Dead of Night

attacked. JT never came back to look for me.”

“Did you look for him?”

“I tried.”

“You try his house?”

“No … there wasn’t time.”

Trout took a step toward her. “Dez … JT didn’t abandon you. You do know that, right?”

“He left me alone. It always happens. The trooper, too…”

Trout came closer still. There was a strange light in Dez’s eyes that he’d caught glimpses of before. Now it burned like a torch. “The trooper didn’t leave you. He died. He was taken. It was something that was part of his life drama, and its effect on you, scary as it must have been, was a side effect. It had nothing really to do with you. Same goes for JT. You said his car crashed. Either he escaped from the backseat, injuring himself in the process, or he was taken. I don’t think that in either case he was thinking, ‘Yeah, this will really fuck over Dez. This will show her.’”

“Show me what?”

“That you should be abandoned. That it’s what people do to you.”

“That’s bullshit. I’m not making this shit up. I mean … you left me.”

“Really? This is the conversation you want to have right now? Fine, ’cause God knows we have nothing else pressing. So, here’s the truth, Dez: you left me the first four times, and the only reason I bailed that last time was because you were screwing that biker. Maybe I read that wrong, but it seemed to have ‘fuck off’ written pretty clearly on it.”

She said nothing.

“God knows this isn’t the time for you to try and catch up on fifteen years of very heavily needed therapy, Dez, but you have some serious issues. You always think people are abandoning you. Your mother did it…”

“She had cancer…”

“And your father did it.”

“He was killed in the war.”

“I know, Dez. I’m the guy who does know this stuff. Maybe you told JT, too, but I doubt there’s anyone else you opened up to about it.”

“You think I’m crazy?”

“Of course you are. You’re crazier than a barn owl on meth, and you damn well know it. Look at your lifestyle. There’s nothing about your daily habits that doesn’t speak of self-loathing. You drink too much. You’ll screw anything with even a high school level pickup line and a tight ass. You’re a bitch of legendary proportions. And you’ve done just about everything you can — which is saying a lot — to make sure that nobody likes you. And definitely that nobody loves you. What makes it all so cheap and dime-store is that it’s pretty much textbook stuff. Child abandonment issues played out with sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll here in backwoods Stebbins County. Tell me if I’m wrong.”

Dez did not tell him he was wrong. She glared at him for a two count, and then she drew her Glock and pointed it at his face.

“You better run, Billy.”

“Jesus Christ, Dez … let’s not go totally over the edge here…”

“Run!” she screamed, and fired. The bullet burned through the air an inch from his ear. Trout heard a wet thwack behind him and turned to see a zombie pitch backward with a neat black hole in the center of its pale face. Behind it were a dozen more, and at least a hundred of the things were coming around the sides of the building.

“Oh … shit!”

Dez shoved him hard to one side and fired again and again. “Get the duffle bag!”

Trout looked around and saw the canvas bag on the ground. He ran at it and bent to scoop it up, but it was far heavier than he expected and the weight jerked him back. He felt sudden pain flare in his lower back.

“Stop fucking around and get the bag!” Dez yelled.

“I’m getting the bag, Officer Hitler,” he muttered under his breath as he bent and used his knees to lift the bag. He slung the strap over the same shoulder that was supporting Goat’s equipment, hugged the bulky bag to his chest, and looked around.

“Go wide,” shouted Dez, pointing.

Trout nodded and went left, cutting a wide line around the closest mass of zombies. The way Dez was indicating would take him behind the line of parked faculty cars. There were no dead visible over there. He understood her plan. Run wide around a big obstacle, get the dead to follow, and then cut between the cars and head to the open door. Good plan, except that with every step pain shot down the back of his left leg. He realized that he must have pulled his sciatic nerve when he grabbed the bag.

“Well, that’s just peachy,” he growled, but he kept going, gritting his teeth against the pain.

Dez was right behind him, walking backward while she fired at the oncoming wall of the dead. Trout kept looking over his shoulder, watching with horror as Dez brought them down, one at a time. The girl who worked at Mario’s Pizzarama; Archie from the Allstate office; the school’s vice principal; Melissa Crawford, mother of new twins; and others. Trout knew almost every face, could put a name to almost every one of them. He knew that Dez did too, and he knew that this must be killing her. Just as it was killing him.

The rain was thinning more and more, and Trout could see all the way to the wrought iron fence. The National Guard were there in force, and they had to be able to see what was happening … but they did nothing.

Bastards! Trout thought, but his real rage was not directed at them but at the insect-brained generals and policy makers who were so willing to accept a scorched earth policy rather than find a solution that would save American lives. Trout was moderate enough, even as a liberal, to accept that military power was necessary and that even some wars needed to be fought. He wasn’t a fool. On the other hand, he didn’t like the obvious disconnect between the human element and most military theorists and the generals who paid them. Year after year he lost ground to the cynical view that humanity was far less important than either tactical advantage or financial gain. When he heard politicians use the phrase “in the best interests of the American people” he knew that it was always a profit-based decision. And it wasn’t just in war. The cold detachment was evident in the mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, the hesitation to provide financial support for the health needs of the Ground Zero workers, and the apparent abandonment of returning U.S. vets, especially those wounded and requiring expensive medical treatment.

Here was another example, one that was biting him in the ass right now. Solving the problem of the Lucifer 113 outbreak would clearly be easier and less of a political nightmare if there were no survivors. Wipe the slate clean, maybe kick out a few bucks for a memorial, and do some spin control to blame it on terrorists, the former administration, the policy makers on the other side of the aisle, or on anyone who was the target du jour. Even if he lived through this, Trout doubted he would ever see the name Volker in the papers, and certainly no mention of Lucifer 113 or the CIA. That would all be erased because the truth would cost too much to tell.

To hell with that, he thought as he bit down on the jolts of pain. But what was the answer? How did he and Dez and Goat fix this? Could it, in fact, be fixed?

As he ran — as he listened to Desdemona Fox, the woman he loved, shoot their neighbors down — he began to get an idea. A really wonderful, ballsy, nasty idea.

Dez fired her last shot and swapped out the magazines.

“How we doing?” she yelled.

Trout looked ahead. “Clear … but only if we haul ass.”

“Then let’s haul ass,” she barked. She fired two more shots, spun, and sprinted to catch up with him. When she saw that he was limping, she grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him roughly along with her.

With the storm abating slightly the moans of the dead filled the air. It was such a horrible sound that it made Trout’s knees buckle, but then as he thought about what those moans meant — the insatiable hunger of the parasitic zombies — he bared his teeth and willed more power to his legs.

They ran down the far side of the faculty cars. A zombie lunged at them from behind a parked Highlander.

“Dez!”