November 4, 2024 • 41 mins
In Episode 1, Severn and Vi had just been attacked after starting for town. When we left them, they’re were both unconscious in the road as a storm hit. That’s were we pick up with Episode 2.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:26):
This is Ed Falco on the AirReading The Strangers a novel in
19 sevens in episode one, Severnand VI had just been attacked
after starting for down.
When we left them, they wereboth unconscious in the road as
a storm hit.
That's where we pick up episodetwo.
(00:49):
When he opened his eyes to thefirst hint of daylight, Severn
knew where he was, though hecouldn't make sense of it, and
so he lay still and watched thefamiliar lightening of the sky
that was dawn.
He was lying behind the bustedout window of an empty
storefront off Main Street.
He knew the store.
(01:10):
It was once a used record shop,and then it was a half dozen
other things over the years.
And for the past several months,it was empty and unrented.
A few doors down was Beringer's,a popular college bar.
His field of vision took in MainStreet and University Avenue and
the Price Theater with its 1940smarquee.
(01:33):
The rain had stopped.
Though there were puddleseverywhere and dead people in
the streets and on thesidewalks, a dozen or so that he
could see.
A red pickup truck had smashedinto and partly through the
plate glass window of arestaurant.
Up the block, a small blue car'sfront end was crumpled against
the red brick wall of a mainstreet shop.
(01:56):
Dogs were barking.
It sounded like several dogs,none nearby.
And there was birdsong, what youwould expect on a spring
morning.
Lots of birds squawking.
When he noticed movement in thecrown of a sidewalk tree, he
looked up and saw a pair ofsquirrels darting along the
(02:17):
branches.
Except for the dead bodies inthe street.
It was a pleasant springmorning.
Somehow Severn must have knownthat moving his head was not a
good idea, because the firsttime he tried it, lifting his
head slightly to look behindhim, into the store, a small
(02:37):
explosion of pain detonated andsent shockwaves down his neck
and through his arms.
He groaned and touched hisforehead, which was wrapped in a
bandage of some kind.
When he looked at his fingers,they were smudged with blood.
And, carefully, he moved hishead again.
And again the pain was intense,a terrible throbbing throughout
(02:59):
the back of his head.
He was on a makeshift litter,constructed of tree branches and
denim jackets and twine.
Someone had carried him intotown.
At that thought, Severn pushedthrough a flood of pain into a
sitting position because itoccurred to him that if he had
been carried into town, perhapsAvai was here too.
(03:22):
Behind him, though, the storewas empty except for a dozen
backpacks and a couple of duffelbags.
It looked like a scout troop ona camping trip had dumped their
stuff in the store before takingoff somewhere.
Severn held his head in hishands and waited for the
throbbing to subside.
Once again, he was utterlyconfused.
(03:43):
How had he gotten where he was?
That was a small confusionwithin the massive confusion of
the event, which was how he hadcome to think of whatever it was
that had happened, leaving deadpeople around him every time he
opened his eyes.
He looked again at the backpacksand the duffel bags and replayed
the memory of the madman flyingat Vi and punching her in the
(04:04):
face, and it seemed possiblethat she was dead.
She was a tiny thing, but itdidn't seem like a punch, even a
vicious punch, would kill her.
Severn's mind went to otherpossibilities.
If Vi wasn't dead, where wasshe?
Had the lunatic who had attackedthem taken her?
(04:26):
At that thought, Severn closedhis eyes.
He didn't want to go there.
He didn't want to think aboutthat.
Severn pulled himself to hisfeet just as a pack of dogs
raced past the busted outstorefront window.
He counted five of them as theyflew by in a heartbeat, and all
but one of them disappeared inan instant later around the
(04:46):
corner.
The one that had hung backlooked to be a collie mix, and
it skidded when it stopped, asif it had only just registered
passing a live man in astorefront.
It trotted back cautiouslytowards Severn and then growled
at the sight of him.
When Severn moved toward it, thedog snarled and lunged, barked a
(05:07):
few times, and then turned andran off to rejoin the pack.
There was an odd disconnectbetween the dog's appearance and
its behavior.
It looked like a well groomed,cared for pet, and it behaved
like a junkyard guard dog.
Severn thought the dogs were theonly living things he had seen
since first opening his eyes,and then he remembered the birds
(05:30):
and the squirrels.
And that led him to wonderingwhy the streets weren't full of
dead animals.
Why weren't there dead birds allover the place?
Why hadn't he come across a deadcat, a dead squirrel?
He tried to think about that,and then simply let it go.
Sara was dead, Vi was gone, theywere dead everywhere around him,
(05:52):
and not a human being or humanmovement of any kind on a Sunday
morning in town.
Whatever it was that hadhappened, I don't know.
It was beyond his understanding.
He wanted to go home and burySarah.
Suddenly, that seemed urgent.
The backpacks were jammed withthe kind of stuff you'd expect
(06:13):
to find at a gathering ofsurvivalists.
Powdered food, matches, clothes,tools.
In one duffel bag, he found tentpoles.
In another he found rifles.
He moved quickly from bag tobag, only glancing at the
contents, not knowing what hewas looking for.
In a little girl's bright pinkbackpack, with a cartoon girly
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figure emblazoned on the frontof it, he found a family
photograph in an outer pocket.
It pictured a half dozen smilingadults in the background forming
a semicircle around a dozenteenagers, who in turn formed a
semicircle around a half dozenlittle kids, one of whom was a
girl of six or seven, dressedall in pink, and wearing the
(06:57):
same backpack from which Severnhad pulled the picture.
He sat motionless on the floor,distilled a throbbing in the
back of his head, which wasgetting to the point of being
incapacitating.
He had bad headaches before.
But nothing near this intense.
It occurred to him that in oneof these backpacks there had to
(07:18):
be medical supplies, includingpainkillers.
And he made himself get up andbegin searching through them
again.
In an outer pocket of a framedpack, Severn found a stash of
pamphlets about the rapture anda pair of Bibles.
He thought, of course, thoughliving and working in a college
town sometimes made him forgetit, this was still Bible
(07:41):
country.
There were a half dozen Biblecolleges within a 50 mile radius
of his home and a church of thisor a church of that around every
corner.
So, of course, a cataclysmicevent happens that leaves masses
of people dead and it must bethe rapture.
Some Christians believed thatwhen Christ returned, the good
(08:02):
would be gathered up into heavenand sinners would be left behind
to suffer tribulations.
At least that was one theory.
Or at least his understanding ofone theory.
He didn't know much about therapture.
But he did know that there werelots of theories.
He put the Bibles and thepamphlets on the floor at the
foot of the backpack andcontinued searching.
(08:24):
He thought about these people,the family in the picture.
Did they think they were sinnerswho had been left behind?
In another pack, Severn foundwhat he was looking for.
It was full of nothing butmedical supplies, from band aids
and gauze to various drugs.
He located a container ofPercocets, popped two into his
(08:45):
mouth, and then closed thebackpack and slung it over his
shoulder.
He went back to the duffel bagwith the rifles.
When he pulled one free, Yankingon it by the barrel, a smaller
bag spilled out with it, andinside that bag he found two
handguns, one of them his own,still wrapped in Vi's red t
(09:05):
shirt.
The rifle was an M1 carbine.
He recognized it from his youth,from growing up in Syracuse, New
York with a father who was intohunting and guns.
He found a dozen clips for thecarbine in the bottom of the
duffel bag.
He popped one into the rifle andslung it over his shoulder.
The others he crammed into thebackpack with the medical
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supplies.
His handgun still had the clipin it, and he shoved it, again,
into the back of his pants.
When he raised himself to hisfeet, the throbbing in his head
got so bad, he thought he mightblack out.
He waited for it to pass, Alongwith the nausea that had come
with it, and then he wentoutside.
The weather was beautiful.
(09:49):
Puddles here and there along thestreet were the only remaining
signs of the previous night'sheavy rain.
In the dirt, near the roots of asidewalk tree, a trio of
earthworms slithered through thedamp black dirt.
Severn ignored the bodies on thestreet and along the sidewalk.
It wasn't that he wasconsciously not looking at them,
(10:10):
it was more like he didn't care.
When he recognized that feeling,that he seemed so uninterested
in the dead that he couldn'teven bother to look at them, he
decided it was better not to lethimself think about that boy in
jeans and a sweatshirt ten feetaway from him with his face in a
puddle of blood.
The kid had probably gashed hishead when he hit the sidewalk.
(10:32):
Severn looked at him and lookedaway.
The more he looked, the morebodies he saw.
There was a clump of bodies inthe doorway of Behringer's.
They seemed to have fallen outof the bar and tumbled over each
other.
Beyond those bodies were dozensof bicycles, some chained to a
bike rack, most leaning onkickstands or on their sides.
(10:57):
Severn started toward Berengerswithout much sense of where he
was going or what he was doing.
He had decided to go back homeand bury Sarah.
And yet he was walking towardthe bar, aware of the sound of
his own feet scraping along thesidewalk and the so far
ceaseless barking of a few dogssomewhere, along with birds
chattering in the crowns ofsidewalk trees.
(11:21):
The air smelled like spring,budding trees and green plants
and growing things and recentrain.
On the street, there were deadkids and blood and wrecked cars.
The front of Beringer's was allplate glass, and Severn saw with
a glance that the bar wascrammed with bodies.
He looked in, and looked away,and then looked again.
(11:45):
They weren't all kids.
Burringer's was a college bar.
It should have been packed withstudents on a Saturday night,
but the bodies in the barrepresented a range of ages,
from little kids to old folks.
Burringer's had two bars, theground floor bar with the plate
glass front windows, the oneSevern was observing at that
moment, the one packed withbodies.
(12:08):
And the cellar bar, with asecond entrance around a corner.
At the second entrance, thefirst thing Severn saw was two
neat stacks of bodies, maybe ahundred bodies piled up like
cordwood, and they were allyoung, student age.
The second thing he saw was theentrance to the cellar bar.
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The steep stairs leadingunderground was clotted with
bodies, and again, they were thebodies of townspeople, all ages,
children to grandparents.
Something within Severn's mindstopped working.
He stopped trying to make senseof things.
What could any of this mean?
He seemed, for the momentanyway, not to care.
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It was all just what it was.
The bodies of a hundred studentswere stacked like cordwood.
The bar, upstairs anddownstairs, was crammed with the
bodies of townspeople.
Dozens of bicycles waitedoutside the bar.
When he noticed a flash ofbright pink fabric among the
jeans and dresses and khakis, hewent closer to the bodies in the
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cellar entrance.
They looked like they had allfallen into a hole.
Their eyes were open.
Pink fabric covered the leg of alittle girl.
All he could see was onesneakered foot.
and a little bit of a branchedthin leg.
The rest of the child's body wassmothered under other bodies.
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They looked like they were alldiving into the ground, flying
into the earth.
Eyes all open, feet sticking up,legs bent all ways.
Severn took the child'ssneakered foot by the ankle and
yanked her free of the otherbodies.
And it was her, the girl fromthe photograph.
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The girl with the backpack.
The same cute, cartoon, girlyfigure on her pink t shirt as
was on the pink backpack.
Severn turned away from thebodies.
He adjusted the rifle strap onhis shoulder and straightened
out his backpack.
He thought he was about to startfor his house, but instead he
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took a seat on a green parkbench bolted to the sidewalk in
front of the bar.
He had to step over bodies toget to the bench.
He sat and looked around again,taking in the streets and the
wrecked cars and the bodiesscattered everywhere.
Part of him was at work tryingto make sense of it, while
another part of him was settlinginto a deep.
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Quiet place, some place withinhimself, a place that didn't
care about the two young men athis feet, or the little girl in
pink behind him, or Vi, or evenSarah.
Something inside him wassettling into a place without
feeling, and he could almostsense it physically, a shifting
and readjusting, like a housesettling.
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He rested his feet on one of thedead boy's legs.
The kid was fat, and when henudged him his belly shook.
Severn was pretty sure at thispoint that there had been a
second event that had killedmost of the people whose bodies
were all around him.
He imagined that there had beenthe first event that killed
Sarah, and the kids at theEpperson's, and many more in
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town where the bars would havebeen full of students.
The first event happened, andAnd then eventually others who
survived, like him, like Severn,started reacting.
One group of survivors clearedthe dead kids out of Beringers
and stacked them outside, andthen used the bar as a gathering
place.
Another family of survivorspacked up their gear and started
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into town, and picked up Severnalong the way.
And then there was a secondevent.
And again, everyone who wasawake died.
And anyone who was unconscious,like Severn, or asleep,
survived.
If these events happenedworldwide.
Severn Shikov, trying to thinkabout that, and stepped over the
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bodies at his feet.
He hesitated before he went outto the middle of the street with
the carbine and the backpackslung over his shoulder.
Far as he could see, up and downMain Street, there were wrecked
cars and bodies.
On the roof of one car, henoticed a fat white cat lying in
sunlight.
While he watched, it picked upits head and stirred and then
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settled down again, lazing on aspring morning.
Severn gathered his strength andstarted yelling.
He screamed, Hey, hey, hey, isanyone alive?
Is anyone here?
He kept up the shouting forseveral minutes, and when no one
answered, he went about ridingand mounting one of the bicycles
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from in front of Beringer's.
He took off the backpack withthe metal supplies, threaded its
carry straps over thehandlebars, and biked back along
Main Street, past bodies andaround wrecked cars, the town
silent except for the barking ofdogs and the chatter of birds.
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When he reached the highway, hefound what he expected.
A couple of big rigs crashedinto the trees and three cars,
almost evenly spaced along theroad, wrecked.
One of the cars was nosedown ina ditch, its back wheels up in
the air, a woman visible throughthe driver's door window, her
hair dark against the whitebackground of an airbag.
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He rolled his bike up onto thegrass, leaned it against a tree,
and walked out onto the roadway.
On the ride out of town, he hadpassed a cluster of houses,
fifteen or twenty of them builtwithin the last five years,
turning what had been a hillyfield into a little community of
similar looking homes.
Throughout the ride, the onlysounds had been the barking of
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dogs and the occasional chatterof birds, and then, as he was
passing that new development, heheard a scream.
It came from one of the housesand it sounded like a boy's
scream, high pitched, but withsomething masculine about it.
He hadn't stopped.
He bicycled past the scream,imagining a kid, a teenager,
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waking up to find someone heloved dead, slumped over a
kitchen table, or sprawled outin a bed with a book in his or
her hand, or stretched out insome lazy boy recliner in front
of a blank TV.
It was still early, he guessed,5.
30, 6 a.
m.
Lots of people would be wakingsoon to find a world utterly
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changed, utterly different, aworld they couldn't have
imagined a heartbeat earlier, aheartbeat before they opened
their eyes on the unbelievable,and were forced slowly to
believe it.
There would be lots ofscreaming, and still he found it
hard to believe he hadn'tstopped.
He thought, I should stop, Ishould help, but he kept biking
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past the houses on his way tohis own house, where his only
thought was that he wanted tobury Sarah.
Once the screaming stopped, heheard another sound, like a door
slamming, and then nothing, onlysilence.
He stood out in the middle ofthe road, thinking he might see
someone, another survivor, butnothing was moving except the
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crowns of trees, which swayed alittle in a light breeze and
made a rustling sound.
If the first event had happenedat, say, 11pm, the event he had
slept through that killed Sarahand the kids at the party, and
then there was a space ofseveral hours before the next
event, the event he wasunconscious for, how many people
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could he expect to have survivedboth events?
Even if only a handful of peoplelike himself, like Vi, had
awakened to discover someonedead, they would have awakened
many others, and then the secondevent would have killed all of
them.
In towns and near highways, thesounds of car crashes would have
awakened many, and they wouldhave awakened many more, and
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then the second event would havekilled them.
So how many could Severn expect,like himself, like the screaming
boy?
How many survivors could heexpect?
Lots, he thought.
Whole families who had gone tobed early on a Saturday night
and were sleeping late on aSunday morning.
For the next several hours, heimagined, survivors would be
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awakening and taking stock.
People would gather.
They'd organize.
Severn imagined all of thiswhile he looked out at the
silent road and listened to thebreeze and the birds and the
dogs barking, only a couple ofdogs now, in the distance
somewhere.
He went back to his bike andthen continued out onto the
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highway, rolling past thewrecked cars and trucks without
stopping or even slowing down tocheck on the dead.
near the turnoff to his road.
The body of a big woman in bluejeans and a flowery blouse was
splayed out on the pavement.
A tractor trailer had jackknifedinto the trees nearby and its
door was ripped open, half offits hinges.
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Severn imagined the woman hadbeen flung out of that truck and
onto the road.
Atop the cab of the truck, atrio of turkey vultures perched
warily, eyeing the body asSevern approached them on his
bike.
When he looked more closely atthe woman, he saw that her eyes
were gone, and he thought feast,a feast for the vultures.
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and biked past her onto hisroad.
He heard the stream racing,running fast and smooth, and saw
the bridge wet but not floodedover.
A little beyond the bridge, hecame to the body of the lunatic
who had attacked him, lying onthe blacktop, and Sage's body on
her side in the grass off theroad.
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But not Vi.
Vi was nowhere to be seen.
He got off the bike and lookedover the scene carefully, trying
to make sense of it.
He walked up to his attacker,who lay on his back, a lead pipe
on the pavement near hisoutstretched fingers.
His eyes were open.
He touched the dead man's bodywith his foot before he went to
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sage.
The first thing he noticed wasthat her eyes were closed.
And then he saw that she wasbreathing, her breath slow and
shallow.
He picked up her head, but shedidn't respond.
She appeared to be alive, butnot conscious.
Her head was cut in severalplaces and caked with blood.
She wasn't dead.
But she wasn't far from iteither.
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Severn left her and went to thespot on the road where he had
seen Vi knocked onto her back.
The blacktop was still wet.
Whatever blood there might havebeen would have been washed away
by the rain.
He looked one more time at themadman lying in the road with
his eyes open, dead and cold andunmoving.
He tugged thoughtlessly at thestrap of the carbine slung over
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his shoulder.
He left his bike where it layand started for the Epperson
house.
The driveway was crowded withcars.
Morning light, soft over anarray of bright colors,
including a fire engine redMustang convertible at its top
down.
The interior soaked and puddledwith rainwater.
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Severn touched the beaded wateron the Mustang's trunk as he
studied the interior.
The way the drink holders werefull of rainwater and the
carpeting was saturated.
The car was new.
The owner might have been drunkenough to forget that the top
was down, but that didn't seemlikely.
Severn thought back to theattack by the lunatic and he
remembered that a driving rainhad followed the blackness by
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seconds.
He imagined the party going on.
Kids jammed into the livingroom, dancing and talking, more
kids downstairs, drinking at thebar, a couple in one of the
bedrooms, taking off eachother's clothes.
Suddenly it goes dark.
They must have thought theelectricity had gone out.
Maybe a fuse had blown.
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They would have laughed.
They would have been drunk andshouting.
Then the rain, and thensomething else.
And they all fall over dead.
Before the kid who owns theMustang has a chance to worry
about putting the top up, he'sdead.
And down the road, Sarah's deadtoo.
Severn would have been sleeping.
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And then he awoke to the worldthe way it was now.
Full of the dead, and barkingdogs, and vultures about to
feast.
He went around the house to thebackyard and his heart jumped at
the sight of a blood smudge onthe basement door.
In the house, he found moresmudges of blood on the basement
stairs and banister, and beforehe reached the top of the
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stairs, he was shouting Vi'sname, and when he reached her
bedroom, she was there.
Backed up against the wall,clutching her bat and looking
terrified.
Her right eye was swollen shutand shining blue black.
Her face was swollen and a thickcloud of blood distorted her
bottom lip.
Severn watched her shiveringwith fear, pressed up against
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the wall.
Part of him was heartbroken atthe sight of her battered face
and part of him wanted to breakdown and cry at finding her
alive.
And another part of him feltlike a black boulder, something
unfeeling and ancient.
He wanted to embrace Vi.
But he listened instead to acold voice whispering that
nothing mattered anymore.
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In a short while they'd both bedead.
He leaned the carbine againsther dresser.
A whimper issued from Vi'scracked lips.
I don't know if you're evenreal, she said.
Her voice was shaking, as washer whole body.
I don't know what to think.
I don't know what's happening.
I left you dead out there.
(25:49):
Severn took a cautious steptoward her bed and said, I'm
real, Vi.
What happened, she pleaded.
I'm dead.
I woke up in the rain and youwere dead and that man was dead
and sage.
She lowered her head as if shecouldn't go on and dropped the
bat.
She leaned forward, broke into achild's sobbing cry, and looked
as though she were about tocollapse to the floor before
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Severn caught her in his arms.
I don't know what's happening,he said.
He picked her up and laid herdown on the bed.
He touched her forehead gentlyand dried her eyes with the
corner of a sheet.
Vi lifted her head slightly andlooked around the room.
It's light out, she said, as ifit were just registering with
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her that it was morning.
It's been light out for a while,Severn said.
I must have been sleeping.
I must have fallen asleep.
Since when, Severn asked.
Do you remember?
Vi said, I thought you weredead.
I could hardly see.
It was still dark.
Out on the road, Severn said,but not blinding dark.
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Not the kind of dark where youcan't see your hand in front of
your face.
Not like the advice said, butdark.
Was it still raining?
Vi nodded.
Driving rain or not that hard?
Not that hard, Vi said.
Just dark and raining.
I could see you lying there andthat guy lying right next to
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you.
What did you do after that?
After you thought I was dead.
I came back here.
I sat on my bed.
I didn't know what else to do.
That was smart, coming backhere, Severn said.
He touched her shoulder.
He said, I see you brought yourbat with you.
(27:39):
Vi thought about that and said,Lucky for you, I brought it with
me the first time.
Severn nodded, though he wasn'tat all sure at this point how
lucky it was.
You should see your face, hesaid.
You look like you got hit by atruck.
Me?
Vi wiped tears away from hereyes.
Have you looked at yourself?
(27:59):
Severn glanced around the roomand found a hand mirror on Vi's
dresser.
He looked at himself standing inthe daylight in front of the
bedroom window.
My God, he said, no wonder Iscared you.
From his chin to his forehead,his skin was a dozen shades of
bruised blue.
His hair was matted with blood,and dried blood stained his face
and neck and clothes.
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We're a pair, he said.
I pushed her hair back off herface.
Do you think my parents and mysister are still alive?
Do you think they'll be comingback?
Severn considered lying to her,making up a fantasy she might
believe, something that wouldmake her life more bearable for
whatever time they had left.
(28:42):
Had he been able to come up withsomething, he might have done
it, but the idea only flitteredthrough his head and
disappeared.
I don't think there's any way toknow who's left alive and who's
not.
If your parents are still alive,I'm sure they're trying to find
some way to get back here to youand your sisters.
Vi watched his eyes carefully.
(29:03):
She seemed to be reading him.
But you don't think they'realive, do you?
She said.
Tell me what you're thinking,please.
Severn put his hand on Vi'sknee.
He felt somehow even moredrained and tired.
I'm thinking there have beenthree events.
Three lurchings so far.
(29:26):
Lurchings?
Vi folded her hands in her lap.
She seemed newly alert andattentive.
We both noticed that feeling, asif our bodies lurched the first
time.
You think that has something todo with all this?
Severn made a gesture with hishands that said he had no idea,
really.
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The way I'm understanding this,he continued, whatever it is
that's happening, it's happenedthree times.
The first time, my wife and yoursisters.
Then maybe an hour or two passedand you and I were on the road
trying to get to town and wewere attacked.
What about that, Vi said.
Who was that?
Why did I don't know.
(30:08):
Severn interrupted her.
I don't know who he was.
A lunatic, he said.
Some guy who lost it.
But how did he wind up deadwhile you and I are still alive?
Vi shook her head as if to sayshe had no idea and was waiting
for Severn to explain.
I think there was another event,the second one, and it killed
him because he was stillconscious and awake while you
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and I were unconscious.
For a while Vi was quiet, thenshe said, and I woke up and came
back in here and fell asleep.
And while you were asleep,Severn said, a group of
survivors found me in the roadand carried me into town.
They left me in an abandonedstore.
I was still unconscious.
(30:52):
Meanwhile, other survivors weregathering at Berringer's, a bar
in town.
Fai said, I know Berringer's, asif indignant at the suggestion
that she wouldn't know theplace.
When I finally came to, therewere only dead bodies in
Berringer's, scores of them.
I figure that was the thirdevent.
They were dead bodies of collegestudents piled up outside the
(31:14):
bar.
The survivors went toBerringer's, emptied out the bar
of all the dead, and then usedit as a gathering place.
And then, it happened again.
Severn paused a moment, waitingto see if I got the picture.
When she was silent, he added,that's three events in seven or
eight hours.
(31:35):
Oh, Vi said, figuring it out.
So you think like, pretty soon,there'll be another one.
Severn said that seems like areasonable assumption.
Vi looked around her room, as ifthe answer to their problems
might be hidden there somewhere.
She said, we could go back tosleep.
(31:57):
Severn said we can't sleepforever.
She said maybe it only happensat night.
That's possible.
Vi said, we could do whatever weneed to do now during the day.
And then be sure to be asleepbefore dark.
Severn looked out the bedroomwindow, at sunlight through the
(32:17):
branches of a tree near theroad.
He noticed a bright red cardinalas it streaked up from a branch
and out of sight, and he wasstruck again at how pleasant the
day seemed, as long as therewere no bodies or wreckage in
the field of view.
Vyse said, what should we do?
We should see if we can doanything for Sage, and then He
(32:39):
killed Sage.
The guy, he No, Severn realizedthat he hadn't told her yet that
the dog was alive.
I'm sorry, he said.
I forgot.
Sage is still alive, but Butwhat?
I don't know if she'll make it.
She was barely hanging on.
Vi threw her legs over the sideof the bed as if she was ready
(33:00):
immediately to attend to Sage.
And then what, she asked,reminding Severn that she'd
interrupted him.
And then I want to bury my wife,he said.
After that, we can bury yoursisters.
Can we wait maybe a day, Visaid, her eyes suddenly tearing
up.
My parents and Daisy, they'dwant to see them before Sure,
(33:23):
Severn said, we can wait a day.
He thought he should put on theair conditioning, if they
weren't going to put the bodiesin the ground as soon as
possible.
Then he remembered again thatthere was no electricity.
The morning was already warmingup, and he'd have heard the
central air humming if theelectric were working.
Still, he went to the wall andflipped the light switch a few
(33:45):
times just to be sure.
My parents and Daisy, Vi said,if they're still alive.
She hesitated.
It's possible they're alive, Vi.
Vi said, but not likely.
And her voice in that momentsounded like a grown woman's and
not a 13 year old's.
(34:08):
There are still lots ofsurvivors, Severn said.
He thought, but didn't say, forthe moment anyway.
There are a lot of people whowill have slept through all of
this.
They're waking up now, andSevern looked out the window
again, as if he could see allthe dead and people waking to
find them.
We should tell them what weknow, Vi said.
(34:29):
Severn doubted there was anyoneelse who had awakened right
after the first event who wasstill alive.
The only way anyone would goback to sleep after something
like that was via drugs orviolence.
And who would take drugs to goback to sleep in the middle of a
catastrophe?
So on the one hand, they shouldshare what they knew.
On the other hand, why?
If there were going to belurchings every few hours, what
(34:51):
did it matter what anyone knew?
How could that be survived?
He said, I want to bury Sarah,and he sounded almost petulant,
like a child who only knows whathe wants and doesn't care about
anything else.
Well, I said, but we can takecare of Sage first, okay?
Severn retrieved the carbine andslung it once again over his
(35:13):
shoulder.
Behind him, Vi found herbaseball bat and followed him
out of the room.
This time, they went out throughthe front door, and when they
reached the living room, Vistopped, asked Severn to wait,
and ran back to her room.
A minute later, she reappearedwith two sheets with which she
covered her sister's bodies.
(35:33):
She said, If we have time, wecan bury.
And then looked around at thedozens of bodies scattered
everywhere else and didn'tcontinue.
Severn said, we'll figure outwhat to do with the bodies.
And then he stopped because herealized that he and Vi had
fallen into talking as if theywere going to survive, when
really, it didn't look likeanyone was going to survive.
(35:55):
He resolved not to let himselfdo that, not to let himself
block out the truth, to make thepresent a bit more bearable.
We'll figure it out, he said.
Vi, once they were outside, hadtaken off at a jog over the lawn
and out to the road.
When Severn caught up with her,she was already kneeling over
Sage and gently petting the biglab's head.
(36:17):
In response, Sage opened hereyes and moved her head
slightly, but otherwise laymotionless beyond the slight
rise and fall of her chest witheach breath.
Severn, without a clue why hewas doing it, grabbed the
outstretched arms of theirattacker and pulled his body a
few feet off the road, whichspilled face down into a muddy
ditch.
(36:38):
Then he looked off into thedistance at the sunlight on the
blacktop where the road curvedand disappeared.
His car was half on the pavementand half in the trees, and
beyond that there was nothingbut a quiet country road.
What should we do, Vi asked.
She hadn't stopped pettingSage's head for a moment.
Severn considered carrying thebig dog back to his house and
(37:01):
decided that wasn't a good idea,especially if there were broken
ribs involved.
He looked back at the Eppersonhouse and noticed that the
garage door was partly open.
Jake had been a part timecarpenter and auto mechanic, and
his garage was always full oftools and supplies.
Severn said, let's make a litterfor her and carry her back to my
(37:22):
house.
I'll probably find what I needin your garage.
Vi said, a note of worry obviousin her voice.
You want me to wait here withSage?
If you see something moving, hesaid, call for me.
Then he added, I mean anything,Vi, even a dog.
Okay, she said, and brought herface down to Sage's and touched
(37:43):
her cheek to the dog's head.
Severn started for the garageand then stopped when he
remembered the handgun he hadwedged in the back of his pants.
He brought it to Vi and laid itin the grass by Sage's paws.
You won't need this, he said,but just in case.
He pointed to the safety.
You have to flip that if youneed to shoot it.
(38:04):
Okay, Vi said, her head stillresting on Sage's head.
In Epperson's garage, Severnfound what he needed quickly, a
pair of dowels that looked to befive or six feet in length lay
on the ground under a workbench,and a canvas hammock hung neatly
from the back wall.
He had spotted both these itemswithin moments of raising the
(38:25):
garage door slightly andslipping under it and into a
quiet space that was more of aworkroom and storage space than
a place for parking cars.
He closed his eyes as if takingthe briefest of naps in this
cool, dimly lit space wherethere were no dead bodies or
signs of an apocalypse.
Only the smell of wood mixedwith another, sharper odor that
(38:46):
was probably a cleaning agent ofsome sort mixed with the cool
damp of night rising off theconcrete floor.
Severn crouched and rested inthe quiet.
Vi was near enough, and the daywas quiet enough, that he'd hear
her if she so much as spokeloudly, and so he felt able to
be still for a minute.
I'll It seemed likely that atany moment the sky would cloud
(39:10):
over and a light rain wouldstart up to be followed by
blackness and driving rain andthen it would happen, whatever
it was, and this time he'd beawake to see it.
Then at least he'd know.
He'd see what all the others,all the dead had seen in the
moment or moments before theydied.
He sighed and bent over to openthe garage door to let in more
(39:32):
light, and as he did so, heheard a glass break somewhere in
the house, followed by what hewas pretty certain was a human
voice, though he couldn't makeout what was said.
It sounded like a mutteredcurse.
After the breaking glass andmuttered oath, there was only
silence.
and the rocketing of Severn'sheart banging in his chest.
(40:02):
That was episode two 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.
This podcast is an experiment inalternatives to traditional
(40:25):
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.
In any event, I'm Ed Falco.
I wrote The Strangers.
(40:46):
And I hope you'll come back forthe next episode.
This is Ed Falco on the AirReading The Strangers a novel in
19 sevens in episode one, Severnand VI had just been attacked
after starting for down.
When we left them, they wereboth unconscious in the road as
a storm hit.
That's where we pick up episodetwo.
(00:49):
When he opened his eyes to thefirst hint of daylight, Severn
knew where he was, though hecouldn't make sense of it, and
so he lay still and watched thefamiliar lightening of the sky
that was dawn.
He was lying behind the bustedout window of an empty
storefront off Main Street.
He knew the store.
(01:10):
It was once a used record shop,and then it was a half dozen
other things over the years.
And for the past several months,it was empty and unrented.
A few doors down was Beringer's,a popular college bar.
His field of vision took in MainStreet and University Avenue and
the Price Theater with its 1940smarquee.
(01:33):
The rain had stopped.
Though there were puddleseverywhere and dead people in
the streets and on thesidewalks, a dozen or so that he
could see.
A red pickup truck had smashedinto and partly through the
plate glass window of arestaurant.
Up the block, a small blue car'sfront end was crumpled against
the red brick wall of a mainstreet shop.
(01:56):
Dogs were barking.
It sounded like several dogs,none nearby.
And there was birdsong, what youwould expect on a spring
morning.
Lots of birds squawking.
When he noticed movement in thecrown of a sidewalk tree, he
looked up and saw a pair ofsquirrels darting along the
(02:17):
branches.
Except for the dead bodies inthe street.
It was a pleasant springmorning.
Somehow Severn must have knownthat moving his head was not a
good idea, because the firsttime he tried it, lifting his
head slightly to look behindhim, into the store, a small
(02:37):
explosion of pain detonated andsent shockwaves down his neck
and through his arms.
He groaned and touched hisforehead, which was wrapped in a
bandage of some kind.
When he looked at his fingers,they were smudged with blood.
And, carefully, he moved hishead again.
And again the pain was intense,a terrible throbbing throughout
(02:59):
the back of his head.
He was on a makeshift litter,constructed of tree branches and
denim jackets and twine.
Someone had carried him intotown.
At that thought, Severn pushedthrough a flood of pain into a
sitting position because itoccurred to him that if he had
been carried into town, perhapsAvai was here too.
(03:22):
Behind him, though, the storewas empty except for a dozen
backpacks and a couple of duffelbags.
It looked like a scout troop ona camping trip had dumped their
stuff in the store before takingoff somewhere.
Severn held his head in hishands and waited for the
throbbing to subside.
Once again, he was utterlyconfused.
(03:43):
How had he gotten where he was?
That was a small confusionwithin the massive confusion of
the event, which was how he hadcome to think of whatever it was
that had happened, leaving deadpeople around him every time he
opened his eyes.
He looked again at the backpacksand the duffel bags and replayed
the memory of the madman flyingat Vi and punching her in the
(04:04):
face, and it seemed possiblethat she was dead.
She was a tiny thing, but itdidn't seem like a punch, even a
vicious punch, would kill her.
Severn's mind went to otherpossibilities.
If Vi wasn't dead, where wasshe?
Had the lunatic who had attackedthem taken her?
(04:26):
At that thought, Severn closedhis eyes.
He didn't want to go there.
He didn't want to think aboutthat.
Severn pulled himself to hisfeet just as a pack of dogs
raced past the busted outstorefront window.
He counted five of them as theyflew by in a heartbeat, and all
but one of them disappeared inan instant later around the
(04:46):
corner.
The one that had hung backlooked to be a collie mix, and
it skidded when it stopped, asif it had only just registered
passing a live man in astorefront.
It trotted back cautiouslytowards Severn and then growled
at the sight of him.
When Severn moved toward it, thedog snarled and lunged, barked a
(05:07):
few times, and then turned andran off to rejoin the pack.
There was an odd disconnectbetween the dog's appearance and
its behavior.
It looked like a well groomed,cared for pet, and it behaved
like a junkyard guard dog.
Severn thought the dogs were theonly living things he had seen
since first opening his eyes,and then he remembered the birds
(05:30):
and the squirrels.
And that led him to wonderingwhy the streets weren't full of
dead animals.
Why weren't there dead birds allover the place?
Why hadn't he come across a deadcat, a dead squirrel?
He tried to think about that,and then simply let it go.
Sara was dead, Vi was gone, theywere dead everywhere around him,
(05:52):
and not a human being or humanmovement of any kind on a Sunday
morning in town.
Whatever it was that hadhappened, I don't know.
It was beyond his understanding.
He wanted to go home and burySarah.
Suddenly, that seemed urgent.
The backpacks were jammed withthe kind of stuff you'd expect
(06:13):
to find at a gathering ofsurvivalists.
Powdered food, matches, clothes,tools.
In one duffel bag, he found tentpoles.
In another he found rifles.
He moved quickly from bag tobag, only glancing at the
contents, not knowing what hewas looking for.
In a little girl's bright pinkbackpack, with a cartoon girly
(06:36):
figure emblazoned on the frontof it, he found a family
photograph in an outer pocket.
It pictured a half dozen smilingadults in the background forming
a semicircle around a dozenteenagers, who in turn formed a
semicircle around a half dozenlittle kids, one of whom was a
girl of six or seven, dressedall in pink, and wearing the
(06:57):
same backpack from which Severnhad pulled the picture.
He sat motionless on the floor,distilled a throbbing in the
back of his head, which wasgetting to the point of being
incapacitating.
He had bad headaches before.
But nothing near this intense.
It occurred to him that in oneof these backpacks there had to
(07:18):
be medical supplies, includingpainkillers.
And he made himself get up andbegin searching through them
again.
In an outer pocket of a framedpack, Severn found a stash of
pamphlets about the rapture anda pair of Bibles.
He thought, of course, thoughliving and working in a college
town sometimes made him forgetit, this was still Bible
(07:41):
country.
There were a half dozen Biblecolleges within a 50 mile radius
of his home and a church of thisor a church of that around every
corner.
So, of course, a cataclysmicevent happens that leaves masses
of people dead and it must bethe rapture.
Some Christians believed thatwhen Christ returned, the good
(08:02):
would be gathered up into heavenand sinners would be left behind
to suffer tribulations.
At least that was one theory.
Or at least his understanding ofone theory.
He didn't know much about therapture.
But he did know that there werelots of theories.
He put the Bibles and thepamphlets on the floor at the
foot of the backpack andcontinued searching.
(08:24):
He thought about these people,the family in the picture.
Did they think they were sinnerswho had been left behind?
In another pack, Severn foundwhat he was looking for.
It was full of nothing butmedical supplies, from band aids
and gauze to various drugs.
He located a container ofPercocets, popped two into his
(08:45):
mouth, and then closed thebackpack and slung it over his
shoulder.
He went back to the duffel bagwith the rifles.
When he pulled one free, Yankingon it by the barrel, a smaller
bag spilled out with it, andinside that bag he found two
handguns, one of them his own,still wrapped in Vi's red t
(09:05):
shirt.
The rifle was an M1 carbine.
He recognized it from his youth,from growing up in Syracuse, New
York with a father who was intohunting and guns.
He found a dozen clips for thecarbine in the bottom of the
duffel bag.
He popped one into the rifle andslung it over his shoulder.
The others he crammed into thebackpack with the medical
(09:27):
supplies.
His handgun still had the clipin it, and he shoved it, again,
into the back of his pants.
When he raised himself to hisfeet, the throbbing in his head
got so bad, he thought he mightblack out.
He waited for it to pass, Alongwith the nausea that had come
with it, and then he wentoutside.
The weather was beautiful.
(09:49):
Puddles here and there along thestreet were the only remaining
signs of the previous night'sheavy rain.
In the dirt, near the roots of asidewalk tree, a trio of
earthworms slithered through thedamp black dirt.
Severn ignored the bodies on thestreet and along the sidewalk.
It wasn't that he wasconsciously not looking at them,
(10:10):
it was more like he didn't care.
When he recognized that feeling,that he seemed so uninterested
in the dead that he couldn'teven bother to look at them, he
decided it was better not to lethimself think about that boy in
jeans and a sweatshirt ten feetaway from him with his face in a
puddle of blood.
The kid had probably gashed hishead when he hit the sidewalk.
(10:32):
Severn looked at him and lookedaway.
The more he looked, the morebodies he saw.
There was a clump of bodies inthe doorway of Behringer's.
They seemed to have fallen outof the bar and tumbled over each
other.
Beyond those bodies were dozensof bicycles, some chained to a
bike rack, most leaning onkickstands or on their sides.
(10:57):
Severn started toward Berengerswithout much sense of where he
was going or what he was doing.
He had decided to go back homeand bury Sarah.
And yet he was walking towardthe bar, aware of the sound of
his own feet scraping along thesidewalk and the so far
ceaseless barking of a few dogssomewhere, along with birds
chattering in the crowns ofsidewalk trees.
(11:21):
The air smelled like spring,budding trees and green plants
and growing things and recentrain.
On the street, there were deadkids and blood and wrecked cars.
The front of Beringer's was allplate glass, and Severn saw with
a glance that the bar wascrammed with bodies.
He looked in, and looked away,and then looked again.
(11:45):
They weren't all kids.
Burringer's was a college bar.
It should have been packed withstudents on a Saturday night,
but the bodies in the barrepresented a range of ages,
from little kids to old folks.
Burringer's had two bars, theground floor bar with the plate
glass front windows, the oneSevern was observing at that
moment, the one packed withbodies.
(12:08):
And the cellar bar, with asecond entrance around a corner.
At the second entrance, thefirst thing Severn saw was two
neat stacks of bodies, maybe ahundred bodies piled up like
cordwood, and they were allyoung, student age.
The second thing he saw was theentrance to the cellar bar.
(12:29):
The steep stairs leadingunderground was clotted with
bodies, and again, they were thebodies of townspeople, all ages,
children to grandparents.
Something within Severn's mindstopped working.
He stopped trying to make senseof things.
What could any of this mean?
He seemed, for the momentanyway, not to care.
(12:51):
It was all just what it was.
The bodies of a hundred studentswere stacked like cordwood.
The bar, upstairs anddownstairs, was crammed with the
bodies of townspeople.
Dozens of bicycles waitedoutside the bar.
When he noticed a flash ofbright pink fabric among the
jeans and dresses and khakis, hewent closer to the bodies in the
(13:13):
cellar entrance.
They looked like they had allfallen into a hole.
Their eyes were open.
Pink fabric covered the leg of alittle girl.
All he could see was onesneakered foot.
and a little bit of a branchedthin leg.
The rest of the child's body wassmothered under other bodies.
(13:36):
They looked like they were alldiving into the ground, flying
into the earth.
Eyes all open, feet sticking up,legs bent all ways.
Severn took the child'ssneakered foot by the ankle and
yanked her free of the otherbodies.
And it was her, the girl fromthe photograph.
(13:57):
The girl with the backpack.
The same cute, cartoon, girlyfigure on her pink t shirt as
was on the pink backpack.
Severn turned away from thebodies.
He adjusted the rifle strap onhis shoulder and straightened
out his backpack.
He thought he was about to startfor his house, but instead he
(14:19):
took a seat on a green parkbench bolted to the sidewalk in
front of the bar.
He had to step over bodies toget to the bench.
He sat and looked around again,taking in the streets and the
wrecked cars and the bodiesscattered everywhere.
Part of him was at work tryingto make sense of it, while
another part of him was settlinginto a deep.
(14:40):
Quiet place, some place withinhimself, a place that didn't
care about the two young men athis feet, or the little girl in
pink behind him, or Vi, or evenSarah.
Something inside him wassettling into a place without
feeling, and he could almostsense it physically, a shifting
and readjusting, like a housesettling.
(15:04):
He rested his feet on one of thedead boy's legs.
The kid was fat, and when henudged him his belly shook.
Severn was pretty sure at thispoint that there had been a
second event that had killedmost of the people whose bodies
were all around him.
He imagined that there had beenthe first event that killed
Sarah, and the kids at theEpperson's, and many more in
(15:26):
town where the bars would havebeen full of students.
The first event happened, andAnd then eventually others who
survived, like him, like Severn,started reacting.
One group of survivors clearedthe dead kids out of Beringers
and stacked them outside, andthen used the bar as a gathering
place.
Another family of survivorspacked up their gear and started
(15:48):
into town, and picked up Severnalong the way.
And then there was a secondevent.
And again, everyone who wasawake died.
And anyone who was unconscious,like Severn, or asleep,
survived.
If these events happenedworldwide.
Severn Shikov, trying to thinkabout that, and stepped over the
(16:09):
bodies at his feet.
He hesitated before he went outto the middle of the street with
the carbine and the backpackslung over his shoulder.
Far as he could see, up and downMain Street, there were wrecked
cars and bodies.
On the roof of one car, henoticed a fat white cat lying in
sunlight.
While he watched, it picked upits head and stirred and then
(16:31):
settled down again, lazing on aspring morning.
Severn gathered his strength andstarted yelling.
He screamed, Hey, hey, hey, isanyone alive?
Is anyone here?
He kept up the shouting forseveral minutes, and when no one
answered, he went about ridingand mounting one of the bicycles
(16:51):
from in front of Beringer's.
He took off the backpack withthe metal supplies, threaded its
carry straps over thehandlebars, and biked back along
Main Street, past bodies andaround wrecked cars, the town
silent except for the barking ofdogs and the chatter of birds.
(17:12):
When he reached the highway, hefound what he expected.
A couple of big rigs crashedinto the trees and three cars,
almost evenly spaced along theroad, wrecked.
One of the cars was nosedown ina ditch, its back wheels up in
the air, a woman visible throughthe driver's door window, her
hair dark against the whitebackground of an airbag.
(17:34):
He rolled his bike up onto thegrass, leaned it against a tree,
and walked out onto the roadway.
On the ride out of town, he hadpassed a cluster of houses,
fifteen or twenty of them builtwithin the last five years,
turning what had been a hillyfield into a little community of
similar looking homes.
Throughout the ride, the onlysounds had been the barking of
(17:56):
dogs and the occasional chatterof birds, and then, as he was
passing that new development, heheard a scream.
It came from one of the housesand it sounded like a boy's
scream, high pitched, but withsomething masculine about it.
He hadn't stopped.
He bicycled past the scream,imagining a kid, a teenager,
(18:17):
waking up to find someone heloved dead, slumped over a
kitchen table, or sprawled outin a bed with a book in his or
her hand, or stretched out insome lazy boy recliner in front
of a blank TV.
It was still early, he guessed,5.
30, 6 a.
m.
Lots of people would be wakingsoon to find a world utterly
(18:37):
changed, utterly different, aworld they couldn't have
imagined a heartbeat earlier, aheartbeat before they opened
their eyes on the unbelievable,and were forced slowly to
believe it.
There would be lots ofscreaming, and still he found it
hard to believe he hadn'tstopped.
He thought, I should stop, Ishould help, but he kept biking
(18:59):
past the houses on his way tohis own house, where his only
thought was that he wanted tobury Sarah.
Once the screaming stopped, heheard another sound, like a door
slamming, and then nothing, onlysilence.
He stood out in the middle ofthe road, thinking he might see
someone, another survivor, butnothing was moving except the
(19:20):
crowns of trees, which swayed alittle in a light breeze and
made a rustling sound.
If the first event had happenedat, say, 11pm, the event he had
slept through that killed Sarahand the kids at the party, and
then there was a space ofseveral hours before the next
event, the event he wasunconscious for, how many people
(19:42):
could he expect to have survivedboth events?
Even if only a handful of peoplelike himself, like Vi, had
awakened to discover someonedead, they would have awakened
many others, and then the secondevent would have killed all of
them.
In towns and near highways, thesounds of car crashes would have
awakened many, and they wouldhave awakened many more, and
(20:05):
then the second event would havekilled them.
So how many could Severn expect,like himself, like the screaming
boy?
How many survivors could heexpect?
Lots, he thought.
Whole families who had gone tobed early on a Saturday night
and were sleeping late on aSunday morning.
For the next several hours, heimagined, survivors would be
(20:26):
awakening and taking stock.
People would gather.
They'd organize.
Severn imagined all of thiswhile he looked out at the
silent road and listened to thebreeze and the birds and the
dogs barking, only a couple ofdogs now, in the distance
somewhere.
He went back to his bike andthen continued out onto the
(20:48):
highway, rolling past thewrecked cars and trucks without
stopping or even slowing down tocheck on the dead.
near the turnoff to his road.
The body of a big woman in bluejeans and a flowery blouse was
splayed out on the pavement.
A tractor trailer had jackknifedinto the trees nearby and its
door was ripped open, half offits hinges.
(21:10):
Severn imagined the woman hadbeen flung out of that truck and
onto the road.
Atop the cab of the truck, atrio of turkey vultures perched
warily, eyeing the body asSevern approached them on his
bike.
When he looked more closely atthe woman, he saw that her eyes
were gone, and he thought feast,a feast for the vultures.
(21:30):
and biked past her onto hisroad.
He heard the stream racing,running fast and smooth, and saw
the bridge wet but not floodedover.
A little beyond the bridge, hecame to the body of the lunatic
who had attacked him, lying onthe blacktop, and Sage's body on
her side in the grass off theroad.
(21:51):
But not Vi.
Vi was nowhere to be seen.
He got off the bike and lookedover the scene carefully, trying
to make sense of it.
He walked up to his attacker,who lay on his back, a lead pipe
on the pavement near hisoutstretched fingers.
His eyes were open.
He touched the dead man's bodywith his foot before he went to
(22:12):
sage.
The first thing he noticed wasthat her eyes were closed.
And then he saw that she wasbreathing, her breath slow and
shallow.
He picked up her head, but shedidn't respond.
She appeared to be alive, butnot conscious.
Her head was cut in severalplaces and caked with blood.
She wasn't dead.
But she wasn't far from iteither.
(22:35):
Severn left her and went to thespot on the road where he had
seen Vi knocked onto her back.
The blacktop was still wet.
Whatever blood there might havebeen would have been washed away
by the rain.
He looked one more time at themadman lying in the road with
his eyes open, dead and cold andunmoving.
He tugged thoughtlessly at thestrap of the carbine slung over
(22:57):
his shoulder.
He left his bike where it layand started for the Epperson
house.
The driveway was crowded withcars.
Morning light, soft over anarray of bright colors,
including a fire engine redMustang convertible at its top
down.
The interior soaked and puddledwith rainwater.
(23:18):
Severn touched the beaded wateron the Mustang's trunk as he
studied the interior.
The way the drink holders werefull of rainwater and the
carpeting was saturated.
The car was new.
The owner might have been drunkenough to forget that the top
was down, but that didn't seemlikely.
Severn thought back to theattack by the lunatic and he
remembered that a driving rainhad followed the blackness by
(23:40):
seconds.
He imagined the party going on.
Kids jammed into the livingroom, dancing and talking, more
kids downstairs, drinking at thebar, a couple in one of the
bedrooms, taking off eachother's clothes.
Suddenly it goes dark.
They must have thought theelectricity had gone out.
Maybe a fuse had blown.
(24:01):
They would have laughed.
They would have been drunk andshouting.
Then the rain, and thensomething else.
And they all fall over dead.
Before the kid who owns theMustang has a chance to worry
about putting the top up, he'sdead.
And down the road, Sarah's deadtoo.
Severn would have been sleeping.
(24:22):
And then he awoke to the worldthe way it was now.
Full of the dead, and barkingdogs, and vultures about to
feast.
He went around the house to thebackyard and his heart jumped at
the sight of a blood smudge onthe basement door.
In the house, he found moresmudges of blood on the basement
stairs and banister, and beforehe reached the top of the
(24:44):
stairs, he was shouting Vi'sname, and when he reached her
bedroom, she was there.
Backed up against the wall,clutching her bat and looking
terrified.
Her right eye was swollen shutand shining blue black.
Her face was swollen and a thickcloud of blood distorted her
bottom lip.
Severn watched her shiveringwith fear, pressed up against
(25:06):
the wall.
Part of him was heartbroken atthe sight of her battered face
and part of him wanted to breakdown and cry at finding her
alive.
And another part of him feltlike a black boulder, something
unfeeling and ancient.
He wanted to embrace Vi.
But he listened instead to acold voice whispering that
nothing mattered anymore.
(25:27):
In a short while they'd both bedead.
He leaned the carbine againsther dresser.
A whimper issued from Vi'scracked lips.
I don't know if you're evenreal, she said.
Her voice was shaking, as washer whole body.
I don't know what to think.
I don't know what's happening.
I left you dead out there.
(25:49):
Severn took a cautious steptoward her bed and said, I'm
real, Vi.
What happened, she pleaded.
I'm dead.
I woke up in the rain and youwere dead and that man was dead
and sage.
She lowered her head as if shecouldn't go on and dropped the
bat.
She leaned forward, broke into achild's sobbing cry, and looked
as though she were about tocollapse to the floor before
(26:11):
Severn caught her in his arms.
I don't know what's happening,he said.
He picked her up and laid herdown on the bed.
He touched her forehead gentlyand dried her eyes with the
corner of a sheet.
Vi lifted her head slightly andlooked around the room.
It's light out, she said, as ifit were just registering with
(26:32):
her that it was morning.
It's been light out for a while,Severn said.
I must have been sleeping.
I must have fallen asleep.
Since when, Severn asked.
Do you remember?
Vi said, I thought you weredead.
I could hardly see.
It was still dark.
Out on the road, Severn said,but not blinding dark.
(26:55):
Not the kind of dark where youcan't see your hand in front of
your face.
Not like the advice said, butdark.
Was it still raining?
Vi nodded.
Driving rain or not that hard?
Not that hard, Vi said.
Just dark and raining.
I could see you lying there andthat guy lying right next to
(27:16):
you.
What did you do after that?
After you thought I was dead.
I came back here.
I sat on my bed.
I didn't know what else to do.
That was smart, coming backhere, Severn said.
He touched her shoulder.
He said, I see you brought yourbat with you.
(27:39):
Vi thought about that and said,Lucky for you, I brought it with
me the first time.
Severn nodded, though he wasn'tat all sure at this point how
lucky it was.
You should see your face, hesaid.
You look like you got hit by atruck.
Me?
Vi wiped tears away from hereyes.
Have you looked at yourself?
(27:59):
Severn glanced around the roomand found a hand mirror on Vi's
dresser.
He looked at himself standing inthe daylight in front of the
bedroom window.
My God, he said, no wonder Iscared you.
From his chin to his forehead,his skin was a dozen shades of
bruised blue.
His hair was matted with blood,and dried blood stained his face
and neck and clothes.
(28:21):
We're a pair, he said.
I pushed her hair back off herface.
Do you think my parents and mysister are still alive?
Do you think they'll be comingback?
Severn considered lying to her,making up a fantasy she might
believe, something that wouldmake her life more bearable for
whatever time they had left.
(28:42):
Had he been able to come up withsomething, he might have done
it, but the idea only flitteredthrough his head and
disappeared.
I don't think there's any way toknow who's left alive and who's
not.
If your parents are still alive,I'm sure they're trying to find
some way to get back here to youand your sisters.
Vi watched his eyes carefully.
(29:03):
She seemed to be reading him.
But you don't think they'realive, do you?
She said.
Tell me what you're thinking,please.
Severn put his hand on Vi'sknee.
He felt somehow even moredrained and tired.
I'm thinking there have beenthree events.
Three lurchings so far.
(29:26):
Lurchings?
Vi folded her hands in her lap.
She seemed newly alert andattentive.
We both noticed that feeling, asif our bodies lurched the first
time.
You think that has something todo with all this?
Severn made a gesture with hishands that said he had no idea,
really.
(29:47):
The way I'm understanding this,he continued, whatever it is
that's happening, it's happenedthree times.
The first time, my wife and yoursisters.
Then maybe an hour or two passedand you and I were on the road
trying to get to town and wewere attacked.
What about that, Vi said.
Who was that?
Why did I don't know.
(30:08):
Severn interrupted her.
I don't know who he was.
A lunatic, he said.
Some guy who lost it.
But how did he wind up deadwhile you and I are still alive?
Vi shook her head as if to sayshe had no idea and was waiting
for Severn to explain.
I think there was another event,the second one, and it killed
him because he was stillconscious and awake while you
(30:30):
and I were unconscious.
For a while Vi was quiet, thenshe said, and I woke up and came
back in here and fell asleep.
And while you were asleep,Severn said, a group of
survivors found me in the roadand carried me into town.
They left me in an abandonedstore.
I was still unconscious.
(30:52):
Meanwhile, other survivors weregathering at Berringer's, a bar
in town.
Fai said, I know Berringer's, asif indignant at the suggestion
that she wouldn't know theplace.
When I finally came to, therewere only dead bodies in
Berringer's, scores of them.
I figure that was the thirdevent.
They were dead bodies of collegestudents piled up outside the
(31:14):
bar.
The survivors went toBerringer's, emptied out the bar
of all the dead, and then usedit as a gathering place.
And then, it happened again.
Severn paused a moment, waitingto see if I got the picture.
When she was silent, he added,that's three events in seven or
eight hours.
(31:35):
Oh, Vi said, figuring it out.
So you think like, pretty soon,there'll be another one.
Severn said that seems like areasonable assumption.
Vi looked around her room, as ifthe answer to their problems
might be hidden there somewhere.
She said, we could go back tosleep.
(31:57):
Severn said we can't sleepforever.
She said maybe it only happensat night.
That's possible.
Vi said, we could do whatever weneed to do now during the day.
And then be sure to be asleepbefore dark.
Severn looked out the bedroomwindow, at sunlight through the
(32:17):
branches of a tree near theroad.
He noticed a bright red cardinalas it streaked up from a branch
and out of sight, and he wasstruck again at how pleasant the
day seemed, as long as therewere no bodies or wreckage in
the field of view.
Vyse said, what should we do?
We should see if we can doanything for Sage, and then He
(32:39):
killed Sage.
The guy, he No, Severn realizedthat he hadn't told her yet that
the dog was alive.
I'm sorry, he said.
I forgot.
Sage is still alive, but Butwhat?
I don't know if she'll make it.
She was barely hanging on.
Vi threw her legs over the sideof the bed as if she was ready
(33:00):
immediately to attend to Sage.
And then what, she asked,reminding Severn that she'd
interrupted him.
And then I want to bury my wife,he said.
After that, we can bury yoursisters.
Can we wait maybe a day, Visaid, her eyes suddenly tearing
up.
My parents and Daisy, they'dwant to see them before Sure,
(33:23):
Severn said, we can wait a day.
He thought he should put on theair conditioning, if they
weren't going to put the bodiesin the ground as soon as
possible.
Then he remembered again thatthere was no electricity.
The morning was already warmingup, and he'd have heard the
central air humming if theelectric were working.
Still, he went to the wall andflipped the light switch a few
(33:45):
times just to be sure.
My parents and Daisy, Vi said,if they're still alive.
She hesitated.
It's possible they're alive, Vi.
Vi said, but not likely.
And her voice in that momentsounded like a grown woman's and
not a 13 year old's.
(34:08):
There are still lots ofsurvivors, Severn said.
He thought, but didn't say, forthe moment anyway.
There are a lot of people whowill have slept through all of
this.
They're waking up now, andSevern looked out the window
again, as if he could see allthe dead and people waking to
find them.
We should tell them what weknow, Vi said.
(34:29):
Severn doubted there was anyoneelse who had awakened right
after the first event who wasstill alive.
The only way anyone would goback to sleep after something
like that was via drugs orviolence.
And who would take drugs to goback to sleep in the middle of a
catastrophe?
So on the one hand, they shouldshare what they knew.
On the other hand, why?
If there were going to belurchings every few hours, what
(34:51):
did it matter what anyone knew?
How could that be survived?
He said, I want to bury Sarah,and he sounded almost petulant,
like a child who only knows whathe wants and doesn't care about
anything else.
Well, I said, but we can takecare of Sage first, okay?
Severn retrieved the carbine andslung it once again over his
(35:13):
shoulder.
Behind him, Vi found herbaseball bat and followed him
out of the room.
This time, they went out throughthe front door, and when they
reached the living room, Vistopped, asked Severn to wait,
and ran back to her room.
A minute later, she reappearedwith two sheets with which she
covered her sister's bodies.
(35:33):
She said, If we have time, wecan bury.
And then looked around at thedozens of bodies scattered
everywhere else and didn'tcontinue.
Severn said, we'll figure outwhat to do with the bodies.
And then he stopped because herealized that he and Vi had
fallen into talking as if theywere going to survive, when
really, it didn't look likeanyone was going to survive.
(35:55):
He resolved not to let himselfdo that, not to let himself
block out the truth, to make thepresent a bit more bearable.
We'll figure it out, he said.
Vi, once they were outside, hadtaken off at a jog over the lawn
and out to the road.
When Severn caught up with her,she was already kneeling over
Sage and gently petting the biglab's head.
(36:17):
In response, Sage opened hereyes and moved her head
slightly, but otherwise laymotionless beyond the slight
rise and fall of her chest witheach breath.
Severn, without a clue why hewas doing it, grabbed the
outstretched arms of theirattacker and pulled his body a
few feet off the road, whichspilled face down into a muddy
ditch.
(36:38):
Then he looked off into thedistance at the sunlight on the
blacktop where the road curvedand disappeared.
His car was half on the pavementand half in the trees, and
beyond that there was nothingbut a quiet country road.
What should we do, Vi asked.
She hadn't stopped pettingSage's head for a moment.
Severn considered carrying thebig dog back to his house and
(37:01):
decided that wasn't a good idea,especially if there were broken
ribs involved.
He looked back at the Eppersonhouse and noticed that the
garage door was partly open.
Jake had been a part timecarpenter and auto mechanic, and
his garage was always full oftools and supplies.
Severn said, let's make a litterfor her and carry her back to my
(37:22):
house.
I'll probably find what I needin your garage.
Vi said, a note of worry obviousin her voice.
You want me to wait here withSage?
If you see something moving, hesaid, call for me.
Then he added, I mean anything,Vi, even a dog.
Okay, she said, and brought herface down to Sage's and touched
(37:43):
her cheek to the dog's head.
Severn started for the garageand then stopped when he
remembered the handgun he hadwedged in the back of his pants.
He brought it to Vi and laid itin the grass by Sage's paws.
You won't need this, he said,but just in case.
He pointed to the safety.
You have to flip that if youneed to shoot it.
(38:04):
Okay, Vi said, her head stillresting on Sage's head.
In Epperson's garage, Severnfound what he needed quickly, a
pair of dowels that looked to befive or six feet in length lay
on the ground under a workbench,and a canvas hammock hung neatly
from the back wall.
He had spotted both these itemswithin moments of raising the
(38:25):
garage door slightly andslipping under it and into a
quiet space that was more of aworkroom and storage space than
a place for parking cars.
He closed his eyes as if takingthe briefest of naps in this
cool, dimly lit space wherethere were no dead bodies or
signs of an apocalypse.
Only the smell of wood mixedwith another, sharper odor that
(38:46):
was probably a cleaning agent ofsome sort mixed with the cool
damp of night rising off theconcrete floor.
Severn crouched and rested inthe quiet.
Vi was near enough, and the daywas quiet enough, that he'd hear
her if she so much as spokeloudly, and so he felt able to
be still for a minute.
I'll It seemed likely that atany moment the sky would cloud
(39:10):
over and a light rain wouldstart up to be followed by
blackness and driving rain andthen it would happen, whatever
it was, and this time he'd beawake to see it.
Then at least he'd know.
He'd see what all the others,all the dead had seen in the
moment or moments before theydied.
He sighed and bent over to openthe garage door to let in more
(39:32):
light, and as he did so, heheard a glass break somewhere in
the house, followed by what hewas pretty certain was a human
voice, though he couldn't makeout what was said.
It sounded like a mutteredcurse.
After the breaking glass andmuttered oath, there was only
silence.
and the rocketing of Severn'sheart banging in his chest.
(40:02):
That was episode two 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.
This podcast is an experiment inalternatives to traditional
(40:25):
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.
In any event, I'm Ed Falco.
I wrote The Strangers.
(40:46):
And I hope you'll come back forthe next episode.
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