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CHAPTER TWELVE
COMMUNICATIONS COMMAND POST #2
STEBBINS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
“It’s working, sir,” said the radio specialist.
The captain in charge of communications for the National Guard detail on the eastern edge of Stebbins County was a small, fussy-looking man with the face of a geek. Even with the uniform he didn’t look like a soldier; and in his own heart he wasn’t. He was an electronics nerd who joined the Army to get free training and to play with more interesting toys than he could afford working at Best Buy.
The unit in which he sat cost more than thirty million dollars, and it was his.
More or less his.
The captain leaned over the specialist’s shoulder and looked at the gauges, dials, and meters, then down at the digital readout on the computer monitor. It was arcane to anyone who didn’t live and breathe electronics. To him it was a language he understood better than English. A language that was precise, without ambiguity.
The information on all those meters told him that no communication signal was getting into or out of Stebbins except those on very precisely fixed channels. The blackout was immediate and complete. Stebbins County went dark, taking with it the border towns of Portersville, Allegheny Falls, St. Johns, and Bordentown. All landlines, cell towers, and Wi-Fi were silent. No cell phone, no landline, and no damn satellite uplink.
Everything was being jammed.
He smiled.
“Good,” he said, as he reached for the phone to tell Scott Blair that Billy Trout wasn’t reaching anyone.
Not anymore.
And neither was anyone else.
PART TWO
BROKEN DOLLS
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.
—Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
Trout tried Goat a dozen more times and hit the same wall every time. Then he went looking for Dez and couldn’t find her. Disturbed and depressed, he drifted back to where the kids had been gathered. It was uncomfortably subdued for the number of young kids there.
“Coffee?”
Billy Trout turned to see one of the younger teachers, Jenny DeGroot, holding a tray on which were a dozen paper cups. Steam rose and clouded the petite woman’s glasses and put a flush on her cheeks. Trout fished for her name.
“Thanks, Jenny,” he said and took a cup.
She nodded and he stepped out of the way as she entered the big classroom. He hadn’t liked the glazed look in Jenny’s eyes. Too much shock, not enough hope. Way too much fear. It made him wonder what was in his own eyes.
He sipped the coffee and winced. Not because it was hot but because it tasted exactly like reconstituted horse urine. Possibly the worst coffee he’d ever tasted, and he’d worked in a newsroom for twenty years. He caught Jenny watching him from across the room and Trout hefted the cup in a salute and pretended to smile in appreciation of the taste.
A second sip only confirmed the bad news from the first taste. Horse urine with just a hint of hog feces. Maybe not as tasty as that.
