Morrison shook his head and turned back around. If there was one thing he couldn't abide, it was those homosexuals. Invading all decent neighborhoods, television, schools, forcing their morals on the rest of America. He walked slowly back toward his house, looking over the Victoria's Secret catalog addressed to his wife.
His next sensation was of flying and darkness. When he regained consciousness, it was with the taste of hard concrete in his mouth. He opened his eyes and saw that he was facedown on his sidewalk, perhaps ten feet from his porch. A strange crackling sound seemed to fill the air behind him, and the ringing of numerous car alarms invaded his consciousness. Or were those screams?
He stumbled to his feet, blood covering his face, the left side of his head numb and feeling swollen. His left arm hurt. Yes, those were definitely screams. He turned around slowly and had trouble interpreting what he saw. Across the street, where a small ranch-style home had once stood, there was a raging fire. Smoke billowed into the air, and debris littered the weed-covered lawn, apparently raining down as far as his own manicured front yard. The VW Jetta was a shell, as if it, too, had been blown apart by some incredible force. People were pouring out of their homes, some screaming, some speaking on cell phones, many looking bewildered and shocked. He suddenly realized that he must have been one of them.
“Blake, what the hell is going on?”
He turned around and saw his wife standing in the doorway, her initial expression of confusion replaced by one of shock. He simply stared at her.
“Blake? What happened to you? My God, is that Mr. Kanter's house?”
Morrison said nothing, turning around slowly to look at the burning remains. The Agent. Fire. There was no way anyone was coming out of that alive.
Mira Vujanac got off the bus and walked briskly up the street toward a small brownstone. The light had dimmed fast in the city once the sun had gotten behind the buildings, and Vujanac hated to be outside at night. Twenty years ago, when the city was much less safe, she had been mugged and raped at knifepoint near the park. Despite years of therapy and more money than it cost to send her children to college, she had never been freed of the fear of walking the streets after dark. She clutched her bag as every stranger passed by, focused almost maniacally on the small black gate that protected the tiny space in front of her door. Still plenty of light, she reminded herself and yet accelerated her pace.
Suddenly, a dark shape appeared from one of the stairways on her right. Mira reacted instinctively, her past attack having given her a heightened sense of threat, so that she identified the hostile intent in the movements before she was even conscious of it. She reached into her bag and pulled out her mace spray, turned and aimed as she had been taught in her self-defense classes, and sprayed.
The man was too fast. He had anticipated her movement and, with his left arm, swatted away her right, knocking the can of mace from her hand. With his right, he brought up a dark object, a gun with a long and large barrel. Oh, God, not again.
Angel Lightfoote walked along the bridge in Central Park, looking down and watching the slow passing of autumn leaves floating on the murky waters of the pond. She passed the couples strolling by holding hands, wrapped in fall jackets, and shielding their faces from the strong wind. Many stopped to stare at her: a waterfall of orange hair, long white dress down to her bare feet, and no jacket. She didn't mind, even if she did notice. There were more important things.
Lightfoote sighed, staring at the trees of the park, leaves turning, soon to become silent skeletons. Winter was a dark time for her, and she dreaded the sleeping of the plants and the sense that life was frozen, stilled, and hidden from view. In that winter bleakness, the concrete of the city no longer seemed so sterile. In fact, she might even prefer it to living things that had been silenced by the cold.
She turned to leave, to return home before the night fell. She began to walk but stopped suddenly. She cocked her head to one side and stared, as if listening intently. The animals are quiet, she thought. Lightfoote had always been able to hear things, see things, sense things that seemed unavailable to everyone else around her. She had struggled as a child, not realizing that those things she knew effortlessly were invisible to others, and that she had to be careful to pretend not to notice them or risk alienating other people with her strangeness. Joining the FBI, she had found for the first time a usefulness for her strange sensitivity. She didn't fool herself — everyone still thought of her as different and kept a certain cautious distance. But for them, she was at least useful on many occasions, when she was able to intuit or connect facts to answers that others could not.
Something is wrong. She felt it in the air flowing over her, in the strange silence from the living heartbeats she sensed around her. They are afraid. Lightfoote realized that she, too, was afraid, and that she was beginning to feel the source of the others' fear. Something close, something hostile, something murderous approached. With growing panic, Lightfoote finally began to realize that it was seeking her.
She spun in several directions, trying to see what this thing was and from where it approached. But the bridge and surrounding region were empty, save the scattering leaves and the sound of wind.
Run, Angel. Run.
A voice spoke intently in her mind. All her body felt the urge to flee, and in a single instant, she gave way and raced down the bridge toward the park exit. At that moment, wood splintered from behind her and the voice called out harshly. You cannot run away.
Angel ran faster. Her white dress flowed out from her body as she raced, pieces of wood exploding inches behind her. She leapt onto the broad handrailing of the bridge and dove through the air. She felt weightless as she drifted down like a white leaf on the wind and plunged into the green mass of water below.
The phone calls kept rolling in. John Savas sat in his office, shocked and disbelieving. Across from him, Cohen sat in a chair weeping, nearly hysterical and overcome with grief. As he put down the receiver, he brought his hand to his forehead and squeezed, a headache pounding, crushing him like a vice. Unbidden, his mind scrolled through the names: Larry, Mira, Matt…Manuel. All confirmed killed, murdered, one call after another bringing in horrific news, inducing nauseous baths of emotion and shock. The FBI was scrambling to locate the remaining agents of Kanter's division and the parallel division chiefs. It was a nightmare of proportions he had never imagined.