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  Gill stared at Bobby blankly, and then, after what seemed like an eternity, realized that Bobby’s answer had been to a different question than the one he wanted to ask. “What should we do with her, boss?”

  Bobby wanted to smack the oaf. He could hear the buzz at the end of the tunnel. This must be what it was like to be a professional athlete before a game or a rock star before a show. They were all out there, waiting for him. He checked his watch again. Five more minutes. He’d scheduled his address for five thirty this afternoon, but by eight in the morning there was already a crowd building in USC’s football stadium. His men had gone through the quarantine zone with loudspeakers and flyers. Instead of bobblehead dolls or foam fingers, the first ten thousand people into the stadium were promised food and water and the chance to hear the Prophet Bobby Higgs tell them exactly how the federal government was conspiring to make them martyrs. By noon, there were already more than three thousand people in the stadium. He should have been getting ready to bound onto the makeshift stage, not dealing with these two idiots. But these two idiots were part of the reason why he had a crowd, why he had food and water to give away. His army was the reason why people were willing to listen to his words. His words meant a lot more with muscle behind them.

  “What do you think you should do?”

  Gill looked at Kevin and Kevin looked at Gill. The two men were clearly stumped by the question.

  Bobby sighed. “Make her disappear. Beating up grandmothers isn’t exactly going to win the hearts and minds of the good people of Los Angeles.” Sure, if they’d brought him a young man it might serve a purpose to string him up from a light pole and hang a LOOTER sign on the body, but an old lady like this? Bad optics. Bobby shook his head. It was time to play the stern father. “And please, stop beating people to death just because they have the temerity to either criticize me or look to the federal government for help. The whole point is to appear as if we are benevolent.”

  The two men continued to look confused.

  “For God’s sake,” Bobby said. “Your job is to hand out food, keep the peace, and tell the people that the government has left them to die and that the Prophet Bobby Higgs will keep them safe. Understand?” Both men nodded. “And stop beating up old ladies. If you need further clarification, talk to Macer.”

  Gill seemed to brighten up. “That’s it. Macer. Macer said to bring them to him if we find a bit one. She’s got it. The mark we’re supposed to look for.” He reached down with one of his shoebox-sized hands and pulled back the collar of the old woman’s shirt. There. Bobby could see it. The bloody slit where a spider had gone in.

  She was infested.

  He had to resist the urge to scream. There were too many of his men around, and while they were loyal to him, it didn’t serve his purposes to look like he was scared. But these unbelievable idiots. Bringing her to him like this?

  “And what else did Macer say about that? He said if you find somebody with a bite mark, put her into the box. Quick now. Into the cube.”

  The two men nodded and then picked up the old lady and dragged her toward the end of the tunnel. Bobby shuddered. The old lady wasn’t just somebody threatening to leave the quarantine zone, somebody afraid of the danger. She was the danger.

  “Good timing, Bobby,” a man’s voice said. “You know what they say. Show, don’t tell. I was beginning to think we were going to have to rely on your charm alone. But hell, putting her out in front of the crowd will do the trick. Show them what this infestation really means.”

  Bobby turned and scowled at Macer Dickson, who was walking toward him from the field. Macer wasn’t as big as Gill and Kevin, but he was scarier. Solid, like he was carved from a tree. And smart. Nothing like the army of men they had working for them. Bobby knew that if he ordered it, his other men would kill Macer. He could do it. He could order Macer hung up from a light pole, just another traitor killed for collaborating with the federal government. Or he could shoot Macer himself. He let his hand drift to the butt of the Desert Eagle .45 he kept strapped to his hip. Boom. Right in the face. How smart would Macer be with a bullet right through his grill?

  That was the problem, though. Macer was plenty smart. From the time the spiders keeled over until Bobby was, in essence, the acting king of what was left of Los Angeles? Barely four days. And every passing day made Macer’s stranglehold even tighter. Macer was the reason why he was now the Prophet Bobby Higgs when, up until the spiders came, he’d just been another grifter working West Hollywood and paying Macer for the privilege.

  Macer was one of those men you knew existed in the cracks of Los Angeles, even if you weren’t actually acquainted with him. A finger in every till and pocket. A hundred men on the payroll. Running drugs from Mexico, guns from Europe, and girls from Thailand. Bobby had never met the man, but he’d worked on Macer’s turf. Bobby had a sweet gig, renting himself out to rich, lonely, married housewives. Getting into the bedroom was never the hard part. Bobby could turn on the charm like flicking a light switch. What was important was that after he took them into the bedroom, he could get the women to pull out their purses and pay him for the privilege. Sure, he’d had to give one of Macer’s men a clean twenty percent, but that was the cost of doing business. Bobby had never really put much thought into Macer himself. Why would he? Macer was just a whisper. And then the spiders came and Macer scuttled out from wherever he’d been working the strings. Power abhors a vacuum or some such, and Macer was a damn Shop-Vac.

  It was slick, really. Almost like Macer knew it was coming. The minute that President Pilgrim—Bobby couldn’t believe he’d voted for her—had ordered the quarantine, Los Angeles had gone into gridlock. In the first hours after the infestation, there’d been thousands of people who’d gotten out, broken through the quarantine lines, but since then, the army or the navy or the Marines or maybe all of them had rolled out tanks and armored Humvees and fenced the crap out of the entire place. There was a rumor that fifty miles out of the city, toward Nevada, there was a checkpoint you could go through where soldiers swept you to make sure you were clean of bugs and then you were free to get the hell out of California. But there was also a rumor that instead of sweeping you for bugs, the soldiers just shot you in the head, threw your body in a Dumpster, and then set the Dumpster on fire once it was full.

  So for all intents and purposes, Los Angeles was an island. Lockdown city. It was terrifying what the federal government could do. They couldn’t figure out how to make a simple tax return, but they could turn Los Angeles into a prison. And that prison looked as good as a death sentence. There were egg sacs scattered across the city. Everybody knew that meant the spiders were coming back, but the government seemed to expect them to believe that no, actually, the spiders were gone, never to return. Did the government really think people would just roll over? Well, yeah, probably. That’s what most people were doing. But not Macer. Macer had a plan.

  If Macer had been a simple thug, Bobby didn’t think the plan would have worked. Cops were still cops, and even though he’d seen plenty of evidence to contradict this opinion, Bobby thought Americans were basically good hearted. They came together in times of crisis. If Macer had sent his men out looting, nothing would have come of it. But Macer was organized, and it was like he was counting on man’s better nature, too. He sent his men out to grocery stores and warehouse clubs, to Target and Walmart and Home Depot. Anywhere he knew people would rush in the aftermath of the disaster. He had his men keep the peace. They organized orderly lines and distributed food and water. They made sure everybody got a fair amount. If people fought, they shut it down. Whenever they came across a good-sized man they deputized him, and they all helped to spread the word: the Prophet Bobby Higgs was going to take care of them.

  Macer was the brains and Bobby had become the voice of Los Angeles’s new reality.

  And that was another thing that scared Bobby about Macer. He’d never even met the man until all this shit had gone down, and yet, when they did meet, Mac
er was already sure of Bobby’s role, already knew that Bobby could pull it off. Like Macer had been scouting all along for somebody to play the role of a prophet on the off chance that the apocalypse hit Los Angeles.

  “Take your hand off your gun,” Macer said. “We both know you aren’t going to shoot me.”

  Macer wasn’t even looking at Bobby. He was looking twenty feet toward the bright wedge of sunlight that opened up into the stadium. A handful of Bobby’s personal guards stood at the entrance, but it was just him and Macer in the tunnel, alone. Time to talk.

  “You getting cold feet?” Macer asked.

  Bobby considered. He wasn’t scared. Not exactly. “I guess it just doesn’t seem right.”

  Macer shrugged. “None of this is right. The government sealing up Los Angeles and saying, ‘Good luck.’ Does that seem right?”

  “She’s just an old lady.”

  “Not anymore. She’s infected. If you do your part and get the crowd revved up, then we can use her as an example. She’ll be the thing that gets us out of here. There’s thousands of people out there, waiting for you. Every one of them is ready to break. We show them what’s trapped in here with them, and they’ll believe anything you tell them. You want to get out of the quarantine zone? You listen to me.”

  Bobby was quiet for a moment. He could hear the crowd noise increasing. It was almost time for him to go out and address them. “What if the government isn’t lying? What if the government is telling the truth and it’s over?”

  Macer actually laughed. “Are you kidding? Do you buy that for even a second?” He waited for Bobby to shake his head and when Bobby did, he stepped close and clapped him on the shoulder. “Okay then. We’ve got a real audience. I asked Lita to give a rough count, and she puts it at close to forty thousand. Forty thousand! That’s a lot of people who are waiting to hear you speak. Now go work your magic.”

  Bobby nodded. He rolled his shoulders and walked to the end of the tunnel. He had to bet that Macer had it nailed. It was a sort of magic, he knew, his ability to move a crowd like this. He’d never gotten a real break as an actor, and grifting had been the natural backup plan. He wasn’t the best con artist—the best he’d seen was a blond girl who was maybe seventeen and who could leave you broke inside a week and thanking her for the privilege—but he’d been good enough. He’d found his niche, separating bored Hollywood housewives from their household allowance. At least he thought he’d found his niche until Macer told him it was time to become the Prophet Bobby Higgs.

  He’d seen it coming. The spiders. That’s what Macer’s men told anyone who’d listen, that the Prophet Bobby Higgs had warned the government that the spiders were coming. The Prophet Bobby Higgs had tried to save them.

  But did the government listen? Of course not.

  And why didn’t the government listen? Because the government didn’t care about the common men and women of Los Angeles.

  And could we trust the government now that they said it was over? Could we trust them to keep us safe?

  Absolutely not.

  And who, Macer’s men asked, could we trust?

  The Prophet Bobby Higgs.

  He’d tried to save them before, Macer’s men told every person who came to them for food or shelter, but nobody would listen. Shouldn’t you listen to the Prophet Bobby Higgs now?

  He stepped close enough to the edge of the tunnel to let his eyes adjust to the light, and then he bounded out. Macer’s little army had made a gauntlet for him. Beefy men, like Gill and Kevin, forging a tunnel through thousands of pilgrims. More than thousands. As Bobby climbed the stairs to the stage, he could see that the field was full of people, and the bowl of the stadium too. As he appeared on the stage, forty thousand voices became one, chanting his name, chanting Bobby, Bobby, Bobby.

  He stepped to the podium and held up his arms. The chanting turned into a swell of cheering, but then the crowd slowly quieted. There was no sound as loud or as lovely to Bobby’s ears as the silence of forty thousand pilgrims.

  “Brothers and sisters,” he said. His voice boomed across the stadium. That was another thing about Macer. He thought of everything. It wasn’t just the free food and water and the promise of an answer to draw the crowds. It was the stage and the pageantry. It was generators to run the sound system. It was the cameraman and the image on the giant video screen. Bobby stole a glance at himself. He looked good.

  “Brothers and sisters,” he said again. “You’re here because you know the truth. The government tells you not to worry. The government wants you to believe that the quarantine is designed to keep us safe. President Stephanie Pilgrim—”

  He had to stop for a moment as boos and hisses rolled across the stadium. It was hard for him to hide a grin. There were the spiders, sure, and they were scarier than anything anybody could have imagined, but Pilgrim felt personal. The spiders were monsters, but Pilgrim had betrayed them. He held up his hands and the crowd stilled.

  “President Stephanie Pilgrim wants you to trust her. The spiders are gone, she says. Nothing to fear. But do we believe her?” He gave the responding chorus of “No!” time to die out and then paused for an extra second so he could lower his voice. They had to hush completely to hear him, the softness an added intimacy. “Of course not. If there was nothing to fear, do you think the US Army would have burned the Staples Center? Do you think there would be a smear of smoke blotting the sky? If there was nothing to fear, do you think, right now, there’d be tanks and military vehicles racing around the streets of Los Angeles, our streets, right here, inside the quarantine zone, looking for infestations and burning the spiders out? Do you know what they’re saying in the rest of the country? They’re saying, ‘It’s just Los Angeles. It could have been worse.’ ”

  He glanced over to the glass cube on the other side of the stage. Empty except for the old lady. This was the part he was afraid of. That old lady. What if they were wrong? What if she was just another person who was scared and terrified? No. She had the mark. She’d been infested. She wasn’t an old lady anymore. She was going to be their example. She was going to be what convinced this crowd that they needed to do whatever Bobby told them, that they needed to do whatever it took to get out. Because if they were scared before, they were going to be terrified after this.

  He hoped. Because God help him if they were wrong about this. About what he was about to do to this old lady.

  Macer better be right.

  “The federal government is basically saying, ‘Hey, so lots of you have died, what’s a few more?’ Two million more? Three million more? Is there anybody here who didn’t lose somebody you loved to the invasion?” He let his voice get louder. “And is that enough sacrifice for the federal government? Are they going to come in and save the day?” The question hung in the wind, his voice echoing. “Save the day? Hell no. President Stephanie Pilgrim has gone on television and said if we try to get out of Los Angeles, try to get past the quarantine, we’ll be shot on sight. If you want to save your wife, your children, if you want to save yourself, the federal government doesn’t care. There are enough soldiers to blow up the Staples Center, to look for these beasts, but not enough soldiers to help us? We’ve been good citizens our whole lives. Paid our taxes. Abided by the law. Shouldn’t the army be here to help us?

  “But what help is the federal government offering? The federal government tells us that if we try to get past the fence we’ll get a bullet in the head and our bodies shoved into incinerators. Oh, there’s nothing to fear, isn’t that right, President Pilgrim? She’s got troops burning down basketball stadiums and is offering us the promise of a quick death if we try to leave Los Angeles. Does that sound like President Pilgrim really believes we’re safe locked up in here, in the quarantine zone? Does that sound like the government is keeping us safe or does that sound like the government is keeping us locked up? Does that sound like the federal government really believes this is over? Think about it. Break the quarantine, and we’ll be shot.” He pa
used. “Our bodies will be incinerated.”

  He stood up straight and looked directly into the camera. “An incinerator? It’s not enough to shoot us? They’re going to burn our bodies. Now why would they do that? Why would the federal government tell us we should shelter in place and then threaten to shoot us and burn our bodies if we try to flee? Why do they feel the need to burn down the Staples Center, to burn down houses and office buildings? That doesn’t sound like we’re so safe to me.”

  He leaned into the microphone and got quiet again. He could feel the crowd leaning in too. He had them. “Now, brothers and sisters, I’ve got to ask you to do something difficult. I’ve got to ask you to watch this. Because this is the truth. This is what the federal government is afraid of.”

  He motioned to the cube. A man—not somebody Bobby recognized—climbed up the ladder against the back of the cube. It was actually some sort of plastic or thick Plexiglas, not glass, but what mattered was that it was a clear cube. Macer’s men had drilled hundreds of tiny holes in its ceiling and on all the sides. The cameraman moved in, and Bobby glanced up at the giant video screen where he could see the old lady in high definition. Mercifully, she was still in an unconscious heap. He watched the man on the ladder lift a five-gallon gas can and start to pour.

  It wasn’t gasoline. Macer had said they couldn’t be sure gasoline would catch properly. No. This was lighter fluid.

  The liquid pooled for a second on the roof and then started to seep through the hundreds of drilled holes, like pasta water through a colander.

  “I know this is hard,” he said into the microphone. “But the federal government is telling you it’s safe here. The federal government is saying, ‘Trust us, Los Angeles is fine now.’ ”