The sun rose on the strip mall, and found two figures just emerging from the McDonald's.

Daniel hoisted his three bags of food supplies, looked apprehensively up the hill, then led the way. "It's only about half a mile from here. I just... I just need to check. Just to see if she's there, or if she left word there, or..." He glanced back at Kelly, who met his gaze and said nothing. He made a wry face. "Okay, so I'm babbling. I need to stop. Your turn." He smiled thinly, took a deep breath, set his jaw, and started taking longer strides up the hillside.

"Um, my turn to babble? Um... okay," Kelly said slowly. "Well, for starters, I'm going to go after those sons of bitches and pay them back."

"Hey, whoa," he said, stopping to face her. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to poke fun at you." He shrugged uncomfortably. "I'm just not sure how else to handle all this, I guess. I try to lighten the mood. I guess sometimes, though..."

She took a deep breath. "Fine. I'm sorry if I kind of bit your head off." She shook her head angrily. "But I'm going to get those things."

"We should come up with something better to call them than 'things'," he said thoughtfully as they started again up the hill. "We'll get confused otherwise."

Kelly snorted as they crossed 108th. "Sorry, I can't really cuss like a sailor, so I don't have any good names for them."

"How about 'raptors'?" he suggested. "I watched a movie not too long ago -- I forget what it was called -- where the characters were stranded on a distant planet, and there were these things that only came out at night, and started eating people. They never named them in the dialogue, but the subtitles referred to them as 'raptors'."

She gave him a look. "That's a pretty cheesy thing to call them, don't you think?"

"Well, probably," he said, "but we've got to call them something. And they do have wings and talons, after all. Like falcons and hawks. Except that we like falcons and hawks."

I don't like the above exchange very much - it may get rewritten without the movie reference, as "they fly, they carry things away, kinda like raptors", and have the word just kind of stick. Should also happen a chapter or two earlier than this.

She shook her head, then shrugged. "Whatever we decide to call them, I'm going after them. See if I can find more of these nests, or maybe find a way to go after more of these things that are already hatched."

Her hand raised, and touched one of her braids. "No," she said softly, "and it doesn't matter. They've already taken two people I really care about. I'll figure something out. I've got my war paint on, and I'm going after them."

They were quiet then, as they made their way around a sharp curve in the road and approached a set of apartment buildings.

As they passed a screen of trees, Daniel stopped suddenly and pointed. "Holy shit," he said reverently. A huge ragged hole had been blown in the side of the second building.

They approached slowly. Pieces of wood and brick had been scattered across the grass. A tangled mass of metal was lodged halfway out of the hole in the side of the building.

"This was one of the laundry rooms," Daniel said. "I haven't been into them in the other buildings, but that's about the right spot." He pointed at the twisted mess of white metal. "I think that was the dryer."

They had reached the hole, and looked in cautiously. The room was small, with a drain in the middle of the concrete floor. There was a doorway leading to the common hallway, and half of the doorframe was missing, with the remains of the door lying in fragments in the hallway beyond. The washing machine had been flipped over onto its side and partially crushed. The ceiling was sagging in places, and chunks had fallen. Shredded shards of metal were scattered throughout the room and embedded in the walls.

"Yeah, I think so," he said, his eyes searching. "There," he said, pointing out a few chunks of blackened metal protruding through the debris. "That looks like the pipes coming out of the floor."

"Why isn't there water everywhere?" Kelly said, stepping into the room to look more closely. She knelt and held her hands out toward the blackened stubs of metal, feeling for heat, then touched one cautiously. "Jesus," she said. "This is a pipe. The end is melted shut." She looked up at Daniel. "It's cold. Whatever happened, it's been several hours ago, maybe days."

"Could a gas explosion have done this?" he said incredulously. "I'm amazed the building didn't burn down."

She stood and brushed soot and dust off her knees. "I don't know," she said. "This is insane."

He snapped his fingers. "Wait. Maybe it could have been gas. You know how they put out fires in oil wells, right?"

"Sure," she said. "They use explosives. Uses up all the oxygen, so the fire can't burn anymore." She nodded slowly, then frowned. "But there's so much flammable stuff around here, you'd think the heat alone would start it burning again, wouldn't you?"

"Shit, you think I know?" Daniel said. He knelt and picked up a handful of debris, and let it trickle through is fingers, soot and fragments and bits of metal.

Kelly rubbed her face, and stepped back out of the room. "This place weirds me out. Let's keep going."

Daniel stood, studied the lump of fused metal that was still left in his hand, and slipped it into his pocket. Then, after a long look back, he followed her back out through the ragged hole in the building.

Daniel emerged from the living room, frowning. Spotting Kelly still hanging back in the common hallway, he waved her in. "Come on in," he said absently. "Sit." He smiled humorlessly. "Given the state of the cars around here, I have a feeling we're going to be doing a lot more walking than this. Rest your legs."

"You're not," she pointed out, but she slowly walked into the apartment. "I don't know," she called after him as he disappeared into the study, "it just kind of feels like I'm intruding, or something."

"Why?" he called back as he rummaged through the stack of papers on the computer desk.

"I don't know," she said. "I guess maybe because I've never even met your wife, and here she's missing. It just feels weird."

There were sounds of scribbling from the study, and then Daniel emerged, holding a note written on the back of a sheet of paper. He looked at her intently, and she met his gaze briefly, and then glanced away.

She shifted uncomfortably. "I don't have anything to feel guilty about, I know. But I just..." She crossed her arms and shook her head. "I don't know. Like I said, it just feels weird. It doesn't seem right."

"Nothing is right," he said quietly. "Everything is crazy." He glanced down at the note in his hand. "All we can do is keep looking for some sanity. And keep looking for Anna. And Mary."

He looked at the note again. "So I'll leave this here, where she'll see it if she comes back," he said. "I asked her to leave me a note if she stops back. So sometime later, we can come here again, and if there's a note, then we'll know she's okay."

Her dark eyes met his briefly, then she looked back at the wall. "If?" she said quietly.

The shadow of a smile crossed his face. "I'm doomed," he said. "One little slip like that can cause the Great Pumpkin to pass you by."

She started to laugh, as he stooped down to leave the note just inside the apartment door. He took out the hunk of metal to weight it down.

Then, from the direction of one of the other apartments, came a muffled crash, followed by the piercing cry of a raptor.

Chapter 4