He thought he understood the power of the eye-trap, and has seen how addictive that demo screen is even before it’s juiced up, but this is success beyond his wildest expectations. Far beyond. There haven’t been any new warning chimes from zeetheend, but he goes there next anyway, just to see how it’s doing. Once again his expectations are exceeded. Over seven thousand visitors so far, seven thousand, and the number ticks up steadily even as he watches.

He drops his coat and does a nimble little dance on the bearskin rug. It tires him out fast—when he makes his next switch, he’ll be sure to choose someone in their twenties or thirties—but it warms him up nicely.

He snags the TV remote from the buffet and clicks on the enormous flatscreen, one of the camp’s few nods to life in the twenty-first century. The satellite dish pulls in God knows how many channels and the HD picture is to die for, but Brady is more interested in local programming today. He punches the source button on the remote until he’s looking back down the camp road leading to the outside world. He doesn’t expect company, but he has two or three busy days ahead of him, the most important and productive days of his life, and if someone tries to interrupt him, he wants to know about it beforehand.

The gun closet is a walk-in job, the knotty-pine walls lined with rifles and hung with pistols on pegs. The pick of the litter, as far as Brady’s concerned, is the FN SCAR 17S with the pistol grip. Capable of firing six hundred fifty rounds a minute and illegally converted to full auto by a proctologist who is also a gun nut, it is the Rolls-Royce of grease guns. Brady takes it out, along with a few extra clips and several heavy boxes of Winchester .308s, and props it against the wall beside the fireplace. He thinks about starting a fire—seasoned wood is already stacked in the hearth—but he has one other thing to do first. He goes to the site for city breaking news and scrolls down rapidly, looking for suicides. None yet, but he can remedy that.

“Call it a Zappitizer,” he says, grinning, and powers up the console. He makes himself comfortable in one of the easy chairs and begins following the pink fish. When he closes his eyes, they’re still there. At first, anyway. Then they become red dots moving on a field of black.

Brady picks one at random and goes to work.

11

Hodges and Jerome are staring at a digital display reading 244 FOUND when Holly leads Freddi into her computer room.

“She’s all right,” Holly says quietly to Hodges. “She shouldn’t be, but she is. She’s got a hole in her chest that looks like—”