Ice shavings collected on the windowsill. Opal scraped a portal in the frost-blighted glass. Wyatt and Adam were downstairs with a Folgers coffee can of nails, hammering two-by-fours across the door. The pounding sounded more like a person furiously wanting in than anyone trying to keep people out. She was scared they might die tonight. She saw flashes in the sky, heard a rumble. These weren’t man-made explosions. It was thunder. Lightning. More thunder boomed, a roll that went on forever and merged with the emptiness in the pit of her stomach. Snowflakes batted the window, tumbled away like dying moths.
Crazy weather.
Crazy people.
That’s who she was seeing in the highway.
Groups of them, mostly men, scattered along the two-lane.
Some were dressed in normal winter coats, but others wore an assortment of quasi-military gear. Winter camouflage and fur- trimmed hats transformed them into inhuman shape-shifters. She counted at least forty.
They all carried weapons.
Old weapons that glinted in the firelight.
Spears. Axes. Pikes. She swore one of them hefted a sword.
Members at the front of each group had camping lanterns, the handles tucked in the crooks of their arms, or held aloft on poles,
where they glowed like stars, molten light spilling on the ground, and also in their arsenal were powerful spotlights, which flashed with dreadful suddenness a cold white bolt into the doorways of silent houses. Opal imagined the people living in those houses. Moments ago perhaps they were sitting down to an early dinner or gathered around their Christmas trees. Maybe they were watching TV. Or maybe they’d been looking out the window the way she was. Hearing the explosions and seeing the fire unabated lick, lap, and slather flame from rooftop to rooftop and consume their town. Cinders dirtied the skyline.
Here and there, the curious moved outdoors.
Citizens stepped outside and wondered first at the inferno and next at the figures approaching down the road.
Figures walking in no great hurry . . . with hunting knives, hatchets, and lengths of chain clutched in their fists. Light floods a doorway. Sometimes it finds the eyes of those who live there. You see a face, a mouth stretched in fear or pure outrage.
Most fled back inside and turned their locks.
What little good that did.
The groups, or posses, attacked with wood-splitting clubs or battering rams made from heavy sections of pipe. One posse used a pointed log. Their arms swung in rhythm.
Doors broke, men went inside.
There were gunshots. No one had enough time to defend themselves.
People were dragged into the open. Young and old—the ambling figures did not discriminate. Man, woman, and child alike were welcomed to the road. Opal saw murder in the snowstorm. How could it be?
It didn’t matter how.
It was.
Opal felt a shadow at her back.
“Lights won’t come on. I think the explosion cut a power line. It’ll start to get cold in here soon.” Adam knelt next to her on the floor.
Opal glanced at the window.
She had tried calling her sister, Ruby, but no one answered their phone.
In the dimming day, out there in the blizzard, people screamed.
Screams of terror, screams of joy.
“They’re taking people from their houses and without the stone ...”
“We’ll find a way,” Adam said.
Opal hugged him. “What you and I need to do is block that door leading to the back steps. There’s a lock on the utility room, but I think we’d be a lot safer if we jammed the washer and dryer in front of the back door. Then there’s no room to push the door in. They’ll have to tear it off the frame. Or climb through the little window, one at a time. If they have to haul out the machines, there’s nowhere to put them but over the railing and into the alley.”
Adam didn’t respond. He stared out the window.
He stood up and ran down the stairs where Wyatt was boarding the doors.
“What is it?” Opal asked.
She looked through the window.
Vera’s Camaro pulled up on a slant under the Rendezvous sign. She was out of the car, running with her arm around a bundle and a pistol in her hand.
Wyatt stopped hammering.
The quiet echoed.
Outside, the screaming continued.