He was now about three blocks from Beacon Hill and the wrought-iron gates that separated the street from the park's landscaped grounds. He decided to stop there. He got behind a tree trunk and extended his neck as far as he could to see what was on the other side of the fence.
His heart skipped a beat.
There were people there. A lot of people. At first glance, Chuck calculated that there must have been at least a thousand. Beneath the elevated redbrick portico and the Corinthian columns of the State House. Most of the people there were lined up to get into the building. It was the way they were lined up that terrified Chuck. Even though he'd seen similar things dozens of times in recent weeks he still hadn't gotten used to them. They were in a perfectly orderly line. In total silence. No arguments, no nervous leg movements and no impatient glances at their watches. Just standing motionless in the line, each one staring at the nape of the neck in front of them. The line snaked from the State House entrance, going down through the garden to the wrought-iron gates.
Another several dozen people seemed to be keeping watch around the line and the entrance doors. Observing the surroundings, some of them with binoculars.
Now Chuck was paralyzed. His legs wanted to run far away from there without waiting to see any more, but his brain told him he shouldn't move. That he had miraculously managed to get that close without being seen, but now any movement could give him away. He was right out in the open, in the middle of the street, three blocks from where those things were scoping out the surroundings with binoculars and maybe a third of a mile from the dome darkened by the shadow of that black cloud of Captors.
And lastly, a part of his mind was telling him that he might have reached the end of his journey. His fate. That it was likely that Ollie was there. Among all those people. His son could be just one more of the masses, controlled by the vortex in that communication center, but there was also the possibility that he was like him. One of the immune. A survivor.
Now Chuck rummaged through his pocket and grabbed the pistol with a trembling hand. Probably a totally useless instrument in that situation, but comforting in spite of it all. A vestige of the old civilization.
That was when it happened. Chuck didn't need to turn around to know that the cold pressure on the nape of his neck was the barrel of a gun and that the metallic sound that echoed down the empty street was the sound of a pistol being cocked.
“If you were one of Them I wouldn't have been able to get this close to you without you reading my thoughts,” said a low voice right behind his head. The guy that had just rested his gun on the nape of Chuck's neck had to be very close to his head, maybe just an inch away. Chuck could feel his hot breath on the back of his neck. “And if you were one of us, I'd know you. So, who the hell are you?” said the voice. “And more importantly, how did you manage to get here?”
The pressure of the gun's barrel was removed from his neck. Chuck raised his arms and turned around very slowly. The guy that was aiming at him with an automatic weapon must have been twenty-five years old at most. He was dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans worn out at the knees. His expression conveyed deep concern mixed with curiosity. It had been many days since Chuck had seen a face like that. A real face with a real expression. Since he had left Saunders to his fate in the basement of his house. Chuck couldn't control his reaction. He started crying like a baby. Before the other man could do anything, Chuck wrapped his arms around him in a trembling hug. He had found another real human being. In the middle of that deserted street.
He was hugging him, his head resting on his shoulder, when the young man spoke in a tone of genuine shock.
“Mr. Kimball?” said the young man. “Is that you?”
Chuck moved away abruptly. He stared at the young man's face, examining his features. A lump formed in his throat. He knew those features, though it must have been several months since he'd seen them. It was as if the young man's face had aged ten years in that time. Wrinkles had appeared on his forehead and worry lines around his eyes, but there was no doubt. It was Paul Clark. His son's basketball coach.
“Paul?” said Chuck. He couldn't believe his eyes.
They both looked at each other for an instant without knowing what to say.
“Congratulations,” said Paul Clark finally. “You've found the Boston Resistance.”
PART III. “And They All Hid in the Caves and Among the Mountain Crags”
CHAPTER 32. Take Me to Your Leader
Lucas Giraut is sitting in the study of his apartment in the former ducal palace, working on his Louis XV cartonnier that, up until a few days ago, was in his office on the mezzanine of LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD. There is no natural light. All the light in the study comes from an art nouveau lamp on a coffee table near the desk. On top of the desk, open like an anesthetized animal with its legs splayed in a veterinarian's office, is a copy of The Lost Rivers of London by Álex Jardí, into which Giraut is transplanting pages of Stephen King's new novel. Carefully extracting the original signatures and replacing them with others meticulously trimmed to the right size. All with the help of his kit for restoring and repairing books. A motley collection of bradawls, rods with serrated ends and small, sharp, surgical-looking blades. On top of the cartonnier there are also nonabrasive glue and nonabrasive cleaning products.
Giraut has just pasted the central signature of Wonderful World into The Lost Rivers, the signature that contains the central block of chapters thirty to thirty-six, when his doorbell rings.
He looks up from his work and frowns into the darkness that surrounds his worktable. For a split second, his mind tells him that it's Valentina. Making one of her Friday afternoon visits. Then he remembers what happened the week before. On a normal Friday afternoon this is the time Valentina Parini would come looking for him to go down to the courtyard. There he'd sit in a chair while she took the hammock and together they would succumb to the pleasures of conversation. Usually about something related to Stephen King's books or movies. Like Victorian gentlemen conversing phlegmatically beneath the trellis of a colonial villa. With the sound of cannons firing in the background.
The doorbell rings again. Giraut sighs and takes off the latex gloves he's been wearing to work on the transplant of signatures. He doesn't recognize the figure that appears on the other side of his apartment door. It's a tall, slender woman who's much more sexually attractive than any woman he's ever had dealings with before.
“Are you Mr. Lucas Giraut?” The woman at the door looks through her dark glasses at the ochre-colored Lino Rossi dressing gown Giraut is wearing over his clothes. With no decipherable expression on her face. “The antiques dealer?”
There is something genuinely strange about the woman at the door. It's not her evening gown with a shawl over her shoulders, or her high-heeled shoes with straps up to the knee, or her dark glasses inappropriate to the late-afternoon light, or the decidedly outmoded scarf she wears tied around her head. Although Giraut's suitological analysis is mainly applied to men's suits, the woman's brand names and indicators of social distinction are conspicuous. Prada. Miyake. Dolce & Gabbana. What is strange about the woman's appearance, however, is the fact that both her haughty posture and her attire seem completely detached from reality. They seem more like the haughty posture and attire of certain tragic, tall actresses of the American studio system of the forties and fifties. Her acceptance of the body she was born with brings to mind images of loneliness in ivory towers and hotel night tables filled with bottles of barbiturates.