“Hurry! They’re right behind us!” someone behind him yelled.
“Keep moving,” he urged. He came up short at the door and kicked it open, which flooded the hallway in bright light. “Go, go, go!”
“They’re coming,” a woman at the back of the group screamed. “Hurry!”
“There’s a barricade out there,” the first one through the door reported.
“Just keep moving, I’ll cover you!” Reese ordered. He moved to the rear of the group and leaned around the corner. A bullet sparked off the wall above his head, and he ducked back. It was hard to see through the smoke down the wide corridor, but the muzzle flash of a gun in the distance told him all he needed to know. At least some of the Scavengers were still alive, and they knew where Reese and Jo had taken the escaped prisoners.
“They’re gonna catch us!” a girl said as she tried to force her way forward through the press of bodies at the exit door.
“Not today,” Reese growled. He waited until one of the Scavengers emerged from the smoke and bent over to cough, then aimed and squeezed off a shot with the pistol. Next to him, Jo stepped up and fired a three-round burst from the captured AR. The man twitched and fell. Reese had no idea who’d fired the kill shot.
Another explosion bloomed through the smoke at the far end of the building, and the orange ball of fire illuminated dozens of people as they ran for cover.
Jo turned around, then slapped Reese on his good shoulder. “They’re through! Let's go!"
Without another thought for the men in the smoke at the far end of the corridor, Reese bolted for the door, hot on Jo's heels. They burst from the burning convention center, coughed, and staggered in the bright sunlight. Sporadic gunfire popped and crackled on the other side of the building. Reese turned and scanned the small group of mostly women and children. Semmi was nowhere in sight. Nor did he see Harry or Carla, Pickering, or Decker—or anyone from the resistance.
"Come on," Reese said as he took the lead and shouldered through the crowd of survivors. "We gotta get out of this place."
Jo raised her rifle in the air and fired a shot. The people they’d rescued screamed and scattered to the alleys and side streets in a panic. “There,” she muttered, “that’s better.”
“Why’d you do that?” Reese hollered as he stood up from a crouch.
“I haven’t had any coffee today,” Jo said with a smirk, “and they were taking too long to get out of our way. Now we can get going. You bring a car to this boogaloo?” she asked, as they stumbled down the debris-strewn street. Gunfire popped and crackled randomly in the distance behind them, but it was clear the initial fight had ended. Reese had no idea who won, and as he thought about the look on Semmi’s face when he ran off to find the prisoners, he wasn't sure he wanted to know. Decker and his men might execute any of the Scavengers they found. Semmi certainly looked like he would.
Reese shook his head. “No car…how did the world go so crazy in a week?” Reese asked no one in particular. “It’s like the rule of law has totally broken down…”
"Well you know the old saying,” Jo replied softly. “We’re only nine meals from anarchy…”
Reese paused to catch his breath and leaned against the corner of an old brownstone apartment building. He squinted up the side of the building at the mud streaks and water stains that had topped the second floor and almost reached the third floor. "I can't even imagine what it must've looked like when the waves hit." He wrinkled his nose and wiped the back of his hand across his face. "And the smell! My eyes have been watering ever since we got here."
Jo snorted, then coughed a glob of blood and mucus from her mouth. "Tell you what, I'm kinda happy those punks busted my nose last night. I don't smell squat."
A shout went up behind them, and Reese turned to see the remnants of a crowd in the distance. Several armed men shouted and ran toward them.
“They good guys or bad guys?” asked Jo.
“How should I know?” Reese said as he turned around. “Run!"
They sprinted away, heedless of which direction they ran. Reese turned them down alleys and sidestreets, climbed over abandoned, mud-caked cars, through gutted buildings, and moved at such a breakneck pace he worried one of them would fall and get hurt. But the fear of what the people who chased them might do—unhinged as they were after the tsunami—drove him and Jo forward at a relentless pace.
It only took a few minutes for them to be completely turned around and lost in the rabbit warren of debris-clogged streets that surrounded the convention center. It wasn’t enough—if one of the people behind them was Sean Mayo…if he managed to survive…
"Which way is south?" Jo panted.
"I have no idea," Reese said as he looked around and squinted. "I don't see any signs! Where are we?”
Jo pointed toward the sky. "Well, I'm willing to bet that black smoke back there ain’t a barbecue. That's gotta be the convention center."
Reese nodded and ran his good hand through his grimy hair. “Okay, at least we’re still moving away from it—that's a good sign. He glanced at the sky and tried to calm his heart rate. "I know it's afternoon, so if the suns there…that means…dadgummit!” he said as he stomped his foot. "We’ve been going north! We’re going the wrong way!"
Jo put her hands on her hips and turned in a circle
