Fall of Night by Rachel Caine

Author:Rachel Caine [Caine, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Speculative Fiction
ISBN: 9780451414267
Google: V_w4LgEACAAJ
Amazon: B00BOE1DCK
Barnesnoble: B00BOE1DCK
Goodreads: 15739817
Publisher: NAL
Published: 2013-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTY

STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL

STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA

Dez Fox knew that she should scream.

A scream would be good. It would punctuate this moment, seal it, send it into eternity.

People were supposed to scream when they died.

Especially when they died like this, trapped inside a nightmare.

Yet when she opened her mouth she said, “JT.”

In her ears the name sounded like “Daddy.”

It meant the same thing to her.

The dead shuffled forward, stumbling over the sprawled limbs of their dead companions. Some of them tripped and fell, but they got up again, mindless of cracked kneecaps and fractured wrists from their collisions with the unforgiving ground.

Dez backed away, but she knew that she had nowhere to run. There were zombies between her and the school. The lighted window was fifty yards away. It might have been a window on the face of the moon for all that it mattered to her.

She saw figures moving inside. Teachers, parents. Maybe even Billy.

It didn’t matter.

“JT,” she said.

And as if in answer to her speaking that name she thought she heard his voice.

This isn’t done, girl.

“JT…?”

Desdemona, you listen to me. You’re a cop and you’re a good one, but you’re not acting like one now.

“I … I can’t … I don’t…”

The closest of the infected were a dozen feet away. In four steps they would have her.

Four.

What about the kids, Dez? Asked JT. What about the little ones?

The school was a million miles away.

“I let them die.”

Damn it, girl, don’t give me that crap. It’s not your fault some damn fool opened that window.

Three steps. She could smell their burned flesh.

“I let them die, JT. I should have been there. I should have been smarter.”

You can’t unring that bell, girl, he said sternly, his voice as clear as if he stood right beside her. You can’t undo that. But you can damn well save the rest of them.

“No … I can’t…”

You can. That’s your job. Saving them is why you became a cop. Saving them is what’s kept you alive all these years, and you know it.

Two steps.

“JT … how can I do this?”

You know how.

“I don’t,” she said, but even as she said it her hands touched her belt, feeling the things clipped to it. The pouches with the handcuffs. The empty slots for magazines. The pepper spray.

Nothing there.

No help.

The stun gun.

No use against the dead. They didn’t react to pain.

Damn it, Dez. Be smarter than that, growled JT.

Stun gun.

The dead were driven by parasites. That’s what Billy had told her.

The parasites shut off most of the body’s functions except a little respiration, a little blood flow, and the nerves needed for standing, moving, grabbing, biting, swallowing.

Nerves.

Nerves.

Nerve conduction.

The hands touched her sleeves, her shoulders, her breasts, her face.

And then her hand drew the Taser.

Nerve conduction.

She heard JT laugh quietly. There you go. You’re not the fastest, girl, we both know that, but damn if you don’t always get there in the end.

The weapon came free of its holster. The Nova SP-5.

The stun gun had a five-shot magazine.

Open a door and go home, said JT.

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