Hank marveled at the coolness of his mind as it analyzed his position. He was trapped—not only paralyzed, but effectively and securely bound in position. The web hammock, however, was not entirely without its advantages. Long, uninterrupted contact with the cold concrete would have made it difficult for his body to maintain its temperature; the webbing also kept him out of the water, thereby preventing his flesh from breaking down in the constant moisture.
So in a very real sense he was high and dry, but also bound, gagged, and paralyzed.
Hung up like a side of beef.
That last thought impacted with the force of a sledgehammer. That was it! He was food! They'd shot him full of preservatives and stored him away alive so he wouldn't decompose. So when pickings got slim above ground, they could come down here and devour him at their leisure.
He willed down the rising panic. Panic wouldn't help here. They'd already paralyzed his body. Allowing fear to paralyze his mind would only make matters worse. But that one cold hard fact battered relentlessly at his defenses.
I'm food!
That rogue cop lieutenant would get a good laugh out of that: The hoarder becomes the hoard. Even Carol would probably appreciate the irony.
But I'm alive, he told himself. And I can beat these bugs.
He knew their pattern. They'd probably stay dormant all day and crawl up to the surface to hunt during the dark hours. That was when he'd get free.
But first he had to regain control of his body. He already controlled his eyeballs and eyelids. Next was his hands. If he was to get free he'd need them the most. A finger. He'd start with the pointer on his right hand, concentrate all his will and energy into that one digit until he got it to move. Then he'd proceed to the next, and the next, until he could make a fist. Then he'd switch to his left.
He glared at his index finger, narrowing his vision, his entire world to that single digit, channeling all his power into it.
And then it moved.
Or had it? The twitch had been almost imperceptible, so slight it might have been a trick of the light. Or wishful thinking.
But it had moved. He had to hold onto that thought. It had moved. He was regaining control. He was going to get out of here.
With climbing spirits, he redoubled his concentration on the reluctant digit.
WFAN-AM
dead air
MONROE VILLAGE, LONG ISLAND
Alan rolled his wheelchair along the network of cement paths that encircled Toad Hall, heading from the back yard to the front. Off to his left, to the west, he saw smoke rising over the trees. Not near smoke, from the Shore Drive neighborhood, but further away. From downtown Monroe, most likely. He'd heard stories of roving gangs, looting, burning, raping. They hadn't shown up out here, but perhaps that was just a matter of time.
Strange how things had worked out. He'd always imagined that if the world ever descended into anarchic nihilism, the violence and chaos and mob madness would occur at night, screams and flames hurtling into a dark, unseeing sky. But given the current situation, human violence was confined to the daylight hours. The night was reserved for inhuman violence.
Alan turned from the smoke and inspected Toad Hall. The old mansion had absorbed another merciless pummeling last night but, like the valiant, indomitable champion that she was, she remained on her feet.
The injuries were accumulating at an alarming rate, however. Her flanks were cut and bruised and splintered, her scalp showed through where her shingles had been torn up. She could still open her eyes to the dwindling daylight, though. Most of them, at least.
Which was why Alan was out here now. A couple of the storm shutters had refused to roll up this morning. Even from the inside Alan could see that they were deeply dented, more deeply that he'd have thought possible from a bug attack, at least from any of the bugs he'd seen so far.
Which meant there might be something new under the moon, something bigger than its hellish predecessors and consequently more dangerous to the little fortress Toad Hall had become. He coasted to a halt and stared as he rounded to the front.
The dents in the steel shutters were deeper than he'd realized. And they'd been scored by something sharp and heavy, with the weight and density of a steel spike.
But it was the rhododendrons under the shuttered windows that bothered him more.
They'd been trampled flat.
Alan rolled across the grass for a closer look. These were old rhodos, maybe fifty years old, with heavy trunks and sturdy branches, kept thick with healthy deep green leaves through Ba's magical ministrations. Tough wood. Alan remembered that from the times he'd cut back the rhodos around his old house before it burned down.
These hadn't been cut, though. The trunks and branches had been crushed, and their splinters pressed into the ground. Something awful big and heavy—or a number of big and heavy somethings—had been outside these windows last night banging and scraping at the shutters.
But they hadn't got in. That was the important thing.
As Alan pushed his left wheel forward and pulled the right backward to turn and roll back to the path, he saw the depression in the lawn. His stomach lurched. He hadn't noticed it before; he'd been too intent on the shutters and the ruined rhodos. But from this angle you couldn't miss it.
The fresh spring grass, overdue now for a trimming, had been crushed in a wide swath that angled in from the front gate, around the willows, and directly to the house. Alan tried to imagine what sort of creature could leave such a trail but all he could come up with was a thirty-foot bowling ball. With teeth, most likely. Lots of them.
He shuddered and rolled back to the path. Each night it got a little rougher. One of these nights Toad Hall's defenses were going to fail. It was inevitable. Alan prayed he'd be able to persuade Sylvia to move out before that happened, or that Glaeken would be able to assemble the pieces he needed to call for help.
Alan could feel it in his bones: they were all going to need help. Lots of it. And soon. Otherwise, if the Sapir curve was correct, they had two sunrises left. Then the sun would set for the last time at three o'clock on Thursday afternoon. And the endless night would begin.
MAUI
Even the coffee tasted like fish.
Jack knew the water was pure—he'd watched Kolabati draw it from the water cooler—but it still tasted fishy. Maybe because everything smelled fishy. The air was so thick with the odor of dead sea life he swore he could taste it when he breathed.
He was standing on the lanai, forcing the coffee down, looking out at the valley below and at the great whirlpool spinning off Kahului. It would have been heart-stoppingly beautiful if not for the stench. Behind him, sounds of chopping, chipping, sawing, and hammering drifted through the door from the house's great room.
Kolabati joined him, coffee cup in hand, and leaned on the railing to his right. She wore a bright, flowered muumuu that somehow enhanced her figure instead of hiding it. Jack's eyes locked on the necklace. He tried to be casual but it wasn't easy. There it was, half the reason for this hairy trip, a couple of feet away. All he had to do was reach out and—
"My silverswords are all dead," she said, looking down at a wilted garden beneath the deck. "The salt water's killed them. I'd hoped to see them bloom."