He sent Mrs. Joann Wolff for more firewood. When she smiled the wounds on her throat opened like gills. Her voice was a harsh whisper but the words came out distinctly.

"All right."

"Joann, are you scared?" asked Bill.

"What?"

"Scared, Joann."

The woman opened her mouth, then closed it. Bill knew that she had been a third-grade teacher at a private girl's school called St. Rose Academy. In what Joann's mind called a *fit of literalism', some witty predecessor had planted a dozen rosebushes in front of the school. The old scars on Joann's left hand were from when she had fallen into the bushes while drinking late one night with another teacher, Mr. John Lemay. She was hoping he'd propose to her, but after half a bottle of warm Chardonnay he admitted that he was gay. Due to the wine she'd started laughing, and then started crying, to the mortification of Mr. Lemay. Then she'd finished off the rest of the bottle after sending him on his way, and fallen into the rosebush when she was trying to walk to her car. She had no memories of how she got home; only of waking up and having a headache like she'd been hit with a boulder and seeing the dry blood crusted on her hands.

"No," whispered Joann. One of her narrow hands crept up to her neck, stroking the wounds.

Bill sat next to the firepit, which was still covered in gray and black ash and still warm from the blaze Septimus had set. "Are you sure?" he said.

"I don't know much," said Joann. When Constance had cut her throat she'd also cut off much of her hair, the remaining strands of which hung in squared-off clumps around the sides of her narrow face. Her brown eyes became black in the early-evening moonlight. She wore a Boston Celtics t-shirt.

"That's for the best, trust me," said Bill.

She stood next to him, her arms crossed. She'd avoided stepping on the other bodies lying between her and the forest. Now her foot rested on the chest of a man in a brown suit, who'd had his nose cut off, the blood from the wound running down a long brown beard. Bill hadn't learned his name yet.

He stared at Joann in silence for awhile. Having another persona*even if she was only a shell, a husk, a memorya*soothed him. Finding out about Joann, which only took a touch, had diverted the flow of his thoughts, even if just for a time. He'd lifted himself into her life, leaving the bombed-out and rubble-strewn crater that was his life for the time being.

Joann stared off into the forest.

"Is it all right if I go now?" she asked. "I think thata*"

She coughed, and a gout of blood burst out of her neck and onto her t-shirt.

"Yeah," said Bill. "Yeah, go ahead. Got to get this fire made."

"Can I ask you something, Bill?"

Bill frowned. Even through the bubbling of the blood, he could hear the third-grade teacher tone in her voice.

"Yes," he said, after derailing his thoughts. The red and gold swam in his guts like a school of sharks.

"You're sad, darling. What are you sad about?"

"That's easy, Joann."

"Would you like to talk about it?"

"Fuck, no."

Joann kept her eyes steadily on his. She did not blink, did not wince.

"If you want to talk about it, darling," she said, "I'm here to listen to you."

She smiled. Blood stained her teeth.

"Maybe you should just go and collect the damned firewood," said Bill.

"All right."

She turned around, picking her way carefully through the bodies laid out shoulder-to-shoulder, just as they had been when Septimus had been there. She wore a denim skirt, and she held it daintily above her knees. Bill watched her as she tracked her way into the forest, eventually disappearing into the gloom.

Bill sighed.

"Fuck it," he said, after a couple of minutes. He got sick of staring into the darkness, and waved his hand at the pile of ashes.

Logs appeared. They were dry and gray and thin, perfect for burning. Kindling piled up underneath them.

Bill watched as the firelight flickered into life, casting black smoke into the black sky and light over the rows of bodies.

He didn't know why he'd come back here. Something deep in his mind nagged at him as he had let the dead out of the trailer, led them here, told them to rest. It was something that didn't make much sense but, as Terris had touted, had a sense of poetic justice that he could not deny. Seeing them spread out where he'd first seen Septimus'sarmya*a couple of days agoa*seemed like the right thing. Balanced an equation, dotted the i's and crossed the t's, all that kind of shit.

He looked over his army.

What had they felt before they died? What kind of horror had Terris subjected their fragile psyches to? And what were they feeling now? Bill knew that they were somewhat aware, that their consciousness burned inside them like a lone candle in a dark cathedral. The churning red and gold enabled him to see this.

He went to the nearest body, squatted on his heels. It was a young man, not much out of his twenties by the look of him. A thin beard hid a deep cleft in his chin. He wore a shirt with a stylized peacock stitched onto the right shoulder, its purple and red feathers foaming down around his chest.

"Who were you?" Bill wanted to know.

Bill hovered his hand over the guy's chest. He knew that if he touched him, there would be no going back; that the man's memories and fears and all of that shit would be directly transferred into him. And besides, he had wanted them to rest. They had seemed glad to lie down.

Bill took his hand away.

He turned back to the fire, stuck out his hands. The chill of the night didn't seem to affect him, but he appreciated the warmth all the same. The fire rose like a growing flower, spitting sparks into the blackness, where they fell back down to the dead strewn all around him.

The red and gold appreciated the rest, too. It sunk back into his abdomen, curling in on itself. Bill did not think it was asleep, but felt grateful that it had shut the hell up for a little while.

He stared into the flames. He almost felt like he could sleep, and sleep peacefully.

He heard footsteps.

"Oh God," he said. "Back already?" He turned around, frowning.

Joann stormed back into the firelight. Her pale face was wide-eyed, and she held her hands out in front of her. She gasped, spraying fine mists of blood from the openings in her neck.

She reached the edge of the field of bodies. Someone's oversized and expensive shoe on an oversized foot tripped her, and she went down across the torso of a bald man wearing a tuxedo.

"Bill," she moaned. "Bill, they're here."

He crossed his arms. The red and gold stirred, as if reluctant to be woken up.

He watched as Joann picked herself up from the body of the dead man. She brushed off the front of her shirt and her long denim skirt, and then her hands went back to her neck.

Bill stepped toward her. When he reached the first bodya*a woman whose wig was on askew, and her makeup smeareda*the red and gold lifted him as if he weighed nothing. Even forty-eight hours ago, the sensation would have made him giddy as hell. He could imagine himself clapping his hands and laughing like a kid as he moved across the ground, hovering like some kind of ghost or god. But now, in his new mind and in this horrible time, he only felt resentment.

"I can walk," he told the red and gold, which continued to bring him forward, floating inches over the faces of the dead. It did not listen to him. "Funny," he said. "Thought that you were subordinate. To me."

He brought himself to a halt in front of Joann, who stared at him as he lowered himself onto the forest floor.

"Why are you back so early?" he asked. "What's the matter?"

She frowned, scratched at her neck-wounds. "He's here," she said.

"Who?" he asked, just to be a dick.

"Terris Smith," said Joann. "Don't know how I know his name. I see it in my brain." She wiped her forehead, leaving a smear of blood and grime. "Did you put his name into my brain? Is that another thing that you can do?"

The red and gold flopped in his stomach. He pictured it now as a school of goldfish, the ornamental Japanese kind, with teeth installed into their sucker-mouths like rings of needles.

"Where is he?" Bill asked.

"He doesn't look like a man," said Joann. "He's this little girl with hair so blonde it might as well be white. Do you know the person I'm talking about, William?"

"Yes."

"She is standing not too far back into the woods. I think you can see her from here. And you have to see what she has with her."

Then Joann screamed.

She raised her hands to her hair, yanking out a huge handful in one pull. She took a shuddering breath before screaming again, this time using words: "OH MY GOD I WANT TO DIE WANT TO DIE WANT TO DIE THIS...AAAAAA!!"

Bill waved his hands. The red and gold reached out into Joann's neck and closed her throat. It stole whatever reanimating properties he had injected into her previously, and she crumbled to the ground. She flopped over next to the man in the tuxedo, hand across his chest, as if they were drunken lovers.

"Enough of that," Bill muttered, taking his hands of his ears. "More than enough of that."

"Right," said Constance. "Enough of that."

Thirty-Eight.

Bill turned to the forest. "Come out," he said.

"No."

"You're scaring my people."

"I grow impatient. Really." Her voice sagged in her throat, as if it were a very great effort to speak.

"You sound tired. Is murder, like, a burden for you?"

The red and gold started up from the base of his spine. It wormed its way into his heart, merging with the blood. It spread to his limbs with the next heartbeat, like a fire raging inside his blood vessels.

"You do right to get ready," said his wife's voice. He saw the ghost of her head in the trees, saw the dark stains in her hair revealed by the firelight.

"Are you going to come out?"

"I am tired," she said. "Brought them."

She put her arm to one side, palm-up.

They stood outside the reach of the firelight. Bill saw vague shapes extending far back into the forest. The body standing nearest to his wife had short hair, curled into a tight perm, and enormous glasses that took up most of her face. A white turtleneck sweater. Flowers embroidered over her breast.

The next was a man, tall and bald. That was all he could see. The next was a moving shadow, a woman even taller than the man, with bangs cut straight across her forehead.

And the line of dead continued into the forest.

"I'm ready," she said.

Bill stared at his wife's eyes. The red and gold surged within him, as if in response to the challenge. He clenched his fists, holding it back through sheer force of will.

"But you're tired," he said.

His wife's body stepped out of the treeline. The firelight revealed her blood-soaked clothes, a pink sweatshirt now red. But her bare feet were clean. Bill wondered when she had lost her shoes.

"I went to a restaurant," she said. He envisioned Terris' head on top of hers. "Wait, noa*three restaurants. There was a Pizza Hut and a diner called Margarine's. And a bar, I think. Some of these people were drunk. And this lady here was among the drinkers, if you can imagine?"

She pointed to the woman with the flowers on her sweatshirt. The woman grinned, the firelight flashing in her glasses.

"Right," said the woman.

"They all died because I made them choke," said his wife's body. She wiped her forehead, smearing the blood. "No cutting or dismembering. Hence their wonderful condition."

The red and gold rose through his body. Bill felt it solidify in the air in front of him like a shield.

Constance stepped forward, cocking her head to one side.

He felt the red and gold tingling on the tips of his fingers, dancing up and down his spine, and even filling his bladder like piss. He knew it wanted to go down to the dead. He restrained it, but barely. The gates were getting weak, worn down underneath something that had the power of a tidal wave.

"Get this over with," said his wife's body.

"All right," said Bill.

And then he lost control of the red and the gold.

He kneeled beside the body next to him and slapped its forehead. And of course he knew right away who the person was, who they had been; needed that information to control them, the red and gold had taught him.

A name, Charles DeLillo, shot through his mind, and all he saw was an image of an aquarium, and exactly fifty neon tetras swimming against a current of indigo water. Came from Charles' childhood, before an earthquake had shattered the tank, spilling the water onto his mother's new carpeta*