11:20
Dispatcher: Twelve, what’s your twenty?
Unit Twelve: Ten miles outside Blaney Park on seventy-seven. Returning.
Dispatcher: Negative. Request you go to Cut River vicinity.
Unit Twelve: Come again?
Dispatcher: Cut River. No radio activity from Cut River P.D. in fourteen hours.
Unit Twelve: Power’s still out in that area… or most of it.
Dispatcher: Should be… some activity. Received a call for assistance earlier.
Unit Twelve: P.D.?
Dispatcher: Negative. Civilian, possibly. Might be a crank.
Unit Twelve: Probably. Ten-forty-nine. En route to Cut River. E.T.A. fifteen minutes.
Dispatcher: Ten-four.
11:39
Unit Twelve: Outside Cut River location on Junction Twenty-Three. Will advise.
Dispatcher: Ten-four.
Unit Twelve: We’ve got an abandoned vehicle here. Possible accident. Two miles outside location on twenty-three. Vehicle is a late-model Plymouth van… license ADAM-DAVID-FRANK two-oh-seven. Repeat.
Dispatcher: ADF two-oh-seven.
Unit Twelve: Standby.
Dispatcher: Vehicle registered to a Benjamin Thomas Eklind.
Unit Twelve: Ten-four. We’re going to need crime scene assistance here… front end of vehicle bashed in. Possible hit-and-run.
Dispatcher: Message relayed.
Unit Twelve: Leaving scene. Occupants missing. Seems to be… can see a fire burning in Cut River direction. Investigating.
Dispatcher: Exercise caution, Twelve.
Unit Twelve: Will do. Ten-four.
11:53
Unit Twelve: Dispatch? Requesting back-up… possible civil disturbance. We’ve got a situation here.
Dispatcher: What’s the Twenty?
Unit Twelve: Cut River… we’ve got vehicles piled up here, wreckage. Road is blocked. Fires burning… scarecrows. Something strange here… I…
Dispatcher: Repeat last, Twelve.
Unit Twelve: Code Twenty here, dispatch. Need immediate assistance.
Dispatcher: On the way, Twelve.
Unit Twelve: It’s a mess… Jesus. Looks like vehicles were driven into each other to block exit or entrance. Fires burning… a group of individuals spotted. Standby.
Dispatcher: Proceed with caution, Twelve.
Unit Twelve: CODE THIRTY! CODE THIRTY! OFFICER NEEDS ASSISTANCE! EMERGENCY! ALL UNITS! PLEASE… OH MY GOD…
Dispatcher: Twelve? Twelve? Repeat, Twelve!
Dispatcher: All available units respond Cut River location! Officer needs assistance!
Unit Seventeen: En route location, dispatch. E.T.A. five minutes. Jesus, looks like fires burning down there…
When Nancy woke, she was in pain.
It felt like she’d been pumping iron. Her muscles were sore, her fingers numb. A headache throbbed just behind her eyes.
And she was not alone.
In fact, she was in a room full of people and she decided right then and there, as her eyelids fluttered open and closed and then open again, that she was dreaming. Had to be. Unless this had all been some seriously nasty nightmare, the last thing she could remember was the A & P. Those things attacking them. Her alone. The little boy from hell.
And then… oh Jesus, Sam.
Sam biting her.
She was on a sofa in what looked like somebody’s living room, a blanket thrown over her. She brought her hand up, brought it up slowly. Yes, her wrist was bandaged. Sam had bitten her. Yes. Not attacked her, not really. All he wanted to do was bite her.
It doesn’t hurt at all, it just feels good…
Oh, Jesus, did that mean, did that mean—
“How you doing, baby?” It was Ben, leaning over her. He looked very tired, very… used-up. But his eyes were bright. “I was worried. Christ, I was worried.”
She managed a smile. “I’m okay. I… what happened? I don’t remember.”
He sat on the sofa near her and told her how he’d been separated from her in the grocery store, thought she’d been killed. Then the crazies started their attack. Joe and Ruby Sue were armed to the teeth. He didn’t know why, but was simply glad. They spent maybe fifty rounds on the crazies, as he called them.
“It was like nothing you ever seen before,” he told her. “You can shoot ’em five, six times, and it only slows them down. You gotta get ’em in the head.
“Ruby Sue was right,” she said in a dry voice.
He nodded.
He himself owed his life to Joe. The crazies had swarmed over him and Joe ran right into their midst, shooting and fighting. Ruby Sue—a crack shot, believe it or not—had backed him up, popping those bastards right in the heads. They’d knocked Ben senseless and Joe had dragged him up the stairs, took care of him. It was also Joe who—
“He shot Sam,” Nancy said.
Ben stroked her hair. “It wasn’t Sam, baby. Not anymore.”
She licked her lips. “He looked like he was dead.”
Ben didn’t say anything to that. “Joe bandaged your arm. You cut yourself or what?”
Nancy went into a bullshit story about how one of them had stuck a roasting fork in her arm, how she’d beat him off with a rolling pin. It was important to her that Ben didn’t know, that any of them didn’t know, about the bite. Laying there, Ben’s voice droning on and on about how they’d come here to this church because they’d seen a police cruiser parked out front that hadn’t been there before.
That’s how they ended up with this bunch.
Ben introduced them all.
Beyond Joe and Ruby Sue, there was a stocky, balding man with a friendly smile named Lou Frawley. Lou was a salesman. The muscular, capable guy in the corner with the bald head and black mustache was named Johnny Davis. He was a citizen of Cut River and, Nancy decided, possibly a mercenary by the way he was dressed and armed. Near to him was a thin, slight brunette with huge dark eyes and jutting cheekbones. She was Lisa Tabano. She looked haunted, trembled badly, and was some sort of rock performer. Even had a guitar with her.
Joe had positioned himself at the window, was studying the night between a part in the curtains.
“Any activity?” Johnny asked him.
“Nada.”
“Not yet, anyway.”
They were in the rectory of St. Thomas’ Catholic Church. In the priest’s living room. It was large but cozy with a fireplace, shelves lined with old books, overstuffed furniture, and impressionist paintings on the walls. It smelled like leather and pipe tobacco.
Of course, Lisa and Lou were heavy smokers and there was a haze gathering in the air now. There was only one light on and it was turned down dim. Nancy thought that was for the best; she didn’t think she could handle bright lights just yet.
“Hi,” Lisa said to her. “How you feeling?”
Nancy looked at her, thought that though she was a pretty girl and everything that Nancy was not—petite, thin, fine-boned—she didn’t look well. Sick? Yes, like maybe she’d come off a lengthy illness. Not good at all. Dark hollows under her eyes, her bones lying tight just under her skin. Rock star? Yes, looked like one of those stick figures with all the hair, on the verge of death.
She thought: Looks like I feel.
She sipped from a glass of water Ben brought her. It tasted good. On her lips, on her throat, but when it hit her stomach she felt nauseous. “What band are you with?” she asked the girl.
“Electric Witch,” Lisa said, as if she didn’t believe it somehow. “It seems so far away now.”
“You guys are good.”
Lisa seemed surprised. “You know us?”
“Yeah. My son has your CD. Loves it.”
“Sweet.”
“What brought you here of all things?”
“My mom and dad. I’m from here. I don’t know where they are.”