Where by Kit Reed

Ray.
    â€œI won’t keep you, but we need to talk.” He puts his hand on Father’s shoulder, making clear what we have to talk about. “Figure out how to make things right.”
    People catch the tune and echo like Baptists at a revival, agreeing, “We need to talk,” “We need to talk,” “We need to make things right!”
    â€œBack here for a meeting, everybody. After we check out our new quarters and settle in. I’ll get the word out when it’s time.” He points to the building behind us, the big block letters mysteriously incised in its formerly blank face:
    MEETING HALL
    â€œOver there.”

 
    7
    Davy
    Thursday, late afternoon
    Davy sprays smashed oyster shell, rushing back the way he came. Slow, this is too. Gets bogged down. Too long. Again. Too damn long. Foraging for dead branches and sprays from travelers’ palms to get traction in the bad places, he consoles himself. Everybody else trying to cross Poynter’s is either stuck in the five-mile stream of traffic backed up halfway to Charlton, or advancing on foot, swarming to join the mob at the causeway.
    At least the shore road is deserted. Better for me, he thinks, not sure what he means.
    Crazy, but at every bend in the road he stops and gets out of the car, fanning his phone like a mad witch doctor. Usually you can get at least one green bar out here, but things are seriously fucked up. He makes five stops before he can pick up a signal.
    Naturally he phones home— rather, Merrill’s cell. It rings and rings. He keeps trying, hitting redial the way you do when you’re sure she’s in the shower, has it on silent, dropped it in the car. Worst-case scenario, he’ll leave voicemail. Anything to put them in touch. No Merrill. Worse, no voicemail prompt. No matter how long he lets it ring, no velvety Merrill message: “Whisper your darkest secrets here, and I’ll get back to you.” Davy persists the way you do when there’s an incurable glitch. Given what he’s seen today and what little he knows, he keeps trying in spite of the reality that he’s too messed up to admit.
    It isn’t only that Merrill doesn’t pick up. Her cell is offline in some new, alarming way. It’s ringing somewhere, somehow, but the threads that connect them are hopelessly snarled. He could hang on from now until the world ends and that’s all it will do: ring. He fires off a text, in case. As if Merrill is anyplace he knows. As if she’s in a position to text him back.
    Where is she?
    Her office phone is dead, the town hall switchboard is dead. So are the phones at home. Correction. At her house, is he still welcome there? Is every land line on Kraven island dead? He scrolls through every local number in his phone. He’ll talk to anybody, friends, business contacts, cops, the twenty-four-hour clinic, whatever works. Nothing does. Yes he is not in his right mind. If he hangs in here long enough, he tells himself, somebody will pick up. Unless they’re all dead .
    His heart clenches. Not them, Ribault. Not her, you idiot. The phones. Again. Again!
    It’s like yelling into a cosmic void. He loves her, he can’t reach her, he can’t reach anybody on Kraven island and he needs to know what happened, where Merrill is, how she is; Davy is crazy with not knowing. He needs to go back inside himself and think, which he isn’t doing very well right now.
    Asshole. Get there.
    Is he crazy, coming back this way? The crowd at the barricades was multiplying like cancer cells, ignorant gawkers mixed in with anxious homefolks and clueless supernumeraries with homemade armbands and TV crews, and the men in charge? Pit bulls and swamp things, most of them, like half the warm bodies in the county got rounded up this morning and supplied with an armband or a badge. One whiff of power turns them into armed forces bent on keeping the line they just drew. There are