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Then she remembered—the perp who’d almost been bitten by the zombie hooker in the squad room.

He was already talking a mile a minute, just as he had in the squad room, and he had no obvious wounds, so he hadn’t been infected.

Yet.

The perp ran to the driver’s-side window, only to find the muzzle of one of Jill’s automatics in his face.

Holding up his hands, the perp cried, “It’s cool, Officer, it’s cool! I ain’t one ’a them things! Ain’t even bit.”

To prove his point, he did a full three-sixty. His clothes were a bit scuffed, and ugly as all hell, but he was definitely not seriously injured.

Indicating the passenger side with her head, she said, “Climb aboard.”

As the perp walked around to the other side of the truck, he said, “Damn—I thought I was the last man alive, but when I heard the shooting, I came runnin’.”

He opened the door and slid in beside Morales, offering her his hand.

“Lloyd Jefferson Wayne. You can call me L.J. on account of the informal situation.”

Before L.J. could even close the door, Jill put the truck back into drive and proceeded down the street.

“Terri Morales.” She shook L.J.’s hand.

L.J. almost leapt out of the seat. “Shit, I know you! I know you! You do the weather—you’re a goddamn celebrity!”

“Yes, that’s me,” Morales said, brightening for the first time since Ravens’ Gate.

Jill ground her teeth. She’d lost Peyton, Alice was off playing footsie with the Frankenstein monster, and who was she stuck with? A starstruck small-time punk and the Raccoon 7 weather chick.

The option of shooting herself in the head was looking more and more palatable.

“This is the shit! Terri fuckin’ Morales, you da bomb, girl!”

“Well, thank you, L.J., it’s nice to be appreciated.”

On the other hand, Jill liked the idea of shooting Morales and L.J. in the head a lot more.

As she turned the pickup onto Hudson Avenue, L.J. said, “Yo, cop lady, where the fuck we goin’? ’Cause I’m tellin’ you right now, this ain’t the way outta town, and there ain’t nowhere else to be but gone, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“ ‘We’ are going to find a little girl named Angela Ashford.”

“You shittin’ me. We supposed to find one little kid in this town? We talkin’ needles and haystacks, yo.”

“We know where she probably is,” Jill said. “When we find her, her father’s going to get us out of town.”

“Yeah, okay, I’m all for that. I seen shit today that would turn me white. If you can get me outta here and someplace where they don’t have zombie-ass motherfuckers and big-ass white folks with tubes in they arms that shoot up cops—”

“What did you say?” Jill asked quickly.

“What did I say what?”

“Who shot up cops?”

“This twelve-foot-tall motherfucker with tubes and packin’ mad heat shot up Mostly Colt. Some cop named Henderson and a bunch of them moon units.”

Jill gripped the steering wheel tighter. “You mean S.T.A.R.S.”

“What-the-fuck-ever, bitch, point is, they all dead now thanks to that big-ass dude. So faster you can get my narrow ass outta here, the happier I’ll be.”

“Understand something, asshole,” Jill said tightly. “You help out, you get out of town, too. Get even a little in my way—or get bit by one of our fellow townspeople—and I will put a bullet in that pea you call a brain, understand?”

L.J. held up his hands. “Hey, it’s cool, yo, it’s cool. You the boss-lady.”

“Just remember that.”

As she drove the pickup through the intersection of Hudson and Robertson, Jill shook her head.

Henderson was dead. She supposed that was some kind of karmic payback for Peyton buying it.

She wondered who else had been with Henderson. Probably Markinson—if he ever got too far from Henderson’s ass, his nose would suffer withdrawal symptoms—and maybe Wyrnowski. And if they were at a gun shop, that redneck Guthrie was almost guaranteed to be with them, too.

All dead.

Latest in a series, collect ’em all.

It wasn’t hard for Jill to make out the school—of all the buildings on this part of Hudson, it was the only one that still had its lights on.

Jill wondered if that was