As she ran, Dez thought about the effect that bullets had. It ended the unnatural life of the living dead.
Did it also end their torment?
Was a bullet to the brain a kindness?
It was so twisted and perverse a concept that even as she ran she nearly doubled over and vomited.
There was one last zombie between her and the door, but it was in a direct line between her and the men with guns. She had one charge left in her gun. Could she use it, knowing this ugly truth? Could she bear to hear that scream again, knowing that she couldn’t then end the suffering of the person trapped inside the dead flesh?
It came at her, mouth wide to bite, hands reaching to grab.
She shot it in the throat, hoping to drop it without the scream.
But it screamed anyway.
It screamed like someone burning in the fires of hell itself.
The infected fell away and then human hands reached for her and pulled her inside the school and then slammed the door shut. Bodies thudded against the outside of the door and down the halls; echoing from the classrooms there was a last volley of gunfire.
Then three spaced shots from the hallway.
Dez knew what those shots meant.
Three shots for three small heads.
Followed by the sound of retching. And weeping.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
STEBBINS–FAYETTE COUNTY LINE
NORTH OF THE BORDENTOWN STARBUCKS
Dustin Lee Frye was making the slowest getaway he’d ever heard of.
It was driving him crazy.
Four hours ago a friend of his had dropped him at the parking lot of the Woodsman Rest, right off Route 381 in Fayette County. Dustin had crouched under a dark gray poncho in driving rain waiting for his ex-girlfriend’s new boy toy to come to work. The boyfriend, a shovel-jawed goon with little pig eyes, worked the night shift as bartender at the Rest, and that meant he’d be on until two a.m.
At ten minutes to eight, Shovel-jaw roared into the lot in his 1970 Mustang Boss 429. A perfectly restored, mint-condition classic muscle car. The Grabber green skin seemed to glo
w in the downspill of light from the sodium vapor bulbs arranged around the parking lot. Over two hundred thousand dollars worth of car, bought for the asshole by his daddy, who owned big chunks of logging and pulp all through Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Dustin didn’t think it was at all fair that the pea-brained mouth-breather should have his ex-girlfriend and one of the sweetest cars in the world. Actually, as Dustin saw it, he could keep the girl. She and Dustin had ended things badly. Harsh language was involved. So was a restraining order. Not the happiest times in his life.
She was elsewhere, probably fretting over what to do about the stretch marks now that Shovel-jaw had knocked her up. If the baby was even his. There had been one last bout of makeup sex with Dustin before everything went to shit, so the whole paternity thing was a dice-roll.
The car, though. Dustin didn’t want the Neanderthal to have the car.
It wasn’t fair.
The car was perfect. From tailpipe to headlights, it was the absolutely perfect car. And assholes should not be allowed to have perfect cars. Dustin was sure there was a law about that somewhere. Or ought to be.
So stealing the car, in Dustin’s view, was not so much a matter of committing a crime as it was serving the public welfare.
He waited for Shovel-jaw to park the car in his special extra-wide slot, lock it, give the creamy green hood its usual pat, and go into the hunters’ club to mix drinks for the other mouth-breathers. The parking lot was nearly deserted, though, because of Superstorm Zelda. A smarter person, Dustin mused, would have called out and stayed at home. But no one ever called this guy smart. Rich, yes. Obnoxious, to be sure. Smart? Not so much.
Dustin started to get up so he could boost the Mustang, but another car came crunching over the gravel. Two men got out and hurried through the rain to the restaurant. Then another came. And another. Then one of the cars left.