A moment later a scream pealed in the street, the sound rising above the wail of the siren, the tolling of the bell, and the hymn. Ten-year-old Chrissie Palen pointed at the sky. At first Martin saw only first moon, pale and serene, speeding in ragged clouds. Then Tom Palen raised his 30-06 and fired, and Martin’s eyes followed the muzzle flash to a simple ovoid, dull orange against the sky, as motionless as if it was fixed to the ground.
Martin scoured the street for Lindy’s Dodge. He put in a call to her, but could not get a signal.
“We need to get out of the street,” Bobby cried. “Everybody, run, run NOW!”
Despite his lack of religious belief, Martin found himself begging God in his heart to bring his family to him safely. He breathed the words in and out, in and out: God, please, God, please, and tried to send some sort of protection to his beloved and their kids, his striving preteen boy and his darling little girl.
The object slid over Rite Way Drugs, then backed off to the Target end of town.
Then Lindy was there, getting out of the car with Winnie and Trevor—and the disk was there, too, sliding back across the sky as if it was on a tabletop.
“For God’s sake, RUN,” Martin screamed at them. “Shoot at the goddamn thing, Tom, shoot at it!”
The rifle cracked, cracked again—and the thing slid away into the darkness. Bullets were rumored to slow them down, but not for long.
Lindy and the kids came toward Martin as if in a slow motion nightmare, like ballet dancers executing a pas de deux, like a little boat drifting in a calm.
The thing reappeared, speeding into view at rooftop level. Electric fire crackled along its edge, spitting sparks into the air. The Palens raced into the church, and Martin realized that his family was not going to make it. He ran toward them, his blood pumping, his legs going fast but not fast enough, as the thing dipped low over Main Street not a hundred yards behind them, and began moving forward. It was about to hit them with the light, he knew it.
“Run, Lindy!”
Whereupon Lindy, God love her, turned and shouldered her bird gun and let go four blasts of buckshot.
The thing seemed unaffected—bullets delayed them slightly, but buckshot apparently not at all.
The kids reached him. “Get in the church!” he shouted to them, pushing them toward the lighted door. Lindy, he saw, had returned to the car for a backpack of provisions.
The bell tolled, the siren moaned, and the congregation sang in ragged chorus, “…he’ll take and shield thee; thou wilt find a solace there.”
Bobby yelled, “MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!”
Lindy came out of the car. She seemed to be under water, she was moving so slow. And then Martin saw why: she was falling, she’d tripped. He ran toward her.
Reg Todd called, “We’re closing the doors!” Winnie and Trevor realized what was happening and began to shout, “Mom! Dad!”
“Martin, it’s right over you, it’s starting to glow!” Bobby pulled out his service revolver and fired at it. The street around Martin began to turn red. Still he ran toward Lindy, he could not conceive of abandoning her.
Her skin was red in the red light from above. He threw an arm around her and began pulling her forward. As they got to the church steps, she gained her footing and began to help him. As she fell into the foyer, Maggie Hastert came to her rescue, and the two women staggered into the last pew as Bobby and Martin slammed the doors.
“Mom,” Trevor shouted.
“Mommy!” Winnie shrilled, the littlest finally realizing that something was not right in her world.
“Momma is all right,” Lindy managed to gasp.
“You’re crying,” Trevor said.
“We’re all crying, Trevor,” Martin said.
“Are we supposed to be crying?” Winnie asked.
Martin moved into the pew with Lindy, with their kids clinging to them, and the Hasterts made room for them. Given that Rose had arrived with their kids, Bobby and his family were okay, too—for the moment.
Reg Todd went into the pulpit. Martin liked him, had hunted with him when they were boys. “Everybody’s praying now, all over the world, calling on the power of God to defend the soul. There is wisdom for us in the Bible, the book of the soul written by God, written for this time when we are discovering our souls because we are losing them. So you listen now. If the light comes—”
There was a scream. Everybody looked around, but it had come from outside, from above the building. It was repeated, and children all over the small nave began screaming, too, and Peg Tarr cried out, and Bobby tried to calm her down and she shook him off. “It’s my husband,” she screamed, “I know it’s him, I can feel it!” She backed away from her neighbor, pushing into Doctor Willerson. “Where’s the Air Force? Where are the planes?” she bellowed. He shrank away from her, fumbling as his glasses flew from his face. “The planes,” she screamed, “the planes!” She grabbed his shoulders and yanked at him so hard she ripped his coat, and he reached back and slugged her, which snapped her head to the side and made spit fly, and made a sound like an exploding lightbulb.
Then the scream outside repeated. It was a human sound, and involved such extraordinary anguish that everyone in the church screamed with it, a roaring agony that, in embracing it, only made it more terrible. Children collapsed, their mothers going down with them. Ron Biggs of Biggs John Deere, fourth generation in tractors, emptied his twelve-gauge into the ceiling, a Remington notched with the lives of forty-one bucks and happy days.
As bits of plaster and angels and clouds rained down, a hideous scraping sound slid along the shingles, ending with a thud in the side yard.
Silence, then, followed by little Kimberly Wilson singing: “A-hunting we will go, a-hunting we will go, heigh- ho the derry-o…” until her mother hushed her.
Total silence. This was not what they had been expecting. Now, a murmur among the congregation. Bobby looked to Martin. “Any idea?” Martin shook his head. This wasn’t supposed to involve people being dropped onto roofs, but that’s what it had sounded like. “Doctor,” Bobby said, “let’s you and I go out and take a look around.”
Rose said, “No!”
“Rose, I—”
“Bobby, no! You stay in here.”
There was a silent look between them. She knew Bobby’s duty, and finally turned away, her eyes swimming.
Bobby and Doctor Willerson crossed the room, went out the vestry door. The body—if that’s what it was— had fallen down that side of the church.
The congregation stood in silence, waiting, some bowed in prayer, other people simply staring.
When they returned a moment later, the doctor said into the silent, watching faces, “I believe it is Mayor Tarr. He’s dead from a fall. He had a rifle. I believe he was on the roof trying to defend us, and lost his footing.”
Peg fainted.
As Ginger Forester and her boyfriend, Lyndon Lynch, who had been sitting with her, moved to help, there came more screaming, fainter, but from many more throats.
One of the other groups was under attack. Bobby went to the main door, opened it for a moment, then returned. “It’s Saint Peter’s,” he announced.
Mal Holmes said, “This is insane! What are we doing just waiting like this. Tarr had a point, let’s go outside, let’s put up a fight. For God’s sake, let’s fight!”
“Our fight is in our prayers,” Reg shouted.
Mrs. James cried out loudly, then, and shook her fist, a gesture that must have been repeated billions upon billions of times on earth over these past terrible weeks.
“I want to read now,” Reg called out. “I have a text. And then we will pray. We will pray all night and the children can sleep in the pews.”
“No way am I going to sleep,” Trevor said.
“Me neither!” Winnie added.
“Okay, kids, hush,” Lindy whispered.
