In the middle of the property was a massive one-story building made from dull gray stone blocks. As Dez had said there were no windows at all, but along one side there were bays for fifty trucks. A dozen trucks were backed into bays. There were a dozen cars parked haphazardly in the lot, some crumpled together. One sat there burning in the dying drizzle.
“Oh … shit…” breathed Trout.
There were zombies everywhere.
Dozens of them.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY
151 FIRST SIDE
FORT PITT BOULEVARD
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
Alex Jay Berman stood on the balcony of his high-rise apartment and watched Pittsburgh burn. His wife held his hand and her grip was like a vise. So tight that he knew she would never let go.
Never.
Screams rose up from below, and Alex bent forward to look down. Twenty-three stories below, moving through patches of sunlight and shadow, the crowds surged. From up here it was impossible to tell who was infected and who was not.
Or at least not yet.
Everyone was in motion.
Cars and trucks moved through the crowds and from up here they looked like leaves buffeted along atop a moving stream. Alex wondered how many of those people the vehicles rolled over. Up hear you couldn’t hear the sound of breaking bones.
Only the screams.
And the gunfire.
And the explosions.
Those were continual.
The rains had dwindled to nothing and then faded as the sun burned through the clouds. The sky above was pretty and blue. A bright blue. Like the summer skies of his boyhood. Pretty. Birds fly up there, far above the sounds of dying from below.
Behind him, on the other side of the closed French doors, fists beat on the glass. Small sounds made by small fists.
Alex did not turn to look. He had done many things in his life, some brave, some crazy, but he was absolutely sure it would take a greater insanity and far more courage than he possessed to turn and look through that glass. He could not do that.
His wife sobbed.
Once, a deep sound that was filled with everything either of them ever needed to say.
Except for one more thing.
Alex turned to his wife and smiled at her.
“I love you,” he said. “And I always will.”
Her tears glittered like jewels in the sunlight.
Still holding hands they stepped off the balcony ledge.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-ONE
SAPPHIRE FOODS