Winds of Change

• Winds of Change
• Midpoint

Winds of Change

Jason Brannon

Published by Permuted Press at Smashwords.

Copyright 2011 Jason Brannon

www.PermutedPress.com

This book is dedicated to Jillian Faith, who has always been my light

in a darkened room. You have changed me for the good

in more ways than I can count.

I.

Several people saw the shooting star as it fell to earth, but nobody thought much about it. Not even when the world started falling apart. I guess there were too many other things to consider at that point, too much death and despair and all-around weirdness. Whatever the case, we didn't make the connection between the star and the disaster until the following day. By then it was too late.

Most of us were too preoccupied with the moon to notice the falling star. It was a blood moon, a brilliant ruby hanging in a sable sky. I had never seen anything like it, and I couldn’t help watching it. It was beautiful and frightening at the same time, like a strain of anthrax studied under a microscope. Although I wasn’t really sure why, the sight of the moon, looking like it had been dipped in a vat of blood made me more than a little nervous. I wasn’t superstitious, but I couldn’t help thinking of signs and omens and prophecies.

No doubt the police station and emergency room would see their fair share of lunatics tonight; the crazies always come out in force when the moon is full. I couldn’t imagine how much more severe things might become with a full, red moon. Little did I know, I was about to find out.

Thinking back to my morning ritual of oatmeal, orange juice, and The Crowley’s Point Sun, I didn’t remember reading anything on the front page about the phenomenon. Usually if there was any sort of upcoming cosmic activity of importance like an eclipse or a meteor shower, it made the paper. Not so with this.

Of course, maybe the scientists didn’t know this was coming. Maybe this was a bona fide omen of some sort that came from nowhere and would disappear just as quickly, or maybe I had simply overlooked the article in my haste to get to work on time. Stranger things had happened.

Although I had plenty of other things I should have been doing, I stood there in the vestibule of the store, watching the moon with a childlike fascination. I imagined werewolves, curses, and ancient rituals which were probably being performed at that very moment by secret societies dressed in black hooded robes. I had an overactive imagination I suppose.

That imagination kicked into overdrive when the lights went out.

Apparently, everyone else’s imagination did the same thing. One minute the hardware store was a fully functioning, well-oiled unit, the next it was a perfect example of chaos. It’s strange how quickly balance can shift in a matter of seconds.

Thankfully, it was closing time and there were only a few people left inside the store. I’m not sure what would have happened if the building had been full of customers. We probably would have realized that something was wrong a lot sooner, but that would have also meant that more people were dead as a result.

Someone - a child, I think - screamed out in fear as everything went dark. The few people that remained in the store could be seen roaming the aisles frantically in search of their loved ones. It was a natural instinct. Of course, nobody was panicking at that point. Power failures were common enough.

Having experienced similar situations during thunderstorms and power outages, I wasn’t that upset. This sort of thing had happened before, and everything always turned out all right. The fact that it wasn't storming outside, however, bothered me a little. The weather couldn't be blamed for this. Maybe a drunk had simply driven his car into a light pole or somebody at the power plant fell asleep and accidentally flipped a switch he shouldn’t have. I didn’t have any good explanations, but I didn’t feel like I needed any at that point. Order would be restored soon enough.

I stood there for a few minutes in the dark, wondering why the backup generator hadn’t kicked in. The generator should have started up immediately unless the mechanics were faulty or someone had tampered with it. It was kept in a locked maintenance room at the back of the store. Only the managers had keys to that room, so it was pretty unlikely that anyone had actually sabotaged the machine. The generator was also serviced on a regular basis which made it hard for me to believe that there might be mechanical failure of any sort.

“Anybody know what’s going on?” Chuck asked me.

“The lights went out,” I joked. “We’re all in the dark here.”

“I’m being serious.”

"I haven’t heard anything,” I admitted, dropping the humor. “Maybe a transformer blew.”

“That doesn’t explain why the backup power failed. That’s never happened before.”

“I don’t have an answer for you, Chuck. All I know is that we’re in the dark right now and there are still people inside the store.”

“Do you think we need to call Mr. Kingsley and tell him what’s happening?”

I thought about it for a moment. Mr. Kingsley was our boss and the owner of Kingsley’s Hardware and Appliance. If I knew him as well as I thought I did, he was probably either pickling his liver at one of the local bars or stuffing dollar bills into some white-trash stripper’s G-string. Mr. Kingsley was a man who didn’t like to be disturbed, especially when getting drunk or fondled. I remembered what had happened the last time I called him in the middle of a lap dance. I had spent the next month working the late shift. I wasn’t too eager to relive my past mistake.

“No need to call the boss,” I said. “We can handle it here. That’s what he’s paying us for. We’re in charge. Let’s just make a decision.”

“It’s just strange that the generator isn’t working,” Chuck said, not willing to let that point pass. “The guy tested it last week. He said everything looked good.”

“So what do you think is wrong with it?” I asked.

“Maybe terrorists are responsible,” Chuck said, only half-kidding.

“Come on, Chuck. Terrorists? Get a grip, buddy.”

“I’m serious,” Chuck said. “I think we really stirred ‘em up by going into Iraq. This feels like something they would try.”

“Terrorists don’t care about us,” I said, peering out the glass front of the store. “We’re nothing. A speck on a map. This is the last place terrorists would hit. Besides, if they were going to hit us, they would do it when we were busy, not when we’re about to close up for the night.”

“That’s exactly why it would be so disturbing,” Chuck reasoned, running a hand through his thinning blond hair. “It would completely catch people off guard. An attack like that would really hit home. People would realize that they are never truly protected. I mean, think about it. We always expect the worst at the obvious times. The news always posts terrorist alerts on the Fourth of July and on New Year's Eve and at Christmas. But what about 9:30 on a Friday night? Who would ever suspect something like that?”

“It's an interesting theory, Chucky, but I think we need to start ushering people out of the store. We can talk about this more when we don’t have to worry about people filling their pockets or stumbling around in the dark and breaking a leg. Mr. Kingsley would can both of us if he got sued because of something that happened in his store while we were in charge.”

Of course, fear of shoplifters wasn’t the reason I stopped the conversation. The truth of the matter was that his logic scared me just a little bit. Chuck was thinking like a terrorist, and his rationale made a certain amount of sense. I didn't like to consider the possibility that he was right.

The sound of brakes screeching and the squeal of metal outside only reinforced the notion that something was wrong. I thought about going to see what had happened, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“Things are going to start falling apart any minute,” Chuck said. “I’m telling you. Go ahead, think I’m a fool now. I’m willing to risk that. I’ll gloat later.”

“Chuck, there are people in here we need to take care of. Enough yapping.”

“You know I’m talking sense, Matt. The element of surprise is a key weapon to a terrorist. Hitting a little town like this would make the entire country stand up and take notice. It would turn everything on its head. Until now, people in the big cities have felt the pressure while we’ve sat back in our recliners and watched it all on television. We’ve walked around thinking ‘I sure am glad I live in a little place like this because nobody will care enough to come after us.’ Well, what if somebody got wise to that kind of thinking and decided to do exactly that?”

“We need to get some flashlights and get these people out to their cars,” I insisted. “We can play this game some other time.”

Chuck sighed. It was obvious that he had almost talked himself into believing his own explanation and was desperate for somebody else to side with him. “You think about what I said,” he grumbled.

“Fine, I’ll think about. You just think about the fact that nobody is dying in this scenario. The lights are out and somebody wrecked their car outside. Other than that, there’s not been anything to get worked up about.”

“Not yet at least,” Chuck said.

“Let’s just round everybody up and make sure nobody’s hurt.”

“You start at one end,” Chuck suggested once he realized he wasn’t going to win me over with the terrorist argument. “I’ll start at the other. This shouldn’t take long. I just hope we don't run into any of them.”

"Can it, Chuck," I muttered. "And don't start talking about terrorists in front of the customers. I don't want to scare everybody because of your overactive imagination. We shouldn't get people worked up until there's a reason for it."

Chuck started to raise some sort of argument, but I didn't give him the chance. I walked away from him and started rounding up the people who hadn't yet made their way to the exits.

Getting all the customers out of the store wasn’t nearly as easy as we had anticipated. For starters, the Weavers didn’t want to leave, and Jesse Weaver wasn’t the kind of man that people argued with.

Although Jesse Weaver wore greasy overalls and steel-toed boots and had two arms’ worth of tattoos, he was one of the richest men in town. Nobody was really sure how he had acquired his wealth, and the really smart people didn’t ask. Some people mentioned bootlegging. Others whispered smuggling and murder. Gambling certainly figured in there somewhere as well. All of the theories were probably true to one extent or the other, and the fact that his sons were following in his footsteps wasn’t much of a comfort either. The fact that they weren't with him was even less consolation. I had seen them all come in together and knew they were in the store somewhere. Those boys didn’t go any place that trouble didn’t follow.

I immediately thought of the generator and the problems we were having. Maybe the Weaver boys were to blame. If anybody could have picked the lock to the service room where the generator was kept, I knew it was them. Wisely, I didn’t say anything in front of Jesse and Vera Weaver about their sons. That would have been trouble for sure.

“I’m not leaving,” Jesse Weaver told me when I approached him. “Not without what I came in here for. The wife needs a stove. That’s what you do here. You sell stoves.”

“The power is out,” I said. “I can’t sell you one right now.“

“Why not?” Jesse asked, undeterred.

“Because our registers run off of electricity, and as you can see we have no electricity at the moment.”

“I’m paying with cash,” Jesse responded. “I can just leave the money with you, take our stove, and be on our way. You can put the money in the drawer when the lights come back on.”

I sighed. “You have to understand where I’m coming from. I’ve got the entire store to consider. If you walk around in here and get hurt, it would be our responsibility. You could trip over something in one of the aisles and sprain an ankle.”

“That ain’t what you’re worried about, and you and I both know that,” Jesse Weaver growled. “You think I might just decide to stick a little something in my pocket and walk out with it. Well, despite what you’ve heard about me, I’m not a thief. I’m a lot of other things that might land me some time in the penitentiary, but a thief ain’t one of ‘em.”

“I’m not concerned about that,” I said, trying to sound convincing, “but I’m in charge of the store, and I‘m shutting things down for now, like it or not.”

“Don’t worry about the store,” Jesse said with a heavy Southern drawl. “It ain’t going nowhere. But I am. I’ve got a stove to load up.”

“Jesse, I can wait on the stove,” Vera Weaver spoke up. “Let this poor man do his job, and don’t give him a hard time.”

Vera Weaver’s voice was a whisper in the middle of a hurricane.

“No, ma’am, you can’t wait,” Jesse growled. “I told you we were doing this tonight, and I’m not going to let this little pissant keep us from it. I’ll call Jack if I have to.”

“Mr. Weaver, I don’t want to get ugly about this...” I knew it wasn’t much of a threat, but then again I wasn’t much of a threat maker.

I heard a wet smacking that was probably the sound of Jesse switching his wad of tobacco from one cheek to another. “Don’t make me get Jack involved in this,” he grumbled. “Me and your boss go way back, and I have plenty of reasons to believe that he’d take my side in this. He asks me for way too many favors to have one of his errand boys throw me out of his store. Call him on his cell phone if you’ve got any doubts about what you should do. Of course, I’m sure that would put a lot of doubts in his mind about your ability to do this job. Am I right?”

I scowled in the dark, irritated that I had been backed into this kind of corner. “Whatever, Jesse,” I said. “We’ll get your stove. Just bear with me for a few minutes and let me round everybody else up. I don’t want a whole store full of people stumbling around in the dark. Fair enough?”

I heard Jesse spit in the dark and shuddered to think about where it might have landed. “I guess I can go along with that,” he said.

Hoping to avoid any further conflict, I was just about to suggest that the Weavers wait at the service desk when I heard someone screaming at one of the doors. It wasn’t the kind of screaming you hear at an amusement park or in a horror movie. Rather, it more closely resembled the sound someone might make if they were being skinned alive. To make matters worse, the lights were still out so I couldn’t see what was going on. It was enough to give me chills and make me want to run for cover, but I knew I couldn’t do that, especially not in front of Jesse Weaver. I was supposed to be in charge of things. If I showed any sign of fear at this point, I knew he would take advantage of that and do whatever he wanted for as long as he wanted. I couldn’t let that happen.

Trying hard not to panic, I left the Weavers standing where they were. Steven, one of the other managers, met me at front entrance. Even in the dark, I could tell that he was pale. He had obviously heard the screaming too.

“Don’t go out there,” he said, checking the sliding glass doors to make sure they were shut. “I don’t know what’s going on, but the world is falling apart all around us. Things are happening to the people who have already left.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, immediately thinking of the potential lawsuits that might erupt from this. Steven sat down on one of the benches in the vestibule. His hands trembled, and he crossed his arms to hide the fact that he was shaken.

“It’s hard to explain," he said at last, "but people are changing the moment they leave the building.”

“Changing? Into what?”

“You form your own opinion,” Steven said. "Tell me what you see."

I had never seen Steven so scared before, and I knew that whatever he had seen must have been bad.

"Just stay away from the exits," Steven added, almost as an afterthought. "There's something in the air out there, and it's nasty stuff. It’s changing people."

I thought back to what Chuck had said about terrorists and wondered if this might really be the beginning of the end. I imagined clandestine missions involving the release of sarin gas, biologically-engineered anthrax, and vials of bubonic plague. The screaming outside the store reinforced the images in my head, giving them color and texture and dimension. I didn’t want to live in Technicolor though. I wanted black-and-white. That would have made everything so much easier to bear.

The screaming went on for several seconds. You could have almost mistaken it for the wailing of emergency sirens had there not been a few words mixed in as well. The words were mostly curses. Whoever was uttering them was definitely suffering.

“Come here,” Steven said above the painful ululations. Reluctantly, I joined him in front of one of the large storefront windows.

He pointed at a foot-high hillock of what looked like wet sand piled up outside the door. The maroon moonlight revealed a few more scattered about the parking lot like the errant homes of wayward ants. I saw a few glints of metal shining atop the mounds and realized what they were - rings, bracelets, necklaces, watches, and even a few gold and silver teeth.

"Look at the prosthetic," Steven whispered. "That's all that's left of the guy who was screaming. I saw him through the window a minute ago. Now he's gone."

The fake leg lay in a pile of what looked like beach sand. The wind rocked it back and forth in the dust like a rolling pin in flour.

It took me a few seconds to realize that the screaming had stopped. It took me even longer to process what Steven was suggesting. If that hillock of dust and the one prosthetic leg was all that remained of Steven's customer, that meant that all of the piles of sand represented people.

I pressed my nose to the glass, straining to see anything that might prove this was all some elaborate hoax. That was when the first bird flew into the glass, making a smack like a wife’s open palm against the side of her philandering husband’s cheek. Startled, I fell back from the window, gasping for breath. The sky chose that moment to start raining birds.

I wasn’t sure if most of them were already dead, but they all ended up that way. Some of them broke their necks after flying into the unyielding brick front of the store. Others just dropped out of the sky, landing here and there like strange hailstones. I had heard about the unexplained phenomenon of frogs falling from the sky and supposed that this was along the same line. The fact that something like this had happened elsewhere didn’t reassure me in the least.

“We’re a modern day Egypt,” Steven said. I was too shocked at that point to question him about what he meant. I was too busy watching glassy-eyed cardinals, crows, robins, finches, hawks, vultures, cranes, and a hundred other types of birds drop from the clouds and crash against the pavement. Strangely enough, the birds didn’t turn to dust like the people had. They just lay there, quiet and unmoving.

Eventually, the downpour of feathers and beaks slowed to a trickle and then died out altogether. The parking lot was littered with birds of every variety. With the sky finally emptied of anything aviary, my mind quickly returned to the hillocks of salt. What had happened to those birds was terrible. But it wasn’t anything like what had happened to all of those unsuspecting people, what could potentially happen to me.

"What is going on here?" I asked, feeling numb. “My God, what happened to all of them?”

“It’s the curse of Lot’s wife,” Steven said, squeezing the gold crucifix that hung around his neck. “Everyone’s turning into piles of salt. You remember the story, don’t you? This is the exact same thing.”

I nodded and tried to swallow. It felt like all of the spit in my mouth had dried up. “I know the story. But these really aren’t the same sorts of circumstances. For one thing, God hasn’t given us a direct command which we, in turn, have broken.”

“But it’s the same type of thing,” Steven said. “It may not be that particular curse. But this is a plague of Biblical proportions. Think about what happened to the Egyptians. They got more plagues than they knew what to do with. Locusts, famine, death of the firstborn, water to blood - all that stuff. Who knows? These might be the first of many. We’ve got a blood moon, people turning to salt, a rain of birds. Think about it, Matt.”

“Plague would imply that this is widespread,” I reminded him. “So far we don’t know that this has affected more than a few people. Maybe these incidents are isolated to this area.”

“But we don’t know that it hasn’t affected any place else,” Steven said, stroking his red goatee.

“There’s a logical explanation for all of this,” I maintained, “I’m sure of it.”

“You’re right,” Steven retorted, “there is. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. It’s a verse in the book of Joel.”

“This is strange, I’ll be the first to admit that. But you act like this is the end of the world.”

“Maybe it is,” Steven said. “You can’t prove that it isn’t. I’m sure you might be able to find some scientific excuse to explain away the birds and the moon. But I think you’d be hard pressed to find an explanation for all of those people turning into salt. Of course, if you’ve got something on your mind, I’d like to hear it.”

I shook my head, unwilling to say what I believed. Maybe that was because I wasn’t even really sure I knew what I believed.

The idea of a biblical curse seemed preposterous. The idea of a chemical agent introduced into the atmosphere by terrorists, however, seemed more and more possible. That could potentially explain what had happened to the birds and what was happening to the people that ventured out. The moon could have just been a naturally occurring phenomenon that coincidentally fell on the same night that the world fell apart. It wasn’t likely, I realized, but I was grasping at straws for sanity’s sake at that point.

“The phones are out,” Chuck said, running up from the opposite direction. “I can’t get any service on my cell either. We desperately need to call someone for help. People are dying out there. I told you we were under attack. What’s happening outside proves it.”

“Slow down,” I told him. “Just slow down.”

“We need to turn on a radio or t.v. fast,” Chuck said. “People are turning to salt. Whatever those terrorists released, it’s eating people alive and turning them to dust.”

“Terrorists?” Steven said, a little confused. “This has nothing to do with terrorists. This is a Biblical curse that God is sending down to punish us.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Chuck said to Steven. “Something bad happens and you are always ready to get God involved in it.”

“Maybe that’s your problem,” Steven said, raising his voice. “You aren’t ready to involve God at all.”

“Stop it,” I said. “Both of you. We don’t have time for this. Whatever is going on will kill us regardless of who’s responsible. What we need to try and do now is to guard ourselves against the threat.”

“Maybe I should start saying Bible verses,” Chuck said. “I just hope He understands the words through my air mask. We need to arm ourselves immediately and get some protection over our mouths and noses.”

“Maybe you should pray instead if you know how,” Steven said through clenched teeth. “Of course, if it’s God’s will for us to die, it won’t really matter any way.”

“Maybe I should just throw both of you out and see what happens,” I yelled. “Maybe you two would get along better if you were both little piles of salt. No mouths to argue with then, no viewpoints to debate. Just nice, tidy quiet heaps of salt. Or dirt. Or whatever that stuff is out there. How about that? Huh? Do you guys think you can shut your mouths for two seconds and let me think? Is that so much to ask?”

“You made your point,” Chuck grumbled.

“Steve?” I said.

“I’m fine,” Steven said. “We need to work together on this. I get that. I guess we’re just all a little uptight is all.”

“Great. Then we’re all on the same page.”

What was supposed to be our own private little pep rally was quickly interrupted by the screeching sound of another car wreck. I couldn’t help wondering if there was a pile of salt sitting there in the driver’s seat. It kind of put all of our bickering into perspective. At this point, the explanation of what was killing so many people didn’t matter as much as the fact that people were walking to their deaths like lemmings off of the edge of a cliff.

It bothered me to think that we had unwittingly pushed dozens of people to their deaths in our haste to empty the store. It bothered me even more to think that we had wasted a lot of time that could have been spent saving lives. But how could we have known? We weren’t even really sure of anything now, least of all that we could save ourselves.

What was the cause? Who was responsible? What could we do to protect ourselves and those around us? Chuck was right. We needed to find some news and see what was going on. Maybe somebody else had the answers to our questions.

I guess none of us considered the fact that the store still had no power. Even if there would have been a radio or t.v. handy, there wasn’t any electricity. It was one in a long list of problems.

A few restaurants and a gas station were within walking distance of our store. They didn’t seem to have any power either. The blackout had claimed the entire west side of town. That still didn’t explain why the generator wasn’t working. But it was comforting in a way to know that there were other people in the same shape we were in. I just wondered how many people had unwittingly gone outside to their deaths before someone realized that remaining inside was the safest alternative. To judge by the amount of debris in the parking lot it looked like a fair number of people had met their maker in the past hour.

"Look," Chuck said suddenly, pointing to one of the aisles at the back of the store. The skylights let in just enough illumination to see furtive shapes darting back and forth from aisle to aisle. “Terrorists,” he hissed. “I told you, and you didn’t believe me. Or, Steven, maybe those are really prophets back there, seeking to spread the word of God. What do you think?”

"There are two of them," Steven said. “That’s all I can be sure of. Well, that and the fact that I’m going to hand you your teeth in about two seconds.”

"Those aren’t terrorists,” I interrupted, “those are the Weaver boys. I knew they were in here someplace. Just haven’t been able to track ‘em down yet.”

“Well, we know where they are now,” Chuck said. “I think we need to corral them. No need for more unnecessary surprises down the road. Having those two loose in the store is almost like letting the bulls loose in the china shop. Anything could happen.”

"And they aren't the only ones still inside," Steven said, directing his flashlight down one of the plumbing aisles. A couple of burly plumbers were still gathering supplies by moonlight like nothing was wrong.

"They don’t even realize what’s happening," I said. “We’ve got to warn everyone of the dangers. We can catch up to the Weaver boys later. We know those two are safe. For now, we need to get the word out that nobody is to go outside. I just wish the intercom worked. We could call everybody to the front of the store and do things the easy way.”

“We know the Weaver boys are safe,” Chuck reminded me. “But are we safe from them?”

It was a perfectly valid question. We just didn’t have time to answer it. For all I knew people were muddling through the aisles and making their way to the exits, unaware of the dangers that lurked on the other side of the glass. I couldn’t allow that to happen.

“Let’s get everyone together,” I said. “Time’s a wasting.”

"We don’t even know what’s going on," Chuck said, his fear coming through as agitation. "For all we know, one of those little countries in the Middle East might have fired a missile. We might have fired back. The world might be breaking down around us even as we speak. If that’s the case, then it won’t really matter what we do. Will it?"

Steven and I looked at each other, unable to come up with a rebuttal for that possibility.

"We need to gather up everyone in the store that's left and explain the situation to them,” I persisted. “We don't want anybody else trying to go out those doors until we know that things are safe. If things are as bad as you think they are, then we’ll at least go out trying. If not, then our efforts may be the thing that saves lives."

That statement held more truth than I ever could have realized.

In truth, there were quite a few more people in the store than I had realized. Twelve in all, counting Chuck, Steven, and myself. The Weavers made four along with the two plumbers. There was also a newly married couple who had taken advantage of the darkness. I found them making out in one of the hammocks out in the garden department. Chuck also found an elderly man in the bathroom.

"What's going on here?" the old man asked. "I just went in to take a leak. When I come out, the world's gone to hell in a hand basket. Are we at war or something?"

"Honestly, none of us know what's going on," I admitted. "But we do know that there is something outside this building that will kill you the minute you try to go to your car.”

“Yeah, I know,” the old man said with a wave of his bony hand. “It’s called the atmosphere. That’s what you yuppies get for spraying all of that hair spray and deodorant and toilet bowl cleaner. Walking outside is like walking inside of the lung of a cigarette smoker.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I tried to explain. “Just trust me when I tell you that going outside right now would almost certainly mean death for you.”

“You’re putting me on,” the elderly man said. “I may be old, but I’m not a fool.”

I sighed. “You can take my word for it or you can look out the windows and see all the little mounds of dirt and salt. That’s all that’s left of the people who tried to make it to their cars.”

“Give me a break,” one of the plumbers said to the other. “We’re not as stupid as you might think. You people look down your nose at us until the crapper backs up or the pipes burst. Then, we’re your personal heroes.”

“This has nothing to do with the way I view you,” I maintained. “I realize that this is all a little hard to swallow, but I’m asking you to believe me.”

“Why should I believe you?” the plumber grumbled.

“Do you have kids?”

The plumber shifted from one foot to another. “Two girls,” he said.

“Do you want those girls to grow up without a father?” I asked him. “If I’m wrong about everything, the worst that can happen is that you’ll feel like a fool. If I’m right, listening to me might be the very thing that gets you home to your daughters.”

“Matt’s right,” Steven said, coming to my defense. “None of you have to like it, but this is reality now. People are dying outside, and there’s nothing we can do about it but sit here and wait for help to arrive. Trying to act like Rambo isn’t going to do anything but get you killed.”

“Maybe this is the end of the world,” Jesse Weaver said. “If that’s the case, then there’s nothing we can do about it. Maybe we should all hold hands and sing Kumbaya. Or maybe we should do whatever we want while there’s still time. This may be our last chance to enjoy life. Anybody in here got a Heineken? Boys, what do you say to that?”

Both of the no-good sons laughed at their father’s stupid joke. Vera Weaver didn’t join her family in their laughter. In all the years the Weavers had been coming in the store, I had never even seen her smile. I knew she must have regretted some of the choices she had made in life that brought her to this point. Undoubtedly, letting Jesse get her pregnant ranked at the top of that list. Still, she stood by her man. There was something both admirable and sad in that.

I felt sorry for her. I also felt sorry for the young couple that I had caught making out in the hammock. They were the only ones out of the group who seemed to take what we said seriously. They were also the ones who had the most to lose.

Even in the dark I could see that the young girl was gripping her husband’s hand. He shrugged off her touch once he saw us looking at him. It was almost as if he was ashamed of his wife or didn’t know quite how to act. She reached for him again, and he backed away from her.

He seemed nervous, erratic, like he had something to hide. He was trying to keep himself in check, but I could see the strain on his face. He was either very new at trying to disguise his emotions or very bad at it. Either way, I felt like I needed to keep an eye on him. Steven gave me a knowing glance, indicating that he felt the same way.

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” the girl persisted. “If this is the end of the world, I don’t want to spend it in here. I’ve got family that I want to check on. See if they’re o.k.”

“We all want to go home,” Chuck said. “But that’s not a good idea right now. In fact, it’s a terrible idea. You won’t take more than a couple of steps before turning into a pile of dust. I don’t know what’s going on outside. The only thing I do know is that you don’t want to be out there. You need to stay in here with the rest of us.”

“Prove what you’re saying,” the argumentative plumber said.

I hit him in the face with the beam of my flashlight, tired of the babysitting and the arguing. We didn’t have time for any of this, and it seemed like I was the only one who realized it.

“He doesn’t have to prove what he’s saying,” I replied with an obvious hint of anger in my voice. “You don’t have to believe any of us. You decide for yourself whether to accept or deny what we say. I can’t speak for the other guys, but it’s nothing to me one way or the other. I don’t know you. I don’t care if I ever learn your name. You can do exactly as you please and walk to that door feeling like you’re ten feet tall. That’s about as far as you’ll get. Once you walk out that door, all you’ll be is a ten foot tall pile of salt. It’s your choice.”

“I want a beer,” the plumber mumbled, ignoring everything I just said. “There ain’t any here. Guess I’ll have to get in my truck and go get some. Anybody here want one? I’ll be sure to bring a few if I don’t turn to dust first.”

“I can’t hold you here against your will,” I warned him for the last time. He took two steps forward, hoping to intimidate me. I didn’t budge. Instead, I let him edge past me and head for the door.

“Hold on, Jerry,” the other plumber said, running after his friend. But Jerry had a point that he was determined to make.

“Come on, Pete, you’re not going to let these little pricks pull one over on us, are you?” Jerry said, sliding the glass doors open and stumbling out into the night. Chuck had followed us to the door and quickly jumped in front of Pete, pulling the doors shut. Pete didn’t seem too eager to go any further and made no move to push Chuck out of his way. It was the smartest thing he could have done.

Jerry took only a couple of steps before he ran back to the doors, beating on the glass with his fists. His eyes were bloodshot and wide with fright. He slammed his fists against the glass again. This time his fist exploded into a million grains of the salt-like dust that composed the myriad mounds in the parking lot. It was like watching a human-shaped sand sculpture being demolished by hurricane-force winds.

The wind quickly swept Jerry away like a puff of acrid smoke. I’m sure there would have been assassins around the world who would have paid tens of thousands of dollars to learn how to dispose of a body that efficiently. I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. I obviously wasn’t the only one.

“Jesus,” Chuck shrieked, backing into Pete. “Did you see what happened to him? One minute, he was there. The next...”

Pete, the plumber, caught Chuck and kept him from falling. But it was clear from the slack-jawed expression on his face that he wasn’t in much better shape. “Oh my God,” he kept muttering over and over again like a mantra.

“Jerry’s gone,” Steven said, grabbing Pete by the shoulders to steady him. I don’t think Pete even heard what Steven was saying until the third or fourth time he said it.

“Bush didn’t send our boys into Iraq in time,” Chuck muttered. “A month or so earlier and all this might have been avoided. One of them probably injected themselves with some sort of biological agent and walked right into the midst of us. They believe in suicide, you know? They think that sort of thing is honorable. But seriously, can you believe it? Terrorists here in Crowley’s Point? It seems surreal.”

Lots of things seemed surreal at that point. Dozens of people had just walked to their deaths outside our store, and there was scarcely a trace of them left save for the small heaps of grayish-white sand that resembled oversized piles of cigarette ashes. I remembered something I had heard in church a long time ago about how all the Christians would be called up to heaven while the sinners were left behind at the moment of Christ’s return. I couldn’t help wondering if that might have been what happened. It frightened me to think that I was one of the ones who had no chance at a blissful eternity. Then, I realized the error in my analysis of the situation. Jerry, the plumber, hardly seemed like the righteous, devout type. If God, in fact, had called the faithful up to heaven, I doubted that Jerry would have been included in the rapture.

“Maybe we’ve been invaded by aliens,” Pete muttered under his breath as he found a bench and sat down.

That got Steven’s attention. “I saw a falling star earlier this evening. I went out back to smoke and was looking up at the constellations when something fell out of the sky.”

“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!” Pete, the plumber, added.

“Where did you learn that?” I asked, more than a little surprised to hear him quoting scripture.

“Sunday School,” Pete replied. “My grandmother used to take me when I was younger. I paid attention sometimes, usually when they were talking about angels and demons. The Bible is the best horror novel you’ll ever hope to read. At the time, I just thought it sounded cool.”

“Maybe you and Steven can have a prayer meeting together or something when this is all over with,” Chuck said, taking every opportunity to get a dig in when he could. Steven ignored him and stayed focused on me.

“So what are you implying?” I asked.

“I think he’s implying that maybe it wasn’t a shooting star,” Vera Weaver suggested. “I tend to agree. Maybe this is God’s way of punishing the wicked. Like one of the Egyptian plagues.” Out of all of us, she was the one who seemed the least frightened or surprised by the things that were going on. Maybe she had some sort of inner wellspring of faith that kept her calm and cool. Whatever the case, having her around made me feel a little better about things. It was comforting to see that someone out of the group was in control of their emotions yet it was hard to believe that the source of my relief carried the Weaver name.

Unfortunately, the other members of the family didn’t share their mother’s virtues.

Jesse Weaver and his boys had resorted to cigarettes to calm their shaken nerves. Normally, I would have told them to put the Marlboros out. But these were unusual circumstances. The clouds of smoke drifted through the air like materialized ghosts. It wasn’t hard to envision those same clouds as the freed spirits of all those who had died the moment they left the confines of the store. I think we all watched the wispy curls of smoke drift off into the atmosphere for several minutes, needing any excuse we could find to give our minds a rest.

Only the young married couple separated themselves from everyone else. They sat side-by-side on the service desk counter and whispered to each other when they thought we weren’t watching. They weren’t holding hands. They weren’t even touching. Only whispering. It all seemed a little strange to me since we had caught them making out in one of the hammocks out in garden center. Yet different people handled trauma in different ways I supposed.

“We could use some organization here,” I suggested at last. “Let’s gather up everything we need for a meeting. I’d really like to talk without quite so much darkness. A game plan is what we need at the moment. I think we’ll have better luck coming up with one if we’ve got a little light on the subject.”

“Arm yourselves, too,” Chuck spoke up. “Grab anything you can find that you might be able to use as a potential weapon if things get out of hand. A hammer, an axe, crowbar, whatever. If you can use it to crush someone’s skull into little bits, it might be a good thing to hang on to. Remember, we don’t know what we’re up against here.”

I wasn’t pleased that Chuck had mentioned the possibility that we might have to fight some unseen invader for our lives. But I guess that was reality and it was better to be prepared for it than to have an enemy sneak up and catch us off guard.

It didn’t take long for everyone to grab something comfortable that they could use to defend themselves with. The two Weavers boys grabbed battery-powered nail guns. Jesse Weaver found a scythe that made him look like the Grim Reaper. The married couple found two pitchforks. Pete the plumber armed himself with a twenty-pound sledgehammer and was immediately transformed into a reasonable facsimile of Thor. The old guy chose a machete. Steven and I both grabbed gas-powered chainsaws that were to our liking. But it was Chuck that took the cake. I couldn’t help laughing at him as he rejoined the group.

His face was obscured by the oversized air mask that he wore over his mouth and nose. A thin ray of light emanated from the miner’s hat he wore. The tool belt around his waist looked like something out of a Batman comic, complete with utility items galore. In one hand he held a pick axe. In the other he brandished a blow torch.

“What?” he said when he realized we were all staring at him in disbelief. “I just wanted to be prepared, is that such a crime?”

While we had been waiting for Chuck to ‘suit up,’ Steven and I had rounded up flashlights for everyone. The light was somewhat of a reassurance, if only a small one. I suddenly felt like a boy at summer camp again. Only now, it was clear that there were things in the darkness to be afraid of, and the light had absolutely no effect on whatever it was that was reducing men to dust.

“This sucks,” Jake Weaver said as we stood there with our flashlights, trying to act brave and hopeful even though we had no reason to be. “I would rather be any place else but here with these losers.”

“Jake, hush,” his mother said. “This isn’t the time. Everyone’s doing the best they can under the circumstances.”

“Who cares? I was supposed to meet Becky tonight.”

“You wouldn’t have known what to do with her anyway,” Kenneth Weaver said with a laugh that was as big as his belly. “Now me on the other hand, I could have shown her some tricks. Shown her what kind of man the Weaver family tree really produces.”

“Watch your mouth, fat boy,” Jake growled, making fists. “It’ll be hard to eat your weight in Twinkies if your lips are swollen shut.”

“Enough,” Jesse Weaver roared, “both of you. I’m sick of listening to it.”

The boys cowered in their father’s shadow. It was an impressive thing to witness in person, especially with Jake. Of the brothers, he seemed to be the more hardened of the two.

A tall boy, almost as imposing as his father, Jake looked like a pale, gaunt scarecrow standing there in the dark. Like his father and younger brother, he had that same greasy mane of dingy blonde hair too. He had a growing reputation in town for doing some of the best tattoos around. Judging by the artwork on Jesse Weaver’s arms, the reputation was well deserved. I wondered if the reputation for vandalism was just as valid.

Kenneth Weaver, on the other hand, looked like the poster child for fat kid jokes. He was obese in that white-trash sort of way, looking like a real life version of the Michelin Man with his fat rolls, pasty white skin, and three-day-old beard. It didn’t help matters any that he was wearing a white wifebeater with sweat rings around the neck and armpits. In true redneck fashion, the back pocket of his jeans had the tell-tale ring of a snuff can. He couldn’t have been any more trailer-park if he had tried.

I didn’t have any trouble envisioning either of their pictures on Wanted posters in post offices across the country. The very thought of criminal activity reminded me of our malfunctioning generator. I wanted to believe that the Weaver boys had something to do with it, but I couldn’t with any real conviction. The malfunctioning generator had to be tied to everything else that was going on. And, crafty as they were, I was sure that they had absolutely nothing to do with the curse that befell anyone who stepped out into the elements. Which meant they probably had nothing to do with the generator either. The boys were professional delinquents, but they knew nothing about biochemical warfare, if that’s indeed what this was. And even if it wasn’t some sort of chemical agent, the boys were even further removed from the skill of Biblical curses. They were off the hook as far as I was concerned. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t cause trouble if given the opportunity. I just hoped Jesse Weaver kept his sons in line.

“So when are we getting to leave this dump?” Jake asked. “Shouldn’t the National Guard be coming along soon?” It was almost like he hadn’t heard what his father had told him less than two minutes before.

“At this point, it’s hard to say when we’ll get to leave,” I told Jake. “The bad thing is that there really isn’t anything we can do about it. Going outside right now is suicide. The way it’s looking, we might be here awhile. You’ll just have to get used to it, like it or not.”

Although what I said had been directed toward Jake Weaver, the young bride took it to heart and immediately began to weep. I think most of us felt sorry for her. Her husband simply looked at her with disgust. It was like watching an aristocrat look down his nose at a homeless person. I don’t know what any of the other guys were thinking, but I wanted to crack the guy’s skull right there. He was about as cold and as lifeless as I had ever seen any husband be.

Realizing that somebody needed to do something, the old guy went to her side and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder when it became clear that her husband wasn’t going to make any attempt to comfort her.

“No need to do all that crying,” he said gently like a grandfather. “We’ll get out of this thing.”

“You can’t be sure of that,” the young woman wept.

“And you can’t be sure that we won’t,” the old man said. “So let’s hope for the better of the two outcomes and pray for that. By the way, name’s Leland Kennedy. Pleased to meet you.”

The young woman laughed through her tears. “I’m stupid. I know it. I’m in the same shape everyone else is in, and all I can think about is myself.”

“Well who else would you be thinking about?” Leland Kennedy replied. “Certainly not that cretin of a husband.”

“He’s not that bad, really,” the young woman said in her husband’s defense.

“Well if I were a little younger, you wouldn’t have to worry about having a man around to comfort you when you needed one. I can promise you that. You may not realize it now, but Old Leland was quite the playboy in his day. You betcha I was.”

Her husband scowled and crossed his arms. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, you old fool,” he muttered under his breath.

“Old fool or not,” Leland said. “I know how to treat a lady. That seems like an area in which you’re deficient.”

“I do fine,” the husband grumbled.

“Fine is what causes your wife to end up in bed with another man,” Leland reminded him. “You’d better do a sight better than fine if you want to hold on to this sweet young lady.”

“Piss off, Moses. Nobody asked you.”

“Well, if either of you get tired of her, I’ll show her a thing or two,” Kenneth Weaver spoke up.

“The only thing you’ll be able to show her is how to clean out a buffet,” Jake Weaver said. Kenneth’s face reddened like a beet.

“Bite me,” he said, averting his eyes.

“I’ve heard just about enough from both of you,” Vera Weaver said. “Your father told you both to hush. Now I’m telling you. Don’t make the same mistake again. Neither of you are too old to get a switch to your behind. And I know that there aren’t any switches available, but there are plenty of extension cords in this store that will work just the same.”

Both of the boys looked ashamed. That sort of went with the territory when your mother called you out in public. Somehow, I didn’t think we’d be hearing anything from them for a while, at least until the sting of public humiliation wore off.

“Maybe we should all introduce ourselves since it seems we may be here indefinitely,” I suggested, trying to change the subject, “get to know each other a little. It will help ease the tension.”

Much to my surprise, everyone agreed.

Of course, just about everybody knew Jesse, Vera, Jake, and Kenneth Weaver. Still they introduced themselves without incident. That in itself was a small miracle. We all knew Leland Kennedy by now too. Pete’s last name was Herbert. The young couple was Wayne and Ashley Richards. Then there was Chuck, Steven, and me.

It was an odd family to be a part of, yet a family is exactly what it was at the moment, a nucleus of people who had to depend on each other until we found some way out. Somehow, given the eerie silence of the world around us, I knew it might be quite a while before escape was an option. In other words, this family was an indefinite arrangement, permanent until we died or another similar miracle rescued us from the winds of change that were blowing outside.

For a while we just made small talk, hoping to skirt the real issues and divert our minds. Chuck and Steven talked about sports. The Weaver boys discussed new tattoo designs, heavy metal, the advantages of Red Man over Skoal. Ashley and Wayne Richards whispered to each other in sharp, muted bursts of conversation as had been their habit from the start. Pete and I talked about the plumbing problems in my house. Leland Kennedy kept to himself the whole time, listening to every word that was said. The problems around us ceased to exist for a few minutes, then Chuck went and got a bright idea which reminded us of everything we were trying so hard to forget.

“The radios we sell use batteries. We sell batteries. Why didn’t we think of that earlier?”

“Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the world was falling apart all around us,” Steven reminded him. “But let’s all make a note to self in the future. In case of Biblical catastrophe, never forget that the radios in Kingsley’s Hardware and Appliance use batteries.”

“You don’t have to try and be cute about the whole thing,” Chuck said. “And it’s not Biblical. It’s Al Qaeda.”

Chuck fiddled with the radio for several minutes before realizing that he’d put the batteries in backwards. Steven and I laughed at him. He never did things the right way, but he was determined where he wasn't skillful. The batteries went in correctly the second time. The speakers hissed with static and bits of random speech that were too garbled to be understood.

Chuck rolled the dial through the gamut of stations. All we picked up was white noise and machine gun bursts of chatter, even on the stations that were normally strong enough to bleed through into several frequencies. We did hear someone call for help once over the airwaves. That was enough to make all of us groan and to fear for our own lives. Then the static quickly turned to silence. It was almost as if Chuck had turned the radio off entirely. But the little red light on the side of the radio glowed like a smoldering coal. The radio was definitely on, there just wasn't anybody left to broadcast.

The silence was even worse than the news we had feared. It meant that this wasn’t a narrow window of disaster. Whatever had happened out in the world was affecting a surrounding radius of several hundred miles at least. Help wouldn’t be coming any time soon. And those that did arrive to lend a hand would definitely have their work cut out for them. There was no telling how long it would take them to get to us.

"Looks we're screwed," Jesse Weaver said, spitting a long stream of tobacco juice behind one of the cash registers.

“Don’t think like that,” Vera chided her husband. “Try to be positive and have a little faith in God. Do something you’ve never done in your life and believe.”

“I believe I’m going to die here,” Jesse said. “That’s what I believe.”

"Just because we can't pick up any stations around here doesn't mean anything," Leland said, unwilling to let our hopes die such a swift death. "There's obviously something wrong with the atmosphere outside. That's probably what's interfering with the radio signals. I'm sure there are still people manning the stations. In fact, it’s very likely that people in the next state are eating supper, tucking little ones to bed, making love, doing everything they normally do. It's probably only a matter of time before somebody outside the radius of the disaster figures out that something's wrong and alerts the authorities. I'm sure we'll be all right if we just stay put. Somebody will come to our rescue eventually."

"I don't like that approach," Steven said. "I'm not comfortable putting my fate in someone else's hands. I say we try and make contact with people in one of the businesses nearby. We stayed alive, why couldn't they have?"

"We haven't even been trapped for two hours yet," Pete, the plumber, replied. "Why don't we give it a little time and see how it goes?"

"I think Pete’s right," Jesse Weaver spoke up. "There's no need to rush out and get ourselves killed. If nobody comes to our rescue, we can always die later. I, for one, don’t like being stuck here any better than anybody else. But I’m not so impatient that I’m willing to risk my life when it might not even be necessary. If we wait one day and nothing happens, that’s one thing. If we wait an entire week and nothing happens, that’s another. Besides, if this is some sort of terrorist attack, then we might be committing suicide by stepping outside the doors. I vote that we stay put for now."

"So what are we supposed to do in the meantime?" Wayne Richards asked.

"How about taking care of your wife," Pete suggested. "A wife as pretty as yours needs to be taken care of. I haven't seen you doing much of that since all this started happening. Maybe I could help."

“You watch yourself,” Wayne shouted, pointing his finger at the burly plumber. “Keep away from her. You hear me?”

“Jeez, man. Lighten up. It was just a little joke.”

“It’s not funny,” Wayne said, “none of this is. You don’t know me. You don’t know her. Why you’re even taking sides in something you know nothing about is beyond me.”

“Enough,” I said, shouting to be heard before things got completely out of hand. “We don’t have time for this.”

“I agree,” Chuck said. "If we’re going to try to survive, then we’re going to have to rely on each other. I don’t think we’re much of a team at this point.”

“So what do you suggest, Chief?” Wayne asked, his voice oozing sarcasm.

“I think the first thing we should do is to get some real lights going. Flashlights are fine, but I'd rather have my hands free in case I need them. I'll go get one of the generators out of hardware. Steven, you gather up a few lamps from the lighting department. Matt, round up some gas. Look around the lawn mowers, there's probably a can lying around. Once we can see a little better, it might be easier to think."

“I don’t think lights will have anything to do with anybody’s ability to think,” Wayne smarted off.

Chuck headed off to find the flashlights and then stopped. “Oh, and Wayne, I almost forgot. While we try to do something constructive, you keep acting like a jackass. We’ll consider that to be your contribution to the group.”

Both of the Weaver boys started laughing at that. I could see Steven smirking in the darkness too. Wayne, understandably, didn’t seem very amused. None of us really cared. We left him standing there, without waiting for a reply.

As we started going our separate ways to gather up the items on our scavenger hunt, a huge explosion outside shook the panes of glass. I think all of us hit the floor, the possibility of a terrorist’s bomb seeming more and more realistic by the second. Yet, after several seconds, it became clear that the building was still intact.

Vera Weaver, however, didn’t fare quite as well as the store. We had just gotten to our feet and were about to go investigate the source of the explosion when Jesse Weaver started shouting for help.

At first I was sure that the woman was dead given the amount of panic in Jesse’s voice. She didn’t appear to be moving at all. But her eyes were open and she was breathing despite the pasty pallor of her cheeks and the thin line of drool that was trailing out of one corner of her mouth.

"It's her heart," Jesse said in a tremulous voice. "Kenneth, go in your mom's purse and find her pills. She needs 'em."

It was the first time I'd ever heard a trace of humanity in Jesse Weaver's voice, and I felt sorry for him. The possibility of losing his wife scared him more than whatever was outside waiting to turn all of us into piles of salt. To look at him, all tattooed and biker-chic, you would never guess that Jesse Weaver was frightened of anything. Somehow, the fact that he was scared made him a little more human, a little more fragile than before. Given the nature of our situation, I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“Hurry up,” Jesse yelled to Kenneth, desperately needing the medicine that would keep his wife alive. Kenneth was doing all he could. A woman’s purse is a labyrinthine place, full of nooks and crannies and abysmal places that could double as the hiding spot for a pirate’s treasure. Vera Weaver’s was no exception, full of change, mints, Kleenex, car keys, a cell phone, cough drops, tampons, and all sorts of other paraphernalia.

“Here, let me help,” Ashley Richards said, dumping the contents of Vera Weaver’s purse onto the floor.

It was during those few frantic seconds when Kenneth and Ashley were rummaging for nitroglycerin pills that Vera Weaver spoke and took us all by surprise. Nobody was really sure what she was saying. The words were indecipherable and obviously part of a foreign language. Her eyelids fluttered like the wings of hummingbirds and she twitched a little with each syllable, as if she were holding a live wire in each hand.

“Not now,” Jake Weaver muttered, thrusting his hands into his pockets and turning his back on the whole situation. “Not now. This isn’t even Sunday.”

I think I was the only one who heard him, and I had absolutely no idea what he meant by that. Yet, it was clear by the way he said it that this wasn’t the first time Vera Weaver had done this sort of thing.

“What’s she saying?” Steven asked.

“I think she’s speaking in tongues,” Pete said in a shaky voice. “This sounds a lot like what used to happen in those services my grandmother took me to.”

“She’s done it before,” Jake replied.

“Hush, boy,” Jesse Weaver snapped at his son. Wisely, Jake closed his mouth.

“Here are the pills,” Kenneth exclaimed, fumbling with the top of the medicine bottle. After a few seconds with no results, Ashley took the pill bottle away from him and popped the lid.

Once they had gotten one of the nitroglycerin pills under Vera Weaver’s tongue, the convulsions and strange mutterings stopped. She was able to sit up after a few minutes of lying there. She was still a little pale and trembling like a geriatric in a nursing home. Nonetheless, she was alive. Given the amount of death around us, that was no small feat.

Vera Weaver obviously needed immediate medical attention, but that was out of the question at the moment. Jesse Weaver looked relieved to see that his wife was still alive, but it was also clear by the worried expression on his face that he knew she wasn’t out of the woods yet.

“What are you people looking at?” he shouted. "My wife's sick. Haven't you ever seen anyone that was sick before? This ain’t a freak show."

Wisely, we gave him all the space he needed. Kenneth and Jake stayed by their mother’s side, looking solemn and hardly like the delinquents they were. In fact, none of them, Jesse included, seemed quite so tough or menacing anymore now that Vera was on the verge of death. We walked away from them, going in search of whatever had made the explosion. I waited until we were out of earshot before grilling Pete.

“Explain what just happened back there,” I said. “You thought Vera Weaver was speaking in tongues. What does that mean?” The group stopped, waiting to hear what the plumber had to say.

“It’s hard to explain,” he replied. “Speaking in tongues, from my experience, is usually an ability of those who are most dedicated to their beliefs. It usually happens during an extreme religious encounter, and it’s generally thought that the words spoken are a message from God. The person speaking is simply the conduit used to transmit the broadcast. Some denominations think that the language is the language that the angels speak.”

“If that was a message from God,” Terry interjected, “it won’t do us much good. We don’t speak that language.”

Pete sighed. “I’ve had only limited contact with this sort of thing. I got my exposure to religion while spending summers with my grandmother. I’m really no expert. However, the way it usually works is that one person speaks in tongues, then another person in the congregation gives a translation of the message. That, too, is given by God.”

“So where’s the translation?” Steven asked.

“I thought you knew all about God,” Chuck said.

“I was raised a Baptist. We never spoke in tongues at our church, but -”

It was almost like Steven had given God permission to use his lips. He immediately began to speak without even realizing it. “Alastor, the executioner, walks the earth,” he said. “Woe to those who stand in his way.”

Pete, Chuck, and I all saw Steven faint in time to catch him. He stayed unconscious for a couple of minutes, and none of us dared to touch him. I think we were all a little frightened of him at that point. Then his eyes popped open, and we all jumped.

“What happened?” he asked, clearly not remembering. Hesitantly, I told him. At first, he didn’t believe a word of what I was saying. Then, seeing the expressions on the faces around him, he realized that it was all true.

“I translated the message,” he said, hardly believing it. “How is that possible, and what does it mean?”

“I think it means we need to steer clear of anybody named Alastor,” Pete said. “Anybody in here by that name?”

We all looked at each other nervously and shook our heads.

“Something’s on fire outside,” Leland Kennedy interrupted, drawing our attention away from Steven.

“That’s where the explosion came from,” Chuck said, putting the pieces of the puzzle together. “It looks like two cars collided head-on.”

“Somebody must have rolled down their window,” I said. “The air got ‘em.”

“That can’t be it,” Chuck said as a car sped by. “There’s always a way for air to get in. The air conditioning, the windows, the exhaust. Look at that car that’s still going. The driver would be dead by now if air was completely responsible.”

Seconds later the car slid off the road and hit a tree. Clouds of smoke rolled lazily into the night sky.

“Then again, I could be wrong,” he added. “Maybe it’s prolonged exposure to the atmosphere that does it.”

“I’m tired of talking about this,” I admitted. “Go and get the generator. Let’s get some lights going and try to find a comfort zone that doesn’t involve talking about death every second.”

“That might be the best thing,” Chuck agreed, walking toward hardware with his flashlight held out in front of him.

“You might as well get some rest,” I told everybody else. “We’re not going anywhere for a while.”

For once, everyone did as they were told. Chuck soon returned with a Honda generator. I managed to find half a can of gas stashed behind the riding lawn mowers. Steven lugged two of the brightest halogen work lights down the aisle, their cords trailing behind them like entrails.

The generator was new and started on the second try. From that point, it was just a matter of plugging the lights in. Soon, there was no trouble seeing everyone and everything around us. It was certainly a lot better than being stuck in the dark with only a couple of flashlights that worked off of D-cell batteries.

Of course, in the light we all saw more than we wanted to see. There beneath our feet was the same grit that was piled up in mounds outside the door. We had all mistaken it for the dust and dirt that can always be found on warehouse floors. But it was more than that. It was all that was left of the people who had walked out of their houses that morning, never suspecting in a million years that they would be reduced to something out of a crematorium urn by the end of the day.

Nobody really said anything about the dust underfoot. We all just kind of moved to another part of the floor and wondered how the flesh-colored ash had found its way into the store. None of us wanted to consider the possibility that we weren't entirely safe, that the glass doors we felt so secure behind weren't actually anything more than microfilters, screening out only a small portion of the contaminant from the atmosphere.

“I’m hungry,” Kenneth Weaver announced, ignoring the dust underfoot. It was obvious by the boy’s girth that he wasn’t kidding.

“Is that all you can think about?” Jake asked his brother. “We’re all going to die here, and all you’re worried about is stuffing your face. That sort of attitude is the reason you’re such a whale to begin with.”

“You shut your mouth, fag,” Kenneth retorted, his blubbery cheeks turning red from rage and embarrassment. “I still get more girls than you do.”

“Shut up, the both of you,” Jesse Weaver roared. “Show your mother a little respect. She ain’t doing so good, and the last thing she needs is to listen to you two yammering on and on about nothing.”

Of course, the fact that Kenneth was hungry brought up a whole new set of problems that nobody had considered yet. The only source of food and water in the entire store was the snack and beverage machines in the break room.

“But I’m hungry, Dad,” Kenneth whined.

“Get what you need if it will keep your trap shut,” Jesse said. “Just smash the glass.”

Steven, Chuck, and I all looked at each other. We knew that this approach would never work. The only question was which one of us was going to speak up. Chuck didn't seem nervous at all about confrontation.

"Hold on just a second," he said, running over to Mr. Weaver. "We've got to be rational about this. Those machines are the only source of food we've got. Who knows how long we'll be trapped in here?"

Jesse Weaver spit on Chuck's shoes and crossed his tattooed arms. "Are you telling me that my boy can't have something to eat?"

I could tell that he was itching for a fight, and I knew that Chuck wouldn't back down. That's why I stepped between them.

"Nobody's telling you anything," I said, "but Chuck's right. We've got to ration this food and plan for the worst."

Jesse Weaver took a step forward. We were close enough that our chests were touching.

"Ain't no need of that," Pete, the plumber, said. "Your boy don't deserve to eat any more than the rest of us."

I think everyone was a little surprised at that, but I, for one, was relieved that Pete was on our side. He was a big, burly plumber who did physical labor for a living. Jesse Weaver knew that as well as I did and seemed in no mood to face him in a physical confrontation.

"At least let me get a drink for Vera," he said irritably. “She’s not doing too hot.”

Thankfully, the snack vendor had been in earlier that day and filled up the machines. There were plenty of sodas, sandwiches, chips, candy bars, and the like. Plenty, of course, if we were going on a picnic or having an afternoon snack. But each piece of food was like a grain of sand in an hourglass. Eventually the food would run out and so would our time on earth. Maybe it would have been easier for all of us to run outside and surrender ourselves to the fury of the wind.

As I looked at the cooler I realized that there were certain things that would spoil if allowed to sit there. Granted, we needed to preserve our food supply. But the food would do no one any good if it ruined. I borrowed Pete’s sledgehammer long enough to smash the glass front of the machine.

“Go ahead and get a sandwich, Kenneth,” I told the boy. “Everybody should go ahead and eat. This may be the last time your stomachs are full for a while. Enjoy it. That stuff won’t keep for long. We may as well go ahead and eat while it’s still good.”

As any overweight person can attest, eating is a comfort, a solace during troubled times. We were a group in sore need of comfort. The majority of the sandwiches were gone within the hour, leaving the candy bars, chips, and drinks for later.

Typical of any kind of cafeteria we all sat in our own subdivided groups. Chuck, Steven, Pete, and I sat together. The Richards’ and Leland Kennedy sat together. And, of course, the Weavers sat in a corner all by themselves.

“What are we going to do?” Steven asked around a mouthful of ham sandwich. Even in the glow emitted by the work lights, I could tell that Chuck was looking to me as well for answers.

“How should I know?” I replied. “It’s not like I’m skilled in crisis situations involving speaking in tongues, chemical warfare, and end-of-the-world scenarios. They left out that chapter in my training.”

“You usually think logically when there’s trouble. You haven’t thought of any other explanations this time?”

I sighed. The truth was I had been thinking. “What if this is, in fact, some sort of judgment on mankind?” I said. “Is this really any different than the Great Flood or the rain of fire and brimstone that killed everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah? Maybe this is God’s way of cleansing the world. The fact that Vera Weaver spoke in tongues suggests that God may have something to do with this.”

Steven, Chuck, and Pete looked at each other but didn’t say anything.

Chuck finally broke the ensuing silence. “Well, if God’s responsible, then there is no escaping. We’ll just survive until we die. Game over. End of paragraph. Lights out. There’s not a person here who can outlast the Almighty.”

“Maybe we’re in the group God intended to live,” Steven suggested. “He saved certain people in the other two cases you mentioned. Maybe we’re like Noah and his family.”

“You sure are a pretty Biblical guy all of a sudden, Steven,” Chuck said sarcastically. “Maybe we should just pray to you for our lives. You seem to have a direct pipeline to God.”

“You think I was faking that?” Steven said defensively.

“I didn’t say that,” Chuck replied. “It’s just a little weird that I’ve gotten drunk with you more times than I can count, I’ve watched skin flicks at your house, I’ve shot rats at the dump with you, and now all of a sudden, you’re quoting Bible verses, and God’s using you for a mouthpiece. You just don’t seem like the most likely candidate for divine intervention.”

“You’re just jealous,” Steven said.

“Enough of this,” Chuck murmured as he left the table. “I’m going to go and have another look at what’s going on outside.”

“I’m coming with you,” Steven said, stuffing the last of his sandwich into his mouth. “Maybe a little of my holiness will rub off on you.”

With the two of them gone, that left just me and Pete. Pete waited until Steven and Chuck were out of earshot before speaking.

“I don’t know how this works but Jerry, my partner, deserved to die,” Pete said solemnly. “He beat his little girl, abused her. He didn’t think I knew but his wife told me. I was trying to help them find a way out. If this is God’s way of judging sins, then I think he hit the mark where Jerry was concerned. He got exactly what was coming to him. Maybe your friends have some secrets they’ve been hiding too. It’s something to consider.”

Pete didn’t give me a chance to respond before he got up and followed Chuck and Steven. Leland and the Richards’ were close behind. Sighing, I got up too. The six of us went to the front of the store, leaving the Weavers to themselves. Jesse Weaver and his sons were still tending to Vera. From what I could tell, she wasn’t doing well at all. One of the boys was fanning her with one of our catalogs. The other was holding her hand. Jesse Weaver kept kissing her on the forehead. Vera didn’t move much in response to any of that.

I wasn’t sure how long she could last without medical attention. For that matter, I wasn’t sure if there was anyone left who could give her medical attention.

I tried to put it out of my mind as I stared out the window. Aside from the two flaming cars that had met head on and the one that had crashed into a tree, there wasn’t much of note going on in the parking lot. The highway that passed in front of the store was deserted. All of the businesses around us were dark. We didn’t see anyone huddling at those windows, however, that didn’t mean there weren’t people alive inside. But that didn’t mean that they hadn’t been reduced to dust either.

Where the dust was concerned, the wind had done a pretty efficient job of cleaning the mess up. In that regard, Mother Nature was better equipped to handle the dead than any undertaker.

Yet, the way it was starting to look for us, she still had a pretty big job on her hands.

II.

None of us said anything for a while. We just stood there waiting for something to happen. It was kind of strange watching the dust clouds roll across the parking lot and realizing that those used to be people. The asphalt was littered with dentures, watches, wedding rings, a glass eye, belt buckles, wallets, stainless steel pins that might have been used to hold broken bones together, and a whole lot of other items that weren’t readily identifiable through the glass.

I thought about what kinds of things I would leave behind if the same fate befell me and realized that there wouldn’t be much; a few cents in change, a few fillings, and a pocket knife. In other words, there wouldn’t be anything to distinguish my heap of dust from the others. I thought of that song by Kansas, Dust in the Wind, and realized that those words held more truth than anyone could have ever realized.

The generator we had set up coughed and sputtered as its fuel supply ran low. The lights that were running off of the generator flickered twice before stabilizing. Without a word, Steven went to refill the gas tank. It reminded me that none of us had ever gone to check on the store’s backup generator. Too many things had happened all at once, and I, for one, had forgotten about it in the midst of so much tragedy. I decided to quietly slip away and have a look. Maybe it was something minor that I could fix. Maybe a cable had simply gotten disconnected. Or maybe there was a switch that I could flip to get the thing working. At this point, getting that generator fixed would surely raise the group’s morale, and I knew we needed all the help we could get.

I gripped my keys tightly in my hand and tried to convince myself that I was brave for checking this out by myself, but I wasn’t. I realized that when Pete met me at the door, and I shrieked like a little girl.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just thought you might want a little help with whatever it is that you’re doing.”

“No problem,” I gasped, still trying to catch my breath. “I was going to see if I could figure out what is wrong with the store’s backup generator.”

“Well, then, let’s have a look,” Pete said. “I’ve had a little experience with generators in the past.” Although I would never admit it aloud, having him there with me made me feel a little better, and it had absolutely nothing to do with his generator experience. With all the things that had gone wrong in the past few hours, I was glad to have another witness there to convince me that I wasn’t going crazy.

I inserted my key to the maintenance room door with a shaky hand. Fortunately for me, Pete had brought a flashlight along.

He directed the beam of light into the dark room as I opened the door. I think both of us immediately realized why the generator hadn’t kicked in as it was built to do once the light reflected back from the machine’s polished surface.

Something (and I use that word knowingly) had demolished the generator. Deep gashes ripped through its metal side. It reminded me of the marks that a bear’s massive claws will leave on the bark of a tree.

“Definitely not a malfunction,” Pete muttered, taking a hesitant step into the room. “This room been locked the entire time?”

“Only the managers have a key.”

“It looks like Freddy Krueger got a hold of that thing,” Pete said. “There’s no way we’re going to fix that.”

I took the flashlight from him and knelt closer to the machine to examine it further.

“Look at this,” I said, pulling a white feather out of the ragged metal.

“So what?”

I shrugged my shoulders, unsure of what this could possibly mean. It was strange enough that someone had gained access to the locked maintenance room given that there were only three of us with a key. It was even stranger still now that we saw the kind of damage that had been done.

“Something supernatural did this,” I said, not caring what Pete thought of me. “When you consider everything else that’s going on around us, this has got to be the result of supernatural intervention.”

“That gave me a thought,” Pete said. “I’m just not sure if I want to say it aloud.”

“If you’ve got any idea what’s going on here, I want to know.”

“I don’t have any concrete ideas about any of this. It just seems weird that Vera Weaver was speaking in tongues, the theoretical language of angels, and then we find a feather stuck in the wreckage of the broken generator.”

“Are you trying to tell me that an angel is responsible for this?” I exclaimed. “I’ve been able to accept a lot of strange things thus far, but I’m not sure if I can swallow that explanation. Can’t you come up with something else?”

“Sorry,” Pete sighed. “A fallen angel is the best answer I can come up with.”

“Any other insights you care to share about this whole thing? Any lessons from Sunday School that might seem timely?”

Pete hesitated. It was clear that there was something else on his mind, and he was uncertain whether or not to say it aloud.

“Don’t hold back,” I said. “If you’ve got other information, no matter how crazy it seems, you need to let me know. At this point, none of us know what is going on. All we know is that it’s becoming more and more likely that we won’t survive. I want to know what you’re thinking.”

“It’s going to sound crazy,” Pete said, “but I’ll tell you anyway. Most Sundays when I went to church with my grandmother, I didn’t listen to anything the preacher said. There was one time, though, when he started talking about the end of the world and the Book of Revelations. That Sunday, I was riveted to my seat. I don’t remember everything he said that day, but I do remember one verse he read about seven angels pouring the wrath of God out of seven vials. Maybe that’s what is happening now. Maybe one of the seven angels poured out the contents of one of the vials.”

“And we just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?” I asked.

Pete nodded. “Who’s to say that the contents of one of those vials couldn’t be some sort of chemically engineered germ?”

I was busy considering Pete’s theory when I heard Chuck calling my name from the front of the store.

“They’re looking for us,” I said. “We should get back. I don’t think we should mention what happened to the generator or your theory about the angel either.”

“Agreed,” Pete said. “We’ll keep this under our hats. No need sending the group into a panic over something we can’t control. There’s enough stuff to worry about right now without adding another item to the list.”

The group all watched us carefully as we walked down the ill-lit aisle. “We both had to go to the men’s room,” I lied, hoping they would believe the excuse. Nobody said anything to the contrary, but I think a few of them thought the explanation was a little fishy.

“Any new developments?” I asked, not really expecting that there would be.

“There’s somebody in that restaurant over there,” Chuck said. “I saw them walk in front of the window.”

“Really?” Pete asked.

“Yeah, really,” Steven replied. “Watch.”

It wasn’t long before the same shadowy figure passed in front of the restaurant window again, confirming what Chuck had said.

“Why couldn’t we have gotten stuck in a restaurant instead of a home improvement store?” Steven asked. “At least then, we wouldn’t have had to worry about food for a while.”

“Depends on how many people are inside,” Leland Kennedy spoke up. “They may be in the same shape as we are if you divide the amount of food they’ve got left by the amount of hungry mouths in need of feeding.”

“We should try to get to them,” Ashley Richards spoke up, “see if they know any more than we do. Maybe they’ve got some answers.”

Wayne Richards looked at his wife carefully. It was clear he was just as surprised by her suggestion as the rest of us were. “Are you stupid? It’s suicide to go outside. We’ve seen what can happen. You can go if you want to. I’m staying right here until help arrives.”

“So we wait here until we starve to death?” Ashley asked, on the verge of tears again. Her lower lip quivered as she spoke. “We were supposed to have our whole lives ahead of us. We were supposed to have a family, kids, even grandkids someday. We were supposed to buy a house that we could call our own. We were supposed to fall asleep in each other’s arms for the next fifty years. How can we do that if we die here after a week or two?”

It was clear that Wayne Richards didn’t have the answers. It was clear that he didn’t care either. Sadly, no one really expected him to.

“I think Ashley’s right,” Leland spoke up. “We’re going to die either way. Might as well give it a shot while we’re still strong enough to fight for our lives. Maybe we could make some sort of containment suit out of trash bags. I saw it on a science-fiction movie once.”

“I’ve got some more air masks in hardware,” Chuck said. “The kind with a strong microfilter. I’ve got thick rubber gloves and boots too. Those might do the trick.”

“Whoever goes should take a walkie-talkie. It’s not more than a couple hundred yards to the restaurant. We shouldn’t have any trouble communicating over that distance.”

“So who is going to be the one to risk their life?” I asked. It was clear nobody had thought about that part of the deal.

“I’ll go,” Leland Kennedy said. “I’m the oldest. I’m the one who’s lived his life and enjoyed the good times. If anybody should take the chance, it should be me. I’ve got the least left to lose.”

Although we should have argued with the old guy, he was right. The rest of us still had a lot of good years left provided that we made it out of this situation alive.

“I’ll go round up the stuff,” Chuck said.

About ten minutes later Chuck returned with a shopping cart full of supplies: duct tape, garbage bags, boots, gloves, an air mask, goggles, and a two-way radio along with a bagful of batteries.

“Go ahead and wrap me up,” Leland said. “I’m ready to do this. Who knows? Maybe I’ll actually make it over there without turning into a food additive.”

We couldn’t help but laugh at that as we started covering every exposed inch of Leland Kennedy in plastic. When we finished he looked like a futuristic mummy. He walked like one too.

“This getup feels like I’m wearing cardboard. I should have asked for the designer version.”

Before any of us could say any words of encouragement or thanks, Ashley Richards kissed the old man on the cheek. The cheek was covered in plastic, but the gesture wasn’t lost in the translation.

“Thank you for what you’re doing,” she said. “Even if it doesn’t work, you are one of the bravest men I’ve ever met.”

“Don’t cry for me yet, missy,” Leland rasped through the air mask. “If I make it back alive, you’re going to cook supper for me one night.”

“I’m still learning to cook,” Ashley confessed.

“Fine. You can buy me dinner then. But be warned I’m a healthy eater.”

“Deal,” she said.

“I’ll hold you to it,” Leland said. “Now, how do I work this walkie-talkie thing?”

“Just push the button on the side and speak into the receiver,” Chuck explained. “I gave you a lot of extra batteries so we can talk freely once you get to the restaurant.”

“You’ve got a lot of faith in me,” Leland said.

“You’re all we’ve got,” Chuck replied.

“Well here goes nothing,” Leland sighed, pushing the doors open. Steven and I closed them almost before the old man could get out.

I think all of us expected him to turn to dust at any minute. But he didn’t. Not after the first step. Not after the tenth step. About halfway to the restaurant he even turned and waved at us to show us he was O.K.

“Talk to him, Chuck,” I said.

“What’s it like out there?” Chuck asked as the radio crackled and popped.

“It’s kind of like walking through a graveyard at midnight,” Leland replied. Given the nature of the dust that was swirling around him out there, the analogy wasn’t that far off base.

“Does everything feel O.K.?” Chuck asked.

“Everything’s fine,” Leland said. “I just hope they’ll let me in once I get there. I could use a good steak right now. That sandwich didn’t do the trick.”

“We hope so too,” Chuck replied. “Eat one for us once you get there.”

“Roger that.”

After a few more seconds Leland reached the front door of the dark restaurant. At first it seemed as though we might have been mistaken about there being other people inside. Then the door swung open quickly and Leland was pulled in.

“Made it,” Leland exclaimed as the two-way radio squealed and sputtered.

We all looked at each other and smiled. The fact that he had survived meant that there was hope for all of us.

Wayne Richards, however, didn’t share our enthusiasm.

“He’s in on it,” he said. “Whatever the terrorists have planned, that old codger is in on it.”

“What are you talking about?” Pete asked him.

“Think about this logically. It was his idea to go out there. So far he’s the only one who hasn’t disintegrated in front of our eyes. And the only reason he can give for wanting to be the sacrificial lamb is because he’s lived longer than the rest of us? Please. He may be old, but that doesn’t mean he’s just going to play the role of martyr for a bunch of strangers he doesn’t know.”

This time it was Ashley’s turn to wheel on him. “Why do you always have to be negative about everything? You think it’s impossible that someone could be so unselfish because it’s something you would never consider.”

“It’s got to be something biological,” Wayne Richards said, ignoring his wife. “Maybe Leland Kennedy is the one who released the contagion. He certainly seems to know how to survive with it flying all around us. For all we know, we could have already breathed the stuff in. Maybe walking out of here like he did was his way of escaping. Or maybe he’s been inoculated against the virus and is just putting on a show to make us think he’s afraid of the air.”

None of us were convinced. Maybe it was because Wayne was the one presenting the argument. Or maybe it was simply because we didn’t want to believe that Leland Kennedy might be capable of the things Wayne was suggesting. Either way, Wayne didn’t have our vote on the matter.

“Just because Leland didn’t turn to dust doesn’t necessarily mean he had anything to do with it,” I said. “Maybe it was God’s will for him to stay alive. For all we know he could have gone out there in nothing but his birthday suit and made it. You seem awfully ready to discount God in all of this, and maybe he’s the only thing that’s kept us alive so far.”

“But we don’t know that either,” Wayne said. “All we’ve got to go on right now is the fact that Leland was wearing the suit and that he survived. The two are linked in my opinion.”

“We’re not listening to your opinion anymore,” Pete said. “Whether you like it or not, God is definitely involved here. Think about Vera Weaver speaking in tongues. That definitely shows some level of divine intervention.”

“Little kids never do stop wanting to believe in Santa Claus,” Wayne said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I guess this is sort of the same thing.”

“It’s a non-issue at this point,” I grumbled. “We haven’t gotten to the stage where we all wrap ourselves in plastic and pray to the Almighty and run outside with the hope that we don’t turn to dust. That comes later. I think we should wait a little while longer and see what Leland does first. Then we make further decisions and evaluations.”

“I agree,” Chuck said. He held the two-way radio up to his face. “Leland?”

But Leland didn’t reply. Chuck adjusted one of the knobs on the radio and spoke again. Leland still didn’t answer.

“What’s going on?” Wayne Richards asked.

I glared at him. “You know the same things we know.”

Wayne shrugged his shoulders and peered out the window. “I still see movement in the restaurant.”

“That doesn’t mean the movements are Leland’s,” I reminded him.

Chuck tried talking to the old man a few more times before giving up. None of us were quite sure what had happened. But the fact that Leland had stopped communicating with us was a bad sign.

“See, I told you,” Wayne gloated. “Now that Leland’s away from us, he can expose his true colors. I was right.”

Wayne was still trying to convince us that his theory about Leland Kennedy was valid when another explosion shook the back of the store.

“It sounds like it’s coming from the pool chemical section,” Chuck huffed.

When we got there, flames were licking up the sides of the walls. The two Weaver boys were standing there gaping at the destruction. With their mouths hanging open and their eyes wide, they looked like fish waiting for the baited hook.

“What did you do?” I screamed at them. “Where’s your father?”

The boys looked at me and laughed. Jesse Weaver caught up to us in time to see his sons snickering.

“What did you two do?” he roared.

Kenneth spoke up. “We heard that you could make a bomb with pool shock and a Dr. Pepper. We didn’t really think it would work.”

“But it did,” Jake Weaver said, echoing his brother’s enthusiasm.

“Both of your hides are mine when we get out of here,” Jesse growled. “Your mother is dying in front of your eyes and all you can do is pussyfoot around out here in the store.”

The normally defiant boys seemed to physically shrink in the presence of their father. I still didn’t like any of them, but I definitely gained a little bit of respect for Jesse Weaver at that moment.

Although the fire wasn’t out of control yet, it was steadily climbing the walls and

inching toward the doors.

“You guys got anything to put this out with?” Jesse asked, a hint of fear creeping into his eyes. “We got enough problems without a campfire.”

“The sprinklers should kick in soon,” Steven replied. “Don’t worry. The building won’t burn down.”

“I’m not worried about the building burning down,” Jesse hissed. “I’m worried that the fire is going to cause those glass doors to explode and let in whatever’s turning everybody to dust. After all, the generator was supposed to kick in too, and look what happened there.”

“He’s right,” Wayne said, pointing at one of the glass doors. The frame was already starting to warp and buckle from the heat. It wouldn’t be more than a few seconds before the glass shattered.

“Do something,” Ashley whimpered.

“Run,” Chuck said. “Back to the break room, hurry!”

We all heard the explosion of glass behind us as we rounded the corner. Ironically, it was then that the sprinkler heads decided to kick in.

“Great timing,” Chuck muttered under his breath.

His words took on a whole new meaning once we saw just how bad things really were. Vera Weaver wasn’t breathing when we exploded through the door.

“Vera?” Jesse Weaver said in a high strained voice. “Oh God, Vera.”

Vera’s eyes were open, and it was obvious that she was straining for air. Her face was a light shade of blue, giving her the look of someone who has spent too much time in subzero temperatures. Jesse shook his wife hard, hoping his love and desperation would be enough to save her. One corner of her mouth was drawn and her eyes stared at some mystery on the ceiling.

“Alastor,” she gasped. “…is here. Seraphim.”

“What?” Jesse Weaver pleaded.

“Please change, Jesse,” Vera whispered as she took her last breath. “I want you to be in Heaven with me.” Jesse cradled her in his arms like a rag doll.

Obviously the threat of dying wasn’t enough to scare Kenneth and Jake Weaver. They were still goofing off when they came through the door. However, they stopped at the sight of their father crying. Undoubtedly, it was something they had never seen. I’m sure not many people had.

Soon, all three of them were kneeling in front of Vera Weaver’s body, spilling their tears onto her still-warm skin. Although it seemed pitifully inappropriate, we stood there and watched.

Chuck, it seemed, was the only one of us who kept his wits about him. In the ensuing chaos, we had all forgotten about the broken glass doors that the Weaver boys had destroyed. Even now, the atmosphere was probably seeping into the store. Who knew how long it would take to reach us?

“I know this isn’t a real good time to bring this up, but we’ve got to find something to seal the doors,” Chuck exclaimed, running a hand through his thinning blonde hair.

None of the Weavers looked up from Vera’s body. All of them, Jesse in particular, were probably regretting the way they had treated the matriarch of the family while she had been alive.

“Leave them,” I said. “They won’t be any help to us right now.”

“The longer we wait, the more likely it is that we’re going to die,” Chuck reminded us.

“The supply closet,” Steven said. “We can probably make it there in time.”

Both of them rushed out without another word, knowing that time was of the essence.

They returned a few moments later with a couple of boxes of garbage bags, some tape, and a bagful of discarded cleaning rags. Immediately, we went to work, plugging the space underneath the door with plastic and rags and sealing it all up with tape. It was a pitiful defense against biological contagion, but it was all we had. At that point, I was hoping that this was some sort of Biblical curse rather than something manmade. Under that scenario our odds seemed slightly better. Still, I couldn’t help thinking about the way Vera Weaver had spoken in tongues and all the things Pete had said about angels and plagues and the end of the world. When you looked at things from that perspective, it became clear that we had lots of reasons to be depressed. The fact that one of the doors to the outside world wasn’t there anymore to keep the atmosphere out didn’t help matters either.

“We’ll suffocate in here,” was the only thing Wayne Richards had to say as he watched Steven and Chuck seal the space underneath the door and around the jamb.

I spoke for everyone when I said, “Either shut up or help.” Wayne turned his back on me, refusing.

It didn’t take us long to seal up the room. Once we were finished, we still had enough flashlights among us to see, but not nearly enough to make us comfortable. We still had the snack and drink machines which was about the only advantage to being stuck in the break room. And all of us were still alive. That was something to be thankful for.

Nobody really said much after that. We had said all that we needed to. There was no need to discuss the possibilities anymore, only the inevitabilities. We were all going to die. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when.

“Maybe Leland will find some way to rescue us,” Ashley said at last.

“He’s the reason we’re in this mess,” Wayne muttered. “Besides, he’s probably already dead.”

“I’m going to try talking to Leland one more time,” Chuck said.

“Leland,” he spoke into the radio. “Can you hear me? If you can hear me, please speak up. Tell us what’s going on.”

Leland didn’t reply at first. “Something’s wrong,” Chuck said.

Then the radio squawked, and Leland’s voice came through. “I’m here,” he muttered. “I got dizzy and lightheaded.”

“What happened?” Chuck asked as the rest of us huddled around him.

“I guess I just overdid it. I’m not in the shape I used to be. I’m fine now though.”

"How many others are there in the restaurant?" Chuck asked.

"Eight, not counting me. They're mostly cooks and waitresses. They're actually doing pretty well, considering. I guess whatever’s keeping you guys alive is keeping them alive too."

"Does anybody know what's happening?"

"Not really. But they've got their theories just like you had yours. They are convinced that this is the end of the world. They think this is God's form of judgment."

"I don't believe it," Wayne Richards said, slamming his hand down on the table. “This guy is in on whatever is going on. That’s the only reason he’s alive right now.”

“Tell him to let us speak to one of the other survivors,” Pete spoke up.

I think all of us were a little surprised by his suggestion, but Pete seemed to have a lot of insight into our problem. Although I had no reason to suspect Leland Kennedy of any sort of involvement, I had to consider the possibility.

“I’d like to hear someone else’s voice too,” Jesse Weaver chimed in. “He could be making all of that up.”

Everyone looked at me for final approval. “Go ahead,” I told Chuck. “Get somebody else on the line.”

“Leland, I want you to do something for me,” Chuck said. Leland, however, didn’t reply. The only thing we heard from that end was the sound of a woman screaming.

“Leland?” Chuck shouted into the two-way radio. “Are you there? What’s going on?”

The screaming woman began shouting incoherently. The radio went dead before she could finish the first sentence, yet it was clear that she wasn’t speaking English. She was speaking the same sorts of words that Vera Weaver had spoken before dying.

“They’re speaking in tongues there too,” Pete sighed. “That’s proof enough for me that God is involved in this somehow. I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I think it’s time we started praying. Our lives depend on it at this point.”

"I don’t think God has anything to do with this," Wayne said.

“Nobody cares what you think,” Steven fired back. “You haven’t exactly been a wealth of information thus far. Why should we listen to you?”

“Because there is the possibility that I’m right.”

“There’s also the likelihood that you’re wrong,” Pete said. “You’re ready to blame terrorists for everything, but there’s a lot that points to the supernatural.”

I shot Pete a dirty look, hoping he wouldn’t tell the group everything we had found out. But he didn’t look at me.

“People are speaking in tongues,” he said, “Matt and I found feathers in the generator. Something had completely demolished it despite the fact that it was in a locked room. That’s why it didn’t come on. And don’t forget what Vera Weaver said about Alastor, the executioner.”

Jesse Weaver took a deep breath and stood up at the mention of his dead wife. He went from a shrunken, shriveled widower to a force to be reckoned with. Pete was a big man, but Jesse towered over him.

“What else did you hear her say?” Jesse grumbled.

Although the rest of us heard her tell Jesse to change his ways just before she died, none of us, Pete included, decided to mention it. “Nothing,” Pete said. “That’s all I caught.”

Jesse’s face collapsed before our eyes, and he put his hands up to hide his grief. It was like watching him transform from a man into a shell of a man.

“She told me to change,” Jesse confessed as he wept. “She didn’t like the man I was. She loved me but she hated me too. Don’t you see that?”

“I’m not so sure that’s what she meant,” Ashley Richards said. “Look.”

It just looked like an ordinary feather, but it was so utterly alien and out of place here that it gave me chills. I immediately looked at Pete, and he looked at me. It was clear that we were both thinking about the feather we found in the wreckage of the generator. This was too much of a coincidence to be unrelated.

“Where did you get that?” Wayne hissed, grabbing the feather away from his wife.

“I found it in my shirt pocket,” she said. “I didn’t realize I had it until after I gave Leland that kiss on the cheek. I didn’t think much about it until now.”

“Are you saying that Leland is to blame?” Jesse asked.

“I don’t know what I’m saying,” Ashley admitted.

“What would an angel want with us anyway?” Steven asked. “I’m not sure that explanation makes sense.”

“I don’t think that’s a question we can answer right now,” I said. “I think the most pertinent question is what we should do for a defense.”

“What can we do?” Jesse said. “Pray? Recite The Lord’s Prayer over and over again? Say the books of the Bible in order? I don’t know what the rest of you are going to do, but I don’t want to make myself a sitting duck. I’m not going to let some angel get away with killing my wife, and that’s what happened when you get right down to it. Vera would still be here with us if the world had stayed the same.”

“If this is happening because of God then there’s nothing we can do,” Kenneth Weaver said. “We may as well open the doors and walk out to our doom. It might even be better that way. Mom’s probably doing better than any of us right now.”

“Speak for yourself, wuss,” Jake said, giving his brother the evil eye. “I’m not ready to die yet.”

“I agree,” I said. “We’re obviously alive for some reason. Maybe it’s God’s will that we stay alive.”

“Maybe we’re the instruments that God is going to use to bring down this angel,” Chuck added.

“And maybe you’ve been sniffing too much diesel fuel, Rambo,” Jesse said.

“Mom believed in God,” Kenneth Weaver interrupted, drawing a hard look from his father. “Maybe we should too.”

“It didn’t do her a lot of good in the end,” Jake reminded his brother. “She’s dead.”

“You shut up,” Kenneth said, smacking his brother in the face with his open palm. “Don’t you talk about Mama like that.”

“Stop it! Both of you,” Jesse Weaver roared like an injured bear. “I don’t want to hear anything else about your mother right now. We’ll remember her later when we can pay proper respect.”

“Maybe your sons are right,” Ashley said timidly. “Maybe trust in God is what we all need right now. It certainly couldn’t hurt.”

“You’ve got my vote,” I said. “In fact, I think we should start to confess. If there is some divine intervention going on here, it might not be a bad idea to get all of our sins out in the open so we can ask for forgiveness. I’m sure some of the dead wish they would have gotten that chance before they turned into a pile of salt.”

We all looked at each other for a moment, wondering if baring our souls was the best course of action at the moment. Chuck was the first to speak.

"I stole some money from one of the registers last week," he blurted out. We all looked at him in amazement.

"What are you talking about?" Steven asked him.

"I want to confess my sins and let you judge whether or not I'm fit to go outside. I want to know if I genuinely stand a chance of surviving once I walk out those doors."

“None of us are fit to judge that sort of thing,” Steven replied. “We’re no better than you. I’m sure there’s something in everyone’s past that they’re ashamed of, something that would be better told to a priest.”

“I’m sure there are some things we all need to get off of our chest,” Pete added. “It doesn’t bother me to hear any of this.”

“I certainly won’t think less of anyone for confessing,” Ashley said.

“This is a complete waste of time,” Wayne grumbled, moving away from his wife. I don’t think anyone heard him. Everyone else was too busy filtering through the memories of the things they had done and deciding what to tell and what to keep to themselves.

And then we began to talk.

One by one, we opened up about our sins, spilling our guts to the world with the hope of staying alive. Jesse Weaver admitted to spending his wife's prescription money on beer and gambling. Steven admitted to cheating on his first wife. Ashley Richards confessed to running into someone else's car at the grocery store and fleeing the scene of the accident. I told them all about all the times I used to shoot cats at the city dump for fun. The Weaver boys perked up when I mentioned that. It was clear that they were guilty of that as well. The only one of us who didn't confess was Wayne Richards. It was clear he still thought the whole purging process was foolish.

"Don't you have something you want to get off your chest?" Chuck asked him.

"This is ridiculous," he said. "You obviously believe that this is God's punishment for the wicked. What makes you think that there will be any mercy shown to you?"

"Ever heard of a little thing called confession?" Jesse Weaver spoke up. “My wife may have been a lot of things, but she wasn’t stupid. This is something she believed in. I didn’t want to believe it myself at first. I guess I’ve done so many bad things in my past that I was scared. But I feel better now that I’ve gotten some of my secrets out in the open. I don’t feel like such a terrible person now that I’ve heard some of the things the rest of you have done. We’re all human, and we’ve all made mistakes. Of course, maybe you’re better than the rest of us but I don’t think so.”

It was surprising to hear a man like Jesse actually stand up for something that didn't have to do with boozing, gambling, or women. But the fear of death will change people sometimes. We found that out the hard way.

"What if you die, Wayne?" Ashley asked him. "Are you that confident that there is no God and no heaven?”

Wayne made a face that was equal parts fear and indecision. He chewed on his bottom lip as if to keep the words from coming out. “There’s more to it than that, Ashley, and you know it.”

None of us were quite sure what he meant by that, and by this point, none of us really cared. Wayne was a thorn in all of our sides. True enough, the situation was bad, yet Wayne made everything worse.

Putting her face in her hands, Ashley began to weep. It was a pitiful longing sound, exactly the kind of mewling lamentation that should accompany the end of the world.

"Fine," Wayne muttered quickly. "You want me to confess something. I'll confess something. I slept with Julie on our wedding day. We've had an on-off relationship ever since. I’ve been cheating on you behind your back for the past two months."

Ashley looked up at her husband with the most hate-filled expression I've ever seen outside of those old pictures of Nazi Generals in their concentration camps. Somehow, I think if she'd been capable at that point, Ashley would have skinned Wayne Richards right then and there and shoved him headfirst into one of those same industrial sized ovens that took the lives of so many Jews. But she couldn't do that. All she could do was rush at him with her fingernails poised to take out both of his eyes.

Jesse Weaver knew what was going to happen before any of the rest of us did and acted accordingly. He was the first to pull Ashley Richards off of her husband. She pretended to calm down only to rush at Wayne again. This time it was all Steven and I could do to get her under control. When all was said and done, Wayne looked like the loser in a prizefight. His lips and nose were both bleeding, and his left eye was starting to swell up. None of us felt sorry for him.

“You’re turning to salt,” Chuck told him. “Don’t even bother wrapping up in plastic. That won’t help you. It almost makes me want to throw you outside myself just to see it happen. You don’t deserve to live.”

None of us could have said it any better. We didn’t have much else to say about anything at that point. I think most of us just sat there, contemplating the course our lives had taken and realizing that we should have seized every opportunity. Of course, you can only wallow in regret for so long before the game becomes tiresome. Chuck was the first one to grow weary of playing the What-If game.

He picked up the two-way radio again and thumbed the button. “Leland? Are you there? Please answer if you are.”

“Right here,” Leland came back.

Chuck looked at me. I replied by shrugging my shoulders.

“What happened a few minutes ago?” he asked. “We heard screaming and a woman speaking in a foreign language.”

“Oh that,” Leland said offhandedly. “One of the cooks trapped in here is Russian. She’s also deathly afraid of mice. She saw one and lapsed into the mother tongue. It took us nearly ten minutes to get her calmed down. If you were trying to speak to me then, I’m sure I didn’t hear you.”

“He’s lying,” Wayne said. “After all that we’ve been through, I don’t think something as inconsequential as a mouse would even register on the Richter scale.”

Chuck held his hand up for everyone to be quiet. It was clear that he was still trying to form his own opinion of the situation.

“I’m going out,” Wayne said, getting to his feet. “Turning into a pile of salt can’t be any worse than staying here with you guys. Maybe I can get Leland to tell me the secret to staying alive.”

“I’ve got the plastic ready,” Steven replied. “Commit suicide at any time.”

“Then wrap me up,” Wayne said, glaring at Ashley and then at me.

“Don’t do anything foolish,” I cautioned him.

“Listen to him, boy,” Jesse Weaver added, backing me up. It felt good to have his stamp of approval on what I said. It meant that the potential for conflict was that much less. I’m not sure what I would have done at that point if forced to argue with Wayne Richards and Jesse Weaver at the same time.

“I’m going out,” Wayne insisted. “If I make it out alive, I’ll go to the restaurant. If not, then I won’t have to look at any of you ever again.” He looked at Ashley as he said that last bit. Her eyes immediately started to gloss over and tears began to stream down her cheeks, but she didn’t break down. She wasn’t going to give him that sort of satisfaction. It was certainly a feather in her cap.

None of us argued anymore as we wrapped Wayne Richards up. Whatever the outcome, it was clear that this would be one less problem for us to deal with. Still, it was hard not to notice the lost, injured look in Ashley’s eyes. Despite what he’d done, she still loved her husband. She was also clearly afraid that he was going to die the minute he walked out those doors.

“Make sure to tell Julie I said hello the next time you see her,” Wayne prodded as we finished strapping the plastic into place with duct tape.

“You show your wife a little respect,” Jesse said, smacking Wayne in the back of the head. Wayne glared at Jesse Weaver, but he wasn’t stupid enough to retaliate.

“Just let me out of here,” Wayne said.

“We thought you’d never ask,” Jesse replied. “Now get out and die.”

Without another word or even a look back at his wife, Wayne Richards threw the lounge door open and ran out into the potentially contaminated store. Chuck and I were there to shut the door behind him and resecure the makeshift seals we had fashioned for the gap beneath the door.

We waited there for Wayne to scream, to run back pounding on the door, something. Yet when he actually spoke to us in a calm, normal tone, it was unexpected.

“All right, you morons can come out now. It’s safe.”

“How can we believe you, Wayne?” Ashley said. It was clear that her question had dual significance.

“Because, you stupid twit, I’m not dust. And since I belong in hell for the terrible things I’ve done, I guess the threat’s either gone or everyone was wrong about the wrath of God in the first place.”

The next sound we heard sounded a lot like a bagful of marbles bursting and scattering across the concrete floor.

“Wayne?” I said.

But Wayne didn’t answer. I had a pretty good idea about what happened out there and what that sound had been. The winds of change had judged and transformed Wayne Richards completely. I think I can speak for the group, Ashley included, when I say that he was a much more likeable fellow as a pile of salt.

Always full of surprises, Jesse Weaver was the one to put his arms around Ashley in consolation. It had taken the death of his own spouse to change his outlook on life, but I’ll have to say the change was a definite improvement. The Weaver boys, however, didn’t seem to know exactly how to respond to any of it. Their mother was lying there on the concrete, growing colder by the minute. Their father’s attitude had done a three-sixty. And now, he had his arms wrapped around a beautiful twenty-something girl that seemed the antithesis of Vera Weaver. Yes, the gesture was obviously meant to be a gesture of consolation. But there wasn’t a one of us, the boys included, who hadn’t given Ashley Richards the once-over, or in Chuck’s case, the twice-over. Jesse Weaver had to be getting a little thrill out of being that close to her. Or maybe my mind was working overtime when it should have been taking a break.

Trying so hard to console himself, Kenneth Weaver kept eating candy bars. He must have consumed fifteen or twenty of the chocolates since the whole thing started. Had there been any alcohol nearby, Jake Weaver would have likely resorted to drinking. As it was, he had only carbonated beverages to drown his sorrows. Between the two, they had a pile of cans and wrappers that could have doubled as a piece of modernistic art. I think both of them were consuming as a means of coping with everything that was going on around us.

At this point, we were all surviving the best way we could. I couldn’t fault either of the boys for their reactions. The rest of us, however, had our own methods. We spent the rest of the day playing poker with a deck of cards that we found in one of the associate lockers, and it took our minds off things temporarily. Of course, reality always reasserted itself during the short breaks we took between hands when we would call Leland over at the restaurant to see if there were any new developments.

Occasionally, I would reconsider Wayne Richards’ theory that Leland Kennedy had something to do with the tragedy around us. The whole situation was strange, and the fact that Leland was still alive made it even stranger. But, try as I might, I just couldn’t convince myself that he was responsible for any of this.

I’m not sure if everyone else felt the same way. Some thought it suspicious that he had survived. The rest of us considered it to be a sign of hope. At that point, we were clinging to anything that seemed like a good omen. We were also clinging to each other.

Take Jesse Weaver and Ashley Richards, for instance. They slept side by side that night. I think the fact that they’d both lost a spouse brought them together. It seemed a little bizarre that Jesse Weaver could sleep with another woman while the corpse of his wife was still in the room. But he didn’t seem to have any trouble. Maybe he just needed someone to console him, and Ashley was convenient. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t fault him.

By the end of the second day, Vera’s body was starting to smell a little. We’d covered her up with some of the spare towels that hadn’t been used to block up the space underneath the door. But that hadn’t been very helpful.

“Mom’s starting to stink,” Kenneth said, echoing the sentiment we all felt but were reluctant to say.

Jesse Weaver slapped his son in the back of the head. “Don’t disrespect your mother like that,” he roared. That anger was quickly followed by a fresh bout of tears, and I suddenly felt bad for questioning his motives with Ashley Richards. It was clear that he still loved his wife and was hurt by her passing. That didn’t make Vera smell any better, of course, but it gave Jesse Weaver a bit more respectability than I had given him credit for earlier.

This time it was Ashley’s turn to comfort Jesse. He seemed drawn to her like an iron filing to a magnet. “We’ve got to put her out,” he murmured into Ashley’s shoulder.

At first, I wasn’t sure what he meant by that.

“Put her out?” Chuck asked. “What do you mean?”

Jesse looked up from Ashley’s tear-stained blouse. “Burial is out of the question so we’ll have to do the next best thing. We put her out. Let the atmosphere do to her what it’s been doing to everyone else. It will be almost like cremation. She won’t know the difference anyway.”

“Are you sure about what you’re saying?” I asked.

“Positive,” he said grimly.

The boys didn’t say anything at first. They were apparently surprised by their father’s decision to toss their mother out like some unwanted sack of garbage.

“That’s Mom you’re talking about,” Kenneth said. “Are you really that eager to get rid of her?”

Jesse Weaver stood up, towering over his son. “I don’t want to hear that out of your mouth ever again,” he roared. “Under normal circumstances, I would never consider something like this, but these aren’t normal circumstances.”

“I don’t think it matters anyway,” Jake Weaver said. “That’s not Mom anymore, just the place she used to live. I say we put her out. It’s not like she won’t rot anyway. When you look at it that way, it seems like we’re actually preserving her memory. I don’t want to remember her after she starts to turn icky and smells worse than she does now. I’d rather remember her like she was when we came into this store.”

“Kenneth?” Jesse Weaver said. “I want all of us in agreement on this.”

Kenneth bit his bottom lip to hold back the tears. “Do it,” he whimpered.

Jesse looked at the rest of us and squared his shoulders to show that he was ready. “Can you guys give me a hand with Vera?”

“Sure,” we all murmured in unison as we grabbed the body and lifted it up.

Jesse stopped at the door. “Just so you know, Vera was one of the saintliest women that’s ever lived. She’s put up with me for all these years, and I’ve put her through a lot. When we put her out and she turns to salt, that isn’t going to be an indicator that she lived a sinful life. Understand?”

It was clear that Jesse didn’t want to consider the possibility that his wife might have kept secrets from him during their marriage. Still, none of us saw any reason to disagree with him. If living with a few delusions was all it took to get him through something like this, then that was a small price to pay.

There was no graceful way to dispose of Vera’s body. We couldn’t leave the door open more than a fraction of a second for fear of turning to salt ourselves. That meant we had to actually heave the body out the door like a sack of garbage. Both of the Weaver boys started crying as we threw their mother out. The body didn’t last more than a couple of seconds before changing. We didn’t actually see it happen, but the same noise that had accompanied Wayne Richard’s transformation accompanied this one as well. It sounded like a bag of marbles had been spilled and were rolling across the floor. In reality, it was grains of salt skittering across the smooth concrete, blown by winds of change.

“Goodbye, love,” Jesse Weaver cried as Ashley slammed the door shut.

It was the closest thing to a funeral and a eulogy that we could give Vera Weaver. I knew we had done the best we could. Still, there was one thing that disturbed me about the whole process: Vera’s remains and Wayne Richards’ remains were quite likely mixed together now. It seemed a little irreverent and unfair to Vera and to her family, especially given the kind of man Wayne Richards had turned out to be. Vera had seemed like a good woman, hardly the kind that deserved to have her remains mingled with an adulterous fool that nobody liked, but given the circumstances, our options had been limited. I hoped she understood.

“The more I think about this, the more convinced I am that the air has nothing to do with the changing,” Chuck said once we were finished brooding over what we had done to Vera Weaver’s body.

“Please, Einstein, elaborate,” Pete said.

“Think about it. We’ve opened that door twice. Some of the air outside has gotten in.”

“So what does that mean?” Ashley Richards asked. “That we should discount the biological agent theory?”

“I’m leaning more and more toward something supernatural,” Chuck said. “I think Leland Kennedy knows more than he’s telling. He may not be responsible for any of this. But I’m willing to bet he has an idea about what’s really going on.”

Not surprisingly, Leland didn’t answer the walkie-talkie when we tried calling him.

III.

We moped the rest of the day. None of us had any ideas about what to do next. The snacks from the vending machine were depleting rapidly. At the rate we were eating and drinking, there wouldn’t be enough left for more than another day or so. Still, those mundane rituals were the only things keeping us sane at that point.

I think all of us were just about to go out of our minds with boredom when the walkie-talkie squawked. It was Leland.

“Well, well,” Chuck said into the radio. “We’re glad you decided to grace us with your presence again.”

“I’m coming back,” Leland said. “Get ready for me and pray that I make it through a second time.”

“What prompted that decision?” Chuck asked, looking a little confused. Leland didn’t answer. I think we would have been surprised if he had.

It only took a few minutes for Leland to travel from the restaurant to our store. Somehow, he knew exactly where to find us. I don’t remember any of us telling him that we had locked ourselves in the break room. Yet, that’s the first place he looked.

“Howdy folks,” he said, pushing the door open and holding it there. Strangely enough, none of us turned to salt.

“How could you be so sure that we wouldn’t die when you left that door open?” I asked.

“Let’s just say there’s a little more to me than meets the eye,” he said with a smile. I knew by the way he smiled that we were in trouble. It was like staring at a piranha.

“He does have something to do with this,” Pete muttered.

“Easy,” Leland said, holding up his hands. “I didn’t say I had anything to do with this. But I do know what’s going on.”

“Explain yourself,” I said.

“I believe in God. I believe in God’s wrath too. Think about the instances in the Bible when He shows that wrath - the Great Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Plagues of Egypt. When God wants to punish lots of people at a time, he usually uses unconventional methods. He also gives plenty of warnings that he is going to exact such punishment unless repentance of sin is made. Noah and his family had months to spread the word. Jonah was given a chance to find righteous people in those evil twin cities. The Pharaoh was counseled time and time again by Moses on what would happen to his people if he didn’t free the Israelites. God didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to destroy the people of the earth without giving them an opportunity to atone for their wrongdoings.”

“Make your point,” Steven said, standing up beside me.

“My point is that God has nothing to do with this plague on mankind. Neither do terrorists.”

“Who are you really?” Chuck asked.

Leland sighed for a moment. “There are many names I go by, most in tongues long forgotten by man. The one most commonly used now is Alastor.”

“The executioner,” Steven said, remembering his earlier interpretation of the Vera’s message when she spoke in tongues.

“He’s the angel that opened one of the seven vials,” Pete murmured.

“What are you?” Ashley asked, pulling the feather out of her shirt pocket and holding it to the light. It glowed with a faint luminescence. While she was clutching the feather tightly, you could see all the bones in her hand, like she had her palm against the lens of a flashlight.

“I’m an officer in the Army of the Lord,” Leland said.

“I don’t believe you,” Kenneth Weaver spoke up.

“Me either,” Jake added.

“I don’t blame you,” Leland said calmly. “I’ve kept a secret from you. You have every right to distrust me.”

“Why are you here?” Terry asked.

Leland considered his answer for a moment. “I’m here because I knew something like this was going to happen.”

“You knew?” I said, hardly believing it.

Leland nodded. “I would have tried to stop it had I known who to go after, but the world is wide, and the disguises are many. I got here a few minutes before the world changed. I knew that I was in the right vicinity, I just didn’t know who to pinpoint. The enemy has many faces.”

“I don’t understand any of what you’re saying,” Pete said.

This time it was Jesse Weaver’s turn to speak. “I think one of us in this room is responsible for what’s happening in the world. He went to the restaurant because he was convinced it wasn’t any of us at first. Now, I think he’s convinced it is.”

“This makes sense,” Chuck said. “Whichever one of us is to blame knew that we thought the air had something to do with the change. That’s why the bodies disintegrated when exposed to the atmosphere outside. That’s also why none of us inside this room changed even though some of the air undoubtedly found its way in. The angel was preying on our fears and beliefs, giving them life and breath. It was letting us think what we wanted to.”

Leland nodded. “One of the fallen is responsible.”

“So which one of us is it?” Jesse Weaver asked. “Is there a test of some sort to determine which one of us is the bad angel?”

“There is,” Leland said calmly. “But the ones of you that aren’t imposters won’t enjoy it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Chuck said. “We need to know. You need to know. Will you be able to stop what’s happening if you can just figure out who’s responsible?”

“The vengeance of the Lord will be administered,” Leland said. No longer did he seem like the jovial old fellow we had met all those hours before. Despite his youthful appearance, the new Leland seemed positively immortal, like an ancient judge surveying the world through highly-sensitive eyes.

“The test,” Kenneth Weaver reminded him. “What’s the test?”

“Every angel that was ever created has a cabalistic mark. The mark is never in the same place on every angel.” Leland unbuckled his belt and pushed his pants down off of one hip. True to his word, there was a small symbol that looked like a botched tattoo. “That is the way my name is written. No matter what guise I take I can never rid myself of the mark. The fallen will still bear his mark.”

“So you want us to strip?” Steven asked.

“I’m not taking my clothes off,” Ashley stammered.

“Got something to hide?” Pete asked.

“I’m not giving you guys a peep show,” Ashley retorted.

“I wouldn’t ask it if it wasn’t necessary, but it is,” Leland replied calmly. “The vengeance of the Lord must run its course.”

Ashley chewed on this for a moment. “None of the rest of these goons have to look, right?” she said at last. “You’re an angel, you should be immune.”

“Even angels are prey to temptation. That’s how nephilim are created. But I am focused in my task.”

“Let’s get to it then,” Jesse said as he started to unbutton his shirt.

Out of courtesy, we let Ashley go first. All of us turned our backs and waited as Leland inspected her. Twice I caught the Weaver boys trying to sneak a peek and grunted to show that I saw them. They didn’t care and kept craning their necks for a glimpse of nude flesh.

“Do you have to look there?” she asked. None of us turned around although the urge was tempting.

“The mark is different for every angel. I must be thorough.”

Lucky devil, I thought.

As Leland conducted his examination, I gave the rest of the guys an examination of my own. I wanted to know which one of us was the imposter. Nobody really seemed nervous or antsy about the possibility of being found out. It was also difficult to discern anything by observing body language. The fallen angel was clearly a skilled actor.

“What happens to the angel when you find him?” Pete asked, shifting his weight back and forth on the balls of his feet.

Leland pulled a knife from a sheath beneath his shirt. “I will cut the angelic mark out and reduce him to a mortal man. Without his mark, his deadly influence will be gone and I will kill him.”

Begrudgingly, we all let Leland examine us. I felt like I was back in high school getting my sports physical.

Leland’s mood got progressively worse. It was clear that he wasn’t finding what he had hoped. In a way, it was disturbing to think that things had gotten so out of hand that an angelic warrior couldn’t handle it. Yet it was also somewhat of a comfort to think that the traitor wasn’t among us.

“I don’t understand,” Leland said when he had finished. “I was positive it was one of you, but none of you have the mark.”

“I think you just wanted to play doctor,” Pete joked uneasily. Nobody else laughed.

“Is it possible I have missed something?” Leland asked, his face full of questions.

I looked at the group and wondered where someone could possibly hide an angelic mark. It was only as I noticed Ashley running her fingers through her mane of lustrous chestnut hair that I realized where the mark was.

“You didn’t check anyone’s scalp,” I said.

Ashley instantly went rigid.

Leland looked at her and then at the rest of us. Her reaction obviously meant something to him. It certainly seemed suspicious.

“Get away from me,” Ashley said, taking a step back from Leland. “It’s not me.”

“You knew who I was all the time,” he said.

Ashley held up the feather she had shown the rest of us. “I didn’t know anything. What are you talking about?”

Immediately Leland began to chatter in a foreign language of some sort. He was speaking in tongues, I now recognized.

“You know what I’m saying,” he said in English. “You understand me, girl. This is your language too.”

“It’s not,” she maintained, fear twisting her face into something not nearly as beautiful as before. “I’m not responsible for this.”

Slowly, Leland circled her like a ravenous dog eying its next meal.

“Help me. Somebody,” she pleaded.

The building began to tremble around us. It felt like we were in the epicenter of an earthquake.

Now, Leland no longer looked like either the mild-mannered young man of moments before or the jovial old fellow we had met in the beginning. His eyes blazed with yellow fire, and his face was chiseled with determination.

“I should have known it was you from the start,” he growled.

“Aren’t any of you going to help me?” she pleaded. “Jesse?”

Jesse Weaver eyed her carefully, unsure of himself. Only moments before he would have easily allowed her to fill the void that Vera had left behind, but now, that void seemed to have its own distinct advantages.

Ashley turned away from all of us and focused on Leland. She looked like a frightened little girl. The act was completely convincing too, but the rumbling building presented a much more convincing argument than Ashley’s facial expressions ever could. We knew it was only a matter of minutes before we all were buried under tons of rubble.

“The building’s going to come down at any minute,” Chuck said as items fell from the shelves and hit the floor, the sound akin to dropping a thousand hammers all at the same instant. I couldn’t understand most of what was being said around me. The only way I knew what Chuck was saying is because I could read his lips.

“Let’s go,” I said, making a waving motion with my hand. None of the others needed any reason to question me.

The only problem with my plan was that we had to run right past Leland and Ashley to get to the exit. We tried to slip past them as they circled each other. Although neither Leland nor Ashley touched them, Pete and Steven both turned to piles of salt before our very eyes. I wasn’t sure which of the two was responsible, however, that was the exact moment that Leland changed into Alastor, casting off every element of humanity. It was impossible to watch the transformation take place. Racking was falling down all around us, and merchandise was piling up in heaps on the floor. All I could see for sure was a blinding white flash of light that reminded me of those nuclear bomb tests on television. Then the angel was there, looking nothing at all like the depictions most commonly dramatized in stained glass.

Gone were all the flowing robes and gleaming halos. All that remained was a hard, weathered figure that looked like he could have been a bounty hunter or in a biker gang. He positively dwarfed Ashley.

Ashley backed away from Alastor, screaming for one of us to help her; not one of us stopped running. Still, I for one wondered why she hadn’t transformed like Alastor had. It made me wonder if we were doing the right thing by leaving her there to fend for herself. I nearly went back for her, and then thought better of it as a huge section of the roof fell in behind me.

The last thing any of us saw before the building caved in was Alastor poised to bring down the sword on Ashley’s head. She still looked like a frightened, innocent woman and nothing else. Feeling ashamed of myself, I turned and ran as Alastor started speaking in tongues. Clouds of dust swirled around us and the store as we fled to the parking lot. Yet this was no ordinary dust. This was all that remained of hundreds and hundreds of souls. Undoubtedly, the dead had gathered to watch this final showdown and to cheer Alastor on - or to condemn him. At this point, I still wasn’t sure if he was a good guy sent to deliver us or if he was the cause of all our troubles.

It’s difficult to say what actually went on inside the store after that because the building caved in at that point. We could still hear Alastor speaking in tongues and what sounded like screaming, but that could have been the sound that the steel beams made as they were twisted and bent out of shape by the weight of the collapsing building. I wanted to believe that. I didn’t want to imagine those sounds coming out of Ashley’s mouth.

We all stood there, staring at the destroyed store, wondering if it was possible that anyone, even angels, could have survived. Yet, neither Alastor nor Ashley crawled out of the wreckage. I don’t think we really expected them to.

The dust fell around us like rain, coating our heads, shoulders, arms, chests, legs. It was like standing in a blizzard. It felt like someone was tapping their cigarette out over our heads.

“Do you think it’s possible that Ashley wasn’t what Leland said she was?” Chuck asked.

“She never changed,” Jesse reminded all of us. “And what about Wayne? How do you explain him in all of this? If Ashley was a fallen angel, then Wayne would have surely known about it.”

“You can’t explain it,” I said. “Out of those of us left, Leland was the only one who was completely and totally by himself. Jesse had his family, Wayne and Ashley had each other, Pete and his buddy came in together. Steven, Chuck, and I had worked together for long enough to know that none of us were angels. That left only Leland. I don’t think there’s any question about what he really was. The only question that remains is which side he was truly on. Was he the one who saved us from certain death or was he the one who brought death with him?”

“So you think he was the bad angel?” Jesse asked.

In my mind, there was only one way to find out. I started walking toward the restaurant. Soon after, I could hear the footfalls of the others behind me.

I knew the answer to the question long before we ever went inside. The buzzing of flies was oppressive. And loud.

These bodies hadn’t been reduced to dust. They had been massacred, mutilated, defiled. I gagged at the sight and moved aside so the others could see.

None of them got more than a five second look before turning away.

“I would say that Leland was most definitely the bad angel,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“Alastor, the executioner,” Steven reminded us. “There was a good reason for his name.”

Yet I realized something else once we walked back to the store. I thought back to the feather that Ashley had been holding. It had been white. Leland, or Alastor, or whatever his name had been had been covered in maroon plumage, which meant that there really had been another angel lurking somewhere nearby. The fact that Ashley had found the feather made me suspect it had been hers all along.

The dust had settled when we finally made it back to the danger zone. I think I was the first to spot the hand sticking out from the rubble like a flower sprouting up out of graveyard dirt.

“I see a hand!” I shouted, running toward the rubble pile. One of the fingers twitched slightly. It was Ashley.

“Help me!” I screamed, but the rest of the group was already hard at work clearing away broken sections of mortar and steel. Ashley wasn’t buried very deeply, but she was seriously hurt. I knew she wouldn’t last long.

She smiled at me as I cleared the debris away from her face. “He’s gone now,” she whispered through bloody lips. Her face was covered in a mask of sheetrock dust. She looked like a ghost.

“Alastor?” I asked. Ashley nodded slightly.

“Wayne and I were sent to kill him. He’s been a source of curses and death for as long as I can remember. He was the orchestrator of the Egyptian plagues, and that was still when he was loyal. Things have changed since then. Before, he killed for God. After he turned his back on The Father, he killed for enjoyment. That’s all this was to him - a game.”

“But Wayne went willingly to his death.”

“He didn’t die. Nobody ever saw him change, did they? We weren’t sure what disguise Alastor would take, and the only way Wayne could be sure was to scout. We knew our plan would work better if it appeared that he was dead.”

“So where is he now? Where was he when you and Alastor were fighting?”

Ashley smiled. Her red lips were now coated with dust. It looked like she had been eating powdered donuts while wearing lipstick. It was the look in her eyes, however, that ruined that impression.

“Who do you think brought the building down?” she asked. “Who do you think held Alastor while the ceiling caved in on top of us? I know Wayne seemed like a jerk, but everything you saw between the two of us was an act. It had to be that way until we figured out what sort of face Alastor was wearing. Wayne and I are immortal; Alastor is immortal too. We can, however, pass from one existence to another. You might call it death, but to us, it’s just a way of getting closer to God. Because we’re angels, we’ll all return to the throne when we pass on. God will handle things from that point on. He’ll punish Alastor for the things he’s done.”

I wanted to ask more questions, but there wasn’t time. I reached for Ashley’s hand. The moment I touched it, she exploded into thousands of pure, white feathers. It resembled the transformation that many of our customers had undergone as they stepped outside the building and turned into nice, tidy hillocks of sand. But I knew that Ashley’s metamorphosis had purpose, had meaning. Hers wasn’t the result of some rogue angel’s games. She was going to God. Given the number of people who had died, I’ll bet she had to wait in line to see the creator.

As it turned out later, the damage had been confined to a very limited area. Astronomers tracked the shooting star that fell that night to a remote section of the highway not far from our store. It was simple enough to make the necessary jumps in logic: that’s where Alastor had come from. That’s how he made his appearance.

Of course, the astronomers didn’t know anything about angels. Wisely, we didn’t mention it either. Nobody would have believed us. As it was, we had to spend three days in an Army quarantine. The stay would have been lengthened by talks of cherubim and seraphim. Instead, we stuck to Chuck’s initial theory of a chemical attack by terrorists, and that seemed to do the trick. It was an explanation people were ready to accept.

The military unit didn’t actually arrive, however, until the next afternoon.

Not knowing what else to do, we spent the rest of that day sweeping the asphalt, shoveling as much of the dead as we could into trash bags, and pondering the nature of God. Our brief encounter with angels had transformed lives, affected families, and completely reshaped beliefs. And while the winds of change hadn’t turned any of us into hillocks of sand, we were new creatures nonetheless.