"Bouncing Beelzebub," Charon whispered, "you're alive."

"Yeah," George replied, dropping his pack on the floor of the boat. "So?"

"Pardon my friend," Alain said, distracting Charon. "He's not the most polite individual." He gave George a glare that caused George to lower his head, leaving Alain to deal with the boatman. "Have you seen any other living people recently," he asked, dropping a roll of quarters into Charon's hand.

Charon looked at the roll, whistled appreciatively, and pocketed it. "Yeah. I took one across nine degrees downriver... 'bout 5 hours ago."

"Was he with anyone? An undead person like myself, perhaps?"

Charon kicked the motor into gear, turning the boat away from the rocks and toward the fog. "No, he was alone. Got a vampire in the boat, crossin' about the same place he did right now."

"Right now," George said incredulously, "but you're here. That's physically impossible."

"Do you have any idea where you are," Charon asked.

George shut up and Alain sat down as Charon headed toward the fog.

Alain was relieved. Kurt had escaped Vinnie and had a five-hour head start on him. He and George had come out a fortieth of the way around the first circle from where Kurt had crossed. From his research, that would put Kurt about twenty-seven miles downriver. It would take him a few hours to make that kind of distance on his own, a day with George tagging along. He'd have to hope that Kurt had enough wits about him to find a place to lay low.

---

Rather than risk the trouble involved with walking into the town, Alain and George headed down the riverbank in the direction Charon had pointed. As there was no day or night, Alain told George to just call stops when he needed a rest. Alain too would need a rest... eventually. He wasn't a machine, but he could go farther than George.

It had been a couple of years since George had served, but he was humping it like he was born to carry a pack. In five hours they made 13 miles, which was a brisk pace considering that George was carrying a pack that weighed about a third as much as he did. Of course, some of that weight was redistributed every time they stopped for a drink, and some of it was left behind every time they stopped to pee.

At that 13-mile point, Alain called a halt for a meal break and some power napping. George had napped in the afternoon so he'd be 100% for the ceremony, and Alain had slept all day. But after the brawling, the running, the planning, the packing, and now eight hours of hiking, he could see that George had fumes in the gas tank. Two hours to eat and nap would make sure that George was at least functional for another few hours.

George slowly lowered himself to the ground. Alain opened one of the packs and pulled out a bottle of water, a Gatorade packet, and one of George's special field bars that were basically a serving of a homemade Plumpy'Nut stuffed inside a cookie shell. They delivered 600 easily digestable calories, electrolytes, and B vitamins in a 4.5 ounce bar. George had created them for his monthly camping trips because he said normal sports bars always left him feeling hungry.

"Thanks," George said, opening the bottle of water and dumping the Gatorade powder in. They'd packed a dozen 700 milliliter bottles each, nearly a third of their pack weight being water. A person normally needed between one and two liters a day, but with the amount of exercise they were getting, George was going to need closer to three. At that pace, they'd go through their water in six days, five if Alain used any for himself.

Alain didn't sweat, meaning he just needed enough water to help break down and wash out the food he ate, plus a little to prevent cotton mouth and general dryness. Maybe a bottle a day. He didn't need to eat, though. He got no benefit from it in terms of sustenance and power. But eating remained a comfort thing for Alain, even after all this time. His taste buds still functioned, perhaps even more acutely than before, and Marie had been such a good cook.

George finished his bar, and what he didn't drink from the bottle he poured into his canteen. Alain handed him the sleeping mat and George lay down on the grass, resting his head on it. He was asleep quickly, his breathing and heartbeat slowing.

Those were the only sounds Alain heard. As close as the town was, no sound carried down the hill from it and no one came out to investigate. Alain didn't suspect any trouble from it anyway. If Dante had been correct, the residents were good people; virtuous souls who hadn't had the opportunity to pledge their faith to God, or hadn't chosen to do so.

Alain had a hard time believing that. The bible had only arrived in some parts of the world recently. It just seemed unfair to be expected to play by rules you hadn't been told. A just God wouldn't condemn good people to Hell, would He? On the other hand, what was just about being made a vampire against your will?

Generally, Alain tried to believe in the "no one can know what's in the mind of God" philosophy: God was just and loving, and what Alain perceived to be unfair was just the part of God's plan that he couldn't understand. He had to believe that God made it all right in the end, that God did care, that God did love him. If he didn't believe that, this whole adventure was sort of pointless.

He pulled out his wallet. The older pictures of Marie, back when they'd newly come to the states, were in an album in a self-storage unit, protected against the elements, against the tattering that would come from carrying them around, but he had more recent ones. The one he looked at was from the '60s and he'd laminated it to preserve it.

She was 41 in the picture, as beautiful as the day he'd fallen in love with her. He saw the beginnings of grey in her hair, only the slightest sagging in her cheeks, the beginnings of smile lines around her mouth and eyes. Every smile line represented a thousand laughs and he felt like he could remember each individual one. Every one of her signs of age was earned from living — while he remained unchanged.

The last two Thanksgivings had been tough. It was her favorite American holiday and she laid down a spread every year that drew friends from miles around. Even at 85 you couldn't keep her out of the kitchen. After she died, everyone got together at Alain's and tried to throw a Thanksgiving party to make her proud, but it just wasn't the same. The next year they tried again. Most of them were so used to having Thanksgiving together, they still wanted to, which in a way was a tribute to Marie and the friends she had gathered close.

For Alain, he knew what was missing. The thing he was most thankful for was gone. Maybe it was silly, even sappy, but the song "Who Wants To Live Forever" from the Highlander soundtrack made him cry every time he heard it.

Alain shook his head. He was only making himself morose. He had a lot of things to do before he could even get to Heaven, and then he'd have quite a time getting permission to stay. He put the picture back in his wallet and put the wallet away. With the original plan, he'd have needed to be very lucky to succeed, but now with George and Kurt complicating things, the odds against his success multiplied by a thousand. He'd just do his best and hope it was enough. It was all he had.

---

Alain woke George after 90 minutes and George made a few adjustments to his pack as they got ready to head out again. "Have you got a bead on Kurt yet," George asked.

Alain tried to sense Kurt. His human friends had loved playing hide and seek with him in the maze of Manhattan. Perhaps it was like throwing a ball for a dog, letting the tame vampire hone hunting skills he'd never use. But he'd become good at tracking people, sensing them. Of all the vampires he knew or knew of, he was the best tracker in New York.

He stilled his breathing and opened himself up, trying to pick up any sense of a human nearby. George was like a huge, honking blip on his radar, but he was the only one. "No. We're still too far."

George unstrapped the uzi from his pack and held the shoulder strap in his teeth as he slung the pack onto his shoulders. He chambered a round and flipped on the safety before slinging it over his right shoulder for easy access.

"You're not going to need that gun," Alain said. "You can't kill anyone here anyway. They're already dead."

"You never know what we're gonna run into," George said, patting the Uzi, "and this thing packs a nice wallop. If I only knock 'em back a few steps it could mean the difference between getting away and getting screwed."

Alain nodded. "You've got a point. But don't go shooting that thing at anyone without my say so."

"Gotcha."

---

They'd been walking for about three hours when Alain got his first sense of Kurt. "He's on the move," he said, putting out an arm and stopping George.

"Where?"

Alain closed his eyes, expanding his senses, searching for the prey he sensed nearby, the beating heart like a sonar blip. "He's near the edge. He's not moving as fast as we are, but he's got a good lead on us."

George took off running, but instead of running along the edge of the town, he headed straight for the closest main street. Alain started after him. "Where are you going," Alain shouted, speeding up to come even with George.

"We're not going to catch him in the first ring," George said, slowing, one hand on the Uzi to keep it from bouncing around, "and if we go toward his street, we're just running two legs of a triangle. When we hit the edge, we'll be closer than if we followed his route and we can start moving sideways again once we're in the second ring."

"Lead on MacDuff," Alain said, shifting the backpack, preparing for the long jog ahead of him.

---

"So," George said, peering down over the edge, no means of transport in sight, "how do we get down?"

"According to Phil, we jump," Alain replied, standing behind him, securing the Uzi onto the pack.

George looked down again, estimating the drop to be at least a mile if not a little more, his stomach registering more than a touch of queasiness at the thought. "You're shitting me."

"Nope," Alain said, pulling the strap tight and tying it off, then pulling on the Uzi to test his knot. "After you."

George felt the backpack suddenly press against him with Alain's weight behind it and then he was tumbling forward through space, beginning a mile-long dive toward the floor of the second ring.