Phantoms

few seconds. But when the lights came on again, Jake was gone.”

Copperfield said, “You looked”

“Everywhere.”

“He could have run away,” Roberts said.

“Yes,” Dr. Yamaguchi said, “Maybe he deserted. Considering the things he'd seen…”

“My God,” Goldstein said, “what if he left Snowfield? He might be beyond the quarantine line, carrying the infection”

“No, no, no. Jake wouldn't desert,” Bryce said, “He wasn't exactly the most aggressive officer on the force, but he wouldn't run out on me. He wasn't irresponsible.”

“Definitely not,” Tal agreed, “Besides, Jake's old man was once county sheriff, so there's a lot of family pride involved.”

“And Jake was a cautious man,” Frank said, “He didn't do anything on impulse.”

Bryce nodded. “Anyway, even if he was spooked enough to run, he'd have taken a squad car. He sure wouldn't have walked out of town.”

“Look,” Copperfield said, “he'd have known they wouldn't let him past the roadblock, so he'd have avoided the highway altogether. He might have gone off through the woods.”

Jenny shook her head. “No, General. The land is wild out there. Deputy Johnson would've known he'd get lost and die.”

“And,” Bryce said, “would a frightened man plunge pellmell into a strange forest at night? I don't think so, General. But I do think it's time you heard about what happened to my other deputy.”

Leaning against a cooler full of cheese and lunchmeat, Bryce told them about the moth, about the attack on Wargle and the bloodcurdling condition of the corpse. He told them about Lisa's encounter with a resurrected Wargle and about the subsequent discovery that the body was missing.

Copperfield and his people expressed astonishment at first, then confusion, then fear. But during most of Bryce's tale, they stared at him in wary silence and glanced at one another knowingly.

He finished by telling them about the child's voice that had come from the kitchen drain just moments before their arrival. Then, for the third time, he said, “Well, General, do you still think it looks like a simple incident of CBW?”

Copperfield hesitated, looked around at the littered market, finally met Bryce's eyes, and said, “Sheriff, I want Dr. Roberts and Dr. Goldstein to give complete physical examinations to you and to everyone who saw this… uh… moth.”

“You don't believe me.”

“Oh, I believe that you genuinely, sincerely think you saw all of those things.”

“Damn,” Tal said.

Copperfield said, “Surely, you can understand that, to us, it sounds as if you've all been contaminated, as if you're suffering from hallucinations.”

Bryce was weary of their disbelief and frustrated by their intellectual rigidity. As scientists, they were supposed to be receptive to new ideas and unexpected possibilities. Instead, they appeared determined to force the evidence to conform to their preconceived notions of what they would find in Snowfield.

“You think we all could've had the same hallucination?” Bryce asked.

“Mass hallucinations aren't unknown,” Copperfield said.

“General,” Jenny said, “there was absolutely nothing hallucinatory about what we saw. It had the gritty texture of reality.”

“Doctor Paige, I would ordinarily accord considerable weight to any observation you cared to make. But as one of those who claim to have seen this moth, your medical judgment in the matter simply isn't objective.”

Scowling at Copperfield, Frank Autry said, “But, sir, if it was all just something we hallucinated — then where is Stu Wargle?”

“Maybe both he and this Jake Johnson ran out on you,” Roberts said, “And maybe you've merely incorporated their disappearances into your delusions.”

From long experience, Bryce knew that a debate was always lost the moment you became emotional. He forced himself to remain in a relaxed position, leaning against the cooler. Keeping his voice soft and slow, he said, “General, from the things you and your people have said, someone could get the idea that the Santa Mira County Sheriff's Department is staffed exclusively by cowards, fools, and goldbrickers.”

Copperfield made placating gestures with his rubber-sheathed hands. “No, no, no. We're not saying anything of the kind. Please, Sheriff, try to understand. We're only being straight forward with you. We're telling you how the situation looks to us — how it would look to anyone with any specialized knowledge of chemical and biological warfare. Hallucination is one of the things we expect to find in survivors. It's one of the things we have to look for. Now, if you could offer us a logical explanation for the existence of this eagle-size moth… well, maybe then we could come to believe in it ourselves. But you can't. Which leaves our suggestion — that you merely hallucinated it — as the only explanation that makes sense.”

Bryce noticed the four soldiers staring at him in a much different way now that he was thought to be a victim of nerve gas. After all, a man suffering from bizarre hallucinations was obviously unstable, dangerous, perhaps even violent enough to cut off people's heads and pop them into bakery ovens. The soldiers raised their submachine guns an inch or two, although they didn't actually aim at Bryce. They regarded him — and Jenny and Tal and Frank — with a new and unmistakable air of suspicion.

Before Bryce could respond to Copperfield, he was startled by a loud noise at the back of the market, beyond the butcher'sblock tables. He stepped away from the cooler, turned toward the source of the commotion, and put his right hand on his holstered revolver.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two soldiers reacting to him rather than to the noise. When he had put his hand on his revolver, they had instantly raised their submachine guns.

It was a hammering sound that had drawn his attention. And a voice. Both were coming from within the walk-in meat locker, on the other side of the butcher's work area, no more than fifteen feet away, almost directly opposite the point at which Bryce and the others were gathered. The thick, insulated door of the locker muffled the blows that were being rained on it, but they were still loud. The voice was muffled, too, the words unclear, but Bryce thought he could hear someone shouting for help.

“Somebody's trapped in there,” Copperfield said.

“Can't be,” Bryce said.

Frank said, “Can't be locked in because the door opens from both sides.” The hammering and shouting ceased abruptly.

A clatter.

A rattle of metal on metal.

The handle on the large, burnished-steel door moved up, down, up, down, up…

The latch clicked. The door swung open. But only a couple of inches. Then it stopped.

The refrigerated air inside the locker rushed out, mixing with the warmer air in the market. Tendrils of frosty vapor rose along the length of the open door.

Although the light was on in the room beyond the door, Bryce couldn't see anything through the narrow gap. Nevertheless, he knew what the refrigerated meat locker looked like. During last night's search for Jake Johnson, Bryce had been in there, poking around. It was a frigid, windowless, claustrophobic place, about twelve by fifteen feet. There was one other door — equipped with two deadbolt locks — that opened onto the alley for the easy receival of meat deliveries. A painted concrete floor. Sealed concrete walls. Fluorescent lights. Vents in three of the walls circulated cold air around the sides of beef, veal, and slabs of pork that hung from the ceiling racks.

Bryce could hear nothing except the amplified breathing of the scientists and soldiers in the decontamination suits, and even that was subdued; some of them seemed to be holding their breath.

Then from within the locker came a groan of pain. A pitifully weak voice cried out for help. Rebounding from the cold concrete walls, carried on the spiraling thermals of air that escaped through the narrowly opened door, the voice was shaky, echodistorted, yet recognizable.

“Bryce… Tal…? Who's out there? Frank? Gordy? is somebody out there? Can… somebody… help