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Chelsea liked this building. She liked it a lot.

“What about this place, Mister Jenkins?”

“Looks like no one’s here,” he said. “It’s all boarded up. Could be some b.u.ms inside, but if so, we can take care of them.”

“Is there . . .” Chelsea searched for the words that Chauncey had given her. “Is there a lot of concrete? Is there . . . rebar? Metal? Those things will make it hard to see us from s.p.a.ce.”

“Oh sure,” Mr. Jenkins said. “There will be lots of that.”

“Good,” Chelsea said. “I think the dollies will like it here. Let’s go inside and look.”

“Okay,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Let’s drive around the building and look for a door we can open up. We need to pull the Winnebago inside, or the police will see it in the morning.”

The Winnebago turned right on Orleans, and its headlights lit a man in the middle of the street. He was dressed in only a T-s.h.i.+rt and jeans, s.h.i.+vering like mad. Even in the dim headlights, they could see that his fingers were swollen and raw. Behind the man they saw the rear of a squat, jet-black motorcycle caked with frozen sludge, dirt and even some ice.

“Holy s.h.i.+t,” Mr. Jenkins said. “It’s freezing outside. That guy was riding a Harley? Is that an Ohio plate on that thing? Look at his f.u.c.king fingers.”

“Language,” Chelsea said.

“Sorry, Chelsea,” Mr. Jenkins said.

She reached out. The man’s name was Danny Korves. He had lived in a town called Parkersburgh. That was a long ways away, and he was cold to the point where he would soon die.

“Mister Jenkins,” Chelsea said, “go get that man and bring him inside. We need to warm him up.”

She didn’t want Mr. Korves to be cold.

After all, if he felt cold, so would the nine dollies growing inside him.

Now that she had enough of them, she knew how long it would take to build the gate. Construction would begin almost as soon as the dollies hatched.

And that moment was only a few hours away, sometime around dawn.

LEAD FROM THE FRONT

Agony. Heat. Brutal, shooting pain, his whole body on fire, his brain on fire.

Was he in h.e.l.l? Charlie Ogden had caused enough death to qualify. Both the enemy and his own men. How many enemy soldiers? His best guess was over a thousand—the kill ratio in Somalia and Iraq had been so ridiculously high that it was hard to keep track.

The exact number didn’t matter, did it? Thou shalt not kill. One death was the price of admission to h.e.l.l; everything else was just overachieving.

A snippet of a picture flashed through his mind. Something black, wiggling. A snake? A centipede?

The heat in his brain grew even higher, which was impossible, because it couldn’t get any higher. Ogden heard himself screaming, or at least trying to, but something in his mouth m.u.f.fled his sounds.

The picture again. Not a snake . . . a tentacle.

A hatchling.

Were they there to kill him? To take revenge?