No.
That wasn’t exactly right.
The sky was filled with military helicopters.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
ROUTE 653
BORDENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA
Goat Weinman was pretty sure he was dead.
So why was he moving?
He tried to open his eyes but either the world was totally without light or he was blind.
Am I dead? He wondered.
Panic detonated in his mind as everything Volker had said about the Lucifer pathogen came sweeping back. When a person is infected, the physical body dies but the mind, the consciousness, lingers, trapped inside hijacked flesh
, floating, observing, able to see and feel, connected to every nerve ending but totally unable to do anything.
Trapped.
Was that what was happening?
Was his body now a … a …
“Oh, God!” he cried out. “I’m one of them … please, God, no don’t—”
Then a voice said, “Wake the fuck up.”
That was immediately followed by a hard slap across his face and Goat felt himself reeling and then slamming into some hard. Metal. He began to fall and thrust his hands out to stop himself.
He.
Thrust.
His.
Hands.
He did it. Not some parasitic impulse over which he had no control.
Goat grabbed on to what had to be the fender of a car and he crouched there, sore, his face stinging, terror and doubt screaming at each other in his head. He could feel his hands on the wet metal of the car. He flexed his fingers and they obeyed.
He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t one of them.
Then he felt the wetness on his face. Not the rain. Something heavier, thicker. On his forehead. In his …
Eyes.
Suddenly he was pawing at his eyes and immediately there was faint light. Bad light, but there. He wasn’t blind after all. Not blind or dead. There was something in his eyes. He tilted his face to the rain and rubbed at his eyes until he could see. There was something black on his fingers.
Until the lighting flashed and then he saw that his black fingers were red.
Slick, glistening red.