The cruiser was gaining speed. The falling snow was making it hard to see, globs of wet snow collected on the windshield wipers as Quentin drove down the street toward Lacy.

“Howlers at two o’clock,” Dillon said. He stuck the Thompson out of the open window. A group of Howlers were climbing down from an old Victorian’s wide porch and into the street. Quentin heard the burst of automatic weapons fire. He glanced as the Howlers, a line of six or more, were cut down in the house’s front yard. He saw Dillon hang out of the patrol car’s window, swearing as he fired, the snow catching in his hair, the flash-suppressing barrel sparking blue in the twilight. The brass tossed in a stream from the machine gun.

Die. Die. Die. Die, Quentin thought, watching the things fall. Dillon’s well-placed fire caught the entire group, high up, and right at head level.

Quentin turned his attention to the road again. He saw the house on the corner straight in front of him. The windshield wiper lifted a huge clot of snow, dragging it across the windshield; it disintegrated and for a moment he saw Lieutenant Bell trying to get up and Lacy running toward her sister, who was squatting in the middle of the street.

Quentin stepped on the brake. He felt the cruiser slide in the snow as he pulled it to the side of the road. For a long moment he didn’t watch the road at all, but instead kept his eyes on Lacy’s running figure. He heard Dillon saying something while trying to get out of the passenger door. Quentin, realizing that Dillon thought Lacy was a Howler, grabbed Dillon’s legs and shoved him out of the car before he could fire. He saw Dillon falling backwards into the snow. His machine gun went off. The roof of the patrol car was pocked with bullet holes, the fire nearly hitting Quentin. He could feel the impact of the shots as they struck the car’s roof, narrowly missing him. He slowed the patrol car to a crawl. He opened his door and turned toward Dillon a few feet behind him.

“It’s my daughter! Don’t shoot!” Quentin said.

Dillon, still holding his weapon, picked himself up off the snowy road and nodded. Quentin reached inside the car and reached into the backseat for a Thompson. Turning from the car, he called to Lacy. She’d stopped in the road in front of her sister. Bell was coming down the center of the street, limping. The Howler—who had once been his daughter Sharon—turned and looked at Quentin, spit hanging from her distorted face.

“It’s not Sharon anymore,” Quentin said to Lacy.

“It’s Sharon, Daddy. It’s Sharon! There’s something wrong with her.” Lacy stopped in front of her growling sister.

Quentin stepped away from the patrol car, weapon in hand. “Lacy, I want you to step over here. Okay?”

“Daddy, we have to do something!” Lacy said. “It’s Sharon. Daddy.”

Quentin raised the Thompson. The Howler had gotten off its haunches and was looking at Lacy. Quentin walked forward, waiting for the thing to spring on his daughter.

“Daddy, what are you doing? That’s Sharon!” Lacy was horrified to see her father pointing his weapon at her sister.

“It’s not Sharon,” Quentin said. “Not anymore.”

The Howler, snow on its naked shoulders, stepped toward Lacy. Slowly at first, then quickly, the thing reached for Lacy. It grabbed her around the neck with one of its hands.

Quentin began to fire. The bullets poured out of the Thompson and finding their target, pounded the Howler’s skull, obliterating it.

The Howler dropped Lacy on the ground and sagged to its knees, its face gone, just a wet red-white-bullet-pounded neck left on its shoulders.

Quentin walked toward his living daughter and helped her up off the snow. He hit the Howler with the butt of the weapon, knocking it over onto the road, stone dead. Lacy looked at him, beyond terrified.

“We have to go,” Quentin said. “Come on.” Quentin looked down at what had been his daughter.

Bell limped over to them. “God, I’m glad to see you, Sheriff. You remember me?”

Quentin looked at the young man and nodded.

“I tried to stop her, Sheriff. I guess that thing was a friend of hers. Did you know her?” Bell asked. “I found her over there in that house. I—”

“She was my daughter,” Quentin said.

Bell stopped in mid-sentence. Everything that had happened to him in the last twelve hours finally seemed to break through. He thought of his sergeant, and how things had been, and what they’d become: the man in front of him had had to shoot his own daughter.

Dillon, unfazed by the fall from the cruiser, was facing down the street, his Thompson pointed out in front of him. More Howlers were coming from other houses. They’d heard the call.

“We better get going,” Quentin said, still looking at his dead daughter. He took Lacy by the arm. She was weeping.

“Stop crying,” Quentin said.  “Are you listening to me, Lacy? I’m not going to lose you, too! Do you understand me? Lacy. Answer me! You have to stop crying and help me. Do you understand? I need you to listen to me.  Do you understand? I need you!”

Lacy looked at her father and then at her sister’s body lying in the snow.

“Yes, I understand,” she said finally. “I’m cold, Daddy.” Quentin handed Bell his Thompson, took off his coat and draped it over his daughter’s shoulders. He looked at Lacy; she looked disheveled, her sweater filthy. He realized, horrified, that something had happened to her. He noticed her car was parked in front of the house and that it must have been parked there for hours; its roof was covered in snow.

“Good. All right. Lieutenant, can you travel?”

“You don’t think I’m staying here, do you, Sheriff?” he said.

Dillon walked up to them. He had his weapon pitched over his shoulder, his hand on the stock. The snow was whirling around him.

“Well, now what? There are about sixty more of those things coming down from the center of town. I guess they got really good hearing,”

Quentin looked down toward Main Street. He could see a group of Howlers coming toward them, some were running in that awful ape-way using their knuckles. “I told Mike Stewart we’d come back for Rebecca and him,” Quentin said.

“You might as well walk on water,” Dillon said. “You’re low on gas. There’s no power; the gas stations are useless without power. If you go back into town, how are you going to get back out?”

“I said I’d go back,” Quentin said. “So I’m going back. Lacy. Does the Volkswagen have gas? Your car? Does it have gas?” He’d seen his daughter’s VW parked on the corner where she’d left it.

“Yes.”

“Okay, I want you and the Lieutenant to go to the Phelps ranch. You know Chuck’s place, his cabin? Lacy, listen to me. You know Chuck’s place?”

“Yes,” she said.

“All right, I want you and the Lieutenant to take the Volkswagen. I want you to take the old Curtis road. It should have been plowed this morning, so it will still be clear. There’s no reason for the things to be way out there yet. I want you to go to Chuck’s cabin and wait for me. Do you understand? You can go with them if you want,” Quentin said, turning to look at Dillon.

“Daddy, I don’t want to leave you. Please!”

“Honey, I want you to go to Chuck’s place. You’ll be safe there. Please. I have to go back and get Rebecca and her father. I promised I’d go back for them. I can’t leave them back there in town. I’ll come out to Chuck’s as soon as I get Rebecca and her dad.”

“I don’t understand,” Lacy said. She put her arms around her father’s waist and began to cry. She wanted to tell him what they’d done to her, but she couldn’t say any of it.

Bell pulled her gently off of her father.

“It’ll be all right,” Bell said. “It’ll be all right. I’ll drive. You just tell me how to get there.”

A group of Howlers came around the closest corner. They’d been telephone linemen; one of them still wore his hard hat. All three of them got down on their haunches in preparation to howl. Dillon turned and walked toward them. He realized he might be low on ammunition. He jogged back to the squad car. One of the Howlers was getting up as Dillon tried to pull the shotgun off the dashboard of the squad car, deciding to use it. Bell walked toward the three Howlers and opened fire on them with the Thompson. Dillon, standing at the patrol car, watched the three things torn apart by the bullets as they got off their haunches and tried to run at Bell. Lacy began to scream. When the firing stopped, Quentin walked to the squad car and unlocked the shotgun from the dashboard, allowing Dillon to grab it.