“Motherfucker!” she snarled, her anger stoked all the way up to white-hot rage and she kicked out again. And again.
And again.
There was a sharp crystalline pop, and then her heels shot through the disintegrating window out into the rain; however, the jagged teeth of the window raked her ankles and calves.
Dez jerked her legs back into the car, her chest heaving in anger and pain. Hot blood trickled down the back of each calf, but cold rain slanted through the window, driven by stiff wind.
She froze and listened once more to the sound of the storm.
Still no moans. No scuffling feet on the wet blacktop.
Dez leaned forward and cautiously stuck her head out the window, looked left and right.
The bus was still there, but that was it. None of them. Not even the remains of Saunders. Had they totally consumed him, flesh, bone, and clothes? No, that was stupid.
He was one of them now. Dez knew that for sure. The way you know bad things when the shit is really coming down around you. Saunders was out there somewhere, half torn apart but walking. Hunting for food.
Her stomach did a sickening spin.
Stop mooning around, you cow, screeched Dez. Get out of the car. Get out … get OUT.
Dez reached her hands through the shattered window and fumbled for the door handle, found it, hooked her cold fingers in it, clumsied it up, and felt the lock pop open. She shoved the door with her knee, and then she was out of the car, moving as fast as she could, and then dropping into a low crouch, studying the road.
Nothing moved but the wind-blown rain.
Dez crabbed sideways down the car to the open driver’s door, found the trunk release, jerked it. Then she duckwalked to the back of the car, making maximum use of cover, peered around, and saw that the coast was still clear. She straightened and pushed the trunk hood all the way up.
And smiled.
Her hat was there. As was her gun belt, her Glock, and her ring of keys.
Dez grabbed for the keys, fumbled the small cuff key out and worked it into the lock. When they clicked open she turned and threw them as far away as she could, her face twisted into a mask of disgust.
Then she wrapped the belt around her hips and cinched it tight. She’d used up her pepper spray on Andy. Didn’t matter, the shit didn’t work on those dead sons of bitches anyway. She dropped the magazine in her Glock. Nine bullets left and one in the chamber. That was the bad news. The good news was the shotgun attached by aluminum clips to the underside of the trunk lid. It had beanbag rounds, though. Good for knocking them down; no good at all for killing them.
The keys to the cruiser were—where?
She went back to the driver’s side, but the ignition slot was empty. Saunders had been a dutiful little trooper and had taken the keys with him. Shit.
Dez turned and surveyed the road, hoping to see the keys glinting on the asphalt. No such luck.
She knew in theory how to boost a car, but she needed a screwdriver or some tools, and her fingers were so numb with cold that she wasn’t even sure she could pull a trigger.
Dez looked around, considering her options. Her car was parked at the station, four blocks from here. But her car keys were in her briefcase in her own cruiser, and that was back at Turks’s. Miles away.
And, if the staties thought she was a mad psycho killer—if the actual truth of what was happening hadn’t yet come to bite them on the ass—then going to the station was a quick way to get arrested again. Dez knew that she wouldn’t let that happen, even if it meant kneecapping a couple of troopers.
Would she kill one of them if she had to?
She weighed the shotgun in her hand. Beanbag rounds might be a way to muscle through them.
Or, just avoid that whole can of worms and figure something else out.
She looked up the road. The elementary school was two miles from here. A long, cold run in this rain. Her trailer home was the same distance but off to the southwest.
It was way out of her way, but she could feel the old place pulling at her. There was a locked trunk in her bedroom. In it, Dez had two hunting rifles, a shotgun, a Sig Sauer nine, a Raven Arms . 25, and enough boxes of bullets to start a goddamn war.
Her landlord, Rempel, had a big Toyota Tundra, too. That thing could drive through a brick wall. If Rempel wouldn’t lend it to her, then Dez had no problem at all knocking him on his ass and taking it. Or kneecapping him, if it came to that. He really was a prick.