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Michael pointed the shotgun over the dash and fired.
The glass exploded. Greer swerved to the left; Peter was thrown against the door, Amy on top of him. They were barreling through a bean field, moving laterally to the gate. Greer swerved the opposite way; the chassis tipped to the left, threatened to roll; then the wheels slammed down. Greer crested a rise and the truck went briefly airborne before spinning back onto the road. An ominous clunk from below; they began to decelerate.
Peter yelled to Greer, “What’s wrong?”
Smoke was pouring from the grille; the engine roared pointlessly. “We must have hit something—the transmission’s blown. On your right!”
Peter turned, took the viral in his sights, and squeezed the trigger, missing cleanly. Again and again he fired. He had no idea if he was hitting anything. The slide locked back; the magazine was empty. The lighted perimeter was still a hundred yards away.
“I’m out!” Michael yelled.
As the truck floated to a halt, flares arced from the catwalk, dragging contrails of light and smoke above their heads. Peter turned to Amy. She was slumped against the door, the pistol, unfired, dangling in her hand.
“Greer,” Peter said, “help me.”
He pulled her from the cab. Her motions were as heavy and loose as a sleepwalker’s. The flares began their lazy, flickering descents. As Amy’s legs unfolded from the truck, Greer stepped around the front of the vehicle, shoving fresh shells into the shotgun’s magazine. He slapped the gun into Peter’s hand and slid his right shoulder under Amy’s arm to take her weight.
“Cover us,” he said.
—
Caleb helplessly watched the truck’s approach. The virals were still well out of reach for even the luckiest shot. Up and down the wall, voices were yelling to hold fire, to wait until they were in range.
He saw the truck stop. Four figures emerged. At the rear of the group, one man turned and fired a shotgun into the heart of an approaching pod. One shot, two shots, three, flames blooming from the gun’s muzzle in the darkness.
Caleb knew that man to be his father.
He had stepped into the harness and clipped in before he was even aware he was doing it. The action was automatic; he had no plan, only instinct.
“Caleb, what the hell are you doing?”
Hollis was staring at him. Caleb hopped to the top of the rampart and turned his back toward the fields.
“Tell Apgar we’ll need a squad at the pedestrian portal. Go.”
Before Hollis could say anything else, Caleb pushed off. A long arc away from the wall and his boots touched concrete; he shoved himself away again. Two more pushes and he landed in the dirt. He unclipped and swung his rifle around.
His father was running with the others up the hill, just inside the lighted perimeter. Virals were massing at the edges. Some were covering their eyes; others had crouched into low, ball-like shapes. A moment’s hesitation, their instincts warring inside them. Would the lights be enough to hold them back?
The virals charged.
The machine guns opened up; Caleb ducked reflexively as bullets whizzed over his head, slicing into the creatures with a wet, slapping sound. Blood splashed; flesh was cleaved from bone; whole pieces of the virals’ bodies winged away. They seemed not merely to die but to disintegrate. The machine guns pounded, round after round. A slaughter, yet always there were more, surging into the lights.
“The portal!” Caleb called. He was running forward at a forty-five-degree angle to the wall, waving above his head. “Head for the portal!”
Caleb dropped to one knee and began to fire. Did his father see him? Did he know who he was? The bolt locked back; thirty rounds, gone in a heartbeat. He dropped the magazine, reached into his chest pack for a fresh one, and shoved it into the receiver.
Something crashed into him from behind. Breath, sight, thought: all left him. He felt himself sailing, almost hovering. This seemed extraordinary. In the midst of his flight, he had just enough time to marvel at the lightness of his body compared to other things. Then his body grew heavy again and he slammed into the ground. He was rolling down the incline, his rifle whipping around on its sling. He tried to control his body, its wild tumble down the hill. His hand found the lower unit of the rifle, but his index finger got tangled in the trigger guard. He rolled again, onto his chest, the rifle wedged between his body and the ground, and there was no stopping it; the gun went off.
Pain! He came to rest on his back, the rifle lying over his chest. Had he shot himself? The ground was spinning under him; it refused to be still. He blinked into the spotlights. He didn’t feel the way he imagined a shot person would. The pain was in two places: his chest, which had received the explosive force of the rifle’s firing, and a spot on his forehead, near the outer edge of his right eyebrow. He reached up, expecting blood; his fingers came away dry. He understood what had happened. The ejecting cartridge, ricocheting off the ground, had pinged upward into his face, narrowly missing his eye. You are fucking lucky, Caleb Jaxon, he thought. I really hope nobody saw that.
