I’m learning, she thought.

She skied across the lawn, building speed, and hit the sidewalk. From there, over the noise of her skies on concrete, she jumped the curb to the snow-covered street. The wide street had just enough snow that she could ski without too much trouble. She glided quickly, double-poling, by the body of the man she’d just shot down.

Patty heard a front door open and stopped and pointed her pistol toward the door. She was getting low on ammunition. She’d brought just two boxes of shells, and at this rate they wouldn’t last much longer. She leveled her pistol at the small black girl in the doorway, but hesitated when the little girl smiled at her. Howlers didn’t smile.

“Don’t shoot.” A tall black man scooped the little girl up in his arms and looked at Patty, a frightened expression on his face.

Patty lowered her weapon. It was the first human voice she’d heard since she’d left the melee at Emigrant Gap four hours ago and skied into the back country in an attempt to get away from the things.

“Sorry. I—” Her own voice sounded strange to her. She was hoarse from the cold and lack of water.

“My name is Poole. Marvin Poole. I’m not one of them,” the man in the doorway said.

“What the hell is going on?” Patty said. The black man was the first person she’d found in twenty miles of fire roads and streets who wasn’t one of them.

“I don’t know any more than you,” Marvin said.

“You have a telephone that works?” Patty asked.

She wore a balaclava over her face; the doctor couldn’t tell much about the woman, but he could see she was wearing a uniform and that she was obviously not one of them. She looked exhausted and frightened.

“No phone. Tower must be down. There is television now. And some radio,” Marvin said, holding his daughter in his arms.

“The media know what’s going on?” the woman asked.

“The government is calling out the National Guard in Los Angeles. It’s pretty bad there, according to the TV,” Marvin said.

“They say anything about us up here?” Patty lowered her pistol, letting it hang from her neck.

“No. It’s all been about L.A. and San Francisco. They haven’t gotten to San Francisco.” Poole said. “It’s probably safe there.”

“You think I could have a cup of coffee?” Patty said. “I’m pretty cold. I skied down from Emigrant Gap. It’s bad up there. They must have come up the freeway from Sacramento. There were so many of them.”

“Yes, of course. Was that one of them?” Poole said and gestured toward the street. “I knew him. Miles Hunt.”

“I didn’t ask,” Patty said. “I’ve been shooting those things all morning.” She bent over to push her ski-pole tip onto the button that released her boot from her ski, then she released the other.

“It’s more than twenty miles to Emigrant Gap,” the doctor said, watching her get out of her skies, amazed that she’d managed it.

Patty walked into the foyer carrying her cross-country skis, afraid to leave them outside. The skis had saved her life. She pulled off her hood. Her hair fell over her shoulders. The doctor shut the door. His little girl scurried off toward the living room. CNN was playing on a huge flat-screen television in the living room, a red banner headline over the anchorwoman’s head, almost pushing her face off the screen: PANIC IN CALIFORNIA, it said.

Reports continue to come into CNN headquarters in Atlanta that the city of Los Angeles is experiencing the worst riot in the history of that city, or any American city.

We warn you that the film footage we are about to show is some of the most upsetting ever run on CNN. But in the interest of the public good, and after much soul searching here in Atlanta, we have decided to show you some of what our cameras have been recording over the last twenty-four hours. We are also getting reports that the riots are spreading to several other cities and towns in California: Bakersfield, Sacramento ...

Patty and the doctor moved across the white living-room rug toward the television. On screen they saw live footage shot by a helicopter hovering above the streets of Santa Monica in Los Angeles.

“We just flew over Santa Monica this morning. Gloria, we have seen things that are impossible to explain. The only thing we can say is that chaos reigns in the city. You can see below that pitched battles are being fought in the streets of Los Angeles. Houses have become forts, businesses have been overrun by ...” The reporter paused, obviously shaken up and frightened, trying to get his composure “… by people that have become somehow changed.”

A house in Santa Monica was shown on screen. They could see the flash of gunfire coming from the house. Howlers, hundreds of them, were attacking the place. They had gotten up the house’s long driveway and were breaking into the bottom floor. An older man was shooting at the Howlers from a second-story window. The helicopter lowered, the shot of the horde of Howlers very clear as they poured into broken windows on the ground floor.

The doctor watched the TV, unable to turn away from the dramatic pictures. The creatures’ strange faces were caught on camera as the helicopter hovered over the house, at times giving them close-ups of the things howling or loping along on all fours up the driveway. The things wore the same ugly expressions Marvin had seen out on the road. The things on TV all seemed to have the same slight elongation of their arms, thickness to their jaw lines too. He could hear their weird, ear-shattering howling sound.

  “Turn it off.” Patty said, frightened by what she was seeing and what it meant: there might not be any escape.

“We did it,” Crouchback said.

Patty turned around as a man in his fifties in pajamas and a robe, in his bare feet, stepped into the living room.

“We did it.”

“What are you talking about?” Patty said.

“Up at Genesoft. We’ve done this,” the man said.

“He thinks it’s the food that Genesoft designed,” Poole said.

“I don’t think. I know.” Crouchback turned on him. “I worked it out at the computer this morning. We designed a new protein. We didn’t tell anyone—top secret. No one thought a simple protein could be—well, do this.”

“Where’s that coffee?” Patty said, looking at the old man. “I could use a cup.”

The doctor’s landline rang.

“I thought you said the phone was out?” Patty said.

“It was out.” Poole ran to the phone in the kitchen, hoping against hope that it meant things were getting better.

*   *   *

Rebecca had changed into her deer-hunting clothes: winter-print camo pants, camo t-shirt, and long-sleeved shirt. She wore ammo belts crossed over her chest, filled with shotgun shells. They were watching the CNN reports on an old black-and-white television in the basement. Sometimes, while they watched, they heard the steel basement door shake, and the awful howling sound coming from above them.

Gary had started to shake involuntarily with fear. Every time Summers heard the pounding on the steel door leading to the shop, he was sure that the Howlers would break it down and get through.

Rebecca shot a disgusted glance at him. “Stop doing that!” she snapped.

“I’m sorry,” Gary said. “It’s just—”

“If they do come down here, what’s the worst they can do?” Rebecca said. “Kill you. Okay. Fuck! You’re making me nervous.”

“Maybe some of them are friendly,” Stewart said. Like his daughter, he seemed to find the whole thing slightly funny.

Gary looked at the father and daughter and realized he didn’t understand them at all. They were either the stupidest people he’d ever met, or the bravest; it might be a little of each.