“Good call,” said Trout. “Right, Dez? You said this place has plenty of food and water and their own generators.”
Dez chewed her lip as she considered it. “There’s probably enough fuel in the generators for maybe a week. Ten days at the outside. After that the lights and heat and everything else shuts down. There are also no windows. Good for security, but once the lights are out it’s a big, black box. And there are two bathrooms but no showers. If it was a week, maybe, but since we don’t know how long … and since we have no way of telling how many of those things are going come sniffing around, we could be well and truly fucked if we get trapped in there.”
“Agreed.” Sam sighed and nodded. “Then that leaves the third choice. Plan A, I guess. We load as much as we can and we get back on the road.”
They watched the zombies in the parking lot.
“Can we actually do that with them hanging around?” asked Trout.
“No. We’d need to take them out. I count—what? Thirty, thirty-two? They’re spaced out … we can take them down.”
“And how many more will come looking to see what all the shooting’s about?”
Sam nodded. “Which means we need to work mighty damn fast.”
“Hey,” said Trout, snapping his fingers. “You black ops guys do assassinations and stuff, right? Don’t you have silencers?
“First,” said Dez impatiently, “they’re called sound suppressors.”
“And second,” said Sam, “we didn’t bring them because this wasn’t that kind of job.”
“Oh.” Trout felt foolish, but then something else occurred to him. “Don’t we have to check the building first before we go in? Who’s going to do that while you clear out the yard?”
“My team gets to do both,” said Sam wearily. Then he brightened. “And I think I know a way to speed the process.”
He outlined it to Dez, who approved. Then Sam touched his earbud and explained the situation and the plan to his remaining team members. Trout couldn’t hear their replies, but he doubted they were any happier about this than he was.
But it all began happening very fast.
Dez told the driver of the first bus to go into the lot. The other buses followed. Sam jumped out and began walking alongside the bus, which proceeded at a pace slow enough to keep pace with him. Boxer, Shortstop, and Gypsy did the same.
The plan was simple. The buses would enter, cut right, and follow the inside of the fence all the way around the building, staying so close that none of the infected could get between the fence and the buses. The engine sound drew the infected like a bright light draws moths, and soon the dead were shambling across the lot toward the lead bus. Sam and the Boy Scouts walked without haste toward them and as each zombie came within twenty feet, one of the soldiers put it down with a single shot to the head. It quickly became a rhythm. Easy and mechanical. Though to Trout, watching from the lead bus, there was a different kind of horror to this. The zombies closed in, they were shot, the convoy inched along, over and over again. Aboard the buses, people started cheering with each kill. As if this was a game and the number counter jumped up with each death. As if the infected were no more real than animated monsters in a video game. As if each of those infected had not been a person hours ago.
It shocked and repulsed Trout.
Lucifer 113 had stolen the life from these people. And this … the necessary killing took away their posthumous sham of being alive. But the reaction of the people on the bus, the cheers like spectators at the Roman circus, seemed to strip away the humanity of each infected. It reduced them to things rather than people.
Somehow this indifference, or detachment or madness or whatever it was, frightened Trout every bit as much as the plague itself. As each cheer went up, louder than the first, Trout thought he could glimpse a future where the survivors of this placed no value whatsoever on human life.
He knew that this was shock, that this was a shared traumatic stress reaction. He knew that. But he feared it, too.
It took over an hour to clear the parking lot.
It seemed like a year to Trout.
When it was over, Shortstop peeled off and headed to the open gate to stand guard.
At Dez’s direction the entire convoy of buses circled the huge building. Dez and Sam pressed their faces against the windows so they could examine the building. Along one section of wall were slots for employee cars. First in the line was a mint-condition 1967 fire-engine red Pontiac Le Mans convertible. Trout knew that car all too well. It belonged to Charlie Matthias.
The other cars and pickup trucks were unknown to him.
“Looks intact,” she said after they finished appraising the building. Then she reached out and tapped the bus driver on the shoulder. “Think you can back this into one of those bays?”
“Drove a tractor my whole life,” said the man. “I can park this in a phone booth.”
He was as good as his word, turning in a good angle, spinning the wheel before shifting, watching the mirrors, and sliding down the slope to a gentle stop against the heavy rubber fender covering the base of the load bay. Dez went back to make sure the door would open, and found there was a half-inch of clearance. She closed the door, though, and made sure it was locked, then hurried back to rejoin Trout. The other buses began imitating the process of backing into the bays. Most were able to manage it, but after a couple of them failed to do it, the driver of Dez’s bus went trotting out to help them.
Dez exited the bus and waited on the deserted loading bay until Sam, Boxer, and Gypsy joined her. Trout lingered in the open doorway, feeling enormously useless.
Dez had six extra magazines for her Glock, and thanks to the APC they’d looted, she had a second nine millimeter tucked into the back of her belt. Sam had switched from his sniper rifle to a more practical M4, and he had magazines tucked into every pouch and pocket. Six grenades were clipped to his harness.
“What’s the call, boss?” asked Gypsy.
Sam nodded to the service door at the far end of the bay. “We knock and let Dez negotiate with her friend, Charlie Matthias, if he’s still alive. She believes he’ll allow us to stock up, given the situation.”
“And if he doesn’t?” asked Gypsy.
Dez shrugged. “I like the guy,” she said, “but I’m not married to him. One way or another we’re rolling out of here with food and water. Not really interested in taking fuck you for an answer.”
Boxer held out his fist and took the bump.
“Gypsy,” said Sam, “watch our backs.”
They moved away from the buses, running lightly, weapons up and out. Trout noticed how smoothly Dez fit in with the Boy Scouts. Like she belonged more to their world than to any other. In a moment of irrational jealousy he wondered what would happen if Sam Imura and Dez had to work together for any length of time. Trout did not like his chances in a competition with that man. Not in combat and not in romance. Sam was everything Dez liked. He was strong, confident, capable, and decent.
“Fuck,” Trout murmured. Then he added, “Billy Trout you are a total damn fool.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-TWO
TOWN OF STEBBINS
STEBBINS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
Jake DeGroot drove through hell.
That was the only way he could describe what he was seeing.
The whole town of Stebbins was in ruins. There was death everywhere, but not enough of it was lying down. People—as torn and vacant as the three girls that had attacked Burl and the others—wandered through the streets. Many of them turned toward the sound of the front-end loader. Some even ran at it and tried to attack it.
At first Jake tried to avoid them, but the machine wasn’t fast or nimble enough to zigzag through the crowd.
He understood more about what they were now. On the slow ride here he’d put on headphones and turned the radio all the way up and listened to someone from the government say crazy things about a plague.
A plague.
A
disease that made people murder each other.
It sounded plausible, though Jake knew it was much worse than that.
Even so, he didn’t want to hurt anyone. Not unless he had to. Not unless there was no other choice.
He ran out of choices on the way to the Stebbins Little School. By the time Big Bird was rolling down the road that lead to the front gate, the way was clogged by victims of the plague.
Unable to go around them or evade them, he took a breath, cursed God, and drove over them. The only mercy he received was that the engine noise was so loud he couldn’t hear the crunching of bones.
So many bones.
He turned away from the biggest mass of them and plowed right through an open stretch of fence, rolled across the parking lot past empty school buses, looking for some sign, some proof that Jenny and the others were still safe inside the school.
Then he rolled to a stop, idling, staring.
At two things.
The first was the open doorway of the school. The infected wandered in and out, and Jake recognized some of the teachers among them. It came close to breaking his heart.
Then he saw the second thing. Words written in brown spray paint on the red bricks of the school wall.
It was a message about who had been here at the school, about how they’d left, and about where they were going. As he read it the infected began climbing onto his machine.
With a growl, Jake put the loader in gear, turned, and with some of the dead still clinging on, headed for the road that led out of town.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-THREE
SAPPHIRE FOODS
ROUTE 40
FAYETTE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
They were twenty feet from the service door when Sam froze, one fist raised. Then he waved the others up so they could see what he was looking at. The door to the building was not, as they first supposed, shut. It was slightly ajar, about a half inch from a tight fit. That wasn’t what jolted Sam, though. There was a partial handprint on the frame, just the palm and a thumb, the rest hidden by the door.
The handprint still glistened with red blood.
“Shit,” whispered Dez. “Can God give us one fucking break?”
Gypsy and Boxer shifted to take clear lines-of-sight once the door was opened. “Dez,” said Sam, “you open the door. I go in first, then my team, then you. Keep all lines clear. Nobody fires until and unless I do.”
He shifted to allow Dez to grip the door handle.
Sam finger-counted down from three, and she pulled the door open quickly, blocked it with her leg and took her gun in a two-handed grip.
Sam went in first, moving silently on cat-feet. The others followed, moving smoothly, weapons moving from corner to corner, covering everything. Dez went in last, and stepping inside wasn’t like stepping into a warehouse.
It was like stepping into an abattoir.
The place was massive, with hundreds of tall rows of steel shelves that stretched off into darkness. Most of the lights were out except for small emergency lights bolted every dozen yards. There was not enough light to see into the building. But there was enough illumination so that Dez could see that the walls to either side of the door and floor in front of her were splashed with blood.
There were bodies everywhere. A dozen at least, and they lay in disjointed tangles, with arms and legs missing, heads crushed, necks chopped through. Trails of blood—shoes and bare feet—led off into the main warehouse and vanished down shadowy rows.
Only one figure still stood.
He was massive, with chest and shoulders so heavily packed with corded muscle that it made him look like a great, pale ape. His skin was the color of milk and there were dreadful scars covering his arms and face. Old scars, barely visible through the blood—both red and black—that covered him from scalp to boots.
He glared at them with mad eyes. One bright blue, the other as red as a subway rat.
He held a crowbar in one fist and a meat cleaver in the other, and he stood there, panting, wild and thoroughly savage.
Sam, Boxer, and Gypsy immediately pointed their guns at him.
Dez pushed her way past the soldiers.
“Charlie?” she said softly.
The wild eyes flared and for a moment it seemed as if this monstrous man would attack.
“Don’t,” murmured Sam Imura. He said it very quietly.
Charlie’s eyes flicked to him for a moment and the thick lips curled back from uneven teeth. Maybe it was a sneer, maybe it was a smile. In either case it was unpleasant and feral.
“Charlie…” Dez repeated. She lowered her gun, holding it in one hand and reaching out toward him with the other.
The mad eyes blinked.
And blinked again, and each time there was a fraction less of the frenzied look and a fraction more of sanity. Of realization of self.
Of recognition.
“D-Dez…?”
“It’s me, Charlie,” she said. “It’s okay.”
“Okay?” echoed Charlie Matthias as if that was the strangest word he’d ever heard. “Okay? Jesus Christ, Dez, what’s happening to the world? Nothing’s okay.”
He let out a breath and lowered the weapons.
Sam and his team held their ground, though.
“What happened here, Charlie? Who are these people?”
The bodies on the floor were so badly mangled that it was impossible to tell who or what they had been.
“They’re … they’re my boys.”
Dez frowned. “Your—?”
“My crew. The guys I fucking run with.” He looked around in confusion. “Rico, and Tyrone. Tony Dale and Fez Zimmio. Christ, Dez, what the fuck’s going on? We were playing cards and Rico went outside to take a piss. Then he comes in all crazy and fucked up. Comes back with a whole shitload of people I don’t know and suddenly everything went to shit. Rico … bit Fez. Bit his throat right the fuck out. Christ, Dez, he started eating him. How’s that not fucked up?”
Charlie’s voice was rising to a dangerous hysterical note, and as he ranted he began waving around his weapons. Sam shifted to stand between Dez and the big man.
“Mr. Matthias, I am going to need you to calm down. Put down your weapons and put your hands on your head. Do it now.”
Charlie stared at him with total incomprehension.
“Who the fuck are you? What’s happening? Somebody better fucking tell me what’s going on.”
“Charlie—Charlie!” yelled Dez and her voice was so loud and sharp that Charlie flinched as if he’d been slapped. “Haven’t you listened to the news? Don’t you understand what’s happening? It’s a plague. It’s spreading out of control and it makes people want to kill each other.”
“W-what?”
“Stebbins County is gone. Everyone’s dead. Everyone, Charlie, except a bunch of kids and some other folks, some adults. We have twelve school buses outside and we’re trying to get out of here. We’re heading down south, but we need supplies. I came here because I knew you’d help us. I knew I could count on you, Charlie.”
With each sentence she changed her voice from sharpness to soft appeal. It worked on Charlie, drawing him back from the edge.
“Is this real? Are you bullshitting me, Dez?”
“It’s real. We’re in trouble and we need your help.”
He looked down at the weapons he held, considered them for a moment, then let them fall. The clangs they made echoed through the building.
“Boxer, Gypsy,” said Sam, “do a sweep. Stay together and make it fast.”
They moved off, each of them throwing Charlie ugly looks.
“Mr. Matthias,” said Sam, “were you bitten?”
“Huh? Me? No. Not that they didn’t try. Christ, Fez chewed on my boot trying to bite my ankle, and that was after I busted his knees and broke his damn back. How’s that make sense?”
Dez quickly explained the situation, compressing it into a few terse lines. Lucifer, Homer Gibbon, the outbreak, the parasites. When
she got to that last part, Charlie bolted and ran for the men’s room. They followed and stood in the doorway while Charlie stripped out of his bloody clothes and scrubbed his skin with hot water and soap, and then rubbed himself down with nearly a full bottle of Purell. Charlie was almost an albino, but he had some splotches of color. He rinsed his jeans and put them back on. The shirt was a total loss.
“Clock’s ticking,” said Sam. “We need to—”
And then Shortstop cut in via the team microphone. Sam held up a hand and used the other to touch his earbud.
“What’ve you got?”
“We got incoming, boss.”
“How many?”
“Too many.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FOUR
COLDWATER CANYON DRIVE
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Albert Godown tied his running shoes, stood, and stretched slowly, feeling the muscles come undone, the cramps from the long flight gradually releasing their hold on him. His wife, Mary, was by the park, holding a deep lunge. She coughed a few times, but she controlled her reaction to it, keeping it small.
“You okay?” he asked.
Mary nodded, then shrugged. “It’s good.”
He waited for more, but that was all she said. So he nudged it a bit. “You still sick to your stomach?”
“Not really.”
Albert walked over to her. “C’mon,” he said, “you were sick as a dog last night.”
“Just airsickness. It was like a rodeo up there.”
“Are you sure? They’re still talking about some kind of flu on the news.”
She shook her head. “It’s better than it was. Might have been allergies. Did you smell the air on the plane? Until they closed the doors it smelled like we were parked right next to an open sewer. Burned my eyes.”
He nodded, though it hadn’t bothered him as much. “It was worse by that hotel.”
Because of the first wave of Superstorm Zelda, the flights the day before had been canceled and the airline had put them up at a hotel near the Pittsburgh airport. The kind of hotel you only ever stay in if your flight is canceled and it’s that or sleep in the terminal. They’d worked out in the little gym and when the rain let up for an hour they jogged around the property for an estimated five miles. That, at least, had been the plan, but halfway through it the humidity turned the air into a cold soup more conducive to swimming than running, so they bagged it and went inside. That humid air stank, too, and that’s when Mary’s cough started. A tickle, at first, and then worse as the evening went on. It came and went, and didn’t really settle down until this morning, when they got a 6:45 flight out of there. They changed planes in Chicago after a three-hour layover, and Mary’s cough sparked up again, but settled down once they were on the plane. Now it was back to being an infrequent thing. Still there, though, and he thought she should have it checked out. He told her so.