“Look,” he continued, “we won’t even split up. Just stay right here, right next to me, and if it looks like they’re going to try anything funny, we’ll just take off into the woods. Worst that can happen is we run into some crazies but, then, that’s what we seem to have already done.”

She smiled at him and he could see she was calming down. He put his arm around her shoulders. “We can do this,” he said. “I mean, we’ve made it through a lot so far, right?”

Evajean nodded and didn’t pull away. He held her and she said, “I’m scared. Really, that’s all. I’m probably freaking myself out.”

“Let’s just not worry about it. I mean, Jesus, think about what we’ve been through just getting here. The woman at the store, that big group of them on the road, the car accident–”

“And you,” she said. “Getting captured and the cave…”

“So this is nothing,” Elliot said. “These are nice people who happen to be kind of religious and are freaking both of us out. We just think about it that way and wait until tomorrow morning and everything’ll be good.”

Evajean pulled away from him and looked up at his face. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s crazy. I feel crazy. Maybe we can just go back to the house?”

They did and, until one of Nahom’s men tapped on the door to let them know the funeral was about to start, Evajean and Elliot sat inside and chatted about old times and dead family what it would be like if everything just went back to normal.

But that ended with the measured knocking on the front door and, when Elliot opened it, a large man in a white collared shirt and grey pants told him Uncle Jeffry had sent for the two of them and that things were about to start. Elliot assured the man they’d be there momentarily.

Now he and Evajean were standing in a crowd of the entire one-hundred and forty, minus the dead, while Jeffry read a passage from one of the scriptural books. Nothing about it so far was too far out of the ordinary for a funeral, albeit with a lot less pomp and circumstance than the Catholic ceremonies Elliot was used to. There was singing and praying, and the families of the deceased spoke their fond memories. One of the men had had five wives and several of the others had two. The number of impacted children was minimal, however, and Elliot–who realized he felt a degree of guilt for what he now watched–was glad for that.

It was during the eighth of these eulogies, as an old woman spoke of her son’s courage and willingness to serve God, that the first of that night’s sequence of terrible events occurred.

Elliot was staring at his feet, unable to look into another yet another pair of anguished eyes. Evajean leaned against him, humming quietly and unconsciously to herself. The little girl in the row in front of Elliot–a girl he was convinced was the one who’d lead him on the brief chase through the woods–tilted her head to the side like she was listening for something, then clapped her hands to the sides of her head, and screamed. She fell backwards, over the chair, and into Elliot. He stumbled forward against her, trying to grab her arms and keep her up, but his startled actions missed and she landed on the grass, legs caught in the chair’s legs, beating her firsts against the ground while screeches pushed through her clenched teeth.

Jeffry, standing to the left of the podium, ran forward, calling out, “Is she okay? What happened?”

Men were pulling Elliot back, trying to get at the girl, while somewhere on the other side of the crowd a woman called out. “Oh God! Oh Jesus!” she shouted and, as he was dragged way from Evajean, Elliot saw the woman pointing toward the ridge. Coming down from that hill, in a single row like Roman soldiers, were over a hundred crazies, armed with rocks and branches, faces to the sky as they ran.

Elliot hurled himself forward and grabbed Evajean. “We have to go!” he shouted over the calls of the men and the cries of the women. Uncle Jeffry was doing his best to calm the crowd, saying something about the church and doors, but nobody seemed to paying him any attention.

They forced their way through the crowd and, as they reached its periphery, it seemed people grasped the heart of Jeffry’s message and began running to the church. Evajean pulled in that direction and Elliot, after brief hesitation, allowed himself to follow her.

When the entire population of Nahom had run through the church’s open entrance, the heavy wooden doors swung shut, and the panic subsided. Elliot heard sobs and the children asked questions about who those people were and where they came from. A little girl, standing near Evajean, asked the emptiness in front of her if those were the bad people who killed her daddy. Evajean pulled her into a hug and whispered in her ear.

Elliot walked over to the closed doors and asked one of the men standing near them if they would hold.

“I don’t know,” the man said and looked over at Uncle Jeffry, who was talking with a group of women. “I don’t know how long they’ll hold.”

Jeffry said, “Okay, everyone, please, let’s try to remain calm. We dealt with these people before and we can do it again. Right now, we need to make sure the church’s windows are shuttered and locked and so I need some of you to carefully make your way through the building and assure that is the case.” He pointed at the men near the door. “And you, you’re only role right now is to be certain nothing gets through those doors. Put your weight against them if you need to, but keep those doors shut.”