Cynthia reached out again, grasped the woman’s lower face again, turned it back in her direction again.

“Hon, read my lips. The theater. There are other people there.”

The woman looked at her, frowning as if she were trying to get the sense of this. Then she looked past Cyn-thia’s shoulder at the chain-hung marquee of The Ameri-can West.

“The old movieshow.”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure. I tried the door last night, after it got dark. It’s locked.”

“We’re supposed to go around to the back,” Steve said. “I have a friend, that’s where he told me to go.”

“How’d he do that.” the dark-haired woman asked sus-piciously, but when Steve started walking in that direc-tion, she went along. Cynthia fell in next to her, walking on the outside. “How could he do that.”

“Cellular phone,” Steve said.

“They don’t work very well around here as a rule,” the dark-haired woman said. “Too many mineral deposits.”

They walked under the theater’s marquee (a tumble-weed caught in an angle between the glassed-in ticket—booth and the lefthand door rattled like a maraca) and stopped on the far side. “There’s the alley,” Cynthia said. She started forward but the woman stayed where she was, frowning from Steve to Cynthia and then back to Steve again.

“What friend, what other people.” she asked. “How did they get here. How come that fuck Collie didn’t kill them.”

“Let’s save all that for later.” Steve took her ann.

She resisted his tug, and when she spoke this time, there was a catch in her voice.

“You’re taking me to him, aren’t you.”

“Lady, we don’t even know who you’re talking about Cynthia said. “Just for Christ’s sake will you come on!

“I hear a motor,” Steve said. His head was cocked to one side. “Coming from the south, I think. Coming in this direction for sure.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “Him,” she whispered.

“Him.” She looked over her shoulder, as if longing for the safety of the laundrymat, and then made her decision and bolted down the alley. By the time they got to the board fence running along the back of the theater, Cynthia and Steve were hurrying just to keep up.

“Are you sure… ” the woman began, and then a flashlight flicked, once, from farther down the building They were in single-file, Steve between the women, the one from the laundrymat ahead of him. He took her hand (very cold) in his right and reached back to Cynthia s (marginally warmer) with his left. The dark-haired woman led them slowly down the path. The flashlight blinked on again, this time pointed down at two stacked crates.

“Climb up and get on in here,” a voice whispered. It was one Steve was delighted to hear.

“Boss.”

“You bet.” Marinville sounded as if he might be smiling. “Love the coverall look-it’s so masculine. Get on in here, Steve.”

“There are three of us.”

“The more the merrier.

The dark-haired woman hiked her skirt in order to get up on the crates, and Steve could see the boss helping himself to an eyeful. Even the apocalypse couldn’t change some things, apparently.

Steve helped Cynthia up next, then followed. He turned around, slid partway in, then reached down and pushed the top crate off the one underneath. He didn’t know if it would be enough to fool the guy the dark-haired woman was so afraid of if he came back here snirfing around, but it was better than nothing.

He slid into the room, a wino-hideout if he had ever seen one, then grabbed the boss and hugged him. Mar-inville laughed, sounding both surprised and pleased. “Just no tongue, Steve, I insist.”

Steve held him by the shoulders, grinning. “I thought you were dead. We found your scoot buried in the sand.”

“You found it.” Now Marinville sounded delighted. “Son of a bitch!”

“What happened to your face.”

Marinville held the lens of the flashlight under his chin, turning his lumpy, discolored face into something out of a horror movie. His nose looked like roadkill. His grin, although cheerful, made matters even worse. “If I made a speech to PEN America looking like this, do you think the assholes would finally listen.”

“Man,” Cynthia said, awed, “someone put a real hurt on you.”

“Entragian,” Marinville said gravely. “Have you met him.”

“No,” Steve said. “And judging from what I’ve heard and seen so far, I don’t want to.”

The bathroom door swung open, squalling on its hinges, and a kid stood there-short hair, pale face, blood—smeared Cleveland Indians tee-shirt. He had a flashlight in one hand, and he moved it quickly, picking out the newcomers’ faces one at a time. Things came together in Steve’s mind as neatly as jigsaw-puzzle pieces. He sup-posed the kid’s shirt was the key connection.

“Are you Steve.” the boy asked.

Steve nodded. “That’s me. Steve Ames. This is Cynthia Smith. And you’re my phone—pal.”

The boy smiled wanly at that.

“That was good timing, David. You’ll probably never know how good. It’s nice to meet you. David Carver, isn’t it.”

He stepped forward and shook the boy’s free hand, enjoying the look of surprise on his face. God knew the kid had surprised him, coming through on the phone that way.

“How do you know my last name.”

Cynthia took David’s hand when Steve let it go. She shook it once, firmly. “We found your Humvee or Win-nebago or whatever it is. Steve there checked out your baseball cards.”

“Be honest,” Steve said to David. “Do you think Cleve-land’s ever gonna win the World Series.”

“I don’t care, just as long as I’m around to see them play another game,” David said with a trace of a smile.

Cynthia turned toward the woman from the laundry—mat, the one they might have shot if they’d had guns. “And this is-”

“Audrey Wyler,” the dark-haired woman said. “I’m a consulting geologist for Diablo Mining. At least, I was.” She scanned the ladies’ room with large dazed eyes, taking in the carton of liquor bottles, the bins of beer—cans, the fabulous fish swimming on one dirty tiled wall. “Right now I don’t know what I am. What I feel like is meatloaf three days left over.”

She turned, little by little, toward Marinville as she spoke, much as she had turned toward Steve outside the laundrymat, and took up her original scripture.

“We have to get out of town. Your pal here says the road out is blocked, but I know another one. It’s goes from the staging area down at the bottom of the embank-ment out to Highway 50. It’s a mess, but there are ATVs in the motor-pool, half a dozen of them-”

“I’m sure your knowledge will come in very handy, but I think we ought to pass that part by, for the time being,” Marinville said. He spoke in a professionally soothing voice, one Steve recognized right away. It was how the boss talked to the women (it was invariably women, usu-ally in their fifties or early sixties) who set up his literary lectures-what he called his cultural bombing runs. “We had better talk things over a little, first. Come on into the theater. There’s quite a setup there. I think you’ll be amazed.”

“What are you, stupid.” she asked. “We don’t need to talk things over, we need to get out of here.” She looked around at them. “You don’t seem to grasp what has hap-pened here.

This man, Collie Entragian-”

Marinville raised his flashlight and shone it full into his face for a moment, letting her get a good look. “I’ve met the man, as you can see, and I grasp plenty. Come on out front, Ms. Wyler, and we’ll talk. I see you’re impatient with that idea, but it’s for the best. The carpenters have a saying-measure twice, cut once.

It’s a good saying. All right.”

She gave him a reluctant look, but when he started toward the door, she followed. So did Steve and Cynthia. Outside, the wind screamed around the theater, making it groan in its deepest joints.