A Shadowman, newly dug out of the ground, with fresh blood on its hands and mouth, slams against the frame of the bus. It recoils as if burned, but it reaches in through the open door at Danny.

Right. Not the time for theory. Time for solutions.

He reaches under the dash and finds the hood release. Then he opens the driver’s side window and crawls out.

All he’s got to do is remove and reattach the leads to the battery. That should establish the circuit again. The buses are old and primitive enough that they don’t have chip-controlled fuel injection. This ought to work.

He leaps onto the front fender and hauls the hood open. He gets the first terminal open with his fingers, it’s so old and loose. The other one is crusted over with battery acid and doesn’t want to give. He cuts his skin open.

The blood must be what draws the Shadowman, because it flies up and knocks him off the bus.

He hits the ground hard, sending the air out of his lungs.

The Shadowman slashes at him, snaps with its teeth. Pushing back at it is like trying to bench-press a cloud of mist. He’s not going to last long.

Then something cuts a blazing arc through the air. Something slices the Shadowman in half and it screams before it slides away, dissolving back into the ground.

Grace, Alana’s daughter, looks down at him. “You okay?”

He nods.

“You’re fixing the buses? Get back to work. I’ll keep them away from you.”

He gets up. She looks at him strangely. “What?” she says.

She must think he’s crazy, because he’s smiling.

“Nothing. I’m on it.” And he rushes back to the first bus.

But if they live through this, he’ll have to tell Alana how much Grace looks like her when she’s slaying demons.

Carrie shoves people into the buses as fast as she can. Danny is doing something under the hood of the first bus in line. Shadowmen are pulling themselves from the dirt. They’ll be able to move freely soon.

But Danny does whatever he said he was going to do, and the bus up front roars to life. Its headlights fire up at the same time. She hears the hiss of a Shadowman as it’s hit by the beams and it burns.

God, they might actually make it out of here alive.

Then she sees Buzz, heading off toward the woods. Running away.

Oh no. He does not get to walk away from this.

She grabs her gun and limps after him

34

Any One of a Thousand Different Men

Alana will never forgive herself for tonight. But she will live with it. There’s a difference.

In a perfect world, she would have protected her daughter, rather than throwing her into the fray. She wanted to keep Grace far, far away from here.