“Come on, guys.”
The dogs ran ahead as I sprinted back to camp and found our radio in the boys’ cabin. Nothing but static on every channel. There was a shout coming from up the mountain. I dropped the radio and went to the back window. Flashlights lit up the trees. Jen and Marty, the couple who’d told Greer about Ricky and Margo, came stumbling down the trail, pushed along by a pair of Marvins. As they passed out of view, another couple appeared behind them, then a family of four, then more Marvins. They were herding the infected through camp toward the trailhead that led off Lucy’s Promise.
“You can’t do this!” Marty screamed as they dipped down into the trees. “This is our home!”
“Don’t worry.” One of the Marvins laughed. “I hear Arizona is great this time of year!”
Arizona? I ran back to my tent and pulled the phone Gonzalez had given me out of my backpack, thinking maybe he’d know what was going on. But when I powered it up, there was no signal. Not a weak signal. No signal. It didn’t make sense. Gonzalez said there was a cell tower on the next mountain.
I pulled on my mask and gloves, then tossed the phone into my pack and threw it over my shoulder. The dogs tried to join me as I came back through the camp, but I warned them off and started down the mountain.
By the time I got to the foot of Lucy’s Promise, Jen, Marty, and a dozen other infected were being loaded into the back of one of the Marvins’ big cargo trucks. I searched for someone in charge and spotted a familiar face right away.
“Raney! What’s going on? Where are you taking them?”
As soon as he saw me, Raney barked an order to his men, then headed for a Humvee that was parked on the side of the road.
I ran to catch up with him. “What the hell are you doing? You said nothing was going to change. You said everything was going to stay just like it was.”
“What did you think?” he barked. “The governor was going to wall off an entire town and play nanny to you and your friends for the rest of your lives? There are thousands of uninfected people out there who want their homes back. Who want their businesses back.” He yanked open the Humvee door. “World’s moving on, kid, starting tonight.”
“Where are you taking them?”
Raney slid into his seat and signaled to the driver. The engine rumbled.
“Good places,” he said. “Safe places. We’ve got facilities in Arizona, Oregon, The Dakotas. A few in Canada. Your friends will be perfectly safe until somebody figures out a cure for this thing. In the meantime, Black River, New York, will be back in business. Hell, a month from now it’ll be like none of this ever happened.”
“But it’s not right! You can’t just—”
I was interrupted by a deep boom coming from somewhere across town. The ground trembled, and then a ball of fire rose over the treetops. All around me radios screeched and Marvins scrambled to their vehicles.
“What was that? What’s happening? Raney—”
But he was already moving. His Humvee sped away, and so did all the others around me. There was another boom, smaller this time, followed by a crash. I spun around, trying to figure out where the sounds were coming from. A third explosion made it clear. They were coming from Monument Park.
I ran flat out, jumping fences and cutting through yards. Every street I passed was full of sirens and flashing lights and roaring engines. When I got to within a block of the park, I heard thousands of voices all yelling at once, so many that they merged into a storm of white noise. I hooked around the back side and climbed the hill, staying low, moving from shadow to shadow until I reached the crest. Once there, I found a thicket of trees and dropped to my belly.
There wasn’t much left of the carnival. The Ferris wheel and a few wooden booths were about the only things still standing. Everything else had been trampled under the feet of nearly five thousand infected who stood shoulder to shoulder below me, fists raised and shouting. They were facing a stage that sat on the far side of the park. It was empty except for a podium and a couple of knocked-over mic stands. There was a knot of Marvin blue to one side of it. It looked like they’d been trying to make their escape, but had been blocked by a wall of infected. Three of their vehicles had been flipped over and were spewing flames and black smoke. Hannah had mentioned there was going to be an announcement at the carnival. I was pretty sure I knew what it was and about how well it had gone over.