“Over here, everybody!” called Skip, hunkering down next to Oliver. Behind them Beryl, a retired nurse, was crouched over Steve, crooning at him to hang on, telling him everything was going to be okay, which Skip, hearing the breath bubbling in Steve’s lungs, rather doubted.
“Gather round, kids, we haven’t much time,” Oliver began, when the trainees who were more or less functional had finished rounding up the ones who weren’t. Of the once glorious sunset, there remained only a few streaks of pale yellow melting regretfully into the gray sky. “There is a sick man out there, an armed man with a troubled mind, who wants to do us harm.”
He paused, glancing around at the others like a quarterback in a huddle. They were all rapt-stoned and rapt. “So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to play a game we all played when we were children. It’s called hide-and-seek, and we’re going to play it like our lives depended on it. We’re going to split up, and we’re going to hide in the woods, separately if possible. Don’t bunch up, and most of all, stay off the trail-off the trail, because that’s where the danger is. Everybody got that?”
There were a few murmured assents; the rest of the cosmic rangers were too stunned or too high to respond.
“Good, good. So let’s go now, let’s split up. Find the best hidey-hole you can, and stay in it, stay in it until you hear someone calling-” And here he lowered his voice to a whisper, “until you hear someone calling ‘Ollee ollee in free.’ Even if it takes all night. No matter what you hear, no matter what you see, you stay in hiding until somebody calls ‘Ollee ollee in free.’ We can do this, people-I know we can do this. Now off you go.”
Nobody moved.
“Please-go! Now!” Oliver rose from his squat and made shooing motions, until at last the group began to disperse. By then the sky had faded from gray to starry black, the night wind had begun to rise, and the leaves were whispering and murmuring like the hungry ghosts of Buddhist mythology.