SecondWorld

1

MIAMI, FLORIDA

WEDNESDAY—AUGUST 8, 2012

“Shit!”

The microwave door flew open and Rachel Carter reached her hand in.

The spoon, left in the bowl of oatmeal and heated along with the cardboard-flavored breakfast, had been shooting off blue sparks when she noticed it. Without thinking, she grabbed the spoon. A millisecond later, her mind registered the stupidity of her action, along with the searing heat. Her arm reacted quicker than her fingers, flailing backward. The spoon soared across the kitchen, weighted with expensive organic oats, and smacked against the stainless steel fridge, where both breakfast and spoon clung like Silly Putty.

Rachel turned on the tap and ran cold water over her pulsing index finger and thumb, her glare fixed on the spoon. It slid slowly toward the floor.

“You okay, Mom?” asked her ten-year-old daughter, Samantha.

“Fine.”

Samantha walked past the fridge, paused, stepped back and looked at the spoon. She turned to her mother with an eyebrow raised. “Fine?”

Rachel forced a smile that communicated a single message: don’t ask.

Samantha shrugged and pulled a chair up to the counter. She climbed onto the chair, then onto the counter.

“Get down from there!”

“I’m hungry.”

“I made you oatmeal.”

“You’re gonna make me puke, too, if I have to eat that sludge.”

With two granola bars in hand, she jumped down from the counter, swung the chair back to the table, and began unwrapping the first bar. Jake, the younger of the two siblings, strode into the kitchen, still in his footie pajamas, which he wore most days. “One of the advantages of being homeschooled,” he was fond of saying. Samantha tossed him the second granola bar and they sat at the table, eating in silence.

Rachel sighed. She couldn’t complain. At least they were eating granola bars and not fast-food egg and sausage sandwiches—which she suspected her husband, Walter, had been sneaking on his way to work. Again. She looked at the microwave clock.

8:30 A.M.

“Walter, you’re going to be late!” she shouted after noticing the time. He worked for a big downtown marketing firm and had a major pitch to make that afternoon.

Walter slid into the kitchen, moving fast. He opened the cabinet, reached up, and took down the granola bar box. Empty. “Ouch. Epic fail.” He looked at Rachel, who nodded toward the kids. Her grin said it all.

He took in their barely contained smiles. “Traitors!” He sighed. “I guess I’ll just get something on the way.”

“I’m sure you will,” Rachel replied, drying off her still-stinging finger.

“What?”

Rachel stared intently at him, trying to convey her annoyance over his bad eating habits, without actually having to spell it out for him in front of the children.

Seeing her expression, Walter laughed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about! Now get out of my head, woman!” He grabbed his bag and headed down the hallway for the front door.

“Love you!” Rachel shouted as the door creaked open.

There was no reply.

No customary “Love you, too.”

No closing door.

No starting car.

She was about to go check on him when Walter slowly backed into the kitchen. He had his iPhone out and was tapping the screen madly. This wasn’t an uncommon activity, but the dire look on his face was far from normal. Rachel held her breath. The kids stopped giggling and watched their father.

“What is it?” she asked. “Did the job fall through already?”

Walter shook his head and kept on tapping. Then he stopped. “This is wrong.”

“What?” she demanded, growing worried. “Is the phone broken?”

He stared blankly down at the screen. “It’s happening everywhere—all over the world. Wait— Crap, I lost our Wi-Fi connection.”

“Walter…”

“The 3G network is down, too.” He met his wife’s eyes. “It must be disrupting cell service.”

She took his face in her hands, willing his stunned eyes to meet hers. “Walter! What are you talking about? What is happening?”

He glanced toward the still-open front door. She followed his gaze and gasped.

The kids hopped out of their chairs to look.

“It’s snowing!” Jake shouted, running for the door.

“No!” Walter jumped forward and snagged his son by the sleeve. He looked at Rachel, his expression alarmed. “Close any open windows. Tape the seams. Use the duct tape.”

She nodded, feeling sick, and they both set off around the house, closing doors and windows. Samantha and Jake went into the living room, climbed onto the couch, and peered curiously out the bay window.

“Why can’t we go out?” Jake asked. “It never snows here. I want to play in the snow!”

“Dad says it’s not snow.”

Jake looked grumpy. “Well, how does he know?”

“Because, silly, snow isn’t red.”

2

TOKYO, JAPAN

WEDNESDAY—AUGUST 8, 2012

Akiko Sato woke to a loud chime.

She reached for the alarm and hit the snooze button. The sound disappeared and she returned to sleep within seconds.

Moments later, the shrill electronic chime sounded again. Her mind, pulled from REM sleep by the first chime, finally registered the sound for what it was—her cell phone. She rolled over to look at the clock, but her tightly tucked-in sheets resisted her movement.

Had she missed her alarm? Was work calling to find out why she was late?

When she saw the time, she relaxed.

10:30 P.M.

She’d only been asleep for half an hour.

She brought the phone up to her eyes and squinted in the screen’s bright blue glow as she read the caller ID. She groaned. Tadao. Her boyfriend. Soon to be ex-boyfriend. He was nice enough, but just too clingy for her. She hadn’t called to say goodnight, and here he was, calling her instead. She popped open the phone and decided that she would break it off with the whipped pup of a man tomorrow. Tonight she had to sleep, and that meant saying goodnight now, or the phone would ring until morning.

“I was asleep, Tadao.”

“Sorry, sorry. Right, it’s late. But you have to see something.”

Just say goodnight, hang up, and go to sleep, she willed herself. “I’m up at four thirty. You know that, don’t you? I have to go.”

“Wait! Just look out your window.”

She glanced toward the drawn shades on the other end of her long, narrow bedroom. She lived on the thirtieth floor of a high-rise apartment building. The only thing to look at outside her window was other buildings. What could he want her to see?

A surge of nervous energy stirred in her belly. Normally reserved and always professional, Tadao sounded unusually lively. Like someone about to do something stupid. He was a system programmer, making it possible for hotels to control lighting and environmental systems from one location. He had, in fact, worked on several of the hotels within eyeshot of her building.

She had a feeling she knew where this phone call was leading.

“I’m going,” she said as she yanked free of her sheets and stumbled over to the window. She hoped he wasn’t going to take a picture of her in her nightgown, using some kind of long-range camera while she read, with a scowl on her face, his marriage proposal written out in lights on the side of a building.

She was positive that’s what he had planned, because as reserved as Tadao was, that was exactly the stupid romantic kind of stunt he would pull.

She took hold of the curtain and held her breath. She’d never been one to climb slowly into a pool. She preferred to jump in. Let the shock hit her all at once and then fade all the more quickly. She counted to three, then jerked open the curtain, scouring the buildings for anything unusual.

Everything looked normal. Tokyo glowed brightly below her window. A thick haze filled the air, which was nothing new, though the color seemed more vibrant than usual. The streets were packed, which was typical.

Well, not quite typical, actually. Something was different. She pressed her nose lightly against the glass and looked down.

The streets were mobbed, but no one was moving one way or the other, simply standing frozen as they gazed upward in awe.

“Are you there? Do you see it?” Tadao asked. “Pretty amazing, right?”

She caught her breath. “I don’t see anything.”

“Step onto your balcony and look up.”

Akiko did as she was told, more curious now than worried. She unlocked the slider, pulled it open, and stepped out into the cool night air. She breathed deep and sneezed immediately. The air was bad tonight.

But then she looked up and forgot all about the air.

The sky was ablaze with colors! Like a rainbow in motion, the atmosphere from horizon to horizon danced with vivid colors like the aurora borealis seen through a kaleidoscope. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of bright streaks, like shooting stars zipping in and out of view, made the display even more spectacular.

She laughed.

“Beautiful, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Like you,” he said.

Akiko frowned, closed the phone, and tossed it back inside. It began ringing a moment later. She closed the door, blocking out the sound, and returned to watching the sky. Tadao could call all night if he wanted to. She doubted anyone in Tokyo would be sleeping tonight.

She turned toward the sky again as a collective “ahhh” rose up from the streets below. The shooting stars had picked up pace. They were everywhere. They were incredibly beautiful.

But somehow ominous.

She looked down at the people below again, all still looking up. Something major was happening. She followed their gaze and for the first time saw something in the night sky brighter than the neon city lights. The haze wasn’t haze. It had a solid form to it.

Like snow.

Red snow.

She glanced down at the shoulder of her pale blue nightgown. What looked like ruddy dandruff, though some bits were more similar in size to a fifty-yen coin, covered the light fabric. Her entire nightgown was coated in it. Akiko gasped, breathing some of it in.

Tasting it.

She gagged and spit, trying to expunge the flavor from her mouth, but each breath only increased the potency.

The air tasted like blood.

3

NINE MILES SOUTH OF KEY LARGO, FLORIDA—ATLANTIC OCEAN

SATURDAY—AUGUST 11, 2012

Fifty feet below the surface of the tropical ocean, Lincoln Miller cringed as his eyes locked onto the cracked portal window. A spiderweb of fissures spread out from the center, reaching for the edge like desperate fingers. He knew the glass would give way at any moment and ocean water would rocket into the research station, drowning whoever was inside.

Despite the dire circumstances, he had more urgent needs to attend to. He picked up the TV remote and paused the DVD before heading to the bathroom. The picture froze on the screen, stopping the first jet of CGI water as it rocketed through the portal.

As an NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigation Service) special agent currently tasked with investigating recently reported acts of ocean dumping over the coral reefs, Miller was technically hard at work. There were only three other people in the world who knew he wasn’t—the director of the NCIS, the deputy director, and the executive assistant director for combating terrorism—his bosses. He had balked at the assignment when it landed on his desk. His skills were better suited to tracking down navy criminals on the lam or hunting seafaring terrorists. As a former Navy SEAL, now special agent, his skills seemed a gross overkill in the battle against glorified litterbugs. It wasn’t until he arrived on-site that he realized the true nature of his assignment—a vacation.

He was scheduled to spend two weeks in Aquarius, an undersea research station run by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)—the world’s only underwater research station. He was required to patrol the reefs surrounding the laboratory twice daily, searching for signs of recent polluting, and if possible, apprehend the culprits in the act. As a scuba enthusiast and lover of all things ocean, he looked forward to each and every “patrol.”

Because Miller was an extreme workaholic, the NOAA assignment was the only way his superiors could get him to take his first real break in five years. It wasn’t that Miller was performing poorly; quite the opposite. They simply believed that no engine could run forever without a respite. In truth, their actions were selfish. Were Miller to burn out, the loss would be significant to the organization. Not only was he a consummate investigator, but his time with the SEALs made him a man of action as well. The NCIS had plenty of both, but rarely in the same package.

With his first week of forced vacation over and his second week just beginning, he was feeling pretty good. The laboratory was cramped, but he had traveled by submarine several times as a SEAL and had no problems with claustrophobia. The lab was well stocked with every deep-sea movie and novel available. The lab’s full refrigerator, air-conditioning, microwave, shower, and high-tech computer system, complete with video games, not to mention unlimited time to swim or even spearfish, made this place Miller’s dream come true. Of course, he’d spent the last few days lazing about, watching movies, playing games, and reading books. He suspected the “ocean dumping” investigation was just a clever cover story for his vacation and had taken a break from his scheduled scuba patrols. There was plenty of time left to dive; he just needed some couch potato time first.

The facility was a forty-three-foot long, nine-foot in diameter, eighty-ton cylindrical steel chamber separated into two different compartments, each with its own air-pressure system and life support. There were living quarters for sleeping and eating, and labs for work. At the far end, off the lab, was a wet porch with an open moon pool for entering the ocean. Miller had all of this to himself, plus—and this was the best part—not a peep from the outside world for three days.

It’s not that he didn’t like people. It’s just that people liked to talk, and after his first day aboard he had decided the break would be good for him. Quiet was bliss. Years of pent-up tension he hadn’t realized he carried began to melt away. So when the NOAA staff stopped checking in on their laboratory, he didn’t think twice about why. Instead, he allowed himself to undergo an emotional readjustment. He went over years of cases, of killers caught, of terrorists exposed, and the few who had slipped away. Then he moved farther back, to the SEALs, and the event that had etched a long scar into his leg and left a little girl dead. The tragedy ended his career with the SEALs, but down here, fifty feet beneath the surface of the ocean, he thought he might finally make peace with his past.

After he finished the movie.

Finished relieving himself, Miller hustled back to his seat without washing his hands. Why bother? Urine was sterile. More important, no one was here to judge him. He’d let his appearance slide over the past week, as well. His black hair was uncombed, his face unshaven. Thanks to his half-Jewish, half-Italian ancestry, Miller’s week’s worth of facial hair was damn near a beard now.

The chair beneath him groaned as he leaned back and propped his legs up on a work desk. With the remote back in his hand, he waited, held his breath, and listened.

Silence.

Wonderful silence.

No worried NOAA voices. No traffic. No cell phone calls. He thought about telling the director that the time off had convinced him to retire. Sure, he was only thirty-nine, but life without responsibility was fun. He held out the remote, positioned his thumb over the Play button, and—

Thunk!

The noise wasn’t loud, but was so unexpected that Miller flinched, lost his balance, and toppled over. He struck his head hard on the metal floor.

“Son of a bitch!”

He lay there for a moment, wondering exactly how he’d ended up on the floor, and then felt the back of his head. One area, the size of an apple, was swollen, pulsing with pain, but there was no blood. He wouldn’t need stitches, which was good because he couldn’t get them here. In fact, if there was any kind of emergency, he was pretty much screwed. A nine-mile boat ride, and a fifty-foot dive, did not make for an easy 911 rescue.

He was on his own.

With a sigh, he rolled his head to the side and caught his reflection in the polished stainless steel base of a workbench. He grunted at the sight of himself. He flashed what he thought was a winning smile, sharpening the fine spread of crow’s-feet around his blue eyes, but his current disheveled appearance hid his good looks. He hadn’t seen himself look this bad since just after…

He pushed the images from his mind, still not fully prepared to deal with his past—not with a movie to finish, and a mysterious noise needing investigating.

He sat up. Pain surged through his head twice, following the rhythm of his heartbeat, and then faded away. When he stood, the pain rose up again, but only momentarily. Shuffling over to the fridge to grab an ice pack, he passed by the small bedroom containing six bunks, three on each side, with a large viewing portal between them. He stopped suddenly, his eyes focusing on the glass portal.

Something wasn’t right.

It was a fish, not an uncommon sight, but something was odd about this one. Its movements were all wrong. He squeezed between the beds to get a better look.

Thunk!

The fish was back, this time smacking hard against the window.

Miller blinked a couple times. The fish, a black grouper, wasn’t moving on its own. The ocean’s currents were pushing it up against the hull.

Well, that’s damn annoying.

He was about to head back to the fridge when something else flitted by the window. It looked like a large piece of fish food. This time, Miller focused on the water beyond the dead fish. There were other fish out there—scores of them—and they zipped through the water in a miniature feeding frenzy. The fish, normally concealed by the reef that Aquarius had been built to study, had come out of hiding, drawn by what looked like a Jolly Green Giant–sized handful of TetraMin. Most of the fish snatched up the flakes with gaping mouths, then spit the reddish stuff back out. If they were smart, anyway. Many fish, dumb enough to swallow the “fish food,” floated belly-up. Poisoned.

Not seeing any large green legs in the vicinity, Miller searched his mind for answers and came up with only one—some jerks were actually dumping waste on top of the research station. Not only were they polluting and killing wildlife, they were also ruining his vacation. Why couldn’t you have waited just a few more days? He was as pissed at these polluters as he was at the terrorists he helped track, and a piece of his mind was just the beginning of what he was going to give them.

Miller ran to the wet porch and hastily pulled on a full tank of air, dive fins, and a mask. In these tropical waters, he didn’t need a wet suit, plus he was already dressed only in shorts—another perk of solitary living on board Aquarius.

He slid into the water and took in the scene around him. The flakes were falling everywhere. Fish, thousands of them, were either eating eagerly, twitching in violent death throes, or already dead. A few small white-tip sharks picked off the twitchers in the distance. The sharks didn’t pose much of a threat, but he would have to watch out for tigers and bulls. All this action could draw their attention, which meant he could easily be mistaken for one of the twitchers—not that tiger sharks cared. He could be a car and they’d still take a bite.

He kicked out from under the Aquarius cylinder and looked up. What he saw made no sense.

The normally blue surface of the ocean…

…was red.

4

Miller scanned the fuchsia waves above, looking for some sign of dumping—a thicker plume of material, for example, or better yet, a ship’s hull. When he found what he was looking for, he intended to rise from the depths like the Kraken and bring a world of hurt to the people responsible. But he could see nothing to direct his anger toward, just an endless sea of red. Visibility had been cut in half, not just by the fog falling from above, but because much of the sun’s light was being blocked by the maroon film covering the ocean’s surface.

Miller looked down. The normally sandy brown seabed was coated in the ruddy ash; the coral reef had been buried. Dying fish thrashed about, sending plumes of the foreign substance upward like dust.

How had he missed this? It couldn’t have just started. There was too much. He hadn’t been outside Aquarius for days, but had he really not bothered to look out one of the portals?

A ladyfish struck his side, its silver body twitching as the last of its neurons fired. He took the fish by the tail and pulled it closer; its body went rigid, giving way to death. Pulling its mouth open, he peered inside. Red sludge lined the dark cave, thick as paint. He checked the gills and found the same phenomenon.

His eyes darted back to the snowy scene of death surrounding him. Some fish and the sharks in the distance had taken to eating the recently dead instead of chasing after the poisonous flakes. Perhaps they would survive? He hoped so. A massive die-off in the Florida Keys would have a profound effect on the surrounding ecosystems, not to mention the many migratory species that passed through. A pod of blue whales had recently been spotted heading north. The red cloud, which looked like krill, would be absolutely irresistible to the one-hundred-foot giants.

A fluttering piece of red material, about the size of a corn flake, caught his eye. He reached out and caught it in his palm, then grasped it between two fingers. It was surprisingly firm. He squeezed and it broke apart. He rubbed his fingers together, releasing a bloodlike cloud as the material dissolved.

He took a deep breath from his regulator, tasting the metallic-flavored air, and let it out slowly, releasing a cascade of bubbles, which fled to the surface. His eyes followed them. He knew the answer to this mystery lay up there. The more he saw, however, the less he wanted to know what was happening.

But he had no choice.

He kicked hard, pumping his muscles, an action that ate up the air in his tank more quickly than would a leisurely swim. He checked the pressure gauge—still plenty of air remaining. This would most likely be a short dive, so he could take the risk. Besides, the wet porch was only fifty feet below and he could free dive that if he had to. Holding your breath for long periods of time is a handy talent to have as a SEAL, and one he had worked on over the years. The skill had yet to save his life, but he had a feeling it would, eventually.

As he neared the surface, the material grew dense, which meant it was definitely coming from above and not being pushed into the area by ocean currents. The material had to be coming from a boat, or a plane, or… Well, he didn’t want to consider the last possibility, and wouldn’t, until he confirmed it with his own eyes.

Through the haze he found the umbilical cord that connected Aquarius to its life support buoy, or LSB. The LSB supplied power and provided wireless communications and telemetry to the station and held air compressors, as well. It also made for a convenient viewing platform. While standing on top of the LSB, which was shaped like a super-sized yellow chess piece, Miller would be able to see from horizon to horizon. If someone was dumping this garbage, he’d spot them.

Approaching the buoy, Miller kicked harder, building speed so he could launch himself onto the platform. As he broke the surface, clumps of wet slime slid from his back and arms. A glob clung to his hair, but he paid it no attention. What he was seeing distracted him from doing anything else. He didn’t stand, remove his goggles, or take out his regulator. He simply gaped.

The world was red. As far as he could see, a crust, like refrigerated pudding, coated the surface of the ocean. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen, yet crimson flakes fell like snow from a sky that looked more purple than blue.

Heart beating hard, he stood up and looked in every direction. He spotted a sailboat off to the north, its sail limp as wilted lettuce, but nothing else caught his eye.

Miller tentatively held out a hand and caught another flake. Its surface felt rough and porous to his touch, like a petrified snowflake. Curious, he removed his regulator and placed the flake on his tongue. The flavor of blood struck him immediately. He gagged and spit several times, then took a deep, shaky breath. The air did no good. He felt winded, as though he’d just run a sprint.

He took another breath. His chest began to ache. He grew light-headed.

He took a third, deeper breath—

—and fell to his knees.

Was it poison? Could these flakes kill so quickly?

Spots danced in his vision as he realized the truth.

He was suffocating.

Drowning in the open air like a fish.

He shoved the regulator back into his mouth and breathed deeply, this time relishing the metallic-tasting air. He continued taking deep breaths until his head cleared and he felt relatively normal again. It wasn’t until then that he let his mind fill in the blanks.

He couldn’t breathe in the open air! What did it mean? What…

Oh shit! Miller thought. I can’t breathe because… there’s no oxygen!

5

Miller shot up out of the water and into the wet porch, yanked out his regulator, and slipped out of his swim fins. During his frantic dive back to Aquarius he’d had time to run through some possibilities. This event could be local, regional, or—disastrously—global. All three scenarios were bad for him. With no oxygen in the air, rescue might be impossible.

If there was anyone left to rescue him.

He threw off his gear and raced to the computer terminal. He sat, still wet, in the computer chair, bouncing his legs while the system booted.

“C’mon, you son of a bitch. Start!” The computer’s typical thirty-second boot time felt like an eternity. When the desktop appeared, he was forced to wait as programs opened in the background and the wireless searched for a signal.

“Connect… connect…”

A message appeared at the bottom right of the screen.

“Shit!”

He opened the network window and clicked Reconnect.

The same message came up. He had no Internet. No e-mail. No webcam.

But the life support buoy had a radio antenna. He rolled across the floor and wiped the bachelor detritus—wrappers, empty bottles, crumbs—from its surface, and switched the radio on. He quickly set the radio to broadcast on all frequencies and held down the Transmit button.

“This is Aquarius Research Station, nine miles south of Key Largo. Does anyone copy? Over.”

He waited to a count of ten. “This is Aquarius Research Station, south of Key Largo. I seem to be experiencing some kind of atmospheric event. It’s killing the fish. And… and the air. There’s no oxygen in the air.”

Oxygen.

His mind was trying to tell him something.

Air.

He let go of the Transmit button for a moment. Then his navy training kicked in and he pushed the button back down for a brief moment. “Over.”

The microphone fell to the floor, dangling by its springy cord. He rolled back to the computer hoping he could still access the internal network. All of the station’s systems could be checked and monitored from here—pressure, batteries, backup systems… and air. It was the last item on this list with which he was most concerned.

The digital gauges rose and fell as the system calibrated and then displayed the current levels. Miller leaned back in his chair, his jaw slack. The air gauge was near the bottom and blinking red, the universal signal for: You’re screwed.

He punched up the maintenance schedule. The station was due for a recharge of air, pumped into the storage tanks from a ship that connected with the LSB. The refill had been scheduled for two days ago, but something had gone wrong. Miller was getting the awful feeling that a refill wasn’t ever going to come.

According to the readouts, he had three more days of air left. The emergency reserve would give him another two after that. Plus, three high-pressure way stations sat approximately one thousand feet from Aquarius. They were originally meant to refuel the air tanks of divers on extended dives, but perhaps he could rig them so that they could supply Aquarius?

Which left him a definite five days to be rescued, maybe more with the air from the way stations.

And if he wasn’t?

Then I’ll die, he thought. From a slow, painful asphyxiation.

There had to be a solution. There had to be something he—

With the force of a train, something huge struck the side of Aquarius and tossed Miller into the air. His head struck the computer table as he fell, knocking him unconscious.

He woke a short time later to warm liquid oozing down the side of his face. He groaned at the pain in his head, and when he reached up to feel his skull for the second time in one day, he expected his hand to come away with a fresh coating of blood.

But there was no blood.

He leaped to his feet, realizing in an instant the awful truth. He fought to remain upright on a wet, steadily tilting floor. The Aquarius had sprung a leak and was leaning at a sickening angle. Miller turned toward the nearest portal. Something dark blocked his view. He hobbled to the bedroom viewport and found the same thing. Something massive had struck the research station and was now pinned up against it.

A pop followed by a metallic groan echoed through the cabin.

The weight of whatever was out there was tipping Aquarius over. If the station leaned too far, the ocean would pour in through the open wet porch. He could seal himself in the living quarters, but then what? Eventually, he would run out of air. And if Aquarius gave all at once, the wet porch might be slammed against the seafloor and he’d be trapped like a lobster in a cage.

He had to get out.

His thoughts raced. He needed to gather as many oxygen tanks as he could. Any supplies he could carry. And—

The lab tilted another ten degrees. He heard rushing water. He felt, more than saw, the lab continuing to roll. It was going to flip.

There was no time!

He ran for the wet porch, splashing through a foot of water. His foot caught on something sharp, sending a stab of pain through his leg. But he didn’t slow down to check the damage. He could see water surging in through the open pool. And a shadow beyond it. He ignored the massive shape, thrust his hands into the water, and found his dive fins, mask, and air tank. He threw the tank onto his back and locked it in place. He took a small, portable pony bottle air tank and strapped it to his wrist.

He was reaching for a second pony bottle when a support beam gave way. Slowed by the tremendous amount of water pressing against the sides of the research station, the beam didn’t buckle completely. It simply started to fall, then roll.

Realizing what had happened, Miller dove into the water and kicked hard without looking back. He was still holding the swim fins and the mask when he entered the water, but he knew how to streamline his body and swim efficiently with his finless feet. When a large pressure wave struck him from behind, he knew that Aquarius had hit the bottom. His home away from home was no more. He kicked until his lungs burned, then stopped, fumbled for his regulator, and thrust it in his mouth.

He put his mask on next, blowing out his nose to clear it. When his vision returned, he slipped on his swim fins and steeled himself for a shock. He turned toward Aquarius’s position and saw the impossible. What had to be a hundred-foot blue whale was twisted about the station like a leech. The whale was dead. The ocean currents that passed by the station had carried the body, turning it into a deadly projectile.

Miller started kicking for the surface, but stopped short. Heading to the surface would do him no good.

There was no air up there.…

He took the air gauge in his hand and checked the pressure. Seeing how much time he had left, he felt tempted to remove the regulator from his mouth and let out a great, bubbly scream. He managed to stop himself just in time. He needed that air.

Then he remembered the way stations. Each was a thousand feet away. He could refill his tank at one of them, but how many times could he keep doing that? He shook his head in denial. The cold, hard facts didn’t matter right now. He had no choice but to keep trying to survive. He kicked hard, heading north toward the way station.

And as he kicked, he prayed he could make the swim in twenty minutes.

Because that’s all the air he had left in his primary tank.

6

Each kick brought him closer to the way station. Each kick also used oxygen, of which he had precious little left. He checked the gauge. Four minutes.

Four minutes. For what? To live? To die trying?

He wondered for a moment if he should start contemplating the outcome of his eternal soul. If he didn’t make it to the way station he would be dead in four minutes. Well, twenty minutes. The pony bottle would give him a little more time. But twenty minutes wasn’t much time to figure out his fate.

He’d never been one to worry about religion, why start now? Without a priest, rabbi, or pastor around, how could he make up his mind anyway? Being totally uninformed, he would most likely choose the wrong religion and be doomed to Hell anyway. And he was pretty sure praying to a generic god wouldn’t do him much good. All religions had their own steps to salvation you had to follow, or saints you had to pray to, or whatever else was being offered. He doubted simply shouting out to an “all of the above” god would seal the deal. So he ignored the question of how he was going to spend his eternity and focused on the here and now—finding the white, cylindrical way station.

He swam up and over the now ruddy reef, making sure to stay well above the ocean floor where the carpet of red flakes could be kicked up, further obscuring his flake-impeded view. It was like swimming through a snowstorm on acid. As he rose above the reef, he could see what looked like a large propane tank resting on the ocean floor.

The way station.

He glanced at his air-pressure gauge. Two minutes to spare.

His heart raced as he leveled out over the flat seabed, and then skipped a startled beat when a large object caught the corner of his eye. For a moment he wondered if he’d seen anything at all, then decided he had. The swirling plumes of flakes in the distance indicated something was out there. Something fast.

Miller kicked hard and performed the swimmer’s version of a sprint. He went rigid, streamlining his body, pumped his legs, and dug through the water with cupped hands. As he closed to within thirty feet of the way station he relaxed. Whatever it was had either not seen him, or had seen him and not cared.

With one minute of air remaining, he slowed his approach, conserving the last few breaths in his tank before switching to the pony bottle while the large tank refilled. He’d never used the way station before, but could see the hookups clearly as he closed to within fifteen feet. It wouldn’t take long to refill his tank, but—

Miller’s entire body jerked violently, and then was yanked backward by his left foot. He spun about and the pressure on his foot dropped away. He was free, but ten feet farther from the way station. He glanced at his foot, which throbbed with pain. A quarter of the fin was missing, though his foot was still intact.

Or was it?

A brown cloud seeped out from inside the fin. Blood. He remembered cutting his foot as he was escaping the floundering Aquarius. He had left a trail of blood through shark-infested waters.

Idiot! Miller cursed himself, as he searched for the shark.

It circled, ten feet away.

A fourteen-foot tiger shark. It was second in size only to the great white, but its unpredictability and ferocity more than made up for the size difference. And right now it clearly had little interest in the tiny pink flakes or scores of small dying fish. It was interested in larger, still-living prey, most likely drawn by Miller’s oozing blood and rapid heartbeat.

Staying alert, he moved carefully toward the way station while turning in time with the striped shark. He unstrapped the pony bottle and readied it for use. In about thirty seconds he was going to need it to breathe. He also planned to expel some of the air to scare the shark off. If the beast managed to get hold of him again, he could always use the bottle to pummel the shark’s snout. Without help, without air, he wouldn’t survive, anyway, but he’d rather not be eaten alive.

As the shark came between him and the way station, it twitched twice and then, with a snap of its tail, turned toward him. There was no time to blow the pony bottle. Miller reacted instinctively, kicking up and reaching out. His hands caught the shark’s snout as it charged. He pushed up, moving his torso away from the open maw and squeezing the predator’s sensitive, jelly-filled snout. The shark thrashed and slipped away from Miller’s grip, but its large body smashed into him, spinning him around and knocking the pony bottle free. It sank to the seabed like a falling leaf. A puff of red debris exploded upward as the bottle landed.

He desperately wanted to swim down to that bottle, but his gut told him to watch out. He spun, looking for the shark, and found it bearing down on him from his left. With only a single breath remaining in the air tank, he removed the regulator from his mouth, held it out, and purged the tank. The shark veered off at the last moment, circling once again as it tried to figure out the best way to attack this defiant prey.

Miller let his last breath escape from his mouth and sank to the seafloor, never taking his eyes off the ocean’s tiger. When he reached the bottom, he knelt by the pony bottle, picked it up, and put its regulator in his mouth.

He could breathe again.

He had fifteen minutes.

Staying close to the seafloor, Miller kicked toward the way station, hoping his proximity to the bottom and the large cloud of pink kicked up by his movements would confuse the predator. He reached the station, breathing heavily. He realized that if he kept sucking on the pony bottle like a hungry baby, it wasn’t going to last nearly as long as it was supposed to. So he took one long, deep breath, and held it. After a count of three seconds, he slowly let out his pent-up breath, and, calmer now, set to work on refilling his air tank.

After removing his tank and detaching the regulator, he attached the tank to the way station valve, screwing the connector tight. The entire process took less than thirty seconds. He opened the way station valve and watched his pressure gauge.

It didn’t move.

He closed and opened the valve again.

Nothing.

Panic set in and he began breathing heavily again. He’d done everything right. This was a basic setup! What could be—

Miller closed his eyes and shook his head.

The way station was empty.

But how?

As he searched his mind for answers, a looming shadow caught his eye. The shark still circled, but was now above him. As his eyes followed the shark around, his vision caught an aberration on the ocean surface. A long cigar shape.

A hull!

The sailboat he’d seen before.

Damn them! he thought. Whoever was on the sailboat had taken his air!

He pulled himself to the top of the way station. He was fifty feet down with a pony bottle and a fourteen-foot man-eater. One fin was ruined and his foot was bleeding. He would never make it. With all the air in the world, he would never make it.

Then I’ll make it with no air, he thought.

He removed the pony bottle from his mouth and looked at it. For all he knew, it contained all the breathable air left in the world. Maybe five minutes. But he could hold his breath for three. He took one last, long pull from the pony bottle, crouched, and as the shark circled closer, he banged the bottle’s valve against the solid way station. A dull bong echoed through the water.

The shark jolted and turned toward him.

Miller struck with the bottle again.

The shark twitched its tail, moving in.

The third strike was followed by a loud hiss and a violent stream of bubbles. Miller twisted the bottle away from the boat’s hull and let go. It took off like an injured fish. The shark snapped at the bottle as it surged past, then twisted around and gave chase.

Miller pushed off the way station and swam for the surface, holding on to that precious last breath of air.

Twenty feet from the surface, the urge to breathe welled up within him.

After another ten feet the desire became almost unbearable. The surface loomed and he kicked harder, adrenaline and fear for his life fueling his ascent.

With a quick glance back he saw the pony bottle resting on the ocean floor, still bubbling away its life-giving air. The shark had given up on the bottle and had returned its attention to Miller.

The predator rose from below, pumping its tail hard, gaining on its prey with the speed of a creature that moved much more efficiently through water than man did on land.

Miller knew that death would find him above the surface, just as surely as it raced to claim him from below, but he still did not want his last moment on earth to be one of violent gore. So he kicked hard and reached out as he approached the back of the hull. As his hands pierced the thick film coating the ocean’s surface he stretched out and pushed down, hoping for a dive deck. He found one.

Using his momentum and several last frantic kicks, he flung himself from the water and onto the deck. A fin cut through the pink sludge inches from his leg, then slid beneath again, disappearing as though it had never been there.

Miller threw himself over the rail and onto the sailboat’s aft deck. When he landed, he coughed out the air clutched within his lungs, and feeling safe for the briefest of moments, took a breath.

The painful sensation of drowning gripped his body like a python. His muscles tightened and he curled into a ball. Pain filled his body and clouded his mind. This was it. This was death. His vision grew blurry. His eyes darted frantically about as his body shut down. No one was aboard, he realized.

Not a soul.

He was alone, and his air—all of it—was gone.

7

Nearly unconscious, Miller still wasn’t quite ready to give up the fight. Eyes bulging, head pounding, he pushed himself to his feet. Staggering forward, he gripped the large polished wheel located at the back of the thirty-foot sloop, and it rolled under his weight, flinging him off. He hit the deck hard, landing in a thick pile of scratchy pink flakes. His fading vision darkened, but the white cabin door in front of him beckoned with hope. He reached for the small handle, yanked it, and forced his head up for a look.

His vision was nearly gone, but a familiar, bright yellow shape managed to make itself known. He dragged himself into the cabin, down the three stairs, and onto something soft. The air tank was sitting on the floor in front of him. He grabbed it and fumbled his hands all over the metal cylinder until he found the regulator hose. He yanked on it, but the hose resisted.

With the last of his strength—his vision dimmed to near nothing—he pulled again. The hose came free. Miller slid a trembling hand up the hose, found the regulator, and slammed it in his mouth. He breathed in.

After two deep breaths, he tasted the vomit. He wondered hazily if he had thrown up without knowing it, but decided he hadn’t. The vomit belonged to whoever had used this regulator before him. A fierce wave of nausea swept through his body and he closed his eyes, forcing himself to fight it down. The taste in his mouth was horrible and sickening, but the life-giving air was delightful.

After waiting a full minute for his body and mind to return to normal, he opened his eyes. He found himself lying on his back staring at the ceiling. He could have sworn he had been lying on his stomach—most likely his oxygen-deprived senses were all twisted about.

He wasn’t lying on the floor, he finally realized. He was lying on top of something.

He turned to the side.

Oh, God. Not something.

Someone.

He sat up fast and jumped to his feet. The regulator popped out of his mouth, weighed down by the heavy oxygen tank on the floor. Miller held his breath as he looked at the body.

It was a woman. Dressed in a yellow bikini with red polka dots. In life she would have been beautiful. Stunning. In death, surrounded by a pool of dried vomit, the graying corpse was hideous—the woman’s mouth was frozen open in a gaping scream where the regulator had once been.

Miller knelt down next to her and picked up the oxygen tank. He placed the regulator in his mouth again, took one long drag, and removed it again. The sight of the dead woman combined with the flavor of vomit was more than he could handle at the moment. The door to the head lay open behind the body. He stepped over it, and in, yanking on the tap. The water flowed and he swiftly rinsed off the regulator, then popped it back in his mouth.

He held the tank by his side and stepped back into the hallway, eyes locked on the copious amount of vomit.

This woman didn’t asphyxiate, he thought. She still had plenty of air left in the tank. So what killed her?

He decided it was a question better answered later, or not at all, and set about searching the rest of the sailboat. He moved quickly through the small hallway and opened the first cabin. A man lay splayed over the bed, tanned, muscular arms flung wide, like Jesus on the cross. His eyes stared at the ceiling and his mouth, wide open, was full of his own vomit. He’d drowned in it. The bedsheet, caked in the sour bile, stuck to the man’s head.

Here too was an oxygen tank. Nearly full. Miller picked it up and headed for the second cabin. The wooden door opened smoothly and the afternoon light poured through the portal onto a stack of oxygen tanks. Six in all. Despite the gruesome surroundings, Miller smiled.

He quickly checked the tanks. All were full.

He shook his head. Well, now I know who drained the way station.

How many trips had they made back and forth? How long had they been here? And what had killed them?

Ignoring the questions that would normally have been important to him, he turned his attention back to the six tanks lying on the bed and the two in his hands.

Each tank held three thousand psi of air, which, at a sixty-foot depth, would last him about an hour. Here, in the open air, each tank would give him about two hours, maybe more if he could control his breathing. He had eight tanks.

Sixteen hours.

That was a great improvement from the sixteen seconds he had left to live upon boarding the vessel, but he was still nine miles from Key Largo. He couldn’t waste any time.

He stepped into the hallway and over the woman, taking the stairs back out to the deck. He shuffled through six inches of the rose-colored flakes and sat at the helm. He looked over the controls. Everything was automated. He tried starting the boat. The engine wheezed and failed. He tried twice more without any luck. He couldn’t get it to start. Then it hit him.

Oxygen.

Without oxygen there would be no combustion, which meant that any gas-fueled engines wouldn’t work. Or generators, for that matter. He wouldn’t even be able to start a damn campfire.

Miller glanced over at the furled sails. When he’d first seen the ship from the life support buoy he’d thought there was no wind to move the ship, but the sails had simply not been engaged.

He wiped dust away from the helm’s console. The ship’s batteries appeared to be working, which was one bright spot in an otherwise hellish day. The console buttons glowed dully in the afternoon sunlight. A button labeled ANCHOR was lit up. He pressed it and heard a winch start to run. The couple had dropped anchor right over the way station. The two sails were labeled as well: MAINSAIL and SPINNAKER. He hit both buttons.

Gears turned and winches spun. The sails unfurled and raised high on the mast. Before the sails had finished rising, the wind caught them with a whump. The boom swung around and snapped to a stop. The sloop lurched forward and accelerated.

Miller took the wheel and directed the ship toward the tiny sliver of land in the distance.

8

The boat slid through the calm waters of Port Largo, a man-made river lined with docks and slips that gave the owners access to their waterfront homes. Several tributaries reached out from either side, extending the water’s reach. It was like a street, really.

A dead street.

The only things moving were the palm leaves bending in the breeze and billowing clouds of red kicked up by the occasional gust of wind. The trees and large parts of several homes had been swept clean of the dust, which had gathered like snowdrifts against other homes.

Miller looked at the sky. The storm, if that’s what it was, showed no signs of ending. Clouds of flakes fluttered down, spinning in the wind like great schools of fish.

Having made the nine-mile sail in just over an hour, he wasn’t in a panicked rush, but with only fifteen hours of air remaining he needed to find more soon and then work out some kind of plan. Key Largo was a beginning, but he needed to reach a city—Miami for starters—where he hoped to find more air and survivors.

He remembered leaving from Port Largo only a week before. It had been a beautiful day. Dark cumulus clouds and high humidity foretold a coming thunderstorm. He’d flirted, for what felt like the first time in a long time, with the caretaker of Aquarius, a pretty blonde whose name he’d forgotten.

He pulled the sloop into the slip closest to the main street, Ocean Bay Drive. He tied the boat off and hopped onto the dock wearing an air tank on his back. He lugged along a second tank, just in case.

His first stop was the scuba shop. Dave’s Scuba. He’d visited the seaside store briefly before heading out to Aquarius. Most of the tanks in the shop would likely be empty, but Dave also rented tanks to vacationers who wouldn’t want to wait for one to be filled. Hopefully there would be some full ones left. Without breathable air in the atmosphere, the shop’s compressor would do him little good.

He entered the store and found it free of the pink dust he’d shuffled through to get there. The place looked untouched, as though frozen in time. Wet suits hung on racks. Key Largo T-shirts dangled from the ceiling. Scuba tanks of all sizes lined the walls.

Then he saw a shoe.

He stepped around a rack of swim trunks and found a bare leg. The rest of the body was hidden behind the checkout counter. He peeked over the top. Despite the regulator covering the lower half of the man’s face, Miller recognized him as the owner, Dave. His balding, slicked-back, long hair was hard to forget, or mistake.

The vomit surrounding his head was familiar. Dave, like the two people on the sloop, had not suffocated. They had plenty of breathable air when they died. Something else had killed them.

Miller glanced out the glass door. A sheet of red covered the parking lot. His eyes trailed down to his own body. He was covered in the stuff. Most of it was fine, powdery dust, but the occasional large flake clung to his shoulder and in his chest hair. Forgetting the air for a moment, Miller stepped over Dave and entered the small bathroom. There was a toilet, a sink, and a roll of paper towel hanging from the wall.

The cool water from the tap felt good as he toweled it over his body. His red-hued skin soon returned to its formerly lightly tanned state. A pool of salmon-colored water surrounded his bare feet. He gingerly washed the sole of his wounded foot and checked the gash that had rung the tiger shark’s dinner bell. It wasn’t deep and had stopped bleeding, but it stung.

The still-running tap reminded Miller that he was desperately thirsty. He removed the regulator from his mouth, bent down to the tap, opened his mouth, and filled it with water. The taste hit him a moment before he swallowed. The water tasted metallic, almost like blood. He spit it into the sink, remembering the flavor of the first flake he’d placed on his tongue.

The water is contaminated with that crap, he realized.

He added water to the list of things he needed to find before leaving.

His stomach growled.

Food, too.

Miller headed back into the store and knelt by Dave’s body. “Sorry, Dave,” he said, his voice muffled by the regulator.

Despite some bloating, the boat shoes slipped off fairly easily, and fit well enough when he tried them on. He grabbed an I ♥ KEY LARGO T-shirt from a hanger. Holding his breath, he quickly pulled the shirt on and then restrapped the tank over his back. Dressed and feeling more human, Miller returned to the front desk. The tanks against the back walls would be the full ones. He checked them one by one, taking note of how much air was in them.

When he was done, he stepped back. Eighteen air tanks. Eighteen.

Thirty-six hours.

Combined with the air in the boat he could make it two days.

Feeling safe for the first time since he took that near-deadly breath of air at the life support buoy, Miller let his thoughts drift beyond his personal circumstances. He thought of his friends, the agents he worked with, and his former comrades in the SEALs. He had no idea if they were still alive. Hell, he might be the last person left alive on Earth. But he wouldn’t give up fighting for his life. Wasn’t in his nature.

He looked down at Dave, dead on the floor, and removed his regulator. “Thanks for the air, Dave.”

As he turned away from the shop owner, a small blinking blue light caught his eye.

A laptop.

9

The laptop sat on the floor, tipped on its side and opened partway. He could see the power cable plugged into the wall and a blue LAN cable that disappeared behind the shelf the machine had sat on before being knocked over. He slid on his belly toward the machine, righted it, and opened it up. He lay there on the floor, next to Dave’s feet, like a child playing video games, and hit the Power button.

A Windows Vista logo flashed on the screen and Miller prayed the machine wouldn’t be buggy. It started up quickly, though, and displayed a nice image of what Key Largo would have looked like a few days previous. A paradise.

But the image and all of Dave’s files held no interest for Miller. Two icons flashing in the bottom right had captured his full attention. The first was a low-battery indicator. He had suspected there was no power, but the plugged-in laptop running off batteries confirmed it. The second icon revealed no network connectivity.

Hoping Dave didn’t have his Internet history and cache cleared, Miller double-clicked the Firefox icon and a message appeared on the screen:

WOULD YOU LIKE TO RESTORE YOUR PREVIOUS SESSION?

Miller clicked Yes and the Web browser opened. The cache did its job, filling in content that was no longer live, but still stored on the computer. Five separate tabs opened at the top of the browser. The first one was what he’d been hoping to see. A news station. He clicked on the tab and a video screen appeared. He tapped on the Play icon. The station’s logo swirled dramatically onto the screen.

“Welcome to News Five at nine. I’m Rebecca Sanchez. We begin tonight’s…”

The woman on-screen was a vision. Her voice comforted him as she welcomed viewers to the show. She was alive.

Was alive, Miller corrected himself. Not anymore. Couldn’t be. The date on the newscast was two days ago.

He focused on her words instead, believing that this woman, like everyone else, was most likely dead.

“More disturbing news tonight, this time out of Washington. President Bensson has issued a state of emergency and imposed an eight P.M. curfew. He has asked that people in the affected areas remain calm, and in their homes. We here at News Five will stay at the station throughout the curfew and bring you updates as they come in.”

She continued speaking for several minutes, repeating the same information in different ways, urging people to stay at home. Stay hydrated. Ration food. And watch the news. Then she switched gears.

“The rash of illnesses that swept across southern Florida and Tokyo, Japan, yesterday, in conjunction with the beginning of an atmospheric event that some are calling biblical, seems to have abated. Symptoms ranging from headaches to severe stomach pain afflicted most everyone in the region. It seems today that the worst is over as people, including myself, are finally feeling better.”

The video ended.

Though he’d heard everything she said, only three small phrases really stayed with him: “affected areas,” “swept across southern Florida,” and, “afflicted most everyone in the region.” He knew a lot of people had died. Key Largo was a city of red-coated corpses. But if this really was a regional event, maybe there was some hope after all?

Two small thumbnail images appeared on top, labeled RELATED STORIES. They were dated the day after the newscast. Unlike many of the blue text links on the page, these were highlighted in purple. Dave had watched them, too.

Miller clicked the first.

The news anchor appeared on-screen again, this time without the flashy graphic. The tired look in her eyes supported her claim that she and the crew had indeed spent the night at the station. She started right in on the story. No greeting. No hello. All business.

“We have just received word, and this has been confirmed by labs all over the world, that this is a natural event. A cosmic event.”

She picked up a piece of paper.

“This statement comes from a NASA spokesman.” She started reading it. “Last week, our solar system passed through a large cloud of naturally occurring iron particles. The massive iron cloud struck Earth’s atmosphere at eight thirty, eastern standard time, on Wednesday morning.”

The reporter inhaled deeply, and then did so again. She appeared overcome with emotion, and short of breath, but pulled herself together and continued.

“The reddish flakes falling from the sky are created when the iron particles strike our atmosphere and oxidize—”

“Rust!” Miller said with his teeth clenched around the regulator mouthpiece.

“—forming flakes of rust. There are two inherent dangers to watch out for during this phenomenon. The first, iron poisoning is…” The woman sniffled hard, let out a faint sob, then wiped her nose and continued. “… is caused by ingesting or breathing large amounts of iron. The symptoms of iron poisoning are…” She sighed. “Severe stomachache, nausea, and vomiting, followed by a day of apparent health as the iron penetrates deeper into the body and destroys internal organs, specifically the brain and liver, as metabolic acidosis sets in. Shock comes next, severe vomiting, followed by death from liver failure.”

She took another deep breath, put the paper down, and continued.

“The second danger facing us is asphyxiation. That’s like drowning in the open air.”

“Becky, you better read what they sent,” came a whispered man’s voice from off-camera.

“I’ve read it. They need to hear the truth, not a bunch of technobabble!” Rebecca snapped. “When iron oxidizes, the chemical change removes oxygen from the atmosphere. We are being told that if this storm keeps up then it’s possible that the atmosphere will become…” Her lower lip trembled and she looked close to breaking into tears. “Well, we won’t be able to breathe.”

Her upper teeth clamped down on the quivering lip, and after taking another deep breath, she began again. “The president will be addressing the nation within the hour, but I suggest you get in contact with your loved ones. Spend your time with them, and if you believe in God, start praying. If you’re one of the millions who have suffered from the ailments I listed off, don’t bother trying to escape the area… you’re already dead.”

An angry voice cut in, shouting, “Rebecca!”

The video stopped and once again showed two thumbnail images. Most of what the woman said seemed accurate. The effects of the storm had clearly been predicted correctly. It had taken some time, but right now there was no air in the atmosphere, though it seemed most everyone had died from iron poisoning before the oxygen ran out. There was no escape, unless you happened to be in a sealed canister with its own air supply.

Like he had been…

What didn’t make sense was that an atmospheric event of this magnitude could strike two highly populated areas on different sides of the planet and leave the rest of the world unscathed. Nature doesn’t choose targets. People do. And that chilled him more than the rest. To think that this might be a new weapon of mass destruction made his insides roil. The government had carefully worded their press release to avoid all-out chaos—which was almost certainly taking place anyway.

He turned his attention back to the computer screen. The battery indicator was flashing now. The screen showed two video thumbnails. The first video he’d watched and the second he hadn’t. The thumbnail of the second video was dated the same as NASA’s press release video, but the time was ten hours later. The still image looked poorly lit, and the reporter, Rebecca, looked like hell.

He clicked on the final video, wondering what Rebecca would have to say, knowing now that the end of the world was near.

She was in tears when the clip started. Her on-screen persona had completely vanished. She was now a terrified and angry woman, facing certain death. “You fuckers!”

Miller jerked back as though she had shouted at him.

“You won’t get away with this! You can’t!”

She wiped her nose, smearing her running mascara across her flushed cheek. The rage in her eyes faded as she addressed a different audience. “Anyone who is still alive… please listen to me. We just received an e-mail from a group claiming responsibility for everything. This didn’t have to happen! If you survive, if you somehow make it through this, know that you are not alone. You are among enemies. And they’re tagging the streets with their symbol.”

She coughed violently, struggling for breath. She reached out her hand, snapping her fingers at someone. A piece of paper came into view and she took it. “This is their symbol. If you see it, either run the other way… or kill the bastards.”

She held the image up to the screen, her hands shaking. It was eerily familiar, but he couldn’t place it. And the longer he looked at it, the more his subconscious shouted, danger! As the screen went black and the laptop shut itself down, he closed his eyes and could still see the image clearly. He couldn’t remember who it represented, but he recognized what it stood for.

Evil.

10

Miller sat back from the laptop, stunned. Someone had caused the storm. Someone announcing their presence to the world through a symbol, someone who could kill millions without firing a weapon or even revealing themselves. What pissed him off was that the group responsible hadn’t asked for or demanded anything in conjunction with the release of their symbol. In a firefight, when the enemy started by shooting two of your men, they had no intention of stopping to talk. More bullets would come until everyone was dead or you figured out a way to kill your enemy first. His instincts told him to get ready for a fight, but what could he do? He was alone in a dead zone of unknown size and had no way to get in touch with the outside world.

Or did he? He hadn’t tried a landline yet.

Miller stood and searched the room. A phone hung on the wall above Dave’s body. He picked it up and put it to his ear.

Nothing.

Anger got the best of him and he yanked the phone from the wall and flung it. Its old-fashioned bell rang out as the phone struck the front window and smashed it. The cacophony of breaking glass snapped Miller out of his anger as a cloud of red dust swirled into the shop.

Time to go, Miller thought. He needed to move—his life depended on mobility now—but he also needed supplies.

Over the next thirty minutes, Miller transported the air tanks from Dave’s shop over to the sloop, which he now saw was named Montrose. After stepping over the woman’s body three times he realized that his passengers had to go. He dragged the stiff bodies to the deck. At first he thought about burying them, but what was he going to do, bury every dead body he came across? It wasn’t remotely feasible, and certainly not rational. Until he escaped this airless hell, his every action would be dictated by the need for survival. Burying two bodies would simply use up his limited resources. All he could do was apologize to the couple before rolling their bodies overboard.

With the air safely stowed in the Montrose, he turned his attention to the next problem—food and water. He could see a CVS pharmacy sign down the road, perhaps half a mile away. They should have what he needed.

He checked his air—forty-five minutes—then started to walk. Halfway there he found an abandoned bike. He hopped on and started pedaling. His speed doubled and his exertion lessened, which was good, but the street was littered with rust-covered bodies that he had to dodge. Staying upright became even trickier when the rust grew deeper. The tires slipped several times and he almost crashed twice. He hoped his tetanus shot was up-to-date. The vaccination was required by the NCIS so he thought he should be okay.

The CVS had been fairly well picked over, but people hadn’t been thinking when they looted the store. Electronics were missing. Junk food and soda had been pillaged. But the good stuff, the food that would keep him alive, was still there. He took five boxes of energy bars, four large containers of chocolate protein drink, a bottle of vitamins, and two three-gallon containers of water. He double-bagged everything and hung the bags on the bike’s handlebars, which made pedaling so unstable he had to climb off and walk the bike back.

Moving quickly, he returned to the store again, grabbing two more water containers and as many canned goods as he could hold. This trip went faster than the first and after returning everything to the sloop, Miller decided he had time for one last run.

As he moved through the aisles this third time around, he looked for anything he thought he might need. Batteries, flashlights, clothing, a raincoat, a knife set, and medical supplies. But one object that he required eluded him—a can opener. He hurried up and down the aisles three times, moving faster with each pass, until he saw a single can opener hanging above a display of nonstick pans on the endcap of the next aisle over. In his rush to reach the can opener, his clothing snagged on the corner of a sunglasses display. There was a hard tug from the display, but he yanked away, strode to the can opener, and picked it up.

He grinned at his success.

And then he wheezed.

He breathed again, but found no air.

He looked at the pressure gauge.

The air that was left was draining quickly.

He spit the regulator from his mouth and inspected the hose. Air hissed from a torn hole. And then, it stopped. The tank ran empty.

He hadn’t snagged his clothing on the metal sunglasses display, he’d snagged the air hose. Stupid! Miller thought to himself.

There was a half mile between him and his air tanks. He cursed himself for not bringing a spare. His heart pounded with fear, realizing that death was two minutes away, three minutes at most. His last breath had not been deep and he already felt the need for another. Then he saw a sign on the back wall of the store.

PHARMACY.

He ran for it and jumped the counter. Pills littered the floor, where they had dissolved into sludge by some now-evaporated liquid. He had no interest in drugs or pills right now. Air was his drug of choice. Then he saw what he was looking for—an oxygen tank. Just one. The kind with which you see old folks shuffling around, or those attached to the electric go-carts of the morbidly obese. He picked up the white tank and set it on the counter. A plastic face mask in a sterile bag went next.

He ignored the reflection of his beet-red face in the reading glasses display on the other side of the counter and quickly attached the face mask. He loosened the valve. When the hiss of escaping oxygen hit his ears, he placed the mask against his mouth—and breathed.

After taking a few deep breaths, he realized that the air tasted different. Unlike the compressed air in the scuba tank, this was straight oxygen, meant to be breathed along with normal air, not in place of it. The tank would keep him alive, but it wouldn’t be long before he started feeling loopy. He swiftly left the pharmacy, taking several pairs of sunglasses on the way, and transported his last shipment of goods to the Montrose. By the time he arrived and switched over to a new tank of air, he was feeling great. The weight of the air tank on his back felt heavy, but he was glad for it. The straight oxygen had worked wonders for his psyche, but too much would be deadly.

When the Montrose was loaded with enough food and water to last several weeks, and air to last for a little more than two days, Miller set sail for Miami.

11

TWO DAYS LATER

Only two hours of air remained when Miller caught his first glimpse of the Miami skyline. The doldrums had settled in over the ocean and left the Montrose’s sails limp. With no wind and no way to start the engines, the ship floated adrift for days in the now sludgy waters of the Bermuda Triangle. Surrounded by an otherworldly red ocean and pink sky, Miller had retreated to the cabin and tried not to think about his dwindling air supply. But that had been hard to do when eating meant holding your breath and sleep was interrupted every two hours by sudden asphyxiation.

When the winds returned, Miller had stumbled up on deck, unfurled the sails, and pointed the sloop west. With no idea how far out to sea he was, all he could do was pray for wind and stay the course. The wind blew gently—a breeze really—but it was enough to get him to Miami.

As the Montrose cut through the waters alongside Miami Beach’s now pink shore—white sand mixed with red flakes—he kept a constant lookout for someplace that might have scuba gear. But all he could see were nightclubs and hotels. Having never been to Miami, he wasn’t sure where to look. Rounding South Beach, he maneuvered the sloop into a channel. A buoyed sign read: MIAMI HARBOR—NO WAKE ZONE.

Miller looked at the harbor, dotted with large islands, and the mainland beyond. Off the starboard bow he spotted a marina filled to capacity with massive white yachts. He spun the wheel, directing the Montrose through the maze of barriers that protected the marina from the open ocean.

With thirty minutes of air remaining, he didn’t bother to find an actual slip. He simply pulled up alongside the end of a dock, hopped out, and tied the boat off. His footfalls on the dock echoed like gunshots in the still silence of the dead city. He could hear nothing else, save for the water lapping against the docks.

To his relief there was a sign at the end of the dock pointing toward Scuba Emporium. He followed it. One hundred feet later, he found a large shop, one of many, at the base of a sky-rise apartment building. The sign on the door read CLOSED.

He tried the door.

Locked.

Cupping his hands to the glass, he peered inside. The shop was expansive and well stocked—a scuba enthusiast’s paradise.

Miller looked around for something heavy that could break the window. He found nothing in the immediate area, but as he was searching, he noticed something unusual. The walkway in front of the store was free of red dust. While much of the dust on the surrounding surfaces had been blown out to sea or piled high against buildings, a fine layer still coated almost everything—except for the space in front of the Scuba Emporium.

He kneeled down and looked at the walkway. Fine streaks of red stretched across the cement surface where a broom had passed over.

The rust had been swept away. With red flakes still falling from the sky, the sweeping must have been done recently.

Miller took a deep breath, removed the regulator from his mouth, and yelled, “Hello!”

His voice bounced off the city’s buildings as though he’d just shouted into the Grand Canyon.

“Is there anyone here?”

No response. And his air was running low.

He took one more deep breath, removed the regulator again, and slipped out of the air tank. Holding it like a shot-put, he took two fast steps toward the glass door and let it fly. The glass exploded. Much of it fell straight down while the rest burst into the shop.

Miller entered slowly, aware of the glass shards poking out from the door’s frame, and of the possibility of getting his head blown off by a justifiably paranoid survivor. The store, like the sidewalk in front of it, was immaculate—seemingly untouched and certainly not looted. He picked up his air tank, checked to make sure the regulator didn’t have glass in it, and placed it back in his mouth.

Squeezing through several racks of wet suits, he cautiously worked his way to the back of the store, where he hoped he would find full air tanks ready for renting. He pushed the last of the wet suits aside, glad to be free of them. That is, until he saw the body that waited on the other side.

The man’s death had been violent, and bloody, and the investigator in Miller wanted to look things over. The man had only recently died. But there was no time for that now. He needed air.

He tiptoed across the sticky swath of wet rug, stepped over the old man’s body, and made for the back of the store. He quickly found a full air tank and switched it out. He took stock of the other tanks. Only ten.

Why so few for such a big shop? he wondered. And with such wealthy patrons.

Closed cabinets lined the back wall above the rack of scuba tanks. Miller smiled as he realized the answer to his question. Because the people who shopped here could afford better.

Miller flung open the cabinets. Yes! Inside were four black closed-circuit rebreather units, CCRs for short. A rebreather, as opposed to a standard scuba set, combines straight oxygen with exhaled air. The end result is smaller tanks, less weight to carry, and seventy-five percent more time per refill. Even better, he felt confident he could take any standard oxygen tank and adapt it for use with the rebreather. He would just need to make sure he had air or trimix on hand. Closed-circuit rebreathers required a diluting gas, in addition to oxygen, but the gas was recycled as he breathed and needed to be changed less frequently.

He knew it was odd to be smiling, but his life expectancy had just gone up. He also was no longer bound to staying on the ocean, or near the scuba shops that lined the shore.

He switched his air tank out for the rebreather, and was happily surprised to find a full-sized face mask. Not only could he breathe freely without a regulator in his mouth, he could also breathe through his nose.

Recharged by his small victory, Miller turned his attention back to the body he had stepped over. The one that hadn’t asphyxiated. The one that didn’t die in a pool of its own vomit, but in its own blood.

The man’s body was round, perhaps from overeating, perhaps from gas built up inside. Miller wasn’t sure which and didn’t want to find out. He focused on the single wound—a gunshot to the man’s head. The exit wound was a baseball-sized hole on the top of his skull. The gray eyes were wide and unblinking, looking up at the ceiling as though hoping for salvation. His mouth was frozen open, lips turned down in disgust at what he was about to do.

Miller reached out and touched the man’s arm. The skin wasn’t as warm as a living person’s, but it lacked the lifeless chill of a long-dead cadaver. The man had killed himself within the last few hours.

The gun, a 9mm Parabellum, commonly recommended for home defense, lay on the floor five feet away from the body, beyond the pool of blood. A half-used air tank lay next to it.

He’d seen enough dead bodies over the past few days, and in his lifetime, that the old man’s corpse didn’t bother him, even though it was fresh. But it did seem a shame the man hadn’t held on just a few hours longer. He could have escaped this mess with his life, as Miller intended to.

Miller stepped over the body and picked up the gun. He checked the clip, slapped it back in, chambered a round, and tucked it into his pocket. A city of dead people wouldn’t be much of a threat, but the weapon made him feel more prepared to handle whatever lay ahead, whether it be a paranoid survivor, a stubborn lock, or someone sporting a circled lightning bolt insignia.

12

After finding another bike and pilfering a map of Miami from the Scuba Emporium, Miller set off in search of the nearest hospital. According to the map, that was Mount Sinai Medical Center. If there were any survivors, he believed they would be there. Hospitals carried lots of oxygen, had backup power sources, and would be the natural place for other survivors to congregate. And if not, he had no doubt that there would be plenty of oxygen tanks that would work with his rebreather. He might find enough for months, though he hoped he wouldn’t be breathing bottled air that long.

Wind had cleared away and piled up the rust against buildings and in alleys, making pedaling easier than it had been in Key Largo. The bodies remained a problem, though. In some places he had to get off the bike and carry it over what had once been a mob. The other new challenge was that the rebreather’s mask had been made for underwater use and blocked his peripheral vision. He had to move his head fully from side to side to see what was around him and it made dodging the dead tricky business. He knew reducing the bodies’ status to that of simple obstacles was a cold thing to do, but to give them any more attention would distract him from his own survival.

There was no way to know how far he might have to go to escape the affected area, or if the attacks had already spread to the rest of the world.

He cut between neighborhoods composed mainly of tall, high-rent apartment buildings, some of which had caught fire. If not for the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere, those fires might still be burning.

Soon the right side of the road opened up into a massive parking lot. A line of palm trees swayed up ahead, and beyond them, something odd rose up from the ground, like a tree, but not.

Miller slowed as he approached the palm trees. The oddity appeared to be a statue of some kind. He pedaled harder and the rest of it came into view. It was a massive hand, its bottom seemingly torn apart. A red-tinged, lily-filled reflection pool surrounded the scene, and in the courtyard lay bodies; perhaps a hundred of them. Some were reaching up.

Alive!

Miller jumped off the bike and ran for the courtyard. “Hey!” he shouted. “Are you okay? I have air!”

His mask fogged over as he waded through the lily pond. Clouds of rust billowed around his feet. Reaching the other side, he removed the mask and looked at the people, wondering why they didn’t respond. Then he realized the truth.

They weren’t dead.

But they had never been alive.

Statues.

“Damn,” he muttered before returning the mask to his face. As he turned, he noticed that the distortion from his curved mask, coupled with the statues’ lifelike poses, created the illusion of life.

He spun around, taking in the scene. The bodies in the courtyard reached out for the giant hand. Intertwined bodies made up the base of the statue. The people looked tormented. Emaciated. Anguished.

Miller turned to the black wall of granite that encircled a portion of the round courtyard. The highly polished surface reflected the late-day sun struggling to shine through the haze of falling red flakes. He shaded his eyes to see the wall more clearly. “Son of a bitch,” he said when his eyes focused.

There on the wall, spray painted in white, was the symbol from the news report—the lightning bolt encased by a crosslike circle. Beneath the symbol was a message, applied thick, with rivulets of white paint that had dripped down to the ground. It read:

Miller realized that this wasn’t just graffiti. A quick walk to the granite wall confirmed it. The first panel told a story dated 1933. What followed for two more panels was a complete history of what the Jewish people had endured during World War II.

This was a Holocaust memorial.

The target of this symbol and its message revealed a deep hatred, one straight out of history. His head snapped away from the wall as though struck. The symbol, in this context, became clear to him. The lightning bolt—no, the thunderbolt—was the Nazi symbol for the Schutzstaffel, Hitler’s elite military unit known as the SS. They were the overseers of the Nazi death camps. The two S-shaped bolts, typically next to each other, had been combined.

Anger welled within Miller. He wasn’t a believer in God, but his great-grandfather had been, and he’d been killed by the SS in Auschwitz along with millions of other Jews across Europe. Thinking of Nazis, he recognized the rest of the symbol as a Celtic cross, which had been adopted by American white supremacist groups. The combination of the two symbols seemed to suggest that these were modern, American Schutzstaffel. The muscles on his back bunched with tension.

Whether they were still in the area, surviving from air tank to air tank like him, or holed up in a bunker, had yet to be seen, but they were prepared. And they had already named their post-genocidal world, SecondWorld.

This isn’t over, Miller thought. If they haven’t attacked the rest of the world yet, they will soon.

When he tore his eyes from the wall, he realized he’d been gripping the handgun in his pocket. A part of him hoped that whoever painted this symbol would show up. Give him an outlet for his anger. But nothing moved, other than the endless red flakes. Whoever painted this was long gone.

After returning to his bike, Miller cut through a large golf course free of bodies. Apparently, no one wanted to golf during the apocalypse. The open space increased his speed, but he felt exposed—watched. Leaving the golf course behind, he took to the sidewalks, preferring to stay in the buildings’ shadows. He could be easily spotted in the stillness of the city, but he didn’t like the idea of making himself an open target, just in case someone out there felt like taking a potshot.

He reached Mount Sinai Medical Center ten minutes later. The hospital was large and nicer than most he’d visited. In fact, with its light brown exterior and surrounding palm trees, the place looked more like a hotel than a hospital. As he approached the building, the doors to the emergency room slid silently open.

Emergency power must still be working, he thought, but forgot all about the door when he looked beyond it.

Miller jumped back. Bodies filled the emergency room—piles of them. Vomit covered several, as well as a dusting of rust. Strangely, almost all of the victims were covered in blood. Something awful—something terribly violent—had happened here. Did the people turn on one another, desperate enough for medical attention to kill off any competitors?

A little girl’s face caught his eye. She was buried beneath three adults, her eyes closed. Peaceful. As though she had simply fallen asleep there. But Miller knew she hadn’t. The death she had experienced would likely have been anything but peaceful.

Swallowing hard, he stepped back, out of the building.

The doors closed behind him.

He found the main entrance on the other side of the hospital and entered the lobby, steeling himself for a repeat of the emergency room scene. But there were only a few bodies here. He forced himself not to look as he moved past them, focusing instead on a wall-mounted map and directory off to his right. Reaching it, he ran his finger over each department as he read the list. He made a note of every place he thought might have oxygen tanks, then paused. His finger lay on the BURN WARD label. Fourth floor.

He knew that people with severe burns were sometimes put in oxygen tents. Could he spend the night in one? Breathing freely? He hadn’t really slept since leaving Aquarius. As he assessed his need for sleep, he felt his legs grow shaky. His vision blurred. It was almost as though his body, knowing that sleep was near, began shutting down in preparation.

He knew he could sleep in the rebreather without issue. It was good for another twelve hours and he had two spare oxygen tanks strapped to his belt, not to mention a hospital filled with them. But to sleep freely, on a bed… well, that sounded like heaven. He headed for the elevators and pushed the button. The doors opened immediately.

Emergency power is definitely still running.

The elevator rose quickly. With a ding, the doors opened to a stark white hallway. A dead nurse lay on the floor, crumpled up into the fetal position. He stepped out and the doors shut behind him. In the silence that followed, Miller thought he heard the wind. He held his breath and listened.

It wasn’t the wind.

It was a child.

Weeping.

13

Miller spun around, trying to discern the cry’s source. He moved beyond the empty nurses’ station, stopped, and listened again. The sound was faint, rising and falling in volume, but never loud. He moved down the hallway, passing open doors. Some rooms held corpses, some were empty, beds still made.

A shadow shifted in the room at the end of the hallway.

He ran toward it.

His chest pounding from excitement, he slowed as he approached the door, caught his breath, cleared his mind, and entered. The corner room had two walls of windows, one looking out to the north, up the coast, and the other back to downtown Miami, which was aglow with orange light from the setting sun.

An opaque sheet of plastic hung from the ceiling and descended over the room’s bed like a tent.

A small body, obscured by the plastic sheet, lay on the bed. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought the person was looking at him. The weeping stopped, followed by some sniffling.

“Are you here to rescue me?” a sweet voice asked. It was a child. A girl.

“Yeah,” he said. “I am.”

“You can come under. It’s okay to breathe in here.”

Miller looked beyond the tent. Next to the bed was an array of equipment including large tanks of oxygen and air. An oxygen tent. Was this girl…?

He removed his mask so she wouldn’t be afraid, knelt down, and lifted the plastic from the floor. He quickly pulled it over his head and let it fall again.

The girl, dressed in a hospital gown, smiled at him, but the smile only lasted a moment. Her lips were swollen and split in several spots. The skin on her left arm looked like it had melted. It was red, swollen, and in some places, cracked and oozing.

She noted his attention. “The bandages hurt when they dried out. I took them off.” Her voice was weak. Frail. “There are other burns on my stomach and legs, all on the left side. Not as bad as my arm, though. The hospital gown hurts a little, but I didn’t want to be naked. Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“In case you came.”

“Me?”

“Or anyone else.”

“Right.”

“I’m thirsty.”

He was sure she couldn’t drink through those lips, though maybe a straw would work. “I’ll be right back.”

He slid out from under the sheet, donned his mask, and found her IV bag. Empty. She’d been dehydrating to death. Alone.

“I’m Lincoln Miller. You can call me Linc if you’d like. What’s your name?” he asked.

“Arwen.”

“Nice name.”

“It’s from Tolkien.”

Tolkien? “How old are you?”

“Twelve.”

“Listen, Arwen. I’m going to go get some supplies. Stuff to help you feel better. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“’Kay.”

“Be right back,” he repeated as he left the room. He searched the hallways for a supply room, ignoring the bodies and his rising emotions. His focus was on Arwen now. He found a door with a brass label that read MEDICAL SUPPLIES. He tried the handle. Locked. After stepping back, he kicked the door three times, right below the knob. On the third kick, the door crashed open.

Cabinets and closets lined the walls of the room. Each was filled with impeccably organized and labeled medical supplies. He opened and closed five doors before finding a cabinet that held nearly twenty IV bags labeled SALINE—0.9% SODIUM CHLORIDE SOLUTION. He took five and left.

“I’m back,” he said upon return to Arwen’s room. He moved straight for her IV, checked the label to make sure he’d taken the right kind, and then switched them out. The liquid drip began immediately. Only then did he notice that Arwen had yet to respond to his entry.

Miller pulled up the plastic, climbed beneath, and found the girl lying still, her eyes closed. He pulled his mask from his face and knelt down next to her. He didn’t dare check for a pulse for fear her red, swollen skin would crack open. Instead he held the back of his hand beneath her nose and watched her small chest.

He sighed as he felt air move across his hand and saw the subtle rise and fall each breath brought to her chest. She was still alive and she had moved over on the bed. Before, she’d been on her back at the center of the bed, now she lay on her unburned side at the edge.

She’d made room for him.

He shook his head, wondering who was taking care of whom. That small gesture of companionship, he realized, had rallied his fighting spirit. He slipped out of his gear, placing the rebreather, handgun, water bottle, and several protein bars on the floor next to the bed. The exhaustion, chased away by the adrenaline of finding Arwen, returned with a vengeance.

He climbed onto the other side of the bed, careful not to bump her little body with his. The bed was firm, but comfortable. The air smelled of burnt flesh and hair. He looked at the back of her head. Her blond hair had burned from the shoulders down, but the hair on top revealed the child she had once been.

He ran his fingers through her hair and wondered if she’d been in one of the apartment fires he’d seen on the way to the hospital. Or perhaps her burns had happened before the catastrophe hit. There was no way to know, not now, anyway.

As he stroked her hair he wondered what his life would have been like if he’d taken a different path. Could he settle down? Have kids? Could he put a little girl to sleep on a nightly basis? He wasn’t sure and had no real frame of reference. Kids never really took to him. What he felt positive about was that he was damn glad to have found Arwen alive. On his own, he might get depressed, or distracted by the horrible setting. But with a child to protect, he’d be at the top of his game. He wouldn’t let the kid die. Not this time.

He dreamed of the desert. Of her—nameless and beautiful—dark curly hair cut just below the ears to make her look like a boy. More memory than dream, the nightmare had plagued him for years. The girl was no more than ten years old. Her dark brown eyes tore into him across the distance and through the binoculars. He left the safety of his position and ran for the girl. She stood at the edge of the target zone—an Iraqi radar station—but without cover, she’d be cut down. Ten miles away, the BGM-109 Tomahawk missile called in by his team switched from a solid propellant to its low-heat turbofan engine, finalizing its descent. That’s when she saw him coming… and ran the other way.

When he woke in the morning, he sat up straight, confused by the shield of white surrounding him. But then he remembered where he was and who he was with. He leaned over Arwen’s little body and watched her chest. She was still breathing. It seemed, for the time being, that he had managed to save this child.

Stiff and sore, he climbed out of the bed. After donning his gear and switching out Arwen’s IV bag he unwrapped a protein bar, lifted his mask, and took a bite. Ugh, he thought, looking at the label. Chocolate Cherry Nut. Tastes like shit.

Wandering over to the windows, he stared out at the world below. Orange light spilled over the city, reflecting off the high-rises and setting piles of red dust aglow. The sun rose over Miami, glinting off a distant billboard. The giant sign featured two sports cars, one red, the other silver. The logo read TESLA MOTORS.

Tesla Motors.

A grin formed on his face. He’d just discovered his first bit of good luck. Tesla cars ran completely on electricity. They didn’t use combustion. They didn’t require oxygen!

Miller squinted as he read the address given on the billboard. He quickly found it on his map, marked the location, and said, “Arwen.” When the girl didn’t respond, he repeated her name more loudly. She groaned as she awoke.

“You snore,” she said.

Miller smiled. “Sorry, but listen—”

“I’m hungry. And thirsty. Weren’t you supposed to get me something to drink?”

His smile broadened. He unwrapped a protein bar and slid it inside the oxygen tent. A bottle of water with a straw went next.

He watched the girl’s silhouette move within the tent as she took a bite. “Gross,” she said. “Tastes like shit.”

Miller laughed loudly. “That’s what I thought. But it’ll keep you strong.”

“Strong for what? I’m just lying here.”

“Not for long,” he said. “I found a way out.”

14

“I can’t see anything under here,” Arwen said from beneath the white tarp of her oxygen tent.

“You’re not missing anything,” Miller replied as he angled the modified gurney around the parched body of a woman facedown on the pavement. He’d rigged a white tent over the gurney and managed to attach two O2 tanks and a saline drip. The end result was a crude but functional mobile oxygen tent.

He’d debated taking Arwen out at all, but when he’d mentioned the car dealership she refused to let him leave without her. Hearing the fear in her voice, he realized that leaving her behind would be cruel, even if there were people in the city gunning for survivors. If they killed him, maybe her blond hair and blue eyes would save her?

Not that it helped all the other white people living in South Florida.

The gurney bounced with a jolt that made Arwen groan in pain.

“Sorry,” Miller said. He’d run over the dead woman’s hand, which had apparently been separated from her body. Must have been hit by a car, he thought, and then lied, “Pothole.”

“There aren’t any potholes in Miami.”

“There are now,” he said in a tone that told her not to argue.

As he walked, Miller scanned for signs of life—both friendly and unfriendly. But with so many places to hide, and so many distractions for his eyes, he doubted he’d see anything. But the large red and white Tesla Motors sign was impossible to miss. He quickened his pace. They still needed to find a car and return to the scuba shop for his supplies before his air ran out—which would happen in just over an hour. Once all that was done, they could finally get the hell out of Dodge.

At least he hoped they could. Dodge could be the entire planet by now.

“Why are we going faster?” Arwen asked.

“Almost there.”

“Go Percy. Go Percy! Go Percy, go, go!” she cheered.

Miller smiled. “Who’s Percy?”

“It’s from a cartoon of Cat in the Hat. Percy the Penguin races a seagull. I used to say it with my little brother, Sam, when we raced.”

Miller sensed a dramatic shift in the girl’s demeanor, which had remained stalwart and in good humor thus far. He slowed his charge toward the car dealership.

“He pronounced it ‘Poucey.’” She sniffed back tears. “They’re dead, right? My parents?”

Miller slowed almost to a stop. He wanted nothing more than to lift up the tarp and hug the girl. But the quickly-rigged tent would likely lose most of its air, she might see one of the many bodies around them, time was short, and even if he could get to her, he doubted he could hug her without causing extreme pain.

“I… I don’t know.”

He saw her lean up in bed.

“I could hear people dying. I saw the red snow. You don’t need to lie to me.”

Miller stopped moving and let out a deep breath that fogged the inside of his face mask. When it cleared, he said, “They probably didn’t make it. So far it’s just you and me.”

“That’s what I thought.” She lay down again. “Let’s go.”

Without another word shared between the two, Miller pushed the gurney toward the dealership, happy to see the street ahead of them free of bodies. He stopped beneath the Tesla Motors sign five minutes later. Palm trees encircled the boxy gray building, which would have looked almost drab if you ignored the large glass windows revealing the rich, red interior. The red walls may have once invoked a feeling of power and superiority, but with most of the world presently coated in a red film, it just looked cliché.

If not for the sleek silver Model S electric car in the front window, he might not have given the building a second glance. But now he revered the sight like it was Jesus Christ himself returned to the Earth. The car represented salvation.

If he could get it started.

“We’re there,” he said, rolling the gurney to the front door. He tried it. “Damnit.”

“Locked?”

“Yup.” He pulled the gurney away from the door.

“What are you doing? One locked door and you’re giving up? We’re doomed.”

Miller smiled, relieved to hear Arwen’s spunk returning.

“Can you cover your ears?” he asked. “This is going to be loud.”

Miller drew the 9mm and aimed it at the door. He was about to pull the trigger when he noticed that the showroom window was level with the sidewalk. Not sure if the garage doors could be opened without electricity, he turned the gun toward the window and fired.

“Too loud!” Arwen shouted.

But Miller barely heard her as he fired again. Cracks spidered across the window.

“Too loud!” she shouted again. “They’re going to hear you!”

The third shot shattered the window and the glass fell away. It was only then that Arwen’s last sentence sank in. They’re going to hear you. He ran back to her. “Who is going to hear me?”

“The bad men.”

“What bad men?”

“From the hospital. I could hear them talking, even after everyone else died. Talked about killing people. Laughed a lot. Like the world ending was a party.”

From the hospital? Miller’s mind retraced their journey, searching for anything out of the ordinary. While everything was out of the ordinary, he hadn’t seen or heard anything suspicious since they left the hospital. And the gunshots would echo off the city’s empty buildings, disguising the direction of their source.

Then a chill ran up his spine. He’d been on the lookout for people all the way from the hospital, but hadn’t once looked behind them. He slowly turned in the direction they’d come. What he saw quickened his breath and pulse.

“What is it?” Arwen asked in a whisper. “Is it them?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking at a group of nearly fifty men, perhaps two football-field lengths away. They stood in the street, not moving under his gaze. They were dressed like casual Miami beachgoers—cargo shorts and tank tops in a variety of colors. But they all had shaved heads and every last one of them was white. Worse, they all wore identical black rebreathers, which implied preparation and foreknowledge about the impending attack.

Welcome to SecondWorld.

One of the men stepped forward and raised a hand in greeting. It was friendly enough, but when the group stepped toward him as one he felt like a wounded deer facing down a wolf pack. If they reached him, he was a dead man. And even if they spared Arwen, what kind of life would she live among men such as these?

Miller offered a wave back to keep the mob moving slowly. They’d probably been trained to not exert themselves and waste air. “Arwen, we need to move fast, okay?”

“It’s going to hurt?”

“Probably for a few minutes, yeah.”

“We in trouble?”

“Yup.”

“’Kay.”

Miller grabbed the gurney and slowly moved it toward the broken window. He kept an eye on the group of men as they watched him. The mutual suspicion quickly became apparent and more than the lead man could bear. He broke into a run and the rest followed.

Miller shoved the gurney inside the dealership, yanked open the rear door of the silver four-door sedan. He placed the unused oxygen tank on the backseat, twisted the valve open, and slammed the door shut. After opening the passenger’s door, he scooped Arwen up, tent and all. She let out a cry, but held on tight. He placed her in the front seat and said, “Stay there, I need to find the keys.”

He jumped over the vomit-covered body of a gray-haired man in a suit and made for the service desk. He hadn’t yet reached it when he heard what sounded like an engine starting, but far more quiet. Remembering the car was electric, he spun around and saw the rear lights glowing red. The front window rolled down and Arwen shouted, “I had my foot on the brake, and pushed a button, and it started!”

The window rose again as Miller made for the car. He remembered seeing a car that could be started by a push button as long as the key—a small transmitter—was within a certain radius. He stopped at the dead body, patted him down, and found a small device bearing the Tesla logo. He snatched it up, afraid the car would stop if it got too far away, and dove for the driver’s side door.

After throwing himself into the front seat and slamming the door, Miller threw the car into drive and said, “Hold on!”

The lead man of the mob reached the front of the store. He held a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun, a compact, deadly weapon no civilian had any reason to own, and began raising it toward the car.

15

The Model S had surprising kick. Glass flung from beneath its squealing tires, peppering the Tesla storefront. With the glass clear, the tires caught the slick linoleum floor and left twin streaks of black as the car rocketed out of the dealership and directly toward the man wielding a submachine gun.

As luck would have it, the gun-toting man had neither heard the nearly silent engine start nor recognized the Telsa brand. His eyes popped wide as Miller directed the silver missile toward him. The weapon lowered as he dove to the side.

Beyond the man, the mob, which was in no danger of being run over, began raising an assortment of weapons. Miller glanced ahead. The dealership sat across from a T intersection. If they could make it to the straightaway directly across from them, they might just make it. But the death squad to their left was about to open fire. And unfortunately, car doors are not as impenetrable as the movies portray. Most bullets, especially the high-caliber variety this bunch carried, could rip right through a car door. Though he was directly in their sights, Miller didn’t duck or swerve. He simply pushed the Auto-down button on his window. While it lowered he took aim with his handgun and hoped the rest of the crew was as inexperienced and jumpy as their apparent leader. He squeezed off five rounds toward the group, not caring if he hit anyone or not. Miller watched as the group hit the pavement like his bullets had struck each and every one of them.

As Miller put the window up, the car tore across the intersection and shot down the side street, reaching sixty miles per hour in five point six seconds—the same amount of time it took the window to go back up. Miller glanced in the rearview and saw the mob rushing into the dealership. They’d have vehicles soon, too.

Miller turned left and pulled over. He turned to Arwen. “You okay?”

She looked small and frail in the seat. She had her seat belt on over the white tent tarp, which was wrapped around her like a blanket. When she gave him a small smile he realized she could breathe.

She noted his attention and said, “The air is okay. You opened the valve on the tank, remember?”

Miller removed his face mask, leaned forward, and shook out of his clunky rebreather apparatus, which had pitched him forward in the seat. He twisted the air supply valves to Off and put the whole thing in the back. The air inside the car smelled strange, but it was breathable. The car had become a mobile oxygen tent.

“We’re going to have to do some more fast driving. Might get bumpy.”

She grimaced.

Miller realized he should have taken some painkillers from the hospital. They’d probably been giving her morphine. He made a mental note to get something for the pain if they escaped the city in one piece.

Miller pulled away from the curb and wove his way through the city, avoiding bodies and the occasional abandoned vehicle as best he could. “We need to find the highway. Head north. Do you know your way around the city?”

She looked at him with squinty eyes. “You know I’m twelve, right? I usually read while my parents drive.”

“Right. I think I need to—”

“What was that?” Arwen said, her voice tinged with fear.

Miller glanced at her as he rounded a body. She was looking beyond him, out the driver’s side window. “What did you see?”

“Something red. Two intersections down. Thought it was moving.”

Miller picked up speed, steering past obstacles like the street was a slalom course. He had no doubt that the red she’d seen was one of the two red Tesla Roadsters that had been on display at the dealership. They were two-seat sports cars and no doubt faster than his four-door sedan.

He turned right at the next intersection, hoping to put some distance between them and the red car. He glanced in the rearview after making the turn. The Roadster was cruising up behind them. One man drove, a second stood in the passenger’s seat, weapon at the ready.

Miller pinned the gas pedal and shot forward. He did his best to avoid the bodies in the road, but knowing the bullets would hurt Arwen a lot more than bumps, he clipped a few arms and legs to maintain speed. He felt the tires spin whenever they hit a patch of rust flakes, like driving through sand, and adapted his driving to the conditions.

As they passed through the next intersection a streak of red to his left caught his attention. He turned to find the second Roadster aiming to T-bone them. He had no time to think about how insane the act was—the morons in the Roadster would almost certainly die. He acted on instinct, twisting the sedan toward the oncoming car and throwing on the parking brake. The Model S spun quickly through the red dust, kicking up a cloud. Miller saw the surprised look on the face of the Roadster’s driver as the two cars came parallel to each other.

As the sedan’s spin and forward momentum pulled it through the intersection, a loud metallic crunch filled the air as the pursuing Roadster T-boned the second. Miller saw both cars flipping through the street. A moment later, a body flew past, legs and arms sprawling out like a rag doll. He crashed to the street with a puff of pink dust. Miller twisted the wheel, straightening out the car, and zipped around the flung man’s motionless body.

The encounter, while brief, had taxed Miller’s body. He hadn’t seen action like that since the SEALs. Adrenaline pounded his heart and made his hands shake. He gripped the steering wheel tight and slowed the car, catching his breath. Once he felt a measure of calm return, he looked to Arwen. She stared back at him with wide eyes. Her lips showed a slight grin. If not for the dry cracking on her lower lip it would have been a full-fledged smile.

“That was awesome,” she whispered.

He smiled for her. “It was, wasn’t it.”

“Where’d you learn to drive like that?”

“Defensive driving course. Part of my job.”

“That was defensive? What are you, in the army or something?”

“Or something— Whoa!” Miller hit the brakes.

Arwen became quickly frightful. “What is it?”

“Look,” he said, pointing.

Arwen relaxed when she saw the Interstate 95 sign. “The highway!”

Miller checked the car’s charge. It indicated they could travel an estimated two hundred miles before the car needed a recharge. He figured they had about five hours of oxygen left, too. And the rebreather tank if it came to that. He considered trying to find the scuba shop and all of his supplies, but a flash of blue passing through a faraway intersection in the rearview sent him toward the highway. Predators were still hunting in Miami.

They drove in silence until they reached the on-ramp for the highway. “We made it,” Arwen said as they rode up the long, curving ramp.

When Miller saw that the double-yellow-lined road was almost completely free of cars and bodies, he powered up to eighty miles per hour and relaxed. The city of Miami, once full of life and never-ending parties, had been reduced to a red-hued ghost town hosting a gang of neo-Nazis somehow capable of reigning in their own SecondWorld. Leaving the city behind lifted a sinister weight from his shoulders.

As the buildings shrunk down to apartment buildings and then homes, Miller turned on the radio. He was greeted by static. He hit the Scan button and the numbers scrolled past until the cycle had completed and started over. Nothing but static. There were either no stations in range transmitting or something was blocking the signal.

Arwen leaned forward with a grunt and opened the glove box. It was empty except for one CD. “Score.”

“I wasn’t looking for music,” he said. “I—” He saw the CD’s label. U2—War. Score indeed. He took it from her and slid it into the CD player. Once “Sunday Bloody Sunday” started playing he knew the disc was kept in the car to show off its amazing eight-speaker sound system.

Miller and Arwen sat in silence as they cruised down the highway listening to an early Bono and The Edge pour their hearts into the music that made them famous. Red flakes danced on the breeze around them, flowing up and over the car.

Ten minutes into the CD, they passed an airplane that had crashed into the opposite side of the highway. It was big—a 747—and probably carried hundreds of people. Fire had consumed the middle of it, and Miller had to pull into the breakdown lane to skirt one of the destroyed wings.

“What happened?” Arwen asked.

“Engines can’t run without oxygen,” he said in a hushed voice. “They must have tried to land on the highway.”

“Maybe the red stuff clogged it up?”

He nodded. “That, too.”

Once past the plane, they fell silent again, neither wanting to talk about what they’d seen. After roughly twenty-seven minutes, nearly a minute into “Two Hearts Beat as One,” Arwen turned down the music. “Enough old-people music.”

“Old-people music? U2 is…” Miller paused. He was talking to a twelve-year-old. U2 was old-people music. “I thought you liked it.”

“You thought wro— Ahh!”

A split second of confusion struck Miller as his ear picked up on Arwen’s scream a fraction of a second before his mind registered what he’d seen—a bullet hole in the windshield. He yanked the wheel from side to side, hoping to throw off the sniper’s aim. A second round tore through the windshield and blasted a hole out the back.

The third round found his left arm. Miller shouted in pain, twisting from the impact. He hammered the brakes as the car veered off the road toward a copse bordering an off-ramp.

16

A wave of leafy bush branches covered the car as it sliced into the brush like a dull knife. Each shattered branch sent a jolt through the car, but ultimately helped avoid a bone-crushing stop against the guardrail, which was just a few feet beyond where the car came to rest. Once stopped, Miller took stock of the situation.

Arwen was still conscious, though dazed, and most likely in intense pain. He glanced at his shoulder, now covered in a maroon stain. A gash stretched across the side of his shoulder where the bullet had skimmed past. A little to the right and his arm would have been all but useless. He’d survived worse—much worse—and didn’t give it a second thought. He couldn’t see past the brush covering the car, but suspected the sniper had been on the overpass to which the off-ramp led. And since he couldn’t see the overpass, the sniper couldn’t see them, which meant he had a minute, maybe less, to figure out some kind of plan.

He ejected the clip from his handgun and checked the rounds. One in the clip. One in the chamber. Two shots. Against what? A lone gunman with a sniper rifle? Ten gunmen with automatic weapons? There was no way to be sure.

Arwen groaned. “What happened?”

Miller slid into the backseat and started putting on his rebreather. There wasn’t time to explain. “Stay in the car. No matter what you hear or see.”

With the rebreather secured to his back, he slid the mask up over his head and secured it over his face. He adjusted the valves and took a breath. “Keep your head down. I’ll be back soon.”

“But—” Before Arwen could speak, Miller had slipped out the back door and closed it behind him.

Miller followed the rise of the off-ramp toward the overpass, staying well within the concealment of the tall bushes. The brush thinned out as several taller trees blocked out the sun. He paused at the edge of the brush, lowering himself down behind a leafy branch, and listened. His patience and instincts were rewarded thirty seconds later.

Fallen leaves and dry branches cracked beneath the careful approach of a lone figure. Miller watched him through the brush. He had the same look as the Miami gang—shaved head, blond hair, blue eyes, the military-grade rebreather—but a few details set him apart. He held the confident posture of a hunter. His black fatigues were similar to those worn by U.S. Special Ops on night missions. But his weapon stood out the most and made no sense. The Karabiner 98k was a five-shot bolt-action rifle sometimes fitted with an optical scope for sharpshooting. It was the standard infantry weapon of the Germans in World War II. But here it was, in the year 2012, held by the man who had just tried to kill him. In the open, with some space between them, the sniper had the advantage. Here in the brush, with twisting branches all around, the long rifle would be unwieldy. But if he reached the clearing…

Miller rose from his hiding spot and raised his weapon. The wound on his left shoulder pounded through him as he fired the first shot. The pain threw off his aim, and the bullet zinged past the sniper’s head.

The man ducked and raised his rifle, but it snagged on a branch and his shot dug into the dirt at Miller’s feet. As the man chambered a second round, Miller took careful aim. Before he could pull the trigger, he noticed the sniper was about to fire from the hip and ducked instinctively. Both shots went wild.

He had no idea how many shots the sniper had left in his five-shot magazine, but he knew how many he had left—none. He left the brush behind and charged through the sloped clearing. When the man charged as well, Miller knew they were both out of ammo. But the stranger still had the advantage. Not only was he not wounded, but the rifle had been fitted with a very sharp bayonet, which essentially turned it into a short spear.

The two met in the center of the clearing, both moving fast. The sniper thrust the bayonet toward Miller’s chest. He spun like a football player, dodging the blade with his body, but felt a tug on something as he passed. He gave it no thought as he continued his spin and pistol-whipped the man in the back of the head.

The two men separated. As Miller watched the man stagger for a moment, he thought he’d gained the upper hand. But the man’s smile, twisted by the thick plastic of his rebreather mask, revealed otherwise. Miller found out why a moment later.

He couldn’t breathe.

The hose that supplied air from Miller’s rebreather to his mask had been severed by the knife.

The ramifications of this struck both men at the same time. The sniper didn’t need to fight. All he had to do was wait. Without air, Miller would soon drop dead without another blow landed.

The man turned to run, but stumbled, weakened by the hard blow to his head. Miller charged, his subconscious counting down the minutes his body could keep going without another breath, and then cutting that time in half because of the oxygen being eaten up by physical exertion.

Miller caught the man’s shoulder and spun him around, but had to jump back as the bayonet swooshed past his stomach. The man’s quick strike overextended his arms and Miller filled the gap, planting a punch into the man’s stomach. The blow would have sent most men to the ground, gasping for air, but the sniper was a trained fighter. He flexed his stomach muscles and sucked in his gut, absorbing the blow’s energy, and keeping his air—of which he had plenty—in his lungs.

In close, the sniper twisted the butt of his rifle up and caught Miller in the side of the head, sending him to the ground. Miller reached out as he fell and managed to pull the face mask from his attacker.

The effects of asphyxiation assaulted Miller. Dizziness and blurred vision blinded him to the man’s approach. Then the man’s weight was on his chest, forcing out what little air remained in his lungs. The sniper tore Miller’s mask away.

The man grinned and spoke English with a heavy German accent. “It has been a long time since I took a life.”

The man pressed his rifle’s long barrel against Miller’s throat and pushed, though it was really just a symbolic gesture since Miller couldn’t breathe anyway.

Miller grasped the rifle and with the last of his strength, pushed back.

The German laughed. “Your struggle is admirable, but ultimately futi—”

Miller let go of the rifle and swung the bayonet, which he’d managed to unscrew with his fingers, into the German’s side. But it didn’t bite flesh. Instead, it stabbed through the man’s rebreather and punctured something inside. As a loud hiss filled the air, the man turned toward the sound. Miller withdrew the bayonet and struck again, this time slamming the blade into the side of the German’s head. The man slumped over without a sound.

Miller stood on shaky feet, his vision narrowing, his thoughts confused. He tried to reconnect his severed rebreather hose, but without tape to seal it back together, most of the air seeped away. All he could think about was the car and Arwen. He started back, stumbling through the brush, snapping branches and fighting to keep his eyes open. A glint of silver ahead shone like a beacon. He fell from the bushes, landing on the hood. Sliding along it, he found the door, opened it, and fell inside. With the door closed, he took several deep breaths.

Nothing. No improvement.

The car held no air, or at least not enough to help.

Arwen’s silence confirmed it.

That’s when he remembered the four golf ball–sized holes in the front and back windshields. He’d left Arwen behind, without air, to die on her own.

17

Miller reached back and cranked the oxygen tank’s valve all the way open. It hissed pure oxygen into the car. His head cleared and his vision returned. He checked Arwen and found a pulse. Unconscious, but alive. Next he removed his T-shirt and tore it into four pieces, balling them up and shoving them into the window’s holes. They wouldn’t stop all the air from escaping, but they were something.

Knowing the oxygen tank wouldn’t last long, he pushed the car’s starter button. When it clicked at him, he feared the car had been wrecked, but quickly realized the silent vehicle had never shut off. He threw the car into reverse and pulled back onto the highway.

Branches flew from the car and red dust billowed behind it as Miller hit the gas and pushed the vehicle to its top speed of 120 miles per hour. The highway passed in a blurry haze of red flakes.

Miller looked down at Arwen. She was tiny and frail and innocent. She didn’t deserve to die like this. The millions of people lying dead in the city shrinking behind them didn’t deserve to die like they did, either. He thought of the gang back in Miami. He saw the sick grin of the German sniper, leering down at him.

“Fuck you,” Miller said to the red sky.

“Who are you talking to?” Arwen asked, her voice weak.

Miller breathed a sigh of relief. “The sky.”

“What’d the sky do to make you so upset?”

Miller’s tension bled away. “Aside from raining down oxygen-stealing red crap?”

Arwen glanced up. “Right. That.” She wheezed. “Hard to breathe.”

Miller motioned to the T-shirt-stuffed holes in the window. “We’ve got a leaky ship.”

“We going to make it?”

There was no way to answer that question. Too many variables were still unknown. How far did they have to go? Had the rest of the world been attacked? How long would the oxygen tank last before it ran dry? The only real information he had was the battery charge. They had fifteen minutes left. Driving at full speed drained the battery fast. He’d been looking for signs of a drugstore or hospital close to the highway, but saw none. He’d considered slowing the pace, but if the air ran out before the battery, what was the point? Time was the enemy and speed was his only weapon.

Arwen coughed. “I’m sleepy.”

“Try to stay awake.”

The girl propped her eyes wide open, but the effort was short-lived. Her eyelids slid down to a tired squint.

Miller moved to touch her arm, but the sight of a body in the road snapped his hand back to the wheel as he yanked it to the left. The car jolted as they swerved one way, and then the other, nearly careening into the center guardrail.

“Sorry,” Miller said, but was secretly glad to see the maneuver had woken the girl again.

“What’s wrong with the sky?” she asked.

He looked up and saw an endless sea of red flakes. “What do you mean?”

“It’s blue.”

Miller looked again. Was Arwen hallucinating?

“Not up there.” Arwen pointed straight out the windshield. “Out there.”

Miller looked straight ahead. The change had been so subtle that he hadn’t noticed the growing streak of blue at the horizon. A blue sky lay ahead. And with it, the promise of breathable air. If he could, Miller would have pushed the accelerator farther down, but it was already pinned to the floor.

“We’re going to make it,” he said, turning to Arwen, but the girl had slumped to the side, her eyes closed.

He stared at her neck, looking for a pulse, and saw a gentle twitch just beneath her skin. But it was faint.

With a suddenness that made his stomach churn, Miller felt as though he’d just spun in circles. The world shifted around him. He kept his arms rigid, maintaining a straight trajectory. He took several deep breaths. His vision cleared slightly, but he knew those three breaths had taken much of what little oxygen was left in the vehicle—oxygen that Arwen needed as much as he did.

The blue sky grew larger before them, expanding fast as they approached the border of the red storm.

As each breath became a wheeze, Miller knew the oxygen tank was empty. His vision became a blur, but he could see the blue sky was nearly above them now. Another minute, maybe, and they’d be clear.

That’s when the car’s battery died. As the car slowed from 120 miles per hour to zero, it carried them closer to the blue sky, but stopped just short. While fighting the now-familiar sensations of the onset of asphyxiation, Miller stumbled out of the car and ran to the other side. He fumbled with Arwen’s seat belt, but got it free and scooped the still form up.

He ran toward the blurry blue sky ahead of them. His legs shook from the effort. Sweat poured down his shirtless torso and red flakes clung to his skin. Through his waning vision, Miller saw two things ahead of him.

The blue, blue sky.

And a wall, atop of which stood a line of armed men wearing identical rebreathers.

“No,” he whispered.

The men were moving now. Rushing toward him. Weapons raised.

“No,” he whispered, and then fell to his knees. He placed Arwen down on the pavement and placed his body over hers.

“I’m sorry,” he said with the last of his breath before falling to his side. Miller blinked at the red sky above and rolled his head northward. The blue sky was so close. Black military boots charged toward him. Loud voices shouted. His vision faded. The last thing he saw was the side of Arwen’s neck. He fought against unconsciousness as he waited for the twitch of her pulse.

When none came, Miller closed his eyes and gave in to death.

18

“Is he awake?”

“Not yet.”

“Keep an eye on him.”

Miller listened to the conversation with his eyes closed. He’d woken thirty seconds previous and attempted to determine his situation without opening his eyes. The sounds around him—feet walking in a hallway, the beep of a heart monitor, and a distant television—combined with the smell of antiseptic, told him he was in a hospital. Normally, this would be a good thing considering he was certain he’d died. But the line of men he saw before losing consciousness wore gear similar to that of the Miami gang and the highway sniper. He was alive, but was he also a captive?

When he heard the door close, he chanced a look. A lanky man stood at the door. His hair was blond and cropped close. Miller closed his eyes as the man turned toward him. He heard the man’s footsteps round the bed and peeked again. The man’s face was serious, his blue eyes intense. He wore a partially unbuttoned white shirt—sleeves rolled up. A 9mm Sig Sauer handgun hung on his hip. Miller sensed the man was dangerous, but he’d yet to see evidence that the man was his enemy.

Miller closed his eyes and pondered the notion for just a moment. That’s when he realized the man wasn’t wearing a rebreather. He breathed freely. And Miller wasn’t wearing a mask either! He took a long slow breath, doing his damndest to not show a smile. The air was far from fresh, tinged with chemicals and detergents, but it smelled far better than his breath trapped within the confines of a plastic mask.

Feeling his strength return, Miller took stock of his body. A dull pain pulsed through most of his limbs, but felt sharp on his wounded shoulder. He could tell by the tightness of his skin that the gash had been stitched. A mild headache behind his eyes was bearable. Otherwise he just felt exhausted.

Through squinted eyes, Miller saw the blond man look out the window. He quickly searched the room. It was an average hospital room. Nothing special. The man’s suit jacket hung from a chair. No balloons. No flowers. No get-well-soon card.

No Arwen.

A sense of urgency took hold. His muscles tensed. And without a second thought, he acted.

Miller sat up fast, happy to find himself not strapped down to the bed. He yanked the IV from his arm and jumped to his feet.

The man guarding him heard the movement and turned. For a moment he looked surprised to see Miller barreling toward him, but he quickly adopted a more menacing posture. For all the good it did him. The man reached out and started to say something, but Miller couldn’t hear the words over the blood rushing past his ears. He took hold of the man’s wrist, twisted it behind his back, and slammed him against the large window. The man’s head struck the window with a loud bong. A moment later, Miller had the man’s handgun pressed against the side of his head.

The man groaned, trying to turn in the direction of his twisted arm to reduce the pressure.

“Where’s Arwen?” Miller said, his voice something like a lion’s growl.

“Who?”

Miller tightened his grip. The man’s voice had a slight Southern twang. Combined with the blond crew cut and blue eyes, that was damn near strike three.

The man gritted his teeth.

“Arwen. Little blond girl.”

“Covered in burns?”

“That’s her.”

“I’m not sure, she—”

Miller pushed the gun hard into the man’s temple.

“I’m FBI!” the man shouted. “My badge is in my left pocket.”

Miller considered this. Was it possible? Had they really escaped that pink hell?

“I’d have to let go of your arm to check the pocket,” Miller said.

“You’d still have a gun to my head.”

He had a point, and by now the man understood that if Miller wanted to kill him, he could. He released the man’s arm and slowly reached into his pocket. A moment later he was looking at a photo ID badge that matched the man’s face and read ROGER BRODEUR.

“This could be fake,” Miller said, stepping back, but keeping the gun raised. “How do I know you’re not one of them?”

“Have you looked out the window?” Brodeur said while rubbing his arm.

Miller turned his focus away from Brodeur and looked out the window. The first thing he saw was blue sky—an endless blue sky. He felt some of the tension in his chest fade. Then he saw the Capitol building far in the distance. “We’re in D.C.?”

“George Washington University Hospital.” Brodeur sat on the bed. “The National Guard picked you up at the redline—that’s what they’re calling the border outside of Miami. On account of the sky being red.”

“I get it.”

“How’d you survive?”

“Long story.”

“S’pose it is.”

“How many others survived?”

“The ones that thought to leave the affected area right away pulled through fine. Just over two hundred thousand people. The rest either never made it out or left after the iron had already poisoned their bodies. Nothing to be done at that point.”

“How many?”

“You really should be resting.”

“How many?”

“Two point two million dead. The affected area in the U.S. stretches from Miami to the Keys. Tokyo and Tel Aviv were hit too. We don’t have the numbers, but the population of Tokyo alone is nearly thirteen million. If you apply the same survival ratio that we have in Miami…”

Miller shook his head. “Why?”

“No one knows.”

Miller lowered the gun down and took a seat. He rubbed his forehead with his free hand. Two point two million people dead in southern Florida. It didn’t seem possible. But he, perhaps more than anyone, knew it was true. He’d seen the bodies.

“Far as anyone can tell, you and the girl are the only survivors.”

Miller shook his head. “No, we’re not.”

Brodeur’s eyes went wide. “There are others? Where are they?”

“Right where I left them, would be my guess. Maybe forty in Miami. Another five in Hell.” Miller stood. “Take me to Arwen.”

“You’re saying they’re hostile?”

“I’ll tell you everything I know just as soon as I confirm that the girl is safe.”

Brodeur looked at the gun in Miller’s hand. “Gonna shoot me if I don’t?”

Miller turned the gun around and handed it back to Brodeur, who holstered it.

“You fight something fierce for an NCIS man.”

With a grin, Miller said, “You know who I am?”

“Course,” Brodeur said, motioning to a file folder sitting on top of the dresser. “Been here for ten minutes is all. Washington P.D. was guarding you until I got here.”

“You’re supposed to be my guard?”

Brodeur’s face reddened. “Yeah, well, you kind of caught me with my pants down.”

Miller looked down at his hospital gown. “Speaking of which, can I get some clothes?”

Ten minutes later, Miller was dressed in new jeans and a T-shirt. The hospital didn’t have shoes, so he’d been given back the boat shoes he’d taken from Dave’s Scuba back in Key Largo. He’d stared at the shoes for a moment.

“You okay?” Brodeur asked with a tone of genuine concern.

“They’re not my shoes,” Miller said.

“The nurse says you came in with them on.”

“Took them from a dead man.”

“Oh.”

Miller stared at the shoes and then slowly slid them onto his feet. For a moment he felt the hot Miami pavement pounding beneath his feet as he pushed Arwen to the Tesla dealership, the tingle of his foot after he’d slammed the car’s accelerator to the floor for an hour, and the slip of the dirt beneath his feet when he fought the sniper.

Brodeur’s next words erased it all. “The girl—Arwen—she’s in the burn ward.”

Miller pushed past him, exited the room, and headed for the elevator. Brodeur did nothing to stop him. He knew better than to get in the way of a Navy SEAL, especially one tough enough to survive what Miller had.

With his finger hovering in front of the elevator button, Miller froze.

“Sure you don’t want the doctors to check you out again, first?”

“Nothing’s wrong with my body. I’m just not sure I can face her again.”

Brodeur didn’t ask, but the question hung in the air regardless—why not? He looked at Brodeur. “If she’s there. If she’s real. Then it’s all real.”

“Then let me be the one to spoil things for you,” Brodeur said. “It’s all real.”

Miller grinned. He was beginning to like Brodeur. The man didn’t mince words. He pushed the Down button and said, “Well, then that sucks for you.”

“Why’s that?”

The doors opened and the pair stepped in.

“Because things are going to get worse.”

The doors closed.

“A lot worse.”

19

Miller found Arwen in a hospital room very similar to the one in which he’d first discovered her. The only real difference was the number of windows and the view through them. The oxygen tent was clear plastic now, instead of opaque like the one she’d had in Miami, and he could see her lying there, looking toward the window. He imagined she felt skittish and afraid after everything they’d been through.

“How long does it take to get some pudding around here?” she said.

Or not.

“Sorry,” Miller said. “I’m all out of pudding.”

She turned toward him, smiling with her eyes, but not her hurt mouth. “Linc!”

“They didn’t even offer me food,” he said.

“You should have asked. Seriously. They’ll get you anything you want.”

Miller had no doubt she was right. They had survived the impossible, and she was a pretty girl with extensive injuries. If she asked for the moon it’s likely someone would try to find a way to deliver it to her.

She lifted the tent up. “Better come in. They told me I needed to keep this down most of the time. Guess my skin didn’t like all that time out in the open.”

When Arwen scooted over, Miller noticed she wasn’t wincing in pain. The burns still hurt, but the experiences of the last few days had toughened her. He could see it in her eyes. He climbed under the tent and lay next to her on the bed.

They stared at each other for a moment, for the first time without the fear of death between them. Arwen began to cry. “They asked about my family. Said I’d eventually have to go live with someone because they’re all dead.”

“No aunts or uncles?”

“They all lived around Miami.”

Damn.

Miller searched his mind for something to say, but came up blank. He wasn’t always great with emotions, and certainly not with expressing them—except maybe for anger. But then he understood what she was looking for. “I’m going to be here. I’ll help figure things out, even if you have to come live with me.”

She relaxed and laid her head on the pillow and wiped away her tears with her good arm. “Thanks.”

“Okay,” said a woman as she entered the room. “Pudding time.” The nurse holding a pudding cup saw Miller and her face transformed from bubbly happy to righteous anger. “Hey, what the hell are you—”

Arwen leaned up. “It’s okay. I want him here.”

The nurse was confused by Arwen’s defense of the strange man in her room. She was about to ask Miller to leave again when Arwen continued.

“Do you know who he is?” Arwen asked. “Don’t you recognize him?”

The nurse looked from Arwen to Miller. Then her eyes went wide. “Oh… oh, I’m sorry.”

Miller said nothing. He was too confused.

“No one offered him a pudding. Can he have one?”

“Uh, sure. What flavor?”

“Chocolate,” Arwen said.

“Sure. I’ll—I’ll be right back.” The nurse left.

“How’d you know I like chocolate?”

“Who doesn’t like chocolate?”

Miller grinned.

Arwen frowned. “She didn’t leave my pudding, did she?”

“Nope.”

Arwen rolled her eyes, and said, “Some people, I swear.”

Miller thought she must have been quoting one of her mother’s catchphrases. All parents have them. The facial expressions and mannerisms were too adult. He knew he was right when fresh sadness crept into her eyes.

He distracted her with a question. “How did you know she would recognize me? Were you awake when they brought us in?”

“They had the TV on for me. Let me watch some cartoons. But the news came on after. Mostly it talked about Miami. And Tokyo. And a new attack in someplace called Tel Aviv. They said that people there knew what to do, though. Most of them got away.” Arwen shifted, getting more comfortable. “Anyway, after that they talked about us. Said our names. Showed your picture a lot. Said what they knew about us, which was mostly about you. We’re famous.”

Miller wasn’t sure how to reply. Arwen’s face was a mix of emotions. She enjoyed the idea of being famous, but recognized that it was fame for all the wrong reasons.

Before he could speak, a quick knock on the door interrupted.

“Miller.”

It was Brodeur.

“Can it wait?” Miller said.

“Wish it could.”

Miller wanted to complain, but stowed it. They were on the same team and Brodeur was just doing his job.

Brodeur sensed his apprehension and added, “Someone’s here to see you.”

Miller raised an eyebrow. “Someone?”

“POTUS.”

Miller’s voice caught in his throat.

POTUS.

Arwen saw the change in Miller’s body language. “Who’s POTUS?”

“Someone you don’t keep waiting,” he said, sliding out from the tent.

“But who’s POTUS?”

“Know what an acronym is?”

“I think so.”

“Each letter of POTUS stands for a word.”

“Like scuba? Self-contained underwater whatever.”

“Exactly,” he said as he closed the tent behind him. “You think on it. Tell me who it is when I get back.”

“’Kay.”

Miller stepped into the hallway, wondering why the president of the United States had come to see him at the hospital. Sure, he was one of two survivors to escape Miami, but Hell had come to Earth. If the president was here to pin a medal, or worse, use the meeting as a PR opportunity, then Miller would tell him to go fuck himself. He saw an army of Secret Service agents in the hallway ahead and made a mental note to use more polite terms when he told POTUS to go fuck himself.

When the waiting room door opened and Miller was ushered into the room, he saw the president’s face and knew, without a doubt, that there would be no medals pinned, and no PR spun. The man looked like he’d gone a few rounds with the Grim Reaper, and the way he sat in the chair said that the next bell could ring at any second.

20

Miller had never met President Arnold Bensson, but had seen the man on TV enough to recognize him as easily as family. He was a handsome African-American man with a manicured smile and casual and relaxed appearance. He spent a lot of time giving interviews to unusual media sources, including a lot of comedy shows. He couldn’t play the sax like Clinton, but he knew how to work a crowd. But what Miller liked most about the president was that when it came down to the nitty-gritty business of armed combat and homeland defense, Bensson never backed down from the tough calls. And he’d made a few, even when they were unpopular.

Now, he looked defeated.

Or at least on the ropes.

“Mr. President,” Miller said as he instinctively stiffened his posture.

Bensson stood and shook his hand. “You did good work out there, Miller.”

Miller stopped pumping his hand. “Hope that’s not what this is about.”

A small grin appeared on Bensson’s face. “I thought I’d like you.” He returned to his maroon-cushioned chair and leaned his head against the wall.

Miller sat across from Bensson and saw him as just another man—tie loosened, shirt sleeves rolled up, looking desperate for a beer. “If you don’t mind, sir, you pulled me away from a pudding date.”

“She’s a lucky girl.”

“Hardly,” Miller said, his voice taking on a hard edge. “Her parents, her brother, and every other member of her family are dead. She’s been shot at, nearly asphyxiated on multiple occasions, and seen enough dead bodies to keep her in therapy for the rest of her life.”

The president nodded. “Like I said. Lucky. It’s a rare person that can face those kinds of odds and come out alive. You’re that person. Without you, she’d—well, you know how things would have turned out.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re here to pat me on the back.”

“Not at all.” Bensson leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I’m here because I trust you.”

“Trust me? We’ve only just met.”

Bensson nodded. “There are no microphones in this room. No cameras or recording devices. It’s just us. Everything said will be between us. I had a ten-minute argument with the small army of Secret Service agents watching my back now. And they won’t come in until we open the door.”

That didn’t sound very smart to Miller. “How do you know I’m not a threat?”

Bensson gave a sheepish grin. “If you wanted me to suffer, you’d let me live anyway. Death would be the easy way out of this mess.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you trust me. Or why you need someone you trust.”

“I trust you because you survived.”

“I got news for you. There are other survivors in Miami. And they’re far from trustworthy.”

With a slight nod, the president said, “We have satellite images of gangs roaming Miami. And we all saw the symbol on the news.”

“They’ve been tagging it all around the city, too.”

Bensson shook his head. “Nazis. It’s just too much.”

The president seemed to be fading into angry distraction. Miller tried to pull him back to the conversation. “You were telling me why you trusted me.”

Bensson looked up, his eyes focusing on Miller. “Mostly it’s because of the girl.” He took a photo out of his pocket and showed it to Miller. The image showed Miller on the ground. Arwen lay beneath him. This was the moment of their rescue. Of their near death. “You nearly died trying to save her. These SecondWorld bastards have so little regard for life that I can’t see any one of them trying so desperately to save hers.”

“That I’m an ex-SEAL and NCIS special agent has nothing to do with it?”

“Not in the slightest,” the president said. “Ranks and titles no longer designate whether you’re on the side of angels or demons. The line between friend and foe is smudged. That said, you being an ex-SEAL and NCIS agent are certainly helpful.”

Something about Bensson’s statement triggered Miller’s subconscious. He’d said something without actually saying it. When it didn’t come to him, he said, “Fine. But I’m still not clear on why you’re here, talking to me.”

“The nation is terrified. The economy is taking a dive. Things are falling apart fast and if we don’t figure this thing out soon we’re going to be looking at riots. Looting. Maybe worse. And everyone left in Washington is pointing fingers, but no one really knows who’s to blame.”

“What do you mean, ‘everyone left in Washington’?” Miller asked.

The president frowned. “There are some people we have no doubt about.”

Bensson’s look of defeat returned. He rubbed his hands over his face and sighed. “About an hour before your return to the real world, the vice president’s motorcade disappeared. We lost all contact. Secret Service followed the GPS tracking units in the vehicles. When they arrived, they found the VP missing and half of his guard dead.”

“Half?”

“They’d been shot… by rounds issued to the Secret Service.”

“Oh my God.”

Tears formed in the president’s eyes. “They were gunned down by men they’d served with for years.”

Miller knew very little about the vice president, other than the fact that he was an older white man who seemed gentle and kind. But he’d clearly been living a double life.

“Twenty-five members of Congress have disappeared. Over one hundred thousand men and women in the armed forces have gone AWOL. In some parts of the South, entire towns have vanished.”

“They’re going to ground,” Miller said. He was up and pacing now. “How’s this possible?”

“There are a lot of religious groups and cults preparing for the end of the world. It’s possible some of them have been fronts, allowing these neo-Nazis to prepare behind a veil of religious freedom. Hell, the Mormons have been building underground bunkers around the world for years. And either no one bothered to track their construction, or the information has been destroyed, because it’s like they no longer exist. But we know they’re there. Look, the point is, I’m not sure who I can trust anymore, but I know I can trust you. The reason for this conversation is twofold. The first is that I wanted to hear your story firsthand and unfiltered.”

Miller gave a nod. Under the circumstances, his testimony would be unique and potentially beneficial to the ongoing investigation. If he had helpful information, it’s likely the testimony could be altered before it reached those in power, or even altered by those in power. Miller empathized with the president’s paranoia. Who could he trust? “That’s why I was under guard,” Miller realized and said aloud.

Bensson confirmed this with a nod.

“You know he looks very… German, right?”

“I didn’t, but we can replace him if you’d like.”

Miller smiled and shook his head. He couldn’t decide whether the fact that the president took his joke seriously was funny or depressing. “He could have killed me if he wanted to.”

“I doubt that very much,” Bensson said. “I’ve seen your record.”

“That was another life.”

“We’ll see.”

Miller didn’t like the sound of that, but before he could follow that line of thinking, Bensson looked at his watch and said, “I’m running out of time. Every move I make is being scrutinized. If I stay too long it might draw attention.”

Miller caught the hint. Bensson wasn’t worried about himself. He was the president of the United States during the worst act of genocide in the history of the world. Only the president’s death could draw more attention to his office. Bensson was worried his presence would draw attention on Miller.

The story took ten minutes to relay. He told Bensson about the news report he’d seen, the spray-painted symbol, and his encounter with the well-equipped but poorly trained gang. The president didn’t say a word until Miller relayed his encounter with the German sniper.

“You’re sure he was German?”

“Even carried a Karabiner 98k with a mounted scope.”

“What’s a Karabiner?”

“Standard weapon for the Germans in the World War. But sharpshooters used it with a scope.”

“World War Two?”

“Yes, sir. It’s an obsolete weapon. But the way he handled it… he came damn near close to shooting me dead through a windshield while I had the needle pegged. That’s a hard shot with modern sniper rifles, never mind an antique. For whatever reason, the Karabiner was his weapon of choice.” Miller met the president’s eyes. “You don’t think the Germans are part of this?”

“God, I hope not.” Bensson stared at the floor. “But it’s safe to assume that our local neo-Nazis aren’t operating alone.”

“Well, that’s pretty much the end of the story. You know how it ended. It’s not much, but I hope the Nazi angle gives the agencies something new to go on. They can find his body in the trees just after the off-ramp for exit fifty-seven. Maybe he’ll have some more intel.”

“Good thinking,” Bensson said.

Miller sensed the man had something more to say, but felt uncomfortable saying it. “The agencies are on this, right? CIA. FBI. Homeland.”

“NCIS, too,” the president confirmed. “But—”

Everything clicked into place as Miller’s subconscious finally found its voice. This meeting was never about getting the story straight from the horse’s mouth. It was about recruiting the horse. Miller stopped his pacing and turned toward Bensson. “But you don’t trust them.”

“Can’t afford to.”

“But—shit—you trust me.”

“I do. You’ve seen combat. You’re an excellent investigator. You’re the one and only person alive who’s drawn blood on the other side of this thing.”

“And you want me to what, chase down the bad guys?”

“I want you to try.”

Miller began pacing again. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

“No one does.”

“You do realize that I’m in pain from head to toe, that I’ve got stitches in my arm.”

“You’ve been through worse,” the president said. “I would give you the full support of my office. Money. Weapons. Transport. Anything you need to get the job done. Unofficially. Off the record.”

“In case I shoot the wrong person, you mean?”

The president ignored him. “I need a man I can trust.”

Wounded soldiers in the field routinely requested to return to the front line. Sometimes out of loyalty to the men they fought beside. Sometimes out of a sense of duty. And sometimes because of baser desires, like vengeance. But the SEALs were different. Wounded men were distracted, slower, and more likely to make mistakes. Miller wanted to help, but the discipline and self-regulation he learned in the SEALs told him to rest. There had to be someone else. “Sir, you can trust me. But I’m in no shape to—”

The president’s eyes filled with a rage few ever saw in him. He stood face-to-face with Miller. “We might walk out of this room and find red flakes falling from the sky! Millions are dead! Millions!” Bensson reached into his pocket and withdrew a five-by-seven manila envelope. He handed it to Miller without opening it. He just sat back down and waited.

Miller opened the package and took out a stack of photos. The first was a satellite image. Green land and blue ocean could be seen at the fringe, but a big, dark red splotch filled the center of the image. Miller’s back tensed. “What am I looking at?”

When the president didn’t answer, he flipped to the next image. The red filled the photo. Barely discernable skyscrapers stabbed up through the pink. The next image was closer still, focused on an eight-block radius. He recognized a landmark that was taller than anything else around it. “Tokyo Tower.” He looked at the president. “This is Tokyo.”

“Next image,” Bensson said.

Miller flipped to the next photo. Sun streaked down a long stretch of city street. It looked bumpy, but the long shadows weren’t cast by poor paving. They were bodies. Millions of bodies. Miami had been a horrible sight, but he could navigate through the city. Tokyo was carpeted with dead. Miller sat down, speechless.

“These attacks were focused on the cities,” Bensson said. “Of that, there is no doubt. But they affected the surrounding suburbs as well, which in Tokyo makes the death toll closer to twenty million. Frankly, we got lucky in Miami. It could have been New York or Los Angeles. We also got lucky that there was a southerly wind in Miami that day. Had it shifted north, up the coast, there would have been millions more dead.”

“The wind?”

“We have no idea what kind of science is creating this effect, but once those red flakes appear in the lower atmosphere, they move with the wind, and a pocket of lethal air moves with them. On the northern edge of Miami, the wall of red flakes stayed consistent—on target—but to the south, it got dragged out to sea. That’s how it reached you.”

Miller stared at the photos in his hands. The bodies were so thick that they overlapped each other in red-dust-covered heaps.

“The clock is ticking,” Bensson said, “and no one knows how much time is left. But we know the enemy is risking exposure by heading underground. Whatever else is coming, is coming soon.”

He’s right, Miller thought. But that didn’t change the fact that he needed to rest, at least for the night. “I’ll start tomorrow,” Miller said.

Bensson took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He took an iPhone from his pocket and handed it to Miller. “That’s a direct and secure line to me. I’m meeting with the remaining joint chiefs and a few generals I think I can trust. I want you there. Eight o’clock, sharp. I’ll have a team look for that dead German overnight. With luck, we’ll have a direction for you then. We’ll have our best and brightest working every angle of this thing, but since I have no idea if they can be trusted, you’re my point man on this.”

“Copy that, sir. See you in the morning.” Miller took the phone and pocketed it before heading for the door.

“Hey,” Bensson said, stopping Miller at the door. He tossed a small pony bottle to him.

Miller caught it.

“Fifteen minutes of air,” the president said.

Miller nodded his thanks and left. Fifteen minutes of air didn’t sound like much to most people, but to Miller, fifteen extra minutes could change everything. It was a good gift. He just hoped he’d never have reason to use it.

21

“Wow,” Arwen said. “That’s… a lot.”

Miller leaned forward in his chair. “I know.” After forcing Brodeur to wait outside Arwen’s room, he’d taken a seat next to the oxygen tent and laid out everything Bensson had asked him to do. He probably should have checked in with Fred Murdock, the executive assistant director of the NCIS and the closest thing Miller had to a confidant, but he felt Arwen deserved to know everything—she’d earned it—and Murdock wasn’t there. Hadn’t called, either.

Her hand slid out from under the oxygen tent. She held an empty pudding cup. “All done.”

He took the cup and placed it on the counter next to his, which he’d polished off in three big scoops.

“So what’d you say?”

“It’s not something you say no to.”

She was silent for a moment, and then asked, “You’ll find me when you’re done?”

The honest answer would have been, “If I’m still alive,” but Miller said, “You’ll still be here when I get back. Going to be in the hospital for a while.”

“And if you don’t come back?”

“That’s not going to happen,” he said. Miller felt guilty for saying it. She clearly knew the score, but he couldn’t let her see his fear.

“You don’t have to lie,” she said. “It’s okay to be afraid.”

Son of a bitch. The kid can read my mind. “I’m not afraid,” he insisted. It was a half-truth. Combat. Life-and-death situations. These things didn’t frighten him. But he was afraid for Arwen. He felt guilty for leaving the kid. Had promised he wouldn’t. If he didn’t come back… Hell, if he didn’t come back, it was likely she’d be dead along with the rest of the world.

“I didn’t tell you how I got burned,” she said.

“You don’t need to.” He didn’t want her to relive that memory.

“I smelled the smoke. Did everything right. Stayed low. Checked the handles. Went to the sidewalk. This was before the red flakes, by the way. But the fire started in my brother’s room. He couldn’t get out.”

Miller’s hand rose to his mouth. “You went back in.”

“He was my brother. I’d have done anything to save him. I don’t remember the rest. My father pulled me out. The red snow started the next morning. I didn’t see my parents after that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“The last thing my father said to me…” Arwen sniffed. Miller couldn’t see her, but knew she was crying. “He said he was proud of me. And I know Sam is, too. Because I tried.”

Miller rolled his neck and looked out the window. The sun hung low in the sky, casting a pink sunset that filled him with dread.

“You’re like Frodo,” she said. “You’ve been given a quest. To save us all. You need a fellowship, of course.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

A silent beat passed between them.

“Before you go,” she said, “take a shower. I can smell you even under here. The bad guys will smell you a mile away.”

Miller smiled. “I don’t live far from here. Going to take a shower, get some shut-eye, and then I’m off to the White House in the morning. And then… who knows.”

“’Kay.”

Miller stood and felt a wave of dizziness pass through him. He held on to the chair as his vision turned black for a moment. A single night’s rest wasn’t going to be enough. His body was still weak, and even a momentary blackout could mean the difference between life and death. I’ll rest on the move, he told himself, stepping to the door.

“I will come back,” he said from the door. The words were as much for him as for her.

“Linc,” she said as his hand took hold of the doorknob. “Frodo was afraid, too. And he was a hobbit. Just a little guy. And he made it back.”

“Copy that,” he said, feeling stupid for using military lingo.

But when Arwen replied with a quick, “Over and out,” he smiled. Had she been his child he’d see her as a chip off the old block. The kid had guts, nerves, and the spirit of a fighter. It kept her alive. Kept them both alive.

Miller opened the door and stepped into the hall, where he was greeted by the ever-vigilant Brodeur.

“I’m leaving,” Miller said.

Brodeur frowned. “You said that like I’m not coming.”

Miller set a quick pace toward the elevator despite the pain in his legs. “That’s because you’re not.” To clear his head and rest, really rest, Miller needed to be alone. He had a lot to process and only one night to do it in.

“Going home, then?”

After stopping in front of the elevator doors, Miller hit the Down button and nodded. No sense in lying about where he was headed. “Cleaning up, getting some shut-eye, and meeting POTUS for a morning brunch.”

“So that wasn’t just a pat-on-the-back meeting?” Brodeur said.

“You sound surprised.” The elevator failed to meet Miller’s internal timetable. He found the door for the stairs and made for the stairwell. Brodeur shadowed him. Taking the stairs hurt far worse than walking, but Miller tried not to show it.

Brodeur noted Miller’s slight limp. “You’re not exactly battle ready.”

“He was persuasive,” Miller said.

“Dang, man,” Brodeur said, his Southern twang coming through more clearly when unmasked by surprise. “What does he want you to do?”

Miller ignored the question, reached the ground floor, and exited the stairwell. He entered the lobby and headed for the reception desk. He tried to offer the portly man behind the counter a smile, but felt too uncomfortable to manage much more than an awkward grin that looked more like a grimace. “Can you call a cab for me?”

“Uh, sure,” the man said, looking at him with wide eyes.

Miller realized the man recognized him. Great, he thought. He turned away from the desk and found Brodeur there, arms crossed, and a smile on his face.

“How are you going to pay for that?”

A quick pat of his pockets reminded him he didn’t have a wallet. “Shit.”

“Going to have to break into your apartment, too, unless you have a spare.” When Miller said nothing, Brodeur flashed his ID and said, “I can make sure you don’t get arrested for breaking and entering.”

With a shake of his head, Miller turned to the man behind the desk. The man turned away quickly, looking at random papers on his desk in an attempt to hide his eavesdropping.

“Cancel the cab,” Miller said.

The man’s neck jiggled when he nodded. “Are you really him?”

Miller just turned away and headed for the door. Brodeur followed.

“I take that back about you being arrested,” Brodeur said. “Everyone knows who you are, now. You’re a celebrity.”

Miller exited through the large glass doors at the front of the hospital. He stopped on the sidewalk as a breeze carried a waft of fresh air over his body. He breathed deep, intoxicated by the smell, by the feel of it in his lungs. He would never take it for granted again.

When Brodeur stopped next to him, Miller said, “A celebrity is someone people wish they were. No one wants to be me. Trust me. Where’s your car?”

“No idea,” Brodeur said. “I tend to misplace things.”

Miller felt like slugging Brodeur, but held off when the man took out his keychain and pushed a button on a car alarm transmitter. A honk sounded in the distance. “Thataway.”

Brodeur led the way, honking the horn every ten seconds, honing in on the vehicle like a dolphin using echolocation. When they reached the car, Miller debated taking the keys from Brodeur and leaving him behind, but the man was just doing his job.

While Brodeur opened the driver’s side door and climbed in, Miller looked back at the hospital. He found the fifth floor and followed the windows to the room he thought belonged to Arwen. It all seemed so normal. So simple. The hospital. The blue sky. It was hard to imagine that while part of the world had been transformed into hell, the rest was business as usual. He kept expecting red flakes to fall from the sky, or for the hospital to explode, or for a sniper bullet to find him.

When the doors unlocked, Miller jumped. Relax, he told himself. Get a grip.

After getting in the car and hitting the road, Miller discovered that his assessment of the world outside the Miami area was drastically incomplete. The world was anything but normal. In the fifteen minutes it took to get to his apartment they witnessed two stores being looted, several fights, and a standoff between a mob and D.C. police in riot gear.

When they turned onto Miller’s street, he was glad to see it looked no different than the last time he’d seen it, nearly two weeks previous. Brownstone apartment buildings lined both sides of the street, most of which were concealed behind twin lines of maple trees heavy with green leaves.

“It’s this one,” Miller said, pointing to his building.

Brodeur pulled over.

“You don’t have to stay,” Miller said.

“You have your orders, I have mine,” Brodeur said. “Won’t be the first night I spent in a car.”

“You’re staying in the car?”

“Can’t keep watch as well from the inside.”

Miller knew he was right, but it still felt odd, having someone watch over him. He opened his door. “You sure?”

“Go,” Brodeur said. “Sounds like you’re going to need as much sleep as you can get.”

“Thanks.” Miller stepped out of the car and closed the door. He offered a nod and casual salute, and limped toward his front door. He strode up the granite stairs leading to the front entry of his building. He had planned to buzz a neighbor to let him in, but found the front door wedged open. The tenants sometimes did this if they were moving a mattress or TV, but no one was around. Assuming someone had just forgot, he kicked the rock away and let the door close behind him.

His pace quickened as he took the stairs toward his third-story apartment. It would feel good to just sit in his chair, which had conformed to the shape of his body. He took the last flight of stairs two at a time, working out his game plan: ibuprofen, shower, beer, chair, think, second beer, go to bed. As soon as he reached his door, the plan became moot. It would have to wait for another day.

The door was open.

Miller reached under his left arm, looking for a gun that wasn’t there. Shit, he thought. He listened for several seconds, and after hearing nothing but the loud hum of his old refrigerator, slid into the apartment. Two steps into the apartment he saw that it had been tossed. The contents of every drawer and cabinet covered the floor. Paintings lay broken and torn. Cushions sat gutted.

At the center of it all, in the living room, stood a petite blond woman, gun in her hand and blood on her arm.

22

Several options shot through Miller’s mind. He could retreat and get Brodeur, who was armed. But that wasn’t really his style. And the game could change by the time they got back. She might be watching the door, or have exited out the back. Leaving wasn’t a viable choice. He had to take care of this here and now.

His way.

The woman held something in her free hand and was inspecting it closely. No way she’s a pro, Miller thought. She’d left her back to the entrance and was totally ignorant of her surroundings. Still, she was holding a 9mm Glock and the blood on her arm suggested she knew how to use it.

Miller stepped quietly through the detritus littering the hardwood floors. With adrenaline fighting his fatigue, he managed to slide up behind the woman. Close up, he noticed a large purse at her feet.

Who brings a purse to toss an apartment?

Her clothes were all wrong, too. She wore tight-fitting jeans that showed off her short, but fit legs. Her red shoes looked like fashionable cross-trainers. And combined with her untucked white blouse and red, flowery purse, she looked like some kind of office employee on casual Friday.

Still, there was the gun.

A problem he would soon fix as he moved to within four feet of the woman. Close up, he could see that she was looking at the Purple Heart medal he’d been awarded for the greatest failing of his Navy SEAL career. He held his breath, pictured every move he’d make, and then acted. With one long step he closed the distance between them. He grasped the gun with his right hand and twisted, while with his left, he shoved her hard in the center of her back. The woman fell forward with a shout. The gun came free.

Miller turned the gun on the woman and took aim at her head.

She landed on the floor and spun around quickly. Her straight blond hair clung to her face, which looked wet. Through her hair, Miller saw her eyes, red-rimmed and wide. The woman was terrified. Not only was she not a pro, she wasn’t even a killer.

“Who are you?” Miller lowered the gun a notch.

And then she spoke.

“Please, don’t shoot me. I’m not your enemy.” The request was simple enough, but every syllable she spoke held the unmistakable sharp sound of a German accent.

The gun came back up. “Bullshit.”

“Please,” the woman said, shrinking back.

“Who did you shoot?”

The woman looked confused. “No—no one.”

Miller squinted at her. His logic said she was lying. After all, the last German he’d encountered had nearly killed him, and she had been standing in his ransacked apartment with a gun. But her eyes, blue and wet, looked honest. He quickly ejected the clip and looked at the bullets. Full. There wasn’t even a round in the chamber. He slapped the clip back home and smelled the gun. If it had been fired recently and reloaded, it would still smell strongly of cordite.

He smelled nothing. Either the woman had reloaded and cleaned the gun, or she was telling the truth.

“Whose blood is that?” he asked, pointing to her arm.

She looked down at the blood, her eyes widening as though she’d seen it for the first time. With a shaky hand, she wiped at the dry blood, but it wasn’t going to come off without soap and water.

Miller lowered the gun. Whoever this woman was, he could see she’d gone through hell.

“What’s your name?”

When she kept wiping at the blood, Miller took her face in his hand and turned her toward him.

“What’s your name?”

Her lips quivered for a moment, but after a deep breath, she found a measure of self-control and spoke. “Elizabeth Adler. I— I’m a German liaison for Interpol.”

“Interpol?”

“I coordinate with the FBI and several European agencies on criminal activities that involve multiple countries.”

“You’re not a field agent?”

“Interpol has no field agents.”

Miller’s knowledge of Interpol came to him in a flash. The organization—despite what Hollywood and novelists would have the world believe—didn’t hunt down criminals and solve cases. That’s not to say they weren’t important; coordinating police forces from multiple countries that might not always have the same agenda was no easy task. And thanks to their efforts, many international criminal organizations and terrorist plots had been uncovered. They were the good guys.

But, if President Bensson was right, even the good guys could be bad guys. Her being an Interpol liaison didn’t necessarily make her trustworthy.

“Back to the blood,” he said. “Whose is it?”

She glanced down at her blood-splattered arm, but didn’t linger. She turned back to him and said, “My boss’s.”

“Is he dead?”

“I don’t think so. I hit him with the gun.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I have something important.”

When Adler pronounced “something” as “somesing,” Miller tensed. He wasn’t sure if he could ever hear a German accent again without feeling threatened. Ignoring her accent as best he could, he listened to her story.

“Something about the iron.”

“The attacks.”

She nodded. “I took it to the local Interpol chief. After he saw it, he—” Her eyes shimmered with tears. “He tried to kill me.”

She brushed her hair away from her face and neck. There was a cut just below the hairline on her forehead, but it was the ring of bruising around her neck that held his attention. Someone had damn near squeezed the life out of her.

“I got his gun. Hit him in the head. Here,” she said, rubbing her temple.

“He fell on you?”

She pursed her lips. “I thought I would die beneath him.”

“But you didn’t. You got away. And… you came here.”

With a sniff, she said, “Yes.”

“Why?”

“The chief was on the phone when I entered his office, finishing a conversation and taking notes. Before he hung up, he said, ‘I’ll get word to the others. We’ll find him and take care of the problem.’” Adler pulled herself up and sat on the edge of the cushionless couch. “After I knocked him out, I looked at the note.” She reached into her pocket and took out a folded slip of paper. She handed it to him.

Miller opened the paper and saw just two handwritten words: Lincoln Miller.

“I had seen you on TV. After everything you’d been through, I knew they weren’t looking for you to congratulate you. I wanted to find you first. The hospital said you’d left, so I came here. I thought I could trust you.”

Miller shook his head. “You and everyone else.”

“What?”

“Never mind. How did you find me?”

“I have contacts with the FBI and D.C. police. It wasn’t hard.”

“Okay. But what were you looking for? Why did you toss my—” A warning Klaxon sounded loud in Miller’s gut. He stood and raised his gun toward the empty apartment. “You didn’t toss the apartment, did you?”

“No, why would—”

Miller held an open palm up. “Shh!”

Leading with the gun, Miller moved from the living room to the kitchen. The place wasn’t big, but there were a few nooks and crannies that would make great hiding places, one of which contained some weapons he thought might come in handy.

“What are you doing?” Adler whispered. She was a few steps behind him, clutching her purse to her chest. “There’s no one here. I checked.”

“Whoever did this was searching for something. I—”

“What where they searching for?”

That was the million-dollar question. To his knowledge, Miller had nothing to hide, and certainly nothing to find. So if they weren’t searching for something, what were they—

“Shit,” Miller said, turning his attention to the open apartment door.

“What?”

“It’s a distraction.”

“For what?”

The answer came a moment later. Glass shattered in the living room. Miller spun, expecting to see someone swinging through the window. What he saw was much smaller, and much more deadly. The grenade bounced off the couch and rolled into the center of the living room. It wasn’t a smoke or flashbang, either. This was the real deal—a frag grenade that would shred their bodies to pieces. Whoever had thrown it through the window had no intention of capturing them alive.

23

Miller turned to Adler and was surprised to see her moving fast in his direction. Her open hands struck him hard in the chest and shoved him into the open bathroom. Miller saw where they were headed, spun around, and ran. He dove into the tub as Adler leapt atop him. The impact of striking the tub hurt like hell, but when the grenade exploded, they survived without injury.

Ignoring the loud ringing in his ears, Miller jumped up and pulled Adler to her feet. “Good reflexes for a liaison,” he said.

She shrugged. “I played a lot of sports.”

Good, he thought, she’s not falling apart. Even soldiers sometimes check out when things start exploding. Adler was wide-eyed, but thinking clearly and still mobile. Knowing they most likely had just seconds, he yanked her out of the bathroom and into the hall. The living room lay in ruins. A three-foot-round hole had been blown through the floor into the apartment below.

Miller ran for the hole. There were two exits from his apartment—the main entrance and the fire escape. The metallic clang of footfalls on the fire escape were impossible to mistake. The shouts rising up the stairwell meant both exits were covered. That left them only one option.

“Into the hole,” he said.

To his surprise and relief, Adler didn’t question the order. She sat on the floor, dangled her legs into the hole, and scooted over the edge. He watched her land far more gracefully than he thought he would manage. When she stepped out of the way he noticed she was still holding on to her purse.

But there was no time to think about why the purse was so important. Red dots bounced on the hallway wall outside his apartment. The men coming up to greet him had weapons with laser sights. He took aim, waiting for the first man to show himself. Miller was outmanned and outgunned, but a single shot could stop an enemy cold. Precision often achieved the same level of shock and awe as brute strength.

When the first man’s black-masked head rose into view, Miller squeezed off a single shot. The man toppled forward and dropped from view, leaving a splash of red on the opposite wall.

“Shit!” shouted a voice from the hallway. “Tango is down! Viper Two, Viper Two, target is alive and armed. Proceed with caution.”

Miller’s gut twisted. Everything about the attack screamed U.S. military.

“Copy that,” came a voice from the back window of the kitchen.

As Miller spun toward the window and took aim, he heard the same voice shout, “Shit!” He squeezed off two more shots. He couldn’t see who was outside the window, he just didn’t want anyone to see his escape route. He knelt, fired another shot into the hallway, and then dropped through the floor.

Miller attempted to roll, but his body, already battered, resisted. With the wind knocked out of him, he fought to his feet.

“No one’s here,” Adler whispered, urging him on with her hands.

Something hard rattled across the floor of his apartment above them.

“Down!” Miller said, covering his ears as he curled into a ball.

The explosion was loud, but dulled by the floor above them. It was also far less violent than the first. A flashbang. But he knew what would come next. The assault team wouldn’t take chances, and they had no reason to hold their fire.

“Ready to run?” he asked Adler.

She stabbed a finger to the second-floor apartment’s exit. “Out there?”

“They think we’re still on the third floor.”

He sensed the argument would continue, but when the rapid-fire staccato of four assault rifles roared from above, she opened the door and dashed into the hallway. If they survived this, they would need to have a serious talk about tactics. He chased her out the door and was glad to see the stairwell leading up to his floor now empty. But that didn’t mean they’d left the front door unguarded.

He managed to grab Adler’s arm before she hit the last set of stairs and yanked her back. He held a finger to his lips. She instantly understood and moved so he could pass.

Leading with the Glock, he leapt into the stairwell and took aim at the man standing at the bottom of the stairs. But he held his fire.

Brodeur, gun in hand, saw him coming, and Miller’s gun pointed at his face. “Miller, what in all hell happened?” He saw Adler. “Who’s that?”

A red dot streaked across Miller’s arm and danced on his chest. He saw it and dove to the side, shouting, “Look out!”

Brodeur dove to the side, but crossed through the line of fire when he did. The red dot appeared on his back. A moment later, two holes appeared. Brodeur hit the floor without a sound, his body motionless. Miller bounced back into the open doorway, aiming for where he’d seen the two muzzle flashes across the street. He fired twice and saw the man drop.

Echoing footsteps pounded down the steps above them. The hit squad had either figured out the apartment was empty or heard the gunshots below. Either way, they were coming. The Glock 17 still held eleven rounds, but he had no idea how many men were coming down the stairs, how many were in the back, or if they’d lob another grenade. After quickly glancing at Brodeur and seeing two holes in the center of his back, Miller grabbed Adler and yanked her out of the apartment building.

“Where’s your car?” Miller asked as they ran down the hard granite stairs.

“This way!” She ran down the street while pulling her keys from her pocket. She pointed the keys out in front of her. A honk came from one of the cars parallel parked on his side of the street.

“You drive,” he shouted.

When Adler cut into the street in front of a tough-looking SUV, Miller felt a flash of hope. But she continued past it, opened the door to a pint-sized blue Mini Cooper, and threw her purse in the backseat.

“Europeans and your tiny cars,” Miller grumbled before climbing into the passenger’s seat. He didn’t know exactly what kind of weapons the men carried, but there wasn’t an assault rifle, or handgun for that matter, in the world that couldn’t tear this car to bits.

The small engine purred instead of roared, but Adler worked the car like a pro, throwing it into gear and peeling out and around the SUV. She hammered the gas and tore down the street—straight back past his apartment building. A line of parked cars and the occasional maple tree would help shield them, but when five members of the assault team emerged, dressed in all black and carrying M4 carbine assault rifles, Miller knew they’d need a little more help. With the butt of the Glock, Miller smashed the passenger’s window, took aim, and fired a volley of five rounds. The first struck a man’s leg, toppling him down the stairs. The rest of the men dove for cover while the Cooper shot away.

Miller sat back in the seat and looked at Adler. She was focused on the road, emotions held at bay for the moment, which was a gift not many people possessed. They’d both be a mess when the adrenaline wore off, but the woman had a dormant fighter at her core. “Turn right.”

She did.

“Know how to get to the highway from here?” The question triggered Miller’s memory. He’d asked Arwen the same question back in Miami. This time he got a nod. Miller watched Adler drive. She had the same blond hair, blue eyes, and determination as Arwen, though her face was more angular, more—

Adler noted his attention and glanced at him. “What?”

He cleared his throat and brushed the broken glass from his leg. “How much cash do you have on you?”

The question caught her off guard for a moment. “Uh, I— Nine hundred dollars.”

She saw the look of surprise on Miller’s face, and she added, “I thought if people at Interpol were a part of the attacks, then maybe other agencies were, too, and I could be tracked through my cards. I went to three ATMs.”

A fighter and smart, Miller thought. “Good thinking. When we reach Ninety-five, head north into Pennsylvania. We’ll get a room there.”

Miller leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes.

“What are you doing?” Adler asked, sounding incredulous. “Taking a nap?”

“I’m thinking.”

“About what?”

“About making a phone call.” Miller opened his eyes and removed the president’s iPhone from his pocket. A single number had been preprogrammed into the phone. He selected it and tapped the Call button.