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"You think the others got out?" he asked

"I don’t know" Alicia coughed again, then took a round "Stay put"

She scooted around the base of the car, returning a moue gesture up and away "More on the tower on the far side of the street The fires pushed them back, but that won’t last"

So there it was Out in the dark, their rifles gone, trapped between a burning building and the virals They were resting with their shoulders touching, their backs braced against the car

Alicia rolled her head to look at hi the pan How’d you know it’d work?"

"I didn’t"

She shook her head "It was still so across her face She closed her eyes and breathed, then: "Ready?"

"The Humvees?"

"It’s our best shot, I think Stay close to the fires, use them for cover"

Fires or no, they probably wouldn’t make it ten meters once the virals saw the, he doubted she’d be able to walk at all All they had were their blades and the five grenades on Alicia’s belt But Amy and the others were still out here, renades and placed them in his hands "Remember our deal," she said

She meant would he kill her, if it came to that The answer came so easily it surprised him "Me too I won’t be one of therenade and pulled the pin, ready to throw "I just want to say, before we do this, I’lad it’s you"

"Same here"

She wiped her eyes with her wrist "Oh fk, Peter, now you’ve seen me cry twice You can’t tell anyone, you can’t"

"I won’t, I proht filled his eyes For an instant he actually believed sorenade-that death was, in the end, an affair of light and silence But then he heard the roar of the engine and knew that it was a vehicle, co toward them

"Get in!" a voice boomed "Get in the truck!"

They froze

Alicia’s eyes widened at the unpinned grenade in her hand "Flyers, what do I do with this?"

"Just throw it!"

She tossed it over the top of the car; Peter yanked her to the ground as the grenade went off with a bang The lights were closing in They took off at a hobbling run, Peter’s ar out of the darkness was a boxy vehicle with a huge plow jutting from the front like a dee of wire; soure positioned behind it As Peter watched, the gun sprang to life, shooting a plume of liquid fire over their heads

They hit the dirt Peter felt stinging heat on the back of his neck

"Keep down!" the voice booain, and only then did Peter realize the sound was a from a horn on the roof of the truck’s cabin "Move your asses!"

"Well, which is it?" Alicia yelled, her body pressed to the ground "You can’t have both!"

The truck ground to a halt just a few meters froure on the roof slid down a ladder A heavy wire mask obscured his face; his body was covered in thick pads A short-barreled shotgun clung to his leg in a leather holster Written on the side of the truck were the words NEVADA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

"In the back! Move it!"

The voice was a woht of us!" Peter cried "Our friends are still out here!"

But the woman seemed not to hear him or, if she did, to care She hustled thely ni the door wide

"Lish! Get in!"

The voice was Caleb’s Everybody was there, splayed out on the floor of the dark coed shut behind thean to move

Chapter FORTY-SIX

That aoman That awful fat wo over her chair like soht, close heat of the room and the taste of her smoke in his nose and mouth and the smell of the woman’s body, the sweat and cru flesh The s fro solid for hi Wake up, Theo But the pull of the drealed, the deeper he was dran into it Like hisinto the darkness of his ownat? Huh? You worthless little shit The wo The boy isn’t just dumb I tell you, he’s been struck du frolazed with rank-shter recall; all that re of it, like a dark stain spattered over his consciousness

He rose from his cot and shuffled to the hole He did his best to aiun to look forward to that sound, anticipating it the way he ht have waited for a visit fro to happen He’d been waiting for so, to tell him why he was here and what they wanted To tell hih the e for pain The door would open, and in But the boots cah the slot at the botto away the e He pounded on the door, a slab of cold ain What do you want from me, what do you want? But his pleas met only silence

He didn’t kno h out of reach, a dirtygave a view of nothing A patch of white sky and at night, the stars The last thing he re turned upside down He re, the sound of his na called, and the whip and snap of his neck as he’d been tossed upward, toward the roof A last taste of the wind and sun on his face and the gun dropping away Its slow, pinwheeling passage to the floor below

And then nothing The rest was a black space in histooth

He was sitting on the edge of the bed when he heard footsteps approaching The slot in the door opened and a bowl slid through, across the floor The same watery soup he’d eaten meal after meal Sometimes there was a little joint of meat in it, so he had decided not to eat, to see what they, whoever they were, would do But this had lasted only a day before his hunger had gotten the better of hiue was thick in hisand scraping The voice was young or old, he couldn’t tell

"That’s the spirit, Theo"

At the sound of his na

"You comfortable in there?"

"How do you knoho I auess you don’t You told ot here Oh, we had ourselves a nice talk"

He willed his mind to remember, but it was all blackness He wondered if the voice was really there at all This voice that see it It would happen sooner or later, in a place like this Thenow, do you? That’s all right"

"Whatever you’re going to do, just do it"