“I don’t want to die out here, Dez,” JT said indecisively. “We have backup coming and we’re not trained for this.”
Dez said, “Give me a better plan.”
He closed his eyes. “Fuck me.”
Dez stood up from behind the mailbox. For a moment she stood there, waiting to be seen, but when the dead did not visibly react to her, she began waving her arms over her head. They kept coming. Maybe they had seen the two officers all along, or maybe it was that they could not show emotion, but there was no appreciable change in their speed.
“Fuck ’em,” JT said again as he rose, laid the shotgun over the curved hump of the mailbox, and fired. At that distance the pellets did no harm, but instantly each of the dead swiveled their heads toward him.
“Yeah … that did it,” said Dez.
The creatures began moving faster. Some could only stagger along on crippled limbs, but others—perhaps the more recently risen among them—began loping down the hill at a sloppy run.
“Oh … shit!”
Dez and JT said it at the same time, and then they were running north on Mason Street.
Dez was younger and could run like a gazelle. JT was fit for his age, but he was a lot older and heavier and had one knee that was a few years shy of needing a replacement. The rain was intensifying and brought with it a cloying, choking cold. JT was breathing hard before they covered the length of a football field. Dez had to slow down to let him keep place.
“The backup will be here soon,” she said. “I want to draw these crazy fuckers into an isolated area so the staties can set up a proper kill zone.”
“Jesus, Dez,” JT puffed, “those are still people.”
“You didn’t seem to think so when you were putting buckshot into them, Hoss.”
“That was different. That was self-defense.”
Dez wiped rainwater out of her eyes. “The hell do you think this is?”
JT said nothing. Sweat and rainwater poured down his cheeks, and under his natural brown skin tone a furious red was blossoming. Dez noticed that he was slowing down, too. She turned and looked back.
The crowd of dead things was falling farther behind them. Some of them had not even rounded the corner from Doll Factory, and as the rain thickened it was harder to see them. They were still coming, though, Dez was sure of that. Whatever drove them was as powerful now as it was when they first attacked them at Doc Hartnup’s.
“Thank God they’re slow,” she said.
JT nodded, unable to speak and run at the same time.
One of the cars pulled out of Bell’s parking lot and turned their way. Dez and JT were running up the middle of the street, so the car slowed. Dez began waving her arms.
“Turn around!” she yelled. “Turn around!”
The driver pulled close and lowered her window, using a flat hand to shield her eyes from the stinging rain. It was Bid McGee, the woman who owned the craft shop in the center of town.
“Bid! Turn around and get the hell out of here. Go! Go!”
“Good lord, Desdemona Fox, what happened to you? Are you all right, dear?”
Dez gave her fender a savage kick. “Are you frigging deaf? I said turn the frigging car around and go the other frigging way, Bid, or I’ll drag you out of there and beat the stupid off of your skinny ass.”
Bid went white with shock and then purple with outrage, but turned her car around and then laid down thirty feet of rubber going the other way.
“Stupid cow,” Dez snarled.
Despite everything, JT smiled. “You have a real way with people, Dez. Charm and poise and—”
“We’re one half sentence away from me kneecapping you and leaving you here for those dead fuckers to eat.”
“Point taken,” he said, and they kept running. They didn’t speak again until they reached Bell’s parking lot. The rain was hammering them now and in the distance they could hear the angry growl of thunder. JT collapsed against the tailgate of a black Ford F-150. “I’ll … I’ll wait here. Keep an eye out…” He flapped a hand toward the door.
Dez lingered for a moment, “When did you go and get old on me, Hoss?”
He tried to grin, but it was a ghastly attempt.
Dez burst through the door and stopped inside. The store was bright with fluorescents and country music was playing on bad speakers mounted high on the wall. Thom Bell was behind the counter ringing up a purchase of black pipe for a construction worker. He and the customer both stared at her in surprise.
“Thom!” Dez snapped. “Listen to me. We have a problem. There’s been some kind of outbreak. Very, very bad stuff. A bunch of infected people are on their way here and whatever they have is making them act all schizo. Help is on the way, but we need to keep everyone in here and lock this place down, and I mean right now.”
Thom Bell asked only one question. “Is this some kind of terrorist thing?”
“Yes,” lied Dez. “Now come on, I need you to—”
Bell was already in motion. He reached beneath the counter and flipped a switch to kill the music, and hit another to turn on the public address system. He told everyone in the store almost word for word what Dez had told him. One woman screamed, but the rest merely ran to the front of the store and started asking questions.
“Okay!” yelled Bell, “Now everyone listen up. We have a situation here. A terrorist situation. Officer Fox just told me that we need to secure this place and that’s what we’re going to do. I want all of the customers to go into the back. There’s a staff locker room there with some chairs. You all just go in and sit down, and we’ll secure the building. Nothing or no one is going to get into here, I can promise you that.”
He spoke with absolute command; Dez knew that he had been a two-tour sergeant during the first Gulf War. He was a big man with a wind-raw face and calm eyes beneath the brim of his Snap-on Tools cap. A man to be taken seriously.
Dez watched the faces of the patrons and staff as Bell spoke. She saw the shock, the first wave of surprise and doubt, saw their eyes flick toward the door, but she also saw how Bell’s commanding voice held them in place and, at least for the moment, emotionally in check.
“Chip,” Bell said to one of the clerks, “you show everyone where to go. Scott, make sure the back door’s locked. Drop the bar, too.” Bell clapped his hands with the sound of a gunshot. Everyone jumped. “Let’s go, let’s go.”
And they went, just like that. Bell told another employee to roll down the shutters.
“Thanks, Thom,” said Dez, closing on him and lowering her voice.
He nodded, but his eyes probed hers. “Is help really on its way?”
“Yeah, and JT’s outside.”
Bell looked her up and down. “You’re covered in blood, girl.”
“I know—” she began, but he cut her off.
“No … I mean, is that infected blood?”
Dez opened and closed her mouth. “I…”
“Maybe you shouldn’t get too close to anyone.” To emphasize this he took a step back. “Now … tell me what’s really happening?”
She shook her head. “I really don’t know.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
She did, moving through it in quick, clipped sentences. As she laid it out, the whole thing sounded impossible to her and she’d lived through it. She watched for, and saw, the doubt grow in Bell’s eyes.
There was a moment of pursed-lipped silence as he considered it. He went to the door and called out in a hushed voice. “JT … what’s happening out there?”
Dez heard JT say, “Still coming. I can’t see them but I can hear them.”
“Better get inside,” suggested Bell, and he held the door as JT hobbled inside, limping on his bad knee, and Bell closed the door behind him. The door was steel with only a small wire-mesh window the size of a piece of loose-leaf paper. The lock was a heavy dead bolt. Bell pounded his fist against the door to show how solid it was.
“Nothing short of a tank will get in here.”
The clerks came up the aisles to assure Bell that the place was locked down. They wore identical expressions that were a mixture of fear and excitement.
“Okay,” Bell said. “You boys go wait down with the customers. Keep everyone calm. Let them have whatever they want from the machines. Go on now.”
Bell turned back to Dez and JT. “I have to say,” he began slowly, “if it was just you telling me a story like this, Dez, I’d think you were on the sauce. No offense, but I’ve seen you at the bar enough to know that you don’t mind knocking a few back.”
Dez said nothing.
“But you, JT,” Bell continued, “we’ve known each other for too many years, and I know that you’re a serious man.”
Being a “serious” person was a mark of distinction with Bell. Everyone knew it, and it was a label he only grudgingly awarded.
JT glanced at Dez. “You told him?”
“All of it,” she agreed.
“Hell of a story,” Bell said. “People turning into … into what? Some kind of ghouls? Eating each other? Marty Goss? Paul Scott?”
“The proof’s on its way here, Thom,” said Dez. “Want to go outside and see what they have to say?”
“Don’t smart off at me, Dez,” said Bell sternly. “This is my store and you brought this here to me. I did what you asked and secured the perimeter, but I have a right to ask questions.”
Dez flushed. When the pressure was on it took effort for her not to be a smart-ass, and Bell wasn’t the kind to accept it.
“Sorry,” she said meekly.
“I know how crazy this sounds,” said JT.
“Crazy about covers it,” agreed Bell.
Dez said, “Why not take a look outside and you tell us what you think. I’m not joking, Thom.”
Bell studied her for a few seconds. Before he did, he reached beneath the counter and removed a big .45 Colt Commander. “I have a permit,” he said, though at the moment Dez wouldn’t have cared if he’d produced a shoulder mounted antitank weapon. Bell quietly opened the small grilled window and peered out. Rain slashed at the door in waves.
