3:08 P.M .
Kat clutched her husband’s neck, carried in his arms.
Blood flowed from scores of tiny lacerations, shallow and deep, wounds from her battle with the helmeted pod’s flying horde.
She had beaten them back as Monk and Kowalski swept in, shedding their chutes and rolling to her aid. She half-fell out of the tree into Monk’s arms. He had grabbed the last few flyers out of the air with his prosthetic hand. The tough synthetic skin and crushing grip made short work of them.
She could have used one of those, and told him so.
His answer:
Now they fled together through the woods, chased by scores of the pods, creatures of every ilk. The loss of blood, along with the exhaustion of her battle, turned the world into a hazy, fluttering view, shadowed at the corners.
Kowalski fired behind them, keeping the worst at bay, but there were too many. Like ants boiling out of a flooded nest, the legion came crawling, leaping, spinning, burrowing, flying away from the destruction behind them.
“There!” Monk called to Kowalski as they broke into a wide meadow.
A steep-sided outcropping of granite offered a vantage from which to make a stand. They fled toward it.
From her perch in her husband’s arms, she watched the hunters break out of the woods on all sides, converging and sweeping toward them across the grasses, hundreds of them.
Monk sped faster, Kowalski at his side.
They reached the outcropping and manhandled her to the top, then joined her.
As they huddled, the hunters came surging up to the rocky island, scrambling over one another to reach them, climbing higher, using their living brethren to form a growing bridge.
The attack also came from the air. Clouds of flyers burst high out of the grasses, like a startled flock of crows. They swept in an organized, beautiful spiral, gathering others to them, swelling their ranks before the final assault.
A spinner buzzed from below, hitting the rock at Kowalski’s toe. He danced back, coming close to toppling over the far side into that churning mass of deadly steel.
“Now would be a good time,” Kowalski said.
“Can you stand?” Monk asked her.
“Yes,” she said with more confidence than she felt.
He swung her to her feet.
“Keep holding on to me,” he ordered.
Monk worked at the wrist of his prosthetic and popped the hand free. One finger still wiggled.
Kat frowned. “What’re you-?”
He threw the hand high into the air. She followed its trajectory, but Monk pulled her chin down, wagged his finger-and drew her into a kiss. His lips melted into hers.
Overhead, a loud
Monk drifted back, smiling at her. “Hand of God, babe.”
She stared out at the fields.
Nothing moved below.
The flyers fell heavily out of the sky, like steel rain.
“Mini-EMP,” her husband explained. “One-hundred-yard-effective radius.”
“Painter had me equip it after the countermeasures described in Dubai. Figured there might be some defense like that at the Lodge and wanted to be prepared.”
Kowalski scowled, patting his pockets for a cigar, pulling one out. “Don’t think he was counting on a robot apocalypse, though.”
She slipped her hand around her husband’s neck, partly because she needed to, but mostly because she wanted to. “What now?”
Monk checked his watch. “Well, I do have the babysitter for the whole night. What did you have in mind?”
“Sutures.”
He raised an eyebrow lasciviously. “So you want to play doctor, do you?”
Kowalski dropped heavily to the rock. “Go get a room.”
Monk held up a hand, then cupped his ear, apparently getting a radio call; clearly, the earpiece must have been insulated against the EMP device he carried. His smile widened. “Company’s coming.”
3:25 P.M.
Gray lifted the helicopter from the meadow with a roar of the rotors. The blades stirred the grasses, revealing the glint of dead steel below.
He had already helped Painter’s group off the ledge. Lisa was tending to Kat’s wounds, while Amanda’s child, dried and tucked into a warm blanket, was crying for his next meal.
Painter was on the phone with the National Guard, ordering a series of EMP devices to be set off to destroy any stragglers. But his first call was to the president, to report the safe recovery of his grandson, William. So, mountains were already being moved to reconcile what had happened.
But some matters were harder to resolve.
Seichan sat in the copilot’s seat, quiet, still processing all she’d learned. The body blow of discovering her father’s identity still showed in her face, in the haunted look in her eyes.
He reached over to her, palm up.
She took it.
They had fled from the castle following the thermobaric explosion in the vaults under the Lodge. In the confusion, they’d commandeered the helicopter, the same chopper that had delivered him here. Gray had contacted Sigma command and got patched through to Painter, only to learn that the director was here-and safe.
Glad to escape, Gray swung the helicopter over the steaming sinkhole. It was rapidly filling with water, quickly growing into a new lake. As he swept across it, he saw something climb out of a tunnel halfway down the sinkhole wall. It was the size of a large tank. It pushed free, like a spider creeping out of a nest, scrabbling at the walls, trailing wires, sections of its carapace missing, some half-completed monstrosity driven by the will to live, to survive.
It emerged into the sunlight, basking in its momentary life.
Then it lost its footing and tumbled into the roiling morass below.
42
July 4, 4:10 P.M. EST
Airborne
The jet screamed through the skies on the way back to DC.
Gray sat apart from the others. Each had finished telling sketchy versions of their story, of what they learned, piecing together a tale of immortality, ancient lineages, and modern weapons research. But the more the story unfolded, the less Gray felt at ease.
Seichan slid into the neighboring seat, already more herself, ever resilient, though he could still see the shadowed cast to her eyes, even if no one else could. He noted, during the debriefing, that she never mentioned the one significant revelation tied to the discovery of her long-lost father: that her mother might still be alive.
