“You remember San Francisco, too, then. Do you remember being with me? The classroom, maybe?”

She gave him a long, careful look. “It’s like echoes.”

He nodded.

“Who knows where I grew up or you grew up, or what our lives have really been.” A smile, creased with anger, flickered in her face, then was gone.

Mark was not familiar with the terrain, so he followed her as she moved quickly toward the shelter of some trees. About a quarter of a mile beyond them, a row of buildings could be seen. Other than the drumming on the far side of the structure, which had risen to a frenetic crescendo, nothing about the scene suggested the slightest thing out of the ordinary.

But then came screams, so frantic that they almost sounded, themselves, like the cries of some sort of alien being. Then he heard the children, their little voices babbling pleas for their lives.

He looked back the way they had come, at the opening they had made.

“We have our duty,” she said. “You’re right about that.”

“I can’t leave them.”

“Thank God! Because if you had, I was going to go back by myself.”

“Gina, it’s going to be hard. You’re going to feel the way you did—”

“Shut up about that! Never mention it again, please. Never!”

“You will feel it! And you will have to overcome it. Face it or risk being captured by it!”

As the desperation in the cries increased, deep excitement came throbbing into him. Her face flushed and she gasped, then uttered a tight, choking sob. She shook her head. She shook it again, harder. She was sweating now, flushed.

“Can you be effective in there, Gina?”

She raised her eyes to him, and in them he saw the steel of determination that the two of them clearly shared, and the doubt he understood so well. For a moment they held each other, their love an island in the savagery of their hearts.

Then they returned to the conservatory, to save whom they could.

*   *   *

George Hammond had been almost beyond exhaustion when he finally reached the White House. His own home, which had been in his family since before the Civil War, had been broken literally in two by the great oak that had stood in the front yard for three generations. He had seen his paintings destroyed, his antiques, his collection of early Washington Senators memorabilia, including the 1924 World Series program, not to mention most of his clothing. In fact, almost everything he had.