Strangers

the herd.
        He found the two public telephones, only one of which was in use. He looked up the number of the Tranquility, tried to call Dom, but the motel's phones were out of service. He supposed the storm might have something to do with it, but he was suspicious and worried. He had to get out there where he was needed, and fast.
        In two minutes flat, he discovered there were no rental cars and that the town's taxi company, equipped with only three vehicles, was so busy because of the storm that he would have to wait ninety minutes to get a cab. So he looked around the terminal at a couple of stragglers from his own flight and at a few others who evidently had landed in private craft just as the airport was closing down, and he accosted them one by one, seeking a ride without success. Turning from one of them, Parker literally collided with a distinguished gray-haired man. The guy looked as frantic as Parker felt. He had pulled his coat open to reveal a Roman collar. To Parker, he said, "Excuse me, please, I'm a priest with urgent business, a matter of life or death, and I'm desperately in need of a ride to the Tranquility Motel. Do you have a car?"
        

        
        Dom Corvaisis sat tensely in the Servers' pickup truck, with the passenger-side door on his right and Ginger Weiss on his left, squinting ahead into a snowfall so heavy that it seemed as if they were driving through countless barriers of gauzy white curtains. He peered forward as though an incredible revelation lay just beyond the next curtain. But when each parted without resistance, it revealed only an infinite array of additional curtains blowing-rippling-fluttering beyond.
        After a while he realized what he was so tensely anticipating: a recurrence of the memory-flash that had stricken him when he had walked out of the Tranquility Grille. Jets…
        What had happened after the third jet swooped over, driving him to the pavement in terror?
        Although the streaming snowflakes made the winter day appear to be a tapestry of millions of randomly arranged white threads, they did not help illuminate the glen. The false twilight of the storm brought a deep-gray gloom to the land three-quarters of an hour ahead of the real twilight. Gnarled, toothy rock formations and an occasional cottonwood loomed suddenly out of the murkiness like prehistoric beasts out of a primeval mist, never failing to startle. However, Dom knew that Jack dared not risk turning on the headlights yet. Though the truck itself was hidden by the snow and by the steep walls of the hollow in which they were sheltered, the lights would reflect up through the falling mega-trillion bits of ice crystals, and the glow would certainly be visible to the observers below.
        They came to a place where the fading tire tracks of the Cherokee, like the trails of huge twin serpents, turned east into a branching glen that led off the main hollow. Jack did not follow Ned Sarver and the others, for the plan required them to head in a different direction. Instead, he pressed the pickup steadily north, relying on Dom's reading of a compass for guidance.
        In another hundred yards, they reached the head of the glen, where it narrowed to - and finally terminated in - a steep upward slope. Dom thought they would have to turn back and follow Ned, after all, but Jack shifted gears, accelerated, and the four-wheel-drive pickup started to climb. The slope was rocky and rutted. The pickup progressed with many a jounce and sway and lurch that repeatedly threw Ginger Weiss against Dom in a series of collisions that were not without a pleasant aspect.
        In the dreary gray storm light of the waning day, and in the dull and well-worn interior of the pickup, Ginger looked, by contrast, more beautiful than ever. Compared to her lustrous silver-blond hair, the white snow appeared soiled.
        With a leap and a crash that bumped Dom's head against the roof, the truck crested the long hill. They drove down a brief incline, then across a level strip of land. As they started up another slope, Jack suddenly slammed on the brakes and cried, "Jets!"
        Dom gasped, looked up into the seething snowstorm, expecting to see an aircraft plummeting at them, then realized that Jack was speaking of jets from the past. He had remembered the same thing that had come back to Dom less than an hour ago. Judging by Jack's sure-handed control of the pickup, however, he