A casual glance confirmed that David Hunter was not among them. Neither were Nia James or Chief Jackson.

Nevertheless, Kyle summoned his army. The time for battle was near.

Jackson and Jahlil roared across town, siren wailing.

A crackling voice on the walkie-talkie it sounded like Mac shouted that something like twenty vampires roamed outside the hospital. "One of the head honchos is with them, too," Mac said. "Tall, dark-skinned fella, wearing black, looks young. You gotta hurry up and get here, Chief." Mac's voice quavered. He sounded truly scared.

"Is Hunter there?" Jackson asked.

"We lost him on the way over," Mac said. "Think he stopped for something."

"s.h.i.t," Jackson said. He hoped that David was okay. The last thing they needed was to lose Hunter. "We'll be there in a few, Mac. Hold it down"

"Yes, sir." The radio sputtered into silence.

"I'm kinda scared, Dad," Jahlil said. Holding his shotgun on his lap, he stroked the barrel as if for rea.s.surance. "What if... what if we can't win?"

Jackson glanced at his son. He understood the true fear that weighed on Jahlil's mind. But Jahlil was afraid to say it.

What if you die, Dad? was the fear that Jackson realized tormented his son.

"Anything like that happens, you call Hunter," Jackson said. "He'll know what to do"

"But I hardly know that guy, Dad. I mean, he seems cool, but...

"You can trust him. He's a good man. I talked to him earlier about backup plans, guess you'd call them"

"Oh" Jahlil wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. He laughed, but it was a nervous sound. "Forget this, man, I'm gonna start thinking positive. Didn't you used to always say, 'If you can believe it, you can achieve it'?"

"That was me"

"I'm gonna take your advice. This one time." Jahlil chuckled again, and this time, Jackson laughed, too.

Nothing, Jackson thought, is as important as keeping up hope. Hope was like food, nourishing you, making it possible to endure what seemed unbearable. A man without any hope was practically dead inside.

But sometimes, hope didn't save the day. Jackson didn't have the heart to tell his son that he had believed, and hoped, that his wife would conquer her cancer. Didn't want to crush his boy's optimism. Just as it was important to nurture hope on your own, so was it important to allow someone to hold tight to his own hope, even when his efforts might be in vain.

The hospital would be around the next corner.

David slumped against a tree, recovering from the incident with Franklin, while inside the Pathfinder, King bustled around impatiently.

He and Nia had taken the young woman upon whom Franklin had preyed inside her house, and laid her body across the living-room sofa. She remained unconscious as they moved her, purple-red puncture wounds glowing on her neck. Undoubtedly, she was already mutating into a vampire.

The thought sickened and angered David. How many other people in town had been bitten and were quietly undergoing the same terrible transformation? They didn't have much time before they lost everyone to Diallo and his bloodthirsty minions.

"We've got to go," he said. His watch read half-past ten. "We've got to help the team at the hospital."

"I hate to bring this up, but what should we do about Franklin's body?" Nia asked. "Should we come back later?"

"Yeah" He refused to look around and see Franklin's corpse. "We'll take care of it later."

As they shuffled back to the SUV, King flew into a frenzy, barking and pawing the windows.

What's gotten into him? David thought. King had freaked out before they'd discovered Franklin feeding on the woman, too. Did the dog have a keen nose for evil?

David looked around. He didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

King stood in the s.p.a.ce between the front seats, growling. David locked gazes with the canine, and it struck him, sud denly, what King was going to attempt. He had lived with the dog long enough to be able to predict its actions.

Nia opened the pa.s.senger door.

"Don't let him get out!" David said.

King bolted through the doorway in a gray-black streak, knocking Nia aside as he ran.

"King, get back here!" David scrambled after the dog. "Stop!"

The dog did not heed his call. King galloped across a yard and disappeared in the murky shadows behind the house.

"Come back, King!" David chased him.

But King was not in the backyard. A dark alley ran behind the property, and David went to the edge and looked both ways. He did not see any sign of King. The dog could've run anywhere.

It was a dangerous night for men and dogs alike. David's worst fear was that King would be attacked by one of those h.e.l.lhounds and become a member of Diallo's murderous hordes.

Nia ran up beside David. "Where is he?"

"The h.e.l.l if I know." If David's hair were longer, he would've grabbed it in his fists and pulled it out in tufts. "He's never run off like this. I don't know what's the matter with him."

"I'm so sorry, David. I shouldn't have let him get out"

"It's not your fault. I should've left King at home in the first place. d.a.m.n" He marched to the truck and got the dog leash.

"I know we're supposed to be helping at the hospital, but I can't leave my dog out there," he said. "No telling what could happen to him."

"I'll go look for him," Nia said. "I've lost one dog today, and I'm not losing another one if I can help it. Give me the leash"

"Are you nuts? I'm not letting you walk around alone out here"

"I'll have my piece with me "" She patted the holstered gun on her hip. "You can cruise around the block looking for King, and I'll look for him on foot. It makes more sense, David. I can run faster than you. Former track athlete, remember?"

"You're right, but I have a bad feeling about this." He pressed the leash into her palm. "Okay, whether we find King or not, we meet back here in fifteen minutes."

"We'll find him, I promise," she said. "See you in fifteen."

David watched her leave.

She can protect herself, he reminded himself. h.e.l.l, she can handle a gun better than I can, knows how to fight, and runs like a gazelle. She'll be fine.

But why did he have such an awful feeling of dread?

When Jackson neared the hospital, his first thought was that a mob had crowded in front of the building. But this mob was mostly dressed in dirty patient gowns.

They were the vampires.

Feral-looking dogs, at least a dozen of them, joined their two-legged counterparts.

The bloodsuckers gathered around the striking, unmistakeable figure of Kyle. Clad in black, he might have been an ancient G.o.d who had emerged from a chasm in the earth and brought along his evil servants.

I reached inside your puny brain before and shaped it as a sculptor manipulates clay.

As Jackson remembered how this fiend had screwed up his mind, a spider of anxiety skittered down his back.

A couple hundred yards away, at the edge of the parking lot, the citizen defense teams had used their cars to form a barricade. Five vehicles-a Dodge Ram pickup, a Ford Explorer, a Chevy, a Honda, and a Mustang-were arranged b.u.mper-to-b.u.mper, serving as a makeshift wall.

"This is crazy," Jahlil mumbled.

Jackson parked the patrol car at the end of the line of vehicles.

"Move fast," he said to Jahlil. Jackson grabbed his shotgun, and Jahlil clutched his, too. "Stay behind the line."

Hurriedly, they got out.

About fifteen people huddled behind the bunker. Every one of them had a firearm, and Molotov c.o.c.ktails were lined up on the pavement.

The team members were visibly relieved when they saw Jackson. Mac approached him, the flamethrower strapped to his back.

"Sure glad you got here safe, Chief," Mac said. "Those dirtbags haven't moved on us yet. They've been hanging back, like they're waiting on something."

"So what're we waiting for?" Jackson said. "Last thing we wanna do is let them make the first move and put our backs against the wall. We've gotta take the initiative, Mac"

Jahlil grabbed his arm. "They're coming, Dad"

I ain't surprised, Jackson thought. Id bet dollars to doughnuts that Kyle was waiting on me to get here.

The vampires shambled across the parking lot, moving in loose formation, like a demonic army. Kyle marched behind his soldiers.

"What do we do, Chief?" Mac asked in a shaky voice.

Jackson quickly summed up the situation and made a decision.

"This is what we're gonna do," Jackson said. "Mac, you and I are gonna climb on the flatbed of your truck. If you don't mind, my son's gonna drive. We're gonna circle around this parking lot, real fast, and pick off those suckers. I'll hit 'em with my shotgun, and Mac'll blast 'em with some fire."

Mac nodded. Jahlil looked scared, but determined to do the job.

Jackson said, "The rest of y'all, stay behind the lines and use your guns and the bottle bombs to knock 'em down. Keep 'em back! Mac and I will do our best to squash the suckers, but we can't fight 'em alone. Everyone ready?"

"Ready, Chief," the group murmured, in anxious voices. They didn't sound half as gung-ho as he'd hoped. They sounded as if they were on the verge of getting the h.e.l.l out of there.

He couldn't blame them. This was probably a suicide mission. But he had to do it. It was his duty, and forsaking duty was unthinkable.

"Let's go, Dad!" Jahlil said. "They're getting closer!"

The vampire army was halfway across the parking lot.

Mac's pickup was parked at the front of the wall of cars. Mac and Jackson hopped onto the flatbed, and Jahlil scrambled behind the wheel. The truck started with a throaty roar.

"Go, boy!" Jackson yelled, and thumped the roof of the pickup.

Jahlil poured on the gas. The Dodge peeled out across the pavement. They began to roll toward the vampires.

Jackson positioned himself on the side of the truck, near the front, and Mac took the rear on the same side, so they could work in tandem.

"This beats the h.e.l.l out of 'Nam," Mac said. Gripping the flamethrower, he shook his head. "Christ, I thought nothing could be worse than that"

"I hear ya, Mac" Jackson held his Remington shotgun tight. His heart throbbed painfully.

Thunder rumbled across the night, sounding like mountains colliding somewhere on the horizon. Cords of lightning punished the swollen sky.

As they came up on the monsters, a clarity of vision over took Jackson. He sank into what he liked to call the "zone of the hunter," a state in which his eyesight was hawk-sharp, his muscles were pumped and loose, and his concentration was unbreakable.

He raised the shotgun.

"Ready when you are, Mac"

"Let's do it, Chief."

Jahlil, handling the Dodge with expert skill, drove directly toward the vampires, as if he were going to steamroll over them. The creatures shrieked, and scattered like rodents. Jahlil smoothly curved to the edge of the pack.

Jackson took aim at one of the suckers-someone he knew, G.o.d help him, when the vampire had been a manand plugged the beast in the head. The creature flopped to the ground.

Mac hit the fallen vampire with a jet of fire, and the monster went up in flames like a bundle of dry sticks.

"Yeah!" Jahlil honked the horn.

Jackson didn't have any desire to celebrate. He was sickened by this terrible work they had to do. This was police duty, at its worst.

After tonight, he might hang up his badge, forever.

The vampires howled, enraged. They chased after the truck.

Jahlil veered around the lot, keeping a good lead on them. Then they made another pa.s.s at the horde.

Jackson lowered into a crouch. He squeezed off two shots: one struck a vampire in the back, the second hit another vampire in the chest. Both of the vamps crumpled. Mac torched them the instant they fell.

"We're kicking their a.s.ses!" Jahlil shouted.

The vampires seemed to comprehend that attacking the truck was foolhardly. All of them, including the vampiric mutts, made a beeline for the line of cars at the corner of the parking lot, where the team members huddled.