Serena falls to the ground, landing on her butt. Carrie tosses away the shotgun. There’s no way she can fire it with her damaged leg. She still has Carl’s pistol and aims it at Serena. For a second, it looks as if Serena is about to cry.

The ground rumbles under them. Carrie resists the urge to help Serena up.

It would do no good. The shadows burst from the ground and embrace her, blood and bone appearing wherever they touch, before they drag her back into the earth.

Because, in the end, that’s all the Followers are. They’re dead bodies, waiting to be buried.

Another shadowy arm reaches up, blindly grabbing for her and her mother. Carrie backpedals furiously, pulling her mom with her. She’s got the gun, but she knows it will do no good.

Danny appears suddenly, and yanks Carrie and her mom away from the grasping hands of the Shadowman. It claws at the ground, then vanishes, off in search of easier prey.

“Are you all right?” he shouts above the chaos.

What a stupid question. “No,” she shouts back.

There are too many people on the hill. This is the home ground of the Shadowmen and of Colchester. They are all going to be Happy Meals for The End if they don’t get out of here.

Carrie sees the buses in the parking lot, down at the base of the hill. She points. “We need to get everyone back on the buses.” She remembers (of course) what Alana told her once about the creatures of darkness. Cold iron. Hopefully there’s enough steel in those ancient diesel beasts to qualify.

“No. The EMP,” Danny says.

“What?”

“The blast will have shut down the ignition of the buses. They won’t start.”

She is so frustrated with him she could scream. So she does: “Well, fix them, genius! It’s what you do, right?”

He looks a little sheepish — Oh, right, duh.

“I’ll get everyone there. Take my mom. Go!”

Danny doesn’t need any more instruction. He grabs her mom by the arm and heads for the buses, jumping and dodging both people and the things coming from the ground to eat them.

Carrie fires her pistol in the air, and shouts, “Everyone down the hill! Get into the buses! Move!”

Danny runs down the hill, with a stampede of classmates and their kids behind him. He leaps into the driver’s seat of the first bus. People pile into the seats behind him, screaming at him to drive.

He cranks the key in the ignition. Nothing. Just like in a horror movie, the car won’t start.

But he knows why. It’s got nothing to do with magic. After an EMP, most engines will not start because they are in latch-up, when the voltage path is blocked after the source of the short is removed —