the Hat and Jennifer and Josephine. He heard clanging as Trevor’s Yamaha keyboard was smashed.
The day wore on, the sun crossed the sky, and still Martin lingered, unable to leave the sacking of his home, in despair, in sorrow, and wondering—hoping—all the while that Trevor was hiding in the crawl space or the attic or the storm cellar.
Finally, at a quarter past three, the two trucks departed.
He waited. He scanned the sky methodically, all of it he could see. He was practiced at spotting tiny objects in sand, and the sky was not so different from a featureless wasteland in Tunisia or Libya.
He was just starting toward the house when he heard, from very far off, a sort of sighing sound. Immediately, he faded back into the stand of trees.
High in the afternoon sky, there was a black dot.
They were still up there.
He waited, listening to the faint sound of the thing, never moving from behind the tree where he hid.
By the time the sound had gone, the sun was setting. He stepped out to the edge of the yard he’d mowed a thousand times.
Maybe they had left somebody hiding in the house. He hadn’t really seen them, after all, just the trucks.
He moved across the grass, aware of its whisper beneath his feet. Dear God, but an abandoned home is a lonely place.
Martin searched the storm cellar. He pulled open the door and peered down inside. Then he climbed in. Things appeared unchanged—there was the lantern, there were the candles in their box, the two gallons of water, the box of PowerBars, all untouched.
Martin was surprised at how much sadness weighed on him to know that his son had not been here.
He crossed the yard to the front porch. The door stood open. He entered, careful to look first for wires across the entryway, and not to move the door at all.
He looked, amazed at what confronted him. “Trevor,” he whispered. Then shouted, “Trevor, it’s Dad! Are you here? Trevor!”
He bent down to the ruins of the dining room table. How could this be, wood destroyed like this? He ran his hand over the lumpy, twisted mess.
The wood had been melted, there was no other explanation.
This hadn’t been done by townspeople, or any people. People couldn’t do this, we couldn’t melt wood. And look at the books, all turned to powder, and the knives in the knife rack, drooping like melted candles.
“Trevor!” He opened the crawl space, looked inside. “Trevor?”
No sign of his boy.
He went upstairs and opened the hatch to the attic. “Trevor, are you up here? It’s Dad.” He pulled down the steps and went up. It was a complicated attic, and he was careful to look in every nook and cranny. A twelve-year- old could make himself very small if he wanted to, and Trev was expert at hiding.
When he understood for sure that he wasn’t there, Martin felt himself just run out of steam. He sat down on the floor. He was suffering now more deeply than he would have thought a human being could suffer. This was what they called anguish, this searing, agonized sense of helplessness. Every time he thought of Lindy walking and walking like that, and his precious little Winnie toddling and limping, his insides twisted against themselves. And Trevor—the sense of him being somewhere in the wind, scared and alone, made him feel more helpless than he’d felt in the jail.
He suppressed an urge to go up on the roof and scream his name, even though that might actually work.
Trevor knew these woods well. He could be hiding back in there somewhere close enough to hear.
Martin headed downstairs, and as he passed their little office, he stopped. He stared in confusion. What was this? Increasingly confused and amazed, he went inside. His papers hadn’t been taken, they’d been methodically shredded, and not simply ripped up, but turned into masses of what looked like thread. Books turned to dust were strange enough, but this was just bizarre.
His laptop lay on his desk. He touched it—and snatched his hand back when the edge of the screen collapsed under his fingers. He touched the keyboard, and the whole laptop simply disintegrated. He was left with more dust.
He understood that he was seeing firsthand the work of the enemy. Whoever had been in those two pickups had not been human.
He raced downstairs, threw open the gun closet—but Lindy had taken their only gun, her little shotgun. It was still at Third Street Methodist.
He cursed bitterly, and as he did so heard something. At first, it sounded like that strange chuckling he’d heard when he was among the followers, and it came from the woods behind the house. But then that sound was covered by another, the rumble of a huge engine, the same sound he’d heard briefly in the streets of the town.
He ran into the hall and down to his and Lindy’s bedroom where he could look out into the driveway.
As he watched, three huge, black Humvees came trundling up to the house, and black-clad soldiers jumped out, their faces covered by dark plastic. It looked like a Ranger team right out of some military movie, but he knew that these were not Rangers.
He was face to face with his enemy.
TEN
DECEMBER 11
INNOCENT
WILEY CAME HOME TO A very subdued household. “What gives?” he asked Kelsey as he carried his new laptop into the kitchen.
She called out, “Mommy, he’s back.”
Nick appeared, his eyes scared. “Why did you chop up your computer, Dad?” There were tears in his voice.
“It had to die. Its life was over.”
“Children, go upstairs.”
As they hurried off, Kelsey said, “Daddy is insane.”
Brooke lifted a box onto the kitchen table. In it were the remains of his old laptop.
“What’s the big deal?” he asked.
“The big deal is, you went after this thing with a hatchet, and I want an explanation for that behavior, because it’s too far from the norm and I’m considering getting my children out of here. That is the big deal.”
He tried to sound reasonable. He even smiled. “The hard disk was fried. Nothing would erase.”
“So you went after it with a hatchet?”
“I did that to make sure the files could never be recovered. You can’t put a computer loaded with files you can’t erase in the landfill. Next thing you know, your life is gonna be on the Internet. So, my love, I have acted rationally, and I do not think I’ve given you reason to take my kids away from me.”
She shook her head. “Oh, Wiley, it’s so hard. It is so hard, honey, and I’m getting tired in my soul.”
“Now, hey, this is us! Me and my girl!”
“Goddamnit, go upstairs and set up your computer!”
He went to her instead, and took her in his arms. She felt pliant and indifferent, but did not try to pull away. “Please, Brooke, bear me. You’re all I have. Bear me.”
She shuddered all over, then buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed bitterly.
“Don’t start yelling,” he whispered, “remember the kids…remember the kids.”
And slowly, there in his arms, she composed herself. She drew back from him. They met each other’s eyes. They kissed.
From halfway up the back stairs came Kelsey’s excited whisper, “We have a kiss!”
So the troubled ship of the Dale family sailed on, tossed on a dark ocean, lost to navigation, but still afloat.
