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He wasn’t the only one obsessed

Though the story of Moonlight Cove had been leaked to the media in piecemeal fashion over three days and had been explored in detail during a four-hour press conference on Thursday evening, and though reporters had exhaustively interviewed h The singular horror of the deaths of the victims--and the number, nearly three thousand, many times the number at Jonestown--stunned newspaper and TV audiences nothe story was hotter than ever

Yet Joel sensed that it wasn’t even the grisliness of the facts or the spectacular statistics that gripped the public interest It was so, Joel was sitting on his bedroll in a field alongside the county route, just ten yards away fro in a surprisingly war He was starting to believe that maybe this news hit home hard because it was about not just the relatively modern conflict of man and machine but about the eternal human conflict, since time immemorial, between responsibility and irresponsibility, between civilization and savagery, between contradictory human i about that when he got up and started to walk So aboutmore briskly

He was not alone Others at the roadblock, fully half the two hundred who had been waiting there, turned almost as one and walked east into the fields with sudden deliberation, neither hesitating along the way nor wandering in parabolic paths, but cutting straight up across a sloped h a stand of trees

The walkers startled those who had not felt the abrupt call to go for a stroll, and so questions, then shouting questions None of the walkers answered

Joel was possessed by a feeling that there was a place he ain have to worry about anything, a place where all would be provided, where he would have no need to worry about the future He didn’t knohat that nize it when he saw it He hurried forward excitedly, co in the baserip of need It had not died when the other children of Moonhawk had perished, for the microsphere coht the freedom of utter shapelessness; it had not been able to receive the microwave-transmitted death order from Sun Even if the command had been received, it would not have been acted upon, for the cellar-dwelling creature had no heart to stop

Need

Its need was so intense that it pulsed and writhed This need was more profound than mere desire, more terrible than any pain

Need

Mouths had opened all over its surface The thing called out to the world around it in a voice that seemed silent but was not, a voice that spoke not to the ears of its prey but to their

Its needs would soon be fulfilled

Colonel Lewis Tarker, co officer at the Army field headquarters in the park at the eastern end of Ocean Avenue, received an urgent call froe of the county-route roadblock Sperl six of his twelve men when they just walked off like zombies, with e condition

"So’s up," he told Tarker "This isn’t over yet, sir"

Tarker iot hold of Oren Westroation into Moonhawk and hom all of the military aspects of the operation had to be coordinated

"It isn’t over," Tarker told Westrom "I think those walkers are even weirder than Sperlmont described them, weird in some way he can’t quite convey I know him, and he’s more spooked than he thinks he is"

Westroer into the air He explained the situation to the pilot, Ji to have soround, see where the hell they’re going--and why But in case that gets difficult, I want you spotting from the air"

"On my way," Lobbow said

"You filled up on fuel recently?"

"Tanks are bri worked for Ji a chopper

He had been e had ended in divorce He’d lived with more woe weighing him down, he could not sustain a relationship He had one child, a son, by his second e, but he saw the boy no er than a day at a tiht up in the Catholic Church, and though all his brothers and sisters were regulars at Mass, that did not work for Ji he could sleep in, and when he considered going to a weekday service it see an entrepreneur, every small business he started seemed doomed to failure; he was repeatedly startled to find how ned for absentee ement, and sooner or later it always became too much trouble

But nobody was a better chopper pilot than Jirounded everyone else, and he could set down or pick up in any terrain, any conditions

He took the JetRanger up at Westro out over the county-route roadblock, getting there in no time because the day was blue and clear, and the roadblock was just a mile and a quarter froround, a handful of regular Ar him due east, up into the hills

Lobbohere they told hi busily up scrub-covered hills, scuffing their shoes, tearing their clothes, but scra forward in a frenzy It was definitely weird

A funny buzzing filled his head He thought so with his radio headphones, and he pulled the didn’t stop Actually it wasn’t a buzzing at all, not a sound, but a feeling

And what do Iit off

The walkers were circling east-southeast as they went, and he flew ahead of the unusual tohich theyVictorian house, the tu about the place drew hih it was a complete dump, he suddenly had the crazy idea that he would be happy there, free, with no worries anyat him, no child-support to pay

Over the hills to the northwest, the walkers were co any ain

And Jiain, and it was theplace he had ever seen, a source of surcease He wanted that freedo in his life He took the JetRanger up in a steep climb, leveled out, swooped south, then west, then north, then east, coain, back toward the house, the wonderful house, he had to be there, had to go there, had to go, and he took the chopper straight in through the front porch, directly at the door that hung open and half off its hinges, through the wall, plowing straight into the heart of the house, burying the chopper in the heart--

Need

The creature’sof its need, and it knew that momentarily its needs would be met It throbbed with excitement

Then vibrations Hard vibrations Then heat

It did not recoil from the heat, for it had surrendered all the nerves and coister pain

The heat had nofor the beast--except that heat was not food and therefore did not fulfill its needs