He didn’t know whether she’d heard him over the screaming noise, so he repeated the message slowly and carefully. Mrs. Novato, in her white pleated skirt and her green blouse and her sensible shoes, stood there swaying and didn’t acknowledge him at all.

“Walk this way, Mrs. Novato!” called Captain Myers. “Please, walk this way!”

When she remained where she was, he turned and called: “I want two volunteers to go out there and get her. On the double!”

Two officers scuttled across from behind the protection of their parked cars, and Captain Myers rapidly briefed them. But as he was talking, he suddenly paused and lifted his head. Mrs. Novato had taken an unsteady step toward them. Then she took another. Then another. Then she pitched forward and fell on her face.

“Get out there!” ordered Captain Myers, and the two officers, guns drawn, skirted around the police cars and sprinted out toward the bus. They weaved from side to side as they ran, and kept their heads low. When they reached the teacher, they took an arm each and ran back, trailing the heels of her sensible shoes along the road surface. They made it back to the protection of the barriers without any sign of interest or hostility from the cold, radiant bus.

They laid Mrs. Novato down on a plaid rug. The police medic knelt down beside her and took her pulse and blood pressure, and checked her eyes for response to light. It was only a few moments more before he stood up and said quite simply, “She’s dead.”

“How did she die?” asked Captain Myers. “Any quick ideas?”

The medic, a pale young officer with a six o’clock shadow and a pointed nose, said, “Feel her for yourself. The abdomen.”

Captain Myers squatted down beside the body and gently touched the stomach with the flat of his hand.

“It feels pretty cold,” he said. “But that’s natural if that whole damn bus is frozen up.”

“Feel harder,” said the medic flatly. Captain Myers looked at him with a slightly aggrieved frown. He didn’t like people who acted funny.

He tried to squeeze the flesh of the stomach in his fingers, but he couldn’t. He looked up at the medic again, and said, “She’s solid, like rock. She feels like a piece of frozen beef.”

The medic bent forward and stripped back Mrs. Novato’s white pleated skirt. From the knees upward, her thighs were pale blue, and they were as rigid and hard as marble. Her pubic hair was frosted white, and her lower stomach was solid but, worst of all, her vagina had been frozen so that it gaped obscenely wide, revealing blue-ribbed flesh inside.

Mrs. Novato’s body, from the thighs to the breasts, had been subjected to such intense cold that it was totally solidified.