They walk down the middle of the street, Pilcher eyeing the scaffolding fronting the building that will become the opera house.
“I imagine there will be some shock and disbelief at the outset, but once they understand what I’ve given them the chance to be a part of?”
“They’ll fall on the ground thanking you,” Pope says.
Pilcher smiles.
A flatbed truck carrying a load of raw lumber rumbles past.
“Can you fathom being given this opportunity?” Pilcher muses. “In the world we came from, our existence was so easy. And so full of discontent because it was so easy. How do you find meaning when you’re one of seven billion? When food, clothing, everything you need is just one Walmart away? When we numb our minds to sleep on all manner of screens and HD entertainment, the meaning of life, of our existence and purpose, becomes lost.”
“And what is that?” Pope asks.
“What is what?”
“Our purpose.”
“To perpetuate our species of course. To reign over this planet. And we will again. Not in your or my lifetime, but we will. The people I bring out of suspension to populate my town won’t have Facebook or iPhones, iPads, Twitter, next-day delivery. They’ll interact like our species used to. Face-to-face. And they’ll live knowing they’re the last of humanity, that outside our fence are a billion monsters that want to devour them. With that knowledge, they’ll abide in a full understanding that in the face of these enormous stakes, their lives have taken on incomprehensible worth. And isn’t that all we want in the end? To feel useful? Of value?”
Pilcher smiles as his town—his dream—comes to life before his eyes.
He says, “This place is going to be our Eden.”
THE TURNERS
Jim Turner kissed his eight-year-old daughter on the forehead and wiped away the tears that were streaming out of her eyes.
She said, “But I want you to stay with us.”
“I have to go secure the house.”
“I’m scared.”
“Mommy’s staying with you.”
“Why are people screaming outside?”
“I don’t know,” he lied.
“Is it because of those monsters? We learned about them in school. Mr. Pilcher protects us from them.”
“I don’t know what they are, Jessica, but I have to go make sure you and Mommy are safe, okay?”
The little girl nodded.
“I love you, sweetheart.”
“I love you too, Daddy.”
He stood, put his hands on his wife’s face. Couldn’t see her in the darkness, but he could feel her lips trembling, the wetness of tears running over them.
He said, “You have water, food, a flashlight.” He tried to make a joke out of it. “Even a pot to piss in.”
She grabbed his neck, put her lips to his ear.
“Don’t do this.”
“There’s no other way and you know it.”
“The basement—”
“It won’t work. The boards are too long to go across the door.” He heard their neighbors, the Millers, dying in their home across the street. “When it comes time to get out—”
“You’ll break us out.”
“I want nothing more. But if I’m not here to do it, use the crowbar. You’ll have to wedge it into the jamb.”
“We should’ve stayed with the others.”
“I know, but we didn’t, and now we’re doing the best we can. No matter what you hear in this bedroom, you stay in this closet, and you don’t make a sound. Cover her ears if—”
“Don’t say that.”
“If what, Daddy?”
“Oh God, don’t say that.”
“I love you, my girls. Now I have to shut this door.”
“No, Daddy!”
“Quiet, Jess,” he whispered.
Jim Turner kissed his wife.
He kissed his daughter.
Then he shut them into the bedroom closet on the second floor of their lavender-colored Victorian.
His toolbox was already open on the floor.
He flicked on his flashlight and chose a suitable two-by-four from the pieces of scrap lumber he’d carried in from the shed—remnants of a doghouse he’d built last summer.
Those warm afternoons working in the backyard . . .
Mrs. Miller’s screaming jettisoned the memory into oblivion.
“No-no-no-no-no-no-no! Oh Goooooooddddd!”
Jessica was crying in the closet, Gracie struggling to comfort her.
Jim grabbed a hammer. He started nails on each end of the board. Screws would have been preferable but there was no time. He held the pine board across the doorframe and drove the nails into the studs.
His mind wouldn’t stop.
He kept replaying what the sheriff had said, but he couldn’t wrap his head around it.
How could this be all that was left of humanity?
By the time he had four boards nailed across the doorframe, the Millers had gone quiet across the street.
He dropped the hammer, wiped his brow.
Dripping with sweat.
Kneeling down, he put his lips to the closet door.
“Jessica? Gracie?”
“I can hear you,” his wife said.
“You’re nailed in,” Jim said. “Now I have to go find a place to hide.”
“Please be safe.”
He put his hand on the door.
“I love you both so much.”
Gracie said something back but he couldn’t hear the words. Too muffled. Too faint. Too ruined by tears.
Rising to his feet, he grabbed the flashlight and the hammer—the nearest thing to a weapon in his toolbox.
At the bedroom door, he turned the lock and closed it gently behind him.
The hallway was dark.
The last half hour had been so filled with shouting and shrieks that the silence struck him wrong, like a lie.
Where will you hide?
How will you survive?
He stopped at the top of the staircase. He was tempted to use the light, but feared it might draw attention.
With a hand on the bannister for a guide, he went slowly down the creaking steps. The living room stood in impenetrable shadow. Jim moved to the front door. He’d locked the dead bolt, but he had a feeling that didn’t matter. From what he’d seen, these things were running through the windows.