Billie leaned her head against the window and kept telling herself that it was all a dream, that it wasn’t real, that Rod Serling would step out in a minute to explain the plot before station identification. Even the town was different; she watched it whirl by and somehow knew this was not her home. It looked like it, right down to the smallest detail, but it didn’t feel like it. That’s what gave it away. It had no life. It was a facsimile, a facade from a Holly­wood back lot that looked completely real from the front but concealed two-by-four bracing and rigging lines and technicians doing sound checks.

There were people up ahead, milling about on the sidewalk, both children and adults. The headlights flashed across them and for an instant each had cats’ eyes, reflecting red and silver, and then they were all running like Halloween pranksters and the van was suddenly past them and turning onto the main street.

She closed her eyes so tight that dark purple spots danced before them. Just a dream. Just a dream.

“There’s Charlie’s place, Mr. Stiles,” Bart pointed as they wheeled around the corner. “The apartment above where the pizza shop used to be. See his squad car?” Stiles’s reply was to steer the van right for it, barely wasting time to brake. The tires screeched and the rear end swung around in the middle of the street, and Stiles was out almost before it had come to a full stop. “Which way in?” he called back, cocking the Uzi pistol he now carried.

Bart pointed to the doorway between the two shops, but his shouted directions were drowned out by a sudden explosion of glass.

A uniformed body hurtled backward through the upstairs window and arched toward the ground as if in slow motion, twisting and turning amid a rain of sparkling shards. The flight ended abruptly as he landed head first atop the police car parked below. The impact crumpled the roof like a tin can and popped the windshield out of its frame and shattered the red flashers. It even coaxed a dying mewl from the loudspeaker. And inter­mingled with that cacophony was the unmistakable sound of breaking bone. The body flopped limply to the side, end over end like a rag doll, and came to rest across the engine hood.

Stiles went slowly forward, wincing from the pain of each step. “Charlie?” he whispered, reaching out to the motionless form.

Dutch Larson sat up and smiled toothily. “Fix that desk yet?” the vampire said before it launched itself at the startled soldier.