The phone.
It rang again.
But that wasn’t possible…the power was off. It couldn’t be ringing. Feeling disoriented, he stumbled over to where the phone sat on a desk. It just kept ringing and he stared dumbly at it.
This is totally psycho, dude, the power is out.
But maybe power had been restored to a few houses and maybe phones worked some other way. If that was so, he could call Heather Sale’s or Lisa Bell’s and find out about Chrissy.
He snatched it up on the seventh ring.
Slowly, with trembling hands, he brought it to his ear. There was air in his throat and he could not speak. Water dripped from him. On the other end, he could hear something.
Something like wind howling through low places.
Then a voice, clotted and congested said, “I’m coming, big bwother…wait for me…I’m coming…”
Nicky.
With a rasping scream, Deke dropped the receiver and fell onto his ass in the drenched carpet.
And still he could hear his brother’s high, screeching voice.
Laughing.
And laughing and laughing.
And another voice in Deke’s head told him, they’re all down below in those secret tunnels waiting for us.
Out in the streets, the wind howled.
22
Thing was, Lily did not ask why Mitch and Tommy came home carrying bags of salt under their arms. She just looked at them, smiled and accepted. And that probably wasn’t a good thing. Again, Mitch was struck by that weird mood she was in. She was acting like a little girl with a secret. A big, wonderful secret kept locked behind pressed lips. And Mitch just couldn’t bring himself to ask what that secret might be. As it was, she was giddy and happy and excited like she was waiting for something momentous to happen.
Oh, something might happen tonight, he found himself thinking, but I don’t think you’re going to like it, Lil.
The Zirblanksi twins were staying with them being that they still couldn’t find their parents. Mitch and Tommy had been over to their house three times and they still weren’t home.
“I don’t want you girls to be worrying,” Mitch told them. “Your mom and dad are probably holed up somewhere waiting this out.”
He wasn’t sure whether the twins believed him or not, but they seemed comfortable with the idea of staying at his house. And he supposed after Miriam Blake, the Addam’s Family would have seemed acceptable. Mitch hadn’t known the girls very well before any of this started. They’d grown up a few houses down Kneale Street, but he didn’t think he’d ever said much more than a simple hello to them his entire life, stuffed some candy into their plastic pumpkins on Halloween night and waved to them on the street. Of course, the twins had a reputation as hellions, something he knew was pretty much true.
But tonight, he was not seeing that.
Rita was very quiet for the most part, brooding sometimes, kept chewing her fingernails. Rhonda was the more outgoing of the two. She kept asking questions, wanting to help with things.
When Mitch and Tommy got back at sundown, or just after, Rhonda had said, “Why so much salt, Mr. Barron?”
Maybe Lily was too lost in her personal fog to care, but not Rhonda.
Mitch had to come up with a lie…and quick. “It’s for my ice cream maker,” he said, not entirely sure where that pearl of bullshit had come from. “You need lots of salt.”
That much was true. Mitch had gotten an ice cream maker for Christmas a few years before and it now sat on a high closet shelf gathering dust. But he’d read the instructions and you did need an awful lot of salt to make ice cream.
Rita brightened at the idea. “We’re going to make ice cream? Can we make strawberry?”
Mitch swallowed. “Um…well…”
Tommy knew he was lying, was enjoying how he squirmed. “Yeah, Mitch, I want some chocolate. Can we make rocky road, too?”
“I love rocky road,” Rhonda said.
Oh, Christ…now what?
The power was off and they were sitting around by candlelight and these kids wanted to make ice cream. You didn’t need electricity to make it, but you needed a freezer. Already, Rita and Rhonda had helped Lily move most of the perishables from the upstairs freezer to the floor freezer in the basement where it was cooler. They would last down there longer, but it probably wasn’t cold enough to store ice cream. But looking at those two girls with their big dark eyes and pretty faces, he could not tell them no. He supposed they could sacrifice one of the bags of salt. Tommy and he had brought home thirty pounds of the stuff and Lily?being Lily?already had a couple five pound bags in the pantry. Lily was like that…or had been…always stocking up when things went on sale. That’s why they had like twenty rolls of paper towels downstairs and enough toilet paper for ten years.
Lily said, “I think it would be fun to make ice cream, girls. When Chrissy gets home, she’ll want some.”
Mitch felt that like a knife in his chest. Still no Chrissy. He’d fed Lily some bullshit about her staying the night at the Sale’s house and Lily had accepted that. Maybe it was true. Maybe that’s where Chrissy indeed was. After all, Heather Sale’s dad said they had been there and would be back. Still, Mitch didn’t like not knowing where she was. Especially with the flooding…and other things.
In the kitchen, by the light of a Coleman lantern, Lily and the girls began assembling ingredients. At least it gave them something to do. And when she was busy, that funny light in Lily’s eyes didn’t burn so bright. Maybe this is what she needed: to keep busy. Maybe, maybe. But there was something there that Mitch did not like.
“I been thinking of all these lights we got going,” Tommy said after Mitch had delivered the ice cream maker to the girls. “You think…you think it’s a good idea to be burning them?”
Mitch didn’t know exactly.
In a way, he thought lights might bring in people that needed shelter and the more, the merrier tonight. But there was also the possibility that the lights might draw in those other…people out there. For surely, like it or not, they were out in the streets now. Mitch had been thinking about them a lot and not coming up with any good explanations for any of it. All the doors and windows were locked. They had Tommy’s four-ten and Mitch’s twenty- gauge Remington auto-loader that he used for hunting partridge in the fall, to go “a-grousing” as his old man had called it. Though it had been a few years since he’d been out bird hunting, he still had a full box of shells. So they had weapons, if it came down to it.
But would any of that be enough?
“I don’t know,” Mitch finally said, “but I figure we have to take a chance. It might be worse sitting in the dark with those kids.”
They had pulled Lily’s big conversion van out of the garage now and pulled in Tommy’s truck. He had a police scanner in there and that, at least, connected them with the world. The garage was attached, so they didn’t have to go outside.
While Tommy sat in the cab listening to the police chatter which was pretty hairy stuff?lost people and bodies, looting and shootings, accidents and people trapped in flooded buildings?he sat by the workbench and smoked, staring out the single rain-spattered window at the night beyond. He didn’t really know what any of this was about. He figured most didn’t, but there were a few out there who did. After seeing that living dead woman that the cops pulled from the drainage ditch, seeing that she wore the remains of military fatigues, Mitch had pretty much made up his mind that the explosion out at the Fort Providence base was all connected up with this. He didn’t know what they did out there, nobody really did, but they were involved. All this shit had come down after that explosion and although Mitch didn’t believe half the crazy stories circulating about that, there must have been a
