“Bite through this, motherfucker. ”
As she slung the bag over her shoulder, Dez caught sight of herself in the floor-length mirror that hung from clips on the bedroom door. She looked like a character from a video game. One of those improbably busty, impossibly well-armed superchicks who could do acrobatics and hit the kill zone even while firing guns from both hands during a cartwheel.
“You look fucking ridiculous,” she told herself.
Her reflection grinned back at her. Dez picked up a Daewoo USAS-12 automatic shotgun, slapped in a ten-round magazine, faced the door, and drew a deep breath.
“Yippie ki-yay and all that shit. ”
She kicked open the door and jumped out into the rain.
PART FOUR
THE LAST MEETING PLACE
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town.
—Alan Seeger, “I Have a Rendezvous with Death”
CHAPTER EIGHTY
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
Corporal Wyckoff let the Humvee roll to a stop just inside the big wrought iron gates of the Stebbins Little School.
“Holy God,” he said softly.
Beside him, Sergeant Polk stared openmouthed.
The entry road wound upward from the gate to the block school that sat like a medieval castle on a knoll surrounded by neat rows of ancient oaks. The school looked solid enough to withstand a mortar assault, but that wasn’t the problem.
The road leading to the school was choked with dozens of crashed and abandoned school buses. Hundreds of passenger cars were clustered around them. A few were burning, several were overturned. Even in the downpour, two of the trees were burning as well, the fire having spread from a wrecked yellow bus that still smoldered. And everywhere—everywhere—were the infected.
“Jesus Christ, Nick … there are hundreds of those things. ”
“Thousands,” murmured Polk. “Oh man … we are so fucked. ”
The dead surrounded the school like an invading army laying siege. Wyckoff and Polk heard a few pops of small-arms fire, but whoever was shooting was either in the crowd, in which case he was dead the second he ran out of bullets, or inside the school, and in that case he might as well be on the moon.
Wyckoff stabbed a finger at the scene. “We’re supposed to go in and secure that? Not a chance. ”
“I know. ”
“Why’d they send us down here?”
“’Cause no one knows what the hell’s going on, that’s why. They don’t know how bad this shit is. We got no air reconnaissance, Nick; we’re the first ones to put eyes on this. ” Polk pulled his map out of its case and studied the position of the school, pointing out landmarks to Wyckoff. “Okay, here’s the school and here’s us. We have two squads, so we’re sure as shit not going in there. Beyond the school is some forestland, what looks like a stream that feeds into a series of ponds, part of a golf course, and then the Maryland state line. That stream is going to be a river right now, so that’s good news. No one’s crossing that, and sure as hell not those awkward sonsabitches. That leaves the western side. There’s a soccer field and a parking lot, and another fence. The east is a fence and then a couple of farms. ” He chewed his lip. “We might be luckier than I thought. ”
“How?”
“We have a combination of natural and man-made barriers that could contain the infected at least for now. ”
“What if they come this way?” Wyckoff asked.
“We hold them. ”