Rebecca picked up the automatic from Summers’ lap and began to show him how to fire the weapon, pure venom in her voice. “And I hope to God they shoot you, and you die,” she said when she’d handed it back to him, finally.
Quentin shut off the headlights and the spotlight as they rounded a bend in the narrow gravel road. “It’s up here, about a mile,” he said.
The patrol car slowed, then stopped. They’d crossed an old wooden bridge in the dark. A house stood at the top of a driveway to their left. Its windows were bathed in a yellowish Coleman-lantern light.
“That’s it,” Quentin said.
“Now what?” Dillon said.
“We go up there and place them all under arrest,” Quentin said. He was lying to himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to admit he wanted to kill them all. He saw Dillon smile in the moonlight.
“I’ll go first,” Rebecca said. “When you hear me start shooting, you come on along.”
Dillon turned to look at the girl, impressed by her lack of fear. He picked up a Glock 21 from the floor.
“Give me that.” Rebecca took the automatic from Dillon’s hand. She checked to make sure it was loaded and had a bullet in the chamber. She did it so quickly and expertly that Quentin couldn’t help but smile. “They’ll open the door for a chick. I’ll tell them I’m scared.”
“What if they think you’re one of the things?” Quentin said.
“My tough luck,” Rebecca said. She reached for the door handle, the Glock in her other hand.
“Wait—Rebecca. I promise, we’ll both be right behind you. We go up the driveway together. You knock on the door,” Quentin said. “Once you get inside, we’ll come in.”
“Take the kid with you,” Dillon said. “Here.” Dillon reached down and picked up a simple five-shot .38 revolver. He checked to make sure it was loaded and handed it to Summers. “Even you should be able to use this. Just point and click, motherfucker.”
Rebecca knocked on the cabin’s front door. She had tucked the Glock into the small of her back so that her parka covered it.
“Help! Help!” She knocked again. The door flew open and a tall young man with long blond hair was standing in front of her.
“Well, fuck me!” he said.
“We need help,” Rebecca said. “They’re out there. The things. Our car broke down.”
“Well come on in, good looking,” the man said. He moved back from the door.
Rebecca saw that he had a pistol in his hand. She saw two dead Howler bodies hanging on one of the cabin’s back walls near the fireplace. The Howlers had been nailed to the knotty-pine wall of the living room like animal trophies—their arms stretched out, their ugly thick faces horribly bullet-pocked. Rebecca looked to her right and saw a tall, older biker with short black hair, standing at one of the cabin’s windows. He was wearing night-vision goggles.
The man who opened the door pointed his pistol at her and Summers, who’d walked up behind her.
“Now, I want you two to come on in here,” the younger one said. Rebecca saw another two men in the kitchen, holding short-barreled shotguns. One of them slipped out the back door. The tall man in the night-vision goggles, holding a walkie-talkie, spoke into the radio, still looking out the window. Rebecca reached behind her slowly.
“Hands where I can see them, bitch!” the blond said.
“We need help,” Rebecca said, bringing her gun hand back in front of her.
“Sure you do. You’re about to get it, too,” the blond said.
Summers jumped at the man. Rebecca pulled the pistol from behind her. The tall man at the window turned. Rebecca saw the green tint of the night-vision goggles as he moved for his pistol on the chair behind him. She fired, hitting him in the face, the hollow-point, 230-grain bullet boring a hole through one of the night-vision goggles’ lenses. She turned and fired almost point blank at the blond, sending two rounds through his right ear, as Summers fought with him. The blond dropped to his knees and fell over. She turned to fire at the man in the kitchen, but he was gone.
Rebecca flew out the front door and screamed for Quentin to watch the side of the house. Rebecca saw, almost immediately, the orange-yellow flash of the Thompson’s muzzle. The two machine guns opened up at once on someone she could just make out standing in the snow at the side of the cabin. The gunman tried to run. His body danced, hit by both machine guns. She ran across the living room and toward the back door, expecting the other gunmen would try and come back inside the house. She pointed her pistol at the back door as she approached. As soon as she saw its dark knob move, she opened fire, shooting through the door in rapid fire until the pistol’s slide remained in the far back position, the Glock empty.
She heard voices and turned to see Quentin and Dillon walk through the front door.
“You okay?” Quentin asked from the doorway. She nodded, then opened the back door. The gunman’s head and upper body slid face down onto the dirty kitchen floor. She saw bits of white down, little white tufts poking through the nylon where her bullets had exited the back of the man’s red parka.
“Take the asshole’s shotgun, we’ll need it,” Dillon said. She went outside and found a combat-style shotgun lying at the bottom of the steps, its barrel buried in piss-stained yellow snow.
* * *
They could not get Marvin to speak. Miles had given up. Patty, he noticed, hadn’t really tried. It was the ranger who had led the doctor back into the house when they saw more of them in the woods heading for the Poole’s backyard. Forty or more Howlers had gathered in the woods, just out of sight, attracted to the sound of the howling.
Patty stood in the snow-covered backyard and watched them come. She dug into her red mackinaw coat pocket and felt the plastic covered shotgun shells; only three shells left. A howling started up from the forest. A gang of them was heading toward the fence, walking in the deep snow, some of them stumbling, their clothes snow covered.
Tired and angry, Patty walked over the backyard, stepping over the bodies of the Howlers she’d shot. It had become personal, a matter of her own survival. She’d seen too much violent death in the last several hours. Shooting the doctor’s wife had changed her—the poor woman’s tortured face imprinted forever. She wanted to kill them all. She was angry that she didn’t have more ammunition. She watched the closest Howler stumble on toward the fence. She turned and saw Miles guide Poole into the house and close the French door.
She turned back and faced the fence. The closest Howler kept coming, its mouth hung with frozen saliva, its dead eyes bloodshot.
“You motherfucker!” Patty said under her breath. “What’s wrong with you? Can’t you hear me? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
The thing kept coming. It stopped immediately in front of her, separated only by the chain-link fence.
“ucluchih uulchi nockeer raw, nocker raw.” The thing spoke to her, its glue-looking spit bubbling on the thing’s lips as it spoke.