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Without looking back, Hawk lifted his arm in a wave of farewell and walked on through the mist and the gray.

SIX

AFTER HIS MEETING with Two Bears, Logan Tom climbed back into the Lightning AV and drove it out into the country to a spot off the road where the prairie stretched away in an unobstructed sweep on all sides. There he parked, set the perimeter alarm system, crawled into the back of the vehicle, and fell asleep. His sleep was deep and dreamless, and when he awoke at dawn he felt fresh and rested in a way he hadn't felt for weeks. He stripped naked outside the AV in the faint light of first dawn and took a sponge bath using water from the tank he carried in the back. The water was purified with tablets, clean enough for bathing if not for drinking. No one had drunk anything but bottled liquids in years, and when the stockpiles that remained were exhausted, it was probably over for them all.

Dressed, he ate a breakfast of canned fruit and dry cereal, sitting cross–legged on the ground and staring out across the empty fields, his back against the AV. On the horizon, the windows of the farmhouses and outbuildings were black holes and the trees barren sticks.

As he ate he thought about Two Bears, the task the Sinnissippi had given him to accomplish, and the impact of what it meant. In particular, he thought about something O'olish Amaneh had said and passed over so quickly there hadn't been time to take it in fully until now.

A fire is coming, huge and engulfing. When it ignites, most of what is left of humankind will perish. It will happen suddenly and quite soon.

Logan Tom stopped chewing and stared down at his hands. It wouldn't matter what any of them did after that, demons or humans. If he was to make a difference as a Knight of the Word–if anyone was to make a difference–it would have to happen before that conflagration consumed them all. That was what Two Bears was telling him; that was the warning he had been given. Find the gypsy morph and you find a way to save the remnants of humankind from what is coming.

He wasn't sure he believed that. He wasn't sure he knew what he believed.

It seemed to him that the world was already come to an end for all intents and purposes, that even a conflagration of the sort the Sinnissippi was foretelling couldn't make things worse. But he knew as soon as he thought this that it wasn't true. Things could always get worse, even in a world as riddled by madness as this one.

He finished his breakfast, took out the finger bones of Nest Freemark, and cast them on the black square of cloth in which they had been wrapped. The bones lay motionless for a moment, then began to wriggle into place, forming up as fingers. Creepy. He watched them shift until they were pointing west. He stared down at them for a few moments longer, then scooped them up and stuffed them back in his jacket pocket. He had his marching orders; he might as well get started.

He drove slowly through the early morning, following the bro–ken ribbon of highway across the remainder of the state under overcast and hazy skies. It was not yet midday when he reached the Mississippi River. The waters of the Mighty Miss flowed thick and sluggish between their defoliated banks, the waters clouded and gray and choked with debris. He could see the shells of old cars and trucks jammed up against the far bank. He could see parts of houses and fallen trees. He could see bodies. He could smell death and decay, a heavy sickening odor hanging in the windless air. He shifted his gaze to the bridge again, a broad concrete span stretching ahead into Iowa.

The bridge was littered with bodies.

The smell wasn't coming from the dead in the river; it was coming from up there.

He stared in disbelief for a moment, not sure that he was seeing things correctly. The makeshift crossing gate told him that this had been a checkpoint for the river, a place staffed by militia serving some local order or other. But the number of bodies and abandoned vehicles and accumulation of debris told him that everyone had been dead for a while now. It told him, as well, that the end had come suddenly.

He took a moment to scan his surroundings in all directions, cautious of what might be hidden there. Finding nothing, he eased the S-150 ahead in a crawl, weaving carefully through the makeshift obstacle course that blocked his path. On the bridge, nothing moved. He began to cross, passing bodies with arms and legs flung wide, fingers clutched in agony, heads thrown back and necks stretched taut. Then he saw the first of many faces turned black and leathery, and he knew.

Plague.

This strain was called Quick Drain for the speed with which it stole life from the body. It was carried on the air, a human–made recreation of what centuries earlier had been labeled the Black Death. It was chemically induced, contracted through the lungs, and fatal in less than an hour if you weren't inoculated against it beforehand or treated afterward at once. From the quickness with which it had obviously overtaken those on the bridge, it must have been a particularly virulent variety. It would have dissipated by now, its life span short once released. There was no way of knowing where it had come from, whether released on purpose or by accident, whether by attack or mistake.

It was deadly stuff; he had seen the results of its work several times before when he was still with Michael.

He drove on, trying not to breathe the air, even though he knew it didn't matter by now. He drove on, and as he did so his thoughts drifted to an earlier time.

* * *

HE LIES IN his bed, so hot he can barely stand his own body. Sweat coats his skin and dampens his sheets. Pain ratchets through his muscles in steady waves, causing him to jerk and twist like a puppet. He grits his teeth, praying for the agony to stop. He no longer cares if he lives or dies; he will accept either fate willingly if only to put an end to the pain.

His eyes are squeezed shut, but when they blink open momentarily he is still in darkness. He hears voices drift through the partially opened doorway from the adjoining room.

"… should be dead anyway … fever too high … can't understand what's keeping him …"

"… tougher than you … seven days now, when anyone else would …

just keep him warm and …"

One of them is Michael Poole, the other Michael's companion, Fresh. But which is which? He cannot tell. The fever clouds his thinking, and he can't

match the voices to the names. It is ridiculous. He knows Michael the way he knows himself, has been with him now for almost eight years. He knows Fresh almost as well as Michael. But the voices blend and the words shift so that they seem one and the same.

"… recovery from this doesn't happen … as you know better than most … better to let things take their course instead of flailing about with all these …"

The voice drones on, lost in the buzzing in his ears, in the hiss of his own breath through his clenched teeth, the in the sweep of his jumbled thoughts.

He has the plague. He doesn't know which strain and doesn't care. He has had it for days. He can't remember how he contracted it or what has happened since. He drifts in and out of consciousness, out of dreams and into reality and back again, always fighting for breath because his throat is so swollen that his windpipe has all but closed up. The pain keeps him breathing because it keeps him awake and fighting for his life. If he sleeps, he thinks, he will lose consciousness and die. He has never been so afraid.

"… have to move camp soon, . . dose, and no stopping them once they know …"

"… can't just leave him to die, damn it… know what they would do, animals …"

"… what do you expect us to do if things don't… sacrifices have to be made … one against the many …"