He opened the door of the car and got in. He hadn’t noticed it from the outside, but his windshield, he saw now, was covered with spit. Saliva dripped from several spots on the glass. He looked over at the line outside the building, trying to determine who had done it, but no one glanced in his direction at all.

He turned on the wiper/washer and backed out of the parking lot, pulling onto the street. He headed toward Howard’s.

The postmaster lived on a low hill in one of the nicer sections of town. His house was in what passed for a subdivision in Willis, and was not far from the post office. Unlike the area in which Hobie lived, the single-story homes on Howard’s street were all well kept up and well taken care of.

Doug parked the car on the street in front of the white clapboard house. He turned off the ignition. There was no sign of Howard’s car, but that meant nothing. It could very well be parked in the garage.

He got out of the car and headed up the front walk. The grass, he noticed, was yellowish brown, not green like the lawns in front of the other houses. Not a good sign. Like many older people, Howard had always been a fanatic about maintaining his yard.

He stepped onto the front stoop and rang the bell, listening for the ring. Nothing. He knocked on the door instead. He waited for a few moments, then pounded again. “Howard!” he called, “are you home?”

There was no sound from within the house, and after three more tries and five more minutes he stepped off the stoop and moved over to the large living-room windows. The curtains were closed, but they were sheer and he figured he’d be able to see something inside. No such luck. Through the material he could see nothing. The interior of the house was much too dark and monochromatic for individual elements to be differentiated. He moved around the side of the house to the dining-room window, then to the kitchen, then around to the back bedroom, hoping at least that a drape would be parted, open wide enough for him to see inside, but the curtains were all firmly and carefully shut. He tried the back door, but it was locked.

“Howard!” he called, knocking.

No answer.

There were other houses flanking Howard’s, but their owners were either inside or at work, and the entire neighborhood seemed empty and abandoned. It gave Doug the creeps. He felt as though he was in one of those movies where the sun flared or some other pseudo-scientific catastrophe had occurred and he was the last man on earth, left alone to wander through the perfectly preserved artifacts of an otherwise untouched world.

A dog barked a few houses away, and Doug jumped. Jesus, he was getting skittish.

“Howard!” he called again.

No answer.