“I think it’s time to revisit the beginning,” Amber said.
“You’re talking about Romeo Libby?” Ricky asked.
“No. SE Prescott,” she said.
Twenty: Alan
“By the time we left, there really wasn’t all that much left of the building. Someone is going to spot the fact that it fell down, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t make that much of an impression on the locals. Just one more derelict building that is returning to dust,” Alan said.
“As long as the river doesn’t back up and flood the road,” Liz said.
He shook his head. “It won’t. Even at its height, it was nowhere near that.”
They heard Joe call from upstairs. It was unclear who he was yelling to.
Alan and Liz just sat in the light from the wall-mounted lamp over their kitchen table. Liz liked to joke that they were re-Ferberizing Joe—getting him accustomed to the idea that people wouldn’t automatically answer his shouted demands. If he wanted them to do something, he should know how to ask politely.
“What’s next?” Liz asked.
Alan sighed. “If I was calling the shots, I would keep us on the same path. We would continue to check all the structures and caves we can find in that space until we were sure that we had exterminated all of them. Start with the big places so we can see if there are any more colonies and then work our way down to the smaller ones.”
Liz nodded.
“But?”
“Well, Amber brought up a good point. Maybe we just took out the largest cluster of them, maybe we didn’t. There’s no way to answer that question for sure. We only have so much time before the last of the snow melts and we can’t easily trek into the woods like that. Further, there is some evidence that they’ve already woken up for the season, which would make the process of hunting them magnitudes more dangerous.”
“Okay?”
“So there are two different proposals on the table. Amber thinks we should backtrack to the first evidence of these things. We have a handwritten journal written by a person who lived in the same area as the mill, and it seems like from his notes that he was around when this infection first evolved.”
“We’re thinking of it as an infection?” Liz asked.
“It’s a useful enough model. Anyway, the idea is that if we can retrace his steps and find the same origins then maybe that knowledge will lead us to a way to finish this.”
“That’s a lot like when you and Robert found that diary and… you know,” Liz said.
“Yes, great point. I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Alan said, looking up at the ceiling.
“And the other?” Liz asked.
“Sorry?”
“You said there were two proposals on the table.”
“Oh, right. I’m not really considering what Ricky and George want to do.”
Liz just stared at him like she was trying to get him to confess to a crime. It worked.
“They want to use George as bait and set a trap.”
“What?”
“Their idea has a valid thought behind it. We know that they don’t hibernate all together, but we’re pretty sure that they hunt as one big pack. If we let them congregate to come after George, then we have a decent shot of knowing where they will all be at the same time.”
“Wow. That’s a huge gamble.”
Alan nodded. “They’re so young. They claim to understand the risks, but how can they? They don’t really believe that they’re mortal.”
“I suppose,” Liz said.
“I know what you’re going to say—Ricky has always seemed like an extremely thoughtful, responsible person. But he also throws himself into things that he feels strongly about. He’s not above risking his skin for what he thinks is the right thing to do.”
“True,” Liz said. “Very true.”
“So I’m leaning heavily towards Amber’s approach, since I can’t sell my idea of exhaustively searching for every place they might be hiding,” Alan said.
“What can I do to support that effort?” Liz asked.
He chewed his lip absentmindedly as he thought. “I guess I just need time to make it work. I suppose I don’t really need anything at the moment.”
“Okay,” Liz said.
Both of their phones lit up at the same time.
They had identical messages from their son.
Alan smiled. “This is very polite. I think our new rules are working.”
# # #
Amber knocked on the door and then put a polite smile on her face. She elbowed Alan and he remembered to smile as well. An older woman came to the door and looked between them through the window before she cracked it open enough to greet them.
“Yes?”
Amber spoke, holding out a picture of the bound journal, like it was their ticket to enter.
“We’re looking for information about SE Prescott? Do you happen to know if he lived here at one time?”
“Who?” the woman asked.
Alan leaned forward, “This would have been at the end of the eighteen-hundreds.”
“Oh,” the woman said. She swung the door in several more inches. “You mean Samuel Prescott?”
“I guess,” Amber said. “He didn’t sign his full name on the journal.”
“Journal?”
Alan stepped in again. “We have copies from a journal he wrote and that’s how we were able to track down this address. Yours is the only house on the road that looks like it could date back to his time.”
“So he did live here in this house?” Amber asked.
“If we’re talking about the same person.”
“Sure,” Amber said.
The woman let the door open another inch or so and then she turned to disappear into the house. Amber and Alan glanced at each other and then decided that they were supposed to follow her in. Alan closed the door behind himself. Amber stood next to a roll-top desk and they both watched the woman disappear through a doorway at the back of the living room.
Her face appeared around the corner a second later.
“Are you coming in or not?”
Amber nudged Alan again—urging him to lead the way.
He did.
By the time they got to the kitchen, she was already seated at the end of the
