Bullshit! That thing we just saw was dead! Emeril LaGasse came running down a set of stairs, his fists pumping in the air, a towel over the shoulder of his chef whites. Tonight we're talking tenderloin, we're talking beef bourguignon, and look at this cabbage, huh? Look at it! I'm makin' a slaw!

Charles sprawled across the bed, with his shirt off, one foot waving back and forth in an agitated rhythm. Nothing fucking on, he moaned, but he didn't switch off the television. How do you get the porn and shit? You know what I'm saying?

In a corner Shar squatted against the wall and held one hand over her ear. The other held the handset of a princess phone. Mom? I can't get through to Uncle Phil. Well how many times have you tried? Me? I'm safe, I'm in some kind of motel- Don't you fucking tell her where we are! Charles shouted. His skinny arms raised like sticks to bat at her but he didn't sit up. Nilla sniffed one of her armpits and winced at the stale smell there. Not body odor, necessarily. Something fouler. I'm going next door, she said. She stepped out into a night full of bugs that batted suicidally against the one light over the motel's parking lot. Charles' Toyota was the only car parked there-the owners must have deserted the place and turned on the no vacancy sign on their way out. If they hadn't been so lost Nilla and the kids would have passed right by it.

Luckily the owners had forgotten to lock the doors when they left, too. In the peace and quiet of an empty room Nilla sat down on the bed with its over-starched coverlet and stared at the useless telephone, wishing she had someone to call. God, no point in dwelling on that, she decided, and pulled the baby tee off over her head. The sleeves stank and she wondered if she could rinse it out in the sink with shampoo. She looked down, checking her skin, and noticed a green discoloration on her abdomen, right above her tattoo. It must be dye from the cheap shirt, she thought, even though it was the wrong color. She got up and went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She stepped out of her baggy pants and saw that the discoloration was on her crotch, too. With a handful of soap she tried to scrub it off but it wouldn't budge. She moved into the shower and tried again with the motel's washcloth. Nothing.

There was a fog-resistant shaving mirror mounted in the shower and she studied her face. The bruising under her eyes had spread until she looked like a raccoon. Or a goth chick wearing too much kohl. She had a bad pimple on her cheek but it wasn't ready to pop. She wondered if she should shave her legs and realized that the hair there had stopped growing. That couldn't be a good sign.

She was still checking herself out when she heard the door of her room open and Charles came trooping in. He had a can of soda in either hand. Hey, he said, Shar thought you might want some- He stopped in mid-thought. His face opened up in a kind of half smile that made him look very, very stupid. He was staring at her but not in the malevolent way the people of Lost Hills had stared at her.

She looked down and saw that she had come out of the shower to greet him but she had forgotten to put her clothes back on. Water dripped from her elbows and her chin and splashed darkly on the ivory shag of the carpet.

What the hell? Had she forgotten all about modesty when she forgot her name? Or was her brain just breaking down, was she not making the necessary connections?

She suddenly felt very alone and very afraid.

I guess I should... he grinned, I mean Shar wouldn't... He was stalling. He wanted her and that meant everything. It meant she was still whole and healthy and desirable. It meant he didn't see a monster when he looked at her but a woman, a human being full of vibrant life. She took a step closer and grabbed his hand. She couldn't believe what she was doing but she needed it, so much.

She guided his hand to her breast and let him cup it. He immediately tweaked her nipple in a way shenormally would have found more irritating than arousing but it just didn't matter. He was human and male and if he reacted to her she could be normal again.

He swallowed hard and moved closer to her, as if unsure of what to do next. Was he a virgin? Nillawas pretty sure she wasn't. She would use every whorish trick she could think of if she could just have this simple reassurance. She reached across the space between them and brushed the backs of her fingers across the front of his jeans.

Nothing. She felt nothing down there -no hardness at all. He looked down at her breast like someone who couldn't understand what he was seeing. So cold, he said, his voice small and afraid.

She winced backward and it was the signal he'd been waiting for. He rushed out of the room, his sodas rolling across the floor where he'd dropped them. Nilla went to the door and shut it, locked it tight and fastened the chain.

She wanted to break down, to cry, but that was a human response and her body refused to let her have even that. She wanted to cut herself to pieces but there was nothing sharp at hand. She looked around the objects of the room-bed, tv, lamp, nightstand, Gideon's bible-and none of them made sense, they'd been torn out of context and left hanging in a meaningless space. It was too much.

She undid all the locks on the door and ran out into the night, down the stairs and across the parking lot. The dark trees there accepted her without a murmur.

PLEASE BE ADVISED: Foreign nationals will not be allowed into the United States unless they carry up-to-date and authorized medical papers. Otherwise you are subject

to incarceration! [Signage posted at Customs, John F. Kennedy International Airport, 4/1/05]

He knows talent when he sees it, yes, that is that, Vikram said, clutching a nylon handloop as the Blackhawk lifted up and banked away from the prison. He's hedging a bet. Back to California. Bannerman Clark hated flying. Washington to Denver on another empty airbus. Blackhawk to Florence to pick up Vikram-now officially attached to Clark's nascent Action Team-and take the two of them back to DIA. Then a military transport, probably an old DC10 judging by Clark's recent luck, then another helicopter to spirit them off to a place called Kern County where someone might possibly have seen the blonde girl, according to a tip phoned in on the APB.

It didn't matter. None of the wasted time or the jet lag or the bad food or the recirculated air mattered. I looked him up in Nexis when I got airborne out of DCA. He's an up-and-comer, playing at being a young Turk at the tender age of fiftytwo. He's angling for a Cabinet post. He wouldn't meet with me in the Pentagon-I didn't ask why but I can guess. He wants to keep me on the books but off the charts.

He has you for his wild card. This man, he is playing games while the house is on fire? Clark laid one finger alongside his nose. Don't forget we're talking about DoD civilians here. Armchair generals. He need say no more. For the last thirty years Vikram and Clark had been touring the world at the whim of men with Big Ideas and Foolproof Plans. Soldiers and even entire countries were just tokens on a game board when you looked down on them from those lofty heights.

I'm his wonk, he calls me. His idea man. Somebody with experience in a brand new way of war. After September Eleventh people like him wrote their own ticket because they were ready for the new paradigm. He hopes to do the same here.

He is making political capital out of this horror.

Clark sighed and lifted both hands. Twas ever thus. I can't help but thinking there's more to this than I get, but then I never understood politics. This guy most certainly does. If we can find this girl and if she is what I think she is this man will be appointing Cabinet posts, not filling one.

Unless we are eaten, all of us, before then.

Yes, that would spoil his gambit. Clark tried to laugh and found he couldn't. CALIFORNIA, INFECTIOUS DISEASE OUTBREAK: This is a notification of the Presidential declaration of a This is a notification of the Presidential declaration of a DR), dated April First, 2005, and related determinations. [FEMA/DHS Federal Register Notice, 4/1/05] Under a rising sun that looked like a ruddy impostor now a freight train full of emergency medical supplies shouldered its way westward through raw cuts in the mountain side, its rusted cars rattling and swaying on the tracks as it cut through switchbacks, its horn a plaintive subsonic tone that seemed to rise up out of the ground like vapor in the heat of day.

It had to slow down to a bare crawl as it crested a ridge. Dick was waiting on a spur of rock just above. Behind him the source called to him with its infinite love but he didn't look back. At just the right moment the voice in his head called Now and he leapt, spinning off his feet into space to come crashing down with a clatter on the roof of a boxcar. He dug in with his feet the best he could, unable to literally hold on. The vibration of the rumbling train made his teeth hurt but he was incapable of complaining.

He was a soldier now. He had his orders. "No, I dont think people should panic. What kind of question is that? Look, just be ready to move. Weve already had some evacuations. I think its fair to say that you should expect more." [San Francisco Chief of Police Heather J. Fong at press conference, 4/1/05]

Nilla wandered through a landscape the colors of bleached bone. The rock beneath her feet looked white, whiter than her pale skin. The aspens and sequoias of the forest behind her had given up on the stony ground. From horizon to horizon all she could see were bristlecone pines, leafless, twisted things that looked undead by starlight. Their branches wrapped around their trunks like hurt people hugging themselves for comfort or speared upwards in accusation at the frozen sky. Some were dead outright, cracked and splintered. They didn't rot, it seemed, so much as erode.

She was cold. She'd been cold before and never really cared but now, naked, wet, exposed in the chilly mountain night, she felt it in her skeleton. She could feel the frost getting into her individual ribs, into the creaky joints of her kneecaps and elbows.

She wanted to go back but she didn't know what that meant. Charles would be huddling with Shar in their room, wouldn't they? Terrified of her.

Charles had to know. He must have suspected before and now he knew. The smell on her was the stink of death. The discoloration on her abdomen was the first sign of putrefaction. Her body and her mind were breaking down and there was nothing she could do about it, nothing anybody could do about it and why would they, anyway? She was dead, a corpse! She should be rotting away. Her flesh would sag and fall off in gobbets, her skin would slough off in greasy strips. Her face would melt away until her bare skull grinned out at the world-would she feel better then?

A prickling of the skin behind her ears made her look up. Something -something living nearby. She would turn her face from it, flee it, whatever it might be. It was big. She closed her eyes and saw it, not a hundred yards away. Two, maybe three times the size of her, its energy brighter than any living energy she'd seen.

She had to get closer. Damnit -the hunger in her had become a solid mass, a tumor in her stomach that had control of her feet. She wanted to run away, to hide herself but the hunger had other plans. She got closer.

Her nose picked up the smell of death right away. It was her own smell, but sharper. Her foot blared with pain as she tripped on something. Bending down she felt metal and wood. A gun, a shotgun. She looked up and saw a human body with no head, dangling from the colorless branches of a bristlecone. Its lower extremities were missing and it had no energy at all, neither bright nor dark. The owner of the motel, maybe, who had come out all this way to kill himself. No one would ever know, she decided.

Something massive shifted behind her and she turned as fast as she could. The energy she'd seen, the bright source was right there. A black bear, maybe three hundred pounds. A female, old and grizzled, her pitch black fur ending in white tips that glistened with the reflected light of stars. The bear made no sound-she didn't growl.

She was beautiful. She stood on her hind legs, her eyes looking directly into Nilla's. Ther e was something there. Understanding? Recognition? Impossible. Nilla was undead, unnatural while this gorgeous animal seemed carved out of the very earth she stood on. Was this some kind of spiritual awakening, Nilla wondered, was she meeting her spirit animal? Maybe this was the moment when everything would make sense.

The bear swiped one paw across Nilla's stomach, the claws digging great bloodless gouges through her midriff, slicing up her tattoo. The blow had enough force behind it to kill outright a full-grown deer. It knocked Nilla off her feet and sent her falling into the body in the tree. Looking up at the corpse Nilla finally understood. The bear had been having a midnight snack- breakfast after a long winter's hibernation. Nilla had just gotten in between a full-grown black bear and her meal.

Relocation camps are now open at Cathedral City, Winterwarm and Oceanside. A map to these facilities is on the back of this handout. When entering a camp you may bring with you: personal (PRESCRIPTION) medication, TWO changes of clothing and ONE small toilet kit. All weapons, illegal items and communication/recording devices (laptop computers, PDAs, CELL PHONES) will be confiscated. [Flyer handed out at bus and train stations in Los Angeles, emphasis as per original, 4/1/05]

The bear didn't growl or roar or make any sound at all as she advanced. Her fur shivered in the breeze and her eyes glowed with fire as she pressed her snout wetly against Nilla's leg. She had to be seven feet long and her legs were allmuscle. Hot breath jetted up Nilla's thigh and she cringed.

The bear looked up at Nilla and panted for a second. She stepped closer, her mass making the ground shake and Nilla cried out as she rolled away. Slowly, keeping her hands in plain view she got back to her feet. If she just walked away, backwards so the bear wouldn't think she was running, well then surely the bear would leave her alone. Right? The bear didn't want to eat her. She was undead-rotting flesh, full of toxins.

Nilla glanced at the corpse hanging from the tree. Oh. Bears must eat carrion, she decided. It wasn't food the bear was after, though, she could see it in the animal's eyes. The bear knew what she was. It was the same look she'd seen in Lost Hills-and from Charles, less than an hour earlier. The bear was intelligent enough to recognize an abomination.

Nilla turned and ran, her bare feet slapping on the slickrock, her arms pistoning as she- The bear tore past her at a gallop, not even exerting herself. She rolled one shoulder and slammed into Nilla, sending her sprawling down a slope of loose shale. The pain was intense as she bounced from one sharp rock to another, her skin bruising and tearing as she rolled. When she finally stopped she could only curl around herself, her body screaming.

The bear came lumbering down the hill, a black shape that obscured half the sky, headed right for her.

No, she thought, she didn't want to... to die like this, not alone in the dead wilderness. No.

No. The bear stopped not three feet away from her and sniffed the air. She lifted her head and opened her mouth, then moved in, her paws smacking the rock. She would have stepped on Nilla if Nilla had still been there.

Nilla was invisible. The cold bit her with renewed force but the pain melted away. She looked down at her hands with eyes closed and saw nothing-no dark energy, just nothing. She stared at the bear and knew the animal couldn't sense her at all. It wasn't over, though. Nilla had to end this or eventually she would run out of strength and become visible again-she had a span of time measured in seconds, maybe-and then the bear would be on her with rending claws and vicious teeth. Nilla had to defend herself if she wanted to walk away.

She reached over and grabbed a handful of loose flesh at the bac k of the bear's neck and squeezed through the fur, squeezed as hard as her fingers allowed, digging her nails into the pliant skin beneath. The bear made a noise then, a titanic, warbling yell that almost sounded like human language.

Nilla's teeth entered the bear's neck. She could see the artery throbbing there. She could smell the blood. When she broke the skin it coursed out and over her, a red flood to carry her away. What happened next didn't involve thinking at all. She bit and tore and gouged as the bear screamed. A chunk of meat came loose in her mouth and she swallowed it effortlessly. The skin tore open and she thrust her face deep into the bear's body, into its hidden recesses. She bit and chewed and swallowed and bit, desperate to steal the bear's energy before it ran out. The bear couldn't resist her-shocked by the suddenness and the pain of her attack it could only scream and try to run but she had it, she had it down, down for the count.

Its life flowed into her, through her. Warm as blood, ric h and sweet as the bear's flesh it thrilled in every cell of her body. It felt like being on fire. It felt like being alive again-there she was, all dressed in white bopping down the street, shaking her hips in the sunshine because it felt so damned good to be alive and healthy and beautiful. It was almost too much.

She fell to the ground on her knees and swayed with it for a while with her eyes closed, watching the bear's golden energy degrade. When she opened her eyes again she saw the bear looking back at her with that same expression of recognition she'd been so startled by before. Then she did a double take. Her benefactor was sitting on the bear's back as if he planned to ride off into the sunset.

You- Nilla looked up at the naked man. His beard looked newly-trimmed and the blue tattoos that covered his skin glowed with their own light. Who-

Mael Mag Och, he said, thumping his chest. He looked down at his mount, at the expression on her face. She knows you. She knows what it is to be gruaim air le acras."

What are you doing here? Nilla demanded. He ignored her. Slipping down the bear's furred flank he stepped onto the slickrock and looked straight upward at the stars. In salmon moon, she wakes from winter and eats, and does not stop. She swallows a river if she can, a cliath bhradan. In summer she takes moths-forty thousand every day.