Not so long ago, they’d talked about dreams. About possibilities, passions, about what could be.
All she knew now was that she had a direction, not one borne of any of that passion or possibility, but of the process of elimination. She could never, would never let herself feel like this again.
■
Monday
“Don’t go,” Maggie said.
“Someone has to,” her dad said.
“You go on this neighborhood watch thing, and you’ll disappear. Something will happen, and you won’t come home tonight. People will tell themselves things. We’ll tell ourselves things, but we won’t believe it,” Maggie said. She was pleading now. “Dad. You know what’s going on. People are blocking off streets, and we tell ourselves it’s to protect ourselves from them, but you know they’re the ones doing it. They’re blocking any path we could take to drive out.”
“It’s hysteria,” her dad said. “People overreacting, and a lack of communication. That’s why tonight will be good. A big group, talking with one another, figuring out how things stand, what the priorities are.”
“Convincing each other of the lies,” Maggie said. “Reassuring, when we need to be doing the opposite. Digging for the truth at the heart of all this.”
“Maggie, calm down.”
“I’m not going to calm down. Not when you’re going to go out there and you’re not going to come freaking home!”
She had tears in the corners of her eyes.
“Then bring me with you,” she said. “Bring me with you, and bring Chris, and we go, together.”
“No,” Chris said. “If we leave the house empty-”
“Chris,” Maggie said, wheeling around. “Come on. Please?”
“It’s dangerous, leaving the place unoccupied. It’s like they’re watching.”
“I’d rather lose the house than leave you alone, Chris. Please? Pretty please?”
“Maggie-”
“Please, papa?”
“Now you’re playing dirty,” Chris said. “I haven’t heard that one in a long time.”
She couldn’t bring herself to speak around the lump in her throat.
“We go to the meeting, then go for a short patrol? Make sure there’s no fires nearby? All together?”
She nodded, relieved enough she let out a bit of a sob.
They left the house as a group.
The meeting was at one house in the neighborhood.
The first set of speeches were very much what she’d expected.
“Lock your doors,” one of them was saying.
Ben had locked his doors.
“Leave lights on.”
If you have power.
“Stay in touch with your neighbors, and let them know where you’re going and if you’re leaving.”
And brush it off with excuses and justifications if they disappear and don’t leave a message.
“We think they’re lurking in the area where all the occupants were displaced. Angry locals who didn’t want to leave, who had all of their services shut off. Teenagers and drunks, who got carried away once they got started. Any day now, the police should have a handle on this.”
“Where are they now?” someone asked.
The discussions went on.
No real answers. Nothing definitive.
Maggie looked back just in time to see a man make his way in through the front doors.
The ringleader? The stranger with the blue car and the weary eyes.
She clutched the two hands she was holding as hard as she could, ducking her head down.
Her dads looked, and she indicated with a tilt of her head.
“It’s him. The crazy guy who attacked me. Who sent those guys to Ben’s house.”
“This will all blow over,” the guy at the stage was saying.
Every time the man had shown up, there had been something. The grotesque art show, the invaders at Ben’s house…
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
She looked, and she saw him staring right at her.
She watched as he beckoned.
With her dads, she stood from her seat, and they left the meeting. By the time they reached the front door of the house, the man had stepped out.
Outside, it was dark, and it was quiet.
“Delete the photos,” the man said. “Now.”
“What are you doing here?” Maggie’s dad asked.
“Damage control,” the man responded. “Please. The sooner you do it, the better for both of us.”
Uncertain, Maggie said, “I can’t tell if that’s a threat, or-”
“It’s reality. If I explain, I endanger you. I could tell you I’m not your enemy, but I suspect-”
“I wouldn’t believe you,” Maggie said.
“I know,” the man said. “I got that sense. What I can tell you is that you’re nearly out of time. As it stands, you may not make it out alive, even if you delete the photos and leave this city now.”
“It’s dangerous out there,” her father said.
“Very soon, it’s going to be dangerous here,” the stranger said. “Within minutes. You should leave now, on foot. The cars are sabotaged and you can’t use the roads.”
Maggie withdrew the phone from her pocket. She set to deleting the photos.
“Good. That buys you time.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “If you’re not the bad guy?”
“Helping. Failing to help, too. Right now, I’m trying to decide. Do I let things hit rock bottom, or do I fight now?”
“What’s the difference?” Maggie asked.
“If I wait until a handful survive,” he said, “Then try to save them, when I know they’ll believe the truth, I might save more than if I go in front of that house full of people and lie.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“If you’re lucky, it never will,” he said. “Go. Take nothing, keep nothing. But go. And pray they haven’t ferreted you out.”
“Why were the photos so important?”
“Go.”
Chris was the one to jerk into motion, driven to move by the force in the stranger’s tone.
With every block they walked, taking shortcuts between houses, they saw how bad it was. Cars had been taken apart and left dismantled in the road. Houses were burned husks. There were pools of blood on the streets, largely dried, flies clustered on them, flying into the air when they drew near.
“Psychological tactics,” Chris muttered, at the cars. At the pools of blood, he said, “Animal blood. There are farms nearby.”
Maggie wondered if he believed it.
She wondered why she couldn’t believe it.
It all came back to those photos. To the stranger…
Her thoughts were interrupted. Figures stepping out of the shadows.
They hadn’t made it.
When she looked, she found they were surrounded.
How could so many of them be so sneaky? How could they walk in near silence for minutes, and not hear a single scrape of a footstep?
The people formed a ring around them.
Too many were too short, too young, too fat, too tall. Almost none were normal… and those ones looked the most wrong when she looked too close.