“Lacey, what in the world-”

Two men emerged from the second vehicle. Darkness poured off them. Lacey’s heart clenched, her voice stopped in her throat like a cork. She didn’t have to look to know what they were. Too late! All lost!

“No!” She was backing away. “No!”

Arnette gripped her by the arm. “Sister, get ahold of yourself!”

People were pulling at her. Hands were trying to wriggle the child free. With every ounce of strength Lacey held fast, squeezing the child to her chest. “Don’t let them!” she cried. “Help me!”

“Sister Lacey, these men are from the FBI! Please, do as they ask!”

“Don’t take her!” Lacey was on the ground now. “Don’t take her! Don’t take her!”

It was Arnette, after all; it was Sister Arnette who was taking Amy from her. As it had been in the field, Lacey kicking and fighting and screaming.

“Amy, Amy!”

She shook with a huge sob then, the last of her strength leaving her body in a rush; a space opened around her as she felt Amy lifted away. She heard the girl’s small voice crying out to her, Lacey, Lacey, Lacey, and then the muffling clap of the car’s doors as Amy was sealed away inside. She heard the sound of an engine, wheels turning, a car pulling away at high speed. Her face was in her hands.

“Don’t take me, don’t take me,” she was sobbing. “Don’t take me, don’t take me, don’t take me.”

Claire was beside her now. She put an arm around Lacey’s shaking shoulders. “Sister, it’s all right,” she said, and Lacey could tell she was crying, too. “It’s all right. You’re safe now.”

But it wasn’t; she wasn’t. No one was safe, not Lacey or Claire or Arnette or the woman with the baby or the guard in his yellow shirt. Lacey knew that now. How could Claire tell her everything was all right? Because it wasn’t all right. That was what the voices had been saying to her all these years, since that night in the field when she was just a girl.

Lacey Antoinette Kudoto. Listen. Look.

In her mind’s eye she saw it, saw it all at last: the rolling armies and the flames of battle; the graves and pits and dying cries of a hundred million souls; the spreading darkness, like a black wing stretching over the earth; the last, bitter hours of cruelty and sorrow, and terrible, final flights; death’s great dominion over all, and, at the last, the empty cities, becalmed by the silence of a hundred years. Already these things were coming to pass. Lacey wept, and wept some more. Because, sitting on the curb in Memphis, Tennessee, she saw Amy too; her Amy, whom Lacey could not save, as she could not save herself. Amy, time-stilled and nameless, wandering the forgotten, lightless world forever, alone and voiceless, but for this:

What I am, what I am, what I am.

SEVEN

Carter was someplace cold; that was the first thing he could tell. They took him off the plane first-Carter had never been on a plane in his life and would have liked to have had a window seat, but they’d stuffed him in the back with all the rucksacks, his left wrist chained to a pipe and two soldiers to watch him-and as he stepped onto the stairs leading down to the tarmac, the cold hit his lungs like a slap. Carter had been cold before, you couldn’t sleep under a Houston freeway in January and not know what cold was, but the cold here was different, so dry he could feel his lips puckering. His ears had clogged up, too. It was late, who knew how late exactly, but the airfield was lit like a jailyard; from the top of the stairs, Carter counted a dozen aircraft, big fat ones with huge doors dropped open at the back like a kid’s pajamas, and forklifts moving to and fro along the tarmac, loading pallets draped with camo. He wondered if maybe they were going to make some kind of soldier out of him, if that’s what he’d traded his life for.

Wolgast: he remembered the name. It was funny how he’d found himself trusting the man. Carter hadn’t trusted anyone in a long, long time. But there was something about Wolgast that made him think the man knew the place he was in.

Carter’s wrists and feet were shackled, and he made his way gingerly down the stairs, minding his balance, one soldier ahead of him, one behind. Neither had spoken a word to him or even to each other that Carter could tell. He was wearing a parka over his jumpsuit, but it was unzipped for the chains, and the wind cut through him easily. They led him across the field toward a brightly lit hangar where a van was idling. The door slid open as they approached.

The first soldier poked him with his rifle. “In you go.”

Carter did as he said, then heard a small motor whir and the door closed behind him. At least the seats were comfortable, not like the hard bench on the plane. The only light was from a little bulb in the ceiling. He heard two thumps on the door and the van pulled away.

He’d dozed on the plane and wasn’t tired enough to sleep more. With no windows and no way to tell the time, he had no sense of distance or direction. But he’d sat still for whole months of his life; a few hours more wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. He let his mind go blank for a while. Time passed, and then he felt the van slowing. From the other side of the wall that sealed him from the driver’s compartment came the muffled sound of voices, but Carter didn’t know what it was all about. The van lurched forward and stopped again.

The door slid open to show two soldiers stamping their feet in the cold, white boys wearing parkas over their fatigues. Behind the soldiers, the brightly lit oasis of a McDonald’s throbbed in the gloom. Carter heard the rush of traffic and figured they were by a highway somewhere. Though it was still dark, something about the sky felt like morning. His legs and arms were stiff from sitting.

“Here,” one of the guards said and tossed him a bag. He noticed then that the other guard was biting into the last of a sandwich. “Breakfast.”

Carter opened the bag, which contained an Egg McMuffin and a disk of hash browns wrapped in paper and a plastic cup of juice. His throat was bone dry from the cold, and he wished there was more of the juice, or even just water to drink. He drained it quickly. It was so sugary it made his teeth tingle.

“Thank you.”

The soldier yawned into his hand. Carter wondered why they were being so nice. They didn’t seem at all like Pincher and the rest of them. They were wearing sidearms but didn’t act like this was anything.

“We’ve got a couple of hours yet,” the soldier said as Carter finished eating. “You need to make a pit stop?”

Carter hadn’t peed since the plane, but he was so dried out he didn’t figure there was much in him to go with. He’d always been like that, could hold it for hours and hours. But he thought about the McDonald’s, the people inside, the smell of food and the bright lights, and knew he wanted to see it.

“I reckon so.”

The soldier climbed into the van, his heavy boots clanging on the metal floor. Crouching in the tiny space, he removed a shiny key from a pouch on his belt and unlocked the shackles. Anthony could see his face up close. He had red hair and wasn’t no more than twenty, give or take.

“No funny stuff, understand?” he told Anthony. “We’re not really supposed to do this.”

“No sir.”

“Here, zip up your coat. It’s fucking freezing out here.”

They led him across the parking lot, one on either side but not touching him. Carter couldn’t remember when he’d gone anywhere without somebody else’s hand on him someplace. Most of the cars in the lot had Colorado plates. The air smelled clean, like Pine-Sol, and he felt the presence of mountains around him, pressing down. There was snow on the ground, too, piled high against the edges of the lot and crusted with ice. He’d only seen snow once or twice in his life.

The soldiers knocked on the bathroom door, and when nobody answered, they let Carter inside. One came in while the other watched the door. There were two urinals, and Carter took one. The soldier who was with him took the other.