How could they ever explain this?
All these big guys and three teenage girls. One of them naked. Another with her shirt torn open and her bra showing. Beaten to shit so they didn’t even look like girls anymore.
What could any of them ever say that would make sense of that?
What?
What?
Tommy stood there and looked down at the girl while the other guys kept rolling around fighting.
Then Tommy spun away, dropped to his knees, and threw up.
Jake was still trying to haul himself out of the mud, still trying to remember how to breathe. He fought to get to his feet, but his knee immediately buckled and he went down again.
That’s when Burl got up.
The naked girl had left him in the mud and was fighting Richie. Hank and Vic were taking turns knocking down the girl in the windbreaker and getting bit and knocking her down again. All of them screaming and cursing.
Jake began to crawl through the mud while across the rainy field, behind the five struggling figures, Burl Hansard stood up. It seemed to take a long time for him to do it. He was so badly hurt, maybe so dazed, that he was clumsy, he looked like he was drunk. The rain slashed at him, sending crooked red lines down to the mud, making his skin look white as paper.
“B-Burl…” called Jake, but he was too far away and his voice was lost in the sound of the storms and all that yelling.
Burl paused for one moment, his pale face turned toward Jake, eyes locked; and in that fragment of time, Jake knew that everything here was wrong. Worse even than it had been. He didn’t know how he knew—it was a reaction born in the deepest, oldest, most primitive part of his brain. It was a knowledge of wrongness without any intellectual interpretation. It was simply wrong.
Burl’s eyes were open but Burl was not in there.
Even from that distance, Jake knew.
Somehow Burl was gone.
So who looked at him from his friend’s eyes?
Who, or what?
All of this burned through Jake’s head in less than a second.
Then Burl took a step. Heavy, lumbering, like he didn’t quite remember how to use his feet. He pulled one work boot out of the mud and took a step, but it was more like falling forward than walking forward.
Not toward Jake.
Burl turned toward the knot of struggling figures. A step, another.
He reached out to help pull the naked girl away who kept trying to bite Vic even though he had her by the hair and kept punching her in the face. Burl grabbed the girl and hauled her away, and Jake expected him to start wailing on her. But he didn’t. Instead he simply shoved her aside and with a rush and a yell that was as loud as it was meaningless. Then Burl grabbed Vic’s face, taking it in both of his hands the way a grandmother does when she’s going to kiss a kid on the lips.
Except that’s not what was happening.
Of course it wasn’t.
Burl pulled Vic forward, tearing him free from the mud, crushing him close, and then he bit down, tearing into Vic’s nose, crushing it, ripping it. Blood exploded against Burl’s face and it seemed to incense the man. He growled like a dog and began tearing at Vic, worrying at his face the way a dog does. Vic screamed and screamed. He beat at Burl, punching him with the same red, swollen fists he’d been using with similar futility on the naked girl. The fists bounced off of Burl’s massive frame. Vic brought his knee up into Burl’s balls. Once, again, and again.
Nothing.
And it was then, at that moment, that Jake lost all hope that there was any way to understand this. He’d been in fights. He’d given and taken shots to the groin. Some guys could cowboy through it, biting down on the pain, bulling through it, but even the toughest of them reacted. You had to react. It was your balls.
Burl didn’t twitch. All that happened was a jerk of his body with each impact, but there was no more reaction to it than when somebody brushes your shoulder on the subway. Less. It was nothing. Dead meat being hit.
That was it.
That was all.
Burl never stopped biting.
Vic’s face.
Vic’s cheek.
Vic’s throat.
Then Vic stopped screaming; he stopped kicking. Someone turned on a power hose of red in Vic’s throat. Blood showered Burl’s face and chest.
Jake lost it then.
He could hear past his own screams.
His eyes seemed to switch off for a moment as if they refused to see any of this.
Time punched him senseless and each second was like a brutal fist against his brain. The sounds and sights of what was going on broke apart and flew off into the storm.
Tommy and Richie were still fighting. One each with a girl.
Then Tommy was down and the girl with the windbreaker knelt on his chest. There was one little, final flap of Tommy’s hand. After that, nothing.
Richie picked the naked girl up and flung her away from him. Then he looked wildly around as if trying to decide how to react, failed, and then simply ran.
Badly.
The mud and the rain and the damage brought him down within two steps.
“No!”
The cry was torn from Jake. It was not the first time he’d yelled, but this one found a hole in the storm where there was no thunder, no howling wind, no screams. A flash moment of quiet into which his one word stabbed.
Every face turned toward the sound.
Toward him.
Burl and the girls.
Even Vic.
Oh, God. Vic.
He sat up and swiveled his head around on his ruined throat.
Richie saw him, too, and he reached out with a bloodstained hand. “Jake … oh, Christ … Jake!”
It was a mistake.
The girls, broken and disfigured, crippled into shambling wrecks, turned away from Jake and began limping after Richie. He tried to crawl away from them.
Didn’t.
Couldn’t.
Burl and Vic did not go after Richie.
Vic got to his feet and, nearly shoulder to shoulder with Burl, began moving toward Jake.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
THE SITUATION ROOM
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
“Mr. President,” said Scott Blair, “Captain Imura’s team is on-site at the Stebbins Little School. I’m waiting now on word about the drives.”
“How soon can Imura get those drives to us?”
“He won’t need to. He’ll upload them to his tactical computer and send them via burst transfer to us. We’ll have them five minutes after he has them.”
“Thank God,” said the president. “Thank God.”
Sylvia Ruddy covered the mouthpiece of the phone into which she’d been speaking. “Scott … how much stake are we placing on what’s on the drives? I reviewed Trout’s broadcasts and it seemed clear that Volker regarded his variation of Lucifer as unstoppable. He said as much to his CIA handler. I have transcripts of all of this and there’s nothing in anything Volker said to indicate that there’s a silver bullet on those drives.”
Blair placed his hands flat on the table. “Have you not been following, Sylvia? I never said that there was a cure on the drives. We need them for our people—Dr. McReady, Dick Price at Zabriske Point, the team at the CDC. They are the most talented bioweapons people on earth. It’s always been our hope that they’ll find a weakness in Volker’s variation.”
“That’s a long damn shot,” said Ruddy.
“It’s the shot we have.”
The president got up and walked over to the big screen on which the satellite images were shown, with the thermal signatures of hundreds of people scattering through the storm. He touched the screen at the outer edge of the dispersal pattern.
“All the science in the world isn’t going to help us if we can’t contain the outbreak.”
No one spoke.
He nodded to General Burroughs. “Amistad, give me the numbers.”
Bur
roughs punched some keys that overlaid a red circle around the troubled area. “The only thing working in our favor right now is that the infected are unable to drive vehicles, and most of them are slow, moving at a fast walk or slower. So, by estimating the potential distance traveled by foot since the quarantine break, we have extended the Q-zone to cover this area.” He hit keys and the line jumped outward so that it covered an area with a sixty-four-mile diameter, with Stebbins in the exact center. “Even if an infected person was traveling on foot at a rate of four miles an hour—which is virtually impossible because of terrain, weather, and, er, the nature of the infection, we estimate that the maximum distance from Stebbins would be thirty-two miles. Therefore we need to designate everything inside this extended area to be our new hot zone.”
The president nodded very slowly. “How many people live inside that zone?”
“It’s mostly farm country…”
“How many?”
It was Blair who had those numbers. It hurt him to say it, though. “One hundred seventy thousand people.”
The president closed his eyes.
“However, if it continues to spread at this rate, we’ll have to expand the zone again,” said Blair. “By tomorrow morning Pittsburgh will be inside the hot zone.”
He turned. “Ladies and gentlemen, I will take any and all suggestions for how to contain this. As of right now no option is off the table.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
Two of the red laser dots vanished and a few seconds later two men came walking slowly and carefully out of the rain. They wore the same dark hazmat suits as the other soldiers, and carried similar gear. The taller of the newcomers had an M4 in his gloved hands; the other had a sniper rifle. Dez recognized it. A .408 Cheyenne Tactical sniper rifle that fired .338 Lapua Magnum supersonic rounds. A rifle bullet like that would result in a kill shot no matter where it struck a person.
The laser dot on Billy Trout remained where it was and Dez’s heart hammered in her chest.
The man with the sniper rifle walked past Uriah Piper and the other farmers, showing a total lack of concern that they all held weapons. He walked right up to Dez, slung his rifle barrel down, raised his goggles onto his forehead, and pulled down his hood to reveal a middle-aged Japanese face. A small mouth, crooked nose, and quiet eyes. Lots of old scars.
“Officer Fox?” he asked, his voice mild and surprisingly deep for a man of his size. Thunder boomed like a dramatic counterpoint and lightning glowed along the edges of his face. Imura raised an eyebrow. “Wow. Nice timing, but I promise that I didn’t plan the theatrics.”
Dez almost smiled. Didn’t.
The soldier offered his hand. “Captain Sam Imura.”
Dez did not shake hands. “Get that laser sight off of Billy.”
“Sure,” said Imura, withdrawing his hand. He tapped the electronic bud seated inside his right ear. “Moonshiner, stand down.”
The red dot vanished. Trout sagged and almost collapsed, but Piper caught him under the armpit and steadied him. Sam Imura looked amused. A fifth soldier, big and broad-shouldered, stepped down from his hiding place in one of the buses.
Dez stepped very close to Sam. They were the same height and she gave him the full weight of her anger and disapproval in a blue-eyed glared. “Okay, so now that we’re done measuring dicks,” she growled, “how about you tell me what the fuck is going on.”
“I will,” said Sam, “but first I need to know if the flash drives are still safe.”
“That’s why you’re here?”
“Mostly,” said Sam. He glanced at Trout. “Do you have them?”
“Don’t trust him, Billy,” said Cletus, one of the farmers. A few others grunted agreement, except for Piper, who stood as silent as a statue.
“Why didn’t you shoot first and just take the drives?” Trout asked sourly.
“Three reasons,” said Sam. “First, we’re not actually barbarians. I know, big surprise, right? It goes against the cliché, but what can I tell you? Second, if we started a gunfight, do you really think either side would win? We’d kill a bunch of you, and you might kill some of my people. That’s pretty crappy math.”
Trout pointed to the big auditorium windows halfway along the side of the school. That entire section of the school’s facade was peppered with thousands of bullet holes, and the windows were totally gone. “You guys seemed happy with that equation a few hours ago.”
“That wasn’t us,” said Sam. “That was Colonel Dietrich of the Pennsylvania National Guard who, as I believe you’ve been told, has been relieved of his command. He was replaced by Major General Zetter, who did not fire on you. He could have, you know. Your ‘live from the apocalypse’ broadcasts are being jammed, so no one would have known if Zetter razed this school to the ground. The fact that he didn’t should say something to you.”
Trout and Dez exchanged an uncertain look.
“What was the third reason, Captain?” asked Dez.
“Because if Mr. Trout here is dead and the flash drives are not in his pocket, then I could burn off a lot of time trying to find wherever he hid them.” He shrugged. “It’s pretty simple, really. The best approach is a straightforward one, so I decided to come and ask.”
“Except that you walked into an ambush,” said one of the farmers. “How smart was that?”
“They ambushed us, dumbass,” said Dez. “Now shut up, Cletus, there are grown folks talking.”
Even in the cold rain the man’s face flushed red.
Sam said, “Mind telling me why you tried to ambush my soldiers? It was my understanding that General Zetter negotiated a truce with you.”
“Fuck Zetter and fuck you.”
“There’s that,” conceded Sam.
“We thought he left two assholes behind to keep us penned in. Turns out we don’t think it’s safe in Stebbins County. Might come as a shock to you.”
Sam said nothing.
“So we were going to tie up Zetter’s sentries, take their weapons, then clear out as many buses as it’ll take to get these kids and the rest of the adults the fuck out of this particular ring of hell.”
“And go where?”
“Anywhere but here.”
“That was the general plan,” agreed Trout, “until you showed up. And I have to say, Captain, that you played a very dangerous hand of cards there. We could have just as easily shot your people.”
“That goes both ways, Mr. Trout, and in any armed conflict I rather like our odds.”
Dez tried to get up in his face. “You can suck my—”
Trout pushed her back.
“Much as I appreciate you not turning this into the O.K. Corral, Captain,” said Trout, “how about the added courtesy of a few answers. Like why’d everybody light out of here like their asses were on fire? What was that about?”
“Well, you’ve probably already guessed that this trouble isn’t over,” said Sam. “The infection, the outbreak. It’s not over. And that’s why we need your help and cooperation. That’s why I need you to give me the flash drives.”
Trout shifted, wincing at the pain in his body. “How bad is it?”
Sam Imura had the kind of face that rarely gave anything away, but Dez and Trout could both see dangerous lights flicker in the man’s eyes. Beneath the placid veneer of calm there was real fear there. Deep and intense, barely kept in check.
“It’s bad,” said Sam. “We may not be able to contain it. Mr. Trout … please … those drives may be our only hope of preventing a nationwide catastrophe.”
Trout sighed deeply and closed his eyes.
“What?” asked Sam.
“I don’t have the drives,” said Billy Trout.
Sam’s face went dead pale.
Moonshiner said, “Oh, shit.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
SUBURBS OF PITTSBURGH
“Homer,” said Goat, after he started the camera again
and adjusted the microphone, “why did you attack those people at the Seven-Eleven?”
“I thought you said you understood.”
“I do,” Goat said quickly, “but this will go out to millions of people who don’t yet understand. You want them to understand, right? That’s why we’re doing this.”
“Sure.”
“Then tell them.”
The rain was intensifying again, so Homer turned up the wiper speed. “What do you want me to say, exactly?”
“You just walked into a Seven-Eleven and killed five people. Talk about why you did that.”
Homer shook his head. “Is that what you think I did?”
“Didn’t you? You attacked everyone, bit them…”
“I didn’t bite everyone,” Homer said. “And I only killed two of them, and the Red Mouth brought them right back. It’s funny, in court they went on and on about how many lives they say I took. Maybe that used to be true, but that’s before I understood the real power of the Red Mouth. I wasn’t trying to take anything from anyone. I was always trying to give them something. That’s why I wanted my lawyer to put me on the stand so I could tell everyone that, so I could explain it. But he wouldn’t do it. He said that people wouldn’t understand and it would go against me in court. Against me? They fucking executed me. How much more against me could it have gone? I think that if he’d let me have my say, if he let me explain what the Black Eye saw and let me speak with the voice of the Red Mouth, then they wouldn’t have sentenced me to any frigging lethal injection.”
No, thought Goat, they’d have put you in a tiny padded cell and spent the next forty years experimenting on your brain to see what makes it tick.
He did not say this to Homer.
The killer kept talking, working it out for the camera. “That’s all different now. Thanks to Dr. Volker and the gift he gave me; now I can share that gift with other people. No one’s ever going to die. Not really. Not like it used to be. We’re all going to live forever.”
Goat kept the camera on the killer’s profile, capturing the way he nodded in agreement with his own words and thoughts.
“In the Bible Jesus talked about how the meek were going to inherit the earth. I forget where he said it, but it was important, and I think this is what he was talking about. The way people are when they wake up after I open the Red Mouths in their flesh. They don’t act the way they used to. They don’t talk; they don’t say stupid shit. I’ll bet they don’t even know if they’re Republican or Democrats. They’re just people. All the bullshit is gone.”