Bean turned his head toward the doorway slowly, his expression blank, and he turned the barrel of the Mossberg as well. “It’s okay, Charlie,” Chris said. He gave the Uzi to Del and then held up his empty hands. “See? Now I’m going to come over there, okay? Just lower the gun.” He started across the room but the shotgun did not lower. If anything it actually raised, so that halfway to the couch Stiles realized that it was trained on his face. “Put the gun down, Charlie.”

“Open your mouth,” the deputy ordered.

Billie called to him, “Charlie, please . . .”

He racked the pump on his gun. “Open your fuckin’ mouth!”

Stiles yawned for him. “See? No fangs.” He nodded to the others and they did likewise. “Now, satisfied?”

For the first time since they’d arrived, Bean blinked. The hands holding the shotgun began to shake, violently, and he stared at them as if they belonged to someone else. Stiles took the weapon from him. “Oh, Jesus,” he muttered, cradling his head in his hands, “Oh, Jesus, what if Susie’d been home . . . what if she’d been home . . .”

Billie dug a blanket from the closet and put it around his shoulders, while Bart and Del made a fresh pot of coffee. She found a bottle of tranquilizers in the bathroom medicine cabinet. It took three of them before Charlie would finally calm down.

Stiles was standing at the shattered window, looking out into the night, when Billie came up behind him, put her arms around him, and hugged herself to his back. But he barely acknowledged her presence. His attention was focused on the dark, deserted street below. “How many do you think are out there?” she asked.

“You don’t want to know,” he said somberly. He motioned to the street. “Look at it. This place is already gone, or most of it at least. It isn’t even a town anymore. It’s a battlefield.” He was looking away from her when he said that, so she did not see the flicker of a grin drift across his bruised and bloody features. “A battlefield,” he repeated to himself in a bare whisper, and the grin became an unsettling smile. “I’ve come home.”

14

Chapter Fourteen

Billie awoke with a jolt. The nightmare had been so vivid that she was still wiping at her neck where Larson’s tongue had fouled her. But the sight of sunlight spilling through the window across the room was a relief. It eased the tension from her shoulders. Just an awful dream after all, she thought, lying back and closing her eyes. Just an ugly dream.

“Mom? Are you okay?”

Bart was standing at the foot of the couch, looking down at her in concern. “You yelled just now,” he said. “Are you all right?”