'Because it's our our song. It's the Squad Anthem, the one we play when we go in hot. We're Cruise's boys.' Cruise? Was that right? As in Tom Cruise? Maybe not quite. song. It's the Squad Anthem, the one we play when we go in hot. We're Cruise's boys.' Cruise? Was that right? As in Tom Cruise? Maybe not quite.

The gunfire from the east was much lighter now. The slaughter of the animals was almost done. But there were men, a long skirmish line of hunters who were wearing green or black instead of orange, and they were listening to that song over and over again as they did their work, adding up the numbers of an incredible butcher's bill: I rode a tank, held a general's rank, when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank . . . Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name. I rode a tank, held a general's rank, when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank . . . Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.

What exactly was going on here? Not in the wild, wonderful, wacky Outside World, but inside his own head? He'd had flashes of understanding his whole life - his life since Duddits, anyway - but nothing like this. What was was this? Was it time to examine this new and powerful way of seeing the line? this? Was it time to examine this new and powerful way of seeing the line?

No. No, no, no.

And, as if mocking him, the song in his head: general's rank, bodies stank. general's rank, bodies stank.

'Duddits!' he exclaimed in the graying, dying afternoon; lazy flakes falling like feathers from a split pillow. Some thought struggled to be born but it was too big, too big.

'Duddits!' he cried again in his hortatory eggman's voice, and one thing he did understand: the luxury of suicide had been denied him. Which was the most horrible thing of all, because these weird thoughts - I shouted out who killed the Kennedys - I shouted out who killed the Kennedys - were tearing him apart. He began to weep again, bewildered and afraid, alone in the woods. All his friends except Jonesy were dead, and Jonesy was in the hospital. A movie star in the hospital with Mr Gray. were tearing him apart. He began to weep again, bewildered and afraid, alone in the woods. All his friends except Jonesy were dead, and Jonesy was in the hospital. A movie star in the hospital with Mr Gray.

'What does that mean? mean?' Henry groaned. He clapped his hands to his temples (he felt as though his head were bulging, bulging) and his rusty old ski-poles flapped aimlessly at the ends of their wrist-loops like broken propeller blades. 'Oh Christ, what does that MEAN?' 'Oh Christ, what does that MEAN?'

Only the song came in answer: Pleased to meet you! Hope you guess my name! Pleased to meet you! Hope you guess my name!

Only the snow: red with the blood of slaughtered animals and they lay everywhere, a Dachau of deer and raccoon and rabbit and weasel and bear and groundhog and-

Henry screamed, held his head and screamed so loud and so hard that he felt sure for a moment that he was going to pass out. Then his lightheartedness passed and his rm'nd seemed to clear, at least for the time being. He was left with a brilliant image of Duddits as he had been when they first met him, Duddits not under the light of a blitzkrieg winter as in that Stones song but under the sane light of a cloudy October afternoon, Duddits looking up at them with his tilted, somehow wise Chinese eyes. Duddits was our finest hour, he had told Pete.

'Fit wha?' Henry said now. 'Fit neek?'

Yeah, fit neek. Turn it around, put it on the right way, fit neek.

Smiling a little now (although his cheeks were still wet with tears that were beginning to freeze), Henry began to ski along the crimped track of the snowmobile again.

10

Ten minutes later he came to the overturned wreck of the Scout. He suddenly realized two things: that he was ragingly hungry after all and that there was food in there. He had seen the tracks both going and coming and hadn't needed Natty Bumppo to know that Pete had left the woman and returned to the Scout. Nor did he need Hercule Poirot to tell him that the food they'd bought at the store - most of it, at least - would still be in there. He knew what Pete had come back for.

He skied around to the passenger side, following Pete's tracks, then froze in the act of loosening the ski bindings. This side was away from the wind, and what Pete had written in the snow as he sat drinking his two beers was mostly still here: DUDDITS, printed over and over again. As he looked at the name in the snow, Henry began to shiver. It was like coming to the grave of a loved one and hearing a voice speak out of the ground.

11

There was broken glass inside the Scout. Blood, as well. Because most of the blood was on the back seat, Henry felt sure it hadn't been spilled in the original accident; Pete had cut himself on his return trip. To Henry, the interesting thing was that there was none of the red-gold fuzz. It grew rapidly, and so the logical conclusion was that Pete hadn't been infected when he'd come for the beer. Later, maybe, but not then.

He grabbed the bread, the peanut butter, the milk, and the carton of orange juice. Then he backed out of the Scout and sat with his shoulders against the overturned rear end, watching the fresh snow sift down and gobbling bread and peanut butter as fast as he could, using his index finger as a knife and licking it clean between spreads. The peanut butter was good and the orange juice went down in two long drafts, but it wasn't enough.

'What you're thinking of,' he announced to the darkening afternoon, 'is grotesque. Not to mention red. Red Red food.' food.'

Red or not, he was thinking of it, and surely it wasn't all that that grotesque; he was, after all, a man who had spent long nights thinking about guns and ropes and plastic bags. All of that seemed a little childish just now, but it grotesque; he was, after all, a man who had spent long nights thinking about guns and ropes and plastic bags. All of that seemed a little childish just now, but it was was him, all right. And so- him, all right. And so-

'And so let me close, ladies and gentlemen of the American Psychiatric Association, by quoting the late Joseph "Beaver" Clarendon: "Said fuck it and put a dime in the Salvation Army bucket. And if you don't like it, grab my cock and suck it." Thank you very much.'

Having thus discoursed to the American Psychiatric Association, Henry crawled back into the Scout, once more successfully avoiding the broken glass, and got the package wrapped in butcher's paper ($2.79 printed on it in Old Man Gosselin's shaky hand). He backed out again with the package in his pocket, then took it out and snapped the twine. Inside were nine plump hot dogs. The red kind.

For a moment his mind tried to show him the legless reptilian thing squirming on Jonesy's bed and looking at him with its empty black eyes, but he banished it with the speed and ease of one whose survival instincts have never wavered.

The hot dogs were fully cooked, but he warmed them up just the same, running the flame of his butane lighter back and forth beneath each one until it was at least warm, then wrapping it in Wonder Bread and gobbling it down. He smiled as he did it, knowing how ridiculous he would look to an observer. Well, didn't they say that psychiatrists eventually ended up as loony as their patients, if not more so?

The important thing was that he was finally full. Even more important, all the disconnected thoughts and fragmented images had drained out of his mind. Also the song. He hoped none of that crap would come back. Ever, please God.

He swallowed more milk, belched, then leaned his head against the side of the Scout and closed his eyes. No going to sleep, though; these woods were lovely, dark and deep, and he had twelve-point-seven miles to go before he could sleep.

He remembered Pete talking about the gossip in Gosselin's missing hunters, lights in the sky - and how blithely The Great American Psychiatrist had dismissed it, gassing about the Satanism hysteria in Washington State, the abuse hysteria in Delaware. Playing Mr Smartass Shrink-Boy with his mouth and the front of his mind while the back of his mind went on playing with suicide like a baby who's just discovered his toes in the bathtub. He had sounded entirely plausible, ready for any TV panel show that wanted to spend sixty minutes on the interface between the unconscious and the unknown, but things had changed. Now he he had become one of the missing hunters. Also, he had seen things you couldn't find on the Internet no matter how big your search engine was. had become one of the missing hunters. Also, he had seen things you couldn't find on the Internet no matter how big your search engine was.

He sat there, head back, eyes closed, belly full. Jonesy's Garand was propped against one of the Scout's tires. The snow lit on his cheeks and forehead like the light touch of a kitten's paws. 'This is it, what all the geeks have been waiting for,' he said. 'Close encounters of the third kind. Hell, maybe the fourth or fifth kind. Sorry I made fun of you, Pete. You were right and I was wrong. Hell, it's worse than that. Old Man Gosselin Old Man Gosselin was right and I was wrong, So much for a Harvard education.' was right and I was wrong, So much for a Harvard education.'

And once he'd said that much out loud, things began to make sense. Something had either landed or crashed. There had been an armed response from the United States government. Were they telling the outside world what had happened? Probably not, that wasn't their style, but Henry had an idea they would have to before much longer. You couldn't put the entire Jefferson Tract in Hangar 57.

Did he know anything else? Maybe, and maybe it was a little more than the men in charge of the helicopters and the firing parties knew. They clearly believed they were dealing with a contagion, but Henry didn't think it was as dangerous as they seemed to. The stuff caught, bloomed . . . but then it died. Even the parasite that had been inside the woman had died. This was a bad time of year and a bad place to culture interstellar athlete's foot, if that was what it was. All that argued strongly for the possibility of a crash landing . . . but what about the lights in the sky? What about the implants? For years people who claimed they'd been abducted bv ETs had also claimed they had been stripped . . . examined . . . forced to undergo implants. All ideas so Freudian they were almost laughable . . .

Henry realized he was drifting and snapped awake so strongly that the unwrapped package of hot dogs tumbled off his lap and into the snow. No, not just drifting; dozing. A good deal more light had seeped out of the day, and the world had gone a dull slate color. His pants were speckled with the fresh snow. If he'd gone any deeper, he'd've been snoring.

He brushed himself off and stood up, wincing as his muscles screamed in protest. He regarded the hot dogs lying there in the snow with something like revulsion, then bent down, rewrapped them, and tucked them into one of his coat pockets. They might start looking good to him again later on. He sincerely hoped not, but you never knew.

'Jonesy's in the hospital,' he said abruptly. No idea what he meant. 'Jonesy's in the hospital with Mr Gray. Got to stay there. ICU.'

Madness. Prattling madness. He clamped the skis to his boots again, praying that his back wouldn't lock up while he was bent over, and then pushed off along the track once more, the snow starting to thicken around him now, the day darkening.

By the time he realized that he had remembered the hot dogs but forgotten Jonesy's rifle (not to mention his own), he'd gone too far to turn around.

12

He stopped what might have been three quarters of an hour later, peering stupidly down at the Arctic Cat's print. There was little more than a glimmer of light left in the day now, but enough to see that the track - what was left of it - veered abruptly to the right and went into the woods.

Into the fucking woods woods. Why had Jonesy (and Pete, if Pete was with him) gone into the woods? What sense did that make when the Deep Cut ran straight and clear, a white lane between the darkening trees?

'Deep Cut goes northwest,' he said, standing there with his skis toeing in toward each other and the loosely wrapped package of hot dogs poking out of his coat pocket. 'The road to Gosselin's - the blacktop - can't be more than three miles from here. Jonesy knows that. Pete Pete knows that. Still . . . snowmobile goes . . .' He held up his arms like the hands of a clock, estimating. 'Snowmobile goes almost dead knows that. Still . . . snowmobile goes . . .' He held up his arms like the hands of a clock, estimating. 'Snowmobile goes almost dead north north. Why?'

Maybe he knew. The sky was brighter in the direction of Gosselin's, as if banks of lights had been set up there. He could hear the chatter of helicopters, waxing and waning but always tending in that same direction. As he drew closer, he expected to hear other heavy machinery as well: supply vehicles, maybe generators. To the east there was still the isolated crackle of gunfire, but the big action was clearly in the direction he was going.

'They've set up a base camp at Gosselin's,' Henry said. 'And Jonesy didn't want any part of it.'

That felt like a bingo to Henry. Only . . . there was was no more Jonesy, was there? just the redblack cloud. no more Jonesy, was there? just the redblack cloud.

'Not true,' he said. 'Jonesy's still there. Jonesy's in the hospital with Mr Gray. That's what the cloud is - Mr Gray.' And then, apropos of nothing (at least that he could tell): 'Fit wha? Fit neek?' Henry looked up into the sifting snow (it was much less urgent than the earlier snowfall, at least so far, but it was starting to accumulate) as if he believed there was a God above it somewhere, studying him with all the genuine if detached interest of a scientist looking at a wriggling paramecium. 'What the fuck am I talking about? Any idea?'

No answer, but an odd memory came, He, Pete, Beaver, and Jonesy's wife had kept a secret among them last March. Carla had felt Jonesy could do without knowing that his heart had stopped twice, once just after the EMTs put him in the back of their ambulance, and again shortly after he had arrived at Mass General. Jonesy knew he'd come close to stepping out, but not (at least as far as Henry knew) just how how close. And lf Jonesy had had any Kubler-Ross stepinto-the-light experiences, he had either kept them to himself or forgotten thanks to repeated doses of anesthetic and lots of pain-killers. close. And lf Jonesy had had any Kubler-Ross stepinto-the-light experiences, he had either kept them to himself or forgotten thanks to repeated doses of anesthetic and lots of pain-killers.

A roar built out of the south with terrifying speed and Henry ducked, putting his hands to his ears as what sounded like a full squadron of 'et fighters passed in the clouds overhead. He saw nothing, but when the roar of the 'ets faded as fast as it had come, he straightened with his heart beating hard and fast. Yow! Christ! It occurred to him that this was what the airbases surrounding Iraq must have sounded like during the days leading up to Operation Desert Storm.