Midnight

They returned to their culinary labors.

11

After escaping through the gate at the rear of the rectory yard, Chrissie stayed on the move for more than an hour while she tried to decide what to do next. She had planned to go to school and tell her story to Mrs. Tokawa if Father Castelli proved unhelpful. But now she was no longer willing to trust even Mrs. Tokawa. After her experience with the priests, she realized the aliens would probably have taken possession of all the authority figures in Moonlight Cove as a first step toward conquest. She already knew the priests were possessed. She was certain that the police had been taken over as well, so it was logical to assume that teachers also had been among the early victims.

As she moved from neighborhood to neighborhood, she alternately cursed the rain and was grateful for it. Her shoes and jeans and flannel shirt were sodden again, and she was chilled through and through. But the darkish-gray daylight and the rain kept people indoors and provided her with some cover. in addition, as the wind subsided, a thin cold fog drifted in from the sea, not a fraction as dense as it had been last night, just a beardlike mist that clung to the trees, but enough to further obscure the passage of one small girl through those unfriendly streets.

Last night's thunder and lightning were gone too. She was no longer in danger of being flash-roasted by a sudden bolt, which was at least some comfort.

YOUNG GIRL FRIED TO A CRISP BY LIGHTNING THEN EATEN BY ALIENS; SPACE CREATURES ENJOY HUMAN POTATO CHIPS; 'IF WE CAN MAKE THEM WITH RUFFLES,' SAYS ALIEN NEST QUEEN, 'THEY'LL BE PERFECT WITH ONION DIP.'

She moved as much as possible through alleyways and backyards, crossing streets only when necessary and always quickly, for out there she saw too many pairs of somber-faced, sharpeyed men in slow-moving cars, obvious patrols. Twice she almost ran into them in alleys, too, and had to dive for cover before they spotted her. About a quarter of an hour after she fled through the rectory gate, she noticed more patrols in the area, a sudden influx of cars and men on foot. Foot patrols scared her the most. Pairs of men in rain slickers were better able to conduct a search and were more difficult to escape from than men in cars. She was terrified of walking into them unexpectedly.

Actually she spent more time in hiding than on the move. Once she huddled for a while behind a cluster of garbage cans in an alley. She took refuge under a brewer's spruce, the lower branches of which nearly touched the ground, like a skirt, providing a dark and mostly dry retreat. Twice she crawled under cars and lay for a while.

She never stayed in one place for more than five or ten minutes. She was afraid that some alien-possessed busybody would see her as she crawled into her hiding place and would call the police to report her, and that she would be trapped.

By the time she reached the vacant lot on Juniper Lane, beside Callan's Funeral Home, and curled up in the deepest brush — dry grass and bristly chaparral — she was beginning to wonder if she would ever think of someone to turn to for help. For the first time since her ordeal had begun, she was losing hope.

A huge fir spread its branches across part of the lot, and her clump of brush was within its domain, so she was sheltered from the worst of the rain. More important, in the deep grass, curled on her side, she could not be seen from the street or from the windows of nearby houses.

Nevertheless, every minute or so, she cautiously raised her head far enough to look quickly around, to be sure that no one was creeping up on her. During that reconnoitering, looking cast past the alleyway at the back of the lot, toward Conquistador, she saw a part of the big redwood-and-glass house on the east side of that street. The Talbot place. At once she remembered the man in the wheelchair.

He had come to Thomas Jefferson to speak to the fifth- and sixth-grade students last year, during Awareness Days, a week long program of studies that was for the most part wasted time, though he had been interesting. He had talked to them about the, difficulties and the amazing abilities of disabled people.

At first Chrissie had felt so sorry for him, had just pitied him half to death, because he'd looked so pathetic, sitting there ill his wheelchair, his body half wasted away, able to use only one hand, his head slightly twisted and tilted permanently to one side. But then as she listened to him she realized that he had a wonderful sense of humor and did not feel sorry for himself, so it seemed more and more absurd to pity him. They had an opportunity to ask him questions, and he had been so willing to discuss the intimate details of his life, the sorrows and joys of it, that she had finally come to admire him a whole lot.

And his dog Moose had been terrific.

Now, looking at the redwood-and-glass house through the tips of the rain-shiny stalks of high grass, thinking about Harry Talbot and Moose, Chrissie wondered if that was a place she could go for help.

She dropped back down in the brush and thought about it for a couple of minutes.

Surely a wheelchair-bound cripple was one of the last people the aliens would bother to possess — if they wanted him at all.

She immediately was ashamed of herself for thinking such thing. A wheelchair-bound cripple was not a second-class human being. He had just as much to offer the aliens as anyone else.

On the other hand … would a bunch of aliens have an enlightened view of disabled people? Wasn't that a bit much to expect? After all, they were aliens. Their values weren't supposed to be the same as those of human beings. If they went around planting seeds — or spoors or slimy baby slugs or whatever — in people, and if they ate people, surely they couldn't be expected to treat disabled people with the proper respect any more than they would help old ladies to cross the street.

Harry Talbot.

The more she thought about him, the more certain Chrissie became that he had thus far been spared the horrible attention of the aliens.

12

After she called him Dr. Doom, he sprayed the Jenn-Air griddle with Pam, so the pancakes wouldn't stick.

She turned on the oven and put a plate in there, to which she could transfer the cakes to keep them warm as she made them.

Then, in a tone of voice that immediately clued him to the fact that she was bent on persuading him to reconsider his bleak assessment of life, she said, 'Tell me—'

'Can't you leave it alone yet?'

'No.'

He sighed.

She said, 'If you're this damned glum, why not …'

'Kill myself?'

'Why not?'

He laughed bitterly. 'On the drive up here from San Francisco, I played a little game with myself — counted the reasons that life was worth living. I came up with just four, but I guess they're enough, because I'm still hanging around.'

'What were they?'

'One — good Mexican food.'

'I'll go along with that.'