[Michael Cantor]

They smelled the town before they saw the town, that familiar blend of popcorn and burnt flesh that had hung heavy in the air at the site of every octoplex bombing, and without even thinking formed a single line as they moved toward the smoldering ruins, the horses picking their way through the first piles of rubble, the six men shapeless within the triple layers of their biohazard gear; the group of them following the path that had started in a shopping mall near Austin, and then taken them to a wind swept mesa outside of Santa Fe, and then to a California forest where they had caught their only glimpse of the red-headed midget and his bicycle, and then quickly back east to the FBI lab in Maryland, and now they were here, and here was where they were. Suddenly, a trumpet sounded.