S1, E1 The Strangers

To inhabit the planet, they had to eliminate the Earth’s indigenous human population. Trouble was, they missed a few.

The story begins with a storm . . .

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Episode Transcript

(00:30):
This is Ed Falco on the air,reading The Strangers, a novel
in 19 episodes.
This is episode 1, TheLurchings.
Severn lay in bed, listening tothe wind scream and the rain

(00:59):
splashing great waves thatwashed over the house.
Sarah was sitting up alongsidehim, but he didn't know whether
she had been awakened by thesame sharp sensation of movement
that had awakened him, orwhether she was just sitting up
in the darkness, which would nothave been surprising.
Sarah was a lifelong insomniac.

(01:22):
From the time she was a toddler,getting to sleep had been an
issue.
She had long ago resorted todrugs, and she always had a
stock of something or other onhand.
sleeping pills of variousstrengths and side effects.
But she tried not to use themevery night, and often Severn
would wake to find her readingin bed or in the kitchen or
downstairs watching some natureshow on the Discovery Channel.

(01:45):
She loved the outdoors.
She worked for a battery ofenvironmental groups.
So when he felt for Sarahalongside him and found that she
was sitting up in bed, it didn'ttell him a lot.
He figured that the electricitywas off.
He figured the storm had downeda power line.
Did you feel that, he asked,meaning the lurching that had

(02:07):
awakened him.
When she didn't answer, hetouched her shoulder.
He had put together the wordingof what he wanted to say.
He was going to say, It feltlike the bed lurched.
He only meant to shake her alittle, to get her attention or
wake her up if she had fallenasleep.
For Severn, this is where it allbegan.

(02:29):
Before, there was an eeriedarkness that he had awakened
into and a sense of foreboding,the kind he associated with
waking from a bad dream.
But still, he was living in theold world, a world where things
happened regularly, as youexpected them to happen, a
recognizably human twenty firstcentury world of politics and

(02:49):
culture, full of all theordinary chaos of our familiar
noisy humanity.
He awakened into this old world.
And when he pushed Sarah, andshe toppled over and fell
horribly out of the bed,overturning the night table,
when she crashed to the floor,like a big, heavy object, with
all the weight and physics of anobject, somewhere inside him, he

(03:13):
knew that she was dead.
And that was the beginning ofthe new world.
Severn didn't panic, but he wasfrantic.
He shouted Sarah's name andscrambled after her onto the
floor.
He said, God, he said, Christ.
He knelt beside her in thatawful dark, and he felt all over
her body, looking for someindication of what might be

(03:35):
wrong, but it only felt likeSarah, still warm and supple as
in life.
He listened for her heartbeatand found nothing.
He gave her mouth to mouth.
He did that for a long time.
That memory persisted, and hedreamt it sometimes.
Trempt of pressing his lips tohers, trying to breathe life

(03:55):
back into her.
He did that, it seemed, forever.
He punched her chest, her heart.
He turned her over and pulledher arms back, trying to force
her lungs to pull in air.
He did everything he could thinkto do.
And all this in a blackness sothick he was blind.
To say it all felt unreal is notquite right.

(04:17):
More, it felt like a wakingdream.
He believed it was allhappening, and that it was
happening in the real world.
But it was so eerie, workingwith only two senses, touch and
hearing.
He couldn't see anything, andtaste and smell were of no
particular use.
Everything was what he felt andwhat he heard.

(04:40):
He felt his wife's body,lifeless under his hands, and he
heard rain and wind and thesounds he himself was making as
he worked on her frantically.
Blowing air into her lungs,pounding on her chest, turning
her over and pulling her armsback.
Oh, and there was the sense oftaste.
It was the salty taste of tearson his lips and in his mouth.

(05:05):
He thought to scream for help,but he didn't.
Then a moment came when he waskneeling beside the bed,
listening.
As a gust of wind built upstrength until he thought it
might blow out the windows orrip off the roof.
Sarah was sprawled in front ofhim, and if he reached for her
he believed she would be there,but he didn't want to touch her

(05:28):
again.
The wind subsided and the houseremained standing.
A syrupy thick weight spreadover and through him.
His thinking was syrupy.
As if he were half sleeping andhis thoughts wouldn't cohere.
He slid away from Sarah untilhis back touched the wall, and

(05:50):
he sat there quietly for whatfelt like a very long time.
Sentences came together slowlyin his thoughts.
Sarah is dead.
Something has happened to Sarah.
He thought it could have been aheart attack, and he wondered
vaguely if she might have triedto wake him.

(06:11):
And that was the sensation hefelt, Sarah grabbing his arm and
yanking at him.
That might have, in his sleep,felt like the bed lurching.
He had obscenely practicalthoughts, what his life would be
like once he inherited Sarah'smoney.

(06:31):
They'd had a long standingargument about her money.
She wanted to save forretirement.
He wanted a bigger house, abetter car.
It wasn't a fortune, it wasabout half a million.
Sitting with his back againstthe bedroom wall, with his dead
wife's body on the floor at hisfeet, he was thinking about her

(06:52):
money and the disgust he feltthat that was cosmic.
Less, what a creep I am, andmore, how base we all are, human
beings.
He cried.
He pulled his knees to his chin.
and sat in the dark crying.

(07:13):
His thoughts eventually turnedto light.
He felt for the window andlooked out.
Or he just pressed his faceagainst the glass because there
was nothing to see but moredarkness.
He pulled himself to his feetand felt his way around the bed
and out into the hallway andfrom there to the kitchen where

(07:34):
he felt around in the cabinetover the fridge for the big mag
light.
He found the long, cool,roughened handle of the
flashlight, found the softrubber off on button, and
nothing happened when he pressedit again and again.
Carefully, making a space on thekitchen counter, he emptied it

(07:56):
of batteries, and then felt hisway back to the hall closet
where they kept thereplacements.
Amazing how good the sense oftouch is, how accurate.
He found the big D batteries,four of them still unopened in
their plastic wrap.
He found a scissors, carefullycut open the package, carried

(08:16):
the batteries back to thecounter, put them in the
flashlight, pressed the button.
Nothing.
He took the batteries out again,made sure they were in the right
order, positive to negative.
Screwed the cap back on, triedagain.
Nothing.
He told himself to be patient.

(08:38):
He worried that the bulb wasblown.
He took the batteries out again,put them back in again.
Still nothing.
He considered candles andmatches, but he knew he had
neither in the house.
He had been meaning to buy somefor months to keep with the
water and the canned foods andother emergency supplies.

(09:00):
He thought about giving up andcalling the police.
But he wanted to see Sarahfirst.
He wanted to look at her onemore time before the ambulance
came and the attendants arrivedand did whatever they would do
to her.
He'd been with his father whenhe died and he still remembered
the cold as he watched theattendants lift his father's

(09:21):
body from the couch and drop itinto a black plastic bag which
they zipped shut around him.
He felt the cold all through hisown body as he thought of bodies
as meat and sinew dropped into ablack plastic bag and the bag
zipped closed.
He wanted to see Sarah again,alone, before the police and the

(09:43):
ambulances and then the friendsconsoling him and all that would
be happening in the next fewhours that would stretch into
terrible days and weeks and sohe found the car keys on their
hook over the sink and he madehis way to the front door.
past the cordless phone andSarah's cell phone attached to
its charger.
In his mind there was the ideaof the flashlight in the glove

(10:06):
compartment of his car, and inhis heart there was, again, a
sense of foreboding.
He found his raincoat hanging ona hook on the back of the front
door, and then he hesitated,afraid to unlock the door, let
alone open it and step outside.
His breathing went ragged andhis arms shook, and he had to

(10:29):
stop and rest his head againstthe doorframe.
He wanted to open the door andgo out for the flashlight, but
his arm wouldn't move until heresorted to reason.
His fear was irrational.
He said it a few times, this isirrational.
And then he pulled the door openand stepped out into the rain.

(10:52):
It was mid April then.
The day had been warm and thenight was cool with wind
whipping through trees andhedges and blowing thick sheets
of rain in winding and billowingwaves that he couldn't see but
he could feel and hear as hemade his way down the three
steps to the brick walk that ledto the driveway.

(11:12):
He went slowly and carefully.
He was barefoot and the bottomof his pajamas were soaked
instantly.
His feet immersed in rainwaterpuddling on the walk.
He stopped to listen and heardnothing but the storm.
The highway was almost two milesaway, though usually he could

(11:32):
hear the soft grumble of aneighteen wheeler rumbling
through the country on the wayto somewhere else.
He couldn't shake the fear, andhe was rapidly growing disgusted
with himself.
He was a thirty nine year oldman in the prime of his life.
In good physical condition, sixfoot one and strong.

(11:53):
And here he was, afraid ofnothing but the dark, while his
wife lay dead and growing cold.
Out loud, he said, and loud,what the hell is wrong with you?
And he continued along the brickwalk to the driveway, where he
found his Honda CRV parked wherehe always parked it.

(12:14):
He opened the door, and thelights didn't go on.
He got into the driver's seat,put the key in the ignition, and
nothing happened.
Except that sense of fear andforeboding came back strong.
It occurred to him that he mightbe dreaming.
But if that was the case, he wasin big trouble.

(12:35):
He would have to be psychoticbecause he knew what reality
felt like and what dream feltlike, and this was the feeling
of reality.
But the total darkness and theflashlight that wouldn't work
even with new batteries, and thecar that wouldn't start with the
lights that wouldn't go on, thathe had to admit, that was a lot

(12:58):
like a nightmare.
And Sarah had fallen over, deadat his touch.
He was awake in a nightmare.
He said that in his head, and itseemed true.
It He found the flashlight inthe glove compartment, and it
didn't work.

(13:18):
He carried it back into thehouse, took the batteries out
and replaced them with the freshbatteries from the mag light,
and it still didn't work.
He put the flashlight down onthe counter and took a seat in a
kitchen chair.
He told himself to slow down andthink.
Why wouldn't either of theflashlights work?

(13:40):
He decided that all thebatteries were dead, as unlikely
as that seemed.
Or both the bulbs were burnedout, as equally unlikely as that
seemed.
He tried to think.
He needed a source of light.
On the counter he found hiswife's cell phone and hit the
side button.
Nothing.

(14:01):
He tried to dial 9 1 1.
Nothing.
He picked up the cordless phone.
Nothing.
This was not easilycomprehensible that this was
happening, and his thoughtsreturned for a moment to the
possibility that he wasdreaming.
As absolutely as he knew that hewas awake, he still couldn't
discount entirely thepossibility that this was all a

(14:23):
dream, because none of it madeany sense.
He was tempted to get back intobed and curl up under his sheet
and hope to fall asleep so thathe could wake up to discover he
had indeed been dreaming.
Instead, he thought of his iPodand his laptop computer.
He felt his way through the darkto his study, where, as he

(14:46):
feared, both pieces of equipmentwere as dead as lumps of rock.
He tossed the iPod onto thedesk, half in anger and half in
disgust.
The electricity was out, and allthe batteries were dead.
How was that possible?
The iPod was working fine beforehe went to bed.
It was fully charged.

(15:08):
He and Sarah had listened toPablo Casals, his choice, and
Nora Jones, her choice.
They had stretched out on thebig living room couch, wrapped
up in each other, her head onhis chest, his arms around her,
and listened to music sleepily.
Sarah had at one point kissedhim on the chin.

(15:31):
And he could still feel it, ashe sat in the dark of his study
and tried to reason things out.
Her lips on his chin, warm and alittle wet.
He recalled that the weather wasnice that evening, no hint of a
storm, and no mention of badweather on the news.
Did that mean something?

(15:52):
Was that a piece of the puzzle?
What would kill all thebatteries from the car, to the
laptop, to the iPod, to anunopened package of D cell
batteries?
He thought maybe an electricalsurge of some sort, but neither
the iPod nor the laptop wereconnected to anything in any
way.
It wouldn't explain theflashlight batteries.

(16:15):
He considered the possibility ofa series of coincidences, that
all the batteries in the housejust happened to be dead at the
same time the car battery wasdead.
Or something else was wrong withthe car's electrical system at
the same time that the iPod andthe laptop battery died.
He considered it and ruled itout as nearly impossible.

(16:38):
Something must have happenedthat fried everything
electrical, even devices andbatteries not connected to the
electrical grid.
And that chain of thinkingbrought him around to thoughts
of a nuclear explosion or a sunflare.
Or some kind of naturalelectrical phenomenon.
What that last thing might bewas a mystery.

(17:01):
But he had read about sun flarescreating electrical
disturbances, and he had readthat a nuclear bomb would fry
everything electrical within acertain radius of the explosion.
Severn tried to work histhoughts around the three
improbable scenarios that mightexplain what was going on.
And the possibility of a nuclearexplosion began to loom over the

(17:24):
other choices.
Even while, at the very sametime, he found the idea absurd.
His thoughts went like this.
Sarah was awake.
The explosion was someplacedistant, say, Roanoke, fifty
miles away, but close enough torock the house.
That would be the lurch he feltin his sleep.

(17:44):
Sarah, seeing the flash andfeeling the explosion, knew what
happened.
and it frightened her so badlyshe had a heart attack.
Could the rain be some kind offallout?
Or the rain and the storm was acoincidence?
It was impossible.
A nuclear explosion in Roanoke,Virginia?

(18:05):
Terrorism in Roanoke?
A nuclear war, again, bombRoanoke?
It was so improbable as to beimpossible.
But it was a theory that fit theevidence.
Severn could not, however,actually believe it.
He stood up in his study andwalked in a small circle,

(18:26):
straining for some otherexplanation, and then the idea
of a meteor strike came to him.
And crazy as the idea seemed, itsuddenly felt like the best
theory he'd come up with.
Might a meteor strike have thesame effect on electrical
devices as a nuclear explosion?
He seemed to remember readingsomething like that somewhere.

(18:48):
Out loud and in his study, hesaid, My God.
And he seriously entertained thepossibility that a meteor had
crashed into southwest Virginia.
If that were the case, if ameteor had struck the earth
somewhere nearby, or relativelynearby, would the rain be full

(19:09):
of debris?
Full of pulverized earth?
Would the sky be black with ashand dirt?
With the thought of that, thesky black with ash, a kind of
numbness descended on Severn ashe accepted the meteor strike as
a possibility.
The storm could be some kind offreak weather event associated

(19:32):
with the strike.
The utter blackness of the nightmight be more than thick clouds,
it might be ash and debris.
The fear Severn felt at thatmoment, at the moment he truly
entertained the possibility of ameteor strike, made his knees
suddenly go watery.

(19:52):
He told himself that the meteorstrike was a crazy theory, that
there could be otherexplanations.
He tried to come up with acourse of action, and the
simplest one was to drive totown.
If there was something hugegoing on, he'd find out soon
enough.
If there was some otherexplanation, he'd find that out

(20:12):
too.
After thinking things through asbest he could, Severn settled on
trying to jumpstart the CRV.
He guessed he'd know veryquickly whether his theory was
hysteria, perhaps as soon as thecar started and he could turn on
the radio and the lights.
On his way to the bedroom, hehad to stop a moment in the

(20:33):
study doorway.
The possibility occurred to himsuddenly that he was blind.
His heart jumped at the thoughtof it.
Somehow, he knew he wasn'tblind.
It was a stormy night, andwithout any of the usual
electronic devices emittinglight, with no stars or moon,
with a thick layer of clouds,there was no light and he

(20:57):
couldn't see.
He knew he wasn't blind in thesame way that he knew he was
awake and not dreaming.
He didn't think.
There was a texture to things, adeep sense.
There was a texture to realityand waking, and he felt it.
There was a texture to sight,even when all you were seeing
was darkness.

(21:17):
He knew he wasn't blind, inprecisely the same way he knew
he wasn't dreaming.
But the thing was, that hecouldn't be sure.
How could he know for certainthat this wasn't a dream?
How could he know that he wasn'tblind, given that he couldn't
see a thing?
He told himself to followthrough on his plan, to get the

(21:40):
car started and drive to town.
In the bedroom he found Sarahand he lifted her onto the
sheets.
As best he could, hestraightened the blankets around
her.
He put a pillow under her head.
He found her lips with hisfinger and kissed her.

(22:01):
He righted her night table, forhe went to his own, and found
the key to the gun box.
On the top shelf in the closet,he found his gun.
There were two ammunition clipsin the box.
He slipped one into the gun, andput the other down on the foot
of the bed.
He went to his dresser, pulledon pants and a shirt, socks and

(22:25):
shoes, and then put the secondclip in his pocket.
He checked the gun's safety withhis thumb before tucking it down
in the back of his pants.
What else should he take?
His wallet.
He found it on the night tableand put it in his back pocket.
He crawled on the bed to kissSarah one more time, and then he

(22:48):
lay down beside her.
He was afraid to go out to thecar.
He was afraid to go outside, andhe lay there beside Sarah.
until he finally gatheredhimself together and pulled
himself up and out of the bed.
In the kitchen, he found hisraincoat, shook the wetness from

(23:09):
it, and then laughed at himselffor the stupidity of that.
Outside, the rain was, ifanything, coming down harder.
At the door, he hesitated.
He had no idea of the time.
He had gone to bed with Isaraaround ten o'clock, and he'd
have guessed.
that he had been sleeping for agood while, but he couldn't be

(23:32):
sure about that.
He didn't feel tired, but thatdidn't mean anything either.
He was confused by theresistance he felt to opening
the front door and stepping outinto the rain.
It was almost as if somethingwas holding him back.
There was one force, and thatwas the force of all the

(23:53):
questions building and the waythey were frightening him.
And that force urged him to goout to the driveway and try to
roll start the CRV, because heknew that if he could accomplish
that, many of his questionswould be quickly answered.
And there was another force,like an unseen hand around his
heart, squeezing and trying topull him back into the bed,

(24:17):
under the covers, to sleep.
There was no question though,not really, he knew what he had
to do.
He pulled himself free from thatunseen hand and went out into
the night.
His house was at the bottom ofPearl Mountain.
In a hard rain like this, theroads turned into waterways.

(24:39):
And that was what he heard assoon as he was out the door.
Water running like a river downthe roadway.
That would make things a littletrickier.
From his driveway, the roadsloped down in an almost
straight line before it turnedgently to the right and
intersected a half mile furtheron with a wider, better paved

(25:01):
road, which in turn ambled along, winding distance, little
more than two miles, to thehighway.
The brick path to the drivewaywas flooded, and water followed
the path down the driveway andout to the road.
Severn's pants, where theraincoat ended at his knees,
were soaked almost the moment hestepped out the door, and by the

(25:24):
time he reached the driveway, hecould feel water soaking through
the leather of his shoes.
The driveway itself was a smalltributary feeding the road.
And he could tell all this fromthe sound of the rain splashing
around him, and the accumulationof it spilling down the hill.

(25:45):
He still couldn't see a blessedthing.
When the bricks stopped andblacktop started, he knew he was
at the driveway.
He walked with his handsstretched out in front of him.
When he was expecting to touchthe car soon, he removed the
keys from the pocket of hisraincoat.

(26:08):
Behind him, he heard somethingrunning across the sodden lawn.
And he had time only to spin inthe direction of the sound
before it was on him, slamminginto him, knocking him onto his
back, the keys flying out of hishand.
He made some kind of animalnoises, Severn did, grunting

(26:28):
noises of alarm and fear.
He tried to protect himself, hishands flailing at the darkness.
Then the creature that hadknocked him down backed off and
barked.
Severn understood that this wasa dog, and he understood, again,
he couldn't say how heunderstood.

(26:49):
It was likely something in thesound of the bark.
He understood that the dog meanthim no harm.
A moment later, the dog jumpedup on him again, this time
licking his face and trying tonuzzle into his chest.
He patted the dog's back andsaid, Alright, hold on.

(27:09):
And it backed away, given Severnroom, as if it understood what
was being asked of it.
Now we're in trouble, he said,meaning the keys were lost.
And he realized he was instantlytalking to this dog as if it
were a human and an old friend.
Something about the dog runningat him and then slamming into

(27:30):
him had pushed Severn around thecorner.
The fear was gone.
Maybe that's too extreme to saythat he wasn't afraid.
It was more like this, theterrible sense of foreboding,
the sense of something ominousand frightening that had Severn
in its grip from the moment heopened his eyes that night.
That was what disappeared oncethe big dog came at him and

(27:52):
knocked him down and licked hisface.
Where are the keys, he said, andcurled on all fours in the
direction where the keys hadbeen knocked out of his hand.
The big dog came close alongsidehim and sniffed the ground, as
if he were helping look for thekeys.
Where are the keys?
Severn kept saying, as if thedog might find them for him.

(28:13):
And the dog sniffed the groundas if it understood and was
doing its best.
When Severn found them, hisfingers coming down first on the
metal ring of keys beforeclutching them in his hand, the
dog barked and Severn jumped tohis feet.
When he opened the car door, thedog leapt into the passenger
seat.

(28:34):
It was a relief to be out of therain.
Severn said, You alright, boy?
And he reached across thedarkness to pet the dog's head.
The dog responded by licking hisface.
And when Severn said, Okay,enough, it backed off
immediately.
He put the key in the ignitionand turned it, hoping something

(28:55):
might have changed since thelast attempt, but nothing had.
He left the key in the onposition, released the
handbrake, and used the footbrake to slowly roll the car
down the driveway.
He was quiet, trying to sense astraight line.
Without the power steering, hehad to muscle the wheel for the

(29:17):
smallest correction.
He let the car build up a littlespeed, and at the bottom of the
driveway, when he felt thesmooth surface of the blacktop
give way to the rough asphalt ofthe roadway, he yanked hard to
the right on the steering wheel.
And the CRV went a few feetbackwards up the hill before
coming to a stop and beginningto roll down the hill.

(29:38):
Besides Severn, the dog wasquiet, though its breathing was
audible.
Severn pulled the steering wheelslightly to the left to bring
the car out to the center of theroad, and then did his best to
straighten it out.
It was frightening being in acar rolling down a hill in utter
darkness.

(29:58):
He put it in second gear andwaited as long as he could bear
before popping the clutch.
When he did, the engine turnedover, but it didn't start.
The hill was steep enough, andthe car had enough momentum to
keep it going, and thus to keepthe engine turning over, but it
didn't start.
You could jump start a car, hethought, without any battery at

(30:21):
all.
So what was the story?
The car was rolling, the enginewas turning over, but it wasn't
starting.
He pumped the gas pedal once,and then the car went off the
road.
Before Severn could manage acorrection in the steering, he
hit something solid, most likelya tree.

(30:42):
His head went into thewindshield hard, and he might
have lost consciousness.
He remembered the impact, andthen the next thing he
remembered was the big doglicking his face, and then the
taste of blood in his mouth andthe feel of it warm and
trickling down from hisforehead.
Bust, he said, not knowing whathe meant.

(31:04):
He unzipped and took off hisraincoat, tore a sleeve off his
shirt, and wrapped it around hisforehead like a bandana.
The cut didn't feel like much.
He had run his fingers over it,and it felt more like a scratch
than anything worrisome.
He put the raincoat back on andtried to get out of the car, but

(31:26):
his door was jammed againstsomething.
He reached across the dog andthe passenger seat, threw the
door open, and the dog jumpedout as Severn climbed over the
console and followed.
He walked along the edge of theroad in the dark, feeling with
his feet where the line ofpavement met the weedy shoulder.

(31:46):
The dog walked beside him,occasionally bumping into his
leg as if to reassure Severn ofhis presence.
Houses weren't close together onthis road.
But he shouldn't have had towalk too far before coming to a
driveway, wherever he was,whichever house.
He was going to bang on the doortill someone answered.

(32:07):
He knew most of the people onhis road anyway, and he guessed
from the distance he had rolledand from the tree he hit, he was
assuming it was a tree.
He guessed he'd come up soon onHank Epperson's place.
Hank was a wine importer, andhis house was a big old
Victorian.
He lived there with his wife andfour daughters, the oldest of

(32:29):
whom was about to start schoolat the University of Virginia in
Charlottesville.
Hank and his wife were takingher there for a visit this
weekend, but the other threedaughters should be home.
He didn't see how he could haverolled past Hank's place.
He hadn't gone that far.

(32:50):
Severn reached down to pat thedog alongside him.
In the back of his mind, he wasthinking about Sarah.
He wasn't letting himself thinkabout the meteor strike theory,
it was too crazy, and it wasn'tworth thinking about because
he'd know what was going on assoon as he could get out of the
suffocating darkness and makecontact with someone other than

(33:11):
a dog.
He couldn't trust his thoughts.
Sarah was dead, and everythingwas crazy.
He needed to stay calm and keeppushing.
Till he got out of the darkness.
He was glad this dog had foundhim.
And as soon as that thoughtcrossed his mind, the dog

(33:31):
growled, low and ominous, andthen took a quick step in front
of Severn, as if to block hisway.
What, Severn said, what is it?
The words weren't out of hismouth before he heard someone
laughing softly in the neardistance, maybe twenty feet
away.

(33:52):
Not much more than that.
Severn yelled, Who is that?
He tried to sound aggressive andunafraid, and thought he was
managing it pretty well.
But whoever was laughing justkept at it, softly.
The laughter was crazy, a littlemaniacal, like a madman laughing

(34:13):
in his cell.
What is this?
Severn shouted.
Who are you?
The laughter stopped.
And there was a sound ofrustling, and then something
whizzed past his head andcrashed into the road behind
him.
Instead of laughter now, heheard a kind of muted growling,

(34:34):
a strangled, furious moan.
What the hell are you doing?
Severn yelled.
And before he could get anothersentence out, the big dog barked
and ran toward whomever it waswho had just thrown something at
them.
Boy, Severn yelled, boy, but thedog was out in front of him,

(34:56):
snarling and barking.
And then, whoever he was barkingat ran off, across a soaked
field.
Severn could hear the retreatingfootsteps clearly, and the dog
at his heels.
And he listened to them recedeinto the darkness and distance,
until he was alone again, andthe barking stopped.

(35:19):
He crouched down in the road.
A shallow river of water rushedpast his feet.
The only sounds were the drivingrain and water as it sluiced
down the mountain.
He put his fingers in the waterand then touched them to his
lips.
No taste, only water.
No grit, no dirt.

(35:41):
If there were ashes or dirt inthe water, he couldn't feel or
taste them.
He looked up to the sky, wherehe saw nothing, no different
than looking behind him, ordown, or to the side.
It was all black, and nothing,and rain so intense, he might
have been standing under ashowerhead, every drop fat and

(36:03):
cold, and like a little bucketof water, all on its own.
He pulled the makeshift bandanaoff his forehead, and let rain
wash over his wound.
Like running a stream of waterover a cut.
He touched the sore spot withhis fingertips.
It didn't hurt much.
He couldn't feel anything morethan a welt and some raised

(36:26):
skin.
He took off his raincoat andtossed it behind him.
It was useless.
He was soaked through under it.
Severn had never experienced arain like this one.
He knew that the stream at theend of the road would be
flooded.
It had to be.
The road itself was a stream,and the stream would be a little

(36:49):
river by now.
He waited and listened, andthen, as he hoped, he heard the
sound of the big dog barrelingtoward him, and he braced
himself.
Okay, boy, he said, thinking hemight help pinpoint his
location, because he couldn'tbelieve even a dog could see in
this darkness.
And he must have been operatingon smell and sound.

(37:12):
When the lab jumped up on him,he was ready, but still knocked
backwards a few steps.
He patted his head and said,Good dog, good boy.
And then he pushed down andstarted out again, following the
pavement toward the Ebersons.
Who was that, he said, as if thedog might answer.

(37:32):
The lab followed along besidehim.
Bumping into his leg every nowand then.
Severn thought he heardsomething out in the fields, and
he stopped to listen.
When the dog stopped with him,but made no sound, he decided it
was nothing and moved on.
He felt the beginnings of panicin his belly, and he fought it.

(37:55):
You need a name, he said to thedog.
What's your name?
He stopped and bent to the dog,feeling his collar.
Thinking he might have a tagwith a name attached to it.
How about Sage, he said, when hefound no collar.
He patted the dog's head.
I used to have a Weimaranernamed Sage.
How about Sage the Second?

(38:18):
Then he added, as if the dog hadrejected, the added Roman
numeral.
Just Sage?
OK, fine, he said.
Sage.
Under his feet, he felt the endof the weeds and the beginning
of what he had to assume wasHank Epperson's driveway.
Here we are, he said, andstarted up the drive.

(38:38):
He walked with slow, carefulstrides, half walking and half
feeling his way.
After a few feet, his calftouched the bumper of a car.
He reached for the car and usedit as a guide.
sliding his hands along thetrunk and the back doors and
windows and then the hood.
When he passed that car, therewas another one in front of it,

(39:01):
and then another in front ofthat one.
He slid around one of the cars,and as he had guessed, there was
another alongside it.
If he could see a blessed thing,he was sure he'd be seeing the
driveway packed with cars, whichmeant the Epperson girls were
having a party while theirparents were away.
And as soon as that thoughtentered Severn's consciousness,

(39:23):
it was followed by an awarenessof the silence coming from the
house, and the sense of panicroiled and threatened to
explode.
He knelt to the dog and pattedits head, and he stayed there
like that, quiet, the two ofthem soaked in a drenching rain,
until he felt sure he hadstilled the panic.
He made his way to the front ofthe house and followed along the

(39:46):
walls to a bay window thatshowed no light coming from
within the house, to a doorwhich was unlocked.
He opened the door and steppedinto a still living room.
When he closed the door behindhim and Sage, the silence was
striking.
He hadn't realized how loud therain had been until the sound of

(40:08):
it was muted.
Sage shook the rain off hiscoat.
and then sat alongside Severn,pressed up against him so close
he was partly sitting on hisfoot.
The room smelled of beer andcigarettes, as if a party had
just ended, and no one hadcleaned up yet.

(40:28):
Severn considered calling outfor the girls, but that
intensely gripping sense offoreboding was on him again, and
he seemed unable to manageanything more than standing
silently in the dark As if hewas waiting for something.
He knew the girls names.
They were all named for flowers.
The oldest, Daisy, was the onestarting college who would be

(40:52):
off in Charlottesville now withher parents.
The two older teens, 16 and 15,were Iris and Rose.
The youngest, a 13 year old, wasViolet, though she hated her
name and insisted on beingcalled Vi.
He knelt to sage and patted hisshoulders and chest.

(41:13):
The dog's body was muscular andsleek.
He found the light switch on thewall and flicked it up and down,
knowing that the electric wasout and that nothing would
happen, but doing it anyway.
Then he gathered up his courageand began feeling his way
through the room.
When his foot hit what heimagined was a coffee table, he

(41:34):
knelt to it and felt around onthe surface.
The first thing he touched was abeer bottle, and then next to
it, what felt like a pack ofcigarettes, which he lifted and
squeezed because something solidwas jammed into the pack.
His heart beat hard withexcitement when he understood
that it was a butane cigarettelighter.

(41:55):
He pulled it from the pack, heldit out in front of him, spun the
little wheel, held down thelever, and it burst into flame.
Illuminating a living roomfilled with scores of dead
bodies, all young, all kids.
They lay scattered throughoutthe room, tumbled over each

(42:16):
other, on chairs and couches,all over the floor, looking as
if they had been hit by a boltof lightning and fallen where
they stood, their arms bentawkwardly, their eyes open, all
their eyes open.
Severn let the flame go out,clutched the lighter to his

(42:37):
chest, and concentrated on hisbreathing, which had gone
instantly shallow and rapid.
When he tried to control hisbreathing, it turned ragged and
loud, like someone recoveringfrom a hysterical crying jag.
And then he thought he might beunable to breathe right, because
he couldn't seem to get enoughair, couldn't seem to manage a

(42:58):
deep enough breath.
In his mind, he shouted, Panic,panic, you're panicking.
As he grew progressively morelight headed.
He feared that he might passout.
But then Sage was up on him,nuzzling into him, licking his
face.
And he grabbed the dog by theneck and pushed it down.

(43:20):
His breathing got better, and hewas able to take deep breaths.
When he was sure he wouldn'tfaint, he flicked the lighter
again, and knelt to the nearestbody, which was at his feet.
He had been a footstep away fromtripping over her, a girl in a
short black skirt that wasthrown up now to her waist,

(43:40):
revealing skimpy red panties.
He pulled down the skirt as ifto protect her modesty.
He touched her neck and foundthat her body was still warm.
When the wheel of the lightergrew uncomfortably hot, he
extinguished the flame and satback on his heels.
What, what, what, he said aloudand then something, something,

(44:05):
something must have happened,something to kill some people
and not others because he wasstill there, he was still alive,
what?
He tossed the meteor striketheory.
Every young person in a roomdoesn't suddenly fall dead with
a heart attack because they'veheard or seen an explosion.
He flicked the lighter again andlooked around the room, and this

(44:29):
time noticed an arrangement ofthree fat square candles on a
shelf in a bay window.
He stepped over the bodies andlit the candles, and then turned
around with the tallest candlein his hand and found himself
facing a scene out of a horrormovie, a room full of dead
bodies in flickeringcandlelight.

(44:51):
My God, he said in a whisper,talking to himself.
He counted 22 bodies.
They looked like they ranged inage from 14 or 15 to 16 or 17.
Kids.
A room full of dead kids.
Sage sat quietly between a pairof girls and watched Severn as

(45:14):
if waiting to be told what todo.
Severn negotiated his way aroundthe bodies.
moving toward a dark corridorthat led to the bedrooms.
He didn't know what he wasdoing.
He was looking around, lookingthrough the house.
He didn't know why.
It seemed to Severn at thispoint that probably the only

(45:35):
reasonable thing to do would bego back to his house and wait
for daylight.
Something huge and mystifyinghad happened.
Something cataclysmic.
The Angel of Death had appearedto everyone awake at a certain
hour and all who saw himperished.
Or maybe waking and sleeping hadnothing to do with it.

(45:57):
Maybe that was the wrong track.
Maybe Severn and Sage andLaughing Man had some kind of
natural immunity to whatever itwas that happened.
In the first bedroom, Severnfound a couple of teenagers, a
boy and a girl, their clothesunbuttoned down to underwear.
lying on a neatly made bed.

(46:18):
They looked like they had beenembracing and had simply fallen
away from each other, like ashell split open, the two halves
lying side by side.
Their eyes, like all the others,were open.
He thought about covering themand hesitated until he saw a
lightweight blue throw foldedover a rocking chair.
He tossed it over them and thenwent back out into the hallway

(46:42):
where Sage was waiting.
In the next bedroom, a littlegirl, the youngest, Vi, was in
bed with the covers pulled up toher neck.
He noticed immediately that hereyes were closed and that she
appeared to be sleeping.
He stared at her in thecandlelight.

(47:04):
Before he could think thingsthrough, Sage jumped to his
feet, springing suddenly toattention, as if he too realized
that something was different.
He leapt up onto the bed andtried to lick Vi's face, but the
girl jumped up instantly,screaming and flailing her arms
and legs.
Sage retreated to stand besideSevern.

(47:25):
Severn himself, out of somethinglike terror at the sudden
screaming, had taken a halfdozen steps back before he
regained his senses and shoutedthe girl's name with as much
authority as he could muster.
Vi, he yelled, Vi.
He approached the bed.
Though she had already jumpedout of it and was pressed up
into a corner, screaminghysterically, with her eyes

(47:45):
squeezed closed.
Vy, he said, with the bedbetween them, open your eyes,
please.
Vy's screaming turned to awhimpering sob, and then, as if
she had to screw up every lastinch of her courage to do it,
she opened her eyes.
It's me, Severn said.
You know who I am.

(48:07):
Vy nodded.
but didn't move out of thecorner until Sage went to her
and pressed his head against herbelly as if begging for a pat on
the head.
As best she could through hersobs, Vyse said, What happened?
She touched Sage and then kneltbeside him.
Everybody's dead, she sobbed.
I saw them all.

(48:28):
They're all dead.
Severn took a seat on the edgeof the mattress.
You were out there.
You saw them.
Something woke me up, she said,crying as much as talking.
And then I called and called andnobody answered.
And then the electricity wasout, so I lit a candle and went
out into the hall, and then theywere all dead.

(48:50):
Everybody.
She put her arm around Sage.
Iris and Rose are out there, shesaid, a terrible sadness
suddenly in her voice.
I know, Severn said, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, Vi.
My wife, Sarah, she's gone too.
What happened, Vi asked, and shelooked at Severn as if he would

(49:14):
be able to explain things.
I don't know, he said.
I can't figure it out.
I mean, he added, I'm trying,Vi, but so far nothing makes
sense.
I thought somebody might havekilled them all, she said.
That's why I pretended to bedead too when I heard you
coming.

(49:34):
You heard me?
You were downstairs?
Vi nodded.
I came up here and pretended.
Tell me what happened.
Severn put the candle down on anight table and touched the
center of the bed, meaning shecould come closer to him.
She didn't move, though, untilSage pulled away from her and
jumped up on the bed.

(49:56):
Then she followed and satalongside the big dog, whom
Severn noticed was not a he atall, but a she.
The end.
Vi put her arm around the dog'sneck.
My mom and dad are inCharlottesville with Daisy, she
said.
The phones aren't working.
I know.
Your dad told me he'd be goingthis weekend.

(50:17):
Do you think they're okay, sheasked.
Is there some way we can reachthem?
Tell me what happened, Vi.
Help me try to understand this.
I told you, she said.
I woke up and found everybodydead.
You woke up.
Do you remember?
She nodded.
It was like my whole bodyjerked.

(50:40):
Like I'd been yanked orsomething.
Like sometimes when you'refalling asleep, she said, only
it woke me up.
I was wide awake.
Then what?
Severn asked.
Then what I just told you.
Severn reached across the bed topat Siege's head, and he let his
hand fall over Vyse and restthere.

(51:02):
He looked around the room,taking in the scene as if
searching for clues.
Her walls were a flickering bluein the candlelight, decorated
with sports posters, including agroup picture of a woman's
basketball team, signed by adozen or so players and coaches.
There were none of the postersor frills Severn might have
expected in a 13 year old girl'sroom.

(51:25):
Instead, there was a baseballbat and a glove with a hardball
in the pocket.
A soccer ball, a basketball, anda lacrosse stick were arranged
neatly in a corner.
The only thing the least bitgirly in the entire space was a
line of Nancy Drew mystery bookson a small roll top desk beneath
the room's only window.

(51:47):
Severn was trying to think ofsomething to say.
When the rain stopped sosuddenly and completely, it was
as if someone had turned off aspade.
Sage stood up on the bed andsaid, And Vi's eyes went to the
window.
Severn looked at the ceiling asif he might be able to see
through it and out to the skyabove.
Vi said, it's kind of evenscarier now.

(52:10):
Severn squeezed her hand andwhen he got up from the bed,
both Vi and Sage left off thebed to follow him.
At the window, he said, it'sstill too dark to see anything.
And when he turned around, hefound Sage and Vi looking up at
him in the candlelight.
Sage, a black lab with soulfuleyes, was almost half Vi's

(52:32):
height.
The dog's shoulders came up toher thighs.
Vi, a thin girl with a shock ofbright blonde hair, cut boyishly
short, had her arm around Sage'sneck.
She was wearing white cottonpajamas, and they were soaked
through in places where she hadhugged Sage.

(52:52):
Together, they looked like aNorman Rockwell print.
Only they were surrounded by ahorror unlike anything Rockwell
ever painted.
Vi said, Was that a gun?
She pointed to Severn's waist.
Under your shirt?
Severn carefully pulled thehandgun out of the back of his

(53:12):
pants and held it dangling infront of him.
It's wet, he said.
I don't even know if it'll stillfire.
Vi went to her bed, pulled off apillowcase and tossed it to
Severn.
You should dry it off, she said.
When Severn asked why, she said,in case you need to use it.
Severn went about drying off thegun with the pillowcase.

(53:34):
Vi, he said, whatever happened,it wasn't a person or people
that did it.
He sat on the bed again, ejectedthe clip, and dried it, even
though it wasn't wet.
I don't think we're in anydanger that way, he said.
And then he added, though hewasn't sure about this at all.
In fact, he said, I think thedanger is probably over.

(53:56):
Whatever it was that happened,it already happened.
Anyway, Vi said, you should dryit off good.
Okay.
Severn continued rubbing thesurface of the gun.
He even twisted the pillowcaseand shoved it as far as he could
into the barrel.
What's her name?
Vi asked.

(54:17):
And she knelt beside the big laband combed her fingers through
the matted and wet hair at itsneck.
I'm calling her Sage.
Severn held the gun up toinspect it.
There, he said, all dry.
He started to put it behind hisback again.
Don't, Vi said.
She found a red t shirt in adresser drawer and handed it to

(54:40):
Severn.
Wrap it in this, she said, tokeep it dry.
Severn wrapped the gun andsecond clip neatly in the t
shirt.
He said, I'm sure it will worknow if we need it.
He added, But I'm also prettyconfident, Vi, that we're not
going to need it.
Still, Vi said, and she lookedup at Severn as if waiting to be

(55:04):
told what to do next.
Severn wedged the gun in theback of his pants and went to
the window hoping to seesomething different, hoping now
the rain had stopped that theclouds might be breaking and a
little starlight or moonlightmight shine through.
But all he saw was his ownflickering reflection in the

(55:25):
candlelight.
He was a big man, but he lookedeven bigger next to Vi.
His reflection loomed over herand Sage as they stood side by
side behind him, watching andwaiting.
We should probably go back to myhouse and wait for daylight, he
said, as he turned to face Vi.

(55:45):
But we could also walk intotown.
It's only a few miles.
We might learn more about what'sgoing on.
Town, Vi said, withouthesitating.
Maybe the phones are workingthere.
Severn very much wanted to gointo town.
And were he still alone, therewould be no question.
But he thought better of it.
Of going to town with Vi in tow.

(56:08):
Actually, he said, let's seewhat it's like out there.
If it seems dangerous, we shouldwait for morning.
I have a lot of friends in town,Vi said.
My best friend, Nate, livesright near the campus on
Waverly.
Do you know where that is?
Sure, Severn said.
But the stream is probablyflooded.
We don't want to cross a floodedstream in the dark.

(56:32):
You think the bridge isunderwater?
Yes, I think it probably is.
Let's at least walk down andsee, please?
All right, Severn said.
Sure.
Wait outside the door, okay?
Severn was confused until Viwent about quickly grabbing up a
pair of jeans and sneakers, andhe realized, of course, that she

(56:52):
meant to change out of herpajamas.
I'll be right outside the door.
When Sage started to followSevern, Vi called to her, and
then took hold of her by theneck.
She struggled to budge the dog,who looked torn between
following Severn and stayingbehind with Vi.
Severn pointed to Sage and thensaid, Stay.

(57:15):
Sage sat down, obediently.
If I said, leave the door open alittle, please.
Severn placed the candle on thefloor next to vie.
He went out into the hall andclosed the door halfway.
Don't go away from the door, shecalled.
Okay.
Okay, severance said, and heleaned against the doorframe in

(57:36):
the dark alone for a moment.
With the sounds of Vi hurriedlydressing on the other side of
the door, Severn struggled againto make sense of what was
happening.
The evidence suggests that anevent of some kind that fried
everything electrical and killedeveryone who was awake.

(57:56):
The mystery was, how did thosetwo things connect?
He didn't know a lot aboutbiology.
His undergraduate degree was inEnglish, and he had been working
for the last 15 years inuniversity administration.
But he was pretty sure that thehuman body's central nervous
system functioned via acombination of electrical and

(58:16):
chemical processes.
So if some cosmic event hadhappened that somehow interfered
with electrical functioning,could that be fatal to humans?
It seemed like a possibletheory.
But how could being asleepprotect someone?
Vy flung open the door and cameout into the hall carrying the
candle in one hand and abaseball bat in the other.

(58:39):
The bat was flung over hershoulder, and she had on good
hiking boots and jeans under along yellow rain slicker.
Severn considered explainingagain the unlikeliness of any
person or persons beingresponsible for her sister's
deaths, but then decided that ifthe baseball bat made her feel
safer, fine.
He thought about the bodies inthe living room and having to

(59:02):
walk through them again on theirway out.
He said, let's use the backdoor.
And he took the candle from her.
Wait, he said, once they starteddown the hall.
I should go get the othercandles from the living room.
I'll get it, Vi almost shouted,as if she thought Severn meant
for her to wait alone.
She darted into her room and wasback in a second with a tall

(59:25):
white candle, fat and round.
Should I light it?
No need to, Severn said, and hetouched her shoulder.
She leaned toward him a little,as if she might hug him.
But then she quickly backed awayagain.
It's this way, she said, and shetook Severn by the arm and led
him to a door that went down aflight of stairs to the
basement.

(59:47):
At the head of the stairs, shewaited for Severn to go first.
He took a single step around herbefore Sage bolted between the
two of them and scurried aheadinto the darkness.
In the candlelight, Severnwatched as Sage sniffed at the
foot of the stairs.
The basement was finished withwood paneling on the walls and
dark carpeting.

(01:00:09):
Severn took a few steps down thestairs.
The candlelight pushing ahead ofhim dimly illumined a pool table
to the left with a girl's bodyslumped over it.
He touched Fai, meaning sheshould wait.
He thrust the candle in front ofhim and saw more bodies, boys
and girls, scattered on thefloor around the pool table.

(01:00:30):
He turned to Vi and said, Thereare more dead down here.
If you want to close your eyes,why, Vi said, I already saw
everything upstairs.
She added, as if angry at thedead, they weren't supposed to
come down here.
She had tucked her candle intoher jeans and was holding the

(01:00:51):
bat over her shoulder as ifready to take a swing.
Severn thought again to explainthat she wasn't likely to need
the bat, and again thoughtbetter of it.
Sage came around to the front ofthe stairs, looked up at Severn
and Vi, and barked as ifconfused by what was keeping
them.
Severn reached behind him andput his arm around Vi's waist to

(01:01:14):
guide her down the stairs.
The smell of alcohol wasparticularly thick in the
basement.
As he stepped onto the carpetingand looked around him one more
time in the candlelight, he sawwhy.
The carpet was puddled with darkstains where beer bottles and
tumblers of whiskey had spilledfrom the hands of the partiers.

(01:01:34):
In the back of the room, a dozenbodies, mostly girls, lay at the
foot of a small bar.
A pair of bar stools tumbled ontop of them.
A fifth of vodka lay on itsside, a little beyond the
bodies.
Its contents spilled out in astain on the carpet, like a
thought bubble emanating fromthe mouth of the bottle.

(01:01:58):
Alongside Severn, Vi made adeep, grief stricken sound, and
then put an arm over her eyesand sobbed.
She was looking at the body of aboy stretched out on the floor.
His face turned to the wall.
In the middle of the room.
His jeans were pulled down tomid thigh, exposing a pair of

(01:02:20):
boxer shorts.
His hands were clenched at hisside, as if he might be ready
for a fight.
Who is he?
Severn asked.
Tommy Riggs, she said.
My cousin.
He was visiting from New York.
She paused and added, almost ina whisper, He's really nice.

(01:02:42):
After another second, she said,Was.
Severn directed her toward thedoor, where Sage was sitting and
looking back at them, waiting.
Outside, the rain had slowed toa drizzle, and though it wasn't
raining crazy hard as it wasbefore, it was still too much
for the candle's little flame,which was extinguished

(01:03:03):
immediately.
Fai said, I can see a littlebit, it's not that bad.
Fade out.
While Severn couldn't make outthe details, he could discern
shapes and variations in thedarkness.
The black of the clouds slightlydifferent from the black of the
sky beneath the clouds.
The black of the sky slightlydifferent from the black of the

(01:03:23):
trees.
It was still windy.
Leaves rustled in trees as thewind blew through hedges.
The various sounds of the windthrough and against things
helped define the surroundingdarkness.
Severn bent to pat Siege's head.
All right, he said to Vi.
Stay close to me.

(01:03:44):
I'll be right behind you, Visaid.
Severn moved cautiously alongthe walkway in front of the
house, toward the garage and theline of cars, and by the time he
reached the end of the driveway,he could make out the road and
the woods on both sides of it.
They were a couple of miles froman old four lane highway still

(01:04:05):
used by lots of truckers.
Severn hadn't heard the lowrumbling roar of a truck from
the highway since he'd awakeneda couple of hours earlier.
And that was another bad sign.
Even miles away, he'd expect tohear the growl of a big rig's
monster engine screaming throughits gears every once in a while.

(01:04:29):
Bye.
Who had been walking practicallyon Severn's heels, apparently
decided that she wanted to becloser, and she came up
alongside him.
You think Daisy and my parentsare okay?
She asked.
Without waiting for an answer,she said, They're going to be so
heartbroken.
Severn said, A lot of people aregoing to be heartbroken, Vi.

(01:04:50):
Even if whatever happened,whatever happened to your
sisters and her friends and mywife, even if it only happened
here.
Only in our two houses, thereare still going to be a lot of
people heartbroken.
What are the chances of that, Viasked, that it only happened
here, only our two houses?

(01:05:13):
Severn thought of the quiet onthe highway and the laughing
man.
He said, we'll know soon enough.
Right now, it's a mystery.
What if we're the only twopeople left in the world?
I rubbed the side of her headwith a baseball bat and looked
up at Severn.

(01:05:34):
Where they were walking, long,thick branches from a line of
big chestnut trees hung over theroad, turning it into a tunnel.
Wind whistled low and softthrough the leaves.
We're not, Severn said, and hepointed to Sage, who was several
feet in front of them.
Sage lived through it, wherevershe was.

(01:05:57):
You lived through it in yourhouse.
I lived through it in my house.
He touched her shoulder.
There are lots of people alive,Vi.
No matter what it was thathappened.
They're going to be soheartbroken, Vi said again,
obviously meaning Daisy and herparents.
Severn reached for Vi's freehand and she let him hold it.

(01:06:20):
They're also going to bethankful that you're alive.
That'll be a blessing.
Fi was quiet as they walked insilence through the light rain
and darkness.
Then, as if finally articulatingwhat she had been thinking, she
said, I'm sorry about Sarah.
She was nice.

(01:06:42):
She let me come over and makecookies with her once, when I
was little.
I remember that, Severn said.
She told me about it.
When he thought he heardsomething in the woods, a branch
crackling, something, He sloweda bit and let go of Vi's hand.
When he didn't hear it again, hesaid, picking up the

(01:07:02):
conversation, She liked you.
She thought you were smart.
I'm the youngest, Vi said.
My dad says you've got to besmart when you're the youngest.
Severn laughed at that and wasamazed that he had laughed.
Sarah was dead and he was in themiddle of some kind of insanity
and he had laughed.

(01:07:24):
Wait, Vi said, and she pointedto Sage, who had stopped
suddenly and turned around.
The lab was looking off into thetrees, and then a low growl came
up from her belly as she startedback toward Vi and Severn.
Sage was maybe five or six feetin front of them.

(01:07:44):
She stopped and barked, and afigure rushed out at her from
between the trees.
Vi screamed.
And ran away into the darkness,and Severn took a step back.
The figure fell on Sage,wielding what looked like a
length of pipe, and he struckthe lab repeatedly with it, in
the head and shoulders, untilthe dog spilled onto its side,

(01:08:06):
motionless in the middle of theroad.
By the time Severn had gatheredhis senses enough to reach
behind his back for the gun, thefigure was almost on him, and he
saw that it was a burly, grayhaired man with a beard.
Severn hadn't even gotten thegun out of his pants when the
first blow hit him, glancing offthe side of his head.

(01:08:27):
It must have been a lead pipethe man was wielding, because
the blow was only glancing.
And still it was enough to bringSevern to his knees, and then
over backward onto the road.
He saw a bright fireworks oflight sparkle in front of his
eyes, and then the figureleaning over him, cocking his
arm, aiming the pipe for anotherblow to the head.

(01:08:50):
Severn understood that he wasabout to die.
The first blow had addled hissenses.
His stomach churned with nausea,and he was on the edge of losing
consciousness.
Now there was going to be asecond blow, and it wasn't going
to be glancing.
He seemed to be drifting offinto someplace dreamy, and he

(01:09:12):
imagined his head splitting openlike a rotten pumpkin, and all
his history spilling out ontothe road.
All his years with Sarah, andall the years before that as a
child, a boy, and a young man.
He started to say something, andthe word that formed on his lips
was Vi.

(01:09:32):
And then Vi was there behind thefigure, and she swung her bat at
the man's head as if it were afat softball gliding in over the
center of the plate.
The man, screaming curses, wasknocked sideways to the ground.
Severn found that he couldn'tmove.
He wanted to move when he sawthe man regain his balance, but

(01:09:55):
nothing happened.
The figure leapt at Vi andpunched her viciously in the
face.
Her head jerked backward and herbody followed, and she slid
along the wet pavement, her armsand legs spread eagle.
Severn thought to himself, She'sdead.
He killed her.

(01:10:16):
And then a couple of thingshappened simultaneously in what
couldn't have been more than asecond or two.
First, the world went black.
It was exactly like being in aroom at night with no windows
when someone turns off thelights.
One second you can see, and thenext second blackness.

(01:10:36):
Sage lay unmoving in the road.
The man punched Vi in the face,knocking her dead or
unconscious.
And then the lights went out,followed in the next instant by
a driving rain and a huge gustof wind.
Severn felt the man's hands onhis legs, as if he were locating

(01:10:59):
him in the utter dark, and thenthe man's fists raining blows on
him, and then nothing.

(01:11:21):
That was episode one of TheStrangers.
New episodes will be availabletwice a week on Mondays and
Fridays until the novel iscompleted.
If you want to read ahead, aninexpensive digital edition of
The Strangers is available fromAmazon, Barnes Noble, and other
online bookstores.

(01:11:42):
This podcast is an experiment inalternatives to traditional
publishing.
If you'd like to support it, andmore like it in the future,
please consider becoming asubscriber or supporter.
If enough listeners choose to doso, that will go a long way to
help ensuring the podcast'ssuccess and continuation.

(01:12:02):
In any event, I'm Ed Falco, Iwrote The Strangers, And I hope
you'll come back for the nextepisode.