The old man shrugged. "How could the Children have gotten through our post defenses?" He looked away down the white glare of the street.
"You're supposed to be finding out," Murphy yelled. He had a good voice for a man two months short of being a hundred. He liked to show it off.
Then Sal thought he saw an odd fluttery movement down the block.
"I'll report in a few minutes," he said, and then he edged along next to the angled wall. A disturbed stream of plaster whispered down and ran off his shoulder.
Near the corner, he stopped. "Max," he said. He whispered it several times. "Max ... that you, Max?"
He moved nearer to the blob on the concrete. Heat waves radiated up around it and it seemed to quiver and dance. He dropped the walkie-talkie. There wasn't even enough left of Max to take back in or put under the ground.
He heard the metallic clank and the manhole cover moved and then he saw them coming up over the edge. He ran and behind him he could hear their screams and cries and their feet striking hard over the blisters, cracks, and dried out holes in the dead town's skin.
He dodged into rubble and fell and got up and kept on running. The pain was like something squeezing in his belly, and he kept on running because he wanted to live and because he had to tell the others that the Children were indeed inside the post defenses.
He knew now how they had come in. Through the sewers, under the defenses. He began to feel and hear them crawling, digging, moving all over beneath the ruins, waiting to come out in a filthy screaming stream.