“No, sir, that is not altogether true. There are three or four people here I’d still like to talk to, but the storm has turned this place to shit. They’ve almost certainly evacuated. I just don’t know. It will take me a while to locate them.”

More chatter from the other side, but then they were finished.

“Yes, sir, I understand. You get yours, I get mine. I won’t let you down.”

A last word from the master.

“Yes, sir. Thank you. I’ll keep you informed.”

Daniel shut the phone and put it away.

“Asshole.”

He returned to the window, and let the rain lash him. Everything was wet now: shirt, pants, shoes, hair, all the way down to his bones. He leaned out, better to see the Square. A fifty-five-gallon oil drum tumbled past the alley’s mouth, end over end, followed by a bicycle, swept along on its side, and then a shattered sheet of plywood flipping and soaring like a playing card tossed out like trash.

Daniel shouted into the wind as loud as he could.

“C’mon and get me, you fuckin’ zombies! Show your true and unnatural colors.”

Daniel threw back his head and howled. He barked like a dog, then howled again before turning back to the room to pack up his gear. Tobey and Cleo were gone.

Tolliver had hidden eight thousand dollars under the mattress, still vacupacked in plastic, which Daniel found when he first searched the room. Probably a gift from the girl. Daniel stashed the money in his bag, checked to make sure Tolliver had no pulse, then went to the little bathroom where he’d left Tolliver’s lady friend after he strangled her, nice and neat in the tub. A little black stream of ants had already found her, not even a day.

Cleo said, “Gotta get going, Daniel. Stop fuckin’ around.”

Tobey said, “Go where, a storm like this? Makes sense to stay.”

Daniel decided Tobey was right. Tobey was the smart one, and usually right, even if Daniel couldn’t always see him.

“Okay, I guess I should wait till the worst is over.”

Tobey said, “Wait.”

Cleo said, “Wait, wait.”

Like echoes fading away.

Daniel returned to the window. He leaned out into the rain again, watching the mouth of the alley in case a zombie rattled past.

“C’mon, goddamnit, lemme see one. One freaky-ass zombie is all I ask.”

If a zombie appeared, Daniel planned to jump out the window after it and rip its putrid, unnatural flesh to pieces with his teeth. He was, after all, a werewolf, which was why he was such a good hunter and killer. Werewolves feared nothing.

Daniel tipped back his head and howled to match the wind, then doused the candles and sat with the bodies, waiting for the storm to pass.