others trailed after. "What about you two?" Brian asked Laurel and Dinah.
"I don't want to go," Dinah said. "I can hear it as well as I want to from here." She paused and added: "But I'm going to hear it better, I think, if we don't get out of here soon."
Brian glanced at Laurel Stevenson.
"I'll stay here with Dinah," she said quietly.
"All right," Brian said. "Keep away from Mr Toomy."
"Keep away from Mr Toomy." Craig mimicked savagely from his place on the floor. He turned his head with an effort and rolled his eyes in their sockets to look at Brian. "You really can't get away with this, Captain Engle. I don't know what game you and your Limey friend think you're playing, but you can't get away with it. Your next piloting job will probably be running cocaine in from Colombia after dark. At least you won't be lying when you tell your friends all about what a crack pilot you are."
Brian started to reply, then thought better of it. Nick said this man was at least temporarily insane, and Brian thought Nick was right. Trying to reason with a madman was both useless and time-consuming.
"We'll keep our distance, don't worry," Laurel said. She drew Dinah over to one of the small tables and sat down with her. "And we'll be fine."
"All right," Brian said. "Yell if he starts trying to get loose."
Laurel smiled wanly. "You can count on it."
Brian bent, checked the tablecloth with which Nick had bound Craig's hands, then walked across the waiting room to join the others, who were standing in a line at the floor-to-ceiling windows.
9
He began to hear it before he was halfway across the waiting room, and by the time he had joined the others, it was impossible to believe it was an auditory hallucination.
That girl's hearing is really remarkable, Brian thought.
The sound was very faint - to him, at least - but it was there, and it did seem to be coming from the east. Dinah had said it sounded like Rice Krispies after you poured milk over it. To Brian it sounded more like radio static - the exceptionally rough static you got sometimes during periods of high sunspot activity. He agreed with Dinah about one thing, though; it sounded bad.
He could feel the hairs on the nape of his neck stiffening in response to that sound. He looked at the others and saw identical expressions of frightened dismay on every face. Nick was controlling himself the best and the young girl who had almost balked at using the slide - Bethany - looked the most deeply scared, but they all heard the same thing in the sound.
Bad.
Something bad on the way. Hurrying.
Nick turned toward him. "What do you make of it, Brian? Any ideas?"
"No," Brian said. "Not even a little one. All I know is that it's the only sound in town."
"It's not in town yet," Don said, "but it's going to be, I think. I only wish I knew how long it was going to take."
They were quiet again, listening to the steady hissing crackle from the east. And Brian thought: I almost know the sound, I think. Not cereal in milk, not radio static, but... what? If only it wasn't so faint...
But he didn't want to know. He suddenly realized that, and very strongly. He didn't want to know at all. The sound filled him with a bone-deep loathing.
"We do have to get out of here!" Bethany said. Her voice was loud and wavery. Albert put an arm around her waist and she gripped his hand in both of hers. Gripped it with panicky tightness. "We have to get out of here right now!"
"Yes," Bob Jenkins said. "She's right. That sound - I don't know what it is, but it's awful. We have to get out of here."
They were all looking at Brian and he thought, It looks like I'm the captain again. But not for long. Because they didn't understand. Not even Jenkins understood, sharp as some of his other deductions might have been, that they weren't going anywhere.
Whatever was making that sound was on its way, and it didn't matter, because they would still be here when it arrived. There was no way out of that. He understood the reason why it was so, even if none of the others did... and Brian Engle suddenly understood how an animal caught in a trap