HOWLERS (23 page)

“I think so,” Bell said. “I’ll get up.”

Lacy moved off the edge of the bed and backed away. “Do you want help?”

“No. No. Time to man up, I guess. We need weapons—some kind of weapons,” he said, standing up. He reached for the flight suit and put it on over the clean underwear she’d taken from Wood. “And some warm clothes.”

“Of course,” she said. She took him up to Robin’s room and watched him pick out a blue Mackinaw coat.

“I want to clean up, too,” she said. “I kept some clothes here.”

“Okay. I’ll see about the truck,” Bell said.

“Would you—? I mean—this is strange, but—”

“Just ask,” Bell said.

“Would you stand by the door of the bathroom—while I shower?”

Bell nodded.

“Thanks. Do you think we’re going to die, lieutenant?”

“You want me to lie?” he said.

“No,” Lacy said. “I want the truth.”

“I don’t really know,” Bell said. “It doesn’t look good, does it?”

*   *   *

“Give me that Thompson,” Rebecca said. She was bloody and tried to tear the machine gun out of Quentin’s hand.

He had to grab her wrist to stop her. “What’s going on?”

“My father. There’s something wrong with him. He just tried to kill me,” Rebecca said.

“Where’s the boy?”

“He’s down there. He wouldn’t help me hold my dad down! I’m going to kill him,” Rebecca said.

“Hold on!” Quentin said.

“Fucking coward. We’ve got to get a doctor for my dad!” Rebecca said.

“Rebecca!” Quentin slapped her.

She stopped yelling. “You done? Now go get my dad a doctor. We had to hide down here when those things came. I’m going to kill him. He’s a fucking coward! Summers,” she said again.

“Where’s your dad?”

“In the basement. I had to tie him up. Now, go get him a doctor!” Rebecca said.

“There is no doctor, Rebecca,” Quentin said.

The girl looked at him. Her cheek, where he’d slapped her, was bright red. Most girls would have cried out after being hit like that, but she’d taken the slap like it was nothing.

“You can’t shoot him,” Quentin said.

“Why not? He’s a little bitch. I had to fight with my father. I might have hurt him. He wouldn’t help me.”

“Rebecca! Listen to me! We need that boy alive right now. We need everyone we can get to help us. If we’re going to survive.”

“What about my dad?”

“Is he—is he one of them?”

“I don’t know. He started talking crazy a little while ago. And he hit me. He’s never hit me in his life!”

Quentin saw Summers come up the stairs. He was pale and looked like he’d been through hell.

Rebecca turned around and looked at Gary Summers as he came through the door.  His bicycle tunic was torn and hanging off of him. Rebecca took a swing at him and hit him in the side of the head with her fist. He stumbled over one of the dead Howlers and fell down, but immediately stood up.

“You have to kill her father, sheriff. He’s one of them,” the kid said, holding the side of his head where Rebecca had punched him.

“Shut up!” Rebecca said. “I wasn’t going to let him shoot my father. You fucking asshole.” She lunged at Summers again. Quentin had to stand between them to protect the boy.

“I wanted to shoot him, but she took the gun away,” Gary said.

“All right, boy. It’s all right,” Quentin said. “Rebecca, listen to me. I want you to go outside and make sure Dillon has all the .216 ammo and .45 and .9mm you’ve got in the store. All right? We found the stuff behind the counter. But I’m hoping there’s more stored somewhere.”

“Yeah, there’s more than that,” she said, looking at Summers. “You better hope those things get you before I do, motherfucker.”

“I’ll go down and see about your father,” Quentin said.

“No. I’ll do it,” Dillon said. He’d come back into the store. “Where is he?”

“He needs a doctor,” Rebecca said.

Dillon was cradling the Thompson in his arms. “What’s wrong with him?” Dillon said.

“He’s acting crazy,” Rebecca said.

Dillon looked at Quentin.

“Okay. I’ll go down and talk to him,” Dillon said.

“He’s one of them!” Summers said. “You have to kill him!”

“Shut the fuck up!” Rebecca said.

Dillon walked up to the girl. “What did he do? Your father.”

“He started talking crazy and—”

Dillon punched her in the jaw. Rebecca fell on the ground like she’d been shot. “You better hold onto her,” he said. “I’ll go kill him. That’s what they do just before they become one of them—talk crazy. I saw it happen down south.” Dillon walked down the stairs to the basement and disappeared into the dark. In a moment they heard the Thompson bark.

*   *   *

It was snowing. The shovel Marvin had bought at Home Depot for gardening in the spring was new, and its end sharp. Vivian Poole’s small body was lying wrapped up in a pink blanket he’d taken from her bed. He looked up and saw snow falling through the late afternoon, the light failing quickly. “Snow devils” kicked up by the strong wind danced across the big white-with-snow lawn where they’d planned to put in a vegetable garden that summer. At the edge of the big yard was a deer fence he’d had put up; it was vinyl-covered chain link, and bright green, and brand new looking. Beyond the fence was the U.S. Forest Service forest. its snow-covered pines tall and dark, dominating the landscape as far as the eye could see. The trees looked ancient in the failing light. There were dark lightless spaces between grey trunks. The dark spaces looked like tunnels to nowhere.

Marvin began to dig his daughter’s grave. It seemed impossible, all of it. The last ten hours were impossible—a walking nightmare. Despite the lingering hope he’d wake from this nightmare at any moment, he knew all that had happened was real. It was the feeling he’d gotten when he wrapped his daughter in her favorite blanket: that it was all real. He’d kissed her cheek, then he’d finally made himself pull the blanket over her face. It was all real, he’d told himself. He was not going to wake up.

He sank his shovel in the lawn and saw a square of earth and dead grass come up. He was crying, but didn’t try to stop. Everything hurt.

I’ve no idea what we’ll do or where we’ll go. How can you be dead, my darling girl?

Marvin saw a tear drop from his face and hit his shoe. He was still wearing his dress shoes, which he’d laced on that morning when everything in his life was so perfect and calm. He’d gone downstairs to breakfast with the kids, they’d laughed. Grace had cooked oatmeal. He let himself drift into the dream of their last breakfast together. He could remember the children’s faces as they ate; it was the beauty of young faces he’d delighted in only a few hours ago. His wife in her robe, her hair down at her shoulders. The morning’s
San Francisco Chronicle
, the sound it made as he folded it to read the sports page.

Marvin heard a howling sound. The sound brought him out of his daydream. He’d been digging and crying and living in the past that seemed more real now. He looked up, his eyes tear-filled. He saw shapes in the forest, dark shapes, just specters really, because they were so deep in the forest. But they were coming his way, ten, twenty; he couldn’t tell. He wiped his eyes. Tears had frozen on his face and the ice crystals hurt when he dragged them across his cheek with the back of his hand.

“Animals,” he said. “Fucking animals!” He heard himself say it. He turned and looked at his daughter’s blanket-covered body. Snow had collected on the blanket. He wasn’t going to leave her. He knew that. Let them come. He would bury her.

The howling sound became louder. One howl answered another, coming from the forest. He wouldn’t look, he thought. He began to dig faster. Each strike, with the shovel, went deeper and deeper, as he raced to get the grave dug. The earth was like stone, uncaring, evil, not wanting him to pierce it. He managed to break through the frozen upper layer until the earth was no longer rock hard. The shovel hit bits of granite as he worked. He heard the shovel’s metal tip make a tinging sound, and ting again as he broke the ground, a narrow long trench that would serve as his daughter’s grave.

Marvin finally allowed himself to look up. He could see several of the things—much closer now—coming through the forest toward the fence.

“Jesus God—help me!” he said. “Jesus, God help me!” He heard himself yell and heard the call of the howlers. The things were answering calls coming from deep inside the forest. They’d spotted him now and the things were gathering, walking from out of a morphing twilight casting a helpless dying light that grew shadows along its edges. Fog-like patches rushed in to fill the new grey voids, leaving a murky darkness that had moments before been forest.

“Vivian! God is my witness—I will not run!” He was terrified. Poole began again to dig like a maniac.

*   *   *

“I thought I killed you,” Patty said, looking at Miles Hunt in the big living room. He was facing a French door to the yard.

“Almost,” Miles said.

“I’m sorry. I thought you were one of them.”

“Well, if you had given me a second to explain.”

Two Howlers were in the backyard, squatting on their haunches and looking at them passively. They were kids: two boys.

“Why don’t they try and break in?” Patty said, walking up behind Miles.

“I don’t know,” Miles said. “There’s a lot of howling coming from the forest behind Poole’s place, maybe it’s that. They seem to be waiting. They call back sometimes.”

“Like coyotes,” Patty said. “Can you walk?” She felt horrible that she’d almost killed an innocent person. “I was so frightened—I’d skied for miles alone, and saw no one that was human. I started shooting at anything, really.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Miles said.

The two Howlers got up off their haunches, moved off around to the side of the house and disappeared from view.

“I’ve locked everything. There’s no way they can get in.”

“Is there a shotgun?” Patty said. “The doctor said he has one. Crouchback.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t looked,” Miles said. “Where’s Crouchback?”

“Dead,” Patty said.

Miles turned around. He was holding the fire poker in both hands. “Is that what you shot me with?” He looked at her service revolver.

“Yes.”

“Jesus! What a day, huh?” he said. “My name’s Miles.”

“Patty,” she said.

“What about the doctor?” Miles asked. “Is he alive?”

“Yes. He and his wife. Their two children, they’re dead. ”

“I see,” Miles said. “Do you know what’s happened?”

“No. The government thinks it’s a virus of some kind,” she said. “That’s what they say on the TV, anyway.”

“It’s not,” Miles said. “It’s not that. It’s something to do with food.”

“What difference does it make, really?” she said. “We’re still fucked.”

“Right. What difference does it make? I saw a gun cabinet in one of the bedrooms,” Miles said. “Down the hall.”

The door opened and one of the Howlers that had been in the backyard stepped in through the front door, which Patty had left unlocked. The Howler ran into the house. They could hear its wet shoes slap the floor of the foyer.

Patty waited until the thing was almost on her and she fired her last bullet—she’d found the bullet at her feet, hidden in the Poole’s carpet. She hit the thing in the middle of its forehead, sending a mist of brains and blood out the back of its skull.

Miles ran to the front door and locked it. He turned and saw the thing still twitching and clawing the living room carpet, the back of its head gone. The girl who had shot it seemed to be in a trance. She stepped over the dying still-squirming thing and walked down the hall toward the bedrooms.

“We better get back to the doctor’s,” Patty said, not bothering to turn around.

A loud rap sounded on the front door and then another, much louder. Miles jumped as if he’d been shocked. He slid open a metal cover on the front door’s peep hole and looked outside. He saw a Howler’s eye staring back at him, very close.

“Open the door,” Patty said.

Miles turned around. He saw the girl standing directly behind him. She had a hunting rifle slung over her shoulder, and was holding a pump-style shotgun in both hands. “Go ahead, open it.”

“Give me the rifle. There’s a pack of them out in the street in front of the doctor’s place.”

Patty unslung the Winchester .30-30 she’d found in Crouchback’s bedroom and handed it to Miles.

“It’s fully loaded,” Patty said. “He kept it loaded. Five rounds, one in the pipe. Make them count,” she said.

Miles looked at her. “You sure?”

“My father was a deer hunter,” Patty said. “I grew up with that model Winchester around the house. He used to make me clean it. Do you know how to use it?”

“Yes,” Miles said. “Six rounds.”

Patty reached over and unlocked the front door. Miles leveled the Winchester, pulling the hammer back, just before the door flew open.