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He heard Cyrus call his name, and hearing the voice provoked two immediate and intense reactions in him.
The first was that he wanted Cyrus to find him. To get him the hell out of here. To get him to an aid station because, fuck it, he had a piece of thigh bone shoved all the way through his body. Shit. Shit. Shit.
The other reaction was totally different, totally alien, totally terrifying.
When he heard his partner’s voice it made him so goddamn hungry.
Hungry.
Hungry.
Oh God, he thought.
He could hear Cyrus coming, crashing through the wet brush, circling wide around the area marked by the yellow and orange tags. Coming close, coming fast. Coming soon.
Mike Chrusciel tried to yell, to warn his partner, to tell him to get the fuck out of here. But his voice was barely his anymore. It was thick, filled with wrongness, and his warning cry sounded more like the moan of someone in pain.
But not physical pain. Not thigh bone through the stomach pain.
No, it was a different kind of pain.
The pain of a terrible, bottomless hunger.
Cyrus would be here in a few seconds. He’d come running up to help. And then what?
The officers had been pretty damn graphic in the briefings. They pulled no punches when they explained what happened to the infected.
People who were like him.
Jesus.
As Cyrus came running, calling Mike’s name, Mike turned and used the last little bit of him that was his left to own. He made his legs move. It was just a few steps.
He heard Cyrus yell, “No!”
Then Mike stepped onto one of the mines.
He loved explosions. Always had. They made him feel powerful. They always comforted him.
Take me home, he thought as he raised his foot, releasing the trigger.
He rode the blast all the way out of the world.
CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN
ROUTE 26
SOUTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA
“Put something on it,” screamed the man.
“I’m trying,” his wife yelled back.
In the backseat the baby was crying. The woman knelt on her seat and tried to cram a folded baby blanket against the hole in her husband’s shoulder. It was not a torrent, there was no artery there, but it pulsed with his heartbeat, and his heart was hammering. His whole right side was slick with red.
“I don’t have anything to tie it with,” she said, trying to hold it in place with one hand as she tried to unbuckled her belt with the other.
“How bad is it?” he demanded in a terrified voice.
