Behind the two men, the girls raised their heads. Then, to his deepening horror, Jake saw that Richie and Tommy—what was left of Richie and Tommy—were climbing to their feet. All those pale faces turned toward the sound of that dreadful moan.
And joined it.
With broken jaws and shattered teeth, with torn throats and dead mouths, every one of them—all of them—raised their voices in a shared expression of that endless hunger.
Jake DeGroot clapped his hands to his ears to stop the noise, but he could hear it all the way down to the pit of his soul. He screamed.
At the sound of his scream, Burl began moving faster. The sticky suction of the mud tried to slow him, but Burl’s face became a mask of bestial hunger and he tore his feet free, step by step, and reached with hooked fingers toward Jake.
That’s when something in Jake’s mind snapped.
The tethers anchoring him to the civilized man he was parted and that part of him floated away like a mask being removed to reveal his true face. It was an older, simpler, far less evolved face, and the eyes of the ultra-primitive saw the oncoming threat and the synapsis of the ancient lizard brain triggered unthinking and immediate reaction.
Jake screamed again, but this time it came out more as a growl, as a snarl of denial and fear and determination. He pushed himself backward, his legs kicking at the mud for purchase, finding it, taking his weight, propelling him into a crouch on fingers and toes. He skittered backward like a dog, hissing at the pain instead of with it, then he slewed around and launched himself away, rising into a sloppy run, falling, getting up again, running. And all the time screaming.
Burl and Vic and the others followed like a pack of rabid dogs.
Jake angled toward his front-end loader, putting it between himself and the pack. The keys were inside the cab. If he could only get to them.
But Burl and Vic split, each one heading toward one end of the machine as if this was something they had rehearsed. On some level Jake knew that they were simply taking the shortest route for each of them, but it felt like a coordinated attack. Jake glanced up at the cab and then to each side.
He wasn’t going to make it.
If he got inside, would the reinforced safety glass keep them back?
Even if the glass held, the door didn’t lock from inside.
He began backing away from the machine. The trailer they were using as a temporary office was forty yards away. Jake spun around, deciding to make for it. If he could get inside, the doors had locks. There were desks he could push in front of the door to block it. The windows were tiny, too small for someone like Burl to climb in through.
All of that flashed through his brain as he took the first step toward the trailer. Burl lunged for him, actually jumping like an animal to try and grab him. Then suddenly Burl’s head snapped to one side and his leap turned into a twisted tumble that send him splatting down to the mud, where he slid to a twisted stop.
His face was gone.
Simply gone.
Jake stared at Burl, trying to understand this new mystery, this new insanity. Even his lizard brain didn’t know how to process this.
Then something pinged off the bucket of the front-end loader and went whizzing past his ear with a sound like an angry wasp.
There was a second ping. A third.
That’s when he heard the sounds.
Distant. Small. Hollow.
Pok-pok-pok.
He whirled and crouched, staring into the rain.
Someone was firing.
Cold hands suddenly grabbed him from behind and Jake was falling. He twisted violently around to see Vic right there, tearing at him with torn fingernails, snapping at him with cracked teeth.
Vic was tall, over six feet, and nearly two hundred pounds. Jake towered over him, though, standing six-eight and packing an extra hundred pounds of muscle and mass on his frame. With power born of fear and desperation, he swung a punch into Vic’s face that knocked the man five feet back. Teeth and blood flew. Vic hit the side of the bucket, spun, fell to his knees, and then was abruptly flung sideways as a fusillade of bullets tore into him, punching holes in thigh and hip and ribs and skull. Vic dropped and lay utterly still.
Jake wanted to stand and stare. He needed to take a moment to reset all of the dials in his head. However bullets pinged and whanged off the machine and behind him the other … things … were still coming. Jake cut them a single quick look and realized they were paying no heed to the bullets that pocked the mud around them. Or to the bullets that tore into their own flesh. Jake saw clothes puff up as rounds struck them. He saw chunks of bloody skin go flying into the rain.
It was insane.
It was like they didn’t care. Or couldn’t feel.
Or were …
His mind teetered on the edge of saying what he thought it was or might be.
Instead he turned and dove for cover as more bullets hammered into the yellow skin of the Caterpillar. The bucket was still low to the ground where he’d paused it when everything started turning to shit. Beneath the bucket was a trench cut by the scoop, and Jake wriggled into that. Big as he was, the trench was deep enough for him to get below ground level, but it was already half-filled with muddy water that was stingingly cold.
Dozens of bullets hit the front-end loader and went ricocheting off into the storm. Jake could hear men shouting.
Richie came splashing through the puddles, still moaning, still hungry, and then he was falling backward, bits of flesh and bone exploding from his chest, his throat, his face, his skull.
Then one of the girls fell with a big hole in her lower back. As soon as she hit the ground she began to crawl, as if the pain she had to be feeling didn’t mean a goddamn thing to her. She saw Jake and began crawling toward his hiding place. She made it halfway there before a bullet struck her in the side of the head and blew brain matter five feet across the mud.
Jake saw it all from his hole.
The shouts were louder now. Men calling to each other as they came running across the construction site. Men in white hazmat suits and combat boots. Men with rifles and belts hung with grenades.
Soldiers.
Jake frowned, unable to understand this. Why were the soldiers in hazmat suits like on TV? That was the stuff they wear when there’s some kind of toxic spill. Only this was a hurricane, not a spill. Or whatever they call a storm this bad this far inland. Supercell. Something like that. It wasn’t any toxic spill. At least not as far as Jake knew.
Unless …
He blinked rainwater out of his eyes. Suddenly a lot of things tumbled together into a single pattern. Ugly, but glued together by some kind of logic.
What if there was a toxic spill?
The radio had been crazy all day with weird shit. Something about a riot out at Doc Hartnup’s funeral home. Something else happening at the school.
Jake only caught bits and pieces of it because you can’t really listen to the radio while operating heavy equipment. Too much noise.
Now he wondered what he’d missed.
And he wondered what kind of trouble he was in.
He almost called out to the soldiers.
Almost.
It was not his lizard brain that made him hold his tongue. No, it was the civilized part of his brain. The part that believed that if things were this bad—if they were sending in soldiers in germ warfare gear and letting them kill people this randomly—then things were already in the shitter. Those soldiers never called out a warning. They never checked to see if Burl and the others needed help.
They’d simply opened fire.
“Oh, God,” he breathed. But he did it very, very quietly.
As the soldiers hunted down the last girl and Jake’s other friends, he sank down into the water until just his eyes and nose were out. He breathed as shallowly as he could, and he closed his eyes.
In order to try and stay alive, he did his level best to pretend to already be dead.
CHAPTER NINETY
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STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
Dez looked as if she wanted to either throw up or punch Sam Imura’s teeth out. Either way, Trout wanted to grab the moment and pull it out of the fire.
“Captain Imura,” he said firmly, “I hear what you’re saying, and as a newsman I appreciate the urgency of your story, but if this thing is already out, then why does it matter if I have a copy of Volker’s research? Go find Volker. He has all of it. Hell, he’s the science. Go waterboard him, I’m sure he’d be happy to tell you anything you want to know. Coming after me seems kind of a waste of—”
Sam’s eyes were cold. “Herman Volker is dead. He committed suicide.”
Trout bowed his head and slumped into a chair. “Christ. Why the fuck didn’t you say so? You assholes always have to drag everything out. Shit.”
“We just found out about it,” said Sam. “Until now he’s been MIA and you were the only known source of intel. Now do you understand why those drives are so important? They are the only known record of Volker’s work. We have plenty of research on Lucifer but no one has a clue about what Volker did when he modified the disease into Lucifer 113. Initial analysis of the infected indicate that the disease is radically different from the old Cold War version. We don’t know if we have the time necessary to deconstruct and analyze Volker’s version. Mr. Trout … where are the flash drives?”
Trout’s mouth felt as if it was filled with burned ashes and bile. In a strained whisper he said, “I gave them to my cameraman.”
“Who is he and where can we find him?”
“Gregory Weinman. Everyone calls him Goat. He’s the one who was taking my standups and streaming them to the Net.”
“Where?”
“He walked out of town just as the Guard were setting up the roadblocks. The last time I spoke with him—before you idiots began jamming all calls—he was at the Starbucks in Bordentown.”
Sam Imura staggered. He took two or three small, aimless steps and almost collapsed against the blackboard on the wall. He put his face in his hands and said, “Jesus save us all.”
“What is it?” snapped Dez. “What’s wrong?”
Boxer went over and put his hand on Sam’s shoulder. Moonshiner and Shortstop sat down hard on the chairs. Only Gypsy held her ground.
“What’s wrong?” demanded Dez.
“Wrong?” mused Gypsy. “What’s wrong is that we are all totally and completely fucked.”
“I don’t—”
“That’s where the outbreak is,” said Gypsy. “The Air Force dropped fuel-air bombs on the whole area. Bordentown is nothing but a cloud of hot ash.”
CHAPTER NINETY-ONE
SUBURBS OF PITTSBURGH
“How we doing, boy?” asked Homer Gibbon.
Goat hoisted a fake smile onto his face. “We’re getting some really great stuff here. I can’t wait to get this onto the Net.”
Homer pursed his lips. In the dark, Goat couldn’t see the blood smeared all over the man. What little there was made it look as if the man was painted in tar. But he stank. At first the car had been filled with the sheared-copper smell of fresh blood, but now it was turning sour as the cells thickened and died. It was like being inside a meat locker with the power off. It took great willpower and a fear of reprisal to keep from vomiting.
“You think they’ll watch it?” asked Homer, sounding a little insecure about it.
A sharp laugh escaped Goat before he could stop it.
“You think that’s funny, boy?” asked Homer in a tone that was abruptly menacing.
“No,” Goat said quickly. “Far from it. I’m pretty sure everyone in the world is going to watch these videos. I don’t think anyone is going to watch anything else.”
Homer looked at him for a long time. “You really think so?”
“Yeah,” said Goat with complete honesty, “I absolutely think so.”
CHAPTER NINETY-TWO
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
“That is not a happy-looking man,” said Billy Trout.
He and Dez stood together watching Captain Sam Imura as he stood on the far end of the room having a mostly one-sided phone conversation. The news that Goat had the drives and that the Starbucks where he was waiting for Trout’s call had been destroyed had hit everyone very hard. Imura stepped aside to call it into his boss—the national security advisor.
Imura had looked pretty defeated at the start of that call, but as the seconds peeled off and fell away, the man’s shoulders slumped. Then Imura straightened and cut a sharp, appraising look at Trout.
“Uh oh,” said Dez.
“Yeah,” agreed Trout.
Imura came hurrying over, still holding the phone in the way people do when the line is still open. “Mr. Trout, do you still have the satellite phone Weinman gave you?”
Trout nodded and produced it.
“Is it charged?”
“Half-charged, but yeah.”
“He has it,” Imura said into the phone, listened, and added, “Good. We’ll try again in five minutes.”
He disconnected the call and considered Trout. “Listen, I guess it’ll come as no surprise to you that they’ve been jamming all communications from Stebbins County.”
“You don’t say,” murmured Trout drily.
“I just asked my boss to have all jamming stopped. Satellite interference, cell lines, the works.”
“Good,” said Dez, “and then maybe we can go around and close all the barn doors ’cause I’m pretty sure the horses have all run off.”
Imura gave her a few millimeters of a tight smile. “If there’s even the slightest chance that Weinman left the vicinity of the Bordentown Starbucks, then maybe we can reestablish contact.”
“His name’s Goat,” said Trout, “and he didn’t have a car. He walked across a field to get to the Starbucks. Or maybe hitchhiked.”
“Then there’s at least a small chance he hitchhiked again. If he’s as tech-savvy as you said, then maybe he realized that service was being jammed and he moved on to someplace outside of the interference zone.”
“Which he wouldn’t have had to do if you ass-clowns didn’t jam him in the first place,” snapped Dez. “If he and Billy’d been able to stay in touch you’d already have Volker’s notes.”
Imura turned to her. “Really, Officer Fox, you want to Monday-morning quarterback this now? Is that the best use of our time?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Fine, we fucked up. It’s hereby noted.”
Dez looked mildly embarrassed; an attitude that Trout found amusing. As he enjoyed having his scrotum remain attached, he declined to say so.
Imura looked at his watch. “The jamming should be down in a couple of minutes. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”
Trout glanced from him to the other members of his team. “Who exactly are you guys? You said private contractors? That’s the PC phrase for mercenaries, isn’t it?”
“In a manner of speaking. We’re former U.S. military who do special jobs.”
“Like what?”
“Like classified stuff that I’m not going to talk about to a reporter.”
Dez sniffed. “I met some of your kind in ’Stan.”
Imura smiled. “The contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq were mostly Blackwater, who are, even by the somewhat loose standards of the mercenary community, total dickheads. Not as bad as Blue Diamond, but swimming at the edges of the same cesspool. Personally, I wouldn’t piss on any of them if they were on fire.”
“Don’t sugarcoat it, Captain,” said Trout.
“There are all kinds of contractors just like there are all kinds of reporters and all kinds of cops.”
“And what kind are you?” asked Dez sharply.
“The kind I can live with,” he said. He cocked his head to one side. “You know, Mr. Trout, I was given a pretty free hand for how I wanted to handle this. We could have done a hard infil of th
e school and taken you.”
“You could have tried,” growled Dez.
But Imura shook head. “I mean no disrespect when I say this, Officer, but if we wanted to play it that way we would have succeeded.”
“I’ve met plenty of spec-ops jocks and—”
“You’ve never met operators like us. I’m not saying this to blow my own horn but to give you a perspective check. You have every right to think of anyone in a military uniform as your enemy. I don’t blame you. However, if we were your enemies you would be dead, Officer Fox, and Mr. Trout would be having an even worse day than he’s already had. It was my choice on how to play this and I set you up to take a run at us outside so we could take you. From all accounts you are a formidable law officer, but we play a different kind of ball. Let’s be clear on that.”
“Okay, okay,” said Trout before Dez could get into gear with the kind of verbal counterattack that would probably end in fisticuffs, “you could have done it the Rambo way and instead you didn’t. Why waste time making that point?”
“Because,” said Imura, “if we can accept that killing you isn’t high on my list of priorities, then maybe we can all put our dicks away and start working together.”
Trout smiled thinly. “It’s a lovely speech, Captain, but if knowing Dez has taught me anything it’s that trust is earned.”
“Not killing you doesn’t earn trust?”
“It’s a good start,” said Trout. “Let’s see where it takes us.”
He lifted the satellite phone and punched Goat’s number.
The number rang.
And rang.
And kept on ringing until Trout felt his heart begin to sink. Then someone answered it.
“Billy!” cried Goat. “Oh my God, Billy—”
There was a snarl of a harsh voice, the sound of an open palm on flesh, a cry of pain, and then a different voice growled, “Who the fuck’s this?”