Fall of Night (Dead of Night Series) (16 page)

CHAPTER FORTY

TOWN OF STEBBINS

ONE MILE INSIDE THE Q-ZONE

The three infected left the road and came splashing and slogging through the mud toward Sam Imura. Each of them ran differently. The boy’s gait was erratic, like a stroke victim trying to run. The younger man barely shuffled along, his limbs stiff and awkward. But the older man ran with an almost normal gait. Fast and with clear determination.

“Ahh, shit,” said Boxer’s voice in Sam’s earbud.

“Boss?” asked Moonshiner.

“I got this,” said Sam, and he could hear the sadness in his own voice. He raised his pistol and sighted along the black length of the Trinity sound suppressor. He slipped his finger inside the trigger guard and squeezed.

A black dot appeared an inch above the right eyebrow of the bearded man, and his head snapped back. Sam used a .22 automatic. The bullet punched in through the front of the skull but it lacked the force for a through-and-through. Instead the lead bounced around inside the man’s skull and destroyed the brain. The efficient mechanics of the infected man’s gait were destroyed in a microsecond. His legs and arms stopped pumping and instead they flopped uselessly, like a puppet whose strings had all been cut. He fell badly, landed on his face, and did not move.

The younger man was three paces behind him and only with the third of those running steps did he try to move around the obstacle. As if it took that long for whatever drove its brain to identify the obstruction and attempt a course correction. It was too little and too late, and his foot struck the dead man’s outflung leg. The younger man pitched forward, hit hard, and slid five feet through the mud.

Sam Imura ignored him for a moment and watched the boy. He was maybe eleven or twelve. A good-looking kid in a hayseed kind of way. Probably would have been a farmer when he grew up. Probably liked sports and girls and his folks. Probably a pretty good kid.

Sam shot him.

The boy fell and stopped being anything. Not a boy, not a monster. He was meat that would cool in the relentless rain.

Something ignited in Sam’s chest. He’d been in firefights before with other kinds of infected. He’d had to pull the trigger on what the military shrinks called a mercy killing and what his commanding officers filed away as a righteous shoot. However Sam knew full well that when any sane person pulls a trigger on a child—even an infected one—there was no mercy in the action. And it was in no way righteous. It was an act that made him feel complicit in a process of deception and abuse that was as old as warfare. Once, when a fellow operative made a crude joke about such kills as “collateral damage,” Sam took him outside and attempted to beat some conscience into the sonofabitch. The lesson hadn’t worked, it didn’t change the asshole and it hadn’t made Sam feel any better. Though it felt good at the time.

His shrink had a field day with that.

Now, standing in the rain and watching the boy fall, Sam thought about the pathogen. Lucifer 113. Named for a fallen angel.

He wondered how far he was falling. How far he had yet to fall.

The third infected was struggling to his knees. Sam almost shot him.

He didn’t.

It wasn’t a matter of mercy, even now.

He tapped his earbud. “Converge on me. I need a spit hood and flex cuffs.”

The man crawled like an arthritic toward Sam, and as he did so he uttered a low, terrible moan. Was it hunger? Or was it something else? Sam thought he could hear desperation in that moan. Like a person trapped in a burning building.

The rest of the Boy Scouts swarmed in, coming at the infected man from four points. Moonshiner, the biggest of the team, swept the man’s hands off the muddy ground and as the young man collapsed, the big man dropped his knee onto his back. He caught the back of the dead man’s neck and forced the pale face into the mud, keeping it there despite all of the struggling. Sam observed those struggles. There was no art to them, no plan. It was pure reaction.

Gypsy pulled a spit hood over the man’s head and the others bound his wrists with plastic flexcuffs.

“What do we do with him?” asked Gypsy. “Leave him here?”

“Pop him,” suggested Moonshiner.

“No,” Boxer said quickly. “What if the doctors can do something for him?”

Shortstop shook his head. “Intel I read says that this disease is a one-way ticket. No one comes back.”

“That’s theory,” insisted Boxer. “We don’t know that. It’s not like this thing’s ever been field tested.”

Moonshiner made a dismissive sound. “Kid, look at this fucker. He’s cold. I’ll bet his body temp is already down five, six degrees. Take his pulse if you want to. Check for pupillary dilation. Do whatever you need to do, but he’s not sick, Boxer, he’s dead.”

But Boxer shook his head. “Seen a lot of dead, man, and he doesn’t look dead to me.”

“Okay, then deadish. Deadlike. Pick whatever word you want to use. Make something up. Point is, this stuff’s already eating his brain. What do you think the docs could do for him? Build him a cage with an exercise wheel?”

“It’s not—”

“No,” said Sam, cutting him off, “it’s not fair and it’s not right and it’s damn well not normal. But it is what’s happening. The assholes who invented this took the concept of death and broke it. Doesn’t mean what it used to and we have to accept that. No matter how it looks, this man is dead. He’s also infected and dangerous.”

“Okay,” said Gypsy, “so what’s the call?”

“We have a to-do list and one item on it is to determine if all of the infected are at the same level of coordination, aggression, and mobile speed.”

“We saw some variety right here,” said Gypsy. “All three of these cats were different.”

“Yeah,” agreed Shortstop, “but why?”

“I’ll take all theories,” said Sam.

They thought about it as they watched the bound infected struggle.

“Damage,” said Moonshiner after a few moments. “That could be some of it. Head trauma, joint damage, even other infected gnawing on their tendons.”

“Jesus,” breathed Boxer.

“It makes sense,” insisted Moonshiner. “They’re all injured, right? So, think about any group of ordinary people who are injured in a battle or an explosion. You get all kinds of different mobility.”

“Makes sense,” agreed Gypsy. “These are all going to be walking wounded.”

“That covers coordination,” said Sam. “What about speed?”

Boxer said, “Maybe … rigor mortis?”

They looked at him.

“C’mon,” he said, “think about it. If these things are really supposed to be dead, and only some of them are functioning because of those parasites, then wouldn’t the rest of them do what pretty much all dead bodies do?”

Gypsy glanced around. “How fast does rigor set in? Three to four hours, something like that? Up to that point the infected—actually, can we call them zombies? Infected makes them seem like sick people.”

“And what?” asked Shortstop. “‘Zombies’ is easier?”

She shrugged. “It’s not as real.”

They all got that. Everyone nodded.

“So, these zombies start stiffening up within a couple of hours, so that’ll account for different rates of movement right there. Freshies move more like real people, stiffies kind of stagger, like we saw on the video feeds we watched.”

Shortstop nodded. “Rigor hits maximum stiffness in something like ten, twelve hours, right? Makes me wonder if there are any zombies out there who can’t move at all. Or can’t move worth a damn. Standing there, or maybe lying in a field somewhere ’cause they can’t move.”

“Okay,” said Boxer, playing devil’s advocate, “but nobody’s reported a bunch of human scarecrows. These things are walking.”

“But not well,” observed Shortstop. “General Zetter’s report talked about a lot of the infected moving in a slow, shuffling manner. I think that’s full rigor right there.”

“What about when the rigor wears off,” asked Boxer. “It does that. Wears off.”

“Sure, but in like four, five days after death,” said Gypsy.

“Even so, how will they be able to move then? Will they get fast again?”

Sam said, “We don’t know. There hasn’t been that much time yet. The first infection was early yesterday, so we’re not even one full day into this thing.”

The bounded infected continued to struggle.

“So…” drawled Shortstop, “what do we do with Sparky here? Do we take him back so they can study him? Is that what they want?”

“No,” said Sam. “The Guard can get as many samples as they want. We’re on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary. And yes, I realize how that just sounded. Zombies and all.”

Everyone grinned at him.

“Point is that if we go on the basis that there are zombies and that a combination of injuries and the onset of rigor will explain most of how they walk and act, then what we look for is something that doesn’t fit that model. A mutation, maybe.”

“Why?” asked Moonshiner.

“Because we’re hoping this disease isn’t as perfect as everyone thinks it is,” said Sam. When the others looked blank, he explained. “A mutation, should one even exist, is more likely to tell the scientists something about the stability of Dr. Volker’s variation of the Lucifer plague. If mutations are possible and—better yet—reproducible, then that opens a door for introducing other mutations that could disrupt the function of the parasite.”

Boxer said, “Wow, I actually understood that.”

They stood for a moment longer, all of them in a loose circle around the writhing dead man.

“Again,” said Shortstop, “what do we do with Sparky here? Strap him to the hood like a six-point buck?”

“No,” said Sam. “We leave him.”

“Like that?” asked Boxer, pointing to the cuffs and spit hood. “It doesn’t seem right.”

Gypsy shrugged. “It’s not like he’s suffering, man.”

Moonshiner leaned close and whispered, “He’s dead, Jim.”

Boxer shoved him away. “Yeah, yeah, very funny.”

“Leave him,” repeated Sam.

Nobody moved, though. They glanced around, at the rainswept road, at the body that lay struggling at their feet, and back the way they’d come.

“Boss,” said Shortstop, “if these three kept walking down the road they’d have come right up to the checkpoint we passed.”

“Uh huh,” agreed Sam.

“Three of these fuckers against those two kids back there?”

“Uh huh.”

“You think those kids would have stopped them?”

“What do you think?” Sam said, making it an open question.

They looked down at the infected. The man continued to writhe and fight against the restraints. His jaws snapped at the material of the spit hood. Gypsy made a disgusted noise. Moonshiner’s grunt was dismissive. But it was Shortstop who answered the question.

“Not a chance in hell, boss,” he said. “Not one chance in hell.”

Together the Boy Scouts walked up the slope to the Humvee. The big Browning .50 mounted on the roof looked ominous. Waiting.

Hungry.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL

STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA

“Ground-floor windows are a priority,” said Dez.

“All of the windows are security glass,” said Mrs. Madison, “with wire mesh in each pane.”

“Won’t stop a bullet,” said a farmer.

“So we block the windows,” said Dez. “Look, this school is built like a blockhouse. There aren’t all that many windows anyway, not on the first floor.”

“Twenty-two,” said Mrs. Madison, and Trout felt like kicking her.

“Twenty-two, okay,” conceded Dez. “So we lock them and cover them with paper or cloth so no one can see in. Then we stack stuff in front of them. Cans with marbles or pieces of metal, anything that will make a lot of noise if the window is forced. We’ll post people in the halls and if anyone hears those cans falling over then they shout out and we all come running.”

Several people nodded, and Trout felt the first splinter of encouragement.

“All of the classroom doors open out,” said Jenny DeGroot. “We can get benches from the gym or other stuff and put them in the halls. If we hear someone breaking in, we can wedge the benches crossways so the doors won’t open out.”

“Great idea,” said Dez, jumping on it.

And suddenly everyone was throwing ideas out. Some were poorly thought out, just things to say from people who needed to be part of a solution—any kind of solution; but there were some good ones, too.

“There are tools and hammers and nails and all that stuff in the janitor’s office,” said one of the teachers.

Someone cleared their throat loudly and the crowd turned toward one of the farmers, a young man with old eyes. Trout fished for his name. Uriah Piper.

Piper shook his head and said, “There’s a better way to secure the doors.”

“Okay, Uriah,” said Dez, “what have you got?”

“Well, first,” he said, speaking in the slow way some farmers do, “we don’t need every door to even open. Once we secure the windows, we can seal off a bunch of the rooms. We can set those noise-making cans you mentioned, but otherwise make sure those doors won’t even open.”

“How?”

“Easiest and fastest way would be to nail a piece of wood along the bottom of the door. Nail it, or better yet, screw it right into the floor, and position it so that it also attaches to the wall right there at the bottom, and maybe again at the top. Or we could erect a brace at an angle to the floor and toe-nail it in, then nail another piece to the floor behind that. Take a battering ram to open a door like that, and even then it wouldn’t be easy. You’d have to tear the whole door apart to get through, and I don’t think even soldiers can do that without us knowing about it.”

“Are you a carpenter?” asked Clark, one of the teachers, his tone filled with skepticism.

“No, sir, I’m a dairy farmer, as I believe you know.”

“Then how do you know that will work?”

Piper gave him a small, cool half-smile. “You live in farm country, Mr. Clark. How do you
not
know that would work?”

That coaxed a few chuckles from the crowd.

“Okay, okay, you’re right,” interrupted Dez, clapping Piper on the shoulder. “It’ll work and it conserves our supplies. Uriah, you’re in charge of securing the doors and windows. Everyone else helps you. Set up work parties and get going.”