Frankenstein

set in steel casings. They were hung from a wooden jamb, with the hinges on the inside.
    With the killing machines making a most demonic noise, Turner Ward shouted for everyone on the mezzanine in the vicinity of the doors to duck and cover to avoid ricochets.
    Van Colpert took the risk of bounce-back lead and, with four rounds, blasted the wood out from under two of the three hinges onthe right-hand door. He jammed another shell in the breech, three in the magazine tube, and took out the third hinge.
    Doogie and Turner put their shoulders to the door, which was now held in place only by the chains that linked it to the left-hand door and by a half-rotted wooden stop molding on the outside. The wood cracked apart, the door shuddered open, and Van threw aside the 12-gauge to help Doogie and Turner lift the door as they swung it to the left, so it wouldn’t drag on the concrete.
    The kids came through first, running for their parents’ trucks and SUVs, and Van thought and prayed they hadn’t lost a single child.
    They had lost four or five adults, however, and he didn’t know who, other than Tank Tankredo and Jenny Vinnerling. They didn’t have time to take a census as people exited, so Van shouted to Turner and Doogie to get their families packed up and out, and leave him to give a ride to anybody who needed one. Van was a single man, and his big Suburban could carry a crowd.
    As it turned out, Tom Vinnerling had died trying to save Jenny, so the three Vinnerling children were the only people Van needed to accommodate. Cubbie was eight, Janene ten, and Nick fourteen.
    The younger kids were in tears, but Nick’s jaw was tight with anger and his mind dead-set against crying. He wanted to drive his brother and sister away in his parents’ Mountaineer.
    As the tires of departing vehicles squealed across the blacktop, Van Colpert kept one eye on the front door when he said, “I know you could drive if you had to, Nick, I suspect you could do anything you had to, but there’s nobody home now for you and Cubbie and Janene. We don’t know what’s happening, what’s next, this is something big, so you guys are going to stay with me. We’re it now, we’re together from here on out. It’s the only right way.”
    The boy was in shock, in grief, but he had never been a bad kid, strong-willed but never willful. He relented at once and helped his siblings into the backseat of the Suburban. He sat in the front with Van.
    As they drove onto the highway, close behind the last of the departing vehicles, Nick showed Van a 9mm Beretta that he had snatched off the floor in the roadhouse. “I’m keeping it.”
    “You know how to use it?” Van asked.
    “I’ve been target shooting since I was twelve.”
    “Target’s different than shooting for real.”
    “It would have to be,” Nick said, which was just the right answer, as far as Van was concerned.
    In the backseat, the two children were sobbing.
    The sound of them tore at Van, the sound of them and the awful truth that he could do nothing to restore their lives to them. All he could hope to do was help them find new ones.
    “What were those things?” Nick asked.
    “Something no one’s ever seen before.”
    “We’re going to see them again, aren’t we?”
    “I’d bet on it.” Van passed his cell phone to the boy. “Call the police, 911.”
    He wasn’t all that surprised when Nick tried to place the call and then said, “There’s no 911 service.”

    With a first-time-ever lack of respect for speed limits, Dolly Samples drove while she, her husband, Hank, and her sons, Whit and Farley, worked out who would do what when they arrived home.
    Loreen Rudolph, her husband, Nelson, and their kids would be moving in with the Samples family for the duration because their house hadsome land around it and on first assessment seemed to be generally more defensible than the Rudolph place. Loreen and Nelson would be bringing a lot of canned food and bagged staples, tools, ammunition, and other goods that would be necessary to fortify and defend the Samples home.
    “We lost dear friends tonight,” Dolly said, “and we have to hold fast to their memories. There’s going to be some hard times ahead, too, you better believe it.”
    “Well, we always knew something was coming in our lifetimes,” said Hank. “We just figured it would be the Chinese or the Russians or some plague. We never thought outer-space aliens, but if that’s what it’s to be, so be