She shrugged off the thought and continued to watch the boys. She was proud of them. They’d grown up quicker than she’d ever realized, and most, she suspected, in the last few nights. Still, somewhere inside her, she almost wished they would act their ages and behave like the little boys they were; frightened, wanting, no, demanding that they all run away and get as far from this place as possible. It was less a maternal need for dependency than a desire to allay her own guilt for having those same feelings. But they didn’t complain. They knew. Without Chris having to explain it as he had to her, they knew that they had to stay, every one of them, and they accepted it. They understood the horrors around them so much more clearly than anyone else. Such was the grace of childhood, she thought. The innocence to believe in the unbelievable without qualification or argument and to go on from there while she and Charlie struggled with their rationalizations and logic. Maybe they could learn a few things from the boys.

The monster magazines crossed her mind. It worked for them, she thought, and she was sorely tempted to go back to the house and dig them from the trash can and get to know her enemy better. She could just see herself, a student pouring over her Fangoria Cliffs Notes, sharpening a stake for her homework . . .

Don’t laugh. It’s not that implausible. Nothing is anymore.

The bed creaked in the room down the hall, and she heard the ratchety sound of a rotary phone dial turning. Then a receiver slammed down angrily, enough to sound the phone’s bell, and Bean came stalking into the living room, wearing only his jeans and his gunbelt, carrying the ever-present Mossberg. He went straight for the phone but Bart saved him the trouble. “They’re all dead, Charlie, all over town. Chris said he was going to cut the lines.”

He gaped at them. “What! What the hell’d he do that for? Where is he, I want to talk to him.”

“He’s gone,” Billie said. “But he’ll be back in a little while.”

Bean’s anger couldn’t mask the concern beneath. “But how am I gonna call Susie?” He snapped his fingers. “My car radio . . .”

“He took that too. Just settle down, Charlie. He knows what he’s doing,”

“But what about Susie, goddammit! I’ve got to tell her not to come back here.”

Billie sat the big man down on the couch. “What do you tell her, Charlie? That there are vampires here?”

“Are you kidding? I’ll have to make up something better than that.”