“I know, but we didn’t, and now we’re doing the best we can. No matter what you hear in this bedroom, you stay in this closet, and you don’t make a sound. Cover her ears if—”

“Don’t say that.”

“If what, Daddy?”

“Oh God, don’t say that.”

“I love you, my girls. Now I have to shut this door.”

“No, Daddy!”

“Quiet, Jess,” he whispered.

Jim Turner kissed his wife.

He kissed his daughter.

Then he shut them into the bedroom closet on the second floor of their lavender-colored Victorian.

His toolbox was already open on the floor.

He flicked on his flashlight and chose a suitable two-by-four from the pieces of scrap lumber he’d carried in from the shed—remnants of a doghouse he’d built last summer.

Those warm afternoons working in the backyard . . .

Mrs. Miller’s screaming jettisoned the memory into oblivion.

“No-no-no-no-no-no-no! Oh Goooooooddddd!”

Jessica was crying in the closet, Gracie struggling to comfort her.

Jim grabbed a hammer. He started nails on each end of the board. Screws would have been preferable but there was no time. He held the pine board across the doorframe and drove the nails into the studs.

His mind wouldn’t stop.

He kept replaying what the sheriff had said, but he couldn’t wrap his head around it.

How could this be all that was left of humanity?

By the time he had four boards nailed across the doorframe, the Millers had gone quiet across the street.

He dropped the hammer, wiped his brow.

Dripping with sweat.

Kneeling down, he put his lips to the closet door.

“Jessica? Gracie?”

“I can hear you,” his wife said.

“You’re nailed in,” Jim said. “Now I have to go find a place to hide.”

“Please be safe.”

He put his hand on the door.

“I love you both so much.”

Gracie said something back but he couldn’t hear the words. Too muffled. Too faint. Too ruined by tears.

Rising to his feet, he grabbed the flashlight and the hammer—the nearest thing to a weapon in his toolbox.

At the bedroom door, he turned the lock and closed it gently behind him.

The hallway was dark.

The last half hour had been so filled with shouting and shrieks that the silence struck him wrong, like a lie.

Where will you hide?

How will you survive?

He stopped at the top of the staircase. He was tempted to use the light, but feared it might draw attention.

With a hand on the bannister for a guide, he went slowly down the creaking steps. The living room stood in impenetrable shadow. Jim moved to the front door. He’d locked the dead bolt, but he had a feeling that didn’t matter. From what he’d seen, these things were running through the windows.

Stay inside?

Go?

On the other side of the door, he heard something scrape.

Leaned into the peephole.