As the flashlight continued its wild movement, Paul caught sight of both scared men, gasping in pain and confusion, both covered in blood.

"Freddie, Denver. Talk to me," Paul said.

While shouting in their faces, he tried ignoring the other sounds, the barking of gunfire and the whump of gasoline bombs he could feel in his heart. Men screaming orders and squealing in pain from the front of the motel. Trying not to lose focus, he grabbed fist holds of clothing and dragged both men away from the window and propped them against a safer wall.

If there was such a thing.

All the while, he shouted at them, demanded that they speak to him, tell him who was hit and where.

"Will you shut the fuck up?" a voice sputtered.

Freddie coughed like a man pulled almost too late from deep water. He wiped a smear of blood from his fingers onto the front of his shirt. Examining it curiously, he said, "Must be Denver's. I'm okay, I think."

"Bastards shot us," Denver growled, stating the obvious. His eyelids fluttered, but couldn't stay open. "Shit," he said, a hand roving to the dark blood trickling down the side of his face. "I think they blew my brains out."

Paul following the weak, yellow glow to his flashlight, which had toppled and found cover under the bed. He spilled light on Denver's face. There was blood in his hair, on one cheek, and on his shoulder, and it dripped down one massive arm.

"You're okay," he said finally.

"No I'm not," Denver argued. He pawed his face and held up a finger covered with bloody shards and grit. "Bone and brain matter," he said resignedly.

"Window glass," said Paul. "You got hit somewhere by flying window glass. Where does it hurt?"

The wounded man let fly with an impressive string of oaths, ending in "It hurts goddamn everywhere!"

"Freddie, stay with him," Paul ordered.

"You think of fangs and cloaks and bats and hypnotic stare-downs," said Freddie. "You don't think of guns. What's going on out there, Paul?"

"That's what I'm going to find out."

He crawled out the door and onto the balcony. A hand grabbed his ankle and he yelped in panic.

"It's me, it's me," said Joy Dunbar, crawling up behind him. "Where's Todd? I woke up and he was gone."

"Stay here," he said, pointing her toward the room he'd just exited.

With Freddie and Denver in there, it was as safe as anywhere. But she ignored him.

I've got to find him," she said.

Paul tried to grab her, but she broke from his grasp and slithered down the balcony stairs on her ass.

As he peered over the rail, the rain beating the back of his head felt like yet another enemy. His first reaction to what he saw out there was to pray very loud and very fast and very earnestly for assistance he knew would never arrive in time.

Chapter Fifty-Nine.

He found Marty McConlon at the end of his nose.

The mist had turned to a drizzle with hints of a hard rain to follow, but it didn't dampen Todd's new scent sense. Rocks, soil, pine needles, moss and even the smallest of crawlies all assailed him with their overpoweringly distinct odors. Todd had discovered a sensation as delightfully alien as the ability to see through walls.

The most appealing scent was that of Marty McConlon's warm blood. Todd found the pudgy officer standing in the open driver's door of his cruiser at the cul de sac that Buck Avenue became as it sideswiped the woods. The cop looked frozen in the act of stepping into the squad car, distracted by the thrashing of Todd making his way out of the underbrush.

"Ernie, that you?"

Todd skidded to a stop some thirty feet from the cop. He could clearly see McConlon squinting his way in the night rain.

Five running steps and he'd be there, but McConlon might still have time to throw himself into the car and lock the door. Then there was that fleshy hand of his wrapped around the black grip of the nine in his holster.

"Ernie?" Again, sharper this time.

"Uh huh," Todd grunted.

He could hear frantic voices in the distance, gunshots, squealing tires and heavy-metal collision. Todd took a couple unhurried steps to the vehicle.

"Hurry up, asshole, it's happening." The cop was looking away now, his concentration on the unseen action to the west.

Todd grinned as the cop's hand slid from the butt of his gun. He moved in, taking his time now, slow but steady. Two steps to go and he felt a beastly growl working its way up his throat as he bared his teeth.

He looked fat and happy, the cop who'd pulled him over and brought him and his family into this town, but his instincts were razor sharp. The gun was out of the holster even before Todd broke skin.

The bullet punched him in the belly, sent him reeling, crashing to the pavement. It sounded, even this close, less like a gunpowder explosion and more like the irritating noise made in popping a brown paper bag. Felt nothing like it was supposed to either, Todd observed as the rain pelted his upturned face.

How'd he end up horizontal like that? The clouds against the black sky looked unexpectedly white and shapely. He stared at them and at the rain shooting straight at him at an interesting angle. He'd never been under a rainstorm before. Not like this, looking up.

It wasn't supposed to hurt. The bullet, not the rain. He'd heard enough stories about people not even knowing they'd been shot and having to learn about it from others. He knew a guy who'd been shot in the head while sleeping, a stray bullet coming through his bedroom window. He'd only figured it out the next day in the emergency room where he went with a headache that just wouldn't quit.

That's not how it was for him, though.

It burned like hell, and right away. Right there in the pit of his stomach. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Gut shot. The worst kind. His belly burning like that, bleeding internally. How come he felt so cold? Colder than the rain on his face. His teeth chattered as his limbs went numb and heavy like frostbite.

Chapter Sixty.

A flicker of motion in the corner of his vision. The cop who'd quick-drawn his holstered gun like no one's business. From his position, sprawled on the soft ground, Todd saw a pair of wet, shiny black shoes coming his way, Marty McConlon taking his time about it. Still cautious, but now close enough for Todd to hear his raspy breathing.

"Dunbar," the cop said. Said it to himself. Hard to say if the word registered recognition or surprise.

Todd's eyes flew open, his hand shot out and grabbed an ankle above one of those wet, shiny black shoes. It was only as he was starting to bring the cop down that he noticed McConlon hadn't re-holstered the nine. Its barrel pointed at Todd's face. He let go of the ankle with one hand and blocked his face with a forearm as the gun boomed. Much closer this time, much louder.

In his mind, anyway, Todd could actually see the 110-grain bullet leaving the polymer barrel, passing all the way through forearm flesh, smashing bones and playing havoc with tough tendons and muscle tissue before continuing into his face, where it shattered jawbone and teeth easy as a bowling ball rolling into glass figurines.

Every nerve cell registered agony. He made a bubbly hitch of a sound nearly lost in the blood and bone grit and tooth enamel filling his windpipe. He retched, a powerful constriction of the muscles of his throat and mouth that burbled from him, not nearly as loud in the air as it was in his mind. His brain launched multiple electrical impulse reports, none of them good.

His body twisted involuntarily when two hundred pounds of law enforcement officer landed on him, the end result of Todd's having pulled at his ankle as he had. Somehow, his pain-clenched hands found by accident the cop's throat.

The gun was still in play, a critically important consideration after the first two jolts to the system. He let one hand slip free of McConlon's throat to grab the cop's gun hand so that the third shot, when it came, hit the wet sky somewhere. Todd pulled the shooter by his throat, brought the cop's face closer to his own, reveling in his bleat of terror.

Todd's mouth opened, his teeth anticipating.

"Noooo," McConlon screamed, the plea shifting abruptly into a moist gurgle.

Todd's mind blanked as the warm fluid washed over him, the gurgles turning to airless little gasps.

It was quickly over. The vampire Dunbar's shirt clung to him, heavy with blood and rain. His jaw throbbed. He felt and could partially see gunpowder-charred slices of his own skin hanging from his face. He reached again to tear at flesh already growing cold, but was interrupted by a crash of static. Todd rolled to one side, ready to greet new danger with a snarl of red teeth.

He saw only the fallen radio, a duplicate of the one he'd left with the earthly remains of cop Ernie.

"We got footholds on the front and back, McConlon. Where the hell are your boys?" the voice roughly demanded.

He knew that voice.

Todd stared dully at the radio before breaking into a pain-wracked grin. God, it hurt. He picked up the radio, his palms so slick he could barely keep a grip. He thumbed a button and held it close to his mouth, making his voice muffled and indistinct.

"Where you at, Zeebe?" He took his thumb off the button and waited out the static. He'd forgotten to say "Over," and wondered if that misstep would trip him up.

"McConlon? Goddamn it, where the hell you think I am? I'm at the foot of the ravine in back of the motel. We're taking potshots and gasoline bombs down here. Your people gonna back us up, or what?"

Todd fought through the pain with a wide smile. His tongue probed the places where only mush gums and sharp splinters had remained moments before. He could feel his jawbone realigning and baby teeth coming in.

It was great to be alive.

Thumbing the button, he said, "Wait for me, Jim. I'll be right there."

"Damn right you will," Zeebe growled. He said other things, too, but Todd wasn't listening.

Groaning and moving slowly, he dropped the two-way, stuffed McConlon's gun in his waistband and set out to find his car mechanic.

Chapter Sixty-One.

The thing kept coming, roaring up the long driveway, barreling through the first line of defense and heading straight for the Sundowners' second junk metal barricade.

Jermaine Whittock, crouched next to Paul on the balcony, said "Holy Jesus" in a way that sounded honestly reverential. Freddie and Denver came up behind and joined them, Denver with a red-stained pillowcase wrapped tightly over the fleshiest part of his arm. Half of his face was bloody and still sparkled with glass from the window, but the rain was washing away the worst of it.

Paul closed his eyes a moment before impact, so he didn't see the town's blood donor vehicle, one Molotov-targeted tire aflame, slam into the second car blockade. He heard it though, the screech of metal and the compacted explosion of gas tanks going up. His eyes popped open in time to see a tower of fire consuming the night air. He watched Ponytail Pete scurry out from wherever he'd been hiding, hoist the chainsaw from his back and tear across the yard.

Almost made it, too. But then the blood bus veered sharply, squealed through torn metal and churned him under its wheels. Denver made a sound like he was about to be sick, but there was no time. The huge, battered vehicle was still coming.

The four men on the balcony remained locked in place, Paul certain that the thing had to slow down, had to stop eventually. Only it didn't.

"Uh oh," Denver said, pretty much summing up the situation.

It hit the front of the motel with a sound that was even more deafening than when it had taken out that second blockade. It jackknifed, the backside twisting violently so that men and a handful of women inside it got launched out the doors and shattered windows, some landing in one of the gas tank bonfires.

They got up again, most of them, and ran screaming, fanning the flames that followed.

Paul watched, mesmerized, unable to even think of saving himself as the huge inflamed vehicle turned the balcony railings to twists and jags of metal. He felt gravity make an interesting move, pitching him forward, up and over the disappearing railing. He landed on his shoulder on the blood vehicle's long expanse of hot flat hood, and felt the hatchet in his waistband bite into his flesh near a hipbone.

Painful as that was, it was nothing compared to how it felt a second later when a large body landed on his back and his vertebrae shifted to accommodate the load.

He grunted, rolled sideways and shrugged Jermaine off. Still in motion, Jermaine crawled toward the Smith & Wesson Model 15 Combat Masterpiece that had skittered away upon impact.

Paul let his eyes retrace the route of their fall and found Denver Dugan still clinging from the broken balcony with his one good arm. For another moment or two. Then the big man fell. He hit the back of the vehicle that had snagged the other two and slammed to the soft ground.

Paul groped under his shirt and brought out the small ax, its sharp edge tipped with a sheen of his own blood. Wincing, he felt around under there, traced a two-inch gash and extracted more wetness on his fingertips. Not much more, he convinced himself.

"Look out, man," Jermaine muttered.

Having struggled to his knees, Jermaine gripped the .38 he'd retrieved and aimed it in a two-handed stance at the dark-haired figure muscling itself onto the flat top of the big bus with them. Paul winced in expectation of the shot, but soon understood why Jermaine stood stock-still with the gun still leveled.

Up close, Patty Craven looked barely out of high school. Her hair, dyed jet black with streaks of red, looked rebelliously self-cut with dull scissors. Nevertheless, her efforts couldn't quite hide her pale natural beauty. It would be impossible to blow that innocent face away with a gun.

As her eyes danced back and forth between the two wide-eyed men, Paul could hear the sounds of the panicky and dying. The night sky lit up with the occasional spark of a gasoline bomb or the steady flare-up of ruptured fuel tanks. Shots were fired continuously, and D.B. was shouting, "Quick, someone give me a loaded gun."

Soon, he knew, they'd be out of ammunition, and then it would all be over.

"My brother," the girl said, crouching.

Then she screeched, nothing human to it, and that must have been the same thought Jermaine had, for the revolver in his band barked once, nearly taking off the side of her head. Her body whipped around. She stumbled and nearly toppled from the top of the high vehicle before righting herself, turning and charging, with an unearthly squeal of pure hatred, at the man who shot her.

The gun went off again, this time producing a heart-sinking click of a sound. Jermaine sighed. The girl leaped at him. And Paul stuck his hatchet in her path and felt it find brittle obstacle, then sink into her chest. The beastly cries of rage turned to a single restrained groan as the vampiress' forward momentum carried her, with the blood-smeared blade buried in her, past Paul and into Jermaine. They both fell over the side.

Paul heard another scream. Freddie. He looked up. Somehow his friend had escaped being pitched from the balcony when the flaming bus hit it. He'd curled one leg over a jagged railing and hung on for dear life. He also held onto a chainsaw with both hands. He had Paul locked in his gaze and was making tossing motions with it.

Paul held out his arms and caught the heavy tool amid fresh shivers of back pain. Freddie nudged the air with one hand, pointing out the front of the bus deck.