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Was that right? Lonnie struggled to understand it. His fingers splayed open and then clutched shut as if trying to grab the image out of the air.
Why?
To do what?
He could feel his lungs expand as he drew in the air for his yell, but the ache was gone. There was pain, but it was different. A totally new kind of discomfort that felt oddly distant. It was like feeling someone else’s pain, though that was totally nuts. Impossible.
The most confusing thing for Lonnie was how his words sounded as they issued from his throat.
They weren’t words at all.
He didn’t hear his voice call Rodriguez’s name. He didn’t hear words at all.
The sound was so strange. So weird.
So wrong.
It was a long, sustained sound of complaint. Of need.
Of …
Of.
Oh God.
Of hunger.
He tried to stop that sound from coming out of him. He tried to pull down his reaching hands.
He tried.
Lonnie Silk tried.
The infection within him did not allow his voice or his hands to obey.
The soldiers stood there, looking the wrong way, looking past the sawhorse barrier to the road on the other side of the Q-zone. As if they needed to see that. As if that road was important.
Idiots.
Fucking dumbass idiots.
Lonnie screamed at Rodriguez.
But the scream was another moan.
Deep and plaintive and filled with a different kind of pain than Lonnie felt. Not the pain of bites and torn flesh and damaged muscle. This was the ache of pure hunger.
The winds and rain tried to tear the moan out of the air, and for a moment Lonnie thought that the soldiers wouldn’t hear it.
Then the white kid turned.
Turned, stared, let his mouth drop open, and then he screamed.
“Tito! Jesus Christ—Tito!”
Tito Rodriguez, that was his name. He spun around, bringing his gun up. He stared, too. He screamed, too.
They both fired.
