Here was another example, one that was biting him in the ass right now. Solving the problem of the Lucifer 113 outbreak would clearly be easier and less of a political nightmare if there were no survivors. Wipe the slate clean, maybe kick out a few bucks for a memorial, and do some spin control to blame it on terrorists, the former administration, the policy makers on the other side of the aisle, or on anyone who was the target du jour. Even if he lived through this, Trout doubted he would ever see the name Volker in the papers, and certainly no mention of Lucifer 113 or the CIA. That would all be erased because the truth would cost too much to tell.

To hell with that, he thought as he bit down on the jolts of pain. But what was the answer? How did he and Dez and Goat fix this? Could it, in fact, be fixed?

As he ran—as he listened to Desdemona Fox, the woman he loved, shoot their neighbors down—he began to get an idea. A really wonderful, ballsy, nasty idea.

Dez fired her last shot and swapped out the magazines.

“How we doing?” she yelled.

Trout looked ahead. “Clear … but only if we haul ass.”

“Then let’s haul ass,” she barked. She fired two more shots, spun, and sprinted to catch up with him. When she saw that he was limping, she grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him roughly along with her.

With the storm abating slightly the moans of the dead filled the air. It was such a horrible sound that it made Trout’s knees buckle, but then as he thought about what those moans meant—the insatiable hunger of the parasitic zombies—he bared his teeth and willed more power to his legs.

They ran down the far side of the faculty cars. A zombie lunged at them from behind a parked Highlander.

“Dez!”

“Got it!” She pivoted and shot the dead man through the mouth just as the thing spat black goo at them. The bullet snapped its head back, and the black liquid geysered straight up and splashed back on the zombie’s face as it fell. A few drops landed on Dez’s sleeve, but there was still plenty of rain to wash it away. Or so Trout hoped.

At the end of the row they cut toward the school. Most of the infected—frightening but without intelligence or imagination—had followed them on their wide course and only three of the dead were lingering by the open door.

Dez pulled out in front, bringing her gun up in a two-handed grip and changed her pattern of running so that she took smaller steps to steady her body as she aimed.

The zombies heard them coming and turned toward them. Trout saw that one of them was the attorney for his second wife. When Dez shot him, Trout expected to feel a nasty little thrill in his chest. He didn’t. This wasn’t a video game and that man was someone he knew. It didn’t matter that Trout didn’t like him. This wasn’t about who liked who; this was a human being who did not deserve what happened to him. As he fell, Trout made himself say the man’s name, quietly to himself.

“Mark David Singer.”

All at once that began a ritual that Trout knew would be with him throughout this crisis. No one should have to die without a name, without some recognition of their humanity.

As Dez shot the second zombie—needing two shots to bring her down—Trout fished for her name. She was the music teacher here at the school. He had interviewed her last year about the Christmas pageant. She was sixty, with gray hair and a corpulent figure. A nice lady. She loved the kids she taught.

He watched her fall with the right side of her face blown to red ruin by Dez’s bullets.

“Sophie Vargas,” Trout said as he ran past her falling corpse.

The last of the infected outside the school was a stranger. Dressed like a businessman. Probably the father of one of the kids, Trout guessed. Come here to pick up his child. The businessman grabbed Dez’s left arm and tried to bite her wrist, but Dez used her right to bring the barrel of the Glock to the man’s temple. The blast knocked his head sideways and he crumpled at Trout’s feet.

Dez was at the door now, pointing the gun inside.

But Trout stopped. He looked over his shoulder. The other zombies were closing fast, but Trout was trapped by the needs of his new ritual. He bent down, hissing at the pain, and patted the man’s pockets until he found a wallet. He pulled it out, shoved it in his jacket, spun, and hobbled to the door with two yards grace. He staggered inside, dropped the heavy duffle, twisted around, grabbed the door handle and gave it ferocious pull. It slammed, but not shut, and with horror Trout saw that a hand was caught between the door and jamb. He had to pull on the door to keep it from being whipped out of his hands.

Behind him, Dez was still firing her pistol.

“Dez!”

“Not now, Billy!” she fired back.

So, he took the big risk. He stopped pulling and shoved on the door, slamming it outward into the faces of the crowd of infected. So many faces. Torn and bloody. They spit black blood at him, and Trout cried out as it splattered on his jacket. With a snarl of rage and fear, he raised his leg to kick out at the zombie whose hand was caught in the door. With a jolt he realized that the man fighting to get in was Doc Hartnup.

“Doc?”

Hartnup’s dead eyes looked right through him, but his mouth was a hungry snarl. Hartnup spat black blood at him, which splattered on Trout’s chest.

That sent Trout into a panic. Doc or not, he lashed out with his foot and caught the dead man in the stomach. Again and again before it lost its hold and Trout fell backward, hauling on the crash bar of the door so that the heavy metal panel swung all the way shut with a huge clang.

Closed. Locked.

Fists pounded on the door from the other side. Trout tore off his jacket and flung it into a corner then pawed at his shirt, looking for traces of the black mucus.

Nothing.

“God almighty,” he wheezed. Another gunshot made him turn and he saw Turk, the little guy who owned the Getty station, go tumbling to the ground.

“Turk,” Trout murmured. “Danny Turkleton.”

Dez stood with her back to him, her shoulders heaving with exertion. Four other zombies lay on the steps. Trout knew two of them and he spoke their names aloud. The others were strangers. A corrections officer and an Irish guy Trout recognized from Dez’s trailer park but couldn’t name. Trout pulled the wallet out of his pocket and flipped it open to the driver’s license.

“Kealan Patrick Burke.”

“What?” Dez asked sharply, then saw what he was looking at. Her expression changed slowly, and Trout could see that she somehow understood what he was doing. She looked down at the bodies around her and nodded.

“Did you know them?” Trout asked.

She nodded. “All of them.” She said their names, and he repeated them.

They looked at each other for a fractured moment, the stink of cordite, blood, and human waste in the air, the steady pounding on the door, the bodies sprawled in what, for them, was a “second death.”

“It’s all impossible,” she said. “You know that, right?”

“It’s worse than impossible,” he said.

Dez narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I know how this started,” he said. “And it’s a lot worse than you think.”

A voice spoke from the shadows behind Dez. “Then you’d better tell us everything, Billy.”

They turned and stared as a big man came walking out of the shadows. His clothes were torn and he had makeshift bandages wound around his head and left arm. His face was battered and bruised, and his eyes were haunted by the things they had seen. But for all that, he looked powerful and dangerous, and he had a hunting rifle held in his strong brown hands.

“JT!” cried Dez.

As Trout watched, she ran to him and wrapped her arms around him and buried her face against his chest, and sobbed.

Son of a bitch, Trout thought with an inward rueful smile. That’s my goddamn scenario.

JT Hammond gave Dez a fierce hug and he kissed her hair.

Then Dez pushed herself away, glared up and him, and slapped him across the face.

“You asshole!” she yelled. “You fucking left me!”

And that’s my girl, Trout thought, and this time his smile reached his lips.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX

OUTSIDE OF STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL

He stood as silent as a tombstone. A few of the Hollow Men pounded on the door, some of them milled around, drawn by trace scents of fresh meat that were tricks of the storm winds. But Doc Hartnup and most of the others stopped moving and stood staring at the closed door.

Hartnup had recognized the two people his body had been chasing. Desdemona Fox, whom he’d known for years, and the reporter, Billy Trout. Even as his hands tried to grab them and tear them apart, his mind tried to communicate with them. He screamed their names. His screamed his own name. He begged them to shoot him. Dez Fox had shot so many of the others, and now they lay still and unmoving. Hartnup wondered—hoping, praying—whether they were really and completely dead now. He had seen others gunned down by the police and later by the National Guard. Taken down with bullets to the brain. He believed that this was the trick. Any bullet was a magic bullet as long as it struck the brain. He had to believe that or there was no God, no hope, and all was red madness forever.

Dez Fox had not shot him. Each time she fired in his direction there was another one of the Hollow Men to take the bullet. Some died, some were with him now, pounding or milling or standing.

Please, he cried within his darkness. Please …

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN

STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL

JT rubbed his face and grinned.

“I didn’t leave you, kid,” he said. “It took about six state troopers to keep me from you after you fell.” He touched his battered face. “They weren’t very nice about it, either. Officious pricks.”

“Wait, wait, hold on,” said Trout, “why were you fighting the state troopers?”

“They thought we were on a killing spree,” said JT, and he quickly explained the chain of events that started at Doc Hartnup’s.

“Doc’s outside,” said Trout. “He’s one of them.”