He tumbled into the pa.s.senger seat.

The thing hit the door hard, slamming it into LaRouche's arm, causing his M4 to fly out of his grasp. He cried out, more in fear than pain. A hand like a robotic vice shot through the open window and grabbed LaRouche by the throat. He couldn't see its face. Only the wild, dreadlocked hair and gnashing teeth. LaRouche tried to cry out, but couldn't get air past the grip on his throat.

He scrambled for his side arm.

The head worked through the window, jaws snapping.

LaRouche found his Beretta M9, yanked it from the holster.

He felt the Humvee moving, could hear gravel slinging. The world out past the windows was a blur of gray. Centrifugal force shoved him towards the creature's jaws. He tried to get the pistol up, but something blocked him, something was in the way. He just kept thinking, why isn't anyone helping me?

The teeth were so close that LaRouche could see the dark gums, smell the sickly breath. He recoiled away yanking at his pistol in a fever pitch of panic, but he couldn't pull his face any further from the jaws, and the pistol was not coming free. If the thing gained another inch, it would have him. It would bite him.

Something suddenly poked through from the back seat. A long, thin, tube of black metal that jutted between LaRouche's headrest and the side of the Humvee, and it speared the thing in the face, pressing against its jaw.

A flash.

Blood.

In his lap. In his face. In his mouth.

Smoke seeped from the thing's wide-open maw like it breathed fire. The eyes rolled back. The grip loosened. LaRouche ripped it off of him, yanked his right hand free, still holding his pistol, then slammed the hunk of metal into the creature's face and shoved it out of the window.

Above him, the M2 thundered.

The little girl screamed.

The stranger's voice shouted hysterically.

Small arms fire popped and crackled.

The Humvee fishtailed, hit a b.u.mp, lifted up, then slammed back down onto the ground.

LaRouche gagged, spat the coppery taste from his mouth, bits of tobacco coming out with it. His stomach heaved. "It got in my mouth!" he screamed, a sudden sensation of sickness coming over him. "It got in my mouth! It's in my mouth!"

He spat again, this time the entire chaw coming out and falling onto the floorboard of the Humvee. He lifted his sleeve to wipe his tongue on it, but realized that his sleeve was already coated in blood. He stared at himself, the blood on his sleeve, on his lap, all over his chest. His mouth hung open, and he didn't know what to do with himself.

Something tugged at him.

He looked at his door, saw that it was still open. He hadn't lost his rifle-it was still tethered to him by his sling. He pushed the door open, yanked his rifle inside, then closed the door. He felt strangely, immensely elated that his rifle was not lost. Then he crashed down again, odd, unruly thoughts vying for his attention.

It's in my mouth.

f.u.c.king thirteen bodies.

I shouldn't have eaten the Charms.

Wilson slapped a bottle of water into his chest. "Rinse yourself out! Don't f.u.c.king swallow!"

He grabbed the bottle. Twisted the cap. Squeezed a flood of ice-cold water into his mouth. Spewed it out the window. More water. More spewing.

"How we lookin'?" Wilson yelled up to Joel, hunched over his steering wheel as the Humvee ripped off of the gravel eas.e.m.e.nt and skidded onto paved road.

"I don't know!" Joel screamed back, his voice cracking. "I can't see them anymore!"

LaRouche hocked, retched, hung his head out the window and spit. He ducked back in so that he could wave forward. "Keep going, Wilson. Keep us going."

They made a sudden turn onto a main highway-LaRouche couldn't see the sign. Wilson floored it, maxing out the Humvee's speed and putting another mile between them and the infected.

"What the f.u.c.k's going on?" the stranger yelled. "Who are you people?"

LaRouche spit twice more, then spun around. "Who the f.u.c.k are you?"

The stranger lurched forward. "I'm this girl's father, you sonofab.i.t.c.h! What the h.e.l.l are you doing with her?"

There was a moment of surprised silence. And then LaRouche nearly climbed over the radio console to get to him. He punched him in the face with a quick left hand, then tried to reach past Joel's legs to grab a piece of him. The man rocked back, holding his nose.

"Hey, hey!" Jim shoved LaRouche back towards his seat.

In the back, barely visible behind Joel's legs, the girl sobbed.

LaRouche didn't care. His mind was just a blank, red page. He drew his pistol and pointed it at the stranger, bellowing over the sound of the roaring engine and the girl's crying. "Motherf.u.c.ker I will kill you! Do you understand that? Who the f.u.c.k do you think you are?"

"LaRouche! Put the gun down!" Jim yelled.

Joel tried to pull his legs out of the way. "What the f.u.c.k's going on down there?"

The Humvee swerved, then braked hard.

Tires screeched.

One of the other vehicles crunched into their b.u.mper.

No one seemed to notice.

The stranger still held his nose, staring at LaRouche's pistol, scared into silence. The girl was still crying. Jim was still trying to talk to LaRouche, who had streams of drool coming from his mouth because he refused to swallow, and staring at the stranger like he had already gone mad, though the pistol was beginning to waver.

Wilson reached out, touched LaRouche on the shoulder. "Sarge."

LaRouche looked at him.

"Come on, man."

It was not as though LaRouche suddenly realized that he was doing something wrong, or that he "snapped out of it", so to speak. He simply shook his head, then withdrew the pistol, as though he had weighed the risks and the rewards of executing the stranger and decided that it was not the best choice. He holstered the pistol, threw his door open and hauled himself out.

Wilson turned into the backseat.

Jim threw his hands up in a beats-the-h.e.l.l-outta-me gesture.

Wilson shot him a dirty look and then pointed one finger in the face of the stranger, still huddled there in the back. "What the f.u.c.k is your problem, you piece of s.h.i.t?"

"What?"

Wilson wanted to punch the man himself. "Who the f.u.c.k do you think you are? That man just risked his life and all of our lives to save you, not to mention your little girl. And then you turn around and call him a sonofab.i.t.c.h?"

"I thought..." the man looked at Jim, then back at Wilson. "I thought..."

"How's about you just shut the f.u.c.k up for right now?" Wilson snapped. "You've done enough G.o.dd.a.m.ned thinking." He kicked open his door and grumbled as he got out. "Should kick you out of my f.u.c.king truck, you stupid motherf.u.c.ker."

Jim opened his door.

Wilson leaned back in. "No! You sit down, Jim."

Jim stared back, shocked.

Wilson shook his head. "Sarge don't need any more of your bulls.h.i.t right now."

He closed the door behind him. LaRouche was several yards in front of the vehicle, on the shoulder of the road. He was bent at the waist, hands on his knees, his rifle slung onto his back. He breathed hard, retched, then spit.

Behind them, a few others jogged up to see what had happened. Wilson waved them off, made a cutting gesture across his neck. They stopped, looked between Wilson and LaRouche, then nodded slowly and began to back away.

Wilson walked to LaRouche's side. They could hear mumbles behind them, doors opening and closing in vehicles as everyone hopped down, curious to see what they could see, try to determine what had just happened in the lead Humvee. Whispering their suspicions to each other. After a moment, Wilson took a deep breath, hooked his thumbs into the strap of his rifle.

"You alright?" he said under his breath.

LaRouche stood up a little straighter. He stared out, away from them. The land dipped down from the road, hit a thin tree line, but beyond those bald trees were rolling farmlands. Unkempt and overgrown hills. Beyond that, blue sky, patchy clouds. Just another day in the country, perhaps.

LaRouche made an ugly noise, sneered. "f.u.c.k that guy."

"He didn't know."

"What if I'm infected?"

"You're not."

"You don't know that."

"How much got in your mouth?"

"A lot. A f.u.c.king lot."

Wilson pursed his lips. Didn't have anything to say to that.

"f.u.c.k him. Wouldn't have even happened if we'd've just left him there."

"You don't even know that you're infected."

LaRouche grunted.

The sounds of an abandoned world filled in the silence between them. The wind scoured the concrete, whistled through tree branches that swished together, hushed over dry gra.s.ses, stirred dead leaves. LaRouche blew his nose onto the concrete, first one nostril, then the other. Wilson used to wrinkle his nose when he saw LaRouche "farmer blow", as he called it, but he supposed he'd gotten used to it. There weren't many options when you couldn't just grab a Kleenex.

"Besides," Wilson offered. "You rinsed your mouth out quick. You didn't swallow any."

LaRouche growled, spit again. "You know, I hate to admit it. But Jim was right about me."

Wilson rubbed a bit of dirt from the stock of his rifle.

LaRouche laughed, a tired, hard-knock sound. "Feels like I'm losing it."

Wilson snorted. "Man, we're all f.u.c.king losing it. The f.u.c.k do you expect? You think we're gonna all run around as good as we once were?" He ran a hand over his s.h.a.ggy black hair. "Nah. We're all just..." his hands worked in the air, trying to find the right word. "...harder versions of ourselves, I guess. There's no one alive that's survived this far and is still the good person they once were. So yeah, maybe you're f.u.c.ked in the head, but I don't think it's any worse than the rest of us."

LaRouche coughed, cleared his throat. "Yeah..."

"Come on," Wilson waved towards the Humvee. "Let's find a better place to stop for lunch. Those f.u.c.kers are probably still running after us."

CHAPTER 18: MORALITY.

They found an old supermarket parking lot and the convoy pulled up into a rough circle in the middle of the wide-open cement expanse. Two remained on watch in the turrets, while the others got out, stretched legs and drank water and had a bite to eat.

LaRouche pulled out his map, laid it across the hood of the Humvee and checked back to his last marker, about 25 miles behind them. It was strange to only go such short distances in the span of so many long hours. But caution demanded slow speeds and circ.u.mventing possible threats. Sometimes it took an hour or two just to get around a town that was little more than a blip on the map. Something that would have taken you five minutes to get around, going sixty miles per hour on an interstate.

He looked around him, shielded his eyes from the sun.

To the east was a cell phone tower. The rest of the horizon bore nothing that he could see would hold one of the radio repeaters. He turned back east and judged the distance of the cell tower at about two or three miles away. Which would put him just inside the 30-mile range of the last repeater.

Not that it mattered much.

Still no comms with Camp Ryder.

But if the radio problem was with Camp Ryder, and they managed to fix it, LaRouche didn't want to be out of radio range.

As he considered this he realized he was deliberately ignoring the gnawing feeling in his stomach. Focusing on the duties of his leadership role, rather than thinking about the possibility that some tiny bacteria could be sneaking its way through his body, hijacking his cells, and multiplying inside of him. He was mentally hiding under the covers.

He looked up from the map, stared out at nothing in particular.

Am I infected? He toyed with the idea, felt himself strangely detached from it, as though he considered someone else's problem. He had thought many times about what it would be like to be infected. How sick would he feel? How long would he hold onto his sanity? Would he know what he was doing when he fed on humans? But in all the time that he'd thought about being infected, he had never thought he would find himself so...numb.

Like it wasn't real. Like it couldn't possibly be happening to him.

Was it happening? Or was he just being paranoid?

Wilson seemed to think so. But it wasn't Wilson's mouth that blood had gotten into. And Wilson could just be saying that to get LaRouche to calm down, while he was secretly wondering when and how he would have to execute his leader.