The dead were just dead.
But the idea of three of them coincidentally moving, falling over or sliding out of their seats, was just too much and Louis could not accept it. His heart hammering and his breath coming very fast, he forced himself to move. To step over the body of the fallen man. He expected them to move again, to reach out or whisper his name, but they were just dead. And to prove this to himself, he went right over to the state cop—avoiding the reflection of his grinning, staring face in the mirror— and pulled the gun from his holster. It was a 9mm. And soon as Louis pulled it out, the cop’s corpse fell over like a tree.
Louis stepped around him, the gun in his hand.
Outside, he heard something that made him go white: the high, joyous peals of laughing children. Just for a moment, but it had been there. Something passed before the window of the café and Louis turned, bringing up the gun and pulling the trigger. But nothing happened. His hands shaking so badly that he almost dropped the gun, he found the safety and clicked it off.
He heard running feet.
He ran to the window, the gun out before him. Out there, the streets were empty. Completely empty. His entire body shook and his bladder felt very full. His heart was pounding so hard he thought it would blow out of his chest. He could see his Dodge from where he was, see it very well.
And the doors were wide open.
Behind him, something moved…
50
They had the girl now.
They dragged her into the shadows while the man was in the café. He never even saw them or suspected they were near. That’s how the clan knew that he was not a hunter, that he was soft and weak, his senses still deadened by who and what he was. Nothing but prey. They could have charged in and taken him but the Huntress did not want that. She would call them to the hunt. She would select the prey. She would find the meat and show them how to bring it down.
She was strange.
She was careful.
But she was also very cunning, very dangerous, and she killed without warning. The others let out a cry of anger when they struck, but not the Huntress. She smiled, exuded a scent of calm, then slashed your eyes, your throat.
The hunters stared down at the girl in the grass.
The men sniffed her. The women pulled at her hair.
She was theirs now…
51
Louis turned, his heart pounding mercilessly.
He turned and found himself staring down the barrel of a double-ought shotgun. The woman clutching it had crazy eyes, messy blond hair. She was dirty, bruised, her shirt was ripped open in the front and he could see most of her left breast quite plainly. But it was those eyes that held him: they were blank, almost unfocused like the eyes of a sleeper.
In a voice that was too calm, too easy, she said, “You just set that pistol on the countertop, mister, and I won’t blow your fucking head off.”
She spoke clearly. Her speech was not garbled or filled with snarling glottals like the regressed ones. He thought she was still human. Yet… her eyes were scary. They made him feel weak, vulnerable, everything inside him running like tepid water.
“Easy,” he said, setting the 9mm down carefully. “I’m not like them. I’m not an animal. I’m still human.”
“No shit? Well, excuse me, fuckhead, if I don’t exactly believe that.”
Louis realized then that she wasn’t crazy, just scared, confused, and more than a little desperate. She would kill if she had to. But he saw that she did not really want to.
He kept his hands in the air. “I’m human and you know it. If you doubted it, you would have shot me. Have you ever seen one of them with a gun?”
She sighed. “I guess not.”
“It’s the regression,” he told her. “A return to the jungle, to the original man, the original woman. They are like our ancestors. They hunt. They kill in packs. They reject anything of our world. I think it might almost be a phobia with them.”
“Listen,” she said, lowering the shotgun, “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. But I’m glad I found you. We might be the only two left. I’m Doris Bleer. You?”
“Louis Shears.” He crossed over to the window. Practically dark. “We don’t have time for this. There was a girl with me. In that car out there. I think she wandered off. I have to find her. She’s in shock.”
Doris shook her head. “She didn’t wander off, Louis. They took her. The crazy ones. I saw ‘em from the window in the back room where I was hiding.”
“Then I have to go after them,” he said, grabbing up the 9mm.
“Louis,” the woman said, looking very compassionate for the first time. “I’m sorry about your girl. But you’ll never see her again. Next time you do, she’ll either be dead or she’ll be one of them.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” he said, filled with emotional turmoil that turned within him like a steel screw.
“Wish I was. But I’m not. Neither are you.” She looked at him with those lost eyes. “They rushed in our house. They killed my husband. They… they cut him in two. They took my daughter. I escaped.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She shrugged, almost bulky beneath her defensive armor. Nothing could touch her. Not now. Not with what she’d seen. “An hour ago… before I hid out here… a pack of them chased me. My daughter was running with them. My own fucking daughter, Louis. She had a knife in each hand. She was hunting me. Do you understand? She was hunting her own mother!”
Louis bled for her, but there was only so much blood in him. Right now his blood was reserved for Macy and Michelle. “I’m going out. I’m going to get her back.”
Louis scrambled over to the door and something let out a sharp, piercing ring. His cellphone. He fumbled it from his pocket.
“Hello?” he said, his voice tinny and weak. “H-hello?”
There was breathing on the other end, deep and drawn-out.
“Who is this?” he said. “Who the fuck is this?”
There was a muted giggling on the other end and then a voice. “Hello, hello, hello.”
An echo.
Michelle.
But not Michelle.
This was an imitation of Michelle’s voice. Flat where it should have been bright; hollow where it should have been full; scraping where it should have been smooth and silky. Like a recording slowed down or sped up. A synthetic voice, a deranged voice. Some insane woman had borrowed Michelle’s voice and this was the blasphemy she was doing with it.
“Michelle?” he said. “Baby? Baby? Is that you?”
More breathing. The sound of a tongue licking lips. “Hello.”
“Michelle, please—”
The line went dead.
And Louis went dead with it…
52
They had her now and Macy knew it just as she knew that whatever came next, whatever unimaginable horror that might be, it would be the end of her. She was still gagged. She imagined she would always be. They had dragged her into a sporting goods store and threw her on the floor. Some of them left, but others stayed to guard her. A boy and girl who were probably grade school age, their eyes shining in the semi-darkness, and a woman who wore a red-checked hunting shirt, unbuttoned, naked beyond that.
They all had the same eyes… red-rimmed, almost translucent like those of wolves, just staring with a fixed blackness at their world.
The new world they would inherit.
A man came in, carrying a club with a nail driven in the end of it. He set it aside, and helped the kids drag Macy into the back room, some kind of storeroom behind the counter. She fought against them and they kicked her, hit her. She punched the girl in the face and the girl went berserk. She made a hissing sound like a mad dog and proceeded to slap the hell out of Macy, her arms windmilling, the slaps landing hard and hurting one after the other on Macy’s face until she stopped moving. The boy grabbed an arm and bit it. The girl did the same with her leg. Not just a nip like the boy, but biting down hard until Macy screamed behind her gag.