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Billy Trout left the basement gymnasium after the bodies had been taken care of. Because they were forbidden to open the exterior doors to the school, the two corpses in their makeshift body bags were placed in one of the shower stalls. After the others left, Billy lingered and stared down at the silent forms.
He wanted to say something, a prayer or something of importance, but even though he kept calling on God since this whole thing started, his actual faith was as dead as the town. This sort of thing did little to rekindle what had always been a weak flame in him. Even so, he mumbled something, a fragment of the Lord’s Prayer, getting some of the words wrong but getting the gist of it out there. For the dead, in case they believed. And … in case he was wrong about there being no God. Trout was open to taking any help they could get. He’d have prayed to the Flying Spaghetti Monster if he thought it would earn the people in this school even a small measure of grace.
Then, heavyhearted, he turned away and climbed the stairs to the first floor. He tried again to call Goat, but he still had no signal. Frowning, he went to the second floor and found a room with big windows so there was no chance of interference.
Nothing. The little meter on the satellite phone said that he still had half a charge. Power, but no signal. No contact with Goat, or with anyone.
The explanation for it was obvious to the realist in him, but Trout resisted it nonetheless. He didn’t want it to be the case.
“Uh oh…” he murmured.
Depressed and frightened, he went downstairs and looked once more into the big classroom. Two of the teachers were handing out little plastic containers of fruit cocktail. Trout thought it was such a bizarre sight. He remembered getting those little cups when he was a kid in this school. It was always a happy moment. They packed a ton of sugar into those cups, and it was nice to see halved maraschino cherries floating among the chunks of peach and pear. Now it seemed incredibly sad. The children took the cups, opened them with clumsy fingers, spooned out the fruit, chewed, swallowed, and all in a ghastly silence.
Trout backed out of the room and went to find Dez.
At first she seemed to be nowhere at all, and he poked his head into every room. Then he caught sight of her heading toward the fire tower at the far end of the hall. He immediately understood where she was heading. He limped down the hall as quickly as he could, hissing whenever the pain shot down the back of his leg. The heavy fire tower door creaked as he opened it, and for a moment he listened to the sounds from below. Soft footfalls fading into silence. He descended slowly and silently, and finally paused on the stone steps and saw her there, standing with her palms on the steel door, shoulders slumped, head bowed.
On the other side of that door was what was left of the infected from the school.
And JT. He was out there, too.
“Damn,” breathed Trout. His voice was soft but in the utter stillness of the fire tower it carried and Dez suddenly stiffened. She didn’t turn though.
“Billy?”
“Yeah, babe.”
There was a beat. “Don’t call me that.”
“Right. Sorry.” Now wasn’t the time to test the limits of whatever new connection they’d for
ged.
He descended the last few steps and moved toward her, mindful to come into her peripheral vision well out of strike range. Experience is a wonderful teacher.
She stared at the closed door as if it were made of glass. “What do you want?”
He almost said that he came looking to see how she was, but Trout preferred his balls still attached to his body. So, instead he said, “They said they’d airdrop some food to us. That’s fine, but nobody I talked to knows how to get up on the roof without going outside.”
“There’s a fire access stairway.”
“Right, okay, that’s good,” he said. “But no one else knew that.”
She turned to look at him, but said nothing.
“Once they drop the stuff,” Trout continued, “it’s got to be inspected, sorted, and distributed. You’ve seen how people are reacting. They’re going to do it wrong. Some of these people are a twitch away from losing it. They might grab stuff or horde stuff. We have to take control of things. We have to make sure we do everything right.”
Her eyes searched his face and after a long moment she gave a single nod.
“There’s something else,” he said. “No, two things. The first is that we have to double—no, triple—check everyone. I mean everyone.”
“We did. No one has a bite.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. The guy who … I mean the guy down in the gym. I didn’t see a bite on him.”
A line formed between her brows. “Of course there was a bite.”
“No, there wasn’t. I, um, checked. Everywhere. I even had to cut his clothes off just to be sure.”
