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“That’s unfair. You’re asking me to say whether it’s right or wrong to kill six hundred kids.”
“Take fairness out of the equation. Look at it for exactly what it is, a problem of survival. Not of a few, but survival of the species. Take a step back and look at the real problem, the big picture, Billy, and tell me what we should have done?”
“First, tell me the absolute truth … is it really that bad out there?”
“Yes.” Sam said it without hesitation.
“Are we in danger of losing control of this whole thing?”
Sam’s face turned to stone. “Billy, we may have already lost control of this thing. The math is so bad. There are so many ways this can go bad on us, and almost no way that we can put this genie back into the bottle.”
“You’re saying we’ve lost? Christ, Sam, is that what you’re saying?”
“I … don’t know. There are still some cards we can play. And the spread will hit some natural barriers. Rivers, mountains, lakes, bridges. All of those are potential chokepoints or they can act as firebreaks. Can we get ahead of it? I don’t know. Not unless we up the game.”
“Up it from fuel-air bombs? Shit, what’s the next upgrade after that?”
Sam said nothing.
Billy looked down at his hands. “Oh, man…”
“So, again I ask you, Billy, last night, what should we have done last night?”
It hurt so much for Trout to say it, but he managed to get the words past the stricture in his throat. “You should have killed us.”
“Yes,” said Sam, “we should have killed you. And God help my soul for saying and believing that.”
They sat in silence for a moment, each of them looking at the world through that lens.
“Then why are you helping us now?” Billy asked again.
Sam nodded to the buses down in the lot and the dozens of people scrambling to prepare them for an escape. “For me and my guys it’s like being cut off behind enemy lines. Sure, we could make it back to the front, but I have a feeling that this is going to change from a gunfight—which is what we do—to a war we’re only going to be able to fight from the air. Providing the storm ever stops. In a mechanized war, we’re not much better than five extra sets of hands. It’s a waste of our specialized skill sets.” He gave Trout a rueful grin.
“And here?”
“You kidding me? Six hundred kids, two hundred civilians, and a horde of flesh-eating monsters? We might actually get to be bona fide heroes. And wouldn’t that make a nice change.”
“You’re joking.”
Sam held up his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “Only a little.”
Down in the lot the four members of the Boy Scouts were helping with the preparations. Trout had been introduced to them only by their combat call signs and what little he could deduce about their personalities. The woman, Gypsy, was a problem solver and apparently the second in command. Moonshiner was gruff and lacked obvious warmth, unlike Boxer who seemed to wear his heart on his sleeve. Shortstop was the most detached of the bunch, very pragmatic but aloof.
“What about your team?” asked Trout, nodding out the window. “Are they on the same page as you?”
Sam nodded. “They usually are. We tend to think like a pack of…”
He stopped speaking and leaned close to the window as lightning flashed and flashed again. The soldier’s body went suddenly rigid with tension. Then he tapped his earbud.
“Team Alert, this is Ronin. I have eyes on the street beyond the north fence. We have potential hostiles. Repeat, potential hostiles.”
It was Boxer who turned first, snatching his rifle from where it lay under a jacket and out of the rain. He brought it up and snapped on the top-mounted light. The beam cut through the rain and the openings in the chain-link fence, and there, filling the street, were silent figures who moved with slow, implacable steps.
“Give me numbers,” ordered Sam.
“Christ, boss, I got forty of them. Shit, no, there’s more coming.”
Gypsy’s voice cut in. “We got more coming in from the west and…” Her words trailed away.
