Alan had Joe’s phone.
Robert sent a message back, “What can I do to help?”
Alan and Liz conferred before they decided on the reply. “Don’t come near until dawn. If you don’t hear from us by then, see if you can find us. Depending on what you find, do whatever you need to.”
“Better not to leave specific instructions,” Liz said, “in case anyone ever checks his phone. You’re sure that he understands?”
Alan nodded. “I told him what they would turn us into, and he knows how to get rid of us if he needs to.”
Liz nodded. “Robert is a good friend. I know he’ll see it through.”
“Let’s pray it doesn’t come to that.”
Alan pulled up the screen again.
Hot smoke was still coming from the chimney. After a brief argument, Liz had won the right to stoke the fire and she had done so without incident. On the roof, the creatures had moved away from the chimney. The fire was a good deterrent. They spotted some of the others trying the windows and even trying to get through the bulkhead into the cellar.
“They can probably get through that lock,” Liz said. “Remember the hotel room?”
“Yeah,” Alan said. “But even if they do, so what? There’s a lot they’ll have to get through to get up here.”
Liz sighed and lowered her head.
“How did we get ourselves into this position again?”
“It’s not like that,” Alan said. “Don’t say it like that.”
She glanced at Joe and then looked to him, keeping her voice at a raw whisper.
“Like what, Alan? We knew this was a possibility and yet we…”
Liz trailed off, shaking her head.
“There are dangers everywhere. We prepared. We got everything ready and it’s working just the way we planned. We’re safe in here. What more could you ask for?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m just frustrated. How long until the sun comes up?”
“Twenty-five minutes,” Alan said.
She dragged her hands down her face, started to yawn, and then shook it off.
“So? What do we do?”
“You get everything ready, and I’ll go see if Ricky and his family survived the night,” Alan said.
“Ready?”
“We’ll go down to Portland and stay at Sarah’s until we find something more permanent. That’s out of their range and I can drive Joe to school so you won’t have to change your hours.”
“Out of their range? What are you basing that on, some hunch that you and Ricky came up with during your research?”
“It’s far enough.”
“Alan, look at that screen in front of you. You were the one who thought that they wouldn’t even come as far south as here, even though we know they were at Amber’s last summer.”
“I said that I didn’t think they would get here this quickly after only coming out of hibernation recently. I never said they wouldn’t make it here.”
“Regardless, one of them stowed away in Amber’s trunk and made it down to Virginia last year.”
“We think,” Alan said. “She was a little crazed after everything, and even she admitted that she didn’t really have any strong evidence that what she saw wasn’t a hallucination.”
“That’s not the way evidence works. It’s up to the evidence to show that she wasn’t a reliable witness. Given nothing to refute her account, we have to take it as fact.”
Alan frowned and was about to argue that point, but he realized that there was a bigger question on the table.
“So, what are you thinking? How far do we go? Farther than Virginia? What about your job? What about the rest of Joe’s school year?”
“Neither of those things matters one bit if we’re infected and turned into blood-sucking monsters, Alan.”
“Yes. Of course.”
They were silent for a moment.
Alan looked back at the display. The creatures were holding their ground. The one near the woods hadn’t moved more than a foot since they first spotted him. The ones on the roof were occasionally pacing, but didn’t want to challenge the hot smoke coming up from the chimney. For whatever reason, the creatures had never ventured into the cellar, although it should have been within their capabilities.
“Moving away…” Alan said. “Everything we’ve been through here. Moving away…”
“We need to think long term.”
That sparked a memory.
“Forty years,” he said, standing up straight. “Romeo Libby has stayed in the same place for forty years, Liz.”
“The guy from the commune?”
“Yes. He said that they don’t return to a place where they’ve been killed. Maybe it’s that simple. Maybe all we have to do is kill one of them and our house will be safe.”
“That’s a big assumption.”
“Is it?” Alan asked. “Romeo is still alive and he seems like a reliable witness to me. Where’s the evidence that he’s not? Isn’t his continued existence proof?”
Alan didn’t mention Ricky’s assessment—that if Romeo was really convinced that his property was safe he wouldn’t have been so careful after four decades.
“There have to be a dozen of them out there. How would you plan to kill just one?”
“Same way we did at the hotel. Throw some seeds out, let them get distracted, and take one out.”
“The time we barely escaped with our lives? You want to recreate that experience?”
“On our terms, maybe,” Alan said.
“We’re locked in a closet, praying for dawn. I wouldn’t exactly call these our terms.”
Joe started to stir. He groaned and pushed his way up as he rubbed his eyes.
“What’s that noise?” Joe asked.
Alan and Liz looked at each other.
“What noise, Joe?” Liz asked.
“That stupid banging. I can’t sleep with it.”
# # #
Liz pressed her ear to the wall. Joe and Alan hunched over the tablet and flipped through the views. Alan could barely believe what he was seeing. The kitchen window was just a black hole. The glass was broken and the lights were out. While they looked at the screen, the lights upstairs went out.
“It’s impossible,” Alan said. “The generator is still working.”
“They’re probably unplugging the lights or breaking the bulbs,” Liz said.
“How?”
“Maybe they have tricks that we don’t know about.”
Alan changed the view on the screen until he found the
