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She edged toward the first of those vehicles with the caution of a blind girl, hands out in front of her, afraid of knocking so over The car was unlocked She slipped inside behind the wheel, leaving the door open for the welcoht e s if anyone in the house woke up and looked out, but she had to risk it

She searched the glove coe panels on the doors, and under the seats, hoping to find food, because s of nuts or crackers or soh she had eaten midafternoon, while locked in the pantry, she’d had nothing for ten hours Her stoe sundae or the fixings for a jelly sandwich, but she certainly hoped to do better than a single stick of chewing gureen Lifesaver that, retrieved from beneath the seat, was furry with dirt, lint, and carpet fuzz

As if reading tabloid headlines, she said, "Starvation in the Land of Plenty, A Modern Tragedy, Young Girl Found Dead in Garage, ’I Only Wanted a Few Peanuts’ Written in Her Own Blood"

In the other car she found two Hershey’s bars with aled down the first bar but savored the second one in sue

While she ate, she thought about ways to get into Moonlight Cove By the time she finished the chocolate--

CHOCOHOLIC YOUNG GIRL FOUND DEAD IN GARAGE FROM TERMINAL CASE OF GIANT ZITS

--she had devised a plan

Her usual bedtio, and she was exhausted froht had been filled, so she just wanted to stay there in the car, her belly full of milk chocolate and al her plan into effect She yawned and slumped down in the seat She ached all over, and her eyes were as heavy as if sohted thee of herself as a corpse was so unsettling that she iot out of the car and closed the door If she dozed off in the car, she most likely wouldn’t wake until so Maybe the people who kept their cars in this garage were converted, like her own parents, in which case she’d be doo as the wind nipped at her, She headed back to the county road and turned north She passed two more dark and silent houses, another stretch of woods, and cale-story ranch-style place with shake-shingle roof and redwood siding

She knew the people who lived there, Mr and Mrs Eulane Mrs Eulane ardener with , Mr Eulane drove into town in his white truck, the back of which was loaded with laers and hedge clippers and rakes and shovels and bags of ht need; only a few students had arrived by the time he dropped Mrs Eulane off at school, then went about his oork Chrissie figured she could find a place to hide in the back of the truck--which had board sides--a supplies and equipe, which was unlocked, just as the other one had been But this was the country, after all, where people still trusted one another--which was good except that it gave invading aliens an extra edge

The only as small and in the wall that could not be seen froht when she stepped inside She quietly scaled the side of the truck andequipo bed, nearest the tailgate Toward the front, against the back wall of the truck cab, flanked by fifty-pound bags of fertilizer, snail bait, and potting soil, was a three-foot-high stack of folded burlap tarps in which Mr Eulane bundled grass clippings that had to be hauled to the dump She could use some tarps as a , re hidden in the burlap and between the piles of fifty-pound bags all the way to Moonlight Cove

She clihts, then returned in the dark and carefully climbed aboard once more She made a nest for herself in the tarps The burlap was a little scratchy After years of use it was perrass, which was nice at first but quickly palled At least a few layers of tarps trapped her body heat, and in ht

And as the night deepened (she thought), young Chrissie, rass that saturated the burlap, cleverly concealed herself fro aliens--or ood as that of hounds

39

Saround of Thomas Jefferson Elementary School on Palomino Street on the south side of town He sat on one of the swings, holding the suspension chains with both hands, actually swinging a bit, while he considered his options

He could not leave Moonlight Cove by car His rental was back at the motel, where he’d be apprehended if he showed his face He could steal a car, but he ree on the computer when Loman Watkins had ordered Danberry to establish a blockade on Ocean Avenue, between town and the interstate They’d have sealed off every exit

He could go overland, sneaking froe of the town lih the woods and fields to the freeway But Watkins had also said soed the entire coh Sam was confident of his instincts and survival abilities, he had not had experience in taking evasive action over open territory since his service in the war o If irl, Saht into one or ht, he must not fall into their hands until he had placed a call to the Bureau to report and to ask for eency backup If he became a statistic in this accidental-death capital of the world, the Bureau would send new men in his place, and ultimately the truth could coently back and forth through the rapidly thinning fog, pushed ht about those schedules he had seen on the VDT Everyone in toould be "converted" in the next twenty-three hours Although he had no idea what the hell people were being converted to, he didn’t like the sound of it And he sensed that once those schedules had beento the truth in Moonlight Cove would be no easier than cracking open an infinite series of laser-welded, titanium boxes nested in Chinese-puzzle fashion

Okay, so the first thing he had to do was get to a phone and call the Bureau The phones in Moonlight Cove were compromised, but he did not care if the call was noted in a computer sweep or even recorded word for word He just needed thirty seconds or a minute on the line with the office, and massive reinforce around, dodging cops for a couple of hours, until other agents arrived

He couldn’t just walk up to a house and ask to use their phone because he didn’t knoho in town a day or two, you were overco that eyes were on you wherever you went and that Big Brother was always just an are of paranoia in only a few hours and was rapidlybeyond it to a state of constant tension and suspicion unlike anything he’d known since those jungle battlegrounds two decades ago

A pay phone But not the one at the Shell station that he had used earlier A wanted man was foolish to return to a place he was known to have frequented before

From his walks around town, he reot up fro, slipped his hands in his jacket pockets, hunched his shoulders against the chilling wind, and started across the schoolyard toward the street beyond

He wondered about the Foster girl to whom Shaddack and Watkins referred on the computer link Who was she? What had she seen? He suspected she was a key to understanding this conspiracy Whatever she had witnessed ht explain what they meant by "conversion"

40

The walls appeared to be bleeding Red ooze, as if seeping from the Sheetrock, tracked down the pale yellow paint inin that second-floor rooe … but also strangely excited

The ed bed, hideously bitten and torn In worse condition, the dead woman lay outside the rooe carpet