about his lawn. He had a job to do. He should get it over with.
He trotted over to the Dafoes’ house. The door opened before he could knock. Mary Lou’s little brother, Jason, stared up at him through his thick glasses.
“Jeez, Nick,” Jason said, his voice cracking with excitement. “What’s going on out there? Look at the colors, would you? Is it something about the hurricane?”
That was the longest speech Nick had ever heard from the fourteen- year-old. When Jason hung around with Bobby Furlong, Bobby did enough talking for both of them.
“Well, is it?” Jason insisted. He looked strange in this new light too. His blond hair was almost white; his fair skin flushed a too-bright shade of pink.
“No,” Nick remembered to answer. “I think it’s something worse.”
“Jason dear?” Mrs. Dafoe’s voice came from somewhere deep inside the house. “Is that somebody at the door?” There was something about the way Mrs. Dafoe phrased things that sounded almost too polite.
“It’s Nick from next door!” Jason called.
“Why, how nice to see you, Nick,” Mrs. Dafoe said as she emerged from the kitchen. She looked like she would on any other day, her clothes perfectly ironed, her hair perfectly in place. “What can we do for you today?”
What can you do? It’s the end of the world , is what he thought. What he said was, “Mr. Mills thinks there’s something wrong. He wants everyone in the neighborhood to get together and talk about it.”
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Dafoe replied, allowing herself the slightest of frowns. “I guess we could do that. Thank you, Nick. I’ll get the rest of the family.”
Nick thanked her back and ran to the next house.
“I see you!” Mr. Sayre yelled at his back. “Turn around when I’m talking to you! I want some answers!”
Nick banged on the Jacksons’ door instead.
The door opened with such force that it slammed against the inside wall.
“What do you want?” Todd’s old man demanded. He lurched forward into the doorway, squinting at the sunlight. Even though it was still the first thing in the morning (probably), he had a beer in his hand. “This better be fuckin’ good.”
Nick stumbled back down the steps, careful to keep out of arm’s reach. The man stared over Nick’s head, although it didn’t look like his eyes were particularly focused. He also looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days. His rumpled clothing appeared to have been on his body just as long.
Nick looked to either side, ready to escape if Jackson made another move. “M-Mr. Mills,” he stuttered. “He thinks something’s going—”
Abruptly, Nick forgot what he was going to say next. He saw something in the woods and heard the same shouts he had heard before, sharp, short sounds; but now they were coming from around the corner of Jackson’s house. Down the street, in the space between his house and the Smiths’ next door, he could see men, dressed in brown, step from the shadows of the forest.
“Oh, shit,” Jackson agreed. The door to the house slammed shut.
The newcomers seemed to be wearing uniforms of some sort. The brown showed on their sleeves and leggings and boots. They also wore breastplates and close-fitting helmets, but if these were made out of any metal, that metal was tarnished and dark. Once the men moved from their forest cover, they hardly made a sound. They reminded Nick of the scenes from Vietnam he saw on the news every night. Except the armor made the soldiers look a little like Spanish conquistadors.
Nick ran out into the street, toward the gathering neighbors. “Mr. Mills!” he called.
“I see them,” the schoolteacher said as he stepped beside Nick. He nodded to his right. “I thought I saw more moving farther up the street.”
“ Now you’re out here!” Sayre was calling as the neighbors gathered on the street. “You took your own sweet time. Look at this. It’s an outrage, I tell you! Someone is going to pay!”
No one looked at