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NoasMichael felt himself pushed forward as the vehicle decelerated Beside hi position and drew her knees to her chest once aze fixed on the door

The truck drew to a halt Caleb scrambled to theand peered outside

"What do you see?" Peter had risen to a crouch; his hair was matted with dried blood

"There’s some kind of structure, but it’s too far away"

Footsteps on the roof, the sound of the driver’s door, opening and closing again

Hollis was reaching for his rifle

Peter put a hand out to stop hi open, blazing their eyes with daylight Two backlit figures stood before the, with dark hair shorn close to her scalp; the man, much older, had a soft, wide face and a nose that looked punched and a few days’ growth of beard Both were still encased in their bulky body arely undersized

"Hand over your weapons"

"Who the hell are you people?" Peter de Knives, too"

They disar the floor in the direction of the door Michael didn’t have much more than a screwdriver left-he’d lost his rifle in the dash fro once-but he handed it over anyway He certainly didn’t want to get shot over a screwdriver While the woure, who had yet to utter a word, kept his gun trained on all of the, low building set against a bulge of barren hills

"Where are you taking us?" Peter asked

The woround and placed it on the floor of the truck "If you have to piss, use this" Then she slammed the door

Peter slapped the wall of the truck "Fuck"

They drove on The teain, turning west For a long tian to climb By now the air in the cabin had become intolerably hot They drank the last of their water; no one had used the pail

Peter pounded on the wall that separated the back here!"

Ti was an effort It seemed that some terrible joke had been played on them They had been rescued from the virals only to be cooked to death in the back of a truck Michael had begun to drift in and out of a state that felt like sleep but not exactly He was hot, so hot At soh this detail seemed trivial, as if it pertained to some other person

Gradually the fact seeped into Michael’s awareness that the vehicle had stopped He had been lost in a vision of water, cool water It was pouring over and through hi that off-kilter smile of his Everyone was there, Peter and Mausa in it together, its healing blueness, and for a moment Michael willed his mind to return to it, this beautiful dream of water

"My God," a voice said

Michael opened his eyes to a harsh white light and s He rolled his face toward the door and saw a pair of figures-he knew he had seen the between them, brilliantly backlit so that he see what appeared to be an orange ju "Seven of them It’s beyond belief" He turned to the others "Don’t just stand there We need stretchers Hurry"

The pair jogged away The thought reached Michael’s brain that so at the far end of a tunnel He could not have said where he was or why, although he also sensed that this knowledge had abandoned hi like deja vu in reverse It was a kind of joke but the joke wasn’t funny, not at all Soe, dry object was in his ue, choking him He heard Peter’s voice, a labored croak: "Whoareyou?"

"My name is Olson Olson Hand" A smile lit up his wind-chapped face, only it wasn’t the silver-haired man anymore, it was Theo-it was Theo’s face at the far end of the tunnel-and that was the last thing Michael saw before the tunnel collapsed and all thought left hi through layers of darkness over a period of ti, an hour turned into a day, a day turned into a year Darkness yielding to a widening whiteness above hiradual reasses His eyes were open, blinking No other part of him seemed capable of movement, just his eyes, the da over hi to one another across a vast expanse of sky He thought: Cold He was cold Wonderfully, aain, so passed, he knew that he was in a bed, that the bed was in a roo his head was out of the question; his bones felt as heavy as iron He was in soled bea upon the white sheet that covered his body and beneath which, it seemed, he was nad The air was cool and moist From a place somewhere above and behind came the rhyth into a metal pan

"Michael? Michael, can you hear ht it was a woman-with dark hair short as a man’s, and a smooth brow and cheeks and a s at him hat appeared to be intense concern Michael felt as if he’d seen her before, but his sense of recognition stopped there Her slender fore costuuely fa his view

"How do you feel?"

He tried to speak but the words seemed to die in his throat The woman lifted a plastic cup from the table by his bed and held the straw to his lips: water, crisp and cold, distinctly metallic in taste

"That’s it Sip slowly"

He drank and drank How a, the taste of water When he had finished, she returned the cup to the table

"Your temperature’s down I’ue felt slow and heavy in his mouth "Where am I?"

She smiled "Why don’t I let them explain that to you?"

The wo him alone Who was she? What was this place? He felt as if he’d been asleep for days, hisdreams He tried to re shts were broken by voices and the sound of footsteps Peter appeared at the foot of his bed His face gloith a grin

"Look who’s awake! How are you feeling?"