Phytosphere

18

Sunlight came to Wake County two days later. Glenda squinted as it streamed through her kitchen window. Hanna and Jake stood at the back door peering at the woods behind the house. Glenda left her spot by the kitchen sink and joined them.

The world looked frightful. Everything was dead. Grass brown. Trees bare. Not like winter, because even in winter she could tell the trees were still alive. In this phytosphere season, the browns and grays of the dead things had a whiteness to them, the telltale sign of a plant’s inability to produce chlorophyll. The forest looked like a dirty rag. The sun lit it up like a spotlight. On some trees the leaves still hung as if glued in place, only they didn’t look like leaves anymore, but more like spent coffee filters or bits of yellowed newspaper. The pine trees reminded her of the Christmas trees people threw out after the holidays, dry and brittle, their needles fleeced. Her lawn was a damp morass of dead grass and mud.

She saw Leigh’s shed.

Yes, Leigh’s shed.

One of those tin ones, bought in a long, flat box and erected one sheet at a time, white, with a green roof. Some dead ivy clawed its way up the side. Ivy. That was Leigh’s thing. Poor dead Leigh. If Sheriff Fulton had been good for nothing else, he had at least buried Leigh.

Her stomach groaned. The sun shone through a hole in the shroud, and its bright intensity was hurtful to her eyes. The sky on the horizon was dark green. This horrible parody of a North Carolina woods looked preternaturally bright against the lugubrious backdrop of the thinning phytosphere.

Her kids stunk. She stunk. There was no running water anymore. When they bathed at all it was in the nearby Taylor Creek, and that was full of dead things.

She saw smoke in the hills. Something was burning.

She opened the door and stepped outside.

Far in the distance, she heard a bird singing. A cardinal. Singing by itself. The sound filled her with hope.

“Come on, kids. Let’s go dig.”

They got the shovel and spade out of the garden shed.

And then she stopped. How could she have been so stupid? She let the shovel fall and hurried to the back door.

“Mom?” said Hanna.

“I’ve got to fone your father. I’ll be able to get through now.”

She tried because, now that there was a hole in the shroud, surely communications would be restored.

But she got the same heartless message.

She resolved to periodically keep trying while the hole was there.

She went back outside. “It’s still down. We might as well dig up Leigh’s stuff.”

They walked to the back fence and went through the gate. Then they walked through Leigh’s gate into his yard.

Jake went into the dead man’s shed, got one of his shovels, and came back out.

All three started digging.

The soil felt loose. She kept looking out to the highway, fearful that at any moment she might see a police cruiser. But all she saw were the neighboring houses stretching out along the highway, some traditional ranch styles, others conglomerations of geodesic domes, and still others molded in the fanciful shapes the more up-to-date residential architects employed. This whole end of town looked deserted. They were the only ones about.

She dug, and was surprised by how weak she felt, how bony her wrists looked, and how easily she ran out of breath.

Hanna started coughing.

“Hanna, sit for a while.”

Her daughter sat on the ground.

Glenda was also alarmed by how hot it was, as if with this sudden burst of sunshine the world had ignited. No more snow. No more winter in summer. Instead it was summer with a vengeance. She stopped digging and checked the thermometer on the side of Leigh’s garden shed. Ninety-two Fahrenheit. Was that possible? Could the temperature rise so dramatically? Or was this but another phase in the shroud’s evolution?

She went back to digging. After a while, her shovel hit something hard. She looked at her children. Jake stopped digging. His blue-and-red windbreaker hung from his bony shoulders.

“You hit something,” he said.

“I think so.”

She cast another nervous glance toward the highway.

Jake sank to his knees and shoved dirt out of the way with his hands. Hanna looked at her brother as if she didn’t fully understand what he was doing—she was all doped up on the asthma medication from Cedarvale. Glenda got down on her knees beside her son and helped.

In a few moments they uncovered a crate—it looked like Leigh had made it himself out of sheets of four-by-three Duratex, the white sheen of the material smudged with dirt. Jake used his fingers to uncover the outlines of the crate, digging steadily, and at last found a rope handle. He yanked, then yanked again until some dirt shifted.

“Jake, move,” said Hanna. “Let Mom get at it with the shovel.”

Jake moved, and Glenda stuck the spade down the side and levered the crate. It still wouldn’t budge.

So she dug some more. Then she helped Jake with the rope handles.

At last, they yanked it loose. “It’s heavy,” she said.

With a little more yanking they finally pulled it out of its hole onto the surrounding lip of ground. Glenda lifted the lid and saw several cans inside.

Jake pulled one out. “Irish stew! And look at this. Chicken noodle soup. And chili. And this one…it’s mandarin oranges!”

Glenda cast another nervous glance toward the highway. “Let’s get this stuff inside before someone comes. We can’t let anybody know we have it.”

“And look, here’s some flashlight batteries,” said Jake. “And candles.”

“Let’s just get it inside.”

Over the next hour they dug up the surrounding area and found five more crates. They took them inside.

They were filled with a variety of canned and dried goods, as well as, ominously, a handgun and three boxes of ammunition.

Most puzzling of all were some keys.

“What do you think they’re for?” asked Jake.

“I don’t know,” said Glenda. “Maybe his cabin. He has a cabin on Jordan Lake.”

“Do you know where?”

“No. He wanted to take me up once…when your dad was in the hospital….”

“He had the hots for you, Mom,” said Hanna.

Glenda shook her head. “No… no, I don’t think he did. We were just good friends, that’s all.”

“But you never went up, right?” said Jake.

“No.”

“Because you love Dad, right?”

“Yes.”

Jake motioned at the keys. “You think he might have food stashed in the cabin?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I don’t know where it is.”

While they dug out the sixth and final crate, Buzz Fulton, the sheriff’s brother, drove by in his truck, the old junk heap bumping and rattling along the road. He slowed as he passed the house, and Glenda knew he could see what they were doing. He came to a brief stop as he passed in front of the house, but then continued into the hills, his vehicle looking lonely, as if it didn’t belong in the sunlit stillness of the dead woods.

“Mom?” said Hanna.

She watched Buzz go until he disappeared over the west hill. Then she looked down at the handgun.

Then at her son. “You want to learn how to use this, Jake?”

19

As Gerry and Ian rode the train out to the Alleyne-Parma Observatory to take their first look at the perforated phytosphere, Gerry held his fone tightly to his ear, even though he had just ended his call to Glenda. Miracle of miracles, they had at last gotten through to each other.

He took the fone away and looked at it, then put it in his pocket.

He went over his conversation with Glenda carefully, even as Ian gave him an apprehensive glance. That desperation in her voice. He had never heard her like that before. That bit about the stew, and how they were cooking it on a fire out back because Hanna wouldn’t eat it cold. And how Buzz Fulton had driven by a few times. Good old Buzz. He had shared more than a few drinks with Buzz. And the Cedarvale asthma medicine making Hanna high all the time. And Jake learning how to use a pistol. It was all so…unsettling.

A snippet of the conversation came full-blown to his mind.

“I’m working on a plan,” she had said.

“What kind of plan?”

“I’m going to disperse the food in the woods out back. And we’re going to run watches. Me and Jake.

Hanna’s too stoned from the medicine. If anybody gets too close to the house, that’s it, Gerry, I’m not asking any questions.”

In the shrillness of this last statement, Gerry had heard his wife’s true anxiety, her tone a revelation, her sentiment a measure of just how bad things had gotten. He stared at the bleak lunar landscape as they passed a spur line that led to an oxygen production facility—three great white spheres on the otherwise gray horizon. He understood—with chill finality—the jeopardy his wife and family faced. Armed men might come to the house and take their food away. Possibly kill them. And Glenda and Jake were going

to fight them with a rifle and a pistol, no questions asked. He had to find a way to beat the phytosphere and beat it fast.

He glanced at Ian.

“So?” said Ian.

“She’s not doing too good.” And he had to struggle to keep his emotions controlled.

“But she’s keeping it together, right?”

He thought of her plan. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Because I always knew she was a strong woman. Right from the moment I met her.”

“The neighbor got murdered.”

“Really? What happened?”

“He had a food stash. Some guys came to his house, killed him, and took it. He had an extra stash buried out behind his shed. That’s what Glenda and my kids are living on right now.”

Ian lifted his chin. “She’ll get through.”

Gerry swallowed against the growing lump in his throat. If he talked too much about this, he might lose it.

He decided to change the subject.

“I was in the mayor’s office this morning for an update.” He bolstered his voice with a businesslike tone.

“Neil’s toxin not only seems to be working, but the U.S. military and its allies have destroyed fully seventy-five percent of the Tarsalan killer satellites.”

Ian raised his brow. “So maybe ships will start getting through again. Maybe you’ll go home soon, buddy.”

Gerry felt himself getting shaky again because Ian was suggesting home. “They’re telling us to stay put. I think the military’s got something planned, Ian. Over and above the toxin thing. Something big.”

Ian shook his head. “You mean something stupid.”

They reached the observatory a short while later.

For Ian, it was an occasion to take a nip from his flask and light up a joint.

Gerry, on the other hand, went directly to Heaven’s Eye.

Rather than look at Earth on the monitors, he studied it through the telescope’s actual lens.

The terminator curved along the Earth’s meridian like a black fingernail, the planet in gibbous phase, looking like a partially closed green eye. At first he didn’t see any imperfections in the uniformly emerald pall, but soon, as the Earth rotated, he discerned an ill-defined black pupil. The muck of the phytosphere was a beryl pudding, and invisible fingers tore it apart. The ragged edges around the pupil had the whiteness of a plant that could no longer produce chlorophyll.

“Do you want a hit off this?” asked Ian.

“Take a look at this. See what you think.”

Gerry moved out of the way.

Holding the joint—a merry little smokable in pink paper—between his thumb and middle fingers, Ian leaned down and looked through the eyepiece. Gerry, meanwhile, considered what he had seen. He had to admit, it looked as if Neil was having some success.

Ian lifted his head. “Looks like it’s doing something.”

Gerry’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah.”

“You think it will work?”

“I hope so.”

“But?”

Gerry shrugged. “Maybe he’s got it.”

“But?”

It was indeed a piece of work that such a colossal structure could be dismantled this way, and he felt nothing but keen admiration for his brother.

“We’ll just have to wait.”

“Wait for what?” asked Ian.

“Seems like a slow process.”

“And?”

“The Tarsalans could respond.”

“Respond how?”

“With a neutralizer, or antidote, or some such other molecular or nanogenic agent. If you’re going to fight the Tarsalans, you have to be smarter, stronger, and sooner than they are.”

“Sooner?”

“You have to hit them all at once, like Stephanie says.”

Three technicians delivered infrared equipment to the Alleyne-Parma Observatory the following day.

Gerry was surprised, and also relieved. He had thought for sure that he wouldn’t get any of this new equipment until Neil’s toxin attempt had unequivocally failed. That he should see the equipment so soon made him think his arguments had, after all, carried weight, and that even the rhetorically minded Ira Levinson had at last seen reason.

The apparatus, in its entirety, was a boxy unit about the size of a refrigerator, and reminded Gerry of a giant multilens camera. One of the lenses stuck out further than the others, protruding from the white casing about six inches, while the other two lenses remained recessed into the instrument, covered with special optical filters made of blue glass.

The technicians took the whole afternoon to install the unit, and to download software into the accompanying computer.

When they were done, they gave Gerry a rundown, and by the time they left he was fairly adept at imaging, enhancing, and analyzing the infrared views of Earth.

The mayor came a few hours later. “How’s it working?” asked Hulke.

“You pulled some strings.”

“It was more than strings, Ger.”

“Malcolm… thanks.”

“Just do something with it. Give Ira a bone or something.”

“I’ve been studying the new images for the last few hours.”

“And so, like, your brother’s thing…is it working?”

Gerry shrugged. “As far as it goes, I guess. But the evidence is inconclusive yet.”

“Even in the new images? Does this…does it help get a better look at what your brother’s toxin is doing? Because I had to use that…that line of reasoning with Ira, even though I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. Otherwise you would have been waiting forever.”

Gerry sighed. So. Here it was again. The hidden agenda. The new apparatus wasn’t meant to further his own research, but to confirm his brother’s. What else was new?

He glumly told the mayor the truth. “I’m not sure.”

The mayor gestured at the infrared views of Earth on the monitors. “How many blooms show deterioration?”

Gerry glanced at the monitor. “I count…five. And it looks as if they’ve just seeded another, so that makes six. It’s just that, you know…” He motioned at the screen. “It seems the phytosphere is catching on, getting an idea of what’s happening…like I said it would.”

“Gerry, please don’t say that.”

Gerry shook his head. “I’m just not sure yet. The hydrogen sulfide seems to be working in some blooms, and not in others. Omicron bloom, for instance. It’s hardly made a dent.”

The mayor’s smooth face flushed. “That’s not, like, the best news I’ve heard all day. Any way I can put a positive spin on it for Ira?”

He raised his brow, frustrated that the mayor should be looking at it this way. “I wouldn’t say it’s a complete bust, Malcolm. But the temperature relationships are complex.” The mayor’s face sank at this notion. “And I haven’t quite figured them out.” Hulke’s face sank further, as if Gerry’s inability to figure things out was just another breach in the confidence the mayor had placed in him.

“So there are… temperature relationships.” The mayor didn’t seem to like this at all. “Okay. Not what I was expecting, but if you could explain without getting too technical…so I have something to take back to Ira.”

Gerry collected his thoughts. “We should be getting an extremely cold infrared signature on the dead plant tissue, well into the darkest blues.”

“But?” The mayor’s pale eyes had now gone wide.

“Well…we have had a lot of blue, and all that tissue is disintegrating, but the disintegration in each bloom only reaches a certain point before it seizes up. It never gets beyond this green boundary here.”

Gerry pointed. “The green indicates that the plant material has actually grown inert. Not dead, just inert.

There’s no growth activity. It’s like an oak tree in winter. It’s still alive, but nothing’s happening.”

“So does that mean your brother’s failed?”

Gerry shrugged. “There’s been no regrowth in the affected areas. I wouldn’t call that failure, but I wouldn’t call it success either. Maybe what we’re going to get is a shroud with a lot of holes in it. Which is better than a shroud with no holes at all.”

“But if the U.S. keeps peppering the phytosphere with this hydrogen sulfide, and keeps starving the xenophyta… surely we’ll get rid of it once and for all.”

“I don’t know. This freeze-up action happens faster each time. It might reach a point where the seeding will stall the minute it hits the phytosphere.”

“But generally speaking, your brother’s had at least some initial success.”

“Given what I’m seeing here, I would say yes.”

The mayor stared at the images on the monitors. “And what about…you know…your own research?

Ira was asking about it.”

“He was?”

“He hasn’t entirely dismissed you, Gerry.”

Gerry’s eyebrows twitched upward. “That’s just the shot in the arm I was looking for, Malcolm.”

“He wanted to know about the… uh… anomalous band.”

Hearing this, Gerry had to rethink his opinion of Ira. He motioned at the monitors. “You can see the band a lot better using infrared.” He pointed. “It runs all the way from the north pole to the south pole.

On the infrared scale, it fluctuates into yellow, even into orange near the equator, and that means it’s generating a lot of heat. Heat means stress.”

“Stress?”

“Whenever things are under great pressure, or great stress, they heat up. This heat band from north to south indicates that the phytosphere comes under global cyclical stress. I’m still trying to understand it.”

“But it has nothing to do with your brother’s poison?”

“No. It was there before my brother used the hydrogen sulfide. I’m working on some models to explain it. It’s definitely not weather, like I first thought.”

“And as for the hydrogen sulfide thing? Come on, Gerry. Let’s try to be positive. Give me some good old Moon-spirited attitude.”

Gerry shook his head. “Malcolm, science isn’t a matter of positive or negative attitude. It’s simply a matter of…careful observation. You don’t want to cloud things up with any kind of attitude.”

They brought Gerry a cot and he stayed at the observatory around the clock. All the good food was gone, and he ate emergency rations, what the Moon had on hand in case of war, famine, or political unrest on Earth: mostly soup packs, rice cakes, and a dozen different pill supplements.

Members of the committee drifted in and out to watch the monitors, and Gerry could tell from the tightness at the corners of their eyes that they were anxious, still rooting for his brother, but nervous because it seemed to be taking so long.

Mitch Bennett came in and made a show of checking over the equipment, but his eyes kept drifting to the monitors, his small lips pursing, his brow settling. He seemed angry at the shroud. He finally left after saying in a sullen tone, “It’s like watching a piece of cheese ripen.”

The mayor came and went in various states of sobriety—and it wasn’t funny, because Gerry knew what it was like to be a drunk—always smelling of booze, for the most part holding it together but then slipping up with a slurred word or two, running off to the observatory washroom for a quick nip, joking about what they were going to do when all the booze ran out, and finally staring at the main monitor as if it were an oracle.

“Do you think you’re going to need a second Smallmouth still?” asked the mayor.

“Why? Is Ira changing his mind?”

“I’ll talk to Ira. He’s not…above fear.”

When the mayor left, Gerry spoke to Glenda again, because that was one great thing about Neil’s attempt: With the holes in the phytosphere, the lines of communication were open again.

“It seems to be stalling,” she told him. “At least from what I can see in Old Hill.”

“Any sign of Maynard?”

“No. But Buzz drove by again.”

“I had some good times with Buzz. Except for Marblehill. Marblehill was a disaster.”

“I wish he’d stop driving by. He came by last night. I heard his truck a mile away.”

Ian came in a number of times and, surprisingly, he took only a few nips from his flask.

Gerry commented on it.

Ian motioned at the monitors. “All this…makes a man think. I always told myself I’d sober up by the end of it all. I’m cutting back as much as I can.”

Stephanie came to visit him.

The minute she saw the monitors she said, “It’s not working.” And it was funny because Stephanie, nothing more than a showgirl, seemed to cut through the crap better than anybody else. “We’ve got to come up with something different fast.”

He studied the monitors and realized Stephanie was right.

Each new seeding brought no more than a pinprick of deterioration, tiny points of stasis where the hydrogen sulfide was trying to gain a meager toehold. It was as if the phytosphere was now putting up its best guard against the attack.

He was with Stephanie when he first noticed a change around the existing holes. In infrared terms, it was manifested as a rim of yellow forming along the edges of the green, like the finger of God reaching out and breathing a new spring into the dormant foliage, yellow being an indicator of warmth, and therefore, of life.

His shoulders sank.

He showed Stephanie, and together they followed the growth for the next hour. He remembered the weeds in his Old Hill backyard, particularly the dandelions in spring; of how quickly his too-big lawn had been covered with a galaxy of ragged yellow stars, and how dozens of other green miscreants, genus unknown, had sprouted up between the patio stones and along the edges of the house. The phytosphere seemed vicious in its will to live. The yellow rims at the edges of the various holes seemed to pulsate as if with golden blood, and the holes themselves grew noticeably smaller. He took measurements, and electronically conveyed them to the mayor’s office, Mitch’s office, and even Ira’s office.

The measurements spoke for themselves.

Attitude had nothing to do with it.

20

Neil’s girls got up early at Homestead because they wanted to see the sunrise. Neil opened his eyes and watched them get ready at the sink. He would have smiled if the awful truth hadn’t been revealed to him last night in a special drop from the Moon. Dr. Gerald Thorndike has confirmed new growth in the phytosphere. Mechanism of defense: dormancy. In other words, Neil had unleashed a toxic winter, and the xenophyta had survived by lapsing into a state of suspended animation.

And all the gunfire on the base last night. What had that been about?

He swung his feet out of the army cot he shared with Louise and glanced around their fairly large officers’ barracks. He heard the rise and fall of jet engines on the tarmac—pilots gearing up for maneuvers. His head pounded. A hangover, but not an alcohol hangover—a stress hangover. Because what was he going to do now? Develop a virus? A plant disease? But how? He wasn’t used to working like this, with scattered personnel and diminished resources. He was used to working with the full and generous backing of the United States government, and not in a place where things were breaking down.

And now Gerry.

Telling him he had failed.

“Let’s see you do something, Ger,” he mumbled under his breath.

“Huh?” said Louise.

“Are you going to get up and see the sunrise?” he asked.

This was their ritual now; sun worshippers, the lot of them.

“I’m thinking of painting the barracks. I’d like it yellow, Neil. See if you can convince Greg to get us some yellow paint.”

“Isn’t it enough he can feed us?”

She glanced at the girls. “Shall we let the girls go first?”

They hadn’t had sex in a while.

“I have a few things to talk to Greg about.”

“Yellow paint?”

He grinned. “Sure. Yellow paint.”

They all got dressed and had their rations, and went outside in their shorts and T-shirts and sandals because even at this time of morning it was sweltering. It was glorious to see the sun slanting through the morass of melting green xenophyta. The entire parade ground was alive with light and shadow.

“There’s Greg,” he said.

“You’re not telling me everything, are you?” said Louise.

He paused. “We’re going to be fine.”

“So can I come and talk to Greg with you?”

“I’d prefer if you didn’t.”

He moved off.

Colonel Gregory Bard was in uniform, but without his jacket. He was tall, and had pools of sweat soaking the armpits of his blue Air Force shirt. He was as skinny as everybody else. He cast a nervous glance over his shoulder as he approached Neil; that’s what Neil remembered about Greg from all those years ago when they had been in the Air Force together, that he always seemed like a man who knew secrets, or who was involved in conspiracies up to his eyeballs. Greg’s caginess dissolved as he watched the girls appreciate the sun. These girls. And Louise. In sunshine. His family. He was lucky to have them.

“So?” he said to Greg. “Is the place still standing?”

“It’s still there.”

“Any sign of damage?”

“Someone’s broken in.”

“They have?”

“But the place doesn’t looked wrecked or anything,” said Greg.

“So everything’s okay? All the vehicles and so forth?”

“Everything looks fine, Neil.”

“And you were able to land two choppers on the lawn okay?”

“That’s quite a place. I had no idea you’d done so well for yourself. And right next to Chattahoochee.

What a great location.”

“And you’ve got some guys up there right now?”

“The best. Harmon, Earl, and Scott. You remember those guys? Then I got some young guys.

Fernandes, Rostov, Douglas, Nabozniak, and Sinclair. All top-notch.”

Neil gestured toward the west. “So those guys down at the other end of the base—”

Greg shook his head, a slow shifting of his chin from side to side as his eyes seemed to seek out an indeterminate spot on the tarmac. “Just some disgruntled airmen who think with their stomachs, not with their heads.”

“How many are there?”

“Enough to make a nuisance of themselves.”

“So, like a… a mutiny?”

“A mutiny? I wouldn’t call it a mutiny. I would call it more a disgreement. About the way I’ve decided to ration the food. Especially now that we have a dwindling number of stores.”

“But they have guns.”

Greg squinted up at the sun. “And a few other things.”

“Greg, I have to make sure my family is safe.”

Greg looked away from the sun and focused on Neil. The change in attitude, though not profound, was signaled by a locking of his neck, a thrusting of his jaw, and a give-me-a-break narrowing of his eyes.

“You don’t have to worry about them, Neil. We’ve got a perimeter set up. And we’re bleeding all the stores to this end. If those guys don’t want to play by the rules, then it serves them right.”

“Maybe you should just airlift me and my family out now.”

Greg motioned up at the sky. “We have the second line to think of. I was speaking to Assistant Secretary of Defense Fonblanque personally about that. Once that’s done—”

“Are they sending more troops to deal with this…this little base insurgency?”

“Insurgency? Come on, Neil.”

“Whatever it is.”

“A bunch of young cadets playing with guns who don’t know any better. That’s what it is. We’ll have it mopped up in no time.”

“Are you sure?”

“Neil, work on the virus thing. Let me handle everything else. There’s no point in inventing problems for yourself when you’ve already got this big one to solve.”

21

The shadow of the mending shroud closed in on Wake County, and to Glenda it was like a vise closing around her soul. Her forehead was moist with perspiration. She was wearing her lightest cotton dress, material so thin it hardly weighed an ounce, but the heat now seemed to have a physical presence, a touch that was soft but insidious, and the temperature quickly drained a person’s energy.

She got up from bed and closed her hand around her cool rifle. Why didn’t they just get it over with?

The sheriff’s brother drove by every couple of hours now, his rusted hulk of a vehicle bumping and rattling along the road like a mechanical ghost. She knew that they knew about the extra food, and she also knew that they were going to make a try, so why didn’t they just do it? She listened, but heard no vehicle. Outside, a phantom green dusk settled over the dead, brown land. The quiet was like the breath of an old man expiring at Cedarvale in the middle of a sleepy afternoon.

She left her bedroom and stopped at Hanna’s door. Hanna sat by the window, leaning into the waning light as if she were a plant starved for sunshine. She held a book in her hands, couldn’t use the electronic reader, which she so often preferred for her school texts, but held an honest-to-God book, made out of honest-to-God paper; and it wasn’t just any book, but one of Hanna’s old books, a children’s book.

Hanna was holding it up to the remaining light with a far-off look in her eyes, and she looked so stoned on the medication from Cedarvale that Glenda was worried about her, and wondered if she was abusing the medication as a way to deaden her daily existence. When the medicine ran out, what then? Would Hanna literally cough herself to death? Would her body finally grow so weak from the racking coughs and lack of food that she would slip into a coma and die?

Day at a time, day at a time, day at a time—her mother’s mantra came back with an urgent and panicked clarity. “Hanna?” she said.

Her daughter turned in the slow and lugubrious way of a heroin addict riding the horse full speed.

“Jake’s asleep. You know that, don’t you?”

“What?”

“He was sleeping when I went for a pee.”

“But it’s only eight in the evening.”

“He’s been sleeping a lot.”

Glenda hurried to the living room.

In the dim green light coming through the picture window she saw Jake sprawled on the sofa, his arm hanging over the edge so that it touched the floor. The gun was next to his hand, its barrel angled off toward the front door, a box of bullets open beside it with a few cartridges, like scattered gold nuggets, on the floor. Yes, sleeping all the time, fourteen to sixteen hours a day, like the depressed old people at Cedarvale. Maybe she should have raided the Cedarvale dispensary for some happy pills as well.

She walked over and shook his arm. “Jake? Jake, honey?”

His head shot quickly to one side, and he was insensible for a few seconds as he clutched wildly for the gun.

Once he had it, he sat up. “Are they here? Are they here?”

“No, Jake, no. You fell asleep.”

Jake cast an anxious glance out the window. “Is that Buzz’s truck I hear?”

She listened, her paranoia taking hold like a bad fever. All she heard was the quiet. Not even any gunfire up in the hills anymore, as if they had all killed each other.

Jake got up and walked to the window. The fear came off him like sparks from a pinwheel—fear only a kid of twelve could feel. She walked to the window and joined him. She looked at the sky. The light of an August sunset seeped through the ragged hole in the green thing up there, and the edges of the hole, as it closed up, weren’t so much green as turquoise, as if hailstones refracted the light. The road was empty.

There was no sign of Maynard, Buzz, or Brennan—bastards, the lot of them.

“I’m going to one of the stashes to get some food,” she said. “You need something to eat. Eat something, then go to bed.”

“Which stash are you going to?”

“By the sycamores. Stash one.”

“Can I go?”

“You’ve got to stay here. In case they come.”

“You think they will?”

“They’d be fools to when it’s light like this. We’d mow them down. But then Sheriff Fulton’s always been a fool.”

“I’ll use the binoculars.”

“Don’t drop them this time.”

“Mom, that was an accident.”

“They’re your father’s good pair.”

“When are you going to learn to trust me?”

She walked to the kitchen and out the back door.

All the dead things in the forest—animals that had starved—were rotting in this heat, and the whole county smelled like roadkill up close. She trotted over to the fence, painfully aware that any of Fulton’s men could be taking a bead on her from up in the hills, and used the cover of the dead cedar hedge to make her way to the back.

She paused next to Leigh’s shed and looked into the woods. With the light coming down in this eerie way, and the shadows gathering in the lifeless trunks, it didn’t even look like Earth anymore, but like some weird and suffocated version of Earth.

She ventured more deeply into the woods. She came to stash one. She dug—and she dug and she dug until she had uncovered stash one. As she was hauling it out of the warm, dead earth, she heard the bump and rattle of Buzz Fulton’s truck coming along the highway, but only for a moment before it died at the top of the hill, to the east of the house. Her heart jumped as if with booster cables and her shortness of breath worsened, and she listened and listened, and tried to hear the truck, but the silence, after the usual signature cacophony of his vehicle, was like a death writ. He wasn’t passing by this time. He was stopping. Up at the top of the hill. And it couldn’t be good, oh, no, it had to be bad, because if he was stopping at the top of the hill, it meant he had plans.

She shoved the stash into its hole.

She ran out of the woods into the yard, conscious of the thump of her sneakers against the dead grass.

She entered through the back door, and locked it manually because the console didn’t have power anymore.

The front door was open and, getting closer, she saw Jake standing on the slab of concrete they called

the porch. He held the binoculars to his eyes and stared up the hill.

She stepped out onto the stoop beside him.

He took the binoculars away. “I think they’re here, Mom. I think this might be the night.”

“Did you make a head count?”

“Three for sure. But there could have been four.”

“So you remember what I said?”

“That the old rules don’t apply, and it’s okay to kill if I have to.”

“Just pretend it’s one of your Handheld Sport games.”

“Mom, it’s a little scarier than that.”

“I know… I know. Take up your position in the back. Don’t come forward unless I give you the signal.”

“I feel a little sick.”

“Are you going to throw up?”

“I’m just really scared.”

“Let’s get ready.”

They went into the house. Glenda walked to Hanna’s room.

Hanna had now put her book aside and was looking out the window. “Is it them?”

“Buzz stopped up the hill. I think you and Jake should go to the woods, like we planned.”

“I never liked Buzz. He was such an asshole at Marblehill. He actually came on to me.”

“He did?”

“I never told you.”

“But you were only twelve.”

“Like I said, he’s an asshole.”

They left Hanna’s room.

Jake and Hanna went to hide in the woods out back.

Glenda stayed alone in the house, on her knees at the front window, her rifle ready, scanning the highway, hoping Jake would give her a whistle if Maynard and his crew came from the back. She waited and waited, and slowly the hole in the sky got darker until finally it shone with the eternal blue of

nighttime, a shade a hundred times darker than indigo, a ragged continent shiny with stars in the pitch-black of the shroud.

She crawled back to the coffee table and groped for her high-powered flashlight, glad Leigh had stashed away so many extra batteries. She struggled back to the window and looked out at the front lawn. It was now a shade brighter than it had been a moment before—and looking at that hole in the shroud, she saw that its edges were growing brighter as well.

After another fifteen minutes, a pale fingernail of Moon peeped out at her from behind the shroud, and she couldn’t help thinking of Gerry.

When Sheriff Fulton finally came, he didn’t show his face, but megaphoned from somewhere out in the dark.

“Glenda?” He waited for a response. “Glenda, we know you’re in there. And we know you have food.

Why don’t you do the sensible thing and give it all up?”

She left the living room, went into the den, placed the flashlight on the high window ledge, turned it on, and shone it out at the front lawn. She left it there, beaming out into the dark, then retraced her steps through the dining room, then the kitchen, grabbed her second flashlight, moved quickly through the dining and living rooms to the other side of the house, and went into Jake’s room.

She put the second flashlight on the window ledge and shone it out at the front lawn as well. Its beam intersected with the one coming from the den. She paused to measure the effect. A pale glow now lit the yard. Fulton would be a fool to come in from the front. Which meant he was going to come from the back. At least she didn’t have to fight this war on two fronts. Not unless they shot out the flashlights, and she didn’t think any of them were good enough marksmen for that.

She left Jake’s room, feeling her way through the dark house until she got to the kitchen, carrying her rifle loosely in her right hand. She grabbed her extra purse from the top of the refrigerator, the one she kept all her rounds in now. She slung it over her shoulder and exited by the back door.

In the light of the Moon, she saw a ground-clinging mist creep over the lawn. She scanned the backyard.

Her eyes strayed to the woods, and as the Moon clawed its way further out from behind the shroud, the poor dead things that used to be trees glowed as if from nuclear waste; not silver, not orange, but somewhere in between.

She leaned her rifle against the house. She heard Fulton’s megaphoned voice from out front, like a nasal and electronic ghost moaning out of the darkness, his words now unintelligible because the house blocked the way. How long before he gave up trying to convince her?

She hurried to the fence that ran between her lot and Leigh’s.

She got a ladder from the fence and carried it quietly to the back of the house. Made of Duratex, the ladder was light and easy to carry. She placed it against the mudroom, climbed to the top, put her rifle on the mud-room roof, dragged the ladder up, then leaned it against the side of the house so that it reached the top. Making sure the feet of the ladder straddled the mudroom peak securely, she climbed to the main roof.

She maneuvered around the low-pitched slopes with relative ease. She took up a position behind the satellite dish, and scanned the backyard. She had great lines of fire.

She got to her feet and moved to the front of the house.

The Moon was brighter now and she saw Buzz Fulton’s truck parked at the top of the east hill, and two police cruisers further down.

She waited.

After several minutes she saw men crossing the highway to the east and disappearing into the yard of the house beyond Leigh’s. Fear momentarily weakened her because up until now she had been hoping that they might never make a try for her food. She maneuvered back to her spot by the satellite dish and waited.

After about fifteen minutes, she saw two men at the back. They inspected the ground. Checking for buried food maybe? Then they came along the fence, crouched over. One of them was Maynard, the other Brennan. She had half a mind to let them break into the house and have their look around. When they found it empty, they might go home and never bother her again.

But then she decided it was best to end it once and for all.

“Maynard,” she called, “I’d stop exactly where you are. One step further and you’re going to have a bullet through your head.”

The two men stopped.

“You’re up on the roof?” called Fulton.

“Where’s your brother?” she called. “Are there other men?”

“Glenda, why don’t you come down from there and talk to us? We might as well try to be reasonable.”

“Why don’t you get off my property? You’re trespassing.”

“You know what we come for, Glenda,” called Brennan. “We know you been hoarding. Just give us your food, and we’ll be on our way. No one will get hurt.”

“I don’t think so, Brennan.”

“Why don’t you come down to the detachment office and join us?” said Fulton. “We’ve made quite a little place down there. I could protect you.”

“For what price, Maynard?”

“Glenda… Glenda, I’m going to give you to the count of three to come down. I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want to hurt your kids. But I got to do what I got do. We’re talking survival here, Glenda.

You know how it is. Don’t say I didn’t give you fair warning. One…”

And suddenly it made complete sense to her, in the way anything can possibly make sense after such a long time in the dark.

“Two…”

Fulton was the enemy. The county’s principal purveyor of death.

“Three…”

Yes, he was the heart and brains of the whole operation, and it was monstrous that he should have the county’s women under his “protection,” and it was up to her to stop all that…. Now careful, Glenda, are you thinking straight? Have you taken all things into consideration? You’re about to shoot a cop, and not just any cop. And yet…shoot him, and you shoot the whole works. Get rid of the head, and the body dies. Yes, it made perfect sense to her, in a fear-crazed way.

“Glenda, you leave us no choice but to—”

And before he could say another word she targeted the sheriff’s head—and it all came back to her, those weekends on the Smoky Hill River with her father, when the sun went down and the sky turned orange, and the partridges leaped into the sky. She took a bead on the sheriff’s head with automatic reflexes and hands as steady as iron, and caressed the trigger so that the rifle fired by itself, adding her own bit of Armageddon to the Apocalypse, the shot rocketing through the air with a roar that echoed in the hills, the bullet hitting its mark as if foreordained.

She heard the sheriff grunt, and he went down like a cow in a slaughterhouse, just so much meat thumping against the poor, dead grass.

Brennan did an odd little jump, his legs splaying, his arms jerking, like he was on thin ice and had just heard a crack. Then he ran toward the back, and she had the oddest sensation that she was floating, because she suddenly felt invincible—but so worried, so terrified for her children, because Brennan was running toward the woods where they were hiding.

So she shot Brennan too, and she must have got him in the spine because his legs gave out from under him, and his handgun flew off toward the shed, a speck of darkness in the gathering moonlight. He dragged himself along with his hands, grunting and groaning, until she lost sight of him in the woods.

22

Gerry knew Kafis from Marblehill, but every time he saw the alien—and Kafis was here on the Moon with a contingent of five other aliens—he had to get used to the Tarsalan’s appearance all over again, especially the bicephalic nature of his cranium. Under the alien’s coarse, dark hair the impression of two separate casings was disconcertingly unmistakable.

Kafis’s face was blue, the color of a robin’s egg. The quality of his skin was like the quality of human flesh, with all the imperfections of pores, wrinkles, and blemishes.

His eyes were a little over twice human size, and were divided into sclera, iris, and pupil, like human eyes. His irises were amber, like Stephanie’s were today, the color of a fine scotch whiskey, and his pupils, black like human pupils, were highly reactive, but not necessarily to light. The way the alien’s pupils dilated and contracted reminded Gerry of the way a hummingbird dances around a bloom, in sudden shifts, so that when Malcolm Hulke burped after a particularly capacious gulp of synthi-beer, Kafis’s pupils twitched open, then twitched closed, then twitched to the halfway point, the changes in aperture occurring with lightning quickness.

The alien’s lips were delicate, a dark shade of blue. Kafis’s teeth, though white, weren’t really so much teeth as upper and lower semicircular serrated blades fitted along his gums like a mouth guard. Below his mouth was a delicate, pointed chin, impossibly small considering the size of the rest of his head.

As for his body, it was about the size of a Vietnamese man’s, smallish and agile-looking.

And his hands… interesting… six digits—like those cats with six toes.

These particular Tarsalans spoke English. Physiologically, their tongues, mouth cavities, and larynxes were equipped for verbal language.

Kafis spoke English best of all—those summers at Marblehill with the Thorndike family had taught him well. And because he had learned most of his English from Neil, Gerry occasionally heard Neil’s phrases in the alien’s voice.

“It’s a wisdom your negotiators should embrace,” he was telling Hulke, who was halfway to getting drunk and arguing for the sake of arguing. “Think of it. As a species, you’ve been confined to this one system ever since you evolved from apes. What if something were to happen to this system? And something eventually will, of course. Your sun will, in a few billion years, go into its red-giant phase, and that will be the end of you. We’ve already talked to at least ten worlds, and they would be willing to welcome you as émigrés.”

“I don’t think you’ll get many takers,” said Hulke. “You may get a few screwballs.”

“But then you might at least have a handful of humans on other worlds. The future of your race would be assured. And that’s all we want as well. To plant some of our people on Earth. There’s plenty of room on Earth, and my colleagues and I are at a loss to explain your intransigence.”

“It’s not my intransigence, Kafis. As far as intransigence goes, you’ll have to talk to Earth.”

“We would prefer you talk to Earth for us. It’s been more than apparent these last nine years that our own negotiators aren’t getting anywhere with them.”

“Uh… Kafis… it’s their ball of wax, not ours.”

Kafis stared at the mayor as if he hadn’t understood a word. Then he rubbed his long, delicate, six-fingered hands together, and glanced at his five silent colleagues.

Kafis turned back to the mayor, and stared at Hulke for a long time, his eyes inscrutable. It really was hard to tell what he was thinking because it was like staring into the eyes of a cat or fish, especially because, characteristically, there wasn’t much play of muscle around his eyes. But at last the alien seemed to dismiss the mayor. He focused on Gerry instead. Some of the muscles around the alien’s small mouth twitched.

“Why do you attack us?”

Here it was, what Gerry had seen so often at Marblehill, the human mind confronting the alien mind, unable to traverse the gulf between.

Kafis continued.

“Why do you allow millions of your own people to die daily? We never meant this. Why do you set fire to your own house…then lock the door and stay inside? We came as your benefactors. We tried to teach you the way of things. But at last you made us force you to kneel, as we make our children kneel, even though it was the last thing we wanted. This you must understand: When the knee is on the floor, it’s time to acknowledge that the lesson is learned. And this is the lesson we have tried to teach you. Life is worth living no matter what the cost. We mean to be your friends and help you any way we can. But you are like the bluntwog, who fights for the sake of fighting. The bluntwog doesn’t understand the ways of harmony, or how the resolution of conflict should best be treated like a ceremony, something that must be performed so all sides can save face. We understand the nature of pride. But the true mark of a civilized being is humility. You show none. Instead of acknowledging our wisdom, you attack us. You force us to use the violence we abhor.”

Gerry sat back and shook his head, feeling the gulf more than ever. “Earth has offered compromise after compromise, Kafis. In case you didn’t know, compromise is a form of wisdom.”

“But you attack us. You kill us. We have suffered ten thousand casualties.”

There it was again, the unbridgeable chasm… and a certain inflexibility to the way Kafis thought about things, as if his way of thinking was too evolved, too hardwired, and too insufferably condescending. Put the phytosphere around the Earth and surely the humans will come to their senses and follow not human cultural norms, but Tarsalan cultural norms. Surely the humans will get down with humility on bended knee and acknowledge that the Tarsalans aren’t their enemies but simply their teachers, wise ones who want only to welcome them into the Commonwealth of Worlds, to disperse the human race so that it can survive when the sun’s red-giant phase at last comes. And if passive protest in the form of the phytosphere is needed as a teaching tool—a cinerthax —then surely the humans won’t lock themselves in their own house and burn it down.

Kafis looked perplexed by the whole situation.

“Let me teach you a fundamental lesson about human beings, Kafis,” said Gerry. “Push us, and we push back. No one’s going to tell us what to do.”

“Yes, but why push against reason and common sense? Do you not value your lives?”

“Of course we do. But we value freedom more.”

“And we offer freedom. Freedom to live wherever you want on any of the habitable worlds. Wouldn’t you like to see the Sungeely Falls on the planet Yravo from their two-mile summit? Wouldn’t you like to see the ringed gas giants Osa and Meta so close in the sky of Hita that you can nearly touch them? And what about the diamond caves of Farostatar, where whole cities are built out of the precious gems?

These are the wonders we offer. These are the freedoms that can be yours. Any of these planets would welcome you. And on any of these planets you would see a mix of races, species, and genera hailing from all parts of the local Milky Way. We offer you the galaxy, and in return, you fire your weapons at us so that we are forced to convert our peaceful shuttles into birds of prey, and shoot down your pilots like pesky insects. We now understand that the mothership is your next objective.” Kafis sat back and his pupils twitched open to their fullest size. “And in that regard we have something we wish you to convey to your United Nations for us. We’ve tried to convey it to them ourselves, but so far they haven’t acknowledged our overtures.”

“Kafis… we’ve been told by Earth that they’ve abandoned any and all diplomatic initiatives.” He thought

of the most recent Earth drop, and how Earth planned to board the TMS and abscond with the phytosphere control device. “They’re not even going to try with you anymore. They’re going bluntwog on you.”

Kafis continued right along, ignoring Gerry’s interjection. “Please convey to them that should they actually succeed in damaging the mothership to the point where its life-support systems no longer function, we will then unilaterally claim as places of refuge those areas marked in the most recent U.N.

counterproposal. Namely, the Kanem Region of Chad, the Arnhem Land Reserve in the Northern Territory of Australia, and the Chattahoochee National Forest in America’s state of Georgia. We will secure these areas with military force and use their hinterlands as regions of supply, regardless of the cost to human life.”

Gerry’s face sank, and Kafis must have noticed it because his pupils shrank. In one of those brainstorms Gerry sometimes had, he realized he had made a breakthrough. He no longer wondered why Neil had such an easy time communicating with Kafis, and was pissed off at Neil for not telling him of this discovery sooner. If Gerry had discovered on his own that the whole key to understanding Tarsalans lay in the movement of their pupils, it would have been one of the first things he would have shared with his brother.

“You’re on weak ground, Kafis. You obviously never expected us to respond with such overwhelming force, and now you’re on the run. You can’t go dictating.”

“Nonetheless, we will stake these claims if life support on the mothership becomes unviable.”

“Then let me give you some advice. You shouldn’t molest any of the local population when you go down. Humans hate that more than anything in an invading alien. Especially in good ole Georgia. If you’ve got to take over, just take over nicely, and try to help everybody.”

“Our survival will be our sole priority.”

“So you understand after all?”

Kafis gave him a double take. “Understand what?”

“How this is about survival.”

“Human, you exhaust me.”

“You exhaust me too, Kafis.”

Ian came to his room much later, just as he was going over the more recent views of the phytosphere, the ones with the toxin holes. Ian was like a caged animal and all he could do was pace in front of the twin beds, stopping occasionally to look at the dark lunar surface, or turning around and gazing briefly at the lamp, always with a look of bewilderment in his eyes. Gerry didn’t know if Ian was here for a reason, or if he was here simply because he had to be somewhere. Sometimes Ian just…showed up. Was he drunk? Gerry didn’t think so. He couldn’t smell any booze.

Ian finally looked at Gerry. “This whole thing is spinning out of control.”

The anxiety in his friend’s voice was like the news the doctor gave you when you had a tumor. Gerry tried to rise to the occasion. He struggled to mount some semblance of courage. But he couldn’t help remembering his wife’s words: If anybody gets too close to the house, that’s it, Gerry, I’m not asking any questions. And then there was Kafis, spinning out of control as well, his strange alien pupils twitching in fear as he considered the unviability of TMS life support. Gerry tried to show courage but, after a visit from the aliens, courage eluded him—the Tarsalans might go down to Earth; they might go to Georgia, which was right next door to North Carolina. And Glenda wasn’t asking any questions.

“I thought we were going to beat it,” said Ian, still pacing.

He didn’t have to say more because his implication was clear—maybe they weren’t going to beat it after all.

Then it was one non sequitur after another from Ian. “God, I’ve done some horrible things in my life.”

Just out of the blue, as if, with that thing knitting itself around the Earth, he had finally found it in his soul to feel remorse. It didn’t matter that Gerry had no context; he understood it well, how the alcoholic could become a beast, how he could black out for hours at a time and have no memory of the abysmal things he had done. “Remember Maggie Madsen?” A pathetic chuckle, as if Maggie Madsen had been one of the bigger lost chances in his life.

“Ian, I thought we agreed we would never talk about Maggie again.”

“Remember that night in the pool?”

“That was her idea, not mine. I had no idea she was going to come up to me that way.”

“Yes, but you didn’t do anything to stop her, buddy, even though you knew she was going out with me.”

“You see what a bad thing alcohol can be?”

“If it was just that one night…but you stole her away from me.”

“And I regret it. I told you that. That’s why we don’t talk about her.”

“What ever happened to her? I wonder how she’s making out down there in the dark.”

“Last I heard, she’d married a car dealer in Norfolk.”

“Really? She always struck me as the more adventurous type.” Then came a whole sequence of, “What am I going to do, what am I going to do?”—the same six words uttered again and again, nonstop, a bizarre refrain wrapped in regret and anxiety. And still the pacing. Wearing out the rug. The clock moved, edging past midnight. Ian got more and more worked up, haunted by ghosts only he could see, driven—so much so that he finally punched the mirror, broke it, and drew blood.

“Jesus, Ian.”

“Sorry, buddy.”

Ian walked to the washroom and cleaned himself up. Gerry heard running water. He tried to concentrate on the stills of the phytosphere, but thought of the damned Tarsalans instead, coming all this way, reminding him of born-again Christians because they were all so smug, so sure of themselves, as if they

had seen the Kingdom of Heaven. Ian came out of the washroom. He had a white towel wrapped around his fist. He radiated desperation.

“But there’s still time, isn’t there, buddy?”

“Time for what?”

Ian became distracted by his own thoughts. He went to the refrigerator, got a little booze bottle, twisted the cap off, sucked the contents into his mouth, but then spit the whole works out, not bothering to swallow, and uttered a string of obscenities, telling Gerry he had to stop that stuff, stop that stuff, stop that stuff, like a man with bipolar disorder in the manic phase.

“That’s it, Gerry. I’m through with booze. I’m walking the straight and narrow from now on.”

“Sit down for a while. I’ll make some coffee.”

Gerry played a role he knew well—the role of sponsor—remembering his own sponsor, Pat Turnshek, an old guy he’d met first at Bellwood, then at all the meetings afterward. When his own demons haunted him, Pat would make coffee, the magic elixir of A.A. meetings, the thing that made everything all right, even when everything was horribly wrong. So he made coffee, and soon it was dripping into the pot.

Ian sat in one of the chairs and rocked, as nervous as could be. “I always manage to say the wrong thing, don’t I?” Another cryptic utterance, one Gerry couldn’t immediately make sense of. “How did you do it, buddy? How did you marry such a nice wife?”

How his wife got into it, Gerry wasn’t sure—Ian was all over the place.

He could have offered Ian the usual platitude, that he was lucky, but knew that it went far beyond luck, that it was his wife’s compassion and forgiveness, and that she wasn’t going to give up on him no matter how bad things got.

The test pilot motioned out the window. “I hate looking at it. It reminds me of all the terrible things I’ve done. I’ve got a lot to make up for, Gerry. I’ve got a whole list of bad things I’ve done to people. I’ve got to make things up in a hurry.” He motioned out the window. “Before we run out of time.”

Gerry stared at the coffeemaker. If they could all just drink enough coffee, maybe the phytosphere would disappear. Maybe the Tarsalans would go home. Maybe they would stay away from Georgia.

And North Carolina. Ian started talking about the Tarsalans: how they creeped him out, how it wasn’t natural for them to come all this way, and how sentient species were meant to stay on their own planets and make their own isolated homes surrounded by their own isolating light-years. And then it was back to Maggie Madsen again.

“In the pool, buddy. I couldn’t believe it.”

“Ian, I’m sorry about Maggie Madsen.”

But Ian bluffed, saying, no, that was all right, we were just kids, we didn’t know any better. “You’re unlikely to do the same thing again, aren’t you, buddy, steal a girlfriend out from under me?”

All Gerry could say was the same thing again. “Ian, I’m sorry.”

They lapsed into morose silence after that.

They sipped coffee.

Gerry tried to bolster Ian’s spirits by telling him it was never too late, and that Maggie Madsen wasn’t the only woman in the world.

But all Ian could do was sit there and shake his head. “That green thing over the Earth—it gives me a whole new outlook.”

23

Glenda stayed on the roof for close to a minute. Her heart pounded. Maynard didn’t move. She thought of the ramifications. Cop killer. What difference did it make? The cops weren’t cops anymore; they were just a band of desperate men in a land of kill or be killed. She didn’t have to worry. There were no judges. No juries. No penal system at all. And the court was closed.

She at last got up from the roof. She descended the ladder, then shifted it, sliding it over the side of the mudroom eaves. She went down the rungs to the backyard, wondering if it was safe to whistle yet, or if any more men would come, or if she had killed the body by killing the head. The mist thickened and the moonlight brightened. She walked toward Fulton.

She knelt next to him, half believing that he might still be alive. But he was dead, lying on his stomach, his arms straight at his sides, his rifle under him, his finger twisted up under the trigger guard. Her hands started to shake.

“You prize-winning piece of shit,” she said.

Tears flooded her eyes and she sobbed, a choking sound in the thick, stinky air of the dead woods out back.

“Mom?”

She turned.

The nightmare kept getting worse.

Buzz Fulton had a chokehold around her daughter’s throat, and a gun pointed at her head. The two approached out of the woods. As they got closer, Buzz glanced at his brother.

In the gathering moonlight, Glenda saw a strange emotion play over the younger Fulton’s face. His jaw protruded and the unshaven whiskers on his pale chin looked like a gunpowder tattoo. His eyes widened, then narrowed, then moistened, and for a few seconds he looked entirely unsure of the situation. He twisted his head to one side, as if he were wearing a too-tight necktie, then to the other side, and in the moonlight she saw a band of sweat glimmer down his left cheek like a silver ribbon.

Hanna was wheezing and wheezing, like a punctured bagpipe, and looking at her with wide, scared eyes.

“You killed him?” asked Buzz.

How to explain it to him? What lie would he possibly believe?

“Bullets started flying, Buzz, and I—”

“I heard only two bullets. And they both came from the same rifle. Yours. Poor Bren is dying back there. So don’t go lying to me, Glenda.”

She saw that the whole situation was at a bad dead end.

“I didn’t want to, Buzz.” And then she remembered what that guy in the supermarket had said to her during the Stedman’s looting. “But it’s every man for himself.”

“Guess I’m going to have to shoot your daughter, then.”

“Buzz, please…” She threw her weapon down, got to her knees, and clasped her hands in entreaty. “I was only trying to protect my children, like any good mother would. And if you’ve got to shoot someone, shoot me.”

Buzz’s lips stiffened in barely controlled anger. “Does that make sense to you, Glenda? That I should give you the easy way out and shoot you dead right now? While I’ve got to stay alive and suffer like this?” His voice was shaking now, and his eyes had clouded over with tears. “Doesn’t it make better sense that I shoot your daughter so that you can suffer like I’m suffering?”

“Please don’t shoot her, Buzz. I’ll do anything. I swear I’ll do anything. I’ll come and join the girls at headquarters if you want.”

“I don’t hold truck with what the boys are doing with those girls at headquarters.”

“Then I can give you food, Buzz. We’ve got food. All kinds of it.”

This stopped him. Then he said, “Why is it that people like you got food, and I don’t have any?”

“I’ve got some hidden in the forest.”

Buzz nodded, then grinned, even as tears thickened further in his eyes. “We knew you had it.” He seemed to dwell on something for a few moments. He came out of his reverie with a businesslike squaring of his shoulders. “We might have a deal, Glenda. Get Maynard’s flashlight. It’s attached to his belt.”

She knelt beside the dead sheriff and unclipped his police flashlight. Her hands shook so badly she could hardly manage the small task. She wondered if Jake was dead somewhere in the woods.

“You’ve got to promise that you won’t kill us if I give you food.”

“I promise.” He flicked his head toward the woods and said, “Move.”

She spoke to Hanna. “Honey, it’s going to be all right. We’ll just do what Buzz says and this will all be over.”

“You listen to your mama, sweetheart. Uncle Buzz ain’t going to hurt you.” Buzz’s slightly licentious tone reminded Glenda of how Buzz had come on to Hanna at Marblehill when she was twelve years old.

She walked ahead of them into the forest, hating to turn her back on the whole situation, cursing herself for being so stupid. She feared that at any moment she would hear a gunshot behind her, and that would be it; Hanna’s short life would be over. She prayed to God, but she couldn’t sense Him right now.

They walked to the end of the yard out past the shed. As she passed the shed and was heading toward the dead sycamores, she heard a noise—the slide of a foot along the dead grass behind the shed, the soft whisper of shoulders shifting inside a T-shirt—and, turning, saw Jake emerge from the shadows, Leigh’s pistol held up straight in both hands, just like she had taught him, his face so scared in the moonlight that his pale blue eyes bulged.

“You let my sister go or I’ll blow your head off, Buzz.”

Her first instinct was to curse him for being such a fool, and for now endangering his own life; but when Buzz jerked to a stop and flicked his head a fraction to the left, and his eyes narrowed with sudden tension, and fresh sweat popped out of his pores like water out of a newly divined well, she thought that, yes, she had to learn to trust Jake, and that she couldn’t do this by herself, not in a world gone mad with hunger and darkness. She was going to have to count on her children.

“Easy there, son,” said Buzz. “I can’t believe your mama gave you a gun.”

“Let my sister go or you’re a dead man.”

“Son, I guess it comes down to nerve. Who’s got more of it? Me or you?”

Jake fired straight into the air, and Buzz’s nerve crumbled.

“Let my sister go, or the next one’s for you.”

“Easy, boy, you don’t want to have an accident.”

He let Hanna go. Hanna hurried to Glenda. Glenda took her in her arms and stroked her hair.

“Now put the gun on the ground,” said Jake.

“Jake, that’s the only weapon I have. You don’t want to leave a man defenseless with the shroud up there.”

“I said, put the gun on the ground. I’m giving you a chance here, Buzz.”

Buzz hesitated for close to five seconds, and in the light of the Moon Glenda saw the frantic thinking that was going on behind his eyes. Despite this scrutiny of his options, he at last put the gun down and stood up slowly.

“Now beat it,” said Jake.

Buzz lifted both arms into the air and backed away. “It’s okay, son, I’m on my way.”

“Shoot him, Jake,” said Hanna. “Don’t let him get away.”

“Don’t you listen to your sister, Jake. Miss, I apologize for what I done to you.”

“Jake, just shoot him. He’s going to come back.”

“Mom?”

“Let him go.”

“But, Mom,” said Hanna, “he’s going to come back, I know he is.”

“Buzz, I’m real sorry I had to kill your brother.” And the tears came back because she really couldn’t believe she had killed a cop.

“The Lord will make His judgment, ma’am.”

“Shoot him, Jake!”

But Jake didn’t shoot.

And Buzz finally disappeared into the dark woods.

Ten minutes later, as they were carrying food back to the house, they heard his truck out on the highway, its bump and rattle a sound that now terrified Glenda.

Back in the house, she foned Gerry, and he answered on the third ring.

“I wouldn’t stay in the area,” he said. “You don’t know Buzz the way I do. He’s a vindictive son of a bitch. When I was a regular at the Crossroads, there was barely a night that went by when he didn’t get in a fight. Hanna’s right. You should have killed him when you had the chance. Revenge is one of his main motivating principles. And now you’ve gone and killed his brother. In self-defense, admittedly, but that’s something Buzz isn’t going to understand.”

“But where would we go?” asked Glenda.

“I’m told there’s still limited cell-phone service in certain parts of the United States.”

“We’re getting partial service here, but it’s a bit sketchy.”

“See if you can phone Neil on his cell. Tell him what’s happened. Maybe you can go down to Coral Cables. Do you have anywhere to recharge the car?”

“The nursing home pump is still working. At least the last time I was there.”

She followed her husband’s advice. She recharged her cell phone by shining a flashlight at it for a few minutes, then tried Neil.

She tried throughout the night, but kept getting service interruption messages.

A little after midnight, service resumed and she was at last able to get through. It turned out he wasn’t in Coral Gables at all. He was at an Air Force base, Homestead.

The change in Neil’s voice took her by surprise. He usually spoke so confidently, as if he had the world in the palm of his hand. But now he sounded distracted. And more than distracted… what was the word?

Yes… he sounded diffuse, as if all his energy and concentration had been scattered.

“I’m working on a new approach.” But his words lacked confidence. She heard what sounded like gunfire in the background. “A virus. It actually works on a kind of interesting principle. It attacks the Tarsalan genetic component of the xenophyta directly, but… I… Jesus, Glenda, you shot a cop?”

And she explained to him how Maynard wasn’t really a cop anymore but just a kind of feudal lord. Then she began to explain about Buzz.

“That idiot Gerry brought to Marblehill a few years back?” he asked.

“That’s him.” Then she explained that Buzz was a vindictive son of a bitch.

“Look…” Neil cut her off, as if the zany details of her war with the sheriff and his brother were beside the point. “I want you and the kids heading to Marblehill. One thing this whole exercise in futility has taught me… it’s all about family. I’ve got some airmen stocking the place. And guarding it. We’ve got a bit of a situation down here at Homestead. And if this virus thing… if it doesn’t pan out… me, Louise, and the girls will be heading up to Marblehill. I’ve got enough food up there to last a year. And I’ve got the place well stocked with medicine…. How’s Hanna? How’s she managing the heat?”

“She’s getting bad, Neil.”

She told him about the prescriptions she had taken from the nursing home, and that they weren’t Hanna’s regular prescriptions, and of how Hanna was buzzed most of the time and wheezing constantly.

“You remember Greg Bard?” asked Neil. “He was a friend of Ian Hamilton’s. I think you met him at Melissa’s christening.”

“The Air Force colonel?”

“Right. He’s getting things arranged for Marblehill.”

“So there’s going to be other families?”

“No. Just the airmen and us. Greg’s a helluva guy. I’ll make sure he knows about Hanna. What’s she taking?”

Glenda gave him Hanna’s prescriptions—her puffers and pills and so forth—and as he took the information down, she felt suddenly safe in a way she never did with Gerry. She could sense Neil’s masterliness, and the overall command of his personality. Neil was going to pull it out of the fire for her.

Neil was the alpha male, the king of the tribe, whereas Gerry had always been the quieter one.

“I’m going to have to drive manually,” she said.

“That might pose a problem,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because we’re getting reports of widespread erosion. No plants holding things down. Greg says a lot of landslides everywhere, especially up in those mountains, and no road crews are going out for repairs.

So you may have to feel your way along. Some roads are bound to be impassable.”

“But one charge should do, right? It’s not more than four hundred miles. And my car’s got an upper limit of four hundred and fifty per charge.”

“It depends on how far out of your way you have to go. Do you have a map? Like an old paper map?

Or do you keep everything stored online? Because the satellite feeds can’t provide maps to your car anymore.”

“Gerry’s got some old maps downstairs.”

“He’s still collecting maps?”

“Mainly old ocean maps. But I think he has some of the area.”

“Take them, just in case. You might end up on back roads.”

She had her kids pack in a hurry because she was afraid Buzz might return at any minute.

She tried to fone Gerry because she wanted to tell him where they were going, not Coral Gables but Marblehill, but she couldn’t get through.

“I don’t get it. I got through just a while ago. Now there’s nothing. And the sky’s still open.”

“Mom,” said Hanna, “things are breaking down everywhere. The shroud might be open, but do you think the people who run AT&T Interlunar are actually going to their jobs anymore? They’re just trying to stay alive, like we are. This is the new Stone Age.”

“Hey, it’s the new Dark Age,” said Jake, and laughed at his own joke.

She thought she might leave a note for Gerry, telling him where they were going, just in case he came back, and just in case their fones stopped working for good, but realized that if she left a note it might be a signpost to Buzz and he would follow them.

She and Hanna had a big fight about it.

“Mom, we have to leave a note.”

“We can’t leave a note.”

“But if we don’t leave a note, how’s Dad going to know where we are? He thinks we’re heading to Coral Gables.”

“If we leave a note, Buzz will see it, and he’ll come looking for us. He’s been down to Marblehill before.

He knows how to get there.”

“Jake,” said Hanna, “you should have shot him while you had the chance.”

“You try shooting someone,” said Jake morosely. “It’s not as easy as it looks. It takes a lot of guts.”

“Guts that you don’t have.”

“Mom, will you tell her to fuck off.”

“Jake, do we have to use that kind of language?” asked Glenda.

Hanna frowned. “Shut up, Jake. Mom and I are having a serious discussion.”

“We’re not leaving a note, Hanna.”

“Then how’s he going to find us?”

“He’ll figure it out. He’s a pretty smart guy.”

“You don’t even want him to find us,” said Hanna. “You’re thinking this is your chance to finally get rid of him.”

Glenda’s anger flared and, in her worn-out state, she felt tears threatening. “How can you say that?”

“Because it’s true.”

“It’s not true. We may have had some pretty rough fights—”

“You know what will happen to Dad if he can’t find us? He’ll die. He won’t know where we are, he’ll think we’re dead, and he’ll die of a broken heart.”

“Hanna, listen to what I’m telling you. If we leave a note for Dad, Buzz will break in, see it, and come after us. I killed his brother. He’s not going to forget that. It’s not like I keyed his car, or egged his house, or butted in front of him at the bank. I killed his brother. I dropped Maynard in cold blood right in front of him. So I’m asking you, please. Don’t leave a note. And don’t try and sneak a note while we’re getting ready. Just let me keep trying your father on the fone.”

“That fone’s a hunk of junk,” said Jake. “You should have rented a better one.”

“With whose money, Jake?”

“I’m leaving a note,” said Hanna.

“No, you’re not.”

“We could leave a note with a clue in it,” suggested Jake. “Something only Dad would understand. We wouldn’t have to spell out that we were going to Marblehill.”

“And what if he doesn’t get the clue?” said Hanna. “You’re such an idiot sometimes, Jake.”

“Come on,” said Glenda. “We’re all tired. And we’re frazzled. Let’s just get to Marblehill. Don’t you want to go there and see your cousins? Didn’t you have fun there last summer and the summer before?

And Uncle Neil is bound to have a fone, and a much better one than this. So let’s just forget about the note. Let’s pack, get in the car, and go to the nursing home so we can recharge. Before Buzz comes back.”

She watched her daughter every step of the way. Hanna sullenly disassembled her clarinet—doctor-recommended for her asthma—in the light of one of the flashlights and put it into its case. She then packed some makeup, and a bag full of clothes, commenting on how Melissa and Ashley were going to make fun of her cheap, bargain-brand clothes, and finally finished by taking five puffs of her inhaler.

“Honey, don’t overdo that stuff.”

“Mom, fuck off.”

Glenda didn’t punish Hanna for saying this. She just went through the motions, and started packing.

Hanna broke down and cried, even though she was zoned out on her bronchodilator. She came into her mother’s arms, and told her she was sorry for saying fuck off. But that didn’t stop Glenda from checking Hanna’s room one last time for a note, and checking it thoroughly.

She at last got into the car with her kids, like they were going on a summer vacation, and as she headed out on the road, she looked up at the sky. And saw that the Moon had finally disappeared behind the western edge of the shroud’s toxic wound. She felt lonely then. She didn’t know if she was ever going to see Old Hill again. She didn’t know if she was going to see North Carolina.

But most of all, she didn’t know if she was going to see Gerry again.