Denouement: David and Laura are living together happily, falling in love.

David crested the hill and watched the sea of green below him shift in the wind. The tide was coming in, and he could hear it now, like distant thunder.
The tide was brown, the animals that it consisted of moving like waves, gracefully crossing the plains. It was like a dream in many ways, the bison he thought would have been extinct by now running in a huge herd below him, trampling the waist high grasses, a single white one at the front.
The Movement’s primary community in Canada was simply amazing to David. They hadn’t so much given up on civilization as moved beyond it. They had fashioned a new mythology to live by that David was eager to explore.
For now, though, he turned and headed for home. His new home. He and Laura were falling in love, and the feeling welled in him like new life blossoming in his chest.
As he walked down the hill, he was overcome with the feeling of John’s presence. It only happened every once in a while now, and disappeared as quickly as it came. He took it as a reminder that past, present, or future, there was more to him than his current consciousness. He was at peace with this, knowing he would have a lifetime to explore its meaning.
For now though, he had a new life to begin.

Denouement: A New Beginning

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like season’d timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.
-George Herbert, Virtue

Epilogue: Another doctor at another company perfects the procedure to defrost patients.

Abner Wagner picked up the magazine that had arrived in the mail. Only way to know what’s really going on in the world, he thought as he opened it.
He read about a fire. A terrible fire. Hundreds of children dead everywhere. Abner could barely look at the pictures, they were so gruesome. What a tragedy, he thought. The Church again.
He turned the page. Another catastrophe. He flipped another page. Another disaster. The magazine seemed to Abner like it was ten feet away from him, like he was looking at it through the wrong end of binoculars, the pictures and the print on it too small to see clearly. Fuckin’ world’s going to hell, he thought, throwing the magazine aside.
He picked up his gin and tonic and took a deep drink, feeling the bubbles caress his throat. Thinking about the state of the world and putting his drink down, the thought was replaced by another.
Oh well, what can you do?


Xiau Ping looked at her patient. She had come so far, yet over the last few days she was losing hope. Once she had overcome the physical aspects of waking her patient, she had passed off the rest of the delay as a side-effect of the long quiescence her patient had endured. She didn’t know what to expect. After she had gotten a heartbeat, she waited patiently for consciousness to return. With every hour that clicked past, she grew a little wearier. With every day that passed, her expectations diminished slightly more.
Although she knew her thoughts should be focused exclusively on her patient, they were currently wrapped up in one egoistic sentiment – she had finally caught up with the Church.
Then it happened.
Her patient’s eyelids fluttered, their eyes opened. Her patient looked up at her. Her patient asked her a question.
“What the hell’s wrong with me?”

Epilogue: The Revelation

What fortitude the Soul Contains,
That it can so endure
The accent of a coming Foot –
The opening of a Door.
-Emily Dickinson

Chapter 84: Ralph Bishop blows the Lab up. He's captured by the Eco-Assassins.

Ralph Bishop ran out of the building like a scalded dog. Screw the bodyguards, he thought.
As soon as he felt he was far enough away from the Lab, he opened his briefcase. He was twenty feet inside the security fence.
A row of buttons, perfectly labeled, greeted him. He found the one that read “Cryonics Lab.” It was yellow. He pushed it.
Nothing happened – or so it seemed. Bishop knew the system was in place. A lethal gas should have filled the facility by now. Everyone should have been dead. Yet, he could still see people moving about. Those...things are not dead, Bishop thought. They are not alive either, he reasoned.
He looked down into his briefcase again. Under a protective cover there was another button, this one red, also labeled “Cryonics Lab.” Bishop convinced himself that the building was disposable. He congratulated himself on his forethought in getting the security system into place in time, and also on always putting all the Church’s main computers in demolition-proof rooms. I am still in control, he thought as he pushed the red button.
The building erupted. Shrapnel flew in the gust. Bishop stared in momentary awe. Watching the fallout, he scrambled back, up to the fence.
The building was ablaze. Bishop heard a voice from behind him.
“You may be worth more alive than dead.”
Bishop heard the sound of metal bending. Turning, he saw a gaping hole in the fence.
“Give me that briefcase,” a man demanded, while another grabbed Bishop by the elbows.
“This might come in handy,” the first man said, smiling and looking inside the briefcase. “Looks like Judgement Day has come a little earlier than you expected.” He turned to the second man. “Put him in the van. Maybe we can get him to answer for his sins.”
Bishop looked at the men as they dragged him through the hole they had cut in the fence and put him in their van, his mind fastidiously turning their thumbprint-size sketches into flesh.

The razor wire lining the top of the security fence was slicing into his flesh, and Victor Grey could smell his blood. He was nearly clear of the silver coils when the blast from the Lab exploding had him reeling, arms spinning as he fell. He heard an audible crunch as his face slammed into the ground. The smell of blood filled his head as his crushed nose blared in agony.
Glancing toward the remains of the building through moist eyes – the pain setting off the tears – he was now glad he had gotten out, glad he had finally reached the limit of what he was willing to endure. The freakshow the Church had on parade blocked the only exit, and the thought of Johnny Rotten’s inhuman grip around him again was too much.
He turned, eyes now blinded by wet dollops of pain, and saw Ralph Bishop being pushed unceremoniously into a van. The world was prismatic through his drenched eyes, and he could see streaks of rainbow in between flashes of red.
He felt the heat from the blaze at his back, and loped away from it. His legs like stilts at first, eventually they understood his commands, and he was at a full run in moments, his mind filtering through the pain to listen to its own command: Get the Hell out of here.

David woke up from an explosive noise. He tried to determine if he felt John’s presence, and felt the same way he did after the quarry – he wasn’t sure. He looked out of the window of the Bug. The Lab was in flames.
“Oh my God! What’s happening?” he cried at Donna and Laura, running to them.
“The bastards,” Laura said.
“Look at the gate. What are they doing here?” David saw a van drive through the security gate. He couldn’t believe what was written on the side of it. It read In These Times.
“Looks like the Church isn’t going to be able to keep this one quiet,” Donna said.
Laura pointed. “Look over there.”
“Is that Ralph Bishop?” David recognized him from the magazine Donna had given him. “What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know, but he’s probably regretting his decision to come right about now. I recognize a few of those people. They’ve probably been following Bishop around for a long time, waiting for him to slip up. They’re the ones I told you about. The Eco-Assassins.”
“Jesus,” Laura said, looking back to the gate. “Look at them.”
More Others were coming in through the gate. They seemed confused, but ran into the building nonetheless. It reminded David of the hornets. Flying into their nest even though it would surely destroy them.

Chapter 83: Bishop sees the newly arrived Beast at the Lab's doors. He runs.

Father Dante missed Tracy. It was so lonely in the room he had been drawn to. What was happening? he wondered. He was sick. He knew he was sick. Good God, it was like everyone there had some sort of disease. Everyone looked so anemic.
He looked at the bed. Except her, he thought. She doesn’t look that way. He turned on the light. A young woman, about eighteen, lay in bed. She was sleeping, but it was a restless sleep. Her arm stuck out from under the covers. It was covered in tattoos – spider webs, crosses, skulls.
Father Dante walked over to her. She’s beautiful, he thought. Like Tracy. He lay his head near hers. Where is Tracy? he wondered. He looked at the girl. He noticed her lips. They were pink with the blood that coursed through them. She was waking up. Maybe it was the light, Father Dante thought. He got up and turned it out.
That’s better, he thought, laying down beside her.

Tracy saw a young man on the bed in the room she had been drawn to. This isn’t right at all, she thought, this can’t be right. The man was waking up. He had short, spiked hair, and a red tattoo that said “Ozzy” on his arm.
“Baby,” he said, “I had no idea they were gonna do this. You wanna lay down?”
“No, there must be some mistake. I think I’m in the wrong room.” She ran to the door. It was locked.
“Mistake or not, I’ve been in the freezer for sixteen years and there’s one thing I miss more than anything.”
In a rush of excitement, he was out of bed and across the room before Tracy turned around.
He grabbed her just as her energy left her, leaving him holding her limp and vulnerable body.

Wow, she’s cute, Rob thought. She looked about his age, too. This was so cool. He walked over to her. Man, she’s cute, he told himself again. He bent down to kiss her.
He had her lower lip in his mouth and felt a strange compulsion. His mind echoed his sentiments – that’ll get rid of that empty feeling inside you, that’ll fill you back up. Rob couldn’t tell if this feeling came from within him or from some external force. Either way, he didn’t argue.
He pinched the girl’s nostrils closed, put his mouth over hers, and started sucking the life out of her.

Juliet Ward was already in bed with the patient she had come all this way to see.
She had found her appetite again.

Rudy Johnson felt like shit. What the hell’s wrong with me? he thought, I must have the dt’s somethin’ fierce.

Melvin Waters didn’t like the look of things. He had sent the boy in alone while he sized up the situation. Something was wrong here, he thought. Something was very wrong. He decided to get a closer look when he heard a noise behind him. It was a crazy sound, like an enormous dog was shambling up behind him.

What in Hell is going on here? Bishop thought as he walked swiftly toward the nurse’s station. He’d had enough. The hallways were crammed with sickly white children. A cacophonous symphony of screams sandpapered what was left of his nerves. Some of the rooms he had passed contained terrible sights. Patients were being outright killed by the Others. Where in Hell was Persey?
He finally reached the nurse’s station. The doors at the end of the hallway were wide open, jammed with pallid children. Behind them, he saw something that at first he thought was a trick of the light. Looking closer he saw that it was not. A creature stood outside the doors of the Lab that had seven heads and ten horns. One of its heads looked like it was wounded to death, but the wound was healed. A man stood beside it with the mark of the Beast stamped on his forehead.
Bishop turned around and ran.

David relinquished control over John and let his mind wander. He found himself back on the hillside in the graveyard. The hill was alive. People, mostly children, were swarming it. He found John, who looked happy to see him. John took his hand and led him to the top of the hill. The solitary tombstone on the very top grew as they approached it. It became a large, square structure resembling a mausoleum. John led David inside through the door that appeared as they approached it.
The mausoleum seemed larger on the inside than it had from the outside. The wall opposite the door was divided into dozens, then hundreds, of rectangular sections. There was writing on each panel, but David couldn’t understand it. John could read the writing, though, and after shaking David’s hand and then dropping it, he walked toward the wall. As he did, a section moved forward. As it slid toward him, David realized that it was a drawer. It stopped when it was six feet from the wall.
John lay down in the drawer. As soon as he did, the drawer began to close. David ran over to it, but he was too late to stop it: he didn’t know if he could – didn’t know if he should. It closed all the way, and John was gone from view.
The entire structure seemed to fold in on itself, transparent to the mind and eye, and David found himself staring at the solitary tombstone on the top of the hill again. He descended the hillside, sidestepping the throng of children gathered on it. He walked to the gates and turned around once he was outside of them. The gates swung closed.
The children on the hill started to run around on all fours, like sheep. As if to answer for this bizarre behavior, a shepherd appeared on the top of the hill where, just moments before, John had accepted his destiny. The shepherd was cloaked in a long white robe, the hood of which covered its face. It carried a long, wooden staff, curved at the top. While David studied this solitary figure, the children did, indeed, turn into sheep, as if David were dreaming within his dream. He looked back at the shepherd, and it, too, transformed. The white robe went black as the staff was turned upside down, becoming a metal scythe. The lamb-children ran to the top of the hill where the shepherd-reaper stood, and it methodically sliced them open with the scythe, their mangled, broken, all-too-human bodies littering the hillside, their blood turning the green grass crimson.
David found himself rising from the planet. From the air, he could tell that what he had seen on the hillside was only a fraction of what was going on in the cemetery. Children were everywhere, hundreds of them, covering the planet, all running toward the top of the hill, and their fate.
David saw the tombstones in their circular patterns moving and turning, going round and round, like great wheels.

Chapter 82: Ralph Bishop finds his son in a room sucking the life out of a patient.

Ralph Bishop saw the lights in the cafeteria flicker. He reached for the phone, calling Patty. Dr. Persey answered.
“The lights just flickered down here. What is going on?”
“Nothing, sir. Everything is under control.”
Bishop knew the man was lying. In the background, Bishop could hear people, what sounded like hundreds of them. They sounded like an out of control mob.
He got up and walked toward Patty’s station. As he walked through the hallway, he looked into the rooms. He immediately stopped. He saw a patient lying in bed asleep, and another person, white as a ghost, poised over the patient like a vampire, gasping for breath.
He went to the next room and saw the same thing. The next room revealed more.
In the next room was his son. He had somehow gotten onto the bed and was on top of the patient in it. Bishop opened the door and turned on the light. His son cringed, and turned his head to face his father. The boy hissed, letting out an extravagant, sated sigh, and Bishop saw the patient in the bed underneath him – dead, blue in the face. He closed the door quickly and locked it.

“Look at them all. It’s so sad.” Laura was wishing she didn’t have such a great view of what was unfolding before her. Young people, children and teenagers mostly – only here and there a young adult – were swarming the Lab. They had bottlenecked in the doorway and spilled out into the parking lot.
“They’re so young,” Donna added. “I had no idea it would be like this.”
“Goddamn Church,” Laura muttered. “What the fuck do they think they’re doing?”

Chapter 81: John destroys the computer system, and the procedure to defrost patients.

Grey was out cold. John turned his attention back to the box with the toggle switches. What was I doing?

As if in answer to his question, he felt his arms go out to the switches, continuing to turn them off. When he flipped the last one, the room grew much quieter. He immediately turned to the box on the facing wall and repeated the motions, clicking off all the toggle switches he found inside. When he was done, the room was silent.

There was a smaller box inside each cabinet, and John saw himself open one, then the other. Inside each was something labeled “SURGE PROTECTOR.” The letters meant nothing to John. John saw himself remove the devices. He then dropped them on the floor and smashed them with his boot.

Picking up the crushed devices, he pulled two wires out of each of them, and connected them inside the areas where the devices were previously. He looked at Grey, who was still passed out.

“Come in, come in. Welcome.” Dr. Persey swung the doors wide open to welcome his guests.

“Hi. My name is Tracy. This is Father Dante.”

“My name is Rob.”

“I’m Juliet Ward.”

“Rudy Johnson.”

Dozens more filed past Dr. Persey. Then dozens more again. He had Patty lead them to the conference room, which was the only place large enough to hold them all. There, he was going to have the doctors pair them up with the person they were there for. The doctors didn’t need to do anything, though – each Other was drawn to a particular patient’s room, wanting to go inside.

Dr. Persey quickly realized they were overwhelmed. With only the doctors and his paltry staff, the Others he had waited so long to see were inundating the Lab. Some came alone, some came in groups. Dr. Persey didn’t know what to do with them all. He ended up letting them go into the patients’ rooms that they were drawn to. He then had the doctors lock the doors to the rooms.

He told himself it was a temporary solution until they could get things under control.

John connected the wires in the areas that previously held the surge protectors. They sparked when he slid them into place. He then found himself switching the toggle switches back on, all at once, using both hands to span the alcove with his arms outstretched. Sparks flew from the wires he had put into place. He reached into the areas where they were and slid the wires out until the contacts were broken.

Then he pushed the wires back in simultaneously. The wires more than sparked, they melted, fusing to the boxes. John noticed smoke coming from both his outstretched hands and his boots, and physically didn’t feel a thing. But mentally –

For a moment, John was back at the office party. He had just been congratulated by the Chief Executive Officer on his “stellar accomplishment” of being the youngest VP ever at the company. This time, though, John didn’t go along with the charade. He made sure everyone was paying attention to him, and then he started berating them – all of them. He told them what a bunch of self-satisfied assholes they were. How they didn’t give a shit about anything but their own greedy desires. He was pounding on the table with his shoe. He told them how they could all go to hell and take their goddamn company and shove it right up their assholes. He then went to the elevator, pressed “L” for lobby, and let the doors close on their ghastly, pallid faces. In his mind’s vision of the events, he was smiling widely –

John pulled his arms away from the electrical boxes, and looked out at the room. The metal boxes on the floor weren’t silent, and they weren’t humming. They were whining. The noise was growing, the whine becoming a wail. John looked toward the door and ran to it. He got out of the room and pulled the door closed. It hissed into place. Behind the door, John heard a series of explosions. Coming through the heavy door, they sounded almost comical, like firecrackers.

It was then that he realized Grey was gone.

Chapter 80: The Others arrive at the Lab.

“No, I’m sure it’s nothing. I’ve had Grey go down and check on it. Nothing to worry about.” A problem with the computer system was the last thing Dr. Persey needed now. He changed the subject. “Our guests should be arriving soon, don’t you think?”

“Assuming your hunch is right. We should have shown the patients on the air like last time,” Bishop objected. “Anyway, I am going to the cafeteria.”

“We can have the cameras come back in, sir. We can have them go through all the rooms, take everybody’s picture.”

“Later. Right now I am famished,” Bishop said before he left the men.

“Where’s Ralph Junior?” Dr. Persey asked the doctors, “I haven’t seen him since before the press conference.”

“He’s gotta be around here somewhere,” offered one of the doctors.

“Well, shall we wait by the door for our young guests?”

Ralph Bishop Junior was sure he had found the right room. This was the one, the crazy empty feeling inside himself told him. The one that holds your salvation. He had the nurse wheel him in.

A young girl lay on the bed, asleep. Ralph motioned to the nurse to leave him alone with her. The nurse, not having any say in the matter, complied.

Ralph had trouble moving, trouble doing almost anything. But he had been saving his strength ever since he woke up feeling so horrible days ago. He crawled out of his wheelchair and wriggled onto the bed.

His hands didn’t work well, but his desiccated lungs had other plans.

“Get up.” Laura shook David awake. “They’re here.”

“Who’s here – Laura, I need to stay asleep! I think I’ve finally got it –”

“Sorry.” She was taken aback by his outburst, but understood, feeling foolish for trying to wake him. “Go back to sleep.”

John blacked out briefly, but remained standing. Coming to, he faced the man. Grey was standing in front of the metal door that led into the room, shifting his weight from foot to foot as if trying to make a decision. John was in control of his body again, and used it.

John lunged at Grey, wrapping him in a crushing grip. He continued his assault by running the back of Grey’s head into the metal door.

Grey’s legs splayed and he fell to the floor.

“Look at them. They look like ghosts.” Laura stood with Donna outside the fence.

“From what I understand they are ghosts.” Donna raised her binoculars at the people thronging through the security gate. And they’re all so young, she cursed to herself.

The gatekeeper let the children in, pointing them to the Lab. He picked up the phone in his booth as they passed.

There were at least sixty of them.

Chapter 79: David dreams through John's eyes again, and leads him to the computer room.

John found that the cage was deceptively simple. It was meant to hold someone incapable of touching the electrified bars. Without any feeling of pain whatsoever, John found that by ignoring the sparks that flew around his hands, he could easily unlatch the door.

Now to figure out where I am, he thought.

David was happy to find his unconscious mind preoccupied not with the graveyard hillside, but with a continuation of his dream in the car – what he knew now was passing before John’s eyes. He was in the cage he had been placed in. He saw his hands in front of him, sparks flying from where they touched the bars. They undid the latch, and the door swung open.

David struggled to put a conscious thought into his dream. He meditated, imagining Beethoven’s Ninth playing in his head. He was successful. He managed to get himself to look at a window in a door. It was dark on the other side, and the window showed him his reflection. It appeared as a living human skull, but he knew it was John.

John found himself looking at his reflection in a window in a door. His mind had blacked out for a moment, and he was unsure why he was staring at himself.

He walked down the hallway to a stairwell. Making sure no noise came from it, he assured himself no one was there. Opening the door, he realized he was on the lowest floor. Stairs ascended from the concrete, but none descended. He started up the stairs.

David found himself climbing the stairs. No, he thought, the computer room is in the basement. By concentrating, he found he could make his feet stop. He turned around and headed down the stairs. He opened the door, and was again in the hallway.

He ran down it, into another hall, and up to a large metal door. There was a sign on the door. It read, “MAIN COMPUTER.”

John was staring at a door. He was no longer on the stairs. He wondered what was happening to him. The cloudiness in his vision was completely gone – he could see clearly now. He saw his hand go out to a keypad by the door. John had no control over it as it punched in a code. It was different from the times at the bank machines because before it had felt like something habitual, on the surface of his brain, controlled his hand. Now it felt as if something much deeper inside him was commanding it. He was no longer living, but being lived.

The door hissed, then opened inward. John went inside and closed the door. The room was filled with a humming noise, which he realized were the metal boxes lined up on the floor. They looked like computers.

He walked over to an alcove which had boxes on either side of it that looked like they controlled the power in the room. He opened the small door on one of the boxes. Inside, there were toggle switches, at least a dozen of them. John’s hand reached out and started turning them off one by one. As he did this, the humming in the room grew quieter.

He was on the sixth one when he heard a noise. He turned his head to see a tiny red light silently flashing over the door. He figured it must be an alarm of some sort. He turned his head back to the toggle switches, and reached out for the seventh one. Turning it off, he heard another noise by the door.

He turned to face the door and saw Victor Grey.

Chapter 78: Laura explains to David how to blow up the Lab's computers.

Donna stopped the Bug on a hillside outside a security fence. David gaped when he saw the building enclosed by the fence.
“God, look at all the security!” Laura gasped.
“And cameras everywhere,” Donna said. “We’re gonna have to wait to get any closer.”
“Guys...” David interrupted.
“Any idea what’s going on?” Laura asked Donna.
“It doesn’t look good. Since Media’s down there, they probably went ahead and defrosted some others. They’re probably celebrating.”
“Guys,” David said, finally getting their attention. “This is the Lab?”
“Sure, silly,” Laura said. “You were in there for a while, remember?”
“Of course. But I was inside. I wasn’t awake when we left, remember? I’ve never seen it from the outside before. It looks like a tombstone.”
“Weird,” Laura said, glancing at the building and back to David. “I never realized that.”
“I think John may still be alive,” David declared.
“What?” both women shouted in unison. “How?”
“My dreams – they’ve taken on a whole new dimension. I think I’m seeing the world through John’s eyes in them. I recognize this fence. The building. Everything. I think John’s inside the Lab.”
“Holy Christ!” Donna exclaimed. “Where?”
“He’s in some sort of cage – a prison of some kind.”
“I know exactly where you mean,” Laura said excitedly. “Can he get out? If he can, we can scrap trying to sneak me in there somehow. If he’s already inside...”
“He could destroy the computer,” Donna said, her eyes glowing. “But how are we going to tell him what to do?”
David smiled. “Leave that to me. I think I’ll take a little nap. Laura, two questions: What’s the password to the computer room and how did you plan to destroy the computer?”

Melvin Waters awoke. He smelled the air. It smelled like rotting meat. He smelled his arm and realized the powerful odor was him. He woke up Rob. Getting close to the boy, he realized Rob smelled as well. He didn’t look right either. His skin was pasty white, almost see-through.

Father Dante rose. He went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. He noticed he didn’t need a shave, even though he knew he should. The air was stifling. He took off his shirt, which he had slept in. As soon as he undid the buttons, he was greeted by the odor of death. It rose from his skin like smoke from a fire.
He quickly undressed and showered. The soap and shampoo filled the tiny room with pleasant smells that lingered in the humid air, but putting his nose to his arm, Father Dante realized the shower was in vain. He still stank.
Hoping Tracy wouldn’t notice, he toweled off and dressed.

Juliet Ward hadn’t sweated all night. Despite this, she still woke up smelling like she had. She cursed her rolls of flesh, which suddenly felt like they were encaging her. Her skin was lucid, and she noticed the lines that appeared wherever it draped in layers.
She could see them right through her skin.

Rudy Johnson sat up in his car. That ain’t right, he thought, rolling down his window. If I didn’t drink nothin’, why do I smell like I do after an all nighter?

Chapter 77: Bishop arrives at the Lab and hosts a press conference.

“Gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce to you Ralph Bishop, and Ralph Bishop Junior.” Dr. Persey was smiling smugly, practicing his good doctor demeanor so it would be perfected by the time the press arrived.

“This is Dr. Kevin Torrence...” Dr. Persey introduced the doctors to their boss, relishing how good he was at playing the host.

After the introductions, he showed the Bishops some patients. Ralph Bishop Junior’s nurse followed them on their rounds, as did two large men that Dr. Persey thought must be their bodyguards.

“And this one?” asked Bishop.

“Nothing, I’m afraid. But that’s less than one percent whose souls haven’t returned. In the future, we’ll perform the procedure before notifying their relatives so the possibility of their kin being one of these doesn’t surprise us or them.”

“A complete vegetable?”

“I’m afraid so, sir.”

“Well, for goodness sakes, kill it.”

“Yes, sir.” Dr. Persey flipped the life support system off.

“Very good results, Jack. But why so many?”

“Just following your orders, sir. I recall you told me to proceed.”

“And the experiments?”

“They begin tonight, sir.”

“I want a full report the minute they are completed.”

“Of course, sir.”

“And the Others?”

“Not yet, sir. But we’ve got a watch out for them. It shouldn’t be long now.”

“Dr. Persey, the media is here.” Patty’s voice came over the intercom.

“You called the media here again?” Bishop was surprised.

“I thought they should know.”

“Very well, I will address them.”

“Well, gentlemen, shall we tell the world?” Dr. Persey asked nervously.

Ralph Bishop led the pack of them to the conference room. He seemed eager to address the throng. He stepped behind the lectern.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming to the Medical Church of America Cryonics Lab on this momentous occasion. As you will shortly learn, not only has the Church been successful in its decades-long effort to revive the dead, it has performed this miraculous feat many times over.

“The building you are in contains hundreds of patients who were formerly in a vitrified – suspended, cryopreserved – state. Now that we have the procedure to awaken them perfected, we are curing them of the diseases that ravaged them earlier in their lives.

“The true miracle here is not necessarily the saving of lives, although that is our primary concern. What I see as the most spectacular achievement of what you are witnessing today is the full dominion of man over the planet that God gave us. It has been tricky at times, and it has taken our race a long time to accomplish, but with the events that have transpired over the last few days, our dominion has come full circle.

“We have mastered the planet and its natural resources – the air, the water, the trees, the animals, the minerals in its crust. We have mastered our bodies and the troubles that plague them – disease, genetic faults, viruses. And today, ladies and gentlemen, we will demonstrate the final dominion – our mastery over life and death; indeed, over our own souls. God has given us life, and we will now have as much control over it as we do everything else in the world.”

Dr. Persey was relieved that the independent media hadn’t arrived yet – he didn’t know how he could explain that to Bishop – but wasn’t happy nonetheless. Bishop was taking the spotlight and turning it on himself. Dr. Persey didn’t even think he would have a chance to speak, let alone show the leopard.

Chapter 76: John escapes the jail cell in the Lab that Grey put him in.

John got the belt off his wrists. Grey had left his feet untied, figuring the cage would be more than adequate to keep Johnny from escaping.

John studied the bars, the door. There must be some way out of here, he thought, his mind working again.

The doctors had been busy, Dr. Persey found. They seemed to share in his excitement. Almost every room in the Lab was filled with a patient.

Now to wait for the Others, he thought.

Grey couldn’t believe it. The Lab had no desire to get the Golden Child back. Walking the hallways of the Lab, he saw why. There were hundreds of people in the Lab now. Hundreds of Golden Children. They occupied nearly all the rooms. Grey looked through the windows in the doors to the patients’ rooms and thought that Dr. Persey must have gone crazy.

Why would he want this many people to experiment on?

The casket that held Rita “Realtor” Gastrill’s body slid smoothly along the rails, past the fringed, scarlet curtain, and into the furnace. Her family had hardly cried, and was already chattering in the lobby of the funeral home. They weren’t gossiping loudly, but were making enough of a din that they couldn’t hear the noise coming from the other room.

Rita, in the typical hasty fashion she had made her way through her short life, forgot to sign the back of her driver’s license declining that her organs be donated after she died. She hadn’t even noticed when the law changed and you had to sign the back not to get them donated. Most of her organs were useless – damaged too extensively by the crash to be donated – but they had been able to salvage one eye, the one that wasn’t crushed on impact. But even though the eye appeared healthy in every way, it, too, was unusable, somehow as dead as its donor.

Regardless, Rita’s final moments on the planet, at least before she was so much soot, were spent blindly groping in an area that was much too small to get any real movement going, one that was too tiny to make any but the most pitiful sounds as she banged away at the sides of it.

Chapter 75: Dr. Persey calls the independent media.

Dr. Persey had not slept well. The combination of his excitement over the leopard and his concerns about the other doctors had conspired to rob him of rest. Regardless, he rose. Today was the day to meet the press.

Grabbing the phone in his room, he punched in the numbers that brought him in contact with the Media Lab. As the extension rang, he wondered if they would go through with his request, or if they would stall and double check that he was telling them the truth about Bishop requesting the independent media as well as them.

“Media.”

“Hello. This is Dr. John Persey from the MCA Cryonics Lab. I’d like to request some press.”

“Event?”

“As you may know, things are really picking up here at Cryonics – remember we had you folks in here last week? Well, we have a new event, one that I’m sure you’ll be interested in –”

“Event?”

“Yes, the event. Well, I’ve – we’ve – brought back an extinct animal, one that no one has seen alive for decades, and I thought –”

“Time?”

“Ralph Bishop will be here soon, so –”

“Time?”

“This afternoon.”

“We’ll be there.” The extension went dead.

Dr. Persey held the phone away from his ear like it was a snake that might sink its venomous fangs into his cheek. Damned media, he thought, could they be any more impersonal?

Now he was faced with a decision he didn’t want to make. He had planned to talk with Media and get them to call the independent press. He knew they had done it before for another Lab, but he didn’t know how – not that he had been given any opportunity to present the question.

He pulled a magazine from his lab coat pocket and unrolled it. It was the one he had learned that the leopard was extinct from. It had a picture of Ralph Bishop on the cover. It wasn’t a picture, though, it was a caricature. Ralph Bishop was drawn as the devil. Instead of arms and legs, he had tentacles. His suction cup encrusted limbs were wrapped around the world, squeezing it. Blood dripped from the suffocating Earth into a beaker. The gradations drawn on the side of the beaker were marked with dollar signs. The headline read:

THIS MAN RUNS AN ORGANIZATION THAT IS

YOUR WORST DREAM/NIGHTMARE COME TO LIFE

HIS LIFE STORY

WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU AND I

They need a proofreader, Dr. Persey thought. That should have read “YOU AND ME.” He turned back the cover. Realizing there were a few Constitutional rights the Church hadn’t been able to overturn yet – freedom of the press among them – he saw the phone number for the editorial offices of the magazine.

Jack, he told himself, this is where you are crossing over a line. One you promised the Church you wouldn’t. But what about Bishop? another part of his mind countered. He was certainly bending the rules. Eating meat. God, calling the independent media was a trifling compared to that. Surely he wouldn’t be damned for such a minor infraction. This other part of his mind prevailed, and his fingers went to the keypad on the phone. They dialed.

“In These Times. How can I help you?”

That’s much better, Dr. Persey thought, much better indeed. How friendly they sounded. How absolutely courteous.

“Hello. I can’t tell you my name, but I want to let you know about a miracle that has taken place...”

Chapter 74: Ralph Bishop flies toward the Lab.

Ralph Bishop had never understood his only son. How could it be that the man with the most power in the country, quite possibly – no, undoubtedly – the world, had a cripple for a son? he asked himself as he surveyed the planet from his personal plane.

How does a man with access to every medicine known to mankind not have the power to change faulty genetics? Of course, fifteen years ago was ancient history. Today, his son could have been programmed without any faults at all. If he had been born today, Bishop could have chosen his eye color, hair color, stature – everything. He could have programmed him like a computer. But that did not help the current situation. And what was he sick with this time? His skin was all pasty and white. The predicament of his son had always vexed him.

Now he wanted to go to the Cryonics Lab. Another irrational request from an irascible boy. Bishop complied simply because he wanted to see the new developments at a Lab he had almost given up hope on. It had been decades since anything happened at Cryonics, he thought, decades in which he had almost lost faith in the Lab ever accomplishing anything at all.

His grip tightened on the handle of his briefcase. I hope their accomplishments have gone well, he thought, patting it like a faithful dog. The last thing his organization needed was another Pathology Lab incident. If there was one major mistake the Church had ever made, that had been it. At Pathology, Bishop realized, they had simply gone too far, and gotten sloppy. With all the technology in the world available to them, it had been human error alone that unleashed a pathogen on the world that should have never escaped the Petri dish. One that killed without prejudice.

Thankfully, the media had not been able to pinpoint where it had come from. They had speculated, sure, but a combination of feigned ignorance and media monopoly had absolved the Church, at least in the public eye, from blame.

But those damn Eco-Assassins knew somehow, Bishop thought. They had traced it back to the source and sent him terrible threats. What did they know, anyway? He had a legal obligation to be profitable. They acted like capitalism itself was at fault. Besides, it had all come from exploration – exploration man was destined to carry out. God had ordained it by putting the tools on the planet. If God had wanted man to live in a natural state, like damned chimpanzees, He would have left humanity in the Garden.

He thought about the old Pathology Lab, how he wished the scientists there had kept their composure and exercised the restraint that was expected of them as professionals. He realized, though, that after a certain amount of time, all scientists became a little crazy. Deprived of lifestyles where they could see the larger, overall implications of their work, they became cult-like – started talking in languages that needed to be translated for anyone in the outside world to understand them. So wrapped up in their small slice of the world that they became like loose molecules in an inflammable fluid. Patting his briefcase again, Bishop assured himself that the old Pathology Lab incident would never be repeated. Not ever.

Besides, Bishop hoped, Jack Persey was not like that. He had been obsessed for years, sure, but he appeared rational when they had met. Maybe only the fear controlled him, though. Maybe the fear that the Church would take him out for losing the first one kept him sane for a moment.

And that damned nurse. Bishop had been hoping she would find herself a boyfriend, get married, get pregnant. Then he could have had Jack freeze her and her fetus – finally find out when the soul actually did enter the body. People never seemed to want to cooperate whenever he had big ideas, though. Especially women. They were always asking questions. That was why he made sure they were never hired or promoted to real jobs, at least while he was at the controls.

He consoled himself with the thought that they would find someone else. That was the wonderful thing about the human race. They certainly were not endangered.

As the plane started its descent, Bishop turned his thoughts back to the doctor, and realized he would know the answer to the question of the sanity of Jack Persey soon enough.

Chapter 73: David continues dreaming & finds himself looking through John's eyes.

David watched in horror as his mind played out what was quickly turning into a nightmare. The peaceful hillside he had dreamed of before was quickly becoming a scene that reminded him of Night of the Living Dead, a film he doubted John had ever seen.

People were swarming the cemetery like angry bees around an upset hive. David’s subconscious mind tried to make sense of it just as his conscious mind was jostled awake.

David heard Donna mumble, “Sorry guys, didn’t see that bump coming,” before he passed out again.

After a few moments, he was dreaming again, but this dream was different in many ways. First, it was a dream about being the passenger in a car. Second, the world in this dream had gone a ghostly shade of green. Third, he had no control over his actions.

The car that David was in pulled up to a huge security fence, its top lined with coils of razor wire and security cameras. David found himself looking to his left, and noted that the driver of the car was facing away from him, showing an ID card to the man who worked in the booth at the security gate.

For some reason, David thought it was strange that there was a security gate here. It seemed like it should have just been one of those orange and white car barrier-arms, not a full-fledged security fence with a manned booth.

Looking forward again, David saw a building come into view. It was huge and gray, looking like a laboratory of some sort. The building had no windows, and loomed against the sky like a giant tombstone. The car he was in stopped, the driver got out, opened the door next to David, and yanked him forcefully from the car. David expected pain to bloom where he discovered his wrists were tied together with a belt, but this was a painless dream. David’s dream body was dragged into the building.

In the lobby, David found he did have some control over his actions, because he pulled back in alarm when he saw Dr. John Persey. The doctor had a glint in his eye that David didn’t think he had seen before. Maybe it was the crazy green color that was clouding everything he saw.

The doctor waved David away, saying, “He’s useless without the other.” David was dragged to what could only be described as a jail cell. The man shoved him inside, saying, “You’ve been demoted.”

There were metal bars surrounding him. He touched them and green sparks – at least they looked green, everything did – flew out of his hands. Again, David expected to feel pain, but there was none. He studied the place he was in. He was sure that if he concentrated hard enough, studied the structure well enough, there was some way he could escape.

First, he concentrated on his hands. They were bound, but the cloth belt that held them was weak, like it had been soaked in water.

“Hey, we’re here,” Laura whispered to David.

“Where?” David asked, waking.

“Donna’s totally out of it. We had to pull over. We’re at another motel. It’s cheap, but it’ll do.”

Jerry Gonzales was perplexed. He had filled up his motel for the first time in decades. It took him twenty minutes to find the “NO” sign, two minutes to wipe off the heavy coating of dust that had encrusted it over the years, and five minutes more to hang it up in front of the “VACANCY” on his motel’s sign.

“NO VACANCY,” he read, still blowing dust off it. That would have made Poppa proud, he thought. The last time that had happened was when the Rolling Stones had come through on their final tour. He noticed the sun rising on the horizon. Gonna be another hot one, he thought.

Then he wondered, Where do all these kids think they’re going?

Chapter 72: The Others go to motels for the night.

Melvin decided he liked the boy. He had the same spirit Melvin remembered having at his age. As soon as the thought was in his head, though, Melvin couldn’t remember what his childhood was like. He searched his mind for the memories, but came up empty. He found he couldn’t even remember recent things, like the name of the bar he worked at. It was either Hell’s Kitchen or Hell’s Basement. He suddenly became certain that his coworkers would never get to see their handiwork on his forehead, and for some reason he didn’t think it mattered.

He pulled the car up to the drive-through window. “I’d like four...”

He was cut off by a metallic and distant voice coming through a speaker. “Let me guess, four meat burgers – raw.”

“Uh, yeah. How’d you know?”

“Popular item today – if you can afford it. Drive through.”

After paying, they drove to a motel. Melvin paid for the room, not even asking the boy to contribute. Hell, it was a cheap room anyway.

Wow, he thought as he and the boy feasted, that tattoo healed faster then he ever imagined it would. It hadn’t bled at all today, despite all the times he had picked at it.

Father Dante had feelings for the girl. She was only sixteen, he knew – or at least that’s what she had told him. Still, he felt the lust in him creeping up and making him hot under his starched white collar. He had excused himself to the bathroom at least fifteen minutes ago and figured he had better get back before his absence became suspicious.

He stared at his body in the bathroom mirror. He was so young, he thought. Why had God called to him so early? He pulled his pants back up, realizing that either God or years of neglect were going to keep him from any release.

Rudy Johnson relaxed in his car on the side of the road. He thought to himself that he had actually tried to hit the raccoon – aimed for it, in fact. As for stopping, picking it up off the road, and tearing off its fur in clumps with his bare hands, he had almost forgotten those actions. He knew he had eaten it, though, because there was a pulpy mess of blood and fur coagulating on his chin. He stretched his arms behind his head out of habit, his muscles not relaxing.

Hell, he thought, this was more comfortable than that pile of blankets at home he called a bed.

Juliet Ward lay down on the covers of her motel room bed. She always slept on top of the covers simply because all her pounds acted like a furnace whenever she slept. Even in the middle of winter, not that winter was very cool anymore, she had to run the air conditioner just so she wouldn’t wake up drenched in a pool of her own unctuous sweat.

But she wasn’t sweating now. Hadn’t all day, in fact, despite the heat. She had felt her energy ebbing away from her, making her tired, and had gotten the cheapest room she could find. She fell into a state she couldn’t call sleep.

It was more like a little death than slumber.

Chapter 71: David, asleep, dreams of the hillside graveyard. John reappears.

The motion of driving finally rocked David to sleep, even as cramped as he was in the back seat of the Bug. He found himself dreaming about the planet he visited in the dreams he had of the theater. He and John had just shaken hands, and John was disappearing before his mind’s eye. Except John didn’t disappear. His image flickered – it was as if the dream were a film, and the machine playing the film was jamming. After John’s image flickered, it became whole again. David stared at him. And behind him.

The tombstones that littered the hillside they were on came to life – or so it appeared. As David surveyed the graveyard, he saw a young boy stand up behind one of them, and start walking up the hill. Behind another headstone, a tall, gangly man came out. David realized immediately that there was no way he could have fit behind it. He, too, started up the hill.

Then another – an enormous young woman. And another – a large, bearded man. And another. People were climbing out from behind the headstones that covered the hillside of the cemetery.

They were all walking up the hill to where David and John stood.

Dr. Persey sat down at the table, his arms spread out at his sides, his hands resting on the table as he explained the phone call. “Seems our work is important, doctors. And not just to Ralph Senior. His son has asked to be brought here, and his father is coming with him.” There had been nothing Dr. Persey could say to Bishop that would calm him. He was determined to accompany his son to the Lab.

“Good show, Jack,” Dr. Torrence responded. “I always knew you’d make a big bang in the medical profession.” Dr. Torrence stood up and walked behind Dr. Persey. He held a dinner plate up behind his head. Dr. Persey spun around, wondering what he was doing. He saw the plate, dirty, behind his head. He looked around the room. Twelve men.

“After all, Jack, you are resurrecting the dead,” Dr. Torrence joked. “The man who has finally, fully, bridged the gap between science and faith.”

In unison, the doctors shouted, “Glory be to God!” They did it so quickly Dr. Persey didn’t know how to react. When he did, it was slowly, his mind still stuck on the explanation of the difference between a lion and a leopard, and the image of the leopard’s eyes staring into his own. He muttered, “Glory be to God,” after the others had already stopped chanting. It came out as a mumble.

He stood up, uncomfortable with the situation. “Well, doctors, let’s get to our patients.”

The men left their dinner plates on the table in the cafeteria and filed out.

“Here’s one. Barbara Ann McKee. Have you been concentrating like I asked you to, Barbara?” Dr. Persey addressed the woman coldly. The doctors surrounding him hardly noticed his disregard for the patient. They, too, were used to treating their patients like broken machines.

“You see, doctors, I failed to have the first one concentrate at all. So I’m seeing what happens when they do,” Dr. Persey added.

“Yes, doctor. I’ve been concentrating. But I still don’t understand what for.”

“Just concentrate. That’s all I ask. If you have a feeling, go with it. Just do whatever comes naturally, and hold the thoughts that come to your mind.”

“Okay, doctor. Whatever you say.”

Dr. Persey lectured the doctors as if she weren’t there. “Only one of the patients is on solid food so far, but they all can’t wait to eat – like that’s some big deal to them,” he explained. “And they seem to come around quicker if we revive them at night. They’ve all been sleeping a lot – and dreaming. They seem to have crazy dreams, and weird memories when they first come out of it. And they’re all coming around quicker than the first one – I still don’t understand why he took two weeks. Anyway, doctors,” Dr. Persey commanded, “let’s go, and I’ll show you the procedure in the flesh.”

Chapter 70: Dr. Persey explains the defrosting procedure to the other doctors.

Cheap rental cars, Victor Grey thought. Damn thing wouldn’t even get over ninety. His passenger was asleep beside him. Earlier, Grey had gotten so desperately bored that he had tried to talk to his captive. It was like talking to a zombie – the man couldn’t even put a sentence together. He confirmed his impression that Johnny looked like an alien. The copper from the mine sunk into his flesh and colored it. Even made his eyes green and cloudy – when they were open.

Grey turned his attention back to the road, and thought about the asphalt scar on the Earth that the road really was. It was a new thought for him, something he had never even considered before. It wasn’t really a scar though, he thought further. Scars indicate a healing process has begun. The road was more like an open wound, bleeding death instead of life. Grey felt uneasy with his thoughts. His exposure to the fields and lakes in Canada was affecting his outlook, and he didn’t like it, having decided long ago that he knew his place in the world, and all the thoughts that went along with it. New thoughts weren’t welcome. He had invested too much of himself in his view of the world – if his view was wrong, so was he. This made him shift uncomfortably in his seat.

He continued speeding toward the Lab, turning his thoughts to the traffic. By now he figured it would have thinned out, but it hadn’t. The closer he got to the Lab, the more cars he saw. Funny, he didn’t think there were this many cars left in this part of the country. These people looked like they were out on joy rides, too, and most of them didn’t even look old enough to drive.

Plus, they had that crazy Sunday-drive look in their eyes.

“So you see,” Dr. Persey said as he scraped the last morsel of flesh from the skin of the acorn squash he had eaten, “the procedure’s been perfected. It’s just a matter of applying it. And we’ve got plenty of people to try it out on.” The squash’s skin lay on his plate like a flayed carcass.

“People, yes,” Dr. Torrence responded. “But didn’t we see a lion in one of those rooms?”

“Not a lion. A leopard. There’s a big difference.”

“Oh come now, doctor. It’s just a big dumb cat. Lion. Leopard. What’s the difference?”

Dr. Persey didn’t have time to answer. As his acrid response was forming in his mouth, Patty’s tinny voice came over the cafeteria speaker.

“Phone call for you, sir. It’s Ralph Bishop.”

Is that a priest? Tracy Jones thought as she drove along the interstate, looking at the tall silhouette ahead of her. She instinctively slowed down, confirming her suspicion. She pulled up behind the broken-down car.

“Do you need some help, Father?”

“Oh, thank heaven. Yes, I do. Seems this car just wasn’t made for these times. Could you give me a ride?”

“Why sure, Father. Where are you go –”

Their eyes met. As the symptoms of their common disease became clear to one another – the ravaged, hollow look, the pastiness of their skin – they both realized the question didn’t need to be answered. Father Dante opened the passenger door and got in.

“Father Dante,” he said, extending his hand.

“Tracy Jones, Father,” she said, reciprocating his action.

Chapter 69: The Church sends twelve doctors to the Lab to help Dr. Persey.

Dr. Persey jumped as the intercom buzzed.

“They’re here, sir. Should I send them in?”

“Send who in, Patty? I specifically told you I didn’t want to be disturbed.” Dr. Persey had actually lost count of how many patients he had revived. He knew he was over two hundred, but figured he could just count the occupied rooms once he felt he couldn’t go on any longer.

“The doctors from the Church, sir.”

“Doctors? From the Church?” Dr. Persey stopped what he was doing. That was just like the Church, he thought. Well, nobody was going to steal his thunder. He was the one responsible for these miracles, not some doctors from the Church who thought they could come in at the last minute.

“Yes, sir. They’ve sent a dozen of their best.”

“Send them in.” Dr. Persey’s mind raced with schemes to send the doctors away, to get rid of them. They weren’t going to get a slice of his pie, he thought.

“Dr. Persey?”

A man Dr. Persey thought he recognized came into the room. Of course, he thought, he had gone to University with him. He extended his hand.

“Kevin Torrence, well, I’ll be damned,” Dr. Persey said as he shook the man’s hand. “I haven’t seen you since our glory days at MCAU. Still playing the trumpet?”

“I can still get it to talk. You remember me, then. Good. It’s been a while. Say, I hear you’re performing miracles down here. We’ve come to help you out.”

Dr. Persey looked behind Dr. Torrence. Eleven men stood behind him in the hallway.

“Welcome, welcome. Let’s grab some dinner and I’ll tell you all about my work.” Dr. Persey was hungry. He had skipped lunch altogether, maddeningly involved with his patients.

As he led them to the cafeteria, Dr. Persey thought about finding a knife and stabbing the doctors to get them out of his life.

I’m so hungry I’m having delusions, he thought.

Rose Simpson drove straight home and prayed. She prayed like she had never prayed before. What’s happening? she asked Jesus.

This morning, Rose had seen a strange sight. A man driving with what she swore was an alien. It was green, just like she had read about, and its skin had an otherworldly sheen, like it was transparent.

If that wasn’t bad enough, she had seen a horrible creature running in the distance later in the day. It had six or seven heads, and its body was covered in spots.

Now, to top it all off, she had just seen a man in a car with a full beard and the sign of the devil written right across his forehead. He had a little boy with him. And as she drove by, she saw that he was laughing at that poor, lanky priest whose car had broken down.

She was used to strangers driving on the interstate that ran by the small town she called home, but not this strange. Aliens, beasts, the Anti-Christ? What’s happening, Jesus? she prayed.

Jesus didn’t answer.

Chapter 68: Rudy Johnson, an Other, wakes and finds himself drawn to the Lab.

Rita Gastrill had celebrated her latest house sale a little too much the night before. It was now after noon, and she was just rising. Despite how long she had slept, her head still throbbed from too many daiquiris.

“Oh dear,” she said, realizing she had missed four appointments already. “Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear.”

She quickly dressed and doused herself with the perfume that more than one prospective house buyer had whispered to their mate smelled like battery acid.

She was in such a hurry she almost forgot her briefcase. Grabbing it, and the information about the houses she was showing today, she ran to her car. Her professional pseudonym was emblazoned on the driver side door. “Rita Realtor,” it read.

Rita pulled out of her driveway, got the car humming at sixty miles per hour, and drove it straight into a telephone pole.

The paramedics figured she was dead before her body had plunked back down into the driver seat. Although she knew it was impossible, the head paramedic estimated the time of death at around 11:30 the previous evening.

Jose couldn’t believe she was an American. Americans stopped coming to his country when the diseases became bad, and she sure looked like she had one.

“But I’ve got to get back to America!” she shouted at him in a language he hadn’t heard in ages, and didn’t understand any of except the last word, so he continued staring at her, hoping he wouldn’t catch what she had.

“You know, fly.” She put her arms straight out from her shoulders, and rocked them up and down like a see-saw. The other people in the lobby of the airport stayed well back from her. The ones walking in gave her a wide berth. Her skin was livid, and she looked more than crazy. She looked insane.

Jose called his manager.

Rudy Johnson never got hangovers. Never. This was mostly because Rudy was never sober, and stayed in a perpetual alcoholic haze. Had, in fact, been drunk for two years straight now. He didn’t care. The checks from his trust fund came in every month whether he could steady his hand to sign the back of them or not.

But today, waking up at his usual one o’clock in the afternoon, Rudy definitely felt what had become a lost memory for him; a hangover – a doozy. His head ached like it was filled with moldy bricks.

He rolled out of the nest on the floor he called a bed, and crawled outside through the basement window. He had lost his house keys six months ago, and hadn’t bothered getting a replacement set. Why bother? he had thought. There were other ways of getting in and out of the house.

He went straight to the garage and opened it. There was fine film of dust on his car. He had been caught drunk driving for the sixth time two months ago, and he knew a hundred trust funds weren’t going to get him his license back.

At first he thought he would just sit in the car, but before he knew it the car was running and he was slipping it into gear. He was driving again, realizing if he got caught this time, there would be no way he could pay off enough people to keep himself out of jail.

For some reason, he didn’t care if he got caught. His chest was warm, like he had thrown back half a bottle of Jack Daniels, and it felt good. It seemed to point him as he drove, telling him where to turn, and which roads to take. Rudy passed a lot of liquor stores on the way, but didn’t even consider stopping.

For some reason, he just didn’t feel like a drink.

Chapter 67: The Lab sends a car to pick Grey up. The Beast escapes and is drawn to the Lab.

Grey was pissed. Johnny Rotten kept falling asleep on him, and there was nothing Grey could do to wake him. He had tied him to a tree along the road, and finally arrived at the next house.

This one was occupied, and Grey was actually pleasant to the old couple living there, despite the curious way they watched him. He used their phone to call the Lab, got a woman named Patty, and told her to have a car sent out to pick him up.

She told him the Lab didn’t have any cars that far north, and that she would send a rental car. Then he would have to drive himself to the Lab. And no, not a word from his Army. Deserters, Grey thought. He hung up with her, thanked the couple, and went out to get Johnny.

There wasn’t a town anywhere around this place, Grey thought. Jesus, how do people live like this?

Janet Lear was amazed how quiet little Shanda was today. She guessed the terrible twos were finally over. She thought she better check on her anyway; she had been looking pale lately.

Janet thought to turn down the stove, letting the pork chops that were sizzling in their own fat cool down a bit, but figured she would only be gone a second. Hell, she thought, if this lunch – the one time they had meat a month – wasn’t ready by the time her husband T.J. got home, he wasn’t going to take it well.

She stood in the doorway to her daughter’s room, and at first, she couldn’t tell what had happened. But she screamed nonetheless. Getting closer to the grisly sight laid out before her, Janet began to piece it together.

Little Shanda wasn’t happy in her crib, hadn’t been for a few months now. But she had never escaped before. Her first time was her last. She had impaled herself on the spire of the play model of the Medical Church of America Headquarters building Janet had picked up the last time they had gone to the amusement park.

Where did she think she was going? passed through Janet’s mind right before she broke down into hysterics.

Her husband T.J. returned home too late – much too late – to salvage anything from the charred remains of his home, least of all his wife and child.

Frank F. Feldman had seen better days. Today ranked up there with the worst. His left hand stemming the tide of blood flowing out of the back of his head, his right groped for the phone that lay nearby it. The truck was a total loss. It had flipped over at least twice when he lost control of it, and lay battered and worthless a short distance away.

The travel cage he had been hauling had its pluses and minuses. On the plus side, which Frank quickly realized might not be a plus, the Beast it had housed remained relatively unscathed throughout the ordeal – only one head was injured. On the minus side, the cage was woefully inadequate for holding a creature of its size and strength.

Frank’s second thought after he landed from his ungraceful flight through the truck’s windshield – his first was silently thanking the Church for using that new kind of windshield glass – had been protecting himself from the creature. But he needn’t have worried. Once the animal was free of its cage, it oriented itself quickly and walked away. After a short while, it ran.

Frank, still dazed, finally got hold of the phone. Amazing, he explained. Even with seven heads, that thing was running in a perfectly straight line, like it had a destination in mind, an appointment to keep.

Chapter 66: Father Dick Dante, an Other, wakes and finds himself drawn to the Lab.

Father Dante had figured out the riddle, or at least thought he had. The words of William Blake ran through his head:

God appears, and God is light,

To those poor souls who dwell in Night;

But does a Human Form display

To those who dwell in realms of Day.

Now that he thought about it again, Father Dante didn’t know the answer – but he thought he knew how to find out.

He had woken up this morning with what anyone else would have thought was a hangover. But not the Father. His head was indeed muddled, but it frequently was. Just a particularly bad spell was all, he told himself.

But then the feeling came. It started in his chest, right below his sternum. It was a feeling he had felt once before, a year ago. Only twenty-three at the time, he had felt that feeling and decided it was God asking him for a life of service. Dick Dante had been pleased, honored really. One of the many benefits would be that people would no longer use his first name. He hated being called Dick.

Today, though, as he contemplated William Blake’s words, he felt that God was commemorating his first message with another task that Father Dante was pleased to fulfill – even if God was a few days off from the actual anniversary date.

God wanted Father Dante to go somewhere, someplace special. He wouldn’t reveal where it was just yet, but filled Father Dante with a feeling of direction. All he needed to do was follow that direction, and God would reveal more as he went.

The only car he had available to him was his parish’s. It was an ancient car, used every month or so to get the priests where they needed to go. But they rarely went anywhere. Still, it might last the trip, he thought. Depending how far the journey was. For Peter’s sake, he chastised himself, of course it would make the trip. He would be driving with the Lord. With this in mind, he got in.

Cars were expensive, he thought as he started the old machine, and it was hard attracting followers to his small parish when everyone was joining the big ones like MCA.

The car coughed and stalled three times before he got it going and drove out of the parking lot.

Chapter 65: Rob Berridge, an Other, is picked up by Melvin as they drive toward the Lab.

Rob Berridge was fascinated by the guy’s watch more than anything. The hands of it were shaped like Christ on the cross. The minute hand was the bottom of the cross, and the hour hand was the top. Rob was only twelve years old, but he quickly deduced that come six o’clock, that crucifix would be upside down.

And instead of numbers around the perimeter of the watch, there were tiny pictures of the Twelve Apostles. One of them was moving. Rob realized that this was the second hand. As it counted out the seconds, the tiny image of Judas held its knife and sliced through the other Apostles’ heads, killing them all every minute, or at least that’s the way it looked to Rob.

“Cool watch, man,” he said to the man in the driver’s seat.

“Thanks, I had it made special. It’s one of a kind.”

“I’ll say. And where’d you get the leathers?”

“Second hand shops – they don’t even make ’em anymore. Animal rights, y’know.”

“Yeah, I know. But they’re cool anyway.”

“Thanks. Listen, if I start nodding off, be ready to take the wheel. And sometimes I lose control of my hands – just watch me, and take over if I start fuckin’ up. Okay?”

Rob hesitated. “I’ll give it a shot, but I’m in pretty bad shape myself.” Embarrassed, he added, “I pissed my pants awhile back, and it was all bloody.”

The driver had noticed this when he had seen Rob on the side of the road. It was the reason he had picked him up. The driver had stained his leathers with more than a little blood himself just hours before. “Do you want to listen to some music?”

“That’d be cool,” Rob answered, suddenly realizing hitchhiking wasn’t so bad – not as bad as his parents made it out to be anyway. Once Rob had walked to the interstate highway, he didn’t know what to expect. But then this guy came along, sure as shit, and picked him right up. Sure, the guy was pretty scary looking, with that beard, and that horrible tattoo on his forehead, but he was giving him a ride. That was what he wanted ever since he got up this morning. Plus this guy listened to cool music – the kind his parents wouldn’t let him buy.

The guy didn’t even ask Rob where he wanted to go, not that Rob could have told him. They just drove along, both of them happy with the direction they were headed.

Rob thought hitchhiking was cool.

Frank F. Feldman was wondering just what the hell he was hauling. Biotechnology had gone too far this time. How was he supposed to train that thing? Train it seven times, teaching each head to cooperate? Or just train it once, and hope its heads could somehow communicate with one another? Shit, he guessed the Church knew best. He hoped.

Being more of a trainer than a driver, Frank wasn’t prepared for the bulk he was hauling. The Beast wasn’t happy watching the world go by at sixty miles an hour, and it registered its complaints by rattling its cage. This swayed the truck from side to side, and it took all of Frank’s attention just to keep the vehicle on the right side of the double yellow line.

One of the Beast’s heads noticed how distracted Frank was at the same time that another head realized how close its thrashing about had slid the cage to the cab of the truck. The back of Frank’s head was literally inches from the bars.

A third head, the one blessed – or cursed – with the longest of the creature’s ten horns decided to do something about the situation it found itself in.

Chapter 64: Tracy Jones, an Other, wakes and finds herself drawn to the Lab.

Tracy Jones was an unhappy young woman. She had wandered through her sixteen years hopelessly searching for a sign. All her friends in her MCA Bible Study group had gotten their signs – or so they said. Why hadn’t she found hers? She was a good girl. She didn’t sin. She prayed. Why had God not chosen to reveal Himself to her?

The devil, that’s why, she thought. The devil and all his little imps. They circled her, trying to get her to do things. She heard them, but never gave in. She never listened to them, loud as they were, haunting her virgin ears. The things they said, the things they told her to do. I need to be saved from them, Tracy prayed to God each night. Why won’t You save me? Show me a sign?

Finally, this morning, Tracy thought she had gotten her sign. This morning she had woken up with a calling in her head. It wasn’t just in her head, though. She also felt a warm tickle in her chest, right between her virgin breasts, where a tiny silver crucifix dangled from a chain around her neck. She thought it was a sign from God to come to Him. Why God wanted her to take her parents’ car and drive to Him, she didn’t know. All she knew was that to get to the place where God wanted her to go, she had to drive herself.

God wouldn’t want her to hitchhike, would He?

Juliet Ward was a hugely fat woman. If she could be called a woman. She was only fourteen, but looked to be about thirty. She had rolled around her short life compelled to eat everything she saw. The sicknesses that followed her binges she hated. But they didn’t stop her when she was eyeing up some food.

Now, for what she thought was the first time in her life, she wasn’t hungry. She had even tried to eat out of habit, but couldn’t stomach anything she tempted her mouth with. Maybe it’s finally over, she thought. Maybe God was going to forgive her for eating His creatures. Chewing up His pigs, and swallowing His cows. Maybe God had something for her to do other than eat.

And all the money she stole. Maybe God was going to forgive her for that as well. It wasn’t easy getting meat these days, and to fund her habit she had to become a thief. Over the years she had stolen money from her father, from her mother, from baby sitters, from anybody she could. Yesterday was the worst, though, she thought, eating it raw right from the case at the supermarket.

She sneaked – what sneaking was possible for someone her size – down to the garage, and stood there staring at her father’s car. Her knees ached under her girth. She knew she should sit down, but where? She walked over to the driver side door and opened it. Her knees sighed with relief when she eased, more like plopped, into the driver seat. Now what? she thought.

Daddy had left the keys in it. Wasn’t that funny? This was his prized possession. Why would he do a thing like that? He had forgone college to buy the car, and it was still running all these years later. Juliet didn’t know how to drive, but she had seen her father do it enough times that she thought she could if she had to. Suddenly, she felt like she had to.

Under the layers of swaddled flesh that wrapped her frame, she felt something. A warm, ticklish feeling. It was talking to her, telling her to do it. To drive Daddy’s car.

She complied with its request.