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Unable to go around them or evade them, he took a breath, cursed God, and drove over them. The only mercy he received was that the engine noise was so loud he couldn’t hear the crunching of bones.
So many bones.
He turned away from the biggest mass of them and plowed right through an open stretch of fence, rolled across the parking lot past empty school buses, looking for some sign, some proof that Jenny and the others were still safe inside the school.
Then he rolled to a stop, idling, staring.
At two things.
The first was the open doorway of the school. The infected wandered in and out, and Jake recognized some of the teachers among them. It came close to breaking his heart.
Then he saw the second thing. Words written in brown spray paint on the red bricks of the school wall.
It was a message about who had been here at the school, about how they’d left, and about where they were going. As he read it the infected began climbing onto his machine.
With a growl, Jake put the loader in gear, turned, and with some of the dead still clinging on, headed for the road that led out of town.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-THREE
SAPPHIRE FOODS
ROUTE 40
FAYETTE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
They were twenty feet from the service door when Sam froze, one fist raised. Then he waved the others up so they could see what he was looking at. The door to the building was not, as they first supposed, shut. It was slightly ajar, about a half inch from a tight fit. That wasn’t what jolted Sam, though. There was a partial handprint on the frame, just the palm and a thumb, the rest hidden by the door.
The handprint still glistened with red blood.
“Shit,” whispered Dez. “Can God give us one fucking break?”
Gypsy and Boxer shifted to take clear lines-of-sight once the door was opened. “Dez,” said Sam, “you open the door. I go in first, then my team, then you. Keep all lines clear. Nobody fires until and unless I do.”
He shifted to allow Dez to grip the door handle.
Sam finger-counted down from three, and she pulled the door open quickly, blocked it with her leg and took her gun in a two-handed grip.
Sam went in first, moving silently on cat-feet. The others followed, moving smoothly, weapons moving from corner to corner, covering everything. Dez went in last, and stepping inside wasn’t like stepping into a warehouse.
It was like stepping into an abattoir.
The place was massive, with hundreds of tall rows of steel shelves that stretched off into darkness. Most of the lights were out except for small emergency lights bolted every dozen yards. There was not enough light to see into the building. But there was enough illumination so that Dez could see that the walls to either side of the door and floor in front of her were splashed with blood.
There were bodies everywhere. A dozen at least, and they lay in disjointed tangles, with arms and legs missing, heads crushed, necks chopped through. Trails of blood—shoes and bare feet—led off into the main warehouse and vanished down shadowy rows.
Only one figure still stood.
He was massive, with chest and shoulders so heavily packed with corded muscle that it made him look like a great, pale ape. His skin was the color of milk and there were dreadful scars covering his arms and face. Old scars, barely visible through the blood—both red and black—that covered him from scalp to boots.
He glared at them with mad eyes. One bright blue, the other as red as a subway rat.
He held a crowbar in one fist and a meat cleaver in the other, and he stood there, panting, wild and thoroughly savage.
Sam, Boxer, and Gypsy immediately pointed their guns at him.
Dez pushed her way past the soldiers.
“Charlie?” she said softly.
