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Prologue
SOLVING THE FOLLOWING riddle will reveal the awful secret behind the universe, assuo utterly mad in the attempt If you already happen to know the awful secret behind the universe, feel free to skip ahead
Let’s say you have an ax Just a cheap one, from Home Depot On one bitter winter day, you use said ax to behead a man Don’t worry, the man was already dead Or maybe you should worry, because you’re the one who shot hiuy with veiny skin stretched over swollen biceps, a tattoo of a swastika on his tongue Teeth filed into razor-sharp fangs--you know the type And you’re chopping off his head because, even with eight bullet holes in hi back to his feet and eat the look of terror right off your face
On the follow-through of the last swing, though, the handle of the ax snaps in a spray of splinters You now have a broken ax So, after a long night of looking for a place to dump the man and his head, you take a trip into toith your ax You go to the hardware store, explaining away the dark reddish stains on the broken handle as barbecue sauce You walk out with a brand-new handle for your ax
The repaired ax sits undisturbed in your garage until the spring when, on one rainy , you find in your kitchen a creature that appears to be a foot-long slug with a bulging egg sac on its tail Its jaws bite one of your forks in half hat seerab your trusty ax and chop the thing into several pieces On the last bloever, the ax strikes aof the overturned kitchen table and chips out a notch right in the middle of the blade
Of course, a chipped head means yet another trip to the hardware store They sell you a brand-new head for your ax As soon as you get houy you beheaded earlier He’s also got a new head, stitched on hat looks like plastic weed-tri that unique expression of "you’re the man who killed me last winter" resentment that one so rarely encounters in everyday life
You brandish your ax The guy takes a long look at the weapon with his squishy, rotting eyes and in a gargly voice he screams, "That’s the same ax that beheaded me!"
IS HE RIGHT?
I WAS PONDERING that riddle as I reclined ontickly hairs acrossback in one of those cheap plastic lawn chairs, the kind that blow out onto the lawn during every thunderstorood occasion to smoke a pipe had I owned one and had I been forty years older It was one of those rare et these days, the kind you don’t appreciate until they’re ov--
My cell phone screeched, the sound like a sonic bee sting I dug the slilanced at the nue of fear I disconnected the call without answering
The world was silent again, save for the faint applause of trees rustling in the wind and cruhtly down the pave trying to climb onto the chair next to ed to send the chair clattering onto its side She stared at the toppled chair for several seconds and then started barking at it
The phone again Molly growled at the chair I closed ry five-word prayer and answered the call
"Hello?"
"Dave? This is John Your piht, or he’ll be forced to stick you Meet hioatee"
That was code It meant "Come to my place as soon as you can, it’s ied
"John, it’s three in the--"
"Oh, and don’t forget, tomorrow is the day we kill the president"
Click
He was gone That last part was code for, "Stop and pick arettes on the way"
Actually, the phone probably was bugged, but I was confident the people doing it could just as easily do some kind of remote intercept of our brain waves if they wanted, so it wasthrough the night innot to think of Frank Ca to keep the fear at bay via distraction I got a local right-wing talk radio prograration, it’s like rats on a ship America is the ship and allllll these rats are coets too many rats on board? It sinks That’s what"
I wondered if a ship had ever really sunk that way I wondered as giving un was still under the driver’s seat I wondered Was there solanced in ht of Frank Ca ho in his black Lexus The car’s wax job glea weightless and invincible behind the greenish glow of his dashboard lights
He senses a tingling on his legs He flips on the doht
Spiders
Thousands of them
Each the size of a hand