She heard the front door open and close again. She walked out of the bedroom. She’d been brushing her hair because it made her feel normal. She was wearing clean clothes, jeans and a blouse she’d left at Robin’s that summer. She’d found no winter clothes. She’d taken one of Robin’s down vests and pulled it on.
“Is there gas? Do we have enough?”
“The yellow warning light is on,” Bell said, his eyes meeting hers.
“Are there any of them—of those things, out there?”
“I didn’t see any,” he said.
Bell looked very pale and thin, she thought. “That’s probably not enough gas to get there,” Lacy said. She put her hairbrush down. She’d left it here that past summer too, when she’d thought she’d been in love.
“He never loved me at all,” Lacy said. “I was such a fool. Jesus!”
“Well, then something good has come out of all of this then,” Bell said. “I guess.”
“Have you ever been in love, Lieutenant?”
“You mean like not with my dog, right?”
She smiled. He had a way of making her smile as if things were normal, and she liked it.
“No, not with your dog.”
“Well, I’m a Southerner, and we love our dogs, ma’am,” he said. “No, not really. Not with a girl. I loved the Army, and flying helicopters, until this morning.”
“You’re lucky. You feel stupid when you find out that people weren’t who you thought they were.”
“How far is this place from here? This ranch?” Bell asked.
“It’s on the other side of town, toward Emigrant Gap, off the county road, about eight miles, maybe a little more, from here. We measured it once, Robin and I.”
“How long does it take to drive?”
“Twenty-five minutes in the summer, and if there’s no traffic. In winter it takes longer,” Lacy said. “We don’t have enough gas.”
“Probably not,” Bell said. “But we might. The warning light could have just come on, for all we know.”
“And if it didn’t just come on?” she said.
“I think you need to put on some warmer clothes,” the Lieutenant said. “You know, just in case we have to do some walking.”
* * *
Grace Poole, wearing just a pair of white panties and a man’s brown sweater, got up from the bed and stumbled across the cold, high-ceilinged master bedroom. She was barefoot. She stopped and looked down at her feet and realized she couldn’t feel the carpet. She paused as she crossed the room and looked at herself in the full-length dressing mirror. Her complexion was ashen grey. Her long hair was messy from lying in bed. She walked up closer to the mirror and touched her face, but couldn’t feel her fingers on her skin. She saw her left hand move over her forehead and nose, but she had no feeling as she walked her fingers over her face.
She spoke to the person she saw in the mirror; it was involuntary, as if she were being forced to speak. She heard gibberish and saw her lips move. A long white tail of thick-looking spit slid out of her mouth as she spoke. It hung grotesquely in the air, then dropped to the floor in one long elastic looking strand.
“Gotcha. Ketchup now; no deal. No deal. Samsung. Galaxy. Now! The magic of Macy’s ... no deal. News at bison. Stream.” She heard herself saying the words. Spit from her mouth hit the clean dressing mirror, white globs of it splattering onto the clean glass. “Fuckshit; fuckshit.” She squatted on the floor and pissed on the room’s white rug, soaking her panties. She felt horribly nauseated. She stood, walked to the bathroom and threw up a white stream of spit into one of the two sinks. She looked up and yelled her husband’s name; but the words she heard herself scream were not what she’d intended to say. It was as if her vocal cords, and lips, had been taken over and were being run by remote control—by someone else, who was forcing her to speak things she had no intention of speaking.
She stumbled out of the bathroom and out into the hallway. She could see the backyard through a large transom window. She saw Marvin outside, without a coat, digging with a shovel, his arms moving quickly. He was standing in the middle of their snow-covered backyard. She leaned on the banister but couldn’t feel it. She could hear howling and looked out and saw several of the things begin to climb their green vinyl fence, coming from the forest behind the house.
Grace went down the steps and threw up half way down. More glue-like spit streamed out of her mouth. She wiped her face with the back of her hand. She saw the vomit run down her hands and between her fingers as she kept walking down the stairs and into the semi-dark foyer. She saw Crouchback’s body lying across the sofa, two round black-ringed holes in his face.
“Marvin—help me!” She heard her own voice speak some of the last intelligible words she would ever mouth. She heard the front door open and close behind her. She turned and looked at Patty and Miles Hunt. She thought she recognized them, but wasn’t quite sure.
“Mrs. Poole?” Miles said.
“Marvin,” Grace Poole said and wiped her mouth. “Marvin—outside.”
“She’s one of them,” Patty said. She raised the shotgun and was going to fire, but Miles knocked the barrel up. Her shot went wild, blowing a hole in the ceiling.
“No!” Miles screamed. Grace Poole ran down the stairs and toward the kitchen. Miles heard Patty’s shotgun rack almost immediately behind him.
“She’s one of them, God dam it!” Patty said.
Miles turned and looked at Patty Tyson. He could see she was horrified. He too couldn’t believe that Grace Poole, a woman he knew so well, was one of them.
He walked into the kitchen and saw Grace pull a kitchen knife from its place in a huge wooden block.
“Grace. Are you all right? Grace!” Miles said.
“Marvin,” Grace Poole said, and gestured outside; it was the coarse gesture of a Neanderthal, not the woman he’d known.
Miles looked out the French door and saw several Howlers inside the backyard. Two of them were crouched and were howling, their heads tilted up. “Grace. Don’t go out there!”
Grace Poole reached for the doorknob. Patty Tyson came through the kitchen doorway and fired her shotgun from the hip. The blast ripped off Grace Poole’s right arm at the shoulder. Miles saw the woman’s skull peppered with dark birdshot. The force of the blast shoved Grace Poole forward into the partially open French door. Grace’s head bounced off the glass, the door still intact. Her left arm gone, she turned and looked at them, then ran out the open French door into the backyard.
“Do that again and I’ll kill you,” Patty said looking at Miles.
“What did you do?” Miles said, horrified that the girl had shot Grace Poole.
“Can’t you see? She’s turned into one of them! We have to kill her!” Patty yelled, racking the shotgun. “Fuck! No ammo.” She looked down at the shotgun’s open breech.
They’d fought a horrific battle crossing the street on the way to the Poole’s house. They’d fired both their weapons at the gang of Howlers—ten or twelve of them, mostly teenagers—that had attacked them. They’d had to stand back-to-back and fire at the things as they ran at them. One of the Howlers had managed to tear the .30-30 from Miles’ hands. Patty had shot it in the head, at point blank range, damaging the .30-30. Miles had been sure he was going to die, watching the rifle snatched from his grasp. He’d frozen, terrified, staring at the Howler who lifted the rifle over its head ready to strike him with it. He’d been unable to move, paralyzed with fear.