Tessa stepped away from the kitchen counter, moving closer to him, and said, "Tell me what you saw, dammit."
"You won't understand."
"What am I — a moron?"
"Oh, you'd understand what I saw, but you wouldn't understand what it meant to me."
"Do you understand what it meant to you?"
"Oh, yes," he said solemnly.
"Are you going to tell me willingly, or do I have to take a meat fork from that rack and torture it out of you? The elevator had started down from the third floor."
He glanced toward the hall. "I really don't want to discuss it."
"You don't, huh?"
"No."
"You saw God but you don't want to discuss it."
"That's right."
"Most guys who see God — that's the only thing they ever want to discuss. Most guys who see God — they form whole religions based on the one meeting with Him, and they tell millions of people about it."
"But I—"
"Fact is, according to what I've read, most people who undergo a near-death experience are changed forever by it. And always for the better. If they were pessimists, they become optimists. If they were atheists, they become believers. Their values change, they learn to love life for itself, they're goddamned radiant! But not you. Oh, no, you become even more dour, even more grim, even more bleak."
The elevator reached the ground floor and fell silent.
"Harry's coming," Sam said.
"Tell me what you saw."
"Maybe I can tell you," he said, surprised to find that he was actually willing to discuss it with her at the right time, in the right place. "Maybe you. But later."
Moose padded into the kitchen, panting and grinning at them, and Harry rolled through the doorway a moment later.
"Good morning," Harry said chipperly.
"Did you sleep well?" Tessa asked, favoring him with a genuine smile of affection that Sam envied.
Harry said, "Soundly, but not as soundly as the dead — thank God."
"Pancakes?" Tessa asked him.
"Stacks, please."
"Eggs?"
"Dozens."
"Toast?"
"Loaves."
"I like a man with an appetite."
Harry said, "I was running all night, so I'm famished."
"Running?"
"In my dreams. Chased by Boogeymen."
While Harry got a package of dog food from under one of the counters and filled Moose's dish in the corner, Tessa went to the griddle, sprayed it with Pam again, told Sam that he was in charge of the eggs, and started to ladle out the first of the pancakes from the bowl of batter. After a moment she said, "Patti La Belle, 'Stir It Up,' " and began to sing and dance in place again.
"Hey," Harry said, "I can give you music if you want music."
He rolled to a compact under-the-counter-mounted radio that neither Tessa nor Sam had noticed, clicked it on, and moved the tuner across the dial until he came to a station playing "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" by Gladys Knight and the Pips.
"All right," Tessa said, and she began to sway and pump and grind with such enthusiasm that Sam couldn't figure out how she poured the pancake batter onto the griddle in such neat puddles.
Harry laughed and turned his motorized wheelchair in circles, as if dancing with her.
Sam said, "Don't you people know that the world is coming to an end around us?"
They ignored him, which he supposed was what he deserved.
13
By a roundabout route, cloaking herself in the whatever shadows she could find, Chrissie reached the alley to the east of Conquistador. She entered Talbot's backyard through a gate in a redwood fence and scurried from one clump of shrubbery to another, twice nearly stepping in dog poop — Moose was an amazing dog, but not without faults — until she reached the steps to the back porch.
She heard music playing inside. It was an oldie, from the days when her parents had been teenagers. And in fact it had been one of their favorites. Though Chrissie didn't remember the title, she did recall the name of the group — Junior Walker and the All-Stars.
Figuring that the music, combined with the drumming rain, would cover any sounds she made, she crept up the steps onto the redwood porch and, in a crouch, moved to the nearest window. She hunkered below the sill for a while, listening to the people in there. They were talking, often laughing, sometimes singing, along with the songs on the radio.
They didn't sound like aliens. They sounded pretty much like ordinary people.
Were aliens likely to enjoy the music of Stevie Wonder and the Four Tops and the Pointer Sisters? Hardly. To human ears, alien music probably sounded like knights in armor playing bagpipes while simultaneously falling down a long set of stairs amidst a pack of baying hounds. More like Twisted Sister than like the Pointer Sisters.
Eventually she rose up just far enough to peer over the sill through a gap in the curtains. She saw Mr. Talbot in his wheelchair, Moose, and a strange man and woman. Mr. Talbot was beating time with his good hand on the arm of his wheelchair, and Moose was wagging his tail vigorously if out of synch with the music. The other man was using a spatula to scoop eggs out of a couple of frying pans and shift them onto plates, glowering, at the woman now and then as he did so, maybe not approving of the way she abandoned herself to the song, but still tapping his right foot to the music. The woman was making flapjacks and transferring them to a warming platter in the oven, and as she worked she shimmied and swayed and dipped; she had good moves.
Chrissie crouched down again and thought about what she had seen. Nothing about their behavior was particularly odd if they were people, but if they were aliens they surely wouldn't be bopping to the radio while they made breakfast. Chrissie had a real hard time believing that aliens — like the thing masquerading as Father Castelli — could have either a sense of humor or rhythm Surely, all that aliens cared about was taking possession of new hosts and finding new recipes for cooking tender children.
Nevertheless she decided to wait until she had a chance to watch them eating. From what she'd heard her mother and Tucker say in the meadow last night, and from what she had seen at breakfast with the Father Castelli creature, she believed that the aliens were ravenous, each with the appetite of half a dozen men. If Harry Talbot and his guests didn't make absolute hogs of themselves when they sat down to eat, she could probably trust them.
14
Loman had stayed at Peyser's house, supervising the cleanup and overseeing the transfer of the regressives' bodies to Callan's hearse. He was afraid to let his men handle it alone, for fear that the sight of the mutated bodies or the smell of blood would induce them to seek altered states of their own. He knew that all of them — not least of all himself — were walking a taut wire over an abyss. For the same reason, he followed the hearse to the funeral home and stayed with Callan and his assistant until Peyser's and Sholnick's bodies were fed into the white-hot flames of the crematorium.
He checked on the progress of the search for Booker, the Lockland woman, and Chrissie Foster, and he made a few changes in the pattern of the patrols. He was in the office when the report came in from Castelli, and he went directly to the rectory at Our Lady of Mercy to hear firsthand how the girl could have slipped away from them. They were full of excuses, mostly lame. He suspected they had regressed in order to toy with the girl, just for the thrill of it, and while playing with her had unintentionally given her a chance to escape. Of course they would not admit to regression.
Loman increased the patrols in the immediate area, but there was no sign of the girl. She had gone to ground. Still, if she had come into town instead of heading out to the freeway, they were more likely to catch her and convert her before the day was done.