Jeb was driving; Boone was riding shotgun. A light drizzle pelted their windshield. The interstate was dark, illuminated only by the stationary white headlights and red brake lights that extended for over six miles behind them. It was the mother of all traffic jams.
"Four-nineteen to Flemming, we're one mile from exit sixty-four," Boone said into the radio. "Any contact with the fire and rescue boys, over?"
"Negative contact," came the reply.
Jeb was taking it slow. The state police cruiser coasted down the emergency lane, its lightbar flashing against the trees that walled the highway. Illuminated by ground lights was a gigantic billboard: "Paradise City, Next Exit."
Movement among the stalled vehicles caught Boone's eye. In the red brake lights he saw figures standing, talking to one another, others weaving through the cars, all headed south, away from the accident somehwere up ahead that had caused this backlog. Not quite running, but definitely moving with haste.
"What in tarnation are these idiots doing?" Boone asked. Jeb looked over at the people between the cars. Some had left their doors open.
Jeb leaned on the horn as a figure entered their headlights. The man didn't even seem to notice them - he sprinted up into the hills on their right, and then was lost in the night.
"Dumbass," Jeb cursed.
Something was wrong. Boone felt it, the way he'd felt it a year ago before that fleeing bank robber he'd stopped for a broken tail light had tried to fill him full of three-fifty-seven holes. Boone had survived that encounter, and he intended to survive whatever tonight might offer. Suddenly, Boone was grateful for the presence of the Winchester 1300 Defender locked in the rack next to his knee.
He cracked the passenger window. There were voices. Scared voices. And something else. Boone grabbed the mike.
"Dispatch, we have civilians abandoning their vehicles here . . . this is weird."
The cruiser made it up a shallow incline where the interstate surmounted a low hill. At the bottom of the slope was the scene of the accident. Red and white strobe lights flashed in the darkness. Little could be seen among the stalled cars and trucks. The corner of an ambulance was visible behind a halted tractor trailer whose gaudily painted sides declared that it belonged to the Jimmy Dean Corporation.
"Stop here," said Boone.
"Why? We're almost there," said Jeb.
"Do it," said Boone. The urgency in his voice surprised Jeb.
Jeb and Boone got out of the cruiser. There was nobody else on the road. All around them, windshield wipers scrubbed away on empty cars. Somewhere, a radio was playing "Bad Moon Rising."
"What the Sam Hill is happening here?" said Jeb as rain started to dampen his uniform. He looked around at the stalled vehicles as if expecting them to answer him.
They walked down the hill. Boone's hand rested on the butt of his sidearm. The beam of Jeb's flashlight fell on empty, rain-slicked asphalt. An enormous visage of Jimmy Dean grinned down upon them from the side of the tractor trailer. Jeb shined his flashlight into the open cab of the eighteen-wheeler.
Nothing. Nobody.
Then, as they rounded the corner of the tractor trailer, they were no longer alone. A throng of people was milling about in the headlights of the ambulance. Something about their gait bothered Boone: a shuffling, stumbling walk, aimless and mechanical.
Walking wounded, thought Boone.
"Hey buddy, you okay?" Jeb asked of the closest figure, one wearing a turtleneck. "Hey, you!"
Turtleneck turned towards them, and both men froze. The man's face was mishapen and swollen. The front of his shirt from his chest to his collar was covered in blood. His eyes had a vacant stare.
Boone's right thumb unsnapped the holster on his hip. His fingers wrapped around the Pacmeyer grips on his black, stainless steel Springfield Armory 1911-A1.
The whole throng that had gathered in the road now turned on Jeb and Boone, and in that moment the whole, horrid truth dawned on him, that these were sick people, sick in a way that he had never seen before. One woman was missing her left arm below the elbow. She shuffled towards him in a beige sun dress. A man in a reflective, green-yellow firefighter's jacket crawled on the ground towards the two troopers. A teenager in a blue polo shirt whose nametag read "Welcome to MegaMart! I'm Greg T" emerged from behind the ambulance. Half of Greg T's face was hanging by strands of flesh. It looked fake, like some horrible halloween mask, and for a moment he told himself that's what it was.
"It's a mask," part of Boone's mind said. "This is some kind of crazy prank."
But the other part of Boone, the part that had kept him alive in that shootout one year ago, spoke also: No, not a mask. Not walking wounded. Walking DEAD.
"Jeb, get to the car," Boone said as the mob closed the distance to them. But fear had welded Boone's partner to the ground.
Boone gave his partner a shove.
"Jeb! GET TO THE CAR! NOW!"
Boone's words broke the hold that fear had taken, and Jeb broke into a sprint, back up the hill to the parked cruiser, its lights still flashing in the rain. Boone heard the patter of many feet behind them, faster now.
Jeb reached the car before Boone. Boone diving into the passenger side. Boone fumbling with his keys to unlock the 12 gauge shotgun from the rack. His fingers numbed with fear. Jeb taking too damn long.
"Buy him time," the voice in Boone's mind told him.
And in the next moment, for no reason that could be discerned, Boone was no longer afraid.
Boone spun around at the approaching mob, his hands filled with Springfield Armory, and the barrage of gunfire that he unleashed echoed up and down the river of stalled, empty cars.