The Straw Men

'Suits me,' Bobby shrugged, and shot him dead.

While Bobby checked the other bodies, making sure nobody was going to wake up and start shooting again, I ran over to Nina. Zandt had her hand pressed firmly over the wound in her chest.

'We're out of here,' I said.

'No,' Nina said. Her voice was surprisingly strong. She tried to haul herself upright.

'Nina, you're fucked up. We have to get you to a hospital.'

She grabbed a table leg with one hand. The other one snatched my wrist. 'Be fast. But go and see.'

I hesitated. Tried to look at Zandt for support, but Nina's eyes held me.

Bobby arrived. 'Oh shit, Nina.'

'I'm staying here and you're going in there,' she said, talking only to Zandt. She looked in pain, but not like she was going to faint. 'Please, John. Make them go. All of you. Please see if she's there. You've got to go see. Then we'll go to the hospital. I promise.'

Zandt waited a beat longer, then leaned over, kissed her quickly on the forehead. He stood up. 'I'm doing as she says.'

I started to reload my gun. 'Bobby, you stay here.' He started to protest, but I kept talking. 'Try to stop the bleeding, and take out anyone you see who isn't us. You're more use to her than either of us.'

Bobby squatted down beside the woman. 'Be careful, man.'

Zandt and I walked fast down to the end doors. 'Whatever happens,' I said, 'we stick together. You got that?'

Zandt nodded, and opened the door. Outside was a path. White light from behind illuminated perhaps fifty yards with clarity, and was enough to suggest the hulks of large houses in the middle distance. None of them showed a light.

We started to run.

34

'We should have brought a flashlight.'

'Should've brought a lot of things,' I said. 'Bigger guns, other people, some idea of what we're doing.'

We were standing at the first junction in the path. It looked like the main street of some tiny town where nobody had cars. The grass on either side was neatly trimmed. The pasture within the walls of the mountains, an area of only about ten acres, had been sculpted to provide each house with privacy and a gently rolling landscape. It seemed very unlikely there was enough room for a golf course, which meant that even their favoured realtor — the late Chip — had never been allowed inside. To either side of the path, set well back, were two houses. The path stretched out into the darkness ahead, leading via other forks to more dwellings, which couldn't yet be seen.

'You take the one on the left.'

'Did you listen to what I said? We don't split up.'

'Ward, there's how many houses? Nina's in trouble back there.'

'Getting killed isn't going to help her. You want to look in these places, we're doing it together. Which

first?'

Zandt walked quickly up the path to the right. As we approached the house, I mentally checked off the features I'd seen on the plans. The house looked like it should be in Oak Park, Chicago, the suburb where many of the early mid-period Wright had been built. It was a beautiful house, and I hated the men behind all this for misappropriating Wright's grammar. He had been about life and community, not individuals and death.

Zandt was less taken with the design. 'Where's the fucking door?'

I led him at an angle across the low terrace, to where a courtyard path snaked round to the left of the building under a balcony. A short series of steps delivered us round a corner to a large wooden door. It

was ajar.

'Main entrance?'

I nodded. Took a breath, then pushed the door gently open with my foot. Nothing happened.

I nodded to Zandt once more. He went in first.

A short corridor, a little light filtering down from a stained-glass panel in the ceiling, the illumination

turned green and cold. At the end, another sheet of detailed glass, screening out the next room.

Carefully we manoeuvred around it, revealing a long, low room. More stained glass, and clerestory windows high up. A fireplace over to the left. Bookshelves, and a seating nook. The shelves were empty. The furniture was in place, but there was no rug on the floor.

We walked very quietly across the room. The house was utterly silent. I held up a hand, pointed; Zandt looked — saw the entrance to another room, partly concealed behind a wooden screen. Nodded, and dropped back beside me. We approached it together, Zandt still glancing behind.

The doorway gave into a kitchen. It was darker, without the highlevel windows. Split-level, with a breakfast area down the end. On the table was a single cup, sitting plumb in the centre. The interior was

dry and the handle was broken. I opened a cupboard, and then a drawer. Both empty.

'This house has been cleaned out.'

Zandt nodded. 'Maybe. But we're still going to check it.'

We searched the rest of the house.

'There's somebody out there,' Nina said, meanwhile.

Bobby was squatted beside where she lay, braced in one of the big leather chairs. The lobby was in darkness. He'd been of two minds about this, reasoning that the lights had been left on, and that to turn them off would broadcast their presence to anyone else lurking in the compound. It was hard to believe that any such person could have avoided hearing the minute of heavy gunfire, however, and so in the end he'd dug around behind reception and turned them off one by one. It felt safer, though not perfect. The end wall was only partly windowed, and he thought they were safe from view, but he still felt like a sitting

duck. The lobby was large, dark, and had three dead people in it.

'I heard something a minute ago,' he admitted. 'Hoped it was them coming back.'

Nina shook her head. 'John will check all the houses. They'll be a little while, even if there's nothing to

find. Especially if. And the sound was coming from the front, not back there.'

He nodded. 'Ward will kill me if he finds out I've left you here alone, but I'm going to have to go look.'

'I won't tell if you won't. But don't be long.'

Bobby made sure her gun was loaded, and then dropped back from her to the wall. He scooted along it as low as he could. When he got to the main door he put his head out cautiously. Theirs was still the only car in the lot. There was no sign of anybody else, and he considered just staying put.

But then he heard something again. It wasn't loud, but it was definitely not caused by the elements. It wasn't a rain sound. It was mechanical, a short, isolated pop. It sounded like it was coming from over on the other side of the lot, where the second building stood. 'What is it?' Now that he wasn't looking at her, Nina was allowing more of the pain to be in her mind. As a result her head felt very fuzzy, and her voice sounded cracked.

'I don't know,' he said. He turned to check, and saw that Nina was well-hidden in the deepness of the huge chair. Best he could do. 'Keep the pressure on the wound.'

Still keeping low, he pushed the door open. A very cold rush of air pushed past him, ushering in the sound of rain.

The rest of the house was empty. Four bedrooms, den, library, a music room. Empty and cleaned out. Stripped of any identification at all, though it was clear that people had lived there until very recently. No dust. Zandt and I came back down the central staircase, less quietly now, and made our way to the back of the ground floor. There was a second large reception room here, a little less fancy than the one in front. A horizontal band of windows showed half an acre of landscaped yard. I flicked the safety on my gun back on.

'Next house?' It was clear that this one didn't hold anything of interest. I was done with it. I was prepared to help Zandt look for the girl's body, if that's what he wanted, but my own needs were focused on finding a live Straw Man or two. And sitting them down, and getting them to explain a few things. Nothing else could hold my attention. It was already feeling too late.

'I'll take a look out back,' Zandt said. 'Then I guess, yes. Though this isn't looking good.'

He opened the door set in the middle of the window panelling, and disappeared into the rain. I stepped out after him, but stayed at the wall. By now I was increasingly sure that Nina had been right: perhaps this guy Wang had speeded things up, but the evacuation had started right from the moment I had beaten up Chip. I'd fucked up, in other words. Given them warning, and time to get away. I hadn't expected this would be their response. They were bunkered in. They were rich and powerful; this was their land. Why run? But I'd still screwed it up. We hadn't discussed the matter, but I suspected Zandt felt I had, too. There was an increasingly wild look to the man's eyes.

As I listened to the sound of him poking about out there in the darkness, I noticed a long line of wire that lay along the bottom of the wall. It appeared from round the corner, and seemed to be buried in the beds by the wall. Cable, or something. Maybe the much-vaunted ADSL Net access. I was about to take

a closer look at it when Zandt made a sudden coughing sound.

I hurried out into the yard. He was standing right in the middle, bolt upright. 'What?'

He didn't say anything. Just pointed. .

At first I couldn't make out what he meant, but then I saw that a patch of ground just to the right

seemed a little rounded.

I walked over and looked down at it. Licked my lips. 'Tell me that's a pet or something under there.'

Zandt just shook his head, and I realized that he hadn't let his arm drop yet. Instead he was pointing

at another spot. At another mound. 'Oh Christ,' I said, my voice catching in my throat. 'Look at this.' Now I was looking for them, I could see that there were other mounds. Three short lines of them. Twelve in total.

Zandt dropped to one knee, pulled at the earth over the nearest mound. The grass slipped out of his fingers, but he got a clump out. Underneath was heavy, wet soil.

I dropped to help him, and we yanked and pulled at the ground. The going was hard and it took a couple of minutes to get down to where suddenly we had something other than soil in our hands and the

smell became awful. I started back, but Zandt pulled out two more handfuls before abruptly giving up.

'We need a shovel,' I said.

Zandt shook his head. 'Anything in these holes is dead. Sarah may still be alive somewhere.'

'Come on, man — she's going to be in one of these graves.'

Zandt was already striding back to the house. I followed him, trying to avoid the mounds but realizing

I must have stepped on at least one on the way out. Back inside Zandt strode straight through into the first reception room. 'We're going to have to look

again,' he said. 'We missed something.'

'I don't know where,' I said.

'So let's start here.'

We split to opposite sides of the room, overturning bookshelves, pulling furniture out of place. I was

quickly convinced that there was nothing there to be found, but Zandt wouldn't be budged from searching every inch.

'This is going to take hours,' I said. 'I don't

I stopped. Zandt glanced up. 'What?'

I wasn't looking at anything in the room, but staring straight out through the main bank of windows to the front of the house. Zandt stepped over to where I was standing.

'You see that?'

I pointed down to the split in the path, about twenty yards away. There, lying where it forked into the routes to all the different houses, something lay on the ground. It wasn't very large, and at this distance it was impossible to tell what it might be. A small pile of sticks, perhaps.

'I see it,' Zandt said.

'That wasn't there when we came in.'

I flicked my safety off again and we went back out through the front door. I walked slowly down the

path; Zandt holding a position back by the door, watching the other houses.

It did look like a pile of sticks. Short curved sticks, very white. Very clean. But I suspected what they were from a couple of yards away. I squatted down beside them, picked one up. Turned to indicate Zandt over.

As he approached, I took over the job of being ready to fire at anyone who might appear. Because

someone was here, without question. Someone who knew we were here, too.

After a brief inspection, Zandt said: 'Those are ribs.'

'That's what I figured. Human?'

'Yes.'

'So who put them there?'

'Ward, look.' About five yards up the path was another stick.

I walked forward, bent down to pick it up. 'Girl or boy?'

Zandt took the femur from me. Like the ribs, the leg bone was clean and white, as if some process had recently been used to bring it to museum condition. 'Can't be sure. But somebody not very old. A teenager.'

We stood together, watching either side of the path.

'Someone's leading us somewhere,' I said.

'The question is whether we follow.'

'I don't see we have any choice.'

'But we've already found the house with bodies.'

'A house. The first we looked in. Either that's a cute coincidence — or there's more than one.'

At the next junction there was another bone, just to the left of the path, as if indicating the way to the house on that side. We checked it quickly. This time the graves were spread around the side of the house, and better — or more proudly — concealed. It was only when Zandt realized that the small squares of stone set into the grass would not have formed a useful path, that we realized they were markers.

To one side of the house we found another bone, pointing the way deeper into The Halls. This bone was half of someone's pelvis.

Neither of us was sufficiently expert to tell the sex of the owner right then, though the condition of the bone and the width of the sciatic notch would probably have been enough to tell Nina that it belonged to a young female, of about Sarah Becker's age.

Bobby had stood nearly a full ten minutes in the shadow of their car, waiting. There had been no more sounds since he had left the lobby, and no sign of movement. It didn't make any difference. Something had caused the previous noises, and it seemed unlikely the problem had just gone away. He was remaining stationary merely to see whether that thing would make itself apparent, giving it a chance to present itself without him having to go looking. It was just possible that it was an animal of some kind. A deer, perhaps. Not probable, but possible.

After another couple of minutes he stirred himself. Nina would be worried if he was out here for too long, and he was by now very wet and very cold. His shoulder hurt a great deal. There was no point turning round and going back in. He had to check the other building.

He walked along the line of little posts that had been driven into the tarmac to mark the parking spaces. He was bathed in light during this, but there was no other way of approaching the building. It looked like a large storage unit, without the detailing of the construction on the other side of the lot, and there were no windows that he could see. He walked all the way round the front to the left side, and finally found a door.

A large padlock hung off it, but the padlock was open. He thought about saying Ward's name, to check whether he was in there, but he knew it couldn't be. Ward would have come back through the lobby. This had to be someone else. He nudged the door open, and stepped inside.

He found himself in a short corridor, with walls that only went about two feet above his head before giving way to empty space. Almost like a stable. There was a smell of some kind, though it didn't remind him of horses. Dim light came from somewhere in the building, down at the other end. Ten feet ahead the corridor was intersected by another at right angles.

There were two doors before the intersection, and he opened them both. One held the kind of supplies he would expect for a residential community, along with a long wall of files. The other, smaller room seemed to be a wine cellar. The racks were empty. This didn't bode well. If they had enough time to clear out the Chateau Lafite, they were long gone. Strange to have left any files behind, in which case. He went back and checked that room. Pulled down a file box at random. There were no files in it, only a couple of Zip cartridges, both labelled 'Scottsdale.' He slipped them in his pocket and replaced the box.

He stepped back out into the corridor and edged forward until he came to the crossroads. He stood absolutely still for a moment before stepping out, allowing his mouth to drop open. You heard better that way, picking up the very quietest of sounds — something to do with the eustachian tubes. He didn't hear anything, but he noticed that there was a cable running along the floor in front of his feet. If it controlled the lighting, then he should cut it. It didn't look like part of the general structure, however, but like a more recent addition. He poked his head forward and saw that it ran down the centre of the corridor to his left. He stepped out of the corner, and went to see where it led. He got about two paces before something else utterly took his attention.

This part of the building was indeed arranged as stables. Small, self-contained areas either side of the corridor, divided up into cages about six feet square. Inside the first one, a shape lay on the floor. It looked like a person. A small person.

Bobby dropped to his knee in front of the bars. The shape was a boy, five years old, maybe six. He was naked. His hands and feet were tied with duct tape. It looked as though his mouth had been covered with the same material, but it was difficult to be sure because very little was left of his head. The blood on the straw of the stall was still wet. Taped to the bars was a picture of an attractive young male child, taken somewhere warm. He hadn't been looking at the camera at the time, didn't even look aware that his picture was being taken. It was a picture, Bobby realized, of the boy in his previous life. His name had been Keanu.

Bobby turned from the sight. Used his hands to pull himself along the front of the stall, along to the next. Another boy, a little older this time, but just as dead. Another label on the cage. This time the picture showed the boy smiling into someone's camera, but a little uncertainly. As if someone had stopped him on a street corner on his way home from school, and asked if he minded, and he'd said no, while thinking it was maybe a little weird.

There was a quiet rustling sound, and Bobby's heart nearly stopped. He froze, until he realized it was coming from just the other side of the corridor, a few yards further along.

In this cage was a girl, maybe eight years of age. She, too, was labelled and photographed. Her name had been Ginny Wilkins. She was not quite dead yet, although she had been shot through one eye. The other was dry and flat, but her lower body was moving slightly. Some part of the nervous system still functioned, and would continue to, for a short while.

Bobby knew there were other stalls. At least another two. And he knew that this building would not have been left open by accident. That even when The Halls was in operation it would have been utterly secured against everyone except a select few. But he kept staring at this girl, in her holding tank, this place to which she had been delivered, and then stored, ready for the person within The Halls who had ordered her.

He felt stupid, and small, and sick. He felt ignorant and naïve. He had thought he knew the world's bad things, that he had walked its dark side with the best of them. Having Ward as a friend had helped. He felt Ward looked up to him, respected his wild-side credentials, and this helped Bobby to reconcile himself to getting older, from not walking the wild side any more. As he looked into the cage, unable to stop watching a piece of barely animated meat as it rolled and twisted its last, Bobby realized he had never even scratched the surface of what was possible — that the wars and murders reported in the news were barely more than sports news updates, death for show; that even most of the. terrorists he'd interrogated had been dabbling in the shallow end of darkness. They at least wanted people to know what they had done. They were doing it for some god, some ideology, some fallen comrades or ancient grievance. They weren't just doing it for themselves. Bobby realized this made a difference, and also that if we were all the same species, there was little hope for us; that nothing we ever did in the daytime would bleach out what some of us were capable of at night. Some aspects of human behaviour were inevitable, but this was surely not. To believe so was to accept that we had no downward limit. Just because we were capable of art didn't mean what lay in front of him could be dismissed as aberration, that we could take what we admired and fence that off as human, dismissing the rest as monstrous. The same hands committed both. Brains didn't undermine the savagery. They made us better at it. As a species we were responsible for all of it, and carried our dark sibling inside.

He heard another sound then, from behind. He didn't look up immediately. Ginny was enough. He was already trying to work out whether he had to shoot her, to put her out of her misery — or out of his misery, perhaps — or whether she would survive the journey back to civilization, and what would be left to save if she did. He didn't think he could face another such decision.

He took too long working it out. It wasn't another child behind him. It was Harold Davids, and he shot Bobby in the back of the head.

Ginny Wilkins's legs were still moving, still slowly thrashing and turning a thousand miles from her home and those who missed her, for several minutes after Robert Nygard was dead.

Zandt was now oblivious to the rain, and had run through the last house without looking in any of the rooms. He was now just following the trail of bones, and he hadn't said anything to me for five minutes.

I hurried after him. The trail was no longer playing with us, proudly showing us what we were amidst, but merely leading us up the centre of the path. A small square, marked out in metacarpals, a patella in its centre. A long snakelike line of vertebrae, laid out at two-foot intervals, in the right order, for all I knew. The Upright Man must have set most of the trail well in advance, only adding the first pile of ribs at the last minute, when he knew we were here to be led. The rest of it had taken time, had been done with care. The killer hadn't gotten us out of Davids's house for our sakes, but for his: he'd already prepared a meeting, and he didn't want his work going to waste. He had, in one way or another, been directing our behaviour for far longer than that.

Finally a pair of clavicles, arranged in an inverted V, with the second femur used to turn it into an arrow. An arrow that pointed up the last fork of the path, to a house thirty yards away.

I caught up with Zandt and grabbed him by the shoulder.

'We're not going in there,' I said.

He ignored me, shrugging off my hand and striding up the path to the steps that led up to the house's terrace.

I grabbed his arm. 'He's going to be waiting for us, John — you know that. He's already killed the girl and he's going to kill us, and then he'll go find the others and kill them too. I know you cared about this girl but I'm not going to let you

Zandt swung round and smacked me in the face.

I fell heavily backward onto the wet path, more shocked than hurt, and began to wonder if I was

missing something. Zandt hadn't even seemed to see me, hadn't looked as if he had any idea who I was.

I slipped and struggled to my feet, and ran after him.

Zandt walked heavily up the steps. Unlike the other houses, this had a door right in the centre of the front elevation. The steps of the terrace led straight to it, as if pouring him down a long, dark funnel. His jaw seemed to want to retreat back into his neck, as if it was only the spasming of his face and skin that was keeping it in place.

There was something lying at the top of the steps.

This time I didn't try to grab hold of him, but walked beside, accompanying him. I was only a step away when Zandt reached the final piece of the trail.

A girl's sweater, now sodden with rain. But neatly folded, and with a name stitched into the front. The sweater was a peach colour. The name was Karen Zandt.

35

Something told Nina not to say anything. Not to make a sound when she heard the door to the lobby softly open. Her chest hurt, and the pain was spreading through her body, grinding and clawing through her stomach, down her right arm to where she held the gun. She didn't want to think about what it would have been like had the bullet hit her lower down.

The door swished shut. A couple of footsteps and still nobody said her name. She knew then that Bobby was dead. She couldn't see that part of the room without shoving herself up and turning her head, a movement that would have been both painful and fatally revealing. She tried to sink into the big soft chair. The footsteps continued, along with another sound. A rolling sound. Then something was put on the floor. It was quiet for a moment.

'I know you're here,' somebody said.

Nina's stomach lurched, and she almost said something. Almost confessed. Almost admitted that yes, here she was, as for a while she had been made to do as a child. But that was a long time ago, and now her lips clamped shut and she gripped the gun as tightly as she could. Her hand felt like it wasn't working

as well as it should.

'They wouldn't have left Bobby here,' the voice said, 'unless there was someone to look after.'

Footsteps. Exploratory. He didn't know where she was. But she'd be in here, and he'd do what he had been told. He usually had. Though on the outside he looked strong, capable, a leader, in reality he had always followed. He had been guilty and trapped for so long, little else seemed to make sense. Hopkins's father had done that to him. Taken a quiet, reasonable life and turned it into a mess. You couldn't help liking Don, in the old days. You were pulled in the slipstream. You met at his house, drank his beer, wound up with his ideas in your head. Wound up with a life you didn't recognize, and too old to do much about it. Wound up hating the follower in yourself, and knowing who to blame.

'Maybe you're already dead,' he said, 'but I don't think so. Anyway, I have to make sure.'

Nina tried to slip lower, but it hurt. And any move big enough to make a difference would make a noise on the leather.

'Bobby's dead,' the man said. His voice was old, but confident. It left no room for doubt. 'And soon the others will be. We could leave you. But loose ends will be securely tied, and that is my job.'

The footsteps were now replaced by a sliding sound, as the man carefully progressed a few inches at a time, masking the direction of his approach. Nina was so frightened she started to cry, an involuntary response from deep inside and long ago, a response she wasn't even aware of.

She slowly pushed her left arm behind her, bracing it against the side of the seat. She pulled her feet inward, a millimetre at a time. Her hand was shaking, and the nerves within her arm felt as if they were on fire.' An auspicious night to die,' the man said quietly. His voice was a little closer now. 'This is not the end. Not at all. This is a new beginning. A clean new world that starts with a bang.' He laughed briefly.

'Actually, that's pretty good.'

The sliding sound stopped.

Nina pushed with everything she had. Her body slumped forward out of the chair. She was awkward, locked up, and toppled forward, crashing down onto the glass table in front of her. She knew she'd screwed it up, but she now could see the shadow over to her right.

Davids nodded. 'Ah. There you are.'

She hauled her hand up and pulled the trigger. Once, twice, three times.

There was only one shot in return, and it didn't hit her.

She waited a moment that lasted for ever, waited for the second shot. It didn't come. She pulled a

knee forward, pushed herself up, turned. On the floor six feet away was a body. Now that she was moving, the prospect of further movement

seemed almost credible, albeit bathed in a stunning white light of pain.

She planted her feet and tottered forward.

An old man with grey hair lay on the floor, he wasn't yet dead. She stood over him, bent at the waist.

Harold Davids looked back up at her.

'You make no difference,' he said, and then was silent.

Nina wasn't listening. She was looking at something that lay near the reception desk. Couldn't quite

make out what it was, so took a few steps forward. It was a small drum. It had cable on it. Cable that had been linked to a set of connectors built into the

reception desk, and that then went out the door.

The start of a new world.

She leaned on the desk and looked over, but there was no sign of anything that would act as a trigger.

It had to be triggered from somewhere else.

She made it as far as the parking lot before one of her legs gave out, dropping her hard onto the asphalt.

The new pain, along with the splattering of frigid rain bouncing back up into her face, was enough to cut through her confusion. She started to crawl toward the car.

I pulled Zandt back from going in the front door of the house. He was almost impossible to influence by now, but I knew we shouldn't go in the front way. I'd already stopped him from going back to pick up some of the bones, had to pull the man's head into mine and shout Sarah Becker's name, to remind him there might still be someone to find alive. It didn't really matter whether she was dead, not by this stage. She was just someone we had to find. I'd changed my mind by now. We were going into the house. Whatever happened. If the man was there, so much the better, but we had to walk the path to the end.

I pushed Zandt round the side of the house, where we found another door. It was locked. I wished Bobby was with us. He would have been able to open it quietly. I couldn't, so I warned Zandt with a hand sign and then just kicked it open.

We ran in. Nobody was there to meet us. We swarmed left up a half-staircase toward the front of the house, to where someone would have been waiting for us behind the main door. There was no one in the room, just a big old chair with its back to the door, and a fancy bureau in a strange mottled wood. We ran, covering each other, through a layout that was now familiar. Hesitated in the back reception. It was dark and quiet and cold. But not utterly silent.

From above we heard a sound. A thumping sound, muffled and distant.

We headed back around, through the kitchen, toward the central staircase. Upstairs there were four bedrooms, rugs on the floor. Nothing there. Bathrooms. Nothing. Study. Nothing. But still this sound from somewhere.

Back into the first bedroom. The sound was louder here. But now it seemed like it was coming from downstairs. Back into the second bedroom: the sound was quieter in here, but still sounded like it was coming from downstairs. I spun on the spot, gun waving, knowing that any moment someone was due to appear out of the shadows, that no one would have left a trap like this and not want to be there for the springing of it.

Zandt ran back into the first bedroom, dropped to his knees on the floor. 'It's coming from under here.'

'We're on the second floor,' I hissed, but then I heard the sound again and knew he was right.

We pulled the rug aside. Floorboards. A small hatch built into them. Zandt bloodied his fingers levering it up.

Underneath, the face of a girl. Pale, gaunt. Her forehead was livid purple from banging it up against the floor above her, for God knows how long. She was alive.

Sarah blinked. Deep in her mind it felt as if someone had lifted her head, raised it just enough that water was no longer going in her nose. Her mouth moved.

Zandt put his hand down and stroked her face. He said her name again and she nodded, barely able to move her head. Her eyes were red and swollen. Zandt bent close. She tried to speak again, and I could just hear a croaking whisper.

'What's she saying?'

'Watch out for knocking wood.' Zandt bent forward and pressed his forehead against hers, as if he was trying to pour warmth into it. The girl started to cry.

I jammed my hands under the lip of the boards at her neck and pulled. At first they didn't move. 'He's nailed them down,' I said. 'Jesus wept. Help me, Zandt.'

They came up, but slowly and one by one. The girl tried to push, to help, but she was far too weak and if she'd been able to do anything from her position she would have done it long ago.

When the last two splintered off, Zandt reached down, slipped his hands under her back, and lifted her up. He hauled her over his shoulder, and that's when she saw my face and started screaming.

Nina had to stand up. She knew she had to stand. She couldn't reach the handle from down here, let alone open it, never mind climb in. She had already noticed, from her very low vantage point, that the cable Davids had been rolling now stretched right the way across the parking lot and into the other building. The building where Bobby presumably lay. And she knew it would go out into the rest of the compound, that this was the final defence and perhaps more than that.

She rested her head on the asphalt again. Her right arm, the arm that had stood her in such good stead all these years, that had done all the things she had asked of it, was now on strike. It was a part of someone else, someone who wasn't on her side and was not listening to what she said. It alternated between feeling like a washing glove full of Jell-o and a claw made of charcoal. This was probably not a good sign.

Nina swallowed twice, raised her head. The ground underneath the car looked dry, drier at any rate than everywhere else. It was possible she could just crawl under there and rest for a while. That's a good idea, her body said, that's a very, very good idea. Even her right arm seemed to come to life at the prospect.

So she rolled onto her right elbow and lunged up with her left hand. The flash of pain spiked her mind clear for a second, and then suddenly she was on her feet. She fumbled at the door with her left hand,

couldn't work it, tried with her right — and was amazed that it did what she wanted. The door opened. She fell forward, tried to pull herself into the driver's seat. Couldn't do it. Pushed herself back onto

her feet, grabbed the wheel and stepped up. This time when she fell at least it was on the seat.

She dragged herself more or less upright, pulled the door shut. Scrabbled for the keys.

They weren't there.

'John, listen to me,' I said. 'She's sick. She doesn't know what she's saying.'

Zandt backed down the stairs away from me, his gun steady in front. Sarah was sheltered behind him, her arms looped tightly around his waist, both for protection and to hold herself up. She stumbled, nearly fell. Zandt had to turn to catch her, putting an arm around her shoulders and clamping her body to his. She had stopped screaming now, but only because her voice had dried to a rasp. The noise was still there inside her own head.

I walked slowly down the steps toward them. My hands were held up, and I was talking in a low, calm voice.

'I did not abduct her,' I said. 'I was not in Santa Monica at the time. I was in Santa Barbara. I can

prove it. I have hotel receipts.'

'It's a half-hour drive.'

'I know, John. I know that. So if I was lying, why would I tell the truth about that part? I could have told you I was in fucking Florida. John, what the hell is going on in your head? You think I'd come up here with you, you think I'd be tracking down these people, if I was one of them?'

Zandt reached the bottom of the stairs. Still supporting Sarah, who was still trying to hide behind him, he backed across the wide corridor and toward the front reception room. This time they were going out the front door.

'There's no telling what people will do,' Zandt said. 'Including me. Make a move and I'll blow your head off.'

'It's not me.'

'She says it is. She says you were there in Santa Monica.'

I stopped walking. 'Okay,' I said. 'Okay. Here's what we'll do. I'll stay here. You leave. You get her out, and then you come back for me, and we'll talk.'

'I'll come back for you,' Zandt said. 'But we won't talk.'

Sarah felt herself falling, but the good man held her up again. Nokkon Wud was receding now. He was staying at the foot of the staircase. He was tricking them, she knew. He was making them think they could get away, and then he'd come for them. He didn't have to walk. He could leap up through the roof and into the sky. He could fly over people's houses, he could dive in and kill them from above. He wasn't normal. He wasn't like anyone else.

She tried to say this to the good man, but it was too hard. She tried to tell him to shoot Nokkon now, but she couldn't and he didn't. He just kept carrying her, into the room at the front of the house. Sarah didn't have any choice about where she went. Her legs weren't working. She just had to go where she was taken.

Nina believed he wasn't going to be there. All the time she stumbled across the lot, as she pushed open the door to the lobby, as she navigated through the marooned hulks of oversized armchairs and settees, Nina had half-believed that Davids would have disappeared, that all she would find was an empty space on the floor. It didn't make any difference. She could not start the car without the keys. Either Bobby had taken them or Davids had. She didn't know where Bobby was. She had to find Davids, and she had to start from where he'd fallen.

And that's where he was. Hardly believing it, Nina reached down to go through his pockets. It would be easier to kneel, but she feared that if she did that she'd never get up again. She'd been able to get across the lot and back into the building, but she didn't know how much she had left. She slipped her hand into his jacket.

His hand lashed out and grabbed hers. His mouth opened.

'Mary,' he said.

She stared, terrified, at his face. He pulled her and she fell.

Her knee crashed straight into his face. The neck twisted with a crunch, but she was barely aware of

this as her own head smacked into the floor. She scrabbled at the slippery floor, got no purchase, then realized nothing was pulling at her. She

twisted round. Put her hand back in his jacket. He didn't move.

She still had to find the keys. If that was the last thing she ever did, then so be it.

She found them in his right trouser pocket. Found three sets. Took them all. Slid along the floor, keeping as far away from him as possible, until she was by a chair. Maybe the chair she'd been lying in, she thought, though she wasn't sure. That seemed quite a while ago.

Triumphant with possession, it only took her thirty seconds to get to her feet. And then she went back across the lobby, over the body of the dead policeman, through the door, and back out into the lot. Her second wind was ebbing, and she knew it — not because she was hurting more, but because the pain was being occluded from her. Blood loss and shock. Her body was pulling up the draw-bridge. It needed its energy, and she was wasting it.

She got to the car, grateful she hadn't shut the door. Pulled herself across onto a seat that was now soaked with rain.

The second set of keys went into the ignition. She closed the door only then, knowing she wouldn't have to go find Bobby.

The engine caught on the first turn, and she blessed Ford and their wily little car makers. It wasn't like when she was young. Then you had to coax them into life, and as a result you loved them and gave them names. Come rain, come shine, these days the things always started. You didn't have to name them to make them work. All you had to do was know where you were going.

She rested her head on the wheel, just for a second, and felt herself blacking out. Jerked back up, put the car in reverse and kangarooed back ten yards.

Then shoved it into Drive, put her foot right down, and drove straight at the fence.

I kept my word, though I was afraid and confused and didn't want to be left alone in the house. I stayed at the bottom of the stairs, staring at a thick cable running up it, until I heard Zandt's voice from the front room.

'Oh Jesus Christ,' he said, and the girl managed another scream. There was a clunking sound. I ran.

In the front room a single lamp was now on, casting a sallow glow by the window. The girl was scrunched up in the corner, making mewling sounds. Zandt was on his back on the floor, his gun lying

yards away. The cop had a very bizarre expression on his face.

Standing over him was a man with a gun. The gun was pointing right at Zandt's head.

'Get away from him,' I shouted, arms straight and my own gun ready. 'Get the fuck away.'

'Or what?' said the man, without even looking. 'Or what?'

'Or I'll blow your fucking head off.'

'You think?' The man finally turned to me. 'Hey, Ward,' he said. 'Long time no see.'

I saw my own face. The world tilted, flipped away.

His hair was longer, and a slightly different colour, dyed a brighter blond. There was something shifted about his features, but nothing more than the impact of being enlivened by a different mind. If you'd seen my face on some days, in some situations, it would have looked the same. Other than that there was no difference. Even our build was exactly similar. I blinked.

'Right,' The Upright Man nodded affably. 'So — you think you can do it now? Kill the only blood relative you ever had?' His finger tightened on the trigger of his gun. 'I'm genuinely interested to know, and don't let the fact you'll be killing John, too, influence your decision in any way.'

He turned his attention back to Zandt. 'Said I'd give her back, sooner or later.' He swung a kick at Zandt's face.

The impact jerked Zandt's head back so viciously that for a moment I thought his neck would be broken. I tried to pull the trigger. But I couldn't.

'You killed one of my co-workers, fuckhead,' The Upright Man continued. 'You put away men better than you. Just so you know, I tried to change Karen. For a long time. It didn't work. So I boiled her. But now I give her back. Did you like the 'delivery' outside?'

Zandt rolled his neck, sniffed against the pain. 'I don't care what you call yourself,' he said. His voice was flat. 'I never have. Shoot the fucker, Ward.'

My mouth was open, and the insides were dry. My arms were not trembling, but locked like stone. It was impossible to move my fingers. I felt like I was missing the back of my head, as if I only lived in my eyes.

The Upright Man saw me staring, grinned. 'Weird, huh? We got a lot to talk about,' he said. 'But I know you're going to be a little wigged out, and actually we need to be leaving. As a gesture of good faith to you I'm going to leave one of these two pieces of shit alive. You get to choose one, and whack the other. You done nowhere near enough killing yet, my man. We need to get you up to speed.'

'The FBI is on the way,' I said. My voice sounded vague and quiet and hollow, even to myself.

'Don't think so,' The Upright Man said, confidently. 'They were coming, they'd be with you.'

'Why did you do it? Why did you kill my parents?'

'They weren't your parents, fuckhead. 'You know that. They killed our father and screwed up our lives. We should have been together, right from the start. Think what we could have done by now. The Straw Men got the money, bro, but we got the blood. We're pure. We're the heart of everything. We're what is true.'

Lying in the corner, Sarah's hands were over her ears and her eyes were screwed shut. She could still hear the man's voice. His hateful, hateful voice, the voice she had heard going on and on, saying thing after thing after thing until she thought it was that which would kill her in the end, not the hunger; that sooner or later he would say something and her head would just split rather than hear any more.

'My advice is you kill John here,' Nokkon was saying. 'He's got nothing left to live for anyhow. And that way you get to keep the girl. She's kind of scuffed up, but hey — we could have some fun.'

Sarah opened her eyes.

'Shoot him, Ward,' the man on the floor said. 'Just shoot him.'

'You're beginning to piss me off, John,' Nokkon said, kicking him again. 'You too, Ward. It's time to move on. My work on this mountain is done. It's time to fly.'

Sarah was confused. The man she'd thought might be her father wasn't, and he was lying on the floor. The other man… she didn't know who he was. A mirror man.

Nokkon talked to the mirror man, who wasn't moving. 'Come on, man, let's get this done. Whack the fuck. You know you want to. You've killed before. That's not an accident.'

Nokkon pointed his gun at the head of the man on the floor. He was going to kill him and fly. He'd said as much. And if the man on the floor wasn't her father, then her father might be at home with her mother and sister. But the thing was, their home had a roof. And if the house had a roof then Nokkon could fly through it, and if he'd do all this to her then there was no telling what he'd do to them.

Sarah slid her hands off her ears. They weren't blocking anything anyway.

'It's in your blood,' Nokkon was saying. 'I know you read the Manifesto. You've read it, and you'll know it's true.'

'It's bullshit,' the man called John said. Nokkon's foot lashed out immediately, stomping down on his hand.

'Ward, I'm rescinding my offer,' the devil said, his voice for the first time less than steady. 'You want

to kill anyone, it's going to have to be her. This guy's been mine for a long while.'

He lined the gun straight at Zandt's face.

But then his head jerked upright. As if hearing something outside the house.

Sarah didn't even think. She leaped out of the corner.

I saw the girl shoot up from nowhere. Her Body wasn't up to it, and the forward thrust was compromised before she was even fully on her feet. But the momentum drove her over Zandt's feet and barrelling straight into The Upright Man. He toppled over backwards, swatting at the girl's bony head, at teeth that were trying to fasten on his face.

One good crack across the eyes and she was falling backward, but the spell on me had been broken.

I fired once, missing him, but then Zandt was on top of him and I couldn't shoot again.

The two men rolled across the floor, kicking, punching. I stood ready to one side, waiting for a clear shot I believed I would take, which I knew I must take at any cost. Then I heard the noise from outside, the sound of a thrashed motor, of a horn being hit again and again. Bobby, thank Christ.

I saw the girl, lying still on the floor, blood flowing out of her nose. I ran to her, knowing this would have been Zandt's choice of priority. I pulled her upright with an arm round her stomach, stumbled toward the front door.

Yanked it open to be bathed in light. I couldn't work out what the fuck and then realized it was the headlights of the car I'd rented from the airport the day before.

I pulled the girl down the steps beside me, wondering what the hell Bobby was playing at but blessing his very soul. Then I realized there was only one person in the car and it wasn't him but the FBI agent and that she looked like death.

I ran round to her window. 'Where's Bobby?'

'Get in,' was all she said. 'Is that her?'

'Yes. Where's Bobby?'

'Where's Zandt?'

'He's inside. Will you tell me where the fuck Bobby is?'

'Bobby's dead,' she screamed. 'Davids killed him. I'm sorry, Ward, but get John, please, we've got to

go. The whole compound is wired and we have to go.'

Cables. All over the place.

I yanked open the back door and pushed the girl in as gently as I could. Left the door open and

sprinted back to the front of the house, shouting out Zandt's name.

Thinking: Bobby's dead.

In the front room there was no one. Zandt's gun wasn't lying on the floor any more. I ran through the house, still shouting, gun out in front, enough of my head still stuck in the world of two minutes ago to be running hot with shame. I hadn't done it, hadn't shot my brother. But I could do it now. I knew I could. I could do it now.

I heard the sound of running from behind and to the side and swerved to pelt into the back reception area. Zandt came hurtling across the room at me. I remembered at the last minute and shouted, 'It's me, John, it's not him, it's me.'

Zandt's face was running with blood. He stopped, gun an inch from my head, trigger already half-pulled.

'Look at the clothes, John, look at my fucking clothes.'

A beat, and then Zandt shoved me aside and tried to run past. I grabbed him round the neck.

'Nina's outside. Bobby's dead. We've got to go.'

Zandt elbowed me in the stomach, knocking me backward. I grabbed him again, yanked his head in tight, screamed at him.

'The whole place is wired. We don't go, he's going to get us all. He's going to get Sarah.'

Zandt's rigidity flexed for a split second, and I hauled him into the front room. Pulled him backward across it to the front door, back into the light flooding through it.

Outside Nina was revving the engine, but still Zandt tried to resist, fighting like a bear against the arm looped round his neck. For a second I thought I might have seen a shadow flit across one of the doorways back inside the house, but it was soon gone.

When we were outside Zandt seemed to realize there were other people in the world, seemed for a moment to see a window through which there was something other than the man he had to kill. I shoved him at the car, stooping to pick something up off the ground.

Zandt climbed unwilling into the back, shouting and swearing, banging the back of the seat in front of him with his fists. Nina had slumped sideways, half into the passenger seat. I got in the driver's door and pushed her across, strapped her in.

I found the gas pedal, jammed my foot down as if trying to stand up. The car fishtailed backward on the wet grass and I pulled it round. Nina was banged into her door, and started moaning, rhythmically but quietly.

'Brace Sarah,' I yelled back to Zandt, pulling my seatbelt on, and then we were hurtling back down through The Halls, flashing past all the quiet houses with their treasures.

I thought I could hear bones crunching under the tyres, but that must have been in my mind and I hoped Zandt did not hear it, too. I hoped also that I did not see what I thought I saw, for an instant: the silhouettes of a small group of people standing up on the ridge of the hill surrounding the pasture, looking down on us.

We were going too fast. I couldn't really have seen it. When I glanced back, they were gone.

I aimed at the hole Nina had made on the way in, and almost made it. Boards flew past the windshield. Worse was a bad tearing noise from where the chassis took a hit from one of the posts on the other side, but the car kept on going. It nearly rolled in the left turn out of the lot and I thought everything had been in vain, but I got the wheels down again and took off down the drive, under the gate, and then right into the road out of the mountains. I nearly totalled the vehicle again immediately just around the turn, where Harold Davids had stashed his car, but managed to skid around it. A series of hairpins, picking up speed, until a final long straight run down toward the stand of trees that shielded the road. I didn't even try to make this turn, knew in advance it wasn't going to happen, and steered instead through the trees, finding gaps large enough to get the car through, aiming us bumping and shuddering out the other side onto the grass. Somewhere between there and the road a flint took out one of the back tyres, and all I could do was try to stop the car rolling as it bounced and skidded down the final slope to smash through the low barricade with a scream of shearing metal.

The car skated across the icy road and clear off the other side into the Gallatin River, running shallow and fast and cold. There was a moment of stillness, in which we realized we were still alive, and then the entire world seemed to explode.

Slumped as I was, bent over and twisted round, all I could see was a new sun of light, bursting out of the mountains like the dawn.

Houma, Louisiana

This is a small motel, and has no room service. I have a small room, out on the end of an arm of equally small rooms stretching out from a dusty office, which is small. The television is old and shit. There is water in the swimming pool, but no one is swimming in it. Least of all me.

Tomorrow morning, early, I will move on. I can remember the name of the town where Bobby's mother lives, and have vague memories of him describing the street where he grew up. I think I might be able to find it. I would like to be able to tell her about her son. What he was like, how good a man he was, and how he died. Perhaps I will even find the graveyard where his father lies buried, and tell him, too. It's the only memorial my friend will ever have.

Ten days ago I sat in a car in Santa Monica and watched as John and Nina walked a girl up to a front door. Sarah was holding one of each of their hands: Nina's left, as her right was in a sling. Sarah was still very pale and weak, but looked a lot better than she had when we got her and Nina to the hospital in Utah. The medic on duty wanted to call the cops. From what he could tell, Sarah had been fed nothing but water laced with lead and a variety of other chemicals, some of them biological agents of a type associated with gene therapy. What was supposed to have been achieved by this, apart from acute poisoning, he wasn't prepared to even speculate. John knew, however, just as he now understood that

— had they read the evidence properly — the bodies of The Upright Man's other victims showed similar attempts to create someone like himself through head trauma and sexual violence.

Nina used her badge, preventing the scene from going nationwide. The doctors checked Sarah and Nina in for a week, but the next morning John and I came and stole them both away. Yes, they still needed treatment. But staying in one place was too much of a risk. Zandt called Michael Becker to let them know he was coming, and then we got in the car and drove.

We headed straight down through Utah, Nevada, and California and then across LA to Santa Monica, Zandt and I taking turns. Though she slept most of the way, I got to know Sarah a little. She was kind, and said I was very different, which helped. In time I believe she'll be okay, and I'll personally lay a bet that next time she's a lady who dines out (probably round about the year 2045, if her father has anything to do with it), she'll be having not a Cobb salad but a burger just the way she wants it.

When they'd reached the step of the Beckers' house, Nina let go of Sarah's hand and rang the doorbell. They looked like a painting for a moment, and then the door opened and there was a flurry of love that I had to look away from. I stared straight out of the windshield for a while, remembering the girl's last words to me.

When I looked back Nina was walking toward the car, her head down. Zandt was still with the Beckers. Sarah finally let go of him and went to her parents. Michael Becker shook Zandt's hand and something passed between them, though I don't know what.

John stepped back and let the family go back inside. He stood there for a little while, even after the door was closed. And then he walked back up the path and got in the car and we drove away. He is down in Florida at the moment, visiting his ex-wife.

When I saw his reaction to the sweater, I wished I had picked up one of the bones instead. I wasn't thinking clearly — it was an unconscious reaction, a realization that he might want something brought back out of the mountains. I guess a bone would have been better, something that had once genuinely been a part of her. But I think the sweater will give them closure enough. We arranged that we will meet again in a while. We have each other's cell numbers. He appears not to hold against me the fact that I was unable to use my gun in The Halls.

But any such reunion should wait for a while, I think. I hope his priority is meeting back up with Nina, after she has cleared her stuff out of LA. Seeing the two of them standing together on that doorstep, I saw something that I hope they come to understand. They're already together.

For long periods while I'm driving I find myself staring straight ahead. Not seeing what's beyond the glass, just allowing rushing images to run through my head like a strip of film. Sometimes I think about The Straw Men, trying to work out what's true and what's not. I want to believe that what underlies all of this is something more intangible than The Human Manifesto: that the ideas within it are merely a psychotic's way of explaining away the divisions that we seem addicted to. But then it occurs to me that the book many claim as the first novel, Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Years, was written in the aftermath of a disease that swept the whole of Europe, and could have been blamed on the way we live together, cheek by jowl; and that our major forms of entertainment, film and television, both burst into true flower immediately after world wars. I begin to wonder if fictional landscapes and aspirational schemes became important as soon as we started to live together in towns and cities, and if this explains the birth of organized religions at about the same time. The more crowded our way of living, the more interdependent we are, the more important our dreams have become — almost as if all of this is there to bond us together, to help us aspire to something missing, and so to edge us toward a humanity that is more than being merely human. Now the Internet is spanning the globe, knitting everyone tighter still, and I wonder if it can be a coincidence that it does so just as we have listed our genetic code, and are starting to tinker with it. The closer we're brought together, the more we seem to need to understand what we are. I do hope we know what we're doing with our genes, and that when we start to take out the parts that seem like faults, like imperfections, we're not removing the things that make us viable. I hope it is our future, and not our past, that makes the decisions. And I hope that now, when I realize something is missing in my life, I will continue to search for it; even if I know that it may only be a promise, and not really there to be found at all. Otherwise we become men of straw, women of shadow, left standing in empty fields where not even the birds come; waiting for an endless summer, when winter is already here. Given how we live, so far from what was once true, it's bewildering that we cope as well as we do. We dream our dreams to keep us sane, and also to keep us alive. As my father once said, it's not a case of winning, but of believing that there's something there to be won.

Often I think about him, and my mother, two people who are not here any more. Their deaths, like any deaths, are not something that can be made better. You cannot catch death and teach it a lesson, just as you cannot catch unhappiness, or disappointment, and as we have not caught The Upright Man or the group he has come to lead. Perhaps we will someday, perhaps not. Maybe someone like them will always be there. It's impossible to tell right now, just as at the moment I do not know whether the timed destruction of The Halls was merely a wholly successful attempt to destroy all its evidence, or whether the explosion was supposed to trigger the vast pool of molten rock that is gathering force beneath Yellowstone — and so annihilate our culture, and the farms of the Western world, returning us to the way of life that The Straw Men so revere. Returning us, or taking us onwards, into the ruins.

Nina thinks so, from something she heard Davids say: she believes that The Straw Men have convinced themselves that they are the better hunter-gatherers, that their wealth has come from some inner 'purity', rather than fate, that they will prevail in any conditions. I don't know. It's not something I can discuss with anyone now.

The message was delivered to the hotel where I was staying in Los Angeles, the day after Sarah Becker was returned. It was from my brother. I don't know how he found me. An hour later I left the hotel, and I haven't stopped moving since.

The message took the form of a videotape. The first portion had been recorded since I had met him. He was clearly very angry, but had evidently not given up all hope of a rapprochement. He filled me in on some of the time we had not shared. His discovery on the streets of San Francisco, a baby boy with nothing to identify him except a name sewn into his sweater. Foster homes, a first murder. A period about which he was vague. His eventual work as a procurer for the rich and sociopathic, his discovery of a link between his employers and his past, his acceptance within a hidden group and first triumph in a McDonald's in a small town in Pennsylvania in 1991. The move into his own experiments in accelerated evolution through violence and abuse, the plan to create a pure bride with whom to create a non-viral strain. A plan he spoke of with an emotion that sounded unpleasantly like love.

The rest of the video is harder to describe. There is something very disturbing about it, and not just because of its subject matter or the implications of its existence. Seeing what looks like myself, in those positions and doing those things, is like having access into a dark dream world, a place where what I believe myself to be is negated, and I become the person I hope I am not. All Bobby and I ever saw were blurred long shots. The Upright Man, or Paul, as I suppose I should call him, had made sure that there was crystal-clear tape of him at every one of those events. Tape taken by himself. Of him standing, smiling, in burning parking lots, of him laying cables and planting bombs, of him in dark rooms with scapegoats in America, England and Europe, giving them guns and plans. Of him squatting naked over the eviscerated bodies of young people known to be missing. Of him eating things.

And thus, of me doing them. Of me at the top of a towering pyramid of guilt, half an hour of evidence.

Even the tape he sent is no use to me. I can't go to anyone with it, and not just because the police of Dyersburg and probably Montana as a whole have joined the list of people I need to avoid. All the tape does is implicate me. There is no record of me having a twin. There's no record of me at all, except what's on the tape and inside my head.

Before she got out of the car in Santa Monica, Sarah Becker leaned across and said something

quietly to me.

'You have to do it,' she said. 'Only you can kill Nokkon Wud.'

She's right. I can't do anything except what he wants me to do. I can't do anything except go find him.

In the meantime, as I clock up the miles, keeping on the move, I listen to past voices and think of things that were once done for me, the love that I was given. I don't know the answer to the question of what I've become, and perhaps never will; but I know at least that it is not as bad as it could have been. The note my father left for me, saying they weren't dead, remains true in ways he never intended. They never will be while I am alive. I wish I could have known them better, but like all such wishes its essence is not only that it came too late, but that it would never have been early enough.

The image of them I remember most of all is one I never saw, except through the medium of a television screen. A young couple, both holding pool cues, with their backs to the camera and an arm round each other. And when they turned, how my father grinned, and flipped his finger at the camera, and how my mother stuck her tongue out.

And later, how she danced.

THE END