This is not an attack by a terrorist organization. These are not the infected that I’ve been telling you about.
Billy panned the camera to show the helicopter hovering outside, its cannons filling the air with fire and death.
That is a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. It is part of the Army National Guard detachment sent to contain the plague outbreak in Stebbins. It is not firing on the infected. There are no infected where I am. I’m in the auditorium of the Stebbins Little School … a regional elementary school. Most of the people in this room are children. There are also teachers and some citizens of Stebbins who were told by authorities to come to this place because it is the county emergency shelter. I repeat … the people here are not infected. There are mostly children and people directed here as an official shelter.
* * *
Mrs. Madison crawled off the stage and into the sound room. The bullets couldn’t reach her in there, and she began waving to people—adults and children—to follow her. It was a risk though. It meant running across the no-man’s-land of the stage. A few tried. Not everyone succeeded.
From the booth, Mrs. Madison could see Billy Trout huddled under the piano. She knew what he was doing and could hear snatches of it. Then she saw the big microphone on its silver stand, the one that was provided for the pianist when she sang along with the children. The wires snaked across the stage, and the leads were still socketed into place on the sound board. The auditorium, she knew, was part of the emergency services setup in the school. The backup generator that powered the lights also provided power to essential emergency equipment. Including the public address system.
Mrs. Madison flipped a row of switches and channeled the feed from the fallen microphone into the main public address system, then turned the volume all the way to the right. Suddenly Billy Trout’s voice boomed like thunder from every speaker mounted inside—and outside—the school. When Trout heard this, he grinned, reached out and pulled the mike closer.
This cult of secrecy and the military’s obsession with owning the worst weapons of destruction has brought us all to this moment. More than six thousand people have died today. They were murdered. Nearly the entire population of Stebbins County. These people are no less victims of terrorism than were the nearly three thousand people who died when the Twin Towers fell, or the two hundred and sixty-six people in the four hijacked planes used on 9-11. Or the one hundred and twenty-five people killed at the Pentagon that day. Or the thousands killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But what makes it more tragic, more unforgiveable … is that the people of Stebbins were not killed by al-Qaeda or the Taliban. There are no terrorist cells operating in Stebbins county. These people were murdered by the U.S. government because some people believe that it is better to kill the innocent than to admit a mistake.
* * *
On the other side of the building, the children and teachers and parents and refugees from the storm crawled under the auditorium seats, screaming and crying out in fear and confusion. For many of them the light of hope was blasted out of their eyes, not through injury, but as they tried and failed to grasp the meaning of what was happening. First the infected attacking and slaughtering so many, and now the rescuers—the army—turning their haven into a killing ground of flying glass and blood.
We cannot allow ourselves to become a nation of fools and slaves. We cannot allow our own government to serve its own agendas at the expense of the people. I appeal to every true American, every patriot—whether you’re left or right—to stand up and say: “Stop!”
* * *
Outside the fence line, hundreds of National Guardsmen stood ready, waiting for the helicopters to do their work so that the next phase of the cleanup could start. Sergeant Polk sat among them, listening to the words that boomed from the speakers mounted outside the school. He smoked a cigarette, chain-lighting it from the last. Discarded butts lay in a puddle by his feet.
One of the men in his squad chortled. “Do you hear this bullcrap?”
Polk turned to him.
“What’s wrong, Sarge?”
Polk nodded toward the school. “I didn’t sign up for this shit.”
“Geez, man, what’d that bitch cop do to you? You going all girlie on us?”
Polk drew in the smoke, held it in his lungs, and exhaled slowly. Then he abruptly got out of the vehicle and began walking toward the gate.
“Hey!” yelled the other soldier. “Polkie … what the shit are you doing?”
“Taking a goddamn stand.”
“What for?”
Polk whirled. “There are people alive in there. Haven’t you fucking been listening?”
He turned and kept walking.
A lieutenant started to run after him. “Sergeant Polk, get your ass back to the line right goddamn now.”
Polk turned again. “This is wrong! We’re supposed to be here to help.”
“We can’t help these people,” growled the lieutenant.
“We didn’t even fucking try!”
He reached the row of parked Humvees and climbed into one.
“Sergeant, I am ordering you to stand down.”
Polk started the engine and put the Humvee in gear.
The lieutenant drew his sidearm and pointed it at Polk. “Sergeant, stand down and step out of the vehicle or I will shoot.”
Polk took his foot off the brake and let the Humvee roll forward. The lieutenant ran to stand between him and the gate, and a lot of the Guardsmen swarmed with him. All around them was the roar of the choppers, the thunder of the machine-gun fire, and the amplified sound of Billy Trout’s voice. Polk pressed lightly on the gas and the Humvee began moving toward the gate.
Other soldiers raised their weapons and pointed them at the vehicle, but the soldiers were cutting looks back and forth between Polk and the lieutenant.
By now the complete file of how this plague started, including a complete confession by Dr. Herman Volker, will have been sent to every major news service in the country. There are no more secrets to defend. You kill us now, it will be act of revenge … and everyone will know it …
* * *
Polk revved the engine, then leaned out of the window. “Either unlock the gate and stand back or watch your ass because I’ll roll right over it.”
“Sergeant, you are buying yourself a world of hurt with this nonsense. Stand down before I put you down.”
Polk revved again.
And a single soldier stepped away from the massed soldiers and began walking toward the Humvee. The lieutenant yelled at him, too, but the soldier held up one fist, forefinger extended. Then he turned and walked backward, his rifle in hand but the barrel pointed to the ground.
“He’s right, loot,” the man yelled. “This is bullshit. This is wrong.”
The lieutenant shifted the barrel of his pistol to cover the second soldier. “Drop your weapon and stand down.”
“Sir, I respectfully decline to accept that order.”
“On what fucking grounds?” screeched the lieutenant, his face boiled red.
“On the grounds that I enlisted to protect my country and my fellow Americans. Haven’t you been listening to what that reporter’s been saying? They have proof that this was something of ours. Maybe it was a mistake, or maybe somebody went batshit and released it, but we started this. How the hell can killing Americans be a right and proper military response to that?”
“That’s not for you to decide.”
The man brought his weapon to port arms. “It is now.”
“Fucking right it is,” said another man, and the lieutenant turned in horror to see a third man step out of the line and walk toward Polk. Then a fourth. Then five more. Ten.
… so, please … stop the slaughter. Stop the killing. Save the children of Stebbins County. We’re here. We’re alive. We need your help … Please …
* * *
As the lieutenant stood there, his pistol still pointed at arm’s length, at least half of the men deserted his side of the parking lot and went to stand in a ragged line around Polk’s Humvee. Other Guardsmen were hurrying along the fence line to see what was happening.
Another officer, Captain Rice, came to stand beside the lieutenant.
“Eddy,” he said softly, “you’re about to make the biggest mistake of your life, and I can guarantee that no matter how this all plays out today, it’ll be the last one of your career.”
“They’re deserting during a time of crisis.”
“That’s one way to see it,” said Rice. “But, tell me, son … you ever heard of General George Custer?”
Then Captain Rice pushed the lieutenant’s gun arm down, turned, and walked across the concrete to stand with the others.
* * *
And then the guns stopped. Smoke whipped up out of the barrels to be threshed by the whipping rotor blades and scattered as mist into the rain. The choppers—those two and the others that hovered above the parking lot—still filled the air with thunder, but the madness of the gunfire had abruptly stopped.
Glass tinkled as pieces fell from the shattered window frames.
In the parking lot the dead moaned.
In the auditorium the wounded cried out.
Billy Trout crept cautiously out from under the sagging ruin of the piano, brushing glass from his hair and lacerating his hand without realizing it. He stared around at the damage. Everyone seemed hurt, but no one looked dead. He frowned, trying to understand it. He could see the Black Hawk holding station outside, the gun still pointed into the school.
Why have they stopped? he wondered.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
“Is it over…?”
Dez’s voice was tiny, a whisper from a raw throat.
The air thrummed with the sound of the rotors. Inside her head there was a more terrible thunder as her pulse hammered her brain. As she rolled onto her hands and knees, glass fell from her hair and clothes. She stayed there, unable to move, feeling the entire day burning in every bruised bone, every aching muscle, every fried nerve.