Swarm

explain almost everything.

Except the secret connection between Sophie and the late Michael Kostopoulos.

I was startled out of my reverie by an unexpected noise: a keening whine, high in the sky. Like something you might hear at a fireworks display. I looked around, puzzled. The others seemed equally startled.

Another whine joined the first, and then another, forming a dissonant chord.

“Oh shit,” I heard Reyes say, in a hoarse, ragged voice, “those are mortars -“

Then there was a bright flash outside, accompanied by the loudest noise in the world, and all the windows shattered. A shockwave laced with broken glass knocked me off my feet, and as I fell the back of my head hit the corner of a desk so hard that the whole world blurred into darkness.

Chapter 6

I lay stunned but not unconscious. My eyes were open, but all was darkness. My first thought was that someone had turned out all the lights. I was vaguely aware of two more explosions tearing through the air, more distant than the first, followed by a fusillade of faint popping noises. All sounds seemed limp and filtered, as if I was still wearing the earplugs I had removed before entering the school.

I don’t know how long I lay there dazed and blind and half-deaf. Time seemed to have lost all direction. It was probably less than a minute before the taste of blood startled me out of that haze. I touched my hand to my face instinctively and found my cheek wet and deformed by a sharp irregularity, a small shard of broken glass. Without thinking I pulled it out. It didn’t hurt. The adrenaline coursing through me left no room for any pain.

With terror I touched my fingertips to my eyes, but they seemed untouched. Then I remembered that I had struck the back of my head, home of the optic nerve. When I touched that impact site gingerly my hand came away wet with more blood, but as far as I could tell my skull was still unbroken.

The popping noises continued. I could make out faint hints of shouting as well. Then three more loud explosions: crump, crump, crump! The air and my clothes rippled with each, but none came as near as the first shell that had shattered the windows and knocked me to my prone and sightless state.

I started to sit up, realized halfway that the rattling drumrolls I heard were gunfire, and quickly abandoned that plan. Instead I reached out and tried to make sense of my immediate surroundings by touch. There was broken glass all over the floor, and several overturned chairs and desks within reach.

When someone else’s hand closed on mine I nearly screamed. Then a woman’s voice, Reyes’s, shouted into my ear: “Are you OK?”

I shook my head, immediately regretted it, and grunted, “Can’t see!”

“Shit. Stay down, there’s more coming -“

She flopped on top of me. Three more crumps pierced the world. This time they were accompanied by visual flickers, and I dared to hope that my sight might return.

Suddenly I thought of Sophie, and said her name desperately.

“She’s all right. Okocha got her.” Reyes’s mouth was so close to my ear that I could feel her breath, but I still had to strain to make out her words. “They’re in the helicopter. It’s bulletproof.”

I felt a brief flare of gratitude towards tall, surly Okocha. My mind was slowly returning to me. It was a dubious blessing. Pain was blossoming in a half-dozen places where I had been cut by shrapnel glass, but that was nothing compared to the paralyzing shock and terror of realizing just how near I was to dying. There were men outside trying to kill me, men armed not just with guns but with artillery.

“You and me,” Reyes said, “we’re not all right,” and I moaned at this confirmation that my life was about to end in this concrete coffin of a building. “There’s a lot of them out there, and they’ve got three mortars at least.”

I felt sick and weak with fear, my muscles seemed almost beyond my control, and I was dizzy from my head injury, I could barely speak. “What do we do?” I pleaded.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t think they know anyone’s still in here, but if we stand up they’ll figure it out in a hurry. We’ll never make it to the chopper. We better wait for a chance.”

We lay there for some time, listening to the gunfire. There seemed to be two kinds; sporadic bursts like strings of firecrackers going off, and a louder and steadier kind that sounded more like an assembly line. I supposed the latter came from the door guns on the helicopter. The air was redolent with acrid gunpowder. Bullets repeatedly slammed into the school wall, or flew through the window and above us. Once one hit something metal not far away with a godawful clang! and I whimpered. I would have screamed if I could have drawn enough breath into my terror-constricted lungs.

All I wanted to do was curl up into a fetal ball, squeeze my eyes shut, and wait for this horror to somehow end, one way or another. If I’d been alone I might have done just that. But Reyes’s presence, her lean body tensed against mine, helped calm me a little. I forced myself to relax my cramping muscles a little, to breathe deeply. Vague figures began to outline themselves in my vision, dark shapes emerging from total blackness. At least my sight was coming back. But that wouldn’t do me much good if I died here.

Three more crumps were followed by a new sound; that of an engine beginning to howl, slowly attaining a crescendo. The helicopter.

“They’re leaving without us,” Reyes said grimly.

I was speechless at this unforgivable betrayal.

“No choice. They’re walking the mortars towards the chopper. Can’t risk a direct hit. This is our chance. When they lift off, everyone out there will be shooting at them for all they’re worth. We can try to go out a window on the other side. I don’t think there’s anyone still there.”

It sounded insane and I told her so.

“You got any better ideas?” she demanded.

“We could just surrender.”

“To the narcos?” She actually laughed, harshly. “They’ll cut your dick off and make you eat it.”

That didn’t sound appealing. “But I can’t see!” I protested, although that was becoming less and less true.

“I’ll take you to the window. You just go through it. OK?”

The engine noise swelled until it devoured all others. Reyes grabbed my hand, pulled me to my feet, and dragged me across the room at a near-run. I outweighed her by about fifty pounds, but it didn’t feel like I had any choice. My eyes had recovered enough to see the blurred outline of the window, waist-high and just big enough, maybe. When I dove through it my shoulders knocked out a few remaining bits of broken glass. I landed on wet mud. A second later Reyes vaulted to the ground beside me.

The rotor wash from the rising helicopter was like a giant hand shoving us down into the ground. Reyes pulled me to my feet again and tried to lead me away from the school at a dead run, but the ground was uneven and I kept stumbling and falling as the noise of the helicopter diminished away.

Dark shapes loomed ahead. I got my free hand up just in time to keep from running facefirst into a tree. Then we were in jungle, wading through a sea of vegetation that seemed to be attacking us. Vines clawed at my legs. Branches tore at my head.

In the distance, I heard shouts.

“Oh, no.” For the first time Reyes sounded scared. “Shit shit shit. I think they saw us.”

Chapter 7

We staggered and stumbled onwards, mostly downhill. In places the jungle was like a wall and we had to find ways around rather than through. My feet kept sticking in deep puddles of mud. After the first shouts we didn’t hear