"You had some downtime coming, you saddled up, and you went camping," Steve said. "What then?"

"I spent four days in the Coppers. Fishing, taking pictures-photography's what I do for fun. Great days. Then, three nights ago, I came back. Went right to my house, which is north of town."

"What brought you back?" Steve asked. "It wasn't bad weather on the way, was it?"

"No. I had my little radio with me, and all I heard was fair and hot."

"All I heard, too," Steve said. "This shit's a total mystery."

"I had a meeting scheduled with Allen Symes the company comptroller, to summarize the switchover from rainbirds to heads and emitters. He was flying in from Arizona. I was supposed to meet him at Hernando's Hide away at nine o'clock, the morning before last. That's what we'd taken to calling the lab and the offices out there on r the edge of town. Anyway, that's why I'm wearing this damned dress, because of the meeting and because Frank Geller told me that Symes doesn't - didn't like women in jeans. I know everything was okay when I got back from my camping trip, because that's when Frank called me and told me to wear a dress to the meeting. That night, around seven."

"Who's Frank Geller?" Steve asked.

"Chief mining engineer," Billingsley said. "In charge of reopening the China Pit. At least he was." He gave Audrey a questioning look.

She nodded. "Yes. He's dead."

"Three nights ago," Marinville mused. "Everything in Desperation was peachy three nights ago, at least as far as you know."

"That's right. But the next time I saw Frank, he was hung up on a hook. And one of his hands was gone.

"We saw him," Cynthia said, and shivered. "We saw his hand, too. At the bottom of an aquarium."

"Before all that, during the night, I woke up at least twice. The first time I thought it was thunder, but the second time it sounded like gunshots. I decided I'd been dreaming and went back to sleep, but that must be around the time he. . . got started. Then, when I got to the mining office . . .

At first, she said, she hadn't sensed anything wrong- certainly not from the fact that Brad Josephson wasn't at his desk. Brad never was, if he could help it. So she had gone out back to Hernando's Hideaway, and there she had seen what Steve and Cynthia would come along and see themselves not long after-bodies on hooks. Apparently everyone who had come in that morning. One of them, dressed in a string tie and dress boots that would have tickled a country-and-western singer, had been Allen Symes. He had come all the way from Phoenix to die in Desperation.

"If what you say is right," she said to Steve, "Entragian must've gotten more of the mining people later on. I didn't count - I was too scared to even think of counting them - but there couldn't have been more than seven when I was there. I froze. I might even have blacked out for a little while, I can't say for sure. Then I heard gun-shots. No question what they were that time. And someone screaming. Then there were more gunshots and the screaming stopped."

She went back to her car, not running - she said she was afraid that panic would take her over if she started running - and then drove into town. She intended to report what she'd found to Jim Reed. Or, if Jim was out on county business, as he often was, to one of his deputies, Entragian or Pearson.

"I didn't run to the car and I didn't go speeding into town, but I was in shock, just the same. I remember feeling around in the glove compartment for my cigarettes, even though I haven't smoked in five years. Then I saw two people go running through the intersection. You know, under the blinker-light?"

They nodded.

"The town's new police-car came roaring through right after them. Entragian was driving it, but I didn't know that then. There were three or four gunshots, and the people he was chasing were thrown onto the sidewalk one right by the grocery store, the other just past it. There was blood. A lot. He never slowed, just went on through the intersection, heading west, and pretty soon I heard more shots. I'm pretty sure I heard him yelling 'Yee haw,' too.

"I wanted to help the people he'd shot if I could. I drove up a little way, parked, and got out of my ca That's probably what saved my life, getting out of my car. Because everything that moved, Entragian killed it Anyone. Anything. Everything. There were cars and trucks sitting dead in the street like toys, all zigzagged here and there, at least a dozen of them. There was an El Camino truck turned on its side up by the hardware store. Tommy Ortega's, I think. That truck was almost his girlfriend."

"I didn't see anything like that," Johnny said. "The Street was clear when he brought me in."

"Yeah - the son of a bitch keeps his room picked up you have to give him that. He didn't want anyone wandering into town and wondering what had happened that s what I think. He hasn't done much more than sweep the mess under the rug, but it'll hold for awhile. Especially with this goddam storm."

"Which wasn't forecast," Steve said thoughtfully.

"Right, which wasn't forecast."

"What happened then?" David asked.

"I ran up to the people he shot. One of them was Evelyn Shoenstack, the lady who runs the Cut n Curl and works part-time in the library. She was dead with her brains all over the sidewalk."

Mary winced. Audrey saw it and turned toward her.

"That's something else you need to remember. If he can see you and he decides to shoot you, you're gone." She passed her eyes over the rest of them, apparently wanting to be sure they didn't think she was joking. Or exaggerating. "He's a dead shot. Accent on the dead."

"We'll keep it in mind," Steve said.

"The other one was a delivery guy. He was wearing a Tastykake uniform. Entragian got him in the head, too, but he was still alive." She spoke with a calm Johnny recognized. He had seen it in Vietnam, in the aftermath of half a dozen firefights. He'd seen it as a noncombatant, of course, notebook in one hand, pen in the other, Uher tape-recorder slung over his shoulder on a strap with a peace sign pinned to it. Watching and listening and taking notes and feeling like an outsider. Feeling jealous. The bitter thoughts which had crossed his mind then-eunuch in the harem, piano-player in the whorehouse-now struck him as insane.

"The year I was twelve, my old man gave me a .22," Audrey Wyler said. "The first thing I did was to go out - side our house in Sedalia and shoot a jay. When I went over to it, it was still alive, too, It was trembling all over, staring straight ahead, and its beak was opening and closing, very slowly. I've never in my whole life wanted so badly to take something back. I got down on my knees beside it and waited for it to be finished. It seemed that I owed it that much. It just went on trembling all over until it died. The Tastykake man was trembling like that. He was looking down the street past me, although there wasn't anybody there, and his forehead was covered with tiny beads of sweat. His head was all pushed out of shape, and there was white stuff on his shoulder. I had this crazy idea at first that it was Styrofoam poppers - you know, the packing stuff people put in the box when they mail something fragile? - and then I saw it was bone chips. From his, you know, his skull."

"I don't want to hear any more of this," Ralph said abruptly.

"I don't blame you," Johnny said, "but I think we need to know. Why don't you and your boy take a little walk around backstage? See what you can find."

Ralph nodded, stood up, and took a step toward David.

"No," David said. "We have to stay."

Ralph looked at him uncertainly.

David nodded. "I'm sorry, but we do," he said.

Ralph stood where he was a moment longer, then sat down again.

During this exchange, Johnny happened to look over at

Audrey. She was staring at the boy with an expression r that could have been fear or awe or both. As if she had never seen a creature quite like him. Then he thought of the crackers coming out of that bag like clowns out of the little car at the circus, and he wondered if any of them had ever seen a creature quite like David Carver. He thought of the transmission-bars, and Billingsley saying not even Houdini could have done it. Because of the head. They were concentrating on the buzzards and the spiders and the coyotes, on rats that jumped Out of stacks of tires and houses that might be full of rattlesnakes; most of all they were concentrating on Entragian, who spoke in tongues and shot like Buffalo Bill. But what about David? Just what, exactly, was he?

"Go on, Audrey," Cynthia said. "Only maybe you could, you know, drop back from R to PG-13." She lifted her chin in David's direction. Audrey looked at her vaguely for a moment, not seeming to understand. Then she gathered herself and continued.

2

"I was kneeling there by the delivery guy, trying to think what I should do next - stay with him or run and call someone - when there were more screams and gun shots up on Cotton Street. Glass broke. There was a spuntering sound-wood - and then a big clanging, banging sound-metal. The cruiser started to rev again. It seems like that's all I've heard for two days, that cruiser revving He peeled out, and then I could hear him coming my way I only had a second to think, but I don't guess I would have done anything different even if I'd had longer. I ran

"I wanted to get back to my car and drive away, but I didn't think there was time. I didn't think there was even time to get back around the corner and out of sight. So I went into the grocery store. Worrell's. Wendy Worrell was lying dead by the cash register. Her dad - he's the butcher as well as the owner - was sitting in the little office area, shot in the head. His shirt was off. He must have been just changing into his whites when it happened."

"Hugh starts work early," Billingsley said. "Lots earlier than the rest of his family."

"Oh, but Entragian keeps coming back and checking," Audrey said. Her voice was light, conversational, hysteri-cal. "That's what makes him so dangerous. He keeps coming back and checking. He's crazy and he has no mercy, but he's also methodical."

"He's one sick puppy, though," Johnny said. "When he brought me into town, he was on the verge of bleeding out, and that was six hours ago. If whatever's happening to him hasn't slowed down. He shrugged.

"Don't let him trick you," she almost whispered.

Johnny understood what she was suggesting, knew from what he had seen with his own eyes that it was impossible, knew also that telling her so would be a waste of breath.

"Go on," Steve said. "What then?"

"I tried to use the phone in Mr. Worrell's office. It was dead. I stayed in the back of the store for about a half an hour. The cruiser went by twice during that time, once on Main Street, then around the back, probably on Mesquite, or Cotton again. There were more gunshots. I went upstairs to where the Worrells live, thinking maybe the phone up there would still be live. It wasn't. Neither was Mrs. Worrell or the boy. Mert, I think his name was. She was in the kitchen with her head in the sink and her throat cut. He was still in bed. The blood was everywhere. I stood in his doorway, looking in at his posters of rock musicians and basketball players, and outside I could hear the cruiser going by again, fast, accelerating.

"I went down the back way, but I didn't dare open the back door once I got there. I kept imagining him crouched down below the porch, waiting for me. I mean, I'd just heard him go by, but I still kept imagining him waiting for me.

"I decided the best thing I could do was wait for dark. Then I could drive away. Maybe. You couldn't be sure. Because he was just so unpredictable. He wasn't always on Main Street and you couldn't always hear him and you'd start thinking well, maybe he's gone, headed for the hills, and then he'd be back, like a damn rabbit coming out of a magician's hat.

"But I couldn't stay in the store. The sound of the flies was driving me crazy, for one thing, and it was hot. I don't usually mind the heat, you can't mind it if you live in central Nevada, but I kept thinking I smelled them. So I waited until I heard him shooting somewhere over by the town garage - that's on Dumont Street, about as far east as you can go before you run out of town-and then I left Stepping out of the market and back onto the sidewalk was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life Like being a soldier and stepping out into no-man's-land At first I couldn't move at all; I just froze right where I was. I remember thinking that I had to walk, I couldn't run because I'd panic if I did, but I had to walk. Except I couldn't. Couldn't. It was like being paralyzed. Then I heard him coming back. It was weird. As if he sensed me Sensed someone, anyway, moving around while his back was turned. Like he was playing a new kind of kid s game, one where you got to murder the losers instead of just sending them back to the Prisoner's Base, or some thing. The engine . . . it's so loud when it starts to rev. So powerful. So loud. Even when I'm not hearing it. I m imagining I hear it. You know? It sounds kind of like a catamount getting f. . . like a wildcat in heat. That's what I heard coming toward me, and still I couldn't move I could only stand there and listen to it getting closer I thought about the Tastykake man, how he was shivering like the jay I shot when I was a kid, and that finally got me going. I went into the laundrymat and threw myself down on the floor just as he went by. I heard more screaming north of town, but I don't know what that was about, because I couldn't look up. I couldn't get up I must have lain there on that floor for almost twenty minutes, that's how bad I was. I can say I was way beyond scared by then, but I can't make you understand how weird it gets in your bead when you're that way. I lay there on the floor, looking at dust-balls and mashed-up cigarette butts and thinking how you could tell this was a laundrymat even down at the level I was, because of the smell and because all of the butts had lipstick on them. I lay there and I couldn't have moved even if I'd heard him coming up the sidewalk. I would have lain there until he put the barrel of his gun on the side of my head and - "

"Don't," Mary said, wincing. "Don't talk about it."

"But I can't stop thinking about it!" she shouted, and something about that jagged on Johnny Marinville's ear as nothing else she'd said had. She made a visible effort to get herself under control, then went on. "What got me past that was the sound of people outside. I got up on my knees and crawled over to the door. I saw four people across the street, by the Owl's. Two were Mexican - the Escolla boy who works on the crusher up at the mine, and his girlfriend. I don't know her name, but she's got a blonde streak in her hair-natural, I'm almost sure - and she's awfully pretty. Was awfully pretty. There was another woman, quite heavy, I'd never seen her before. The man with her I've seen playing pool with you in Bud's, Tom. Flip somebody."

"Flip Moran? You saw the Flipper?"

She nodded. "They were working their way up the other side of the street, trying cars, looking for keys. I thought about mine, and how we could all go together. I started to get up. They were passing that little alley over there, the one between the storefront where the Italian restaurant used to be and The Broken Drum, and Entragian came roaring right out of the alley in his cruiser. Like he'd been waiting for them. Probably he was waiting for them. He hit them all, but I think your friend Flip was the only one killed outright. The others just went skidding off to one side, like bowling-pins when you miss a good hit. They kind of grabbed each other to keep from falling down. Then they ran. The Escolla boy had his arm around his girlfriend. She was crying and holding her arm against her breasts. It was broken. You could see it was, it looked like it had an extra joint in it above the elbow. The other woman had blood pouring down her face. When she heard Entragian coming after them - that big, powerful engine - she spun around and held her hands up like she was a crossing guard or something. He was driving with his right hand and leaning out the window like a locomotive engineer. He shot her twice before he hit her with the car and ran her under. That was the first really good look I got at him, the first time I knew for sure who I was dealing with."

She looked at them one by one, as if trying to measure the effect her words were having.

"He was grinning. Grinning and laughing like a kid on his first visit to Disney World. Happy, you know? Happy."

3

Audrey had crouched there at the laundrymat door, watching Entragian chase the Escolla boy and his girl north on Main Street with the cruiser. He caught them and ran them down as he had the older woman - it was easy to get them both at once, she said, because the boy was trying to help the girl, the two of them were running together. When they were down, Entragian had stopped, backed up, backed slowly over them (there had been no wind then, Audrey told them, and she had heard the sound of their bones snapping very clearly), got out, walked over to them, knelt between them, put a bullet in the back of the girl's head, then took off the Escolla boy's hat, which had stayed on through everything, and put a bullet in the back of his head.

"Then he put the hat back on him again," Audrey said.

"If I live through this, that's one thing I'll never forget, no matter how long I live-how he took the boy's hat off to shoot him, then put it back on again. It was as if he was saying he understood how hard this was on them, and he wanted to be as considerate as possible."

Entragian stood up, turned in a circle (reloading as he did), seeming to look everywhere at once. Audrey said he was wearing a big, goony smile. Johnny knew the kind she meant. He had seen it. In a crazy way it seemed to him he had seen all of this-in a dream, or another life.

It's just dem old kozmic Vietnam blues again, he told himself. The way she described the cop reminded him of certain stoned troopers he had run with, and certain stories he had been told late at night - whispered tales from grunts who had seen guys, their own guys, do terrible, unspeakable things with that same look of immaculate good cheer on their faces. It's Vietnam, that's all, coming at you like an acid flashback. All you need now to com-plete the circle is a transistor radio sticking out of someone's pocket, playing "People Are Strange" or "Pictures of Matchstick Men."

But was that all? A deeper part of him seemed to doubt the idea. That part thought something else was going on here, something which had little or nothing to do with the paltry memories of a novelist who had fed on war like a buzzard on carrion . . . and had subsequently produced exactly the sort of bad book such behavior probably warranted.

All right, then - if it's not you, what is it?

"What did you do then?" Steve asked her.

"Went back to the laundrymat office. I crawled. And when I got there, I crawled into the kneehole under the desk and curled up in there and went to sleep. I was very tired. Seeing all those things. . . all that death. ., it made me very tired.

"It was thin sleep. I kept hearing things. Gunshots, explosions, breaking glass, screams. I have no idea how much of it was real and how much was just in my mind. When I woke up, it was late afternoon. I was sore all over, at first I thought it had all been a dream, that I might even still be camping. Then I opened my eyes and saw where I was, curled up under a desk, and I smelled bleach and laundry soap, and realized I had to pee worse than ever in my life. Also, both my legs were asleep.

"I started wiggling out from under the desk, telling myself not to panic if I got a little stuck, and that was when I heard somebody come into the front of the store, and I yanked myself back under the desk again. It was him. I knew it just by the way he walked. It was the sound of a man in boots.

"He goes, 'Is anyone here?' and came up the aisle between the washers and dryers. Like he was following my tracks, In a way he was. It was my perfume. I hardly ever wear it, but putting on a dress made me think of it, made me think it might make things go a little smoother at my meeting with Mr. Symes." She shrugged, maybe a little embarrassed. "You know what they say about using the tools."

Cynthia looked blank at this, but Mary nodded.

'It smells like Opium,' he says. 'Is it, miss? Is that what you're wearing?' I didn't say anything, just curled up there in the kneehole with my arms wrapped around my head. He goes, 'Why don't you come out? If you come out, I'll make it quick. If I have to find you, I'll make it slow.' And I wanted to come out, that's how much he'd gotten to me. How much he'd scared me I believed he knew for sure that I was still in there some where, and that he was going to follow the smell of my perfume to me like a bloodhound, and I wanted to get out from under the desk and go to him so he'd kill me quick I wanted to go to him the way the people at Jonestown must have wanted to stand in line to get the Kool-Aid. Only I couldn't. I froze up again and all I could do was lie there and think that I was going to die needing to pee. I saw the office chair - I'd pulled it out so I could get into the knee hole of the desk-and I thought, 'When he sees where the chair is, he'll know where I am.' That was when he came into the office, while I was thinking that. 'Is someone in here?' he goes. 'Come on out. I won't hurt you. I just want to question you about what's going on. We've got a big problem.'

Audrey began to tremble, as Johnny supposed she had trembled while she had been hedge hogged in the kneehole of the desk, waiting for Entragian to come the rest of the way into the room, find her, and kill her. Except she was smiling, too, the kind of smile you could hardly bring yourself to look at.

"That's how crazy he was." She clasped her shaking hands together in her lap. "In one breath he says that if you come out he'll reward you by killing you quick; in the next he says he just wants to ask you a few questions Crazy. But I believed both things at once. So who's the craziest one? Huh? Who's the craziest one?

"He came a couple of steps into the room. I think it was a couple. Far enough for his shadow to fall over the desk and onto the other side, where I was. I remember thinking that if his shadow had eyes, they'd be able to see me. He stood there a long time. I could hear him breathing. Then he said 'Fuck it' and left. A minute or so later, I heard the street door open and close. At first I was sure it was a trick. In my mind's eye I could see him just as clearly as I can see you guys now, opening the door and then closing it again, but still standing there on the inside, next to the machine with the little packets of soap in it. Standing there with his gun out, waiting for me to move. And you know what? I went on thinking that even after he started roaring around the streets in his car again, looking for other people to murder. I think I'd be under there still, except I knew that if I didn't go to the bathroom I was going to wet my pants, and I didn't want to do that. Huh-uh, no way. If he was able to smell my perfume, he'd smell fresh urine even quicker. So I crawled out and went to the bathroom - I hobbled like an old lady because my legs were still asleep, but I got there."

And although she spoke for another ten minutes or so, Johnny thought that was where Audrey Wyler's story essentially ended, with her hobbling into the office bathroom to take a leak. Her car was close by and she had the keys in her dress pocket, but it might as well have been on the moon instead of Main Street for all the good it was to her. She'd gone back and forth several times between the office and the laundrymat proper (Johnny didn't doubt for a moment the courage it must have taken to move around even that much), but she had gone no farther. Her nerve wasn't just shot, it was shattered. When the gunshots and the maddening, ceaselessly revving engine stopped for awhile, she would think about making a break for it, she said, but then she would imagine Entragian catching up to her, running her off the road, pulling her out of her car, and shooting her in the head. Also, she told them, she had been convinced that help would arrive. Had to. Desperation was off the main road, yes, sure, but not that far off, and with the mine getting ready to reopen, people were always coming and going.

Some people had come into town, she said. She had seen a Federal Express panel truck around five that afternoon and a Wickoff County Light and Power pickup around noon of the next day, yesterday. Both went by on Main Street. She had heard music coming from the pickup. She didn't hear Entragian's cruiser that time, but five minutes or so after the pickup passed the laundrymat, there were more gunshots, and a man screaming "Oh, don't! Oh, don't!" in a voice so high it could have been a girl's.

After that, another endless night, not wanting to stay, not quite daring to try and make a break for it, eating snacks from the machine that stood at the end of the dryers, drinking water from the basin in the bathroom. Then a new day, with Entragian still circling like a vulture.

She hadn't been aware, she said, that he was bringing people into town and jugging them. By then all she'd been able to think about were plans for getting away, none of them seeming quite good enough. And, in a way, the laundrymat had begun to feel like home . . . to feel safe. Entragian had been in here once, had left, and hadn't returned. He might never return.

"I hung onto the idea that he couldn't have gotten everyone, that there had to be others like me, who saw what was going on in time to get their heads down. Some would get out. They'd call the State Police. I kept telling myself it was wiser, at least for the time being, to wait. Then the storm came, and I decided to try to use it for cover. I'd sneak back to the mining office. There's an ATV in the garage of the Hideaway - "

Steve nodded. "We saw it. Got a little cart filled with rock samples behind it."

"My idea was to unhook the gondola and drive north-west back to Highway 50. I could grab a compass out of a supply cabinet, so even in the blow I'd be okay. Of course I knew I might go falling into a crevasse or something, but that didn't seem like much of a risk, not after what I'd seen. And I had to get out. Two nights in a laundrymat. . . hey, you try it. I was getting ready to do it when you two came along."

"I damn near brained you," Steve said. "Sorry about that."

She smiled wanly, then looked around once more. "And the rest you know," she said.

I don't agree, Johnny Marinville thought. The throb in his nose was increasing again. He wanted a drink, and badly. Since that would be madness - for him, anyway - he pulled the bottle of aspirin out of his pocket and took two with a sip of spring-water. I don't think we know any-thing. Not yet, anyway.

4

Mary Jackson said: "What do we do now? How do we get out of this mess? Do we even try, or do we wait to be rescued?"

For a long time no one replied. Then Steve shifted in the chair he was sharing with Cynthia and said, "We can't wait. Not for long, anyway.

"Why do you say that?" Johnny asked. His voice was curiously gentle, as if he already knew the answer to this question.

"Because somebody should've gotten away, gotten to a phone outside of town and pulled the plug on the murder- machine. No one did, though. Even before the storm started, no one did. Something very powerful's happening here, and I think that counting on help from the outside may only get us killed. We have to count on each other, and we have to get out as soon as possible. That's what I believe."

"I'm not going without finding out what happened to my mom," David said.

"You can't think that way, son," Johnny said.

"Yes I can. I am."

"No," Billingsley said. Something in his voice made David raise his head. "Not with other lives at stake. Not when you're. . . special, the way you are. We need you, son.

"That's not fair," David almost whispered.

"No," Billingsley agreed. His lined face was stony. "It ain't."

Cynthia said, "It won't do your mother any good if you - and the rest of us - die trying to find her, kiddo. On the other hand, if we can get out of town, we could come back with help."

"Right," Ralph said, but he said it in a hollow, sick way.

"No, it's not right," David said. "It's a crock of shit, that's what it is."

"David!"

The boy surveyed them, his face fierce with anger and sick with fright. "None of you care about my mother, not one of you. Even you don't, Dad."

"That's untrue," Ralph said. "And it's a cruel thing to say."

"Yeah," David said, "but I think it's true, just the same. I know you love her, but I think you'd leave her because you believe she's already dead." He fixed his father with his gaze, and when Ralph looked down at his hands, tears oozing out of his swollen eye, David switched to the veterinarian. "And I'll tell you something, Mr. Billingsley. Just because I pray doesn't mean I'm a comic-book wizard or something. Praying's not magic. The only magic I know is a couple of card tricks that I usually mess up on anyway."

"David - " Steve began.

"If we go away and come back, it'll be too late to save her! I know it will be! I know that!" His words rang from the stage like an actor's speech, then died away. Outside, the indifferent wind gusted.

"David, it's probably already too late," Johnny said. His voice was steady enough, but he couldn't quite look at the kid as he said it.

Ralph sighed harshly. His son went to him, sat beside him, took his hand. Ralph's face was drawn with weariness and confusion. He looked older now.

Steve turned to Audrey. "You said you knew another way out."

"Yes. The big earthwork you see as you come into town is the north face of the pit we've reopened. There's a road that goes up the side of it, over the top, and into the pit. There's another one that goes back to Highway 50 west of here. It runs along Desperation Creek, which is just a dry-wash now. You know where I mean, Tom?"

He nodded.

"That road - Desperation Creek Road - starts at the motor-pool. There are more ATVs there. The biggest only seats four safely, but we could hook up an empty gondola and the other three could ride in it."

Steve, a ten-year veteran of load-ins, load-outs, snap decisions, and rapid getaways (often necessitated by the combination of four-star hotels and rock-band assholes), had been following her carefully. "Okay, what I suggest is this. We wait until morning. Get some rest, maybe even a little sleep. The storm might blow itself out by then - "

"I think the wind has let up a little," Mary said. "Maybe that's wishful thinking, but I really think it has."

"Even if it's still going, we can get up to the motor- pool, can't we, Audrey?"

"I'm sure we can."

"How far is it?"

"Two miles from the mining office, probably a mile and a half from here."

He nodded. "And in daylight, we'll be able to see Entragian. If we try to go at night, in the storm, we can't count on that."

"We can't count on being able to see the . . . the wildlife, either," Cynthia said.

"I'm talking about moving fast and armed," Steve said. "If the storm plays out, we can head up to the embankment in my truck - three up front in the cab with me, four back in the box. If the weather is still bad - and I actually hope it will be - I think we should go on foot. We'll attract less attention that way. He might never even know we're gone."

"I imagine the Escolla boy and his friends were thinking about the same way when Collie ran em down," Billingsley said.

"They were headed north on Main Street," Johnny said. "Exactly what Entragian would have been looking for. We'll be going south, toward the mine, at least initially, and leaving the area on a feeder road."

"Yeah," Steve said. "And then bang, we're gone." He went over to David - the boy had left his father and was sitting on the edge of the stage, staring out over the tacky old theater seats - and squatted beside him. "But we'll come back. You hear me, David? We'll come back for your mom, and for anyone else he's left alive. That's a rock-solid promise, from me to you.

David went on staring out over the seats. "I don't know what to do," he said. "I know I need to ask God to help me straighten out my head, but right now I'm so mad at him that I can't. Every time I try to compose my mind, that gets in the way. He let the cop take my mother! Why? Jesus, why?"

Do you know you did a miracle just a little while ago? Steve thought. He didn't say it; it might only make David's confusion and misery worse. After a moment Steve got up and stood looking down at the boy, hands shoved deep into his pockets, eyes troubled.

5

The cougar walked slowly down the alley, head lowered, ears flattened. She avoided the garbage cans and the pile of scrap lumber much more easily than the humans had done; she saw far better in the dark. Still, she paused at the end of the alley, a low, squalling growl rising from her throat. She didn't like this. One of them was strong - very strong. She could sense that one's force even through the brick flank of the building, pulsing like a glow. Still, there was no question of disobedience. The outsider, the one from the earth, was in the cougar's head, its will caught in her mind like a fishhook. That one spoke in the language of the unformed, from the time before, when all animals except for men and the outsider were one.

But she didn't like that sense of force. That glow.

She growled again, a rasp that rose and fell, coming more from her nostrils than her closed mouth. She slipped her head around the corner, wincing at a blast of wind that ruffled her fur and charged her nose with smells of brome grass and Indian paintbrush and old booze and older brick. Even from here she could smell the bitterness from the pit south of town, the smell that had been there since they had charged the last half-dozen blast-holes and reopened the bad place, the one the animals knew about and the men had tried to forget.

The wind died, and the cougar padded slowly down the path between the board fence and the rear of the theater. She stopped to sniff at the crates, spending more time on the one which had been overturned than on the one which still stood against the wall. There were many intermingled scents here. The last person who had stood on the over-turned crate had then pushed it off the one still against the wall. The cougar could smell his hands, a different, sharper smell than the others. A skin smell, undressed somehow, tangy with sweat and oils. It belonged to a male in the prime of his life.

She could also smell guns. Under other circumstances that smell would have sent her running, but now it didn't matter. She would go where the old one sent her; she had no choice. The cougar sniffed the wall, then looked up at the window. It was unlocked; she could see it moving back and forth in the wind. Not much, because it was recessed, but enough for her to be sure it was open. She could get inside. It would be easy. The window would push in before her, giving way as man-things sometimes did.

No, the voice of the unformed said. You can't.

An image flickered briefly in her mind: shiny things. Man-drinkers, sometimes smashed to bright fragments on the rocks when the men were done with them. She understood (in the way that a layperson may vaguely understand a complicated geometry proof, if it is carefully explained) that she would knock a number of these man-drinkers onto the floor if she tried to jump through the window. She didn't know how that could be, but the voice in her head said it was, and that the others would hear them break.

The cougar passed beneath the unlatched window like a dark eddy, paused to sniff at the firedoor, which had been boarded shut, then came to a second window. This one was at the same height as the one with the man-drinkers inside of it, and made of the same white glass, but it wasn't unlatched.

It's the one you'll use, though, the voice in the cougar's head whispered. When I tell you it's time, that's the one YOU use.

Yes. She might cut herself on the glass in the window, as she had once cut the pads of her feet on the pieces of man-drinkers up in the hills, but when the voice in her head told her that the time had come, she would jump at the window. Once inside, she would continue to do what the voice told her. It wasn't the way things were supposed to be . . . but for now, it was the way things were.

The cougar lay below the bolted men's-room window, curled her tail around her, and waited for the voice of the thing from the pit. The voice of the outsider. The voice of Tak. When it came, she would move. Until it did, she would lie here and listen to the voice of the wind, and smell the bitterness it brought with it, like bad news from another world.