I will shoot.”
Polk took his foot off the brake and let the Humvee roll forward. The lieutenant ran to stand between him and the gate, and a lot of the Guardsmen swarmed with him. All around them was the roar of the choppers, the thunder of the machine-gun fire, and the amplified sound of Billy Trout’s voice. Polk pressed lightly on the gas and the Humvee began moving toward the gate.
Other soldiers raised their weapons and pointed them at the vehicle, but the soldiers were cutting looks back and forth between Polk and the lieutenant.
Polk revved the engine, then leaned out of the window. “Either unlock the gate and stand back or watch your ass because I’ll roll right over it.”
“Sergeant, you are buying yourself a world of hurt with this nonsense. Stand down before I put you down.”
Polk revved again.
And a single soldier stepped away from the massed soldiers and began walking toward the Humvee. The lieutenant yelled at him, too, but the soldier held up one fist, forefinger extended. Then he turned and walked backward, his rifle in hand but the barrel pointed to the ground.
“He’s right, loot,” the man yelled. “This is bullshit. This is wrong.”
The lieutenant shifted the barrel of his pistol to cover the second soldier. “Drop your weapon and stand down.”
“Sir, I respectfully decline to accept that order.”
“On what fucking grounds?” screeched the lieutenant, his face boiled red.
“On the grounds that I enlisted to protect my country and my fellow Americans. Haven’t you been listening to what that reporter’s been saying? They have proof that this was something of ours. Maybe it was a mistake, or maybe somebody went batshit and released it, but we started this. How the hell can killing Americans be a right and proper military response to that?”
“That’s not for you to decide.”
The man brought his weapon to port arms. “It is now.”
“Fucking right it is,” said another man, and the lieutenant turned in horror to see a third man step out of the line and walk toward Polk. Then a fourth. Then five more. Ten.
As the lieutenant stood there, his pistol still pointed at arm’s length, at least half of the men deserted his side of the parking lot and went to stand in a ragged line around Polk’s Humvee. Other Guardsmen were hurrying along the fence line to see what was happening.
Another officer, Captain Rice, came to stand beside the lieutenant.
“Eddy,” he said softly, “you’re about to make the biggest mistake of your life, and I can guarantee that no matter how this all plays out today, it’ll be the last one of your career.”
“They’re deserting during a time of crisis.”
“That’s one way to see it,” said Rice. “But, tell me, son … you ever heard of General George Custer?”
Then Captain Rice pushed the lieutenant’s gun arm down, turned, and walked across the concrete to stand with the others.
And then the guns stopped. Smoke whipped up out of the barrels to be threshed by the whipping rotor blades and scattered as mist into the rain. The choppers — those two and the others that hovered above the parking lot — still filled the air with thunder, but the madness of the gunfire had abruptly stopped.
Glass tinkled as pieces fell from the shattered window frames.
In the parking lot the dead moaned.
In the auditorium the wounded cried out.
Billy Trout crept cautiously out from under the sagging ruin of the piano, brushing glass from his hair and lacerating his hand without realizing it. He stared around at the damage. Everyone seemed hurt, but no one looked dead. He frowned, trying to understand it. He could see the Black Hawk holding station outside, the gun still pointed into the school.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED
“Is it over…?”
Dez’s voice was tiny, a whisper from a raw throat.
The air thrummed with the sound of the rotors. Inside her head there was a more terrible thunder as her pulse hammered her brain. As she rolled onto her hands and knees, glass fell from her hair and clothes. She stayed there, unable to move, feeling the entire day burning in every bruised bone, every aching muscle, every fried nerve.
JT Hammond crawled slowly to the wall, shedding debris and leaving a trail of bloody hand and knee prints. He grabbed the shattered sill and pulled himself up.
The two Black Hawks pulled back from the building. Beneath them the dead were massing into a huge crowd. The sound of the gunfire and the voice from the speakers drew them from every part of the parking lot. Thousands of bone white hands reached for the birds, thousands of mouths moaned and bit the air.
As the first two Black Hawks moved away, their machine-gun barrels trailing smoke, the other two flew out over the crowds of the living dead.
The cries of the dead rose into the cold drizzle of midnight.
“Is it over?” Dez asked again.
“No,” he said.
The guns swiveled up toward the window.
Then there was a mechanical squawk behind them. Dez and JT turned and looked down. The walkie-talkie lay there.
“… icer Desdemona Fox, please respond. Officer Desdemona Fox, please respond…” The call repeated and repeated. Dez did not recognize the voice.
“Well,” said Dez, “ain’t that interesting as shit?”
JT laughed. He turned around and slid down to sit with his back to the wall.
Dez climbed painfully to her feet and tottered over to where the communicator lay amid the rubble. She bent over with a groan and picked it up, keyed the Send button and spoke.
“This is Fox.”
“Desdemona Fox?”
“No, it’s Michael J., asshole.”
“Please verify your badge number and the last four digits of your social security number.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Dez complied.
The voice said, “Confirmed. Thank you, Officer Fox. Please hold the line.”
“Is this some kind of trick?” asked JT, but Dez didn’t reply.
Another voice spoke, one she hadn’t heard before. “Officer Fox?”
“This is Fox. Who’s this?”
“This is Major General Simeon Zetter, commander of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard.”
A day ago she would have been impressed to the point of speechlessness. A lot had changed since then.
