“Yes, sir, I’m a small-town cop. I also spent a couple of years in Afghanistan taking orders from cocksuckers like you, so I know when someone’s blowing smoke out of their ass.”

“Watch your mouth, Officer Fox.”

“Or what? You want to come here and arrest me? Go ahead. Otherwise stop acting like you’re in command of this situation. I’m asking you—telling you—to get in touch with your boss and tell him to get in touch with his, as far up the line as you have to go. Tell them that we know who let this monster off the chain and who’s responsible for killing an entire town … and who now wants to try and cover it all up by pretending that the surviving witnesses are infected just so you can slaughter us all. You tell them that.”

No reply.

“Colonel…?” No reply. In fact there was no further chatter on the walkie-talkie. Not one word.

Dez shook her head and stared at Trout, who was still taping. “They’re going to let us die here. God … they’re going to murder all these kids.” Tears broke from her eyes and rolled down over her cheeks. She weighed the walkie-talkie in her hand and then with a snarl turned to hurl it against the wall but JT scooped it out of her hand.

“No,” he said, “we might need that.”

“I blew it,” she snapped back. “I pushed too hard and blew it. God, why am I always such a bitch?”

“Actually,” said Trout, turning off the camera and lowering it, “I thought you were magnificent.”

“Oh, shut up, Billy.”

“No,” said JT, “boy’s right. You were great. You smacked that officious prick’s ass.”

“That’ll look good on my tombstone. Let’s face it, I played the wrong card. He knows that we’re a liability and now he’s going to burn this town down just to keep us from telling the world.” She glared at Trout. “Why the fuck are you smiling?”

“I taped that conversation you just had. Dietrich’s voice is crystal clear.”

“So? We can’t do anything with it. The Internet and cell service is as dead as we’re going to be.”

Billy Trout unslung the equipment bag he carried and bent down—hissing a little at the pain in his back—to unzip it.

“You’re not the only one who brought goodies to this party, Dez.” He produced a device and showed it to them, his smile never wavering. “This is a satellite news uplink. If we’re going to go down, babe, then let’s at least go down swinging.”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT

PENNSYLVANIA ARMY NATIONAL GUARD

COMPANY D, 1-103RD ARMOR

Lieutenant Colonel Dietrich set his walkie-talkie down and stared at it for five long seconds. Across the table from him, Captain Rice stood in silence, not daring to intrude into this moment. He could see the fires that rage were lighting under the colonel’s skin. His commanding officer’s mouth was a tight knife slash; his nostrils flared wide like a charging bull.

Rice tried to make himself invisible. He expected Dietrich to suddenly dash everything off the table, or hurl the walkie-talkie the length of the room. But the colonel said and did nothing as the seconds splintered off the clock and fell like debris on the floor.

Dietrich walked over to the window and looked out at the storm.

“The wind’s dropping,” he said. His tone was quiet, calm, and that surprised Rice, who had heard the full exchange between Dietrich and that crazy female cop in Stebbins.

“Yes, sir,” said Rice. “Weather service says that we’ve seen the worst of it. The storm front is turning north by east. Winds are down to—”

“How soon before we can get some birds in the air?” asked Dietrich.

Instead of directly answering, Rice made a call, spoke to another captain, listened, and hung up.

“As soon as the wind drops another fifteen miles per hour, sir. We’re still at the outer range of unsafe.”

Dietrich nodded. He clasped his hands behind his back and continued to stare out the window.

“That cop is well intentioned,” he said quietly, “but she does not understand what’s at stake.”

Rice cleared his throat. Very quietly. “No sir. She was totally out of line. Probably stress … or the onset of the disease.”

“Probably,” agreed Dietrich coldly.

“Your orders, sir?”

Dietrich said nothing for almost twenty seconds. Rice waited him out. Then the colonel turned.

“Sound draws these things, correct?”

“The infected, sir? Yes, that’s what we’ve heard from our people on the ground.”

Dietrich nodded. “Then here is what I want to do.”

Rice listened in silence. Dietrich’s plan was as solid as it was brutal.

As Rice hurried out of the office to set things in motion he said a silent prayer for the people in Stebbins.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE

STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL

“Are you sure this will work?” asked JT as Trout set up the satellite equipment.

“Goat said it would, and he knows this stuff pretty well,” said Trout. “I’m no damn good at all in a fight. I do this or I go hide in a closet.” He handed the unit to JT and showed him how to work it, then he stepped away and ran his fingers through his wet hair and straightened his soaked shirt. “How do I look?”

“Like a drowned golden retriever,” said Dez.

“Thanks.”

“But a good-looking drowned golden retriever,” she said, giving him a small, crooked grin.

Trout flashed her a brilliant smile. “That’s probably the nicest thing you’ve said to me in two years.”

He expected her to smile at that, instead he saw a flicker of pain dart through her eyes; and he felt like an ass for making a bad joke at a time like this. He busied himself with clipping the lavaliere mike to his shirt collar.

“Ready,” he said.

JT held up crossed fingers. Dez merely nodded, her expression on the doubtful side of neutral. Trout cleared his throat and gave JT the nod to start recording.

“My name is Billy Trout,” Trout began. “I’m a reporter for Regional Satellite News in Stebbins County. Please watch this video. This is not a hoax, this is not special effects or a gag. This is real. People are dying and more will die. There’s a good chance I’m going to die. Maybe today.”

Trout paused and took a breath. He was sweating and used his fingers to wipe the sweat out of his eye sockets. From behind JT, Dez gave Trout a thumbs-up, and he plunged ahead.

“If you’ve been watching the news you know that the big storm is centered over southwestern Pennsylvania right now. You may also have heard of some problems here in Stebbins. Rioting and looting. However, I am here to state for the record that there is no rioting in Stebbins. There is no looting. However a lot of people are dying here. I am going to tell you the truth about what is happening here in Stebbins. If I live through this, I’ll probably go to jail. That’s okay, as long as the story gets out. Please watch this video. Please post it on YouTube. Put the links on Twitter and Facebook and everywhere else you can think of.

“I am in the Stebbins Little School, the elementary school here in town. There are eight hundred people in here with me. More than half of them are children. A lot of people have died here today, but unless we all work together, a lot more are going to die. I repeat … this is not a joke. This is not a hoax. This is real and it’s happening right now.”

He took a breath. His hands were shaking.

“This is Billy Trout, reporting live from the apocalypse…”

CHAPTER NINETY

BORDENTOWN STARBUCKS

It seemed to take forever, but the call finally came through on Goat’s Skype account. Routing it through the main RSN satellite was a firing offense and almost certainly illegal. Fuck it. So was turning people into zombies.

Trout sent him three videos. One was for immediate release, the other two were to sit in their chambers until Billy told him to pull the trigger.

Goat used his earphones so no one else could hear the call, and he set Skype to record everything as a backup to the straight satellite feed, which was automatically recorded on the RSN server, which was in Pittsburgh not Stebbins. Goat copied the whole thing on his hard drive, too. Then, as soon as it was done, he e-mailed it to himself at three different accounts. That would give him copies in his sent folder as well as the three in-boxes. All of this took a few seconds and now there were copies in places the government could not easily block, access, or confiscate.

After the broadcast was done, Goat got a private Skype call from Trout.

“Did you get them?”

“Yes I did, Billy, and I’m sweating high-caliber bullets right now. Tell me this is all true. The National Guard’s actually shooting people?”

“They’re shooting everyone.”

“Aren’t they testing them first?”

“No.”

“Then how do they know who’s infected or—”

“Goat—they’re shooting everyone. No questions asked.”

“Oh, man…” Goat felt the room beginning to spin. “How safe are you going to be in that school?”

Trout was a long time answering.

“Billy?”

“You got to get this out. Listen, kid, this is a million times worse than anything Volker said it would be. Goat … everyone’s dead. Marcia, Gino … everyone.”

“Marcia…?” Goat asked hollowly.

Trout told him what he’d seen and done … and been forced to do. When he described the encounter with Marcia, Trout broke into tears.

“Oh, shit, man…” said Goat in a voice choked with his own tears. He looked around the Starbucks, but the place was so deserted that there was no one near, no one to see or hear. “Those fuckers. Marcia? Goddamn it, Billy, we can’t let them get away with this.”

“I have no intention of letting them skate, kid. We’re going to ram this up their asses.”