Strangers

"Ginger, what's wrong?"
        She was able to respond only with a wretched, involuntary sob.
        Seen through her tears, he shimmered, blurred. She wished he'd go away and leave her to stew in humiliation. Didn't he know how much worse it was to have him staring at her while she was in this condition?
        The snow was falling harder. Other people appeared in the doorway through which he had come, but she could not identify them.
        "Ginger, please talk to me," George said as he drew near. "What's wrong? Tell me what's wrong. Tell me what I can do."
        She bit her lip, tried to repress her tears, but instead she began to sob harder than ever. In a thin, blubbery voice that sickened her with proof of her own weakness, she said, "SSomething's wrong with me."
        George stooped down in front of her. "What? What's wrong?"
        "I don't know."
        She had always been able to handle any trouble that came her way, unassisted. She was Ginger Weiss. She was different. She was a golden girl. She didn't know how to ask for help of this kind, of this degree.
        Still stooping in front of her, George said, "Whatever it is, we can work it out. I know you're fiercely proud of your self-reliance. You listening, kid? I've always stepped carefully when I'm with you because I know you resent being helped along too much. You want to do it all yourself. But this time you simply can't handle it alone, and you don't have to. I'm here, and by God you're going to lean on me whether you like it or not. You hear?"
        "I… I've ruined everything. I've d-disappointed you."
        He found a small smile. "Not you, dear girl. Not ever. Rita and I have had all sons, but if we could've had a daughter, we would've hoped for one like you. Exactly like you. You're a special woman, Dr. Weiss, a dear and special woman. Disappoint me? Impossible. I would consider it an honor and a pleasure if you would lean on me now, just as if you were my daughter, and let me help you through this as if I were the father you've lost."
        He held out a hand to her.
        She grasped it and held on tightly.
        It was Monday, December 2.
        Many weeks would pass before she learned that other people in other places - all strangers to her - were living through eerie variations of her own nightmare.
        

    2.
        

    Trenton, New Jersey
        
        A few minutes before midnight, Jack Twist opened the door and left the warehouse, stepping into the wind and sleet, and some guy was just getting out of a gray Ford van at the foot of the nearest loading ramp. The van's arrival had been masked by the rumble of a passing freight train. The night was deep around the warehouse, except for four meager patches of murky yellow light from poorly maintained, grime-dimmed security lamps. Unfortunately, one of those lights was directly over the door through which Jack had exited, and its sickly glow reached precisely far enough to include the passenger's door of the van, out of which the unexpected visitor had appeared.
        The guy had a face made for police mug books: heavy jaw, a mouth that was hardly more than a slash, a nose that had been broken a couple of times, and hard little pig eyes. He was one of those obedient but pitiless sadists that the mob employed as enforcers, a man who, in other times, might have been a rape and pillage specialist in the armies of Genghis Khan, a grinning Nazi thug, a torture master in one of Stalin's death camps, or a Morlock from the future as imagined by H. G. Wells in The Time Machine. To Jack, the guy looked like serious trouble.
        They startled each other, and Jack did not immediately raise his.38 and put a bullet in the bastard, which is what he should have done.
        "Who the hell are you?" the Morlock asked. Then he saw the canvas bag that Jack was dragging with his left hand and the lowered pistol in Jack's right hand. His eyebrows shot up, and he shouted, "Max!"
        Max was probably the driver of the van, but Jack did not wait around for formal introductions. He did a quick reverse into the warehouse, slammed the door shut, and stepped to the side of it in case someone out there started using it for target practice.
        The only light inside the warehouse came from the brightly lit office far at the back of the building and from an overhead bank of widely spaced, low-wattage bulbs set in tin shades, which were allowed to burn all