Suffer the Children Read Online Free Page B

the carpet, watching the TV upside down. Megan sat cross-legged about two feet from the screen.
    “Anything good on?” he said.
    “Hey, Dad,” Nate said vacantly, his eyes glued to the TV.
    Megan jumped to her feet and ran at him, screaming, “ Daddy! ”
    He caught her and twirled her laughing through the air.
    “Hey, princess.”
    “I missed you today, Daddy.”
    His heart warmed to hear that. It always did.
    It was always good to come home after a long day. He swallowed his anger and his worries. Swallowed them hard. Everything he did in his life, this was the reason.
    Sometimes it was too easy to lose sight of that.
Joan
    11 hours before Herod Event
    Joan awoke during the night. Her heart pounded. She stared into the dark.
    The clock read 3:02.
    She’d been here before. A random creak, and she’d wake up glaring fiercely at the hazy outline of the bedroom door, ready for battle.
    Next to her, Doug snored softly on his stomach. Joan took comfort in his presence. The man could sleep through the Rapture, but if she managed to wake him up, he’d get the baseball bat he kept under the bed and lumber downstairs to check things out.
    There was never anybody there, but Doug always went anyway. Sometimes she thought he wanted to find a burglar on his property, just so he’d have the legal justification to beat somebody to a pulp. Whatever his motives, she was glad for it.
    Joan considered herself a practical woman with her head screwed on straight. Doug periodically obsessed about things like avian flu and global warming, but she had no use for such worries. Nonetheless, she sometimes wondered if she’d left the stove on while out shopping, worried over whether the doors were securely locked, and thought she heard her children crying for her when she was in the shower or drying her hair. And once she heard something go bump in the night, she couldn’t return to sleep until Doug pronounced the house secure.
    Was it a bad dream that had woken her? Maybe she was still worked up about Ramona and Josh, and she’d had a nightmare. If she had, she couldn’t remember it now. The other night, Joan dreamed she held Nate’s head in her hands. It was absurd—his body was at the shop being fixed, but the technician had lost it—yet it had seemed so real to her, holding his lifeless head in her hands and wondering if they’d ever find his missing clockwork body. As the horror mounted with the realization that Nate was gone forever, she’d woken covered in sweat.
    Joan lay back and closed her eyes. She was home. Nothing could harm her here. Her family slept around her in the dark. She sensed the children breathing in their beds down the hall. She felt herself lulled back toward sleep. The morning and its routines would dispel her night fears.
    The world was a dangerous place, but not here. Children were suffering in other parts of the world—everywhere there was poverty and famine and war—but not in this house. She returned to sleep with the knowledge her children were safe and sound, and nothing would ever harm them.

TWO
Ramona
    2 hours before Herod Event
    The food court was bustling.
    After fighting crowds of Christmas shoppers and carrying Josh halfway across the mall, Ramona was already worn out, but she perked up when she saw her friend.
    Bethany looked perfect as usual. She had a boyfriend and a profitable career in real estate sales. Her five-year-old, Trent, was thriving in private school. She made it all look so easy.
    Nothing was easy for Ramona. It was unfair.
    They hugged, and each told the other how great she looked. They bought their lunches and found a table next to the indoor playground, which swarmed with screaming children. Trent wolfed down his food, grabbed Josh’s hand, and pulled him toward the jungle gyms.
    Stabbing at her salad with a plastic fork, Bethany complained about the number of people she had to shop for this Christmas. It was a drawback of dating Brian; he had a large family to