Nelson’s credit that he didn’t indulge himself with a second I-told-you-so. “No, I’ll do it.”
There was a secure landline in the station chief’s office. Guilder made his way upstairs and down the empty hallway, his left leg dragging pitifully. All the offices had been stripped bare; the only things in the room were a chair, a cheap metal desk, and a telephone. He lowered himself into the chair and sat there, staring at the phone. After some time he realized his cheeks were wet; he had begun to weep. The strange, emotionless weeping that had come to seem like a harbinger of his fate, and the body’s unbidden confession of his wretched little life. As if his body were saying to him: Just you wait. Just you wait and see what I’ve got in store for you. A living death, sonny boy.
But this would never happen; once he picked up the phone, it would all be over. A small comfort, to know that at least he wouldn’t live long enough to suffer the full brunt of his decline. What he had failed to accomplish that day in the garage would now be done for him.
Mr. Guilder? Come with us. A hand on his shoulder, the march down the hall.
No.
20
By the time they reached the buses, the soldiers had established a perimeter. A crowd was forming in the predawn darkness. Danny’s bus was in the third slot; Kittridge glimpsed him through the windshield, hat wedged onto his head, hands clamping the wheel. Vera stood at the base of the steps, holding a clipboard.
God bless you, Danny Chayes, Kittridge thought. This is going to be the ride of your life.
“Please, everyone, keep calm!” Porcheki, moving up and down the line of buses behind the barrier of soldiers, was yelling through a megaphone. “Form an orderly line and load from the rear! If you don’t get a seat, wait for the second load!”
The soldiers had erected barriers to serve as a kind of gate. The mob was pressing behind them, funneling toward the gap. Where were they going? people were asking. Was the destination still Chicago, or somewhere else? Just ahead of Kittridge’s group was a family with two children, a boy and girl, wearing filthy pajamas. Dirty feet, matted hair—they couldn’t have been older than five. The girl was clutching a naked Barbie. More thunder rolled in from the west, accompanied by flashes of light at the horizon. Kittridge and April were both keeping a hand on Tim, afraid the mob would swallow him.
Once through the gap, the group moved quickly to Danny’s bus. The Robinsons and Boy Jr. were the first to board; at the bottom of the steps were Wood and Delores, Jamal and Mrs. Bellamy. Pastor Don brought up the rear, behind Kittridge, Tim, and April.
A burst of lightning, ghostly white, ignited the air, freezing the scene in Kittridge’s mind. Half a second later, a long peal of thunder rolled. Kittridge felt the impact through the soles of his feet.
Not thunder. Ordnance.
A trio of jets shot overhead, then two more. Suddenly everyone was screaming—a high, shrill sound of undammed panic that built from the rear, engulfing the crowd like a wave. Kittridge turned his face toward the west.
He had never seen the virals in a large group before. Sometimes, from his perch on the tower, he had seen three of them together—never less or more—and of course there’d been the ones in the underground garage, which might have numbered as many as twenty. That was nothing compared to this. The sight suggested a flock of earthbound birds: a coordinated mass of hundreds, thousands even, rushing toward the wire. A pod, Kittridge remembered. That’s what they’re calling them, pods. For a second he felt a kind of awe, a pure breathtaken wonder at its organic majesty.
They’d sweep over the camp like a tsunami.
Humvees were racing toward the western wire, rooster-tails of dust boiling from their wheels. Suddenly the buses were unguarded; the crowd surged toward them. A great human weight crashed into Kittridge from behind. As the crowd enveloped him, he heard April scream.
“Tim!”
He dove toward her voice, fighting his way through the mob like a swimmer against the current, tossing bodies aside. A clot of people were trying to jam themselves into Danny’s bus, pushing, shoving. Kittridge saw the man who had been ahead of them in line holding his daughter over his head. He was yelling, “Please, somebody take her! Somebody take my daughter!”