Strangers

of my right. That was the signal to VIGILANT to institute the new order. No one but Lieutenant Horner and I can get out of Thunder Hill until I decide it's safe."
        Leland Falkirk left the office, walked out into The Hub, as pleased with himself as was possible under these disturbing conditions. It had taken eighteen months, but he had at last shattered Miles Bennell's infuriating composure.
        If he had chosen to make one more revelation, he could have brought the scientist all the way to his knees. But there was one secret the colonel had to keep to himself. He had already devised a plan to kill everyone and everything in Thunder Hill in the event that he decided they were infected and only masquerading as human. He had the means to reduce the installation to molten slag and stop the plague right here. The hitch was that he would have to kill himself along with everyone else. But he was prepared for that sacrifice.
        

        
        After sleeping only five and a half hours, Jorja showered, dressed, and went to the Blocks' apartment, where she found Marcie sitting at the kitchen table with Jack Twist. She stopped at the end of the living room, just outside the kitchen doorway, and watched them for a moment, while they remained unaware they were being observed.
        Last night, at four-forty a m., after Jorja and Jack and Brendan had rendezvoused at the Mini-Mart with the second team of outriders and had returned from Elko, Jack had slept on the floor in the Blocks' living room, so Marcie would not be alone in the morning after Faye and Ernie had gone off on their respective tasks. Jorja had wanted to move the girl to their own room, but Jack had insisted that he did not mind doing a little babysitting after Marcie woke. "Look," he said, "she's sleeping with Faye and Ernie in their bed. If we try to move her now, we'll wake all of them, and everyone needs whatever sleep he can get tonight." Jorja said, "But Marcie's been sleeping for hours, so she'll be up and around before you are in the morning. She'll wake you." And he said, "Better me than you. Really, I don't need much sleep. Never have." And she said, "You're a nice guy, Jack Twist." He said self-mockingly, "Oh, I'm a saint!" And she said with great seriousness, "You may be the nicest guy I've ever met."
        She had firmly settled on that opinion during the hours they had cruised through the night-clad streets of Elko in his Cherokee. He was smart, witty, perceptive, gentle, and the best listener she'd ever encountered. At one-thirty in the morning, Brendan pleaded exhaustion and curled up in the back of the Cherokee, instantly falling asleep. Jorja, dismayed that the priest had come with them, had not really understood her dismay until Father Cronin went to sleep; then she realized that her feelings had nothing to do with the priest, but resulted from her desire to have Jack Twist to herself. With Brendan out of the way, she got what she unconsciously wanted, and she fell entirely under Jack's spell, telling him more about herself than she had told anyone since her all-time closest friend had moved away when they were both sixteen. In almost seven years of marriage, she had never had a conversation with Alan that was half as profound as that she had with Jack Twist, a man she'd known less than twelve hours.
        Now, as she stood just outside the kitchen doorway in the Blocks' apartment and watched Jack with Marcie, Jorja saw another good side of him. He could talk comfortably with a child, without the slightest note of condescension or boredom, something few adults could manage. He joked with Marcie, questioned her about her favorite songs, foods, and movies, helped her color one of the last untinted moons in her album. But Marcie was in a deeper and even more frightening trance than she had been yesterday. She did not answer Jack; she rewarded his attention with nothing more than an occasional blank or puzzled look, but he was not discouraged. Jorja realized that he had spent eight years talking to a comatose wife who had never responded, so he would not lose patience with Marcie anytime soon. Jorja stood in the shadows just beyond the doorway for several minutes, unannounced, torn between the pleasure of watching Jack be Jack and the agony of watching her daughter descend even farther into a state increasingly similar to some of the behavior of an autistic child.
        "Good morning!" Jack said, looking up from the