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"Not if I take a class in bear killing"

"So before you set sail, you’re going to spend four years at a good college of agriculture?"

Bobby sucked in a breath deep enough to ventilate his upper intestine, and blew it out "All I know is, I don’t want to end up like Delacroix"

"Everyone ever born into this world ends up like Delacroix," I said "But it’s not an end It’s just an exit To what comes next"

He was silent a moment Then: "I’m not sure I believe in that like you do, Chris"

"So you believe you can ride through the end of the world by growing potatoes and broccoli on an uncharted tropical island somewhere east of Bora Bora, where there’s both insanely fertile soil and lassy surf--but you find it hard to believe in an afterlife?"

He shrugged "Most days, it’s easier to believe in broccoli than in God"

"Not for alow His face crinkled as if he could still detect a trace of deco Delacroix "This here is one evil piece of real estate, bro"

Iinary mites crawled between the layers of ree with him: "Bad mojo"

"Looks super-burnable"

"Whatever they are, I doubt the cocoons are only in this one bungalow"

In their sameness and orderly placement, the houses of Dead Town suddenly seemed less like man-made structures and more like the mounds of termite colonies or hives

"Burn this one for starters," Bobby insisted

Hissing in the knee-high grass, ticking-clicking in the dead twigs of the withered shrubbery, buzzing and rasping in the leaves of the Indian laurels, the breezeus, as though predicting the inevitability of a future inhabited solely by six-, eight-, and hundred-legged beings

"Okay," I said "We’ll burn the place"

"Too bad we don’t have a nuke"

"But not now It’ll draw cops and firemen from town, and we don’t want theht left We’ve got to get "

As we followed the ay toward the street, he said, "Where?"

I had no idea how to searchand Orson in the vastness of Fort Wyvern, so I didn’t respond to his question

The ansas tucked under the passenger-side windshield wiper on the Jeep I saw it as I was rounding the front of the vehicle It looked like a parking ticket

I plucked the iteht to exaer seat, Bobby leaned over to study my discovery "Who put it there?"

"Not Delacroix," I said, surveying the night, oncewatched

I was holding a four-inch-square, laned to be pinned to a shirt or to a coat lapel The photograph on the right half was of Delacroix, although this was a different picture from the one on the driver’s license we had found beside his body He ide-eyed in this shot, startled, as though he had foreseen his suicide in the flash of the camera Under the photo was the nae were his age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, and social security number At the top were the words initialize on entry Printed across the entire face of the badge, in a three-diraph or the information under it, were three transparent, pale-blue capital letters: DOD

"Department of Defense," I said, because h I’d never seen a badge like this in her possession

"‘Initialize on entry,’" Bobby said thoughtfully "Bet there’s a microchip implanted in this"

He’s computer literate, but I never will be I have no need for a co faster than yours, I have no tilasses, I can’t easily read asessions in front of a screen, you are bathed in low-level UV radiation norain; because of e, however, exposure to those eiant lumpy melanoma of such peculiar squishy dimensions that I’ll never be able to find clothes that are both comfortable and stylish

Bobby said, "When he enters the facility, they initialize the e, you know?"

"No"

"Initialize--clear the h a doorway, e responds towhere he went and how long he stayed in each place Then when he leaves, the data is downloaded into his file"

"You creep me out when you talk coet evil-twin vibes"

"There’s just one Bobby," he assured alohere we had found Delacroix, half expecting to see eerie lights beyond the s, frenzied bug-wing shadows flitting up the walls, and a shaainst the badge, I said, "Tracking every step he h the front door--that’s maximum-paranoid security"

"This must’ve been on the floor beside the corpse with the other stuff Soalow ahead of us, took it, and put it here Why?"

The ansas to be found in the line at the bottoe Project Clearance: MT

Bobby said, "You think this ID got hienetic experiments, the very place where the shit hit the fan?"

"Maybe MT Mystery Train?"

Bobby glanced at the words eain "Nancy Dreould be proud"

I switched off the flashlight "I think I knohere he wants us to go"

"Where ants us to go?"

"Whoever left this under the wiper"

"Which is who?"

"I don’t have all the answers, bro"

"Yet you’re positive there’s an afterlife," he said as he started the engine

"The big answers I have It’s just sooing?"

"The egg room"

"So noe’re in a Batman movie, and you’re the Riddler?"

"It’s not in Dead Town It’s in a hangar on the north side of the base"

"Egg room"