Suffer the Children by Craig DiLouie

deal with her grief directly. Grief that could eat her alive. She wasn’t sure she was strong enough to handle that yet.
    All morning, she’d rolled up her sleeves and given the house a thorough cleaning. She didn’t touch the kids’ rooms. She just closed the doors and left them alone. In every other living space, though, she’d erased all evidence of their existence. She couldn’t cope with what she was feeling if she had to wash her face every night before bed while staring at Megan’s little pink Dora the Explorer toothbrush.
    By midafternoon, she finished getting the house into shape. She’d called her guests, found appropriate music from her CD collection to play during the service, and dug up some candles. Now she needed to buy some refreshments to serve everybody. She hoped she could get Pastor Gary to visit and say a few words.
    First stop was Major’s kennel to fill his bowls. Joan knelt next to the dog while he ate and stroked the fur on his back. Major glanced at the back door of the house.
    “Are you looking for Nate?”
    The dog looked up at her with hope.
    “Nate’s not coming today.” She rested her cheek against his warm back and listened to his steady heartbeat. “When I get home, wouldyou like to come inside for a bit and see how you like it? Do you want to be an inside dog? Would you like that, Major?”
    The dog nudged the bowl along the wood floor with his sloppy eating. Joan closed her eyes and smiled for the first time in days. It didn’t last.
    She walked out in front of the house, where she found her Dodge Durango. She’d parked it on the street to avoid disturbing the children in the garage. She scraped the ice off the windshield, got in, and started her errands. The streets were eerily deserted. The playgrounds empty. Everywhere she went, nobody had their Christmas lights on. It struck her that in most of the world, there wasn’t a single human being who believed in Santa Claus.
    Her local supermarket was open. Joan bought as many items on her list as she could find. Many shelves had been emptied. The pharmacy had run out of sleeping pills. Even the allergy and cold medicines had been cleaned out. Teenagers and old men ran the cash registers. The cheerful Muzak made her want to scream.
    She packed her groceries into her car and drove off.
    The next stop was the church. Her heart fluttered as St. Andrew’s came into view and she heard its bell calling the faithful. She felt both drawn and repulsed by the prospect of going inside to find Pastor Gary. She was a churchgoing woman, and the familiar comforts of her religion sounded good right about now. But she couldn’t reconcile the idea of a loving God with what had happened. It was one thing to strike down a family member before his or her time and leave it to the survivors to find meaning in it. It was another to completely cull the world’s children.
    The Lord worked in mysterious ways, but this time it looked like plain old genocide.
    Maybe she would find some meaning to all this inside. Why did this happen? she wondered. Who should we blame? Ourselves? Terrorists? Global warming, pollution?
    God?
    And if it was God, why? What are we supposed to learn? If God is teaching a lesson, what could it possibly be?
    Saint Andrew’s appeared to be packed. The church parking lot had filled to capacity and then some, and Joan was forced to park several blocks away. She left the car and followed other people streaming toward the church. Most wore black; the entire world was in mourning. The bell tolled again.
    Joan hesitated at the entrance. She’d never seen it so crowded. The pews had filled. A long procession of mourners waited their turn in the aisle to place candles, flowers, toys, and photos at the altar. The organist played a neutral tune, something to fill the air so you couldn’t hear the sobbing. Otherwise, there was no structure to the ceremony, no clergy providing comfort to the afflicted. The atmosphere was thick with