Could be around the side of the house. “Hello? Anybody there?”
No response. Then the sound returned, more distinct this time, and he realized that it was coming from two directions, out behind the low hill that separated the house from their north fields, and then again from down near the pretty little stream that was one of the reasons they’d put the house here.
For all the world, it sounded like two dirty old men chuckling at him over his plight. “Hello?”
Then he heard something in the sky, whoosh…whoosh. He looked up, but clouds were coming in and it had turned inky black.
His mouth went dry, his heart began the peculiar, twisting beat that came when his fear increased. He ran to his car and jumped in and locked the doors. Who knew what might be out there? Aliens, even, the concealed architects. What was it some old scientist had said, “Aliens when they come will be stranger than anything we have ever imagined, or can possibly imagine.” Words to that effect. Beings from a parallel universe might be even stranger…or strangely similar.
He got out of there fast, driving as close to northwest as he could, blasting his way through the stubble- choked, furrowed fields. How very ordinary it had all seemed just a month ago. Driving out this way to pick out a Thanksgiving turkey at Smeal’s, he had seen Old Man Dennis working his harvest, thought how sad it was that, out of all those kids, he couldn’t find a single one willing to continue the tradition. Word was they were going to sell out and move to Florida, but he’d thought at the time, No, the Dennises are gonna die on that land.
The sun slid behind the clouds, and with night came an increase of loneliness that was so deep it amounted to a new kind of emotion for him.
He drove on, searching blindly, trying his best to stay on course.
It was some moments after he’d seen the glow on the horizon that he realized that it meant headlights in the distance. He stopped the jeep, got out, and clambered up on the roof. About two miles ahead, there was a slowly moving cluster of lights—the cars and trucks of followers. Couldn’t be from Holcomb, they had all been disensouled. So that had to be the Harrow contingent.
Lindy was out there somewhere, his Lindy and his Winnie and maybe Trevor. He looked up into the black sky and wondered if those were dead bodies out there, and if his family’s souls had gone somewhere better. Oh God, please help them. Help me help them, God. If only you’re there, we need you. We need you.
He got down and drove ahead, keeping his own lights off so he could see the caravan. He closed quickly. They weren’t going fast, obviously. Soon, he was in among them, about five vehicles. It had been more. The wanderers had lost many followers.
“Hey, bone collector,” a woman’s voice yelled.
“Helen!”
She leaned out the back of the Turpins’ mangled Buick. “Got supplies?”
“I got ’em!”
“My Reg likes Oreos, you got Oreos?”
“I’ve got some Pillsbury chocolate chip cookie mix.”
“Well, hell, I’ll try it on ’im. I think he sorta recognized John Twenty-four by the way, so I’m lookin’ for a comeback.”
“You folks seen Lindy?”
Another voice called, “Sure thing, Martin. We fed your family twice. Your girl’s happy when she gets soy milk.” That was right, oh God, that was Winnie’s favorite.
He scoured the backs that were visible in the car lights, but there were so many of them, it wasn’t a small crowd, it was enormous, it stretched on and on.
He stopped and got out. He grabbed soy milk and orange juice, they would need strength and fluids, they would be in shock and they’d been walking continuously now for close to twenty hours.
“Be careful, there,” a voice said as he sprinted among the vehicles, then out into the darker crowd of wanderers. “Winnie,” he called, “Soy milk, soy milk! Trevor Winters, Dad’s here, Dad’s got cranapple.”
Then he saw a back, familiar hair. He doubled his speed, pushing past people who were breathing hard, who were staggering. What was going to happen, would they be walked to death? Why not kill them outright and save everybody this terrible, terrible suffering?
“Lindy! LINDY!”
A head turned, and he found himself looking into the empty grin of Beryl Walsh, the local bank manager. He went on. “Lindy! Trevor! Winnie!”
There was her hair again, and this time he was sure. “Oh, Lindy, hey, hey, it’s me, babes, I’m gonna take you home, I’ve got the truck, I’m gonna take you guys home!”
He came up beside her, and it was definitely Lindy of the green eyes and the straight, proud nose, Lindy of the bobbing blond hair. “Oh baby, I got you. Thank the Lord.” He looked around. “Where are the kids? Winnie? Where’s Winnie?”
Not a glance, not a word. He sprinted in front of her, walked backward as he talked. “The kids, Lindy, where are the kids?”
She came straight on, her face expressionless. Unlike some of them, she didn’t even have a smile left in her. She strode like a Valkyrie, though, a powerful, healthy woman…whom, he thought, was going to make an excellent slave.
Would they be taken to another world, like the slavers took people from Africa? How similar that must have felt to this, to the people who watched the ships sail away. It had been history to him before, but those millions of lost families were now part of his heart.
And he thought, the Nephilim, those strange rapists mentioned in Genesis, called the fallen ones, they had enslaved us before biblical times, had they not? Enslaved us, and then gone. Mysteriously.
In recent years, as his data piled up, he had become more and more willing to entertain the notion that there might have been some sort of human-alien interaction in the distant past, which had led to the catastrophe of 12,000 B.C., when the makers of the great stone monuments had abruptly vanished.
Had it been a war? Had it been, perhaps, something like this? And therefore were these people going to some far place destined to suffer a fate that maybe not even God could know?
Then, a miracle. He saw Winnie. She was trundling along, she had a bit of a limp. He ran to her, swept her up in his arms, cried out, buried his face in her little-girl sweetness—and then realized that her legs were still moving. She was still walking, in fact, she hadn’t stopped walking even when she was picked up.
Pointing her back toward the car, he put her down. She took a few steps, then, as if she was controlled by some sort of inner gyroscope, she turned abruptly and continued on with the others. He hurried along beside her. “I’ve got some soy milk for you, honey,” he said. He fumbled in his pocket for a box of it and held it out to her. She took it and drank it down. “Thank you, baby,” he found himself saying, “thank you.” Then he cried out, “Trevor! Trevor Winters! Dad’s here, I’ve got cranapple. Dad has cranapple.” His throat constricted and he had to stop. He controlled his emotions, fought them back, and kept on. “Trevor Winters, Trevor Winters.”
He moved back and forth in the crowd, and suddenly there was a light in his eyes. “Martin! Hey, buddy!”
“Uh-you’re—”
“George Matthews, I’m that damn plumber.”
“Oh, George, for the love a-yeah!”
“You’re looking for Trevor?”
“Yeah, actually. I got Winnie to drink some soy milk.”
“That ain’t Winnie anymore, and Trevor’s not here.”
“Not here?”
“Nah, Trevor’s not wandering.”
He grabbed the man’s shoulder. “George! George, are you sure!”
“There’s something else going on. There’s kids gone.”
“Are they—are they okay, George?”
He could feel George’s eyes on him. “Dunno. But my girl’s one of ’em. Wife’s out here.”
“And you’re sure they’re not—Trevor is definitely not here? You’re certain of it?”
“Not certain of anything in this world, bro, but I’ve been out here all day with my Molly, and I’ve seen Winnie and Lindy plenty, but not him, and I did see him—you know, after the church—and he was going out toward the
