Chester walked out of the House into a nearly frozen world carrying a globe of liquid metal.

Hot wind whipped between the narrow spaces between the buildings. Dark clouds rolled over the tops of the skyscrapers. Rain pounded the police line and House residents.

Yet the police were standing like chrome statues captured in mid-action. Faces frozen in frightening masks—black spots where their eyes should be, gaping black ovals where their mouths should be, the barest bump where their noses should be.

Zombies, Chester reminded himself. If Beyul can transform the entire police force into unidentifiable zombies for your convenience, it can make you into a zombie for someone else’s. He indulged in the creepy feelings for a moment and then weaved his way through the zombie statue maze and through the holographic/volumetric police tape to the waiting limousine.

The rear door opened for him.

He stepped inside.

An elderly man, whose hair was more silver than blonde, had a silver, sweaty sheen to his face and hands. He sat beside a zombie and across from another. The man gestured to the rear-facing seat. The cufflinks of his black suit flashed with the reflections of the flashing police lights.

Chester suppressed a shiver at touching a zombie but sat.

The door closed, and the limousine began moving.

“Well?” The man asked—his blue eyes crinkled in pleasure.

“Governor Dietrichson, we are still missing two.” Chester handed the liquid metal orb to the man.

Dietrichson took the orb. “We are no longer free. The Founding Fathers meant for us to have freedom above all else.” He looked into Chester’s eyes, “What of the one who would tighten our chains?”

“Suicide. We’ll confer with the medical examiner to make sure it sticks.”

“Good. Just don’t have all of them commit suicide.”

Chester shook his head. “Today is an ill-fated day. So many strange and unique accidents.”

“Excellent. Find the missing two.”

“Of course.”

Dietrichson considered the orb and shook his head. “The pagans, the atheists, the nonbelievers, the fornicators, the sodomists, the heretics must not be allowed to escape. The Lord’s Wrath has finally come for them. We must prepare them to face His Judgement. We must be ready for our Rapture.”

“His Will be done.”

“Amen, my son. Amen.” Dietrichson put the globe into a duffle at his feet — thick muscles threatened his suit. “Where should we drop you?”

“Back at the House. I have a feeling the security recordings will be useful in finding another connection sphere.”

Dietrichson nodded, and the limo, after going around the block, slowed. The door opened to the curb.

Chester moved to leave.

Dietrichson placed a hand on Chester’s wrist. “Remember. Let none escape.”

“His Will.”

Dietrichson nodded and leaned back. “Peace be with you.”

“And with you.”

Chester saw the dozen police officers outside the House were still frozen zombies. He stepped out of the limo into the crowd and made his way back across the police line. He made a small hand gesture.

The zombies began moving, and the chrome appearance faded to a mere silvery, sweaty sheen—eyes, mouths, noses, expressions, everything normal. Ordinary officers in Beyul connection suits talking, shifting, shuffling, filing into various vehicles.

A shiver assaulted Chester’s spine, and he tried to not think about where people went while they were zombies. Instead, he showed his forged police ID to the House scanner and entered through the doors and remembered it didn’t matter. Nothing would save them.

Chester leaned against the interior wall of the House and considered the residents hidden away in their coffins. Why can’t the crushing despair of their circumstances drive them into depression and isolation? But he answered his own question. Humanity is some strange cross between a herd animal and a pack animal — some peculiar hybrid, both prey and predator. When a group of humans has been preyed upon too much, they delusionally huddle together for protection. When looking for an individual, it is so much easier to separate and stalk and slay those who believe themselves predators.

He felt the familiar grooves in the walls — each a reminder of a childhood moment. He yanked his hand away. Stop. They might have installed new security measures during the last — Stop. Out of the past. That was then. This is now. He made another visual survey of the hall. Nothing new. And no residents.

He slipped down the stairs to the basement.

In the security room was the one person he most wanted to avoid — the sole survivor from his childhood torment.

“Hello, Chester,” Mister Monte said. He looked over the uniform. “Officer Dietrichson.”

Chester cringed at his adopted name then sighed. He knew Brandt Monte from before, from their shared childhood, from their House residency. “Hello, Brandy.”

“You still can’t respect me despite —”

“Because. This is how I chose to remember you.”

“So despite everything, you are still living in the past.”

No, because of everything, I have cleansed my past, purifying those who probably didn’t deserve such consideration. He shrugged. “Who was close to the Salas kid?”

“No small talk?”

“I don’t have time,” he gestured to the weather feeds.

One of two hurricanes, Teddy, had just missed San Antonio and Austin and was now spinning across the Sea of Mississippi to make landfall near Port Birmingham and cut across the Georgia Peninsula, so far her storm bands would pushed feet of rain into Atlanta. The other, slower moving Wilfred, had cut between the Cuba Islands and was wading into the Augusta shallows dragging her faster-spinning skirts of rain over Atlanta — pumping a dozen inches of rain every few hours.

Mister Monte gave him a slight smile. “An hour ago, the buses left taking the residents along the Seventy-Five to —”

“Why? No one would have bothered with us.”

“Times change. The quarterly bonuses —”

“Lie. Concord and Spartan before them and Hackett before them never gave bonuses.”

Mister Brandt Monte shrugged.

“Whoever-it-is is still in the city. You are covering for him. What else did you do?”

“Did you know a record one hundred contracts were released today?”

Chester clenched his jaw, closed his eyes, counted backward from ten. “Why. Are. You. Determined. To. Save. This. One? He is but one in ten billion dying people.”

“He is better than both of us were. He has a gift. He uses it to make people happy.”

He stared at her — she who perverted herself to become a man. He knew what she had done — erased the residence logs, erased the security footage, erased the contracts, released anklet trackers, and scattered chaff into the storm. This was what he loved about her. These cracks into the past into who she was kept him from accepting what she had done to her body.

Chester turned to leave.

“That’s it? You are just giving up?”

He looked back at her, “Brandy, —” he couldn’t bring himself to use her masculine name and couldn’t bring himself to be formal with her “— God’s Wrath and Judgement are upon us. No one will escape that. The government now claims everything is so much worse than the accepted models. They estimate you have three months, … if you survive Teddi and Wilfred.”

“They are regulating me out of existence?”

Chester shook his head. “No, they are abdicating. If the Earth had a quarter the population, an eighth, it might recover in time. Instead of making the hard choices, they hope enough of us will kill each other off that …” He took in a breath and shrugged. “The species avoids extinction.”

He retreated to the stairs.

“Wait.”

Chester hesitated.

“May I come with you?”

He had always loved reading the ballads dealing with what one would do with a small, fixed number of days to live. Spending time with her had always been at the top of his list.

He hated the perversion she had become, but maybe that was the best he could get. Besides, she would try to stop what needed to be done. In that regard, she hadn’t changed. Those actions would still tug at his heart — reminding him that he still had one.

He nodded. He would enjoy the challenge while it lasted.

They climbed the stairs.

A scream came from the lower level racks of coffin rooms followed by pounding on the low ceiling.

Chester glanced down the hallway. Not even the sickly-yellow brown of the coffin doors has changed. “Mrs. Pukac is off her meds, again? Not in Concord’s budget this month?” He turned and descended the stairs.

Monte grabbed his arm. “Please don’t.”

He shook free. “We have simple jobs to do. That is what everyone wants from us.” He walked to the station she had been sitting at and waved a hand through the interface gap. “Beyul, find all Tapan Salas appearances.”

Monitors sprang to life. Images began flashing on the screens.

“How,” Monte asked. “Security —”

“My employer doesn’t care about security now — the end is too near.” He turned to look at the unchanged eyes — no, those had changed too. Older, perhaps wiser. Definitely more experienced. “I had hoped you had done what you said you did. It gave me hope that maybe we aren’t the same scared kids. But we are still owned. Just different owners. Aren’t we?”

Monte nodded.

He turned back to the images which had stopped.

Salas with others — his parents and one other person were common. A perverse look between Tapan Salas and this other, who Beyul tagged as Rupert Ainsworth.

Chester took a picture and spoke the name to Beyul — trusting the information would be delivered. He walked to the stairs. Stopped and turned. “Come on. The world is dying. We might as well reminisce and catch up while we look for this Rupert. If there were a god, it would know we don’t have any other friends.”

“I thought you were a believer.”

Chester laughed and shook his. “My remote father asked me to believe, so I do. But, with you, it is hard to believe that a kind of just god would demand the sacrifice of us all for the sins of so few. Yes?”

Brandt Monte nodded, climbed the stairs with him, and exited into the driving rain.