Patty stood frozen, the howling getting louder and louder outside. She looked for her remaining bullets and loaded her pistol.

“We have to stop it!” Patty said.

Poole’s wife had turned and was looking for her daughter in the living room. Patty ran at the door, pushing the doctor violently out of her way. She heard herself screaming at him, but the sound of the Howlers’ shrieking outside was so loud, she could barely hear herself.

She threw open the front door. The two Howlers stopped and looked at her. She was no longer afraid of them. She leveled her pistol and calmly fired first at the boy, hitting him in the face, and then turned the pistol on the girl, who had sprung for her. She dodged the flying Howler as she fired her last shot. The thing collapsed at Poole’s feet, dead. The last shot fired went through the thing’s ear and took the side of her head off.

“Crouchback had a shotgun,” Marvin said. He was looking out across the road, which needed to be plowed, to Crouchback’s place. The temperature in the house had been cold all day, but he’d not felt it until now. Crouchback’s body had begun to smell almost immediately, as if some kind of internal rot had taken place even before he’d died.

“I can go,” Patty said. “Do you know where he kept it?”

“No,” Marvin said. “I just used to see him take it out and put it in the car. He was a bird hunter—quail. He’d bring us some.”

“It will be good to have. There might be other weapons,” Patty said, “in some of the other houses.”

“Yes,” Marvin said. “I wish now—I didn’t really know the other neighbors. I don’t know if they have any guns.” He turned to her. They had sedated his wife, both of them having to drag her away from her daughter’s dead body. She’d been hysterical and fought them, punching Patty in the face. Poole had had to strike her and scream at her. They’d finally managed to take her upstairs. Poole had injected her with something and she’d gone to sleep. Patty had wished that he would inject her, too.

“Will your wife be able to travel? I think we should go west, as we’d planned. We can’t stay here,” Patty said.

“Yes. In an hour or so. We’ll go,” Poole said. “I’m going to bury Vivian, out in the backyard.”

“Do you want me to help?” Patty said.

“No,” Poole said. His voice was distant. They were both wearing down ski parkas they’d taken from his son’s closet to help with the cold. The doctor looked at his wristwatch. His cell phone was no longer working, the battery dead. All the clocks in the house were electric and had stopped. He had been the kind that found it impossible to even buy a gadget to charge his cell phone from the car and now he was angry at himself for that, and for allowing Crouchback to come into their house. He wanted to scream at himself—or worse—but didn’t.

It was a few minutes past four in the afternoon. Outside the snow was falling hard again, and the light had started to go out of the sky. It would be dark soon.

“We’ll have to travel at night,” Poole said.

“You’d better lock the door behind me,” Patty said, ignoring what he’d said. She was holding a child’s aluminum softball bat, the only serious weapon they could find in the house.

“Yes, of course,” he said.

“Okay. Listen, if I don’t come back—my mom lives in Virginia. Susan Tyson-Phillips, in Virginia Beach. Could you let her know what happened to me? If you make it out,” Patty said.

“Yes. Yes. I will,” Marvin said.

She turned and left. He didn’t move toward the front door because he wasn’t ready to see his little daughter, who was still lying in the living room. He heard Patty Tyson open the front door and leave. He saw her cross the snowy street and watched her enter Crouchback’s house. He wondered if she would survive.

The thought of suicide crossed his mind; it would be easy. He could simply inject, first his wife, then himself, and this nightmare would all be over. That morning, only a few hours before, their family had been having breakfast together. Everyone had been so happy. They’d been planning a family trip back east to visit Poole’s parents. He’d looked at his family, sitting around the kitchen table, and had thought that he was the luckiest man alive. It had been less than twelve hours ago.

CHAPTER 18

“Face it, they’re all dead,” Dillon said. “We’re too late.” He looked around the destroyed gun shop. Weapons and clothing littered the floor. The long glass gun case had been smashed. Dillon had the Thompson up and was looking for more Howlers to kill. More than a dozen dead Howlers lay around the door, and inside the gun shop. Two of the things were lying on the gun case, dead where they’d fallen.

A car drove by the shop at top speed. Quentin looked as it sped by. Dillon pushed a dead Howler off the counter with the butt of the Thompson; it thudded to the floor, head first.

“What now, lawman?” Dillon said.

“I got some people I’ve got to go arrest.” Quentin said.

“No shit! Arrest. I hope it’s not me,” Dillon said. He placed the Thompson on the busted-up counter and picked up a brand new .50 caliber Desert Eagle lying next to several other new automatics. “I always wanted one of these. Now that’s the mother of all popguns, baby. And I think it’s on sale today, too!” Quentin saw the man smile like a kid.

“I want to deputize you,” Quentin said. “I didn’t catch your name.”

Dillon slid the huge pistol into his belt at the small of his back. “You’re joking. I rob banks for a living. My name is Dillon. Please to meet you.”

“Quentin Collier.” The two shook hands. “No, I’m not joking. I can’t do it alone. You seem to know what you’re doing,” Quentin said.

“Sheriff, I just robbed your bank. I don’t think I’m really deputy material. Do you?”

“This is what I’d call a Special Circumstance,” Quentin said.

“Who is so important you want to arrest them instead of getting the fuck out of here while you can?” Dillon said.

“Motorcycle gang. They have a clubhouse outside of town,” Quentin said. He walked behind the counter and started searching for boxes of .45 caliber ammo. He saw a stack and threw a box to Dillon, then another, making him catch them in quick succession.

“Thanks for the offer. And I’d love to help you out, amigo. but I’m busy this afternoon,” Dillon said. “I thought I’d go to San Francisco, maybe catch a Giants game.”

“If you help me do this, you can keep the money you stole,” Quentin said. “And I’ll help you get the rest of it. It must be back there in the Ford.”

“You’ll help me get the rest of it?”

“Yes,” Quentin said.

“And why would you do that?”

“I told you, I can’t do this by myself.” Quentin threw him another three boxes of ammo. “And you can stay in town when this is over. I’ll make sure no one bothers you.”

“When this is over? You sound very sure of yourself.”

“The government won’t let us be run out of our town. They’ll come, sooner or later. But they will come.”

“How do you know the whole country isn’t being overrun, right now?” Dillon said.

“I don’t. But you can’t go downtown and get the money alone, is what I’m thinking. I’m thinking there was maybe a million dollars, meant for the Indian casino. That’s why you robbed our bank on a Friday morning. The casino gets their cash for the weekend on Fridays.”

“Well, you’re very well informed, Sheriff. I’ll say that. And it was two million in cash. We had someone inside the casino. A pretty girl told me all about it.”