JOE . . .

Joe suffers again through his daymare. Every day, the same dream, clinging by his fingertips to the lip of the same rocky precipice, his feet swinging and kicking over the same dark swirling infinity. The living darkness calling to him, beckoning, and still that same traitorous part of him longing to answer, to let go and fall...

No. Not fall. Go home.

Then a sudden shift. He's now standing on the ledge. And below him, clinging by their fingertips, hang Carole andLacey. He laughs as he grinds a heel into their fingers and sends them screaming, tumbling into the abyss.

LACEY . . .

"This is creepy, Carole," Lacey said as she scanned the street from the subway stairwell. Cars lined the curbs as always, but the streets lay still and silent. "Nothing is moving. Nothing."

Except for the birds, but they didn't count.

The silence got to Lacey. She found the emptiness here eerier and far more surreal than the close call with that pair of emaciated vampires. It sent cramps rippling through her intestines.

But even so, it was good to be out of the tunnels, to feel a fresh breeze on her face, to inhale clean air. They'd found three more undead scattered in alcoves along the shuttle tracks before they reached the Lexington Avenue line, and a half a dozen more on the nine-block length of track they walked down to the Thirty-third Street station. All were emaciated, and they dispatched them without difficulty.

The morning was further along than they'd intended by the time they crept up to street level.

"We've got to head uptown a couple of blocks, then west," Lacey said.

Her uncle had laid out their route, but this was her city so it was only natural that she take the lead here.

"We'll be exposed," Carole said. "I don't like that."

"Neither do I, but the only really open spot will be crossing Thirty-fourth. After that there should be lots of nooks and crannies to hide in if need be."

They made a headlong dash to Thirty-fifth, then turned left.

"This area used to be called Murray Hill," Lacey told Carole as they hurried along the sidewalk, staying low, ever ready to duck into a doorway at the first sign of movement or sound of a car. "I guess it still is. Very tony, very high rent. At least it was."

But now it was a ghost town, pimpled here and there with piles of black plastic garbage bags, torn open, their contents pawed and pecked through by rats and pigeons, perhaps even people. Waiting in vain to be picked up by a non-existent sanitation department. Waiting for Godot.

She led Carole past the brick-fronted Community Church of New York with BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS emblazoned on its front wall.

Peacemakers... is that us? she wondered.

Further up on the right, on the corner of Madison Avenue, sat a brown-stone church and steeple.

"The Church of the Incarnation," Carole muttered as they passed. "I wonder ... oh, it's Episcopal."

"Almost as good as Catholic, right?"

Carole smiled. "But not quite."

They dashed across Madison to the shadows of the Oxford University Press offices, then continued on toward Fifth Avenue. Before reaching Fifth they found the broken side doors of the City University Graduate Building. They squeezed through and climbed to the second floor. There, through huge arched windows, they had a panoramic view of the Art Deco lower levels of the Empire State Building and the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street.

Lacey leaned forward to see if she could see the top.

"Don't get too close to the window," Carole said, pointing to the sunlight slanting through the dusty air. "Somebody might see you."

Lacey nodded, too awestruck by what she saw.

"Look. They have electricity."

Houlihan's bar and restaurant, occupying the ground-floor corner of the Empire State nearest them, was lit up inside. A neon Red Hook Lager sign glowed in the window. She'd stopped in there once to eat but had walked out. Fourteen bucks for a hamburger. Location, location, location.

"Joseph told us they were using the generators."

"I know. But it's been so long since Eve seen a working electric light, I. .. it's kind of wonderful in a way. Gives me hope."

They found some chairs well back in the shadows and settled down to watch. A few Vichy hung around under the canopied front entrance, but otherwise there wasn't much activity.

"Do you think this is the right way to go?" Lacey said after a while. "The three of us attacking the Empire State Building, I mean."

"We don't know that we will be. That's why we're here now. To see if it's feasible."

"Don't get me wrong, but do you get the feeling that no matter what we find, somehow Joe's going to think it's feasible?"

Carole turned and stared at her. "I don't think I understand."

"I think you do. My uncle's got a major hard on for this Franco."

Lacey—

"It's true and you know it. That's all he's talked about since we did the Post Office: Franco, Franco, Franco. Here we are, possibly the only three humans in the world with firsthand knowledge of the vampires' secret—how the death of one reverberates through the progeny, wiping out all his or her get down the line—and we're all together in New York instead of splitting up and trying to make it into the unoccupied areas of the country to spread the news."

"We've been through that."

"Yeah, I know, but..."

It was easier to move around within the occupied zone than to get out of it. Vichy were stacked at the Delaware River crossings waiting to pick off anyone who tried. Joe's theory was that if they could knock off Franco and his get, the Vichy network would collapse in disarray—at least for a while—and they could waltz across.

Maybe.

"And remember," Carole said, "one of the parishioners has a shortwave and is probably broadcasting the news to the world right now."

"We don't know that. And who'd believe him?"

"Exactly. That's why we agreed it will be much better to be able to show than simply tell."

Another idea of Joe's: use the building's security system to videotape the deaths of Franco and his get. Then they'd have proof.

"Look, Carole, I know Franco is the head honcho and taking him down will put a serious crimp in the undead master plan, but do you get the feeling that there's more to it, that if Joe could demonstrate this get-death on another undead of equal stature, he'd bypass the opportunity and remain fixed on Franco?"

Carole's tone took on a definite chill. "You're saying that Joseph would jeopardize our lives and what we know just to get revenge on Franco?"

"You're not answering the question."

Carole looked away.

Was it simple revenge? That had to be part of it, Lacey knew, and she had her own score to settle with this monster for what he had done to her Uncle Joe. But she sensed something more than revenge driving Joe to this showdown, something she was missing.

That worried her.

"Look, Carole, you've got to admit that Joe isn't exactly the same guy he was a week ago. He was dead, and now he's not. What brought him back to life? It wasn't your God, so what was it?"

"God intervened. Joseph was supposed to become one of the undead, but he did not. God has turned the Devil's own work back on him, making Joseph an instrument of His divine vengeance."

"Buy into that if you want, Carole. I don't. I can't. And I'm a little worried about that weird dream he's been having. We know Joe's been to hell and back. I just hope he didn't bring a little of that hell back with him."

- 14 -

CAROLE . . .