OCR Text |
Show Acting Alone Page 12 extravagant events, or a fire, or a fire drill. Nobody cared to speculate which. Polycarpana supposed that each possible encoded event qualified as an act of God. But, even so, all the various patterns of whoops and screams that echoed so luridly and profanely across Cheyenne Mountain might be expected to blur together in the minds of women devoted not to self-preservation, but to the perpetual adoration of Christ. In any case, the chaplain wasn't down here hiding with his charges now. Simone Stylite had reported seeing him fiddling with his stopwatch while he was walking his doberman attack dog earlier today. A well-timed fire drill seemed likely. Especially since this was First Friday, come to think of it: the state's designated day for the monthly siren test. "Tarnation! That must be it!" cried Simone as Polycarpana whispered that fact down into her plump ear. Mother Superior, at the head of the procession, now held up her hand. "Far enough," she said, peering forward, down into the unspelunked gloom of the tunnel, where the Intruder was supposed legendarily to lurk. The dark procession of nuns sat down together in mostly dry places on the ground among the civil defense supplies: the bottled distilled water; the soda crackers; the boxed chemical toilet; and the fancy spiced pears which Simone Stylite and Polycarpana had spent one entire free afternoon bottling, but which Mother Superior had deemed too fancy for daily consumption and had consigned down here to gather dust till Judgement Day. Stacked close to the spot where Polycarpana helped to lay Simone in her stretcher were the terrifying army surplus foxhole-digging foldup shovelpicks. (Just |