In the White House Situation Room, the president of the United States sat with his aides and Scott Blair, National Security Advisor, and watched the slaughter of the infected.
“What have we done?” whispered the president.
Blair took off his glasses and rubbed his face. “We did the right thing, Mr. President. ”
The president shook his head. “No,” he said, “no we did not. ”
* * *
Inside the school, huddled together on the floor, Dez and Trout held each other as the bullets hammered like cold rain on the walls. It seemed to go on forever. Pain and noise and death seemed to be the only things that mattered anymore. The barrage began chewing through the walls, showering them with debris.
And then … silence.
Plaster dust drifted down on them as the rotors of the helicopters dwindled to faintness and then were gone.
“It’s over,” Trout whispered. He stroked Dez’s hair and kissed her head and wept with her. “I won’t ever leave you, Dez. Never. ”
Dez slowly raised her head. Her face was dirty and streaked with tears, and her eyes were filled with grief and hurt. She raised trembling fingers to his face. She touched his cheeks, his ear, his mouth.
“I know,” she said.
Dez wrapped her arms around Trout with crushing force. He allowed it, gathering her even closer. They clung to one another and sobbed hard enough to shatter the whole ugly world.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THREE
BORDENTOWN STARBUCKS
Goat looked out at the storm. The night sky was still black, but the rain had slowed to a gentle drizzle. From where he sat he could see the lines of red taillights and white headlights on the highway. He wondered how many of those travelers knew what was happening?
Probably all of them by now.
The story was everywhere. It was the only story on the news right now, and Goat suspected that half of those oncoming headlights were reporters trying to get to Stebbins while the story was still breaking. He had already seen ABC, CBS, and CNN vans come through.
He trolled the online news. FOX was the first to pull the word “zombie” out of the info dump of the Volker interview. “Zombie Plague in Pennsylvania. ” Goat snorted. It sounded like an SNL skit. Wasn’t funny at all.
He looked down at the clock on his laptop. Ten minutes to one. It wasn’t even twenty-four hours since this thing started. It felt like a year.
The news feeds broke into the story to announce that the president was going to address the nation at 3:00 a. m. Goat wondered if he would pass the buck onto the previous administration, or to spooks within the intelligence community who still clung to the glory days of the Cold War. Or, would the president take the hit, be the captain of the ship? Either way, a lot of things were going to change.
Goat sipped his coffee and wondered when Billy would call. The last message from him said that they were going to take the infected outside. Since then … nothing.
Headlights flashed as a car pulled into the lot. Goat flicked a glance. A metallic green Cube. Ugly. Same make and color as the one in Aunt Selma’s front yard. It made him think of that, and how it all started.
Then his mind ground to a halt as the driver’s door opened up and a man got out.
A tall man. Bare-chested despite the cold.
A grinning man, with a tattoo of a black eye on each flat pectoral.
Goat wanted to scream but he had no voice at all. He wanted to run, but he was frozen in place.
The man walked the few steps between car and door in an awkward fashion, as if his knees and hip joints were unusually stiff.
Goat’s fingers were on the keyboard. Almost without thinking, his fingers moved, tapping keys as the bare-chested man pulled open the door and stepped into the Starbucks. The few remaining customers turned to look at him. The barista glanced up from the caramel macchiato she was making. She saw the bare chest and the tattoos. She saw the caked blood and the wicked smile.
The man stood blocking the door. Grinning with bloody teeth.
Goat’s fingers typed eight words.