Fall of Night (Dead of Night Series) (31 page)

STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA

Dez laid it out for them. The military’s withdrawal, the fuel-air bombs, the burned dead, and the vulnerability of the school.

“If we stay, we risk a siege,” she concluded. “God only knows how many of these things there are, and I sure as shit don’t want to find out. We need to get out now while we still have a chance.”

“How do you propose to do it?” asked Piper, following a cue Trout had given him.

Dez pointed over their heads. “Buses. There are more than enough school buses to get us all out of here. We need to clear out any bodies, hose the insides down to prevent infection, and then load the kids and as many supplies as we can take.”

“And go where?” asked one of the parents.

“Pittsburgh,” said Dez. “Or Philadelphia. Any of the big cities. Anywhere we can get the right kind of help and protection.”

“But those
things
are out there,” said Clark.

“Sure. Some of them. At last check there were eighteen that we could see. We have enough weapons to take them out.”

The crowd murmured at that. Taking them out sounded easy when stated in flat and antiseptic words, but every one of the people outside was a neighbor. Or a relative.

“We can’t just … kill them,” said a thin woman with watery eyes.

Dez walked over and put her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Dottie … those people are already dead. You know that. We all know that. The kids in here are alive.
We’re
alive, and if we want to stay that way then we have to square this all in our heads. This isn’t a bunch of people with the flu. They’re dead. They’re infected by something that makes them move, but they’re dead.” She paused. “Besides, considering what’s happened to them, putting them down would be a mercy.”

“Amen,” said Uriah Piper.

A few of the others murmured agreement. Dez patted Dottie and then turned to the rest of the crowd. She explained what she wanted done and separated people into teams. Not everyone liked the idea. The strongest objections came from Clark, the teacher who’d mouthed off earlier. He wanted them all to stay right there in the school. His logic was that if there was a problem like flooded roads or military roadblocks, some might get out rather than all being stopped.

“No,” said Dez firmly, “we all go together.”

“And what if we don’t want to go anywhere?” demanded Clark.

“
You
can stay, Clark,” said Dez, leaning on that word. “Doesn’t matter to me. But the kids are coming with me and I need enough adults to drive buses and handle guns.”

Most of the crowd looked uncertain, but there were murmurs and nods, a few clear votes of support. However, Clark stood his ground.

“Who are you, of all people, to say what happens with the kids?”

She got up in his face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Clark stood his ground. “Let’s face it,
Officer
Fox, you’re not exactly a role model. How many times have I seen you staggering drunk, coming out of one shithole bar or another? How many times have you been reprimanded for excessive force? Yeah, I know about that stuff. My sister, Bitsy, was on the town council. I know all about you. You’re a loudmouth and—what do they call it in the movies? A loose cannon? That’s it. Exactly why is it we’re supposed to listen to you or follow your orders?”

Trout saw the dangerous red climb up Dez’s throat and bloom on her cheeks.

“That’s enough, Clark,” he said.

Clark wheeled on him. “Oh, right, and we should listen to you, too. Mr. Live From the Apocalypse. Mr. Give Me a Pulitzer Because I Have Innocent Blood on my Polo Shirt. Fuck you. You turned this whole thing into a story because like all reporters if it bleeds it leads, right? I’ll bet that when all those bullets were flying and the kids were screaming, you probably had a hard-on just thinking about how big a story this was. Well excuse me all to hell, Billy, but I don’t think you have a real stake in this. You don’t have any kids here. We do. Or we’re charged with taking care of these kids. They’re only a story to you. Besides, everyone in town knows that you’re been banging Dez Fox since high school, so this is the two of you in cahoots.”

Billy Trout snarled like a dog and swung a skull-cracker of a punch at the point of Clark’s jaw.

Clark leaned back with the ease of a trained boxer and let the punch pass, then he hooked Trout in the gut with a fist that he buried deep in belly flesh above Trout’s belt buckle. Clark pivoted and clopped Trout behind the ear with a right that put him flat on the floor. Trout was so shocked and hurt that he couldn’t even break his fall. He fell flat on his chest. And threw up.

There was a click and a blur of movement and then Clark was against the wall with Dez’s pistol barrel screwed into the soft pallet under his chin.

“You miserable cocksucker,” she hissed, “I’m going to blow your shit all over the—”

“No.”

The word was snapped out, sharp and full of cold command.

Then Uriah Piper moved into Dez’s peripheral vision. His face was hard as stone. “Put the gun down,” he said.

Dez and he locked eyes.

“Now,” said Piper.

On the floor, Trout make a sound like a strangling cat.

With great reluctance Dez stepped back and lowered her gun.

“Put it away,” suggested Piper. She did. “Now see to your friend there. He doesn’t look good.”

She slammed her Glock into its holster. Clark, who despite having had a gun pointed at him, managed to sneer with open contempt. Dez sank to her knees and pulled Billy’s head onto her lap. His face was the color of an overripe eggplant and he was only able to breathe in small gasps. He made little
yeep
sounds. Dez wiped the vomit from his face and held him. Her eyes never left Clark, and she hoped he could read his future in those eyes.

Uriah Piper, his voice and manner calm, stepped between Dez and Clark as if wanting to break that line of communication. But the action forced Clark to shift his attention to the laconic farmer.

“You handle yourself pretty well, Clark. You box?”

“Sure, so what?”

“So did I,” said Piper, and without warning he hit Clark with a short jab that exploded his nose and a right cross that put him on the floor right next to Billy Trout. Both punches were so hard and so fast that they looked and sounded like a single blow.

Everyone stared in sudden, intense shock.

Clark lay there, nose and mouth streaming with bright blood.

Dez Fox gaped. Even Trout focused his bulging eyes on the quiet farmer.

Piper looked at his knuckles, spit on them, rubbed the spit into the calluses, sighed and then seemed to slowly become aware of the crowd. He said nothing to them, but he squatted down next to Clark.

“Here’s the thing, my friend,” he said mildly. “Some people never want to be part of the solution. All they want to do is bitch and whine and create complications for other people. You’ve been like that as long as I’ve known you, and that’s going on twenty years. Since, what? Little League? I don’t remember you ever once stepping up and helping without running your mouth. Mostly that’s okay, that’s people being people, and it didn’t matter much to anyone. Now it does matter. Now we got to work together or we all get hurt or get killed. Now … I’m no fan of Officer Fox and I barely known Mr. Trout outside of what he writes in the papers, so this isn’t me sticking up for my friends. This is me, a farmer and a part of this community saying that if you don’t shut your mouth and work
with
us, then by the Lord Jesus, when we roll out of here in those buses I will personally tie you to the front grill, cover you with A1 sauce, and use you for bait. Look me in the eye and ask me if I’m joking.”

No one said a word. Certainly not Clark, who stared at him with eyes that were filled with fear and strange lights.

Piper dug a clean tissue out of his pocket and held it out. When Clark made no move to take it, the farmer bent and placed it on his chest, patted it flat, then straightened. He turned and looked down at Dez and Trout.

“My guess is that we don’t have a whole lot of time,” he said. “Probably be best if we got our behinds into gear.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

THE SITUATION ROOM

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The Situation Room was crammed with too many people and everyone was shouting. At each other, into phones; some, apparently, at God.

All National Guardsmen in the area had been deployed. Additional troops from joint-use bases were rolling, and the ban on interaction with state and local law enforcement had been lifted. In each of his many phone calls, General Burroughs used the phrase. “This is all boots on the ground.”

The Air Force was actively in play now, as were fighters and helicopters from the Marines and Navy.

Scott Blair took or made more calls than he could count. FEMA and all other disaster-response groups were being pressed to their limits. Teams from the CDC were on the ground, but they were being shunted to the side because there was nothing for them to do. Plenty of samples of living and terminated infected had been collected. They had gallons of the black blood, and more samples were being flown to labs all over the country. Everyone with a microscope was studying Lucifer 113. Nobody had an answer.

Then Blair’s phone rang and the display told him that it was Sam Imura. Blair snatched it up and cupped his other hand over his ear so he could hear. “Tell me some good goddamn news, Sam. Tell me you have the flash drives in your hand. Tell me what I need to hear.”

Sam didn’t. Instead he told the truth.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL

STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA

Billy Trout felt like death.

Since yesterday he had been slapped, punched, shoved, shot at, attacked by zombies, nearly gunned down by helicopters, pulled his back out, and punched some more. There was no part of his body that did not hurt. His stomach felt like it was filled with broken glass and he had a persistent ringing in his ear. Nausea eddied in his gut and his eyes had trouble focusing. He felt ninety years old as he limped slowly after Dez as she trotted down the hall toward the rear exit.

Finally he had to stop and lean against the wall, gulping in ragged lungfuls of air.

When Dez realized he wasn’t following her, she stopped and turned. “What are you doing?”

“Watching all the pretty fireflies,” he croaked.

He expected a sharp comeback, but instead she came back to where he stood, an expression of concern clouding her pretty face. She smoothed the lank blond hair out of his eyes and placed her palm on his cheek. An act of tenderness that was an echo of a Dez Fox that Trout used to know.

“I should have cut his balls off and fed them to him,” she said.

Trout managed a weak grin. “I’d have enjoyed that.”

She grunted and smiled. “Piper rang his chimes pretty well, though. Who’da thought?”

“Wish I’d seen it.”

“It was sweet.”

“Sure.”

Trout straightened slowly and then hissed sharply, collapsing back against the wall.

“Jesus Christ, Billy, how fucked up are you?”

“Oh … I’ve had worse.”

“No you haven’t, you asshole.”

“No, I haven’t,” he agreed weakly. “It’s the sort of thing people say.”

“Is it bad?”

“It’s not terrific,” he admitted through clenched teeth.

She shook her head. “We need to get you to a hospital.”

He slowly straightened again, face set against pain spikes. He made it to a relatively upright position. “On the list of immediate priorities, Dez, that’s right near the bottom.”

Dez didn’t argue.

“Come on,” he said, “we have work to—”

“Officer Fox!” a voice called sharply, and they both looked toward the stairwell as Jenny DeGroot came bursting out. “Something’s happening outside.”

“We already know about the soldiers leaving—”

“No,” said Jenny breathlessly, “it’s something else. You’d better come look.”

Dez cut a look at Trout, but he waved her away. “Go, I’ll catch up.”

Dez followed Jenny into the stairwell and Trout could hear their footfalls as they raced up to the second floor. The thought of climbing stairs was intimidating, but Trout forced himself to stagger into the fire tower and climb the stone steps, one at a time. It felt like to took a hundred years and the version of Trout that emerged from the tower was hobbled and hunched and gasping for breath.

Dez Fox nearly ran him down as she tore back toward the stairs.

“What?” he gasped as he flung himself out of her way.

“The soldiers,” she said. “They’re back.”

She took off running with Jenny and a few of the others at her heels.

Trout didn’t immediate follow. He couldn’t face the steps, not yet. Instead he limped over to one of the classrooms, went inside and peered out the window. Down in the lot a pair of soldiers was walking purposefully toward the school. They wore dark hazmat suits and had guns in their hands. They stopped at the corner of the building and one of them raised a walkie-talkie and spoke into it for a moment, listened, then lowered the device. Then, weapons raised and ready, they began walking slowly along the east side of the building.

Were they walking the perimeter or looking for a way in?

A sudden and alarming thought jolted Trout. Where exactly was Dez hurrying to? He thought he knew the answer and it scared him to death. He set his teeth against the pain and hobbled toward the stairs as fast as he could.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

THE NORTHERN LEVEE

FAYETTE COUNTY

On the other side of the county from his niece, Jake DeGroot wondered if he was dead.

Everyone else seemed to be.

Jake was a construction worker from Bordentown who volunteered to work all night in Stebbins, and he and his crew had been at it for nearly twenty-four hours.

Until everything went crazy in Stebbins, just over the county line.

Now he lay in a shallow pit, half-drowned, shivering, and terrified; hidden from view beneath the lowered bucket of a yellow front-end loader. His machine, the one he drove every day. Big Bird.