Fall of Night (Dead of Night Series) (37 page)

CHAPTER NINETY

STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL

STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA

Dez looked as if she wanted to either throw up or punch Sam Imura’s teeth out. Either way, Trout wanted to grab the moment and pull it out of the fire.

“Captain Imura,” he said firmly, “I hear what you’re saying, and as a newsman I appreciate the urgency of your story, but if this thing is already out, then why does it matter if I have a copy of Volker’s research? Go find Volker. He has all of it. Hell, he’s the science. Go waterboard him, I’m sure he’d be happy to tell you anything you want to know. Coming after me seems kind of a waste of—”

Sam’s eyes were cold. “Herman Volker is dead. He committed suicide.”

Trout bowed his head and slumped into a chair. “Christ. Why the fuck didn’t you say so? You assholes always have to drag everything out. Shit.”

“We just found out about it,” said Sam. “Until now he’s been MIA and you were the only known source of intel. Now do you understand why those drives are so important? They are the only known record of Volker’s work. We have plenty of research on Lucifer but no one has a clue about what Volker did when he modified the disease into Lucifer 113. Initial analysis of the infected indicate that the disease is radically different from the old Cold War version. We don’t know if we have the time necessary to deconstruct and analyze Volker’s version. Mr. Trout …
where are the flash drives
?”

Trout’s mouth felt as if it was filled with burned ashes and bile. In a strained whisper he said, “I gave them to my cameraman.”

“Who is he and where can we find him?”

“Gregory Weinman. Everyone calls him Goat. He’s the one who was taking my standups and streaming them to the Net.”

“Where?”

“He walked out of town just as the Guard were setting up the roadblocks. The last time I spoke with him—before you idiots began jamming all calls—he was at the Starbucks in Bordentown.”

Sam Imura staggered. He took two or three small, aimless steps and almost collapsed against the blackboard on the wall. He put his face in his hands and said, “Jesus save us all.”

“What is it?” snapped Dez. “What’s wrong?”

Boxer went over and put his hand on Sam’s shoulder. Moonshiner and Shortstop sat down hard on the chairs. Only Gypsy held her ground.

“What’s wrong?” demanded Dez.

“Wrong?” mused Gypsy. “What’s wrong is that we are all totally and completely fucked.”

“I don’t—”

“That’s where the outbreak is,” said Gypsy. “The Air Force dropped fuel-air bombs on the whole area. Bordentown is nothing but a cloud of hot ash.”

CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

SUBURBS OF PITTSBURGH

“How we doing, boy?” asked Homer Gibbon.

Goat hoisted a fake smile onto his face. “We’re getting some really great stuff here. I can’t wait to get this onto the Net.”

Homer pursed his lips. In the dark, Goat couldn’t see the blood smeared all over the man. What little there was made it look as if the man was painted in tar. But he stank. At first the car had been filled with the sheared-copper smell of fresh blood, but now it was turning sour as the cells thickened and died. It was like being inside a meat locker with the power off. It took great willpower and a fear of reprisal to keep from vomiting.

“You think they’ll watch it?” asked Homer, sounding a little insecure about it.

A sharp laugh escaped Goat before he could stop it.

“You think that’s funny, boy?” asked Homer in a tone that was abruptly menacing.

“No,” Goat said quickly. “Far from it. I’m pretty sure everyone in the world is going to watch these videos. I don’t think anyone is going to watch anything else.”

Homer looked at him for a long time. “You really think so?”

“Yeah,” said Goat with complete honesty, “I absolutely think so.”

CHAPTER NINETY-TWO

STEBBINS LITTLE SCHOOL

STEBBINS, PENNSYLVANIA

“That is not a happy-looking man,” said Billy Trout.

He and Dez stood together watching Captain Sam Imura as he stood on the far end of the room having a mostly one-sided phone conversation. The news that Goat had the drives and that the Starbucks where he was waiting for Trout’s call had been destroyed had hit everyone very hard. Imura stepped aside to call it into his boss—the national security advisor.

Imura had looked pretty defeated at the start of that call, but as the seconds peeled off and fell away, the man’s shoulders slumped. Then Imura straightened and cut a sharp, appraising look at Trout.

“Uh oh,” said Dez.

“Yeah,” agreed Trout.

Imura came hurrying over, still holding the phone in the way people do when the line is still open. “Mr. Trout, do you still have the satellite phone Weinman gave you?”

Trout nodded and produced it.

“Is it charged?”

“Half-charged, but yeah.”

“He has it,” Imura said into the phone, listened, and added, “Good. We’ll try again in five minutes.”

He disconnected the call and considered Trout. “Listen, I guess it’ll come as no surprise to you that they’ve been jamming all communications from Stebbins County.”

“You don’t say,” murmured Trout drily.

“I just asked my boss to have all jamming stopped. Satellite interference, cell lines, the works.”

“Good,” said Dez, “and then maybe we can go around and close all the barn doors ’cause I’m pretty sure the horses have all run off.”

Imura gave her a few millimeters of a tight smile. “If there’s even the slightest chance that Weinman left the vicinity of the Bordentown Starbucks, then maybe we can reestablish contact.”

“His name’s Goat,” said Trout, “and he didn’t have a car. He walked across a field to get to the Starbucks. Or maybe hitchhiked.”

“Then there’s at least a small chance he hitchhiked again. If he’s as tech-savvy as you said, then maybe he realized that service was being jammed and he moved on to someplace outside of the interference zone.”

“Which he wouldn’t have had to do if you ass-clowns didn’t jam him in the first place,” snapped Dez. “If he and Billy’d been able to stay in touch you’d already have Volker’s notes.”

Imura turned to her. “Really, Officer Fox, you want to Monday-morning quarterback this now? Is that the best use of our time?”

“I’m just saying.”

“Fine, we fucked up. It’s hereby noted.”

Dez looked mildly embarrassed; an attitude that Trout found amusing. As he enjoyed having his scrotum remain attached, he declined to say so.

Imura looked at his watch. “The jamming should be down in a couple of minutes. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

Trout glanced from him to the other members of his team. “Who exactly are you guys? You said private contractors? That’s the PC phrase for mercenaries, isn’t it?”

“In a manner of speaking. We’re former U.S. military who do special jobs.”

“Like what?”

“Like classified stuff that I’m not going to talk about to a reporter.”

Dez sniffed. “I met some of your kind in ’Stan.”

Imura smiled. “The contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq were mostly Blackwater, who are, even by the somewhat loose standards of the mercenary community, total dickheads. Not as bad as Blue Diamond, but swimming at the edges of the same cesspool. Personally, I wouldn’t piss on any of them if they were on fire.”

“Don’t sugarcoat it, Captain,” said Trout.

“There are all kinds of contractors just like there are all kinds of reporters and all kinds of cops.”

“And what kind are you?” asked Dez sharply.

“The kind I can live with,” he said. He cocked his head to one side. “You know, Mr. Trout, I was given a pretty free hand for how I wanted to handle this. We could have done a hard infil of the school and taken you.”

“You could have tried,” growled Dez.

But Imura shook head. “I mean no disrespect when I say this, Officer, but if we wanted to play it that way we would have succeeded.”

“I’ve met plenty of spec-ops jocks and—”

“You’ve never met operators like us. I’m not saying this to blow my own horn but to give you a perspective check. You have every right to think of anyone in a military uniform as your enemy. I don’t blame you. However, if we were your enemies you would be dead, Officer Fox, and Mr. Trout would be having an even worse day than he’s already had. It was my choice on how to play this and I set you up to take a run at us outside so we could take you. From all accounts you are a formidable law officer, but we play a different kind of ball. Let’s be clear on that.”

“Okay, okay,” said Trout before Dez could get into gear with the kind of verbal counterattack that would probably end in fisticuffs, “you could have done it the Rambo way and instead you didn’t. Why waste time making that point?”

“Because,” said Imura, “if we can accept that killing you isn’t high on my list of priorities, then maybe we can all put our dicks away and start working together.”

Trout smiled thinly. “It’s a lovely speech, Captain, but if knowing Dez has taught me anything it’s that trust is earned.”

“Not killing you doesn’t earn trust?”

“It’s a good start,” said Trout. “Let’s see where it takes us.”

He lifted the satellite phone and punched Goat’s number.

The number rang.

And rang.

And kept on ringing until Trout felt his heart begin to sink. Then someone answered it.

“Billy!” cried Goat. “Oh my God, Billy—”

There was a snarl of a harsh voice, the sound of an open palm on flesh, a cry of pain, and then a different voice growled, “Who the fuck’s this?”

It took Trout a couple of stumbling moments to match this new voice to a recent memory and then to fit those awkward pieces into a puzzle shape that made only fractured sense. He felt his heart lurch in his chest.

He said, “Homer?”

CHAPTER NINETY-THREE

THE SITUATION ROOM

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Scott Blair closed his cell and wanted to scream.

Instead he made another call and got the director of the National Security Agency on the line. He explained about Goat Weinman having the flash drives.

“What do you want me to do?” asked the director.

“Hack his phone and email. He’s a reporter and he’s on the run. There’s every chance that he sent the data to himself as a way of keeping it safe. Find out.”

The director didn’t ask whether Blair had a warrant. That time had already passed.

CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR

ON THE ROAD

FAYETTE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

“Why as I live and breathe, it’s Mr. Live From the Apocalypse his ownself,” said Homer. “Billy Trout, how do you do?”

Homer grinned into the phone as he spoke. Beside him, Goat cowered back, one hand pressed to the welt on his cheek where the killer had belted him when Goat answered the call.

“Homer?” repeated Billy Trout. “Is this really Homer Gibbon?”

“In the flesh. Can’t tell you how much I enjoyed your little speeches on the radio coupla hours ago. Really exciting stuff.”

“How … how…?”

“You gonna finish that sentence?”

“How are you with Goat? Is he okay? Did you hurt him? Christ, you’d better not have touched him, you sick fuck.”

“Hey, mind your manners,” warned Homer, “or I will do some particular damage to your friend.”

“No, don’t!”

“I ain’t done shit to him so far, but that could change right quick, so make sure you keep a civil tongue in your head.”

“Yes, yes, okay. I’m sorry. I’m just concerned for my friend. May I speak with him, please?”

Homer pulled onto the shoulder, put his hand over the mouthpiece, and turned to Goat. “This thing have a speaker?”

“Yes,” said Goat and when Homer held out the device, he flicked the switch. Homer leaned close and very quietly said, “You don’t speak unless I give the nod.”

“Yes. No problem.”

“And if you say the wrong thing, you know what I’ll do to make you sorry about it.”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Homer held the sat phone up between them. “We got this on speaker, so Mr. Goat can hear you, too.”

“Thank you,” said Trout. “Goat … you okay there, buddy?”

Goat looked for approval and got a nod. “I’m okay, Billy. He hasn’t hurt me.”

“Thank God. Can you tell me where you are?”

Homer shook his head.

“No,” said Goat. “I can’t do that.”

“Can you tell me what you’re doing?”

Homer thought about it, then nodded.

“Mr. Gibbon wants me to tell his side of the story. The whole story. About the Black Eye and the Red Mouth. You remember those from the trial, Billy?”

“Sure.”

“That was only part of the story. A small part.” Goat saw Homer give him a small nod of approval and decided to take that script and run with it. “There’s so much more to the story, Billy. I know you’d really appreciate it. It’s the greatest story anyone’s ever told. It’s so … deep. So big.”

Homer looked pleased, but Goat was afraid of overdoing it, so he closed with that.

“I … see,” said Trout. “Sounds like something I definitely want to hear.”

“You really do.” An idea occurred to Goat and he hoped Trout would be sharp enough to catch the ball and run with it. “It’s like you always told me, Billy. There are layers and layers to Homer Gibbon. No one really knows him. The stuff at the trial was all bullshit. No one ever asked him the right questions. No one ever really wanted to know what he saw and why he does what he does. It’s like people didn’t think the Red Mouth or the Black Eye were real. You always said there was more to the story. You always said that it was a crime that no one ever let Mr. Gibbon speak to the jury, speak from his heart, and tell the whole truth. You were right, Billy. Absolutely right.”

There was only a half beat before Trout said, “Nice to know you were paying attention, Goat. And I’m jealous that you’re there to get that story. Will we ever get to hear it?”

Goat waited for Homer to give another nod.

“That’s what we have planned. I have some incredible stuff already. Really amazing stuff. As soon as we get somewhere with Wi-Fi I’m going to upload it and blow everyone’s minds.”