When he got to the end of the tunnel, he panicked and cried like a little boy. He accidently touched the end of the rope Chuck had hung from the trap door. When he touched it, he stopped crying and pulled. At first it hadn’t moved. The second time he used both his hands and slowly the lid, its top piled with frozen snow, cracked open and early-morning light flooded the pitch-black tunnel.

He raised himself up in the opening and saw, almost immediately, Howlers running through the forest toward the cabin, some crouching on the ground and calling. He gazed out, frozen with fear. If he could make it across to the road, he might escape and live. He scrambled out the opening and fell into the snow, crawling on his hands and knees through the fresh powder snow toward the county road only fifteen yards away. He could hear the gunfire coming from the cabin behind him, heard rounds smacking the pine trees around his head.

He lay in the snow, the heat of his body melting it and soaking his skin. He waited, too afraid to crawl, listening to the bullets whack pine-tree bark, making it fly off the tree just a few feet from his face.

A few Howlers were on the road in front of him. Most had run toward the cabin. He spotted the bed and breakfast on the other side of the road; it seemed to be deserted, but he was too frightened to risk standing up and running across the road, afraid that Howlers would spot him. He watched the road and urinated on himself, making the cold worse. He started to shake uncontrollably. If he didn’t get up out of the snow, he’d die of hypothermia.

Piss-stained and freezing, Gary Summers stood up as soon as the shooting stopped. He ran through the thigh-deep snow until he broke out of the woods. Without stopping he turned and ran toward the bed and breakfast, sure he was going to be chased down by one of the things and murdered. But he wasn’t. Gary Summers ran down the Country Bride Inn’s empty driveway and into the Inn full of dead guests and warm clothes he took from their open suitcases.

*   *   *

Bell got out of the limo. He raised the empty automatic and pointed it at the Land Rover. “Get the fuck out of the car,” Bell said.

Ryder slipped out from behind the wheel his hands up. “Okay, I know you’re pissed at me,” Johnny said. “I don’t blame you. But hear me out, Bell.”

Rebecca opened the back of the limo. Pointing her weapon at Ryder, she walked up to the passenger side of the Land Rover and dragged Sue Ling out, throwing her onto the driveway roughly.

“I’m going to kill this bitch in two seconds if you don’t throw out all your weapons,” Rebecca said. She held the short barrel of the assault rifle against Sue Ling’s cheek. The girl lay on the ground, terrified.

“Okay, okay!” Johnny said. “For fuck sake, on the backseat!” He nodded toward the Land Rover. Rebecca reached in and pulled out a Marine AA 12 shotgun. “And my pistol,” Johnny said. He lifted his jacket and showed the butt of an automatic. Bell had him toss the pistol to him by the barrel. It landed on the pavers in front of him.

Patty, who’d gotten out behind Rebecca, picked it up. She immediately checked to see if it was ready to fire, then pointed it at Ryder.

“I got a deal for you,” Ryder said.

“Yeah?” Bell said.

“Yeah,” Ryder said, smiling as if nothing was wrong in the world.

“What is it, asshole?”

“You help us move something, and I’ll show you where there’s another Prepper cabin—one that the Senator and those crazies don’t know about.”

“What are you doing here? Why did they let you go?”

“The senator—the crazy fucker—wants Sue Ling and me to run a whorehouse for them. The New American Army, or whatever the hell it’s called, is going to need one up here in the Sierras. I told them they should use this old rich guy’s place.”

“I’ll ask you one more time, Ryder, and you’d better tell me the truth. What are you doing here?”

“I came for the gold we hid,” Ryder said. “I want to get it and split before the New American Army get here. They’re sending some Comfort Girls here, to this mansion, and some men to guard the whorehouse.”

“What gold? What are you talking about?” Bell said.

“This old fucker. He had a lot of it. We hid it here. I told them I would work the whorehouse just so Sue Ling and I could get up here and get our goods and split. The New Freedom Army is about an hour behind me. Like I said, the Senator is sending some men and a few girls they collected already. I don’t want anything to do with it. All we want is to get our gold and get the fuck out of here. I’m not working for them. Johnny Ryder works for himself. Fuck these people.”

“Is there a helicopter here, or was that all bullshit?” Bell said.

“It’s right up there.” Johnny pointed toward a barn-like garage. “I didn’t touch the thing. I’m no pilot,” Ryder said. “We don’t have much time. I told them exactly where this place was. I had to, or they wouldn’t let me come. They have some kind of drone and they followed me with it. They’ll be here soon. The drone is above us. So they know you’re here too, now.” Ryder pointed above him. An object hovered about a hundred feet above them, silent and grey.

“These are some high-tech motherfuckers,” Ryder said.

A burst of shotgun fire shattered the drone and brought it to the ground in pieces.

“Fuck them,” Rebecca said. She’d fired the AA 12 with one hand and was able to hit the drone in the moonlight.

“Is that a yes, chief?” Ryder asked.

Bell looked down the hill and saw two sets of headlights slowing on the highway below.

“Move that fucking jeep,” Bell said and lowered the empty pistol he had trained on Ryder. He got back into the limo and waited for the convoy below, watching it in the rearview mirror, as Ryder got the Land Rover pulled around and out of his way.

Bell floored the limo in reverse. He backed it down the driveway about fifty feet, then spun the wheel as hard as he could. The rear end of the limo slammed into the side of the hill. The stretch limo was now effectively blocking the driveway up to the mansion. Bell scrambled out and ran up toward the house.

*   *   *

Howard had carefully packed the medicines he’d collected at the doctor’s office, putting them in a cardboard box he’d found. The medicine locker in the Poole’s office had been untouched, despite the fact that the office was a wreck. Poole’s young receptionist, who had come back to check on the office, had been beaten with a chair and was lying in the waiting room, dead. Howard, sorry for the dead woman, had pulled a curtain off of a window and pulled it over her body.

Two cars had come racing through Timberline while he’d been in the doctor’s office. One had crashed trying to avoid an abandoned car and everyone inside had been killed immediately. The car’s horn was still blaring loudly. A second car, coming into town behind the first, managed to avoid the gauntlet of stopped cars. The second car, driving at high speed, had gone on toward the south end of town. Howard had seen them both pass through the office window, which had a full view of Main Street.

He stared out at the crashed car, its horn blaring loudly. He could see the dead bodies in the car. It looked like a whole family. The driver’s head had bashed the steering wheel so hard that it had engaged the horn. It had been Howard’s stopped Prius they’d failed to get around. He felt guilty. His hands had begun to shake.

He finished filling the box with the medicines he’d found and walked out of the doctor’s office and across the chaotic street toward the car that had just crashed. He laid the box in the snow and opened the driver’s-side door. A dead woman rolled out, about thirty, with short red hair. The family had hit a wooden telephone pole at sixty or seventy miles an hour. No one in the car had been wearing safety belts, probably so they could fire weapons at the Howlers.