lot of emotions running high. The result was a jumble from which Dez could only harvest a few scraps.
“… last of state cops are in the holding pen … primary shooting line with a fallback at twenty yards … helos grounded … two cars of farmers tried to run the south barricade … CDC Wildfire team delayed by storm…”
Only bits and pieces, but it was enough for Dez. And more than enough to convince her not to say anything into the walkie-talkie. If they shot their own and shot civilians …
She heard the phrase “Q-zone” at least a dozen times. Quarantine zone. Had to be. That was both good and bad. Good for the rest of the state, or maybe the rest of the country. Bad as shit for her and her fellow citizens in Stebbins County. It wasn’t a surprise, but it confirmed her worst fears.
Almost her worst. There was another phrase that was peppered through the chatter. Three words. Three terrible words.
Dez stuffed the walkie-talkie into her jacket pocket and began running again. Faster.
A few cars and trucks appeared in the gloom, but each time they were ordinary. Parked where they should be parked, no sign of further violence.
Until she found the second state police cruiser.
It was smashed into a telephone pole half a block from the road that led to her trailer park. The front end was wrapped like a cruller around the shattered stump of the pole. Wires lay across the road like broken spider webs. Chunks of safety glass sparkled as raindrops struck them.
Dez raised the shotgun as she approached the vehicle from a quarter angle. The windshield was spiderwebbed out from a black impact hole. The driver, seat belt notwithstanding, had hit the windshield hard. From the degree of damage, and the lack of skid marks, it looked to Dez as if the driver had been driving at high speed and never touched the brakes.
There were multiple lines of bullet holes stitched along the passenger side of the cruiser. The brass in the middle of the road were from M16s. All four doors were open.
She darted forward and aimed her gun inside.
The front seat was torn and slashed, and there was an inch-deep puddle of bloody rainwater sloshing around the puddles. Standing like bleak islands in the puddle were small lumps of meat and a man’s left thumb.
Dez’s mind cruelly supplied a name for what she was seeing.
Leftovers.
She swallowed a throatful of acid and checked the backseat. Blood there, too.
Whose blood? The thumb had been from a white man, not from JT.
“C’mon, Hoss,” Dez murmured. “Give me a happy ending here.”
But there was no more to this story.
She moved around to the back of the vehicle. The trunk hood was bent and had popped out of the lock. The shotgun was gone. She tried on a smile, hoping that JT had been the one to cowboy up and blast his way out of there. The backseat was bloody, though.
“No…,” she breathed, and hearing the word drove a spike of doubt and fear into her heart. “C’mon … no…”
The rain was so loud that she never heard the wet footsteps behind her, but suddenly icy fingers clamped around her arms and dragged her backward.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Billy Trout suddenly swerved the Explorer off the road and pulled behind a billboard for a year-round Christmas store.
“What’d you do that for?” demanded Goat.
“Look!” Trout said, pointing.
Goat peered through the storm. A hundred yards ahead, almost invisible in the relentless rain, a line of military vehicles was barreling along Hank Davis Pike, the road that cut across the county line and went directly into Stebbins. There were at least a dozen troop trucks and two Humvees with top-mounted machine guns. They were bucketing along, and when they hit the crossroads they didn’t even slow down, burning straight through the red light. Only the last vehicle slowed to a stop, slopping through mud onto the shoulder. Immediately soldiers piled out and began removing sawhorse barriers from the back of the truck. They erected them across the road that led into town. The guards were dressed in rain ponchos, but their M16s were visible on slings.
The soldiers were dressed in white hazmat suits.
“Oh man,” said Goat. “This shit must be totally out of the box.”
“Yeah,” murmured Trout dryly. “God, this story has to get out. Damn … I wish the phones worked. Fucking storm…”
“Screw the storm, Billy. Our calls were going nowhere before the rain even started. Those goons cut the lines and jammed the cell towers and you know it. We’d need a satellite phone or the broadcast uplink to get the word out.”
“Don’t suppose you brought that stuff?” Trout asked hopefully.
“Pretty sure I’d be fucking using it right about now if I had.” Goat stared at the Guardsmen down the road. “We’re screwed, Billy. We’ll never get in.”
“Maybe, maybe. Let me think.” Trout turned and looked the way they’d come, and then looked farther up the road, chewing his lip in thought. “Okay, they’ve got this road blocked, and there are four other significant roads that lead to town. Hank Davis becomes Doll Factory once you pass the reservoir. Then there’s Sawmill Road at the west end, Brayer Bridge Road at the southeast corner, and Sandoval Road that crosses into Maryland. They’re going to block those, no doubt about it. How many other roads does that leave?”
“Including farm roads?” asked Goat. “About a million.”
“Right. So, if they’re just now blocking the big roads, we can still get in on a farm road. What’s close? Forest Lane … or that crappy little utility road by the Miller place.”
Goat looked uncertain. “Wait, man, let’s think this through. Why exactly are we trying to get
“Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack. Think about it, man. Doc Volker infected a psycho serial killer with a bunch of parasites that are probably going to make him even more of a murderous whack job than he already was, and which are likely to spread like wildfire. He said that the infected would be — what’s the word he used? —
“Exactly,” agreed Trout.
“Then why in the wide blue fuck are we even thinking about going in there?”
“We’re reporters—”
“Yeah? Save that shit for the rubes, Billy.”
Trout turned in his seat. “Okay, then all bullshit aside. Everyone knew that this storm was coming, so by now they would have evacuated the middle school and bussed all those kids over to the elementary school. That’s the town shelter point. They’ll probably be bringing in the old folks from Sunrise Home, and anyone who lives in areas likely to flood. That’s — what? Two thousand people? More than half of them kids.”
“Most of the kids’ parents will have picked them up already?”
“Maybe from east and north, but anyone coming from west and south will have been flooded out. Or, maybe stopped by the military. No matter how you spin it, Goat, there are going to be hundreds of kids and maybe as many old folks and townies who have nowhere else to go. They’re going to be inside that shelter.”
“Okay. So?”
“So, if they don’t know what they’re facing, then they’re going to take in anyone who comes to the shelter doors. That includes wounded people. People who might have been bitten. You heard what Volker said, this thing is completely infectious. If even one wounded person shows up and they let him in, then Lucifer 113 is going to sweep
