Though he felt as lightheaded as if he had been drinking, and though he was having difficulty keeping his thoughts focused, Marty now had confirmed what he’d suspected when the two men first arrived: they were not saviors, merely new executioners, and only marginally less mysterious than The Other.
“You’re going to do it?” the larger of the two asked.
“Too much trouble to haul them back to the cabin. You don’t think this weird church is an even better setting?”
“Drew,” the big man said, “there are a number of things about you I like.”
The smaller man seemed confused. He wiped at the snow that the wind stuck to his eyelashes. “What’d you say?”
“You’re damned smart, even if you did go to Princeton and Harvard. You’ve got a good sense of humor, you really do, you make me laugh, even when it’s at my expense. Hell, especially when it’s at my expense.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“But you’re a crazy, sick son of a bitch,” the big man said, raised his own handgun, and shot his partner.
Drew, if that was his name, hit the tile floor as hard as if he had been made of stone. He landed on his side, facing Marty. His mouth was open, as were his eyes, though he had a blind man’s gaze and seemed to have nothing to say.
In the center of Drew’s forehead was an ugly bullet hole. For as long as he could hold fast to consciousness, Marty stared at the wound, but it didn’t appear to be healing.
Wind blew.
Snow fell.
A greater cold came down—along with a greater darkness.
Marty woke with his forehead pressed to cold glass. Heavy snow churned against the other side of the pane.
They were parked next to service station pumps. Between the pumps and through the falling snow, he saw a well-lighted convenience store with large windows.
He rolled his head away from the glass and sat up straighter. He was in the back seat of a truck-type station wagon, an Explorer or Cherokee.
Behind the steering wheel sat the big man from the bell tower. He was turned around in his seat, looking back. “How you doing?”
Marty tried to answer. His mouth was dry, his tongue stuck to his palate, and his throat was sore. The croak that escaped him was not a word.
“I think you’ll be all right,” the stranger said.
Marty’s ski jacket was open, and he raised one trembling hand to his left shoulder. Under the blood-damp wool sweater, he felt an odd bulky mass.
“Field dressing,” the man said. “Best I could do in a hurry. We get out of these mountains, across the county line, I’ll clean the wound and rebandage it.”
“Hurts.”
“Don’t doubt it.”
Marty felt not merely weak but frail. He lived by words and never failed to have the right ones when he needed them, so it was frustrating to find himself with barely enough energy to speak. “Paige?” he asked.
“In there with the kids,” the stranger said, indicating the combination service station and convenience store. “Girls are using the bathroom. Mrs. Stillwater’s paying the cashier, getting some hot coffee. I just filled the tank.”
“You’re . . . ?”
“Clocker. Karl Clocker.”
“Shot him.”
“Sure did.”
“Who . . . who . . . was he?”
“Drew Oslett. Bigger question is
“Huh?”
Clocker smiled. “Born of man and woman, but he wasn’t much more human than poor Alfie. If there’s an evil alien species out there somewhere, marauding through the galaxy, they’ll never mess with us if they know we can produce specimens like Drew.”
Clocker drove, and Charlotte occupied the front passenger seat. He referred to her as “First Officer Stillwater” and assigned her the duty of “handing the captain his coffee when he needs another sip of it and, otherwise, guarding against catastrophic spillage that might irreparably contaminate the ship.”
Charlotte was uncharacteristically restrained and unwilling to play.
Marty worried about what psychological scars their ordeal might have left in her—and what additional trouble and trauma might be ahead of them.
In the back seat, Emily sat behind Karl Clocker, Marty behind Charlotte, and Paige between them. Emily was not merely quiet but totally silent, and Marty worried about her too.
Out of Mammoth Lakes on Route 203 and south on 395, progress was slow. Two or three inches of snow were on the ground, and the blizzard was in full howl.
Clocker and Paige drank coffee, and the girls had hot chocolate. The aromas should have been appealing, but they increased Marty’s queasiness.
He was allowed apple juice. From the convenience store, Paige had purchased a six-pack of juice in cans.
“It’s the only thing you might be able to hold in your stomach,” Clocker said. “And even if it makes you gag, you’ve got to take as much of it as you can because, with that wound, you’re sure as hell dehydrating dangerously.”
Marty was so shaky that, even with his right hand, he couldn’t hold the juice without spilling it. Paige put a straw in it, held it for him, and blotted his chin when he dribbled.
He felt helpless. He wondered if he was more seriously wounded than they had told him or than they realized.
Intuitively, he sensed he was dying—but he didn’t know if that was an accurate perception or the curse of a writer’s imagination.
The night was filled with white flakes, as if the day had not merely faded but shattered into an infinitude of pieces that would drift down forever through an unending darkness.
Over the chittering of the tire chains and the grumble of the engine, as they descended from the Sierras in a train of cars behind a snowplow and cinder truck, Clocker told them about the Network.
It was an alliance of powerful people in government, business, law-enforcement, and the media, who were brought together by a shared perception that traditional Western democracy was an inefficient and inevitably catastrophic system by which to order society. They were convinced that the vast majority of citizens were self- indulgent, sensation-seeking, void of spiritual values, greedy, lazy, envious, racist, and woefully ignorant on virtually all issues of importance.
“They believe,” Clocker said, “that recorded history proves the masses have always been irresponsible and civilization has progressed only by luck and by the diligent efforts of a few visionaries.”
“Do they think this idea’s new?” Paige asked scornfully. “Have they heard of Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tsetung? ”
“What they think’s new,” Clocker said, “is that we’ve reached an age when the technological underpinnings of society are so complex and so vulnerable because of this complexity that civilization—in fact, the planet itself—can’t survive if government makes decisions based on the whims and selfish motivations of the masses that pull the levers in the voting booths.”
“Crap,” Paige said.
Marty would have seconded her opinion if he’d felt strong enough to join the discussion. But he had only enough energy to suck at the apple juice and swallow it.
