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With a treged, half-carried her across the wide rooency beams shone from the corners In the distance, a series of roars, and after each a , like an earthquake Glass was jostling,sound They ca on a sub it open and stepped inside She was being held by the larger ripped her fro the barrel to herclearer now Her heart was clicking like a e from the door? She could smell the man’s breath close to her face, a warrip; his hands, his whole body were trenant," Lila said, or started to say, thinking this ht alter the situation But her voice was cut short as, fro

The aerial operations over western and central Iowa on the night of June 9 were not without risks Chief aht fail to carry out their orders, and, in fact, soht crews refused to deploy their payloads over civilian targets, while three more claimed to have sufferedso, an operational failure rate of six percent (Of these ten flight crews, three were court-martialed, five were reprimanded and returned to duty, and two dropped to the deck and were never seen again) In the co weeks, as the mission of JTF Scorch expanded to include centers of population throughout the nation’s middle section and the Intermountain West, members of the task force would recall this statistic with soust, soin the stockade as prisoners of conscience or had vanished with their aircraft into the skies above the dying continent that it becaly difficult tothe very mission of JTF Scorch into doubt These difficulties were compounded by secessionist movements in California and Texas, both of which proceeded to declare then and appropriate all federalWashington to stop theambit, both militarily and politically, as by this time the situation was in pure free fall Much bluster ensued on both sides, cul in the Battle of Wichita Falls and the Battle of Fresno, in which vast nuround and in the air, threw in the towel, laid down their arms, and asked for sanctuary Thus, by enerations as the year zero, the nation known as the United States could be said to exist nohours of June 9, beneath athe full, or nearly full, cooperation of its assets In confirreat masses of Infected Persons had collected in four distinct hot spots across the state: Mason City, Des Moines, Marshalltown, and the FEMA refugee-processing facility in Fort Powell By 0200, the first three had been dispensed with; Fort Poas the final prize A coan the assault; concurrently a C-130 transport was inbound from MacDill Within its bay lay an explosive device called a GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Boh explosive, the MOAB was the largest non-nuclear bo an impact crater five hundred feet in diameter and a blast wave sufficient to level an area the size of nine city blocks; its fires would burn for days

When Nelson bent to undo Grey’s straps-straps no longer attached to anything-Grey lurched forward, seizing hi his teeth in the man’s neck A deep bite: he felt Nelson’s windpipe being crushed beneath his jaws As the two tumbled backward over the bed, Grey shook him like a ith a rabbit in its teeth; a jet of hot blood filled Grey’s mouth They were on the floor now, Nelson face-up, Grey above hional twitch of Nelson’s hands and feet, and that was all Grey burrowed his jaws deeper, into the soft meat

He drank

Had it been this easy for Zero, Grey wondered, this pleasurable? A rich vitality poured through hilorious i inhalation of blood, Grey pulled his face away He allowed hiard the corpse on the floor The flesh of Nelson’s face looked as if it had been shrink-wrapped to its underlying structure; his eyes, like the eyes of the woed reptilianly fro into the heart of eternity Grey searched his uilt, perhaps, or pity, or even disgust He was a murderer, a man who had killed He had stolen the life of another But he felt none of these things He’d done what he had to do

The door to his cha to save you-all that has happened has ordained it

He stepped through

What eure was backlit, sunk in shadow As he advanced, beaoas bathed in blood

Lawrence?

"Don’t" Theits barrel deep into her ribs His steps were uncertain, fluttering His whole body was shaking like a leaf It seeht fall "Keep your distance"

Grey reached his bloody hands plaintively forward "Lila, it’s me"

Horror, revulsion, a protective mental numbness at the violent swiftness of events-all corip her in a frozen, focusless terror in which her body and her brain seeh the fog she realized what the screaoas any indication, Lawrence had not merely killed the small man but torn him to pieces WhichShe remembered the tank She reore like solass of the Volvo’ssplintering under his fist Lawrence had becos (Poor Roscoe) And yet there was so about his eyes, which she could not look away froht into her, shining with an al?" the o"