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"What’s she doing?" said Michael "She’s just standing there"

"Wait here"

Peter climbed froe their existence The two floater DS vehicles, 4×4s, had pulled into position alongside the Hu his sidearm, Peter stepped cautiously forward

"Identify yourself"

The woe Its iron struts carved lines of darkness against the sky Peter raised his weapon, inching closer She was clutching so to you"

The woht of the trucks’ headla Woe of her face see like so water He felt a jostle of nausea

"We knohere you are" Her voice was as ethereal as tissue "It’s just aat her head "Answerblue As they locked onto his own, Peter realized that what he was seeing was a beautiful woman, maybe the most beautiful of his life The plump, pillowy lips The delicately upswept nose The proportionate arrange skin of her cheeks To look at her was to be swept into a current of almost unbearable sensuality His mouth was suddenly dry

"You’re tired," she said

The state, jarred him from his stupor He hat?

"I said," the woman repeated, "you’re tired"

"I don’t knohat you’re talking about"

Her face fell with puzzlement; it appeared he had disappointed her Peter’s eyes fell to the object clutched in her hand A , metal rod from its side

Peter knehat it was

He leapt toward her as her finger found the switch A sheen of light and a crack of sound like the sla heat blew hiht Whoever she is, this wo at the sky Tie, on fire, was descending toward hi road tie crashed to the ground a few feet from his head As Peter rolled away he felt soain; Michael was pulling hi Peter’s waist, Michael was yelling into the walkie "Everybody back up now!"

Lights were blazing at them from all directions Before Peter could fully process the inforreatover the ditch It swerved to a halt before theures rose like dark apparitions fro, cylindrical objects to their shoulders

"Oh, shit," said Michael

They flung theround as the rockets, in a white burst, jetted frounfire was instantly sed by the DS vehicles’ detonation Fla debris whizzed over their heads

"Ceps," Michael barked into the walkie, "get out of there!"

The figures in the truck had paused to reload Ceps’s tanker would be next Peter reached for his sidearone; he’d lost it in the first explosion Fro The oilers were leaping fro from both ends of the convoy now They were trapped between the river and whatever was approaching from the rear, presumablyto do was run Peter and Michael broke for the first tanker just as Ceps leapt down fro Peter a rifle He snatched it fro around, took ai fire, sending the figures diving for cover He’d bought therabbed Lore by the wrist as she eround He was shouting, waving toward the rear of the convoy "Get away froain One clean shot at the first tanker and it would all be over Three thousand gallons per truck, thirty-six thousand gallons in all The entire convoy would go up, detonating like sticks of dynite in a line Peter realized that one of the figures was the cloaked woer, only to hear the click of an empty chamber

The woman raised her arms and spread theether different sort of vehicle had appeared It swooped upon thehts blazing from the roof of its cab A six-wheeled seo boxes constructed of galvanized hly reflective finish In the weeks to co so hould enificance, a clue in a sequence of clues; but at thedescent upon the scene, no one paid thatoilers, their panicked brains washed clean of logic, and failing to notice that the suard had conveniently vanished into the undergrowth, even permitted themselves the hope of rescue They were under attack The attack, , had come from nowhere The containers, in their fortified appearance and shining bulk, reseo of an altogether different kind

One to see this was OFC Juan Sweeting Despite his off-puttingmuscularity, Ceps was a man with the soul of a poet Alone in his rack at the end of each day, he privately put pen to paper, rendering his deepest thoughts in lines of uncommon sensitivity and verbal music Despite the trials of his life, he steadfastly believed the world to be a beautiful, God-touched place worthy of hureat deal about the sea, whose coh he had never shown anyone these poems, they formed the heart of his life, like a secret lover So a bulk of iron above his head in the weight cages, Ceps was so inflamed by the desire to write a poem that it was all he could do not to abandon his task and race back to his rack to celebrate the ly reflective se suspicion, like Peter’s, that not all was as it appeared Indeed, nothing about the attack s prey upon one another in this manner? Did they not possess a coy source that maintained the very existence of their species? The idea taking shape in his mind was the correct one, that their attackers were not in league with their own kind, and as the first of the two shining coo, his suspicions became certainty But by then it was too late; it had always been too late

The virals swarmed over the convoy There were hundreds But in the moment that followed, Ceps realized that the virals were not, in fact, killing everyone So swiftness, but others were snatched bodily, flailing and screa as the virals seized them around their waists and leapt away

A far worse fate, to be taken To be taken up

He made a quick decision

The semi had come to a halt less than twenty yards from the last tanker in the line Ceps had seen a tanker blow before The destruction was instant and total, a great fiery wallop, but in the preceding tenth of a second so the weakest point in the structure, the expanding fuel sent the tanker’s end plates shooting horizontally like corks froun before it was a bomb Ceps had reached the last tanker now The silver truck was parked twenty yards straight behind hie With his massive arms, Ceps unscrewed the cap of the offload port and opened the valve Gasoline spouted froush He stood in this current, soaking his clothes He filled his hands and splashed his hair This ravishing world, he thought, his senses filling with the sly bittersweet, ravishing world Perhaps someone would find his sheaf of poees the hidden truths of his heart The words of a poeht, he had found a book of her poems in the Kerrville Library, in a room nobody ever went to Because it seemed no one had any use for it, and in a state of anthropomorphic sympathy for its loneliness on the shelf, Ceps had tucked it into his coat and stolen off to an alleyhere, sitting on an ash can, he’d discovered a voice long gone froht to hisport, he closed his eyes to let its words, etched in h him one last time:

Beauty crowds me till I die

Beauty, ht of thee-

He rehter from his pocket and flicked it open to balance his thumb upon its flinted wheel

A hundred yards away, in the cab of the third tanker, Peter was atte since worn off, told hi sound