The next-door neighbor, Delta Shore, ran over to Frances. "What's happening, hon? Why are all these soldiers here? My good God Almighty! Can you believe it? They must be from Nellis or Fallon or someplace. I'm a little scared, Frances. You scared, hon?"

The clothespin in Frances 's mouth finally dropped to the ground as she spoke to Delta. "They say that they're evacuating us. I've got to get the girls."

Then Frances ran inside the mobile home, and at 240-some pounds, she had believed her sprinting, or even jogging, days were far behind her.

"Madison, Brett, c'mere, you two. Nothin' to be scared of. We just have to leave for a while! It'll be fun. Like a movie. Get a move on, you two!"

The girls, ages two and four, appeared from the small bedroom where they'd been watching Rolie Polie Olie on the Disney Channel. Madison, the oldest, offered her usual "Why? Why do we have to? I don't want to. I won't. We're too busy, Momma."

Frances grabbed her cell phone off the kitchen counter-and then the next really strange thing happened. She tried to get a line to the police, but there was nothing except loud static. Now that had never happened before, not that kind of annoying, buzzy noise she was hearing. Was some kind of invasion going down? Something nuclear, maybe?

"Damn it!" she snapped at the buzzing cell phone, and almost started to cry. "What is going on here?"

"You said a bad word!" Brett squeaked, but she also laughed at her mother. She kind of liked bad words. It was as if her mother had made a mistake, and she loved it when adults made mistakes.

"Get Mrs. Summerkin and Oink," Frances told the girls, who would not leave the house without their two favorite lovies, not even if the infernal plague of Egypt had come to town. Frances prayed that it hadn't-but what had? Why was the U.S. Army swarming all over the place, waving scary guns in people's faces?

She could hear her frightened neighbors outside, verbalizing the very thoughts racing around in her head: "What's happened?" "Who says we have to leave?" "Tell us why!" "Over my dead body, soldier! You hear me, now?"