There were hundreds of them, it seemed, maybe thousands, filling the street, the sidewalk, and the side streets feeding into this one.

"This is human behavior we do not understand," David said. "This is beyond what is known about stress response."

Mack gunned the motor, and Caroline writhed in her seat.

But David, who was closest to the door, jumped out.

"You can't do this," he said.

The leading edge of the penitents or whatever they were had now reached the truck's front b.u.mper.

David faced them. "Wake up, wake up, all of you!"

He went to one of them, a man with the bones of his knees visible as he dragged himself along. He leaned into the man's face, calling on him to stop. Robotically, he continued on.

Mack said to Caroline, "Stay here." He also got out of the truck. "We have to keep moving, David, we can't stay here!" Then Katrina came up to them. Her-or rather, David's-gun was at the ready.

Caroline had had enough. Why would Mack, if he had good intentions, ever give a gun to somebody as obviously murderous as Katie? And why go so far from the clinic, and why even enter the town? No, this was all wrong, all of it.

The crowd had surrounded the truck, men, women, and children moving past them with the indifference of a flooding river. Mack was in front, struggling to push people aside.

Katie saw that he was having trouble and fired into the air.

He turned. "Help me," he shouted.

She went toward him, firing a second time, this time into the face of a woman, who pitched back amid her screaming children.

Caroline saw their chance. "This isn't right," she said to David.

"I know it."

They got out of the truck. David reached in for the portal.

"Stop!"

Mack was blasting through the crowd toward them.

"David, run!"

"The portal!"

"Run!"

She turned toward a nearby alley, and David followed her.

Mack had gotten in the truck and was gunning the motor, Katie hanging on the running board of the old vehicle. Honking the horn, they drove through the crowd, the engine snarling as the truck bounded and crunched over people.

David and Caroline ran hard down a side street, but the truck was faster and it was on them in moments, and suddenly it was beside them and Katie was pointing her gun straight at David's head. He angled away, heading into the alley.

At that point, Mack hit the brakes, Katie jumped off the running board of the old vehicle, and Mack got out, caught up to David in a few strides, then dragged him farther back into the alley.

"Come on," Katie said to Caroline, motioning with the gun.

"Katie, I understand your anger. I'd feel the same way. But you have to accept the fact that David and I go back-"

As David struggled with Mack, Katie slapped Caroline so hard that she reeled and fell to the sidewalk-which also brought David to a stop.

Mack kicked in one of the doors that opened onto the alley.

"Bring her," he said to Katie as he dragged David inside what turned out to be a restaurant kitchen. "Lotta useful stuff in here," he explained to Katie.

When he had his gun on both David and Caroline, he told Katie, "Go out and get the portal. I want it in my sight at all times."

Caroline and David both understood immediately what was about to happen here, and exactly why Mack had chosen a place full of the tools you find in a kitchen.

"Mack," David said, "we can't help you. The time for that is over."

"What in h.e.l.l h.e.l.l kind of bulls.h.i.t is that?" kind of bulls.h.i.t is that?"

"If you have a black spot on your body, Mack, you've been judged and you can't go through. The portal is part of a science we know only in legend. It's not a science of inanimate matter, but of the soul-and so it's alive, in a sense, and it won't allow you through unless you are chosen."

"I am d.a.m.ned well chosen! I am one of the the chosen!" chosen!"

At that moment, Katie returned with the portal.

"A Humvee with soldiers just pulled up out there," she said. Then, as she leaned it against the wall, she added, "My G.o.d, Mack, look at this."

As she held the portal up and moved it, the image within it also moved. Trees appeared, then, as she continued to move it, they slipped away into a riverbank dotted with flowers and thick gra.s.s.

"It's a window," she said in wonder.

"I know what it is," Mack snapped. "I promised you your revenge and now's the time. We need to find out how they made this and how in h.e.l.l to get through it."

She was completely entranced with the portal.

"It's soft," she said. Pressing a little, she pushed her fingers through.

"Jesus," Mack said, "Jesus, can you go farther?"

She pressed until her whole hand was inside.

"I can feel it! Oh, it's sort of cool but I can feel the sun on my hand."

Mack was right beside her now.

"That gra.s.s," he said, "can you reach down and-"

Katie crouched, taking the portal with her.

"Sure-oh, I can feel it. It's gra.s.s. Oh-G.o.d-" Smoke, fast and thick, began coming out from under her T-shirt.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand back, and blood came gushing out of the neatly sliced stump of her wrist. Flailing, she screamed, then flames shot out around her midriff, melting the shirt and causing her to twist and turn in agony, then to run to the far end of the long kitchen and smash into the wall.

All the while, Mack watched with the coldest eyes Caroline had ever seen. He did not try to help Katie at all, but kept his gun trained on the two of them.

Katie struggled in her death agonies, her pealing screams dropping to choked gargles as the room filled with a sickening stench of charred flesh and the overwhelming stink of burned hair.

The portal lay flat. Pressed into the gra.s.s on the other side of its surface was Katie's hand and most of her forearm.

"What in h.e.l.l happened to her?" Mack snarled.

"She was marked," David said quietly.

Mack thrust the gun into his stomach.

"What is this about these marks?"

"You get them from the life you've lived. A life beyond redemption, and you-"

Mack slammed him with the pistol and sent him sprawling and spitting.

"All right, shut up with that bulls.h.i.t! You listen to me, both of you, and listen close, or you will die slower and harder than you can imagine. That Humvee out there is a recce unit. Behind it is a strike force. They know what you have and these are your choices. Either tell us how to work this thing right now, or we will torture the life out of you until you do, then go to the clinic and waste whoever there is left to waste. Choose, children. Now."

"Mack, listen to me," Caroline said, putting all the urgency she could into her voice. "We can all go together. We can be friends. Partners!"

With a speed so sudden that it was in itself terrifying, Mack lunged at her and slammed her against the wall so hard she slumped, momentarily stunned. He shook her back to consciousness.

"I tried it before and it hurt so much I couldn't do it. Then this woman-G.o.dd.a.m.n! But this f.u.c.ker works and there's a secret to it, and you will will tell me that secret." tell me that secret."

She remained silent. What else could she do? If he couldn't get through, it was because he was judged.

"Okay, Doc David, then you tell me how it works."

He had something in his free hand that was not a gun, then she heard her clothes ripping and felt coldness and tightness against her skin. It was a point, she knew, and a little more pressure and it would penetrate.

"I swear to you, I will take every inch of skin off her, every f.u.c.king inch, f.u.c.king inch, unless you tell me the truth." unless you tell me the truth."

"There's nothing to tell," David said. "It's a sort of filter, it only lets certain people through."

"Then you're gonna change it."

"We can't."

The knife began sliding along her skin. She forced her pain to remain silent.

"You will hold her skin in your hands and she will still be alive, David. She will be in agony unlike any either of you have ever known. The only way you will be able to stop her pain will be to kill her with your own hands!"

"David-"

David turned on her. "Shut up!" Then, back to Mack. "Mack, we can change it. For you. You can go through."

"Where? Where is that place? It sure as h.e.l.l isn't anywhere on this Earth."

"It is, Mack. It's on this Earth."

"Where?"

"Mack, it's right here. It's where we're standing right now. It's what the Earth will become after ... after what's going to happen."

"And what would that be?"

"The end of this cycle."

"And the Earth is totally destroyed?"

"The cycle is over. Those of us who enter the new Earth start the new cycle there."

Caroline felt the pressure of the knife lessen.

"And who decides?"

"We decide," David said. "We can change the portal for you."

He lifted it from the floor. Caroline wasn't sure what he was doing, and remained silent. But one thing she did know. He could not change the portal in such a way that it would let someone with the mark through, because that mark identified them as being below the human level, lacking higher morality, compa.s.sion, and judgment. This is why it was called the mark of the beast. It meant, simply, that your life had left you more animal than human.

From outside, there came the snarling of big vehicles, then the squealing of brakes, followed by voices.

"That's the general," Mack said. "He's seen the truck."

"He knows about your truck? How?"

"We have communications. Just enough."

David looked doubtful. "May I ask-"

"Just fix the d.a.m.n portal. Do it now!"

Caroline realized that Mack did not know how General Wylie had found them. A lucky guess, perhaps.

David picked up the portal. "Caroline, we have to do this."

There wasn't a thing she could do to change it. All she could think was that he was buying time, so she took it from him. Up close like this, it was indistinguishable from a window. It was marvelous, just the most extraordinary thing she'd ever seen. But what would she do to make Mack think she'd changed it?

"It has to be tuned to the people who're going to use it," David said. "It works like a fingerprint reader. Let us-Caroline, print Mack to it."

Dear G.o.d, he was going to trick Mack into doing the same thing that Katie had done.

She had no choice but to go along. "Give me your hand, Mack," she said. Touching his damp skin was horrible. There was a sense of the corpse about it, not like the skin of a living person.