Page 53 of At Midnight Comes the Cry

He cleared his throat. “I hit some scree and slid sideways. It’s wedged between a couple of trees.”

She didn’t want to ask, but she had to. “Your uncle?”

“Still there. I swear I heard him laughing at me.” Paul shielded his eyes and looked up toward heaven. “He always did have a wicked sense of humor.” He dropped his gaze to her. “Now you.”

“Van Alstyne’s been taken by the militia.”

“What? You should have led with that! What happened?”

She relayed the events of the past—what was it now, an hour? Ninety minutes? Paul gave her a look when she described losing her gun and water bottle. “Now you know why the map is on your arm.”

“Yeah, I got that part. What I don’t know is what we should do.”

“We need to get somewhere with either a landline or a working cell signal and alert my people and yours.”

She paused. “You want to… hike out?”

He leaned to one side to peer at her backpack. “You don’t have a tent or a tarp, do you?”

She shook her head.

“Then no. We’ll head to where we parked our trucks. We can make it to the road well before nightfall.”

“What if they’re snowed in?”

“If we can’t power through the snow, then at the very least, we’ll have heat and shelter.”

She nodded. “It feels so… just awful. Leaving the chief behind.”

“I hear you.”

“I’m sorry I’m so inept at all this.” She waved a gloved hand to encompass the woods, her backpack, and the outdoors in general.

He caught her hand. “You’re doing great. And even if you were completely kitted out and we both had weapons, it would still be two against the whole pack of right-wing nutjobs.” The smile fell off his face. “We already know they don’t have any qualms about killing law enforcement.”

She pressed her lips tight together. Thinking of the chief. Thinking of Flynn.

Paul resettled his knapsack. “Ready?”

She nodded. “I’m ready.”

THE THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and forever. Amen.

1.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14

This day in the church calendar was variously known as “Stir-up Sunday” from the collect, or Rose Sunday, for the color of the third candle in the Advent wreath, symbolizing Mary, the Rose of Sharon. But Clare had a private nickname for the third Sunday in Advent: Chaos Christmas. In the parish hall, the Martha and Mary Guild were selling homemade cookies as a fundraiser while members of the congregation—those who hadn’t torn out of church headed for the mall—chatted, drank coffee, and poked among the Holly and Ivy Fair remnants thatstillhadn’t been cleared out.

In the sanctuary, the children’s choir and the Christmas pageant kids were rehearsing in the chancel, while the volunteers for the greening of the church clambered up ladders holding wreaths and shouted at each other, “A little to the left! No, your other left!”

One of the three kings let out a strangled cry. “He bit me! Spencer bit me!” His small page boy, freed from the older kid’s restraint, jumped across the chancel step and fled toward the parish hall, his beleaguered mother close behind.

Clare shifted Ethan’s weight on her hip and kissed his cheek. “Please don’t grow up to be the Biter,” she whispered.

One of the women wiring bows onto the ends of pews gestured toward the nave. “Clare? It looks like we have a visitor.”