A prophet of the oldest testament of them all.

So many stars.

They reminded Thomas of Neil's crazy seminar in Skeat's class. Rather than present anything of his own, Neil had dressed as the Man in Pink and sung Eric Idle's 'organ donation song' from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. The whole class, including old Skeat, had roared with laughter. But Skeat wasn't about to let Neil off the hook for sheer moxy's sake. Afterward, he demanded that Neil explain the significance of the song.

Neil nodded, smiled rakishly, and said: 'We live in a world where asking about the meaning of life has become a joke. It's no longer just the answer that eludes us. We've lost the question as well.'

The prick received an A, of course.

Staring at the stars, Thomas silently mouthed the lyrics—how could he forget them after enduring so many drunken rehearsals? And it seemed he could feel the entire earth float beneath him, wheeling beneath the light of a never-ending nuclear holocaust… A sun. A star.

A granule of light drifting in an infinite void.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

August 25th, 7.23 a.m.

'Dad! Daddy, wake up!'

'Wah?'

It was Ripley, sobbing. She had blood on her palms.

'Bart's dead, Dad! Somebody killed Bart!'

Thomas pulled a hand across his face, struggled out of his sleeping bag, stumbled to his feet, at once alert and still sleeping. What was happening?

Bart seemed impossibly black, slumped across the dew-grey lawn between the patio and the kids' pup-tent—so black that Thomas didn't realize the wetness matting his fur was blood until he looked at his finger tips. Brown eyes fogged and open. Tongue slack across the grass.

Ripley stood sobbing, wrist pressed to wrist, hands clutching her cheeks. 'Bart!' she cried.

A terror unlike any he had ever felt clutched Thomas about the throat.

'Sweetie,' he said as calmly as he could manage, 'where's Frankie?'

'I dunno.'

His daughter's words struck him like a hammer. He stood, his stomach bubbling, his limbs as light as styrofoam. Just adrenalin, he thought.

He walked over to the pup-tent, calling, 'Frankie?'

He jerked open the flap. Nothing but tangled sleeping bags in orange gloom.

He ran to the house, yanked open the patio doors, crying, 'Frankie!'

The house had the falling-snow quiet of returning from a long trip.

He ran upstairs, hoping that Frankie had crawled into his own bed. Nothing.

'Frankie!' he shouted.

He tried to laugh, to tell himself that Frankie sometimes liked to hide.

'This isn't funny, son!'

He dashed down the stairs through the main floor to the basement.

'Frankie! Jesus Christ… This is not funny!'

He searched the basement. Nothing.

He exploded through the front door, desperately rooted through the bushes, shrieking, 'Frankie!'

'Daddy!' he heard. His heart stopped.

'Where are you son?' he croaked.

'Daddy!' again—from the backyard!