summer sunlight ... along with the heads of a few startled termites. Gard pitched sideways off the porch, yelling miserably, and fell into the dooryard with a solid meat thump. He tried to get up, then wondered why he was trying. The world was swaying in front of his eyes. He saw first two mailboxes, then three. He decided to forget the whole thing and go to sleep. He closed his eyes.
5
In this long, strange and painful dream he was having, Ev Hillman felt/saw Gardener fall, and heard Gardener's thought
(forget the whole thing go to sleep)
clearly. Then the dream began to break up and that seemed good; it was hard to dream. It made him hurt all over, made him ache. And it hurt to combat the green light. If sunlight was too bright
(he remembered it a little sunlight)
you could close your eyes but the green light was inside, always inside - a third eye that saw and a green light that burned. There were other minds here.
One belonged to THE WOMAN ' the other to THE LESS-MIND which had once been Peter. Now THE LESS-MIND Could only howl. It howled sometimes for BOBBI to come and let it free from the green light but mostly it only howled as it burned in the torment of the draining. THE WOMAN also screamed for release, but sometimes her thoughts cycled into appalling images of hate that Ev could barely stand. So: yes. Better
(better)
to go to sleep
(easier)
and let it all go but there was David.
David was dying. Already his thoughts - which Ev had received clearly at first - were falling into a deepening spiral that would end first in unconsciousness and then, swiftly, in death.
So Ev fought the dark.
Fought it and began to call:
Get up! Get up! You out there in sunlight! I remember sunlight! David Brown deserves his time of sunlight. So get up! Get up! Get UP! GET
6
UP GET UP GET UP!
The thought was a steady beat in Gardener's head. No; not a beat. It was something like a car, only the wheels were glass, they were cutting into his brain as the car motored slowly across it.
deserves his time of sunlight David Brown GET up David GET David up David Brown! GET UP! DAVID BROWN! GET up! GET UP, DAMMIT!
'All right!' Gardener muttered through a mouth that was full of blood. 'All right, I hear you, leave me alone!'
He managed to get to his knees. He tried to get to his feet. The world grayed out. No good. At least the rasping, cutting voice in his head had let
up a little ... he sensed its owner was somehow looking out of his eyes, using them like dirty windows,
(dreaming through them)
seeing some of what he saw.
He tried to get to his feet again and was again unable.
'My asshole quotient is still very high,' Gardener croaked. He spat out two teeth and began to crawl through the dirt of the dooryard toward the shed.
7
Haven came after Jim Gardener.
They came in cars. They came in pickup trucks. They came on tractors. They came on motorcycles. Mrs Eileen Crenshaw, the Avon lady who had been so bored at Hilly Brown's SECOND GALA MAGIC SHOW, came driving her son Galen's dune-buggy. The Reverend Goohringer rode behind her, the remaining strands of his graying hair blowing back from his sunburned pate. Vern Jernigan came in a hearse he had been trying to convert into a camper before the 'becoming' got into high gear. They filled the roads. Ashley Ruvall wove between those on foot like a slalom racer, pedaling his bike like a madman. He had returned home long enough to get something he called a Zap Gun. This spring it had only been an outgrown toy, gathering dust in the attic. Now, equipped with a 9-volt battery and the circuit board from his little brother's Speak 'n' Spell, it was a weapon the Pentagon would have found interesting. It blew holes in things. Big holes. This was strapped onto the carrier of his bike, where he had once carried newspapers for delivery. They came in a ripping hurry and there were some accidents. Two people were killed when Early Hutchinson's VW collided with the Fannins' station wagon, but such minor things stopped no one. Their mental chant filled the hollow spaces in the air with a steady, rhythmic cry: Before he can do anything to the ship! Before he can do anything to the ship! It was a fine summer's day, a fine