He called again.
Nothing, just the meaningless ring with no answer.
Screw it, he thought. He’d record an update anyway and send it to Goat. Maybe his friend was ordering a refill at that nice, warm, safe goddamn Starbucks. Or he was in the nice, warm, safe bathroom taking a leak.
“I am going to let Dez kick your bony ass,” Trout promised as he clipped on his lavaliere mike. He hit the record button and set himself in front of the camera.
“This is Billy Trout, reporting live from the apocalypse,” he began, then shook his head. “I know how that must sound. If you’re anywhere but here it’s probably pretentious and corny. But not from where I’m sitting. Right now I’m in a small office near where the military fired on six hundred children a few minutes ago. Since then we’ve reached a kind of détente with the National Guard. They offered us a deal. We had to gather all of the sick and wounded people—anyone who showed any signs of infection from Lucifer 113—and we had to take them outside. That’s right, out where the monsters are. And we had to leave them there. Men and women, and children.” He paused and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “Children. I … still can’t believe that we did it. Does that make me a war criminal, too? Did I help staunch the spread of a deadly pathogen or did I participate in a heinous act of brutality. I honestly don’t know. I don’t know.”
The camera kept recording, but Trout had to take a moment to collect himself.
“One of the people who went out there was a good man. A good friend. A Stebbins County police officer named JT Hammond. I want to tell you about him. I want you all to know about him. About how decent and kind he was; how strong he was. How courageous he was.”
Trout then told the camera about what JT did, about how he was infected and how he made a stand with the children. By the time he was done, tears were streaming down his face and there was a tremolo in his voice.
He sniffed and collected himself.
“And now what, America? We have eight hundred people in this building. Two hundred adults, the rest kids ranging from kindergarten through middle school. We have a few guns and some ammunition. Probably not enough. This place is the town’s emergency shelter, so we have food, water, cots and blankets, first-aid equipment, and other basic necessities. Enough to provide for three hundred people for two weeks. Yeah, stop for a moment and do the math.”
He had to control his anger because rage wanted to make him say the wrong things and Trout needed to get this right.
“I don’t know if this message will ever get out. I don’t know if the government is now coming clear about Lucifer 113 or not. All I know is that this plague is immoral and illegal and it’s killing people. I know how and why it was created. The man who invented this gave me all the science. The question now, I suppose, is what happens next. With us here in the Stebbins Little School. With what’s left of the Town of Stebbins and, really, all of Stebbins County. And with this monster that they’ve let loose. You tell me, folks … what now?”
He sighed, reached over and switched off the camera, then punched the buttons to send it to Goat. Technically, Goat should have been streaming it straight out to the Net, but Trout wasn’t sure. He tried calling him again and once more got nothing. He thumped the phone down in frustration.
And that’s when he saw her standing there.
Dez.
She was pale and ghostly in the shadowy hallway, her blond hair hanging in rattails, her uniform torn and dirty, her blue eyes filled with pain and tears.
But her mouth.
Despite everything, Dez was smiling.
“Thank you,” she said so softly that he almost didn’t hear her.
“For what? I don’t know if that even got out.”
Dez shook her head and stepped into the room. “I heard what you said about him. About JT.”
“I…” Trout began, then said simply, “He was my friend, too.”
Dez reached for him and he took her into his arms. They kissed for a long time. It was hot and wrong and her lips tasted of tears. But he absolutely did not want to let her go.
Then she leaned back and looked at him, studying his face with eyes that were filled with questions.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He did not dare ask for what. There was so much wreckage behind them. Years of trying to make a relationship work, and years of failure. Sometimes spectacular failures.
Like the last time.
For now, he didn’t care
what she was sorry for, or if it really related to him at all. He nodded and kissed her again.
Then, after a long, sweet, oddly gentle time, Dez pushed him back, turned, and walked away.