He turned on the little radio that he’d brought up with him, just in case there would be some signal from somewhere, but the world remained as silent as it had been these past three days. No radio, no TV, no Internet, GPS mostly not working. Landline telephones were sporadic, cell phones were local only, and then only occasionally. There was no TV, and even the shortwave radio consisted of static, and in the higher frequencies, endless streams of what sounded like some sort of singsong code, a machine language.
Another flash, this one going close to the ground, then expanding and getting brighter.
He became aware that his heart had begun to thutter. He faced the fantastic reality: They had come to Lautner County. That light was over Holcomb, not twenty miles away.
Nobody had ever seen them. The only thing known was that the fourteen lenses, when night fell on them, disgorged thousands of dully glowing bloodred disks, which fanned out spreading the most appalling and bizarre form of death ever known to man.
He picked up his cell phone and called the town’s police officer, his friend Bobby Chalmers. “Got some bad- looking flashes in those clouds, Bobby.”
“I’m lookin’ at ’em.”
Next, he phoned Lindy. Attempting not to alarm her, he kept his voice casual. “Hey, Doctor Winters.”
“Hey, Doctor Winters.”
“Sorry to rouse you from your beauty sleep, but, uh, why don’t you go ahead and get the kids ready? I think you need to come over here. Looks like we could have some activity coming in from the west.”
She didn’t get a chance to react before his phone started beeping in another call. He clicked over. “Hi, Bobby. Where are you, BTW?”
“On my way to you. Ron Turpin over in Parker—”
Parker was between here and Holcomb, a scattering of trailers and a tumbledown convenience store at a crossroads. “I know Ron.”
“Yeah. He’s sayin’ there’s a formation he can see in the flashes, moving with the clouds. And nobody’s answering the phone over in Holcomb.”
“But they’re working? The phones are working?”
“They’re ringing. No cops, no sheriff, no paramedics picking up, nothin’.”
“Dear God.”
“You better get down outta there, now, Martin.”
Immediately, he clambered down the four flights to the choir loft, glanced out across the dark church, and then went down the stairs to the entrance. Bobby had arrived and was going into the electrical closet as Martin reached the foot of the stairs. Bobby hit the power switches, lighting up the nave, then all the external lights.
Martin flipped open his cell phone and called the minister. “Reg, we could be getting hit tonight, looks like.”
“That can’t be true.”
“It looked like Holcomb was getting it a few minutes ago and now Bobby can’t raise them on the phone. Disks passed over Parker coming this way. We’re the only town in this direction for eighty miles, Reg.”
“I’m on my way.”
Martin stepped outside. “I called Dennis Farm,” Bobby said. “We—” His phone buzzed. He flipped it open, listened a moment, then closed it. “That was Larry Dennis screaming for help, they got Sally, the light’s coming down like rain—then the line—” He held out the silent cell phone.
In both of their minds was the same thought: it couldn’t be happening here, it was something you heard about, a big city thing, a European thing, a Chinese disaster.
“Wake ’em up,” Bobby said, “we’re under attack.”
Martin went back into the church and started the bell. There was a whirring sound as it began ringing, its stately tones trembling off into the night. His finger hesitated over the siren. It hadn’t been sounded since September, when it had been turned on for the tornado that had taken out the Conagra silo and the Kan-San Trailer Park.
He flipped the switch, and the siren began as a low growl, quickly increased its volume, then filled the air with its wailing. Across the street, Sam Gossett came to the door in his pajama bottoms and yelled, “Is it for real?”
“Holcomb and Dennis Farm just got it,” Bobby said. “It’s for real, all right.”
The Wilsons and a family Martin didn’t know except to nod to arrived in SUVs and went hurrying into the church. They must have been sleeping in their clothes. As he passed, Timmy Wilson said, “They’re coming up Six Mile, slow and low.”
His words made Martin feel literally sick. He telephoned Lindy. “Hi, hon, what’s your situation?”
“We’re leaving the house.”
“You need to hurry, Lindy, they’re over Six Mile Road.”
“Oh, God, Martin.”
According to Homeland Security, people alone did not survive, none of them, not ever. Groups supposedly had a better chance. They still got flyers dropped from time to time. He speculated that Bo Waldo might have something to do with that. There was a man who was not going to be beaten, unlike those two generals, who’d been edgy, bitchy thoroughbreds.
“Lindy, cut across the Walker place to the highway.”
“I’ll wreck their garden.”
“Do it now!”
She closed the phone—unless something else just happened. A wave of nausea almost made Martin gag.
“You okay?” Bobby asked.
“Lindy’s out there with the kids. Where’s Rose?”
“Same thing, coming in fast as she can.”
“But not down Six Mile Road.”
“Goddamn, buddy, that’s right.”
Bobby, who had been his friend since their boyhood in this community, met his eyes. Bobby had stayed, Martin had gone on to university. But he’d returned in the end, discovering after Berkeley and Stanford that one did not leave Kansas so easily.
“I never thought this would come,” Bobby said as the two of them watched the sky and the people now hurrying into the church.
“We’re not in Kansas anymore, Bobby. Kansas is gone with the wind, I’m afraid.”
“You think it’s gonna be all of us, Martin?”
A wave of what could only be described as woe swept over Martin. He said, “The pamphlet says that more survive if we congregate.” It had been dropped by Homeland Security last week.
“What I feel like doing is hiding. That’s what feels right.”
“I would assume that we can’t hide.”
The pamphlet, which had been dropped from a Goodyear blimp, of all things, was the only defense the government had offered. In fact, the most terrifying thing about the whole business was the silence from Washington and Topeka.
George and Moira Fielding came huffing up, she in a slip and bra, he in baggy boxer shorts and flip-flops. “There’s screaming coming from down the end of Constitution,” he gasped.
Serenity Lodge. Forty old folks. Martin looked at Bobby. “You want to go over there?” He thought to himself that Lindy and the kids must pass right in front of the place on their way in.
“I’m needed here.”
It wasn’t cowardice, it was simple truth.
Across town, Martin could see the steeple of the First Church of Christ light up, and heard its bell join theirs. Saint Peter’s was invisible behind the huge oaks that stood along Evans behind Main, but he knew they’d be lit up, too. They didn’t have a working bell.
Emma Heard got out of her car. “There was that light just like they say, it was horrible, horrible!”
“You were at the home?”
“I was in my office when—oh, Jesus, I tried to help them, they were all in their rooms—” She broke down in
