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“Alex, do you have that thing I found in the plane, the little golden rectangle?”

“Oh, sure, right here,” she said. She reached into her pocket. “Wait, I…” She looked around some more, in both jacket pockets, her pants pockets. “I don’t know, I—”

“Did it fall out back there?” Jerry said.

“I was running, with the bear and everything,” she said. “Is it important?”

Lyle was considering his answer when Eleanor suddenly hit the brakes. It prompted everyone to turn around and see what she was looking at. Ghost town. A beautiful, serene, peaceful ghost town. The main drag, Lincoln Avenue, unfolded before them for a good ten blocks, shops on each side, traffic lights overhead, most of them turned off. One, a few blocks down, blinked yellow. It had all the looks of a quiet mountain town in the middle of the night, with one exception. Two blocks down, a police car had smashed into the window of a shop. It looked like it had spun out and driven directly into the glass and then gotten stuck there, its back half sticking out into the sidewalk.

Four blocks farther ahead, the car they were giving chase to took a left-hand turn onto a side street.

“Any reason I shouldn’t follow?” Eleanor said.

No one spoke.

Eleanor stepped on the gas. They all looked at the police car smashed into the front of a business advertising local art. The pilot kept going. On Seventh, she took a left turn. Now things turned residential. One- and two-story houses, some just shy of ramshackle, others not fancy but tasteful and even recently remodeled. Lots of sport utility vehicles. One house had a fence with slats made entirely of old skis. They cruised through the deadened residential area, reaching foothills just a few blocks later. They followed the car when it took a left and then wound up a hill, reached a plateau, and revealed another valley, this one dark and, evidently, not much inhabited. The car in front of them had begun descending and they followed. A half mile later, they took a left turn onto a dirt road.

“He’s leading us somewhere, obviously,” Eleanor said.

A minute later they drew near to a house. In front of it was parked the station wagon. In the middle of nowhere, a two-story cabin made of thick logs, looking, at least in this dim light, expertly manicured, hand-crafted. Two horizontally rectangular windows cut the top floor, suggested two bedrooms. A picture window took up the middle of the bottom floor but a curtain concealed whatever was behind it. A rocking chair sat on the narrow porch behind the front door. Parked in front, steam rising from the hood, was the station wagon but not the person who had been driving it.

“What next?” Eleanor said.

Nobody responded.

“I’m concerned this person may be violent,” Lyle said.

“Ditto,” said Jerry.

“Why?”

“Because that’s the precautious way to think,” Jerry said.

“Precautious?”

“This syndrome, it might impact how people behave. I’m not sure about that.” Lyle was thinking about how the man on the airplane had been hit in the head. Someone had done that.

“What does that have to do with the radio waves?” Eleanor said. “You keep asking about them.”

“I’m thinking of onset. Sorry, dumb fancy word. When this syndrome hits, what happens. Do we feel something, or react in some way? How much time do we have before…”

His voice trailed off.

“Maybe the guy is just as scared as we are,” Eleanor said. She pulled up the pickup parallel to the station wagon, left it idling.

There was a flash of light and—rat-tat-tat—bullets tore through the front of the pickup.

Twenty-Four

The world lurched forward. That’s what it felt like. Bullets tore into the tires and they deflated and the pickup truck lunged with its passengers like it had fallen to its proverbial knees, sending everyone tumbling. Lyle’s forehead smacked the front panel. The girl wailed from the backseat. Lyle felt the clutch of Eleanor’s hand on his leg. He saw the blood on her own forehead as she bounced back. Jerry, head low, cracked the passenger’s-side door.

Rat-tat-tat. Another two bullets spat at the front of the car.

Steam hissed from the engine, a spark flew, metal clanged, and then silence again. The message seemed pretty clear: Don’t move or I’ll shoot.

Without taking her hands from the steering wheel, without moving perceptibly at all, Eleanor said quietly: “He’d probably have killed us already if that’s what he wanted to do.”

“Sounds like a semiautomatic, at least,” Jerry said with equal care. “We’re outgunned. But if I can get a clean look—”

“Jerry, Jerry. Don’t even think about it. If I had to guess, there’s someone out there who is just as scared as we are. So let’s not spook him further. Dr. Martin?”

“Sounds right to me, Captain.”

“You don’t think it’s some half-sick madman? Like with the disease or something?” Alex said from the back. “We’ve got children here.”

“Good point,” Jerry said.

For Lyle, the world felt like it had split into two or, rather, into two screens, each showing different camera angles of the same scene. One camera focused on the house, quaint but deadly, hiding a powerful weapon and its trigger person. The other camera focused on the car, and the people in it, the formations of alliances and coalitions, primitive psychology forming. Whom to trust? Jerry was like a less-evolved animal, dangerous, impossible to communicate with but possible to manipulate and fundamentally unaware of his primitive psychology. Quite the opposite of Alex. Every time she spoke now, Lyle sensed her many layers. She stared at him almost like he was a savior or lover. Other times, as if he were a foe.

Maybe he was going nuts, he thought.

“Deep breaths,” Eleanor said. “Let me tell you what I’m going to do.”

She explained that she would slowly open the door, hands up, and walk in surrender toward the house and let the person understand the situation.

“No, please.” It was Alex. “You’re too important. I’m just a…” Before she finished or could say anything further, she’d opened the passenger-side back door and climbed over the boy. A bullet spat the ground in front of the truck but she stood her ground.

“Back in the truck,” Eleanor said as patiently as she might, clearly about to lose her shit.

“Jerry,” Alex said. “Don’t let him shoot me.”

Get back in the truck,” Eleanor repeated.

“Keep your hands up,” Jerry said. “Tell him you don’t have a gun.”

“Don’t let him shoot me.”

“Give me a sign if he’s crazy,” Jerry said.

“Like what? Like a little loco sign behind my back?” Alex whispered.

“Draw him out.” Jerry sounded like he’d been thinking it all along.

Alex took another step forward, arms raised, and yelled toward the house: “We have children!”

She took another step. Now she was a step in front of the pickup. This time, no shots. From the backseat, the girl whimpered and now the boy choked out a sob, too. “You two, keep it down, I don’t want to have to ask you again,” Jerry said. “I will get you out of this.”

Alex took two more steps forward. Then two more. Now she was within fifteen feet of the porch. With the headlights shot out of the pickup, she was getting less visible. Wind had joined the snow, blowing from the west. Arms over her head, Alex balled her fists for warmth.

She said something the people in the pickup couldn’t hear and then the right side of the downstairs curtain moved. Not a lot, but enough to indicate the whereabouts of someone in the house.