HOWLERS (26 page)

Marvin looked up at the young woman. “For what?” Poole said.

“To help people who will need a doctor!” Miles said. “That’s why. And maybe you can help figure out what the fuck is going on.”

“All right,” Marvin said. “I’ll go.”

At 6:30 in the evening they walked into the garage and got into Marvin’s wife’s dark blue Cadillac Escalade. They’d been hearing howling since the sun went down. Miles suggested he should drive, with Patty literally riding shotgun in the passenger seat, as she was the better shot. They’d gone back to Crouchback’s place and found another two boxes of ammunition for the twelve gauge—sixty rounds—but none for the damaged .30-30.

Miles looked at Patty. “Ready?” he asked.

“Yeah, as I’ll ever be,” Patty said. She watched Miles reach up to the visor and hit the garage-door opener. Patty watched the big garage door rise up in the rearview mirror. She saw several Howlers standing out in the street.

Seeing them too, Miles almost hit the button to close the door back down, but didn’t. “Fuck,” Miles said. He heard Patty hit the button rolling down the Cadillac’s passenger-side window. “Just fucking kill them,” Miles said.

He pulled out of the garage. He felt the cold air from the car’s open window and heard the shotgun go off almost immediately. He heard Patty rack the shotgun. She was leaning out of the window. He stepped on the Cadillac’s throttle, fishtailing out into the street, in reverse, whipping the steering wheel as the big car slid out of control. When it stopped sliding, he turned the wheel and floored it again.

He turned to look next to him; Patty was gone. He slammed on the brakes and looked in the rearview. She’d been yanked out of the car’s window and was lying on the ground. Miles put the car in reverse and floored it, aiming a rear bumper at the Howler standing over Patty. The Howler held the shotgun it had taken from her.

“Don’t get up,” Miles whispered, staring into the rearview mirror as he punched it. He felt the car hurtling backwards. He felt it hit something. He wasn’t sure whether he’d caught the Howler, or run over Patty. He waited what seemed for an eternity for the passenger door to open, not sure it would. “
Come on
—”

Patty jumped into the cab, coming out of the dark. She’d been searching for the shotgun but hadn’t seen it.

“I’ve lost the fucking shotgun,” she said as she slid into the seat, her jacket covered in snow.

Miles shifted into Drive and hit the accelerator, sending the Cadillac speeding down the street.

“Stop the car!” Marvin yelled. Miles, not understanding what was wrong, slowed the car. Marvin opened the back door and saw the black snow-dirty asphalt rushing past.

“
Jesus
, Marvin!” Miles said, slowing the car to a crawl.

“Stop the car!” Marvin said again. “I’ll get it.” Miles stopped the car. Marvin stepped out of the Cadillac and walked down the middle of the dark empty street. He saw Howlers jumping through the windows of a house and heard a man scream. He kept walking, looking to either side of the road for the shotgun. He finally saw it lying in the road in front of him. A Howler, both its legs broken, was lying in the snow near it. Marvin bent down and picked up the shotgun. He racked it, sending an empty shell out into the night.

He stood and looked around him. The neighborhood he’d known was gone. He could see broken windows, the bodies of his neighbors—people who like himself had been living normal lives just 24 hours before—lying where they’d had been killed. He looked up at the sky overhead and saw the stars. They looked bright and distant and perfect. The storm had passed. Something about looking up at the stars made him want to live, despite everything, as if he were all men, and not just one man.

“God help us all,” Marvin said out loud, lowering his head. He walked up to the crippled Howler that was trying to use its broken legs to stand again. Marvin laid the shotgun on the thing’s forehead. The thing grabbed for the barrel. Marvin fired and the Howler’s face disappeared. Its dead hand let go of the barrel. He turned and slowly walked back toward the Cadillac’s huge red taillights.

Marvin Poole was a changed man. He was now a violent and angry man, who had chosen to go on living, but only for vengeance’s sake, like some dark angel of death.

“Are you okay?” Miles asked, as Marvin slid into the back. Miles saw the doctor had a strange and different look on his face . He saw that it was peppered with Howler blood.

“Okay,” Marvin said, “Now. I’ll keep this with me.”

*   *   *

“He’s up there in that little cabin. He blocked the road so nobody can drive up there. Can you imagine?” Cooley said. They’d parked in front of the pine logs blocking the gravel road that led up to Chuck Phelps’s ranch.

“Doesn’t look like much,” the man riding next to Cooley said. He was a client of the accountant’s and an important official with the ATF in San Francisco. Cooley had given the ATF man and his wif —Fredrick C. Billings, Jr., and Mrs. Billings Jr.—a free luxury package at the B&B that included 90-minute massages and “European dermabrasion” in exchange for Billings’ promise to stop by the Phelps place and “investigate.” Billings was more than willing to get a free weekend in the mountains if all he had to do was flash his badge at some doomsday prepper and tell him to keep the noise down. And, of course, should the ATF man see anything illegal, it would lead to the opening of a formal ATF case file.

   “The law can pick it up from there,” Billings assured Cooley, who had gotten him out of some hot water with the IRS. Billings considered Cooley a little bitch, but a useful one. “These types are all pretty much the same. They’re out of touch. Most of them are crazy. You say he’s a Vietnam vet?” Billings was sweating slightly because he’d splurged on a mineral bath and rub-down after breakfast with one of the cute hard-bodies Cooley had staffed the place with.

“Yes. But that might be just a story, you know, to get sympathy. Like bums who hold up cardboard signs and ask for handouts,” Cooley said. He turned off the satellite radio, tuned to 80’s hits. Cooley loved and admired Sting. They’d just missed the first on-air government warning about the Howlers, broadcast over satellite radio that morning.

“How far is the cabin from the road?” Billings asked.

“Not far. I was up there last summer. He took a shot at me!”

This was a lie; the truth was more prosaic. Phelps was in Timberline. The accountant had gathered up all his courage and decided to confront Phelps about his gun range—a perfectly legal one, the hick local sheriff had explained to Cooley. One that Quentin had checked himself, and found respected all the county’s ordinances about outdoor gun ranges.

“Yes,” Cooley continued. “Nearly killed me. I told the police up here, but they’re all, you know. They’re all a bunch of hillbilly types. You can’t believe it. It’s like going back in time up here. Everyone knows everyone. And they protect this crazy guy just because he was born here.”   “He shot at you?”

“Yes. Nearly killed me, too. Came close. I ran, had to,” Cooley lied.

“I see,” Billings said. “And you told the police up here?”

“Yes.”

“All right, let’s go have a word with this yahoo.” Marching past a “No Trespassing” sign without a warrant made no difference to the two men.

Three Howlers attacked the two men as they climbed the steps to the Phelps cabin. Two were naked, a man and wife, having gotten sick while at the B&B’s isolated “lovers only” outdoor hot tub on a deck in the woods.

Cooley, always quick-witted, pushed Billings down in the snow in hopes he could make it into the cabin in time. Billings, already exhausted, fell backwards toward the screaming creatures who had run up behind them. Sitting in the snow, Billings took out his service pistol and fired at the screaming naked Howlers, missing all but the closest, which he killed by sheer luck. The other two reached him as his pistol clicked empty. One of them, the man, knelt immediately in the snow and shit. It was the strangest thing Billings had ever seen. The woman waited, not sure whether she should go on toward Cooley who was just making it up the stairs to the cabin.

“Help! Help me! For God sake!” Billings yelled. He stood up.

The female Howler, waiting for her mate, knelt and began to howl.

“Help me! I’ve hurt my ankle,” Billings said, not aware that it was Cooley who had pushed him down as he was running.

Cooley opened the door, stole a quick glance at the terrified injured man and then closed the cabin door behind him, locking it. Exhausted and drenched in sweat, Cooley watched from the window as the two Howlers literally pulled Billings apart, tearing his arms off his body first, as if he were a paper doll.

Still alive, Billings stood up, arms gone and shoulders spurting blood, and limped pathetically toward the cabin. But the creatures caught him after only a few steps.

Cooley, hands shaking, pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911.

“Hello, 911?”

“Yes, 911 operator speaking.”

“Operator,” Cooley said, “I’m in a cabin in the woods and someone has just been murdered.”

“Can you hold, please? We’re receiving a high number of calls.”

“NO, I
CAN’T
HOLD!” Cooley dropped his phone on the floor and blocked the door with an old-fashioned steel bar he saw for the purpose. The bar fell in place across the door, held by two steel hooks. Cooley, feeling safe, watched the naked creatures through the cabin’s small windows. Both were running toward the porch. The two things jumped up the stairs onto the porch; he watched them pound on the bullet-proof, two-inch thick, military-grade, and bomb-proof plastic.

He stared at the ugly things as the Howlers tried to smash the small windows. He backed away from the blood-printed glass as both Howlers broke their wrists trying to punch through it. It was impossible; the window’s thick plastic was too tough. The two finally stopped pounding, their broken and dangling hands useless, both began to howl and shriek.

“Jesus,” Cooley said, staring at the naked couple. Their faces had changed from just a day ago.
Jesus . . . those two were staying at the B&B.
He turned from the small bloodstained window and saw two dogs looking up at him. One of them, a giant German Shepherd, started to growl and then leapt at his throat.

CHAPTER 21

They’d stopped unexpectedly. The Land Rover’s headlights were shining on the entrance to an expensive five-star hotel’s elegant roadside entrance. The entrance was flanked by six-foot high portals made of smooth river stones, built to mark the place. The entrance, bathed in floodlights, stood out in the pitch black night as if nothing were wrong and the elegant hotel were open for business.

“Now what do we have here?” Johnny said. “How come they still got electricity?”

“Probably emergency generators,” Bell said from the backseat.

“It’s a
hotel
,” Lacy said. “What are we stopping here for?”

“People in there might need our help,” Johnny said. He had taken a suit of clothes from a mansion they’d robbed earlier. He was wearing a pair of expensive pants and jacket that were mismatched. The jacket was snakeskin and had cost $5,000. He’d taken the owner’s expensive Borsalino-made Panama hat, too, and was sporting it when he’d stopped to pick them up.

Johnny dug in the jacket pocket and took out a pharmacy-style pill container. “Got a thousand Oxy tablets at the Rite Aid in Reno! The whole damn pharmacy was wide open. No one there except some
very
dead people. Want some?” Johnny asked, looking at them in the rear-view mirror.

“No, thanks,” Bell said.

“Sure? Makes things a lot better. Got to face all this shit out here without drugs is hard on a man,” he said.

“I’ll say,” his girlfriend said. “A
lot
better with them than without them.” The girl was high and had chattered on the whole time since the couple had stopped for them, as if they were all on a lark, instead living a nightmare.

Lacy reached for Bell’s hand. It was the first time they’d touched like that. She wrapped her hand around his and held it tightly.

“Why don’t we just go on and meet up with my dad,” Lacy said. “It’s better if there’s more of us.”

“Well, for
one
reason I got some business up in there,” Johnny said.

“What kind of business?” Bell asked. The two stoners were using the horrible chaos as an opportunity to steal and loot without worrying about the usual consequences. It was why he had left them earlier that morning. It was crazy
and
immoral, yet they were doing it. Bell hated the man behind the wheel in the worst way. His old grandmother, a sharecropper all her life, had once said to him that the Devil at his strongest “wears a Sunday suit, but a Saturday-night smile.”

“That last place was a gold mine!” Sue Ling said.

“I’m sure it was,” Bell said.

“The old geezer had a great gun collection. All kinds of shit. He was some kind of banker. Said he was a big shot and could get us all the money we wanted,” Johnny said.

“I thought you said there wasn’t anyone at home?” Lacy said.

“Did I?
Anyway
, this looks like a pretty fancy place. They’ve got to have all kinds of good shit up in there. Rich people’s place—full of rich-people’s shit.”

“There are still laws,” Bell said. “Just because of what’s happened doesn’t mean—”

“Are there?” Johnny said.

“You think so?” Sue Ling said. “I don’t think there are any. Not anymore. Everything is free. It’s like Christmas,
only better
.” She turned toward them and smiled like a little kid. She’d raided some rich girl’s closet and wore a get-up like one of the Orange County Housewives, dressed for a glam-winter sojourn, complete with a white mink ski hat. “It’s not like—you know, it was
before
.”

“That doesn’t make it
right
,” Lacy said.

“Wasn’t right to send me to Pelican Bay for two years either, or keep me in an isolation cell, but the motherfuckers did it anyway,” Johnny said. “All I did was sell a little meth.”

“You’re both crazy,” Lacy said. Bell felt her squeeze his hand again. “You’re both crazy. And I’m going to tell my father what you’ve done.”

“Well, are we crazy, honey?” Johnny asked his girlfriend.

“I’m crazy about you,” Sue Ling said. “Hey, I got a Chanel bag for
free
! Everyone in the store was
dead
!” The Chinese girl smiled in the deranged way that Oxy-moron heads developed, half shit-eating-ain’t-I-cute grin, and half seven-year-old’s smug look. The painkiller made them believe that everything and anything that came out of their mouth was either funny, or profound, when it was puerility personified.

The girl lifted a Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum with the eight-inch barrel from where she’d had it stuck between her seat and the armrest. She pointed it at Bell. The huge pistol was fully loaded. Bell could see the tips of the bullets facing out from the pistol’s open cylinders.

“That pistol there is better than the Desert Eagle. We got both from the old guy. But the Smithy has that long eight-inch barrel; you get 2075 feet per second vs. 1475 feet per second with the Israeli’s Eagle. Shit, these Jews really know now to make some kick-ass guns! Both 300-grain loads, of course. That’s got the hollow points too. Hits these Howlers—Splat City, brain-wise. I get a kick out of watching them hit the deck,” Johnny said.

“I could shoot you both right now and I would
get away
with it. That’s
so
cool,” Sue Ling said and broke out laughing. Only joking.” She put the huge pistol down. “I wouldn’t, though— shoot you. I fired it up at the mansion and it hurt my wrist! We were messing around shooting down the hallways, to see how many doors we could get through. This fucking thing, we couldn’t find the bullet! I think it went through six doors!”

“It was a big-ass place! Had a private fucking
lake
,” Johnny said. “Some kind of special wine-drinking room. Fucking rich people think of all kinds of shit. Whoever heard of a special wine-drinking room? Fucking
idiots
. Old man kept asking me what I wanted with him. So I shot him in the foot and told him I wanted to see him dance, like in the Westerns. Remember? Fucker danced. Hopping like a
motherfucker
. They showed all the cool Westerns at Pelican Bay. I love me some Westerns,” Johnny said.

“I want out!” Lacy said. “Let me out! He’s crazy!” She let go of Bell’s hand and reached for the car’s door handle but it was locked.

“Honey, you can’t go out there.
They’re
out there.
Shit
. Don’t act
crazy
,” Sue Ling said. The girl’s pretty young face wore a look of honest concern.

She might only be sixteen or seventeen years old, Bell realized.

“Your call,” Johnny said. He turned and looked at Bell. “I’ll let your bitch out if she really wants out.” He reached for the Land Rover’s armrest and they heard the mechanical sound of all four doors unlocking together. “Go on ... get!”

Lacy looked at Bell, her hand on the door’s lever.

“We can’t get out here,” Bell said. “We’ll die. I promised your father I’d look after you.” Bell turned and looked at Johnny. “Why don’t you turn on the radio, see what you get. It’s satellite, so we should be able to get some news. Like you said.”

“So are you in, or are you out, bitch?” Johnny asked Lacy directly, ignoring Bell. He tilted the black porkpie hat back in frustration.

Lacy stared at him. “In,” she said finally.

“Right. Okay.” Johnny hit the latch and Bell heard all four door locks snap shut. “Now let’s go see what kind of goodies we can find.” They drove through the portals and turned down a long new-looking driveway passing a well-lit sign: “
Sierra Ranch—a Four Seasons Luxury Resort and Spa.”
Johnny turned on the satellite radio and instead of the news, tuned in a country and western station that was playing “Rawhide
.
”
He and his girlfriend started singing along with the famous Frankie Lane tune: “
Don’t try to understand ’em ...  just ride, rope, and brand ’em ...”

It was while they were driving down the driveway, Johnny making the cracking motion of a whip, playing along with the song, that Bell decided he would probably have to kill them both
,
and soon, or he and Lacy would be murdered by the two drug-fueled lunatics before the night was over.

The Howlers had already visited the hotel, and probably not that long ago, Bell thought, as they pulled into the elegant well-lit turn around, a majestic pine tree in the center of it. A bellman—his head pulled off his shoulders, exposing a blunt-looking spinal column—lay in the middle of the driveway. Expensive suitcases were scattered everywhere. Some had been opened and their contents scattered by the mindless creatures. Guests had been unloading, it seemed, as an extra-long stretch limousine was parked in front of the Bell Captain’s station, with all its doors left wide open. The limo’s back window was smashed in. The limo driver was hanging out of the driver’s side door; a large stone had split his skull wide open, the stone still protruding from the dead driver’s head.

“
Je-e-sus
,” Sue Ling said. “Look at all those
clothes
, babe!”

“Bonanza!” Johnny said. He pulled the Land Rover directly behind the limo. “Okay. Let’s see what we
got
here.”

Bell watched Johnny pocket the car’s electronic key, lifting it from a tray on the armrest.

“I’m staying here,” Lacy said.

“No.
Everyone
out,” Johnny said. “No fun otherwise. And, I don’t trust you.” He waved his pistol at them. “O—U—T, spells out. I’ve got an idea.”

“At least give us a weapon,” Bell said. “They could still be here, the things.”

“Well, just give us a shout if you see one,” Johnny said. Sue Ling stepped out of the car, the huge Smith & Wesson held in her left hand.

A man pushed through the doors of the honey-colored, log-cabin style lobby. He was in his forties, wearing smart ski gear. He looked terrified. “Thank God. Can you help us? My wife is sick.
Please.
Can you help us? We need a doctor. I’ve been trying to call out for an ambulance, but my cell phone doesn’t work.”

Johnny walked around the front of the Land Rover and lifted the Desert Eagle and pointed it at the man. “Hold on there, Sport. How many people are in there with you?”

The man stopped walking, stunned that the help he’d expected had turned into something else. “We were in our room—asleep. They came. We could hear the screaming in the lobby. We kept our door shut. It was terrible—what’s wrong? I’m not one of those things!”

“Any cops here?” Johnny asked.

“
What
?”

“You know, security? Guys with fucking guns?” Johnny asked.

“I didn’t see any,” the man said.

“Where’s your wife?” Johnny asked.

“Room 214. She’s very ill—I don’t know what’s wrong with her. I need help—the
things
. It’s terrible what—”

“Help?” Johnny said.

“Can you take us to a doctor?” the man asked. He glanced at Bell and Lacy, looking to the two of them for help.

“Oh, a doctor.
Sure
.” Johnny said.

“Thank you. I told my wife that—”

A loud shot rang out. The high-velocity bullet hit the standing man dead in his face. It blew the back of his head off, knocking him backwards as if he’d been hit by a bat. The shot reverberated around them.

Lacy screamed and Bell grabbed her, turning her away from the awful sight of the man’s skull broken open and his jerking feet. The contents of his skull spilled across the ground behind him.

“See if he’s got a wallet,” Johnny said to Sue Ling.

The girl ran over to the dead man, rifled his jacket pockets and came up with a wallet and a cell phone.

“
Bingo
,” Johnny said. “It’s dog-eat-dog out here, baby. Now, you two want to live, go get some wallets. And meet us back here in in the lobby in an hour. And I’d watch out for the guy’s bitch. No doubt she’s one of them by now.”

“You’re a murderer,” Lacy said in a quiet, horrified voice, turning toward Johnny.

“You figure that out on your own?” Johnny said. “Damn, you’re a smart bitch.”

“Can’t do it without a weapon,” Bell said. “Those things could be anywhere around here.” He tried to keep the anger out of his voice.

“Go,” Johnny said. “Go now! Go and get
me
SOME FUCKING MONEY!”

Sue Ling ran over to her boyfriend and tossed him the dead man’s wallet. “One,” the girl said, smiling and seemingly unaffected by the brutal murder. The two hugged.

Bell saw the girl had a diamond belly button piercing when she reached up to kiss her boyfriend.
She’s a psychopath
, Bell thought.

“You’re both insane,” Lacy said.

“You get us ten thousand dollars
cash
, and we’ll take you to that ranch. That’s how insane we are,” Johnny said. “We’ll wait for you in the bar.”

Bell wondered why they’d been kept alive, and now he understood. It was dangerous going into the hotel. Why not send them in to do the dirty work? If they were killed, what would it matter?