S1, E7 The Strangers

In  Episode 6, at the conclusion of Part 1 of the novel, Severn and the kids—Tommy and Vi—awakened from their drugged sleep to find the storms had passed and that electrical devices, and cars, were working again. After driving to town and finding it reeking with the dead, they left for Severn’s father-in-law’s farm, a rural expanse with relatively few human inhabitants. In Part 2 of the novel, we pick up with Episode 7, after almost a full year has passed on the farm without another lurching.

Transcript

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This is Ed Falco on the air, reading The Strangers, a novel in 18 episodes. In episode 6, I'm Ed Falco. At the conclusion of Part 1 of the novel, Severn and the kids, Tommy and Vi, awakened from their drugged sleep to find the storms had passed and that electrical devices and cars were working again. After driving to town and finding it reeking with the dead, They left for Severn's father in law's farm, a rural expanse with relatively few human inhabitants. In part two of the novel, we pick up with episode seven, after almost a full year has passed on the farm without another lurching. For the first few months on the farm, they feared every gathering storm. Eventually, as summer turned to fall and fall to winter, and each storm was nothing more than a fluctuation in the weather, they came to accept that the events were over. Severn settled on a theory of the lurchings as a natural phenomenon. An unknown occurrence of a sort that perhaps happened periodically, with intervals of millions of years. Though it also seemed possible that the lurchings were the result of some cosmic chaos, some mysterious event perhaps occurring somewhere off in space and producing this murderous effect on Earth. Still, The inexplicable nature of the events, the way they killed only those who were awake, the way they killed only human beings and no other form of life, all that continued to mystify Severn. The nights when he couldn't sleep, when accompanied only by sage, he'd walk through the fields and woods of the hundreds of acres surrounding their farm, were many. They had found the farm abandoned. Sarah's parents had probably been off traveling somewhere, as was usual for them. They hired others to attend to whatever needed attending while they were on the road. But Severn and the kids hadn't found a single body anywhere on the farm. In the weeks after they settled into the house, when they had driven to each of the surrounding farms, They had found and buried a dozen bodies, with bulldozers and backhoes readily available. The burying had not been physically difficult. But the bodies, by the time they found them, were horribly decomposed, and that was difficult. The nearest town was Millersville, some thirty miles away, and the nearest city was Lynchburg, which was more than an hour away. Millersville was a decent sized town with a population of 9, 000 or so, and they'd been able to find everything they needed in its various stores and shops. Severn taught both Vi and Tommy to drive, and they had made several trips to Millersville with pickup trucks to load up on supplies. Throughout those first months, Severn had kept himself and the kids busy. Days they worked stocking up on everything from hay and seed to tools and feed. Nights they spent reading books they found in the Millersville library. Books that explained how to do things ranging from slaughtering animals, to making butter, to building shortwave radios. By the time winter arrived and the first snows fell, they had fallen into a daytime routine of assigned chores and responsibilities. They ate their meals together, and in the evenings they sat together in the living room around a pot bellied wood burning stove, where sage and sterling curled up on a square of plush carpeting. Those winter evenings, mostly they talked about the day, and about the past and future. Tommy had joked once about Vi and he being the new Adam and Eve, and Vi had told him not to get any ideas, that she was still only thirteen years old. Severn had changed the subject, seeing Vi's awkwardness, but he thought that, if nothing changed, eventually Vi and Tommy would start a family. It was possible that they were the only three people left on Earth. Possible, but not certain. Maybe not even likely. And because of that, Severn and Tommy and Vi still talked about searching for others. Early that winter, Vi turned 14, and then a month or so later, Tommy turned 16. Severn turned 40, but didn't mention it to the kids. Both Tommy and Severn had grown lean and muscular from the hard physical labor of establishing the farm. In Tommy's case, he had put on weight. He remained wiry and build, but his frame was now sleek with a layer of knotty muscles. At 5'11 he was still a couple of inches shorter than Severn, but he looked like he might grow a bit before he reached his full height. Severn had lost weight, maybe as much as 20 pounds, though he wasn't bothering to check. There was hardly any fat left on his body. He was as solid as he'd been in his late teens and early twenties when he played football in high school and college. Vi had filled out in the ways of a young woman. She took to wearing dresses occasionally and experimenting with makeup. One Saturday afternoon she disappeared for a few hours with one of the pickup trucks. When she returned with several boxes she explained that they were feminine supplies and that she needed them and she wasn't about to go get them with Severn or Tommy. Nonetheless, she promised never to go anywhere alone again. It was too dangerous. They all understood she was too important. The way things were at that time, she might have been the most important person on earth. She was also, thankfully, extraordinarily capable of taking care of herself. She had become an excellent shot with both a rifle and handgun. All three of them spent many afternoons at target practice, often devising competitions. And Vi was near as good a shot as Tommy, who was an excellent marksman. Severn wasn't bad. But after winning a few competitions in the earliest weeks, he never again beat either of the kids. Both Tommy and Vi had learned to drive motorcycles soon after learning to drive pickups. Severn had brought back several dirt bikes, ATVs, and motorcycles from a dealership in town, and they used them for getting around the farm and making short trips to neighboring farms or when necessary to Millersville. For the most part, though, they only went to town when it couldn't be avoided because of the bodies. All through the spring and summer, when they had to go to Millersville, they could always smell the place long before they got there. Then there were the dogs. And they were always a danger. For that reason, no one went anywhere without an assault rifle on his or her shoulder. And Sage and Sterling were confined to the house, or an area of the front yard off the front porch, that Severn and the kids had carefully fenced in. After the first storm in mid December had dropped a couple of feet of snow, packs of dogs pretty much had disappeared from the farm. The rest of the winter had been unusually severe. With lots of snow and two storms that Severn counted as blizzards. For the last weeks in January and all of February, Severn and the kids hadn't traveled beyond the farmhouse and the surrounding fields and barns. Severn, during those winter months, had fallen into a dark state of mind. He wanted to walk off along a wooded trail and just keep walking until the elements or the dogs put an end to it all. Sometimes the only way he could get himself out of bed in the morning was by thinking about walking into the hills and not turning back. That picture of himself following a trail into the deep woods became a sustaining image. Then, late in March, when the snow was all melted and the roads were messy but passable, he took the Comanche, one of the ATVs, into Millersville by himself. The rule was that no one traveled anywhere off the farm alone. But the day was sunny and warm, and the winter had been unusually severe and long. He wanted to get away from the kids and the farm, and the mud and his routine chores. There were some things he needed from town, work gloves and overalls and a new ratchet wrench, but that, he understood, was just an excuse to get away for a couple of hours. He had spent the morning cleaning up the dairy barn with the kids. After lunch, they went off to spend some time skeet shooting. He told them he was going to work on repairing fence. Instead, he took the Comanche and started from Millersville. The road to town was riddled with cracks and potholes and littered with rocks and tree limbs. Severn was taken by how quickly nature was overwhelming anything made by man. How long, he wondered, before the natural world swallowed up every sign of civilization. In his mind's eye, as he drove slowly along the debris littered road, he imagined fires burning through towns, earthquakes leveling cities, tsunamis washing away villages. He imagined the human world day by day being worn down and blown away and washed off into the sea until all that remained was a wilderness that had consumed every effort and effect of every human being who had ever lived. Part of him felt the tragedy of that erasure, and another part of him felt the glory of it. He imagined the greenery of the trees and brush interspersed with wildflowers and mosses and multi hued ground cover and grasses, and it all seemed to him then like the skin of an elemental force, a power eternal and unending and endlessly varied. For a few moments, piloting his ATV along a wrecked roadway surrounded by trees, he felt a powerful urge to take the Comanche off the road and drive into the woods as far and fast as he could until the thing ran out of gas and left him alone in the middle of nowhere. And from there, he would just keep walking, until he joined all the others. His family, his friends, and Sarah. In the grip of that urge, Severn pulled up the Comanche next to a toppled highway sign and cut the engine. At first, the silence felt complete. Once the roar of the engine ceased, there seemed to be no other sound in the world to replace it. Then, slowly, the smaller sounds emerged. A breeze through the woods. Then a bird started up, calling on and off. And then, someplace else. Something else. Faint, in the distance, a drumming sound, irregular, maybe woodpeckers. The sound seemed to be coming from over the hill toward the outskirts of Millersville. Severn started up the ATV and took it off the road, weaving his way around trees and straight up a steep hillside toward the sound. Halfway up the hill, he came to a rock ledge and had to turn back and weave his way parallel to the rocks until he found a grassy slope that was steep but looked possible. He gunned the engine and the front wheels lifted as the back wheels dug in and powered him up the slope above the ridge and then on to the top of a hill where he found himself looking down at a highway and a convoy of SUVs heading into Millersville. He counted six. Six SUVs. He was deaf then from the drumbeat of his own heart. Six SUVs moving steadily along the highway into Millersville. He was dizzy for a minute, unable to think. He dropped his head to the handlebars of the Comanche because he thought he might faint. He closed his eyes, and the momentary darkness pulsed with his heartbeat. When the light headed in his past, he looked down at the highway again and saw that the SUVs were landcruisers, six long Toyota landcruisers, three of them late models and three of them the old FJ40s that looked like Jeeps. He remembered the binoculars then, in the cargo box, and he spun around and retrieved them in time to catch the last of the convoy before it rounded a bend out of sight. Through the rear window, he glimpsed a car full of people. He counted six, four in the back, two in the front, including the driver, three women, three men. He tossed the binoculars into the cargo box and started down the hill toward the highway, but in short order found that route impossible, given several lines of rock ledges. He turned the Comanje around, made his way back down the hill to the road, and started from Millersville. The road he was following would take him into the opposite end of town from where the land cruises were heading. His thoughts, as he drove, were scattered. More questions than thoughts. Who were they? How had they survived? Why, in God's name, were they heading to Millersville? He was full of questions and an excitement that verged on hysteria as he navigated fast as possible over the debris littered road. It occurred to him that the rifle he had slung over his shoulder might be taken as a sign of hostility, and he slowed down and took it off. When he couldn't find a place to conceal it in the ATV, he tossed it away into the woods. He was about to gun the engine when he looked up and saw a boy and a girl, a couple of children, maybe seven or eight years old. The boy was wearing blue jeans and a rust red t shirt, and the girl had on a blue dress. They were both blondes, the boy with short hair, the girl with hair down past her shoulders. There were a couple of beautiful kids standing on the top of the hill and looking down at him. And then they turned and walked away casually. They didn't seem in the least bit frightened or upset. They simply turned and walked back over the hillside. Severn was torn between following the road into town or climbing the hill in pursuit of the children. Because the children were closer, he spun the Comanche around and drove along the side of the road until he found an opening in the trees wide enough for access. He wound his way through trees to what looked like a walking trail, and he followed it straight up the hill and into a field that continued climbing. When he reached the crest of the hill, he saw the children again. They were walking toward a group of people, men and women and teenagers, who were busy working on a pair of houses, cleaning up the landscaping, and making what looked like minor repairs. The children had glanced back over their shoulder at him before they continued on their way. Severn cut the engine and looked down at the scene. He saw that a few of the adults had noticed him too. They looked up at him and then went back to work as if nothing were amiss. Once he turned off the ATV, their voices floated in the air, drifted up the hill to him. And it was like nothing he had ever heard before. Every once in a while, one or more of the people working at the bottom of the hill would look up, as if curious about him, and though he had no idea what they were saying, he felt sure that he was the subject of their conversation. Their voices were part song, part speech, a language full of clicks and buzzes and musical notes that sounded more like complex bird song than speech. His first thought was that they were human beings who spoke like birds. His second thought was that they weren't human beings. He started the Comanche again, spun it around and drove away several hundred feet, but he retrieved the binoculars, left the ATV in a patch of the woods, and then climbed the hill again, keeping low this time, out of sight. When he neared the crest of the hill, he got down on his belly and crawled through grass until he came to a spot where he could see down the hill without himself being seen. The houses were situated at the end of a winding country road, a couple of modern looking ranch houses with fenced in backyards. The ordinary storm rot damage, aggravated by a year of abandonment, was largely repaired on both houses or in the process of being repaired. A couple of men were on each roof, replacing torn away shingles. There looked like there might have been some flood damage in one of the houses. Brooms and mops and buckets were scattered around the back door, and several people were carrying furniture and rugs into the house. Severn noticed while he watched that there was something different about the way they walked. They lifted each foot with each step a little higher than ordinary, producing a walk that resembled a trotting horse. It wasn't as extreme as all that, but it was noticeable. A slight trot to their walk. Other than that, there was nothing different about them. They were ordinary looking people. Some of the women were pretty, some were not. Some of them were tall and some were short. Some were muscular, some were skinny. There was no one he noticed who was fat. He made a note of that checking it off. Somewhere in the back of his mind, their hair was the ordinary human range from blonde to black. The U of their skin ranged from pale to dark with a couple of women looking like they had deep tans. For the better part of an hour, Severn observed them, and aside from the way they spoke and walked, everything else about them looked human and ordinary. But they weren't human. Somehow, Severn understood that. He was sure of it. In a field behind one of the houses, he spotted a small bulldozer and a pile of debris. The country road was clear as far as he could see. He guessed they had gathered up the debris from the road and dumped it in the field. And he guessed there would be bones and human remains in that pile of debris. What was left of a human body after it lay exposed through a hot summer and hard winter. Not much, not much more than bones and teeth. The cleanup would be easy. Even the smell, Severn thought, would be gone after a year. He trained the binoculars on another house, farther up the road, and saw no activity. He counted eight more houses before the road curved out of sight, and he saw no activity in any of them. Severn whispered the word, strangers, because that was how he had started thinking of these beings already, as strangers. He noticed that the two houses at the end of the road, the one the strangers were working on, were the newer and bigger houses. He guessed they were built relatively recently, probably by retirees who sold their expensive houses in the city somewhere and brought themselves dream houses in the country. He figured if he had to pick two houses to live in out of the ten he could see, those would be the two he'd pick. Behind him, coming from the woods, Severn heard the barking of dogs. He pressed himself down into the dirt and then cursed himself for tossing his rifle away. He tried to remember how far away he had left the Comanche and he considered jumping up and bolting for it, betting that he could get to it before the dogs got to him. He was hidden, though, in tall grass. And the dogs had easier targets, it seemed to him, down the hill. None of the strangers were carrying weapons any more lethal than a hammer. He wondered about that, why they weren't armed given the danger of roaming packs of dogs. And then, while they lay face down in the dirt, he heard the dogs barking as they crested the hill and started down toward the houses. At the approach of the dogs, a loud chatter arose among the strangers. The ones working on the houses turned and called, and others came out of the houses as if to greet the dogs, who approached the strangers easily, as if they were comfortable with them. Severn looked closer, using the binoculars, and he saw that the strangers were feeding the dogs treats, which they pulled from their pockets, and then others brought them bowls of food from out of the houses. In short order, the dogs were playing with the strangers, were lying peacefully in the sun. Then the chatter and calling that had arisen at the dogs approach quieted down and the strangers went back to work. Severn slithered away in the grass until he was out of sight of the strangers and then hurried back to the ATV. For a minute or two he sat quietly on the machine holding the handlebars and he went over what he had just witnessed. He let himself consider that he might be out of his mind or dreaming, but quickly discarded the thought. The ordinary world had gone missing a year ago, with the first lurching. He was living in an extraordinary time, a time where nothing from the past could be used to predict the future. Strange beings who spoke like birds and walked like trotting horses? Yes, that would have been crazy a year ago in the old world, but this was a new world, and this was happening. He hesitated before starting up the Comanche and then reminded himself that they had already seen him, and that none of the strangers seemed to think anything of it. They wouldn't, he said aloud, thinking that even close, through binoculars, they would They didn't look any different from him. They would have thought he was one of them. His next thought was that there must be more of them, including the ones he had seen approaching the town in a caravan of landcruisers. Enough of them, at least, that they weren't surprised to see someone they didn't know riding an ATV through the hills. Severn drove down to the road, not sure where he was going until he got there and turned the Comanche toward Millersville. He had been gone from the farm for a couple of hours already and the kids would have noticed at this point that he was missing. He worried then that they might come looking for him, but they had no way of knowing where he was, and they wouldn't think of town first. They'd go up into the woods, where he'd typically take off to be alone. More likely, though, they would go about their chores and wait for him to return. He wondered how he would explain all this to them, and then he wondered what this would mean, what they would have to do in response. He piloted the ATV cautiously toward town, and when he passed the first house lined streets and found the houses empty, he was relieved. He drove slowly, looking in windows of the homes, and he saw nothing. He was in the old section of town, driving past lovely old houses that dated back to the 1920s and earlier. Some of them had been damaged by the storms, and there were broken windows and gutters torn loose. But these houses had been lovingly kept up before the lurchings, and for the most part, they were still in good repair. In this neighborhood of old houses that went on for a half dozen blocks, he saw no signs of life. When he reached the newer developments, with the more modern and spacious houses, he found the first of the strangers. There were dozens of them, living in the best houses. Kids were on the street, people in the yards, and in general there was a sense of lazy activity. It felt like a Saturday or Sunday afternoon with people out and working on their houses or gardens. Kids scurried along the sidewalks playing with each other. Again, their voices were more like birdsong than human voices, and they all moved with a trot like gait. Cars were parked on the street, along with heavy machinery, bulldozers and dump trucks, backhoes and tractors. Then a car passed him on the road, a BMW with a young woman at the wheel. When another pair of cars came along the road behind her, Severn pulled the Comanche to the side and slowed down while they went round him. Once again, neither the kids nor the adults paid him any more attention than a passing glance. They did, though, seem to take notice of his presence, and he worried that someone would try to talk to him. When he reached the center of town, which used to consist of a dozen blocks of shops and restaurants, he was surprised to find that all but a few of the houses had been leveled and the debris already hauled away. The town had been reduced to a fraction of what it used to be. Where there used to be buildings, there were now fields of dirt. It looked to Severn like they had leveled the buildings, filled in the basements with dirt, and hauled the debris away. Town was now only a few blocks long. And those few blocks were full of strangers. In what remained of the town, a couple of blocks of shops and restaurants, groups of strangers moved along the street. As Severn approached this area, driving slowly along a road that cut through fields of leveled businesses and homes, he noticed that there were no cars or vehicles parked on the street, though there had been cars parked on the street in the residential areas. He pulled up the ATV next to a dump truck, cut the engine, and sat quietly observing the strangers as they went about their business only fifty feet or so away from him. He was getting used to their voices already, the quiet chirps and hums and clicks they made as they talked back and forth. When a couple of men on the street in front of what looked like a small grocery store stopped and stared at him, Severn swung himself off the ATV and started fiddling with the engine. Crouched beside the vehicle, pretending to be adjusting the throttle, he watched the two men, and when they started his way, he casually got back on the Comanche, started it up, and drove off, leaving them on the street, looking after him. By the time the racket Severn's heart was making as it pounded in his chest quieted down, he was back on the road to the farm alone. He had the throttle opened up all the way, and when he realized that he was driving recklessly, swerving around rocks and branches, braking and accelerating like a maniac, he slowed down. He worked to manage his thoughts, which were bouncing around like pinballs. He kept looking off to the side of the road, off into the hills and trees and fields, fearful of being observed, wondering if there were strangers here too, living perhaps in the occasional houses off the road. He doubted it. This was a back road, lightly used even before the lurchings. It didn't go anywhere except to connect up again with a highway another twenty miles past the farm. It was a lonely country road, a back road that wound through woods and farms, and the strangers would have cleared it by now had they been using it. It wasn't clear. It was a mess of rocks and rubble and tree limbs, so they hadn't been this way yet, the strangers. When he settled on that, his thoughts slowed down a little bit. He still had some time. The weather remained sunny and warm, and he thought to himself that it was a beautiful spring day, and once again he was in the midst of a reality so strange that it was nearly impossible to grasp. It occurred to him, like a newly emerging idea, that those creatures he had just observed were his wife's murderers. His wife, A'isha. And perhaps every human being on earth lest the three of them, lest Severn, Tommy and Vi. The thought frightened him, and infuriated him, and finally left him confused. He wondered what might happen if they simply announced themselves to the strangers, walked into town and said, here we are, you missed us. He didn't like any of the possibilities that came to mind. Most likely they'd be killed. What else could he assume if they'd killed off the rest of the species? Or maybe they'd be kept as pets, or specimens to be observed in zoos. At the farmhouse, Sage was waiting for him with her nose pressed to the screen door. He patted her and wrestled with her a bit in greeting and then pushed her back toward the living room where Sterling was lying listlessly on his square of carpeting. In the dining room he found the kids. One at each end of the dining table, their hands folded in front of them. They looked like parents waiting to have a serious talk with a troublesome child. Vi was wearing a bright yellow flowery summer dress that was a size too small for her and Tommy had on black dress slacks and a dressy gray shirt. A lot of what they wore had been scavenged from the surrounding farmhouses and it wasn't unusual for them to look like they were wearing someone else's clothes, as they did then. Severn said, What's going on? and took a seat at the center of the table between them. Tommy said, You went off the farm alone. Vi said, That's your rule, Severn. You made that rule. Severn said, You're right. I broke the rules and I apologize, but in this case, it turned out to be lucky for us. Really? Tommy said. Why? He sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. Because, Severn said. And then he got up and went to the kitchen. Over his shoulder he called back, I have something to tell you and I'm trying to find a way to say it. Vi looked worriedly at Tommy, her eyes welled with tears. Severn noticed the tears when he returned to the table with a jug of water and three glasses. He asked her what was wrong, and she shook off the question. She told him, Go ahead and say whatever it is you was about to say. He slid a glass in front of her and filled it with water. Millersville is inhabited. I saw them. The ones inhabiting it. Tommy pulled a glass in front of him and filled it with water. Say that again. What do you mean? Millersville is inhabited. I mean, there are people living there. There are people living there who look like people, but they're not. They look like us, but they're not us. Vyse said, I don't get what you're saying. Tommy said, neither do I. Are you telling us aliens have taken over Millersville? Both kids were looking at Severn as if he might be dangerous. Vyse said, there are people in Millersville? She sounded as if she was still trying to grasp that possibility. What people? What did they look like? Were they like families? Soldiers? Severn said they looked like ordinary people, not soldiers. If they look ordinary, Tommy jumped in, what makes you think they're not? Vi said, did you talk to anyone? Did you ask anyone what was going on? I didn't talk to anyone, Severn answered, because they don't talk like us. To Tommy he said, That's how I knew they weren't human. They talk like, like you might imagine a six foot tall bird might talk. It's not human speech. It's more like bird song. They click and hum and sing. Vi said they could be foreigners. Maybe the lurchings didn't happen in, like, parts of Africa, and now they've come here. Tommy looked at Vi as if trying to read her. African survivors are in Millersville? He turned to Severn. Were they black? Severn shook his head. It's not human speech, he said. You have to hear it. Good idea, Tommy said. Let's go. We need to see this. Hesitantly, Vi asked Severn, Is that something we should do? Go see them? Severn sat back in his chair and took his time finishing off his glass of water. When he put the glass down, he waited another few seconds until he was sure he had their complete attention. Carefully, he asked, Do you guys really think I'm crazy? Do you think I've lost my mind? For an awkward few seconds neither Tommy nor Vi answered. Then, Vi said, We don't think you're crazy, Severn. Tommy added, But we are, like, really worried about you. I mean, that's what we were wanting to talk to you about. Vi said, We're just worried is all. Severn asked about what? About you being depressed, Tommy said forcefully, as if he had just hit on the subject he had wanted to talk about all along. You think we don't see it? Vyse said, We're not blind, Severn. Tommy said, Every time you go off alone, we're afraid you're not coming back. He was speaking louder, leaning forward over the table. Vyse said, He doesn't mean that. Tommy said, Yes, I do. My father killed himself. I've been around depression before. I've been around crazy people before. My father was like He nodded toward Severn. He was like you, especially in the morning. Can't look at anybody. Can't hardly speak. After a long moment of Severn and Vi staring at Tommy, and Tommy staring back at them, Vi said, Your parents were killed in an automobile accident. Tommy sighed as if exhausted and pushed his chair back from the table. Not really, he said. And he got up and went out to the screen door to the front porch without saying anything more. Vi said to Severn, I thought his parents were killed in a car accident. Severn asked, Am I really that bad? Are you guys really worried that I'm going to kill myself? I wasn't at first who I said. I thought you were just moody in the morning. But then, Tommy, Severn said, I'm sorry. A moment later he added, I'm not out of my mind, and I won't ever leave you two alone. I give you my absolute word on that, Vi. Do you trust me? When Vi nodded, he said, Okay. So that's settled. He looked toward the porch and then back to Vi. Do you think I'm crazy? Tommy, who was standing beside the screen door to the porch just out of sight, called into the dining room. We don't think you're crazy, Severn, but could you like, maybe somehow be mistaken? He moved in front of the door and looked back into the house. Look at it from our point of view, he said. We want to believe you, but man, aliens that talk like birds have taken over Millersville? He squinted up his face into a comic grimace. Severn said, Did you hear me tell Vi that I'm sorry? Dude, you're right there. Yeah, I heard you. Severn said, I'm sorry about your father. Vi said, Yeah, me too, Tommy. Tommy said, Dude. My mother died in a car accident about a year before my father died. He shrugged as if to say there was nothing to be done about any of it, and then disappeared again out of the frame of the screen door. Severn followed Tommy out to the porch, with Vi and the dogs behind him. Tommy was sitting in a white cane rocker, looking out at the fields and rocking himself easily. Severn and Vi pulled up chairs alongside him and the dogs bolted out into the front yard. Severn said, I haven't lost my mind. I know this sounds crazy, but look at where we are. Look at what we've been through. It's crazy, but it makes more sense than any of our other theories did. He put a hand on the arm of Tommy's chair to stop the rocking. I could never wrap my mind around a natural event that killed off only humans, he continued, while leaving every other life form from worms to birds perfectly healthy. It didn't make any kind of sense. This, this I can wrap my mind around. This is within my frame of reference. It's like a drug we'd developed to kill off only one kind of cell, like if we were fighting a particular kind of cancer. What is, Vi said. What happened, Tommy answered for Seven, the lurchings. What I'm saying is that I can comprehend someone devising a means to kill off only one particular species on a planet. Severn sat back in his chair, leaning away from Tommy. That's comprehensible. It's not a lot different than us devising a way to kill off only one kind of microorganism in the human body. And now, seeing what I've seen in Millersville, he looked from Tommy to Vi. Needing them to believe him. After a while, Tommy said, So, like, are we in danger again? Vyse said, yeah, if they killed everybody else, are they going to kill us? Severn said it's a possibility. Vyse said, so now what do we do? Severn took his time and explained his thinking. In the process, He told them the whole story of his trip to Millersville, narrating everything that had happened from his first sighting of the children, to the dogs coming over the hill, to his trip into town. He wanted them to start packing immediately, to gather up supplies and move them into the RV, which he would drive up into the woods on the south end of the farm, where they could look down on the farmhouse and the road. They'd take the ATV and the dirt bikes, they'd each load up backpacks, and they'd fill cargo boxes in the ATV with essentials, so that if they had to run, they'd be able They'd run with the supplies they needed. Vyse said, Do you think they'll come out here? Severn said, Eventually. Yes. That seems likely. Tommy said, I want to see these things. These bird people. Vyse said, I don't. They look like us. Tommy asked. But they talk like birds? Their walk is different, too. Severn said. They lift their feet almost like a horse trot. He got up and demonstrated, finding the gate easy to mimic. Dude, Tommy said, You look like some guys in Brooklyn bopping down the street. Dude. Good, Severn said. Thanks. That's what it looks like. So, Tommy said, can we go? Can we check them out? When Severn didn't answer right away, Tommy pressed. You said they saw you. You were like 50 feet away from them, right? We don't look any different from them, Severn said. But if they hear us speak or see us walk, we won't get out of the car, Tommy said. We'll just drive through town. Vi said emphatically, I don't want to do that, that's crazy. You can stay, Tommy said. Why do you want to go? Because, dude. Don't you want to see them? What? Vi said. The things that killed my whole family and everybody else? Do I want to see them? Not really. Tommy looked at Severn as if he were the referee. Severn said, If we took the Hummer with the tinted windows, they wouldn't be able to see in the car. Vi said, But why would we want to, Severn? Why would we want to go near them? To learn what we can? To see what we can figure out about them? We should probably observe them and learn as much as we can before they make their way out here. Why? Vi asked, urgently. Her arms crossed over her chest. Severn said, You don't have to come, Vi. Right, she said, and dropped her arms to her side in exasperation. Tommy said, Dude, We'll let you take the baseball bat. Don't you get this, Vyse said? You think this is funny? She glared at Tommy and then went off into the house as if she were finally fed up with everything. Severn lifted himself onto the porch railing and looked out at the fields and hills. The weather was relentlessly glorious, the late afternoon sun shining through the trees adding a reddish tint to the leafy branches. Spring was exploding through the hills and fields in cascades of green and white and red. Soon the purple red buds would blossom, and the dogwoods and the pear and apple trees with their white flowering. Severn wondered if they would appreciate it, these strangers. Would it be as much of a wonder and a joy to them as it had been for Sarah, who loved spring so intensely that she would hike alone for hours along mountain trails and then come home and write about what she'd seen in her journal? She thought of spring as one of God's great gifts, eternally recurring. She listed the wildflowers in her journals and sketched them below the descriptions. She wrote poems that she would let no one else read. Though occasionally she would read one to Severn at night, before bed. She'd reach alongside her to her night table, where she kept her journal, and she'd ask, May I read this to you, Severn? Severn heard her again in his mind as clearly as if she were in bed beside him. May I read this to you, Severn? Dude, Tommy said. So what are we doing? Vi was in the living room, on the other side of the screen door, looking out at the two of them. To Tommy, he said, We need to start packing. He looked toward the screen door. Are you alright, Vi? Yeah, she said. I'm fine. And she pushed open the door and came out on the porch to stand beside Tommy. I think I'm just scared. Tommy put his arm around her legs, hugging her. So what do we do first? he asked. Pack the essentials, Severn said. Dried food, canned food, cereal. Guns and ammunition, Vi added. Severn hesitated and then said yes. Guns and ammunition. Tommy flung himself back in the rocking chair and then let the forward reaction toss him up and onto his feet. Okay, he said. And then all three of them went to work. That was episode 7 of The Strangers. New episodes will be available twice a week on Mondays and Fridays until the novel is completed. If you want to read ahead, an inexpensive digital edition of The Strangers is available from Amazon, Barnes Noble, and other online bookstores. This podcast is an experiment and alternatives to traditional publishing. If you'd like to support it, And more like it in the future, please consider becoming a subscriber or supporter. If enough listeners choose to do so, that will go a long way to help ensuring the podcast's success and continuation. In any event, this is Ed Falco, I wrote The Strangers, and I hope you'll come back for the next episode.