“I’m looking for my sister,” Lacy said. The girl who answered the door was only sixteen or seventeen, she thought, in Lycra shorts and a t-shirt. A TV was on in the living room; Lacy could see someone playing a video game on it. Several men were sitting around the dismal room. One of them got up off a black Naugahyde couch and came toward the door. He was very blond and had a large Celtic-style cross tattooed on his neck. Lacy didn’t recognize any of the men; none was from Timberline.

“Who the fuck are you?” the young man said. He pushed the girl away from the door as if she were a dog.

“She’s looking for her sister,” the girl said. She looked a lot like Sharon, Lacy thought: attractive, thin, greasy hair, in true biker-chick style.

Lacy felt the dog squeeze by her leg. It ran into the house. The man who was walking toward the door said something and Lacy heard a squeal and thud. She saw the dog get kicked into the wall next to the television set. She’d never seen anyone kick a dog before in her life, and didn’t know what to do. It froze her blood.

“I don’t want any dog that can’t fight,” the man said, smiling at her. Without saying another word, he grabbed Lacy by the arm, yanked her into the house and slammed the front door shut.

*   *   *

“I’d like to buy a pistol, Mr. Stewart,” Sharon Collier said.

Rebecca and her father could both see that something was wrong with her. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she seemed thinner than they remembered her.

The man did something with his ponytail. His arms were covered in blue-black crude prison tattoos. He still hadn’t said a word.

Mike Stewart turned and looked at his daughter, then back at Sharon, whom he’d known since she was a baby.

“Well, Sharon. I guess—”

“It’s a present for my dad’s birthday. It’s coming up,” Sharon said quickly. She looked down at the counter. “I need something for my dad.” Her voice sounded agitated, the words coming out a little too fast.

“Why don’t you get him a hat or something?” Stewart said. He started to come around the counter.

“No! It has to be a pistol. Something powerful—I want.” She put both hands on the glass counter, as if she were deliberating. “I want a shortened forty-five, with two clips and a box of hollow points. Oh, and I think I’ll buy him a bullet-proof vest, too. That’s okay to buy, right? I mean, it would be like my father was buying it?” she said. She scratched her arm and shot Stewart a look.

“Rebecca, why don’t you show Sharon what we have in hunting vests, and I’ll get some of my powerful stuff from the back.” Stewart looked at his daughter.

Rebecca nodded; she knew that her dad was on his way to make a call. She looked at Sharon, whom she known since they were kids. Sharon was stoned—that was obvious. The biker who’d come in with her had blue eyes, and his hair and face were greasy. He seemed very pale, too, which was a dead giveaway of meth freaks.

“So what’s your name?” Rebecca asked him, unafraid.

“Smith,” the man said, looking at her. “John Smith.”

“That’s an unusual name,” Rebecca said, meeting his stare.

“This is Mike, down at All American Gun Shop. I got to talk to the sheriff. To Quentin,” Stewart said.

“He’s not in right now. Do you want to leave a message?” a deputy said.

Stewart looked through the one-way mirror he’d installed in the shop’s office so that he could always keep an eye on the gun counter.

“Tell him that his daughter Sharon is down here at my shop with some—some biker guy. This guy is trying to get her to buy a pistol and a bullet-proof vest. I think they’re both high as kites.”

*   *   *

Miles raced along the corridors of Timberline’s city hall. He stopped when he saw Quentin come into the lobby, heading for the Sheriff’s office on the first floor.

“I’ve got to talk to you.”

“Not now, Miles.”

“Quentin! I said I have to talk to you!”

The sheriff stopped. He had his hand on the office door. “I’ve got to find my daughter Miles,” Quentin said.

“Quentin. Listen, there’s someone upstairs in the jail. He was the search and rescue pilot who was sent out when you called the ranger station about Chuck Phelps.”

“What are you talking about?” Quentin said.

“I just interviewed him. The pilot. He says Phelps was dead up there in the Gap, and that he and his sergeant were attacked by some kind of ... some kind of people, that weren’t people. I think you better come hear his story. It’s a lot like what I heard the guy from the L.A. Times tell my editor this morning. It’s what I heard happened in Los Angeles. They’re here. These things. I think that’s what the disappearances are about. I think it’s what I heard at Genesoft’s offices this morning. I think I know what’s happened,” Miles said. “I think it’s that genetically engineered food that’s done it. I’m not sure. But I think it’s possible.”

“Miles, you’re not making any sense. That’s a biotech firm—they screw with vegetables or something. What’s that got to do with all these disappearances?”

A deputy opened the door and stuck his head out into the hallway. “Sheriff, a message came in for you, there’s been some kind of disturbance at the high school. We sent a couple of cars down there. A fight or something. When’s Eileen coming back? I’m having trouble handling the phones by myself. We got a lot of people calling in about missing persons.”

“How many people we got out sick today?” Quentin asked the deputy.

The young man stopped and counted on his hand. “Four. And T.C. must have gone home; he should have been back from Sacramento by now. But we can’t get him on the radio and he’s not answering his cell phone, either. It seems like half the town is missing,” the deputy said. “Sheriff, are you all right?”

“Deputy. Does anyone in your family work at Genesoft?” Miles asked.

“What?” The man looked at Miles as if he’d gone off the deep end. The deputy tried to hand Quentin a telephone-message form.

“Answer him!” Quentin said. “Does anyone at your place work up there? Did you get any food from up there?”

“Or in the last week?” Miles said.

“I don’t know. I had an omelet this morning,” the man said, baffled. “And no. My wife works at the bank. My mom does too.”

“Breakfast. Where?” Miles said.

“At the Copper Penny.” The deputy nodded toward the street.

“How do you feel?” Miles said.

“Quentin, what the hell is Miles talking about?”

“I’m not sure,” Quentin said.

“Oh, and Sharon’s over at the gun shop,” the deputy said, handing Quentin the message.

“What?”

“Yeah, Mike just called for you. You were out. He said Sharon is at the shop and she’s— she’s stoned,” the deputy said.

“Look, Miles. I’m going to give you one minute, then I’m walking out of here and getting my daughter.” The deputy went back into the office.

“The pilot says that he was attacked by fifty or sixty people who weren’t people anymore. He called them Howlers because they make some kind of weird screaming sound when they attack,” Miles said.

“Obviously he’s crazy,” Quentin said.

“Is he? How many people are missing here in Timberline since yesterday? A hundred, maybe more? Look, I didn’t put it together until the pilot told me what happened to him,” Miles said. “I don’t think he’s crazy.”

“Put what together?”

“I told you there was a worker at Genesoft this morning who said that a lot of the employees were sick there. She said there was something wrong with the new product line, R-19 —that it was responsible for illnesses.”