Characters in Home Delivery

“We’re gonna light that graveyard up like a friggin stage,” Bob said. Andy Kingsbury stood up. “I heard on the news that sometimes you can shoot one of them things in the head and it’ll stay down, and sometimes it won’t.”

That, and being ready when it did. Women were excluded. • • • It was Bob Daggett, of course, who drew up the watch roster. That was only right, since Bob had been head selectman on Jenny for about a thousand years.

When she asked Bob Nedeau if he had any more, he said he had a whole damn case of the stuff out back.

… and Candi said she knew she was, but she was welcome to the upstairs bedroom that used to be Brian’s anytime she wanted. Maddie hugged Candi, kissed her cheek, declined with the most graceful thanks she could find, and was at last allowed …

Buck Harkness over there lying by an aspen tree had been part of the crossfire that had cut his late wife to ribbons; he had fainted after observing her …

… As it was, not a single islander was hurt, although Bud Meechum found a rather suspicious-looking hole torn in the sleeve of his shirt the next day. “Prob’ly wa’ant nothin but a blackberry thorn, just the same,” he said.

“There’s five generators on the island,” Burt Dorfman said (when Burt spoke everyone listened; as the only Jew on the island, he was regarded as a creature both quixotic and fearsome, like an …

… “I didn’t know the school kep a supply of em handy,” Cal Partridge said, and there was a ripple of laughter. “It don’t now, but it will,” Bob said, “because every man jack of you with more than one rifle bigger than a twenty-two is gonna bring it here.”

Candi Pulsifer asked her for the fifth time that night, and Maddie said she was fine for the fifth time that night, that she was coping, and Candi said …

Her helpless eyes roved the shelf display for nearly ten minutes before Charlene Nedeau asked if she could help her with something—only Charlene said it in a sarcastic way, and Maddie guessed she would tell all her friends at …

One of little Cheyne Pulsifer’s crayons was on the end table beside the chair Maddie was sitting in, and for some crazy reason she picked it up and wrote the number down …

… sense I don’t think— (Static.) Dagbolt:—dead after all because Ching-Ling Soong—or rather, Ching-Ling Soong’s severed head, one means to say—just floated past me, and her eyes were open and blinking. She appeared to recognize me, and to— (Static.) …

Jack could swim, and he had popped to the surface like a cork, Dave Eamons had told her miserably, but just as he did, another heavy swell came, slewing the boat directly into him, and although Dave would say no …

… when she missed her second period, and after four sleepless nights she made an appointment with Dr. McElwain on the mainland. Looking back, she was glad. If she’d waited to see if she was going to miss a third period, Jack would not have had even …

There was no spittoon in the gym, of course, so Frank Daggett had brought an empty mayonnaise jar to spit his juice into. He did so now. “Git down to where the cheese binds, Bobby,” he said.

“If I wasn’t around to tell them women where to squat and lean against the wheel,” George Sullivan had been fond of saying while in his cups and among his friends at Fudgy’s Tavern or in the back room of Prout’s Barber Shop, “I don’t know …

NORAD was at DEFCON-2 when a British astronomer named Humphrey Dagbolt spotted the satellite. Or the spaceship. Or the creature. Or whatever in hell’s name it was.

The answer was no, just chicken noodle—the kind that came in the can. That was all the soup Jack Pace needed in his life, and all the answer (on that particular subject, at least) that Maddie needed in hers.

He looked at John Wirley, the school principal. “Okay if we keep em in your office, John?” Wirley nodded.

There were about seventy of them in all, ranging in age from Johnny Crane, who had just turned eighteen, to Bob’s great-uncle Frank, who was eighty, had a glass eye, and chewed tobacco.

… buried an empty casket in the little cemetery at the north end of Jenny Island, and the Reverend Johnson (on Jenny and Little Tall you had your choice when it came to religion: you could be a Methodist, or if that didn’t suit you, you could be …

It seems likely that the blast-chambers themselves were clogged with worms and Captain Lin Yang—or whichever officer was then in charge—believed an explosion of the fuel tanks themselves to be imminent as a result of the clog.

… kicked again and she remembered how uncharacteristically tired and out of sorts he’d sounded at Mabel Hanratty’s yard-sale that day: Buy it, Maddie, for Chrissake! I’m tired! Want to go home and get m’dinner! If you don’t get a move on, I’ll give the …

… Considering that it was probably the end of the world, Maddie Pace thought she was doing a good job. Hell of a good job. She thought, in fact, that she just might be coping with the End of Everything better …

Bob did. Frank looked around at the three men, their faces as white as Matt Arsenault’s had been when he drove the ’dozer over men and women he had known since he was a kid in short pants and Buster Browns.

… gusty night, and then the gravestone marking the final resting place of Mr. and Mrs. Fournier’s boy Michael, who had died of leukemia at seventeen (bad go, that had been, him being their only child and them being such nice people and all), fell …

… him and knocked him over the side of My Lady-Love, the lobster boat he had inherited from his Uncle Mike. Jack could swim, and he had popped to the surface like a cork, Dave Eamons had told her miserably, but just as he did, another heavy swell …

… for some crazy reason she picked it up and wrote the number down on a sheet of scrap paper before Mr. Pulsifer got up and turned off the TV without a single word. Maddie told them good night and thanked them for sharing their TV and their Jiffy Pop.

… on the phone and Maddie waited and hoped for her mother to just tell her to come back home, but Mrs. Sullivan could tell no one over the age of ten anything. “Maybe you ought to come on back over here,” she had said once in a tentative way, and …

… on Jenny were starting to feel a wee bit silly (“I dunno if I’m standin guard or pullin my pud,” Orrin Campbell said one afternoon as a dozen men stood around the cemetery gate, playing Liars’ Poker) when it happened . . . and when it happened, it …

… really went to town on him, and George let it be known on Little Tall that what that bastid Pop Cook didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him none, and furthermore, he would disjoint the man or woman that let light into the darkness of Pop’s ignorance …

He looked over at Sonny Dotson, who ran Island Amoco, the only gas station on Jenny.

… political leaders of both countries knew exactly where Star Wormwood was located: above the expanding hole in earth’s ozone layer. It was sending something down from there, and it was not Flowers by Wire. Missiles came next. Star Wormwood jigged easily out of their way and then returned to its …

No big deal until the first news film (“You may want to ask your children to leave the room,” Tom Brokaw introduced gravely) showed up on network TV, decayed monsters with naked bone showing through their dried skin, traffic accident victims, the morticians’ concealing make-up sloughed away so that the …