Preoccupied and worried because he hadn't been able to find Michaels and Metcalf, he'd made the mistake of passing too closely by one of the locked cells in C-block packed with unreliable inmates. Hands-many hands-had seized him and yanked him against the bars. The hands tried to take his rifle, too, but the rifle had come loose and fallen on the floor too far away to be reached. Still, the hands had Walker. And while the men who owned those hands couldn't get out of the cell, they could go to work on him. And when they tired, pass him to the hands in the next cell. He spent the rest of his life seeing nothing but hands.
Black hands, white hands, brown hands. Some of them were very strong.
All of them were very eager. He didn't see anything, after a while.
His eyes were gone. Soon after, he stopped screaming. His throat was gone too. "What do we do, boss?" asked Boyne. "We didn't expect this." James didn't have an answer. He'd thought they'd be occupied the whole time taking the towers. But after the second tower, that Morelli had taken, the towers were empty. Somebody had been in those towers. Cigarette butts were strewn all over. But they were gone now. *** In a clearing in the woods just out of sight of the prison, Jenny Radford and Barbara Ray did another check of their supplies.
There was no point to that, really. They'd gotten their improvised battlefield medical center set up long since. The handful of guards Andy had left to protect them-against predators, more than the possibility of convicts coming out-at least had that duty to keep them busy. Jenny and Barbara had nothing. Another useless check of the supplies at least kept them from having fits.
Chapter 55 Andy approached the door to the infirmary, praying his vest would take whatever came out the window at him. Nothing came. He halfheartedly pulled on the doorknob, expecting it to be locked. It wasn't. Hurriedly, he stepped into the entryway. The second set of doors was also unlocked. His nerves were stretched tight. His heart was in his throat. None of this made any sense. He jumped through the door opening and turned around, checking the mirrors over his head.
All the halls were empty. There was a strange, pungent odor in the air. He couldn't quite place it. The other guards and Kershner and his men were now just two steps behind him. They moved slowly across the floor. He waved at the examining room and one of the guards disappeared into its interior and returned in a short while, shaking his head. Another guard had moved on, checking the break room and then the records room. Again, a headshake. Andy looked at the stairwell leading up to the second floor and couldn't help but wince. The moment they were inside the stairwell they would become sitting ducks. He opened the door and stepped through it, motioning for the others to follow. As quickly and quietly as possible, they climbed the stairs and reached the top. Again, the door wasn't locked. He opened it, gave a soft shove and it swung wide. The strange odor was there, stronger now, but no prisoners. They moved quickly, fanning out. "Blacklock.
Over here." Kershner and Pitzel were staring into a row of three cells. Andy hurried over. Bodies were stacked inside all of the cells, reaching from the floor to within a foot of the ceiling. All of them were headless. All of them were naked. "Over here," Watkins called.
They turned and went over. It was another cell. This one was lined with heads. "Jesus," one of the guards whispered. "We knew about the meat lockers, but…" Andy's stomach churned and he could feel the room spin. He took a deep breath and regretted it immediately. He recognized the peculiar scent, now. But it wasn't the scent that nauseated him-that was just the smell of powerful disinfectant cleaning fluids, mixed with… ammonia, maybe. Or bleach. What sickened him was the realization of what had happened. Having filled the freezers, and still not knowing what to do with more bodies, Luff must have decided this was the best temporary solution. Drenching the corpses with this home-made let's-hope-it-works hideous brew must have been what he decided would keep the bodies from decaying before he could figure out a final solution. There was always a method to the man's madness, as mad as it might be. "Okay," he said. "I need an estimate. How many dead?" Jeff Edelman walked toward them, his face pale. "There are a hundred and forty-two names on this list. Every one of them except the last nineteen has a line drawn through it." He handed Andy the clipboard he'd found on the desk. They found the guillotine in C-block. Along with-thank God-hundreds of convicts still alive, packed in their cells. And, outside the cells, what was left of a convict that Andy thought might be-might have been-Jimmy Walker.
Andy walked down the line of cells, staring at the still-living inmates. For their part, they stared back at him silently. Some of them were crying. Eventually, one of the inmates cleared his throat and said: "Nice to see you again, Captain Blacklock. Where you been?"
"Nice to see you, Franklin. I've been detained by other business, I'm afraid. But I'm back now." Franklin cleared his throat. "Good. We wound up missing you. A lot." "Where's Luff?" whispered the inmate next to Franklin. Andy shook his head. "We don't know yet. But we'll find him." "When you do, kill him. Kill all of them. Please." Andy didn't reply to that. He'd already come to the conclusion himself that that was probably the only rational solution. But being back inside the place he'd worked for many years-the place that, strange as it might be, had shaped his sense of duty, even his sense of self-he didn't feel able to give that order. What he could order with regard to foreign conquistadores, he simply couldn't do with regard to inmates who were under his authority. Rod would think he was nuts, of course. Rod was probably even right. But Andy wasn't Hulbert. "Don't worry about Luff," was all he finally said. "Whatever else, he's done." There came the sound of a fusillade, from far away. A big one, and it was ongoing. Andy keyed his radio. Before he could even ask, Marie's voice came over it, providing the answer. "A lot of inmates are trying to make a break through the east gate. We're gunning them down. But they keep pouring out. Must be fifty of them already, and there's more coming." "Are they armed? Can you handle it?" "Yes, they're armed. Rifles, mostly. But they're completely panicked, Andy.
They're not even shooting back. Just trying to get to the woods." They had to be Luff's own people, then. Between what they'd learned from the armory raid and what they'd seen since storming the prison, Luff had disarmed every convict except his own inner circle-and most of that inner circle was now trying to get out. "Shoot as many as you can, but don't take any risks. If some of them make it to the woods, we can live with it. Their ammunition won't last long, no matter what.
After that, it's them barehanded against the dinosaurs." "Right. My money's on the dinosaurs." It sound as if Marie and her people could handle it, and Andy needed to concentrate on taking the machine shop.
This was almost over, and he wanted to finish it. Now, before the horror just overwhelmed him. He knew that, to the day he died, he'd never be able to get those images out of his mind. And would always blame himself for the slaughter, in the end, no matter what reassurances people gave him. The horror had happened on his watch.
For someone like him, with his sense of duty, that was all that mattered. The only thing he could do now was end it. Watkins came up to him. "Don't worry about the ones who make it into the woods. Kevin and a few others can take care of that problem, over the next few days. Might take a week. Probably not." Andy stared at him. Watkins smiled. "For Kevin, it'll be like hunting deer. Except deer are more dangerous." All things considered… "Okay, fine. We'll leave it to him." Hearing a little commotion, he turned. James Cook and about half of the Boomers had come into C-block. "The towers are secure,"
Cook said without preamble. "And one of your guards-I don't know his name-told me to tell you that they've cleared D-block. They found a couple of hundred prisoners in there still alive. All of them locked up except seven, and those went back into a cell without putting up a fuss. So what's the plan now?" Hearing that two hundred people had survived in D-block was something of a relief. But not much. That block had held over three times that many inmates, just a few weeks earlier. But Andy pushed that aside, for the time being. First things first. "Machine shop. All that's left." Cook nodded, then gave the cells packed with still-living inmates a long, considering look. "You want, we Boomers can pick out some worthy men for you. Have them take the lead in the charge." He gave the prisoners that distinctive smile of his. The one Andy thought would probably terrify Las Vegas casino owners if they saw it coming. It was obviously terrifying some of the inmates. "Least the fuckwads can do," Cook added. The offer was tempting. But Andy wasn't about to go there. "No, we'll handle it. Our job, not theirs." "Get ready," said Luff. "We'll butcher 'em as they come in, and it'll all be over." The twenty men he had left didn't say anything. A couple of them nodded. Luff decided things had probably worked out for the best. Reliability was the key. With steady men, you could accomplish wonders, and the last hour or so had been a ruthless selection process. Any of Luff's reliables who weren't quite reliable were trying to get out through the east gate. Or trying to hide somewhere. The ones left were really reliable. All he needed. "Come out with your hands in the air! You will not be asked again. You have exactly ten seconds to respond." From inside the building came a reply. "Fuck you!" Andy looked at his watch and waited. "Five seconds!" There was no response. "One second!" Crack! That shot almost hit him. He could hear the bullet whizzing by. Before he could even give the order, three guards lobbed gas canisters through the building's broken windows. Hulbert could see movement through the open windows, even with the smoke. He said to the guard lying next to him on the roof: "I'm right-you're left." That was Bradley Scott, one of the guard force's sharpshooters. Scott fired a moment later. By then, Rod had a man in his scope and took him down. For the next few seconds, firing from the vantage point of the roof and working from each side, they shot every man inside the machine shop who made himself visible. Six, all told, and maybe two others. Not all of them would be dead, though. Three of the shots Rod had taken had been at exposed limbs, and he was sure the same was true of Scott. Nickerson and the other shooters on the other buildings were doing the same. Two minutes went by. After the first ten seconds or so, no shots had been fired from the machine shop. There'd been no counterfire at all.
During that time, other guards kept lobbing gas canisters into the building. By now, Rod knew, the inmates inside would be in bad shape.
Suddenly, waving a white strip of some kind of cloth, five men burst out of the building. Two men came behind them, but those last two were shot in the back by someone still inside before they could get out of the door. The five men who'd made it out were coughing, their eyes running. Two of them vomited the second they were through the door and took their first breath of fresh air. Vomiting or not, though, they scrambled to the side, out of the line of fire of anyone in the machine shop. The other three men had already done so. None of the guards moved. Andy went over, crouching low, and caught one of the prisoners by the shirt. "Who's still in there, Sternwood? Answer me, damn you." "Luff. Him and Krouse and Ray." He coughed. "Everybody else is dead in there, 'cept us. Maybe one or two more are alive, but they's hurt bad." One last charge, then. If that much gas hadn't forced Luff and the other two out, adding more wouldn't help. Andy would lead the charge himself. It was his responsibility. He dragged the prisoner over to the next building, letting the other four make their own way on hands and knees. Once that was done, he started giving orders into the radio. But James Cook interrupted him before he got very far. Somehow or other, he'd gotten his hands on a radio. He must have been standing next to a guard holding one, and had told him to hand it over. The guard would have obeyed, probably without even thinking about it. Cook was one of those people-Andy was another, himself-to whom authority came easily. "Andy, that's nuts. Fuck the machine shop. I've been talking to Boyne and he tells me most of the equipment in there will survive anyway. It's steel and cast iron."
"Survive what?" "I'll blow the damn thing. Give me ten minutes to go find Leffen. Then give him half an hour-hell, give him an hour-to figure something out. Fuck going over the trenches. Luff ain't worth it. Just snuff him like a rat in a hole." "He's right, Andy,"came Rod's voice."We can take the time. We've got the whole building surrounded and this one doesn't have any connecting underground corridors. Let's do it Cook's way." Andy hesitated, then realized they were right. His fierce urge to lead a charge into the building was just a half-suicidal way of trying to atone for his lapse in duty.
But, whatever else, he had no right to risk the lives of other people in the doing. "Okay, we'll try it. James, go ahead. Take as much time as you need." By Andy's watch, it took exactly one hour, six minutes and fourteen seconds. Without any preamble except a brief alert over the radio-that was for the benefit of the sharpshooters-Cook appeared in the courtyard, pushing a supply cart ahead of him. He was moving fast, almost but not quite running. The cart was loaded with bottles.
Big ones, most of them, all connected by some sort of fuse arrangement. God only knew what was in them. God and Carter Leffen, whose peculiar genius was now completely unrestrained by the need to avoid casualties. As soon as Cook appeared, Hulbert and the other sharpshooters starting firing into the building through the windows.
As covering fire went, it was absolute and complete. If Luff or either of his two men tried to shoot at the oncoming cart-if they even raised their heads enough to see it in the first place-they'd be dead. When Cook got to the open door, he planted his foot on the rear axle of the cart and put his weight on the handles. That was enough to hoist the front wheels into the building. Then-damn the maniac-he took the time and risk to enter the building pushing it in front of him. He'd have no covering fire, now. Not from Hulbert and Scott, anyway. He was right in their line of fire. The sharpshooters on the other buildings kept firing, though, and that was evidently enough to keep Luff and his men down. A few seconds later, Cook came out of the building.
Running as fast as he could. "Get down!" Andy half-shouted into the radio. "Everybody. Down!" The charge blew. Andy hissed in a breath.
Leffen, the arsonist, had designed a bomb that was mostly an incendiary. The building didn't come down. It shook a little, but that was all. If they could put the fire out, they'd still have a machine shop. If they could put it out soon enough, they might even still have all of the machine tools and equipment intact. But Luff was dead. He and Krouse and Ray were probably unrecognizable at all, any longer.
That incredible first bloom of fire had been hot enough to be felt reflected off the walls. Inside, it must have been like having a miniature atom bomb going off. He stood up and spoke into the radio.
"Get the firefighting gear. Quickly, people." He shifted channels.
"Marie, what's happening out there?" "Nothing. Haven't seen anybody in a while. I figure maybe thirty of them made it into the woods. Tops.
Probably not more than a couple of dozen." "All right. We'll deal with that problem later. Once you're sure there's no danger, check to see if there are any survivors among the ones you shot." After a brief hesitation, she said:"Yeah. Will do." Up on the roof, Rod smiled.
His girl, sure enough. And it was time for him to make good on the boast. He gave Scott a sidelong look. "Brad, you know what Andy's like. I figure he'll be having enough nightmares as it is, without adding another one." He used his rifle to indicate the five men in Luff's inner circle. "You with me, or do I handle it myself?" With a puzzled frown, Scott looked down at the five men below who'd made it out of the machine shop alive. They were sitting against a wall, under the watchful eyes of a guard. They'd stopped coughing by now, but they still looked teary-eyed, even from a distance. After a few seconds, the frown disappeared. "Oh. Yeah, sure." "Come on, then." Hulbert appeared, with Bradley Scott alongside. Andy only noticed him coming with part of his mind. He was preoccupied with getting the firefighting organized. The machine shop wasn't particularly flammable, as a building, nor was the equipment in it. But he was worried about the oils in there. They'd just be cutting oils and cooling solvents, not gasoline or anything like that. But, given enough heat, almost any kind of oil could ignite. Hulbert nodded toward the five men against the wall. "Since you're tied up, I figured I'd take care of this. We should get them into a cell. Keep the other prisoners from killing them, if nothing else." Andy gave the men in question a quick glance, then looked back at the burning machine shop.
"Yes, you're right. Use any cell you can find that'll suit the purpose. We'll deal with them later." Hulbert went over to the prisoners. "On your feet. Now. You boys are getting locked up again."
That seemed to relieve them more than anything else. Still bleary-eyed, they got up and starting walking in the direction Hulbert pointed to with his rifle. Rod and Scott followed, a few steps behind.
Andy went back to worrying about the fire. Not more than five seconds after Hulbert and his charges disappeared around a corner, he heard a short fusillade of shots. His rifle at the ready, and with two other guards following him with their own weapons, he raced to see what had happened. He found Hulbert and Scott, standing over five corpses. When he got closer, he saw that all of them had been shot in the back.
"What happened?" "Stupid bastards tried to make a run for it." Bradley Scott nodded solemnly. "Shot while trying to escape." Andy stared down at the bodies. They were still lined up in a row, the same way they'd been walking. He stared up at Hulbert. "Let it go, Andy," Rod said softly. "Just let it go. This part of our new world, you leave to me and Kevin Griffin, will you? I promise I won't meddle with the rest."
The sound of distant rifle shots came. Not a fusillade. Just one shot.
Then, a few seconds, another. Then, a few second later, another.
Hulbert smiled. "And Marie, sounds like." Andy sighed, and wiped his face. "No more, Rod. I'll look the other way, with Luff's men." His tone became very hard. "But not one inch more. If that's not understood, I will make it understood. Believe me, I will." "You got it, boss. Not one inch more." They got the fire under control, before the oils in the lockers got ignited. Any of the small open cans of cutting oil lying around had gone, of course. But those had probably been ignited during the explosion itself, and they hadn't contained enough to do any real added damage. Once the fire was out and the building had cooled down enough, Boyne accompanied Andy into the building. While Andy looked for the bodies, John inspected the damage to the machine tools and the other equipment. "We still got a machine shop," he pronounced, after a while. "A couple of the drill presses are scrap, but that's no big deal. The drill bits are okay, which is all that really matters. And we'll have some work to do, repairing the Bridgeport and the small lathe. But the other two lathes and the Cincinnati are fine." He looked down at the three objects Andy was studying. "Which one's Luff?" "I have no idea." Fortunately for the mythology of their new world, they were able to figure it out soon enough. They found Luff's dental records in the infirmary. There wouldn't be stories floating around for years about how Luff might have made it to Argentina on a submarine-or even into the woods. The monster was dead. So were one thousand, four hundred and six of the inmates who'd still been alive when Andy left the prison to look for the Cherokees. And at least another forty weren't going to be alive much longer, from the effects of Luff's rule.
Chapter 56 "Andy, you have to let this go," Jenny told him quietly, a week later. "The truth is, most of those men would have been dead anyway, within a year or two. Luff targeted all of the sickly, all of the old, anyone with an infectious disease, anyone with a heart condition, anyone with cancer, anyone with emphysema, anyone with a really serious blood pressure problem, anyone who was diabetic, anyone who was psychotic-anyone he thought was weak at all. You saw it. He had his office piled high with the medical records. He even had everyone on Death Row murdered, probably figuring they'd be more trouble than they were worth." "I know that. We also found his notebook where he made the calculations. So many dead, so much food saved-and then, so help me, he filled four pages calculating whether keeping a sick man alive instead of a healthy one would be cost-effective in terms of food, figuring that a healthy man needs to eat more. And came up with the conclusion that he'd always be ahead if he thinned the herd-that's the expression he used in his notes-by working from the bottom up. "I also know that, in his sick and twisted way and certainly not because he gave a damn about them, Luff probably saved as many lives of Indians out there as he took inside the prison.
Probably a lot more. Whatever else happens, we won't be spreading AIDS and hepatitis and half a dozen other diseases in this new world. Not now." He fell silent. In the hopes it might lighten his spirits, Jenny said: "And we won't be spreading smallpox, either. If I remember right, that was the big killer after the New World was discovered by Columbus. Not because of Luff, but because we'd pretty much eradicated it anyway. There hadn't been a case of smallpox anywhere in the world in years." Andy shook his head. "I know all that, Jenny. And it doesn't make any difference. Not to me. My job was to be a guard commander. I might have taken a man to be executed, but I didn't pass the sentence and I didn't carry it out. And until the sentence was carried out, by lawfully appointed persons, my job was to protect society from that man and protect him as well." He wiped his face with a big hand. He'd been doing that a lot, these past few days. "And there was one of those men on Death Row that most of us thought was probably going to be exonerated and released soon. Once the lab report on the DNA evidence came in. Leland Jefferson. Quiet, soft-spoken, spent fifteen years on Death Row waiting for one appeal after another.
Never budged from his claim to be innocent-and, privately, I eventually decided he was. The truth is, we all liked him, after a while." They'd never found Leland Jefferson's head. When Andy finally thought to inquire, the Boomers told him Jefferson was one of the men whose bodies they'd incinerated in those early days. He was just ashes, now, slowly spreading across the world of the Cretaceous.
"Andy, let itgo." A few minutes went by, as they sat together on a log just outside the prison. By now, the area around Alexander was quite safe. In the course of scouring the area for escaped convicts, Griffin and his Cherokees also reported any dangerous-looking animals they spotted. Kershner and his men would respond immediately. They carried modern rifles as backup, but they always fired the first volley with the muskets. Hulbert was right about that. It remained to be seen how the muskets would do against something the size of a tyrannosaur or an allosaur. But those were few and far between, and none had been spotted within two miles of the prison. Against the smaller predators they did encounter, one volley of. 69 caliber bullets was enough. Certainly enough to take them down. The rifles were only used to finish the kill, if needed. Eventually, Jenny sighed. "All right. I know you well enough to know you probably won't let it go. Not ever, at least somewhere in your mind, till the day you die. But would it help any if you held me, in the meantime?" "Sure would." "Then do it. Start right now, and never stop so long as we're both alive."
Chapter 57 "Hernando!" De Soto turned his head; something was coming from beyond the rise. "Run! Run!" His men were scattering, moving faster than they had moved in days. Then he saw the demon.
"Cowards!" he shouted. He drew and fired his wheel-lock pistol. Then drew the other from its saddle holster and fired again. There'd be no time to reload. He drew his sword and spurred his mount. The horse threw him. Then fled. De Soto staggered to his feet. The demon might have gone after the horse, except that de Soto's fury was too great.
On foot, he charged, staggering and reeling. He was still half-stunned from the impact of being thrown. Calling for the blessing of the virgin and the saints. No man is a villain, in his own eyes. And whatever virtues were absent in the man named Hernando de Soto, courage was not among them. All who observed his end, and survived to tell the tale, agreed that de Soto never stopped fighting. Not even after the demon's jaws had closed upon his middle and lifted him high, and his blood and intestines spilled everywhere. Still, he struck at the reptile head with his sword; and struck again, and again. Some swore he struck a last blow as he disappeared into the maw. And believe he fights still, in Lucifer's very bowels.
Chapter 58 The seven-year-old girl's eyes looked as wide as saucers. "You promise you won't hurt him?" Esther Hu stooped and took Linda May Tucker's little hands in her own, which weren't all that much bigger. She didn't have to stoop much, either. The paleontologist was a very small woman. "Linda May, believe me, the very very very last thing we're going to do is hurt the little fellow. He's more precious than gold." The girl stared at her, for a bit. "Well, okay, then. I guess." "And you can come visit him any time you want to, just to make sure he's all right." Esther glanced up at the girl's parents.
"We'll be glad to pay the cost of the trip, folks." The mother nodded.
The father just looked relieved. Watching, Margo had to keep from laughing. Quite obviously, the father had heard the same stories about what happens to baby alligators kept as pets that she'd heard. Linda May Tucker, now satisfied enough, started examining the room curiously. Her eyes fell on a very big, thick book lying on a table nearby, kept under glass. "What's that?" "That?" Esther straightened up and studied the book for a moment. "We call it Exhibit A. What it is, though, is a very old Bible. Really old." "Can I touch it?" Margo stepped forward. "Better not, honey. It might get damaged. It's really really old." She was fudging, actually. True, looked at from one angle, the Bible was slightly over four hundred years old. But, measured from the likely date of printing, it was no older than some of the books in Margo's own library. And it was very sturdy. Still, they weren't taking any chances. Not with a German-language Bible, printed in Fraktur typeface, from the last decade of the sixteenth century. There was no date printed anywhere in it, but the expert Nick had brought in said he could place it and date it quite precisely-to the satisfaction of any antique or rare book dealer in the world. More to the point, he could place it and date it so precisely that not all of the king's men nor all of the king's lawyers nor all of the king's national security experts could deny the fact. Nick had been right. In less than eight months, they'd turned up seventeen people in the area around Grantville who'd discovered something, before the federal agencies clamped down. The Bible had been among the things they'd found. And then, encountering the blank indifference or even outright hostility of the authorities, had decided to keep those items quietly as a private possession and say nothing further. Margo still wasn't sure she agreed with Nick's plan, to wait until there was a change of administration before holding the press conference. Somewhere in the darker recesses of her mind, she had a faint lingering suspicion that Nick was trying to avoid embarrassing the current holder of the White House. He admitted himself that he'dvoted for the bum, even if she was pretty sure he'd come to regret the fact as time went by. Still, she understood Nick's insistence that politics be kept out of The Project's policies. And his reasoning was hard to argue with. The election was only a short time away, after all. And a new administration, regardless of which party's candidate won, wouldn't feel compelled to hold the bunker of folly at all costs. Not even the party which now controlled the White House, with a new President. Not after The Project held the press conference. With-so far-four Nobel Prize winners having quietly agreed to attend and give their support.
With-so far-dozens of eyewitnesses who could report things that were completely at variance with the official government line. With-so far-well over two hundred objects of one kind or another that did the same. All of it backed up by the massive data The Project had collected over the years here in Minnesota. Data, furthermore, that had been duplicated at least in part by more than a dozen research facilities elsewhere in the world. And they had Exhibit A. Which was now, of course, demoted to Exhibit B. Margo beamed down at the new Exhibit A, which had just arrived from a farm located three miles from the spot where Alexander Correctional Center had once stood. The baby velociraptor peered back up at her. "His name's Chucky," the girl explained. Esther and the paleontologistsswore the critter wouldn't get any bigger than a large turkey. Margo hoped they were right. Even as tiny as it was, those teeth looked sharp-and the big claws on the feet looked even scarier. There wasn't much question it would grow up, either. The girl who'd found it, just coming out of the egg, had lavished tender loving care on her new pet. It was obviously quite healthy. "He likes Chicken McNuggets. And french fries. But you gotta break them up into little pieces first. So he doesn't choke or anything." Linda May leaned over, reached a finger into the cage, and stroked the creature's neck. Margo would swear the little monster arched its neck in response. And it made some sort of noise that sounded almost like a purr. Couldn't be, of course.
Epilogue "One year to the day," Edelman pronounced. "Well.
Formally, I guess." Jenny smiled at him. "What's the formality involved, Jeff? Wehave kept track of the days. This is the three hundred and sixty-fifth. Don't tell me you're trying to screw us up with a leap year." Edelman grimaced. "The folly of common sense.