rifle for a cartridge.
Carl glances at her. “Honeycomb. Tires are bulletproof. I’d go for the headlights first. Then the sensor package on top. Shoot its eyes and ears.”
“What’s the sensor package look like?” asks Jack.
Carl pulls out his rifle and checks the magazine as he speaks: “Black sphere. Antenna coming out of it. It’s a standard-issue compact multisensor payload with an electron-multiplied CCD infrared camera mounted on a high- stability gimbal, among other things.”
We all frown at him. Carl looks around at us.
“Sorry. I’m an engineer,” he says.
The Humvee steers itself through the central mass of sleeping people. The headlights jounce up and down in the darkness. The sounds are indescribable. Red-tinted headlights turn our way, growing larger in the night.
“You heard the man. Fire on the black box if you have a clear shot,” says Jack.
Soon, bullets begin to crack out in the night. Cherrah’s hands move swift and smooth along the length of her bolt-action rifle, spitting bullets accurately at the lurching vehicle.
Headlights shatter. It swerves, but only to run down nearby refugees. Sparks fly from the black box on top as bullets hit it again and again. Still, it keeps coming.
“This isn’t right,” says Jack. He grabs Carl by the shirt. “Why isn’t the fucker blind?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” whimpers Carl.
It’s a good question.
I stop firing and cock my head, trying to dial out all the screams and running shapes and confusion. The shattered campfires and tumbling corpses and roaring engines fade, drowned out by an amnesiac shroud of concentration.
A sound emerges from the chaos. It’s a gentle
Some kind of eye in the sky.
The battered Humvee looms out of the night like a sea monster surfacing from black depths.
We scatter as it plows into and over our hill.
“Flying robot. Eleven o’clock. Just over the tree line,” I shout.
Rifle barrels rise, including my own. The Humvee charges past us and bashes through a campfire a dozen yards away. Embers from the fire cascade over its hood, like a meteor streaking through the atmosphere. It’s coming around for another go.
Muzzles flash. Hot brass shell casings cascade through the air. Something explodes in the sky, spraying the ground with pulverized bits of plastic.
“Scatter,” says Jack. The roar of the Humvee drowns out the whining engines of the falling star in the sky. The armored vehicle bulldozes straight over the mound where we stand, shocks bottoming out. In the rush of air as the Humvee passes, I can smell melted plastic and gunpowder and blood.
Then the Humvee rolls to a stop just past the hill. It moves away from us, jerking forward in starts and stops like a blind man feeling his way down a path.
We did it. For now.
A massive arm settles down over my neck, squeezes tight enough to grind my shoulder blades together. “It is blind,” says Tiberius. “You have the eyes of a hawk, Cormac Wallace.”
“There’ll be more. What now?” asks Carl.
“We stay here and protect these people,” says Jack, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“How’s that, Jack?” I say. “They might not want our protection. Plus, we’re sitting next to the biggest arsenal in the state. We’ve got to head for the hills, man. Camp out.”
Cherrah snorts.
“You got a better idea?” I ask her.
“Camping is a short-term solution. Where’d you rather be? In a cave somewhere, hunting for food every day and hoping you find it? Or in a place where there will be other people to depend on?”
“And riots and looting,” I add.
“I’m talking about a smaller community. A safe place. Gray Horse,” she says.
“How big?” asks Jack.
“Probably a few thousand, mostly Osage. Like me.”
“An Indian reservation,” I groan. “Mass starvation. Disease. Death. Sorry, I just don’t see it.”
“That’s because you’re full of shit,” says Cherrah. “Gray Horse is organized. Always has been. Functioning government. Farmers. Welders. Doctors.”
“Well,” I say. “As long as there are
She looks at me pointedly. “Jails. If we need ’em.”
“Specialization,” says Jack. “She’s right. We need to reach a place to regroup. Plan a counterattack. Where is it?”
“Oklahoma.”
I groan out loud again. “That’s like a million miles away.”
“I grew up there. I know the way.”
“How do you know they’re still alive?”
“A refugee I met heard about it on shortwave. There’s a camp there. And an army.” Cherrah snorts at Carl. “A
I clap my hands. “I’m not hiking across America on the whim of some chick we just met. We’re better off on our own.”
Cherrah grabs me by the shirt and yanks me close. My rifle clatters to the ground. She’s wiry, but her slender arms are strong as tree branches. “Teaming with your
Cherrah’s scowling face is inches away. A bit of ash from the scattered fires lands in her inky black hair and she ignores it. Her black eyes are trained on mine. This small woman is absolutely intent on remaining alive, and it’s clear that she will do anything to stay that way.
She’s a born survivor.
I can’t help but smile.
She lets go and gives me a shove.
“You wish,
A thundering laugh startles all of us. Tiberius, looking like a huge shadow, throws on his backpack. Firelight gleams from his teeth as he speaks.
“Then it is settled,” he says. “The five of us make a good team. We have defeated the Humvee and saved these people. Now, we will journey together until we reach this place, this Gray Horse.”
The five of us became the heart of Brightboy squad. On that night, we began a long journey through the wilderness to Gray Horse. We were not yet well armed or well trained, but we were lucky—during the months after Zero Hour, Rob was busy processing the roughly four billion human beings living in major population centers of the world.
It would be the better part of a year before we emerged from the woods, battle scarred and weary. While we were gone, however, momentous events were taking place that would alter the landscape of the New War.
