ALICE RAISED THE HANDGUN SHE’D liberated from the cut-in-half policeman. She’d fired it only once, and when she had, the kick had practically slammed the barrel into her forehead. The report had earned her attention from the feral she’d been trying to hit, but its head had inexplicably exploded when it turned, spraying Alice, the grass, and the rock she’d been hiding behind with blood and flecks of blackened gray matter. She supposed someone must have shot it, but she had no idea where the shot had come from, or how she’d been so lucky as to earn its protection.
She felt like a coward. The rock, near the lawn’s rear, had proved an overly nice hiding place, so she’d stuck to it. Once she had the gun (more as a high-caliber security blanket than a means of protection), the rock’s shelter had felt doubly nice. She kept telling herself to move — to go out there and save her friends’ lives. But in the ensuing mental debate, sense won out over moral imperative. If she broke her cover, someone would break her for sure. Alice waged her battles with a pen and a keyboard. She wasn’t a flesh-and-blood fighter and never would be.
But now, as the shouting and screaming and sounds of slaughter diminished, she decided to stand. She’d left everyone else to fend for themselves and that would always make her a little ashamed, but she wouldn’t be rescued. Alice wouldn’t end today with a policeman’s or clarifier’s hand in hers, as he pulled her from to safety from a coward’s hidey-hole.
The gun was heavy. She was terrified of its recoil, sure that she’d brain herself if she pulled the trigger again. But still it felt good. Like she was in control, whereas she very much was not.
There was no one past the rock. Nothing but bodies and — she felt a retch — body parts. It was easy to tell the ferals (or, astonishingly, the ordinary necrotic citizens who’d been turned feral) from the uninfected bodies.
The uninfected looked chewed.
The ferals didn’t have heads because stopping them had required blowing those heads off … or at least perforating them with giant holes.
Alice crossed the lawn, gun out. There were riot squads at the far end. She heard a few shots, far off like the pop of fireworks. Something grabbed at her ankle, and she kicked away, panicked. She looked down to see something that was barely more than arm, shoulder, and head leering at her, its face almost entirely gone.
At the clearing’s other side, past shredded and gore-stained picnic blankets, Alice found a line of black backs: clarifiers facing something, putting it down.
If they saw her, she’d be arrested for sure — maybe this time for real. Same for Ian Keys, and August Maughan, if he were here. Alice wasn’t sure what crime they’d committed, but they’d done something for sure.
She turned and found herself facing a pair of clarifiers.
“You’re Alice Frank,” one of them said.
Alice considered her weapon. Would they shoot her out of hand and claim self-defense? Should she try and threaten her way past?
She felt her arms lowering. Then, without even looking in her handgun’s direction, the clarifier who’d spoken pointed toward the parking lot, away from the finished fray. At the end of his gesture, Alice saw a group of uniformed police steering a tall balding man through a sea of what appeared to be reporters.
Archibald Burgess, being led away in handcuffs.
“Right this way, Miss Frank,” said the clarifier, moving to escort her toward the media circus.