Page 56 (2/2)

"Where’s everybody else?" Loman asked "Just listen, Paul Just listen"

From every part of town, scores of wild voices were lifted in eerie song, either calling to one another or challenging the unseen -out clouds

Loman hurried to the back of the patrol car and opened the trunk His unit, like every other, carried a 20-gauge riot gun for which he’d never had use in peaceable Moonlight Cove But New Wave, which had generously equipped the force, did not stint on equipment even if it was perceived as unnecessary He pulled the shotgun fro hiressed, all of them, everyone on the force, except you and e against the bumper

"But that’s crazy!" A is corabbed a box of shells that was in the right wheel-well of the trunk, tore off the lid "Don’t you feel the yearning, Paul?"

"No!" Amberlay said too quickly "No, I don’t feel it, I don’t feel anything"

"I feel it," Loe--one in the chaazine "Oh, Paul, I sure as hell feel it I want to tear off o with them, hunt and kill and run with them"

"Not ht up the loaded gun and fired at A his head off

He couldn’t have trusted the young officer, couldn’t have turned his back on hi in his

As he stuffed un blast froun was in the hands of Booker or Shaddack Struggling to control his raging terror, fighting off the hideous and powerful urge to shed his human form, Loman went inside to find out

21

Toun, but he didn’t think much about that because, after all, they were in a war now You could hear what a war it was by just stepping out in the night and listening to the shrieks of the coh the hills to the sea He was irl he’d seen in the hall, because he knew the woirl ure how they had joined up

War So he handled it the way soldiers did in the gooda round into the roouessed he hadn’t hit anyone, so he fired again, and still no one screaone froht switch, found it, and discovered he was in the deserted band room

Evidently they had left by one of the two other doors, and when he saw that, he was angry, really angry The only tiun was in Phoenix, when he had shot the Indian with his father’s revolver, and that had been close-up, where he could not un After all, Jeez, he had watched a lot of war movies, cowboy movies, cop shows on television, and it didn’t look hard, not hard at all, you just pointed the er But it hadn’t been that easy, after all, and Tory, furious, because they shouldn’t make it look so easy in the un jumped in your hands as if it was alive

He knew better now, and he was going to brace his and brace hi holes in the ceiling or bouncing off the floor any ot a whack at the hi dead when he wanted them to be dead

22

The door out of the band room had led into a hall that served ten soundproofed practice rooms, where student musicians couldanyone At the end of that narrow corridor, Tessa pushed through another door and coaxed just enough out of the flashlight to see that they were in a chae as the band roo to the back A student-drawn sign on one wall, co, proclaimed this the home of The World’s Best Chorus

As Chrissie and Saun roared in the distance It sounded as if it was outside But even as the door to the corridor of practice rooed, closer than the first, probably back at the door to the band room Then a second blast from the same location

Just like in the band room, two more doors led out of the choral chamber, but the first one she tried was a dead end; it went into the chorus director’s office

They dashed to the other exit, beyond which they found a corridor illun--STAIRS--iht Not EXIT, just STAIRS, which meant this was an interior ith no access to the outside "Take her up," Sa in the ground floor by every entrance, anyway"

"What’re you--"

"Gonna make a little stand here," he said

A door crashed open and a shotgun exploded back in the chorus room

"Go!" Sam whispered

23

Harry heard the closet door open in the bedroo sweat as if in a sauna Maybe he hadn’t needed the second sweater

Go away, he thought Go away

Then he thought, Hell, no, coet it You think I want to live forever?

24

Sam went down on one knee in the hall outside the chorus roo a stable position to coing door open six inches, both arht hand, his left hand clauy across the roohts of the band-room corridor behind hi about hiun down a spray of pellets before he entered He pulled the trigger The click was loud in the silent rooun Clackety-dack No aed to his feet and through the swinging door, back into the chorus roouy to switch on the overhead lights or step farther across the threshold, because noas the ti as he went, Sa his da count On the second or third shot, the guy in the doorway squealed, God, he squealed like a kid, his voice high-pitched and quaverous, as he threw hiht

Sa in his jacket pocket with his left hand, grabbing at the spare cartridges, while with his right hand he snapped open the revolver’s cylinder and shook out the expended brass casings When he reached the closed door to the narrow hall that connected chorus rooh which the tall man had vanished, he pressed his back to the wall and jammed fresh rounds into the Smith & Wesson, snapped the cylinder shut