Strangers

said, "Well, I don't know what they'll look like, or what they'll call themselves. But they're going to do something bad to us, maybe turn us into zombies." Cal Sharkle assured Wilkerson that he had plenty of guns and ammunition in his house and had taken steps to make a fortress of the place.
        Alarmed by talk of weapons and shootouts, Wilkerson had humored Cal and, as soon as the man left, had called his sister. Nan Gilchrist had arrived at half-past-ten with her husband and had told a worried Wilkerson that she would handle it, that she was sure she could persuade Cal to enter the hospital for observation. But after she and Mr. Gilchrist went into the house, Ed Wilkerson decided they might need some backup, so he and another neighbor, Frank Krelky, went to the Sharkle house to provide what assistance they could.
        Wilkerson expected Mr. or Mrs. Gilchrist to answer the bell, but Cal himself came to the door. He was distraught, nearly hysterical - and armed with a.20-gauge semiautomatic shotgun. He accused his neighbors of being zombies already. "You've been changed," he shouted at Wilkerson and Krelky. "Oh God, I should've seen it. I should've known. When did it happen, when'd you stop being human? My God, now you've come to get us all in one swoop." Then, with a wail of terror, he opened fire with the shotgun. The first blast took Krelky in the throat at such close range that it decapitated him. Wilkerson ran, was hit in the legs as he reached the end of Sharkle's front walk, fell, rolled, and played dead, a ruse that saved his life.
        Now Krekly was in the morgue, and Wilkerson was in the hospital in good enough condition to talk to reporters.
        And Father Wycazik was at the entrance to O'Bannon Lane, where a young man in the crowd behind the police line was eager to fill in the last of it for him. The man's name was Roger Hasterwick, a "temporarily unemployed beverage concoctionist," which Stefan suspected was an out-of-work bartender. He had a disturbing gleam in his eyes that might have been a sign of intoxication, drug use, lack of sleep, psychopathy, or all four, but his information was detailed and apparently accurate:
        "So, see, the cops close the block, evacuate the people out their houses, then they try to talk with this Sharkle the Shark. But he don't have a phone, see, and when they use a bullhorn, he won't answer them. The cops figure his sister and brother-in-law are in there alive, hostages, so nobody wants to do nothin' rash."
        "Wise," Father Wycazik said bleakly, feeling even colder than the winter day in which he stood.
        "Wise, wise, wise," Roger Hasterwick said impatiently, making it clear he preferred not to be interrupted. "So finally, with a half-hour daylight left, they decide they'll send in the SWAT guys to dig him out, maybe save the sister and brother-in-law. So they lob tear gas in there, see, and the SWAT guys rush the place, but when they get in they hit trouble. Sharkle must've been workin' on the house for weeks, settin' traps. The cops start fallin' over these thin wires he's strung everywhere, and one gets brained by a deadfall, which don't kill him but sure does some damage. Then, Christ, Sharkle opens fire on 'em because he's wearin' a gas mask same as they are and just waitin' like a cat. The dude was prepared. So he blows one cop away, utterly, and wounds one, then he heads down into the cellar and pulls the door shut, and nobody can get in after him 'cause it's not any regular cellar door but a steel door he's put in special. Not only that, but the outside cellar door, around back, is steel, too, and what he's done is he's put heavy sheet-metal shutters over the insides of the cellar windows, so it's your typical stalemate, see."
        By Stefan's calculations, two people were dead, three wounded.
        Hasterwick said, "So the cops they pulled in their horns real fast and figured to wait him out through the night. This mornin', Sharkle the Shark slides open one of them sheetmetal shutters on a basement window, see, and he shouts a bunch of stuff, really crazy stuff, and they figure somethin' more is gonna go down, but then he closes the shutter again, and since then - nothin'. I sure hope he does somethin' soon,,cause it's cold and I'm beginnin' to get bored."
        "What did he shout?" Stefan asked.
        "Huh?"
        "This morning, what crazy stuff did he yell from the basement?"
        "Oh, well, see,