Children of the Storm

other shadow-hidden dead men, she walked the rest of the way to the door of the children's room, which was closed and sinister-looking.
        She put her hand on the knob.
        She twisted it as far as it would go.
        The door wasn't locked.
        She looked back at Rudolph Saine, as if she thought he might have gotten up from his puddle of blood and become a living man once more, as if she suspected his death had been a very elaborate practical joke-no, a very elaborate impractical joke. But it was not any prank; it was much too real for comfort, for sanity, for hope. He had not moved, and he would never move again.
        She pushed open the door, part way.
        The room was well-lighted, but she saw nothing to disturb her thus far.
        She pushed the door open further and stepped into the room, her hand still tight on the knob.
        The children were lying on the bed, tied with what appeared to be lengths of wire.
        “Sonya, look out!” Alex cried.
        She started to back step, had the door ripped out of her hand, and staggered forward, off balance, into the bedroom.
        “Welcome aboard,” Bill Peterson said, smiling at her, holding the long, deadly knife up where she could plainly see it.
        Tina was crying, and Alex was trying to shush her.
        In a voice that sounded nothing like her own, Sonya said, “Bill, it can't be you, not you of all people.”
        “Madam,” he said, “I'm afraid you're mistaken. My name is Jeremy, not Bill.”

----

    TWENTY-TWO
        
        Though she was only twenty-three years old, and though she had been raised in one of the most civilized countries and eras in the whole span of recorded history, Sonya Carter did not find death to be a stranger. Not a friend, surely, but not a stranger either; more like a well-known enemy that she still feared, passionately feared, but whom she had found she could talk with. She had seen death many times, beginning at the age of ten, when, having claimed her parents, he was a faceless entity, never fully glimpsed, hovering in the background, a force that she could not readily identify but which she understood had changed the entire course of her future, her life to be. She had seen him again, during her nurse's training, and there she had gotten a closer look at him, had seen him take people away while they slumbered- or while they kicked and screamed and cursed him every inch of the way. She had seen him do his work suddenly, without warning, and she had seen him dawdle, as if he enjoyed the agony of his victims the way a cruel child would enjoy cutting a leg from a frog and watching it try to hop away from him. She had seen death on the beach, shrouding a rotting corpse, feeding the crabs, silent and sandy, particularly loathsome, and she had seen death in the corridor of Seawatch, seen it in the form of an old friend, Rudolph Saine, ghastly and familiar both. But in all of these encounters, she had never seen a more terrifying death, a more horrifying glimpse of him than the one she saw in Bill Peterson's eyes, lurking behind Bill Peterson's twisted face.
        “Why?” she asked.
        He said, “Everyone has to suffer sometime in their lives, sooner or later, because that's only fair.”
        His voice was different, not at all the voice of Bill Peterson. If she had not known him well, she would have thought that this actually was some twin brother of his, some maniacal relation. But he was too much like Bill, and he wore Bill's clothes. As impossible as it seemed, he was Bill. His voice was nasal, too reedy, filled with a self-righteous sneer that made her blood run cold and her hands grow as clammy as two dead fish.
        “That's no answer,” she said.
        “I held a trial.”
        “For what crime?”
        “For the crime of not having suffered.”
        “That makes no sense.”
        “Yes, it does,” he assured her. “I held a trial, being my own judge and jury, and I passed sentence.”
        “On little children?”
        He glanced quickly at Alex and Tina, momentarily confused.
        “You're talking nonsense, Bill.”
        “Jeremy.”
        “You're talking nonsense, Jeremy.”
        He sneered at her again, regaining his composure, only momentarily ruffled. “I passed judgment on their parents. Their parents have been sentenced to suffer.”
        “By having their children taken from them?”
        “That's it,