“Don’t you look pretty,” Mary said. She tried to conjure a reassuring smile. “What a darling dress! Come on, George, let’s get going.”
Her son was reluctant to come along. Mary took Lori’s hand while she still held it out. The girl flinched, but Mary held tight.
“Which way is your grandparents’ house?” Mary asked.
“No!” Lori said. She tried to pull her hand away again. “I told you, demons got them.”
“Relax,” Mary said. “We’re not going there. I’m just trying to get my bearings.”
“Your what?” Lori looked up at her.
“I want to know what direction to go.”
“That way,” George said. He moved up on Mary’s other side. “Her house is that way.”
Mary looked between the two kids. Lori nodded.
“Okay,” Mary said. “We’ll swing wide around it then. Sound good?”
Lori was shaking her head. When she opened her mouth to speak, Mary interrupted her. “I know, I know. Demons. We’ll figure that out when we see them.”
[ Stopped ]
George navigated them through the woods. He took them close enough that even Mary could see the outlines of the house through the trees. Lori didn’t even look where they were going. She kept her eyes fixed on those shapes that represented a place that her people called home. In normal circumstances, Mary would have dragged the girl back to Earl Palange’s house. She wasn’t in the habit of abducting truant children.
Mary listened to her own feet. Flanked by the silent children, she was still making a racket.
“Where are the dogs?” Mary asked.
Lori didn’t answer.
Mary stopped and asked again. Earl’s business was a constant source of irritation for his neighbors. Despite the fact that he had built his house out in the woods, away from town, everyone within two miles knew that Earl ran a dog boarding facility. He had all the proper permits, and his property was inspected every year, but he did not have the approval of his neighbors. If the wind was blowing to the north, the lower half of the town all complained about the noise of the barking and baying dogs.
Mary never heard the noise. Their house was on the other side of the hill. But within shouting distance of the house, the dogs should have been going crazy at the sound of Mary’s shuffling steps.
“Demons got them,” Lori said.
“The dogs?”
The girl nodded.
“Maybe you should tell us a little about these demons,” Mary said. She immediately regretted the thought. If the kids started to panic, they would be impossible to keep under control. “Never mind, Lori. You can tell us later.”
“You’ll see,” Lori said. “They won’t let us get much farther.”
Mary frowned.
“We’ll see together,” Mary said. “Stay close, George.”
George was facing the wrong way, walking backwards. “There’s something behind us,” he said.
Mary turned. She didn’t see a damned thing. The whole day was starting to get a little too frustrating. Mary was losing her temper and wanted to yell at George. It wasn’t his fault. Instead of resenting his ability to see, hear, and move better, she had to use him. She had to use him as an extension of herself, so they would both benefit.
“You kids run ahead,” she said to George. “Take her and go thirty paces south, you hear me? Make sure you can still see me and you do what I say.”
“We still going to the cemetery?” he asked.
Mary nodded. “Go.”
George did as he was told. He wouldn’t take Lori’s hand, but he tugged at the girl’s hem until she followed him. The two ran ahead just as Mary heard what George had been talking about. There was something coming through the woods.
Any other day, she would have said it was a squirrel or maybe somebody’s cat. But this thing was relentless. It wasn’t scooting forward and then stopping to look around, it was coming at a constant speed, crunching through the leaves. Mary faced the sound of the approaching thing and backed in the direction that George and Lori had gone.
Mary didn’t see anything.
She heard the buzzing in the air and whipped her head around. She could hear the motor, but still didn’t see anything.
“Demons,” she whispered. “
Electronic
demons, maybe.”
People were so worried about drone strikes in other countries. What would happen if someone tried to take over a village with little robots?
“Is that what they’re doing?” she whispered to herself.
She ducked as she heard another buzzing sound. This time, she caught a glimpse of the thing as it whizzed by. It was black. She had seen those before—some of those same things had been in the air while she was rescuing her son. Mary crouched and picked up a good thick stick. She slapped it against her hand.
With a glance, she saw that George was obeying her instructions well. She adjusted her path and then returned to scanning the leaves. She would see it soon—she had to.
When the thing buzzed through the air again, Mary didn’t hesitate. Without thinking, she swung her good, strong stick and managed to clip the black thing as it passed by close enough that she felt the wind on her face. She heard it crash into a tree and then tumble down to the leaves.
Mary smiled.
In the trail of disturbed leaves that made up her tracks, she saw another thing scuttling. It was the size of a rabbit, but it didn’t hop. This thing moved like an overgrown cockroach. Mary took her good stick in both hands and slung it over her shoulder. As the thing closed the distance, Mary swung her stick like an axe. She had chopped her fair share of wood and the motion was natural. She plowed the thing down into the soft forest soil.
With no hesitation, she swung again and again. Her good, strong stick cracked and then broke in two. As she straightened back up, she heard them. There were more of the things coming through the woods, disturbing the leaves. She glanced at the dead one at her feet. It was a tangle of menacing little legs.
When she turned, George and Lori were just standing there, right at the range of her vision.
“Get moving!” she yelled.
Mary chased after them, pausing only to pick up another stick.
[ Vacation ]
K
IRK
H
ILLIARD
SAT
AT
the kitchen table, reading yesterday’s newspaper when he heard the side door open. He wasn’t paying any attention to what he was reading. Kirk was trying to think of a way to get out of going to the party at his brother-in-law’s that evening. If he could get out of that, maybe he could swing by Peg’s for another visit. His Wednesday visit was still an excitement he felt in the pit of his stomach. She was so accommodating, and she made him feel attractive. Until he experienced how she lusted after his body, he never would have thought it important.
“Can I have my allowance early?” Jenny asked.
Kirk snapped down the paper, and surfaced from his vivid fantasy.
“You mean the allowance that you already asked for and got?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Do you fail to see the flaw in your logic?” he asked.
“If you remember correctly,” she said. “I asked for your help in getting a job. You always said that if I came to you and asked for your help, you would give it to me. Having asked for your help, and having been turned away, it seems like an advance on my allowance is completely reasonable.”
“If
you
remember correctly,” he said, snapping the paper back up between them, “I asked
you
to be my intern for the rest of the summer. Maybe if you hadn’t walked away from that offer, I would be more willing to entertain your allowance request.”
She rewarded him with a disgusted grunt and then turned to stomp into the kitchen. He skimmed the ads in the newspaper as he listened to her open and slam cabinet doors, looking for something that probably wasn’t there.
“I thought you were going to the parade,” he said.
“I did for a little,” she said. “It’s not the same without Big Jack.”
“Ugh,” he said. The horse was all anyone was talking about.
She came back to the table and dropped herself into one of the chairs. It barked back across the tiles as she landed. Kirk lowered his newspaper to give her a stern look, but she was staring down at her phone.
“What did you do with your mother?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“You went to the parade with your mother. Where did she go?”
She didn’t even bother to answer. Kirk let his paper fall to the table. It covered her phone.
“Jenny!” he yelled as she worked to recover her phone from under the newspaper.
“What?” she asked, looking up. The little device had the capability of completely resetting her brain. She looked at him like she was seeing him for the very first time.
“Where. Is. Your. Mother?”
“She went somewhere with your girlfriend. She was yelling.”
Kirk’s heart stopped beating.
“She and Shelly were supposed to go for a power walk tomorrow, but Shelly said that her new husband was having a crisis, and…”
Kirk tuned out the rest of the story so he could devote his attention to breathing again. For a second, he pictured Chelsea finding out about one of his dalliances and running off to a lawyer. That would be disastrous. He needed Chelsea.
“Where is she now?” he asked, trying to sound normal. For the moment, his thoughts of tracking down Peg that evening were completely forgotten.
“I told you, she went off with Shelly.”
“But when is she coming home? We’re supposed to go to your uncle’s place for cocktails.”
Jenny’s attention had been recaptured by her phone. She only shrugged at his question.
“Can you text her or something and find out?” he asked.
“Nope,” Jenny said. “Phones don’t work. Wifi too.”
“She says as she actively plays with her phone,” he said.
“This is
local
. I can’t do anything that connects to anywhere. I can’t even play games that have ads in them. Nothing works.”
“Oh,” Kirk said. He understood only one thing from her explanation—the cell phones were out. He leaned back in his chair and managed to snag the cordless phone from the charger. Chelsea always wanted to get rid of the landline, but Kirk routinely vetoed the idea. He knew the bozo who leased the land to the towers, and that guy couldn’t even be trusted to keep his own driveway clear. It was no wonder that the towers were always getting knocked out by this or that.
He punched the button on his phone and got only a strange tone.
Kirk frowned.
He stood up, sighed, and grabbed his keys from the counter.
Jenny looked up at the sound of jingling keys. “Are you going into town? Can I get a ride?”
“You just walked home from town and now you want a ride back there? Can you explain why that makes any sense at all?”
She rolled her eyes and then looked at him like he was an idiot. “I didn’t know I would be stranded here without any way to communicate with the outside world. My cell didn’t work in town, but I figured that wifi would work here. If I can’t text, I might as well talk to people, right?”
Kirk shrugged. “Okay. Fine. But I’m only going as far as the Grill. I’m not going to deal with all the holiday traffic.”
[ Stranded ]
He turned the key again. The car began to sound weary as the battery lost its oomph.
“Huh,” Kirk said. He fished his phone from his pocket and remembered that it didn’t work when it was halfway to his face. He began to reach for the door and then put his hand back on the wheel.
“I guess we’re walking,” he said.
“What?” Jenny asked. Based on her tone, it would have been easy to imagine that she had never accomplished such a heroic feat in her entire life.
“I’ll walk down to Jim Stratton’s garage and see if he wants my business. I heard that he’s picking up a lot of Roger’s clients.”
“What. Ever,” Jenny said. She got out and somehow managed to navigate without removing her eyes from her game.
“I should find out when Roger’s getting out again,” Kirk said to himself. “He’s ten times the mechanic that Jim is.”
Kirk looked back at his house and then down the driveway. Jenny walked to town all the time. Kirk hadn’t managed the trip in quite a while. She was already moving that direction. Kirk got himself moving. There was no sense in delaying. He was going to have to track down Jim and see if he could get his wrecker out to the house. Kirk looked over his shoulder and thought about going back. He could always find Jim tomorrow, or maybe just wait for the phones to work. He shook his head. It was pure laziness talking. Lately, his only real walking had been on the golf course. It would do him good to get out.
[ Realization ]
They were only a couple minutes from home when Kirk put his hand on Jenny’s shoulder and stopped her.
“Was that from your game?” he asked.
She looked at him.
“What are you talking about?”
“That sound.”
“My phone is muted.”
They heard it again. It was a girl screaming. Jenny looked at him with wide eyes. It had been a long time since she had looked that vulnerable. There was something about seeing his daughter frightened that he liked. Maybe it was wrong to think that way, but it reminded him of a simpler time—a time when a monster in the closet could be banished with only a nightlight.
There was nothing simple about this day—the phones, the car, and now screaming in the distance.
“What was going on when you left town?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “The parade was starting. Everyone was watching it.”
“Nothing else?”
Jenny shook her head.
Kirk wished he had the car. There was a compartment in his trunk where he kept two guns. He had only shot them once, but they had made him feel secure hundreds of times. He wanted a little of that security at that moment.
“I’m going back to the house,” he said.
“Dad!” Jenny said. “Shouldn’t we go find out who screamed?”