Mr. Murder

stood.
        "I bought and prepared two getaway properties, one at each end of the country, so I'd be prepared for this day when it came. Owned them both under untraceable false names. I've transferred this one to Ann and John Gault, since I can only use one of them."
        He seemed embarrassed when Paige hugged him.
        "Karl," Marty said, "what would have happened to us without you? We owe you everything."
        The big man was actually blushing. "You'd have done all right, somehow.
        You're survivors. Anything I've done for you, it's only what anyone would have."
        "Not these days," Marty said.
        "Even these days," Karl said, "there are more good people than not. I really believe that. I have to."
        At the Range Rover, Charlotte and Emily kissed Karl goodbye because they all knew, without having to say it, that they would never see him again.
        Emily gave him Peepers. "You need someone," she said. "You're all alone. Besides, he'll never get used to calling me Suzie Lori.
        He's your pet now."
        "Thank you, Emily. I'll take good care of him."
        When Karl got behind the wheel and closed the door, Marty leaned in the open window. "If we wreck the Network, you think they'll ever put it back together again?"
        "It or something like it," Karl said without hesitation.
        Unsettled, Marty said, "I guess we'll know if they do… when they cancel all elections."
        "Oh, elections would never be canceled, at least not in any way that was ever apparent," Karl said as he started the Rover. "They'd go on just as usual, with competing political parties, conventions, debates, bitter campaigns, all the hoopla and shouting. But every one of the candidates would be selected from Network loyalists. If they ever do take over, John, only they will know."
        Marty was suddenly as cold as he had ever been in the blizzard on Tuesday night.
        Karl raised one hand in the split-finger greeting that Marty recognized from Star Trek. "Live long and prosper," he said, and left them.
        Marty stood in the gravel driveway, watching the Rover until it reached the county road, turned left, and dwindled out of sight.
        That December and throughout the following year, when the head lines screamed of the Network scandal, treason, political conspiracy, assassination, and one world crisis after another, John and Ann Gault didn't pay as much attention to the newspapers and the television news as they had expected they would. They had new lives to build, which was not a simple undertaking.
        Ann cut her blond hair short and dyed it brown. Before meeting any of their neighbors living in the scattered cabins and ranches of that rural area, John grew a beard, not to his surprise, it came in more than half gray, and a lot of gray began to show up on his head, as well.
        A simple tint changed Rebecca's hair from blond to auburn, and Suzie Lori was sufficiently transformed with a new and much shorter style.
        Both girls were growing fast. Time would swiftly blur the resemblance between them and whoever they once might have been.
        Remembering to use new names was easy compared to creating and committing to memory a simple but credible false past. They made a game of it, rather like Look Who's the Monkey Now.
        The nightmares were persistent. Though the enemy they had known was as comfortable in daylight as not, they irrationally viewed each nightfall with an uneasiness that people had felt in ancient and more superstitious times. And sudden noises made everybody jump.
        Christmas Eve had been the first time that John dared to hope they would really be able to imagine a new life and find happiness again.
        It was then that Suzie Lori inquired about the popcorn.
        "What popcorn?" John asked.
        "Santa's evil twin put ten pounds in the microwave," she said, "even though that much corn wouldn't fit. But even if it would fit, what happened when it started to pop?"
        That night, story hour was held for the first time in more than three weeks. Thereafter, it became routine.
        In late January, they felt safe enough to register Rebecca and Suzie Lori in the public school system.
        By spring, there were new friends and a growing store of Gault family memories that were not fabricated.
        Because they had seventy thousand in cash and owned their humble house outright, they