HOWLERS (22 page)

He had caught the Sheriff’s radio from his own scanner and rushed out of the office and driven to Timberline. He’d pulled up the driveway and seen the sheriff’s cars and uniformed men standing at the Goods’ front door. He’d spotted Quentin Collier grim-faced look as he got out of his car.

Quentin had stopped him. “You don’t want to go in there Miles.”

“What do you mean?” Miles said.

“Just what I said.”

“Willis and I went to school together. What happened, Quentin?” Miles asked. The Goods’ front door was open. Miles saw bloody footprints on a new white carpet. He turned and looked inside the garage, its door open. He saw the bodies of the children lying on the garage floor, their skulls smashed. He was violently ill and ran back toward his car to be sick in the snow. He didn’t go inside the Goods’ house after that. He simply took notes on what T.C. McCauley gave him about the murders. It had been, up until now, the worst day of his life.

Miles began to laugh uncontrollably. The sound of his hysterical laughter was horrible even to himself, but he couldn’t stop. He finally stopped laughing and looked behind him and saw a set of new black-handled kitchen knives, nested in a block of wood and sitting on a huge marble-topped island behind him. He turned and grabbed one of the knives, sliding it out of its wooden nest. He put his right hand down in front of him, palm down and was about to plunge a boning knife into his hand, thinking it would wake him from this long nightmare.

“It’s all our fault,” Crouchback said again. He was sitting on the doctor’s sofa. They had been ignoring him as they’d prepared to leave the house. Poole and his wife had carried things out to their car. Patty Tyson had been asked to watch Poole’s little daughter. Patty had sat across the room from the old scientist, tired of his blathering on about some protein and talking to himself until he’d fallen asleep, his pajama top open at the chest and exposing a sea of coarse white chest hair.

The Pooles’ little girl was oblivious to all of it: the old, seemingly crazy man, the terrified look on her mother’s face as she trooped down from the upstairs bedrooms with bags of clothes, or her father’s peregrinations around the house gathering improvised weapons. The weapons, Marvin knew, would be useful in their journey to what they all hoped would be a Howler-free zone, somewhere west of Sacramento.

They’d turned off CNN because the doctor’s wife had broken down as she watched the TV. The news channel showed live footage shot from a police helicopter in San Diego. The camera had caught two Highway Patrol officers battling Howlers on the parking lot of a Target, firing their shotguns at close range, their patrol car ringed by hundreds of Howlers. The helicopter had hovered close. They could hear shots coming from the police helicopter as the police chopper’s crew tried to help, flying closer and closer, in a brave attempt to rescue the two battling officers. But the two Highway Patrolmen were overrun and brutally killed, all shown live. They’d seen them disappear into the horrible mob of Howlers that tore them to pieces, as if they’d been made of something flimsy, rather than flesh and bone.

Patty was reloading her sidearm in the now ice cold living room when Crouchback opened his eyes. She thought that the old man was going to start his crazy harangue up again. She glanced across at him, taking her eyes off her revolver, and noticed Crouchback’s face looked different. His expression seemed odd, his flabby cheeks rubbery; his look vacant, but his blue eyes were intense, savage. Patty’s fingers stopped working the bullet into the pistol’s chamber. It fell from her hand and dropped down on the coffee table with the others.

“You okay?” Patty said. “Mr. Crouchback?”

The old man looked up at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. She saw a bit of spit emerge from his lips and run down his chin.

“Doctor! Doctor Poole!” Patty stood up and fumbled with the bullet she’d dropped on the coffee table, picking it up by its brass end. A panic filled her and her hand shook. She dropped the bullet a second time. An uncontrollable physical terror passed through her. She wanted to run from the room. She tried everything she could to stop shaking. She saw her hand holding the pistol; it was shaking horribly. She attempted to pick up another bullet and bring it toward the revolver’s open cylinder.

“Doctor Poole!” she heard herself yelling.

Crouchback stood up. A giant, filthy gob of spit hung off his lower lip. The spit—like white glue—stretched out, but failed to fall away from his lower lip. Patty’s screaming frightened the little girl, sitting across the living room.

“Vivian, honey.” Poole’s daughter was staring at her. She’d been playing with her Barbie doll quietly. The doctor had told Patty that his daughter had been ill with the flu for two days and would normally have been a bundle of energy. The child’s face looked pale; she’d been very quiet all the time Patty had been watching her. Now she was frightened by Patty yelling, and by the strange look on Crouchback’s face.

“Honey, I want you to go find your daddy, can you do that?” Patty said in as calm a voice as she could muster. She picked up another bullet, glancing down quickly at the shells on the coffee table.
Two loaded
, she thought.

“Daddy?” Poole’s daughter asked.

“Yes, honey,” Patty said.

The little girl, only nine, put down her Barbie doll and stood up. Patty picked up another bullet and slid it into the cylinder.
Three
. She watched the little girl cross slowly in front of Crouchback, who hadn’t moved since he’d stood up from the couch. The long ribbon of silver-white looking saliva had stretched further, hanging down from Crouchback’s slightly open mouth, almost reaching his crotch.

Four
.

Crouchback grunted slightly as if he were trying to clear his voice. He turned his head slowly and seemed to track the girl as she walked by him.

“Mr. Crouchback?” Patty said. “Mr. Crouchback, are you all right?”

“Shoot him,” Poole said. The doctor had stopped in the foyer, the front door open behind him. He was holding a box of food and had just come out of the kitchen. “Shoot him—please. Now.”

“Vivian, I want you to come to me,” Patty said. The little girl stopped. She turned and looked at the ribbon of saliva swinging in the air, still hanging from Crouchback’s mouth.

“Vivian, do what she says.” Marvin said. He put the box down. His wife came up behind him and glanced into the living room, and then screamed.

Crouchback grabbed the girl by the hair and was lifting her up and shaking her at the same time, so that her body looked like an over-sized marionette. The girl, because he’d lifted her, was between Crouchback’s head and Patty’s line of fire. She’d learnt on the long ski run that the things wouldn’t die unless you hit them in the head. She watched helplessly as the thing threw the girl across the room by her hair, and against the rock fireplace.

Crouchback, free of the little girl, sprung at Patty. She fired until the pistol clicked empty, watching the bullets smack into Crouchback’s twisted and howling wide-open mouth. The gunshots tore off a chunk from the back of the old man’s skull and he crumpled, still grunting, but now lying on top of Patty, pinning her to the couch. His body pressed down on her. The gob of Crouchback’s warm spit hit her across the face, along with bits of Crouchback’s shattered front teeth and gums. The man was bleeding out on her through his mouth. She finally managed to lift him off her. Two black-ringed bullet holes from the close-quarter blasts were stamped on Crouchback’s face.

Patty stood up and wiped her wet face. She heard screaming and looked up and saw Dr. Poole and his wife fighting with two Howlers—just children, no older than 16. The couple was trying to close the front door on them. One of the Howlers had Poole’s wife by the ankle. They kept closing the big heavy front door on the child-Howler’s hand until it was severed at the wrist. Finally the two were able to close and lock the front door behind them. Outside the Howlers began to call; their loud shrieking was sure to attract more of them, Patty knew. She looked for Vivian and saw the little girl’s body lying in front of the tall stone fireplace. She was dead.

Patty stood frozen, the howling getting louder and louder outside. She looked for her remaining bullets and loaded her pistol.

“We have to stop it!” Patty said.

Poole’s wife had turned and was looking for her daughter in the living room. Patty ran at the door, pushing the doctor violently out of her way. She heard herself screaming at him, but the sound of the Howlers’ shrieking outside was so loud, she could barely hear herself.

She threw open the front door. The two Howlers stopped and looked at her. She was no longer afraid of them. She leveled her pistol and calmly fired first at the boy, hitting him in the face, and then turned the pistol on the girl, who had sprung for her. She dodged the flying Howler as she fired her last shot. The thing collapsed at Poole’s feet, dead. The last shot fired went through the thing’s ear and took the side of her head off.

“Crouchback had a shotgun,” Marvin said. He was looking out across the road, which needed to be plowed, to Crouchback’s place. The temperature in the house had been cold all day, but he’d not felt it until now. Crouchback’s body had begun to smell almost immediately, as if some kind of internal rot had taken place even before he’d died.

“I can go,” Patty said. “Do you know where he kept it?”

“No,” Marvin said. “I just used to see him take it out and put it in the car. He was a bird hunter—quail. He’d bring us some.”

“It will be good to have. There might be other weapons,” Patty said, “in some of the other houses.”

“Yes,” Marvin said. “I wish now—I didn’t really know the other neighbors. I don’t know if they have any guns.” He turned to her. They had sedated his wife, both of them having to drag her away from her daughter’s dead body. She’d been hysterical and fought them, punching Patty in the face. Poole had had to strike her and scream at her. They’d finally managed to take her upstairs. Poole had injected her with something and she’d gone to sleep. Patty had wished that he would inject her, too.

“Will your wife be able to travel? I think we should go west, as we’d planned. We can’t stay here,” Patty said.

“Yes. In an hour or so. We’ll go,” Poole said. “I’m going to bury Vivian, out in the backyard.”

“Do you want me to help?” Patty said.

“No,” Poole said. His voice was distant. They were both wearing down ski parkas they’d taken from his son’s closet to help with the cold. The doctor looked at his wristwatch. His cell phone was no longer working, the battery dead. All the clocks in the house were electric and had stopped. He had been the kind that found it impossible to even buy a gadget to charge his cell phone from the car and now he was angry at himself for that, and for allowing Crouchback to come into their house. He wanted to scream at himself—or worse—but didn’t.

It was a few minutes past four in the afternoon. Outside the snow was falling hard again, and the light had started to go out of the sky. It would be dark soon.

“We’ll have to travel at night,” Poole said.

“You’d better lock the door behind me,” Patty said, ignoring what he’d said. She was holding a child’s aluminum softball bat, the only serious weapon they could find in the house.

“Yes, of course,” he said.

“Okay. Listen, if I don’t come back—my mom lives in Virginia. Susan Tyson-Phillips, in Virginia Beach. Could you let her know what happened to me? If you make it out,” Patty said.

“Yes. Yes. I will,” Marvin said.

She turned and left. He didn’t move toward the front door because he wasn’t ready to see his little daughter, who was still lying in the living room. He heard Patty Tyson open the front door and leave. He saw her cross the snowy street and watched her enter Crouchback’s house. He wondered if she would survive.

The thought of suicide crossed his mind; it would be easy. He could simply inject, first his wife, then himself, and this nightmare would all be over. That morning, only a few hours before, their family had been having breakfast together. Everyone had been so happy. They’d been planning a family trip back east to visit Poole’s parents. He’d looked at his family, sitting around the kitchen table, and had thought that he was the luckiest man alive. It had been less than twelve hours ago.

CHAPTER 18

“Face it, they’re all dead,” Dillon said. “We’re too late.” He looked around the destroyed gun shop. Weapons and clothing littered the floor. The long glass gun case had been smashed. Dillon had the Thompson up and was looking for more Howlers to kill. More than a dozen dead Howlers lay around the door, and inside the gun shop. Two of the things were lying on the gun case, dead where they’d fallen.

A car drove by the shop at top speed. Quentin looked as it sped by. Dillon pushed a dead Howler off the counter with the butt of the Thompson; it thudded to the floor, head first.

“What now, lawman?” Dillon said.

“I got some people I’ve got to go arrest.” Quentin said.

“No shit! Arrest. I hope it’s not me,” Dillon said. He placed the Thompson on the busted-up counter and picked up a brand new .50 caliber Desert Eagle lying next to several other new automatics. “I always wanted one of these. Now that’s the mother of all popguns, baby. And I think it’s on sale today, too!” Quentin saw the man smile like a kid.

“I want to deputize you,” Quentin said. “I didn’t catch your name.”

Dillon slid the huge pistol into his belt at the small of his back. “You’re joking. I rob banks for a living. My name is Dillon. Please to meet you.”

“Quentin Collier.” The two shook hands. “No, I’m not joking. I can’t do it alone. You seem to know what you’re doing,” Quentin said.

“Sheriff, I just robbed your bank. I don’t think I’m really deputy material. Do you?”

“This is what I’d call a Special Circumstance,” Quentin said.

“Who is so important you want to arrest them instead of getting the fuck out of here while you can?” Dillon said.

“Motorcycle gang. They have a clubhouse outside of town,” Quentin said. He walked behind the counter and started searching for boxes of .45 caliber ammo. He saw a stack and threw a box to Dillon, then another, making him catch them in quick succession.

“Thanks for the offer. And I’d love to help you out, amigo. but I’m busy this afternoon,” Dillon said. “I thought I’d go to San Francisco, maybe catch a Giants game.”

“If you help me do this, you can keep the money you stole,” Quentin said. “And I’ll help you get the rest of it. It must be back there in the Ford.”

“You’ll help me get the rest of it?”

“Yes,” Quentin said.

“And why would you do that?”

“I told you, I can’t do this by myself.” Quentin threw him another three boxes of ammo. “And you can stay in town when this is over. I’ll make sure no one bothers you.”

“When this is over? You sound very sure of yourself.”

“The government won’t let us be run out of our town. They’ll come, sooner or later. But they will come.”

“How do you know the whole country isn’t being overrun, right now?” Dillon said.

“I don’t. But you can’t go downtown and get the money alone, is what I’m thinking. I’m thinking there was maybe a million dollars, meant for the Indian casino. That’s why you robbed our bank on a Friday morning. The casino gets their cash for the weekend on Fridays.”

“Well, you’re very well informed, Sheriff. I’ll say that. And it was two million in cash. We had someone inside the casino. A pretty girl told me all about it.”

“We can go get it now, if you want,” Quentin said.

“What do I do with it?” Dillon said.

“You can hide it at my place,” Quentin said.

“Your place?”

“Yeah,” Quentin said. “It’s not that far, and it will be safe there.”

“So, you’re going to break the law for me,” Dillon said.

“No, not for you.”

“Well, then?”

“They raped my daughter,” Quentin said. “That was my daughter, Lacy. I want to pay them a visit. And like I said, I can’t do it alone. My deputies are probably all dead.”

“How many are there?” Dillon said.

“Probably twenty or so. Maybe more. Not really sure. They come and go,” Quentin said.

“I always wanted kids,” Dillon said. “I was married once. I thought she and I would have a lot of kids. We had one. She lives in Virginia. My daughter.”

“What happened?” Quentin said, looking the man in the eye, trying to measure him. Could he be trusted?

“I went to prison,” Dillon said. “Occupational hazard.”

“You help me and I promise you can stay in town. It’s not too late to have a family,” Quentin said. “You have my word on that. We got a deal, James?”

“How did you know my first name?”

“I got a call yesterday from the FBI in Sacramento. The FBI is looking for you. They said you were the gang leader. But I wasn’t sure it was you they were talking about until now.”

“I’m popular,” Dillon said. “All right, Sheriff, you got yourself a deal.” 

Quentin put out his hand and they shook on it.

“Put up your right hand and repeat after me: I, James Dillon, hereby do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, and the laws of the state of California, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help me God.”

“Sure, why not,” Dillon said.

“You’re hereby deputized. Welcome to the Department. You have the right to carry a firearm in public and to make arrests,” Quentin said.

They loaded up all the ammunition they could carry: three cases of 12 gauge shells, five cases of .45 caliber hollow points, and six full cases of .206 for the department’s M-16s. And they found a few boxes of rounds for the Desert Eagle. To make sure they had enough sidearms, they took all the Glocks they found, of whatever caliber.

Quentin was coming back for the last of the ammunition when he saw the door to the basement move. Someone was pounding on it from the other side. Several Howler bodies blocked the door—Quentin recognized one of them, a man’s, as Timberline’s Bank of America branch manager. The banker’s face, now made grotesque by a heavy Neanderthal jawline, had been stitched by machine-gun fire. The banker’s skull was almost torn in two, held together only by grey matter.

“Help! Help us, for fuck’s sake!” Dillon heard someone screaming hysterically on the other side of the steel door. He walked over the Howler-littered floor. He raised his Thompson.

  “Who is it?”

“It’s Rebecca. Open the fucking door!”

“Why didn’t you say it was you,” Dillon said. He rolled away the piled and shot-up bodies from in front of the narrow door and it flew open.

*   *   *

They were standing in a bedroom looking down on Bell, who had passed out.

“We can’t take him,” Wood said. “Look at him. And he might become one of them. You heard what CNN said. How can we be sure he’s not infected? He told me he fought with them hand to hand.”

Lacy looked down on the thin, red-headed lieutenant. The power had come on and off several times that afternoon and was back on. They’d carried Bell, unconscious, into one of Wood’s extra bedrooms. The bedroom was warming up again; the house had gotten cold while the power had been down.

Lacy and Robin had sat in the kitchen deciding what they would do. Twice Lacy had tried her father’s cell phone, but hadn’t gotten through. Wood wanted to go to his mother’s house in Burlingame in the Bay Area. His mother was very well-to-do, and he’d gotten her on his phone. She’d told him that none of the things that she’d seen on TV were happening in the Bay Area. She’d urged her son to come down, and bring Lacy, as soon as possible.

“We can’t just leave him,” Lacy said. “That would be cruel.”

“What happens if he turns into one of them?” Wood said. “Then what?”

“We’d have to—kill him,” Lacy said.

“Well, from what I’ve seen on the TV that might not be so easy,” Wood said.

“Where’s his gun?”

“In the kitchen. I’d better go get it,” Wood said, looking down at the lieutenant. “He’s sweating like a pig.”

“Maybe he’s just sick,” Lacy said.

“I think he’s probably infected,” Wood said. Her boyfriend had been afraid to even touch Bell after he’d seen TV footage from L.A. about the riots. She’d been forced to drag the lieutenant into one of the ground-floor bedrooms by herself. Robin had refused to take his vital signs, or even treat his bleeding wound, terrified that he would catch whatever was turning people into monsters.

“We can’t just let him die,” Lacy said. “What do I do? Look how dirty that bandage is.”

“You can’t touch him. You could be infected,” Wood said.

“How do you even know it’s contagious, for God’s sake?”

“CNN said it was probably some kind of virus. We have to assume that’s how it’s being spread to healthy people, by some kind of virus, Lacy. Like AIDS.”

“Tell me what to do, Robin. He needs our help.”

“You’ll have to clean his wound and dress it. It might be infected—that might be why he has the temperature,” Robin said. “Lacy. Leave him here. Forget him. Let’s go while we can. I have a full tank of gas in the Prius. We can be in the Bay Area in four hours. Less. My mom said it’s safe there.”

“I’m not just going to leave this man. We have to take him,” she said. “What if it was you lying there?”

Wood looked at her, a strange expression on his face. It was a look she’d never seen before. It was murderous.

“Okay. I’ll get what you need. And I’ll bring in the pistol, just in case.” He left the room. Her cell phone rang and she jumped. “Hello.”

“Lacy?”

“Daddy?”

“Where are you?” Quentin said.

“I’m at Robin’s place.”

“You have to leave there and go to Chuck’s place. I’ll meet you there in a few hours. You can’t stay there at Robin’s. It’s not safe.”

“The lieutenant is sick. He passed out. Robin wants to leave him and go to his mother’s in San Francisco,” she said.

“You can’t travel on the roads. They’re not safe. Just go to Chuck’s place. Please, honey.”

“I can’t leave Bell here.”

“Is he—is he turning into one of them?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

“Maybe you should consider leaving him behind.”

“No! I won’t. What if it were you? Or anyone we know.”

“He’s not family, Lacy.”

“I don’t care. He’s a human being. I think he’s just sick.”

“Okay—bring him to Chuck’s. But you can’t stay there at Robin’s. You promise me? You’ve got to get to Chuck’s.”

“I promise. I’ll bring him and Robin as soon as I—” She turned off her phone and looked out the bedroom window. She saw Robin Wood pull his white Prius out of the carport. They looked at each other through the window; then Wood continued down the driveway and was gone.

“He took the pistol ... the one my father gave us,” Lacy said. It was dark, and the power had gone off in the house again. This time it hadn’t gone back on. The big ranch house was getting colder and colder.

“Your boyfriend left you?” Bell said.

“Yeah.”

Bell lifted himself up on the bed. She’d fed him some soup she’d managed to heat up in the fireplace. He looked down and saw he was wearing clean underwear. His nylon flight suit was at the foot of the bed.

“I hope you don’t mind, but your underclothes were filthy,” she said.

“It’s only our first date. I usually don’t take my clothes off, you know, until the third,” Bell said. He saw her smile. She’d taken her hair clip off and her long blond hair was beautiful. It was the first time he’d seen her really smile, and it was reassuring.

“You have a tattoo,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I wasn’t expecting it.”

“Neither was my mom,” Bell said.

“It said something, but I didn’t want to stare.”

“This one is for fighting, this one is for fun,” Bell said. He’d had a .45 pistol tattooed on his right side, next to the old-soldier’s limerick. “I got it when I was very inebriated.”

“I see.”

“Thank you,” Bell said. “Maybe he’ll come back. Your boyfriend.”

“No, he won’t,” she said. She was sitting on the edge of the bed holding the bowl of soup. “Do you want some more?”

“Yes, please. I don’t remember the last time I ate. Yes I do—it was this morning, at the base with my sergeant.” She held the spoon up to his lips and he let her feed him more soup. “Were you engaged?”

“Yes. I guess. Something like that,” Lacy said.

He took the half-full bowl of soup from her hands and put it down on the nightstand next to him. She started to cry. He watched the tears well up in her eyes and roll down her pretty cheeks. He didn’t know what to say to make her feel better, so he said nothing.

What do I say: Your boyfriend is a prick and you’re better off without him?

“I was in love with him,” she said. “So stupid. I never thought he would just leave.”

Bell reached for her hand without thinking about it and held it. “Is there another car?”

“His truck. But I think he said it’s low on gas. That’s why he took the other car.”

“Your father wanted us to meet him at some place,” Bell said.

“Chuck Phelps’s ranch.”

“Is it far?”

“About eight miles from here. It’s next door to our place.”

“I don’t understand. Why don’t we just meet him at your place?”

“I don’t know,” Lacy said. “Chuck is kind of a Prepper. You know, like on TV.”

“You could have left me,” Bell said. “Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just couldn’t leave you. It seemed wrong to leave a sick person. I want to be a doctor. What kind of doctor would I be if I did that? Robin was afraid that you would turn into one of them. What we saw today. What happened to my sister. The TV said it might be a virus—what’s doing this to people.”

“It might be,” Bell said. “I touched those things. This morning. What if he’s right?”

“What if he’s wrong?” she said. “No one could know yet what’s doing it. How could they?”

“So we have a car, but no gas. No weapon. And you have to drag along an invalid.”

“Looks like it. Do you think you can leave? Are you strong enough?” she asked.