Sam got his hands and knees under him, and got to his feet. He stepped back from the car, and in the faint light he could see what had happened.

He had run over a small pine tree—one that was just big enough to stop the car and force it upward at the front end. The tree itself, two inches thick across the trunk, had bent under the vehicle’s weight—but hadn’t broken. The car was just hanging there now, angled upward, while the tree strained beneath it like an archer’s bow under tension. Sam took a step back from it; there was no telling how much longer the tree would hold.

The far-off screams grabbed his attention again; he turned toward them. A hundred feet away, in the gap between the two houses, half a dozen silhouettes were visible. And coming toward him.

Sam turned fast and considered his options. He was in the center of a long, dark channel formed by the row of back yards. That channel ran parallel to the street he had been following earlier—the way to Lauren Coleman’s house.

Sam ducked around the crashed Escort and sprinted away into the darkness.

Sixty seconds later he sat crouched beside the front corner of a house. Straight ahead of him, across the street, stood the Coleman place. He scanned the street in both directions and listened.

Nothing there.

Four houses away, he could hear the afflicted—a whole cluster of them in the back yard where he’d left the car. For now, at least, that commotion had drawn them all together like a magnet.

He watched the street for another ten seconds, then broke from cover and ran.

The key was where Dani had left it—inside the fake rock next to the porch. Sam scooped it up mid-stride, popped it open, shoved the key into the lock. He turned in place and scanned the night around him, watching for any movement in the smoke.

Still clear.

He unlocked the door and slipped inside.

Hot, stale air—but at the moment it seemed as fresh as a spring breeze. He closed and locked the door, then stood there sucking in lungful after lungful of the air, clearing the acrid taste of the smoke from his throat.

He moved through the entryway into the dark space of the living room, and lay down on his back on the carpet. He got his breathing under control. Long, slow breaths instead of frantic ones.

You’re safe. Relax. Lie here for an hour if you want to.

He wanted to.

He shut his eyes and listened to the distant screams outside, the sounds dampened by the walls of the house. Compared to what it had sounded like out there, this was close to a lullaby.

His breathing slowed almost to normal.