“We’re working in here,” Mary said, pointing.
He followed her to the living room. Alan’s plan was to just kill a little time talking to Mary and then he would go back home and make another attempt at entering the empty house. When she showed him what she expected him to do, Alan regretted not heading the other direction to stop by his friend Robert’s place. There, they would have been patching drywall or framing in a new closet or something. Alan felt comfortable doing those kinds of tasks where his work would never be judged. Mary had him cutting out patterns and hand-stitching seams. His fingers were both too sensitive and clumsy.
“I’m terrible at this,” he said. “You’ll never be able to sell any of these.”
“Nonsense,” Mary said. “People will actually gravitate towards the ones that look like a child made them.”
“Thanks,” he said.
She smiled and raised her eyebrows.
“Where’d you grow up, anyway?” she asked.
Before he knew it, Alan was telling her his life story. Halfway through, when he was telling her where he met Liz, he realized that he still didn’t know anything about her other than she was Ricky’s mom. He interrupted himself and started to ask where she grew up when Tucker jumped up and went through the door towards the kitchen.
“Hold that thought,” she said and followed the dog.
Alan finished the stitching on the pillow and held it at arm’s length to consider it. She might have been joking, but it really did look like a child had worked on it. His stitch meandered left and right down the length of the seam. A moment later, he heard the door open and Mary greet someone. Then, before he could stand up, the door closed and she was returning with a package.
“Good news,” she said. “I got some more walnut shells so…”
She saw the look on his face and stopped talking.
“Alan?”
“Tucker doesn’t bark,” he said.
“Nope. When he was a puppy, he used to be a complete nuisance whenever anyone came to the door. Ricky trained him to go politely to the door and wait instead of barking and jumping everywhere.”
“Romeo trained his dog to hide,” Alan said. “I thought he was just being careful, but Ricky said that people will only be careful for so long. He said that eventually they get sloppy or lazy if they’re not still face-to-face with the problem that made them careful in the first place.”
“Sounds about right,” Mary said.
Alan put down the pillow and stood up. “I have to make sure they’re okay.”
# # #
The satellite messenger was still on the seat of his car. Alan opened the door and picked it up—there were no new messages from the kids. The last thing Amber said was that they were going down into the hole.
Mary walked up slowly as he tapped out a message. Her arms were crossed—she was practically hugging herself.
“What’s the problem?” she asked.
“No response. I just asked for an update,” he said.
“But what made you jump up and run out to check on them?”
“Oh,” Alan said. He looked her in the eyes and saw her worry. He measured his words carefully, not wanting to spread his fear just based on a hunch. “I was thinking about Romeo, and thinking about some things that he said. At the time, I trusted that he was telling the truth, but Ricky was more skeptical. If Ricky was right, then what else might Romeo have been lying about?”
“Like?”
Alan took a deep breath and blinked as he looked up towards the sky. The sun was almost overhead.
“Well, I have to wonder why he was tending to that graveyard off the side of the road. At the time, I figured he had some survivor’s guilt and was paying his respects. Then, he reached out to Ricky to say that they had ended hibernation early this year. Maybe he told us that so we wouldn’t bother to go out and hunt for them anymore.”
“Why would he care if you were hunting them?” Mary asked. “If he’s afraid of the things—as he should be—then wouldn’t he want them found?”
“If he’s lying, then I guess who’s to say that he’s afraid of them?” Alan asked.
Mary frowned and looked away.
Alan looked down at the satellite device again. It had a feature that he hadn’t used. The two devices were linked, so he could hit a button and get a report back on the location of the other one. The answer he received didn’t make any sense. It told him the last location of Amber’s device, but said that it hadn’t made contact in almost two hours.
“What?” Mary asked, seeing his concern.
“Well, unless the battery ran out or they took the thing underground, I guess I don’t understand this. There’s no contact with the other unit.”
Mary looked back towards the house and then down at the dog. When she looked back to Alan, all the worry and concern were gone from her features. All that was left was determination.
“Your car or mine?”
# # #
Before they got out of range, Mary called Vernon. Alan couldn’t help but overhear the conversation with her husband. He only asked one question.
“What’s my share?”
Alan understood the question when Mary answered.
“Make spears or stakes or whatever. Like the ones that Amber had. Get some of that powder she had too. Take everything back to her uncle’s house and get it ready in case the fight comes back there. If you don’t hear from me again by sunset, bring everything up to the address I’m sending you.”
“Got it,” Vernon said.
Alan’s conversation with Liz couldn’t have been more different. They still had a chance to protect their son.
“Alan, make something up. Call the fire department or police if you have to,” Liz said.
“Not until we know,” Alan said. “The only advantage we have
