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Letty shouted, “Go! Go!”
Lucas asked Rae, “Ready?”
Rae: “Go.” She thumbed the M4 to full-auto, and hosed down the trees where Turney had disappeared.
Lucas sprinted across the road and into the trees above the short sloping shoulder. There was no incoming gunfire.
Rae: “I’m coming.”
“Quick! Quick!”
Lucas was mostly behind a pine tree, with his Walther aimed at the point where Turney had vanished. Rae sprinted across the road andjoined Lucas in the trees, and they began threading their way through the brush along the road.
Hawkins stuck his head up above the hood and said, “My Lord. They’re going after her.”
—
Letty said, “Weneed to get over to the bus. C’mon.”
They jogged out from behind their SUV, to Lucas’s vehicle. Rae’s gear bag was open on the ground, and Letty pulled it open, found a second M4, took it out, with a magazine, slapped the magazine into the gun, and handed it to Hawkins.
“Nothing in the chamber. Look like you know how to use it. We may have to get loud if the locals want to look in the bus.”
Hawkins nodded. “I do know how to use it. I’d rather not, though.” He pulled the charging handle back, released it, and a round slammed into the gun’s chamber.
Letty nodded. “Then let’s go.”
Letty and Hawkins slouched toward the bus. Lucas and Rae had moved a hundred yards through the trees, hopscotching along, one at a time as the other set up to provide cover fire if needed. If Turney was in shape, and was running hard, she’d be several hundred yards away. On the other hand, she could be lying in ambush.
Letty turned around the nose of the bus, and Hawkins, who was seven or eight inches taller than she was, stood on the front bumper, looked through the windshield and said, “Jesus: they’re alive, Letty. There are three of them, on stretchers on the floor. They look like they’re dying, their faces are…grotesque…but they’re moving their arms and heads.”
“Trying to get out?”
“No. It doesn’t look like theycouldget out. They look helpless. They’ve got infusion bags above them, with leads going into their arms.”
“I gotta call Greet. I don’t know what they’ll want to do.”
“Catch Turney and keep people away from the bus. That’s all we can do,” Hawkins said.
—
Lucas and Raehad reached the spot where Turney had disappeared and found nothing but a short stretch of trampled-down weeds, then a few footprints on a dirt path. They continued along the edge of the road for another two hundred yards, never saw her again, but did find her rifle, abandoned in a patch of brush, out of ammo.
“If she got a car up here, or somebody in a car, she could be heading down the mountain,” Rae said. “We need to get the state police to block the road before it branches out.”
“Might be too late for that,” Lucas said. “I guess we gotta try.”
“If she didn’t get a car, if she’s up in the trees, she’s got nowhere to go. It’d be a hell of a tough walk out.”
—
A white copcar sped past them, toward the school bus, and Rae said, “Uh-oh.”
“Yeah. We better get back there.”
The cop car stopped thirty yards short of the RV and a heavyset cop got out, stood behind a door, and shouted, “What are you doing?”
Letty had put her Sig back in her pocket and now put both of her hands in the air, one with her ID, and shouted back, “Department ofHomeland Security.” She walked toward the cop, while behind her, Hawkins stood at the nose of the truck with the M4. When she got close, hands still in the air, she called, “We have a very serious security situation here. There are two U.S. marshals coming up behind you…”
