The Passage

FORTY-TWO

They reached the foot of the mountain before half-day. The pathway, a switchback zigzagging down the eastern face of the mountain, was too steep for horses; in places it wasn’t a path at all. A hundred meters above the station a portion of the mountain seemed to have been carved away; a pile of rubble lay below. They were above a narrow box canyon, the station obscured to the north by a wall of rock. A hot, dry wind was blowing. They climbed back up, searching for another route as the minutes ticked away. At last they found a way down-they had drifted off the path-and made their final, creeping descent.

They approached the station from the rear. Inside its fenced compound they detected no sign of movement. “You hear that?” Alicia said.

Peter stopped to listen. “I don’t hear anything.”

“That’s because the fence is off.”

The gate stood open. That was when they saw a dark hump on the ground, beneath the awning of the livery. As they moved closer the hump seemed to atomize, breaking apart into a swirling cloud.

A jenny. The cloud of flies scattered as they approached. The ground around her was darkened with a stain of blood.

Sara knelt beside the body. The jenny was lying on her side, exposing the swollen curve of her belly, bloated with putrefying gas. A long gash, alive with squirming maggots, followed the line of her throat.

“She’s been dead a couple of days, I’d say.” Sara’s bruised face was wrinkled against the smell. Her lower lip was split; her teeth were outlined with crusted blood. One eye, her left, was swollen with a huge, purple shiner. “It looks like someone used a blade.”

Peter turned to Caleb. His eyes were open very wide, locked on the animal’s neck. He’d pulled the neck of his jersey over the lower half of his face, a makeshift mask against the stench.

“Like Zander’s jenny? The one in the field?”

Caleb nodded.

“Peter-” Alicia was gesturing toward the fence. A second dark shape on the ground.

“Another jenny?”

“I don’t think so.”

It was Rey Ramirez. There wasn’t much left, just bones and charred flesh, which still exuded a faint smell of grilled meat. He was kneeling against the fence, his stiffened fingers locked in the open spaces between the wires. The exposed bones of his face made him appear to be smiling.

“That explains the fence,” Michael said after a moment. He looked like he might be ill. “He must have shorted it out, holding on like that.”

The hatch was open: they descended into the station, moving through its darkened spaces, room by room. Nothing seemed disturbed. The panel still glowed with current, flowing up the mountain. Finn was nowhere to be seen. Alicia led them to the back; the shelf that hid the escape hatch was still in place. It was only when she opened the door and he saw the guns, still in their boxes, that Peter realized he’d feared they’d be gone. Alicia pulled a crate free and opened it.

Michael gave an admiring whistle. “You weren’t kidding. They’re like brand-new.”

“There’s more where this came from.” Alicia glanced up at Peter. “Think you can find the bunker on those maps?”

They were interrupted by footsteps banging down the stairs: Caleb.

“Someone’s coming.”

“How many?”

“Looks like just one.”

Alicia quickly doled out weapons; they ascended into the yard. Peter could see a single rider in the distance, pulling a boiling plume of dust. Caleb passed the binoculars to Alicia.

“I’ll be damned,” she said.

Moments later, Hollis Wilson rode through the gate and dismounted. His arms and face were caked with dust. “We better hurry.” He paused to take a long drink from his canteen. “There’s a party of at least six behind me. If we want to make it to the bunker, we should leave right now.”

“How do you know where we’re going?” Peter asked.

Hollis wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. “You forget. I rode with your father, Peter.”

The group had gathered in the control room; they were loading gear as fast as they could, whatever they hoped to carry. Food, water, weapons. Peter had spread the maps over the central table for Hollis to examine. He found the one he wanted: Los Angeles Basin and Southern California.

“According to Theo, the bunker was a two-day ride,” Peter said.

Hollis frowned, his brow furrowed as he studied the map. Peter noticed for the first time that he’d begun to let his beard come in. For a second, it felt to him as if it were Arlo standing there.

“I remember it as more like three, but we were pulling the carts. On foot, I’d say we could do it in two.” He bent over the map, pointing. “We’re here, at the San Gorgonio Pass. The time I rode with your father, we followed this road, Route 62, north from the Eastern Road, Interstate 10. It’s quaked out in spots but on foot that should be no problem. We overnighted here”-again he pointed-“in the town of Joshua Valley. About twenty kilometers, but it could be as much as twenty-five. Demo fortified an old fire station and laid in supplies there. It’s tight, and there’s a working pump, so we can take water if we need it, which we will. From Joshua it’s another thirty clicks east on the Twentynine Palms Highway, another ten due north across open country to the bunker. A hell of a walk, but you could do it in another day.”

“If the bunker’s underground, how do we find it?”

“I can find it, all right. And believe me, you’ve got to see this place. Your old man called it the war chest. There’s vehicles, too, and fuel. We never could figure out how to get one running, but maybe Caleb and the Circuit can.”

“What about the smokes?”

“We never saw much of any through this stretch. Doesn’t mean they aren’t there. But it’s high desert, which they don’t like. Too hot, not enough cover, no real game that we ever saw. Demo called it the golden zone.”

“And farther east?”

Hollis shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. The bunker’s as far as I ever went. If you’re serious about Colorado, I’d say our best bet is to stay off I-40 and work our way north to Interstate 15. There’s a second supply cache in Kelso, an old railroad depot. It’s rough terrain through there, but I know your old man got at least that far.”

Alicia would ride point; the rest of the group would follow on foot. Caleb was still signaling the all clear from the roof of the station as they loaded up their gear in the shade of the livery. The jenny was gone; Hollis and Michael had dragged it to the fence.

“They should be in sight by now,” Hollis said. “I didn’t think they were more than a few clicks behind me.”

Peter turned his eyes to Alicia. Should they go look? But she shook her head.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, with an air of finality. “They’re on their own now. Same as us.”

Caleb descended the ladder at the rear of the station and joined them in the shade. They were a group of eight now. Peter was suddenly aware how depleted they all were. None of them had slept at all. Amy was standing close to Sara, wearing a pack like the others. She was squinting with a kind of fierce bravery in the sunlight, beneath an old visored cap somebody had found in the supply room. Whatever else was true about her, she wasn’t used to the brightness. But there wasn’t anything he could do about that now.

Peter stepped away from the awning. He counted out the hands; seven hours until darkness fell. Seven hours to cover twenty-five kilometers, on foot, across the open valley. Once they started, there would be no turning back. Alicia, her rifle slung from her shoulder, swung up onto Hollis’s horse, a huge, sandy-colored mare built like a house. Caleb passed her the binoculars.

“Everybody ready?”

“You know,” Michael said, “technically, it’s not too late to surrender.” He was standing next to his sister, awkwardly holding a rifle across his chest. He looked at their silent faces. “Hey, it was just a joke.”

“Actually, I think Circuit has a point,” Alicia declared from atop her mount. “There’s no shame in staying. Anybody who wants to should speak up now.”

No one did.

“All right then,” Alicia said. “All eyes.”

He wasn’t cut out for this, Galen decided. He just wasn’t. The whole thing had been a huge mistake from the beginning.

The heat was killing him, the sun like a white explosion in his eyes. His ass was so sore from riding he wouldn’t walk for a week. He had a screaming headache, too, where Alicia had clobbered him with the cross. And nobody in the party was listening to him. Nobody was doing a goddamn thing he said. Hey, guys, maybe we should close it up a little. We might want to slow down. What’s the goddamn hurry?

“Kill them,” Gloria Patal had said. This little mouse of a woman, scared of her own shadow as far as Galen could tell, but from the looks of things, there were whole sides of Gloria Patal that he had never seen before. Standing at the gate, the woman was seething with rage. “Bring my daughter back here, but kill the rest of them. I want them dead.”

The girl had done it, that’s what everyone was saying, the girl and Alicia and Caleb and Peter and Michael and… Jacob Curtis. Jacob Curtis! How could that half-wit Jacob Curtis be responsible for anything? It made no sense to Galen, but nothing about the situation did; sense was no longer the point as far as he could tell. Not at the gate where everyone had gathered, all of them shouting and waving their arms; it was as if half the Colony wanted to kill someone, anyone, that morning. If Sanjay had been there, he might have been able to talk a little sense into people, get them to calm down and think. But he wasn’t. He was in the Infirmary, Ian said, babbling and weeping like a baby.

That was about the time that the crowd had gone to get Mar Curtis and dragged her to the gate. She wasn’t the person they really wanted, but there was nothing to be done about it. The crowd was going wild. A pitiful scene, the poor woman who’d never had a bit of luck in her life, who didn’t have an ounce of strength to resist, hustled up the ladder by a hundred hands and thrown over the Wall as everyone broke into cheers. It might have ended there, but the crowd was just getting started, Galen could feel it, the first one had simply given them a taste for more, and Hodd Greenberg was yelling, “Elton! Elton was with them in the Lighthouse!” And the next thing Galen or any of them knew, the crowd was rushing to the Lighthouse and under a storm of cheers they hustled the old guy, the blind old guy, to the Wall. And they threw him over, too.

Galen, for his part, was keeping his mouth shut. How long before somebody said, Hey, Galen, where’s your wife? What about Mausami? Was she part of this too? Let’s throw Galen over next!

Finally Ian had given the order. Galen didn’t see the sense in going after them, but he was the only Second Captain now, since all the other Seconds were dead, and he could tell Ian wanted to maintain at least the illusion that the Watch was still in charge. Something had to be done or the crowd would be throwing everyone over the Wall. This was when Ian had taken him aside and told him about the guns. Twelve crates of them, behind a wall in the storage room. Personally, I don’t care one way or the other about the Walker, Ian said. Your wife is up to you. Just bring me those fucking guns.

They were a party of five: Galen in command, Emily Darrell and Dale Levine in the second slot, with Hodd Greenberg and Cort Ramirez bringing up the rear. His first command outside the Wall, and what did he have? That idiot Dale and a sixteen-year-old runner and two men who weren’t even Watch.

A fool’s errand, that’s what this was. He released a heavy sigh-loud enough for the runner Emily Darrell, riding beside him, to ask him what was wrong. She had been the first to volunteer for the ride, the only one from the Watch besides Dale. A girl with something to prove. He told her, Nothing, and let it go at that.

They were almost through Banning now. He was glad he couldn’t make out much in the way of detail, but the glimpses he got as they rode through town-you couldn’t not look-creeped him to the bone. A bunch of caved-in buildings and dried-out slims roasting in their cars like strips of mutton, never mind the smokes, who were probably skulking around somewhere. One shot. They come from above. The Watch drilled those words into your head from the time you were eight years old, never once letting you in on the big secret, what nonsense it all was. If a smoke dropped down on Galen Strauss, he wouldn’t stand a chance. He wondered how much it would hurt. Probably a lot.

The truth was, the way things were, the whole Mausami thing finally felt over. He wondered why he hadn’t seen that before. Well, maybe he had and just hadn’t been able to bring himself to accept it. He didn’t even feel angry. Sure, he had loved her. Probably he still did. There would always be a place in his mind where Mausami was, and the baby, too. The baby wasn’t his, but still he found himself wishing it were. A baby could make you feel better about just about anything, even going blind. He wondered if Maus and the baby were okay. If he found them, he hoped that he’d be man enough to say that. I hope that you’re okay.

They approached the ramp to the Eastern Road, riding in two lines. Flyers, his fucking head was pounding. Maybe it was just the knock Alicia had given him, but he didn’t think so. His whole vision seemed to be collapsing. Funny motes of light had begun to dance in his eyes. He felt a little sick.

He was so wrapped up in his thoughts he didn’t realize where he was, that he’d reached the top of the ramp. He paused to take a drink. The turbines were out there, somewhere, spinning in the wind that was pushing into his face. All he wanted was to get to the station and lie down in the dark and close his eyes. The dancing specks were worse now, descending through his narrowed field of sight like a glowing snowfall. Something was really wrong. He didn’t see how he would be able to continue; someone else would have to take the point. He turned to Dale, who had moved up behind him, saying, “Listen, do you think-”

The space beside him was empty.

He swiveled in his saddle. No one was behind him. Not one rider. Like a giant hand had plucked them, mounts and all, right off the face of the earth.

A wave of bile rose in his throat. “Guys?”

That was when he heard the sound, coming from beneath the overpass. A soft, wet ripping, like sheets of damp paper being torn in half, or the skin being pried off an orange fat with juice.

FORTY-THREE

They made Joshua Valley with just minutes to spare; by the time they reached the fire station, the light was nearly gone. The station was located on the western edge of town, a squat, square structure with a concrete roof and a pair of arched doors facing the street, sealed with cement blocks. Hollis led them to the rear, where the water tank sat in a thicket of tall weeds. The water that poured from the pump was warm and tasted of rust and earth. They all drank greedily, dumping great cascades over their heads. Never had water tasted so good, Peter thought.

They gathered in the shade of the building while Hollis and Caleb pried loose the boards that covered the back entrance of the station. With a shove the door spilled open on its rusted hinges, exhaling a wash of trapped air as dense and warm as human breath. Hollis took up his rifle again.

“Wait here.”

Peter listened to Hollis’s echoing footsteps moving through the dark space within. He was strangely unconcerned; they had come this far, it seemed impossible that the fire station would refuse them shelter for the night. Then Hollis returned.

“All clear,” he said. “It’s hot, but it’ll do.”

They followed him into a large, high-ceilinged room. The windows were sealed by more concrete blocks, with narrow slits at the top for ventilation, through which issued a yellow-tinted glow of fading daylight. The air smelled of dust and animals. A miscellaneous assemblage of tools and building supplies was pushed against the walls: sacks of concrete, plastic troughs and hoes encrusted with cement, a wheelbarrow, coils of rope and chain. The bays where the engines had once been were empty. Now the area served as a makeshift stable, with half a dozen stalls and tack hung on the boards. Along the far wall, a flight of wooden stairs ascended into nothing-the second floor was gone.

“Cots in the back,” Hollis explained. He had knelt to fill a lantern from a plastic jug. Peter saw the liquid’s pale golden color and recognized the smell. Not alcohol: petroleum. “All the comforts of home. There’s a kitchen and bath, too, though there’s no running water and the chimney’s sealed.”

Alicia was leading the horse inside. “What about this door?” she asked.

Hollis lit the lantern with a match, paused to adjust the wick, and passed it to Mausami, who was standing beside him. “Hightop, give me a hand.”

Hollis retrieved a pair of wrenches and passed one to Caleb. Hanging from the joists over the front entrance, suspended by a pair of blocked chains, was a barricade of thick metal plates, framed by heavy timbers. They lowered it into position and bolted it to receivers set in the jamb, sealing themselves inside.

“Now what?” Peter asked.

The big man shrugged. “Now we wait till morning. I’ll take first watch. You and the others should sleep.”

In the back room were the cots Hollis had spoken of, a dozen mattresses on sagging springs. A second door led to the kitchen and bathroom, with a row of rust-stained sinks below a cracked mirror and four toilet stalls. All of the windows were sealed. One of the toilets had been pulled out and now sat, its bowl tipped forward like the face of a drunken man, in the far corner of the room. In its place was a plastic bucket and, on the floor beside it, a pile of old magazines. Peter picked up the top one: Newsweek. On the cover was a blurry photo of a viral. There was something oddly flattened about the image, as if it had been taken from a great distance and very close at the same time. The creature was standing in some sort of alcove, in front of a device with the letters ATM written at the top. Peter didn’t know what this was, though he’d seen one like it in the mall. On the ground behind the viral lay a single, empty shoe. The two-word caption said, BELIEVE IT.

He returned with Alicia to the garage. “Where are the rest of the supplies?” he asked Hollis.

Hollis showed him where the floorboards lifted up, revealing a recess about a meter deep, its contents covered by a heavy plastic tarp. Peter dropped down and pulled the tarp free. More jugs of fuel and water and, packed tightly together, rows of crates like the ones they’d found under the stairs at the power station.

“These ten here are more rifles,” Hollis said, pointing. “Pistols over there. We only moved the smaller weapons, and no explosives. Demo didn’t know if maybe they’d just blow up on their own and wreck the place, so we left them in the bunker.”

Alicia had opened one of the crates, removing a black pistol. She pulled the slide, sighted down the barrel, and squeezed the trigger; they heard the sharp click of the hammer falling on an empty chamber. “What kind of explosives?”

“Grenades, mostly.” Hollis tapped one of the crates with the toe of his boot. “But the real surprise is this one here. Give me a hand.”

The others had gathered around the hole. Hollis and Alicia stood on either side of the locker and hoisted it to the floor of the garage. Hollis knelt and opened it. Peter had expected more weaponry, so he was surprised to see a collection of small gray pouches. Hollis handed one to Peter. It weighed barely a kilo; on one side was a white label, covered with tiny black writing. At the top were the letters MRE.

“It stands for Meal, Ready to Eat,” Hollis explained. “Army food. There are thousands of them in the bunker. You’ve got… let’s see,” he said, and took the pouch Peter was holding, squinting at the tiny print. “‘Soyloaf with gravy.’ I’ve never had that one.”

Alicia was holding one of the pouches, frowning at it skeptically. “Hollis, these things have been ‘ready’ for about ninety years. They can’t still be good.”

The big man shrugged and began passing the pouches around. “A lot aren’t. But if it’s still airtight, you can eat it. Believe me, you’ll know when you pull the tab. Most are pretty good, but look out for the beef Stroganoff. Demo called it ‘Meal Refusing to Exit.’”

They were reluctant but, in the end, too hungry to refuse. Peter had two: the soyloaf and a sweet, gluey pudding called “mango cobbler.” Amy sat on the edge of one of the cots to nibble suspiciously on a handful of yellow crackers and a wedge of what appeared to be cheese. From time to time she lifted her eyes warily; then she returned to her furtive eating. The mango cobbler was so sugary it made Peter’s head buzz, but when he lay down he felt his fatigue uncoiling in his chest and knew that sleep would grab him fast. His last thought was of Amy, nibbling on the crackers, her eyes darting over the room. As if she were waiting for something to happen. But this idea was like a rope in his hands he could not hold, and soon his hands were empty; the thought was gone.

Then Hollis’s face was floating above him in the dark. He blinked the fog of his disorientation away. The room was stifling; his shirt and hair were soaked with sweat. Before Peter could speak, Hollis silenced him with a finger held to his lips.

“Get your rifle and come on.”

Hollis, carrying the lantern, led him to the garage. Sara was standing against the wall of concrete blocks where the bay doors had once been. A small observation port had been built into one of the doors-a metal plate that pulled aside in a track, bolted into the concrete.

Sara stepped away. “Take a look,” she whispered.

Peter pressed his eyes to the opening. He could smell the wind in his nostrils, the cooling desert night. The window faced the town’s main street, Route 62. Across from the fire station stood a block of buildings, ruined hulks, and behind them a softly undulating line of hills, all of it bathed in a bluish moonlight.

Crouched in the roadway was a single viral.

Peter had never seen one so motionless, at least not at night. It was facing the building, resting on its chiseled haunches, gazing at the building. While Peter watched, two more appeared out of the darkness, moving along the road and stopping to take up the same, vigilant posture, facing the firehouse. A pod of three.

“What’re they doing?” Peter whispered.

“Just standing there,” Hollis said. “They move around a bit but never come any closer.”

Peter pulled his face from the window. “You think they know we’re in here?”

“It’s tight but not that tight. They can smell the horse for sure.”

“Sara, go wake up Alicia,” Peter said. “Keep quiet-it’s best if everyone else stays asleep.”

Peter returned his face to the window. After a moment he asked, “How many did you say there were?”

“Three,” Hollis answered

“Well, there’s six now.”

Peter stood aside for Hollis to look.

“This is… bad,” Hollis said.

“What are the weak spots?” Alicia was beside them now. She freed the safety on her rifle and, making an effort to keep quiet, pulled the bolt. Then they heard it: a thump from above.

“They’re on the roof.”

Michael stumbled from the back room. He looked them over, frowning, his eyes blurry with sleep. “What’s going on?” he said, too loudly. Alicia touched a finger to her lips, then pointed urgently to the ceiling.

More sounds of impact came from overhead. In his gut Peter felt it, a soft bomb exploding. The virals were searching for a way in.

Something was scratching at the door.

A thump of flesh on metal, of bone on steel. It was as if the virals were testing it, Peter thought. Gauging its strength before they made a final push. He tightened the stock against his shoulder, ready to fire, just as Amy stepped into his line of vision. Later he would wonder if she’d been in the room all along, hiding in a corner, silently observing. She stepped to the barricade.

“Amy, get back-”

She knelt before the door, placing her palms against it. Her head was bowed, her brow touching the metal. Another thump from the far side, though softer this time, searching. Amy’s shoulders were trembling.

“What’s she doing?”

It was Sara who answered. “I think she’s… crying.”

No one moved. There were no more sounds coming from the far side of the door now. Finally Amy shifted off her knees and stood, facing them all. Her eyes were distant, unfocused; she seemed not to be seeing any of them.

Peter held up a hand. “Don’t wake her.”

While they watched in silence, Amy turned and walked, with the same otherworldly air, to the door to the bedroom, just as Mausami, the last sleeper, emerged. Amy pushed past her without appearing to notice her. The next thing they heard was the squeak of rusted springs as she lay down on her cot.

“What’s going on?” Mausami said. “Why is everybody looking at me like that?”

Peter went to check the window. He pressed his face against the slot. It was as he expected. Nothing was moving outside; the moonlit field was empty.

“I think they’re gone.”

Alicia frowned. “Why would they just leave like that?”

He felt strangely calm; the crisis, he knew, had passed. “Look for yourself.”

Alicia slung her rifle and pressed her eyes to the window, her neck straining as she tried to widen her field of vision through the opening.

“He’s right,” she reported. “There’s nothing out there.” She drew her face away and turned toward Peter, her eyes narrowed. “Like… pets?”

He shook his head, searching for the right word. “Like friends, I think.”

“Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?” Mausami said.

“I wish I knew,” said Peter.

They raised the barricade just after daybreak. All around they saw the creatures’ tracks in the dust. None of them had slept much, but even so, Peter felt a new energy coursing through him. He wondered what this was, and then he knew. They had survived their first night out in the Darklands.

The map spread out on a boulder, Hollis went over their route.

“After Twentynine Palms, it’s open desert through here, no real roads. The trick to finding the bunker is this range of mountains to the east. There are two distinct peaks at the south end, and a third behind them. When the third stands right in the middle of the two, turn due east, and you’re going the right way.”

“What if we don’t make it before dark?” he asked.

“We could hole up in Twentynine if we had to. There are a few structures still standing. But as I remember it they’re just hulks, nothing like the fire station.”

Peter glanced toward Amy, who was standing with the others. She was still wearing the brimmed cap from the supply room; Sara had also given her a man’s long-sleeved shirt to wear, frayed at the sleeves and collar, and a pair of desert glasses they’d found in the firehouse. Her black hair was pushed away from her face, a nimbus of dark tangles flapping under the brim of the cap.

“Do you really think she did it?” Hollis said. “Sent them away.”

Peter turned back toward his friend. He thought of the magazine in the bathroom, the two stark words on its cover.

“Truthfully, Hollis? I don’t know.”

“Well, we better hope she did. After Kelso, it’s open country clear to the Nevada line.” He drew his blade and wiped it on the hem of his jersey. When he resumed speaking his voice was quiet, confidential. “Before I left, you know, I heard people talking, saying things about her. The Girl from Nowhere, the last Walker. People were saying she was a sign.”

“Of what?”

Hollis frowned. “The end, Peter. The end of the Colony, the end of the war. The human race, or what’s left of it. I’m not saying they were right. It was probably just more of Sam and Milo’s bullshit.”

Sara stepped toward them. The swelling on her face had eased overnight; the worst of the bruising had faded to a greenish purple.

“We should let Maus ride,” she said.

“Is she okay?” Peter asked.

“A little dehydrated. In her condition, she has to keep her fluids up. I don’t think she should be walking in the heat. I’m worried about Amy, too.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

She shrugged. “The sun. I don’t think she’s used to it. She’s got a bad burn already. The glasses and shirt will help, but she can stay covered only so long in this heat.” She cocked her head and looked at Hollis. “So what’s this Michael tells me about a vehicle?”

They marched.

The mountains fell away behind them; by half-day, they were deep in open desert. The roadway was little more than suggestion, but they could still follow its course, tracing the bulge it made in the hardpan, through a landscape of scattered boulders and strange, stunted trees, beneath a boiling sun and a limitless sky bleached of all color. The breeze hadn’t so much died as collapsed; the air was so motionless it seemed to hum, the heat vibrating around them like an insect’s wings. Everything in the landscape looked both close and far away, the sense of perspective distorted by the immeasurable horizon. How easy it would be, Peter thought, to get turned around in such a place, to wander aimlessly until darkness fell. Past the town of Mojave Junction-no town at all, just a few empty foundations and a name on the map-they crested a small rise to discover a long line of abandoned vehicles, two abreast, facing the direction they had come. Most were passenger cars but there were some trucks as well, their rusted, sand-scoured chassis sunk in the drifting sand. It felt as if they’d stumbled on an open grave, a grave of machines. Many of the roofs had been peeled away, the doors torn off their hinges. The interiors looked melted; if there had once been bodies inside, they were long gone, scattered to the desert winds. Here and there in the undifferentiated debris, Peter detected a recognizable item of human scale: a pair of eyeglasses, an open suitcase, a child’s plastic doll. They passed in silence, not daring to speak. Peter counted over a thousand vehicles before they ended in a final plume of wreckage, the indifferent desert sands resuming.

It was midafternoon when Hollis announced that it was time to leave the road and turn north. Peter had begun to doubt that they would ever make it to the bunker. The heat was simply overwhelming. A blazing wind was blowing from the east, pushing dust into their faces and eyes. Since the line of cars, no one had said much of anything. Michael seemed the worst off; he’d begun, discernibly, to limp. When Peter questioned him, Michael removed his boot without comment to show him a fat, blood-filled blister on his heel.

They paused to rest in the sparse shadow of a yucca grove. “How much farther?” Michael asked. He’d taken off his boot for Sara to attend to his blister; he winced as she pierced it with a small scalpel from the med kit she had found at the station. From the incision came forth a single bead of blood.

“From here, about fifteen kilometers,” Hollis said. He was standing away from them, at the edge of the shade. “See that line of mountains? That’s what we’re looking for.”

Caleb and Mausami had fallen asleep, their heads propped on their packs. Sara wrapped Michael’s foot in a bandage; he wedged it back into his boot, grimacing with pain. Only Amy seemed little worse for the wear. She was sitting apart from the others, her skinny legs folded under her, watching them warily from behind her dark glasses.

Peter went to where Hollis was standing. “Will we make it?” he asked quietly.

“It’ll be close.”

“Let’s give everyone half a hand.”

“I wouldn’t go longer.”

Peter’s first canteen was empty. He allowed himself a sip from his second, vowing to hold the rest in reserve. He lay down with the others in the shade. It was as if he’d only just closed his eyes when he heard his name and opened them again to find Alicia standing over him.

“You said half a hand.”

He rose on his elbows. “Right. Time to go.”

Another hand had passed before they saw the sign, rising out of the wavering heat. First a long line of fencing, tall chain-link with coils of barbed wire at the top, and then, a hundred meters inside the open gate, the small sentry house and the sign standing beside it.

YOU ARE ENTERING THE TWENTYNINE PALMS

MARINE CORPS AIR GROUND COMBAT CENTER.

DANGER. UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE.

DO NOT LEAVE THE ROAD.

“Unexploded ordnance.” Michael’s face was compacted in a fierce squint. “What does that mean?”

“It means watch your step, Circuit.” Alicia directed her voice to everyone. “It could be bombs, or maybe mines. Single file, try to step in the footprints of the person in front of you.”

“What’s that?” Mausami was pointing with one hand, the other held over her brow against the glare. “Are they buildings?”

They were buses: thirty-two of them parked in two closely spaced lines, their yellow paint almost entirely rubbed away. Peter stepped toward the closest bus, at the rear of the line. The breeze had died; the only sound came from their footsteps on the hardpan. Below windows covered in heavy-gauge wire were the words DESERT CENTER UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT. He clambered up the dune of sand that was pushed against it and peered inside. More sand had blown through, subsuming the benches in wavelike drifts. Birds had roosted in the ceiling, staining the walls with the white paint of their droppings.

“Hey! Look at this!” Caleb called.

They followed his voice around to the far side. Tipped onto its side was the shell of some kind of small aircraft.

“It’s a helicopter,” said Michael.

Caleb was standing on top of the fuselage. Before Peter could speak, Caleb had pulled the door open, like a hatch, and dropped down inside it.

“Hightop,” Alicia called, “be careful!”

“It’s okay! It’s empty!” They heard him rummaging around the interior; a moment later, his head popped through the hatch. “Nothing here, just a couple of slims.” He chinned himself up. He slid down the fuselage and showed them what he’d found. “They were wearing these.”

A pair of necklaces, tarnished from exposure. To each was attached a silver disk. Peter used some of his water to rinse the tags clean.

Sullivan, Joseph D. O+ 098879254 USMC Rom. Cath. Gomez, Manuel R. AB- 859720152 USMC No pref.

“USMC-that’s Marine Corps,” Hollis said. “You should put these back where you found them, Caleb.”

Caleb snatched the necklaces from Peter’s hand, clutching them protectively against his chest. “No way. I’m keeping these. I found them, fair and square.”

“Hightop, they were soldiers.”

Caleb’s voice was suddenly shrill. “So what? They never came back, did they? The soldiers were supposed to come back for us, and they never did.”

For a moment, no one spoke. “That’s what this place is, isn’t it?” Sara said. “Auntie used to tell stories about it. How the First Ones came from the cities, to ride the buses up the mountain.”

Peter had heard these stories, too. He’d always thought of them as just that, stories. But Sara was right; that’s what this place was. More than the buses themselves, or the fallen helicopter with its dead soldiers inside, the stillness told him so. It was more than the simple absence of sound; it was the silence of something stopped.

A feeling jarred him then, a prickling alertness. Something was wrong.

“Where’s Amy?”

They fanned out through the lines of buses, calling her name. By the time Michael found her, Peter was completely frantic. He had never considered that she might wander off like this.

Michael was standing beside one of the sunken buses, peering through an open window.

“What’s she doing?” Sara said.

“I think she’s just sitting there,” said Michael.

Peter clambered up and pulled himself inside. The wind had pushed the sand to the rear of the vehicle; the first few lines of benches were exposed. Amy was sitting on the bench directly behind the driver’s seat, holding her pack on her lap. She had removed her glasses and hat.

“Amy, it’ll be dark soon. We have to go.”

But the girl made no move to leave. She appeared to be waiting for something. She glanced around, her eyes pulled into a squint, as if noticing for the first time that the bus was empty, a ruin. Then she rose, drawing her pack onto her shoulders, and climbed out through the window.

The bunker was just where Hollis had promised.

He led them to a spot where the third mountain stood between the other two, turned east again, and in half a click he stopped. “This is it,” he announced.

They were facing a wall of rock. Behind them, the setting sun cut a final sliver of light across the horizon.

“I don’t see anything,” Alicia said.

“You’re not supposed to.”

Hollis slung his rifle and began to scramble up the wall. Peter watched him with a hand over his eyes against the reflected glare. Ten meters up he disappeared.

“Where did he go?” Michael said.

The face of the mountain began to move. A pair of doors, Peter realized, made to blend with the surface as camouflage: they backed into the face of the hillside, revealing a dark cavern and the figure of Hollis standing before them.

It took Peter a moment to absorb the full dimensions of what he was seeing: a vast vault, carved from the mountain itself. Rows of shelving extended into its dark recesses, stacked with pallets of crates that reached high above their heads. A forklift was parked near the entrance, where Hollis had opened a metal panel in the wall. As the group moved inside, he flipped a switch and the room suddenly thrummed with light, issuing from a network of glowing ropes on the walls and ceiling. Peter heard the airy hum of mechanical ventilation coming on.

“Hollis, these are fiber optics,” Michael said, his voice lit with amazement. “What’s the power source?”

Hollis flipped a second switch. A yellow warning beacon sprang to life, swiveling with a mad urgency over the doors. With a clunk of gears engaging, the doors began to slide from their pockets, dragging blades of shadow across the floor.

“You can’t see them the way we came,” Hollis explained, lifting his voice over the racket, “but there’s a solar array on the south face of the mountain. That’s how Demo found the place.”

A hard bang as the doors closed, the echo ricocheting deep within. They were sealed away now, in safety.

“The stack won’t hold much of a charge anymore, but you can run straight off the panels for a few hours. There are some portable generators too. There’s a fuel depot just a short walk north of here. Gas, diesel, kerosene. If you bleed it off right it’s still usable. There’s more than we could ever use.”

Peter advanced into the room. Whoever had constructed this place, he thought, they had built it to last. The room reminded him of the library, only the books were crates, and the crates contained not words but weapons. The leftovers of the last, lost war, boxed and stored for the war to come.

He moved to the nearest shelf, where Alicia was standing with Amy. Since the incident at the buses, the girl had stayed close, never venturing more than a few meters away. Alicia had pulled the base of her sleeve over her wrist to wipe away a layer of dust from the side of one of the crates.

“What’s an RPG?” Peter asked.

“I have no idea,” Alicia said. She turned, smiling, to look at him. “But I think I want one.”

FORTY-FOUR

From the Journal of Sara Fisher (“The Book of Sara”)

Presented at the Third Global Conference on the North American Quarantine Period

Center for the Study of Human Cultures and Conflicts

University of New South Wales, Indo-Australian Republic

April 16-21, 1003 A.V.

[Excerpt begins.]

Day 4

So I guess I’ll just begin. Hello. My name is Sara Fisher, First Family. I am writing to you from an army bunker somewhere north of the town of Twentynine Palms, California. I am one of eight souls traveling from the San Jacinto Mountains to the town of Telluride, Colorado. It’s strange to say these things to a person I don’t even know, who may not even be alive when I’m writing this. But Peter says someone should keep a record of what happens to us. Maybe someday, he said, someone will want to know.

We have been at the bunker two days. All things considered it’s pretty comfortable, with electricity and plumbing and even a shower that works if you don’t mind cold water (I don’t). Not counting the barracks, the bunker has three main chambers: one that seems to contain mostly weapons (“the storeroom”), another with vehicles (“the garage”), and a third, smaller room with food and clothing and medical supplies (we don’t have a name for it yet, we just call it the third room). This was where I found the notebooks and the pencils. Hollis says there’s enough stuff here to outfit a small army, and I don’t doubt it.

Michael and Caleb are going to try to fix one of the Humvees, which is a kind of car. Peter thinks two of them should be able to carry the eight of us with supplies and enough extra fuel, though Michael says he doesn’t know if he can salvage more than one from the parts we have. Alicia is helping them, though from the looks of it she doesn’t do much more than hand them the tools they ask for. It’s nice to see her not bossing everyone around for a change.

All of this belonged to the Army, who are all dead now. I think I should say that. Also that the reason we are here is the girl, named Amy, who is a hundred years old, according to Michael. Though if you met her you might not know this. You’d think she was just a girl. There was something in her neck, a kind of radio, which told us she comes from Colorado, in a place called the CQZ. This is a long story, and I’m not quite sure how to tell it. She can’t talk, but we think there may be more people out there like her, because Michael heard them on the radio. And that is why we are going to Colorado.

Everybody here has a job to do, and mine is to help Hollis and Peter figure out what’s in the crates on the shelves. Peter says that as long as we’re waiting on the Humvee we might as well make use of the time, in case we need to come back here someday. Plus, we might find things we can use now, such as the walkie-talkies. Michael thinks he can make a couple of them work if there are any batteries that will still take a charge. Off the storeroom there’s a kind of alcove we call the office, full of desks and computers that don’t work anymore and shelves stacked with binders and manuals, and that was where we found the inventory lists, pages and pages of them, with everything from rifles and mortars to pairs of pants and bars of soap. (I hope we find the soap soon.) Each item is followed by a bunch of numbers and letters, which match the numbers and letters on the shelves, though not always. Sometimes you open a crate and think it will be blankets or batteries and what you’ve got is shovels or more guns. Amy is helping us, and though she still hasn’t said anything, today I realized she could read the lists as well as anyone. I don’t know why this surprised me, but it did.

Day 6

Michael and Caleb are still working on the Humvees. Michael says there’s two he can probably fix, but he’s still not sure. He says the problem is anything rubber-a lot of it is cracked and falling apart. But I have never seen Michael so happy, and everyone thinks he will figure it out.

Yesterday I took inventory of the medical supplies. A lot of it is no good, but there are some things I think I can use, real bandages and splints and even a blood pressure cuff. I took Maus’s pressure and it was 120/80 and I told her to remind me to take it every day and be sure to drink a lot of water. She said she would, but it makes her have to pee about every five minutes.

This morning Hollis took all of us out to the desert to show us how to shoot and throw a grenade. There’s so much ammo he said it was okay to use and everyone ought to know. So for a while we all shot off rifles at piles of rocks and threw grenades into the sand, and now my ears are ringing with the sound of it. Hollis thinks the area south of us is full of mines and says no one should go there. I think he was speaking mostly to Alicia because she’s been taking the horse to hunt in the early mornings before it gets too hot, though so far she hasn’t got anything except a couple of jacks, which we cooked last night. Peter found a deck of cards in the barracks and after dinner we all played go-to, even Amy, who won more hands than anyone, even though no one explained the rules to her. I guess she figured out just by watching.

Real leather boots! We’re all wearing them now except for Caleb, who still has his sneakers. They’re way too big but he says he doesn’t mind, he likes the way they look, and he thinks they’re lucky, since he hasn’t died since he put them on. Maybe we’ll find a crate of lucky sneakers?

Day 7

Still no progress on the Humvees. Everyone is beginning to worry we’ll have to walk out of here.

Apart from the boots, the best thing we’ve found so far are the light sticks. These are plastic tubes you snap over your knee and give them a hard shake and light comes out, a pale glowing green. Last night Caleb broke one open and put the glowing stuff all over his face and said, “Look at me, I’m a smoke now!” Peter said that wasn’t funny but I thought it was, and most of us laughed anyway. I’m glad Caleb is here.

Tomorrow I’m going to boil water and take a real bath, and give Amy a haircut while I’m at it, at least do something about those tangles. Maybe I can get her to take a bath, too.

Day 9

Michael said today they were going to try to start one of the Humvees so we all gathered around while they hooked it up to one of the generators, but when they tried to turn the engine over there was a loud bang and smoke and Michael said they’ll have to start from scratch. It was probably bad gas, he says, but I could tell he didn’t really know. To make matters worse, the toilets backed up in the barracks and Hollis said, How is it the United States Army can make food that lasts a hundred years but they can’t make a decent toilet?

Hollis asked me to give him a haircut too and I have to say, with a little cleaning up he doesn’t look half bad. Maybe I can get him to shave off the beard, but I think it means too much to him, with Arlo gone. Poor Arlo. Poor Hollis.

Day 11

The horse was killed today. It was completely my fault. During the day we’ve been keeping her staked outside in the shade where there’s some brush and weeds to graze on. I decided to walk her a bit but then something spooked her and she got away. Hollis and I ran after her but of course we couldn’t catch her and then we saw her out in the field where the mines were and before I could say anything there was a terrible boom, and when the dust cleared she was lying on the ground. I was going to go after her but Hollis stopped me, and I said, We can’t leave her like that, and he said, No we can’t, and he went back to the barracks to get his rifle and that was what he did. Both of us were crying and after I asked him if he’d had a name for her and he said yes, her name was Sweetheart.

We’ve been here just nine days but it feels like much longer and I have begun to wonder if we are ever leaving this place.

Day 12

The horse’s body was taken away in the night. So now we know there are smokes around. Peter has decided to close the doors an hour before sunset just to be safe. I’m a little worried about Mausami. In just the last few days she’s started to show. Probably no one else would notice, but I can tell. What everybody knows but isn’t saying is that Theo is probably dead. She’s tough but I’m sure this is all very hard for her as the days drag by. I wouldn’t want to have a baby out here.

Day 13

Good news-Michael says he may try to start one of the Humvees tomorrow. We all have our fingers crossed. Everyone is anxious to get going.

I came across a crate in the third room marked Human Remains Pouch and when I opened it and saw what was there I realized they were bags the Army used to put dead soldiers in. I repacked the crate and hope no one asks me about it.

Day 16

I haven’t written for a couple of days because I’ve been learning to drive.

Two days ago Michael and Caleb finally got the first of the Humvees running, tires and all. Everyone was shouting and laughing, we were all so happy. Michael said he wanted to go first and with just a few scrapes he managed to back it out of the bunker. We all took turns at the wheel with Michael telling us what to do, but none of us is very good.

The second Humvee rolled out this morning. Caleb says that’s it, that’s what we’re going to get, but we don’t really need more than two anyway. If one breaks down we can use the other as a backup. Michaels thinks we can carry enough diesel to get to Las Vegas, maybe farther, before we have to find more.

We’re off in the morning to the fuel depot.

Day 17

Gassed and ready to go. We spent the morning shuttling back and forth to the depot, filling the Humvees and the extra cans.

Everyone is exhausted but excited, too. It’s like the trip has finally, truly begun. We’re riding as two groups of four. Peter is going to drive one Humvee, and I’m going to drive the other, with Hollis and Alicia riding up top to man the guns, fifty-caliber machine guns, which we mounted this afternoon. Michael found some batteries to hold a charge so we can talk to each other with the walkie-talkies, at least until the batteries run out. Peter thinks we should try to go around Las Vegas, stay to the backcountry, but Hollis says it’s the quickest way if we want to get to Colorado, and the interstates are best, because they follow the easiest terrain. Alicia sided with Hollis, and Peter finally agreed, so Las Vegas it will be, I guess. Everyone is wondering what we will find there.

I feel like we’re a proper expedition now. We threw away our old clothing and everyone is wearing Army clothes, even Caleb, though they’re much too big on him. (Maus is hemming a pair of pants for him.) After dinner Peter gathered everyone around and showed us our route on the map, and then he said, I think we should celebrate, Hollis, don’t you, and Hollis nodded and said, I think that’s right, and held up a bottle of whiskey he’d found in one of the desks in the office. It tasted a little like shine and felt the same, and before long everyone was laughing and singing, which felt wonderful but was a little sad too, because we were all remembering Arlo and his guitar. Even Amy drank some, and Hollis said, Maybe it will put her in the mood to say something, and at that she smiled, the first time I think I’ve ever seen her do this. It really feels like she’s one of us now.

It’s late now, and I have to go to bed. We’re setting out at first light. I can’t wait to leave, but I think I will miss this place, too. None of us knows what we’ll find or if we’ll ever see home again. I think without our realizing it, we’ve become a family here. So, to whoever is reading this, that’s really all I have to say.

Day 18

We made it to Kelso in plenty of time. The landscape we’re in seems totally dead-the only living creatures seem to be lizards, which are everywhere, and spiders, huge hairy ones the size of your hand. No other buildings besides the depot. After the bunker, it feels like we’re out in the open, totally exposed, even though the windows and doors are all boarded up. There’s a pump but no water, so we are running on what we brought. If it stays this hot we better find more soon. I can tell no one’s going to sleep much. I hope Amy can keep them away, like Peter says.

Day 19

They came last night, a pod of three. They entered through the roof, tearing the wood apart like paper. When it was over, two of them were dead and the third had scattered. But Hollis had been shot. Alicia says she thinks she did it, but Hollis said he actually shot himself, trying to load one of the pistols. Probably he was just saying that to make her feel better. The bullet passed through his upper arm, just a nick really, but any wound is serious, especially out here. Hollis is too tough to show it, but I can tell he’s in a lot of pain.

I’m writing this in the early-morning hours, just before dawn. Nobody’s going back to sleep. We’re all just waiting for sunrise so we can get out of here. Our best chance is to make it to Las Vegas with enough time to find shelter for the night. What everybody’s thinking, but not saying, is that there’s no real safety from here on out.

The funny thing is, I don’t mind so much, not really. I hope we don’t all die out here, of course. But I think I’d rather be here than anywhere else, with these people. It’s different being afraid when there’s the hope that it will amount to something. I don’t know what we’ll find in Colorado, if we ever get there. I’m not even sure it matters. All those years, waiting for the Army, and it turns out the Army is us.

FORTY-FIVE

They drove in from the south, into the fading day, into a vision of towering ruins.

Peter was at the wheel of the first Humvee, Alicia up top, scanning the terrain with the binoculars; Caleb sat beside him in the passenger seat with the map over his lap. The highway had all but disappeared, its course vanished under waves of cracked, pale earth.

“Caleb, where the hell are we?”

Caleb was twisting the map this way and that. He arched his neck and shouted up to Alicia, “Do you see the 215?”

“What’s the 215?”

“Another highway, like this one! We should be crossing it!”

“I didn’t know we were even on a highway!”

Peter brought the vehicle to a halt and picked up the radio from the floor. “Sara, what’s your fuel gauge say?”

A crackle of static, and then Sara’s voice came through: “A quarter tank. Maybe a little more.”

“Let me talk to Hollis.”

He watched in the rearview as Hollis, his injured arm wrapped in a sling, scrambled down from the gun post and took the radio from Sara. “I think we may have lost the road,” Peter told him. “We both need fuel, too.”

“Is there an airport anywhere?”

Peter took the map from Caleb to examine it. “Yes. If we’re still following Highway 15, it should be ahead of us, to the east.” He shouted up to Alicia: “Do you see anything that looks like an airport?”

“How the hell should I know what an airport looks like?”

Through the radio, Hollis said, “Tell her to look for fuel tanks. Big ones.”

“Lish! Do you see any fuel tanks?”

Alicia dropped down into the cabin. Her face was coated with dust. She rinsed out her mouth from her canteen and spat out the window. “Dead ahead, about five clicks.”

“You’re sure?”

She nodded. “There’s a bridge up ahead. I’m thinking that could be the overpass at Highway 215. If I’m right, the airport is just on the other side.”

Peter picked up the radio again. “Lish says she thinks she sees it. We’re going ahead.”

“All eyes, cuz.”

Peter put the vehicle in gear and drew forward. They were on the city’s southern outskirts, an open plain tufted with weeds. To the west, purpling mountains lifted against the desert sky like the backs of great animals rising from the earth. Peter watched as the cluster of buildings at the heart of the city began to take shape beyond his windshield, resolving into a pattern of discrete structures, bathed in a golden light. It was impossible to tell how big they were or how far away. In the backseat, Amy had removed her glasses and was squinting at the landscape outside her window. Sara had done a thorough job of cutting the mats away; what remained of her hair, that wild tangle, was a trim, dark helmet, tracing the lines of her cheeks.

They came to the overpass; the bridge was gone, collapsed in sheets of broken concrete. The highway below was a choked gulley of cars and debris, completely impassable. There was nothing to do but try to go around. Peter guided the Humvee east, tracing the highway below them. A few minutes later they came to a second bridge, which appeared intact. A gamble, but they were running out of time.

He radioed Sara. “I’m going to try to get across. Wait until we’re over.”

Their luck held; they traversed it without incident. Pausing on the far side for Sara to cross, Peter took the map from Caleb once again. If he was correct, they were on Las Vegas Boulevard South; the airport, with its fuel tanks, would be due east.

They pressed on. The landscape began to change, thickening with structures and abandoned vehicles. Most were pointed south, away from the city.

“Those are Army trucks,” said Caleb.

A minute later they saw the first battle tank. It was resting upside down in the center of the road, like a huge capsized turtle; both of its tracks had been blown off its wheels.

Alicia crouched to peek her head back into the cabin. “Pull forward,” she said. “Slowly.”

He turned the wheel to navigate around the overturned tank. By now it was obvious what lay ahead: the city’s defensive perimeter. They were moving through a vast debris field of tanks and other vehicles. Peter saw, beyond it, a line of sandbags backed against a concrete barrier, topped with coils of wire.

“What do you want to do now?” Sara asked over the radio.

“We’ll have to go around somehow.” He released the Talk button and lifted his voice to Alicia, who was scanning with the binoculars. “Lish! East or west?”

She ducked down again. “West. I think there’s a break in the wall.”

It was getting late; the attack the night before had left them all shaken. The last hands of daylight were like a funnel, drawing them down toward night. With each passing minute, the decisions they made became more irrevocable.

“Alicia says west,” Peter radioed.

“That’ll take us away from the airport.”

“I know. Put Hollis on again.” He waited for Hollis’s acknowledgment, then continued: “I think we have to use the gas we’ve got to find shelter for the night. All those buildings up ahead, there has to be something we can use. We can backtrack to the airport in the morning.”

Hollis’s voice was calm, but Peter could detect the underlying note of worry. “It’s your call.”

He glanced through the rearview at Alicia, who nodded.

“We’re going around,” Peter said.

The break in the perimeter was a ragged gap twenty meters across. The remains of a burned-out tanker truck lay on its side near the opening. Probably, Peter thought, the driver had tried to run the blockade.

They continued on. The landscape was changing again, thickening with structures as they moved into the city. No one was talking; the only sounds were the low rumble of the engine and the scrape of weeds on the underside of the Humvee’s carriage. They had somehow gotten on Las Vegas Boulevard again; a creaking sign, still held aloft on its wires above the street, jostled in the wind. The buildings were larger now, monumental in scope, towering above the roadway with their great ruined faces. Some were burned, empty cages of steel girders, others half-collapsed, their facades fallen away to reveal the honeycombed compartments within, dressed with dripping gardens of wire and cable. They passed beneath signs bearing mysterious names: Mandalay Bay. The Luxor. New York New York. Rubble of all kinds littered the spaces between the buildings, forcing Peter to move at a creep. More Humvees and tanks and sandbagged positions; there had been a battle here. Twice he had to stop completely and search for an alternate route around some obstacle.

“This is too dense,” Peter said finally. “We’ll never make it through. Caleb, find me a way out of here.”

Caleb directed him west, onto Tropicana. But a hundred meters later the road disappeared, subsumed once again under a mountain of rubble. Peter reversed direction, returned to the intersection, and fought his way north again. They were stopped this time by a second perimeter of concrete barricades.

“It’s like a maze in here.”

He tried one more route, heading farther east. This, too, was impassable. The shadows were lengthening; they had maybe half a hand of good light left. It had been a mistake, he knew, to head through the heart of the city. Now they were trapped.

He took the radio from the dashboard. “Any ideas, Sara?”

“We can go back the way we came.”

“It’ll be dark by the time we get out of here. We don’t want to be caught out in the open, not with all these high points.”

Alicia dropped down from the roof. “There’s one building that looks tight,” she said quickly. “Back down this road about a hundred meters. We passed it coming in.”

Peter relayed this information to the second Humvee. “I don’t see that we have a lot of options.”

It was Hollis who answered. “Let’s do it.”

They reversed course. Angling his eyes upward through the windshield, Peter identified the structure Alicia had indicated: a white tower, fantastically tall, rising from the lengthening shadows into sunlight. It appeared solid, though of course he couldn’t see the other side; the rear of the building might be completely peeled away, for all they knew. The structure was separated from the roadway by a masonry wall and a broad, bowl-like depression, with pipes extruding from the drifts of sand and debris that littered the bottom. Peter was worried they would have to traverse this somehow, or else leave the Humvees on the street, but then they came to a break in the wall just as Alicia called down, “Turn here.”

He was able to pull the Humvee right up to the base of the tower, parking beneath a kind of portico, wreathed with skeletal vines. Sara pulled in behind him. The front of the building was boarded up, the entrance barricaded by sandbags. Exiting the vehicle, Peter felt a sudden chill; the temperature was dropping.

Alicia had opened the rear compartment and was hurriedly passing out packs and rifles. “Just take what we’ll need for tonight,” she ordered. “Whatever we can carry. Bring as much water as you can.”

“What about the Humvees?” Sara asked.

“They’re not going anywhere on their own.” Alicia, after drawing a belt of grenades over her head, checked the load on her rifle. “Hightop, do you have a way in yet? We’re losing the light here.”

Caleb and Michael were furiously working to pry loose the covering from one of the windows. With a crack of splitting plywood it yanked loose from the frame, revealing the glass behind it, caked with grime. A single stroke from Caleb’s pry bar and the glass shattered.

“Flyers,” he exclaimed, wrinkling his nose, “what’s that stink?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Alicia said. “Okay, everybody, let’s move.”

Peter and Alicia climbed through the window first. Hollis would bring up the rear with Amy and the others in between. Dropping inside, Peter found himself in a dark hallway, running parallel with the front of the building. To his right stood a pair of metal doors, chained shut through the handles. He stepped back to the open window.

“Caleb, pass me a hammer. The pry bar, too.”

He used the sharp end of the pry bar to shatter the chain. The door swung free, revealing a wide, open space, more region than room, remarkably undisturbed. Apart from the smell-a tart chemical scent, vaguely biological-and a heavy layer of dust that coated every surface, the impression it gave was less of ruin than abandonment, as if its inhabitants had departed days ago, not decades. At the center of the space stood a large stone structure, evidently some kind of fountain, and on a raised platform in the corner, a piano, tented with cobwebs. A long counter was positioned to the left.

Peter tilted his gaze upward to the ceiling, which was bisected by elaborately carved molding into discrete, convex panels. Each was ornately painted: winged figures with sad, dewy eyes and plump-cheeked faces, set against a sky of billowing clouds.

Caleb whispered, “Is it… some kind of church?”

Peter didn’t answer; he didn’t know. Something about the winged figures on the ceiling was disquieting, even a little ominous. He turned to see Amy standing by the cobwebbed piano, gazing upward like the rest of them.

Then Hollis was beside him. “We better get to higher ground.” He felt it, too, Peter could tell, this ghostlike presence hovering over them. “Let’s try to find the stairs.”

They advanced into the building’s interior down a second, wider hallway, lined with stores-Prada, Tutto, La Scarpa, Tesorini-the names meaningless but strangely musical. There was more damage here, windows shattered, shards of glinting glass scattered over the stone floor and crunching under the soles of their boots. Many of the stores appeared to have been ransacked-counters smashed, everything overturned-while others seemed untouched, their peculiar, useless wares-shoes no one could actually walk in, bags that were too small to carry anything-still displayed in the windows. They passed signs that said SPA LEVEL and POOL PROMENADE, with arrows pointing down other, adjacent hallways, and banks of elevators, their gleaming doors sealed, but nothing that said STAIRS.

The hallway ended in a second open area, as large as the first, receding into darkness. There was something subterranean about it, as if they had stumbled upon the entrance to an immense cave. The smell was stronger here. They broke their light sticks and moved forward, sweeping the area with their rifles. The room appeared to be filled with long banks of machines, like nothing Peter had ever seen before, with video screens and various buttons and levers and switches. Before each was a stool, presumably where the machines’ operators had sat, performing their unknown function.

Then they saw the slims.

First one and then another and then more and more, their frozen figures resolving out of the gloom. Most were seated around a series of tall tables, their postures grimly comical, as if they’d been overcome in the midst of some desperate, private act.

“What the hell is this place?”

Peter approached the nearest table. Three seated figures occupied it; a fourth lay on the floor beside his overturned stool. Holding up his light stick, Peter bent to the closest body, a woman. She had toppled face-first; her head was turned to the side, her cheekbone resting on the table’s surface. Her hair, bleached of all color, formed a snarl of parched fibers around the knob of her skull. Where her teeth should have been were a pair of dentures, their plastic gums still retaining an incongruously lifelike pinkness. Ropes of golden metal wreathed her neck; the bones of her fingers, where they rested on the tabletop-she seemed to have reached out to stop her fall-were bedecked with rings, fat shining stones of every color. On the table before her was a pair of playing cards, face-up. A six and a jack. It was the same with the others, he saw: each player had two cards showing. There were more cards strewn over the table. Some kind of game, like go-to. In the center lay a heaping mound of more jewelry, rings and watches and bracelets, as well as a pistol and a handful of shells.

“We better keep moving,” Alicia said, coming up beside him.

Something was here, he thought, something he was meant to find.

“It’ll be dark soon, Peter. We have to find those stairs.”

He pulled his gaze away, nodding.

They emerged into an atrium, domed in glass. The sky above was cooling, night falling. Escalators led down to another dark recess; to the right they saw a bank of elevators, and yet another hallway, and more shops.

“Are we going in circles?” This was Michael. “I swear we came right though here.”

Alicia’s face was grave. “Peter-”

“I know, I know.” The moment of decision was upon them: keep looking for the stairs or seek shelter on the ground floor. He turned to face the group, which seemed, suddenly, too small.

“Damnit, not now.”

Mausami pointed toward the windows of the closest shop. “There she is.”

DESERT GIFT EMPORIUM, the sign read. Peter opened the door and moved inside. Amy was facing a wall of shelves by the counter, bearing a display of spherical glass objects. Amy had taken one in her hand. She gave it a hard shake, filling its interior with a flurry of movement.

“Amy, what is that?”

The girl turned, her face bright-I have found something, her eyes seemed to say, something wonderful-and held it out for him to take. An unexpected weight filled his hand: the sphere was full of liquid. Suspended in this fluid, bits of glittering white matter, like flakes of snow, were settling down upon a landscape of tiny buildings. Rising at the center of this miniaturized city was a white tower-the same tower, Peter realized, in which they now stood.

The others had crowded around. “What is it?” Michael asked.

Peter passed it to Sara, who showed it to the others.

“Some kind of model, I think.” Amy’s face was still wearing a look of glowing happiness. “Why did you want us to see this?”

But it was Alicia who provided the answer.

“Peter,” she said, “I think you better look at this.”

She had turned the globe upside down, revealing the words that were printed on its base.

Milagro Hotel and Casino

Las Vegas

The smell had nothing to do with the slims, Michael explained. It was sewer gas. Mostly methane, which was why the place smelled like an outhouse. Somewhere beneath the hotel was a sea of one-hundred-year-old effluent, the pooled waste of an entire city, trapped like a giant fermentation tank.

“We don’t want to be here when that lets go,” he warned. “It’ll be the biggest fart in history. The place will go up like a torch.”

They were on the fifteenth floor of the hotel, watching the night come on. For a few, panicked minutes it had begun to look as if they’d have to take refuge on the hotel’s lower levels. The only stairwell they’d found, on the far side of the casino, was clogged with debris-chairs, tables, mattresses, suitcases, all of it bent and smashed, as if hurled from a great height. It was Hollis who had suggested jimmying open one of the elevators. Assuming the cable was intact, he explained, they could climb a couple of floors, enough to get around the barricade, and take the stairs the rest of the way.

It worked. Then, at the sixteenth floor, they encountered a second barricade. The floor of the stairwell was littered with shell casings. They exited to find themselves in a darkened hallway. Alicia cracked another light stick. The hall was lined with doors; a sign on the wall said AMBASSADOR SUITE LEVEL.

Peter gestured with his rifle to the first door. “Caleb, do your thing.”

The room had two bodies in it, a man and a woman, lying on the bed. They were both wearing bathrobes and slippers; on the table by the bed was an open whiskey bottle, its contents long evaporated to a brown stain, and a plastic syringe. Caleb, voicing the words everyone was thinking, said he wasn’t going to spend the night with a couple of slims, especially slims that had killed themselves. It wasn’t until they had tried five doors that they found one without bodies behind it. Three rooms, two with a pair of beds in each and a third, larger room facing a wall of windows that gazed over the city. Peter stepped to the glass. The last daylight was going, bathing the scene in an orange glow. He wished they were higher, even on the roof, but this would have to do.

“What’s that down there?” Mausami asked. She was pointing across the street, where a massive structure of ribbed steel, four legs that tapered to a narrow tip, rose between the buildings.

“I think it’s the Eiffel Tower,” said Caleb. “I saw a picture of it in a book once.”

Mausami frowned. “Isn’t that in Europe?”

“It’s in Paris.” Michael was kneeling on the floor, unpacking their gear. “Paris, France.”

“So what’s it doing here?”

“How should I know?” Michael shrugged. “Maybe they moved it.”

They watched together as night fell-first the street, then the buildings, then the mountains beyond, all sinking into darkness as if into the waters of a filling tub. The stars were coming out. No one was in the mood to talk; the precariousness of their situation was obvious. Sitting on the sofa, Sara rebandaged Hollis’s wounded arm. Peter could discern, not from anything she said but from what she didn’t, going about her work with tight-lipped efficiency, that she was worried about him.

They divvied up the MREs and lay down to rest. Alicia and Sara volunteered to take first watch. Peter was too exhausted to object. Wake me up when you’re ready, he said. Probably I won’t even sleep.

He didn’t. In the bedroom he lay on the floor, his head propped on his pack, staring at the ceiling. Milagro, he thought. This was Milagro. Amy was sitting in a corner with her back to the wall, holding the glass globe. Every few minutes she would lift it from her lap and give it a shake, holding it close to her face as she watched the snow whirl and settle inside it. At such moments, Peter wondered what he was to her, what all of them were. He had explained to her where they were going and why. But if she knew what was in Colorado, and who had sent the signal, she had made no indication.

At last he gave up trying to sleep and returned to the main room. A wedge of moon had risen over the buildings. Alicia was standing at the window, scanning the street below; Sara was sitting at the small table, playing a hand of solo, her rifle resting across her lap.

“Any sign out there?”

Sara frowned. “Would I be playing cards?”

He took a chair. For a while he said nothing, watching her play.

“Where’d you get the cards?” On the backs was that name, Milagro.

“Lish found them in a drawer.”

“You should rest, Sara,” Peter offered. “I can take over.”

“I’m fine.” Frowning again, she swept the cards into a pile and redealt. “Go back to bed.”

Peter said nothing more. He had the feeling he’d done something wrong, but he didn’t know what.

Alicia turned from the window. “You know, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll take you up on your offer. Put my head down for a few minutes. If it’s okay with you, Sara.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Alicia left them alone. Peter rose and stepped to the window, using the nightscope on his rifle to scan the street: abandoned cars, heaps of rubble and trash, the empty buildings. A world frozen in time, caught at the moment of its abandonment in the last, violent hours of the Time Before.

“You don’t have to pretend, you know.”

He turned. Sara was looking at him coolly, her face bathed in moonlight. “Pretend what?”

“Peter, please. Not now.” Peter could feel her resolve; she had decided something. “You did your best. I know that.” She gave a quiet laugh, looking away. “I’d say I was grateful but I’d sound like an idiot, so I won’t. If we’re all going to die out here, I just wanted you to know it’s all right.”

“No one’s going to die.” It was all he could think to say.

“Well. I hope that’s true.” She paused. “Still, that one night-”

“Look, I’m sorry, Sara.” He took a deep breath. “I should have told you that before. It was my fault.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Peter. Like I said, you tried. It was a good try, too. But the two of you are meant for each other. I think I’ve always known that. It was stupid of me not to accept it.”

He was completely confounded. “Sara, who are you talking about?”

Sara didn’t answer. Her eyes grew suddenly wide. She was looking past him, out the window.

He turned sharply. Sara rose and came to stand beside him.

“What did you see?”

She pointed. “Across the street, up on the tower.”

He pressed the nightscope to his eye. “I don’t see anything.”

“It was there, I know it.”

Then Amy was in the room. She was clutching the globe to her chest. With her other hand she gripped Peter by the arm and began to pull him away from the window.

“Amy, what’s wrong?”

The glass behind them didn’t so much shatter as explode, detonating in a hail of glinting shards. The air blew from his body as he was knocked across the room. It was only later that Peter would realize that the viral had come in right on top of them. He heard Sara scream-not even words, just a cry of terror. He hit the floor, rolling, his limbs tangled with Amy’s, in time to see the creature vaulting back out the window.

Sara was gone.

Alicia and Hollis were in the room now, everyone was there, Hollis was ripping off the sling and taking up his rifle, he was standing at the window, aiming below, sweeping the scene with his barrel. But no shots came.

“Fuck!”

Alicia pulled Peter to his feet. “Are you cut? Did it scratch you?”

His insides were still churning. He shook his head: no.

“What happened?” Michael cried. “Where’s my sister!”

Peter found his voice. “It took her.”

Michael had grabbed Amy roughly by the arms. She was still clutching the globe, which had somehow remained unbroken. “Where is she? Where is she?”

“Stop it, Michael!” Peter yelled. “You’re frightening her!”

The globe fell to the floor with a crash as Alicia yanked Michael away, sending him spilling onto the sofa. Amy stumbled backward, her eyes wide with fear.

“Circuit,” Alicia said, “you have to calm down!”

His eyes were brimming with furious tears. “Don’t fucking call me that!”

A booming voice: “Everyone shut the hell up!”

They turned to where Hollis stood by the open window, his rifle at his hip.

“Just. Shut. Up.” He looked them all over. “I’ll get your sister, Michael.”

Hollis dropped to one knee and began rifling through his pack for extra clips, filling the pockets of his vest. “I saw which way they took her. Three of them.”

“Hollis-” Peter began.

“I’m not asking.” He met Peter’s eyes. “You of all people know I have to go.”

Michael stepped forward. “I’m coming with you.”

“I’m going too,” said Caleb. He raised his eyes to the group, his face suddenly uncertain. “I mean, because we’re all going. Right?”

Peter looked at Amy. She was sitting on the sofa, her knees pressed protectively to her chest. He asked Alicia for her pistol.

“What for?”

“If we’re going out there, Amy needs a weapon.”

She drew it from her waistband. Peter released the clip to check the load, then pushed the clip back into the handle and cocked the slide to put a round in the chamber. He turned it around in his hand and held it out to Amy.

“One shot,” he said. He tapped his breastbone. “That’s all you get. Through here. You know how to do this?”

Amy lifted her eyes from the gun in her hand, nodding.

They were gathering their gear when Alicia pulled Peter aside. “Not that I’m objecting,” she said quietly, “but it could be a trap.”

“I know it’s a trap.” Peter took up his rifle and pack. “I think I’ve known it since we got to this place. All those blocked streets, they led us right here. But Hollis is right. I never should have left Theo behind, and I’m not leaving Sara.”

They cracked their light sticks and stepped into the hall. At the top of the stairwell, Alicia moved to the rail and looked down, sweeping the area with the barrel of her rifle. She gave them the all clear, waving them forward.

They descended in this manner, flight by flight, Alicia and Peter trading the point, Mausami and Hollis guarding the rear. When they reached the third floor they exited the stairwell and moved down the hall, toward the elevators.

The middle elevator stood open, as they’d left it. Peering over the edge, Peter could see the car with its roof hatch standing open below. He swung out onto the cable, his rifle slung across his back, and shimmied to the roof of the car, then dropped inside. The elevator opened on another lobby, two stories tall, with a glass ceiling. The wall facing the open door was mirrored, giving him an angled view of the space beyond. He inched the barrel of his rifle out, holding his breath. But the moonlit space was empty. He whistled up through the hatch to the others.

The rest of the group followed, passing their rifles through the hatch and dropping down. The last was Mausami. She was wearing two packs, Peter saw, one slung from each shoulder.

“Sara’s,” she explained. “I thought she’d want it.”

The casino was to their left, to their right the darkened hall of empty stores. Beyond that lay the main entrance and the Humvees. Hollis had seen the pod taking Sara across the street, to the tower. The plan was to get across the open ground in front of the hotel using the vehicles, with their heavy guns, for cover. Beyond that, Peter didn’t know.

They reached the lobby, with its silent piano. All was quiet, unchanged. In the glow of their light sticks, the painted figures on the ceiling seemed to float freely, suspended over their heads without attachment to any physical plane. When Peter had seen them the first time, they had seemed somehow menacing, but as he looked at them now, this feeling was gone. Those dewy eyes and soft, round faces-Peter realized they were Littles.

They reached the entrance and crouched by the open window. “I’ll go first,” Alicia said. She took a drink from her canteen. “If it’s clear, we get in and go. I don’t want to hang around the base of the building more than about two seconds. Michael, you take Sara’s place at the wheel of the second Humvee; Hollis and Mausami, I want you up on those fifties. Caleb, just run like hell and get inside and make sure Amy’s with you. I’ll cover you while everybody gets aboard.”

“What about you?” Peter asked.

“Don’t worry, I’m not letting you leave without me.”

Then she was up and out the window, dashing for the nearest vehicle. Peter scrambled into position. The darkness beyond was total, the moon obscured by the roof of the portico. He heard a soft impact as Alicia took cover at the base of one of the Humvees. He pressed the stock of his weapon tight against his shoulder, willing Alicia to whistle the all clear.

Beside him, Hollis whispered, “What the hell’s keeping her?”

The lack of light was so complete it felt like a living thing, not an absence but a presence, pulsing all around him. An anxious sweat prickled his hair. He drew a breath and tightened his finger on the trigger of his rifle, ready to fire.

A figure raced toward them out of the darkness.

“Run!”

As Alicia dove headfirst through the window, Peter realized what he was seeing: a roiling mass of pale green light, like a cresting wave, hurtling toward the building.

Virals. The street was full of virals.

Hollis had begun to fire. Peter shouldered his weapon and managed to let off a pair of shots before Alicia seized him by the sleeve and yanked him away from the window.

“There’s too many! Get out of here!”

They had made it less than halfway across the lobby when there came a thundering crash and the sound of splintering wood. The front door was failing; the virals would be streaming in at any second. Up ahead, Caleb and Mausami were sprinting down the hall toward the casino. Alicia was firing in quick bursts behind them, covering their retreat, her spent shell casings pinging across the tiled floor. In the flashing light of her muzzle Peter saw Amy on all fours by the piano, probing the ground as if she’d lost something. Her gun. But there was no point in looking for it now. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her down the hall, chasing the others. His mind was saying: We’re dead. We’re all dead.

Another crash of breaking glass from deep inside the building. They were being flanked. Soon they’d be surrounded, lost in the dark. Like the mall, only worse, because there was no daylight to run to. Hollis was beside him now. Ahead he saw the glow of a light stick and the figure of Michael ducking through the shattered window of a restaurant. As he reached it he saw that Caleb and Mausami were already inside. He yelled to Alicia, “This way! Hurry!” and shoved Amy through, in time to see Michael disappearing through a second door at the rear.

“Just follow them,” he cried. “Go!”

Then Alicia was upon him, yanking him through the window. Without a pause she reached into her pouch and withdrew another light stick and cracked it over her knee. They raced across the room to the rear door, which was still swinging with the force of Michael’s exit.

Another hallway, narrow and low-ceilinged, like a tunnel. Peter saw Hollis and the others up ahead, waving to them, shouting their names. The smell of sewer gas was suddenly stronger, almost dizzying. Peter and Alicia swiveled as the first viral burst through the door behind them. The hallway flashed with the light of their muzzles. Peter was firing blind, aiming at the door. The first one fell and then another and another. And still they kept on coming.

He realized he’d been squeezing the trigger but nothing was happening. His gun was empty; he had fired off his last round. Alicia was pulling him down the hall again. A flight of stairs, leading down to another hall. He bumped against the wall and almost fell but somehow kept going.

The hall ended at a pair of swinging doors that opened on a kitchen. The stairs had taken them below ground level, into the deep inner workings of the hotel. Banks of copper pots hung from the ceiling above a wide steel table that shone with the reflected glow of Alicia’s light stick. His breath felt tight in his chest; the air was dense with fumes. He dropped his empty rifle and seized one of the pots from the ceiling. A wide copper fry pan, heavy in his hands.

Something had followed them through the door.

He turned, swinging the pan as he lurched backward against the stove-a gesture that would have seemed comical if it weren’t so desperate-sheltering Alicia with his body as the viral bounded to the top of the steel table, dropping into a crouch. A female: her fingers were covered in rings like the ones he’d seen on the slims at the card table. She was holding her hands away from her body, the long fingers flexing, shoulders swaying in a liquid motion from side to side. Peter clutched the pan like a shield, Alicia pressed behind him.

Alicia: “She sees herself!”

What was the viral waiting for? Why hadn’t she attacked?

“Her reflection!” Alicia hissed. “She sees her reflection in the pan!”

Peter became aware of a new sound, coming from the viral-a mournful nasal moaning, like the whine of a dog. As if the image of her face, reflected in the pan’s copper bottom, were the source of some deep and melancholy recognition. Peter cautiously moved the pan back and forth, the viral’s eyes following, entranced. How long could he hold her like this, before more virals came through the door? His hands were slick with sweat, the air was so dense with fumes he could scarcely breathe.

This place will go up like a torch.

“Lish, do you see a way out of here?”

Alicia swiveled her head quickly. “A door to your right, five meters.”

“Is it locked?”

“How should I know?”

He spoke through clenched teeth, doing everything he could to hold his body still, to keep the viral’s eyes focused on the pan. “Does it have a lock you can see, damnit?”

The creature startled, a muscular tautness rippling through her. Her jaw fell open, lips withdrawing to reveal the rows of gleaming teeth. She had given up her moaning; she had begun to click.

“No, I don’t see one.”

“Pull a grenade.”

“There’s not enough space in here!”

“Do it. The room is full of gas. Toss it behind her and run like hell for the door.”

Alicia slipped a hand between their bodies to her waist, freeing a grenade from her belt. He felt her pull the pin.

“Here you go,” she said.

A clean arc, up and over the viral’s head. It was as Peter had hoped; the viral’s eyes broke away, her head twisting to follow the airborne parabola of the grenade as it lobbed across the room, clattering on the table behind her before rolling to the floor. Peter and Alicia turned and dashed for the door. Alicia got there first, slamming into the metal bar. Fresh air and a feeling of space-they were on some kind of loading dock. Peter was counting in his head. One second, two seconds, three seconds…

He heard the first report, the concussive spray of the grenade’s detonation, and then a second, deeper boom as the gas in the room ignited. They rolled over the edge of the dock as first the door shot above their heads and then the shock wave, a prow of fire. Peter felt the air being stripped from his lungs. He pressed his face into the earth, his hands held over his head. More explosions as pockets of gas went off, the fire traveling upward through the structure. Debris began to pour down over them, glass falling everywhere, exploding on the pavement in a rain of glinting shards. He breathed in a mouthful of smoke and dust.

“We have to move!” Alicia cried, pulling at him. “The whole thing is going up!”

His hands and face felt wet, but who knew what that was. They were somewhere on the south side of the building. They tore across the street under the light of the burning hotel and took cover behind the rusted hulk of an overturned car.

They were breathing hard, coughing out smoke. Their faces were coated with soot. He looked at Lish and saw a long glistening stain on her upper thigh, soaking the fabric of her pants.

“You’re bleeding.”

She pointed at his head. “So are you.”

Above them, a second series of explosions shook the air. A huge fireball ascended upward through the hotel, bathing the scene in a furious orange light, sending more flaming debris cascading to the street.

“You think the others got out?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Alicia coughed again, then took a mouthful of water from her canteen and spat onto the ground. “Stay put.”

She scooted around the base of the car, returning a moment later. “I count twelve smokes from here.” She made a vague gesture up and away. “More on the tower on the far side of the street. The fires pushed them back, but that won’t last.”

So there it was. Out in the dark, their rifles gone, trapped between a burning building and the virals. They were resting with their shoulders touching, their backs braced against the car.

Alicia rolled her head to look at him. “That was a good idea. Using the pan. How’d you know it’d work?”

“I didn’t.”

She shook her head. “It was still some cool trick, anyway.” She paused, a look of pain skittering across her face. She closed her eyes and breathed, then: “Ready?”

“The Humvees?”

“It’s our best shot, I think. Stay close to the fires, use them for cover.”

Fires or no, they probably wouldn’t make it ten meters once the virals saw them. From the look of Alicia’s leg, he doubted she’d be able to walk at all. All they had were their blades and the five grenades on Alicia’s belt. But Amy and the others were still out here, maybe; they had to at least try.

She clipped off two grenades and placed them in his hands. “Remember our deal,” she said.

She meant would he kill her, if it came to that. The answer came so easily it surprised him. “Me too. I won’t be one of them.”

Alicia nodded. She had removed a grenade and pulled the pin, ready to throw. “I just want to say, before we do this, I’m glad it’s you.”

“Same here.”

She wiped her eyes with her wrist. “Oh fuck, Peter, now you’ve seen me cry twice. You can’t tell anyone, you can’t.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

A blaze of light filled his eyes. For an instant he actually believed something had happened and she’d accidentally released the grenade-that death was, in the end, an affair of light and silence. But then he heard the roar of the engine and knew that it was a vehicle, coming toward them.

“Get in!” a voice boomed. “Get in the truck!”

They froze.

Alicia’s eyes widened at the unpinned grenade in her hand. “Flyers, what do I do with this?”

“Just throw it!”

She tossed it over the top of the car; Peter yanked her to the ground as the grenade went off with a bang. The lights were closing in. They took off at a hobbling run, Peter’s arm wrapped around Alicia’s waist. Lumbering out of the darkness was a boxy vehicle with a huge plow jutting from the front like a demented smile, the windshield wrapped in a cage of wire; some kind of gun was mounted to the roof, a figure positioned behind it. As Peter watched, the gun sprang to life, shooting a plume of liquid fire over their heads.

They hit the dirt. Peter felt stinging heat on the back of his neck.

“Keep down!” the voice boomed again, and only then did Peter realize the sound was amplified, coming from a horn on the roof of the truck’s cabin. “Move your asses!”

“Well, which is it?” Alicia yelled, her body pressed to the ground. “You can’t have both!”

The truck ground to a halt just a few meters from their heads. Peter pulled Alicia to her feet as the figure on the roof slid down a ladder. A heavy wire mask obscured his face; his body was covered in thick pads. A short-barreled shotgun clung to his leg in a leather holster. Written on the side of the truck were the words NEVADA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS.

“In the back! Move it!”

The voice was a woman’s.

“There are eight of us!” Peter cried. “Our friends are still out here!”

But the woman seemed not to hear him or, if she did, to care. She hustled them to the rear of the truck, her movements surprisingly nimble despite her heavy armor. She turned a handle and flung the door wide.

“Lish! Get in!”

The voice was Caleb’s. Everybody was there, splayed out on the floor of the dark compartment. Peter and Alicia clambered inside; the door clanged shut behind them, sealing them in darkness.

With a lurch, the truck began to move.

FORTY-SIX

That awful woman. That awful fat woman in the kitchen, her loose round form spilling over her chair like something melted. The tight, close heat of the room and the taste of her smoke in his nose and mouth and the smell of the woman’s body, the sweat and crumb-filled creases in the rolls of billowing flesh. The smoke curling around her, puffing from her lips as she spoke, as if her words were taking solid form in the air, and his mind telling him, Wake up. You are asleep and dreaming. Wake up, Theo. But the pull of the dream was too strong; the more he struggled, the deeper he was drawn down into it. Like his mind was a well and he was falling, falling into the darkness of his own mind.

Watchoo looking at? Huh? You worthless little shit. The woman watching him and laughing. The boy isn’t just dumb. I tell you, he’s been struck dumb.

He awoke with a jolt, spilling from his dream into the cold reality of his cell. His skin was glazed with rank-smelling sweat. The sweat of his nightmare, which he could no longer recall; all that remained was the feeling of it, like a dark stain spattered over his consciousness.

He rose from his cot and shuffled to the hole. He did his best to aim, listening for the splash of his urine below. He’d begun to look forward to that sound, anticipating it the way he might have waited for a visit from a friend. He’d been waiting for the next thing to happen. He’d been waiting for someone to say something, to tell him why he was here and what they wanted. To tell him why he wasn’t dead. He had come to realize, through the empty days, that he was waiting for pain. The door would open, and men would enter, and then the pain would begin. But the boots came and went-he could make out their scuffed toes through the slot at the bottom of the door-delivering his meals and taking away the empty bowls and saying nothing. He pounded on the door, a slab of cold metal, again and again. What do you want from me, what do you want? But his pleas met only silence.

He didn’t know how many days he’d been here. High out of reach, a dirty window gave a view of nothing. A patch of white sky and at night, the stars. The last thing he remembered was the virals dropping from the roof, and everything turned upside down. He remembered Peter’s face receding, the sound of his name being called, and the whip and snap of his neck as he’d been tossed upward, toward the roof. A last taste of the wind and sun on his face and the gun dropping away. Its slow, pinwheeling passage to the floor below.

And then nothing. The rest was a black space in his memory, like the cratered edges of a missing tooth.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed when he heard footsteps approaching. The slot in the door opened and a bowl slid through, across the floor. The same watery soup he’d eaten meal after meal. Sometimes there was a little joint of meat in it, sometimes just a marrowed bone for him to suck. At the beginning he had decided not to eat, to see what they, whoever they were, would do. But this had lasted only a day before his hunger had gotten the better of him.

“How you feeling?”

Theo’s tongue was thick in his mouth. “Fuck off.”

A dry chuckle. The boots shifting and scraping. The voice was young or old, he couldn’t tell.

“That’s the spirit, Theo.”

At the sound of his name, a chill snaked his spine. Theo said nothing.

“You comfortable in there?”

“How do you know who I am?”

“Don’t you remember?” A pause. “I guess you don’t. You told me. When you first got here. Oh, we had ourselves a nice talk.”

He willed his mind to remember, but it was all blackness. He wondered if the voice was really there at all. This voice that seemed to know him. Maybe he was just imagining it. It would happen sooner or later, in a place like this. The mind did what it wished.

“Don’t feel like talking now, do you? That’s all right.”

“Whatever you’re going to do, just do it.”

“Oh, we’ve done it already. We’re doing it right now. Look around you, Theo. What do you see?”

He couldn’t help it: he looked at his cell. The cot, the hole, the dirty window. There were bits of writing on the walls, etchings in the stone he’d puzzled over for days. Most were senseless figures, neither words nor any kind of image he recognized. But one, situated at eye level above the hole, was clear: RUBEN WAS HERE.

“Who’s Ruben?”

“Ruben? Now, I don’t believe I know any Ruben.”

“Don’t play games.”

“Oh, you mean Ru-ben.” Another quiet laugh. Theo would have given his life to reach through the wall and smash the speaker’s face. “Forget Ru-ben, Theo. Things did not work out so nicely for Ru-ben. Ru-ben, you might say, is ancient history.” A pause. “So tell me. How you sleeping?”

“What?”

“You heard me. You like that fat lady?”

His breath caught in his chest. “What did you say?”

“The fucking fat lady, Theo. Come on. Work with me here. We’ve all been there. The fat lady inside your head.”

The memory burst inside his brain like a piece of rotten fruit. The dreams. The fat lady in her kitchen. A voice was outside the door and it knew what his dreams were.

“I have to say, I never did like her very much myself,” the voice was saying. “Yakkity yakkity yakkity, all day long. And that stink. What the hell is that?”

Theo swallowed, trying to still his mind. The walls around him seemed closer somehow, squeezing him in. He put his head in his hands.

“I don’t know any fat lady,” Theo managed.

“Oh, sure you don’t. We’ve all been through it. It’s not like you’re the only one. Let me ask you something else.” The voice dropped to a whisper. “You carve her up yet, Theo? With the knife? You get to that part yet?”

A swirl of nausea. His breath caught in his chest. The knife, the knife.

“So you haven’t then. Well, you will. All in time. Trust me, when you get to that part, you’re gonna feel a lot better. That’s kind of a turning point, you could say.”

Theo lifted his face. The slot at the bottom of the door was still open, showing the tip of a single boot, leather so scuffed it looked white.

“Theo, you listening to me in there?”

His eyes fixed on the boot with the force of an idea taking hold. Gingerly he rose from the bed and moved toward the door, stepping around the bowl of soup. He sank into a crouch.

“Are you hearing my words? Because I am talking about some serious re-lief.”

Theo lunged. Too late: his hand grabbed empty air. A bright explosion of pain: something came down hard, hard, on his wrist. A boot heel. It smashed the bones flat, compressing his hand into the floor. Grinding and twisting. His face was shoved against the cold steel of the door.

“Fuck!”

“It hurts, don’t it?”

Spangled motes were dancing in his eyes. He tried to pull his hand away, but the force holding him in place was too strong. He was pinned now, one hand stuck through the slot. But the pain meant something. It meant the voice was real.

“You… go… to… hell.”

The heel twisted again; Theo yelped in agony.

“That’s a good one, Theo. Where did you think you were? Hell is your new address, my friend.”

“I’m not… your friend,” he gasped.

“Oh, maybe not. Maybe not just at the moment. But you will be. Sooner or later, you will be.”

Then, just like that, the pressure on Theo’s hand released-an absence of torment so abrupt it was like pleasure. Theo yanked his arm through the slot and slumped against the wall, breathing hard, cradling his wrist on his lap.

“Because, believe it or not, there are things even worse than me,” the voice said. “Sleep well, Theo.” And then the slot slammed closed.