Monday, 3:30 a.m.

I woke up in the dark, to a voice whispering in my ear, “Wake up, Charlie.”

I couldn’t place it.

“Wake up,” it hissed.

I couldn’t figure out where I was. In my room at Choke? Hawaii? No … the inn?

“Charlie, wake up,” the voice whispered. “Please, wake up.”

Then it hit me. I was in the bunker; Hal had drugged us. Us …

Elizabeth was with me.

My eyes popped open. A hand shot over my mouth, and Elizabeth’s face appeared inches from mine.

“Shh,” she said, holding a finger in front of her lips. “He’s asleep.”

I gave her the okay sign, and she moved her hand off of my mouth. “What time is it?” I whispered.

“Three thirty in the morning.” She pointed at a digital clock mounted on the wall. The numbers were green and sending a faint glow out into the room. It was the only light in the place.

“Where is he?”

She pointed toward the sofa, and I saw him splayed out, still wearing his bathrobe.

“We can’t stay here,” she said. “I think he’s gone crazy.”

“Oh, he’s definitely gone crazy,” I whispered, and eased my way up and into a sitting position on the side of the bed. I added don’t end up hiding in a bunker when you get older to my mental to-do list. Hal and I might have a few genes in common, but that didn’t mean my life had to follow the same path to Crazy Town.

“We need to go now,” she said, standing up slowly.

I got up, too, and followed her across the room, toward the door. We inched our way along, being careful not to run into anything.

We were between the sofa and the kitchen area when about a dozen pots and pans came crashing to the ground all around us.

“Darn!” Elizabeth hissed, and a flashlight flicked on.

“I thought you might try something like this,” Hal said, sitting up and pointing the light into our eyes.

“We just want to go, Uncle Hal.”

“What?” he said. “What did you say?”

“We want to leave.”

“Huh? You’ll have to speak up. I don’t have my hearing aids in,” he said, getting up off the sofa.

“He can’t hear a thing without those hearing aids,” I whispered to Elizabeth. “Get behind him.”

She nodded and drifted back toward the beds.

“I left them on my desk,” Hal grumbled.

While he got up and headed for the desk, I quickly slipped around the sofa.

“Not so fast, kiddo,” he said, and I heard a click. “I’ve got a flashlight in one hand and my shotgun in the other. Like I said before, making you stay put is for your own good.”

“Hal, don’t do anything crazy. Please, listen to me,” I pleaded.

“Huh? What?”

“Listen!” I screamed. “Mom and Lilith are out there! I need to see if they’re okay!”

“That’s what I’ve been saying, kid — we’ll wait until the day,” he said. “Then you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

Hal was at the desk now and put his flashlight down, although he kept it aimed straight at me. I could hear him patting around for his hearing aids.

“No! We need to help Mom! And Lilith! And everyone else for that matter!”

“Here they are,” he said.

With the flashlight blazing in my direction, I couldn’t see Elizabeth. I could only hope she was behind Uncle Hal and could get the drop on him.

“I don’t want to stay down here, hiding like a chicken!”

“You don’t have to yell,” Hal said. “I can hear you. I’ve got my hearing aids in. Now where’s the girl?”

“Right here,” I heard Elizabeth say, and then there was a loud clanging sound, like two pots being bashed together.

That’s when three things happened, almost all at once: Hal screamed in pain, the flashlight dropped and the gun went off.

I threw myself at Hal. We crashed onto the floor, the gun clattering away.

“My ears,” he roared, thrashing his way out from under me and getting back up onto his feet. “She’s deafened me!”

I scrambled after him and jumped onto his back. Amazingly, he stayed up, with me hanging on to him, piggyback style. I bucked and twisted, trying to bring him down.

“Get off!” he grunted, stumbling around.

“Let us leave!” I shouted, straight into his right ear.

“Gard-darn it, kid, it’s not safe out there!” he cried, whirling around and around in the dark, bumping into things, kicking pots, until Elizabeth rushed over and rammed us from the side.

“Raah!” Hal cried, as we sidestepped into the record player. The whole thing toppled over, crashing to the ground beside us.

We hit the concrete floor hard, with me on the bottom, and all the air exited my body. Hal rolled off of me, and I wheezed violently, trying to breathe.

“Are you okay, Charlie?” Elizabeth asked, rushing over.

I tried to answer, but couldn’t. I gasped and struggled to my knees.

“What’s wrong?” Elizabeth pleaded, helping me stand up.

I gulped in air and nodded. “I’m okay,” I squeaked.

Hal didn’t get up. He was kneeling beside the record player, which had broken into two big pieces. Wires were hanging out, and a few of the internal pieces were now external pieces.

“How could you?” he moaned. “You killed my music, you maniacs!”

“You shot at us,” I said weakly.

“The music,” he grumbled, trying to fit the two pieces of the record player back together.

“Come on, Charlie,” Elizabeth said, grabbing Hal’s shotgun, which he seemed to have forgotten. “Let’s go.”

She handed me the gun and held out her phone in front of us to light our way with the display.

“My music,” Hal muttered mournfully. “How am I going to listen to it now?”

Elizabeth and I rushed to the door and I slid open the panel, revealing the video monitor. There was no sign of Baxter or Johnny outside.

“They’re gone,” Elizabeth said.

“Yeah, but how far did they go?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” she said and grabbed on to the disk in the middle of the door.

That’s when Hal came looming out of the darkness, like a monster coming back to life. “Do not open that door!” he roared.

I wasn’t willing to shoot Hal, so I swung the gun in front of me like a baseball bat, to ward him off.

“Stay back, Uncle Hal! We’re leaving!”

“You can’t leave!” he shouted. “They’re out there, kid, and they’ll get you. Don’t you see, I’m trying to keep you safe! There’s no need to risk your life! Just stay down here with me until this all blows over.”

“It’s not going to blow over!” I said. “And Mom’s out there, and Lilith — I’ve got to try to help them.”

“Don’t try to be a hero, kid,” Hal said. “Believe me, it’s not worth it. You just end up by yourself.”

“I’ve got to try,” I said, and I heard Elizabeth turn the disk. An instant later, the bolt clicked, and the light above the door changed from red to green.

“I’m taking the gun,” I said, as Elizabeth pulled the door open.

“I didn’t mean to shoot, kid,” Hal said. “That was an accident.”

“Just the same, I’d like to hang on to it. And when all this blows over, I’ll buy you a new record player,” I said as we stepped out of the bunker and into the concrete shaft. It was still empty, and the trapdoor at the top of the ladder was still open. Beyond it was only darkness.

“Don’t be a hero,” Hal repeated weakly, and he stepped forward and pushed the door shut. It closed with a hiss.

“What now?” Elizabeth whispered.

“I hate to say it, Winehurst, but I think the smartest thing to do is get out of town as fast as possible. There’s no way we can risk trying to find my mom, or anyone else, and the sooner we get help for your dad and Johnny, the sooner they’ll be back to normal.”

“I’m not sure anyone’s going to be able to help my dad and Johnny,” she said.

“We have to try,” I said. “Otherwise we may as well stay holed up in that bunker. Is that what you want to do?”

“I don’t think he’d let us back in,” she said.

“Which means there’s only one way to go now …” I said. “Up.”

She nodded. “If we can get to my car, we might have a chance.”

“I’ll lead the way to the cellar door,” I said, grabbing on to the ladder. “If it’s locked, I’ll try to blast it open with the shotgun.”

“And if we can’t get it open?” she asked, starting up behind me.

“Then we’ll have to go upstairs and through the front door.”

She didn’t say anything else and neither did I. We both knew going upstairs and through the front door would probably be the end of our story. Heck, I had a feeling that popping my head out of the trapdoor and into the cellar was probably going to be the end of the line for Charles Harker. But I didn’t have a choice, so when I got to the top, I just scrambled up and out as fast as I could. I was expecting one of them, or a lot of them, to spring out of the darkness, but nothing happened.

Elizabeth popped out behind me and we made our way through the cellar, leaving the trapdoor open. Thanks to the light in the shaft, I could see a few feet in every direction, but the edges of the room were still cloaked in darkness.

I tapped Elizabeth’s shoulder and pointed toward the corner where I thought the back door was located.

She nodded, and we crept around the boxes and paint cans that were strewn on the floor. Once we were a few feet away from the trapdoor, though, the light faded away. That’s when I heard something. It was a shuffling sound. Someone was down here. They were walking.

Elizabeth reached for my shoulder. She was shaking, or maybe I was shaking, I couldn’t tell. The footsteps were coming faster. Coming at us.

Maybe if I’d been able to keep my wits about me, I would have used the gun, but my wits were long gone. Instead, in an insane panic, I threw myself at the cellar doors, like a cartoon character rushing at a brick wall. And, like a terrified cartoon character, I actually managed to crash through them. Bashing through doors like that should have hurt, it should have hurt a lot, but apparently I’d managed to turn off the pain centers of my brain, and all without the help of a mysterious parasite.

Fresh air wafted across my face. The rain had let up and been replaced by a fine mist.

“Run!” Elizabeth screamed, rushing past me and into the backyard.

I spun around, holding the shotgun across my body, but Jimmy Brooks grabbed it and pulled me back down a few steps into the cellar. He yanked the gun out of my hands, tossed it sideways and snapped at me with a mouthful of needle-sharp fangs. I cringed, frozen, but an orange blur crossed in front of my face, and he fell backward into the cellar.

I looked up. Elizabeth was standing in the doorway. She’d kicked him square in the face.

“Run!” she screamed again, and I scrambled out of the cellar and across the lawn behind her.

The clouds were still blotting out the stars and the moon, but even in the dark, our orange unitards were going to make us stand out — unless we somehow managed to wander into a field full of prison inmates.

I skidded around the corner of the inn, but the padding on the feet of my unitard was soaked and slipping all around. I managed to catch my balance and glanced over my shoulder. Jimmy, Lennox and Baxter were rounding the corner behind me. I’d never make it to the car; I’d never be able to outrun them. I knew that for certain. But I could buy Elizabeth some time. She was almost at the front corner of the inn and might be able to make it into the woods if she had a few more seconds. Jake’s pickup was parked in the driveway, beside the inn, leaving a gap that Elizabeth was just passing through now. If I fought them there, in that bottleneck, she might be able to get away.

Jimmy was close now; I could hear his footsteps pounding behind me as I reached the front bumper of Jake’s truck. When I got to the passenger-side door, I tried to turn. My plan was to hit him with a surprise left hook, but my feet slipped sideways again and I fell, crashing into the side of the truck and landing on the gravel driveway.

Jimmy was running straight at me, his face expressionless, his mouth open. There was no way I could get back up in time. All I could do was watch in terror as he closed in on me, snapping his new fangs as he came. He was only a few feet away, when the passenger-side door flew open. I heard Jimmy thunk into it, face first, and then I watched him fall backward, Lennox and Baxter crashing into him and falling over him in a heap. I scrambled onto my feet, and Miles Van Helsing jumped out of the truck, holding a hammer in one hand and a wrench in the other.

“You’re okay …” I stammered.

“No time!” he said, shoving me toward the front of the inn.

By some miracle, the Porsche was parked in the driveway. I assumed the miracle went by the name of Miles Van Helsing. Elizabeth was getting into the driver’s seat as we ran by Hal’s precious rosebushes.

She slammed the door shut, and a moment later the car’s engine roared to life. We only had about seven or eight feet to go when Dutton, the indestructible zompire, limped in front of us. His jaw was jutting off to the side, way out of place, and he could barely walk on one leg, but there he was, blocking our way.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Miles threw the hammer at Dutton. It hit him right in the forehead. He wobbled backward, and Miles sprinted past him. Dutton blindly grabbed at me as I went by, but even in my soggy booties, I managed to scoot past him.

Miles was already in the backseat and had left the door open.

“Go!” I yelled, cramming myself in.

Elizabeth slammed on the gas, the tires spun and gravel spit out behind us. The car fishtailed before the tires caught, and Johnny’s face slammed against my window. Dried blood covered his mouth and chin, and his nose was swollen and bent, probably thanks to Hal’s smack with the gun. His lips were curled back, fangs snapping, but his eyes were empty.

I turned away. Did I really think I was going to get out of this? Maybe Hal had been right: it would have been better just to stay holed up in the bunker listening to old records.

“Go! Go! Go!” Miles cried, and the tires finally dug in. The car shot forward, and we tore out of the driveway. Johnny galloped along beside us, but I tried not to look; I didn’t want to see him anymore, not like that.

“Hold tight,” Elizabeth said, making a hard right onto Elm Street. She shifted gears, braked, shifted again, and all of a sudden we were speeding away.

Monday, 3:55 a.m.

We were hurtling down Elm Street, whipping around corners and practically catching air when we drove over the small rises in the road. It was still drizzling, so the visibility wasn’t great, and the road was slick from the rain. None of it slowed Elizabeth down, though. I buckled up my seat belt and heard Miles doing the same behind me.

“I thought you were toast,” I said, looking back at Miles.

“I thought you were, too.”

“So what happened?” I asked.

“Your sister,” Miles said. “One minute they were on top of me, the next she was dragging me across the cellar and then throwing me out the doors at the back.”

“She’s not infected! I knew she’d make it. That means Mom’s probably still okay, too!” I said. “Where did she go?”

“I don’t know,” Miles said. “She just disappeared. I didn’t stick around to investigate.”

“Well, thanks for saving my neck, Miles,” I said. “I figured you would’ve made a run for it instead of sticking around.”

“I would have, but I …” He hesitated. “I got turned around in the woods. By the time I made it back to Elm Street, the Porsche was gone. So, I backtracked to the inn and found it parked in the driveway.”

“I bet it was Lilith,” I said. “But why didn’t you drive away?”

“Your brother and Dutton were patrolling the outside of the inn, and I couldn’t get to the car. I slipped into Jake’s truck and was waiting for a chance to make a break for the car, but they never left. That’s bad, by the way,” he added. “They’re still capable of planning after sundown. It doesn’t bode well.”

“Well, what does bode well for us is that we can finally get out of this place. We can get help. Where are we headed?” I asked Elizabeth.

“We’ll take Rolling River Road,” Elizabeth said, “to Maple and try for the bridge. It’ll only take fifteen minutes to get to Hillsboro once we’re on the highway.”

“As long as there are no roadblocks,” Miles said. “The way they were rounding us up yesterday, I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to cordon off the town.”

Before I could respond, Elizabeth made a hard left onto Rolling River Road. “Hold on!”

Just then, a leg fell over the side of the car.

I screamed, Miles screamed, Elizabeth screamed — and then Johnny’s face appeared in the windshield. He looked at us, upside down, for about two seconds, and then his face and leg disappeared again.

“Was that J-Johnny?” Miles stammered.

“Yeah,” I groaned, then suddenly Johnny’s face was next to me, at the passenger-side window.

I screamed again. So did Miles. Elizabeth leaned away from me, and the car swerved across the street. We hit the opposite shoulder and fishtailed. She pulled the wheel hard, too hard, back to the other side of the road. The car shot across the road and hit the gravel shoulder. Then Johnny was gone, and for a moment, it looked like we might have lost him. Elizabeth finally managed to get the car back under control, but then his face reappeared in the window beside me. He had the same wooden expression as before, like he couldn’t care less about careening down the road on the roof of the car. He leaned even farther over the window. I saw his hand flash by and an instant later the window imploded. Tiny bits of glass rained down on me, and wind blasted in. Johnny leaned in and tried to bite me on the shoulder. I threw myself to the driver’s side, away from him, crashing into Elizabeth’s arms. The car jerked to the left and we swerved again. Elizabeth tried to straighten us up, but this time she couldn’t. The car fishtailed wildly across the wet pavement, and for an instant, I recognized that we were back at The Bend. I even spotted the place where I’d jumped off the cliff. That was about when we hit the guardrail.

We plowed through it like a hot knife through butter, hardly even slowing down. Then we were in the air.

As we hovered above the black water of the Rolling River, I heard Miles say “This is bad” in a ludicrously casual voice. Then we started our dive. The last thing I saw, before we hit the river, was the headlights lighting up the water. They penetrated the darkness until I thought I could see the very bottom.

Then, of course, we crash-landed. Johnny torpedoed off the roof and disappeared into the river. The car started to sink.

“Roll down your window, Elizabeth,” Miles said calmly, as ice-cold water gushed into my window. “Roll it down before the electrical system fails.”

She did, and water started gushing into her window, too.

“Make sure you unbuckle,” Miles said, not quite as calmly as before. The frigid water was up to my waist now and pouring in fast. “Then take a deep breath and get out.”

I unlocked my seat belt as the car tilted forward and started a nosedive. I took one last gasp of air before we were submerged. The car kept sinking for two or three more seconds before the front end hit the bottom. Then the headlights flickered out, and it got dark. My lungs were already screaming when I reached out for Elizabeth’s arm, but I couldn’t find her. I reached into the back, but Miles must have already evacuated, too. I pulled myself out of the car and kicked and clawed my way to the surface.

I burst out of the water, gasping and coughing.

“Elizabeth!” I yelled when I’d caught my breath. “Miles!”

The current of the river was stronger than I remembered, and it was quickly carrying me away from where the car had gone under.

“Elizabeth!”

“Over here!” she cried, and I spotted her orange jumpsuit downriver. She was standing waist-deep in the water near the riverbank.

She clambered out and into the trees while I swam over. I straggled onto the shore and followed her into the woods.

“Are you all right?” I asked. She was soaked and shivering.

“I think so,” she said. The rain had picked up again; the sound of it slapping against the leaves of the trees was deafening. “What happened to Miles?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“And Johnny?”

“I saw him go into the water. I don’t know after that.”

“Now what?” she asked, her teeth chattering.

“We should keep moving. Maybe try to get out of town on foot.”

“I’ve got to get some dry clothes first or I’ll freeze.”

“I know they’ve got plenty of T-shirts at Romero’s.”

“No, I was thinking we’d head for the church. Reverend Takahashi collects used clothes for people in Haiti, and he’s famous for leaving the doors unlocked. We could sneak in, get out of these stupid uniforms and then try to walk to the highway.”

“It doesn’t feel right taking clothes for people in Haiti, but if we get out of this alive, I’ll donate a whole box of new stuff — heck, I’ll send them ten boxes of new stuff. The faster we get out of here the better. Miles was right — if they don’t have roadblocks set up now, they will for sure by the morning. I’m sorry I made us go back to the inn, Winehurst. We should’ve played it safe and just hightailed it out of town. Miles and Jimmy would still be …”

“We all agreed to do it,” she said, teeth chattering. “And it was the right thing, Charlie. Plus, Miles might be all right. He might be close by. Maybe we should wait for him?”

“Johnny might be close by, too,” I said. “I think if Miles was here, he’d order us to keep moving.”

“There’s a walking trail — it’s just through the trees,” she said, pointing behind us. “And there’s a bridge that will take us back to the road.”

“Ladies first,” I said, and we bumbled our way through the trees and onto a narrow walking path. I kept looking back as we walked, to check if we were being followed, but I didn’t see anything or anyone.

“It’s not far,” Elizabeth said.

About a minute later, we came to a wooden bridge.

“I want to rip the feet off of these things,” Elizabeth said, as we started toward the bridge. “It’s like walking on a couple of slimy sponges.”

“I guess the bomb shelter clothing designers didn’t think people would be swimming in them much. That’s just poor planning in my opinion.”

Elizabeth stopped when we stepped onto the bridge and glanced up and down the river. “Do you see anything, Charlie?”

“I can barely see to the other side of the bridge, Winehurst,” I said.

Just then I distinctly heard the cracking of branches. Someone was coming through the woods, and they weren’t far away.

“Is it Miles?” Elizabeth asked, grabbing my arm. If she’d grabbed my arm like that yesterday, I would have been on cloud nine. Now I would have given anything for Johnny to be back to normal and stealing her away from me.

“I certainly hope so,” I croaked, “but he would be the one person in the world who would completely understand if we didn’t hang around to find out.”

She nodded, and we dashed across the bridge. Once we popped out on the other side, we hustled down a winding gravel path and stopped behind a neighborhood mailbox.

“That’s Maple,” she whispered, nodding down the street. “It’s not far to Church Street.”

“How far?” I asked, keeping my ears peeled for anyone following us.

“Maybe five hundred yards?” she said.

I didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t hear anything behind us anymore. I would have absolutely hated it if I could hear someone coming, but not hearing anything was making me feel a whole new level of scared. On top of that, there was no good way to sneak along Maple Drive. The front yards were big and wide open, and you’d have to be blind to miss us with those orange jumpsuits.

“I think we’re just going to have to run for it, Winehurst,” I said.

“I’m probably going to break my ankle thanks to these booties,” she said. Her skin was pale and she was shivering in violent bursts. “I can’t wait to get into some new clothes.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, shivering, too, and scanned the street for the slightest bit of movement. But I didn’t see a thing, which made me more terrified than ever. “Maybe we should try to sneak through the backyards.”

“Maybe we …” she started, and then we heard the thumps of footsteps coming across the bridge.

“On second thought, maybe we should just run,” I said.

An instant later we were sprinting down Maple, my feet skidding left and right over the slick soles of the booties. Elizabeth stumbled a couple of times and lost some ground, but we managed to cover about four hundred yards pretty quickly. I could just see the church through the darkness when I slowed and glanced over my shoulder to make sure she was all right. That’s when she tripped and fell onto the road in a heap. I stopped, slipping and almost falling, too, but I managed to catch my balance. Just as I started back, I caught sight of a figure walking onto Maple, emerging from the path we’d been on. And even though he was infected now, he still had his rock-star stroll, like he had nowhere to go and nothing important to do. Johnny.

Elizabeth scrambled onto her feet. “Run, Charlie!” she screamed.

“We’re getting out of here together, Winehurst,” I cried, rushing back and grabbing her hand. And with that, as if they’d just been waiting to prove me wrong, a slew of blank-faced zompires started emerging from the front doors along Maple Drive.

“Run!” Elizabeth said, squeezing my hand so tight I thought she might break a few bones.

We ran, stumbling, almost tripping, as twenty or thirty zompires came out of their houses and joined in the chase behind us. Lucky for us they seemed confused at first, like they couldn’t figure out where we were, but within seconds, they started toward us with that eerie speed.

If they’d seen us any earlier, we never would have had a chance to make it to the church, but we’d already covered most of the distance, and now our terror was making us move with our own extra bit of speed. They were closing in fast, though, I could feel that without having to look. I don’t know why I thought getting inside the church was going to make us safe, but it had to be better than being hunted down like a gazelle on the Serengeti.

My hopes were dashed almost immediately by another mob of about thirty zompires that marched off of Church Street, with jerky steps, and headed straight for the front of the church.

“This way!” Elizabeth cried, swerving to our right and sprinting toward the rear of the church.

“The back door,” she panted. “He leaves it open.”

A giddy panic set in, and I had to fight to keep myself from giggling as we made our mad dash for the back of the church. Zompires were right on top of us, and the new mob was already streaming around the front corner. It was pointless, I knew that, and yet we kept going. Then the back door came into view, and a foolish glimmer of hope spread through me. Maybe we could hide inside, lock ourselves in a room, wait it out? Maybe we could find a phone and call someone and they’d actually believe us and send help? Or maybe we’d find a time machine inside and travel back to three days ago? They were all ridiculous thoughts, but when Elizabeth got to the door and threw it open, I felt a gigantic wave of triumph crash over me. We bounded inside, and I slammed it shut. Elizabeth grabbed the dead bolt and twisted it into place.

“We might make it,” I said. Then the mob crashed into the door, and I heard the wood crack.

“They’re coming in!” Elizabeth groaned.

We were on a landing. There were stairs up, and there were stairs down.

“Which way?” I asked.

Elizabeth took the stairs up, and I followed her. We rushed along a short hallway, through a door, and found ourselves in the nave of the church. Elizabeth turned around and slammed that door shut, too, then scanned the room.

“Turn on the lights, Charlie,” she said. “I can’t stand the dark anymore. The switches are at the front.”

I knew what she meant. If we were going down, and we almost certainly were, it would be nice to at least do it in the light. I rushed to the front and found a panel of about eight light switches. I used both hands and threw them all up at once. The lights blinked on, and the church got bright. At the same time, a recording of church bells started up. I froze momentarily, but reminded myself we weren’t going to hide from them anymore, so church bells ringing didn’t matter. Plus, if Miles, Lilith and Mom were out there somewhere, maybe it would create a diversion and give them a chance to escape.

I could hear footsteps rushing behind the door at the back. Elizabeth leaped away from it and dove under the pews. I dove, too, and we started commando crawling our way toward each other. The door crashed open, and I heard a crowd trample in.

There was no getting away now, and I knew it. The sad thing is I actually felt a wave of relief.

“It’s been nice getting to know you, Winehurst,” I whispered. “Maybe, after we’re changed, we can still do dinner. And if we do share a hive mind, please ignore most of my thoughts. They can be pretty childish.”

She grabbed my hands, smiled and gave me a short, simple kiss on the lips. “We tried,” she said.

Feet closed in, all around us. I looked up from under the pew and saw the Man-Bear, Igor Balic, crouching down, looking right at me. His mouth was open, thorny teeth in full display, spider blossoms scampering across them.

Elizabeth squeezed my hands tighter. Balic started toward us, then hesitated and stood up. An instant later, the windows were crashing in. Something — no, lots of things  — whistled through the air, and I looked at Elizabeth. She was staring at something — a green canister that was lying several feet away from her on the floor, hissing out yellow smoke. My eyes started to water, and I began to choke. I looked up at Balic again and saw a small dart shoot into his cheek, and then another hit him in the neck. My eyes felt like they were on fire and started watering so badly I couldn’t see anymore. I didn’t want to get up, but I needed to get away from the yellow smoke that was now billowing out of that canister. I staggered blindly to my feet, then I felt something sharp dig into my stomach. I looked down; a dart was sticking out of my orange jumpsuit. Everything went black.

Monday, ?:??

I woke up in a cot, in a white tent, with Richard O’Rourke staring down at me from behind a plastic visor. He was decked out in a yellow hazmat suit. I’d finally lost my mind.

“Hello, Harker,” he said.

“Hola, O’Rourke, I think I’ve gone loco,” I murmured.

“Yeah, sure, a long time ago. It probably happened after about a week at Choke.”

“What? What’s going on? I don’t understand.”

“You emailed me, remember?”

“I did?”

“Yeah, you said something strange was going on in Rolling Hills and sent me a photo of a skull with something growing out of it.”

“Right,” I mumbled. “How’d you get here so fast? I thought you were holed up somewhere in the Middle East.”

“We’re only three days into summer vacation, Harker. I haven’t had time to pack, let alone leave.”

“Where am I?”

“This is a containment tent, inside a mobile field hospital.”

“In Rolling Hills?” I asked, looking around at the gleaming white walls of the tent.

“Close by,” he said.

I tried to sit up, but the world went spinning away, and I collapsed back onto the bed.

“What happened?”

“Do you want the long or short version?”

“Medium?”

“All right,” he said, sitting back. “Well, I got your email and, obviously, thought it was a joke. But I had to admit it seemed a little too elaborate for you, so I took some time to do some googling about Rolling Hills. There’s someone by the name of Dr. Xavier Vortex, who’s been tweeting and blogging about this mysterious viral outbreak about every five minutes, which is lucky for you. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have risked telling my dad about it. But, after seeing that this Vortex had some serious credentials, scientifically speaking, I decided to broach the subject with him.”

“Vortex actually has credentials?”

“Yes, he does — although he’s kind of fallen off the map recently. Anyway, I brought it up with my dad, and he had one of his operatives come and check it out.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. He never reported back. I don’t think Dad would’ve handled things so … well, so efficiently, if one of his own employees hadn’t disappeared. That’s not normal, and Dad takes his operatives’ safety very seriously.”

“This is all your dad?”

“His company, yes, and don’t ask me who he’s talked to or who he’s working with on this. When he picks up the phone, I’ve been trained to stop listening. Look, I’m probably telling you more than I should, Harker, but we’re friends, and I thought you should know something about what’s going on.”

“How’d you find us?”

“Dad and his team were actually in the middle of corralling the … how does he put it? Oh yeah, he was corralling the ‘contaminated subjects’ on Church Street when he heard church bells and sent a squad of men over to investigate. He’d brought me along to ID you if you were ever captured, but he had me wait back here.”

“What happened to the girl who was with me?”

“They’re keeping you all separated until they’re positive you’re not infected. But from what I’ve heard, she’s all right.”

“Do you know what happened to Lilith or my mom?”

He frowned and shook his head. “They haven’t brought them in yet, but my dad will let me know when they do. They’ve captured Johnny, though.”

“What are they going to do with him? Can they cure him?”

“I don’t know, Harker, but I will tell you this: Dad brought along some serious firepower on this job. They definitely have the best and brightest looking after him.”

“So, what’s in store for me?”

“For now, you can just sit back and relax. But I wouldn’t start booking tee times anytime soon. The town is quarantined, and you may have been exposed to a seriously messed-up virus.”

“Is that why you’ve got your rainsuit on?”

“It’s called a hazmat suit, Harker. And I had to steal it to sneak in here. If anyone catches me, I might actually disappear for a few years — no joke.”

“You’ll let me know if they find my mom and Lilith, right?”

“Of course, but hey, you should know they brought in another guy a little while ago. He’s in the room across the hall. He’s hurt pretty bad, but I heard he mumbled your name a couple of times. I thought he might be a friend of yours.”

“Is it Miles?” I asked.

He opened his mouth to answer, but then there was a rustling outside the tent followed by the sound of a zipper being undone. O’Rourke bolted up and stood at attention.

Two people entered, both decked out in hazmat suits.

O’Rourke saluted them and quickly marched out without another word.

One of my new visitors saluted him back, without really paying any attention, and walked over to me.

“Charles Harker, I’m Colonel Stephen H. Sanders. How the heck are you feeling, son?” he asked and bent over to peer at me. His face was clean-shaven and angular.

“I’m alive,” I said. “I think.”

“Damn straight you’re alive,” he said. “And you’re a hero.”

“Not me,” I muttered. “I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off most of the time.”

“There are worse things to be than a chicken,” Sanders said. “Now buck up, son, because I’ve got some good news. Doc Peters here,” he said, motioning to the other person, “has given you the all clear. You’re not infected.”

“Great,” I said, even though being in the clear wasn’t making me feel a whole lot better considering the rest of my family was either missing or infected.

“I’ll get someone in here with some grub, and I’m sure you’ll be feeling right as rain in no time. Now, if you’ll excuse us, the doc’s got rounds to make.”

“Sure,” I mumbled, but the two of them were already marching back to the zippered door. They unzipped, zipped and then were gone, leaving me alone in my quarantine tent.

“Miles Van Helsing,” I muttered and sat up slowly. The world tilted a little again, but then things evened out. I eased my way onto my feet and expected to fall back down, but I got my balance. Whatever they’d put in that dart was wearing off.

“Miles Van Helsing,” I said again, this time grinning a little. “That nut-ball made it.”

I started toward the zipper-door, and that’s when I clued in to the fact that I wasn’t wearing my orange onesie anymore. Now I was decked out in a green hospital gown, the kind that’s wide open in the back. I pulled it shut with one hand and grabbed the tent zipper. I wanted to see Miles. We’d been through a heck of a lot, and I wanted to make sure he was okay.

I’d just managed to undo the zipper when someone burst in wearing one of those hazmat suits, practically knocking me over.

“Watch it,” I said, figuring it was a doctor or a guard making sure I didn’t go out for an unauthorized stroll. And I was going to head back to my bed like a good little patient when I caught sight of who was staring at me from behind the plastic visor.

“Miles!” I said and grabbed him.

“Take it easy,” he said, as I tried to give him my version of a Johnny Harker bear hug.

“You made it!” I said, stepping back.

“You could say that,” he said in a low voice. His face was covered in scrapes. One eye was swollen purple and completely shut. The other was only partially open.

“What happened?” I asked.

“The crash in the river,” he said, zipping the tent closed. “Then I met your brother in the woods.”

“How’d you get away?” I asked.

“I didn’t,” he said flatly.

“What —” I started, feeling my legs turning to rubber.

“I borrowed the suit from your friend,” he said.

“O’Rourke?” I gasped and fell backward into my cot.

“He’s in my room … taking my place, temporarily. The suit will shield me from the sun.”

“Not you, Miles …” I said, and all my strength drained out of me.

“It needs to survive. It needs to move on. I have to get out of here or they’ll try to kill it.”

“Miles, they can fix you,” I stammered.

“Fix me?” he said flatly and pulled a scalpel from out of nowhere. “I don’t want to be fixed.”

“Easy does it, Miles,” I said, trying to gather up some energy to fight him off.

“This isn’t for you,” he said and stepped over to the other side of the tent. He sliced the scalpel down the side of the tent, and there was a sound like air seeping out. Then my tent sagged a little as sunlight streamed in from outside.

“I came to tell you, Charlie, that I have to go, but I’ll be back,” he said, taking one step outside. “Lilith and your mother, they’re not one of us. Not yet. But you’ll all join us, and you’ll see that it’s better this way.”

“Miles!” I cried, but he was gone.