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The cops wanted to get closer, but Lucas kept waving them back. Then gunfire broke out from the back of the church, and everybody crouched, looking, guns coming out. Rae shouted, “Warning shots, warning shots, people trying to get out.”
Mellon called: “What the hell is going on there?”
“People in the church are trying to get out, but we can’t let them out. I believe they’re all infected: Catton was on her way out of the church when I saw her, and she said, ‘You’re too late.’ She’d already unloaded that shit.”
“What do I…”
“Get the Army up here, right now. That fast-reaction group they were talking about. Get them up here,” Lucas shouted.
“Yes.” And he was gone.
A cop shouted, “They’re coming.” The church door opened, and a man, woman, and two children pushed through.
“Go back inside,” Lucas shouted. “Go back inside.”
“We’re coming out. You can’t hold us here,” the man shouted, and he prodded the kids forward.
“If you come out, I’ll shoot you, and no doctor will want to get close. You’ll just lay there until you die.”
The woman grabbed her husband’s jacket sleeve, and tried to pull him back inside, but he shook her off and said, “You wanna shoot kids, I guess you can.”
“I will,” Lucas warned him.
The woman was talking urgently to the man, and a cop, not far away, turned his head toward Lucas and said, “You shoot at those kids, and I’ll kill you.”
“No, you won’t,” Lucas said. “I am very fast and very accurate, and I will shoot you in the head.”
“Wanna bet?”
“No, I don’t, but Iwillkill you. Believe that. We cannot let those people out. Not even the kids.”
“I got kids,” the cop said. He was young, middle twenties.
“So do I,” Lucas said. “But I will shoot them if they come running out, and I will shoot you.”
—
At the church,the woman pulled the man toward the door, and he stepped back, then pulled the kids with him, and the door closed behind them.
Another cop shouted at Lucas, “I’m not shooting anybody in there.”
“Neither am I,” another cop yelled.
“If they come running out, and you don’t push them back, maybe eight out of ten people in this town will die, and that includes your own families,” Lucas shouted. “You think we’re doing this because we like it?”
The cops were calling back and forth to each other, arguing. There was nothing more moving at the church doors, and they waited; a helicopter flew over, at altitude, and didn’t slow or circle, so the pilots might not have intended to overfly the church. As the sound of the helicopter faded, a priest, wearing his vestments, came to the door, looked at Lucas and called, “We need to have a conference.”
“It’ll have to be by telephone,” Lucas said. “Everyone in your church may have been contaminated, by that dead woman you see there.” He pointed. Catton’s scarf had come off, and her scalp was like a pink soccer ball in the dirt.
The priest seemed to notice Catton for the first time. “Who did that?”
“I did. I’ll shoot anyone else who tries to come out. We will have some viral specialists here within the hour, to figure out what to do,” Lucas said, waving his gun like a windshield wiper, wanting the priest to see it. “For the time being, Father, nobody leaves. You need to go back inside, calm everybody down, and just wait. We’ll get some medical specialists here as soon as we can.”
—
Underwood showed uptwo minutes before the MPs’ fast-reaction force. He started toward Lucas, but Lucas waved him back. “That’s Catton,” he called, pointing. “I think she opened the vials in the church and is contaminated herself. I’ve kept everybody away from herbody, but I was only about fifteen or twenty yards from her when I shot her, so…Everybody’s got to stay away from me. Same with Rae—Rae’s covering the door in the back of the church for the time being.”
Underwood said, “Goddamnit! Goddamnit! Nobody got out?”
