say anything about Mr. Carson and the others, or about the visit from SymboGen security. I felt funny about that, but if I started going into details, I’d wind up writing everything down, and there wasn’t time. I could explain when we were all together again.
Nathan honked the horn. When I’d called to ask him if we could go, I’d told him not to bother getting out of the car. The sound still made me jump a little, my stomach squeezing like a fist. Were we making the right decision? Should we really be running around with people who used quotes from obscure children’s books in casual conversation, and played cloak-and-dagger games for no good reason?
Did we have a choice?
Nathan honked again. No, we didn’t have a choice. Devi was dead. If we wanted answers, we’d have to take them wherever we could find them.
I locked the door behind me as I left the house, slinging my messenger bag over my shoulder one-handed. I was dressed for a clandestine meeting, in jeans, a dark blue hoodie, and running shoes—in case we found a reason to run—with my hair pulled into a ponytail.
Nathan looked over as I practically threw myself into the passenger seat. He blinked. “Sal? Are you okay?”
“Not really,” I said. “I’ll explain on the drive.”
“Okay.” Nathan reached for the GPS. “What’s the address?”
I read it off for the system. “There’s also another quote that sounds like it’s from that book you were talking about.”
“
“Yeah, that one.” I held up the card, and recited more than read, “ ‘The broken doors are open. Come and enter and be home.’”
Nathan started the car. He didn’t say a word as he pulled out of the driveway. I slowly lowered the card, blinking at him. He wasn’t looking at me; he was staring at the windshield, where the glowing red printout from the GPS displayed at eye level.
I frowned, not sure what I was supposed to say, or what—if anything—I’d done to upset him. I wasn’t the one who wrote the note. I wasn’t the one quoting the book.
Finally, Nathan sighed, and said, “ ‘Some lies better left untold; some dreams better left unsold. The broken doors are open. Come and enter, and be home. My darling girl, be careful now, and don’t go out alone.’” He glanced my way. “It’s from the middle of the book, where the boy and girl who’ve gone out alone together—don’t ask me how that works, I was a kid, I believed it completely—have reached the broken doors, and everything is about to get bad. It’s sort of a welcome. And it’s sort of a warning.”
“I’m a little disturbed that our secret source for secret things is communicating with us via quotes from a children’s book that no one but you has ever heard of,” I said. “It’s weird and I don’t like it.”
“I really expected you to go with ‘secret source for secret secrets’ there, and I don’t like it either, but I don’t see what choice we have,” said Nathan. “She’s the only person who seems to know what’s going on.”
“Yeah.” I studied him sidelong. The dark circles under his eyes didn’t surprise me, but I didn’t like them, either. Not sure what else to say, I asked, “Is someone taking care of Minneapolis? I was worried about her this morning.”
“I’ve contacted Devi’s family, since they’re local. They’re considering their options.” The bitter way he said that made it plain he didn’t expect them to come for Devi and Katherine’s bulldog. “In the meantime, Minnie is with me. My building manager says she can stay for a little while, given the circumstances, even though I’m not supposed to have pets.”
“I think… I think that’s a good thing. I’ll feel safer knowing you have a dog with you,” I said slowly. “Given the circumstances and all.”
Nathan glanced at me again. “Sal? What’s wrong?”
I took a deep breath. “Something happened with Beverly this morning,” I said before I began, haltingly, to explain the events that had started with Beverly standing stiff-legged and growling in the backyard. It took longer than I expected. Even with me refusing to leave anything out, Nathan kept asking me questions, making me back up, and finding the things I wasn’t saying. By the time I finished, I was trembling all over, a deep, bone-weary shake that seemed to start somewhere deep inside my chest and radiate from there. I stopped talking. I couldn’t find anything else inside myself to say.
Nathan said it for me. “You did the right thing,” he said. “I don’t know that I would have had the presence of mind to call SymboGen, but after what happened last night with Devi… I wouldn’t want to involve the police with three of them when they were in their mobile state.”
There was no question as to who he meant by “them.” I shuddered, the memory of the woman on the back porch rising, uninvited, behind my eyes. “It was freaky. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Like I said, you did the right thing. SymboGen is more equipped to deal with this sort of situation than anybody else. I just wish I knew what made them surround your house like that. I haven’t heard anything about that behavior. It makes me a little nervous, to be honest. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I don’t want me to get hurt either, so I think we’re in agreement.” I placed a hand on his arm. “It’s going to be okay. This lady will have the answers that we’re looking for, and then you’ll know how to start treating the sick people, and all of this will go away.” I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. We might find out what SymboGen was hiding about the sleeping sickness; we might even find a way to treat the people who were afflicted. But no answers were going to bring Devi back. My own example notwithstanding, the dead were beyond the reach of modern medical science.
Nathan nodded grimly. “Let’s hope you’re right,” he said, and kept driving.
The GPS led us off the freeway and into a rundown section of a city called Concord. From there, we drove through increasingly worn-looking streets toward our final destination. This was the heart of the Bay Area’s extended suburban sprawl, communities that grew up around San Francisco and the ports during the state’s big boom period—a period that once seemed like it was going to last forever, according to a documentary I once watched on California’s history. California had the natural resources, it had the space, and it had the drive to keep its population growing until they ran out of room. I guess they never expected to run out of cheap gas and good weather while they still had space to cram in another housing development.
Most of California’s suburban areas had gone one of two ways: they had returned to their agrarian roots, or they had begun dying a slow death through attrition and neglect. Most of the farmland around Clayton was still owned by the United States military, and so they’d gone for option number two. We drove almost three miles and didn’t pass more than a dozen cars. One old man pushed a shopping cart full of his worldly possessions along the sidewalk in front of a deserted Kmart with big yellow CLOSED banners in the windows. Everything else was still.
“We’re almost there,” said Nathan. He turned off the main road into a small shopping center where a thrift store clung to life next to a feed store as closed as the Kmart. He drove past them both, gritting his teeth as the broken pavement of the parking lot caused the car to shudder and bounce.
An abandoned bowling alley filled the back third of the lot. Nathan circled around behind it, parking out of sight of the street. I blinked at him. He shrugged and turned off the engine.
“I don’t think we necessarily want to attract more attention than we will just by being here, do you?” he asked.
“No,” I admitted. Unfastening my belt, I slung my bag back over my shoulder and got out of the car.
The air was hotter and drier in Clayton than it had been in San Francisco. I glanced at my piece of paper and then at the address painted on the back door of the old bowling alley, reassuring myself that we were really in the right place. We were. Nathan walked next to me as we approached the building, which gave no signs of being occupied. Leaves on the nearby, half-dead trees rustled in the wind. Everything else was still. We stopped just short of the bowling alley door.
“Should we knock?” I asked.
“I don’t see how else we’re going to get inside,” he said.
I swallowed hard, nodding. Then I stepped forward and rapped my knuckles lightly against the wood. I stepped back again, and we waited for someone to come to the door. And waited. And waited.
When almost ten minutes had gone by, Nathan stepped forward. He knocked much more authoritatively,
