Molly hit the brakes, and they turned around and headed back toward the police station.
“Make sure my shotgun is loaded," she said from the driver's seat.
It was quiet after that. Jack saw the ghostly postal truck in the road up ahead, but he did not mention it. Nor did he say any more about the phantoms that lingered on the sidewalks, moving swiftly along with them, keeping up with the Jeep as though it were no effort at all.
Yet though he did not mention the dead again, all three of his companions glanced furtively out into the dark from time to time, as if they might catch a quick glance of the lost souls who even now urged them on their way, crying silently for justice.
* * *
Molly's knuckles were white on the wheel. Her breathing was shallow and for a moment she felt as though she were underwater; there was pressure on her ears and everything sounded so far away.
Her foot was heavy on the pedal. The Jeep barreled up the road, covering the mile or two between downtown and the police station in what seemed like no time at all. The headlights seemed strangely dim. Beside her, Bill loaded her shotgun. Then he slid two grenades out of the bag and cradled them in his hand.
In the rearview mirror she saw Jack staring out the side windows, face slack and pale, ghostly. She knew what he was seeing. The lost souls, the victims of the Prowlers. He did not have to tell her. Molly wondered if the Meredith girl, the one they'd been unable to save, was out there, looking on.
It made her angry to think that. And the anger gave her strength.
The Jeep hit a pothole and the headlights seemed to blaze with renewed vigor. In the backseat, the sheriff checked the clip on the assault rifle again, and Molly tried not to think of the destructive capacity of that weapon. All guns scared her, but this one more so. It seemed so uncontrollable, even in the hands of a man with such confidence.
Of course, most of the sheriff 's confidence was gone now. An expression of grim determination was etched on his face, but there was none of the air of authority around him anymore. He was just another soldier now.
“There," Bill rasped.
Ahead, the Town Hall was dark. As they cruised past it, the police station came into view, its shattered windows gleaming with light from deep within, a flickering jack-o'-lantern of a building. Dark shapes cavorted in the paved parking lot.
“They're still here," Molly whispered.
“It looks like they're . . . celebrating," the sheriff rumbled.
“They think they've won," Bill told them.
Jack grunted in the back. “Like hell."
“Molly, hit a few if you can, but get us right in front of the door." Bill rolled the grenades in his hand.
The faces of the Prowlers, their animal countenances, were almost absurdly comic when the Jeep turned toward them and the headlights picked them out, spotlighting them against the front of the station. Molly pumped the accelerator instead of the brake, and the Jeep surged across the parking lot. Several of the Prowlers were smart enough and quick enough to dive out of the way.
Two of them weren't.
The Jeep struck them an eyeblink apart, the impact of metal on shattering bone reminding Molly of big fireworks, and the way the explosion is heard first, and then the report right after. One of the Prowlers went under the tires and the Jeep bumped over him. The other flew up and struck the windshield, which splintered, and the thing slid off the spiderwebbed glass, limbs at odd angles, when she slammed on the brakes.
“Go!" Jack shouted.
Molly grabbed the shotgun from Bill, kicked open her door, and blew the arm off a Prowler that was coming for her.
They rushed the Jeep immediately, but only a few were still outside. As if enjoying the spoils of war, most of them were inside. Jack figured they were looking for Lemoine's journal. He could see several outlined in the open door, beginning to stream out, primal rage mixing with surprise as they prepared to finish what they had started.
Jack had the same idea.
He shot the first Prowler to rush him right through the window on his door. Then he kicked it open, dropped to the pavement, and shot again as the animal swiped a claw toward Molly's legs.
Gunfire split the night.
“Bill!" Jack shouted. “The door!"
Even before the words were out, he saw Bill pull the pins on a pair of grenades and lob them at the front door of the station.
“Cover!" Bill roared.
They all ducked their heads, shied away, but the blast was bigger than they expected, and when the grenades exploded, Jack and Molly were knocked off their feet. His head smacked the pavement hard, and he shook it as he got up.
Molly pumped the shotgun and decimated the chest of a Prowler that lunged at him. He fell beside him with a wet crunch and twitched only once.
“Stay down!" Sheriff Tackett snapped.
Jack glanced up at him from the pavement and watched in amazement as the aging man with the round belly and the thick, steel gray mustache opened fire with the assault rifle. There were four Prowlers remaining in the parking lot that were still on their feet when he started. Tackett swept the gun in a wide arc at gut level, and the Prowlers jittered like tacky plastic skeletons as the bullets thumped through their flesh.
They all went down.
“Let's move!" Bill snarled.
Jack was up in an instant. He grabbed Molly by the hand and pulled her up with him, and when they turned toward the station, he saw that the entire face of it, the front door and the wall around it, had been blown in. In the harsh light from inside, he could see several Prowlers getting
