Det är Peter Jackson, en av de två överlevande i staden enligt boken.
Another silence, then Crane: "Sir!"
Shawn: "Judas."
Crane: "You see him? The man in the white robe, walking across the street--"
Shawn: "I see him."
Crane: "He's just stepping over them like--"
Shawn: "He's coming toward us."
Crane: "Sir, look, I think we should get out of here, if you don't mind my--"
The next sound was a high-pitched scream, and a crunching noise. Transmission ended at this point, and Vandenberg Scoop Mission Control was not able to raise the two men again.
....
"Look at this," he said, pointing to a figure. It was a man in knee-length white robes, standing and looking up at the plane. He was an old man, with a withered face. His eyes were wide.
....
Burton was beginning to regain his composure now, after the initial shock of the town. He was beginning to think clearly. They walked up to the van, standing in the middle of the street, its lights still shining weakly. Stone reached in to turn off the lights. He pushed the stiff body of the driver back from the wheel and read the name on the breast pocket of the parka.
"Shawn."
The man sitting rigidly in the back of the van was a private named Crane. Both men were locked in rigor mortis.
....
He stopped. He was looking at the face of Shawn, who had obviously pitched forward hard onto the steering wheel at the moment of death. There was a large, arc-shaped cut across his face, shattering the bridge of his nose and tearing the skin.
....
He was an old man, with thin gray hair and a wrinkled, worn face. He wore a long nightgown that was smudged with dirt and yellowed with dust, and his feet were bare. He stumbled and tottered toward Stone. His chest was heaving with exertion beneath the nightgown.
"Who are you?" Stone said. But he knew: the man in the pictures. The one who had been photographed by the airplane.
....
"We won't hurt you," Stone said. "What is your name?"
"Jackson. Peter Jackson. Sir. Please don't hurt me."
Så, lång historia kort, en av de överlevande bär fortfarande den vita nattdräkten han hade på sig när alla plötsligt dog. Shawn och Crane såg honom ögonblick innan sjukdomen slog dem och orsakade att Shawn föll fram och slog in i ratten (och eventuellt ledde till någon form av krasch).