He pulls into the Petromo Truck Stop in Springfield, Missouri and after a man-size meal he hitches himself up into the cab of his eighteen wheeler for a few hours of well earned sleep when he hears the knock.

He takes her hand and lifts the light lot lizard up into the cab. Actually, just what he'd been hoping for happened faster than he expected.

Minutes later his ecstasy crescendos as his upward thrusts become harder and more rapid and the girl makes sounds just below his ear...thick muffled sounds...sticky, wet sounds... and then -

Bill Kettler slips silently into oblivion.

The girl, he thinks, opening his eyes. Squinting from the searing glow outside, he looks down at the digital clock on the dash. It reads four-forty a.m. Groping for his pants his hand falls on his open wallet.

His money is gone. So are his credit cards. His tape deck.

He throws open the door on the driver's side and eases himself down cautiously, but the blacktop below flies up to meet him. Truck engines thunder all around him, like giant cats and the air is thick with diesel exhaust; a truck parked beside his holds a full trailer of cattle, their warm breath showing through the circular holes in the trailer. In the next row, in front of him a jet black Peterbilt fires up its headlamps and the beams cut into Bills watery eyes as he tries to shield himself from the glare. His sits up weakly, his chest heaving.

A slender figure stops in front of one of the headlights, hunched to light a cigarette.

Painfully, Bill scrambles to his feet, trying to ignore the dizziness that sends the lot spinning in all directions beneath him and stumbles towards the girl. Suddenly a meaty hand grabs Bill and slams him against his truck.

The black Peterbilt shifts into gear and slowly it leaves the lot. Painted in solid black lettering on the humming white refrigeration unit are the letters, CARSEY BROS. TRUCKING.

A red-haired freckle-faced boy wearing a powder blue shirt and red pants finds Bill and helps him back into his truck. Bill realizes his chest is matted with blood and he discovers the bite marks. He tries to drink water but his throat closes and he nearly gags. He rolls down the window and inhales deeply.

Bill hangs his head limply from the truck. He is conscious of a dull beating sound, a rhythmic sound, almost like a heart beating. Slowly he turns his head towards the trailer parked alongside him, the livestock trailer . . . .

Larry hears an engine slow and looks up to see a blue Kenworth pull off the freeway - just the stubby, sawed-off looking tractor.

The driver gets out, leaving the engine idling and heads towards him.

Larry flinches as the man steps into the light - his skin is the color of dry bone and his eyes are so deep in their sockets they are hidden by a circle of blackness.

"I lost my buddy a ways back and I was wondering if he'd been through here."

The man faces Larry, takes a step toward him . . . another step . . . still another, until the light peels away the darkness hiding his eyes and Larry sees him. His own eyes widen, even watering a little as he stares into those pits.

"A black Peterbuilt? Extended hood? A white trailer that says Carsey Brothers Trucking on the side?"

Larry's throat is suddenly dry and scratchy and he stops to swallow. "Yeah . . um . . yeah. As a matter of fact he did come through here, about an hour ago. Headed towards Sierra Pan with a load of … um caskets. Funny thing . . at Christmas . . ."

Ahead to the right, fenced off from the traffic by the blood red flicker of flares a shapeless mangle of steel and shattered glass that had once been two cars lies crumpled on the pavement. The red and blue lights of police cars throb and spin in front of and beyond the mess.

In the passenger seat alongside Jenny Mrs. Grace Tipton shifts her weight from one cheek to the other as she adjusts the blanket over her legs.

Jenny's 5 year old daughter Shawna stirs under the pile of coats in the back seat. "What's goin on Mama?"

"Just another wreck darling. No need to stare at it."

Glancing in her rear view mirror Jenny watches as her daughter's pretty young face slides out from under the blankets, the bald patches where the hair had not yet grown back from the effects of the chemotherapy more obvious because of her mussed up hair. She feels her eyes well up with tears and she quickly glances out the driver side window, to avoid meeting her daughter eyes, even in the mirror.

FAMILY RESTAURANT - HOME COOKING

VIDEO ARCADE - TRAVEL STORE

GAS - DIESEL

FULL SERVICE - TRUCK & AUTO

"Okay, that's where we're going!"

Shawna sits up to check out exactly where her mother is taking them.

A tan Bronco roars past them on the left and pulls up short in front of them. Alarmed, as the Bronco taillights glare, her over protective mother touches the brakes just a little too hard for the treacherous road conditions. The wagon fishtails as the tan monster's rear lights extinguish and the vehicle pulls away.

Shawna lifts her delicate, slender hands up to her face and screams as the wagon spins over the freeway and a heavy suitcase slams into the back of Mrs. Grace Tipton's soft gray and pink head, sending her frameless eyeglasses exploding into the windshield.

Above the din of twangy country music blaring from the loudspeakers mounted in the ceiling and over one hundred urgent conversations to live humans and plastic cellphones, the entire restaurant hears Ms A.J. Kettler's scream and all heads turn as her ass hits the wet floor and she comes sliding out of the kitchen with her legs spread wide before her. Broken plates, meatballs and spaghetti, liver and onions surround her as she looks up into the demeaning eyes of Ms. Dina Bonnick, the widely despised, petite, silver gray, fiftyish assistant manager.

"They'll have to be deducted from your paycheck, you know."

Kevin Bissete, one of the busboys, stands frozen next to a pile of trays, staring hungrily at A.J. as she gets to her feet.

A short, bearded trucker writing in his log book at the coffee counter lifts his head slowly, frowning at Byron as if the janitor had just cut a raucous fart. Byron stops mopping for a moment, cocks a brow at the man, smiles and, ever so quietly sings as he mops: "Swing low sweet chaaari-ah-hot, comin' for t' carry me hooome . . . ."

Byron steps around them and is just about to ask what is wrong, but stops just short of stepping into a large puddle of blood on the tile floor.

The man has a rip in his nose that actually opens and shuts as he breathes, splattering blood all over the place. " A fight," he rasps, " . . . flashlight . ."

"Hol-lee shee-yit!" he says to a shorter, fatter man at his heels. "Get out there and make Godamned sure none of 'em come in here. This'll drive them outta their fuckin' minds."

The background of trucker's messages is suddenly interrupted by the telephone ringing.

Jon explains almost apologetically that he heard his Dad on the trucker's radio a few minutes back and that he's in the area. He hasn't called for over three weeks. He sounds somehow different. Jon hands the phone to Cece and returns to the window to watch the truck stop where his mother works. He raises a pair of binoculars to his eyes.

As Bill turns his tractor into the off-ramp he runs some Chap stick over his dry, cracked mouth. His pallor is even grayer than it was in the weigh station and his cheeks have sunken even further into his cheekbones.

Doug, A.J.'s new boyfriend is engrossed in the weather channel.

'Doug . . .Doug?" Jon's soft voice gets his attention. "I'm going to take a walk down to the truck stop 'cause Mom will need some help getting home."

"I wanna come too." We hear his sister Cece's voice in the background.

Doug eases himself out of the recliner and drains his last drop of beer. "OK, OK, maybe we should all go. She's gonna need some help getting up here, that's for sure."

"I told you, we'll get there as soon as we can - oh don't start with me Janice. The only reason for that is you live there. I'm a few hundred miles away and we've - because I can't afford to fly, that's why."

Jenny puts her hand over the mouthpiece and asks Grace to take Shawna to the drugstore to get some Paracetomol. Grace reluctantly gets the message, as does Shawna.

Jon, his coat pulled up around his face as comes out from between a row of trucks freezes and stares up in disbelief at his fathers Kenworth looming up in front of him. There is movement in the cab. A soft light comes on behind the seats in the sleeper area.

Moving cautiously, Jon crosses to the truck, eyes locked on the driver's window. He stands beside the truck and listens. Grabbing the handle beside the door, Jon steps up on the running board and peers cautiously through the window.

It is there: the green rubber triceratops Dad had bought him on their trip.

"Dad," Jon whispers through a smile, opening the door and repeating it louder: "Dad! Hey Dad!"

There is a cough from the sleeper, a wet sputtering sound and a shuffle of sudden movement. "Who's - what the hell's -" Someone stumbles down between the seats and turns.

A man.

His hair is mussed and spiky. His long face, white. And a dark thick liquid is smeared around his mouth and dribbles down from his chin. This is not my father. But it is.

Jon falls back out of the cab, screaming . . .

As Kevin Bisette, busboy, passes the counter carrying a load of dirty utensils, the cook, Arnie Hamilton, leans out and calls, "Hey Kevin, we're almost out of cheese. Go down and get some, huh?"

Passing through the kitchen Kevin grabs a bunch of keys from a hook on the wall. He heads down the steep stairs to the basement and across to the freezers broad steel door. Inside the air is almost as cold as outside.

His feet crunch on the damp concrete floor as he reaches under his smock, unfastens his breast pocket and removes a joint. He climbs on a couple of crates and opens up a rectangular window about 2 feet by 3.

After the second hit Kevin begins to feel the effect of the grass - a little relaxed, a little horny - but decides he has time for one last hit. He inhales a third time and lifts his face to the window to allow the smoke to waft outside and - a small, white face smiles at him from outside and says, "Mmmm, smells good."

Kevin falls back off the crates and lands on the concrete floor with an explosive grunt. He scrambles to his feet coughing and spins around as two legs slide through the open window.

She is kind of cute - no, erotic. She slips off her jacket and tosses it on a crate behind her: "What do you want?" she asks Kevin. On her sweatshirt red letters, stretched taught over surprisingly large breasts read: EASY BUT NOT CHEAP.

"You wait here and I get to spend my break with you."

"Okay. Yeah." She brushes her fingertips lightly over his throat, just below his jaw, "You take your break real soon, now."

Slowly the terror drains from Jon's eyes and his father hunkers down beside him, overwhelmed with affection. He clutches Jon's shoulders and lifts the boy into his arms, holding him close, squeezing him so tightly that Jon grunts as he returns his fathers hug.

"Come on up, Jon. We've got a lot to talk about.

Jenny watches as the young teenage girl talks to Ms. Dina Bonnick. To Jenny's surprise Ms. Dina Bonnick courteously agrees to seat the two unwashed men and the teenage girl thanks her and leaves the restaurant!

"So your mom's inside, huh?" Bill asks, looking towards the restaurant.

"Yeah, she's still working."

"Cece, too?"

"No, she's waiting in the car with Doug." As the words come out of Jon's mouth he bites his lip. Dad doesn't know about Doug.

"Doug?" Bill looks deeply into his son's eyes. "Um. May you better tell me about Doug. Does he live with you?"

Jon bows his head as if he has betrayed his dad.

"It's OK Jon, don't feel bad about it. Is he a good man? Does he treat you well?"

Jon Shrugs. "I don't know, things just aren't . . . the same."

Looking into his Dad's shadowed face, Jon asks, Dad, can I come live with you? I could go on the road with you . . I've only got a year of school left And I could take a correspondence course."

"No, no Jon. You've got to stay with your Mom. She's really going to be needing you after Grandma dies. And just in case this Doug isn't a good guy after all, she needs someone to keep an eye on her."

"Why the hell did you just have to disappear like that? Did you think that just because she wanted to leave you that I did too? You couldn't write? You couldn't call once in a while? Other people are divorced, some of my friends parent are divorced, but they keep in touch with their parents. They call, they visit. But you, you just . . . disappear, like a fucking criminal, like the police are after you or something. And you look so bad, so sick, like there's something wrong with you, but you won't tell me anything, like where you've been, or where you're going or if I'm ever going to see you again, and ... and ... I ... "

Jon's next few words stick in his throat for a moment, clogging with the hot tears burning there and clogging up his eyes. He fumbles with the door handle to get out but it's locked and as he gropes around to unlock it he blurts out, "I hate you . . I hate you for leaving me and just taking off like that .... "

Bill's hand closes on his son's wrists. Looking down at his father's icy grip Jon sees the veins, so dark on those white boney hands. "What's wrong, Dad?"

Trapped in the moment with his son, Bill, speaking slowly and monotonously, begins to tell Jon exactly what happened to him. The snow falls heavily outside.

Unable to contain her curiosity, and against her better judgement, A.J. asks, "Ms. Bonnick, um, how come you seated those two guys out of order?"

"Out of order? What guys?"

"Those guys." A.J. indicates the two unwashed guys with her head.

"That family? They looked awful and I figured -"

"No, no. The table next to them."

"I didn't seat those guys."

"Yes you did. I just stood there and watched you. I was amazed. They came in with some girl, a teenager, and she said something to you and you seated them. And here we've got all these people waiting . . "

"What girl?" Ms Bonnick faces A.J. She looks genuinely confused. " I didn't talk to no teenage girl."

Remembering her position in the restaurant, Ms Bonnick pulls herself up to her full height and dismisses A.J. "Now you stop worrying yourself about things that don't concern you and get those orders out. Already it looks like your working late."

"Dad, dad, ... you've just gotta see a doctor. There's just gotta be a hospital here, somewhere close. Right?"

"A doctor can't help me, Jon. Do you know what they'd do if they found out if they found out what I am?"

"Dad, you don't know that, Dad . . "

"Jon, look at me," Bill says, turning his son's face to look directly into his. Jon tries to pull away but his Dad's icy grip is strong.

Jon looks at his Dad. Watches him as he slowly opens his mouth, wider and wider. Something moves in Dad's mouth, two somethings, lowering in his mouth, extending downwards. Two teeth. Incisors. Growing as his mouth opens. Sliding from his gums like snake's fangs. The two needle points glisten with saliva.

David thinks he sees some movement between the nearby trucks. There just has to be a few lizards in the lot tonight and some company wouldn't go amiss right now. Yes, there she is: a pretty young thing with a good walk and just built for comfort. She has her blond hair piled up high on her head and her short, tight dress exposes enough of her white, lanky. Davis adjusts the lay of his growing dick inside his pants. With just a short leather jacket edged with fake fur, open to show her curves, David wonders how she could keep warm on a night like this.

"You've got to go back inside, Jon", his father calls down from the cab.

"Come with me."

Bill swings down from the cab, turns and closes the door behind him. Bill is completely relaxed in the freezing temperature and puts his arm around his bundled up son, to comfort him more than to warm him. "I can't" he whispers, "You know that." Their feet crunch through the snow as they walk. "Remember the girl I told you about? The one who bit me? And the man who drove the truck? The Carsey Brothers? Well they're here. Tonight. In fact there are two trucks. That's why I'm here. To find them."

Something changes in Jon's face; his eyes narrow and he tucks his lower lip between his teeth slightly. "I was listening on the CB for your moniker before we came down and watching the lot through the binoculars - I saw the a Carsey Bros Truck, a white truck, just before I saw you pull in. And I saw a girl, she had long blond hair and she was dressed real sexy. . .

Bill clutches his son's shoulders. "You listen to me boy. See my face? See my skin? While you're here you don't go anywhere near anyone who looks like me, man or woman. You steer clear steer clear of anyone who looks sick or even a little suspicious, you hear me?" Bill squeezes his son's shoulders, shaking him a little.

Jon's eyes widen, fearfully as he nods.

"And don't go of by yourself. Stay with your mother and get Cece and .... what's his name, your mother's boyfriend?"

"Doug."

"Yeah. You get them inside and stay with them. Keep an eye on your sister. And get them all home as soon as you can. You hear?"

"I'm not gonna see you again?"

Bill wraps his arms around his son. "I'll be here. I'll be watching you. I won't be far away. Yeah.... you'll see me again." He slaps Jon's back. "Now get your sister inside there and stay with them until your Mom comes off shift."

After a few steps Jon turns back.

"Go on. And get some dinner inside of you. Food's good here, remember."

Bill steadies himself by holding onto a truck as he watches his son disappear between the rows of trailers. Then silently and swiftly, keeping to the shadows, without so much as a breath or a blink to betray his presence he moves through the shadows, like blood through an artery, until he is standing just a couple of feet from a restaurant window.

And there they are. Bill's daughter Cece and the new boyfriend, Doug, trailing behind A.J. as she leads them through the packed restaurant to a table. But no Jon. Bill's eyes follow A.J. as she weaves through the crowd, her loaded tray expertly carried at shoulder height. A.J. lowers her tray onto the table as Doug and Cece slide into their booth - right next to where two, fat ugly men say eating sloppily, chewing with their mouths open, food clinging to their lips.

The Carsey Brothers ...

"Linda, I'm gonna be outside for just a second in case somebody wants me, okay?"

She nods and Byron passes the banks of payphones, leaning his mop against the wall and goes outside, shivering as he steps into the cold snowy night. Lee Russell, a pot bellied fellow with a bulbous nose that gives away all the drinking he does on his off days, is making change for a customer who has just filled up.

"Hey Lee, where's David?" Byron calls.

"Dunno, he took an early break, can you believe that? Again!" To the customer, an older man in an overcoat and fedora: " You have a good night now. But if I was you I'd sit it out for a while."

The man shakes his head, jingling his car keys; he looks grumpy. "No I'm going to turn around and head back. Just wasting time here."

Lee shrugs and says "Suit yourself." Then to Byron again: "He went out towards the shop, I think." Holding his elbows close to his sides, extending his forearms and doubling both fists, Lee thrusts his pelvis forward and says, "Know what I mean?"

Byron nods. He knows exactly where to find David. Going through the shop, Byron passes Buddy Pritchard, one of the mechanics, hunching under the hood of a Mack. "David come through here?" he asks.

"Yup, in the back. But I don't think he wants anymore company," the mechanic chuckles, never turning away from his work.

Without pausing, Byron goes to a door in a dark narrow corridor in back, slips a key in and opens it without knocking.

"David?" he says, stepping inside. "We got a cop out fruh - "

David is sitting on the sofa, head leaning back and arms limp at his sides. His pants are around his ankles and the girl he'd seen through the window earlier is kneeling between David's legs, slurping.

But something is wrong.

David is panting. His chest is heaving up and down in rapid piston-like rhythm and his mouth and eyes are wide open. Too wide. And the girl, who doesn't react to Byron's presence for a moment, holds David's cock in her fist, pounding frantically, holding it to the side so it's out of the way of her face, which is buried between David's thigh and groin. Her head moves up and down, back and forth, and the noise she makes .... such a loud, thick noise, is like a calf sucking its mother's tit.

Feeling bad now, and regretting the intrusion, Byron repeats, "David, there's a cop out - "

The girl spins around, dark hair flying about her face with the sudden movement.

Something dribbles from her mouth. Something dark.

It is on David's leg too, smeared there like jam on toast.

David keeps panting, panting.

Byron says quietly, "What thee fuck - "

The girl dives. She shoots across the room like an attacking dog, bloody hands outstretched, mouth yawning open and eyes narrowed to black cuts. And something else, she has fangs. She hisses like a wild cat as her hands strike Byron's chest, slamming him against the greasy metal bookshelf, full of grimy manuals and old telephone books, his lungs emptying under the force of the blow.

She can't be fucking doing this! She lifts Byron off the floor, the whole two hundred and sixty pounds of him, and throws him across the room, slamming him into the sofa and driving it up against the wall. He gets up instantly, rising to his knees and turning towards the door, but -

- the girl is gone.

"Jesus Gawd Jesus Gawd I'm bleeding, I'm bleeding Jesus Gawd ..."

"She bit me Byron, she bit me!"

"I'm really sorry, but you're gonna be cut off from the hospital for a long time now because of the chemical spill and I gotta get over there right now, so you'll have to do the best you can until I can get someone over here or come back for you miself."

Cody winds up his apology quickly and backs out of the office and collides with Buddy Pritchard, who stumbles into the office looking haggard and a little ill.

"Oh, um yeah," Buddy said, running a hand through his wet, snowy hair, "Byron said you'd be here. There's a guy there, David, a guy from the gas island. He's um bleeding. Really bad. I don't know what's happened but there's, um, blood. A lotta blood. I think he's pretty hurt."

"Where the hell have you been?" A.J., appearing from nowhere, hisses into Jon's ear as she holds a tray of hamburgers and french fries above her head. "Get over there and join Doug and Cece - your food's getting cold."

Jon scoots in beside Cece, immediately picking up his hamburger and stuffing it into his mouth to avoid having to answer any questions until he's had a few more moments to think about it. As he sinks his teeth into it his eyes wander to an empty space, just to the side of Doug's head and freeze. Doug looks back over his shoulder, sees nothing unusual, nothing to warrant the troubled look in Jon's eyes.

"Jon, what are you staring at?"

"Staring? Nothing. Nothing. I'm not staring." Jon's response is quick and breathy, trembling with guilt.

Doug is about to pursue the question when a timid female voice comes over the P.A. system: "Your attention please? Your attention? We're sorry for the interruption, but ... if there are any doctors or nurses dining in the restaurant, could you please come to the register? We have two injured men who are in need of attention. A.J., would you please bring the first aid kit to the register?"

Immediately Jon hears his mother's name mentioned he gets up from his seat. "Where are you going?" Doug asks.

"I'm going with Mom."

"But you're not a doctor ..." replies Doug.

But Jon leaves.

"He's so gross," Cece sneers. "He gets off on seeing people bleed."

"Well Cece," Doug says, "I guess it's just us." He starts twirling his fork in his spaghetti, but his fingers slow down a bit and he cocks his head to the side when he hears an urgent hissing sound from the booth beside him.

" - wahtta you think? What would happen then, huh?"

"It coulda been anything! A heart attack, a-a-a, I don't know, a kid with a bloody nose!"

"I don't care what it coulda been. Get off your ass and check it out."

A utensil clatters noisily against a plate. "How come I gotta do all this shit? I'm haulin' the fuckin' queen."

"Whatsat give you, seniority? You think that's some kind of privilege? You're haulin that fuckin thing because I don't wanna get near it. Now get out there, Goddammit!" Keys jangle noisily. "An' here. Take these and get my cigars outta my truck."

Doug feels the back of his seat shift as the man gets up.

"Good God!" the doctor snaps. "This man's lost a lot of blood!"

"Yeah, that's obvious," Deputy Cody murmurs.

"No," Dr Kane says, "more. I mean more blood than there is here. Was he stabbed? Did you bring him here? Was he - "

"Somebody bit him," the black man says.

"Bit him? You're kidding?" To the man on the sofa, the doctor says, "Sir, I'm a doctor. Could you tell me what happened? Sir?"

The man groans.

"Some kinda bullshit," a gravelly voice mumbles as a short fat man walks into view, kicking slush with his boots.

He walks between the black trucks and stops, facing the first one Bill approached. He knocks three times on the trailer - one.. .two - three -- then waits. Silence.

Then two knocks respond.

The man takes a quick step backward, shuddersand stuffs his hands into his coat pockets. Turning, he walks toward the back of the trailer, muttering, "Goddamned freak, anyways."

Bill backs further into the darkness and watches the man step into the aisle behind the trucks and look in both directions, head bowed against the snow. As the man turns, Bill gathers all his strength and moves.

The man's face is down on the slushy ground between the trailers in a heartbeat with Bill straddling him, clutching his soft round shoulders.

"What the fuh--"

"Shut up," Bill whispers.

"Whattaya want? I ain't got any muh--"

"Just shut up and listen. What's your name?"

"Claude. Carsey."

"You drive one of these trucks?"

"Yuh-yeah. Yeah."

"What are you hauling?"

"Cuh-caskets. yaknow, for dead people. Coffins."

"What was the knocking for?"

"Whuh-whuh-what? "

"You knocked on the trailers. Why?"

"Nunna yer fuckin' bidness."

"Who knocked back? Who's inside the trailer?"

"What the hell d'you --"

Bill gets off him, rolls him over and presses a knee to his chest, clutching his collar. Bill snaps his mouth open, extending his fangs.

"Oh-oh, sweet Jesus God, no, no, yuh-you're, you' re one of 'em," the man whimpers. "Please don't hurt me. Please. I - I swear...I'll...do whatever you want. I swear."

"What do you haul in the trucks?"

The man looks puzzled, confused. "But ... you know. Don't you?"

"Tell me."

"Girls. Girls who're...like you. 'Cept they're not in

there now. They're working."

"Working?"

"Yeah, the lot. Y'know. Lot lizards? They hook. And then they...well, they get what they need. And they get us what we need. Money. And whatever else they can find."

"Who knocked in there just now?"

The man seems to lose some of the color in his face. "You...don't know?" he breaths.

"I'm asking, aren't I?"

"But...you're one of them. How could you not - "

Bill pulls him close until their noses were almost touching. "Don't fuck with me, Claude. Answer my question. Who knocked in the trailer?"

"Buh - but she'll kuh - kill me if I --"

"I've got news for you, Claude. I'm gonna kill you anyway. So just think of this as a final confession. Who is she? What is she? Why is she still in there?"

Claude's eyes dart around and he whispers, as if afraid of being overheard: "We call her their queen. She's like them, but...worse. They're human. Or...they were. Before they ... changed. She changed them. And she's not human."

"Why does she stay in the truck?"

"Because she's -- " Claude shudders violently and looks sick. "She looks ... too different to go out. The girls bring people to her. Usually kids. She likes 'em young. She says they're --" His face twists briefly. "- fresher."

"Does everyone they bite become like them?"

"Nuh - no! God damn, you know what that'ud mean? They'd be everywhere! No - they just take what they need and leave 'em. Usually they're unconscious and they wake up later with a little mark somewhere feelin', y'know, hung over."

Bill's shakes the man, growling, "That's a fucking lie! One of them changed me!"

"Really! It's the truth! I don't know what happened to you, but that's the way they do it. Really!"

"Can they be killed?" Bill asks.

Claude's eyes widen. "Who th'fuck knows? I sure as hell ain't gonna try!"

"Can they be stopped?"

"Wuh-well...they get really sick if they get near garlic.

Just -- " He cackled nervously. J-just like in the movies."

"How do they --"

"Dad?"

Bill drops the man to the ground and jerks around with a gasp. Jon stands at the end of one of the trailers, shivering in the cold.

"What the hell are you doing?" Bill hisses. "I told you to stay inside!"

"I couldn't." He tells Bill about what he'd heard and seen in the back room of the shop after following A.J. there.

"Well, go back!" Bill snaps. "Now. Get inside."

Jon simply stares at his dad, jaw gawking. "What are you doing, Dad?"

Bill opens his mouth to respond but simply stares at his son silently.

Jon stares at him with brows furrowed above pained eyes, as if Bill has done something that hurts him. Bill looks down at Claude and sees quivering fear. He lifts Claude easily by his collars, slamming him into the side of the trailer. "How do they die?" he growls.

Claude looks as if he is about to cry. "I'm tellin' you, man, I don't know! " he rasps, spittle dribbling over his lumpy lips. "None of'em've ever died. And that - " He glances fearfully at the the trailer behind Bill and lowers his voice to a breath. "-- that thing in there ... she's been around for...oh, God, I don't know ... she's old, man, I'm tellin' ya. Hundreds a years ... maybe thousands, for all I know. I'm tellin' ya...they don't --" He stops and swallows hard, his head bobbing; then he hisses, " - you don't die!"

Never loosening his grip, Bill turns to Jon, who has not moved an inch, as if the snow has frozen him where he stands; his eyes have doubled in size and his mouth hangs open. "I thought I told you to go inside, boy!" Bill snaps.

Jon shrinks back at the anger in his dad's voice.

"What is it, Jon?" he asks, his voice softer this time.

"A man...in the shop. He's been bitten. I...thought you should know."

Bill nods. "Yeah. Okay. You go on back inside with your mom, now."

"She's in the shop, too."

In his shock, Bill's grip on Claude's collars loosened.

"What?"

"The freeway's closed, so they can't call an ambulance," Jon says. "They called for a doctor or nurse to come help this guy, so Mom went to see if she could do anything."

Bill whispers, horrified, "You mean...your mom is - "

Pain explodes into his groin and shoots up into his abdomen like lava from a volcano.

Claude's knee.

Bill falls to the icy pavement and curls into a groaning ball as Claude's heavy footsteps fade across the lot.

Instantly Jon is at his side, clutching his arm. "Dad! You okay, Dad?"

"Yuh - yeah. Yeah, I'm okay." He looks across the lot and sees Claude weaving his clumsy way between the trucks. He squeezes Jon's shoulder, "Stay here, you understand me? Just stay here!"

Bill runs, his feet slapping the snow with a rhythm more than twice as fast as Claude's. He closes the distance between himself and Claude in seconds. He dives for the man's broad back and Claude hits the slushy pavement with a muffled grunt. There is a resounding crack when Claude's forehead slams into the ground.

Bill rolls the heavy man over with ease and stares into unconscious eyes.

"Shit," Bill sighs. He looks back over his shoulder,

concerned for Jon's safety.

To his left there is a small rectangular window level with the ground.

Hooking his arms beneath Claude's shoulders, Bill drags him to the window and, with little effort in spite of his weakness, shoves him headfirst through the window. There is a clatter and a crash, then silence. Bill looks into the window to see Claude lying in a heap on the cement floor surrounded by tumbled boxes and a shattered crate.

But once Claude regains consciousness, it won't be hard for him to stack some crates back up to the window and climb out. Bill looks around again.

A filthy garbage dumpster that had once been white stands against the side wall of the shop. Bill rolls it across the alley, its wheels screeching with effort, and turns it up on its side directly in front of the window with less than half an inch between the dumpster and the wall.

"What the hell you doing back there?"

Bill spins toward the voice and sees an enormous figure standing at the end of the alley, silhouetted against the lights of the truck lot.

"Huh?" the large man bellows. It is the voice of a black man, a strong resonant voice. "What're you doing?" He starts toward Bill, his big arms held out slightly at his sides as if he were prepared to defend himself. "And what's this mess? What the hell did you do with the damned garbage, man? Huh? Whatta you think you're--"

"Dad!" Jon cried from the lot. "Daaad!"

The man stops and turns toward the cry.

"That's my son," Bill hisses, rushing past the man, who turns and follows him, growling, "Whole fuckin' place is falling apart tonight..."

"My God," she breathes.

"Excuse me?" Dr. Kane says, blinking.

"My God, that's my son," she says.

"That's my son, something's wrong with my son," as she starts out of the room, pulling Cody with her...

"I could kill him in an instant," it hisses in a soft, sibilant voice. "Or I could bleed him. Feed on him. Make him just like you. Would you like that?"

Bill freezes. "God, no," he whispers. "Don't do that. Please."

Footsteps crunch through the snow, stopping behind

Bill, and the big man mutters, "Oh, Lord in heaven."

"Then bring Mr. Carsey back," the voice hisses, like a needle cutting across ice.

"He's... he's okay."

"I don't care about that. Bring him back."

"Lord in heaven," the man says again, repeating it over and over under his breath.

"Give me my son," Bill says, trying to sound firm, authoritative.

The voice makes an animal-like sound that resembles human laughter. "What do you want? Why do you follow us? Do you want to bring us harm?" the voice asks with a sarcastic lilt. "Do you want to bring harm to your own kind?"

"I - I...I'm not your kind."

"But you are. You are."

There are more footsteps, coming closer, at a jog. And a voice.

"Jon? Jonny?" It is A.J.

"Jonathan, are you all ri -- " She rounds the back end of one of the black trucks and freezes, staring open mouthed at Bill, then at the thing that holds their son between them.

A sheriffs deputy steps up beside her, his hand fumbles for his gun once he realizes what he is seeing.

"Okay," the deputy says, raising the gun, "just hold it there, just hold it a second. Let the boy go."

The thing shifts in the darkness and the glistening eyes turn to the deputy, who is stepping forward cautiously.

"You hear me?" he calls. "Just let the boy go and we'll work this out without anybody getting hurt, okay?" Moving closer, he adds firmly: "Right now." Closer. "I'm not playing with you." Closer still...

Something - a little more than a blur - an arm - whips out of the blackness and strikes the deputy in the chest. Ribs crack like dry twigs and the

deputy leaves the ground as if caught in a powerful wind. The gun tumbles away from him as his arms and legs fly out in front of him and his body shoots out across the aisle to the next row of parked trucks. His back slams into the back of a trailer and he slides to the ground, crumbling into a rag-doll heap in the snow.

A.J. screams. For a moment, she looks as if she is about to dive forward and attack the thing

The big man behind Bill gasps, "Holy shit, what the hell is -- "

Bill reaches back and clutches the man's arm. "Get that woman out of here. Now."

He moves around the truck in seconds, standing behind A.J. and holds her shoulders, trying to lead her away. He pulls her backward to the other side of the truck where her cries fade.

"Give me my son," Bill says, "and I'll do whatever you want."

"Join us," the black voice hisses without hesitation.

"What?"

"Travel with us. Hunt with us. You are endangering too many -- yourself as well -- by traveling alone. You are inexperienced, ignorant. We can teach you. I can teach you. After all," it whispered slowly, almost sensuously, "you are one of my own."

"I don't need to travel with anyone. I've doing just fine."

"Then why have you followed us?"

"To...to STOP YOU."

It laughs. "Stop us? From doing what we must do? What you must do, as well?"

"No," he says, his voice low as it comes through clenched teeth. "No, I don't kill. I don't hurt anyone."

"Then you will die!" the voice says happily. "You will grow weaker and weaker until you cannot move. And you will whither away. Surely you're feeling it already, aren't you?"

"No."

"Mmm. You don't lie well. You feed on animals? Or perhaps you steal the blood. From hospitals, I suppose. Many have tried that. The weak ones always do at first, the sentimental ones. But they soon learn that it is not the same. They grow weak, then ill. They learn something. You will learn it, too.

Unless you feed on living humans, unless you drink warm blood still pumping through human veins and arteries, you will die. It is a wonderful way of weeding out the weaklings. Survival of the fittest, and all that. So. If you are not hunting, I do not believe that you are in good health." It laughs again. "You're dying already."

Bill looks at Jon, who seems to be staring at something far in the distance; he seems unaware of everything around him.

"Why was this done to me?" Bill asks.

"A mistake. It happens. It cannot be undone. You accept your situation or you don't. Which shall it be, Mr. Kettler?"

"Let my son go."

A shadow-like shape of a long slender arm stretches out toward him in the darkness. "Come to me first."

The black claws are smooth and glistening. The long boney fingers, skin flour white, beckon gracefully.

"Dad?" Jon whimpers, as if he's just awoke from a bad dream. "Dad? What's...what're you-"

"It's all right, Jon. Everything's all right." He steps forward cautiously, nodding slowly, saying to the creature, "Okay. Fine. I'll come to you. But you've got to let my son - "

The enormous man appears at the other end of the trucks, arms raised above his head, both hands clutching a yard-long winch bar. It remains suspended there for an instant, just long enough for light to sparkle on the chrome. Then it starts downward.

The creature moves in a blur.

Bill cries out, "Nooo!"

Jon released a terrified, confused scream.

The milky white arm sweeps up, long fingers wrapped

around the black man's wrist as he screams, dropping the winch. It clatters to the ground behind him and he hits the pavement, rolling through the

dirty slush, grunting painfully until he slams into the rear tires of a truck across the aisle.

"Not nice, Mr. Kettler," the creature hisses. "I've changed my mind." The creature sweeps around the back of the trailer in a whispering haze of darkness and the door slides up with a rumble.

Bill rounds the trailer and looks into the square of blackness in which, very faintly, a pale, hideous face, inhuman, grins with a glistening, snout full of white needles.

He freezes.

"Your time is running out," the face rasps, a thin pink tongue flickering behind the fangs. "You are growing weaker. You are becoming ill. You'll die soon. For good. You are no longer a threat. You are ... a pity."

The door slams down with a metallic explosion and then --- silence, except for the wind that blows curtains of snowflakes in white swirls.

Bill' throws himself against the trailer's door, his fists pounding the metal, echoing like thunder on the other side as he screams incoherently.

Behind him, the black man groans as he climbs to his feet.

And a soft, sniffling voice whispers, "Bill? Buh-Bill, is...that you?"

Bill looks over his shoulder to see A.J. standing a few yards away.

"Bill?" she says again, just a breath this time.

He nods jerkily.

For a long time, they just stare at one another as the snow falls ...

Delbert smiles and puts down his book, flicks the radio off and calls, "Yeah?"

No response.

He tosses the blankets aside and gets up. "What?"

"Want some company?" A small, thin voice. Young.

Delbert likes them young.

He opens the sleeper door and looks down at the small girl bundled in a heavy coat. She smiles up at him, her face pale, eyes heavy with a sexy, sleepy look. Delbert leans out, offered his hand and chuckles, "C'mon up, honey."

She is light as a feather...

"What can I do you for, missy?" Lumpy asks with a grin, knowing what he wants to do her for.

When she speaks, the wind whips smoke from her mouth violently: "You can start by opening up and letting me in."

"Fine by me, honey," Lumpy laughs, fishing his keys from his pocket...

Claude Carsey wakes up in the basement with blood in his eyes and reaches up slowly with a trembling hand to wipe it away, but another hand -- cool and small - takes his wrist gently and pulls it away. A soft cloth dabs at the blood, clearing it away until his eyes flutter open and -

"You get your -- don't you tuh-tuh -- you keep away from me!" Claude sputters in a high voice, as he slaps the girl's hand away.

"Not feeling too well, Mr. Carsey?" Amy's smile doesn't fool him.

"Go away," he says, his voice hoarse. "Get away from me, just go away."

"Sorry, but --" She shrugs, raising her brows helplessly, "-- we're kinda stuck here, you and me."

"What? Where? Where are we?" He tries to get up again but the dizziness shoves him back to his seat.

"In the basement of the restaurant. I think. Don't quote me."

"Well...I gotta go. I gotta get back to --"

He tries to relax, but can't and he presses his stiff back hard against the crates to get as far from her as possible.

She only leans closer. Smiling again. That sharp-fanged smile that is like an ad for Satan's very own brand of toothpaste. "It's just you and me, Claude. All alone. At least for a while. I got a friend now, see? Someone you don't know. Your stinking brother, either. In fact, none of you know him, including that fucking freak you cart around in your truck." Still smiling around the bile in her voice: "Somebody who likes me. He's gonna do things for me, Claude. And he's coming soon." She leans very close, only inches from his face, and there is a smell ... not her breath, because they really didn't have any breath; it is just a faint smell that sort of wafts up from deep inside her - the smell of old meat covered with spoiled preserves - and it makes Claude's face screw up. "Then...when he gets here...I figure we can have a little fun. The three of us."

Claude does something he hadn't done in over forty years.

Claude closes his eyes and prays, and...

"You are afraid," the creature hisses. "You are trembling."

Jon says nothing. He stares in the direction of the voice, but sees only solid darkness.

"You should not be afraid." There is a smile in the voice.

"I will not hurt you. Your father is the one I want. He should be with us. He needs to be with us. He will die alone. And he may expose us. But you ... you are safe here. Don't be afraid." Jon feels a thin ice cold finger stroke his jawline gently and the tip of a claw run over his skin. The creature says, with a soft, feminine chuckle, "You are too old for me."

But he is afraid. He can't move, can't even think. He just stares into the darkness, trembles, his body crawling with gooseflesh and...

"What's so interesting out there, Shawna?" she asks. Shawna shrugs, but says nothing.

Mrs. Tipton, concerned, puts an arm around her waist. "Are you sure you feel all right, honey?"

Shawna is frowning, her lower lip tucked between her teeth. "I'm not sick. It's just that...something else is wrong."

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know!" Shawna snaps, more harshly than she'd intended, spinning to face Mrs. Tipton. Softly, she repeats, "I don't know. Really. But something... something bad is wrong."

Mrs. Tipton puts her hands on Shawna's shoulders and says, "Listen, sweety, if you say something's wrong, then you must have some idea what. You're making me very nervous with this talk. You know, it could have something to do with the accident ... the way you're feeling, I mean. It can do things like that, you know, just make you feel bad for no reason.

Do you think that's it?"

Shawna shakes her head and opens her mouth to respond, but is shocked into silence when the lights go out and the drugstore is swallowed by darkness and ...

"Oh, my Lord, what is happening around here?" the black man shouts.

There are other voices in the darkened lot, truckers grumbling about the outage, faint and whipped away by the wind, but none as loud or as filled with fear.

Bill gets to his feet, turns and spots A.J. She is kneeling in the snow, both hands pressed to her face, watching Bill between her fingers; she is mumbling something into her palms, or perhaps just sobbing, as she shakes her head back and forth, back and forth...

She pulls her hands away slowly and whimpered, "BuhBill? Is thuh - that you?"

He approaches her uncertainly, trying to find his voice.

"Yeah, A.J. it's me."

She stands and heads unsteadily toward him, saying softly, "What's happened?" Moving faster, raising her voice: "What have you done?"

Bill stops.

A.J. rushes him then, swinging her fists before she even reaches him. She slams into his body and begins pummeling his chest, screaming, "What was that thing, that fucking thing where is Jonny, you sonofabitch, where's my Jonny?" She screams on and on, hammering him, and Bill tries to stop her without hurting her but she begins kicking his shins and knees - and he is just too weak for it, both mentally and physically. So he slaps her.

A.J. falls on her ass, gasps her shock, and Bill drops to one knee at her side, and whispers, "God, I'm sorry, A.J., I'm sorry, but I just - "

She slugs him in the stomach so hard and so unexpectedly that Bill doubles over with a startled grunt. She is about to hit him again when a beefy black hand clutches each of them and holds them apart.

"Don't you think enough people have been hurt out here, dammit!" he barks, shaking them. "Now knock it off before I hafta beat the shit outta both of you!" He seems embarrassed then and drops his hands, wincing. "I'm...look, I'm sorry, but I'm just, y'know, kinda..." To Bill: "Listen, man, that cop over there is dead. You hear me? He is dead. Now I don't know what the story is with you two and I probably don't wanna know, but there's one thing I do want and that's for you to explain to me what the fuck I just saw out here because I don't think I'm too fuckin' sure, you know what I'm sayin'?" He'd grabbed the collar of Bill's coat in both hands and is shaking him as he roars in his face.

Bill wraps his bony fingers around the man's thick wrists and squeezes. He has enough strength to freeze the black man and make him tremble with pain as he squeezes the wrist bones hard and harder.

"What's your name?" Bill asks.

Through clenched teeth: "By...ron."

"Calm down, Byron. Okay?" Byron stares silently for a moment. "Okay, Byron?"

He nods slowly at first, then his head bounces up and down like a ball. "Y-yuuhh ...o-o-o ... yuh-yeah, okay."

Bill smiles a little and speaks softly. "Listen to me, Byron. I need you to help me. You, too, A.J." He turns to her; she is staring at him with a sort of horrified fascination. To Byron again: "I don't want to hurt anybody, Byron. Really. What just happened here - " He gestured to A.J. " - well...it's kind of, um, complicated. She's my ex-wife."

Byron nods quickly, wide-eyed. "I kinda figured."

"Right now, there are a lot of people in danger, Byron. They're snowed in here, there's no power, and there are some people wandering around here who want to hurt them. Do you understand?"

"I think I do, yeah. Now, I mean, after that, yeah."

"Well, I think I might be able to keep them from being hurt.

But you have to believe that I don't want to hurt them. And you'll have to listen to me when I explain this. I mean, you'll have to listen to, um...to some stuff you might not want to believe."

Byron nods.

Bill turns to A.J. "And you have to believe that I'm going to get Jon out of there. And...and that I want you and the kids...and Doug...to get out of here safely."

Shocked, she nods slowly.

"Okay," Bill whispers, as he prepares himself. "Okay." As briefly as possible, he tells them everything...

"Want some company?" Victoria asks.

He shakes his head slowly. "Didn't'cha read the sticker, honey?" he asks gently. "I don't do that sorta thing. I'm a Christian."

Victoria grimaces. "Fine."

The man nods, waves and, still smiling, closes the door. She moves to the next truck, knocks on the door and, when the man opens the door, he smiles and says, "You look cold, baby. You wanna come inside?"

She nods and he reaches down to help her up...

"What.. .I don't understand is why you didn't.. .call or write," she whispers, as if she hadn't heard his story at all. "You could've written, at least. And...if you'd told me what was wrong...I would've helped you."

"What could you have done?"

"I could've tried. I've...well, I...I know I'm the one who left, but...I've missed you. We all have. Jon especially. You're still all he talks about and he's always -- " She stops and her gaze turns to the black Carsey Bros. truck. Her eyes fill with tears again and her lips quiver.

"We're gonna get him out of there," Bill says, as firmly as he can. He reaches out to touch her, but she shrinks away convulsively.

"I - I'm...sorry," she whispers, turning away from him.

"You say garlic might help?" Byron asks.

"I think so. At least, with the girls. I'm not sure about that thing in the truck. The queen. That's gonna be tough."

"Well, I know where we can get some garlic. There's a shitload of it in the basement of the kitchen."

"Can you get to it?"

"I'm the janitor. I can get to anything."

Turning to A.J. again, Bill says, "Look, you've got to tell Doug about this. Make sure the girls are with one of you at all times."

She nods.

"And as soon as you can, get out of here."

"We don't have a car. We had a wreck."

"What? Why didn't you tell me? Was anyone hurt?"

"No, no. We're fine. Except for the car."

He looked at her a long time, then asks, "Is he good to you? This Doug?"

She chuckles coldly. "Sometimes I think he's too good to me. Like you were."

"Then I'm glad. I'm glad." He nods and turns away from her, resisting the urge to touch her again.

"Look," Byron says, "I hate to wreck your reunion, but whatta you say we go down to the basement."

Bill starts to reply, then remembers Claude Carsey.

"Shit, that's where I put him."

"What?" Byron says.

"Carsey. One of the drivers. After I knocked him cold, I put him through a basement window behind the restaurant."

"But it's kept locked."

"It was open a crack."

"Shit. Don't sound good to me."

"Yeah," Bill says. "Let's get in there."

A man shouts, "Shut those damned things off!"

Kevin smiles and heads down the corridor, punching out and grabbing the basement keys on his way. As he opens the door, he hears voices and freezes.

"Amy?" Kevin whispers.

Amy was kneeling on the floor between the legs of a man slumped against a stack of crates beneath the window.

She looks over her shoulder so quickly that her hair parachutes around her head. In the dark it is hard to tell, but it looks to Kevin like she is smiling. Grinning, actually. And there seems to be something - two small things - hanging from her upper lip. Two small sharp things glistening with dark fluids.

She laughs.

"God, Amy, what...what're you..."

She stands and rushed towards him so quickly he flinched. "Kevin!" she hisses. "You're back!" She wraps her arms around him and holds her face close to his. There is a wet, coppery smell to her that makes him grimace. She seems happy, giddy as a child. "I have so much to tell you!"

Kevin stiffens, backs away, but she grabs his arms and pulls him toward her, whispering, "What's the matter? I thought you wanted to come down here so we could get close." She presses her breasts against him and runs her hands over his chest lightly.

Kevin looks down at the man sprawled on the floor and a cold clutching feeling in his chest tells him that something is very wrong here.

The man stirs, his head lolls to one side and a booted foot scrapes over the concrete floor.

"What's happened?" Kevin rasps. "Whuh - what've you done? Who's that man?"

"Someone who wanted to hurt me. Someone who's been hurting me for a long time. You wouldn't want someone to hurt me, would you, Kevin?"

Her satiny voice seems distant and Kevin wants nothing more than to get away from her, but he can't take his eyes off the man on the... and Amy moves her hand down to his belt ... then below his belt to his fly, where her fingers move with purpose, pulling the zipper down with a hiss.

"Look at me, Kevin."

He does.

"You don't want to stay around here forever, do you?" she whispers, easing her hand into his pants. "You want to go away and see other places, right?" She begins to stroke him gently. "You want to make lots of money, don't you? And you'd like to be with me...wouldn't you?"

In a heartbeat, the man on the floor is forgotten...

Shawna jumps down from the counter, but keeps looking over her shoulder at the front window.

A sound from the back of the store startles her and Mrs. Tipton jerks her head toward the hallway, then looks at Shawna and smiles as the match goes out.

"It's just a cat, honey," she says with quiet reassurance. A distant truck headlight casts an eerie hard light into the drugstore.

There is another sound, louder this time, a clatter, and a groan. She turns to Shawna, her smile gone, mouth curled into a wrinkled little O.

"Let's go, Mrs. Tipton!" she hisses. "Let's get back to the restaurant! Now!"

An even louder clatter is followed by footsteps.

Mrs. Tipton freezes in a hunched, half-standing position, all confidence gone from her face. Shadows deepened her wrinkles and the lantern flames glisten in her eyes.

"Puh - please, Mrs. Tipton, we have to go!" Shawna whispers. "It's something bad, just like I said something bad!" She backs toward the window, chest heaving as she stares at the black passageway that leads back to the restaurant. The darkness oozes and Shawna throws herself at Mrs. Tipton, clutching her hand and screaming, "Now Mrs. Tipton now we have to -- "

They are around them in an instant, as if they had melted out of the darkness, two young women -- girls, with skin like ivory, sunken cheeks and thin necks with muscle cords pulled taut. And they are smiling.

Mrs. Tipton screams and clutches Shawna close to her side.

The girls move toward them smoothly, confidently. One has blond hair and wears a long, tattered wool coat; the other wears a blue ski cap and a grey down jacket. The blond whispers, "Hi, little girl. What's your name?"

"You leave her alone!" Mrs. Tipton shrieks, stepping in front of Shawna.

The blond stops, nods and says, "Okay. What's your name, old lady?"

They move quickly and are on Mrs. Tipton in a heartbeat, pushing her to the floor, embracing her, their faces pressing to each side of her neck as she struggles helplessly. Her screams are brief, and then she becomes silent, her wide eyes staring at the ceiling, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, hands clenching and unclenching, feet twitching.

Shawna holds in her scream, hugging herself as she backs away clumsily until her shoulders are against the windowpane, then she spins around and screams with all her might, pounding her fear-weakened fists on the glass: "Heelllp! Somebody heelllp!" She screams the words over and over again until -

--hands clutch her shoulders and turn her around and Shawna looks into the white, smiling, blood-smeared face of the blond. From beneath her upper lip curl two long narrow fangs -- each of them glistened with dark blood.

"Don't be afraid," the girl hisses, blood spattering from her lips. She presses a bloody hand over Shawna's mouth, spins her around and embraces her from behind.

The other girl rises slowly, her tongue running over her lips, and steps in front of them. Her eyes are heavy, as if she's just awakened from a deep sleep. Her nose twitches a few times and she winces at Shawna. "She smells funny," she said.

"So?"

"I mean she smells...sick, maybe."

"Don't they all these days? She doesn't smell as bad as some. Probably just a bad diet. This is hicksville, y' know. They probably live on grease around here. You bleed the old lady?"

"Course not, idiot. She's alive."

"Well, kill her. She'll talk."

The girl in the ski cap goes back to Mrs. Tipton's side and the blond turns to watch. Shawna watches in horror as the girl bends down and holds the old woman's head between both hands. With a sudden jerk, Mrs. Tipton's neck cracks sharply.

Shawna struggles then, tries to scream again, but only for a moment; she grows tired quickly and the girl's arms are like iron bars.

The blond smiles down at Shawna and says gently, "You're gonna come with us. There's somebody who wants to see you. Somebody who'll like you a whooole lot..."

Inside, it is noisy and dark. They shoulder their way through the crowd, through the travel store and, after Byron stops to get a flashlight from a utility closet, into the restaurant. Byron leads them behind the counter toward the hall that leads to the basement.

"Bill?" A.J. whispers hesitantly. "I should go talk to Doug. He should know about...about what's happening."

"Okay." He squeezes her arm. "Remember, stick together and don't go outside, but get away from that guy at the next booth."

She nods, looks sick for a moment, as if she might vomit or pass out, then begins to cry quietly.

"Don't worry, A.J. We're gonna...we're gonna..." When she looks up at him, he can't finish, he can't look her in the eyes and say it, so he holds her to him, looking instead at a stack of dirty plates as he says, "We're gonna get him out of there and he's gonna be fine."

"Somebody mind telling me what the hell's going on here?"

The man's voice trembles only slightly with quiet, contained anger and when Bill turns to him, he knows somehow that it is Doug.

A.J. wipes her eyes and sniffles. "Doug, this is Bill. My ex-husband."

He says nothing, just stares Bill in the eyes. He looks angry at first, defensive. But as he continues to look at Bill in the poor light, his expression changes to one of curiosity, then he backs away a little, frowning, all of his anger gone.

"We have to talk, Doug," Adelle says.

Doug's eyes dart back and forth between Bill and A.J., suddenly worried. Her lips are quivering and she's about to start crying again. "What's going on here?" Doug asks.

"Just...Doug, please, come to the table. We have to talk." She sounds impatient. With another glance at Bill, she takes Doug's hand and leads him away.

As they start down the hall, Byron shakes his head and says, "I bet you've had better days."

"Not in about a year."

Byron turns his flashlight on a ring of keys he's taken from his belt, finds the right one and unlocks the basement door.

"This is where they keep all the kitchen supplies and the food," Byron says, shining the flashlight into the darkness below as he starts down the stairs. "The garlic's probably in the free - " He stopped half way down with Bill right behind him.

Sound.

Movement.

A gasp...a sigh...a giggle...a low, gurgling whimper...

Byron sweeps the light around the basement until the beam finds them: a boy and girl on a coat spread out on the concrete floor. The boy was on his back, jeans pulled down around his knees, the girl squatting atop him, hands flat on his chest as she grinds her hips on him until she freezes and they both looked up.

"Oh, shit!" the boy groans, scrambling to get up. "Shit, oh shit, man, shit! " The girl moves off of him and he begins pulling up his pants before he is off the floor.

"Kevin?" Byron asks.

Bill watches the girl...

"Kevin, what the hell 're you doing?" Byron snaps.

...and the girl watches Bill as she slips into her pants casually.

He whispers to Byron as he pushed by on the way down the stairs, "She's one of them."

Smiling, the girl sweeps up her coat, saying, "C' mon, Kevin, hurry up."

"Oh, shit, son of a bitch, I'm, shit, man, I'm fucked," Kevin rambles ..

The girl's eyes remain on Bill as he hurries down the stairs and her comfortable smile never falters. As if without a thought, she bounds up onto the stack of crates beneath the small window, which she tears from its hinges and tosses to the floor where the pane shatters musically; her right leg kicks up expertly, her foot clangs against the upturned garbage dumpster just outside, and the dumpster slams into the opposite wall, clearing the passage.

Kevin stops to stare in awe, his belt still unfastened.

Bill and Byron are half way across the room, the flashlight beam dancing through the darkness.

She holds out her arm to him and says firmly, "Give me your hand."

"What?"

"Give me your hand!"

Kevin does as he is told and she sweeps him off the floor, lifting him in both arms and pushes him out the window smoothly, then starts to crawl out after him.

Thunder cracks in the room and a brief flash turns the walls white.

The girl slams against the wall and a glistening black red flower blossoms in the middle of her back. She bounces from the wall, leaving behind a splash of red, and falls off the crates to the floor where she is still.

But only for a moment.

As the two men close in on her, she springs to her feet like a gymnast and hunches slightly, arms out at her sides, ready to defend herself. She is still smiling.

"Holy mother fucking shit sweet Jee-zus hear my prayer!" Byron bellows, his feet skidding over the concrete as he quickly backs away, staring at the large black hole between the girl's breasts. He shines the light directly on the wound and sees that it is moving. Raw meat, shedding very little blood, is quivering ... undulating ... gelling.

His right hand, clenches the gun, begins to convulse as he lifts it to fire again, babbling his horror in a high-pitched string of profanity as Bill dashes toward the girl from the side.

She does three things in the same second: she moves three big steps forward in a single leap, swings her right fist into Bill' s chest, knocking him into the crates, and kicks up her left leg, connecting with Byron's right hand and sending the gun into the darkness. Then she slaps her hand over his face, pressed her fingers into his fleshy cheeks and pulled him toward her, getting very close.

"I'm already dead, you stupid nigger," she rasps, then slugs him in the stomach, slamming him into the wall beneath the stairs.

By the time she leaves the basement to join Kevin outside, the wounds beneath her tattered blood-stained clothes are healed.

"Adelle, what the hell is the matter?" he asks.

She squeezes his hand. "Not now."

"What do you mean, not now? What were you doing with him? And what the hell is he doing here?"

She stops and faces him. She is white with panic but manages to hold herself together. "I'11 explain in a minute, Doug, I promise I will, but first we have to get Cece away from that booth."

"Away from the -- why?"

"That man." She nods toward the booth beside theirs.

"We have to get them away from him." Before he can ask why, she clutches his shirt in both hands, takes a deep breath, speaking quietly and with an exaggerated sort of calm. "Doug, something horrible has happened. Something I couldn't believe if I hadn't seen it.

I am about five seconds away from becoming a screaming convulsing vegetable and before that happens I want to get Cece away from that man and into another part of the building.

Please, just please humor me for now and I'l1 tell you everything in a minute." Without waiting for him, she hurries to the table, leans down and begins to gathering their things as she whispers to Cece.

Doug follows them out of the restaurant, glancing back at the man in the booth beside theirs; he seems agitated and is constantly looking around, as if waiting impatiently for his partner. Hurrying to catch up with A.J. and Cece, Bill goes into the travel store, trying to keep himself from becoming too upset until he hears A.J.'s story.

The store is lit by several lanterns and the two cashiers carry flashlights. People mill about in the darkness, their feet shuffling on the floor, their voices blending into a steady drone punctuated by an occasional laugh or a curse from a disgruntled trucker. A.J. goes all the way back to the darkened soft drink coolers.

"Mom, what's going on " Cece whines. "I wasn't through eating. I'm hungry."

Through clenched teeth, A.J. snaps ,"Just be quiet and don't - " She stops suddenly, flinching as if slapped.

Her face relaxes and she puts an arm around Cece, whispering, "I-I-I'm sorry, honey, I didn't muh-mean to bark at you like that." She embraces the girl for a moment, breathing, "I'm sorry."

This behavior worries Doug more than anything he's seen so far.

"What's the matter, Mom?" Cece askes quietly. "You're crying."

A.J. backs away, shaking her head in dismissal.

"Mom," CeCe asks, "where's Jon?"

Then she loses it. She buries her face in her hands, drops her purse, and cries softly.

Doug steps forward and says, "Look, Cece, tell you what, since you didn't finish your dinner, here's twenty bucks.

Get anything in the store. How about some junk food, huh?

Dorritos? Anything you want this time, no rules. Look, there's cold sandwiches in this cooler and drinks over here."

"Can I have a Jolt Cola?" Cece asks expectantly.

"Even a Jolt. Go ahead--" He handed Cece a twenty." It's on me. Your mom and I've gotta talk."

"No!" Adelle blurts. "No, Cece, you stay right here, duh don't move. You can eat anything you want, just do it right here.

Kuh - keep the wrappers and we'll pay for it later."

They speak in whispers as Cece eats, A.J. doing most of the talking while Doug stares at her in utter disbelief ... at first. Then when she tells him about Jon: "Son of a bitch, where is he, Adelle, why the hell didn't you say so in the -- "

"Shh, keep your voice down, I don't want Cece to hear.

Doug, I'm telling you, there's nothing we can do. That thing is...I saw that thing and there is nothing we can do. Except wait for Bill."

"Oh. Wait for Bill." The churning of jealousy stirs his guts and he paces a moment. "What the hell's Bill doing, changing his clothes in a phone booth?"

"He's one of them."

"One of -- you mean one of those -- oh, God, A.J., you don't really believe that shit, do you?"

"Goddammit, Douglas, I don't know what they are and I don't care what you call them, but they're out there and he knows how to handle them. I don't know, maybe they're just like us and they've got some kind of - of - of horrible duh - disease or something, but that thing, Doug, I saw that thing, and if everybody here knew about it there'd be a fucking stampede, except nobody has anyplace to go. Now will you please for God's sake just--" She stops again, grinding her teeth. "I'm sorry, dammit, I'm sorry."

Doug steps forward and holds her as she whispers in his ear.

"I yelled at Jonny. At the table ....oh, Doug, I just can't live with the thought of my last words to my son being angry ones..."

"Byron?" he croaks.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm here."

Bill sees the flashlight glowing on the floor, hears Byron shuffling around until he finds it, then watches him retrieve his gun.

"I don't know why I'm here," Byron says, coming toward him, "'cause if I had any brains I'd get the fuck gone. You okay?"

"I'm...not sure. Don't feel too well, tell you the truth."

Claude Carsey groans in the dark as Byron helps Bill to his feet. They go to Claude's side and shine the light on him.

His face is bloody and his eyes gummy and swollen; he looks up at them with his mouth yawning and hands quivering.

"She killed me?" he rasps. "Am I dead? Am - am - am I guh gonna die?"

Byron squats down and touches Claude's cheek with the barrel of his gun. "No, you're gonna help us, that's what you're gonna do."

Getting on his knees, Bill asks, as firmly as he can manage, "What does garlic do to them, Claude?"

"Gar...lic? Well, I s'pose you could find out easy enough."

"Remember what I just said about you not dying?" Byron growls. "One more remark like that and I'm gonna have to make myself a liar."

"Makes 'em sick," Claude says. "Ruh-real sick."

"When they touch it?"

"No, no. Tha's just when they smell it. Don't know what the hell happens when they touch it." He turned his head and spit some blood onto the concrete.

Bill and Byron exchange a glance.

"What happens if they can't get back in the trucks, Claude?" Bill asks.

His swollen eyes widened slightly. "If they can't ... I don't know, but it must be bad, 'cause that's the only thing they're scared of. Scared shitless of it. And why the fuck don't you know what hap - " He glances at the gun. " -- well, I mean...I figure you oughtta know what sunlight does."

"Ain't gonna be very sunny out today," Byron tells Bill.

Claude says, "Weather don't seem to matter to 'em none.

Least not that I can tell. But...what, um...oh, Lordy, no, you guys ain't thinkin' of ... no, you ain't gonna do that, no, you can't do that. You know what my brother would do to me? He'd fuckin' kill me's what he'd do." He sits up, pleading now. "No, please, you can't do that, you can't--"

But they ignore him.

"The other guy," Bill whispers. "We've gotta get him down here and out of the way."

Byron stands as Bill gives him a description of Phil Carsey and tells him where Phil is seated.

"You gonna be able to handle this guy?" Byron asks, handing Bill the flashlight.

"Sure." Bill gives Claude a weak but toothy grin and says, "You won't give me any trouble as long as I promise not to give you a kiss, will you, Claude?"

Claude begins to cry...

Byron hurries up the stairs, putting the gun in his jacket pocket, but never taking his hand from it. In the restaurant, he spots the other Carsey brother easily and approaches his booth casually. Standing behind him, Byron leaned forward and, through the jacket, presses the gun to the back of Phil's neck, whispering, "Now listen, motherfucker." Byron knows that nothing strikes fear into the heart of the average white man quite as effectively as a large black man with a gun calling him motherfucker and it tickles him. "You' re gonna get up real nice and slow, like you and me are old friends, and you're gonna come with me across the restaurant to the hallway back there without doing anything funny, or my little friend here's gonna take your face for a ride clean across this building, you understand?"

Phil swallows dryly and nods, then, clumsily but with caution, scoots out of the booth and walks a step ahead of Byron to the hallway as the barrel of the gun bumps his lower back with each step. At the end of the hall, Byron removes the gun from his pocket, opens the door and motions Phil down the stairs, calling to Bill for some light.

In the basement, Phil spits at his brother, "What the fuc'd you do, asshole?"

Byron pokes him hard with the gun. "Shut up." To Bill: "Flash that around. There's some rope down here somewhere."

"Holy shit," Phil chuckles coldly at Bill. "You."

"Yeah, me. Sit down with your brother."

Bill gets a fat coil of rope from a hook on the wall, hands the gun to Bill, places the flashlight on a crate and wastes no time in tying the Carsey brothers back to back. As he grunts and strains, pulling the rope tight, Bill says, "Maybe you can give us a little more information than your brother could, Phil."

"Go fuck yourself," he gurgles.

Byron moves quickly, enraged; he slaps the gun from Bill's hand, drops to one knee, grabs as much of Phil Carsey's hair as he can and pulls his head back hard until Phil is gagging, then shoves the barrel against his throat, spraying his fat face with spittle as he speaks in a rapid continuous stream: "Now you listen to me motherfucker. I'm a little edgy tonight and I'd be more than happy to blow your Goddamned brains out right now because you smell really bad and better yet I know you'll die and after some of the shit I've seen tonight that would be a pretty fuckin' reassuring sight, but maybe you'd like it better if my friend here took a little blood sample from one of your filthy fuckin' veins like them bitches you been haulin' in your trucks do while you're sittin' on your fat ugly ass eatin' chili, huh, would you like that, you wanna see what that's like, huh?"

Phil's face reddens and trembles with anger, but his eyes give away his fear. "Whuh - what? Whatta you want?" he whispers.

Byron lets go of him, stands and takes a deep, steadying breath, then hands the gun back to Bill and continues securing the ropes.

Bill's voice is unsteady: "That thing out in your truck has my son. I wanna know what to do about it."

Phil smirks. "Have another one."

Bill leans close, touching his nose to Phil's and showing his fangs. "What...is...she?"

Phil's nostrils flare with disgust. "The queen. Sorta. . . sorta like their ... leader, I guess. Their mother, kinda. She knows what they're thinkin', what they're doin'...least, she seems to. Hell, half the time, I think she knows what I'm thinkin' and doin'. I - I ... look, I'm sorry, but ... if she's got your son...you ain't gonna see him alive again. She likes 'em young."

With clenched teeth: "I want to kill her. How do I do it?"

"Yuh - you think I know? You duh - don't think I'd've tried by now if I knew? I hate that fuckin' thing, she scares the shit outta me, but there ain't a Goddamned thing I can do about it."

"Where'd you find her?"

"Oh, no. She found us. We ... we was independents. Went all over the country haulin' shit. We was in upstate New York on our way to pick up a couple loads a pastries. Y'know, packaged shit like Ding Dongs and Ho Ho's. We stopped at a rest stop. Late at night. There was a few cars there, but...there was no people. Place was dead. Hah. Dead. Went into the bathroom and there they was. These three guys. Feet stickin' outta three different stalls. Blood on the floor. They looked dead. Claude got sick. I got scared. Ran outside and looked in them other cars parked in the lot. There was...more bodies.

Never looked, but I figured there was more in the ladies' room.

All I wanted was to get the fuck outta there, y'know? And then ... there she was. Just as big and ugly as you please seepin' outta the dark. A great...big.. .Goddamned demon. Tha's what I thought she was at first, I swear, a fuckin' demon from Hell." He's out of breath and pants a moment. "Thuh - they'd been stayin' in this little cave way out in back of the rest stop.

Made us go to a ... a little cemetery way out in the middle of fuckin' nowhere. Made us..." He clenched his eyes against his memories. "...made us dig up coffins to haul'em in. Wuh - we had to...empty all these fuckin' coffins. Practically dug up the whole place before we had enough. All those - oh, sweet Jesus - all those bones and - and - and cuh - corpses. Rotted and smelling and...the smell, man, you just don't know the smuh - smell." He stops a moment, eyes closed, then: "Seven years ago. Believe me, buddy, if I knew how to stop her..." He just shakes his head silently, eyes wide.

"Then why do you do it, asshole? Why don't you just stop?"

He gives a soft, unpleasant giggle. "Hee...hee-hee... steady money and, uuhhh...hee-hee.. lotsa travel a course, a-and, lessee.. .buh-because she, hee-hee, won't fuckin' let us. Never let us, you kuh-kiddin '? That...cunt...Pies, man!" he hisses. "She's got fuckin' wings like a great big fuckin' bat!" His flabby cheeks quiver like gelatin, his eyes fill with tears and his shoulders quake within their bonds.

Byron finished tying and stands slowly, staring at Bill with a look of growing horror.

Phil's words came in a wet, trembling breath. "I'm fucked, man. Me'n him both. We'll be doin' this the rest of our fuckin' lives. And there ain't nothin' you can do...to stop it." He breaks down, sobbing openly, his chin pressed to his chest, head bobbing.

"Huh-hey, Phil," Claude whispers from behind him, craning his head around to look over his shoulder. "Hey, duhdon't cry, Phil. C'mon, Phil, don't...don't cry..."

Bill and Byron stare at one another for a long moment, both of them afraid to speak. Then Byron asks, "What do you suppose we should do?"

Bill massages his chest with four fingers. "I've got an idea. First we'll have to get the keys from them, then take the garlic out there and put some in at least one of the trucks to keep the girls out...until sunrise if we're lucky. Just keep it away from me. I feel bad enough as it is."

"What about the queen? What about your son?"

Bill closes his eyes and shakes his head slowly. "I just. ..don't know."

"Oh, c'mon, move it," the girl in the ski cap says in a voice no louder than the subtlest breeze,"you know how she gets when we're gone too long, and we've been gone too long already."

How who gets? Shawna wonders frantically. Who are they talking about?

The ski cap girl continues: "She needed to feed hours ago. I don't want to set off a panic -- "

The two girls move silently through the trucks with their trembling load.

Suddenly the blond freezes, stiffens and presses her fingers hard into Shawna's back and shoulder.

The girl in the ski cap drops to her knees holding her head and begins to cry softly.

The blond staggers, trembling, and falls to one knee making grunting sounds. And then -- it's over.

The girl in the ski cap sobs.

The blond gasps, "She's angry. We've taken too long."

"I told you, dammit, I told you."

Yust shut up. We'll have to hurry, that's all."

Shawna is lifted again and the girls quicken their pace...

"Hoooo-leeee shit," Byron breathes.

"What is it?" Bill responds in a whisper from somewhere in the dark.

"Well...if everybody could see this, maybe they'd listen to what we have to say. Caskets. Lotsa caskets." He hefts the two boxes of garlic into the trailer then climbs in himself, taking his .38 from his jacket pocket. Byron with knees trembling, reaches down with his left hand, which holds the flashlight, touches the lid of the closest casket, waits a moment, then throws it open.

Empty.

Putting his gun back in his pocket, he scoops a handful of garlic cloves out of the box and scatters them in the casket, then another handful. Then he lowers the lid.

Byron keeps looking over his shoulder at the open door, nervous, afraid. But he continues what he was doing -- putting two handfuls of garlic cloves in each casket -- as quickly as he can, then scatters the remaining cloves around the trailer floor, grabs the boxes and hurries back out. He pulls the door down, hops off the bumper and he and Bill return to the truck.

Gurgling sounds...hisses... wet, bitter mumblings.

"Yes, Mistress," they said..."we'll be quick...you won't hunger long..."

He feels the touch of her trembling fingers on his face now and then, like the caress of dead snakes, and she strokes his hair sometimes as she rambles on and on, her voice bubbling in her throat like boiling blood.

"I may not be able to wait, child...do you know what that means? You are beautiful. Do you know that I can hear your heart beating?"

He says nothing, just holding his breath for a long while.

"Do you know that I can feel your heart beating without even touching you? Do you know that? I could rip your heart out so fast you would still see it beating. I could feed it to you before you lost consciousness. Your heart...your beautiful beating heart..." Her voice becomes a terrifying growl, almost a rumble: "Where are those little sluts?" And then-

--silence. Nothing.

"Listen," Doug whispers firmly, "I'm not sure exactly what's going on here, but if this is some kind of prank, a hoax to get your wife back, or something, I'll throw you into court so fast you'll wish it had never crossed your mind."

Bill starts to speak, but Byron beats him to it: "Hey, friend, if this is a hoax, it's got Allen Funt beat all to hell. Besides, I would've kicked the shit outta this guy by now, he was trying to pull something over. But it's no hoax and we ain't got no time to deal with you right now."

"It's okay, Byron," Bill says calmly. "Look, Doug, all I want to do is save my son, okay?" In a whisper, he adds, "If that's still possible. Afterwards, you'll never see me again. I swear."

Doug softens, then averts his eyes a moment. "It's just ... the whole thing is so -- "

" -- yeah, crazy, I know," Bill interrupts. "But we've gotta live with it." He slaps Doug on the shoulder and turns to Byron, nodding toward the restaurant as he says, "Let's go..."

She strokes his throat and her claws scrape lightly across his skin. Her tongue, wet and cold, licks his cheek, working its way down to his throat where her lips closed...sucked...

"Don't be afraid," she whispers. "You'll feel no pain. Only a moment of extreme - "

There are three knocks on the trailer door and she pulls away from him. The door rumbles upward and faint light penetrates the darkness. Two young women climb in hesitantly, one of them carrying a frail little girl in her arms.

"We're sorry," one says, pulling the door down.

"We hurried," the other added, "but with the crowds -- "

The creature rushes forward and grabs the little girl up in her arms, growling, "I don't want to hear excuses!" She backs away from the two women silently and stands still for a long moment, then the women drop to their knees, clutching their heads and crying out in pain.

One whimpers, "Nuh-nuh-no, nuh-noooo!"

The other screeches, "Stop! Pluh-heeeze stop!"

Silence. The women fall back against the closed door, groaning. "Get the light and turn it on," the creature hisses, turning to Jon, holding the girl close. "I want him to see this. I want him to see what his father really is."

There is a metallic click and light shines in the blackness.

And Jon screams...

"All right everybody, we need your attention!"

Dina flinches and spins toward the booming voice. Byron is standing in the middle of the restaurant with a gaunt pale man.

Dina mutters, "What in the hell is he doing?"

The din of the crowd lowers slightly, but most people pay no attention.

The man beside Byron starts to speak but Byron touches his arm and shakes his head. Byron reaches into his coat pocket and removes a gun, holds it up and fires a shot it at the ceiling.

There is a wave of simultaneous gasps, the room falls silent and no one moves.

"Okay, listen up!" Byron shouts. "We've gotta problem and we need the help of everybody in this room. Everybody in this building! We're all stuck here, right? We aren't going anywhere, right? There's been a spill on the freeway and it's closed and we're all gonna be here for a while. For hours.

Maybe till sunrise or later. Now with that in mind, I want you to know that this guy--" He gestures toward the man beside him: "has made me aware of a problem we've got outside this building. We are all in a lot of danger. Unfortunately, you aren't gonna wanna believe me when I tell you why we're in danger and all I can say is I sure as hell wouldn't be doin' this shit if it weren't true. So listen up! If you don't..." He looks around for a moment, almost as if he were uncertain of what he was doing. "...you're on your own." He turns to the man beside him and nods.

The man seems to think carefully for a moment, then takes a moment longer to shift his shoulders, as if he were gearing up for something as -

Dina stalks toward Byron with a stiff back, head tilted back and chin jutting. She stops two feet away from him, takes a deep breath, holds out a hand and says quietly, "Give me the gun, Byron. Give it to me."

Byron looks at her in disbelief.

"You know this will mean your job, Byron, unless you stop now." She waggles her fingers and stiffens her outstretched arm.

Byron sucks his lips in and his eyes become wide. 'You can have my job!" he shouts. "You can have my fuckin' job after this! I quit! Now you --" He swings his arm up and puts the gun in her face; his hand trembling " -- shut the fuck up!"

Dina's hand drops to her side heavily and she backs up several steps, jaw slack.

Facing the crowd, Byron says, "Now this man is gonna talk, and if there's a brain in your fuckin' head, you'll listen to him!" He turns to his companion and says quietly, "Go ahead..."

"Our problem now is to keep them out of here. Now, I think I know how we can do that. They can't --'they can't tolerate garlic. We've gotten a lot of garlic from the basement, but we've used some of it already and we don't know if there will be enough left to do what we need to do."

"A-and ... what's that?" a woman asks timidly.

"We need to surround this place with it, especially all the doors and windows. To keep them out."

A bellowing laugh rings out and Bill turns toward the trucker's coffee counter to see a hefty man with a bushy brown beard, head back, laughing toward the ceiling. "Vampires!" he shouted jovially. "We got vampires, huh? Well, you're in luck.

I gotta truckload a garlic out in the lot. Maybe there's somebody here's gotta truckload a crosses, too!" his laughing continues.

A scrawny fellow a few seats down: "No, no, don't laugh. It sounds right to me. I've been hearing stories."

"What stories?" the bearded man barks.

"From friends. Other truckers. About lot lizards who... bit 'em. Just like this guy says. And they stole shit from the truck.

I always figured there was something weird about it, but..."

"Ha." The bearded man shakes his head. "It's a fuckin' fairy tale's, what it is. Those girls just bit 'em because they was enjoyin' gettin' their brains fucked out, is what that was. And you can't tell me --" The trucker stops mid-sentence when Byron rushes him, grabs his head and pulls his head back, touching the barrel of the gun to his throat.

"You shittin' us about hauling garlic?" he demands through clenched teeth. "You gotta load of garlic outside?"

The man nods as much as he is able.

Byron turns to Bill, "This is our man..."

He whispers, "Please don't hurt her. She's just a little girl. Please-"

"She's exactly what I want," the creature says, her mouth inches from the girl's throat. "And this is exactly what your father will have to do to keep from dying. Because he's one of us." Her head shoots forward and her fangs punch into the pale little girl's flesh.

Jon swallows several times to keep from throwing up and closes his eyes, but he has to watch; he can't believe what he was seeing.

Blood oozes from under the creature's mouth and dribbles over the girl's neck; the girl doesn't move, just stares blankly upward, mouth open, chest hitching. The creature's entire body moves fluidly as her mouth sucks. Her hands wriggle over the girl's body, stroking her face and hair and arms and-

--the creature freezes. Stiffens. She lifts her head slowly, mouth open and dripping with the girl's blood. Her eyes roll lazily and her hands close into fists as she sits up suddenly, holding the girl tightly in her arms. Her eyes are wide, mouth gaping, and then -

-she screams. Her wings lift and spread with a great rush of wind. Her scream cuts through the air like a dull razor, growing louder and louder as she rises jerkily, her body writhing, and she turns, arms rising above her head as her scream becomes even louder and more piercing and-

--the little girl began to scream, too, her voice mixing with the awful squall as the creature turns and -

-- dives toward the back of the trailer, scream rising, and slams through the closed doors, wings spreading even further as she moves outside and is airborne. Her scream fades into the night as her wings carry her away with great leathery flapping sounds.

The two young women in the trailer press their backs to the wall, one standing straight, the other hunkered in a squat.

They stare at the open doors with fearful eyes, trembling, the blond wringing her hands as she stands, the girl in the ski cap not moving at all. They seem not to notice Jon at all.

Jon stands slowly, staring at the two women one more time.

They were still staring at the open doors. He turns and heads quickly out of the trailer, running into the darkness.

An instant later, the two girls exchanged a confused glance, the blonde hissed, "Shit!" and they both jumped out of the trailer after the boy...

"You don't need a job anymore. You have me. We're gonna take care of each other."

Suddenly Amy stiffens beside him, her fingers digging into his thigh and she makes a strangling sound in her throat.

"Whatsamatter?" Kevin asked.

She closes her eyes and clutching her head between her hands, hissing.

"Amy? What's wrong?" He pulls the pick-up over to the side of the road, slowing to a stop.

"Nuh-no!" she barks. "Kuh-keep going!"

"But what's-"

"Just keep guh-going! Some-something wrong...with her...something huh-happening..."

"Something's wrong with who?"

Amy slams her head against the dashboard and screams, "Just get me away from her noowww!" as...

"What the hell happened?" Bill whispers.

"I don't give a damn," Byron gasps, trying to catch his breath. "I'm just glad it did, is all."

"Oh God, somebody help my baby!" Jenny Lake cries, kneeling beside her daughter. "She's bleeding! She's been hurt!

Oh God, I think she's been-"

Jenny is interrupted mid-sentence by a sound from outside. It begins faintly, then grows louder as it became more identifiable: a high-pitched shriek. All eyes turn from the heap of moist, blackened ashes to the broken window through which gusts of snow still blow. The shriek is joined by another, and another, until the night was singing with a chorus of bone-chilling, not-quite-human screams. And among them, so faint that it was almost buried, was a voice that makes Bill's heart skip a beat; "Daaaad! Daaaad!"

A.J. hurries into the restaurant, her voice weak as she stammers, "Bill? Was thuh-that him? Wuh-was that our JuhJonny?"

Bill turns to Byron and snaps, "Bring some garlic," as he heads past A.J. and out of the restaurant.

Byron vaults over the coffee counter to one of the remaining crates of garlic, puts down his gun for a moment and begins to stuff fistfuls of it into his pockets. He stuffs his gun under his belt, picks up the crate and says to the trucker who'd said he was hauling garlic, "Grab one of these and follow me." Then, to the crowd: "We're gonna need all the help we can get! Anybody interested in all of us staying alive, come out and give a hand." Then he followed Bill at a jog, as...

-- Jon stumbles to his feet, screaming for his dad again, as screams of agony rise in the dark around him, female voices wailing as if their flesh were being burned off, and-

-- male voices, too, crying out in fear and pain, and

-women beginning to fall from the cabs of the trucks in the parking lot and running, screaming, through the snow all around them, running as if pursued by their worst nightmares, their arms outstretched, some of them naked or only half dressed, with garments hanging from their bodies as if they had suddenly gone mad in the act of undressing, and-

--as the blonde dives forward, clutching the cuffs of Jon's pants, nearly tripping him up his cries for his dad collapse into senseless screams of terror, when-

-two arms wrap around him suddenly from behind, pulling him away from the girl and throwing him aside.

Jon's screams became quiet sobs of relief when he sees his dad. He kicks the girl in the face, surprising her enough to knock her backward with a shocked grunt. He grabs Jon's elbow and begins leading him toward the building as he says, "Are you all right?"

Jon simply nods as he and his dad hurry into the truck stop. Dad looks back over his shoulder at the figures staggering and running and crawling in the night.

The big black man Jon had seen with Dad earlier hurries out the door as they go in and Dad says to him, "Get that garlic around the windows. They're everywhere and they've gone crazy."

Inside, Jon's mom rushes toward him, crying his name as she embraced him and holds him tighter than he could remember ever being held.

"Oh Jonny, oh thank God, Jonny, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I yelled at you, thank God, are you all right, honey, are you hurt, did that thing hurt you?"

"No," he mutters when Mom pulls back to look at him.

"No, Mom, I'm not hurt. But there was...a little girl," he added, frowning, as...

"Amy!" Kevin shouts, killing the engine and pressing himself against the door to get as far from her as possible until she calms down. "Amy, what the hell is wrong? Stop it!" But she ignores him, and thrashes around in the cab, slapping and scratching herself, clutching her hair and pulling her fists away with knotted strands sticking between her fingers, and her screams sometimes formed garbled words and, stiff with fear and confusion, Kevin listens carefully, trying to make them out:

"--how - die--could sh -- ow could -eee die - how cuh-could she--die-"

"Bill!" Byron calls. "Get the hell away from here! Go back inside and keep everybody in there! We'll take care of this!"

Bill lifts his head and looks toward the truck; the flashlight beams blur through the stinging tears in his eyes.

"Go on!" Byron shouts, waving his arms.

Crawling away and finally managing to climb to his feet, Bill obeys...

"What's happening?" A.J. asks, rushing toward him.

Before he can answer, she gasps quietly and says, "My God, Bill, you look horrible. Are you all right?"

He leans against a rack of candy and chewing gum and chuckles. "I don't think so."

"What's happening outside, Dad?" Jon asks, stepping forward.

"They're getting the guh-garlic from...from the truck. So they can spread it around. The building. At the doors and windows, and..." He feels dizzy again and pauses, leaning forward and holding his head in his hands. When he lifts his head again, he realizes that the other people around him are closing in, their expressions fearful, as if they are depending on him to tell them. "Luhlook," he says quietly, "everything'll be okay if we just stay inside. That's all, just stay inside."

"But what if they come in here?" barks a fat woman as she bounces a baby in her arms.

Other voices, ask questions urgently. He lifts his hands. "It'll just be few more minutes before they have that garlic spread around the building. Then there's no way they can come in here."

The voices quiet, making way for a scream coming from the restaurant.

"Help! Please, somebody help! She's bleeeeding! She's bleeeeding!"

Bill and A.J. exchange a glance, then she turns to Doug and says, "I'm going to see if there's something I can do." Bill follows her into the restaurant, where the woman is still huddling over her little girl. Bill puts his arm around Jon as they near the kneeling woman, who looks up at A.J., eyes desperate.

"I'm a nurse," A.J. says.

The woman sweeps a hand across her teary eyes and says, "She's been bitten. Bad. She's bleeding."

A.J. kneels down beside her and the waitress, whose uniform is stained with blood, grasps her arm. Her face screws up and tears fall more freely.

"She has CANCER," she whispers.

A.J. removes the woman's hand gently and turns the pale, frightened girl's head to one side so she can inspect the wound. "It's not too bad," she says. "We just need to stop the bleeding. Get me some rubber gloves from the kitchen?"

The woman hurries away, returning a moment later with a pair of green latex dish washing gloves. As A.J. puts them on, she says, "Get me a cloth, something clean to stop the flow, some hydrogen peroxide from the store, maybe, and some gauze if they have any."

The little girl blinks as her mother rushes to get the peroxide and bandages; she looks at A.J., confused and frightened, and asks, "Is the monster gone?"

With tears in her eyes, A.J. looks up at Bill, silently asking him for help. He hunkered down beside the girl and tried to sound reassuring as he says, "Yeah, honey. The monster's gone."

The girl squints at Bill for a moment, "Are you sick, too?"

"Yeah," he whispered. "I'm sick, too."

He stands and turns to the crowd in the restaurant. They're watching him quietly with expectant eyes. "Everything's going to be okay," Bill says, "as long as none of you leave the building for any reason whatsoever. Just...stay inside."

The batteries powering the auxiliary lights finally die and the restaurant flickers into darkness. "Somebody get some of those halogen lanterns and bring them in here," Bill calls weakly to no one in particular.

"What's gonna happen, Dad?" Jon asks quietly.

"We're going to stay here until sunrise, Jonny. It's just -" He glances at his watch: "oh, an hour or so from now. Things are going to be fine."

"No. I mean, what's gonna happen to you?"

Bill puts his hand on Jon's shoulder and gives a closed mouth smile. "Oh, don't worry about me. Tell you what. Go see how your sisters are doing, okay?" He pats the boy and gives him a gentle push. Once Jon had disappeared, tossing reluctant looks over his shoulder, Bill goes to the coffee counter and falls heavily onto one of the stools, folding his arms on the counter and resting his head. "Good question," he mumbled quietly to himself. "What's gonna happen to me..."

Then Byron comes inside, visibly shaken. He takes the seat beside Bill and lights a cigarette, then blows the smoke out hard as he keeps his eyes on the window.

"Gave these damned things up four years ago," he says waving the cigarette, "and climbed the walls for a month. But on my worst day, I never wanted a smoke as bad as I did just now. It's a fuckin' nightmare out there," he whispers. "Them things have gone crazy! They're like a pack of wild dogs or, or...hell, like a school of sharks in bloody water. And if they don't get that damned freeway open so we can get some help in here..." Another angry burst of smoke as he shakes his head, still staring out at the night and vague figures that move around in the darkness. "Fuckin' bullets don't do no good.

Nothing stops 'em.'Cept that garlic. God, I hope it keeps working."

'Janitor!" Dina Bonnick calls from across the restaurant, shooting out of her chair and stabbing a finger toward Byron.

'Janitor! You, Byron!" Dr. Kale tries to quiet her, get her to sit down, but she just shakes him off. "Where have you been ? Clean up this mess right now!" She points at the scattered shards of glass and the now crusty puddle of black ooze on the floor. "That is your job, you know ! You do want to keep your job, don't you?"

Byron stares her down, cracking his knuckles as he smokes. Finally, he whispers, "Whatta you say I go over there and toss that dizzy bitch into the parking lot?"

"Don't worry about it, Byron," Bill says. "Everybody's scared and upset."

Byron stares at the woman for a few minutes, until the doctor calms her down, then he puts out his cigarette, lights another and gestures toward what remained of the winged creature on the floor. "The hell you s'pose happened to that thing?"

It's becoming an effort to speak without slurring his words, but Bill says, "I'm not sure, but I think it had something to do with the little girl it was carrying. She has CANCER." He looks at Byron. "It drank some CANCER infected blood. Maybe that was it."

Byron stared at the lumpy substance, frowning. He cracks his knuckles a few more times then, without saying another word, stands and goes over to the window where he stares out at the night.

Bill groans quietly and runs a hand through his hair. When he lowers it to the counter, he sees thick strands of hair clinging between his fingers. Turning his hand over, he sees that the skin around his fingernails is turning an odd bluish grey and beginning to crack and peel.

A hand touches his shoulder and he jerks around, startled, to see Doug standing beside him. The man's mouth works silently at first, struggling to find the right thing to say, then he looks away a moment.

"Look," he says finally, "I just want to say, um, that I'm sorry about, um, not taking you seriously before. I thought maybe you were...oh, I don't know what I thought."

"Forget it. Really." Bill tries to smile. "It's not the kind of thing that's easy to take seriously."

Hesitantly, Doug takes a seat beside him.

"How're the girls?" Bill asks.

"Fine. They're over there with Jon." He nods toward a table where the girls sit with their brother sipping cans of Pepsi. "They talk about you a lot, you know. All three of them. Especially Jon. They've missed you."

Bill's silence seemed to embarrass Doug.

The two of them stare out the window for a while. Patches of the darkness outside move, seemed to ooze this way and that around the parked cars like black mud. They're out there, waiting, thinking, deciding what to do, how to get inside the restaurant where a magnificent buffet awaits them, with desserts of children and infants...

An elderly woman in the far rear corner of the restaurant begins to sing "Rock of Ages" in a frail, cracked voice and, a few lines into the hymn, others join her, until nearly everyone on that side of the restaurant is singing, some with spirit, others in mournful voices that wander off key.

Jenny strokes Shawna's forehead. She is so pale, her eyes nestle so deep in her dark sockets. Blood has been splattered on her face and in what remains of her hair. Jenny holds a cloth to the wound on Shawna's neck, checking now and then to see that the bleeding is continuing to slow. The skin around the bite has turned a mottled purple and yellow and is becoming puffy.

"They hurt Mrs. Tipton," Shawna whispers tremulously. "I think...maybe they killed her."

"Don't worry about that now, honey. Just try to hold still and relax and -- stay alive, try to stay alive like you've been doing for the last year, Shawna, please - think about something nice." The restaurant has grown so cold that her breath wafts from her mouth like a small ghost each time she speaks.

"It bit me."

"I know, honey, but that thing is gone now. It's not gonna hurt you anymore."

The man named Bill returns to Jenny's side and gives Shawna a little smile. "How's it going?"

"Okay," Shawna answers, flatly.

Speaking in a soothing voice, Bill asks her if she'd seen anyone else in the trailer where the monster had bitten her. She described a boy and Bill nods, saing that was his son, that he is all right now, and asks if there was anyone else.

"Just two ladies. They were mean. They hurt Mrs. Tipton and took me from the house. They were real white. Sick looking, maybe. Like us."

"Okay." He pats Shawna's shoulder and says, "Don't worry about them. They're not coming in, because we've -- "

Byron came to Bill's side and clutches his arm urgently.

"Gotta talk a sec. I got an idea. C'mon over here." He leads Bill to the coffee counter where they speak quietly.

Jenny watches them, feeling afraid again. Was something else wrong? Had things gotten worse? She reaches down absently and takes Shawna's hand, squeezing it as she watched the two men, watched their lips movie so quickly, their brows frowning, heads nodding rapidly. Byron pulled something from his coat pocket, a small box; he opens it, reaches inside and produces what looked like a bullet. Holding it between thumb and forefinger, he gestures with it, still talking fast, then pauses, waiting for Bill's response. Suddenly, they turn and look at her at once and move toward her as Byron returns the bullet to its box and the box to his pocket. She waits, but they say nothing for a long moment, exchanging hesitant glances, then squat beside her.

"Jenny, honey," Byron says, his deep voice soft and uncertain, "we're gonna need your help."

There is something about the way he says it that makes Jenny slide an arm under Shawna's shoulders and hold her closer to her side. "What? I mean, how?"

Another pause, another reluctant glance between the two men. Then Bill says, "We think the reason that thing died -- " With a nod toward the mess on the floor. "-- had something to do with your daughter. It bit your daughter, and...she has CANCER."

Jenny's insides begin to shrink with dread. "Yuh-you wanna use my buh-baby for some kind of --"

"No, no," Byron whispers, squeezing her arm. "It's just a guess, but it's all we got to go on, and in case we're right, and in case all that garlic out there don't work...well, what we need is...we need some of your daughter's blood."

Jenn's eyes widened and she holds Shawna even closer, hissing, "Are you out of your fucking mind, you want me to give you -- you think I'll - my God, how can you --" She stops, takes a breath and starts to get up, telling Shawna, "You wait just a second, sweetheart, I'II be right buh--"

The little girl grips Jenny's hand hard and says, "They think maybe I killed the monster, Momma? That maybe I can stop the others?"

"You never mind, honey, I'm gonna go talk to these men and --"

"Is that what they think?" She sucks her lower lip between her teeth, lifting her head from Jenny's rolled up coat, frowning.

Jenny glances at Byron, then Bill. They both nod.

Shawna sees their silent replies and squeezed Jenny's hand again, saying as firmly as she could, "Then I want to help."

Bill and Byron sit at the coffee counter with the box of bullets open and the bullets lined up before them. Each wears rubber dishwashing gloves and holds a cloth that had been soaked with Shawna Lake's infected blood. One at a time, they pick up a bullet, hold it delicately between thumb and forefinger and squeeze the cloth around it, coating it with the blood; the bloody bullet is then returned to the counter in another line. As they work, they watch the window, catching glimpses of figures moving in the darkness outside, watching them.

"This might not work," Bill mutters.

"How come?"

"Well, I don't know how long the virus will last on a bullet out in the open, know what I mean? And it's being shot through a gun. And a bullet isn't exactly a sponge. A bunch of reasons, know what I mean?"

"Yeah, yeah, we're grabbin' at straws, I know, but what the hell else we gonna grab at? Tell you what," Byron says, turning to him. "You come up with a fool-proof idea and I'11 drop this one like a bad habit."

Bill nods in agreement and they continue in silence.

As the minutes pass the sun was rising.

The screaming begins again outside in the darkness as...

"The fuck is that?" Claude barks, out of breath.

Phil just listens, chest heaving.

It grows even louder and suddenly both realized what they are hearing.

"It's them," Claude breaths.

"Shit... sunrise."

"What're they doin' out there? How come they ain't found a place to hide? How come they ain't in the trucks?"

"The fuck am I s'posed to know?"

They listened as it grows louder still, as if it is coming closer... ...dangerously close, until -- it sounded as if it is right outside-

"The window!" Phil cries in a shrill voice.

"Holy shit!" Claude shouts, slamming his back against his brothers, struggling against the ropes. "Get us outta here! Somebody get us outta here for the love of Gaawwwd!"

The brothers fall on their sides and crane their necks to look up at the window, which is completely blocked by a wall of leering faces. They continued screaming for help, begging for rescue, but...

Byron has already loaded his gun with six bloody bullets and is on his feet facing the window shouting, "What the hell's that?"

Bill rises slowly, his entire body tense and aching. "The sun's...coming up," he whispers.

"What's that mean?"

"Means...if they don't...if we don't...find shelter...we're gonna die."

Byron spins on him, shouting, "What the hell you mean, we're gonna -- " He freezes, staring at Bill, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. Bill can't resist lifting a hand and touching his cheek.

His skin is like beef jerky.

Byron looks as if he is about to speak, but no sound comes from his mouth. Bill leans close to him and rasps, "Calm them down. Tell 'em...it's good...what's happening. They're dying out there."

After a moment, Byron turns and shouts, "Hey! Everybody just quiet down, here! C'mon, no, just--" He pointed the gun in the air and fires.

The voices fall to a murmur.

"Nobody panic, now, y'hear? What you're hearing out there is good. It means--" He stops mid-sentence and, along with Bill and everyone else, listens.

It is quiet outside.

"What happened?" Byron whispers.

Just the whining of the wind. And something else, something softer. Voices...muffled, screaming voices...

Bill frowned and rasps, "Sounds like...like it's coming from...from the base -"

"Basement!" Byron shouts. "The fuckin' basement! We forgot to cover the window to the fuckin' basement!"

Byron dashes around Bill toward the hallway that leads to the basement door as the crowd's panic begins to grow again. Bill falls against the counter and closes his eyes when the realization strikes him.

The voices belong to the Carsey Brothers.

The lot lizards had gotten into the building.

Bill knew he wouldn't be the only one who would not see daylight...

Byron runs across the restaurant toward the rear corridor taking his flashlight from his jacket pocket. What had always seemed to be a short, unthreatening corridor seems to stretch on forever as he moves into deeper and deeper darkness. The closer he gets to the basement door, the better he can hear a sound coming from the other side, and a few feet from the door, he slows his pace to a fast walk, listening.

He can't make it out yet, but it is not a voice or footsteps. It sounds more like...sloshing.

His keys jangled as he finds the master and slips it into the lock.

The sound continues.

He turns the key and pushed the door open.

The sound is more distinct.

Sucking.

The flashlight beam pierces the darkness as it sweeps down the stairs searching for the source of the sound. The saucer of light passes over a few feet of dirty concrete floor, a couple of crates and -- a pair of shapely female legs on their knees, then two more, and slender white arms splashed with black-red and a face smeared with it and -- Byron looks down at the swarm of pale bloody faces that rise quickly from the glistening mess that used to be the Carsey brothers and look up at him.

He spends a moment in eternity at the top of those stairs, locked in the gaze of dozens of startled eyes glittering in the beam of his flashlight. A throaty hiss rises from below and the girls move as one toward the stairs. He makes a small pathetic sound - and raises the gun, firing twice into the mass of bloody grinning faces pushing upward toward him, but the gunshots have no effect and the sound he makes grows louder as he drops the flashlight, backing into the corridor and pulling the door shut, clenching his fist around the knob to keep it from being turned from the other side as he screams down the dark corridor, "Everybody out! Get out of the building! Everybody get out noowww!"

A chorus of screams erupt in the restaurant. Running feet storm over the floor in a rush of movement; glass shatters and men and women shout incoherently.

The knob jiggles in Byron's hand and he tightens his grip, pointed the gun and emptied it into the door. It does no good.

Fists pounded the door and the collective hiss from the other side became a guttural snarl.

"Byron!"

Dropping the gun and clutching the doorknob with both hands, Byron looks to the other end of the corridor and sees Bill leaning against the wall unsteadily, holding one of the hologen lanterns at chest level, his face lost in shadow. Behind him, through the windows, Byron can see the first dull ghost of daylight in the iron sky.

"Byron! Come outside! Hurry! They won't last long out there! Just run!" Bill lifts the lantern a bit higher so his face is bathed in its harsh white glow. His pale skin had become dry and flakey, wrinkling deeply around his eyes and mouth. He looked twenty years older.

The door cracks and splinters and a bloodied arm shoots through the jagged opening, a hand slaps onto the side of Byron's face and closes hard, digging nails into his flesh and slamming his head against the door.

Byron screams as the door opens and the arms slide out of the darkness, embracing him like tentacles, and hands tear at his clothes, fangs rip his flesh and tongues lap at his blood.

He fights at first, writhing on the floor, flailing and kicking, but the pain becomes too great, the screams of his attackers too loud, and as his own blood gurgles in his throat and spattered into his eyes ...

...Bill backs away from the corridor feeling helpless and angry at both himself and Byron. Unable to watch the blood bath a few yards away, he turns toward the panic in the restaurant.

Leaning against walls and counters and chairs, Bill walks unsteadily into the chaos holding the lantern up and searching for A.J. and the kids.

On the floor just a few feet in front of him is Jenny Lake.

She huddles protectively over Shawna screaming to no one in particular, "What's happening my God what's happening what is -

"Take the girl and go, Jenny, just get out of here!" Bill shouts to be heard above the confusion.

She looks up at him, tears streaking her terrified face.

"But what's happening, where do we go, where do we -"

Fighting to keep his balance, Bill reaches down and grips her upper arm, pulling hard. "Outside! Get outside!"

Shawna is now curled into a fetal position on the floor, wrapped in her mother's coat, and her wide eyes dart around in the dim light, confused and terrified. Jenny slides her arms under the frail little girl and scoops her up off the floor.

"Hold it," Bill says, putting the lantern on the coffee counter.

He removes his jacket with stiff, weak movements and drapes it over Jenny's shoulders. "It's even colder out there," he says, nodding toward the exit.

Jenny makes a sound that might have been meant as a thank you.

She turns and shoulders her way into the crowd and, as they hurry out, Shawna looks at Bill over her mother's shoulder and, realizing that he wasn't following them, shouts, "Bill! C'mon, come with us!"

Bill lifts his lantern again and waves at the girl. "I'11 be fine."

"No! Mommy, wait for Bill!"

They disappear into the crowd.

Bill turns back to the corridor and squints into the darkness. He can only see shadowy movements, but he can hear enough: horrible slurping and sucking, like pigs in mud.

He turns and begins shouting, "A.J.! Cece! Jonny!" He walks into the fleeing crowd calling their names over and over. A woman with silver hair bumps into him as she spins around, shouting at everyone who rushed past her, "Stop it! Stop this right now!" Her eyes are wide with the look of one who has abandoned her sanity. She waved her fists in the air.

"I am the manager! I am responsible! Stop this right now!"

"Come on, ma'am," Bill says, taking her arm and trying to turn her toward the front of the building. "You've got to get out of here, it's danger --"

She lashed out and catches him hard in the ribs with her forearm, screaming through clenched teeth, "Get your hands off of me! I'm the manager, Goddammit!"

The world tilts and Bill's head strikes the edge of a table as he falls. He drops the lantern and it rolls over the floor away from him. His mouth opens and he tried to cry out in pain, but cannot find his voice. He watches through bleary eyes as legs rushed by him; feet kicking him and stepping on his arms and legs and garbled voices fading slowly, as if he were sinking under water.

Bill closes his eyes and waits for the final deadly silence and the everlasting sleep of death to descend as...

...Jon jerks his arm from Doug's grasp and shouts, "Let me go! I'm gonna go back and help Dad!"

They're just a few feet from the entrance, which is clogged with people pushing one another aside to get out.

Cece pulls on her mother's arm. "Where's Dad, Mom?

Where is he?"

Jon can tell by the sinking expression on Mom's face that she hadn't planned on telling the girls that Dad was around.

Doug takes his arm again and said firmly, "He can take care of himself, Jon, now let's--"

"He's sick!" Jon screams, pulling away again and turns to go back into the restaurant.

"Whatsamatter with Daddy, Mom?" Cece asks, still tugging her arm.

Doug clutches Jon's shoulders from behind and pulls him out of the way of an enormous fat woman holding a baby and blubbering senselessly as she rushes by, shoving people aside roughly to get to the doors. Doug holds him close, wrapping an arm around Jon's chest and half dragging him through the first set of glass doors, growling, "You can all see your dad when we get outside, okay? Outside!"

Bilious anger burns in Jon's throat and he began kicking back at Doug's shins and digging his elbows into Doug's abdomen to get away; he accidentally kicks an elderly woman whose husband was helping her out of the building, but they didn't stick around for an apology.

Jon shouts, "He can't go outside, you sonofabitch! The sun'll kill him!" He breaks free and spins to face them, his breath coming fast and hard.

The girls stare at him in shocked confusion, jerking back and forth as they are bumped and jostled by others hurrying out.

"You can go outside if you want," Jon says, backing into the store, "but I'm gonna see if I can help him."

Cece turns to her mother: "We can't leave him, Mom." She begins to bob up and down slightly, as if she has to urinate: "We gotta help Daddy! I wanna see him! Please, let's help him!"

Jon watches as a long, silent look passes between Mom and Doug, then Doug sighs, "Take the girls outside, Adelle." To Jon: "Let's go."

Jon's tight shoulders relax with relief so strong that he almost laughs out loud as he turns and heads back toward the restaurant.

There are still more people coming out, some of them taking advantage of the chaos and ducking into the store to do a little last minute looting, others lagging behind with children or bags they'd brought in with them. A few lanterns remain scattered around the dark restaurant; the last ones leaving the restaurant are either limping or being helped out, having been injured in the initial panic. A silver haired woman stands in the middle of the darkness pounding her fist on a table and shouting, "You are all going to lose your fucking jobs, every last one of you, and l am not going to be responsible, do you hear me?" Her voice is raw and hoarse and her body moves in rigid, nervous jerks, her knees nearly buckling now and then as her legs quake. The last waitress in the room goes to her side, murmuring soothingly as she tries to put her arm around the woman's shoulders. The woman jerks away, shouting, "You are fired as of now, missy, do you understand? Get your things and get out of here!" The waitress backs up reluctantly, then hurries out, crying. The woman turns, then, and points at the floor to her left: "And some body get this God damned drunk off the floor and out of here!"

Jon spots him. He is sprawled on the floor on his back.

And he is holding very, very still.

"Dad!" he shouts, hurrying toward him with Doug beside him.

But the crazy woman is faster, rushing to his side and pulling back her leg to kick him, growling, "Goddamned transient wino!"

Jon sprints forward and dives, barking, "No!" as he tackles her to the floor.

The woman lands on the carpet but rolls to the strip of tile floor that runs behind the counter. Stunned, she props herself up on her side just a few feet from the entrance to a dark corridor as Jon crawls on hands and knees to his dad's side.

"My God," Doug breathes as he looked down at him.

Dad looks even worse than he had just a short while ago.

His white, flakey skin is shriveled and seems to be running off his skull like melting wax. His hair has become coarse and his fingernails are darkened slightly. The appearance is not that of age, but of decay, of rot.

Tears sting Jon's eyes and blur the face that no longer resembled his father's.

Doug kneels and touches two fingertips to his throat. "He doesn't have a pulse," he says quietly. "And he's not breathing."

"Course not!" Jon sobs. "He's been dead for over a year!" Jon grabs his dad's shoulders and shakes him hard. "Dad!

Dad, you gotta wake up! We're gonna help you outta here, Dad! Dad!"

Doug touches Jon's arm and says gently, "Doug, that's not going to do any good. There's nothing we can --"

"Sun . . . " The word is spoken in a paper-thin voice through cracked and peeling lips that barely move.

"Dad?"

"The sun...is coming...up..."

Doug stares at the body, horrified.

Jon leans close to him. "What should we do, Dad? Tell us what to do!"

Dad's eyelids peel open slowly and his dulled, sunken eyes try hard to focus until they find Jon's face. "Jonny..."

"Whatta we do?"

"Cece...safe?"

Jon nods.

"Mom?"

Again.

When Jon sees that Dad is trying feebly to sit up, he and Doug help him, one on each side. Dad groans and squints as he looks toward the window. Outside, the grey sky had grown just a bit lighter, but darkness still rules.

"Truck," Dad coughs.

"What?"

"Take me...to my truck...where it's...dark..."

"He wants to go to his truck" Jon says.

Doug nods, his features curled with disgust. "Okay, let's get him---"

"I'm going to report all of you!"

They both toss a glance at the woman. She is sitting up now, her shoulders slumped, her face sagging and slick with tears. She speaks to no one in particular, just sits there with legs spread before her, stiff arms propping her up, head lolling as she cries.

"Report every...damned... one of you..."

"Okay, let's get him up," Doug says.

Jon turns back to Dad, but only for an instant; something catches his eye and he turns to the woman again. Something moves in the darkness of the corridor behind her. Something white. Several somethings.

Arms. Long arms reach out slowly, silently.

And faces. White, geisha-like faces smeared with ... with something, each with two deep black holes from which sinister eyes glisten.

They move forward, arms outstretched, slowly at first, and then -

-- they pounce. The arms wrap around the woman and the faces open sloppy, smeared mouths with fangs that drip of dark fluids and the woman's face shows only a heartbeat of surprise before-

--the arms pull her into the darkness and all Jon can see is her legs, kicking silently and uselessly, and then

--the darkness is just darkness again, except for the horrible sucking sounds that begin ...

"Doug!" Jon shouts.

He'd seen it, too. "Holy shit," he barks, lifting Dad clumsily and shouting, "Out! Get outta here!"

Faces appear in the darkness again, moving out of the corridor and into the glare of the halogen lanterns, three of them, looking directly at Jon and-

--smiling.

Doug bundles Dad in his arms as easily as if he were a sack of laundry and Jon follows him out, glancing over his shoulder as the women became fully visible now, their clothes hanging in tatters on their bloody bodies, a white red-splashed breast exposed here, a spattered thigh there.

"Hurry," Dad rasps. "God...hurry..."

Doug and Jon break into a run, slowing for no one and nothing, knocking over a display of greeting cards as they round the corner and pushing out the first set of glass doors, then knocking an ashtray over before getting through the second.

"Daddy?" Cece screams from somewhere in the crowd.

"Is that Daddy? Daddeeee!"

"No!" Mom shouts, her voice thick with emotion. "Stay here, Cece, just wait here." She catches up with them as they run across the parking lot toward Dad's truck across the street. "My God, what's wrong?" she cries. "What's happening to him?"

Jon sees that he's getting worse; his cheeks are more hollow and his arms shake. But even more disturbing is the expression of pain and fear on his face -- eyes closed tightly, lips quivering -- and the thin whimpering sound he makes. When he speaks, his voice is forced and unsteady.

"The girls...stay with the girls," Dad says, turning his face toward Mom without opening his eyes.

They stop beside the truck and Doug says, "He's right, Adelle, go back with the girls. I'11 be over in a minute. And get everybody away from the building. Thuh-those - those things are in there."

She protests at first and tries to talk to Dad, but Doug convinces her and she heads back reluctantly.

"Inside...puh - please," Dad hisses and Doug opens the cab and carries him inside as Jon follows. Doug lifts him into the dark sleeper where he curls into a ball and groans, "The ice...box...in the corner..."

Jon is smaller, so he crawls up into the sleeper, squints in the darkness and finds the icebox in the corner at the foot of the bed. He opens it to find several plastic bags stacked in rows. Each was filled with a thick dark red liquid.

He winces when he realizes what it is and just kneels there staring at the bags for a while.

"Juh-Jonny, please..." Dad groans.

With twitching fingers, he reaches into the icebox and removes one of the bags, holding the corner gingerly between thumb and forefinger as he turns to his father.

Dad snatches the bag from Jon's hand and began to tear at the top clumsily with his teeth, holding it in convulsing hands.

"C'mon, Dad, you don't need that," Jon says quietly, pleadingly. "We'll get you a doctor and he can -"

Dad just waves a hand, dismissing him, as the bag rips open. He tips it back and opens his mouth, letting the thick blood ooze between his swollen, cracked lips. Some of it dribbles down his chin as he gulps loudly, stopping to cough once and lick his lips.

Jon's stomach hitches and he turns away so quickly he almost falls out of the sleeper. He stumbles down into the passenger seat and leans forward, holding his face in his hands, feeling sick. Doug pats his back helplessly as...

...Bill drops the empty bag and shudders, his tongue smacks around the corners of his mouth as he lies back and struggles to feel the blood warming him, enriching him, filling the rotting, decaying holes opening up deep inside him. But the effect is minimal and short lived. Bill lies in the dark, eyes closed, listening to the muffled whispers of Doug and Jon in the cab.

"Jon," Bill rasps, his voice a little stronger but not much.

After a moment: "Yeah?"

Sitting up, Bill wipes his bloody face on a blanket. "Come here, please."

Jon is reluctant, but he peers over the edge of the bed, never meeting Bill's eyes.

"Do me a favor," Bill says, trying to keep his voice steady.

"Go out there with your mom, okay?"

He says nothing.

"And...guh - give your sister a...a hug from me. Tell them I love them and I'm sorry I didn't get to see them. Maybe. ..maybe some other time."

Jon starts to turn away, muttering, "Liar."

Bill grabs his wrist and holds him. "I'm sorry, Jonny. You know I didn't...want any of this to happen. It's just one of those things. Life's full of them. Nobody's at fault. Nothing anybody can do. If you can't stop hating me...at least don't take it out on your mother. And on Doug. Okay?"

Still averting his eyes, the boy nods only slightly.

Bill looks at him in the dark, going over Jon's face slowly with his eyes, recording every feature, every flaw. And he sees something he'd never noticed before.

On Jon's neck, below his jaw. A small patch of skin beneath which something lurked.

A pulse.

Bill jerks his head away and tries not to think about that pulse. He squeezes Jon's wrist and says in a strained voice, "I...love you...son."

Jon breaks. His face crumbles into a mask of pain and he quickly sobs, "Me, too," as he drops out of sight and hurries out of the truck.

Bill takes a moment to gather as much strength as he can find and sits up, hanging his legs off the bed. Fat snowflakes still fall from steel-colored clouds, the bottoms of which glow ever so softly. Daylight is brighter but still very young, yet it fires scalding shards of metal into Bill's eyes and he shields them with a hand. Doug sits in the passenger seat looking up at him with a mixture of apprehension and helplessness.

"Is there anything I can do, Bill?" he asks nervously.

"Yeah. Grab my sunglasses out of that pouch on the door." Doug hands him the glasses and he puts them on. They help some, but not much. "Now," Bill says, "go out there and get everybody as far away from the building as possible."

"Why?"

He shakes his head. "Just do it. And, um...take care of A.J. and the kids. Take good care of them. And tell A.J. ... tell her how sorry Iam."

"Look, Bill, maybe there's something we can do, somebody who can help you take care of this and get bet--"

"Just do it."

Doug nods slowly, openes the door and gets out. He stands outside for a moment, watching Bill.

"HURRY, dammit!

The door slams and Bill hears Doug's footsteps crunching over the snow. He watched him head back to the crowd in the parking lot. An off-key, muddled rendition of "The Old Rugged Cross" comes from one corner of the parking lot, sung by unsteady, frightened voices. To the right of the building, he can see part of the truck lot and, even with bleary eyes, he can see several still bodies sprawled on the snowy ground here and there. Then his eyes turn to the gas island, to the pumps standing like mechanical guards beneath the white steel canopy, lined up with their curved chrome fingers stuck in their ears.

As Doug nears the crowd in front of the truck stop, he is overcome with exhaustion. A.J. is crying and chewing her lip, her arms around Cece, who is also crying. He opens his arms to her and she falls into them, sobbing.

"What's wrong with him?" she asks.

"I'm not sure, but...well, he's..." He chuckles without humor, unable to believe what he is saying. "...he's one of them. One of those things. And he's...very sick. I guess. Hell, I don't know. Jon says he's been dead for a year."

A.J. closes her eyes and turns away, her lips thinning as she holds back more tears.

"Sorry, honey. He's resting right now." He reaches out and massages her shoulders, frowning. Shaking his head abruptly, trying to dismiss his feelings, he embraces her again, holds her in silence for a moment. He turns to Jon, who stands a few feet away, watching his dad's truck, eyes red and swollen, lips quivering. "You okay, Jon?" He nods.

"We wanna see him!" Cece cries.

Doug hunches down and strokes her face. "You can't see him, sweetheart. Not right now. He's very sick and he just needs to rest. Maybe later." He kisses A.J. and moves toward the noisy crowd. They are cold and frightened. He lifts his arms and calls, "Um, excuse me, folks. Could I have your attention?"

Heads turn to him slowly, a few at a time, and he repeats himself, then says, "Um, we don't think those...those, uh, things will be coming out after sunrise, and it's almost light now. But until then, it's probably a good idea to move away from the building. If we could all just move over here by the street? The freeway should be open soon and maybe we'll get some help in here. I think if we just--"

An engine roars to life.

"He's starting his truck!" Jon shouts.

Doug spins around and sees the lights on Bill's Kenworth come on, sees Bill turn to them, just staring through his sunglasses for a while.

"What the hell's he doing?" Doug mutters.

The crowd falls silent and everyone watches the blue tractor across the street.

"He can't drive," Jon says. "Not as sick as he is. Mom, somebody's gotta stop him." He starts toward the street, but Doug grabs his arm.

"Uh-uh. Just sit tight."

The engine idles for a while.

The sky grows lighter.

The snow continues to fall.

The the tractor moves. It drives forward slowly then veers left as if to make a U-turn. But it doesn't. It keeps going straight. The grill clatters as it tears through the hedges surrounding the parking lot and takes out part of the truck stops old wooden roadside sign.

Voices rise, some in anger, some in fear.

Doug's mouth becomes dry very suddenly. "Son of a bitch," he breaths.

The Kenworth's horn wails once, twice, a third time as it picks up speed, nicking the back end of a small pick-up that was sloppily parked; the pick-up spins away from it and the horn doesn't stop this time, just keeps wailing, screaming.

Doug turns to see where the truck is headed and he doesn't wait a heartbeat to scream, "Run! Everybody run! Into the street! Now!" He sweeps Cece up under one arm and pushed A,J. ahead of him.

But Jon just stands and watches, his jaw slack.

"Dammit, Jonny, come on!" Doug shouts.

The others run, some fall and crawl until they regaine their footing; a few are trampled before they get back up.

Screams rise in the quiet snowy dawn as...

...Jonny backs up, slowly at first, his eyes following the Kenworth in which his prize triceratops dangles in the window. He keeps his eye on his dad's window, watching as his head bobs while the tractor gains speed. He backs up faster, breaking into an awkward jog as it neared the gas island, heading straight for the first row of pumps. There is a split second, just an instant, when Jon sees his dad's head turn to look out the window; the sunglasses are crooked on his face and his mouth is a gaping black hole framing a silent scream.

Then Jon runs, crying and screaming.

And hell comes out of the pavement.

The explosion makes a deafening gushing sound and its impact carried Jon several feet, throwing him into the shrubs, where he struggles to stand and continue running.

On his feet again, he turns around and continues running backward, his feet sliding dangerously over the icy pavement.

The biggest, angriest flames Jon had ever seen are engulfing Dad's Kenworth and shooting into the sky. Black smoke billows up to meet the clouds. The canopy that had covered the pumps falls through the air gracefully, almost as if it were falling in slow motion, and lands on several cars in the lot with a thunderous crash.

There is another smaller explosion, this one from under the main building, half of which disappears sending missiles of rubble into the air. Even across the street, Jon can feel the heat enough to make his skin tingle and his eyes burn and water.

The diesel island goes next and another steel canopy is lifted on a wave of fire and comes down on a row of trucks parked in the truck lot.

The others who had fled the building are scattered in every direction and almost all of them have hit the ground, either for protection or from the concussion of the explosion; some of them are in the street, others in the bushes or sprawled in a snowbank. Their cries and screams and panicked babbling serve as music for the fire's ballet.

Jon just stands in the middle of the street, in one spot, and turns very slowly around and around as bits of pavement and metal and charred wood rain from the sky, and no matter where he looks, no matter what he sees, the most vivid image in his eyes is that of his father's decaying face, sunglasses askew, screaming soundlessly as he drove to his death.

Through their tears, some of the people, once again, begin to sing a hymn as they gather together across the street: "Blessed Assurance."

Jon's mother rushes to him, embracing him and kissing him again and again, whispering his name. Still holding him close, she leads him across the street to where Cece presses her faces into Doug's side, sobbing and trying to keep warm.

The four of them stand close as another sound rises above the cries and roar of the flames. It sounds, at first, like a strong gust of wind sighing through tall pines. Gradually, the scattered crowd calms a bit, tense perhaps, afraid of what might be coming next. Heads turned from right to left, looking for the source of the sound, which was joined by another, and a third.

The sounds grow louder, clashing with the hymn singers, whose voices falter and finally stop as all eyes turned toward the mountain of fire that had once been the Sierra Gold Pan Truck Stop.

They are screams...unearthly, agonizing screams rising from the blaze, only to fade away again until all that was left was the roar of the fire...

She looked around at old wooden walls on which hang two rakes, a shovel, a hoe and an axe. When she tries to stand, her back bumps into something and she glanced over her shoulder at a neatly stacked pile of firewood.

And something else.

Something attached to her back. She tries to stand but dizziness plopped her back down on the creaky wooden floor.

Even after the dizziness passes, she cannot keep her balance and she drops on her ass two more times. She tries to reach behind her to see what is weighing her down, but she notices that her clothes are hanging from her body in tatters and she freezes.

Groaning, she closes her eyes and puts her head in her palms, sliding her fingers into her wet, matted hair.

A smile moves slowly across Amy's face and she whispers in the dark, "She's dead."

Amy leans over to the wall and looks through a crack between two of the wooden slats. It's dark outside. The day is gone.

With the of a child, Amy stands again, remains upright for a few moments, then begins to sway backward. She slapped her hands onto the wall to hold herself up. Reaching her left arm over her shoulder, she touches her fingertips to something. It is attached to her back just above her shoulder blade.

There is one on the other side, too.

She shakes her shoulders, hoping to dislodge the objects from her back. There is a hushed rustling sound behind her, a stirring of the cold air around her, but the weight on her back remains. Frowning, Amy looks down at herself, surveying the damage to her clothes. And then, even in the darkness, she sees it.

A fine layer of dark hair over her entire body. She runs her hand over her breasts in disbelief, but holds the hand out before her when she notices how long her nails have become. How long and black.

"Oh, my God," she says aloud, and her voice is different.

Slightly muffled. Her mouth feels funny...full. She touched her face and-

-her mouth is swelling, growing out from her face, almost like...like a muzzle.

"Oh, my God," she says again, her voice a whine now. She realizes that her entire body feels different ... and that the things on her back are there to stay.

Clumsily, Amy spreads her new wings.

Her stomach twists and she leans over, as if to vomit, then drops to her knees, her face in her hands, and sobs.

"Not me...not me..."

She swallows her tears when she hears a sound outside.

A door opens.

Stomping feet.

A girl's voice, early teens, maybe younger: "I'm doing it now, Dad, I am getting the wood! Jeez! "

The door slams and footsteps crunch through the snow as the voice mumbles indignantly: "...always following orders...like bein' in the fucking Army, for cryin' out... do this, do that...good ol' Kunta Kinte, that's me, yes massah, no massah..."

Crunch-crunch, crunch-crunch... louder, closer...

Amy's crying stops and is forgotten in seconds. She can smell the girl, she can feel her pulse already, feel it in her bones.

She stands, moves silently to the door of the wood shed and spreads her wings again.

There was no time to hate herself now, no time to mourn her condition.

There was her hunger to appease...there was blood to drink...

...there were places to go...