“You don’t have to come,” Quentin said. “You should probably go with them. I probably won’t make it.”

Dillon looked at him, then reached inside the patrol car and grabbed one of the moneybags. He ran toward the VW with it. Quentin watched him, expecting him to get in with Bell and his daughter. But in a moment he was back, without the moneybag.

“I told them to take care of it for me,” Dillon said. “I don’t trust you.” Dillon broke out laughing, popped out his Thompson’s magazine and started to reload, pulling shells from his pants pocket. Plenty more Howlers stood between him and that blonde he’d seen in the gun store.

Quentin got behind the wheel of the patrol car and turned the car around and pointed it toward Main Street. He checked the gas gauge; he had a quarter tank left. He’d meant to get gas that morning on the way into town and had forgotten, and now it was probably too late. The pumps weren’t working at any of the local gas stations because the power grid had gone down. Quentin stopped the car in the middle of the street.

He looked over at Dillon, who was loading his Thompson’s second magazine, his fingers working quickly, the box of shells poured out between his legs.

“Sorry about your daughter,” Dillon said. He watched Quentin get out of the car. The snow was falling at an angle and coming down hard again. Dillon’s fingers stopped working over the bullets. It was silent in the car. The snow was almost blue. Dillon watched the Sheriff walk over to his dead daughter lying in the street. The big man put a coat he’d taken from the trunk of the car and laid it where his daughter’s face had been.

Dillon stopped his reloading and watched. He wondered what his own life would have been like if he’d not done the things he’d done, if he could have been like the Sheriff, standing over his dead daughter in the street. He envied the sheriff his pain, no matter how horrible—it was something, at least. He looked down again and scooped up more shells. The worst thing about all his years in prison was the coldness that had crept into him. He’d stopped feeling what people on the outside felt. He’d wanted a family, a normal life. He would never live to have them. He would probably never live to meet his own daughter.

Quentin got back in the car and slammed the door. He was weeping. Dillon looked up at him but didn’t say a word. They drove on in silence back toward the center of town with nothing but the occasional sound of Dillon shifting the re-loaded Thompson on his lap. He turned his head left and right looking for Howlers, the snow making it hard to see details.

It looks like the inside of one of those glass paperweights my mother used to collect, Dillon thought. When he was a boy, waiting alone after school for his mother to get home from a twelve-hour shift, he would shake all her collection at one time and watch it snow, dreaming of the bright future he knew was waiting for him.

*   *   *

Miles got out of the highway patrol car, thanked the grim-faced CHP officer, and shut the door. The CHP officer, a friend of his father’s, had rescued him out on the road when he’d been attacked—Miles’ Mustang had been surrounded by a gang of the things. The patrol car took off immediately.

Miles watched the patrol car race down the street, its emergency lights flashing blue and red. Everything the CHP officer had told Miles on the way was unbelievable. Yet he was living proof of the officer’s fantastic story about roaming gangs stopping cars and murdering their occupants. Twice on the way here, and to his horror, the CHP officer had driven through milling gangs of random people, running over several, killing them, not slowing down if they were in their way. It was, Miles thought walking toward Poole’s house, the strangest day he’d ever lived through.

Like so many of the cars he’d seen on the road heading out of Timberline, Poole’s Volvo, sitting in the doctor’s driveway, had smashed windows and looked like a wreck. Its roof was partially collapsed. Miles had seen things on the road heading out of Timberline that he couldn’t explain. He’d seen strange-looking groups of people aimlessly huddled around abandoned cars. At one point he’d stopped his car and just stared at the people, wondering what in the hell they were doing. Spotting him, they’d rushed his car, and howling like lunatics, they’d pulled him from the Mustang.

Knocked to the ground, a little Mexican girl—no more than eight or nine years old—sprang on his throat. It was while the little girl, incredibly powerful, was throttling him that two Highway Patrol cars pulled around the corner and saved his life. Both officers had jumped from their patrol cars and opened fire on the gang. One of the officers trotted up to Miles, who was fighting to pull the girl’s hands from his throat, and shot the girl point-blank. The shot went off inches from Miles’ face. The little girl had slid to the ground, dead at his feet. Staggering to his feet, he’d looked at the officer in horror.

“Howler,” the officer had said, and holstered his weapon.

   While he’d been interviewing the lieutenant at the Sheriff’s Department—and concluding that the man was probably crazy—Miles had gotten a voice mail from a Genesoft executive, a man called Crouchback whom he’d met before. Crouchback asked Miles to come to his home, telling him it was urgent that they speak in private as soon as possible. Crouchback said he had something important to tell him, on the record, about Genesoft’s new R-19 line.

It was snowing again. Miles looked across the street. The front door of the Crouchbacks’ house was wide open. Miles had written about the swanky neighborhood’s McMansions and knew that Dr. Poole lived across from Crouchback’s place; his article had featured both men’s new homes. Poole was also on Miles’ interview list, since he’d heard from one of the deputies that Willis had killed himself in Poole’s office. Since what had just happened to him, though, and what the CHP officer had described to him, it all seemed pointless.

Miles thought he saw a woman lying on the floor in the Crouchbacks’ foyer. Two hours ago he would have rushed to help, but now he stopped himself, not sure what to do. The last thing the CHP officers had told him was, “Get a firearm.” The police were overwhelmed, and he would have to protect himself from the things. He decided to ignore the body.

He pulled the collar up on his jacket and walked across the street toward Poole’s house. He heard a gunshot and stopped in the middle of the street to see where it had come from.

A woman in a State Park Ranger’s uniform and a black balaclava came out between Crouchback’s place and the neighbor’s house on cross-country skis. The woman cut to her right, stopped and turned to face Miles. She had a pistol tucked into the front of her open blue parka. They looked at each other for a split second. He watched the hooded skier take off again, cutting across the snow-covered lawn, and then skiing over Crouchback’s driveway. Miles heard her skis make a loud scraping sound as she crossed the drive. The woman stopped again and glanced into the Crouchbacks’ open front door. Miles watched her point her pistol at the doorway. She swung her skis, taking big expert hopping steps, and was suddenly pointing her weapon at him.

He was about to yell “Hello” when she shot him.

Patty Tyson fired two rounds at the thing standing in the street and lowered her pistol. She watched him fall. She’d rigged a cord she’d ripped from her parka around the pistol’s trigger guard so she could hang the weapon around her neck as she skied. She draped the cord over her neck now. The Howler hadn’t even gotten off a scream.