Collie followed Steve’s pointing finger and stared at the Reed house. The modern aluminized siding had returned, replacing the logs, and the roof was once more neat asphalt shingles instead of whatever it had been before (sod, he thought); the mid-sized satellite dish was back on top of the carport. But the house’s foundation was rough wood planking instead of brick, and all the windows were tightly shuttered. There were loopholes in those shutters, too, as if the inhabitants of the house expected their day-to-day problems to include marauding Indians as well as Seventh-day Adventists and wandering insurance salesmen.

Collie couldn’t say for sure, but he didn’t think the Reed house had even had shutters before this afternoon, let alone ones with rifleport loopholes.

“Sa-aaay.” Billingsley sounded like a man who is finally getting the idea that all of this is a Candid Camera stunt. “Are those hitching rails in front of Audrey’s? They are, aren’t they? What is all this?”

“Never mind that,” Cynthia said. She reached up, took the old man’s face between her hands, and turned it like a camera on a tripod so he was looking at the corpse of Peter Jackson’s wife.

“Oh my God,” Collie said.

There was a large bird perched on the woman’s bare thigh, its yellow talons buried in her skin. It had already snacked off most of her remaining face, and was now burrowing into the flesh under her chin. Collie had a brief, unwelcome memory of going after Kellie Eberhart in exactly the same place one night at the West Columbus Drive-in, her saying that if he gave her a hickey, her dad would probably shoot them both.

He didn’t realize he had lifted the.30-.06 into firing position until Steve pushed the barrel back down with the palm of his hand. “No, man. I wouldn’t. Better to keep quiet, maybe.”

He was right, but… God. It wasn’t just what it was doing, but what it was.

“Losser goddam arm!” Gary announced from the kitchen, as if afraid they might forget this if he allowed them to. Old Doc ignored him. He had crossed the living room looking like a man who expects to be shot dead in his tracks at any moment, but now he seemed to have forgotten all about killers, weird vans, and transforming houses.

“My good gosh, look at that!” he exclaimed in a tone that sounded very much like awe. “I ought to photograph it. Yes! Excuse me… I’ll just get my camera…”

He began to turn away. Cynthia grabbed him by the shoulder. “The camera can wait, Mr Billingsley.”

He seemed to come back a little to their situation at that. “Yes… I suppose, but…”

The bird turned, as if hearing them, and seemed to stare at the vet’s bungalow with its red-rimmed eyes. Its pink skull appeared black with stubble. Its beak was a simple yellow hook.

“Is that a buzzard?” Cynthia asked. “Or maybe a vulture?”

“Buzzard? Vulture?” Old Doc looked startled. “Good gosh, no. I’ve never seen a bird like that in my life.”

“In Ohio, you mean,” Collie said, knowing that wasn’t what Billingsley meant, but wanting to hear it for himself.

“I mean anywhere.”

The hippie looked from the bird to Billingsley and then back to the bird again. “What is it, then? A new species?”

“New species my fanny! Excuse my French, young lady, but that’s a fucking mutant!” Billingsley stared, rapt, as the bird opened its wings, flapping them in order to help it move a little farther up Mary’s leg. “Look how big its body is, and how short its wings are in relation to it-damned thing makes an ostrich look like a miracle of aerodynamics! I don’t think the wings are even the same length!”

“No,” Collie said. “I don’t think they are, either.”

“How can it fly ?” Doc demanded. “How can it possibly fly ?”

“I don’t know, but it does.” Cynthia pointed down toward the thick billows which had now blotted out all vestiges of the world below Hyacinth Street. “It flew out of the smoke. I saw it.”

“I’m sure you did, I didn’t think someone pulled up in a… a Birdmobile and dropped it off, but how it can possibly fly is beyond all-” He broke off, peering at the thing. “Although I can understand how you might have thought it was a buzzard before the inevitable second thoughts set in.” Collie thought Old Doc was mostly talking to himself by this point, but he listened intently just the same. “It does look a little like a buzzard. As a child might draw it, anyway.”

“Huh?” Cynthia said.

“As a child might draw it,” Billingsley repeated. “Perhaps one who got it all mixed up in his mind with a bald eagle.”

The sight of Ralphie Carver hurt Johnny’s heart. Put aside by Jim Reed, whose solicitude had been superseded by his excitement at the impending mission, Ralphie stood between the stove and the refrigerator with his thumb in his mouth and a big wet spot spreading on the front of his shorts. All his bratty bluster had departed. His eyes were huge and still and shiny. He looked to Johnny like drug addicts he had known.

Johnny stopped inside the kitchen door and put Ellie down. She didn’t want to go, but at last he managed to pry her hands gently off his neck. Her eyes were also shocked, but held none of the merciful glaze Johnny could see in her brother’s. He looked past her and saw Kim and Susi Geller sitting on the floor with their arms around each other. Probably suits Mom just fine, Johnny thought, remembering how the woman had seemed to struggle with young

David Reed for possession of the girl. He had won then, but now David had bigger fish to fry; he was bound for Anderson Avenue and parts unknown. That didn’t change the fact that there were two little kids here who had become orphans since lunch, however.

“Kim?” he asked. “Could you maybe help a little with-”

“No,” she said. No more, no less. And calm. No defiance in her gaze, no hysteria in her tone… but no fellow feeling, either. She had an arm around her daughter, her daughter had an arm around her, cozy as can be, just a coupla white girls sittin around and waitin for the clouds to roll by. Understandable, maybe, but Johnny was furious with her, nevertheless; she was suddenly everyone he had ever known who looked bored when the conversation came around to AIDS, or homeless children, or the defoliation of the rain forests; she was everyone who had ever stepped over a homeless man or woman sleeping on the sidewalk without so much as a single glance down. As he had on occasion done himself. Johnny could picture himself grabbing her by the arms, hauling her to her feet, whirling her around, and planting a swift kick square in the middle of her narrow midwestern ass. Maybe that would wake her up. Even if it didn’t, it would certainly make him feel a little better.

“No,” he repeated, feeling his temples throb with stupid rage.

“No,” she agreed, and gave him a wan little at-last-you-under-stand smile. Then she turned her head toward Susi and began to stroke the girl’s hair.

“Come on, dear heart,” Belinda said to Ellen, leaning down and opening her arms. “Come over here and spend some time with Bee.” The girl came, silent, her face twisting in an awful cramp of grief that made the silence somehow even worse, and Belinda enfolded her.

The Reed twins watched this, but really didn’t see. They were standing by the back door, looking bright-eyed and excited. Cammie approached them, stood in front of them, appraised them with an expression Johnny at first mistook for dourness. A moment more and he realized what it really was: terror so large it could only be partially concealed.

“All right,” she said at last. Her voice was dry and businesslike. “Which one carries it?”

The boys looked at each other, and Johnny had a sense of communication between them-brief but complex, perhaps the sort of thing in which only twins could engage. Or perhaps, he thought, it’s just that your brains have boiled, John. That was not actually so farfetched. They certainly felt boiled.