Sergeant Fred Larson, one of her dad’s most trusted officers, came up beside her. “It’s all right,” he said. “We’ll take it from here.”

Something about this bothered her, but she didn’t know what it was.

Still. It was over now. She raised the gun in the air. Larson reached out and gingerly took it from her.

She kept looking at Wade. He didn’t seem at all worried.

Carrie realized what was missing: she never heard any sirens. Would her father have pulled up to the gym without lights and sirens?

She turned and faced Larson, and suddenly realized why it was all wrong.

Larson was the only cop in the gym. There were two dozen other people with him, all armed, but all of them ordinary citizens from Middleton. Doug Hatcher and his wife Ellie, who ran the Hallmark store at the mall. There was Tom Wheeler, the real estate agent whose face was on every bus bench in town (“We’ll Make You a Wheeler Dealer!”). Ron Johnson, the vice-principal. People she’d seen at the grocery store. People she’d seen in the background every day of her entire life.

They looked at the death all around, and they didn’t look at all concerned. They were calm. They were happy.

They were the Followers.

Larson grabbed Carrie and threw her to the floor as she started to run.

He aimed his own gun at her.

“Stretch out thine hand toward Heaven,” he said, loudly.

“That there may be Darkness over the land,” the others chanted back.

Well, shit, Carrie thought.

“I’m sorry,” Larson said. “We have to make sure this works. It’s for the greater good, Carrie. I never wanted you to get hurt.”

That was too much for Carrie. “Oh, spare me.”

“I wish I could,” he said.

Danny rounded the corner of the high school, then stopped in his tracks. He saw something coming in the sky.

For a moment, his brain — his finely tuned computer mind — simply refused to accept the input from his eyes.

A dragon made of pure shadow was flying down toward Middleton.

He was surprised to find he felt annoyed. He’d put up with a lot of bullshit so far. The thing in the air flapped its wings, obeying no laws of aerodynamics or physics that he knew. Really, he wanted to ignore it completely. This was not his area, after all.

And yet, he was the only one standing here.

The dragon was moving inexorably toward the school. It would be here any moment.

He took a deep breath. Fine. So it was impossible? Didn’t matter. He’d deal with it.

He ran to the side of the school and began climbing the fire escape. From the top step, he scrambled onto the roof of the gymnasium.

The dragon was almost upon him. He looked up into its red eyes, saw its oily black skin.