clear the goggles. All she knew now of her surroundings was the groan of the engine, the spraying of the mud, and the occasional slap at her head by an overhanging branch.
She settled back into that dark world, taking what solace she could from the protection of an ever-thickening [missing] mud. She couldn't tell how long it was before the engine fell silent. In the sudden quiet she thought they'd broken down, but when seconds later the other ATV cut its engine she knew they'd reached their destination.
Laura pulled the goggles away from her face with a loud slurp. She unbuckled her seat restraints and struggled to her feet. Large volumes of mud dripped from her lap onto the floorboard, and her running shoes squished in the deep muck already there. Laura sullenly climbed over the windshield in disgust, refusing all offers of assistance from the similarly filthy men. Despite the ledges of mud that cascaded from her clothes, she still felt thirty pounds heavier under the weight of the grime.
She stood erect on the slanted hood of the ATV. The jungle was thinner on the ground than she had expected. But it all grew together overhead, forming a thick canopy that blocked most of the light. The dark green leaves of the plants and trees seemed almost as black as the marshy ground from which they sprang.
The soldiers moved slowly and with obvious effort through the mire, great sucking sounds audible with every step. Hoblenz had issued no orders to his men that she had heard, but they all began to clean their rifles with pristine white rags. Trying not to cringe, Laura stepped off the front fender into the swamp. Her foot sank deep into the squishy mess, the water rising halfway up her shin to fill the hole she'd made, soaking her foot and jeans. It took surprising effort for her to pull her foot free of the clinging mud.
Her bright white athletic sock hung in the air above the muck. Her running shoe had come off and disappeared at the bottom of a muddy well, which quickly filled to the top with dark water. She balanced on one foot, her other sinking deep in the wet glue.
She had to await the soldiers' help this time. They probed for her shoe with bayonets. When they fished it from the swamp, it was unrecognizable inside a cubic foot of black mud. After a soldier carved most of the mess off with his knife, she sunk her foot into the shoe with a loud sound.
'I am woman, hear me roar,' she heard Hoblenz say. The soldiers next to them laughed. 'You happy yet, or you wanna take a piss standin' up?' There was more laughter.
Laura trudged through the swamp, muttering 'Fuck you' to Hoblenz as she passed. Up ahead, the four men from the second vehicle had fanned out, their weapons in hand. The area was slightly elevated, and she climbed out of the swamp and into what passed for relatively solid mud. 'Which way now?' she asked.
Hoblenz joined her, but he took his time in answering. 'This is the place.'
She looked down at the uneven ground. There was absolutely nothing to set this spot apart from the rest of the swamp.
'You ready to go?' Hoblenz asked — driving his point home by proposing the abrupt conclusion of their trip.
All the mud people looked at her and waited. She had to justify the expedition somehow. 'What did you find?' Laura asked.
Hoblenz sighed. 'I thought you knew.'
'I mean, the Dutch sub dropped him off on the beach and he worked his way through the jungle toward the assembly building. But how could he make it through this?'
'He didn't come through the jungle on foot,' Hoblenz said. 'That'd be impossible. He made his way from the beach by skirting the fringe of the jungle along the crawler track. That's where we picked up his footprints with the thermal imagers.'
'But I thought the area from the computer center to the launch pads was high security. The 'restricted area' or whatever the sign by the Village calls it. Don't you have some kind of system — motion detectors or whatever — that would pick up an intruder?'
'Yep.' Hoblenz shrugged. 'Error number ten million and something.'
Laura nodded, and more clumps of the drying gunk fell to the ground. 'So how did he get in here? You said it was impossible.'
'For a man,' Hoblenz clarified, and then fell silent.
'Look, I've been playing twenty-questions with Gray ever since I got to this island. I thought you, at least, would appreciate the value of straight talk.'
Hoblenz's cheek bulged for a second, and then he spat. 'Okay. The sub let him off on the beach' — Hoblenz pointed back the way they had come—'and then he skirted the jungle edge all the way around' — his arm swept through the air 180 degrees—'to a point near the assembly building.' His arm fell to his side with a muddy slap.
'That's where the tracks disappeared.'
'What do you mean, 'disappeared'?'
'He was picked up and carried. There were broken branches all around. They lead into the jungle, and so did the footprints — odd footprints. You couldn't pick 'em up with thermal imagers.'
'So how did you find the body?'
'It was still warm. We spotted him from a chopper, then Mr. Gray and me came in here in ATVs and found him — him and the cold footprints.' His voice was a million miles away.
'Awfulest goddamn thing I ever saw in my life, and I've seen some shit. And let me tell you somethin' else. I've never been more scared in my whole life. Not even close. With those goggles on, everything's all green and glowing. Everything that's warm, that is. What we were lookin' for was stone-cold and black.'
'Mr. Gray said you set up lights and found tracks everywhere,' Laura said in the reverent tone assumed by Hoblenz.
He nodded. 'Everywhere there's dry land, there's footprints. Look!' he said, and Laura followed him over to peer down at a string of dark holes in the mud. 'And over there,' Hoblenz pointed, 'and there. It's like they were havin' a goddamn square dance out here or somethin'. I don't know if it was one, or ten, or all forty something of 'em. But it was robots. They were here, and they killed that poor son of a bitch. Ripped his goddamn head off.' Hoblenz said angrily. His voice then fell to a more menacing tone. 'Fuckin' bastards.'
33
'Where's Mr. Gray?' Laura asked Janet in the foyer.
'Oh, dear,' the woman responded, looking aghast at the mud that coated Laura.
'Mr. Gray — where is he?' Laura repeated.
'In… in the study, I suspect. Still asleep.'
Laura headed straight there in her bare feet, having removed her filthy running shoes and socks at the front door.
The study was empty — Gray's blanket piled in his desk chair and his shoes on the floor beside.
She began to search the house for him. There was a drawing room that looked as if it had never been used. A cozy game room with a polished wood bar, dartboard, and billiards table. A beautiful two-story library complete with rolling, brass-railed ladders. All were empty.
It was a beautiful house. The rooms begged for the warmth of human presence, but they were still and lifeless and empty, After checking the darkened exercise room on the lower level and still finding no one, she was about to look upstairs when she thought,
Starting back at the dining room, she began to search for a door that had to be nearby. One opened into a butler's pantry whose walls were lined with shining utensils. Walking down the short hallway past a gauntlet of copper pans and gleaming ladles, she saw the ovens and walk-in freezers of the large room ahead.
Gray sat on a tall stool at a butcher-block island in the middle of the spotless room. His back was to Laura as she approached. He was hunched over a newspaper, reading while having a late lunch.
Her feet made no noise on the black-and-white checkerboard of the cool tiles.
He was eating a sandwich. Knives protruded from open containers of peanut butter and jelly that sat next to a loaf of white bread. A mug with a picture of the Enterprise from the old TV series of Star Trek was half filled with coffee. He was reading the sports section of the
