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.
JT Hammond crawled slowly to the wall, shedding debris and leaving a trail of bloody hand and knee prints. He grabbed the shattered sill and pulled himself up.
The two Black Hawks pulled back from the building. Beneath them the dead were massing into a huge crowd. The sound of the gunfire and the voice from the speakers drew them from every part of the parking lot. Thousands of bone white hands reached for the birds, thousands of mouths moaned and bit the air.