Dying for Rain (The Rain Trilog - BB Easton Page 0,45

grieving bones across the street to the Channel 11 news van, the passenger door opens, and Michelle climbs out.

“You okay?” she asks, her battered face mirroring my battered spirit.

I nod. Then shrug. Then shake my head as she comes over to give me a hug.

“If it makes you feel any better, I think this footage is gonna have everybody in Georgia on Team Wes as soon as it airs. He’s a hottie, huh?” Michelle forces a smile as she tugs me closer to the van.

Opening the side doors, she gestures for me to climb inside. Flip is in the driver’s seat while Quint and Lamar are sitting in two small fold-out chairs. The three of them are chowing down on soup straight out of the can. A skinny counter wraps around the back and driver’s side of the van, and above it are rows of monitors, lights, switches, and buttons.

Lamar greets me with a grin. “Hey, Rainy Lady!”

“How’d it go?” Quint asks, setting his can on the counter.

I sit in the middle of the floor and try to pry off one of Michelle’s cruel shoes. It’s so tight on my foot that I end up yanking it off with both hands and throwing it across the van. “Ugh!”

“So … not good?” Lamar summarizes.

I screw my eyes shut and shove my hands into my hair, tugging as hard as I can to distract myself from the pain. A squeal emanates from somewhere deep inside of me, high and pained and pressured, like a teakettle about to blow.

“What the hell happened?” Michelle asks, climbing in behind me and shutting the doors. “You were in there for, like, half an hour!”

“I had him!” I shout, hot, angry tears leaking through my closed eyelids. “I had him, and I fucking lost him!” I take a few deep breaths and try to calm down. Try to force my brain to think.

Think, Rain. Keep it together.

“He’s right there!” I growl, shoving my hand in the direction of the police station. “He’s right here, and I can’t get him out!”

“What happened in there?” Michelle repeats her question as she climbs back into the passenger seat.

I suck in another deep breath and cover my mouth with my hands. “They have guns. That’s what happened.”

“We have guns,” Quint offers.

“We have two guns.” I snort.

Flip lifts his pant leg, revealing a small silver pistol in an ankle holster.

“Okay, three guns. Even if we managed to take out the cops in the lobby without getting shot, there are probably more officers inside. All they’d have to do is seal the doors, and then we’d be sitting ducks.”

Michelle shakes her head. “This whole Green Mile operation is run by, what … the governor, a handful of police officers at the station, maybe a dozen riot cops, and a couple of security guards at the capitol? What is that, like, twenty people?”

“If we could just get the Bonys on our side, we’d have enough people to fight back or even the runaways from the mall.” Lamar raises his voice in excitement. “Q is fuckin’ crazy. I bet she’d kill a cop.”

I sigh. “I tried to get her to come, but you know her. Q only does what’s good for Q.”

“You know who would probably love to help? All those prisoners they just released,” Quint suggests. “Nobody hates cops more than criminals, right?”

“There’s enough guns in this country to arm every man, woman, and child,” Flip mumbles around a mouthful of loaded potato soup. “All you need is, like, a hundred of ’em.”

My shoulders slump. “How do we even find that many people? Look around. Everybody’s just tryin’a survive. They’re not gonna put their necks on the line for people they don’t know.”

“Damn.” Michelle’s mouth draws into a frown as she reaches for a bottle of vodka next to a monitor. “I wish we could broadcast a message for you, but they’d kill us as soon as they saw it.”

I stare into the black monitor next to her as she takes a long pull from the bottle, seeing only my reflection staring back at me.

Broadcast.

Message.

As soon as they saw it.

“What if they don’t see it?” I blurt out, my eyes darting back to Michelle’s. “What if we fight fire with fire?”

“What are you talkin’ about?” Flip asks as Michelle chokes on her last swallow of vodka.

“I’m talking about subliminal messaging! That’s how they programmed us to think the world was gonna end, right? How they drove a quarter of us insane enough to kill