Maggie said, “Oh my God.”
Ethan looked back.
She had stopped in the middle of the street and was staring at the school.
He ran back to her.
“We have to keep going.”
She pointed.
A door in the side of the building swung open and a man was standing in the threshold waving one arm.
Maggie said, “What do we do?”
What do we do?
One of those decisions that could decide everything.
Ethan scaled the four-foot fence and raced across the schoolyard, passing a sandbox and monkey bars in the shadow of a giant cottonwood whose yellow leaves had plastered the pavement.
The man holding open the door was Spitz, the Wayward Pines postman, an inventive position for a town that had zero need for the mail. Yet still, he’d walked the streets several days a week, stuffing mailboxes with fake junk mail, bullshit tax notices, and the like. He was a brawny, extravagantly bearded man, larger through the waist than one might think for someone who lived on his feet. Presently, he stood in a shredded black T-shirt and kilt—his fête costume—with his left arm wrapped in a piece of bloody fabric. He wore a nasty slice across his cheek and a piece of flesh had been gouged out of his right leg.
He said, “Hi, Sheriff,” as Ethan arrived. “Didn’t expect to see you.”
“Back at you, Spitz. You look like shit.”
“Just a flesh wound.” The man grinned. “We thought the other groups were wiped out.”
“Ours made it through the tunnels, up to the cavern.”
“How many of you?”
“Ninety-six.”
“I got eighty-three down in the basement of the school.”
Kate asked, “Harold?”
Spitz shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
Hecter said, “We thought everyone else had been killed.”
“We were attacked on the way to the tunnels. Lost about thirty down by the river. Brutal. As you can see, I got in a little scuffle with one of those sons of bitches. Took five men to drag it off and if one of them hadn’t had a machete it would’ve killed us all. I heard the gunshot a minute ago. It’s what drew me outside.”
“One came after us a little ways up the block,” Ethan said. “We thought maybe they’d all gone back into the woods.”
“Oh no. Town’s still crawling with them. I’ve been making house raids within sprinting distance. There’s people still hiding in their homes. I rescued Gracie and Jessica Turner just before dawn. Jim had nailed them into a closet. He isn’t with your group, is he?”
“I saw him last night,” Ethan said. “He didn’t make it.”
“That’s too bad.”
“How are your people?” Maggie asked.
“Three died from their wounds overnight. Two are in pretty rough shape. Probably won’t last the day. A bunch of us are scraped all to hell. Everyone’s freaked out. No food, just a little water from the fountains. We had a teacher in our group and if he hadn’t said to come here, we’d all be dead. No question in my mind. It was war last night.”
“How secure is the basement?” Ethan asked.
“Could be worse. We’re locked in behind two doors in a music classroom. No windows. Only one way in and out. We’ve built barricades. I’m not saying it’s impenetrable, but we’re hanging in.”
A scream erupted several blocks away.
“Better get your asses inside,” Spitz said. “Sounds like whatever you killed had a buddy.”
Ethan looked at Kate, back at Spitz.“I’m headed for the mountain,” he said. “For Pilcher.”
Maggie said, “If there are injured people, I may be able to help. I was in school to become a nurse back in my old life.”
“We’d love to have you,” Spitz said.
A second scream answered the first.
Ethan said, “Do you guys have any weapons?”
“One machete.”
Shit. He’d have to leave them with someone who could shoot. This group of people needed some form of protection beyond a big knife.
“Kate, you stay with them too,” he said.
“You need me.”
“Yes, but if we both go and get killed, then what? At least this way, you’re the backup plan if I don’t make it back. And meanwhile, you can protect these people.”
Hecter said, like he hadn’t quite fully committed to the idea, “Well, Ethan, I guess it’s just you and me then.”
“Will I be seeing you again, Sheriff?” Spitz asked.
“Here’s hoping.” Ethan grabbed Maggie’s hand, and said, “Bedside table drawer?”
“Yeah, go upstairs, turn right when you come off the staircase, it’s the door at the end of the hall.”
“Your house locked?”
“No.”
“Which one is it?”
“Pink with white trim. Wreath on the front door.”
Maggie and Spitz headed into the school.
Ethan started to turn away but Kate grabbed him, her hands cold on the back of his neck. She pulled him toward her and kept pulling until their lips touched, and then she was kissing him and he was letting it happen.
She said, “Be careful,” and disappeared through the door.
Ethan looked at Hecter.
The abbies were howling.
“Two blocks,” Ethan said. “We can make it.”
They ran through the schoolyard, between picnic tables, into an open playing field, heading straight for the fence.
Ethan glanced back, saw movement in the street behind them—pale forms on all fours.
With the shotgun slung across his shoulder, he put two hands on the fence and leapt over the top, hit the ground running on the other side.
Streaked into an intersection.
Right—clear.
Left—four abbies en route, still several blocks away.
Halfway down the block, an abby broke through the glass of a front window and charged Ethan.
“Keep running!” he screamed at Hecter, then stopped, squared up, and racked a fresh shell.
Hecter blitzed by and Ethan put the monster down with a head shot.
He chased after Hecter, and as they reached the last intersection before Maggie’s house, it occurred to him that he never asked what her car looked like. There were loads of them on this block, and two parked on the curb in front of Maggie’s place.