Crowe raised his weapon. Not his usual XM8, but a common industrial water blaster. The gas-powered engine throbbed away behind him.

He made sure the setting was on its highest power and tried a short burst. The jet of water shot clear across the highway. Up and down the line, there were occasional bursts as other troopers tried out theirs.

Overhead, the tiny shapes of the crop dusters circled, waiting for instructions from the command center.

Crowe didn't want to use them, possibly his most potent weapon, until he was sure of his targets.

The streetlights disappeared into the thickening fog, yellow halos forming around the bright stars of the bulbs. The mist lapped at the edge of his foxhole, then drifted slowly down into it, wrapping around his legs and waist as he knelt in the shallow dugout.

The fear seemed to be a part of the mist. It was palpable, so real that he thought he would choke on it. He wanted to turn, jump out of the hole, and run for his life back down the motorway toward the city.

There was something about the mist that went beyond the usual fear of going into combat. It held the fear of the unknown, and something else, too. It was impossible to describe. It was as if, not just his mind, but his very body was afraid of the mist. As if the cells that formed the structures of his being were quivering at the approach of the creeping fog.

But he could not run. This was it. This was the moment of truth for Auckland, and possibly for the human race. Right here. Right now.

Crowe knew that if he was feeling the terror, then the rest of his men, and the Kiwis ready to fight alongside them, would be feeling it, too.

A voice sounded in his earpiece, Manderson's voice. He turned. His friend was singing. The song was an old one. Once the stirring hymn that had led the soldiers of the North against the Confederates in the American Civil War and later the battle cry of U.S. soldiers in the First and Second World Wars: "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on."

Other voices were joining in now, from up and down the line. First the rest of the USABRF agents in their black combat biosuits. Then a few hesitant Kiwi accents.

He switched on his throat mike and added his voice to the chorus.

"Glory, glory! Hallelujah! Glory, glory! Hallelujah! Glory, glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on."

The fog swirled up around them, and the first jellyfish struck out of the darkness before the chorus had finished. The hymn trailed off into a ragged end as the men slapped at the creatures, whose tentacles were writhing into the fabric of the biosuits.

They came straight out of the dark fog. No searching, no seeking. Guided missiles locked onto their targets, arrowing through the mist, their fine tentacles trailing behind them.

Men hammered at them, squashing them, wrenching them off the arms and bodies of their biosuits. The air was suddenly thick with the swarming creatures.

Crowe twisted the nozzle of his water blaster around to "spray" and pulled the trigger, aiming in the air above them. Five or six of the jellyfish dropped out of the air and began squirming on the ground in front of him. The surface, the skin, if that was what it was, of the creatures was fizzing and bubbling. That was the salt, Crowe realized.

"Take that, you bloodsuckers!" Manderson cried to his right.

Crowe tried another spray and sent an instruction to the crews of the fire engines.

More of the jellyfish dropped to the ground, and he saw the fire crew to his right raise one of their nozzles. A curtain of salty water appeared in front of them. A mist of their own.

The jellyfish were dropping and fizzing by the hundreds, perhaps thousands. The roadway in front of them was covered in them, wriggling for a few moments, then lying still.

The ones he had sprayed earlier were still there, he noted. The outer surface had hardened, calcified into a pale white sh.e.l.l. They had not absorbed back into the mist! They had not absorbed back into the mist!

"Here they come!" someone called in his earpiece, and he strained his eyes to see the first of the snowmen lumbering out of the fog toward them. The noise they made was no longer a hiss. Here in the thinned-out mist, they moved more slowly and the sound was like that of wind around a house on a stormy night.

At first he saw just a few, gradually solidifying out of the mist. Then more appeared behind them; and more behind them. Suddenly they seemed to be everywhere, marching across the gray asphalt toward them.

"My G.o.d!" Manderson murmured.

"Water blasters hold till they are closer," Crowe ordered. "Hose crews, fire at will."

The fire hoses to his right swelled and burst forth in two heavy streams of seawater. Long wet arms that reached through the fog across the highway to the hordes of creatures that approached.

Where the high-pressure water struck, the snowmen exploded, great globs of their substance flying into the air.

Crowe watched as the closest of the creatures were all but cut in half by the salt.w.a.ter jets from the fire hoses.

And yet still they marched forward.

Crowe keyed his throat mike. "Bring in the dusters, right down the highway. Right over our heads."

There was a roar above him as the first plane made its low-level run, just above the fog, and the mist intensified as the salty sea spray drifted down around and in front of them.

Clouds of jellyfish dropped down through the mist, piling up on the highway, but the snowmen still marched forward. Their skin, too, was shriveling and bubbling with the salt, but it did not halt them.

The fire hoses were sweeping back and forth, ripping the creatures to shreds, but the fire crews were spread too thinly.

"Water blasters, pick your targets," Crowe yelled. "Make it count!"

More tankers were already on their way, but the water was still a limited supply. Thank G.o.d, or thank Rebecca, for the salt, which prevented the fog from reclaiming its own.

A white, sluglike creature lurched toward him. Crowe sighted along the barrel of the black plastic and metal rod of the water blaster and squeezed the trigger.

The jet of water shot out, and he directed it across the chest of the creature. It punched a hole straight through the spongy material, and Crowe sawed the blade of water back and forth, cutting the creature into pieces. Manderson was doing the same.

This close, and in the lighter mist, Crowe finally came face to face with the enemy. He could see why the first to sight them had referred to them as snowmen. They looked like puffed-up human beings, inflated somehow from within, and covered in a white, gelatinous substance. They had faces, he realized. Almost human, with mouths, noses, and even eyes, but all formed from the same white spongy substance. The eyeb.a.l.l.s, the eyelids, were white. The eyelids did not blink. The terror that had welled up in him before intensified, but he stood his ground.

He cut another couple of the creatures down, taking the legs off one and slicing through the neck of another.

The creatures dropped.

The jet from the fire hose swept across in front of him then, and the ragged line of snowmen faltered for the first time. Crowe hacked at the creatures with the blast of water from his weapon and found he was whooping with exhilaration.

They were winning. The line was holding!

"The mist is thickening," Manderson called, next to him.

"Get those fighters in here," Crowe shouted. "Close support. Light up the other side of the road, see if we can thin out the mist a little."

The fog was indeed thickening, he realized, and the creatures were starting to move faster. He ripped another couple apart. The ma.s.s of the creatures' flesh was filling the roadway. Overhead, the crop dusters swooped, covering the bodies of the creatures with brine, shriveling and fizzing.

Across the highway, lightning flashed and he ducked down into his foxhole for a moment as the shock wave of multiple explosions shook the ground around them.

Lucy Southwell's voice on the radio then, from the command center, three hundred feet behind the line.

"Crowe, this is Lucy. The evacuation is nearly complete, but we've lost all contact with the easternmost sections of the line."

"My G.o.d!" Manderson said for the second time that night, only this time it sounded like a prayer.

SILENCE IN THE M MIST Ramirez pulled up and watched below him as the last of his air-to-ground missiles impacted on the gra.s.sy strip, not even a hundred yards from where the troops cowered in their foxholes on the other side of the highway. below him as the last of his air-to-ground missiles impacted on the gra.s.sy strip, not even a hundred yards from where the troops cowered in their foxholes on the other side of the highway.

Now that was precision flying and precision targeting.

The crop dusters had left now, having exhausted their tanks. His aircraft were also out of bombs and missiles and were already heading back to the carrier to re-arm.

Ramirez alone remained over the battleground, circling, to feed information back to the carrier and to the troops on the ground.

The line was holding here at Albany, he saw, and also out to the west. But the east coast suburb of Mairangi Bay had been long swallowed by the dense white cloud, which had outskirted the defensive line, floating slowly out to sea and back in again behind it.

The frigates Te Mana Te Mana and and Te Kaha Te Kaha had been positioned in the bay, against just such an eventuality, he knew, but the had been positioned in the bay, against just such an eventuality, he knew, but the Te Mana Te Mana was now resting, listing over, on the sands of Mairangi Bay beach, and the was now resting, listing over, on the sands of Mairangi Bay beach, and the Te Kaha Te Kaha was slowly grinding itself to pieces on the rocks of the head land. There was no movement on board either vessel. was slowly grinding itself to pieces on the rocks of the head land. There was no movement on board either vessel.

The fog, apart from the holdup at Albany and farther west, was pouring down the east coast of the North Sh.o.r.e, spreading out behind the defense force at Albany and chewing its way across the affluent suburbs of Castor Bay, Campbells Bay, Milford, and on to Takapuna and Devonport.

He risked a low pa.s.s over the highway, trying to see the troops on the ground, but the mist was too dense.

Rebecca pulled up off the sand onto the gra.s.sy verge alongside Cheltenham Beach and thought she was lucky to have made it.

Some of the rocky promontories between the bays had been almost impa.s.sable. If it were not for the low tide, it would have been impossible.

She gunned the engine up past the navy training center and around onto the main road. Glancing to her right at the intersection, she realized with horror that the mist was barely a few hundred yards away and crawling rapidly forward along the road.

Only a few cars blocked the road here, and she swung from side to side, weaving in and out of them, the fog, omnipresent in her rearview mirror.

The final stretch, alongside the Devonport Golf Club, was clear.

Xena had woken now, if she had actually been asleep and not just resting. She was quiet, though, watching Rebecca drive with wise eyes.

Rebecca skirted the base of Mount Victoria on the long looping road and accelerated down the deserted main street of Devonport.

At the wharf, she turned right, heading along the breakwater toward the naval base.

The barriers were down at the entrance to the base, which didn't surprise her. What did surprise her, and perhaps shouldn't have, was the armed guard who stepped out of the security booth and waved her to a halt, the pistol held ready for use in his right hand.

"No admittance," the guard said, not at all calmly. "This is a military area."

Another guard stepped out of the booth then, and he had an automatic rifle held at the ready.

"I have to get through," Rebecca said urgently. "I have orders from Doctor Crowe and Doctor Lucy Southwell."

"No admittance," the guard repeated.

"Get out of here," the other guard growled.

Xena screeched, alarming the guards, who had not noticed her until then.

"What the h.e.l.l?" the first guard said, looking at Xena.

"Oh h.e.l.l!" The second guard said, looking where Xena and Rebecca were looking.

The fog was rolling rapidly down the slope toward the sea, swallowing building after building as it came.

Two more of the nightmarish white creatures hurled themselves out of the ever-thickening fog. Crowe cut a diagonal slash across them with the jet from his water blaster and they fell.

The crop dusters were gone now. So, too, were the fighter-bombers. The girl had been right. She had been right about the salt and the water, and everything else she had advised or suggested.

Another snowman reared up in front of them, but Manderson cut it open at the neck before Crowe could pull the trigger on his weapon.

Was it possible that she was right about the creatures?

The twin fire hoses next to them were silent now, and Crowe glanced across to see why. Had the water run out?

Where the crew had been, two men to a hose, four of the white sluglike creatures stood silently. Absorbing. Digesting.

"Stony," Manderson said urgently, looking behind them.

Crowe turned. The fog had come up behind them. It was closing in on their position as he watched. The front of the cloud was alive with antibodies, and behind them moved the dense shapes of the macrophages.

"Stony, we did it," Manderson began, with a quiet resignation in his voice. "We held out long enough..." But there was a hissing noise from the front, and Mandy disappeared, replaced by one of them. them. The white-lidded eyes stared unblinkingly at Crowe from where Manderson had crouched. The white-lidded eyes stared unblinkingly at Crowe from where Manderson had crouched.

Crowe screamed and turned his water blaster onto the macrophage. It tore a jagged line across the creature, and the remains of Manderson's suit spilled out, hanging loosely out of the torn white flesh.

The fog was thickening all around them now. He looked to the left and right, but if any of his men were left, they were invisible in the fog. He tapped his microphone and called his team, but got only silence in return.

An antibody struck the faceplate of his helmet, covering his eyes. Crowe screamed again and slapped it away. He strode forward into the mist, shaking his head violently, erratically, from side to side. The hose of the water blaster pulled him back, tried to stop him, and he wrenched at it, felt something give, then strode forward again.

The barrel of the device, disconnected and useless in his hands, swung around as he aimed the empty weapon at the whiter-than-white shapes that appeared around him.

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored."

His voice filled the suit, and he unsealed and flipped up his face mask to let the words out into the fog.

"Glory, glory! Hallelujah!"

And then there was silence in the mist.