Rebecca turned, smiled, and held out her hand in an “it’s-cool” signal, a calm-down-no-problem-look on her pretty flushed face.
“Yeah? What’s up, Dad?” she said, hooking up her bra quickly, and finally stepping out of the dark to the bottom of the stairs.
“You better come up, honey. And bring the Thompsons, all of them,” her father said.
“Okay, but—”
“Rebecca, just do it, please.”
“Okay, Dad. Okay.” They heard the door close. Gary was putting on his bike shoes.
“God damn, that was close!” Gary said.
“Sure was. God, you’d think there was a war going on,” Rebecca said.
“What’s he want? What are Thompsons?”
“Machine guns,” Rebecca said.
“Excuse me?”
“Dad collects older machine guns. He wants me to bring up the Thompsons. Must have a collector up there or something. Probably the goddamn ATF agents again. He’s got one of the biggest collections in the state. It’s illegal, though, I guess. You don’t work for the ATF or anything, do you?” She smiled at Gary. “Somehow I don’t think so. Help me move these boxes out of the way.”
Gary turned around and looked at the couch they’d been making love on. Great stacks of National Geographic magazines stood on either side of the couch and ran down the walls of the shooting range. Rebecca went to the first stack and pulled down several bundles of magazines they used to hide the collection of automatic weapons. She reached into the space, opened a box and pulled out a Thompson. Gary recognized the thing from old black and white gangster movies he’d watched on TV.
“Holy shit!” he said.
“Pretty cool, huh? Here, take this one upstairs, and this one too.” She handed two of them to him. Summers stopped at the top of the stairs and turned around. Rebecca was taking out two more Thompson submachine guns from their original wooden packing cases.
“I never met anyone like you before,” Gary said, and went through the door into the store.
“Boy, give them guns,” Mr. Stewart said. Gary stepped out of the doorway. The sheriff he’d seen around town was at the counter. His face was hurt, one eye almost closed shut. The sheriff was taking boxes of ammunition and throwing them in a canvas bag he’d gotten from a rack. Another man, tall and muscular, was standing near the shop’s entrance—he looked a lot like a white version of the movie actor the Rock, Summers thought. The man had a shock of black hair, was about forty, and had crude tribal-style tattoos on his arms. The man stuck his head out the doorway and looked both ways.
Gary walked to the sheriff and handed him one of the guns. Quentin looked up from what he was doing.
“Kid can you use one of these?” Quentin asked. He nodded to the M-16 he was holding. From the look on the men’s faces, something was seriously wrong. Gary glanced at the man standing in the open doorway, who’d turned around.
“No time, they’re on the way,” Dillon said. He walked toward the gun counter. “Give me that thing!” Gary handed him one of the Thompsons.
“Where’s Rebecca?” Quentin said.
“Here I am, Sheriff.” Rebecca kicked the door to the basement shut with her foot.
Quentin looked up at the girl. He put his hands on the counter in a formal way, like a preacher at his pulpit.
“I want you to listen to me, girl, because what I’m going to tell you is the truth, but it’s going to sound pretty strange. There’s a bunch of things out in the street. They look human but aren’t. They’re going to try to kill us as soon as they get here. I don’t have time to explain. Lacy and Sharon need me. I have to go back outside. There’s no more law in town. I guess it’s everyone for themselves.”
Dillon yanked off the canister clip on the Thompson and was filling it with ammunition that Mr. Stewart had thrown to him from behind the counter.
Dillon looked at the girl. “How do you use it? It’s a fucking antique!” Stewart grabbed the Thompson and showed Dillon how to change canisters and where the safety was.
While they were doing that, a few Howlers rushed the door. Gary had wandered to the front of the store, not sure what was going on. He looked at the people outside and thought they were trying to escape from what the sheriff was talking about. He went to the door and opened it for them. The three armed people behind him watched in disbelief, not able to shoot because Gary was in the way.
Dillon was the first to react. He ran across the room and began firing. The thing that had grabbed Summers by the throat caught a hail of bullets as Dillon threw himself against it and kept firing. The bullets went through the Howler that was trying to rip Gary Summers’ head off, and out the back of its head into the other Howlers that were crowding the door. A waterfall of brass poured out of the Thompson. Dillon drew Gary back by his shirt, yanking him backwards violently. Dillon stepped between him and the Howlers trying to come in the open doorway. His machine gun clicked empty.
A Howler, a tall, thin woman, flew through the door and grabbed Dillon by the shirt, backhanded him, and started to pull him out the door. Rebecca ran across the room, put one of the Thompsons up against the woman’s jaw and fired a burst. The Howler dropped to the ground, its broken-into-pieces skull pouring blood. Rebecca turned on the open door; several Howlers were trying to get through. She opened fire, moving slowly along the doorway and wall. Wood chips and pieces of Howler flew in the air. Rebecca kicked the door closed, threw the dead bolt, then a steel security arm across what was left of the shot-up door.
“Thanks,” Dillon said.
They were silent. Gary picked himself off the floor and moved back away from the door, terrified.
“Are you coming with me, or not?” Quentin said, looking at Dillon. “I’m leaving. I’ll come back with the girls if I can. And pick you all up.”
“Go where?” Dillon said, still looking at Rebecca. “It’s no different anywhere else. They’re all over.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But you don’t have a car and I do,” Quentin said. “I’ll need everyone’s help to clear the street, and give me a chance to get into the patrol car.”
“Would someone please tell me what the fuck is going on, for Christ’s sake,” Rebecca said.
Dillon turned around and looked at her. He could still feel the iron grip of the Howler on his shirt as the thing had tried to pull him out the door. “Hey, save the last dance for me,” he said, without even thinking about it. He didn’t smile, but the gates in his eyes opened a little.
Rebecca’s father looked at the man. He saw something he didn’t like in that look, something feral and extremely masculine aimed at his daughter.
* * *
“I said you aren’t supposed to stop the van,” Bell said.
“Those are civilians, sir. I can’t just run them over!” the MP driving said.
“That’s exactly what you have to do,” Bell said. The young soldier glanced into the mirror. “I’m your superior officer. That’s a direct order—run them down!”
Bell felt the van slowing. They had been going about sixty miles an hour, driving in the fast lane on Highway 50, when they saw them. Bell watched the trees outside and gauged the van’s speed.
“That’s an order!” Bell said again.
The young soldier slowed down, not listening to him. They had left Timberline and just gotten on Highway 50 near Truckee. No traffic was coming the other way, Bell noticed. They had been on the highway for ten minutes and still there was no traffic coming the other way. The highway’s eastbound lanes were empty. He knew something was wrong. It was late Friday afternoon; at this time of day, the traffic heading east from Sacramento should have been heavy. But not a soul was on the other side of the freeway. They were alone.