“Miles, go ahead.”

Miles heard Eileen Anderson on the other line and asked his fiancée to hold. “Yes, Eileen —could you have Quentin call me at the paper as soon as possible? And I was wondering, have you had a lot of missing-person reports filed in the last day or two?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Could you fax me over the list?”

“I don’t know . . . my son’s missing. That was his school calling asking me where he was,” she said. Her tone was different. She sounded frightened.

“I’m sorry. I’m sure he’s okay.”

“I dropped him off at school myself,” she said.

   “Eileen, I need the list of missing people, even if Quentin is out of pocket. Okay? It’s important.”

“All right.” Quentin’s secretary hung up.

Miles punched the blinking button on the other line. “Is everything all right there in San Francisco?” Miles said.

“Yes, Miles. Everything is fine here. What’s wrong? You sound strange,” she said.

Miles sat back in his chair, relieved. “Well, if I told you what we’ve been hearing, you wouldn’t believe me,” he said. “Anyway, it’s probably some kind of hoax.”

“Miles, I’ve got to go. I love you. Don’t forget to call my mom.”

“Okay. Love you too, babe.”

CHAPTER 13

Dr. Poole drove out of the Timberland High’s parking lot on the south end of Main Street in a quiet panic. A long line of yellow school buses were parked in the whirling snow. His Volvo dipped roughly off the school’s parking lot and onto the street. Everything that had gone on that morning, until that moment, had been bizarre, even horrible, but still dream like. Now it all seemed very real. His son had disappeared and he was on the verge of panic. He heard his cell phone buzz and he grabbed for it.

Find him?

He pulled the car over and texted his wife back.

No. Not yet.

The high school had called his wife and asked if their eldest son had been kept home. His wife, frantic, had begged Marvin to find their son Richard when Marvin had called her from the Sheriff’s office. So far he’d failed. Now he would have to go home and explain to her that hundreds of students were missing from Timberline’s schools, and that he had no explanation.

He drove down Main Street toward his practice, hoping to see his son on the street—his tall body bobbing the way it did when he walked, his hair riddled with snow. Marvin turned a corner by the town’s one pool hall where he knew the kids sometimes hung out. He slowed the Volvo. He saw the CLOSED sign in the pool hall’s window and went on toward the center of town, glancing down side streets. His cell rang and he snatched it off the passenger seat without looking to see who was calling.

“Poole.”

“Marvin, did you find Richard?” his wife asked.

“No, baby. But I’m sure he’ll call one of us.”

“I don’t understand, Marvin. Richard would never do this. Not call me. He would not cut school.” Marvin listened to his wife’s anxious voice. It was the first time he thought of lying to his wife since they’d met. He didn’t want to tell her what he’d heard. He didn’t want to tell her that something truly dreadful might be happening.

“He’s all right, some kind of prank. You know teenagers, just when you think you know them, they do something like this. It’s part of growing—”

“Marvin, don’t talk to me like that! I’m not a patient. Don’t. I want to know where my son is!” his wife said.

“Grace, how’s Vivian? Is her temperature any better?”

“No, it’s worse. She has horrible diarrhea, you better come see her. I don’t know what to do.”

“What about Richard? I was going to go up to the ski school and see if he—” he said.

“No, come home. See about your daughter first.” His wife hung up without saying goodbye.

Marvin turned the Volvo back onto Main Street with the thought of other mothers and fathers he’d seen, searching for their children at the high school. The doctor tried to put the conversation he’d overheard with the state police into some kind of context, trying to work it into his own son’s disappearance, but he couldn’t. How could anyone make sense of what he’d heard? The report was too bizarre to believe. There was some kind of reasonable explanation. Something was indeed terribly wrong, yes; he was sure of that. He’d sensed it for days, after seeing his patients’ strange symptoms. But there had to be a good reason.

At a stop sign he rubbed his eyes. One of his medical school professors had once said that just because someone was a Catholic, didn’t mean they couldn’t ride a motorcycle too: two diseases could exist together, living side by side.

One of his patients, a young mother with her baby boy, crossed the street in front of him. Bundled up, she lifted her hand to wave at the doctor, and smiled. Marvin watched the baby carriage, one of those new high-tech ones with the bicycle wheels, roll by. How could what he’d heard be true?  Marvin tried to smile, but he couldn’t. He glanced up instead and noticed the Christmas lights strung over the street.

“God damn it,” he said aloud.

The streetlight went out. He slammed his hand on the steering wheel.

Marvin pulled onto the old stone bridge over the Truckee River. It was a covered bridge, and once under the bridge’s shed-style roof, he was grateful for the partial darkness and a sense of quiet and protection. He glanced through the slats in the walls and saw the dark molten river running around huge snow-capped boulders, the rocks standing in dumb silent formations against the moving river. It all seemed so normal. He’d passed over this bridge a thousand times, a thousand times he’d felt the bump of his tires over the timbers, and felt the way it shook the car slightly. It reminded him of the first time he had driven over the bridge years before with his wife and son. And then he remembered Willis’ warning as he stood with the scalpel to his throat: “They’ll be here soon!”

Trucks and cars with snow on their roofs and hoods came at him in the opposite lane as soon as he’d crossed the bridge. He went down a mile and turned onto Ridgewood Avenue. He glanced at his watch. He would be home in twenty minutes, or less. He waited at the stop sign. A white VW bug crossed in front of him. He saw Lacy Collier. She wore dark glasses and a bright red wool ski cap. Lacy raised her hand and waved at him as she went on toward the center of town.

The Ponderosa Estates was a new development of expensive homes seven miles from Timberline. The doctor’s Volvo passed the garish sign advertising the development’s newest homes. “Fifteen Ranchettes Still Available!” a sign said. A car coming the other way through the snow was flashing its headlights, alternating between the high-beam and low-beam. The driver slowed down as he approached the doctor’s car. Marvin slowed, thinking there must be an accident ahead. The two cars stopped alongside one another. An older man rolled down his window.

“Mister, don’t go up that road, whatever you do!”

“What are you talking about?” Marvin said.

The man, in his seventies, was talking but keeping both hands on the wheel of his car. He was driving an old yellow Dodge; the car’s back window had been smashed.

“They’re attacking—up by Pollock Pines. I drove through them. I’m looking for a policeman. Do you have a cell phone? Mine is dead.”

“Yes,” Marvin said. “Attacking? Who’s attacking?”

“They tore a guy out of his van and killed him. There’s twenty or thirty kids in the middle of the road, pulling people out of their cars and murdering them.” The old man was obviously in shock, his mouth quivering slightly. Marvin had seen men’s lips quiver that way in Africa, during the worst Ebola outbreaks.