Afraid

Fran turned her attention back to the basement door. She scrambled to it on all fours, staying under the hovering cloud of smoke, and banged on it with her open palm.

“Duncan! It’s Mom! Open the door!”

A grunt, to her left. The stranger, though smaller, had managed to get on top of Erwin and straddle him. Fran continued to pound.

“Mrs. Teller! It’s Fran Stauffer! Are you in there!”

“Mom!”

Hearing Duncan’s voice made Fran want to sing.

“Duncan! Open up! Hurry!”

She put her ear to the door, listening to deadbolts turning and mechanisms engaging. But the door didn’t budge.

“Mom! It’s stuck!”

Fran coughed—hot, viscous, black smoke hovered at chest level—and reached for the knob. It wouldn’t turn. The stranger must have damaged it with the sledge-hammer.

A scream, raw and high-pitched. Fran looked. The stranger had some sort of miniature flamethrower. He held it to Erwin’s face.

She needed to protect Duncan, but if Erwin were killed she wouldn’t be able to fight the stranger herself.

Erwin’s howl cut into her, forcing her decision. Fran launched herself at the man in black.

Josh handed his cell over to Streng and listened to the sheriff’s conversation with the state police.

“Safe Haven is under attack by an unknown military force … armed and very dangerous, they’ve already killed two that I know of, and there have been several fires and an explosion … as many men as you can spare … I’ll be at my office outside of town … reception is spotty, try me on my land line there … dammit!”

The sheriff squinted at the phone, which had apparently disconnected. Josh took the phone back, tried to redial. No signal. He put the phone in his pocket and felt the container he’d taken from Ajax. He pulled it out. It looked like a cigarette case, but rounder, and the finish was blackened like gun metal. A latch on the side opened it. Inside, nestled in the felt lining, were rows of amber capsules.

“What are these? Pills?”

Streng opened a matching case and squinted. “Kind of big for pills.” He took one out and rolled it between his fingers. “They look like poppers. Who the hell knows? Probably shouldn’t mess with them.”

Josh considered throwing the case out the window but wound up pocketing it again. Then he studied the electronic device he’d found on Ajax. Like the case, it was made of smooth black metal. But it was solid rather than hollow and had a USB port on the bottom. It also had a large dent in the face, possibly from one of Streng’s bullets. Josh played with it for a few seconds, trying to get it to do something. He failed. Then he gave it to Streng, who had similar results.

“Maybe it’s a tracking device, like a GPS. Lemme have that canteen.”

Josh handed it over. Streng unscrewed the cap and sniffed. He must have judged it safe, because he took a long pull and passed it to Josh. The firefighter drank greedily, surprised at how thirsty he was. They each took another sip, and then the canteen was empty.

“Here’s Pine Village.”

Olen swung the Honey Wagon onto Montrose Street at a sharp angle, and Josh heard the liquid contents in the tank behind him slosh in protest. He could see the fire behind the hill ahead. Josh’s thoughts shifted to Fran: smart, funny, sexy, a great mother, and great all-around person. He really messed up a good thing with her.

Josh willed her to be okay. For her sake, and for Duncan’s, but also for selfish reasons. Josh was surprised how much the thought of her being in trouble made him angry.

The Honey Wagon crested the hill, and Josh set his jaw against the inferno before them. Fran’s house looked like a palace in hell, every window and doorway belching flame, not a square inch untouched by fire. A lost cause. Anyone trapped inside would be dead by now.

Olen slowed down and uttered, “Wow.”

Across from it, another home, burning but in better shape. Josh saw an unattended garden hose, pumping water onto the porch. That had to be where Erwin was. And, hopefully, Fran and Duncan.

“Park by that house,” Josh instructed Olen. “What’s in your tank right now?”

“Sump water.”

“How do you pump it out?”

“Way ahead of you, boss. It’s gonna smell to high heaven.”

“Smelly is better than burned to the ground.”

Before Olen came to a full stop Josh swung open the passenger door, hopped out, and sprinted for the entrance. His groin still ached, and his neck felt like he’d been whiplashed, but neither slowed him down. He heard Sheriff Streng bark something behind him, the words getting lost in the roar of burning house. Josh pulled his shirt up over his nose and hunched low under the cloud of smoke hugging the ceiling. Small fires dotted the walls and furniture, and the inside temp had to be over a hundred degrees.

Josh scanned the foyer and spotted three people rolling around on the floor. Erwin, Fran, and—Josh couldn’t believe it—Santiago. No … not Santiago. But someone just as creepy, all dressed in black and sporting a rapturous expression as he tried to hold a flame to Erwin’s face.

Josh rushed over, helping Fran pull the intruder off of Erwin. Even with four arms against the intruder’s one, it was a battle. But then Erwin became aware of Josh’s presence, and he added his weight and strength to the cause. They peeled the intruder off of Erwin, pinning the hand that held the large lighter to the floor.

When Erwin got back to his feet he touched the raw burn on his cheek, grimaced, and made a fist the size of a small ham. He dropped onto the intruder, bellowed out in pain and rage, and began to smash him in the face. As Josh watched, Erwin split the man’s nose, cracked his teeth, and bloodied both eyes. The intruder kept a sick grin on his face the entire time, a grin that stayed on even after he lost consciousness.

Josh pried the lighter out of the man’s hand and locked eyes with Fran. She looked like she’d been in a war. Her hair was a rat’s nest, her clothes were torn, and her skin was a mosaic of soot, mud, and blood. Josh reached out for her hand, but she had already spun away, heading deeper into the house.

“Watch him!” Josh yelled at Erwin. Then he went after Fran.

She knelt next to a closed door, tugging at the knob. He bent down next to her.

“Duncan and Mrs. Teller are in there! It’s a bomb shelter!”

Josh’s hands joined hers on the knob and they both tugged. The door didn’t budge. Josh knocked on it, surprised by how warm it felt. Metal. All firemen hated metal doors. Even worse, the frame also seemed to be reinforced.

“Duncan! It’s Josh VanCamp! Can you hear me!”

“Yeah!” The boy’s voice was muffled and filled with fear.

“We’re going to get you out!” Josh yelled. Then he pulled Fran close and said into her ear, “I have to go to the truck.”

Fran grabbed his arm and dug her fingers in. Her eyes got wide.

“Don’t leave.”

“I’m not leaving. I’ll be right back.”

Fran nodded and released him. The smoke had built up on the ceiling and floated at chest level. Josh moved in a crouch to stay under it. He squinted at Erwin, who had been joined by Sheriff Streng. They had tied up the intruder and were tugging him out of the building.

Josh beat them outside. He coughed, spat out black, and took a big gulp of cool night air. Olen had a filthy hose clutched in his gloved hands, spraying the side of the house with human waste. Josh could smell it through the smoke. He wrinkled his nose and hopped in the cab of the truck, grabbing the rifle. The stock had a split in it, but it looked able to fire. He didn’t think a .22 would do much against a steel door, but he had no other ideas.

“Keep it low, at the foot of the flame,” Josh told Olen.

“I am. It’s not working.”

The fire had reached the second floor. Josh realized that with the equipment they had the house was a goner.

“Keep going. There are people trapped inside.”

Olen nodded at him, and Josh went back into the building. Smoke and soot stung his eyes, and the temperature had gone up a dozen degrees. Fran was still next to the door, hitting it with a sledgehammer. Josh touched her shoulder, tugged her away.

“Duncan! Stand away from the door!”

The boy yelled okay.

Josh aimed at the knob, black tears stinging his eyes, and fired. The bullet pinged off the knob, making a shallow dent and nothing more. Josh swore.

“Josh!” Duncan banged on the door. “You have to hurry! The smoke is getting bad!”

• • •

Duncan’s eyes stung like someone poked dirty fingers in them, and his nose was running like he had a cold. The smoke was getting really thick at the top of the stairs. Every time he breathed, he coughed.

“Duncan!” Mrs. Teller called. “Come here!”

Duncan didn’t want to leave the top of the stairs, even though the walls on either side of him were on fire. He was really scared, but his mom was behind the door, trying to get in. He wanted to be there when she did.

He crouched down, trying to get under the smoke, but it was just as bad by his feet. Duncan pulled his shirt up over his mouth, shrunk back against the heat of the flames, and closed his eyes, hoping Mom would hurry.

A hand grabbed his shoulder, startling him. Mrs. Teller.

“We need to get downstairs, child.”

Duncan shrugged away.

“I want to wait for Mom and Josh!”

The old woman coughed. “We’ll wait for them downstairs. Come on.”

She reached for Duncan’s hand, and he fought it, pulling away.

“No!”

“Please, Duncan. Smoke rises. We have to get lower, or we’ll die from the smoke.”

Duncan sucked in more bad air, filling his lungs with scratchy heat, and coughed it out. It hurt. When Mrs. Teller grabbed his hand again he didn’t struggle, reluctantly following her back into the shelter. It had gotten brighter, the soft green light of the glow sticks replaced by flickering orange. Duncan looked up, saw patches of fire on the ceiling, spreading out like an upside-down spill.

It was so hot.

Mrs. Teller took him to the middle of the room, and they crouched on the floor. Woof came over, whimpering. He was scared, too.

Mrs. Teller put her arm around Duncan.

“Remember all the cookies we used to bake together?” she asked.

Duncan coughed, nodded. Sometimes they made different shapes, like squares and triangles. Or giant cookies, as big as the pan.

“You always liked to lick the bowl. Mr. Teller liked that, too. We’ll bake cookies again, when we get out of here. Would you like that?”

“Yes,” Duncan answered.

But his mind wasn’t on cookies. It was on the flames, rapidly spreading to the walls and the supplies on the shelves.

Revulsion coursed through Jessie Lee. The lottery commissioner had gotten blood on her arm. Blood had tons of diseases in it. She could practically feel the viruses soaking into her pores. Who knew where he’d been, who he’d slept with?

She dug around in her purse and found a pack of tissue and some moist towelettes that she liberated regularly from the diner. As she wiped her arm and hands, her thoughts of getting sick were replaced by other, more sinister thoughts.

What if the blood isn’t his?

She hadn’t noticed him bleeding. And this was more than just a few drops.

The scenario popped into her head fully formed. They weren’t there to get lottery money. They were there to be killed, one by one. That’s why the electricity was out. That’s why the doors were locked. That’s why the cars from the first people on the list were still in the parking lot. That’s why they were taken into the locker room one at a time. That’s why, once in the locker room, people would scream. That’s why the lottery commissioner looked like that serial killer Marshal Otis Taylor. He actually was Taylor. Somehow he escaped the death penalty, and now he was here in Safe Haven, wiping out the entire town one by one.

“That’s ridiculous,” Jessie Lee said out loud.

She wadded up the dirty tissue and tossed it into the nearest trash can.

“Merv Johnson,” the commissioner said into the PA system. Merv stood up and waddled over to Jessie Lee. He winked as he passed her.

Jessie Lee came after Merv on the lottery commissioner’s list. She frowned. As ridiculous as her theory was, the thought of going by herself into that locker room suddenly seemed like a really bad idea. She hurried after Merv, reaching out and grabbing his arm.

“Merv—”

“Can’t talk now, Jessie Lee. I’m going to grab my check, then hop on the Internet and search for Vettes.”

“What if,” she felt stupid saying it, but she couldn’t get it out of her head, “what if there is no lottery?”

Merv stopped walking. His fat face scrunched up, making him look like a bulldog.

“What do you mean?”

“Did anyone show any credentials? And it’s past one a.m., isn’t that a strange time to be passing out checks? And why is the lottery commissioner guy wearing a black army outfit? And where’s the media? Winning Powerball is a big story.”

“Well, why are we all here, then?”

Jessie Lee chewed her lower lip. This all felt foolish, which meant that it probably was foolish. Still …

“I want to go in with you,” she told her boss.

Merv shook his head. “The mayor said one at a time.”

“Take a good look at the mayor, Merv. He looks positively freaked out.”

They both glanced at Mayor Durlock, who wore an expression that could easily be interpreted as fear.

Merv shrugged. “I’ll ask the commissioner. But if he says no, don’t push it. I don’t want to get on his bad side.”

Or he’ll eat your toes, Jessie Lee thought. But she agreed, and they approached the boys’ locker room together. The lottery commissioner met them at the entrance.

“Only one at a time.” He stared at Jessie Lee when he said it.

She wound her arm around Merv’s. “We want to go in together.”

The commissioner smiled without warmth.

“Your turn will come.”

“You know who you look like?” Jessie Lee blurted it out before her internal censor could stop her. “That serial killer. Marshal Otis Taylor.”

Merv’s expression became pained. “Jessie Lee!”

The commissioner narrowed his eyes and Jessie Lee suddenly felt cold. She realized that her far-fetched fantasy was right. This was Taylor, and if she went in that locker room she was going to die.

“I … uh … changed my mind.” Jessie took a step backward. “I don’t want the money.”

Taylor grabbed Jessie Lee’s arm, his fingers digging in.

“We’ll make an exception this time. You can go in together.”

“I don’t want to.” Jessie Lee tried to pull away, but he gripped her too tightly.

“Nonsense,” Taylor said. “Let’s go.”

“No!”

Her shout brought silence to the gymnasium. It stretched on for a few seconds, until someone in the bleachers yelled, “I’ll take her share!” which prompted everyone to laugh.

Jessie Lee continued to tug against Taylor’s grasp, and Merv put his hand on the man’s shoulder and said, “Maybe you should let go.”

Taylor glared at Merv, then at the crowd, and finally at Jessie Lee. His eyes were black, expressionless. Like a shark. He opened his hand and she stumbled backward, landing on her ass.

“I’ll see you later,” he said.

Merv didn’t appear scared in the least, but he did ask Jessie Lee, “Are you okay?”

“Don’t go in there, Merv.”

“You’re acting silly. And you’re causing a scene.” He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “Are you on something?”

Jessie Lee felt her face get hot. She was trying to save Merv’s life, and he was treating her as if she was stoned, or crazy.

“Merv, you’ll die if you go in there.”

Merv shook his head, like she was a disappointment, and then Taylor escorted him into the locker room. Jessie Lee stood up, noticing that everyone in the room had their eyes glued to her. Several were snickering. Morons. Didn’t they see how crazy all of this was? Were they so blinded by greed? They were all going to die, and they just sat around waiting for it, like sheep.

Maybe if she had proof of what was really happening, she could convince the crowd what was going on. At the very least, she could convince herself she wasn’t crazy. Jessie Lee held her chin up and marched into the girls’ locker room, located next to the boys’.

Back when she attended school here the peephole rumors were legendary. Supposedly there was a loose brick in the boys’ shower, and when it was removed you could see into the girls’. Jessie Lee, and every other girl in school, used that excuse as the reason they never took showers, rather than admit to body-image issues and the general all-around embarrassment of public nudity.

Jessie Lee remembered looking for the loose brick on more than one occasion. Not because she feared boys peeping at her, but because she wanted to peep at them. At thirteen, she’d never seen a boy’s dick—back then she called them wieners—so she and her best friend Mandy Sprinkle went into the girls’ locker room during a basketball game and climbed up onto the lockers and into the ceiling panels. They crawled over to the boys’ locker room, through pink insulation and mouse droppings, and waited above the showers for the game to end. Then they took turns peering through a small crack, giggling so badly that they thought for sure they’d be caught and expelled.

They didn’t get caught. And they saw a variety of wieners. But ultimately the whole episode left Jessie Lee unimpressed. She remained that way for two more years until she made out with her first boyfriend and saw his dick, which looked much more impressive up close and erect.

The memory returned to her as she climbed the last locker and pushed the ceiling tile up and to the side. Her breathing became quick, and her heart rate increased, just as it had the last time she’d done this years before. Only this time she was alone. And this time she wasn’t giggling.

She grabbed on to a board—Jessie Lee couldn’t remember if they were called rafters or joists—and peered through the opening. Though petite, she weighed more than she did in junior high, and the space above the ceiling tiles felt even more cramped. The pink insulation had been replaced with yellow stuff, and she tugged her shirt up over her nose so she wouldn’t breathe in any fiberglass particles.

The ceiling tiles were made of that brittle fire-retardant material and hung below the joists on wires. She reached above the tiles, to the boards, and pulled herself up. The joists were about eighteen inches apart, and she kept her bare knees on one and her hands on another and inchwormed toward the boys’ locker room.

It became very dark, and very hot. Sweat dripped down her forehead and stung her eyes. Dust clung to her, making her skin itch. Heat and dust seemed to clog her nostrils, and after only a few breaths her mouth went dry.

Jessie Lee couldn’t remember how far she had to go and couldn’t see anything ahead of her. She began to count boards. Six should get her out of the girls’ area, and four more would probably take her above the boys’ room, though she didn’t know where.

The boards were easy to climb across but not comfortable at all. No more than an inch or two thick, they put creases into her knees and palms and made it impossible for her to stretch out and rest.

After crossing four boards her shoulder muscles began to cramp up. She paused, trying to relax her neck, rolling it around in the hot, claustrophobic air. Then she arched her back and reached for the next board.

Her hand found something else. Something furry and bony.

A dead mouse in a trap.

Jessie Lee screamed. She couldn’t help herself. Mice freaked her out. She pulled her hand away so fast that her elbow banged into some overhanging support beam. This brought fresh tears to her eyes and a tingling sensation that felt like she’d licked her fingers and stuck them in an electrical outlet.

She froze, squeezing her eyes shut, holding her breath, waiting to see if her outburst had been heard.

Ten seconds passed.

Twenty.

She was met with only silence.

The tingling passed, and Jessie Lee brought the mouse hand back and wiped it on her jeans. She could smell the rot on her fingers—or perhaps she only imagined it—and her tongue curled in her mouth and she gagged. She maneuvered two feet sideways so she’d avoid the mouse trap and then continued forward.

After three more boards she heard something. A man’s voice, faint, coming from below. She thought it said, “Were waring.”

Jessie Lee eased her body down, resting her chest on a joist. It hurt her boobs and made it hard to breathe, but the board took her weight and she lowered her hands to pull back a ceiling tile below her. She lifted it a centimeter, pushed it to the side, and stared. Her view revealed nothing but tile floor and empty lockers.

“I don’t know.”

Merv’s voice, and it sounded like he was crying.

Jessie Lee finessed the tile back into place, did a push-up to get onto all fours, and crawled two more boards forward.

Beneath her, Merv screamed.

The sweat made Jessie Lee’s long blond hair cling to her face in spaghetti strands, and she was having a hard time keeping her arms from shaking. Partly from exertion. Mostly from fear. Again she dropped down to chest level and peered through a crack.

This time she saw Merv, sitting in a chair. His chest was covered with blood, and blood drenched the floor around his feet. Behind him, she saw a pair of legs walk past. Legs dressed in black. The face was out of view, but she guessed it was Taylor.

“Where’s Warren Streng?” Taylor said.

Merv whimpered. The strong, self-assured man she’d seen only a few minutes ago was gone. Merv had become a frightened shell of himself.

Taylor touched Merv with a small black object, which made a cracking sound. A stun gun. Merv convulsed, moaning.

Jessie Lee knew she had to reach her cell phone and take a picture of this. She could show it to the town, and they’d do something. But she trembled so badly she feared losing her balance and falling through the tiles. She couldn’t take her hands off the joist.

Below her, Taylor pulled Merv’s head back, exposing his throat. His other hand held a knife.

The motion Taylor used wasn’t slitting. It was gouging. Like digging into a peach to remove the pit.

Jessie Lee sucked in both of her lips and bit down to keep from crying out. She watched Merv shake and twitch and bleed an ungodly amount, eventually falling out of his chair and flopping around on the floor like a fish. His palms slapped at the bloody tile, sending droplets skyward, misting Jessie Lee’s face. Slowly, eventually, his horrible gyrations slowed down, and he rolled onto his back, the hole in his throat making gagging sounds. He stared upward, locking eyes with Jessie Lee. Then his mouth opened as if to say something.

No words came, though a low gurgle came through the hole in his throat. Then Taylor grabbed his ankles and began to tug him away. Jessie Lee needed to take the picture before he went out of view. Shaking, she reached a hand behind her, seeking the purse strapped to her shoulder, and her hand brushed something sitting on the joist.

Jessie Lee heard a loud SNAP accompanied by blinding pain—

She had stuck her fingers in a mouse trap.

Without being able to stop it, she screamed. And as the sound left her lips, Jessie Lee Sloan realized she was as good as dead.

Fran watched, impotent, as Josh fired twice more at the door between her and her son. The bullets pinged off without even making a dent in the steel.

The smoke had gotten so thick that every breath provoked coughing. The door was too hot to touch, and the temperature around them had risen to the point where the air shimmered at their feet. It seemed as if every bit of moisture in Fran’s body had been baked away. But she still picked up the sledgehammer, still pushed Josh aside, and still swung at the doorknob with everything she had.

The door didn’t open.

Josh said something to her, but she couldn’t understand him above the roar of the flames surrounding them. He pried the sledge out of her grasp, eased her back, and swung it. But not at the door; Josh aimed for the door frame, next to the deadbolt.

The wood gave, and the head of the sledgehammer made a chip in the wall. Josh repeated the process. Fran had to get down on her knees to breathe—the last of the good air formed a pocket below waist level. Josh continued to stand, continued to hammer. Fran kept her eyes glued to the doorjamb, saw it splinter away, and then the dull thud of striking wood was replaced by the clang of metal on metal.

Josh fell to his knees next to her, coughing.

“… forced,” he croaked.

“What?”

“The doorway … it’s reinforced. We can’t get in this way.”

Movement, behind them. Erwin knelt next to Fran, put a hand on her shoulder.

“We have to get out of here! The structure is giving out!”

“I’m not leaving my son!”

Erwin and Josh exchanged a glance. Then they each grabbed an arm and dragged Fran out of the house.

Fran kicked. She screamed. She locked her mouth onto Josh’s arm and bit him. But they manhandled her out the front door and onto the lawn, through puddles of raw sewage. Fran felt like she was made of glass and about to shatter.

“DUNCAN!” She continued to fight, but they wouldn’t let her go. “Please! I have to get—”

And that’s when the house collapsed.

Sweat soaked Duncan’s hair and ran down his face. The oversized T-shirt stuck to him like he’d worn it swimming. He’d never been this hot before. Hot and thirsty. His tongue felt really big.

“I want something to drink,” he said to Mrs. Teller.

“I’m sorry, Duncan. I don’t think there’s anything left.”

Two of the four walls of shelves were burning, along with the supplies on the shelves. The brightness of the flames could be seen through the thick smoke, which had almost filled the room.

Duncan coughed, patted Woof on the head.

“It’s going to be okay, boy,” he said.

But Duncan knew it wasn’t going to be okay. The stairs were on fire. Mom and Josh probably couldn’t get to them. He still hoped that they would. Maybe Josh had a fireproof suit. Maybe he had a fire truck with a big hose that would put out the flames really fast.

Duncan wiped his face. The heat was so bad that it was starting to hurt his skin, like sunburn. His head felt funny, too, like he just woke up and was still groggy.

“We’re not going to burn,” Mrs. Teller said.

Duncan looked at her, squinting through his red-rimmed eyes. Did she know how to escape? He recalled Bernie’s lecture, about how bad it hurt to get burned. He didn’t want to burn to death. He didn’t want to get burned at all, not even a little bit.

“Terrible way to go,” Mrs. Teller said. “Terrible way. Burning in a fire.”

She had her eyes closed. Duncan didn’t think she was talking to him.

“It will be okay,” she said. “It will be okay. I can do this. We won’t burn. The Lord is my shepherd and He’ll give me the strength.”

Duncan coughed, then asked, “Strength for what?”

Mrs. Teller stared at Duncan. She was sobbing, so bad it shook her whole body.

“I won’t let you suffer like that, child. I won’t let you burn to death. I promise.”

Duncan didn’t like seeing Mrs. Teller like this. She was an adult. She was supposed to be strong. It made him even more scared.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“When the time comes, I’ll be strong,” Mrs. Teller answered. “I’ll take care of us both.”

Then she racked her shotgun.

Dr. Stubin combed through the wreckage site, looking for something that might help him. The three soldiers who’d been babysitting him were mostly intact, though the explosion had thrown one of them almost fifty yards from where Stubin had last seen him. Another, the sergeant, had actually lived long enough to ask Stubin for help. He died less than a minute later.

The Green Berets had fared even worse. Stubin had found bits and pieces of them, but nothing larger than an arm.

The Huey they’d arrived in no longer resembled anything other than junk. It, and the previous wreck, and been reduced to smoking scrap iron and burning bits of rubber and plastic. The whole area looked like a scene from Dante’s Inferno.

Stubin knew General Tope wasn’t foolish. He’d counter the loss of his team with firepower, and a lot of it. It was only a question of waiting and the cavalry would come.

The problem was Mathison. After the explosion, he’d fled into the forest. Stubin had called to him, and whistled for him, but the monkey was apparently too spooked to come back. And Mathison was important to Stubin. Very important.

Stubin wasn’t sure how much monkey instinct Mathison retained after all of the brain tinkering he’d undergone, but the doctor doubted his capuchin friend could survive in the wild on his own. He’d seek out humans. And it might be the wrong group of humans. Stubin had to find him. But first, he had to salvage what he could from the wreck.

Stubin walked to the epicenter of the disaster, then began a 360-degree spiral outward, watching where he stepped, eyes peeled for anything useful. A radio would be nice.

After five minutes, he hadn’t found anything except some broken night-vision goggles and a boot containing three-quarters of a foot. Hadn’t they been carrying supplies? Food? Guns? Didn’t they know the danger they were facing?

Apparently not, any more than they expected to be blown up.

Moving to the perimeter of the crash site, Stubin poked at a smoking bush with a stick and pried away something that looked like a shotgun, but with a much bigger barrel. It appeared unscathed. He touched it quickly, ascertained it was cool enough to hold, and picked it up. Stubin took a few seconds to locate the lock on the breech, and the barrel swiveled down, revealing a grenade—probably nonlethal if they were following instructions. He pulled the large canister out, judged it in working condition, and let it drop back in.

The grenade launcher had a sling, and Stubin wrapped it around his shoulder and continued hunting. He found two MRE rations, considered leaving them, but realized he didn’t know how long he’d be in the woods. They went into his jacket, along with some compact binoculars with one cracked lens. The binocs also had a compass on the top, and amazingly it still worked.

Stubin found north, tried to picture the map of the area he’d seen briefly while riding in the chopper, and deduced he was east of town. He whistled again for Mathison, got no response, and then headed west, toward Safe Haven.

The instant Taylor looked up, Jessie Lee scrambled forward. Her knees banged into the joists, and the mousetrap still pinched her fingers, but she moved as fast as possible while still maintaining her balance. After getting two body lengths away from where she’d been, Jessie Lee held her breath and tried to listen, straining to hear anything other than the hammering of her heart.

She heard nothing.

He won’t shoot me, she thought. Too loud. He wouldn’t want to arouse the suspicions of the mob in the gym. Besides, Taylor hadn’t been holding a gun. He did have a stun gun, and Jessie Lee was a cornered target. She had to get out of there, fast.

Noise, directly beneath her. The unmistakable clang of a metal locker opening.

She gingerly pulled off the mousetrap and tried to move forward, but there wasn’t anyplace further to go—she hit the wall. Turning around while balancing on one-inch sections of board would take more time than she had. She could hear Taylor climbing up the locker, and any second he’d be pushing up a ceiling tile, reaching out with the stun gun.

Jessie Lee chose to move backward. She couldn’t see behind her in the dark, but the joists were spaced evenly apart and she could sense where they were. Fast as she dared she began to crab backward, heading for the girls’ locker room.

Ahead of her light surged in from where a ceiling tile used to be. She squinted at Taylor, less than three feet away, poking his head through. Could he see her in the dark?

Apparently he could. The killer stared directly at her and offered one of his cold smiles.

“I like the feisty ones. Maura Talbott was feisty. She was my sixth girl, in Madison. I tied her down with baling wire and bit off all of her fingers.”

Jessie Lee remembered the TV special, which showed the autopsy photos after the obligatory parental discretion advised warning. The victim’s fingers weren’t all he’d chewed off.

She moved even faster, feet missing the boards and sometimes slipping between them and hitting ceiling tile. She banged her elbow—the same one—and then the thick gold Omega anklet that Erwin bought her became caught on something. One of the wires, holding up the tiles. She tried to pull free, without success. It held her like a claw.

Ahead of her, Taylor crawled up onto the joists. He still had the smile on, and he pressed the button on the stun gun to show her what was in store. A burst of white light crackled across the two probes.

Jessie Lee pushed with her free foot. No good. She crawled back, bending the knee of her trapped leg as she got closer, and then her handhold slipped and her butt fell directly between two boards, breaking through the ceiling tile. Her upper body followed.

She cried out, hands grasping at the air, and for a crazy moment Jessie Lee was free falling to the floor of the boys’ locker room, headfirst. But her leg stayed stuck. So instead of falling through, she hung there by her knees, upside down like a child on a jungle gym.

She swung back and forth, the bright lights in the room and the blood rushing to her head adding to her disorientation. It took a moment for the world to stop spinning, for things to come back into focus. When they did, she freaked out.

Bodies. Dead bodies. Stacked ten high, like cordwood, in the showers directly beneath her. At least fifty people. Neighbors. Friends. Jesus—her cousin Rachel. Seamus Dailey. Mary Porter. John Kramer. Sarah Richardson, the head teller from the town bank.

A sob tore loose from Jessie Lee’s throat. On top of the pile, close enough to reach out and touch, was her best friend and maid of honor, Mandy Sprinkle.

Blood coated every inch of the showers like paint, so thick Jessie Lee could taste copper. It brought back a long-ago trip to a turkey-rendering plant, to placate a boyfriend who worked there. The blood inside the slaughterhouse flowed knee deep—a swirling river filled with bits of tissue and swarming with flies.

Creaking, above. Taylor.

Jessie Lee tried to pull herself up, to free her leg, but she couldn’t get any handholds through the hole she made. She reached ahead of her, sticking her fingers around a square of ceiling tile, and it tore away without supporting her weight.

She lifted her other leg—the one that wasn’t caught—but that put too much weight on her trapped knee, causing instant pain.

The creaking got closer and all she could do was hang there, like a piñata waiting for the stick. She tried to scream, but her breath came in shallow pants and all she managed were squeaks.

Control yourself, she thought. Stop panicking. If you scream, you can save yourself. Someone in the gym will come and investigate. Just fill your lungs with air.

She tried. She tried harder than anything she’d ever attempted in her twenty-eight years of life. But every time she sucked in a bit of air she saw someone else in the mound of death, someone else she recognized, and the oxygen whooshed out of her.

If she couldn’t pull herself up, and couldn’t scream, there was one more possibility for escape.

Not wanting to, but not having any choice, Jessie Lee reached out for her best friend, Mandy, atop the pile. She didn’t look at her friend’s face, frozen in wild-eyed terror. She didn’t look at her throat, which had a cut so deep you could see inside of it. Jessie Lee concentrated on Mandy’s hand. The same hand she held when they spied on the boys taking showers so long ago, giggling madly.

Mandy’s fingers splayed out, as if expecting to be given something. Jessie Lee stretched, but she was inches away from touching them. She tried to swing by her knees, remembering the school-yard trick known as the penny drop. The first pass, she barely touched Mandy’s finger. The second time, she grasped her hand but couldn’t hold on.

Third time was the charm. Jessie Lee entangled her fingers in Mandy’s, then she brought her other hand around and locked on to her friend’s wrist.

Dear God, she’s still warm.

Jessie Lee reflexively let go, panicked to the point of hysterics. This couldn’t be happening. Less than an hour ago she’d been planning her wedding, thinking about the extra things she could do with the lottery money. And now she hung upside down over a stack of her dead friends and neighbors while a psycho tried to kill her.

She made fists and pounded her thighs several times, trying to focus, trying to force courage. Then she began to rock back and forth again. This time when she caught Mandy’s hand she held on and pulled. She pulled for all she was worth.

But instead of freeing herself, all Jessie Lee did was drag Mandy off of her roost. Her friend slid across the corpse beneath her and then headed face-first down the pile. Jessie Lee tried to hold on, but the strain on her knees became too great, and then Mandy tumbled to the floor. She landed in the pool of blood, arms and legs akimbo, her eyes staring up at Jessie Lee accusingly.

Jessie Lee again tried to scream, but her lungs wouldn’t cooperate.

Not even when Taylor began to bite her knee.

Fran kicked Erwin in the stomach and he released her arm, which allowed her to also twist away from Josh and run back to the blazing house.

The second floor had collapsed onto the first, blockading the doorway with smoking debris. But Duncan was still alive. She felt it. All she had to do was get to him.

Fran ran through grass wet with sewage, around the side of the house, eyes scanning for window wells. She found one and hurried over. It had been filled in with concrete.

Damn Mr. Teller, the paranoid lunatic. Toward the end of his life he’d lapsed into dementia, thinking people were out to get him. Mrs. Teller had mentioned the bomb shelter he’d built in the basement, but Fran had never asked for a tour. She should have. What if there wasn’t any other way in?

She ran to the back of the house, saw another concrete plug, and swore. Maybe they could dig, break through the walls …

There! A few feet away from the filled-in window well. A metal grating, about half the size of a manhole cover, set into the foundation at ground level. Smoke billowed out. Fran slid across the grass on her knees and banged on it. The square duct was covered with wire mesh, bolted to the concrete.

“DUNCAN! DUNCAN, CAN YOU HEAR ME!”

Josh came up next to her, then Erwin.

“Must be the ventilation for the shelter,” Josh said. “Stand back.”

He carried the sledgehammer Fran had dropped. Fran leaned away, and Josh made easy work of the grating with two big swings. Fran pried it away, then stuck her head into the opening.

“DUNCAN!”

Smoke poked at her eyes, but the heat was bearable. She could crawl down. Fran shoved one arm in, alongside her head. But she couldn’t get her second shoulder through no matter how hard she pushed. The hole just wasn’t big enough.

“Mom!” Duncan called, faint but frantic.

“Duncan!” Fran stretched, splaying out her fingers as if she could touch his voice.

“Mom! There’s something wrong with Mrs. Teller!”

The smoke, Fran thought. Oh, God, no, the smoke.

Then came the thundering BOOM of a gunshot.

Duncan jumped to the side just before Mrs. Teller fired the shotgun at him. It was the loudest noise Duncan had ever heard in his whole life, making his ears hum. The pellets hit the concrete floor, and one of them bounced off and hit Duncan in his leg. It stung, like someone had slapped him hard. He looked and saw some blood on his calf.

Then Duncan heard the sound of another shell being racked. Mrs. Teller walked through the smoke, looking very calm except for her eyes, where black soot clung to the tears on her face. She pointed the gun at his head.

“Mrs. Teller! No!”

“I’m so, so sorry, Duncan. It’s time.”

Duncan’s voice cracked. “Time for what?”

“Time for us to go to heaven, Duncan. It will be okay. I promise. It won’t hurt at all. And we’ll see Mr. Teller there, and we’ll all bake cookies.”

Duncan’s hand darted up and knocked the gun to the side, then he crawled away from her as fast as he could, hiding in the smoke.

The shotgun BOOMED.

“I won’t let us burn, Duncan.”

Duncan couldn’t see her through the smoke, and her voice seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. He hugged his knees and tried to make himself smaller. Why were all of these bad things happening? Where were Mom and Josh?

“Please, Duncan,” Mrs. Teller said. “It’s better this way.”

The shotgun fired, to his left. A large box of toilet paper fell off the shelf and onto the floor, spilling its contents. Woof continued to bark, then growled deep.

“Woof, come!” Duncan yelled, as scared for Woof as he was for himself.

His dog kept snarling. It was too smoky to see what was going on. Duncan thought he heard Mom calling him again, but he couldn’t tell. The flames were crackling really loud, and Woof was barking at the fire like it was the neighbor’s cat. Three of the four shelves were burning, and the smoke was so bad that every breath hurt.

Then the shotgun BOOMED again, and Woof was silent.

Duncan’s heart ached, but he didn’t cry—maybe he was finally all out of tears. More than ever he wanted Mom, wanted to give her a huge hug. She’d protect him. She’d make it better.

But Mom wasn’t here.

That man, Bernie, had scared Duncan. But he was even more scared now, of Mrs. Teller. She was supposed to be looking after him. How could she do this? Duncan buried his face in his hands, his whole body shaking, wishing none of this was happening, wishing it was a dream.

Then Woof barked.

He’s alive!

“Woof!” he called. “Woof, come!”

Woof whimpered. Duncan had heard him whimper only once before, when he got a rabies shot at the vet.

“Woof?”

“I’ve got your dog, Duncan.”

Woof whined again. What was she doing to him? He couldn’t see.

“Please, Mrs. Teller. Josh and Mom are going to save us.”

Mrs. Teller coughed. “I know they are. Come over to me and your doggie. We’ll all wait for them together.”

Duncan wanted to believe her. He wanted so bad to believe her. Mrs. Teller never lied to him before.

But then she never tried to shoot him before, either.

“Come over here, Duncan. Your little doggie wants you.”

Another cry from Woof.

“Give me the gun.” Duncan’s voice was tiny, almost a whisper.

“Come here, Duncan. Hurry.”

“First you have to give me the gun,” he said, louder.

“I’ve been watching you for years, Duncan. I’m telling you the truth. I want what’s best for you. For all of us. I’m your babysitter. And I’m an adult. You need to listen to adults, Duncan. Isn’t that what your mother told you?”

Mom did tell him that, all the time. And Duncan ached to hold his dog. He began to crawl toward Mrs. Tel-ler’s voice. But the pain in his leg reminded him that he shouldn’t believe her.

“Let Woof go, and give me the gun, and I’ll come over.”

“Duncan—”

“Let Woof go!” Duncan was almost yelling now. He’d never yelled at an adult before. It felt strange, wrong, but he needed her to know how serious he was. “And let me have the gun, Mrs. Teller!”

“You little brat!”

His dog snarled, and Mrs. Teller cried out. Then—so fast it startled him—hot breath bathed Duncan’s face. He recoiled, surprised, and Woof licked his cheeks and nuzzled his neck. Duncan hugged the beagle to his chest, wiping his runny nose in Woof’s fur. The beagle looked fine—he wasn’t hurt at all.

“Duncan …”

Mrs. Teller’s voice made Duncan tremble. He crawled backward, behind the fallen box.

“Duncan … your dog bit me … I need your help …”

Duncan stayed put. The smoke hung low in the air, thick as storm clouds, and it was getting hard to breathe without coughing.

“I’m bleeding pretty bad, Duncan … I need … the first-aid kit …”

Woof growled at Mrs. Teller. Duncan wrapped a hand in his collar, holding him back. He wanted to shrink and disappear. Why wasn’t Mom here yet?

“I wouldn’t hurt you, Duncan … I need your help … please, boy … the first-aid kit …”

Duncan remembered all the times Mrs. Teller watched him. The cookies they baked together. The twenty dollars she gave him every year for his birthday. She was a nice old lady. She shouldn’t die.

But what if she was lying? She was talking slow, but she might be faking. What if she just wanted him to come close so she could shoot him and Woof?

“The … first aid … it’s near the box of canned peas …”

Duncan found himself looking around for it, even though he didn’t want to, even though it might be a bad idea. It wasn’t on the shelf behind him, and that was the only shelf he could see.

“Help me … Duncan … be a good boy …”

Could he trust her? Should he trust her?

“Duncan … please …”

“Woof,” Duncan whispered to his dog, “stay.”

And then he crawled off to look for the first-aid kit.

Fran struck the concrete foundation with the sledgehammer, the wooden handle stinging her palms like she’d pressed them next to a belt sander. She struck again. And again. And again. Chips of stone flaked away, the ten-pound head digging divots into the cement.

“Fran, we have to find another way.”

She ignored Josh, ignored all the pain, ignored everything except the task at hand. Swing. Smash. Swing. Smash. If she had to pound a hole all the way to hell to get her son, she would.

Josh put a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged him off and raised the sledge again. He tried to wrestle it from her, but she refused to let go.

“It’s a steel vent.” His eyes were glassy but firm. “Even if you break up the foundation around it, we can’t make the vent wider.”

“You heard Duncan! You heard that gunshot! That crazy old woman is trying to kill him!”

“We need to find a rope or something, pull him up. But trying to dig through ten feet of dirt, rock, and rebar is just wasting our time.”

Fran nodded quickly, letting Josh take the hammer. A rope. If they had a rope, they could snake it down the vent, Duncan could tie it around his waist …

Another gunshot echoed out through the grating.

Fran dropped to her knees and screamed her son’s name.

Duncan found the first-aid kit next to the peas, right where Mrs. Teller said it would be. It was a large white box, made out of metal, with buckle clasps on the front and a big red cross painted on the lid. He clutched it to his chest, unsure of what to do next.

“Duncan … please help me … the blood …”

“I’ll throw it to you,” he said, then darted to the right in case Mrs. Teller tried to shoot where she heard his voice.

“I can’t see … in this smoke … you need to bring it to me.”

Woof barked at Mrs. Teller. Duncan shushed him. He knew the dog was just protecting him, but he was giving their position away. Duncan went farther right, until he was against a wall. He had to get down to Woof’s level to breathe because the smoke was so thick, but even near the floor the air was getting bad.

“Throw me the gun,” Duncan said. “Then I’ll come to you.”

“What? Duncan … I can’t hear you …”

Duncan filled his lungs and yelled, “Throw me—!”

The sonic BOOM blew a hole in the smoke, and birdshot chewed into the metal first-aid kit Duncan held out in front of him. The kit jumped from his hands like it was alive, and Duncan’s hands stung. Just as bad were Duncan’s ears—it felt like someone had punched him on both sides of his head, and the ringing was so bad he actually looked for bells. He also realized he’d peed his underwear a little.

He pulled Woof away from the wall, toward the shelves, and then put his hands in front of his face. They hurt like crazy, but there wasn’t any blood. Duncan’s lower lip trembled, but he didn’t cry—maybe he was finally all out of tears. More than ever he wanted Mom, wanted to give her a huge hug. She’d protect him. She’d make it better.

But Mom wasn’t here. Only Mrs. Teller. And she was going to kill him unless he did something about it.

The room had gotten brighter, and the green light from the glow sticks was replaced by orange. A shelf had caught on fire. Duncan recalled Bernie’s lecture, about how bad it hurt to get burned. He didn’t want to burn to death. He didn’t want to get burned at all, not even a little bit. He’d rather get shot.

“Duncan? Did I get you? If you’re hurt let me know. I can end your pain, child. I’ll take all your pain away.”

Duncan watched the shelf burn and hugged his dog tighter. He had to do something. Anything. Or else he and Woof were going to die.

I have to get the gun, Duncan thought. Then Mrs. Teller couldn’t hurt him, and he could keep her away until Mom and Josh rescued them.

Duncan knew he had to crawl to her, pull the gun away. She was an adult, but she was always talking about how her bones were old and brittle, how her muscles were getting shriveled up. Duncan always had to open jars for her, and he even beat her at arm wrestling once last year.

But he couldn’t move. His legs and arms felt stuck to the floor.

Get the gun! he thought. Go get the gun!

His muscles didn’t obey.

Then, like a slap, he heard the sound of the shotgun being racked.

Duncan squeezed his eyes shut, as tight as they could be squeezed, and waited. He didn’t want to see it coming.

“DUNCAN! CAN YOU HEAR ME!”

Mom!

Mom sounded close, almost like she was in the room. Magically, he could move again. Duncan got to his feet. Mom’s voice seemed to be coming from the left, but the only thing there was a shelf stacked with supplies, and many of those supplies were on fire.

“DUNCAN!”

Duncan picked up the big box of toilet paper that had fallen down, and used that to knock the burning supplies off the shelf. There, on the wall, was some sort of vent.

“MOM!”

Duncan yelled with everything he had. Then he climbed up onto the metal shelf and stuck his hands in the vent grating.

“Duncan! Are you okay!”

“You have to get me and Woof out of here, Mom!” He lowered his voice. “Mrs. Teller is trying to kill us.”

Mom didn’t answer right away, but he thought he heard her sob.

“Duncan? It’s Josh. Are you small enough to fit into the duct?”

Duncan squinted through the grating. Inside it was square, and not very large. But he could probably squeeze in there.

“I think so! But there’s a metal vent in the way!”

“Can you pull the vent off?”

Duncan locked his fingers and tugged. The vent didn’t move.

“It’s on too tight.”

“DUNCAN!” Mrs. Teller yelled.

He turned and looked behind him. She stood there, holding the shotgun. Fire stretched to the ceiling behind her. Duncan couldn’t see the expression on her face, but she looked very angry. He tore his eyes away and searched the floor, looking for …

“Woof!”

The beagle went straight for Mrs. Teller’s calf, biting hard and causing her to fall over. The shotgun fell from her hands, and she tried to push and kick the dog away. Woof dodged her blows and kept up the attack.

This time Duncan didn’t hesitate. He hopped off the shelf and hurried to the shotgun. It lay there like a rattlesnake. Duncan forced himself to pick it up, surprised by its weight—it was heavier than it looked.

“Duncan!” Josh’s voice, through the vent.

Duncan walked back to the shelf. He put his finger on the trigger and tried to hold the gun like Mrs. Teller did, with the butt against his shoulder. He couldn’t; the gun was too long. So he held the gun at his side, at waist level, with the stock extended out behind his armpit. Then he aimed at the vent.

The BOOM shook his whole body, and the shotgun jumped out of his hands and went skidding backward across the floor. Duncan didn’t look to see where it went. He focused on the duct.

The grating was gone. He’d shot it off.

Duncan ran to the shelf, climbed up, stuck his head into the hole. Yes, he’d be able to fit. Barely. But the duct went up on a slant that was too steep—he couldn’t crawl up.

“Duncan!”

“I’m here, Josh! I shot the cover off.” He felt absurdly proud of himself when he said that.

“Can you get inside?”

“Yeah. But I don’t think I can crawl up. It’s too high.”

“I’ll look for some rope! Hang in there, Duncan!”

Duncan wiped the sweat off of his forehead. It had gotten even hotter. The wall on either side of him was burning, the flames coming closer.

Mom said, “What’s Mrs. Teller doing?”

Duncan turned and squinted at her. She was on the floor, still fighting with his dog.

“Woof’s attacking her, Mom! Woof! Come!”

Woof barked to Duncan and then trotted over, his tongue hanging out. He looked pleased.

“Up, Woof! Up!”

Woof leapt up onto the shelf, and Duncan hugged his dog tight. The beagle licked his face, then slobbered all over his ear.

“Mom’s going to save us, Woof. We have to go in that vent. Don’t be scared.”

Woof wasn’t scared at all. Upon noticing the duct, he stuck his head inside and barked. Duncan petted Woof’s butt and told him he was a good boy. Then he chanced another look over his shoulder.

Mrs. Teller was gone.

“Duncan!” Josh talking. “We’re sending down a hose. Wrap it under your arms and tie it around your chest.”

The hose made a lot of noise coming down, banging against the aluminum walls of the duct. Woof barked and bit the end when it appeared. Duncan told the dog to sit and tugged the hose out until there was enough to make a knot. Then he paused. If he went up the hole, how would Woof get out?

“You gotta go first, buddy.”

Duncan patted the dog’s head, then wrapped the hose around Woof’s body. He tied it tight enough to make the beagle yip.

“Mom! Josh! Pull Woof up!”

“No! Duncan, you come up right now!”

“Woof’s going first!”

Duncan listened to Mom and Josh argue, and then Woof got tugged into the hole. He tried to spread out his paws and pull back, ears flat against his skull, but he was jerked right up the vent.

“Duncan …”

It was Mrs. Teller. She was right behind him.

Duncan didn’t waste time. He scrambled into the duct after his dog, forcing himself up as far as he could go. The fit was tight. Really tight. And the smoke rose up beneath him, making it a lot harder to breathe, because there were no pockets of good air.

Overhead, the duct clanged, and the hose came down again.

“Wrap it around you, Duncan!”

Duncan’s arms were up over his head, so he could grab the hose but had no way to pull it around his waist; he couldn’t lower his hands. Instead he held it tight.

“Okay!” he yelled.

Josh pulled so hard on the hose it got ripped from his grasp.

“Duncan!”

“I can’t tie it on!” Duncan coughed. “Pull slower!”

Again the hose came down. Duncan became aware of how hot it was getting in the vent. He felt sleepy. He wanted to close his eyes, even though he knew that was a bad idea.

“Duncan!” Mom, yelling. “Grab the hose!”

Duncan managed to get a hand on it. Josh lifted slower this time, and Duncan held on. But after going up only a little ways he felt like he was being stretched in half.

“Hold it!” Duncan croaked. “I’m stuck!”

The oversized undershirt he wore had become caught on something in the vent, and the material was pulling at his neck, choking him.

Duncan tried to shake his head to release the tension. It didn’t work, the fabric continuing to cut into his throat. Because he couldn’t lower his arms, he couldn’t get the shirt off.

I have to let go of the hose, drop down, and take off the shirt, Duncan thought.

And that’s when Mrs. Teller grabbed his foot.

Duncan screamed. He didn’t want to let go now, even if he got strangled. He tried kicking but didn’t have any room. Mrs. Teller’s hands grabbed his thighs, hard, her fingers squeezing.

Duncan knew this was the end. He wasn’t going to get away. He felt bad for his mom. First she lost Dad, and now him. Smoke filled his lungs, but he tried to talk. He wanted to tell Mom that he loved her, one last time, before Mrs. Teller pulled him down.

But Mrs. Teller didn’t pull. She pushed.

Duncan heard the sound of fabric tearing, and then the pressure on his neck eased up. Josh yanked the hose, and Mrs. Teller continued to shove Duncan up the vent, lifting his legs, his ankles, and finally his feet, until he no longer felt her touch.

A moment later Mom and Josh were tugging on his arms, hauling him out of the duct.

“Duncan! Oh, my God, you’re bleeding!”

“I got shot, but only a little.”

Mom hugged him, and he hugged her, and it turned out he had some tears left, after all, because he started to cry. Woof, not wanting to be left out, stood up on his hind legs and put his front paws on him, joining the hug. Duncan wanted it to go on forever.

Then, from the vent, the sound of screaming.

Duncan pressed away from his mother.

“Mrs. Teller! She’s still in there, Mom!” He looked at Josh. “We have to get her out! The fire is going to get her!”

Another scream, and then the sound of a shotgun firing.

Silence followed.

Josh put one hand on Duncan’s shoulder and his other on Mom’s. He steered them, gently but firmly, away from the house.

“We need to get you both to a hospital.”

Even though Mom and Josh didn’t say anything, Duncan knew what happened to Mrs. Teller. And it was okay. She was finally with Mr. Teller again. He imagined them both, in heaven, baking cookies.

“I fired a shotgun,” Duncan said to Josh, beaming.

Josh tousled his hair.

“You did good, sport. Now let’s go make sure your mom is okay.”

Duncan saw Josh take Mom’s hand, their fingers interlocking, and he smiled.

Sheriff Streng sat in the back seat of Mrs. Teller’s 1992 Buick Roadmaster station wagon, a vehicle that boasted faux wood side panels and less than ten thousand miles on the odometer. Mrs. Teller had kept it in the garage and was kind enough to leave the keys in the ignition.

Streng had pulled it onto the lawn before the house collapsed, doing so out of necessity. There were too many people to cram into Olen’s Honey Wagon, and one of them was dangerous.

The captive had his hands tied behind him, Streng’s belt cinched around his legs, and a face that resembled a Picasso painting because Erwin had hit it so many times. He was no longer an immediate threat, but the sheriff still didn’t like being this close.

Streng had frisked him quickly, finding the plastic zip lines they’d used to bind his wrists, assorted matches and lighters, a container filled with more of those odd capsules, a Ka-Bar Warthog knife, and another one of those high-tech electronic devices that he couldn’t figure out how to turn on. He put everything, except the knife, in an empty McDonald’s bag he’d gotten from Olen’s truck. Then he turned his attention back to the pyro.

Like Ajax and Santiago, this man wore a black military-style outfit. And like Ajax and Santiago, he scared the crap out of Streng.

When he began to wake up, Streng Mirandized him, and then he and Erwin put the stranger into the back seat of the Roadmaster. Streng sat next to him. He pressed the thick-bladed combat knife up against the man’s throat, but he still kept an arm’s length away.

“Wake up. I have questions.”

The man peeked at Streng though peach-puffy eyes. He grinned. The missing teeth and swollen face made him look like a jack-o’-lantern.

“Hello, Sheriff Streng. I’d be happy, very happy, to answer any questions you have, as long, as long as you tell me where Warren is.”

Wiley again. What kind of horror had his brother brought upon this little town?

“What’s your name?”

“Bernie.”

“Full name.”

“Just Bernie is fine.”

“How many people in your unit?”

Bernie stuck his tongue through the gaps in his teeth and made sucking sounds. He seemed to be counting them. When he finished, he said, “Enough to get the job done.”

“What’s the job?”

“Find Warren. Finding Warren. Warren, Warren, Warren.”

“Why do you want to find him?” Streng thought he knew the answer but wanted confirmation.

A line of bloody saliva leaked out the corner of Bernie’s mouth.

“Did you take my lighters, Sheriff?”

“Answer my question. Why are you looking for Warren?”

Bernie clenched his jaw. Streng heard a cracking sound. Without flinching or taking his eyes away from Streng, Bernie produced a broken tooth between his grinning, distended lips. His tongue pushed it out, and it slid down his chin on a wave of gory spit.

“Why don’t you burn me?” Bernie asked. “Maybe that will make me talk.”

Centuries ago Streng served in Vietnam, during the war. He’d seen firsthand the types of things the Cong did to extract information. It had sickened him and remained a subject of nightmares for decades afterward.

When he mustered out and became a rookie cop in Milwaukee, criminal interrogations had been a bit … looser … than they were now. Streng witnessed his fellow officers beat a confession out of a killer using phone books. He’d also watched his squad take turns kicking a known child molester in the groin until he revealed the location of a child he’d abducted. Both times the suspects broke quickly. And both times Streng felt disgusted with himself afterward, even though he hadn’t participated in the beatings.

Bernie expected torture. Hell, he probably deserved torture. But the willful infliction of pain on a fellow human being just wasn’t in Streng’s constitution. He decided to try another approach.

“I saw your friends earlier. Ajax and Santiago. Did you all train together?”

Bernie stared malevolently.

“I bet you boys had a lot of training. You think they trained harder than you, or are just better at this stuff?”

Now Bernie shifted in his seat.

“That Santiago, I bet he’d never allow himself to be captured.” Streng moved closer to Bernie. “I bet he’d die first.”

Bernie took a deep breath, then exhaled hard through his broken nose. A clot blew out of his right nostril, and dark blood oozed out. Bernie extended his tongue and let the blood run over it.

“I smell piss.” Bernie licked his bloody lips and grinned. “Did Santiago make you wet yourself, Sheriff? Or— hehehe—is that just old age?”

Streng didn’t take the bait. Instead he removed a disposable lighter from his pocket and flicked it on. Bernie focused on it like a cat watches a mouse. Streng let it burn for about ten seconds, then allowed the flame to die.

“Well, you’d know a thing or two about wetting yourself, wouldn’t you, Bernie? Pyromania and bed-wetting go hand in hand.”

Bernie continued to stare at the lighter.

“Was that what your childhood was like, Bernie? Setting fires? Pissing yourself? Killing little animals? I bet you did a lot of that. Let me guess—did Daddy make special visits to your bedroom at night, when Mommy was asleep?”

Bernie’s eyes got big, and his jaw began to quiver.

“Daddy, my daddy, Daddy burned me. All over. Mommy would help, would hold me down. Because I was bad. They knew, they knew I was bad, they tried to cleanse me with fire, burn the evil out. But they went away before they could save me. Mommy and Daddy loved me.”

Streng fought revulsion, stayed strong.

“Why are you after Warren? Is it money?”

“Money?” Bernie grinned. “Want to see me light my pee-pee on fire? I’ll do it for a dollar. A dollar a dollar a dollar. Everyone, all the kids, everyone at the orphanage, they save their money to watch me do it.” He locked eyes with Streng. “Got a dollar, Sheriff?”

“I’ve got a dollar, and I want to see that, Bernie. But first tell me how many are in your unit.”

“They love me, love me like Mommy and Daddy. I’m important, so important, to them. Their star pupil. They found me years ago, saved me from the institution. I—”

Bernie’s smile died, and then his eyes rolled up into his head. His head began to twitch, and Streng wondered if the man was still trying to frighten him. Truth told, Streng was frightened. This man, even tied up, exuded menace like radiators exuded heat. But the spasm went on for several seconds, and Bernie definitely didn’t seem in control. Some sort of seizure?

Then, abruptly, it stopped. When Bernie opened his eyes he was no longer grinning.

“Charge,” he said.

Streng had no idea what that meant, but Bernie stared straight ahead and didn’t say anything else.

“Charge what?” Streng asked.

“Charge.”

“I don’t understand.”

Bernie’s mouth began to move. But he wasn’t talking. He was chewing.

When the blood began to leak out, Streng realized Bernie was chewing his own tongue.

Someone knocked on Streng’s window, startling the hell out of him. He turned and saw Erwin standing there. Streng sought the handle and rolled down the window.

“Josh and Fran—that’s the woman from the diner—they saved the boy.”

“And Mrs. Teller?”

Erwin shook his head. Streng pursed his lips. While he’d been screwing around with the car, the old woman had died. Could he have done anything to prevent it? How many people had died so far on his shift?

Streng pushed the thoughts away. Guilt later. Right now he had things to take care of.

“Is he okay?” Streng asked.

“Josh wants to take the boy and Fran to the doctor. But I want to go to the junior high and find Jessie Lee. Olen wants to go, too, because of the lottery.”

Streng considered his next step. He needed to see a doctor, as well. The throb in his kidney hadn’t abated, and the sweat on his forehead spoke of a fever. The nearest hospital was in Shell Lake, a forty-minute drive from here. But that lottery business smelled funny, especially with everything else going on. Could it be connected somehow? Then there was the matter of what to do with Bernie.

“Help me put him in the Honey Wagon,” he told Erwin.

Erwin studied his shoes. Streng understood.

“This is a very bad man, son. One who tried to burn your face off. I would have messed him up, too, given the chance.”

Erwin nodded, but he didn’t seem in any hurry to touch Bernie again and made an extra effort not to look at him. Streng had a squeamish moment, removing his belt from Bernie’s legs, but the killer just sat there, silently chewing his tongue. He remained compliant as they walked him to Olen’s truck, allowing himself to be buckled into the back seat.

Streng called for Olen, who stopped spraying the burning house with sewage and set upon rolling up his hose. Josh, Fran, and young Duncan came around the side of the house, huddling close together. They were followed by a surprisingly fat dog, possibly a beagle. Streng approached Josh.

“Head to the ER in Shell Lake. Take the Roadmaster. And tell as many people as you can about what’s happening here. The staties should be here soon, but I wouldn’t mind if the whole army showed up.”

He handed Josh the keys.

“How about you, Sheriff? You need a doctor.”

“First I need to drop off this one.” He jerked his thumb at the cab. “I’m going to have Olen take me to Sal’s to get my Jeep and find my gun. Then our friend will go into the Safe Haven lockup.”

Safe Haven didn’t have an official police station, but Streng kept an office in the Water Department building, and it had a small cell, mostly used for the occasional drunk and disorderly.

“Could they still be at Sal’s?”

“Don’t see why they would be. They’ve got other fish to fry.”

Josh nodded, then extended a hand. “Be careful.”

“You, too.”

Streng shook it. The boy also held out his hand. Streng shook that, as well.

“Thanks for coming to get us, Sheriff,” Duncan said. There were tear streaks on his dirty face, but his eyes shone clear and blue.

“It’s my job, Duncan. You take care of Josh and your mother, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

Streng didn’t know Fran well—he’d eaten at the diner only once and the meatloaf had given him fierce indigestion, making a return visit unlikely. But he knew what had happened to her and her husband. The whole county knew. The fact that she was able to get on with her life spoke volumes.

Standing next to her, Streng sensed that inner strength, though he didn’t know how long it would last. Both Fran and her boy were black with soot, but she looked like she’d been shoveling coal in hell. As pressed for time as they all were, a quick debriefing still seemed necessary.

“Fran, this might not be an appropriate question considering all that’s just happened, but are you okay?”

“The man, the one who attacked Duncan, he dresses like a man who attacked me at the diner. His name is Taylor. He … killed Al and then tried to kill me. Over an hour ago.”

“You came from the diner?” Streng asked. “Is your car around here?”

“I didn’t drive here. I … swam. The river. That’s where Erwin found me. I had to get to my son.”

Streng raised an eyebrow. The river was over a mile away, and the diner was several miles farther.

“How did you know Duncan was in danger?”

“Taylor told me.” She narrowed her ice blue eyes. “He wanted to know where your brother Warren was.”

Streng flinched. More people hurt, because of Wiley. But why were these commandos going after Fran and her son?

The sheriff stared at Fran, then at Duncan, and he made the connection. A connection that Fran obviously wasn’t aware of. Suddenly some things made sense.

“And you’ve never seen either of these men before? You don’t know why they’re looking for Warren?”

Fran shook her head.

“Or why they went after you?”

“I only met your brother once, Sheriff. At my wedding. He crashed it, got drunk, and started a fight with my stepfather.”

Streng frowned. One more reason to hold a grudge against Wiley.

“You’re safe now. Josh will take you to the hospital. I’m … sorry this happened to you.”

Fran hugged Duncan closer.

“We’re survivors,” she said.

Streng had no doubt of it.

“When you get out of town the cell reception should improve. I’ll call you from a land line. I need to take your statement, Fran. Yours, too, Duncan.”

“And Woof’s?” Duncan asked.

At hearing his name, the dog cocked his head to the side.

Streng bent down to pat the dog on the head, and the motion brought blinding pain. He still managed to say, “And Woof’s.”

Josh herded them toward the car, but Fran stopped and turned back.

“Sheriff, do you know what happened to the mayor?”

Streng shook his head.

“I saw him in the fire truck. He was naked and tied up.”

“Alive?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see who was driving?”

“No. I thought it was Josh at first, but obviously …” Her voice trailed off.

“Get to the ER,” Streng said. “I’ll call later.”

They have the mayor, too? Streng said to himself. What’s his link to Wiley?

Streng had no idea, but he sure as hell was going to find out. Right after he took care of Bernie, he was going to have a long-overdue talk with brother Warren.

But first, he needed a gun.

It wouldn’t be wise to visit Wiley unarmed.

When Jessie Lee Sloan was six years old, there was a boy in her first-grade class named Lester Paks. Lester was a textbook full of emotional and mental problems. He laughed and cried for no reason at all. He poked himself with tacks and bit at his fingernails until they bled. He ate markers, and crayons, and glue, and even whole schoolbooks, tearing out a page at a time and wadding it into his mouth while their teacher wasn’t looking.

Jessie Lee sat next to him in class. She used to watch him, equally fascinated and repulsed, as he did these odd things. And she always left him alone, until the day Lester reached into his desk and took out Mr. Smiley, the classroom hamster. He put half of Mr. Smiley in his mouth and had already begun to chew when Jessie Lee screamed for the teacher.

Lester got in trouble. Big trouble. They took him out of school, and rumors were he went to a hospital for crazy people. But he came back after a few weeks, and when he sat down at his desk and stared at Jessie Lee he looked meaner than anyone she’d ever seen.

It happened at recess. Jessie Lee was playing four-square with her friends and Lester ran over, dropped to his knees, and bit her on the leg. Bit her and wouldn’t let go.

She kicked. She yelled. Her friends, two teachers, and the principal all tried to pull Lester off. But he clamped down like a pit bull, grinding her calf between his teeth, his cheeks puffing out with her blood.

They finally got him off by holding his nose until he passed out.

He never came back to school.

Jessie Lee needed one surgery to stop the bleeding, and two more to fix the scarring. She still retained the mark, a dimpled patch that never tanned.

She didn’t have any deep psychological problems after the attack, other than not being able to watch vampire movies. There were occasional nightmares, and a heightened sense of caution around strange dogs, but overall she recovered well. After that experience, Jessie Lee felt like she could handle anything. After all, what could be worse?

Now, hanging upside down by her knees over a stack of corpses in the boys’ locker room, she realized that there were things worse. That point hit home when she felt Taylor’s teeth on her knee.

Jessie Lee hadn’t been able to scream because of hyperventilating. Now she couldn’t get in any air at all. The psycho’s hands kneaded her bare thighs, and she felt his lips and tongue suck hard on her flesh, making hickies. Jessie Lee struggled to shake free, but her foot remained caught by her gold Omega anklet.

Hot breath, on her calf.

Then a nip; something a lover might do.

Every synapse in her brain seemed to fire at once, and Jessie Lee felt as if she would actually go insane with panic.

It got worse. The mouth moved higher, teeth and stubble brushing against her skin. Settling on the knee, opening wide to engulf the entire kneecap.

She knew what being bitten was like. How the skin broke and tore. How veins got pinched and severed. How muscle fiber felt while being gnawed.

And that’s when Jessie Lee Sloan began to thrash. Violently. Her body clenched and folded like a switchblade, her head and shoulders twisted back and forth, and a massive surge of adrenaline allowed her to flex her legs. The wire broke, and her foot finally came loose.

There was a millisecond of relief—Taylor’s mouth off her knee, her legs stretching out above her—and then she fell.

Jessie Lee landed, face-first, in a pile of her dead friends and neighbors. But she didn’t stay on top, nor did she roll off the side. The corpses shifted to accommodate her weight, parted, and she began to sink into the middle.

She flailed out her arms, trying to climb up, but struggling slicked her in blood and slippery fluids, making her slide down farther. Gory, lukewarm limbs poked her. Pale faces with rictus grins kissed her. More shifting, and a cadaver fell on top of Jessie Lee, sealing her in a decomposing human tomb. This fueled her hysteria, prompting more wiggling, advancing her descent. By the time she exerted enough self-control to stop squirming, Jessie Lee had burrowed halfway into the pile.

It was dark, but unfortunately not dark enough that she couldn’t see. The dead were stacked all around, smooshing Jessie Lee on all sides. Her face pressed against someone’s lacerated chest. Her right hand became stuck deep in a fatal neck wound. And the stench … death smelled like rotten carnations, an odor so powerful she tasted it on her tongue.

Jessie Lee tried to twist around and force her head into open air. She shoved the body above her—a man she recognized from church. His midsection bent upward and his head tilted down. Blood dripped from his mouth onto Jessie Lee’s face. She craned her neck, turning away, and it trickled into her ear.

The weight on her chest made it hard to breathe. Being bitten was horrible. Suffocating to death in a pile of corpses was even worse. Jessie Lee kicked out and the pile shifted again, pushing her face into someone’s urine-soaked crotch. Then, abruptly, bodies began to topple, and Jessie Lee rolled toward the back wall of the showers, smacking her head against the porcelain tile.

A moment passed, the dead settling into new positions. Jessie Lee’s legs burned now that the circulation had returned, and the bump on her head brought fresh tears. She moved her hand up to rub it but stopped when she heard footsteps.

Someone was in the shower.

She stayed still, eyes peering through bent elbows and twisted legs, straining to see the entrance. No good; her view was blocked.

Do I call for help? she thought. It might be someone from the gym, someone who could save her.

Or it might be Taylor.

Lowering her eyes, Jessie Lee examined her clothing and found herself drenched in gore. If she didn’t move she would look like just another corpse. He probably wouldn’t even notice her. She held her breath, waiting for Taylor to leave.

“… help me …”

The voice, coming from directly beneath her, made Jessie Lee gasp. She tilted her head and saw she was lying on top of Melody Montague, her elderly second-grade teacher. Less than an hour ago they’d been talking about the wedding.

Jessie Lee stared as the slash in Mrs. Montague’s neck oozed blood. But the wound hadn’t affected her voice, because again the woman said, “Help.”

And she said it louder this time.

Jessie Lee glanced back at the entrance to the shower, then to Mrs. Montague.

“Shh.” She touched her finger to Mrs. Montague’s lips. The old woman didn’t seem to notice.

“Please someone help me.”

Footsteps. Closer. Taylor, or whoever was in the shower room.

“… help …”

“I’ll help,” Jessie Lee whispered, “but you have to be quiet.”

Mrs. Montague’s eyes stared out into space, wide and unfocused. Her chin trembled. She began to shake her head.

Jessie Lee didn’t know what to do. Mrs. Montague was going to draw Taylor’s attention, and then he’d find them and kill them both. She willed her old teacher to stay still, to be quiet.

“… help me …”

The footsteps stopped on the other side of the pile. Through the tangle of bodies, Jessie Lee could see someone standing there.

“… please …”

Squeezing her eyes closed, Jessie Lee placed a hand over Mrs. Montague’s mouth. Mrs. Montague fought against her touch, so Jessie Lee pressed harder.

She needs to be quiet, Jessie Lee said to herself. She needs to hush, or we’ll both die. Please hush, Mrs. Montague.

Mrs. Montague moaned. Jessie Lee adjusted her hand to also cover Mrs. Montague’s nose.

Please be quiet, please be quiet, please be quiet …

In the shower, noise echoed. Jessie Lee held her own breath, held it along with Mrs. Montague, willing the footsteps to go away and leave them alone.

The moment stretched until it was spider-web thin.

Just a little longer, just a little longer, just …

Mrs. Montague stopped struggling.

Jessie Lee shook with effort not to breathe. Bright motes appeared before her eyes even though they were closed.

The footsteps receded, out the shower entrance, back into the boys’ locker room.

Jessie Lee sucked in a breath, then removed her hand from Mrs. Montague.

Her teacher’s lifeless eyes stared, accusing.

I … killed her.

Jessie Lee told herself she didn’t have a choice. They both would have died if they’d been found. Plus, Mrs. Montague was practically dead anyway.

Right?

A sob erupted from Jessie Lee, a long, hard sob that gained in volume until it became a scream.

She continued to scream until the footsteps came rushing back. And it turned out they didn’t belong to Taylor, after all.

“Hello, missy.”

“Oh, please … please help me …”

Jessie Lee reached for the figure over the wall of the dead.

The figure reached back—with a stun gun.

Josh pushed the Roadmaster to 50 mph, which was as fast as he dared on County Road JJ, the only road in and out of Safe Haven. Like many northern Wisconsin roads it boasted knots of turns and hills, all penned in by the woods. Deer leapt out of the tree line on a regular basis, and hitting one bigger than a hundred pounds could prove fatal to more than just the animal.

Josh snatched a look sideways. Duncan and Fran sat in the front seat with him. Fran now wore jeans and a sweater, both too large for her, and her thick blond hair had been tied back with a bright red scrunchie. Duncan’s attire fit better—jeans and a T-shirt from a boy his age. The clothes were loaners from a neighbor down the street. They hadn’t been home, but Fran watched their house when they went on vacation and knew they kept a spare key under the doormat. She was sure they’d understand.

Prior to dressing, Josh had bandaged Duncan’s leg wound. A pellet had stung him, leaving a bleeding welt. Josh didn’t think there were any lodged inside, but an x-ray would show for sure.

Fran’s injuries were harder to dress, especially without anesthetic. That psychopath Taylor had bitten off one of her toes and chewed much of the skin off another. Josh cleaned the wounds, taped gauze around them, and recommended Fran leave her foot shoeless. Fran met him halfway; she wore borrowed open-toe sandals.

Josh tried his cell again. Still no signal. He should be getting one soon, as he got closer to Shell Lake. They’d attempted to use the neighbor’s phone to call 911, but repeated attempts resulted only in a busy signal. It didn’t matter. Josh estimated they were ten minutes away from the hospital.

Though the evening had dished up countless horrors for all of them, the mood in the car was upbeat. As if they were heading for a carnival, or on vacation, rather than to a hospital and the authorities. Josh guessed their spirits were high because each of them felt ridiculously lucky to be alive.

“There’s Mystery Lake,” Duncan said, pointing as they passed. “Dad and I used to go there to catch bass. Do you know why it’s called Mystery Lake?”

Josh shook his head. “Tell me.”

“Because when they first named it, they couldn’t tell how deep it was. This was before depth finders. It’s deeper than Big Lake McDonald, even though it’s only thirty acres big.”

“How deep is it?”

“Over eighty feet. I bet there are some really big walleye and bass in there. Do you fish?”

“Only every single day I can.”

“Baitcast or spincast?”

Josh smiled. The kid knew his stuff. “Spincast, mostly. I use baitcast for muskie.”

“How big was your biggest muskie?”

“Thirty-two pounds, twelve ounces.”

“Wow! You use a spinner? Bucktail?”

“Muskie Jitterbug, frog color. The old wooden one. I think muskies like wood instead of plastic because it isn’t as hard to chomp down on. That gives you an extra fraction of a second to set the hook before they spit it out.”

Duncan leaned closer to Josh, pulling out of his mother’s protective hug.

“Will you take me muskie fishing?”

“Sure. I’ll take you and your mom.”

Duncan made a face. “Mom doesn’t like to fish.”

“Mom does like to fish.” Fran tousled Duncan’s hair. “She likes sitting on a boat, casting into the water. Mom just doesn’t like to catch fish.”

“It freaks her out,” Duncan explained. “Whenever she gets a bite she screams and hands me or Dad the pole. But we haven’t gone fishing since Dad died. When will you take us?”

“We can talk about that later.” Fran suddenly became cool. “Josh is a busy man. Very busy.”

Josh winced. Fran was giving him a dig because he never called her for another date. They’d gone out only a few times, but Josh had fled from the casual relationship before it developed into something deeper.

“Fran, about that. I owe you an explanation.”

He waited for Fran to say, “No, you don’t.” She didn’t. He went on.

“I told you about Annie before.”

“Who’s Annie?” Duncan had shuffled even closer to Josh, their legs now touching.

“She was the woman I was going to marry, but she got really sick. Before she died, she made me promise something.”

“What was it?”

“She made me promise that I’d live a long life.”

Josh pictured the hospital scene in his mind, holding Annie’s hand, her last wish that he wouldn’t die young like she had. He felt his eyes well up.

“That sounds like a big promise,” Duncan said.

Josh cleared his throat. “It was. And I took it very seriously. But then I became a fireman and planned on becoming a paramedic. I wanted to move to Madison, or Milwaukee. Someplace where I could make a difference.”

“But you make a difference here in Safe Haven,” Duncan said.

“How many fires have there been in Safe Haven? Well, before tonight?”

“None.”

“Exactly, none. So I wanted to go to a bigger city, where I could really help people. Save some lives. But because I made that promise, I decided I would stay here.”

“When was this?”

“About a year before I met you and your mom. And I kept my promise to Annie, I didn’t go to the big city. But I realized that was wrong. I wasn’t happy. I needed to go someplace else, someplace where I could do some good. So I started taking paramedic classes, and as soon as I finish I’m going to move out of Safe Haven.”

“Is that why you stopped dating Mom? Because you were leaving?”

“That’s why.”

“Mom said it was because you didn’t know a good thing when you saw it.”

Josh glanced at Fran, who was trying to control a smirk. He said, “Sometimes we know good things, Duncan, but we run away from them anyway.”

“I think—JOSH!”

Josh reacted instantly, slamming on the brakes, his hand shooting out in front of Duncan so the child didn’t pitch forward. The Roadmaster fishtailed, tires screeching, and then skidded to a stop on the gravel shoulder. Josh stared at the road, wondering what animal he’d almost hit. A possum? Raccoon?

Whatever it was, it hopped onto the hood and screeched, making all three of the car’s occupants jump in their seats.

“It’s … a monkey!” Duncan said.

A small, cinnamon-colored monkey, no more than a few pounds. It walked up to the windshield, knocked on it, and waved.

Duncan clapped his hands together. “That is so cool!”

Woof stuck his head over the back of Josh’s seat and woofed at the monkey. The monkey began to hoot, sounding a lot like an owl. Woof’s ears went up, and he began to howl, low-pitched and earnest. The animals continued this off-tune duet until Fran told Woof to sit down. The dog licked her face and complied, curling up into a ball on the back seat. The monkey clapped its hands, apparently pleased with the performance.

Duncan scooted forward, putting his hands on the dashboard. “We need to catch him.”

“That’s not a good idea, Duncan.” Fran rolled up her side window, even though it was barely open a crack. “Monkeys bite. And they carry diseases.”

“But look, Mom! He’s got a collar! He belongs to someone. I bet he’s lost.”

The monkey nodded his head, like he was agreeing with the boy. Duncan poked Josh on the shoulder.

“What do you think, Josh? Should we help him?”

Josh didn’t know of anyone in town who kept a monkey or any place in the area that sold them. Perhaps some tourist had lost him during summer vacation. Ultimately, it didn’t matter where the monkey came from. They had more pressing things to do than chase someone’s missing pet.

“I think we should leave him here, Duncan. Maybe his owner is nearby, looking for him.”

“But you said you wanted to help people. He needs our help. He’s all alone out here.”

Josh looked at Duncan and felt his will bend.

“Okay, we’ll help. I’ll check to see if he’s tame. Wait in the car.”

If the evening hadn’t been surreal enough, chasing a monkey put a nice capper on everything. Josh exited the vehicle and closed the door behind him, gently to avoid the loud noise. He smiled at the monkey and slowly held out his hand, feeling more than a little ridiculous.

“Hey, little fella. My name is Josh. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The monkey walked up to Josh, stuck out his own hand, and gripped Josh’s finger.

He wants to shake hands, Josh thought, amazed. He complied, keeping the motion easy and deliberate. The monkey then hopped onto Josh’s arm.

Josh stiffened. His first inclination was to shake the creature off, as he would any strange animal that latched on to him. But this monkey didn’t appear hostile. If anything, it seemed completely at ease. Josh kept still while it climbed up to his shoulder. Then it sat there, tiny hands running through Josh’s hair.

“I think he’s tame!” Josh heard Duncan yell through the car door.

Josh stood there for a moment. The monkey made no attempt to bite his ear off and didn’t seem sick or lethargic. Josh glanced at Duncan’s face, which had lit up to 120 watts.

“He seems safe,” Josh said to Fran. “But I won’t bring him in the car unless you say it’s okay.”

Duncan spun on Fran and began hitting her with mile-a-minute begging. Josh watched Fran sigh.

“Okay. But only until we locate his owner. And if he gets uppity, he goes.”

Fran received a big hug from her son, and then Duncan was opening up Josh’s door.

Josh sat down carefully, trying not to jostle the primate. Before he’d gotten halfway into the car, the monkey had leapt off his shoulder and into Duncan’s lap.

“Easy, Duncan,” Josh warned. “Don’t try to grab him. Let him get comfortable with you.”

The monkey held out a hand, just as he had with Josh. Duncan took it.

“Pleased to meet you. I’m Duncan.”

After a customary shake the monkey reached out for Fran. She grasped his tiny monkey paw with two fingers and introduced herself. He pumped her hand up and down. Fran’s laughter filled the car, sweet and musical. Josh grinned.

“He’s got a tag on his collar,” Duncan said. “His name is Mathison.”

Upon hearing his name, Mathison chattered in an obviously social manner. It sounded like a bird chirping. This prompted Woof to stick his nose over the seat for a sniff.

“Be good, Woof,” Duncan commanded. “He’s our friend.”

Mathison extended a hand to the dog. When it wasn’t shaken, he patted Woof on the head. Woof apparently decided the proceedings weren’t that interesting, because he withdrew and went back to sleep.

“Mathison is a New World monkey,” Duncan said. “We studied them in school. They come from South America. You can tell because he has a tail. I think he’s a cappuccino.”

“That’s capuchin,” Fran gently corrected. “And it looks like he’s got a scar on his head.”

Fran moved to touch it, and Mathison screeched at her, batting her hand away.

“Sensitive little guy.”

“I bet he’s hungry,” Duncan said. “Capuchin monkeys eat fruit and bugs. We should stop someplace.”

Josh marveled at Duncan’s resilience. Earlier he’d been shot at by his babysitter and almost burned alive. Children were remarkable. Josh and Annie had talked about having kids. If things had turned out differently, he would have wanted one like Duncan.

Josh started the car, checked his rearview, and then pulled back onto JJ. The turnoff onto the main highway was in a mile or two. Then, on to the ER. Josh wondered what would be open this late where he could get some monkey food. A gas station, probably. Pick up some peanuts, or raisins, or maybe fresh fruit. There was a Farm and Fleet that sold livestock feed. Maybe they would have—

“Thank God.”

Fran pointed to the road ahead. Josh saw the blinking red and blue lights in the distance. Lots of them. He cut his speed, waiting for them to approach.

Oddly, they stayed still.

“Why aren’t they coming?” Duncan asked.

Josh didn’t know, and he didn’t like it. He slowed down even further, then had to brake. Both lanes were blocked off with orange traffic cones and neon-yellow barrels. Josh pulled up to them and noticed two rows of steel stinger spikes on the asphalt, extending out into the woods on either side of the road. Josh had watched enough TV to know that police used the spikes to blow tires during high-speed chases.

Josh gazed beyond the roadblock. Parked fifty yards ahead were four police cars, several army Humvees, and an honest-to-God tank.

“DO NOT GET OUT OF YOUR VEHICLE! TURN AROUND AND HEAD BACK IN THE DIRECTION YOU CAME FROM!”

“Why do they want us to go back?” Duncan asked. He scooted closer to Josh again.

“I have no idea, Duncan.”

Josh reached for the door handle. Fran grabbed his arm.

“Maybe you shouldn’t do that, Josh.”

“What are they going to do? Shoot me?”

He opened the door and three shots punched through his driver’s-side window. The megaphone boomed again.

“STAY IN YOUR VEHICLE AND TURN AROUND!”

Josh’s pants were peppered with tiny square bits of glass. He noticed his hands were shaking. Next to him Fran and Duncan were ducking down, covering their heads. Mathison had jumped into the back seat, where he and Woof huddled together on the car floor.

What the hell were these people doing, shooting at civilians?

“I’m driving a woman and child!” He yelled through the open door but decided to keep his head inside the car. “They need medical attention!”

“TURN YOUR VEHICLE AROUND!”

“Damn it, we need help! We’ve been attacked! We need to get to a hospital!”

“YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO TURN AROUND, THEN WE’LL OPEN FIRE.”

Josh stared impotently at Fran, not knowing what they should do.

“We have to go,” Fran said.

“Where?”

“Maybe we can park someplace and walk to the road.”

“There are at least thirty army guys out there. They have a tank.”

“I thought the army was supposed to help us,” Duncan said.

“YOU NOW HAVE FIVE SECONDS!”

Josh had no choice. He backed up and continued driving backward until he felt safe enough to close his door and make a three-point turn.

“Now what?” he asked Fran. “This is the only road in and out of Safe Haven.”

“We could go back to my neighbor’s house. There’s obviously something going on. It looks like the authorities are aware of the situation. Maybe we should lie low, wait it out.”

Josh wasn’t convinced. He tried to come up with a scenario where the military would put up roadblocks. A quarantine of some kind? Were Bernie, Taylor, Santiago, and Ajax here to spread some sort of germ or poison? Or was this a media blackout, ensuring news didn’t spread? That could explain the phone problems they’d been having—someone might be jamming the signals and blocking the land lines.

“You need to see a doctor.” Josh stared at Fran so she could see how serious he was. “As soon as possible. Duncan does, too. And I’m not sure going back to Safe Haven is a smart idea.”

“How about Doc Wainwright?” Duncan asked. “He gives me my shots every year.”

Doc Wainwright had a clinic in town, open Tuesday and Thursday. The other days of the week he divided his time between Shell Lake and Eau Claire.

“He won’t be open now, Duncan,” Fran said.

“Can’t we go to his house? He told me he lives on the lake.”

Josh considered it. Wainwright had a house on Big Lake McDonald, on the shore opposite the Mortons’. But Fran needed more than a few stitches and some antibiotics. She needed surgery.

Still, Wainwright was better than not doing anything.

“Doc Wainwright it is,” Josh said. He hit the gas and then had to slam on the brakes once again to avoid hitting the man standing in the middle of the road.

Streng and Erwin walked the still-docile Bernie over to the sheriff’s Jeep. Streng locked him in the back and tossed the McDonald’s bag full of Bernie’s things onto the floor of the front seat. Then Streng turned his attention to Sal Morton’s house.

“He twisted off Sal’s head, Sheriff. Like a bottle cap.”

Streng had no reason to doubt Josh. And he really didn’t want to go back into that house and see what his cousin had seen. But he’d dropped his .45 on the roof, and he’d feel much safer riding with Bernie if he had it back.

“Erwin, you and Olen come with me, help find my gun.”

Erwin’s face pinched. “I really need to get to the junior high, Sheriff. If those soldier guys have the mayor, then that whole lottery story could be BS. My fiancée is there.”

From what Streng understood, much of the town had gone to that lottery thing. Surely there was safety in numbers. But Streng wasn’t going to prevent Erwin from looking after his own.

“Okay. I’ll meet you there after I drop off Bernie at my office. If anything strange is going on, grab your girl and run.”

“You don’t need to tell me twice. See you later, Sheriff.”

“Good luck, Erwin.”

The men clasped hands, but it felt forced. Or perhaps final. Then Erwin headed back to the Honey Wagon, and Streng again focused on the house. His recent bad experience prompted memory flashes of fear and panic. He pushed those memories aside, shined Olen’s dirty flashlight at the front door, and made himself walk toward it.

Darkness and silence greeted Streng as he entered. Though the commonly accepted veteran stereotype spoke otherwise, Streng never had posttraumatic stress disorder, never had any kind of flashbacks. He’d seen some horrible things in the war and still had occasional bad dreams, but he managed to escape Vietnam with both his mind and his body intact.

Stepping into Sal’s house, though, brought back a feeling he hadn’t experienced in more than thirty years. The hell that was patrol.

Streng hated patrol. You had an equal chance of dying no matter how quiet you were, how careful you were. During those nighttime missions Streng felt like he had a hundred bull’s-eyes on his body, each one with rifle crosshairs zeroing in on a different body part. Nowhere to hide, and running was useless. The Cong were part of the jungle, and every tree, every rock, every shadow had deadly potential. All you could do was stay low and hope.

That same feeling enveloped Streng as he crept into Sal’s house for the second time that night. The feeling of being watched, hunted. Except this time he didn’t have a gun, just a Ka-Bar knife. Not that it mattered much. If Santiago was waiting in the shadows, Streng doubted anything less than a rocket launcher would keep him at bay.

He took the stairs slowly, shining the light on each step so he didn’t trip, pausing every three steps to listen. Streng’s injured kidney throbbed in time with his heartbeat. Halfway up the staircase the odor of death hit, and hit hard. Streng switched to breathing through his mouth, which didn’t help much. He pressed his hand hard against his aching side and ascended to Sal’s bedroom.

A snatch of childhood skipped across Streng’s mind, him and Wiley and cousin Sal, climbing the fence to the Safe Haven cemetery on Halloween night to prove their preteen bravery. Streng, the youngest of the trio, had been terrified, and before they took more than a dozen steps on hallowed ground he froze, refusing to move.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Sal had told him. “Everyone here is dead.”

“I’m not afraid of the dead,” Streng remembered saying. “I’m afraid of what made them dead.”

Streng thought he’d come a long way since those childhood years, a long way from being a grunt, from being a rookie cop. But much as a man matured, he stayed the same man. With the same fears.

The sheriff of Ashburn County steeled himself as best he could, pure will forcing emotional detachment, refusing to be swayed by the horrors that he would witness. Then he went into the bedroom.

There was blood. A lot of blood. Painted in black Jackson Pollock madness, thrown across the bedspread, the walls, the carpet.

But there were no bodies.

Streng’s shoes made squishing sounds as he walked to the closet, its sliding door closed. He opened it fast, stepping back, pointing the flashlight inside. The beam exposed some hanging shirts and a laundry hamper.

Where were they? Who could have taken them? Santiago and Ajax didn’t have time to dispose of the bodies—they’d been right behind Streng and Josh. Unless …

Unless they came back for them.

The gray hairs on Streng’s arms pricked out like a porcupine, and he had that tingle/surge in his belly that brought instant flop sweat. He could feel the sniper rifles aimed at him, ready to fire, and knew he had to get out of there as fast as possible.

Streng spun and saw Santiago standing in the doorway.

“I guessed you’d come back for your car,” he said.

I’m going to die, Streng thought. Horribly.

He wanted to ask what happened to Sal and Maggie, but his throat closed up. That was good—it prevented him from weeping. From begging.

“I’m going to enjoy making you scream,” Santiago whispered.

Somewhere, within the old body, the young man’s training kicked in, and Streng moved. He feinted left with the knife, then tried to get around Santiago, driving his shoulder into him, hoping momentum would take him to the stairs.

Santiago took the hit and grasped Streng by the shoulder, yanking the sheriff off of his feet. Streng got shoved to the floor, Santiago pouring onto him like liquid. The knife was pried from his grip and tossed aside. Streng reared back the flashlight and lashed out, catching the soldier in the chin. There was a delicious, revolting cracking sound, and Santiago’s head snapped back. But he stayed on Streng, his hands pinning down the sheriff’s arms, squeezing, forcing him to drop the flashlight.

“I think you broke my cheekbone.” Santiago’s words were slow, slurred.

Streng hoped he broke every bone in his goddamn head. He wanted to say that aloud, to show some defiance. But he knew he was trapped, knew the pain was coming, and he was afraid if he opened his mouth he’d vomit from fear. Blood—his cousin’s blood—soaked through the back of his shirt and pants, cold and wet. He smelled death, and staring up into Santiago’s dark eyes, he saw it, as well.

“Give me the Charge.”

That was the same thing Bernie said. Was it something Streng took from them?

“Give it to me.”

Santiago’s hand moved down over Streng’s body, seeking out his tortured kidney. Jesus, no. Streng tried to find his voice, to tell him there was some Charge in the Jeep, when he remembered the metal case he’d taken off Santiago earlier.

“My pocket,” he managed to say. “I’ve got some in my pocket.”

He felt the killer’s hand pause on his midsection, and Streng braced for the agony, if bracing for it was even possible. But Santiago’s fingers passed, probing lower, patting down Streng’s pants, finding the case. The killer tugged it out and cradled it in his palms like a junkie with a fix.

Streng’s fist shot out, knocking the case across the room, onto the bed. Incredibly, Santiago leapt off of him, going after the Charge. Streng didn’t bother hunting down the Ka-Bar. Instead he rolled onto all fours and crawled like hell out of the bedroom, heading for the hallway. If he could make it down the stairs, make it to the car—

Ajax filled the staircase.

Streng went right, into the second bedroom. His shins pleaded with him to stop, but he picked up speed instead, crawling toward the broken window, the cool breeze promising freedom, his .45 waiting for him on the roof.

He bumped something in the darkness.

Streng couldn’t see, but he knew. His hands rested on a body, cool and still, and even though he didn’t want to do it he reached up the chest … up the shoulders … until he found the empty space and the slick, sharp knot of vertebrae where Sal’s head used to be.

Revulsion swirled within Streng, rooting him. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, but he could faintly hear someone coming into the room behind him, someone who wanted to kill him or worse. Streng crawled around his cousin, his leg brushing something that rolled, something that could only have been Sal’s severed head, and then his hands were on the shattered windowpane and he was pulling himself up and Ajax grabbed him by the shoulder.

Streng tried to duck under the gigantic hand, but it locked under his armpit and tugged violently, hurling him across the room. His back hit something—a dresser or desk—bringing a rainbow banner of pain before Streng’s eyes. Then he fell, face-first, to the floor.

“Bring him,” Santiago said, or perhaps Streng imagined it. Ajax grabbed his ankle, pulled him across the carpeting, and Streng cast about frantically anything to grab. He touched something—something cold and sticky that felt like jelly.

But it wasn’t jelly.

It was Maggie.

The jelly feeling came from exposed fat and muscle, most of her skin having been peeled off.

Streng wrapped his fingers around her wrist, and for a moment his body stretched between Ajax and his cousin’s wife. Then the giant jerked hard, breaking Streng’s grip, making his face skip across the rug and causing a friction burn on his cheek. He was hauled into the hallway, past the staircase—so close yet so out of reach—and into Sal’s bedroom, where Ajax lifted him by his leg and held him upside down like a little girl’s doll.

Santiago had the flashlight tucked under his arm. Between his thumb and index finger, held at mouth level, was one of those capsules. But rather than eat it, Santiago broke it open and sniffed the contents. Streng watched as the killer vibrated like he’d been plugged into an electric socket, and then a mirthless smile creased his face.

Ajax made an awful sound, an inarticulate vowel jumble that sounded like the cries of the deaf.

“You’ll get some in a moment.” Santiago pointed at Streng. “Bring him here.”

Ajax didn’t move. He moaned again, deep and cowlike. The blood pooling up in Streng’s head made it feel ready to burst.

“Now, Ajax. Then you’ll get some Charge.”

Ajax moved forward, and Streng’s knuckles dragged the floor and bumped something hard and sharp. The Ka-Bar. He latched on to it and almost laughed at his luck.

“No playing around this time, Sheriff,” Santiago said. “You’re going to tell me where your brother is. Ajax, break his knees. He won’t be needing them anymore.”

The Ka-Bar Warthog had a thick, heavy blade, and Streng swung it at Ajax’s knuckles like he was chopping down a sapling—hack hack hack—and the huge fingers released him.

Streng landed on his shoulder, rolled to all fours, and then leapt for the doorway. He took the stairs three at a time, moving faster than he had in more than twenty years. Miraculously, he made it outside without anyone grabbing or killing him.

His Jeep was parked less than fifty yards away. Streng sprinted, pushing past the pain in his legs, his side, his whole body. He dared a quick glance behind him and saw Ajax emerge from the doorway at full speed, fast enough to break through a brick wall.

Streng focused on his vehicle. Fifteen steps away.

Ten.

Eight.

Jesus, they’re almost on me.

Six.

Two.

He hit the driver’s side and reached for the handle, getting out of the door’s way as he yanked it open.

“Charge,” Bernie said from the back seat.

Streng tossed the Ka-Bar on the passenger seat, dug the car keys from his pocket, wasted two seconds trying to find the ignition, and started the vehicle just as Ajax slammed into it.

The impact jolted Streng, cracking his head against the window, bringing out the stars. With one hand he fumbled for the gear shift, and the other sought out and found the electric door lock. Streng manhandled the car into first and hit the gas.

A massive palm struck the front windshield, making a spiderweb mosaic out of the glass. The car lurched forward as Ajax’s hand broke through, reaching for the steering wheel. The giant caught it, holding on and allowing himself to be dragged up the dirt road alongside the Jeep.

Streng sought out, and found, the Ka-Bar. As the Jeep bounced around and Ajax banged on the door, Streng stabbed at the giant’s hand, over and over, the knife tip gouging bone. Little fountains of blood erupted, bathing the sheriff’s lap. Streng stabbed hard, then twisted the blade. The fingers opened and Ajax released the wheel, his arm flailing out and pulling the shattered windshield from its mounting. Streng checked the rearview and watched the monster roll into the underbrush, and then his image disappeared because Bernie stood up from his seat, mouth open, his broken and bleeding teeth biting at Streng’s shoulder.

Streng smashed down the brake pedal. Bernie bounced forward and flopped next to him in the front seat, legs in the air, combat boots kicking like mad. One of them connected with the Ka-Bar, knocking it from Streng’s grasp.

Streng tugged the door handle and fell out of the car before he got his head stoved in. A ways down Gold Star Road, Ajax was getting to his feet, and farther, coming up fast, was Santiago running full tilt.

Streng ran around the front of the Jeep, opened the passenger door, and pulled out Bernie. Then he grabbed the soldier’s hair and drove his forehead once, twice, three times into the oversize steel-belted radial. That took the fight right out of him.

Streng risked another glance behind. Ajax had broken into a jog, and Santiago had taken the lead and would be on him in seconds.

Streng wrestled Bernie into the back, climbed across the passenger seat without bothering to close the door, and hit the accelerator. The Jeep’s tires bit into the road, kicking up sand and gravel, and then they finally found purchase and the vehicle lurched forward—but not before Santiago made it to the passenger door and tried to climb in.

The steering wheel dripped slick blood, but Streng clenched it tight and swerved hard, away from Santiago, ripping the open door from his grip. Then he popped the Jeep into second gear, punched the gas, and left Ajax and Santiago in the dust.

Wind whipped at the sheriff’s face through the empty space where his windshield used to be, irritating the rug burn on his cheek and burning his eyes, and Streng hurt in so many places he couldn’t even take inventory, but for the first time since this hellish ordeal began he managed a small grin.

“Not bad, old man,” he said to himself.

He headed toward Safe Haven.

Jessie Lee opened her eyes and looked around. She was still in the boys’ locker room, surrounded by blood and bodies. The chair she sat in was the same chair that she saw Merv, her boss, die in.

She filled her lungs and let out the loudest scream she could.

But all that came out was a gurgling wheeze, accompanied by the worst sore throat she’d ever had.

“I used this,” said a voice from behind her. A voice that wasn’t Taylor’s. Dangling in front of Jessie Lee’s eyes was a pair of surgical scissors, long and thin, bits of tissue clinging to their blades.

“Yelling brings unwanted attention. And who wants to bother and fuss with gags? Messy, disgusting things. So I snipped your vocal cords.”

Jessie Lee sobbed—a quiet, pitiful sound. She tried to stand up, but firm hands held her down.

“Taylor and I have a question to ask, and we’d like a quick answer. You’ve already taken up a lot of our time, and other people are anxious for their turn. And don’t worry about us hearing you—I can lip-read.”

Taylor stood before her, brushing dust and bits of insulation from his uniform. He cupped her chin, making Jessie Lee look at him.

“Where is Warren Streng?”

Jessie Lee shook her head. Warren was Sheriff Streng’s brother, old and eccentric. He had a shack in the woods somewhere. No one ever saw him.

“I don’t know,” she tried to say. It came out as a wet whisper.

Taylor crouched. His eyes revealed the depths of hell.

“Think hard. Think very hard.”

Jessie Lee wondered if she should make something up, wondered if that would buy her more time. But more time for what? A few extra hours with these psychopaths? Dying here, now, was almost certainly preferable to the worst that could happen. She closed her eyes, paging through her memories to come up with a last thought. Her mind settled on Erwin, the night he proposed. Awkward, stuttering, getting down on one knee during the halftime show at the Packers game, the JumboTron asking, “Jessie Lee, will you marry me?” He put a ring on her finger—a much bigger ring than he could afford—and when she hugged and kissed him, twenty thousand fans cheered.

They would have had a wonderful wedding. And a wonderful marriage. Jessie Lee pursed her lips. She could almost hear Erwin’s voice.

“I don’t care if I’m not allowed. I’m looking anyway.”

It was Erwin’s voice. Outside the locker room.

“You can’t go in there, Erwin.” Rick Hortach, the town treasurer. “You’ll ruin it for the rest of us.”

“I need to know if she’s in there, Rick. Get out of my way.”

Taylor stood up, but his partner said, “I’ll handle it—I’m dressed for it,” and walked around the corner to the locker room entrance.

Jessie Lee flushed with hope. She had to warn Erwin somehow, had to let him know what was happening.

“I’m sorry, sir.” Taylor’s partner talking. “You’ll have to wait your turn.”

“I’m looking for my fiancée, Jessie Lee Sloan. Is she in here?”

“ERWIN!” Jessie Lee screamed. She screamed with everything she had, until her shoulders quaked and her throat felt like it caught fire. But all that came out was a high-pitched hiss.

“Miss Sloan was here. She left about five minutes ago, with her lottery check.”

“HELP ME!” Jessie Lee tried to stand up, but Taylor swung his leg over her and straddled her lap. She twisted and shoved, and he wrapped a hand in her hair and forced her head back. Jessie Lee felt his lips, and then his warm teeth, on her neck.

“Why isn’t her name crossed off the list, then?”

“We’re getting around to it.”

“I’d like to take a look anyway.”

“I’m sorry, that’s not allowed.”

“ERWIN!” she cried out, one last time. The tears came fast but silent, and her chest heaved with sobs.

“You think you have a chance at getting away?” Taylor said, his breath hot on her ear. “No one gets away.”

Taylor nipped at her throat, and she shook her head NO NO NO NO NO …

“I know she’s in there,” Erwin said. “Get out of my way.”

Jessie Lee looked toward the entrance and saw Erwin—big, strong, wonderful Erwin—stride around the corner, his hands clenched into fists. He focused on the stack of bodies in the shower room and his mouth hung open.

“HERE!” Jessie Lee yelled. “I’M HERE!”

And Erwin’s eyes met hers and pierced her with hope, and then he was rushing at Taylor, bellowing in rage, arms open to grab him.

The knife appeared in Taylor’s hand so fast it was almost magic, and he leapt up and smoothly punched the blade into Erwin’s chest.

Erwin gasped. He fell to his knees, looked longingly at Jessie Lee, and then pitched forward onto his face.

Jessie Lee ran to the man she loved, burying her face into his back, trying to get her hands under him to put pressure on the wound even though his heart had already stopped beating.

She was so preoccupied with her efforts that Jessie Lee didn’t even feel it when Taylor came up behind her and slit her throat.

Fran hugged Duncan to her and stared at the man they’d almost run over. He stood in the middle of the road, only a few feet in front of their car. Tall, in camouflage military fatigues and a matching helmet, some sort of weapon strapped to his shoulder. He had his hands over his head and was waving, trying to flag them down.

“Drive!” Fran told Josh.

Mathison had other ideas. He hopped onto the dashboard and pointed at the man, hooting and chirping.

The man smiled and yelled, “Mathison?”

Josh glanced at Fran. “Your call. We can talk to him, or leave.”

“Hello?” The man took a step forward. “Do you have a monkey in there?”

Duncan looked up at her. “It’s his monkey, Mom. We should give him back.”

Fran used her fingertips to brush the bangs from her son’s eyes. He hadn’t lost his ability to trust people, to look on the good side of things, even after the night he’d endured. Fran didn’t think she could ever trust anyone in a uniform again.

“I’m a scientist,” the man said. “I’m here to help. Look, I’m putting down this weapon. I’m not even sure what it is.”

Fran had a tense moment when he unslung the big shotgun, but he quickly set it down on the road and raised his hands over his head.

“What do you think?” Josh asked.

Her gut told her they should leave. Even if Mathison did belong to this man, it could be sorted out later. Fran’s primary concern was Duncan’s safety.

“No one helped us, Mom. After the crash.”

Fran couldn’t believe that came from his lips. Duncan never talked about the accident. Not even in therapy. But she often wondered if he thought about it as often as she did.

It had been late, almost midnight. They were driving home from the annual rodeo in Spooner, a neighboring town. Just ten minutes away from home, her husband, Charles, had slowed down to take a sharp turn on the winding country road. Some nameless driver—either drunk or careless—had taken no such precaution, taking up both lanes and forcing Charles to swerve into the woods to avoid a collision.

Their car went down an embankment and hit a tree, rolling them over and trapping them inside. Charles had been horribly injured. But Fran remained hopeful. They had crashed only a few yards off the road. Someone would see them. Someone would stop.

Twenty-three cars passed them up that night. Fran knew, because she counted. As each one approached, she prayed they would see the wreck and help. Each time, her prayers had gone unanswered.

It took two hours for Charles to bleed to death. And another hour before they were finally discovered. She remembered talking to Duncan during that time, soothing him, even as her husband’s life spilled out of his wounds and onto her face. Fran assumed Duncan had blocked the memory. Apparently he hadn’t. She looked at her son now, so earnest, so strong, so full of hope, and felt such overwhelming pride it made her chest hurt.

“Okay,” she told Josh. “Let’s talk to him.”

Josh opened the car door and craned his head out the opening. But just as he began to speak, Mathison jumped off the dash and galloped to the man, leaping into his arms. Fran let out a long breath as she watched the happy reunion, her apprehension dropping a notch. The monkey hugged the man, the man hugged the monkey, and both parties engaged in some back patting. Then Mathison jumped down to the street and hopped back into the car, sitting on Duncan’s lap and prompting a delighted squeal from her son.

“I take it you two know each other,” Josh said to the man.

“We go back a long ways. May I approach? I’m guessing some bad things have happened tonight and you’re spooked.”

Fran nodded at Josh.

“Okay, you can come closer. But please keep your hands where I can see them. We’ve had one helluva night.”

The man walked forward, keeping his arms raised. He stopped next to Josh’s door and squatted. Up close Fran saw that he was older, perhaps late fifties, and so thin his Adam’s apple looked enormous. His helmet was askew, revealing a bald head dotted with liver spots. He smiled, his front teeth slightly crooked.

“I’m Dr. Ralph Stubin. You’ve met Mathison, I see.”

Woof walked over and gave Stubin a sniff, then began to bark.

“Woof!” Fran used her firm voice. “Shush!”

The dog woofed once more, then turned a circle and sat back down.

“Is Mathison yours?” Duncan asked Stubin.

“Yes and no. I bought him, but he’s a sentient being and really only belongs to himself. We’re friends more than anything.” Stubin stopped grinning, and his face became serious. “You’re probably wondering what’s going on here, and how I fit in. I’m guessing there’s a roadblock ahead?”

Josh nodded. Fran wondered why Josh didn’t speak and realized he was waiting for information before he decided to share any. Smart.

Stubin rubbed his pointy chin. “I was afraid of that. Standard operating procedure, I suppose. Have there been any casualties yet?”

“At least four people have died,” Josh said evenly.

“But we got away!” Duncan added.

Fran gave Duncan a small pinch on the bottom, a signal to stay quiet.

“You got away?” Stubin raised his thick gray eyebrows. “Extraordinary.”

“Do you know what’s going on?” Josh asked.

“I have an idea. This is kind of a long story, and I’m guessing you don’t want to invite me into your car. And rightfully so. Do you want to talk outside?”

Stubin’s eyes flashed to Duncan, then back to Fran. She understood. There were things her son didn’t need to hear.

“Duncan, stay in the car with Woof and Mathison.”

Duncan opened his mouth, apparently ready to protest, but then Mathison pulled himself onto Josh’s shoulder and began picking at his hair.

“He’s grooming you,” Stubin said. “He only does that with people he likes.”

“Can I pet him?” Duncan asked.

“He doesn’t like his head being touched, but he likes belly rubs.”

Duncan tentatively tickled Mathison’s midsection, and the primate cooed. Fran relished the big smile on Duncan’s face, then she and Josh got out of the Roadmaster. She met them by the front of the car.

Josh folded his arms and said, “Okay. Tell us what the hell is going on in this town.”

“May I ask your names?” Dr. Stubin asked.

Josh offered his first name only, and Fran followed his lead. There was a round of hand shaking, and Fran found Stubin’s palm to be hot and moist.

“Where to begin, where to begin?” Stubin laced his fingers together and rocked back on his heels, looking beyond them. “Okay. You’re familiar with terrorism, correct? Not the acts of terrorists so much, but the ideology behind terrorism.”

Josh answered. “Violence directed against civilians, meant to cause fear.”

Stubin nodded. “Excellent. Yes. It should be added that noncombatants are the targets, but the goal is to send a message to those in power. If you scare enough people, the thought is their government will change its policies. We erroneously believe that terrorism is used primarily by fundamentalists, or extremists. But that’s BS. All governments, even Western nations, support terrorists. Sometimes it’s through discreet funding—remember the Iran Contra scandal? The so-called freedom fighters that our government supported were a group of raping, murdering thugs, who destroyed more than a hundred Nicaraguan villages.”

“Is that what we’re facing here?” Josh asked. “Government-sponsored terrorism?”

Stubin frowned. “Actually, what you’re facing is much worse. In recent years, many countries have begun training their own terrorists rather than clandestinely funding them. These units are code-named Red-ops. Everyone has a Red-ops program. And one of them has accidentally landed in Safe Haven.”

Fran thought about Taylor. While he didn’t fit her conception of a terrorist, he certainly did his best to instill fear. “Who sent them?”

“I’m not in the Intelligence loop, but we think they’re Canadian. It’s very likely they got much of their training in the U.S., though.”

“But Canada is our ally,” Josh said.

“Yes. That’s sort of where I come in. I’m a brain surgeon who specializes in transhumanism. It’s a catchall phrase for making humans better with the help of technology. I’ve been working with our own military, experimenting with enhancing soldier performance. Mathison is one of my early successes.”

Fran glanced back at the car. Through the windshield she watched Duncan and Mathison playing what looked like patty-cake. “He seems pretty smart.”

“He’s very smart. It’s safe to say he’s the smartest animal who ever lived, except for human beings, and he’s probably smarter than a great many of those. I named him after Alan Mathison Turing, the grandfather of modern computers. Turing invented machines that run sequentially, figuring out tasks in linear fashion. The human brain, however, is a parallel processor, absorbing and dealing with a lot of information at once. For example, right now you’re looking at me, and listening to my words. But at the same time you can feel the cool breeze, see what’s going on behind me, plus you’re already formulating more questions to ask, and performing dozens of other biological and sensory processes at the same time. A lot of recent research has been done, trying to make computers more human. My research is opposite—implanting neuroprosthetic devices to make human beings act like computers.”

“Brainwashing,” Josh said. He didn’t sound enthused.

“More like programming. The chip allows for the downloading of information directly into the brain, just like running a program on your computer. When the program is initiated, the subject can function with pinpoint efficiency, able to complete tasks that would normally require years of training. For example, here’s one of Mathison’s programs, initiated by a simple word command.” Stubin snapped his fingers, getting the monkey’s attention. “Mathison!” he called to the car. “Dance, please.”

Fran watched as Mathison hopped through the side window and onto the hood. The primate stood on two legs and stuck one paw out in front of him. Then the other. He turned up one palm, the other palm, touched his head with one hand, then the other hand …

“Is that … ?” Josh asked.

Stubin nodded. “Yes. He’s doing the Macarena.”

Duncan clapped his hands, delighted. Fran was amused at first, but the display quickly became sort of sad. It reminded her of that old movie A Clockwork Orange.

“How long will he dance for?”

“Until the song ends. We can’t hear it, but it’s programmed onto the chip in his head. The technology is really quite revolutionary. I’ve been able to grow neurons—actual brain cells—on the silicon of integrated circuits. The neurons actually bridge the gaps between transistors, which transmit electrical impulses just like neurotransmitters. Mathison’s dance is a computer program, but to him it feels more like an irresistible thought or impulse. All other thoughts are overridden. As such, he can do things no other monkey can do, without ever even having to practice. Very much like savants can play an entire concerto after only hearing it once, or solve complex mathematical problems without a calculator. With this breakthrough it is now possible to bypass education and automatically download professions into people’s brains. With the right program, a man can have all of the skills of a surgeon, or a lawyer, or a mechanic.”

Josh said, “Or a terrorist.”

“I’m afraid it appears my Canadian colleagues have done just that.”

Fran folded her arms. “And you haven’t?”

Stubin eyed her, and Fran could detect a sliver of distaste. “I haven’t worked on humans. The U.S. government won’t allow it. But imagine having a group of soldiers who could follow complicated, specific orders, better and faster, without questioning them.”

“We don’t have to imagine them,” Josh said. “They’re here in Safe Haven.”

Mathison finished his dance, and Duncan applauded. Fran scanned the tree line, suddenly feeling very exposed. Stubin didn’t seem worried.

“The army asked me to come here, to lend my expertise. But I’m afraid the Special Forces unit I came with was killed. I’m trying to get into town where I can contact my superiors.” He glanced at the broken window, and then up the road. “I’m guessing the people at the roadblock weren’t very welcoming.”

“So why are the Red-ops here?” Fran asked.

Stubin adjusted his helmet, and it slipped right back into its original position. “As far as I know, this Red-ops unit crashed here accidentally, and they’re carrying out their objective and treating your town like an enemy territory.”

“What’s their objective?”

“Isolate. Terrorize. Annihilate. That’s what they do.”

“Then why were they asking about Warren?”

Stubin blinked. “Warren?”

“He’s the sheriff’s brother. If they came here by accident, how do they know about Warren?”

“That’s also standard operating procedure. When a Red-ops unit invades a town, they seek out information—phone books, directories, and such—and memorize it.”

Fran frowned. “Taylor called me by my name. How did he know it was me? My picture isn’t in the phone book.”

Stubin shrugged. “They might have accessed the state driver’s license database. Or maybe he looked through your personal belongings. He attacked you?”

“At the diner where I work.”

“The diner? Do you wear a name tag?”

Fran did wear a name tag. She flushed, feeling stupid. But it still didn’t make sense.

“Taylor knew about Duncan.”

“Duncan?”

“My son. Bernie had gone after Duncan.”

Stubin stared at her for a few seconds before he spoke. “I have no idea how they knew that. This makes it a lot worse.”

Fran didn’t know how this could possibly get any worse, but she asked anyway.

“Perhaps the Red-ops units didn’t crash here accidentally,” Stubin said. “Perhaps they’re here on purpose.”

Taylor looked at the woman bleeding out on the shower floor and felt remorse. She was a tasty little morsel, but he hadn’t had the opportunity to really enjoy her. He recalled his past, before death row, and the women he’d been with. There was one girl, in Chicago, a tiny thing with fingers like pretzels that went crunch crunch—

Taylor experienced something like a flashbulb going off in his head, and before the memory became too pronounced the Chip sensed the deviation from the program and rebooted. Without thinking he reached for his case and removed a Charge capsule, breaking it under his nostrils. The fumes—a mixture of acetylcholine, trichloroethylene, amyl nitrite, and several other proprietary ingredients—traveled up his nasal passage, entered his lungs, and then permeated his bloodstream. From there the chemicals reached the brain and defragmented the memory center, clearing it of all unnecessary neurotransmitters.

Taylor stopped thinking about the past and once again reverted to Chip protocol. Interrogate townspeople. Find Warren Streng.

He looked at his partner, Logan, who wore civilian clothes rather than the black body armor, the result of changing soon after they’d landed. Logan enjoyed bloodshed as much as Taylor did and had been the lucky one chosen to kill their handlers in the helicopter, cutting their throats so deeply their heads were practically severed. Taylor would have liked that duty, but he’d been busy helping Santiago set the charges, blowing up the chopper to make it look like it had crashed. In the unlikely event they were caught, the government could claim it was an accident, rather than intentional.

Though the Chip didn’t allow for personal feelings to get in the way of the mission, if Taylor were to pick his favorite team member it would be Logan. They had similar backgrounds. Both were serial killers, with oral fixations. Both equated pain with sexual arousal. Both were behind bars when the Red-ops recruited them. If it wasn’t for one vital difference, they might have been identical twins.

Logan was currently dressed as a townie, but it didn’t fool many people, because everyone here knew who everyone else was and could spot strangers instantly. But if everyone knew everyone, why were they having so much trouble locating Warren?

“Erwin? You in there?”

A male voice, coming from around the corner. Taylor nodded at Logan, who quickly intercepted.

“You’re not allowed back here, sir.”

“My buddy Erwin just went in there.”

“He left.”

“He didn’t leave. I’ve been standing here the whole time. Look, I’ve seen some crazy shit tonight and I just want to make sure … Jesus Christ.”

The man had gotten past Logan and stood in the locker room, taking in the carnage. He was short and bearded and wore filthy overalls and a filthy baseball cap. Taylor could smell the sewage on him from ten feet away.

Logan came up behind the man, placing a knife to his throat. Taylor shuffled over. The name OLEN was stitched onto the man’s bibs.

“Hello, Olen. Where’s Warren Streng?”

Olen’s lower lip bounced like it was made of rubber. “Wiley? He lives on Deer Tick Road, on the little lake.”

Taylor moved closer, getting in Olen’s face. He noted that even the man’s teeth were stained gray.

“You actually know where he lives?”

Olen appeared ready to cry. “I … I cleaned out his septic tank a while back.”

“Do you have his address?”

“Wiley doesn’t exactly have an address. He likes to live off the grid, he says. No mail. No utilities. Only comes into town once in a while.”

That explained the trouble they’d been having.

“Whether or not you die depends on how you answer my next question. Can you take us there?”

Logan drew a little blood on Olen’s neck to drive the point home.

“Yeah … yeah, I can … no problem.”

“Good,” soothed Taylor. “Very good.”

A thought, or the chemical/electric approximation of a thought, flashed full-blown into Taylor’s mind.

Eliminate townspeople.

He guessed it appeared in his partner’s head, as well, because Logan was already kneeling by the backpack and removing gas masks. Taylor forced one onto Olen’s face and put one on himself. Then he and Logan donned clear plastic ponchos, gloves, and leggings, and each strapped on a bandolier of aerosol canisters.

“If you try to run, I’ll pull off your mask,” Taylor told Olen. “And you wouldn’t like that.”

The three of them walked out of the locker room, into the gymnasium. The crowd of over three hundred didn’t react immediately. It took a few seconds for them to notice the gas masks and a few more seconds for them to question what was happening.

By that time Taylor had already activated and thrown two cans, Logan three. The hydrogen cyanide gas was colorless but carried the odor of bitter almonds. The canisters hissed as they rolled through the bleachers, and the smell—coupled with the trio’s attire—induced panic. Screams popped up here and there, then mingled and joined into a communal wail that sounded as if it came from a single entity.

People tumbled over each other, tripping down the riser stairs, falling and trampling and stampeding toward the exits, which did no good because they’d been previously locked. A foolish man rushed Logan, who slashed open his trachea before being touched. Taylor kept Olen in his sights but probably didn’t need to bother; the sewage man seemed frozen to the spot.

After sixty seconds the panicked screams were replaced by another sound: wheezing. The gas entered their bodies through the lungs and mucus membranes, and it quickly induced runny noses, dilated pupils, and tightening of the chest. This was followed by coughing, panting, throwing up, urinating, and defecating. Then came convulsions and death.

Taylor found it quite enjoyable to watch. He’d been recruited by the Red-ops, secretly saved from death row, because of his appetite for death. For him, killing was like riding a roller coaster or seeing a good movie. His levels of serotonin and dopamine rose, prompting a sense of well-being and pleasure. The Chip enhanced this effect. Taylor licked his lips, and his heart rate increased, but he made no attempt to touch his growing erection. Rape wasn’t in the programming today.

The three of them stood there for almost five minutes. Not everyone died, but those that still breathed were comatose or on their way. Taylor was grateful that the gas mask filtered out odors, because the gym was lousy with bodily fluids. He tugged Olen by the arm and followed Logan to the table near the gym entrance, watching his step. The town treasurer still sat at the table, mouth open and eyes bugged out. He’d managed to get the keys out of his pocket but died before being able to use them. Logan tugged them from his hand.

It took a bit of pulling and pushing to move the large pile of bodies away from the door, and when they got to the bottom of the stack Taylor was tickled to see Mayor Durlock still alive, twitching and wheezing. His chest and face were speckled with bloody vomit, and the front of his pants was stained.

Taylor bent down so the mayor could hear him.

“I lied to you about seeing your wife and daughter again. They’re already dead. But thanks for helping out.”

Mayor Durlock’s face contorted into a lovely mix of shock and anguish, which morphed into pure pain when Logan cut out his eyes. Logan tossed one to Taylor.

“I’ve got an eye on you.”

Then Logan’s face went blank. The Chip, rebooting. No time for play right now.

Taylor unlocked the door and dragged Olen outside.

“Where’s your vehicle?” Taylor asked.

Olen didn’t answer, but he did raise his hand and point to a tanker truck with a skunk painted on the side.

“How far is Warren Streng’s place from here?”

Olen stayed silent. Logan poked him in the stomach with the knife, slipping the blade in an inch.

Olen flinched violently, letting out a scream.

“How far?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

Taylor and Logan exchanged a knowing look.

“You have ten minutes to get us there,” Logan said, “or I’ll feed you your own liver.”

As they got into the truck, the Chip initiated another thought in Taylor’s head. Call the others. He held open his plastic leggings and tugged the Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service Communicator out of his front pocket. He slid back the cover on the MMDSC and held it to his head like a cell phone, speaking loudly to overcome the distortions of the gas mask.

“Head bird acquired. Stand by for directions to the nest.”

The Honey Wagon pulled out of the parking lot and onto Main Street, and Logan again poked Olen with the knife, for no particular reason. Taylor smiled; he wasn’t the only one aroused by the pain of others. He mentally ran through the next few objectives, and he closed his eyes and pictured the last one. The one that missions always ended with. Have fun.

All good soldiers got to partake in a little rest and relaxation when combat duties were finished. Sometimes R&R lasted for days before evac was called. He’d be free to indulge in whatever warped fantasies he could dream up. No rules. No laws. No repercussions. He hoped there would be a few survivors left for playtime. Maybe that sexy waitress, Fran. Taylor smiled. Her blood had been deliciously salty.

The Chip sensed the electrochemical changes in Taylor’s cerebral cortex and rebooted. Taylor dug out a Charge capsule and slipped it up under his gas mask.

The fumes took away the daydreams. But Taylor’s smile stayed.

Streng pulled into the Water Department parking lot and had his choice of spaces. He parked in the handicapped zone because it was closest to the front door.

Bernie had behaved for the remainder of the ride, sitting silently and staring straight ahead. Streng flipped on the interior light and turned around, studying his captive. Bernie’s face had swelled up even more, purple and red hues peeking though the dried blood. Streng noted the lump on his forehead where he’d introduced Bernie to his thirty-two-inch tires and didn’t feel a shred of pity. Though the killer was beaten, acting docile, and still had his hands tied behind him, Streng wouldn’t relax until he was locked in the drunk tank.

The sheriff considered his next move. He kept a spare gun in his office. Streng didn’t want to risk moving Bernie without being armed, but if he left him in the Jeep he could climb out the broken front window and run away. Streng decided he’d put Bernie’s seat belt on; it’d be impossible for him to escape without using his hands.

Streng kept his eyes on Bernie’s eyes and slowly reached for the belt. This required Streng to lean between the seats, exposing his face and neck to Bernie’s few remaining teeth. The farther he reached, the closer he got, until they were face to face. He smelled Bernie’s breath, metallic and hot. Bernie’s eyes were dark brown, almost black, and betrayed nothing. If eyes were the windows to the soul, this man had none.

What turns a person into a monster like this? Training? Some horrible event in his past? Genetics? How does a man lose his humanity?

Streng felt around Bernie’s hips for the seat belt but couldn’t find it. He’d have to lower his eyes to look. It would take only a second or two. What could happen in a second or two?

“Fuck that,” Streng said. He withdrew his hand, grabbed the Ka-Bar knife, and stepped out of the Jeep. Then he opened up the rear door and put the blade tight against Bernie’s throat, revealing a gnarled mass of pink scar tissue at his collar line.

“You move, you die,” he said.

He located the seat belt, pulled it around the pyro, and locked it in place.

“He burned me,” Bernie said, startling Streng. “Daddy did it, to make me stop playing with matches.”

Streng pulled away from him and said, “I really don’t care.”

Bernie went on. “He put my—my arm—on the stove, and he … held it there. I had to count, count to ten. I keep seeing it. I keep feeling it.”

Streng walked back to the front seat. He dug the office keys out of his glove compartment and picked up the McDonald’s bag full of Bernie’s belongings from the passenger-seat floor.

Bernie said, “I don’t, I really don’t, want to remember. Stop it, Daddy! Stop hurting me!” Bernie’s eyes pleaded with Streng. “Make it stop.” Then he began to shake and moan, tears forming ski trails in the blood on his cheeks.

“We can’t control what happens to us,” Streng said, recalling something his father used to say. “Only how we react to what happens.”

Dad had been a lumberjack. He’d been deep in the woods, scouting virgin forest, when a tree fell and pinned his leg. He had his hunting knife with him and spent two days drinking rainwater and hacking away at the tree and the ground. Neither one gave way. So on the third day he went to work on his leg. Streng remembered his father telling the story, about trying not to scream while he did it, for fear of attracting coyotes, and how the bone wouldn’t cut so he had to use a large rock to break it. He crawled three miles through the woods, during a terrible storm, and when he finally made it to safety the first thing out of his mouth was to ask for a beer.

Dad wasn’t bitter about it. In fact, as soon as he was well enough he went back to the tree and cut a section from it, from which he carved a wooden leg. Then he opened a bar in Safe Haven and named it Stumpy’s, which thrived until his death years ago.

If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Another of his father’s optimistic expressions. Dad was always quoting those. Streng didn’t know if he’d have the guts to do what his old man did, and then the bravery to carry on, but he hoped so. He also hoped he’d never have to find out.

Bernie, however, didn’t seem cut from the same cloth.

“CHARGE!” Bernie screamed, straining against the seat belt. “I NEED CHARGE! MAKE THE MEMORY GO AWAY!”

Streng took that as his cue to leave. The Water Department, like every other building he’d passed on the way over, had no electricity and was dark as death. Streng found one of Bernie’s lighters in the sack and flipped it on, using it to light his way. He opened the glass front door and limped past the secretary’s desk, down a tiled hall, to the unisex washroom. He caught his reflection in the mirror and wasn’t surprised to see he looked like hell. The orange light, and the flickering shadows, made Streng think of cavemen for some reason, primeval campfires from long ago.

Streng set the high-tech lighter on the sink with the catch depressed so it stayed on, and he unbuckled his holster and pants. Taking them off brought sparks of pain, sparks that became full-blown forest fires when he made himself urinate. The dark brown color reinforced Streng’s conviction that he needed to get to a hospital.

He flushed, then used the sink to splash water on his face and neck. He also washed his groin, ashamed he’d wet himself earlier. Part of him knew that it wasn’t his fault—any healthy young buck would have pissed having his kidney mangled. But a louder, meaner part told him to get used to it, because he was an old man who would soon be in diapers.

Streng told that louder, meaner part to shut up.

He picked up the torch and his stained pants and walked in underwear and socks to his office, two doors down. Streng tried the phone on his desk. Everything he dialed resulted in a busy signal. He had similar results with his cell.

The sheriff wasn’t surprised. Something big was happening, and if the bad guys didn’t kill the phone lines, there was a chance the good guys had done it to make sure no word of what was happening leaked out. Bless our government and their cover-your-ass policy.

In his closet he had an extra pair of slacks. No extra underwear, but he’d live with that. He stripped off his boxer shorts, set the dirty clothes on a shelf, and pulled on the fresh khakis. On his desk was a bottle of Tylenol. He dry-swallowed three. Then he unlocked his desk drawer and removed a .357 Colt Python and a partial box of ammo. Streng knew it was loaded, but decades of being around firearms made him check anyway.

He also hunted for and found his Mini Fry stun gun in the drawer—the same size and shape as a pack of cigarettes, and it delivered 900,000 brain-scrambling volts. Streng flipped the side switch and the battery indicator glowed green.

Back at the closet, Streng strapped on a holster for the Colt and a nylon fanny pack that Sal bought him for his sixtieth birthday. Streng had refused to accept the gift, calling it a “man purse.” Sal insisted, saying that since Streng was now an old fart he needed something to carry all of his medication around. They laughed, drank too much, and Streng hung it in this closet and forgot about it. Now he snapped it onto his waist and thought about Sal as he filled it with the ammo, the Ka-Bar, the stun gun, Bernie’s lighters, Bernie’s container of Charge capsules, some matches, the Tylenol, and the electronic communicator thing, which vibrated just as Streng picked it up.

It reminded Streng of a Zippo, but slightly larger. A shell of black metal, no obvious buttons or switches, with an outlet in the bottom to plug in a cord. It vibrated again. A pager of some kind? Streng squeezed the top, tapped it on his desk, and pressed the sides. Nothing happened. Then he noticed a tiny seam along the back. He held the bottom, pulled the top, and the cover slid open, revealing a text message on a small green phosphorus screen.

Head bird acquired. Stand by for directions to the nest.

Streng felt a surge of anger. They must have found Wiley.

He played with the device for a few seconds, trying to retrieve older messages, but it didn’t seem to have that function. It didn’t have a keyboard, either, or any way to send text messages. Just a single button and a small speaker to talk into. Streng figured it translated speech into text, then sent it via microwave or some other high frequency. He tucked it into his man purse and zipped it closed.

Time to move Bernie.

He picked up the lighter, palmed the Mini Fry, and headed back to his Jeep. Bernie’s fit had ended and he sat quietly, staring straight ahead. Streng got into the back seat with him, wondering how a man so obviously crazy could be recruited by an elite commando unit. Something to do with those Charge capsules? Ultimately he didn’t care. Understanding Bernie was much less important than incapacitating him.

Streng didn’t fool around. He used the stun gun.

He held the device to Bernie’s neck, the two protruding metal prongs connecting with his skin, and pressed the button to discharge the weapon.

A crackling sound accompanied the white spark, and almost a million volts surged into Bernie’s body, disrupting the electrical impulses the nervous system sent to the muscles, causing them to rapidly contract.

Streng knew from experience how it worked—when he’d bought the device he tried it out on himself with the help of a coworker. A one-second burst brought blinding pain. A two-second burst brought extreme muscle spasms. Three seconds could knock a person down, rapidly converting blood sugar into lactic acid and causing instant energy loss. Four seconds brought dizziness and disorientation. Five seconds could pacify even the most determined attacker for up to a few minutes.

Streng hit Bernie with a five-second burst. Bernie jerked, shook for a bit, then flopped over. Streng gave him a hard slap on the cheek to see if he reacted. He didn’t. Streng kept the Mini Fry pressed to Bernie’s side in case he needed another jolt and used his free hand to unbuckle him. Then he half pulled/half coaxed Bernie out of the car and onto his feet. The killer weaved a bit. Streng grabbed on to the back of his collar to steady him.

“Electricity,” Bernie mumbled.

“That’s right. Keep moving, or you’ll get some more.”

They came to the front door. Streng held it open and shoved Bernie inside. Since he didn’t have three hands, he couldn’t also hold the lighter. The office was too dark to lead Bernie to the cell.

Bernie said, “I have a chip in my head.”

“Good for you.”

Streng needed light, but he wasn’t letting go of the pyro, and he wasn’t about to put down the stun gun. So he gave the man another jolt. Bernie dropped to his knees. Streng kept his hand on his collar and shoved the Mini Fry into his fanny pack, fishing around for the lighter.

“I think you rebooted it,” Bernie said.

Bernie bolted. Streng reached out with both hands to grab him, but Bernie’s momentum took him forward and he scurried down the hall, blending in with the darkness.

A millisecond later Streng had cleared leather on his holster and fired his Colt twice, the reports snapping in his ears and the muzzle flash making him blink. He flicked on the lighter and held it up. The hallway was empty. Did the building have a back entrance? Streng couldn’t picture it, but chances were it did. Bernie’s hands were still tied, so he’d have a tough time unlocking doors. He was probably crouching somewhere, ready to pounce.

Streng cursed himself for being sloppy. He swung out the cylinder—warm to the touch—and yanked the spent brass, feeding in two fresh bullets. Then he moved down the hall, slow and cautious. He led with the Colt but kept his arm bent and tight against his body so the weapon couldn’t be knocked away, reminding himself to aim for the head; Bernie’s body armor might stop Magnum rounds.

When he reached the first doorway—the comptroller’s office—Streng held his breath and paused, an ear turned to listen. Nothing. He brought the lighter forward, saw a desk, file cabinets, a bookcase, the closet door open and empty. Nowhere to hide.

Streng moved on to the washroom, opening the door in a single clean motion, pointing the gun upward. Empty again.

Four offices left, including Streng’s, plus a boardroom and the drunk tank. Streng didn’t feel nervous. He was a seasoned cop and a seasoned hunter. Scary as Bernie was, the man was cuffed and had no weapons. Streng simply needed to stay calm, cool, and methodical, and he’d get Bernie. Dead or alive.

A smell wafted up from the hallway. Smoke. Not the cordite from the Colt; something chemical and sharp. Streng’s nose led him past two doors, to the mayor’s temporary office. On the floor, near the desk, the plastic zip line Streng had used to tie Bernie’s hands. The ends were melted and still smoking.

Bernie was free.

Adrenaline spiked through Streng’s veins. He looked left, then right, not seeing Bernie, wondering how he could have gotten out of the room without Streng seeing it, realizing he couldn’t have so he must have thrown the zip tie in there, spinning around to see Bernie charging at him—

The Colt was shoved to the side just as Streng dropped the lighter, which winked out when it hit the ground. Bernie hit him full body, slamming Streng backward into the desk, driving the air from his lungs.

The sheriff held on to the gun, shoved it into Bernie’s stomach as the killer pounded him in the sides. He squeezed off a shot, point-blank. Bernie recoiled, slipping off of Streng, hitting the floor. Streng aimed where he guessed Bernie to be and fired three more rounds. He waited, trying to hear above the ringing in his ears. Nothing. He fumbled for his man purse, located another lighter.

Bernie lay on the floor, sprawled out and eyes closed. Streng’s kidney burned, and his gun hand shook, and along with the pain and the fear was a bubble of animal rage. One shot to the head and it would be over. Streng had killed before. In Vietnam. In the line of duty, during a liquor store robbery. But he’d never murdered anyone. The distinction was large. In one case, the person was shooting back. In the other, the person was unarmed.

Streng got down to one knee, aimed the barrel at Bernie. The man deserved this, and probably much more. But was it Streng’s job to judge? Even more important than the grayness of right and wrong, would Streng be able to live with himself afterward?

He fired.

The bullet hit its mark, not penetrating the body armor, but flattening out Bernie’s kneecap like a stepped-on dog turd. Bernie’s eyes popped open and he howled, and Streng grabbed his collar and dragged him across the tile floor, to the cell room. Ignoring Bernie’s sobs of agony, he located the correct key, swung open the steel-barred door, and pulled him inside.

Streng didn’t feel any sort of vindication or swell of pride when the jail door clanged shut. He’d stood by his morals and hadn’t murdered a defenseless man, but that might not have been the right decision. Time would tell.

“Stop hurting me, Mommy!” Bernie wailed. “Please stop hurting me!”

Streng left the room.

Josh checked the rearview mirror and glanced at Dr. Stubin sitting in the back seat. Stubin was petting Woof—the dog had fallen asleep with his head on the doctor’s lap and was snoring softly.

Between Josh and Fran in the front seat, Duncan and Mathison also slept, each sitting with their heads back and their mouths open. Fran stared out her window as they drove, absently stroking her son’s hair.

“So how do we stop them?” Josh asked Stubin.

“The Red-ops?” Stubin rubbed his nose. “Well, we can assume they’re enhanced. Besides the chip implants they’ve probably had other body supplementations. Better vision. Better hearing. Quicker reflexes. Performance-enhancing drugs for bigger muscles and more endurance. I’m guessing they’re wearing the latest in body armor. And possibly, their dopamine and serotonin levels have been tweaked, giving them greater resistance to pain.”

“But they can die, right?”

Stubin flashed his crooked teeth. “Everything dies, Josh.”

Josh wasn’t convinced. “One of them, Ajax, is the biggest guy I’ve ever seen. Has to be seven feet tall.”

“Human growth hormone experimentation. I’ve studied that. Very difficult to pull off. You said there are four of them?”

“Four that we know about. Ajax, Santiago, Taylor, and Bernie.”

“A Red-ops unit in Wisconsin. Amazing.”

Josh didn’t care for the note of admiration in Stubin’s voice. “You think terrorism is amazing?”

Stubin shifted, pushing Woof off to the side.

“You have to understand, Josh. Pure research doesn’t exist anymore. You need to have funding. There are the pharmaceutical companies, but they only dump money into drugs. Charities and philanthropists are trying to cure cancer and AIDS. The only group willing to pay for cutting-edge research is the military, and only if it is applicable to some aspect of warfare. But this research has farther-reaching applications. Think of a world without learning disabilities. Where brain disorders are things of the past. Where people could be programmed to know right from wrong and criminal impulses could be controlled.”

“And what about freedom of choice?” Fran asked.

Stubin leaned forward. “Do you really believe that freedom of choice exists? India still has a caste system. Most of the Middle East treats women as inferiors and those who practice other religions as enemies. China regulates how many children couples can have, genocide abounds in South America and Africa, Malaysia has a booming underage sex trade, and the list goes on and on. All around the world the people in power abuse it and human rights are ignored. But what if we were incapable of hurting our fellow man? What if our core impulse was to help each other rather than control each other? The human race is destructive. This research could fix it. Purify it.”

“I remember another historical figure trying to purify the human race,” Josh said. “It didn’t work out so well.”

Stubin sneered. “Hitler was a fool. You can’t breed perfection out of an imperfect species. Genetics are the problem, not the answer.”

Josh looked at Fran and saw she was thinking the same thing he was: Stubin had a few loose screws. But the army must have brought him here for a reason other than lectures.

“So what’s your function in this?” Josh asked.

“I’m here in an advisory capacity. But unless I can contact the military, my role here is pretty much useless. When I tried to get close, they shot at me.”

“And why did you bring the monkey?”

“If I leave Mathison home alone, he gets bored, drinks all the beer, and breaks things. Or maybe he does it out of revenge. When I teach him sign language someday, that’s the first thing I’ll ask him. Where are we going, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“The roadblock won’t let us get to the hospital, so we’re visiting a local doctor to patch up Duncan and Fran.”

“Is the doctor nearby? I noticed we just turned onto Old Mason Road.”

Josh raised an eyebrow. “He lives off Old Mason, at the end of Duck Bill. Are you familiar with the area?”

“I memorized the maps while taking the helicopter here.”

“The helicopter. That was the explosion earlier?”

“Unfortunately. They landed at the Red-ops crash site. Apparently it had been booby-trapped.”

Josh had searched the crash site thoroughly but hadn’t seen any traps or explosives. He must have gotten lucky and not triggered any.

They drove for another ten minutes. Josh kept glancing over at Fran, checking on her, and twice he caught her looking back at him. If they got through this, when they got through this, Josh wanted to see as much of Fran as he could. He hoped she felt the same. They had a lot of lost time to make up for.

He turned off of Old Mason, onto a sand and gravel road surrounded by forest.

“This is Duck Bill?” Stubin asked. “Why hasn’t it been paved?”

“That comes up every few years at the town meeting. The residents here say they like their roads rustic and old-fashioned and want to keep them that way. I think it’s because they don’t like change.”

“Change is inevitable,” Stubin said. “You can’t ignore technology.”

“Ignoring it and choosing not to embrace it are two different things, I think,” Josh said. “Here we are.”

He parked the Roadmaster on the grass next to Doc Wainwright’s house and touched Fran’s shoulder. “I’m going to see if he’s home. Do you and Duncan want to come in with me?”

“Duncan’s asleep. I don’t want to wake him up.”

“Will you be okay?”

Fran met his eyes. “We’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Thanks.”

Josh let his hand linger for longer than necessary, then nodded and exited the vehicle. The general practitioner lived in a ranch, on the west shore of Big Lake McDonald, surrounded by trees. His electricity seemed to be out, just like everyone else’s. Josh had visited him once at his office in town to have a large splinter removed from his palm. He found Wainwright’s bedside manner excellent and his skill with a scalpel and tweezers adequate at best. The quintessential country doctor.

He approached the front door warily, as if something might pop out at him at any moment. The woods—a source of tranquility for Josh as long as he could remember—no longer seemed safe or familiar. Josh stopped and studied a shadow on the porch, judged it to be a lawn chair, and continued onward. He knocked three times, waited, and knocked again.

“Doc? It’s Josh VanCamp, from the fire department. I have some people here that need medical attention.”

Josh waited and knocked once more. No sounds of life from inside the house. The doctor was either a heavy sleeper or he’d been lured into town by the promise of lottery riches. On impulse, Josh tried the doorknob. Unlocked, just like most houses in the Northwoods.

“I’m going to check if he’s home!” Josh shouted back to Fran.

He wondered whether she and Duncan would be okay with Dr. Stubin and decided to chance it. Even with everything that had happened to her, Fran seemed able to take care of herself just fine. When they were dating, Fran had told him she suffered from panic attacks. He’d even seen it happen once, during a Tilt-a-Whirl ride at a carnival he’d taken her and Duncan to. Fran froze up when the ride ended, and it took Josh and two carnies to pry her hands off the safety bar and remove her from the car. Perhaps she’d since conquered her demons.

Josh entered the house cautiously. He was breaking and entering, and if Wainwright was waiting in the darkness with a shotgun he’d have every right to blow Josh’s head off. But Josh was willing to risk it. Even if the doctor wasn’t in he probably had medical supplies. God only knew when they’d get Fran to a hospital. At the very least she needed antibiotics.

“Doc! You home? Anyone here?”

No answer.

He tried the light switch on the wall, which didn’t work, and made his way into the kitchen by feel. People kept flashlights in easy-to-reach places, like drawers, or atop the refrigerator. The latter is where Josh found a Maglite, one of the models that used half a dozen D batteries, making it a weapon, as well. He spotted Wainwright’s phone. A busy signal. Then he searched cabinets, discovering only dishes and canned goods.

Moving on, Josh located Wainwright’s office and quickly found a medical cabinet stuffed with equipment. Josh filled a pillowcase with free samples of Cipro, a vial of lidocaine hydrochloride, a can of aerosol antiseptic spray, two sealed syringes, some acetaminophen samples, forceps, hydrogen peroxide, and a sealed suture needle package.

Outside he heard Woof bark.

Not a friendly bark. A warning bark.

Something was happening. Something bad.

Josh rushed out of the office, through the front door, just in time to see the Roadmaster pulling away down Duck Bill Lane.

• • •

Taylor noted that Olen had begun wheezing. While the gas mask protected the man from inhaling hydrogen cyanide, the chemical had soaked into his clothing and subsequently his skin. From there, it bonded with every cell it could, preventing them from getting oxygen. Taylor figured he had perhaps five minutes left to live. Because of this he took over the driving. They were currently on a rarely used dirt road and had to slow down to navigate the sharp turns.

“How far are we?” Logan asked, poking Olen with the knife. Olen was bleeding from a dozen or so previous pokes.

“We’re … close. Feel … sick …”

Then he puked in his gas mask and fell forward, banging his head onto the dashboard.

Logan stabbed him again. Olen didn’t flinch.

“He’s dead,” Logan said.

Taylor hit the brakes. He and Logan tugged Olen out of the Honey Wagon and left him on the side of the road. Then they took off their masks and protective plastic garments and tossed them into the trees. Taylor opened the MMDSC and pressed the talk button.

“Location 1.6 kilometers east on Deer Tick Road. Attempting to locate nest.”

Logan spat. “Now we have to search for him. You could have given the guy some of your Charge.”

“You could have given him some of yours,” Taylor snapped back. “This road is a dead end. If Warren Streng lives anywhere on it, we’ll find him.” Taylor scanned the tree line and saw a rusty sign nailed to a tree that read “Private Property, Trespassers Will Be Shot.”

“Besides,” he said. “I think we’re close.”

When the perimeter alarm went off, Warren “Wiley” Streng switched the video monitor feed to his plasma-screen TV and sat in his lounger, watching the Honey Wagon approach. It stopped, and two people in gas masks pulled a third out of the truck.

The camera used night vision technology, so everything glowed green. But even though it cost a fortune, it wasn’t high-definition like the monitor, and the figures were blurry. Wiley used the remote to zoom in and, from the dirty clothing, recognized Olen Porrell as the dead man.

The two others moved quickly and efficiently. Soldiers. No. Special Forces. Their black uniforms were somewhat stiff. Body armor, probably that new liquid kind he’d read about on the Net. One of them used some sort of device to call for backup, then stared at the No Trespassing sign for so long that Wiley was sure he spotted the hidden camera. But the moment passed, and they climbed back into the truck and continued up the road.

They found me, Wiley thought. After more than thirty years, they finally found me.

He pulled himself out of the chair and began to prepare for the attack.

• • •

It happened so fast Fran didn’t have time to react. Woof barked, and then the car doors were open and men were climbing into the Roadmaster. One of them was tall and thin, and the other was enormous. The giant got into the back seat, tossed Woof out of the vehicle, and placed a huge hand on Fran’s scalp, his fingers draping down over her face.

“If you move, he’ll twist your head off,” said the thin man, his accent foreign and heavy. Fran guessed him to be Santiago, and the large one, Ajax. “Then we’ll do the same to your boy.”

Fran stayed stock-still. Santiago started the car and fishtailed on the lawn, heading back up Duck Bill Lane. Duncan opened his eyes, looking confused, then terrified. He hugged Fran, and she hugged him back.

“You took your time.” Stubin removed something small and black from his pocket. “I’ve had this thing on for ten minutes.”

Santiago frowned. “You might have helped us by saying the address.”

“I didn’t know the address.”

Fran watched Santiago check the rearview mirror. He touched his ear, which was crusted with dried blood. “That firefighter cabrón, I have to settle something with him.”

“It can wait.” Stubin squinted at the communicator. “Taylor and Logan have almost located Warren. They’re on Deer Tick Road. Take the next left you see.”

It was tough for Fran to find her voice with her skull being palmed like a basketball, but Duncan reached over and grabbed her hand, giving her strength.

“You found Warren. You can let us go.”

Stubin scrutinized her as if she were something he’d stepped in. “I suppose people only see what they want to see and ignore everything else. That’s why you trusted me. That’s why the U.S. military trusted me.”

Fran let the implications of that last line run through her head.

“The Red-ops team isn’t from Canada,” she stated.

“Of course not. They’re ours.”

The roadblock made a lot more sense now.

“They’re U.S., but the military didn’t order this,” Fran guessed. “They’re going to be angry with you.”

“They think I died in that helicopter explosion. Besides, they’re so busy making sure that no stories leak out that they aren’t even looking for us. Wouldn’t CNN just eat this up? U.S. terrorist cell destroys Wisconsin town. They’ll nuke Safe Haven before they let the word get out.”

“Let Duncan go.” Fran pursed her lips, keeping her tears at bay. “Please.”

Stubin gave an exaggerated sigh. “You don’t get it. You’re still useful to us.”

“Why?”

Santiago laughed. “Doesn’t this dumb puta know Warren is her father?”

Fran didn’t know what to say, how to react. She’d grown up the only child of a single mother who told Fran that her dad died in Vietnam. Mom got married when Fran was seven, and her stepfather adopted her. She hadn’t thought about her birth father in over two decades.

“It gets even better.” Stubin smiled, obviously enjoying this. “I’ve been looking for Warren for a long time. You couldn’t imagine the amount of research it took. The paper trail led me to Safe Haven. When we ran your car off the road a few years ago, we were hoping Warren would come out of hiding to visit you at the hospital or attend the funeral. He didn’t. Not exactly father-of-the-year material. Maybe he’ll show a bit more affection when we’re cutting off his grandson’s fingers outside his front door.”

Fran felt a panic attack coming on. The increased heartbeat. The sweaty palms. The hyperventilating. She thought back to the crash, to being trapped in the car, and flinched at the knowledge that it wasn’t an accident at all, that it was intentional. Her life, and Duncan’s, and Charles’s, shattered because some madman used her family as a tool to find a father she didn’t even know she had.

Fran began to shake. She felt a scream welling up, and she was ready to completely lose her grip on reality when Duncan whispered to her, “I’m afraid, Mom.”

And Fran knew she couldn’t afford to lose control. She had to remain calm, to look for escape opportunities, to be ready to act. For Duncan’s sake. So she stared the panic attack square in the eye and ordered it to go away.

Not this time. Not ever again.

The tremors left, and her heartbeat slowed, and her breathing became steady.

“Don’t be afraid of these assholes,” she told her son. “I’m not.”

Then she held Duncan tight to her chest and tried to be strong enough for both of them.

• • •

Sheriff Streng stopped the Jeep before turning onto Deer Tick Road. He opened the fuse box and used the little plastic pair of tweezers inside to pull out fuses for the brake lights, parking lights, headlights, and interior lights. When he got behind the wheel again he drove completely dark, navigating by feel and by the orange hunter’s moon.

En route, the communicator vibrated again, and Streng read a rambling message that he figured out was a live transcript of a conversation. A roadblock was mentioned, along with taking Fran and Duncan to see a doctor. It had to be Josh talking. Streng knew Josh took one of these communicators off of Ajax and wondered if he’d learned how it worked. If so, he needed to be careful; he was giving away his position.

Deer Tick was less a road and more a trail. It wound around the southernmost tip of Little Lake McDonald, but rather than hug the shoreline where the prime real estate was, it went the opposite way into the woods. Streng knew of only a few residences on Deer Tick: displaced trailers and shacks made of corrugated steel, long rusted out. Homes for the poor, the hopeless, and the crazy.

Wiley was one of the crazies.

He’d been that way since they were children. If there was a thimbleful of trouble to be found in all of Ashburn County, Wiley found it, and usually compounded it. He started young, breaking windows with slingshots, skipping school, stealing candy bars and comics from local businesses. That led to teen years marked by hot-wiring cars and boats for joy rides, running away from home for weeks at a time, selling drugs.

Streng had done his share of stupid things as a youngster, but he was more of a casual participant. Wiley was an instigator. Nowadays people like him were known as adrenaline junkies, and they BASE jumped and rode their bikes down mountainsides and went snorkeling with sharks. Back then he was simply known as a juvenile delinquent and probably would have spent his life behind bars if it hadn’t been for the draft lottery.

It wasn’t Wiley that had been drafted. It was Streng. He had his number called in July of 1972. Wiley enlisted to keep an eye on his little brother.

That plan didn’t work out for either of them—right after basic training they were sent to different locations. Streng went to the Second Platoon, Company B, First Battalion, Fourteenth Infantry, in the Chu Pa Region. Wiley went to the Kontum Province and the Fifty-second Aviation Battalion, where he became a helicopter door gunner and one of the most successful black-market traders of the region.

Streng scowled. He hadn’t spoken to Wiley in over thirty years and felt it was still too soon. But this had to be done, and there was no one else to do it.

The sand road was in such a state of disuse that grass and weeds grew in the center section between the tire treads. Streng heard them scrape against his undercarriage, a soft sound punctuated by an occasional thump when he ran over a fallen tree branch. He hit the brakes when he saw a familiar shape lying in the brush.

The sheriff kept the Jeep running and stepped out to investigate, holding one of Bernie’s lighters. Olen Porrell, on his back, a gas mask on his face caked with vomit. Streng had no idea why his friend wore the gas mask, but it apparently wasn’t enough to protect him. He didn’t want to get too close, so he watched to see if Olen moved or breathed. Olen did neither. Streng took a shallow sniff of air, trying to sense any off odors. He smelled the woods and nothing else.

Wiley liked booby traps. He’d liked them as a kid and really learned to like them in Vietnam, picking up many ideas from the Cong. But gas in an open area dissipated too quickly. Streng decided that this wasn’t one of his brother’s devices. Olen must have been exposed elsewhere, which also accounted for the missing Honey Wagon.

Streng hopped back into his vehicle and motored up the road even more slowly, checking the sides and behind him as well as ahead. He spotted Olen’s truck around the next bend, where the road dead-ended, its headlights on. Streng took his Jeep off-road, burying it in the thicket. The brush was so dense Streng had to crawl over the back seat and exit through the rear hatch. He closed it softly, unholstered his Colt, and crept toward the Honey Wagon.

The truck was empty. Streng imagined the scenario. One of the commandos had gotten to Olen, who knew Wiley’s address because he cleaned out his septic tank. They poisoned him to get him to talk, and now they were creeping through the woods, looking for Wiley’s house.

Good luck finding it, Streng thought.

When Wiley moved back to Safe Haven, flush with ill-gotten gains, he spared no expense building his dream house. And Wiley’s idea of a dream house was very close to Batman’s. Hidden underground, with secret entrances and exits, away from the searching eyes of the law, the military, and the enemies he’d made in Vietnam.

The last time Streng visited had been during the day, and even then he hadn’t been able to find Wiley’s place. At night, with eyes that were thirty years older, he didn’t even know where to begin looking. A smarter tactic would be to hunt the people who were after Wiley. He could hunker down, cover himself with foliage, and wait for one of them to—

The blade appeared at Streng’s throat with incredible stealth and speed.

“Drop the gun and put those hands up, Sheriff. Don’t make me ask twice.”

Josh was grateful for the heavy rains this fall, which kept the lake level high and made it possible to navigate the tributaries leading from Little Lake McDonald to the Chippewa River.

He drove a bass boat that he borrowed from Doc Wainwright—a seventeen-foot Nitro with a top speed of forty-five miles per hour. Josh figured he could straighten out the grand larceny charges later. He was worried as hell about Fran and Duncan, and he had to get to Safe Haven and find Sheriff Streng.

Josh adjusted the trim when he entered the shallows so the prop didn’t hit bottom, shining the Maglite ahead to avoid the dead trees. The wind bit at his cheeks, making his face tingle. Woof stood beside him, his jowls flapping in the wind, obviously not minding the cold at all. The firefighter turned two wide circles in the murky waters until he found the inlet, and then he buzzed through that and into the Chippewa, heading downstream.

That’s when the motor died. A quick survey of the dash controls showed the boat had no gas. Doc Wainwright was probably getting ready to store the boat for the winter and hadn’t bothered to fill it.

Rather than waste time cursing his luck, Josh hurried to the front of the boat and swung out the electric trolling motor, locking it into place. He sat in the bow chair and used the foot pedal, navigating south at a speed that wasn’t much faster than the current.

Five excruciating minutes later Josh beached the boat along the riverbank, two blocks from the Water Department building. He picked up the pillowcase full of medical supplies and scooped up Woof. Then he climbed over the short decorative iron fence that lined the river’s edge and set the dog down on the street. Woof sniffed around, peed, and then fell into step alongside the jogging firefighter.

Town was dead. Dark and dead. Josh checked his watch, noted it was past two a.m. Even so, there should have been some kind of activity, someone driving somewhere. It was eerie. He tried his cell, got the recorded message about no service, and resisted the urge to throw it at the ground.

He got to the Water Department breathing heavy and coated with sweat. Josh noticed the parking lot was empty. The sheriff wasn’t in. He decided to head to the junior high and borrow Olen’s truck, but before he got three steps away he heard a scream coming from the building.

Bernie, Josh thought. Probably not happy about being locked up. Josh’s first impulse was to ignore him and press on. But maybe Bernie knew something. He sounded upset. Maybe that would make him more susceptible to talking.

Josh checked the front door, established that it was open, and followed the wailing inside.

Woof wanted to run on ahead and check it out, but Josh ordered the dog to heel. He set the pillowcase down by the door, adjusted the flashlight focus to the widest beam setting, and walked down the familiar hallway to the drunk tank. Bernie sat on the floor of the cell, hugging himself and whimpering. Bleeding and broken, the killer looked like someone had dropped him from a building.

Woof growled at Bernie, his hackles rising and his tail pointing straight up.

“Charge,” Bernie mumbled. “I need Charge.”

Josh dug into his pocket, removing the container of pills and the electronic gizmo he took from Ajax. At the sight of this, Bernie hopped onto one foot and stretched his hand through the bars.

“CHARGE! GIVE ME THE CHARGE!”

Surprised, Josh stepped backward. He raised the gizmo.

“Is this what you want?”

“NO! THE CHARGE!”

Josh held up the capsules, and Bernie nodded rapidly, blood and drool running down his fat lips.

“Where’s Fran and Duncan?” Josh asked.

“GIVE ME THE CHARGE! THE CHARGE!”

“Answer my questions, I’ll give you the pills. Where’s Fran and Duncan?”

“Don’t know.”

“Where’s Sheriff Streng?”

Bernie clenched the bars and shook them.

“DON’T KNOW DON’T KNOW DON’T KNOW!”

“Then you’re no help to me.”

Josh turned to leave.

“NOOOOOO!” Bernie cried. “Check the MMDSC!”

Josh paused. “What’s that?”

“The communicator! Check the communicator!”

Josh palmed the electronic thing, showing it to Bernie. “This?”

“YESSSSS!”

“How does it work?”

“Hold the bottom, hold the bottom, pull up on the sides to open the cover.”

Josh tried, but that accomplished nothing. He rubbed the large dent in the center and figured the cover might be jammed. He needed some tools.

While Bernie screamed after him, Josh returned to the hallway and went to the janitor’s closet. The last time he’d been to the Water Department he’d helped the mayor fix a leak in the sink. The toolbox sat on the closet shelf where he’d left it. He set the Maglite on its base and used two pairs of pliers to open the communicator cover.

It exposed a small green screen. Words began to flash across it.

Head bird acquired. Stand by for directions to the nest.

The message disappeared and was replaced by:

Is the doctor nearby? I noticed we just turned onto Old Mason Road.

He lives off of Old Mason, at the end of Duck Bill. Are you familiar with the area?

Josh recognized the new messages as his exchange with Stubin in the car. How did that get on there? Had their car been bugged? Had Josh accidentally recorded it somehow?

Or did Stubin do it?

A few more lines scrolled by, then the monitor blinked and read:

Location 1.6 kilometers east on Deer Tick Road. Attempting to locate nest.

That must be where the sheriff’s brother lived. And probably where they took Fran and Duncan.

“CHARGE!” Bernie called from his cell.

Josh pocketed the device and picked up the Maglite, heading back to the drunk tank.

“YOU PROMISED ME, PROMISED!”

“I have more questions,” Josh told him. “Then you’ll get the Charge.”

“Can’t think … can’t think … need Charge …” Bernie banged his forehead against the bars in cadence to his words. “Can’t think … can’t think …”

“How many soldiers are in your Red-ops unit?”

“Need Charge … need Charge …”

Josh opened up the metal container, showing Bernie the Charge capsules.

“How many soldiers?”

Bernie twitched, then blinked several times. “Five. Five soldiers. There are five.”

“Name them.”

“Santiago, Taylor, Ajax, Logan, and Bernie.”

Josh took a shot. “Is Dr. Stubin the one who put the chip in your head? Is he the reason you’re here?”

“Yessssss,” Bernie hissed.

That asshole. Josh should have never left Fran and Duncan alone in the car with him.

“What is your mission?”

“Need Charge … need Charge …”

Josh removed a pill from the container and tossed it out of the room, into the darkness.

“NOOOOOOOOO!”

“What’s your mission?”

Bernie shook his head. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

Josh threw another pill away.

“I DON’T KNOW! I NEED CHARGE! I CAN TELL YOU IF I HAVE CHARGE!”

Josh considered it, then tossed a capsule into the cell. Bernie hobbled after the pill, snatching it from the floor and holding it under his nose. He squeezed and sniffed.

Josh detected a cloying chemical odor. It took him a moment to place it. Freshman year at UW, he had a roommate named Carlos who was gay. Carlos used poppers—butyl nitrite that came in small bottles labeled “Room Deodorizer” and “Video Head Cleaner”—to enhance sex. From his paramedic classes, Josh knew butyl nitrite was a vasodilator, similar chemically to the amyl nitrite used to treat various heart conditions.

Bernie continued to sniff, and his demeanor went from Hyde to Jekyll. One moment frothing at the mouth, the next a picture of serenity.

“What’s your mission?” Josh asked again.

Bernie’s eyes became slits.

“Your sheriff shot me in the knee. It’s shattered. You can’t imagine the pain.”

“Tell me your mission and I’ll help you.”

“How?”

“I have lidocaine.”

“Show me.”

“Tell me first.”

Bernie cocked his head to the side, as if considering it. Then he said, “Our mission. Interrogate townspeople. Find Warren Streng.”

“Why do you want Warren Streng?”

Bernie smiled. His missing teeth made Josh wince.

“Let me have the lidocaine.”

Josh walked back into the hall, Woof at his heels. He picked up the pillowcase he’d left by the door and found the lidocaine vial. Back in the cell room, Josh filled a syringe with two milliliters of the fluid while Bernie stared. He slid the needle across the floor to Bernie, and it came to a stop outside the bars.

In his eagerness, Bernie went for it too fast and knocked it away. He stuck his hand through the cell bars and strained for the needle.

“Please …” Bernie whimpered. “The pain …”

Josh walked over and bent down, reaching for it.

Fast as a whip Bernie had him by the wrist and pulled him up against the bars.

Woof went crazy, jumping and growling and barking. Josh pulled with all he had, but Bernie had arms like anacondas, coiled muscle grabbing him everywhere at once. The killer finally settled on a choke hold, forcing Josh’s back against the bars, locking a forearm around his neck.