CHAPTER 60

Ed felt the gas burning his eyes and lips, the snot running from his nose as he stepped through the field of corpses, and he pressed his handkerchief tightly over his face as he fought his way through to where he’d seen Robin Tharp fighting with the guards. He’d lost sight of them in the confusion and the drifting clouds of gas.

Jasper’s voice could still be heard above the hacking and groaning crowd, and he sounded delirious, full of insecurity and rage and confusion. One moment he was pleading for everyone to just calm down, and the next he was screaming at a small trickle of people hurrying from the pavilion.

Ed headed that way. He was surprised to see Margaret O’Brien out in front, guiding several adults and quite a few children away from the pavilion.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Head to the RVs. Where’s Robin?”

“Back there,” Margaret said, and pointed toward the pavilion. “Help her, Ed.”

But he was already running as she said it.

He saw Robin herding her kids away from the pavilion, struggling with a few who were trying to break loose and run back to be with their parents.

One of the guards stepped out of the gas cloud behind her, hacking and coughing, ropes of snot hanging from his nose and mouth, a pistol held limply in his hands. His body was shaking, and there was an enormous open bite mark on his wrist. When he saw Robin, he fell on her. She screamed and tried to break free, but the guard held her with the last of his strength.

With his elbow, Ed hit the nerve bundle at the base of the man’s neck, dropping him to his knees. He stared up at Ed and his eyes were rimmed with red, unfocused, turning the milky pale of the infected. His face was shiny with sweat and a chemical film. He tried to moan, but only managed a gargling sound. Ed kicked him in the chest and laid him out on his back, where he began to convulse.

Then Ed reached down and picked up the man’s pistol, a 9mm Beretta, nice gun. U.S. Air Force written down the side. It was an officer’s gun.

“Are you okay?” he said to Robin.

She nodded. Ed glanced over at the pavilion. The gas cloud was so thick now all he could see was the peaked top of the metal roof, and the gas was spreading, seeping down the hill toward them.

A moment later, Jeff Stavers emerged from the fog, holding his shirt over his face. He had a rifle on one shoulder and a struggling child on the other.

“Help him, Ed.”

“I will. Go.”

The kids were running across the playground in front of her. A few had made it to the large earth dome that marked the beginning of the fields, and they had crested the top. They were almost there.

Robin caught up with the stragglers and helped them along.

A little girl of two, maybe three was standing near the top of the hill, looking back toward the pavilion. She was crying for her mother and refused to go any farther. Before Robin could reach her, two other little girls stopped near her and started crying for their parents, too. Robin knelt beside them, begging them to move. One of the little girls slapped Robin’s hand away from her shoulder and tried to run back to the pavilion. Robin managed to grab the girl, but she couldn’t stop all three, and they ran around her.

They didn’t make it far, though. Sandra Tellez scooped them up, both girls fighting and kicking and screaming, and she carried them back to the top of the hill.

“Come on,” she said to Robin. “They’ve got the RVs ready to go.”

Robin picked up the third struggling little girl, and they ran the rest of the way to the waiting RVs. Ben Richardson met them outside the closest RV and helped them get the children on board.

She heard a shot and saw Jeff leveling a rifle at a group of zombies who had followed them down from the pavilion. He was blocking a child with his body. He fired twice more before he ran out of ammunition.

There were still three more zombies in front of him.

“Jeff!” Robin yelled. “Come on!”

He turned and saw her waving at him.

“Come on,” she said.

He picked up the child and ran for the RVs. She took the child from him and helped her up onto the RV.

“Where’s Ed?” she asked.

“I don’t know. He went back for some of the others.”

She turned toward the pavilion and saw the gas cloud rising higher into the air. It had engulfed most of the center of the village and was starting to make its way around the slight rise of the hill at the edge of the road, long, narrow fingers poking through the gaps between the buildings and inching downhill.

“We don’t have much time,” Richardson said above them. “That cloud’s going to be on us in another minute or two.”

“We have to wait for him,” Robin said. “We have to.”

“I don’t know if we—”

Richardson cut himself off abruptly. Robin watched his eyes go wide, his attention focused on something over her shoulder.

She turned.

Jasper was limping toward them up the snow-covered main road. Even from a distance of some thirty feet, Robin could tell the man’s eyes were bright red. He was coughing. A runner of blood oozed down the corner of his mouth from his left nostril. His square face was shining like it had been sprayed with wax. And though he was limping, he was fueled by a rage so monomaniacal and intense that he still managed to outdistance Michael Barnes, who was coming up behind him.

“Give me back my children,” Jasper shouted at them. “They are not yours. They are not yours to take. They are mine. Mine! You hear me? Give them to me now!”

Spit flew from his lips. He looked thoroughly deranged. He reached down and picked up a long piece of rebar that was leaning against the front of a nearby pickup and swung it wildly in their direction.

“Give me back my children. Give them to me, you little bitch.”

“No,” she murmured.

“Give them to me now!”

He was closing on them, barely ten feet away. Robin put up her hands to block the blow she knew was coming and a whimper passed her lips.

But the blow never came. She’d closed her eyes without realizing it. When she opened them, Ed Moore was standing between her and Jasper.

“Get everybody on board,” Ed said to Richardson. “Get the RVs rolling.”

“You,” Jasper hissed. “You did this to us. You betrayed us.”

Ed had a pistol in his hands. He had it centered on Jasper’s chest, but Jasper wasn’t looking at it. His eyes were drilling into Ed Moore’s, every ounce of him consumed with rage.

Jasper drew the piece of rebar back to strike, and Ed shot him. One round, square in the chest.

Jasper sucked in a surprised breath, looked down at the hole in his body, and collapsed without a word. A second later, Barnes was at his side, his fingers groping for a pulse on the dead man’s neck.

He closed Jasper’s eyes, then looked up at Ed Moore.

“Stay there, Barnes.” Barnes rose to his feet. “Don’t move.”

If Barnes understood him, he made no sign of it. He stared past the gun to Ed, his face inscrutable.

“You guys get moving,” Ed said to Jeff and Robin, who were still watching from the doorway. “Hurry.”

They climbed into the RV and Robin turned and looked back at Ed. He still had his gun trained on Michael Barnes.

“You guys go,” Ed said. “I’ll cover you.”

She was about to motion to Richardson to drive away when Barnes suddenly reached under his shirt, drew his pistol, and fired at Ed. Barnes was amazingly fast, and the shot was ringing in her ears before her mind had a chance to process what had just happened.

But either the shot had gone wide or Ed was faster, for he’d hit the ground and rolled toward the vehicles to his right. Robin watched Barnes sprint forward, turn, and level his gun at the spot where Ed had slipped between a pair of trucks, but he didn’t fire.

Ed wasn’t there.

Barnes moved so fast.

Ed saw him ducking his shoulder to reach under his shirt, saw the flash of metal as the gun came out, saw the explosion as it went off, and the whole thing happened so fast he couldn’t make himself react in time.

He felt the punch in his side even as he jumped to his right, hit the ground, and rolled between a pair of pickups. Moving quickly, he rolled under one of the pickups and out the other side. He had just enough time to see a small trail of blood behind him, and in that moment he knew he’d been hit. Ed looked down and saw blood seeping between his fingers, running down his hip inside his jeans. The wound was bleeding badly, but it wasn’t especially deep. He could see that. Still, Barnes had drawn first blood.

Another shot rang out ahead of him and slammed into the windshield beside him. Exploded bits of glass dusted his cheek, making him cry out.

He immediately fell to the ground.

There were no more shots, and Ed pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and crawled around the back of the truck and came to a rest with his back against the truck’s wheel. Glancing under the vehicle, he got a glimpse of Barnes running toward his hiding spot.

Ed was breathing hard. He knew he had to regain the offensive if he was going to have any chance at all of survival, but his aged body was screaming at him in pain. Everything hurt. Not just the wound in his side but his knees and his shoulders and his back, too. Even his heart was pounding like an engine that had been pushed too hard.

“Gotta do it,” he said, and popped up behind the truck’s tailgate right as Barnes rounded the corner. Ed fired, hitting Barnes in the shoulder and spinning him around in the air even as he was slammed to the ground.

He fired twice more, but Barnes was already on his feet and scrambling back around the corner of the truck, the shots slamming uselessly into the ground, kicking up snow and black mud.

Ed ran after him. He didn’t want to let Barnes create distance on him. Younger, faster, and probably a better shot, too, Barnes would be able to use that distance to plant a bullet right in his forehead.

Plus Barnes was hit worse than he was.

He could use that.

Barnes turned around when he heard Ed running up behind him, but he was shot in the right shoulder, making that arm useless, and he had to cross over his body with his left hand in order to sight the gun on Ed.

Ed used the extra second to close the distance between them and tackle Barnes, knocking him backward over the hood of a truck and onto the snow-covered ground.

Barnes rolled away from him and got to his feet almost instantly. Ed took a moment longer. He managed to climb to his feet right as Barnes charged him and caught Ed under the jaw with a ferocious upper cut that turned everything in his world purple.

He fell back against the pickup.

Barnes charged him again, jabbing him twice in the mouth with his left, then stepping back and swinging his left again, this time catching Ed in the cheek. Ed fell back against the truck, stunned, his legs going weak beneath him. He’d never been hit so hard in his life.

Barnes swung another left at Ed’s face, but this time Ed saw it coming. He slid down the front of the truck and came up just outside Barnes’s wounded right shoulder. He snaked a finger into the wound and dug in.

Screaming in rage and pain, Barnes staggered backward.

Ed attacked. Leading with his right, he jabbed once at Barnes’s throat, catching him on the windpipe before pulling back and then wading in with another punch to the solar plexus.

Barnes doubled over, the air leaving his chest in hacking rush.

Ed closed the distance between them again, this time meaning to slam the door shut on Barnes with a flurry of rights to the younger man’s face. He swung, but Barnes came up under the blow and faded back as he sent a left across Ed’s jaw.

Ed fell backward onto his butt. Dazed, he looked up at Barnes. He rolled over onto his elbow, but Barnes was on him so quickly he seemed like a blur. His fist crashed into Ed’s chin with a crack that echoed across the unnaturally windless prairie.

Ed was flat on his back now, floating just above unconsciousness. Dimly, he watched Barnes walk casually down the slope that led to the west entrance. He reached down and picked up the pistol Ed had knocked from his hand earlier.

“You fight good, old man,” he said. He rubbed his jaw. From the way Barnes winced, Ed could tell he’d done some damage. “Wonder what would have happened if we’d met when you were thirty.”

“Fuck you,” Ed said. The words sounded muddled coming from his busted lips.

Barnes raised the pistol at Ed and a shot rang out.

Ed flinched, and realized a moment later that he hadn’t been hit.

In front of him, Barnes slumped to the ground, a spreading blossom of blood oozing from a hole in his neck.

Ed looked up and saw Billy Kline standing there, breathing hard, but smiling.

“You okay?” Billy asked.

Ed groaned. “You’re kidding, right?”

Billy put a hand under Ed’s arm and eased him up to his feet.

“So, was that an example of old age and guile triumphing over youth and raw talent? Cause if so, I gotta tell you, the lesson was a little murky.”

Ed smiled. “You got a smart mouth on you, son. Just get me out of here.”

“You got it, old man.”

Billy led Ed onto the lead RV and put him down on the couch.

“Oh, Jesus,” Sandra said. “Ed. Oh, my God.”

She touched his battered face, but he pushed her hand away.

He looked up at Billy. “Get us out of here,” he said. “Get us onto the road. Just drive.”

“Right,” said Billy.

Billy ran forward and climbed into the driver’s seat. He’d never driven anything like this before, but everything looked familiar enough. Richardson had already gotten the engine running, and they were sitting on half a tank.

So far so good.

He looked to his left, making eye contact with the drivers of the other two RVs. Both drivers waved back.

“Hold on,” he said over his shoulder.

He put the RV in gear and eased into the gas. He could feel the heavy vehicle sliding on the ice, but they were moving.

Richardson appeared at his side.

“You got more infected coming through the gate.”

“I see ’em,” Billy said. He checked his rearview mirror and saw that the other two RVs were falling in line behind him.

“Hang on,” he said to Richardson, and he dipped into the throttle.

The big RV lurched forward, fishtailing a little on the ice and snow. Ahead of them was a knot of the infected. Billy braced for the impact and drove headlong through the crowd, bodies bouncing off the front bumper with dull-sounding thuds.

A moment later, they were through the crowds and through the gate and heading out of the Grasslands. The world was an endless white desert stretching out before them, the sky a dark gray mass of storm clouds stretching the length of the horizon.

“They all make it through?” Richardson asked.

Billy checked the rearview mirror. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, we’re all clear.”

Less than ten minutes later, Richardson was pointing at a dark line of vehicles on the road ahead of them.

“I see it,” Billy said. “Who do you suppose that is?”

The vehicles were moving slowly, deliberately. There were bodies on the road ahead of them, and as Billy slowed, they could see gunshot wounds.

“Whoa, Billy,” said Richardson. “Stop!”

Billy hit the brakes and the big vehicle slid to a stop.

From behind them, Ed said, “What’s going on? Why’d you stop?”

Richardson pointed out the window. “You see that?”

“Yeah,” said Billy.

White shapes were sliding down the snowbanks along the side of the roads. Soldiers, black rifles in their hands standing out against the snow and their white snowsuits.

“What’s going on?” Ed said again.

Billy looked back over his shoulder. Ed was trying to stand; Sandra was trying to hold him down.

“The cavalry,” Billy said. “Day late and a dollar short, but looks like we’re saved.”

Beside him, Richardson laughed.