She went very still, as though it had shocked her.

He put a finger to her nose. "Don't think that you're special, Jenny. Don't think it for one f.u.c.king second. You have a skill, and it is keeping you alive. But for your own G.o.dd.a.m.n sake, don't become more annoying to me than your skill is useful, do you understand me?"

She didn't respond. Hung limply in Greg's arms.

Jerry snorted. Looked down at Arnie and Paul. "And why don't you give my men some f.u.c.king pain medications?"

She held Jerry's gaze. Her voice was glacier cold, and just as brittle: "Because we don't have any more medications, Jerry." The words seemed innocent enough, but their meaning was obvious. We used to have medications, when Captain Harden was leading us. But you don't have bunkers full of supplies. So now we're starving. Now we're sick. Now we're in pain. And there ain't s.h.i.t you can do about it. Because you are not Captain Harden.

He worked saliva into his dry mouth, sniffed haughtily. "Fine. Do your f.u.c.king job." He turned and began walking away. "Greg!" he barked. "Come with me."

Greg grit his teeth and released Jenny. He didn't look at her-couldn't bring himself to do it-and he jogged after Jerry, shaking his head just slightly.

Outside, Jerry stared at the front gate, a mangled mess of metal with two guards standing around it with their thumbs up their a.s.ses, not doing s.h.i.t but staring at it like it was some sort of G.o.dd.a.m.ned mystery. They shined flashlights through the gate and illuminated the sprawled bodies of two infected that had come scarily close to that breach in their defenses. It was quiet now-no infected screeching in the woods-but Jerry was sure it wasn't going to last long.

Jerry growled low in his throat, tried to shake off the feeling of crumbling, the feeling that everything was falling down around him. Too hastily built. Too structurally unsound. Maybe he'd made his move too early. Maybe he should have waited. Bided his time until conditions were better.

Or maybe he'd been too kind. Maybe he'd been too merciful. Perhaps he had tried too hard to play it safe, to please everybody. Perhaps it was time to play a little hardball.

"First thing's first," he said to Greg. "Get that f.u.c.king fence fixed yesterday. I want four armed men on that breach until its put back together and the infected can't get through. I want however many men that you have left to be roving around the fence and on top of the building, ready for whenever these motherf.u.c.kers come for us. Once you have that set up, get Angela into my office. We need to address the threat of whoever might have allied themselves with Angela and Marie."

"You want me to help you question Angela?"

"No," Jerry shook his head. "We need to neutralize the threat of more people rebelling inside Camp Ryder." He looked at Greg. "For their own safety, and to better equip the men that are defending Camp Ryder, I'm going to need everyone to surrender their weapons. If anyone objects to that, those are probably the people we need to be concerned with. Go door to door with three others, and if they give you any problems, lock them up."

They drove slow. The midmorning light came through the trees in slats of brightness, and was caught in the smoke that hung over everything like a heavy fog. Part smoke and part dust. Wilson could smell it-the sharp smell of high explosives and the muted, gritty flavor of cement, so finely pulverized by a blast that the particulate matter seemed weightless in the air. It also reduced their visibility to maybe a hundred yards at the most.

Like they were driving through a cloud.

They approached the bridge over the Roanoke River. No one spoke. Just the steady thrum of the Humvee coasting down the road, the tires whirring across the pavement, occasionally encountering a bit of debris that had been thrown so far from the blast sight and crunching over it. This had to be where the horrendous blast had come from.

Wilson had heard other noises when they'd been running back to the convoy. A sound like a giant buzz saw, and men screaming. A few smaller explosions. And then nothing after that. Just the wind in the trees, and a rising column of smoke, a haze that clung stubbornly to the roadway. The faraway murmur of the river as it flowed east.

"Slow down," Wilson instructed, leaning out of his open window, his rifle ready.

Ahead of them and to the right, a dark object lay sprawled in the road.

A man, Wilson was pretty sure. Or part of him anyways. As they drew closer, the smoke and dust cleared enough to see the details. It was indeed a man, though one if his arms and a large portion of his torso were missing. He wore the white cloth around his arm, the cross-and-circle painted on it. All around him, the cement was cratered in vicious looking lines. He lay in the middle of one of those lines.

Wilson didn't say anything. Didn't interpret what he saw, because he honestly didn't know what to think. He was just an Air Force Academy cadet, not a modern warfare expert. He didn't know what weapons made what wounds, or what in the h.e.l.l he'd heard or what could have caused it.

He waved with one hand. "Keep going."

They continued on. Pa.s.sed a pickup truck on the side of the road. Riddled with gigantic holes. They couldn't see what was inside the cab of the pickup because blood and dark, fleshy matter clung to the interior of all the gla.s.s, evenly splattered. Two other bodies were in the bed of the pickup truck, still clinging to weapons, though not much else was recognizable.

"Oh, man," Dorian mumbled from up top.

Tim echoed the sentiment. "I don't know whether this is a good thing, or really, really f.u.c.king bad."

Wilson swallowed, tasted the smoky dust on his tongue. "Guess it depends on who and what did this."

The road changed textures. From old, tire-smoothed asphalt, to a rough, white cement. The beginning of the bridge. Here the trees stopped and no longer provided a wind break. Ahead, the smoke and dust was clearer, and Wilson could see the abrupt end of the bridge.

"Holy s.h.i.t..." Wilson tapped Tim on the arm, signaling him to stop. The Humvee halted, and behind them through the open window Wilson could hear the other vehicle's brakes engaging, the rumble of their idles mixing with the noise of the river below them. "The f.u.c.king bridge is gone."

Wilson opened his door, stepped out.

"Again," Tim said as he engaged the Humvee's emergency brake and stepped out, shouldering his rifle. "Seems like a good thing. But..."

Wilson glanced behind him as the others in his group began piling out of the vehicles. There was a certain, funereal mood to the group. The loss of Father Jim weighed incredibly heavy on them, and despite Wilson's best efforts, no one was ignorant as to the friction between Jim and LaRouche. And now LaRouche was missing? They were smart enough to figure it out on their own.

But for the moment, those negative feelings were forgotten. Everyone was tense, their eyes and their focus on outward threats, and not on themselves. It was almost a welcome distraction.

"Let's keep our heads on a swivel," Wilson advised, because it felt like something a leader should say. He wasn't sure if anyone wanted him to lead them, but they seemed not to object, and it seemed to have fallen on him by default, for whatever reason. He didn't particularly want the job, but he didn't see anyone else stepping up to take it.

Limited options.

He faced the bridge and began walking. More bodies and debris. Beyond the gouts of smoke, blue sky, crystal clear for moments before it was shrouded again. The edge of the bridge drew closer, the image became clearer.

The cement super structure ended in a ragged, crumbling tear. The edges of the road were jagged, with twisted bits of rebar poking out of them. Below the cement, the structural I-beams had been completely sheared by the blast, effectively severing the bridge in half.

"f.u.c.k me," Wilson mumbled.

A gust of wind took the smoke away as he stopped, maybe ten feet or so from the edge and he could see clearly beyond, see the river flowing beneath them, marshy at the banks, but swift and brown-black in the center. And he could see the other side of the bridge, a solid twenty-foot gap between the two halves.

A group of figures on the other side, staring at him.

He snapped his rifle up, finger going to the trigger.

The figures, standing erect when he'd first seen them, suddenly crouched, almost down to all fours, and they began scrambling about the jagged edge of the bridge, eyes fixated on Wilson, jaws open, s...o...b..r hanging in thick strands from them. Their tattered filthy clothes. Their starved, sinewy frames. Maybe a dozen of them.

Infected, Wilson realized.

Tim was beside him, rifle aimed. "Should we shoot 'em?"

Wilson looked at them for a moment.

They paced and they screeched and chirped and chuffed at them. But it was sounds of frustration. A wild animal stuck in a cage. They could not cross.

"Where the f.u.c.k's the rest of them?" Wilson asked. "There were thousands."

"Maybe they got blown up."

"No way they could blow up that many."

"Maybe these are just stragglers," Tim suggested. "Maybe the rest of them continued on towards the coast."

The infected on the other side of the river paced for a bit more, issued a few screeches that curdled Wilson's blood, and he considered firing on them, but decided against it. He lowered his rifle. "Save your ammo. They're not a threat to us right now."

Tim lowered his rifle and glanced down at the obliterated section of bridge. "d.a.m.n, man..."

Wilson kept watching the infected on the other side. They grew still for a moment, almost tense. Almost cautious. They seemed to lose focus on Wilson and Tim, and one or two of them came out of their huddled postures and stood there, eyes on the sky, jaws working.

Wilson's eyes narrowed. "What the f.u.c.k are they doing?"

Tim shifted uncomfortably. "I don't know man...let's just get the h.e.l.l out of here."

"They're listening to something," Wilson decided.

No sooner had the words come out of his mouth than one of the infected made a weird screeching sound, like the panicked sound a monkey makes, and the whole group of them burst into a headlong sprint-away from Wilson and Tim. It only took a second or two for them to disappear over the other side of the bridge.

Wilson felt his whole body shaking. "We should go."

Tim grabbed his arm. "You hear that?"

It came on them fast. A sound that rapidly grew from a high-pitched but powerful whine, like a jet engine, to a heavy, chest-buffering throb. It must have been moving low and very fast across the water because it seemed to erupt into the sky, coming out of the river bed in a blur. Just a long, gray body and a thunderous roar of rotors, scrubbing the last bit of smoke from the air with a powerful downdraft that kicked bits of debris into Wilson's face and made him take a step back from the ledge, holding his hand up to shield his face.

Tim screamed something, but Wilson couldn't hear what it was over the deafening noise. Tim wanted to run and had seized onto Wilson's jacket, but Wilson shook him off and stood there, though he really had no idea why, and knew almost immediately that it was an incredibly stupid decision. Nevertheless he stood there, rifle pointed harmlessly at the ground, his other hand raised into the air, mouth wide open in shock and tasting not only the dust now, but the pungent stink of jet exhaust.

The thing seemed to hang there in midair, the tail of it whipping around as though it was simply on its way past and suddenly noticed them and was coming back around for a double take. It turned to face Wilson and a cold, jittery feeling took over his stomach, but he still didn't run. Instead he dove into his jacket, his hand diving into that inner pocket, so close to his chest. Close to his heart. His whole body shook, trembled, uncontrollably. Tim was still screaming something, about to break and go for the vehicles, though Wilson doubted it would do them any good at this time. If they were going to run, they should have done it a long d.a.m.n time ago.

It leveled off, floated there, about twenty feet above the bridge span, and it moved slowly in a horizontal drift. Just beyond the clear gla.s.s bulb of the c.o.c.kpit, Wilson could see the helmeted heads, one behind the other. The bulbous, black, insectoid eyes. Staring back at him, perhaps as apprehensive of him as he was of them...or maybe not quite, since Wilson knew that it would only take a push of a b.u.t.ton to turn his body into fragments of meat. That big 20mm cannon that sat under the nose already pointed right at him.

Wilson drew his hand out of his inner jacket pocket, holding the item that he kept tucked away there. It unfurled as he drew it out, the rotor-wash catching it and splaying the colors out. It was that old US flag Wilson had taken from Parker's Place. And he knew that it would either be his savior or his death sentence.

A moment pa.s.sed. Just long enough for Wilson's heart to slam three times in his chest, and for the thought to poke its head-I don't think they're convinced. They might still think we're The Followers. They're gonna turn us all into jelly...

And then the AH-1W Super Cobra rotated in the air right in front of Wilson, turning counter-clockwise, the three enormous barrels of its main gun no longer staring Wilson in the eye. The long tail of the attack helicopter was now displayed to them like a billboard, the front end pointed back east, in the direction it had come from. Wilson read the big, block lettering printed on the side of the tail, just a slightly darker gray than the rest of the aircraft. Then the pilot held up his gloved hand, the thumb pointed skywards, and the bird took off, roaring away from them, just over the surface of the river.

Wilson was left there, the breath coming in and out of him in ragged gasps, his one hand still up in the air, clutching the US flag, the stars and stripes still fluttering, and he gaped down the river where the helicopter had disappeared.

Then he turned and looked at Tim with a grin. "Motherf.u.c.kin' Marines!"

CHAPTER 38: BREAKAGE.

It was a recurring nightmare. Angela, laying on the cold floor of a dark room, hands bound behind her back, wondering what was next. Wondering where Abby and Sam were. Wondering if they were okay. Scared for them. Scared for herself. Thinking about Bus being murdered. Thinking about Jerry.

Jerry.

f.u.c.king Jerry.

She screamed and it seemed to shake the darkness. She thrashed around, kicked the walls, but it only succeeded in making her wrists hurt more than they already did. She couldn't feel her hands anymore and she worried that they would forget about her here in this cramped, cloying darkness and her hands would eventually die and fall off.

She sobbed. Frustration, more than anything else. The feeling of being trapped. Caged. No way out. Nothing you can do to help yourself. Completely at the mercy of someone else, someone who you know will hurt you. And knowing that her kids were in the same position destroyed her.

She called out to them, screamed their names as loud as she could, but the sound of her voice simply battered itself against the cement walls that surrounded her like a tomb and came right back to her until they gave her a headache. Her voice became raw, her mouth dry. She wondered how long they would leave her there and felt her heart beginning to pound, her breath getting ragged.

She was not claustrophobic, but it didn't take claustrophobia to panic at being buried alive.

An oubliette, she remembered. A little dungeon where you put people to forget about them.

That's what it felt like.

So when the door opened and light came pouring through like oxygen flooding her lungs, open air and not crushing, closed darkness, her relief was so strong that she almost didn't mind the fact that it was Greg standing in the doorway.

But the feeling didn't last long. Greg leaned in and grabbed her by the arm, once again avoiding her gaze. "C'mon. Jerry wants you in the office."

Angela looked at the side of his face as he pulled her along towards the stairs. "Where are my kids, Greg?"

"They're fine."

"Let me see my kids."

"Not right now."

"When?"

"When Jerry says so."

Angela twisted away from him and only succeeded in making him tighten his grip on her arm so that she almost cried out. She forced herself to look over her shoulder at him, forced a wicked smile onto her face. It was a bluff, but it was all she had left. "You're gonna regret this, Greg. This will not end well for you, you know that right? You know that Jerry and your little group of thugs aren't gonna keep them out? You're not gonna be able to stop them from coming. And G.o.d help you when they do. You're gonna pay for this s.h.i.t, Greg. You and Jerry both."

Greg glanced around. The building was empty. All the guards were outside, watching the fence. Their limited manpower was spread thin as it was. With no one there to see him, he took Angela and slammed her against the wall, pinning her there with the weight of his body.

He put his face close to hers. "Who's coming, Angela?"

Angela held his gaze. "It's gonna be bad for you."

One of his hands snaked up, ambled roughly over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and then came to rest, the heel of his palm against her throat, the fingers wrapped around her jaw. He leaned on her, just slightly, so that she had to tense her neck to keep it from constricting her airway. He turned her face roughly, forcing her to stare at the front doors of the Camp Ryder building.

"You know..." She could feel his lips just barely touching her skin, his nose brushing up against her ear, inhaling her like an animal. "You're on such thin ice, Angela. And yet you still act like you're so in control."

She grit her teeth. Forced herself to think about something else.

"Where'd you learn that from, Angela?" his whispers continued, making unpleasant gooseflesh riot across her skin. "Because I remember when you first came to Camp Ryder. You were just so...beaten down. But now? You've changed."

Think about something else. Think about Abby. On the back porch of the house. When the lawn was still clean cut and green. Early summer. Before you lost everything. Watching her play in the gra.s.s. Carefree. Good times. Those were good times. Think about that.

He turned her face towards him, and they were so close that their noses touched.

"Was it Captain Harden?" Greg smiled. "Did he teach you how to be all tough? That's a real shame, considering he's dead. Considering he abandoned Camp Ryder and everyone in it, and in all likelihood, he's either running around in the woods like a savage with a pack of infected, s.h.i.tting himself...or maybe he has become the meal that they are currently s.h.i.tting out."