EROES

1

Owen couldn't raise Henry by calling out loud, the man was too deep in exhausted sleep, and so he called with his mind. He found this was easier as the byrus continued to spread. It was growing on three of the fingers on his right hand now, and had all but plugged the cup of his left ear with its spongy, itching growth. He had also lost a couple of teeth, although nothing seemed to be growing in the sockets, at least not yet.

Kurtz and Freddy had stayed clean, thanks to Kurtz's finely honed instincts, but the crews of the two surviving Blue Boy gunships, Owen's and Joe Blakey's, were lousy with byrus. Ever since talking to Henry in the shed, Owen had heard the voices of his compatriots, calling to each other across a previously unsuspected void. They were covering up the infection for now, as he himself was; lots of heavy winter clothing helped. But that wouldn't be possible for much longer, and they didn't know what to do.

In that regard, Owen supposed he was lucky. He at least had a wheel to which he could put his shoulder.

Standing outside the back of the shed and beyond the electrified wire, smoking another cigarette he didn't want, Owen went in search of Henry and found him working his way down a steep, brushy slope. Above him was the sound of kids playing baseball or softball. Henry was a boy, a teenager, and he was calling someone's name - Janey? Jolie? It didn't matter. He was dreaming, and Owen needed him in the real world. He had let Henry sleep as long as he could (almost an hour longer than he had really wanted to), but if they were going to get this show on the road, now was the time.

Henry, he called.

The teenager looked around, startled. There were other boys with him; three - no four of them, one peering into some kind of pipe. They were indistinct, hard to see, and Owen didn't care about them, anyway. Henry was the one he wanted, and not this pimply, startled version of him, either. Owen wanted the man.

Henry, wake up.

No, she's in there. We have to get her out. We -

I don't give a rat's ass about her, whoever she is. Wake up,

No, I -

It's time, Henry, wake up. Wake up. Wake

2

the fuck up!

Henry sat up with a gasp, not sure who or where he was. That was bad, but there was worse: he didn't know when he was. Was he eighteen or almost thirty-eight or somewhere in between? He could smell grass, hear the crack of a bat on a ball (a softball bat; it had been girls playing, girls in yellow shirts), and he could still hear Pete screaming She's in here! Guys, I think she's in here!

'Pete saw it, he saw the line,' Henry murmured. He didn't know exactly what he was talking about. The dream was already fading, its bright images being replaced by something dark. Something he had to do, or try to do. He smelled hay and, more faintly, the sweet-sour aroma of pot.

Mister, can you help us?

Big doe eyes. Marsha, her name had been. Things coming into focus now. Probably not, he'd answered her, then added but maybe.

Wake up, Henry! It's quarter of four, time to drop your cock and grab your socks.

That voice was stronger and more immediate than the others, overwhelming them and damping them out; it was like a voice from a Walkman when the batteries were fresh and the volume was turned all the way up to ten. Owen Underhill's voice. He was Henry Devlin. And if they were going to try this, the time was now.

Henry got up, wincing at the pain in his legs, his back, his shoulders, his neck. Where his muscles weren't screaming, the advancing byrus was itching abominably. He felt a hundred years old until he took his first step toward the dirty window, then decided it was more like a hundred and ten.

3

Owen saw the man's shape come into view inside the window and nodded, relieved. Henry was moving like Methuselah on a bad day, but Owen had something that would fix that, at least temporarily. He had stolen it from the brand-new infirmary, which was so busy no one had noticed him coming or going. And all the time he had protected the front of his mind with the two blocking mantras Henry had taught him: Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross and Yes we can-can, yes we can, yes we can-can, great gosh a'mighty. So far they seemed to be working - he'd gotten a few strange looks but no questions. Even the weather continued in their favor, the storm roaring on unabated.

Now he could see Henry's face at the window, a pale oval blur looking out at him.

I don't know about this, Henry sent. Man, I can hardly walk.

I can help with that. Stand clear of the window.

Henry moved back with no questions.

In one pocket of his parka, Owen had the small metal box (USMC stamped on the steel top) in which he kept his various IDs when he was on active duty - the box had been a present from Kurtz himself after the Santo Domingo mission last year, a fine irony. In his other pocket were three rocks which he had picked up from beneath his own helicopter, where the fall of snow was thin.

He took one of them - a good-sized chunk of Maine granite - then paused, appalled, as a bright image filled his mind. Mac Cavanaugh, the fellow from Blue Boy Leader who had lost two of his fingers on the op, was sitting inside one of the semi trailer-boxes in the compound. With him was Frank Bellson from Blakey's Blue Boy Three, the other gunship that had made it back to base. One of them had turned on a powerful eight-cell flashlight and set it on its base like an electric candle. Its bright glow sprayed up into the gloom. This was happening right now, not five hundred feet from where Owen stood with a rock in one hand and his steel box in the other. Cavanaugh and Bellson sat side by side on the floor of the trailer. Both wore what looked like heavy red beards. Luxuriant growth had burst apart the bandages over the stumps of Cavanaugh's fingers. They had service automatics, the muzzles in their mouths. Their eyes were linked. So were their minds. Bellson was counting down: Five . . . four . . . three . . .

'Boys, no!' Owen cried, but got no sense they heard him; their link was too strong, forged with the resolve of men who have made up their minds. They would be the first of Kurtz's command to do this tonight; Owen did not think they would be the last.

Owen? That was Henry. Owen, what's -

Then he tapped into what Owen was seeing and fell silent, horrified.

. . . two . . . one.

Two pistol-shots, muffled by the roar of the wind and four Zimmer electrical generators. Two fans of blood and brain-tissue appearing like magic over the heads of Cavanaugh and Bellson in the dim light. Owen and Henry saw Bellson's right foot give a final dying jump. It struck the barrel of the flashlight, and for a moment they could see Cavanaugh's and Bellson's distorted, byrus-speckled faces. Then, as the flashlight went rolling across the bed of the box, casting cartwheels of light on the aluminum side, the picture went dark, like the picture on a TV when the plug has been pulled.

'Christ,' Owen whispered. 'Good Christ.'

Henry had appeared behind the window again. Owen motioned him back, then threw the rock. The range was short, but his first shot missed anyway, bouncing harmlessly off the weathered boards to the left of the target. He took the second, pulled in a deep, settling breath, and threw. This one shattered the glass.

Got mail for you, Henry. Coming through.

He tossed the steel box through the hole where the glass had been.

4

It bounced across the shed floor. Henry picked the box up and undid the clasp. Inside were four foil-wrapped packets.

What are these?

Pocket rockets, Owen returned. How's your heart?

Okay, as far as I know.

Good, because that shit makes cocaine feel like Valium. There are two in each pack. Take three. Save the rest.

I don't have any water.

Owen sent a clear picture - south end of a northbound horse. Chew them, beautiful - you've got a few teeth left, don't you? There was real anger in this, and at first Henry didn't understand it, but then of course he did. If there was anything he should be able to understand this early morning, it was the sudden loss of friends.

The pills were white, unmarked by the name of any pharma?ceutical company, and terribly bitter in his mouth as they crumbled. Even his throat tried to pucker as he swallowed.

The effect was almost instantaneous. By the time he had tucked Owen's USMC box into his pants pocket, Henry's heartbeat had doubled. By the time he stepped back to the window, it had tripled, His eyes seemed to pulse from their sockets with each quick rap in his chest. This wasn't distressing, however; he actually found it quite pleasant. No more sleepiness, and his aches seemed to have flown away.

'Yow!' he called. 'Popeye should try a few cans of this shit!' And laughed, both because speaking now seemed so odd - archaic, almost - and because he felt so fine.

Keep it down, what do you say?

Okay! OKAY!

Even his thoughts seemed to have acquired a new, crystalline force, and Henry didn't think this was just his imagination. Although the light behind the old feed shed was a little less than in the rest of the compound, it was still strong enough for him to see Owen wince and raise a hand to the side of his head, as if someone had shouted directly into his ear.

Sorry, he sent.

It's all right. It's just that you're so strong. You must be covered with that shit.

Actually, I'm not, Henry returned. A wink of his dream came back to him: the four of them on that grassy slope. No, the five of them, because Duddits had been there, too.

Henry - do you remember where I said I'd be?

Southwest corner of the compound. All the way across from the barn, on the diagonal, But -

No buts. That's where I'll be. If you want a ride out of here, it's where you better be, too. It's . . . A pause as Owen checked his watch. If it was still working, it must be the kind you wind up, Henry thought. . . . two minutes to four. I'll give you half an hour, then if the folks in the barn haven't started to move, I'm going to short the fence.

Half an hour may not be long enough, Henry protested. Although he was standing still, looking out at Owen's form in the blowing snow, he was breathing fast, like a man in a race. His heart felt as if it was in a race.

It'll have to be, Owen sent. The fence is alarmed. 7here'll be sirens. Even more lights. A general alert. I'll give you five minutes after the shit starts hitting the fan - that's a three hundred count - and if you haven't shown up, I'm on my merry way.

You'll never find Jonesy without me

That doesn't mean I have to stay here and die with you, Henry. Patient. As if talking to a small child. If you don't make it to where I am in five minutes, there'll be no chance for either of us, anyway.

Those two men who just committed suicide . . . they're not the only ones who are fucked up.

I know.

Henry caught a brief mental glimpse of a yellow school bus with MILLINOCKET SCHOOL DEPT. printed up the side. Looking out the windows were two score of grinning skulls. They were Owen Underhill's mates, Henry realized. The ones he'd arrived with yesterday morning. Men who were now either dying or already dead.

Never mind them, Owen replied. It's Kurtz's ground support we have to worry about now. Especially the Imperial Valleys. If they exist, you better believe they'll follow orders and that they're well-trained. And training wins out over confusion every time - that's what training is for. If you stick around, they'll roast you and toast you. Five minutes is what you have once the alarms go. A three hundred count.

Owen's logic was hard to like and impossible to refute.

All right, Henry said. Five minutes.

You have no business doing this in the first place, Owen told him. The thought came to Henry encrusted with a complex filigree of emotion: frustration, guilt, the inevitable fear - in Owen Underhill's case, not of dying but of failure. If what you say is true, everything depends on whether or not we get out of here clean. For you to maybe put the entire world at risk because of a few hundred schmoes in a barn . . .

It's not the way your boss would do it, right?

Owen reacted with surprise - no words, but a kind of comic?book ! in Henry's mind. Then, even over the ceaseless howl and hoot of the wind, he heard Owen laugh.

You got me there, beautiful.

Anyway, I'll get them moving. I'm a motivational master.

I know you'll try. Henry couldn't see Owen's face, but felt him smiling. Then Owen spoke aloud. 'And after that? Tell me again.'

'Why?'

'Maybe because soldiers need motivation, too, especially when they're derailing. And belay the telepathy - I want you to say it out loud. I want to hear the word.'

Henry looked at the man shivering on the other side of the fence and said, 'After that we're going to be heroes. Not because we want to, but because there are no other options.'

Out in the snow and the wind, Owen was nodding. Nodding and still smiling. 'Why not?' he said. 'Just why the fuck not?'

In his mind, glimmering, Henry saw the image of a little boy with a plate raised over his head. What the man wanted was for the little boy to put the plate back - that plate that had haunted him so over the years and would forever stay broken.

5

Dreamless since childhood and thus unsane, Kurtz woke as he always did: at one moment nowhere, at the next completely awake and cognizant of his surroundings. Alive, hallelujah, oh yes, still in the big time. He turned his head and looked at the clock, but the goddam thing had gone off again in spite of its fancy anti-magnetic casing, flashing 12-12-12, like a stutterer caught on one word. He turned on the lamp beside the bed and picked up the pocket watch on the bedtable. Four-oh-eight.

Kurtz put it down again, swung his bare feet out on to the floor, and stood up. The first thing he became aware of was the wind, still howling like a woe-dog. The second was that the faraway mutter of voices in his head had disappeared entirely. The telepathy was gone and Kurtz was glad. It had offended him in an elemental, down-deep way, as certain sexual practices offended him. The idea that someone might be able to come into his very head, to be able to visit the upper levels of his mind . . . that had been horrible. The grayboys deserved to be wiped out for that alone, for bringing that disgustingly peculiar gift. Thank God it had proved ephemeral.

Kurtz shucked his gray workout shorts and stood naked in front of the mirror on the bedroom door, letting his eyes go up from his feet (where the first snarls of purple veins were beginning to show) to the crown of his head, where his graying hair stood up in a sleep-tousle. He was sixty, but not looking too bad; those busted veins on the sides of his feet were the worst of it. Had a bell of a good crank on him, too, although he had never made much use of it; women were, for the most part, vile creatures incapable of loyalty. They drained a man. In his secret unsane heart, where even his madness was starched and pressed and fundamentally not very interesting, Kurtz believed all sex was FUBAR. Even when it was done for procreation, the result was usually a brain-equipped tumor not much different from the shit-weasels.

From the crown of his head, Kurtz let his eyes descend again, slowly, looking for the least patch of red, the tiniest roseola blush. There was nothing. He turned around, looked at as much as he could see by craning back over his shoulder, and still saw nothing. He spread his buttocks, probed between them, slid a finger two knuckles deep into his anus, and felt nothing but flesh.

'I'm clean,' he said in a low voice as he washed his hands briskly in the Winnebago's little bathroom. 'Clean as a whistle.'

He stepped into his shorts again, then sat on his rack to slip into his socks. Clean, praise God, clean. A good word. Clean. The unpleasant feel of the telepathy - like sweaty skin pressed against sweaty skin - was gone. He wasn't supporting a single strand of Ripley; he had even checked his tongue and gums.

So what had awakened him? Why were there alarm bells clanging in his head?

Because telepathy wasn't the only form of extrasensory percep?tion. Because long before the grayboys knew there was such a place as Earth tucked away in this dusty and seldom-visited carrel of the great interstellar library, there had been a little thing called instinct, the specialty of uniform-wearing Homo saps such as himself.

'The hunch,' Kurtz said. 'The good old all-American hunch?ola.'

He put on his pants. Then, still bare-chested, he picked up the walkie which lay on the bedtable beside the pocket watch (four-sixteen now, and how the time seemed to be rushing, like a brakeless car plunging down a hill toward a busy intersection). The walkie was a special digital job, encrypted and supposedly unjammable . . . but one look at his supposedly impervious digital clock made him realize none of the gear was un-anything.

He clicked the SEND/SQUEAL button twice. Freddy Johnson came back quickly and not sounding too sleepy . . . oh, but now that crunch time was here, how Kurtz (who had been born Robert Coonts, name, name, what's in a name) longed for Underhill. Owen, Owen, he thought, why did you have to skid just when I needed you the most, son?

'Boss?'

'I'm moving Imperial Valley up to six. That's Imperial Valley at oh-six-hundred, come back and acknowledge me.'

He had to listen to why it was impossible, crap Owen would not have spouted in his weakest dream. He gave Freddy roughly forty seconds to vent before saying, 'Close your clam, you son of a bitch.'

Shocked silence from Freddy's end.

'We've got something brewing here. I don't know what, but it woke me up out of a sound sleep with the alarm bells ringing. Now I put all you fellows and girls together for a reason, and if you expect to be still drawing breath come suppertime, you want to get them moving. Tell Gallagher she may wind up on point. Acknowledge me, Freddy.'

'Boss, I acknowledge. One thing you should know - we've had four suicides that I know of There may have been more.'

Kurtz was neither surprised nor displeased. Under certain circumstances, suicide wasn't just acceptable, but noble - the true gentleman's final act.

'From the choppers?'

'Affirmative.'

'No Imperial Valleys.'

'No, boss, no Valleys.'

'All right. Floor it, buck. We got trouble. I don't know what it is, but I know it's coming. Big thunder.'

Kurtz tossed the walkie back on the table and continued dressing. He wanted another cigarette, but they were all gone.

6

A pretty good herd of milkers had once been stabled in Old Man Gosselin's barn, and while the interior might not have passed USDA standards as it now stood, the building was still in okay shape. The soldiers had strung some high-wattage bulbs that cast a brilliant glare over the stalls, the milking stations in the parlor, and the upper and lower lofts. They had also put in a number of heaters, and the barn glowed with a pulsing, almost feverish warmth. Henry unzipped his coat as soon as he stepped in, but still felt the sweat break out on his face. He supposed Owen's pills had something to do with that - he'd taken another outside the barn.

His first thought as he looked around was how similar the barn was to the various refugee camps he had seen: Bosnian Serbs in Macedonia, Haitian rebels after Uncle Sugar's Marines had landed in Port-au-Prince, the African exiles who had left their home countries because of disease, famine, civil war, or a combination of all three. You got used to seeing such things on the TV news, but the pictures always came from far away; the horror with which one viewed them was almost clinical. But this wasn't a place you needed a passport to visit. This was a cowbarn in New England. The people packed into it weren't wearing rags and dirty dashikis but parkas from Bean's, cargo pants (so perfect for those extra shotgun shells) from Banana Republic, underwear from Fruit of the Loom. The look was the same, though. The only difference he could discern was how surprised they all still seemed. This wasn't supposed to be happening in the land of Sprint Nickel Nights.

The internees pretty well covered the main floor, where hay had been spread (jackets on top of that). They were sleeping in little clumps or family groups. There were more of them in the lofts, and three or four to each of the forty stalls. The room was full of snores and gurgles and the groans of people dreaming badly. Somewhere a child was weeping. And there was piped-in Muzak: to Henry, this was the final bizarre touch. Right now the dozing doomed in Old Man Gosselin's barn were listening to the Fred Waring Orchestra float through a violin-heavy version of 'Some Enchanted Evening'.

Hyped as he was, everything stood out with brilliant, exclam?atory clarity. All the orange jackets and hats! he thought. Man! It's Halloween in hell!

There was also a fair amount of the red-gold stuff. Henry saw patches growing on cheeks, in ears, between fingers; he also saw patches growing on beams and on the electrical cords of several dangling lights. The predominant smell in here was hay, but Henry had no trouble picking up the smell of sulfur-tinged ethyl alcohol under it. As well as the snores, there was a lot of farting going on - it sounded like six or seven seriously untalented musicians tootling away on tubas and saxophones. Under other circumstances it would have been funny. . . or perhaps even in these, to a person who hadn't seen that weasel-thing wriggling and snarling on Jonesy's bloody bed.

How many of them are incubating those things? Henry wondered. The answer didn't matter, he supposed, because the weasels were ultimately harmless. They might be able to live outside their hosts in this barn, but outside in the storm, where the wind was blowing a gale and the chill-factor was below zero, they wouldn't have a chance.

He needed to talk to these people

No, that wasn't right. What he needed to do was scare the living hell out of them. Had to get them moving in spite of the warmth in here and the cold outside. There had been cows in here before; there were cows here again. He had to change them back into people ?scared, pissed-off people. He could do it, but not alone. And the clock was ticking, Owen Underhill had given him half an hour. Henry estimated that a third of that was already gone.

Got to have a megaphone, he thought. That's step one.

He looked around, spotted a burly, balding man sleeping on his side to the left of the door leading to the milking parlor, and walked over to take a closer look. He thought it was one of the guys he'd kicked out of the shed, but he wasn't sure. When it came to hunters, burly, balding men were a dime a peck.

But it was Charles, and the byrus was re-thatching what old Charlie no doubt referred to as his 'solar sex-panel'. Who needs Rogaine when you've got this shit going for you? Henry thought, then grinned.

Charles was good; better yet, Marsha was sleeping nearby, holding hands with Darren, Mr Bomber-joint-from-Newton. Byrus was now growing down one of Marsha's smooth cheeks. Her husband was still clean, but his brother-in-law - Bill, had that been his name? - was lousy with the stuff. Best-in-show, Henry thought.

He knelt by Bill, took his byrus-speckled hand, and spoke down into the tangled jungle of his bad dreams. Wake up, Bill. Wakey-wakey, We have to get out of here. And if you help me, we can. Wake up, Bill.

Wake up and be a hero.

7

It happened with a speed that was exhilarating.

Henry felt Bill's mind rising toward his, floundering out of the nightmares that had entangled it, reaching for Henry the way a drowning man will reach for the lifeguard who has swum out to save him. Their minds connected like couplers on a pair of freight-cars.

Don't talk, don't try to talk, Henry told him. Just hoId on. We need Marsha and Charles. The four of us should be enough.

What -

No time, Billy. Let's go.

Bill took his sister-in-law's hand. Marsha's eyes flashed open at once, almost as if she had been waiting for this, and Henry felt all the dials inside his head turn up another notch. She wasn't supporting as much growth as Bill, but perhaps had more natural talent. She took Charles's hand without a single question. Henry had an idea she had already grasped what was going on here, and what needed to be done. Thankfully, she also grasped the necessity of speed. They were going to bomb these people, then swing them like a club.

Charles sat with a jerk, eyes wide and bulging from their fatty sockets. He got up as if someone had goosed him. Now all four of them were on their feet, hands joined like participants in a s6xance . . . which, Henry reflected, this almost was.

Give it to me, he told them, and they did. The feeling was like having a magic wand placed in his hand.

Listen to me, he called.

Heads rose; some people sat up out of sound sleeps as if they had been electrified.

Listen to me and boost me . . . boost me up! Do you understand? Boost me up! This is your only chance, so BOOST ME UP!

They did it as instinctively as people whistling a tune or clapping to a beat. If he'd given them time to think about it, it probably would have been harder, perhaps even impossible, but he didn't. Most of them had been sleeping, and he caught the infected ones, the telepaths, with their minds wide open.

Operating on instinct himself, Henry sent a series of images: soldiers wearing masks surrounding the barn, most with guns, some with backpacks connected to long wands. He made the faces of the soldiers into editorial-page caricatures of cruelty. At an amplified order, the wands unleashed streams of liquid fire: napalm. The sides of the barn and roof caught at once.

Henry shifted to the inside, sending pictures of screaming, milling people. Liquid fire dripped through holes in the blazing roof and ignited the hay in the lofts. Here was a man with his hair on fire; there a woman in a burning ski-parka still decorated with lift-tickets from Sugarloaf and Ragged Mountain.

They were all looking at Henry now - Henry and his linked friends. Only the telepaths were receiving the images, but perhaps as many as sixty per cent of the people in the barn were infected, and even those who weren't caught the sense of panic; a rising tide lifts all boats.

Clamping Bill's hand tightly with one of his own and Marsha's with the other, Henry switched the images back to the outside per?spective again. Fire; encircling soldier; an amplified voice shouting for the soldiers to be sure no one got clear.

The detainees were on their feet now, speaking in a rising babble of frightened voices (except for the deep telepaths; they only stared at him, haunted eyes in byrus-speckled faces). He showed them the barn burning like a torch in the snow-driven night, the wind turning an inferno into an explosion, a firestorm, and still the napalm hoses poured it on and still the amplified voice exhorted: 'THAT'S RIGHT, MEN, GET THEM ALL, DON'T LET ANY OF THEM GET A WAY, THERRE THE CANCER AND WE'RE THE CURE!'

Imagination fully pumped up now, feeding on itself in a kind of frenzy, Henry sent images of the few people who managed to find the exits or to wriggle out through the windows. Many of these were in flames. One was a woman with a child cradled in her arms. The soldiers machine-gunned all of them but the woman and the child, who were turned into napalm candles as they ran.

'No!' several women screamed in unison, and Henry realized with a species of sick wonder that all of them, even those without children, had put their own faces on the burning woman.

They were up now, milling around like cattle in a thunderstorm. He had to move them before they had a chance to think once, let alone twice.

Gathering the force of the minds linked to his, Henry sent them an image of the store.

THERE! he called to them. IT'S YOUR ONLY CHANCE! THROUGH THE STORE IF YOU CAN, BREAK DOWN THE FENCE IF THE DOOR'S BLOCKED! DON'T STOP, DON'T HESITATE! GET INTO THE WOODS! HIDE IN THE WOODS! THEY'RE COMING TO BURN THIS PLACE DOWN, THE BARN AND EVERYONE IN IT, AND THE WOODS ARE YOUR ONLY CHANCE! NOW, NOW!

Deep in the well of his own imagination, flying on the pills Owen had given him and sending with all his strength - images of possible safety there, of certain death here, images as simple as those in a child's picture-book - he was only distantly aware that he had begun chanting aloud: 'Now, now, now.'

Marsha Chiles picked it up, then her brother-in-law, then Charles, the man with the overgrown solar sex-panel.

'Now! Now! Now!'

Although immune to the byrus and thus no more telepathic than the average bear, Darren was not immune to the growing vibe, and he also joined in.

'Now! Now! Now!'

It 'umped from person to person and group to group, a panic?-induced infection more catching than the byrus: 'Now! Now! Now!'

The barn shook with it. Fists were pumping in unison, like fists at a rock concert.

'NOW! NOW! NOW!'

Henry let them take it over and build it, pumping his own fist without even realizing it, flinging his hand into the air to the farthest reach of his aching arm even as he reminded himself not to be caught up in the cyclone of the mass mind he had created: when they went north, he was going south. He was waiting for some point of no return to be reached - the point of ignition and spontaneous combustion.

It came.

'Now,' he whispered.

He gathered Marsha's mind, Bill's, Charlie's . . . and then the others that were close and particularly locked in. He merged them, compressed them, and then flung that single word like a silver bullet into the heads of the three hundred and seventeen people in Old Man Gosselin's barn:

NOW.

There was a moment of utter silence before hell's door flew open.

8

Just before dusk, a dozen two-man sentry huts (they were actually Porta-Potties with the urinals and toilet-seats yanked out) had been set up at intervals along the security fence. These came equipped with heaters that threw a stuporous glow in the small spaces, and the guards had no interest in going outside them. Every now and then one of them would open a door to allow in a snowy swirl of fresh air, but that was the extent of the guards' exposure to the outside world. Most of them were peacetime soldiers with no gut understanding of how high the current stakes were, and so they swapped stories about sex cars, postings, sex, their families, their future, sex, drinking and drugging expeditions, and sex. They had missed Owen Underhill's two visits to the shed (he would have been clearly visible from both Post 9 and Post 10) and they were the last to be aware that they had a full-scale revolt on their hands.

Seven other soldiers, boys who had been with Kurtz a little longer and thus had a little more salt on their skins, were in the back of the store near the woodstove, playing five-card stud in the same office where Owen had played Kurtz the ne nous blessez pas tapes roughly two centuries ago. Six of the card-players were sentries. The seventh was Dawg Brodsky's colleague Gene Cambry. Cambry hadn't been able to sleep. The reason was concealed by a stretchy cotton wristlet. He didn't know how long the wristlet would serve, however, because the red stuff under it was spreading. If he wasn't careful, someone would see it . . . and then, instead of playing cards in the office, he might be out there in the barn with the John Q's.

And would he be the only one? Ray Parsons had a big wad of cotton in one ear. He said it was an earache, but who knew for sure? Ted Trezewski had a bandage on one meaty forearm and claimed he'd gouged himself stringing compound barbed wire much earlier in the day. Maybe it was true. George Udall, the Dawg's immediate superior in more normal times, was wearing a knitted cap over his bald head; damn thing made him look like some kind of elderly white rapper. Maybe there was nothing under there but skin, but it was warm in here for a cap, wasn't it? Especially a knitted one.

'Kick a buck,' Howie Everett said.

'Call,' said Danny O'Brian.

Parsons Called; so did Udall. Cambry barely heard. In his mind there rose an image of a woman with a child cradled in her arms. As she struggled across the drifted-in paddock, a soldier turned her into a napalm road-flare. Cambry winced, horrified, thinking this image had been served up by his own guilty conscience.

'Gene?' Al Coleman asked. 'Are you going to call, or - '

'What's that?' Howie asked, frowning.

'What's what?' Ted Trezewski said.

'If you listen, you'll hear it,' Howie replied. Dumb Polack: Cambry heard this unspoken corollary in his head, but paid it no mind. Once it had been called to their attention, the chant was clear enough, rising above the wind, quickly taking on strength and urgency.

'Now! Now! Now! Now! NOW!'

It was coming from the barn, directly behind them.

'What in the blue hell?' Udall asked in a musing voice, blinking over the folding table with its scatter of cards, ashtrays, chips, and money. Gene Cambry suddenly understood that there was nothing under the stupid woolen cap but skin, after all. Udall was nominally in charge of this little group, but he didn't have a clue. He couldn't see the pumping fists, couldn't hear the strong thought-voice that was leading the chant.

Cambry saw alarm on Parsons's face, on Everett's, on Coleman's. They were seeing it, too. Understanding leaped among them while the uninfected ones only looked puzzled.

'Fuckers're gonna break out,' Cambry said.

'Don't be stupid, Gene,' George Udall said. 'They don't know what's coming down. Besides, they're civilians. They're just letting off a little st - '

Cambry lost the rest as a single word - NOW - ripped through his brain like a buzzsaw. Ray Parsons and Al Coleman winced. Howie Everett cried out in pain, his hands going to his temples, his knees connecting with the underside of the table and sending chips and cards everywhere. A dollar bin landed atop the hot stove and began to bum.

'Aw, fuck a duck, look what you d - ' Ted began.

'They're coming,' Cambry said. 'They're coming at us.'

Parsons, Everett, and Coleman lunged for the M-4 carbines leaning beside Old Man Gosselin's coatrack. The others looked at them, surprised, still three steps behind . . . and then there was a vast thud as sixty or more of the internees struck the barn doors. Those doors had been locked from the outside - big steel locks, Army issue. They held, but the old wood gave with a splintering crack.

The prisoners charged through the gap, yelling 'Now! Now!' into the snowy mouth of the wind and trampling several of their number underfoot.

Cambry also lunged, got one of the compact assault rifles, then had it snatched out of his hands. 'That's mine, muhfuh,' Ted Trezewski snarled.

There was less than twenty yards between the shattered barn doors and the back of the store. The mob swept across the gap, shouting NOW! NOW! NOW!

The poker-table went over with a crash, spilling crap every?where. The perimeter alarm went off as the first internees struck the double-strung fence and were either fried or hooked like fish on the oversized bundles of barbs. Moments later the alarm's honking, pulsing bray was joined by a whooping siren, the General Quarters alert which was sometimes referred to as Situation Triple Six, the end of the world. In the plastic Porta-Potty sentry huts, surprised and frightened faces peered out dazedly.

'The barn!' someone shouted. 'Collapse in on the barn! It's an escape!'

The sentries trotted out into the snow, many of them bootless, moving along the outside of the fence, unaware that it had been shorted out by the weight of more than eighty kamikaze deer?hunters, all screaming NOW at the top of their lungs, even as they jittered and fried and died.

No one noticed the single man - tall, skinny, wearing a pair of old-fashioned horn-rim specs - who left from the back of the barn and set out diagonally across the drifts filling the paddock. Although Henry could neither see nor sense anyone paying attention to him, he began to run. He felt horribly exposed under the brilliant lights, and the cacophony of the siren and the perimeter alarm made him feel panicky and half-crazy . . . made him feel the way Duddits's crying had, that day behind Tracker Brothers.

He hoped to God Underhill was waiting for him. He couldn't tell, the snow was too thick to see the far end of the paddock, but he would be there soon enough and then he would know.

9

Kurtz had everything on but one boot when the alarm went off and the emergency lights went on, flooding this godforsaken piece of ground with even more glare. He felt no surprise, no dismay, only a mixture of relief and chagrin. Relief that whatever had been chewing on his nerve-endings was now out in the open. Chagrin that this fucking mess hadn't held off for another two hours. Another two hours and he could have balanced the books on the whole deal.

He jerked open the door of the Winnebago with his right hand, still holding his other boot in his left. A savage roaring came from the barn, the sort of warrior's cry to which his heart responded in spite of everything. The gale-force wind thinned it a little, but not much; they were all in it together, it seemed. From somewhere in their well-fed, timorous, it-can't-happen-here ranks, a Spartacus had arisen - who would have thunk it?

It's the goddam telepathy, he thought. His instincts, always superb, told him this was serious trouble, that he was watching an operation go tits-up on a truly grand scale, but he was smiling in spite of that. Got to be the goddam telepathy. They smelled out what was coming . . . and someone decided to do something about it.

As he watched, a motley mob of men, most in parkas and orange hats, came moiling through the sagging, shattered barn doors. One fell on a splintered board and was impaled like a vampire. Some stumbled in the snow and were trampled under. AR the lights were on now. Kurtz felt like a man with a ringside seat at a prizefight. He could see everything.

Wings of escapees, fifty or sixty in each complement, peeled off as neatly as squads in a drill-team and charged at the fence on either side of the ratty little store. Either they didn't know there was a lethal dose of electricity coursing through the smoothwire or they didn't care. The rest of them, the main body, charged directly at the back of the store. That was the weakest point in the perimeter, but it didn't matter. Kurtz thought it was all going to go.

Never in any of his contingency plans had he so much as considered this scenario: two or three hundred overweight November warriors mounting a no-guts-no-glory banzai charge. He had never expected them to do anything but stay put, clamoring for due process right up to the point where they were barbecued.

'Not bad, boys,' Kurtz said. He smelled something else starting to burn - probably his goddam career - but the end had been coming anyway, and he'd picked one hell of an operation to go out on, hadn't he? As far as Kurtz was concerned, the little gray men from space were strictly secondary. If he ran the news, the headline above the fold would read: SURPRISE! NEW-AGE AMERICANS SHOW SOME BACKBONE! Outstanding. It was almost a shame to cut them down.

The General Quarters siren rose and fell in the snowy night. The first wave of men hit the back of the store. Kurtz could almost see the whole place shudder.

'That goddam telepathy,' Kurtz said, grinning. He could see his guys responding, the first wave from the sentry huts, more coming from the motor-pool, the commissary, and the semi trailer-boxes that were serving as makeshift barracks. Then the smile on Kurtz's face began to fade, replaced by an expression of puzzlement. 'Shoot them,' he said. 'Why don't you shoot them?'

Some were firing, but not enough - nowhere near enough. Kurtz thought he smelled panic. His men weren't shooting because they had gone chickenshit. Or because they knew they were next.

'The goddam telepathy,' he said again, and suddenly automatic? rifle fire began inside the store. The windows of the office where he and Owen Underhill had had their original conference lit up in brilliant stutterflashes of light. Two of them blew out. A man attempted to exit the second of these, and Kurtz had time to recognize George Udall before George was seized by the legs and jerked back inside.

The guys in the office were fighting, at least, but of course they would; in there they were fighting for their lives. The laddie-bucks who had come running were, for the most part, still running. Kurtz thought about dropping his boot and grabbing his nine-millimeter. Shooting a few skedaddlers. Bagging his limit, in fact. It was falling down all around him, why not?

Underhill, that was why not. Owen Underhill had played a part in this snafu. Kurtz knew that as well as he knew his own name. This stank of line-crossing, and crossing the line was an Owen Underhill specialty.

More shooting fi7om Gosselin's office screams of pain . . . then triumphant howls. The computer-savvy, Evian-drinking, salad?-eating Goths had taken their objective. Kurtz slammed the Winne?bago's door on the scene and hurried back to the bedroom to call Freddy Johnson. He was still carrying his boot.

10

Cambry was on his knees behind Old Man Gosselin's desk when the first wave of prisoners smashed its way in. He was opening drawers, looking frantically for a gun. The fact that he didn't find one very likely saved his life.

'NOW! NOW! NOW!' the oncoming prisoners screamed.

There was a monstrous thud against the back of the store, as if a truck had driven into it. From outside, Cambry could hear a juicy crackling sound as the first detainees hit the fence. The lights in the office began to flicker.

'Stand together, men!' Danny O'Brian cried. 'For the love of Christ, stand toge - '

The rear door came off its hinges with so much force that it actually skittered backward across the room, shielding the first of the screaming men who clogged the doorway. Cambry ducked, hands laced over the back of his head, as the door fell on the desk at an angle with him beneath it, in the kneehole.

The sound of rifles on full auto was deafening in the tiny room, drowning out even the screams of the wounded, but Cambry understood that not all of them were firing. Trezewski, Udall, and O'Brian were, but Coleman, Everett, and Ray Parsons were only standing there with their weapons held to their chests and dazed expressions on their faces.

From his accidental shelter, Gene Cambry saw the prisoners charge across the room, saw the first of them caught by the bullets and thrown like scarecrows; saw their blood splash across the walls and the bean-supper posters and the OSHA notices. He saw George Udall throw his gun at two beefy young men in orange, then whirl and lunge at one of the windows. George got halfway out and was then yanked back; a man with Ripley growing on his cheek like a birthmark sank his teeth into George's calf as if it were a turkey drumstick while another man silenced the screaming head at the other end of George's body by jerking it briskly to the left. The room was blue with powdersmoke, but he saw Al Coleman throw his gun down and pick up the chant - 'Now! Now! Now!' And he saw Ray Parsons, normally the most pacific of men, turn his rifle on Danny O'Brian and blow his brains out.

Now the matter was simple. Now it was just the infected versus the immune.

The desk was hit and slammed against the wall. The door fell on top of Cambry, and before he could get up, people were running over the door, squashing him. He felt like a cowboy who has fallen off his horse during a stampede. I'm going to die under here, he thought, and then for a moment the murderous pressure was gone. He lunged to his knees, driving with adrenaline-loaded muscles, and the door slid off him to the left, saying goodbye with a vicious dig of the doorknob into his hip. Someone dealt him a passing kick in the ribcage, another boot scraped by his right ear, and then he was up. The room was thick with smoke, crazy with shouts and screams. Four or five bulky hunters were propelled into the woodstove, which tore free of its pipe and went crashing over on its side, spilling flaming chunks of maple onto the floor. Money and playing cards caught fire. There was the rancid smell of melting plastic poker chips. Those were Ray's, Cambry thought incoherently. He had them in the Gu!f. Bosnia, too.

He stood ignored in the confusion. There was no need for the escaping internees to use the door between the office and the store; the entire wall - no more than a flimsy partition, really - had been smashed flat. Pieces of this stuff were also catching fire from the overturned stove.

'Now,' Gene Cambry muttered. 'Now.' He saw Ray Parsons running with the others toward the front of the store, Howie Everett at his heels. Howie snatched a loaf of bread as he ran down the center aisle.

A scrawny old party in a tassled cap and an overcoat was pushed forward onto the overturned stove, then stomped flat. Cambry heard his high-pitched, squealing screams as his face bonded to the metal and then began to boil.

Heard it and felt it.

'Now!' Cambry shouted, giving in and joining the others. 'Now!'

He broad-jumped the growing flames from the stove and ran, losing his little mind in the big one.

For all practical purposes, Operation Blue Boy was over.

11

Three quarters of the way across the paddock, Henry paused, gasping for breath and clutching at his hammering chest. Behind him was the pocket armageddon he had unleashed; ahead of him he could see nothing but darkness. Fucking Underhill had run out on him, had -

Easy, beautiful - easy.

Lights flashed out twice. Henry had been looking in the wrong place, that was all; Owen was parked a little to the left of the paddock's southwest comer. Now Henry could see the Sno-Cat's boxy outline clearly. From behind him came screams, shouts, orders, shooting. Not as much shooting as he would have expected, but this was no time to wonder why.

Hurry up! Owen cried. We have to get out of here!

I'm coming as fast as I can - hold on.

Henry got moving again. Whatever had been in Owen's kickstart pills was already wearing off, and his feet felt heavy. His thigh itched maddeningly, and so did his mouth. He could feel the stuff creeping over his tongue. It was like a soft-drink fizz that wouldn't go away.

Owen had cut the fence - both the barbed wire and the smooth. Now he stood in front of the Sno-Cat (it was white to match the snow, and it was really no wonder Henry hadn't seen it) with an automatic rifle propped against his hip, attempting to look everywhere at once. The multiple lights gave him half a dozen shadows; they radiated out from his boots like crazy clock-hands.

Owen grabbed Henry around the shoulders. You okay?

Henry nodded. As Owen began to pull him toward the Sno-Cat, there was a loud, high-pitched explosion, as if someone had just fired the world's largest carbine. Henry ducked, stumbled over his own feet, and would have fallen if Owen hadn't held him up.

What - ?

LP gas. Gasoline, too, maybe. Look.

Owen took him by the shoulders and turned him around. Henry saw a vast pillar of fire in the snowy Might. Bits of the store - boards, shingles, flaming boxes of Cheerios, burning rolls of toilet paper - rose into the sky. Some of the soldiers were watching this, mesmerized. Others were running for the woods. In pursuit of the prisoners, Henry assumed, although he was hearing their panic in his head - Run! Run! Now! Now! - and simply could not credit it. Later, when he had time to think, he would understand that many of the soldiers were also fleeing. Now he understood nothing. Things were happening too fast.

Owen turned him around again and boosted him into the Sno-Cat's passenger seat, pushing him past a hanging canvas flap that smelled strongly of motor oil. It was blessedly warm in the 'Cat's cab. A radio bolted to the rudimentary dashboard chattered and squawked. The only thing Henry could make out clearly was the panic in the voices. It made him savagely happy - happier than he'd been since the afternoon the four of them had put the fear of God into Richie Grenadeau and his bullyrag buddies. And that's who was running this operation, as far as Henry could see: a bunch of grownup Richie Grenadeaus, armed with guns instead of dried-up pieces of dogshit.

There was something between the seats, a box with two blinking amber lights. As Henry bent over it, curious, Owen Underhill snatched back the tarp hanging beside the driver's seat and flung himself into the 'Cat. He was breathing hard and smiling as he looked at the burning store.

'Be careful of that, brother,' he said. 'Mind the buttons.' Henry lifted the box, which was about the size of Duddits's beloved Scooby-Doo lunchbox. The buttons of which Owen had spoken were under the blinking lights. 'What are they?'

Owen turned the ignition key and the Sno-Cat's hot engine rumbled into immediate life. The transmission ran off a high stick, which Owen jammed into gear. Owen was still smiling. In the bright light falling through the Sno-Cat's windshield, Henry could now see a reddish-orange thread of byrus growing beneath each of the man's eyes, like mascara. There was more in his brows.

'Too much light in this place,' he said. 'We're gonna dial em down a little.' He turned the 'Cat in a surprisingly smooth circle; it was like being on a motorboat. Henry collapsed back against the seat, holding the box with the blinking lights on his lap. He felt that if he didn't walk again for five years, that would be about right.

Owen glanced at him as he drove the Sno-Cat on a diagonal toward the snowbank-enclosed ditch that was the Swanny Pond Road. 'You did it,' he said. 'I doubted that you could, I freely admit it, but you pulled the fucker off.'

'I told you - I'm a motivational master.' Besides, he sent, most of them really are going to die anyway.

Doesn't matter. You gave them a chance. And now -

There was more shooting, but it wasn't until a bullet whined off the metal just above their heads that Henry realized it was aimed at them. There was a brisk clank as another slug ricocheted off one of the Sno-Cat's treads and Henry ducked . . . as if that would do any good.

Still smiling, Owen pointed a gloved hand off to his right. Henry peered in that direction as two more slugs ricocheted off the 'Cat's squat pillbox body. Henry cringed both times; Owen seemed not even to notice.

Henry saw a cluster of trailer-boxes, some with brand names like Sysco and Scott Paper on them. In front of the trailers was a colony of motor homes, and in front of the biggest, a Winnebago that looked to Henry like a mansion on wheels, were six or seven men, all firing at the Sno-Cat. Although the range was long, the wind high, and the snow still heavy, too many were hitting. Other men, some only partially dressed (one bruiser came sprinting through the snow displaying a bare chest that would have looked at home on a comic-book superhero) were Joining the group. At its center stood a tall man with gray hair. Beside him was a stockier guy. As Henry watched, the skinny man raised his rifle and fired, seemingly without bothering to aim. There was a spanng sound and Henry sensed something pass right in front of his nose, a small wicked droning thing.

Owen actually laughed. 'The skinny one with the gray hair is Kurtz. He's in charge, and can that fucker shoot.'

More bullets spanged off the 'Cat's treads, its body. Henry sensed another of those buzzing, hustling presences in the cab, and suddenly the radio was silent. The distance between them and the shooters clustered around the Winnebago was getting longer, but it didn't seem to matter. As far as Henry was concerned, all those fuckers could shoot. It was only a matter of time before one of them took a hit . . . and yet Owen looked happy. It occurred to Henry that he had hooked up with someone even more suicidal than himself.

'The guy beside Kurtz is Freddy Johnson. Those Mouseketeers are all Kurtz's boys, the ones who were supposed to - whoops, look out!'

Another spang, another whining steel bee - between them, this time - and suddenly the knob on the transmission stick was gone. Owen burst out laughing. 'Kurtz!' he shouted. 'Bet you a nickel! Two years from mandatory retirement age and he still shoots like Annie Oakley!' He hammered a fist on the steering yoke. 'But that's enough. Fun is fun and done is done. Turn out their lights, beautiful.'

'Huh?'

Still grinning, Owen jerked a thumb at the box with the blinking amber bulbs. The curved streaks of byrus under his eyes now looked like warpaint to Henry. 'Push the buttons, bub. Push the buttons and yank down the shades.'

12

Suddenly - it was always sudden, always magical - the world fell away and Kurtz was in the zone. The scream of the blizzard wind, the pelt of the snow, the howl of the siren, the beat of the buzzer - all gone. Kurtz lost his awareness of Freddy Johnson next to him and the other Imperial Valleys gathering around. He fixed on the departing Sno-Cat and nothing else. He could see Owen Underhill in the left seat, right through the steel shell of the cab he could see him, as if he, Abe Kurtz, were all at once equipped with Superman's X-ray vision. The distance was incredibly long, but it didn't matter. The next round he fired was going right into the back of Owen Underhill's treacherous, line-crossing head. He raised the rifle, sighted down -

Two explosions ripped the night, one of them close enough to hammer Kurtz and his men with the shockwave. A trailer-box with the words INTEL INSIDE printed on it rose into the air, turned over, and came down on Spago's, the cook-tent. 'Holy Christ!' one of the men shouted.

Not all of the lights went out - a half hour wasn't long and Owen had had time to equip only two of the gennies with thermite charges (all the time muttering 'Banbury Cross, Banbury Cross, ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross' under his breath), but suddenly the fleeing Sno-Cat was swallowed in moving fire-flecked shadows, and Kurtz dropped his rifle into the snow without discharging it.

'Fuck a duck,' he said tonelessly. 'Cease firing. Cease firing, you humps. Quit it, praise Jesus. Inside. Every one of you but Freddy. join hands and pray for God the Father Almighty to get our asses out of the sling they're in. Come here, Freddy. Step lively.'

The others, nearly a dozen, trooped up the steps to the Win?nebago, looking uneasily at the burning generators, the blazing cook-tent (already the commissary-tent next door was catching; the infirmary and the morgue would be next). Half the pole lights in the compound were out.

Kurtz put his arm around Freddy Johnson's shoulders and walked him twenty paces into the blowing snow, which the wind was now lifting and carrying in veils that looked like mystic steam. Directly ahead of the two men, Gosselin's - what was left of it ?was burning merry hell. The barn had already caught. Its shattered doors gaped.

'Freddy, do you love Jesus? Tell me the truth.'

Freddy had been through this before. It was a mantra. The boss was clearing his head.

'I love Him, boss.'

'Do you swear that's true?' Kurtz looking keenly. Looking through him, more than likely. Planning ahead, if such creatures of instinct could be said to plan. 'As you face the eternal pit of hell for a lie?'

'I swear it's true.'

'You love Him a lot, do you?'

'Lots, boss.'

'More than the group? More than going in hot and getting the job done?' A pause. 'More than you love me?'

Not questions you wanted to answer wrong if you wanted to go on living. Fortunately, not hard ones, either. 'No, boss.'

'Telepathy gone, Freddy?'

'I had a touch of something, I don't know if it was telepathy, exactly, voices in my head - '

Kurtz was nodding. Red-gold flames the color of the Ripley fungus burst through the roof of the barn.

' - but that's gone.'

'Other men in the group?'

'Imperial Valley, you mean?' Freddy nodded toward the Winnebago.

'Who else would I mean, The Firehouse Five Plus Two?

Yes, them!'

'They're clean, boss.'

'That's good, but it's also bad. Freddy, we need a couple of infected Americans. And when I say we, I mean you and I. I want Americans who are crawling with that red shit, under?stand me?'

'I do.' What Freddy didn't understand was why, but at the moment the why didn't matter. He could see Kurtz taking hold, visibly taking hold, and that was a relief. When Freddy needed to know, Kurtz would tell him. Freddy looked uneasily at the blazing store, the blazing barn, the blazing cook-tent. This situation was FUBAR.

Or maybe not. Not if Kurtz was taking hold.

'Goddam telepathy's responsible for most of this,' Kurtz mused, 'but it wasn't telepathy that triggered it. That was pure human fuckery, praise Jesus. Who betrayed Jesus, Freddy? Who gave him that traitor's kiss?'

Freddy had read his Bible, mostly because Kurtz had given it to him. 'Judas Iscariot, boss.'

Kurtz was nodding rapidly. His eyes were moving everywhere, tabulating the destruction, calculating the response, which would be severely limited by the storm. 'That's right, buck. Judas betrayed Jesus and Owen Philip Underhill betrayed us. Judas got thirty pieces of silver. Not much of a payday, do you think?'

'No, boss.' He delivered this reply partially turned away from Kurtz because something in the commissary had exploded. A steel hand clutched his shoulder and turned him back. Kurtz's eyes were wide and burning. The white lashes made them look like ghost-eyes.

'Look at me when I talk to you,' Kurtz said. 'Listen to me when I speak to you.' Kurtz put his free hand on the nine-millimeter's grip. 'Or I'll blow your guts out on the snow. I have had a hard night here and don't you make it any worse, you hound, do you understand me? Catch the old drift-ola?'

Johnson was a man of good physical courage, but now he felt something turn over in his stomach and try to crawl away. 'Yes, boss, I'm sorry.'

'Accepted. God loves and forgives, we must do the same. I don't know how many pieces of silver Owen got, but I can tell you this: we're going to catch him, we're going to spread his cheeks, and we are going to tear that boy a splendid new asshole. Are you with me?'

'Yes.' There was nothing Freddy wanted more than to find the person who had turned his previously ordered world upside down and fuck that person over. 'How much of this do you reckon Owen's responsible for, boss?'

'Enough for me,' Kurtz said serenely. 'I have an idea I'm finally going down, Freddy - '

'No, boss.'

' - but I won't go down alone.' Ann still around Freddy's shoulders, Kurtz began to lead his new second back toward the 'Bago. Squat, dying pillars of fire marked the burning gennies. Underhill had done that; one of Kurtz's own boys. Freddy still found it difficult to believe, but he had begun to get steamed, just the same. How many pieces of silver, Owen? How many did you get, you traitor?

Kurtz stopped at the foot of the steps.

'Which one of those fellows do you like to command a search-and-destroy mission, Freddy?'

'Gallagher, boss.'

'Kate?'

'That's right.'

'Is she a cannibal, Freddy? The person we leave in charge has to be a cannibal.'

'She eats em raw with slaw, boss.'

'Okay,' Kurtz said. 'Because this is going to be dirty. I need two Ripley Positives, hopefully Blue Boy guys. The rest of them . . . like the animals, Freddy. Imperial Valley is now a search-and-destroy mission. Gallagher and the rest are to hunt down as many as they can. Soldiers and civilians alike. From now until 1200 hours tomorrow, it's feeding time. After that, it's every man for himself Except for us, Freddy.' The firelight painted Kurtz's face with byrus, turned his eyes into weasel's eyes. 'We're going to hunt down Owen Underhill and teach him to love the Lord.'

Kurtz bounded up the Winnebago's steps, sure as a mountain ?goat on the packed and slippery snow. Freddy Johnson followed him.

13

The Sno-Cat plunged down the embankment to the Swanny Pond Road fast enough to make Henry's stomach roll over. It slued, then turned south. Owen worked the clutch and mangled the stick-shift, working the 'Cat up through the gears and into high. With the galaxies of snow flying at the windshield, Henry felt as if they were travelling at approximately mach one. He guessed it might actually be thirty-five miles an hour. That would get them away from Gosselin's, but he had an idea Jonesy was moving much faster.

Turnpike ahead? Owen asked. It is, isn't it?

Yes. About four miles.

We'll need to switch vehicles when we get there.

No one gets hurt if we can help it. And no one gets killed.

Henry . . . I don't know how to break it to you, but this isn't high? school basketball.

'No one gets hurt. No one gets killed. At least not when we're swapping vehicles. Agree to that or I'm rolling out this door right now.'

Owen glanced at him. 'You would, too, wouldn't you? And goddam what your friend's got planned for the world.'

'My friend isn't responsible for any of this. He's been kid?napped.'

'All right. No one gets hurt when we swap over. If we can help it. And no one gets killed. Except maybe us. Now where are we going?'

Derry.

That's where he is? This last surviving alien?

I think so. In any case, I have a friend in Derry who can help us. He sees the line.

What line?

'Never mind,' Henry said, and thought: It's complicated.

'What do you mean, complicated? And no bounce, no play ?what's that?'

I'll tell you while we're driving south. If I can.

The Sno-Cat rolled toward the Interstate, a capsule preceded by the glare of its lights.

'Tell me again what we're going to do,' Owen said.

'Save the world.'

'And tell me what that makes us - I need to hear it.'

'It makes us heroes,' Henry said. Then he put his head back and closed his eyes. In seconds he was asleep.