The Waking Dark by Robin Wasserman Page A

aliens.
    On Saturday afternoon, two days after the storm, the megaphone message changed, announcing a town meeting. Every household was requested to send at least one representative. There would be free coffee.
    There would be answers.
     
    They crammed into the school gymnasium, downed their weak coffee, and waited to be convinced that their world wasn’t broken beyond repair. No one was in much of a hurry to sit down, not before they’d exhausted all possibilities for hugging and weeping and retelling the story of how they’d made it through. It would hurt less once it became a story, something to be remembered and rehashed in a neat linear form. Some tottered on crutches; others brought pillows on which to rest plaster-encased limbs. Almost everyone bore bandages, stitches, burns, or scratches, some badge of honor from the storm. Even Ellie, though the shallow slash on her face had nearly healed.
    She and her parents – temporarily reunited by crisis – squeezed into the fourth row. To their left sat Chip Gordon, the high school chemistry teacher known to bump up his salary by making and selling illegal fireworks out of the chem lab all summer. On their right was Rosemary Wooden, older sister of the departed Eugenia, who had always been (in her own estimation) the smarter and (in everyone’s estimation) meaner sibling. Her disposition had not improved with the slaughter of her sister in a drugstore massacre.
    Ellie had come to the meeting only because her mother requested it, and when it came to her mother, saying yes was easier. She would have preferred to stay at home, in her room, staring. It was how she’d spent the last two days, staring at the ceiling, trying and failing to regain her purchase on the world. Since the storm, she’d felt like she was living underwater, everything blurry and muffled and slow. Everything except the voice in her head.
    Unlike the rest of the world, the voice felt real.
    And it knew her sins.
    The mayor took the stage. Ellie wondered if everyone else could see that he was trembling, or if it was just her. She’d started to think a lot of things were just her.
    He welcomed the town, offered his sympathies for their struggles, promised them that Oleander would band together in this time of trouble. He recited these sentiments in a monotone, reading verbatim from his notes, never once raising his eyes to meet the crowd. He called a line of football players onto the stage, introducing them as the Watchdogs, an impromptu neighborhood watch that would ensure the continuing security and tranquility of the town. Special commendation went to Baz Demming, police lieutenant’s son and star quarterback, whose brainstorm this had been.
    The sight of Baz penetrated Ellie’s haze. She could feel his eyes searching the crowd – surely not for her. It had been years since she’d had to worry about that. But they could easily fall on her accidentally, and if they did, she felt as if her skin might literally burn.
    That
time
is
over,
she told herself.
    That
me
is
gone.
    The voice knew better.
    A screen was unfurled. It lit up, revealing a middle-aged middleman, graying and paunchy and dressed in civilian clothes. He introduced himself as Colonel Matthew Franklin. He didn’t bother to explain how he’d managed to appear before them with all phone and Internet lines down; when it came to its own needs, the government always had its ways.
    “I apologize that I couldn’t join you in person,” he said, smiling avuncularly into the camera, “but rest assured that a joint task force of National Guard and FEMA personnel is doing everything in its power to restore… Oleander to the life it once knew.” There was a noticeable pause before he spoke the name of the town, as if he’d needed a whispered reminder from someone off camera. “I’m sure you have many questions about the quarantine” that’s been erected at the town borders —”
    It was the first time anyone official had used the