"It's all right, darling." She touched his arm. "It's all right—"
The light went out.
Somewhere Alice heard screaming. It seemed to fill the walls, the floor, the ceiling and the night itself, everywhere, as though the very air was screaming in some vast agony. The sirens.
She heard a whimpering sound and realized that it was Kelsey. She held him tightly in her arms. He was shivering.
The Tevee screen seemed like a page on which vital print had died, something strangely alive but without sound or meaning, like an exposed brain without thought, like the deadness of an open eye in a corpse.
"All lights will be extinguished for two hours," the voice said. "Everyone will go immediately to their air-raid shelters!"
"Two hours," Kelsey whispered.
"I'm here," she said. "We're together, darling. There's nothing—"
He didn't seem to hear her. He leaped out of her arms, and she heard furniture crashing as he blundered around wildly in the dark.
"The shelter," he yelled hoarsely. "The shelter!"