completely blocked by cars — more than just the detritus of eleven-year-old traffic, these cars had been hauled into place and braced with sheets of wood and metal. Kira shook her head, muttering lowly.
“They’ve barricaded the city.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“That’s Gardiners Avenue,” said Jayden. “We’re very close.” He paused. “How far do you think the wall goes around?”
“It doesn’t make sense to build it here and nowhere else,” said Gianna. “Otherwise they’d just build a fort and guard the intersection.”
“Either way,” said Xochi, “we can sneak past them mid-block somewhere. They can’t have guards along the whole length of it.”
The others agreed, and they picked their way through the overgrown yards of a sprawling residential neighborhood. They worked their way down to a spot halfway between cross streets, and when Kira peeked out through the kudzu-covered fence, she saw that the barricade was lower here — just cars in a line, with no reinforcing boards or boxes.
“Curse this wretched island and its strip malls,” said Kira. “Everything on this island is covered with trees — how can there be this much open ground?”
“There’s some underbrush,” said Xochi, “but probably not enough to hide us all the way across.”
“Look down there,” said Gianna, pointing south. “That next clump of soldiers is at least two blocks away. The gap between guards is actually pretty big — when it gets dark, we’ll have a pretty good chance.”
Kira looked south, then north again, gauging the distance. “Flip around the radio and see if you can find what channel that checkpoint is using.”
Gianna started clicking the knob,
“That’s us,” said Kira, tapping her fingers on the wall. “Keep monitoring all three channels; we’ll set a watch, lie low, and wait for dark.” She peeked back through the fence, sizing up the distances to either guard post.
Each hour that passed, Kira felt her stomach twist further into knots.
When darkness finally fell, Farad pulled more planks from the fence and pushed a small hole through the kudzu. They shouldered their gear, strapped it on tightly, and poised on the brink in a thin line: Farad, Xochi, Jayden, Gianna, Kira, and Marcus. Kira gripped her rifle and took a deep, slow breath.
“Keep the radio on,” said Kira, “as quiet as you can make it. If the Grid sees us crossing, I want to know about it.”
Gianna smiled thinly. “Already done.”
“Then we go,” said Kira. “Stay down, stay silent, but if they spot us just run for it.”
Farad bounced loosely on the balls of his feet. “Ready … set-y … spaghetti.” He dropped to his stomach and slipped out, pushing silently through the weeds toward the makeshift wall of cars. The others followed, trying not to rustle as they went. There were a few long seconds of desperate silence, and suddenly the radio burst into cries and shouts and static.
“There! There! South of Twenty-Three!”
A bullet slammed into the asphalt barely ten inches from Kira’s hand.
“Stealth is over,” she said. “Just run.” They leaped to their feet and charged across the street, vaulting the wall of cars; Kira planted her right hand on a broad metal hood for leverage; it scalded her skin, still hot from a day in the sun, but she jumped up and tromped across it, two quick, clanging steps before leaping back down to the ground beyond. The radio was screaming alarms, and she heard warped, echoing gunfire — first over the radio, then in real life as the sharp reports finally reached her ears. Farad was across now, sprinting through the parking lot toward a gap in the strip mall buildings, when suddenly Gianna dropped like a stone, a puff of thick mist hanging in the air above her.
“No!” Kira screamed, following so close behind Gianna that she tripped over her body and crashed to the broken asphalt. She found her feet and tried to rise, turning to help Gianna, but Marcus grabbed her as he passed and pulled her to her feet, dragging her forward.
“Keep going!”
“We have to help her.”
“She’s dead, keep going!”
Kira wrenched her arm from his grip and turned back, hearing a bullet slam into the ground somewhere dangerously close. Gianna lay facedown in a puddle of blood. “Forgive me,” Kira whispered, and grabbed not the girl but her radio.
Kira felt her body twist with an impact, but she kept her feet and ran again toward Marcus and the others.
“Are you trying to get killed?”
“Shut up and run,” said Xochi, pulling them through a broken gate that listed sadly on one rusty hinge. The space beyond was a backyard, dense with weeds, and they fought through them to the shattered back door of a sagging house, the paint peeling off in long, faded strips. This close to the edge of the city the houses were still uninhabited, and they dropped to the floor in a skeleton’s living room. Jayden turned back with his rifle to cover the door.
“I’ve been hit,” Kira said, dropping the radio to pat herself, looking for blood. Farad snatched up the radio, thumbed the switch, and barked into it, “Checkpoint Twenty-Three, this is Patrol Forty. We’re right here, but the Voice have not come through the houses. Repeat, they have not come through the houses. Do you have visual contact? Over.”
“Negative, Forty,” squawked the radio. “Still searching. Over.”
“Understood, we’ll keep searching as well. Over and out.” He clicked off the radio and threw it back to her. “You risked your idiot life for that thing, we may as well use it.”
“What’s Patrol Forty?” asked Xochi.
“They’re stationed on the north side,” said Farad, “which is a different radio channel. That gives us maybe ten minutes before they figure it out. Now we’ve got to get out of this house before a real patrol comes chasing us in here.”
Before he even finished whispering, they heard footsteps and voices in the yard behind them. Jayden grabbed his gun and ran to the back door, crouching behind the sagging wall.
“This is the Long Island Defense Grid,” Jayden shouted, glancing back at the others and gesturing for them to pick up their guns. “You are ordered to drop your weapons and surrender immediately.”
There was a small pause, and Jayden listened with his head cocked. After a moment a voice shouted back, “Is that you, Patrol Forty?”
Jayden smiled wickedly. “Yes, it is. Is that Checkpoint Twenty-Three?”
Kira heard the men outside cursing. “Don’t tell me we lost them!”