And her.
The only possible way in was to smash through the side gate.
The upside was that she’d get to the school and maybe help save whoever was still alive inside.
The downside was that she’d open a door for the dead to escape. Not that there weren’t plenty of the bastards out here, but …
Even while she was debating it, she began rolling down the hill toward the gate. At first she let the car coast, picking up speed through gravity, and as she did this she picked up the walkie-talkie and keyed the Send button. She’d listened long enough to pick up the key names.
“Break, break, break, this is Officer Desdemona Fox, Stebbins PD calling for Lieutenant Colonel Macklin Dietrich. I know you’re on the line, sir. Please verify that you can hear me, over. ”
There was a confusion of voices and Dez repeated her call. And again. Finally Dietrich’s gruff voice responded.
“Who is this?”
“Already told you that, sir. Officer Fox, Stebbins, PD. ”
“This is a military line and—”
“Excuse me, sir, but cut the shit. Far as I know I’m the last surviving police officer in Stebbins, and I am going to enter the Stebbins Little School to look for and protect survivors. ”
“The hell you are, officer—”
“Pardon, sir, but the hell I’m not,” she barked. “There are a couple of hundred kids in there. ”
“Everyone in that compound is compromised, Officer Fox. You need to report to a checkpoint and—”
“And get shot? No thanks, sir. Besides, I see muzzle flashes coming from the second floor of the school. Those dead sonsabitches can’t shoot a gun, so someone’s alive in there. ”
“Officer Fox, I am ordering you to stand down. ”
“Sir, I’m calling to inform you, not to ask permission. And to tell you to secure the hole in the west gate. ”
“What hole?”
Dez answered with a rebel yell as she gunned the engine and sent the Tundra smashing through the wrought iron at seventy miles an hour. The windshield cracked, metal crumpled, and glass flew into the air and was whipped away by the wind. The engine coughed but did not die and Dez fed it gas all the way across the lawn and up the far hill.
There was a new crackle of gunfire and she looked in the rearview mirror to see a Humvee with a top-mounted . 50 caliber come racing along the fence line. The gunner was firing in her direction, though the range was too great and more than half the bullets hit the fence.
Trying to get my attention, she thought. Okay, dickheads, you have it. Now let’s play.
She gunned the engine and raced across the parking lot, swerving only enough to avoid smashing into living dead who staggered toward the sound of her roaring engine. Dez recognized faces and could put names to a few of them.
Behind her, the army Humvee was inside the fence now and continuing to fire. Dez cut in and out between parked cars, letting them soak up the rounds from the heavy . 50 caliber. A few of the dead went down, too, their bones shattered by the foot-pounds of impact as the bullets pounded them.
Dez circled the building to see what was what. She didn’t like what she saw. There were thousands of the living dead in the parking lot. Littered among them were at least fifty corpses who lay unmoving in the rain. Somebody knew how to kill these things. As she shot past the crowd of monsters, they surged after her, and that effectively blocked the pursuing Humvee. She could hear the constant machine-gun fire as she rounded the corner again.
The real problem, the thing that drove nails of ice into her flesh, was what she saw at the back of the school. There were far fewer dead back there—fifty or so—but the back door of the school was open.
As Dez watched, two zombies shuffled inside.
“You bastards!” she yelled and angled toward the door, then suddenly thought better of it and cut left in a tight circle, coming up behind a parked school bus and stopping. The engine idled roughly, the sound like the throaty growl of a wrestler waiting for the next round. She looked from the knot of dead milling near the back door to the corner of the building. “Come on, come on…
”
The Humvee roared around the side of the school and then slowed as the driver tried to spot the Tundra. From where she sat, Dez was sure she could see them but they would have a hard time spotting her. The dead near the back of the building turned toward the Humvee, which was fifty yards closer to the building than Dez’s Tundra was, and they began moving toward the soldiers. A few moved at a loping run, the rest tottered on clumsy legs. The soldiers immediately began firing at the living dead.
“Perfect,” Dez said, grinning. She grabbed the stick shift, stepped on the gas, and shot out from behind the bus, driving at full speed in a straight line toward the Humvee. The driver and the gunners never saw her coming.