"We must be saved together. We cannot go to God alone; else he would ask, 'Where are the others?'" - Charles Péguy

We would build a community. It had already started. Last night was a taste of what was to come. Those who sought sanctuary would find us here. We would send no one away. If we began immediately, we might still be able to stockpile some of the supplies needed without too much trouble. I was confident people would come. But first, we had to prepare. I hurried home through the breaking dawn. Impotent street lights lined the sidewalk like watchful sentinels, and the air was so still the earth itself seemed to be holding its breath.

I came back into the house to find Michael already awake and sipping at his morning coffee.

"Out communing with the Universe?" He teased.

I stuck my tongue out at him. "Don't mock me. I'll smite you."

He raised his hands in surrender. "No smiting, whatever you do!"

I sat down next to him. "I was scoping out the neighborhood." My gut twisted as I said, "I think we need to leave this house.

His eyes filled with sadness. "I guess I knew this was coming for a while, but I tried not to think about it. I really love this place, this house. It's where I created my best art." He covered my hand with his own. "It's where we created our sons, and where we met them for the first time."

"Maybe we'll be back." Even as I said it, I knew it wasn't true.

"Yeah, maybe," he said.

For a while we rested, my head on his shoulder, in comfortable silence. I would miss the house, but I would be OK anywhere, as long as our family stayed together. I knew he felt the same.

The lights flickered once, twice, and the house roared to life, breaking the spell.

I sat up. "I'm going to do some laundry while we have power, and start figuring out what we need."

We did our best to move quickly and quietly. It wouldn't do to have the entire town notice a flurry of activity around the old factory. Not yet. Some days we still had power. TV and radio stations were still broadcasting when they could. Many people were just waiting for the government to step in and fix things, despite the fact that gangs of trolls set up city-states in the south, and the entire northwest was besieged by werewolves. The TV news mentioned these things but said nothing of a response. In fact, the president hadn't made a statement in weeks. I wonder to this day if he had already been spirited out of Washington to be hidden away in a bunker. Maybe he's still in hiding. Meanwhile, demons took command of the nuclear facilities in Russia.

Freyja introduced us to her daughters, Hnoss and Gersemi, and they began helping us, as did Atsheena, who was the hardest worker I'd ever known. We began with the dormitory, scrubbing everything until it shone. We dragged bags of trash and debris out of the building and chased more than a few tiny rodents from their nests. Raziel often appeared out of nowhere and, a few times, Sandalphon and Neith would come with him. Michael conscripted their help with his project of stocking up on supplies and, I confess it amused me to see some of the most powerful beings in all of creation carrying bags of flour and rice over their shoulders.

It wasn't always easy to find what we needed. We weren't the only ones preparing for the worst. As the last of the leaves fluttered down to the earth we gathered everything we could from our own homes, from stores, from the shelters that had been set up by groups like Red Cross to help those who were suffering from the increasingly frequent power outages.

Hnoss and Gersemi had a special love for Donovan and, when the mornings began to dawn glittering with frost, started taking him on hunting trips into the woods behind the factory. He learned to shoot a bow and preserve the meat of a deer. Our stores of supplies grew steadily, and in October we decided it was time to leave the house for good.

I closed the door behind us with a heavy heart. It was just a building, but it represented an entire age that had been stolen away from humankind. The house was once warm and sweet and full of life. Now it was just a shell.

I glanced around our adorable little rural neighborhood. The fires and vandalism that had plagued the city did not run rampant here, but the signs of neglect spilled over. Garbage was piled in intervals along the side of the street. Yards were overgrown and unkempt. Most of the houses simply sat, as ours now would, with that dark emptiness peculiar to abandoned buildings.

Many had moved away. Our friend and neighbor, Mrs. Walczak, had headed south to be with her son who reasoned that it would be easier to survive in a milder climate.

Many had died. There were no pharmacies for those who needed insulin or other drugs. No ambulance came to help the ones whose hearts fluttered and seized in the night. Meals on Wheels no longer fed the old or infirm. And, of course, some people simply disappeared into the night.

Michael, Atsheena, Freyja, the boys and I each put our few belongings into the trunks near our beds.

In the evening, Michael lit both the stove in the dormitory and in the kitchen, which Atsheena had modified into a wood-burner. We cooked a simple but abundant meal of soup and bread. As we sat in strange silence in the vast space, someone hammered on the heavy metal door.. The sound echoed through the building and was almost instantly repeated. We all looked at each other, at the door, and at each other again. I studied Donovan's reaction. He seemed startled, but not frightened.

"I don't hear anything unusual, do you?" I asked him.

He shook his head. Freyja shrugged and stood to go investigate. Michael went with her and the rest of us lingered at a distance. I wanted to be able to push the boys back into the dorm at the first sign of danger.

With a silence that was testament to Atsheena's mechanical skill, the rusty old beast of an entryway eased open on well-oiled hinges, to reveal an old man that could have walked out of an advertisement for the Farm and Tractor Supply store. He was all brown Carhartt coveralls, orange stocking cap, and white whiskers. Bright blue eyes shone out from a face as brown and weathered as the coat he wore.

"A man could freeze to death on a night like this. I see you have a fire, by the smoke risin' from the chimney. I thought maybe you'd have room for another soul." He gave Freyja a moment's examination that proved he was old but not yet dead or blind. "You're just about the nicest thing I've seen in a month."

"I could be a beast from the abyss," she said.

"Slap me in irons, and take me to the lake of fire," he answered, and her musical laughter filled the air.

I released the breath I didn't know I'd been holding, and she let the man enter, locking the door behind him.

Jed was the first to come to what we began, that night, to call "The Compound." He was exhausted, half-starved, and terribly cold. We set him a place at the table, nearest to the warmth of the stove and he settled into the chair with visible relief.

"I knew I'd be safe here, soon as I saw that smoke. I don't know how, but I knew." He dunked his bread in his soup, and took a huge bite, which he proceeded to enjoy heartily, unhampered by having only half the usual number of teeth. "My gut tells me you opened that door not a moment too soon, miss," he said to Freyja. "Seemed like there was more than one pair of hungry eyes out there."

Ike stayed on my lap, always uncertain of strangers at first. "Where did you come from?" I asked him.

"You're the woman from the TV news," he said around the mush in his mouth.

"I am."

"Never did see one thing replayed so many times in my life. Wonder how many folks got your message."

"Not enough, I fear," I said, resting my chin on the downy fuzz on Ike's head

"No. Not enough." He shivered, and I suspected it had nothing to do with the temperature. "To answer your question, I was livin' in the old folk's apartments on the north side of town. A 'retirement community' they called it. Not much of a community, though. Just a bunch of old farts sitting around in cheap, shoddy housing waiting for death." He paused, mashing up another bite of bread. "I guess they got their wish last night. Death showed up. A group of Ghouls, actual honest-to-God Ghouls. Who would have thought I'd live to say such a thing? They eat corpses, you know. I guess they decided we were dead enough." He noted Ike, sitting on my lap sucking his fingers, and stopped before saying anything else along those lines. "Well... I went out the fire escape when I heard them coming down the hall. Figured I'd rather die jumping from the third story than at the hands of those monsters. I would have, too, except for a delivery truck in the alley. I don't know how long it had been there. I'd never noticed it before, but there it was. So I climbed out, jumped onto the top of that truck, just about bustin' both knees in the process, and climbed down. Didn't know where to go, so I just started walking. Found myself here."

We welcomed him, and many more to come.

A week later, Jake and Emma came to us on a crystal clear and fiercely cold November afternoon. They were a young couple, married less than a year, from the neighboring town. They'd woken one night to their apartment complex burning. After escaping, they were compelled to head in our direction.

"We weren't sure where we were going until we saw this place," Emma said.

We heard a similar account the next day when Eddie showed up. "I'll be straight with you. I was doing time in the county jail for petty theft. Warden came in with vampire bites on his neck. He had the crazy eyes, you know? But he opened all the doors and told us to run while we had the chance. I didn't wait to hear it twice. I'd planned to run all the way to Florida, and die with my feet in the sand, but something made me stop here. Somehow I knew I didn't need to go any further." He frowned a little. "Not yet anyway."

Fayette literally blew in on a strong wind. You could smell the snow in the air, and the clouds grew swollen and bruised. The fierce, bitter wind cut through even the most modern insulating fabrics and we lingered around the warmth of the fire when we heard a sound at one of the few windows that was still glass.

"Oh!" Freyja exclaimed and ran to open it, allowing the tiny, beautiful creature into the building.

She was a perfectly formed, startlingly purple lady with fluttering wings not so different from those of a dragonfly's. She stood maybe five inches tall and had the most regal bearing I'd ever seen. She nodded with great respect to Freyja and bowed to me. "Prophetess, I seek your protection and community."

"You are welcome here," I said.

I repeated the same thing to everyone upon arrival. They came in groups and alone; men, women and children. For the most part they were human, but not always. Adam and Denisa were vampires. They showed up separately, but recognized each other from another time and place.

Only once during those first months did unfriendly visitors bother us.

On a bitter mid-winter evening, as the pathetic grey light of day surrendered to the dominant blackness of a new moon night, there was a horrible scratching of claws, scrabbling at the metal door. The handle rattled, and Atsheena burst through. She was filthy, with dead leaves tangled in her hair. Even as she entered, her face was changing from bear to human. She slammed the door shut, and fumbled with the bolt with trembling hands.

I raced to her and helped her with the lock, my heart hammering in my chest. "What's wrong? Atsheena! What happened?"

Her eyes were wild. "They found me," she gasped.

"Who?" The word had no sooner left my mouth when something massive thumped the door.

"They found me," she said again, shaking my shoulders.

My own kind seeks my end. I've nowhere left to run.

I remembered her words the day we'd met.

Freyja and her daughters had come up behind me. "How many, Atsheena?" Gersemi asked.

Atsheena ran her fingers through her hair to push it off her face. "I don't know. Two dozen? Three?"

"We can fight a few shape shifters," Adam said, joining the conversation. "Right, Denisa?"

The female vampire appeared startled by the question.

"Popobawa leads them," Atsheena said.

"That's bad," Freyja said.

"Define bad," I said.

"He's a full demon. Like Raziel, but evil. Really evil."

"Like Ba'al," I said.

"So much worse than Ba'al," Atsheena warned. He's the father of the shape shifters. He despises me for deserting them."

"Raziel! We need you!" I called out. He was there, at the back of the group. His wings folded behind him, as though he'd just come from flight.

The boards over the windows were rattling under the assault of Atsheena's hunters.

"Freyja, Take your daughters. Force the others to the front," the angel said.

The three women ran off. I noticed the vampires had disappeared, but it was no great wonder to me. They never lingered near Raziel.

He turned to me." Simone, we will face Popobawa. Uncover your face."

"No." Michael and Eddie had been working in another room and came in when they heard the noise. "You want my wife to go out there and fight whatever is trying to claw its way into this building? Are you mad?"

"The choice is yours, Simone," He said, putting his hand on my shoulder. At his touch, my soul leapt inside of me.

I have no choice, I thought. The Power is too strong. I can't resist it. I avoided my husband's furious gaze, pulled the scarf from my face, and let it flutter to the cold floor.

Someone in the group whimpered, and another made an odd, grunting noise. The fierce screams of the three warrior women reached us through the thick walls. I unlocked the door and walked out. The beast before me fell back, trembled, shimmered, and turned into a bird, flying up to join a dozen others, circling above.

The rest came toward us, chased by Freyja, Hnoss, and Gersemi. They scrambled to stop, propelled by their forward momentum. Before me, a man with the blackest skin I ever saw stood in nothing but a loincloth. A gourd hung around his neck on a thick leather cord. He kept one hand on it while he spoke. "You dare frighten off my children, Prophet? You are a fool," he shouted in bass tones so deep and powerful the earth under my feet trembled. "Give us the traitor. We want nothing else from your little camp, woman."

"I'm a prophet of That Which Is, and those who dwell here are under my protection." Fire danced on my fingertips, but fear gnawed on my gut. I could not call down flames like I had before.

"Then I will kill you first, and take what's mine," he said, but after a single step, he fell back. Raziel had come through the door and stepped past me. He towered over me. Light poured out of him.

"Keeper," the demon snarled. He swelled in size and a void began to form around him.

If Raziel's natural form was the essence of Light, Popobawa's was something deeper than darkness. He appeared to absorb all that was around him like a black hole.

Raziel reached toward him, moving so fast my eyes couldn't follow. He ripped the gourd from the demon's neck and tossed it to me. "Take that to Atsheena. It belongs to her now."

Popobawa roared in fury.

"Time to go, kid," Freyja said. Grabbing my arm, she pulled me inside. Hnoss and Gersemi followed, locking the door.

Michael still stood there. I couldn't bring myself to meet his eye. The pressure in the room built, just as it does before a thunderstorm. I felt the Power in me being pulled toward the standoff outside. I focused on the feel of the hard concrete under my feet. A crack, louder than any thunder, tore through the air. The building began to rattle, as though from an earthquake. Then all was silence.

"They're gone."

I looked to see who had spoken. Donovan stood in the shadows across the room. "I can't feel them anymore," he said. "They're gone."

Hnoss went to him and threw a friendly arm around his shoulders. "I think you're right, kid. I think they're gone."

I finally looked at Michael. The betrayal he felt was written all over his face. I had chosen to listen to Raziel and follow the Power, rather than him. The last thing I wanted was to hurt him, but I didn't know what else I could have done, and I didn't know what to say about it now. I left to check on Atsheena and give her what Raziel had handed me.

When I handed the gourd to her, she took it with trembling hands. "Raziel asks too much," she said.

"It's his thing," I told her. I didn't ask what was in the ancient container. I didn't want to know.

After that night, the members of our little community seemed different. Less worried. More confident. They felt protected, and in this place, they knew they were safe, and that their lives had purpose. Except for Michel. For the first time in our marriage, distance existed between us that I had no idea how to bridge.

The winter raged outside the doors, but our home was a fortress of brick and stone. It had stood for a century and a half, through times of hard use and total neglect. It had survived two world wars, half a dozen major floods, a score of nearby tornadoes and more terrible winter storms than the residents of the area were willing to remember.

The old windows were covered over with thick wooden boards. The main room was once a packing plant for the crops coming from the fields of local farmers and headed to the shelves of markets all over the world by way of the train tracks that ran directly along the back-side of the building. Now it housed our vehicles and various work spaces we had set up, from wood working to sewing. It was in that room that the long table was situated. Somehow the table seemed to be the center of every bit of activity that happened in that place. On the opposite end of the hall there was an enclosure, built from old pallets, that held three goats, two rabbits, and a dozen chickens. I was unconvinced that this set up would work out in the long run. The animals ate quite a bit more than the humans, and keeping them happy and clean in an indoor space was a challenge but, for now, fresh milk and eggs were welcome, and there were enough hands to take on the extra work.

The dormitory we'd prepared filled up. We slept in two straight rows like little girls in a French boarding school. Of the others, only Atsheena and Fayette slept, but each had their own space just the same. Everyone had their own footlocker where they kept a few items of clothing and whatever personal mementos they'd been able to salvage when they'd left their old lives behind. Nearly everyone had brought a photograph that they kept on the tables between the beds. Funny, the expensive things we had all worked so hard for, for so many hours of our lives, had been easily left behind while these bits of colored paper were kept so close to the heart.

It would have been too much to say that it was a happy group. We had all suffered mind-numbing losses. Many people had terrible nightmares, especially the children. By mutual, unspoken consent the dormitory was never left in total darkness. We missed our old lives, but I sensed that, in time, the group would find contentment again.