Phantoms

Chapter 24

Questions Corporal Billy Velazquez, one of General Copperfield's support troops, climbed down through the manhole, into the storm drain. Although he hadn't exerted himself, he was breathing hard. Because he was scared.

What had happened to Sergeant Harker?

The others had come back, looking stunned. Old man Copperfield said Harker was dead. He said they weren't quite sure what had killed Sarge, but they intended to find out. Man, that was bullshit. They must know what killed him. They just didn't want to say. That was typical of the brass, making secrets of everything.

The ladder descended through a short section of vertical pipe, then into the main horizontal drain. Billy reached the bottom. His booted feet made hard, flat sounds when they struck the concrete floor.

The tunnel wasn't high enough to allow him to stand erect.

He crouched slightly and swept his flashlight around.

Gray concrete walls. Telephone and power company pipes.

A little moisture. Some fungus here and there. Nothing else.

Billy stepped away from the ladder as Ron Peake, another member of the support squad, came down into the drain.

Why hadn't they at least brought Harker's body back with them when they'd returned from Gil Martin's Market?

Billy kept shining his flashlight around and glancing nervously behind him.

Why had old Iron Ass Copperfield kept stressing the need to be watchful and careful down here?

Sir, what're we supposed to be on the lookout for? Billy had asked.

Copperfield had said, Anything. Everything. I don't know if there's any danger or not. And even if there is, I don't know exactly what to tell you to look for. Just be damned cautious.

And if anything moves down there, no matter how innocent it looks, even if it's just a mouse, get your asses out of there fast.

Now what the hell kind of answer was that?

Jesus.

It gave him the creeps.

Billy wished he'd had a chance to talk to Pascalli or Fodor.

They weren't the damned brass. They would give him the whole story about Harker- if he ever got a chance to ask them about it.

Ron Peake reached the bottom of the ladder. He looked anxiously at Billy.

Velazquez directed the flashlight all the way around them in order to show the other man there was nothing to worry about.

Ron switched on his own flash and smiled self-consciously, embarrassed by his jumpiness.

The men above began to feed a power cable through the open manhole. It led back to the two mobile laboratories, which were parked a few yards from the entrance to the drain.

Ron took the end of the cable, and Billy, shuffling forward in a crouch, led the way Cast. On the street above, the other men paid out more cable into the drain.

This tunnel should intersect an equally large hole perhaps larger conduit under the main street, Skyline Road. At that point there ought to be a power company junction box where several strands of the town's electrical web were joined together. As Billy proceeded with all the caution that Copperfield had suggested, he played the beam of his flashlight over the walls of the tunnel, looking for the power company's insignia.

The junction box was on the left, five or six feet this side of the intersection of the two conduits. Billy walked past it, to the Skyline Road drain, leaned out into the passageway, and pointed his light to the right and to the left, making sure there was nothing lurking around. The Skyline Road pipe was the same size as the one in which he now stood, but it followed the slope of the street above it, plunging down the mountainside. There was nothing in sight.

Looking downhill, into the dwindling gray bore of the tunnel, Billy Velazquez was reminded of a story he'd read years ago in a horror comic.

He'd forgotten the title of it. The tale was about a bank robber who killed two people during a holdup and then, fleeing police, slipped into the city's storm drain system. The villain had taken a downward-sloping tunnel, figuring it would lead to the river, but where it had led, instead, was to Hell. That was what the Skyline Road drain looked like as it fell down, down, down: a road to Hell.

Billy turned to peer uphill again, wondering if it would look like a road to Heaven. But it looked the same both ways. Up or down, it looked like a road to Hell.

What had happened to Sergeant Harker?

Would the same thing happen to everyone, sooner or later?

Even to William Velazquez Velazquez, who had always been so sure (until now) that he would live forever?

His mouth was suddenly dry.

He turned his head inside his helmet and put his parched lips on the nipple of the nutrient tube. He sucked on it, drawing a sweet, cool, carbohydrate-packed, vitamin-and-mineral-rich fluid into his mouth. What he wanted was a beer. But until he could get out of this suit, the nutrient solution was the only thing available. He carried a forty-eight-hour supply-if he didn't take more than two ounces an hour.

Turning away from the road to Hell, he went to the junction box. Ron Peake was at work already. Moving efficiently despite their bulky decon suits and the cramped quarters, they tapped into the power supply.

The unit had brought its own generator, but it would be used only if the more convenient municipal power were lost.

In a few minutes, Velazquez and Peake were finished. Billy used his suit-to-suit radio to call up to the surface." General, we've made the tap. You should have power now, sir.”

The response came at once: "We do. Now get your asses out of there on the double!”

"Yes, sir," Billy said.

Then he heard… something.

Rustling.

Panting.

And Ron Peake grabbed Billy's shoulder. Pointed. Past him.

Back toward the Skyline drain.

Billy whirled around, crouched down even farther, and shone his flashlight out into the intersection, where Peake's flash was focused.

Animals were streaming down the Skyline Road tunnel. Dozens upon dozens. Dogs. White and gray and black and brown and rust-red and golden, dogs of all sizes and descriptions: mostly mutts but also beagles, toy poodles, full-size poodles, German shepherds, spaniels, two Great Danes, a couple of Airedales, a schnauzer, a pair of coal-black Dobermans with brown-trimmed muzzles. And there were cats, too. Big and small. Lean cats and fat cats. Black and calico and white and yellow and ring-tailed and brown and spotted and striped and gray cats.

None of the dogs barked or-growled. None of the cats meowed or hissed.

The only sounds were their panting and the soft padding and scraping of their paws on the concrete. The animals poured down through the drain with a curious intensity, all of them looking straight ahead, none of them even glancing into the intersecting drain, where Billy and Peake stood.

"What're they doing down here?" Billy wanted to know.

"How'd they get here?”

From the street above, Copperfield radioed down: "What's wrong, Velazquez?”

Billy was so amazed by the procession of animals that he didn't immediately respond.

Other animals began to appear, mixed in among the cats and dogs.

Squirrels. Rabbits. A gray fox. Raccoons. More foxes and more squirrels. Skunks. All of them were staring straight ahead, oblivious of everything except the need to keep moving. Possums and badgers. Mice and chipmunks. Coyotes.

All rushing down the road to Hell, swamng over and around and under one another, yet never once stumbling or hesitating or snapping at one another. This strange parade was as swift, continuous, and harmonious as flowing water.

"Velazquez! Peake! Report in!”

"Animals," Billy told the general." Dogs, cats, raccoons, all kinds of things. A river of 'em.”

"Sir, they're running down the Skyline tunnel, just beyond the mouth of the pipe," Ron Peake said.

"Underground," Billy said, baffled. "it's crazy "Retreat, goddamnit!" Copperfield said urgently." Get out of there now.

Now!”

Billy remembered the general's warning, issued just before they had descended through the manhole: If anything moves down there… even if it's just a mouse, get your asses out of there fast.

Initially, the subterranean parade of animals had been startling but not particularly frightening. Now, the bizarre procession was suddenly eerie, even threatening.

And now there were snakes among the animals. Scores of them. Long blacksnakes, slithering fast, with their heads raised a foot or two above the floor of the storm drain. And there were rattlers, their flat and evil heads held lower than those of the longer blacksnakes, but moving just as fast and just as sinuously, swarming with mysterious purpose toward a dark and equally mysterious destination.

Although the snakes paid no more attention to Velazquez and Peake than the dogs and cats did, their slithering arrival was enough to snap Billy out of his trance. He hated snakes.

He turned back the way he had come, prodded Peake." Go.

Go on. Get out of here. Run!”

Something shrieked-screamed-roared.

Billy's heart pounded with jackhammer ferocity.

The sound came from the Skyline drain, from back there on the road to Hell. Billy didn't dare look back.

It was neither a human scream nor like any animal sound, yet it was unquestionably the cry of a living thing. There was no mistaking the raw emotions of that alien, blood-freezing bleat. It wasn't a scream of fear or pain. It was a blast of rage, hatred, and feverish blood-hunger.

Fortunately, that malevolent roar didn't come from nearby, but from farther up the mountain, toward the uppermost end of the Skyline conduit. The beast-whatever in God's name it was-was at, least not already upon them. But it was coming fast.

Ron Peake hurried back toward the ladder, and Billy followed. Encumbered by the curved floor Although they hadn slow.

The thing in the tunnel cried out again.

Closer.

It was a whine and a snarl and a howl and a roar and a petulant squeal all tangled together, a barbed-wire sound that punctured Billy's ears and raked cold metal spikes across his heart.

Closer.

If Billy Velazquez had been a God-fearing Nazarene or a Bible-thumping, fire-and-brimstone, fundamentalist Christian, he would have known what beast might make such a cry. If he had been taught that the Dark One and His wicked minions stalked the earth in fleshy forms, seeking unwary souls to devour, he would have identified this beast at once. He would have said, "It's Satan." The roar echoing through the concrete tunnels was truly that terrible.

And closer.

Getting closer.

Coming fast.

But Billy was a Catholic. Modern Catholicism tended to downplay the sulphurous-pits-of-Hell stories in favor of emphasizing God's great mercy and infinite compassion. Extremist Protestant fundamentalists saw the hand of the Devil in everything from television programming to the novels of Judy Blume to the invention of the push-up bra. But Catholicism struck a quieter, more light-hearted note than that. The Church of Rome now gave the world such things as singing nuns, Wednesday Night Bingo, and priests like Andrew Greeley.

Therefore, Billy Velazquez, raised a Catholic, did not immediately associate supernatural Satanic forces with the chilling cry of this unknown beast-not even though he so vividly remembered that old road-to-Hell comic book story. Billy just knew that the bellowing creature approaching through the bowels of the earth was a bad thing. A very bad thing.

And it was getting closer. Much closer.

Ron Peake reached the ladder, started up, dropped his flashlight, didn't bother to return for it.

Peake was too slow, and Billy shouted at him: "Move your ass!”

The scream of the unknown beast had become an eerie ululation that filled the subterranean storm drains as completely as floodwater. Billy couldn't even hear himself shouting.

Peake was halfway up the ladder.

There was almost enough room for Billy to slip in under him and start up. He put one hand on the ladder.

Peake's foot slipped. He dropped down a rung.

Billy cursed and snatched his hand out of the way.

The banshee keening grew louder.

Closer, closer.

Peake's fallen flashlight was pointing off toward the Skyline drain, but Billy didn't look back that way. He stared only up toward the sunlight.

If he glanced behind and saw something hideous, his strength would flee him, and he would be unable to move, and it would get him, by God, it would get him.

Peake scrambled upwards again. His feet stayed on the rungs this time.

The concrete drain was transmitting vibrations that Billy could feel through the soles of his boots. The vibrations were like heavy, lumbering, yet lightning-quick footsteps.

Don't look, don't look!

Billy grabbed the sides of the ladder and clawed his way up as rapidly as Peake's progress would allow. One rung. Two.

Three.

Above, Peake passed through the manhole and into the street.

With Peake out of the way, a fall of autumn sunlight splashed down over Billy Velazquez, and there was something about it that was like light piercing a church window-maybe because it represented hope.

He was halfway up the ladder.

Going to make it, going to make it, definitely going to make it, he told himself breathlessly.

But the shrieking and howling, Jesus, like being in the center of a cyclone!

Another rung.

And another one.

The decontamination suit felt heavier than it had ever felt before. A ton. A suit of armor. Weighing him down.

He was in the vertical pipe now, moving out of the horizontal drain that ran beneath the street. He looked up longingly at the light and the faces peering down at him, and he kept moving.

Going to make it.

His head rose through the manhole.

Someone reached out, offering a hand. It was Copperfield himself.

Behind Billy, the shrieking stopped.

He climbed another rung, let go of the ladder with one hand, and reached for the general — but something seized his legs from below before he could grasp Copperfield's hand.

"No!”

Something grabbed him, wrenched his feet off the ladder, and yanked him away. strangely, he heard himself screaming for his mother-Billy went down, cracking his helmet against the wall of the pipe and then against a rung of the ladder, scratching his elbows and knees, trying desperately to catch hold of a rung but failing, finally collapsing into the powerful embrace of an unspeakable something that began to drag him backwards toward the Skyline conduit.

He twisted, kicked, struck out with his fists, to no effect.

He was held tightly and dragged deeper into the drains.

In the backsplash of light coming through the manhole, then in the rapidly dimming beam of Peake's discarded flashlight, Billy saw a bit of the thing had him in its grasp. Not much.

Fragments looming out of the shadows, then vanishing into darkness again. He saw just enough to make his bowels and bladder loosen. It was lizardlike. But not a lizard. Insect.

But not an insect. It whaled and mewled and snarled. It snapped and tore at his suit as it pulled him along. It had cavernous jaws and teeth. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph-the teeth! A double row of razor-edge spikes. It had claws, and it was huge, and its eyes were smoky red with elongated pupils as black as the bottom of a grave. hid had scales W”

of skin, and two horns, thrusting from its brow above its baleful eyes, curving out and up, as sharply pointed as daggers. A snout redder than a nose, a snout that oozed snot. A forked tongue that flickered in and out and in and out across all dim deadly fangs, and something that looked like the stinger on a wasp or maybe a pincer.

It dragged Billy Velazquez into the Skyline conduit. He clawed at the concrete, desperately seeking something to hold on to, but he only succeeded in abrading away the fingers and palms of his gloves. He felt the cool underground air on his hands, and he realized he might now be contaminated, but that wasn't the end of his worries.

It dragged him into the tunnel of darkness. Then stopped, and held him tightly. Then tore at his suit. It cracked his helmet. It pried at his plexiglass faceplate. It was after him as if he were a delicious morsel of nut meat in a hard shell.

His hold on sanity was tenuous at best, but he struggled to keep his wits about him, tried to understand. At first, it seemed to him that this was a prehistoric creature, something millions of years old that had somehow dropped through a time warp into the storm drains. But that was crazy. He felt a silvery, high-pitched, lunatic giggle coming over him, and he knew he would be lost if he gave voice to it. The beast tore away most of his decontamination suit. It was on him now, pressing hard, a cold and disgustingly slick thing that seemed to pulse and somehow to change when it touched him. Billy, gasping and weeping, suddenly remembered an illustration in an old catechism text. A drawing of a demon. That was what this was.

Like the drawing. Yes, exactly like it. The horns. The dark, forked tongue. The red eyes. A demon risen from Hell. And then he thought: No, no; that's crazy, too! And all the while that those thoughts raced through his mind, the ravenous creature stripped him and pulled his helmet almost completely apart.

In the unrelieved darkness, he sensed its snout pressing through the halves of the broken helmet, toward his face, sniffing. He felt its tongue fluttering against his mouth and nose. He smelled a vague but repellent-odor, like nothing he had ever smelled before. The beast gouged at his belly and thighs, and then he felt a strange and brutally painful fire eating into him; acid fire.

He writhed, twisted, bucked, strained-all to no avail. Billy heard himself cry out in terror and pain and confusion: "It's the Devil, it's the Devil!" He realized he had been shouting and screaming things almost continuously, from the moment he had been dragged off the ladder. Now, unable to speak as the flameless fire burned his lungs to ash and churned into his throat, he prayed in a silent singsong chant, warding off fear and death and the terrible feeling of smallness and worthlessness that had come over him: Mary, Mother of God, Mary, hear my plea… hear my plea, Mary, pray for me… pray, pray for me, Mary, Mother of God, Mary, intercede for me and His question had been answered.

He knew what had happened to Sergeant Harker.

Galen Copperfield was an outdoorsman, and he knew a great deal about the wildlife of North America. One of the creatures he found most interesting was the trap-door spider. It was a clever engineer who created a deep, tubular nest in the ground with a hinged lid at the top.

The lid blended so perfectly with the soil in which it was set that whatever wandered across it, unaware of the danger below, were instantly dropped into the opening, dragged down, and devoured. it was horrifying and fascinating. One instant, the prey was dying, and the next instant it was gone, as if it had never been.

Corporal Velazquez was gone as sudden as if he had stepped upon the lid of a spider's lair.

Gone.

Copperfield's men were already edgy about Harker's disappearance and were frightened by the howling that ceased just before Ve was dragged down. When the corporal was taken, they all spread back across the street, afraid that something was about to launch itself out of the manhole.

Copperfield, in the act of grieving for Velazquez when he was snatched, jumped back. Then froze. That was not like him. He had never before been indecisive in a crisis.

Velazquez was screaming through the suit-to-suit radio.

Breaking the ice that locked his joints, Copperfield went to the manhole and looked down. PUM's flashlight lay on the floor of the drain. But there was nothing else. No sign of Velazquez.

Copperfield hesitated.

The Corporal continued to scream.

Send other men down after the poor bastard?

No. It would be a suicide mission. Remember Harker. Cut the losses here, now.

But, good God, the screaming was horrible. Not as awful as Harker's.

Those had been screams born of excruciating pain.

These were screams of torment. Not as bad, but bad enough. As bad as anything Copperfield had seen on the battlefield.

There were words among the screams, spat out in explosive gasps. The cry was making a, begging plea.

"…bug… — …dragon…… prehistoric…

And finally, with both physical pain and anguish of the soul in his voice, the corporal cried out, "It's the Devil, it's the Devil!”

After that, the were every bit as bad as Harker's.

At least he didn't last as long.

When there was only silence, Copperfield slid the manhole cover back into place. Because of the power cable, the metal plate didn't fit tightly and was tilted up at one end, but it covered most of the hole.

He stationed two men on the sidewalk, ten feet from the rim, and ordered them to shoot anything that came out.

Because a gun had been of no help to Harker, Copperfield and a few other men collected everything needed to manufacture Molotovcocktails. They got a couple of dozen bottles of wine from Brookhart's liquor store on Vail Lane, emptied them, put an inch of soap powder in the bottom of each, filled them with gasoline, and twisted rag fuses into the necks of them until they were snug.

What had happened to Harker?

What had happened to Velazquez?

What will happen to me? Copperfield wondered.

The two mobile field units cost more than twenty million dollars, and the Defense Department had gotten its money's worth.

One lab was a marvel of technological microminiaturization.

For one. thing, its computer-based on a trio of intel 432 micromainfranes; 690,000 amistors squeezed onto only nine silicon chips-took up no more room than a couple of suitcases, yet it was a highly sophisticated system that was capable of complex medical analyses. in fact, it was a more system-with general logic and memory capacity than could be found in most major university hospitals’

pathology labs.

was a great deal of It stacked up into the motor home, all of it designed and positioned for maximum utility of the limited space. In addition to a pair of computer access terminals along one wall, there were a number of devices and machines: a centrifuge that would be used to separate the major components of biM, urine, and other fluid samples; a spectrophotometer; a spectrograph; an el microscope with an image interpretation-enhancement mad-out link to one of the computer screens; a compact appliance that would quick-freeze blood and tissue samples for storage and for use in tests in which element extractions were mom easily performed on frozen materials; and much, much more.

Toward the front of the vehicle, behind the drivers' compartment, was an autopsy table that collapsed into the wall when not in use. At the moment, the table was down, and the body of Gary Wechlasthirty-seven, Caucasian-lay on the stainless-steel surface. The blue pajama bottoms had been scissored away from the corpse and set aside for later examination.

Dr. Seth Goldstein, one of the three leading forensic medicine specialists on the West Coast, would perform the autopsy.

He stood at one side of the table with Dr. Daryl Roberts, and General Copperfield stood at the other side, facing them across the dead body.

Goldstein pressed a button on a control panel that was set in the wall to his right. A recording would be made of every word spoken during the autopsy; this was common procedure in even ordinary postmortems. A visual record was also being made: two ceiling-mounted videotape cameras were focused on the corpse; they, too, were activated when Dr. Goldstein pressed the button on the wall panel.

Goldstein began by closely examining and describing the corpse: the unusual facial expression, the universal bruising, the curious swelling.

He was especially searching for punctures, abrasions, localized contusions, cuts, lesions, blisters, fractures, and other indications of specific points of injury. He could not find any.

With his gloved hand poised over the instrument tray, Goldstein hesitated, not quite sure where to start. Usually, at the beginning of an autopsy, he already had a pretty good idea of the cause of death, When the deceased had been wasted by a disease, Goldstein usually had seen the hospital report. If death had resulted from an accident, there were visible trauma. If it was death at the hand of another, there were signs of violence.

But in this case, the conditions of the corpse raised more questions than it answered, strange questions unlike any he had ever faced before.

As if sensing Goldstein's thoughts, Copperfield said, "You've got to find some answers for us, Doctor. Our lives very probably depend on it.”

The second motor home had many of the same diagnostic machines and instruments that were in the lead vehicle-a test tube centrifuge, an electron microscope, and so forth-in addition to several pieces of equipment that were not duplicated in the other vehicle. It contained no autopsy table, however, and only one videotape system. There were three computer terminals instead of two.

Dr. Enrico Valdez was sitting at one of the programming boards, in a deep-seated chair designed to accommodate a man in a decontamination suit complete with air tank. He was working with Houk and Niven on chemical analysis of samples of various substances collected from several business places and dwellings along Skyline Road and Vail Lane-such as the flour and dough taken from the table in Liebermann's Bakery. They were seeking traces of nerve gas condensate or other chemical substances. Thus far, they had found nothing out of the ordinary.

Dr. Valdez didn't believe that nerve gas or disease would turn out to be the culprit.

He was beginning to wonder if this whole thing might actually be in Isley's and Arkham's territory. Isley and Arkham, the two men without names on their decontamination suits, were not even members of the Civilian Defense Unit. they were from a different project altogether.

Just this morning, before dawn, when Dr. Valdez had been introduced to them at the team rendezvous point in Sacramento, when he had heard what kind of research they were doing, he had almost laughed.

He had thought their project was a waste of taxpayers' money.

Now he wasn't so sure. Now he wondered…

He wondered… and he worried.

Dr. Sara Yamaguchi was also in the second motor home.

She was preparing bacteria cultures. Using a sanple of blood taken from the body of Gary Wechlas, she was methodically contaminating a series of growth media, jellied compounds filled with nutrients on which bacteria generally thrived: horse blood agar, sheep blood agar, simplex, chocolate agar, and many others.

Sara Yamaguchi was a geneticist who had spent eleven years in recombinant DNA research. If it developed that Snowfield had been stricken by a man-made microorganism, Sara's work would become central to the investigation. She would direct the study of the microbe's morphology, and when that was completed, she would have a major role in attempting to determine the function of the bug.

Like Dr. Valdez, Sara Yamaguchi had begun to wonder if Isley and Arkham might become more essential to the investigation than she had thought.

This morning, their area of expertise had seemed as exotic as voodoo.

But now, in light of what had taken place since the team's arrival in Snowfield, she was forced to admit that Isley's and Arkham's specially seemed increasingly pertinent.

And like Dr. Valdez, she was worried.

Dr. Wilson Bettenby, chief of the civilian scientific arm of the CBW Civilian Defense Unit's West Coast team, sat at a computer terminal, two seats away from Dr. Valdez.

Bettenby was running an automated analysis program on several water samples. The samples were inserted into a processor that distilled the water, stored the distillate, and subjected the filtered-out substances to spectrographic analysis and other tests. Bettenby was not searching for microorganisms; that would require different procedures than these.

This machine only identified and quantified all mineral and chemical elements present in the water; the data was displayed on the cathode ray tube.

All but one of the water samples had been taken from taps in the kitchens and bathrooms of houses and businesses along Vail Lane. They proved to be free of dangerous chemical impurities.

The other water sample was the one that Deputy Autry had collected from the kitchen floor of the apartment on Vail Lane, sometime last night.

According to Sheriff Hammond, puddles of water and saturated carpets had been discovered in several buildings.

By this morning, however, the water had pretty much evaporated, except for a couple of damp carpets from which Bettenby wouldn't have been able to obtain a clean sample.

He put the deputy's sample into the processor.

In a few minutes, the computer flashed up the complete chemical-mineral analysis of the water and of the residue that remained after all of the liquid in the sample had been distilled: PERCENT OF PERCENT PERCENT OF PERCENT SOLUTION OF SOLUTIONOF RESIDUE RESIDUE H 11.188 00–00 HE 00.00 00.00 Li 00.00 00.00 BE 00.00 00.00 B00.00 00.00 c00.00 00.00 N00.00 00.00 0 88.812 00.00 NA 00.00 00.00 MG 00.00 00.00 AL 00.00 00.00 sip 00.0000.00$00.0000.0 °CL 00.0000.00 K00.0000.00 The computer went on at considerably greater length, flashing up the findings for every substance that might ordinarily be detected. The results were the same. In its undistilled state, the water contained absolutely no traces of any elements other than its two components, hydrogen and oxygen. And complete distillation and filtration had left behind no residue whatsoever, not even any trace elements. Autry's sample couldn't have come from the town's water supply, for it was neither chlorinated nor fluoridated. It wasn't bottled water, either.

Bottled water would have had a nominal mineral content. Perhaps there was a filtration system underneath the kitchen sink in that apartment-a Culligan unit-but even if there was, the water that passed through it would still possess more mineral content than this. What Autry had collected was the purest laboratory grade of distilled and multiply filtered water.

So… what was it doing all over that kitchen floor?

Bettenby stared at the computer screen, frowning.

Was the small lake at Brookhart's liquor store also composed of this ultrapure water?

Why would anyone go around town emptying out gallons and gallons of distilled water?

And where would they find it in such quantity to begin with?

Strange.

Jenny, Bryce, and Lisa were at a table in one corner of the dining room at the Hilltop Inn.

Major Isley and Captain Arkham, who wore the decontamination suits that had no names on the helmets, were sitting on two stools, across the table. They had brought the news about Corporal Velazquez. They had also brought a tape recorder, which was now in the center of the table.

"I still don't see why this can't wait," Bryce said.

"We won't take long," Major Isley said.

"I've got a search team ready to go," Bryce said." We've got to go through every building in this town, take a body count, find out how many are dead and how many are missing, and look for some clue as to what the hell killed all these people. There's several days of work ahead of us, especially since we can't continue with the search past sundown. I won't let my men go prowling around at night, when the power might go off at any second. Damned if I will.”

Jenny thought of Wargle's eaten face. The hollow eye sockets.

Major Isley said, "Just a few questions.”

Arkham switched on the tape recorder.

Lisa was staring hard at the major and at the captain.

Jenny wondered what was on the girl's mind.

"We'll start with you, Sheriff," Major Isley said." In the forty-eight hours prior to these events, did your office receive any reports of power failures or telephone service interruptions?”

"If there were problems of that nature," Bryce said, "people would generally call the utility companies, not the sheriff.”

"Yes, but wouldn't the utilities notify you? Aren't power and telephone outages contributory to criminal activity?" Bryce nodded." Of course.

And to the best of my knowledge, we didn't receive any such alerts.”

Captain Arkham leaned forward." What about difficulties with television and radio reception in this area?”

"Not that I'm aware of," Bryce said.

"Any reports of unexplainable explosions?”

"Explosions?”

"Yes," Isley said." Explosions or sonic booms or any unusually loud and untraceable noises.”

"No. Nothing like that.”

Jenny wondered what in the devil they were driving at.

Isley hesitated and said, "Any reports of unusual aircraft in the vicinity?”

" No.”

Lisa said, "You guys aren't part of General Copperfield's team, are you?

That's why you don't have names on your helmets.”

Bryce said, "And your decontamination suits don't fit as well as everyone else's. Theirs are custom tailored. Yours are strictly off the rack.”

"Very observant," Isley said.

"If you aren't with the CBW project," Jenny said, "what are you doing here?”

"We didn't want to bring it up at the start," Isley said." We thought we might get straighter answers from you if you weren't immediately aware of what we were looking for.”

Arkham said, "We're not Army Medical Corps. We're Air Force.”

"Project Skywatch," Isley said." We're not exactly a secret organization, but… well… let's just say we discourage publicity.”

"Skywatch?" Lisa said, brightening." Are you talking about UFOs? Is that it? Flying saucers?”

Jenny saw Isley wince at the words "flying saucers.”

Isley said, "We don't go around checking out every crackpot report of little green men from Mars. For one thing, we don't have the funds to do that. Our job is planning for the scientific, social, and military aspects of mankind's Just encounter with an alien intelligence. We're really more of a think tank than anything else.”

Bryce shook his head." No one around here's been reporting flying saucers.”

"But that's just what Major Isley means," Arkham said.

"You see, our studies indicate the Just encounter might start out in such a bizarre way that we wouldn't even recognize it as a first encounter. The popular concept of spaceships descending from the sky… well, it might not be like that. If we find ourselves dealing with truly alien intelligences, their ships might be so different from our concept of a ship that we wouldn't even be aware they'd landed.”

"Which is why we check into strange phenomena that don't seem to be UFO related at first glance,' Arkham said." Like last spring, up in Vermont, there was a house in which an extremely active poltergeist was at work.

Furniture was levitated. Dishes flew across the kitchen and smashed against the wall. Streams of water burst from walls in which there were no water pipes. Balls of flame erupted out of empty air-”

"Isn't a poltergeist supposed to be a ghost?" Bryce asked.

"What could ghosts have to do with your area of interest?”

"Nothing," Isley said." We don't believe in ghosts. But we wondered if perhaps poltergeist phenomena might result from an attempt at interspecies communication gone awry. If we were to encounter an alien race that communicated only by telepathy, and if we were unable to receive those telepathic thoughts, maybe the unreceived psychic energy would produce destructive phenomena of the sort sometimes attributed to malign spirits.”

"And what did you finally decide about the poltergeist up there in Vermont?" Jenny asked.

"Decide? Nothing," Isley said.

" Just that it was… interesting," Arkham said.

Jenny glanced at Lisa and saw that the girl's eyes were very wide. This was something Lisa could grasp, accept, and cling to. This was a fear she had been thoroughly prepared for, thanks to movies and books and television. Monsters from outer space.

Invaders from other worlds. It didn't make the Snowfield killings any less gruesome. But it was a known threat, and that made it infinitely preferable to the unknown. Jenny strongly doubted this was mankind's Just encounter with creatures It-from the stars, but Lisa seemed eager to believe.

"What about Snowfield?" the girl asked." Is that what's going on? Has something landed from… out there?”

Arkham looked uneasily at Major Isley.

Isley cleared his throat: As translated by the squawk box on his chest, it was a racheting, machinelike sound." It's much too soon to make any judgment about that. We do believe there's a small chance the first contact between man and alien might involve the danger of biological contamination. That's why we've got an information-sharing arrangement with Copperfield's project. An inexplicable outbreak of an unknown disease might indicate an unrecognized contact with an extraterrestrial presence.”

"But if it is an extraterrestrial creature we're dealing with," Bryce said, obviously doubtful, "it seems damned savage for a being of 'superior' intelligence.”

" The same thought occurred to me," Jenny said.

Isley raised his eyebrows." There's no guarantee that a creature with greater intelligence would be pacifistic and benevolent.”

"Yeah," Arkham said." That's a common conceit: the notion that aliens would've learned how to live in complete harmony among themselves and with other species. As that old song says… it ain't necessarily so.

After all, mankind is considerably further along the road of evolution than gorillas are, but as a species we're definitely more warlike than gorillas at their most aggressive.”

"Maybe one day we will encounter a benevolent alien race that'll teach us how to live in peace," Isley said." Maybe they'll give us the knowledge and technology to solve all our earthly problems and even to reach the stars. Maybe.”

"But we can't nile out the alternative," Arkham said grimly.