Kelli, the more sane of the two women in his flat group, started to move. He seized her wrist. She was blond and pretty, but had mean eyes and a small heart when it came to taking care of others. She worked mornings at a pastry shop and Friday and Saturday nights at a gentlemen’s club. Not as a dancer, but as a hostess.
Her blond hair made her stand out in the darkness, but Warren knew he was almost invisible. At six-two, he was more than a head taller than she was. He was twenty-three, a couple of years younger than she was. He was long and lanky, dressed in black jeans, black motorcycle boots, black turtleneck, and a long black duster. With his black skin, he was a shadow among shadows.
“Don’t move,” Warren whispered. That warning tickle still exploded inside his brain. It was everything he could do to keep from running away and leaving her there. If she put up much of an argument or a fight, he was going to do exactly that, though. He still wasn’t sure why he wasn’t doing that now.
“What’s wrong with you?” Kelli demanded, yanking her hand free. She reached for the door of the refrigeration unit.
“We’re…not…alone.” Warren breathed the words into her ear.
“No, we’re not.” She whispered, too, hooking her fingers in her long hair and pulling it back from her face. “This place wasn’t empty when we came here.”
The other scavengers were busy with the canned foods. All of them worked as fast as they could to gather everything they could safely carry.
Warren and Kelli had brought pillowcases, doubling them to increase the strength.
“Listen to me,” Warren said desperately, locking eyes with her. He’d found over the years that making eye contact with people he wanted to persuade was somehow more effective than simply voicing a logical argument. “There’s something out there.”
Kelli hesitated then. Warren had gone out of his way to get her from the club one night four months ago. He’d convinced her he’d had a premonition that something bad was going to happen. Only minutes later, a jealous boyfriend came in and shot his girlfriend and nine customers. The girlfriend and two of the customers had died.
“What makes you think that?” she asked. “I just know it. We need to get out of here.”
“We need food,” Kelli argued. “We’re running out of things to eat.”
“If we don’t leave,” Warren told her, “we may not be going home tonight.”
She stared into his eyes. “Are you sure?”
Warren nodded. “I’m sure.”
Kelli glanced around, but Warren knew he had her. “All right,” she said.
Warren took a fresh grip on his pillowcase. It was less than half full, but he’d scored peanut butter, which would make George happy.
Lights suddenly flashed against the broken windows of the convenience store.
“Coppers,” one of the other scavengers groaned.
Immediately the scavengers began dumping items they’d stolen from residences onto the floor. For many of the scavengers, looting was a natural outgrowth of survival. Maybe they couldn’t at the moment sell the jewelry, tri-dees, or individual entertainment systems they’d boosted, but they believed everything would return to normal soon. Then they planned on making small fortunes selling their stolen goods.
George was doing the same thing when he went out to forage.
The policeman entered the convenience store and shined his flashlight around. Illuminated by the beam, the man looked tired and old. He wore riot gear, bulky and stiff. He carried an assault rifle in his other hand.
“You people need to get out of here,” the policeman said. His beam fell across the scattered jewelry and other items on the floor that clearly didn’t belong in the convenience store. His face hardened. “And stop that bloody thievery. Don’t any of you have a conscience? You’re out there robbing the dead. Or people that have been scared out of their homes.”
“Don’t lecture us,” a big man snarled. “We might not even get out of this. And if we do, we aren’t going to have much. Insurance isn’t going to cover our losses. I didn’t have any alien insurance. Did you?”
“They’re not aliens,” someone else said. “They’re demons.”
“What do we have here?” the first man asked sarcastically. “Did the parson leave the vicarage long enough to come down and loot with the rest of us heathens?”
“Don’t talk like that,” someone else said.
“Get moving,” the policeman said, “or I’m going to run the lot of—”
A shadow unfurled in the window, swinging down into the window from above and smashing through the glass. The policeman tried to turn and bring his assault rifle into play. He had his finger on the trigger and was firing in a heartbeat.
But it didn’t last long. In one stride, the demon was on the policeman. It closed one hand around the policeman’s head and yanked.
Warren heard the man’s spine snap even across the store. By then Warren had Kelli by the wrist and was dragging her into motion. He ran for the back door, slamming through the alarm bar.
Immediately the alarm filled the night.
Forgot about the batteries, Warren chided himself. Alarm systems would have a secondary power source in case the primary one was shut down.
The cobblestone alley ran in both directions, but the way to the left dead-ended at a tall fence topped with barbed wire. Kelli immediately took off to the right.
Warren started to follow but the warning tickle fired through his brain again. This time it bordered on painful. He stopped short, tightening his grip on Kelli’s wrist.
She cursed at him. “Come on.” Her voice was tight with desperation. “That thing is going to be coming!”
People ran past them.
Warren held his ground and maintained his hold. “No. We can’t go that way.”
“Let me go!” Kelli jerked, trying to get free.
“Don’t! If you want
