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“Stop Sunday driving,” he bellowed. “Move this fucking thing.”
The Humvee kept rolling forward, but it was difficult to climb over the human debris while avoiding all of the wrecked and abandoned cars. The dead began closing like a fist around the vehicle.
“Little help up here,” called Shortstop. “This shit’s getting weird.”
“Windows,” ordered Sam, and except for Boxer, the others lowered their windows and stuck gun barrels into the rain. A moment later the inside of the truck was filled with ear-splitting thunder. Shell casings hit the ceiling and bounced off each other and stung like wasps where they hit bare flesh.
“Shortstop,” roared Sam, “grenade.”
Shortstop stopped firing, plucked a green ball from his rig and pulled the pin.
“Frag out!” he cried as he flung it into the midst of the dead closing on the front of the Humvee. He ducked down a split second before the grenade exploded. Everything in the blast radius was torn to ragged pieces and at the edges of the blast the concussion knocked the zombies off balance, leaving a rough opening that was clouded with blood-red mist.
Sam punched Boxer on the shoulder. “Punch it.”
Boxer gave it all the gas it would take and the Humvee leapt forward, smashing through the crippled dead, crushing others. Behind him the main mass of the infected closed like the waters of the Red Sea. They collided with one another in their desperate race to get to the living flesh. Gypsy and Moonshiner leaned out of the windows and fired back at them, shooting at legs to shatter thighbones and drop the pursuers into the path of the rest of them. Shortstop climbed back up and turned the Browning in a circle, not needing to aim. There were targets everywhere.
The Humvee shot through the bloody opening and there was clear street beyond it. Boxer kept his foot on the pedal all the way down to the floor and with every second the horde of the dead dropped behind. One by one the guns stopped firing, and after a full minute Sam touched Boxer on the shoulder.
“Okay, kid, ease it down.”
Boxer dropped the speed from seventy to fifty to forty and kept it there. They passed other zombies, but by the time the infected could turn and target them, the Humvee was past. No one fired at them.
Everyone sagged back, exhaling balls of burning air, their hands trembling with adrenaline and shock.
“Reload,” snapped Sam. “Do it now.”
They did it, and the orderliness of that action helped steady each of them. Not completely, but enough so they could reclaim themselves. Enough so they could dare look in each others’ eyes.
They drove on, no one speaking. There was nothing that needed to be said.
Then a soft purring buzz broke the silence. And Sam lunged for his satellite phone.
“Sir,” he said as soon as the connection was made, “Stebbins is not under control. There is extreme activity and—”
“Sam, to hell with that,” Blair snapped. “The Q-zone is compromised. I repeat, the devil is off the chain. The president has ordered the Air Force in. Drop everything else and get to the school. Get those flash drives. Do it now.”
“How bad is it?”
Blair paused for a shattered moment. “It’s bad, Sam. Volker is dead. We’re going to have to go big on this to try and stop the spread—but we need those drives. You are authorized to use all means and measures to secure them.”
Sam felt his throat tighten.
“Understood, sir,” he said. But the line was already dead.
The members of the Boy Scouts exchanged looks.
Then Boxer kicked down on the gas, the tires spun on the wet ground until smoke curled up behind the Humvee, and then they were rolling fast, gaining speed, heading toward the Stebbins Little School.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
THE SITUATION ROOM
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
The president was surrounded by ghouls.
Every face of every person at the table looked like a death mask: pale, devoid of hope, sunken, and hollow-eyed.
