"You all okay up there, Warren?" Y'all okay…

"Goddamn it, Andrew, we just got here. Now shut the hell up unless we call you or unless you see him. We're going to chase him your way."

Kurtz slid his.45 into his back holster and took the heavy sap out of his pocket.

The tallest of the three men clicked off the hand radio and gestured for the other two to split up, one going around the west mezzanine and the other around the east side. Kurtz watched them go, the big men moving in what looked like a parody of military efficiency, stumbling over heaps of construction debris, cursing when they stepped in puddles, all the time fiddling with their night-vision apparatuses.

Warren stayed behind, head moving, aiming a Colt M4 carbine burdened with a huge suppressor. The big man swiveled constantly, the laser beam flickering left, right, up, down. Warren glanced behind him, made sure that no one was between him and the wall near the elevator, and backed up cautiously.

The radio squawked again.

"What?" Warren said angrily.

"Nothing up here. Me and Douglas are at the stairway at the other end."

"You look in all the goddamn rooms?"

"Yeah. They ain't got doors on this level."

"Okay," said Warren. "Start on down. Sweep the sixth floor."

"You comin' down, Warren?"

"I'm staying right here until you got the sixth floor swept. We don't wanna be comin' at each other in the dark, now, do we?"

"No."

"So call me when you got the whole floor searched, then I'll come down, then you do the next one down, until we find the sonofabitch or flush him down to where Andrew is waiting. Y'all understand, Darren?"

"Yeah."

Another voice. "Darren, Douglas, Warren? Y'all all right?"

Three voices at once. "Shut up, Andrew."

While all this chatting was going on, Warren had been backing up until he was almost to the scaffolding. Kurtz silently lifted the cardboard panel and moved out of the elevator shaft.

The wooden plank creaked under him. Warren started to turn. Kurtz leaned forward and sapped him with the two-pound blackjack.

Andrew didn't like being alone on the first floor. It was dark and dank and creepy down here. Looking through his night-vision goggles made everything go all greenish white, so that every doorway or heap of sand looked like a ghost. But when he took the goggles off—which Warren had told him not to do—he couldn't see anything at all. The Israeli Bullpup full-auto assault rifle that he'd chosen was cool, slick, and black and curved as a snake, but he couldn't really see it in the dark. At least it wasn't heavy. Even the laser-sight's red beam, which had seemed so cool at the niggers' warehouse, was just a greenish beam of light through his goggles. Andrew amused himself by playing Star Wars with it, making light-saber noises as he swung the Bullpup and swooshed the beam back and forth down the long hallway.

Suddenly the radio crackled again. It was Darren.

"Warren? Warren? We found this Kurtz's guy's hidey-hole on six! He ain't here, but we found a cot and sleeping bag and shit. Warren?"

Warren did not answer.

"Warren?" came Douglas's voice.

"Warren?" said Andrew from his place near the front hall on the first floor.

"Shut up, Andrew!" said Darren and Douglas together. Then, also together, they said, "Warren? Warren?"

Warren didn't answer.

"Y'all better get back up there," said Andrew.

This time his two older brothers did not tell him to shut up. There was a silence broken only by static-crackle and then Douglas said, "Yeah. You stay where you are, Andrew. If you see somethin' move, don't shoot until you're sure it ain't us comin' down. If it ain't us, kill it."

"Okay," said Andrew.

"An' stay the hell off the radio," said Darren.

"Okay," said Andrew. He could hear the clicks as they turned their radios off.

Andrew stood silent for what seemed a very long time. He was still turning slowly, trying to get used to the glowing greenish world of the night-vision goggles, but even the light-saber game wasn't any fun anymore. Nothing moved from the east stairwell. The elevator remained silent. Water dripped. Finally Andrew couldn't stand it any longer. He pressed the transmit button on the small sports walkie-talkie. "Warren?"

Silence.

"Douglas? Darren?"

No answer. Andrew repeated the call and then shut his own radio off. He was getting nervous.

It was lighter in the big middle part of the warehouse—the part that Warren had called the atrium—and Andrew moved into the huge, echoing space, looking up more than seven stories to the glowing skylight almost one hundred feet above him. It was only reflected city light bouncing off clouds coming through the skylight, but it flared up so much in Andrew's goggles that he was blinded for a second. He raised his free hand to wipe the tears from his eyes, but the stupid night-vision goggles were in the way.

Andrew looked up at the top floor, where floor-to-ceiling plastic reflected the light differently than did the cold brick of the first six floors, but nothing was visible through the thick plastic. He lifted the radio again.

"Warren, Douglas, Darren? Y'all all right?"

As if in answer there came seven shots—very rapid, very loud, not silenced at all—and suddenly a terrible ripping and screaming from high up near the skylight.

Andrew swung the Bullpup assault rifle up.

There was a hole in the plastic way up there on the seventh floor. Worse than that, something huge and loud was screaming and flapping its way down toward him. Through his goggles, the thing looked like some gigantic, misshapen, greenish white bat-thing with one blazing eye. Its wings must have been twenty feet long, and they were flapping wildly, now streaming behind the body of the bat like rippling ribbons of white fire. The bat was screeching as it fell toward him.

Andrew emptied the generous clip of the Bullpup at the apparition. He had time to see that the burning eye of the thing was actually the dot of his laser beam and also to see several of his slugs hit home, tearing into the spinning, flapping bat-thing, but the screaming continued—grew worse, if anything.

Andrew jumped back into the atrium doorway, but kept shooting—phut! phut! phut! phut! — he had never heard a silenced weapon on full-auto before and the ripping sound mixed with the screaming and flapping noises weirded him out.

The giant bat hit the concrete floor about thirty feet from Andrew. Now it sounded and looked more like a giant Hefty bag full of vegetable soup hitting the ground than any sort of bat that Andrew had ever seen. Green-white liquid spilled and spurted in every direction and it took only a few seconds for Andrew to realize that it was blood and that it would be quite red in real light.

Andrew ripped off his night-vision goggles, threw them down, and ran for the front door.

Kurtz had sapped the big man lightly: enough to knock him out, but not hard enough to kill him or keep him out for long. Kurtz jumped from the scaffold and worked quickly, moving the moaning man's Colt M4 carbine out of reach, patting him down for other weapons—he carried none—confiscating his radio and night-vision goggles, and finally pulling off his filthy army jacket and donning it himself. Kurtz was cold.

The radio crackled again. Kurtz listened to the one on the first floor talking to the two on the sixth floor who'd found his cot and sleeping bag.

"Y'all better get back up there," came the braindamaged drawl from the cracker downstairs.

Kurtz heard either Darren or Douglas say, «Yeah» and then he got busy retrieving the Colt M4, checking that the magazine was full and the safety off, and then lying prone behind the moaning—but still unstirring—facedown figure of Warren. Kurtz did not prefer to use long guns, but he knew how to use them. Lying there, the barrel of the M4 propped on the big man's back, Kurtz felt like a figure in an old cowboy painting—the cavalryman who's had to shoot his horse to use as cover when the Indians are attacking.