“He can’t hurt those people… that would be attacking innocents.” “Really? Your boss that allowed you to hurt his team is an innocent? Do you believe that? Will Mark believe that?” “Fine. He can’t hurt those people… he has no access to them.” “Well, he hinted he might somehow have ten thousand vampires within his organization… if that is the case, and they are scattered across the US, I suspect he has pretty good access to almost everyone. Unless we all hide in a bunker for the next decade or so.” This was going to take a while.
THE NEIGHBORHOOD » CARL Hod and I parked the LV and SUV a bit North of Oroville on a dirt pullout about a mile beyond a fire station. At this point in the road it looked like almost no one came up this far, but we moved up here late Saturday night after the last dialysis shift, so we couldn’t see what traffic was normally like. It was also hard to see the road, although I could see lots of fauna around it in the bushes. We were definitely in some nice woods, but our goal was to hide and blend in… at the same time. To “look casual”. Being in Oroville is a new experience for both Hod and me: the foothills of mountains are very different from the beaches of Santa Barbara and Southern California, and Hod is from Hawaii. Hawaii has mountains (or really volcanos) but they are pretty warm. We both seem to be surviving in spite of the climate change. We picked going to Oroville because no one else raised their hand during the very rushed meeting. I would normally have preferred being back in Santa Barbara, but my wife and children left for her parents’ home (in Zurich) at the end of the school year, so I had nothing to go - 91 -
