Buzz nods. “Something they never tell you about being in a cult: it’s important to look good naked. Sorry they started without you. But you know, you’re on the clock once the Viagra kicks in. We needed to get the ceremony going, consecrate the bonds of obedience, yadda yadda yadda.”

“Buzz — ” Danny says.

Buzz scowls.

Danny takes a deep breath, starts again. “Robert. Whatever you’ve been promised. Whatever you think this is. They’re lying. They’re going to — ”

Buzz makes a jerking-off motion. “Oh, please, stop talking. For once in your life, just admit that you don’t know what the fuck is going on. Your know-it-all attitude. Did I ever tell you how much I hated that? Like you were so much smarter than everyone else.”

Danny should probably let that go, but he can’t. “I created a working artificial intelligence when I was four years old.”

Buzz leans down to look him in the eye. “And yet, here you are. So tell me: Who’s smarter now?”

“Look. I’m sorry I shut down Sharp Industries. But it was going to happen sooner or later. Whatever I can do to make it right, I’ll do — ”

Buzz smirks. “You think I give a shit about that? That was never the real problem. You interrupted the ritual, Danny. That’s where you fucked up. Now I’m doing what you never could: I’m going to save Middleton.”

It’s been a long night already, and that tips Danny over the edge. “What the hell are you talking about?”

So Buzz tells him.

Buzz went off to college, but it didn’t last long. He knew he wasn’t big enough or good enough to play for the pros. When his leg folded back like a paper clip during a game sophomore year, it was almost a relief. He was happy to stop being a jock. He came back home.

What he didn’t realize was how bad things had gotten in Middleton. When Sharp Industries and Sax Enterprises shut down, half the people in town lost their jobs. And no new businesses wanted to come to town. Not after New Year’s Evil. Nobody talked about it, but it hung over the whole town like smog. You breathed it in, all the time, until it became a part of you, living inside your bones and your blood.

He and Middleton limped along, both of them on the edge of bankruptcy, for ten years. He hooked up with his high school girlfriend at the ten-year reunion, and she got pregnant so fast that he knew she was lying about being on the pill. They got married anyway.

That’s when they came to him. The Followers.