Homer grunted. “What’s that have to do with news?”
“Everything,” said Goat. He realized that this was a chance to reinforce his usefulness. “The Internet is a lot more important than anything when it comes to getting the news out there. Most people get their news from the Net.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen Yahoo News. But that ain’t that Twitter shit.”
“No, but a lot of people take URLs—Web address links—from sources like Yahoo News and other services, and they post them on Twitter and other social media platforms. Other people repost the links. Sometimes a news story only reaches a lot of people because of posts on social media. Everyone tweets these days. Even the president.”
“‘Tweets.’ Now ain’t that masculine as all shit?” Homer let loose a big horse laugh. “That’s hilarious. Look at me, Homer fucking Gibbon, public enemy number one, tweeting. That’s funny as balls.”
Goat shifted his position, still defensive but easing the stricture in his muscles. “It would get your story out,” he said. “To the biggest number of people. Millions. All over the world.”
Homer shot him a look. “For real?”
“Absolutely.” Goat paused. “That’s how we got this story out. Billy Trout sent me news feeds from town and I posted them all over the Net so they’d go—”
He chopped off that last word, not daring to say it.
But Homer reached over and jabbed him with a finger. “They’d go … what?”
“Um … there’s an, um, expression that, um…”
“Fucking say it, boy.”
Goat took a breath and said it in a rush. “When social media is used to break a story and it spreads really fast, it’s call ‘going viral.’”
It took Homer a moment to process that, and then he began laughing.
He was laughing so hard that he drove right off the road and slammed into a tree.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
When Gerry Dunphries could walk again, Trout took him back to the big classroom and turned him over to Mrs. Madison. The principal wrapped a blanket around Gerry’s shoulders and led him away.
Billy Trout looked at the children. Despite the sound of hammering and people shouting as they worked in teams to fortify the school, some of the kids were actually sleeping. It amazed him. As exhausted as he was, he was absolutely certain that he could not fall asleep. Not now and maybe never again. Too much possibility of things waiting for him in the dark shadows behind closed eyelids.
There was still no word from Goat, and with every passing minute Trout grew more convinced that it somehow meant that everyone in the school had slid from the frying pan directly into the fire.
Just for the hell of it he tried the satellite phone once more.
Nothing.
“Fuck,” he said, then immediately apologized, though none of the kids seemed to have heard or reacted. He spent a few minutes wandering around checking on the kids, tucking blankets more securely around them, studying their faces to fix them in his mind, pulling names out of the air for as many of them as he could. He saw one face, a black-haired chubby little girl with a beautiful face who slept with her arms wrapped around a small pillow, holding it to her chest as if it was a trusted teddy bear. Trout realized that he knew this girl very well but hadn’t seen her in the crowd before. He’d been to her first birthday party, to her christening. To at least five barbecues at her aunt’s house. Her name was Belle, and she was the only niece of Marcia Sloane, the woman who had handled phones and done research for Regional Satellite News. Marcia was a curvy retro-Goth woman, north of forty but always possessed of a timeless sexual appeal that was a legend throughout Stebbins County. Fiercely intelligent, saucy, and the very best of company under any circumstances.
That realization brought with it the memory of the last time he’d seen Marcia. It was yesterday afternoon while Trout was coming back to Stebbins after interviewing Dr. Volker. By then the outbreak had cut all the way across the town. His last image of Marcia was her pale, torn, snarling face as it vanished below the level of his car’s hood while the Explorer ground her into the mud. That had been the start of it for him, the point at which the wild story he’d gotten from Dr. Volker became the irrefutable reality of Billy Trout’s life.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, uncertain whether he was saying it to the girl, for all she’d lost, or to her aunt for what he’d done to her. Or to everyone, for what they were enduring and what lay ahead.
More deeply saddened than ever, Trout turned and drifted back into the hallway. He caught sight of Dez and called out to her. She turned and began walking toward him. They met at the hall’s midpoint, by a 4H trophy case filled with photos of kids with their awards for best piglet, biggest sow, largest pumpkin. Brightest future.
“Is … is Gerry okay?” she asked tentatively.
“He was in bad shape to begin with, Dez. I don’t think this did him any extra harm.”
“You’re a bad fucking liar, Billy.”