“At least let me talk to—”
“Hey! Watch out!” Saunders suddenly yelled and turned the wheel violently to the right as a pregnant woman stepped out from behind a farmworker bus that was parked on the shoulder of the road. The fender of the cruiser missed her by an inch and Dez screamed in the back seat, sure that the woman was going to be smashed.
“Goddamn!” Saunders stamped down on the brakes and the cruiser slewed sideways on the wet asphalt, kicking up a wave of dirty rainwater. Dez was thrown forward as the car rocked to a jarring stop. Saunders jerked open the door handle. “Stupid bitch. ”
“Don’t!” cried Dez, but Saunders ignored her as he got out. Rain chopped in through the open door. Dez twisted around in the seat to see what was happening. The pregnant woman was looking the wrong way, but she had stopped in the middle of the road; her hair hung in wet rattails and her clothing was disheveled.
Saunders crammed his Smokey the Bear hat on his head, hunched his shoulders against the cold rain, and stomped toward her, his back rigid with anger and stress, one stiffened finger jabbing the air as he yelled at her.
Dez knew this was all wrong even before the woman turned.
It was wrong because the day was wrong. Because the world was wrong. Because everything was wrong.
“Don’t…” she said, her voice much smaller. She knew that the moment was already rolling downhill.
The woman turned just as Saunders reached her. Her body was heavy with a late-term pregnancy. Her dress was a pretty farm country frock with a cornflower pattern. She was young, maybe twenty-five, with long blond hair. She had dark eyes and nearly every scrap of meat had been torn from her face and mouth.
Saunders juddered to a stop. Frozen by what he was seeing. By the impossibility of someone so badly injured still standing.
Through the open front driver’s door Dez could hear the patter of raindrops on the wide brim of his hat. She heard him begin to say, “Jesus Christ. Lady, are you—”
“Don’t!” Dez’s shriek bounced off the closed windows of the cruiser.
And then the woman was on him. She lunged at him with small, pale hands. Her lipless mouth opened wide and white teeth streaked with black blood snapped forward.
Dez screamed.
A geyser of blood shot ten feet above Brian Saunders’s head.
Dez screamed and screamed. She kicked the screen; she threw her shoulder against the door.
Saunders’s legs buckled and he dropped to his knees as the woman bent over him, her teeth locked on the side of his throat.
There was movement on the bus. Beside the bus. Behind the bus.
More of them.
A busload of them.
They converged on the trooper and dragged him to the asphalt.
Dez screamed one more time. And then she tried to stop it, realizing far too late what that scream would do.
Several of the things looked up from their unspeakable feast. Looked in the direction of the scream. Looked at her.
“Don’t…” Dez whispered softly as one by one a dozen of the monsters rose from the thrashing body and shambled toward the cruiser. The front driver door was open. Dez was in cuffs. She twisted around and popped the catch on her seat belt, but there was no way out of that car. She was trapped.
No … she was preserved. Meat in a locker.
“Don’t…” Dez begged, even though Saunders was long past hearing her. “Don’t leave me…”
They shuffled toward her.
There was no need for silence now.
Dez screamed again, and again.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO