I guess that sounds a little on the melodramatic side, and I’m sorry I can’t make it any clearer than that, but there was just this feeling in the atmosphere. The closest thing I can think of to compare it to is the day the World Trade Center buildings went down. Remember how, when you went outside, even if there were no radios or television sets to be heard, even if you were alone, you could feel the weight of it in the air? As if the wind itself had been stopped dead in its tracks, stunned by the horror of it, and everything around you was holding its breath, wondering, What happens now?

That’s what this day had felt like to me.

Like I’d told Ethel, I hadn’t been sleeping too well the past few days, and I figured that had a lot to do with the way I was seeing things. It wasn’t like some slimy, big-ass tentacled monster was going to come dropping down on Cedar Hill like a curse from Heaven once the clouds parted and the rain stopped. I was just tired. That had to be it.

Once the van’s engine was all warmed up, I turned the heater on and in a few minutes had the inside all toasty. I pulled around in front and waited for the Reverend, who came out almost right away, carrying a cooler that I knew was full of sandwiches, as well as three Thermoses; two of hot coffee, one of hot chocolate. He slid open the side door, shoved the cooler inside, then closed the door and climbed into the front passenger seat.

“Me, too,” he said.

“What?”

He shook off the rain, ran his hand through his hair to push it back from his face, then looked right at me. “I’ve been feeling it, too.”

I blinked. “Feeling…wh-what? What’re you—?”

He shook his head. “Don’t play dumb with me, Sam. All day you’ve felt like something’s been off, haven’t you? Like something’s about to happen?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. Yes.”

“Hence my saying, ‘Me, too.’ Try to keep up.” He leaned forward and looked out the windshield, his eyes turning up toward the rain. “Makes you crazy, doesn’t it? That sense that something’s going to happen and you don’t know if it’ll be something good or something…not.”

“Either way,” I said, putting the van into gear, “we got the perfect night for it.”

The Reverend turned to me and smiled. “That’s just like you, Sam. ‘The perfect night.’ Saying something like that.”

“Oh, it’ll be all right, Mr. Frodo, you’ll see.”

I pulled away from the curb and the Popsicle Patrol officially began.

Believe it or not it was the Reverend, not me, who started calling it that. It strikes some people as offensive—Ethel, in particular, thinks it’s pretty tasteless—but the Reverend defends it by saying: “Would it be in better taste if I called it the ‘Corpse-sicle Patrol’? Because that’s what they’ll be if we don’t get to them in time. If you wish for us to change the name, then you have to make at least two runs with us. Otherwise you get no say.”