He heard one of his aides say something to himself, and for a moment Zetter thought it was a prayer. It wasn’t. It was the thing that Oppenheimer had said when the first atom bomb was tested.
“I am become Shiva, destroyer of worlds.”
And while fuel-air bombs were non-nuclear, the point was eloquent. Zetter felt like striking the man, but hitting someone for speaking the truth was not the way to survive this moment.
In silence, he endured the rebuke implicit in that statement.
Destroyer of worlds.
Destroyer of lives.
So many people.
The outer edge of the heat wave rolled through the night toward them. It had been greatly weakened by distance and did little more than brush past his face and fill his mouth with a bitter taste. Zetter turned and discretely spat into the mud. Some of the others did, too. A few still wore their hazmat masks.
The heat blew past them and for a moment there was a deceptive stillness, a calm that told lies about the night. Then the rains began to fall again, and the storm winds blew, and the sounds of screams echoed through the night. Car horns blared, faint and muted.
“Sir,” said another aide, hurrying toward him from the communication truck, “you need to see this.”
His voice held a rising note of panic that made Zetter spin around and go running after him, with his other aides in tow. As he ran Zetter turned and spat again, trying to clear his mouth of the acrid, itchy dust from the shock wave.
He felt sick to his stomach, but he decided that it was the shock, the stress, the horror of it all.
In that, General Zetter was entirely wrong.
ACROSS THE FAYETTE COUNTY LINE, PENNSYLVANIA
They moved across the quarantine zone alone and in packs. In the ragged, bloody, and fire-blackened clothes of farmers and tourists, travelers and news reporters. A few wore National Guard BDUs. They moved together, weeping, crying out in unending pain from bites that had torn through skin and muscle, or from blistered burns that bubbled on skin that had been touched by the hellish heat.
They staggered away from the flaming pit where the Starbucks had been, and away from the blackened shells of their cars. They left behind friends and family members.
Those that could run, did.
The rest limped and shambled and crawled.
Away from the bombs and the bullets and the things that bit.
None of them had a plan, or a direction. They simply fled.
And the dead followed after.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
Trout and Dez sat in the principal’s office. Mrs. Madison had found a blanket and wrapped it around Dez’s shoulders, but rainwater dripped from her clothes and pooled on the floor beneath her chair. Trout pulled his chair close and sat with his hand on her knee. He thought she’d object to that, but after a while she squeezed his hand.
Mrs. Madison sat across from her. Uriah Piper and Jenny DeGroot were in the office as well. No one else.
“It was Gerry Dunphries,” said Jenny.
Dez looked at her. “What?”
“He was supposed to be helping in the kitchen, cutting open cereal boxes, but when I looked up he was gone. I figured he went to the bathroom, or…”
“Or what?” asked Trout.
“Or needed to find a quiet place to cry.”
Everyone tried not to look at Dez, but one by one they did, and it made Trout winced.
Mrs. Madison tried to console her, “Please don’t think you’re in any responsible for what Mr. Dunphries did. He was deeply distraught by everything that’s happened and—”
“Fuck him,” Dez said quietly.
Mrs. Madison blinked. “Pardon?”
“Fuck Gerry Dunphries and fuck his being ‘distraught.’”
“That’s—”
“And fuck you for whatever you’re about to say,” she said. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear any bullshit from anyone. Dunphries opened that window and he got three kids killed. End of story and may he burn in hell.”
“That’s hardly fair,” said Piper.
“It’s unrealistic,” agreed Mrs. Madison. “Shock can induce many different degrees of psychosis.”
“Since when are you a psychologist?” sneered Dez.
“Since I got my MA in psychotherapy and child counseling before you were born.”
“Yeah? Well fuck your MA, too.”
Mrs. Madison recoiled and her throat flushed pink.
“Dez,” Trout said gently, “let’s dial it down and—”
“Oh, and most of all fuck you, Billy Trout.” She slapped his hand off her knees. “Okay, so Gerry Dunphries was batshit. Lot of that going around. Our town is overrun by zombies and we’ve just been abandoned by the military. Batshit seems to be the only flavor we have left, so we all better get used to sucking on it. You want to know how batshit crazy I am? When I was out there surrounded by all those frigging dead sonsabitches with no ammunition—you know who helped me? You want to know who talked me through it? You know who saved my life? JT motherfucking Hammond. Yeah, my dead partner. My best friend. The man who helped save all of your lives. He had my back and told me what to do and how to get through it just like he always did. How’s that for batshit?”
The room was utterly silent.
Dez leaned forward and fixed Mrs. Madison with a steely stare. “You want to know the kicker to that? Even now, even knowing that I’m crazy my ownself, even right here in your office, I can still hear JT’s voice. Telling me to stop yelling, telling me to watch my language, telling me to take it out of overdrive. Yeah, I can hear that clear as day.”
“Dez…” began Trout, but she ignored him.
Dez sat back. “We’re all crazy. Fine. If it’s the way things are then it’s the way things are. I’ll be happy to talk to the rest of the adults and explain the facts of life to them. If any of them are too fucked up in the head to be part of how we’re going to survive, they have my permission to hang themselves or give themselves a sponge-bath with steak sauce and go outside. But they don’t take any of the kids with them, they don’t let the kids see it, and they don’t let those fucking zombies in here. And if anyone does anything to endanger the other kids, I will personally shove a gun up their ass and pull the trigger. That is not—I repeat not—a joke. Am I making myself crystal fucking clear here or do I need to start kicking some basic survival sense into everyone in this frigging school?”
The silence following her words was heavy and long. Trout looked at the faces of the others, tried to read their eyes and predict what they’d say.
It was Uriah Piper who spoke first. “I won’t shoot anyone for being crazy or stupid,” he said. “But if you need to do that I’ll load your guns for you.”
Mrs. Madison gave a slow, grudging nod.
A strange smile formed on Jenny DeGroot’s young face. “I’m absolutely with you, Dez.”
Dez and everyone else turned to Trout. He cocked an eyebrow, “Honey, if you even need to ask then you really are batshit.”
The harsh mask of anger and hurt on Dez’s face softened. “Thanks, Billy … but if you ever call me honey again I’ll kneecap you.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Piper cleared his throat. “I hate to interrupt a tender moment here…”
“Fuck you,” Dez and Trout said at the same time.
“… but I need to get back to securing the building. Looks pretty clear that there are more of those things out there and for whatever reason they seem to be coming here.”
Dez started to nod, then abruptly held up a hand. “Wait.”
“Wait … no…”
“What?” asked Trout.
“When I was outside,” she began slowly. “The buses…”
“What about them?”
She began shaking her head. “We’re thinking about this the wrong damn way. Jesus, how could I have been so dumb?”
She stood up, dropping the blanket to the floor and walking to the door. She opened it and looked out through the suite of offices toward the main part of the school. Her gaze roved over everything including the walls and the ceiling. Then she turned and leaned against the frame and shook her head again.
“When this thing started I came here because I knew this was where they were going to take the kids. Town shelter and all that. Okay, fine, it’s strong and defensible and we have some supplies. Then we were locked in here by the National Guard. This became our place, you see what I’m saying?”
No one did.
“We thought we were going to ride it out in here. The Guard would airdrop food and supplies and the geniuses at the CDC would cook up a cure or vaccine or something. Then the frigging Guard lit out of here like their asses were on fire. It wasn’t an orderly retreat and it wasn’t the kind of wrap-up you have after a field deployment has completed its job. No, the way they went tear-assing their way out of here means they were going to a fight, and it was a bigger fight then they anticipated. Armies plan and move with some kind of order. They only bolt and run when the shit has seriously hit the fan. Then there was that explosion. Or maybe it was a series of them. Big fucking airbursts. Not nuclear because we’d all be dying right now if they’d dropped a nuke on Stebbins or Bordentown. No, I think they found a big fucking nest of these things and they tried to sterilize them with fuel-air bombs.”
“What are they?” asked Jenny.
“Thermobaric cluster bombs. It’s the biggest and most powerful non-nuclear device we have.”
“Dear God,” murmured Mrs. Madison.
“I see where you’re going with this,” said Trout. “Can’t say I like it.”
“I don’t see,” said Jenny.
“Last resort,” said Piper, and both Trout and Dez nodded. The farmer explained, “A bomb like that wouldn’t be something they’d use if they could contain this with regular tanks and helicopters and such. Scorched earth is what you go for when you’re losing a fight.”
“Exactly,” said Dez.
“I’m still not following,” said Jenny. “Does that mean they wiped them out?”
Trout fielded that. “You didn’t see the infected who were outside. They were all burned. The bomb may have killed some of them, but it didn’t kill all of them. Any of them who weren’t in the direct blast zone, any of them who were only burned, are still out there. And after what just happened, I think it’s pretty clear they’re coming here.”
“Here? But why? I mean, wasn’t this just random? Weren’t these infected just whichever ones were in the area?”
“No,” said Dez, “they were too badly burned. They’re coming here from closer to wherever ground zero was.”
“The blast was north and west,” said Trout. “Over by Bordentown or near there.” He paused. “Which is where the quarantine zone line is.”
And where Goat was, he thought, but he didn’t say it.
“Okay,” said Jenny, “but again—why here? Why the school?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Madison, “surely you’re not saying they can smell the children here.”
“With the rain?” mused Piper. “Probably not.”
“Then why?”
Trout glanced at Dez. “I’ve wondered this before. I know the infected are supposed to be, for all intents and purposes, brainless. Brain dead. But could there be some trace left? Maybe something the parasite drive can tap into? Genetic memory? There’s a precedent in science.”
Dez turned haunted eyes away from him. “I don’t care what’s driving them. I don’t care if they are coming here because they remember the school or because they think it’s prom night. Fuck it. The point is that they are coming here and if we stay here, then this place is going to stop being a refuge and start being an all you can eat buffet.”
She turned back to them and now her eyes were cold and dangerous.
“And I will not let that happen.”
Trout said, “What do you have in mind?”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
THE SITUATION ROOM
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
“Talk to me,” croaked the president in a voice grown hoarse with yelling and pleading. “Where are we with containment?”
Every eye turned away from him and focused on the big screen and its many smaller windows. The satellite thermal scan still showed hundreds of dots moving in all directions. Smaller windows were ground-level views from military vehicles and some field-troop helmet cams as they engaged the infected. The sounds of gunfire, even muted to a whisper, were dreadful. And there was so much screaming. From the infected who had not yet died, from possibly uninfected civilians running from the blasts and from the dead, and from the soldiers.
“Sir,” said General Burroughs, “General Zetter is requesting orders on what to do with uninfected survivors.”
Sylvia Ruddy said, “How can we tell if they’re uninfected? Do we have a way to triage this?”
“Scott?” asked the president.
Blair felt like he was a passenger on a sinking ship. Like he was the only man to have seen the iceberg but no one had paid attention to his shouts of warning. Now the president wanted answers from him. Solutions.
“Sir,” he said slowly, “we do not have the protocols or resources to triage anyone. We don’t have the manpower on the ground to detain and monitor large numbers of civilians.”
“What are you saying?” demanded the president.
“What I’m saying, sir, is that we cannot afford the luxury of treating anyone as potentially uninfected. We have to respond as if every person coming across those fields is a carrier. Every single one.”
The president got to his feet and towered over Blair. “Are you insane?”
“No, sir. You asked for my recommendation. That is the only possible course of action.”
“I refuse to accept that, goddamn it.”
Blair rose as well. “Refusing to accept the truth about Lucifer 113 is what brought us to this point, Mr. President. We have acted timidly and slowly from the beginning and we are fighting an uphill battle.”
“Those are survivors?”
Blair pointed a finger at the screen. “They’re already dead!”
“No,” said the president with a stubborn shake of his head. “Simeon Zetter will contain this.”
Blair gaped at him, simply unable to speak.
On the screen, with every second that passed, the images told a story that anyone with eyes could understand, but everyone with hearts refused to accept.
Except for Blair.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
Dez and Trout called a meeting of as many of the adults as could be spared from guard duty and childcare. Trout suggested that everyone meet them downstairs in the gymnasium.
“Why here?” asked Dez as she and Trout went down to wait for them to gather. “People died down there today.”
“Right,” he told her. “Where better to make your point about how safe the school isn’t?”
“You want me to play these people?”
“Of course I do, Dez. Play them and then lead them, because you are the best chance we all have of getting out of here.”
Dez studied him for a moment, then gave him a small, wicked smile. “If we ever get ourselves out of this thing, Billy, I’m going to bang your eyes crooked.”
“You’ve done that more than once.”
“I ain’t saying we’re getting back together, but … yeah, I think a littler recreational yee-haw might take some of the edge off.”
“That’s all it’ll be?” he said, arching an eyebrow. “Something to settle the nerves?”
“You have a problem with that?”
“Not even a little one.”
Dez bent and gave him a quick, wet, delicious kiss. But instead of the quick catch-and-release he expected, she took his face in both hands and
looked deeply into his eyes. Her smile faded away completely.
“I—wasn’t screwing around back there.”
“When?”
“When I said I heard JT talking to me.”
He smiled. “Wait … you’re telling me you’re crazy? You? Dez Fox? You shock me, woman. Shock me, I say.”
“Fuck you.”
“I believe that is what we’ve been discussing.”
She kissed him again.
When she was done he did not feel a single one of his injuries. He was gasping for air when she pushed him back. He was also hard as a rock and he believed that there was never a less sensible or convenient time for an erection in the entire history of sexual congress.
Dez, quick as always, saw the bulge and her smile came right back.
Before she could hit him with a joke, he said, “No, it’s not a gun in my pocket. I’m just very damn glad to be here with you.”
She reached down and cupped his hardness through the stained cloth of his jeans.
“Careful now,” she said, “or you’ll make a girl blush.”
She gave him a squeeze, then released him and turned quickly away as the gymnasium door opened and people began filing in.
Billy Trout genuinely hoped he had enough time either for a cold shower or to spend five useful minutes banging his head on a brick wall.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
ON THE ROAD
PITTSBURGH SUBURBS
“Why are we going to Pittsburgh?” asked Goat, though he thought he knew the answer.
Homer shot him a sly look. “See a few old friends.”
Goat knew that he should just keep his mouth shut, but despite all of his fear, the pain in his body, and the absolute strangeness of this experience, there was a part of him that was a still a newsman. Or maybe it was the other aspect, a somewhat older and more precisely defining aspect of who he was—the filmmaker. This was all good drama. It would be great cinema. Cinema verité in real point of fact, because this was the truth. This was real.
It only felt like a nightmare.
He said, “You’re going to find your foster parents, aren’t you?”
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