Inhabiting a body he no longer controls, Asher turns away from the lake and moves through the trees toward the distant house. He is astonished that of all the places where he might have gone in search of the ideal isolation, he chose Zipporah, such an intimate distance from a sequestered starship inhabited by a thing that could read his mind. This incredible coincidence suggests that there are hidden patterns in the human experience, a structure underlying reality that implies meaning, and this further infuriates him.
The presence informs him: “We will begin with Joanna Chase. She was once innocent, but she threw away her innocence. When she was a child, she gave me the only real hope that I’ve had on this mission, that there might be some of your kind who could remain of the best intentions. As part of your punishment for being what you are, you will not be allowed to break her spirit or take her life. You will only stand witness as I deal with her, witness to your egregious failure.”
Asher imagines that this is what the condemned must have felt when he had escorted them to the church and locked them in where they could smell their future rising through the floorboards from the testamentary necropolis. But they earned the fate he imposed on them, as he most certainly has not earned that toward which he is moving. They would have been abashed at the realization that they were nothing but pestilence, filthy vermin whose lives were of no consequence, whereas he is outraged at the injustice of the judgment laid against him. He will not be humiliated and put down like an animal. He will not.
The wind is skirling, the rain hissing, and with the last of the apple trees behind him, Asher detects a vinegar-like odor and feels the purring that is more of a pressure than a sound. He looks up; the thing that possesses him does not prevent him from looking up, and he sees above him a thing of considerable weight, floating there as a balloon might float, a thing of such horrific appearance that it can only be from another world, one far stranger than Earth. He knows—because he is allowed to know—that this will kill the woman whose name he heard only a minute earlier, Joanna Chase, and then it’ll kill him, whereafter the murder of all humanity begins.
86
Kenny Deetle drove the black Suburban part way off the lane and pulled even with the Ford pickup and stopped. Squinting through the window in the driver’s door, he saw the body on the pavement, which he took to be an omen that he should make a career change if he survived the night. No more white-hat hacking. No more playing detective. A job with a low violence factor. Floral arrangement. Open a bakery. He had the moves to be a dance instructor.
Leigh Ann also saw the man on the pavement. From the back seat, she said, “Looks like he needs help,” and she opened her door.
“Close that, stay here,” Kenny warned. In the sidewash of the headlights, he evidently could see the victim more clearly than she could. “He’s totally dead.”
“You’re sure?” Ganesh asked, because from his position, through the rain streaming down the windshield and between the wipers that whisked the glass, he wasn’t able to see anything of the victim.
“Yeah,” Kenny said. “Looks like his head has been turned inside out or something.”
Closing her door, Leigh Ann said, “That’s vivid. Maybe we ought to be elsewhere.”
“I’m for Florida,” Kenny said, praying that the men at the roadblock were already aware of the need to come to the rescue and were not still twelve miles away.
“If it’s started,” Ganesh said, “which a dead man suggests it has, we won’t be allowed to turn and leave. Get us to the house.”
As Kenny eased the Suburban forward, he said, “I don’t have a gun or anything.”
“Neither do I,” Leigh Ann said, “just six years of karate.”
“I have a gun,” said Ganesh. “But it won’t have any value in this situation.”
“Exactly what is this situation?” Kenny wondered.
“Dire,” said Ganesh.
Glancing at the rearview mirror for a glimpse of Leigh Ann, Kenny said, “Six years of karate for real?”
“For real.”
As they passed the willows, Ganesh said, “Fast, Kenny, off the driveway, across the yard. Close to the front door. I don’t want my suit to get wet.”
Wheeling to the right and accelerating, Kenny figured Ganesh was less concerned about the rain than about something else in the night. “For real?” he asked Leigh Ann again.
“I could tie you in knots.”
“You already have,” he said, and thought, God don’t let me die just when I have more reason to live than ever.