Midnight Mass

"Didn't you sleep well?" Joe said.

"As a matter of fact, no," Carole said.

"Bad dreams?"

"In a way." She looked up, first at Joe, then at Lacey. "Are we proud of ourselves?"

"About what?" Joe said.

"About this morning."

"Yeah," Lacey said. "We reduced the world's undead population by eight and we learned something that could turn this fight around: kill one of the big-shot undead and a whole lot of others die too."

Carole said, "What about how we learned that secret?"

Lacey shook her head. "I'm not following."

Carole sighed and looked at the ceiling. "Torture. Am I the only one who's bothered by the fact that we tortured that creature into giving us the information?"

"Yeah," Lacey said with an edge on her voice. Joe could sense his niece's back rising. "I guess you could say you are. They're already dead, Carole."

"No, they're undead. And they very obviously feel pain."

"Hang on now," Joe said. He caught Carole's troubled gaze and held it. "We did what we had to, Carole. I didn't like it, and I'm sure Lacey didn't either, but this is war and—"

"A war for what?"

"For survival," Lacey said. "Them or us. This isn't a war of ideologies, Carole," Lacey said. "And it's not a war of religions either. This is a war for the survival of the human race."

"Even if we have to sacrifice our humanity to win it?"

Joe leaned back and kept silent. This wasn't what he'd wanted to talk to Carole about, but he sensed this argument had been brewing all day, maybe longer. Best to stay out of the line of fire unless it escalated too far.

"Ever hear of the Spanish Inquisition, Carole?" Lacey said. "That was 'humanity' at its most creative. We invented torture."

"You sound proud of it."

"Not at all. I look at a picture of a rack or an Iron Maiden and my stomach turns. My point is that we, as the living, don't exactly have clean hands when it comes to depravity."

"I'm not worried about humanity's hands," Carole said sofdy. "I'm worried about ours—the three of us. I'd like to believe that we deserve to win. But if in the process we become like the enemy, what have we won?"

"The right to survive!"

"Is that all you want?"

"No!" Lacey shot to her feet and pounded the table. "I want more! I want to see every single one of those bloodsucking parasites dead and rotting in the sun! They robbed me of the person I loved more than anyone in my life, they took my parents—maybe I was on rotten terms with them, and maybe I'll always be pissed at them for naming me Lacey, but they were still my parents—and then they took one of the few men in the world that I love and respect and tried to turn him into a monster like them. I want them gone,

Carole, I want them wiped off the face of the earth, and I want them to go screaming in agony, and I'm for doing whatever it takes to achieve that!" Her voice broke and tears streamed down her cheeks as she pounded the table with each word. "Whatever—it—takes!"

Joe rose, put an arm around Lacey's shoulders, and let her lean against him. Time to make peace.

"I'm okay," she said.

"No, you're not. None of us has been okay since the invasion. We're all damaged to varying degrees, but we all want the same thing. Carole has a valid point. We need to win—we must win—but maybe there should be a line we won't cross in order to win. I think we may have crossed that line at the Post Office."

He felt Lacey stiffen and shake her head. "No lines, no limits, no quarter, no mercy."

Joe tightened his grip on his niece's shoulders. How was he going to salvage this?

"Can we leave it that we agree to disagree and hope we don't have to cross the line again—hope that we don't find ourselves in a position where we even have to think about crossing it?"

But if that moment came, Joe wondered, what side of that line would he come down on?

Lacey shrugged, reluctantly, he thought. "I guess I'm all right with that."

Carole nodded. "So am I. I pray we're never faced with that choice again."

"Good," Joe said, sagging with relief. "You two had me worried there."

"What?" Lacey said, looking up at him with a half-smile playing about her lips. "You thought we'd break up the team? Never happen. Right, Carole?"

"Never. Our work is too important. But I thought it needed an airing."

"Well, it's aired," Joe said. "Now let me air something else." He sat and took Carole's hands in his. "How long have you been wiring yourself with explosives?"

She looked away. "A while."

"Why?"

"I think that should be obvious."

It was. But for Joe it was unthinkable.

"Carole, you mustn't. . . you can't..."

"I won't," she said. "Not unless all hope is gone."

"Even then—"

She faced him. "I will not become one of them, Joseph. And didn't you tell us yourself that you jumped off the Empire State Building?"

Yes, he had, hadn't he. He wished he hadn't told them. It cut off his argument at the knees. What could he say—that it was all right for him but not for her?

"But blowing yourself up ..."

The thought of Carole being torn to pieces, bits of her splattered against the walls and ceiling of a room, or scattered up and down a street, sickened him.

Her smile was tremulous. "What better way to go? I put my hand in my pocket, I press a button, and it's over—instantaneous, painless, and, considering the straits I'll be in at that moment, I'll probably take a few of the enemy with me."

"I kind of like that idea," Lacey said. "Maybe you can wire me and—"

Joe held up a hand. "Lacey, please." He stared at Carole. "All right. What can I say? It's something only you can decide, Carole. But I beg you, when things look blackest, when you think there's no way out and the situation can't get worse, hold off pressing that button. Give it just one more minute."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to lose you. And who knows? Maybe in that one extra minute the situation will start to turn around. Promise?"

She shrugged. "Promise."

Joe leaned back. He'd thought he'd feel better confronting her about this, but he didn't.

He put it behind him for now and looked first at Lacey, then Carole.

"All right. That's settled—I hope. Now we should plan our next step. When do we leave for New York?"

Lacey dropped back into her seat. "New York? So soon? Are we ready for that?"

"I don't think we have much choice," Joe said. He got up and settled himself on the couch. "First off, I don't think there's another nest we can practice on. Second, after what we did this morning, I've got a feeling this area's going to be on the receiving end of a lot of attention. So while they're looking this way, gearing up to make a move against the church and the people holding it, I propose we sneak in under their radar and strike where they least expect it."

Carole was nodding. "I like it. And from the way things went this morning,

I believe dawn is the best time. But I assume we'll find more than three collaborators guarding the Empire State Building."

"Lots more," Joe said. He glanced at his niece. "Too many for even Annie Oakley here to take out."

Lacey smiled. "Oh, I don't know about that."

She got up and went to the dining area. She returned dragging a large canvas mail sack. She set it beside the couch and pulled open the top. Joe started when he saw the jumble of weapons inside.

"Good Lord, Lacey, what did you do? Rob an armory?"

"Almost as good. Before we left the Post Office this morning I collected every pistol and piece of ammo I could find, from Vichy and undead alike. Even picked up that sawed-off shotgun."

Joe shook his head. "It's still not enough. We're only three and there's dozens of them. We'll need another way."

Lacey looked at Carole. "Explosives? That napalm you cooked up?"

Carole shook her head. "Nothing I can make has the detonation velocity necessary to damage a building like the Empire State."

Lacey looked glum. "Then what? If we can't get inside—"

"I think I have a idea," Carole said.

Lacey brightened. "What?"

"Just the start of one. Let me work it through first. How long have we got?"

"I'd like to leave as soon as possible," Joe said. "Hit them before they find out what we did at the Post Office. Or if they do know, catch them while they're still off balance."

"I think we should make the trip by day," Lacey said. "That way the only ones around to stop us will be living. At night we'll have to dodge the undead as well."

"But I can't help you during the day."

Lacey smiled and nudged the letter bag with a toe. "I think Carole and I can handle any Vichy we meet along the way."

Joe wasn't keen on lying helpless in a car trunk while the two women took all the risks, but he couldn't fault Lacey's logic.

"All right then," he said. "We leave at dawn. Will that give you enough time, Carole?"

"I hope so. I'll need to take the car to see if I can find what I need."

"Okay. Just get back in time so we can stock up for the trip. We need to find some gas too. The Lincoln's pretty low."

"No need," Lacey said. "There's a cool convertible with a full tank sitting in the garage. We can take that instead."

"Looks like you've got all the bases covered. Only one thing left to do before we go. Carole, drop Lacey off at the church so she can tell them what we did at the Post Office and to expect reprisals. But most important, tell them the get-death secret. Have Gerald Vance get on his shortwave and start broadcasting it around the world."

"You think anyone'll believe it?"

"I hope so. Maybe in New York we'll find a way to give the world more tangible proof."

"How?"

Joe didn't answer. He was working on the beginning of an idea of his own.

BARRETT . . .

It was a little after midnight when James Barrett stepped out of the elevator into the Observation Deck atrium. A couple of Franco's get-guards pulled pistols and started for him. Where was Artemis tonight? He was usually the first to get in the face of anyone, living or undead, who set foot on the deck.

"What do you want?"

Something in their eyes, their expressions. Was it fear? What was going down here?

"Franco said to meet him here," Barrett said.

"I'll go check," said one of the guards.

As commander of the Empire State Building's human contingent, Barrett was used to being taken straight to Franco. Why this extra layer of insulation all of a sudden?

After all, he was responsible for round-the-clock security. He could have stayed around just on days—the really important time for security—but that meant he'd never get to see Franco, and Franco would never see him. So he caught a few winks here and there when he could and made sure he was around for at least some of the night shift.

He'd held the job for six months now. That meant he had nine-and-a-half years of servitude left. That was the deal with the undead: ten years of service and they'd turn him. Fine for the other slobs to wait that long, but not him. He'd risen as high as a living man could go in Franco's organization. He needed to take the next step, needed to be turned, and soon. But he still hadn't found the lever to boost him to that stage.

"Come with us," said the returning vampire. "But first..."

He patted Barrett down and removed the .44 Magnum from his shoulder holster. He stared at it a moment, then handed it back.

Barrett hid his shock. He'd never been frisked before.

"Let's go," said the other.

But instead of escorting him to the outer deck, he led him into a stairwell to the left of the elevator bank and down the steps to the eighty-fifth floor. After a short walk along a hallway, he was passed through another set of guards into a bare room furnished with only a king-size four-poster bed. Large sheets of plywood had been bolted over the windows.

Franco paced the room, his hands behind his back.

"There's been some trouble," he said without preamble, without so much as a glance at Barrett.

"Where?" It must be really serious, he thought. "I haven't heard anything."

"You wouldn't," Franco said, his eyes were on the floor as he paced. "I sent Artemis down to New Jersey a few days ago to check up on Olivia and see to it that she was staying on top of things. If she wasn't—as I was sure was the case—he was to take over. This evening I received a report from downtown that—"

He seemed to catch himself and cast a quick sidelong glance at Barrett. What was he hiding? He knew that Artemis and a few of his get lived down in the Village. What had Franco heard?

Franco shook his head and went on. "I heard a report that made me suspect that something might have happened to Artemis. So I sent a flyer down to check." Finally he looked up at Barrett. "Artemis is dead. So is Olivia."

"Oh, shit," Barrett said. It was the best he could do. He was all but speechless.

Artemis dead? Barrett couldn't wrap his mind around it. Was there a tougher undead son of a bitch in the world? He doubted it.

"How?"

"Staked. Same as Olivia."

"Her guards too?"

"All dead."

"A massacre! Who—?"

"I suspect it has something to do with that vigilante priest. That's the only answer."

"But he's one of you now."

"His followers aren't. Maybe when they found out that we turned him, instead of being demoralized, they went berserk. I don't know."

Barrett heard opportunity knocking. Here was a chance to stand out, to maybe shorten that nine-and-a-half-year wait for immortality.

A plan was already forming. Show up down there, pretend to be another refugee, infiltrate their ranks, wait till the time was right, till they were off guard, then blow them all away.

"Want me to go down and check it out?"

Franco shook his head. "No. I need you here. I want you to gather your men from inside and outside the city and concentrate them around this building. I'm going to organize a counter strike and I don't want any interruptions. By next week I'll have gathered a horde of ferals to set loose down there. No quarter, no survivors. Then I'm going to incinerate the entire area. The flames will be visible for miles. Not one house or church or synagogue will be left standing. The rest of the living will hear and understand the consequences of resistance."

"I don't think pulling in your perimeter is such a good idea. That's like your early-warning system. You don't want—"

"What I don't want is to debate it. I did not bring you up here for a discussion. I'm telling you what to do. Now do it!"

Barrett resisted a hot retort. He held up his hands and said, "You're the boss."

As he turned and walked out, he thought, But you're an asshole.

He didn't care what Franco said, he wasn't going to pull in all the outriders. His ass was on the line here too, and if a caravan full of vampire hunters was headed this way, he wanted to know about it before they reached Fifth Avenue.

Because invariably vampire hunters were cowboy hunters too.

- 12 -

LACEY . . .

Feeling tight and on edge, Lacey sat straight and tall in the passenger seat, scanning the highway ahead and twisting to check out behind as they sped north along Route 35. Her right hand rested on the .45 semiautomatic cradled in her lap.

They'd left before dawn with Carole at the wheel. The Parkway route had been considered, but rejected. It was a wider road, but offered fewer options should they run into any Vichy. Route 35 was local, but it wasn't as if they had to worry about traffic lights or anything, and it allowed them to turn off on an instant's notice. That was good; the sun was rising into a cloudless sky, which was not so good. Lacey would have preferred a cloudy, rainy day. Better yet, foggy. Anything to cut the visibility.

As she spotted a sign that said HAZLET she felt the Fairlane surge forward. Joe—apparently he'd played around with cars as a teen—had identified this one as a '57 Fairlane; he'd checked the engine before they'd left and proclaimed it "hot," mentioning a four-barrel carburetor and other car talk she couldn't follow. She leaned left to catch a look at the speedometer.

"Ninety?" she said.

Carole nodded. She was dressed in some hideous mauve nylon warm-up she'd found last night in a neighboring house. "The road is straight and level here, and the sooner we get there, the better."

"I'll drink to that."

Carole nodded. "I don't know much about cars, but this one handles beautifully."

They merged with Route 9 and headed over a tall bridge. After that it was decision time.

"Turnpike or stay on 9?" Carole said.

Tough question. Lacey did not want to run into any Vichy.

"Let's think about that," Lacey said. "The closer we get to the city, the thicker the Vichy will be. But if I were a Vichy, the last place I'd look for someone traveling would be the Turnpike. It's too open. So I'd concentrate on the back roads."

"You're assuming they think that far ahead. The ones I've met so far haven't been too bright."

"But Joe said they were pretty well organized in the city. Someone with brains is probably calling the shots. I vote Turnpike."

Carole took a deep breath. "All right. Turnpike it is."

They followed the green-and-white signs and got on the New Jersey Turnpike North at Exit 11. They kept to the outer lanes.

As they roared along, Lacey felt herself starting to cook in the sunlight pouring through her side window. She rolled it down a few inches; that helped for a while, but soon she was perspiring.

She was wearing plaid cotton comfy pants and a red V-neck sweater over an extra-large T-shirt she'd found—it came from some restaurant called Pete and Elda's and apparently was a prize for eating a whole large pizza. Eventually she removed the sweater.

"If it gets much warmer we'll have to put the top down."

"I don't think that would be wise."

"Why not? Afraid of developing skin cancer in twenty years?"

Gallows humor. Even Carole smiled—a rare event these days.

Lacey pulled the T-shirt away from her skin and caught a whiff of herself.

"Damn, do I ever need a shower!"

She'd tried to bathe in the ocean but it was freezing.

"Wouldn't you love to be able to take a bath?" Carole said. "I'd give almost anything for one."

"Me too." Lacey decided Carole's cage was due for a gentle rattle. "You know, I wish I believed in the soul. I'd trade mine for one good hot shower."

"Don't talk like that," Carole said.

"It's true."

She glanced at Lacey. "You'd sell your soul that cheaply?"

"We're talking hypothetically here, and no, I wouldn't sell it that cheaply. I'd want at least three hot showers—long ones.

Carole looked as if she were about to reply when she glanced in the rearview mirror. Her expression tightened.

"Oh, no."

Lacey turned and looked through the convertible's plastic rear window. Two longhaired men on motorcycles had just roared out of a rest stop and were closing in on them. They wore dirty cutaway denim jackets and brandished pistols.

Vichy.

"Damn. Sorry. I guess I made the wrong call."

She reached down to the postal bag on the floor by the back seat—next to their stock of mylar napalm balloons and the canister of chemicals Carole had picked up from the town's water treatment plant—and came up with a sawed-off ten-gauge shotgun.

"Well, I was hoping this wouldn't happen, but at least we're prepared."

One of their pursuers raised a pistol and fired a round over the top of the Fairlane.

"A warning shot across our bow," Lacey said. She worked the shotgun's pump to chamber a shell. "Let's see how they like—"

Carole grabbed her arm. "Dear God, I just thought of something! What if they shoot into the trunk?"

"Joe can handle a bullet or two, as we've already seen."

Her grip tightened. "I'm not worried about the bullets so much as the holes they'll make. The sunlight will come through and—"

"Shit!" Three good minds planning this trip and not one of them had thought of that.

Another shot—this one whined past Lacey's open window. She stuck her head out and waved her empty hand. The biker on the left grinned and pointed toward the shoulder.

Lacey pulled back inside. "Pull over. But take your time. And when you think you're going slow enough, start putting the top down.

Carole looked at her. "Top down? Wh—?"

"Can't explain now. And speaking of top down ..." She began pulling off her T-shirt.

"Lacey!"

"Just trust me."

She'd given up bras long ago. As the car decelerated, she released the roof catches and tucked the .45 into the postal bag. Then she climbed into the rear. She laid the shotgun in the sling between the back seat and the roof compartment.

She began slipping out of her pants. She still liked to wear panties but she removed those too.

The roof started to rise. The wind swirling around her body felt good as she knelt on the back seat, gearing herself up for what was to come. One of the Vichy, pistol at the ready, pulled his bike up along the driver side and looked in, probably checking out the number of occupants. When he saw Lacey his eyes went wide and he let out a whoop.

As he dropped back, Lacey said, "As soon as we stop, get out of the car and start yelling at me to put my clothes on."

"Why don't I start right now?"

"Listen to me. I want them to see that you're not armed—they'll for sure know I'm not. I want them off guard. So just act mad and like you think I'm crazy."

"I'm sure I can handle that," Carole said.

The roof was three-quarters down when the car stopped. Lacey stood and threw her arms wide.

"Guys! Am I glad to see youl Where the fuck you been hiding?"

The Vichy pair looked at each other, stopped their bikes half a dozen feet behind the car, and sat staring. Both still clutched their pistols.

"Not as glad as we are to see you, little lady," said the red-bearded one on the left. "And I do mean see you."

He gave his buddy's arm a backhand slap and they both laughed.

Lacey heard the car door slam behind her and Carole's voice cry, "Lacey! You put your clothes on right this instant!"

"Who's she?" said the other one who'd twined his salt-and-pepper goatee into a triad of greasy braids.

"Just some lezbo I hooked up with."

Redbeard grinned. "Lezzie action. Awright!"

Braids set his kickstand and got off his bike. Lacey noticed he had PAGANS written across the back of his cutaway. She also noticed the bulge behind his fly. Good. All that blood flowing away from his brain.

"Lezzie, huh?" He took a step toward Carole. "No such thing. She just ain't met the right man yet."

Oh, but she has, Lacey thought.

"Never mind her." Lacey crawled out on the trunk lid and seated herself cross legged, giving the two Vichy a panoramic view. Braids suddenly lost interest in Carole. "I'm the one in need of a little male tail, if you know what I'm saying. Been too damn long since I had a guy to do me right."

"Well then," Redbeard said, getting off his bike. He adjusted the bulge in his pants. "This is your lucky day. You get a double dose."

"Hey, I ain't got nothing against a three-way, but I need one guy to start me off right. You know, get me juiced up. Who's got the biggest dick? I want the best-hung guy first."

"That'll be me," said Redbeard.

Braids snorted. "No fuckin way!"

Here was the tough part. She had to time this just right or the whole situation would go to hell in a heartbeat. Lacey clapped her hands and forced a giggle. "Oh, this is so cool! A cock fight! Show me! Show me! Show me! I'll be the judge! No-no, wait! I'll be the package inspector!"

Laughing, the two men holstered their pistols and began fumbling with their flies. With a shaking hand Lacey reached around, pulled the shotgun from the boot, and fired at Redbeard first. The recoil almost knocked her off the trunk and into the back seat, but the blast took Redbeard full in the chest, slamming him back through a halo of his blood and into his bike. Some of the scattering shot caught Braids in his arm and he spun half around, clawing at his pistol. Lacey regained her balance and her grip on the sawed-off. She quick-pumped another shell into the chamber as she slid off the trunk to the ground, then pulled the trigger, catching Braids in the left side. His shoulder, neck and cheek exploded and he went down in a spray of red.

Lacey pumped one more shell of double-ought shot into each of them— didn't want them talking to anyone—then took their guns. She tossed the shotgun and the new weapons onto the back seat.

"Men," she said, reaching for her clothing. Loathing welled up in her. "No wonder I gave up on them. They're such assholes."

She pulled on the panties and comfy pants first. As she was shrugging the T-shirt over her head she found Carole glaring at her.

"What?"

"You shouldn't have done that."

"Killed them? What was I sup—?"

Carole shook her head. "You shouldn't have called me a lesbian. That wasn't right."

"It was just something to distract them, set little triple-X fantasies spooling through their heads."

Carole slipped back behind the wheel. "Still, just because I've forsworn marriage doesn't mean I'm a lesbian. A vow of chastity means no sex with men or women."

"I know that, Carole." She dropped back into the passenger seat and slammed the door. "Takes one to know one, and my gaydar doesn't so much as beep with you."

Carole glanced at her. "You're . . . ?"

"Yeah."

"Does your uncle know?"

"Sure does. He doesn't like it but he accepts it. Too bad you aren't, Carole. You're kinda cool."

Carole's face reddened as she put the car in gear.

Lacey laughed and gave the nun's shoulder a gentle punch. "Only kidding."

And she was. With the memory of Janey still so fresh and haunting, she couldn't think of being with anyone else. Not yet.

"This isn't going to be a problem for you, is it?"

Carole shook her head. "The convent had its fair share. It was no secret behind the doors. They kept to themselves, and I kept my mouth shut. God will be the final judge."

"I guess I have nothing to worry about then," Lacey said.

She turned and looked back at the two men sprawled in their pooling blood and felt nothing.

"Why don't I feel anything, Carole? You've killed your share of Vichy. Do you—?

"I always got sick afterward—at least when I had to ... do it myself... by hand. But what you just did doesn't bother me so much. Perhaps because it wasn't close work ... or because it was you doing it instead of me. I know they had to die but..." She sighed. "Nothing in my life prepared me for this, Lacey. I was raised to be merciful—I'm a Sister of Mercy, after all—but I don't believe the undead or their collaborators deserve any mercy from us. I've decided to leave that to God. He can decide."

"Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out. Right." Just how Lacey felt.

"Perhaps. Still... I can't ignore the fact that the Vichy are still human beings. No matter what awful things they've done, they're still God's children, and I can't help thinking that if maybe someone had got to them early enough and showed them the grace of God's love, their lives would have been different."

Lacey shook her head. "Sorry. Can't buy that. Some people are just plain evil. They're born bad and they stay bad all their lives. They're like termites, undermining your house. There's no accommodating them, so if you don't want to wake up with your house reduced to sawdust, you exterminate them."

"That's what they are to you? Bugs?"

"Worse. Bugs don't have a choice in how they act."

Lacey knew she hadn't always been like this, but something started dying within her when Janey had gone missing; her parents' empty, bloodstained house had pushed it closer to the grave; Uncle Joe dead with his throat torn open had administered the coup de grace. She couldn't imagine herself feeling anything but murderous loathing for the creatures, human and inhuman, who'd been a part of all that.

Carole hit a switch and the top began to rise.

"Leave it down," Lacey said.

Carole looked at her. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"It is. Think about it. You heard Joe: All the females of childbearing age have been trucked off to farms to be breeders. That leaves nothing for the cowboys between their stud times at the farms. They're horny as all hell. If they see two women in an open car they'll be more likely to ask questions first and shoot later, don't you think?"

"You also said we'd be less likely to run into trouble on the Turnpike."

"That was just a guess. This is based on the fact that these guys—as the two back there on the ground prove—think with their dicks."

Carole closed her eyes for half a minute—Lacey couldn't tell if she was thinking or praying—then hit the roof switch. The top settled back into the boot.

"I hope you're right."

After that, Carole kept the pedal to the metal, hitting one-twenty on the long straightaways through the flatlands by Newark Airport. The still, silent airport streamed past to the left, the equally still railyards to the right. Like running through an industrial graveyard.

The big road remained eerily empty except for one other car, half a dozen lanes away, headed in the opposite direction. Whether friend or foe, Lacey couldn't tell.

Then the roadway lifted and the Manhattan skyline hove into view to the right, pacing them as they raced along. The gap where the Trade Towers used to stand caused an ache in Lacey's chest. The hijackers and their victims were long gone, and now most of the survivors were probably gone as well. And Islam ... Islam was gone too.

Good riddance. Lacey had no use for any religion, but she'd found Islam's treatment of women particularly offensive. A mongrel religion, cobbled from pieces of others and strung together by adolescent sex and power fantasies. Good fucking riddance.

A lump built in her throat as she thought about what her city had suffered. She'd thought nothing could be worse than the Trade Tower attack, but then the undead had come ...

A few minutes later they were passing through Union City. She saw the weathered old sign, UNION CITY—EMBROIDERY CAPITAL OF THE WORLD, and shook her head. Union City wasn't embroidering a thing these days.

"I can't believe this," Lacey shouted over the wind whistling around and between them as they coasted down the Lincoln Tunnel helix. "We made it without being hassled again."

Carole glanced at her watch and shook her head. "Forty-five minutes. That must be a record."

"And that includes the time we lost with those two motorcycle yo-yos. It's like everybody's on vacation."

"I think we might be able to take credit for some of that," Carole said. "After what we did in the Post Office, I'll bet they've drawn their collaborators closer—doubling the guard and measures like that. The upside of that is an easier trip getting here; the downside will be a much more difficult time accomplishing what we came here to do."

"Every silver lining has a cloud, right?"

Carole nodded as they threaded an E-ZPass lane and aimed for the tunnel's center tube. "Always."

Carole turned on the headlights as they entered the dark, arching maw, and just then a siren howled behind them. Lacey jumped in her seat and looked around at the flashing red lights atop two blue-and-white units that had appeared out of nowhere.

"Police?" Carole said.

Lacey eyed the cars. First off, the NYPD was long gone. Second, the four shaggy-headed silhouettes crammed into that first unit didn't look anything like cops. Probably an equal number in the unit beside it.

Eight Vichy. . . she doubted the tactics she'd used on the two bikers would fly here. As if to emphasize that point, one of the occupants in the lead cop car held an assault pistol out a rear passenger window and fired a burst into the air. The bullets shattered some ceiling tiles and the pieces rained on the cop car, denting the hood and cracking the windshield. Lacey spotted a fist flying in the rear of the car. Someone wouldn't be trying that again.

The following unit pulled alongside the first, high beams flashing on and off. Lacey rose in her seat, exposing herself to the glare, and waved.

"What do we do?" Carole shouted over the roar of the wind, Her expression was tight.

"Your turn."

"My turn? For what?"

"To show a little titty."

"What?"

"Yeah. I did my part, now you do yours. I'll take the wheel and—"

"Not on your life! Just shoot at them. We don't have to worry about sunlight leaking into the trunk while we're in here."

Lacey thought of that assault pistol that had fired a moment ago, and wondered if there were more of them in the units. She didn't stand a chance against that sort of firepower. Then she looked down and saw the napalm balloons.

"Slow down a little," she said as she crawled into the rear. "Here we go again."

She crouched on the back seat and pulled off her T-shirt, then she grabbed a napalm balloon in each hand.

"What are you doing?" Carole said.

"I'm about to play hide and seek. Just be ready to burn rubber when I tell you."

Could she get away with something like this again? If they were half as horny as she thought they were yeah. Maybe.

Taking a breath, she pressed a balloon over each breast, plastered a big grin on her face, then rose to her knees.

The left blue-and-white swerved as the driver hit the siren again and a couple of hands popped out the windows to wave the horn sign. The right unit did the same.

She pulled the balloon off her left breast and held it high.

The sirens wailed again.

She bared her right breast and held that balloon aloft.

Another wail.

She tossed both balloons at the cars.

"Hit it!" she yelled as she dove for the seat.

The last thing she saw as the tires screeched and the Fairlane leaped forward was one balloon splattering harmlessly on the pavement and the other breaking against the grill of the right car. The front of the car exploded, rocketing the hood toward the ceiling, and then Lacey was down, flat on the rear seat. The explosion kicked them from behind like a rear-end collision. A wave of heat rolled over them for an instant before they left it behind.

Lacey peeked over the back of the rear seat in time to see the burning unit sidewipe its companion. The second bounced off the wall with a shower of sparks, then slammed into the first as someone's gas tank exploded. The second car flipped then and landed against the first. Amid the agonized screech and groan of metal grinding against concrete and asphalt and tile, both slid to a halt across the tunnel roadway in a single, twisted, flaming mass.

Lacey shook her head. Wow. Powerful stuff.

She thought she saw something moving, a flaming man-shaped thing crawling out a window, but she couldn't be sure. Suddenly a third explosion rocked the mass. The other gas tank, she guessed.

Lacey tugged her shirt back over her head and climbed up into the passenger seat.

"That's it! The last time I strip down for these animals."

"Let's hope so," Carole said. "By the way, that was an amazing piece of indirection."

Was that a note of genuine admiration Lacey detected in her voice?

"Thank you. And my compliments to the chef on that napalm." Lacey pointed ahead at the splotch of brightness ahead in the dark of the tiled gullet. "Look. The light at the end of the tunnel."

"More Vichy there?"

Lacey grabbed the shotgun. Her stomach crawled. How long could their luck last?

But to their amazement, the Manhattan side of the tunnel was deserted. Gasping with relief, they swerved left and roared into the concrete box of an enclosed above-and-below-ground park-and-lock lot on 42nd Street.

BARRETT . . .

Neal kicked a piece of blackened metal from the wrecks and sent it spinning across the scorched pavement. He tugged on his beard.

"What the fuck?"

"What the fuck is right," Barrett said. "All seven guys gone. Just like that."

Franco was going to be pissed ... if he found out.

The relief crews had arrived on the Manhattan side at noon to find smoke billowing from the middle tube. They'd waited till it tapered off, then drove inside. This was what they'd found.

Lights from the headlights of a couple of cars illuminated the twisted mess of metal. The ceiling and walls were scorched black for hundreds of feet in both directions.

"You think it was a hit?" Neal said.

"You mean like what happened at the Lakewood Post Office. I don't know. See any bullet holes?"

Neal shook his head. "Not a one."

Neither had Barrett.

Two carloads of cowboys reduced to crispy critters. It looked like one car had plowed into the other, smashing it against the side of the tunnel. Barrett visualized a bent side panel, showers of sparks, a gas cap tearing off, then kablam!

What had they been doing—drag racing through the tubes? Assholes. One car was supposed to be stationed at each end of the tunnel, but this wouldn't be the first time they'd got bored and hung out together on the Jersey end. He'd caught them at it before and this was probably another instance. Most of these guys had the attention span of a gnat.

"Well, without bullet holes in the cars—or what's left of them—how could it be a hit? Must have been an accident. Caused by terminal stupidity."

Barrett ground his teeth. He had to get out of this job. He had to take the next step. Get turned. He'd go crazy if he had to spend another nine-plus years with these assholes.

- 13 -

CAROLE ...

"Look, Ma," Lacey said. "A double threat: no hands while walking on the third rail."

Carole knew Lacey had to be as uneasy as she, walking these subway tracks, but she was doing a better job of hiding it. She briefly angled her flashlight beam at Lacey, then back to the tracks again.

"Under different circumstances I might call that a shocking display of brashness, but after yesterday ..."

Lacey laughed.

They'd huddled in the car in the park-and-lock garage all day, venturing out only to relieve themselves. When the sun had fallen and Joseph was awake, he left alone to begin nighttime surveillance on the Empire State Building and the area around it. But he'd returned less than an hour later driving a huge Lincoln Navigator he'd appropriated from a nearby parking lot. He insisted that she and Lacey transfer to it, not because of the comfort its extra size afforded, but because of its hard top. They were already insulated by the garage's layers of reinforced concrete, but he wanted them further sealed in steel. He begged them to stay locked in during the dark hours, telling them their warm blood made them easy to pick out against the cold concrete and granite of the city. If a hybrid like him could sense them, what about the fully undead?

Carole had missed him, worried about him, but had taken his advice. She and Lacey had slept when they could, and talked when they couldn't—talked about anything they could think of. Except sex. Lacey's lesbianism made Carole uncomfortable. Or was it the fact that she felt a growing fondness for this young woman who happened to be a lesbian.

She'd been relieved to see Joseph return with the dawn. He was excited. He'd found a place where they could watch the comings and goings at the

Empire State Building in relative safety and comfort, and told them how to get there.

So now it was their turn. They'd left the garage at sunrise when the undead were no threat. Only the living.

They'd walked the deserted pedestrian tunnel from the Port Authority to Times Square, and were now down on the tracks of the 42nd Street Shuttle. This seemed like the safest way to move about the city. Certainly less risk down here of running into a pack of cruising Vichy than up on the street. At least she hoped so.

Flashlight in one hand, cocked-and-ready pistol in the other; backpacks filled with sharpened stakes, hammers, batteries, and cans of salmon they'd brought from the Shore.

What a way to travel. What a way to live.

Carole knew nothing about guns, had never liked them, had never so much as laid a finger on one until a few days ago. She'd always imagined she'd be afraid of them, but had to admit she found something comforting in the weight, the solidity, the pent-up lethality of the semi-automatic Lacey had given her. She'd shown her how to work the safety. All she had to do if the need arose was point and pull the trigger. She prayed that need would never arise. There was no place to practice so she hadn't fired it yet, and had no idea how it would feel when she did.

"You know," Lacey said, dancing along the third rail like a gymnast on a balance beam, "it's strange. From the instant we jumped off the platform onto the tracks, I had to touch this rail. I was scared to—I mean, what if by some freak chance it was live—but I had to. Didn't you feel any of that?"

"Not at all." But seeing Lacey on the third rail made her nervous. The chance of the power coming back on was about equal to that of a subway full of commuters coming by, but still it put her on edge. "We've been told all our lives that we could never touch the third rail because we'd be fried to a cinder. At first opportunity you're up on the rail, walking along it. That's pretty much you in a nutshell, isn't it."

Lacey snickered. "I guess so. What's the psychology there? It no longer has power over me, so now I'm dancing on its grave?"

"I never placed much stock in psychology."

"But look where you're walking, Carole. What does that say about you?"

"It says nothing's changed. I was quite happy staying off the third rail when it was live, and am just as happy to stay off it now."

"Ever watch Ren and Stimpy?"

"Can't say that I have, although years ago at a school picnic I remember some of my students wearing badly drawn T-shirts with those words on them."

"It's a cartoon show, and in one of the early episodes they're in outer space and they come across this button with all these warnings about 'Do not press or you will destroy the space-time continuum,' or something like that. Anyway, Stimpy just has to press it. And when I saw that I said, Yeah, I think I'd press it too."

"Good Lord, why?"

"Well, first off, part of me would be going, Yeah, right, like this button's gonna end the space-time continuum. Uh-huh. And another part would be thinking, Really? What would that be like? Let's find out..."

"How about a part of you saying, Let's lock the door to this place and throw away the key?"

"I think when they were giving out parts I missed that one." She flashed her light at Carole and held out a hand. "Come on. I'll help you up."

"No, thank you. If one of us slips off and sprains an ankle, the other has to remain well enough to carry on."

Lacey loosed a dramatic sigh, then stepped off the rail and fell in beside her. "Spoil sport." She flashed her beam ahead. "Damn, it's dark."

Carole nodded. The light-colored tiles—she supposed they'd once been white—in the pedestrian tunnel and in the Times Square station had reflected the glow from their flashes, letting them see more than just what was in the beam. But down here on the tracks, surrounded by grimy steel girders and soot-blackened concrete walls, with no reflective surface except the polished upper surface of the tracks and an occasional puddle, the darkness seemed a living thing, pressing against them. And all those recesses and access tunnels and crawl spaces . . .

Something splashed behind them.

Carole heard Lacey gasp. Both whirled and flashed their beams madly about but found nothing moving. Carole could feel her heart pounding.

"Think it was a rat?" Lacey said.

"Could have been."

"I hate rats."

"They're just animals."

"Yeah, but I really skeeve them."

"Skeeve?"

"Yeah. Heard it from some Italian girl I knew. Means to make your skin crawl. If we see a rat, that'll be a good time for you to get used to firing your pistol. I think we can risk a few shots down here."

"I'm not shooting a rat. And neither are you. They're no threat to us, it's a waste of ammunition, and besides, they were here first. It isn't rodentia you should be worried about down here. Genus Homo offers the main threat right now."

They started walking through the dark again, but every so often one of them—they took turns—would turn and flash her light behind them.

Lacey whispered, "I remember hearing about homeless people who used to live in the subway tunnels. I wonder if any of them are left."

"If I were a betting woman—and I'm not—I'd say no. Underground is where the undead go to hide from the light. Once down here they'd sniff out the living in no time."

Lacey grabbed her arm. "Speaking of sniffing, what is that?"

Carole felt her nose wrinkling. She knew the odor: carrion. "Something died nearby."

"Which means there's a good chance one of them is nearby."

They followed the stench to a recess in the right wall that led to an alcove beyond it. Carol flashed her beam down the narrow passage. The floor was littered with the bodies, of beheaded rats, some of them acrawl with maggots.

"What's with the dead rats?" Lacey whispered behind her.

"I don't know."

"We don't want to go in there."

"Right," Carole said. "But we must."

"Like hell."

"We can't leave any undead along our route. What if we're delayed coming back and we're caught down here after sundown? We can't see in the dark; they can."

Lacey was silent a moment, then grumbled, "All right, but let's go in with all bases covered." Carole felt a tug on her backpack. "I'll handle the gun and flashlight—in case whatever's in there is human—while you take the hammer-and-stake detail."

A moment later Carole had her crucifix and a stake in her left hand, thrust out ahead of her, the hammer clutched in her right. Lacey was squeezed beside her, manning the flashlight. Carole wished she had a third hand to hold a cloth over her mouth and nose. The stench was unbearable.

They edged down the passage, shuffling to avoid stepping on the dead rats, and entered a small square alcove, maybe ten feet on a side. The first thing Carole saw was a naked corpse crumpled in the far corner, face to the wall; the position made it impossible to determine its sex. The floor was littered with more dead rats, most of them clustered around the naked emaciated male figure that lay in the center of the space. When Lacey shone the light on its face, the gummy lids parted slowly. It let out a feeble hiss and bared its fangs. Although this one didn't quite qualify as a feral, its appearance was a long way from human.

Carole wasted no time. "Keep the light on it," she told Lacey as she knelt beside the thing.

She touched the crucifix to its sunken belly, eliciting a flash and a puff of smoke. That proved beyond doubt it was undead. The creature writhed as she raised the stake—she'd have no trouble finding a space between the jutting ribs of this washboard chest. But just as Carole pressed the point of the wooden shaft against its skin, Lacey let out a cry of terror and the flash beam darted around the room.

Carole turned and saw Lacey struggling as if her foot was caught.

"It's got me!" Lacey cried. "Damn it to hell, I thought it was dead!"

In the wildly wavering light Carole saw that what she too had assumed to be a human cadaver had locked its fingers around Lacey's ankle. Lacey was trying to kick herself free but the creature clung to her like a weighted manacle. Panic bloomed in the hollow of her gut. Were there more?

Something hit Carole's hand, knocking the stake from her grasp. She turned back to her vampire and felt it reaching for her. She patted the floor around her but found only dead rats.

"Lacey! The light!"

But her words didn't penetrate Lacey's stream of shouted curses as she frantically tried to free her ankle. Carole could feel things spinning out of control as events accelerated, becoming increasingly surreal, chaotic, epileptic. The creature before Carole clutched her wrist as Lacey began shooting at the one grasping her. The shots were deafening in the small space. Lacey's wildly gyrating flashlight beam raked across Carole, revealing the lost stake. Ears ringing, she swung the hammer at the forearm of the hand holding her wrist, heard a bone snap, felt the grip break. She grabbed the stake and in the dark, placed it on the creature's chest over where she hoped its heart would be, then hammered it into the flesh. Its limbs flailed, back arched, chest heaved, but Carole kept her grip on the stake, taking a second swing, the hammer head glancing off the end of the stake and grazing her hand. She clenched her teeth against the pain as Lacey fired again, the strobe of the muzzle flash giving Carole just enough light to see where to strike a third blow. This one landed solidly, driving the stake through the heart beneath it. The creature spasmed and lay still.

Carole looked around for Lacey, saw her limping away down the narrow corridor, dragging the still-attached vampire after her through the maggoty rats. Carole reached around and pulled another stake from her backpack, then followed.

"Lacey, stop."

"Carole, get this damn thing off of me!"

"I will. Just hold the light steady."

Lacey stopped moving. Carole knelt on the back of the thing, placed the point of the stake to the left of the spine, and drove it through with three swift blows. The thing shuddered and finally released its grip on Lacey's ankle.

Lacey lurched away and leaned against a steel support beam, gasping.

"I think I'm going to be sick. The undead always disgusted me, but these things . .. what the hell?"

Carole rose and leaned against the wall, waiting for her pounding heart to slow. "I think they're strays, and obviously they're starving."

"Have they been living on rats? Is that possible?"

"I don't know. Joseph said Franco told him Manhattan was empty and they were hunting in the other boroughs. I do know that we got careless."

"Yeah," Lacey said. "Sorry for losing it in there. I didn't expect... wasn't ready for being grabbed like that. I hope no one topside heard the shots."

So did Carole. "Let's keep moving."

JOE . . .

Joe suffers again through his daymare. Every day, the same dream, clinging by his fingertips to the lip of the same rocky precipice, his feet swinging and kicking over the same dark swirling infinity. The living darkness calling to him, beckoning, and still that same traitorous part of him longing to answer, to let go and fall...

No. Not fall. Go home.

Then a sudden shift. He's now standing on the ledge. And below him, clinging by their fingertips, hang Carole andLacey. He laughs as he grinds a heel into their fingers and sends them screaming, tumbling into the abyss.

LACEY . . .

"This is creepy, Carole," Lacey said as she scanned the street from the subway stairwell. Cars lined the curbs as always, but the streets lay still and silent. "Nothing is moving. Nothing."

Except for the birds, but they didn't count.

The silence got to Lacey. She found the emptiness here eerier and far more surreal than the close call with that pair of emaciated vampires. It sent cramps rippling through her intestines.

But even so, it was good to be out of the tunnels, to feel a fresh breeze on her face, to inhale clean air. They'd found three more undead scattered in alcoves along the shuttle tracks before they reached the Lexington Avenue line, and a half a dozen more on the nine-block length of track they walked down to the Thirty-third Street station. All were emaciated, and they dispatched them without difficulty.

The morning was further along than they'd intended by the time they crept up to street level.

"We've got to head uptown a couple of blocks, then west," Lacey said.

Her uncle had laid out their route, but this was her city so it was only natural that she take the lead here.

"We'll be exposed," Carole said. "I don't like that."

"Neither do I, but the only really open spot will be crossing Thirty-fourth. After that there should be lots of nooks and crannies to hide in if need be."

They made a headlong dash to Thirty-fifth, then turned left.

"This area used to be called Murray Hill," Lacey told Carole as they hurried along the sidewalk, staying low, ever ready to duck into a doorway at the first sign of movement or sound of a car. "I guess it still is. Very tony, very high rent. At least it was."

But now it was a ghost town, pimpled here and there with piles of black plastic garbage bags, torn open, their contents pawed and pecked through by rats and pigeons, perhaps even people. Waiting in vain to be picked up by a non-existent sanitation department. Waiting for Godot.

She led Carole past the brick-fronted Community Church of New York with BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS emblazoned on its front wall.

Peacemakers... is that us? she wondered.

Further up on the right, on the corner of Madison Avenue, sat a brown-stone church and steeple.

"The Church of the Incarnation," Carole muttered as they passed. "I wonder ... oh, it's Episcopal."

"Almost as good as Catholic, right?"

Carole smiled. "But not quite."

They dashed across Madison to the shadows of the Oxford University Press offices, then continued on toward Fifth Avenue. Before reaching Fifth they found the broken side doors of the City University Graduate Building. They squeezed through and climbed to the second floor. There, through huge arched windows, they had a panoramic view of the Art Deco lower levels of the Empire State Building and the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street.

Lacey leaned forward to see if she could see the top.

"Don't get too close to the window," Carole said, pointing to the sunlight slanting through the dusty air. "Somebody might see you."

Lacey nodded, too awestruck by what she saw.

"Look. They have electricity."

Houlihan's bar and restaurant, occupying the ground-floor corner of the Empire State nearest them, was lit up inside. A neon Red Hook Lager sign glowed in the window. She'd stopped in there once to eat but had walked out. Fourteen bucks for a hamburger. Location, location, location.

"Joseph told us they were using the generators."

"I know. But it's been so long since Eve seen a working electric light, I. .. it's kind of wonderful in a way. Gives me hope."

They found some chairs well back in the shadows and settled down to watch. A few Vichy hung around under the canopied front entrance, but otherwise there wasn't much activity.

"Do you think this is the right way to go?" Lacey said after a while. "The three of us attacking the Empire State Building, I mean."

"We don't know that we will be. That's why we're here now. To see if it's feasible."

"Don't get me wrong, but do you get the feeling that no matter what we find, somehow Joe's going to think it's feasible?"

Carole turned and stared at her. "I don't think I understand."

"I think you do. My uncle's got a major hard on for this Franco."

Lacey—

"It's true and you know it. That's all he's talked about since we did the Post Office: Franco, Franco, Franco. Here we are, possibly the only three humans in the world with firsthand knowledge of the vampires' secret—how the death of one reverberates through the progeny, wiping out all his or her get down the line—and we're all together in New York instead of splitting up and trying to make it into the unoccupied areas of the country to spread the news."

"We've been through that."

"Yeah, I know, but..."

It was easier to move around within the occupied zone than to get out of it. Vichy were stacked at the Delaware River crossings waiting to pick off anyone who tried. Joe's theory was that if they could knock off Franco and his get, the Vichy network would collapse in disarray—at least for a while—and they could waltz across.

Maybe.

"And remember," Carole said, "one of the parishioners has a shortwave and is probably broadcasting the news to the world right now."

"We don't know that. And who'd believe him?"

"Exactly. That's why we agreed it will be much better to be able to show than simply tell."

Another idea of Joe's: use the building's security system to videotape the deaths of Franco and his get. Then they'd have proof.

"Look, Carole, I know Franco is the head honcho and taking him down will put a serious crimp in the undead master plan, but do you get the feeling that there's more to it, that if Joe could demonstrate this get-death on another undead of equal stature, he'd bypass the opportunity and remain fixed on Franco?"

Carole's tone took on a definite chill. "You're saying that Joseph would jeopardize our lives and what we know just to get revenge on Franco?"

"You're not answering the question."

Carole looked away.

Was it simple revenge? That had to be part of it, Lacey knew, and she had her own score to settle with this monster for what he had done to her Uncle Joe. But she sensed something more than revenge driving Joe to this showdown, something she was missing.

That worried her.

"Look, Carole, you've got to admit that Joe isn't exactly the same guy he was a week ago. He was dead, and now he's not. What brought him back to life? It wasn't your God, so what was it?"

"God intervened. Joseph was supposed to become one of the undead, but he did not. God has turned the Devil's own work back on him, making Joseph an instrument of His divine vengeance."

"Buy into that if you want, Carole. I don't. I can't. And I'm a little worried about that weird dream he's been having. We know Joe's been to hell and back. I just hope he didn't bring a little of that hell back with him."

- 14 -

CAROLE . . .

By Sunday evening they were ready to make their move.

Fifty-three minutes before sundown, as soon as Joe was up and fed—Lacey's turn tonight—he got behind the wheel of the Navigator and drove down Broadway. Lacey sat up front next to her uncle; Carole had the rear to herself.

"Are we ready for this?" he said as they approached Thirty-fourth Street.

Carole wasn't sure. She hoped so.

They'd learned through three days and three nights of steady surveillance that the Vichy—the more time she spent with Joseph and Lacey, the more Carole found herself using that designation—stuck to a fairly rigid schedule of two shifts: a large contingent of perhaps twenty-five or thirty worked the days, while only a half dozen or so manned the entrance at night.

They'd taken over Houlihan's and turned the bar-restaurant into a cafeteria of sorts. It served two meals a day—breakfast and dinner—at change of shift. Using binoculars, Carole and Lacey had watched from their perch across the street as the Vichy attacked heaps of scrambled eggs every morning—the cook had to be using the powdered kind—and pots of some sort of stew every evening.

All three agreed that the meal break at shift change was the time to strike. All the Vichy were concentrated in Houlihan's then. They'd settled on dawn, Monday, for their assault.

But assault how?

Joseph and Lacey had wanted to find a way to use the napalm, rig it somehow to explode and turn the restaurant into an inferno while the Vichy were eating their breakfast. But the "somehow" eluded them. And even if they did manage to come up with a way to explode it, the napalm presented too many chances for something to go wrong. If they were only partially successful—if they killed some but not all of the Vichy—they'd have to abandon all hope of success. They couldn't win a fire fight with them, and from then on the Vichy would be warned and on full alert.

Carole had had a better idea. This was why she'd brought along the canister of sodium fluorosilicate. She'd had a feeling they might need a more silent form of death than bullets and napalm. She'd found canisters of the chemical at one of the local municipal utility authorities where it was used to purify the water supply. At a few parts per million, sodium fluorosilicate was harmless. But ingestion of half a gram of the odorless and tasteless powder interfered with cellular metabolism, making you deathly ill. A gram caused convulsions and death. Not a pretty way to go, but probably better than being burned alive by napalm.

Carole wished there were another way, one that could be delivered by someone else and not multiply the number of lives she'd already taken. But there was nothing and no one. It was her idea, her responsibility. She couldn't shirk it off on someone else.

The question was, how to get it into the Vichy? Obviously via their food. This evening's sortie would accomplish that—they hoped.

Joseph turned the big SUV onto Thirty-fourth and said, "Let's pray that those technicians I've been watching don't eat with the rest of them tomorrow. We need them. And besides, they appear to be innocent. The three of them seem older than the typical Vichy, they're unarmed, and dress like middle managers. They arrive in a group every morning, flanked by two Vichy.

They're not tied or manacled, but I get the impression they're prisoners of some sort."

"But they could wind up sick or dead," Lacey said. "Then what do we do?"

"Please, God, don't let them," Carole said. She had blood on her hands, she was crimson to her elbows, but so far none of it was innocent.

"But what if they do?" Lacey persisted.

Joseph shook his head. "I've been watching three dawns in a row and not once have they eaten with the others. In fact, by the time they're brought in, breakfast is just about done, and they're taken directly inside. Let's hope tomorrow is no exception."

Halfway between Sixth and Fifth Avenues, Joseph slowed the car to a crawl. Carole leaned forward, peering ahead between Joseph and Lacey toward the lighted windows of Houlihan's, glowing like a beacon in the fading light. She searched for signs of stray Vichy who'd wandered away from the Fifth Avenue entrance around the corner where they usually hung out. But nothing was moving on the street except their car.

"Damn!" Joseph said. "The earring. Would somebody do the honor?"

Lacey fished the Vichy earring off the dashboard and punched it through his earlobe.

"Didn't feel a thing," he said. "Are you ladies ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," Lacey said. "How about you, Carole?"

Carole could only nod. Her mouth was too dry for speech. They were entering the belly of the beast.

Joseph swung the car into the curb and stopped. Houlihan's lit-up interior was empty. Dinner wasn't ready yet. The cook was back in the kitchen.

"I'll turn the car around and wait here. Hurry. And be careful."

Carole watched Lacey shove a pair of steel bars she called "nunchucks" up the left sleeve of her sweatshirt. She turned to Carole and took a deep, quavering breath.

"Let's roll."

Carole alighted with her backpack in her hand. She'd removed the stakes and crosses and hammer and replaced them with a football-size sack of sodium fluorosilicate. A pound of the stuff. Enough to kill the Empire State Building's Vichy contingent a dozen times over.

They hurried across the sidewalk, pushed through the revolving glass doors, and headed straight for the rear of the restaurant area. The air smelled sour. The bar, tables, and floor were littered with paper plates, food scraps, and empty beer cans. Waves of glistening brown beetles scurried out of their way as they approached.

"Cockroaches," Carole whispered. "I've never seen so many."

"Maybe they feel some kinship with the clientele," Lacey replied.

They paused outside the swinging doors to the kitchen. Light filtered through the two round, grease-smeared windows.

"Okay," Lacey said. "I go first."

She pushed through the doors; Carole followed. A fat, balding, cigar-chewing man in a bulging tank top stood before a stove, stirring a big pot. He looked up as they entered.

"Who the fuck are you?" he said.

"A couple of hungry ladies," Lacey said. "Got any dinner you can spare?"

"Yo." He grinned and grabbed his crotch. "I got dinner right here."

"That's not exactly what we had in mind."

"You eat some of this, you get to eat some of what's cookin in the pot. Capisce?"

While Lacey talked, Carole looked around the filthy mess of a kitchen. She didn't see a gun. The cook probably couldn't imagine he'd need one. Immediately to her right she spotted the other thing she was looking for: half a dozen ten-pound canisters of powdered eggs. One was open, its lid slightly askew.

"I'm kind of cranky right now," Lacey was saying. "I'm hungry, I've got low blood sugar, and I'm feeling premenstrual. You'll like me better when I'm not hypoglycemic."

"Ay, this ain't no Let's Make A Deal." He jabbed a finger at Lacey. "You do me before you eat"—then at Carole—"and she does me after. Otherwise you can get the fuck outta here."

Lacey sighed and took a step toward him. "Oh, all right."

He grinned and started loosening his belt. "That's more like it!"

Lacey's hand darted to her sleeve and came up with her nunchucks. She whipped her hand around in a small circle, snapping her wrist and slamming one of the steel bars against the side of the cook's head. He grunted and staggered back, clutching his head. Lacey followed, swinging her nunchucks left, right, left, right, then vertically, connecting each time with either the man's head or his raised elbows. With blood spurting from his face and scalp, the cook turned away, dropped to his knees, then fell forward, covering his head with his hands and groaning.

"Stop, stop! Take what you want!"

"Warned you I was cranky. Now get flat on your belly and stay there." He complied, leaving the patterned soles of his sneakers facing Carole. Lacey turned and gave her a nod.

Carole knelt beside the open canister of powdered eggs and removed the lid. It was three-quarters full. A heavy metal scoop lay inside. She pulled the bag of sodium fluorosilicate out of her backpack and began scooping the egg powder into its place.

"You could have been nice, you know," she heard Lacey saying. "All we wanted was something to eat. Didn't your mother ever teach you to share?"

"I'm sorry," the cook moaned. "I'm sorry!"

"Now we'll have to take it."

When Carole figured she'd scooped out about two pounds of egg, she zipped up the backpack, then emptied the pound of sodium fluorosilicate into the canister. The chemical was white and the powdered egg was a pale yellow. She used the scoop to mix them into a consistent color, then replaced the lid.

God forgive her. She'd just sealed the fates and numbered the hours of dozens of men. Vicious, evil men, but men nonetheless.

"All right," she told Lacey. "I've got the eggs."

Lacey had the big chrome refrigerator door open and was peering inside.

"What have we here?" she said. She reached in and removed what looked like a pepperoni and half a wheel of white cheese. "Looks like cookie's got his own private stash!" She turned to the cook and squatted beside him. "All right. We're leaving. Don't even think about moving or making a sound until we're gone or I'll bust your head wide open and fry your brains on the grill. Capisce? "

The cook moaned and nodded.

Lacey looked at Carole and waggled her eyebrows. "Let go."

JOE . . .

Joe could see the kitchen doors through Houlihan's plate glass windows. He'd watched Carole and Lacey push through them only a few minutes ago, but it seemed like an hour.

"Come on, ladies," he whispered. "Come on."

The idea was to make this look like a food raid—desperate people risking their lives to take food out, not leave something behind. That was why he'd asked Lacey not to show a gun unless she had to. All it would take was one shot to bring the Vichy running. Let them think the thieves who'd hit them were amateurs armed only with nunchucks and knives.

Am I doing the right thing? he wondered for the thousandth time since they'd arrived in New York. He had a feeling he wasn't.

They were following his lead, trusting him with their lives. Was he, as the phrase went, exercising due diligence? He didn't know. All he knew was that once the idea of targeting Franco in his aerie had taken hold, he couldn't uproot it. He'd considered other options, but none of them held a candle to this. Because this was unquestionably the best tactic or because he'd become fixated on Franco? Part of him argued that he should have sent either Carole or Lacey west, to try to cross into unoccupied territory with the secret. But a stronger part had countered that he needed both of them along to take Franco down, and that argument had prevailed.

And he knew why. He had a secondary goal in mind, one he dared not tell Carole and Lacey. They'd never let him go through with it.

But he had another concern. Joe was noticing wild mood swings. In life he'd been prone to periodic lows that usually responded to a couple of stiff Scotches. Now he found himself experiencing surges of rage at the slightest provocation. He'd managed to control them so far. Like early this morning when Lacey had questioned him about some minor point in tonight's plan, he'd had this sudden urge to grab her by the throat and scream at her to stop asking so many goddamned questions.

He'd managed to fight it off, but that urge still frightened him. Was it the stress, the responsibility of what they'd planned, or was he edging closer to the darkness in his daymares? What if—?

Movement in the SUV's side mirror caught his attention. A Vichy, bearded and denimed like so many of them, had rounded the corner and was approaching the Navigator with a raised pistol. Then Joe recognized him: the one who'd been with the head Vichy in the Armani suit when Joe was dropped outside the front entrance.

He'll recognize me! This will ruin—

Wait. He won't recognize me.

Joe had forgotten momentarily how his face had been disfigured by the sun. Easy to forget when you'd never seen it, when mirrors gave back only a smeary blur.

"What the fuck is this?" the Vichy said, stepping up to the open driver window and leveling his semiautomatic at Joe. "Who are you and what the fuck you think you're—shit! What happened to your face?"

That voice ... Joe remembered it taunting him in the long elevator ride to the Observation Deck.

I'm glad I ain't you. Holy shit, am I glad I ain't you.

"Good morning," Joe said. "Just waiting to pick up a friend. And the face? An industrial accident."

"Who gives a shit. What're you doin here, man? You think this is some kinda taxi stand?"

Joe turned his head and showed his right earlobe. He flicked the dangly earring. "Hey, I'm in the club."

"That don't mean shit. Who you waitin for?"

Joe cudgeled his brain for the name of this guy's buddy, the one in the suit who'd called him "god-boy."

"Barrett," he said as it came back to him. "He told me to meet him here at sundown."

The Vichy's eyes narrowed. "Barrett's on night duty with me. Should be here any minute." He pulled open Joe's door. "Let's go see about this."

As Joe stepped out of the car, he saw movement in Houlihan's over the Vichy's shoulder: Carole and Lacey leaving the kitchen.

Joe reached for the man's pistol and was surprised by how fast his hand moved. It darted out in a blur of motion; he grabbed the weapon and twisted it from his grasp. The Vichy jumped back with a shocked look and stared at his empty palm. Then he opened his mouth to shout but Joe's other hand reached his throat first, fingers gripping the nape of his neck while the thumb jammed against the windpipe. The man made a strangled sound. Joe pressed harder, hearing the cartilage crunch as it began to give way.

Stop, he told himself.

They'd decided no killing tonight, it might rile the Vichy too much, send them out hunting instead of staying close to Houlihan's and tomorrow's breakfast.

But this felt too, too good. And oh this man deserved dying for how he'd taunted him. Worse yet, he'd seen too much.

A crushed throat might raise too many alarms, though.

With a heave Joe lifted him off his feet and hurled him head first toward the sidewalk. The back of his skull hit the concrete with a meaty crunch; his arms stiffened straight out to either side, then fell limp beside him.

"Joseph?" It was Carole, stepping through the revolving door. She stared at the body with the blood pooling around its head. "What—?"

"Hey, Unk," Lacey said. "I thought we said—"

"In the car, both of you!" he snapped. "We've wasted too much time already!"

Their fault. If they hadn't dawdled so damn long inside, this wouldn't have happened.

The two women piled into the back seat as Joe slipped behind the wheel. He wanted to slam his foot against the accelerator and burn rubber out of here, but a quiet departure was best. When he reached Sixth he turned uptown one block, then raced east on Thirty-fifth. Mostly pubs and parking garages along this block. He pulled into a multi-level garage and parked far in the rear. If the Vichy went hunting for the thieves who stole their food and killed their man, they'd never expect them to hide just one block away.

As he shut off the engine he noticed a foul odor emanating from the back seat.

"What is that?" he said.

"Just some snack foods we picked up," Lacey said. "A pepperoni and what looks like provolone."

"The pepperoni—does it have garlic in it?"

"Probably, I—oops. Sorry about that."

"Throw it out."

"No way, Unk. We might never see another pepperoni again. But we'll eat it outside the car."

Joe was halfway turned around, ready to grab the damn pepperoni and shove it down her throat when he stopped himself.

He turned back and leaned his head against the steering wheel.

What's happening to me?

- 15 -

CAROLE. . . .

At dawn, and not a minute before, Joseph, Carole, and Lacey stepped out of the garage and started toward Fifth Avenue. The pistol in Carole's hand— Joseph had told her it was a 9mm Glock—felt heavy as it swung with her gait, muzzle toward the sidewalk.

They'd been waiting for Joseph when he awoke an hour ago. After Carole had fed him a few drops of her blood, they'd gone to work checking weapons and mentally preparing themselves for the coming ordeal.

While Joseph and Lacey had tinkered with their guns, Carole sidled off with her gear to a far corner of the garage to make her own preparations. In a little while they'd be entering the heart of darkness, with a fair chance of not coming out alive. Carole wasn't afraid of dying. It was undying that terrified her. So while Joseph and Lacey armed themselves from the collection of weapons confiscated along the way, Carole added extra precautions to guarantee she'd never be an undead: extra charges front and back, and extra triggers. If it came to the point where all hope was lost, she'd make her exit. But not alone.

If worse came to worst, she'd be risking eternal damnation to avoid undeath. Carole shuddered at the prospect. She'd been taught that suicide was a one-way ticket to hell, but she hoped and prayed that God would understand. Death before dishonor . . . death before undeath . . . surely that was the right thing to do.

And now they were on the street, heading toward . . . what?

"All right," Joseph said as they neared Fifth Avenue. He was walking between them. "This is it. We take it slow down to Thirty-fourth. If things went as planned we won't meet any resistance. If things didn't, well, we might have to fight to escape."

Carole knew all this but let him talk. She sensed an unusual tension in

Joseph. Was it because this was their D-Day, when all their planning and watching and waiting would either bring them success or death? Or was it something else?

He stopped them at Fifth and worked the slide on his gun.

"Ladies—time to lock and load."

Carole followed his example. The slide gave more resistance than she'd expected.

"Remember what I said," Joseph told them. "If anything happens to me, get out of town and do your best to reach unoccupied territory."

He leaned away and peered around the corner, then turned back to them and nodded.

"I think we're in business."

He motioned them to follow when Carole cleared the corner she saw what he meant. Down the gentle slope, past Thirty-Fourth Street, she spotted three still figures lying on the sidewalk under the Empire State Building's front canopy.

As they passed a smashed and looted Duane Reade, Houlihan's came into view. Writhing forms littered the sidewalk in front of it. One lay in the open doorway next to the revolving door. The odor of fresh coffee wafted across the street through the cool dawn air. On another day, in another place, the smell would have had her salivating, but right now her stomach had shrunk to a tight little knot the size of a walnut.

They crossed the street and now Carole could see the Vichy close up— their gray faces, their bloodshot eyes, their blue lips. She tensed and ducked into a half crouch as she caught movement to her right. One of the Vichy was convulsing on the sidewalk. Her first impulse was to run to his side and help him, but she suppressed it. She, after all, was the reason for his seizure.

Carole stared in horror at the thrashing arms, the foam-flecked lips. It was one thing to plan for their deaths, to imagine them dead. It was something else entirely to witness their death throes.

"Dear God, what have I done?"

JOE . . .

"Let's keep moving," Joe said.

He noticed Carole's sick look. He felt for her, but this was no time for Carole to start second-guessing herself. The old Father Joe might have been appalled, but ex-Father Joe was more fatalistic. It was an ugly scene, but what was done was done. No turning back now.

"Eight," Lacey said. "Your window is shrinking."

Joe checked his watch. He had less than fifty minutes before daysleep took hold. They entered the building and he led Lacey and Carole on a winding course through the prostrate forms in the Empire State's front lobby.

At the elevator banks he stopped when he noticed the closed doors to the local car. He pressed the call button, then stepped back and aimed his pistol at the doors.

He motioned Carole and Lacey to the side. "Be ready to fire. This may not arrive empty."

"But this car is waiting," Carole said, pointing to a set of open doors.

"That's the Observation Deck express. At this point we only want to go to three."

The car arrived empty. Joe got on after Lacey and Carole, stabbed the 3 button, and they were on their way. Mentally he was anxious, but physically he was calm—no butterflies in his gut, no pounding heart. As if his emotions were divorced from his body. Or maybe because his body had entered a new mode of existence, one without adrenaline.

Joe pointed his gun at the doors as the car slowed to a stop on three. They parted to reveal an empty hallway. He touched his fingers to his lips and stepped out. Keeping his pistol raised before him, he approached the open double doors to the security center. He was four feet away when a heavyset Vichy stepped into view.

"About fuckin—"

His eyes widened as he saw them and he was reaching for the pistol in his belt when Joe shot him once in the chest. He staggered back, eyes even wider, and then another shot rang out, catching him below the left eye and snapping his head back. He fell like a tree to lay stretched out on the hall carpet.

Joe glanced at Lacey who had her pistol extended in a two-handed grip.

She smiled. "Just making sure."

He looked at Carol. She clutched her pistol waist high, pointed at the wall. She looked like a startled deer.

Joe stepped into the security area and found the three technicians staring at him in shock. He pointed to the fallen Vichy in the hall.

"Any more like him here?"

They shook their heads.

"No," said the oldest of the three. He looked about sixty with gray hair and a receding hairline. "But there will be soon. He was waiting for his relief so he could go get breakfast."

"His relief's not coming," Joe said. "And breakfast has been canceled."

He allowed himself a moment of congratulation. They'd done it. They'd knocked out the Vichy and captured the Security Center.

Now they had to hold it.

"Who are you?" said the technician. He couldn't seem to pull his gaze from Joe's face.

Joe opened his mouth to speak but Lacey beat him to it.

"Just some nobodies who've come to liberate the building."

"No shit?" said the youngest, who appeared to be in his forties.

"No shit," Lacey agreed. "Who are you three and why are you working for the bloodsuckers?"

"I'm Marty Considine," said the gray-headed one. He pointed to the young one. "This is Mike Leland, and that's Kevin Fowler." The third technician was fat and wore a stained half-sleeve white shirt. He nodded but said nothing.

"As for being here," Considine went on, "we don't have much choice."

"Yeah," said the fat one, Fowler. "Not if we want our wives and kids to live."

Lacey shook her head. "You call this living?"

Leland looked away. "No. But when they slap your kid around and rape your wife in front of you, just to give you a taste of what will happen if you screw up, you get the message."

Joe felt for them, but not terribly. Everyone had suffered. He was scanning the monitors. When he recognized views of the Observation Deck, he said, "We've got one job for you, then you can go back to your families."

"And do what?" said Fowler. His lower lip trembled. "Where can we go?"

"That's up to you. Within half an hour, if all goes well, your services will no longer be needed here. By anyone." He stepped closer to the monitors. "Is there a camera in the stairwell to the Observation Deck?"

Leland began typing on a keyboard. "We've got three there. Which one do you want?"

"The highest—between the eighty-fifth and eighty-sixth if you've got one."

"We do."

"Audio?"

"Just video." He grabbed a mouse and clicked. "Here you go."

A monitor went blank, then cut back in with a view of a door marked 85 in an empty stairwell. A sawed-off shotgun leaned in the corner next to the door.

"Excellent," Joe said.

Leland squinted at the screen. "Hey, somebody's usually guarding the door to eight-five from dawn to dusk."

"We gave him the day off," Lacey said. "Any way of broadcasting from here?"

Considine shook his head. "The building has a huge TV antenna, but that's another department. We're security. We don't know squat about TV transmission."

"It's okay," Joe said, tapping the screen. "We'll tape as planned. Record that one, and then I'll tell you another one to record when I get to the Observation Deck."

"It's true then?" Considine said. "You're really liberating the building?"

"That's the plan," Joe said.

"About time. How many of you are there?"

"Just us," Lacey said.

He stared. "Three? Just three? You've got to be kidding! Are you people crazy?

Joe shrugged. "Probably. But we're already more than halfway to succeeding. We—"

A burst of static from the hallway startled him.

"Security! Security, do you copy?"

Joe tensed. "What's that?"

"One of their two-ways."

Joe stepped out into the hall, found the little walkie-talkie clipped to the dead guard's belt, and turned it off. He returned to the Security Center and faced Carole and Lacey.

"That means at least one of the Vichy is still alive out there. Probably more."

"Well," Lacey said, "we knew from the get-go we wouldn't get them all."

"I don't like leaving you two alone here."

Considine stepped past him. Joe tensed as he picked up the fallen guard's pistol. He worked the slide and chambered a round.

"Who said they're alone? Your ranks just swelled to four."

Joe stared at him. "You know how to use that?"

Considine nodded. "Nam, pal. Eighteen months in country."

Joe liked leaving Carole and Lacey with an armed stranger even less, but sensed he could trust Considine. He didn't have much choice.

"You folks hold the fort here. Lock the door and pull that desk in front of it. Shoot anyone who tries to get in."

"Where are you going?" Considine said.

"Upstairs. I've got a date with Franco."

He glanced at Carole. She had a dazed air about her that worried him. "Carole, are you all right?"

"I'll be fine," she said. "Hurry. You haven't much time."

"I know." He stepped close to her and took her in his arms and held her. He never wanted to leave her.

"I love you," he murmured as he kissed her hair. "Always remember that. We—"

He stopped as he felt a lump between her shoulder blades, and another farther down near the small of her back. He knew what they were.

"Oh, God, Carole!" he whispered. "Don't ever push those buttons. I know they give you comfort, but I beg you, don't. Please don't."

He released her she stared at him with stricken eyes. "Only as a last resort," she told him. "Only when all hope is gone."

"Then I pray that moment never comes." He turned and hugged Lacey. "My favorite niece," he said. "One of my favorite people in the whole world. Just remember: if anything happens to me, you and Carole get these tapes to the unoccupied territories."

Lacey backed away and gave him a strange look. "Why do you keep saying that? It's like you don't think you'll see us again."

"I might not. But I'm not what this is about. I'm expendable. If I can't make it back, you two must go on without me."

He couldn't tell them the truth. He turned to go.

"Wait," Carole said, holding a zipped-up backpack. "Don't forget this,"

He nodded and began slipping his arms through the straps as he ran for the elevators. The pack was hot against his back.

BARRETT . . .

Home from the night shift, James Barrett stepped into his Murray Hill brownstone and checked the long-pork filet he'd put in the refrigerator to thaw when he'd left at sunset. It had softened considerably but still had a ways to go.

He yawned. Christ, this was a boring way to live. Sleeping days, working nights. His internal clock couldn't seem to get used to it. Cooking was the only interesting thing in his life now, and even that was palling on him. Without fresh spices there were only so many ways you could cook human flesh. At least it was better than eating that slop they served the troops at Houlihan's day after day.

Not that he'd eat with the hoi polloi anyway. He needed to set himself apart, both in their eyes and in the undead's.

At least they'd had a little excitement last night with Neal getting killed and those two women stealing food from the kitchen. Neal wound up with the back of his head stove in. He was one tough mother. Barrett couldn't see a couple of women doing that. Must've had help.

He wondered if they were connected to the mess in the Lincoln tunnel. What if that hadn't been an accident?

He had put the cowboys on full alert tonight, stationed a couple of guards in Houlihan's, and sent out teams to look for someone, anyone who might be connected. They'd returned with a few stray cattle but no one who fit the cook's description.

He'd miss Neal. He was good for a laugh and for the application of a little muscle when Barrett gave him the go-ahead. But did he feel even a trace of sadness at his passing? They said when you were turned and rose as undead, you lost all your emotions. That would be a breeze for Barrett. He had no memory of feeling anything for anybody. Ever.

That was why his situation was so frustrating. He was already most of the way to undead. All he needed was the bite and he'd be there. If he could just—

His two-way squawked. Now what? Couldn't they do anything over there without him? He snatched it up.

"Yeah. Talk to me."

Nothing but faint static from the other end.

"Hey, you called. What do you want?"

Nothing again, then something that sounded like a groan, a very agonized groan.

"Hello? Who's there? What's going on?"

Again the groan, fainter this time, then nothing. Barrett tried to get a response but nothing came through. He tried calling the Security Center but no one picked up.

His chest tightened. Something was up. Remembering Neal's cracked dome, he stuck his Dirty Harry gun—his .44 Magnum—into his shoulder holster and hurried back to the Empire State.

JOE . . .

When Joe stepped out on the eightieth floor, instead of heading for the other bank of elevators to take him the last six floors to the Observation Deck, he looked around and found an exit door. He pushed through and climbed the stairs.

Outside the door marked 85 he looked around for the security camera. When he found it he waved, then reached for the handle.

A foul miasma of rot engulfed Joe when he opened the door. The stairwell was well lit but the space beyond the door was dark as a tomb.

How appropriate, he thought.

His night vision was extraordinary but it wasn't up to this, so he stepped through and found a light switch on the wall. The hallway was strewn with office furniture. He began searching room to room. The first two were filled with somnolent get-guards stretched out on mattresses and futons, but Franco was not among them. He looked down the hall and saw a form stretched out before a doorway. Could be a dead victim, but if it was a get-guard . . .

It was. That could only mean Franco was inside. Joe picked up the pistol and machete at the guard's side and tossed them down the hall. Then he tried the door. Locked. He reared back and kicked it in.

There, in the center of the otherwise empty room with boarded-up windows, a four-poster bed sat like a ship becalmed on a still dark sea.

And in that bed .. . Joe recognized the big blond hair and mustache, the sharp angle of the nose. A burst of fury like nothing he'd ever experience took hold of him. He wanted to run down the hallway, find that machete, and start hacking away at this worthless cluster of cells. But no killing blows. Just slicing off small pieces, one at a time . . .

Joe shook it off. These dark impulses were getting stronger. Had to stick to the plan.

"Franco!" he shouted as he stepped over the get-guard. "Franco, I've got something to show you!"

Franco lay on his back in gray silk suit pants and a glossy white, loose-sleeved shirt that reminded Joe of a woman's blouse. Slowly he pivoted his head toward Joe. His eyes widened in surprise as his lips formed the word, Who?

"We'll get to that in a minute."

He lifted the big vampire onto his shoulder, something that would have been a back-wrenching task a week ago; but now, with his semi-undead strength, he found it easy. Franco struggled but his movements were weak, futile. The get-guard at the door clutched at him as he passed but didn't have a prayer of restraining him.

Joe moved down the hall, kicking in each door he passed, shouting, "Hey! I've got your daddy and I'm going to send him to his final reward. Try and stop me!"

Back in the stairwell he started up the flight to the Observation Deck but stopped halfway. He put Franco down and let him slump on the concrete steps.

"Who are you?" Franco rasped.

"Am I that easy to forget?" Joe said. "It was only a week ago—a week ago today, as a matter of fact."

He heard something scrape against the concrete under Franco. He flipped him over and saw the leathery tips of his wings struggling to emerge through the slits in his shirt. Joe pulled off his backpack and unzipped it. Rays of bright white light shot from the opening.

Blinking in the glare, Joe reached in and found the foam-rubber padding Carole had duct-taped to the lower end of his silver cross. Even through the padding he felt its heat. Averting his eyes he pulled out the cross and slammed it against one of the emerging wings. A hiss of burning flesh, a puff of acrid smoke as Franco writhed and let out a hoarse scream. Then the other wing— with the same results.

He returned the cross to the back pack and zipped it. He blinked to regain his vision; when it cleared he looked down at Franco's back. The wing tips were now smoldering lumps of scar tissue. He turned as he heard the door from the eighty-fifth floor hallway swing open. Members of Franco's get-guard began to crawl into the stairwell.

Good.

He grabbed the gasping, whimpering Franco and turned him onto his back. The vampire stared at Joe's face, his expression terrified and confused.

"I'll refresh your memory, Franco. You allowed something called Devlin to lunch on me." Joe's anger flared again as he recalled his terror, his helplessness, and the searing pain of having his throat ripped open. "Remember?" He heard his voice growing louder. "Told me I'd soon be just like him. Remember? " He grabbed Franco by the neck and drew his face close. "Remember?"

He was shouting now and he wanted to rip Franco's head off.

No. Not yet.

He looked down and saw that the get-guards had reached the steps and were crawling up, their progress slow, tortured.

"Come on, guys," he said. "Move it. I haven't got all day."

Damn right. He glanced at his watch. He had maybe twenty, twenty-five minutes before he became as weak as they.

He turned back to Franco and saw that a light had dawned in the undead's eyes—realization, but not belief.

"The priest?" he whispered in a voice like tiny claws scratching stone. "You? No ..."

"Yes!" Joe heard the word hiss out like escaping steam. "The priest. Killing me wasn't good enough. You had to condemn me to an eternity of depravity, rob me of every shred of dignity, undo every scrap of good I'd done in my entire life. At least that was your plan. But it didn't work."

"How?" The word was an exhalation.

"I'm not even sure myself. All I know is this is how it works out in the end: I lose, but you lose too."

He flinched at a deafening report and the spang of a bullet ricocheting off the concrete above his head. Another shot and this time the bullet dug into his hip with a painful sting.

He stood and faced them, spreading his arms. "Go ahead. It won't matter. I'm one of you."

Not true. He'd never be one of them, but no reason they shouldn't suffer some confusion and dismay in their final minutes.

More shots. Most were misses because their weak, wavering hands were unable to aim, but a few hit home. He jerked with the impacts, felt the heat and pain of their entries, but it was nothing he couldn't bear. Finally they gave it up. He smiled at the alarm in their faces.

He turned to Franco and lifted him in his arms. "Let's go."

"Where?"

"To see the sun. Don't you miss it? We're too late for sunrise, but it promises to be a beautiful day."

Franco grabbed Joe's shirt and pulled on it. A feeble gesture. But Joe was surprised to see a nasty grin stretch his thin lips.

"You idiot! Devlin was my get! That makes you my get as well. When I die, you die!"

"I know," Joe said, returning a grin he hoped was just as nasty: "I'm counting on that."

Franco's jaw dropped open. "N-no! You can't! You—"

"I can. Because I don't want to exist like this."

Joe pushed through the door at the top of the steps and emerged into the green-tiled atrium by the elevators. Sunlight, searingly bright, blazed through the huge windows of the enclosed observation area that lay a few steps up and beyond. Only a six-foot swath, no more than two feet wide, penetrated the atrium.

I'm here. I've done it.

Amazing what someone can do when they don't care if they live or die, he thought. But they can achieve so much more, achieve the seemingly impossible, when they're looking to die.

He forced himself to look at that swath of direct light. That was where Franco would meet his end, sealing Joe's fate as well. But first he'd wait for the get-guards to arrive. He wanted as many as possible on camera when Franco bought it.

CAROLE . . .

Carole's stomach clenched as she stared at the monitors. "What is he doing?" "Just what he said he would," Lacey replied. "Getting as many get-guards onscreen before he pushes Franco into the sunlight."

"But there's a whole stairwell full of guards. Too many of them. He's letting them get too close. Why doesn't he have the cross out?"

"What can they do? After that display in the stairwell they know they can't shoot him."

"But they have those machetes."

"So? They can barely lift them. Don't worry, Carole. He's got them beat." Carole wasn't so sure. A lucky swing from a machete could sever an Achilles tendon, or worse, a higher swing could catch Joseph's hamstrings. He wouldn't be able to stand then. He'd go down and they'd swarm over him. One of them might be strong enough to behead him ...

Her chest tightened at the thought. She couldn't, wouldn't lose him.

"I'm going up there," she blurted.

"No way!" Lacey said. "Our job is to stay here."

Carole began pushing the desk away from the door. "No. I can help. I can use the cross to keep them back."

Lacey grabbed her arm. "Carole—"

Carole wrenched free. "Please don't fight me on this. I've got to go. I've just got to."

"Shit!" Lacey said. "Then I'll go with you."

"No." She cracked the door and peeked out into the hall. Empty. "One of us has to stay here. That's you."

Without looking back, she stepped into the hall and started for the elevators.

She heard Considine's voice behind her. "Tell her she's got to go down to one and catch an express to eighty."

"Carole—" Lacey began.

"I heard," Carole said over her shoulder.

"Keep your gun ready," Lacey called. "You see anything moving, shoot first and ask questions later."

"I will."

And she would. Joseph needed her and no one was going to bar her from reaching him.

BARRETT . . .

Barrett staggered through the Empire State lobby in a daze. His men lay strewn about like jackstraws. Blue-gray faces everywhere. Those who weren't dead were well on their way.

Obviously they'd been poisoned, but how? The water supply? The breakfast eggs? The coffee? Didn't much matter now. He just had to remember not to eat or drink anything within blocks of this building.

But all of his men? Surely there had to be a couple who'd missed breakfast. But he didn't know who and he had no way of contacting them. They were scattered throughout the building. He'd have to go floor to floor and door to door.

The other question was who. Who did this? What did they want? Were they after the cowboys, to send a message to anyone who collaborated with the enemy? Or were they after the undead too? If so, they'd be upstairs, on eight-five—where the vamps would be sitting ducks and the shit would really be hitting the fan.

Barrett turned and looked back at the front doors. His first impulse was to cut and run. As top cowboy the responsibility for all this would be laid on him. But on the other hand, he'd been looking for a chance to put himself in the spotlight. Maybe this was opportunity knocking.

He had to reach the Security Center. He could get the lay of the land there and decide what, if anything, he could do. He headed for the elevators. As he passed the security kiosk in the main lobby he remembered it was equipped with a couple of monitors.

He stepped up to the console and dialed through the various feeds but stopped when he came to the Observation Deck. He gaped at the scene playing out on the little black-and-white screen. Some guy with a scarred-up face had Franco. The head vampire hung in his grip like a rag doll. A couple of get-guards were crawling through the stairway door. Where were their guns? Why didn't they shoot?

They needed someone to take charge up there and take this fucker out.

James Barrett grinned. His moment had come.

He searched the drawers of the kiosk looking for something to give him an advantage, no matter how small, beyond his big gun. He found some pepper spray and a couple of pairs of handcuffs. He took the spray, then pulled his Magnum and headed for the elevators.

As he approached the Observation Deck express bank, he heard a set of doors slide open. He started to step back, then reversed field. The car couldn't hold that many; he might be outnumbered but he had surprise on his side. So he made a snap decision and charged with both arms held straight out before him, pepper spray in his left, pistol in the right. He'd reached full speed when a woman stepped out of the car. He collided with her head on. As they fell to the floor he began firing into the car. He got off two booming shots before he realized it was empty.

Barrett turned his attention to the woman who was struggling beneath him. He slammed the heavy barrel of his Magnum against her head, stunning her. Then he rushed back to the guard kiosk and grabbed the handcuffs. She was stirring as he returned so he quickly pulled her arms behind her and snapped the cuffs on. He didn't have the keys and didn't need them to lock her into them. As for getting her out—not his worry.

He stood and looked down at her. A slim brunette. Not bad looking, but not his type. One thing he knew about her was that she didn't belong here. That meant she was with the ugly guy on the Observation Deck. And that meant he had a hostage. Perfecto.

JOE . . .

Half a dozen get-guards were through the door now, their machetes scraping against the marble as they dragged themselves across the floor.

These should be enough to make the point, he thought as he edged himself and Franco away from them and closer to the patch of sunlight. They appeared to be in the camera's field of view.

Now .. . the moment of truth.

Questions surged unbidden into his mind. Did he really want to do this? It would end everything. No more Carole, no more Lacey. Wasn't this existence, hideous as it was, better than no existence at all?

No. Unequivocally no. He would not spend the centuries this half-breed existence might give him as a creature of the darkness and twilight. Yes, he'd have more time with Carole and Lacey, but he'd also have to watch them age and die.

Better to make a clean break, better to end his personal horror by removing another horror from the earth.

He lifted Franco and tensed his muscles to hurl him into the light.

"Get ready to burn, Franco," he whispered.

"No! Please—!"

Just then an elevator chimed to his left. The doors slid open and his heart sank when he saw Carole. He didn't want her to have to watch his death throes. But panic and rage exploded within him when he saw the grinning face hovering behind her shoulder.

Barrett.

The head Vichy propelled Carole ahead of him into the atrium. The doors whispered closed behind them.

"Well, well," he said, still grinning. "What have we here? I guess this is what we call a stand-off."

"Carole, are you all right?"

She shook her head. A thin stream of blood trickled down her temple from her scalp. Her eyes filled with tears.

"Joseph, I'm so sorry."

"It's all right."

He made a silent promise: I'll get you out of this, no matter what it takes.

He noticed that her arms were pulled behind her, which meant her hands were bound. In a way, that was a relief. Barrett had no idea how lucky he was. If Carole were able to get her hands into her pockets, she might have blown them both to pieces by now.

"Let her go, Barrett," Joe said.

His eyebrows lifted. "You know my name? You have the advantage over me, sir. And I'm sure I'd not forget a face like yours."

There wasn't time to get into that.

"Just let her go."

"And why would I want to do that?"

"It's the right thing to do."

"For you maybe, but not for me. I'm willing to make a trade, though. Her for him." He pointed to Franco. "Hear that, Bossman? I'm saving your ass. And I expect something in return—big time. After I straighten this out, I want to be turned. Immediately. We waive the ten-year clause. Agreed?"

"Yes," Franco rasped. "Of course."

"And I don't want to be turned by some low-level drone, either. By you or, better yet, by the guy who turned you, if he's still around. I want wings."

Franco nodded. "Yes. Anything. Anything you want."

"You want to be like them?" Joe pointed to the undead guards who were continuing their inching crawl toward him. They'd be within striking distance in a minute. "Look at them. Slithering along the floor. They're vermin!"

"But they're the vermin who're running the show."

"Not for long. And then where will you be?"

"It's over for us, Mister Melted Face. The New World Order has arrived, and though it's not what anyone imagined, the choices come down to predator or prey. I've never seen myself as prey." He smiled. "So . .. how do you want to work the trade?"

"Joseph, no!" Carole cried.

Barrett grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back. "No one asked you! You're nothing but merchandise, so keep it zipped. I do the negotiating here!"

Joe took a step toward him. He wanted to kill Barrett, but slowly. Twist his head around an inch at a time until it was facing the other way.

"Uh-uh!" Barrett said. He held up an old-fashioned stiletto, pressed the button, and out snapped a gleaming four-inch blade. He pressed the point against Carole's throat. "Don't make me damage the merchandise."

LACEY . . .

Lacey stared at the Observation Deck feed. Joe's lips were moving and he was looking away from the camera.

"Who's he talking to?" she said.

Considine shrugged. "Maybe Franco, maybe your friend. She should have arrived by now."

The scars made Joe's face all but unreadable, especially on this small, grainy screen, but something about his body language set off warning alarms throughout her brain.

"Do you have other cameras up there?"

Leland grabbed his mouse. "One other that catches the atrium." Windows opened and closed on his computer screen, menus dropped down and rolled up. "Here we go."

The scene that flickered to life on the screen froze Lacey's heart. Carole ... held prisoner by a Vichy.

"Barrett!" Considine said over her shoulder. "Fucking Barrett. How'd you miss him?"

"Who's he?"

"Chief rat."

Lacey pulled her pistol from her belt. "I'm going up there."

"Not alone, you're not," Considine said.

"Stay here," she said. "We need that tape."

"These guys can handle that. Going alone is what got your friend in trouble." He was already heading for the door. "Let's move."

Lacey followed him out into the hall. They were almost to the elevators when one of them chimed. The UP light glowed over the second set of doors. Considine went into a crouch and motioned her toward the near wall. Pistol fully extended, he hurried forward and flattened himself against the wall immediately to the right of the doors.

When they slid open and a scraggly-haired head peeked out, Considine shot him in the face from six inches away. Lacey heard someone inside the car shout "Fuck!" as the shot man went down in a spray of red, landing in the doorway. The doors tried to close but the body blocked them.

Considine knelt and, without turning his head, motioned Lacey down to the floor. Seconds later another Vichy burst from the car with a hoarse cry, spraying the hall with an assault pistol. As the bullets screamed over her head, Lacey returned fire along with Considine. She didn't know who hit him but suddenly he went into spin, falling one way while his weapon sailed in another. He ended up huddled against the wall, clutching his shoulder.

Considine peeked into the elevator car, then stepped over to the fallen Vichy, picking up his assault pistol on the way. He turned him over with his foot and—to Lacey's shock—shot him in his good shoulder, then once again in the stomach.

"Not exactly a kill shot," Lacey said as the Vichy screamed and writhed in agony.

Considine's face was a grim mask as he returned to the elevator and pulled the first body clear of the door.

"Not intended," he said.

"We don't want to leave any live ones."

He motioned her into the car. "That one we do. Between the messed-up shoulders and the gut shot, he's out of the fight."

The doors closed and he pressed the lobby button.

Lacey stared at him. "You've got something personal going on here?"

Considine's eyes remained fixed straight ahead on the doors. His voice was dead flat. "Back in January two of this guy's buddies held me and made me watch while he raped my wife. Said if I didn't cooperate they'd pass her around the cowboys like that until they were tired of her, then she'd be turned and sent to kill me."

Lacey swallowed. The terror, the humiliation this man had had to live with .. . she couldn't think of anything else to say except, "I'm sorry."

"And now he's sorry. It should take him hours to die. If I'm real lucky, maybe a couple of days, every minute of it in excruciating agony."

"My kind of guy," she said. He glanced at her. "That is, if I liked guys."

JOE . . .

Joe winced as he saw the point of the stiletto indent the flesh of Carole's throat.

"Don't hurt her,"

"Then stop dragging this out," Barrett said. "We make the switch and we all walk away free and clear." He smiled. "Until I come and hunt you down."

Joe felt his strength beginning to slip. He glanced toward the observation windows. He couldn't see the glass or anything beyond, only a featureless blaze of white. The sun was nearing the point where it would suck off his energy and reduce him to a crawling weakling like Franco and his get.

What could he do? If there was a way out of this, he couldn't see it. He could barely think.

So close to success—ending Franco and all his get, no matter where in the world they were. Ending himself.

Maybe that was the answer: shove Franco into the sun, and while his screams caused a distraction, make a leap toward Carole and Barrett.

Did he dare?

As if Barrett were reading his mind, he moved into the patch of sunlight, pulling Carole with him. Joe could barely look at them.

"No funny stuff," Barrett said.

Joe slumped. Now what?

"I sense indecision," Barrett said. "Let me offer some incentive." He held up the stiletto, twisting it back and forth to catch the light. "Always wanted one of these, but they've been illegal for decades. Found it in the house I'm occupying. Snap it open and you feel like a juvenile delinquent from a bad fifties movie. But it's a good street-fighting knife. Know why? This slim little blade doesn't get caught up in clothing. Watch."

With that he stabbed it into Carole's flank right below her ribs. Joe cried out as he saw her stiffen in pain and try to pull away. But Barrett had her by the neck.

"Don't worry," he said. "The cut's only an inch or so deep. Nothing that'll do serious damage. But it can cause a lot of pain." He angled the blade. "Especially when I drag the point along a rib."

Carole gasped as all the color drained from her face. Her knees buckled but Barrett held her up.

"All right!" Joe shouted. "All right! Just stop it! Please!"

Carole was shaking her head. "No!" He could barely hear her voice. "You can't!"

Barrett jabbed her again and this time she screamed. The sound was like shards of glass being driven through his brain. He wanted to cry.

"Carole, he's got us. We've lost this round."

"Just as you'll lose every round," Barrett said.

"I can't let this happen, Joseph," she gasped.

What was she saying? Thank God she couldn't get her hands into her pockets.

"It'll be all right, Carole."

"Forgive me, Joseph, forgive me, Lord. I love you both."

She turned her head, lifted her left shoulder, and bit something there that looked like a knotted thread.

What's she doing?

"Yeah, I know," Barrett said. "You love everyone. That's why you haven't a prayer of winning."

Joe saw a string clenched in Carole's teeth, saw her close her eyes and jerk her head back.

"No!"

The explosion hit him like a falling slab of concrete, knocking Franco into him and sending them both flying. He lost his grip on Franco and slammed into the marble wall behind them, then tumbled to the floor. For a moment he lay there dazed, not sure of where he was, and then it came back to him.

"Carole!"

He struggled to his feet and looked around. Red . . . everything, including Joe, was splattered with red. The blast had shattered the observation windows and now a small gale rushed through the atrium.

Where was Carole? He staggered around, searching, but could find no recognizable trace of her. There had to be something left, something more than the bits of flesh clinging to the walls. Something glinted in a corner: a single bloody handcuff.

Gone . .. she was gone ... as if she'd never been.

Movement caught his eye. The get-guards had been tossed around by the blast but were recovering now. They were crawling back toward the stairwell, dragging Franco with them, and licking the blood from

the floor as they moved.

With a cry of rage in a voice he didn't recognize, Joe lurched toward them. His strength was leaking away like water down a drain. Had to do this while he still was able.

He grabbed Franco's ankle, ripped him free of the guards holding him, and dragged him toward the light. No hesitations, last words, no taunts, just finish the job he'd come here to do. He pulled Franco to his feet at the edge of the sunlit patch and shoved him forward with everything he had.

Franco must have been an old one because he burst into flame as soon as the light touched his skin. His scream was musical, at least to Joe. He spun as his skin charred to black and his eyes bubbled in his head, tried to lunge back to the shadows but his legs wouldn't support him. He collapsed in a flaming heap. Joe fell back against the nearest wall and slid to the floor, arms open wide to embrace his oncoming death.

LACEY . . .

Lacey and Considine had reached the eightieth floor and were headed for the final elevator bank when the building shook. Lacey saw glass and debris rain past the windows.

A sick certainty about what had just happened nearly drove Lacey to her knees.

"Oh, no! Carole!"

"Your friend?" Considine said. "What—?"

She waved off his questions as she leaned against a wall and sobbed. Oh, Carole. Did you have to? Did you really have to?

"Look," Considine said, "I know we decided to stay off the stairwell, but if there's been an explosion up on the deck, these elevators won't be trustworthy. We're going to have to take the stairs. You have a cross?"

Lacey pulled one out of her pocket and handed it to him. "Here. But I've got a feeling we're not going to need it."

He led her to the stairwell where they were backed up by a blast of smoke when they opened it. The air cleared quickly, however, propelled by the wind blowing through the doorway. The lights were still on, and they hurried up the steps.

"What's that stink?" Considine said.

"Dead vampires. Lots of them."

"Why should they be dead?"

Lacey gave him a quick explanation of get-death.

"No offense," he said, "but I'll believe that when I see it. Sounds too much like wishful thinking."

"That's how most people will react. Which is why we wanted to catch it on tape.

On the eighty-fifth-floor landing they came upon the piled rotting corpses of Franco's get.

"Believe me now?"

"Jesus Christ. It's true." He looked at her with wide eyes. "That means..."

"Yeah, that we're not beaten, that the living have still got a shot. But we have to get those tapes to people who can use them."

She led the way over the stinking cadavers, stepping around them when she could, and on them when she couldn't. The door to the Observation Deck had been blown off its hinges and the wind flowing through it carried most of the stink away.

Lacey hesitated at the door, afraid to go any further, but forced herself through. The carnage—the blood, the shattered marble, the stove-in elevator doors—stopped her in her tracks.

"Jesus God," Considine said behind her. "What happened here?"

Lacey said nothing, but she knew ... she could see the scene play out in her brain . .. Carole ran out of options and took Barrett with her.

In the sunlight she saw a pile of charred, smoking, semi-molten flesh. That would be Franco. But Joe .. . where was Joe?

"Uncle Joe?" she called. "Uncle—?"

And then she saw him, curled in the fetal position in a corner, face to the wall. He wasn't moving.

"Uncle Joe?" She hurried to him and turned him over. His eyes were closed and his scarred face was twisted into a mask of pain. "Uncle Joe, are you all right?"

He opened his eyes and sobbed, "I was supposed to die, not her! But I'm still here and she's not!"

Lacey didn't understand and didn't try to. He was weak as a newborn. She cradled him in her arms and they cried together. He had no tears but she had enough for both of them. They fell on his face, wetting his cheeks.

Behind them Lacey heard a clatter from the stairwell and recognized Leland's voice. "What the hell happened here?"

"I'm still trying to figure that out," Considine said. "Did you get it on tape?"

"The cameras here went dead but I switched to one of the deck cameras in time to catch Franco's meltdown. Also caught his guards dying like poisoned rats on the stairs. What happened to them?"

"Tell you later. Can you believe it? They did it! They liberated the building!"

"I'd say they damn near liberated the whole city."

"Hear that, Unk?" Lacey whispered. "We did it, you and me and Carole. And we can prove it."

Suddenly Considine was hovering over them.

"I just sent Leland downstairs. He's going to dupe the tape while Fowler finds a car for you two. We're going to put you on the road with a copy, then we're each going to get our families together and head west with our own copies. One of us has to get through."

"I don't think I can get downstairs," Joe said.

"You'll get down," Considine said. "I'm going to check the elevator. If it doesn't work, well, after what you just did, I'll carry you down on my back if need be."

As Considine moved away, Joe squeezed Lacey's arm.

"We can't leave Carole."

"Carole left us, Unk. And she didn't leave anything behind."

"Let me die," he whispered. "I want an end to this."

"I know you do, but—"

"I was Franco's get. I was supposed to die with him."

So that was the reason behind the "If anything happens to me" mantra ... He was planning to go out with Franco.

"I guess since you're not truly undead, you're not truly his get."

"But I am. I have to die."

"No way, Unk. You're going to see this through till the end. This is just a step, but we're on our way. We're going to push these slime bags back into the sea. And you and me, we're going to be there to see it."

"Carole was our conscience, Lacey. She made us whole and kept us on track. What will happen to us without her?"

"I'll tell you what'll happen. You and I will become the Terrible Two. We'll make those fuckers wish on the hell they come from that Sister Carole Hanarty was still alive to rein us in. They think they've seen trouble today? They haven't seen a goddamn thing."

She thought she saw him smile as he closed his eyes and slipped deep into daysleep.

"Hey!" Considine called from the other side of the atrium. "The elevator's still working."

"Give us half a minute," Lacey said.

She held her uncle tighter and rocked him like a baby.

* * *

version 1.0 scanned and proofed by maspr2004

25/05/2006 version 1.0