Monster Nation(47)

'It's called 'Death Valley',' Charles told her. ''Death Valley,'' he repeated as if that alone would change her mind. 'It's the hottest place on earth, I think. We learned about it in Geography class. People who go there get lost and they die. You don't go in there without water. We don't have any water, in case you didn't notice.'

They could not just stop. Not when Nevada was so close. They couldn't go back, either. The entire US Army was probably looking for her back there. 'It's just a name! We can cross it in a couple of hours. We can stop for water in just a couple of hours.' He started heading back to the car. 'Charles, wait'look. There's somebody else here.'

He looked where she pointed. She was right, there was a pickup truck parked on the side of the road just a couple of hundred yards away. Dust and grime besmirched its sides so thoroughly that it had taken on the colors of the desert. It looked like there were two people lying down in the bed of the truck, moving against one another. Lovers parked in the middle of nowhere for a little afternoon fun, she guessed. It felt too hot for that but she supposed hormones could overcome heat exhaustion if they were strong enough.

'Oh, dude,' Charles said, his face falling. 'It's two guys.'

'Yeah, well,' Nilla said, getting desperate. They couldn't turn back now'her name was waiting for her. 'Maybe they have some water.'

Charles didn't move. She smiled weakly at him but she knew very well he wasn't going to go ask for water from the truck's occupants. Fine, she thought, she would do it herself. She covered the distance between the two vehicles as quickly as she could, her feet slipping on the loose gravel of the shoulder. It was so hot. When she reached the pickup she cleared her throat a couple of times to try to warn the two men that she was approaching. They didn't stop what they were doing so she stepped closer. 'Hello? Excuse me?' She took another step and smelled blood in the air. She closed her eyes, knowing what she would find. There were two people in the back of the truck, yes. One of them rapidly bleeding to death. The other one had beat him there.

The ghoul must have felt her regard. He reared up, a mouthful of flesh tumbling from between his lips and got to his feet so that he towered over her, his stained face ten feet up in the air. He wore a torn-up padded vest even in the intense heat and his legs looked as thick as tree trunks. That wasn't what she noticed first, though.

He didn't have any arms.





Monster Nation





Chapter Fourteen


The I-25 Corridor is completely backed up, all the way to the Tech Center, it looks like there was a multi-car pileup somewhere down there'please, once again we have to urge everyone not to try to get out of the city by car, it will only increase the chaos. [Traffic Report from Denver's 7, Special Emergency Bulletin 4/4/05]

A spill of them came up the bed of the Platte, maybe two or maybe three dozen, their feet splashing wildly in the muddy water. Among the dead Clark saw a couple of orange jumpsuits'those would be the original infected prisoners of Florence'but also one or two Battle Dress Uniforms. Military personnel. He raised his pistol but didn't shoot.

Behind him the platoon sergeant howled at the troops. Chief Horrocks waved his arms like a demon as he urged his soldiers on. 'Put your f*cking back into that, Mendelsohn! Get some of that 550 cord down here, we need to secure this end.'

Clark lined up his weapon with the forehead of the leading assailant. A woman in a waitress uniform with a nametag that read KRISTI. Her face wide and open and blank. It would take a lot, a complete shift in perspective, to pull the trigger. It had to happen, and soon.

'Come on, come on, you all get lazy since we came home? You been sitting around watchin' cable, eating Burger King every day? It's MREs on the menu tonight unless we stop this thing here and now!'

Clark knew better than that. The infected had not stayed together as a unified force against which he could run flanking maneuvers and surgical strikes. They had spread out, thousands of them heading in thousands of directions and everywhere they infected the civilians they found. In a few hours there would be more infected than healthy in Denver. This was a holding action, a way to buy time until the relocation buses were out in convoy, headed for safer climes. Clark lowered his weapon.

'Now now now go go go, move it, move it,' Horrocks boomed and finally, yes'the two lengths of orange detainment netting lifted like the sails of a day-glo ship. They snagged a few of the infected, their clumsy hands snarled up in the plastic but the rest just surged forward, trying to get through the gauntlet the soldiers had erected. They were being funneled straight toward Clark and the ten best shots of the platoon.