a tremendous eruption that sent her staggering back.
She fell onto the grass. The wind raged around her, pulling at her hair and her dress. Her eyes wheeled about until she saw another bolt of lightning shoot down into Wink, and another, and another, each one followed by the screaming, earth-shattering crashes.
When she regained herself, she heard the wailing of air-raid sirens as some long-dormant disaster system rattled awake. Then she saw a faraway tree lit by dancing red light, and gasped.
“Fire,” she said, though she was almost deaf to her own voice. “Eddie—run home. Get on your bike and run home and get your parents!”
Eddie leaped onto his bike and pedaled away. Mrs. Benjamin managed to stand back up and started to rush off toward the fire, not certain what she would do if she got there. More bolts of lightning came shooting down, decimating houses, shops, trees. A florist’s shop mere yards away burst apart as one of the arcs of lightning brushed it, sending waves of dust dancing across the street. People rushed out of their homes, looking about wildly, holding hands.
She could hear screams. Some sounded like women and men. Others, children.
“My God!” cried Mrs. Benjamin. “My God, my God!”
She was near a corner when one of the bolts of lightning struck the middle of the street just around the bend. It almost knocked her over again, and she had to hold on to a lamppost to stay up. When she recovered, she saw red-and-orange light flickering on the houses across the road. The middle of the street just around the corner must have been on fire.
Yet there was a shadow projected onto the houses by the flames. She was not sure if she was imagining things, but if the shadow was right, something huge and many-limbed was standing in the street, just out of view around the corner. She stared at the shadow, watching its arms heave as whatever it was took huge, gasping breaths, like some kind of enraged animal, and though the whole town was roaring with thunder and fire she thought she could hear deep, rattling gasps…
She walked closer to the corner, wondering if she really wanted to look down that street, and see… but then she heard an awful noise from just around the corner, like a thousand cicadas beginning to whine, and she knew she had to run, run as fast as she could.
Because there’d been something inside that lightning bolt. Something had come down from the sky with it. And Mrs. Benjamin did not know what it was, but she did not want to see it, or for it to see her.
She saw Mr. Macey running in her direction. “Myrtle!” he shouted. “Myrtle, for Christ’s sake, don’t go that way! Everything’s on fire back there!”
“But you can’t go that way, either!” she said, pointing at the corner. “There’s… something there!”
“What?” he cried. “What’s there? What do you mean?”
“I don’t know! But there’s something in the lightning bolts! Something’s coming down with them!”
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” he screamed. This made her pause, for never in her life had she ever heard Eustace Macey use such a word. “We’ve got to move!”
“But Eustace, please! You can’t—”
She stopped. Though the air was thick with smoke and brilliant light, she saw through it, just briefly, and glimpsed the mesa just a few miles out of town.
The top of the mesa was on fire. All the dishes and satellites and telescopes there were in ruins. But the fire on the mesa lit something above it… something massive and dark, swaying back and forth… and she thought she saw eyes, yellow and luminous like huge lamps…
“There’s something on the mesa!” she screamed, and she pointed.
“What?” said Macey, and he turned to look.
But as he did, Mrs. Benjamin smelled that awful ozone smell again. And then the whole world went bright.
She was aware of a wave of heat, followed by a blast of pressure that lifted her up off the ground and sent her tumbling back. When she came to a stop she thought she had her eyes closed and fought to open them, only to find she was actually blind. Everything around her was dark, and all she could see were bubbles of green and blue swelling and fading.
Then she began to see light. Images calcified around her. Everything nearby was on fire. There was a huge circle of absolute black on the sidewalk, scorched from the lightning. And there, in the center, was