"Oh Lord, please," Shaun panted. "Please G.o.d, please G.o.d-" Visions of her being eaten alive before his eyes painted themselves with blood in his imagination.

"Open the f.u.c.king door!" The woman's voice rose in pitch. Her wide eyes scanned the approaching figures, moving now with arms outstretched, fingers grasping.

Finally, the latch came loose. Shaun pulled the lever down. The tongue came free of the latch plate and he swung the door open. The woman dived in, dropping her duffel bag on top of Scooter who yelped and spun out of the way, claws scratching across the floor, collar jangling. Shaun slammed the door closed and relocked it just as the first infected zombie, a teenage rapper from the looks of him, smashed his face onto the outside window, smearing gluey saliva over the gla.s.s.

The woman panted on the floor. She had a gun in her dirty hand. Her face was equally dirty. Her shirt was ripped and one ivory breast hung free, a deep, severe bite showing jagged and crimson, oozing with blood. Through the shreds of fabric, her bare torso was noticeably tracked with deep lacerations, her forearms raked almost as bad. She caught her breath and tried to pull what was left of her tattered shirt to conceal her breast, but it was useless. She met his eyes.

Shaun's face went hot in the cheeks. "A-are you...all right?"

"Yes. Thanks to you. And sincerely...thanks."

Shaun swallowed, hating himself because he couldn't take his eyes off her breast. He didn't know what fascinated him more - her beauty or that very nasty bite. "I...I'm sorry, but that looks like a bad bite. Are you...do you think-?" Dread pooled in his stomach at the thought of her turning, succ.u.mbing to the infection trapped in here in the booth with him, and then eating him and Scooter for lunch.

She knew what he was getting at. "They're not werewolves." She laughed. "I'm pretty sure some of us have immunities to the infection. Explains why some people aren't sick and some are. I've been bitten before. I haven't turned into one of them. I don't think it works that way. You either die from the infection or you wake up like them." She tapped on the window at the snarling mob of infected banging on the gla.s.s around them. "But who's to say it won't happen to all of us before long? I don't know...maybe some of us just take longer to exhibit symptoms of the infection." She looked at him and then winced. "But, maybe not. Maybe some of us are just left to try to stay alive and not become snacks for the infected who didn't die."

Shaun took off his jean jacket and handed it to her. "Here, maybe this will fit."

The woman smiled through her pain. "Thanks." She draped it over her shoulders. It fit okay. They were about the same size. "I should clean the wound."

"I have some water here." Shaun offered her the remains of the water bottle left behind by the tollbooth operator.

"Thanks." She poured some water over the raw bite. It was a whitish pink crater in the upper slope of her breast. The vision of the blood washing away to reveal the fatty tissue and pinpoint red nerve endings made Shaun feel woozy with sickness. He turned away until she was done.

She cursed as the pain seized her, but then she was quiet, her breathing heavy. "What's your name?"

"Shaun Huntington."

"Hi Shaun. I'm Dejah Corliss." She held out a slim hand.

He took her hand. Her touch was cool and smooth and evoked a surge of desire. Cripes, don't be sick about this man. This woman seems nice. She needs help. Maybe she can help us, too. Besides, she's a lot older and she's probably married and stuff. The chick's been through a lot. Good grief. "Nice to meet you," Shaun said. "This is Scooter."

The dog c.o.c.ked his head and barked. They both burst out laughing. Scooter licked their faces.

As soon as they had regained their composure, Dejah said: "Well, it seems we're in a h.e.l.luva situation. Granted, a much better one than if we were on the other side of these walls."

Shaun nodded, looking up from where they sat on the floor. "Yeah, I've been in this situation' for a couple of days now." The vacant faces of the infected stared in at them, eyes lolling. He watched them as they pressed in around the booth. The view on the monitors showed that still more were headed their way to join the mob surrounding their fortress against the world gone mad.

"Looks like we might be here a while more," Dejah said. She was looking at the monitors. "Nice to have these at least."

Shaun shrugged. He was trying not to let more feelings of hopelessness well up inside him and cause him to cry right here. Not that the woman would probably care, but still. He didn't want to seem like some kind of sissy. Some kid who couldn't handle himself. Yeah, because you've handled yourself real well up until now. Scooter licked his cheek and he wrapped his arm around his dog's neck.

"Hungry?" Dejah unzipped the bag she'd been carrying. She moved gingerly, babying her wounds. "Water or c.o.ke?"

The smell of chocolate and beef jerky wafted over the scent of urine that had permeated the tollbooth. He'd already filled up the plastic wastepaper basket with pee and wadded up papers that they'd c.r.a.pped on. He'd been planning on dumping it outside as soon as the infected zombies gave him a break. Until then, the plastic bin was overflowing, and the stench was none too pleasant. Dejah hadn't mentioned anything. She looked smart enough. She'd know he had no other choice.

"Oh h.e.l.l, yes. c.o.ke." His stomach flipped and even Scooter got antsy. She handed him a pack of beef jerky, Snickers, and a c.o.ke. "You're a life saver."

"t.i.t for tat, as they say." She smiled and took a bite of a large chunk of beef jerky, washing it down with water. "Anyway, seemed like a good idea to bring as much along as I could while I was hiking through the woods. Not so much when I had to run away from those things out there." Her eyes went to the windows where the infected still had their faces mashed, staring in at them with eyes filled only with hunger.

"You think they'll ever get better? Like, the virus will run its course and they'll be normal again?" Shaun had been thinking about it in terms of what had happened to his parents, how they'd been killed, wondering if they were out there wandering, mindless flesh-eaters like this. He couldn't bear the thought of it. Better if all of this was just temporary. Better if they, and his sisters, were just dead. Not like them.

He hadn't thought about the infection like Dejah had described it: that his family must have been immune because none of them got sick, or hadn't gotten sick yet, there hadn't been much time. Still, if they'd been immune, that meant when you got eaten, you didn't come back like some sort of Hollywood zombie or werewolf. You either got away from the infected people and lived, or died from your wounds. Although the pain of their deaths was still raw, knowing they couldn't come back to cannibalize others and drool and shuffle around like the fiends on the other side of the gla.s.s was somewhat of a relief. At least they're in Heaven now.

Dejah shook her head, studying him closely.

She's recovering well from her wounds, he thought. The wounds on her arms already seemed less irritated, scabbing over. A little water sure went a long way for her.

"I don't know," she said. "All I do know is what they said on the news that it's a virus and spreads rapidly." She took a bite of her jerky and fed a piece of it to Scooter, who snapped it up. "What do you think?"

He shook his head distantly, eyes going back to the monitors. I think we're all screwed. "I don't think things will ever be the same."

She gave him a thin-lipped smile and rubbed his shoulder in comfort. Scooter nuzzled against her for more jerky and she gave the dog a piece. Shaun ripped open the Snickers and took a bite, washing it down with a swallow of c.o.ke. He couldn't help but wonder what came next ... what they could possibly do but stay here until they ran out of supplies and then die together. However, before Dejah had arrived, the zombies wandered away from him and Scooter after a few hours. Maybe that would happen again. Still, he recalled how some of the zombies hadn't really gone away, but just laid in wait, ready to ambush him if he tried to escape.

"How long have you been here, Shaun?"

"Four or five days, I think. We tried to leave town Sat.u.r.day afternoon. A bunch of my friends, teammates, died Friday night after our last football game. Things got out of hand so fast with the sickness that my Dad thought we needed to get out of town before everyone else did. Thing is, after about twelve hours, things got so bad that other people had figured out what Dad figured out and were all going the same way on the interstate. Traffic was jammed for miles. Before we knew it, the infected were all over the place, coming from all directions. There was a lady, a few cars ahead of us. She had a couple little kids and a baby. She was out of her car, running between the lanes. Dad saw her, and went to help. He was good like that." Shaun sucked in a loud breath, he took another bite and swallowed, masking the surge of emotion at the memory of what had happened next. At Dad going down beneath the wave of infected. Still, it felt good to talk about what happened. "My parents' Suburban is about six or seven cars away. Down the left lane." He looked over and found her studying him with compa.s.sion. "They're dead," he said matter-of-factly. "And so are my sisters." He was able to say it now despite the surge of pain in his throat. He felt a little like he was in shock. Maybe he was.

"I'm sorry."

He nodded, staring at the monitor that was aimed the direction of his parents' car. "What about you?" he said. "What are you doing out here?"

"My daughter. She's with my husband in Greenville. I've got to get there."

"Really? I was just there last week. That's where my football game was - before we all got sick."

"You were in Greenville?"

"Sure. I play for Millward Christian High. Or, used to anyway. We had a game at Greenville Christian Academy last Friday. In fact, we were on the bus coming home when we saw the plane explode I guess it set all this off."

"You saw it?"

"The thing exploded right over our heads. We were crossing the Hunt County line headed back home when the night lit up like a thousand fireworks. The boom of the explosion shook the bus."

"Wow."

"Yeah. Everyone was sick before we even got home. Bus driver rolled the bus right up to the ER. I'm the only one that isn't dead out of the whole d.a.m.n team. Coach too. Whatever it was, we got it first thing. Got out before they quarantined Hunt County. I guess we'd still be in Hunt County if we were driving any slower. Or at least I'd be in Hunt County. Everyone else is just dead." Shaun absently pet Scooter, thinking back to how he'd been mulling over the unfairness of how Jana had used him like a p.a.w.n to get her old boyfriend back. Now it seemed so insignificant compared to all of this. He wondered if Jana was still alive. He secretly hoped her jackhole boyfriend was a s...o...b..ring zombie eating rats in some alley. "I don't even know if any of my other friends ended up infected or not. Dad whisked us out of there so fast. He was big on end of the world Revelations type scenarios. He was instantly freaked out."

"Hmm, that sucks." Then, Dejah smiled. "But did you win the game?"

Shaun's eyebrows shot up. He looked at her, and though she had a twinkle in her eye, she really wanted to know. It was strange as h.e.l.l to be talking about a football game surrounded by windows chock full of flesh-eating humans smashing their ugly mugs against the Plexiglas, wanting to slurp out their guts.

"Yup, by fourteen points." He smiled.

"So I guess you're a pretty good runner, then."

He shrugged. "Sure. I was on special teams, so, yeah, that's about all I was really any good at."

"Well," she said. "That's all that really counts right now. Because you know we're going to have to make a run for it eventually."

He nodded. "I figured. I was just trying to figure what to do. Where to go."

"Well, now, that's easy."

"Really?"

"Sure," Dejah smiled. "You're going with me."

CHAPTER 14.

Frank Baum poked a finger between the yellowed plastic blinds drawn shut on the front windows of the Bocadomart, where he'd been holed up for the last couple days and nights. He peered through the narrow slit into the parking lot, darkened by the tweedy grays of twilight. Presently, the lot was vacant of the lumbering, lurching fiends he'd come to refer to as Sickies, who'd been h.e.l.l bent on having him for a tasty bocado. Parked and crashed cars littered the broken concrete, but it wasn't the coming of the monsters that ruined the parking lot. Even before the infection hit this part of Duncanville, Bocadomart was run down and neglected. The little barrio grocery store saw action mostly from illegal immigrants, food stamp holders, and drug dealers capitalizing on the poor and downtrodden.

What Bocadomart had going for it was the thick iron bars s.p.a.ced every four inches across the entire gla.s.s front of the store. Roll-down steel, garage-type doors further strengthened the entryways, protecting the front and back interior doors. There were two interior surveillance cameras and one outside camera. Frank could watch what was going on out front without having to peek through the blinds; but being the old geezer that he was, he didn't trust modern conveniences too d.a.m.n much and preferred to have a look-see out the blinds every now and then just to make sure that what he saw on the surveillance monitor was really happening in the parking lot of the mostly abandoned strip mall. And right now, that was just about nothing.

The Sickies seemed to move around more during the daylight for some reason. Sure, there were a few stragglers that lurched about at night, but for the most part, they started banging on the windows a few hours after sun up. Maybe, he thought, they slept at night out of habit.

Frank let the plastic slat drop into position on its dusty strings. He never really came to this part of Duncanville, but while trying to find a way out of the city, he pa.s.sed the store and saw the doors open and no one inside. One quick scan of the place and he knew it was a pretty good spot to ride out the Sickies for as long as possible. Food, water, reinforced walls and doors. The place was made of cinder blocks lending itself even further to indestructibility. He hauled all of his weapons and supplies inside the store from his Hummer, which he parked out front within jumping distance. When the Sickies were gone, he busily siphoned the gas out of all of the cars parked in the lot. As a result, the back storage room of the Bocadomart smelled like a gas tank.

Frank popped the top of a cold Bud and took a sip. Electricity and water still worked. That was good, although he had to wonder for how long.

He walked behind the counter to an olive-green, vinyl living room chair. It was covered with a nubby, woven Mexican blanket and a lot of cat hair. He sat and stared at the black and white surveillance monitor: same view of the empty parking lot he'd just seen with his own two eyes. Fishing around in the stack of English-version magazines he'd gathered from the magazine wall, he pulled out a Time and thumbed through it. Most of the magazines in Bocadomart were in Spanish, a language he'd never really mastered despite the proliferation of Mexican immigrants in the area.

"Whole lot of nothin'," Frank grumbled aloud and tossed the glossy magazine to the side. Even if the news contained within the magazine's pages had been interesting, it was irrelevant now. He had no idea how far the infection had spread, if it had crossed the state or Mexican borders, but in a way, not even that really mattered. His world, his own personal sphere, had ceased to exist when Nanette died.

Leaning his head against the chair back, Frank closed his eyes and sighed.

Infection took her only four hours after they found out about the sickness. The doctors told him outright that she would likely die, that it wouldn't be long before she slipped into a comatose state and then ... he could tell from the looks on their faces that she'd become one of them. Even as they tried to convince him to stay there, he ignored offers of a wheelchair, carried her out to the car himself, and took her home. Nanette made him promise that if she didn't die, if she woke up as one of the Sickies, he'd put her out of her misery. That was his Nanette: tough old bird to the bitter end. When he protested, she said she didn't want to become some sort of rabid dog - she made him promise to take her out if she woke up from her coma snarling and clawing like that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Ellis who lived two doors down from them, who left his trash in the street and the dogs tore into the overfull bags every week.

G.o.d graciously spared Frank from the task. His darling Nanette never woke up from that coma. He was on his sixth cup of coffee - black - and shaking like a junkie when he noticed the slight rise and fall of her frail chest had stopped. Softly, he touched her pale face, which, even after seven decades of living, was smooth and as beautiful as the day he met her. She didn't twitch. Putting his ear beside her mouth and nose, he listened for the breath that didn't come. He slid his hand under the thin cotton of her favorite rosebud-covered nightgown, onto her chest, hoping for the telltale beat of her generous heart, but it was still. The heart that had loved him with a force beyond reckoning was silent.

Dead.

Frank scowled. It was always supposed to be him that kicked the bucket first. Old, crotchety, drinkin', smokin', never-say-die him. Not Nanette.

Frank finished the rest of his beer.

"d.a.m.n it, Nanette." He wiped his watery eyes and lifted the broken plastic shield away from the cigarette case. It hadn't always been broken; he bashed the thing with his rifle b.u.t.t until it shattered.

Grabbing a package of Marlboros, he ripped the cellophane from the top and opened the box. He simultaneously fumbled for his lighter as he stuck a cigarette in his mouth. The little flame engulfed the cigarette end and he took a puff. "Yeah, yeah, I know, Nanette. I'll stop next week." He laughed. Somewhere Nanette was rolling her eyes.

The television was useless. No cable and what few channels the storeowners must have been able to pick up on a normal day were off the air. Nothing but loud static as he manually turned the dial on the old television. Frank turned it off in frustration.

He had everything he needed except his Nanette and entertainment. In the storage room, he found three VCRs. Presumably they'd been used to make security tapes at some point, but now none of them worked. The radio he found in the men's bathroom sometimes yielded a channel, but it was AM and the programming was obviously pre-recorded, so it didn't help him. He wanted to hear news. Updates. Something telling him what was happening. He hadn't seen an uninfected person since he drove up to the Bocadomart. The last non-Sickie he'd seen had been a panhandler on the street getting mauled by about fourteen Sickies, and d.a.m.n it all if he was going to stop his Hummer for some d.a.m.n window-washing pest that contributed to the clogged traffic problems.

In hindsight, maybe he should've stopped and at least took a few shots at some of the Sickies, but who knows how that might have ended up. He didn't survive the battle of k.u.msong Salient to end up lunchmeat because he stopped to help some G.o.dd.a.m.n no-good vagrant.

Frank gave another loud sigh.

"You should get some sleep," he said to himself. He'd been doing that a lot today: talking to himself. He needed to hear a voice even if it were his own. He was pretty sure that staying holed up in here would drive him nuts long before one of the Sickies got him.

Frank went to the back storage room where he'd made himself a bed out of a yellow Corona inflatable pool float, a pile of a.s.sorted clothing he'd found in the store, and a handful of new beach towels decorated with big red letters that spelled: Tecate. If the d.a.m.n Sickies were going to sleep at night, he might as well too. Of course that was just a theory. He just hoped the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds stayed away so he didn't have to be proved right or wrong. He lowered himself to the floor and crawled onto the bed, pulling a beach towel over him for a blanket. His elbow banged the cold, cinderblock wall as he stuck his arm beneath his head for a pillow. "d.a.m.n!"

Every time he shifted, the pool float's air dispersed to a different part. His feet popped up and down with every movement. His b.u.t.t met the hard floor beneath no matter how he positioned himself and his boots hung over the end of the rigged up mess.

"I'm too old for this s.h.i.t." Frank closed his eyes. Somewhere he could hear his Nanette: Quit your b.i.t.c.hing and be glad you don't have to sleep on the bare floor. The old girl was always right. "'Night kid, I love you."

He listened to the ticking of the plastic clock hanging on the wall and prayed that G.o.d showed him some sign of hope tomorrow. Or even the next day. But as he drifted toward sleep, his brain recalled a bunch of fire and brimstone evangelists and this that and the other End Times message of the dead rising from graves, bodies floating through the skies, and fire raining down from the heavens to destroy the world. Pleasant stuff like that, which, up until this moment, he'd chalked up to overzealous preachers on power trips trying to part some poor suckers from their hard earned money.

Up until this moment.

Now, seeing all this crazy s.h.i.t unfold, he wondered if those lily-white preacher boys knew a thing or two that he should've lent an ear to. Then again, those preacher boys might be dead or infected, roaming the streets, doing their best to send a few souls to their final destinations on their own.

"Oh, h.e.l.l," Frank muttered, smacking his dry lips. "Just go to sleep."

Tomorrow would be a whole new day. Something would change tomorrow. He just knew it.

CHAPTER 15.

Dejah and Shaun sat with their knees folded, heads down, talking in whispers for about an hour before the infected zombie hordes around the tollbooth began to disperse. Finally, Shaun pretended to be asleep, but watched a monitor with one eye, while Dejah did the same. Shaun told her how he'd seen some zombies hide as if to set up an ambush for him, so they tried to remember where the infected headed, tracking them on the monitor, noting where they seemed to disappear. Scooter slept peacefully curled next to Shaun. The smell of them in the booth was almost zoo-like, bearable only out of necessity.

Dejah was intent on going one way across the lake using the bridge, taking 303 to Duncanville Road, down to Camp Wisdom Road headed east, toward Mesquite, Rockwall and Greenville beyond. The plan was to dash out of the tollbooth and run for the first vehicle with no bodies in the seats and keys in the ignition preferably something big that could push other vehicles out of the way.

"Do you think we can make it all the way across, even in a truck?" Shaun asked her.

"I think so," Dejah said. "It doesn't look crowded enough that we can't weave our way through."

Moments went by. Both of them were getting antsy.

"It doesn't look like they're going to thin out much more," Shaun finally said.

"Too many of them were drawn over by me when I came in, I guess." There was a hint of defeat in Dejah's voice.

"No," Shaun said, "You drew them out. That was a good thing. It's just, now-"