“Well come on in, good looking,” the man said. He moved back from the door.

Rebecca saw that he had a pistol in his hand. She saw two dead Howler bodies hanging on one of the cabin’s back walls near the fireplace. The Howlers had been nailed to the knotty-pine wall of the living room like animal trophies—their arms stretched out, their ugly thick faces horribly bullet-pocked. Rebecca looked to her right and saw a tall, older biker with short black hair, standing at one of the cabin’s windows. He was wearing night-vision goggles.

The man who opened the door pointed his pistol at her and Summers, who’d walked up behind her.

“Now, I want you two to come on in here,” the younger one said. Rebecca saw another two men in the kitchen, holding short-barreled shotguns. One of them slipped out the back door. The tall man in the night-vision goggles, holding a walkie-talkie, spoke into the radio, still looking out the window. Rebecca reached behind her slowly.

“Hands where I can see them, bitch!” the blond said.

“We need help,” Rebecca said, bringing her gun hand back in front of her.

“Sure you do. You’re about to get it, too,” the blond said.

Summers jumped at the man. Rebecca pulled the pistol from behind her. The tall man at the window turned. Rebecca saw the green tint of the night-vision goggles as he moved for his pistol on the chair behind him. She fired, hitting him in the face, the hollow-point, 230-grain bullet boring a hole through one of the night-vision goggles’ lenses. She turned and fired almost point blank at the blond, sending two rounds through his right ear, as Summers fought with him. The blond dropped to his knees and fell over. She turned to fire at the man in the kitchen, but he was gone.

Rebecca flew out the front door and screamed for Quentin to watch the side of the house. Rebecca saw, almost immediately, the orange-yellow flash of the Thompson’s muzzle. The two machine guns opened up at once on someone she could just make out standing in the snow at the side of the cabin. The gunman tried to run.  His body danced, hit by both machine guns. She ran across the living room and toward the back door, expecting the other gunmen would try and come back inside the house. She pointed her pistol at the back door as she approached. As soon as she saw its dark knob move, she opened fire, shooting through the door in rapid fire until the pistol’s slide remained in the far back position, the Glock empty.

She heard voices and turned to see Quentin and Dillon walk through the front door.

“You okay?” Quentin asked from the doorway. She nodded, then opened the back door. The gunman’s head and upper body slid face down onto the dirty kitchen floor. She saw bits of white down, little white tufts poking through the nylon where her bullets had exited the back of the man’s red parka.

“Take the asshole’s shotgun, we’ll need it,” Dillon said. She went outside and found a combat-style shotgun lying at the bottom of the steps, its barrel buried in piss-stained yellow snow.

*   *   *

They could not get Marvin to speak. Miles had given up. Patty, he noticed, hadn’t really tried. It was the ranger who had led the doctor back into the house when they saw more of them in the woods heading for the Poole’s backyard. Forty or more Howlers had gathered in the woods, just out of sight, attracted to the sound of the howling.

Patty stood in the snow-covered backyard and watched them come. She dug into her red mackinaw coat pocket and felt the plastic covered shotgun shells; only three shells left. A howling started up from the forest. A gang of them was heading toward the fence, walking in the deep snow, some of them stumbling, their clothes snow covered.

Tired and angry, Patty walked over the backyard, stepping over the bodies of the Howlers she’d shot. It had become personal, a matter of her own survival. She’d seen too much violent death in the last several hours. Shooting the doctor’s wife had changed her—the poor woman’s tortured face imprinted forever. She wanted to kill them all. She was angry that she didn’t have more ammunition. She watched the closest Howler stumble on toward the fence. She turned and saw Miles guide Poole into the house and close the French door.

She turned back and faced the fence. The closest Howler kept coming, its mouth hung with frozen saliva, its dead eyes bloodshot.

“You motherfucker!” Patty said under her breath. “What’s wrong with you? Can’t you hear me? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? CAN YOU HEAR ME?”

The thing kept coming. It stopped immediately in front of her, separated only by the chain-link fence.

“ucluchih uulchi nockeer raw, nocker raw.” The thing spoke to her, its glue-looking spit bubbling on the thing’s lips as it spoke.

She never heard one speak before, and it shocked her. “What?”

“Ul raw,” the thing said. Then it jumped onto the fence. She let it climb, watched it, relishing the thing’s nearness—seeing its ugliness close up. She heard the fence chatter as the Howler climbed it. She waited for its belly to get to her eye level; then she plunged the kitchen knife she’d picked up in the snow deep into the thing’s gut, through the fence. She watched it continue to climb, ripping its own bowels open as it pulled itself up the fence.

“Die ... Die ... Die,” Patty said, the knife sunk to the hilt. But even partially eviscerated, pulling its own guts out with each move up the fence—it wouldn’t die. She stepped back, letting go of the knife, and shot the thing in the head, just as it was about to lift itself to the top of the fence, dragging a long tail of red and white guts behind it. The thing’s body slumped back headless, its body caught on the fence. It hung there, caught on a cowboy-style belt buckle that said TEXAS.

The doctor had not spoken a word since Miles had led him back into the house. They’d done what they could to comfort him, but Marvin had refused food when they offered him some of the canned chili they’d found and cooked. Both Miles and Patty had eaten several cans, heating the chili on the Pooles’ gas range, which still worked despite the lack of power. The doctor had sat in the living room staring out the window to the street beyond. They’d brought him clothes for the trip they were planning. Marvin had put them on without speaking. When Miles had told him what their plan was—to leave the Sierras via Highway 50 and head for Sacramento, where Miles said the government was broadcasting from an emergency radio frequency—Marvin had simply nodded.

“I’ve decided to stay here,” Poole said when they came in to check on him. “I’d rather stay here. You two go. Take the car.”

“No,” Miles said. “We can’t leave you here. No way. You’re coming with us.”

Poole looked at them both and shook his head no.

“They’ll need doctors in Sacramento,” Miles said.

“My wife and children are all dead,” Poole said in disbelief.

Miles didn’t know what to say.

“Your family would want you to go on living,” Patty said.

Marvin looked up at the young woman. “For what?” Poole said.

“To help people who will need a doctor!” Miles said. “That’s why. And maybe you can help figure out what the fuck is going on.”

“All right,” Marvin said. “I’ll go.”

At 6:30 in the evening they walked into the garage and got into Marvin’s wife’s dark blue Cadillac Escalade. They’d been hearing howling since the sun went down. Miles suggested he should drive, with Patty literally riding shotgun in the passenger seat, as she was the better shot. They’d gone back to Crouchback’s place and found another two boxes of ammunition for the twelve gauge—sixty rounds—but none for the damaged .30-30.