In the lobby, three of the deputized militia men were glued to football highlights on the big-screen television meant solely to display missing person alerts. Two of the three, with square jaws and dark, neatly trimmed hair, were obviously brothers. The third was a fat man with long blond hair and an unkempt beard that grew down to his chest. A short man had fallen asleep on the sofa. A tall, skinny man was playing a game on the office computer. Kroker, the one who seemed to be in charge, was a hulk with a platinum-dyed goatee and a cross on his shaved scalp. He sat at the processing desk with his feet kicked up on a chair. He had the radio tuned to a sermon by Pastor Tony. The deep broadcasting voice boomed out of the little speaker:

“Without God, the evil in this country will devour you. Jane Allgood will be our next president, and, despite her sexual perversions, she will be God’s sword. I have no doubt He’s going to cure her of that sin, just as He’s going to cure this country of all its transgressions—”

Kroker saw her, gave a wink, and licked his upper lip. A silver stud pierced the tip of his tongue.

Pretending not to notice the lewd gesture, she casually strolled to the window, as she would on any other night, and peered out. It was snowing again, much harder now—heavy flakes made a dome of white around the single, solar-charged yard light in the center of the parking lot. She strained her eyes to see through the storm. Just another sleepy night in the early hours.

Comstock’s vicious attack must have opened the boy’s old wounds. He was probably hallucinating. He’d taken a nasty hit to the head when he went down. She’d finish packing, and before she left, she’d have a medic come and check on all the prisoners. It would keep these idiots busy and out of trouble, at least for a few hours.

She was about to turn away from the glass when movement caught her eye. Just beyond the range of visibility was the faint outline of someone standing in the snow. Maybe nothing, just a mirage, her imagination—and then it moved and was gone.

It had been a crazy day. The chances the boy was a little bonkers were elevated, but it wouldn’t hurt to be cautious. She dropped the steel bar across the front door. The sound brought the deputies to attention.

“What the hell, lady?” said the fat deputy.

“I thought I saw something,” said Gwen. “We need to secure the premises.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Kroker. “Didn’t Comstock tell you to get your shit and go home?”

The shortest of the men, the one who’d been sleeping, now stood next to her at the window with his face pressed against the door and his hands cupped around his eyes—his breath fogged up the cold glass. “I don’t see nothin’ but snow.”

“Sit down, Mark,” said Kroker. “She’s just trying to spook you.”

Gwen looked at the CCTV monitor and saw Francis sitting in the corner of his cell with his knees pulled up against his chest; he was rocking back and forth. Alan was awake and rubbing the back of his head. The Gretas were huddled in a corner.

“Hey, what the fuck? Internet died,” groaned the tall deputy at the computer. “Shit, no phone signal either.”

Kroker picked up the desk phone and put it to his ear. “Line’s dead.” He kicked his feet off the chair and came to the window. “It’s just a bad storm.” He took the CB from his belt and called out, rather unprofessionally, “Uh, hello, this is the sheriff’s office.” There was nothing but static. The lights flickered and went out. The roistering voice of Pastor Tony blipped out of existence.

“Fucking shit!” cursed one of the brothers who’d been watching the game.

“Sheriff’s officer here. We’re having internet and electrical issues. Do you read?”

The yard light’s amber monochrome doused the quiet lobby. Now, all the deputies stood by the window, peering into the storm.

“Someone’s out there,” said the short one.

“I only see snow,” Kroker said.

“I swear. Right there, by the edge of the parking lot. You see it?”

“She’s got you pissing your panties. You’re seeing things. Why don’t you go check it out anyway?” barked Kroker. “Danny, Donny, go with Mark.”

The short deputy, Mark, looked nervous.

The three men bundled up. Kroker unbarred the door, quickly locking it again when they were outside with their flashlights and guns.

“You guys read me?” he spoke into his walkie-talkie.

“Yeah, we hear you. It’s fucking cold out here. Like someone turned down the temperature a hundred degrees.”

“Then hurry the hell up.”

The men trudged out and faded into the snow.

“It’s hard to see,” came a voice over the walkie.

“Walk the perimeter and get back here,” Kroker ordered.

“Roger that.”

Quiet settled so heavy a pin drop would have startled them. Gwen, Kroker, the tall deputy, and the fat, bearded deputy were glued to the window, trying to see.

Her body jerked involuntarily when the walkie crackled.

“Jesus, I saw it!”

“Say again,” said Kroker, a tremble in his voice. “What did you see?”

“Jesus, no—”

“Mark, come in. Respond!”

“Danny? Donny? Respond, please.” Panic intensified. “You guys come back in now. You hear me?” There was no reply. They waited. Eternal seconds, minutes. No reply.

“Can you hear me?” a voice called at last, but it did not sound like one of the deputies.

“Mark?” asked Kroker. “Was that you?”

“We want the boy,” said the voice, low and gritty, almost a growl.

“Who is this? Guys, get your asses back here now and quit fucking around.”

Gwen felt the overwhelming urge to run, a primal instinct gripping her body.

“We need to help them,” said the tall deputy.

“No. Stay put. Call Comstock.” Kroker’s voice trembled.

“Still no signal,” said the fat deputy.

Someone started broadcasting again, a faint whimpering, like the sound of a scared puppy.

From out of the whiteness, a figure emerged, took form, and stumbled slowly toward them with its hands out in front as if feeling the air for resistance.

“It’s Mark!” said the fat deputy in relief.

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As he got closer, instead of going directly to the door, his hands searched for the window.

When she saw why, her stomach lurched, and it took everything she had to keep its contents off the lobby floor.

“What’s wrong with him?” said the tall deputy.

“Jesus Christ,” said Kroker. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Mark’s hands shook as they gently touched the window. He placed his face against the glass and peered inside, gaping holes where his eyes should have been. Blood poured down his face in two crimson streams.

“Fuck fuck fuck! Get him in here!” cried Kroker, but no sooner had he spoken than the shadow came out of the blizzard.

“There!” she whispered. At first, Gwen thought it was a man, but then she saw it was a dog, a large dog. It carried that savage hunger she had only seen in the wild.

“Mark, look out! Behind you! Mark! Mark!” screamed the tall deputy.

But how could Mark look without any eyes? Blind Mark turned in the nick of time to catch the full force of the animal as it jumped and hit him, slamming him back against the window. The glass cracked.

The scream that came from short Mark was one of final horror. Even in his blind and wretched state, he could surely sense the presence, and that presence from the stone age meant death.

The scream ceased as the beast’s jaws sealed around his neck, and with one great twist, it ripped his throat out and let the body stumble back, the arterial work of the neck spewing forth a crimson fountain of the man’s blood. Mark’s hands went to his eyeless face, then he let them flop, and he fell over.

The beast stared at them with its gory, dripping maw, matted with blood and the fleshy residue of their friend’s throat. Its long, forked tongue lapping its shards of razor teeth. Then it looked sharply in the other direction, its attention absorbed by something in the distance, and it prowled back into the storm, leaving Mark to bleed to death on the walk.

Mark’s boot twitched once and didn’t move again.

“What the hell was that?” the fat deputy implored.

“It killed Mark,” cried the other.

“I think it was a wolf,” said Gwen.

“It’s about to be a fuckin dead wolf,” said Kroker as he pulled on his jacket and picked up his gun. “Danny, Donny. We’re comin’ for you. Shoot to kill.”

Gwen ran to her desk and grabbed her flashlight from the box she’d been packing. She also took Francis’s shoes and a jacket from the collection of confiscated items.

“What’s happening?” Alan said when she entered the cell room.

“Something killed one of the deputies.”

“Killed? Something? What?”

“It happened so fast. I don’t know. I think it was a wolf. It… it ripped his throat open. He’s dead right outside the front door.”

“The hunters,” said Francis.

Gwen unlocked the cell doors. “Francis, put these on.” She set his shoes by his feet. “They talked to us on the walkie. At least, I think they did. They said they want the boy,” she whispered.

Behind her, she heard the click of a gun being cocked.

“And we’re going to give him to them,” said Kroker.

“The hell you are,” said Alan, stepping between the gun and Francis.

Kroker raised his weapon and leveled it at Alan’s head. He was about to say something when the two men in the lobby started shouting. Overwhelmed with decisions, he turned and sprinted back to the front.

“Can we make it to my car? It’s in the café parking lot,” said Alan.

“There’s a side door,” she said. “It’s a straight shot from there.”

In the cell at the front of the holding room, the Gretas were pressed against the brick wall, peering with wide eyes from behind their fabric masks.

“We can’t leave them,” said Francis. “They heard the music.”

“Christ.” She unlocked their cell door and yanked it open. “Come on.”

The tall one came first, and the others followed, a hand on each shoulder in a train.

She led them down the hall and peeked around the corner. The deputies were at the large windows with their guns raised.

“This is the Lake County Sheriff’s Department. We are under attack. Repeat, under attack!” Kroker screamed into his radio. At the reception desk, Gwen reached over and grabbed her confiscated revolver. In all her years on the force, she’d never drawn her weapon in the line of duty, but she was a crack shot at the range.

“Do you see it?” one of them shouted.

“There it is! Right there! The fucker’s just watching us,” said the other.

“Shit, there’s another one. How many is that?”

She could just see out the front window where an animal paced back and forth.

“Alan, those things,” she whispered.

Alan squeezed her arm. Francis was between them.

“Let’s go,” Alan whispered.

They had a corridor of twenty meters to the side exit. First Gwen, then Francis, then Alan, followed by the Greta parade.

When they reached the door, Gwen said, “Let me lead. Straight shot to your car. I’ll cover. Get in and haul ass. The roads will be slick. We need to put some distance between us and whatever’s out there.”

Alan nodded and held Francis’s hand. From the front, they heard something hit the window, then again, then the tremendous shattering of exploding glass and the rapid firing of weapons.

“Now!” She kicked the door open and stepped into the storm. The freezing wind drove snowflakes into her face like needles of ice. On this night, as they raced across the snowy knolls, her senses were surging, and her gun felt alive in her hand.

Francis slipped and went down hard. Alan lifted him to his feet without slowing.

“There!” He pointed. His car was parked next to the café, already covered with a layer of snow.

Gwen turned around, and in a split second, a dark sense of horror rose in her at what she saw. A Greta had fallen, and the wolf—no, not a wolf, something else; wolves don’t get that big—was crouched over her, ripping away her fabric wrappings to get to her flesh. The other women kicked at the beast to get it off, their soft fists only causing the animal to snarl and snap. It grabbed the woman on the ground by the neck and shook its head violently. Then, it turned its deadly attention to the others.

“Run!” she shouted to them.

The tall woman looked at her, then at the beast now tearing at another of her companions.

“Fucking run!”

The tall woman raised her hand over her head, put her palms flat together in a silent salute to the dead and the dying of her sect, and bolted to the car in her long, flowing garb.

“Raven, unlock! Start!” shouted Alan. The car came to life, the snow over the headlights lighting up, casting their beams in a blue-green storm of swirling snowflakes.

It dropped down from the café’s roof, crushing the hood with its mass. It crouched and snarled; all its intention directed at Francis.

“Majiiiiiiii!” came the crooked sound from a maw unsuited to human words. Its fangs, as long as fingers, dripped with a viscous drool.

BANG.

Gwen’s shot was sure, right through the creature’s chest. It flipped over and hit the café’s wall, squealing like a stuck pig. Then it was gone, and all was silent.

“In! In!” said Alan.

Gwen grabbed Francis and tossed him into the back seat as she got in behind him and locked the door. The last remaining Greta climbed in the front and covered her head with her hands. She started to rock back and forth.

“Raven, override!” Alan was already slamming the accelerator. The electric engine gave a high-pitched whine, and the tires spun on the snow, moving the car only a few feet.

“Steady, steady” said Gwen with forced calm. Alan tried again. This time, the tires caught traction, and he headed for the road.

“Wait! Wait!” she heard, then saw Kroker running over the little hill that separated the department from the café’s parking lot, nearly falling over the strewn bodies of Gretas, dark lumps on the white snow. He waved his arms, and Alan slowed.

“No,” Gwen shouted. She’d seen something behind the deputy.

Alan gunned it, taking a hard right. The rear of the car fishtailed as they hit the city street.

There was the deputy, waving his arms, and behind him, the wolf.

The last thing she would remember of the vulgar militiaman, with his shaved head and tattooed cross, were his screams and how they faded as they drove away.

“Where do we go?” asked Alan.

“City police,” she said.

At the end of the block, Alan took another right onto Main Street, where every streetlight was decorated with green, red, and gold Christmas ornaments, and all the shops were glittering with lights.

At this hour, the stoplights flashed orange, giving them a clear shot out of town.

Her adrenal glands firing, memory recording in HD at ultra-high speed allowed her to capture the black sedan flying down First Avenue directly at them in crisp detail. The sound was like being inside of a popping balloon. Her teeth shook.

Had it hit the back door, it would have killed her and Francis instantly, but it missed by a millisecond and impacted the rear of the car, sending the self-driver into a spin, bashing her head against the door frame, and toppling Francis onto her lap. The airbags deployed, a grinding of metal and breaking glass. They smashed through the front of a shop.

A security alarm blasted a piercing trill. Alan punched the gas, the engine whined, and the tires spun, but they did not move. She looked over at the car that had hit them and saw someone dressed in black get out, but what came around was not a person.

Gwen felt for her gun, but it was gone. Alan kept punching the gas to no avail—they were high-centered on the concrete steps.

The beast came to her window and opened its jaws. She saw the fangs, saw the dark eyes reflecting the strobing Christmas lights.

“No! Leave us alone!” the boy shouted. He buried his head against her shoulder.

From a distance, the sound of shifting gears, drawing closer, getting louder: MWAAA, MWAAAA, MWAAAAAAAAAAA.

The creature turned its head just in time to see the metal grill and let out a sharp, short yelp as its body was struck head-on with a crunch and snap of bone.

Down the street, the vehicle braked, came to a stop, and backed up, running over it again. Thump-a-thump.

The window of an antique, blue and white Volkswagen van rolled down and an old hippie in dreadlocks stuck his head out.

“Hope you got insurance. Ya’ll need a lift somewhere?”