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Another blast froh the floor Glass was falling; everything was caving in The gun’s barrel was pressed against her ribs like a cold finger pointing at her heart The led his head toward a corner of the roo"

"Put the gun down and I’ll go with you"

"Godda to her A kind of awakening, and it wasn’t just the gun It was as if she were returning to consciousness after years of sleep How foolish she’d been! Painting the nursery, of all things! Pretending they were taking a drive in the country, as if that could change anything! Because David was dead, and Eva was dead, and Brad, whose heart she had broken; she had convinced herself the world wasn’t ending, because it already had And here was this man, this Lawrence Grey, who had coel to lead her to safety, as if the baby she carried were his own, and she knehat she had to say

"Please, Lawrence Do what he asks Think about our baby"

A fraught moment followed, so suspended as to seem outside the flow of time Lila could read the question on Lawrence’s face Could he get to the pistol before the man fired? And if he could, what then?

"Show us the way out of here"

By the time they reached the roof, the helicopter’s blades were turning, casting a whirling wind across the rooftop The sky was gloith an eerie, ereenhouse It seemed the helicopter would leave without the to them from the cockpit They climbed aboard; Guilder slae became aware that he was face-down in the dirt A taste of blood was in his et to his feet but realized he had only one; his prosthesis was gone He lifted his face to see the Humvee tipped on its side a hundred yards away, like a beached sea creature Its windshield was se The mob had fallen on it like a pack of ani to rock it back onto its wheels, but the effort was disorganized, co and kicking co their positions as if the ht offer soe crawled to where Ti but unconscious-a sle; his hair wasfro had stopped Soldiers were tearing past, but there was nowhere to run A mass of virals lay at the wire, felled by the soldiers’ bullets, but as his eyes scanned the scene, Kittridge understood that the attack had been a test, an advance force sent to exhaust the soldiers’ defenses A second, vastly larger pod was now ae stretched, flowing like a shireen liquid as it surrounded the encampment The final assault would come from all directions

He lifted Tiainst his own They were in the ; yet as they crouched in the dust, a bubble of silent inactivity see thee turned his face toward the east For a briefaway in the darkness, though this was an illusion, he knew By now they were gone, far beyond the reach of his vision Godspeed to you, Danny Chayes A deep stillness wrapped his being and, with it, a feeling of the past, an experience like deja vu: he here he was but also not, he was here and also there, he was a boy at play and a es flashed through his consciousness: the viral in her wedding dress clinging to the hood of the Ferrari; a view of sparkling sunlight on a river he had fished for years; April, on the night when they had sat together in theof the school, watching the stars, and the look of quiet peace on her face as the two of them made love; the boy in the car, his eyes full of a terrible knowledge, and his hand-his little boy’s hand-desperately reaching, then gone All of these andto hi of being very s in the world The world is notthrough The treasures are laid up soels beckon me from heaven’s open door, and I can’t feel at ho sound; his eyes flickered, fought to open, then stilled The virals, having co toward the wire Kittridge became aware of an absence of sound around them The battle was over; the planes had broken away Then, in the quiet, he detected, high above, the drone of a heavy aircraft Kittridge angled his face to the sky A C-130 transport, co from the south As it passed overhead an object released from its belly, its dive abruptly stalled by the puff of a parachute The plane clie closed his eyes So, the end It would happen instantaneously, a painless departure, quicker than thought He felt the presence of his body one last ti in his veins, the dru toward theain, over and over, so that the boy would be hearing these words "I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you"

The blast wave fro Grey and Lila broadside: a blinding sheen of light, followed by an earsplitting slap of heat and sound As if lifted on the crest of a wave, the helicopter lurched forward, its nose pointed earthward at a forty-five-degree angle, rocketed up again and began to spin, its angularon an ice rink It spun and as it spun the pilot pitched to the side, his neck broken by the force of impact with the windshield; but by this ti-and the centrifugal force of their velocity, nobody inside the helicopter was thinking very one, and nothing else would happen until they reached the ground

Lawrence Grey experienced the crash itself as a severing in tiainst the wall of the helicopter in its death spiral, the next he was lying in the wreckage He felt but did not specifically recall thesensation, as if he were a bell that had been struck There was a s sound So on top of hi but unconscious The helicopter, as left of it, lay on its side; where the roof should have been was now the door

"Lawrence, help me!"

The voice came from behind him He shoved Guilder’s body off his chest and felt his way to the rear of the helicopter One of the benches had twisted loose, pinning Lila to the floor, crushing her at the waist Her bare legs, the flilistened with a heavy, dark blood