Dez gave the truck all the gas it could take and the huge pickup slammed into the Humvee with the force of a thunderbolt. With that much momentum and the rain-slick ground, the Humvee was slammed sideways. Dez kept her foot pressed to the floor, driving the other vehicle across thirty yards of asphalt. Then the Humvee’s far-side tires collapsed and it canted down to the blacktop. It slammed everything to a teeth-jarring halt, and the Tundra’s airbag deployed hard enough to punch Dez to the brink of unconsciousness.
But her mind was racing now, revving with fear and need. She struggled to remain conscious as she fished in her jacket pocket for a knife, flicked the blade open, stabbed the airbag, and slashed it down to ribbons. She kicked the door open and staggered out. The world took a few sickening sideways steps and she followed with it, then she grabbed the crumpled hood to steady herself. The closest dead were thirty yards away and closing.
The Tundra was a wreck, but she didn’t care. It was Rempel’s anyway. The Humvee was also a pile of junk. The driver was slumped over, dead or unconscious. Dez could not afford to pare off a slice of compassion. She knew they were following orders, but that cut no slack with her. The gunner had been flung out of the vehicle and was on the ground, groaning and clutching a broken arm. A third man, a rawboned guy wearing sergeant’s stripes stenciled on his hazmat suit, was struggling to get out of the Humvee through the shattered window. Dez ran around to his side, grabbed him by the neck, and hauled him out. He thumped down on the ground and looked up at her face from behind the plastic mask of the biohazard suit. He reached for his sidearm and Dez kicked it out of his hand as the weapon cleared the belt holster. Dez reached out and tore off his hood, mask and all, and screwed the barrel of her Sig Sauer in the man’s eye socket.
“Freeze, motherfucker,” she said.
“God! No, please … don’t!”
“What’s your name?”
“Polk. Teddy Polk. Sergeant, Pennsylvania Army National—”
“Skip that bullshit. ” She pulled the pistol out of his eye and hit him on the top of the head with it. Not hard, but hard enough. Not a love tap. “Okay, Polk, why were you trying to shoot me?”
“We have to. You’re infected…”
“Do I fucking look infected?”
“How can I tell? It’s easy to hide a bite. ”
“I wasn’t bitten. ”
“We were told that some of them spit infectious materials and—”
Dez stiffened. The Russian woman had spat the black goo at her. So had Andy Diviny. Had she gotten any of it on her skin? She was almost certain she hadn’t.
Almost.
“I’m not infected,” she said again, her voice hard and cold. “Point is, you fuckers didn’t even bother to check. ”
Polk’s eyes shifted away toward the approaching dead and came reluctantly back. “I … they said…”
“They said what?”
He flinched. “We were told that everyone in town was infected. ”
“Christ. Well, news flash, Einstein, they’re wrong. Your commanding officers are lying to you. I’m not infected … The people in the school aren’t infected, the—”
“Were you in there?” he cut in.
“No, but—”
“Then you don’t know. Everyone outside is infected. ”
“Someone inside is shooting. Have you seen any of them fire a gun?”
“Some of them drive cars and—”
She hit him again. Harder.
“Ow! Goddamn it…”
“You dumb shit. If they’re driving a car or shooting a gun—or speaking, for Christ’s sake—then they’re not infected. Are you asswipes just killing everyone in town?”
Polk did not answer.
The rain was thinning, the roar of the wind was less intense, and they could hear the moans of the approaching dead.