Apocalypse - Keith R. A. DeCandido [57]
And carrying a gun.
Terri hated guns.
Maybe she wouldn’t have to fire it.
She opened the door to one of the classrooms.
The place was a mess. Desks were overturned, papers and books were all over the floor.
Pretty much like the rest of the city.
Dutifully, she filmed the room with her camera, which felt a helluva lot more comfortable in her right hand than the stupid gun Officer Valentine had given her did in her left.
What the hell was the woman thinking, giving her a gun? It was nuts.
Sure, she’d complained that she didn’t have a gun, but that was because she wanted an armed escort. She left the violence to thugs like Valentine. That’s what they were paid for.
Terri was paid to report the news.
Or the weather.
Thanks to D.J., that bastard.
What especially pissed her off was that D.J. didn’t need to fake the footage. Miller was dirty, everyone knew it, it was just a question of when he’d fuck up enough to get caught. In fact, he did get caught the very next week—by a goddamn newspaper reporter. If some ink jockey could nail Miller, anybody could. Certainly Terri could’ve, given a decent source.
Her mistake was in thinking that D.J. was one.
D.J. had disappeared right after the tape was exposed as an expert bit of digital fakery. That annoyed Terri for two reasons. One, she wanted to remonstrate with the little shit for ruining her career.
Two, he probably wasn’t in town right now, so he’d escaped the fate of most of Raccoon City’s citizenry. If anybody deserved to be turned into a zombie and shot in the head, it was D.J. McInerney.
However, she knew she’d climb out of this hole eventually. She was still famous, after all. Even street punks like L.J. knew who she was. And weather could still lead to a decent career—look at Al Roker.
She started when she heard something.
It sounded like a whimper of some sort.
“Angela?”
Moving toward the sound, Terri found a little girl cowering in the corner. It looked like she was cradling a doll in her arms.
The poor kid.
“It’s okay, honey. No need to be afraid. We’re here to take you home.”
Terri realized that she had no idea what Angela Ashford looked like. For all she knew, this was some other little girl.
Still, even if it wasn’t Ashford’s daughter, it was better to rescue her than not.
The girl’s back was to Terri. Setting the camera down for a moment—it wouldn’t be a good idea to put the gun down with little kids about—she touched the girl’s shoulder in order to turn her around.
A horrific face gazed back at her.
The first thing Terri noticed were her blood-red lips—so colored because they were, in fact, covered with blood.
Then she noticed the milky white eyes.
Both contrasted eerily with the pale skin.
The girl was dead.
Terri backed up. “Oh, my God!”
It wasn’t the sight of the girl that truly frightened her, though.
It was the doll.
Or, rather, not a doll, but another little kid, off whom the girl had just fed.
Terri Morales had a strong stomach, and had managed to get through this day without throwing up.
Now, though, at the sight of one child feeding off another, her stomach lurched.
She bumped into something. At first she thought it was one of the desks, but when she turned around, she saw that it was a boy.
Another walking corpse.
Looking around the classroom, she saw that there were dozens of them.
All little kids.
All dead.
All with blood on their lips.
All moving in on her.
They literally had her cornered. There was no way out of the room now. From all sides came the army of dead children.
The boy grabbed her right arm and bit it.
Terri screamed.
Another one grabbed her leg.
A third bit her right on the hip.
The pain was overwhelming, as hundreds of small teeth ripped into her flesh.
She could have used her gun, but how could she shoot little kids?
Instead, she screamed louder, even as the gun fell to the floor.
Her rent legs could no longer support her weight, and she fell to the floor, the kiddie corpses swarming all over her now-prone form.
The last thing she saw was her camera, which was lying