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CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED EIGHT
STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL
STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA
“Okay, listen up,” said Sam into the team channel. “This is a holding action. We don’t fire until and unless there’s a danger of a breach. Watch the fences. If they start putting pressure on it, we use selective fire to drive them back, or we drop enough to block access. This is a target-rich environment but that’s also a good way to burn through too much ammo. Check your targets. Headshots only. Unless you’re pressed, take time for accuracy. Make ’em count.”
Behind them Dez and Uriah Piper had set up chains of people to bring out the hundreds of boxes of food, water, and supplies. The chains split off to feed the stuff into a dozen Type C Blue Bird school buses. Uriah Piper was running from bus to bus to start engines and check fuel levels. A couple of teachers were busy siphoning gas from buses that were too low in fuel to make a long run or too badly damaged. Each bus had a standard capacity of seventy-seven passengers and the driver, which meant that a dozen of them would easily transport the eight hundred survivors of Stebbins County with room for boxed supplies.
Jenny DeGroot had found a can of spray paint and was writing a message on the outside wall of the school, but Trout couldn’t read it at that distance. Probably a note about where the buses were going. Smart, he thought.
Trout, too dinged up to help, was recording everything and, he hoped, streaming it out to the Net. He wanted people to know. Unfortunately, he had no laptop, so he couldn’t check to see if anything was showing up on the Web.
Sam came over and looked Trout up and down. “Do you have a gun?”
“No. I’m not very good with one.”
“You’re worse without one.” He bent and removed a small automatic from an ankle holster and held it out to Trout. “Beretta 3032 Tomcat. Seven-round box magazine. Less than a pound and fits into any pocket.” He showed Trout how to use the thumb safety. “Better to have it and not need than need it and not have it.”
“One of Dez’s favorite lines.”
Sam smiled. “Dez … is she your lady? Girlfriend? Wife? Something?”
“Something. We’ve been a couple more often than you’ve had hot dinners, but recently we’ve been on a break.”
“A ‘break’?”
“As in she keeps threatening to break parts of me I don’t want broken.”
“I joined the army because war is easier than love,” said Sam.
“Very wise words.” Trout glanced over at Dez. “She’s a foul-mouthed redneck who is, politically speaking, to the extreme right of Glenn Beck, but even with all that I love her. Always have.”
“That street go both ways?”
Trout sighed. “Not lately.”
“Ah.”
“I mean … apocalypse and all. Not a hearts-and-flowers sort of thing.”
“I hear ya.”
“Tell you what, though,” said Trout. “For all of her rough edges—she has the biggest heart. She’d die for any one of those kids, and for most of the adults, too. No, that’s not quite right. She’d happily and mercilessly kill for those kids.”
Sam nodded. “A warrior rather a soldier.”
Trout cocked an eyebrow. “There’s a difference?”
“Soldiers are called to serve and when their service is done they go home. A warrior lives on the battlefield. It is home.”
Trout studied him. “Yeah … that’s Dez.” He weighed the gun in his palm, nodded thanks, and put it into the pocket of his stained and torn sportscoat.
“Listen, Billy, I think I’d better tell you some things. I heard from my boss, Scott Blair.”
“Good news, I hope.”
“I wish … but, no. Lucifer has become an airborne pathogen now.”
