Michael and Greer picked up the first survivors north of Rosenberg, a group of three soldiers—stunned, starving, their carbines and pistols drained. The virals had attacked the barracks two nights ago, they said, tearing through the place like a tornado, destroying everything, vehicles and equipment, the generator and radio, ripping the roofs off the Quonsets like they were opening tins of meat.
There were others. A woman, one of Dunk’s girls, with black hair streaked white, walking barefoot along the roadway with her tippy shoes dangling from her fingertips and a story about hiding in a pump house. A pair of men from one of the telegraph crews. An oiler named Winch—Michael recalled him from the old days—sitting cross-legged by the side of the road, carving meaningless shapes in the ground with a six-inch knife and babbling incoherently. His face was chalky with dust, his coveralls black with dried blood, though it was not his own. All took their places in the back of the truck in stunned silence, not even asking where they were going.
“These are the luckiest people on the planet,” Michael said, “and they don’t even know it.”
Greer watched the landscape flow past, dry scrub yielding to the dense tangle of the coastal shelf. The intensity of the last twenty-four hours had kept the pain at bay, but now, in the unstructured silence of his thoughts, it roared back. An omnipresent, low-grade urge to vomit tossed his gut; his saliva was thick and brassy-tasting; his bladder pulsed with unexpressed fullness, febrile and enormous. When they’d stopped to pick up the woman, Greer had stepped into the scrub with the hope of passing water, but all he’d managed to produce was a pathetic crimson-tinted trickle.
South of Rosenberg, they swung east toward the ship channel. Muddy water sprayed up behind them; each bang of the truck’s carriage on the gullied roadway threw fresh punches of pain. Greer wanted a drink of water very badly, if only to clear the taste in his mouth, but when Michael drew his canteen from under his seat, took a long pull, and offered it to him, all the while staring out the windshield, Greer waved it off. From Michael, a sideways glance—You’re sure?—and for that moment the man seemed to know something, or at least suspect. But when Greer said nothing, Michael wedged the canteen between his knees and capped it with a shrug.
The air in the truck changed, and then the sky; they were approaching the channel.
“For fucksakes, I only just came from here,” said the woman.
Five more miles and the causeway appeared. Patch and his men were waiting at the bottleneck. Barriers of razor wire had been laid across it. As the truck drew to a halt, Patch stepped up to the driver’s window.
“Didn’t expect you back so soon.”
“What has Lore told you?” Michael asked.
“Just the bad parts. No sign of them here, though.” Then, glancing into the back of the vehicle, “I see you’ve brought some friends.”
“Where is she?”
“The ship, I guess. Rand says she’s driving everybody crazy down there.”
Michael turned toward their passengers. “You three,” he said to the soldiers, “get out.”
They were looking around with bewilderment. “What do you want us to do?” one asked—the highest-ranking among them, a corporal with eyes empty as a cow’s and the soft, baby-fatted face of a fifteen-year-old.
“I don’t know,” Michael said dryly, “be soldiers? Shoot at things?”
“I told you, we haven’t got any ammo.”
“Patch?”
The man nodded. “I’ll fix them up.”
“This is Patch,” Michael said to the three. “He’s your new CO.”
They looked blankly at one another. “Aren’t you guys, like, criminals?” the one said.
“Right now, do you honestly give a damn?”
“Come on now,” Patch cut in, “be good fellows and do like the man says.”
Looking askance at one another, the soldiers disembarked. Once Patch and the others had pulled the barrier aside, Michael gunned the engine and roared down the causeway. Rand met them at the shed, shirtless and sweating, a greasy rag knotted around his head.
“What’s our status?” Michael asked, stepping down. “Have you flooded the dock?”
“There’s a problem. Lore found another bad section. There are soft spots all through it.”
“Where?”
“Starboard bow.”
“Fuck.” Michael gestured toward their remaining passengers, who were standing in a group, staring with befuddlement. “Figure out what to do with these people.”
“Where’d you get them?”
“Found them on the way.”
“Isn’t that Winch?” Rand asked. The man was muttering into his collar. “What the hell happened to him?”
“Whatever it was, it wasn’t nice,” Michael answered.
Rand’s eyes darkened. “Is it true about the townships? That they’re all gone?”
Michael nodded. “Yeah, looks like we’re it.”
Greer interrupted: “Michael, I think we need to take extra men up to the causeway. It’ll be dark in a few hours.”
“Rand, how about it?”
“I guess we can spare a few. Lombardi and those other guys.”
“You two,” Rand said to the telegraph men, “come with me. And you,” he said to the woman, “what can you do?”
She arched her eyebrows.
“Besides that, I mean.”
She thought for a moment. “Cook a little?”
“A little’s better than what we’ve got. You’re hired.”
Michael strode down the ramp to the ship. A crane with a sling had been moved into place on the dock, near the bow, where six men in bosun’s chairs hung over the side. At the far end of the weir, men in welding masks and heavy gloves were using circular saws to cut the replacement from a larger plate, sparks jetting from their blades.
Lore, standing at the rail, saw him and came down. “Sorry, Michael.” She was practically yelling to make herself heard over the whine of the saws. “The timing isn’t great, I know.”
“What the hell, Lore?”
“Did you want her to sink? Because she would have. I’m not the one who missed it. You should be thanking me.”
This was more than a delay; it was a catastrophe. Until the hull was tight, they couldn’t flood the dock; until they flooded the dock, they couldn’t fire the engines. Just flooding the dock would take an additional six hours. “How long do you figure to replace it?” he asked.
“To cut the plates, pull out the old ones, lower them into place, rivet, and weld, I’d say sixteen hours, minimum.”
There was no reason to question her; it wasn’t something that could be rushed. He turned on his heels and headed down the dock.
“Where are you going?” Lore called after him.
“To cut some fucking steel.”