“Melanie, I’m going out.”

“You’re what?” his wife demanded from the basement. “Ronald Blake, you’re the one who insisted that we stay in and get in the basement! If you think I’m staying down here . . .”

“Woman, you stay the hell where you are. I’m going out!” he roared back over his shoulder.

The source of the voice had already ignored him, however, and was standing at the top of the stairs. “Don’t you talk to me like that. I’m not one of your floozies from your service days.”

“Don’t I know it,” he moaned as he grabbed an old flak jacket and threw it on, sliding a pistol into his belt. “They wouldn’t be questioning me right now.”

“That’s because none of them had anything other than air between their ears, and you know it. Now what the hell are you doing this for?”

“An old friend is calling out the clan,” he said as he walked to the door.

At the door to the house he paused, glancing back. “Run off more water while the pressure is still good, and stay in the basement and away from windows. That blast earlier may not be the last, and the next one might be close enough to blow the glass in.”

“We have shatterproof composite windows, Ron. You picked them out, remember?”

“Yeah, well, stay away from the windows anyway.” He grunted, pausing to think on it. Then he pulled the gun from his belt and handed it over to her. “Take this.”

“Aren’t you going to need it?”

“You saw those things on the news before they took out the cameraman,” he grunted. “That popgun won’t do a damn thing.”

“So what do I need it for?”

“For humans,” Ronald Blake said before he stepped out and closed the door behind him.

Across town, in another borough, a similar conversation was happening, though in reverse.

“What are you talking about, Janet? You can’t go out there!”

“Alan, I don’t work for you, and you sure as hell don’t own me,” the thirty-eight-year-old redhead said as she pulled on a tan vest and buckled it up.

“Who the hell is this Eric character and why are you rushing out when he calls? An old boyfriend?”

Janet snorted, shaking her head as she pulled on her boots.

Alan was a Wall Street broker, and a lot of fun in peacetime, but when Eric’s text had come over the link she’d almost thanked God aloud because the whining was getting on her last nerve. As soon as the first confirmation had hit the net that there was real fighting going on he’d all but curled up under his bed and sobbed.

She stood up and smiled at him. “It’s been fun, Alan. Maybe if we both live through this we’ll meet up again. Ciao.”

“Janet! Janet!” he yelled after her as she let herself out of the penthouse apartment and headed for the stairs. “You can’t go out there!”