Yet the bus, safe and reliable, went on, and the girl was beside him. His mind subtly switching gears to sleep as positive, removal as positive, he began to think again of the warm bed, the moment, however transitory, of peace and release.

  “Place to stay in Easton?”

  “Uh-uh. Find one.”

  “Stay with me?”

  “Guess so.”

  “Sleep with me?”

  “OK.” A tired smile, and a hand on his jacketed arm.

  Sleep . . . A rumbling underneath the floor. An uncanny noise. A sudden cessation of power, a soundless coasting. Smoke. The bus ground to a halt.

  Five minutes later, and he and the girl were standing on cold concrete again, but not on the way to a warm bed, or to Easton, or to anywhere. The late cocoon of the bus sat smoking, then outrageously beginning to burn, no longer even a temporary shelter while help came. Soon it would be a blackened hulk, like the rows of dark houses its former occupants could feel at their backs, empty and menacing. The two dozen people, driver, suddenly stripped of his power, included, stood huddled together, collars turned up, hands in pockets, stamping their feet like a lost herd of cattle. They’d been birthed from a dark womb into an equally dark, surreal night.

  The others would stand there, probably, shaking with cold and city-slum fear, until a police car or fire truck happened by and some sort of accommodation was made. But he and the girl, unspokenly, being part of a life that was already flow, fugue, and imperative motion, shrugged, shouldered their gear, and started walking back toward the hazy orange of downtown.

  . . . Booted feet crunching broken glass of wine bottles, even an occasional syringe. Bare trees, dead and broken trees, of what had once been a neighborhood. The three-story housefronts, beyond short, paper-strewn yards, staring open-doored, no doored, windowless, obscene. No lights inside, not even a late night drunk in the street to disturb what was no longer peace, no longer anything. A neighborhood that, in no longer being one, had reserved itself into a dark mirror image, a cold, dark hell. And everywhere the smell of charred wood, infinitely worse than a burning.

  Guitar case on back, duffels in hands, hand in hand. Long hair ruffled by vagrant air, chill breath in lungs.

  “Scared.”

  “Sort of.”

  “Me too.”

  “Been through worse. Got raped once.”

  “Damn. Nothing like that. Once went in a house like these, sleep the night, old man, red eyes, breath like acid, stuck his face in mine, kitchen knife in ribs, ripped off my money. He was like metal, I was only skin and bones.”

  “Yeah. Know what you mean.”

  Walk another dead black block, another. The chill, the fear, now digging deep, moving over the line to the physical; heavy gut, fast heart, weak legs. But atmosphere still worse than actuality, maybe . . .

  At the end of the next block, silhouetted by what light there was, legs spread, arms braced: the four figures, black or white.

  Don’t turn. Don’t run. Just walk up to them, by them, nod. Though it’s three a.m. in the city of death, don’t show you’re afraid.

  Boots sound too loud, hearts the same. But almost there . . . Almost past . . . The four guys hard, inhuman, dirty denims, on drugs but no less sinewy, catlike. The other strain of American rebel, bred of violence, reacting with it. Past. . . Oh God, some distance now . . .

  “Hey, guitar man!”

  “Hey, little mama!”

  Footsteps quick behind, flash of knives seen over shoulder.

  Run!

  Surreal. The life, the road, the bus, the dreams and nightmares, hundred seats, hundred gravelly highway shoulders, motel rooms, strangers, rare kindred spirits, even the long-ago not-so-long-ago time of childhood, innocence, security, all come to this. Real enough.

  They dash down the dark cold sidewalk, baggage dropped, only guitar case thumping on his back, stripped like prey for flight. Boots pound, hearts pound, lungs start to ache, legs move faster than willed, automatic. He runs a bit ahead, propelling, hand locked on hers, feeling cold sweat. What’s passed, what’s seen of it, looks like the day after Dresden, day after some future holocaust, feels like worse. A dream he once had flashes, of a burning row of houses, flames rising to orange night sky, and a boy and girl fleeing to the cold country, he maybe to become a prophet, she a saint before they die. But what’s behind . . .

  Suddenly, a pitch-dark corner. He turns sharply, nearly slips, drags, they dart down a side street. Without looking, up the cracked steps of the first dead house, across the broken porch—ankles turning—inside. Up the filthy stairway—glass crunching underfoot, paper slipping—through the first solid door, closed behind, inside. A bedroom, bare, couple of chairs, cracked paint, peeling wallpaper, dust, raw gust in through glassless windows, wan streetlight beyond.

  But no steps following, for now.

  “Gee.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Looked back once, they were half a block behind.”

  “Won’t give up. Not them.”

  “Right. No witnesses. Kill us if they find us.”

  “Yeah. Their turf. Jungle.”

  “Can’t run anymore. Ankle.”

  “God . . .”

  Then slowly, with no more words, the merging of the same but different happens, not in a hot motel room in the not-to-be north, but here, here. He isn’t protector, she isn’t consoler, they’re just two becoming one. Arms reach, hug, long hair’s smoothed back with caring hands, still panting lips meet, denim presses denim, through hard leather jackets, breasts meet breast. He sinks back into a shaky chair, unbuckles hke an out-of-date warrior, she smiles, reaches to her belt, jeans below ankles, flash of white thigh, shuffles forward like a lost goddess. . .

  Only the dark, and the soft sound. On his lap, facing, he holding, the local warmth, sharp thrill of entry, slight motion, but then all of it getting lost again in space and time, especially since it could be the last. Go this way, maybe, right beyond the peak into nothingness. Could be worse, the life we’ve led, free at least, the dream, true at least, this, real at least.

  Only the dark, and the soft sound, the beautiful lost music from her throat.

  Afterward, they buckle up, sit cross-legged, facing, on the dusty floor. She reaches in pocket, pulls out a candy bar, breaks it in half. He digs in jeans, comes up with a crumpled pack, one last smoke, passes it. Leaves the lighter open, sets it between them, not enough for outsiders to see, but enough for them till it dies. Cold and death kept at bay one more time. Enough.

  Then he opens the battered case, takes out guitar . . . and tries to echo, not loud enough for them, what he’s just heard from her.

  It was never any good, really. Thinking you could say something that would change it. Stop the machine, the death in life. The people who held the towns and the daylight, who put you off onto the roads and into the night while they slept even deeper. Into the drift, the state of the bus world that was nevertheless more valid than they’d ever know. And now to this, to an end maybe fittingly at the raw hands of those even farther lost or found in the darkness. But at least you could try.

  A song, now, rising on the night. A gentle voice, words, guitar strings, all of it peace. Enough, after all, despite the other voices, the things they wanted, the cold hard facts. Something somehow, still, running under or above it all, from the real Jesus, through Walt, through Woody, a song, America, Russia, all of it that was ever any good was a song, a forgotten song. As this one would be, since only he knew it, and now she.

  And a noise, of the four sets of feet instinctively, finally on the stairs outside, then kicking at the wooden door. Making a sounding box of the death room, like the smaller box of the instrument. Bursting in . . . they’re gonna come get you sometime . . .

  In the end, before the blood, there was only the sound of a guitar, and a song.

  Beasts in Buildings,

  Turning ’Round

  by J.N. Williamson

  If she had a premonition that morning that she was going to die that day, it probably wouldn’t have occurred to her that her life would end in the bomb shelter.

  Certainly not with her throat cut.

  Three people with her in the old, reopened shelter saw the start of the woman’s death if not, in all cases, the cause of it. They were among those who weren’t praying for the missiles to pass by the hotel again that afternoon, though they certainly wished for another miracle. One of them merely happened to turn his head in her direction at the moment it appeared that the taut skin at the front of her neck and just above the collarbone was splitting, opening up of its own accord. Fascinated, he had the impression as well that the gap immediately began to widen—as though something inside her was pushing out, trying to escape. But that was only the blood.

  A second person saw the death start, too, but looked away. He was too frightened by the noise above the hotel to allow anything to register in his mind except his personal terror.

  The third person who observed the arrival of death and had not been praying was the murderer. By the time the dead woman was pitching forward with no sound escaping her lips—moving for an instant as if she might be on the verge of standing—that person was already sitting alone in a concave hollow of the shelter even more steeped in shadow than the rest of the bare and colorless, utterly functional room.

  He didn’t point, cry out, or rise until the first witness was already emitting piteous cries, which drew the complete attention of the other fifteen living people present, and by then, an unsuppressed smile didn’t matter much.

  Under the circumstances, it was safe to consider himself successful.

  Safe, successful, and self-satisfied for the third time running.

  Three women murdered inside a stale and poorly illumined bomb shelter built to fend off the weapons of other, half-forgotten wars and taking up less than half the cellar of the modest old hotel. Just one exit, too! Three, during a total of nine raids spread over four days—let the foreign army devil see a pattern in that! Three down, fourteen to go, some men, some women—it was delicious to picture them trying to decide whether the males were to be spared, and only the females stalked and slaughtered! Fourteen human beings of varying faiths and several nations, the imbeciles huddled together because they already feared for their worthless lives—incapable of going anywhere else from terror of the bombs!—and they had no way to discover who was cutting their throats!

  His solitary risk lay in the likelihood that they’d no longer think, after this, that two or more nationals were killing each other; they’d know there was just one murderer. But that added another element of challenge, of delight! The trick was to take them when they least expected it, and to destroy as many of them as possible prior to the eventual evacuation.

  So, since they wouldn’t anticipate consecutive attacks, the next victim must die during the next sortie of planes and missiles. Perhaps—if they were rattled badly enough—his total might climb to five or six, even more.

  And they would never discover the motive behind the killings in ten thousand risings of the sun—in one hundred thousand!

  Because there was none.

  The three men from the embassy had taken the best table in the restaurant of the besieged hotel with as little to-do as if magnetized by it, and the headwaiter had passed out menus without giving a thought to their right to the table. There was that kind of dignity to the graying ambassador, whether anyone else in the place knew his profession or not. His aide was trying hard—fine-haired mustache meant to age him, twitching whenever he wiggled his upper lip—to do a good impression of the old man.

  As to the uniformed man with the short-cropped, wiry hair, he had his own sort of dignity, but would have felt badly about his small group commandeering the big table if the ranks of people staying at the hotel hadn’t been thinned. In addition to the trio of women killed in the basement shelter, a number of frightened individuals had run off into the war-torn city to vanish, and some patrons, obviously, had stayed in their rooms tonight.

  Not that he blamed them. He’d been stunned when the latest victim’s throat was slashed. Dead bodies work up very little appetite, he thought, and began to survey the other tables, counting those who were present until it was time to place his order. “That,” he said, blindly jabbing an index finger at the menu. He wouldn’t be in the dining room at all except the ambassador desired the views of his attaché.

  Three of them, seven other customers scattered around the sizable, candlelit room. The hotel was trying to conserve the generator. Since only three employees remained—the maids had taken off so there was the dark-skinned cook, an aged runt of a bellhop, and the hotel manager obliged to double as headwaiter—that meant two folks were alone now in their rooms. The captain remembered. An exotic-looking woman who reminded him of some fifties actress, and an Alexandrian business type; they were not present and accounted for.

  It dawned on him with distaste that he was beginning to look at the others as if one was the worst kind of murderer he’d ever imagined and, with a shock akin to a minor electrical jolt, that one of them undoubtedly was.

  “My money’s on a terrorist,” said the ambassador. His voice and chin were low; he seemed to be addressing his silverware. “Who else could manage such a thing in the midst of other people?”

  The young aide bobbed his head. “That’s a given.” He didn’t admit he was contradicting his own first impression that there were conflicting groups of nationals.

  “Well, how hard is it to imagine a psycho at work,” the captain said slowly, “considering the shelter is half-dark and folks are already terrified by bombs? No nation or race is free of madness.” He let his gaze wander. Counting the actress-type in her room, there were only four women left. With surprise, he saw that one of them was seeking his gaze. “This fellow’s a planner who takes his time.”

  “Terrorists can calculate matters down to the fine details,” the aide argued, appealing to his employer with a glance. “There may be some clever pattern that—”

  “Planners of terrorism plan,” the captain told him. “They send emotional types to get the job done. Expendable fanatics full of passion, high as kites.”

  The distinguished ambassador remarked, “I find that most interesting.”

  “Thank you, sir.” He broke eye contact with the young woman. It was a night of surprises. This old man in the gray, perfectly tailored suit rarely offered a compliment. “I have my ideas, but their only value is that they are mine.”

  A crinkled smile. The ambassador peered up with a disturbingly challenging expression. “They’re about to acquire added weight, Captain. No one else in this place can get to the bottom of things but you. Not so far as I know.”

  The captain frowned, sat back. He had just walked straight into one of the old diplomat’s famous traps. “I have no authority here if you mean I should conduct an investigation.” He really meant that none of them did. Suddenly, he felt quite tired. The embassy had been closed with little prior notice. Everyone had piled into vehicles headed for the airport, and their own car hadn’t made it. Only decent luck had gotten them to this hotel in one piece. Their driver hadn’t been that fortunate.

  The old man’s blue eyes had a way of frosting out to colorlessness when he’d gotten into something; they were like that now. “I doubt anyone will raise an objection if you stop the son of a bitch. Look. The phone lines are down, even if we could persuade a policeman to jeopardize his life in coming here. I know your record, Captain. A hitch in Intelligence. You are the best man for the job.”

  Sensing an approach, he leaned forward to reply, just above a whisper. “All right. Because he probably will do it again if no one volunteers. What else is there to it, sir?”

  “Shrewd question.” The old man’s voice was scarcely audible. “Before losing the phones, we were informed that command will provide a little lift for us in the morning, whenever it looks clear. The hotel will be evacuated.”

  “Keep it quiet,” the aide added. “There’d be panic if the bird couldn’t land for any reason.”

  Yet if an Apache did make it in tomorrow morning, thought the captain, everybody there would be airlifted out, ultimately dispersed to God knew how many nations—

  And the damned killer would get by with the vilest crimes he had ever heard of. He would be free to go on slicing up innocents whenever and wherever he—

  “Please,” said the standing woman, “pardon me. But if you’re the best man to find the murderer, we should get acquainted.”

  He stared up, startled that she was speaking flawless English. “How did you hear what we were saying?”

  “I didn’t.” She gave him a fleeting smile. “I read lips. As to what was discussed, don’t worry. I’ll keep it quiet about the helicopter.”

  She was in her late twenties, her auburn hair tousled as if she’d brushed at instead of brushing it, and very, very short. The captain had the impression that her mammoth purse with the strap was far too large for her . . . of demureness, and mental gears furiously shifting . . . of western dress hastily assembled over a figure that was probably cute (a type he’d never much appreciated) . . . and of an icy challenge with the same flinty self-confidence he associated—loved and hated—with the ambassador.

  “If we can have a moment,” she went on, “at my table”—she tilted her head—“I’ll have my say before your meals arrive.”

  Irritation flared, but the ambassador answered her before he could. “We’ll excuse you, Captain,” he said, rising to nod at their petite intruder. He smiled down, benignly. “Perhaps the young lady believes she knows the identity of the murderer.” Everything in his face but the smile asked the captain to take over, and be discreet.