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“Dear God,” murmured Mrs. Madison.
“I see where you’re going with this,” said Trout. “Can’t say I like it.”
“I don’t see,” said Jenny.
“Last resort,” said Piper, and both Trout and Dez nodded. The farmer explained, “A bomb like that wouldn’t be something they’d use if they could contain this with regular tanks and helicopters and such. Scorched earth is what you go for when you’re losing a fight.”
“Exactly,” said Dez.
“I’m still not following,” said Jenny. “Does that mean they wiped them out?”
Trout fielded that. “You didn’t see the infected who were outside. They were all burned. The bomb may have killed some of them, but it didn’t kill all of them. Any of them who weren’t in the direct blast zone, any of them who were only burned, are still out there. And after what just happened, I think it’s pretty clear they’re coming here.”
“Here? But why? I mean, wasn’t this just random? Weren’t these infected just whichever ones were in the area?”
“No,” said Dez, “they were too badly burned. They’re coming here from closer to wherever ground zero was.”
“The blast was north and west,” said Trout. “Over by Bordentown or near there.” He paused. “Which is where the quarantine zone line is.”
And where Goat was, he thought, but he didn’t say it.
“Okay,” said Jenny, “but again—why here? Why the school?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Madison, “surely you’re not saying they can smell the children here.”
“With the rain?” mused Piper. “Probably not.”
“Then why?”
Trout glanced at Dez. “I’ve wondered this before. I know the infected are supposed to be, for all intents and purposes, brainless. Brain dead. But could there be some trace left? Maybe something the parasite drive can tap into? Genetic memory? There’s a precedent in science.”
Dez turned haunted eyes away from him. “I don’t care what’s driving them. I don’t care if they are coming here because they remember the school or because they think it’s prom night. Fuck it. The point is that they are coming here and if we stay here, then this place is going to stop being a refuge and start being an all you can eat buffet.”
She turned back to them and now her eyes were cold and dangerous.
“And I will not let that happen.”
Trout said, “What do you have in mind?”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
THE SITUATION ROOM
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
“Talk to me,” croaked the president in a voice grown hoarse with yelling and pleading. “Where are we with containment?”
Every eye turned away from him and focused on the big screen and its many smaller windows. The satellite thermal scan still showed hundreds of dots moving in all directions. Smaller windows were ground-level views from military vehicles and some field-troop helmet cams as they engaged the infected. The sounds of gunfire, even muted to a whisper, were dreadful. And there was so much screaming. From the infected who had not yet died, from possibly uninfected civilians running from the blasts and from the dead, and from the soldiers.
“Sir,” said General Burroughs, “General Zetter is requesting orders on what to do with uninfected survivors.”
Sylvia Ruddy said, “How can we tell if they’re uninfected? Do we have a way to triage this?”
“Scott?” asked the president.
Blair felt like he was a passenger on a sinking ship. Like he was the only man to have seen the iceberg but no one had paid attention to his shouts of warning. Now the president wanted answers from him. Solutions.
“Sir,” he said slowly, “we do not have the protocols or resources to triage anyone. We don’t have the manpower on the ground to detain and monitor large numbers of civilians.”
