Shuttered Sky

in shadows. It was as good a place as any to privately bring Drew up to speed. Winston told Drew everything he had kept from him. All that he knew, or at least all he thought he knew.

Rather than being distressed by the news of the three intruders, Drew appeared relieved. Perhaps knowing the face of doom was better for him than waiting for it in the dark.

“And these three . . . phantoms you’re talking about—you think they’re looking for you?”

“No,” answered Winston, “They’re not looking for me. That’s the problem.”

“Three ghouls out there, and they’re not looking for you. Maybe I’m a moron, but I don’t exactly see that as a problem.”

Winston sighed. “It means that whatever they’re up to, I no longer figure into their equation. They’ve completely dismissed me.”

“So, you think there was a point when you did mean something to them?”

“I know there was.”

“You were a threat to them?”

“Not just me,” Winston said. “Dillon, Lourdes—Tory and Mi­chael as well. Maybe even Deanna.”

“Fear of the dead?” asked Drew.

“Fear of their recovery,” Winston answered.

“But you’re not a threat anymore?”

Winston shook his head. “We’re nothing to them now. I can sense it.” Winston gave Drew a few moments, watching him piece it all together.

“They had to make certain one piece of the whole was destroyed forever.” Drew concluded. “So they sent Briscoe to destroy Michael’s remains, but he failed, so he went after Tory instead!”

“And the moment Tory’s ashes were scattered to the sky,” added Winston, “it was safe for the three to enter this world.”

Drew pursed his lips, shaking his head. “There’s still something that I don’t get. You’re not a threat to them, yet your powers increased the moment they arrived. Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s as if their intrusion triggered something. Like an alarm.”

“Or an immune system,” offered Drew. It was an offhand com­ment that almost slipped by. It took a moment for both of them to really latch onto it. Drew turned to face Winston, and Winston caught an intensity in his eyes. Excitement, fear, both beginning to blossom together. “Like an immune system,” Drew said again, slowly, like a spell. Winston could feel the spell open a door, and the scope of what was beyond it gave Winston vertigo.

A shadow moved in the dim service lights of the closed concession deck. They turned to see a figure approaching, something terribly wrong with the face. Only as the figure got closer, did they realize that he was wearing a latex mask over his head. The mask, a Halloween staple, featured a bloody, lopsided face, cleaved down the middle by a rubber hatchet. He smelled the part—a stench of organic decay as if he hadn’t washed for weeks.

“You boys looking to score some shit?” said a muffled voice behind the mask. “I got something for whatever ails you. Only the good stuff, guaranteed.”

“Get lost,” said Drew.

“C’mon, I got your number,” said the drug dealer. He turned to Winston. “You boys are looking to shoot up. Let me inoculate you against your pain.”

“Get the hell out of here before I put a real hatchet in your head,” Winston said.

The dealer put up a pair of dirty hands, and backed off. “Suit yourself. If you change your mind, I’ll be around.” Then he strolled off looking for fresh customers.

Sign of the times, thought Winston. When the dust finally settled, the only ones left would be the cockroaches and the drug dealers. Winston looked out over Dallas. There were more fires on the horizon now. The distant echo of fire engines blended with the sounds of the stadium behind them. A handful of firefighters, battling to break a fever raging out of control.

“Do you know how an immune system works, Drew?”

Drew shrugged. “The marrow and spleen kick out white blood cells. The white cells surround the foreign body, and kill it. Hey, man, didn’t you ever see Fantastic Voyage?”

“There are also antibodies,” Winston reminded him. “Different kinds, each with their own specific properties. Their own special charm. They lie dormant until triggered by either a disease, or a vac­cination.”

Let me inoculate you against your pain.

Winston glanced around for the split-faced drug dealer, but he was nowhere. He shivered, holding the thought in abeyance. “The thing is, it takes more than one antibody to do the job. To fight the most dangerous threats to the body, it takes specific types, in specific quan­tities working together.”

Drew considered it, and nodded a deeper understanding. “A quan­tity of six, maybe?”

“Maybe.” A roar from the crowd signaled that one of the two teams had scored, but neither Winston nor Drew ventured onto the field to find out which one. Winston scanned the deserted space around them, until spotting the nearest ramp leading down. “I do believe we have to find ourselves a drug dealer.”

* * *

The hatchet-faced dealer had left the upper concession level, and they did not spot him on the lower levels either. He could have taken off his mask and vanished into the crowd, but somehow Winston doubted that.

“The guy was dogshit on bad news,” Drew reminded him. “Why are we looking for him?”

Winston chose not to answer that. Instead he asked, “Are you familiar with fractal theory?”

“No, but I’m sure you are.”

“Only what I’ve read.” Of course, they both knew the library locked in Winston’s head had grown rather extensive. “The theory says that the smallest particle of something is just a smaller version of the whole.”

“You lost me.”

“A boulder on a mountain will, on some very basic level, contain the pattern of the entire mountain inside it. The way an acorn holds the pattern of the oak. The way every living cell contains the pattern of the whole organism.”

“DNA.”

“Right. But what if it doesn’t stop there? What if the organism is the blueprint for the species. And what if the species is the blueprint for the cosmos?”

Drew laughed the idea away. “Winston, I don’t doubt that you see yourself when you look at the stars.”

With the fourth quarter winding down, and their masked marauder nowhere in sight, they headed out into the parking lot.

“All I’m saying,” Winston continued, “is that if a star can be alive, and its death be the birth of six souls here on earth, what else might be alive out there? How much bigger is the picture?”

“And what does all this have to do with a ballpark pusher?”

Winston slowed as they neared their car. “I think we’re about to find out.”

Drew turned and caught sight of it, too. The elusive drug dealer sat on the hood of their car. The parking lot lighting cast a dark shadow of the rubber hatchet across one side of his face. Half in shadows, the mask was even more menacing.

Drew grabbed Winston’s arm. “I don’t like this. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“He’s on our car,” Winston reminded him. “Where are we going to go?” The hatchet man watched them, his face like a portrait that always held one’s gaze. They stopped a good five yards from the car.

“Leaving so soon?” the dealer said.

“Looking for you,” Winston answered, reigning back his own fear. “We were wondering what you had to offer. And what it might cost.”

“It just so happens I’m running a special today,” the dealer said. “Crystal Nova. Powerful stuff. Just a small piece of it is guaranteed to grow hair on your chest—and just about everywhere else, for that matter.”

Winston took a step closer to the car. “Take off the mask.”

The “dealer” slowly reached up, and peeled off the latex mask to reveal the sickly face of a Hualapai Indian nowhere near as beautiful as it had been a year before. The voice had lost its musical timbre, but the face was unmistakable. It was Okoya.

Winston should have warned Drew, for now Drew’s fear spiked suddenly. “Oh, crap—I thought Dillon took