Units approached from all sides.  Holtz had no idea what they might find.  Forty-two officers of varying rank converged on the Gatherers Church of the Light.  Through open fields and thick forest, they moved in groups of five and six.  Finally the circle reached the temple grounds.  They were all aware that an unauthorized surveillance team, composed of men they knew had been here. 
      Bombar's guys were armed with wooden swords and spear guns.  Their equipment bewildered the others.  They weren't wearing the special body armor.  Eight patrol cars drove up to the front of the church.  As with any raid, the officers went quickly to the door and announced their intentions. 
      The building plans on file had shown no office space.  The two flanking buildings were sleeping quarters.  They coordinated the entry.  No one answered and the doors were broken down with steel battering rams.  All three buildings were then flooded with state policeman. 

     Janis Patterson reached for the phone.  She toed the switch on the floor, which activated the tape recorder.  It was an old habit. Totally illegal, but she loved to get the good stuff.   She had been editing a new article for her column. 

      Her office at the Intelligencier was a cramped little space on the third floor.  It gave a nice view of Doyalstown from its only window. 
     "Janis Patterson," she answered.  Putting her feet up on the desk, she lit one of the thin black cigarettes from her humidor.  Next to the window hung a framed photograph of Janis and Hillary Clinton.  They were shaking hands.  They were shaking hands and smiling the intense "we will conquer the world" smiles of strung-out liberal feminists.  Even then, Janis's wavy; shoulder length hair was iron grey. 
     "Janis," the voice came, "I've got something for you.  This could be a good story."
     "What do you have," she said, brightening. 
     "Frank Holtz is on the rampage again.  He's got fifty cops up on Morgan's Hill, raiding a church."
     "Oh goodie!"
     "It's taking place as we speak."
     "Oh man!  I'm calling Channel 6 right now.  This is great--"
     "No, don't call anybody, Janis.  Just grab the Goddamned story."
     "Hey, don't go down my throat!  You owe me.  You're the one who comes begging.  Not me.  My daughter told me something about a campout where old Kirk's daughter corked off about all that stuff.  Corked off about me too.  That bunch has some shitty press coming."
     "Janis--"
     "You're the one who's boffing the Mrs. Kirk, Jerry.  Our little arrangement is your idea--"
     "Janis--"
     "Not mine," she whispered.  "What's the address?"
 

    When they broke into the church, Charlie Bombar pulled up in his Jeep Cherokee.  He hopped through the door.  Holtz and the other officers were in front of the altar.  Frank was kneeling on the floor, scraping a sample with his penknife. 
     "Anything," Bombar shouted.
     "Nobody here," Frank answered.  "You're late, man."
     "Each man was equipped with a shoulder radio.  Frank leaned his head to the side, pressed the send button.   "Garrison--what'ya got over there?"
     The voice came back, "We've got five of them over here Captain.  They look tame enough."
     "Ed," Frank said, "is there any...sign of--"
     "No sir.  Your boy's not in here captain.  Sorry." 
     "Thanks Ed."
     "Captain, I don't get it.  There's nothing going on here."
     "Just hold on to them Eddie.  We'll be there in a minute," Frank said into the radio. 
     He turned to Bombar.  "This is a slaughter house, Charles.  God only knows what they do here."
     "Or who they do it to," Bombar said.  Frank's face went blank.  "Shit, I'm sorry Frank.  He's gonna turn up."
     "I hope," Frank said.  He kicked at the circular rug on the floor. What the fuck would they need those for?  This is just like the P.I. described it."  Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a wriggling white mouse.  "Momma's okay," he said.  "Let's go next door and see what they have."
     Built of the original stones from the previous temple, the two structures east and west of the church were dormitories.  The one to the west was occupied, but there was still no evidence of wrongdoing. 
     In the east building, they found four church members.  Among them was the Reverend Tan Lee.  Holtz and ten of the officers entered the communal living area which was now wall to wall uniforms.  On a couch across the room, a little man with short black hair, white shirt and thin black tie smiled at them.  Every instinct in all the men present said that they had to have the wrong man. 
 

    Murry was still shivering.  "What are we going to do," he asked.  Fredric Eissler stuck out his lower lip.  Chewing on the inner side, he lowered his brow.    The long fingers, like a lizard's hand roamed over the side of his face.  A sweet stench of bowel and blood was filling the room.  Bonnie had her back to the wall, knees up, head buried in her arms. 
     "Any idea where John went, Murry?"
     "No Dr. Eissler.  I heard the door slam outside and I ran to look.  The door to the quiet room was, uh, locked.  John must have done it.  I'll go call the police now."
     "No."
     "But we have to tell the police."
     "No.  Go get a box or two of those heavy-duty garbage bags.  They had a van.  Pick up everything.  Wash the room down just like you do every day.  Maybe a little better."
     "What about her?"
     "I'll take care of her."
     "She might tell."
     "They might think she had something to do with it.  Nine people dead.  She doesn't want that kind of trouble."
     "I'll get the bags."
     "Do."

    "What we have, Reverend," Holtz said, "is a lot of evidence pointing to a kidnapping operation.  Vans hauling people off in the middle of the night.  That sort of thing.  Ever heard of a company called Gatherer Security?"
     "The church owns many companies,” Lee said.  He might have been on drugs.  There was a space behind his eyes that stretched for half a million     miles. 
     "Are you saying that you never heard of it?"
     "No, I am not."  Again, deep space. 
     "What's the exhaust unit for?" Bombar snapped.  The cops, who had been dusting, bagging tiny fibers, moved closer to hear the answer.  When they swabbed the floor, they did a test for blood, and it came up positive, everywhere they tested. 
     A uniform came in the door.  "Captain, Dublin wants you on the car phone."
 Frank said, "Tell them to patch me in, Hank."  He touched the button on his belt pack and spoke into the shoulder mike.  "This is Holtz.  Go ahead Helen."
     "Frank, I thought you should know," came the small hollow voice, "Channel 6 is on the way.  They just called.  The mobile unit is in the area and they want to fly over.  They want pictures for the news at five."
     "Helen, you get them back and tell them absolutely not!"
     "Will do."
     "Make it nasty Helen.  Lawsuits, obstruction, lives at stake; make it very nasty.  Hit'em hard."
     "Will do, Captain," she said.
     Holtz looked around the room.  To no one in particular, he said, "How the hell did they find out about this?"

    Trees, rivers, farm land, shopping malls, parking lots; like a miniature train set, the Pennsylvania landscape rolled beneath the helicopter. 
     6 LIVE was painted across the belly in large block letters.  Pablo Myers had, in his career as a pilot, flown three hundred missions in Vietnam and more in the Gulf.  He touched the head set, pushing the speaker closer to drown out the wind flow and rotor noise.  He turned to talk to the cameraman. 
     "Lars, we're getting a communiqué."
     "Yeah?" He yelled.  His blonde hair and beard, deep blue eyes, and tall frame had gotten him the nickname Viking Eye of broadcast news. 
     "The staties are hot.  They don't want a fly-over or nothin'."
     "Fuck'em!  They're fascists.  We couldn't fly over Waco either, until it was burning.  Fuck'em."
     At that moment they were crossing over Revere, ten miles from Morgan's hill, heading North.  ETA about 7 minutes.
 

     "Captain, we're gonna pop that lock on the gate, see what's in the lake."
     "Go ahead," Frank said.  "You guys keep your eyes open.  This isn't over yet."
     "Yes sir," the man replied. 

     Bombar leaned over the little preacher and grabbed him by the shirt, pulled him off the couch.  "Why don't we just start answering some questions for the man!"
     "Charlie, Charlie, you're an observer," Holtz said, gripping Bombar's wrist.   "Put him down."
     "He stinks, Frank."
     Reverend Lee looked at his companions.  A knowing glance passed among the six men.  One of them, a tall man with a goatee introduced himself as Ken.  "Captain Holtz, we've been cooperative.  Your men are here now against our protests.  Reverend Lee has been more than...kind."
     "So, maybe you can tell me--"
     "Don't interrupt!" The man screamed.  Every officer in the room flinched back, an involuntary recoil.  The power of command in his voice was undeniable.  He continued in a calm tone.  "A helicopter is approaching from the South.  We can't allow that.  What happens here is just...between old friends, shall we say?  Get your men out now."
     Bombar said, "How do you know about a chopper?"
     Just then an officer broke in through the door.  He was breathless, exited, his voice choked.  "Frank--Captain, you won't believe what's in that lake."
     Holtz seemed not to hear.  He reached into his pants.  He felt the little ball of fur, pulled it from his pocket.   "Charlie."
     "Yo."
     "Get the men out now," he said quietly.
     "Get'em out?"
     "Get them out--now!"
     Frank held out his hand.  Bombar looked at what he had.  The mouse was dead, the tiny eyes bright red, filled with blood.

    The Delaware Valley sat down to dinner.  TV screens in over 200,000 homes geared up for the news at five.  Channel 6 flashed their glitzy graphics for which they paid enough to keep all of Somalia alive for a year.  Framed inside the artistic variations of the number 6, were scenes of a body being lifted into an ambulance.  The anchor narrated:
     "A shooting on Frankford Avenue ends a reign of terror."
      Then a shot of the Philadelphia city council in chambers.
     "City council members implement a new law prohibiting over five breeds of vicious dogs."
     Finally, from fifteen hundred feet, the screen filled with three buildings and a lake, surround by fields.
     "Dublin State Police raid The Gatherers Church of the Light in Wilson Township."
     Then the music started, full of horns, typewriters tapping, electronic cords.  The husky female voice continued, "All this and more on Channel 6 Action News; we'll be right back, after this."
     Twelve commercials, some as short as five seconds, like psychological gunshots, raked across high resolution, high tech televisions, giving way at last, to the grey momentary pause before the news began. 
     Again the jerky shot of farmland and buildings. On the ground, police cars were backing up, heading away from the buildings.  Cops on foot, leaving the area, marching double-time toward cars parked on dirt roads in the woods. 
     The anchorwoman barked the narrative.   "We're live in the Action Cam helicopter at a church in Wilson Township, a suburb of Easton, Pennsylvania.  State Police this afternoon served a warrant to Reverend Tan Lee of the Gatherers Church of the Light.  Lee is to answer charges of kidnapping and murder."

     On board the Action Cam, Lars had his legs out the side door.  A harness kept him from falling. 
     "Man, they're pissed," Myers yelled, easing back the pedals, loosing altitude.  "They're talking lawsuits, jail terms, no nookie for a week.  They want us bad."  They were hovering directly over the temple.

     On the TV screen, it was clear that the police were leaving.  The chopper was rising again to dive a view of the retreat.  Carefully kept lawns surround the property, turning a deep green in the afternoon sun.  Several black dots appeared on the grass.  They were like glistening sea urchins.
     "You see that," Myers yelled, looking back.
     "What is that, man?  Must be some equipment.  Sprinklers maybe."  He was hard to understand over the rotors. 

     Frank ordered the men to set up a perimeter.  They were to remain about an eighth of a mile away.  Watching with field glasses, they witnessed the appearances on the ground.
     "You reading this Captain?"
     "I see it.  All units stay put."
     The helicopter spun slowly at five hundred feet.
     "Charlie," Frank said, "assemble your team.  Break out the special gear."  He scratched the back of his head.  His fingers went to the plug.  It was hard to get used to the thing; not much more than a bump, but it was a hole in his head, just the same. 
     Men in the cars, in the woods, watching, began to feel the creeping emotional ripple.  They felt the nausea coming toward them across the grass, through the trees, in subtle prolonged waves. 
     The black spheres on the ground were evenly spaced.  Thousands of viewers watched as they expanded, unfolding slowly.  In the helicopter, the cameraman felt bile rise to his throat.  His cheeks felt puffy.  He looked at Pablo Myers and made a face, stuck out his tongue.  The pilot nodded.  Lars unhooked his harness to get a better shot.  Myers glanced back and quickly raised a fist, the signal to stop, the signal of extreme disagreement.

 "--what look to be some sort of giant black flowers blooming on the ground.  I've never seen anything like this and I have seen a lot--"

     "They're in some sort of formation," Frank said.  "Charlie, there's twenty or more in each of those groups."  One of the officers spoke behind him.  "Sir, I'm feeling sick."
     "Yeah Captain, I feel like I've got the runs."

     Over the radio. "--pretty many of the men are coming down with some...poison or something."

     "This is Holtz to all units.  Stand fast.  I repeat, stand fast.  Nobody's leaving.  What you feel is an effect from the creatures down there.  Most of you were made aware of this.  You've read the report.  Stay where you are."

     Pablo Myers felt dizzy.  The stick in his hand began to swell as his vision faltered.  He knew he should land.  But it would be right in the middle of whatever that was on the ground.   The dragoons would snatch them up the minute they hit the turf.  Fuck it.  Lars still aimed the camera straight down.  With a rictus on his face, drool flew from his mouth out the door.  Then he was gone.  Myers had passed out and let go of the stick. 

 "--huge black chrysanthemums, sort of cauliflowers--"

     The spinning ground rushed up at the TV screens in the Delaware Valley.  Then it flew past, a swift smudge of buildings and green grass.  Myers got control for a brief moment, enough to save their lives.  The helicopter tumbled and crashed.  Still running, the camera showed a splash of broken plastic as the windshield bubble exploded. 

 "--apparently having difficulties.  Oh--oh my God!  The helicopter has apparently crashed--"

     Lars was thrown from the door.  On his back, unconscious, but still holding the camera, his face and a view of the field filled the screen.  The television audience saw the sky at an odd angle.  Then there was a wall, like a gently flowing embankment of dark undersea life moving toward them.  The ground came up again, a short distance.  Lars' blonde head fell across the screen.  His body was violently jerked up and a huge black form dragged him slowly away.  Then the body of Pablo Myers fell from the craft in front of the camera.  He too was lifted up and dragged off. 
     TV screens across half of Pennsylvania showed stalks of grass, still and stiff, towering like monuments in a graveyard.

    In the history of television, there was never so strong a reaction.  Channel 6 was deluged with calls.  People called to say that Satan himself had taken those men to hell.  Of the hundreds that called, each had a different description of the Prince of Lies.
     News teams began arriving within the hour.  Local stations vied for position, trying to get close.  But when they got within half a mile, they got sick and stayed back.  Several police officers were taken away by ambulance, despite the Captains orders.

    Preparation began.  More men were called in.  The total was over one hundred before eight o'clock.  Generators and lights provided some protection.  Charlie Bombar unlocked the truck and broke out the protective suits.  All the thirty men in Bombar's team had been fitted with scull plugs and they knew how to use them.  These were surgical implants as designed by Martin Downing, which bored directly into the brain, at the back of the head.  A thick hypodermic needle was fitted to the plug, connected by tubing to the injection processor.  Just tapping a button inside the suit would supply a measured amount to the brain.  As per Arnie Cohn's instructions, the dosage was to be self administered within ten minutes of exposure.  Frank had kept the serum refrigerated in his basement for ten years.  Arnold Cohn's last word on the subject was, "It should keep."
     The team wearing the suits was trained for the most ferocious infighting.  Nothing would get through the armor web, but the serum was still a precaution.  They were armed with Boken and spear guns.  Every cop along the perimeter was given a long-range crossbow and two dozen arrows.  The plan, as Holtz saw it was to lob arrows into the church grounds. 
     The Lobesomen knotted together to repel the attackers.  Holtz knew that the battle would not take place until they allowed it.  Black flowers, like power plants, sprang up every few minutes and this gave the cops a target.  They had been on the grounds all along, remaining invisible.  Now it was a stand off.
     "I've counted about two hundred down there," Bombar said.
     "Two twenty-five," one of the sergeants said.  About twenty in each group and one more just popped up."
     Frank cocked his head, spoke into the shoulder mike ." Holtz to all units.  Nobody shoots until I say.  We're counting over two hundred, so, once you get the range, see that they count.  The signal will be, "Make it rain."
 
 

At each slender point, the bones, the marrow, fanned out like waves and ripples of light, as would meandering streams.  Tiny flames licked through the skin, radiant auroras, and the pulsing of blood, miles of neon, crimson, opalescent, veins, arteries, capillaries, overlapping into infinity. 
      Each of the millions of bursting spheres within spheres, subtle veils of light unto themselves, seared within, within suns inside suns.  With the escaping light, matter, gross and tangible, was overcome by the unyielding flow of virility, absorbed and cast in ovals of luminous multi-colored explosions.  In the center of it all, in the head, the brain was a curled feather of white-hot fear. 
      Reverend Lee scanned what would be his last meal.  The flight of emotions, a psychic release of hummingbirds, delicate shapes, flitted through him, danced frantically and was gone.  It was panic stricken.  The thick scent of secreting glands, oil and acid on the skin changing their chemical structure like a piece of steel heated to the point of variegation, entered his magnificent ten senses like the mouth of a river.  Of the multitude of delicious sensations, none were his.  Not one of his own.  There was no hint of the melting form within form stretching their light across the horizon.   Their beauty was without equal.  They had reached their zenith.  His children.

     A nagging feeling overcame Frank Holtz.  When he was a boy, his father had removed a board full of termites from the attic.  He had shown Frank how they had gotten in, and that there was no damage to the other boards. 
      His father was wrong.  The house was ninety percent infested.  After tenting and fumigation, extensive rebuilding was necessary.  Frank's family was rich.  No harm done. 
     He thought about the world now as it was.  He thought about boards with only a little damage and a house that was full of insects eating away.  He thought about how his father had been fooled. 

      There were five detectives on hand.  He spoke briefly to Lincoln Ford.  "Linc, run down that list of leads, starting with Gatherer Security."
      "What are you looking for?" Ford said.
      "Find out who's working tonight."
      "I'm on it."

      It was nine thirty.  Night had come softly and with dread.  There weren't enough suits to go around, so Frank had ordered members of the team to space themselves around the perimeter.  When in place, they flashed three times at intervals.  The loop of officers was clearly outlined by the blinking lights. 
     The night was clear with cloud cover far off to the south.  A mist hung three or four feet over the fields and the church grounds.  The wind was from the southeast, crossing over the buildings, the lake, and up to the road.  It carried an aroma of roots, turned earth and something else. 
      Frank knew it well. 
      The only sound other than each other was the constant slapping of water on the lake.  They kept chatter to a minimum.  The channel was open in case of an attack.  When the call came from Helen at dispatch, Frank and Bombar were suiting up.
      Helen said, "Captain Holtz...Frank...your wife called and said that Kevin hasn't come home yet.  She sounds very upset and wants you to call."
      "That's a ten-four.  Thank you Helen," Frank said.
      "Frank, we're all with you.  We're all sorry," Helen said.  The chatter around the perimeter went dead quiet.  The men listened of the open channel and no one wanted to impose on the Captain. 
      "Thank you.  I know you all would help if you could.  And... we don't know what happened yet."
      Then, in the lull of silence that follows all such moments, they heard a sound.  It was rising above the insects and small animals, the noise of whispering policemen.  It was the heart-rending wail of a child slicing through the black air.  Every man heard it.  Every cop and news corespondent, every civilian who could endure the terrible wave of the seething flowers heard it.  Each took an imaginary step toward the battleground.  They all mumbled their concern, hooked through the heart by the feeble cry. 
      "Nobody move!  Hold your positions," Frank shouted.  "What you hear is an illusion; a trick!" 
      "Captain," came a disembodied voice, "what if it is some poor kid who just wandered--"
      "It's not mister," Frank said into the mike.  "You're likely to hear a lot of things before the night's over."  He sat down in the open bay door of the van.  Staring out at the evil field where men would fight and die, he fought the urge to curse.  When Kevin was six years old, he had stumbled into a nest of yellow jackets.  He was close enough to the house for Frank and Gail to hear the terrible screaming of their son.  The boy had suffered more than twenty stings.  What Frank Holtz heard now coming off that field was his little boy, six years old.  It was Kevin.  They were out there doing that to him.  They were calling. 
      As if on cue, the screaming again bit into the night.

     Janet Reno's handling of the situation in Texas had been controversial.  So much so, that the networks were salivating for any new church angles.  But the Moonies, the Bagwan, the assorted Maharishis and even the Scientologists had been quiet for the following three years.  So when Frank Holtz had a hundred thirty-five men surrounding an obscure little temple in Pennsylvania, it became worldwide news before the evening was out. 

      "Good Evening, I'm Ted Kopple, and this is Nightline.  In 1994 a man named David Koresh caused the world to hold its breath in a struggle that lasted nearly a month.  The Department of Tobacco and Firearms surrounded the Branch Davidian Church compound, effectively holding its members hostage and eventually watched as it burned to the ground, killing every man, woman, and child inside.
      "With us tonight is our corespondent Michael Dilts at a location just North of the Gatherers Temple of the Light.  Good evening Michael."
      "Good evening Ted."
      "And we have with us State Police Commissioner Jerald Le Montour.  Mr. Le Montour has headed up the investigation of the church members and spearheaded the raid, which took place earlier today.  Good evening Commissioner."
      "Good evening Ted.  Nice to be here."

      The screen was split between the two opposing viewpoints, Le Montour on the right and Michael Dilts on the left. 

      Copple continued:  "We received this film which was taken at around 10:45 this evening.  It is graphic...somewhat startling...and might not be suitable for young viewers."  At first, it was badly lighted, just bodies in motion, then the camera panned past police cars to a group of cops on the ground.  Rolling around, holding their ears, crawling away.  A close-up filled the TV screen with the face of a young policeman, mouth open, eyes wide with fear, his head gouging a trench into the leaves and soft dirt.  The camera went from the face down the long line of men along the perimeter.  Many of them were in a similar condition.  The lens rested for a moment on a man in a white suit with a helmet.  There was just a hole in the faceplate.  This man seemed to be calm and not all uncomfortable. 

      "These are actual shots taken earlier this evening.  In a moment, we'll talk with the man who is in charge of this raid and we'll see some more footing from that tape.  I'm Ted Koppel...and this is Nightline.  We'll be right back...after this."
 

     Kevin Holtz blew out the candles.  He held up his penlight and threw light on the old four poster bed.  She wasn't dressed yet and the image almost brought him to his knees.  They were both feeling the guilt and the pressing need to get back, but Friday night had been the most glorious thing either of them had ever done. 
      Winning a fight at the Easton Mall had been exhilarating.  When they were escorted out, they thought they would be delivered to the Easton police station, but the white shirts said nothing and let them go the Bronco and drive away.  The group seemed almost reverent toward them.  They did not come near and actually fought off many of the giant's friends that wanted to continue the disagreement. 
      In the Bronco.  "Wow, did you see the size of that guy?"
      "His girlfriend looked like King Kong," Kathy said.  "I thought she took my head off."
      "Oh babe, we won't be going shopping there again for a while."
      "It kind of adds new meaning to the phrase "shop till you drop", doesn't it?'
      "That's good.  Hey, that's good."  He reached over and took her hand.  She leaned in and squeezed his thigh. 
      "Kev, I want to go somewhere."
      "Hungry?"
      "No, I want to go to bed."
      He couldn't say anything for almost a minute, but thought about where to go.   "I know a place," he said. 
      She turned on the radio.

      At the apex of 611 and Route 32, he headed east.  They rolled along the new black top for about two miles.  "There it is," he said.  "This is the place where they found an old Indian burial ground.  For a while, a few years ago this whole place was crawling with archeologists."
      "What's down here?"
      "This old road is almost invisible, but the Bronco can get us through anywhere.  See it?  There's an old house, right along the river."
      "And we're going there?"  Kathy pulled the front of her jacket together.
      "You'll like this," Kevin said.
      It was a deserted shack with four rooms.  Most of the walls and the roof were leaning at odd angles, but inside, the flooring was sound enough.  He carried in a sleeping bag and a woolen blanket.  His penlight showed the way.  At the back of the place was a room with a beautiful old king bed.  It had a hand carved backboard and the mattress was dry, almost a foot thick.  There were candles scattered everywhere from other young lovers who had been there before them. 
      "This'll do," she said.
      Time passed. 
      They went out for dinner late Friday night, traveling to Phillipsburg and then came back to spend most of Saturday just making love. 

     10:45, Saturday Night.
      The channel was still open to prevent surprises.  So, when the call came, they all heard.  "Frank...Frank, Gail just called.  She said that Kevin and his girlfriend are safe.  They're home at your house.  They stayed out all night the way kids do sometimes."  Helen's voice was shaky, almost breaking, knowing what her words meant.
      "That's a ten-four.  Thank you Helen," Frank said.  He turned around and faced Charlie.  He held out his palms and shook his hands gently.  Relief spread over him, seeming to drain the life out of his muscles.  He sat down on the running board of the van, dropped his head in his hands and cried. 
      Bombar moved in, reaching for Frank's shoulder and stopped.  His fingers hovered an inch above the fabric, not wanting to intrude. 
      The first sharp snap came from across the fields.  It reached them just before the second, and then a third.  Out in the dark, the men were clapping, applauding.  A cheer went up that sounded like the crowd at a football game or a horse race.  As cops, they all shared the emotion of a lost child found. 

      Kevin Holtz sat with Kathy, watching the Koppel interview.  The living room was tile floored with Persian rugs and leather furniture.  The east wall was decorated with shelves of potted plants, vines, and cactus that intertwined to create a thick green quilt behind their heads.  Gail sat opposite them on the couch. 
      Kevin said, "I never thought it would end like this."
      "I hope this is the end," Kathy said, her mind elsewhere.
      "Kath, if I haven’t said it enough times, I'm sorry I doubted you."
      "Oh, Kevin, we're just not old enough to be so serious."
      "Yeah well, I blew it.  I hope my dad is okay."
      Gail was listening to the conversation.  She felt similar about the past ten years.  "Your father and I have had a lot of hard feelings about this.  I didn't believe it either, so don't be too hard on yourself."
      "Thanks mom," he said.  "I think I should go up there."
      "Oh no you don't," Gail said sternly.
      "Hit the mute button," Kathy said, "they're back on."

      "No one, having seen the crash of the Channel 6 helicopter, Koppel began, "can forget the sight of the cameraman being dragged off by what looked to be a large sleek animal.  But it was a huge animal that walked on two legs.  Commissioner Le Montour, what can you tell us?"
     Jerry Le Montour looked nervous and hastily made up in his office in Doyalstown.  This was the big time.  His election to state Rep. was in the pocket.  Behind him were shelves full of books.  He knew he looked good. 
      "Well Ted, what we know so far is that what you saw was a human being.  That they are in the final stages of--"
      "I'm sorry to cut you off, Commissioner, but you say that this was a man?"
      "Yes, from what we know so far, that is the final stage of a disease.  It is a relatively--a totally--unknown virus that mutates the cell structure of a human being to that extent.  We think that group...is responsible for the murder of probably two or three hundred people.  I might add, that Captain Holtz made it quite clear that the camera crew was not to fly over the area.  They disregarded that order."
      "I think," Copple went on, "what the world would like to know right now, is, why was no attempt made to rescue those men?"
     "Well, I believe just prior to that, the officers had left the church grounds because they found out that they were seriously outnumbered.  The evidence definitely supports that kidnapping, murder and possibly members of that church have perpetrated the illegal transmission of a dangerous disease.  When the officers found themselves to be outnumbered they fell back without incident.  Given what we know about the situation, I maintain that my men acted rightly.  I think we can agree, Ted, that nobody wants another Waco."
      "And what specifically led police to these facts as you state them?"
      "Some fifty people from the local community disappeared over one weekend.  People who were known to attend the church services."
      "You've spoken of it as a disease," Koppel said.  "Are there any medical professionals who support your views?"
      "No."
     "Then, upon what do you base these allegations?"
     "We have a three hundred page report compiled by two laboratory technicians, one of whom was a specialist in the area of communicable diseases.  But not a doctor."
      "And then how do you account for--"
      "And we can make that report available to you Mr. Koppel."
      "Thank you Commissioner Le Montour,” Ted Koppel said.  "We go now to the Gatherers Temple of the of the Light in Pennsylvania."
      The man in the other frame was dressed in a red jacket and jeans.  He was nearly bald with pale blonde hair and large sunken eyes.  Behind him were police cars stretching off into the dark, and officers who seemed to be recovering from something. 
      "Can you hear me, Michael?"
      The man pressed his fingertips to the headset.  "Not very well Ted.  We're here at the church on Morgan's hill as you told the viewers.  It has been a very disturbing scene here in the last two hours.  At about 10:45, this evening a terrible onslaught of sound assailed everyone around the church.  It began, as uh, cats, like hundreds of cats being tortured, screaming cats.  Then it increased to what became some gigantic ferocious animals.  Finally, we heard people crying, children, women.  It rose and fell as though it came from a faulty P.A. system.  It affected everyone here in an unbelievable way, as you saw, Ted.  Then an incredible discovery--as you saw from the clip, the effect was very dramatic--these sounds did not translate to the film.  We heard it--we definitely heard it, but the audio didn't."
      "What about the church members themselves?  Is there any activity that you can see?"
      "Ted, we have Captain Frank Holtz standing by.  He can tell us more about the situation here.  Captain..."
      Frank was dressed in the special flack suit.  He looked like an astronaut.  With a wooden sword in one hand, he gestured with an open right palm toward the church.  "I don't have time to fill in all the details.  These people are afflicted by a disease of the blood.  It has altered their physical and psychological nature.  They are now stronger than twenty men, extremely dangerous, and have the ability to incapacitate a human being through a form of spontaneous hypnosis."
      The man touched the headset.  "Uh, Ted Koppel is asking what they actually look like if they are altered."
      "That's impossible to say.  No one," Frank answered, "has seen the Lobesomen." 
      Koppel on the screen looked puzzled.  "Would you repeat that."
     "Lobesomen," said Frank.  "We think the first one was imported here from Portugal and that's what they call it there."
     On the screen. "What happens next, Captain Holtz?"
      There was a pause as the question was again repeated.
      "We intend to attack at dawn," Frank said, looking straight into the camera.

      Lincoln Ford called the final number just after 11 o'clock.  Five companies, all owned by the Gatherers Church; all the same answer.
      "Captain, there's nobody home.  No answer at four of the companies.   But I got through to the security firm, talked to the woman who works the phones.  I also called the mall and every place where they have contracts.  None of their people showed up for work.  Left'em high and dry.  The old lady at Gatherer Security said they been out since Wednesday.  She says they're all at the church, Captain."
      "That'll work," Frank said.
 

     Murry had bagged most of the Balazos.  He found the task rather sweet and saved Luis for last.  The black, thick sacks were tied with yellow nylon cord and were stacked by the door.  Most rooms like this were rinsed occasionally because of the messy habits of the occupants.  As he pulled in the hose, he sighted the head which still sat where John had left it, between the slumped metal posts.  The stream of the garden hose shot out of the nozzle and sloshed into the dead eye of Luis Hernandez.  "Eat that, ben-day-ho," Murry said.  He sang as he washed the room.  "Ding dong, Luis is dead.  He's dead, he's dead, he's fuck-ing dead.  Ding dong Luis is fuck-ing dead."
      "Done yet," Eissler said, standing in the door.
      "Oh!  Not quite yet, no," Murry answered, having been surprised.
      "Take the bags out, load them in the van.  Did you find the keys?"
      "Right here," Murry said.
      "You'll find a warehouse on 34th.  Drive around back.  There's a dumpster.  Keep your gloves on."
      "I know where that is."

      Bonnie was curled on the bed when he came in.  The drug had had time to work.  He lifted her wrist, checked his watch.  Her pulse was slow and steady. 
      "Do you hear me?"
      "Yes," she said, a long hiss.  Eissler began to lift her T-shirt over her head.  She complied by raising her arms.  He pulled off her shoes and socks.  Then gently tugged at her shorts until they were off and in a heap on the floor.  He told her to lift up and removed her underwear.  She was naked on the small single bed.  He began to thrill at the power it afforded him over another human being. 
      "We're going to have a little talk," he said.  "Would you like that?"
      "Sounds nice."
      He stroked her stomach, her thighs, pulled a lock of hair from her ear, and felt the lobe.  His fingers tenderly traced the curve of her breast. 
      "You're walking down a long, dark road.  Brightly lit in spots, but almost black in spots.  Stay toward the bright places.  You come to your high school graduation.  They hand you a diploma; no one else gets one.  No--one--else, no one, no one else, no one."
      "No one."
      "You're just floating, sinking, sinking, my voice is the only thing you can hear.  My voice."
      "Your voice."
      "There was a young girl who went with some bad boys.  She can't remember what they did.  She can't remember what happened.  She can't remember the boys at all.  She can't remember."
      "I can't remember."
      "There was a doctor who tried to help the little girl.  Do you know him?"
      "Yes, I know him."
      "Do you like him?"
      "Sometimes."
      "The little girl likes him.  She is devoted to him.  She would do anything he would ever ask.  She is very attracted, very turned on by the doctor."
      "Ahhhhhhh."
      "All that you have heard you will forget.  But you will do whatever the doctor tells you."
      "I will."
      "Promise?"
      "I will."

      Eissler returned to the quiet room.  The bags were gone and the room washed thoroughly, still steamy from the hose and mop bucket.  It had the piercing smell of pine oil.  He went to the pillars, grabbed the chain and pulled. 
      Incredible.
      "John?"  He walked to the wall, running his hand along the thick rubber.  His fingers traced the gouges and deep lacerations.  Moving around the circumference, he could see the almost invisible pattern.  It moved ahead of him like a scurrying animal. 
      "John, do as I say.  Show yourself!"
      It reminded him of a cubist painting.  Hundreds of tiny facets flickered in an out of focus.  John Doe's face came and went for a few moments, then he grew like a plant out of the air.  Eissler bent over the pathetic figure and put an arm around his shoulders.  He shook the man gently. 
      "I didn't mean to do it," John whispered.
      "I know you didn't."
      "They were being very nasty," John said, looking up into Eissler's face like a child.
      "It's okay now.  We're going to let you sleep in your old bed for tonight."
      "Oh, I'd like that.  I really would."
      They left the Quiet Room, the doctor supporting John down the hall.  He tripped, almost falling.  Yellow-grey spikes dripped to the floor, clicking on the tile.  They were like canes holding up a lame man. 
      "Ooooooh noooooo," John wailed.  "You s-see.  I can't control it!"
      "We'll do the best we can," Fredric Eissler said.  He put John to bed with a triple dose of Demerol.  After tucking him, in the doctor went to the room where he had left his secretary. 
 

     Mario Leonardi, Governor of New Jersey was in his palatial home watching the Ted Copple interview.  The TV was in front of the glass door that led to the pool. 
      "Hon, get me another glass of vino," he said to the young woman he had hired for the evening.  Mrs. Leonardi was in Canada visiting her parents.  The girl had been selling hotdogs from a cart when they met.  She was dressed in a black thong bikini, the same as  that afternoon when he had first seen her.  Her long blonde hair was real for God's sake.  The Governor watched her go to the kitchen.  He switched channels.

 "--and appear to be much like Bigfoot or some very large animal.  This is certainly one of the strangest assignments that this reporter has--"
 
He switched again.

"--deadly menace such as the public has never before faced.  The National guard--" 

      And again.

 "Local authorities are calling for a total quarantine of the area.  How far reaching the danger to the public is--"

      Leonardi turned off the set.  He picked up the phone.  Elections were only months away.  Fast thinking, fast action; this was a crisis tailor made just for him.  The voters would love it.
      "Hey, goombah, yeah...listen, with this thing in 'Pennsey.  I'm thinking some big public-minded move here.  I want every available man along the Delaware down there.  Start right at--let me see--there's a bridge.  What's the name of that town?  Mercer, right.  I want people down there at that bridge first thing.  Like right now.  Yesterday!  Then, keep'em going, right on up to Falls River, down to Trenton.  Nothing fancy, just two by fours and a lot of razor wire.  Put on a show.  But nobody gets out of 'Pennsey."
      He pressed the off button.  The hotdog girl came back and sat next to him.  "Sounds like a big deal," She said.  "What are you trying to do?"
      "Get re-elected, what else," the Governor said.

     Occasionally, the noise would come.  They learned to ignore it, but the nerve-chewing screams of women and children were like a saw going through a cop's brain.  Every animal on earth that growled, snarled, or squealed had its say that night.  The continuous slap out on the water accompanied the crumbling morale of the men surrounding the church. 
      Frank Holtz felt the need to address the people under him.  He had never thought himself an eloquent speaker, but he knew he had to say something.  "I never had a chance to talk to you men.  Some of you don't know me.  Some of you are from different departments.  Maybe you didn't know what you getting into.  The job requires that you be here, but any of you who don't...any of you who can't justify getting in on the fight can stay out of it. 
      "Some of you guys, I'm sure, didn't read the report.  Most of you probably just scanned it.  Well, let's go over the facts one more time.  These aren't your average bad guys.  Forget about your guns.  You will want to fall back on the hardware, but when it comes, firearms will do more harm than good.  The wood's the only thing that will bring them down.  Mr. Bombar has got more swords coming and we'll have about forty more of the flack suits.  After that, we're on our own.  I know how strange it must be to you, that we have to do it the old fashioned way, like our forefathers.  But that's the way it is.  The bad guys know what you think, and they know what you feel.  They're bigger, stronger, and if you look'em in the face, you’re done.  I've been through this once before and what I think--what I know--is that they have respect for only one thing, balls.
      "So, good luck to you all, and if you have to die, do it with a stick in your hand."
      "Holtz out."

      Some of them did leave.  They were given the chance, and they headed home.  But the ones who stayed shouted their approval with one voice. 
      At five on Sunday morning, the truck arrived with the extra weapons.  Long and short boken, so that the men could have one of each.  Fifty more flack suits were flown in by helicopter.  The pilot was warned to stay clear of the temple grounds.  He still felt woozy by the time he touched down.  He chose to stay and join the fight. 
      As the blue-black night turned to grey, they knew it was time.  Charlie Bombar had walked the entire perimeter and talked with each group of officers, answering their questions.  When he came back, more swords were handed out.  Again, he advised them to leave the side arms behind.  "Swing it like a bat," he said again and again.  "Try to knock'em out of the park.  Swing and jab and jump back."
      Holtz had set up the makeshift command post at the North end of the property.  The police van was parked under a grove of trees.  Open air was just thirty feet away and the sky was getting lighter.  They could clearly see the black writhing clumps in the field.  Bombar came to the van with two officers.
     "Excuse us for a few minutes," he said.  They nodded and walked off.
     "Whata'ya think," Frank asked.
     "We don't have much time."
     "What else do you think," Frank said, probing. He realized that Bombar had more on his mind.
     "I'm second in command.  I've decided."
     "Okay."
     "You were in country and you know what happens next."
 Frank said, "I'm not following, Charles."
     "You're not going in, Frank.  I have to tell you that.  There it is."
     "They need us.  They need both of us down there.  If I don't--"
     "You don't, that's all.  I'm sorry Captain.  As second I have to tell you you can't go down there."
     "What if I override you?"
     "Oh please.  Look, it won't end here.  You have to be there to mop up.  We can't trust anybody else.  Like you said Frank; it comes down to you and me.  If they get you and I'm dead, then the whole shitting process could start again just by way of fuckups."
     Frank made a fist and held it to Charlie's face.  They pressed their knuckles together and shook hands.
     "You're right of course," Frank agreed.
     "Dad," a voice came from his left.
     "Boy," Frank said, "you get your ass back down that hill."
     "Wow, nice to see you too."
     "I'm sorry," Frank said, "nice to see you.  Now go home."
     "Pop, I want to be here.  I've seen the news."
     "I haven’t," Frank answered.
     "The world knows your name, dad."
     "Kevin...son, men are going to die here.  In just about an hour, I might be dead.  So let it sink in.  Go home."
     "Nah, I think I'll stay.  Those things down there can deal with two Holtzs."
     "Well said!" Shouted Bombar.  "I wish that was my son saying that."  The sound of his voice was muffled.  He looked at his students through the face shield of his helmet.  His world was reduced to a grey coin in the black plastic.  Like a Cyclops, he limped over the van. 
     "If you stay," he said, "you don't get involved.  You're here with the gear.  That's an order."  He turned to Frank.  "And I am second banana."
     "Aye aye, sir," Kevin said.
     Charlie checked the helmet mike.  "This is Bombar.  Helmets on now.  Lock and load.  Repeat.  Lock and load."
     Out in the salmon-colored dawn, a hundred twenty eight wooden bolts were loaded in front of tight steel cable.  The ancient ritual of bending the steel bow, notching an arrow, and aiming the weapon high, took place in earnest that morning in the last decade of laser disks and the satellite uplink.
 

    Evilyn Cooms threw open the French doors that looked out over her pepper plants.  Her house in Finesville sat by a stream, the most pleasant property in New Jersey.  She was a collector of antique ceramics.  Plates were her passion.  An extensive collection of Delft dinnerware (though no sane person would dare eat off one) blue houses and landscapes, on bone white, were hung around her stone fireplace.  Evilyn thought with glee about the set of tiny saucers.  Old man Coplin had finally agreed to sell.  It was the find of a lifetime and she knew if she didn't get there while the iron was hot, that old bitch Milly Crocker would get there first, and it might never come again.  Evilyn was up early.  She dressed calmly and stopped to check herself in the full-length mirror.  A story book grandmother, her face had an acorn shape, surrounded with white curls.  Her crown was nearly hairless, but she always wore a knit cap even in summer.  She was only four foot eight, but nobody got in her way when she didn't want them to.  She put on a knee length summer dress and a pair of high top sneakers. 
     In her carport, she unlocked the Yugo and got in.  She turned on the engine and stepped on the gas.  As was her habit, she put the car in gear, screeching the tires and headed out on 519.
     Across the railroad tracks along the river, she saw the soldiers.  She was instantly sure that they were just more hoodlums from that Hoot's bar and grill.  They wore a variety of different uniforms.  At the bar, just opposite the bridge, a large group in camouflage jump suits were busy building a barricade. 
     "No!" Evilyn shouted.  Timing was everything.  Two minutes either way and she could loose.  Who did they think they were?  The nerve, the audacity, the plates!
     She knew what razor wire was.  Her cousin in Newark had it going around the fence at his parking lot.  At the bridge, there was a large wooden structure with twenty soldiers standing in a row.  They were facing the Pennsylvania shore.  They had guns.
     Evilyn pulled over beside the foundation of the old train station.  She got out and slammed the door of the Hugo as hard as she could.  With as much righteous indignation as she could muster, she headed for whomever was in charge. 
     "Excuse me, young man."
     They looked at her slowly as though she were an insect.  As a group they moved together a little tighter, sensing trouble.  Some had been in Asia and the Middle East.  Little old women could get you a ticket to the Home for Vets quicker than shit through a mama-san.  The little woman came closer. 
     "I need to go across this bridge.  You open that thing up immediately!"
     "Can't do that ma'am.  Bridge is closed until further notice."  The man was very young, no more than twenty.  Evelyn realized that he was a marine, from the uniform.  What were they doing here?
     "You don't understand," she said, "that I have urgent business over there."  She pointed over the river.
     "Nobody's crossing over, ma'am.  It certainly isn't just you."
     "Well, we'll see about that!  I'll just go down to Milford and cross there!"
 He softened.  "May I ask your name?"
     "What do you want to--"
     "Only to know to whom I'm speaking."
     "I'm Evilyn Cooms."
     "Evilyn, there are barricades at Milford, Frenchtown, New Hope and all the way to Trenton.  If you were to travel North, Easton, Belvidere, Portland and as far as Port Jervis.  Try to swim, and you could get shot.  You won't get across the Delaware today...Evilyn."
     "Perhaps I will take a boat."
     "Mrs. Cooms, by tomorrow, that wire will run along the river and New Jersey will be completely sealed off.  Please don't."
     "Sealed off from what," she asked.
     One of the other marines spoke up:  "Ain't you seen Ted Koppel?  They got big buggers goin' ape shit up at that church."
     "That'll be all private.  We're sealed off from Pennsylvania," the marine said.  "You'll have to be on your way now, ma'am.  We have to keep this area clear."
     Evilyn Cooms got off her parting shot.  "What you describe is a lot of nonsense and the only buggers are politicians who want to get reelected." Then she gave them the finger.
     They watched her walk to her car.  Her steps were very forceful, as though she was trying to squash one of them with each step, putting out small fires.  They still thought about how an old mama-san would stuff a grenade right up your ass while you were fucking the dog.  The car door slammed and the engine roared.  Evilyn Cooms thought only of the Delft saucers as her tires squealed across the railroad tracks. 

    They collected in larger circles.  As the creatures wound themselves in greater numbers, the effect was stronger.  The news people pulled farther back, relying on telephoto equipment for pictures.  A group of protestors had gathered up on the road as first light.  Most of them ran screaming with their signs into the trees and reconsidered their strategy. 
     The men inside the flack suits felt nothing.  With the helmets on, they screened out the paralyzing hypnogogic wave.  Inside the helmet, a man would have one eye closed, focused on the dot of light that was the enemy.  Now that there was light, they could see a small broken body on the grass.  The bloodied carcass was by itself near a single tree. 
     Bombar sighted it with his binoculars.  "Ah shit, Frank," he said, "that is a kid.  It's a little boy."
     Frank took a look.  "Oh Christ, what the hell have I done.  Would they do that?  Would they do something like that."
     "It wasn't a trick," Charlie said, pissed off.
     "I--I just let that kid die.  I gave the order to ignore it.  We should have--"
     "Bullshit!  They did it!  Now they're gonna pay."

     The first arrow was released by accident.  Nobody saw it go and the cop who did it watched it arc over the field.  He hoped to God it didn't hit another cop.  Moments later they heard the squalling in the middle of one of the black wreaths.  With the trees as a background, the red plume shot up like a geyser, bright as a tropical bird.  The sight stunned them. 
     Holtz spoke into the helmet mike.  "Give that man a cigar!  You guys without a suit, take cover.  Let's do it.  Make it rain.  I repeat.  Make it rain."
      Then the pink morning air was full of arrows.  Black scratches flew skyward, some overshooting the target, but the majority fell on their marks.  The archers quickly found the range.  The roar was like that of a thousand loudspeakers.  Shrieking elephants, hissing, moaning, wild cats.  Bright red flags sprouted from the black rings and the air grew pink from the spray.  Blood hackles like maroon ferns rose and fell from the lawn, from the field.  Some of the arrows fell inside the lake where reddish-brown plumes splattered up over the wall.
     They reloaded and fired again.   Now the dead began to litter the grass.  Many, still moving, returned to the human form.  As their number diminished, they tore free of the rings and many began to tear about the field.
     A piercing stench wafted across the field.  Dead animals, like a rat caught dead in the walls, cat shit, rotten seafood.  One of the men standing nearby asked, "Captain, why don't they just run?"
     "They can't.  They've grown too large--too many.  They can't harm each other, so they let us do it. 
     "So, you mean they're allowing this to happen?" 
     "For now, yes.  But every one that dies reduces the number.  They'll fight back soon enough."
     There were red curtains hanging weightless in the air.  The creatures were breaking up, running in all directions.  They moved in and out of visibility.  More arrows fell and the grass turned a dark, glassy, brown.  Men who were unprotected stood behind trees and vehicles.  It very quickly became necessary to stay out of sight because some of the bolts went far over the church, slamming into car doors and windshields.  The turf prickled with wooden shafts.
     The wind was blowing from the South.  Holtz was concerned about the men not wearing protective gear.  "You guys head up the hill and keep those onlookers under control."
     "I've got fifty-eight down, Captain," Bombar said, without removing the field glasses.  "All went back to human form right away.  It's a mess down there."
    Kevin Holtz sat in the passenger side of a police van.  His mouth was open.  He couldn't take his eyes off the hideous spectacle.  Frank regretted that he had let the boy stay.  "You should go Kev," he said.  "You won't ever be able to forget this."
     "You won't either, Dad.  I just didn't know.  I didn't believe any of this."
     "You gotta get outta here son," Frank said, squeezing the boy's wrist.
     "No, I'm staying here with you, Pop.  No matter what happens."
     "Then, do me a favor."  He reached into the van and pulled out one of the suits.  "Put this on.  Your Uncle Charles had it made especially for you.  You might as well put it on."
     "But that means somebody out there doesn't have one."
     "Yeah well, put it on anyway," Frank said.  "Put the helmet on too.  You can keep the plate back, but if you get woozy, drop it."

     They rose to heights of ten feet, hopping, running across the field.  Dark shapes flowed together and tore apart.  Each time a group came together, a wave of nausea went through the policemen.  They, in turn, would hear the howls of the protesters and camera crews.
     There were more than a hundred dead, both men and women, lying on the grass.  Some continued to spray for several minutes.  They were both clothed and nude, as though they had had no time to dress for their death.  Individuals began to crouch and paw the earth like spiked boars, like grizzly bears, gigantic bristling buffalo, weighing tons.  Others were like ghastly stallions, standing on their haunches raking at the sky with paws the size of peach baskets.  Black fur grew long, running along the ground, lapping out, becoming waves on a green beach.  In the midst of each shaking, flailing horror, the eyes were wild.  Eyes of terrified animals stared at their executioners.  The ridge of jagged bone that headed the black seamless orbs was visible, regardless of the shape.  In the middle of the dead and dying, one of them opened its mouth and spewed the culmination of all vicious, enraged animals.  Its screams were so forceful that it seemed to bend back the trees.  To the men surrounding this spectacle, the essence, the soul of every predator on earth vented its agony.  There was a reverberation, an echo that came back from the surrounding hills.  The mouth was huge and bulbous, the head thrown back, deep as a car hood, with curved white teeth measuring three feet or more, jutting haphazardly, expanding, contracting.  Then suddenly, one of them charged the perimeter.  It was like a huge wildebeest doing sixty miles an hour.  Another was right behind it. 
     "This is it!" Bombar shouted.  "Nail'em!  Nail'em now!"  But the men holding that position were unprepared for the ferocity.  They were either between arrows or too panicked to shoot.  As the beasts closed in, they tried to run, but were caught.  One of the officers was thrown in the air, spinning like a doll.  He had no flack suit and was dead before he hit the ground.  They rolled like bowling pins.  A white suit hit an oak tree like an apple thrown by an angry child.  The man lay still for a moment as the creature circled and then he was up, both swords forward, in a tight fighting stance.
     Several more of the black shapes charged.  From the thudding of giant paws, it was obvious that they weighed a thousand pounds or more.   Something like a black rhino covered in spikes reared up and gained sixty or seventy miles per hour in moments.  Some were brought down with arrows now that the men were ready.  One cop began swing his sword back and forth.  In his suit, they couldn't see who he was, but they could hear him grunting across the open helmet channel.  Suddenly he was washed in blood.  He had pierced the thing as it bit down on his leg.  It dropped him and died.  His shaking hand slapped the box.  The tube filled with a measured injection of the serum, cinnamon colored liquid flowing into his brain.  He bent forward as his cerebellum swelled. 
     "Fuck this!" Bombar yelled.  He turned to Frank, move his head around until they could see each other.  "Let's take it to'em," he said.  "All units close in.  Repeat, move in!"  They hesitated for a few moments and then began to move slowly toward the mayhem.  Bombar said, "So it becomes a bull fight."  He saluted Frank and Kevin, gave his war yell and limped into the battle.  A roar went up from the other cops as they sprinted into the red sea.
     The news people did the best they could with long range equipment.  While continuing to shoot footage, they were no longer live.  The networks refused to air what they saw.  Events at the Gatherers Church of the Light were unsuitable for any audience. 

     Charlie Bombar limbed into the clearing.  In each hand, he held a razor sharp wooden sword.  He turned once more to Frank and Kevin.  In their helmets, they heard him.  He tapped the fiberglass leg with the sword in his right hand.  "Pil Sung, Frankie," he said.
     "Certain victory, Sabonim," Frank answered, lifting his fist.  Bombar strutted toward the field, swords pointing away at a forty -five-degree angles.  From that position he was impervious to attack.
     A wild pig, as large as a Volkswagen bus appeared from nothing and roared past him.   Clumps of sod flew up behind it as it tore the earth.  Its lower jaw was hanging to the ground, lined with tusks that jutted like spears.  It was on a collision course, headed for Frank.  There was no time to load and less even to stand.  Frank swung the boken straight over his head and pointed it level.  The momentum alone would knock the van over.  He realized he was about to die.  Then he heard a soft "putt" next to his head, and felt himself jerked violently to one side.  The beast fell screaming, dug a trench in the grass, and threw up a cloud of dirt and blood.   It stopped a few feet from him.  He flipped back the black faceplate.
     It was Kevin.  The boy had loaded the crossbow and had it ready beside him.  He had dropped down on one knee like a pro and put one in the monster's eye.  The Lobesomen lay in front of them spraying. 
     The boy had saved his life.
     "Son of a bitch!" Kevin yelled.  "Son of a bitch!"
     "Boy," Frank said, "reload."
     "Shit Pop," Kevin said.  He was shaking.  Then he regained himself and said, "Right Dad!"  He hopped back into the van and put the weapon between his feet. 
     "Son," Frank said, facing the boy.  "Son, thank you for--"
     "No problem Pop," Kevin said.  "I'm getting the hang of this."

     Bombar spoke to the men.  "Form groups of five and ten.  Keep moving in.      Don't let them get behind you.  They won't get away.  They've got nowhere to go."  Three beasts, bubbling fur and fangs attacked him.  Throughout the battle, each man could hear every other in their helmets, their shoulder mikes.   What they heard at that moment raised the hair on their necks. 
     "EEEEEEEAAAAHHHH!" Bombar began the sen go no koe, the before and after voice.  The swords crossed over his head and came down slashing.  Blades circled like propeller blades.  The wood tore into one of the creatures and instantly flicked into the neck of another.  A gaping mouth opened over him.  He was gone, covered in swarming fur.  Then the great head fell back.  Bombar stepped away, spinning, as he was attacked again.  Within a fan of red he kept chopping, stabbing, slicing.  He brought down ten of the monsters in minutes, slapped at the injector and shook his head.  The others took his lead.  In tight groups, resembling deadly hedgehogs, they slowly overcame the beasts that still lived.    To move forward they had to step over the bodies, the ground sloshing beneath their feet.  Those men that stayed with the vehicles kept up a steady barrage of arrows, killing anything that came their way.
     Then, it was over.
     The persistence of memory would have the terror continue forever in their minds, but the battle of the Lobesomen was over.
     Eighty-six officers stood shaking inside their white flack suits.  They couldn't see.  They had fought blindly, swinging at anything.  Bombar was poised among them, ready to continue.  They waited for what seemed to be minutes.  He pushed back the faceplate, scanning the field through clear, unbreakable Lexan plastic.  Eight cops were dead, broken and twisted on the ground, despite the padded suits. 
     Someone said, "We're done right?"
     Then another, "Yeah, they're all dead."
     "What'a we do now?"
     "What happens now Charlie?"
     Frank's voice came into their helmets.  "This is Holtz.  Stay where you are.  Nothing is over.  Nothing says we got them all."
    "Let's fall back," one of the suits said.
     "No!  You stand fast!"  Bombar reached up with his gloved hand and pulled the black shield down.  "We stay here for a while," he ordered.
     "Several of the man were lined up against the wall.  They stood in groups, still facing outward, ready for another attack. 
     But it didn't come.

     Half an hour went by.  The smell began to clear.  Most of the cops began to calm themselves, but kept their helmets on just the same.  The aftermath of such a bizarre battle came to an almost crushing close.  In the absence of sights and sounds that would never be repeated, reality itself seemed to become solid, galvanizing between the fighters.  They were breathing normally when the church doors slowly opened. 
     To say that they opened slowly wasn't quite accurate.  They opened in veils.  At one moment the bullet shaped doors were fully open, then they had begun again with just a long black crack down the center.  Each second, they broke in facets like stop-action bird wings. 
     Frank's line of vision was such that he could see the front of the church. "Kevin, stay here.  I mean it."
     "I go where you go," the boy said.
     "Kevin, you do as I say, please.  I'm serious."
     "Okay Dad.  Be careful.  I want you to play with your grandchildren."
     "Roger that, kid."

     A figure was coming down the center aisle.  He was dressed only in a loincloth.  Just as the doors had done, the man walked in segments.  There were shades of him still left behind as he passed through the door.  Where he began and ended, it was hard to tell.  As he crossed over the threshold and out onto the church steps, the air around him started to ripple.  The officers could clearly see what appeared to be a peacock fan around him that stretched out in a radius of ten or more yards.  It was a halo, a radiant ferris wheel of phantasmagoric colors, thin transparent layers, bending light, glowing like florescent cells.  There was no smell, nor was there any nausea.  A pleasant flow of peace and well being went through the cops.  It was a dramatic reversal from the hours of fear.  They began to lift their face shields. 
     "Keep those shields in place!"  Frank snapped.  "Look alive."
 Reverend Tan Lee stood on the steps like a ceramic doll.  He seemed to transcend matter, almost floating above the stone steps.  His feet seemed to bear no weight as if he were suspended lightly on the bottom of a pool. 
     "Good to see you again, Captain Holtz, " Lee said.  His voice was like water, or a dozen fine musical instruments, hundreds of subtle voices within voices.
     Holtz watched through the hole in his helmet.  He was intrigued by the little man, but didn't trust anything or anyone connected with this place. 
     "Nice to see you, but I'm afraid you're under arrest.  Get down on the ground."
     "Forgive me," Lee said, "my English..."
     "Your English is good enough.  Now get down!"
     "Allow me to say a few things first."
     "Go ahead," Bombar said, "and then we poke you full of holes."
 Lee spoke.  "The water was poisoned.   You know that by now Captain Holtz.  These people," he gestured with his hand at the field, "are innocent of any crimes.  There is no victory for you here." 
     "What happened to the six men that came here on Friday night?" Bombar shouted. 
     "Dead."
     "Where are they?"
     "They are here."
     "So's this," Bombar said, venom in his tone.  He released an arrow.  The shot went straight toward the little man's chest.  But a few feet before it struck, it turned to dust, a puff of brown smoke, wood fibers, a crackling noise and it vanished.  Bombar ran to one of the white suits, grabbed the man's bow and fired again.  The result was the same.   He stared with his mouth open, hate distorting his face.  "Those men had families!"
     "Are these," Lee said, gesturing at the bodies heaped in the field, "not a family?" 
     Now the flow of well being and the light show around the Reverend changed.  Like a vicious net, it fell over the men.  They could hear the change as it reached the perimeter and then the people in the woods.  The sickness returned.  They heard moaning up in the woods. 
 Reverend Lee raised his arms.  He trembled, and his mouth fell open.  The eyes rolled back and turned to black polished coals.  His feet turned inward, sprouting graceful, overlapping talons, like voracious roots seeking a place to hold.   Glossy black hair ran down the steps, crawling toward the men.   Each strand, each cable of mane was searching, slithering, crackling with intelligence, with a life of its own.  It covered the area in front of the wall and pushed its way toward the gate. 
     The cops started to run.  They fell over the bodies to get away from the fur, streaming with spines.  It moved, undulating, around the sides of the church, now knee deep.  At the edges of this black tide, large, white stumps of bone connected to great hunks of throbbing muscle swelled and dug into the ground.  They curled inward, pulling sod toward the tiny figure on the steps.  Lee's arms bulged and broke away from his body, becoming thin grey membranes.  His legs were now like tree trunks with spikes that pierced the cement beneath him.  Huge jaws with snapping mandible, bristling with shark’s teeth grew out of the sea of swimming hackles.  These mouths were supported on stalks of raw muscle that rushed them forward like freight trains.  Great blinking eyes that dripped with thick yellow mucus floated out over the grounds. 
     The Reverend's head was a thorn bush of teeth and weeping eyes.  It was a fountain of horror, gushing black fluid that became clumps of eyes hanging like grapes, gazing, wary, angry.  This living fountain continued to rise, casting off an intricate network of membranes with thin bones, swelling to support the weight.  The nearly transparent skin covering these bones spread and reformed like hideous plant life.  These were wings.  Soon they covered the doors and then the church itself.  All semblance of a human being was now totally gone.  Like onions peeling back layer after layer, the center opened and kept growing. 
     Reverend Lee was now close to two hundred feet tall.  His shadow covered the trees to the East of the church grounds.  The moaning of sick and near unconscious people was like a chorus for miles around the Temple of the Light.

    Along the Delaware River, six miles away, the marines and National Guard were still erecting the barricade.  Coils of razor wire were nailed from the top, down to the ground.  The barrier was impossible to climb over.  The bank stretched down to the muddy green water where rocks broke the surface.  To the East, another bank rose along a field lined with trees.  Looking North, the narrow river road vanished into the foliage.  Across the river, beyond the town of Mercer, a mountain jutted into the blue sky. 
     Marine Corp. Lieutenant, Ned Thornton sat with his legs propped up in a jeep.  Private Richard Perot was at the wheel.  Across from them, at the Riverside TapRoom, a group of bikers had arrived.  The looks were dirty and resentful on both sides.  An overweight man in greasy jeans, with long grey heir, wrapped his arm around a cracked and faded post.  His name was Buzzard.  "Hey," he yelled, "how long is this shit gonna go on?"
     Thornton ignored him.
     "I'm talk'in to you Army man."
     "We're Marines," Thornton said politely. 
     "I don't give a shit what the fuck you are.  I wanna cross that there river.  You Mah-reens better open that fucking bridge up.  We got a lotta dudes here, say so." 
     Dick Perot squinted at the group on the tavern porch.  "And we got ree-peetin' rifles," he said.  "Y'all c'mon over."
     It was now two o'clock in the afternoon.  There was a noticeable reduction of light.  It was like the cool gradual change brought on by an eclipse or a slow rain cloud.  A shadow began to pass over the river, the tavern.  The bikers looked West, shading their eyes. 
     "Jesus Christ!" Buzzard yelled.  "There's somethin' up there in the sky."  They saw a shape mounting above the tree line. 
     "What the fuck is that lieutenant?"  Perot asked.
     "Man, I have no idea."  He thumbed the mike on the field pack.  "This is River Wall One.  This is River Wall One.  We've got somethin happening in the NorthWest.  I mean the whole north West."
     He waited.
     "Advise," he said.
     And the sun went out.
 

     It was time, the moment that had come for a thousand years.  Was his legacy to be this?  If so, then so, he thought.  And he scanned his worlds for the lives of the saints.  His own beloved Saint Sabastian, who would, like himself, not yield.  He had neither love nor scorn for the beaters and hunters, the bearers and spectators.  The hunt was as it has always been.  Slayers and slain awash in each other's blood.  He had longed since that day of his first communion to allow the beast to have its way.  To free his minion which he had always controlled.  Now the slayers would see the truth, the endless desire and potential of his overbeing.  His tiny will, tremendous by the standards of men, now melted into the ocean of terror and the slavering need of what he was to become.  He was lost.  The rising, expanding, billions within billions of cells and altered atoms called each to their own purpose, each mass hunting, calling, devouring, demanding to be fed.  There was no limit now.   He would roll over the planet itself and have no need of light, no need of dark.  He belonged to neither polarity and never would again.   This boiling realm of interwoven brilliance was an ecstasy undreamed of by the pilgrim seekers of foregone time.  Power, untainted by restraint, without boundary, without...
 ...without love?
     He stretched again his tiny will.  It was like an open palm against ocean waves.  Speaking gently to himself, he called it back and held to the image of his Sainthood.  When he was at last vulnerable, he begged the offering at his feet to repent and be washed with the others. 
 But it refused.

    Giant talons anchored it to the ground.  There were hundreds of them boring four and five feet deep into the earth.  Each talon was composed of white, flaking, cracked bone.  Above each was a hump of muscle that twitched with the strain of holding its place.  Dirt and grass was heaped up, packed by the probing bone fingers.  Fur, thick as bridge cables reached out like tentacles with cruel barbs turned inward.  The sinuous whips rolled out gently and drew in the dead. 
    They were hung heads down, by their feet, a macabre necklace of flesh and bone.  Each had great wounds from the arrows and swords that had killed them. 
     The wings continued to multiply.  At the top, an ebony mist broiled where the sun would have been.  It began to collapse, the wings, covering more than an acre, spiraled in on themselves.  White spines pierced the black membranes.  Two one hundred-foot long slashes opened in the black skin.  Blood poured over the indigo lips like a broken dam.  It drenched the fleshy terraces and plateaus, falling in rivulets to engulf the lifeless members of the Gatherers Temple.  One by one, they were absorbed, until finally only a single foot dangled from a drooping jaw.  The foot spun violently and was sucking in with an audible pop.  The heaving parapet that had blocked out the afternoon sun was painted in the dripping blood of the Lobesomen. 
     The dead were then slowly excreted, washed clean, sucked dry like lobster claws, and dropped at random, back to the grass.  Reverend Lee flickered in and out of focus and then reappeared in the center, like a pinned butterfly.  His arms were outstretched, his feet together.  On his face was a look of extreme anguish, his human teeth showing in a rictus of pain.  The wings had shrunk in on themselves to black sails, claws hanging where the hands would be, white as ivory.  The great talons pulled free of the ground and shriveled.  Mouths closed on their pink throats with a snap that breaking fingers might make.  Again the wings fluttered, folded, and lowered the tiny figure at their center to a tree.  Black whips snarled in the branches, tying the diminutive figure fast. 
      The child, a young boy, who had been used to taunt the officers throughout the night, lay dead and unmarred at Lee's feet.  His hands were jerked down behind the trunk of the tree and lashed tight by coils of his own animated hair.   His feet and legs were securely bound, toes turning blue. 
      Holtz felt the nausea diminish.  The tremors and emotional attacks began to subside.  "Let's go," he shouted.  "Move in!  Move in now!"  He waved the men toward the tree.  Bombar limped closer.  Cops surrounded the tree.  Reverend Tan Lee's chest was pushed forward, his breastbone white beneath the skin.  He was covered in a thin sheen of his own blood.  The loincloth was soaked, pink, hanging limply.  His eyes, full of pain and compassion scanned the men in white suits.  He saw them as a flock of tiny black holes moving to his offering and thought of the poetry of life.  He lowered his head and whispered something to the small corpse at his feet. 
      The tentacles still wound around the branches, pulling the arms and legs tighter.  The words were slurred and almost drunken.  "Never has the moon shown so brightly..."
      Twenty arrows flew to him. He jerked against the branches and they bent, encircling him.  The legs jumped, the head fell back and he exhaled forever.    The bolts pierced the flesh cleanly, as though they were entering a Christmas ham.  The terrible eruption of blood didn't come.    "...as when I am about my appointed rounds."
      Tan Lee was dead.
     Charlie Bombar, father of two, dropped his bow and walked to the tree.  He gently scooped up the child and carried him away.  "Too bad," he muttered, thinking of his daughters.  He cradled the lifeless child as he walked toward the road.  Bombar thought that they could at least return one of the long list of casualties.  He removed his helmet.  It felt good to breathe fresh air. 
      All the sounds and sickening effects of the creatures were gone.  An army of camera people and correspondents descended on the white-suited cops.  All helmets were off now and Frank didn't like it.  The ground was slushy.  There was an inch of pink-grey sludge everywhere.
      "Get back!  Hold those people back!  But they kept coming.  They wanted the shot of Bombar carrying the child.  With that they could go live again.  The cops that hung back with the vehicles began to herd then toward the road. 
     Frank said, "Charlie, put the kid down."
     Bombar didn't stop. 
     "Charlie, drop him."

      On the TV screens in living rooms and kitchens across three states, a big man in a white suit carried a child.  His tired face was suffused with determination.  Thousands of faces like this throughout the history of television had filled the screen.  Faces of firemen, of policemen, of civilians who rescue people after plane crashes.  His blonde hair was spiked out on top, very military, hairline back to his ears. 
      The suit was funny, sort of rubbery, quilted, with big rings at the cuffs and neck.  A helmet was clipped between his fingers.  He carried a child.  This was like a modern Norman Rockwell, the man and the dead child.  Only one crew got the live feed for it, but every network and station would have it by eleven. 

"...in the aftermath of one of the most violent and bloody police battles that this reporter has ever seen, all that's left of the carnage is this little boy.  The child appears to be unconscious--No, he seems to be waking up."

      Charlie heard that.  He knew the boy was dead.  He stared down at the bundle in his arms.  No child was cradled there.  He was holding a cocoon, a chrysalis, gleaming like black plastic.  The moment of decision had already come and gone.  After the killing, Bombar was overcome with the urge to be human again, to love.  His own children, now grown, were in his mind.  This instant of weakness was all the creature needed.  It was the last.  The thing lashed to the tree had ceased.  With the others dead, this one would fight with all the ferocity it possessed.  It would fight for its life. 
      Instantly, it dropped a pale gray wing to the ground.  A huge claw corkscrewed into the dirt, gaining purchase.  Bombar's head was the only vulnerable spot.  A cobra hood shot over his exposed face, impaling his neck with spines and groped inside the suit for his shoulders and chest. 
      His fellow officers were too shocked to act.  They saw Bombar slap the processor under his arm, injecting the serum.  Holtz still wore the helmet and rushed forward with his sword.  He plunged the tip into the billowing cocoon, but it became liquid like a grape wine and pooled around the sword.  Frank began hacking.  Each time he brought the blade down, the creature folded away from it.  Bombar was bleeding down the front of the suit.  One of the cops leaned in and thrust a sword into his hand.  Charlie used it to pry under the thing around his head.  It fell forward, releasing him, but shot back, a sack full of snapping heads.  The wing was rooted to the ground, wrapping around his legs, claws searching for a place to bite. 
      Holtz shot first.  His arrow went through the thick black membrane and hit Bombar in the leg.  He fell and was instantly swallowed, claws and spines weaving a macramé of suffocation. 
      Frank jumped on the thing and began to grapple with it.  He tore at the tangle of needles and got to Charlie's face.  Bombar was sinking fast.  Blood began to spurt from the wound left by the arrow.  Frank put his foot over it to deflect the spray.  Then other hands were tearing at the abomination.  Twenty men were ripping the thing from Bombar's suit.  Twenty swords hacked it to shreds. 
      "One of the cops starting yelling, "This is terrible.  I ain't staying here."  He ran toward one of the vans. 
      "Stop him," Frank said.  "Go get him.  Bring him back."
      Charlie Bombar was on the ground with one of the men holding his head.  Half of them had just injected their cerebellum with cold serum. 
      "Boys, before anybody can go home we have to wash this stuff off.  It's gonna take a while," Frank told them.  "Every suit has to be destroyed and then we decide what to do with the place.  How many of you have used the injector?"  There was a show of hands.  "Do it now.  Everybody hit that button."
      Thirty men pushed the button inside their suits.  They wrinkled their brows and shook their heads as the cool liquid hit their brain.  One young guy said, "Feels kinda' nice.  We should get together like this every weekend."  At that the whole regiment laughed and it went on for five minutes.  Men at the perimeter heard it over the open channel and it caught on.  The man who said it lowered his head, grinning. 
      "All you men without the plug, take off," Frank said, "I want you out of here.  You all did well.  Get back to the perimeter and handle the onlookers.  For God's sake, stay off this shit."  He nudged the sticky grass with his mottled boot.   "Keep those people away."  He pointed toward the growing crowd of news personnel and locals. 
      "You," he pointed to one of the men.  "Tell them I want two guys.  A narrator and a cameraman.  Get them into a pair of suits.  They go along.  The rest of you stay up there."
      Bombar coughed.  He started to get up shaking off pieces of his attacker. 
      "Can you hack it?"  Frank asked, reaching out a hand.
      "I'm good.  What a fight!"
      "And tell my boy to come down here."

       Paired down to a squad of thirty-six men, they entered the church.  This was the team that Bombar had trained.  Most were still helmeted, walking carefully, noiselessly, sword and bow ready.  The newsmen with the camera walked right down the middle isle. 
      When they got to the pulpit, they stopped.  "Do we want a live feed here?  Do you think that would be right, Captain Holtz?"
      Frank was wearing dark glasses with pinholes. He had them on a cord around his neck.  He lowered them and said, "Probably not a good idea.  There's something here and it won't be on Heraldo."  Frank kicked up the rugs, uncovering the brass drains.  "Get a shot of this.  And this too."  He pointed at the fire hose on the wall. 
      "I can't really see through this thing," the cameraman said.
      "Keep it on," Bombar ordered.
      "What are we looking for," the narrator said.
      "Some kind of door," Frank answered, "or an opening."
      The narrator began his lead-in.

      "We have entered the building itself.  After what can only be described as a terrible battle with the hideous occupants, we're getting ready to probe whatever secrets might be hidden here.  The Gatherers Church of the Light: now a place of mayhem, terror, and death. Here we have large drain covers that were apparently used to wash down the blood of innocent victims."

      The camera panned the ceiling, walls, floor, and then settled on a shot of the pulpit itself.  The scene was populated with white suits and the man with the sunglasses. 

      "Each of the officers here is equipped with what is called a boken, a wooden sword.  We're told that it's the only weapon known to be effective against these creatures.  Apparently, these things, whatever they may be, can be picked up by the video, but not by the audio.  So, the viewers might see us reacting to things without the benefit of sound."

      "There is no door," one of the cops said.  He pulled back a heavy curtain.  "Here's another curtain." 
     Bombar jumped up on the stage.  "Let's see," he said.  He grabbed the curtain and pulled it down, did the same to the second.  Behind the thick, striped backdrop, there was a door.  It was corrugated steel, ten feet tall.  Along side, mounted to the cement wall was a box with two buttons.  One yellow and one green."
     "Green," Frank said.
     The door went up.  It rattled, moving in and out inside the steel track, coming to a stop as it rolled to the top.  A cement ramp angled down.  It seemed to go on for a long way deep into the ground.  There were no lights.  A strong breeze was sucked into the doorway. 

     "...what is definitely a hidden doorway behind where sermons were given on Sunday mornings.  It stretches dark and forbidding into the background.  We'll be going down into that darkness in a few moments."

     "Go back up.  Get flashlights.  I want big ones," Frank said to two men next to him.  "I want halogens stretching all the way to God knows where that leads." 

     When they came back with the lights, Kevin was with them. 
     "I can't believe they don't have lights," Bombar said.  Kevin walked to the wall and rubbed the surface with his hand.  "Maybe they can see in the dark," he said.
     Frank and Charlie looked at each other.  "You can take off the helmets if you want to," Frank said.  "But stay alert."
     "Well," Bombar said, "I don't see a wall switch."

     Even with the halogen lights, the tunnel had no end.  It stretched on into the deadest dull-black any human could imagine.  For a hundred yards the floor continued down.  Then it gave way to cement blocks, crudely set into packed earth.  A steady breeze flowed past them, carrying fresh air into the hole.  The blocks finally ended and there was only packed dirt under their feet.  Every man recoiled as they sighted the first bodies.