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  Three years ago, his reassignment to the Atlanta office from North Dakota to anchor the late-afternoon hours was a good thing. Now he wasn’t so sure. The city had its distractions, but he was growing tired of pursuing them. One of these days he would have to quit playing the tough guy and settle down with someone more like Betty than Theresa.

  On the other hand, he liked playing most of this game he was playing. He could turn the tough act on or off with the flip of a hidden switch, a real advantage in this business. To the audience and some of his peers, he was the genuine North Dakota face with a GQ shadow and dark wavy hair that they could always trust. To others, like Theresa, he was the enigmatic college quarterback who could have made pro if not for the drugs.

  Now he threw words instead of balls and could deliver them at any pace required by the game.

  He finally pulled his BMW in front of the white house on the corner of Langshershim and Bentley.

  He sighed, opened the door, and unfolded himself from the front seat. Her car was in the garage. He could just see the SUV’s roof rack through the window.

  He sauntered up to the door and rang the bell.

  Theresa opened the door and walked back into the kitchen without a word. See, now Betty, the girl he’d dated for two years during college, never would have done that—not knowing he’d driven for an hour to see her. Well, maybe she would as a come-on now and then, but never while wearing this distant, nearly angry look.

  Her short blond hair was disheveled and her face was drawn—not exactly the tempting, sexy look he had expected. She pulled a wineglass from her rack and poured Sauvignon Blanc.

  “Am I wrong, or did you actually invite me out here?” he asked.

  “I did. And thank you. I’m sorry, I just . . . it’s been a long day.” She forced a smile.

  This wasn’t a game. She was obviously bothered by something that had happened on her trip. Theresa put both hands on the counter and closed her eyes. He registered alarm for the first time.

  “Okay, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Nothing I can tell you. Just a bad day.” She took a long drink and set the glass down. “A very bad day.”

  “What do you mean you can’t tell me? Your job’s okay?”

  “For the time being.” She took another drink. He saw that her hand was trembling.

  Mike stepped forward. Took the glass from her hand. “Tell me.”

  “I can’t tell—”

  “For crying out loud, Theresa, just tell me!”

  She stepped away from the counter and ran her hands through her hair, blowing out a long sigh. He couldn’t remember ever seeing her in this condition. Someone had died, or was dying, or something terrible had happened to her mother or the brother who lived in San Diego.

  “If you’re trying to scare me, you’ve already done it. So if you don’t mind, let’s cut the games. Just tell me.”

  “They’d kill me if I told you. You of all people.”

  “‘You’ meaning me in the news?” She’d said too much already, and her quick side glance confirmed it. Something had gone down that would make her sweat bullets and send a newsman like him into orbit. And she was sworn to secrecy.

  “Don’t you kid yourself,” he said, grabbing a glass from the rack. “You called me down here to tell me something, and I can guarantee you I won’t leave until you do. Now we can sit down and get sloshed before you tell me, or you can tell me straight up while we still have our full wits about us. Your choice.”

  “What kind of assurance that you don’t go public with this?”

  “Depends.”

  “Then forget it.” Her eyes flashed. “This isn’t the kind of thing that ‘depends’ on anything you think or don’t think.” She wasn’t in complete control of herself. Whatever had happened was bigger than a death or an accident.

  “This has something to do with the CDC, right? What, the West Nile virus is loose in the White House?”

  “I swear, if you even breathe—”

  “Okay.” He lifted both hands, balancing the glass in his right. “Not a word about anything.”

  “That’s not—”

  “I swear, Theresa! You have my complete assurance that I won’t breathe a word to anyone outside this house. Just tell me!”

  She took a deep breath. “It’s a virus.”

  “A virus. I was right?”

  “This virus makes the West Nile virus look like a case of hiccups.”

  “What then? Ebola?” He was half-kidding, but she glared at him, and for a horrible moment he thought he might have hit it.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Of course she wasn’t kidding. If she was kidding, her upper lip wouldn’t be misty with sweat.

  “The Ebola?”

  “Worse.”

  He felt the blood drain from his face.

  “Where?”

  “Everywhere. We’re calling it the Raison Strain.” The tremor had spread from her hands to her voice. “It was released by terrorists in twenty-four cities today. By the end of the week every person in the United States will be infected, and there is no treatment. Unless we find a vaccine or something, we are in a load of hurt. Atlanta was one of the cities.”

  He couldn’t quite sort all of this into the boxes he used to understand his world. What kind of virus was worse than Ebola?

  “Terrorists?”

  She nodded. “They’re demanding our nuclear weapons. The world’s nuclear weapons.”

  Mike stared at her for a long time.

  “Who’s infected? I mean, when you say Atlanta, you aren’t necessarily saying—”

  “You’re not listening, Mike. There’s no way to stop this thing. For all we know, everyone at CNN is already infected.”

  He was infected? Mike blinked. “That’s . . . how can that be? I don’t feel like I have anything.”

  “That’s because the virus has a three-week latency period. Trust me, if we don’t figure this out, you’ll feel something in a couple weeks.”

  “And you don’t think the people deserve to know this?”

  “Why? So they can panic and run for the hills? I swear, Mike, if you even look funny at anyone down at the network, I’ll personally kill you! You hear me?” She was red.

  He set his glass on the counter and then leaned on the cabinet for balance. “Okay, okay, just calm down.” There was still something wrong with what she’d told him. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something didn’t compute.

  “There has to be a mistake. This . . . this kind of thing just doesn’t happen. No one knows about this?”

  “The president, his cabinet, a few members of Congress. Half the governments in the world. And there is no mistake. I ran some of the tests myself. I’ve studied the model for the past twelve hours. This is it, Mike. This is the one we all hoped would never come.”

  Theresa dropped into an armchair, rested her head, closed her eyes, and swallowed.

  Mike straddled a table chair, and for a long time neither spoke. The air conditioner came on and blew cold air through his hair from a ceiling vent. The refrigerator hummed behind him. Theresa had opened her eyes and was staring at the ceiling, lost.

  “Start at the beginning,” he said. “Tell me everything.”

  THERE WAS a problem with the EEG.

  Bancroft knew this wasn’t true. He knew that something strange was happening in that mind that slept in his chair, but the scientist in him demanded he eliminate every possible alternative.

  He switched out the EEG, plugged the twelve electrodes back in, and reset it. Wave patterns consistent with conceptual brain activity ran across the screen. Same thing. He knew it. Same thing as the other unit. There were no perceptual waves.

  He checked the other monitors. Facial color, eye movement, skin temperature. Nothing. Not a single cottonpickin’ thing. Thomas Hunter had been asleep for two hours. His breathing was deep and his body sagged in the chair. No doubt about it, this man was lost to the world. Asleep.
>
  But that’s where the typical indications ended. His skin temperature had not changed. His eyes had not entered REM. The signatures on the EEG did not show a hint of a perceptual signature.

  Bancroft walked around the patient twice, running down a mental checklist of alternative explanations.

  None.

  He walked into his office and called the direct line Phil Grant had given him.

  “Grant.”

  “Hello, Mr. Grant. Myles Bancroft with your boy here.”

  “And?”

  “And I think we have a problem.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning your boy’s not dreaming.”

  “How’s that possible? Does that happen?”

  “Not very often. Not this long. He’s sleeping, no doubt. Plenty of brain activity. But whatever’s going on in that head of his isn’t characterized by anything I’ve seen. Judging by the monitors, I’d say he’s awake.”

  “I thought you said he was sleeping.”

  “He is. Ergo, the problem.”

  “I’ll be over. Keep him dreaming.”

  The man hung up before Bancroft could correct him.

  Thomas Hunter wasn’t dreaming.

  9

  RACHELLE HEARD the ululating cries on the edge of her consciousness, beyond the sounds of Samuel’s singing and Marie’s hopeless efforts to correct his tone deafness. But her subconscious had been trained to hear this distant cry, day or night.

  She gasped and jumped to her feet, straining for the sound. “Samuel, hush!”

  “What is it?” Marie asked. Then she heard the warbling cries too. “Father!”

  “Father, father!” Samuel cried.

  They lived in a wooden hut, large and circular with two floors, both of which had doors leading to the outside. The doors were one of Thomas’s pride and joys. Nearly ten thousand houses circled the lake now, most of them among the trees set back from the wide swath cleared around the waters, but none had a door quite like Thomas’s. It was the first and best hinged double door in all the land, as far as Thomas was concerned, because it could swing both ways for fast entry or exit.

  The top floor where they slept had a normal locking door that opened onto a walkway, which was part of a labyrinth of suspended walkways linking many homes. The bottom floor, where Rachelle was ladling hot stew into tin bowls, boasted the hinged double door. The hinges were made of leather, which also acted as a kind of spring to keep the doors closed.

  Marie, being the oldest and fastest at fourteen, reached the door first and slammed through it.

  Samuel was right behind. Too far behind. Too close behind. He met the doors as they released Marie. They smacked him in the forehead and dropped him like a sack of potatoes.

  “Samuel!” Rachelle dropped to her knees. “Those cursed doors! Are you okay, my child?”

  Samuel struggled to a sitting position, then shook his head to clear it.

  “Come on!” Marie cried. “Hurry!”

  “Get back here and help your brother,” Rachelle yelled. “You’ve knocked him silly with the doors!”

  By the time Marie returned, Samuel was on his feet and running through the doors. This time the doors struck Rachelle on the right arm, nearly knocking her down. She grunted and ran down the stone path after the children.

  The doors had hurt her arm, she saw. They had opened a very small cut that could hardly concern her now. She ignored the thin trail of blood and ran on.

  Streams of women and children ran the paths that led toward the gate where the high-pitched cries continued with growing intensity. They were definitely home. The only question was how many.

  On every side grew winding puroon vines with lavender flowers similar to what Thomas described as bougainvillea and large tawii bushes with white silken petals, each spreading their sweet scent through the air. Like gardenia, Thomas said. Every home was draped in similar flowering vines according to a grand master plan that rendered the entire village a garden of beauty. It was the Forest People’s best imitation of the colored forest.

  Rachelle ran with a knot in her throat. Thomas may be the best fighter among them, but he was also their leader and the first to rush into the worst battles. Too many times he’d returned carrying the body of the soldier who’d fallen beside him. His good fortune couldn’t last forever.

  And William’s order to prepare for evacuation had set the entire village on edge.

  They converged on a seventy-foot-wide stone road that cut a straight line from the main gate to the lake. Night was falling, and the people were ready for celebration in anticipation of the Forest Guard’s return. They mobbed the front gate, bouncing and dancing. Torches and branches were raised up high. The army was mounted, but with children on their mother’s shoulders, the view was blocked.

  A loud voice screamed above the din. This was the assistant to Ciphus—Rachelle could pick out his voice from a hundred yards. He was trying to move the people to the side as was customary.

  The crowd suddenly settled and parted like a sea. Rachelle pulled up with Marie on one side and Samuel on the other. Then she saw Thomas where she always saw him, seated on his black stallion, leading his men, who stretched behind him into the forest. A bucket of relief washed over her.

  “Father!”

  “Wait, Samuel! First we honor the fallen.”

  The people parted farther, leaving a wide path for the warriors. The clip-clop of the horses’ hoofs was now clearly audible.

  Ciphus approached the front line and Thomas stopped his horse. They talked quietly for a moment. To Rachelle’s right, thousands continued to line the road that led to the distant lake, now shimmering in rising moonlight. About thirty thousand lived here, and in the days to follow, their number would swell to a hundred thousand as the rest arrived for the annual Gathering.

  Ciphus seemed to be taking longer than usual. Something was wrong. William had been emphatic about the seriousness of the situation when he’d ridden in yesterday to demand they prepare to evacuate, but they had won, hadn’t they? Surely they hadn’t come to announce that the Horde was only a day’s march behind.

  Ciphus turned slowly to face the throng. He waited a long time, and for every second he stood, the silence deepened until Rachelle thought that she could hear his breathing. He lifted both hands, tilted his face to the sky, and began to moan. This was the traditional mourning.

  Yes, yes, Ciphus, but how many? Tell us how many!

  Soft wails joined him. Then in a loud voice he cried, “They have taken three thousand of our sons and daughters!”

  Three thousand! So many! They had never even lost a thousand.

  The wails rose to fever-pitch cries of agony that reached out to the surrounding desert. First Thomas and then the rest of his men dismounted and sank to their knees, lowered their heads to the ground, and wept. Rachelle fell to her knees with the rest, until the whole village knelt on the side of the road, weeping for the wives and mothers and fathers and daughters and sons who’d suffered such a terrible loss to the Horde. Only Ciphus stood, and he stood with arms raised in a cry to Elyon.

  “Comfort your children, Maker of men! Take your daughters into your bosom and wipe away their tears. Deliver your sons from the evil that ravages what is sacred. Come and save us, O Elyon. Come and save us, lover of our souls!”

  The custom of immediately marrying the widows to eligible men would be stretched very thin. There weren’t enough men to go around. They were all dying. Rachelle’s heart ached for those who would soon learn that their husbands were among the three thousand.

  The mourning continued for about fifteen minutes, until Ciphus finished his long prayer. Then he lowered his arms and a hush fell over the crowd now standing.

  “Our loss is great. But their loss is greater. Fifty thousand of the Horde have been sent to an appropriate fate on this day!”

  A roar erupted down the line. The ground trembled with their throaty yells, motivated as much by the fresh horror of their o
wn loss and their hatred of the Horde as by their thirst for victory.

  Thomas swung back into his saddle and walked his horse up the road. At times like this he would sometimes acknowledge the crowd with nods and an uplifted hand, but tonight he rode with sobriety.

  His eyes found Rachelle. She ran to him with Samuel and Marie. He leaned over and kissed her on the lips.

  “You are my sunshine,” he said.

  “And you are my rainbow,” she replied, tempted to haul him off the horse right now. He felt her teasing tug and grinned. Their sappy exchange was refreshing because it was so genuine. She loved him for it.

  “Walk with me.”

  He kissed Marie and smiled. “As beautiful as your mother.” He ruffled Samuel’s hair.

  They walked down the cheering line like that, Thomas in the saddle, Rachelle, Samuel, and Marie walking proudly on his right side. But there was a tension in Thomas’s face. It wasn’t only the price they had paid in battle that occupied his mind.

  The moment they reached the wide sandy shores to the lake, Thomas dismounted, handed the horse off to his stable boy, and turned to his lieutenants.

  “Mikil, William, we meet as soon as we’ve bathed. Suzan, bring Ciphus and whatever members of the Council you can find. Quickly.” He kissed Rachelle on her forehead. “We need your wisdom, my love. Join us.”

  He hugged Samuel and Marie, whispered something in their ears. They ran off, undoubtedly up to some mischief.

  Thomas took Rachelle’s hand and led her to one of the twenty gazebos that overlooked a large amphitheater cut from the forest floor. The lake lay two hundred yards distant, just past a swath of clean white sand. They’d cleared the forest over the years, and as the village grew, they expanded the beach by relocating houses that had once been near the lake, such as their own. In their place they planted thick, rich grass and more than two thousand flowering trees, carefully positioned in concentric arcs leading to the sand. Hundreds of rosebushes and honeysuckles spotted the grass in tidy enclaves with benches for sitting. This end of the lake had been landscaped as a garden park fit for a king.