“I have to speak to Quentin,” Poole said. The deputies all knew from the sound of the doctor’s voice that it was bad, whatever had happened. No one knew yet just how bad.
CHAPTER 6
It was useless trying to warn people. They only laugh at you, he thought, taking a deep drag off a fresh Camel cigarette. James Dillon looked out on the traffic from his seat in the Denny’s on Highway 50. He’d lit the filterless cigarette with a Zippo lighter his grandfather had given him on his twenty-first birthday. The old man had carried the lighter with him during the Korean War. It was one of Dillon’s few personal possessions; he’d been able to retrieve it, along with his wedding ring, from a box of things his aunt had kept for him when he got out of San Quentin.
That same year he was released from prison, he started to rob banks for a living. It had been going well enough. He worked with five other professionals. They took few risks, hitting only out-of-the-way banks, many in the Central Valley of California. All the small-town banks they robbed had easy access to major freeways and were mostly unprotected, with nothing more than surveillance cameras and small-town police forces to rely on. The police departments in rural small-town America were spread too thin to respond quickly to bank’s alarms, especially since the financial crisis. It was the first time since he’d been a Boy Scout that he had a savings account.
It was an off hour, between breakfast and lunch at the Denny’s. The restaurant was quiet. The surrounding booths were mostly empty. He knocked an ash onto the floor and remembered it was illegal to smoke inside a restaurant. He dropped his cigarette onto the dirty linoleum floor and smashed it out with the heel of his new Redwing boot. The last thing he needed was to be arrested for smoking.
A few truck drivers from a busy truck stop across the street sat at one of the tables behind him, talking in sleepy low voices. Dillon looked out at the nearly empty restaurant’s parking lot and saw the snow falling outside. It all seemed cold and dismal, and he felt lonely. He turned back from the windows and saw a waitress standing in front of him in her ill-fitting Denny’s uniform. He debated warning her of the things he’d seen. He wanted to grab her by the arm and explain that everyone sitting in the restaurant was in danger of losing their life, but he didn’t. He’d done it before, at a Denny’s in Fresno, and people there had just laughed at him.
“Warm that up for you?” the waitress said politely, not really looking at him.
Dillon looked up at the woman, at her makeup and her double chin, and behind her at the short-order cook who was diligently scraping burnt meat from the grill, getting ready for the lunch crowds that would soon fill the place. He put his hand over the top of the cup. Not seeing his hand cover the cup, the waitress started to pour coffee. The hot coffee spilled over Dillon’s hand. He didn’t feel a thing.
“Oh my God! I’m so sorry,” the waitress said, shocked. She pulled back the glass coffee pot immediately, the coffee spilling onto the greasy brown Formica table.
“Yeah, fine. Don’t worry. It’s okay.” He pulled his hand away and wiped it with a napkin, the burn finally registering.
“That was hot . . . coffee,” the waitress said, looking at him as if he weren’t real.
Dillon looked at his hand. The skin around his knuckles was turning red, but he didn’t feel much pain yet. He had trained himself not to feel pain. That was what prison did for you. You trained yourself to be a gladiator. If he was anything, after seven very long years spent in San Quentin, James Dillon was a bona fide gladiator, with the scars, hard countenance—rarely able to find a smile—and crude blue-ink prison tattoos that marked him to civilians as a scary outlaw.
“Check, please,” he said.
“Sure. I’m really sorry, honey. I’ve been here since 5:00 a.m. You put it on automatic,” the waitress said, horrified by what she’d done.
“Don’t worry. It’s okay. If you could just please bring me the check,” Dillon said. He’d pocketed his lighter. “And don’t worry, it wasn’t your fault. It was mine.” He couldn’t look at the blousy older woman and not think of his own mother, who’d died while he was in prison. His mother had been a waitress in roadhouses all over West Texas and Southern California when he’d been a boy. It had just been she and he while he’d been growing up, and he missed her. She was the only person in his life who’d ever really, truly loved him. He had no one in his life, since his wife had left him.
His intense loneliness was starting to make him feel somewhat ghostly. He’d picked up girls—and some whores—along the way, but didn’t like it. It was just sex, and that wasn’t what he wanted.
The pain from his scalded hand began to register, but he cut it off like a yogi who could walk on fire.
“How far is the ranger station at Emigrant Gap?” he asked the waitress. He took out his wallet with his burnt hand.
The waitress was still staring at him, still in shock that he hadn’t even flinched when the coffee had hit his hand. “Over there,” she said, pointing with the coffee pot. “On the other side of the highway, there, where the flagpole is. You can’t miss it.”
He left a twenty-dollar tip and thanked the woman, then walked to the cash register. A thin, pretty hostess was ringing up an older couple, the man in his seventies.
“Damnedest thing,” the old man said, counting out bills on the glass counter. “Damnedest thing. I know I hit that woman full on with my trailer. She didn’t even blink. She just got up and kept right on running . . . damnedest thing I ever seen in my life.” The old man turned to Dillon.
The cashier winked at Dillon. She didn’t believe it. Dillon knew it was true. He stepped up to the cashier. She was fresh-faced, with blue country-girl eyes and short brown hair. He knew how long the girl would last once the Howlers got here. Dillon slid a five-dollar bill across the glass counter, over the gum and mint display, and paid for his cup of coffee.
“I thought I’d heard everything,” the girl said. She flirted with him. He was handsome, and women liked him. “I guess that geezer needs his medication. You from around here?”
“You better clear out,” Dillon said. “Clear out while you can.” He couldn’t help himself. The idea of everyone dying in here in a few hours was too much to bear. He had to say something. Even if they laugh at me, he thought.
“Pardon me?” the girl said.
“I said you better clear out.” He looked at the girl, then turned to the people in the diner. It was picking up; a few people were coming through the doors. He turned back to the girl. “They’ll be here soon. I’ve seen them. You don’t have much time,” Dillon said. He’d heard the news on his truck’s satellite radio. Even through the media’s half-truths, he knew it was getting worse. He’d seen it himself in Southern California only a day ago. Someone there had called them Howlers because of the sound they made.
“Right,” the girl said. “They sure are.” The girl obviously thought he was crazy. He’d seen that look before. A day ago when he’d driven into Big Bear, he’d seen the same look. They—the government—were keeping it quiet, he figured. They were keeping the news off the TV as long as they could. If it isn’t on TV, nobody believes you. They would all find out the hard way, once it was far too late.