They did this under threat of death from terrifying creatures beyond their imaginations. Most of these people didn’t have a missing child in their immediate family, but almost all of them knew someone who did. Though hardly to the scale of the Milk Carton Epidemic, the Internet Epidemic was in full swing: social networking sites had been blanketed by posts from parents attaching photos of their missing kids and giving the details on the last reported sighting, and these posts had been faithfully reposted by friends.

Now there were the missing children, right there on the field.

They’d all heard the sound bites from Sergeant Gulager on local TV, about how the community’s best chance of defeating this crisis was by pulling together. And so they did. With backpacks, seat cushions, and bare fists they faced the Gumm-Gumms, and within seconds the bleachers were a sea of flailing limbs of both human and troll variety. Football players from both teams got into the act, ramming helmets into troll stomachs and absorbing savage attacks through shoulder pads.

It was an inspiring, though hopeless, display. In just one minute, blood-red slashes appeared across dozens of defending arms, and the frightened and confused humans turned to the most desperate of maneuvers, scurrying through the gaps in the bleachers and curling into fetal balls, while the trolls continued to rip and slobber and swipe.

Gulager ran down the side of the bleachers with his sidearm raised—but what could he shoot at? Every Gumm-Gumm was locked in close combat. Gulager tripped on a pair of discarded Steve Smackers and went tumbling. He got to his feet, picking up the noisemakers to toss them aside, and then paused, weighing them in either hand. He perked up his head, searched about wildly, and sprinted to where the drama club were cowering within their plywood castle. Gulager accosted Mrs. Leach, who nodded and pulled out the microphone that would have been used to amplify RoJu.

Gulager’s voice boomed through the stadium speakers.

Not once did he stutter.

“USE THE SMACKERS! PICK THEM UP! THEY’RE EVERYWHERE! YOU CAN DO IT! FIGHT BACK! FIGHT BACK!”

No ordinary voice could command the attention of a populace so overwhelmed with fright. But Sergeant Gulager had been the man whom San Bernardino had depended on through trials of every sort, and that kind of trust ran deep. Parents and teens and elderly alike reached for the nearest Steve Smacker and delivered their best roundhouse blow to the closest troll. The Gumm-Gumms were flummoxed; the plastic blasts were so much more rhythmic than anything heard in the underworld, and the bright colors were blinding to those who lived among dim shades of brown and black. The crack of the Smackers, what to me had been the most irritating noise in existence, became something else altogether: the sound of hope.

“Jim! Jim!”