Title

Derrick Adisa and Jay Bradford had already gotten up and headed down to breakfast with Ricky. Papp was still sleeping, having helped the previous night when one of the tent posts snapped.

Reagan himself had been awake for over an hour, after another nightmare of the hospital getting hit, he and the fighters trying to hold The Dragon and its creations off long enough for Mary and the others to escape. Men had dropped all around him, but nothing slowing those creatures down. Derrick had lost his courage and ran, and Reagan and Ricky sprinted after him, the two of them stumbling over the bodies of their friends, every doorway cut off by another of the monsters.

He glanced around the room. He’d shoved his air mattress up against the wall, under the window, shading him from the morning light. Strong winds blew through the empty window frame, wiggling the clothes and bedding that four grown men and one little boy had left scattered over the room.

When he didn’t open his eyes, Krissy dropped her dog on him, and Keebs went immediately to work on his face.

“Dr. Thorpe wants to talk to you.” Her shirt was black with sequins, her bottoms jean shorts. She’d spent time on her hair. Krissy Stratton was no longer self-conscious about her scar—Reagan wouldn’t tell her, but he actually liked it. A two-pronged fork of smooth white skin started right below the eye and traveled down the cheek, breaking up the naive symmetry of her features. She looked strong now. Her old expressions of superiority—such as the one on her face just then—now looked like a tough girl’s displeasure: Get your ass in gear, soldier.

Krissy had painstakingly cut her dog’s hair down to the size of a beagle’s. With a white body and brown face, except for a stripe of white running down its nose, Keebs always looked to be smiling.

Keebs leaned up against his left leg and stretched out the way she often did, natural selection turned for cuteness and shows of affection.

“No, he’s going to want me to take him to the battle,” said Reagan, taking swim trunks from his side of the chair. “Do you mind?”

“Yeah, I do. It’s after eight o’clock. The Republic could start out at any minute.”

At that moment, Ricky appeared in the doorway, took one look at Reagan naked, Krissy appraising him with her arms folded, and turned mechanically, going back the way he came.

“Trust me, the last bureaucracy on the island won’t head out anytime soon,” said Reagan, pulling up his swim trunks. “First, they’ve got to form the committee to decide when to start.”

“It wouldn’t be the worst idea you’ve ever had.” Reagan buttoned his shirt and tucked it into his khaki shorts. Then he clipped in his holster and began to stretch on the uncluttered patch of floor by the bathroom.

“No, because the last time we did a head count, we were down to seventeen commandos and orderlies who could still fight. Total. Lose me and it’s sixteen. We can’t afford to throw anyone away at this point.”

“Sure he will. He’s got to keep an eye on you if he ever wants to get himself some Krissy Stratton, doesn’t he?”

Finally, Krissy shook her head and said, “Don’t expect me to act sad or anything.”

“You know what’s funny is that, according to Facebook, we’re still in a relationship.”

It took her a moment to think of a barb, and before she could let it fly, Reagan got up, headed for the door, and placed a finger over her lips, “No, no, like this....” He went back into the room for his shoes and said, “You know all the stuff I kept bringing in on my own, and everyone kept getting mad that I was making runs by myself, and asking how I kept pulling it off?”

“I wasn’t going over to Key West like I said. I hit a bunch of stores our first night on the island, stuffed it all in some garbage bags, and hid it all in some of the sand traps on the golf course. There are still a few things out there. The Rickster has a map.”

“Speaking of The Rickster, would you mind keeping an eye on him while we’re gone? This day would be even more depressing if we get out there and find him hiding in the trunk of our car.”

As she shook her head and moved to leave, Papp sat up, now awake. “Don’t let Thorpe get you killed.”

“Promise. Only Krissy can get me killed,” he said loudly in the direction of the footsteps down the hall.

“Hang on. Gun... check. Gloves... check. Colostomy bag in case Mr. Gray gets a hold of me... check.”

Papp shook his head. “How do you do it? You and the jokes. I wish I could. All I can think about now is maybe I should be the one that drives the truck.”

“Well,” Reagan said with a single sniff. “Maybe after today, no one will have to drive it.”

Reagan Castaneda and the man known to the hospital survivors as Dr. Thorpe, dressed just as he’d been dressed two days before, walked out into the circle drive. Reagan held his shoes in his hand as they went past the freshly splinted tent post, past the beds and everyone too sick or too hurt to make it to the cafeteria for another of Mary Stratton’s breakfast specials, past the lines of laundry, and even the waste holes and the line of cars, out nearly to the fence. Reagan stopped in front of a bright yellow sports car.

Reagan whistled, out a breath. “I’ve never driven a Corvette before. What do you say?”

He drove them to the gate, and once the guards silently rolled the two pickups that formed the gate out of the way, they parked on the street not more than thirty feet outside the car wall. Reagan rolled down the windows, and the passenger compartment instantly became a wind tunnel.

“You’ll want to be able to hear what’s going on,” he said. “Trust me.”

Thorpe, his real name of Haney known only to Reagan, stared at him for a long moment. “Are you going to put on your shoes?”

Thorpe looked away. “Take a bit of advice from someone who has done this a time or two. It sounds all Buddhist, but trust me, it helps. You’re thinking about the fight. Don’t think about the fight. The fight will only last a few minutes. Don’t think about the few minutes. Think about something good you’re going to do after. Then just think about what it’s going to take to get there. Think of it like a game. Think competitive and how you’re not going to let these assholes keep you from getting the win.”

“He held one guy down and killed him by squirting wasp spray up his nose. He killed another with a big-ass syringe loaded with sea water or some shit.”

“Okay,” Thorpe said, nodding, “That’s fucked up, I admit, but combat is combat, kiddo. Whether it’s a syringe or a Taliban sawing through your neck, it’s all the same at the end.”

Thorpe glanced all around. “What do you think is happening on the other side of the island?”

Reagan shrugged. “If Needle-Dick over at the Republic confine holds true to character, then he’s checking and rechecking some overly complicated plan that’s about to turn into a shit show.”

Thorpe shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense. If they have armored vehicles, they should just spread out, form three or four separate convoys—north, south, middle. How are nine guys and one heavy gun going to stop all that?”

“The Dragon is the biggest problem by far, but not the only one. Needle-Dick is a bastard, but he’s not stupid.” Reagan nodded to the west. “He’s only got two ways to go, and one of them means fighting the squatters in New Town. No... he’s going to push south. It’s mostly open on that side, and your air cover should have a nice clean shot unless The Dragon and his boys wiped out the entire Sheraton Confine and set up in there. Nah... I think we would have heard that. Don’t you get any intel on that phone of yours?”

Thorpe snorted. “Kid, I’d never even heard of a confine before I met you people. They showed me a couple hours of aerial footage, with heat signatures running around like ants. A couple of them were strange. You’d see one close on another, then throw it twenty feet through the air. But no, I don’t know anything about Protest City.”

“They’ve been quiet for awhile,” said Reagan, reflectively. “I wish I knew why.”

“We’re focusing on getting through today. Remember? Tell me something useful about his men.”

Reagan pushed back in his seat and stretched his shoulders. “All of them have weapons, but only Razor is any good with his. It looks like one of those oversized swords, if you’ve ever seen one of those funky Japanese cartoons. I think it used to be propeller blade. They like to go hands on. With all that adrenaline running through them, they just want to tear into you, but the smaller ones aren’t that dangerous throwing punches. They’re all strong, but the little guys can’t get enough weight behind their blows. Don’t let any of them grab you, though, big or small. If they do, you have maybe a couple seconds. Their grip just gets tighter and tighter and then it’s all over. If Colossus hits you, you’re dead.”

“Minivan. He turned it over on its side while one of our people was using it for cover.”

“The last time I saw him, he had bits of skin falling off every time he moved. Not fun to look at.”

“All those pictures looked like they were taken at night. How’d you guys get ’em?”

“A couple kids over at the DoubleTree hotel rigged up a security camera. Battery powered. You can carry it. They gave it to us, and one of our people got the shots over a period of a few days.”

Thorpe reached into his belt and pulled out a gun that looked like something out of a science fiction flick.

“The gun is nice,” said Thorpe, “but it’s the bullets that are supposed to be special. They’re loaded with a nerve toxin. The guy at HQ told me that unless these dudes have some radical difference in their basic biology, it should drop them in a matter of seconds.”

“Huh.” Reagan considered it. “Okay, might be worth a try. Better than what we had planned.”

“No. We loaded two hundred pounds of fertilizer into the back and turned the whole thing into a giant bomb.”

Reagan shrugged. “When Doc White said we’ve tried everything, he meant it. We’ve tried everything.”

It took the better part of the morning to get our sick stowed away in the van and settled for the trip. Kimmie Bartlett threw up and we had to clean it out and try again. I got away for a few minutes on the beach—just a few minutes alone with my Angie. I won’t say what we said to each other. It’s personal—father and daughter—because I had a feeling that I’d never see her again. If something happened to me, what would that mean for her?

I don’t remember most of the speech I gave, just a few choice lines that I thought up the night before instead of sleeping, a little cop-speak for old times’ sake. I think I quoted Vince Lombardi at one point. My one inspiration was the very last.

I took everybody to the back of the van, to the six jaundiced bodies looking up at us. I said to the six of them, “Now I want you all to try and lie still. It might get loud. Don’t worry. We’re going to do everything possible. We’re going to give this everything we’ve got.”

Then I looked around at the others and they all nodded and each of them added a few well-wishes of their own.

We only had three long guns to go around, two rifles and a twelve-gauge. The deputy riding with Vic Wallace had one of the rifles. The other and the shotgun were in the back of the BearCat with that thing. It took forever to get her tied up and secured in the rear of the Cat. No one wanted to touch her. The Cat’s open to the back, so we wouldn’t have had any peace if we hadn’t gagged her. Even with the cloth in her mouth, she kept making these sounds, taunting the two deputies.

At the sound of first explosion, Wisdom asked if I wanted him to say a prayer. He was a good catholic once, so I figured it couldn’t hurt.

Strange as it sounds, I said, “Amen,” and meant it with every ounce of my soul. For four months, I could never shake the feeling that the all-powerful United States Military was watched all this like a football game—frustrating, infuriating—but I always had the sense they could have squashed it anytime they wanted. Right then, it was clear: they wanted this.

Tisdale could have cobbled together some sort of armored barge or something—I don’t know... something to get us over there. He didn’t want that. I think he wanted us to get attacked. Maybe he thought he could kill them all, at least get some decent video.

While I sat behind the wheel of the SWAT truck, the phone rang. It wasn’t Tisdale. It wasn’t even Throat. It was a something-or-other Murphy from the Admiral’s general staff, there to relay info while everyone else watched us from their TV screens.

“That’s not helpful.” He talked us through the air strikes right up until they were over—two Cobra helicopters flying loops overhead—and then his voice tensed and climbed a couple octaves as he said, “Captain, whenever you’re ready.”

Koz and Santiago led us out in the squad, and the van was snuggled up in the middle. It felt as though we were hardly moving, but when we turned onto United, the wheels screeched. If you haven’t seen a picture of Old Town, the visual is hard to describe. It’s not like the damage after a storm or old footage from World War II-era Berlin. Most of the window tarps hung frayed, flapping like hundreds of big streamers if there’s a stiff breeze, as on that day. Most days, birds fly out of our way from the trees and roof tops and right out of the God damned street, but today, with the bombing, all was just smoke, and the vines were so overgrown, the birds just bounced in the middle of the road. Every few structures we came to, one or two were burned up, a few of them down to the foundation. Litter lay scattered about everywhere, but you couldn’t tell what most of it was anymore. After a summer outside and a few good rain storms, it all turned brownish gray. A lot of the debris, even if it was wood or plastic, looked like a pile of moldy old rags. It all kind of looked like cigarette ashes left in the bottom of a giant ashtray.

Hutchins is a fool to think they’ll ever rebuild. Everything outside the confines looks like radiation took it.

We took the turn onto Atlantic so hard that, for a second, we leaned on two wheels. People poked their heads up from the White Street Pier shanty town, like a pack of prairie dogs scoping out danger. The two choppers scouted ahead while the BearCat took the lead. We made it a couple of blocks, took the hard right onto Bertha, and the left at the abandoned hotels where the street turns into S. Roosevelt. The other two slowed and the BearCat moved front, accelerating for the barricade punch.

Wisdom screeched the breaks and the other two vehicles hit theirs. We strained to see either chopper, but they were both out of view. I could hear Murphy breathing into the phone while in the background someone said, “Sounds like you said... the road is out. Can you confirm?”

We were only a couple of hundred feet from the dogleg back at Bertha. Make it back and we had options, north or west, or maybe take cover in either of the hotels. We never made it back.

The movement caught our attention in front. Wisdom and I cursed while one of the choppers, spinning circles and smoke streaming off its tailfin, crashed into the waters off Smather’s Beach. We couldn’t see the other one.

I kept yelling into the mic, shouting for the others to get turned around. Then Wisdom’s breath caught in his throat so loud that, for a split second, I thought our captive had broken free and started choking him. He was gaping at the side mirror, so I looked over at mine.

Wisdom fumbled for the stick shift as I stared at the truck. I could see the driver—Gollum, the one with the goggles and the bomber jacket that always looked like a World War I fighter pilot. In seconds, he would collide with the squad and drive it right into the sick-van.

I crossed my arms, and the impact threw me against the headrest. I heard both deputies hit the back door. Whiplash had me stunned. Our motion stopped, and the thing in Eve’s body howled as if it were on a roller coaster, thrilling at the drop.

Wisdom strained as he pushed his foot against the pedal, and the screeching vibrated through my skin. The forward view curved into an image of the retaining wall separating the street from the salt ponds. Another second, and we were sideways, and then came another sound. Hydraulics.

Wisdom slipped on the stick, so I grabbed at it, and we fumbled it back into drive. He stepped on the pedal, but it was no use.

I flicked off my belt, stood up on the seat, and jumped over the back into the rear compartment. Both the deputies lay sprawled on the floor, one holding his head in pain. I reached for him, and he tried to grip my arm so that I could pull him up. I knocked it away, reached for the rifle under his legs, and tore it free. Then I grabbed the latch for the turret and popped it.

For a second, my eyes met the Eve-thing’s. It smiled and bit down into the cloth in its mouth.

I had to pull myself with one arm, but fear-pumping adrenaline made it simple. I came out of the turret, braced my legs in the hatch and, face to grinning face with Gollum and those crazed, stained lips, I emptied the clip. Gollum disappeared behind webbed glass showered with red.

There it was, the cloth gone—completely gone. It looked at me and gave a shrug, its hands still behind its back.

I froze, wondering for a half-second what to do. Then we got our wheels under us.

Reagan stopped the Corvette on west side of the Cow Channel Bridge. He and Thorpe could hear gunfire and see the smoke rising from the south side of the Island. Thorpe’s phone came alive with the sounds of battle-talk.

Radio: “Bird Three is down! Bird Three is down!”

Radio: “Alpha Foxtrot, do you have visual?”

Radio: “We’re taking fire! Bearing mark 42.1—”

Radio: “Bird One, engage the bogie!”

Radio: “—clear shot! Bogie has contacted Unit Black. Repeat, we do not have a clear shot!”

Thorpe held calm. “You want to believe these things are smart, right? Okay. What’s around the convoy right now?”

Radio: “—target on top of the western-most hanger. It’s jumping off.”

“So do the jets that are about to show up. If you’re wrong, the fighters are about to blow these things to bits. If you’re right... then this isn’t the real move.

Radio: “East end of the runway. Eight... count... eight targets approaching from the east.”

Radio: “Units Blue, White, and Black are all leaving the road. Repeat, units Blue, White, and Black are all leaving the road!”

Radio: “—I have eight subjects that appear to be engaging a single bogie on the runway. I repeat... an explosion. One of them threw something!”

Radio: “Movement. I have one leaving cover.”

Radio: “Two bogies. Repeat, two bogies coming out of the water.”

I’m seeing... I’m seeing. They appear to be converging on the runway... surrounding the new threat.

“I don’t know,” Reagan said, panicked. “They’re good with stuff, like the camera, but... but.”

We were farther up, near the road. A pair of jets passed overhead, and I started in on Murphy again. “We need that strike! Where is our fucking strike!”

The garbage truck still hadn’t moved, but I knew better than to count it out. We’d given them the space they were yelling for, about eighty yards of it, right up near the car-blockade and the Sheraton Confine. We were off the road so they had a clean shot.

“Boss.” Wisdom’s voice was low and serious. “Boss.” He’d opened his door and was looking out.

I couldn’t see except that his side mirror gave me a little portrait of the garbage truck. Someone walked next to it. “Gollum?”

“No,” he said like a death sentence. “This one got out of the back. I don’t recognize him.”

“A new one,” the Eve-thing gasped with mock excitement. “Let’s give him a name.”

I jumped out on my side. The van was still kicking up sand where it had gone too far off the road. I could see the thing now.

The truck sat in the middle of the street, canted north from the collision. This one stood at the back, dressed all like a trash guy, putting on a pair of work gloves, reaching back into the truck for something. Then he took a step back.

Something... someone... crashed into him, but he didn’t budge. He was bigger and way heavier. I could see some skinny guy with stringy hair, an obvious One. It was hungry, but it never got to take a bite out of this one. The Two slammed its head against the side of the truck and just stood there for a second, gouging its eyes, but I was too far away to see the pop. The Two let it go and the body fell like an empty suit.

Eve was still yelling, still taunting. “Can we go for irony on this one? I’m bored with all the tired old metaphors. He’s big, so we call him Colossus. We think he’s the only one who can hold his breath, so we call him Salamander.”

The deputies climbed out through the back. The one with the empty rifle had a dagger on his hip, but held the rifle by the barrel and the stock, clearly meaning to use it as a club.

By then I could see what the Two was pulling out of the back of the garbage truck.

Vera held Thyroid under the shoulders and dragged him backwards. Her legs threatened to buckle under the weight.

They were gone—all gone. A helicopter had just crashed on the runway, its propeller still flapping uselessly until it skidded into the side of one of the buildings and snapped off. Shawn and Billy had run to intercept the two coming out of the water. Face had thrown a bomb at the pickup and they had all run for cover. The burned one came out of the hanger and the dogs charged, and Face turned on his flamethrower, and for a second they had a wall of flame protecting them and the big one screaming bloody murder, but then the tank exploded, the big tank on Face’s back—he had to be dead—and everything was noise and pain and debris and metal clanging against metal. Defiance.

“Hunter,” she screamed, and lost her grip, dropping Thyroid on the tarmac at the front of another one of the little hangers. She couldn’t see far down the runway from the wreckage of the truck and all the fire. She spun toward the hanger, where a single prop plane sat in the middle. No one had jumped out... so far. “Hunter!” Her voice had gone shrill. “Hunter!”

She tried to get her hands under Thyroid’s bulk and lifted. Nothing. She wondered how she’d ever gotten him up in the first place. The right side of his head was matted with blood. She tried again, harder.

“Chris... Chris,” she said. “You have to help me. Do you hear me? You have to help me. I can’t do this alone.”

In her mind, they were all closing in on her—every single one. She lifted and screamed and felt like her spine would snap, but then she stood, Thyroid in her arms, and shuffled backwards as quickly as she could, back into the recesses of the mercifully empty hanger.

When she set him down under one of the plane’s wings, she called his name more softly and felt for a pulse. She couldn’t feel anything. Then his lips moved, as if he were trying to work up spittle in his mouth.

Movement at the edge of her vision caused her to look up. Maximus stood in the entrance, by himself, panting but not moving. She called out, and he padded toward her, limping. She could see his singed fur over his rump and down his left side.

He stopped in front of her, not moving. For long seconds he held still, and the sobbing girl looked into his eyes and understood. She understood just as if he had spoken the words. He stepped beside where she sat holding Thyroid’s unconscious head, and licked her cheek... once. Then he met her eyes again.

He turned then, leaving the crying girl and the unconscious boy, and limped back to the hanger entrance and set off in the direction of something approaching from outside.

Then, with the girl he loved at his back, Maximus rolled his shoulders forward, bared his teeth, and let out a fearsome growl.

Thorpe braced as the Corvette exploded onto the runway, kicking up dirt and rocks from the parking lot curb. In front of the two men, everything was wreckage and fire. The tiny airfield only had two strips, separated by a hundred and fifty feet or so of grass. One of the SuperCobras had ended up on its side, its propeller snapped off, up against one out of a line of hangers. The terminal to their left appeared undamaged. The main battle had taken place on the runway.

Reagan gunned it. “All right, Thorpe,” he said, over the sound of the motor. “End of the road.”

“The one we’re about to hit,” said Reagan as they shot past the burning wreck of a pickup, “is Razor.”

Thorpe only saw him for an instant—long black hair, eye makeup, strikingly clean shaven, wearing a red vest of some sort over a skin-colored shirt. The piece of metal in its hands could not have weighed less than twenty pounds. He had just enough time to twist his body away from someone he’d been fighting, and jump. The bumper caught his legs and sent him forward as he swung.

The enormous blade embedded itself in the windshield, and they slid sideways. Above the screeching of the tires, Thorpe heard the body thump into the car and fall off. They stopped, and he could see nothing out of the front.

The one that had nearly been hit by the car held a riot shield and a baseball bat. He crouched next to a burning pile of rags that Thorpe realized was a body. The one called Razor, just thrown off a speeding car onto cement, was already standing back up. In the other direction, he could see the one called Lucifer, holding some sort of club, with a low-cut V-neck that showed thick chest hair and a maniacal grin. Much farther away, in front of one of the hangers, he could see the burned one, Colossus, holding the .50-caliber machine gun—and its stand—in its arms.

Thorpe emptied his thoughts, drew the FN 5.7 with the laser sight from his holster, and dropped down onto his right knee, his left forward so far that it looked as though he were airborne, suspended above a hurdle at a track event. His arms locked out like steel pistons and he fired from left to right—two to the chest, one to the head of Razor; two to the chest, one severing the right ear of Lucifer. He then paused to gain his sight picture, adjusted for the distance, and put seven rounds into the midsection of Colossus. He then dropped his clip and popped in another.

Lucifer had dropped to his knees, holding his chest, blood dripping out of the missing ear.

Two of them jumped the retaining wall. We had heard them splashing, one man and one woman—both soaking wet, both out of their heads, both coming at us.

Wisdom dropped them, using nearly an entire mag to get them both on the ground, while yelling at the deputy with the shotgun to hold fire. We were going to need those slugs.

I couldn’t see the guy with the chains, but I knew what he was doing: he was preparing to charge.

I knew most of the action had shifted somewhere else, so I ran over to the van, using the reprieve to get it back in play. We couldn’t go east, which meant we had to get back around the garbage truck and the Twos.

Wallace and I didn’t say anything to each other. No time. Even without Chain-Boy, we’d have more Ones on us any second. We gave each other a look and ran to the back. He threw open the doors and we both started pulling Kevlar off the crying, sick patients. We were still wedging them under the back tires when Wisdom shouted. I thought our guy had started to charge. I was wrong. It was worse.

When I made it back to the ‘Cat, I saw the garbage truck moving, thick black smoke coming out of its overhead exhaust pipes, the front grill hanging off and dragging on the pavement. The guy with the chains hung onto the back. Gollum was still alive, and driving.

“I’ve got it,” the Eve-thing shouted. “Let’s call him Mr. Clean.” She laughed.

He said something, but the idiot with the shotgun fired and I couldn’t hear. Fifty yards. Forty. I kept yelling for him to repeat. Finally, I heard him.

I dove for the deputy with the empty rifle as the missile whooshed in. The front end exploded and I was thrown back, mid dive. It knocked all of us over. The front end of the garbage truck vanished—just pieces of the motor and tires, part of one on fire, the flame appearing and disappearing with every turn of the wheel. The wreckage rolled straight at us, then turned and went off the road, maybe fifty feet down the beach, and finally got stuck in the sand just before the water.

“We got one,” the deputy with the shotgun muttered from his back. “We got one.”

From Eve-thing’s reaction, I figured it was true. I jumped up into the back of the ‘Cat and got in her face. I shouldn’t have, but she was so far under my skin that I wasn’t thinking clearly. Right in front of her nose, I yelled at her about how it felt.

All of the sudden, she stopped screaming, opened her eyes and said, “Oh, I’m not mourning him.” Her face got all pouty. “I’m sad for you, Perry.”

Mr. Clean had jumped out the back, and now charged straight at us, chains wrapped all up his arms, about five feet of it, with some sort of weight dangling from both ends.

“Aw, sweet puppy,” said the one with the thick beard, dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt. It made a clicking sound with its mouth and held out its hand. This one had no visible sign of infection.

Maximus was not fooled. He lunged and locked his teeth into the thing’s arm, and then pulled it to the ground. The thing tried to pull him into a bear hug, but Maximus had gone utterly wild, jerking his body as it moved up the thing’s head and began to savage its face.

Vera, knowing Maximus wouldn’t last long, grabbed the knife out of her boot holster. Something latched onto her wrist.

Thyroid, looking straight at her, blood all down his face, began to pry the knife out of her hands.

The thing with the beard shot upward onto its feet, pulled Maximus off its face, and threw the dog, slamming his body against the wall just inside the entrance to the hanger. Maximus lay motionless on the ground.

“Look what you did to my face,” the thing screamed, a flap of cheek hanging loose. “My beautiful face.”

Vera looked all around for anything she might use as a weapon, but Thyroid had stopped. For a moment Vera thought he wouldn’t make it another step. Then she realized that the thing wasn’t moving either. The two of them simply stared at one another. Seconds passed, and for a wild moment, everything stopped, as if some sort of contest were taking place. She couldn’t make sense of it.

Finally, Thyroid moved, and pointed at it, his finger held still. “You... whatever you are... in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of him. Do it! Do it now.”

The thing’s eyes narrowed, its chin dropped, and it shook its head. “Sorry, kiddo, it doesn’t work like that.”

Thyroid lowered his arm uncertainly and turned. “Vera?” His expression was grave. “Tell Hunter... they’re not just infected. They aren’t human anymore. This must have been what Granny tried to tell us.”

The thing surged forward and caught Thyroid just as he was turning back. They rolled together on the ground.

Vera ran. Out of corner of her eye she saw Maximus, now back up, closing as well. They arrived at the same time, Maximus tearing into its shoulder, Vera raking her nails across its eyes.

It knocked her off and reached again for her dog. Then it stood straight up, and Maximus fell and went for a leg. Vera could only see it from the side, standing over Thyroid, straddling the boy, and it reached for its beard, ignoring the dog tearing at its legs. It staggered off of Thyroid, and Vera realized what was happening. She got back her feet and ran straight at him. Right as she made contact, she wound up with her right arm and slapped, straight up, with all her strength. Behind the beard her palm contacted the hilt of her dagger, where Thyroid had lodged it up under his chin.

Its head jerked, and the thing tottered backwards. For a moment, it managed to straighten and look straight at her, and Maximus let go of its leg. He backed up and tried to open its lips, but the dagger, now driven through the roof of its mouth, held it shut. Its eyes rolled back.

At the very moment it fell to the ground, Maximus yelped as if something had startled it from behind.

Lindsey MC was not good at war. When the monsters had attacked and Face turned on his flamethrower, she’d left her position on the flank. It looked so cool. Out from the side, she could see how far the jet of flame traveled, but standing behind him, it just looked like a blossom that stopped right in front of his hose. She’d laughed to herself and was looking for someone to share this with when the tank exploded.

When she regained consciousness, Mr. Gray, wearing a Nixon mask, had begun to rape her. They were in one of the hangers, in the backseat of some weird-looking truck, and he’d taken her pants off.

Lindsey MC was not good at hand to hand combat either. She squirmed and kicked, and tried a head butt when he came close, but he beat her bloody. He held her wrists down and leered over her while she grew weaker and weaker. She even tried to knee him in the back, but it was useless. He straddled her waist in the padded bench seat covered with a plastic tarp, and choked her nearly unconscious. Again and again, he did this, laughing as her vision faded, each time stopping in the moment before it all went black, while the bullets cracked outside and an explosion shook the truck.

Unfortunately for the entity called Mr. Gray, Lindsey MC was particularly good at one thing, and that one thing was murder. She had a natural aptitude that she might never have discovered if it had not been for the outbreak and for the Wharf Rats. And, as with most natural aptitudes, the utilization of this gift gave her great pleasure.

Mr. Gray realized this as he thrust himself inside of her and noticed her grinning up at him. But by then it was too late, because by then he’d already made forceful contact with Lindsey MC’s diaphragm and the stainless-steel razor blade embedded in its center. And even though pain was not its master, it shivered and lost its grip on the girl’s arms.

She jumped up and, with one hand, roughly pulled down its gray hood. Before it could properly react, she used both her hands to do something right below the level of its mask. When it did look down, it became aware that she’d taken her watch off and was twisting it, right below his chin, over and over.

The thing’s body could not distinguish this new pain. It never realized that a piano wire was being tightened around its neck.

Lindsey MC was a natural, and the wire was not digging into the back of its vertebrae. It was between them, digging down into the spinal cord itself, and as it became paralyzed, its blood soaking its clothes, the seat, and the girl, it could only gaze into the eyes of Lindsey MC’s and listen to her sharp laughter.

I never should have given that idiot the shotgun. He missed every damn shot and was trying to get another in the pipe when it hit us. Me, Wisdom, and Santiago, coming around the street side, had all scored hits, but nothing to the face. It ran with its arms in front of its face. One of the shots actually ricocheted off of the arm chains.

I saw the weights as it swung. One was spiked. The other had a kind of saw blade welded on the top of the ball, like a Mohawk on a little metal head. The thing flailed. It killed the rifle deputy instantly. The saw-ball caught Wisdom on top of a shoulder and put him on the ground.

It had shortened up on the spike ball and just repeatedly slammed it down on the other deputy. Smash, smash, smash.

I wasn’t but a few feet away, in the back of the truck, gun even with his face. I went for an eye, caught it on the forehead, at the hairline. Then my slide locked back—totally out.

Eve-thing sighed, as if we were at the carnival and I had just missed the prize.

The thing looked up at me, one arm still out to the side where the chain connected to my friend’s shoulder.

I charged. He was big, but I knocked him off his feet and shimmied up his body so the vest was pushing down on his face and he couldn’t bite me. I pulled out my knife and started ramming it into the top of his head, over and over. The hit must have pulled the ball loose, because he had both arms free. He grabbed me around the waist, and though he only squeezed for a second, I felt my back pop. I thought it was broken, thought I was paralyzed.

It knocked us both off, and we went flying. A chopper buzzed overhead, and a sniper shot but missed by a good five feet. All that wind. Damn fools.

Then Vic’s deputy with the rifle got a hit, right in the face—side angle, across the eyes—got both eyeballs and the bridge of its nose.

It looked straight at him. I swear it did. Even with nothing there. It looked straight at him and ran and knocked him down and dug its teeth right into the man’s neck. I’ll never forget it, the way the flesh on the deputy’s neck bulged around its jaws, while its teeth just sunk in... just sunk in and closed, and then it arched up and spit out the guy’s larynx.

Billy thought, in retrospect, that running to intercept the two Twos coming from the Salt Ponds had been a mistake. Billy and Shawn both had pistols, and waited until they were close before firing, but they didn’t hit anything.

The one with long hair and all the gold stuff, Marcus, had just run straight at him, cat-rolled at the last second, and buried a switchblade deep into Billy’s stomach. It left the knife in him and kept running toward the others. It never even slowed down.

Lying there with a knife he could not get out of his abdomen, Billy had watched while Shawn had fought the other Two hand-to-hand, and as Face’s gas tank had burst. He kept turning from the one side to the others, fully expecting to see his friends on the ground, dying, with each turn.

Only Hunter Grant still stood on the runway—four to one, still fighting, shield up, Defiance flying. God, he was magnificent. Tears welled-up in Billy’s eyes, and it had nothing to do with the pain in his gut.

On the other side, Shawn had Salamander at a standstill. Shirtless and wearing wetsuit leggings, the thing had fired a spear gun straight at Shawn, and missed. Shawn, moving wildly, had dodged it, and now the two fought with knives. Salamander kept trying to get its body into him, but Shawn sidestepped it every time. He kept moving, and every time the creature closed, Shawn went for its weapons. Salamander’s knife arm had been cut to ribbons.

He could never last, though, and Billy knew it. If Shawn died, he was going to die like a Wharf Rat, fighting to the very last like Hunter Grant. Billy felt all around him for the pistol. He found the handle, gripped it, and tried to get up, but a hot iron burned through the center of his body. He tried to pull the knife out, but even touching it brought more agony than he could bear.

In the distance, Shawn took a punch, another, and a then a swinging backhand that caught him right on the chin. Shawn hit the ground.

Billy gritted his teeth. He only had seconds. He gripped his own abdomen, around the protruding hilt, with his left hand, and gripped the pistol with his right. A scream caught in his throat as he rose.

The pain rendered him senseless. Far ahead, he could see the body of his friend being dragged toward the Salt Ponds. Behind him came gunfire and the sound of a bomb blast. He staggered forward.

In his head, a guitar riff cut through the haze—then bass, drums, a voice. The pain lessened, and Billy managed a limping skip, almost a jog.

Salamander didn’t turn. He had Shawn over his shoulder as he walked him down into the brackish water.

Billy never slowed down at the water’s edge. He paid no attention to the bloated, long-dead body floating face down in the shallows. He skipped through the water until he was up to his waist and then he dove. He no longer felt the knife. There was no pain—only the music, hammering his skull:

Each time a crescendo rose on the “Face.” Billy could hardly see. He had to let go of his gut so that he could paddle with a hand and a pistol. The pond was not large. He didn’t go far. There, ahead and to the left, he saw Shawn, bubbles rising out of his mouth, and Salamander, Indian style on the bottom, blood streaming up from his arm like red smoke, looking up at his victim like a child watching fireworks.

It let go of Shawn, and then Salamander and Billy Blankenship reached for each other. Billy wondered if the gun would even fire under water.

Lacewood went to Glen ‘Face’ Waldron’s lifeless body. The sobbing caught in his throat and never came out as a sound. Face’s expression... his expression as the bullets had trailed up to him and hit the fuel tank. They had been doing so well, winning the fight. Who would ever have expected a homemade flamethrower?

And now Face was gone, burned to char, his body curled up fetal, like a child sleeping.

Carter Lacewood desperately needed to hold someone, to be held. He needed another Rat to tell him how to cry, how to make any sound at all. He looked all around, and saw fires and metal wreckage and a bright yellow car with smoke coming from its hood, and two men standing over another. It took him a moment to realize that one of the men standing was Hunter Grant. Just the sight of Hunter, still alive, took the emotion out of his throat and let him breathe again.

Lacewood staggered up behind Hunter and grabbed his shoulder. The other boy spun and, for a moment, Lacewood thought Hunter would hit him with Defiance.

Lacewood recognized the other man as Reagan the Commando. His mouth was moving too.

It was then that Lacewood realized that he couldn’t hear. He looked down to see both of his hands scraped and bleeding, and one of his legs didn’t move right. Hunter shook him, and he could easily let himself pass out, but.... He could not. He steeled himself and tried to make sense out of the lips and gestures. Hunter wanted something—something that Lacewood should be carrying.

Lacewood had never seen the man on the ground before. This man was shouting up at Reagan, and Reagan was shouting back.

Lacewood started back to where he had been lying on the ground. He remembered the place in front of the hanger, where Colossus had fired the gun and Lacewood had startled, but Colossus was not there, just a section of cement that was blackened and bowed up like a giant mole hill.

He turned around to see that the one on the ground was still yelling, as Hunter had gone over to a body and started hitting it in the head with Defiance.

Carter Lacewood understood stories. He understood the way that events connected to other events, and right at that moment, his mind took the various pieces all around him and assembled them into a single, coherent narrative.

Colossus was gone, blown to bits—a bomb, a missile from the chopper. The man on the ground was a new commando. He was with Reagan somehow, came with him to help, but this one had been wounded—burns and a bright red oval on his leg.

Something had killed Razor—should have killed. That’s why they were shouting. They didn’t believe Razor was dead, or at least they wanted to make sure. This new one wanted something else. The bodies. He wanted the bodies intact, and now Reagan had a finger in his face and was keeping him on the ground, and was probably going to punch him if he tried to stop Defiance.

Why did he think that Razor should be dead? That was the part that didn’t make any sense. Was he new to the island? Did he not understand that the Twos were unkillable? At least... so far they had been, but if Razor was going to get back up, he was going to have to do it without a head. Defiance had reduced it to mush.

Hunter Grant seemed satisfied. He was walking away, looking over to where Reagan kept the other commando on the ground. He walked toward another one, and Lacewood had to move to see.

It lifted something that Lacewood first took for a club. Then it pulled at it with both hands and it unrolled in front of him.

It... it... it... it knocked me down again. I caught part of the swinging chain, knocked out two of my teeth.

Vic had a One, slamming its head down on the street. Koz held his hand where the Chain-thing had bit him. Santiago grabbed Koz’s chewed up pinky and held it down on the sand, and was about to blow it off with his last bullet.

The sniper... the fucking sniper took another errant shot, and I felt that thing grab my shirt and twist, and I knew it was taking aim with Koz’s pistol... and....

When I saw them, that thing and what was left of its face lay on its back. Wisdom... Matt... he had it... but really, it had him. Both men had pistols. Both had grabbed the other one’s gun arm with their own arm... forced by that thing... and they just held like that... craning their wrists around to get a shot.

Then they fired, both of them, over and over, like two wooden ships... firing off broadsides, point blank, spraying blood all around them. I could see the pieces of their bodies getting blown off. His face. His hair. Matt... he kept firing, four or five shots, until his gun clicked.

Every bullet had hit it in the head. There was nothing left. When it let go, Matt dropped on top of it.

Thorpe watched as the chopper’s tail dipped suddenly. With wisps of smoke all over, it revved its motor and slanted hard over the buildings.

“Where,” shouted Thorpe, almost delirious from pain and blood loss. “We need to know where!”

Sergeant Douglas Haney, AKA “Doctor Thorpe,” had a problem: he needed at least two squads of combat-class troops, and at least one good armored assault vehicle, and he needed them right now. He didn’t care what the idiot Major said—these were U.S. citizens. He was fighting enemy combatants on U.S. soil, and kids—these were just kids—were dying all around him. On top of that, a couple mags loaded with full jackets would be nice. The last poison bullet he’d put into “Lucifer” hadn’t even slowed him down.

What he did have was one deaf kid, with a .223—eleven bullets left—who was a lousy shot. He had another kid with a riot shield and baseball bat, who would not follow orders, one unarmed girl with a dog that was not moving draped over her lap, and one karate-dude with a pistol who couldn’t hit the broad side of the airport terminal where they currently took cover.

On the runway, a tiny sports car had been hit with .50 caliber rounds, and might or might not run. No one wanted to find out because somewhere in the midst of wreckage and debris was the last place they’d seen Lucifer, the Bontrager’s guy that looked like a 70’s pickup artist. On the other side of the runway, two more kids were laid out next to an inland pond, moving just enough that spotters could tell they were alive. And somewhere amongst all of this was another girl—this one missing—whom Bat-Boy would not leave without.

On the other side, the boy with the shield knelt protectively covering the girl and her dog.

Thorpe looked up. “This is the deal. We have to get those two from the other side of the runway, find the girl, and move... at least three wounded out of the combat zone. In other words,” he said, and pushed himself upright with his back to the wall. “We need a car.”

“Not the two-seater, Fuckwit. We need the armored car. Someone has to go down to the beach, rendezvous with whatever is left of the convoy, and get that son of a bitch up here where it can do some good.”

“Yeah, well, I’d offer, but I think you’re probably getting sick of carrying me all over the place.”

It made sense. The kid with the bat could fight, no question. Reagan had called him Hunter somewhere along the way. A name? A description? Didn’t matter; either way, it seemed appropriate. By Thorpe’s count, Lucifer had at least three separate concussions. Both Reagan and Hunter had fought him after he first unrolled the plastic sheeting and got the jump on Hunter, wrapping the plastic around his face. Thorpe could see the boy’s mouth frozen wide open. After Reagan knocked the thing off the boy, it had tried to do the same to him, but no luck—that kid Hunter could move. He kept changing tactics—and Thorpe made a note of this: outside, inside, takedown, moving, always moving. The one thing the kid could not seem to do was pair-up with the other kid to combine their attacks; he kept getting in the other one’s way. Finally, Thorpe had gotten a clean shot and hit the thing in a kidney. That was it. It ducked behind the pickup.

There was no question of trying to finish it off. At that point, the girl with the dog was screaming for her man, and her man had not yet noticed that he had three bullet holes in the back of his shirt. Not wounded, though—he had some sort of heavy black ceramic vest, probably police issue, but he’d taken rounds all the same, just as with the chopper.

The Dragon was still out there, and Thorpe didn’t have a vest. Neither did Reagan.

I don’t think I ever lost consciousness. 10:30 in the morning turned to the last minutes of twilight in my fading vision, and I writhed like a crab trying to get back onto my feet. Next thing I know, I’m looking at the face of Eve Daniels... except that it’s not Eve. Officer Eve Daniels would never have smiled like that. Her face sank into mine and I felt my lips tingle.

When I did get back up, it was because of Santiago. He grabbed me and hoisted me up, and ran alongside me to the street. Vic Wallace ran past, headed the other way. I tried to tell my officer that we had to move the sick, but my mouth was full of blood and I swallowed some trying to talk. We crossed a patch of grass, and he said something about my back. Then he handed me off.

They put me on a mattress atop a wooden cot. It was too thin to provide much comfort, but I wasn’t feeling much of anything anymore. Two of them took me to a pastel-colored ambulance. No, not an ambulance, but something bigger, held up by tires that looked like overinflated balloons.

There were people—voices—all around. I could hear a high-pitched woman complaining about all the sand on the wound. Hands fumbled at my Kevlar vest, and I managed to turn my head as they lifted off the armor. I looked straight into the drawn features of the Malone girl, now lying on the carpet next to me. I wanted to feel for her. I wanted to mourn for my friend too, to think about his sacrifice, to well up with pride and mumble a few words. Elizabeth would probably want me to shed a tear.

That and the other stretchers being lifted in behind me, guided by strong hands into metal slots along the interior of the ambulance.

All the while, a familiar man in dreadlocks and a white shirt spoke verbal notes into a hand-held recorder. My ride would cost $200 plus depreciation. There’s only one man in the Keys with a mind for price margins. I could have died there on the tarmac, bleeding my last onto the sand beside my best friend, but instead, Max was going to try and finish the run.

Carter Lacewood worked with Reagan Castaneda to clear the hall, the concourse, and the terminal of the tiny airport. Reagan had taken the pistol out of his waist holster and cleared corners and exits, and finally he and Lacewood had crouched all the way to the end of the check-in counter, clearing the opposite side in the glassed-in room with the model of an old-timey airplane hanging from the ceiling.

He hadn’t been there before. Now he was, standing with his back to the exit doors, burns on his hair and his right cheek and part of his beard.

Lacewood knew the name: this was Marcus. He even knew that this one had been the leader of the Home Depot bikers before they were destroyed. He’d seen him on the runway before Face—his best friend Face—had sprayed his liquid flame, and died for spraying it.

Lacewood was no longer deaf, now able to hear a ringing that pulsed through his skull and drowned out everything else. Marcus said something, but Lacewood only saw lips moving. He imagined that Marcus was talking about him. He’d been there with his best friend Face, there when he was burned.

As the story developed in his mind, Lacewood saw a different drama playing out. Marcus was goading, trying to get Reagan to come for him. Reagan could tell, though, and stood in front of the counter, his pistol holstered, wanting Marcus to make the first move. These two knew each other. No, that was wrong—Reagan’s face showed trepidation. They had encountered each other before. Reagan must have known something about him once, but now he was different, and the difference frightened him.

Lacewood didn’t understand it. The thing’s right eye moved independently of the left, and Reagan drew attention to this. Clearly, Reagan had done this; they’d fought before—maybe more than once.

While he watched this interplay, Lacewood tried to fit himself into the story. They had wanted him to go, to give his rifle to the injured commando, and to leave Hunter Grant and Vera. Why him? What good was he without the rifle? The only thing he could do now was....

In the story of life, he’d always considered himself the main character. Everything that happened... happened because of how it moved his story. Hunter Grant came for him. The Wharf Rats moved in with him. The fighting took place around him. Face’s death was important because of the loss experienced by him. But as he assembled the story into a coherent narrative, a thought forced itself through the ringing: he was not the main character.

In a blinding second, Lacewood thought about all the religious mumbo jumbo that he’d endured to make Hunter Grant happy, and wondered if this was what it really meant to see the face of God. Not to look at a giant set of eyes or a nose that gave off beams of light, but to realize that it’s not your book; you’re just a name on one of the pages. If all anyone were to do was look at the cover, they would never even consider him. He was so insignificant. But with the light on the page—on his page—with the people he cared about bleeding and dying on an island full of terrors, even his part—his tiny part—added something to the whole.

And so Carter Lacewood took the two hunting knives, which he’d sheathed on his belt because he thought they looked cool, and started forward at the creature that now turned to consider him.

Lacewood chuckled to himself. “At least... I’m something.” He broke into a limping sprint, and engaged Marcus right in front of the glass, his arms windmilling.

Suddenly, Marcus no longer possessed the shape of a man. He was a blur of frenzied arms and legs, and a face that shuddered from side to side.

Lacewood fell onto his back, and felt a wetness on his forehead. He looked up in anticipation, his neck shaking, but Marcus couldn’t move in for the kill.

Lacewood’s part was over. He could relax, think only about the pain and how awful and short life could be.

Reagan slammed knee after knee into the creature’s ribs. He timed his strikes—Lacewood found this amusing—so that every time Marcus tried to push forward, away from the metal beam in between the glass panes, another knee strike forced him back. Reagan delivered them like a drum beat: thump, thump, thump.

Fast, incredibly fast, Marcus slung a necklace over his head and around Reagan’s neck. Reagan’s face turned red but he didn’t panic. Instead, he moved in, worked his shoulder blade under the creature’s arm pit, and then spun in behind it. He grabbed Marcus around the waist in a single fluid motion, then turned, arched his powerful back, and drove the thing’s head down into the floor tiles.

Its body bucked and shook, and its limbs spasmed so violently next to where Lacewood lay that he had to fight to keep his eyes from protectively closing.

Reagan got up and, ignoring the thing’s flailing, punched it in the face—and again, and again. The fourth time, Marcus caught Reagan’s arm, but Reagan didn’t hesitate. He jumped, up and over, using the trapped arm like a pole stuck in the ground, and rotated over the creature’s body to land on the other side, where he raked its face with an elbow strike.

Reagan planted a leg onto the floor and pushed off. Lacewood could no longer see his face, with Reagan pinned in the vice-grip of Marcus’s arms, but his torso and legs vaulted up and over, up and around, up....

Lacewood would never have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. The pendulum swing of Reagan’s legs ended and a knee struck downward, clacking against the creature’s head.

Lacewood shuddered to see such a magnificent fighter crushed in front of him, by a body Reagan had utterly destroyed yet still remained animated by some unknown evil. The wrongness of it all... the violation... his own contribution wasted... his friends lost....

Carter Lacewood found himself back on his feet, as if raised up by some unknown force, holding his shaking comrade around the waist. He clutched, shifted, pulled, and then Reagan was free, but seemed spent.

Lacewood pulled it out of Reagan’s holster, extended the gun, and fired into both of the creature’s eye sockets.