He concentrated on lifting the sacred human dead and laying them in rows, and consoling as best he could the living. He helped a man who had been partially flayed and was in shock, covering the purple, oozing ruin of his legs with strips of gauze from Linda’s dwindling medical kit. Then Pete and one of the uninjured took the man out to the makeshift medical station in the street, where lights glared and the little Novocain that had been found in the one local dentist’s dispensary was in use.

“Give it to the children,” the man said as Linda set an IV for him.

Mark did not hear her words of reply, spoken softly in what had developed into a soft summer night. Not that he couldn’t, but he was too consumed by his own tragedy. Looking at the man who had been skinned, he found himself longing to crawl out of his own skin.

A small girl spoke again, and he realized that she had been talking to him for some time.

“Will you carry me?”

He picked her up, face as soft as a dream, dusting of freckles.

“Where is my mommy?”

“Your mommy is in heaven.”

“Can I go? I want to be with her.”

He felt the flesh of her beneath his big hands, as soft, almost, as air. “Stay here with us, child, stay with us for a little while.”

She laid her head upon his shoulder, and in anguished silence he received her tears. He gave his heart to the child, the half of it that he could. But the other half found her disgusting and wanted her dead.

More than that, though, Mark thought, if he could not find what was truly human within himself, and make it all of him, then he needed to be the one to follow this child’s mother, and to die.

Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE STORM

In a useless attempt to sweep away the anguish in her soul, Gina had turned her music up to full volume, and “Riders on the Storm,” “Caro Nome,” and “The Ride of the Valkyries” blared simultaneously out of six sets of the speakers that were scattered through the office.

As she worked, she screamed and cried out his name and swooped her lenses trying to find him and cut more strike orders.

She noticed shaking and saw that clouds were surging past outside, and rain was hurling itself at the window. Yesterday, the storm had been creeping up the coast, but now it seemed to be gathering strength. Wonderful. All she needed was cloud cover thick enough to affect signals access to her satellites.

As long as that didn’t happen, though, she couldn’t have cared less about the storm. There was no hurricane in northern California where she was focused.

By all indications it was a beautiful evening in the little town of Willoughby, except that there was no traffic.