18
Hank broke off in midsentence and looked around. He'd not only forgotten what he'd been about to say, but where he was.
He looked down from his makeshift stage and saw seventy or eighty faces staring up at him. Now he remembered… he was speaking to a Kicker group in the basement of a clubhouse in Howard Beach.
But what was he supposed to say next? How could he have forgotten? He'd given this speech so many times he could repeat it in his sleep.
Something was wrong. But what?
And then he knew: Something… someone was missing.
Jeremy… Jeremy was gone.
He didn't know how or why or where, but Jeremy's light had flickered out. Hank felt it, knew it. Just as he'd known, so many years ago, that Daddy was gone and never would be coming back.
Had an Enemy gotten to him? That was the most logical explanation.
Hank searched for grief but found only fear. He'd never been that close to Jeremy, hadn't even liked him, to tell the truth. He was more concerned about being next on the Enemy's list.
He looked again at his audience. Could one of them be lurking in the crowd, waiting for a chance to kill him too?
He fought the urge to turn and run. That would be stupid. He was safe here among the Kickers. This would be the last place the Enemy would try for him.
He calmed himself and resumed speaking. But not his usual spiel. He started telling them about a young woman—alone, afraid, no family, pregnant, thinking she hadn't a friend in the world. But she did have friends and family—the Kickers. He told them how she and her baby were important to the future of the Kicker movement, to the future of the whole world, and how the Kicker family would find her and shelter her and protect her from those who feared and hated the dissimilated.