Chapter 24: Spring

The horde came at the speed of weather.

They did not run in the cold.

They shuffled over the snow in a dark mass half a mile wide, following sound.

"Everybody inside," I said. "No lights. No talking."

Thirty-one people went to ground in the root cellar, the barn, and the farmhouse basement.

Hank and Eli and I lay on the berm with the rifles unfired, and watched them come.

The night before, we had set the school bus in the far north field, with its engine running on a gas can and its horn wired to a car battery.

I had done the math in the dark with a pencil.

The horn went off at six.

It blared across the valley, one long blast, then another.

The leading edge of the horde swung toward it.

Thousands of them turned together.

They crossed the north field forty yards from our trench, close enough that I could see their breath freeze, and none of them looked at the wire.

They went around the bus and tore it apart, and then the horn died.

Then they kept going, east, down the long white valley, away from us.

It took four hours for the last of them to pass.

Beside me, Hank breathed out.

"Well," he said. "That's the stupidest thing I ever saw work."

"It was my plan," I said.

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