“It’s Howard, Howard Price.”
“Thank you, Howard. Good luck. Call when you get to mailbox number 30. Take the eastern road out of town. You’ll pass the high school and a 7-11. You can’t miss it. That’s the direction you’re going to travel, and toward where we are now. I’ll come and meet you on the road myself. I promise. All right?” Marvin said. “You’ll be all right.”
“Yes. Okay,” Howard said. “How far am I from where you are?”
“Twenty minutes, probably even less,” Marvin said. “You’ll see Howlers on the road near us. But you’ll be okay. Stay in the car until you see me.”
Marvin hung up. A text appeared from Miles’ cell with a list of drugs Poole needed and instructions on where exactly he would find them in the office.
Howard turned and looked down to his right and saw Poole’s office. He was afraid of getting out of the car. He remembered the pistol Jon had given him at the rest stop and picked it off the seat next to him. It was snowing hard, the sky dimensionless, the highest peaks of the Sierra Madre hidden in mist.
Before going to Poole’s office, Howard stopped in the Copper Penny to scavenge something to eat. The scene was horrifying, but nothing frightened him more than what he saw on a tablet computer he found on the floor.
It was a scene shot from a helicopter of an overpass on Highway 80, southeast of Timberline. The entire highway—all six lanes—was filled with creatures coming from the greater Los Angeles basin, tens of thousands of them heading toward the Sierra: a kind of strange mutant army on the march.
He found the tablet’s volume control and turned it up.
“Terrorist creatures are massing on this California highway heading away from Los Angeles and into the mountains. There is no explanation for this mass movement of creatures out of the LA area,” a CNN newscaster’s voice said.
Howard pushed some cold French fries into his mouth. He looked at the dead people in the booth, their plates of food hardly touched. The food on the plates in front of them was ice cold, but, he hoped, still edible.
“In other news, the new Provisional Government is taking emergency measures to ensure citizens’ safety from this attack, which sources say may be linked to sleeper cells of terrorists based in Los Angeles. Colonel Terry Bent, spokesman for the Provisional Government, urges all Americans to continue to shelter in place. Local law enforcement and military police will be moving door-to-door with further instructions, and confiscating private firearms in order to prevent civil disorder.”
Howard reached over and took a turkey club sandwich from in front of a woman with a crushed face. She’d been hit so many times in the face that she was unrecognizable. He pushed the tablet computer to the side and ate the sandwich, picking up an iced tea that was cold to the touch.
CHAPTER 28
Lieutenant Bell stopped the limousine they’d taken from the hotel’s parking lot and turned in the driver’s seat. They’d found Rebecca some designer jeans and a black turtleneck sweater to wear. Her sweater had been torn in a melee on the hotel’s turnaround on the way to the limo.
Rebecca told them that Senator Prince knew all about the Phelps cabin, and exactly where it was located. She said Prince was planning to use it as his headquarters. Rebecca’s hair was down; she looked older. Something awful had happened to her eyes. Her expression had been girlish; now it was mean.
Rebecca held an automatic weapon across her lap. She’d picked it up off the ground as they were running out onto the turnaround. They’d run through a gauntlet of Howlers equipped with nothing but a fire ax that Patty had found in the hotel’s equipment room, and the pistol that Bell had taken in the fight. Prince’s men had been overrun and had retreated to the lobby. The trio had taken a chance and run out the back of the hotel, near the pool, and headed for the parking lot.
Bell emptied his pistol as they left the hotel, before the parking lot was even in sight. The fight on the turnaround had been horrific. Twenty feet from the limousine, a new group of Howlers had attacked them, responding to the howling at the hotel. Only seven of Prince’s gunmen had survived the earlier battle, and their nervous commander ordered them inside. The gunmen had watched the un-armed trio from the lobby, sure they’d be killed.
Reaching the turnaround, Bell had been able to clear a path through ten or more of the thing with the red handled fire-ax, the girls standing behind him. One of the Howlers, a very tall woman, had grabbed the ax and torn it from his hand. He’d thought it was over, but Rebecca had seen a weapon lying only a few feet from them. She’d picked it up and run, screaming at Bell and Patty to hit the ground.
Rebecca had opened up with the short-barreled assault rifle, spraying fire into the gang of Howlers. She killed all but two of the things before the weapon stopped firing, out of ammo. Instead of giving up, Rebecca ran straight at the two remaining creatures: a young Latin man dressed gang-banger style, exposing his underwear, and a young girl. She used the rifle as a club, cold-cocking the girl with the butt of the rifle, hitting her in the face until the thing finally fell over.
The young man had loped up and grabbed Rebecca from behind, spinning her around. As he swung a skateboard at Rebecca’s face, Bell had picked the ax off the ground and sunk it into the top of the thing’s skull, using all his might. The ax head came straight down and split the kid’s head open all the way to its neck. The skateboard board tumbled out of its dead hands. Rebecca had pushed the still-standing thing over.
The two made it to the limousine, Bell jumping into the driver’s seat. They’d both failed to notice that Patty had been in her own hand-to-hand battle and was trapped standing on top of a car, unarmed. She’d been saved only because one of the gunmen, inside the hotel watching her, had decided he couldn’t let her die. He’d stepped outside, firing his weapon at the things surrounding her. Patty turned and looked at him as he walked toward her, firing.
“Get out of here,” the gunman said, changing clips as he spoke. She hopped off the car’s hood and ran toward the limo.
The gunman watched them drive off. “Fuck Prince,” he muttered. He’d seen enough of what the Senator had in mind for America. He walked away from the hotel and slipped into the woods.
On the way to Timberline, Bell spotted the abandoned car that he and Lacy had driven from her boyfriend’s house the day before. It was still parked in the middle of the highway, exactly where they’d left it. He drove on until he saw a driveway in the moonlight to his right and stopped the car. Not one car had passed them on the road since they’d left the hotel. It was a bad sign, Bell thought.
“This might be the place. Ryder and that bitch Sue Ling picked Lacy and me up just back there, where you saw the abandoned car. Ryder said they’d just left the mansion when they found us on the road.”
“Yeah, there’s a mansion up there,” Rebecca said. “A friend of mine worked a party there for Mr. Towler, the caterer. She said the old rich guy who gave the party was showing everyone his personal helicopter.
The pitch-black driveway was barely lit by the moonlight. Snow had started to pile in a small drift at the front of the mansion’s wide-open security gate. Bell doubted he could get the limo up the driveway, which was probably snow-covered and impassable.
“The place could be full of Howlers,” Patty said, looking at the open gate.