Bell saw she was weeping. It was the first human thing he’d seen since he’d left the crazy kids who had picked him up on the freeway and taken him up to the demolished Denny’s. He’d walked away from the couple as they rooted around in the body-strewn kitchen of the Denny’s looking for something to eat. Bell had thought that if he was going to die, he wanted to die alone, and not with a couple of lunatics from L.A.
Something about this girl’s tears, the first normal thing he’d seen since his sergeant had been killed that morning, moved him unexpectedly. The tears on her face were, oddly, a sign of normal life.
“They were mean to the dog. He remembers me,” Lacy said, trying to hold back tears, her voice quivering.
Bell stepped out into the road in front of her. He heard the girl, but wasn’t listening. He saw the Howlers coming down the street, two of them, a man and a younger woman. They came from the direction the dog had come. One of the Howlers was naked from the waist down; she was dragging a carcass out into the street. The Howler dropped it and sat down on her haunches. The man, walking on his knuckles, wandered out into the middle of the snowy road, lifted his head, raised his elongated arms over his head, and began to howl.
“God damn you!” Bell said. He felt as if he were on the verge of losing his mind. He walked toward the man and fired his pistol. The thing tried to move back and Bell shot him again, this time in the head. The Howler fell over heavily in the fresh snow. The woman that had been dragging the carcass in her teeth let it go and started to howl, setting back on her haunches, her face raised toward the sky.
“Sharon! Baby?”
Bell turned around and saw the girl step off the porch and walk into the street, a strange look on her face.
“Sharon?”
Bell fired at the Howler but the pistol was empty, the slide all the way back. The girl was walking toward the Howler. The noise from the female Howler was terrific and horrible.
“What are you doing? That’s close enough,” Bell yelled. “Come with me!” He stepped between them. “I think there are some guns in the house over there.”
Lacy was trying to get by him. “Sharon … honey? God … Sharon!” Lacy started to trot toward her sister.
Bell, in horror, saw the thing turn and look at her. The girl was getting closer. “Shit.” Bell ran down the snowy road and picked Lacy up by the waist from behind. He felt the pain in his side as the girl fought him. He looked around him. Out of one of the houses another Howler, in black motorcycle leather, loped down the porch and into the street. Behind him several more Howlers came out on the porch of the house.
“Stop it. You’ll get us killed,” Bell said, clutching the girl as she kicked and hit at him. He guessed that the Howler had been someone the girl knew, and that she didn’t understand it would kill her.
“Sharon! Sharon, what’s wrong?”
The pain in Bell’s side was excruciating. Lacy elbowed him twice in the face. He tried not to let go, but she was tearing away from him, the pain in his side overwhelming him.
“She’s not your friend anymore,” Bell yelled. Lacy finally tore away from him and headed back toward the Howler. Bell looked back toward the other Howlers spilling out onto the street, jumping from the porches of nearby houses. If he stayed here any longer, he would be killed.
The girl was still walking toward the Howler. The thing started calling to the others.
“Sharon, it’s me, Lacy. What’s wrong, honey? Sharon?”
Bell turned away. He didn’t want to watch what was going to happen. He started to jog toward the house he’d seen with the shotgun. It was hard for him to run. He stopped in mid-stride. I can’t let her die like that, he thought.
“God damn you!” he said. Bell turned around and walk-jogged back toward Lacy, who was looking at her sister, standing only a few yards in front of her.
The Howler stopped, put its head down and looked at Bell. The thing’s arms were longer than he remembered. The thing looked at him and bared its teeth. Bell picked his pistol off the ground where he’d dropped it, walked toward the girl and picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. He walked, not expecting to live much longer, toward the house on the corner.
“You’re going to get us both killed! Don’t you understand?” Something hit him in the side of the head. He thought it was the Howler at first, then realized the girl was slamming him on the top of his head with her fists, trying to get him to drop her.
Through the hail of blows, he concentrated on the house across the street. He felt himself punched again and again. Lacy caught him in the temple and he dropped on his knees, stunned. Bell finally stood up, wobbly from the blow. The girl was running back toward the Howler and certain death and there was nothing he could do about it now.
The cruiser was gaining speed. The falling snow was making it hard to see, globs of wet snow collected on the windshield wipers as Quentin drove down the street toward Lacy.
“Howlers at two o’clock,” Dillon said. He stuck the Thompson out of the open window. A group of Howlers were climbing down from an old Victorian’s wide porch and into the street. Quentin heard the burst of automatic weapons fire. He glanced as the Howlers, a line of six or more, were cut down in the house’s front yard. He saw Dillon hang out of the patrol car’s window, swearing as he fired, the snow catching in his hair, the flash-suppressing barrel sparking blue in the twilight. The brass tossed in a stream from the machine gun.
Die. Die. Die. Die, Quentin thought, watching the things fall. Dillon’s well-placed fire caught the entire group, high up, and right at head level.
Quentin turned his attention to the road again. He saw the house on the corner straight in front of him. The windshield wiper lifted a huge clot of snow, dragging it across the windshield; it disintegrated and for a moment he saw Lieutenant Bell trying to get up and Lacy running toward her sister, who was squatting in the middle of the street.
Quentin stepped on the brake. He felt the cruiser slide in the snow as he pulled it to the side of the road. For a long moment he didn’t watch the road at all, but instead kept his eyes on Lacy’s running figure. He heard Dillon saying something while trying to get out of the passenger door. Quentin, realizing that Dillon thought Lacy was a Howler, grabbed Dillon’s legs and shoved him out of the car before he could fire. He saw Dillon falling backwards into the snow. His machine gun went off. The roof of the patrol car was pocked with bullet holes, the fire nearly hitting Quentin. He could feel the impact of the shots as they struck the car’s roof, narrowly missing him. He slowed the patrol car to a crawl. He opened his door and turned toward Dillon a few feet behind him.
“It’s my daughter! Don’t shoot!” Quentin said.
Dillon, still holding his weapon, picked himself up off the snowy road and nodded. Quentin reached inside the car and reached into the backseat for a Thompson. Turning from the car, he called to Lacy. She’d stopped in the road in front of her sister. Bell was coming down the center of the street, limping. The Howler—who had once been his daughter Sharon—turned and looked at Quentin, spit hanging from her distorted face.
“It’s not Sharon anymore,” Quentin said to Lacy.
“It’s Sharon, Daddy. It’s Sharon! There’s something wrong with her.” Lacy stopped in front of her growling sister.
Quentin stepped away from the patrol car, weapon in hand. “Lacy, I want you to step over here. Okay?”