“The hell—”
What was this? Some kind of crazy storm tailgate party? Beer and ribs and…?
He was five yards away when he realized that he was wrong. About the nature of the gathering. About the menu. About everything. The people closest to him raised their faces from their meals and stared at him with eyes that were far too dark and mouths that were far too red.
Nick was three yards away when he stopped walking and turned to run.
That was two yards too late.
* * *
Jillian Weiner felt the darkness closing in. The calm-down drugs were taking her below the level of pain and stress, and soon the big, dark, soft wave of anesthesia would roll over her and she would go down into a sweet nothingness. She wouldn’t feel the scalpel as the doctors went in and removed her appendix. Who needs an appendix anyway? She knew that there would be pain when she woke up, and more pain during the recovery, but for now … it felt like rolling down a hill that was lined with silk and covered with pillows.
Sounds were becoming muted, distorted, softened so that they made little sense other than as background noise. She could hear the doctor and the nurses speaking, and even understand snatches of what they said, but if it made any sense to Jillian, she was too deep to care.
“… the hell’s going on out there…?”
“… someone’s hurt out in the hall…”
“… oh my God … my God!”
“… please … oh, sweet Jesus … please, don’t let it in here…”
The screams became the cries of seagulls over a lazy beach. Even when blood splashed her, it was nothing more than salt spray from the summer waves.
It’s nice down here, she thought. So sweet, so soft …
Jillian felt hands on her. Nurses? Doctors? Who cared?
She couldn’t exactly remember what a doctor was.
Or why she was here.
The darkness was flowing around her, filling up the room. The figures that moved around her were painted in tones of mint green and bright red. Then the colors swirled as she went deeper, and deeper.
She felt the others hands, the colder hands, on her. But she didn’t care.
She felt the dull pinch of teeth. That registered as pain, but as far away, on a shelf, over there, somewhere else.
As Jillian’s eyes closed, as the anesthesia took her all the way down, she had one last glimpse of the room. A doctor with an Indian face and eyes filled with blood, bending toward her stomach. Another pinch, another bite.
The anesthesia pulled her under and she was smiling as Dr. Sengupta, the nurses, and several patients gathered around her gurney and devoured her.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
MASON STREET NEAR DOLL FACTORY ROAD
The dead moved toward the cruiser. Trooper Saunders had stopped screaming by now. Dez’s screams died slowly in her throat as she stared through the rain-smeared window at the monsters. Most of them were clustered around the body, but the rest were coming her way.
Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God …
There was no way out.
The rain was getting heavier by the moment, obscuring the window, making it hard to see what they were doing.
“Shit,” Dez breathed and immediately slid down off the seat, crammed herself into the footwell and tried to disappear. The rain was so loud she could not even hear the moans of the dead.
Please please please …