of the situation was clear.
Danny took a few moments at the radio desk to call around to other police and fire departments, but didn’t get much useful information—they were all in the same boat, trying to catch up with events.
Wulf Gunnar was complaining from his cell, demanding to know whatwas going on outside, and it gave Danny a small pleasure to ignore him. Forest Peak was lucky to be on the margin. Down in the thickly settled areas, if the radio chatter was to be believed, circumstances were devolving at a pace not even a military presence could slow down. This thing was going to have to play itself out overnight, at least.
Danny was trying to find somebody at the federal level who could tell her what the hell was going on, but the FBI was not answering any of its phones and the civilian government’s snarl of automated touch-tone phone assistants sent her around in ever-decreasing circles. She was setting the handset of the phone back on the cradle when Nick came in, dragging the dead man from the back of the cruiser. The body was wrapped in the vinyl banner from the Chevron station.
“Somebody gotta tell me what the fuck is happening,” Wulf growled when he saw the corpse. Nick left it on the floor alongside a desk. Danny relented: Wulf did have a right to know, especially if she was going to keep him locked up. She couldn’t remember if he’d been charged yet. She turned to speak to him.
They all heard glass breaking on Main Street, and screams—not the screams of those crazy people running through the woods, but screams of fear, anger.
Danny rushed out the front doors of the station onto the sidewalk, heard an engine racing, and an instant later got clipped by the wing mirror of a BMW with a “Trojans” frame on the license plate. She stumbled back into the wall and gritted her teeth, feeling the big muscles of her thigh contract with pain. Nick came rushing out and thumped into a woman holding a small dog. The dog leaped to the ground and ran off beneath the idling cars. The woman spat at Nick: “Asshole!” and threaded her way between the cars after the dog, shouting “Puff! Puff, stay!”
The BMW, meanwhile, was tearing down the broad sidewalk space between the old-fashioned wooden telephone poles and the doorsteps of the businesses on Main, leaving behind it a strew of upended trash barrels, the town’s lone post box, a cardboard display of Whiffleballs and bats, and a couple of knocked-over crafts booths—and there were several other cars coming after it. Almost at the end of Main Street, the Beemer hit an abandoned chili cart and slewed to a halt, the windshield covered in beans. The driver jumped out and started scraping the chili off the glass with his bare hands. An irrelevant voice flickered through Danny’s mind: I hope that’s not Rosarita’s . Danny considered for a split second making an example of thedriver, hauling him out and handcuffing him, but the real crisis wasn’t this one driver.
The entire town appeared to have gone insane.
From end to end, Main Street was jammed with vehicles, all heading south toward the flatlands. Before, it had been a mess, like getting out of the parking lot after a football game. Now it was impassable, and people were flipping out—there was a shouting match across the street that looked like it might escalate into a brawl. The crawling vehicles spanned both lanes of the road, incoming and outgoing, with more nosing out of lanes, daring to attempt the shortcut down what passed for a sidewalk in Forest Peak. Horns and engines and voices rose in an unholy din. Dogs were barking through back windows.
The same as she did in the Marines, Danny gathered what she knew and assembled a quick working hypothesis, subject to constant revision. Some kind of disaster had happened, as far as she could tell; what it was, nobody knew, but it seemed to be spreading fast. People were fleeing the major urban centers (or trying to return), and there were
Danny took a few moments at the radio desk to call around to other police and fire departments, but didn’t get much useful information—they were all in the same boat, trying to catch up with events.
Wulf Gunnar was complaining from his cell, demanding to know whatwas going on outside, and it gave Danny a small pleasure to ignore him. Forest Peak was lucky to be on the margin. Down in the thickly settled areas, if the radio chatter was to be believed, circumstances were devolving at a pace not even a military presence could slow down. This thing was going to have to play itself out overnight, at least.
Danny was trying to find somebody at the federal level who could tell her what the hell was going on, but the FBI was not answering any of its phones and the civilian government’s snarl of automated touch-tone phone assistants sent her around in ever-decreasing circles. She was setting the handset of the phone back on the cradle when Nick came in, dragging the dead man from the back of the cruiser. The body was wrapped in the vinyl banner from the Chevron station.
“Somebody gotta tell me what the fuck is happening,” Wulf growled when he saw the corpse. Nick left it on the floor alongside a desk. Danny relented: Wulf did have a right to know, especially if she was going to keep him locked up. She couldn’t remember if he’d been charged yet. She turned to speak to him.
They all heard glass breaking on Main Street, and screams—not the screams of those crazy people running through the woods, but screams of fear, anger.
Danny rushed out the front doors of the station onto the sidewalk, heard an engine racing, and an instant later got clipped by the wing mirror of a BMW with a “Trojans” frame on the license plate. She stumbled back into the wall and gritted her teeth, feeling the big muscles of her thigh contract with pain. Nick came rushing out and thumped into a woman holding a small dog. The dog leaped to the ground and ran off beneath the idling cars. The woman spat at Nick: “Asshole!” and threaded her way between the cars after the dog, shouting “Puff! Puff, stay!”
The BMW, meanwhile, was tearing down the broad sidewalk space between the old-fashioned wooden telephone poles and the doorsteps of the businesses on Main, leaving behind it a strew of upended trash barrels, the town’s lone post box, a cardboard display of Whiffleballs and bats, and a couple of knocked-over crafts booths—and there were several other cars coming after it. Almost at the end of Main Street, the Beemer hit an abandoned chili cart and slewed to a halt, the windshield covered in beans. The driver jumped out and started scraping the chili off the glass with his bare hands. An irrelevant voice flickered through Danny’s mind: I hope that’s not Rosarita’s . Danny considered for a split second making an example of thedriver, hauling him out and handcuffing him, but the real crisis wasn’t this one driver.
The entire town appeared to have gone insane.
From end to end, Main Street was jammed with vehicles, all heading south toward the flatlands. Before, it had been a mess, like getting out of the parking lot after a football game. Now it was impassable, and people were flipping out—there was a shouting match across the street that looked like it might escalate into a brawl. The crawling vehicles spanned both lanes of the road, incoming and outgoing, with more nosing out of lanes, daring to attempt the shortcut down what passed for a sidewalk in Forest Peak. Horns and engines and voices rose in an unholy din. Dogs were barking through back windows.
The same as she did in the Marines, Danny gathered what she knew and assembled a quick working hypothesis, subject to constant revision. Some kind of disaster had happened, as far as she could tell; what it was, nobody knew, but it seemed to be spreading fast. People were fleeing the major urban centers (or trying to return), and there were
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