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"And saw the flash. There're high-voltage cables strung around the base, hidden
in the brush. Heather saw it in time."
"We never saw that. Think it was…"
The question hung in the cool of the November evening as they stared at each
other with fear.
Then from the guarded establishment a quarter mile off, they became aware of a
siren, rising and falling like a wounded dinosaur in the last throes of agony.
"This place will be swarming with sentries in a few minutes," said Jim. "Carrie,
you take Heather back to the pickup. Get it packed. All our gear. Be ready to
move out at ten seconds' notice. Shoot anyone who isn't us."
They didn't argue, running away, feet crackling through the dried, dead branches.
Jim was leading Kyle toward where he'd seen the dazzling flash, when they
bumped into the lumbering, puzzled figure of Sly Romero.
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"What is it, son?"
"Where's Steve?" added Kyle, at Jim's heels. "Where's your dad, Sly?"
"Me worried, Jim. Me worried, Kyle."
"Where is he?" said Jim, managing with a great effort of self-control to take Sly
very gently by the arm.
"Sleep."
"Asleep! He can't… Oh, no."
"Me was behind Dad, and Dad fell on a rope and me saw big light and
bangbangbang. It was the highdrypomix. Dad sleeping and me couldn't make
him wake. Shook him, Jim. Me shook Dad. But he stayed sleep."
"Come on, Sly," said Kyle. "Let's go join Heather and Carrie. Your Dad'll be
along a bit later."
Jim walked on, steeling himself for what he knew he was going to find.
Chapter Eighteen
"Blessed Lord Jesus!"
"May his angels, seraphim and cherubim and all the celestial hosts gather in their
brazen armor to protect us."
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Nanci's breathing was fast and shallow. Twice in the early hours of darkness
she'd slithered away into unconsciousness. But her honed combat reflexes saved
her, waking her within scant seconds to staunch the flow of blood from the deep
knife wound in her femoral artery.
Now she blinked into the velvet blackness around her, straining to see where the
bizarre voices were coming from.
"I believe it is a poor wayfarer, sister, cast away on the drift rock of life."
"Indeed, brother, I concede that you are correct in your assumption."
"Perhaps we should seek to put the traveler away from all suffering, into that
bourn from which no man returneth."
Nanci Simms sat up, trying to moisten her cracked lips with a tongue that had
swollen and blackened in the desert heat. She gripped the 9 mm automatic in her
right hand.
And waited.
THIRTY MILES AWAY, Jefferson Lee Thomas was in better shape.
He was walking steadily toward the south, intent on making some quality
distance in the coolness before fatigue forced him to stop and rest for the
remainder of the night.
Flagging energy had already made him drink a large part of the gallon of water
that he'd taken from the expired Mercedes. Two thirds of his dried meat had also
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been nibbled away as he trudged along the shoulder of the highway.
There had only been a couple of signs of life on the road.
Once a small roe deer had picked its delicate way across the blacktop
immediately in front of him, its hooves pecking at the pavement. By the time
Jeff had registered what it was, the moment for shooting it had passed.
The second time it was a pair of coyotes, tails slung between their legs, padding
alongside him for a quarter mile, muzzles turning toward him as though they
were weighing the lone man up as a
potential meal. When he finally stopped and unholstered the big Smith &
Wesson .45, they both disappeared silently into the wilderness, leaving him on
his own again.
THE BRACKISH WATER had tasted to Nanci like the finest of chilled
Zinfandels, served in a crystal goblet.
Then Brother Edward had held the flickering candle while his sister, Sister
Stephanie, had managed to sew up the small but deep wound in Nanci's leg.
"You have been most brave, dear lady," he said to her.
Edward was in his early fifties, tall and stooped, with rimless glasses and a long
beard heavily flecked with silver. His sister was a little younger, with a
prominent Adam's apple and a nervous habit of swallowing two or three times in
every sentence.
They both wore gray jeans, shirts and parkas, with backpacks. As far as Nanci
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could make out, neither of them was carrying any sort of weapon.
"We spread the word of the Lord throughout these blighted lands," explained the
brother as Stephanie finished binding the stitched wound. Nanci had noticed that
he had carefully averted his eyes from her thighs and the pale V of her panties
during the operation.
"Now that we have saved your life, Sister Nanci, you are obligated to aid us in
our mission." Stephanie rubbed her long-fingered hands together as though
something vaguely sticky had come into contact with them.
"What?"
The woman smiled with a wonderfully forgiving Christian charity that Nanci
thought made her look like a simpering idiot.
"Yes, of course. Jesus has saved you, so you now become His handmaiden,
ready to serve joyfully in apostolic work."
Nanci shifted, aware of the butt of the handgun tucked safely out of sight in the
small of her back. "I'm not certain that I wish to devote myself to the Lord.
Though I'm awfully grateful to you for your assistance. It was really most
Christian of you to help me."
The brother and sister looked at each other. A segment of moon had broken
through the banks of heavy cloud, and Nanci could now see them more clearly.
She noted the peculiarly goatlike shape of both heads, with tapering foreheads
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