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Another chaperone, a brash nineteen-year-old named Joel, finally unfolded his cane and picked his way down the bus steps to the ground.

“It’s a grassy field,” he reported back. Then he yelled, to the driver or to anyone else who might be within earshot: “Hello! Is anybody there?”

“This is so wrong,” said Joni, who, as the lead chaperone, felt as helpless as the little ones in her care. “I just can’t understand it.”

“Wait,” said Joel, talking over her. “Do you hear that?”

They were all quiet, listening.

“Yes,” said another.

Joni heard nothing aside from an owl hooting in the distance. “What?”

“I don’t know. A… a humming.”

“What? Mechanical?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. It’s more like… almost like a mantra from yoga class. You know, one of those sacred syllables?”

She listened longer. “I don’t hear a thing, but… okay.

Look, we have two choices. Close the door and stay here, and be helpless—or get everybody outside and mobilize them to find help.”

No one wanted to stay. They had been on the bus too long.

“What if this is some test?” speculated Joel. “You know, part of the weekend.”

Another murmured her agreement.

That sparked something in Joni. “Fine,” she said. “If this is a test, then we’re going to ace it.”

They unloaded the children by rows, and shepherded them into tight columns where they could walk with one hand resting on the shoulder of the child in front of them. Some of the children acknowledged the “hum,” responding to it, trying to replicate the noise for the others. Its presence seemed to calm them. Its source gave them all a destination.

Three chaperones led the way, sweeping their sticks over the surface of the field. The ground was rugged but largely clear of rocks or other treacherous obstacles.

Soon, they heard animal noises in the distance. Someone guessed donkeys, but most agreed no. It sounded like pigs.

A farm? Maybe the humming was a large generator? Some sort of feed machine grinding at night?

Their pace quickened until they reached an impediment: a low wooden rail fence. Two of the three leaders split up left and right, searching for an opening. One was located, and the group was herded to it, moving inside. The grass turned to dirt beneath their shoes, and the pig noises grew louder, nearer. They were on some sort of broad path, and the chaperones drew the children into tighter columns, striding forward until they reached a building of some sort. The path led directly to a large, open doorway, and they entered, calling out but receiving no answer.

They were inside a vast room of various contrapuntal noises. The hogs reacted to their presence with squeals of curiosity that frightened the children. They butted their tight pens and scraped their hooves against the straw-laden floor. Joni felt for the stalls lining either side of the group. The smell was of animal excrement, but also… something more foul. Something like charnel.

They had found the inside of the swine wing of a slaughterhouse, though none of them would have called it by that name.

The hum had become a voice for some of them. Those children felt compelled to break ranks, apparently responding to something familiar in the voice—and the chaperones had to round them up again, some by force. They initiated a new head count to make sure they were all still together.

While she was participating in the count, Joni finally heard the voice. She recognized it as her own, the strangest sensation—the voice seeming to originate inside her own head, hailing her, as in a dream.

They followed the call of the voice, walking forward down a wide ramp to a common area thick with the smell of charnel.

“Hello?” said Joni, her voice trembling—still hoping that the corny bus driver would answer them. “Can you help us?”

A being awaited them. A shadow akin to an eclipse. They felt its heat and sensed its immensity. The droning noise swelled, filled their heads beyond distraction, blanketing their most profound remaining sense—aural recognition—and leaving them in a state of near-suspended animation.

None of them heard the tender crinkling of the Master’s burned flesh as he moved.

INTERLUDE I