She heard the front door’s screen door open and turned, startled. A young man with red hair, in a dirty uniform of some kind, stood in the doorway.

“Sorry, I saw you in the window and I—I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think you were one of them,” Lieutenant Bell said.

Lacy looked at the lieutenant. He’d left the stoner couple from L.A. when they stopped at the Denny’s on the road to Timberline, preferring to go it alone. And after he’d watched them rifle two dead bodies for cash, the Chinese girl taking a dead woman’s earrings and putting them on and laughing about it.

He’d found an abandoned mountain bike leaning against the back of the restaurant and ridden it back all the way into Timberline. He’d ridden to the sheriff’s office, expecting to find help, and found that abandoned too. The interior of the office had been wrecked. The bank across the street was mysteriously on fire. And everywhere he walked on Main Street were dozens of dead bodies and abandoned cars. He thought he was the last living soul on the planet until he’d cycled down a random residential street and seen the girl standing inside the house. She was the first human being he’d seen in more than an hour.

“I’m looking for my sister,” Lacy said blankly.

Bell limped into the house. His side was bleeding and he had a bruise on his face. He was wearing some kind of military overalls that were filthy.

“Is she here?” Bell asked.

“I—I don’t know. No. I don’t—I’ve been. I have to call my father,” she said. “Do you have a cell phone?”

“No. Land lines are down,” Bell said. “I’ve been in a few empty houses and there was no dial tone.”

“I need to call my father,” Lacy said again. “Do you have a phone?” She repeated the question as if she hadn’t heard him answer her.

Bell looked at the girl. He saw that something was very wrong with her. She was disheveled—trauma from seeing the killing in the house, he supposed. He didn’t know what to say. Bell glanced around the room. He saw a body part lying on the floor and looked up. The things had been here, it was obvious. The girl had escaped—or come in later—and now she was traumatized. It was understandable.

“I’ve …” Lacy looked at him.

On instinct he walked across the room, took the girl by the hand and led her out the front door to the street.  She followed him, not able or not willing to object. He didn’t know whether she saw what he’d seen on the floor: a man’s male organs tossed aside, ripped from his body.

“There’s a house next door. It has a cell phone. No one was there when they came. I think the place is pretty much intact,” Bell said. “Why don’t we go over there and try their phone?”

The girl looked at Bell and nodded. The dog that had been kicked by the man at the door that morning came out from behind a fence across the street, ran across the snowy road and put his head on the toe of Lacy’s running shoe. The dog barked. Lacy bent down and patted the animal carefully, as if she were reconstructing something inside of herself at the same time. She stood up and pushed the hair out of her face.

Bell saw she was weeping. It was the first human thing he’d seen since he’d left the crazy kids who had picked him up on the freeway and taken him up to the demolished Denny’s. He’d walked away from the couple as they rooted around in the body-strewn kitchen of the Denny’s looking for something to eat. Bell had thought that if he was going to die, he wanted to die alone, and not with a couple of lunatics from L.A.

   Something about this girl’s tears, the first normal thing he’d seen since his sergeant had been killed that morning, moved him unexpectedly. The tears on her face were, oddly, a sign of normal life.

“They were mean to the dog. He remembers me,” Lacy said, trying to hold back tears, her voice quivering.

Bell stepped out into the road in front of her. He heard the girl, but wasn’t listening. He saw the Howlers coming down the street, two of them, a man and a younger woman. They came from the direction the dog had come. One of the Howlers was naked from the waist down; she was dragging a carcass out into the street. The Howler dropped it and sat down on her haunches. The man, walking on his knuckles, wandered out into the middle of the snowy road, lifted his head, raised his elongated arms over his head, and began to howl.

“God damn you!” Bell said. He felt as if he were on the verge of losing his mind. He walked toward the man and fired his pistol. The thing tried to move back and Bell shot him again, this time in the head. The Howler fell over heavily in the fresh snow. The woman that had been dragging the carcass in her teeth let it go and started to howl, setting back on her haunches, her face raised toward the sky.

“Sharon! Baby?”

Bell turned around and saw the girl step off the porch and walk into the street, a strange look on her face.

“Sharon?”

Bell fired at the Howler but the pistol was empty, the slide all the way back. The girl was walking toward the Howler. The noise from the female Howler was terrific and horrible.

“What are you doing? That’s close enough,” Bell yelled. “Come with me!” He stepped between them. “I think there are some guns in the house over there.”

Lacy was trying to get by him. “Sharon … honey? God … Sharon!” Lacy started to trot toward her sister.

Bell, in horror, saw the thing turn and look at her. The girl was getting closer. “Shit.” Bell ran down the snowy road and picked Lacy up by the waist from behind. He felt the pain in his side as the girl fought him. He looked around him. Out of one of the houses another Howler, in black motorcycle leather, loped down the porch and into the street. Behind him several more Howlers came out on the porch of the house.

“Stop it. You’ll get us killed,” Bell said, clutching the girl as she kicked and hit at him. He guessed that the Howler had been someone the girl knew, and that she didn’t understand it would kill her.

“Sharon! Sharon, what’s wrong?”

The pain in Bell’s side was excruciating. Lacy elbowed him twice in the face. He tried not to let go, but she was tearing away from him, the pain in his side overwhelming him.

“She’s not your friend anymore,” Bell yelled. Lacy finally tore away from him and headed back toward the Howler. Bell looked back toward the other Howlers spilling out onto the street, jumping from the porches of nearby houses. If he stayed here any longer, he would be killed.

The girl was still walking toward the Howler. The thing started calling to the others.

“Sharon, it’s me, Lacy. What’s wrong, honey?  Sharon?”

Bell turned away. He didn’t want to watch what was going to happen. He started to jog toward the house he’d seen with the shotgun. It was hard for him to run. He stopped in mid-stride. I can’t let her die like that, he thought.

“God damn you!” he said.  Bell turned around and walk-jogged back toward Lacy, who was looking at her sister, standing only a few yards in front of her.

The Howler stopped, put its head down and looked at Bell. The thing’s arms were longer than he remembered. The thing looked at him and bared its teeth. Bell picked his pistol off the ground where he’d dropped it, walked toward the girl and picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. He walked, not expecting to live much longer, toward the house on the corner.

“You’re going to get us both killed! Don’t you understand?” Something hit him in the side of the head. He thought it was the Howler at first, then realized the girl was slamming him on the top of his head with her fists, trying to get him to drop her.

Through the hail of blows, he concentrated on the house across the street. He felt himself punched again and again. Lacy caught him in the temple and he dropped on his knees, stunned. Bell finally stood up, wobbly from the blow. The girl was running back toward the Howler and certain death and there was nothing he could do about it now.