Miles looked at Patty. “Ready?” he asked.

“Yeah, as I’ll ever be,” Patty said. She watched Miles reach up to the visor and hit the garage-door opener. Patty watched the big garage door rise up in the rearview mirror. She saw several Howlers standing out in the street.

Seeing them too, Miles almost hit the button to close the door back down, but didn’t. “Fuck,” Miles said. He heard Patty hit the button rolling down the Cadillac’s passenger-side window. “Just fucking kill them,” Miles said.

He pulled out of the garage. He felt the cold air from the car’s open window and heard the shotgun go off almost immediately. He heard Patty rack the shotgun. She was leaning out of the window. He stepped on the Cadillac’s throttle, fishtailing out into the street, in reverse, whipping the steering wheel as the big car slid out of control. When it stopped sliding, he turned the wheel and floored it again.

He turned to look next to him; Patty was gone. He slammed on the brakes and looked in the rearview. She’d been yanked out of the car’s window and was lying on the ground. Miles put the car in reverse and floored it, aiming a rear bumper at the Howler standing over Patty. The Howler held the shotgun it had taken from her.

“Don’t get up,” Miles whispered, staring into the rearview mirror as he punched it. He felt the car hurtling backwards. He felt it hit something. He wasn’t sure whether he’d caught the Howler, or run over Patty. He waited what seemed for an eternity for the passenger door to open, not sure it would. “Come on—”

Patty jumped into the cab, coming out of the dark. She’d been searching for the shotgun but hadn’t seen it.

“I’ve lost the fucking shotgun,” she said as she slid into the seat, her jacket covered in snow.

Miles shifted into Drive and hit the accelerator, sending the Cadillac speeding down the street.

“Stop the car!” Marvin yelled. Miles, not understanding what was wrong, slowed the car. Marvin opened the back door and saw the black snow-dirty asphalt rushing past.

“Jesus, Marvin!” Miles said, slowing the car to a crawl.

“Stop the car!” Marvin said again. “I’ll get it.” Miles stopped the car. Marvin stepped out of the Cadillac and walked down the middle of the dark empty street. He saw Howlers jumping through the windows of a house and heard a man scream. He kept walking, looking to either side of the road for the shotgun. He finally saw it lying in the road in front of him. A Howler, both its legs broken, was lying in the snow near it. Marvin bent down and picked up the shotgun. He racked it, sending an empty shell out into the night.

He stood and looked around him. The neighborhood he’d known was gone. He could see broken windows, the bodies of his neighbors—people who like himself had been living normal lives just 24 hours before—lying where they’d had been killed. He looked up at the sky overhead and saw the stars. They looked bright and distant and perfect. The storm had passed. Something about looking up at the stars made him want to live, despite everything, as if he were all men, and not just one man.

“God help us all,” Marvin said out loud, lowering his head. He walked up to the crippled Howler that was trying to use its broken legs to stand again. Marvin laid the shotgun on the thing’s forehead. The thing grabbed for the barrel. Marvin fired and the Howler’s face disappeared. Its dead hand let go of the barrel. He turned and slowly walked back toward the Cadillac’s huge red taillights.

Marvin Poole was a changed man. He was now a violent and angry man, who had chosen to go on living, but only for vengeance’s sake, like some dark angel of death.

“Are you okay?” Miles asked, as Marvin slid into the back. Miles saw the doctor had a strange and different look on his face . He saw that it was peppered with Howler blood.

“Okay,” Marvin said, “Now. I’ll keep this with me.”

*   *   *

“He’s up there in that little cabin. He blocked the road so nobody can drive up there. Can you imagine?” Cooley said. They’d parked in front of the pine logs blocking the gravel road that led up to Chuck Phelps’s ranch.

“Doesn’t look like much,” the man riding next to Cooley said. He was a client of the accountant’s and an important official with the ATF in San Francisco. Cooley had given the ATF man and his wif —Fredrick C. Billings, Jr., and Mrs. Billings Jr.—a free luxury package at the B&B that included 90-minute massages and “European dermabrasion” in exchange for Billings’ promise to stop by the Phelps place and “investigate.” Billings was more than willing to get a free weekend in the mountains if all he had to do was flash his badge at some doomsday prepper and tell him to keep the noise down. And, of course, should the ATF man see anything illegal, it would lead to the opening of a formal ATF case file.

   “The law can pick it up from there,” Billings assured Cooley, who had gotten him out of some hot water with the IRS. Billings considered Cooley a little bitch, but a useful one. “These types are all pretty much the same. They’re out of touch. Most of them are crazy. You say he’s a Vietnam vet?” Billings was sweating slightly because he’d splurged on a mineral bath and rub-down after breakfast with one of the cute hard-bodies Cooley had staffed the place with.

“Yes. But that might be just a story, you know, to get sympathy. Like bums who hold up cardboard signs and ask for handouts,” Cooley said. He turned off the satellite radio, tuned to 80’s hits. Cooley loved and admired Sting. They’d just missed the first on-air government warning about the Howlers, broadcast over satellite radio that morning.

“How far is the cabin from the road?” Billings asked.

“Not far. I was up there last summer. He took a shot at me!”

This was a lie; the truth was more prosaic. Phelps was in Timberline. The accountant had gathered up all his courage and decided to confront Phelps about his gun range—a perfectly legal one, the hick local sheriff had explained to Cooley. One that Quentin had checked himself, and found respected all the county’s ordinances about outdoor gun ranges.

“Yes,” Cooley continued. “Nearly killed me. I told the police up here, but they’re all, you know. They’re all a bunch of hillbilly types. You can’t believe it. It’s like going back in time up here. Everyone knows everyone. And they protect this crazy guy just because he was born here.”   “He shot at you?”

“Yes. Nearly killed me, too. Came close. I ran, had to,” Cooley lied.

“I see,” Billings said. “And you told the police up here?”

“Yes.”

“All right, let’s go have a word with this yahoo.” Marching past a “No Trespassing” sign without a warrant made no difference to the two men.

Three Howlers attacked the two men as they climbed the steps to the Phelps cabin. Two were naked, a man and wife, having gotten sick while at the B&B’s isolated “lovers only” outdoor hot tub on a deck in the woods.

Cooley, always quick-witted, pushed Billings down in the snow in hopes he could make it into the cabin in time. Billings, already exhausted, fell backwards toward the screaming creatures who had run up behind them. Sitting in the snow, Billings took out his service pistol and fired at the screaming naked Howlers, missing all but the closest, which he killed by sheer luck. The other two reached him as his pistol clicked empty. One of them, the man, knelt immediately in the snow and shit. It was the strangest thing Billings had ever seen. The woman waited, not sure whether she should go on toward Cooley who was just making it up the stairs to the cabin.

“Help! Help me! For God sake!” Billings yelled. He stood up.

The female Howler, waiting for her mate, knelt and began to howl.

“Help me! I’ve hurt my ankle,” Billings said, not aware that it was Cooley who had pushed him down as he was running.