Trout spoke quietly into the mike. “We’re hearing gunshots. It sounds like … yes, they’re coming from upstairs. That’s the Stebbins police officers, Desdemona Fox and JT Hammond. They’re hunting the last of the infected in order to ensure that this building is safe and secure. ”
He paused and aimed the mike at the ceiling. The shots continued and Trout wished that he felt as confident about what was happening up there as he sounded. But he needed to convey the message that the school was under control.
“The shooting has stopped,” he said and panned the camera to show that every one of the eight hundred faces in the auditorium was tilted upward, eyes wide, expressions showing mingled hope and dread.
The silence in the big room held and held, and then the whole building began to vibrate.
“Helicopters!” said one of the men in the back. “The army’s here!”
Wild cheers erupted throughout the hall. Trout goggled at this, but then considered that these people were here in the school long before he got here, so they may not have seen the ruthlessness of the National Guard.
“Listen to this,” he said in the mike. “People are cheering because they hear helicopters. They’re hoping that the military is coming to rescue them. I had that same hope
when I crossed the quarantine zone. And, call me crazy, folks, I still hope that the guys in the white hats do come along and save our butts, because I’d love a happy ending here. ”
He tilted the mike up again, and waited with the others, muttering, “Come on … come on … come on,” under his breath as the heavy throp-throp-throp of the rotors beat closer and closer.
And then the miniguns opened up.
The cheers instantly turned into a shrill chorus of screams as the windows exploded inward in storm clouds of glittering glass. The shards swept across the packed crowd, slashing and tearing. Children dove under the seats, adults tried to shield them with their own bodies. Bullets buzzed above the massed people like a swarm of furious hornets.
Billy Trout dove behind an upright piano used for school shows and the bullets coaxed a mad, disjointed tune as they ripped the instrument into kindling. Despite the madness raining down around him, Trout punched the Record and Send buttons and aimed the camera at the windows.
CHAPTER NINETY-NINE
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
The Black Hawk hovered in the air like a nightmare, the minigun growing like a dragon, spitting hundreds of rounds at the top floor of the school. A second helicopter coasted with monstrous slowness past the far side of the school, firing at the row of lighted windows. Below them, the living dead moaned and reached with aching fingers toward the sky, trying to tear the machines down to tear them open for the meat inside. But the choppers were too high and the dead could not reach them, and the intensity of need within those moans rose to a horrible shriek.
* * *
“This is Billy Trout reporting live from the apocalypse!” he yelled. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but we are under attack. Please … if anyone can hear me, we need help!” He turned up the gain on the lavaliere mike clipped to his lapel so that his words could be heard over the din of screams and automatic gunfire. “We’ve been begging for help from the government … and this is how they respond!”
* * *
Dez was curled in a fetal crouch, her arms wrapped around her head, her body bleeding from dozens of cuts. Her eyes were squeezed shut, but her mouth was open as a continual, red-raw scream tore itself from the deepest part of her. A dozen feet away, JT Hammond was curled into a similar knot, trying to shrink into himself. He, too, screamed.
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!”