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Mrs. Madison recoiled and her throat flushed pink.
“Dez,” Trout said gently, “let’s dial it down and—”
“Oh, and most of all fuck you, Billy Trout.” She slapped his hand off her knees. “Okay, so Gerry Dunphries was batshit. Lot of that going around. Our town is overrun by zombies and we’ve just been abandoned by the military. Batshit seems to be the only flavor we have left, so we all better get used to sucking on it. You want to know how batshit crazy I am? When I was out there surrounded by all those frigging dead sonsabitches with no ammunition—you know who helped me? You want to know who talked me through it? You know who saved my life? JT motherfucking Hammond. Yeah, my dead partner. My best friend. The man who helped save all of your lives. He had my back and told me what to do and how to get through it just like he always did. How’s that for batshit?”
The room was utterly silent.
Dez leaned forward and fixed Mrs. Madison with a steely stare. “You want to know the kicker to that? Even now, even knowing that I’m crazy my ownself, even right here in your office, I can still hear JT’s voice. Telling me to stop yelling, telling me to watch my language, telling me to take it out of overdrive. Yeah, I can hear that clear as day.”
“Dez…” began Trout, but she ignored him.
Dez sat back. “We’re all crazy. Fine. If it’s the way things are then it’s the way things are. I’ll be happy to talk to the rest of the adults and explain the facts of life to them. If any of them are too fucked up in the head to be part of how we’re going to survive, they have my permission to hang themselves or give themselves a sponge-bath with steak sauce and go outside. But they don’t take any of the kids with them, they don’t let the kids see it, and they don’t let those fucking zombies in here. And if anyone does anything to endanger the other kids, I will personally shove a gun up their ass and pull the trigger. That is not—I repeat not—a joke. Am I making myself crystal fucking clear here or do I need to start kicking some basic survival sense into everyone in this frigging school?”
The silence following her words was heavy and long. Trout looked at the faces of the others, tried to read their eyes and predict what they’d say.
It was Uriah Piper who spoke first. “I won’t shoot anyone for being crazy or stupid,” he said. “But if you need to do that I’ll load your guns for you.”
Mrs. Madison gave a slow, grudging nod.
A strange smile formed on Jenny DeGroot’s young face. “I’m absolutely with you, Dez.”
Dez and everyone else turned to Trout. He cocked an eyebrow, “Honey, if you even need to ask then you really are batshit.”
The harsh mask of anger and hurt on Dez’s face softened. “Thanks, Billy … but if you ever call me honey again I’ll kneecap you.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Piper cleared his throat. “I hate to interrupt a tender moment here…”
“Fuck you,” Dez and Trout said at the same time.
“… but I need to get back to securing the building. Looks pretty clear that there are more of those things out there and for whatever reason they seem to be coming here.”
Dez started to nod, then abruptly held up a hand. “Wait.”
“Wait … no…”
“What?” asked Trout.
“When I was outside,” she began slowly. “The buses…”
“What about them?”
She began shaking her head. “We’re thinking about this the wrong damn way. Jesus, how could I have been so dumb?”
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She stood up, dropping the blanket to the floor and walking to the door. She opened it and looked out through the suite of offices toward the main part of the school. Her gaze roved over everything including the walls and the ceiling. Then she turned and leaned against the frame and shook her head again.
“When this thing started I came here because I knew this was where they were going to take the kids. Town shelter and all that. Okay, fine, it’s strong and defensible and we have some supplies. Then we were locked in here by the National Guard. This became our place, you see what I’m saying?”
No one did.
“We thought we were going to ride it out in here. The Guard would airdrop food and supplies and the geniuses at the CDC would cook up a cure or vaccine or something. Then the frigging Guard lit out of here like their asses were on fire. It wasn’t an orderly retreat and it wasn’t the kind of wrap-up you have after a field deployment has completed its job. No, the way they went tear-assing their way out of here means they were going to a fight, and it was a bigger fight then they anticipated. Armies plan and move with some kind of order. They only bolt and run when the shit has seriously hit the fan. Then there was that explosion. Or maybe it was a series of them. Big fucking airbursts. Not nuclear because we’d all be dying right now if they’d dropped a nuke on Stebbins or Bordentown. No, I think they found a big fucking nest of these things and they tried to sterilize them with fuel-air bombs.”
“What are they?” asked Jenny.
“Thermobaric cluster bombs. It’s the biggest and most powerful non-nuclear device we have.”
