STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
Trout tried to kick the door in.
He stepped back, raised his knee to his chest, and snapped out with every ounce of strength he possessed. He knew where and how to kick in a door. He’d witnessed cops do it, written about it in news articles, seen it in movies. His heel hit the wood right beside the doorknob. Angle, placement, and leverage should have torn the lock out of its hinges and slammed the door inward.
There was only a tiny fragment of time for his brain to process a sudden and awful reality.
This door opened out into the hallway.
There was absolutely no way to stop that kick.
His foot hit and the door did not—could not—burst inward. Instead the force of the impact rebounded from the immovable object and shot through his heel, up his shin, and through dozens of muscular transfer points into the nerve clusters in his lower back that were already damaged.
He shrieked in pain and instantly fell onto his back on the hardwood floor, the shock knocking the air out of his lungs.
Beyond the door the screams rose to the ultrasonic, burying the sound of hungry moans.
Trout was absolutely incapable of movement.
Even when he saw the doorknob jiggle and turn. Even when he heard the lock click open. Even when the door began to swing outward.
The edge of the door struck him on the hip, but his sprawled body prevented it from opening beyond a few inches. A small, desperate hand suddenly thrust out through the crack, tiny fingers clawing at the air, trying to grab something. A lifeline, a hope. Anything.
Then the hall was filled with a dreadful roar of rage and horror.
Billy turned his dazed head and saw a demon running out of the shadows toward him. Beautiful and terrible, blue eyes blazing like lasers, teeth bared in an animal snarl.
“D—Dez…” he croaked.
She leapt over him and as she landed she planted a foot against his hip and shoved him away with ruthless force. He rolled over, fresh agony spearing through him. Dez tore open the door, grabbed the child—a little black girl with cornrowed hair decorated with pink dragonfly clips—and hauled her out of the room.
The child came staggering into the hall.
Covered in blood.
Trailing blood.
Streaming blood.
The sound that came from Dez Fox was more savage and far less human than anything Trout had heard from the mouths of the infected. It wasn’t a sane sound. It was bestial and horrible.
She whipped the door all the way open and ran into the room, and through that open door Trout could see the tableau and understand what had happened. One of the adults had tried to escape through a window, taking several children with him. But the dead had been outside. Without the soldiers to surround the school, the dead had come hunting for food. Three of them were already inside the room. More of them milled beyond the open window. All of them were blackened and burned, their skin cracked from the heat, their hair burned away, their clothes still smoking. The only color Trout could see was the white of their teeth, the milkiness of their dead eyes, and the red blood on the mouths of the zombies inside the school.
Trout saw all of this in a terrible flash. Then the storm outside seemed to enter the school as thunder and lightning tore the room apart. Dez had her gun out and she fired, fired. The booms of the Glock seemed impossibly loud. The muzzle flashes strobed images into Trout’s memory. A blackened face flying apart as hollow-point rounds exploded its skull.
Then Dez was moving, shoving her way past children who cringed back, hands clamped to bleeding wounds, voices raised in desperate pleas that Trout knew could never be answered. Not anymore.
Two of the burned infected were down, and the third lunged at Dez from her blindside.
“Watch!” cried Trout, but Dez was already turning, firing, blowing the hungry need from the eyes of the dead thing.
She raced to the window, gun out in front of her in two hands and emptied the rest of the magazine into the faces of the things that were fighting each other to climb inside. They fell backward. Dez swapped out the magazine, letting the empty one fall. She leaned out and began firing again, screaming at them to fall, to die, to fucking die.
And they died.
Feet pounded down the hallway and Trout turned to see a knot of adults racing toward him, guns and clubs in their hands. He saw them reach for the children and even though he hated himself for doing it, even though he knew it would earn him a sentence in hell, he yelled them back.