“Daddy, we have to do something!” Lacy said. “It’s Sharon. Daddy.”
Quentin raised the Thompson. The Howler had gotten off its haunches and was looking at Lacy. Quentin walked forward, waiting for the thing to spring on his daughter.
“Daddy, what are you doing? That’s Sharon!” Lacy was horrified to see her father pointing his weapon at her sister.
“It’s not Sharon,” Quentin said. “Not anymore.”
The Howler, snow on its naked shoulders, stepped toward Lacy. Slowly at first, then quickly, the thing reached for Lacy. It grabbed her around the neck with one of its hands.
Quentin began to fire. The bullets poured out of the Thompson and finding their target, pounded the Howler’s skull, obliterating it.
The Howler dropped Lacy on the ground and sagged to its knees, its face gone, just a wet red-white-bullet-pounded neck left on its shoulders.
Quentin walked toward his living daughter and helped her up off the snow. He hit the Howler with the butt of the weapon, knocking it over onto the road, stone dead. Lacy looked at him, beyond terrified.
“We have to go,” Quentin said. “Come on.” Quentin looked down at what had been his daughter.
Bell limped over to them. “God, I’m glad to see you, Sheriff. You remember me?”
Quentin looked at the young man and nodded.
“I tried to stop her, Sheriff. I guess that thing was a friend of hers. Did you know her?” Bell asked. “I found her over there in that house. I—”
“She was my daughter,” Quentin said.
Bell stopped in mid-sentence. Everything that had happened to him in the last twelve hours finally seemed to break through. He thought of his sergeant, and how things had been, and what they’d become: the man in front of him had had to shoot his own daughter.
Dillon, unfazed by the fall from the cruiser, was facing down the street, his Thompson pointed out in front of him. More Howlers were coming from other houses. They’d heard the call.
“We better get going,” Quentin said, still looking at his dead daughter. He took Lacy by the arm. She was weeping.
“Stop crying,” Quentin said. “Are you listening to me, Lacy? I’m not going to lose you, too! Do you understand me? Lacy. Answer me! You have to stop crying and help me. Do you understand? I need you to listen to me. Do you understand? I need you!”
Lacy looked at her father and then at her sister’s body lying in the snow.
“Yes, I understand,” she said finally. “I’m cold, Daddy.” Quentin handed Bell his Thompson, took off his coat and draped it over his daughter’s shoulders. He looked at Lacy; she looked disheveled, her sweater filthy. He realized, horrified, that something had happened to her. He noticed her car was parked in front of the house and that it must have been parked there for hours; its roof was covered in snow.
“Good. All right. Lieutenant, can you travel?”
“You don’t think I’m staying here, do you, Sheriff?” he said.
Dillon walked up to them. He had his weapon pitched over his shoulder, his hand on the stock. The snow was whirling around him.
“Well, now what? There are about sixty more of those things coming down from the center of town. I guess they got really good hearing,”
Quentin looked down toward Main Street. He could see a group of Howlers coming toward them, some were running in that awful ape-way using their knuckles. “I told Mike Stewart we’d come back for Rebecca and him,” Quentin said.
“You might as well walk on water,” Dillon said. “You’re low on gas. There’s no power; the gas stations are useless without power. If you go back into town, how are you going to get back out?”
“I said I’d go back,” Quentin said. “So I’m going back. Lacy. Does the Volkswagen have gas? Your car? Does it have gas?” He’d seen his daughter’s VW parked on the corner where she’d left it.
“Yes.”
“Okay, I want you and the Lieutenant to go to the Phelps ranch. You know Chuck’s place, his cabin? Lacy, listen to me. You know Chuck’s place?”
“Yes,” she said.
“All right, I want you and the Lieutenant to take the Volkswagen. I want you to take the old Curtis road. It should have been plowed this morning, so it will still be clear. There’s no reason for the things to be way out there yet. I want you to go to Chuck’s cabin and wait for me. Do you understand? You can go with them if you want,” Quentin said, turning to look at Dillon.
“Daddy, I don’t want to leave you. Please!”
“Honey, I want you to go to Chuck’s place. You’ll be safe there. Please. I have to go back and get Rebecca and her father. I promised I’d go back for them. I can’t leave them back there in town. I’ll come out to Chuck’s as soon as I get Rebecca and her dad.”
“I don’t understand,” Lacy said. She put her arms around her father’s waist and began to cry. She wanted to tell him what they’d done to her, but she couldn’t say any of it.
Bell pulled her gently off of her father.
“It’ll be all right,” Bell said. “It’ll be all right. I’ll drive. You just tell me how to get there.”
A group of Howlers came around the closest corner. They’d been telephone linemen; one of them still wore his hard hat. All three of them got down on their haunches in preparation to howl. Dillon turned and walked toward them. He realized he might be low on ammunition. He jogged back to the squad car. One of the Howlers was getting up as Dillon tried to pull the shotgun off the dashboard of the squad car, deciding to use it. Bell walked toward the three Howlers and opened fire on them with the Thompson. Dillon, standing at the patrol car, watched the three things torn apart by the bullets as they got off their haunches and tried to run at Bell. Lacy began to scream. When the firing stopped, Quentin walked to the squad car and unlocked the shotgun from the dashboard, allowing Dillon to grab it.
“You don’t have to come,” Quentin said. “You should probably go with them. I probably won’t make it.”
Dillon looked at him, then reached inside the patrol car and grabbed one of the moneybags. He ran toward the VW with it. Quentin watched him, expecting him to get in with Bell and his daughter. But in a moment he was back, without the moneybag.
“I told them to take care of it for me,” Dillon said. “I don’t trust you.” Dillon broke out laughing, popped out his Thompson’s magazine and started to reload, pulling shells from his pants pocket. Plenty more Howlers stood between him and that blonde he’d seen in the gun store.
Quentin got behind the wheel of the patrol car and turned the car around and pointed it toward Main Street. He checked the gas gauge; he had a quarter tank left. He’d meant to get gas that morning on the way into town and had forgotten, and now it was probably too late. The pumps weren’t working at any of the local gas stations because the power grid had gone down. Quentin stopped the car in the middle of the street.
He looked over at Dillon, who was loading his Thompson’s second magazine, his fingers working quickly, the box of shells poured out between his legs.
“Sorry about your daughter,” Dillon said. He watched Quentin get out of the car. The snow was falling at an angle and coming down hard again. Dillon’s fingers stopped working over the bullets. It was silent in the car. The snow was almost blue. Dillon watched the Sheriff walk over to his dead daughter lying in the street. The big man put a coat he’d taken from the trunk of the car and laid it where his daughter’s face had been.
Dillon stopped his reloading and watched. He wondered what his own life would have been like if he’d not done the things he’d done, if he could have been like the Sheriff, standing over his dead daughter in the street. He envied the sheriff his pain, no matter how horrible—it was something, at least. He looked down again and scooped up more shells. The worst thing about all his years in prison was the coldness that had crept into him. He’d stopped feeling what people on the outside felt. He’d wanted a family, a normal life. He would never live to have them. He would probably never live to meet his own daughter.