“Thanks, Vibeke,” he said.
“I’m sorry…” I began.
He held up a hand. “No speeches.”
Still the dead rampaged around us. I dimly heard Durkee screaming at me to get off my freckle and get moving.
“…about Alyssa,” I finished.
I could have said more. Maybe I should have.
But instead I shot a zombie ambling up behind him.
Logan turned away from me, flexing his fingers as he faced the oncoming horde. “Move along, civilian,” he said. “Let me do my work.”
I saluted his back.
And then I ran.
I ran until I thought my lungs would burst, until my legs informed me they were going to fall off my body and that was that. I tore beneath the overpass, found myself grabbed by Durkee himself and dragged to the right, behind a house in what I hoped was the safe zone.
It could not have taken more than twenty seconds to get from Logan to relative safety, despite my brain trying to convince me I had in fact just run a marathon.
“I said hold them off,” Durkee bellowed at me, “not dive into them!”
“Sorry,” I said.
He shoved a pair of earmuffs onto my head.
And then the overpass blew up.
The explosion made the ground rock back and forth, and the tremendous rash of falling cement, glass, and rebar briefly concealed all else. I covered my ears too late; they were already ringing, the high-pitched whine mixing in with what I imagined must be Logan still shooting, still fighting, still screaming at the undead.
We stayed there for quite some time, waiting for the air to clear, for the shaking to stop. Waiting for someone to tell us it was all right.
There was no one to do that. We had to decide for ourselves.
Durkee finally stepped out from behind our shelter, and sucked in some air.
When he didn’t drop dead, I joined him in studying our handiwork.
The overpass was gone, and with it most of the houses on either side. Huge chunks of concrete, wood, and pieces of rebar had landed in the street. It didn’t resemble a big, strong wall in any way, shape, or form…but it was just enough of one to make crossing the street a misery for the dead.
I glanced over my shoulder. Far behind us, some of the Garnet Cloisters inhabitants had clumped together, and were staring at the destruction visited on their old neighborhood. I had seen expressions like theirs before—the wide, teary eyes, the slack jaws, the inability to fully understand what they were looking at. We all went through it at some point. Hastings, which had been so strangely protected and sheltered, just got there a lot later than the rest of us.
I looked back at the debris field. “Man, you guys really trashed the place,” I said.
My voice sounded distorted. Oh, shit. Had the blast taken out my eardrums as collateral?
I tugged on Durkee’s sleeve and pointed at my ears.
He nodded, and pointed at his, too.
I figured that meant it would either pass, or we would be deaf forever. Great odds.
Slowly the others began to emerge from their makeshift shelters. Hammond pulled massive headphones off his ears and gave us a thumbs-up, which I took to mean we’d either successfully stopped up Chapman and saved the city, or he was just happy he’d managed to evade significant hearing damage. Tony and Dax stumbled over behind him, with Poltava and one of her men bringing up the rear. I didn’t ask where the other two had gone.
Gloria popped up. Vijay stumbled along behind her, his hands clutched against a bleeding head wound.
Hammond immediately tried to usher us back toward the city gates. I lingered a few moments, watching the pile. Waiting for Logan.
He never showed.
Chapter Thirty-Two
As it turned out, shooting zombies was the easy part. The real work began once the dust finally settled.
As the day wore on, the gates were flung open and the onetime occupants of Camp Elderwood streamed in past the big walls of Hastings, beneath the watchful gazes of Hammond’s soldiers. By the time they got inside, word had started spreading among Keller’s men that Durkee was in fact alive, and many of them began seeking out their captain for orders.
I had never seen a man so happy to be swamped by soldiers. He accepted apologies and well wishes with grace, and assigned out duties as quickly as he could.
Not all of them came, though. For every man and woman that showed up, there was at least one that did not; eventually we determined that at least a quarter of the forces had fled, either to follow Keller into some part of the Quarantine Zone or flee beyond the city walls.
It made for one hell of a chaotic scene. There seemed no way to keep track of everyone; the city had plenty of empty housing for the refugees, but those who had been displaced by the whole Chapman Street incident had already started migrating in that direction. Some of Hammond’s crew had started setting up tents right outside the city, despite the general’s insistence that everyone get inside the wall.
In short, everyone was wandering around aimlessly, and I did not give two shits about it.