And stared at the big metal monster.
Big Bird.
“No,” he told himself. It was too clumsy, too slow. And the school was too far.
Then he was running through the mud toward the machine.
The key for Big Bird was still where he’d left it, right in the ignition. He twisted it and the big diesel engine roared to life with a growl so loud that it sounded like a dragon rousing from a troubled slumber. He pulled the door shut, sealing himself inside the Plexiglas cab. He turned the heat to high, shifted hard, and began moving through the mud. The Cat’s top blacktop speed was forty, and the mud cut that down to less than half.
The school was eleven miles away, almost due south.
“I’m coming, Jenny,” he said aloud, and the fact of having a purpose, of having someone else to fight for, made his whole body feel as hard and powerful as the steel of the machine in which he rode.
He did not hear the crunch as the left rear tire rolled over the corpse in the mud. Nor when the right rolled across the nearly submerged body of Burl.
Or, if he did, Jake refused to allow himself to acknowledge it.
“I’m coming, Jenny.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FIVE
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
“Everyone back to the school!” screamed Dez, but the adults were already dropping hoses and running. She ran behind them, shoving the slower ones, chasing them all to safety. “Check the doors. Keep the kids away from the windows. Move … move.”
Moonshiner and Shortstop laid their rifles atop the front and rear hoods of a burned-out police car. Boxer climbed atop one of the buses and Gypsy went into another one and pointed her gun out the window. Only Sam and Trout stood their ground.
“We’d better get inside,” warned Trout, but Sam didn’t move.
“There are so many of them,” he said softly.
Dez ran back to join them, her Glock in a two-handed grip, face set and hard.
“You want to fight them here?” she asked incredulously. “There are too many ways they can come at us.”
The dead were closing in. The nearest ones were fifty feet beyond the fence.
“It’s your house,” said Sam. “It’s your call.”
“There’s more coming across the yards,” called Boxer, pointing. They turned and saw more of the infected staggering through the lines of connected yards to the east.
“Dez,” said Trout, taking her by the arm, “this is stupid. There are too many of them. Let’s get inside.”
But Dez pulled her arm free. “No.” She turned to them. “Listen, Billy, Sam—we can reinforce the building and hole up, but for how long? The supplies we have won’t last. Sam, can you guarantee that the army’s coming back for us?”
The answer was on Sam’s face. “This is falling apart. I don’t think anyone can make promises right now.”
“What are you saying?” asked Trout. “That we could be stuck here for weeks?”
“Billy … I’m saying if this keeps going the way it’s going, then no one will be coming for us.”
“Until when?”
Sam shook his head. “We could lose this war.”
“War? It’s an outbreak…”