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 tw
o 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. ”