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“Give her to me, honey,” JT said gently. “I’ll take care of her. Don’t worry.”
It took everything Dez had left to allow JT to take the sleeping girl from her arms. She shook her head, hating him, hating the world, hating everything.
“Better get inside,” JT warned. Some of the zombies were very close now. Twenty paces.
Trout ran to the door. “Dez, JT, come on. We have to go. We can’t leave this open or they’ll get inside.”
Dez reluctantly moved toward the door, backing away from the child she had to abandon. Trout reached and took her hand, and when she returned his squeeze it was crushingly painful. He pulled her toward the door as the first of the dead stepped into the pale glow thrown by the emergency light.
“JT, come on, let’s go!” Trout yelled.
The big cop did not move. He held the little girl so gently, stroking her hair and murmuring to her.
“JT!” cried Dez. “We have to close the door!”
He smiled at her. “Yeah,” he said, “you do.”
They waited for him to come, but he stayed where he was.
“JT?” Dez asked in a small, frightened voice. “What’s wrong?”
JT kissed the little girl’s forehead and set her down with the others. Then he straightened and showed her his wrist. It was crisscrossed with glass cuts from the helicopter attack.
“What?” she asked.
He pushed his sleeve up.
That was when she saw it. A semicircular line of bruised punctures.
Dez whimpered something. A question. “How?”
“Upstairs, when those bastards tackled us. One of them got me … I didn’t see which one. Doesn’t matter. What’s done is done.”
Then the full realization hit Dez. “NO!”
It was all Trout could do to hold her back. She struggled wildly and even punched him. The blow rocked him, but he did not let go. He would never let go. Never.
“No!” Dez yelled. “You can’t!”
The dead were closing in on JT. He unslung the shotgun. Across the parking lot the las
t flares were fading and the trucks turned off their sirens, one by one.
“Go on, honey,” JT said.
“No goddamn way, Hoss,” she growled, fighting with Trout, hitting him, hurting him. “We stand together and we fucking well go down together.”
“Not this time,” JT said, and he was smiling.
Trout could see it even if Dez could not, that JT was at peace with this.
“No! No! No!” Dez kept repeating.
“I’m going to keep these bastards away from those kids as long as I can,” said JT. “I need you to go inside. I need you to tell the National Guard to do what they have to do, but make sure they do it right. They got to wipe ’em all out. All of them.”
What he meant was as clear as it was horrible.
“JT—don’t leave me!”
