Gumshoe ran for it, crouched low and weaving left to right, firing on the move. He saw some cyborgs falling, but more were emerging from between the now fully open steel doors and he realized that there were an awful lot of them — certainly too many to fight. Glancing to the front again, continuing his dangerous run, still crouched low and weaving to avoid the fiercely hissing laser beams, he saw that Bonnie and Satchmo had come back out of the tunnel to give supporting fire to Ben and Zapata. A laser beam found the latter, burning a whole clean through his torso, and he collapsed, screaming, his body almost sliced in two, as Gumshoe crossed the last few metres of dead ground to rejoin the group.

  'Keep going!' Ben bawled.

  Gumshoe practically smashed his way through the group, and kept going with Bonnie and Satchmo running after him to join him. Reaching the entrance to the tunnel, they stopped and turned around to give covering fire to Ben as he stopped firing and also made that final run.

  Ben had just about made it when another cyborg — taller and broader than the others, with an untouched human head on a powerful steel body, with highly mobile steel feet and razor-sharp prosthetics for hands — a veritable monster — approached rapidly from the side and grabbed hold of him. One razor-sharp metal claw took hold of Ben's throat, the other grabbed his left arm, then the monster tugged in opposite directions, tearing

  Ben's arm from its shoulder socket, which instantly gushed blood, and practically ripping his head away from his blood-spurting neck. Ben's savaged remains were hurled backwards into the basement as the monster turned to advance again.

  'Run for it!' Gumshoe shouted, pushing Bonnie away from him and raising his weapon to fire as the monstrous cyborg advanced rapidly upon him. Gumshoe fired a sustained burst as Satchmo raced away with Bonnie, determined to save her life, but the bullets just ricocheted off the monster and it kept advancing.

  Gumshoe couldn't look at the face of the monster. He couldn't bear the sight of it. He turned his eyes away, saw large red and green buttons, and automatically reached out to press the latter. A hidden engine started up and he saw the flat edge of two ceiling-high reinforced-steel doors emerging from the walls on both sides of him. Turning to the front again, where the monstrous cyborg was almost upon him, making blood-chilling, animalistic gargling sounds, he desperately fired his weapon at it, heard the bullets again ricocheting harmlessly off it, and saw its steel claws grabbing the closing doors to

  keep them apart.

  The cyborg's fierce, demented eyes were staring straight at Gumshoe out of a deathly white face rendered inhuman by brain-implanted hatred.

  Gumshoe almost screamed when he recognized Snake Eyes.

  The monstrous cyborg, Snake Eyes — this surgically mutated old friend — continued emitting those blood-chilling, animalistic gargling sounds as it stared wild-eyed at Gumshoe and struggled to keep the closing doors apart. At first Gumshoe just looked on, briefly mesmerized by sheer horror and disbelief and revulsion. Then, getting his senses back, he raised his weapon to put a short burst into Snake Eyes's exposed head, despite his despair at the thought of doing so. Mercifully, the steel gates slammed shut at that moment, shearing off the steel fingers of the two razor-sharp steel claws, which clattered with a metallic rattling to the concrete floor.

  Greatly relieved, though his heart was racing wildly, Gumshoe

  turned away and ran along the tunnel to catch up with Bonnie and Satchmo. When they heard his approaching footsteps, they turned around to face him. Bonnie's bizarre make-up was streaked with tears, but she had managed to stop crying and now gave him a pained, loving smile. When he reached her, she threw herself into his arms, muttering, 'Thank God, thank God'

  Gumshoe patted her spine with his free hand and said, 'It's okay. It's all over. Now let's get the hell out of this charnel house and breathe some fresh air.'

  By 'charnel house', he meant the dead cyborgs littering the tunnel, which otherwise was empty and silent. Glancing at those bodies, Bonnie shivered and released him, saying, 'Yeah, I agree. The sight of those dead cyborgs gives me the shivers, reminding me of what we left back there, under the Pentagon.

  Yeah, let's get the hell out of here.'

  'My running shoes are on,' Satchmo said, 'and I ain't stoppin' for no one.'

  'Me neither,' Gumshoe said.

  As they made their way back along the great tunnel, heading for the White House basement, Gumshoe thought a lot about what, or who, they had left back there. Possibly, for a start, Bonnie's parents and younger sister. That was why Bonnie looked so distraught. She had hoped to find her family down there, even as the walking dead, perhaps as hideously mutated humans. She had emotionally needed to find them, even if only to psychologically bury them and put them out of her mind for good. But Bonnie had been cheated when the walking dead had been drained of life, along with the cyborgs and the Men in Black. She would now be forced to live without real knowledge of what had happened to her family, which was worse than knowing the truth, however brutal. She could, Gumshoe knew, be deeply traumatized by this in the years to come. His heart went out to her.

  Then, of course, there was Mike Johnson — if such had indeed been his real name. When Gumshoe recalled what had happened

  back in the Pentagon basement, he was convinced that Mike Johnson had been in silent telepathic communication with the unconscious Wilson. What they had said to each other, if in fact they had communicated, Gumshoe could not imagine, but he was intrigued by the fact that Mike, just before reaching Wilson, had shown an unexpected ruthlessness, placing his need to complete the task before Gumshoe's suffering, and had then gone into some kind of trance when studying the unconscious Wilson. Mike had then vanished, somehow making his escape from the basement without being seen.

  He could, of course, have been seen by Ben and Zapata, then still in the tunnel, but those two good friends were now dead and could neither confirm nor deny that Mike had made his escape that way.

  So where was Mike Johnson?

  And why had he vanished?

  Assuming that he would resolve the mystery when he made contact again with Johnson back in Chinatown, Gumshoe continued along the tunnel with a silent Satchmo and Bonnie, stepping around the dead cyborgs and avoiding looking at them, until they were back in the White House basement.

  That basement too was filled with dead cyborgs and they hurried across it, then gratefully made their way back up the stairs to enter the ground floor of the empty White House.

  In fact, it was not empty. It was dark, but not empty. As they were making their way along the vaulted-arch corridor, they heard the soft, slow padding of what sounded like hesitant footsteps up ahead.

  Instantly slowing down and raising their weapons to the firing position, they inched along the corridor wall until they came to the stairs that led up to the First Floor. Peering around the corner, Gumshoe saw what looked like a human figure disappearing around the top of the stairs, possibly heading for the North Entrance Hall.

  Bonnie and Satchmo glanced at him, neither saying a word, but both asking the question with their eyes.

  Who was it up there?

  'Mike Johnson?' Gumshoe whispered rhetorically, then, receiving no reply, only perplexed, frightened glances, he indicated with a jabbing thumb that Bonnie and Satchmo should follow him up the stairs.

  He went up carefully, step by painful step, trying not to make a sound and managing to keep silent until he had reached the last stair and could turn into the hallway. Again hearing the sound of those slow, hesitant footsteps, he glanced into the hallway, which was dark, and caught a glimpse of a human form turning into the moonlit North Entrance Hall, clearly intent on leaving the building.

  Still concerned with who that person might be, no longer trusting Mike Johnson, Gumshoe stepped quietly into the hallway and led the others along it, protected by darkness, until they had reached the North Entrance Hall. Holding his breath, he peered carefully around the corner wall and caught a glimpse of the same person leaving the building through the North Entrance.

  Ever more careful, he advanced across the empty, moonlit lobby and reached the open double doors.

  Then, with Bonnie and Satchmo behind him, he stepped out of the White House.

  The night air smelt wonderful. The north lawns were moonlit. The shattered pieces of five dead cyborgs and one blown-apart SARGE were scattered around the double doors. The butchered bodies of Lenny Travis and Richie Pitt were lying, one sliced in two, near the end of the wall to Gumshoe's right.

  Directly ahead of him were the twisted, scorched remains of the main gate and beyond it, scattered haphazardly along Pennsylvania Avenue, between the White House area and Lafayette Square, were the dead bodies of Speed Freaks and cyborgs, the still-smouldering remains of hot rods, motorcycles, SARGEs and Prowlers, the general debris of batde.

  On the moonlit lawn, three people, a mature man and woman and a girl about Bonnie's age, all dressed in black coveralls, all

  dazed and confused, were turning around slowly, tentatively, to look back in disbelief at the White House. They were, pretty obviously, recently awakened members of Wilson's walking dead.

  They saw Bonnie as Bonnie saw them.

  'Oh, my God!' she cried out. 'It's my Mom and Dad! And my kid sister, Marie! Oh, good God, they're okay!'

  Her parents and sister stared at her, at first in disbelief, then in dawning recognition and, finally, in acceptance and joy, as Bonnie threw her weapon down and ran across the moonlit lawn to embrace them one after the other, her tears falling freely. Her mother and father, likewise, were weeping; her younger sister was smiling.

  Gumshoe didn't try to join them. He wanted to give them this private moment. He and Satchmo skirted around them and walked on to the gate, each still holding his weapon, both deeply fatigued and awash with a conflicting mixture of emotions: pride at what they had done, sorrow for their dead friends, fear of what they had witnessed, joy that the rule of the cyborgs had seemingly come to an end. Once outside the White House grounds, they glanced up and down the road, at the mangled remains of the hot rods and motorcycles, the SARGEs and Prowlers, the dead bodies of cyborgs and old friends.

  'Boy, oh, boy!' Satchmo softly exclaimed, sounding as sad as an old blues or country song. 'What the hell happens now?'

  'We go home,' Gumshoe said. 'We get back in your car and we turn on the radio and check if what's happened here has happened all over the world. My bet's that it has.'

  'Glory be and hallelujah,' Satchmo said, getting his ebullient spirits back. 'Let's check it out, brother.'

  Together they walked to Satchmo's undamaged Mazda and slipped into the front seats. Satchmo turned the key in the ignition, then switched the radio on. He didn't have to tune in to many stations to get a news programme — it was all news this morning and all of it confirmed what Gumshoe had suspected: the flying saucers had been exploding all over the world and the rule of the cyborgs had ended. Already politicians worldwide, rendered impotent for so long, were fighting among themselves for the top administrative positions in the governments hastily being reformed. The world, with its many human imperfections, was returning to normal. Satchmo turned off the radio.

  'We did it, brother,' he said. 'We pulled that motherfucking job off. Now the politicians will take all the credit and we'll be back in the doghouse.'

  'There are worse places to be,' Gumshoe said, 'and we've been there and back.'

  Satchmo grinned. 'You want a ride to your place?'

  'No, I think I'll walk. It'll be nice to saunter home as a free man, breathing fresh air.'

  'Not me, man. I need a pillow and a blanket over my head and I need it real quick.'

  Gumshoe slipped out of the car and closed the door. 'I'll see you around.'

  'You bet,' Satchmo said.

  The black man drove away. Gumshoe stood there for a moment. He heard Bonnie's distinctive laughter and glanced across the road to see her emerging from the moonlit grounds of the White House, almost hysterical with joy, trying to embrace her mother and father and younger sister all at once, becoming awkwardly entangled with them as they walked along the dark road, away from the wrecked vehicles and dead bodies, moving hopefully towards a more normal, happier future.

  Gumshoe didn't try to follow them. Some moments were just too private. He decided to let Bonnie have a few days with her family and then give her a call and invite her out For sure, they would have a lot to talk about and he certainly wanted to talk.

  Right now, however, he wanted to go home, have a good sleep and then try to track down his old rival Mike Johnson, to find out if he had made contact with Wilson and, just as important, why he had left the Pentagon basement so abruptly, without telling anyone.

  In fact, Gumshoe never saw 'Mike Johnson' again, though he saw an awful lot of Bonnie Packard.

  Michael had vanished.

  Chapter Forty-four

  From:

  no need for code.

  freedom bay is back to normal.

  reports indicate that the wilson saucers are no more and that

  the rule of the cyborgs is over.

  the major desire here is for a return to the world but we need

  to know where the bird is.

  we use the code name bird only in a nostalgic way and look

  forward to seeing you come home.

  where r u.

  come in bird.

  From:

  the bird has flown and will not be coming back.

  there can be no explanation.

  warm regards to my parents and my sister.

  thanks for everything.

  farewell.

  Chapter Forty-five

  What are we? We are One. We are One and we are All. We are everything outside and inside ourselves, and without us it cannot be. All that is, begins here. Space and time are created here. The past and the future are here and exist by our will.

  We survey the teeming infinite. We rule over what we survey. Should we cease to be, it will all cease to be: the universe will shrink and disappear and will never have been. All that is, begins here. All that will be, must end here. Here, within us, is the beginning and end of the circle.

  We venture forth to greet ourselves. We draw space and time together. All the light and colours of the spectrum swim around us in glory. We are radiant. We accept. The light pours through ravines of colour. The sounds of history pass through us and recede and return eternally. All that was, all that is, all that will be, is here and now always.

  The light pours and pulsates. Voices speak and yet are silent. The great moons are eclipsed by other moons and travel through time and conquer it. We are radiant. We accept. We embrace all that is. It streams through us and around us and then spreads out to fill up the Nothing. The purple flower of a flare. A comet streaking through the night. The light flows and turns into great rainbows that bridge the black depths.

  We venture forth to be greeted.

  Here time is rendered redundant and space obliterated. Life exists and dies and is rebom and the process is endless. Our destiny is here and now. Here and now there are no boundaries. What we see and what we feel and what we hear are all created within us. We see the darkness and the light, feel the ice and the

  fire. We reach out and touch what we will because we want it to be there.

  A sudden dazzling phosphorescence. Streams of colour and burning light. The sounds of history are collected and cast forth to bridge the past and the future. Exploding galaxies and roaring voids. Vast clouds of cosmic dust. The great dust-clouds envelop the clustered stars and then radiate beauty.

  We venture forth to be made whole.

  We ordain all that is. We accept it or cast it out. Our mind is emptied and we let it fill up with all the wealth of the universe.

  The birth and death of galaxies. Blazing suns and imploding stars. Lonely moons circle planets of a size that defies comprehension. Then light. A rush of colours. The golden furnace of a giant star. The fire is drawn out like a stretching membrane and forms a rainbow . . . a whirlpool.

  The whirlpool is immense. Lt swirls around a black hole. It is a maelstrom of energy and heat and blinding colour, and it swirls around the black hole and is devoured, leaving only night's silence.

  We embrace the silent night, cast off space and time, and see the boundaries of our mind receding rapidly until the distance is infinite. All that is, is in here. The past and future are now. There are parallel lines of light and force that stretch from here and end here. Direction and dimension: neither has credence here. There is knowledge and the certainty of existence, its reality constant. Radiation and sound. All the wavelengths rendered visible. There is colour and sound and vibration, but they cannot be measured.

  All is here.

  All is now.

  We sing. What we are sings. Great suns and moons dazzle. One of the moons opens out and draws us in and dissolves to reveal us. The Kingdom and its glory. Time and space reconciled. The moons spin and flare up and fade away as the universe unfurls.

  Colour: that which is. A vast spectrum on display. Orange skies and purple clouds and yellow suns, the stars green, blue and golden. There is death and beauty here. The stars melt and reform. There are great magenta clouds of formless matter slowly rising and falling. Green fires blaze up and die. Comets streak the sky with silver. Silent winds blow ice crystals in immense cyan spirals, and they sweep out and girdle the stars and the pale, serene moons. The colours merge and are dazzling.

  We sing. What we are sings. What we are is what is. We are one, we are millions, and we divide down the middle, and repeat this again and again and thus multiply always. Amoebae. Loops and coils. The pale moons stretch out and mingle. The stars blaze and their light meets and blends to become a vast web.