She looked up at him again, her eyes shining with tears and defiance. 'I am not an ant, however. I am not an ant.'
He kissed her again. She wrapped her arms around him tightly and gave back as good as she got. And when his hand tugged her blouse from the waistband of her slacks and then slipped up across her midriff to cup her breast, she gave him her tongue. When they broke apart, she was breathing fast.
'Want to?' he asked.
'Yes. Do you?'
He took her hand and put it on his jeans, where how much he wanted to was immediately evident.
A minute later he was poised above her, resting on his elbows. She took him in hand to guide him in. 'Take it easy on me, Colonel Barbara. I've kind of forgotten how this thing goes.'
'It's like riding a bicycle,' Barbie said.
Turned out he was right.
15
When it was over, she lay with her head on his arm, looking up at the pink stars, and asked what he was thinking about.
He sighed.'The dreams. The visions. The whatever-they-are. Do you have your cell phone?'
'Always. And it's holding its charge nicely, although for how much longer I couldn't say. Who are you planning to call? Cox, I suppose.'
'You suppose correctly. Do you have his number in memory?'
'Yes.'
Julia reached over for her discarded pants and pulled the phone off her belt. She called COX and handed the phone to Barbie, who started talking almost at once. Cox must have answered on the first ring.
'Hello, Colonel. It's Barbie. I'm out. I'm going to take a chance and tell you our location. It's Black Ridge. The old McCoy orchard. Do you have that on your... you do. Of course you do. And you have satellite images of the town, right?'
He listened, then asked Cox if the images showed a horseshoe of light encircling the ridge and ending at the TR-90 border. Cox replied in the negative, and then, judging from the way Barbie was listening, asked for details.
'Not now,' Barbie said. 'Right now I need you to do something for me, Jim, and the sooner the better. You'll need a couple of Chinooks.'
He explained what he wanted. Cox listened, then replied.
'I can't go into it right now,'Barbie said,'and it probably wouldn't make a lot of sense if I did. Just take it from me that some very dinky-dau shit is going on in here, and I believe that worse is on the way. Maybe not until Halloween, if we're lucky. But I don't think we're going to be lucky'
16
While Barbie was speaking with Colonel James Cox, Andy Sanders was sitting against the side of the supply building behind WCIK, looking up at the abnormal stars. He was high as a kite, happy as a clam, cool as a cucumber, other similes may apply. Yet there was a deep sadness - oddly tranquil, almost comforting - running beneath, like a powerful underground river. He had never had a premonition in his whole prosy, practical, workaday life. But he was having one now. This was his last night on earth. When the bitter men came, he and Chef Bushey would go. It was simple, and not really all that bad.
'I was in the bonus round, anyway,' he said. 'Have been ever since I almost took those pills.'
'What's that, Sanders?' Chef came strolling along the path from the rear of the station, shining a flashlight beam just ahead of his bare feet. The froggy pajama pants still clung precariously to the bony wings of his hips, but something new had been added: a large white cross. It was tied around his neck on a rawhide loop. Slung over his shoulder was GOD'S WARRIOR. Two grenades swung from the stock on another length of rawhide. In the hand not holding the flashlight, he carried the garage door opener.
'Nothing, Chef,' Andy said. T was just talking to myself. Seems like I'm the only one who listens these days.'
"That's bullshit, Sanders. Utter and complete bullshit-aroonie. God listens. He's tapped into souls the way the FBI's tapped into phones. I listen, too.'
The beauty of this - and the comfort - made gratitude well up in Andy's heart. He offered the bong. 'Hit this shit. It'll get your boiler lit.'
Chef uttered a hoarse laugh, took a deep drag on the glasspipe, held the smoke in, then coughed it out. 'Bazoom!' he said. 'God's power! Power by the hour, Sanders!'
'Got that right,' Andy agreed. It was what Dodee always said, and at the thought of her, his heart broke all over again. He wiped his eyes absently. 'Where did you get the cross?'
Chef pointed the flashlight toward the radio station. 'Coggins has got an office in there. The cross was in his desk. The top drawer was locked, but I forced it open. You know what else was in there, Sanders? Some of the skankicst jerk-off material I have ever seen.'
'Kids?' Andy asked. He wouldn't be surprised. When the devil got a preacher, he was apt to fall low, indeed. Low enough to put on a tophat and crawl under a rattlesnake.
'Worse, Sanders.' He lowered his voice. 'Orientals.'
Chef picked up Andy's AK-47, which had been lying across Andy's thighs. He shone the light on the stock, where Andy had carefully printed CLAUDETTE with one of the radio station's Magic Markers.
'My wife,' Andy said. 'She was the first Dome casualty.'
Chef gripped him by the shoulder. 'You're a good man to remember her, Sanders. I'm glad God brought us together.'
'Me too.' Andy took back the bong. 'Me too, Chef.'
'You know what's apt to happen tomorrow, don't you?'
Andy gripped CLAUDETTE's stock. It was answer enough.
'They'll most likely be wearing body armor, so if we have to go to war, aim for the head. No single-shot stuff; just hose em down. And if it looks like they're going to overrun us... you know what comes next, right?'
'Right.'
'To the end, Sanders?' Chef raised the garage door opener in front of his face and shone the flashlight on it.
'To the end,' Andy agreed. He touched the door opener with CLAUDETTE's muzzle.
17
Ollie Dinsmore snapped awake from a bad dream, knowing something was wrong. He lay in bed, looking at the wan and somehow dirty first light peeping through the window, trying to persuade himself that it was just the dream, some nasty nightmare he couldn't quite recall. Fire and shouting was all he could remember.