Chapter 15: The Voice

Greta's POV

I was waiting at the yard gate when the pickup came up the gravel at first light.

I had a crowbar in one hand.

I did not know what I meant to do with it.

Hollis got out slowly.

His coat was torn at the shoulder, and he held a clipboard and a ring of brass keys against his chest.

He saw me and stopped.

"You said dawn," I said.

"I'm here."

"You took the truck. You went to the Center. I felt it go up my arm every time you moved."

"Greta."

"Tell me."

He set the clipboard on the hood.

He set the keys beside it, and then he put both hands in his pockets, because they were shaking.

"I'll tell you the way it happened," he said. "Please let me finish."

I put the crowbar down.

"The first time, I was alone on a ridge east of the city with a hand radio," he said. "The county channel was the only thing still talking."

"The county channel," I said.

"A woman came on every night at dusk."

My mouth went dry.

"She gave her name first, every time, the same way," he said.

He said it in my cadence, so exactly that the hair stood up on my arms.

"Then she told a man to put his hand on a wall and breathe. Three nights, and I did not hear her miss a word."

"That was me," I said.

"Yes."

I could not say anything else.

"I never met you," he said. "Not in that life. I never saw your face. I only had your voice, and then the night it stopped."

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