Demetrius eyed the roofline. There. A dark shape. Movement. The shape dipped back out of sight.
Looking down, Demetrius grunted with interest. The other crazies were nowhere in sight. Scared off by the gunshot? That meant self-preservation, something new. That kid up in the library certainly hadn’t seemed very worried about pain or death or even staying in one piece. Did this mean they were calming down? Or simply growing craftier, more dangerous?
He didn’t have time to weigh the possibilities. Later, yes, it would be important. For now, though, he had to get out of this tree. He felt confident in his ability to climb out of the tree, especially with the remaining hose at his disposal. He was happy that the crazies had run off, clearing an LZ, but Terrier Girl’s death proved that the sniper had an angle and was still watching the base of the tree. The guy might even feel some kind of personal grudge toward Demetrius…the one that got away.
Demetrius didn’t plan on hanging around any longer than he had to. He didn’t want the sniper repositioning, and he didn’t want a fresh batch of crazies at the base of the tree.
Using short movements and keeping an eye on the roof line, he tugged the hose up through the branches, wrapping it around his chest and abdomen so it wouldn’t catch or tangle in the branches as he climbed. Once he had it all reeled in and wrapped up, he swiveled around to opposite side of the tree—just like a squirrel keeping itself away from a hunter on the ground, he thought grimly—and began his descent. He took his time, pausing to check the strength of the branches, the ground below, the roof line, then moving again, dropping limb by limb, lower and lower. His battered body ached with the effort, but Demetrius had learned to ignore pain during his military career, and he did his best to file this current discomfort away under "L" for later. When, at last, he reached the bottommost branch, he set to work with the hose, tightening his crude harness and tying the free end to a limb as thick as his thigh. Satisfied, he ran his checks again—roof, ground, hose, roof—dropped the slack and stepped off the limb with the hose held in both hands.
He descended hand over hand, hating the swaying motion he was building. Nothing to do about it now, he knew, and he hurried along, swinging side to side like a pendulum and dreading the sound of the rifle.
There was no gunshot. He hit the ground, flattened against the wide trunk, which shielded him from the chemistry building, and untied the hose from around his waist. The girl he’d thought of as Terrier Girl lay dead at his feet spread out in the grass next to all that glass. Those shards would work as weapons, he knew, but thinking of his cut hand, he decided to hold out for something better. Standing here with solid ground beneath him, having survived a pair of hand-to-hand situations, sniper fire, a jump from the upper stories of the library, and the climb out of the tree, he was feeling downright spry, almost giddy.
What now?
Back into the library to help the kids he’d left upstairs? It was a nice thought, but it wasn’t very realistic. The place was crawling with crazies, and chances were he’d just get his ass killed in the attempt. Besides, he had no guarantee they were still alive, let alone that he’d find them if he went hunting.
What, then?
He scanned the area. In the distance, crazies flashed by. Down in town, buildings burned. From here, he could make out one of the big apartment complexes on College Drive—Gable Arms, he thought it was called—fully engulfed in flame. Alarms shrieked in all directions, as did people, most of them sounding fairly distant, he was thankful to note. He glanced at the roof line. Nothing.
Over in the west end of town, something exploded. A string of smaller, popping explosions followed. Secondary events, caused by the main explosion.
One thing he wasn’t hearing much of was gunfire. Off in the direction of the residential sections, a few shots rattled in uneven succession, different calibers, different locations, different shooters. Once, nearer, he heard the flat crack of a .22. Then silence. Overhead, nothing.
Something nagged at Demetrius. The whole event, at least as far as this part of campus went, had been going on for less than an hour and probably only half that time, yet judging from the memory of shots he had heard while inside the library and the number of bodies strewn along the quad, Demetrius concluded the rooftop sniper had been blasting away for a good fifteen or twenty minutes prior to Demetrius rappelling from the window.
The fucker had known.
He had known this was going to happen, and he’d prepared everything before all this shit had hit the cosmic fan. There was a chance it was a cop trying to stabilize the situation by sniping psychos, but Demetrius doubted the notion. Even if some cop had mistaken Demetrius for a crazy, why play games? Why shoot the rope till it snapped?
The guy was no cop. Who was he, then? His excellent marksmanship wasn’t much of a clue. After all, this was Central Pennsylvania not Central Park, and in this part of the world, boys picked up rifles as soon as they put down their baby rattles. Shooting and hunting were a way of life here, so much so that many of the local schools shut down on the opening day of buck season each year. Really, then, it could be almost anyone up there. But the time thing…that’s what felt significant, the shooter getting into position so quickly.
The bastard had known it was coming, the whole thing. He’d prepared for the event. He didn’t warn everyone. He didn’t high tail it out of town. He set himself up with a rifle and plenty of ammo and waited for the fun, the sick bastard.
I wonder if he remembered a comfy chair and popcorn, Demetrius thought, and his hands curled into fists.
This was terrorism. Right here in Cheery Valley. It was a simple equation, really. If someone, even one person, had known all of this was coming—and that fucker up there had definitely known all about this shit—it meant terrorism. Planned mass murder. That son-of-a-bitch had killed a lot of people from his convenient little perch. Under the right sort of persuasion, he might share a good deal of information about what was causing this mass psychosis. He might even know how to make these kids normal again.
Demetrius caught himself. They’re not kids, not anymore. He could not think of them, even fleetingly, in those terms. These were no longer the weak, shuffling wingnuts for whom he’d built such a reservoir of contempt. These were killers. For Demetrius, any encounter meant fight or flight, no posturing allowed. And if he did fight, he had to fight hard and fast and for keeps.
What’s the spirit of the bayonet fighter?
No mercy, drill sergeant.
But his gripe wasn’t with the random crazies. He’d snap their necks if he had to, but they hadn’t caused all this, and if he could avoid hurting them, he would, so long as it didn’t put him in danger.
He looked again to the roof line and, seeing the slightest movement there, he smiled. My gripe’s with him.
He sprinted from the tree to the dark shrubbery bunched at the side of the chemistry building. Then he started looking for a way in.
Chapter 24
The screen door groaned, and the bolt of the inner door rattled. Steve looked at Cat. She looked at him. The back door popped open, and Steve could hear someone crying.
"Someone is inside," Steve said. He rose from the couch, reached toward the knife, frowned, and left it.
Moving past him, Cat called out, "Brianna? Heidi?"
Steve touched her shoulder, but she shrugged his hand and moved forward, where window light gleamed along her slim, sweat-slick arms and glinted along the butcher knife in her hand.
A girl’s face, badly battered and framed in a tangled, brunette disarray, emerged from the darkness of the mudroom. She stared, her right eye nearly closed with swelling, dark circles of smudged mascara making her look both hunted and haunted. Beneath her nose, snot pink with blood fanned across her trembling lips and chin.
"Heidi," Cat said.
Heidi backpedaled. Then she stopped, left eye wide.
Cat reached out her empty hand. "It’s okay, Heidi. It’s me, Cat."
Heidi kept starin
g. Her eyes flicked to Steve.
"This is my friend Steve," Cat said. "We’re okay, Heidi. You’re safe."
Sure, we’re okay, Steve thought, but is Heidi? He saw no green slime around her mouth or anywhere else, and she wasn’t attacking them, but she didn’t look exactly sane, either.
Heidi leaned her back into the doorjamb and slid to the floor, where she hugged her knees and sobbed.
"You’re okay," Cat said.
Heidi lifted her head. She was a good looking girl, Steve realized, if you ignored the shiner and the snot. Her shirt, stained with blood and ripped most of the way open, revealed large breasts barely restrained by a white bra. Long, deep scratch marks oozed red across her upper chest, and Steve noticed one of her earrings was missing, the earlobe torn and bloodied.
Outside, a lunatic cackled, sounding close.
Heidi turned toward the noise and shuddered. "He’s coming."
"Who?"
"He’s been following me forever."
Cat crouched and drew her into a hug. "You’re okay now."
Was she okay, though? Steve wondered. It was the sort of lie we told at the worst of moments. Guaranteed at least one well-meaning asshole fed Humpty Dumpty the same line.
Hang in there, Humpty old boy, everything’s going to be a-okay.
The laughter started up again. If that guy had anything to say about it, Heidi would be very un-okay. Shit, it sounded like the guy was in the house with them…
Then it hit him. Heidi was so out-of-her-head scared she’d forgotten to close the back door. He grabbed the knife, hurried past them, half expecting to meet the crazy there in the darkness, and soon saw his initial suspicion had been correct: the back door was wide open. Through it, he could see the small, patchy yard, a scraggly pine tree, a crazy looking bastard all covered in blood, sitting in the wading pool, chewing the broken end of a beer bottle…
Steve shut and locked the door, making as little noise as possible. Had the crazy seen him? Heard him? He pulled the curtain an inch to one side of the mudroom window and risked a glance. The pool was empty.
Returning to the kitchen, Steve set the knife on the counter and scanned the room for a more comfortable weapon, something he could trust himself to use without hesitation. His eyes moved along the culinary terrain. Food processor, Garfield cookie jar, toaster… He grinned, imagining himself holding onto the cord and spinning the toaster overhead. He opened the closet.
Boots, coats, a shovel, rock salt. There. Field hockey sticks. Two of them. He grabbed both and carried them into the living room, where the girls sat on the couch and Heidi was telling her story.
"We were at Troy’s party, me and Lindsay and Brianna, and we were running late because, well, we were waiting for Brianna, you know, so then we got over there, and some people were outside throwing this Frisbee around, one of those ones that light up? And we were heading down into the basement, that’s where the party was, and then this kid yelled and threw the Frisbee at me. Troy’s brother? The cute one, from IUP? From the Halloween party?"
Cat nodded.
Heidi rattled on, her talker on autopilot. "So he said, ‘Hey, you want to get high?’ And I said all right, a little, so we went inside, up to Troy’s room, and we were up there for a while, smoking and stuff, he’s a pretty nice guy." She stopped for a second and looked over at the kitchen cabinets, then resumed her story. "So then all this noise started, and we didn’t know what was going on. It sounded like some big fight or something, so we went outside and…" Her eyes went wide, and Steve knew she was seeing it all again. "They were crazy. Everybody. They were fighting. People were coming out of the basement, and everybody was screaming and yelling, and this one kid, I saw him smash this other kid’s face right through a window, and then Troy’s brother was like, ‘We gotta get out of here,’ and I said, ‘What about my friends?’ and he said there wasn’t anything we could do, and he grabbed my arm, and we ran around the house, and people were fighting there, too, and out front, and across the street at this other house. So then he asked me where I thought we should go, and I figured I’d bring him here and you know, wait for Lindsay and Brianna, but then we were crossing the street, and the car hit us."
"What?" Cat reached out and stroked Heidi’s hair. "A car hit you?"
"Him, really," Heidi said, and now she was crying again. "It just came out of nowhere, you know? It was so loud, and then the boy was just gone, and I got knocked over, and that’s when I hit my face. I looked back, and the boy was in the road, and he looked so bad. It was so weird. I mean, he wasn’t all right, you know? He was all twisted, and his one leg was up behind his back, and his one hand was just tapping on the ground, and all this…all this stuff was coming out of him, and then I saw red lights, and the car was backing up. He backed right over him! Then he kept backing up, and he rammed right into the car in front of me. I ran. But I guess the guy hopped out because I heard him running after me and shouting and laughing. It was awful." Grabbing hold of Cat’s arm, she said, "We have to get out of here."
"What?" Cat said. "Where? Get out of the room, or—"
Heidi laughed. It sounded unnatural, awful. "Out of this town," she said. "Now."
Steve figured he’d better flick that plan out of her head before she fully committed. He could see by Cat’s expression that she wanted nothing to do with it, and he sure as hell didn’t. Here, they had doors, locks, food, running water. Out there, shit…out there, it was a madhouse.
"I don’t think that’s such a good idea," he said.
Heidi glanced at him then just as quickly turned back to Cat. "We’ll pack our things. Just do a quick job, though. Do you think we should wait for Lindsay and Brianna? No. No, we can’t. We don’t have the time. I mean, I wouldn’t expect them to wait for us. Could you be ready in ten minutes?" She paced the floor, twisting and untwisting her hair.
"Where would we go, Heidi?" Cat asked.
"Anywhere. If we stay here, they’ll find us."
Steve said, "And they wouldn’t find us out there?"
Heidi gathered her hair in both hands. "Cat, please tell this asshole to shut the fuck up."
"Look," Steve said, "if you want to split, go for it. Truly. But I’m staying here." There. Let her have it straight.
"Fine," Heidi said. "Cat and I are leaving."
Steve turned to Cat and raised his brows.
"Heidi, we can’t go out there," Cat said. "The whole town’s one big slaughterhouse. It would be suicide."
Heidi lost it. She paced faster than ever, throwing her arms around and shouting again, all incredulous. She couldn’t believe this shit. She thought they were friends. And then, pointing to Steve, she said, "Who the fuck is this asshole, anyway?"
Steve kept his mouth shut. He’d had his say. Now he’d let them hash it out. He watched and listened. It was obvious Cat wasn’t going to budge, and he wondered what Heidi was like on a good day. Not bad looking, but Christ, no brains at all.
Cat said, "Heidi, we need to sit tight and chill out."
Outside, as if to prove her point, another pack of lunatics ran past, hooting. In the back, the giggler cackled again, one psychotic bird answering the call of a passing flock.
"That’s him," Heidi said. "That’s the guy from the car." Looking more afraid than ever, she reached out, obviously intending to pull Cat from the couch. "We have to go."
Cat shook her head. "We’re safer here. We’ll keep the doors locked, the lights out, the weapons close."
Heidi started laughing. It was horrible. "You don’t get it."
"We do," Cat said. "We came through town. Look at me, Heidi. Open your eyes and look at me." She spread her arms, showing just how blood-soaked she was.
"Are you deaf or something?" Heidi shrieked. All her manic laughter was gone now, replaced with fury. "He’s coming for us. We have to get the fuck out of here!"
Her shrieking got the giggler started up again. By the sounds of it, he could be next door, Steve figured. "We have to keep the nois
e down," he said, patting the air.
Heidi gave him the finger.
Steve kept his voice level and calm. "You’ve been through a lot tonight. You’re not thinking straight. If you’ll just settle down for a second—"
"Fuck off, Dr. Phil," Heidi said, still aiming the finger at him.
Steve wondered if he could swing a hockey stick fast enough to knock that finger off. A tempting thought, but probably not the best idea. Instead, he extended the other bat in her direction. "You should take this," he said, figuring it might redirect her, give her something to do, make her a part of the department of home defense.
Heidi shook her head and dropped her hand. "I don’t want the fucking thing. I’m not going to hit anybody. I’m getting out of here."
Steve felt his face growing hot. Fuck this. He had absolutely no loyalty to this girl. None. And here she was, bitching and flipping him off and screaming so loud she might as well go out back and ring a dinner bell to call all the crazies. Steve tossed it on the coffee table. "Fuck it. Stick it up your ass for all I care."
Heidi started up with her loud, humorless laughter again.
"Take the stick," Cat said. Steve could tell she was losing her patience, too. "You have to defend yourself."
"Are you a fucking retard or something, Cat? I already told you! I don’t want it!" Heidi shouted.
Outside the giggler yelled "Woo-eeeeet!"
Hissing, Steve motioned with his palm. Quiet down, quiet down.
"Don’t hiss at me, cocksucker!" Heidi shouted.
Steve clenched his teeth and tightened his grip on the stick. This bitch was going to get them killed if he didn’t shut her up.
"Look, Heidi," Cat said, taking her firmly by the arms. "You have to knock off the shouting. You can’t shout anymore."
"Get your hands off me, bitch!" Heidi shouted. "You always have to do shit your own way and you never give a shit about anybody else. You’re just a quitter. First, you quit school, and now you’re quitting Lindsay and Brianna."
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