Todd sat beside Kate on the cot while Brendan, looking pale and out of sorts, leaned a shotgun against the desk. Then he stared down at his hands in near disbelief, watching as they vibrated like a pair of tuning forks.
“Where’s Tully?” Molly asked. She looked from Bruce to Brendan. “What happened to Tully?”
“The Tull-man,” Brendan said forlornly, his eyes distant and unfocused.
“He’s dead,” said Bruce, pulling on a clean shirt. There were dark smudges under his eyes.
Cody’s grip around Kate tightened. Kate rocked her gently, telling her that everything was going to be all right—such feeble, futile promises.
“This is their fault,” Molly said. That sharp look was back in her eyes. “Those things didn’t know we were here until they showed up.”
“Relax, Molly,” Bruce said.
Molly shook her head. “No. We should have never let them in here.”
Brendan sat beside Molly on the cot. He placed one hand on her knee but looked too preoccupied to offer her any worthwhile comfort.
“There was only one,” Todd assured her, “and we killed it.”
“You don’t know that! There could be more right outside, watching and waiting. There could be a whole goddamn army of them.”
Against Kate’s chest, Cody sobbed. “Stop it,” Kate told Molly.
“We’re okay for right now,” Bruce said. He went to the liquor bottles on the desk and selected some tequila.
“But what about later?” Molly protested. “Those things will come back, Bruce. You know they will.”
“And if they do, we’ll fight them off again, Molly.” Bruce leaned against the desk and unscrewed the tequila, took a swallow. “There’s nothing more we can do about that.”
“There is,” Molly said. “We can send them both back out there, let them fend for themselves.”
“Molly,” Brendan said, seemingly returned from his stupor. He rubbed her thigh.
But Molly could not be consoled. “We could send them out and make them lead those things away from us.”
“No one is going out there,” Bruce said. “We’re in this together now.”
“They brought those things—”
“They didn’t do anything!” Bruce yelled back. Again, Cody shuddered and Charlie gaped up at the sheriff’s deputy, a combination of fear and awe on the boy’s face. More calmly, Bruce said, “No one did anything, Molly. This—whatever this is—just happened. And now we’ve got to survive it. Together. We’re not doing anyone any good fighting among ourselves.”
“You’re not the law anymore, Bruce,” Molly grumbled. She placed both hands flat against her distended stomach. “There is no law anymore. Not in Woodson.”
Cody sat up. Her face was red from crying. “Please stop yelling,” she said.
Bruce looked down at the bottle in his hands while Molly, her eyes welling with tears, looked away from him and at the wall.
“Hey,” said Brendan, clapping his hands together and startling them all. Some color had returned to his face. “Who wants hot dogs?”
“I do!” Charlie boomed.
“I do,” Cody echoed, less enthusiastic.
Brendan stood, forcing a goofy grin. “Then let’s go, gang. Train’s pulling out of the station. All aboard!”
Charlie hopped up and Cody climbed down off the cot. Still grinning, Brendan opened the door and saluted Charlie, who giggled and saluted him back.
“Brendan,” Todd said, and handed him the pistol.
Brendan nodded almost imperceptibly, stuffing the pistol into his waistband at the small of his back. Then he barked at the kids: “Let’s go, soldiers! Left! Right! Left! Right! Forward—march!”
A smile beginning to overtake Cody’s delicate face, Brendan led the kids out into the hallway. Their footsteps receded into the darkness.
Bruce grunted his approval. Rubbing a hand along his bald pate, he took some more tequila from the bottle before handing it over to Todd. “I want to hear about this computer you mentioned,” Bruce said.
Todd chugged a mouthful of tequila, winced, and handed the bottle to Kate. “I had a laptop with me when we came into town,” Todd said. “If I’m right about what’s going on—about why my phone works while everything else in this town is going haywire—then my laptop should boot up and work fine, too. If you can hook it up to that modem of yours, Bruce, we can get online, maybe even make a phone call out.”
“Theoretically,” Bruce said.
Kate took a swallow of the tequila. It burned all the way down her throat before exploding in her stomach.
“Wait a minute,” Molly said. “Are you saying we’ve got a working computer?”
Still want to kick us out? Kate thought, smiling wryly to herself.
“Sort of,” said Bruce. Turning back to Todd, he said, “Where is it, exactly?”
Todd took the bottle back from Kate. He looked instantly miserable. “I think,” he said, drawing out his words, “I think it’s back at the town square.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A look of total resignation overcame Bruce’s face. His whole body appeared to deflate. On her cot, Molly’s eyes darted back and forth between Bruce and Todd.
“The square?” Molly said. Defeated, she slumped back against the wall.
“We’ll just have to go back and get it,” Todd said.
“But Tully said—” Molly began, before Bruce spoke over her.
“The square is like ground zero, Todd. That’s where they’ve all been congregating. Not to mention, I caught sight of that electrical eye in the clouds while we were out front, burying the bodies. That eye is seated directly over the square right now.”
Kate frowned. “So what does that mean?”
“It seems to attract them, gives them strength,” Bruce said.
“Just like last night, back at the church,” Todd said. Too clearly, he could recall last night’s escape from the church, and how one of those things had gotten inside Chris while, unbeknownst to the rest of them, another had gotten inside poor Meg. And once they’d exited the church, there had been all those townspeople—what Tully had succinctly dubbed “skin-suits”—standing there as if awaiting instruction.
Instruction from that glowing eye in the sky, Todd thought now.
“Where exactly in the square is this computer of yours?” Bruce asked.
“If it’s still where I left it, it’s inside the Pack-N-Go.”
“If the Pack-N-Go is still there, too,” Kate added, attracting an impatient glare from Molly.
Bruce sighed. The halogen lamps gleamed off his scalp. “Well, then, I guess we don’t have much of a choice.”
“We can make torches,” Kate suggested. “They kept away from the torches last night. And when one of those snow-things rose up out of the ground, I think I burned it.”
Bruce was shaking his head. “A torch might scare one off, or even injure it if you really nail ’em, but chances are it’ll get away and will only come back with friends. When they’re in groups, they swoop down over you and generate enough wind to extinguish any small flames.”
“We’ve learned that the hard way,” Molly added.
“So what do we do?” Kate said.
“We travel as incognito as possible,” Bruce said. “Same way Tully got you both here, I’m sure. Far as I can tell, they don’t have any extraordinary senses. No amplified sense of sight or smell—not like a dog or a wolf or anything—so it’s our best bet just to lay low.”