Quentin looked up at a man standing a few feet away and wearing a ski mask. The man had a short combat-style shotgun pointed at the body lying on the ground to Quentin’s right. The man with the shotgun turned toward Quentin, racking the shotgun. The man’s eyes were penetrating, dark, efficient.

“Get up,” the man said. “Get the fuck up!”

Quentin picked himself up off his hands and knees.

“Put the gun down.”

Quentin dropped his pistol as he stood, still slightly dazed. The end of the man’s shotgun barrel was touching his chest. Quentin realized he was bleeding; it was the blood in his eyes that was making it hard to see clearly. He had half a picture of the snowy street.

Three men were in the Ford now. He looked to his right. An old man was lying in the street, a spray of blood around him on the snow. Quentin didn’t recognize him. He couldn’t believe that the old man had been the one to knock him down and then pick him up and fling him around like a doll. He must have been eighty years old. The old man’s chest was imploded from the shotgun blast; a portion of his face, from his nose down, was blown off completely.

Quentin turned toward the sheriff’s station across the street. One of his deputies had come out. His hands were up in the air. The deputy was looking at Quentin. The deputy’s face, a confused blank, took in the scene. The traffic on Main Street had stopped to the left and the right of the masked man.

“You got a real problem, lawman,” Ski Mask said. “There’s plenty more of those things. They’ll be all over town soon. You’ll see.”

Quentin looked into the eyes of the man speaking. He didn’t understand. Had the robber just saved his life?

Ski Mask ran to the Ford and jumped into the back seat. The Ford moved out into the street, not quickly, but as if it had all the time in the world. It drove into the intersection slowly and deliberately, and headed down the street.

Quentin bent and picked up his pistol. He looked up at the girl on the stairs of the bank who had tried to warn him. She was gone. The deputy was jogging across the street toward him.

“Sheriff, you all right? Jesus Christ, I never seen anything like it!” Quentin looked to his right at the body of the old man that had almost killed him. “You’re bleeding bad, Sheriff. We better get you over to the doctor’s.”

“What happened, Troy? I don’t understand. They just robbed the bank?”

“Sure did. But that bank robber just saved your life. That thing that came down the street just killed three women in The Copper Penny.”

“What?”

“That’s why I came out. Someone ran into the station and said some old man had gone crazy in The Copper Penny and was killing people. That bank robber just saved your ass!”

“That’s impossible,” Quentin said. He looked down at the dead body lying in the street. The car that had been stopped in front of him raced on. “That’s an old man,” Quentin said, half out of it.

“Old man or not, that guy body slammed you like you were a little girl,” the deputy said. “I saw it myself.”

Quentin touched his face. His right eye was starting to swell shut and his face was covered with blood. He could feel the stickiness and the gravel and salt that had gotten into the lacerations on his face and chin. A siren wailed in the distance and Quentin, wiping his eyes, saw a fire truck making its way down Main Street, its canary-yellow engine bright against the falling snow. He watched in horror as it approached, cars pulling over to make way. People were crawling on the fire engine, hanging onto the ladders and onto the engine’s side, like apes at the zoo. One of them—just a kid—threw the driver from behind the wheel and down onto the street.

“My God,” the deputy said. “Oh my God!”

The thing driving started to howl loudly.

“It can’t be,” Quentin said. “That’s Eileen’s son, isn’t it?”

The young boy stood up on the seat as the fire engine raced down Main Street, out of control, and began to hit cars and plow over them. Eileen’s son put his head back and howled as loud as the engine’s siren. The deputy pulled Quentin out of the fire truck’s way.

They watched the fire truck crash into the AG Edwards storefront down the street. The people hanging from the ladder dropped off and loped up the street toward Quentin like great apes. Some of the things used their knuckles to propel themselves.

Quentin stared in disbelief. Bystanders on the sidewalks were being attacked. In a moment the gang of ape-like things were on them, and it was complete chaos.

Their Ford had been rammed by the fire truck and hurled through the storefront’s plate-glass window and into the interior of AG Edwards. The front of the fire truck, having followed their car, was sitting beside it. Both vehicles were wedged into the debris. A steel beam in the ceiling had sheared the fire truck’s cab clean off.

The Ford had struck several people with desks along the storefront, killing them instantly. Dillon turned around in the backseat; he saw the smashed-out gaping hole the two vehicles had punched out. He could see Howlers jumping off the fire truck’s back end, which was sticking out into the street.

One of his men had been decapitated by a stop sign that had come through the Ford’s front windshield. In a surreal picture, the head was still wobbling about on the seat next to Dillon like a slowing top. Someone was screaming. The driver, he guessed, because Dillon could see the black man was rocking back and forth in agony, his big head ticking violently. The screaming was horrible. The driver, his left foot and left thigh impaled on a gas line, was trying to undo his seat belt. Dillon got control of his own shock and did a quick check of his body. He moved his arms, then his legs; everything was working.

One of the Howlers was approaching the Ford. The Howler got close in and put his face up to the bashed-in front windshield. The dead man next to Dillon still wore his ski mask. Dillon tore it off, then took the pistol out of the dead man’s hand. The driver had stopped screaming; it was quiet in the car. Dillon was the only one left alive. The severed head was sitting on one of the moneybags, the head’s eyes wide open. Dillon knocked it off with the back of his hand. The head’s face, even in death, seemed to sense the ironic turn of events.

Grabbing one of the canvas moneybags, Dillon tried the door on his left. Immediately a hand was grabbing for him. A child’s hand caught him by the ankle and began to drag him out of the Ford. It felt as if a powerful machine had caught hold of his leg. He saw the kid’s head through the Ford’s window, raised his pistol and fired.

The kid flew backwards into a dead stockbroker, still holding his phone where he’d died. The stockbroker’s legs had been cleanly amputated; he’d been knocked into the front of the Ford and rammed between a random desk and a wall. Pieces of his intestines had been pushed up through his mouth and were spilling onto the Ford’s hood, and yet the dead man was holding his cell phone as if he were alive and in mid conversation.

Dillon crawled out of the half-open car door. He brought out two of the moneybags from the bank. He reached into the back of the Ford and got his shotgun, which was lying on the floor. He searched one of the Texan’s pockets for ammo and found an extra full clip for a Glock.

In the smashed-up office the Howlers were milling around, looking about as if they were lost. Two of them were beating a young secretary to death, punching her with tremendous force, their blows crushing her face. Several people from the brokerage were sitting at their desks injured or trying to help each other get over the debris and out into the street.

Dillon looked at the two bags of money. He couldn’t carry both and wield his shotgun at the same time. He swore under his breath. “Hey, asshole.”