Fall of Night (Dead of Night Series) (22 page)

He heard the shallow breathing of the rest of his team, but realized he was holding his own breath. Sam let it out slowly.

“We are so fucked,” said Moonshiner.

No one disputed him.

They heard the crunch of glass and they all wheeled around at the same time, bringing their guns up. Across the street was a diner with a gaping hole where a big picture window should be. The entire frame, and all of the building, was covered by so many bullet holes that it looked like polka dots, except there was nothing fun or festive here. The rifle-mounted flashlights of the five soldiers painted the front of the store in pale yellow light.

A figure moved in the gloom just inside the diner.

“Inside the store,” called Sam. “United States Special Forces. I need you to step out of the building with your hands raised. If you have a weapon I need to you drop it now.”

The figure came out of the shadows and into the glare of the overlapping flashlight beams.

It was a man.

He wore only ragged boxer shorts. The rest of his clothes were gone. Much of his flesh was as well.

He raised his hands toward the five people standing near the Humvee.

It tried to moan, but there was not enough of its face left for that. No jaw, no tongue. Just a gaping red horror below the stumps of its broken upper teeth.

“I got this,” said Shortstop and he fired a single round, the report crisp in the wet air. The zombie’s head snapped back and it fell into the store. But then it seemed to hover there, not quite hitting the ground, and for a bizarre moment Sam thought that it was somehow fighting for its balance even though it was bent so far backward. Then the body shuddered and tumbled to one side as something else came into view.

Another of the infected.

This one was crawling, and its humped body was what kept the first one from hitting the floor. The dead thing’s face was smeared with red and its mouth still worked, still chewed on some piece of something that dangled from between its lips.

The creature looked at them and bared its teeth.

Sam heard Boxer gag.

Not because of the horrible thing on the floor or what it was clearly eating.

He gagged because the zombie was dressed in the woodland camouflage of the Pennsylvania National Guard.

It was a soldier.

Behind it, other shapes moved in the gloom of the diner. And these figures sent up the moan that the first zombie could not. A haunting, wretched cry for something to staunch the dreadful hungers that drove them. They began moving through the shattered window frame.

So many of them.

So many soldiers among them, their battle dress uniforms torn, helmets lost or askew, bodies opened by teeth and nails, souls lost, eyes vacant. Black blood dribbled from their mouths.

“Oh, fuck me,” breathed Boxer. “Fuck me, fuck me.”

“Keep it steady, kid,” said Moonshiner.

A scuff of a clumsy foot made them turn and they saw more of the infected coming out of the open doors of the bank, the feed store, the craft shop, and the county assessor’s office.

Fifty at least.

“I thought General Zetter said they had this shit under control,” growled Gypsy.

“Fuck me,” said Boxer.

“This is some evil shit right here,” agreed Moonshiner.

“Stand or fight, boss? And I’m really okay with hauling ass,” said Shortstop, but for once even his pragmatic cool seemed to be crumbling away.

“There’s so many of them,” said Boxer, and as he said it more of them rounded the corner of the next block. There were children mixed in with the adults. Their faces and limbs turned worm-white from blood loss, mouths black as bottomless holes.

All of them torn. All of them ragged.

That’s how it stuck in Sam’s mind, and somehow he knew that’s how it would always be.

The Ragged People.

As if they were all members of some secret fraternity, bound together in death. Or from some far country where the sun never shines and all there will ever be is the hunger.

“Boss?” urged Gypsy.

“No,” said Sam, turning. “Everyone back in the Hummer. This isn’t what they sent us to do.”

They held their weapons out and ready as they climbed in. The Humvee was armor plated and had reinforced glass windows, but Sam did not feel even a little safe as he shot the lock on his door. He knew the others didn’t either.

“Get us out of here, Boxer,” he said with a calm he did not feel, but the younger soldier was already putting the car in gear.

He backed up and circled the Stryker, then stamped on the brakes as more of the pale figures moved through the downpour.

“Shit,” he said and spun the wheel.

“This is turning into a crowd scene,” said Moonshiner.

Despite everything he knew about the situation and everything they’d done so far this night, Sam hated the idea of opening fire on these ragged people. It felt like abuse to him. Like bullying.

But there were so damn many of them.

The flash drives,
he told himself.
Get the flash drives or this is the whole world.

All he had to say aloud was, “Shortstop.”

The man rolled open the top hatch of the Humvee and stood up into the fierce rain. He whipped the cover off the big Browning, yanked the bolt back, and began firing. The heavy bullets tore into a knot of zombies, knocking them backward with massive foot-pounds of impact, bursting apart joints, ripping loose connective tissue, splashing the Stryker and the other infected with black blood. Four of the creatures went down. Then another five.

“Go, go,
go
!” yelled Sam, and Boxer hit the gas again. The Humvee rolled over the fallen infected, heavy tires crunching bones. Shortstop pivoted and fired at the zombies closing in on the right. Twenty of them.

“Stop Sunday driving,” he bellowed. “Move this fucking thing.”

The Humvee kept rolling forward, but it was difficult to climb over the human debris while avoiding all of the wrecked and abandoned cars. The dead began closing like a fist around the vehicle.

“Little help up here,” called Shortstop. “This shit’s getting weird.”

“Windows,” ordered Sam, and except for Boxer, the others lowered their windows and stuck gun barrels into the rain. A moment later the inside of the truck was filled with ear-splitting thunder. Shell casings hit the ceiling and bounced off each other and stung like wasps where they hit bare flesh.

“Shortstop,” roared Sam, “grenade.”

Shortstop stopped firing, plucked a green ball from his rig and pulled the pin.

“Frag out!” he cried as he flung it into the midst of the dead closing on the front of the Humvee. He ducked down a split second before the grenade exploded. Everything in the blast radius was torn to ragged pieces and at the edges of the blast the concussion knocked the zombies off balance, leaving a rough opening that was clouded with blood-red mist.

Sam punched Boxer on the shoulder. “Punch it.”

Boxer gave it all the gas it would take and the Humvee leapt forward, smashing through the crippled dead, crushing others. Behind him the main mass of the infected closed like the waters of the Red Sea. They collided with one another in their desperate race to get to the living flesh. Gypsy and Moonshiner leaned out of the windows and fired back at them, shooting at legs to shatter thighbones and drop the pursuers into the path of the rest of them. Shortstop climbed back up and turned the Browning in a circle, not needing to aim. There were targets everywhere.

The Humvee shot through the bloody opening and there was clear street beyond it. Boxer kept his foot on the pedal all the way down to the floor and with every second the horde of the dead dropped behind. One by one the guns stopped firing, and after a full minute Sam touched Boxer on the shoulder.

“Okay, kid, ease it down.”

Boxer dropped the speed from seventy to fifty to forty and kept it there. They passed other zombies, but by the time the infected could turn and target them, the Humvee was past. No one fired at them.

Everyone sagged back, exhaling balls of burning air, their hands trembling with adrenaline and shock.

“Reload,” snapped Sam. “Do it now.”

They did it, and the orderliness of that action helped steady each of them. Not completely, but enough so they could reclaim themselves. Enough so they could dare look in each others’ eyes.

They drove on, no one speaking. There was nothing that needed to be said.

Then a soft purring buzz broke the silence. And Sam lunged for his satellite phone.

“Sir,” he said as soon as the connection was made, “Stebbins is not under control. There is extreme activity and—”

“Sam, to hell with that,” Blair snapped. “The Q-zone is compromised. I repeat, the devil is off the chain. The president has ordered the Air Force in. Drop everything else and get to the school. Get those flash drives. Do it now.”

“How bad is it?”

Blair paused for a shattered moment. “It’s bad, Sam. Volker is dead. We’re going to have to go big on this to try and stop the spread—but we
need those drives.
You are authorized to use all means and measures to secure them.”

Sam felt his throat tighten.

“Understood, sir,” he said. But the line was already dead.

The members of the Boy Scouts exchanged looks.

Then Boxer kicked down on the gas, the tires spun on the wet ground until smoke curled up behind the Humvee, and then they were rolling fast, gaining speed, heading toward the Stebbins Little School.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

THE SITUATION ROOM

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The president was surrounded by ghouls.

Every face of every person at the table looked like a death mask: pale, devoid of hope, sunken, and hollow-eyed.

On the screens the glowing icons that represented the jets were streaking toward Bordentown. Other dots indicated the movement of General Zetter’s National Guard forces and the reinforcements that had been ordered in to help hold the quarantine line. With that line broken, the troops were being deployed in a wide circle around the Starbucks.

The president took a long drink of water, but it did nothing to soothe his dry, raw throat. He set the glass down with a clunk that seemed absurdly loud in a room that was unusually quiet.

“What are our options?” he asked of the people around the table. The people whose job it was to always have answers.

General Amistad Burroughs said, “The jets will—”

“No,” interrupted the president. “I want to know what we need to do afterward. After the bombs.”

Sylvia Ruddy shared a look with Scott Blair. She said, “You’ll have to address the nation again.”

“And say what?” asked the president. Ruddy flinched. “No, I want you to tell me, what can I possibly say that will help the country understand this.”

“Sir, I—”

The president picked up a sheet of paper and shook it at her, at everyone. Everyone had a copy of the same report in front of them. None of them had touched the report after first reading it. The papers lay on the table, unwanted, feared, despised.

“These are casualty estimates. In just under five minutes we are going to kill thousands of American citizens. Thousands more are already dead. And we don’t yet know if this is the end of it. So, tell me … what exactly is it I’m supposed to tell the nation?”

The dead faces stared at him and said nothing.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL

STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA

The last of the military vehicles rumbled out of the parking lot, leaving behind a scene of disorder and desolation.

“Now what?” asked Trout.

Dez nibbled thoughtfully on her lip. “If they’re really gone…”

“What?” he prompted.

“I can think of only three reasons they’d leave,” she said, ticking them off on her fingers. “It’s over and they’ve been told to stand down.”

“Is that likely?”

“No. They left too fast and left too much shit behind. They were told to drop and run. Question is whether they’re running from or running to.”

“Huh?”

“That’s choice two and tree. So, the second option is that there’s another problem. Maybe they found a bunch more of these zombies. Or, more likely, there’s a problem at the quarantine line.”

“What’s the third option?”

She gave him a flat stare. “Getting out of the line of fire.”

For emphasis she pointed up to the ceiling. Trout followed her finger as if they could both see a jet loaded with fuel-air bombs screaming its way across the skies of Stebbins County.

“Well,” Trout said slowly, “shit.”

“Yeah.”

“But … the flash drives … they want those. They won’t blow us up if they think we have them.”

“Sure. Unless they found Dr. Volker, in which case when this is over you are going to be one inconvenient motherfucker, Billy. Same goes for me and anyone you may have talked to in here. Which is everyone.”

Even after everything that happened, Trout was aghast at the thought of such cold-blooded murder. He kept shaking his head, but he wasn’t sure he actually disagreed.

“We have a window, Billy,” said Dez as she turned, hurried to the desk and began shoving the guns and ammunition back into the duffel bag. “We need to get the fuck out of here while there’s still a
here
to get out of.”

“What are you doing?” asked Trout.

She nodded to the windows. “Neither of us believe this is over, right? Not with the way they left. And maybe they’re not going to bomb us, but where does that leave us?”

“In a nice, safe building that we’re reinforcing,” he said. “With lots of food and supplies.”

“For a week, Billy. Now, think it through. If this is as big a disaster as Zetter said, as big as what Volker told you, then are you telling me that we might
only
be stuck here for a week?”

“No, but they said they’d airdrop supplies to us.”

“You want me to punch some stupid off of you?”

He rubbed his chest. “No thanks. What am I missing?”

“If the Guard had to run out of here like their dicks were on fire, then this thing is spreading. Which also means that there are so many of those dead fuckers out there that they had to take everyone including the cook. Does that sound like anything’s under control?”