infected, if she was truly lost to him forever, then he would use Volker’s gun and give her peace … and then he would join her. If he could not have her in life, then he would follow her into death.
Tears ran down his face and he wiped his eyes on his sleeve.
Screw this. Dez was probably already as dead as Marcia. Maybe everyone in town was. Say good-night, folks, and thanks for coming. So long.
Marcia took a small step toward the Explorer.
“Marcia,” Trout said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
She took another step. Trout tried flicking the lights at her. Her lips curled in a brief snarl, but then settled back to rubbery slackness.
Trout took his foot gingerly off the brake, allowing the engine idle to move the SUV forward a few feet.
Marcia did not move. He stepped down on the brake pedal.
“Come on, Marcia … please,” Trout said, sniffing at the tears. “Cut me a break here.” The pistol was on the seat beside him. Even a bonehead like him could suck on the barrel and pull the trigger.
He thought about Goat and what they had planned to do about this.
There were hundreds of kids at the shelter. Maybe more. If they’d gotten there when the storm started, then there was a good chance they were still alive, still safe within the blocky walls of the elementary school.
And Dez was out there somewhere.
“Fuck!” He yelled it.
Outside, Marcia heard him and took a more definite step toward the car.
Inside, a clock was ticking in Billy Trout’s head.
He eased his foot off the brakes again and the car moved forward once more, slowly closing the distance between the Explorer’s grille and Marcia. She didn’t move out of the way. She reached for the hood, and Trout watched her red nails scratch long lines in the paint. One of her nails bent slowly backward and then broke, tearing away a flap of skin. Trout yelped in imagined pain; Marcia did not.
The Explorer moved against her, bumping into her with a soft, heavy sound that made Trout clench his teeth. Marcia leaned into the car, pushing and clawing at it as if she could tear through it to get to …
A fresh wave of sickness washed over Trout as he realized with perfect clarity what Marcia intended to do. It was something he had known all along but not quite accepted. Until now.
“Please,” he begged. He hit the horn.
She clawed at the hood.
He tapped the brakes to try and jolt her away. The lane was far too narrow to go around, and there was no side road.
But she would not, could not, be deterred. She knew that he was in there. And she wanted him. Even though her eyes were dead, her mouth worked constantly, snapping at the air.
“Please,” he said again, but even as he said so, he touched the gas. Just a tap, but it made the Explorer surge five feet forward. Marcia was flattened against the grille and hood for a moment, her feet sliding in the mud. Then she slipped. Just a few inches, her weight pulling her down as her feet lost their support.
Trout touched the gas again, just a whisper of extra power. The Explorer lurched forward again, and Marcia slipped farther down.
“I’m sorry,” Trout said and then a sob broke in his chest as he pressed down on the gas, driving the car forward and watching Marcia slide slowly backward off the hood and sink down, inch by inch, in front of the car. In front, and under. Her arms were stretched forward, nails scratching and scrabbling at the wet metal. Rain pounded her, dancing along the white skin of her hands and arms.
Another few feet forward, another few inches down.
She was disappearing in horrible slow motion, sinking into the mud as the weight and mass of the Explorer pushed her down. Trout stared into her empty green eyes as they peered at him over the very edge of the hood … and then they were gone as she slid down. Her hands slid away from him, and they, too, were gone.
There was a moment when the car seemed to stall, but then Trout realized with even greater horror that it was because the wheels were trying to climb over an obstacle.
A second, deeper sob tore itself from Trout’s chest as he fed the car more gas and the four-wheel drive found purchase. The Explorer rocked sideways as it climbed awkwardly over the obstruction. Wheel by wheel it thumped back into the mud, and the vehicle rolled forward without further hindrance.
Trout kicked the brake pedal to the floor and bent forward as if in physical pain. His forehead rested on the knobbed arc of the steering wheel. He let go of the wheel and punched it, and punched the dash and punched his own head. Trout screamed as loud as all the pain in the world.
When he finally began driving, he dared not look in the rearview mirror. It would kill him to see Marcia lying broken in the mud. It would kill him to see her getting to her feet.
“Oh, Christ,” he said through his tears. “Dez…”
He gunned the motor and kept driving.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
“Where is everyone?” asked Jimmy Hobbs as he and his girlfriend, Elizabeth Donald, stepped into the foyer of the offices of Regional Satellite News. He was five years younger than Elizabeth and was the company gofer, doing everything from chauffeuring camera crews to replacing broken toilet seats. With his shocking red hair and freckles he looked like Archie from the comics. Elizabeth had curly black hair and dark eyes and a Goth style she modeled after Marcia’s, minus all the piercings.
“Where’s Marcia?” asked Elizabeth as she shrugged out of her wet coat. She was not smiling. A faint frown tugged at the corners of her mouth.
The receptionist’s chair was pushed back against the wall and her Styrofoam Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup was on its side, still dripping into the pool that was spread under the desk.
“Maybe she went to get the mop,” suggested Jimmy. “I’ll go see.”
Without another word he pushed through the batwing saloon doors that led into the newsroom. Elizabeth bent over to shake droplets from her hair. From that angle she could look under the edges of the flapping saloon doors and for a moment she didn’t understand what she was seeing.
Jimmy seemed to be dancing with Murray Klein’s secretary, Connie.
Dancing?
Even as she saw this, Elizabeth knew that it was wrong, that her perception was skewed, and not merely because she was bent over. The picture she saw would not fit into her mind.
She straightened slowly and peered over the top of the doors.
Jimmy was not dancing. Of course he wasn’t dancing. That was crazy.
What he was doing, however, was crazier by far.
Connie and Jimmy were locked in a fierce embrace and it seemed to Elizabeth that Connie was forcibly trying to kiss Jimmy.
No. Not kiss.
Jimmy was twice the secretary’s size, but shock and the ferocity of the attack was crippling him. In a moment it would kill him, unless …
Elizabeth burst through the doors and into the newsroom.
She stopped, momentarily forgetting even the weird and absurd gavotte being performed in front of her. The newsroom was in shambles. Desks were overturned, papers thrown onto the floor. Computer monitors had been smashed and some still leaked smoke; and someone had splashed bright red paint everywhere.
Once more Elizabeth’s mind rewound that thought and edited it with new words. Not paint. Blood. Pints of it. Gallons. Walls, floor, and even some on the ceiling.
Bodies lay scattered around. The rest of the afternoon staff. The weatherman, Gino Torelli, was spread- eagled over a desk with his crotch and the inside of both thighs simply … gone. Torn away. Elizabeth could see torn
