The Remnant (4 page)

"Come," she said, forcefully, motioning for
the dog to follow her into the house.

Maxie obeyed her command reluctantly, and not
without a quick glance over his shoulder toward the gate. Ashley
hurried inside and closed the door behind them, quietly locking and
deadbolting it. She rushed through the kitchen, then the den, and
into the entryway. Reaching behind her raincoat beside the door she
retrieved a sawed-off, pump shotgun. She ascertained that there was
a shell in the chamber, flipped off the safety, turned off the
front porch light. Lifting a handheld radio from a hook beside the
door she keyed it, speaking softly.

"Ashley here. Maxie spotted someone out
front. I’m going to check."

"What? Wait for backup."

She frowned. That was procedure, and simply
good survival tactics, but the thought of an invader standing at
that moment on
her
ground, threatening her, and Maxie, and
Marie, stirred a self-righteous anger within that burned like
fire.

The radio crackled again. "Ashley?"

"Won’t take a minute," she said, hanging the
radio back on the hook and turning down the volume.

A rustling sound caused her whirl.

Marie, wrapped in a cotton robe, stood in the
hallway regarding her with a quizzical, anxious expression.

"I’m sure it’s nothing," said Ashley,
watching the teenager’s bright blue eyes fall on the gun.

Marie had as much reason as Ashley to be
afraid of night visitors, but the girl had always exhibited a
determination equal to Ashley’s not to give in to her fears. Ashley
could see her back stiffen as she hurried into her bedroom,
returning with a small revolver.

"You wait here," said Ashley. "And lock the
door behind me."

The girl simply nodded her assent.

"If anyone comes through this door but me or
Maxie," said Ashley, "shoot them. Don’t talk. Shoot."

The girl nodded again.

Ashley snatched a flashlight from the shelf
above her raincoat and quietly opened the door, slipping through it
and quickly into the shadows along the wall, whispering for Maxie
to follow. The hesitant
nicking
of his nails on the
floorboards gave her heart. He might be as afraid as she was of
whoever was out there, but he wasn’t about to desert.

She quickly found the figure again, and it
definitely wasn’t a trick of the light. The thought of a man or men
invading the valley under cover of darkness stirred memories she
had struggled for years to hold at bay. She jerked in a breath,
reaching deep for the anger again, the one emotion that could
really vanquish her fear. A pressurized warmth slowly mushroomed in
her chest, and her quivering arms hardened, her grip tightening
around the shotgun once more.

"Damn you," she muttered, her finger slipping
onto the trigger.

She stepped out of the shadows and strode
with an air of confidence she hardly felt down the steps onto the
walk. The figure never moved. When she reached the last concrete
square in the lawn she crunched along the gravel drive. A light
huffing at her side assured that Maxie was still with her, but he
wasn’t quite brave enough to growl or bark or lead the way. Still
the presence of the big dog lent her courage. Only now she wondered
if it wouldn’t have been better to leave him inside with Marie to
lend the girl support. She hadn’t been thinking clearly enough, and
muddy thinking could get them all killed.

"Who are you?" she shouted when they were
thirty feet from the figure. "What do you want?"

The arm slowly dropped from the tree as the
man straightened, mountainous and muscular. Errant starlight
through the branches shone all around him, but not one feeble ray
seemed willing to settle upon his shadow as he turned away into the
deeper shadows. Ashley clicked on the flashlight.

But the figure was gone.

She flicked the light back off, but the
man-shape did not reappear as it should have had the image been
merely a moon-conjured silhouette. Maxie followed her obediently
into the trees, sniffing the underbrush, stepping lightly on
tiptoe, his hackles high, and Ashley felt as though her own
adrenalin-charged senses were now as acute as the dog’s.

But there was no one in the trees.

Maxie seemed overjoyed when she finally
headed back up the drive, racing ahead of her to wait on the top
step, barking loudly. She stopped beside him and turned, half
expecting to see the figure again, but the woods remained empty,
only the same inky, skeletal trees. She let Maxie in the front door
and followed him inside. The dog sat in the middle of the den
floor, wagging his tail and glancing contentedly from her to Marie.
The girl stared expectantly at Ashley, but all Ashley could do was
shrug.

"I guess it was nothing," she said.

But she could see that Marie didn’t believe
her. Ashley didn’t believe herself.

She closed and bolted the door behind her,
replacing the shotgun beside it and resting the flashlight on the
table. But she shook her head at the now grinning Maxie because he
was, after all, only a four-year-old dog. He didn’t have her
experience, and she knew what she felt because she had experienced
it before. The valley was no longer secure.

The Angels were back.

Surrounded by a protective barrier of
sandbags, the clapboard structure of the Meeting House had served
the Brethren for the past five years as a gathering place on days
of worship or fellowship. It had also been configured to be a
stronghold in the event of an attack with shuttered windows that
included gun slits and walls reinforced with brick, and as she
pulled into the parking lot Ashley couldn’t help but glance around
at the woods which had been cut back fifty yards on all sides to
create what Stan called a killing field. But all seemed quiet
tonight, and she wondered if she was making a fool of herself and
stirring up a passel of more anxiety the valley could do without.
Marie sat stoically in the passenger seat of the rusted Subaru,
lost in thought. Ashley understood the girl’s reticence. Talking
about evil might bring it to life.

By the time she parked the stationwagon at
the far end of a double line of thirty cars and trucks there were
only a couple of people still entering the building. A barrage of
light burst through the tall double doors, shattering the
cloud-tossed shadows that lurked amid the nearest cars, but she had
the sense that the gleams were not illuminating the night so much
as racing to escape the valley, to flee back to the stars glowing
impotently overhead. Better to vanish forever into that cold
emptiness than to remain here.

None of the valley people had been born to
this place, this life. Ashley, herself, had once experienced a very
brief window of time when her world had seemed not only full of
possibilities but of wonder, but that period seemed remote now. For
most of her life she had known distrust and terror, and on one
horrible night everyone who now dwelt in this valley had shared in
a horrible transformation.

They had all been brought together by faith.
They were held here now by fear.

Marie and Maxie followed her across the lot
to the still open doors of the Meeting House. On the top step she
spotted Stan, cradling a machine pistol in his powerful arms.

"It’s probably nothing," said the muscular,
bald man, patting Maxie and smiling at Marie. "People see things.
Even you."

She nodded, knowing he was wrong. "Did you
check with the crossroad guards?"

"Yep. Nothing."

"The perimeter?"

"Nothing crossed the motion detectors. Not
even a deer. And the sound sensors didn’t pick up so much as a twig
breaking."

"Where’s Cole?"

"He’s on crossing guard duty tonight."

She shook her head. "I saw someone, Stan,"
she insisted, watching his stern smile turn to a frown.

He shrugged, glancing one last time into the
night. "But you don’t know who or what it was, and now Paulie woke
up the whole valley."

She glanced back at the lot. No one else was
arriving. "Let’s get this over with," she muttered.

As always when Ashley passed through the
doors of the Meeting House she was struck by the way her past clung
to her present. She could imagine the thirty-odd men and women
seated in the pews singing hymns of praise and rejoicing. Instead,
tonight the room was ahum with gossip. When Ralph Prater saw her
and Stan enter and close the doors he rose behind the table and
slammed a gavel down to call the meeting to order. Ashley found a
seat beside Paulie, and Marie sat on the other side of the old man,
hugging him. Maxie lay obediently in the aisle. Several other
German Shepherds glanced at him, then lay their heads back on their
paws.

"Ashley claims to have seen an intruder in
the woods tonight," said Ralph, in his resonant voice that always
reminded Ashley of an American Anthony Hopkins. "And Paulie decided
that what she had to say should be heard by all here together,
rather than the story getting passed from mouth to ear and turning
into who knows what by morning."

Paulie was the natural leader of the
Brethren, but since the killings he had refused to accept that
position. He nodded to Ashley. Instead of walking to the table, she
simply rose again to face the crowd who all turned in their
seats.

"There was a man in the woods tonight. In
front of my house."

There were gasps from the crowd, but Ashley
ignored them.

"When I shined my flashlight on him... he
disappeared."

Murmurs echoed around the Meeting House.
Ashley knew her story sounded crazy. She could have just told them
that she’d seen a man and then lost him in the woods, but that
wasn’t what happened. She stared at the worn hardwood floor between
her shoes, wondering if maybe she
was
going mad. Perhaps the
stress of years of constantly being on the alert
had
 
finally warped her mind.

"Are you okay?" asked Paulie, leaning over to
rest a liver-spotted hand on her arm.

Paulie was the oldest member of the group and
her adopted father. At one time he had preached a pretty good
testament, stirring people’s hearts, touching their souls. His wife
Clara had been a staunch member of the community, always there when
anyone was sick or in need. Her pies and cakes were legendary. Like
Ashley, Paulie’s heart was broken when Clara and the kids were
killed, more so with his loss of faith. But he was still a loving
old man, and if there was any good left in the world, then Paulie
was living proof.

"I saw someone," she whispered.

His face darkened, the convoluted wrinkles
lining his forehead tightening like waves bunching before the bow
of a boat, but his blue eyes glinted with a wry humor and love of
life, not fear. Paulie carried within him an unfathomable sadness,
but within its depths still lay a trickling wellspring of hope, and
he would go to his grave facing life the same way Ashley did. Head
on.

"Then convince ‘em," he said.

"Ashley?" said Ralph.

"I know what I saw," she said, in a firm,
clear voice. "The man was watching my house. I don’t know who he
was or how he got into the valley undetected, but he was
there."

She glanced from face to face. Most were
fearful, some confused, a few seemed angry-at her, at the
invader-whoever he might be-at the world that was so unfair. She
understood and sympathized with each and every one of them.

"Why don’t you just come out and say it?"
shouted Elizabeth Crowley from the front row. "It was an
Angel."

Ashley glanced at Marie, not surprised to see
the girl cringe.

"We don’t know that," said Emery Tyson,
shaking his gray head.

Murmurs sounded again then grew to an uproar
before Ralph slammed his gavel down again.

"We don’t have enough information to go
saying that," shouted Ralph. "Each and every one of you has a right
to speak, and you’ll all get your turn if you want one. But right
now Ashley still has the floor."

Paulie nodded his encouragement, and Ashley
drew strength from the old man.

"Maxie was whining tonight. He never does
that. He’s a good dog, and not afraid of much."

Paulie smiled at her and shook his head. A
few people chuckled. She stared into Maxie’s trusting face, glad he
didn’t understand the implied insult to his dogship.

She repeated the story, trying not to omit
anything. There was nothing for her to hide from these people. They
had all shared far too much for subterfuge. If some of them thought
she was crazy or overcome with fear and seeing things, so be it.
They all knew what it meant if the Angels had invaded the
valley.

"Maybe you and Maxie was both just
overwrought," said Pete Bell. His face said that he was hoping that
was all it was. She liked Pete almost as much as she did Paulie.
"You might have just scared yourself into believing it."

She shrugged, not wasting her breath on
further argument.

"This
figure
you witnessed," said
Ralph, clearly passing over naming it, "didn’t speak to you,
then?"

She shook her head, shivering. The last thing
she wanted to think about was having a conversation with an Angel.
She bit her lip so hard she tasted salty blood on her tongue.

"All right, all right," said Ralph as people
started muttering again. "We aren’t going to get anywhere with
everybody gabbing at once. We have two things to think about. Who
or what it was that Ashley saw and what the heck it or he was doing
there. Who wants to go first?"

People looked all around, but no one stepped
up. That was usually the way of it. Most monthly meetings were
nothing more than Ralph notifying the group about stocks of
supplies, the financial situation-which didn’t really change that
much-or discussing this or that person who might have gotten ill
since the last meeting. Over the past five years there had been a
couple of other times when someone thought they saw something
strange or came into contact with an outsider, but tonight no one
had much else to add. So, it surprised Ashley when Paulie climbed
slowly to his feet.