Chapter 23: East Gate

Reese's POV

We ran down four flights with two hundred people on our heels.

The stone was back in my chest, warm and settled, and it seemed to know where it was going.

The courtyard was a field of frozen dead under the white light.

The east gate had bowed in on its hinges.

Beyond it, a wall of the living dead leaned on the steel, thousands deep.

I stopped in front of the gap, ten paces from the gate, and put out my right hand.

My nose started to bleed at once.

"Reese," Jonas said, at my shoulder.

"I can hold the ones in the courtyard," I said. "I can't hold the road. Close it."

"With what?"

"I don't know! Something big!"

He turned to the people crowding down the stairs behind us.

He shouted over their heads in the voice that had rattled the guardrail on the overpass.

"Trucks! Every truck you have! Back them across the gate! Fire company, with me!"

For one second nobody moved.

Then the woman from the third row, the one who had put her hand to her mouth, ran for the nearest pickup.

She was the first.

After her came a man with a forklift and the old man with the radio.

Eleven volunteer firefighters followed with axes, and then Ray.

Ray came down the stairs at a run, fifty-five years old, with the shotgun in one hand.

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