“Are you Mr. Alvado?”
“Call me Jock. Everybody does.”
“I need you to keep her relaxed, Jock. Deep breaths, and no pushing for now. Can you do that for me?”
“I’ll try.”
Jenny came up behind Sara. “Everybody’s in,” she said.
Sara put her hand on Grace’s arm. “Just focus on having your baby, okay?”
The basement door was made of heavy steel, set into walls of thick concrete. Sara was about to close it when the room plunged into darkness. An anxious murmuring, and then people began to shout.
“Everybody, settle down, please!” Sara said.
“What happened to the lights?” a voice cried from the darkness.
“The Army’s just diverting current to the spots, that’s all.”
“That means the virals are coming!”
“We don’t know that. Everyone, just try to keep calm.”
Jenny was standing beside her. “Is that really what they’re doing?” she asked quietly.
“Do I know? Go check the storage room for lanterns and candles.”
The woman returned a couple of minutes later. Lamps were lit and distributed around the space. The yells had fallen to whispers and, then, in the gloom, a tense silence.
“Jenny, give me a hand.”
The door weighed four hundred pounds. Sara and Jenny pulled it closed and turned the wheel to engage the bolts.
—
A quarter of Apgar’s men had taken up positions within five hundred yards of the gate; the rest were spread at regular intervals along the walls and connected by radio. Caleb was in charge of a squad of twelve men. Six of them had been stationed at Luckenbach—part of a small contingent who’d made it to a hardbox as the garrison was overrun. No officers had survived, orphaning them in the chain of command. Now they were Caleb’s.
A man came banging down the catwalk toward him. Hollis wore no uniform, but a standard-issue chest pack was cinched to his frame, holding half a dozen spare magazines and a long, sheathed knife. An M4 dangled from its sling across his broad frame, the muzzle pointed downward; a pistol was holstered to his thigh.
He gave a crisp salute. “Private Wilson, sir.”
It was absurd, Hollis speaking to him this way. He almost seemed like he was play-acting. “You’re kidding me.”
“The women and children are secure. I was told to report to you.”
His face was set in a way that Caleb had never seen before. This large, gentle man, collector of books and reader to children, had become a warrior.
“I made a promise, Lieutenant,” Hollis reminded him. “I believe you were there at the time.”
The spots came on, spilling a defensive perimeter of stark white light at the base of the wall. Radios began to crackle; a tremor of energy moved up and down the catwalk.
A call went out: “Eyes up!”
The clack of chambering rounds. Caleb pointed his rifle over the wall and flicked off the safety. He glanced to his right, where Hollis stood at the ready: feet wide, stock set, eyes trained down the barrel in perfect alignment. His body was somehow both tense and relaxed, purposeful and at ease with itself. It had the look of an old feeling stitched to the bones, summoned effortlessly to the surface when called upon.
Where would the virals come from? How many would there be? His chest was opening and closing arrhythmically; his vision seemed unnaturally confined. He forced himself to take a long, deep breath. Don’t think, he told himself. There are times for thinking, but this isn’t one of them.
A glowing point appeared in the distance, straight north. Adrenaline hit his heart; he hardened the stock against his shoulder. The light began to bob, then to separate like a dividing cell. Not virals: headlights.
“Contact!” a voice yelled. “Thirty degrees right! Two hundred yards!”
“Contact! Twenty left!”
For the first time in over two decades, the horn began to wail.
—
Greer shoved the accelerator to the floor. The speedometer leapt, the fields flying past in a blur, the engine roaring, the frame of the truck shuddering.
“They’re dead behind us!” Michael yelled.
Peter swiveled in his seat. Points of light were rising from the fields.
“Look out!” Greer yelled.
Peter turned around in time to see three virals leap into the headlights. Greer took aim and sliced through the pod. As bodies barreled over the hood, Peter slammed forward and bounced back into his seat. When he looked again, a single viral was clinging to the hood of the truck.