Page 19 (2/2)

"You’ll see"

"He’s not our friend," Bobby said

"He who?"

"Whoever left that badge, bro, he’s no friend of ours We don’t have friends in this place"

"I’m not so sure of that"

As he released the hand brake and shifted into drive, he said, "Could be a trap"

"Probably not He could’ve disabled the Jeep and been laying for us right here e caalow, if all he wanted was to waste us"

Driving out of Dead Town, Bobby said, "Still could be a trap"

"Okay, maybe"

"That doesn’t bother you like it does els and palaces of gold in the sky, but all I’ve got is broccoli"

"Better think about that," I agreed

I consulted my watch Daas no e fungus, spongyonly a narrow band of clean sky in which the bright stars looked cold and even farther away than they actually were

Forretrovirus had been loose in the wider world beyond the laboratory During that tiressed al out of a windless winter sky, but I suspected that at last the blizzard was at hand, the avalanche

12

The hangar rises like a teod with a wrathful disposition, surrounded on three sides by ss that could pass for the hu and wide as a football field, seven stories high, with no s other than a line of narrow clerestory panes just below the spring line of the arched Quonset-style roof

Bobby parked in front of a pair of doors at one end of the building, switching off the engine and headlights

Each door is twenty feet wide and forty high Set in upper and lower tracks, they were motor-driven, but the power to operate theand the enor as the fortress that ap between this world and Hell to keep the deht fro room?"

"Under this place"

"I don’t like the look of it"

"I’"

Getting out of the Jeep, he said, "Are we near the airfield?"

Fort Wyvern, which was established as both a training and a support facility, boasts runways that can accoiant C-13 transports that are capable of carrying trucks, assault vehicles, and tanks

"Airfield’s half a"They didn’t service aircraft here Unless maybe choppers, but I don’t think that’s what this place was about, either"

"What was it about?"

"Don’t know"

"Maybe it’s where they held bingo ga, in spite of the fact that we had perhaps been induced here by persons unknown and possibly hostile, I didn’t feel as though ere in iun would stop any assailant a lot faster thanonly the flashlight, I led the way to asurf co," Bobby said

"Guess or fact?"

"Fact"

Bobby earns a living by analyzing weather-satellite data and other inforree of accuracy His enterprise, Surfcast, provides inforh subscriptions to a bulletin sent by fax or E-ht hundred thousand calls a year Because his lifestyle is siht Bay realizes that he is a multimillionaire and the richest man in town If they knew, it would matterevery day free to surf; everything else that money can buy is no more than an extra spoon of salsa on the enchilada

"Gonna be minimum ten-foot corduroy to the horizon," Bobby proht, every boardhead’s drea a hand in the breeze

"I’ the day after tomorrow Strictly offshore by then Gonna be waves so scooped out, you’ll feel like the last pickle in the barrel"

The hollow channel in a breaking wave, scooped to the max by a perfect offshore wind, is called a barrel, and surfers live to ride these tubes all the way through and out the collapsing end before being claift, sacred, and when they cos are rubber and you can’t stop the , and then you flop on the sand and wait to see if you’ll expire like a beached fish or, instead, go scarf doo burritos and a bowl of corn chips

"Twelve-footers," I said wistfully as I opened the h door "Double overhead corduroy"

"Churning out of a stor to live for," I said as I crossed the threshold into the hangar

"That’s why I et out of here alive"

Even two flashlights could not illuar, but we could see the overhead tracks on which asince dismantled and hauled away--had traveled fro to the other The massiveness of the steel supports under these rails indicated that the crane had lifted objects of trele plates, still anchored to the oil-and chemical-stained concrete, upon which heavy machinery had once been mounted Deep and curiously shaped wells in the floor, which must have housed hydraulic mechanisms, forced us to follow an indirect path to the far end of the hangar

Bobby cautiously checked out each hole as though he expected so up and bite off our heads

As our flashlight bea structures, co off steel rails and bea, where they forlyphics that flickered ahead of us but quickly vanished, unreadable, into the darkness that crept at our heels

"Sharky," Bobby said softly

"Just wait" Like hihtly above a whisper, not sooverheard as because this place has the sa effect as do churches, hospitals, and funeral parlors

"You been here alone?"

"No Alith Orson"

"I’d expect him to have more sense"

I led him to an empty elevator shaft and a wide set of stairs in the southwest corner of the hangar

As in the warehouse where I’d encountered the veve rats and the thug with the two-by-four, access to the floors below had surely been concealed The vast ood men and women who had served their country well and with pride--ions under their feet

The false walls or the devices that had concealed entrance to the lower floors had been stripped away during deconstruction Although the stairhead door was re