20

December 14, morning

The back road out of town was blocked by police cars. Cruzon wasn’t about to challenge the imposing blockade.

“Let’s try the freeway. Maybe there’s room to drive around them there, if we’re fast and nervy enough,” Stanner suggested.

Cruzon nodded, stopped, backed up, drove back through town the other way. The day had turned gray, and there was a damp mist in the air.

Occasionally, cars pulled up beside them, when there was a lane to do it in, and paced them, the people staring. Now it was a family in a silver and red Isuzu Rodeo: two identical blond children, a doe-eyed blond mother, their redheaded daddy, three sets of blue eyes and one of brown, the dad not watching where he was driving but able to drive anyway. A family with all four heads turned to silently stare at Stanner and Cruzon and Adair—until she lay back down, as if napping, hiding her face.

“Maybe we should try to disable that vehicle,” Cruzon suggested. He accelerated through a light as it turned yellow. “They could’ve gotten the word from those we killed back there. We could run them off the road.”

The Isuzu fell slightly behind but unhesitatingly ran the red light, trying to keep up with them. Its engine revved loudly as it put on speed—and Cruzon deliberately slowed so the Isuzu would overshoot.

“No,” Stanner said. “Let’s not push them into reacting before we have to. They seem uncertain. They don’t know everything. Their communication isn’t perfect. The system is still evolving.”

“They seem like . . . evolution gone wrong,” Cruzon muttered, his forehead furrowed.

“Not in the DNA sense of evolution. But they’re always restlessly evolving—self-directed evolving, I guess. They have their own kind of splicing—but it’s not gene splicing. Anyway, they might know who we are—or they might not. Those following us could think we’re their kind but on a different frequency, maybe.

“Sometimes they’re very proactive, but other times, it’s like their All of Us is still running through all the possibilities, like a cheap chess program thinking about its next move. That erratic decision making is our main hope—for right now anyway.”

After another block, the Isuzu turned off, heading to the north end of town. “What’s off in that direction?” Stanner asked.

“Nothing special,” Cruzon said. “Lot of tract homes. Churches. A golf course. The cemetery’s out there, on the edge of town.”

They drove past a smoking, burned-out Chevy pickup aslant in the middle of the street, with a couple of cops standing beside it, watching them go by. A swag-bellied cop and a grim-faced woman officer.

“What do you think about those cops at that wreck, Cruzon?” Stanner asked, fighting the urge to look back over his shoulder.

“Used to be they’d have waved at me, maybe called me on the radio. Normally there’d be at least two units next to a scene like that, too.”

The police radio crackled to itself, waves of static as if a great pulsing sea of interference was rolling over the town.

They passed a deserted-looking Albertsons supermarket. The doors were chained up, the parking lot was empty. “Okay,” Cruzon said. “Here’s the freeway entrance.”

But that was blockaded, too. Cruzon stopped the car, about half a block away, in the parking lot of an ARCO station, and they sat looking at the blockade. The town was sealed up.

Three police cars were parked sideways across the road. On the shoulder was a van that had a FEMA logo on the side. Two guys in bulky helmeted orange hazmat suits, protection against a large-scale toxin leak, looked at an instrument in the back of the van. Stanner thought he could see a handmade transmitter back there, too.

Cruzon said, “Looks like they’re acting as if the town had a refinery leak. I did hear them let loose with their siren once.”

“Those guys in the moon suits are props. Camouflage, for the locals—and maybe for choppers.”

“People can’t buy that shit for very long, can they?”

“They don’t have to,” Stanner said. “If these things follow the pattern we saw in the lab, then they’re building up toward a mass release. They have to keep people out of town only till that’s done.”

“What do you mean, mass release?”

“A kind of quantum leap in reproduction. They build their population toward a kind of critical mass, then they try to move to a colony-replication model. They seem to have modeled the thing on the triggers that make ant colonies replicate. Those antennas on the roof—I figure they’ll send out a carrier wave, give the signal. When they’re ready.”

“Yeah? When will that be?”

Stanner shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, but probably not more than another twenty-four hours, or so.”

“There have to be people from the outside press here, if they’re quarantining the town. Whether they’re calling it a toxin leak or an anthrax attack or whatever. You can’t just bottle up a town, this close to the big ones, without people noticing. But I haven’t heard anything on the radio news.”

Stanner felt a wave of disgust. “I haven’t seen any press. And no state or county emergency personnel out here, either. Which means that the fucking Pentagon has made all the right calls.”

Cruzon sat pensively, watching the men at the blockade. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, chewed his lower lip. After a moment he muttered, “Your tax dollars at work.”

Stanner looked at the girl in the backseat. She was hugging herself in a corner of the seat, knees drawn up protectively. Just staring into space. “Adair?”

Her eyes flicked toward him, but she didn’t react in any other way. Stanner was beginning to worry that she might never come back.

“Adair, have you been anywhere near a TV set, like maybe last night? Heard anything from the outside about Quiebra?”

She just looked at him. He thought she shook her head, once, just slightly. But he wasn’t even sure of that.

Stanner sighed. She’d been through too much to handle.

Maybe if he explained everything to her, at some point. Maybe, if she could grasp how this had an explanation, a cause, she could come to grips with it. An explanation had seemed to help Cruzon— who’d been right on the edge of what field agents used to call “The Paranoia of No Return.”

“They’ve noticed us,” Cruzon said, squinting at the blockade. “We’d better get out of here. Ditch this car maybe, get away overland, contact the state police. Get some backup. I mean, the Pentagon may have made some calls, to hold people back from looking too close, but that doesn’t mean everybody’s in on it.”

“They’re not all in on it. They’re just being lied to. Pretty well, too. If we could take some evidence out . . . We should have brought Breakenridge with us.”

“I know some trails, up in the hills.”

“We don’t want to go overland unless we have to,” Stanner said. “There are things out there keeping the town closed up, all around the edges of town. They’ve changed some of the animals. But we ought to find a place to hide for now—and collect what evidence we can. Maybe we can get around these bastards tonight.”

Stanner noticed that the men at the blockade were peering over at him, talking earnestly. Then he saw someone he knew, getting out of the front of the FEMA van. Two people. His daughter, Shannon, was one—and the other was Bentwaters. With them was a Green Beret carrying an Uzi.

“Oh, no,” he muttered. “Shannon.”

Cruzon looked at him. “Somebody you know?”

“Yeah.” The guys in the moon suits got in the FEMA van and it drove away. “They’ve got my daughter,” Stanner said. “And Bentwaters, a guy who was important to the Facility.” He made up his mind. “Cruzon, wait here. After I’ve walked over there, ease the car slowly closer, so I can get to it in a few steps. If things go sour, you can do a U-turn, get out of here with the girl, try to find some other route out of town. I’ve got to get my daughter away from those . . . things.”

“You sure about this? I mean, they brought her here to bring you out in the open, right?”

“Yeah, I know. But they might want me alive if they could get me that way. Anyway—anyway, good luck, Commander.”

“Stanner!”

But Stanner was already stepping out, damp gusts whipping his windbreaker.

Carrying the M16 in his left hand, he took out his badge with his right, waved it, up high so they could see it. He just kept holding the badge up and smiling as he walked over toward the roadblock. He had only one full clip left in the M16.

Shannon saw him, took a step toward him—and Bentwaters grabbed her arm, pulled her back. Stanner had to work at it to keep from running at him, wanting to shout, Get your fucking hands of my daughter.

He made himself walk up to them slowly, putting the badge away, taking the stock of the M16 in his right hand. Holding it across his body. Not threatening—but obviously ready. He glanced at it once to make sure the safety was off.

Shannon was breathing hard—he could see her chest heaving from here—and she had her hands clutched against her sides.

Five men stood around Shannon. Standing close beside her, hand gripping her arm, was a tall, graying man with deep smile lines on his tanned face; he wore khaki slacks and a beige Lacoste shirt. Stanner had a foggy memory, from his first day of asking questions, that the guy had been the town’s mayor. Name of Rowse.

On her other side was one of the young marines from the satellite crash site, wearing a scrappy, dirty uniform, carrying an M16. Beside him was Bentwaters, wearing a FEMA jacket, shivering visibly. The jacket was social camouflage issued by the NSA.

Standing by the cop cars was a familiar Green Beret, Uzi slung over one shoulder. A plastic name tag on his jacket read DIRKOWSKI. Stanner remembered him from the crash site, too: the knucklehead who’d sent the diver down without protections. No briefing. He was briefed on the situation now, all right.

And Morgenthal was there. The shop teacher. A 12-gauge shotgun in his hands. Two Quiebra cops—they used to be cops—were sitting in the cruisers behind the group of men. A young black cop and a jowly, older white one.

Morgenthal and Rowse both looked completely human, though Morgenthal looked shabbier now, his shirt untucked, unshaven, hair matted. Their disparity gave Stanner hope. The crawlers were powerful—but not perfectly organized. The All of Us was still learning.

Stanner walked up to within ten paces of them and stopped. He looked at Shannon and saw the marks on her face, her split lip. God help them if they’ve changed her over.

He smiled encouragingly at her. She looked away, her mouth quivering.

He gave another kind of smile to the men standing with Shannon and smacked the breach of his M16 in his hand. “You know, I’m pretty good with this thing. I’ve had my share of practice.”

“No need for any test of skill,” Rowse said finally. “Mr. Bentwaters here is our emissary. Mr. Bentwaters, you have the floor.”

Stanner looked at Bentwaters. “Someone’s hit my daughter. Was it you?”

Shannon closed her eyes and sobbed, just once. “Dad.”

“Quiet, young lady, please,” Rowse said, tightening his grip on her arm.

Stanner’s hands began to sweat on the gun.

Bentwaters licked his lips and looked at the girl. Then at the gun in Stanner’s hands. His eyes danced with fear. “Henri, no, I didn’t hit her. And I didn’t tell them to bring her here.

“And I’ve told her everything,” Bentwaters went on breathlessly. “It seemed only fair. The team that was following you, from the Agency—when they lost you, they went and picked her up, brought her into town. Listen, they got Gaitland. He came over here to see what he could find out, and we think he’s dead. I came over separately and—look, I’m sorry about this, Major. About the girl. About you running up against all this. I just wanted to inspect the site, see if the diagnosis was as you seemed to think—that the thing had gotten away from us. I asked for an escort, over at the NSA, because I figured it could be dangerous, but, uh, all they’d give me was Dirkowski here. And he—” Bentwaters broke off, licking his lips.

Stanner looked at Dirkowski.

He’s one, too, Stanner thought. “Okay. What’s the Pentagon doing about this?”

“They’re playing ball with these things—for now. They don’t want a big detachment over here, drawing attention. They’re trying to keep a lid on the media until they can figure out what to do.”

Stanner shook his head in amazement. “They think they can contain this? Keep people in the dark forever? You know, an idea has been growing on me for a while, Bentwaters. And I’ll tell you what it is: The government thinks the American people are stupid— but they’re not stupid, they just feel powerless. They’ll figure out someday that they’re not powerless.”

Bentwaters smiled sadly. “Someday won’t help us.”

Stanner looked narrowly at Bentwaters. “I figure the Facility must have some kind of contingency plan?”

Bentwaters flicked his eyes at the former Green Beret without turning his head—trying to catch Stanner’s attention with that motion of his eyes. Don’t say too much in front of this thing.

Stanner nodded, just perceptibly.

Bentwaters sighed, his voice quavering. “It’s not about the Facility—not around here. It’s them. They’re getting ready to—”

“Shut up,” the Green Beret said. And there was a flicker of metal in his throat, as if something had looked out of it, just for a moment. “Just give him the message.”

Stanner looked at Bentwaters, wondering if he was still human. He seemed very humanly scared—but that could be an act.

That’s when Stanner noticed the thin, shiny, clinging ribbon around Bentwaters’s neck. Like a living necklace of dull, shifting chrome; it quivered like a line of ants, so crowded together you couldn’t make out one from the next.

Stanner knew what it was. The “ants” were each made of smaller individualized components; and those were organized of active “interdependent but independent” particles that were smaller yet.

Bentwaters saw Stanner’s look—and reached up self-consciously, as if to touch the “necklace.” Then hastily drew his hand back. “You see it? That thing—it’ll enter me, change me, if they give it the signal. If I don’t do what they say. They got into the personnel files at the Facility. They know all about us. They’ve seen your psych evaluation, everything. They want me like I am now, so I can talk to you—so you know you’re talking to a human being. They didn’t think you’d deal with one of them.”

“They’re right,” Stanner admitted. He turned to Shannon. “They put anything on you, Shannon?”

She swallowed visibly and shook her head.

Bentwaters glanced at Shannon. “They were afraid if they put one on her, you’d assume she was a lost cause. You had to see her . . . unmolested.”

“Right again. Shannon, how’d you end up here, honey?”

Shannon licked her split lip. “I—some men came and got me. They said you were out of control, and I had to talk to you. They brought me here. They were going to use me to bring you back—to whichever of these asshole agencies you work for—and they—” She squeezed her eyes shut, wiped away tears, and then went on. “But they’re dead now. They’re all cut up and . . . I don’t understand any of this, Dad.”

“Just be patient, hon, it’ll be all right,” Stanner said, trying to sound as if he believed it. “Bentwaters, they killed her escort, took her and you for bait? That what happened?”

Bentwaters licked his lips and nodded. “That’s more or less it. You’re all that’s keeping me and the girl human. They want you out of town, and they want Cruzon dead—or turned over to them. And they want a girl you’ve got with you. Name of Adair something.”

“They want me out of town? Not dead?”

“Having you dead is just an ideal. You’re a loose cannon. But it seems they’re convinced there’s something you’ve got that’ll hurt them. They’re concerned that if they just shoot you down, someone else might just set off that something . . .”

Stanner gave Bentwaters a hard look. “They know what that is?”

Bentwaters shrugged. “They’ve guessed.”

Stanner nodded. So his bluff had worked. And there was just the possibility it might not be bluff—if Bentwaters had come through. Stanner didn’t have the device yet—but Bentwaters had been smart enough to make them think he did. “So, they want to make sure I don’t set that ‘something’ off.”

“And they want to make some kind of deal with the Pentagon. So you and your daughter and I can live through this thing—as human beings—if you turn those two in the car over to them. And then we carry back their message.”

“What kind of message?”

“Terms. They don’t want the whole world, at least not all at once. If the Pentagon backs off, they’re willing to negotiate. Maybe— for the West Coast. For a while.”

Shannon was looking in horror back and forth between Bentwaters and Stanner. “Dad, who are you dealing with? What would you be giving them?”

“I don’t know yet, Shannon.” Stanner turned to Bentwaters. “They assume I’ll play ball?”

Bentwaters shrugged. “You’ve worked for the Facility for years. And they’ve got your daughter.” He reached up to close the last two inches on the FEMA jacket. “Shit, it’s cold out here. You got a cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke,” Stanner said. Bentwaters had confirmed for Stanner what he suspected. If the crawlers were trying to cut a deal, then they were worried. Which meant that they’d found out that some sort of containment plan was in the offing. The Pentagon, the Facility, and probably the White House all knew how far it had gone. And that meant the Feds have to take radical steps to end this. Not in the way he’d planned it, though. Something more decisive, and extreme.

Anything extreme enough to stop the All of Us would probably kill everyone in town. Not just the ones who’d been changed over. Having to sacrifice a few researchers out in Lab 23—that had been hard, but they’d known the risks, so it was something he could live with. But this . . .

Thousands of normal people were still hiding in town, people who hadn’t become crawlers. A whole town would be massacred to hide a secret.

“Dad,” Shannon began.

He tried the encouraging smile again. It didn’t feel convincing. “I’m sorry this happened to you, baby.”

“It didn’t just happen!” she hissed, glaring at him past her tears. “You got into it and that got me into it. This ugly filthy shit that you work in.”

No answer came to him, for that.

“We want those two in the car,” Morgenthal said. “And we want you to come with us peacefully, for debriefing. You tell us where your little toy is, and you negotiate for us with your people at the Pentagon. Then you and your daughter can go free.”

“And me!” Bentwaters put in, his voice breaking up under the pressure of desperation. “You promised I could go with Stanner!”

Morgenthal ignored him.

“Most of our people are occupied elsewhere, Stanner,” Rowse said, taking it up seamlessly. “We don’t want a lot of noise and mess now. And we don’t want the state police coming in here. You understand, Major? But if we have to, we’ll do it the hard, noisy way. We were just hoping you’d make it easier on all of us.”

Stanner hesitated. Rowse added, “And if you’re thinking you can point your weapon at us and force us to back off—no. I’m not, in fact, a guy named Rowse anymore, Stanner. I’m the All of Us. We don’t just throw away our ‘human resources.’ ” He smiled at his little irony. “But don’t think I really care if you kill me. Because I’m something you can’t kill, even if you kill this Rowse body. You understand?” And he flashed Stanner what remained of his politician’s smile.

“Sure,” Stanner said. “You feel that way because you’re just part of a goddamn machine. That I understand.”

Rowse’s smile didn’t fade. “I’ll wait thirty seconds more for your decision. You come with us quietly, and you have a deal. We have other plans for Bentwaters. So that leaves you to act as our intermediary.”

Bentwaters had gone white-faced.

Stanner’s hands tightened on the gun. His knuckles were stinging in the damp wind. He could smell the sea, very faintly. He heard a semi truck pass on the freeway, its driver blissfully unaware of all this, probably just thinking about the next stop and a girl in Reno.

“Your daughter and I have been here an hour, waiting for you,” the Green Beret said. “You coming or not?”

Stanner let out a long slow sigh. “Okay,” he said.

“Then bring the Adair Leverton girl over here to us. We want her, too,” Rowse said.

Stanner nodded and backed away from them about ten steps. “Hold tight there, Shannon.”

Licking his lips, looking into Stanner’s eyes, Bentwaters said, “Major, you really don’t want to go without me.”

Stanner didn’t answer—but he guessed what Bentwaters meant. Bentwaters had the data he’d asked for.

But they weren’t going to let Bentwaters go with him.

Stanner hesitated, then turned and walked back to the Quiebra police car where Cruzon and “the Adair girl” waited.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught a movement, a small car swinging out from behind a Shell station, pulling up at the edge of the parking area, facing the street. He glanced that way. A man he’d never seen before was behind the wheel, with a lean teenage boy who looked familiar at his side.

Oh, right: It was the conspiracy-theory kid from the site and the high school. Waylon. They just sat in the idling car, watching.

Stanner figured they’d planned on using the freeway ramp to escape from town, saw that it was blocked. Now they were watching to see what happened.

Stanner reached the cop car and murmured to Cruzon, “Sorry, Cruzon.”

Ignoring Cruzon’s inquiring look, Stanner opened the back door of the cop car, reached in, grabbed Adair by the wrist, and pulled her out to stand in the street.

She just looked at him, her eyes big. She looked at the people up at the entrance to the freeway. And she looked like she might bolt.

“Just hold on,” he told her, as Cruzon got out of the car.

“What’re you doing?” Cruzon asked.

“I’m sorry,” Stanner said, and cracked Cruzon on the side of the head with the butt of the M16. Not too hard, but hard enough to knock him back against the open front door, to spin him half around. He reached out and pulled Cruzon’s sidearm from his holster, then pointed it with his left hand. “Walk up toward the roadblock, there, Commander. Do it. You, too, Adair.”

“You son of a bitch,” Cruzon said, clutching his head. He muttered what was probably a curse in Tagalog.

“Adair, let’s go. Move toward the freeway,” Stanner said.

“What you going to do if she doesn’t?” Cruzon asked bitterly. “Shoot her in the back? Maybe they’d like it if you did that. You’d score points.”

“Just go on where I told you,” Stanner said, pointing the M16 at Cruzon. He had it propped against his right hip. He shoved Cruzon’s pistol into his own waistband, in front.

Stanner herded Cruzon and the girl toward the roadblock at the freeway on-ramp. The right side of the cop’s head was bleeding and he was a little unsteady on his feet. “I guess maybe it was some kind of trade, your daughter for me?”

“Something like that.” It seemed to be taking forever to walk to the roadblock. “Now shut up and go.”

Cruzon snorted. “You really think they’re going to give her to you like she’s supposed to be? Or even let you go?”

“Just shut up and hurry. Let’s get this the fuck over with, Commander.” He started to tell Cruzon something more, but he was too close now. He might be overheard.

They were about a dozen paces from the roadblock, Adair walking as if in a dream, Cruzon trudging slowly behind her—when Stanner pretended to shove Cruzon with his left hand to hurry him. Leaning in close, even snarling, “Hurry up, you little Flip asshole!”

Cruzon almost turned his head to look when he felt something pushed into his own waistband.

“Don’t look back,” Stanner said almost inaudibly, between clenched teeth. “Can you feel your gun down there? Just nod once.”

Cruzon nodded.

Stanner took a deep breath. “Head shots ought to slow them down.”

Eight, nine more paces. They were within a few steps of his daughter. He spoke to Dirkowski. “Start my daughter toward me, if you want them.”

“We’ve got them right now,” the Green Beret pointed out, and raised the Uzi.

“Shannon, get down!” Stanner shouted, and he shoved Adair to his left so she fell sprawling in the street, as Cruzon yanked the gun out of the back of his waistband.

“Run, girl!” Cruzon shouted at Adair, as he got a bead with the pistol.

The Green Beret was aiming the Uzi at Adair as she got up to run. The first burst from the Uzi smacked the asphalt where Adair had been lying.

Shannon tore herself free from Rowse’s grip and threw herself flat.

Stanner fired at the Green Beret’s head and caught it with three solid rounds; the soldier danced back and fell.

Waylon was shouting. Adair reached his car, grabbing at a door handle.

Rowse ran toward the roadblock cars, shouting. The marine at the roadblock had set himself to leap, but three rounds from Cruzon’s pistol jerked him back, flailing. Morgenthal fell, spasming under a burst from Stanner’s M16.

Bentwaters and Shannon both were screaming. Stanner grabbed Shannon’s wrist, shouted at her over the roar of Cruzon’s gun, then she was up and running, Bentwaters right behind her.

The crawlers in the cop cars were firing, but the shots went wild. Morgenthal was up again and loping toward them on all fours.

Cruzon fired low at the cars in the roadblock, bursting three tires. Then he ran out of bullets and turned to run.

Stanner knew—as he emptied his clip, knocking Morgenthal down again—it was too far back to Cruzon’s car. They’d never make it.

But a midsize sedan pulled up in his path, and a back door flew open. The Waylon kid and the older guy shouted at them to get in. Adair was already huddled in the backseat.

Shannon and Cruzon and Bentwaters piled into the sedan, cramming up against Adair. Bullets smacked into the rear fender and rang from the pavement as Stanner tried to follow—but it was too crowded.

He grabbed hold of the open back door as best he could as the car spun to the right in a tight circle, and hung on as it accelerated down the road, away from the freeway. He clung to the door and to someone’s hand inside, he wasn’t sure whose. One of his feet was on the bottom edge of the car’s floor, at the door, the other hanging free. He glanced over his shoulder.

The cars behind them had each lost tires, and the Green Beret was still sprawled, twitching, damaged past moving, but the other crawlers were furiously pursuing—on foot. Running along the street. Morgenthal, full of gunshot but still coming, and Rowse and the two cops—and they were on all fours, their hands and feet extended from their ankles, leaping high into the air, bounding as fast as the fugitive car, thirty, forty miles per hour.

But as Stanner crammed in with the others in the back, thinking of circus clowns, barely able to close the door behind him, the car picked up speed, roaring through twenty-five-mile-an-hour zones at fifty, sixty, seventy-five, till at last they left their pursuers behind.

Stanner decided the man driving was probably Waylon’s father. Family resemblance. Adair tapped the driver on the shoulder and pointed to a side street.

“Okay, I’m sure as hell open for suggestions,” Waylon’s dad said hoarsely. So he followed her mute directions.

December 14, noon

Vinnie knew for sure his mother was dead when he saw her climbing across the roof.

He’d come back and found the house empty. The doors standing open. She always locked the doors, even when she was at home. He thought she was dead, he was even pretty sure of it, but he refused to believe it till he could see what remained of her.

He had called for her, wailed to himself when she wouldn’t answer, called some more as he went through the rooms, over and over. He wished he could ask the neighbors, but first of all, he had a hard time asking anyone anything anytime, and second, they didn’t seem to be around.

They might be where Mother was.

She didn’t come home during the night. He might manage to tell the police things so they could understand, if he really concentrated. But he was afraid to call the police. He wasn’t sure why, except that when he’d passed them on the street he could feel they were all wrong. And sometimes he could hear them talking in his head.

“They use words but they’re words stolen from cradles,” he muttered, as he rocked furiously in his mother’s rocking chair. “Slave words all strung in a wire and spinning like the Mechmort in Starbots. Transform, transform, Starbots, transform and defend!”

He had sat there all night, with all but a night-light turned out. He was afraid the lights might attract the moths, and he didn’t want the moths to know where he was.

In the morning, too upset even to eat his Froot Loops, he’d gone to scout around, looking for Mother in the streets and in the woods by the house. Down in the woods he had seen some kids, teenagers and younger kids, looking scared, hiding in the rusted shell of an abandoned, overgrown school bus.

Vinnie managed to ask one of the boys if he’d seen Mother. After a few attempts at asking the question, in different ways, finally the boy understood. The boy shook his head—and then turned away to hide tears. Crying for his own mother.

Vinnie had tried to tell them that the woods wasn’t very safe. There were little things in it that used to be animals. But one of the girls had said that they knew how to deal with those. She pointed to the cats prowling around the bus. They had seen the cats kill the little jumping metal things. And for some reason, the cats were immune to being taken over by them.

So the kids had brought big bags of dry cat food and spread it around. Feral cats and wandering house cats came, and stayed— preferring it here to being around the things their owners had become. The cats were like a patrol against the little clockwork animals. Even the crawling marine stayed away. So far. But they had seen him in the distance, crouching in the bushes, watching.

He’ll come, Vinnie thought, when they need parts enough, the cats won’t keep him away.

Anyway, the girl told Vinnie, looking at him pointedly, his being there was scaring some of the smaller kids.

He was used to being sent away. He went away to look for Mother somewhere else.

Now, coming back to his own street, tired and hungry and walking along a few doors down from home, he saw a big blocky car pull up in front of his house. Mother and Mr. Roxmont from next door got out of the car, and Mr. Roxmont was carrying a big box of equipment into his garage and Mother was carrying what looked like a dish antenna.

Then his scrawny white-haired little mother climbed up the side of the house, in some way he didn’t understand. Mother climbed right up onto the roof.

He hid himself behind a parked truck as the car that had dropped them off went by, driven by a raggedy-looking man.

When it was gone, Vinnie came a little closer to his house. Mother was setting up one of those machines he’d seen on lots of the roofs in town. She had a firm grip on a screwdriver and her hand was spinning on the wrist, all the way around. A questing strand of metal was poking from Mother’s mouth and seemed to be looking toward the work, as if supervising.

Vinnie was very sure that this was no longer his mother. That his mother was dead.

He began to shake and to cry softly to himself and to talk aloud to the trees and the brush as he slipped between two houses, over a fence, and down into the woods. There wasn’t anywhere else to go.

The children at the abandoned bus didn’t want him there. He knew he could help them, too. He could hear things in his head, and he could warn them. But it was too hard to speak to them. That was always the problem. The tangling thing in him had always pushed people away, and now at the end it was going to push him completely off the edge of the world.

Then he thought of someplace to go. He would go to the cemetery, on the other side of town. Mother used to take him to visit Father’s grave there. He always felt a friendly welcoming from Father and all his friends at the cemetery. It was quiet there. Yes. That’s where he’d go.

He’d be safe among the dead.