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“Oh my God,” he breathed, realizing that no one knew.
Then he thought back to the violence on the road, the helicopters, the explosions.
People knew.
But they didn’t know that Homer was loose, that he was on the road.
That he was free.
Goat used the webcam on his laptop to record a quick and desperate video message. He had no idea how much time he had—or had left—so he made it short. He gave their location, and explained what Homer had already done. He emphasized that Homer had killed people, and had wounded others. He referenced Lucifer 113 and that Homer was, for all intents and purposes, the patient zero of this plague. He ended it with a statement that was both a call to arms for the authorities and a desperate cry for help.
It took several agonizingly slow seconds for the video file to upload to his media listservs, including the one that had all of Goat’s White House correspondent colleagues. Then he posted it on YouTube and immediate deleted the file from his computer.
He kept glancing out the window at the building into which Homer had disappeared. It was a club of some kind.
What could Homer want in there?
He checked the video files of the interviews with Homer. Most were so big that they were still uploading, but many of the shorter ones were already up. He sent the same batch of them to his listserv using DropBox and WeTransfer, dumping all of the raw footage into the media cauldron, praying someone would watch it, understand its reality and importance, and act on it.
With all of that done, Goat scrolled through the video clips until he found the one in which Homer used the same eerie tone of voice. He watched it all the way through. It wasn’t long, but it hit him like a punch to the throat.
He watched it again.
And again.
It was on the third viewing that the whole truth broke through.
The awful truth.
He suddenly knew why Homer was here.
Just as he knew why Homer had stopped those other times. He knew why Homer killed, and he knew why Homer sometimes spared lives. It wasn’t mercy and it wasn’t any of his humanity connecting with individuals.
It was something else.
Something horrible.
Something far worse than anything Homer had ever done, before or after he’d become the monster that he now was.
Homer wasn’t on any vengeance kick. He wasn’t hunting for his former foster parents. No, that was too mundane and cliché a motive for a person who was hearing the kinds of voices Homer heard.
No, what Goat realized with perfect clarity was that Homer, knowing and accepting what he was, what Volker had done to him, had embraced it. He hadn’t killed everyone at the 7-Eleven, but now that made sense. He hadn’t killed them all, but he’d infected them all.
The same with the people back at Starbucks. He killed some and fed on some, but his real agenda was spreading the infection. Like some kind of nightmare blend of John the Baptist and Johnny Appleseed, Homer was on the road to spread the word of his god. To spread the gospel of the Red Mouth and the Black Eye.
To create the paradise that he’d envisioned, that he’d spoken of. A world inherited by the meek. By the mindless dead. By those raised up, as Jesus had been.
At least according to Homer’s view of the cosmos.
It was a horrible plan, but a very practical one. A workable one.
Behind them, at the 7-Eleven and the traffic jam on the road, the infection was probably already spreading. Outside of the quarantine zone.
Goat snatched up his camera and babbled all of this into a live stream. He saved it and posted it on Facebook.
Then he logged onto Foursquare, the social media app for sharing your location.
“Find us,” he begged. “Find us.”
