"To see what they left us," Clay said.

They hurried after him. Tom caught up first, while Clay's hand was still on the doorknob. "I don't know if this is a good idea," Tom said.

"Maybe not, but it's what they're waiting for," Clay said. "And you know what? I think if they meant to kill us, we'd be dead already."

"He's prob'ly right," Jordan said in a small, wan voice.

Clay opened the door. Cheatham Lodge's long front porch, with its comfortable wicker furniture and its view of Academy Slope rolling down to Academy Avenue, was made for sunny autumn afternoons like this, but at that moment the ambience was the furthest thing from Clay's mind. Standing at the foot of the steps was an arrowhead of phone-crazies: one in front, two behind him, three behind them, then four, five, and six. Twenty-one in all. The one in front was the Raggedy Man from Clay's dream, his sketch come to life. The lettering on the front of the tattered red hoodie did indeed spell out harvard. The torn left cheek had been pulled up and secured at the side of the nose with two clumsy white stitches that had torn teardrops in the indifferently mended dark flesh before holding. There were rips where a third and fourth stitch had pulled free. Clay thought the stitching might have been done with fish-line. The sagging lip revealed teeth that looked as if they had been seen to by a good orthodontist not long ago, when the world had been a milder place.

In front of the door, burying the welcome mat and spreading in both directions, was a heap of black, misshapen objects. It could almost have been some half-mad sculptor's idea of art. It took Clay only a moment to realize he was looking at the melted remains of the Tonney Field flock's ghetto blasters.

Then Alice shrieked. A few of the heat-warped boomboxes had fallen over when Clay opened the door, and something that had very likely been balanced on top of the pile had fallen over with them, lodging half in and half out of the pile. She stepped forward before Clay could stop her, dropping one of the automatic pistols and grabbing the thing she had seen. It was the sneaker. She cradled it between her breasts.

Clay looked past her, at Tom. Tom gazed back at him. They weren't telepathic, but in that moment they might as well have been. Now what? Tom's eyes asked.

Clay turned his attention back to the Raggedy Man. He wondered if you could feel your mind being read and if his was being read right that second. He put his hands out to the Raggedy Man. The gun was still in one of them, but neither the Raggedy Man nor anyone in his squad seemed to feel threatened by it. Clay held his palms up: What do you want?

The Raggedy Man smiled. There was no humor in the smile. Clay thought he could see anger in the dark brown eyes, but he thought it was a surface thing. Underneath there was no spark at all, at least that he could discern. It was almost like watching a doll smile.

The Raggedy Man cocked his head and held up a finger—Wait. And from below them on Academy Avenue, as if on cue, came many screams. Screams of people in mortal agony. Accompanying them were a few guttural, predatory cries. Not many.

"What are you doing?" Alice shouted. She stepped forward, squeezing the little sneaker convulsively in her hand. The cords in her forearm stood out strongly enough to make shadows like long straight pencil-strokes on her skin. "What are you doing to the people down there?"

As if, Clay thought, there could be any doubt.

She raised the hand that still held a gun. Tom grabbed it and wrestled it away from her before she could pull the trigger. She turned on him, clawing at him with her free hand.

"Give it back, don't you hear that? Don't you hear?"

Clay pulled her away from Tom. During all of this Jordan watched from the entryway with wide, terrified eyes and the Raggedy Man stood at the tip of the arrow, smiling from a face where rage underlay humor and beneath the rage was . . . nothing, as far as Clay could tell. Nothing at all.

"Safety was on, anyway," Tom said after a quick glance. "Thank the Lord for small favors." And to Alice: "Do you want to get us killed?"

"Do you think they're just going to let us go?" She was crying so hard it had become difficult to understand her. Snot hung from her nostrils in two clear strings. From below, on the tree-lined avenue that ran past Gaiten Academy, there were screams and shrieks. A woman cried No, please don't please don't and then her words were lost in a terrible howl of pain.

"I don't know what they're going to do with us," Tom said in a voice that strove for calm, "but if they meant to kill us, they wouldn't be doing that. Look at him, Alice—what's going on down there is for our benefit."

There were a few gunshots as people tried to defend themselves, but not many. Mostly there were just screams of pain and terrible surprise, all coming from the area directly adjacent to Gaiten Academy, where the flock had been burned. It surely didn't last any longer than ten minutes, but sometimes, Clay thought, time really was relative.

It seemed like hours.

When the screams finally stopped, alice stood quietly between clay and Tom with her head lowered. She had put both automatics on a table meant for briefcases and hats inside the front door. Jordan was holding her hand, looking out at the Raggedy Man and his colleagues standing at the head of the walk. So far the boy hadn't noticed the Head's absence. Clay knew he would soon, and then the next scene of this terrible day would commence.

The Raggedy Man took a step forward and made a little bow with his hands held out to either side, as if to say, At your service. Then he looked up and held a hand out toward Academy Slope and the avenue beyond. He looked at the little group clustered in the open door behind the melted boombox sculpture as he did this. To Clay the meaning seemed clear: Theroad is yours. Go on and take it.

"Maybe," he said. "In the meantime, let's be clear on one thing. I'm sure you can wipe us out if you choose to, you've obviously got the numbers, but unless you plan to hang back at Command HQ, someone else is going to be in charge of things tomorrow. Because I'll personally make sure you're the first one to go."

The Raggedy Man put his hands to his cheeks and widened his eyes: Oh dear! The others behind him were as expressionless as robots. Clay looked a moment longer, then gently closed the door.

"I'm sorry," Alice said dully. "I just couldn't stand listening to them scream."

"It's okay," Tom said. "No harm done. And hey, they brought back Mr. Sneaker."

She looked at it. "Is this how they found out it was us? Did they smell it, the way a bloodhound smells a scent?"

"No," Jordan said. He was sitting in a high-backed chair beside the umbrella stand, looking small and haggard and used-up. "That's just their way of saying they know you. At least, that's what I think."

"Yeah," Clay said. "I bet they knew it was us even before they got here. Picked it out of our dreams the way we picked his face out of our dreams."

"I didn't—" Alice began.

"Because you were waking up," Tom said. "You'll be hearing from him in the fullness of time, I imagine." He paused. "If he has anything else to say, that is. I don't understand this, Clay. We did it. We did it and they know we did it, I'm convinced of that."

"Yes," Clay said.

"Then why kill a bunch of innocent pilgrims when it would have been just as easy—well, almost as easy—to break in here and kill us? I mean, I understand the concept of reprisals, but I don't see the point in this—"

That was when Jordan slid off his chair and, looking around with an expression of suddenly blossoming worry, asked: "Where's the Head?"