He had to be as brave as the workers in Japan, he told himself. Or the men and women who’d worked to put out the Chernobyl reactor’s fire, who had died soon afterward.

“Come on, old boy. Step one is get your damn phone working.”  Price walked to the door of his glass-enclosed office and unlocked it. He stepped out into the larger city room, which was a smashed-up mess: piles of computers, turned-over metal file cabinets, partitions blocking exit doors, odd bits left untouched—a nightmarish landscape. He searched the detritus for some kind of weapon, but found nothing but an old-school style metal letter opener. He picked it up off a desk and headed out into the dark hallway.

*   *   *

“What if I told you—” Johnny Ryder said.

“Shut the fuck up!” Bell said. He raised the pistol Rebecca had handed him and thought for a second time about firing a round straight into Ryder’s face.

“Hold on now, boy!” Johnny shot his hands up, his palms out in front of him. He turned to see Sue Ling boogying out the double doors from the pool area as fast as she could run.

Rebecca raised her pistol and waited for the girl to center on her pistol’s ramp sight. She placed the girl’s bobbing back, lining it up just above the sight’s front notch, and felt her finger start to squeeze the trigger. At the very last moment, she decided to run after her, instead of killing her.

“What if I told you I knew where there was a helicopter—a brand new one, fly-boy? What would you do then, huh? That’s right, at that old guy’s mansion. He had one on his property. Parked right behind the fucking house. And it looked spanking new to me.”

“Where?” Bell said.

“Well, that’s for me to know, and you to trade for,” Johnny said.

“What do you want?” Bell said.

“Me and Sue Ling go free. In exchange, we take you there, and you let us go when we get there. We get our Land Rover and our weapons back, too.”

Bell looked at Patty Tyson, who was standing behind Ryder, her pistol trained on Ryder’s back.

“I can fly it. If it’s true,” Bell said to Patty.

“It’s true, all right,” Johnny said, turning to look at Tyson.

“How far away is it?” Bell said.

“Close enough,” Johnny said.

“I don’t believe you,” Bell said. “I think you’re lying to buy time. So I don’t kill you.”

“Ask Sue Ling—if you catch her. If it is a lie, she wouldn’t know anything about it, would she?”

Rebecca fired in the air. Two Howlers were standing in the center of the hotel’s turnaround. They had been beating on a tourist who had been hiding in one of the rooms and had walked out trying to find her car in hopes of escape. One of the Howlers had pulled her from behind, snapping her neck and killing her instantly. The two male Howlers were busy pulling her apart.

Sue Ling stopped running, as she was heading straight toward the Howlers.

“Stop right there!” Rebecca said. The girl was incredibly fast, and Rebecca would have never caught her if it hadn’t been for the Howlers blocking her way.

Sue Ling shot her hands in the air and turned around. She was barefoot and began to shake; her clothes were wet, and the temperature outside was about 20 degrees.

“Shoot them, for fuck’s sake!” Sue Ling said. “Please. Hurry up!”

“You better come over here,” Rebecca said. She trained her pistol on the closer of the two Howlers.

“Fuck, it’s cold,” Sue Ling said. She started walking back toward Rebecca.

“Move to your right some,” Rebecca said.

The Chinese girl veered to the right and Rebecca fired at the first Howler. The bullet caught the man in the center of his forehead, shattering the top half of his skull.

“Shit—good shot!” Sue Ling said, turning and squealing with delight at the sight of the Howler falling stone dead, his brains tilting out of what was left of his skull. “You’re a goddamn Annie Oakley.”

Rebecca was about to fire on the second of the two Howlers, but the thing began to run down the driveway and away from her. Rebecca noticed that the driveway was being lit up by something. She could see car headlights, several of them, move through the pine trees that lined the driveway. Her first thought was that Quentin had come after them with more help, and she had a great feeling of relief.

The first car in the line stopped, and Rebecca heard the sound of automatic gunfire. The caravan of cars pulled forward again and came down the lane toward her. For a moment, watching the procession, she completely forgot about Sue Ling.

“Who the fuck is that?” Sue Ling said. She’d reached Rebecca’s side and turned around. She was shaking horribly, but she too was intent on watching the procession of cars.

The first of four black Chevy Suburbans, without license plates, pulled into the turnaround, all four pairs of headlights pointing at them. The lead car switched to its high beams, which ruined Rebecca’s night vision, and more or less blinded both girls. As their eyes fought to refocus, they heard car doors open. When they could see again, they saw several men step out in front of the big cars. The men were pointing automatic weapons at them.

“Say something quick, or die right there,” one of the men said.

“Well—howdy, boys,” Rebecca said. She’d lowered her pistol to her side. Her eyes adjusted to the intense lights. She watched the second Suburban’s backdoor open and a man in a green snowsuit get out. He had white hair and was tall and thin. He walked to the head of the line.

“You, the other one, speak up,” one of the men said to Sue Ling.

“I’m cool,” Sue Ling said. “Not a Howler.”

“They’re human, I guess,” one of the gunmen said.

“Ladies, my name is Senator Prince. We’re here to rescue you from this horror.”

“You’d better drop the gun,” one of the Senator’s men said. The gunman was wearing an army-green Patagonia jacket and blue jeans. Something in his expression was scary—a profound indifference, as if he might be at the gun range sighting on a paper target. His ice cold expression froze Rebecca’s blood.

“Why would I do that?” Rebecca said, trying to sound tough.

“Well, so he won’t shoot you, dear,” the senator said, smiling. “You see, we prefer to be the armed ones. We want to keep it simple. But don’t worry. We’re here to help.” Senator Prince walked out in front of his men and smiled again as if there were nothing wrong in the world. “Now, who else is in there with you?”

Rebecca looked at the men with the senator. They were still aiming their automatic weapons at her and Sue Ling. She let go of her pistol and it fell to the ground.

“Excellent. Now, see? That’s a good girl,” the senator said. He walked up to the two girls and looked at them as if they were furniture in a store window, weighing their value. “My, you’re both quite lovely young women.”

Rebecca heard more car doors open and close and other men and women’s voices. Some of the richest “Fun Hogs” she’d seen around Timberline walked out from behind the headlights and toward the hotel’s entrance. Some were on cell phones. The well-dressed group walked by her without saying a word; a few small children followed with their brown-skinned nannies in tow.

The senator took Sue Ling by the shoulder and led her back into the hotel.

“What you need is to get out of those wet clothes,” the senator said.

*   *   *

“This is the control room, according to this Phelps guy’s instructions,” Dillon said. The below-ground-floor control room was small, paneled in knotty pine to cover the concrete walls, about eight by ten feet. A console ran the length of the longer wall, with two swivel-style desk chairs. A dozen TV monitors hung above the console. The monitors, which had sprung to life with the cabin’s generator, displayed various outside-the-bunker views. But the men could see little on screen, as it was pitch dark outside.