5.

We crept past, trying to avoid making eye contact with the crazed preacher.

"This is your fault," the man roared, jabbing a finger at the crowd. "You have brought this upon yourselves, because you had ears but did not hear. You had eyes but did not see. You denied G.o.d, and put other G.o.ds before Him. Now He has called His faithful home, and has left me behind to warn you of what will come. You removed Him from your schools and courtrooms and allowed sodomites to marry and babies to be killed in their wombs. Now you will pay the price for your sins. This is the start of the long, dark night."

"f.u.c.king nutcase," Frank grumbled. "As if things weren't bad enough."

After we'd safely made it past the group and were out of earshot, we picked up our pace again.

"Think that's true?" Charlie asked.

Frank snorted. "What? That G.o.d took everybody away because of abortion and gay marriage?"

"Well . . . yeah."

"f.u.c.king bulls.h.i.t," Frank said. "I've got an easier time believing in little gray men, and I don't believe that either."

I grinned. "I take it you're not religious?"

Frank scowled. "Used to be, until my wife left. Came home from work one day and she'd cleaned the house out. Left me a dinner plate, fork and spoon. And the lawnmower. Come to find out she'd been cheating on me for the last six months. Ended up moving in with the guy, and left me holding the mortgage. We got divorced. I filed for bankruptcy while she got remarried."

Charlie whistled. "d.a.m.n. That sucks, man."

"Yeah, it does. After that, I just quit believing. Seemed easier that way. I mean, you take a look around and all you see are wars and famine and people dying of cancer and little kids getting s.n.a.t.c.hed by sick f.u.c.ks like the guy back at the bridge. There's just too much heartache and pain. Where's the love? G.o.d's supposed to be love, right? I don't think He exists. Think we're all walking around trying to live our lives according to a book that was pieced together when dinosaurs still roamed the earth."

"So you're an atheist?" I asked.

"Yep," Frank said. "And probably going straight to h.e.l.l for it. Heh-I don't believe in G.o.d but I still believe in h.e.l.l. Ain't that funny?"

Charlie and I agreed that it was.

"How about you guys?" Frank asked. "You atheists?"

"I'm agnostic, I guess," Charlie answered. "I believe in something. I just don't know what. Certainly not the Christian G.o.d. His believers say that He hates me. I've heard that all my life. Supposedly, He nuked an entire city just because of people like me. So f.u.c.k that-I ain't following. But I do think there's something out there. Something that maybe we're not meant to understand. I believe in ghosts and stuff like that, so I guess that's proof of an afterlife."

Frank nodded. "But not a Heaven?"

"No," Charlie said. "At least, not the way you mean. No clouds and people with wings on their backs, flying around and playing the harp. If you want to see that, there's a gay bar in York I can take you to."

Frank started laughing and Charlie joined him. They both stopped, clutching their bellies and slapping each other on the shoulder. Despite my eagerness to get home, I was glad for the break, and even happier to see that the tension between the two was easing. When they'd gotten their breath back, we started down the road again.

"How about you, Steve?" Frank asked. "What do you believe?"

"I don't know. I was born and raised Jewish. My wife and her parents are born-again Christians. I don't know what that makes me. I guess I don't really believe in anything, other than that I wish everybody could get along."

Charlie nodded. "I can't remember who said it, but there's a quote that goes, *There's enough religion in the world to make people hate one another, but not enough to make them love one another.'"

"I agree with that," Frank said.

We walked on in silence. A group of crows were gathered along the side of the road, picking at a corpse. In the darkness, I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, or what had killed it. Stranded motorists ignored the birds. One of the scavengers took flight with something pink hanging from its beak.

A murder, I thought. A group of crows is called a murder.

"But what if they're right?" Charlie asked again. "The Soapbox Man and his crowd. What if this really was the Rapture or the Second Coming or whatever they call it?"

Frank shrugged. "If that's true, then G.o.d called everybody home and we don't get to go."

"Sure we do," I said. "We're walking home right now."

"Yeah," Frank replied. "But to get to the home they're talking about, we'd have an awful long way to walk."

I sighed. "Seems to me like we have a long walk ahead of us either way."

"Yeah," Frank agreed. "Wish we'd have brought along some of that whiskey those people back at the fire gave us."

"I've got a new joke," Charlie said. "A Jew, a Polack, and a h.o.m.o are walking to Heaven, p.i.s.sed off that G.o.d left them behind . . ."

"What's the punch line?" Frank asked.

"I don't know." Charlie smiled. "Like I said earlier, we'll just have to wait and see."

Charlie's words ran through my mind. Home. Heaven. They were pretty much the same thing, as far as I was concerned. Christians said that when they died, they went home to be with the Lord. They called Heaven home. My heaven was home, too-at home with my wife. I'd walk all night to be with her again, if I had to. And if G.o.d really had called His children home and took them all to Heaven, then I'd walk there to find her, too.

In either case, it was a long way to walk.

6.

We reached Exit 24-Butler and Sparks-around 8:40 p.m. The suburbs and industrial parks had given way to woodlands and farms. Lots of cars traveled past us now, both on-road and off. Those with four-wheel drive raced through the fields and pastures, short-cutting around the slow-moving traffic. Some without four-wheel drive tried it too, and wound up stuck in the mud. We had to raise our voices over the spinning tires and blaring horns as they splattered each other's windshields with mud.

We stuck close to the guardrail as the traffic pa.s.sed. Frank and Charlie looked as tired as I felt. The cold air raised gooseflesh on my sweaty skin. The muscles in my legs ached and my feet had blisters on them. When I stumbled, Charlie caught me.

"We should rest again," he suggested.

I shook my head. "Can't. Need to get home to Terri."

"You sound like a broken record, dude. You're not going to do Terri any good if you end up lying alongside the highway, dying from exhaustion."

"He's right," Frank panted. "I ain't as young as you guys. I need another break."

Reluctantly, I allowed Charlie to guide me over to the guardrail. We sat down on it. Another vehicle pa.s.sed by. The woman behind the wheel looked sh.e.l.l-shocked. She stared straight ahead, her eyes not seeing.

A big guy in a mud-splattered, olive-colored trench coat approached us. He didn't seem wary or afraid. His head was shaved, but long, wispy sideburns framed his leering face. The right lens in his gla.s.ses was cracked in a spider-web pattern. He smelled like booze.

"Hi." He smiled. "My name's Carlton. What's yours?"

I returned his smile, still unsure of his motives.

"I'm Steve. This is Charlie and Frank."

"Nice to meet you." His voice was softer than I'd expected, given his size.

"I take it you got stranded, too?"

He ignored my question. "The mall is menstruating."

"What?"

More cars filed past us.

"The mall, down in Hunt Valley? It's menstruating. A great ocean floods forth."

"Uh, you mean...bleeding?"

Carlton nodded vigorously. "Really. It is. Just like in the Bible. *And behold, the malls shall menstruate.' The Book of Meat, chapter twelve; verse two."

Frank groaned under his breath. Carlton didn't seem to notice.

"There's cheese in his head," our new friend continued. "Fishy-fleshed cheese, just like they said there'd be."

"That's nice," I said, giving Frank and Charlie a nervous glance.

First it was the Soapbox Man, shouting and preaching from the hood of his car. Now this. I wondered just how many people had gone insane in the immediate aftermath of the disappearances.

"Are you folks going home?" Carlton asked, smoothing the wrinkles from his trench coat.

Charlie and Frank remained speechless, and I hesitated. Clearly, the guy was drunk or insane-or both. The last thing I wanted was a crazy person following us home. But before I could distract him, Frank spoke up.

"Yeah, we're just trying to get home. Gotta be moving on now, actually."

Carlton glanced down the highway, staring into the darkness. Then he looked back at us and smiled. His eyes seemed to twinkle.

"You can't go home. The others went home. He called them home. But not us. We've been left behind."

I shivered in the darkness. Beside me, I felt Charlie do the same. Could it be a coincidence that we'd just had this conversation, or was something else at work?

Frank cleared his throat. "It was nice talking to you, Carlton."

Carlton shuffled away from us, then turned around. "This is level six, if you come through the Labyrinth. Level six. Soon, if we stay here, we'll all have to wear the mark. If we want to buy anything, we'll have to wear it. The number is six one six. That's the number of the Beast. We'll wear it, and then we'll get really painful sores, and the seas will turn to blood, just like the mall did."

None of us responded. What do you say to something like that?

"I'm getting out," Carlton said. "I know a doorway."

He walked on, and we watched him go. He stopped farther up the road and talked to a group of migrant workers sitting in the back of a stalled pick-up truck. As we listened to their conversation, it became clear to us that none of the men spoke English, but that was okay, because we weren't sure that Carlton did either.

Another helicopter hovered overhead, low enough to stir up roadside litter and other debris. Hamburger wrappers, cigarette b.u.t.ts, newspapers and plastic cups swirled in a funnel cloud. People on the ground waved their arms and shouted for help, but the chopper flew on. The crowd cursed the pilot.

Charlie took a deep breath and exhaled. "I've been thinking."

"What about?" I turned to him.

"That guy back there at the Thornton Mill Road overpa.s.s."

"Tony? The one at the fire?"

"Yeah, him. I think he was lying about the skinheads. I mean, I've got no love for skinheads, don't get me wrong. But it seems like anytime we need a cultural boogeyman in this country, we lay it on a group like that. Skinheads. Muslim terrorists. Satanic daycare instructors. Republicans."

"What's your point?" Frank asked.

"What if it wasn't skinheads that hanged that guy? What if it was Tony and the other people that were there?"

I rubbed my tired eyes. "Come on, Charlie. You saw them. Most of that group were business people, just like us. Regular people. They're not going to resort to vigilante justice."

"Why not? Things have gotten real weird real quick. The mob rules, man. People have vanished, authorities aren't around, the survivors are scared, and n.o.body knows what's going on. Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me."

A black Labrador scampered by, its nose to the ground. When Charlie called out to it, the dog ran away, tail tucked between its legs. It must have belonged to somebody because it had a bright red collar around its neck, complete with dog tags. Whimpering, it disappeared.

"I'm starting to think it's true." Frank scratched the back of his neck.

"What?" Charlie asked. "That regular, everyday people hung that guy?"

"No. That aliens abducted everybody. It sounds silly, but could that actually happen?"

"There's no such things as aliens," I said. "It's just another bulls.h.i.t rumor. They don't exist."

Frank gazed up at the stars. "Just like G.o.d..."

"So what's your theory, Steve?" Charlie asked. "We've seen a lot more since it first happened. Where do you think Craig and all these other people went?"

We watched as a Lexus, its speakers rattling with a thudding ba.s.s line, swerved to avoid a pedestrian. The driver blew his horn. The man in the road shook his fist and shouted curses.

"I don't know," I admitted, after the car had pa.s.sed. "But it's not f.u.c.king aliens and it's not the Rapture. There has to be a reasonable explanation for what's happened."

"Maybe the scientists did something," Frank said.

"Which scientists?" Charlie asked.