They all laughed again. Flash kept them laughing for hours as they sat and talked. His streetwise witticisms were welcome after the grim struggle Alex and Jo had faced the night before. It occurred to Alex that he probably would not have laughed at these jokes three years earlier. They would doubtless have seemed stale. Somehow, sitting in this clearing on a cool autumn morning, Flash seemed like the funniest man in the world.
Flash, too, seemed to be enjoying the camaraderie. He was a born entertainer, who burst into song to punctuate his gags.
"Here I come, walkin' down the street," he sang, "I'm a forty-year-old freak, just a beatin' my meat."
Jo and Alex doubled over with laughter.
It was at that very precious, vulnerable moment that they were attacked.
"Throw the guns over there," said the thin, white-haired woman. She pointed an old German Mauser at Alex.
They had no choice but to do as she said. Alex tossed the Ingram and Flash's Uzi into the bushes. He recalled bitterly that Victor's .44 had been left behind in the sewer. If only he had it under his clothing now . . .
"You, too, lady" their attacker said.
Reluctantly, Jo lobbed the .32 after the other guns.
"Now, let me see what you've got for food," the old woman said.
"There's no food here," Flash told her.
The old woman grimaced. "I don't believe you."
"Well, it's the truth. I haven't got anything here. And you can see that these people don't have anything."
The old woman stepped closer to Jo and Alex. She didn't seem to be infected at all. Just another forager, trying to survive. "It was very foolish of you to sit here, singing and shouting," she said. "I could hear you from that hill way over there." She gestured with her rifle barrel.
Flash came up behind her with something that glinted in the dappled sunlight. One blow on the back of the head, and the old woman went down with a groan.
"Sorry," said Flash. He gently sat the old woman against the fallen tree. "That's the thing about the park. Plenty of company."
"She's bleeding," said Jo, kneeling to help their would-be attacker.
"Jo, she might have killed us," Alex pointed out, as he retrieved their weapons.
"I don't think that was what she had in mind," said Flash. "I mean, she could have just shot at us from the bushes."
"True."
"I hope she doesn't have a concussion," Jo said. She tore a strip from what was left of her shirt and wiped the blood from the old woman's face.
"She'll be okay," Flash said. "We can tote her to my place, if your old man will give me a hand."
Alex nodded assent. Together, they picked up the woman and carried her through the woods, Alex holding her ankles and Flash cupping his hands under her arms while Jo supported her head.
"Keep your eyes peeled," Alex instructed Jo. It seemed that the park was a dangerous place after all, but not because of the colloids. Because of people. In the sewer, there had been a certain sense of commiseration, if not camaraderie. Up here in the open anyone could be infected, and so no one could be trusted. Of course, the underground wouldn't be any different from now on—if there was an underground anymore. At least they could live like human beings here in the park, albeit primitively, instead of like rats creeping through the sewers.
Flash led them through a crumbling arch, and up some stone steps. By the time they had reached the top, the two men were winded. Jo offered to help out.
"It's not much farther," puffed Flash.
They went down the back side of the hill, where they found what appeared to be an area where logs and discarded vegetation had long ago been deposited by workmen. Untended, weeds and brambles had grown into an impenetrable thicket.
"Looks like a dead end, doesn't it?" Flash said. "But watch this." He moved a few branches, and a passageway appeared. "Just like in a fairy tale."
A few yards in was a brick cottage. There was a metal door with a combination lock, which Flash quickly opened. They took the still unconscious woman inside and laid her on a mattress on the floor.
"The caretakers used to use this place," Flash explained. "Maybe even lived here at one time."
Alex and Jo looked around. There was wooden furniture on the stone floor, most of it in pretty good shape, and several mattresses. Best of all was a fireplace.
"Pretty cozy," Alex said.
"Be it ever so humble." Flash grinned. "I got some water over here. He found a clean rag, dabbed it in a large plastic container and handed it to Jo. She used the damp cloth to clean the woman's wound.
"She's coming around," Jo said.
Indeed, the old woman's eyes were open now. Fear showed in them, but she said nothing.
"Let me get her a drink." Flash took a tin cup from a shelf and dipped into the plastic container. He gave it to Jo, who used it to moisten the old woman's lips. "Can you drink some of this?" she asked.
The old woman tried to, but it went down wrong and she choked. Jo leaned her forward and patted her on the back until the fit of coughing subsided.
"I think she needs a doctor," Jo said.
"I
am
a doctor!" the old woman shouted, hacking and coughing.
"Yeah, right," said Flash.
"I have a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, young man." She swallowed a little water.
"In what discipline . . . Doctor?" asked Alex.
"Microbiology." The old woman took another sip and sat up straight, perhaps deriving more strength from her captors' newfound respect than from the liquid nourishment. "Class of nineteen sixty-six. My name is Claire Siegel, Ph.D."
"Are you one of the people who unleashed the colloids on the rest of us?" Flash demanded. "A little government project, maybe?"
Doctor Siegel looked at Flash as if he were the most contemptible ignoramus who ever lived. "You don't really think this plague came out of a laboratory, do you?"
"Where else?" Flash shrugged.
"Maybe God is punishing the unfaithful. You're a likely looking sinner. Maybe you're next."
Alex and Jo glanced at one another, wondering if the elderly scientist were joking.
"It's as good an explanation as any," Doctor Siegel said, seeing the look that passed between them. "What the hell did we ever learn about them? A virus that infects the nervous system oncologically, and then eats away at the tissues, suspending them in a colloidal gel, transforming them into some slimy goo that attacks any living human being it happens to run into."
"Seems like you've been out of touch for awhile," Alex said. "The colloids have developed some new tricks in recent days."
Doctor Siegel looked apprehensive. She said nothing, however.
"They can communicate telepathically, and, if they're riding a fresh host, they can control their fear of water. I'd say those survivors who didn't get out of the sewers in the past few days are probably history by now."
Doctor Siegel shook her wild, white mane. "Then the park's the last place in the city with any degree of safety."
"That won't last very long, most likely," said Alex.
"Especially with looters running around," Flash said. "If there's a threat from inside as well as outside, we don't have a chance."
"What are you driving at?" Doctor Siegel asked.
"I'm saying we ought to all stick together, Ma."
"And fight off the evil oppressors, is that it?" Siegel sneered at him.
"It's worth a try," Alex said, annoyed at Doctor Siegel's pessimism. "Maybe if we team up, we'll have a better chance of survival."
"And maybe we'll end up harboring Typhoid Mary, not realizing she's among us until it's too late."
"I'm not saying we don't have to be cautious," Alex said.
"Then what are you saying?"
"That we've got to do something. I've lived like scum for three years, and I don't want to any longer."
"So you came up out of the sewer into the light. Admittedly a heady experience, but are you sure you're not getting carried away, Mr. . . .?"
"Ward, Alex Ward. This is Jo, and the Young Turk you've been arguing with is called Flash."
Doctor Siegel sighed at that last. "Spare me."
She got to her feet, shaky but unassisted. "Quite a rap on the head you gave me," she said to Flash with some resentment.
"What would
you
have done?" Flash responded.
She shrugged. "You know, I'm getting to be pretty old. I don't know how much longer I can stand to live out on my own, so I'll try to get along with you people for awhile. I warn you, though, I'm cranky."
"Yeah, we noticed." Flash grinned at her.
It occurred to Alex that these two actually liked each other, in spite of their inauspicious introduction. It would probably not do to mention such a notion at this juncture, but it seemed that some sort of mother-son dynamic was at work here. He was touched by the possibilities.
"Well, is this place going to be headquarters?" Doctor Siegel asked.
"For now, at least, it seems like a good idea," said Alex. "What do you think, Flash? This hideout is yours by squatter's rights, after all. It seems to me that we can only live here if you say it's okay."
"It was my idea, wasn't it? Hopefully, my house will soon be too small for what I have in mind."
"Which is . . . ?" Jo asked.
"If every uninfected person in Philadelphia can get together to fight this thing, maybe we can start something."
"Maybe," Siegel said. "And then again . . . "
Jo laughed. "Every movement needs a sophist," she said. "Just to keep everything in perspective. I think we've found ours."
In spite of herself, Claire Siegel smiled for the first time since she had met them.
"Are there any veterans among us?" Flash asked.
Three more people had been added to their numbers since the day Alex and Jo had first heard Flash playing his guitar. They were three disheveled souls, two men and a woman, seated on the floor of the little stone house. One of them, a man named Riquelme, responded to Flash's question. "I was in the Army," he said in a lilting Puerto Rican accent. "But I don't want to tell anybody what to do."
"What about you, man?" Flash turned to Alex.
"Yeah, I was in Iraq."
"Combat outfit?"
"Yeah, I made the mistake of joining the National Guard."
Flash grinned broadly. "Now we're getting someplace."
"Don't be too sure of that. Remember how that war went?"
"Hey, it wasn't your fault, old buddy. You couldn't find WMD that weren't there, right?"
Alex laughed. "Right."
"We got us a military strategist here, folks," whooped Flash.
The new people showed little reaction, but Doctor Siegel sat up and took notice. "Alex, do you think you can come up with a strategy, or is this new waver talking through his hair?"
"Well, there are some things about the enemy that we know. We can make battle plans based on those facts."
"Um-hm."
"The trouble is, the colloids keep mutating. And their behavior seems to be changing, too. I don't know how to predict what they're going to do next."
"Well, doesn't it seem to you that they are changing in stages?" Doctor Siegel said. "A few things were learned about them early on. For example, they seem to retain human nervous tissue after the host has been consumed, while the glial tissue vanishes into the colloidal mass."
"Huh?" said Riquelme.
"That means that the neuroglia—tissue that supports the nervous system—is disposed of, while the nerves themselves survive."
"Oh."
"For three years," Dr. Siegel continued, "things have pretty much remained the same. Now they've killed off most of the human race, and they're changing into something new. At least that's the way it looks from where I sit."
"You mean that they'll stay the way they are for a while?" Alex asked.
"I can't be sure, but I think it's a safe bet. Organisms don't evolve overnight. There has to be a pattern, but it's unfamiliar to us."
"If you're right, we've got a few years before they move on to the next phase, right?"
"Not necessarily. Just look at the physical development of a human being, for example. A brief period of infancy, a decade of childhood, six years of adolescence . . . and then forty to seventy years of adulthood."
"But adulthood can be broken down into phases, too," Jo put in. "The same twenty-year-old at fifty can be like two different people."
"True. We can say that there's young adulthood, early middle age, middle age, and senescence."
"You forgot one," said one of the new people, a gaunt, glassy-eyed man of indeterminate age. Alex had thought him to be asleep through the entire discussion.
"Which one did we forget?" Doctor Siegel asked.
"The last one—death." This was uttered in a deep, portentous tone.
Siegel shook her head at this melodramatic pronouncement. "I don't think any of us have forgotten that for a minute."
"Haven't you, though?" the hypnoidal man persisted, speaking very slowly. "Is that why you're asking us to risk our lives for some cockamamie paramilitary scheme?"
"Do you want to just give in to the colloids?" Alex asked, surprising himself by the anger in his tone. "Just lie down and let them have the Earth?"
"Better dead than red?" was the sneering reply. "You're with us or you're against us?"
"Something like that."
"What do you think can come of violence, except more violence?" the rabble-rouser asked.
The other new people murmured in agreement.
"That's right," said the woman, who said her name was Jill. "We've been getting along all right so far. We're still alive."
"But for how long?" Alex said. "There's not much of the human race left, is there? What makes you think we can survive if we don't do something?"
"Maybe we've developed an immunity," the thin man said.
"And maybe the tooth fairy is real," said Flash. "Come on, man, we've just been lucky so far. There's no reason to believe we're immune."
"Believe what you want. But remember, if you start trouble, you'll just draw attention to us."