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The group started to break up, but then Gerry Dunphries, the man who’d sung the fractured lullaby, grabbed Dez’s arm. “Wait, wait, hold on, let’s not go crazy here.”
Everyone paused, looking at him. His eyes were wide and wild and Trout was sure the man was a very short step away from screaming.
“Hold on for what, Gerry?” asked Dez.
“We’re acting like this is all really happening,” he said. “And it’s not. It can’t be. None of this is really happening. I mean, come on, people going crazy and … eating each other. That’s not happening. That’s not what’s really going on.”
Mrs. Madison took a step toward him and in a gentle voice asked, “Well, Mr. Dunphries, what do you think is happening?”
“It’s something in the water,” he said. “I mean, that’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s happened before. Like when they put LSD in the New York subways. They did that at the Chelsea Hotel, too. And in France back in the 1950s, the CIA did it in France, they put psychedelic mold in bread and freaked all those people. It was in, in, wait a minute, in … yes, in Pont-Saint-Esprit. And remember what Jim Jones did at Jonestown with the Kool-Aid. That’s what this really is. They’re doing something to us. They’re messing with our brain chemistry. This isn’t really happening. It’s something in the water. Maybe they seeded the clouds and that’s why it started happening when it started raining. Nobody’s really killing each other. My wife didn’t kill anyone. My kids are fine. Tracy and Sophie are just fine, and don’t you dare try and tell me different. They’re fine, but they’re probably freaking out, too, and we have to get out of here, not lock ourselves up. We have to get out and—”
And Dez Fox spun him around and slapped him across the face.
It was, after all, what you do with hysterical people. Trout had seen it a thousand times in movies and on TV. You slap the crazy out of them and knock some sense into them with a big opened-hand wallop across the chops.
The sound was as loud as a gunshot. Gerry Dunphries spun in nearly a full circle and caromed into Clark, who tried to catch him and failed. Gerry crashed to the floor, his face blossoming with a bright red handprint.
Dez loomed over him, hand raised for a second blow, her mouth starting to form words that Trout knew would be some variation of the “cowboy up” speech.
But Gerry screamed.
He scuttled away from her, tears breaking from his eyes, his mouth trembling as terrified sobs tore their way out him. He crawled all the way to the wall and huddled there, hunched and cowering, arms raised against the next blow. Against the next inevitable hurt.
The moment ground to a halt.
Everyone froze into a tableau that came close to breaking Trout’s heart. Dez was caught in a role for which she was totally ill-suited—that of a bully terrorizing a helpless person. The other people looked shocked but there was guilt there, too; everyone was complicit in this moment. If the slap had worked—and Trout doubted that it ever did outside of Hollywood or a bad novel—then they would have tacitly supported what Dez did. Instead they were bystanders to injury and there was no way to step back onto the ledge.
“I…” began Dez, but even that small a thing, a single tentative word, made Gerry flinch again. He buried his head under his arms and wept brokenly. Dez turned right and left as if looking for the doorway back to a minute ago. She spotted Trout. “Billy, I…”
Trout moved past her and knelt in front of Gerry, who instantly shied away. But Trout made very soft, very slow shushing sounds. He sat down on the floor next to Gerry, wrapped his arms around the man, and pulled him close, rocking him the way the man had rocked the little girl. Trout fought to find the words of that o
ld nursery rhyme. Found some of it. Sang it quietly, leaning over Gerry to comfort the man with the warmth of another body.
“Come along,” said Mrs. Madison in a hushed voice. “We have work to do.”
One by one everyone left until only Dez lingered, looking wretched and guilty and confused. Trout met her eyes. He gave her as much of a smile as he could muster, then a small nod. He mouthed the words “It’s okay.”
Near to breaking herself, Dez Fox backed away until she reached the far end of the gymnasium, then she turned and fled.
“It’s okay, Gerry,” Trout said to the sobbing man. “It’s all going to be okay,” he lied.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
THE OVAL OFFICE
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Scott Blair had a hard time keeping himself from committing a federal crime. He wanted to punch the president in the mouth.
No, he wanted to do more than that. He wanted to beat some sense into the man.
“Mr. President,” he said with as much control as he had left, “the intelligence we are getting from Captain Imura clearly contradicts the reports being filed by General Zetter. The situation in Stebbins is far from stable and—”
“And we have ten thousand additional troops inbound,” said the president. “We have another five on standby. The NBACC field team has arrived and they are making their assessment and, frankly Scott, I think they are in a better position to assess this kind of threat than a former special operator.”
“I couldn’t disagree more strongly,” insisted Blair. “Sam Imura is one of the most experienced people we have, with the except of Captain Ledger who is, unfortunately, out of country and out of reach.”
“Captain Imura is retired from active field work,” said Sylvia Ruddy. “He’s been out of the field, in fact, for years.”
