Phantoms

“No,” Jenny said, “She stays with me.”

Exasperated, Bryce said, “Listen, Jenny, this is virtually a martial law situation. I can order you to stay here.”

“And enforce the order — how? At gunpoint?” she asked, but with no antagonism.

Lisa returned with the black leather bag.

Standing by the front doors of the inn, Sara Yamaguchi called to Bryce: “Hurry. Please hurry.”

If it had struck at the field lab, there was probably no use hurrying.

Looking at Jenny, Bryce thought: I can't protect you, Doc. Don't you see? Stay here where the windows are locked and the doors are guarded. Don't rely on me to protect you because, sure as hell, I'll fail. Like I failed Ellen… and Timmy.

“Let's go,” Jenny said.

Agonizingly aware of his limitations, Bryce led them out of the inn and up the street toward the corner — beyond which it might very well be waiting for them. Tal walked at the head of the procession, beside Bryce. Frank and Gordy brought up the rear. Lisa, Sara Yarnaguchi, and Jenny were in the middle.

The warm day was beginning to turn cool.

In the valley below Snowfield, a mist had begun to form.

Less than three-quarters of an hour remained before nightfall. The sun spilled a final flood of bloody light through the town. Shadows were extremely long, distorted. Windows blazed with reflected solar fire, reminding Bryce of eyeholes in Halloween jack-o'-lantems.

The street seemed even more ominously silent than it had been last night. Their footsteps echoed as if they were crossing the floor of a vast, abandoned cathedral.

They rounded the corner cautiously.

Three decontamination suits lay tangled and untenanted in the middle of the street. Another empty suit lay half in the gutter and half on the sidewalk. Two of the helmets were cracked.

Submachine guns were scattered around, and unused Molotov cocktails were lined up along the curb.

The back of the truck was open. More empty decontamination suits and submachine guns were piled in there. No people.

Bryce shouted: “General? General Copperfield?”

Graveyard silence.

Surface-of-the-moon silence.

“Seth!” Sara Yamaguchi cried, “Will? Will Bettenby? Galen? Somebody, please answer me.”

Nothing. No one.

Jenny said, “They didn't even manage to fire one shot.”

Tal said, “Or scream. The guards at the front door of the inn would've heard them even if they'd just screamed.”

Gordy said, “Oh, shit.”

The rear doors on both labs were ajar.

Bryce had the feeling that something was waiting for them inside.

He wanted to turn and walk away. Couldn't. He was the leader here. If he panicked, they would all panic. Panic was an invitation to death.

Sara started toward the rear of the first lab.

Bryce stopped her.

“They're my friends, damn it,” she said.

“I know. But let me look first,'-he said.

For a moment, however, he couldn't move.

He was immobilized by fear.

Couldn't move an inch.

But then at last, of course, he did.

Chapter 31 Computer Games

Bryce's service revolver was drawn and cocked. He seized the door with his other hand and threw it wide open. At the same time, he jumped back, pointing his gun into the lab.

It was deserted. Two rumpled decon suits lay on the floor, and another was draped over a swivel chair in front of a computer terminal.

He went to the rear of the second lab.

Tal said, “Let me do this one.”

Bryce shook his head. “You stay back there. Protect the women; they don't have guns. If anything comes out of here when I open the door, run like hell.”

Heart pounding, Bryce hesitated behind the second field lab. Put his hand on the door. Hesitated again. Then pulled it open even more carefully than he had opened the first.

It was deserted, too. Two decontamination suits. Nothing else.

As Bryce peered into the lab, all the ceiling lights winked out, and he jerked in surprise at the sudden darkness. In a second, however, light sprang up once more, although not from the ceiling bulbs; this was an unusual light, a green flash that startled him. Then he saw it was only the three video display terminals, which had all come on at once. Now they went off. And came on. Off, on, off, on, off… At first they flashed simultaneously, then in sequence, around and around. Finally they all came on and stayed on, filling the otherwise unlighted work area with an eerie glow.

“I'm going in,” Bryce said.

The others protested, but he was already up the step and through the door. He went to the first terminal screen, where six words burned in pale green letters across a dark green background.

JESUS LOVES ME — THIS I KNOW.

Bryce glanced at the other two screens. They bore the same words. Blink. Now there were new words:

FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO.

Bryce frowned.

What sort of program was this? These were the words to one of the songs that had come out of the kitchen drain at the inn.

THE BIBLE IS FULL OF SHIT, the computer told him.

Blink.

JESUS FUCKS DOGS.

The latest three words remained on the screen for several seconds. It seemed to Bryce as if the green light from the display terminals was cold. As fireplace light carries a dry heat with it, so this radiance carried a chill that pierced him.

This was no ordinary program being run on these displays. This was nothing General Copperfield's people had put into the computer, no form of code, no exercise of logic, no systems test of any kind. Blink.

JESUS IS DEAD. GOD IS DEAD.

Blink.

I AM ALIVE.

Blink.

DO YOU WANT TO PLAY 20 QUESTIONS?

Gazing at the screen, Bryce felt a primitive, superstitious terror rising within him; terror and awe, twisting his gut and clutching his throat. But he didn't know why. On a deep, almost subconscious level, he sensed that he was in the presence of something evil, ancient, and… familiar. But how could it be familiar? He didn't even know what it was. And yet… And yet perhaps he did know. Deep down. Instinctively. If only he could dig inside himself, down past his civilized veneer which embodied so much skepticism, if he could reach into his racial memory, he