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He was still chuckling when the dead customer lunged at Goat, grabbed him by the shirt and hair, and pulled him toward those blood-streaked teeth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
Desdemona Fox pushed herself back from Billy. The movement was abrupt, as if she’d suddenly reached the limit of the grief she allowed herself, though Trout knew it was more than that. People were watching. Civilians. And Dez was the only person of any authority left, even if that authority no longer carried any official weight. There was, after all, no Stebbins County Police Department anymore. All of the other officers and even all of the support staff were as dead as the mayor, the town selectmen, the director of public works, and the chief of the fire department. There was, in fact, nothing left of Stebbins except the small knot of people here and the real estate on which they stood.
Even so, Dez had to play her part. She knew, as he did, that her badge and gun, her uniform and the personal power everyone knew she had, formed the rails in a frail fence between order and chaos. If she lost it, then these people would likely lose it, too. And if that happened, then none of the children upstairs had a chance.
Not one chance.
Dez kept her face averted while she went through the mechanical process of removing the magazine from her Glock and thumbing in fresh rounds to replace those she’d fired. She did not bother to pick up her spent brass. Everyone stood mute as they watched this, and when she slapped the magazine back into place they all flinched. The face Dez showed them as she holstered her gun was composed, hard, uncompromising, and totally closed. If anyone noticed the drying tear tracks on her face they dared not mention them.
Dez nodded to two men who stood slightly apart from the group. “Bob, you and Luke get some of those big plastic trash bags from the kitchen. We have to wrap the bodies and get them out of here.”
The men stared at her and then past her to the room where the killing had been done. They didn’t move.
“Now,” she snapped, and they flinched again.
Bob opened his mouth, maybe to protest or maybe to ask a question, but then he caught the look in Dez’s eyes and answered with a curt nod. He tapped Luke on the arm and they turned and hurried across the gym floor.
Dez appraised the rest of the group.
“Listen to me,” she said in a quiet, dangerous tone. “The rest of you are going to search this place. Again. I don’t know who searched down here, but because some assfuck didn’t look in a closet or a closed office another kid’s dead. You hear me? Someone killed that kid and I’m not talking about the dead son of a bitch who bit him. For now I don’t give a shit who searched down here. But we need to search this whole building again and that means every nook and fucking cranny. You hear me? And if another kid gets hurt because one of you jerkoffs didn’t do your job, then God help you because when I get done with you there won’t be enough left to feed to the fucking zombies. Anyone think I’m joking, anyone has anything to say about that, say it now and I’ll shove it down your throat with your teeth. This isn’t a debate. Now move!”
They scattered like scared birds. As they moved away, Trout saw that their eyes were now filled with a different kind of fear. Not of the dead but of the living. Of her. Everyone in town knew Dez Fox. Most of the people in Stebbins didn’t like her, and Trout knew that a lot of them wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire, but no one could say that she wasn’t a good cop. There were a lot of stories floating around town about how Dez treated wife beaters and child abusers. None of those stories were exaggerations, Trout knew.
Add to that the things she’d done here in the school. She and JT, her partner. Partner, mentor, best friend. Father figure.
JT was outside, his body infected by a bite and torn by heavy-caliber machine-gun bullets. He’d sacrificed himself to help clear the school of the infected, and he’d gone down fighting to keep the infected children from being mauled by the dead before the military could use their guns to end all pain for them.
Trout wrestled with that, understanding on one level that the slaughter was necessary and even merciful in a twisted way, but on all other levels it was perverse. No matter from which angle it was viewed, the innocents were the victims.
Now the last surviving children of Stebbins County were here in this building. No more of them should have died.
The men hurried away, splitting into two-person teams, not saying anything until they were in the stairwell on the far side of the cavernous gym. All of them were bigger than Dez. Most of them were tough, hardened farmers and factory workers, some were even combat veterans. No one said a damn word to Dez Fox.
Dez stood there and watched them go. Trout saw that her whole body was trembling. Rage and pain.
He wanted to take her into his arms again.
That would probably earn him an ass-kicking, too.
So instead he said, “Dez—what do you want me to do? How can I help?”
It took a long time before she reacted, as if she was off in some distant place and there was so much distance to travel to get back to where he was. Her head turned slowly until she faced him, but even then there was no immediate recognition in her eyes.
She said, “What?”
“How can I help?” he repeated gently.
“I…” she began, but faltered. She shook her head, then without another word, Dez crossed the big empty room and vanished into shadows.
Billy Trout stood watching the emptiness of the open doorway to the stairwell.
“Shit,” he said softly.
