CHAPTER 49

Ed Moore woke to a siren blaring.

He sat up in bed quickly and tried to focus in the dark. The other men he shared this section of the dormitory with were sitting up as well, all of them looking around for an explanation.

Ed and Billy traded looks from across the aisle.

Ed got out of his cot and forced his feet into his boots. His toes were numb with the cold, and pressing them down into the leather sent pulses of pain through his feet.

“What’s going on?” Billy asked.

“Perimeter alarm,” Ed said. “Get your coat. Come on.”

A moment later, the two of them ran out into the biting cold of the North Dakota predawn morning. The ground glittered with a fine crystalline layer of ice. Everywhere they looked, the Grasslands seemed empty, almost pristine. Only the insistent blaring of the siren and the distant sound of men yelling broke the calm.

“Ed?”

“Sounds like it’s coming from the north gate.” He let out a frustrated breath that misted before his eyes. “Damn, I wish I hadn’t given up my guns.”

“What are we supposed to do?”

The community had drilled for fires, and most of the folks in the Grasslands had taken basic CPR, but they had no public zombie contingency plans. Jasper’s only public statement on the matter was that the perimeter fence would protect them from the small number of zombies likely to make it this far north. When pressed why non-Family members weren’t allowed to keep their weapons, he said only that the Family would protect them from any zombie danger. Now, Ed was kicking himself for not squirreling away one of his guns.

Floodlights came on to their right. Ed and Billy both turned that way and saw bright white light spreading across the icy ground.

Behind them, and to their left, more and more people were coming out of their dormitories. They looked confused and frightened. Ed could hear the low murmur of their confused voices.

“Come on,” he said, grabbing Billy by the sleeve.

“Where are we going?”

“Weapons,” Ed said.

He guided Billy over to the still-unfinished dormitory number six building and the two of them chose cast-off pieces of lumber to use as cudgels. Then they were sprinting toward the main gate, the ice crunching beneath their feet. The siren continued to blare. Others were following them.

As they got close to the dirt road where the community’s trucks were parked, they could see some of the armed patrols forming skirmish lines. Up ahead, in the bright glow of the floodlights, they saw the main gate hanging open and folded over at the top as though the supports that held it upright had been shattered. And beyond the gate, moving with agonizing slowness, were the infected.

Ed saw several hundred ruined faces, more than he had seen in one place since coming to the Grasslands. They were funneling toward the open gate. Several bodies already lay within.

As the patrols formed their lines, the sounds of yelling gradually died off, replaced by the rattle of sporadic gunfire.

One man was trying to yell orders to the patrols. Ed saw him waving wildly to somebody, but his features were lost in shadow and his voice drowned out by the roll of rifle fire.

Ed turned again toward the approaching zombies, but his gaze lingered on three of the corpses just inside the gate. There clothes were different from the other infected, newer, not soiled.

And then Ed was able to make out the face from the shadows, and he recognized Tom Wilder.

“Billy,” Ed said.

Billy was staring at the zombies pouring through the gate, but at the sound of Ed’s voice, he looked where Ed was pointing.

“What?” he said. And then he saw it. “Oh, shit.”

The gunfire was growing steadier.

Billy turned to Ed. “Ed, that’s Tom. What’s going on?”

Ed didn’t get to answer him.

The man who had been yelling and waving at them suddenly appeared in front of them. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. “You think you can do anything with sticks? Get back!”

And before Ed could protest, the man was pushing him back behind a makeshift cordon with the other members of the Grasslands.

Amid the sound of gunfire and people shouting and the constant, low vibrating moan of the infected came the sound of a truck approaching. Ed turned as the crowd of people around him zippered apart to let one of Jasper’s black Chevy Tahoes glide past.

The Tahoe stopped, and Jasper and Michael Barnes got out.

Barnes had an AR-15 slung over his shoulder. He wore a light black jacket and jeans over brown work boots, and he moved casually, like one accustomed to this sort of thing.

Immediately, Barnes took charge. He took up a point position and motioned for six other members of the patrol to form up in a V behind him.

Ed raised an eyebrow as they advanced. He had worked crowd control in the wake of the L.A. riots back in 1992 and he knew that a unit didn’t just fall into a fighting echelon position. It took lots of practice, lots of dress rehearsals. And even then it was hard to get right.

But Barnes and his team moved out silently, effortlessly. Barnes himself did most of the shooting. They advanced into the knot of zombies coming through the gate, their shots measured and precise. They made it look easy, and a moment later they had cleared the gate and were standing outside it, shooting at their leisure at every zombie that came within range.

Less than ten minutes later, with the echo of gunfire still sounding across the prairie, Barnes stepped back in through the gate. His AR-15 was slung over his shoulder again. There was a look of unflappable calm on his face.

Jasper was clapping, and a moment later, he was leading the crowd in cheers as he slapped Barnes on the back.

Ed watched it all with a growing sense of unease. Things were definitely not right. Not at all.