Everyone in Morristown might be headed this way.
10
The Reverend Timothy Morris had established his settlement directly after the war. As an unexpected reward, he received a full quarter-ton of seeds from Missoula. A few of the United States’ seed banks survived the plague year, the seeds held back for their potential rather than being eaten outright. Since then, the government had been paying people to grow specific crops in exchange for a percentage of future harvests and the right to dictate where new seeds and saplings would be sent.
Their wealth steadily attracted more people to the Reverend’s influence. The folks in Morristown weren’t crazy. They were enthusiastic. The Reverend preached New Evangelism, which taught that man’s purpose was to regrow and repopu late. Sometimes it also meant plural marriages, wife swapping, or marriage at a young age. That was one reason why Tony had been so fascinated with Jefferson’s neighbors and why his mother despised them.
The crowd on the perimeter was silent. A few of them groaned, but it was their faces that truly spoke for them. Their eyes were huge and afraid. One sandy-haired woman blinked spasmodically, but most of them walked with their eyes wide open as if lost or confused.
“What do we do?” Ingrid asked.
“We can’t just kill them!” Cam said.
“Do it! We gotta do it!” another man screamed. The high pitch of his voice made it clear that he was trying to convince himself, too — but what choice did they have? The closest people were about to clear the fences.
Cam wrenched his gaze away from the oncoming shadows as Greg and Neil jogged up behind him. “Where is the hazmat suit!?” Cam yelled, cursing himself.
“What if we start a fire?” Ingrid said. “Is there any gasoline?”
“The flamethrowers are back at the greenhouse!”
“Then we’ll shoot into the ground at their feet.”
Cam glanced at the older woman with respect as her hand clacked against her M16, flicking the fire selector to full auto. Ingrid had volunteered for guard duty when others insisted on taking cover inside the sealed huts, and Cam remembered the handsome, blunt nose and chin behind her face mask. Ingrid Wood was unusual not only for her age — few people in their sixties had survived the plague year — but because of her accent. Ingrid had emigrated from Germany two decades ago after a divorce, and she was friendly, tough, and unfailingly polite.
“We may have to wound them,” she said.
“Do it!” Neil screamed.
The first of the infected people staggered out of the fences, a young man in a MICHIGAN T-shirt and a skinny girl with filthy white socks beneath her blue gown. Cam recognized one of them. The young man’s thick hair and the plague scarring on his nose were unmistakable. He was a farmer’s son and loud in his religion, taking every chance to explain about the Resurrection any time a crew from Jefferson came to trade equipment or food. Jake. The young man’s name was Jake and he was a good kid, rightly proud of his family’s apple trees.
Cam raised his M4.
The floodlights switched on before anyone fired. David had finally gotten his tripod ready and hit the power, draining electricity away from Ruth’s lab. Its dual lights burned into the people in the fences, illuminating the night like stark white glaring suns. Two shadows leapt from each person in a fan of silhouettes. Glass and chrome winked among the car parts on the ground.
Their eyes looked incredibly strange. It was as if none of them had irises. Their pupils were huge, like black pennies, and did not shrink in the light. It was a permanent condition. They shared some uniform injury to their brains.
The floodlights hurt them. The young man reeled away as the skinny girl ducked her head and scuttled sideways. Others raised their arms or moaned. The light stopped them. The Bull Dog was too strong. At first, Cam thought it might work. Then he noticed the second wave of human shapes. The field of light held at least a hundred figures, and there were hundreds more beyond them in the darkness.
Cam felt his blood run cold. The nearest people were repelled by the glare, yet the larger crowd seemed to be attracted to it. It was an eerie sight. Most of the infected people had been headed toward Jefferson, but without purpose. Some had stopped or strayed in other directions. Others were looking at the sky or their feet.
As the Bull Dog lit up the fences, the entire crowd turned as one, their white and brown faces reflecting the light like dishes. Blood gleamed on hands or bare legs where they’d fallen and hurt themselves. Then the crowd began to separate into two halves, circling in toward the brilliant corona from either side.
“Oh my God,” Ingrid said.
“Shut ‘em off! Shut ’em off!” Cam yelled. Too late. The infected people had a clear goal and began to pick up speed, shambling through the obstacles and barbed wire. Metal clanked, but they were silent, only grunting or heaving for air. Even the young apple farmer seemed to regain his bearings, stalking toward them even though he bent sideways from the light as if it was a physical force.
“Open fire!” Greg shouted, blasting the young man in the head. The boy toppled.
Cam’s eyes stung inside his goggles but he repressed the emotion, screaming against his face mask. He welcomed the noise of his M4, too, because it overrode everything else.
The carbine rattled in his arms as he dropped the skinny girl with a three-round burst. Her blood looked purple in the high-intensity lights. Cam took down the man behind her. Then a woman. Then another man. The range was too close. The M4 and the older model M16 were designed to penetrate Soviet helmets at a hundred yards, not unarmored targets at forty feet. Cam’s shots passed through the fourth man’s shoulder without knocking him down.
At the same time, Owen and Ingrid blazed at the crowd with their M16s. Two more carbines and a shotgun ripped into action from Cam’s left, farther down the perimeter.
The guns were withering. Twenty people twisted and fell. One man lay screeching on a chrome bumper, making noises that sounded almost like words before their Russian grenade launcher coughed somewhere to Cam’s right. A small rocket jumped into the field of light, splashing fire and smoke. The men and women of Jefferson had moved to reinforce Cam and the others like a well-schooled platoon, but they were downwind of the infected mob.
The carbines on Cam’s left went silent first. He was reloading his own weapon when he noticed the change, yet it wasn’t until he set his M4 against his shoulder again that he realized the delay from the other position had lasted too long. Those men weren’t reloading. They were infected.
Cam peered at the nearest hut, looking for flashlights or muzzle flashes. There was nothing. Then someone stumbled past the corner of the building. The man was not empty-handed or half clothed like the people in the crowd. In fact, he seemed to be pawing at his jacket hood as he struggled to shake his hand loose from the trigger guard of his shotgun, treating the weapon like a burden rather than a tool.
“Oh shit we gotta move!” Cam yelled at Greg. “Fall back! Fall back!” He slapped at Ingrid’s shoulder, but the older woman was too focused on controlling her M16. She fired into the west side of the crowd.
The infected people continued to advance. The guns did not frighten them, nor did the dead and wounded on the ground. They stumbled through their bleeding friends with no more attention than they gave to the fences and car parts. If anything, the muzzle blasts seemed to draw them. It was as if they were so deeply submerged in their trance that they seized on any external sensation. They walked right into the guns, which were much fewer now.
“Hold your position!” Greg shouted, but Cam pointed and yelled, “We lost everyone on our left! Every time
