HOWLERS (15 page)

She saw a man in leather pants and black leather vest walk by the open door. A grey pit bull came flying out of the open door as if it might have been kicked out. The dog landed against one of the parked motorcycles, knocking it over. The pit bull scampered away up the road yapping, obviously hurt.

A young girl with long black hair stood in the doorway holding a can of beer. She was laughing; someone grabbed her and yanked her back inside the house by her arm.

“Great,” Lacy said to herself. She pulled the car around and parked directly in front of the house.
This is my sister we’re talking about here. If it was Mom she’d walk right in there and yank Sharon out
.

She looked up the street. The dog was coming back toward the house, its nose close to the snow-covered road. Lacy turned off the WV’s engine and got out of the car. She waited for the dog to come to her. The animal growled at first, but Lacy bent down and made soft mothering sounds. The dog came forward and let her pat its wide ugly head. Eventually the dog licked her hand.

“What’s wrong, boy, huh?” She looked up at the house behind her. She heard laughter. Someone kicked the door shut. The dog pulled away from her and ran out into the middle of the street, spooked by the loud sound of the door being slammed. The animal was almost hit by a passing car.

“I’m looking for my sister,” Lacy said. The girl who answered the door was only sixteen or seventeen, she thought, in Lycra shorts and a t-shirt. A TV was on in the living room; Lacy could see someone playing a video game on it. Several men were sitting around the dismal room. One of them got up off a black Naugahyde couch and came toward the door. He was very blond and had a large Celtic-style cross tattooed on his neck. Lacy didn’t recognize any of the men; none was from Timberline.

“Who the fuck are you?” the young man said. He pushed the girl away from the door as if she were a dog.

“She’s looking for her sister,” the girl said. She looked a lot like Sharon, Lacy thought: attractive, thin, greasy hair, in true biker-chick style.

Lacy felt the dog squeeze by her leg. It ran into the house. The man who was walking toward the door said something and Lacy heard a squeal and thud. She saw the dog get kicked into the wall next to the television set. She’d never seen anyone kick a dog before in her life, and didn’t know what to do. It froze her blood.

“I don’t want any dog that can’t fight,” the man said, smiling at her. Without saying another word, he grabbed Lacy by the arm, yanked her into the house and slammed the front door shut.

*   *   *

“I’d like to buy a pistol, Mr. Stewart,” Sharon Collier said.

Rebecca and her father could both see that something was wrong with her. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she seemed thinner than they remembered her.

The man did something with his ponytail. His arms were covered in blue-black crude prison tattoos. He still hadn’t said a word.

Mike Stewart turned and looked at his daughter, then back at Sharon, whom he’d known since she was a baby.

“Well, Sharon. I guess—”

“It’s a present for my dad’s birthday. It’s coming up,” Sharon said quickly. She looked down at the counter. “I need something for my dad.” Her voice sounded agitated, the words coming out a little too fast.

“Why don’t you get him a hat or something?” Stewart said. He started to come around the counter.

“No! It has to be a pistol. Something powerful—I want.” She put both hands on the glass counter, as if she were deliberating. “I want a shortened forty-five, with two clips and a box of hollow points. Oh, and I think I’ll buy him a bullet-proof vest, too. That’s okay to buy, right? I mean, it would be like my father was buying it?” she said. She scratched her arm and shot Stewart a look.

“Rebecca, why don’t you show Sharon what we have in hunting vests, and I’ll get some of my powerful stuff from the back.” Stewart looked at his daughter.

Rebecca nodded; she knew that her dad was on his way to make a call. She looked at Sharon, whom she known since they were kids. Sharon was stoned—that was obvious. The biker who’d come in with her had blue eyes, and his hair and face were greasy. He seemed very pale, too, which was a dead giveaway of meth freaks.

“So what’s your name?” Rebecca asked him, unafraid.

“Smith,” the man said, looking at her. “John Smith.”

“That’s an unusual name,” Rebecca said, meeting his stare.

“This is Mike, down at All American Gun Shop. I got to talk to the sheriff. To Quentin,” Stewart said.

“He’s not in right now. Do you want to leave a message?” a deputy said.

Stewart looked through the one-way mirror he’d installed in the shop’s office so that he could always keep an eye on the gun counter.

“Tell him that his daughter Sharon is down here at my shop with some—some biker guy. This guy is trying to get her to buy a pistol and a bullet-proof vest. I think they’re both high as kites.”

*   *   *

Miles raced along the corridors of Timberline’s city hall. He stopped when he saw Quentin come into the lobby, heading for the Sheriff’s office on the first floor.

“I’ve got to talk to you.”

“Not now, Miles.”

“Quentin! I said I have to talk to you!”

The sheriff stopped. He had his hand on the office door. “I’ve got to find my daughter Miles,” Quentin said.

“Quentin. Listen, there’s someone upstairs in the jail. He was the search and rescue pilot who was sent out when you called the ranger station about Chuck Phelps.”

“What are you talking about?” Quentin said.

“I just interviewed him. The pilot. He says Phelps was dead up there in the Gap, and that he and his sergeant were attacked by some kind of ... some kind of people, that weren’t people. I think you better come hear his story. It’s a lot like what I heard the guy from the
L.A. Times
tell my editor this morning. It’s what I heard happened in Los Angeles. They’re here. These things. I think that’s what the disappearances are about. I think it’s what I heard at Genesoft’s offices this morning. I think I know what’s happened,” Miles said. “I think it’s that genetically engineered food that’s done it. I’m not sure. But I think it’s possible.”

“Miles, you’re not making any sense. That’s a biotech firm—they screw with vegetables or something. What’s that got to do with all these disappearances?”

A deputy opened the door and stuck his head out into the hallway. “Sheriff, a message came in for you, there’s been some kind of disturbance at the high school. We sent a couple of cars down there. A fight or something. When’s Eileen coming back? I’m having trouble handling the phones by myself. We got a lot of people calling in about missing persons.”

“How many people we got out sick today?” Quentin asked the deputy.

The young man stopped and counted on his hand. “Four. And T.C. must have gone home; he should have been back from Sacramento by now. But we can’t get him on the radio and he’s not answering his cell phone, either. It seems like half the town is missing,” the deputy said. “Sheriff, are you all right?”

“Deputy. Does anyone in your family work at Genesoft?” Miles asked.

“What?” The man looked at Miles as if he’d gone off the deep end. The deputy tried to hand Quentin a telephone-message form.

“Answer him!” Quentin said. “Does anyone at your place work up there? Did you get any food from up there?”

“Or in the last week?” Miles said.

“I don’t know. I had an omelet this morning,” the man said, baffled. “And no. My wife works at the bank. My mom does too.”

“Breakfast. Where?” Miles said.

“At the Copper Penny.” The deputy nodded toward the street.

“How do you feel?” Miles said.

“Quentin, what the hell is Miles talking about?”

“I’m not sure,” Quentin said.

“Oh, and Sharon’s over at the gun shop,” the deputy said, handing Quentin the message.

“What?”

“Yeah, Mike just called for you. You were out. He said Sharon is at the shop and she’s— she’s stoned,” the deputy said.

“Look, Miles. I’m going to give you one minute, then I’m walking out of here and getting my daughter.” The deputy went back into the office.

“The pilot says that he was attacked by fifty or sixty people who weren’t people anymore. He called them Howlers because they make some kind of weird screaming sound when they attack,” Miles said.

“Obviously he’s crazy,” Quentin said.

“Is he? How many people are missing here in Timberline since yesterday? A hundred, maybe more? Look, I didn’t put it together until the pilot told me what happened to him,” Miles said. “I don’t think he’s crazy.”

“Put what together?”

“I told you there was a worker at Genesoft this morning who said that a lot of the employees were sick there. She said there was something wrong with the new product line, R-19 —that it was responsible for illnesses.”

“Miles, are you telling me all this is about Genesoft?”

“Yes, I think so. I got their shipping reports for the new product. The shipped to supermarkets in Southern California, in the Bay Area and back East. Even here in Timberline. They sent free products to several restaurants in Nevada City too, all over the Goddamn state—starting two weeks ago.”

CHAPTER 14

Lieutenant Bell looked at the name written in dark pencil lead under the window of the jail cell: Willis Good. It stood out amongst the other graffiti. Something about it made it stand out, centered under the window. Bell read the Latin:
In hoc lacrimarum valle
. He’d gone to a Catholic high school and managed three of the words, but was at a loss for
lacrimarum
. He smiled: a Latin graffito seemed fitting after what he’d been through.

He stepped closer to the Plexiglas windowpane and looked out on the street below. It was snowing and the Christmas lights strung over the intersection were swinging in the wind. A car stopped in front of the Bank of America, which was built on a slight knoll; a long flight of granite steps led up to the entrance. Bell watched three men get out of the car. The lieutenant caught sight of a pistol tucked quickly under a jacket. He turned around and looked at the cell door they’d locked behind him. He thought of calling out, but hesitated. He looked again out the window and down on the street. The car had pulled up the street; the men who had gotten out were walking quickly up the steps to the bank.

Bell turned around. He saw the MPs at the door of his cell.

“Lieutenant.” 

  “What are you doing? I thought you guys had left,” Bell said, moving from the window.

“We got a call from the Colonel. He said they’re going to drop the charges. You’re to come back to base immediately,” the MP said. Bell heard the key move in the door’s steel lock. The cell door swung open and the young MP stood aside, making way for the deputy who had opened his cell door. The young military policeman seemed embarrassed by the sudden turn of events.

“So, the U.S. Army made a mistake,” Bell said. The Colonel who had arrested him had probably understood finally what was going on out there, and that Bell had been telling the truth about what had happened to his sergeant.

“Won’t be the first time, sir,” one of the young men said.

Bell walked out of the cell and followed the MPs down the stone stairway. They walked out of the jail and piled into the U.S. Government van waiting for him outside in the alley.

“You guys don’t mind driving with a crazy man then, I take it?” Bell said. The two MPs didn’t answer.

“The colonel said he wanted me to give you his apologies, sir,” the driver said.

Bell was looking again at the car that had pulled up in front of the bank. The driver, an older black man, was holding the wheel with both hands as if he expected something other than his wife to come out of the bank. The car’s windshield wipers moved slowly over the glass, pushing snow out of the way.

“Apology not accepted,” Bell said. The van’s engine started. The driver pulled out onto the street from the alley.

The black man at the wheel of the Ford glanced up at the van as it pulled onto the street and passed him. Bell thought of telling the van’s driver to stop. He contemplated going back and warning the sheriffs that there was probably a bank robbery in progress—right across the street, no less. But he didn’t. He told himself there were much more important things going on in the world, and said nothing.

Something about the way the Ford was parked, or perhaps the cloud of white exhaust coming from the primer-gray Ford Explorer’s tailpipe, or the hard glancing look of the stranger sitting behind the wheel of the car caught Quentin’s eye as he stepped out from the Copper Penny, where he’d been looking for Lacy. It was snowing hard enough that he had to pull up the collar to his coat. Instinctively, and despite the fact he was looking for Lacy on the street, Quentin glanced again at the Ford, this time unbuttoning his coat.

His right hand found and rested on the butt of his automatic. The black man behind the wheel, a stranger to him, looked at the sheriff and then into the Ford’s rearview mirror. Quentin, hand firmly on his pistol, started to cross the icy street. All his internal alarm bells were going off.

Quentin’s radio crackled as he stepped off the curb. He turned it up enough to hear it as he walked toward the Ford.

“Sheriff, we got some kind of riot at the K-mart. Attack by some kind of gang—Sheriff, are you there? Quentin?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” Quentin said, as calmly as he could. “I think we have an armed robbery in progress across from the station, at the Bank of America.”

“Could you repeat, Sheriff? There’s something wrong down at the K-mart. I think you better get down there. I’ve sent—did you say armed robbery?”

Quentin had stepped down into the dirty snow-covered street. The man behind the wheel of the Ford was staring directly at him, the black man’s eyes intense, his hands gripping the steering wheel.

“I said, I think we have an armed robbery in progress,” Quentin repeated carefully, holding the button down on his radio. A car passed him, coming between him and the Ford. He recognized the driver, a neighbor, who waved. He didn’t wave back. He drew his pistol. He used the cover of the car’s passing to pull it out of the holster. He slid the radio’s handset back into place, lowered his pistol and hit the safety on the Sig, making it hot. He simultaneously pressed the pistol against the back of his thigh, which he hoped would keep it out of the black man’s sight line.

The deputy was speaking to him again over the radio. Quentin’s heart had kicked into overdrive, thumping hard enough for him to feel it beating. His vision started to close down, the adrenalin creating a tunnel-vision effect: the front of the Ford, the black man’s face staring at him over the steering wheel, now all distant and sitting at the bottom of the tunnel.

Walking slowly, Quentin turned his head and glanced up at the steps of the bank. A women and a child were heading up the stairs of the bank building. The young woman stopped and motioned to Quentin with her hand, as if she were warning him of something.

Quentin, thinking he’d missed a car, turned to his left. The street was clear. He tried to re-focus on the black man in the Ford. The girl on the stairs was yelling something; he couldn’t quite make it out. He was having trouble finding the black man’s face at the bottom of the adrenaline-created tunnel. Then he heard the scream behind him and was shoved forward, viciously. He knew he was going to lose his balance and fall. He tried to get his gun hand up, away from him, so that he wouldn’t shoot himself.

He landed better than he thought, his pistol in front of him; he was facing the front wheel of the Ford he’d been heading toward. He heard the scream again and something was on him, jumping up high on his shoulder. He felt himself being dragged over the street. When it stopped, his face was shoved down hard against the rough salted-and-snow-covered asphalt. He saw the asphalt come and go. He almost lost consciousness, his head slammed down hard again on the asphalt.

On the edge of consciousness, Quentin heard the scream again. Then a gunshot, very loud and very close. He felt the pressure on his neck ease. He saw something roll to his right. A body came into view. A car horn honked loudly as his vision returned to normal, and he could see clearly again. He tried to get up, his pistol still in his right hand.

Quentin looked up at a man standing a few feet away and wearing a ski mask. The man had a short combat-style shotgun pointed at the body lying on the ground to Quentin’s right. The man with the shotgun turned toward Quentin, racking the shotgun. The man’s eyes were penetrating, dark, efficient.

“Get up,” the man said. “Get the fuck up!”

Quentin picked himself up off his hands and knees.

“Put the gun down.”

Quentin dropped his pistol as he stood, still slightly dazed. The end of the man’s shotgun barrel was touching his chest. Quentin realized he was bleeding; it was the blood in his eyes that was making it hard to see clearly. He had half a picture of the snowy street.

Three men were in the Ford now. He looked to his right. An old man was lying in the street, a spray of blood around him on the snow. Quentin didn’t recognize him. He couldn’t believe that the old man had been the one to knock him down and then pick him up and fling him around like a doll. He must have been eighty years old. The old man’s chest was imploded from the shotgun blast; a portion of his face, from his nose down, was blown off completely.

Quentin turned toward the sheriff’s station across the street. One of his deputies had come out. His hands were up in the air. The deputy was looking at Quentin. The deputy’s face, a confused blank, took in the scene. The traffic on Main Street had stopped to the left and the right of the masked man.

“You got a real problem, lawman,” Ski Mask said. “There’s plenty more of those things. They’ll be all over town soon. You’ll see.”

Quentin looked into the eyes of the man speaking. He didn’t understand. Had the robber just saved his life?

Ski Mask ran to the Ford and jumped into the back seat. The Ford moved out into the street, not quickly, but as if it had all the time in the world. It drove into the intersection slowly and deliberately, and headed down the street.

Quentin bent and picked up his pistol. He looked up at the girl on the stairs of the bank who had tried to warn him. She was gone. The deputy was jogging across the street toward him.

“Sheriff, you all right? Jesus Christ, I never seen anything like it!” Quentin looked to his right at the body of the old man that had almost killed him. “You’re bleeding bad, Sheriff. We better get you over to the doctor’s.”

“What happened, Troy? I don’t understand. They just robbed the bank?”

“Sure did. But that bank robber just saved your life. That thing that came down the street just killed three women in The Copper Penny.”

“What?”

“That’s why I came out. Someone ran into the station and said some old man had gone crazy in The Copper Penny and was killing people. That bank robber just saved your ass!”

“That’s impossible,” Quentin said. He looked down at the dead body lying in the street. The car that had been stopped in front of him raced on. “That’s an old man,” Quentin said, half out of it.

“Old man or not, that guy body slammed you like you were a little girl,” the deputy said. “I saw it myself.”

Quentin touched his face. His right eye was starting to swell shut and his face was covered with blood. He could feel the stickiness and the gravel and salt that had gotten into the lacerations on his face and chin. A siren wailed in the distance and Quentin, wiping his eyes, saw a fire truck making its way down Main Street, its canary-yellow engine bright against the falling snow. He watched in horror as it approached, cars pulling over to make way. People were crawling on the fire engine, hanging onto the ladders and onto the engine’s side, like apes at the zoo. One of them—just a kid—threw the driver from behind the wheel and down onto the street.

“My God,” the deputy said. “Oh my God!”

The thing driving started to howl loudly.

“It can’t be,” Quentin said. “That’s Eileen’s son, isn’t it?”

The young boy stood up on the seat as the fire engine raced down Main Street, out of control, and began to hit cars and plow over them. Eileen’s son put his head back and howled as loud as the engine’s siren. The deputy pulled Quentin out of the fire truck’s way.

They watched the fire truck crash into the AG Edwards storefront down the street. The people hanging from the ladder dropped off and loped up the street toward Quentin like great apes. Some of the things used their knuckles to propel themselves.

Quentin stared in disbelief. Bystanders on the sidewalks were being attacked. In a moment the gang of ape-like things were on them, and it was complete chaos.

Their Ford had been rammed by the fire truck and hurled through the storefront’s plate-glass window and into the interior of AG Edwards. The front of the fire truck, having followed their car, was sitting beside it. Both vehicles were wedged into the debris. A steel beam in the ceiling had sheared the fire truck’s cab clean off.

The Ford had struck several people with desks along the storefront, killing them instantly. Dillon turned around in the backseat; he saw the smashed-out gaping hole the two vehicles had punched out. He could see Howlers jumping off the fire truck’s back end, which was sticking out into the street.

One of his men had been decapitated by a stop sign that had come through the Ford’s front windshield. In a surreal picture, the head was still wobbling about on the seat next to Dillon like a slowing top. Someone was screaming. The driver, he guessed, because Dillon could see the black man was rocking back and forth in agony, his big head ticking violently. The screaming was horrible. The driver, his left foot and left thigh impaled on a gas line, was trying to undo his seat belt. Dillon got control of his own shock and did a quick check of his body. He moved his arms, then his legs; everything was working.

One of the Howlers was approaching the Ford. The Howler got close in and put his face up to the bashed-in front windshield. The dead man next to Dillon still wore his ski mask. Dillon tore it off, then took the pistol out of the dead man’s hand. The driver had stopped screaming; it was quiet in the car. Dillon was the only one left alive. The severed head was sitting on one of the moneybags, the head’s eyes wide open. Dillon knocked it off with the back of his hand. The head’s face, even in death, seemed to sense the ironic turn of events.

Grabbing one of the canvas moneybags, Dillon tried the door on his left. Immediately a hand was grabbing for him. A child’s hand caught him by the ankle and began to drag him out of the Ford. It felt as if a powerful machine had caught hold of his leg. He saw the kid’s head through the Ford’s window, raised his pistol and fired.

The kid flew backwards into a dead stockbroker, still holding his phone where he’d died. The stockbroker’s legs had been cleanly amputated; he’d been knocked into the front of the Ford and rammed between a random desk and a wall. Pieces of his intestines had been pushed up through his mouth and were spilling onto the Ford’s hood, and yet the dead man was holding his cell phone as if he were alive and in mid conversation.

Dillon crawled out of the half-open car door. He brought out two of the moneybags from the bank. He reached into the back of the Ford and got his shotgun, which was lying on the floor. He searched one of the Texan’s pockets for ammo and found an extra full clip for a Glock.

In the smashed-up office the Howlers were milling around, looking about as if they were lost. Two of them were beating a young secretary to death, punching her with tremendous force, their blows crushing her face. Several people from the brokerage were sitting at their desks injured or trying to help each other get over the debris and out into the street.

Dillon looked at the two bags of money. He couldn’t carry both and wield his shotgun at the same time. He swore under his breath. “Hey, asshole.”

One of the milling Howlers looked up. It started to shriek, then howl. It made for Dillon, the Ford between them. The Howler, about twenty and clad in Cal-Trans overalls, climbed over the top of the Ford, taking the direct route. Dillon waited for him to come over the Ford’s roof. He shot him as soon as he came over the top, blowing him backwards. Several Howlers came up over the Ford in the same manner. Dillon fired again and again; three Howlers dropped from the shotgun’s blasts. The rest of the group came up at him, the same way, over the top of the Ford, just as he expected.