"Do it!"

And then the next thing Mike knew, the gun was in his his face. face.

"Do it," the general shouted at Timmy, "or I blow your f.u.c.kin' brother's f.u.c.kin' brains out right now!"

Timmy went to the portal. He stood before it.

"I love you," he said without turning around. The tears in his voice broke his brother's heart. He was gonna burn, Timmy was gonna burn, and Mike and Del, they would be next. What a s.h.i.tty G.o.dd.a.m.n way to go, how stupid was this?

"Sir," Del said frantically, "we need to take this thing up to the clinic. That's a secret installation! They know how it works, they can tell us."

"Move!"

There was a click. The cold of the gun barrel nestled against Mike's neck.

Suddenly Timmy just very smoothly stepped forward and went right into the thing. He seemed to walk forward, but also to get smaller and smaller, until finally he just disappeared.

Silence. n.o.body moved. "Jesus ..." the general whispered.

Then he seemed to climb out of something, and there he stood as clear as day in the gra.s.s on the other side, facing away from them. He bent down on one knee and ran his hands through the gra.s.s. Then he stood up and raised his eyes to what looked like a summer sky, floated with soft white clouds. Mike could practically hear the birds singing.

"Timmy," Mike shouted.

"Shut the f.u.c.k up!" The general removed the gun from Mike's neck and stepped closer to the portal. "Can you hear me?"

Timmy came close to the portal. Inclining his head to one side, he peered back at them. Could he see in this direction?

"Come back, Timmy," Del shouted. "Come on back, man!"

"Stuff it, soldier!"

"Yessir. But, Sir-"

Timmy held out a hand. He flattened it against his side of the portal-and instantly pulled it away.

Then Timmy was looking past the portal, seemingly into the sky above his side of it, or maybe at the portal itself, it was hard to be certain.

His face changed, moving into a wide-eyed expression of disbelief, then amazement.

He turned and went the other way, disappearing in among the trees of the orchard.

"TIMMY!" Mike went toward the portal. Mike went toward the portal. "TIMMY!" "TIMMY!" But as he tried to follow his brother, the general shoved him aside. But as he tried to follow his brother, the general shoved him aside.

"Get outta there," he said.

"Where's my brother?"

"Eating G.o.dd.a.m.n apples, looks like to me."

"He was running. Something was wrong."

"Yeah, what's wrong is he's a f.u.c.king dumba.s.s not to come back."

General Wylie stepped into the portal, using exactly the same decisive motion that Tim had used. Except ... he stopped. For a moment, there was silence. This was followed by a stifled cry that quickly became a howl of agony as flames burst through the fabric of his uniform, accompanied by a sound as if of frying bacon.

"Help him," Colonel Manders shouted, shielding his eyes as he tried to get near the general, who was flopping like a fish, his body enveloped in flames.

Then, just as the others had done, he fell backward off the portal and lay kicking and spinning on the ground in burned agony.

Aside from the colonel, Mike and Del were the only members of the unit near the portal-alive, at least. Most of the ones who hadn't gone up into that machine or been killed like the general was being killed, had deserted by now. Maybe someone was still hanging in a Humvee here and there, but n.o.body who was willing to come anywhere near the portal.

Overhead, another meteor roared past, a thick streak of light accompanied by an ominous rumble. Somewhere below the southern horizon, it exploded in a flash.

"f.u.c.k this," the colonel muttered. He swung into a Humvee, started it, and went back down the road, heading out toward the interstate and the Blue Ridge.

Mike and Del watched him go.

"Well, s.h.i.t," Del said into the silence that had enveloped the convoy. "Anybody home? h.e.l.lO?"

Mike went to the portal.

"Timmy," he shouted into it. "Timmy!"

What was in there that had so upset him? Timothy Pelton did not scare easily, and Mike was in a position to know that. Even as kids, Tim had always been the bold one, the first one up the tree, the first one to ride the Top Thrill Dragster in Cedar Point, the first one to ask a girl out, the first one in to save Momma that time they had the fire.

Mike slumped. He felt Del's arm come over his shoulder.

"Del, I feel like he's on the other side of the moon. Farther."

"What the h.e.l.l is this thing?"

"Some kinda cla.s.sified stuff, has to be."

"They ain't got no problems over there," Del said, " 'cept them crab apples don't look real worth eating."

"He's not eating crab apples! He run scared, man." A sudden burst of pure hate overcame Mike, and he kicked the blackened rubble of the general hard a few times. "f.u.c.kin' b.a.s.t.a.r.d! b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

"Hey. HEY!" Del pulled him away. "That ain't gonna do nothin'. That guy was headed for a court-martial, anyhow, the way he's killing people. I mean, I saw about five murder ones go down here today."

"Time of war." He went close to the portal. "Timmy! TIMMY, d.a.m.n your eyes, come back here!"

Then he saw, across a far hill, a small dot in motion. For some moments, he watched it as it moved steadily up the gra.s.sy hillside. Del also watched.

At some length, he said, "Could be him."

"Or some caveman who ate him. We gotta find out how this thing works."

Del went to a Humvee and opened the door. Inside was Ken Freitag, a gun in his mouth and the back of his head spread across the cab.

"Occupied," Del muttered.

He went to the next one down the line and got in. There was a click, then the engine started. Hardened military electronics were not so quick to fry, fortunately, but there was going to be more than one vehicle in this convoy that wasn't gonna move. "Got forty miles left in this," Del said.

Without speaking-they didn't need to bother, the three of them always understood one another's thinking-Mike picked up the portal and slid it into the back of the Humvee, where it fit nicely ... or had it gotten smaller when Mike tried to put it in?

Everybody knew the way the image in it changed as you moved it, and Mike didn't want to lose the spot where Timmy had gone in.

"We get this thing working right, we need to bring it back right here," he said.

"It's a countryside over there. If we get through safely, we're gonna find him sooner or later. Looks like southern Ohio, matter of fact."

"Southern Ohio is G.o.d's country."

"So is the rest of the world."

They were silent for a moment, each contemplating in his own way the enormity of what was happening.

"Why don't we just go in now?"

"You think we should?"

They both looked at it, then at each other. At last Mike said, "I think we need to find out more about it."

"I hear you," Del said. He pulled the Humvee out of the line and proceeded toward the town square. Plasmas so intense that they outshone the dismal sun now flashed across the sky without ceasing. Instead of the empty streets that had followed the pa.s.sage of the penitents, they soon found that Raleigh was crowded with people who were pushing and pulling anything they could that was on wheels, trying to take supplies with them as they headed west toward the interstate. It looked like something out of a World War II movie.

People stared hard at the Humvee as it trundled east. They'd been shot at one too many times when trying to approach the convoy. They gave the soldiers their distance.

Up and down the street, buildings were burning. Molten insulation was dripping off overhead wires. "Spontaneous electrical fires," Del said. "Must be a whole lot of solar juice in the air to cause this."

Mike knew that the sun's energy would concentrate in wires if it became intense enough. There were weapons that could do that, too.

Up and down Main Street, the same street lamps from which the victims of the penitents were hanging were now exploding, sending sparks down into panicky crowds of refugees. Sheets of fire flared along electric lines, and columns of smoke rushed up from the roofs of buildings.

"It's everywhere," Mike said. "The whole world is burning."

When Del was forced to slow down, people began coming up to the Humvee. "This could get ugly," he said, and jammed the gas to the floor.

"Easy on the clutch, man."

"I know it, but I gotta not hit these folks."

In the sky, a huge plasma danced, a long electrical body writhing, its appendages sweeping the horizons like great snakes.

Soon, they were through the town and onto the highway that led to what had been the convoy's original destination. Like the town, the road was filling with refugees, a few on horseback, more on bikes, most on foot. Mike held a weapon in sight, making sure it was visible to the angry eyes and the mad eyes that watched them pa.s.s.

These poor d.a.m.n people-somebody had to save them. If this darn portal would work, they could go through. Given enough time, maybe the whole darned country could go through.

What a d.a.m.n miracle it was, but probably not for ordinary folks. Only people like the ones in the Blue Ridge would be allowed to use a thing like this, you could bet on it.

His heart just literally felt like it was tearing in two. He could feel his twin wanting to be with him. He could feel Tim being scared and being alone, and maybe knowing that the portal was in motion, that it was disappearing like a summer cloud or whatever it looked like on that side.

The farther they got from town, the fewer people there were on the road, and Del began to run the Humvee harder-until he saw someone ahead of them.

"d.a.m.n," he said as they drew near the person standing in the middle of the road. It was a woman with a baby stroller filled with fishing equipment, rods, reels, poles, hooks and lines in packets. She wasn't going anywhere, either. She held her ground right in the middle of the two-lane blacktop.

Del stopped, leaving the Humvee idling.

She came around to the window. "We're moving our stock," she said, "and I'd be willing to pay you twenty dollars for an hour of the truck." She glanced around. "There's looting. The cops are gone."

"Lady, we'll all be dead in a few days."

"What in the world is the matter with you? How dare you say such a thing."

"This is the Last Judgment, lady," Del said. The Twines were Church of Christ, big-time. Not the Peltons. Their dad had steered clear of religion altogether. But Mike knew about the Last Judgment, of course, and from where he sat, Del could d.a.m.n well be right. What if that black stuff on people was sin showing up right through their skin?

"I need to move my stock. We're in hard times and we're planning a sale next week. We need inventory."

Mike leaned over to Del. "She's blown," he said. "Totaled."

"Christians can't just leave people," Del snapped.

"So let me drive. I ain't one. Anyway, you left all those people back there."

"Yeah, they weren't askin' for help."

Mike had to get this portal working. He had to get over into wherever the h.e.l.l it was and find Tim. Mom and Dad were gone now, but this is what they would've wanted him to do, and it was what his blood wanted him to do. You lose your twin, you lose half your soul. But how to convince Del?

"Lady," Mike said, "we need to get on. We got a mission."

"There's no mission, Mike!"

"My brother is my mission!"

"Fellas, if you need to go-"

"We need to go!"

Del did not move, and it shocked Mike to realize just how strongly he felt about this. He was going to push Del out of that seat and drive away without him if he didn't get this vehicle moving again.

But, in the end, Mike had to admit that he couldn't bust up with Del, let alone make him eat a fist or something. So the next thing he knew, he was loading fishing tackle into the Humvee.

They did six miles to a just plain pitiful little house, sad and tired and full of kids. An older boy and his dad came out and quickly unloaded the Humvee. Helping them and seeing the way they treasured this stuff that n.o.body would ever buy, Mike was almost moved to tears. It reminded him of being in Afghanistan and having cold families come up to camp in the night, to huddle against the warm sides of tents and fill them with their ripe stink and the reek of 'Stan food.

Guys would kick the s.h.i.t out of them through the canvas, but Mike and Tim didn't, and Del would go out and feed them, which would draw more, and he'd feed them until he ran out of d.a.m.n loaves and fishes or whatever.

These were Americans, though, but it no longer felt much different.

They finished, then Del went out and got their well going by osmosis using garden hoses, which is the kind of thing he always knew how to do.