"Think?"

"About the old lady."

"I believe her. What other choice is there?"

Glen put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. "I don't know. She might have been setting you up."

"Setting me up for what? I offered her money, she wouldn't take any."

"Not this time, maybe. That's the way con games work. They hook you in by giving you something for nothing, then they come back with something even better, only this time it's going to cost you."

"Glen, pull over."

"What?"

"Just pull over and stop the car."

Giving her a puzzled look, Glen eased the Camaro over to the curb and stopped. He put the shift lever in park and turned in the seat to face Joana.

"Now what is all this about a con game?" she demanded.

He shifted in the seat uncomfortably. "Wella what do we really know about this old woman, anyway? Some girl, who we don't know either, claims she has mystic powers of some kind. It's all kind of hard to swallow."

Joana stared at him. "Glen, I don't understand you. You didn't say anything about having doubts before we came. You were just as eager as I was." A thought hit her. "Wait a minute, did you think it was part of the con game when she offered to tell you when you were going to die, and how?"

"Ia" Glen turned away and looked out through the windshield. "No," he said in a different, subdued voice. "I believed she could do it. G.o.d help me, I still believe she knows."

"Then whata?"

"I was scared, Joana. Scared right down to the soles of my feet. When we got out of there and onto the street again and everything looked so ordinary, so unthreatening, I was ashamed of myself. A part of me could not admit that a little old Mexican lady had pointed a finger at me and scared me more than anything ever before in my life. I had to deny it somehow. I had to prove I was strong, so I started running off at the mouth and couldn't stop."

Joana pulled his head down and kissed him. "You are strong, Glen. You're strong and brave, and you're the man I love. Can we go home now?"

He laid a hand on her cheek and looked deep into her eyes for a moment. "Joana," he said, "you are a h.e.l.l of a woman."

Chapter 20.

Dr. Hovde sat in a canvas chair across the coffee table from Joana and Glen in the house on Beachwood Drive. He leaned forward listening intently as Joana described the meeting earlier that evening with the grandmother of Ynez Villanueva.

When Joana finished telling her story there was a long silence in the room. It was Hovde who finally spoke.

"It's fantastic. Even though indirectly it was I who sent you to the woman, this is a hard, hard thing to accept. The whole idea of witches and walking dead men is so completely foreign to everything I believe in."

"I know how you feel," Glen said. "I was there, and I'm still stunned by what I heard. G.o.d knows I don't want to believe these things are happening, but can we afford not to believe it?"

"If you have any other explanation, Warren, I'll jump at it," Joana said.

"I wish I had," said Hovde, "but I haven't. The only thing we can do is a.s.sume that everything the old woman told you is true, and get on with it. Do you have paper and something to write with?"

Joana brought him a yellow legal pad and a ball-point pen. He laid the pad flat on the coffee table in front of him.

"Sometimes it helps me attack a problem to write it down and look at it."

"You sound like an engineer now," Glen said with a brief smile.

"The first thing to do," Hovde went on, "is define the issue."

For a moment no one spoke, then Glen said, "h.e.l.l, that's easy enough. If we accept what the old woman said tonight, then someone, or something, is trying to kill Joana."

Dr. Hovde wrote at the top of the pad: Joana's life in danger.

"What do we know about the danger?"

"She said they could send four of those zombies, no more."

The doctor wrote: Maximum 4 Walkers.

Joana shivered, but said nothing.

"Three of them are used up now," Glen said.

"That's right," Joana agreed. "There was the woman in the car, the man who broke in here Sunday night, and the girl on the cliff."

Dr. Hovde made another note on the pad: 3 down, 1 to go.

"One to go," Joana said, reading. She closed her eyes for a moment.

"At least there's a time limit," Glen said. "The last one has to come by the Eve of St. John. That's Monday. If we get past that, we've won."

Deadline: June 23, Hovde wrote.

"Knowing that, I think it would be wise if Joana is not left alone between now and the deadline," he said.

"Definitely," Glen agreed. "She can stay at my place."

"Maybe you ought to think about getting her away somewhere, out of town."

"I could do that," Glen said. "Drive her up to San Francisco, stay there until after Monday."

"Just a minute," Joana said. The sudden sharpness of her tone made both men look at her quickly. "You two are making plans for me as though I'm not even in the room. I'm not a helpless child, you know. And I'm not some delicate gla.s.s figurine that has to be packed in layers of cotton."

"I'm sorry, Joana," Hovde said. "We're just trying to come up with the best way to protect you."

"We know you're not helpless," Glen added. "And you're certainly not made of gla.s.s."

"Okay," Joana said more gently. "I didn't mean to sound ungrateful. But let's look at the suggestions you're making. Don't leave me alone. That's fine, I'm not anxious to be alone right now, but we've got four days. n.o.body wants to be watched every second for four days. And how do we know it will make any difference? I wasn't alone Sunday night, and that maniac still broke in here and came after me."

"But we have an idea what we're fighting now," Glen said. "That makes a difference. Sunday we were taken by surprise."

"That's true," Joana conceded. "But leaving town doesn't make sense to me. If something is making it possible for dead people to get up and walk and kill, it could happen just as easily in San Francisco or anywhere else as right here."

"Yes, I see what you mean," Hovde said. "We've got to expand our thinking beyond what we know as the natural world."

"It isn't easy when we don't know all the rules," Glen said.

"There are some things we know about the walkers," Hovde said. "They are not invulnerable. Again, taking the word of the old woman, if only a newly dead person can be turned into one, we won't have to worry about old corpses rising out of the cemetery."

"That's good news," Joana said.

"At least it tells us they have limitations. What else do we know about them?"

"They move easily enough," Joana said. "They're fast and they react quickly."

Dr. Hovde wrote WALKERS in the center of the page and underlined it. Below he wrote: Agility.

"And I can tell you they're strong," Glen said. "Stronger than normal people. The one who broke in here Sunday threw me around like I was stuffed with feathers."

Strength.

"And I can add that they retain the power of speech," Hovde said, "even though the personality dies. The husband of the woman in the car said she talked to him lucidly for several hours after her apparent death. The man Ed Frankovich works for-he was the one here Sunday-also said he spoke."

Speech.

"What about the girl on the beach?" Glen asked.

"I didn't hear her speak," Joana said, "but she was terribly strong. I was lucky to get away from her."

"Have they found her body?" Glen asked.

"Not yet," said Hovde. "The currents are strong off the point where she fell in, and the body could have been carried miles up the sh.o.r.eline. I've asked a friend at the hospital to call me when they find her."

Joana grew thoughtful. "Warren, you talked to the husband of one of these walkers and the employer of another. What kind of people were they, anyway? I mean when they were alive."

"Ordinary," said Hovde. "That's the only word I can think of to describe them. Yvonne Carlson was an average middle-aged housewife, from all evidence loving to her husband and content with her life. Ed Frankovich was something of a loner, but apparently a quiet, gentle man. There seems to be no connection between what these people were in life and what they became. They retain a few of the surface traits of the living person, but essentially the walkers are machines of destruction that exist entirely apart from the people who occupied the bodies."

"Another thing you can add to the list is that they're hard to kill," Glen said. "Or destroy, or whatever the word should be."

"That is the truth," Joana said with feeling. "I watched you hit that creature over and over again, and it just kept coming."

"That's an important point," said Dr. Hovde. "What does it take to stop the walkers? The woman in the car, for instance."

"She just got out and collapsed on the ground," Joana said. "n.o.body laid a hand on her, and I'm sure she couldn't have been hurt in the car. It simply ran into a bush and stalled."

Hovde nodded. "The only marks on the body were from the electrocution the night before. Nothing from that afternoon."

"And the one who was in here," Glen said, "as hard and as often as I hit him, it didn't even slow him down. He was on his feet and still trying to get at Joana until the other people came running up. That's when he finally dropped."

"There was a crowd around the woman too when she collapsed, wasn't there, Joana?"

"Yes. They ran up to where the car came to a stop, and were standing there when she got out."

"Maybe," the doctor said thoughtfully, "when the walkers are surrounded, and because of the sheer odds against them can't finish their task, they justa quit."

"That's quite a jump in logic," Glen said.

"Maybe it is, but it's a possibility to consider. What about the girl on the beach, Joana?"

"It fits. It was not until Glen and the other people from the restaurant got close to us that she went over the edge. I can't swear that's why it happened-she had ripped away a piece of my blouse and lost her balance."

Glen frowned. "Even if this is true, even if the walkers self-destruct when a crowd surrounds them, what good will it do us?"

"The more we know about them, the better prepared we'll be," Joana said.

"To me it's one more reason why you shouldn't be left alone."

"Glen, are you going to start the big-man-must-protect-little-girl business all over again?"

"d.a.m.n it, this is no time for a consciousness-raising session."

Dr. Hovde spoke up. "Glen, Joana, we've got to work together now, or all the knowledge we've gained is useless."

"I know," Joana said more quietly. "Believe me, Glen, I appreciate what you've done for me, what you're doing. It's just that I hate to feel like some helpless creature who can do nothing but hide in the corner while the men go off to battle."

"That's not the way it is," Glen said. "You know that."

"Yes, I know it. All the same, it bothers me."

"You'll have plenty of time to hash all this out after Monday," Dr. Hovde said.

"In the meantime," said Glen, "you do agree that it's best to stay with me until this is over?"

"I'll stay with you," Joana said, "and I'll love it. But let's make it here at my house instead of your apartment."

"What difference does it make?"

"If I'm in my own house it will feel less like I'm running away, that's all."

"Fair enough," Glen said. "Starting tonight, I'm your constant companion until this nightmare is over."

"What about your job?"

"No problem. I'll take tomorrow and Monday off. They can get along without me that long."