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PART ONE
CONTAINMENT
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town.
—Alan Seeger, “I Have a Rendezvous with Death”
CHAPTER ONE
DOLL FACTORY ROAD
STEBBINS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
“This is Billy Trout, reporting live from the apocalypse…”
The car sat in the middle of the road with the radio playing at full blast.
All four doors were open.
The windows were cracked and there was one small red handprint on the glass.
The voice on the radio was saying that this was the end of the world.
There was no one in the car, no one in the streets. No one in any of the houses or stores. There wasn’t a single living soul there to hear the reporter’s message.
It didn’t matter, though.
They already knew.
CHAPTER TWO
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
Stebbins County police officer JT Hammond pushed on the crash-bar and the door opened. There were bodies outside in the school parking lot. Scores of them, crumpled and broken.
JT looked around for movement and saw none. “It’s clear.”
He stepped outside and held the door as the line of infected people shambled out.
Adults and children.
Billy Trout and JT’s partner, Desdemona Fox, came last, each of them holding a small child in their arms.
The National Guardsmen popped several flares on the far side of the parking lot to attract the masses of living dead. On that side of the lot, behind the chain-link fence, all of the Guard trucks sent up a continuous wail with their sirens. The dead shuffled that way, drawn by light and noise.
One of the victims, a man who had been bitten by what had been his own wife and children, stared glassily at the stiffly moving bodies. Then he raised a weak arm and pointed to the soldiers.
“Are they coming to help us?” he asked.
“They’re coming,” said Dez, hating herself for the implied lie. She told the wounded to sit down by the wall. Some of them immediately fell asleep; others stared with empty eyes at the glowing flares high in the sky.
For a moment it left Dez, JT, and Trout as the only ones standing, each of them holding a dying child. The tableau was horrific and surreal. They stared at each other, frozen into this moment because the next was too horrible to contemplate. Then they saw movement.
JT peered into the shadows. “They’re coming.”
“The Guard?” asked Dez, a last flicker of hope in her eyes.
“No,” he said.
They heard the moans. For whatever reason, pulled by some other aspect of their hunger, a few of the dead had not followed the flares and the sirens, and now they staggered toward the living standing by the open door. More of them rounded the corner of the building. Perhaps drawn by a more powerful force.
The smell of fresh meat.
“We have to go,” said Trout.
“And right now,” agreed JT. He kissed the little boy on the cheek and set him down on the ground between two sleeping infected. Trout sighed brokenly and did the same. Dez Fox clung to the little girl in her arms.
“There’s more of them,” said Trout.
“Dez, come on…” murmured JT.
But Dez turned away as if protecting the little girl she held from him. “Please, Hoss…?”
“Dez.”
“I can’t!”
