HOWLERS (33 page)

“Comfort Girl,” Prince said again, turning to Rebecca. “That’s your designation now.”

“
Designation
?” Rebecca said.

“Yes, in the new country we’re building. This is a gift. Something we’ve been waiting for,” Prince said.

Rebecca looked at him blankly. He sounded like a crazy man. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“Well, you’re a Comfort Girl now. You don’t need to understand. That’s the beauty of life in this new nation. People like you can do what you do best: serve us.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Rebecca said.

“It means you’ll give comfort to important people. Like me. It will be an honor to serve us. You’ll see. You will be happy in your work.”

“Give comfort? What the
fuck
are you talking about?”

“Yes. With your body. Everyone has something to contribute to the new society. You have your beautiful body. You’ll contribute that,” Prince said. “Now come here.” 

The two men who’d brought her to the room pushed her forward. The Senator told them to back off and guided Rebecca toward a large black-leather ottoman. He pushed her over, her wrists bound behind her. She landed face down on the ottoman. Rebecca felt her panties ripped off of her. She screamed for help, but it did no good. The senator, enjoying his audience, indulged himself.

“I wanted you to know that if you’re a good Comfort Girl, and do exactly what you’re told, you’ll be perfectly safe, despite everything that’s going on out there. We’ve already arranged for an Army helicopter to deliver us fresh foods. Imagine that! Wine, too. I can hardly wait. Do you like wine?”

Rebecca, her hands still bound behind her by plastic handcuffs that cut into her wrists painfully, turned toward the Senator. She’d been unceremoniously stood up. She noticed for the first time that Prince’s face was red as if he were sunburned. She didn’t answer. She closed her eyes for a minute and did what she used to do when she was a little girl and woke from a nightmare.

I’ll wake up and Dad will be down the hall. I’ll wake up. It’s just a nightmare.

The sound of gunfire outside the hotel forced her to open her eyes. Senator Prince, re-tying his robe, ordered her taken to her room. One of the guards marched her out of the suite and into the lobby, naked except for her bra.

As the guard led her across the hotel lobby, Rebecca could see the Senator’s gunmen in the turnaround, fighting a pitched battle with a large group of Howlers. Two of the things made it past the gauntlet of shooters and ran into the lobby. The man guarding her turned and started to fire at the two Howlers, who ran straight for him.

Feeling herself let loose, Rebecca, her arms behind her, ran straight into an elevator door that magically opened. She expected to be grabbed from behind, by either a Howler or the guard. She turned as the door closed in front of her and saw the Howlers beating the gunman, who’d panicked and missed his shot. They had torn the rifle from his hands and were clubbing him to death with his own weapon.

The door closed before one of the Howlers could follow her. The thing’s hand was caught in the closing elevator door; the dirty hand reached for her. Rebecca raised her boot and kicked its hand as hard as she could. She could feel the elevator begin to rise. She watched the thing’s fingers finally slip out between the door’s big black rubber bumpers. She went to the console of buttons and pressed 6 with her elbow.

“Oh Jesus Christ, someone help me!” she said aloud, watching the lit display’s digital counter stop at the sixth floor. She started to shake, exhausted, feeling dirty and frightened, all her reserves of courage and bravado completely gone. She sagged to the floor. The elevator door opened as she wept.

“What the fuck,” Bell said. He and Patty had decided to try and escape, unable to find Johnny Ryder, Sue Ling or Rebecca.

Patty ran into the elevator and hit the Emergency Stop button. She looked down on Rebecca, who was sobbing uncontrollably. For a moment no one did anything. They could hear the shooting outside slow down, then stop all together.

Without thinking, Bell grabbed Rebecca by the shoulders and stood her up.

“Cut these
fucking
handcuffs off!” Rebecca said. Her face was wet with tears; she seemed hysterical. He pulled her into the hallway, had her face the wall, and cut her free of the plastic handcuffs with his pocketknife.

“Now what?” Patty said.

“I’m going to kill Prince,” Rebecca said. “Give me that pistol. Come on. Give it here.”

“What happened?” Patty said. “What did they do to you?”

“Just give me the fucking
gun
.”

Bell grabbed her and pushed her back into the wall. “You can’t. Okay? The only hope we have is getting out of here,
now
. Do you understand? We have to work together, or we, all three of us, die tonight.”

Rebecca’s eyes were crazy. “He
raped
me,” she said. “Give me that pistol or I’ll kill you, too.”

“Let her go,” Patty said. “You need something to wear, clothes.”

Bell let go of Rebecca’s shoulders. She rolled out from under him angrily. The elevator doors remained open, the doors jerking as they tried to close.

“You better unlock the elevator, or they’ll know something’s wrong,” Bell said.

Patty ducked into the elevator, unlocked it and stepped out. The door slid closed.

They trooped down the hall, Patty scouting empty rooms for clothes for Rebecca to wear. Bell, behind them, tried not to look at the naked girl. The raw and ugly new black tattoo—
CG
— on her right ass cheek terrified him.

CHAPTER 27

They’d noticed that Howlers were learning to use simple tools. The Howlers had worked together to muster battering rams. Groups of the things had started dragging trees they’d pulled down in the forest. Twenty or more, holding a tree, would run toward the cabin’s front door. Each time, the cabin’s defenders cut the Howlers down before they could reach the porch.

It was this new aspect, their learning to use tools, which had unnerved Summers. The second time they’d tried it he’d panicked and run down into the bunker, leaving his weapon on the floor, sure the Howlers would succeed in breaking in and kill them. He’d closed the safety door separating the lower bunker from the cabin, trapping the rest of them upstairs. No one had noticed.

The five remaining upstairs—Quentin, Lacy, Marvin, Miles and Dillon—were shocked and exhausted from the second battle. The numbers of Howlers that had attacked the cabin was something they’d never anticipated, or would ever forget. Thousands had attacked in wave after wave. Howlers of every kind, many obviously from cities—more black and brown Howlers now—rushed up the snow-covered road toward the tiny cabin. The five of them had stood by their gunports, firing their automatic weapons straight toward the horde. The sound of five automatic weapons, the barrels heating up so they were sometimes glowing red, had filled the tiny cabin. They had had no respite, no time for screaming, no time for crying, or for even drinking water. They had slaughtered thousands of Howlers, who now lay in heaps outside the cabin again. The beautiful snowy field had turned into an ugly battlefield reminiscent of the Somme or Gettysburg, carpeted with corpses.

   The battle had taken place over three hours in the dead of night, making it even more terrifying. By dawn, the floor of the cabin was covered with thousands of shell casings from the assault rifles. The sickening smell of cordite clung to their clothes and to the walls. Their trigger fingers were blistered and they had burns on their hands from handling their overheated weapons while reloading.

The dawn had come and they were drinking coffee in silence. An occasional pounding on the door of the cabin signaled that one of the many wounded Howlers had dragged itself over the corpses of the dead onto the smoldering charred porch and continued to attack, even bullet-torn and half-dead. They were
still
intent on breaking down the door and killing them all.

It all seemed impossible and yet they had seen it, and lived it. They’d managed to clear the field of fire from the mounds of dead Howlers stacked up in the kill zone one more time and in preparation for the next attack. Already more Howlers were gathering below on the road, calling out for more to join them. But the worst had been the sight of them carrying trees and running with them toward the cabin. It was their learning to work together that had terrified them more than anything. If they were learning to use tools, they soon might learn to use firearms.

“Where is the kid?” Dillon asked at last, his face haggard. A dark shadow of beard had grown over his face in the last forty-eight hours.

“He’s hiding,” Marvin said.

“The door to the bunker is locked,” Lacy said. “He’s locked it!” She stood over the open trap door, trying to slide back the iron plate.

They all looked at each other.

“There’s only one way down there,” Dillon said.

Marvin nodded.

“All the extra ammunition is down there,” Quentin said. His shirt had been burnt from the flame thrower they’d used during the battle. Some of the gel had dripped onto him and caught fire as he’d tried to turn off the weapon. Lacy had smothered the fire out with her own body.

   No one had noticed Summers sneaking off during the battle. They had no way even to communicate with him. The trap door was covered with a two-inch thick steel plate, set in place from below.

Lacy, first to see the plate, had immediately realized what Summers had done. During the battle, she’d seen him frozen with fear when it looked as if they would be overrun and the front door breached. But she’d been forced to concentrate on her firing and she’d forgotten about Summers, lost in her own manic killing and reloading.

“
Motherfucker
!” Dillon said. He took a sip of coffee. “I guess this Phelps guy never figured on a coward fucking everyone like that.”

“There’s only a couple of boxes of ammunition left up here,” Marvin said.

A loud, steady banging started on the cabin’s door. Coffee in hand, Marvin walked slowly to the gunport with a view of the porch. He saw a teenage Howler with a sledgehammer. The thing was using deliberate, careful swings, hitting the cabin’s reinforced door. Marvin watched the hinges jump, intrigued by the Howler’s use of the tool.

“They’re learning fast. He’s got a sledgehammer,” Marvin said, not bothering to turn around. He stuck the barrel of the FAL through the gunport, fired a burst at the kid’s head and returned to the table. Killing Howlers had become routine.

During the worst moments of the battle it had been the doctor who made sure everyone had ammunition: running to the back of the cabin and the gun locker and bringing boxes of ammunition to each of them, sometimes sitting on the ground, his back to the wall, his blood stained sheep-skin coat open, reloading their empty clips himself with a gadget from Phelps’s gun locker. Never once had Marvin looked frightened or even worried, even at the very worst moments when Summers had stopped firing and started screaming like a child, having snapped.

At their worst moment, when a horde of Howlers gained the porch, dozens of the creatures beating on the thick plastic window, their faces big, their spit hitting the window, their dirty palms pressed against the bullet-proof plastic—some of them shoving hands through the open gunports—even then, when it seemed they would all die soon, Marvin had worked with the same dull look on his face, almost as if he’d become one of them.

   It was then, while Summers pissed himself and fell on the floor screaming like a child, that Quentin ran for Phelps’s homemade flamethrower. Quentin manned the awkward thing, attached to a jerrycan by a plastic hose, itself attached to an air compressor. He’d pulled the compressor’s starter and the flamethrower jumped to life, building pressure in the jerrycan, pushing a gel-like substance that Chuck had designed to mimic the Napalm he’d seen used in Vietnam.

The homemade flamethrower began to spit hunks of gel from its nozzle. Quentin screamed for people to get away from the gunports and lit the end of the flamethrower. Dripping flame, he poked the flamethrower’s head out of one of the cabin’s gunports and pulled the trigger. The nozzle shot flaming gel at the attackers, covering them in flames.

The weapon saved the day, turning the wall of pounding Howlers, a hundred of them, into a blue-yellow ball of fire. The burning gel struck the creatures, igniting their clothes and skin. Their whole bodies on fire, the things ran out in different directions, blind.

It had been Dillon who opened the cabin door and rushed out to kill them as they ran. At the same time, he doused the flaming porch with buckets of water that Marvin and Lacy passed out to him.

It was then, while they were all fighting the fire on the porch, that Summers had crawled to the trap door and had locked himself down in the bunker, without anyone noticing.

“What do we do now?” Lacy said. She was looking at her father.

Quentin got up from the table. “We have to eat something. Can you fix us something?” He walked to the trap door that led to the bunker. He opened the cover and saw that the inside was locked with a steel plate that slid over the hatch and could only be locked from the bunker side.

“Yes,” Lacy said.

“Hey, kid. Can you hear me?” Quentin said.

No one answered. 

Quentin opened the cabin door and looked at the dead Howler, his hands still around the sledgehammer. He slid the hammer out of the Howler’s hand and closed the cabin door, re-locking it. He walked over to the hatch and with all his might, swung the hammer down on the steel plate.

The hammer’s head snapped off and flew off, nearly hitting Miles. Quentin looked at the hammer’s broken handle.

“Now what?” Miles said. His face was white with exhaustion, his hands blistered from his weapon.

“We eat breakfast,” Quentin said. He took the broken handle, walked toward the cabin’s door and leaned it carefully against the door. Lacy got up and turned to the refrigerator.

“I must face the man that hates me or lie a coward—or lie a coward in my grave—.”
Dillon sang
the words to
High Noon
quietly.

“Shut up!” Quentin said.

“What’s wrong, Sheriff? We got a couple boxes of ammo and these things are starting to use tools. What do you think is going to happen to us? We’re heading to the green room.” Dillon walked over to the hatch separating them from safety and looked down again at the steel plate. “I should have listened to Rebecca and shot that fucking kid when I had the chance.”

“
Please
shut up!” Lacy said. She started to cry. She was holding a box of eggs she’d found in the cold room. “
Please
.” It was so pitiful, her exhausted tone of voice, that Dillon shut up. He looked at her, then went down to the gun locker and threw it open.

Three boxes of long rifle shells were left. A whole stack of shotgun shells remained, but their range made them almost useless. They had only survived because they’d killed so many of the things further out from the cabin. He closed the locker door and for the first time in a long, long, time felt real fear. He felt a kind of panic.

He turned and looked at the cabin door. He had the sudden irrational urge to run out the door and onto the field. He could see himself running through the snow to the road, to some kind of vehicle that would take him far away from this nightmare.

He heard the sound of bacon frying, then smelled it. That familiar sound, and the smell of the cooking food, helped him get hold of himself. He turned around in time to see Quentin collapse onto the floor. He watched Quentin’s body twist and shake in the grips of some horrible seizure.

Lacy had laid a wooden spoon on the counter. Marvin, realizing Quentin was having a seizure, forced the spoon into Quentin’s open mouth as he shook and jerked on the floor.

Dillon looked out the scratched and bloody window. A new wave of Howlers was gathering at the bottom of the field. He could see them shaping up for a new attack, most of them sitting on their haunches and howling. He expected to die.

*   *   *

Howard Price passed Timberline’s shot-up population sign and drove on around the bend and over a short concrete bridge into town. He drove slowly down Main Street, sometimes having to drive directly over dead bodies and around abandoned cars. The town seemed completely deserted. He’d seen no one on the road after turning off at Emigrant Gap. He’d seen a few creatures on the side of the road, some standing passively by deserted cars, others in groups of thirty, or so, had been running along the road in a surreal fashion, heading east. Some of them stopped to howl, or to stare at him as he drove past. A few had run after the car, but he’d sped up and left them behind. The next ten miles had been Howler free, the road empty. He passed a smoldering hulk of a motel to his right and sped on.

He looked at his gas gauge. He had only a quarter tank or less, but more than enough to get him to the bed and breakfast Miles had described. He decided to try and fill up his Prius in Timberline if possible. It would be dangerous, but it was important to do while it was still possible. He noticed lights on in the storefronts he passed—even the Christmas lights, strung down the town’s main street, were still on. If he could find a gas station, the pumps, and the computers attached to them, might still be functioning.

He stopped his car in the middle of Main Street and looked out at the unreal scene of snow-covered wrecks and dead bodies. He consulted the Google map Miles had emailed him. The cabin, according to the instructions, was only about five miles to the east of Timberline. He looked at the electronic pin he’d stuck in the map. It was four in the afternoon and he’d eaten nothing since the night before.

He heard the slap of his windshield wiper. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw nothing moving on the street behind him. He tried to squint and see through the falling snow in case he was missing something.

“I’ve got to eat something!” he said aloud. It was the first time he’d spoken since he’d gotten back in the car at the rest stop. He looked at his phone; it had a signal. He put the car in park and thumbed through his contacts until he saw Miles’ cell number and decided to try it.

“Hello,” Miles answered.

“Miles?”

“Yes. Where are you?”

“In Timberline,” Howard said.

“
Fuck
!” Miles said.

“I’m almost there,” Howard said. “I’m going to try and get gas in case we need the car.”

“You can’t come now,” Miles said.

“
What
?”

“It isn’t safe. We’re surrounded by them and—it’s useless here. There’s no point. We’re locked out of the bunker. I’m sorry, Howard.”

“I can try,” Howard said.

“It’s suicide,” Miles said.

“I don’t know what else to do, Miles.” Price could hear someone take the phone.

“Hello, this is Dr. Marvin Poole. You say you’re in Timberline?”