The pilot and the copilot exchanged long, meaningful looks. "Maybe you should check it out," the pilot said. The door kept rattling. The copilot unstrapped himself and came aft, walking with the motion of the helicopter, one hand onthe ceiling to brace himself. What have we got back here, just rations and some light munitions, right? he called back to the pilot. Anything that might come loose?

It was like a dream, a particularly horrible dream, where you know what is about to happen but you are so plagued by selfdoubt and general anxiety that you don't dare open your mouth to say it, because that would make it real.

The co-pilot reached for the handle on the side of the hatch and even before he had turned it all the way the hatch exploded inward, spilling two hundred pounds of meat into the crew compartment. There was blood, and torn flesh, and screaming, but in that first awful second Clark couldn't connect the dots, couldn't make sense of what was happening. Only when he heard Vikram calling his name did he really know.

A man. A dead man. A dead man with no arms. A dead man with no arms, his torso riddled with bullet holes, his face distorted by damage and hunger, his body as dry and tough as beef jerky, had stowed away aboard the helicopter when it left the prison. The dead man had killed the copilot in one incredibly swift, incredibly brutal motion and now he had his teeth deep in Vikram's calf. Some of the blood slicking down the floor belonged to his best friend.

The dead girl was up, standing on her chair. She looked horrified and Clark felt a quick irrational burst of desire-he wanted to tell her everything was alright, A better plan came to mind a moment later. He was standing next to an exterior hatch with an emergency release. He pulled up on the red handle and the door fell away into blackness, cold air bellying in so fast and hard it knocked everyone down. The dead man slipped away from Vikram. The girl fell off her crewseat. Clark grabbed her arm and hauled her up to stand next to him.

The dead man didn't bother getting up. He just got his teeth into Vikram again and kept chewing. Vikram drew his weapon and started firing at the dead man's head but the helicopter was rolling, pitching, yawing-nobody could fire accurately under those conditions, and Vikram was no marksman.

The pilot kept looking over his shoulder, shouting something back at them. Questions. He wasn't paying enough attention to flying the aircraft. Soldier! Clark yelled at him, see to your duties! Then he turned to the girl.

This psychic, he said to her. He told you-you were the only one. The only one who could go to the Epicenter. He told you that, he was sure of that?

The girl's eyes were very wide. He shook her and she nodded. It was what he needed to hear.

Grabbing her by the arms he yanked her forward and shoved her out of the helicopter, out through the external hatch, out into the roaring sky.

Poor mood, no appetite, continued angiogenesis inside the deforming body. But shes alive. Fuck you, God, fuck you, Death, fuck you, fucking Cancer. Shes still alive! [Lab Notes, 1/16/05]

Something was burning -Bannerman Clark felt the heat on his leg. He felt the hairs there crisp and curl and melt. There was only a little pain, in his chest. He looked down and wished he hadn't. A jagged piece of steel transfixed him to the side of the broken helicopter. He was like a butterfly mounted in a case. Best to not try to move, he decided. Best to just wait it out. The heat on his leg kept getting more intense and he could smell his flesh burning, but still, there was no pain.

There had been a moment after he pushed the girl out of the hatch, a single moment when it looked as if the pilot might actually get them down safely. That Vikram might actually kill the armless dead man. That they could continue the mission.

Something slithered nearby. There had been a moment and the moment had passed. The pilot had started screaming and then he had unbuckled himself from his seat, trying to get away, trying to get away from the murderous corpse. It had only taken a few seconds after that for the helicopter to smack into the side of the mountain.

The slithering thing drew closer. Clark opened his eyes, though he didn't want to. He had some idea of what he was going to see. A dead person, a hungry dead person coming to eat him. He just wasn't sure who it would be.

It was Vikram. The Sikh Major's face was crumpled in on one side, he was missing an eye. One whole side of his body didn't seem to work. He didn't say a word as he hauled himself closer. His mouth was open, his teeth very white.

Vikram had a knife on his belt. A kirpan, more of a short sword. It was one of the religious objects he was supposed to keep on his person at all times. Clark could take that knife and destroy his friend's brain with it. That was the very least he could do.

Assuming he could lift his arm. Assuming that Clark wasn't completely paralyzed.

Vikram dragged himself an inch closer. Almost in range. Time to find out. Somethings out there... I saw it today, again, working its way through the trees. I called out but it didnt answer. Something is climbing up the mountain but I dont think its human what is it? What is it? [Lab Notes, 3/21/05]

Nilla stopped screaming. She opened up her eyes. She was lying in something wet, something cold and white.

Snow.

Her neck could be broken. She'd hit the side of the mountain pretty hard. Sitting up could be the worst thing she could do for herself-she might tear her spinal cord. Of course, it wasn't like anyone was coming to rescue her. Clark hadn't been trying to kill her. He'd been trying to save her. He knew the helicopter was going down. Nilla had heard it crash and clatter and fall and slide for what seemed like hours while she lay inert on the hard, cold ground, looking straight up.

She sat up. Her bones still worked. Her ribs hurt like a motherfucker, but her legs, and her arms, and yes, her neck were all still intact. She had fallen a hundred feet out of thin air to collide with the stony limb of a mountainside and it looked like she had made it okay.

There were some benefits, she guessed, to already being dead. She tried to get her bearings. Trees surrounded her on every side, conifers with a dusting of snow on their needles. Straight up, between the treetops, she could see stars and the faintest sliver of a crescent moon. If there was a way to know which way was north based on the position of the moon, Nilla couldn't remember it. She was lost. Lost and alone in the middle of the wilderness in the middle of a continent full of dead things. If her neck had been broken she couldn't have been in worse shape. She sat down and tried to think about what to do next.

That was when she noticed the light. It wasn't normal light, of course, or she would have noticed it right away. It was more watery, more indistinct. She could see it better with her eyes closed. Well. There you go. It was the same kind of light she saw when she looked at living people. Golden. Perfect. Pretty much every fiber of her being was agreed. Getting closer to that light was a good plan.

Her mind, strangely enough, agreed. She had come to find the source of the Epidemic. The energy that kept her from dying like she ought to. She was one hundred per cent sure that this ethereal light that radiated right through the trees was the Source.

She got back to her feet and started walking. Climbing, in places, her hands clumsy but strong enough to grab at rocks and exposed tree roots. Her feet dug into the slippery ground, kicking through a rime of years-old snow, through the accumulation of fallen pine needles beneath, into frozen dirt under that. She hauled herself bodily up slopes, then ran, headlong, recklessly, down the other sides. She clambered over ridges of bare rock carved knife-thin by eons of wind. She crouched under endless tree branches and smacked her forehead on those she didn't see and had bushel after bushel of freezing snow dumped down the back of her thin cotton shirt.

She should have been exhausted after the first quarter mile. Every step should have been harder, a brand new agony. But it wasn't. If anything the mountaineering got easier. Her body felt better, stronger, healthier with every step she took. At one point she felt her neck spasm and shake and she thought maybe physical collapse had finally caught up with her but no. It was the bullet, the bullet the Indian soldier had fired at her on the prison's rooftop. Underneath it the muscle fibers and nerves and blood vessels wriggled as they wove themselves back together. The inert leaden mass of the bullet popped out of her neck with an agonizing little sputter and fell to smack her hard on the bones of her wrist. She yanked her arm back in pain but even the pain disappeared after a moment.

The light that came through the trees-it was better than heroin. It was better than sex with a loving partner. It was better than a drink of water after three days of wandering in the desert. It was nearly morning when she came out over a final lip of rock and saw the valley below her and the Source beneath it. Cold blue light the color of hallucinations lit up the sky over Bolton's Valley, the place Captain Clark had shown her in a photograph. The place Jason Singletary had shown her with his mind.

She wasn't the only dead person to have found t he place. A crowd of them-maybe two hundred in all-stood below the ridge. Their battered and torn bodies looked relaxed there. Their ragged faces were turned upward to catch the light. It was tempting to join them. It was even more tempting to move closer, to go into that flaring beacon.

Nilla found herself elbowing through the crowd without really thinking about it. When one of the corpses coughed and cleared its dry throat she wasn't even surprised.

Lass. Please don't go any farther. Nilla turned to face what had been a middle-aged woman. She had been plump, with chinlength hair pulled back in a simple black band. She had very little skin left on her face, and no eyes. Nilla understood, looking at her, that she could still see the light of the Source.

I t was Mael who spoke through the woman, of course. Why? Nilla demanded. Are you worried that I'll go up there and turn this thing off, like Clark wanted? I haven't actually decided what I'll do yet. I haven't decided who I am. Good Nilla, bad Nilla. I kind of want to find out, though. Nilla closed her eyes and felt rays of sparkling warmth shoot through her, healing her, feeding her. Oh, she wanted to find out so very much. I've got more important things to do.

Indeed, lass? And what's more important than the end of the world? Answer me that. Or don't. I've little left to teach you, but there's this: don't go another step.

Christ, next you're going to tell me your God doesn't want me up there.

The woman shook her head. Teuagh is no god. He is my father. He is the father of us all. When I was alive a child did what his father told him. I used to think I was like a father to you. Really? Because I thought we had more of a Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepard thing going on. Wow, now that I think about itthat's kind of creepy. Well, listen, you can't stop me. If I want to go up there I will.

You don't ken it yet, Nilla. I'm not trying to stop you because I'm afraid of what you'll do. I'm simply afraid you're going to hurt yourself. There's so few of us now. You, some fellow in New York who figured it out on his own. A lad in Russia who doesn't even know where he is. I'm just trying to protect a very scarce resource, that's all.

Nilla opened her mouth to rebuke him but then she saw charred corpses in the broken field ahead of her. She took a step closer and felt the warmth of the Source grow hot. Another step and it was painful. Oh, she said. The same energy that fed her could burn her to a crisp if she got too close. Yet moving forward meant getting closer.

But then she just had it, as if her body knew what to do even if her mind was oblivious. She banked her energy-subtracted her darkness-made herself invisible. The one thing she could do that nobody else could manage. The one thing that set her apart. Instantly the warmth was gone. She stepped forward, and again, until she was even with the burnt and disfigured bodies sprawled across the rocks.

Nothing happened.

Singletary had been right. She was the only one who could go to the Source. She started to climb. It was a far easier ascent than what had come before, though every step knocked loose showers of pebbles and dirt, eroded bits of hillside that went skittering down, pattering, pittering away from her. The handholds were stable, if the footing wasn't. In a few minutes she had reached the top of a ridge. A green-painted stegosaurus stood watch there, sculpted out of concrete. Just as Singletary had shown her.

Dinosaurs. Statues of dinosaurs. A tyrranosaur loomed over the site, while human-sized velociraptors leered out from around corners. In the middle of it all stood a dilapidated building with a sign posted next to its door.

DINOSAUR EXPERIENCE.

-HALL OF FOSSILSPROPRIETOR DR. E. VRONSKI OPENING SUMMER 2006.

The door opened and a man stepped out. A living man. He was mostly bald, with tiny blue eyes, intensely blue eyes. Nilla walked over to him and took the hand he extended. He had no trouble seeing her, even though she was invisible. She must be invisible-if she let her energy show, even for a moment, she would have been incinerated.

I always imagined one of you would come. Please. We should go inside. He lead her into a dark building full of glass display cases. Some of them were empty and collecting dust. Others held dark fossils half-buried in matrices of brown or red stone. Educational plaques hung on the walls.

Are you Dr. Vronski? Nilla asked.

I was, he told her. I mean... I was a paleontologist, before all this, well, you know, started. I'm the one, by the way. I'm the moron who killed off the human race.

Nilla didn't know how to reply to that. Then she thought of something. "How can you see me? I'm invisible." He burbled pleasantly, as if something had tickled him. After a while I learned how to see it. The singularity. It's like living next to an invisible star for months and months, eventually you start wondering where all the light is coming from. You're like a shadow against that light. You know, like on a dark night, you can see a tree because its silhouette blots out the stars behind it. Come on, please, this way. You're going to kill me, right? Kill me and eat me? It's far less than what I deserve. Here. He lead her to the top of a stairwell. Maybe you'd like to see it first, though. The singularity. Or maybe... something to eat.

Nilla looked down the stairs. There was someone else down there-or maybe two people, standing very close together. They moved into the light and her mouth fell open in true horror.

This is my wife, Charlotte. He looked at her eyes and whispered, please don't say anything about her appearance. She's very sensitive.