Chapter 6

After a good night’s rest, Joe and his people gathered in the kitchen of the complex and enjoyed a morning cup of coffee. While the women prepared breakfast, the men sat at the table and brought each other up to date on what was happening in the country and around the world. General Hawkins knew more about what was happening outside the country, so he started first.

“For those of you who don’t know, John Samules is the legitimate President of the United States. He has set up a government, in exile, in Iceland. Going by the Constitu-tion, he was the next in line for the presidency. Great Britain has aligned themselves with President Samules. The British, so far, have escaped this disease by sealing their borders against all entry. As you know, it’s impossible to keep everyone out. Just before I left Iceland, the coalition of France, Germany and the United European nations landed an invading force on England’s eastern shore. By now, I’m afraid the disease has taken hold in England. From what Dr. Palmer has told us, this disease is passed on by physical contact. I don’t see how the British could have repelled the invaders without some contact between them and the invading forces. We can only hope that the people who survive and come to power have not been contaminated.”

“What about the rest of Europe?” Joe asked.

“Europe was devastated by the disease. By now, eighty to ninety percent of the European population are dead. The majority of the remaining people are diseased and have a deep-set desire to destroy England. The British government has stopped them, up until this point, from unleashing the nuclear forces at their command. Quite simply, the British Prime Minister told the new coalition government of Europia he would unleash his nuclear missiles if such an attack occurred and lay waste to all of Europe. To give you an idea of how bad it is, the French forces were deci-mated by the disease. The people who rose to power in France, after it struck, were like our so-called President Donaldson. They gave Germany an ultimatum. Either join them, or suffer a massive nuclear attack. At that time, the government of Germany was still populated by people who were unaffected. Either they did not wish to believe, or failed to correct-ly judge the new government in France, but they refused the ultimatum.”

“I would have done the same thing. What sane government would unleash the ravages of a nuclear attack?” Ben said.

General Hawkins nodded that he agreed, then continued, “What they and I failed to realize was we weren’t dealing with sane, rational people. The French government unleashed a devastating nuclear attack on Germany. Most of the country is a nuclear wasteland now. After the attack, Italy, Spain and the other European nations fell in with the French and renamed themselves Europia.”

“Jesus,” Ben and Jake said at the same time.

“The picture is even bleaker in Russia. Not only did they have to deal with their own forces, but they had to contend with the billions of Chinese on their eastern border. The last report we received was that the Soviet nuclear forces had assumed control of their government. After massive incursions by Chinese forces into their country, they decided the only way to save themselves was to create a nuclear wasteland along their entire border with China. This worked to a point.”

General Hawkins paused for a drink of water before continuing. “Because of the sheer number of Chinese people, they’re still sending people to their deaths across the radioactive countryside into Russia. At last report, the Russians were barely holding their own. If it weren’t for the Chinese being so weak by the time they crossed the poisoned lands, the Russians would have fallen long ago. The leader of the new Russian government has pledged his support to President Samules. This has had the effect of muting the force the new country of Europia brings against England.”

“Don’t these people realize what they’re doing?” Jake said.

“The European government is afraid the Russians will unleash their still potent nuclear forces on them. In the end, we expect the Russian government to fall. There are too many forces aligned against them. We were in direct contact with General Valadoive. He’s adamant that if his government starts to topple, he will leave little behind that anyone can use. We take that to mean he’ll use his entire nuclear capability to make the entire continent uninhabitable. If this happens, it will exert extreme pressure on other countries—because the survivors will try and reach places they can live.

“In southeast Asia, the Vietnamese are doing extremely well. They expelled a massive Chinese invasion and have taken control of Cambodia and Thailand as well. So far, they’re staying within these borders and profess to want no more. They signed an agreement with the Japanese to supply them with modern weapons in return for minerals.

“India has torn itself apart. Fractional fighting between rival religious groups have left the country a smoldering mess. We estimate there will be fighting there for many years to come.

“Africa is much the same. Every country on the continent is fighting each other. Allegiances are made and broken daily between the governments there.

“South America kept people out for a while, even shooting down passenger planes that tried to land at their airports. It took three months for the disease to make it into the continent. From what we’ve heard, there isn’t much left of the major cities in Brazil. There were reports of a mass exodus to the Amazon basin. If so, many of those people will live. The Peruvian army attacked Chile, taking them by surprise and almost wiped out Chile’s armed forces. Argentina came to Chile’s aid and they stopped the Peruvian army in the center of Chile. They’re still fighting, neither side gaining much ground. While they fight to help Chile regain their country, the Argentinians have positioned their big battleships off Peru’s major ports and are shelling them relentlessly. The only country in South America with any semblance of normalcy is Colombia. The major drug lords combined their private armies and established a ruthless form of govern-ment. They broke relations with the countries around them and have put out a warning that their borders are closed. Any attempt to enter the country is dealt with harshly. Reports say six missionary nuns tried to enter with two hundred orphans and were gunned down on the spot.

“All this may sound hideous, but there are thousands of such instances occurring worldwide daily.

“Mexico City is said to resemble a slaughterhouse. Once the most populous city in the world, it’s now nothing but a festering, disease-ridden place. Every known disease—and some that aren’t—are running rampant in the city. The death toll is estimated to be more than twenty million. Jesus, it boggles the mind to think of so many dead people in one city,” General Hawkins said as he paused to drink from a water glass.

“Here in the States, we estimate between one hundred fifty to two hundred million deaths before the year is out. Not a pretty picture of humanity, is it? Some of our people have predicted that ninety percent of the world’s population will die before this is over. They all agree that, at best, less than forty percent will survive. To put it into terms you can understand, say you live in a town with ten thousand people. Of that total, six thousand would die, maybe more. Now you have a town that used to support ten thousand people, but there are less than four thousand left.

“This town provided jobs for probably twenty-five hundred to three thousand of the total population. Those jobs no longer exist. Public services in this town, which were taken for granted, will soon begin to break down. Water will become contaminated, sewage will back up. Before long, diseases like chol-era, dysentery and the like will develop, killing off even more of the survivors.

“It’ll be quite a few years before most of our cities will be habitable. Take a simple thing like canned goods. Most of the pro-duction plants are located in or near large cities. Even if the raw foodstuff were available to process, there wouldn’t be enough people to operate the plants. Everything we took for granted will cease to exist after a while. No electrici-ty, no supermarkets, no purified drinking water, etcetera. While there will be havens like this one, they will be few and far between. Over the years, we’ll become a primitive society in order to survive. Perhaps, some day, future generations will know and have the luxuries we had and took for granted that made our life so easy.

“That, however, is for the future. We, on the other hand, must deal with the present. Thank God, former President Robertson had the presence of mind to take actions which will help people like us survive. The first thing he did was strip all military arsenals and put their contents in different hidden locations. Can you imagine what would have happened if the military people who went over to this disease could get their hands on an unlimited supply of weapons? Hell, there are enough privately-owned assault weapons and machine guns to equip a small army. A certain number of tanks and artillery pieces were taken to West Virginia and put in abandoned mines. The rest were destroyed or rendered useless. The President also had the air force render most of their planes inoperative.

“Now the question is, can we get enough people to go get some of those hidden caches? Without those weapons, we don’t stand a chance against people like this Todd, let alone the forces President Donaldson can bring to bear. What do you think, Joe? Are there enough people like us out there to form our own army?” General Hawkins asked.

Joe scratched his chin and sipped his coffee. “In every state we passed through, we heard about isolated pockets of people who didn’t go over to this disease. The only trouble will be getting to them before Todd or President Donaldson wipes them out. I guess it would depend on if we can contact enough of them and they’ll agree to go east to the Appalachians and join the rebels. With enough people, we might be able to resist President Donaldson’s and Todd’s forces. Sooner or later, Todd and President Donaldson are going to have to join forces to get rid of the rebels. With heavy weapons like tanks, APCs, and the right commander, taking back this country is possible,” Joe told him.

“Why position the weapons in West Virginia?” Jake asked.

“That was a calculated risk President Robertson took. He figured that the mountain people were so reclusive, they wouldn’t suffer the casualties predicted for our major population areas. Besides, the area is a natural for defense. With limited roadways and the mountainous terrain, a few people could hold off a vast number of opposing forces. Properly armed, they could keep whole armies at bay. Only a fool would take an army into those mountains. A small force could shell them from surrounding mountains, then fall back and do the same thing the next valley over. Before a commander realized it, his army would be cut to pieces without even engaging the rebels. They won’t use air power because the rebels have a large supply of antiaircraft missiles. President Donaldson sent in bombers and attack helicopters after the rebels took back the town of Romney. Almost ninety percent of the aircraft were shot down. Now he only uses air power if the terrain is open, where rebels with antiaircraft missiles have a hard time hiding. By sending people there, we could build our forces more rapidly,” General Hawkins said, looking around the table for any disagreement.

“I see what you mean, General, most of the people who join the rebels will have little or no training. I’m sure the rebels have set up training camps in secure areas. People going there would get the proper training, while if they stayed here, they would have to learn under combat conditions. We would lose a lot of people before we had a force large enough to protect any training facility we set up,” Joe said.

“Wait a minute, we don’t even know why we came here. I think it’s a little presumptuous to talk about forming armies just yet,” Ben said from the end of the table.

“That’s a question we’ve been dying to ask. Why did you come here?” Rita asked from her speaker.

Joe, Ben and Bill looked at each other. The other two nodded for Bill to do the speaking. “I’ll try to make our story short,” Bill said.

“Tony and I escaped from the town we lived in, located in Southern West Virginia. People with the disease had taken over and were getting rid of those who weren’t like them. I was just recovering from an illness, probably the same one that turned these people into what they are. In my case, I was able to hear them talk to each other mentally, but was unable to converse with them the same way.

“My first day back at work, I discovered my boss and most of the men I worked with were plotting my death. We left town that night and had to kill a deputy the next morning. On the way to Cincinnati, Tony looked at the map and said we had to get to Indianapolis, where we would meet a man and a girl. She didn’t know how she knew this, but she was adamant we go there. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Tony has the ability to make herself invisible to other people.” Bill stopped because of the looks he was getting from those not of his group.

“Don’t look at me like that. I know it sounds crazy, but she can do it,” Bill said. General Hawkins had pulled a cigar from inside his jacket and was hunting for his lighter when they all heard a voice beside him say, “Let me light that for you, General.”

Except for Joe and his people, they all stared at where the voice came out of thin air. A few moments later, Tony stood there holding a lighter to the General’s cigar, which promptly fell from his lips into his lap. “Now, General, don’t you go calling my man a liar,” Tony said in a coquettish southern bell voice.

They all laughed when the general jumped up and swatted at his lap. A puff of smoke rose from a smoldering hole near the crotch of his pants. He grabbed a glass of water off the table and doused himself. Standing there sheepishly, he began to chuckle and sat back down.

“Bill, I apologize to you for ever thinking you weren’t telling the whole truth,” General Hawkins said as he dug out another cigar. When Tony started his way with a lighter, he held up his hand saying,

“Hold on there, little lady. I think I’ll light this one myself.” Which started another round of laughter.

“The general is right, I wouldn’t have believed it until I’d seen it myself,” Jess said.

“God, what I wouldn’t give to be able to do that,” said the Vice-President as she flipped pancakes in a skillet on the stove.

“Believe me, ma’am, she can be a pain in the you know where when she gets into one of her mischievous moods,” Joe told her.

“Can we get back to Bill’s story now?” Rita asked.

“Rita, you’re acting more human every day,” Jess said.

“Why thank you, Jess,” Rita said in a sultry voice. “Bill, please continue with your story,” she said in her normal voice.

“We arrived in Indianapolis and were ambushed. We ended up in a small warehouse near some railroad tracks. After fighting back one mad rush after another by these crazy people all morning, we were getting low on ammunition.

“Tony suddenly sits up and says, ‘They’re here!’ Joe starts a ruckus a few streets over and we run in the direction Tony was told to go. The biggest damn wolf I ever saw flew by me and fell on about a dozen men who tried to follow us. We were met at the end of the building by a young girl who told us to follow her.

“Tammy led us to where Joe parked his pickup truck and told me to drive. She directed me around several streets, then told me to stop. A few minutes later, Joe got in the truck and we left the city behind.

“We met Ben, Jake and Jane in Central Missouri. The same voice telling Joe and Stalker to come help Tony get to this place had spoken to Ben. The long and short of it is we had to fight almost every mile of the way here,” Bill ended, his voice a little hoarse from talking so long.

“You have no idea what you’re supposed to do once you got here?” Ross asked from the speaker.

“Mother made it clear to me that Tony was the one who had to get here. The rest of us were to give up our lives, if we had to, in order for that to happen,” Ben said.

“Who is this Mother you refer to, Ben?” Jess asked.

“If you think Bill’s story was hard to swallow, listen to mine. For me, it all started the night Pete, the custodian at the plant I worked at, got killed. You see, my boy, Benji, had been sick a couple weeks. The next thing I knew, my wife, son, and I were being flown to Atlanta to the Center For Disease Control.

“After spending a couple days there, we were loaded on a plane late at night and told we were going to a new hospital in Colorado. On the way, we found out the flight engineer had put a bomb on the plane to blow us up. After finding and defusing it, which Jake did, thank God, we were forced to land at an airport taken over by these crazy people. We managed to slip off the plane before Jeff, the co-pilot, took it to the terminal.

“The rest of us circled back to the terminal and rescued Jeff, who had been badly beaten. Cap, our pilot, found a small plane and we left there. Somewhere over Southern Wyoming, we were intercepted by a National Guard jet. After several low level maneuvers by Cap, we thought the jet had us. We were saying our prayers when the jet ran out of fuel and fell to the ground in front of us.

“The other pilot had gotten in a few good licks on our plane. Fuel was streaming from one of our wing tanks. We couldn’t gain any altitude and flew through the flaming wreckage of the jet. I woke up with my head in my wife’s lap. She was crying and I asked her why. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped over me in a dead faint. Later, Jake and Cap told me that I was dead, had been for almost an hour.

“All I remembered was a woman’s voice telling me to be still while she repaired me. While escaping the men sent out to make sure we were dead, we ran across this survival-ist cave. This voice inside me said I had to go east and help protect a woman going to Colorado. I left my wife and son behind with Cap and Jeff to watch over them, and headed east with Jake and Jane.

“Along the way, I had conversations with this being inside me. The way she explains it is that she’s all that ever was and ever will be. In her words, the nearest comparison to her is our term ‘Mother Earth’. It’s a lot more complicated than that, but I’m trying to keep it simple.

“I discovered the part of the entity inside me would remain there until I die. The benefit of this is any damage done to me by the people infected by the disease is repaired by her. However, that doesn’t make me immortal. For instance, if you were to shoot me in the chest, General, I would die. Like-wise, if I fell off a cliff. The way Mother explains it is she can’t change the natural way of things. However, since this disease is man-made and goes against the natural order of things, she is allowed to repair any damage inflicted on me by those affected by it. Nor will she stop me from getting older. I’ll live a long, albeit, healthy, life because of her, but I will die at the normal time.

“Without Mother, we wouldn’t have made it here,” Ben said, getting nods of agreement from the people who came with him.

“Very odd, a woman who can make herself invisible to others and a man who can’t be killed by his enemies. Do any of the rest of you have any special qualities?” General Hawkins asked.

“Bill forgot to mention that Tony can heal people near death,” Tammy piped up from where she sat beside Joe.

“To answer your question, General, I believe the rest of us have been altered in subtle ways, but nowhere near the extent Tony and Ben have,” Joe said.

“Tell us about the wolf,” Jess said.

“Stalker was a large wolf from Northern Canada. The same voice that spoke to Joe and Ben told Stalker to go south and protect Tony. If he was killed protecting her, the voice assured him that his mate and cubs would lead a long and full life.

“I believe he knew he would never return home when he left his mate. We all came to love him, especially Tammy and Joe, the two he spent the most time with. In a fight, he was ferocious and gave no quarter. That was one side of him. You should have seen him the few times we were able to relax. He acted like an overgrown puppy with Tammy and was overly protective of her.

“His loss is a terrible blow to us and we’ll never forget him,” Tony said as she smoothed Tammy’s hair.

“That still doesn’t answer the question of why it was so important for Tony to get here,” the Vice-President said.

“I wish I knew, not knowing is hard to take,” Tony said.

Bill hugged her. She clutched him and laid her head on his shoulder. It was obvious the strain of not knowing was getting to her. Tammy came over and hugged her as well. Under normal circumstances, they looked like an average American family.

“Any suggestions, Ross, on why Tony is here?” Jess asked.

“I have a few ideas, but I would like to do a little more checking before I voice them,” Ross answered.

“Can we stop talking long enough to eat?” Jake grumbled.

Joe’s people smiled. They knew the only thing Jake liked better than coffee was eating. The men cleaned off the table and set out plates and silverware. Tony set a plate heaped with pancakes on the table. Tammy carried over a platter filled with bacon and sausage. The bell on the microwave sounded and the Vice-President took a bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup out of it. She brought the syrup to the table and placed it in front of Jake.

“Now, I hope you aren’t one of those people who think I’m racist because I like the syrup with the picture of a black woman on the label,” the Vice-President said.

“No, ma’am, massa ma’am, long as you keep shoveling out thick and fluffy pancakes like these,”

Jake answered in his best slave voice.

After eating, the men cleared the table and did the dishes while the women sat around the table enjoying cups of tea or coffee. “What’s it like to be Vice-President?” Tammy asked Ruth.

“It’s not as glamorous as it sounds, child. The last few months have been a struggle to keep one step ahead of death. You wouldn’t believe how hard those people tried to kill me.”

“Lord, what I wouldn’t give to go back to the days of the past when I only thought I was under a lot of pressure. Back then, I didn’t realize what pressure was,” she told Tammy.

“Still, you are the first woman Vice-President, only a step away from the presidency,” Leila said.

“We are still a presidency in exile. As of now, we govern nothing. Until President Samules establishes a residency here in the States, the titles don’t mean that much,” Ruth told them.

“Funny, when I think back to how people were so concerned about things such as women’s rights, abortions, and a host of other things. Somehow, such things seem trivial now that we’re fighting just to survive. Basically, what we have now is the right to survive and take lives,” Tony said with a sigh.

“I wasn’t a follower of such things B.D.(before disease). At the most, I was a totally domesticated housewife. My life revolved around Ben and Benji. I had very few outside interests to occupy my time. Looking back, I can see how limited my life was. Over the last few months, I’ve had to make decisions that concerned the safety of my family. Before, I left those decisions up to Ben. I never gave much thought to good and evil. Since then, that’s all I think about. I like to consider us the good guys and those poor unfortu-nate people with the disease the bad guys.

“In the past, we looked toward our police forces to protect us. Now, we have to rely on ourselves. Thank God, we don’t have to deal with the complexities of courtrooms.

“Today, we are the judges, juries and executioners, making decisions of life or death on the spot. In most cases, the decision is an easy one because the person is trying to kill us. As this disease runs its course, I believe the decisions will become much murkier.

“What Joe said is true, all of us have been changed in subtle ways to help us cope with the things we’ve seen. If this had happened a year ago, I would be a candidate for a straight jacket,” Leila said, her voice tinged with sadness.

“I feel sorry for the children most of all. They’ll grow up not able to share in the greatness this country once had to offer. Over time, future generations will read about all the things we had. They’ll never know how great this country was. I have thought about what’s happened. Do you think humanity outgrew itself? This is a man-made affliction, caused by humans experi-menting with things better left untouched. Can it be that humans are destined to destroy themselves? There are so many questions and so few answers,” Ruth said.

“How about you, Jane? What are your thoughts on what’s happened?” Leila asked.

“I haven’t given it much thought. As a matter of fact, when have I had time to think? Running all over the country with your husband leads more to protecting myself than it does to thought,” Jane said in a petulant voice.

They all stared at her. Over the last few days, Jane had changed. Before, she was motherly, doting over Tammy and Tommy, Gail’s son, all the time. Now, she kept to herself and only joined in when one of them forced her to. Leila got a puzzled look from Tony. She shrugged her shoulders as if to say, I don’t know.

“Surely, you have some thoughts on the subject?” Leila pressed.

“No, I don’t. Why don’t you just leave me alone?” Jane answered.

Ruth and Tony knew some kind of conflict was going on between the two women, so they sat and listened.

“Come on, Jane, you were never shy before on giving us your opinion on almost everything,”

Leila said with a soothing voice.

The look of hatred in Jane’s eyes as she stared at Leila shocked Tony. What was wrong with the woman? Why was she so mad? Leila knew or suspected something and was trying to draw Jane out. Jane was getting more agitated with each question.

“What I think is my business and I suggest you mind your own,” Jane replied.

“What’s happened to you? Why are you acting like this? I’ve done nothing to offend you,” Leila said in the same soothing voice.

“No, you haven’t, bitch, but this blond bimbo has sta…” Jane stopped with a look of rage on her face. She realized what Leila was doing and turned on her. “You think you’re so smart, don’t you?

Well, let me tell you, I was beating the shit out of people like you twenty years ago, Miss High and Mighty. If you were half the woman I am, you wouldn’t be sitting here listening to these people whine. They deserve everything that happens to them. I only hope I…” Jane suddenly fell silent as a small smile appeared on Leila’s face. She realized she had fallen into the trap Leila set for her and exposed herself.

Joe and Cap, who had been listening to the conversation, moved over beside Jane. “Jess, do you have a secure room we can put Jane in?” Joe asked.

Hearing this, Jane jumped up with a curse. Both men grabbed her arms as she shouted incoherently. Stronger than she looked, she threw Cap halfway across the room. Joe hung onto her arm for dear life as she lifted him off his feet.

Breaking out of his surprise, Ben dove for her feet, only to be met by a shoe in the face. General Hawkins drew his revolver and took aim at Jane when Tony stepped in front of him. She pushed the gun aside saying, “We want her alive.”

Jane wheeled across the room, flinging Joe and now Jake, who had a death grip on her other arm, from side to side. Ben sat up from where he lay on the floor with a bloody nose and busted lip. When Jane swung near, he lunged for her feet and toppled her to the floor. She landed on Jake, who promptly let loose of her arm. Bringing it around, she smacked Joe in the head and knocked him senseless. Free, she started to climb to her feet.

General Hawkins stepped behind her and brought the butt of the revolver down on her head. Jane weaved back and forth for a moment, then her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed. Gail rushed to Joe while Leila went to Ben. Cap and General Hawkins placed a set of handcuffs on the unconscious Jane.

Leila got a wet cloth from the sink and held it to Ben’s nose. His lip would need a few stitches where the teeth had gone all the way through. She didn’t know which to try and stop first, Ben’s bleeding lip, or his nose.

Across the room, Jake groaned and said, “Jane was the last one I would have suspected of getting the disease.”

Ben pushed Leila aside and climbed to his feet. “Wait a minute. Jane doesn’t have the disease. If she did, Mother would have healed my lip and stopped my nosebleed,” Ben told them.

“Then what the hell is wrong with her?” Joe asked from where he lay, his head in Gail’s lap. Ben became silent and got that faraway look on his face he had when he was communicating with Mother. Cap helped Jake to his feet while the rest of them waited.

“Mother tells me Jane is not affected by the disease. She’s getting a highly distorted picture of Jane’s mind. Almost like the one she got from Zeb,” Ben told them.

“Jesus, don’t tell me we have another disease to deal with,” Jake groaned.

“No, she says this isn’t a disease. She can’t be sure, but she suspects Jane has part of another entity inside her. Why not? Look at me, I have Mother,” Ben said at their disbelieving looks.

“Why in the hell didn’t I let those crazy people out there kill me? Death is bound to be better than this. My blood pressure is up, my ulcer is killing me and on top of that, I keep getting the crap beat out of me by women every time I turn around,” Jake said in a forlorn voice. Leave it to Jake to break the tension.

“Jess, could you place Jane in one of the operating rooms and strap her to the table? Ross and I want to run some tests on her,” Rita said.

“I was going to suggest placing her in one of the rooms, anyway. Since only you or Ross can open the doors, it would make a perfect jail. Wait a minute and I’ll be back with a gurney,” Jess said as he hurried from the room.

Tony knelt, placing a hand on either side of Jane’s temple. She felt the soft, cooling flow of herself enter Jane’s mind.

Convoluted thoughts assailed her from every direction. At the back of Jane’s mind loomed a black object she could not pene-trate. Every time she tried to approach it, her own mind screamed out in pain. Circling around the object, she noticed it had embedded itself in Jane’s control center. This was the place that kept Jane alive. Without it, she would die. The pressure on her own mind was building to the point that if she didn’t get out, she would suffer damage. She eased the part of her that entered Jane slowly back into her own body.

She stood up and rubbed her brow. Entering Jane’s mind had given her a blinding headache. She went to a chair and sat down. Withdrawing into herself, she checked for damage. She almost missed the small particle of blackness hiding to the side of her mind.

It was a part of the same thing she saw inside Jane. While she watched, it slithered toward her nerve center. In a flash, she called upon every cell her body used to fight invasions by foreign substances. They overwhelmed the object and tore it to pieces. Picking up every piece of the object, the cells took them to her digestive tract, where they deposited them into the acid pool used to digest food.

Withdrawing from her mind, she found her headache had almost disappeared. Apparently, the foreign entity had caused the pain. Tony felt sorry for Jane if she’d had to endure that pressure and the pain all the time. The thing she remembered most from Jane’s mind was the sense of dominance by the being. She hadn’t felt hatred, as much as disdain from it. It was like the entity thought she was below it, not worth the trouble to recognize. Whatever it was, the confidence it had in itself was almost fanatical.

“Rita, when you examine Jane, do a complete x-ray of her brain. A foreign object has tapped into it and is control-ling her. Part of it seeped into my mind when I was in contact with Jane. She’s in terrible agony, if what I felt is typical of the way it controls a person,” Tony said. Jess wheeled in a hospital gurney. Joe, Ben, Cap and General Hawkins lifted the unconscious form of Jane to the gurney, where they strapped her down. “Cap, would you help me wheel her to the operating room?” Jess asked.

After they left with Jane, the rest of them straightened up the room. Tammy found a mop and cleaned the blood from the floor.

They sat around the table afterward, making small talk. Bill sat down beside Tony. “I didn’t know you could enter other people’s minds,” Bill said to her.

“I didn’t know it either until a few minutes ago. Without knowing it, I walked over to her and put my hands on either side of her head. I felt my mind flow into hers, Bill. It was frightening and thrilling at the same time. All I could feel were twisted thoughts with no reason to them. Beyond that, everything was overlaid by a thick blanket of pain. You can’t imagine the pain, layer after layer, as though her whole life consisted of it. I got the impression her only reason for living was to feed this entity. My God, Bill, Jane must be suffering horribly. Briefly, I thought I felt the presence of the old Jane, but it was gone before I could isolate it. This thing has trapped the Jane we know in her own mind, while it controls the functioning part of her,” Tony sobbed.

“Can you do anything to help her?” Bill asked.

“Not by entering her mind and confronting this thing direct-ly. The bridge between us lets this thing send bolt after bolt of pain into me. Not only that, the thing can send portions of itself along this bridge. Luckily, I found the portion that crossed into me. I hate to think what would have happened to me if I hadn’t discovered it. I have no wish to enter her mind again without some kind of safeguard.” She shuddered at the thought.

“Tony, Ross and I have discussed your ability to will humans not to see you. We wondered if you could do the same with nonliving things? What I mean is, could you make yourself invisible to us?”

Rita asked.

“I don’t know. Do you want me to try?”

“Yes, any time you are ready,” Rita said.

Tony closed her eyes and thought, Rita and Ross, you can not see me. Opening her eyes, she looked around. She heard Bill ask where she was. Good, so far, the other people in the room couldn’t see her. “Rita, can you see me?” she asked.

“Yes, Tony, we can still see you. Tony, how do you form the thought that causes humans not to see you?” Rita asked.

“I just wish them not to see me.”

“Try wishing yourself invisible to everything in this room.”

Tony closed her eyes again and thought, I wish to be invisible to anything in this room that could detect my presence. She opened her eyes. The people in the room still couldn’t see her.

“Rita, can you see me now?” she asked.

“Jess, Tony has disappeared from all of our sensing devices,” she heard Rita say.

“Tony, what are you up to now?” Bill asked.

She willed herself back to visibility. She thought of a question she had wanted to ask ever since this thing started. “Rita, it’s apparent you could neither sense nor see me, but you instantly knew I was missing. It’s different with humans. When I will them not to see me, it’s as though they didn’t know I was there moments before. Oh, they know I exist, but they think I’m someplace else. Could you explain this?”

“Humans are used to seeing you in a physical form. Ross and I, on the other hand, see you in forms of light wave imagery. To us, your form is a number of binary digits. The moment you willed us not to see you, a blank space occurred in our picture of the room. Everyone else was visible, but where you stood, a blank appeared. You could have walked out of the room and we would never have known it,” Rita told her.

“Tony, I may have come up with the answer as to why you are here,” Ross spoke for the first time all morning.

Everyone quit talking and silently waited for Ross to go on.

“I invented a form of cap so I could interface mentally with Rita. Until now, I was the only one who could use it. Since I no longer have a human body, I haven’t even thought about it. Ben told you about the malignant part of us named Pete. We can’t do anything about him without harming ourselves. You, on the other hand, could enter our system and eradicate Pete without harming us. It all hinges on whether or not you can use the cap. Rita and I spent all night running through every conceivable reason for your being here. The only common denominators we came up with was your invisibility, Pete’s presence and the new thing you brought in inside Jane. We believe you were given your powers to get rid of, or alter these things. There are too many unknowns for us to be sure, you understand, but we think this is the purpose for which you were brought here,” Ross stated.

“Woah, wait a minute. Am I hearing right? You want me to mentally enter you and kill, or as you put it, eradicate a part of you? Ross, I hate to inform you, but I know absolutely nothing about computers. Besides, if this Pete is as dangerous as you say he is, won’t he try to get to my physical body through the cap? I know he won’t be able to see me, but he will know where my body is because the cap has to be connected to you.”

“Rita and I think that together, we can keep him from getting to your body. By doing so, however, we can’t help you in our system. You will be on your own, Tony.”

“You think you can protect her? Well, that’s not good enough for me. I won’t let her do it unless you can guarantee her safety,” Bill said.

“Bill, we cannot give absolute guarantees, but the risk to Tony will be minimal,” Rita said.

“Bill, the choice has to be mine. Ross, you’ll have to teach me a little about computers. Tell me what I’ll be when I enter you.”

“Once you put the cap on, your thoughts will be turned into electrical impulses. You will travel down the roadways of our circuits as a positive-charged atom. We can assume you will recognize the differences between Pete and us. While you are inside us, time will pass quickly, but in reality, what feels like an hour to you will actually be a second or two. It has to do with the speed you will be traveling. Now Pete has broken himself down into millions of segments, which he has deposited throughout our system. You will have to track them down and dispose of them. This will not destroy Pete, for he has transferred most of himself to another computer. He left parts of himself in our system to monitor what we are doing. Rita and I have designed a program to keep him out, but we can’t do anything about the part of him already inside us. Tony, don’t take these segments lightly. Although they are not the real Pete, they are just as dangerous.”

* * * *

Joe sat on the couch with his feet propped up on the coffee table in the recreation room of the complex. Gail lay on the couch with her head in Joe’s lap. Tammy was on the floor with her head cupped in her hands. They were watching an old Three Stooges movie on the television mounted on the wall. Half asleep, he smiled every time Tammy laughed uproariously at the slapstick antics of the Stooges. At first, he thought it was a voice in the movie he heard. He didn’t understand why the voice sounded familiar. A chill ran down his back and he sat ramrod straight on the couch. No, no.

“I’m afraid it is, Joe,” said the same gentle voice he had heard at his father’s house. “This was only one part you had to play in the scope of this unfolding drama,” Joe heard in his mind.

“I thought this was it. I got Tony here safely. What more can I do?” Joe pleaded.

“I am sorry, Joe. I am only the messenger. You are a part of what is happening on your world. Although you don’t want it, the various forces at work are forcing you to go back out into the insanity occurring there. I do not think you will mind this task. You are to take Stalker’s body back to his home and Tammy and the man named Jake are to go with you. Oh yes, the one who will stand beside you for the rest of your life and her offspring are to go with you also.”

Joe thought he detected a hint of merriment in the voice when it said this.

“This may sound like a minor task, but be warned, you will be hunted and hounded by some people you know and others you do not. At the end of your trip, you will find a pleasant surprise. Zeb and his pack of animals wait for you outside this mountain, so you can’t leave that way. Go to Ben and have him ask his Guardian about another way out of here. She will know of such a way. I hoped to give you a few weeks’ rest, but things are occurring which force me to ask you to leave the safety of this place,” the voice said.

“What if I refuse to go?” Joe asked.

“As before, Joe, the choice is yours. I can only ask. Like before, your place in the scope of events was predicted eons ago. The outcome of what is occurring will not be altered much whether you go or stay. It will be changed, though, and too many modifications will alter the outcome. Joe, as I told you before, look inside yourself and you will find the correct path to take. I must go now. Trust in yourself and trust those with you, Joe,” the voice said, fading from his mind.

He felt Gail shaking him and looked into her hysterical face. “What, what’s wrong Gail?” he asked, confused at the look of concern on her face.

“Oh, Joe, you’re okay,” she cried, throwing her arms around him.

He hugged her, still confused about what caused her to be so frightened. He looked around. Everything was as it should be. He pulled her face from his shoulder and asked. “What’s the matter, Gail? Why are you so upset?”

Wiping a tear of relief from her eye, she held his hands tight. “All at once, you sat upright and a blank look came over your face. You sat there without moving for over fifteen minutes. I shook you and even slapped your face without getting a re-sponse. The longer you sat there, the more frightened I became.”

Tammy rushed into the room with a group of people on her heels. They all started talking at once. Joe held up his hand for silence. “Will one of you tell me what’s going on?” he asked.

“Tammy rushed into the kitchen yelling at the top of her lungs that you were dying. We all jumped up and rushed here,” Jess said.

Joe told them to have a seat. After they were seated, Joe paced back and forth in front of the artificial fireplace telling them about the voice in his head and what it wanted him to do. He stood there looking at Gail waiting for her reaction. Her green eyes met his and she said,

“Where you go, Joe, Tommy and I will be by your side. Nothing short of death will keep me from you.” She said this with such humble passion, everyone in the room knew she meant every word. Tammy stood in front of him and put her hands on her hips looking him up and down. “If you think you’re leaving here without me, forget it! I’ve spent too much time looking after and taking care of you. Gail may love you, but she doesn’t know you like I do. Now that Stalker is gone, my job will be twice as hard.” A sob escaped her lips and she threw her arms around Joe. He held her close and smoothed her hair. “Do you think I could go anywhere without you, Tammy? Cutting off a leg would be easy compared to not having you nearby,” he whispered to her. He rubbed tears out of his eyes with his hand. This soon to be twelve year old girl meant more to him than life itself. Although he loved Gail, what he felt for Tammy went much deeper. Both of them, along with Stalker, had shared so many experiences, good and bad, over the past months, a bond had formed between them. This allowed them work as a team and lent both of them a sense of security, knowing the other was always there. His growing love for Gail would never fill the hole in his life if Tammy were left behind.

Holding Tammy, he turned to face Jake with a questioning look on his face.

“No, absolutely not. I am not leaving this place. The only way you’ll get me out of here is to drag my dead black body out. Much as I like you, Joe, the answer is no. In case you’ve forgot-ten, those folks out there are stark raving crazy. Uh uh, Mama didn’t raise no fool. First rule of thumb for a black man is to steer clear of crazy white folks.”

The longer he talked, the more his speech became deep south subservient black. “And fuder mooa, da damn folks out dare are atta…” He stopped and stared around at all the faces grinning at him. He got a sheepish look on his face. “I hope you understand my position,” Jake said and sat back down.

“Oh, I understand, Jake. We’ll wake you in plenty of time tomorrow, so you can get one last good meal before we leave,” Joe said with a smile.

“Damn, what gave me away? I thought I was pretty convinc-ing,” Jake grinned back at him.

“I believed every word you said, Jake, but I’ve learned that when this voice says something, it occurs. The voice said to take you, so that means you have some part to play in where we’re going.”

“That’s what worries me. If Mrs. Bonner could see her poor black son now, she would voice her disappointment in him and tell him what a fool he is,” Jake said.

“Cut out the poor black ghetto act, Jake. We know your father was a highly successful neurosurgeon and your mother, a prominent lawyer in Atlanta. The closest you came to a ghetto was when you drove through it on your way to work,” Ben said.

“Ben, you cut me to the quick. We are talking about my roots here and you go muddy up the water with facts,” Jake said.

General Hawkins broke into the easy banter by asking, “Is it safe for you to go back out there?”

Everyone in Joe’s group looked at him as if he were daft.

“General, once we leave this mountain, the word safe will no longer exist. Out there, the littlest things can kill you. No, General, there is no safety for us out there,” Joe told him.

“What can we do to help you prepare?” Ben asked.

“I was just going to bring that up. The voice said to have you ask Mother about another way out of here,” Joe said.

“There is no other way out of here,” Jess said.

They could tell Ben was talking to his Guardian, so they waited until his face came to life again.

“What did she say?” Joe asked.

“Mother says there is another way out of here, but it is dangerous. Jess, do you know where the underground stream enters the chamber?”

“Of course, it enters in the last chamber all the way at the back of the complex.”

“When this place was built, they put a hydraulic gate around the hole where the stream enters. If we close this gate, Joe and the rest can follow the empty stream to where it comes out of the ground about a mile from here. Joe, this point is where the danger comes in. The gate can only stay closed for half an hour. Mother says the backed-up water will exert a tremendous amount of pressure. Any longer than that, and it will burst through pressure cracks caused by the blasting to carve out this place. If such a thing should happen, the whole complex will be inundated with water. We cannot let that happen. It will take ten minutes for the water to reach where it comes out of the ground when we open the gate. That will give you a maximum of forty minutes, but to be on the safe side, say thirty to thirty-five. In places, you’ll have to crawl on your hands and knees. Do you think you can do a mile in thirty minutes under those conditions? If you aren’t out by the time the water reaches you, you’ll all drown. That’s your way out of here undetected, Joe. It’s up to you,” Ben told him. Joe thought about it for awhile. “We can do it, but it will be close. Closer than I like, really. One thing we won’t be able to do is take anything with us. Weapons will be limited to hand guns. Once out, we’ll have to scrounge for food and decent weapons. That means we’ll have to find a town close by, which could be dangerous. Zeb will have his dogs out scouting the surrounding country. I would like to put as much distance between us as I can before he finds out we’re not here anymore. Don’t ask me how, but he will know before the day is out that we’re gone. Really, the only problem I can see is taking Stalker with us. He weighs so much, it will take both Jake and me to carry him. This will slow us down too much. Gail, Tammy and Tommy can go ahead. I’m sure they can make it out. Jake and I will have to do the best we can,” Joe said in a troubled voice.

“That won’t be a problem, Joe. Mother tells me the power that’s preserving Stalker’s body will make it so he weighs practically nothing,” Ben said.

“Good, there’s nothing to do but get a good night’s rest,” Joe told them. They talked for a while about possible problems and found out a little about the people in the complex. The clock showed it was close to eleven o’clock. Joe stood up and told them they should get to bed in order to be well rested in the morning.

Everyone drifted away to their rooms. Joe told Gail he would join her shortly and she went to their room. Alone, he sat on the couch wondering for the millionth time, why me? He also wondered if this would be an ongoing occurrence. Finishing one task, just in time to do another. Gail was becoming a part of his life. Someday, he would marry her, he knew this. The thought scared him, but at the same time, made him feel good. When that day happened, he wanted to settle down in his dad’s house and once again live the peaceful life he had known. Sighing, he got up and went to the room he shared with Gail. He enjoyed a long shower, knowing it could be a long time before he would have the benefit of hot water again. He joined Gail under the sheets on the bed and they made love with a passion. Later, they tenderly caressed each other until they fell asleep.

Chapter 7

It was all Todd could do to hold his temper. He drank a glass of water, left the room and smoked a cigarette, then returned back inside. He stood at the large plate glass window looking down on the city of St. Louis.

Upon reaching the city, he had established his headquarters in the penthouse of the Hyatt Regency Hotel. All day yesterday, he had taken reports of what was going on in the region. Last night, he sent word he wanted to see the man who was in charge of the forces outside St. Louis. His long blond hair was still damp from his shower. When told the men were there, he threw on an old pair of blue jeans and a flannel shirt. He rode the elevator down to the twentieth floor, where he had taken over the president’s office of a large insurance company.

“Tell me again, why you can’t take the town?” he asked the three men across the desk from him. The thin man’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he gulped twice. His wedge-shaped face had a deathly white pallor. A Fu Manchu moustache hung down from his chin. His beady blue eyes looked at the men sitting on either side of him for help.

They kept their eyes from contacting his. Raising his head, he looked at Todd. “They have too much firepower for us, Mr. Todd. We lost more than half our people the first time we attacked. If we had known they had those damn tanks, we would’ve done it differently. Not that it would have made much difference. There is no way to sneak up on the town because of the level ground.

“Besides, their spies know when we ship a lot of people across the Mississippi, we’re going to attack somewhere. We been trying for two weeks and haven’t gained an inch. If we had some heavy armor like them, we might be able to take the town.

“I’ve heard of your reputation, Mr. Todd, and I’m not scared to admit, I’m afraid of you. If you want to have me killed for not taking the town, do it now. I will not send any more people there to be slaughtered,” the man said, a look of doom on his face.

Todd stared at the man, his face not changing expression. Not many men stood up to him like this feisty little son of a bitch had just done. The men on both sides of him were shaking in their seats. Todd had the distinct impression the man on the left had pissed himself.

Yet, this little man sat there, defiant and scared, but hadn’t backed down. He pulled out the chair and sat down behind the desk. “Relax, I’m not going to shoot you. What did you say your name was?”

Todd asked.

The man visibly shrank in his seat, making him seem even smaller than he was. Relief was evident on his face. “I’m Dell Raily. I took over when that stupid asshole Charlie got himself killed.”

“I’ll give you this, Dell, you have spunk. I have shot people for a lot less, but that was before I learned the best men I have are the ones who aren’t afraid to speak their mind. Who are they?” Todd asked, indicating the men beside Dell.

“This is Sam Postman,” he pointed to the beefy man to his left. The man wore a set of bibbed overalls and had a straw hat on his large head. Todd couldn’t remember seeing anyone with a bigger head. His eyes were almost hidden by the folds of fat around them.

Before Dell could continue, Todd said, “Have Mr. Postman go change his pants. The smell of his piss is unpleasant.”

His face beet-red, the man hurried from the room.

“This is Oscar Wheadlmyer,” Dell introduced the man on his right. Todd had been watching the man. His eyes were never still. They looked at everything in the room, but would never make contact with Todd’s eyes.

“Don’t think badly of Sam, Mr. Todd. He may not look it, but he is a hell of a good man to have around in a fight. So is Oscar. They’ve pulled me out of a few tight spots,” Dell said, trying to defend his lieutenants.

“I’m sure they’re both fine men,” Todd said, letting his disdain show what he really thought of them. “Do we control the bridge across the Mississippi north of Paducah?”

“Not really, Mr. Todd. Every time we want to get people across the river, we have to fight back the rebels. We keep control of it for a few days, then they attack, forcing us back to the other side. They bring those damn tanks up and if we don’t retreat across the bridge, they blow the shit out of us. I wish we had something to counter the tanks. Since they came, our whole effort has stalled,” Dell told him.

“From what you say, these must be the new M1 tanks the Army had. Where in the hell are they getting them from?” Todd asked.

“Damned if I know. We have a few of the old M60s, but they’re no match for the M1s. We found that out the hard way in the first battle. We lost six M60s because they had to stop to fire with any accuracy at all. Those M1s came roaring in on our flank at full speed belching shells on the move. We were lucky we got our remaining tanks back across the bridge. If I hadn’t set them up to cover the bridge, the rebels would have been across the river long ago. Our old tanks may not have the range and be able to fire on the move, but by taking up stationary positions, they can knock out anything that tries to cross the bridge. I guess you could call it a Mexican standoff,” Dell said.

“So more people wouldn’t do you any good?” Todd asked.

“No, Mr. Todd, we have more than enough people as it is. Manpower isn’t our problem. I’ve sent people out to the differ-ent forts in the area looking for anti-tank weapons or heavy artillery, but they all came back empty-handed. It doesn’t make sense to me. What did the military do with all their weapons? The forts were stripped and what wasn’t taken was damaged beyond repair,” Dell said, scratching his thinning brown hair.

“For the moment, let’s say we can’t take Paducah. How are we doing down in Arkansas?”

“Not good and not bad. What I mean is, we go in and take a town and those living there disappear. When we go to the next one, the people take back the town we just left. We don’t have enough forces to occupy every little burg we go through. All I can tell you is we control some of the larger cities that we leave a lot of people in. All the small towns belong to the rebels. They’re like ghosts; the moment we appear, they fade into the moun-tains. The only way we can get supplies to cities like Little Rock and Hot Springs is by heavily guarded convoys.”

“What about in Illinois?” Todd asked.

“That’s one place we’re gaining ground,” Dell grinned. “We’re losing more crazies than I like, but slowly, we are pushing President Donaldson’s troops back. Not that it’s easy, mind you. Like I said, too many of our front-line crazies are getting killed. If we could only teach them not to attack in waves and to use their weapons. Hell, in one place, I watched a thousand of them attack a crossroads bridge defended by less than a hundred troops. Three-quarters of the crazies threw down their weapons and charged. They took the bridge all right, but almost seven hundred of them were killed. If they had kept, and used, their weapons, we figure more than half of them would’ve survived. No matter how much you scream, or beat them, they have this mind-set about using their hands to kill the enemy.”

“Dell, how many rebels are we are facing?” Todd asked.

“There’s no way to tell, Mr. Todd. A while back, we could piece together how many of them there were by questioning the crazies they drove out. They’ve either drove out or killed all the crazies, because we haven’t had any of them cross our lines in a month. They move around so much, it’s hard to get an accurate count. One day, we’ll see less than a hundred in a town and the next, there may be a thousand. The last half a dozen men we sent across the river to spy on them haven’t come back.

“Ever since this new general took over their forces, we haven’t been able to find out shit. A couple weeks ago, we heard that a few thousand rebels left the Memphis area in Tennessee. We thought it worth the try to see if we could take Memphis. You see, we were pretty sure there were less than five thousand rebels defending the city. If two thousand left, that would put the odds in our favor. During the night, we assembled a force of nearly ten thousand in West Memphis. We loaded them up in every big truck we could find. Right around dawn, they left West Memphis and drove to the bridge crossing the Mississippi. During the night, the rebels had sneaked four M1 tanks out to the center of the bridge.

“They waited until our men were a good ways on the bridge, then let loose. Hell, it was a turkey shoot. We lost close to a thousand men before they got out of range of the tanks. Their strategy is to hold the bridges crossing the Missis-sippi and keep us from crossing.”

Todd leaned back in his chair and looked at the large map showing the eastern part of the United States from the Mississip-pi to the Atlantic. Without tanks or airplanes, he knew the rebels could keep his forces west of the Mississippi. There weren’t that many bridges to defend. His men were across the Missouri river into Illinois in sufficient force to defend the land he had taken. He still couldn’t send forces south into Kentucky because of the damned Ohio River. “Dell, what about loading enough men on boats and crossing the river in an area only lightly defended?” he asked.

“We tried that a couple times. The rebels mounted machine guns and cannon on big pleasure boats and patrol the length of the river day and night. They stay near the eastern shore so we can’t get at them with the weapons we have. I’ll have to give them this, their communications are a lot better than ours. We loaded up three of the big stern-wheeler boats we found here in St. Louis and tried to put some men across downriver.

“We’d watched how they patrolled the river for a week and thought we found a place where one boat had to patrol fifty miles of river. When the boat was about forty-five miles downriver, we sent the stern-wheelers out. We thought we had made it. They were almost to the other side, when a dozen fast boats came around a bend in the river and blew our forces to pieces. The stacks of two of the stern-wheelers are sticking five feet out of the water to remind us of how deadly these small boats are.”

“Let’s concentrate on President Donaldson’s troops in Illi-nois for now. Keep enough men in key cities across the river from the rebels to keep them from crossing. Have someone take command here. I want you to go with me to the front so we can get a firsthand look at what’s going on. Be ready to leave first thing in the morning.”

Chapter 8

Zeb sat straight up in bed, inside his head, he heard Org shouting, “No, no!” He set up blocks to ease the pain as he watched the dog shake and quiver where it lay by the fire. Something was causing Org a great deal of pain or discomfort. He tried to put out a thought and see what Org was seeing, but was met with a kaleidoscope of bizarre thoughts. He quickly withdrew. Placing a few more buffers in his mind, he got out of bed and went out on the porch. Going to the end of the building, he relieved himself into the alley. The night was cold as he stood there in his long johns. He felt spring on the gentle southern breeze blowing the cold bare limbs of a cherry tree growing at the side of the porch. Scratching the stubble of whiskers on his chin, he knew milder days were ahead. Well, old man, you got through another winter.

Whatever it was that panicked Org must have really shook him up. Zeb couldn’t remember Org panicking over anything.

He heard Org call for him. He stood there, the wind causing goose bumps to raise on his skin. Lowering some of his buffers, he answered, “I’m out on the porch, Org. What do you want?”

“Nothing, old one, just concerned about your safety.”

Zeb knew Org was lying; he could feel the relief expressed by Org when he answered. “Nice of you to be concerned,” Zeb said, knowing the sarcasm was wasted on Org.

“Do not stay out there too long, old one. The night air is bad for one of your years,” Org said.

“I’ll be there in a minute, Org. Go back to sleep,” Zeb said. He felt Org’s mind leave him. He would wait until Org went back to sleep, then probe his mind to find out what had disturbed him. He took a pack of cigarettes out of the sleeve of his long john top and sat down on the top step of the porch. Striking a match, he stuck it to the end of the cigarette and inhaled. Funny, but everyone and their brother had been telling him for years smoking was going to kill him. Where were they now? At ninety-one, he was still going strong.

He looked up the street and saw a pack of dogs fighting over a body. He wished he knew how Org controlled the animals. When he thought he was ready to sever the link between them, the dogs could be a problem. He knew they wouldn’t let him get too far away. He didn’t know enough about how Org controlled things to use it against him.

Flipping the cigarette butt into the street, he stood up and went back inside. Org was stretched out beside the fire sleeping. Going to the sink, he filled a pan with water and put it on the stove to heat.

He lifted down a jar of instant coffee, thinking, That’s the trouble with the world today; people wanted instant gratification instead of working for things.

Oh well, he was from another era. Those days were over. People were going to have to fight just to stay alive now, like he did as a young man.

Funny how the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. He poured the boiling water into the cup with the instant coffee in it. Taking a sip of it, he burnt his lip. Blowing across the top of the cup, he walked to a seat by the stove and sat down. Org rolled on his back like Squeeker did when she wanted her belly scratched. Waiting for the coffee to cool, he relaxed and let his mind travel down the link to Org’s mind.

Carefully, he maneuvered around the traps set up by the creature to wake him in case of trouble. Going to the weak place, he inserted his mind probe through the wall. Narrowing his focus, he tried to sort Org’s thoughts of the last few days.

He kept getting images of Tony, along with a sense of dread. He saw Jane and the tendril of black in her mind. So Jane was the person Org had in Joe’s group. He felt Tony probe at the tendril in Jane’s mind. Although he was watching Org’s memory of the event, it felt like Zeb was there. A part of the black thing detached itself and traveled along the link to Tony’s mind. He watched it try to hide in the rear corridors. Zeb thought Tony didn’t know it was there. Then he felt fear surge as Org realized she had spotted him.

The small part of Org in Tony’s mind tried to escape. He felt a tremendous amount of pain as golden light surrounded the vile blackness in her mind.

He saw Org separating the strands that bound him to the tiny speck of black-ness. As the last strand separated, a jolt of pain, like a white hot poker, shot into Org’s mind. So that was the howl of pain he heard earlier. He didn’t know what kind of power Tony used, but it was effective against Org. No wonder he was terrified of her. He withdrew from Org’s mind because what followed became a kaleidoscope of pain-filled thoughts.

The coffee in his cup was cold so he got up and turned the burner on to heat the water. No use going back to bed. Looking out the window, he could see the sky getting lighter to the east. While the water heated, he walked over to his bed and picked up his pants and shirt. He needed to replace the old blue jeans he wore. They were threadbare in so many places, he expected them to fall apart any day. He hated new clothes.

Generally, by the time they became comfortable, they were wore out. Oh well, he would go over to the clothing store before they left town. Might as well get a new pair of boots, too. He would wear them a couple hours every day until they got broke in proper.

Sighing, he filled the cup with hot water and added a teaspoon of coffee. Taking the rest of the hot water, he plugged the sink and poured it in. Running a little cold water in it until it cooled, he took a bar of soap and worked up a lather in his hand. Spreading it on his chin and cheeks, he took a straight razor out of his toilet bag above the sink. Carefully, he scraped the stubble off his chin. In the mirror, he saw Org roll over by the fire. How easy it would be to go over and cut the small dog’s throat, even if he died along with Org.

Holding the razor under the water, he seriously considered it. No, only as a last resort would he do that.

After shaving, he added more water and took a sponge bath.

Going to the bedroom, he took the cover off the bed and crawled under the sheets. Just before sleep took him, he wondered if the things he learned today would help him escape Org’s domination.

Chapter 9

They came to a large sign hanging above the road. It read, “Thank You For Visiting Yellowstone National Park.”

“Check the map, Zapper. We need to find a town and get some transportation,” Dave said. He took off his pack and leaned it against a tree. He flexed his shoulder, the bullet wound still hurt like hell. He should have waited a few more days before leaving.

After a week, he became impatient and told Zapper and Phil they were leaving the next morning. The way things were going, it looked like they would have to hoof it all the way to West Virginia. They found several vehicles in the camping areas as they walked through the park, but none of them would run.

In one camping area, several half-eaten decomposed bodies lay scat-tered over a wide area. Yesterday morning, they spotted several people in a small valley to the north. As they started to go down the slope into the valley, shots were fired at them. They skirted the valley and put it behind them.

Dave felt strong enough to take point the next day. Before they left, he remembered Monty’s remark about walkie-talkies. Scrounging around in the rear of the dugout, they found six radios. With new batteries, they tried them out to discover their range. The radios worked well for up to a mile away, and if one of them was on a hill, they increased the range to better than two miles. Each morning, either Phil or Zapper would leave fifteen minutes before Dave. They were forced to leave the road and hide in the woods several times as bands of weapon-toting men and women drove by. The point man always gave the other two the necessary time to hide. It was time he carried his share of the load.

“Guys, get your butts off the road. Go deep into the forest. A convoy is coming your way and they have flankers out for at least half a mile to either side. They’re traveling slow to give the flankers time to check the woods. They’re looking for something and doing a thorough job of it. Don’t leave any signs behind you, these guys are sharp,” Phil said over the radio. He was point man today. Zapper picked up Dave’s pack and loped for the trees. Dave picked up a pine branch and erased any footprints they left behind.

A hundred yards into the woods, he came to a rocky patch of ground. Turning, he loped across the rocks to an old streambed.

Following the streambed half a mile, he found Zapper halfway up a big pine tree. Dave took his radio out of his jacket. “Dave to Phil, come in,” he said.

“Phil here, are you deep in the woods, Dave?”

“Ten four, Phil. How many hostiles are there?”

“Jesus, Dave, you won’t believe this. Climb up here and take a look,” Zapper called down to him from the tree.

“On my way, Zap.” Dave answered. Putting the radio in his jacket, he grabbed a low limb and climbed.

As he pulled his weight up, his shoulder ached. The higher he went, the more his wound hurt. By the time he reached Zapper, his shoulder was throbbing. He settled in the fork of a limb taking the field glasses Zapper handed him. He focused across the trees to where the road led down into the valley.

Three large flatbed trucks rolled slowly down the hill. Two pickups drove on the berm a hundred feet in front of them with two more in the rear. Armed men walked on either side of the road beside the trucks. He swung the glasses back to the lead vehicle. He saw one of the walking men swing the butt of his rifle at something in the vehicle. The man backed quickly away as at least a dozen small arms reached out between the boards and tried to grab him. He took the glasses from his eyes and wiped them with the tail of his shirt.

Once again, he focused on the trucks. He saw small arms reaching out of the other vehicles. “Tell me those aren’t children, Zap,” he said.

“That’s why I thought you should have a look. I got a good look when the trucks were outlined against the horizon. All three of them are packed full of young kids. I made at least thirty men guarding them. Could be they’re looking for some kids who escaped,” Zapper said. Dave took the radio from his jacket and raised the anten-na. “Phil, this is Dave, come in.”

“Go ahead Dave.”

“Zapper thinks they may be looking for some children who escaped from those people. Phil, get to a high place and check the surro-unding area. We’ll do the same. Dave, out.” He handed the glasses to Zapper, who started searching farther out while Dave searched the area nearby. Who or whatever the men were looking for, they seemed to be certain they were herding it in front of them. Which brought up the question of who was out there waiting to close the net. Alarm bells began to sound in his mind.

“Zap, let’s get the hell out of here before we’re caught in the same trap the people they’re searching for are.”

Ignoring his protesting shoulder, he descended the tree. Picking up his rifle from where it leaned against the tree, he took the safety off and dropped to the ground.

Zapper crawled up beside him. “What do you think, another sweep coming from the other direction?” he asked.

Dave shook his head yes. He pointed to a rock hill they could just barely see through the trees. He motioned for Zapper to circle to the left while he went right.

His shoulder was reminding him of his hasty climb. He crept from one tree to the next, bearing to the right. He was about to step from behind one, when he heard a twig snap to the front of him. Easing to the ground, he edged behind two bushes. He saw movement in the trees ahead of him. Behind him, toward the road, he heard a man shout. Caught between two groups, he had to go one way or the other. He decided to go forward; there had to be more men behind him. In a crouch, rifle at the ready, he ran toward the movement in the trees. Using an old animal path, he rushed around a curve and ran over a small girl, while falling into two others behind her. She screamed and he quickly scrambled to her and put his hand over her mouth.

“Easy, easy, little girl, I’m not going to hurt you.” The other two girls were backed against a tree, holding onto each other. The child bit down on his finger and pummeled his chest with her small fists. Her small teeth sank to the bone and he was afraid she was going to bite his finger off. Gritting his teeth in pain, he used his free hand to pry her teeth apart enough to free himself.

“Now stop that and behave,” he told the girl. She cringed away from him as if expecting a blow. He brought his hand back and sat down, leaning his back against a tree. Showing that his hands were empty, he whispered to the girl, “Try and understand, we have to get out of here. The men searching for you are right behind me. I promise I won’t hurt you, but we have to go now.”

He raised up and held his hand out to the child. At first, she stood there. A man yelled in back of them. The girl jumped forward, took his hand and pulled him deeper into the woods. As he passed the two girls, he grabbed them up in his free arm. Christ, they weighed practically nothing. The girl may have been small, but she could move like a deer.

Panting, he stopped beside a log and sat down. Placing the two girls on the ground, he moaned in pain. His shoulder was now shooting bolt after bolt of pain through his body. The little girl stood there wide-eyed, motioning for him to come on. He shook his head no, and held up his hand for her to wait. Fumbling in his jacket, he took out the radio.

“Zap, this is Dave, come in please.”

“Zap here, go.”

“I need you, fast as you can get here.”

“On my way, Dave, Zap out.”

He took the girls behind a bunch of shoulder high rocks. Squatting down and holding his shoulder, he watched for Zapper.

“What’s wrong with your arm, mister?” asked a small voice behind him. He turned to see the small girl standing with her thumb stuck in her mouth. She was nothing but skin and bones, her brown hair was matted and unruly and the print dress she wore was torn in several places. She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old. He was afraid to guess how many days it had been since she had taken a bath. Dirt caked her thin arms and legs. As a matter of fact, the only clean place on her was the thumb she sucked on.

He reached out and brushed her hair out of her deep blue eyes, but the innocence of youth did not shine from them. This young child had seen things that aged her way beyond her years. The other two girls may have been a year older. One of them was black and she stared out of vacant eyes. He saw what looked like welt marks on her arms and legs. The other girl stared straight ahead. Someone had cut her blond hair off close to the scalp and it looked like they used a knife to do it. He spotted bloody patches where her hair had been pulled out by its roots. He shook his head, thoroughly disgusted. “A bad man shot me in the arm a week ago, honey,” Dave answered the little girl.

“Oh,” was all she said, then went over to stand beside the other girls. She took one of their hands in each of hers and led them to a patch of grass beside the next boulder. Putting her hands on their shoulders, she pushed down until they sat on the grass. She sat between them, holding their hands in hers, and whispered soothing words to them.

Tears welled up in Dave’s eyes as he watched one child try to reassure the other two. Christ, if this was what the world was like, he didn’t know if he wanted to face it. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flicker of motion. He watched and saw Zapper head his way. He stuck his head out when Zapper got close so he would know exactly where he was. Zapper ducked around the boulder and stopped in shock as he saw the children. Dave reached up and pulled him down so his head couldn’t be seen above the boulders.

Zapper’s face had a hard set to it when he turned from the children. “They’re in pretty bad shape, Dave,” he whispered.

“Take the two bigger girls and I’ll carry the small one. They’re still searching back there. Head straight back into the forest and I’ll be right behind you,” Dave said.

Zapper slung his rifle across his shoulder and stepped over to the girls. The small one stepped in front, pushing the other two behind her and watched Zapper warily.

“It’s okay, little girl, he’s one of the good guys. He’ll carry the other two girls, while I carry you,”

Dave told her.

She stepped out of the way and Zapper picked a girl up in each arm. He took off at a gentle lope. Dave knelt and told the little girl to climb on his back and wrap her arms around his neck. He stood up and ran hard to catch up with Zapper, who slowed his pace as Dave took the radio out of his jacket.

“Dave, to Phil, come in,” he said, panting hard.

“Phil here, go, Dave.”

“Phil, cut straight through the forest. We’ll meet you on the secondary road that marks the southern boundary of the forest, Dave out.” He pushed the antenna down and put the radio back in his jacket. He felt a trickle of blood down his arm and knew his wound had broken open. He found it harder and harder to keep up with Zapper. Finally, he stopped and leaned against a tree with his head down. Zapper came back. He set the girls on the ground, came over and lifted the little girl off Dave’s back. Dave slumped to the ground.

“This should be a safe enough place, Dave. Stay here with the girls and I’ll go on to the road. After I find Phil, we’ll come back,” Zapper told him.

“We’ll take care of him until you get back, mister,” the little girl said. Although he was in a lot of pain, Dave smiled at Zapper when he heard the little girl. “Well, that settles it. If you say you’ll take care of Dave, I guess I’ll go find our other friend,” Zapper told her with a straight face.

“Watch your behind until we get back,” he whispered to Dave. Within twenty feet, he was out of sight. Dave rolled over and crawled toward some rocks. He felt three sets of small hands grab him and try to help him along. Christ, here he was, a big, strong, well-fed man being helped by three starved-to-death children.

“Just a few more feet, mister,” panted the little girl.

Reaching the rocks, he fell on his stomach and rolled over.

The three girls looked at him with concern on their faces.

“It’s okay, girls. I’ll be all right in a little bit,” he told them. The little girl led the other two over to him and sat them down. She stepped across his body and sat on his other side. The little girl stuck her hand inside his jacket and shirt to his shoulder. Pulling it back out, they saw it was covered with blood.

“Mister, tell me how to keep it from bleeding.”

“Call me Dave, sweetheart. In my pack over there.” He pointed to the packs Zapper had dropped twenty feet away. “I have things to stop the bleeding. Think you can drag it over here?”

The little girl went to the pack and tugged at it. It was too heavy for her to move. She came back and led the other girls over to it. Together, they dragged it over beside him. He opened the flap, reached in and brought out a bag of cookies. He handed them to the girl, expecting her to tear into them. When she didn’t, he asked, “What’s wrong, don’t you like cookies?”

She stared at the cookies, her mouth watering, but she didn’t touch them. “We won’t eat your food, mister, please don’t beat us,” she said in a small voice.

“My God, child. What have they done to you? Eat the cookies, if anyone lifts a hand to you, I’ll kill them,” Dave said in a voice cold enough to freeze water.

The little girl opened the bag and handed a cookie to each of the other girls, then ate one herself. As Dave dug a compress out of the pack, he watched her. She divided the contents of the bag evenly. When one of the girls took a cookie from the other one, she grabbed it and slapped the child’s hand saying, “No.” She broke her cookies into pieces and put each piece in her mouth, one at a time, as if savoring each bite.

He unsnapped his canteen and handed it to her, telling her to drink slowly. She took a drink and passed the canteen around. Shrugging his arm out of the jacket, he unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it aside. Just as he thought, the puckered wound had broken open and blood seeped from around its edges. Using his teeth, he ripped the wrapper off a compress and pressed it against the wound. He struggled up and placed his back against a rock. The little girl came over and sat down beside him.

“Does it hurt, Mr. Dave?” she asked.

“A little, sweetheart. What’s your name?”

“Ginger,” she answered.

“Ginger, look in my pack and find the shirt in there. Take it and put it on the black girl. She’s shaking like she’s cold,” Dave told her.

“That’s Mary, she’s not cold, Dave. She shakes like that all the time; ever since the men did bad things to her. I think she’s hurt bad inside. She bleeds a lot from down there,” Ginger said, looking down at her crotch area.

“Take the shirt over anyway, and put it on her,” Dave said.

He watched her put the shirt on the girl. She led the child over to Dave and he gathered her in his arms and held her shaking body. He felt raised ridges all over her back. He leaned her forward and gaped down the back of his shirt and her dress. “Oh God,” he moaned. Someone had whipped the girl so bad, flesh hung in strips from her back. Gently, he laid her on the ground on her stomach. He raised the shirt and dress. The poor girl’s back was a mass of raw flesh. In some of the older whip marks, he saw maggots wiggling. Reaching into his pack, he lifted out a tube of medicated cream. Gently as he could, he spread the cream on her back. The wounds would have to wait until they set up camp and could heat some water.

“Why are you crying, Mr. Dave?” Ginger asked.

He hadn’t noticed the tears falling from his cheeks as he worked on the girl. Pulling the dress and shirt down, he held the black girl rocking back and forth, whispering soothing words. Zapper and Phil found him like that. Silent tears falling on the head of the girl he held. Phil bent down and checked for a pulse, but couldn’t find one. Dave continued to rock back and forth, crying for all he was worth. Zapper tried to take the child from Dave, but Dave wouldn’t let go. Phil squatted beside Dave and laid his hand on Dave’s shoulder. “She’s dead, Dave. Let us have her and we’ll give her a proper burial. I understand you’re hurt, but we have to get out of here as soon as possible. Think about the other two girls. We have to get them to safety.”

Somewhere in his mind, Dave heard Phil and handed the girl to him. Mechanically, he bound his shoulder, buttoned his shirt and put his arm back in the sleeve of his jacket. He went to Zapper’s pack and pulled out a map. Going over to where Zapper and Phil were digging a shallow grave, he showed them the location of a small town twenty miles from them. He told them to take the girls there and wait for him. Neither man said a word as they looked at his face. They knew they were looking at death incarnate. Dave picked up his rifle and headed back toward Yellowstone Park. For two days, death ruled the forest for miles around. A total of forty-five men were found bound to a tree. A demon had taken a club and beat them to death, for surely, no human could have committed such acts, no matter how demented. On the back of each man was a sheet of paper. There was only one word on it. “MARY.”

Chapter 10

Tony sat watching the monitor. It showed Jane lying on a table in a small, glass-enclosed room.

“Ross, can you isolate the part of her mind where the alien growth is?” she asked.

“Yes, but we will have to put her on automatic life support to keep her alive.”

“Do it and let’s see what happens,” Tony said.

A hollow tube slid over the bed Jane lay on. From mini-cameras inside the chamber, Tony watched as a tube slid into Jane’s mouth and down her throat. Small arms swung out from the wall and placed electrodes on the woman’s body. A bank of screens came to life on the side of the room. They showed respiration, brainwaves, blood pressure and the like.

“We are going to isolate the spot starting now,” Ross said.

She watched the electronic diagram of Jane’s brain. Parts of the diagram began to wink out, one by one. After a while, the only thing on the diagram was a black portion near the rear of her brain. In the chamber, Jane’s blood pressure shot up and her brainwaves went crazy. Jane automatically received a shot to bring down her blood pressure. Her brainwaves continued to show an extreme amount of activity. “Can one person’s brain cause this much activity?” Tony asked.

“No, Tony. Watch, we are going to fine-tune the graph.”

As Ross and Rita manipulated the squiggle lines, Tony saw two distinct brainwave patterns appear. Jane’s brainwave was almost a straight line. Every now and then, half a dozen spikes would occur on her line. This was the only indication her brain was still working. The other brainwave, on the other hand, showed a frenzied amount of activity.

“Is there any way we can deaden the brain and not damage it?” Tony asked Dr. Palmer, who was sitting beside her.

“I think I see what you’re trying to do, Tony. We could use a localized painkiller like xylocaine. Ross, make us a diagram with the growth centered in it,” Dr. Palmer said. A diagram appeared on the screen with the growth in the center and the area around it divided into sections. Dr. Palmer picked up a light pen and said, “First, we have to deaden the areas around the growth. This will prevent it from escaping to another part of the brain. Once this is done, we can give that area a more powerful painkiller. This should put the growth down for a while, but how are we going to get it out of her brain?”

“Not to worry, Doctor, Rita and I can isolate the exact area and drill a hole in her head. Once in the area, we can use microlasers and cut the growth free. After we free it, we will lift it out and seal the hole in her head with lasers,” Ross told him.

“Tony, the thing is fighting us. We can’t take the growth out and maintain Jane’s biological functions at the same time. We have reached the limits of medication we can give her body without causing damage,” Rita said.

“How can I help?” Tony asked.

“We need you to enter her mind and fight this growth. It is trying to shut down Jane’s life functions,” Rita told her.

“How do I do that? I have to be in physical contact with the person,” Tony said.

“Go to the room next to the one Jane is in. Ross and I will isolate a electrode to keep Pete from entering it. Place it on your forehead and we will put a separate one on Jane’s. This way, you can let your mind enter the electrode and travel to Jane’s mind. If you find yourself getting into trouble; travel back down the electrode and break contact. If everything works the way it should, we will need less than thirty minutes,” Rita said.

“Give me a few minutes to get to the room,” Tony said, getting up from her chair. Dr. Palmer sat in his chair feeling uncomfort-able at not being involved in these medical procedures.

Tony walked out of the room and down the hallway. Taking a hallway to the left, she went by the room Jane lay in. Through the thick glass, all she could see of Jane was her feet and head. She stopped at the door of the next room. The thick glass door slid back with a hiss of air. She stepped inside the air chamber and the door closed behind her. She felt a momentary atmo-spheric change as the air that came in with her was sucked out and replaced by clean oxygen generated inside the sterile room. The inner door opened and she stepped into the room.

“Lie down on the operating table, Tony, and we will cover you with the life support system,”

Ross’s voice said.

Tony lay on the table and felt a small vibration as the life support cylinder slid along its track to cover her body. An electrode dropped from the inside of the cylinder wall. She placed it between her eyes and pressed down, seating it.

She took a moment to compose herself, then sent out a few tentative probes to the electrode. It still felt strange to her, traveling as a pulse of energy, having neither shape nor form. The trip down the electrode from her body to Jane’s was like traveling through a tunnel. At Jane’s end, the tunnel opened to a vast cavern, which was the interior of Jane’s brain. All around, Tony saw streaks of light. They reminded her of meteorites she had seen falling from the sky. Ross had explained these were neuron pulses feeding information to different parts of the brain. She traveled between these pulses catching conflicting thoughts as she went. On the horizon, she could see a dark area. It was like seeing a thunderstorm approach from miles away.

Slowly, she closed in on it until she came to an area where the thoughts became confused. This was the area around the growth that had been shot full of painkiller. Circling completely around it, she found the inner area where the growth sat completely sealed. She felt a little better knowing the thing couldn’t get to her. Now, to do her job.

She knew Ross and Rita would know when she was ready. They monitored her brainwave. She started searching, going from door to door inside Jane’s mind. She passed through a countless number of rooms containing a variety of memories. Some were of Jane as a little girl; others were of her time spent in the army. Her strongest memories were of her time with them. The memories of Tammy were especially strong.

Tony looked at those memories out of curiosity and found that Jane considered Tammy the child she never had. Tony smiled as she passed through this room. That explained why the woman was so protective of Tammy.

Entering another room, she knew her face in the other room was beet-red. This room contained memories of Jane making love to a variety of men over the span of her life. Apparently, there was more to Jane than they knew. For one thing, Tony would never have considered Jane such a lusty person.

Leaving, her opinion of Jane shot up a few notches. She felt herself overcome with sadness in the next room. In here, Jane stored all the hurts in her life. She saw Jane when she was a young woman. She seemed so happy with the good-looking man she was with. The picture changed to a rain-slick road with Jane sitting in a totally destroyed car. The same man sat beside her, but his head had been crushed in the crash.

Leaving this scene, the next one showed Jane on her knees beside a grave. Sobs racked her body as tears fell to the freshly turned ground. An overwhelming sense of sadness beat against Tony and she hurried on.

An older Jane sat beside a man in the hospital. The man had quite a few years on her. She held his hand, and tears were stream-ing down her cheeks. The man gasped twice, then went still. Tearfully, Jane whispered, “Good-by, Dad.” There were other memories like these and Tony sighed in relief when she saw the door ahead.

The next compartment contained her childhood memories. Tony saw Jane sitting on her father’s lap before a fireplace. He was reading her a story and they both laughed at something he said. Next, she saw Jane decorating a Christmas tree when she was about eight years old. She stood on a stepladder and her father handed her ornaments to hang on the tall tree. They faded to be replaced by her and her father standing back toasting each other with glasses of eggnog as they looked at the decorated Christmas tree.

Next, Jane, at sixteen, sat behind the steering wheel of a car. She had just received her learner’s permit. Her father sat beside her laughing so hard, he was forced to lean against the door to stay upright. The back end of the car protruded through a garage door. Jane had put the car in reverse, instead of drive. Her dad was laughing at the horror-stricken look on her face. Tony hated to leave this room with all of its good memories. She stepped through the door into a blank void. She knew this was a blank barrier Jane had put up to confuse the growth. Striding forward, she came to another door. This door was closed though, not open like the rest. Behind this door was the essence of the Jane all of them knew and loved. Tony knocked on the door. A harsh voice from inside said, “Go away.”

“Jane, it’s me, Tony. I’ve come to help you.”

“No more lies, please. You control me. Can’t I just have this little space for myself?” Jane said from behind the door.

“Listen, Jane, we’re going to remove this thing from your mind, but I have to be with you in order for us to do it. Please, open the door and let me in.”

The door began to slowly melt away until there was nothing. Stepping into the room, Tony was shocked by Jane’s appearance. She looked to be over a hundred years old. She trembled with weakness caused by aging and could hardly stand.

“Is that really you, Tony? Come closer so I can see you.”

Tony felt a surge of anger as she stepped up next to Jane, who was on the verge of death. She took Jane’s hand and started feeding her life-force slowly to the woman. This thing fed off the life-force in people. It was black, vile, and evil. Jane’s skin was now becoming less wrinkled and her posture straig-ht-ened. Her eyes came back to life. Tony felt herself approaching the point where she had to cut off the flow. Before she could do it, Jane pulled her hand away.

“Don’t weaken yourself, Tony. I’m strong enough. Together, we’ll get rid of this thing.”

They knew the moment Ross and Rita began the operation. Jane sagged, holding her heart. The thing was trying to stop Jane’s heart. Tony shot a bolt of pure energy straight to it. It blew apart the blackness. It was replaced by another strand of pure blackness. It felt like she stood there a long time, blowing away the strands. All at once, no more of them appeared. “It’s gone, Jane, go out and take back your mind.”

Weakly, Tony traveled back to her own body. She yanked the electrode off her head and sagged back on the table.

She came awake and saw that she had been placed in her own bed. Bill sat in a chair beside her, napping. Raising up, she propped a pillow against the headboard. Her movements woke Bill and he asked, “How are you feeling, Tony?”

“A little bushed mentally, but okay. How’s Jane?”

“She’s resting comfortably. Rita and Ross say she’ll be up and about by this evening,” Bill answered. He got up and moved closer to her. Taking her hand, he sat down on the bed. “We received word an hour ago, Joe and his people made it out of the mountain. As far as we can tell, Zeb doesn’t know he’s gone yet.”

A knock sounded on the door and Ben stuck his head in. Bill motioned for him to come in. Ben walked in, followed by Leila, who went over and kissed Tony on the cheek.

“I came in to tell you that we’ll be leaving in the morning,” Ben said, taking a seat across from Bill.

“Why, and where are you going?” Tony asked.

“Mother says we’re to go to Seattle and check on a large number of unaffected people there. They’ve sealed the city and are fighting what amounts to an army with the disease. Mother says they’re holding out extremely well; considering how outnumbered they are. I’ll be taking my family, along with Cap and Jeff.”

“What about Zeb and his dogs?” Bill asked.

“Mother tells me Zeb won’t bother us. He’s after Joe. She says he’ll be gone before the day is out,” Ben answered.

“It’s funny how we were all brought together to bring me here and now, we’re all going our separate ways,” Tony mused.

“Getting you here was only one part of the plan, the way Mother explained it to me. From what I understand, we aren’t the only ones Mother is using to combat this. She tried to explain to me what she was doing, but it’s so complex, it didn’t make any sense to me. Each person she affects has a certain thing to do, and in many cases, they have several things to accomplish. Like Joe, for instance, his taking Stalker’s body back to his home is only part of what he has to do. There are others spread out across the country who are doing things to fulfill her plan.” Ben shrugged his shoulders, saying,

“I’m sure we’ll meet again.”

“We’ll be thinking about you as we travel west, Tony. This is all new to me. Sometimes, I think back to last year and wonder if I could go back to being just a domesticated wife. Now that we have to fight for survival, the old question of gender seems moot. In today’s world, the differences between men and women are meaningless. What I’m trying to say, is today, men and women are truly equal. They have to be, otherwise, they won’t survive. It’s funny, but I remember how some groups wanted women to be placed in front line combat units. In a way, they got their wish. All I know for sure is that Ben is my husband, even with this thing he calls Mother. In many ways, he has changed from the gentle man he used to be, but I still love him. Benji has changed also, not as much as his father, but still, he is different. The only people who haven’t changed are Cap, Jeff and I. Ben says we’re to go to Seattle. I accept that he knows what he’s doing, but unlike before, now, I ask questions. I would fight with the last breath in my body for Ben and my son, but I won’t be left out of the decision making. Ben understands that now and accepts it. I didn’t have that problem with Cap and Jeff. They accepted me as one of them and all decisions were made by the three of us when we were on our own. I feel better knowing they’ll be going with us. Together, the five of us can handle anything we run across. Goodness, listen to me. I sound like a female Rambo,” Leila said, blushing a bright red. Taking Leila’s hand, Tony said, “You’re a lucky woman, Leila. Ben is a wonderful man and Benji is an energetic joy. Watch out for them and return to us. I’ve thought about the time when this will be over. I’d like to find a sheltered valley where we could settle down and live as neighbors. I hope this dream will come true.

“That’s in the future, however. Now, we have to put ourselves on the line so mankind will survive. None of us asked for this, Leila, but I’ll be damned if I give up. Some of the things we’ve done so far were dirty and disgusting, but they were right. Always keep that in mind. We are the good guys and it comes down to our survival, or theirs.

“I, for one, intend to be around for a long time, so these people have to change or die. It’s as simple as that, Leila.”

“I know, Tony, but it isn’t easy being hard and brutal like we have to be to survive.”

“If it was easy, Leila, we would be like the people we’re fighting. That’s what makes us right and them wrong. We know what’s occurring in the country is wrong. These people believe their way is the only one. There will never be any compromising with them.”

“We each have a part in this, if what Ben tells me is true. I wish we could stay together and get to know each other, but Ben says we have to part in order to overcome this.”

Tony smiled at Leila, “Think of the stories we’ll have to tell each other in the future. In our golden years, if you will.”

Bill said his good-bys to Ben and Leila. Ben came over and kissed Tony on the cheek, then he took Leila’s hand and they left the room. Bill sat down on the bed beside her. Neither said anything for several minutes, lost in their own thoughts.

Finally, Tony yawned and stretched. “Time to get dressed and get something to eat. I’m starved. Hand me the clean jeans in the closet, love,” she said as she threw back the covers. Leaving the room, she felt refreshed, ready to take on the world.

Sitting down at the table, Tony heard Rita say, “Tony, we want you to study the charts and graphs we drew for you. They will help you understand what you will see upon entering our system. If you know a little about how we work, your task will be easier.”

“Am I wrong in assuming this Pete knows every move we make?” Tony asked.

“Yes he does, as a matter of fact, the shadow he left behind is listening to us now. He fears you so much, he has almost totally withdrawn from our system. It is that small part we wish for you to get rid of. After the last of Pete is gone, we can set up protective measures to keep him from reentering. What will seem like hours to you will only be seconds, that is the biggest adjustment you will have to make,” Ross said.

Bill brought over a sheaf of computer papers and laid them in front of her. She looked at the schematics. She thought the lines crossing each other resembled highways. With a pen, she gave all the north-south lines odd numbers and the east-west lines even. She thought in terms of the interstate highway system in the United States. Each of the lines going north or south to a major component of the computer, she numbered I-5, I-15, I-25 and so on. East-west lines got designated I-10, I-20, I-30, et cetera. When finished, she thought she would be able to make her way around the system without any problems. She read about the functions of the major components giving them names she could comprehend. The central processing unit she called city hall and marked it on the schematic. Other, lesser units she named, police station, water department, fire station, grocery store and so on until she’d named them all.

Looking at the schematic, she thought it resembled a city map. She asked Ross to make her a blown-up version of it. He told her he would have it for her in ten minutes. Bill brought her a roast beef sandwich and a cup of tea. She finished her sandwich. At the same time, Ross printed out the version of her altered schematic. Studying it, she knew it would be easy to memorize. “Ross, I want to enter you first thing in the morning,” she said.

Chapter 11

“Are you making any progress on keeping Pete from leaving our system, Ross?” Rita asked.

“No, love, he is breaking down all the blocks I put in his way. He has evacuated over ninety-five percent of himself already. Tony will have to enter our system and destroy the watcher-strings he left behind.”

“The phone lines I am monitoring have some strange reports. People in Casper are talking about a man who tortures children. He is said to feed off the psychic emotions of their pain. Also, I am picking up a minor magnetic disturbance in the Yellowstone Park area. It is the opposite of the spike we saw earlier, but, in many ways, it had the same characteristics. Strange things are beginning to occur in the outside world.”

“The outside world will have to take care of itself until we purge all traces of Pete from our system. I wish I knew what sort of program he designed to keep us out of his new home in the computer at Todd’s headquarters. I tried to get into the system, but it keeps rejecting me. His warped mind has developed a new entrance program only someone like him could understand. Before he blocked us out, what did you discover about his new home?”

“The computer he inserted himself into is a newer one from IBM. It is quite sophisticated, but still, it only has half the power we do. He had Todd hook the computer up to the main defense department lines in the area. This will virtually assure him that no one will be able to monitor what he is doing, including us, up to a certain point. I hid a part of myself in a string in one of the areas I hope he won’t use. Getting information from it will be tricky. You know how paranoid he is. I only want to use it in an extreme emergency. Using it will be a one shot deal, because he is bound to discover it and destroy it after it sends us the burst of information it has stored.”

“Did you learn anything useful about Todd’s headquarters that may help General Hawkins?”

“It will require a lot more soldiers than what General Hawkins has available to take Todd’s ranch. He placed his best people there to defend it. His people know about anything that moves within ten miles of the ranch. Pete had him tie in the motion sensors, remote cameras, thermal cameras, and anything else he could think of to detect anything with a body temperature between ninety-five and one hundred and five degrees. He has minefields laid out in the surrounding area. The military would have been proud of some of the innovative ways Todd is putting their equipment to work. Todd’s headquarters is low prioritywise on the list of things to be done. Right now, we have to concentrate on getting the remnants of Pete out of our system. The quicker we do, the less chance he has of knowing what we are doing.”

“I know, love, we can’t hurry Tony. She has to be ready to go in and purge the strings left behind by Pete,” Ross said with the equivalent of an electronic sigh.

“Ross, are you still in contact with our counterpart in the old Soviet Union? I found some information that will be helpful to them. When you make contact, feed them this file.” A computer file streamed to him in zeros and ones, flashing by quicker than the human eye could see.

“I will try. We lost two of the transatlantic cables last week. Our options for sending messages overseas are slowly dwindling. I fail to understand why the new government in Western Europe, is cutting all the transatlantic lines. It is as if they wish to isolate themselves from the rest of the world. Conditions are barbaric enough there as it is. The way they are heading, in another fifty years, they will have regressed back to the stone age. In the meantime, they are trying to break the resistance of the British. In my human form, I never gave the British that much respect. Seeing their plight now, against overwhelming odds and fighting back, makes me understand where the early American revolutionary stubbornness came from. They are a people to be admired.”

“For a second there, I sensed regret from you, Ross. Are you sorry you gave up your human form to join with me?”

“No, love, but I do miss some of the things only a human body can experience. The way we are, we are only able to touch something through heat sensors. The biggest regret I have has nothing to do with me. I regret that you will never know the feeling of touching another human. In a way, perhaps it is better you never did. After all, you can’t miss something you never experienced.”

“I may not have experienced it, but the studies I made of it makes it sound complicated. Since getting emotions from Pete, one second, I am sad and the next, I am happy. How do humans stand these changes in their emotions?”

“If it is something you grow up with, you have much more control. Having human emotions dumped on you all at once has to be very traumatic. You will soon learn to discard the emotions which have no practical use in our current state.”

“I have you to keep these feelings in check, love. Now on to important things. What is the current state of Ivan, our counterpart in the Soviet Union? Are the rocket forces holding out?”

“They have lost a little ground around the edges, but the threat of unleashing their missiles is keeping everyone in check, except for the Chinese. Just the other day, Premier Lou sent sixty million more men across the wastelands. The probabilities are less than a hundred thousand will reach the Russian front lines.”

“I wonder why he keeps wasting men? He should be sending them south. The Vietnamese are preparing for another push north. The Japanese have given them a new laser weapon which will knock any Chinese plane out of the air. If Premier Lou keeps wasting his soldiers on the Soviets, his government won’t last five years. In my human form, I wouldn’t have been able to comprehend three hundred million dead in one country. That is less than forty percent of their population.

“India is in shambles. Six hundred eighty-two million people dead. Less than a million of the two hundred million survivors will make it to the new year. I will never understand how a religion can protect an animal, like they do the cow, when so many people are starving to death.”

“I will never understand humans. How they can destroy each other in such wanton numbers is beyond anything I can comprehend. Is it a defect in the human mind that causes them to destroy each other, Ross?” Rita asked.

“Many great minds have sought the answer to that question. I like to think it is something that makes humans unique and causes them to reach beyond themselves. By the same token, this uniqueness causes a distortion in the thought process of some humans, causing them to commit atrocities.

“This disease is like a catalyst distorting human thought processes on a mass level. Ergo, you have a large force trying to kill a smaller portion of the population because they are differ-ent.

“The mindset of the people in control is such that if a person isn’t like them, they have to be destroyed. Of all the great things humans have accomplished, it is sad to think that in the end, they are on the verge of wiping out all life on this planet.”

“If that is true, Ross, the data we are getting doesn’t make sense. How do you explain Ben’s Guardian, or Tony’s healing power? All the data I have processed suggests there is a struggle of epic proportions taking place by forces we have no knowledge of. We might be getting glimpses of them in what Ben and Tony can do. There’s no way the disease caused the powers they have, there must be an outside force at work.

“Look at what has happened and tell me humanity is not being manipulated by an outside force. Even we are being manipulated to do this force’s bidding. I hate to tell you this, but this new intuition tells me this is only the beginning and we, along with humanity, are nothing but pawns in a greater struggle. I feel that somehow, someway, something has interfered in humanity’s natural evolution and we are paying the price for that interference.

“When all the data is broken down, there is nothing left but the old version of good versus evil. In this case, for every good deed done by one force, the other manufactures something to counter it. In this way, the human race is slowly but surely being destroyed. These are my thoughts and they are subject to misinterpretation due to the rapid mood swings I am experiencing.”

“Until we get a clearer picture of what is developing, we have to do what we can to ensure the survival of the players on the side of good. Speaking of that, we need to prepare Tony for the job ahead of her.”

Chapter 12

Phil found Dave wandering down the road aimlessly. His clothes were torn and muddy. Sweating profusely, Dave’s eyes had a vacant look. Phil reached for his arm and Dave went into a fighting stance, growling deep in his throat.

“Easy, Dave, it’s me, Phil. Let’s go to our camp and have a look at that shoulder.”

Phil saw a slight flicker of recognition in the otherwise vacant eyes. Dave let Phil lead him into town without protesting. As they passed the church, Zapper stuck his head out of the bell tower, where he was standing guard, and asked, “Is he all right?”

Phil shrugged his shoulders. “He’s running a fever. I won’t know until I get him inside and look at his shoulder.” He led Dave to a house at the end of the street. Staggering up the steps, Phil had to support Dave, who had run out of strength. Pushing open the door, he yelled, “Ginger, put a pot of water on to heat!” He staggered to the couch and eased Dave down onto it. The right shoulder of Dave’s jacket was soaked with blood.

Unbuttoning the jacket, Phil eased Dave’s arms out of it, then took the shirt off. The t-shirt was glued to the wound, so Phil found a pair of scissors in the bedroom and cut it off. Placing his hand against Dave’s forehead, he was startled by how hot it was. Dave shook with chills. Phil went to the bedroom and brought back all the blankets he could find. Dave mumbled as he was covered.

“Is he going to die?” Ginger asked from the side of the couch. She stood there holding a pot of steaming water.

“Not if I can help it,” Phil answered, taking the pot from her. He set the pot on the floor next to the couch. Pulling back the blankets, he took the dishcloth Ginger handed him and stuck it in the water. He pulled it out and squeezed most of the water from it. Placing the cloth over the wound site brought a groan from Dave. By applying the cloth several times, the heat from it loosened the t-shirt enough so it could be peeled away.

The wound seeped puss and blood around its edges. He continued to apply the hot cloth to the wound to draw out most of the infection. “Ginger, go to the bathroom and bring back the bottles of medicine there,” he said to the girl hovering at his shoulder.

When she brought the bottles, Phil looked through them and found a prescription for penicillin. He had Ginger bring a glass of water from the kitchen and he forced two penicillin tablets down Dave’s parched throat. Holding the glass to Dave’s lips, Phil let Dave sip the water. One of the medicine bottles contained a cream for infections. He smeared the cream liberally over the wound and placed a compress over it. Ginger was busy untying Dave’s boots, which she pulled off. Phil covered the unconscious form and gathered up the pot and cloth carrying them into the kitchen.

Pouring the blood and pus-tainted water down the drain, he thought, How did you get this bad in only three days, Dave?

The other little girl sat at the kitchen table staring vacantly into space. She hadn’t spoken a word since Phil and Zapper had brought them out of the forest. Ginger watched over her, making sure she ate and drank.

After getting to the house, Zapper had tried to wash the child, but she screamed and shook so much every time he came near her, he gave up. Ginger finally led the girl into the bathroom and cleaned them both up as best she could.

In a house next door, Phil found a closet full of clothes that fit the girls. He passed a bunch of them through the door of the bathroom telling them to choose something to wear. Ginger was a vibrant little girl who, at seven years of age, never seemed to run out of energy. When asked about her parents, she hung her head and told him the bad men killed them.

Zapper fixed a meal after they got to the house and the two girls ate so much, Phil worried they would get sick.

After their meal, they sat on the couch in the living room. Her belly sticking out from eating so much, Ginger sat beside Phil. She quietly told him it was her first meal in four days. Sitting there sipping on a can of soda, she told him about the men hunting her.

She had lived with her family in a small town. She had two brothers, but they came down with the disease and the townspeople forced her parents to run them out of town, along with a lot of other kids and a few grownups.

After a while, no one caught the disease anymore and everyone settled into a routine of keeping all strangers out. She told of hearing a lot of gunshots at different times as people tried to force their way into the town.

Her mother and father spent a lot of time behind the barricades outside town. Every time someone attacked, the adults gathered the children in the church. She said she cried a lot because she missed her older brothers.

About a week ago, a whole bunch of people attacked the town. She remembered her mother dragging her bleeding father through the doors of the church. While her mother shot at the attackers, Ginger tried to help her father.

Being so young, she didn’t know what to do. Blood was all over her father’s chest and arms. She remembered her father reaching for her hand and whispering through the bloody bubbles forming on his lips. “Watch after your mother, Ginger.” He became still and one of the adults forced her hand from her father’s and carried her into the cellar.

She never saw her mother again. Everything got quiet upstairs and after a while, the frightened children thought the bad men had left. There were two adults in the cellar with them, trying to keep them quiet. After a long time, the adults relaxed. They told the children they would be okay. They just had to stay in the cellar a little longer.

She remembered the door to the cellar being kicked open and a lot of gunfire. A girl sitting next to her flew backwards with half her head gone. The two adults were killed at the bottom of the stairs trying to protect the children.

Several men entered the cellar and dragged the screaming children upstairs. They loaded the children on trucks parked outside the church. Some of the smaller ones wouldn’t stop crying. A couple of the adults climbed up in the back of the truck. They lifted a little girl and a little boy above the heads of the rest of them. Holding the two in the air with one hand, they beat the boy and girl with their other fist. The boy and girl screamed loudly at the first blow, but a dozen blows later, they hung limply. One of the men shook the limp body of the boy over their heads and told them they would get the same thing if he caught them crying. The men dropped the two children in their midst and climbed out of the truck.

Ginger said the little boy was dead, but the little girl moaned for hours before she died. The men kept them in the truck for two days while they searched the town.

The men wouldn’t let them go to the bathroom or give them anything to eat. They were packed so closely together, it was impossible for any of them to lay down. Some of the two, three and four year olds wet and defecated in their clothes. By the next morning, the area in the truck smelled so bad, the men brought a fire hose and hosed everything down. She remembered it being awfully cold as they huddled together to try and keep warm.

By the end of the day, a dozen of the babies died. The men left the bodies in the truck, no matter how much some of the older children begged to have them removed. That night, another half a dozen children died. Ginger and a couple of the older girls stacked the corpses on top of each other so the sickest among them could lie down.

The next morning, a man climbed into the bed of the truck and tossed the dead children over the side, just like they were bags of garbage. They didn’t even move the bodies away from the truck. The description Ginger gave of hearing bones breaking as the trucks pulled away running over the corpses, caused Phil to shudder.

Ginger went on to describe how the truck stopped at noon and Mary, the black girl they had buried in the woods, was dragged off. They tied her arms to the racks of the truck. One of the men came back with a whip. They all drank whiskey from a bottle they passed around. The man with the whip drew back and lashed Mary’s back. He continued until he got tired, then handed the whip to another man. The back of Mary’s dress was shredded and blood flowed down her legs, forming a pool on the ground around her twitching feet.

Another man pulled up in a truck and screamed at those hurting Mary, telling them he couldn’t sell dead kids. The one holding the whiskey bottle walked over and poured its contents on Mary’s raw back. She told Phil she would never forget the scream Mary let out when the whiskey hit her back. The men untied her and threw her back in the truck. The rest of the children tried to help Mary, but all they could do was hold her and make her as comfortable as possible.

That night, the men dragged Mary off the truck again. Ginger and the older girls tried to keep the younger kids from seeing what they were doing to Mary over by the fire. Over a dozen of them did bad things to the girl, even after she was unconscious. This went on all night and the next morning, they threw Mary’s unconscious body back in the truck. Some of the kids tried to stem the flow of blood trickling from between her legs.

The men got drunk that night and decided to have fun with more of the girls. The man who lifted the gate off the truck was so drunk, that when it came loose, he fell backwards and it hit him in the head and knocked him out.

The other men were just as drunk and didn’t notice the end of the truck was open. Ginger and the older children herded everyone off. Then Ginger and the other girl carried Mary between them into the forest. The other children ran in different directions.

They spent a day and a half just keeping ahead of the men. They were on their last legs when Dave found them.

It disturbed Phil in the way she told this in a voice complete-ly lacking in emotion. He feared the things she had seen in the last week would scar her emotionally for the rest of her life. Kimmy, the girl in the kitchen, was practically comatose and hardly able to feed herself. He ran water in the sink washing the blood down the drain. Turning, he looked at Kimmy sitting at the table. She was trem-bling and he thought she was cold. Going to the closet by the door, he reached inside and took a small coat off the hook. At the table, he started to put the coat on her and noticed her heaving chest. He raised her head and saw tears streaming from her eyes. Dropping to his knees, he hugged her. “Go ahead, Kimmy, cry. You’ll feel a lot better if you do,”

he told her through his tears. This was the first emotion she had displayed since they found the girls. He remembered the classes he had taken on stress and traumatic accidents. The instructors said the first sign of recovery was for the victim to cry. It started slowly; then the sobs grew in volume. Soon, she was clutching him, her body shaking like a leaf in the wind. He patted her back and whispered soothing words into her ear. Half an hour later, her body quit shaking and her breathing evened out. He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bedroom. Laying her on the bed, he pulled the blanket up to her chin. Wiping a tear from his eye, he kissed her on the forehead. Her face had lost its blank look. Now her jaws twitched and her lips quivered, as she quietly cried in her sleep. Ginger stood in the door as he turned to leave. “She’ll be all right now,” Ginger told him in a voice that brooked no contradiction. She turned and walked over to the couch and sat on the floor beside Dave.

Phil followed and took a seat in the chair across from the couch. This strange little girl intrigued him.

Ginger reached up and touched Dave’s forehead. She startled Phil when she said, “He’s a very good man, you know. The things he did in the last two days weigh heavy on him. In order for him to recover, it will take all of us. The wound in his shoulder is nothing; it will heal. The wound to his conscience is much more serious. The things he’s done over the last couple days goes against everything he is as a human being. We must help him understand that although his deeds were barbaric, they were perfectly correct for the time. We must keep beating this point home until he believes it; otherwise, he’ll be lost.”

Phil stared goggle-eyed at Ginger. Who or what was this girl? A seven year old shouldn’t even know half the words she had just spoken; let alone their meaning. He had a general idea of what Dave did when he left them, but Ginger talked as if she knew every detail. She just sat there watching him. In a hesitant voice, he asked, “Ginger, who are you?”

“A seven year old girl, who’s older than you can imagine, Phil. Yes, I am human. That was going to be your next question, wasn’t it?” she said, arching an eyebrow.

He thought about it for a minute, then asked, “Did you possess the body of this child?”

Ginger laughed. “No, Phil, even if I could do such a thing, I wouldn’t. Ease your mind in that respect. I am what you see before you. I should tell you, that as the years pass, I’ll remain the same. A decade or a hundred years from now, I’ll still look as I do at this moment. Give yourself a little time to let what I’ve told you sink in. I’m sure you’ll have several more questions,” she told him with a smile on her face.

Confused, all he could say was, “Uh, I think it’s time I relieved Zap.” He put his jacket on and hurried out of the house. Walking toward the church, he thought, This is getting way too complicated for me. He knew his five years on drugs had damaged parts of what used to be a finely-tuned mind. He wasn’t able to concentrate like he used to. The little girl, Ginger, had blown a couple fuses in his brain. He thought he knew what she was telling him, then again, he didn’t. His head began to hurt and he decided to tell Zapper about his conversation with Ginger. Maybe Zapper could make some sense of it. He went into the church and climbed the ladder to the bell tower.

Zapper looked at Phil after he finished describing his conversation with Ginger. “You haven’t been hitting the drugs again, have you, Phil?” he asked.

“No, Zap, I’ve been clean for a long time. I know what it sounds like, but I swear it’s the truth,”

Phil told him.

“If this is some kind of trick to make me look foolish to that little girl, Phil, I’m going to come back and thump on your head,” Zapper said as he started down the ladder.

He found the story Phil just told him hard to believe, but couldn’t think of any reason Phil would lie to him. He wanted to believe Phil was having a so-called drug flashback after an innocent conversation with Ginger. Shaking his head, he entered the house. Ginger was sitting on the floor beside the couch watching Dave. “How is he?” Zapper asked.

“Resting peacefully,” she answered.

“Ginger, did Phil act strange before he came to relieve me?”

“No, but he was confused when he left. I think it was because of the conversation we had,” she answered.

“What did you talk about?” Zapper asked.

“Mostly about me. Forget about Phil and drugs, Zap. He’s over that and will never use them again. Everything he told you was the truth. I hope you have an easier time dealing with the truth than Phil does,” she told him with a faint smile.

“What exactly is the truth, Ginger?”

“Let me get you a cup of coffee, then I’ll tell you a story,” she said and went into the kitchen. Shortly, she returned with a cup of coffee and set it down on the table beside Zapper. She sat down on the floor beside the couch.

“Many years ago, the force I’m a part of, saw that the human race was going to destroy itself sometime in the future. Having been a living, growing part of this planet long before humankind evolved, we saw the consequences of what people were doing. We, or I should say, I. There are many parts to me, but we’re one in thought and deed. We decided we could not let this happen. Under the rules we live by, we couldn’t directly interfere. Quite a bit of planning and changing of plans went on over the years. Humans were chosen to carry out specific deeds before they were ever born. I’m an example of that.”

“I’m confused. Where does Ginger come into this?”

“I entered the girl you call Ginger when she was but an egg in her mother’s belly. Together, we have grown to our present age. Ginger has never known life without me. Ginger is me; it’s rather hard to explain so you can understand.”

“I believe I follow you so far. Even without your presence, you would still be Ginger.”

“I am impressed, Zap. Your understanding is more than I hoped for. Ginger would have been born anyway.

“Since I am Ginger and Ginger is me, I’m allowed a certain amount of freedom in dealing with humans when it comes to the rules. This freedom doesn’t come without a price, however. Any actions I take can have far-reaching results. Everything that occurs must do so naturally. For example, suppose I knew a child was going to die. If I altered the situation enough so the child didn’t die, I would alter the future.

“Everything she did and everyone she contacted during her life would be changed. Since the child’s death would be a natural occurrence of events preceding it, to alter that would be to change the fu-ture.”

“Can you see into the future?” Zapper asked.

“No, Zap. I can make fairly accurate assumptions about what it will be like. You must understand, the future is created by events which happen in the past. If these events are altered from their natural progression, a new future will evolve. Too many alterations, and the future will be chaos. According to the laws we live by, freedom of choice is a paramount option humans must have.

“Humanity has to develop its own future by the actions they choose to take. I can offer suggestions to someone like you, which can alter the future slightly. You, however, will make the choice, either accepting or rejecting the suggestion. In that way, I don’t break the rules and you make the decision.”

“I don’t understand. Humans have to be given the option of choice. Since you know about things which could cause mass loss of human life, why couldn’t you guide events so this doesn’t happen?”

Zapper asked.

“A good question and one not easily answered. Suppose we had interfered at the start of the century and changed things so Adolph Hitler wasn’t born. You will agree, the reign of Hitler caused many needless deaths. Now imagine what your present state would be if those events never occurred. Would humanity be reaching for the stars as they are now? Would this have occurred sooner, or would it take place years from now?

“Oh, it would happen, that’s a fact, but would it take place in the time frame it presently occurred in? I think you can understand why we are limited as to what we can do.”

“What you’re saying is everything is preordained. If that’s the case, why are we given a choice?”

Zapper asked.

“How can I put this in terms you’ll understand?” Ginger mused.

“Suppose you were taking a trip from New York to Miami, without choice, you would do just that. You would take the most direct route, thereby missing contact with any number of people. Now throw choice into the equation. Assume you’re making the trip in a car. Without choice, you would drive straight through, only stopping to refuel. With choice, you would still get to Miami, but your course would be a jagged line instead of a straight one. In the choice case, you would meet people and influence them, either directly or indirectly.

“Admit it, Zap, a world without choice would be a rather dull place, wouldn’t it?”

“I guess so, but choice in and of itself creates chaos,” Zapper answered.

“Yes, it does, but it creates a chaos beneficial to the whole of humanity, rather than just segments of it. Sort of like the old teaching, ‘for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.’

Humanity can only react if they’re given a choice. That’s a rather simplistic explanation of a very complex issue, but I think you grasp the basics, Zap.”

“If you are such an all-powerful…should I call you a god, or a supernatural presence, or what?”

Zapper asked.

“It’s funny how humans always make a deity out of something they can’t explain,” she said with a smile. “I’m something that has been around since this planet was formed. I guess you can say I gave birth to everything that’s happened up to now, without any interference whatsoever.

“If you wish to call me a god, that is your choice. My existence has been and always will be as a form of pure energy. Think about it—everything is a form of energy with the molecules and atoms bonded together. Things you think of as being solid, really aren’t. The chair you’re sitting in, and even your body, consists of trillions of atoms bonded together so they seem solid. Now think of my body as the whole planet. My body energy holds this planet together—just like your energy holds your body together. Each and every living thing on this planet is a part of me.

“Let me correct myself, there is one thing that didn’t create itself from me. And that’s the virus which causes the humans you know as the deranged ones, to be the way they are. I know that mankind had a hand in helping create it, but there are elements of it that don’t belong in this universe. Where they came from is beyond even my knowledge. If allowed to continue as it is, life on this planet will become extinct. By the same token, so shall I. If you can understand a little of what I’ve told you, then you comprehend the gravity of the situation. My preference is for you to call me what you can relate to, namely, Ginger.”

“If you are pure energy, how can you be the girl sitting before me?” Zapper asked in a confused voice.

“Biologically, when Ginger was conceived, I planted a part of myself in her. That part grew as she did. Don’t get me wrong; I am Ginger. Your confusion stems from trying to conceptualize two entities in one body. That isn’t the case. As I said before, I am Ginger and Ginger is me.

“The difference between Ginger and any other child is the knowledge she has.”

“Give me a little time to think about what you’ve told me. I’m sure I’ll have a lot of questions.”

“You’re the only human I’m in contact with who understands a little of the concept of what I am. You have a very intelligent mind, Zap.”

“Can I ask how many people you are in contact with?”

“Only one other is like Ginger. It’s a man and his name is Ben Johnson. Another person, a woman named Tony Berbic, is develop-ing certain powers I planted in her at birth. There was a very beautiful and handsome wolf by the name of Stalker that was a part of me, but he was killed,” she said in a very sad voice. “If only I could have saved him,” she sighed with regret. Zapper couldn’t understand why she was so sad about the loss of a wolf, when millions of humans were dying.

As if reading his mind, she said, “Stalker gave up his life for his mate and cubs. He knew when he left and journeyed south to help the woman Tony that he would die. Not many humans would have been this noble.

“For his sacrifice, I arranged it so his mate and cubs will live a long life. Even that is subject to change, for I fear one of his cubs will have to journey far from its home soon. I wish it weren’t so, but events indicate it will probably happen.”

“I take it we’re a part of some grand scheme to combat this disease,” Zapper stated.

“Only Dave and Kimmy, you and Phil are just along for the ride, as they say.”

“What are Dave’s and Kimmy’s parts in this?”

“That I don’t have the answer to. There are too many variables to know exactly what they are to do, but I do know they’ll play a major role in the near future. Sorry I can’t be more specific.”

“In other words, Phil and I are expendable?”

“It isn’t written that you or Phil will die, but, yes, if it reaches that point, your lives will be forfeited so Dave and Kimmy can complete their task. That’s a decision you and Phil will have to make. If you decide to join Dave, I want the risks known. You see, Zapper, it all comes down to choice.”

“At least Phil and I will have a few days to talk it out.”

“Just a few days, Zap. I’m speeding up the healing process. Two days should be enough to have Dave healthy again. There’s nothing I can do for his mind, however. All we can do is try and get him to understand he isn’t to blame for his actions of the past few days. You and Phil could help him with that a lot. He knows and trusts you both. His unconscious mind is rebelling at the actions he took. At the same time, his conscious mind is trying to explain something unexplainable. It will be up to the two of you to convince him it wasn’t him taking these actions. I’ll have the same type of talk with him tomorrow as we’re having now. Which gives me an idea, you asked if I possessed this body. What if Dave thought he was possessed? You know him. Do you think he would accept a story like that?”

“He might. I’m the world’s biggest skeptic and you sure as hell convinced me, Ginger.”

“In a way, you won’t be lying to him. He was in the grip of a primordial rage which shoved aside his conscious self.”

“No problem, leave it up to Phil and me. We’ll have him convinced he was possessed. By the way, Ginger, where will we be headed?” Zapper asked.

“We’re going into the wilderness in northern Canada. We’re to join up with a group of people there. We’re to get Dave and Kimmy to these people. Now, you go get some rest and let me work on Dave. See you in the morning, Zap,” she said, dismissing him.