He felt the tires slip and started to laugh, which shocked him. The salesman had talked him into buying a four-wheel drive, and he’d bitched about it for weeks afterwards. Now the Volvo pulled out slowly, in reverse, through ten feet of snow bank and back out onto the empty road.

*   *   *

“Who’s that?” Quentin asked. He’d seen the Military Police outside his office when he got back from Eileen’s. He was about to go out again and look for Sharon.

“It’s someone called Bell,” one of the deputies said. “Hey Sheriff, we’re trying to get Calvin on the radio, and nothing. He was supposed to be back from Reno this afternoon.”

“I talked to him first thing this morning,” Quentin said. “Keep trying. Why are they bringing him here—the Lieutenant? That’s an Army problem.”

“I don’t know,” the deputy said.

Miles Hunt walked up to the main counter of the Sheriff’s office. Quentin saw him and raised his hand in a hello. Miles walked through the doorway and up to the counter that separated the offices from the public anteroom. Miles looked at the young man sitting against the wall in chains and leg irons, and then at Quentin standing in his office doorway.

“Quentin, what’s going on?”

The sheriff looked at the young reporter and hesitated. “Buzz Miles through,” Quentin said.

Miles stepped to the gate in the counter and waited for the buzzer to sound. Bell glanced at him. His leg chains made a noise on the floor as he moved his feet. The buzzer sounded and Miles stepped though. He followed Quentin into his old-school, all-metal-furniture office. Quentin closed the door.

“What have you heard?” Quentin said, leaning against the door.

“I heard a lot of people in town are missing, and that’s not all. The paper sent me over for a list of missing people. Eileen was supposed to email it, but she must have forgotten. So I came over to get it myself. And I came to ask you what you’d heard about the rumors.”

“I can’t give it to you. The list, I mean,” Quentin said. He looked at his friend. “Not right now. This is all off the record. Do I have your word on that?”

Miles nodded.

“I got a call from the State Police in Sacramento about an hour ago,” Quentin said. “There’s some kind of … outbreak.”

“You mean like in the movies?” Miles smiled.

“No, there are people gone missing all over the state.”

“And that’s not all,” Miles said. “There are gangs of people roaming the streets of Los Angeles. Killing people.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Price called the Los Angeles Times,” Miles said. “He still knows a lot of people on the staff there.”

“Gangs of people?” Quentin sat on the corner of his desk, taking the news in.

“That’s what Price’s friend said. And something else. I went up to Genesoft’s news conference this morning. A woman stopped me in the hall and told me that there’s a serious problem with one of the company’s new products.”

Quentin’s cell phone rang and he picked it up.

“Daddy, it’s me,” Lacy said.

“Where are you?”

“I’m in town, at the Copper Penny. I changed my mind, I’m going back to school,” she said. “I stopped here—I wanted to look for Sharon and tell her. And I just bought a new cell phone.”

“Don’t. I want you to come here, to my office right now. Right now,” Quentin said.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just want you to come to the office.” Quentin looked up at Miles.

“Daddy, is something’s wrong? Did you find Sharon? Is she okay?”

“No, I didn’t find her yet,” Quentin said.

“I think I know where she is. I’m going over there,” Lacy said.

“Lacy. Please, for Christ’s sake, not now!”

“Daddy, I can’t go back to school without getting her to go home. Mom wouldn’t like it. I know I can get Sharon to come home. I know I can.”

“Lacy ... Goddamn it!” The line went dead. Quentin held his phone, then put it down. “I’ve got to go out. I’ll be back.” Quentin rushed out the door, past the military police in the lobby of the building. Lieutenant Bell, handcuffed and waiting in one of the wooden chairs, watched Quentin move past him.

They’re here, Bell thought. They’re here and he knows it.

Bell turned in his chair. He held up his manacled wrist and tried to move his chained feet. He twisted in the chair, watching the sheriff pass, out on the street now, from the window behind him. The sheriff moved quickly down the sidewalk, and people moved out of his way.

Miles couldn’t wait for Quentin. He had a deadline at the paper and was already late with his end of the story. He stopped at the counter to look for Quentin’s secretary, but didn’t see her; he would have to write the story without a list of missing persons.

He tapped his fingers on the transom, frustrated because he couldn’t get any hard news to substantiate all the rumors he’d heard. Two deputies were talking to the Military Policemen at the far end of the counter. Miles turned and looked at the young redheaded lieutenant in leg irons and waist chain sitting against the wall. The lieutenant’s head was craned around so that he could see out the window behind him. Miles tried to overhear the conversation the deputies were having with the military policeman.

“From what I heard, he’s not all there,” one of the young MPs was saying. “He told the Colonel some kind of monsters killed his sergeant.”

“We’re out of rubber rooms, but we got concrete ones.” one of the deputies said. That got a laugh from the young cops all around.

“What did he do?” Miles moved down the counter. The men looked at him. “Press. Reporter for the Nevada City Herald,” Miles said to the two MPs.

“Murdered his sergeant,” one of the MPs said, nodding toward Bell.

“At the base?” Miles asked.

“No, out in the woods. They were on a search and rescue mission,” one of the MPs said.

“Why is he here?” Miles asked. His reporter instincts were firing.

“There’s some kind of closure on Highway 50. No one can get through,” the MP said. “We were ordered to leave him here. He’ll be picked up tomorrow. There’s no place to keep him up at the base. We were supposed to take him to the Army’s stockade in Sacramento, but were ordered to bring him here at the last minute.”

“Hey, are you a cop?”

Miles turned around; the young man in chains was looking at him.

“Are you a cop?” Bell asked. “Or a lawyer? Or what?”

“Reporter,” Miles said.

“Well, I got a story for you,” Bell said from across the room. “And it starts with I didn’t kill anybody.”

“They’re here, aren’t they?” Bell asked. He’d turned from the window and put his handcuffed wrists on his lap.

The handcuffs looked heavy duty. The MPs had left, ordered back to their base. Miles and Bell were alone in the anteroom.

“Who’s here?” Miles asked. Miles glanced at Bell’s filthy and ripped flight suit and the military insignia on his shoulder. They were about the same age, he realized.

“The Howlers,” Bell said. “That’s why the MPs couldn’t take me down to Sacramento. See, I’ve figured things out now. I think the Army knows what’s going on too. They just can’t say. But I bet they know about the Howlers by now. I turned on the Apache’s gun camera. So there’s video, and they will have seen it by now and sent it on to Washington. I flew over several hundred people attacking cars on Highway 50.” The lieutenant’s blue eyes were very clear. He seemed completely sane.

   “What are you talking about?” Miles said. All morning he’d been hearing things that didn’t make any sense. He was tired of it. It had started to make him angry. If people had been lying to him, he’d had enough of it.