The other guys were there. Hank and Tommy and Vic.
Jake was almost there. He’d been farthest away.
They grabbed the girls. Shoved them. Knocked them back.
The girls turned on them. Their faces were smeared with blood that was so thick the downpour couldn’t wash it off.
Everyone was wrestling, struggling.
It was crazy. All those big men. Three teenage girls, none of them bigger than one-ten. The blood.
All that blood.
Jake stepped down wrong and sank to mid-shin in watery mud. Pain detonated in his knee and for a terrible moment he thought he’d broken his leg. But it was just jammed straight. Maybe sprained. It stopped him cold, though, and pitched him face-forward into the mud. It went straight up his nose, into his eyes, into his screaming mouth. Down his throat.
He coughed and gagged and blew, pawing at his face, trying to unclog his nostrils and mouth so he could drag in a breath. Swallowed more mud doing that and a worse spasm of coughing nearly tore him apart. His chest convulsed and he vomited mud and coffee and two Egg McMuffins into the storm, and the fierce wind blew it back into his face.
For a long, twisted time he lay there, dripping with mud and puke, trying to breathe. Failing. Trying.
Until black fireworks exploded in his head and the sounds of the rain dwindled into a distant buzz and Jake knew that he was choking to death. Right there. While his friends fought little girls and screamed and bled.
Desperate, terrified, Jake balled his right fist and punched himself in the solar plexus as hard as he could. It felt like being shot, but a ball of something—bread or Canadian bacon or mud or all of that shot from his mouth and vanished into the rain. He dragged in half the air in the world. The flesh around his eyes tingled and the world was incredibly bright but filled with fireflies.
Then the wind brought the screams back to him.
That was how the day started for Jake DeGroot.
It was the best part of his day.
It got so much worse after that.
CHAPTER EIGHTY
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
Dez Fox made no sound at all as she opened the small door that connected the teacher’s lounge to the corner of the schoolyard. The wind screeched through the chain-link fence and rain hit the concrete so steadily it sounded like white noise. Dez took several small, quick steps, her feet barely lifting from the ground as she moved up behind two of the patrolling soldiers. They were twenty feet ahead of her, walking at a measured pace, heading to the turn at the far end. They carried their M4s at an angle to keep rain from filling the barrels. Even though both of them wore gray-green hazmat suits, Dez could tell that one was male and the other female.
Dez stopped behind a decorative outcropping of red brick and racked the slide of her Daewoo shotgun.
Even with the storm it was a loud and distinctive sound, and she’d waited until she was in position so the soldiers could hear it.
She yelled, “Freeze right fucking there.”
They froze. Right there.
“Unsling your rifles and stand them against the wall,” Dez ordered. “Do it now.”
The soldiers hesitated and the woman started to turn.
“Don’t make a stupid mistake, girl,” warned Dez.
“You’re the one making a mistake,” said the female soldier.
“And I’ll cry about it later. Drop the guns or I’ll drop you. Last warning.”
The soldiers exchanged a brief look, then they slid the straps from their shoulders and very gingerly stood their weapons against the wall.