Day 4

The Kanker sisters, their mother in tow, had packed up the trailer, yanked out the cinder blocks, and cranked up the Chevy by 11:30 at night, and by 12:13 in the morning, they'd convinced Mom to come along and get the hell outta dodge.

Their Chevy, trailer fishtailing behind, tore past the Cul-de-Sac as Nazz inspected the new set of doorways punched through the walls of Kevin's house while Kevin gathered up all his father's guns from their strategic placements around the house, carefully laying them out across the kitchen island, table, and counters. Kevin's father had a pistol for every room in the house, and several in auxillary in the gun cabinet with his half dozen hunting rifles, four shotguns, and an AR-14 assault rifle, along with a small machine gun Kevin suspected to be an Uzi hidden in a money box under the bed in the master bedroom.

Nazz floated between the decimated rooms of the house, back and forth from them to Kevin's feverish compiling of weapons.

She walked to the gaping hole where bay window used to be as Kevin felt his dad's recliner up and down, around the back, and, popping the foot stand out, underneath. Nazz nodded across the street to Double Dee's house. "Sooooo...Double Dee's got a demon stashed in his house?"

Kevin looked up, irritated, and snapped, "What?"

Nazz stared at him for a moment. Kevin sighed in annoyance and went back to groping the recliner. Nazz's heart throbbed in her throat. Her heart rate had been up, and pounding, all day. "Are you okay, dude? It looks like you need some medical attention."

"You know what happened, Nazz? Do you know what just happened? A demon climbed out of one of the holes in the ground out there, almost took my head off, and it did this." He stood, turned and held his shirt up to show Nazz the set of gashes across his stomach.

"Dude...Dude. Dude." Nazz tried to say something else, but that was all that would come out.

"How else do you explain it? How do you explain it, Nazz?"

"You're in bad shape, Kevin. Sit down, alright? Can't all this firepower stuff just wait till tomorrow?"

"It's today, Nazz. It's past midnight." Kevin realized how short of breath he was, and decided to splay out in the recliner while his dad wasn't there. He supposed Nazz was right. He could compile the guns after some rest in the morning.

"Are you done?"

Kevin looked around, thought a minute. He had nothing left to do that couldn't wait. "I guess."

"Let me put something on that, okay, dude?" Her voice softened as she grew closer. Kevin nodded "okay." "Very cool. Um. Do you know if you guys have hydrogen peroxide here?"

"No. I don't know," Kevin huffed.

"That's totally okay. Um. Alright. I know where my parents keep it, so I'm gonna go by my house and grab some, and you just stick tight right here, okay, Kev?"

"Okay." Splayed out in the recliner, Kevin began to realize how tired he was. It had been a busy day, just like yesterday. Taxing. He figured it would probably only get worse and worse, each day harder and harder. No wonder Jimmy's parents couldn't take it. Kevin's heart dropped. He hadn't considered them in a few hours. He hadn't been thinking of what to do about it, how to tell the others. Kevin wondered where Jonny was. He'd heard the melonhead scream in the woods. He must have run into the demon too. Or one like it. They had to be coming out all over the goddamn place. Kevin wondered whether or not he was just tired from the day or from the blood loss from his chest wounds.

As Kevin was lost in thought, Nazz was looking him over, worrying, nervous, scared, the works. She figured he was out for the count, at least for a little while, so she walked past the torn out bay window and took the door instead. "I'll just be a few minutes, Kev. Just hang tight."

Kevin's mind was racing, darting from one thought system to the next. He considered the End of the World. When the door shut, he thought about Nazz. How much he wanted her to come back, so he didn't have to be all alone with people he didn't like, present company included. But she'd only be a minute. She was just going back to her house. Then Kevin remembered Rolf's dad's plans of plunder. He jumped up, bolted out the bay window, calling: "Nazz, wait, I gotta tell you something!"

Nazz walked into the mangled nightmare that was her kitchen as Ed dragged his parents' old dog cage across the Cul-de-Sac to Double Dee's, where Double Dee and Eddy kept watch over the bound demon as it screamed epithets at them in its grotesque language. Since they'd carried it inside, they had compounded the duct tape binding the beast with whatever lengths of chain and rope the three Eds could find lying around the respective houses, locking the chain with padlocks from Double Dee's collection.

Eddy watched Double Dee watch the strange black thing with its pure-red eyes. He watched the thing with fascination and curiosity. Double Dee could feel Eddy's eyes burning holes in the side of his head, felt it about it harshly as the demon's seemingly literal piercing gaze. Double Dee had to admit, any time it made eye contact with him, a ripple of dread rolled across his very being.

Double Dee called a recess in the kitchen, the beast's cries dulled through the wall of the garage. "So we're calling it a demon, yes? That is what we're going with on this?"

"Yeah…" Eddy mumbled, "I mean, look at it, Double Dee. It's got antelope ears, it's got the eyes a' fire, it's got fucked-up teeth even for you, sockhead, and whadda ya bet it came clawing its way outta one a' those fissures out there. For cryin' out loud, Double Dee, just listen to the thing. That ain't nothin' for human ears, I'm tellin' ya."

"Do you really think we've discovered the truth behind the theism argument, Eddy? We've proved the existence of at least some sort of supernatural force above us? I think we'll have to put that to the test, Eddy."

"How'd ya figure?" grumbled Eddy.

Double Dee thought for a moment. "Well, first things first, I suppose I'd best go ahead and find out what language it's speaking. That is, if it's anything known to human ears, to quote yourself, Eddy."

"You're off-world, Double Dee. You're gonna try and translate that shit it's sayin'? It's all just pops and clicks. I think our best bet is try and figure out how ta 86 the damned thing."

"I think Rolf's attempts earlier tonight were proof enough that in the area of mortal combat, we'd all be bested, don't you agree?"

"Not if we nuke the damn thing."

"Come on, Eddy. At the very least, it's something to keep our minds off of things till the world gets a hold of itself, isn't it? It's better than just sitting and moping around, yes?"

Eddy gave it a moment's thought even as he shook his head, Double Dee could see. It was always a delicious, especially rare occasion to beat Eddy at his own game, that game of course being the spoken word.

Before Eddy could come up with a dissenting statement, the two boys heard Ed banging on the garage door from the outside. From the weight of the thuds, it sounded like Ed was launching his whole body at the door, which was not outside the realm of possibility. He called through the door, "Mail for you!"

Double Dee sauntered back into the garage, knowing he'd beaten Eddy, and called through the door to Ed, "It's open, Ed!"

With the power out, Double Dee could not press the button on the wall to activate the electric retractor on the garage ceiling, but Ed seemed satisfied with lifting the garage door with one hand and sliding the dog kennel through, then walking under and letting the door fall shut behind him.

Double Dee and Eddy helped Ed where they could as he hauled the hog-tied demon into the kennel and locked it inside with the last padlock, which they'd saved for the cage.

Eddy curled up on the couch a half an hour later after growing bored with Double Dee's research and quickly passed out, snoring and drooling all over the furniture as Double Dee and Ed watched the hateful beast through the bars of the cage. It seemed so much smaller, packed undoubtedly uncomfortably into the small kennel on the floor of the garage. But any time they would care to glance into one of its two glowing red eyes, they would be quickly reminded of the respect and fear it commanded of them, even locked up and humiliated in a dog kennel. Especially then, probably. They were certain to remember the danger it posed to them and their friends should it ever escape, and they were sure to never grow too comfortable of the demon outta Hell in their midst, although both boys suffered the bad habits of letting their guards down perhaps too much, Ed at the cool factor of the thing in all its four-color comic book beauty, and Double Dee at its incredulous impossibility. But neither boy was distracted fully enough to forget to be in part terrified of the thing with its razor sharp claws, razor sharp teeth, and razor sharp horns. Most of the thing was, in fact, razor sharp, as Ed had been so unfortunate to find out quite firsthand.

Not an hour later they were graced with a knock at the door from none other than Nazz. A surprise, to say the least, as the night grew ever closer to its wee morning hours, Double Dee noted with a glance at his watch. But Nazz carried with her at that moment none of her calm laid-back demeanor. Her shoulders were high and tight, like a cat on guard, her face grim and tired from a long day. Double Dee had forgotten to be tired in all the excitement. Nazz seemed to have no time for pleasantries even as Double Dee offered them to her as he stepped aside to let her into his house. She stepped inside and faced the room as Double Dee turned to lock and bolt the front door, and she only turned when he turned the deadbolt, and she said, inches from Double Dee's face, a hand on his chest, "I want to see it."

Double Dee was filled with a sudden anxiety and fear. "You want to see…" He couldn't manage the end of the sentence before Nazz interjected with: "The demon."

Double Dee let her to the garage, where Ed dangled over Double Dee's father's excess swivel chair, limp and snoring, as dead to the world as usual but with his eyes closed.

Double Dee walked ahead of Nazz and expected to know she'd caught sight of the demon when she'd let out a stifled noise of fear, but that muffled shout never came. Double Dee feared for a moment she overlooked the thing; after all, it was low to the ground, and one would not expect to find a demon locked in a dog kennel. But after a few moments of silence, Double Dee knew she must have seen it, and after another few moments he turned to look at her.

Her expression attempted to be stern and cool, detached and strong, but a nervous swallow gave her away. Not that it made her seem weak, not at all. No one could avoid fear looking into that thing's eyes in the low light of the garage, the glowing red seeming to waft off the eyes like a car's tail lights in fog. "Do you think it's smart to keep it caged like that?" she asked, and suddenly Double Dee felt quite afraid. "Don't you think you'll make it angry?"

Double Dee thought a moment. "Nazz, I believe the time has come and gone to avoid that."

Nazz nodded. "Thank you, Double Dee. Um. I just wanted to see it."

"Okay, Nazz. I'll show you out."

When Nazz walked out, she could hear a set of three bangs ricocheting across the yard from the next yard over as Kevin rapped at Rolf's front door. He had been trying to get Rolf to answer since she'd left him. He'd thought he'd slipped out while Nazz wasn't looking but he was never the light-on-his-feet type. Not to mention how loud the broken glass crackled under his feet as he climbed out his bay window.

"Dude," she called softly across the hedge. Kevin looked up at her. "Let's go, okay?"

Kevin took one last look at the door and nodded grimly at her. It was too late for everyone to be up anyways. But Kevin knew he wouldn't be getting much sleep. There were many more long days to come.

As Kevin and Nazz walked away, rubbing shoulders, Rolf sat on the other side of the living room wall of his home, watching his father take each and every one of his final set of breaths. He had not spoken in hours, and he was far from the lively, if angry, man he had been in the sunshine.

Friedbjorn had bled all over the plastic-wrapped couch, blood pooling among the translucent folds of the covering. Freddie was pale, his eyes lackadaisical, lids hooded, breathing slow and labored. He gazed at the ceiling like his night's dreams were projected onto it, and he was watching them, half-aware, half-receptive, run by him at a sterile distance, growing further and further away as he seemed to slip from his own vision, sinking down into his brain like it was deflating, or like he was drowning in quicksand and moving just as sluggishly, and he left his eyesight behind as he slipped away.

Rolf tended to his nearly dead father. He had attempted to strap Friedbjorn's stomach back in with a roll of tin foil and a length of rope, but they just poured out onto his hands around the binds of the rope. Rolf knew how warm his father's insides were. How hot his blood was while alive. But Friedbjorn was hardly alive by midnight, and by two AM, three minutes after Kevin's fist had last rapped on his front door, Rolf's father was dead.

Rolf tended to him for several minutes more, even knowing he was dead. He sat by his father's side and looked down at his father's eyes as they stared blankly at the ceiling, jaw slightly slack, lips slightly turned upward. It was as if he'd seen an angel and not a demon that night. Perhaps, Rolf hoped in the more childish corners of his aged mind, he had. But Rolf did not believe in such things.

After taking the time to accept his father was dead, he wrapped the slipcover on the couch around his father's body, tied it with lengths of rope from the farm out back, went back outside and slept with Wilfred in the yard till the wee hours of the morning, as the cool gray light flooded the darkness through clouds. Rolf suspected from the humidity, the wind, the sky, that it would rain that day. And it would several hours later, as Rolf began work on his father's grave among the pig troughs, softening the soil. Good for digging.

The rainfall on the roof of his house shook Kevin awake, and he sat up in the recliner, trying to remember when he'd fallen asleep. Nazz laid nearby on the couch, still asleep. She had always been one for rain.

The first kid Kevin met on the Cul-de-Sac, when his parents had moved them there to relocate for his father's new job at the jawbreaker factory, had been Nazz. They'd gone to same church, when both their sets of parents had gone to church. Both sets had since stopped. It took Kevin's mom and dad till the divorce to stop going, although Kevin knew his father would slip out during the day to pray and cry at his old place of worship every once in a while. Kevin and Nazz's parents recognized each other in the pews one Sunday and set up a playdate between the two kids. Kevin hadn't been receptive, because fat people disgusted him when he was small and still did at teen age, but he quickly fell in love with Nazz after the second or third date.

Not like that. Not in love like 'in love' with Nazz. Ew. She used to be fat. And they were just friends.

It rained on that second or third date, and Kevin remembered how much Nazz loved the rain from that, although he suspected she didn't think he remembered. She loved it, told him so, and danced to its beat on the roof of her house. She had always been a free spirit like her parents. A hippie. What were they doing going to church?

But Kevin put the footrest down and set about to the day's work.

He turned and remembered with a start at the sight of it that a demon had blown through his house like a Mack truck last night and left a hole in his wall to the outside. Rain was flooding the carpet.

Kevin went out back and found a tarp, when to the garage and found a staple gun, and he woke Nazz up stapling the tarp to the hole in the wall. She sat up, groggy as all hell and irritable. Kevin told her the house was all hers and for breakfast and a shower, and she nodded and rubbed her head.

Kevin looked out the half-covered hole in the wall, out toward Jimmy's house, which he could just barely see at the very other end of the Cul-de-Sac, at the end of the roundabout.

He turned to Jonny's house and thought about Jonny for a minute before finishing covering the wall as he kept thinking about Jonny.

Kevin went to the kitchen and remembered he'd sat out all the guns in the house there late last night. What a strange place he'd been in then. To be fair, he'd just been attacked by a demon, which was something he didn't believe was real, or at least was something he thought he wouldn't encounter in a long, long time. Seemed like that fissure out in the woods was a portal to Hell. It was strange to Kevin how easy that was to believe in his head, that that crack in the ground ran straight down to Hell itself, which, he reminded himself, was something he didn't necessarily believe in either. What a world he lived in. What a world.

He ate breakfast alone until Nazz stepped up to the doorway halfway through his waffle. She told him she was going out again looking for her parents and there was nothing he could say to stop her. He wouldn't have dared try anyways and to prove it to her, as well as provide her with as much luck and good will as he could, he lent her his bike for the day, and he hand-cranked his garage door to lift it up, and watched Nazz mount his baby and ride it out of there. He went back to the kitchen and finished breakfast, then washed dishes around the same time Eddy woke up on Double Dee's couch, grumbling and trying to figure out just where the fuck he was.

He remembered after a moment, and then he felt like shit. He didn't try to go back to sleep, just got up and shuffled to the garage to see if the demon had broken out and killed Double Dee yet. All he found was Sockhead bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, humming as he worked to decypher the demon's language, flipping through one of his father's books on language, writing in his notebook intermittently. Eddy stood in the door, waiting for Double Dee to see him. After a while, he gave up and walked out again. Stood in Double Dee's house, looking at the cracked walls. Bored, he turned around and walked back into the garage.

"Where's Ed?" he asked, taking Double Dee off-guard, making him drop his pencil.

"Oh, Eddy," Double Dee sighed.

And the demon took this as its cue to start its round of foreign screaming for the day. Eddy's head hurt in the mornings, so he clamped his eyes shut, his hands over his ears, gritted his teeth and shouted, "Shut up, would ya? It's too early for this!"

Double Dee put in a pair of earplugs and said in a casual tone, "I sent Ed home early this morning, Eddy. He needed to have a real bed. And besides, he was worried sick about his mother."

Eddy grumbled in response and crossed his arms. "You got ones for me?" he grunted in regards to the earplugs.

He said it softly enough to Double Dee not to hear, but Double Dee smiled anyways and held up another pair on the workshop table. Eddy shuffled over, snatched them away, put them in and shuffled back into the house.

Jonny woke up to a knock at his door. He slipped into a shirt, grabbed up Plank from his own bed and headed downstairs. When he answered the door, nobody was there. But he did see Kevin walking back across the street from his house. "Hey, Kevin!" Jonny called, and Kevin looked back. Jonny waved and Kevin stomped back over. He approached Jonny, squinting at the sunshine even though it was overcast and raining. "You eat yet?" Kevin mumbled.

Jonny hadn't, so Kevin mumbled an invitation to his house and Jonny happily obliged.

Kevin walked Jonny back to his house. On the way. Kevin asked, "Was that you screamin' last night?"

Jonny chuckled shyly, rubbed the back of his neck and said, "Yeah. I saw something out in the woods."

"You saw the demon?'

Jonny stopped and looked at Kevin in the middle of the street.

"How'd you know that? That I saw a demon?"

"Because, woodboy, we all saw a demon last night."

"You're kidding."

"No. You said you saw it in the woods, right? That's about where I saw it last night, right beside the trailer park, right?"

Jonny frowned. "No," he said.

The two boys stood and thought in the road as Nazz watched from her living room window. She watched till Kevin and Jonny were out of view, waited around long enough for them to be back inside, then gathered up the bags she'd packed, slung them onto her back and headed out the back door. She strapped one bag to the bike rack and wore the other on her back. She was packed for an overnight trip. She mounted Kevin's bike and rode out the Cul-de-Sac for Main Street. She hadn't told Kevin, because he might not have let her gone willingly nor lent him the bike. She had only made the choice not to come back that night after he'd made the offer. She couldn't have made it far and back quickly enough without it. It was perfect.

She'd also slipped one of the pistols from Kevin's kitchen collection, and had it hidden in the pack slung across her back. She rode through the rain, picking up speed on the bike till the raindrops stung her face.

"Gee willikers, Plank, look at the arsonal!" Jonny cried at the sight of the assortment of firearms in Kevin's kitchen.

"Can't be too careful these days, Jonny boy," Kevin said, trying to sound cool. He made Jonny breakfast and they struggled to maintain conversation. At least, Jonny did. Kevin was content to a comfortable silence, but Jonny's fidgeting would allow that. Halfway through breakfast, Kevin noticed the gap in the pistol collection. He knew immediately where it had gone. With Nazz on her trip. He couldn't be too mad. She needed it. He only wished he'd offered it himself.

After eating, Kevin turned to Jonny with a grim look and said, "Do you want to come with me when I tell Jimmy about his mom and dad?"

Jonny gaped at Kevin for a minute. "Um" was all he could muster.

"Yes or no, Jonny, that's all I ask." Kevin stared at him and Jonny stared back, a deer in headlights.

"Do I gotta tell him?" Jonny managed.

"Not if you don't want to. Look, we can go over there, and whenever the situation calls for it, whoever's ready can tell him. Sound good, Jonny boy?"

"Um. We should pick who tells him. Cuz if neither of us decide which one tells what, then we might both get confused when we go over there because we'll both be thinking the other's gonna tell him, and then neither of us'll tell him, and then we'll both walk home wondering just what the hell happened."

"That won't happen, Jonny."

Jonny fidgeted with his plate, Plank diligently sitting at his side. "Yeah, I know," Jonny squeaked.

As Jonny and Kevin took the long walk down the Cul-de-Sac to Nazz's house, Rolf finished the grave he planned to bury his father in. He stabbed the shovel in a plot of earth, wiped the sweat/rain mixture on his brow, and walked back inside. His father was a huge man, and it took quite a bit of strength to drag him through the house, out back to the grave.

Rolf felt it was a disgrace to his father to drag him to carelessly through the house, and felt it would be even more so to just haphazardly knock him over into the hole, so he mustered up all the strength he had left, pulled more than a few muscles, but he hoisted his father up off the ground, up over his head, and then cast him down into the hole. He did it all right. He said a prayer for his father, then began filling the hole in.

After that, he sat in a slipcovered chair and rested. Then, he went out and fed the animals. And afterwards, he commenced to packing the house up.

Jimmy took it hard. Neither Kevin nor Jonny could blame the kid, really. Sarah sure couldn't. They would have felt the same way if they knew their parents had taken the easy way out. Sarah was angry right after they told Jimmy about his mom and dad, pissed that they had waited a whole day to do it, livid that that little freak 2x4 kid had the absolute nerve to bring his goddamned hunk a' wood along for the ride, but that all fell to the wayside for her poor baby Jimmy.

Jimmy cried at first, which Kevin, Jonny and Sarah decided was markedly better than what he did after that. But before he stopped sobbing into Sarah's blouse, pressing his brace ring into Sarah's stomach, which hurt, but she couldn't just tell him that, could she?

And before he fell silent in bed, he told Sarah, and Kevin and Jonny overheard, which was unfortunate, what poor Jimmy had to say. He told Sarah how he'd ended up hurt that day of the earthquake.

He didn't remember. But that was the horrible thing, because he could always remember. He figured he'd just been asleep, or at least half-asleep when it happened, but now he knew he'd just chosen somewhere deep down in his subconscious to ignore it all. See, the last thing he'd remembered was his parents, stiff and crying, plucking him up out of bed during the world-shaking earthquake. Then, all he knew was he was on the ground under his bedroom window, and he thought he was dying he was in so much pain. His parents, he figured, had thrown him out the upstairs window. They'd tried to kill their only son in the world. Now, what kind of parents were thoses, anyhow?

Jonny was catatonic after that revelation. Not a word in the world could shake him out of his trance. Sarah found a hole to crawl into after Kevin and Jonny left and curled up in it, and racked with sobs till she was bone dry inside and her throat hurt from it all.

Later, Kevin tried to see Rolf again. But again, he would not answer the front door. At least this time, it was not willful on Rolf's part. He was just in the middle of packing the upstairs, too far from the door to hear the raps on its surface.

On his way home, Kevin's mind was racing. Rolf's father must have been dead by now, or as good as, as far as he knew from the descriptions of the others last night. He thought about Rolf and he thought about Jimmy. He thought about Jimmy's parents. What made them do something like that? The day of the earthquake, they killed themselves. What could have driven them to do something like that? Had another demon dig its way out, and they caught a glimpse of it Bigfoot-style crossing the Cul-de-Sac that day? Or had they figured something was going on, something Kevin, Jimmy, Sarah, nobody else knew about? It killed Kevin that he'd never know what they were thinking the moment before they threw Jimmy out that window.

There were less people out that day, according to Nazz's approximation of Peach Creek as she rode past the "Now Leaving" sign and past the fissure she'd found had opened up parallel to the white lines on the highway, effectively chopping the strip of asphalt in half, the heat rising off it all but singing her right side as she rode alongside it. Likewise, there was next to nobody on the highway leading to the city. She'd pass the odd car tearing ass down the oncoming lane and the odd truck coming up from behind, riding slow as slow could be, probably taking in all the damage. If she saw someone else on foot on her way, she was sure to veer quick to the side to avoid them, whether or not they were hurt or scared or young or old, whether they were calling to her or not. She heard gunshots, screams, blood curdling screams, police sirens, and every other kind of siren known to man when she crossed the bridge into the city.

The destruction she saw on her ride was immense. The Peach Creek Fire Department, which she saw scattered in several areas, had an impossible task on their hands. Several homes, Nazz saw, had completely collapsed. The Crawdad Hut had collapsed as well, and Lih's Supply Company was smoldering from aftermath of a fire. Nazz could see several pillars of jet black smoke rising on the horizon, which could only mean there were dozens more fires across the county, and definitely more across the country. No wonder the government had not stepped in to their aid. They must have had much bigger fish to fry. She remembered watching the news on the day of the earthquake before the power went out and saw several nuclear reactors up north and west were on the brink of failure. The earthquakes had shaken several volcanoes awake, with several lucky world-ender exceptions, newscasters had gasped thankfully. Peach Creek, Lemon Brook, everybody was on their own for a while. That was if the government ever did come to their aid, if it was still in good standing after this. It might take months to get help at this rate if at all. And after that, it would take years to repair all the damages. And what about those glowing fissures? Peach Creek wasn't the only town in America with those cracking open all over the place. They were about as frequent as destroyed houses.

She was afraid to get too close to the hospital downtown or anywhere thereabouts. It would be crowded out there, and that meant interactions with people she could not avoid. That terrified her as it seemed more and more with each passing day that law was failing, and the country was collapsing. Who knew what the odd passerby on the street thought of her as she rode past? Did they see a pretty girl they could dig they fingers and way worse than that into? A girl with two big, overflowing bags full of god-knows-what valuables and the like? A victim? A warm body? A jewelry stand? Nazz was terrified of people when they weren't for sure bound to the rules of the law.

But she couldn't avoid downtown. She couldn't just ignore the hospital. That area drew people. She had a better shot of finding her parents and Jonny's parents out there. The more people there were, the better her chances. If they thought like her, took the road less travelled by, she would be screwed. But she had to make a decision.

So she made the hard one and banked toward the tallest buildings in the city. She followed the street signs from there.

She rode fast through the downtown streets where she could. In many places, pieces of the surrounding buildings had broken off and shattered on the roads. Broken glass littered the ground in most spots like snow in early winter. Nazz had to be careful with Kevin's bike through here. She passed dozens and dozens of people. Most were calm and huddled together in makeshift tent cities in the streets where the buildings seemed to dangerous to take refuge in, or were closed to the public. Cops guarded many large buildings with their front windows blown out. They were protecting company assets instead of going through rubble to save lives. Some people were still crying and screaming, although in most areas Nazz couldn't see who was screaming. Many people she rode past were injured. She saw a woman being held down by what Nazz could only hope was her family as her forehead jetting blood down her face and into her gaping mouth, which hung in an expression of horror and shock, her limbs tense and muscles tight like she was all cramped up. Cars slowly made their way through packs of people in the street. Some were civilian vehicles, others police, ambulances, fire trucks. Nazz saw a SWAT van down a perpendicular street with all its doors open and its siren going off. She heard gunshots sometimes.

Nazz, against every fiber of her being, rode past each gathering of people slowly, sure to check every face in the crowds for her parents or Jonny's parents. She saw a couple people she thought was someone she knew, but upon closer inspections, however close Nazz dared stray, she found the people strangers.

One tall building of maybe fifteen stories poured black smoke from an upper set of windows. People stood around under it, discussing how close it was to falling. Nazz rode away. Why weren't they running, if they thought it was near collapse?

She overheard talk as she rode. Moaning voices telling infirmed family that help was coming, or grieving voices asking why this had happened and where the authorities were, why wasn't anybody helping them? They hadn't seen the extent of the damages. Hadn't seen the television since the earthquake or heard the radio. The didn't know the world was a hairpin away from ending as humanity knew and loved it. Some people she passed spoke like nothing was even happening. She passed the odd member of an outlying crowd that could laugh as others told stories or jokes. She guessed everybody dealt with these things differently, and she was thankful not everybody was hopeless. If you're laughing, you're not hopeless.

She couldn't even get close to the hospital through the emergency barricades and armed guards. The hospital, it seemed, was overflowing as it was and spilling over with injured men, women and children. Guards turned people away and some grew angry and violent. There were enraged screams from the front of the barricades. In front of Nazz, even as far from the hospital as she was, was a sea of injured. Brave doctors and nurses moved among the rows of injured and they were crowded around with desperate family members of the infirmed or the injured themselves begging for hasty assistance. There was only so much help to go around. It stank out there of sweat and shit and death. Several bodies in outlying rows reeked and were swarming with flies. Most of the bodies were covered with sheets of some kind, but it seemed people had grown too attached to their covers to lend them to the dead now. She watched a man pull a comforter blanket off a corpse, ball it up in his hands and walk away with it. It gave ideas to others surrounding and they too took sheets off the corpses.

Nazz needed to get off the bike and move among the people, look for her family. She couldn't leave the bike, so she walked with it next to her, clutching it close to herself and herself close to it to make her as small as possible to fit through the tight crowds. Most people made room for her, and some people asked if she needed help. She shook her head most of the time and got tired of it after a while, so she stopped responding until one worried man grabbed her and slung her around to face him, demanding to know if she was hurt or knew where her family was. She told her she was fine and needed to get home. She got on Kevin's bike and rode off as fast as she could. She couldn't find her parents or Jonny's out there at the hospital.

She rode out of the crowded downtown and rode around till she calmed down. When she did, she took the bike down street by street through the city, looking for anyone she knew. As she rode, she passed bodies of looters shot dead in the streets or slung over storefront windows, as well as the corpses of mugging victims, robbed for everything they carried, sometimes including their clothes. She rode by a block away from a gas station that had blown up, billowing smoke into the sky. Had to be bad for the ozone, all this catastrophe.

After an hour or so of aimless riding through streets, Nazz took a break at a quiet, derelict McDonald's, where she sat on an outdoor bench and ate the lunch she'd packed for herself, Kevin's pistol on her leg as she did. She heard something inside the playground out there with her, in the plastic tunnels above but didn't know if it was human or an animal. Cars rode by. She could tell she was close to the interstate because of how many drove past. That interstate must have been a nightmare. She would steer clear of it.

But it must have been packed. Maybe her mom and dad were there. But why would they be? As a matter of fact, why would they be anywhere out there, out in the city? Looking for help? It must have been apparent by now there was no help out there. Maybe they'd looked for help and ended up dead. She hadn't even checked the piles of bodies.

Nazz noticed that she hadn't found any more glowing fissures since she'd ridden past the one going out of Peach Creek. It seemed they were more rare than she realized, thankfully. That meant fewer holes to patch up to keep the demons from getting loose. Nazz laughed as though that. What an insane thought. "That meant fewer holes to patch up to keep the demons from getting loose." The whole thing was plum crazy. She sounded like a schizophrenic just trying to describe what was happening around her.

She rode back through the metropolitan area and searched the stacks of bodies in the streets for hide or hair of her parents, and found nothing and nobody she cared about. It was strange. After seeing a few bodies on the street, nearly gagging at the sight of those, she was tossing them aside like nothing, pushing them away like a minor inconvenience, and she hadn't given one thought to the limp faces on any of those bodies she rifled through, to the minds they'd held maybe even just a few hours ago, to what each body she touched and gave little though to meant to its family members who'd lost a beloved daughter, mother, father or son, aunt or uncle or nephew or cousin. Nazz suffered.

A few hours later came nightfall. Nazz became afraid to ride the streets especially with her bags of what would be audited upon sight as valuables and Kevin's beautiful, vintage bike that would no doubt fetch a pretty penny at any pawn shop it was brought to.

She found a patch of woods just outside the city, just a small island of trees sandwiches between two winding strips of asphalt, laid the bike out next to her and pulled out her sleeping bag. She didn't sleep for a few hours after she'd laid down, more uneasy with every passing car, passing pair of footsteps, or thought that came through her mind. She was afraid all the time now. She should never have left Peach Creek or the Cul-de-Sac she surmised around 10:30 that night, but an hour later she passed out and slept hard for the next seven hours.

Back in Peach Creek, Ed took care of his sickly mother in her bed, his father downstairs in the recliner, snoring through a generated-powered marathon of Married with Children reruns, about as helpful as a loaf of bread in a hostage negotiation. Ed had been caught between two mind set all day. In one, he worried for his mother and increasingly depressed sister, especially now after Jimmy's apparent auto-vegetablization. His mother was growing sicker by the day and her health could be gauged and graphed by the rasp of her voice and the pallor of her skin, particularly on her face, where her cheeks never flushed. The other, Ed was hap, hap, happier than happy, his mind racing in a good way (compared to his other mindset) as he considered the possibilities that came from the mutant Hell beast Double Dee was keeping stashed in his garage. The only thing Ed could feel anything less than joyous about was that Double Dee was hogging the demon all to himself! They should set of time tables or something and share the horned Mephistopheles so Ed could get a turn enjoying its unknowable songs and lullabies. He was so excited when he thought about it, about what it might mean (if there was one, there had to be more, which was so cool! A hive of super-mutants living right under his feet in his very own township of Peach Creek!) and he thought he might literally explode. But he contained himself, just barely, but he did. He even managed not to go mouthing off about it to any of his family like Eddy warned him not to do. He had kept quiet all day! Eddy would be so proud. Ed was lying in his bed, just as sleepless as Nazz was a city over, his mind racing at the same time Nazz's was too, during which time Double Dee also had his wits about him, and had a sudden, delightful (well, if only in his own brain) realization.