Ground Zero

She’d broken a little sweat by the time she rounded the corner. Out of shape. Well, what else could she expect from a sedentary life spent reading from either a page or a monitor?

She glanced back. No one following.

She slowed her pace. Had she lost him? Had she truly had anybody to lose?

Even if she’d been wrong, she’d just had a good drill on staying alert. She couldn’t allow herself to become complacent. Not with what she knew.

Another glance back and she almost tripped over her own sneakers as the blond man rushed into sight at the corner. He stopped, looking around. His movements seemed jerky, almost frantic.

As if desperately looking for someone.

She wasn’t imagining it. He was after her.

Panicked, she ran blindly. She cut toward the street and felt someone grab her arm.

Another!

She twisted free and increased her speed. If anything happened to her, her brother would check her house and read the note . . . the note that told him to contact Jack.

3

“All right, lissen up.”

Jack stood on the Lexington Avenue sidewalk with a dozen typically scruffy Kickers and pretended to pay attention as Darryl gave them their marching orders. Darryl’s scraggly brown hair had grown longer as he’d grown progressively thi

Jack always saw him around on his regular visits to the Lodge. Hadn’t ever spoken to him, but he didn’t seem a bad guy. Thompson’s gofer. Kind of the Jar Jar Binks of the local Kicker enclave.

His first encounter with Darryl had been in the basement of the Kickers’ borrowed clubhouse back in May on the night all hell had broken loose. Jack had been clean-shaven then and had had a foot planted in Darryl’s back. No way he’d ever recognize him today.

“Now,” Darryl said as he scratched his arm with his free hand, “I think you’ve all been here before, so you all should know the drill. But just in case one of you’s a newbie, here’s how we play it. We’re go

Jack stared at the art deco front of the Dormentalist Temple on the far side of Lexington and scratched his new beard. Relatively new. It had filled in nicely since he’d stopped shaving a couple of months ago. He’d needed to change his appearance and it had worked. With his hair cut short—not much longer now than his beard—he looked like a different person.

Thompson, the Kicker leader, was the reason. Their last meeting had not gone Thompson’s way. Nothing he’d like better than to extract a little payback from Jack’s hide. He’d probably spread his description among his followers, so Jack wasn’t taking any chances.

He glanced down at the faux tattoo on the thumb web of his left hand.

Thanks to Gia’s deft touch with a black Sharpie, he looked like a true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool Kicker.

“You can’t miss the Dormie members,” Darryl was saying. “They got the Michael Jackson jackets on.”

“Faggots,” said Hagaman, a long-bearded, barrel-chested biker type to Jack’s left. “Just like their boss man.”

“Former boss man,” Jack said.

Indelicate photos involving Luther Brady, the Dormentalists’ disgraced Supreme Overseer and Acting Prime Dormentalist—now former SO and APD—had surfaced last fall. He was awaiting trial on a variety of charges, sexual misconduct the least of them.

Hagaman sneered. “Bet the new one’s a faggot too.” He squinted at the entrance to the temple. “And what’s that bullshit over the door? I seen it a dozen times but what the fuck’s it mean?”

The desires of the worthless many are controlled by

the desires and knowledge of the decent few.

Plato

Jack shrugged. “It’s Plato. And Plato didn’t always make a lot of sense.”

He’d never understood how anyone had ever bought into that shadows-on-the-wall stuff.

“Yeah,” Hagaman said with a derisive snort. “What can you expect from Mickey Mouse’s dog?”

Jack laughed, then noticed Hagaman’s sharp look. “You were kidding, right?”

“No.”

“Play-toe—the philosopher.”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. Him. What’s his first name again?”

“He’s just known as Plato.”

“Just one name? Who’s he think he is—Mado

Jack turned away and spotted a couple of Dormentalists walking toward their temple. Their steel-gray, double-breasted jackets were buttoned all the way up to their high collars. Some wore military-style cords draped across the front or around a shoulder. He was pretty sure they weren’t going for the Michael Jackson look. Maybe Sergeant Pepper.

“We’d like to convert the members,” Darryl was saying, “but we’re most interested in the ones going in and out who ain’t in uniform. Those are recruits. And we want to get them before the Dormies do. We want them to be Kickers instead of Dormies. All they gotta do is read that chapter and they’ll want to read the book. And once they read the book, they’re ours. So concentrate on them.” Darryl gri

The Kickers cheered, Hagaman the loudest.

Jack knew the possibilities for some rough-and-tumble were what drew these guys up here. Most of them were bunking at the Kicker HQ downtown and it gave them a chance to earn some Kicker “community service” points in exchange for their keep.

For Jack it was a chance to stay in touch with the group. He sensed they’d coalesced around Hank Thompson for some purpose. They themselves didn’t seem to know what that was, but he wanted to be nearby when they found out.

As they trooped across the street, a dreadlocked Kicker who Jack knew only as Kewan—and who knew Jack only as Joh

“Hey, Joh

A smile creased his deeply pocked cheeks . . . a face like the surface of the moon—the dark side.

“Sure.” Jack fished out his Bic and handed it to him.

Kewan gri

Jack had guessed that was coming. A lot of these guys had little cash, so he always made a point of carrying a pack of Marlboro Reds. Kewan had lit up by the time they reached the other side.

They split into two groups of a half dozen each and flanked the doors. As the universally smiling and pleasant Dormentalists emerged or approached, the Kickers pressed them to take the sample chapter and read it. To a man and woman they refused. They knew they were being watched from inside.

Last year Jack had become involved with the Dormentalists—he wasn’t alone in thinking of it as a cult rather than a church—and knew what went on behind the walls of this tightly controlled, globe-spa

The so-called Kicker Evolution that Hank Thompson touted in Kick embraced all socioeconomic strata, but the lower echelons seemed to return the clinch with the most fervor. Many of them—including their leader—had had brushes with the law.

The Dormentalists had been in long-term competition with the Scientologists—known in Kicker circles as “L. Ron Hubtards”—over who could cull more depressed and lost sheeple from the human herd for fleecing. Then Hank Thompson had appeared on the scene with his Kick manifesto, urging people to “dissimilate” from society and join the Kicker Evolution. Millions had responded, decimating the ranks of both the Dormentalists and Scientologists. But Thompson wanted more. Right now another group of Kickers was over on West 46th Street at the Scientology building handing out chapters and spoiling for a fight.