were
\par uncounted smaller openings, some were two or three inches in diameter,
\par others two feet, probing them with the infrared flashlight revealed
\par nothing more than could have been seen by peering into a drainpipe or a
\par gun barrel.
\par 
\par We might have been inside an enormous, incomprehensibly elaborate set of
\par refrigeration coils, or exploring the plumbing that served all the
\par palaces of all the gods of ancient myths.
\par 
\par Unquestionably, something had once surged through this colossal maze,
\par liquids or gases. We passed numerous tributaries, in which were anchored
\par turbines with blades that must have been driven by whatever had been
\par pumped through this system. At many junctions, various types of gigantic
\par electrically controlled valves stood ready to cut off, restrict, or
\par redirect the flow through these Stygian channels.
\par 
\par All the valves were in open or half-open positions, but as we passed
\par each block point, I worried that if they snapped shut, we would be
\par imprisoned down here.
\par 
\par These tubes had not been stripped to the concrete, as had all the rooms
\par and corridors in the first three floors under the hangar.
\par 
\par Consequently, as there were no apparent lighting sources, I assumed that
\par workmen servicing the system had always carried lamps.
\par 
\par Intermittently, a draft stirred along these strange highways, but for
\par the most part the atmosphere was as still as that under a bell jar.
\par 
\par Twice, I caught a whiff of smoldering charcoal, but otherwise the air
\par carried only a faint astringent scent similar to iodine, though not
\par iodine, which eventually left a bitter taste and caused a mild burning
\par sensation in my nasal membranes.
\par 
\par The trainlike rumble came and went, lasting longer with each occurrence,
\par and the silences between these assaults of sound grew shorter.
\par 
\par With every eruption, I expected the ceiling to collapse, burying us as
\par irrevocably as coal miners are occasionally entombed in veins of
\par anthracite. Another and utterly chilling sound spiraled along the tunnel
\par walls from time to time, a shrill keening that must have had its source
\par in some machinery spinning itself to destruction, or else crawling these
\par byways was a creature that I had never heard before and that I hoped
\par never to encounter.
\par 
\par I fought off attacks of claustrophobia, then induced new bouts by
\par wondering if I were in the sixth circle of Hell or the seventh. But
\par wasn't the seventh the Lake of Boiling Blood? Or did that come after the
\par Fiery Desert? Neither the blood lake nor the great burning sands would
\par be green, and everything here was relentlessly green. Anyway, Lower Hell
\par couldn't be far away, just past the luncheonette that serves only
\par spiders and scorpions, around the corner from the men's shop that offers
\par bramble shirts and shoes with razor-blade in-cushions. Or maybe this
\par wasn't Hell at all, maybe it was just the belly of the whale.
\par 
\par I think I went a little nuts and then recovered before we reached our
\par destination.
\par 
\par For sure, I lost all track of time, and I was convinced that we were
\par ruled by the clock of Purgatory, on which the minute and hour hands turn
\par without ever advancing. Days later, Sasha would claim we had spent less
\par than fifteen minutes in those tunnels. She never lies.
\par 
\par Yet, when eventually we prepared to return the way we had come, if she
\par had tried to convince me that retracing our route would require only a
\par quarter of an hour, I would have assumed we were in whatever circle of
\par Hell was reserved for pathological liars.
\par 
\par The final passage which would lead us to the kidnappers and their
\par hostages was one of the larger tunnels, and when we entered it, we
\par discovered that the abbs we were seeking or at least one of them,
\par anyway had posted a neatly arranged gallery of perverse achievement.
\par 
\par Newspaper articles and a few other items were taped to the curved metal
\par wall, the text was not easily readable by the infrared flashlights, but
\par the headlines, subheads, and some of the pictures were clear enough.
\par 
\par We played our lights over the various items, quickly absorbing the
\par exhibition, trying to understand why it was here.
\par 
\par The first clipping was from the Moonlight Bay Gazette, dated July 18,
\par forty-four years earlier. Bobby's grandfather had been the publisher in
\par those days, before the paper had passed to Bobby's mother and father.
\par 
\par The headline screamed, BOY ADMITS TO KILLING PARENTS, and the subhead
\par read, 12-YEAR-OLD CAN T BE TRIED FOR MURDER.
\par 
\par The headlines on several additional clippings from the Gazette, dating
\par to that same summer and the following autumn, described the aftermath of
\par these murders, which apparently had been committed by a disturbed boy
\par named John Joseph Randolph. Ultimately, he had been remanded to a
\par juvenile detention center in the northern part of the state, until he
\par achieved the age of eighteen, by which time he would have been
\par psychologically evaluated, if declared criminally insane, he would
\par subsequently be hospitalized for long-term psychiatric care.
\par 
\par The three pictures of young John showed a towheaded boy, tall for his
\par age, with pale eyes, slim but athletic-looking. In all the shots, which
\par appeared to be family photographs taken prior to the homicides, he had a
\par winning smile.
\par 
\par That July night, he'd shot his father in the head. Five times.
\par 
\par Then he hacked his mother to death with an ax.
\par 
\par The name John Joseph Randolph was unnervingly familiar, though I
\par couldn't think why.
\par 
\par On one of the clippings, I spotted a subhead that referred to the
\par arresting police officer, Deputy Louis Wing. Lilly's father-in-law.
\par 
\par Jimmy's grandfather. Lying now in a coma in a nursing home, after
\par suffering three strokes.
\par 
\par Louis Wing will be my servant in Hell.
\par 
\par Evidently, Jimmy had not been abducted because his blood sample, given
\par at preschool, had revealed an immune factor protecting him from the
\par retrovirus. Instead, old-fashioned vengeance was the motivation.
\par 
\par "Here, " Sasha said. She pointed to another clipping, where the subhead
\par revealed the name of the presiding judge, George Dulcinea.
\par 
\par Great grandfather to Wendy. Fifteen years in the grave.
\par 
\par George Dulcinea will be my servant in Hell No doubt, Del Stuart or
\par someone in his family had crossed John Joseph Randolph somewhere,
\par sometime. If we knew the connection, it would expose a motive for
\par vengeance.
\par 
\par John Joseph Randolph. The strangely familiar name continued to worry me.
\par 
\par As I followed Sasha and the others along the gallery, I seined my memory
\par but came up with an empty net.
\par 
\par The next clipping dated back thirty-seven years and dealt with the
\par murder-dismemberment of a sixteen-year-old girl in a San Francisco
\par suburb. Police, according to the subhead, had no leads.
\par 
\par The newspaper had published the dead girl's high-school photo.
\par 
\par Across her face, someone had used a felt-tip marker to print four
\par slashing letters, MINE.
\par 
\par It occurred to me that if he hadn't been diagnosed criminally insane
\par prior to turning eighteen, John Joseph Randolph might have been released
\par from juvenile detention that year with a handshake, an expunged record,
\par pocket money, and a prayer.
\par 
\par The following thirty-five years were chronicled by thirty-five clippings
\par concerning thirty-five apparently unsolved, savage murders.
\par 
\par Two-thirds had been committed in California, from San Diego and La Jolla
\par to Sacramento and Yucaipa, the rest were spread over Arizona, Nevada,
\par and Colorado.
\par 
\par The victims each photo defaced with the word MINE PRESENTED no easily
\par discernible pattern. Men and women. Young and old. Black, white, Asian,
\par Hispanic. Straight and gay. If all these were the work of the same man,
\par and if that man was John Joseph Randolph, then our Johnny was an
\par equal-opportunity killer.
\par 
\par From a cursory examination of the clippings, I could see only two
\par details linking these numerous murders. First, the horrendous degree of
\par violence with which they had been committed, whether with blunt or sharp
\par instruments. The headlines used words like BRUTAL, VICIOUS, SAVAGE, and
\par SHOCKING. Second, None of the victims was sexually molested, Johnny's
\par only passions were bashing and slashing.
\par 
\par But only one event per calendar year. When Johnny indulged in his annual
\par murder, he really let himself go, burnt off all his excess energy,
\par poured out every drop of pent-up bile. Nonetheless, for a lifelong
\par serial killer with such a prodigious career, his three hundred and
\par sixty-four days of self-restraint for every single day of maniacal
\par butchery were surely without precedent in the annals of sociopathic
\par homicide. What had he been doing during those days of restraint?
\par 
\par Into what had all that violent energy been directed?
\par 
\par In less than two minutes, as I quickly scanned this montage of mementos
\par from Johnny's scrapbook, my claustrophobia had been pressed out of me by
\par a more fundamental, more visceral terror. The faint but constant
\par electronic hum, the trainlike rumble, and the less frequent but fearsome
\par keening combined to mask any sounds that we made as- we approached the
\par killer's lair, but the same cacophony might screen the sounds that
\par Johnny made as he crept up on us.
\par 
\par I was the last in our procession, and each time I glanced back the way
\par we had come which was about every ten seconds i was certain old Johnny
\par Randolph would be there, about to strike at me, slithering snakelike on
\par his belly or crawling spider like across the ceiling.
\par 
\par Evidently, he had been a brutal killer all his life. Was he now
\par becoming? Was that why he snatched these kids and squirreled them away
\par in this weird place in addition to the desire for revenge on those who
\par had proved he'd killed his parents and had locked him away? If a good
\par man like Father Tom could spiral so far down into madness and savagery,
\par how much farther into the heart of darkness could John Randolph descend?
\par 
\par What unthinkable beast might he become, considering where he'd started?
\par 
\par In retrospect, I realize that I was encouraging my imagination to spin
\par even further out of control than usual, because as long as it was
\par feverishly conjuring crawly fears of bizarro Johnny, it wasn't able to
\par taunt me with images of Bobby Halloway alone and helpless, bleeding to
\par death in the elevator alcove.
\par 
\par Following Sasha, Doogie, and Roosevelt, I swiftly played the infrared
\par beam over the final cluster of clippings.
\par 
\par Two years ago, the frequency of these killings increased.
\par 
\par Judging by the presentation on this wall, they were occurring every
\par three months.
\par 
\par The headlines roared of sensational mass murders, not of solitary
\par victims anymore, three to six souls per pop.
\par 
\par Perhaps this was when Johnny had decided to bring in a partner, the
\par stocky charmer who had so earnestly endeavored to give me some skull
\par exercise in the hallway under the warehouse. Where do tandem killers
\par meet? Probably not at church. How do they decide to divide the labor, or
\par do they just take turns sweeping up after?
\par 
\par With a fun partner, perhaps, Johnny had expanded his territory, and the
\par clippings showed him venturing as far as Connecticut and then south to
\par sunny Georgia. On to Florida. A jaunt over to Louisiana. A long ride up
\par to the Dakotas. Travelin' man.
\par 
\par Johnny's weapons of choice had changed, no more hammers, no lengths of
\par iron pipe, no knives, no meat cleavers, no ice picks, no hatchets, not
\par even any labor-saving chain saws or power drills. These days the lad
\par favored fire.
\par 
\par And these days his victims fit a clear, consistent profile. For the past
\par two years, they had all been children.
\par 
\par - Were they all the children or grandchildren of people who had once
\par crossed him? Or perhaps until these latest abductions, he'd been
\par motivated solely by the thrill of it.
\par 
\par I was more than ever frightened for the four kids now in John Joseph
\par Randolph's hands. I took some cold comfort from the knowledge that,
\par according to the clippings in this demonic gallery, when he committed
\par these atrocities against groups of victims, he destroyed them all at
\par once, in a single fire, as if making a burnt offering.
\par 
\par Therefore, if one of the kidnapped children was alive, then all were
\par probably still alive.
\par 
\par We had assumed that the disappearances of Jimmy Wing and the other three
\par were related to the gene-swapping retrovirus and to the events at
\par Wyvern. But not all the evil in the world arises directly from my mom's
\par work. John Joseph Randolph had been busy prepping for Hell from at least
\par his twelfth year, and perhaps what I'd suggested to Bobby last night was
\par true, Randolph might have imprisoned these children here for no other
\par reason than that he had stumbled upon the place and enjoyed the
\par atmosphere, the satanic architecture.
\par 
\par The gallery ended with two startling items.
\par 
\par Taped to the wall was a sheet of art paper bearing the likeness of a
\par crow. The crow. The crow on the rock at the top of Crow Hill.
\par 
\par This was an impression that had been made by pressing the paper over the
\par incised stone and rubbing it with graphite until the image appeared.
\par 
\par Beside the crow was a Mystery Train patch of the kind that we'd seen on
\par the breast of William Hodgson's spacesuit.
\par 
\par Already, then, Wyvern was back in the picture. There was a connection
\par between Randolph and top-secret research conducted on the base, but the
\par link might not be my mother or her retrovirus.
\par 
\par A rock of truth was visible in this sea of confusion, and I strove to
\par get a grip on it, but my mind was exhausted, weak, and the rock was
\par slippery.
\par 
\par John Joseph Randolph wasn't merely becoming. Maybe he wasn't becoming at
\par all. His connection to Wyvern was more complex than that.
\par 
\par I dimly remembered a story about a wacko kid killing his folks in a
\par house on the edge of town, out along Haddenbeck Road, a lot of years
\par ago, but if I'd ever known his name, I'd long forgotten it.
\par 
\par Moonlight Bay was a conservative community, assiduously well groomed for
\par tourists, the citizens preferred to talk up the fine scenery and the
\par seductively easy lifestyle, while playing down the negatives.
\par 
\par Johnny Randolph, self-made orphan, would never have been featured in the
\par chamber of commerce literature or written up in the Mobile Guide under
\par local historical figures.
\par 
\par If he'd returned to Moonlight Bay as an adult, long before the recent
\par child snatchings, to work or live here, that would have been major news
\par The past would have been dredged up, and I would have known all the
\par gossip.
\par 
\par He might, of course, have come back under a new name, having legally
\par changed from John Joseph Randolph with the sanction of the doting
\par therapists at the facility where he'd been incarcerated, in the interest
\par of putting his troubled past behind him and starting his life anew, with
\par a healed heart and enhanced self-esteem and blah-blah-blah.
\par 
\par Fully grown, no longer recognizable as the infamous dad-blasting,
\par mom-chopping twelve-year-old, he might have walked unknown on the
\par streets of his hometown. He might have gone to work at Fort Wyvern in
\par some capacity associated with the Mystery Train.
\par 
\par John Joseph Randolph.
\par 
\par The name still gnawed at me.
\par 
\par Now, as Mungojerrie led us along the final length of this tunnel, which
\par appeared to be a dead end, I took one last look at the gallery and
\par thought I grasped the purpose of it.
\par 
\par Initially it had seemed to be a bragging wall, the equivalent of a star
\par athlete's trophy case, a display that would make Johnny tuck his thumbs
\par in his armpits, puff out his chest, and strut. Homicidal sociopaths are
\par proud of their handiwork but can seldom risk opening their scrapbooks
\par and grisly souvenir collections for the admiration of family and
\par neighbors, they are forced to preen privately.
\par 
\par Then I had thought the gallery was nothing more than pornography to
\par titillate a radically twisted mind. To this freak, the newspaper
\par headlines might be the equivalent of obscene dialogue. The victim and
\par crime-scene photographs might get him off more readily than any triple-X
\par adult film ever made.
\par 
\par But now I saw that the display was an offering. His whole life was an
\par offering. The murder of his parents, the single killing every twelve
\par months, his three hundred sixty-four days of stern self-denial each
\par year, and recently the storm of child murders. Burnt offerings.
\par 
\par As I studied the vile gallery, I didn't know to whom these terrible
\par gifts were made, or for what purpose, although even at that point, I
\par would have been willing to hazard a guess.
\par 
\par The tunnel ended at a fully deployed, eight-foot-diameter gate valve,
\par which had once been operated by an electric motor.
\par 
\par When Doogie set aside his machine pistol and hooked his fingers into a
\par groove on the face of the valve, without the aid of a motor he was able
\par to roll the barrier aside almost as easily as he would have retracted a
\par sliding door. Although unused for more than two years, it traveled in
\par its recessed tracks with only a little noise, which was, in any case,
\par lost in the increasingly ominous sounds that rumbled and squealed
\par through these drained guts of the "temporal relocator." Oddly enough, I
\par thought of the awe stricken, shipwrecked seamen who had been rescued by
\par Captain Nemo in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and then given a tour of
\par the labyrinthine mechanical bowels of the megalomaniac's Nautilus.
\par 
\par Eventually they might have felt enough at home aboard that leviathan of
\par a submarine to break out the hornpipe, play a tune, and dance a
\par sprightly jig, but even the most gregarious and adaptable of folks, left
\par to prowl the seemingly endless metal intestines here below the egg room,
\par would forever feel that they were in alien and hostile territory.
\par 
\par Although Doogie opened the door like valve only three feet, lamplight
\par poured through from a space beyond, flaring with blinding power in my
\par infrared lenses.
\par 
\par I raised the goggles to my brow, switched off the infrared flashlight
\par and jammed it under my belt. The lamplight wasn't as bright as I had
\par expected, the lenses had exaggerated it, because they weren't meant to
\par function in the ultraviolet spectrum. The others pulled up their
\par goggles, too.
\par 
\par Beyond the gate valve was a fourteen- or sixteen-foot length of tunnel,
\par clad in seamlessly butted sleeves of brushed stainless steel,
\par terminating in a second valve, identical to the first. This one was
\par already open approximately as far as Doogie had opened the first, the
\par goggle-defeating UV light issued from the room beyond.
\par 
\par Sasha and Roosevelt remained at the first valve. Armed with the . 38,
\par Sasha would make sure that no one came along behind us to block what
\par might be our only exit. Roosevelt, whose left eye was swelling again,
\par stayed with her because he wasn't armed and because he was our essential
\par link to the cat.
\par 
\par The mouser hung with Sasha and Roosevelt, keeping safely out of the
\par forward action. We hadn't dropped a trail of bread crumbs on the way in,
\par and we weren't a hundred percent certain that we could find the route
\par back to Bobby and the elevator without feline guidance.
\par 
\par I followed Doogie to the inner gate valve.
\par 
\par After peering into the space beyond the gate, he raised two fingers to
\par suggest that there were only two people in there about whom we needed to
\par worry. He indicated that he would go first, moving immediately to the
\par right after entering, and that I should follow, going to the left.
\par 
\par As soon as he cleared the doorway, I slipped into the room, with the
\par shotgun thrust in front of me.
\par 
\par The Twilight-of-the-Gods rumble, rattle, bang, and skreek that shook
\par down through the entire facility, from roof to bedrock, was muffled
\par here, and the only light came from an eight-battery storm lamp sitting
\par on a card table.
\par 
\par This chamber was similar in shape to the egg room three floors overhead,
\par though this was much smaller, about thirty feet long and fifteen feet in
\par diameter at its widest point. The curving surfaces were sheathe not in
\par that glassy, gold-flecked substance but in what appeared to be ordinary
\par copper.
\par 
\par My heart soared when I saw the four missing children sitting with their
\par backs to the wall in the shadows at one end of the room. They were
\par exhausted and frightened. Their small wrists and ankles were bound, and
\par their mouths were covered with strips of cloth tape. They were not
\par visibly injured, however, and their eyes widened with amazement at the
\par sight of Doogie and me.
\par 
\par Then I spotted Orson, lying on his side, near the kids, muzzled and
\par restrained. His eyes were open, and he was breathing. Alive.
\par 
\par Before my vision could blur, I looked away from him.
\par 
\par In the center of the room, frozen by Doogie's gun, two men sat in padded
\par folding chairs, facing each other across the card table that held the
\par storm lamp. In this stark tableau, they reminded me of characters in a
\par stripped-down stage set from one of those stultifying minimalist plays
\par about boredom, isolation, emotional disconnection, the futility of
\par modern relationships, and the sobering philosophical implications of the
\par cheeseburger.
\par 
\par The guy on the right was the abb who had tried to brain me with a two
\par by-four under the warehouse. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been
\par wearing then, and he still had those tiny white teeth, although his
\par smile was considerably more strained than it had been previously, as
\par though he had just discovered a corn worm among that mouthful of white
\par kernels.
\par 
\par I wanted to pump one shot into his mug, because I sensed not just
\par smugness in the geek, but also vanity. After he took a magnum round at
\par such close range, the only word adequate to describe his face would also
\par spur on a dog sled team.
\par 
\par The man on the left was tall, blond, with pale green eyes and a puckered
\par scar, in his mid-fifties. He was the one who had snatched the Stuart
\par twin sand his smile was as winning as it had been when he was a boy of
\par twelve with the blood of his parents on his hands.
\par 
\par John Joseph Randolph was unnervingly self-possessed, as if our arrival
\par neither startled nor concerned him. "How're you doing, Chris? " I was
\par surprised he knew my name. I'd never seen him before.
\par 
\par Whispery echoes of his voice were conducted like a current along the
\par copper walls, one word overlaying the next, "Your mother, Wisteriashe
\par was a great woman." I couldn't understand how he knew my mother.
\par 
\par Instinct told me that I didn't want to know. A shotgun blast would
\par silence him, and scour that smile off his face the smile with which he
\par charmed the innocent and the unwaryturning it into a lipless
\par death's-head grin.
\par 
\par "She was deadlier than Mother Nature, " he said.
\par 
\par Renaissance men ponder, brood, and analyze the complex moral
\par consequences of their actions, preferring persuasion and negotiation to
\par violence. Evidently, I'd forgotten to renew my membership in the
\par Renaissance Man Club, and they had repossessed my principles, because
\par all I wanted to do was blow away this butchering creep and with extreme ,
\par prejudice.
\par 
\par Or maybe I'm just becoming.
\par 
\par It's the rage these days.
\par 
\par With my heart made brittle by bitterness, I might have pulled the
\par trigger if the kids hadn't been there to witness the carnage. I was also
\par inhibited because the copper skin on the curved walls was guaranteed to
\par spin deadly ricochets in all directions. My soul was saved not by the
\par purity of my morals but by circumstances, which is a humbling
\par confession.
\par 
\par With the barrel of the Uzi, Doogie gestured at the playing cards in the
\par two men's hands. "What's the game? " His voice echoed tinnily around the
\par curved copper walls.
\par 
\par I didn't like these two men's watchful calm. I wanted to see fear in
\par their eyes.
\par 
\par Now Randolph turned his hand of cards face up on the table and replied
\par to Doogie's question with too much dry amusement. "Poker." Before Doogie
\par decided how best to restrain the card players, he needed to determine,
\par if he could, whether they had guns. They were wearing jackets that could
\par conceal shoulder holsters. With nothing to lose, they might do something
\par recklesslike take wild shots at the kids, rather than at us, before they
\par themselves were cut down, hoping to kill one more tender victim just to
\par go out on a final thrill.
\par 
\par With four children in the room, we didn't dare make a mistake.
\par 
\par "If not for Wisteria, " Randolph said, addressing me, "Del Stuart would
\par have pulled the plug on my financing long before he did."
\par 
\par "Your financing? "
\par 
\par "But when she screwed up, they needed me. Or thought they did.
\par 
\par To see what the future held." Sensing a pending revelation of an ugly
\par truth, I said, "Shut up, " but I spoke in little more than a murmur,
\par perhaps because I knew I needed to hear whatever he had to tell me, even
\par if I'd no desire to hear it.
\par 
\par To Doogie, Randolph said, "Ask me what the stakes are." The word stakes
\par spiraled around the ovoid room, still whispering back to us even as
\par Doogie dutifully asked, "What are the stakes? "
\par 
\par "Conrad and I play to see who gets to soak each of these tykes in
\par gasoline." Conrad mustn't have been in possession of a gun in the
\par warehouse the previous night. If he'd had one, he would have shot me
\par dead the moment that I touched his face in the dark.
\par 
\par Moving his hands as if dealing imaginary cards, Randolph said, "Then we
\par play to see who gets to light the match." Looking as if he might shoot
\par first and worry about ricochets later, Doogie said, "Why haven't you
\par killed them already? "
\par 
\par "Our numerology tells us there should be five in this offering.
\par 
\par Until recently, we thought we had only four. But now we think  ... " He
\par smiled at me. "We think the dog is special. We think the dog makes five.
\par 
\par When you interrupted, we were playing cards to see who lights the mutt
\par boy." I didn't think that Randolph had a firearm, either. As far as I
\par could remember from my hasty scan of his gallery of hellish achievement,
\par his father was the only victim he'd dispatched with a gun.
\par 
\par That was forty-four years ago, probably the first murder he'd committed.
\par 
\par Since then, he preferred to have more personal involvement, to get right
\par into the wet of the work. Hammers and knives and the like were his
\par weapons of choice until he started to make his burnt offerings.
\par 
\par "Your mother, " he said, "was a dice woman. Rolled the dice for the
\par whole human race, and crapped out. But I like cards." Pretending to deal
\par cards again, Randolph had moved one hand close to the storm lamp.
\par 
\par "Don't, " Doogie said.
\par 
\par But Randolph did. He snapped the lamp switch, and suddenly we were
\par blind.
\par 
\par Even as the light went off, Randolph and Conrad were on the move.
\par 
\par They got to their feet so fast that they knocked their chairs over, and
\par these hard noises rattled repeatedly around the room like the sharp
\par rata-tat produced by a running boy dragging a stick along a picket
\par fence.
\par 
\par I was instantly on the move, too, following the curve of the room toward
\par the children, trying to stay out of Conrad's way, since he was the one
\par closest to me and would most likely go hard and fast for the place where
\par I had been when the lights went out. Neither he nor Randolph was the
\par type to run for the exit.
\par 
\par As I sidled toward the kids, I slipped the infrared goggles off my
\par forehead, over my eyes. I yanked the special flashlight from my belt,
\par clicked it on, and swept the room where Conrad might be.
\par 
\par He was closer than I'd expected, having intuited my attempt to shield
\par the children. He held a knife in one hand, slashing blindly at the air
\par around him, hoping to get lucky and cut me.
\par 
\par How very strange it is to be a man with sight in the kingdom of the
\par blind. Watching Conrad seeking without finding, flailing in mindless
\par rage, seeing him so confused and frustrated and desperate, I knew one
\par percent of what God must feel like when He watches us at our furious
\par game of life.
\par 
\par I quickly circled Conrad as he ambitiously but ineffectively sought to
\par disembowel me. Employing a technique sure to elicit the righteous
\par indignation of the American Dental Association, I gripped the butt of
\par the flashlight between my teeth, to free both hands for the shotgun, and
\par I slammed the stock of the gun into the back of his head.
\par 
\par He went down and stayed down.
\par 
\par Apparently, neither one-name Conrad nor the inimitable John Joseph
\par Randolph had realized that our goggles were part of infrared sets,
\par because Doogie was almost literally dancing around the most successful
\par serial killer of our time excluding politicians, who generally hire out
\par the wet work and beating the crap out of him with a natural-born
\par enthusiasm and with a skill honed as a bouncer in biker bars.
\par 
\par Perhaps because he had a greater concern for dental safety and oral
\par hygiene than I did, or perhaps just because he didn't like the taste of
\par the flashlight handle, Doogie had simply placed the infrared light on
\par the card table and then herded Randolph into the primary path of the
\par beam with a relentless series of judiciously delivered pokes, punches,
\par and chops with his fists and with the barrel and butt of the Uzi.
\par 
\par Randolph went down twice and got up twice, as though he really believed
\par that he had a chance. Finally he dropped like a load from a dinosaur,
\par prepared to lie there until he fossilized. Doogie kicked him in the
\par ribs. When Randolph didn't move, Doogie administered the traditional
\par Hell's Angel first aid, kicking him again.
\par 
\par Unquestionably, Doogie Sassman was a Harley-riding maniac, a man of
\par surprising talents and accomplishments, a true mensch in many ways, a
\par source of valuable if arcane knowledge, perhaps even a font of
\par enlightenment. Nevertheless, no one was likely to structure a new
\par religion around him anytime soon.
\par 
\par Doogie said, "Snowman? "
\par 
\par "Hey."
\par 
\par "Handle some real light? " Slipping off my goggles, I said, "Fade me
\par in." He switched on the storm lamp, and the copper-lined room was filled
\par with rust-colored shadows and shiny-penny light.
\par 
\par The pre-cataclysmic rumbles, cracks, squeals, and groans that shook
\par through the vast building continued to be muffled here, more like the
\par embarrassing noises of digestive distress. But we didn't need a
\par fifty-page directive from the Occupational Safety and Health
\par Administration to know that we should vacate the premises as soon as
\par possible.
\par 
\par We quickly determined that the children were not merely bound with rope
\par or shackled. Their wrists had been wired together, as had their ankles.
\par 
\par The wires were drawn cruelly tight, and I winced at the sight of bruised
\par skin and dried blood.
\par 
\par I checked Orson. He was breathing, but shallowly. His forepaws were
\par wired together, his hind legs, too. A makeshift muzzle of wire clamped
\par his jaws shut, so he was able to issue only a thin whine.
\par 
\par "Easy, bro, " I said shakily, stroking his flank.
\par 
\par Doogie stepped to the gate valve and shouted along the tunnel to Sasha
\par and Roosevelt, "We got em. All alive! " They whooped with delight, but
\par Sasha also urged us to hurry.
\par 
\par "We're shakin' and bakin', " Doogie assured her. "Keep your guard up.
\par 
\par " After all, there might be worse than Randolph and Conrad in this
\par labyrinth.
\par 
\par A couple of satchels, backpacks, and a Styrofoam cooler were stacked
\par near the card table. Under the assumption that this gear belonged to the
\par tandem killers, Doogie went in search of pliers or any other tool with
\par which we could free the kids, because the wires had been braided and
\par knotted with such obsessive care that we couldn't easily unwind them.
\par 
\par I gently pulled the tape off Jimmy Wing's mouth, and he said he needed
\par to pee-pee, and I told him that I did, too, but that we would both have
\par to hold it for a little while, which shouldn't be any trouble because we
\par were both brave guys with the right stuff, and this earned his solemn
\par expression of agreement.
\par 
\par The six-year-old Stuart twinsaaron and Anson thanked me politely when I
\par untaped their mouths. Anson informed me that the two unconscious kooks
\par on the floor were bad men. Aaron was blunter and less clean-spoken than
\par his brother, calling them "shit heads, " and Anson warned him that if he
\par used that forbidden word in front of their mother, he would be toast.
\par 
\par I had expected tears, but these weeds had cried all they were going to
\par cry, at least over this weird experience. There's a natural toughness in
\par most kids that we seldom acknowledge, because we usually view childhood
\par through glasses of nostalgia and sentimentality.
\par 
\par Wendy Dulcinea was, at seven, a glorious reflection of her mother, Mary,
\par from whom I'd been unable to learn the piano but with whom I'd once been
\par in deep puppy love. She wanted to give me a kiss, and I was happy to
\par receive it, and then she said, "The doggie is really thirstyyou should
\par give him a drink. They let us drink, but they wouldn't give him
\par anything." The corners of Orson's eyes were crusted with white matter.
\par 
\par He looked sick and weak, because with his mouth wired shut, he had not
\par been able to perspire properly. Dogs sweat not through pores in their
\par skin but largely through their tongues.
\par 
\par "Gonna be okay, bro, " I promised him. "Gonna get out of here.
\par 
\par Hold on. Going home. We're going home. You and me. Out of here."
\par 
\par Returning from a search of the killers' gear, Doogie stooped by my |
\par side and, using lineman's pliers with sharp side cutters, snipped the I
\par bonds between my brother's paws, pulled them off, and threw them aside.
\par 
\par Cutting the wires around Orson's jaws required more care and time,
\par during which I continued to babble that everything was going to be cool,
\par primo, sweet, stylin', and in less than a minute, the hateful muzzle was
\par gone.
\par 
\par Doogie moved to the kids, and though Orson made no effort to sit up, he
\par licked my hand. His tongue was rough and dry.
\par 
\par Empty assurances had poured glibly from me. Now I wasn't able to speak,
\par because everything I had to say was important and so deeply felt that if
\par I started to let it out, I would be laid low by my own words,
\par emotionally wrecked, and with all the obstacles that remained in the way
\par of our escape and survival, I couldn't afford tears now, maybe not even
\par later, maybe not ever.
\par 
\par Instead of saying anything, I pressed my hand against his flank, feeling
\par the too-fast but steady beat of his great, good heart, and I kissed his
\par brow.
\par 
\par Wendy had said that Orson was thirsty. His tongue had felt dry and
\par swollen against my hands. Now I saw that his flews, scored from the
\par pressure lines left by the muzzling wire, appeared to be chapped.
\par 
\par His dark eyes were slightly filmy, and I saw a weariness in them that
\par scared me, something close to resignation.
\par 
\par Although reluctant to leave Orson's side, I went to the large Styrofoam
\par cooler beside the card table. It was half full of cold water in which
\par floated a few chips of ice. The killers appeared to be health conscious,
\par because the only drinks they had brought with them were bottles of V8
\par vegetable juice and Evian water.
\par 
\par I took one bottle of water to Orson. In my absence, he had struggled off
\par his side and was lying on his belly, though he seemed not to have the
\par strength to raise his head.
\par 
\par Cupping my left hand, I poured some Evian into it. Orson lifted his head
\par barely enough to be able to lap the water from my palm, at first
\par listlessly but soon with enthusiasm.
\par 
\par As I repeatedly replenished the water, I reviewed the physical damage he
\par had endured, and my increasing anger ensured that I'd be able to hold
\par back my tears. The cartilage of his left ear appeared to be crushed, and
\par the fur was matted with a lot of dried blood, as though he had sustained
\par a blow to the head with a club or a length of pipe.
\par 
\par Blunt instruments were one of Mr. John Joseph Randolph's specialties.
\par 
\par In his left cushion, half an inch from his nose, was a blood-caked cut.
\par 
\par A couple of the nails in his right forepaw were broken off, and his toes
\par were sheathe in hardened blood. He had put up a good fight. The pasterns
\par on all four legs were chafed from the wire, and two were bleeding,
\par though not seriously.
\par 
\par Doogie had finished snipping the wires that bound the kids and had moved
\par on to Conrad, who was still out cold. Using a spool of the killers'
\par wire, he had shackled the man's feet. Now he was using more wire to cuff
\par his wrists behind his back.
\par 
\par We couldn't risk taking the two men with us, back through the maze.
\par 
\par Because crawling was required in some of the tunnels, we wouldn't be
\par able to bind even their hands, and without restraints, they would be
\par completely uncontrollable. We would have to send the police back here
\par for them assuming the entire structure didn't collapse from the stresses
\par of the time-shifting phenomena occurring overhead.
\par 
\par Although I might have changed my mind later, at that moment I wanted to
\par immobilize them, seal their mouths shut with tape, put a bottle of water
\par where they could see it, and leave them here to die painfully of thirst.
\par 
\par Orson had finished the Evian. He struggled to his feet, wobbly as a
\par baby, and stood panting, blinking the filminess out of his eyes, looking
\par around with interest.
\par 
\par "Poki akua, " I told him, which is Hawaiian for dog of the gods.
\par 
\par He chuffed weakly, as though pleased by the compliment.
\par 
\par A sudden pong, followed by a nerve-jangling squeal, as of metal torquing
\par violently, passed through the copper room. Both Orson and I looked at
\par the ceiling, then around at the walls, but there was no evident
\par distortion of the smooth metal surfaces.
\par 
\par Tick tick tick.
\par 
\par I dragged the heavy cooler across the floor to Orson and opened the lid.
\par 
\par He looked in at the icy water sloshing among the bottles of Evian and
\par vegetable juice, and he happily began to lap it up.
\par 
\par On his side, curled in the fetal position, Randolph was groaning but not
\par yet conscious.
\par 
\par Doogie clipped off a few feet of wire, all he needed to finish binding
\par Conrad, and passed the spool to me.
\par 
\par I rolled Randolph facedown and hurriedly wired his wrists together
\par behind his back. I was tempted to cinch the bonds as tight as those on
\par the children and Orson, but I controlled myself and made them only tight
\par enough to ensure that he could not free himself.
\par 
\par After securing his ankles, I looped wire from the shackles at his feet
\par to those at his wrists, further limiting his ability to move.
\par 
\par Randolph must have awakened as I began to apply this final restraint,
\par because when I finished, he spoke with a clarity not characteristic of
\par someone just regaining consciousness, "I've won." I moved out from
\par behind him and hunkered down to look at his face.
\par 
\par His head was turned to the side, left cheek against the copper floor.
\par 
\par Lips split and bleeding. His right eye was pale green and bright, but I
\par saw no evidence of animal eye shine.
\par 
\par Curiously, he appeared to be in no distress. He was at peace, as if he
\par weren't trussed and helpless but were merely resting.
\par 
\par When he spoke, his voice was calm, even slightly euphoric, like that of
\par someone coming out of a light Demerol sleep. I would have felt better if
\par he'd ranted, snarled, and spat. His relaxed demeanor seemed to support
\par his unnerving contention that he had won in spite of his current
\par circumstances. "I'll be on the other side before the night is gone.
\par 
\par They stripped out the engine. That wasn't a mortal wound. This is a sort
\par of ... organic machine. In time, it has healed. Now it powers itself.
\par 
\par You can feel it. Feel it in the floor." Those rumblings, like passing
\par trains, were louder than before, and the spells of calm between were
\par shorter. Although the effect in this room had been less than elsewhere
\par in the structure, the noise and the vibrations in the floor were at last
\par gaining power here, too.
\par 
\par Randolph said, "Powers itself with the littlest help. A storm lamp in
\par the translation chamber two hours ago that's all it took to get it
\par running again. This is no ordinary machine."
\par 
\par "You worked on this project? "
\par 
\par "Mine."
\par 
\par "Dr. Randolph Josephson, " I said, suddenly remembering the name of the
\par project leader I'd heard on Delacroix's tape. John Joseph Randolph, boy
\par killer, had become Randolph Josephson.
\par 
\par "What does it do, where does it ... go? " Instead of answering me, he
\par smiled and said, "Did the crow ever appear to you? It never appeared to
\par Conrad. He said it did, but he lies. The crow appeared to me. I was
\par sitting by the rock, and the crow rose out of it." He sighed. "Formed
\par out of the solid rock that night, in front of my eyes." Orson was with
\par the children, accepting their affection. He was wagging his tail.
\par 
\par Everything was going to be all right. The world wasn't going to end, at
\par least not here, at least not tonight. We would get out of here, we would
\par survive, we would live to party, ride the waves again, it was
\par guaranteed, it was a sure thing, it was a done deal, because right here
\par was the omen, the sign of good times coming, Orson was wagging his tail.
\par 
\par "When I saw the crow, I knew I was someone special, " Randolph said.
\par 
\par "I had a destiny. Now I've fulfilled it." Once more, the fearsome twang
\par of torquing metal punctuated the rumble of the ghost train.
\par 
\par "Forty-four years ago, " I said, "you're the one who carved the crow on
\par Crow Hill."
\par 
\par "I went home that night, fully alive for the first time ever, and did
\par what I'd always wanted to do. Blew my father's brains out." He said this
\par as if reporting an achievement that filled him with quiet pride.
\par 
\par "Cut Mother to pieces. Then my real life began." Doogie was sending the
\par kids out of the room, one after the other, along the tunnel to where
\par Sasha and Roosevelt waited. "So many years, so much hard work, "
\par Randolph said with a sigh, as though he were a retiree pleasantly
\par contemplating well-earned leisure.
\par 
\par "So much study, learning, striving, thinking. So much self-denial and
\par restraint through so many years." One killing every twelve months.
\par 
\par "And when it was built, when success was at hand, the cowards back in
\par Washington were scared by what they saw on the videotapes from the
\par unmanned probes."
\par 
\par "What did they see? " Instead of answering, he said, "They were going to
\par shut us down.
\par 
\par Del Stuart was ready right then to pull the plug on my funding." I
\par thought I knew why Aaron and Anson Stuart were in this room.
\par 
\par And I wondered if the other kids who had been snatched and killed all
\par over the country were related somehow to other people on the Mystery
\par Train project who had disappointed this man.
\par 
\par "Then your mother's bug got loose, " Randolph said, "and they wanted to
\par know what the future held, whether there would even be a future."
\par 
\par "Red sky? " I asked. "Strange trees? "
\par 
\par "That's not the future.
\par 
\par That's ... sideways." From the corner of my eye, I saw the copper wall
\par buckle.
\par 
\par Horrified, I turned toward where the concave curve had seemed to become
\par convex, but there was no sign of distortion.
\par 
\par "Now the track is laid, " Randolph said contentedly, "and no one can
\par tear it up. The border is breached. The way is open."
\par 
\par "The way to where? "
\par 
\par "You'll see. We're all going soon, " he said with disconcerting
\par assurance. "The train is already pulling out of the station." Wendy was
\par the fourth and last child through the gate valve at the entrance to the
\par chamber. Orson followed her, still tottering a little.
\par 
\par Doogie motioned urgently to me, and I rose to my feet.
\par 
\par Randolph's pale green eye fixed on me, and he gave me a bloody,
\par broken-toothed , eerily affectionate smile. "Time past, time present,
\par time future, but most important ... time sideways. Sideways is the only
\par place I ever wanted to go, and your mother gave me the chance."
\par 
\par "But where is sideways? " I asked with considerable frustration as the
\par building shook around us.
\par 
\par "My destiny, " he said enigmatically.
\par 
\par Sasha cried out, and her voice was so full of alarm that my heart
\par jolted, raced.
\par 
\par Doogie looked down the tunnel, aghast, and then shouted, "Chris! Grab
\par one of those chairs! " As I snatched up one of the collapsed folding
\par chairs and then my shotgun, John Joseph Randolph said, "Stations on a
\par track, out there sideways in time, like we always knew, always knew but
\par didn't want to believe." I had been right when I'd suspected that truths
\par were hidden in his strange statements, and I wanted to hear him out and
\par understand, but staying there any longer would have been suicidal.
\par 
\par As I joined Doogie, the half-closed gate valve, which was the door of
\par the chamber, began to slide all the way shut.
\par 
\par Cursing, Doogie gripped the valve and put all his muscle against it, the
\par arteries in his neck bulging from the effort, slowly forcing the steel
\par disc back into the wall.
\par 
\par "Go! " Doogie said.
\par 
\par Because I'm the kind of guy who knows good advice when he hears it, I
\par squeezed past the mambo king and sprinted along the sixteen-foot section
\par of tunnel between the two enormous valves.
\par 
\par Above a thundering and a wind like shrieking worthy of the final storm
\par on doomsday, I could hear John Joseph Randolph shouting, not with terror
\par but with joy, with passionate conviction, "I believe! I believe!
\par 
\par " Sasha, the kids, Mungojerrie, and Orson had already passed through to
\par the next section of tunnel beyond the outer gateway.
\par 
\par 
\par 
\par Roosevelt was wedged into the breach, to prevent the valve from sealing
\par Doogie and me in here. I could hear the motor grinding in the wall,
\par trying to drive the steel disc into the fully closed position.
\par 
\par I jammed the metal folding chair into the gap, above Roosevelt's head,
\par bracing the valve open.
\par 
\par "Thanks, son, " he said.
\par 
\par I followed Roosevelt through the gate.
\par 
\par The others were waiting beyond, with an ordinary flashlight.
\par 
\par Sasha looked far more beautiful when she wasn't green.
\par 
\par The gap in the gateway was a tight fit for the sass man, but he popped
\par through, too, and then he wrenched the chair out of the gap, because we
\par were likely to need it again.
\par 
\par We passed the Mystery Train patch and the image of the crow. No draft
\par currently moved through this tunnel. None of the newspaper clippings
\par ahead of us stirred at all. And yet the large sheet of art paper, which
\par featured the graphite rubbing of the carved-stone bird, was fluttering
\par as if a gale-force wind were tearing at it. The loose ends of the paper
\par curled and flapped vigorously. The crow seemed to be pulling angrily at
\par the pieces of tape that fixed it to the curved steel surface, determined
\par to break out of the paper as, according to Randolph, it had once arisen
\par out of rock.
\par 
\par Maybe I was hallucinating this business with the crow, sure, and maybe I
\par was born to be a snake charmer, but I wasn't going to hang around to see
\par if a real bird morphed out of the paper and took flight, any more than I
\par was going to lie down in a nest of cobras and hum show tunes to
\par entertain them.
\par 
\par On a hunch that I might want proof of what I'd seen down here, I tore a
\par few newspaper clippings from the wall and stuffed them in my pockets.
\par 
\par With the faux crow flapping furiously against the wall behind us, we
\par hurried on, keeping our group together, doing what any sane person would
\par do when the world was coming apart around him and death loomed at every
\par side, We followed the cat.
\par 
\par I tried not to think about Bobby. The first problem was just getting to
\par him. If we got to him, everything would be okay. He would be waiting for
\par us cold and sore and weak, but waiting by the elevator where we had left
\par him and he would remind me of my promise by saying, Carpe cerevisi, bro.
\par 
\par The faint iodine odor that had been with us all the way through the
\par labyrinth was sharper now. Threaded through it were whiffs of charcoal,
\par sulfur, rotting roses, and an indescribable, bitter scent unlike
\par anything I had smelled before.
\par 
\par If the time-shifting phenomena were spreading down here into the deepest
\par realms of the structure, we were at greater risk than at any moment
\par since we had entered the hangar. The worst possibility wasn't that our
\par escape would be delayed or even cut off by the motor-driven valves.
\par 
\par Worse, if the wrong moment of the past intersected with the present, as
\par had happened more than once upstairs, we might suddenly be inundated by
\par whatever oceans of liquid or toxic gas had pumped through these tubes,
\par whereupon we would either drown or suffocate in poisonous fumes.
\par 
\par One cat, four kids, one dog, one deejay-songwriter, one animal
\par communicator, one Viking, and the poster child for Armageddon that's me
\par ran, crawled, squirmed, ran, fell, got up, ran some more, along the dry
\par beds of steel rivers, brass rivers, copper creeks, one white light
\par flaring off curved walls, brightly spiraling, feathery darkness whirling
\par like wings everywhere that the light didn't reach, with the rumble of
\par invisible trains all around, and a shrill shrieking like the whistles of
\par locomotives, the iodine smell now chokingly heavy, but now so faint it
\par seemed the previous density had been imagined, currents of the past
\par washing in like a mushy tide, then ebbing out of the present.
\par 
\par Terrified by a periodic sound of rushing water, water or something
\par worse, we came at last to the sloping concrete tunnel, and then into the
\par alcove by the elevator, where Bobby lay as we had left him, still alive.
\par 
\par While Doogie reconnected the wires in the elevator control panel, and
\par while Roosevelt, carrying Mungojerrie, shepherded the kids into the cab,
\par Sasha, Orson, and I gathered around Bobby.
\par 
\par He looked like Death on a bad hair day.
\par 
\par I said, "Looking' good." Bobby spoke to Orson in a voice so weak that it
\par barely carried over the sounds of clashing times, clashing worlds, which
\par I guess is what we were hearing. "Hey, fur face." Orson nuzzled Bobby's
\par neck, sniffed his wound, then looked worriedly at me.
\par 
\par "You did it, XP Man, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "It was more a Fantastic Five caper than a one-superhero gig, " I
\par demurred.
\par 
\par "You got back in time to make your midnight show, " Bobby told Sasha,
\par and I had the sickening feeling that, in his way, he was saying goodbye
\par to us.
\par 
\par "Radio is my life, " she said.
\par 
\par The building shook, the train rumble became a roar, and concrete dust
\par sifted down from the ceiling.
\par 
\par Sasha said, "We have to get you in the elevator." But Bobby looked at me
\par and said, "Hold my hand, bro." I gripped his hand. It was ice.
\par 
\par Pain cramped his face, and then he said, "I screwed up."
\par 
\par "You never."
\par 
\par "Wet my pants, " he said shakily.
\par 
\par The cold seemed to come out of his hand and up my arm, coiling in my
\par heart. "Nothing wrong with that, bro. Urinophoria. You've done it
\par before."
\par 
\par "I'm not wearing neoprene."
\par 
\par "So it's a style issue, huh?
\par 
\par " He laughed, but the tattered laughter frayed into choking.
\par 
\par Doogie announced, "Elevator's ready."
\par 
\par "Let's move you, " Sasha suggested, as tiny chips of concrete joined the
\par fall of dust.
\par 
\par "Never thought I'd die so inelegantly, " Bobby said, his hand tightening
\par on mine.
\par 
\par "You're not dying, " I assured him.
\par 
\par "Love you ... bro."
\par 
\par "Love you, " I said, and the words were like a key that locked my throat
\par as tight as a vault.
\par 
\par "Total wipeout, " he said, his voice fading until the final syllable was
\par inaudible.
\par 
\par His eyes fixed on something far beyond us, and his hand went slack in
\par mine.
\par 
\par I felt a whole great slab of my heart slide away, like the shaling face
\par of a cliff, down into a hateful darkness.
\par 
\par Sasha put her fingertips to his throat, feeling for a pulse in his
\par carotid artery. "Oh, God."
\par 
\par "Gotta get out of here now, " Doogie insisted.
\par 
\par In a voice so thick I didn't recognize it as my own, I said to Sasha,
\par "Come on, let's get him in the elevator."
\par 
\par "He's gone."
\par 
\par "Help me get him in the elevator."
\par 
\par "Chris, honey, he's gone."
\par 
\par "We're taking him with us, " I said.
\par 
\par "Snowman"
\par 
\par "We're taking him with us! "
\par 
\par "Think of the kids. They" I was desperate and crazy, crazy-desperate, a
\par dark whirlpool of grief churning in my mind, sucking away all reason,
\par but I was not going to leave him there. I would die with him, beside
\par him, rather than leave him there.
\par 
\par I grabbed him by the shoulders and started dragging him into the
\par elevator, aware that I was probably frightening the kids, who must
\par already be scared shitless, no matter how contemporary and cool and
\par tough they were. I couldn't expect them to clap their hands with glee at
\par the prospect of taking an elevator ride up from Hell with a corpse for
\par company, and I didn't blame them, but that was the way it had to be.
\par 
\par When they saw that I wasn't going any damn where without Bobby Halloway,
\par Sasha and Doogie helped me drag him into the elevator.
\par 
\par The rumbling, the banshee shrieking, the snap-crackle-pop that seemed to
\par indicate imminent structural implosion all faded suddenly, and the
\par drizzle of concrete chips stopped, but I knew this had to be temporary.
\par 
\par We were in the eye of the time hurricane, and worse was coming.
\par 
\par Just as we got Bobby inside, the elevator doors started to close, and
\par Orson slipped in with so little time to spare that he almost caught his
\par tail.
\par 
\par "What the hell? " Doogie said. "I didn't press a button."
\par 
\par "Somebody called it, someone upstairs, " Sasha said.
\par 
\par The elevator motor whined, and the cab rose.
\par 
\par Already crazy-desperate, I became crazier when I realized that my hands
\par were slick with Bobby's blood, and more desperate as I was overcome by
\par the idea that there was something I could do to change all this.
\par 
\par The past and the present are present in the future, and the future is
\par contained in the past, as T. S. Eliot wrote, therefore, all time is
\par unredeemable, and what will be will be. What might have been that's an
\par illusion, because the only thing that could have happened is what does
\par happen, and there's not anything we can do to change it, because we're
\par doomed by destiny, fucked by fate, though Mr. Eliot hadn't put it in
\par exactly those words. On the other hand, Winnie-the-Pooh, much less of a
\par broody type than Mr. Eliot, believed in the possibility of all things,
\par which might be because he was only a stuffed bear with a head full of
\par nothing, but it also might be the case that Mr. Pooh was, in fact, a Zen
\par master who knew as much about the meaning of life as did Mr. Eliot. The
\par elevator rosewe were at B-5and Bobby lay dead on the floor, and my hands
\par were slick with blood, and there was nevertheless hope in my heart,
\par which I didn't understand at all, but as I tried to see clearly the why
\par of my hope, I reasoned that the answer was in combining Mr. Eliot's
\par insights and those of Mr. Pooh. As we reached B-4, I glanced down at
\par Orson, whom I'd thought was dead but was now alive again, resuscitated
\par just as Tinker Bell had been after she'd drunk the cup of poison to save
\par Peter Pan from the murderous schemes of the homicidal Hook. I was beyond
\par crazy, caught in a wave of totally macking lunacy, sick with terror,
\par sicker with despair, sickest with hope, and I could not stop thinking
\par about good Tink being saved by sheer belief by all the dreaming kids in
\par the world clapping their small hands to proclaim their belief in
\par fairies. Subconsciously, I must have known where I was going, but when I
\par snatched the Uzi out of Doogie's hands, I had no conscious idea what I
\par intended to do with it, though judging by the expression on the waltz
\par wizard's face, I must have looked even crazier than I felt.
\par 
\par B-3.
\par 
\par The elevator doors opened on B-3, and the corridor beyond was filled
\par with muddy red light.
\par 
\par In this mysterious radiance were five tall, blurry, distorted maroon
\par figures. They might have been human, but they might have been something
\par even worse.
\par 
\par With them was a smaller creature, also a maroon blur, with four legs and
\par a tail, which might have been a cat.
\par 
\par In spite of all the might-have-beens, I didn't hesitate, because only
\par precious seconds remained in which to act. I stepped out of the
\par elevator, into the muddy red glow, but then the corridor was full of
\par fluorescent light when I crossed into it.
\par 
\par Roosevelt, Doogie, Sasha, Bobby, Mungojerrie, and I me, myself,
\par Christopher Snow stood in the corridor, facing the elevator doors,
\par looking as if they expected trouble.
\par 
\par A minute ago, down on B-6, just as we had loaded Bobby's corpse into the
\par elevator, someone up here had pushed the call button. That someone was
\par Bobby, a living Bobby from earlier in the night.
\par 
\par In this strangely afflicted building, time past, time present, and time
\par future were all present here at once.
\par 
\par With my friend sand I myself gaping at me in astonishment, as if I were a
\par ghost, I turned right, toward the two oncoming security men that the
\par others hadn't yet seen. One of these guards had fired the shot that
\par killed Bobby.
\par 
\par I squeezed off a burst from the Uzi, and both guards were cut down
\par before they fired a shot.
\par 
\par My stomach twisted with revulsion at what I'd done, and I tried to
\par escape my conscience by taking refuge in the fact that these men would
\par have been killed by Doogie, anyway, after they had shot Bobby.
\par 
\par I had only accelerated their fate while changing Bobby's altogether, for
\par a net saving of one life. But perhaps excuses of that sort make
\par excellent paving stones for the road to Hell.
\par 
\par Behind me, Sasha, Doogie, and Roosevelt rushed into the corridor from
\par the elevator.
\par 
\par The astonishment among all these doppelgangers was as thick as the
\par peanut butter on the banana sandwiches that had ultimately killed Elvis.
\par 
\par I didn't understand how this could be happening, because it had not
\par happened earlier. We had never met ourselves in this hallway on our way
\par down to find the children. But if we were meeting ourselves now, why
\par didn't I have a memory of it?
\par 
\par Paradox. Time paradox, I guess. You know me and math, me and physics.
\par 
\par I'm more a Pooh guy, an Eliot guy. My head ached. I had changed Bobby
\par Halloway's fate, which was, to me, a pure miracle, not mere mathematics.
\par 
\par The elevator was full of muddy red light and the blurry maroon figures
\par of the kids. The doors began to slide shut.
\par 
\par "Hold it! " I shouted.
\par 
\par Present-time Doogie blocked the door, half in the fluorescent corridor
\par and half in the murky red elevator.
\par 
\par The throbbing electronic sound swelled louder. It was fearsome.
\par 
\par I remembered John Joseph Randolph's pleasurable anticipation, his
\par confidence that we would all be going to the other side soon, to that
\par sideways place he wouldn't name. The train, he'd said, was already
\par beginning to pull out of the station. Suddenly I wondered if he'd meant
\par the whole building might make that mysterious journey not just whoever
\par was in the egg room, but everyone within the walls of the hangar and the
\par six basements below it.
\par 
\par With a renewed sense of urgency, I asked Doogie to look in the elevator
\par and see if Bobby was there.
\par 
\par "I'm here, " said the Bobby in the hall.
\par 
\par "In there, you're a pile of dead meat, " I told him.
\par 
\par "No way."
\par 
\par "Way."
\par 
\par "Ouch."
\par 
\par "Maximum." I didn't know why, but I thought it wouldn't be a good idea
\par to return upstairs to the hangar, beyond this zone of radically tangled
\par time, with both Bobbys, the live one and the dead one.
\par 
\par Still holding the door, present-time Doogie stepped into the elevator,
\par hesitated, then returned to the corridor. "There's no Bobby in there!"
\par 
\par "Where'd he go? " asked present-time Sasha.
\par 
\par "The kids say he just ... went. They're jazzed about it."
\par 
\par "The body's gone because he wasn't shot here, after all, " I explained,
\par which was about as illuminating as describing a thermonuclear reaction
\par with the words it go boom.
\par 
\par "You said I was dead meat, " the past-time Bobby said.
\par 
\par "What's happening here? " the past-time Doogie demanded.
\par 
\par "Paradox, " I said.
\par 
\par "What's that mean? "
\par 
\par "I read poetry, " I said with super-mondo frustration.
\par 
\par "Good work, son, " said both Roosevelts in perfect harmony, and then
\par looked at each other in surprise.
\par 
\par To Bobby, I said, "Get in the elevator."
\par 
\par "Where are we going? " he asked.
\par 
\par "Out."
\par 
\par "What about the kids? "
\par 
\par "We got them."
\par 
\par "What about Orson?"
\par 
\par "He's in the elevator."
\par 
\par "Cool."
\par 
\par "Will you move your ass? " I demanded.
\par 
\par "A little crabby, aren't we? " he said, stepping forward, patting my
\par shoulder.
\par 
\par "You don't know what I've been through."
\par 
\par "Wasn't I the one who died?
\par 
\par " he asked, and then disappeared into the murky red elevator, becoming
\par another maroon blur.
\par 
\par The past-time Sasha, Doogie, Roosevelt, and even the past-time Chris
\par Snow looked confused, and the past-time Chris said to me, "What are we
\par supposed to do? " Addressing myself, I said, "You disappoint me. I'd
\par expect you, at least, to figure it out. Eliot and Pooh, for God's sake!
\par 
\par " As the oscillating thrum of the egg-room engines grew louder and a
\par faint but ominous rumble passed through the floor, like giant train
\par wheels beginning to turn, I said, "You've got to go down and save the
\par kids, save Orson."
\par 
\par "You already saved them." My head was spinning. "But maybe you still
\par have to go down and save them, or it'll turn out that we didn't." The
\par past-time Roosevelt picked up the past-time Mungojerrie and said, "The
\par cat understands."
\par 
\par "Then just follow the damn cat! " I said.
\par 
\par All of us present-time types who were still in the corridor roosevelt,
\par Sasha, me, Doogie holding the elevator doorstepped back into the red
\par light, but when we were in the cab with the kids, there was no red light
\par at all, just the incandescent bulb in the ceiling.
\par 
\par The corridor, however, was now flooded with red murk, and our past time
\par selves, minus Bobby, were maroon blurs once more.
\par 
\par Doogie pressed the button for the ground floor, and the doors closed.
\par 
\par Orson squeezed between me and Sasha, to be close to my side.
\par 
\par "Hey, bro, " I said softly.
\par 
\par He chuffed.
\par 
\par We were cool.
\par 
\par As we started upward at an excruciatingly slow pace, I looked at my
\par wristwatch. The luminous LED digits weren't racing either forward or
\par backward, as I had seen them do previously. Instead, pulsing slowly
\par across the watch were curious squiggles of light, which might have been
\par distorted numbers. With growing dread, I wondered if this meant we were
\par beginning to move sideways in time, heading toward the other side that
\par Randolph was so eager to visit.
\par 
\par "You were dead, " Aaron Stuart said to Bobby.
\par 
\par "So I heard."
\par 
\par "You don't remember being dead? " Doogie asked.
\par 
\par "Not really."
\par 
\par "He doesn't remember dying because he never died, " I said too sharply.
\par 
\par I was still struggling with grief at the same time that a wild joy was
\par surging in me, a manic glee, which was a weird combination of emotions,
\par like being King Lear and Mr. Toad of Toad Hall at the same time.
\par 
\par Plus my fear was feeding on itself, growing fatter. We weren't out of
\par here yet, and we had more than ever to lose, because if one of us died
\par now, there was no chance that I'd be able to pull another rabbit out of
\par a hat, I didn't even have a hat.
\par 
\par As we ground slowly up, still short of B-2, a deep rumbling rose through
\par the elevator shaft, as if we were in a submarine around which depth
\par charges were detonating, and the lift mechanism began to creak.
\par 
\par "If it was me, I'd sure remember dying, " Wendy announced.
\par 
\par "He didn't die, " I said more calmly.
\par 
\par "But he did die, " insisted Aaron Stuart.
\par 
\par "He sure did, " said Anson.
\par 
\par Jimmy Wing said, "You peed your pants."
\par 
\par "I never, " Bobby denied.
\par 
\par "You told us you did, " said Jimmy Wing.
\par 
\par Bobby looked dubiously at Sasha, and she said, "You were dying, it was
\par excusable." On my wristwatch, the luminous squiggles were twisting
\par across the readout window faster than before. Maybe the Mystery Train
\par was pulling out of the station, gathering speed. Sideways.
\par 
\par As we reached B-2, the building began to shake badly enough to cause the
\par elevator cab to rattle against the walls of the shaft, and we grabbed at
\par the handrails and at each other to keep our balance.
\par 
\par "My pants are dry, " Bobby noted.
\par 
\par "Because you didn't die, " I said tightly, "which means you never wet
\par your pants, either."
\par 
\par "He did too, " said Jimmy Wing.
\par 
\par Sensing my state of mind, Roosevelt said, "Relax, son." Orson put one
\par paw on my shoe, as if to indicate that I should listen to Roosevelt.
\par 
\par Doogie said, "If he never died, why do we remember him dying? "
\par 
\par "I don't know, " I said miserably.
\par 
\par The elevator seemed to have gotten stuck at B-2, and abruptly the doors
\par opened, though Doogie had pressed only the G button.
\par 
\par Maybe the kids weren't able to see past us to what lay beyond the cab,
\par but those of us in the front row had a good look, and the sight froze
\par us. A corridor, either stripped to the bare concrete or equipped as it
\par had been in years gone by, should have waited out there past the
\par threshold, but we were facing a panoramic landscape instead. A
\par smoldering red sky. Oily black fungus grew in gnarled, vaguely treelike
\par masses, and thick rivulets of vile dark syrup oozed from puckered
\par pustules on the trunks. From some limbs hung cocoons like those we had
\par seen in the Dead Town bungalow, glossy and fat, pregnant with malignant
\par life.
\par 
\par For a moment, as we stood stunned, no sound or odor issued from this
\par twisted landscape, and I dared to hope it was more a vision than a
\par physical reality. Then movement at the threshold drew my eye, and I saw
\par the red-and-black-mottled tendrils of a ground-hugging vine, as
\par beautiful and evil-looking as a nest of baby coral snakes, questing at
\par the sill of the door, growing as fast as plants in a nature film run at
\par high speed, wriggling into the cab.
\par 
\par "Shut the door! " I urged.
\par 
\par Doogie pressed a button labeled close door and then pushed the G button
\par again, for the ground floor.
\par 
\par The doors didn't close.
\par 
\par As Doogie jammed his thumb against the button again, something loomed in
\par that otherworldly place, no more than two feet away from us, crossing
\par from the left.
\par 
\par 
\par 
\par We brought up our guns.
\par 
\par It was a man in a bio-secure suit. Hodgson was stenciled across the brow
\par of his helmet, but his face was that of an ordinary man, not crawling
\par with parasites.
\par 
\par We were in the past and on the other side. Chaos.
\par 
\par The writhing tendrils of the black-and-red vine, the diameter of
\par earthworms, lapped at the elevator carpet.
\par 
\par Orson sniffed them. The tendrils rose like swaying cobras, as if they
\par would strike at his nose, and Orson twitched away from them.
\par 
\par Cursing, Doogie pounded the side of his fist against close door.
\par 
\par Then against G. Hodgson could see us. Amazement pried open his eyes.
\par 
\par The unnatural silence and stillness were broken when wind gusted into
\par the cab. Hot and humid. Reeking of tar and rotting vegetation.
\par 
\par Circling us and blowing out again, as if it were a living thing.
\par 
\par Careful to avoid stepping on the vine tendrils, afraid they would bore
\par through the sole of my shoe and then through the sole of my foot, I
\par tugged frantically at the door, trying to pull out the sliding panel on
\par the left. It wouldn't budge.
\par 
\par With the stench came a faint but chilling sound like thousands of
\par tortured voices, issuing from a distance and threaded through those
\par screams, also distant, was an inhuman shriek.
\par 
\par Hodgson turned more directly toward us, pointing for the benefit of
\par another man in a bio-secure suit, who hove into view.
\par 
\par The doors began to close. The vine tendrils crunched between the sliding
\par panels. The doors shuddered, almost retreated, but then pinched the
\par vines off, and the cab rose.
\par 
\par Oozing yellow fluid and the bitter scent of sulfur, the severed tendrils

\par curled and twisted with great agitation and then dissolved into an inert
\par mush.
\par 
\par The building shook as if it were the home of all thunder, the foundry
\par where Thor forged his lightning bolts.
\par 
\par The vibrations were affecting either the elevator motor or the lift
\par cables, perhaps both, because we were rising more slowly than before,
\par grinding upward.
\par 
\par "Mr. Halloway's pants are dry now, " Aaron Stuart said, picking up the
\par conversation where it had left off, "but I smelled the pee."
\par 
\par "Me too, " said Anson, Wendy, and Jimmy.
\par 
\par Orson woofed agreement.
\par 
\par "It's a paradox, " Roosevelt said solemnly, as though to save me the
\par trouble of explaining.
\par 
\par "There's that word again, " Doogie said. His brow was furrowed, and his
\par gaze remained riveted on the indicator board above the door, waiting for
\par the B-1 bulb to light.
\par 
\par "A time paradox, " I said.
\par 
\par "But how does that work? " Sasha asked.
\par 
\par "Like a toaster oven, " I said, meaning who knows?
\par 
\par Doogie pressed his thumb against G and kept it there. We didn't want the
\par door to open on B-1. B for bedlam. B for bad news. B for be prepared to
\par die squishily.
\par 
\par Aaron Stuart said, "Mr. Snow? " I took a deep breath, "Yes? "
\par 
\par "If Mr. Halloway didn't die, then whose blood is on your hands?
\par 
\par " I looked at my hands. They were sticky-damp with Bobby's blood, which
\par had gotten on them when I'd dragged his body into the elevator.
\par 
\par "Weird, " I admitted.
\par 
\par Wendy Dulcinea said, "If the body went poof, why didn't the blood on
\par your hands go poof? " My mouth was too dry, my tongue too thick, and my
\par throat too tight to allow me to answer her.
\par 
\par The shuddering elevator briefly caught on something in the shaft, tore
\par loose with a ripping-metal sound, and then we groaned to B-1.
\par 
\par Where we stopped.
\par 
\par Doogie leaned on close door and on the button for the ground floor.
\par 
\par We didn't ascend any farther.
\par 
\par The doors slid inexorably open. Heat, humidity, and that fetid stench
\par 
\par rolled over us, and I expected the vigorous alien vegetation to grow
\par into the cab and overwhelm us with explosive force.
\par 
\par In our slice of time, we'd risen one level, but William Hodgson was
\par still out there in never land, where we had left him. Pointing at us.
\par 
\par The man beyond Hodgsonlumley, according to his helmet also turned to look
\par at us.
\par 
\par Shrieking, something flew out of that baleful sky, among the black
\par trees, a creature with glossy black wings and whiplike tail, with the
\par muscular, scaly limbs of a lizard, as if a gargoyle had torn itself
\par loose of the stone high on an ancient Gothic cathedral and had taken
\par flight. As it swooped down on Lumley, it appeared to spit out a stream
\par of objects, which looked like large peach pits but were something
\par deadlier, something no doubt full of frenzied life. Lumley twitched and
\par jerked as though he had been hit by machine-gun fire, and several
\par perfectly round holes appeared in his spacesuit, like those we had seen
\par in poor damn Hodgson's suit in the egg room the previous night.
\par 
\par Lumley screamed as though he were being eaten alive, and Hodgson
\par stumbled backward in terror, away from us.
\par 
\par The elevator doors began to close, but the flying thing abruptly changed
\par directions, streaking straight toward us.
\par 
\par As the doors bumped shut, hard objects rattled against them, and a
\par series of dimples appeared in the steel, as if it had been hit by
\par bullets with almost enough punch to penetrate to the interior of the
\par cab.
\par 
\par Sasha's face was talcum white.
\par 
\par Mine must have been whiter still, to match my name.
\par 
\par Even Orson seemed to have gone a paler shade of black.
\par 
\par We ascended toward the ground floor through crashes of thunder, the
\par grinding rumble of steel wheels on steel track, harsh whistles, shrieks,
\par and the throbbing electronic hum, but in spite of all those sounds of
\par worlds colliding, we also heard another noise, which was more intimate,
\par more terrifying. Something was on the roof of the elevator cab.
\par 
\par Crawling, slithering.
\par 
\par It could have been nothing but a loose cable, which might have explained
\par our quaking, jerky progress toward the ground floor. But it wasn't a
\par loose cable. That was wishful thinking. This thing was alive.
\par 
\par Alive and purposeful.
\par 
\par I couldn't imagine how anything could have gotten into the shaft with us
\par after the doors had shut, unless the intermingling of these two
\par realities was nearly complete. In which case, at any moment, might not
\par the thing on the roof pass through the ceiling and be among us, like a
\par ghost passing through a wall?
\par 
\par Doogie remained focused on the indicator board above the doors, but the
\par rest of us animals, kids, and adults turned our faces up toward the
\par menacing sounds.
\par 
\par In the center of the ceiling was an escape hatch. A way out. A way in.
\par 
\par Borrowing the Uzi from Doogie once more, I aimed at the ceiling.
\par 
\par Sasha also covered the trapdoor with her shotgun.
\par 
\par I wasn't optimistic about the effectiveness of gunfire. Unless I was
\par misremembering, Delacroix had suggested that at least some of the
\par expedition members were heavily armed when they went to the other side.
\par 
\par Guns hadn't saved them.
\par 
\par The elevator groaned-rattled-squeaked upward.
\par 
\par This side of the three-foot-square hatch featured neither hinges nor
\par handles. There was no latch bolt, either. To escape, you had to push the
\par panel up and out. To enable rescue workers to pull it open from the
\par other side, there would be a handle or a recessed groove in which
\par fingers could be hooked.
\par 
\par The flying gargoyle had hands, thick talon like fingers. Maybe those
\par huge fingers wouldn't fit in a groove handle.
\par 
\par A hard, frantic scraping noise. Something clawing busily at the steel
\par roof, as if trying to dig through. A creak, a hard pop, a rending sound.
\par 
\par Silence.
\par 
\par The kids clutched one another.
\par 
\par Orson growled low in his throat.
\par 
\par So did I. The walls seemed to press closer to one another, as though the
\par elevator cab were reshaping itself into a group coffin. The air was
\par thick.
\par 
\par Each breath felt like sludge in my lungs. The overhead light began to
\par flicker.
\par 
\par With a metallic squeal, the escape hatch sagged toward us as though a
\par great weight were pressing on it. The frame in which it sat would not
\par allow it to open inward.
\par 
\par After a moment, the weight was removed, but the panel didn't return
\par entirely to normal. It was distorted. Steel plate. Bent like plastic.
\par 
\par More force had been required for that task than I cared to think about.
\par 
\par Sweat blurred my vision. I wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand.
\par 
\par "Yes! " Doogie said, as the G bulb lit on the indicator board.
\par 
\par The promise of release was not immediately fulfilled. The doors didn't
\par open.
\par 
\par The cab began to bob up and down, rising and falling as much as a foot
\par with each sickening bounce, as though the hoist cables and the limit
\par switches and the roller guides and the pulleys were all about to crack
\par apart and send us plunging to the bottom of the shaft in a mass of
\par mangling metal.
\par 
\par On the roof, the gargoyle or something worseyanked on the escape hatch.
\par 
\par Its prior efforts had tweaked the panel in the frame, and now the trap
\par was wedged shut.
\par 
\par The elevator doors were still shut, too, and Doogie angrily punched the
\par button labeled open doors.
\par 
\par With a shrill bark, the badly distorted rim of the steel trap stuttered
\par in the frame, as the creature above furiously pulled on it.
\par 
\par At last the elevator doors opened, and I spun toward them, sure that we
\par were now surrounded by never land, that the predator on the roof would
\par have been joined by others.
\par 
\par We were at the ground floor. The hangar was noisier than a New Year's
\par Eve party in a train station with howling wolves and a punk band with
\par nuclear amplifiers.
\par 
\par But it was recognizably the hangar, no red sky, no black trees, no
\par slithering vines like nests of coral snakes.
\par 
\par Overhead, the warped escape hatch screeched, rattled violently.
\par 
\par The surrounding frame was coming apart.
\par 
\par The elevator bobbed worse than ever. The floor of the cab rose and fell
\par in relation to the hangar floor, the way a dock slip moves in relation
\par to a boat deck in choppy seas.
\par 
\par I gave the Uzi to Doogie, snatched up my shotgun, and followed the sass
\par man into the hangar, jumping across the shifting threshold, with Bobby
\par and Orson close behind me.
\par 
\par Sasha and Roosevelt hurried the kids out of the elevator, and
\par Mungojerrie came last, after a final curious glance at the ceiling.
\par 
\par As Sasha turned to cover the cab with her shotgun, the escape hatch was
\par torn out of the ceiling. The gargoyle came down from the roof.
\par 
\par The leathery black wings were folded as it dropped, but then they spread
\par to fill the cab. The muscles bulged in the beast's sleek, scaly limbs as
\par it tensed to spring forward. The tail whipped, lashing against the cab
\par walls. Silver eyes flashed. Its raw mouth appeared to be lined with red
\par velvet, but its long forked tongue was black.
\par 
\par I remembered the seed like projectiles that it had spat at Lumley and at
\par Hodgson, and as I cried out to Sasha, the gargoyle shrieked. She
\par squeezed off a round from the shotgun, but before she could be riddled
\par with squirming parasites, the elevator broke apart and the cab plunged
\par out of sight with the screaming creature still aboard, trailing cables
\par and counterweights and pulleys and steel beams.
\par 
\par Because the beast had wings, I expected it to rise out of the ruins and
\par soar up the shaft, but then I realized that the shaft no longer existed.
\par 
\par Instead, I was looking into the starry void that I had glimpsed earlier
\par in the night, where the stairwell should have been.
\par 
\par Crazily, I thought of a magical wardrobe serving as a doorway to the
\par enchanted land of Narnia, mirrors and rabbit holes leading to a bizarre
\par kingdom ruled by a playing-card queen. This was only a transient
\par madness.
\par 
\par Recovering, I did the Pooh thing and gamely accepted all that I had see
\par nand was still seeing. I led our intrepid band across the hangar, where
\par super-weird and maximum-sharky stuff was happening, across this never
\par land of past, present, future, and sideways time, saying hello to a
\par startled ghost workman in a hard hat, brandishing the shotgun at three
\par ghosts that looked as if they would give us trouble, while trying as
\par best I could not to put us in the same space that was about to be
\par occupied by an object materializing from another time, and if you think
\par all that was easy, you're a kak.
\par 
\par At times we were in a dark and abandoned warehouse, then we were in the
\par murky red light of a time shift, but ten steps later, we were walking
\par through a well-lighted and bustling place populated by busy ghosts as
\par solid as we were. The worst moment was when we passed through a red fog
\par and, though still far from the exit door, found ourselves beyond the
\par warehouse, in a landscape where black masses of fungus rose with vaguely
\par treelike forms and clawed at a red sky in which two dim suns burned low
\par on the horizon. But an instant later, we were among the workmen ghosts
\par again, then in darkness, and finally at the exit.
\par 
\par Nothing and no one followed us into the night, but we kept running until
\par we had nearly reached the Hummer, where at last we stopped and turned
\par and stared at the hangar, which was caught in a time storm.
\par 
\par The concrete base of the structure, the corrugated steel walls, and the
\par curve of the Quonset-style roof were pulsing with that red radiance.
\par 
\par From the high clerestory windows came white beams as intense as those
\par from a lighthouse, jabbing at the sky, carving bright arcs.
\par 
\par Judging by the sound, you would have thought that a thousand bulls were
\par smashing through a thousand china shops inside the building, that tanks
\par were clashing on battlefields, that mobs of rioters were screaming for
\par blood.
\par 
\par The ground under our feet was trembling, as though from an earthquake,
\par and I wondered if we were at a safe distance.
\par 
\par I expected the structure to explode or burst into flames, but instead it
\par began to unravel. The red glow faded, the searchlights spearing from the
\par high windows went dark, and we watched while the huge building flickered
\par as though two thousand days and nights were passing in just two minutes,
\par moon glow alternating with sunshine and darkness, the corrugated walls
\par appearing to flutter in the strobing light. Then suddenly the building
\par began to dismantle itself, as if it were unraveling into time past.
\par 
\par Workmen swarmed over its surface, all moving backward, scaffolding and
\par construction machinery appeared around it, the roof vanished, and the
\par walls peeled down, and trains of trucks sucked the concrete out of the
\par foundation, back into their mixers, and steel beams were craned out of
\par the ground, like dinosaur bones from a paleontological dig, until all
\par six subterranean floors must have been deconstructed, whereupon a
\par blinding fury of massive dump trucks and excavators replaced the earth
\par that they had once removed, and then after a final crackle of red light
\par passed across the site and winked out, all was still.
\par 
\par - The hangar and everything under it had ceased to exist.
\par 
\par The spectacle left the kids ecstatic, as if they had met E. T. and
\par ridden on the back of a brontosaurus and taken a quick trip to the moon
\par all in one evening.
\par 
\par "It's over? " Doogie wondered.
\par 
\par "As if it never was, " I suggested.
\par 
\par Sasha said, "But it was."
\par 
\par "The residual effect. A runaway residual effect. The whole place
\par imploded into ... the past, I guess."
\par 
\par "But if it never existed, " Bobby said, "why do I remember being inside
\par the place? "
\par 
\par "Don't start, " I warned him.
\par 
\par We packed ourselves into the Hummer five adults, four excited kids, one
\par shaky dog, and a smug cat and Doogie drove to the bungalow in Dead Town,
\par where we had to deal with Delacroix's rotting cadaver and the ceilings
\par festooned with frankfurter-size cocoons. An exorcist's work is never
\par done.
\par 
\par On the way, Aaron Stuart, the troublemaker, reached a solemn conclusion
\par about the blood on my hands. "Mr. Halloway must be dead."
\par 
\par "We've done this, " I said impatiently. "He's not dead anymore."
\par 
\par "He's dead, " Anson agreed.
\par 
\par "I may be dead, " Bobby said, "but my pants are dry."
\par 
\par "Dead, " Jimmy Wing agreed.
\par 
\par "Maybe he is dead, " Wendy brooded.
\par 
\par "What the hell is wrong with you kids? " I demanded, turning in my seat
\par to glare at them. "He's not dead, it's a paradox, but he's not dead! All
\par you've got to do is believe in fairies, clap your hands, and Tinker Bell
\par will live! Is that so hard to understand? "
\par 
\par "Ice it down, Snowman, " Sasha advised me.
\par 
\par "I'm cool." I was still glaring at the kids, who were in the third and
\par final seat.
\par 
\par Orson was in the cargo space behind them. He cocked his burly head and
\par looked at me over the kids' heads, as if to say Ice it down.
\par 
\par "I'm mellow, " I assured him.
\par 
\par He sneezed a sneeze of disagreement.
\par 
\par Bobby had been dead. As in dead and gone. As in deader than dead.
\par 
\par All right. Time to get over it. Here in Wyvern, life goes on,
\par occasionally even for the deceased. Besides, we were more than half a
\par mile from the beach, so anything that happened here couldn't be that
\par important.
\par 
\par "Son, the Tinker Bell thing makes perfect sense, " Roosevelt said,
\par either to placate me or because he had gone stark, raving mad.
\par 
\par "Yeah, " said Jimmy Wing. "Tinker Bell."
\par 
\par "Tinker Bell, " the twins said, nodding in unison.
\par 
\par "Yeah, " Wendy said. "Why didn't I think of that? " Mungojerrie meowed.
\par 
\par I don't know what that meant.
\par 
\par Doogie drove over the curb, across the sidewalk, and parked on the front
\par lawn at the bungalow.
\par 
\par The kids stayed in the vehicle with Orson and Mungojerrie.
\par 
\par Sasha, Roosevelt, and Doogie took positions around the Hummer, standing
\par guard.
\par 
\par At Sasha's suggestion, Doogie had included two cans of gasoline in the
\par provisions. With the criminal intention of destroying still more
\par government property, Bobby and I carried these ten gallons of
\par satisfyingly flammable liquid to the bungalow.
\par 
\par Going back into this small house was even less appealing than submitting
\par to extensive gum surgery, but we were manly men, and so we climbed the
\par steps and crossed the porch without hesitation, though quietly.
\par 
\par In the living room, we set down the gasoline cans with care, as though
\par to avoid waking a quarrelsome sleeper, and I switched on a flashlight.
\par 
\par The cocoons that had been clustered overhead were gone.
\par 
\par At first I thought the residents of those silky tubes had chewed free
\par and were now loose in the bungalow in a form that was sure to prove
\par troublesome. Then I realized that not even one wisp of gossamer filament
\par remained in any corner, and none floated on the floor.
\par 
\par The lone red sock, which might once have belonged to one of the
\par Delacroix children, lay where it had been previously, still caked with
\par dust. In general, the bungalow was as I remembered it.
\par 
\par No cocoons hung in the dining room. None were to be found in the
\par kitchen, either.
\par 
\par Leland Delacroix's corpse was gone, as were the photographs of his
\par family, the votive-candle glass, the wedding ring, and the gun with
\par which he had killed himself. The ancient linoleum was still cracked and
\par peeling, but I could see no biological stains that would have indicated
\par that a dead body had been rotting here recently.
\par 
\par "The Mystery Train was never built, " I said, "so Delacroix never went
\par to ... the other side. Never opened the door." Bobby said, "Never got
\par infected or possessed. Whatever. And he never infected his family. So
\par they're all alive somewhere? "
\par 
\par "God, I hope so. But how could he not be here when he was here and we
\par remember it? "
\par 
\par "Paradox, " Bobby said, as if he himself were entirely satisfied with
\par that less than illuminating explanation. "So what do we do? "
\par 
\par "Burn it, anyway, " I concluded.
\par 
\par "To be safe, you mean? "
\par 
\par "No, just because I'm a pyromaniac."
\par 
\par "Didn't know that about you, bro."
\par 
\par "Let's torch this dump." As we emptied the gasoline cans in the kitchen,
\par dining room, and living room, I repeatedly paused because I thought I
\par heard something moving inside the bungalow walls. Every time I listened,
\par the elusive sound stopped.
\par 
\par "Rats, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par 
\par 
\par This alarmed me, because if Bobby heard something, too, then the furtive
\par noises weren't the work of my imagination. Furthermore, this wasn't the
\par scuttling-scratching-squeaking of rodents, it was a liquid slithering.
\par 
\par "Humongous rats, " he said with more force but less conviction.
\par 
\par I fortified myself with the argument that Bobby and I were just woozy
\par from gasoline fumes and, therefore, couldn't trust our senses.
\par 
\par Nevertheless, I expected to hear voices echoing inside my head, Stay,
\par stay, stay, stay ... We escaped the bungalow without being munched.
\par 
\par Using the last half gallon of gasoline, I poured a fuse across the front
\par porch, down the steps, and along the walkway.
\par 
\par Doogie pulled the Hummer into the street, to a safer distance.
\par 
\par Moonlight mantled Dead Town, and every silent structure seemed to harbor
\par hostile watchers at the windows.
\par 
\par After setting the empty fuel can on the porch, I hurried out to the
\par Hummer and asked Doogie to back it up until one of the rear tires was
\par weighing down the manhole. The monkey manhole.
\par 
\par When I returned to the front yard, Bobby lit the fuse.
\par 
\par As the blue-orange flame raced up the walkway and climbed the front
\par steps, Bobby said, "When I died  ..."
\par 
\par "Yeah? "
\par 
\par "Did I scream like a stuck pig, blubber, and lose my dignity? "
\par 
\par "You were cool. Aside from wetting your pants, of course."
\par 
\par "They're not wet now." The fuse flame reached the gasoline-soaked living
\par room, and a firestorm blew through the bungalow.
\par 
\par Basking recklessly in the orange light, I said, "When you were dying .
\par 
\par .."
\par 
\par "Yeah? "
\par 
\par "You said, I love you, bro." He grimaced. "Lame."
\par 
\par "And I said it was mutual."
\par 
\par "Why did we have to do that? "
\par 
\par "You were dying."
\par 
\par "But now here I am."
\par 
\par "It's awkward, " I agreed.
\par 
\par "What we need here is a custom paradox."
\par 
\par "Like? "
\par 
\par "Where we remember everything else but forget my dying words."
\par 
\par "Too late. I've already made arrangements with the church, the reception
\par hall, and the florist."
\par 
\par "I'll wear white, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par "That would be a travesty." We turned away from the burning bungalow and
\par walked out to the street. Harried by the witchy firelight, twisted tree
\par shadows capered across the pavement.
\par 
\par As we drew near the Hummer, a familiar angry squeal tortured the night,
\par followed by a score of other shrill voices, and I looked left to see the
\par troop of Wyvern monkeys, half a block away, loping toward us.
\par 
\par The Mystery Train and all its associated terrors might be gone as if
\par they had never been, but the life's work of Wisteria Jane Snow still had
\par its consequences.
\par 
\par We piled into the Hummer, and Doogie locked all the doors with a master
\par switch on the console, just as the rhesuses swarmed over the vehicle.
\par 
\par "Go, move, woof, meow, get outta here! " everyone was shouting, though
\par Doogie needed no encouragement.
\par 
\par He floored the accelerator, leaving part of the troop screaming in
\par frustration as the rear bumper slipped from under their grasping hands.
\par 
\par We weren't in the clear yet. Monkeys were clinging tenaciously to the !
\par luggage rack on the roof.
\par 
\par One nasty specimen was hanging by its hind legs, upside down at the
\par tailgate, shrieking what must have been simian obscenities and furiously
\par slapping its hands against the window. Orson snarled to warn it away,
\par face-to-face at the glass, while struggling to stay on his feet as
\par Doogie resorted to slalom maneuvers to try to shake the primates loose.
\par 
\par + Another monkey slid down from the roof, directly in front of the wind
\par shield, glaring in at Doogie, blocking his view. With one hand it
\par gripped the armature of one windshield wiper, to keep from tumbling off
\par the Hummer, and in its other hand was a small stone. It hammered the
\par stone against the windshield, but the glass didn't break, so it swung
\par again, and this time the stone left a starburst scratch.
\par 
\par "Hell with this, " Doogie said, switching on the wipers.
\par 
\par The moving armature pinched the monkey's hand, and the whisking blade
\par startled it. The beast squealed, let go, tumbled across the hood, and
\par fell off the side of the Hummer.
\par 
\par The Stuart twins cheered.
\par 
\par In the front seat, forward of Sasha, Roosevelt rode shotgun, sans shot
\par gun but with cat.
\par 
\par Something cracked against the window beside him, loud enough to make
\par Mungojerrie yelp with surprise.
\par 
\par A monkey was hanging there, too, also upside down, but this one had a
\par combination wrench in its right hand, gripping it by the box end, using
\par the open end as a hammer. It was the wrong tool for the job, but it was
\par a lot better than the stone, and when the precocious primate swung it
\par again, the tempered glass crazed.
\par 
\par As thousands of tiny fissures laid an instant crackle glaze across the
\par side window, Mungojerrie sprang out of Roosevelt's lap, onto the
\par backrest of the front seat, onto the seat between Bobby and me, up and
\par over and into the third row, taking refuge with the kids.
\par 
\par The cat moved so fast that it was landing among the children even as the
\par sparking, gummy sheet of tempered glass collapsed onto Roosevelt's lap.
\par 
\par Doogie needed both hands for the wheel, and none of the rest of us could
\par take a shot at the invader without blowing off our animal communicator's
\par head, which seemed counterproductive. Then the monkey was inside,
\par swarming across Roosevelt, snapping its teeth at him and swinging the
\par wrench when he tried to seize it, so fast that it might have been a cat,
\par out of the front seat and into the middle seat, where I was sitting
\par between Sasha and Bobby.
\par 
\par Surprisingly, it went for Bobby, perhaps because it mistook him for the
\par boy chick of Wisteria Jane Snow. Mom was its creator, which in monkey
\par circles made me the son of Frankenstein. I heard the wrench ring dully
\par off the side of Bobby's skull, though not a fraction as hard as the
\par rhesus would have liked, because it hadn't been able to get in a good,
\par solid swing as it was leaping.
\par 
\par Then somehow Bobby had it by the neck, both hands around its small
\par throat, and the beast let go of the wrench to pry at Bobby's choking
\par hands. Only an extremely reckless monkey hater would have attempted to
\par use a gun in these close quarters, and so as Doogie continued to slalom
\par from curb to curb, Sasha put down the window at her side, and Bobby held
\par the invader toward me. I slipped my hands around its neck, under Bobby's
\par hands, and got a strangulation grip as he let go. Though this all
\par happened fast, too fast to think about what we were doing, the
\par snarling-gagging-spitting rhesus made its presence felt, kicking and
\par thrashing with surprising strength, considering that it wasn't getting
\par any breath and the blood supply to its brain was zero, twenty-five
\par pounds of pissed-off primate, grabbing at our hair, determined to gouge
\par our eyes, tear off our ears, lashing its tail, twisting fiercely as it
\par tried to pull free. Sasha turned her head aside, and I leaned across
\par her, trying to choke the monkey senseless but, more important, trying to
\par shove it out of the Hummer, and then it was through the window, and I
\par let it go, and Sasha cranked the glass up so fast that she almost
\par pinched my hands.
\par 
\par Bobby said, "Let's not do that again."
\par 
\par "Okay." Another screeching fleabag swung down from the roof, intending
\par to enter through the broken window, but Roosevelt whacked it with a t
\par sledgehammer-size fist, and it flew away into the night as though it had
\par been fired out of a catapult.
\par 

\par Doogie was still putting the Hummer through quick serpentine maneuvers,
\par and at the tailgate, the monkey hanging upside down from the roof rack
\par swung back and forth across the unbroken window, as if it were a clock
\par pendulum. Orson tumbled off his feet but sprang up at once, snarling and
\par snapping his teeth to remind the rhesus of the price it would pay if it
\par tried to get inside.
\par 
\par Looking beyond the tick-tock monkey, I saw that the rest of the troop
\par continued to give chase. Doogie's slalom trick, while shaking loose some
\par of the attackers, had slowed us down, and the bright-eyed nasties were
\par ..
\par 
\par gaining on us.
\par 
\par Then the sass man stopped swerving, accelerated, and rounded a corner so
\par fast that he almost stood us on end when he had to jam the brake pedal
\par to the floorboard to avoid plowing through a pack of coyotes.
\par 
\par The monkey at the tailgate shrieked at either the sight or the smell of
\par the pack. It dropped off the Hummer and ran for its life.
\par 
\par The coyotes, fifty or sixty of them, parted like a stream and flowed
\par around the vehicle.
\par 
\par I was afraid they would try to come through the broken window.
\par 
\par With their wicked teeth, they would be harder to hold off than mere
\par monkeys.
\par 
\par But they showed no interest in canned people meat, racing past, closing
\par ranks again behind us.
\par 
\par The pursuing troop rounded the corner and met the pack. Monkeys shot
\par into the air with such surprise that you would have thought they were on
\par a trampoline. Being smart monkeys, they retreated without hesitation,
\par and the coyotes went after them.
\par 
\par The kids turned backward in their seats, cheering the coyotes.
\par 
\par "It's a Barnum and Bailey world, " Sasha said.
\par 
\par Doogie drove us out of Wyvern.
\par 
\par The clouds had cleared while we'd been underground, and the moon hung
\par high in the sky, as round as time.
\par 
\par 
\par With midnight still ahead of us, we took each of the kids home, and that
\par was totally fine. Tears are not always bitter. As we made our rounds,
\par the tears on the faces of the children's parents were as sweet as mercy.
\par 
\par When Lilly Wing looked at me, with Jimmy in her arms, I saw in her eyes
\par something that I had once yearned to see, but now what I saw was less
\par fulfilling for me here in time present than it might have been in time
\par past.
\par 
\par When we got back to my house, Sasha, Bobby, and I were prepared to
\par party, but Roosevelt wanted to get his Mercedes, drive home to his
\par handsome Bluewater cruiser at the marina, and craft a pirate's patch out
\par of filet mignon to cover his swollen eye. "Children, I'm getting old.
\par 
\par You go celebrate, and I'll go sleep." Because he was off duty at the
\par radio station, Doogie had made a midnight date, as if he'd never doubted
\par that he would come back from never land and feel like dancing.
\par 
\par "Good thing I have time to shower, " he said. "I think I smell like
\par monkey." While Bobby and Sasha loaded my and Sasha's surfboards into her
\par Explorer, I washed my bloodstained hands. Then Mungojerrie and Orson and
\par I went into the dining room, now Sasha's music room, to listen to the
\par tape that I had heard twice before. Leland Delacroix's testament.
\par 
\par It was not in the machine where I had left it when I'd played it for
\par Sasha, Roosevelt, and Mungojerrie. Apparently, it had vanished like the
\par building that had housed the Mystery Train. If Delacroix had never
\par killed himself, had never worked on the train, had never gone to the
\par other side, then no tape had ever been made.
\par 
\par I went to the rack in which Sasha stores audiotapes of all her
\par compositions. The dupe of Delacroix's testament, labeled "Tequila
\par Kidneys, " was where I had put it.
\par 
\par "It'll be blank, " I said.
\par 
\par Orson regarded me quizzically. The poor battered boy needed to be bathe
\par , treated with antiseptics, and bandaged. Sasha was probably one step
\par ahead of me, already packing a first-aid kit into the truck.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie was waiting at the tape player when I returned with the
\par cassette.
\par 
\par I popped it into the machine and pressed the play button.
\par 
\par The hiss of magnetic tape. A soft click. Rhythmic breathing.
\par 
\par Then ragged breathing, weeping, great miserable sobs. Finally,
\par Delacroix's voice, "This is a warning. A testament." I pressed stop.
\par 
\par I could not understand how the original tape could cease to exist, while
\par this copy remained intact. How could Delacroix be making this testament
\par if he'd never ridden the Mystery Train?
\par 
\par "Paradox, " I said.
\par 
\par Orson nodded in agreement.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie looked at me and yawned, as if to say that I was full of
\par crap.
\par 
\par I switched the machine on and fast-forwarded until I came to the place
\par on the tape at which Delacroix listed as many of the personnel on the
\par project as he'd known, citing their titles. The first name was, as I had
\par remembered, Dr. Randolph Josephson. He was a civilian scienti stand head
\par of the project.
\par 
\par Dr. Randolph Josephson.
\par 
\par John Joseph Randolph.
\par 
\par On leaving juvenile detention at the age of eighteen, Johnny Randolph
\par had surely become Randolph Josephson. In this new identity, he had
\par acquired an education, apparently one hell of an education, driven to
\par fulfill a destiny that he had imagined for himself after seeing a crow
\par emerge from solid rock.
\par 
\par Now, if you want, you can believe that the devil himself paid a visit to
\par twelve-year-old Johnny Randolph, in the form of a talking crow, urging
\par him to kill his parents and then develop a machine the Mystery Train to
\par open the door between here and Hell, to let out the legions of dark
\par angels and demons who are condemned to live in the Pit.
\par 
\par Or you can believe that a homicidal boy read a similar scenario in, oh,
\par say it was a moldering comic book, and then borrowed the plot for his
\par own pathetic life, built it into a grand delusion that motivated him to
\par create that infernal machine. It might seem unlikely that a
\par slashing-chopping-hacking sociopath could become a scientist of such
\par stature that billions of dollars in black-budget government money would
\par be lavished on his work, but we know he was an unusually self-controlled
\par sociopath, who limited his killings to one a year, pouring the rest of
\par his murderous energy into his career. And, of course, most of those who
\par decide how to spend black-budget billions are probably not as well
\par balanced as you and I. Well, not as well balanced as you, since anyone
\par reading these volumes of my Moonlight Bay journal will be justified in
\par questioning my balance.
\par 
\par The keepers of our communal coffers often seek out insanely ambitious
\par projects, and I would be surprised if John Joseph Randolphaka Dr.
\par Randolph Josephson was the only raving lunatic who was showered with our
\par tax money.
\par 
\par I wondered if Randolph could be dead back there in Fort Wyvern, buried
\par alive under the thousands of tons of earth that, in the manic reversal
\par of time, had been returned by dump trucks and excavators to the hole
\par where the egg room and associated chambers had once existed. Or had he
\par never gone to Wyvern in the first place, never developed the Mystery
\par Train? Was he alive elsewhere, having spent the past decade working on
\par another and similar project?
\par 
\par The three-hundred-ring circus of my imagination abruptly set up its
\par tent, and I became convinced that John Joseph Randolph was at the
\par dining-room window, staring at me this very moment. I spun around.
\par 
\par The pleated shade was down. I crossed the room, grabbed the pull cord,
\par yanked the shade up. Johnny wasn't there.
\par 
\par I listened to a little more of the tape. The eighteenth name on
\par Delacroix's list was Conrad Gesel. No doubt he was the stocky bastard
\par with the cropped black hair, yellow-brown eyes, and doll's teeth.
\par 
\par Perhaps he was one of the temponauts who had traveled to the other side,
\par one of the few who had come back alive. Maybe he had glimpsed a destiny
\par of his own in that world of the red sky, or had been driven quietly mad
\par by what he'd seen and had found himself self-destructively drawn to that
\par nightmare place. In any case, he and Randolph hadn't met at a church
\par supper or a strawberry festival.
\par 
\par The skin was still crawling on the nape of my neck. Although the Mystery
\par Train building had been deconstructed down to the last chip of concrete
\par and the final scrap of steel, I didn't feel that we'd reached closure in
\par this matter.
\par 
\par John Joseph Randolph hadn't been at the window, however, now I was sure
\par Conrad Gensel had his nose pressed to the pane. Because I had lowered
\par the blind after checking for mad Johnny, I crossed the room again.
\par 
\par Hesitated. Yanked up the shade. No Conrad.
\par 
\par The dog and the cat were watching me with interest, as if they were
\par being highly entertained.
\par 
\par "The big question, " I said to Mungojerrie and Orson, as I led them into
\par the kitchen, "is whether the door Johnny opened was really a door into
\par Hell or a door to somewhere else." He wouldn't have submitted a grant
\par application with the promise of building a bridge to Beelzebub.
\par 
\par He'd have been more discreet. I'm sure the cloak-and-dagger financiers
\par believed that they were funding research and experiments in time travel,
\par and because they are all comfortable in their lunacy, that seemed
\par rational.
\par 
\par As I took a package of frankfurters out of the freezer, I said, "And
\par from what he was ranting in that copper room, I guess it must have been
\par time travel of a sort. Forward, back but mostly what he called sideways.
\par 
\par " I stood pondering the problem, holding the frozen hot dogs.
\par 
\par Orson started pacing in circles around me.
\par 
\par "Suppose there are worlds out there in time streams that flow beside
\par ours, parallel worlds. According to quantum physics, an infinite number
\par of shadow universes exist simultaneously with ours, as real as ours. We
\par can't see them. They can't see us. Realities never intersect.
\par 
\par Except maybe at Wyvern. Where the Mystery Train, like a giant blender,
\par whipped realities together for a while." Mungojerrie was now pacing
\par around me, too, following Orson.
\par 
\par "Isn't it possible that one of those shadow universes is so terrible
\par that it might as well be Hell? For that matter, maybe there's a parallel
\par world so glorious we couldn't distinguish it from Heaven." The pacing
\par pooch and the pacing cat were so focused on the hot dogs, in such a
\par solid trance, that if Orson had suddenly stopped, Mungojerrie would have
\par walked halfway up his butt before realizing where he was.
\par 
\par I cut open the package of frankfurters, spread the sausages on a plate,
\par headed for the microwave oven, but stopped in the middle of the room,
\par pondering the imponderable.
\par 
\par "In fact, " I said, "isn't it possible that some people genuine psychics,
\par mystic shave actually at times looked through the barrier between time
\par streams? Had visions of these parallel worlds? Maybe that's where our
\par concepts of the afterlife come from." Bobby had entered the kitchen from
\par the garage as I'd launched into my latest monologue. He listened to me
\par for a moment, but then he fell in behind Mungojerrie and Orson, pacing
\par circles around me.
\par 
\par "And what if we do move on from this world when we die, sideways into
\par one of those parallel to us? Are we talking religion or science here?"
\par 
\par "We're not talking anything, " Bobby said. "You're talking your head off
\par about religion and science and pseudoscience, but we're just thinking
\par hot dogs."
\par 
\par Taking the hint, I put the plate in the microwave. When the hot dogs
\par were warm, I gave two to Mungojerrie. I gave six to Orson, because when
\par I had lifted the cut chain-link and urged him to enter Wyvern the
\par previous night, I had promised him frankfurters, and I always keep my
\par promises to my friends, just as they always keep their promises to me.
\par 
\par I didn't give any to Bobby, because he'd been a smartass.
\par 
\par "Look what I found, " he said, as I was washing the frankfurter grease
\par from my hands.
\par 
\par My fingers were dripping when he gave me the Mystery Train cap.
\par 
\par "This can't exist, " I said.
\par 
\par If the entire building that housed the project had unraveled from
\par existence, why would the cap have been made in the first place?
\par 
\par "It doesn't exist, " he said. "But something else does." Baffled, I
\par turned the cap in my hands, to look at the words above the bill. The
\par ruby-red stitching didn't form Mystery Train anymore.
\par 
\par Instead, the two words were Tornado Alley.
\par 
\par "What's Tornado Alley? " I asked.
\par 
\par "You find it a little  ..."
\par 
\par "Not uncreepy? "
\par 
\par "Yeah."
\par 
\par "Maximo weird, " I said.
\par 
\par Maybe Randolph and Conrad and others were out there in Wyvern or some
\par other part of the world, working on the same project, which now had a
\par different name. No closure.
\par 
\par "Gonna wear it? " Bobby asked.
\par 
\par "No."
\par 
\par "Good idea."
\par 
\par "Another thing, " he said. "What did happen to the dead me? "
\par 
\par "Here we go again. He ceased to exist, that's all."
\par 
\par "Because I didn't die."
\par 
\par "I'm no Einstein." He frowned. "What if I wake up some morning, and
\par beside me in bed is that dead me, all rotting and oozing slime? "
\par 
\par "You'll have to buy new sheets." When we were packed and ready to party,
\par we drove out to the point of the southern horn of the bay, on which
\par Bobby's cottage a beautiful structure of weathered teak and glass is the
\par only residence.
\par 
\par On the way, Sasha stopped at a pay phone, disguised her voice by doing a
\par Mickey Mouse imitation god knows why Mickey Mouse, when any of the
\par characters from The Lion King would have been more apt and tipped the
\par police to the scene at the Stanwyk house.
\par 
\par When we were on the move again, Bobby said, "Bro? " J "Yo."
\par 
\par "Who left that Mystery Train cap for you in the first place? And who
\par slipped Delacroix's security badge under the windshield wiper on the
\par Jeep last night? "
\par 
\par "No proof."
\par 
\par "But a suspicion? "
\par 
\par "Big Head."
\par 
\par "You serious? "
\par 
\par "I think it's way smarter than it looks."
\par 
\par "It's some mutant freak, " Bobby insisted.
\par 
\par "So am I."
\par 
\par "Good point." At Bobby's place, we changed from street clothes into wet
\par suits, then loaded a cooler full of beer and a variety of snacks into
\par the Explorer.
\par 
\par Before we could party, however, we needed to resolve one issue so we
\par could stop glancing nervously at the windows, looking for the crazy
\par conductor of the Mystery Train.
\par 
\par The oversize video displays at the computer workstations in Bobby's home
\par office were ablaze with colorful maps, bar graphs, photos of the earth
\par taken from orbit only minutes ago, and flow charts of dynamic weather
\par conditions worldwide. Here and with the help of his employees in the
\par Moonlight Bay offices of Surfcastbobby predicted surf conditions for
\par subscribers in over twenty countries.
\par 
\par As I am not computer compatible, I stood back while Bobby settled into
\par one of the workstations, rattled his fingers across the keyboard, went
\par on-line, and searched a database listing all the leading American
\par scientists of our time. Logic insisted that a mad genius obsessed with
\par the possibility of time travel, determined to prove that parallel worlds
\par existed alongside our own and that these lands could be reached by a
\par lateral movement across time, would have to become a physicist, and a
\par damned good one, enormously well funded, if he had any hope of applying
\par his theories effectively.
\par 
\par Bobby found Dr. Randolph Josephson in three minutes. He was associated
\par with a university in Nevada, and he lived in Reno.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie sprang onto the workstation to peer intently at the data on
\par the screen. There was even a photo. It was our mad scientist, all right.
\par 
\par In spite of the widespread base closures that had followed the end of
\par the Cold War, Nevada had been left with a few sprawling facilities.
\par 
\par It was reasonable to assume that on at least one of them, top-secret
\par research projects in the Wyvern vein were still being undertaken.
\par 
\par "He might have moved up there to Reno after Wyvern closed, " Sasha said.
\par "That doesn't mean he's still alive. He could have come back here to
\par snatch these kid sand died when that building ... came apart."
\par 
\par "But maybe he never worked at Wyvern at all. If the Mystery Train never
\par happened, then maybe he's been up there in Reno all along building
\par Tornado Alley or something else." Bobby called directory assistance in
\par Reno and obtained a listed number for Dr. Randolph Josephson. With a
\par felt-tip pen, he jotted it on a notepad.
\par 
\par Though I knew my imagination was to blame, the ten digits seemed to have
\par an evil aura, as if this was the phone number at which soul-selling
\par politicians could reach Satan twenty-four hours a day, seven days a
\par week, holidays included, collect calls accepted.
\par 
\par "You're the only one of us who's heard his voice, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par He rolled his chair aside, so I could reach the telephone at the
\par workstation. "I've got caller-ID block and trace-call block, so if you
\par make him curious, he can't find us." When I picked up the handset, Orson
\par put his forepaws on the workstation and gently clamped his jaws around
\par my wrist, as if to suggest that I should put the phone down without
\par making the call.
\par 
\par "Got to do it, bro." He whined.
\par 
\par "Duty, " I told him.
\par 
\par He understood duty, and so he released me.
\par 
\par Although the fine hairs on the back of my neck were dueling with one
\par another, I keyed in the number. As I listened to it ring, I told myself
\par that Randolph was dead, buried alive in the hole where that copper-lined
\par room had been.
\par 
\par He answered on the third ring. I recognized his voice at once, from the
\par single word hello.
\par 
\par "Dr. Randolph Josephson? " I asked.
\par 
\par "Yes? " My mouth was so dry that my tongue stuck to my palate almost as
\par securely as Velcro to Velcro.
\par 
\par "Hello? Are you there? " he asked.
\par 
\par "Is this the Randolph Josephson formerly known as John Joseph Randolph?
\par 
\par " He did not answer. I could hear him breathing.
\par 
\par I said, "Did you think your juvenile record was expunged? Did you really
\par think you could kill your parents and have the facts erased forever? " I
\par hung up, dropping the handset so fast that it rattled in the cradle.
\par 
\par "Now what? " Sasha asked.
\par 
\par Getting up from the workstation chair, Bobby said, "Maybe in this
\par version of his life, the kook didn't get funding for his project as
\par quickly as he found it at Wyvern, or maybe not enough funding. He might
\par not yet have started up another model of the Mystery Train."
\par 
\par "But if that's true, " Sasha said, "how do we stop him? Drive over to
\par Reno and put a bullet in his brain? "
\par 
\par "Not if we can avoid it, " I said. "I tore some clippings off the wall
\par of his murder gallery, in that tunnel under the egg room. They were
\par still in my pockets when I got home. They hadn't just vanished like ..
\par 
\par .
\par 
\par Bobby's corpse. Which must mean those are killings Randolph's still
\par committed. His annual thrill. Maybe tomorrow I should make anonymous
\par calls to the police, accusing him of the murders. If they look into it,
\par they might find his scrapbook or other mementos."
\par 
\par "Even if they nail him, " Sasha said, "his research could go on without
\par him. The new version of the Mystery Train might be built, and the door
\par between realities might be opened." > I looked at Mungojerrie.
\par 
\par Mungojerrie looked at Orson. Orson looked at Sasha. Sasha looked at
\par Bobby. Bobby looked at me and said, "Then we're doomed."
\par 
\par "I'll tip the cops tomorrow, " I said. "It's the best we can do.
\par 
\par And if the cops can't convict him  ..." Sasha said, "Then Doogie and I
\par will drive over to Reno one day and waste the creep."
\par 
\par "You have a way about you, woman, " Bobby said.
\par 
\par Time to party.
\par 
\par Sasha drove the Explorer across the dunes, through shore grass silvered
\par with moonlight, and down a long embankment, parking on the beach of the
\par southern horn, just above the tide line. Driving this far onto the
\par strand isn't legal, but we had been to Hell and back, so we figured we
\par could survive virtually any punishment meted out for this violation.
\par 
\par We spread blankets on the sand, near the Explorer, and fired up a single
\par Coleman lantern.
\par 
\par A large ship was stationed just beyond the mouth of the bay, north and
\par west of us. Although the night shrouded it, and though the porthole 5
\par lights were not sufficient to entirely define the vessel, I was sure
\par that I had never seen anything quite like it in these parts.
\par 
\par It made me uneasy, though not uneasy enough to go home and hide under my
\par bed.
\par 
\par The waves were tasty, six to eight feet from trough to crest.
\par 
\par The off shore flow was just strong enough to carve them into modest
\par barrels, and in the moonlight, the foam glimmered like mermaids' pearl
\par necklaces.
\par 
\par Sasha and Bobby paddled out to the break line, and I took the first
\par watch on shore, with Orson and Mungojerrie and two shotguns.
\par 
\par Though the Mystery Train might not exist any longer, my mom's clever
\par retrovirus was still at work. Perhaps the promised vaccine and cure were
\par on the way, but people in Moonlight Bay were still becoming. The coyotes
\par couldn't have crunched up the entire troop, a few Wyvern monkeys, at
\par least, were out there somewhere, and not feeling kindly about us.
\par 
\par Using the first-aid kit that Sasha had brought, I gently cleaned Orson's
\par abraded pasterns with antiseptic and then coated the shallow cuts with
\par Neosporin. The laceration on his left cushion, near his nose, was not as
\par bad as it had first looked, but his ear was a mess.
\par 
\par In the morning, I would have to try to get a vet to come to the house
\par and give us an opinion about the possibility of repairing the broken
\par cartilage.
\par 
\par Although the antiseptic must have stung, Orson never complained.
\par 
\par He is a good dog and an even better person.
\par 
\par "I love you, bro, " I told him.
\par 
\par He licked my face.
\par 
\par I realized that, from time to time, I was looking left and right along
\par the beach, half expecting monkeys but even more prepared for the sight
\par of Johnny Randolph strolling toward me. Or Hodgson in his spacesuit,
\par face churning with parasites. After reality had been so thoroughly cut
\par to pieces, perhaps it could never again be stitched back together in the
\par old, comfortable pattern. I couldn't shake the feeling that, from now
\par on, anything could happen.
\par 
\par I opened a beer for me and one for Orson. I poured his into a bowl and
\par suggested he share some of it with Mungojerrie, but the cat took one
\par taste and spat with disgust.
\par 
\par The night was mild, the sky was deep with stars, and the rumble of the
\par point-break surf was like the beating of a mighty heart.
\par 
\par A shadow passed across the fat moon. It was only a hawk, not a gargoyle.
\par 
\par That creature with black leather wings and a whiplike tail had also been
\par graced with two horns, cloven hooves, and a face that was hideous
\par largely because it was human, too human to have been plugged into that
\par otherwise grotesque form. I'm pretty sure drawings of such creatures can
\par be found in books that date back as far as books have been printed, and
\par under most if not all of those drawings, you will find the same caption,
\par demon.
\par 
\par I decided not to think about that anymore.
\par 
\par After a while, Sasha came out of the surf, panting happily, and Orson
\par panted back at her as though he thought she was trying to converse.
\par 
\par She dropped on the blanket beside me, and I opened a beer for her.
\par 
\par Bobby was still thrashing the night waves.
\par 
\par "See that ship out there? " she asked.
\par 
\par "Big."
\par 
\par "We paddled a little farther out than we needed to. Got just a little
\par closer look. It's U. S. Navy."
\par 
\par "Never saw a battleship anchored around here before."
\par 
\par "Something's up."
\par 
\par "Something always is." A chill of premonition passed through me.
\par 
\par Maybe a cure and a vaccine were forthcoming. Or maybe the big brains had
\par decided the only way to cover up the fiasco at Wyvern and obscure the
\par source of the retrovirus was to scrub the former base and all of
\par Moonlight Bay off the map.
\par 
\par Scrub it away with a thermonuclear brush that even viruses couldn't
\par survive.
\par 
\par Might the wider public believe, if properly prepared, that any nuclear
\par event obliterating Moonlight Bay was the work of terrorists?
\par 
\par I decided not to think about that anymore.
\par 
\par "Bobby and I are going to set a date, " I said. "Gotta get married now,
\par you know."
\par 
\par "Mandatory, once he said he loved you."
\par 
\par "That's the way we feel."
\par 
\par "Who's the bridesmaid? " she asked.
\par 
\par "Orson, " I said.
\par 
\par "We're deep into gender confusion."
\par 
\par "Want to be best man? " I asked.
\par 
\par "Sure, unless, when the time comes, I'm up to my ass in angry monkeys or
\par something. Take some waves, Snowman." I got to my feet, picked up my
\par board, said, "I'd leave Bobby standing at the altar in a minute, if I
\par thought you'd marry me instead, " and headed for the surf.
\par 
\par She let me get about six steps before she shouted, "Was that a proposal"
\par 
\par "Yes! " I shouted.
\par 
\par "Asshole! " she shouted.
\par 
\par "Is that an acceptance? " I called back to her as I waded into the sea.
\par 
\par "You don't get off that easy. You owe me a lot of romancing."
\par 
\par "So it was an acceptance? " I shouted.
\par 
\par "Yes! " With surf foaming around my knees, I turned to look back at her
\par as she stood there in the light of the Coleman lantern. If Kaha Huna,
\par goddess of the surf, walked the earth, she was here this night, not in
\par Waimea Bay, not living under the name Pia Klick.
\par 
\par Orson stood beside her, sweeping his tail back and forth, obviously
\par looking forward to being a bridesmaid. But then his tail abruptly
\par stopped wagging. He trotted closer to the water, raised his head,
\par sniffed the air, and gazed at the warship anchored outside the mouth of
\par the bay. I could see nothing different about the vessel, but some change
\par evidently had drawn Orson's attention  and concern.
\par 
\par The waves, however, were too choice to resist. Carpe them.
\par 
\par Carpe noctem. Carpe aestusseize the surf.
\par 
\par The night sea rolled in from far Tortuga, from Tahiti, from Bora Bora,
\par from the Marques as, from a thousand sun-drenched places where I will
\par never walk, where high tropical skies burn a blue that I will never see,
\par but all the light I need is here, with those I love, who shine.
\par 
\par about the author.
\par 
\par Dean Koontz is the author of a dozen #1 New York Times bestsellers,
\par including Sole Survivor and Intensity. He lives in southern California.
\par 
\par Correspondence for the author should be addressed to, Dean Koontz P.O.
\par 
\par Box 9529 Newport Beach, CA. 92658.
\par 
\par the end.
\par 
\par 
\par 
\par 
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