'Obviously, communications satellites are still functioning.'
'Probably they prefer we don't see them,' Neil said, 'but they want us to know what's happening with the weather because fear debilitates. Maybe they want us frightened, cowering, and pliable.'
'They?'
He didn't reply.
She knew what he meant, and he knew that she understood. Yet both of them were reluctant to express the truth that they suspected, as if to name the enemy would be to unleash in themselves a terror that they could not tame.
Neil put down the remote control, turned from the TV, and headed out of the family room into the adjoining kitchen. 'I'm going to make coffee.'
'Coffee?' she asked with a note of disbelief.
This domestic task seemed to be evidence of total psychological denial, a reaction unworthy of the unshakeable, eternally competent man whom she had married.
'We haven't had a full night's sleep,' he explained. 'We might need to stay awake, keep our wits about us, for a long time. Coffee will help. I better make it while we still have electrical service.'
Molly glanced at the TV, at the lamps. She hadn't thought the power might go off.
She was chilled by the prospect of having no light except the eerie luminosity of the unclean rain.
'I'll gather all the flashlights,' she said, 'and whatever spare batteries we have.'
Flashlights were distributed throughout the house, continually charging in wall outlets. They were to provide guidance in the event that an earthquake imposed darkness in rocked rooms filled with avalanched furniture.
He turned to her, paler than he'd been a moment ago. 'No, Molly. From now on, neither of us goes anywhere alone. We'll collect the flashlights later, together. Right now, let's brew some coffee. And make sandwiches.'
'I'm not hungry.'
'We'll eat anyway.'
'But Neil-'
'We don't know what's coming. We don't know when we'll have a chance to eat again? in peace.'
He held out a hand to her.
He was the most beautiful and appealing man whom she had ever known. The first time that she'd seen him, more than seven years ago, Neil had been standing in a complicated geometry of multicolored light, smiling warmly, his face so perfect and his eyes so kind that she briefly mistook him for Saint John the Divine.
She gripped his hand, shivering with fear and inexpressibly grateful that fate had combed her and him from the tangle of humanity, and that love had braided them together in marriage.
He drew her into his arms. She held fast to him.
One ear against his chest, she listened to his heart. The beat was strong, at first quickened by anxiety, but then growing calmer.
Molly's heart slowed to match the pace of his.
Steel has a high melting point, but higher still when it is alloyed with tungsten. Cashmere is a strong fabric, as is silk; however, a cashmere-and-silk blend will be more durable and will provide more warmth to the wearer than will either fabric alone.
Alone, she had learned at a young age to carry all the weight the world piled on her. As long as she had Neil, she could endure not just the terrors of this world but also those that might come from beyond it.
6
ALTHOUGH THE KITCHEN AND FAMILY ROOM WERE redolent of the rich aroma of coffee, Molly thought that she could detect the faint but singular odor of the rain penetrating the walls from the saturated night.
She and Neil sat on the floor in front of the TV, the shotgun and pistol within easy reach, eating chicken sandwiches and potato chips.
Initially she had no appetite. On first bite, however, she discovered that she was ravenous.
No food had ever tasted as delicious as this. The chicken proved juicier, the mayonnaise creamier, the pickles more tart, and the chips crispier than any she had eaten before. Every flavor was exquisitely enhanced.
Perhaps any prisoner on death row, savoring his last meal before being given a lethal injection, experienced the flavors and textures of food this intensely.
On television, silvery-blue snow fell in the French Alps, in the mountains of Colorado, on the streets of Moscow. Each scene appeared to have been dusted with Christmas-card glitter.
The domes and minarets of the Kremlin had never before looked so magical. Every glimmering shadow in those twinkling boulevards and sparkling plazas seemed to harbor elves, pixies, and other fairy folk who might momentarily spring into sight, dancing and performing aerial acrobatics in exuberant celebration.
The ethereal beauty of the sequined blue snow suggested that whatever might be happening could not be entirely without a positive aspect.
In Denver, although dawn had not yet broken, children were frolicking in the streets, tossing snowballs, drawn from their homes by the novelty of a blue, luminous blizzard.
Their delight and their musical laughter inspired a hopeful yet uncertain smile from the on-scene network reporter. He said, 'And another remarkable detail about this extraordinary phenomenon-the snow smells sort of like vanilla.'
Molly wondered if the newsman had a sufficiently sensitive nose to be able to detect a far less appealing underlying scent if one existed.
'Vanilla laced with the fragrance of oranges,' he continued.
Perhaps here in the San Bernardino Mountains, the rain no longer smelled as it had when Molly stepped onto the porch with the coyotes. Maybe, as in Colorado, the night now offered the olfactory delights of a confectioner's kitchen.
Turning, encouraging the cameraman to pan with him, the reporter indicated the wintry panorama: the mantled street, the evergreen boughs laden with fluffy masses of sapphire flocking, the warm amber lights of houses huddled cozily in the blue impossible.
'It's indescribably beautiful,' he said, 'like a scene out of Dr. Seuss, a street in Whoville, the glitter without the Grinch.'
The hundred-eighty-degree sweep of the camera came to a stop, zooming in on a group of children who were bundled for winter play.
A girl of perhaps seven held a snowball in her gloved hands.
Instead of throwing it at anyone, she licked it, as if it were one of those treats made with shaved ice and flavored syrup, sold at carnivals and amusement parks. She grinned at the camera with blue-tinted lips.
An older boy, inspired by her example, took a bite from his snowball. The taste seemed to please him.
This image disturbed Molly so much that if she had not already consumed her sandwich, she would have put it aside, unfinished.
She remembered the unclean feel of the rain. She would never have turned her face to the sky and opened her mouth to imbibe this storm.
Evidently, the sight of the children eating snow dismayed Neil no less than it did Molly. He picked up the remote, surfed for news.
7
UNABLE TO PRESS FROM HER MIND THE IMAGE OF THE children feeding on the tainted snow, Molly paced and drank too much coffee.
Neil remained seated on the floor, using the TV remote.
Up and down the broadcast ladder, more channels than before were too poorly received to be watchable. And
