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to Carson, no less so than nature and the world itself.
    They chose a table outside, in the oak shade, apart from most of the other diners. They ordered crawfish boulettes and fried okra salad, followed by shrimp-and-ham jambalaya.
    This was a denial lunch. If they could still eat this well, surely the end of the world was not upon them, and they were not as good as dead, after all.
    “How long does it take to make a Jack Rogers?” Michael wondered when the waitress had left.
    “If Helios can make anyone overnight, if he’s that far advanced, then we’re screwed,” Carson said.
    “More likely, he’s steadily replacing people in key positions in the city, and Jack was on his list already.”
    “So when Jack did the first autopsy on one of the New Race and realized something weird was going on, Helios just brought his Jack on-line quicker than planned.”
    “I’d like to believe that,” Michael said.
    “So would I.”
    “Because neither of us is a big cheese. On his short list, our names wouldn’t be there between the mayor and the chief of police.”
    “He would have had no reason to start growing a Carson or a Michael,” she agreed. “Until maybe yesterday.”
    “I don’t think he’ll bother even now.”
    “Because it’s easier just to have us killed.”
    “Totally easy.”
    “Did he replace Luke or was Luke always one of them?”
    “I don’t think there was ever a real Luke,” Michael said.
    “Listen to us.”
    “I know.”
    “When do we start wearing aluminum-foil hats to protect ourselves from alien mind-readers?”
    The thick air swagged the day like saturated bunting, hot and damp and preternaturally still. Overhead, the boughs of the oaks hung motionless. The whole world appeared to be paralyzed by a terrible expectation.
    The waitress brought the crawfish boulettes and two bottles of ice-cold beer.
    “Drinking on duty,” Carson said, amazed at herself.
    “It’s not against department regulations during Armageddon,” Michael assured her.
    “Just yesterday, you didn’t believe any of this, and I half thought I was losing my mind.”
    “Now the only thing I can’t believe,” Michael said, “is that Dracula and the Wolfman haven’t shown up yet.”
    They ate the boulettes and the fried-okra salads in an intense but comfortable silence.
    Then before the jambalaya arrived, Carson said, “Okay, cloning or somehow he can make a perfect physical duplicate of Jack. But how does the sonofabitch make his Jack a medical examiner? I mean, how does he give him Jack’s lifetime of knowledge, or Jack’s memories ?”
    “Beats me. If I knew that, I’d have my own secret laboratory, and I’d be taking over the world myself.”
    “Except your world would be a better one than this,” she said.
    He blinked in surprise, gaped. “Wow.”
    “Wow what?”
    “That was sweet.”
    “What was sweet?”
    “What you just said.”
    “It wasn’t sweet.”
    “It was .”
    “It was not.”
    “You’ve never been sweet to me before.”
    “If you use that word one more time,” she said, “I’ll bust your balls, I swear.”
    “All right.”
    “I mean it.”
    Smiling broadly, he said, “I know.”
    “Sweet,” she said scornfully, and shook her head in disgust. “Be careful or I might even shoot you.”
    “That’s against regulations even during Armageddon.”
    “Yeah, but you’re gonna be dead in twenty-four hours anyway.”
    He consulted his wristwatch. “Less than twenty-three now.”
    The waitress arrived with plates of jambalaya. “Can I get you two more beers?”
    Carson said, “Why the hell not.”
    “We’re celebrating,” Michael told the waitress.
    “Is it your birthday?”
    “No,” he said, “but you’d think it was, considering how sweet she’s being to me.”
    “You’re a cute couple,” said the waitress, and she went to get the beers.
    “Cute?” Carson growled.
    “Don’t shoot her,” Michael pleaded. “She’s probably got three kids and an invalid