Fall of Night (Dead of Night Series) (2 page)

A man who had been infected; a man no one and no science could save.

But he hadn’t turned yet. That was clear to Rollins and probably to everyone. The man had come out of the school leading a staggering line of sick and injured people.

All infected, all dying. None of them dead yet.

Another cop, a woman, had tried to pull him back inside. Rollins could tell from her body language that she was screaming and fighting to pull the male officer to safety. However another man, a white man, dragged her away and forced her inside the school.

Two of the uninfected getting clear.

Leaving the others outside.

Leaving them to die.

The cop had stood his ground and as the zombies closed around him, he fired and fired and fired. It was the most heroic thing Hap Rollins had ever seen in twelve years as a combat vet.

The man had to know that there was no hope.

None.

So why did he fight?

The answer huddled behind him against the now closed door to the Stebbins Little School. A little girl. Other little kids.

The cop fought like a wild man to keep them safe from the monsters. To make sure that their last memory was not of being consumed. To protect them from that while he waited for the big black insects in the sky to end it all with bullets.

Rollins had been in the best position to fire on the black cop.

And the kids.

The orders came.

The killing began.

The dying began.

And the tears.

Now the infected were dead. All of them. The dying and the risen dead. All of them littered on the pavement and splashed against the walls of the school. Against the building designated as the town emergency shelter.

Rollins was not a deeply educated man, but he understood the concepts of irony and farce.

And tragedy.

He wanted to look away from the torn body of the cop and the smaller rag doll figure of the little girl. Wanted to.

Couldn’t.

On some level Sergeant Rollins felt that it would have been a sinful thing to do. Disrespectful.

Then the helicopter began moving, rising and turning, pulling him away from the evidence of such hurt and harm. As it went, Hap Rollins hung his head and prayed to a God he was absolutely certain had turned His back on this world.

CHAPTER FOUR

PENNSYLVANIA NATIONAL GUARD FIELD COMMAND POST

INSIDE STEBBINS COUNTY

Major General Simeon Zetter watched the live feeds on the screens of four laptops set side by side on the big table. Around him the other officers under his command watched in utter silence. No one spoke. All Zetter could hear was the tinny sound of helicopter rotors from the laptop speakers and the labored exhalations of the men and women around him. Everyone was panting as if they’d all run up a steep hill even though all they had done was watch.

The voice of a Black Hawk pilot suddenly cut through the stillness.

“Zero movement,” he said. “Spotters observe zero movement on all sides of the target.”

The target was the school.

On the screen, four M1117 armored security vehicles entered through the main gate as machine gunners behind the fence kept watch. The M1117s split and each one began rolling along one side of the school. The vehicles bounced over ragged pieces of the dead.

“Confirmed,” said the same voice. “Zero movement.”

Zetter heard several of the officers let out deep sighs.

He reached for a microphone and gave a string of orders for his people to expand the ground search using the modified Desert Patrol Vehicles. Lines of these dune buggy–like, two-man vehicles vanished into the surrounding woods and neighborhoods, going where the heavier and clumsier Humvees couldn’t.

Then Zetter sat back and let out his own sigh. He got to his feet and turned to the gathered officers, all of whom fell silent.

“This is a tragic and terrible day in American history,” he said. “We have all been asked to make hard decisions and to carry them out with professionalism and efficiency.”

The officers nodded.

“You are all aware of the political delicacy of what has happened today.”

More nods, but now they were careful. There were three huge elephants in the room with them, and nobody wanted to talk about any of them except the infection. That was safe ground because it was why they were there. The president and the governor of Pennsylvania had mobilized the Guard to stop the spread of an old Cold War bioweapon that had been released accidentally by a former Soviet scientist. That was, by strict military parlance, a clusterfuck. And the pathogen’s virulence was such that it spread throughout the town, infecting virtually everyone. Killing them. And then in a twist of mad science that even Zetter found hard to accept, it brought the dead back as aggressive disease vectors. The risen dead, driven by the genetically engineered parasites that made up the substance of the pathogen, attacked like sharks—mindless, endlessly hungry, and vicious.

That resulted in the second elephant in the room, the one each of them knew would haunt their lives and taint the military here on the ground and the administration in Washington. Acting under orders to sterilize the town in order to stop the spread of the infection, Zetter’s command predecessor, Lieutenant Colonel Macklin Dietrich, had ordered the town’s emergency shelter—the Stebbins Little School—to be destroyed. It was filled with people, many of who were infected. Every officer understood the necessity for that kill order; most of them even agreed with it.

However, a reporter, Billy Trout from Regional Satellite News, was inside the school. Inside, but connected to the outside world via a live news feed. As the gunships opened up on the building, Trout made an impassioned plea to the world to save the uninfected children. The plea hit every single news service. The media and public outcry was immediate and massive.

Massive.

And that directly led to the ugliest part of this—at least for the officers in that command center. The reporter’s plea was broadcast to the troops outside the building via the school’s public address system.

The result?

One by one the soldiers at the fence stood up and refused to follow orders. They would not kill the children.

It was mutiny, and one officer—a young lieutenant—tried to nip it in the bud, but he was overwhelmed and, eventually, outranked as a more senior officer—Captain Rice—went to stand with the mutineers.

The president had immediately ordered General Zetter to relieve Dietrich of his post and assume overall command of the situation. Every officer there knew that it was unfair to put the blame on Dietrich, just as it was unfair that the public and the media would demonize them for their actions in Stebbins County.

Actions that, had they not been taken, would have opened the door to a massive and perhaps unstoppable pandemic.

That was the biggest elephant in the room, and nobody there dared talk about it.

Now, another chapter had been completed. Zetter had contacted the reporter and two police officers inside the school and made them a deal. If they sent out every infected person then the school would be spared.

It was a bad deal and everyone—inside and outside the school—hated it.

But it would play well in the media. As well as something like this could play.

Zetter looked at each of his officers and read variations on this story in each pair of eyes. He grunted softly and nodded.

“You all have your assignments,” he said. “Let’s finish the cleanup so we can all go home.”

The officers stood to attention—crisply, silently, and with absolutely no trace of expression or emotion on their faces. Zetter couldn’t blame them for not wanting to show anything to him. He was the hatchet man for the administration, and that administration would be looking for more scapegoats to sacrifice on the altar of public outrage. It was how the politics of warfare worked, and it was how that worked probably going back to Alexander the Great.

When he was alone, Zetter sat down and sagged into his chair, feeling all of his years and more that he hadn’t earned. He knew that once this was over he was as done as Dietrich. Done and gone.

He wasn’t even sure he minded.

Not after a day like today.

He reached for his phone and punched in the number that direct-dialed the White House Situation Room.

The chief of staff, Sylvia Ruddy, answered the phone and then put it on speaker.

“Mr. President,” said General Zetter, “we have contained the outbreak. It’s over.”

CHAPTER FIVE

GOOD-NITES MOTOR COURT

FAYETTE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

Dr. Herman Volker parked his car in one of the vacant slips outside of the small motel. He turned off the engine and sat for nearly ten minutes watching the rain hammer down on the windshield. The sluicing water blurred the glass and transformed the neon sign above the office into an impressionist painting. All pinks and greens.

He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes, blew his nose, and then tossed it onto the seat.

Then he opened the door and stepped into the downpour. He wore trousers, a dress shirt, tennis shoes, and a blue sweater, and he looked like the tired, defeated, sad old man that he was. His feet barely lifted from the ground as he shuffled toward the door, pulled it open, and went inside. He carried no suitcase or overnight bag. The only thing he brought with him was his wallet, and it took him a long time to organize his thoughts well enough to fill out the information sheet given to him by the bored night clerk. He paid for the room with his credit card, took the key, and walked outside again. His room was on the same strip where he’d parked.

Volker used the keycard to open the door, went inside, closed the door.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the ugly painting on the wall. An artless mess that was supposed to remind people of Joan Miró, but didn’t. Not in any way that lifted the soul.

The doctor stared at the painting for a long time.

CHAPTER SIX

STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL

STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA

At first they could only sit there, huddled against the wall, locked in each other’s arms, beaten mute by horror, wrapped in their cloak of shared grief.

Time was fractured and each second seemed to expand and stretch, refusing to end, refusing to pass.

Dez kept repeating JT’s name.

Over and over.

Was it a plea or a prayer? Trout couldn’t tell.

Then suddenly Trout felt a change in Dez. It was a subtle thing, but it was there. One moment she was empty of everything except her pain, and then he felt her body change. Her muscles tensed. No, that was wrong. It was more like they somehow remembered their strength. She straightened in his arms and her clutching hands gripped him and pushed him slowly but inexorably back. He resisted for a moment, then let her create that distance between them. A necessary distance for her, he was sure of it. And in that space Dez Fox reclaimed the personal power stolen from her by disease pathogens, guns, and betrayal.

There was a final moment of intimate contact, when their faces were inches apart. Dez was flushed, her face puffy from weeping, her eyes red and filled with pain. Then he saw the blue of those eyes become cold and hard. And unforgiving.

Her full lips compressed into a tight line with just a hint of a snarl. Trout knew that look, and he was fully aware of how dangerous she was when her mouth wore that shape and her eyes were filled with that much ice. So, he eased back, releasing his embrace, shifting his body toward the wall and away from her.

There was one heartbreaking moment, though, where he saw that she was aware of his allowance and acceptance of her power, and how he withheld his own. Dez gave him a single, tiny nod of shared awareness.

Then she got to her feet. It took effort and it took time, but when she was standing Dez towered over him, and he sat there in her shadow, looking up at her.

“We have to make sure the kids are okay,” she said in a voice from which all emotion had been banished. Trout wondered what it cost her to affect that much control.

“Yes,” he said.

“And we have to search the building again.”

“Okay.”

She began to turn.

“Dez—” he began but she held up a hand.

“No,” she said. Then she began climbing the stairs.

No.

Trout wondered if she thought he was going to say something about JT’s sacrifice. Something encouraging about how the kids inside were safe. Or something more personal. Something about what he felt.

He knew that what he’d planned to say was that he’d do whatever she needed him to do, to help however he could.

But he wondered if those were the words that would have actually come out of his mouth. Dez hadn’t thought so.

Maybe, he thought as he got heavily to his feet, she was right.

“Damn,” he said aloud.

He patted his pockets and realized that the satellite phone Goat had given him was somewhere upstairs. He needed to get it. To tell Goat what just happened. To have Goat tell the world.

This is Billy Trout reporting live from the apocalypse.

There was more truth to tell. More of the story he needed everyone to know.

Maybe it would help.

Trout was past knowing that, or anything, for certain.

Aching in body and heart, Billy Trout lumbered up the stairs after Dez.

CHAPTER SEVEN

TUNNEL HILL ROAD

STEBBINS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

Corporal Lonnie Silk was sure he was dying.

He could feel the warmth leave him, running in lines inside his trousers, down his legs, pooling in his shoes.

The bleeding wasn’t as bad now, but he didn’t think that was a good thing. As his daddy used to say, you can’t pour coffee from an empty cup.

And he felt so empty.

Of blood.

Of breath.

Of everything. Like God was rolling up the whole world to throw it in the crapper.

It was like that.

The rainswept street was all harsh whites and blacks in the stark illumination thrown by the headlights of abandoned cars and businesses with all the lights turned on but nobody there. The glow gave everything a harsh look, like crime scene photos in old newspapers. No soft edges, even with the rain.