not all was as it appeared. Indeed, nothing about the attack made sense. Why would human beings prey upon one another in this manner? Did they not possess a common foe? Why destroy an energy source that maintained the very existence of their species? The idea taking shape in his mind was the correct one, that their attackers were not in league with their own kind, and as the first of the two shining compartments released its cargo, his suspicions became certainty. But by then it was too late; it had always been too late.
The virals swarmed over the convoy. There were hundreds. But in the moment that followed, Ceps realized that the virals were not, in fact, killing everyone. Some were set upon with merciless, blood-splashing swiftness, but others were snatched bodily, flailing and screaming as the virals seized them around their waists and leapt away.
A far worse fate, to be taken. To be taken up.
He made a quick decision.
The semi had come to a halt less than twenty yards from the last tanker in the line. Ceps had seen a tanker blow before. The destruction was instant and total, a great fiery wallop, but in the preceding tenth of a second something interesting occurred. Seeking the weakest point in the structure, the expanding fuel sent the tanker’s end plates shooting horizontally like corks from a bottle. In essence, an exploding tanker truck was a gun before it was a bomb. Ceps had reached the last tanker now. The silver truck was parked twenty yards straight behind him, well within range. With his massive arms, Ceps unscrewed the cap of the offload port and opened the valve. Gasoline spouted from the pipe in a glistening gush. He stood in this current, soaking his clothes. He filled his hands and splashed his hair. This ravishing world, he thought, his senses filling with the smell of fuel, like bottled fire. This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world. Perhaps someone would find his sheaf of poems tucked beneath his mattress and read in its pages the hidden truths of his heart. The words of a poem he loved came back to him. Emily Dickinson: a boy of eight, he had found a book of her poems in the Kerrville Library, in a room nobody ever went to. Because it seemed no one had any use for it, and in a state of anthropomorphic sympathy for its loneliness on the shelf, Ceps had tucked it into his coat and stolen off to an alleyway, where, sitting on an ash can, he’d discovered a voice long gone from the earth, that seemed to strike straight to his most secret self. Now, standing in the path of the gushing port, he closed his eyes to let its words, etched in memory, pass through him one last time:
He removed his lighter from his pocket and flicked it open to balance his thumb upon its flinted wheel.
A hundred yards away, in the cab of the third tanker, Peter was attempting to put the thing in gear. The knob, its markings long since worn off, told him nothing. Each attempt was met with a grinding sound.
“Move over.”
The door swung open and Lore scrambled in, Michael following. Peter slid across the bench to let him take the wheel.
“Our plan is?” Michael asked.
“We don’t have one.”
Michael glanced into the side-view. His eyes widened. “Now we do.”
He jammed the gearshift into first, swung the wheel all the way to the left, and hit the gas, clipping the second tanker. Instead of reversing, Michael pressed the accelerator again. A screech of metal and suddenly they were free, a fifteen-ton wheeled missile bounding into the undergrowth.
Behind them, the world exploded.
The truck shot forward like a rocket; Peter was thrust back in his seat. The rear of the truck lifted, swerved, then somehow found traction again. The cab was bouncing so fiercely it seemed certain they would shake apart. Michael worked through the gearbox, still accelerating. Brush swept over the windshield; they were flying blind as bats. He turned the wheel left again, guiding them in a long arc across the tangled field, and then with a second toss they were on the highway again, racing east.
Their flight had not escaped attention. In the side-view, Peter saw a bank of pale green light gathering behind them.
“We can’t outrun them in this thing,” Michael said. “The only chance is the hardbox.”
Peter jammed a magazine into his rifle. “What have you got?” he asked Lore, and she showed him a pistol.
“That’s not the only problem,” Michael said. “We’ve lost our brake coupler.”
“Meaning what?”
“I can’t slow down or she’ll jackknife. We’ll have to jump.”
The virals were closing. Peter guessed two hundred yards, maybe less.
“Can you get us up the exit ramp?”
“At this speed, there’s no way I’ll make the turn at the overpass. It’s ninety degrees.”
“How far’s the box from the top of the ramp?”
“A hundred yards straight south.”
There was no way they would make it if they jumped at the base of the ramp. A hundred yards would be cutting it close as it was, and that was assuming they escaped the fall uninjured.
The hardbox marker appeared in Michael’s headlights. Lore climbed over the bench and took a place by the door as Michael downshifted, cutting their speed to thirty, and veered to the right, guiding them up the ramp. They flung the doors wide, filling the cab with swirling wind.
“Here we go.”
As they hit the top of the ramp, Michael and Lore leapt from the cab, Peter just behind them. He hit the ground on his feet, knees flexed to absorb the impact, then rolled end over end on the pavement. The air poured from his chest. He came to a stop just in time to see the taillights of the tanker barreling through the guardrail. For the thinnest instant, the vehicle, all thirty thousand pounds of it, seemed on the verge of taking flight. But then it sank from sight, its disappearance followed by one more titanic explosion on a night of them, a roiling cloud with a white-hot center that blazed like an enormous flare.
From his left, the sound of Lore’s voice: “Peter, help me!”
Michael was unconscious. His hair was slick with blood, his arm twisted in a way that seemed broken. The first virals were at the foot of the ramp now. The light of the burning truck had bought them a moment, but that was all. Peter hoisted Michael over his shoulder. Christ, he thought, his knees buckling under the weight, this would have been easier a few years ago. The hardbox flag stood in dark silhouette against the stars.
They ran.
34
She appeared in the doorway as Lucius was concluding his evening devotions. From her hand dangled a chiming ring of keys. Her plain gray tunic and tranquil demeanor did nothing to communicate the impression of someone in the midst of a jailbreak, though Lucius noted a glaze of perspiration on her face, despite the evening chill.
“Major. It’s good to see you.”
His heart was full of a feeling of events set in motion, circles closing, a destiny unveiled. All his life, it seemed, he had been anticipating this moment.
“Something’s happening, isn’t it?”
Amy nodded evenly. “I believe it is.”
“I’ve prayed on it. I’ve prayed on
Amy nodded. “We will have to move quickly.”
They stepped from the cell and continued down the dark hallway. Sanders was asleep at his desk in the outer room, his face turned sideways over neatly folded arms. The second guard, Coolidge, was snoring on the
