Alice got the call from Gary in her bedroom while packing clothes into luggage.

            “Hey Gary,” she said, cradling her phone with her chin while she kept packing. “Hey Alice,” he replied. “How are you holding up?”

            “Better than I was in the chief’s office, at least,” she said. “My mom’s a different story, however. She’s…well…she’s not doing well.”

            If her mother wasn’t crying from bad memories, she was scared out of her mind, jumping at every sound.

            “I can imagine,” said Gary sympathetically.

            “I’m going to drive her out to my uncle’s farm,” she said. “Get her away from the city, at least until this has all blown over. It’s quiet out there, so it’ll be perfect. Worst case scenario is we get a bear in the front yard.”

            Gary laughed.

            “I think that’s a great idea,” said Gary. Then, after a second's hesitation, he added. “Listen. Your week of suspension is almost up. Chief Dalton asked me to tell you that he's concerned about you coming back to work.”

            Alice paused. Even after everything that had happened, Alice's first instinct was to say she'd be fine. The more she thought about it, however, the more she realized it wasn't true. Seeing so many deaths just like the Baxters' was getting to her, a creeping dread ever present in the back of her mind. Of course, even if Alice was perfectly fine, she knew she couldn't abandon her mother right now.

            After a moment of silence, Alice said, “Honestly? I think I will need more time.”

            “Alright,” said Gary. “Chief said that once the suspension is over, he has no problem granting vacation leave for as long as you need it.”

            “I appreciate that.”

            “Good. Stay safe, Alice.”

            “Yeah, you too.”

            Alice hung up and spent a few minutes packing, and before long, she was almost finished. As she looked over her bedroom for anything else she might want to take with her, she spotted a little jewelry box atop her dresser.

            Such a thing would have nothing she needed, and yet, on a whim, she walked over and opened it. Inside were various little trinkets that she hadn’t worn in years. Jewelry wasn’t exactly necessary or useful for a police detective, after all. One particular piece, however, caught her eye.

            It was a necklace with a little silver cross hanging from it. It wasn’t elaborate or otherwise remarkable, just a flat, silver cross that she could just barely see her reflection in, hanging from a thin silver chain.

            It sparked a memory.

###

Alice, only five years old, hid in a cupboard. She’d been crying, and was still wiping tears from her eyes and sniffling. Glass jars and cans of food filled the shelves beside her as she hugged her knees to her chest. After a few minutes alone, she heard someone walking outside, his shadow breaking the light from under the cupboard door. Whoever it was stopped for a moment, and then she heard a man’s voice, speaking playfully.

            “Oh dear, I’m feeling famished. I could get some jerky from the cupboard, but the door is so low to the ground, and I don’t feel like kneeling. I wonder if I should open the cupboard door or not.”

            “That’s not funny, Daddy,” said Alice.

            She heard a sigh, and then moments later, the door opened to reveal her father in his military uniform. He sat down on the floor, a mere inches away from her. She turned away, unable to look him in the eye.

            “How did you know I was here?” asked Alice.

            Her dad smiled and said, “Let’s just say you should listen to your mother when she tells you to wipe your shoes at the door.”

            Alice, curiously, looked at the floor in front of the cupboard, seeing some mud. Then she looked at the muddy shoes she wore.

            “Oh,” said Alice.

            “Tell me what’s wrong, sweetie,” said Mr. Hayes.

            Alice shifted uncomfortably, hesitating. “Daddy, are you going to die?”

            Alice's father was taken aback by the question. “Alice. Why would you ask that?”

            “I saw mom watching the news, said Alice. “And a military funeral.”

            A look of understanding passed over his eyes. He sighed, running a hand through his hair. Alice looked past him to see Mom looking after Arther. Little Arthur was just three, too young to understand why their father left home all the time. Before today, Alice had been vaguely aware that her father’s job was dangerous. Seeing so many coffins at that funeral had suddenly made it clear just how dangerous it was.

            “Do you have to ship out again?” asked Alice.

            “Yes, sweetie,” said Mr. Hayes sadly. “I’m afraid I do. When I joined the Army, I made a promise.”

            “Mom says when you get married, you make a promise too.”

            “Your mother is a very smart woman,” said Mr. Hayes. “But I understand why you’re confused. You see, Alice, in a way, it’s because of my promise to your mother that I do what I do.”

            Alice, wiping a tear from her eye, looked at her father curiously and said, “What do you mean?”

            “There’s a reason we have a military,” he said. “There are people out there who, if they could, would hurt people like us. Sometimes they're just bad people, and sometimes it’s more complicated than that, but whatever the reason, there will be people who wish to do us harm, and someone has to be there to stop them. People like me. I go, and I fight for this country so that those who mean us harm don’t reach my home and my family.”

            “But what if you don’t come back?”

            “That’s the risk we soldiers have to take, but between you and me, I’d rather something happen to me than something happen to you.”

            Alice didn’t know how to feel about this, and her father saw that. With a knowing look on his face, he pulled off a chain necklace he’d been wearing around his neck, one with a silver cross hanging from it. He held it up for her to see, light shining off of it.

            “Here,” said Mr. Hayes. “I want you to have this. I can’t promise that I’ll always come home again. That risk is the sacrifice I have to make to keep you and this country safe, but I do promise that I won’t go down without a fight. I will always do whatever I can to get myself and my fellow soldiers home safely so we can all be with our families. And if anything ever happens to me, I want you to look at this and remember that I’ll be in heaven with Jesus, and I’ll be watching over you. Okay?”

            Alice wiped the last tears from her eyes and said, “Okay, Daddy.”

            He reached in and put the necklace around her neck.

            “Now come out, sweetie,” he said. “I can’t imagine it’s that comfortable in there.”

            “Not really,” said Alice, climbing out. "Guess I could have picked a better spot, huh?"

            Her father laughed, and Alice laughed too. She did feel a little better.

###

As Alice looked at that little silver cross, she wiped a tear from her eye. She hadn’t worn this thing in ages. When their father died overseas, Alice found little comfort in his words, and things got worse when Arthur disappeared. Seeing the Baxters dead had filled her with unyielding dread. She remembered getting on her knees at her bedside, praying day after day for her brother to come home safely, but he never did. One could only ask for something so many times before the silence became overwhelming. Alice had been raised going to church her entire life, and while it wasn’t accurate to say she no longer believed, she didn’t know how to feel about it these days.

            In truth, Alice wasn't entirely certain why she'd fished this thing out. It had so many bad memories associated with it. Good ones, sure, but the bad memories just seemed to override them. It wasn't as if she wanted the cross to repel vampires. That was a silly idea.

            Maybe, with everything going on, the idea of her father watching over her just seemed a comfort. A small comfort, maybe, but comfort nonetheless. Alice took the little cross out and hung it around her neck. A moment later, she realized that her mother might ask about it, and since she didn’t feel like talking about it, she quickly hid the cross under her blouse. Alice could feel the metal there, and it was surprisingly warm.

            Alright then, Alice said to herself. I guess that's everything.

###

Alice found her mother crying, still not fully packed. Alice helped calm her down and finish packing, and then they left. They drove out of the city in her mother’s station wagon via the interstate, across the countryside with lush green trees surrounding them and a mountain range looming in the distance. After a long drive, they got off an exit, took a short trip through a small town, and then finally took some back roads to find Uncle Paul's farm.

            By the time they got there, the sun had just dipped below the trees and sparkled through them periodically. Alice could see the fields of crops in the distance, the barn where they stored heavy equipment, and the storehouses where freshly harvested crops were kept. Uncle Paul’s farm wasn’t the biggest in the world, but it was familiar. Alice had spent a few holiday gatherings and family reunions at this farm.

            As Alice drove up to the farmhouse, hearing the tires scrape across the gravel road, Paul and Betty Hayes sat on the porch in rocking chairs, getting up to greet them. Uncle Paul was a burly older gentleman with a white mustache and the build of a man who worked hard for a living. Aunt Betty was a slender woman with silver hair and youthful energy that belied her age. Paul wore overalls and a plaid shirt, while Betty wore a dress and apron, and all of this was precisely what Alice expected.

            She didn’t expect to see her two cousins standing there. Ryan Hayes, a blonde man about Alice’s age, looked like he’d worked on a farm his whole life, wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Last Alice remembered, he’d gotten a job as a gym instructor. Next to him stood Penny Hayes, a twenty-year-old two years into college, wearing jeans and a tank top. She was majoring in history at Saint Vivia University.

            As Alice and her mother left the car, Uncle Paul, Aunt Betty, Ryan, and Penny were already walking up.

            “Alice, Sara,” said Uncle Paul. “Finally got sick of all that city air, huh?”

            “No, I just need a break from it,” said Alice’s mother, Sara, getting a hug. “Thanks for having us. What are you two doing here?”

            “Well, you see,” said Ryan with a smirk that screamed mischief. “Penny’s doing a book report on the history of Saint Vivia, and she’s doing interviews. Do you have five hours to spare so she can bore you to death?”

            Alice rolled her eyes, amused.

            “Would you let that go already?” said Penny, exasperated. “We just heard you’d both be stopping by and decided to visit.”

            They all shared a couple more hugs and then started taking their bags inside.

            “When you finish packing,” said Uncle Paul. “You should check out the gun rack. I got a new beauty just last week.”

            Of course, Uncle Paul wanted to show off his guns, as usual. Not that Alice minded. Alice and her mother had a few relatives they could have stayed with, but it was because of that gun rack that Alice specifically chose Uncle Paul and Aunt Betty. 

            Bad things were happening in Saint Vivia. If in the unlikely chance it showed up way out there, they’d be prepared.