HOWLERS (31 page)

Dillon studied the console’s various switches, all of them marked with red-plastic labels.

“This guy was meticulous,” Dillon said.

“Yeah, Chuck was that, all right,” Quentin said.

“
Exterior Sound
,” Dillon said, reading one of the labeled switches. Under that switch were several other clearly labeled switches
: Driveway, Rear of Cabin, West Side of Cabin, East Side of Cabin
. Dillon hit the Driveway switch and they could hear howling on the speaker above them. It was eerie.

“They call to others, like wolves,” Dillon said. He watched the monitor showing the gathering of Howlers on the road, many of them on their haunches howling like dogs: men, women, children.

Watching the monitor, Quentin still couldn’t believe what had happened. Only yesterday morning he was worried about butterflies on the way to have breakfast with Patty. Now one of his daughters was dead, and the world he’d known was gone forever. At first he thought it was a nightmare; even when Poole had woken him, he was sure he’d dreamt it all and would wake up to find Marie lying next to him. But it wasn’t to be. It was Poole who’d told him that he wasn’t crazy, that the world had gone mad. When the doctor had left him in the room, lying on the cot, he’d broken down and cried, sobbing like a child with his daughter in his arms.

“Yeah, seems so,” Quentin said. “Turn it off. I got a headache.”

Dillon flipped the audio switch back to the off position and the howling stopped.

“How are those girls and Bell going to get in here? There are hundreds of them out there,” Quentin said. “We’ll have to call them, warn them that we’re surrounded.”

“I—that’s my ex-wife—Patty Tyson, with Rebecca,” Dillon said. He’d heard from Miles that his wife had been traveling with Miles and the doctor.

Quentin shot Dillon a look.

“You know her?”

“Yeah, we’ve met,” Quentin said. “She’s a ranger up at Emigrant Gap.”

“Yeah,” Dillon said, looking at him carefully. “I wanted to patch it up with her. We have a kid.”

Quentin stood up. He felt dizzy and sat down again.

“Are you okay?” Miles asked. He’d come in the room last and was standing behind Quentin.

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” Quentin said. The room was spinning and he felt drunk. Quentin closed his eyes and opened them again. The spinning stopped.

“I wouldn’t have let them stay if I’d thought they couldn’t get back,” Miles said.

For the second time in his life Quentin Collier realized he had no answers. When Marie had been sick he’d scoured the Internet looking for any kind of cure, or possible cure, for her cancer. He’d discovered that the Internet was populated by horrible, cretinous faith-healers and quacks of the worst kind. That was the first time, late one night, he had to admit he was powerless in a way he’d never been before. God was going to steal something from him that he loved and he could do
nothing
to stop it.

He asked God, why his wife? Why the one person in the world he truly felt at ease with, the one person in the world he couldn’t afford to lose? He’d walked out of the house, the Sierra above him, cold-faced and hard looking in early autumn—the Indian summer gone, with winter waiting to come on. He’d broken into a run until he’d fallen down exhausted and hating God. Everything he’d believed in seemed to be a lie. There was no God, and there was no mercy in life. He’d stood up and swore to himself that he would never pray again, or believe in God again. Marie died two days later while he was down the hallway looking for a nurse. He’d collapsed when Lacy told him, refusing to believe she was dead.

“I don’t know what to do,” Quentin said. He was looking at the scene on the monitor.

“He’s dug an escape tunnel. It comes out about here,” Dillon said. He picked up the printout from Phelps’s Apple laptop. He showed Quentin the spot. “We could go out there and kill them all,” Dillon said, tapping the spot on the map with a pencil. “Why not?”

“Because there are fifty of them, or more. And there’ll be even more soon,” Quentin said. He stood up again. His head felt like it was going to split open.

“Well we have to do something,” Dillon said. “We can’t just let my wife and the girl die.”

“Ex-wife,” Quentin said. “We were seeing each other. Patty and I. You should know that.”

“I’m still in love with her,” Dillon said.

“Yeah? So what,” Quentin said and walked out. His vision was blurry.

Enfilading and Escape

Quentin, if you’re reading these instructions, I’m not there to help you or the people with you, so please read these instructions carefully.

There are two tunnels (West and East tunnels) both run parallel and on either side of the cabin’s driveway. Each of the two tunnels ends at the county road. And each tunnel can be used as escape route, should escape from the cabin be necessary. However, their primary function is to bring enfilading fire on the driveway and for ambushing the enemy from behind, should that become necessary.

The tunnels are each exactly four-feet wide and four-feet high to allow for easy movement of men and weapons. The tunnels are made of reinforced concrete. You will find each tunnel has two rolling platforms that will allow you to pull yourself along the tunnel. Each sled is six feet long and three feet wide. The sleds are designed to carry two men and ammunition. There are two escape hatches/cum ambush platforms along the tunnels: one at the very end of the tunnel and located exactly at the edge of the property—a few yards from the county road, and a second one midway down the driveway and exactly 50 yards from the cabin’s front porch.

The tunnel exits are marked by a red rope. If you want to open the tunnel,
you must first pull the red rope
. This will open a hatch cover, which is camouflaged.

First West Hatch:  The driveway will be exactly twenty feet to your immediate right.
Warning
: in the wintertime, these hatch covers may well be covered with snow, which could block the way as you exit the hatch! There will be a flood light in the tree directly above you and facing the driveway, so an attack at night is possible. These outdoor lights are controlled from the control room.

First East Hatch: Ditto but the driveway will be to your
LEFT
.

Note that I’ve designed the hatch covers so that they will swing away from opening so it is possible to stand in the tunnel and fire from the opening,
providing you protection and escape as the hatch can be closed manually by simply pulling it back into place with the red rope.

Remember: He who dares, wins!

Chuck.

CHAPTER 25

“What do you know about a fortified cabin near Timberline?” the black man asked. He was wearing clean Levi Dockers and a pressed white shirt. He looked very clean, his appearance a total contrast to Bell’s bloody and torn flight suit.

The black man was about forty or so, and had gray in his hair. He had entered the hotel room with an aura of quiet authority. The lieutenant had been standing looking out of the hotel room’s picture window and down on the pool, one story below. The dead had been carted off by the Senator’s troop of bodyguards—twenty or more of them, Bell had guessed. One of the Special-Ops types was standing in the shallow end of the pool in his underwear, using a net to scoop out all the floating debris. It seemed incredible that anyone could care about cleaning a pool under the circumstances, Bell thought, shaking his head.

“I don’t know anything about it. Why have we been locked up like this?” Bell said, turning around.

“You were placed under arrest yesterday. The military police are looking for you,” the black man said. His crisp white shirt made his skin seem that much darker.

“How do you know that?” Bell said, shocked that they knew about his arrest.

“We keep in touch,” the man said. “Tell me about the cabin. Where is it located
exactly
? We believe you know where it is.”

“I don’t know where it is,” Bell said. It was a lie. Rebecca had described to him where the Phelps cabin was
exactly,
telling him it was next to a sign that read
Country Bride Inn and Spa.
The girl had told him, too, that the cabin was marked by a barricaded driveway and directly across the road from the Inn, on the one road leading east from Timberline. Bell had lied instinctively, not sure exactly why, other than he’d decided he didn’t like the Senator, or his men or their assumed authority.

  “I don’t believe you,” the man said. He had an Apple tablet computer and turned it toward Bell. The tablet showed a Google Earth view of Timberline and its environs. “Show me where it is and we’ll let you go. In fact, you can come with us. We need military men like you, under the circumstances.”

“Why do you care so much about that fucking cabin?” Bell said.

“It’s a place my employer is interested in,” the man said.

“
Why
?”

The man didn’t answer, but instead handed Bell the tablet.

“I told you, I’ve no idea where it is! I’ve never been there, and I’m not from around here. I was stationed at the Army’s—”

“We will kill the three girls unless you tell us exactly where this cabin is, all of them,” the man said. His face was placid.

The threat, Bell realized with horror, was a real one. The man had the dead eyes of the soldiers Bell had met before, men who’d been on several combat tours of duty in Afghanistan. They all had the same deadpan, empty-eyed look of professional soul-dead killers.

“What’s going on out there?” Bell said.

“What do you mean?” the man said. The question seemed to strike a nerve.

“I mean, what’s happened to people? You know damn well what I mean,” Bell said.

“We don’t know yet. Could be any number of things. Now, show me where this cabin is on the map.”

“I told you, I don’t have a clue,” Bell said.

“Okay. It’s on you, then.” The man left the room and came back with Patty Tyson. Bell had exchanged only a few words with her. She was dressed in a California State Park Ranger’s uniform. She was handcuffed with white plastic cuffs, her hands behind her back, a black nylon hood placed over her head. The black man was carrying an automatic. He pushed the woman into the center of the room and raised the pistol, aiming it at the back of her head, the barrel a few inches from the hood.

“Please—tell him,” Patty said under the hood. “Please.”

“Okay,” Bell said. “Okay, you win.”

“Good,” the man said. He lowered his pistol.

Bell went to the bed and sat down with the tablet. When he sat down he quickly unzipped the cargo pocket on his calf where he’d put a small pocket knife they’d missed when they’d searched him because it was so small. The man came and stood above him as he found Timberline and the county road heading east away from the town. Bell found the place he thought it might be and stuck a digital pin in it. He thought about attacking the man who was standing nearby, but success seemed a long shot. The small pocketknife was useless, and armed guards were somewhere out in the hallway.

“There. Now will you let us go?”

Instead of answering him, the black man walked out of the room without saying a word.

“Is there a guard outside the door?” Bell asked as soon as he was gone. Patty shook her head yes. He took the hood off her head. Her face was sweaty, her expression terrified.

“They beat Rebecca,” she said. “I told them you knew where it was so they would stop beating her. I told them I didn’t know, and I
don’t
know.”

“How many are outside?”

“Three.”

“Is she okay?”

“Yes, I think so. What do they want with us? Why are they doing this to us? Who are these people?”

“They want the cabin, I think. They must know that it’s bad out there or they wouldn’t care about it,” Bell said.

“You mean the things are everywhere?”

“Yes. Probably. I think so. Or they would have sent a helicopter for the Senator by now, the government.”

“
Jesus
.”

Bell used his pocketknife to cut the plastic handcuffs off of Patty’s wrists.

“They’ll know you have that,” she said, nodding at the knife.

“We have to warn the others. Lacy and her father,” Bell said.

“How?” Patty said.

“We have to kill him,” Bell said, whispering.

She nodded. “How, without the men outside hearing?”

“I don’t know,” Bell said.

“I know I’m going to wake up. I know this is a nightmare,” Patty said.

“Yeah, I keep thinking that, too.” Bell said. He slapped her hard across the face with the back of his hand. She looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “But you see it isn’t, is it?”

Patty touched her stinging check and nodded. “How?” she said. “How do we do it?”

“You had to go to the bathroom. I’ll tell him I cut your handcuffs off. I’ll hand him the pocketknife when I explain what I did. Go in there and close the door. Sit on the toilet like you’re peeing,” Bell said.

She did what he asked.

*   *   *

The freeway out of Nevada City, heading east into the Sierras, was mostly empty. Only a few cars had gotten through from Sacramento, and those that did were driving in the fast lane at over 100 miles an hour, hoping to get away from the chaos behind them.

Price had decided that he would rather travel in the slow lane and be able to turn off the highway, if necessary. A man, at a strangely normal-looking rest stop he’d pulled into, driving in a camper full of people from Southern California, had told him that
tens of thousands
of Howlers were roaming Highway 50 near Sacramento. He told Price very few cars were getting through.

“What about the authorities?” Price had asked the man. Howard had stopped to pee, not being able to hold it any longer, and pulled off the freeway just below Emigrant Gap.

The man, armed with a hunting rifle, was standing guard while his friends filled water bottles from the tap at the rest stop. The man had told Harold an incredible story about what had happened in Los Angeles: how they’d escaped the hordes of Howlers only because he was a gun dealer and was coming back from a gun show in San Diego with all his stock of weapons and ammo when it all started.

“There are no cops now. They’ve all gone home to look after their own families, I guess. The only authorities we saw were some Homeland Security guys and their wives looting a Wal-Mart for ammo and food,” the man said. “They were set up real good; they had one of those high-off-the-ground crowd-control vehicles the cops use. But they didn’t want to help us, that’s for sure. We’ve had no help at all.” The gun dealer was Price’s age, and the strain of the last two days showed on the man’s grizzled unshaven face.

“Do you know what’s happened to people?” the man asked him. He introduced himself as Jon Wein and said he was born in Douglas, Arizona. It was odd, Price thought, that the man had told him where he was born. It was as if the two had crossed paths in the Old West.

“My name is Howard ... Howard Price.”

“Please to meet you, Howard,” Jon said.

“Jon, I don’t know what’s happened for sure, but I think it could be radiation poisoning—from Fukushima.”

“What’s that? Fuka
what
?”

“It’s an atomic power station in Japan,” Howard said.

“Never heard of it,” Jon said.

“Most people haven’t. They had an accident there, at the plant, back when they had the typhoon and tsunami in 2011.”

“Well, something sure as shit happened all right,” Jon said. “You have any kind of weapon, Howard?”

“Letter opener I found at the office.”

The man smiled at him and rubbed his chin. “You got to shoot them in the head, Howard. That’s the best way to kill them fast.”

“I see,” Howard said.

“Do you know how to use a pistol?”

“A little. I was in the Army,” Price said. “But I don’t have one.”

“I’ll give you one. I got lots of them in the mobile home. I can’t just leave you out here with a fucking letter opener,” Jon said and spit. “Jesus, Howard, maybe you’d better come with us.”

“Thank you Jon, but I have a son—you know—up there in Timberline, and a wife. I think I better make sure they’re okay, but thank you.” It felt good to have the fantasy. It made him feel whole again. For a long time he’d felt so alone and sad about everything in the world. The fantasy about a family was something that made him feel better. He’d started telling complete strangers that “his family this, or his family that.” The fantasy was growing, taking on a life of its own, and he didn’t care; he liked it.

“Well, sure, I get that, but let me give you something. A gift, then,” Jon said.

Price looked at the huddled group of people at the water fountain; they were various ages and colors. The group were filling a motley collection of plastic containers from two water fountains in front of the rest stop’s bathrooms. Jon came out from the mobile home and handed him an old-school .38 Special revolver.

“All you have to do, Howard, is pull the trigger when they’re close: say six feet, or so.”  He handed Howard the pistol and a box of ammo. “You want to practice? Maybe once, while I’m watching?” Jon turned around and pointed to a road sign that said
Keep Off The Grass
, maybe 50 feet away. “Can you hit that sign, Howard?”

“I’ll try,” Howard said. He lifted the pistol, aimed at the sign and pulled the trigger. The gun went off and he heard the bullet strike the sign, punching a hole in it.

“Well, there you go then, Howard. Good shooting!”

“Thanks, Jon.” They shook hands warmly as if they were old friends.

“You know what, Howard?” Jon said.

“No, what?”

“I always knew that atomic shit would blow back on us someday,” the old man said. “I was in the Navy back in the day, and saw one of the tests at Bikini Atoll.”

   “‘It’s unreasonable to make such a big deal over the death of a fisherman.’ That’s what Edward Teller said,” Price said.

“The Jap fisherman that died?” Jon said.

“Yeah.” Howard said. “Funny the things you remember reading when you’re a kid. I’m over sixty and I remember things I read when I was ten,” Howard said. 

The older man just looked at him and smiled, thinking that Howard was close to going around the bend, maybe from the stress of it all.

The old gun dealer and his new friends pulled out of the rest area ahead of Howard. The old man said they were going to try and go north to Oregon because they’d seen a rumor, on the internet that was still up, that it was okay up there. Howard wished them all luck. They’d all hugged as if they knew they might all be dead soon, and certainly would never met again.

Before he closed the door to his Prius, Howard looked around the eerie rest area. It was silent. The roof on the restrooms had snow on it that reflected the moonlight. He remembered a Kurosawa film; a bit of it ran in his head in perfect black and white, like these colors, a boy running down a snowy street in a small Japanese town.

“Akira Kurosawa,” Howard said out loud. “
The Bad Sleep Well
. Am I losing my mind? Who will look for us? We have no father or mother, and we are lost in the world.” He yelled, perhaps to break the silence. His voice echoed against the concrete and wood walls of the rest stop and died away in the shadows. The silence returned.

He walked across the parking lot. Miles had emailed him the directions to the cabin. He studied the email carefully. When he was sure he understood the directions, he got into his Prius. He put the revolver on the passenger seat next to him, locked the door and pulled out. The freeway was completely deserted as he gained speed and headed toward the turn off at Emigrant Gap. He tried to find a radio station to get any useful news, but all the government had hijacked all the local stations. All were playing the same loop, telling people “not to panic” and to “remain indoors, until further instructions.” Howard clicked off the radio, turned off the freeway and took the road toward Timberline.

*   *   *

Dillon had sat in the cabin’s control room with Miles and watched the Howlers gathering for the last three hours.

“There are a thousand. Maybe more,” Miles said under his breath.

“More,” Dillon said. They looked at each other.