For a moment none of the three men left behind said anything.

“We got to get into that fucking bunker,” Dillon said without turning around. He ran out the open door without explaining, the FAL over his shoulder. Marvin and Quentin watched him trot through the snow toward the county road. They could see several Howlers in the distance coming toward him.

Poole turned and saw Quentin drop to the floor, writhing horribly. He rushed to his side. Quentin’s whole body began to jerk violently, an ugly white foam building on his lips.

*   *   *

Howard picked up the box with the medicine. It had stopped snowing. Rivers of blue showed in the sky where the clouds had parted. Sunlight hit the town and was reflected off its metal roofs.

The tank stopped in the middle of Main Street. It had crushed several cars that had been in its way, the tank powering easily over them and smashing them flat. The tank, fourteen feet wide, stopped directly in front of them, its cannon parallel to the ground.

“We’re saved,” Jon said. “God damn it! I knew it! I knew we’d be okay!”

The old man stepped out into the street and waved his hands in the air. Several people came out of the camper now that they thought it was safe. Howard watched them pour out of the passenger-side door. They were all kinds of people: blacks, whites, Latinos, children, young mothers. Jon slapped Howard’s back with excitement. The old man stepped toward the tank, waved his hands high in the air and whooped.

“God Bless America!” Jon yelled. He turned back to Howard, smiled and did a little dance. He pulled his sidearm out and shot a round into the air. A black woman came up, hugged Jon and then hugged Howard, then took off and ran toward the tank.

Howard turned his attention to the tank again. He didn’t smile. Something was wrong, he thought, about the way the tank just sat there, as if it were watching them. Why didn’t they acknowledge the celebration and open the hatch? He’d been in the Army. That would be the first thing a young soldier would do under the circumstances.

A young man, about seventeen with long blond hair, ran toward the tank shouting and waving at it happily, passing the black woman. The automated machine gun on top of the Abrams fired a burst and cut the boy in two pieces, killing him as he ran. The tank started up and came speeding toward them, firing its .50 caliber machine gun, targeting the camper.

The first volley had missed Howard. He’d stepped behind the camper, and its big engine block had saved him. He could hear the .50 caliber rounds tearing into the camper, breaking the glass and puncturing its aluminum rear, shredding it. He ran, the cardboard box still in his arms, toward his Prius. He heard the screams behind him and trotted on, terrified. He could see the glass of one storefront explode, then another.

His cell phone fell out of his pocket and he stupidly bent to pick it up. He turned and saw the front of the tank, its front end straight up in the air, climb up and crash down on the camper, collapsing its roof. He saw people running away, some cut down by the machine-gun fire as he climbed into his Prius and looked into the rearview mirror. The tank was backing up over the camper, driving in reverse, trying like some strange steel monster to crush what was left of its lopsided and smashed-in body.

Howard started the engine. Jon grabbed the passenger-side door, screaming for him to let him in. Howard slammed on his brakes, expecting Jon to jump in, but when he turned to look again, Jon had disappeared from sight, the door left open. Howard slammed his foot onto the gas pedal and raced down the street, swerving around scores of abandoned cars, the Prius’ passenger-side door still open. The Prius’ backend slid wildly as he turned off of Main Street.

He heard himself screaming as he drove, desperately jerking the car’s steering wheel to avoid colliding with random cars. He didn’t realize that he was driving at 60 miles an hour, the accelerator pinned to the floor. It was as if he were hearing someone else’s screams.

*   *   *

Dillon stopped jogging and took a knee in the snow. Several Howlers were coming up the road toward him. He watched one of them also get on one knee and begin to howl loudly. Dillon fired at the crouching Howler and saw it fall over. The others—they seemed to all be men—were running toward him. He waited for them to close in, then he cut them down.

He stood up and ran past their twitching head-shot bodies toward the county road. He had to guess where the cabin’s escape tunnel hatch might be located. He thought he understood Phelps by now. He would put it, he thought, very close to the road, but in a spot that was not open. He was sure of that.

More Howlers had gathered at the bottom of the road to the cabin, at the fallen trees that blocked the road up to the cabin. Dillon raised his rifle and fired. He fired until the weapon was empty. Two Howlers, a young man and a woman, jumped off the logs and ran toward him still alive. He could hear their shoes crunching the new snow. He took out a six-shot Smith and Wesson old-school .38 revolver, the only handgun they’d found ammunition for upstairs. He turned and looked to his left but saw nothing that would indicate a lid or opening to the tunnel.

It has to be closer to the road. It’s at the fallen tree! That’s where it would be.

Dillon crouched. The two Howlers slowed, the man standing behind the woman. The woman leapt at him, springing into the air. Dillon dodged the thing and shot her as soon as she landed. Firing twice, he hit her in the neck and head. He felt himself knocked over and felt his shoulders being slammed on the ground. The second thing’s saliva hit him in the face as it shook him violently. He tried to lift his pistol, but it was caught between him and the thing’s chest. He fired anyway, but it did no good; the rounds went into the thing’s guts. He felt himself losing consciousness, his head hitting the ground repeatedly.

A shot rang out and he felt the thing let go of him and go limp. It slid to his right side and face-down into the snow.

Dillon felt himself being helped up by someone he couldn’t quite make out because of the Howler’s thick spit covering his eyes.

“I’m Howard,” the man said. A middle-aged man with thinning black hair, wearing a tie and a short-sleeve shirt, held a pistol in one hand and a cardboard box in the other.

Dillon focused. He wiped his eyes, his vision blurred, but he was sure it was a man and he was alone.

“Howard Price. I’m Miles’ friend. He said I might be safe here. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, thank you, Howard.” Dillon picked up the revolver he’d dropped. “I need you to help me find something, Howard.”

“Yes, of course,” Howard said.

“Well, what if it doesn’t work?” The four of them were crammed into the control booth: Quentin, Miles, Howard and Dillon. They were watching the tank commander on the video screen in front of them. Dillon had found the hatch to the bunker’s western escape tunnel, which Summers had left wide open. Dillon was able to climb in and climb back through the long tunnel in the dark, and into the main room of the bunker, and open the steel plate to the cabin.

The four of them were watching the Abrams tank, which had stopped only a few yards from the cabin’s front porch.

“It has a four-man crew,” Dillon said. “I know the Abrams tank. I was a crew member for a while when I was in the Army.”