Goat wiped his eyes and nose on his sleeve. “What do you want me to do?”

CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL

“Watch out!” yelled Trout, and Dez whirled around as a zombie came at her from the shadows of the top landing. Dez fired three shots, one to the chest and two to the head, and the dead woman spun into the wall, then slid bonelessly to the floor.

“I don’t know her,” murmured Trout. Dez glanced down.

“Peggy Sullivan,” she said. “Secretary here at the school.”

“Peggy Sullivan,” echoed Trout. He nodded and they moved on.

They were a few steps from the second floor landing. Dez was on point, but she had turned to look down at the small body of a little boy who lay twisted on the midpoint landing. The child had been shot, but it was clear that he had been infected before he’d been put down. Dez was only distracted for a second, but it was enough for the other zombie to blindside her. This impact knocked her sideways, but she twisted around and put two rounds into the creature’s face.

“You okay?” JT asked from the bottom of the stairs. He was watching their back trail and carrying the heavy duffle of weapons. Trout was in the middle, unarmed and hypervigilant.

“Yeah,” Dez breathed. She took her pistol in both hands and went up the last few steps, checking the corners. “Clear.”

They followed her up and waited for her to check the hallway.

“I thought you cleared these things out of here.”

“We locked some of those things in the first two rooms,” said JT. “More upstairs.”

Dez moved cautiously forward. The classroom doors had frosted windows, but she could see awkward shapes shift and move behind the heavy glass. When she bent to listen should she could hear the low, hungry moans.

“How many are in there?”

JT came up beside her. “Six in that room, two in the other.” He nodded down the long, dark hallway.

“Can’t leave them here,” said Dez. “They’ll get out one way or another.”

He drew in a ragged breath. “Damn,” he said, but he nodded.

“Wait,” said Trout, “what are you going to—”

Before he could finish, Dez kicked open the door and she and JT rushed inside. All Trout could see from the hallway were shadows and bright flashes, and all he heard was the thunder as Dez and JT emptied their guns into the living dead.

When they emerged, their faces were wooden.

“Dez, I—” Trout began, but Dez pushed past him to the door on the other side. She and JT paused to reload, then they nodded to each other, kicked open the door, and went in shooting.

Trout stared in horror. Not because they were doing so much killing, but because so much was necessary. When JT pushed open the door and stepped into the hallway he looked ten years older. So did Dez. They stood there, faces dirty with gun smoke, reloading their weapons, their eyes fixed onto the middle distance and empty of all life. Like the eyes of the dead things they had just slaughtered.

Dez dropped a bullet and Trout saw that her fingers were trembling. He knelt to pick it up, and when he handed it to her she closed her fingers around his for a moment. She squeezed her eyelids shut and fought to keep her mouth from twisting with barely suppressed sobs. Then she released him, took the bullet, and finished reloading.

“The auditorium’s down and around the corner,” said JT gently, but Dez pushed past him.

She knew every inch of this old school. These drafty corridors and echoing fire towers were part of her childhood. She’d been a lonely girl who loved playing in her imagination, and the school was a castle under siege or a grand palace filled with knights and ladies, an old haunted house or the lair of a crafty wizard. She could walk the halls blindfolded. She hurried along, her gum-rubber soles making almost no sound. JT was as quiet on his feet, but after two flights of stone stairs he was huffing like a dragon; behind him, Billy Trout limped along. With each step, the sciatic pain was worse and his pace slower. It made him feel old and intensely vulnerable.

JT had grown up in Fayette County and his family had not moved to Stebbins until he was in high school, but Trout knew this old place every bit as well as Dez. He remembered the lonely, lovely little blond-haired girl, and he had loved her from afar even then.

He thought about that as they hurried through the pale glow of the emergency lights. All this time and I’m still no closer to having her, he thought. Or, maybe I’m further away.

It saddened him as much as the tragedy in town, and he could totally understand—now more than ever—Dez’s feelings of being abandoned by those she loved and trusted.

“Ah, Dez,” he whispered in a voice he knew could not carry to her ears. “You’re crazy but I do love you so. How sane does that make me?”

Up ahead, Dez paused by the double doors that led to the auditorium, looking back over her shoulder almost as if she had heard him after all. Their eyes met and she gave him a brief, sad smile.

What does that mean, he wondered. Was it an acknowledgment of feelings as viewed from two sides of an uncrossable field of wreckage? Possibly. Or, was it a good-bye? Did Dez believe that they were all going to die here? Neither she nor JT had shown much faith or enthusiasm for the videos he’d sent. Though they did not say so, it was clear that they did not think Trout could make his plan work.

He wasn’t entirely sure himself. Nor was Goat. It was a gamble of a kind he had never imagined making before, not even in his wildest Hollywood dreams.

Trout held eye contact with Dez, wanting to preserve the moment, to make this communication, however tenuous, last. But timing was against them and that connection was too fragile to support it. Dez turned away and reached for the door handles.

CHAPTER NINETY-TWO

BORDENTOWN STARBUCKS

Goat was quickly going crazy.

He kept nervously toggling back and forth between Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, watching the hits, the retweets, and reposts of Billy’s video. In the first hour it was on YouTube it had fewer than a hundred hits, and most of the comments posted by viewers were cynical and mocking. They did not believe the video was real. Then something happened a few minutes into the second hour. There was a significant jump in hits. Goat backtracked and saw that the new rush was being driven by Twitter. A couple of key players had retweeted the URL. Some of these were conspiracy theory nuts who thought this was an early Christmas present, some were anarchists of the kind who thought Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks posts in 2010 were holy writ, but a lot of them were serious players in the media. Goat had posted the link everywhere and had sent it in mass e-mails to everyone in his media listservs. Thousands upon thousands of people in print, broadcast, and digital media. Some of them apparently knew Billy Trout, and that’s where the traction started. They reposted the link to their contacts and included personal endorsements of Trout. The secondary wave of posts went out in a massive ripple. Someone who knew Billy also knew a producer on CNN and that person included the link in a news update. That sort of thing happened again and again. By the time ninety minutes had passed, the spread was viral.

Viral marketing. Goat considered that, and for a moment he thought that it was an unfortunate choice of words; then he looked at it from a different perspective. It had a flavor of poetic justice to it.

By the end of the second hour the number of hits on YouTube had climbed to the high five figures and every time Goat refreshed the page the number jumped by hundreds. And then by thousands. The spread was geometric.

But Billy Trout did not call back.

Even though Goat’s system could accept a satellite call via his Skype, the connection did not work in reverse. Goat could not reach Trout.

Goat licked his lips and drummed his fingers and drank too much coffee. And felt his nerves burning down to the gunpowder.

Finally he couldn’t take it anymore and he posted the second video. This was the one where Billy was videotaping Dez Fox while she argued with the National Guard Colonel on the walkie-talkie. If the first video was a slap in the face, then this was going to be a full swing-of-the-leg kick in the nuts.

He kept glancing at the door as if expecting federal agents to come busting in any second. Well, he thought, too bad if they do … but it’s already out there. So, fuck you.

CHAPTER NINETY-THREE

THE WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM

WASHINGTON, D.C.

The president of the United States watched the monitors on the wall. The rain and wind had diminished significantly. Two minutes ago he gave permission for the six Apache helicopters to take off, with four Blackhawks flying close support. The Apaches each carried fuel-air bombs as well as their usual complement of Hellfire missiles, machine guns, and rocket pods. There was enough firepower aboard those helos to destroy an average-size American city. Far more than was necessary to wipe Stebbins off the face of the earth.

The order he had given was to fly to Stebbins. Nothing more. Not yet. He couldn’t imagine how he could shape his mouth to give the kill order for this.

Scott Blair, the National Security Advisor, came hurrying into the Situation Room. He waved away the staff members sitting closest to the president and then bent to speak in a confidential tone. “Mr. President? We’ve just learned that someone in Stebbins is sending out messages.”

“What kind of messages, Blair? And to whom?”

“The wrong kind, Mr. President,” said Blair. “What’s worse is that they’re being posted on the Internet. YouTube, mostly; fed by links on Twitter, and other social media sites. We’re working to control those sites … but the Internet is volatile. The National Guard units in Stebbins are attempting to locate the sender and shut him down.”

“What’s he saying?”

“I can play it for you, sir. Do you want me to clear the room?”

“If it’s already on the Internet, there’s no point. Play it.”

Blair nodded and punched some buttons on a computer built into the table. The screen switched from the weather report to a page of the YouTube Web site. Blair pressed Play and a good looking white man with blond hair and a pinstripe shirt appeared. The man was soaked and his face was lined with stress. His eyes, which were robin’s egg blue, stared into the camera with laserlike intensity.