The Police Commissioner reports similar third-shift problems in most of the city's precincts.
Almost done.
Hank had started an hour ago. He'd used the bolt cutters to snip all the pieces of cyclone fencing to size in one shot, and now he was nailing the last piece to the frame of the bathroom window. When the last nail was in place, he stepped back and surveyed the job.
"There!" he said aloud. "That oughta keep them out."
It was a good bet those monsters would reach the upper floors tonight. If they did, he was ready for them. Even if they tore out his screens and smashed the panes, nothing bigger than two inches around was getting through that fencing. But just as important as the fencing on the windows was the bar on the door. He'd bolted the steel brackets into the door frame; they were heavy, sturdy, and designed to hold a four-by-four oak bar. Nobody was getting into this place unless Hank said so.
He had to admit, though, it looked like hell. Carol would probably have a fit when she got back.
Carol!
He stepped to the window and peered out. The sun was down. Soon the air would be filled with those monstrosities. She should have been home by now. Where was she?
The phone rang then. Hank ran to answer it.
"Carol?" he said as he jammed the receiver to his ear. Relief flooded him at the sound of her voice.
"Oh, Hank!" Carol said. "I'm so glad you're home."
"Where are you? Don't you know it's almost dark?"
"That's why I'm calling. I'm at Glaeken's. I'm okay, but I can't get home."
"I see," he said. Now that he knew she was safe, annoyance seeped though. "Did you get the things on your list?"
"No."
"What? You know I was counting on you."
"I'll get them tomorrow."
"You can't! It's like a jungle out there. The stores were selling out when I started this morning. They're all empty now. Dammit, Carol! I can't do all this alone!"
She'd let him down. He tried to hide his hurt.
"I needed to talk to somebody, Hank. So I stopped by here to see Bill."
"Talk?" His heart kicked up its rate. "What did you talk to him about?"
"Us. I wanted to straighten a few things out in my head."
"Did you tell him about the—about our supplies?"
"Yes. But I just—"
"Carol! How could you?" He felt as if he'd been stabbed. "Didn't I tell you not to mention them to anybody? Those are for us!"
"Okay, Hank. Okay. We'll talk about that when I come home. I'll be there first thing tomorrow morning."
"Fine!" he said, feeling a cold wind stirring up and blowing through his heart. "Stay the night with your priest friend. Talk your little heart out. Good night!"
He slammed the receiver down, waited a couple of seconds, then lifted it again and left it off the cradle. Then he stepped to the door and dropped the big four-by-four bar onto its brackets.
The receiver began to howl. He jammed a cushion over it.
Carol…how could she do this to him? Why was she blabbing about their supplies all over town? Why was she trying to undermine his plans? It didn't make sense. He'd put all this together for the two of them. He was her husband. It was his duty to look out for her. And that was just what he'd been doing.
But apparently Carol didn't care. No, it was worse than not caring—she was actively sabotaging him. Her big mouth was going to ruin everything. And there was no way he could stop her.
Or was there?
He couldn't make her go around and tell everyone that she'd been lying. Even if he could, it wouldn't work. But he could make her story a lie.
All he'd have to do was move their supplies.
And he knew just where to take them: the Jersey Shore. During a long span of his bachelor years he used to rent a bungalow every summer at places like Chadwick Beach or Seaside Heights. Most of them were little more than plywood boxes, but he knew a couple of places that were fairly sturdy, equipped with storm shutters and heat. They'd be empty now, the beaches and boardwalks all but deserted, waiting for the summer renters—renters who wouldn't be coming. A perfect locale.
He got to work arranging all the cases of food in four-foot stacks by the door—the maximum load he could handle with his hand truck. At first light tomorrow he'd cover each stack with a sheet and hustle it down to his rented van still parked below.
Hank took a blanket and huddled down behind his walls of food and began counting the hours till dawn.
As Carol listened to the busy signal for perhaps the dozenth time, she watched Jack and Glaeken in huddled conversation on the far side of the living room. Jack had arrived earlier, jubilant that he'd heard from someone named Gia over the shortwave. Apparently she and her daughter had made it safely to a hideaway in Pennsylvania. Now, as he and Glaeken conversed, they'd occasionally glance her way, but she realized they were really looking at Bill, and that made her uneasy.
She hung up and dialed her home phone number again. Still busy. She wanted to scream at it to ring. She had to speak to Hank, straighten things out. She didn't like the thought of him spending the night alone in that apartment thinking she'd let him down. She'd tried the operator but her rings were never answered. NYNEX seemed to be running on its computers alone. She wondered how long they'd hold up. She hung up the phone and looked at Bill.
"Still busy. Do you think anything's wrong?"
"Sounds like he's in some sort of snit. He'll get over it."
"I hope so. Snit's a perfect word. I can't believe he's acting like this. Do you think he'll be all right?"
"I'm sure he'll be fine. I just wish he was as concerned about you as you are about him."
How true, she thought. Why isn't he calling to see how I'm doing?
Jack came over and rested his hand on the phone.
"Mind if I make a call?"
"Go ahead," she said. "It's not doing me any good."
She and Bill moved away to make room for him. They gravitated to the picture window overlooking the Sheep Meadow. Carol saw lights and bustling figures below.
"What's going on?"
"I'm not sure," Bill said. He lifted a pair of binoculars from a nearby table and peered through them. "They were dropping some sort of depth charges in it earlier today. Looks like they're going to try spraying them with insecticide again." He passed the glasses to her. "Take a look."
The Sheep Meadow swam into focus through the lenses. Carol remembered watching a similar scene on TV last night, a scene that had ended in bloody horror.
"I can't believe they're going to try this again," she said. "Those men down there must be either very brave or very crazy."
"I'd venture they're neither," Bill said. "They're doing their job. Everybody else can go nuts, throw up their hands and say nothing matters anymore, the world's coming to an end so screw everything and let's party, let's go wild, let's do all the things we never allowed ourselves to do when we knew there'd be a price to pay. Let's get drunk, get stoned, rape, pillage, kill, destroy, burn everything to the ground just because we feel like it. But there will always be a certain small percentage out there who'll go on doing their jobs, people with an overriding sense of duty, of responsibility, of obligation to try to keep things running, to ignore the end-of-the-world Zeitgeist and just keep going. People who know that to let yourself go crazy is to say that your day-to-day life has been a sham, that you've been a hypocrite, that your lifestyle has been little more than play-acting for other people; like saying, 'Hey, you know everything I've said and done up till now? It's all been a lie. This is the real me.' No matter what Rasalom throws at that small percentage of humans, they aren't going to back down. Some of them are down there around that goddam hole right now."