clearly.
And there it was again, more distinct this time, and this time he could tell what it was—the unmistakable ringing of church bells. On a good day, you could hear them from out here in the hills, but who would be ringing them at this hour?
Matt lived closer to town, maybe he could hear better.
He picked up the phone, then hesitated. It was late and he was going to make Matt mad. But how could he not? Matt was the police chief and, at the moment, the town’s only cop. If somebody was ringing the bell of one of the churches, maybe it was because he couldn’t make a call.
He dialed, listened.
“Yeah?”
“Hey, I wake you up?”
“I sit by the phone all night waitin’ for you, you stupid fuck. So what in hell do you want?”
“Would you do me the favor of going to your window and tell me what you hear?”
“’Course not.”
“You’re a cop, aren’t you at least curious?”
“Not at all. Good night.”
“Matt! MATT!” And suddenly it wasn’t funny. He had to know.
“Yeah?”
“Just do it.”
There was a silence. It extended. Eventually, Matt came back. “Nothing.”
“You must have heard something.”
“The faint plink of leaves falling. Possibly, the snuffling of a possum, or it could’ve been a coon.”
“No church bells?”
“No, but I did hear something connected with church bells, actually. With belfries. Bats. In your belfry, squeaking like sonembitches.”
“Somebody is ringing bells down there, my friend.”
“You wake me up again, I’m gonna come out there and cuff your ass and put you in the tank.”
“The drunk tank’s rusted closed. You told me so yourself.”
“For you, I will apply Liquid Wrench.”
Wiley hung up. He flipped on his police scanner and watched the red LED race across the little screen. The scanner emitted a slight burp of static each time it crossed the county sheriff’s carrier wave.
Lonely sound. Lonely out here.
He’d damn well heard those bells.
Not in this version of Harrow, Kansas, though. If Matt had heard them, he would have gone down into town to check things out. He was too conscientious to dismiss something as odd as that. At best, it was going to be vandals, but at worst—well, maybe a fire, who knew?
If he could sit down at the laptop—if he dared to do that—he might find out. He turned it on. His hands stirred, moved. His fingers fluttered above the keys. Then they touched them. It was like watching a machine turn on. The hands were not his.
His fingers pounded keys. Stopped.
Then he looked down at what he’d written. “The masters of the sky were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them.”
Was that a quote from the Bible? Or an ancient Hebrew text, maybe?
He googled the passage, came up empty.
But the masters of the sky had been the Nephilim, creatures who had come out of the air to rape and pillage, who had caused the devastating war portrayed in the ancient Indian Vedas, with their stories of sound-guided missiles, flying saucers, and nuclear bombs.
In legend, the coming of the Nephilim had marked the end of the last age.
As, indeed, according to the ancient Maya, December 21, 2012, marked the end of this one. The Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0.
All the new-age gurus were howling that it was going to completely blow the mind of man. Wiley figured it was another Y2K, when the coming of the year 2000 had been expected to cause an outbreak of chaos, but which had actually been a lot of overhyped nonsense.
When he closed his eyes, it seemed as if the office did not have his desk in it. Instead, there were two recliners with reading lights beside them. Where he kept his little TV, they had a bookcase full of science tomes, archaeology and physics. He saw the books so clearly that he could almost read the titles.
The bells were now joined by the long wail of a warning siren.
He found himself uttering a prayer for the other Harrow, and all whom she was losing on this night, right here, right now, December 1, 2012.
Near him, he could sense movement.
He tried to open his eyes, couldn’t. Really tried. Could not. He called Brooke, but nothing came out.
The room in Martin and Lindy’s house became more clear.
He could see a woman—Lindy. Kind of pretty. Scientific looking. Not gorgeous like Brooke.
She, also, had heard the bells ringing, and had come in to listen at the window. She was haggard and had a shotgun in her hands—not a good one like his, but rather an old ten-gauge that had seen better days—much better ones.
Then he noticed that he was typing. The damndest thing, he hadn’t even realized it. His eyes were closed, but he could hear it. Feel it in his fingers.
He tried to draw his hands away from the keyboard, couldn’t.
“Lindy,” he said. Sweet name. She drew her head back from the window and started out of the room.
The phone in her version of the room rang. Wiley couldn’t see it, but he heard it so clearly that he froze, his fingers stopping just above the keys. He could hear her breathing, gasping almost, between the insistent rings.
From down the hall, he heard a murmured sigh as his Brooke tossed and turned. Was she aware, at least dimly, of the sound of Lindy’s phone?
Lindy put her hand on it. She tightened her grip. Her face reflected a torment that was horrible to see. She picked it up.
THREE
DECEMBER 1
THE NIGHT WATCH
ON NOVEMBER 29, 2012, WHAT had started so strangely in Gloucestershire on the 21st had become a great terror that had, on that night, struck millions of cities, towns, and villages across the world, and expanded from there. Now, on December 1, the White House that Martin had visited was long since evacuated, Washington was in chaos, the world was in chaos. The stories from the great cities were beyond horror. Rather than face what was happening people by tens of thousands had gone out of windows in New York and Chicago, leaving heaps of untended bodies in the streets. The country’s communications had broken down, fuel and food had ceased to move along highways choked with refugees, and worse had happened, much, much worse.
Harrow, Kansas, however, had not been struck. All the towns in the area had organized themselves and were as prepared as they could be, but so far the problems had not affected Kansas—at least, not this part of it. However, with communications down, they really had very little idea what was happening past thirty miles away.
Martin was on watch in the steeple of Third Street Methodist when, just before one in the morning, he saw light flicker in the clouds that choked the dark west. As he looked more carefully, the clouds lit up briefly. But there were thunderstorms out there, so there would be lightning, of course.
Another flash slowly dwindled and was gone. He knew archaeology, not meteorology, but he had never seen lightning that lingered like that.
