Horne came in while Tim was still crying, still handcuffed to the chair, still facing the television screen. The Colonel stood a respectful distance away and waited for Tim to get control of himself again. Eventually Tim turned his chair around to face the military man.

“He could still be alive,” Horne said.

“No,” Tim replied. It was something he knew, deep in his bones.

“I have a team investigating right now. We were able to figure out which intersection is shown in the video and they’re going to—”

“My son is dead,” Tim said.

“You can’t know for sure.”

“My son is fucking dead! I wish Nero had gotten him. That would have been quick. How many weeks has it been since that footage was shot? He’s been trapped in that car this whole time, unable to get out of his car seat. Without Karen to set him loose he could do nothing but sit there and be terrified and wonder when his Daddy was going to come save him. He must have been hungry, so hungry, but in the end he almost certainly died of thirst after just a few days. Maybe he had a sippy cup of juice with him, and maybe he didn’t, but either way there’s no chance he made it.”

Horne rocked back in his boots as if he’d been slapped. “That’s a hell of an attitude.”

“It’s the attitude that got me this far,” Tim explained. “It’s called realism. You can talk all you like about high-minded principles, Horne. You can tell me every life is sacred and that you had to go to all this trouble to save me. It’s bullshit, all of it. While my son was dying of thirst watching droolers stumble around just feet away, I was in Chicago trying to get laid. The funny thing is I love my wife. I always have. I wasn’t angry with her or feeling some kind of seven year itch. I just saw an opportunity to get some while I was out of town and I thought hey, why not? Karen would never know. Nobody would get hurt.”

Horne frowned. “You aren’t being punished for your sins, Kempfer.”

“Of course not. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Things just happen. There’s no reason for them, and there’s no big story they all fit into like puzzle pieces. Life fucks us, all of us, again and again and we do what we do to try to make sense of it but that’s a fool’s game. You can’t win. Senselessness is just too big to fight.”

Horne’s eyes had glazed over while Tim was speaking. His hands shook as he reached down to undo Tim’s handcuffs.

“Come with me,” he said, and nothing more.

The two of them walked out of the hangar side by side, the armed guards and a confused-looking Buzzard following a few steps behind. The rain had stopped and the sun was low and orange on the horizon, not quite hot enough to dry up the wet concrete runway. Thousands of tiny cracks riddled the tarmac, darker than the surrounding material.

They had a ways to go. Horne led Tim down a runway that seemed to go on forever, passing empty hangars on the left and right. It almost felt good to Tim to walk under an open sky without the fear that droolers would come running at him at any moment. It almost felt good—except he was pretty sure nothing would ever feel good again. Not like it used to.

Ahead of them the runway was cluttered with thousands of white shapes, each about the size and dimensions of a human being. As they got closer Tim saw they looked like marble statues though they also looked stained, which confused him.

Eventually they got close enough to see what they were. They were statues of a kind though they didn’t look like stone at all. They looked more like Styrofoam. They had no faces, just blank round heads, and their arms were raised in a gesture of horror. They were all of them identical in pose and aspect, differing only in that some had visible seams running up their legs and sides while others were smooth.

Each statue had a dripping dark stain on its shoulders and neck. Some kind of dark fluid had been sprayed on them and it had dripped down their chests and groins. It looked like the fluid had melted them a little wherever it fell.

They stood in silent rows, one after the other as far down the runway as Tim could see.

“Creepy,” Buzzard said behind them. Tim didn’t even glance back.

“Corn starch,” Horne said. When Tim didn’t respond to that either he explained. “They’re molded from corn starch so they’re fully biodegradable. One good rain would send them all down the gutter and into the Sound.”

A pair of uniformed boys wearing elaborate respirator masks were moving between the rows, each of them carrying a heavy spray rig. They took turns splashing the statues with more of the dark fluid. One of the boys turned around suddenly and sprayed his partner across the back. The victim jumped up and down, then whirled to fire back.

“Privates! Stand to attention at once,” Horne said, and the boys stopped horsing around and snapped into postures of obedience. Horne had clearly trained them well, even if he hadn’t gotten all the mischief out of them.

“What is that gunk?” Buzzard asked.

“The Army calls it TZ. Civilians know it as saxitoxin.”

Tim nodded, once. “I get it,” he said.

“Could you tell me?” Buzzard demanded.