Edge of Survival

Copyright © 2020 by Kyla Stone All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America

Cover design by Christian Bentulan

Book formatting by Vellum

First Printed in 2020

ISBN: 978-1-945410-62-8

Created with Vellum

CONTENTS

Preface

1.  Liam

2.  Liam

3.  Liam

4.  Sutter

5.  Hannah

6.  Hannah

7.  Quinn

8.  Quinn

9.  Liam

10.  Hannah

11.  Hannah

12.  Quinn

13.  Quinn

14.  Liam

15.  Liam

16.  Liam

17.  Liam

18.  Liam

19.  Liam

20.  Liam

21.  The General

22.  The General

23.  Quinn

24.  Quinn

25.  Hannah

26.  Quinn

27.  Liam

28.  Liam

29.  Liam

30.  Hannah

31.  Quinn

32.  Quinn

33.  Hannah

34.  Hannah

35.  Sutter

36.  Quinn

37.  Quinn

38.  Quinn

39.  Liam

40.  Quinn

41.  Quinn

42.  Hannah

43.  Hannah

44.  The General

45.  Quinn

46.  Quinn

47.  Quinn

48.  Hannah

49.  Hannah

50.  Liam

51.  Liam

52.  Quinn

53.  Quinn

54.  The General

55.  Liam

56.  Quinn

57.  Quinn

58.  Quinn

59.  Quinn

60.  Quinn

61.  Quinn

62.  Quinn

63.  Quinn

64.  Liam

65.  Liam

66.  Hannah

67.  Quinn

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Also by Kyla Stone

About the Author

Nuclear Dawn Preview

PREFACE

Much of this story takes place in Southwest Michigan. For the sake of the story, I have altered certain aspects and taken a few liberties with a real town or two. Thank you in advance for understanding an author’s creative license.

“We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it in full.”

MARCEL PROUST

1

LIAM

DAY EIGHTY-FIVE

Liam Coleman studied the man through the scope of his Remington 700 30-06.

At first glance, the man did not appear to be a threat. But Liam took nothing at first glance.

The man was in his mid-seventies, his weathered face a network of wrinkles, his blue eyes rheumy, his bald scalp shiny in the sun. He wore scuffed work boots and worn jeans beneath a heavy brown overcoat.

He was also a vandal. The old man held a half-empty bottle of whiskey by the neck in one liver-spotted hand; in the other, he gripped a can of red spray paint.

He was busy scrawling choice words across the side of a two-story gray colonial with an iron turkey weathervane set atop the roof. A double-barrel shotgun leaned against the wall beside him.

Glass from the house’s broken windows peppered the front porch and glinted in the matted grass. Trash and debris were scattered across the patchy, overgrown front lawn. Graffiti defaced the scuffed, peeling siding.

The entire house seemed to sag, defeated and desolate.

It was a microcosm of the rest of the town. Mounds of trash bags piled outside buildings. Some bags had burst open, and refuse skittered across the streets and sidewalks and accumulated in the storm drains.

The boutique storefronts and businesses along the main street boasted shattered windows and busted front doors. Several had burned to the ground.

No movement anywhere. No signs of life but for several rats darting in and out of a gas station with windows like empty black eyes.

The town was deserted. Utterly empty.

The man was the first person Liam had seen today.

Liam shifted, flexing his sore shoulders, pebbles and twigs poking his belly. He lay on his stomach on the hard ground atop the hill overlooking the town of Tuscola, Illinois.

The evening sun hovered above the tree line, the sky burnished in golds, oranges, and reds. He had been watching the town since dawn, shifting positions several times, studying the main street, a few neighborhoods, and now the northern outskirts.

Tuscola was a small rural town in the heart of Illinois’ Amish and farming country in Douglass county off Interstate 57. It was about one hundred and sixty miles south of Chicago and two hundred and twenty miles from Fall Creek, Michigan.

Liam stabilized the 30-06 on a flat rock in front of him, his M4 slung across his back. He’d brought the 30-06 for sniping, since it had more range and a stronger punch.

Over his BDUs, he wore an improvised ghillie suit made from jute netting woven with grass, shrubbery, and twigs. Camo netting wound around the body and barrel of the 30-06 to camouflage it.

The disguise blurred the human form and blended him perfectly with his surroundings. Anyone from town who glanced up the hill would see only trees, bushes, and rocks.

Dead leaves smothered the matted, brown grass. Patches of snow blanketed the ground. The air was sharp and chilly; the setting sun did nothing to warm him.

As Liam watched through the scope, the old man took a drink of his whiskey and wiped his mouth with the back of his arm, then went back to work spraying a new insult in colorful language.

Liam needed information. He needed to talk to the old man.

Concern for the people he cared for back in Fall Creek ate at him, chiseling at his considerable concentration. Hannah Sheridan and her children, Milo and little Charlotte. Quinn and Molly. Bishop. Reynoso and Perez.

He’d left Fall Creek five days ago, carefully rationing his fuel in the 1978 Dodge D150 he’d borrowed from a farmer and stashing it in an abandoned barn a half mile south of his current position.

Raiders had attacked him twice on the road, and he’d avoided at least double the ambushes. The term “highway robbery” had become literal again.

Before he’d left town, he’d spent a week training the townspeople and helped the Fall Creek Police Department and various volunteers set up roadblocks and watches, establishing a protective perimeter around the outskirts of the small town.

It wasn’t enough.

There was more to do, and he hated leaving Hannah, but this mission was necessary. For himself. For Jessa and Lincoln’s sake. And for his nephew.

He’d abandoned his brother’s child once. He wouldn’t do it again.

Liam scanned for possible sniper positions. The tops of the buildings were empty. No movement, nothing out of place, no light reflections from scopes.

He’d already selected the route that provided him with the best cover and concealment. As soon as it was dark, he would enter the town.

He inched backward, shuffling on his belly with the rifle still in his hands until he’d slid far enough down the hill that he could stand without being spotted behind the tree cover.

A crow cawed from somewhere. Icy wind rustled the branches of the oak, maple, and pine trees surrounding him as a chipmunk scuttled through snow a few yards southwest.

He took it all in. Saw everything. Heard everything. Every sense on alert.

He was used to the lack of mechanical sounds. Few planes flew overhead unless they were military. Few cars on the roads anymore, either.

Most vehicles built after 1980 had stalled the day of the Collapse. The rest had run out of gas in the following weeks. Those who had fuel conserved it wisely.

Liam moved stealthily to a tree about five yards down the hill, removed and folded his ghillie suit, and placed it in the pack he’d hidden beneath several pine boughs.

He shouldered his go-bag—which contained several days of food and water, a water filter, first aid kit, more ammo, and other survival supplies—and did a quick weapon check.

He had switched to his M4 for this stage of the mission. He had his Gerber MK II tactical knife sheathed at his hip along with his Glock 19 outfitted with a seventeen-round magazine. A round always chambered made it eighteen.

He wore a plate carrier and chest rig with two preloaded magazines for the sidearm and three for the carbine along with night vision goggles and a few flash bangs and frag grenades confiscated from the militia’s weapons depot.

Liam put on his NVGs, adjusted his grip on the carbine, keeping it in the low ready position, and began his descent down the hill. His spine twinged in discomfort.

He kept going, not letting the pain slow him.

Liam had served eight years as a Delta Special Forces Operator before being medically discharged for a back injury—five crushed discs from too many jumps from choppers and airplanes conducting top secret operations around the world.

The pain in his spine was a constant ache, unless he exacerbated it—then it was an electric shock to his spinal cord, debilitating and agonizing.

Gradually, darkness fell. Night sounds filled the air—nocturnal creatures creeping through the underbrush, the hoot of an owl. The night was his.

His heart rate quickened. On high alert, every sense straining for any threat, Liam exited the trees at the base of the woods.

He used the terrain to his advantage, moving from tree to tree until he reached a long deep ditch, careful to avoid the patches of dirty snow. He followed the ditch until it came out behind a row of houses. From there, he skirted a backyard and came out on the road.

A Chevy Impala was parked at the curb, covered in dead leaves and withered pine needles. Taking a knee behind it, he slowed his heart rate, breathing steadily, and listened.

Nothing out of the ordinary. No signs of a threat.

With great care, he made his way along the road, leapfrogging from car to car, from building to building, and crossed the street. He scanned windows and rooftops, searching for movement.

Cutting the corners, he led with his weapon in a firing position until he reached the weathered gray house with the turkey weathervane.

Keeping his back against the siding, he checked the rear window and opposite side windows for others inside the house. A darkened living room, an empty bedroom, a kitchen. A camp stove on the counter, a few clean dishes stacked beside it. Neater inside than the trashed exterior.

Nothing moved. No shadows out of place.

He crouched at the eastern corner of the house, listening. No sounds but labored breathing and the shake and spray of the paint can. The old man was hard at work.

By the sound of it, he’d moved to the front of the house, next to the porch. The light from a kerosene lantern glowed softly.

Liam exhaled, steadied himself, and burst into action. He swung around the side of the porch and aimed the M4. “Hands up! Now!”

2

LIAM

DAY EIGHTY-FIVE

The old man turned and blinked his rheumy eyes several times, startled but seemingly unsurprised.

He raised both arms and dropped the spray can but not the bottle, the whiskey sloshing.

“I’ll do whatcha ask,” he said in a creaky voice. “Just don’t make me lose my booze. It’s all I got left in the world.”

Liam circled the porch, his eyes never leaving the old man. He came in close and kicked the shotgun out of the way, almost knocking over the kerosene lantern next to the man’s feet.

“Keep your hands up where I can see them,” Liam said.

The old man trembled, more from age than fear. His eyes, though, were steady. “You don’t gotta kill me for the booze. I’ll give it to you, though it’ll break my heart to do it.”

“Keep the whiskey.” Liam patted him down and removed a Sig Sauer P365 holstered at his hip and a folded tactical knife in his right pocket.

Liam confiscated them both. He tucked the pistol into his belt and the knife in his pocket. “Whose house is this?”

“My own.”

Liam raised his brows. “You’re vandalizing your own house?”

The old man gestured at the houses across the street. “It’s camouflage, ain’t it? Gotta blend in these days. If my house looked all clean and kept, it’d draw attention. And that’s the last thing I’m aiming to do.” He grimaced. “It’s also excellent therapy.”

It made sense. The guy was wily and clever. Liam wouldn’t underestimate him.

He gestured with the M4. “Inside.”

The old man narrowed his eyes. “What for? I told ya, I got nothing.”

“Not planning to hurt you, but I will not wait around out here for a sniper to take me out, either. Inside, now.”

“Makes sense. If there were any snipers out here.” The man grunted. “Someone after you?”

“I’m the one who gets to ask the questions.”

“I suppose that carbine says you’re right. Let’s go, then.”

His shoulders bent with age, the old man picked up the lantern but left the spray can as he shuffled across the front yard.

Liam retrieved the shotgun and followed him up the porch steps and inside the house, weapon pointed at his back.

He scanned the living room—two floral couches, an oak coffee table strewn with photography books. On the wall, dusty photos of grown kids and a handful of grandkids.

The old man saw him looking. “They’re all gone now. All of ‘em.”

Liam shut the door behind them. He set the shotgun in the far corner out of easy reach and prodded the man into the kitchen, sat him down in a kitchen chair, and directed him to set the alcohol on the table.

He secured the man’s hands behind his back with zip ties from his pack.

The old man wiggled his arms but didn’t fight him. “You don’t gotta do that.”

“I’m clearing the house.”

“Fine by me. You won’t find nobody but ghosts.”

Liam checked the house, room by room. It felt cold and unused. Dust settled on every surface, spider webs gathering in the corners.

Satisfied that it was indeed empty, ghosts excluded, he moved back to the kitchen.

The old man watched him warily. “Could you be so kind as to free me now? These withered old arms of mine are goin’ numb.”

Liam checked beneath the table and inside the cabinets for hidden weapons. Finding nothing, he figured honey would attract more bees than vinegar.

He cut the zip ties with his Gerber. “Keep your hands on the table.”

The man let out a groan, stretched, and rubbed his wrists. He rested his elbows on the table and clasped the whiskey bottle with veined, wrinkled hands. “Name’s Rob McPherson. Since you’re a guest in my house and all, seems we should introduce ourselves.”

“Liam Coleman.” Liam angled himself so he could see out the kitchen window without exposing himself while also monitoring the old man.

He wished his NVGs had infrared capability. The backyard glowed green—matted, overgrown brown grass poking up beneath scabs of dirty snow, a sagging fence, and patio furniture filmed in dead leaves and snow.

Several houses stood behind the fence, their windows like broken teeth.

McPherson stared at him. Not indignant, and not afraid. More curious than anything. “You a soldier? A real one?”

“Are there fake soldiers around here?”

“You could say that. Which kind are you?”

“You look like a soldier, is all I’m saying,” the old man said. “A real one.”

Liam was a soldier. Didn’t matter whether or not he was still in the service. His years of training were embedded in his bones, in every move he made, in his every thought and the way he looked at everything as a potential threat, always assessing exit strategies and counter moves.

It was as natural as breathing.

“I served my country. Always will, if that’s what you’re after.”

The old man nodded, satisfied. “It is.”

“Just need to ask you a few questions.”

McPherson took a swig and wiped his mouth. “Ask them, so you can be on your way, and I can get back to my drinkin’.” He narrowed his eyes. “Alone.”

“Where is everyone? What happened to this town?”

“Same thing that’s happened to every town hereabouts.”

“And that is?”

“You lookin’ for someone in particular?” McPherson asked instead of answering.

Liam hesitated but saw little risk in offering the information. “The Brooks family. Evelyn and Travis Brooks. They have an infant with them, a little boy. They were staying with Jasmine Brooks, Travis’s aunt.”

McPherson rubbed his grizzled jaw and nodded. “I know them. Arrived a few months ago. Good people.”

The tightness released in Liam’s chest. “They made it.”

“They did.” McPherson’s mouth thinned. “Did you visit the farm?”

“I went there first.”

That awful day in Chicago, Liam had asked his dead brother’s in-laws to give him the address of their destination. He’d wanted to know where his nephew was—even if he never saw him again. He’d needed to know.

When he’d arrived in Tuscola yesterday morning, Liam had gone straight to the farm.

Located on ten acres a few miles south of the town limits, the large rambling farmhouse had once been yellow and white with a big wrap-around porch.

It was once warm and homey and welcoming. It was no longer any of those things.

The house had burned to the ground. So had the barn, a few sheds, and the chicken coop.

Most of the fence was still standing upright, bright white against the blackened remains of the fire. Whatever animals had once grazed within that fence—horses, cows, pigs—were long gone.

Liam had walked the property for an hour. The charred bones of the structure no longer smoldered. He picked his way through the burnt remains of a home, the detritus of a life.

Walls half-collapsed. A scorched couch with cushions melted to the frame. Furniture—credenzas, bookcases, dining room table, coffee table—reduced to blackened charcoal. Everything filmed in a thick layer of soot.

No footprints remained. No vehicle tracks to follow. No clues other than destruction.

Liam’s chest had gone tight, anger thrumming through him, a bright splinter of rage lodged in his heart.

If someone had hurt them…if anyone had dared to lay a finger on his nephew…

He would find them, and he would kill them.

That he didn’t find any burned skeletons was his only solace. It meant they hadn’t died here. Didn’t mean they weren’t dead somewhere else.

He’d retreated to Tuscola in search of information. A full day of recon had brought him to the defaced gray house with the weathervane. To Rob McPherson, his penchant for vandalism, and his fast-dwindling bottle of whiskey.

“Do you know what happened to them?” Liam asked. “Who burned it down?”

“Not in particular,” McPherson said. “But in general—probably the same thing happened to them that happened to everyone else.”

“You mean the Collapse?”

Three months ago, on Christmas Eve, a series of simultaneous, high-altitude nuclear detonations had caused a massive electromagnetic pulse that destroyed the power grid across most of the continental United States.

It had fried the electronic systems in vehicles, aircraft, laptops and phones, including many newer model generators—anything with a computer chip larger than an Apple watch.

In an instant, the United States had been dragged back to the eighteenth century. Unlike the eighteenth century, most people still alive lacked the knowledge or tools to survive.

McPherson gave him a hard look. “Worse.”

Liam checked the windows, looking for threats. Nothing. There was no one out there. No one at all. The entire town desolate, home to shadows and wraiths, dust and ashes.

An eerie, disconcerting feeling rippled through him. He repressed a shudder.

In his mind’s eye, he saw Fall Creek. A similar fate could befall them just as easily.

He was here, not there, not protecting them, not ensuring Hannah’s safety.

Guilt speared him. He felt his focus waning as worry filled him, his attention divided.

He longed to return to them. Hannah, her son Milo, and Charlotte, the child he’d adored the first moment he’d held her in his arms, her tiny starfish hand clamping around his finger, her rosebud lips, the milky sweet smell of her.

But first, he had to do this one thing. Needed to do it, for he knew he could not be whole without it.

Liam forced himself to bring his full concentration to bear on the task at hand. The faster he saved his nephew, the faster he could return to Fall Creek—and Hannah.

“Tell me everything.”

3

LIAM

DAY EIGHTY-FIVE

The old man took a long swig of whiskey. He set the bottle down in front of him and stared at it for a minute before exhaling slowly, like he had to work himself up to tell the tale.

“When it first happened, the government came after a couple of weeks. They said they were makin’ a big shelter for all the nearby towns south of Peoria and east of Springfield. They built a huge FEMA shelter just outside of Champaign.

“I suppose so the bigwigs could access Willard Airport easily and whatever resources the University of Illinois could still offer. Plus, the Army Corps of Engineers has their research laboratory there. At any rate, the government calls it a camp, but it’s more like a city, if you ask me. No idea how many people, but a lot.

“They promised electricity, food and water, and medications for those that needed them. Everyone was cold and hungry, and lots of people had already died by then. Car accidents, freezing in their homes, heart attacks, things like that.

“Most folks went willingly. No one was forced to go, but FEMA wasn’t supplying food drop-offs or anythin’. If you wanted food, you went to the camp. That was it.

“Then after a month, FEMA pulled a bunch of our National Guard boys who were keepin’ order here and at the camp. Needed ‘em more somewhere else, I guess. Probably to hold back the tide of chaos in Chicago. A losing battle, if you ask me. Anyway, a few weeks after that, the camp was overrun.”

“Overrun? By whom?”

“They call themselves the Syndicate. I guess it’s a riff off the National Crime Syndicate, that infamous confederation of organized crime and mafia bosses from the 1930s and 40s.”

Liam cocked his head. “A gang, then?”

McPherson shook his head. “Not like the gangs you’re probably thinkin’ of. These new groups out of Chicago are organized, powerful, and violent. Picture the cartels in Mexico or the old-style Russian mafia. They’ve got money and connections—high up, too. Corporations, political officials, and cops in their pockets. Way out here, we never had trouble from them, but I’ve heard stories.”

“I see.”

“They think they’re wannabe soldiers or somethin’. Must have robbed a National Guard armory because their weapons are military-grade, and they march around in uniforms.”

Liam stiffened. The militia had worn uniforms, too, fancying themselves better than they were.

These guys, though, sounded worse.

“Their head guy, Alexander Poe, has built up his reputation as this ruthless commander. He’s brutal. They all are.”

“What happened?”

“These guys came charging in like an enemy invasion—hundreds of them. They have armored trucks and automatic weapons. We couldn’t match their numbers or firepower. They took over the camp, killed everyone that resisted, and rounded up the town so we couldn’t fight back or go for help. Took everybody who didn’t hide in time and forced them into the camp. They burned houses and businesses. They killed good people, including my two sons.”

Anger washed through Liam. So much needless death, so much senseless evil, and no one to stop it.

“They came through like locusts and confiscated everything—food, supplies, cows and horses—and consolidated them at some nearby Amish farms, since they’re completely operational without electricity.”

McPherson wiped at his rheumy eyes with the back of his arm and cleared his throat. “We’ve got the largest Amish settlement in Illinois right here in Arthur. Poe put some of his people with the Amish to guard them. They take whatever they want, whenever they want.”

A shadow crossed his face. “And not just animals and supplies, either, if you know what I mean.”

Liam’s anger flared brighter, harder. He did know.

“They’re using citizens at the FEMA camp as slave labor for the local farms. Supposedly, they’ve overtaken a few camps throughout Illinois. Poe uses them as supply hubs to support his growing army.”

It made sense that Poe and his Syndicate would target FEMA camps, and this one in particular, because they were soft targets rich in resources.

The needs of hundreds of millions of displaced persons and refugees scattered across the country had completely overwhelmed FEMA and the rest of the government.

With the lack of communication, limited transportation, and declining resources, many rural communities were overlooked, understaffed, and forgotten.

It made them easy pickings for gangs, militia, or whoever had the most guns.

“What’s he using his army for? What’s his goal?”

McPherson shrugged. “Beats me. But I’ve heard he’s using the camp as a base for human trafficking, too—selling women and slaves. He trades in food, ammo, weapons, fuel.”

Liam clenched his jaw. It didn’t surprise him. People like this Alexander Poe were greedy for power and control, and willing to subjugate anyone to get it.

They had existed before the collapse, but now little was stopping these sociopathic demons from destroying everything they touched.

“Now everyone’s just…gone,” the old man said. “The Syndicate doesn’t know I’m here. I keep the outside of the house looking as trashed and abandoned as all the others. For the first week, they sent patrols to pick up any stragglers, anyone still hiding. Now, they don’t come. Maybe they don’t care anymore. What am I going to do to them? Nothing.”

He shook his head. “Never seen anything like that here. Never thought I would. I love my country, Mr. Coleman. I fought in ‘Nam. Is this how it is everywhere now?”

“No,” Liam said. “It’s not like this everywhere. Things aren’t good. Plenty of evil thriving, but not like this. The National Guard would never allow this.”

“There are no watch dogs left. No one to protect the flock.”

“There are still a few,” Liam said gruffly.

McPherson drank the last of the whiskey, tilting the bottle back to make sure he got every drop. He licked his thin dry lips and sighed. “If your people are still alive, they’re in that camp. You gonna get them out of there?”

“I am.”

The old man’s gaze went distant, like he was watching a scene play out far removed from this dark empty kitchen. “They killed my sons. They killed my neighbors, my friends. Any damage you need to do to get the job done, don’t feel badly about it.”

“I’ll take that into consideration.”

“And be careful. They’re the shoot-first, ask-questions-never type.”

“I can handle myself.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

Liam removed the man’s Sig Sauer from his waistband and set it on the counter. He placed the folding knife beside it and moved to the back door, scanning the backyard through the window in the door before turning back to McPherson.

Something tugged at him. A sensation he hadn’t been sure he could feel again—compassion.

He pitied the old man, recognizing the pain and loneliness in those rheumy but intelligent eyes. He knew loneliness deep in his own bones.

Liam cleared his throat. “Afterward, I can swing back here. I know a place in Michigan that’s doing okay, despite everything. I’ve got an extra seat in my truck.”

McPherson stared forlornly at his empty whiskey bottle. “Nah. This is my home. Way I figure, somebody’s got to stay to keep an eye on things. Keep those knuckle-draggers from winnin’ completely, you know? Might as well be me.”

Liam couldn’t help but respect the old man and his valiant stand against the evil encompassing him. There was something admirable in such a small, insignificant deed.

How simply surviving could be an act of bravery.

“Anything you need?”

McPherson pursed his lips. “You got an MRE by chance? Never thought I’d say this in a million years, but I’d love one. Whatever flavor you got.”

Liam gave a wry smile. “I do.”

4

SUTTER

DAY EIGHTY-SIX

Mattias Sutter aimed through his sights and flicked off the safety of his AK-47, switching the fire selector to semi-auto. His finger massaged the trigger, itching to fire.

A man and a woman in their fifties stood on the wide stone steps not twenty feet in front of him. Presumably husband and wife, they were each armed, the silver-haired, pearl-wearing wife carrying a pitiful peashooter, the husband with a shotgun aimed at Sutter’s chest.

Sutter wasn’t worried about him. He’d never get the chance to pull that trigger.

“This is my property!” the man said in a quavering voice.

“Not anymore,” Sutter said. “Leave now—leave your belongings, your house, everything—and walk away.”

They stared at him, uncomprehending. Although they were sallow-skinned and unwashed, their designer-brand clothing hanging loose on their frames, they looked remarkably well-kept three months after the apocalypse.

Their house was a multimillion-dollar, twelve thousand square-foot palace overlooking the St. Joe River. Sutter drooled at the immense castle of a house—three stories of graceful lines and elegant turrets, built of fieldstone, with a great slab of an oak door and floor-to-ceiling windows.

He could get used to decadence like this. Too bad that wasn’t in the cards today—for him or them.

“This is our home,” the woman said, eyes wide with fear and hatred. “You have no right to it!”

Sutter shrugged. It was the response he’d expected. He’d have preferred to shoot them without the preamble, but this asinine Q and A was part of Xander Thorne’s shtick. “Not my problem, lady.”

This was an ugly world, but it was a world he recognized, welcomed even.

For the right player, it was a world full of opportunity. Just because he’d lost one opportunity didn’t mean a hundred others weren’t waiting to present themselves.

Including this one right here.

He had zero moral qualms about eliminating two strangers he didn’t know and didn’t give a rat’s hairy behind about.

It was as painless as taking out the trash. For him, anyway.

When he moved, it was lightning quick, the AK-47 in his hands spitting rounds faster than the couple’s brains could react.

They weren’t used to shooting people; they hesitated. Sutter didn’t. Two shots to the chest for each of them. They dropped without squeezing their triggers once.

“Shoot first,” he lectured their dead bodies, feeling nostalgic for the eager men and women he’d trained in the militia. He’d cared for them like his own family. “Always shoot first.”

A pang hit him. His men were gone. Dead. Murdered.

His home had been in Allegan, Michigan, a town of five thousand where he’d recruited and trained the members of the Volunteer Militia Brigade of Southwest Michigan, now all KIA.

With his militia slaughtered, there was nothing left for him in Allegan.

When he’d fled Fall Creek on the 1982 Suzuki Quadrunner four-wheeler he’d stolen from Rosamond, he’d paralleled US-131, heading north.

He’d had an acquaintance with a bug-out location just past Torch Lake in northern Michigan, about two hundred and sixty miles from Fall Creek. A nice three-bedroom vacation cabin on a crystal-clear lake stashed with a few months of food and supplies.

He’d been planning to join his friend—or eliminate him, depending on the situation upon arrival—but his plans had changed abruptly when he’d stumbled upon Xander Thorne and his gang of hungry nihilists.

Sutter decided not to run after all.

Everything he had had been ripped from him, his entire life’s work obliterated in a single night. His plans laid to waste.

The men he’d spent years recruiting, dead. The community he’d worked so hard to secure, lost.

He’d lost it because of Liam Coleman.

Sutter’s plan had been flawed. He’d waited too long, allowed Rosamond Sinclair free rein while he bided his time. Her spurious desire to be lauded and adored by her subjects had derailed them all.

Sutter had seen the writing on the wall. Blinded by hubris, Rosamond had refused to recognize her fatal flaw and paid the ultimate penalty for it.

His cousin was dead now. Assassinated at the hands of Coleman, he was certain of it. That had been a bitter mistake, one he would not make again.

No more waiting. No hesitation. Decide, then act. Leave only bodies behind.

Sutter didn’t waste time drowning in self-pity. He might be down, but he wasn’t out.

Behind him, someone coughed.

Sutter didn’t move, didn’t take his eyes off the two bodies. He imagined Liam Coleman dead at his feet.

Xander Thorne marched up beside him, several dozen tough, heavily-armed young people materializing between the trees and converging on the house.

Xander grinned. “Well done.”

“I pass your test?” Sutter asked, unable to mask a hint of sullen resentment from creeping into his voice.

He could’ve slipped away a dozen times in the night. Two reasons kept him eating, sleeping, and living with a hundred half-crazed gangster-wannabes.

First, Xander had confiscated his pack. They’d searched him for weapons but overlooked one critical element. The sat phone Sutter had stolen from Winter Haven would be his salvation and his vengeance—if he could just get to it.

Second, Xander’s group was useful. They were violent, malicious, destructive, like slavering attack dogs that needed to be pointed in the right direction and unleashed.

Sutter should be leading this ragtag group of thugs, not serving as the lowest rank-and-file foot soldier. They were wasting his skills, his potential. Still, he kept his tongue. It would take time to gain their trust, to manipulate himself into a leadership role.

Xander nudged the bodies with the toe of his boot and grimaced in distaste. “Scabs on the butthole of humanity, these two. Holed up in their castle, watching the rest of the world burn.”

Sutter would’ve loved to hole up in such opulent luxury and extravagant comfort, but he knew better than to say so. Like any cult or corporation, you toed the party line and regurgitated whatever drivel they wanted to hear. “Damn parasites.”

Xander turned to those waiting behind him. The crowd shifted with an eager energy, grinning in anticipation, bristling with those bizarre and unsettling weapons—swords and knives, spears and javelins, big heavy maces and axes, hatchets and sledgehammers.

Xander unsheathed his sword and thrust it into the air. “Death to power!”

His minions took up the chant, shouting and shrieking as they poured into the house like cockroaches bent on annihilation.

Sutter remained outside, watching impassively as they desecrated the palatial home with graffiti, shattering windows and breaking the front door off its hinges.

Inside, they wrought further destruction—hurling china dishes against the wall, bashing in a grand piano, flipping over mahogany bookcases and hutches, pissing on the lush white carpets.

Tyrell and Dahlia, two of Xander’s most devoted—and insane—followers, remained at his side.

Xander pointed to the two bodies and tilted his chin at Tyrell. “String ‘em up. You know what to do.”

As his people got to work, Xander turned to Sutter. “Where’s this fuel you promised us?”

“Soon,” Sutter said. “I just have to verify one last thing.”

He still needed access to that sat phone.

Of course, he’d known about the secret sat phone that Rosamond had smuggled in beneath Sutter’s nose. As if Sutter hadn’t known everything that went on with his men.

And he’d known exactly who she would call. It had taken little subterfuge to get ahold of the phone and discover the number.

One call was all it would take.

Sutter could wait. Vengeance, after all, was a dish best served cold.

5

HANNAH

DAY EIGHTY-SEVEN

Hannah Sheridan stood back and admired her creation.

The contents of her project were scattered across the kitchen table. Using the survival books on Molly’s e-reader, she had taught herself to build a high-efficiency solar oven using duct tape and the reflective side of a windshield accordion solar shade.

After shaping the solar shade into a funnel, she placed the funnel on top of an upside down five-gallon bucket, with a cake rack set in the funnel's bottom. She’d wrapped a black pot in an oven bag, then placed the pot atop the rack, which would allow the sun’s rays to shine down under the pot and reflect on all sides, drawing in solar heat.

With the oven bag trapping the heat inside the pot, the oven could cook dinner at temperatures up to 350 degrees. Voilà!

More windshield shades shouldn’t be hard to find. Neither should cake racks or baking bags. She and Milo could scavenge the bakery and abandoned vehicles, build more solar ovens, and barter them for needed supplies at Trade Day.

Someday soon, spring would arrive, and the sun would shine again.

“Not bad for an afternoon’s work, right?” She tickled Charlotte, who let out a peal of giggles as pure as church bells. The baby gazed up at her with her big blue eyes—all pink velvety skin and feathery brown hair sticking out beneath Liam’s handmade gray and green knit hat.

Every time Hannah looked at the beautiful, crooked yarn, it did something to her chest, squeezing her belly. Where was he right now? Was he safe—?

A knock sounded at the door.

Her heart gave a little jolt. Could it be Liam? She balanced Charlotte on her left hip, who cooed and batted at anything within reach, and headed for the door.

The town was protected with armed roadblocks at each of the six roads into town, including an additional barricade at the top of Tanglewood Drive. Still, her good hand strayed for the American Ruger .45 at her hip.

She still wore her western-style oversized silver buckle so she could rack the slide one-handed if needed. The Ruger had been a gift from a kind, fierce woman named CiCi that she had sworn never to forget.

Hannah opened the door to find Dave Farris standing on her front porch. “Hey, Hannah. I just wanted to check in and make sure you were doing okay.”

He wore a winter cap and sweater beneath his unzipped jacket, his weathered face creasing into a broad smile. Behind him, a bicycle leaned against the mailbox. Now that people were running out of precious fuel, bikes had come back in vogue.

She smiled warmly. “We’re alright, thank you.”

She’d always liked Dave. In his early sixties, Dave was gregarious, kind-hearted, and dependable. He was a helper, happy to pitch in where needed, offering his hotel with a working generator for the medically fragile and elderly.

He also kept everyone apprised of news and rumors through his ham radio network.

She glanced beyond him toward the empty street. The day was gray and chilly, the snowdrifts melting, but not fast enough. The houses hunched against the cold, smoke spiraling from every chimney.

Hannah was back at her old house. Milo had jogged over to Molly and Quinn’s house to borrow one of Quinn’s end-of-the-world science fiction novels that weren’t fiction anymore. Ghost had gone with him.

A few weeks ago, Atticus Bishop, the pastor of Crossway Church, had moved in across the street. So had Mike Duncan and his son Jamal, along with Annette King, the high school principal, and Jose Reynoso, the new chief of police by default after Noah’s death.

Liam had taken one of the vacant homes a few houses down.

She felt safer with everyone nearby—especially Liam.

The neighbors rotated a constant watch at the barricade they’d placed at the top of the road. At Liam’s direction, the town had formed a 24/7 watch at roadblocks in and out of town along with patrols to maintain security around Fall Creek.

“Just making sure. After what happened…” Dave waved a vague hand. “It’s been a hard couple of weeks for all of us, but especially for you and Milo. We’re here for you if you need anything.”

“I appreciate that. Planning Trade Day has been keeping me busy.”

She and Molly had been working with several of the local farmers to create Molly’s trading day on a larger scale, and Dave had helped get the word out to the surrounding communities. They’d set the date for Friday at the Berrien County Youth Fairgrounds just outside of town on Old 31.

Dave adjusted his coat, fiddling with the zipper. “Oh good, good. With you and Molly at the helm, Trade Day should be a great success. I have no doubt.”

“We’ll do our best.” Hannah narrowed her eyes. “There’s something else.”

He gave her a sheepish grin. “Okay, you got me. It’s the town council. Since we’re not electing a new superintendent, the council will run things until we receive further instructions from a reliable government source. We’ll have an election in six months, after we’re a bit more stabilized. But for now, the council voted to choose replacements for our vacant seats. The majority felt you’d be a beneficial voice for the council. So, we voted you in last night.”

Hannah raised her eyebrows. “I don’t get a say in it?”

Dave winked. “We’re confident that you’ll say yes.”

“But I don’t have any experience.”

“You care about this town. You’re a natural. The way you spoke out at the last town hall meeting. It was going downhill fast, but you and Bishop brought it back. You helped figure out a solution and got most everyone on board.”

Hannah blushed. The meeting two weeks ago had been rife with discord. A few fist fights nearly broke out.

No one in Fall Creek could agree on what to do with the families of the militia.

The families were crammed into three Winter Haven houses under constant guard. Every day, eighty-seven women, children, and elderly strangers needed food, shelter, and toiletries. They were a drain on precious resources.

It had divided the town. Anger, resentment, and grief simmered, about to boil over. People had shouted and pointed fingers, some weeping, others threatening violence.

She could still hear the cacophony of discordant voices growing louder and more vehement:

“Why are we still wasting resources on the outsiders?”

“They’re eating our food! We’re on the verge of starvation, and they’re living in luxury!”

“We should drive them out! Let them fend for themselves and see how they like it!”

“Hang them all, I say!”

“That’s inhumane! They’re women and children. That would make us murderers!”

“Better us than them! We let them stay in our midst, they’ll slaughter us in our sleep!”

“We should let them stay. What happened isn’t their fault. They’re innocent!”

“Over my dead body! We should go in there ourselves and take care of the problem. A box of 9mm rounds should do it!”

Aghast, Hannah had watched the proceedings as they unraveled into chaos. This was not the Fall Creek she knew and loved. They’d held it together this long. They’d outlasted a corrupt tyrant and a sadistic militia.

If they didn’t come together now, they were doomed.

That couldn’t happen.

Before she could think better of it, Hannah had stood abruptly, shoving back her chair and whistling through her fingers. Bishop added a booming command for everyone to shut their traps.

Maybe it was because she was still an oddity in the community, a fascinating source of rumors and hearsay, but when she spoke, the people quieted. They listened to her.

Instinctively, she knew that they couldn’t accept a group of hostile outsiders, most of whom resented and despised the Fall Creek residents for killing their husbands and fathers, wives and mothers.

Likewise, Fall Creek had suffered its own losses at the hands of the militia. The town was grief-stricken, crippled, and needed space and time to heal.

Allowing the militia families to stay would not only be dangerous, it would also tear the town asunder with animosity, suspicion, and bitterness.

They had to go.

When she suggested the town use one of the old diesel buses to transport the families to the FEMA shelter pick-up zone, it was generally accepted as the best of several mediocre options.

The trip would require critical fuel resources, but it would remove the families to a safe and distant location, ensuring they couldn’t easily return to seek vengeance. And those who were truly innocent, the children, would be cared for and not left to starve.

Sometimes, the least bad choice was the only choice.

Some grumbled unhappily, but the vote passed.

While Reynoso and his security teams kept watch in Fall Creek, Liam and Bishop had chaperoned the transport to the FEMA pick-up location north of St. Joseph off Old 31, where Red Cross volunteers would transfer the families to the nearest FEMA regional center in Portage, just south of Kalamazoo.

It had been a harrowing but successful trip. The militia families were gone, and only James Luther remained as a prisoner.

Dave cleared his throat, bringing her back to the present.

“It’s all thanks to you,” he said, as if bound and determined to convince her no matter her thoughts on the matter. “You stood up to Rosamond and eradicated her reign once and for all.”

“Quinn was there, too. Truth be told, Quinn was the one who put a stop to her, not me.”

Dave grinned. “She’s a spitfire, no debate on that count, but she’s a little young yet for a town council seat.” He leaned in and tickled Charlotte’s feet, eliciting a gleeful shriek and a spate of giggles before returning his fervent gaze to Hannah. “You’ve earned your place. And also, we need you.”

Hannah’s cheeks went hot. She’d spent five years locked in a concrete room, isolated and cut off from society—from friends, neighbors, and family.

She had craved belonging like a shipwrecked sailor starving for a morsel of bread.

She’d found that here. She wanted to get involved, to help. Although she’d never thought of herself as a leader, that didn’t mean she couldn’t step into the role and learn as she went. “I’m willing to help however the town sees fit.”

Dave’s grin broadened, his cheeks crinkling beneath the bristly salt and pepper beard he’d grown over the last few months. “It’s settled, then.”

Charlotte squirmed on her hip, and she adjusted her grip on the baby’s chubby thighs. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. It’s a terrible job, but someone’s got to do it, right? At least you won’t be lonely. Bishop just accepted a council seat as well.”

“An excellent choice.”

“We asked Liam, too. He declined. I bet you already knew that, though.”

The corners of her mouth twitched. “Liam Coleman isn’t much for committees.”

Dave rolled his eyes. “He said the same thing, only not as nicely. It’s a real shame, too. The townspeople fear him just enough to listen to him. Reynoso’s our new chief of police, so we named him head of security.”

“Did he accept?”

“Didn’t give him a choice on that one. He’s already doing it; we just made it official.” Dave frowned and glanced back toward the street. “Sure wish he was back already. It doesn’t feel right without him around.”

Liam’s absence left a hole in her chest that expanded with each passing day.

In part, it was her fault. She was the one who’d encouraged him to leave in the first place.

He had nothing to answer for in Hannah’s mind, but his own judgment was another matter. She knew Liam Coleman well enough to understand that his self-recrimination would destroy him if left unchecked.

So many things in life couldn’t be changed. You couldn’t go back and save anyone, couldn’t wrestle time or people into submission.

But rescuing his nephew was still possible.

And so he had gone out into a world consumed by mayhem and anarchy—a man alone, but a warrior.

“It’s been a long week,” she admitted.

“It’s been a long year!” Dave removed his cap and twisted it in his hands. He kicked snow off his boots and stared at the wooden planks in the porch floor before clearing his throat awkwardly. “I have more news. And I’m sorry, Hannah, but it’s not good news.”

Her heart lodged in her throat. “What is it?”

“It’s about your family.”

Hannah loved her parents dearly. And her older brother, Oliver.

During her years of captivity, she’d thought about them often, wondering what they were doing; whether they still went snowmobiling, winter camping, and hunting in the Porcupine Mountains of the Upper Peninsula; whether they sat around the dinner table and stared at her empty chair and missed her as much as she missed them.

Once she had escaped the basement, she’d only had the head space for two things—staying alive and getting home to Milo.

After she’d returned to Fall Creek, she’d asked Dave to use his far-ranging ham contacts to find a needle in a haystack and track down her family.

Dave’s expression softened. “I’m so sorry, Hannah. Your mother was in a fatal car accident the day of the EMP, and your father had been receiving chemotherapy treatments for bone cancer. Your neighbor said the prognosis was excellent, but without the chemo…he passed away a month ago.”

Hannah went rigid. Her parents, dead? They would never know that she’d survived. They would never meet their granddaughter.

Charlotte gurgled happily, tugging on strands of Hannah’s hair in her fat fists. For her infant daughter, everything was still normal, her world not spinning, everything turned upside down yet again.

Numb, Hannah bounced her in her arms and patted her back. She swallowed the lump in her throat. “And Oliver?”

“The neighbor said he’s still alive, but he hasn’t seen him in a few weeks. We’ll find him for you, I promise.”

She managed a nod, unable to speak.

Dave cleared his throat again. “I’m so sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”

She blinked away the wetness in her eyes. “You found my brother. For that, I cannot thank you enough.”

Dave blushed, his weathered cheeks turning ruddy. He tickled Charlotte’s toes again and gave her foot a soft squeeze through her socks. “We take care of each other in Fall Creek. Anything you need, just say the word.”

“Thank you, friend.”

After he’d ridden away on his bicycle, Hannah shut the door and collapsed against it, her legs failing her. She held Charlotte close and rubbed her small, soft head. She smelled like baby powder and milk.

Hannah’s eyes were wet, her chest too tight to breathe. The world seemed far away and too close at the same time. More death. More pain. More sadness.

When would it end?

6

HANNAH

DAY EIGHTY-SEVEN

The house was quiet. Too quiet.

Hannah blinked and glanced at her mechanical watch. She hadn’t realized how long she’d been standing there, lost in a sea of memories and grief. A half hour had passed.

Milo had not yet returned from Quinn and Molly’s house. Ghost was with him, so she didn’t worry, but Charlotte squirmed in her arms and let out an unhappy yowl, the distinct smell of urine reaching her nostrils.

The world intruded, demanding her attention.

Pushing away the sorrow, she forced a cheerful note into her voice. “I know it’s time for your nap, but first we need to check on your brother. Right after we freshen you up. Boy, do you stink, little girl.”

Humming Prince’s “When Doves Cry,” Hannah changed Charlotte into a fresh cloth diaper and dumped the used one in a nearby bucket to take care of later. Washing cloth diapers by hand was a pain, but it was better than the alternative.

Sliding her into a fresh blue onesie featuring dancing puppies, she sat back and took in her daughter’s full head of chocolate-brown hair, her velvety skin, her tiny fingers and toes with their pink shell nails.

She tickled her daughter’s tummy and blew on her neck. Charlotte squealed in delight. How beautiful she was, how perfect and vibrant and alive.

Once she was clean, Hannah tucked her into a blue jacket and a second layer of socks. The weather mid-March in Michigan could vary wildly. Temperatures were in the low thirties, cloudy and brisk, drifts of slushy snow still blanketing the ground.

With Charlotte in tow, she exited the house wearing a jacket with the Ruger in her pocket. No matter how safe she felt, it went with her everywhere.

The chilly air stung her cheeks. The street was quiet—other than the sentries at the barricade, everyone was busy working, either preparing for Trade Day, volunteering for various security patrols, or working the community garden they’d started at the middle school baseball field.

She had a key to Molly’s house, as did Milo, since he was always vacillating between the two households.

Letting herself in, she wandered down the hallway to Quinn’s room. Valkyrie, the sleek black cat who was usually outside hunting, wound around her legs, purring.

Milo lay on the messy, unmade bed, the earbuds from the iPod tucked into his ears. Typical of a teenager’s room—clothes, books, and drawing bric-a-brac scattered everywhere.

Not so typical were the sharpened flechettes on the dresser and the box of ammo on the nightstand.

Ghost napped in the center of the wood floor, several cats piled on top of him like he was an Afghan rug.

“Who died?” Milo asked.

Hannah shot him an alarmed look. “What makes you say that?”

He gave a little shrug. “Everybody’s dying.”

Her chest squeezed. She laid Charlotte down beside Ghost, who snorted in his sleep and instinctively curved his paws around her small form. She cooed and reached for him, curling and uncurling her tiny fists in the fur of his neck and chest.

With Charlotte happily occupied, Hannah sat on the edge of the bed beside Milo. “It feels that way sometimes.”

He gazed at her beneath his mop of unruly black curls, his dark eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed. He’d hidden in here to cry in privacy, she realized.

Hannah didn’t want to tell Milo about his grandparents. He didn’t need to know yet, and it would only make things worse for him.

He’d lost his father three weeks ago. Since Noah’s death, he’d been quiet and withdrawn. Most nights, he woke up crying or plagued by nightmares. It took hours to calm him, if he calmed at all.

“Don’t worry. Everyone here is okay. It’s all right.”

He blinked, the tension easing in his face.

“What are you listening to?”

“Elvis. ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love.’ Quinn pretends she doesn’t like it because it’s all romancy, but it’s her favorite.”

With a sigh, Hannah let her gaze drift around Quinn’s room, taking in the monsters, aliens, and mythical creatures the girl had so painstakingly painted.

She had incredible talent. The paintings were detailed, lifelike, and terrifying.

“Where is Quinn, anyway?”

That pained little shrug again. It gave away so little—and so much. “She’s never around anymore.”

“I’m sorry, honey. Everyone deals with grief in their own way.”

“She doesn’t want to play with me.”

“She’s not trying to hurt you, I promise. She just needs some time.”

Hannah made a mental note to talk to Quinn again. She’d spent five years unable to mother a child. Now she felt responsible for three.

And Milo wasn’t wrong. She’d hardly seen the girl in weeks. Where Milo was lost and weepy, Quinn was hard and angry, withdrawing further into herself with every passing day.

Noah had left waves of devastation in his wake. They were all still reeling.

Milo blinked hard and stared at the ceiling. “Okay.”

He was only eight and so slight, so small and fragile, yet he’d been through so much. His beautiful olive skin that highlighted his Venezuelan heritage was still pale from his bout with adrenal crisis and the five-day coma.

They had a few more months of the hydrocortisone medication that controlled his Addison’s disease, but they’d used the last emergency injection.

Finding more was high on the list of priorities.

She leaned over and rubbed his shoulder. He hated being asked if he was feeling okay, so she tried to suss out his health in other ways. “Are you hungry? Molly is helping with the new community garden, but when she’s finished, she promised to help us make potato skins in the solar oven.”

“Mom?”

“Yeah, honey?”

“Was Dad a bad person?”

Hannah went still. “Why would you think that?”

Milo turned his head and stared at the wall. A painting of a beautiful white unicorn rose above the bedframe, its tail and mane streaming in the wind. In a room of monsters, the unicorn was the only “good” creature.

“I asked Quinn, and she said he was. Quinn doesn’t lie.”

She choked down the grief. Not for herself, but for her son, for the burden he was forced to bear.

How could she explain it when her own feelings were a complex tangle of anger, heartbreak, grief, bitter disappointment, and loss?

Noah was dead. His part in this life was over, but not the legacy he’d left behind.

He had loved Milo, loved her. He’d been a good cop, a loyal friend, a loving father. She mourned who he was, but more than that, who he should have been.

Every misguided step he took, he could have stopped. Instead, each step took him further and further from the man he’d claimed to be.

Hannah understood that he’d done it all for Milo. He’d believed that the end goal justified any means, no matter how ugly or brutal. He had traded justice and morality for a counterfeit peace, a false security that had never existed.

Hannah swallowed and licked her lips, thinking of what to say, praying she didn’t make things worse. “Your father loved you very much, Milo. He loved you more than any person in the entire world. You know that, don’t you?”

He nodded.

“He was trying to protect you. He was trying to protect all of us, but he was afraid, and his fear drove him to make some mistakes.”

You couldn’t know another person, couldn’t crawl inside their skin and feel their thoughts, see their darkest fears or driving needs. All you could do was wade through the fallout and try to comprehend why the person you loved had made the choices they had.

“He didn’t try to stop the militia,” Milo said. “The militia hurt people. Nana—I mean, Mrs. Sinclair—caused what happened at the church. She hurt people, too.”

“Yes,” Hannah said around the lump in her throat, “they did. She did.”

“Dad was on their side.”

“Fear can make people do awful things. Some people will give up a lot for things they believe in. Peace is a good thing. Safety is a good thing. But people can give a little here and there until one day they’ve given so much in the name of that thing that they don’t recognize themselves. They’ve crossed lines they’d never thought they’d cross at the beginning. And in the end, the very thing they wanted so badly is the thing they’ve lost.”

With a pang, she thought of how desperately Noah had wanted them to be a family. How much he’d sacrificed to keep the town safe.

And yet, in the end he’d let the wolves in himself.

Milo stared up at the ceiling, saying nothing, silent tears sliding down his cheeks. She didn’t know how much he understood, but it was important to keep talking, to face it head on and not bury it, to embrace the process of mourning and accept the pain.

“Is it wrong to feel sad? Am I bad for wanting him to come back?”

Hannah scooted onto the bed, laid down beside her son, and drew his stiff little body into her arms. After a moment, he relaxed against her, his narrow shoulders quaking.

“There is nothing bad or wrong about you, or your feelings,” she said into his hair. He smelled like dirt and pinecones and baking soda shampoo. She felt his heartbeat, his warmth, every precious breath as his chest hitched. “Your dad was your dad. You loved him and he loved you. Full stop. You’ll understand more when you’re older, but for right now, that’s all that matters. When it comes to you and your dad, that was all that ever mattered. It’s okay to love him. It’s okay to feel angry or disappointed, too. It’s okay.”

They cried then, both of them, together. Milo’s body curled like a comma against hers, his fist nestled against his cheek like when he was a baby.

And then she sang to him, filling the room with her pure voice, surrounding him with music, something good and lovely and bright to chase away the darkness.

She sang their favorites, Guns N Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine,” Elton John’s “Your Song,” U2’s “One,” and of course, “Blackbird” by the Beatles.

Milo had lost his father. She had lost her husband and now her parents. Even though she was a grown woman and hadn’t seen them for years, she felt their absence like a permanently missing piece of herself.

She had read once about the mathematics of grief—how what was taken always weighed more than what remained.

Even if that were true, she couldn’t allow it to remain so.

Charlotte and Milo were here, now, in the present. They needed her. She wouldn’t leave her children motherless and unmoored.

Hannah would be strong for them, as strong as she needed to be.

7

QUINN

DAY EIGHT-SEVEN

Sixteen-year-old Quinn Riley pointed over the water toward the opposite bluff. “What’s that?”

Jonas Marshall stood and shielded his eyes, fishing pole in one hand. “You mean the McMansions?”

“No. It’s something else.”

Quinn swiped her blue-tinted bangs out of her eyes and grabbed the binoculars from the bench of the fishing boat they’d borrowed from Jonas’s mother, a twelve-foot rusted tin can that barely kept them afloat.

Tiny waves lapped the boat, rocking gently beneath them. Chunks of ice bumped the sides. The diesel motor chugged along, quiet enough to hear crows cawing in the trees.

Quinn, Jonas, and Whitney Blair were fishing along the St. Joe River north of town, somewhere between Fall Creek and the lakefront city of St. Joe. Most of the river had melted, though small icebergs floated here and there, the banks swollen with snowmelt.

In the morning, they’d spent several hours clearing the middle school baseball field to create the community garden for hardier, cool weather vegetables like potatoes, onions, and carrots. In the newly-built greenhouses, they’d planted zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, and spinach until their fingernails were black with dirt.

At Molly’s directive, they’d also planted seeds for bell peppers, broccoli, and cauliflower in cups, which they would transfer outdoors in May and June.

As far as the dismal fishing trip went, all they’d caught were two gross catfish and one meager perch.

Quinn raised the binoculars to her eyes and scanned the bluff above them. Tall brown trees scratched the gunmetal gray sky. Elaborate docks dotted the riverbank, steep wood staircases leading to extravagant houses featuring wrap-around decks and floor-to-ceiling windows.

Many were the second or third vacation homes of rich cats from Chicago and Detroit, visited in the summer and on weekends, remaining empty in the winter.

Now, most of the windows were shattered, graffiti scrawled across the exteriors. Fancy furniture littered the back lawns, the patio furniture bent and broken.

Some had clothes scattered across the once manicured lawns—blouses and tank tops snagged on the deck railing, pillowcases puddled across the stairs, pants, shorts, and towels caught in tree branches and manicured bushes.

A woman’s white bra fluttered like a flag in the wind.

Ice water trickled down Quinn’s spine, raising the hairs on her neck. It was one thing to scavenge out of necessity, but this felt like something different.

This felt like a desecration—destruction for the sake of destruction.

“Who would do something like that?” Whitney asked after Quinn handed her the binoculars. She wore loose jeans, combat boots, and a bright purple jacket that contrasted with her pale skin and hollow eyes.

Three months ago, Whitney had been a bubbly cheerleader, the prom queen of Fall Creek High, always dressed to the nines. That girl was long gone.

Now, she was withdrawn, grief-stricken, and fearful, a shadow of her former self.

But then, so was Quinn.

They were all different.

Some not for the better.

Jonas shrugged. “Who knows? As long as they don’t dare come to Fall Creek.”

“We should head back,” Whitney said tremulously. “I don’t feel good about this. We shouldn’t be out this far.”

Jonas tugged on his empty line and sighed. “Nothing’s biting, anyway.”

They hadn’t yet turned around when the sound of voices reached them. The scent of smoke from a campfire carried on the wind.

Quinn tensed as she and Jonas exchanged a wary look.

Jonas had a hunting rifle balanced next to him; she had her pistol and slingshot. They could defend themselves.

The fishing boat puttered around the bend in the river, and a group of about a dozen people appeared between the thin leafless trees, huddled around a bonfire at the edge of the water.

Several felled logs spread with blankets provided seating along with a few battered camping chairs. Trash, empty bottles, and pop cans littered the muddy, trampled clearing.

This hideaway had been well-used.

A few guys turned to face them as the boat motored closer. They stood at the edge of the water, skipping rocks. She recognized their burgundy and gold Wolverine jackets. Fellow high schoolers from Fall Creek.

One of them hurled a rock much too large for skipping. It sailed through the air, narrowly missing Whitney. Water splashed the hull as the rock sank to the bottom of the river.

“Watch it!” Jonas said.

The teens laughed and raised their mugs and glasses. A few hooted and waved to Jonas. “Let us on!”

“Give us a ride!”

“Where you been, man?”

“Don’t you wanna hang with us anymore?”

Two girls rose from their log seats and stared at the little boat, their gazes lasering in on Whitney and Quinn. Their cheekbones were sharp as glass, eyes huge in their gaunt faces, designer jeans dirty and hanging off their hips.

The popular girls in school were always competing to be the skinniest waif, as if achieving bean-pole thinness was the epitome of human accomplishment.

Well, now they’d gotten their wish. Were they finally satisfied? Or were they as hungry as Quinn, their stomachs like shriveled pits gnawing on itself?

Probably hungrier, she decided. Thanks to Gran’s foresight, Quinn still ate two sturdy meals a day. Though eating was for nourishment, no longer for pleasure.

Her mouth watered at the thought of cheeseburgers, potato chips, and mint chocolate chip ice cream.

“You shouldn’t be out this far!” Whitney called over the water. “It’s dangerous!”

One girl sneered. “So dangerous. Watch out for those snapping turtles. Oh no! Maybe a tree branch will fall on us!”

Quinn gave them the middle finger.

A few boys laughed and returned the favor. A couple others threw more rocks, one striking the stern with a dull clunk.

Jonas cursed as he steered the boat further from the shore and out of their line of fire. “What the hell, man!”

“They’re worthless tools.” Whitney brushed her lank red hair back from her face and blew out a breath. “All they do is sit around their bonfires and whine about how hungry they are, how the booze and weed are all gone, and how life is pointless and too hard. Forget them.”

Unlike most of the town, these indolent laggards spent their days doing nothing, as far as Quinn could tell. Apparently, their parents still fed them a little. It was more than they deserved.

Principal King had put most of the high schoolers to work as couriers carrying messages throughout the town or as “resource managers”—which basically meant scavenging empty homes for anything useful that other residents could use, like baby gear for Hannah and Charlotte, or batteries, wires, and motherboards for Jamal and Tina to tinker with.

The fishing boat motored past the shiftless teens. Their too-loud voices and braying laughter carried across the water. They were careless and stupid; anyone could sneak up on them, and they wouldn’t hear a damn thing. And she hadn’t noticed a single weapon among them.

“You don’t think they’re the ones who vandalized the houses on the bluff?” Jonas asked once they were clear of the group.

“I don’t think so. They’re lazy and bored, not exactly malicious. That would take too much gumption.” A fresh wave of dread shivered through her. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she couldn’t deny the creeping sense of trepidation. “It was someone else.”

8

QUINN

DAY EIGHTY-SEVEN

Jonas glared back the way they’d come and shook his head in disgust. “I can’t just sit around like that, doing nothing, complaining and waiting for other people to fix things. I need to do something.”

Jonas had dared to confront the militia in front of his parents’ hardware store. For his troubles, he’d gotten punched and would’ve been shot—if Liam hadn’t intervened.

Quinn liked to think that she’d helped, but Liam Coleman was more than capable, his own one-man army.

After that day, she’d seen Jonas in a different light. He wasn’t just an idiot football jock like the rest of them; he actually had a brain. A hot-headed, impetuous one, but still.

She respected him for that. Liked him, even.

He and Whitney had both aided in fighting the community distribution center fire, sprinting into the burning, smoke-filled middle school again and again to recover supplies, pushing themselves past the point of exhaustion along with Quinn.

Quinn, Jonas, and Whitney shared little in common, except for one thing—the militia had killed one of their parents.

They lapsed into silence for several minutes, Quinn worrying at her eyebrow ring as she stared at the water. Only the boat broke the reflection of the trees and sky, shattering and refracting the images into thousands of pieces.

The air was brisk but windless. The barren trees still.

“My mom is like that, now.” Whitney gazed across the far bank, where several geese glided along the shoreline. She didn’t look at Jonas or Quinn. “She’s too depressed to get up and just lays in bed all day. Our house is…it’s filthy. There are bugs everywhere. Spiders and flies. It stinks. I hate it.”

People wanted the world to go back to the way it was. They wanted the distractions of Netflix and social media, the ease of fast food and restaurants and Starbucks, the comforts of music and grocery stores, delivery services and Amazon on demand. Jobs and church and bars, movie theaters and bowling alleys.

Hell, everyone wanted cars that worked and hot showers. A house that wasn’t freezing. Electricity was an amazing invention; living without it sucked hairy coconuts.

But some people wanted what they’d lost so badly they couldn’t adjust to now. They couldn’t wrap their heads around their new reality, and it was screwing with their brains.

With no shrinks standing by to dispense anxiety and anti-depressant meds, things were getting worse.

Quinn understood it. She understood it better than she wanted to. The temptation to crawl into bed in your sweatpants and bury yourself beneath a mountain of blankets, to tune out the broken world and sleep the rest of your miserable life away.

To make the pain stop.

“That sucks,” Jonas said. “My mom’s a wreck, too. My dad…my dad dying really hit her hard.” His voice caught as he jigged his fishing rod listlessly. “It’s like, she’s so angry. She hated the militia, and hates them even more now, but there’s nothing else she can do about it. Nothing will bring him back. The house is just so quiet without him.”

During the weeks the militia had controlled Fall Creek, they had killed nineteen townspeople, including the police officer, Owen Truitt and Wayne Marshall, Jonas’s dad.

Desoto had shot and killed Whitney’s father when he’d attempted to steal a Winter Haven house. Just like Sutter had shot and killed Quinn’s mother.

Noah had died too, right in front of her. She’d tried to warn him, to save him, but she’d failed.

She blinked hard, fighting away the sudden flood of wetness behind her eyes.

This was the part where she should open up, to share her innermost feelings, but she couldn’t do it. It was too much, too real, too close to the surface.

Her stomach knotted, suddenly queasy. She’d agreed to come out here to forget, to escape her own head for a few hours. It wasn’t working.

She was clinging to the side of a cliff, holding on by the tips of her fingers, and she didn’t know how to keep herself from falling.

“At least they’re all dead,” Whitney said. “I’m glad they’re dead. Sometimes I wish I’d killed one of them myself.”

“Careful what you wish for,” Quinn muttered.

Jonas shot her a confused look.

She said nothing. What was there to say? They didn’t know she’d been the one to kill Rosamond Sinclair. They didn’t know she had been seconds too late to save Noah.

Whitney sniffed. “I’m glad Mrs. Sinclair is dead. And Chief Sheridan, too. If they’d never let the militia in, our dads wouldn’t have died. Your mom either, Quinn.”

Quinn’s brain played a vicious game of Russian Roulette: Noah, dead on the floor. Rosamond sinking to her knees, grasping at her bloodied throat. How the woman’s hands fluttered helplessly, like white moths against the bright red blood.

How dark it had looked splattered across the polished Brazilian wood planks, dark like oil. So slick and wet, almost like the paint Gramps used to buy her. How she’d slipped in it as she fell by Noah’s side, begging him to live, to come back, to earn another chance to make things right.

A black pit opened in her stomach. It was hard to breathe. Everything was close, too close. The water on every side, lapping against the sides of the boat, trapping her.

Abruptly, Quinn stood, the boat rocking. “I need to go.”

Jonas set down the fishing rod. “You okay?”

She wasn’t okay. She was so far from okay it was on another planet. “I want to leave. Take me back.”

Whitney scrunched up her beautiful, too-thin face, already contrite though she hadn’t done a thing wrong. The wrong was inside Quinn.

“Did I say something? I didn’t mean to—”

“Take me back!” She was shaking. The boat rocked precariously beneath her feet. “Now!”

If Jonas didn’t start driving the damn boat, she’d jump in and swim to shore, never mind that the water was still freezing and she’d catch hypothermia.

Jonas saw it in her face—she would do it. “Okay, okay! We’ll go back.”

“Head to shore. I’ll walk.”

Whitney balked. “Why would you want to walk? We can take you home in the boat.”

She’d have to hike at least five miles through the woods in the cold, but that beat another second stuck in this tin can with other people. She had her Berretta pistol, along with her trusty slingshot and three flechettes, each sharpened to a razor edge.

Quinn’s hands curled into fists at her sides to keep them from trembling. To keep herself from hitting something—or someone. “Just do it!”

Jonas gave her a look like she was some alien creature he’d never seen before. Like she’d disappointed him. “Chill out. We’re going—”

Whitney let out a gasp. “Quinn.”

Something in her voice stopped them both.

Whitney pointed behind them, her wan face going bone-white, her red freckles standing out like droplets of blood. “There’s a body.”

Quinn twisted around and raised the binoculars. The bluff wasn’t so steep here; the houses crowded closer to the river. An enormous stone three-story mansion featuring a tiered deck and an elaborate outdoor kitchen rose above them.

Quinn had seen a lifetime of corpses in the last four weeks alone.

This body, though.

An overweight, middle-aged man hung listless, strung from the rafters of the deck, a yellow nylon cord throttling his neck. His hands were bound with yellow cord. His mottled, purplish skin made it impossible to make out identifying features.

Something was tacked to his chest, a water-logged cardboard square with letters scrawled in black spray paint.

“I can’t make out the words.” Whitney’s voice squeaked in panic. “What does it say?”

“‘Death to Power’.” Quinn’s chest turned to ice. Saying the words aloud sent a chill tunneling straight through her. “We need to go. Now.”

They might have defeated the militia, but that didn’t mean they were safe.

Something else was out there. Something bad.

9

LIAM

DAY EIGHTY-EIGHT

It didn’t take Liam long to find FEMA Center #109, a hastily constructed facility near the grounds of Willard Airport in Champaign, a mid-sized university city in central Illinois.

It took far longer to find the people he was searching for.

Ghillie suit in place, he’d spent the last two days reconning the camp—glassing the area, climbing trees before dawn to get enough elevation to see clearly, and moving positions every few hours to get eyes on a different section of the camp.

FEMA had constructed the facilities upon wide-open fields; only a few positions allowed him enough tree cover to gain close access.

He tracked patrols, security shifts, and stationary guard positions, and studied the movement and daily schedule of the civilians.

The old man was right. FEMA Center #109 was as large as a city. Dozens of huge white tents plus hundreds—thousands—of modular buildings like single-wide trailers were set in a grid pattern and surrounded by a tall chain-link fence lined with concertina wire.

The Syndicate thugs carried long guns and wore BDUs, the name tapes and patches removed from their uniforms. They looked like soldiers, intentionally preying upon a civilian’s natural inclination to respect and obey American armed forces.

Guards patrolled the perimeter on an hourly circuit. Two sentries were posted in static positions every five hundred yards. Dozens more maintained order within the fence.

They were well-armed and organized, but they lacked the rigorous discipline of the military. They were not soldiers. Liam would exploit that.

The civilians looked tired, weak, and worn out. They edged out of the way when a guard stomped past, many flinching. They feared the Syndicate.

He witnessed several guards beating and tormenting civilians. One struck a man who responded slowly to an order. Two others knocked a tray from a woman’s hands and laughed when she knelt to pick the food off the ground.

Leering guards harassed women and teenage girls. Once, a guard yanked a woman into a nearby storage building. From the slump to her shoulders, the bruises on her face and arms, and the way she shrank from him, he could tell that this was not the first—or last—time.

Every hour he watched, Liam’s anger grew, rage simmering just beneath the surface of his tightly controlled demeanor. If he’d had his Spec Op team with him, he’d already be storming the camp, putting an end to this brutality. Or burning the whole place to the ground.

But he couldn’t do any of that. He was just one man, and so he forced himself to focus on his mission, on saving who he could save.

He took breaks only to answer the call of nature or open a can of beans and inhale the contents cold. He’d refilled his water bottles at McPherson’s house from a hand pump attached to his well.

Liam had left four MREs with the old man. The rest, he needed for himself. It was a good thing he’d brought supplies for several days; he would wait for as long as it took.

Mid-morning on the third day, he found them.

He was tucked in the fork of a thick oak about twenty-five feet off the ground, glassing another section of the endless grid. He’d rewoven his ghillie suit to include leaves and branches.

He froze mid-scan down a row between the tents, which led to a section of showers and bathrooms. A woman shuffled along the path. Slim build, warm brown skin, short black hair streaked with gray.

Pulse thudding in his throat, he followed her with the binoculars until he was certain.

The last time Liam had seen Mrs. Brooks was the day of the EMP when he delivered her grandson. She’d been smartly dressed, her graying hair stylishly bobbed, her makeup perfect. More than that, she’d stood tall and confident.

Now, she shambled in her oversized sweatpants and wrinkled khaki jacket, her shoulders bent with an air of despair. Her hair was mussed and ragged, and dark shadows rimmed her eyes, her face worn with exhaustion and stress.

In her arms, she cradled an infant dressed in a little blue coat and a long-sleeved onesie printed with footballs and helmets. His nephew.

Liam’s heart clenched like a fist. Memories of that terrible day seared his mind. The plummeting plane, the careening wreckage, the dead bodies everywhere.

His twin brother lying in the street, unmoving. Jessa on the bed, blood staining her legs, her chest, the sheets beneath her.

Save him, Liam. Save my baby…

It had been the right thing to bring the infant to his grandparents, but Liam should have escorted them to Tuscola himself and ensured their safety.

Relinquishing his nephew had felt like a giant hand tearing a hole in his heart. Shattered by grief, loss, and regret, he’d made a foolish decision; he’d allowed them to leave Chicago on their own.

His courage had never failed him in a moment of combat. Not once. But when it came to people and relationships and their messy complexity, he was not brave. He’d allowed that grief—that fear—to sever his connection with his nephew.

Liam couldn’t do anything to change the past. He’d lost what he’d lost. Lincoln and Jessa weren’t coming back.

Jessa’s voice no longer spoke to him from beyond the grave; he didn’t need her like he once had. He felt her, though, felt the love she’d had for this child burning inside him.

With the binoculars, Liam followed Mrs. Brooks and memorized the location of the modular building she entered. A pole with a sign scrawled “Quadrant 4: Zone C: Row 15” helped orientate him. The Brooks’ trailer was located five buildings directly south of the pole.

He waited and watched a while longer. At 1900 hours, both Mr. and Mrs. Brooks emerged from their trailer. Mr. Brooks carried the baby in a sling, facing inward. Liam couldn’t get a good glimpse of the child’s face before they disappeared between the buildings.

He’d seen enough. What he needed now was a few hours of rest. Lights out was at 2200 hours.

He retreated until he’d put a good half-mile between himself and the camp before unzipping his pack again and pulling out a tarp and spreading it on the ground beneath a tree. He used his pack as a pillow, his M4 resting across his chest.

The waiting was the worst. The fighting, the adrenaline-fused battle—that wasn’t the part he dreaded. He was made for that.

It was the quiet. That unnamed dread, the unknown. Those were the things that messed with his head. His pulse thudded against his skull.

His thoughts turned again to Hannah. With her, the nightmares didn’t go away, but they lessened. Without her presence, his ghosts haunted him with renewed and relentless fury. She was his lifeline back to the world of the living.

He didn’t sleep but allowed himself to drift into a state of half-awareness, almost like meditation. He imagined her smile, the way the light lit up her green eyes, and then he forced himself to shut down every thought.

He stilled his body, aware only of his physical senses, alert only to a potential threat.

Time passed. He rested.

At 2245 hours, he sat up. Drank some water. Packed his things, adjusted his plate carrier, and did a systems check.

He would get them out of that hellhole tonight. Sneak in, grab them, and sneak out.

He was only one man. One man with three souls to protect and defend.

This time, Liam would not fail.

10

HANNAH

DAY EIGHTY-EIGHT

The second town hall meeting was worse than the first.

Hannah hadn’t thought it was possible, but she was wrong. Clearly.

The newly appointed town council had declared the historic Greek revival courthouse located in the center of town as the de facto town hall location, as it had been before Rosamond had shuttered public meetings and moved the council to her own home.

Daylight streamed through the tall windows along the rear wall, providing enough light without electricity in the large two-story room featuring gilded arches, white pillars, and distressed wood plank floors.

The air was chilly but not freezing, though people packed together and wore coats. They had pushed the historic memorabilia and museum items into one of the side rooms to make space.

Earlier, Dave had organized volunteers to set up a couple hundred metal folding chairs. Every seat was taken, with a few dozen people wedged in the back and more cramming the aisles.

The council members sat at two side-by-side rectangular tables on the wooden platform at the front of the room.

Dave Farris, Annette King, Jose Reynoso, Mike Duncan, Officer Hayes, and Darryl Wiggins were original members of the council.

With the deaths of the superintendent along with her son, Julian, and the loss of Chief Briggs and Noah, the council had voted to add Hannah, Bishop, and Samantha Perez, also a Fall Creek police officer.

Hannah sat on one end between Dave and Bishop. Dave had brought a battery-operated megaphone, but sound carried well in the historic building, so as long as folks were quiet and respectful of the speaker, they didn’t need it.

Few acted respectful, however. Or quiet. The expansive room echoed with the buzz of angry murmuring, muttering, and complaining. The townspeople were restless, their hungry faces tense and glowering.

They’d already spent well over two hours hashing out the fate of the fifty-one Winter Haven houses recently vacated by the militia—fifty after Noah’s house burned to the ground.

The small, self-sufficient neighborhood ran on solar panels hardened against the EMP attack, outfitted with separate communal well water and septic systems.

As far as anyone knew, this was the only community in Southwest Michigan that still had power. Possibly, all of Michigan. Which made it a pretty prize—and a target.

Everyone in Fall Creek wanted in. They wanted working washing machines, hot showers, flushing toilets, stoves and ovens to cook what little food they had left, and lights that turned on at the flick of a switch.

All the things society had taken for granted for decades—suddenly gone. Whatever negatives electricity had brought with it—toxic social media and the ubiquitous, addictive nature of technology—life was extremely hard without it.

Eventually, after much disagreement and discussion, they’d hammered out a tenuous proposal. Those families that had owned Winter Haven houses prior to Rosamond’s takeover were allowed to return to their homes.

That left twenty-three available houses. The old, sickly, and infirm, as well as families with babies and children younger than five years old would share seventeen homes—three to four families a house. Each house was a good six to eight thousand square feet, boasting five or six bedrooms and as many bathrooms, most with finished walk-out basements.

Fall Creek residents would use the remaining five homes on a rotating basis for showers, use of washers and dryers, refrigerated food items, recharging batteries, communication headquarters, etc.

The schedule was still being hammered out—Hannah could already foresee it as a source of tension and squabbles, but it seemed like the most equitable option. For now.

It wasn’t ideal, but it was survivable.

Though Hannah qualified for one of the Winter Haven homes based on Charlotte’s age, she declined. Living on Tanglewood Drive meant hardship and incredibly hard work, but it also meant she saw Quinn and Molly daily, along with Bishop, Reynoso, and of course, Liam.

The warmth and connection in the mini-community they’d built was precious to her, and she wouldn’t give it up, not even for a hot shower.

The discussion finally turned to the matter on everyone’s minds these last few weeks—the fate of one James Luther.

“Bring him out to us!” shouted the old farmer, Albert Edlin. The crowd rumbled in agreement. “We know how to deal with a traitor!”

Dave and Reynoso tried to rein in the crowd, while Bishop watched with a stricken expression. Annette King looked resigned, like she was too exhausted to care as Samantha Perez sat ramrod straight, her firm jaw set in a scowl.

Hayes and Duncan said little, likely too cowed to take a stand. Darryl Wiggins, the priggish, sour-faced manager of the now-defunct Community Trust Bank, was also unusually quiet.

Hannah’s gaze wandered over the crowd. Molly sat in the front row, her cane and the Mossberg leaning against the chair next to her legs. The seat beside her reserved for Quinn remained empty.

Molly kept her shotgun slung over her back any time she left the house. She was an amusing sight—a stooped, white-haired grandma lugging around a shotgun and a cane.

Still, she’d surprise the hell out of anyone who failed to take her seriously. Hannah had seen her shoot.

Molly flashed Hannah a wry, can’t-live-with-them-can’t-live-without-them grin and winked, her weathered face breaking into a network of wrinkles. Her blue eyes were still as sharp and clear as ever.

Hannah managed a tight smile in return before scanning the room for Quinn, finally spotting her slumped against the back wall next to Jonas Marshall and Whitney Blair.

All three teens wore sullen expressions. They were out for Luther’s blood, too; Hannah didn’t blame them.

Despite herself, her gaze fell on Jonas’s mother—Corinne Marshall, the owner of the hardware store and the woman who’d brought Liam the names of the townspeople willing to fight the militia.

She’d helped them win. She’d also lost her husband in the trade.

Corinne Marshall gazed boldly back at her, her eyes blazing behind her purple-framed glasses. She crossed her arms over her chest, her shoulders stiff, every cell of her body telegraphing her fury.

A sliver of guilt stabbed Hannah. She recognized the pain beneath the woman’s anger.

She understood it because she felt it herself.

Luther wasn’t just a member of the militia; he’d set fire to Noah’s house and nearly killed Milo, who was sleeping inside. He’d claimed he didn’t know of Milo’s presence, but Milo had nearly died, accident or no.

Hannah had as much right to despise him as anyone, but personal feelings didn’t change what they needed to do.

“Luther murdered our people—he needs to die!” Dwayne Lawson bellowed.

The rumble of the crowd’s displeasure grew louder, more reckless.

“Why is he still here, being fed and sheltered, when I can’t get a second can of green beans? How is that fair?”

“Death by firing squad!”

“Why waste the bullets? String him up!”

“Hang him!”

“If you won’t do it, we will!”

Dave and Annette exchanged uneasy glances. Reynoso pushed back his chair, getting ready to call his security team to wade into the fray and physically pacify people.

That would only make the situation worse.

Her hands went clammy, her mouth going dry. Someone needed to intervene. Someone

needed to do something. Like last time, it might as well be Hannah.

She let out a loud whistle, stood, and clapped her hands. “Your attention, please!”

Startled, the people quieted, if only briefly. She would have their attention for only a few moments; she needed to act.

She spoke loud and clear. “We will not kill James Luther.”

“What the hell?” Corinne cried, rising to her feet in outrage. “Why not?”

“We gave him our word. Liam Coleman and I stand by that.”

Mutterings of disgust roiled through the room. A few people cursed. “That’s B.S.!” Sandra Perkins yelled.

“We made a deal,” Hannah said. “Luther’s life for the weapons depot. We won with those weapons. And we won without losing even more lives.”

Corinne’s face contorted. “A deal with the devil doesn’t count.”

“We will not drag that man out into the streets and murder him,” Hannah repeated, her pulse thudding loud in her ears. “It will not happen.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Annette said. “Truly, we all are.”

Corinne turned her scathing gaze onto Annette, so much grief and fury boiling off her that the principal flinched. “Sorry? You’re sorry? Sorry won’t bring my husband back, now will it? Sorry won’t give me and my son justice!”

“Corinne—” Dave started. “We understand—”

“Clearly, you understand nothing!” Corinne jumped to her feet. “We willingly fought against Rosamond, Sutter, and the militia. We were willing to fight and die. We gave everything! Now you’re going to spare that monster? He killed our people. Now we kill him. That’s justice!”

“I don’t disagree,” Perez said. “The minute those psychopaths opened fire on civilians, they lost their right to be human. We should dispose of him like the trash that he is.”

The room erupted into chaos.

“ENOUGH!” Bishop didn’t need a megaphone. His deep baritone voice slammed through the noise, shocking people into silence.

“Corinne and Jonas,” he said, still loud but gentle, “I understand your pain—and your anger. To every family member that has lost a loved one to the militia, we know your grief. We grieve with you. We suffer with you. But more bloodshed is not the answer.”

Grudgingly, the crowd settled, expressions still grim and angry, but contained. No one could argue with Bishop. Every single person present knew how much he’d lost, his wife and daughters sacrificed in Rosamond’s ploy to insert the militia and own the town.

The townspeople might not agree with him or believe in his faith, but they respected him. Every one of them. She could see it in their eyes.

“The fact remains that Luther is a prisoner of war,” Bishop said. “He voluntarily relinquished himself into our custody, providing invaluable information in exchange for his life. It would be unethical to kill him. He will remain a prisoner until the council comes to an agreement on an alternative option.”

“Ethics aren’t exactly relevant anymore!” Tina Gundy said.

“Ethics and morality still matter,” Bishop said evenly. “As long as I have any say in it. Though we may be on our own for now, America is still America. I will abide by its laws and constitution as much as I am able. As God as my witness, I will strive to do the right and moral thing.”

“As chief of police, so will I,” Reynoso said.

“As will the council,” Dave echoed.

Chagrin flashed across Perez’s face, along with disappointment and anger. She shoved her short black hair behind her ears, jaws clenched, but said nothing. She disagreed, but maintained sufficient self-control not to argue in public.

Disgruntled, Corinne shook her head, frustrated, defeated, still furious, but she didn’t speak out against Bishop, either.

Instead, she turned, shuffled past several people to the middle aisle, and stalked to the rear of the room. Several dozen heads turned to watch her go.

She motioned to her son, and Jonas followed her out without a word. At the door, she paused, turning to face them. “Mark my words, you’re going to regret this decision.”

The door shut behind them with an echoing click.

11

HANNAH

DAY EIGHTY-EIGHT

“If we are fractured, we fall,” Hannah said.

“I agree,” Bishop said. “We have to work together.”

Annette shook her head wearily. “It sounds good, but it’s no use. You saw them in there—absolute mayhem. Everybody’s bitter, angry, scared. It’s a miracle if any of them agree on anything.”

After the rancorous meeting, the townspeople had finally trickled out, returning to manual labor, making meals from scratch, planting gardens, gathering firewood, sterilizing water, and manning the blockades and conducting security patrols around the town.

The council had remained behind to hash out a few more details.

They’d voted to banish Luther on pain of death if he ever returned, but hadn’t yet set the date or the specifics.

Perez cracked her knuckles, her expression still glowering. “You know how I feel about Luther, but a vote is a vote. I’ll stand with the council. As for those complainers out there, anyone who isn’t with the program can pack their bags and march on out of here. Or maybe we spring some capital punishment on their sorry butts, too. See how they like it.”

“We can’t exactly hang people for bad attitudes,” Dave said wryly.

Perez slouched in her seat. “You sure?”

“After that disaster in there, I’m starting to side with Perez,” Annette said.

“Give the people another chance,” Hannah said.

“We’ve given them plenty of chances. They still don’t get it.”

“Give them one more.”

Perez rolled her eyes but finally relented. A full-figured Latina, Perez was short-tempered and fiery, and could hold her own in a fist fight, gun fight—any kind of fight. The kind of woman you wanted on your side.

“At least they care enough to show up, I guess.” Annette rubbed her face. She looked more frazzled than Hannah had ever seen her, her eyes bloodshot, her short silver hair mussed.

“Annette, are you okay?” Hannah asked.

“Truthfully? No. I’m exhausted. Running the shelter is worse than herding cats or managing classrooms of recalcitrant teenagers. The people are apathetic. They spend most of the day slumped on their cots or sitting against the walls, staring at nothing. Some of them, it’s like they’re vacant. Not all of them, but enough.”

Hannah recalled the numbed disconnect she’d experienced during her first months trapped in Pike’s basement, her brain rebelling against her new reality, her body petrified by shock, horror, and disbelief.

If she’d remained that way, she’d have capitulated to despair, her despondent mind abandoning her body to wither and die on that moldy mattress.

She’d nearly lost herself.

Instead, she’d forced herself to get up, to exercise daily, to sharpen her mind by composing songs and writing lyrics, to mark the days with chalk on the concrete wall, and most of all, to bring her formidable focus to bear on the one thing that mattered—surviving in order to get home to Milo.

Compassion welled through her, but also a renewed determination.

She pushed her hair behind her ears and sat forward, her elbows on the table. “They’re still in shock. They feel useless. Worse, they’re becoming hopeless. We need to get them up and moving, working for something, taking responsibility for themselves.”

“How?” Bishop asked.

“We close the shelter.”

“What?” Wiggins sputtered. “You can’t do that!”

Bishop shot her a hard look, frowning. “That doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

“In a few weeks, we’ll be near the end of April and past the freezing point. They can return to their homes. They’ll feel better just sleeping in their own beds instead of those cots all crammed together like sardines. Able-bodied people need to work for food. We can’t afford to give away supplies for free.

“And they need it, too. They need to feel like they’re a part of something, like they have a bit of control back, even if it’s just a little. It will help.”

Annette sighed heavily. “I suppose we can try anything. I was about to quit, anyway.”

“We need you, Annette!” Dave said, aghast.

“I’ll still help. I just need a break.”

“We asked too much of one person,” Bishop said. “Annette needs to take care of herself. If we all work together, pitch in, and take responsibility for this town, we can do it.”

Dave reached out to squeeze Annette’s hand. She looked a bit taken aback, but then gave him a tentative smile in return. “We can even thrive.”

Hannah watched them for a moment, hope beating in tandem with her heart. Despite their struggles, despite the stress and the in-fighting, people could connect. They could find each other. Friends, family, lovers.

People needed each other now more than ever.

“I don’t care what you do with those people,” Wiggins said darkly. “At least we’re swimming in supplies. There’s plenty to go around.”

“Not that much,” Reynoso said in his typical placid manner. A former Marine in his forties, Jose Reynoso was a reticent man, loyal and pragmatic. And built like a tank. “Especially after we give back to the Community Alliance.”

Wiggins blanched. “What? That can’t still be on the table.”

“It is.” Bishop ran a hand through his afro. The big man wore his favorite black leather jacket over a tangerine-orange Hawaiian shirt dotted with yellow pineapples. “We can’t keep the stolen supplies. They aren’t ours.”

Wiggins glared at him. “Like hell. Our people fought and died in that battle you were so keen on, Pastor. Where was the so-called ‘Community Alliance’? Nowhere. We fought for those supplies, and we won them, fair and square. They abdicated their claim on anything when they refused to fight.”

Perez shot him a pointed look. “I don’t recall your presence in the fighting, either.”

Wiggins’ face turned a bright shade of purple. His mouth opened like a fish, no sound coming out.

He shot daggers at Bishop, then Hannah before practically spitting the words, “I would have gladly taken up arms. Unfortunately, I was otherwise detained.”

Wiggins hadn’t forgiven Hannah, Liam, and Bishop for restraining him in his own home and holding him at gunpoint. They hadn’t trusted the former banker not to warn the militia of the impending attack; once the fighting was over, they’d released him.

He’d hurled a plethora of colorful insults at them that night and several times since.

Over the last few weeks, his anger had reduced from a boil to a simmer, though Hannah didn’t doubt that Wiggins despised them—and Quinn, too. He certainly held no fondness for Ghost.

“As much as I hate to admit it, Wiggins isn’t entirely wrong,” Perez said. “We desperately need that food. Giving it away…It feels wrong.”

Mike Duncan shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. “Altruism is well and good, Pastor. But shouldn’t we be thinking of ourselves first? I feel for our neighbors, but we have needs, too. We need to take care of our own.”

The owner of the now defunct gas station, he was a reserved man and spoke little, but he’d fought alongside Reynoso in the battle and earned a permanent limp because of a bullet to his thigh.

“It wasn’t ours in the first place,” Bishop reminded them. “We are simply returning what the militia stole. It’s the right thing to do. Anything less would make us complicit in their suffering.”

Duncan nodded reluctantly. “I suppose that’s true.”

“Besides, we’ve already told them we’re giving it back,” Dave said. “That’s how we got them to agree to come to Trade Day at the fairgrounds.”

“They’re coming, then?” Annette asked.

“In part due to Dave’s diplomacy,” Hannah said.

“And Hannah’s,” Dave said. “We’ve both been working hard.”

As part of organizing the countywide event at the Youth Fairgrounds, Dave and Hannah had contacted local community leaders in Niles, Stevensville, Buchanan, St. Joe, Dowagiac, Watervliet, and Coloma, including Mick Sellers, the leader of the Community Alliance, to discuss sharing security and supply needs.

Benton Harbor had been overrun by gangs, so they had steered well clear of the city limits.

Dave scratched at his beard. “It wasn’t easy to get them to commit to anything. Flynn and some of the others still blame us for the militia’s raids. Returning the supplies will build trust and cooperation between our communities.”

“Don’t see why we need them, anyway,” Perez said. “We can take care of ourselves. We’ve proven that.”

“Against fifty,” Bishop said. “What about when it’s against a hundred? Two hundred?”

“We can’t rely on them,” Perez argued. “They flaked on us when we asked for their help once. Who’s to say they won’t do it again?”

Hannah shook her head. “We must trust them, just like they’re going to have to trust us.”

Perez made a face like she was sucking on a lemon. Hannah’s chest twinged; Liam often made a similar acrid expression.

He wasn’t a fan of the proposed alliance, either. The man was incredibly stubborn; he’d still do everything alone if given half a chance. He hated to rely on others, especially anyone he didn’t know and trust.

Hannah didn’t blame him, but she knew in her heart that this was the right thing to do.

The communities had to stand together; there was no other option.

If Trade Day was successful…if the alliance meeting went well…her heart beat faster. They could make a difference, a real difference.

They could build something here that would endure through the Collapse and beyond.

“We need something good,” Bishop said. “People need something to work toward, a goal. They need hope.”

Hannah smiled. “Then let’s give it to them.”

12

QUINN

DAY EIGHTY-EIGHT

“Ready for the last load?” Hannah asked.

“As if we have a choice,” Quinn quipped, rolling her eyes.

They’d already finished two loads of clothes, which were hanging on the clotheslines strung between a couple of maple trees in Gran’s backyard.

She and Hannah had been busy washing two households’ worth of laundry. They used two five-gallon pails. Quinn had cut out a one-and-a-half-inch hole in each lid. The first bucket was for washing, the second for rinsing.

Both were filled with water, with soap added to the first bucket, and a half cup of vinegar poured into the rinse bucket as a softener. She’d placed a toilet plunger with small holes punched into the rubber cup through each lid.

Using the plunger, Hannah agitated the dirty laundry vigorously by pushing and pulling the plunger for about ten minutes. The wet, sudsy laundry was transferred to Quinn’s bucket of clean water, which she agitated for five minutes before dumping the water, refilling it from the well pump, and plunging the clothes again until they were rinsed.

It sure beat kneeling over the tub and hand-scrubbing each item with Gran’s old-fashioned washboard and a bar of soap.

The Winter Haven houses had electricity for their washers and dryers, but with all this dreary weather, power was limited. Besides, Gran insisted they know how to do it the old-fashioned way, and Hannah agreed.

“If we’ve learned anything, it’s not to rely on something that might disappear tomorrow,” Gran had said. As much as Quinn hated it, she knew Gran was right.

Charlotte lay on her back on a blanket Hannah had spread on the back patio a few yards away. Ghost lounged beside her, dozing with his head on his paws, soaking up the delicious sun.

He’d gone squirrel hunting earlier in the morning, the remains of which had been proudly deposited by the back steps.

During a break, Hannah made funny faces at Charlotte, who let loose a burst of giggles as bright and pure as pearls on a string. Hannah’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her green eyes tinged with sadness as she gazed at her daughter.

“Charlotte is already changing so much, so fast, I forget what she looked like just a few weeks ago. I wish I could document her somehow, capture this special time for her.”

Quinn’s chest tightened, guilt pricking her. The portraits she’d drawn of Charlotte were still sitting on her dresser, unfinished.

It wasn’t just the lack of time. She’d lost the desire to draw and paint. She’d lost the desire to do pretty much anything, her heart too consumed with worry, grief, and rage.

“I miss pictures, too,” she forced out, thinking of the millions of photos that vanished the moment phones died forever.

“Maybe I miss disposable diapers most of all.” Hannah shook off the sadness and gave a self-deprecating laugh. “For such a tiny creature, her bowel movements are impressive. The cloth diapers just never end!”

Quinn had changed her share of Charlotte’s diapers and agreed completely. “Tell me about it. At least we have soap.”

Eventually, they’d have to create their own soap from scratch using wood ash to make lye and mixing it with rendered animal fat. Luckily, they weren’t there yet.

Quinn was suddenly grateful for Gran’s huge stash of baking soda.

Hannah sloshed the dirty laundry with the plunger, her jaw clenched in concentration, her injured fingers clasping the handle awkwardly. It looked like it hurt.

“I can do that,” Quinn offered. At least she could be good for something. Laziness had never been one of her character flaws.

Hannah shook her head. “The pain means it’s working, right? It gets a little easier every time, like it’s a dead thing coming back to life.” She wiped her forehead with the back of her arm and tilted her chin at Quinn. “You ready for Trade Day tomorrow?”

While they did the laundry, Milo had gone with Gran to work on the community garden at the middle school baseball field.

Mike Duncan and Robert Vinson were building several greenhouses with lumber, plywood, and repurposed windows donated from the hardware store, while the principal had scrounged up a few hydroponic towers she’d discovered in the science teacher’s classroom.

The towers used aquaponics to grow seedlings in water without soil. Jamal, Mike’s son, thought he could build some homemade grow towers using PVC pipes.

Bishop, Reynoso, and several of the others were busy manning the barricades and roadblocks. At sixteen, Quinn couldn’t participate. Yet.

“We’re ready. We loaded Gran’s homemade applesauce and jarred peaches and tomato sauce into the Orange Julius this morning.”

Quinn tried to drum up some internal excitement, but she couldn’t. These days, she couldn’t seem to feel much of anything.

Except for anger. She never ran out of anger.

Once the clothes were mostly dry, Quinn used a broom handle to beat them, then snapped each item a few times when they were fully dry before folding them. Fabric didn’t come out clothes-dryer soft, but it helped with the stiffness. Gran was right, as always.

After a few minutes, Hannah glanced at her, brows lowered in concern. “Quinn, since we’re alone…I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

She went rigid. “Everything’s fine. I’m fine.”

“We’ve all been so busy. And no one’s ever alone anymore, are they? Other people are always around. I haven’t been able to check in with you.”

Her eyes burned. She tightened her grip on the agitator and pulled and pushed until her biceps felt like they were on fire. “I’m strong. I don’t need anyone to check on me.”

“It has nothing to do with strength. We all need some help from time to time.”

“Give your help to someone who needs it. Like Milo. He’s the one without a dad now.”

“I will. I am.” Hannah hesitated. “Milo isn’t the only one hurting.”

Quinn concentrated on the birds chirping, on Charlotte’s giggles, on the chilly breeze tunneling through her sweater. At the edge of the yard, all the trees stood in a row—thick tall trunks, branches like empty arms stretching for something they’d never be able to reach.

“You experienced trauma, Quinn. Having to kill Rosamond. What Noah did, how he died. Right after it happened, everyone focused on Milo’s coma. But we haven’t forgotten about you. I promise. I haven’t forgotten about you.

“You stepped up and protected Milo. Kept him safe and helped him deal with all the awful things that happened. But who’s helping you?”

Quinn dropped her gaze to the bucket, her stomach doing nervous somersaults. She felt Hannah’s worried eyes on her, like how a mother might look at a wayward child she was afraid might bolt.

Longing pricked her. Quinn tried her best to ignore it and failed miserably.

Her mother, Octavia, had been in the business of causing harm, not healing it. Careless with other people’s hearts, she was never the one to bandage the wounds she’d inflicted.

Gramps was the one Quinn confided in. The one who’d offered his shoulder to cry on, who’d sat in the Orange Julius and listened patiently to her little-girl complaints.

Gran was all Quinn had left. She knew Gran loved her, but Gran wasn’t one to spill her guts or have heart-to-hearts about anything. The closest they’d ever come to talking about the hard stuff was after Octavia died. It was the only time she’d ever seen Gran cry.

She both wanted to confide in Hannah and dreaded it. Both drawn to Hannah’s tender concern and terrified of it.

Hannah studied her. “You can talk to me, you know.”

“I am talking to you.”

“About anything. About everything.”

Quinn didn’t speak. She wasn’t sure that she could.

“How Noah died—”

“I don’t want to talk about him.” Her words came fast and jerky, a smoldering ember in her chest, her cheeks hot.

“It wasn’t fair or right, how it happened. When someone you care about makes bad decisions, it can be tough to process, to figure out how you feel about it all.” Hannah hesitated. “I know. I’m going through it, too.”

Quinn’s throat thickened. “I’m fine.”

“It’s okay to feel—”

“I said I’m fine!”

Hannah nodded slowly, reluctantly. “Okay, I understand.”

Hannah probably did understand. Noah had been her husband. She had more of a right to grieve than Quinn did, more right to anger, pain, and betrayal.

Even so, that knowledge didn’t change a thing inside Quinn, didn’t loosen the bitter knot in her gut or dissolve the darkness hardening in her chest.

Half the time, she felt numb, disconnected. Empty. The other half, she was incandescent with rage.

A brutal anger so sharp, she felt it cutting her up from the inside. Scarring her. Mutating her into someone—something—she didn’t recognize.

In the last two weeks, the dark thing inside her hadn’t gone away. It hadn’t gotten better. It had grown bigger, darker, uglier.

And it filled her with a bottomless terror.

13

QUINN

DAY EIGHTY-EIGHT

Charlotte let out a vexed wail as she batted one of her toys out of reach. Her fat little arms flailed for it, but she couldn’t yet flip over or crawl.

On his feet at Charlotte’s first cry, Ghost shook the leaves and twigs from his fluffy coat and circled the blanket anxiously, nosing her little body to discover the source of her unhappiness.

Ghost panted his warm doggy breath into her face. Charlotte’s distress transformed into coos and giggles. Hannah abandoned the laundry bucket to retrieve the baby’s toy, check her diaper, and whisper a few sweet nothings into her pink seashell ear.

Watching them, Quinn’s heart squeezed. She felt like crying for absolutely no reason, which just made her angrier at herself.

Once Charlotte was situated, Hannah returned to the laundry and Quinn’s side. They worked for several more minutes in silence.

“She looks like you,” Quinn said after a while.

“It’s a small blessing, but one I treasure.” Wincing, Hannah stopped agitating the pole and rubbed her injured hand. “While I was pregnant, for the longest time, I couldn’t love her. I associated her with Pike—with the awful things that he did to me. But the night she was born, I almost died. I had to fight my way back, and when I did, I saw her for the gift that she is. She’s mine, not his. She was never his.”

She met Quinn’s gaze. “For me, she is proof that beauty can come from ashes.”

“You killed Pike,” Quinn blurted out before she could stop herself. Her cheeks heated. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t bring it up. I have a big mouth, Gran’s always getting after me.”

Hannah didn’t flinch or shrink away. Her gaze never wavered. “It’s okay. It’s not a taboo subject. It happened. It’s part of my story.”

Quinn hesitated, glancing away and searching the trees. A crow perched on a branch, watching her with its beady black eye. “What was it like, to kill him?”

For a minute, Hannah didn’t answer. Quinn worried that she wouldn’t respond, that no matter what she’d claimed, Quinn had offended her.

“Terrifying,” Hannah said finally.

“But you did it, anyway.”

Hannah’s smile was pained, hinting at the scars she’d endured, but there was strength in her, too, a core of iron that radiated from her whole being. “Fear can’t be defeated, but it can be beaten, over and over again, if you’ve got something worth fighting for.”

Quinn wanted that strength, that fortitude and toughness that Hannah exuded. How could someone remain so kind after such brutality?

Quinn had never killed anyone before that night two weeks ago. Within an hour, four human beings were dead because of her. The militiamen she’d eliminated from a distance, at night, so she never saw their faces or glimpsed their pain.

Rosamond Sinclair was up close and personal.

Rosamond’s death was the one that haunted her. Rosamond—and Noah.

“It wasn’t like in the movies,” Hannah said. “Where the heroine exacts revenge and walks away unscathed. Taking a life does something, means something, no matter who it is. Gavin Pike was a monstrous man. He deserved to die, he needed to die. It was self-defense, and it was justice, but it still took something from me.”

Quinn said nothing.

Near the woodpile, Valkyrie was on the prowl, hunting for mice, but Loki kept jumping in and ruining her plans. She hissed her displeasure and swiped at him with her claws.

Loki meowed loudly and danced out of her way, only to follow her and foil her next ambush, too. Loki was a lousy hunter. Valkyrie, on the other hand, was born for it.

“Killing a person changes you,” Hannah said. “There’s no getting around it.”

She hated that Rosamond lurked in her mind and stalked her nightmares. She hated that Noah’s crumpled form was the first thing she saw in the morning and the last thing she saw at night.

“I still have nightmares, too. I still see his face.” Hannah’s voice was so soft over the breeze and Charlotte’s coos and gurgles, Quinn had to strain to hear it. “It takes time to work through it—all the emotions and nightmares. You feel different than you think you should feel, than you want to feel. Is that how it is for you?”

Quinn managed a faint nod.

“It’s okay to feel upset about it,” Hannah said gently. “Everything I imagine you’re feeling right now—it’s normal. But never forget that Rosamond brought her death upon herself. She gave you no choice. Do you understand? You did what you had to do. You did the right thing.”

They didn’t speak for a moment.

Hannah’s gaze softened. Tears sparkled in her green eyes like emeralds. “We’re survivors, Quinn. You and me. We do what we have to do.”

She felt it, like an electric current linking her to Hannah, the same current that connected her to Bishop—the bond between people who’d lost so much.

A loss that obliterates you, undoes your life, unspools your very self, until you look in the mirror and the face you see isn’t yours anymore.

“You can talk to me, Quinn. I promise. It’s okay to ask for help.”

She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t ask for help or talk about it. She couldn’t even name it: the something going wrong inside her. How she could feel herself slipping away and something new creeping in.

How she didn’t know how to stop it—or even if she wanted to.

Quinn dropped the plunger handle and backed away, a scream locked behind her teeth. “I have to go.”

“Quinn—”

“I’m sorry.” The laundry wasn’t finished. It was rinsed, but everything needed to be wrung out and hung on the clothesline, or the towels and sheets would get moldy. “I’m sorry about the laundry. I’ll do all Charlotte’s diapers next time, I promise. I’m sorry.”

She didn’t scratch Ghost’s chin or hug Charlotte goodbye.

Eyes burning, hot tears strangling her throat, Quinn turned and stumbled across Hannah’s backyard, not toward her own house but away, into the woods, heading anywhere but here.

14

LIAM

DAY EIGHTY-EIGHT

Liam shouldered his pack and lowered his NVGs over his eyes.

He made his way through the trees as soundlessly as possible, mapping out his steps, avoiding twigs in his path and stepping heel-to-toe over the damp leaves, matted grass, and snow.

The moon was out, the air brittle and cold. The night sky was cloudless, the stars bright shards. A silvery glow limned the trees, the branches, each gleaming patch of snow.

The moonlight meant he was more exposed.

He needed to be careful.

Before the edge of the tree line, he paused and checked his watch. 2258. The patrol passed by this section of fence at 2300 hours, again at 2400 hours, and every hour after that.

He took out his binoculars and glassed the area to find the patrol was right on time. Two guards with M4s on slings trudged along the inside perimeter of the fence, their flashlight beams sweeping back and forth.

Security floodlights powered by a generator interspersed the fence. This section was located equidistant from the farthest lights, which made it the darkest area of the entire fence line.

A few hundred yards east inside the perimeter, the sentries posted at the static position leaned against the fence. One smoked a cigarette. The second one appeared to be sleeping—his head tilted back, eyes closed.

Liam waited in complete silence, hardly breathing.

Once the patrol had passed, he examined the area one last time before moving out into the thirty yards of open space between the tree line and the fence. He kept low and moved fast, running at a crouch. His back twinged in protest, but he didn’t slow.

He arrived at the fence and squatted, dropped the M4 on its sling, and reached for his pack and pulled out the wire cutters. He rarely packed tools in his go-bag, but for this trip, he’d brought several “just in case” items.

He glanced toward the sentries, who weren’t paying attention. It was imperative he eliminate the sentries on his egress route. Speed was of the essence.

Every sense alert, he focused on a single strand of wire since it required the fewest cuts. He snipped from the bottom up, cutting a large enough hole that he could slip through quickly and easily without snagging his pack or clothes.

He’d normally use twist ties to close the fence to pass a cursory examination from the guards, but he needed to bring Mr. and Mrs. Brooks and his nephew through as well. They might be running for their lives. Speed trumped all else.

He drew his Gerber tactical knife and moved east quickly and expertly, a dark form slipping from shadow to shadow, from modular building to modular building.

The trailers were packed close together with only a few feet between them. Every ten trailers deep, a wider parallel pathway led to bathrooms, the mess hall, workstations, or wherever the civilians needed to go.

Sentry one, a slim black man in his thirties with a goatee, dragged on his cigarette and blew out a stream of smoke, killing his night vision. Sentry two, a larger man sporting a beer gut and a beard, continued to doze, snoring lightly, his weapon not even in his hands.

Neither of them alert nor watchful. Neither prepared for what was coming.

That familiar cold calm descended over him. Time slowed, every sense crystalizing.

Liam bent, picked up a stone, and tossed it.

The first sentry turned toward the sound.

Without hesitating, Liam slipped up behind him, placed his hand over the man’s throat, and drove his knife through the base of his skull.

He dropped the hostile almost soundlessly and moved to the second one.

The dozing sentry snorted and jerked himself awake. His eyes bulged in horror as Liam slid his knife across the man’s jugular. He gurgled and gasped, clutching at his throat.

It took him a little longer to die, but he couldn’t speak; that’s what mattered.

Swiftly, Liam dragged the bodies behind the closest trailer. He wiped his knife on the thigh of sentry two and sheathed it.

These men were the enemy—he’d seen how they treated the civilians, especially the women. He felt no remorse or guilt.

He continued his mission.

The night filled with the quiet sounds of thousands of people sleeping—snoring, shifting and snorting, a toddler crying somewhere. The air smelled faintly of plastic, burnt food, and body odor.

He found the pole with the correct designation, “Quadrant 4: Zone C: Row 15,” and made his way toward it.

A door opened to his left. Heart hammering, Liam ducked behind the side wall of the closest trailer.

Footsteps thudded as a figure closed the door and walked a few steps. It was quiet for a moment, then the snap of a lighter and the smell of a cigarette being lit. Someone sighed in tired satisfaction.

The smoke tickled his nostrils, and he restrained a sneeze. Liam ducked low and peered around the corner, leading with the muzzle of the M4.

A woman wearing an opened coat over purple polka-dotted pajamas leaned against the trailer wall. She tilted her head back, her eyes closed, the lit cigarette tucked between two fingers.

Moonlight glimmered over her dirty blonde hair and highlighted the weary lines of her face. Not a hostile—a civilian.

The threat level was low, although she could sound the alarm if she saw him.

Liam made a mental note of her location as he moved along the backside of the trailer and hurried down the narrow aisle between the next several buildings.

He paused when he reached the fifth trailer down from the pole. The Brooks’ trailer was located one layer inside the grouping, surrounded by trailers crammed in close, less exposed than the ones located along the major pathways.

He circled it, staying alert for any passing soldiers or sleepless citizens. He saw nothing. A generator hummed softly, the lights along the perimeter fence buzzing dully in the silence. He could still smell cigarette smoke.

The windows were accessible but high, the front door constructed of flimsy aluminum, which wouldn’t provide much hindrance.

He slipped off his pack, unzipped a compartment, and pulled out his lock pick set. It didn’t take long to jimmy the front door lock.

Liam stepped inside the heavily shadowed trailer, shut the door behind him, flipped his NVG optics down, and took in his surroundings.

Moonlight streamed through the slats in the blinds. The trailer was tiny and resembled a camper—miniscule kitchen, with a table that folded so the living room also doubled as a dining room. The place was cramped but clean.

The narrow door to the single bedroom stood open. At the foot of the bed, a makeshift bassinet fashioned from a dresser drawer lay on the floor. His tiny nephew slept inside it.

His chest twinged—Hannah had done the same with Charlotte.

He lifted his gaze, continuing to scan the room, and jerked to a halt. A dark shape materialized in the bed, a shadow highlighted by the moonlight filtering from the window.

Evelyn Brooks sat up in bed. She held a kitchen knife in one hand and pointed it at him. “Don’t you dare come any closer.”

15

LIAM

DAY EIGHTY-EIGHT

Liam stopped in the doorway and lifted both hands, making sure his weapon aimed away from the bed, his movements slow and steady, voice calm. “It’s Liam Coleman.”

“Don’t move.” Mrs. Brooks fumbled for a flashlight on her bedside table with her left hand, flicked it on, and flashed it in his face.

He blinked, squinting against the harsh glare, but didn’t move. She needed to see that he wasn’t a danger. He repeated himself, “It’s Liam. Liam Coleman.”

She lowered the flashlight. “It’s…it’s you.”

Her husband rolled over in bed next to her. “Honey, what—” He caught sight of Liam and sat up quickly, eyes wide and round with fear. “Lincoln? Am I dreaming? I must be…”

Liam flinched. It had been a long time since anyone had mistaken him for his twin, since he’d glanced at his brother to see his own face reflected at him.

“Not Lincoln,” Mrs. Brooks said. “Lincoln is dead, honey. This is Liam. His brother.”

Mr. Brooks blinked and rubbed his face. “Liam? What are you doing here?”

“I shouldn’t have left you in Chicago. I needed to make sure you were okay.”

“In the middle of the night?” Mr. Brooks asked, incredulous.

He was slim, his wiry short hair and beard mostly gray, faint wrinkles lining his eyes and mouth. Jessa had told Liam that her father was a psychology professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Or, he had been before the Collapse.

“How?” Mr. Brooks said. “How did you get in here?”

Mrs. Brooks swung her legs around and sat on the edge of the bed. “The guards wouldn’t have let him in. He must have snuck in. And if he can sneak in, he can sneak back out.”

Liam’s mouth twitched. Mrs. Brooks was as astute and clever as her daughter, Jessa, who’d been an OB-GYN—and a damned good one.

“Those soldiers burned our farm down,” Mr. Brooks said. “They forced us here and won’t let us leave.”

“They act like they’re soldiers, but they’re not,” Mrs. Brooks said.

“No, they’re not,” Liam said. “Not even close. Mr. and Mrs. Brooks, I’ve come to get you out of here, to take you and the baby somewhere safe.”

Mrs. Brooks stared at him. “You have a way to get us out?”

“Yes, ma’am, I do. Though it poses some risk.”

In the few times Liam had interacted with her, she had always seemed like an intelligent, capable, and decisive woman. She did not disappoint him now.

Mrs. Brooks sucked in a deep breath and nodded. “Let’s go.”

She rose to her feet, came around the bed, and gently picked up the baby. He grunted and squirmed but didn’t wake up. “Call me Evelyn. And my husband is Travis.”

She cradled the baby’s sleeping head with her palm. In the dim light, he was all brown skin, tiny squished features, and black curly hair. “And this is little Liam. We call him L.J. The ‘J’ is for Jesse.” She gave a tight, pained smile. “Like Jessa.”

The name was perfect, but he couldn’t say so. Emotion surged in his chest, thickening his throat—gratitude, relief, love, loss, and regret. Emotions he couldn’t afford to feel right now.

He longed to hold his nephew again, but this was not the time.

He settled for a quick, closer look. The infant was small for three months old. Even in the dark Liam could see he was much too thin, especially compared to Charlotte, who was growing chubbier by the day. The baby waved pencil-thin arms and gave a pitiful little yelp in his sleep.

His gut twisted. “Is he okay?”

Something flashed in Mrs. Brooks’ eyes. “They promised us formula, but the rations are pathetic. The babies who can’t nurse are basically starving. The only supplies we have left are what we brought with us. I’ve done everything I can, but this sector alone has lost four infants in the last three weeks.”

“He’s sickly,” Travis said. “Most of the babies and young children are. Pneumonia, tuberculosis, strep throat. The soldiers just laugh. There are no doctors here. No medicine.”

“It’s bronchitis,” Evelyn said, fear in her voice. “And it’s getting worse.”

Anger flashed through Liam like an electric current. If he had the firepower to light up this place without harming civilians, he’d do it in a heartbeat.

He cleared his throat, forcing himself to focus on the mission. “We need to go. Get dressed and pack what the baby needs. Hurry, before the patrol returns.”

Evelyn frowned. “What happens if they discover us? They’ve hurt people who’ve tried to leave. They take people away and no one ever sees them again. Travis’s aunt, she had diabetes. They wouldn’t give her the proper amount of insulin. She died in here. They didn’t care. I already told you about the babies. And the young girls and women—”

“I know,” Liam said. “I’ll take care of it. Be as quiet as possible. And follow my lead.”

“We will.” Travis stuffed a bottle, a couple of cloth diapers, a few rags, and a single dented can of formula into a backpack. “We don’t want to stay here a minute longer than we have to.”

Evelyn dressed the baby in a coat and hat, then tucked him into a baby carrier and wrapped the straps around her shoulders and waist. L.J. coughed weakly and whimpered.

Tension torqued through Liam. “What if he cries?”

Evelyn held up a pacifier. “I have this, but it’s no guarantee. Babies cry.”

Liam nodded tightly. Not so long ago, he’d known nothing of the unpredictable little creatures. After two-and-a-half months with Charlotte, he was convinced he knew even less than before.

Travis rested his hand on Liam’s forearm. “I know how to shoot a gun. I’m no expert, but I enjoy skeet shooting and I’ve visited the range a few times. Please, let me help.”

Liam clenched his jaw. He didn’t trust anyone but himself, but if they were discovered, he would need the backup.

He unholstered his Glock 19 and handed it to Travis grip-first. “The magazine is loaded with a round already in the chamber.”

“Thank you,” Travis said.

Liam said, “Don’t thank me yet.”

16

LIAM

DAY EIGHTY-EIGHT

Travis held the door open for Evelyn and Liam. Travis went first with Evelyn and the baby in the middle, Liam taking up the rear.

The M4 rested on its sling against his chest within easy reach. He drew the HK45 for potential close-quarter combat; if he needed to use it, the silencer would buy them time.

The frigid night air hit them like a slap. Spring or not, the chilly midwestern nights still dipped into the low twenties. A few snowflakes spiraled from the dark sky.

The baby awoke. His skinny little arms flailed on either side of the carrier as he whimpered unhappily. It was cold, and he wasn’t warm and snuggled in his bed.

“Shhhh, sweetie,” Evelyn whispered, patting his back.

L.J. let out a few ragged coughs in between mewling cries, with a wet rasping sound in his chest that even Liam knew should never come from a baby.

His nephew was sick. He didn’t know how sick, but it wasn’t good.

They hadn’t gone a hundred feet when a voice called out from the darkness. “Hey! What are you doing?”

To their right, the cigarette lady stepped out from the shadows between two trailers. Her cigarette dangled from her lips. The ember glowed like a single red eye.

He kept the muzzle of his gun lowered at a forty-five-degree angle, but the threat was clear. “None of your concern.”

Travis and Evelyn halted, frightened and unsure.

He gestured at the Brooks and made to move around the woman planted in the center of the narrow walkway. “We’ve got to go.”

“You can’t go anywhere!” Cigarette Lady’s voice rose. “It’s not allowed. Who is this guy? Why does he have a gun?”

“Janet, please,” Evelyn said. “We’re not bothering you. Just pretend you didn’t see us.”

“Why would I do that?” Janet asked, bristling and obstinate.

“She’s trouble,” Evelyn said under her breath. She patted L.J.’s bottom and gave him his pacifier. The baby coughed but began sucking quietly. “She doesn’t like us.”

Liam checked their six. No one else had exited their trailer, no guards headed their way—yet. “Just walk.”

They kept moving. Their boots thudded across the worn dirt, dead grass, and slushy snow. The lights along the perimeter fence grew brighter, the shadows between the trailers dark and thick.

Janet followed them. Her nightgown billowed behind her, her coat flapping, her boots slapping the ground. “You’re breaking the rules! You can’t do that! Who is he? One of those insurgents?”

“No!” Evelyn said. “He’s just a friend. A soldier.”

Liam reached an intersection. He swept the silencer to the left, then the right.

Both worn paths were empty. Didn’t mean they’d remain that way, especially with belligerent Janet trailing after them. The scent of her damned cigarette was cloying, irritating his nose and throat.

“He’s not like these soldiers, that’s for sure.” Janet picked up her pace. “You trying to escape, is that it?”

“No!” Travis said tersely. “Please, Janet. Go back to bed.”

“Shut up!” someone yelled through the window of the trailer to their left.

Liam winced. They were making too much noise, drawing too much attention.

He scanned the area, checked behind them. Still no hostiles in sight.

“‘See something, say something’,” Janet quipped. “That’s what they told us. We get extra rations if we report suspicious behavior, you know.”

It never ceased to amaze him how easily people could be convinced to act against their own self-interests. This woman was willing to betray her fellow prisoners to endear herself to the tyrants who’d imprisoned her, too.

Maybe some people got so used to the walls of a prison that they wanted nothing else.

“I’m going to report you. I’m gonna—”

With a muffled grunt, Liam whirled around, anger slashing through him. He wouldn’t shoot an unarmed civilian, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t tempted—or that he couldn’t make her think he’d do it.

He shifted the HK45 and aimed at Janet’s chest.

The woman paused in mid-step. Startled, her mouth opened in a big red O.

“Lady, you need to turn around right now. Go back to your trailer, crawl into bed, and go to sleep. This is just a nightmare. If you don’t want it to become real, obey immediately.”

Flustered, she took a wobbling step backward as her cigarette slipped from her fingers and dropped to the dirt. “You can’t—you have no right—”

She would not shut up. She was a threat.

Liam reversed the pistol, took two quick strides, and struck the side of the woman’s head with the grip before she ducked or screamed. Not hard enough to harm her, though.

She went down immediately, lights out before she hit the ground. He didn’t like it, but it had to be done.

Travis gaped at Janet’s fallen form. “Did you just—”

“She would’ve shouted an alarm.”

Evelyn crouched awkwardly next to the woman, one hand steadying the baby, who let out a disgruntled cry, and felt the woman’s pulse. “She’s not dead. Just unconscious. She’ll have a nasty concussion.”

Travis helped his wife to her feet, squeezed her hand, and gave a resigned nod. “We understand.”

With Travis’s help, he quickly dragged Janet’s unconscious body behind the nearest trailer while Evelyn stroked L.J.’s hair and patted his bottom, soothing him. His lids half-closed, growing heavy, the rasping in his chest seeming loud as a chainsaw.

Liam felt no sense of relief. They weren’t out of danger. Patrols were everywhere, and their window of opportunity was closing fast.

They were running out of time.

17

LIAM

DAY EIGHTY-EIGHT

“I already cut the hole in the fence,” Liam said. “When we get there, go through it and run into the woods. I’ll lay down cover fire, then follow you.

“If we get separated, there’s a farm one mile straight south on Ridgeline Road, which you’ll hit past this strip of woods. Sun Haven Farm. Rendezvous there. Travis, anyone comes at you, you shoot them. Don’t hesitate.”

When they both nodded, he motioned for the Brooks to keep moving. He scanned their surroundings, examining each trailer, searching the shadows for movement, checking behind them.

Rapid footsteps sounded to their right.

Adrenaline kicked his heart. Liam spun left and pushed Evelyn and Travis around the nearest corner. They pressed against the side of the trailer, Liam in front of them, silenced pistol raised.

The footsteps drew closer.

It was a crappy hiding spot. The moon was so bright, it was like a spotlight blazing down on them, everything limned in a ghostly glow.

There was nowhere to go. Fleeing would only draw more attention.

Turn around, turn around, Liam chanted inside his head.

The footsteps didn’t turn around.

A guard dressed in BDUs rounded the corner of the row of trailers ten yards to their right. Young, Caucasian, baby-faced. The M16 in his hands carried high and in the ready position, the muzzle aimed right at them.

The kid caught sight of them and froze. His eyes went wide as he took in the scene—Liam armed to the teeth, a woman with an infant, her husband huddled protectively beside her, also armed.

Liam’s finger rested on the trigger. The silencer wasn’t completely silent. Someone might hear it. Worse, if the kid got a shot off, every thug in the camp would come running.

Still, he was prepared to fire at the smallest movement, the faintest finger twitch. If the guy narrowed his eyes, he was dead. If he opened his mouth to shout a warning, he was dead.

Liam would not allow harm to come to his nephew or to Jessa’s parents. He would die before he let that happen.

The hostile stared at them, startled and unsure. He didn’t lower the weapon. He didn’t move a muscle.

Liam stared back, heart pounding.

Someone snored in the trailer next to them. L.J. made soft snuffing noises, coughing wetly.

The tension stretched taut as a rubber band about to snap.

“I heard something,” the hostile said. “You—you’re trying to escape.”

“Please,” Evelyn said. “We just want to leave. That’s all.”

“You’re not supposed to leave.”

“We won’t cause any trouble,” Travis said. “We don’t want to be here.”

“I can’t let you leave,” the guard repeated

“Our baby is sick,” Evelyn said. “He’s dying.”

It wasn’t until she said the words aloud that Liam realized it was true. Even more reason to get them the hell out of here—now.

His finger took all the tension out of the trigger.

The young man’s gaze darted to the baby, his eyes white orbs in the shadows of his face. Something shifted in his features—a hint of doubt, of remorse.

And then his shoulders tensed, the muzzle of his rifle lifting a fraction of an inch.

Liam fired. Two short taps. The rounds spat from the silencer and drilled the guard in the chest. As he staggered back, M16 flailing, a third round punctured his left orbital socket and slammed through his brain matter.

The hostile dropped to the damp ground, dead.

Evelyn gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth, Travis hugging his wife and grandson close.

For an endless, agonizing moment, no one moved, muscles tensed, ears straining, listening hard for a sign that the muffled gunshots had alerted anyone to their presence.

A few trailers over, someone snored loudly. A shuffling noise, then a grunt.

No alarms. No approaching footsteps.

He dared not take the time to hide the body. They had only minutes before the sentry shift change. Besides, the pooling blood glistening like oil in the moonlight would betray their deeds soon enough.

With growing dread, he hurried the Brooks on as quickly as he dared.

In less than a minute, they were almost to the fence.

Liam strode ahead of them and checked the last intersection. He inched past the nearest trailer, weapon leading, and swept left, then right.

The fence lay straight ahead of them. Beyond the open stretch of land, freedom.

Maybe they’d gotten lucky, after all. They might just escape this hellhole unscathed—

Fifty yards behind them, a shout of alarm sounded. A dozen shouts and yells echoed through the camp, followed by several pairs of boots thudding in their direction.

Someone had discovered the body of the guard.

Right on cue, little L.J. startled awake and let out a shrieking wail.

Evelyn tried frantically to shush him, to no avail. It was too late. The baby screamed at the top of his lungs. Ragged, heartbreaking cries.

Fear seized Liam’s chest with iron talons. So much for luck. It would take every ounce of his skill, wits, and courage to get Jessa’s parents out of here alive.

With no thought for his own safety, he whirled and pushed Travis. “Go!”

Travis seized his wife’s hand, and they sprinted for the fence.

Liam took up a defensive position behind a trailer and covered the Brooks, holstering the HK45 and lifting the M4 in one fluid motion. The trailer provided concealment but little cover. He couldn’t get pinned down here, or he was in serious trouble.

When they reached the fence, Evelyn knelt, graceful even with a fifteen-pound baby attached to her chest. She pulled the chain link apart while Travis scooted through on his hands and knees. He twisted around and held it open for her.

L.J.’s jagged cries grew louder. Didn’t matter how sick he was; in the stillness, they were loud as trumpet blasts, alerting every armed thug within a quarter-mile radius.

A flashlight beam pinned them in place.

“Hey! You there! Stop right now!” a deep voice shouted.

18

LIAM

DAY EIGHTY-EIGHT

Two guards ran toward them from the east. A hundred yards away, maybe less. Several more came at them from the west—hostiles about to flank them on both sides.

There was no time for hesitation or indecision. Every second meant life or death.

Blood rushed in Liam’s ears, his heart about to hammer out of his chest. He pushed down the rising panic and willed himself to focus.

His charges weren’t the ones who would die. Not today. Not this time.

Liam flipped his NVGs down, pulled the M4 to his cheek, and adjusted the selector to three-round bursts. With skill and precision, he aimed, exhaled, and fired.

The first man fell. Then a second and third. Several came running to take their place.

Four more hostiles appeared along the central path perpendicular to the fence. Muzzle flashes lit up the night. The rat-a-tat of automatic gunfire split the air.

Rounds zinged past Liam’s head. Punched into the trailer walls behind him with pings and thunks. A bullet struck the ground a foot from his boots, clods of dirt spraying his shins.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he surged from behind the trailer, seized a frag grenade from his chest rig, and tossed it. It sailed twenty yards toward the oncoming hostiles.

He leapt back behind the trailer for cover. The explosion lit up the night.

The ground shook beneath his boots, the flimsy trailer wall rattling against his back. Shrieks of agony splintered the air.

More screams. Trailer doors flung open as people stumbled from their beds and fled in terror.

Evelyn yelped. Out of the corner of his eye, Liam glimpsed her wriggling, caught half through the fence. L.J. let out wet, hiccupping cries as Travis squatted on the other side, yanking her arm and attempting to jerk her through. She was stuck fast.

A jagged end of chain link had hooked the shoulder strap of the baby carrier. With her arms and torso already through the hole, Evelyn couldn’t reach back and untangle it, and neither could Travis.

Fear pierced Liam. Arrowed straight through his heart. He didn’t need to think it through. It was not a choice.

He’d give his life a thousand times for Lincoln and Jessa’s child. As he would for Hannah, for Milo and Charlotte.

Time slowed. Action unfolded frame by frame. Liam moved not by thought but muscle memory, his years of training taking over.

Liam tossed another grenade, broke cover, and moved into the wide pathway, aiming and firing short bursts. A half-dozen hostiles were already down, ripped apart by the frags. They wouldn’t be getting up.

Dropping to the ground, he rolled, coming to his knees in a crouch in front of Evelyn and his nephew. He was completely exposed. But incoming rounds would strike him, not them. That’s what mattered.

Shielding them with his body, he knelt, terror thrumming through his veins as he hurled a flashbang to disorient the hostiles.

He turned away, covering his eyes and opening his mouth.

The explosive bang slammed into his eardrums. The incredible brilliant light flashed bright against his eyelids.

He opened his eyes and braced the M4’s stock against his shoulder. His eye squinted through the optics, finger squeezing the trigger again and again. Boom! Boom! Boom!

Rounds struck the dirt, pinged the fence on either side of him. A bullet struck Liam’s chest, knocking him back, pain radiating like he’d been kicked by a horse.

The plate carrier protected him from penetration but not the punch of the round. It’d leave an ugly bruise. Bruises he could live with—

More rounds whizzed past his head. Just below his plate carrier, a fiery pain struck his lower left side.

Damn it! He registered dimly that he’d been hit. He couldn’t look to see how bad.

“We’re free!” Travis shouted. “I got her free!”

“Go!” Liam cried.

They were out of time. More hostiles were coming, running from several directions. A dozen of them. Two dozen. Too many of them.

In seconds, they’d overwhelm him.

Adrenaline surging, Liam hurled another flashbang to cover their retreat.

The hostiles fell back, momentarily blinded, disoriented and stunned. They stumbled around dizzily, like they were drunk, clutching at their ears and faces. One man screamed and fumbled at the flash burns on his thighs.

They’d come to in ten to fifteen seconds, though they wouldn’t be able to see or hear clearly for a while. Switching to full auto, Liam let loose a barrage of firepower.

Gritting his teeth, he pushed himself to his feet, the adrenaline momentarily masking the extent of his injury.

As he backed up, Liam mowed down any hostile in sight. His ears ringing, he turned and flung himself through the hole in the fence.

Like broken teeth, the jagged ends of the chain link scratched his cheek and neck, scraped his clothes, and nearly snagged on his pack.

With a savage growl, he ripped through.

He leapt to his feet and spun around, searching for enemy targets. He backed away, laying down cover fire on any stragglers.

Behind him, the Brooks fled into the night. They raced toward the woods thirty yards away, out in the open, exposed.

He had to make sure they were clear. Liam fired another short burst. He felt the bolt lock back and did a tactical reload. A few stray rounds fired after him—none too close.

Now was his chance to escape.

He turned and ran after the Brooks, stumbling, white-hot pain radiating from his ribs, an explosion of agony that stole his breath from his lungs.

He reached the woods just as the hostiles opened fire again. Dirt sprayed as bullets struck the ground yards to his left and right.

Liam pressed himself against the thick trunk of an oak tree and inhaled sharply, steadying his heart rate. He was alone. As instructed, Evelyn and Travis had gone on ahead of him.

He needed to stop their pursuers, give them time. Problem was, he was running out of time himself.

Slick wet blood leaked from the hole in his side. It drenched the front of his shirt and his vest. His legs were going weak and rubbery.

With a sharp breath, he put the pain in a box and forced himself to press on. Just a little longer. He needed his broken, battered body to endure until he knew they were safe.

He leaned out from the tree and swept the fence line with a barrage of firepower.

Two more hostiles went down. Then three more.

After a minute, return fire ceased.

More would come. He needed to retreat before they organized and flanked him.

Squatting, Liam grabbed his IFAK first aid kit from his chest rig and slapped a Celox blood-clotting pad on the wound and wrapped it with an Israeli trauma bandage. It would have to do.

His nephew wasn’t safe yet.

19

LIAM

DAY EIGHTY-EIGHT

Liam rose heavily. Gasping from pain mingled with weariness, he turned and disappeared into the trees.

He did another tactical reload as he ran, his hands slick with his own blood slipping on the metal as he slapped in the fresh magazine and jammed the spent one into a pouch on his chest rig.

Even wounded, even with his back injury, he was incredibly fit. He loped through the trees at a steady pace, his teeth gritted, praying the adrenaline would continue blocking the worst of the pain.

He was the only thing that stood between his brother’s family and certain death. He had to stay on his feet, no matter what.

The moon had disappeared behind a raft of thick clouds. The forest was dark and shadowed. Frost-tinged dead leaves crunched beneath his boots. The cool air smelled like damp earth and pine and sap.

Over it all, he inhaled the hot coppery scent of his own blood.

Every minute, he stopped to listen over his pounding heart.

He strained his ears for the telltale warning that he was being tracked. A rustle of leaves, a twig cracking. The soft crunch of boots on snow.

A random gunshot sounded, but it was distant. Gradually, the shouting faded.

Despite the pain, he forced himself to pick up the pace. If Poe was anything short of an idiot, he’d have a reaction force gearing up to search for them.

He sensed the net closing around them, the trap’s jaws snapping shut.

When he reached the farm where he’d stashed the truck, Evelyn and Travis were waiting for him outside the barn. Evelyn had fixed a bottle for L.J., who’d blessedly fallen back to sleep. Even his breathing was raspy and ragged.

“Let me drive,” Travis said when he caught sight of Liam, his eyes going wide in alarm. “Liam, you take the backseat. Evelyn, take care of him.”

“I’m fine,” Liam insisted.

“You’re hurt,” Evelyn said.

“I’m fi—”

“Liam Coleman, listen to me right now.” Evelyn drew herself to her full height and fisted her hands on her hips. “I might not have had the privilege of knowing you well, but I knew your brother. Lincoln was my son-in-law—don’t you forget that. I know you through him. He told me you’ve spent your entire life taking care of people and forget you need care yourself. You’ve been shot. Now let me help you!”

His shoulders sagged. He didn’t have any fight left in him. He couldn’t have argued with Evelyn even if he’d wanted to. She reminded him too much of Jessa.

He’d never been able to say no to Jessa, just like he couldn’t refuse Hannah.

The pain was fast sapping his stamina. The adrenaline dump had left him shaky and light-headed. He had little choice; a few seconds more and he’d be a puddle on the forest floor.

“Fine.” He tugged his keys from his pocket and tossed them to Travis. “I see where Jessa got her stubbornness.”

“One hundred percent of it.” Travis flicked on a bright LED flashlight and started for the barn.

Liam winced as he reached for a side pouch on his go-bag and withdrew a small flashlight with a red filter to aid night vision. He handed it to Travis. “Use this. It’ll draw less attention.”

He took a step and faltered. Waves of dizziness washed over him as his legs threatened to give out.

Without hesitation, Evelyn wrapped her arm around Liam’s bloody torso and propped him up. “Lean on me.”

She was slim, not as curvy as her daughter had been, but strong. With Evelyn’s help, they shuffled into the darkened barn.

The scent of hay and dust filled his nostrils. It was too dark to make out anything but heavy shadows and the dark shape of the truck directly ahead. He sensed hay bales and tractors.

Travis accidentally kicked over a metal bucket and froze. In the carrier, L.J. squirmed but didn’t awaken.

“We need to hurry,” Liam said. “They’ll be coming after us.”

Travis unlocked the truck and jumped into the driver’s seat. Liam clenched his jaw against a cry of agony as he clambered into the back seat, Evelyn helping as best she could.

He eased off his pack and set it on the floor beside him, keeping the M4 in his lap.

While Travis held the flashlight, Evelyn strapped the baby into the car seat Liam had scavenged and installed with Hannah’s help before he’d left.

L.J. gave several deep rattling coughs, but Evelyn soothed him, and he settled in his car seat.

Liam strained his ears for any sound of pursuit. Blackness wavered at the corners of his vision, his skin prickling with sour sweat.

He couldn’t allow his body to give out on him. Not until they were safe.

He’d planned to booby trap their escape route with grenades or drop a tree to block their pursuers’ vehicles, but his injury changed everything. There was no time. He was dizzy, nearly unconscious.

Evelyn sat sideways in the middle of the seat next to him, bracing herself awkwardly with one leg against the back of the passenger seat. She shone the flashlight on Liam’s wound, her eyes narrowing.

“That bad?”

“Let’s just hope you didn’t perforate your stomach or spleen, but you’ve lost a lot of blood. There’s an entry wound, but no exit. The bullet’s still inside you.”

She cleared her throat and pointed at his pack. “You have a first aid kit in there? We’re going to need it.”

“No time. The longer we wait, the more vehicles they’ll have on the roads to block us in. We have to go.”

“Liam, you need immediate medical care—”

Distant shouts echoed through the forest, followed by dogs barking.

Liam’s heart tightened like a fist. “Go!”

Travis sucked in an alarmed breath. “Should we just hide here until they leave? They’d have to search a hundred barns to find us.”

“They’ve got hunting dogs. They’ll track us right here. Plus, they’ll see our tracks in the snow.”

The rumble of an engine reached them, then another and another.

“They’re coming,” Liam wheezed.

Behind the wheel, Travis froze. “What do I do?”

Liam said, “Drive!”

20

LIAM

DAY EIGHTY-EIGHT

“Where are we going?” Travis asked, terror in his voice.

Liam gritted his teeth. The pain was a hot poker searing his side. Even talking hurt. “There’s a map in the glove compartment with escape routes marked. Skirt Champaign and keep to the back roads—they aren’t as clogged. Head northeast toward Michigan.”

Travis started the engine, and it coughed and choked before roaring to life. He backed out of the barn, spun, and tore down the driveway, chunks of snow and gravel spitting from beneath the tires.

Several pairs of headlights flickered through the thick stands of trees behind them.

“Faster, Travis!” Evelyn shouted.

Travis swung a hard left and roared up a side street. The truck’s headlights caught wide swaths of empty, snow-blanketed farmland on either side of the road, pockmarked with farmhouses, fences, and scraggly trees.

Everything beyond the beams of yellow light was endless darkness.

Travis shifted into gear and floored the accelerator. They bounced and jostled over fallen twigs and branches, swerving sharply around the occasional stalled car filmed in dirty snow and dead leaves.

A gleam of headlights flashed through the rear window. Even in the dark, Liam recognized the wide fat beams of a Humvee speeding toward them.

Travis cursed, spun the wheel, and turned right onto a larger road. “I-57! Sorry!”

“Just head north and get off as soon as you can. It’s a straight shot and too easy for them to catch us. We need to lose them in a neighborhood.”

“Tree ahead!” Evelyn cried.

Travis cranked the steering wheel and barely missed the branches of a massive downed sycamore tree looming like some monstrous, spidery creature.

Gunshots exploded the air. Automatic fire blasted from the Humvees.

The baby woke with a startled yelp.

Travis ducked and wrenched the wheel, nearly swerving off the road. “I don’t know where to go! Someone needs to help with the map!”

Despite the nausea wrenching through him, Liam twisted around and braced himself against the back seat, looking backward, M4 in hand. He flipped the NVG optics down over his eyes.

The beams of two Humvees bounced wildly behind them, lighting up the trees. Maybe two hundred yards back but gaining ground.

They were up-armored. He could just make out the shapes of the turrets.

He flicked off the safety. “I’m shooting out the back window. Cover the baby with something!”

“Liam, your injury—”

“Won’t matter if we’re all dead in the next thirty seconds!”

Evelyn nodded tightly. She grabbed a blanket from the diaper bag and spread it over L.J.’s screaming head.

The truck bounced and jerked. The pain was immeasurable, every jolt an electric shock that sent red arrows spearing through his vision.

Liam fired three controlled bursts, the gunfire explosive in close quarters. The freezing wind buffeted him, howling in his ears, drowning out the baby’s terrified shrieks.

No one could spare a second to comfort him. They had to stay alive first.

The Humvees kept coming. With his NVGs, Liam made out a hostile rising to man the turret of the first Humvee.

His lungs constricted. They wouldn’t survive a hit from the M2 .50 caliber machine gun. With an effective range of two thousand yards and 750-850 rounds per minute, they’d be instantly eviscerated.

Liam fired at the gunner but missed. “Get us off this road! Now!”

“There’s a neighborhood to the right, just past the overpass bridge,” Evelyn yelled.

Travis shook his head frantically. “There’s no road!”

“It’s a berm,” Evelyn said over the baby’s screams. “The bushes don’t look that big. Just go!”

Liam fired again and again. The gunner ducked. “Now!”

Travis jerked the wheel to the right, barely letting up on the gas. The truck squealed, the tires lifting off the road, jarring them so violently that both Liam and Evelyn were thrown against the seats. L.J. shrieked in protest.

Behind them, the M2 unleashed a thunderous roar.

Liam glimpsed chunks of asphalt blasting from the road, caught frozen for an instant in the twin yellow beams like a slow-motion disaster movie.

And then Travis turned up a grassy slope, bumping and tearing through underbrush, twigs and thorns scraping the truck’s sides, and rammed through a wooden privacy fence at forty miles per hour.

They crashed into the backyard of a brick bungalow.

With Liam facing the rear, he caught flashes of the detritus as the truck plowed over a patio set, plastic chairs flying, the folded umbrella thumping over the hood and roof before striking the bed of the truck and landing, khaki fabric whipping wildly.

A second later, they broke through the opposite side of the fence, raced across the driveway, and bounced over the curb onto a residential street.

Liam could barely hear over the roar of the wind, his eyes straining for a flicker of yellow headlights in pursuit. The rush of the air dried out his eyes, partially blinding him.

He blinked, and there they were—the Humvee bouncing from the backyard onto the road behind them as Travis banked into a sharp ninety-degree corner.

“Turn off the headlights!”

“What? Then I can’t see! I’ll crash—”

“We’ll never lose them otherwise!” Liam tore off his bump helmet with the optics and thrust it at Evelyn. “Give it to your husband!”

With the NVGs, Travis could avoid driving headfirst into an obstacle that might kill them. Within a few blocks, he was blowing through four-way stops and darkened traffic signals.

Evelyn clutched the map with white-knuckled fingers, shouting instructions. Somehow, she kept them from turning onto a dead-end street or cul-de-sac.

Travis sped up, increasing to dangerous speeds, turning at every block, nearly tipping the truck, almost crashing into stop signs and stalled vehicles in the center of the road.

With a metallic screech, he sideswiped a minivan, losing the driver’s side mirror.

In the tight corners, narrow roads, and clustered houses, the gunners couldn’t get close enough for a clear shot. Especially without the truck’s headlights drawing them like a beacon.

The glowing eyes of the Humvees stalking them grew further and further behind. After an eternity, they flickered and winked out for good.

“They’re gone!” Evelyn said. “I don’t see them anymore.”

“Keep watching…doesn’t mean they won’t show up. And keep driving.”

Evelyn managed to soothe L.J. while simultaneously directing her husband. Travis wove through a few more neighborhoods before leaving Champaign and hitting the back roads that led them northeast through miles and miles of farmland toward Michigan.

Liam struggled to remain alert in case the Humvees appeared again. They didn’t.

Nothing outside their vehicle but the dark, empty, endless night.

Finally, Travis switched on the headlights and gave a shaky sigh. “Well, that was quite the adventure, wasn’t it, darling? Weren’t you just saying how you missed long drives in the country?”

Evelyn gave a half-hysterical laugh. “Peaceful drives in the country.”

Liam’s fingers slackened on the carbine. Dizziness washed over him. He felt himself slipping.

“Liam!”

Fighting unconsciousness, he sagged against the back seat. “I think I…I think…”

“Save your strength.” Instantly composed, Evelyn dropped the map and pulled an Israeli trauma bandage out of Liam’s go-bag at his feet. “Lucky for you, I’m an ER nurse.”

“Feel damn…lucky.”

“You should.” Evelyn peeled back his blood-drenched shirt to get a good look at the wound. “You have anyone? Someone special in your life?”

He gritted his teeth against a tsunami of pain. “I do.”

“That’s good. What’s her name?”

He hadn’t told a single soul of his true feelings. “I…”

“Her name, Liam.” Evelyn’s face dimmed, her voice far away. “Tell me her name.”

He didn’t know what he said, or if he said anything at all. His ears rang like a struck bell, his brain mush, everything going fuzzy and distant.

He was drifting on waves of pain, yet one image fixed in his mind like the spark of an ember in a sea of darkness. One face.

Just before he blacked out, Evelyn said, “Stay alive, Liam. Stay alive for Hannah.”

21

THE GENERAL

DAY EIGHTY-NINE

The General leaned forward in his overstuffed leather office chair and stared at the satellite phone set atop his expansive cedar desk.

He’d been calling his contact repeatedly, with no answer.

It concerned him.

With a sigh, he picked up his tumbler of cognac and swished the ice in the dark liquid.

The whirr of the generator buzzed in the background. No lights were on in the governor’s offices—they relied on daylight as much as possible, using precious electricity for heat and refrigeration.

Water treatment and sewage had been offline for months. The pipes in Lansing—and in every city across Michigan, across the entire country—were bone dry.

Currently, drinking water was brought in from outside the city and treated manually, reserved for government officials and other VIPs, of course.

The General didn’t care where it came from, as long as it came.

Ice was a precious commodity the General had no intention of doing without.

For the last two months, he’d called the George W. Romney Building on Capital Avenue in Lansing, his home away from home. The historic thirteen-story limestone and brick structure had once served as a hotel, but after being purchased by the state of Michigan in the 1980s, it was gutted and renovated as the new Office of the Governor.

The current governor of Michigan—Henry Duffield—was just down the hall, a few short doors away.

The General leaned back in his chair with a sigh. He had always enjoyed basking near the seat of power—if not sitting on the throne himself.

Someone knocked on the door. “Sir, the Governor’s debrief has started,” his assistant said.

Out of habit, he glanced at the clock on the wall, still frozen in time.

The debrief was early. That calculating little minx of a Secretary of State was once again attempting to undermine him.

“Thank you, Osborne,” the General said as he rose.

He brought the cognac with him to the governor’s office, where Governor Duffield bent over a bundle of files and paperwork on his immense desk.

The Secretary of State, Lauren Eubanks, leaned against a bookcase with her arms crossed. Her eyes narrowed as he entered.

Osborne, the General’s assistant, trailed into the office after him to remain quietly in the corner unless called upon, avidly taking notes.

A slim, stoop-shouldered man stood beside Eubanks, clearing his throat and shuffling a sheaf of official-looking papers in his hands.

“Started without me, I see,” the General said, modulating his voice, keeping his temper in check.

“My fault,” the Secretary of State said, smiling. “Seeing as you’ve been so busy. I didn’t want to disturb you with yet another meeting.”

It was saccharine, and as fake as the sweet smile he offered in return. “It’s no bother. I’m happy to assist in any way that I can.”

“I’m sure you are,” she said.

Governor Duffield waved his hand distractedly. “Abdul Nazari here was just giving us the latest updates from Homeland Security, since they oversee FEMA. Each one is more depressing than the last.”

The man cleared his throat. “As I was saying, a few counties in California and Arizona have a plant up and running on wind or solar power, but it’s the transformers that are the problem. The few international donations went to New York and L.A. Washington has ordered thousands, of course, but they won’t be ready for two years, and you can guess where they’re going first.”

“How long until we’re back online?” Governor Duffield asked.

“The latest reports from Homeland Security suggest five to seven years for major cities. Ten years for the fly-over states.”

“What?” Duffield squeaked, even though the General had repeatedly warned him of just such an eventuality. “Are you kidding me? What are we going to do?”

Henry Duffield was a worrier, not a doer. A hand-wringer and a complainer. How the white-haired, stoop-shouldered old man had won another term was beyond the General’s comprehension. And yet, here he was.

“That’s your purview, not ours,” the Homeland paper-pusher said. “Handle things.”

“But we need more supplies. Our camps are running out of food and toiletries, not to mention room. We barely survived the winter!”

“The United States government is not responsible for you. If you haven’t prepared for emergency contingencies as instructed—”

“With what funds?” Eubanks asked sharply.

“Why, your own, of course,” the man said with more than a bit of smugness.

The General wisely refrained from cussing the bureaucrat from the room. Or pulling his pistol and shooting the waste of oxygen through his irritating pie hole.

Unfortunately, certain rules of civilization still applied.

Five minutes later, the irritating man had departed, and the governor and his secretary of state stared at each other, still reeling from a new reality that the General had accepted on day one.

“Ten years,” Governor Duffield said. “Ten.”

Eubanks simply shook her head, cradling her ribs with her arms, and said nothing.

“And D.C. insists on keeping it from the public,” the General said. “As if they can’t figure it out on their own.”

Of course, he meant D.C. metaphorically. The President, his cabinet, and what remained of congress had hunkered down at Mount Weather in Bluemont, Virginia for the foreseeable future.

He imagined they had all the ice and cognac a man could wish for, and every other creature comfort the nation’s elite government officials felt they deserved.

Cowards, they were. Frightened, bleating cows. Too timid and sheltered to deal with the world as it was.

Luckily, they had access to men like him, who were still willing to do the dirty work. For a price.

“Hell, they’re still telling the FEMA shelters to plan in degrees of months, not years.”

“You can’t panic the people—” the governor started.

The General rolled his eyes. “Oh yes, the old adage that the public can’t handle the truth. I’m well aware of the reasoning. If we told them the truth, they might riot. Or raid the grocery stores. Or burn their own cities.” He did not break eye contact, his gaze cold and calculating. “Have you considered that we’re already there?”

Governor Duffield shifted uncomfortably and coughed into his handkerchief. He was an old man, but then, politics had become a playground for old men who pantomimed at power like small children strove for supremacy in the sandbox.

The real power lay elsewhere.

A politician had to play by a set of rules, had to maintain a facade of moral and ethical certitude. A man like the General did not.

A one-star general with the U.S. Army, the General had officially “retired” after rumors of some shady dealings reached the wrong ears. As always, he’d landed on his feet, pivoting quickly, recruiting the best soldiers and ex-soldiers and establishing a private security firm for those ABC law enforcement agencies and government entities who wanted certain things done off the books. Kidnappings. Security for sensitive cargo. Target elimination.

His men had given him the nickname long ago; it had stuck. To those in the know, he remained a general—the General. The epitome of the behind-the-scenes shadow, the string-puller, the puppet master.

The world at large knew nothing of his existence. He preferred it that way. In certain circles, he was revered. In others, he was loathed. And in still others, he was feared utterly.

And so, when the EMP hit and it all went to hell, Henry Duffield had called upon the one person he knew who could deliver results by any means necessary.

He might not like it, or even like the General, but the world needed men like him. Men who got things done.

What had begun as overseeing security details for the surviving members of the state legislature and the governor’s office had rapidly morphed into significantly more reach. The General had inserted himself into every aspect of the day-to-day dealings of the crippled state government. As planned, he was now indispensable.

The governor gave a wet cough. “You’re being facetious again.”

“I am only stating the truth,” the General said. “And nothing but the truth.”

The Secretary of State studied him darkly, as if she were trying to figure out what skullduggery he was up to. A tall, plain woman, with a stern, suspicious demeanor, Lauren Eubanks was intelligent and incredibly competent.

She was also one of those foolhardy idealists who still clung to outdated ideals of morality and ethics.

The General despised her.

He did not forget for one second that she was next in line for succession if something untoward were to happen to the current governor.

The lieutenant governor and attorney general had never made it home from their overseas Christmas vacations. Next in line after the Attorney General was the President Pro Tempore of the senate—deceased in a car accident—and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, a middle-aged woman who’d absconded from her duties to care for her family in Ann Arbor.

The General intended to become the next Secretary, and sooner rather than later. There were so many ways to die these days.

As if she could read his mind, Lauren Eubanks narrowed her eyes.

The General smiled at her. It wasn’t a warm smile, but sharp. A warning.

22

THE GENERAL

DAY EIGHTY-NINE

Lauren Eubanks glared back at the General, unblinking, uncowed.

She was becoming a problem.

The line of succession was a conundrum for another day, one he planned to tackle, but not yet. Patience, after all, was a virtue. As was cunning, which he had in spades.

Duffield cracked his gnarled knuckles, a few age spots marring the back of his hands, and glanced away. “What are we going to do?”

“Send more men to Detroit,” the General said. “Get the city under control. Then organize a resupply to FEMA Centers #23, #24, and #26 and promise them additional food stores if they provide us with a list of National Guard recruits. We need more soldiers.”

“We can’t hold food hostage in exchange for families giving up their sons and daughters,” Eubanks said. “That’s beyond the pale.”

“At least we’re not drafting them,” the General shot back. “Yet.”

“The White House is demanding we send more troops to Illinois,” Governor Duffield whined, his voice rising. “This Syndicate and their leader, Poe, are becoming more of an issue, and—”

“He’s not our issue,” the General insisted. “Chicago is a dumpster fire. They need to admit defeat. Contain it, that’s the best they can hope for.”

“We have to send them,” Eubanks said. “We’re under orders—”

“Wait,” the General said. “Give it a little time. The right decision will become clear in due time.”

“We can’t just disobey federal regulations—” Eubanks started, but the governor waved her off.

“We’ll deal with this tomorrow.”

“But—”

“I’m tired, Lauren.”

Eubanks pursed her lips, reluctant, but nodded. “Sir.”

She didn’t address the General but turned on her heel and strode from the office, her practical sneakers squeaking across the floor. He watched her go with a smile.

She knew he’d won that battle. The governor was a waffling, indecisive man. A delay was as good as a win.

Since they’d been dismissed, the General turned to his assistant, who stood silent as the General preferred, awaiting his next command. “Call Baxter to my office.”

John Baxter was a timid man with an elongated neck and wet, meek eyes that reminded the General of a turtle; the sort of man always prepared to duck into his shell at the slightest sign of trouble.

He was also thorough, boasted the mind of a steel trap, and had the loveliest handwriting the General had ever laid eyes upon. He imagined medieval monks transcribing the Bible on vellum with ink and quills couldn’t have compared with Baxter’s flowery but exacting script.

When the dust settled and America had revived, the world needed to know what happened; the heroes and villains, the sacrifices and betrayals. Who among them rose boldly to lead a broken country, and who choked and fell on their swords.

Whether that was ten years from now, fifty, or a hundred, it didn’t much matter to the General. As any historian worth his salt would tell you, history was written by the victors.

And the General intended to become the victor. It would be his version of history the future remembered, his vision recreated.

Baxter scurried in, head down, a leather-bound book clutched in his long slender fingers. The General waved to the man’s customary seat by the window.

He leaned back in his leather chair and took another satisfying sip of cognac. Ice tinkled against the glass. “Shall we begin?”

As the scratching of pen on paper filled the room, the General found his gaze drawn to the satellite phone perched on the edge of his desk.

She still had not called. And he had no one close by to check on her.

He made multiple calls a day, remaining in contact with his various team leaders stationed throughout the state. His closest paramilitary contacts were in Grand Rapids. They had their hands full with a raging gang war and a FEMA shelter suffering from dysentery outbreaks due to lack of proper sanitation.

A flicker of unease flared through him. He closed his eyes, opened them. Everything was the same—the desk, the leather chair, the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, the large window overlooking the once-gilded grounds of the ornate capital building across the street.

He took another swig of liquor; it didn’t calm him.

Anxiety niggled at the back of his mind. Something was wrong.

Most people were replaceable, but not all of them. Not her.

He might not have spoken to her more than twice in a decade, but he’d kept tabs. He’d known.

Now he didn’t, and the not knowing was unacceptable.

Suddenly, he was in no mood to parse his legacy.

“Leave me!” he thundered at Baxter.

Without a word, the small man dropped the pen, set the leather-bound book on the side table, and bolted from the chair. The General didn’t bother watching as he scurried from the room and shut the door behind him.

The General picked up the sat phone and once again called his daughter.

Once again, Rosamond failed to answer.

23

QUINN

DAY EIGHTY-NINE

The morning of Trade Day, Quinn wandered the Berrien County Youth Fair grounds, Milo ambling along behind her, checking each booth as Ghost trotted beside him.

Several white rectangular buildings loomed in front of them, stacked side by side and constructed of metal with concrete floors and large open doors at either end.

In years past, the buildings had housed thousands of art projects, student paintings, photos, and crafts, the expo buildings reserved for local businesses to advertise their wares, offering stickers and lollypops to passersby.

A few hundred people strolled from building to building and clustered in small groups to chat and catch up on news and rumors.

“Which building next?” she asked with forced brightness.

Milo made a show of studying them all, then pointed to the last building in the row, furthest away. “That one.”

“Of course,” she muttered.

Quinn was watching Milo for the day. Usually, she didn’t mind. Milo was like the little brother she’d never had, and she adored him.

Lately, when she looked at Milo’s wan face and sad eyes, she saw Noah. He reminded her of that night, of everything that had happened.

Today was the first time she’d spent with Milo in two weeks. They both felt it—the awkwardness, the distance, circling each other like strangers.

Milo was quiet and withdrawn, Quinn consumed with her own dark thoughts, at a loss with what to do or say.

They hurried across the muddy grass, ducking their faces against the chilled wind. The sky was gray and overcast, the temperatures in the mid-thirties.

Gunshots echoed over the hum of conversations and shouting children. Reynoso and a few Fall Creek officers had set up a makeshift range out of hay bales to conduct sessions throughout the day. BYOB—Bring your own bullets.

The fair rides were normally at the west end of the fairgrounds. Now it was an empty, weedy brown field, snowdrifts piled here and there.

Where were the huge metal monstrosities, the Ferris wheel, Gravitron, carousel, bumper cars, the pendulum pirate ship, the drop tower? Probably gathering dust in some enormous warehouse, never to be used again.

At least, not for a decade, maybe two. Might as well be forever.

Things like county fairs wouldn’t be anyone’s priority for a while.

With every step, memories struck her. Visits with Gran and Gramps every year to see the rabbits, chickens, and goats and watch the equine show competitions like dressage, the beautiful horses prancing around the ring with their braided manes, supple shining coats, and flowing tails.

And of course, gobbling elephant ears as large as her head, her fingers dusty with powdered sugar, her mouth sticky from cotton candy and caramel apples and giant turkey legs dripping with fat.

At seven, she’d thrown up on the Tilt-O-Whirl. At nine, she’d won first place in art for drawing Princess Ariadne fighting the Minotaur instead of Theseus. She still had the blue ribbon tucked away in her sock drawer.

Another, darker memory infiltrated her mind. When she was ten, she’d waited for Octavia to pick her up from the fairgrounds after a friend’s mother had dropped them off earlier that morning.

One by one, her friends’ parents had arrived to take their precious children back to their safe, warm, cozy homes. Until Quinn was the only one left.

Night fell, the fair closed, the turnstiles squeaking as hundreds of guests filed out in a rush, and then the workers locked up and left, all overlooking the little girl sitting on a hay bale off to the side of the entrance, licking ice cream off her fingers and trying not to cry.

After several frantic phone calls and the discovery that Octavia was on a bender, in no shape to mother anyone, Gramps had eventually come.

“I’m here,” he’d said as he’d pulled up in the rickety orange 1978 Ford F150 Super Cab, a rare flash of anger in his face when he saw her, alone and shivering, soon replaced with concern and relief. “I’m right here.”

They hadn’t spoken on the way home, but how she’d loved the Orange Julius that night, the rumble of the engine vibrating her frayed seat, the familiar smell of Gramps, the sturdy, reliable shape of him in the dim glow of the passing headlights.

So many memories. Some good. Some bad. That time gone forever, no matter how much she wanted it back. Shattered with Gramps’ death, with the EMP that stole so much in a single, silent, invisible breath.

She rubbed her eyebrow ring and picked up her pace, pushing the bleak memories out of her head as she glanced at the crumpled paper in her hands.

Gran had directed her to make a list of items available for trade, since Gran herself was busy selling her famous canned applesauce, peaches, and strawberry jam while she watched baby Charlotte for Hannah.

Quinn and Milo stepped inside the last long white building, Ghost trotting close to their heels. Hannah had instructed the Great Pyr to watch after the boy, and the dog seemed to understand—never straying further than a few yards from Milo’s side.

Inside, it was like a giant flea market. Folks from Fall Creek and nearby towns displayed their wares on folding tables, prices hand-scrawled on pieces of cardboard or construction paper and taped to the tops or sides of the tables.

No one wanted money; it was a barter system, now.

“Beans, bullets, and band-aids” were the three B’s that Gramps always said would be valuable if the world went dark. He was right, as always.

Becky Grisone, the owner of Tresses Hair Salon, had shears, combs, and spray bottles displayed on a couple of tables. She’d dragged in one of her salon chairs and was cutting a woman’s waist-length hair to her chin.

A line of people waited behind her, carrying plastic shopping bags with a few cans or boxes of food to trade for a good haircut.

It was smart to go short. Less hair meant less shampoo and soap; plus, with hygiene harder and harder to keep up, lice was making a major comeback.

Maybe Quinn should consider a cut of her own, though she’d trimmed her bangs herself with Gran’s shears. A blue mohawk might be cool, though most of the blue had faded to black.

A few booths down, Jamal Duncan and Tina Gundy, whose father had owned Gundy’s Auto Repair, had an array of mechanical junk spread across several tables, stuffed in cardboard boxes, and scattered across the floor—car batteries, coils of wire, chargers, and lawn mower engines.

Jamal had helped Fall Creek set up repeaters to extend their communications range. An engineering major, he was quite the genius with electronics, and his tinkering had brought several radios and a few generators back into working order.

Word had gotten out, and people were bringing in car batteries, handheld radios, portable generators, and solar chargers for Tina and Jamal to fix in exchange for toiletries and food.

Quinn stopped at Mr. Atkinson’s booth for some of his home-grown honey, which he traded for Gran’s peaches. His wife made amazing peach cobbler and various pies.

Julia Vern-Smith had made handmade soap from ash and pig fat. Corinne Marshall had some precious seeds, which she exchanged for a few of Mrs. Dorson’s chickens.

Ghost sniffed at everything, his bright brown eyes missing nothing. He was so tall, his wagging tail brushing tubes of Neosporin and boxes of band aids.

At the next booth, he knocked small pots of rosemary and basil seedlings right off the table.

No one yelled at him. He drew weary smiles from adults and cries of adulation from the kids, who came running in all directions to pat his head, fondle his ears, and scratch beneath his chin.

Ghost indulged their adoration with the serene tolerance of a prince.

Quinn marveled at his incredible patience with those he deemed his charges. He treated the littlest ones with utmost gentleness, even when they inadvertently stepped on his paws or tugged on his tail, while he playfully nudged or pushed the older kids, inciting them to chase him or vice versa.

“Great dog you’ve got there,” said a middle-aged woman at a booth selling homemade candles and eggs. Her sign said she was trading for bleach, soap, and toothpaste.

Milo beamed with pride. It was the happiest Quinn had seen him since Noah died. “Thanks, lady.”

“You ever wanna sell that dog, I’ll trade whatever you ask. I’d give up my best laying hens for that beautiful boy. All of them.”

Milo frowned. “He’s not for sale.”

The woman shrugged but gave Ghost another yearning glance. “Just throwing it out there.”

They kept moving, Quinn making a list of trades that she and Gran would come back for with a trailer to carry everything. A few booths later, Milo leaned in and studied a kerosene lantern. According to the sign, the owner needed beta-blockers for his heart condition.

Milo chewed on his lower lip. “You should have a booth, Quinn.”

“And what would I trade? People won’t need homemade hand warmers for long.”

“Your drawings.”

“No one wants monster drawings, Milo.”

He gave her a shy glance through the dark curls falling into his eyes. “In the olden days, all the rich kings and queens would commission painters to paint portraits of themselves. So their family wouldn’t forget about them.” There was something lost and wistful in his voice.

Her heart clenched. She understood what he was asking for, even if he couldn’t come out and say it. He wanted a picture of his dad.

She blinked, a sudden pressure behind her eyes, her hands forming fists at her sides. Everything in her recoiled at the thought, anger mixed with something dark and painful.

And yet, Milo’s forlorn gaze pierced her to the core.

“I’ll think about it,” she forced out around the lump in her throat.

She could feel him studying her, his big solemn eyes on her face. Pleading with her, beseeching. Begging for something that she couldn’t give him.

“Wanna listen to music later?” he asked, so quiet she almost didn’t hear him.

She busied herself examining a soy candle, picking it up and weighing it in her hands, inspecting the wick length, pretending she gave a damn about any of this.

Maybe he wouldn’t ask again, and she could pretend she hadn’t just rejected him. She felt his brokenhearted need like a chain around her neck, but she was already barely treading water, already drowning. She couldn’t take the weight of him, too.

Disappointment clouded his face. Quinn looked away, hating herself.

Later, she promised herself. Next time. Tomorrow, maybe.

Her nerves were raw and edgy, anxiety scrabbling beneath her skin. She wanted to run, to get away, to disappear.

Suddenly, everyone was too close, the buzz of conversation too loud, like angry bees inside her head.

Ghost let out a low urgent bark.

Quinn glanced down at him, startled. She’d been standing here for a few minutes, her mind blank. “What is it, boy?”

He barked again, his body stiff as he tilted his head, sniffing the air. He gently shook off a couple of kids petting him and dashed toward the opened doorway at the rear of the building, his plumed tail streaking behind him.

“Ghost! Wait up!” Her heart rate quickening, Quinn turned around, searching for Milo.

He wasn’t next to her anymore. He wasn’t at the booths on either side or anywhere in the crowd.

Milo was gone.

24

QUINN

DAY EIGHTY-NINE

“Milo!” Quinn set the soy candle on the table and rushed after Ghost, emerging from the expo building into the dreary gray day. “Wait!”

Milo and Ghost were nowhere in sight.

“Milo!”

No answer.

She took a few tentative steps, then turned in a slow circle, scanning the buildings, the trees, the barren field in the distance.

The expo building was the last in the row, along the far west perimeter of the fairgrounds. A concrete walkway circled the buildings. Beyond a few scattered outbuildings, thick woods lurked beyond the fence line.

How had they disappeared so fast?

Past the fence, something moved in the trees.

Quinn squinted, shielding her eyes with one hand while going for the Beretta with her other. She stuffed Gran’s list into her pocket and withdrew the pistol.

Though the police and other volunteers patrolled the fairgrounds, it didn’t mean they were safe. The last three months had taught her well.

With the Berretta in both hands, carried low, finger off the trigger, she moved toward the trees. She didn’t want to panic fire and hit Milo or Ghost.

Three reeking, overfull outhouses stood twenty yards ahead of her. Past them to the right, a twenty-foot section of the chain-link fence had been flattened by a giant felled hickory tree.

After leaping the log and crossing the fence, she entered the forest. Deep shadows enveloped her, the temperature dropping several degrees.

Her footsteps crunched loud in the sudden stillness. No birds chirped from the naked branches arcing above her head. No squirrels or chipmunks scurried through piles of dead leaves or darted across melting snowdrifts.

The familiar sounds of people faded away as she traveled further from the fairgrounds and deeper into the woods.

Another movement between the trees, deep in the shadows. Dark and furtive. It was low to the ground, and fast. Some sort of animal.

Dog, her brain registered.

The thought didn’t calm her growing apprehension.

A shadow streaked to her left. To her right, a twig cracked. She whipped toward each sound, adrenaline spiking, palms going damp.

A chill crept up her spine. It didn’t sound like Ghost. Wasn’t Ghost.

There were dogs out here. Not the friendly sort, but the hungry, desperate, half-wild kind. Her heart rate kicked up a notch.

She had the distinct impression of being hunted.

During the long brutal winter, most pets had starved rather than harm their owners. She’d seen it a hundred times in the abandoned homes she’d scavenged, dogs remaining loyal to their beloved owners even as they wasted away to skin and bone, even as they perished.

Some lucky ones could hunt for themselves, like Ghost, or were blessed with owners who’d provided for them, like Gran and her menagerie of cats.

A small percentage had escaped their fences or chains and went feral, forming ragged packs that roamed the outskirts of town, ravaging garbage dumps, breaking into pens and snatching chickens. A few had attacked and bitten people.

Last week, a pack in Stevensville had attempted to drag off a toddler who’d wandered too far from her parents.

Starvation had hardened them; they were unrecognizable as family pets. Desperate for food and too domesticated to hunt small game, they’d become bolder and more aggressive with every passing week.

Quinn pitied the dogs, but she also knew better than to underestimate them. Instinct screamed at her to get back to the safety of the fairgrounds.

If the dogs were hunting her, they were also hunting Milo.

She couldn’t leave until she found him.

“Milo!” she called again, drawing attention to herself but desperate to find him. “Where are you?”

Being quiet wouldn’t help. The dogs could smell her. They knew where she was.

The brown trunks and leafless branches blended with the damp, muddy ground. The colors bled together, making it hard to distinguish lurking figures in the underbrush.

Gusts of wind blew through the trees, shadows wavering, branches scraping against each other. A shadow moved unlike the rest—low and slinking.

Whipping around, she glimpsed mottled fur and the swish of a brown tail whipping between two maple trees.

A growl drew her attention. Ahead and to the right, further into the woods. She spun toward each new threat, gun up, hands trembling.

Another growl followed the first. Then another.

A flurry of barking shattered the air. Then a scream. Milo.

Quinn broke into a run.

25

HANNAH

DAY EIGHTY-NINE

“How about a trade?” Hannah asked.

Dominique West crossed her considerable arms across her chest and eyed Hannah. “You look like a lightweight. Most lightweights can’t handle the quality of our moonshine. I mean, it’s 160 proof, practically liquid fire.”

Hannah shrugged good-naturedly. “It’s not for me.”

“Oh?” Dominique grinned, held up a mason jar sloshing with liquid, and took a hardy gulp. She sighed with pleasure and wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand. “Now that’ll put some hair on your chest. How much do you want? I’m trading five rounds per jar, or eight rounds for two jars. .304, .22, or 9 mil.”

“I was thinking bigger.”

Dominique raised one pierced eyebrow.

“It’s for our entire town.”

Dominique whistled. “I’m intrigued. Tell me more.”

Dominique was an attractive Hispanic woman in her mid-twenties. Tattoos sleeved her muscled arms. Her black hair was shorn close to her scalp, and she wore paint-splattered overalls, combat boots, and black leather motorcycle gloves.

Ever since the Collapse, she’d been running a successful moonshine business. Hannah, however, was interested in more than getting drunk.

Hannah explained the town’s needs, Dominique nodding along, her lips pursed, a crease between her thick black brows. “It’s manageable. My still can produce ethanol up to 190 proof. I’d have to ramp production way up, take on an assistant or two. Or five. But it’s doable. Problem is, for the amounts you’re talking, I’d need more feed corn, more sugar—”

“We can supply it,” Hannah said, not one hundred percent certain that they could. That was a problem for another day, one she had faith they could figure out. “Give us a list. We can get you whatever you need. What do you want for it?”

“You got antibiotics or painkillers?”

“We might have something.”

Dominique took another swig of her own wares. “Honestly, what I want is something fresh. I’m sick and tired of eating out of cans, but I don’t got the time to pull seeds and hoe weeds.”

“You hoe the dirt. You pull weeds.”

She smirked. “Whatever.”

“We’re planting a community garden and building several greenhouses.”

“If you bring me salads, tomatoes, some strawberries, then I’m your girl. I’ll keep you flowing in biofuel like it’s the land of milk and honey.”

Hannah couldn’t keep the grin off her face as she thrust out her hand. “On behalf of Fall Creek, you have a deal.”

Dominique’s grip was strong as she flashed a grin of her own.

They shook hands and got to work on hammering out the details. Fifteen minutes later, they had a plan in place. Fall Creek farmers would now have the biodiesel they needed to fuel their tractors, and maybe there’d be enough left over for a few of the town’s diesel trucks and generators.

Either way, it was a huge win. And exactly what Hannah had hoped to achieve with Trade Day.

She’d found an elderly man who took prednisone for his arthritis willing to trade the last of her antibiotics for an additional six weeks’ worth of meds for Milo. She’d also bartered for a quarter of a tube of diaper cream for Charlotte.

Earlier in the afternoon, she’d checked on the kids: Milo was with Quinn and Ghost, and Charlotte was happily batting at baby toys in the Pack’ n’ Play that Molly had set up beside her booth.

The afternoon had turned gray, heavy clouds obscuring the sun, but that didn’t matter. It was a beautiful day.

Everywhere she looked, people seemed content, eager, even smiling. About a dozen of Reynoso’s security team walked among them, armed and watchful but relaxed, which kept the atmosphere tranquil.

At least, until the Community Alliance arrived.

They met as agreed inside the enclosed show arena, a large metal building with steel beams crisscrossing the high ceiling, still smelling of hay and manure.

Rows of stacked bleachers ringed a large fenced arena with a dirt floor. Barrels, more fencing, and hay bales were stacked against a half wall separating the arena and the stands.

She could almost feel the metal bench beneath her, Noah’s warm shoulder pressed against hers, inhaling the scent of hay, animals, and dirt mingled with popcorn and cotton candy. Two-year-old Milo giggling as he pointed at the animals—hogs, dairy cows, even llamas. Noah meeting Hannah’s gaze over Milo’s tousled head, his eyes shining with love for their son.

She blinked back the bittersweet memory, her throat tight.

There were no fairs anymore. No Noah, either. Only the difficult task at hand.

Mick Sellers and fifteen men and women from the Community Alliance had shown up, including the big fiery redhead named Flynn, who flanked Mick like a bodyguard.

Mick had to be in his mid-seventies, but his hair remained buzzed, and he carried himself with a military bearing, while Flynn was built like a sequoia tree, tall and burly, with thickly gnarled brows and a bushy beard that reached his chest.

On Mick’s other side stood Dallas Chapman, dressed in hunting camo, her skin the color of freshly turned earth, tight black coils springing from beneath her MSU Spartans winter hat.

The men behind them wore work boots, jeans, and canvas coats, and held rifles and shotguns. They were all armed, their postures stiff, their gazes hard and suspicious.

It wasn’t a good sign.

Bishop, Perez, and Hannah served as Fall Creek representatives. Reynoso was training the new recruits, while Dave, Wiggins, and Annette were busy ensuring Trade Day ran smoothly.

The others were engaged in various security-related tasks, both back home in Fall Creek and at the fairgrounds. Liam wasn’t back yet.

Flynn opened the conversation without preamble. “Three of our greenhouses were torn down in the last two days. Greenhouses we’d just built, at considerable effort and using most of our remaining seeds.”

“What?” Hannah asked, taken aback.

Flynn seethed, radiating hostility. “One of our barns was burned down last night. Jason Hanson’s fence was broken and half his cows released. It took two days to find them. At least his were left alive. Hugh Burley found six steers slaughtered this morning. Not butchered for meat, either. They were left where they lay, killed for sport.” His eyes flashed. “Or maybe revenge.”

Hannah’s mouth dropped open, speechless.

Who would do such a thing? Why kill animals and not eat them? Why destroy greenhouses planted with precious seeds? Destruction for no rational purpose. It made no sense.

“Why would anyone do that?” Bishop asked, echoing her thoughts.

Flynn leered at them. “You tell us.”

Perez bristled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“One of our farmers—Blake Hill—was found dead in his home the day before yesterday, a gunshot wound to his chest. Looks like he tried to defend his farm and was overrun.”

Hannah stared at him in horror. “That’s awful.”

Flynn glared at her. “You do a good job acting innocent, I’ll give you that.”

“That’s because we are.” She recalled Bishop telling her that this man had lost his wife during one of the militia’s raids. No wonder he was angry. This, though, was taking things to another level.

Tension thrummed through the air. Both sides glowered at each other with bitterness, resentment, and suspicion.

Perez grimaced. “You think it’s us?”

Dallas gave a disgusted snort. “If the shoe fits.”

“We had nothing to do with any of that!” Bishop said.

“You’ve already raided our towns and murdered our people. This is just more of the same.”

“Time for some payback, if you ask me,” one of Flynn’s people muttered. It was under his breath, but Hannah caught it. Her gut tightened in growing dread.

Fall Creek wanted to broker peace and unity, but the Alliance appeared to have zero interest in either. They teetered on the edge of violence.

One wrong step, and the whole thing would blow up in their faces.

26

QUINN

DAY EIGHTY-NINE

“Don’t move!” Quinn cried.

She sprinted past a cluster of birch trees, staggering through thick underbrush, thorns snagging at her clothes, and burst into a small clearing.

She took in the scene in a fraction of a second. Her guts turned to water.

Milo huddled, backed against the trunk of a spruce tree.

A dozen dogs circled him, lurking between the trees, creeping closer and closer. The dogs stared at him, hunger rendering them fearless and bold, their heads up, ears cocked, muscles bunched and bulging as they prowled the perimeter.

They were gaunt, each rib in sharp relief, their once gentle faces pinched by desperation and that instinctive, relentless will to survive.

Some people had gone feral. It only made sense that dogs would, too.

Kill to survive. Eat to live. Every animal knew it; it was the law of nature.

They wouldn’t survive without prey. Today, Milo was that prey. They would’ve attacked Milo already—would’ve ripped his tiny body to shreds in seconds—if not for Ghost.

The fearless Great Pyrenees leapt in front of Milo, white fur bristling, wheeling to face each new threat, snarling a vicious warning to any dog who dared to sneak too close.

One on one, Ghost could take any of them. With his muscled torso and thick fur, he was twice the size of the next largest dog, a skinny barrel-chested Rottweiler.

They came at Ghost in twos and threes, never one alone. Snarling and barking, growling, lips peeled back to reveal razor-sharp canines.

As one charged his front, two more lunged in to nip at his ribs. Ghost whirled and snapped his jaws inches from their throats. They scampered back with startled yelps.

But they’d learned pack behavior. The dogs were working together, like wolves.

“Get out of here!” Quinn screamed. Fear and revulsion churning in her gut, she shifted her gun into one hand, picked up a large stick and hurled it at the nearest dog. “Get! Go away! Stop it!”

It struck a brown Pit Bull in the hind leg. The dog shied away with a whimpered snarl. A Golden Retriever who’d been circling the spruce tree to get behind Milo let out a frightened yelp and fled, scurrying south through a thick tangle of underbrush.

Quinn sprinted to Milo’s side. “Get behind me!”

Milo stared at her with sheer terror in his eyes. “Don’t hurt them.”

She thrust his small body behind hers and faced the snarling dogs. “Just a tiny problem with that, Small Fry. They very much want to hurt us.”

She felt little concern for herself, only the kid. She had to get him out of here.

The boughs of the spruce spread far above their heads, the branches too high to climb. The nearest trees were tall and skinny; their limbs would break beneath even Milo’s weight.

She risked a second to twist around the spruce’s trunk and glance behind them, blinking against her blurring, panicked vision.

Trees and bushes and more trees. Everything looked the same.

Savage relentless barking blasted her eardrums, vibrating through her body. The scent of coppery blood overwhelmed the smells of sap, pine needles, and decaying leaves.

She swung back around, pulled out her slingshot, aimed, and released a couple of steel balls. The dogs dodged and howled but didn’t retreat, growing even more aggressive.

Sticks and stones wouldn’t deter them. Her sling shot couldn’t take them down, either. If they attempted to run, they were dead meat. Ghost couldn’t stop all of them.

They could smell her fear, Milo’s fear. Even she could smell it—a sour metal tinge to her skin, her breath. Stay calm, think, figure it out. Think!

Dismay filled her as she lifted the Beretta in a two-hand grip. She felt the same as Milo. Even as they attacked, she dreaded killing them.

In so many ways, this wasn’t their fault. She understood their desperation, their hunger.

At the same time, she couldn’t let them hurt Milo. And Ghost? No freaking way.

A German Shepherd lurched forward, about to pounce upon Ghost from the right. Quinn fired. Missed. Fired again.

The round punched into the dog’s rib cage. The dog let out a howl as its hind legs sagged, and it collapsed.

She risked another glance around the tree, desperate for an escape. This time she saw it. “There’s an oak tree five yards behind us, a few degrees to the right. Low branches. Forked like a slingshot. You can climb it.”

Milo’s voice squeaked. “But what about you—”

“Run for it, Milo!”

“I’m not leaving—”

“Just do it!” she shouted.

Milo’s boots crunched dead leaves and twigs as he slipped around the spruce, footsteps thudding as he ran back toward the safety of the oak.

One Retriever caught sight of the fleeing boy and tore after him, teeth bared. Adrenaline spiking, Quinn fired and missed. They were so damn fast.

With a curse, she spun, trying to track ahead of the animal, and fired twice more in quick succession. One round slammed into the dog’s hind leg, and it fell not two feet from Milo as he scrambled for the lowest tree branch and climbed.

It took two more shots to kill it. She was running out of rounds.

Someone had to come to help, didn’t they? Wouldn’t the crowds at the fairgrounds hear the gunshots and come running? Her stomach sank as she remembered Reynoso’s firing range. No one would recognize the difference between those shots and Quinn’s.

They were on their own.

Four dogs lunged at Ghost at once, ripping and tearing. And then two more. Ghost spun and twisted and rolled, biting and snapping, hurling one off him only to have two more take its place, until they were a whirling blur of fur and teeth and savage growls.

Frantic, Quinn peered through the iron sights, aiming for one dog, but the attack was so vicious, so fast, she might hit Ghost.

With a moan of frustration, she shifted her aim, exhaled, and fired at one of the pit bulls crouched at the edge of the trees. At least she could make sure it didn’t join the fight, too.

Her aim was true; the pit bull fell.

Her stomach clenched, tears stinging her eyes.

A Labrador fell out of the pile of writhing bodies with a yelp, staggering backward as blood poured from a wound in its neck.

She aimed and fired, wincing as the round hit its mark. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

She squeezed the trigger again. The slide locked back. Out of ammo.

Another dog yelped and fell, its throat torn to shreds. The dogs trampled over it and kept fighting, ferocious and unrelenting. Six of them tearing and biting at Ghost. Ghost a snarling, whirling dervish, all fangs and claws.

Blood spattered the dead leaves and dirt. She couldn’t tell whose it was.

With growing horror, she watched Ghost fighting for his life, for their lives.

“Quinn!” Milo shouted at her. “Climb the tree!”

She almost went. Almost. But she couldn’t abandon Ghost, not when he was so valiantly defending them.

She wouldn’t let this happen. She wouldn’t let him die.

Quinn picked up a heavy branch the size of a baseball bat and advanced on the melee, screaming so loud she couldn’t hear a thing, couldn’t think, only knew she had to fight, had to try.

She never reached the dogs.

Gunshots rang out. Several people raced into the clearing, rushing the fighting dogs, shouting, wielding weapons. More gunshots. Boom! Boom!

Startled, the dogs broke apart. Two fell, blood blossoming. Three men waded into the fray, swinging nail-studded baseball bats and sledgehammers. Another three shots. Boom! Boom! Boom!

The Rottweiler toppled sideways, a hole in the side of its head. The remaining dogs scattered—limping, bloodied, snarling and yelping.

They fled into the trees and disappeared in the shadows.

The strangers hollered after the dogs, but Quinn had eyes only for one.

Ghost lay on his side, covered in dirt. Bright red blood stippled and stained his white coat. Blood was everywhere, trampled in the leaves, sprayed in terrible arcs across dirtied clumps of snow.

Fear lanced through her. He looked dead.

“Ghost!” Quinn cried.

For a heart-shredding moment, the dog didn’t move.

Then a shudder rippled through his great body. He lifted his head with a soft whine and rose gingerly to his feet, a bloodied gash in his right hind leg.

He took a faltering step toward her.

It was difficult to determine bites or cuts through his fur. She didn’t know how serious his injuries were, but he was up, he was alive.

Her relief was short-lived.

One of the strangers spun toward the Pyr, a skinny black guy with acned skin, a crossbow slung across his back and a hatchet at his hip. A revolver in his hand, aiming at Ghost.

“Stop!” Quinn fell to her knees in front of Ghost, hands out, shielding the dog with her body. “Don’t shoot him!”

27

LIAM

DAY EIGHTY-NINE

Liam drifted in and out of consciousness, pain his only companion.

Nightmares of combat seared his mind—the boom of machine guns and mortar fire, rounds screaming past him on all sides, smoke billowing, grenades exploding, the groans of his lost brothers-in-arms.

Liam…Hannah present somehow but always just out of reach, trapped and calling for him. No matter how far he ran or how hard he fought, he couldn’t seem to find her. Liam…Her pure, church-bell voice beckoning him, as potent as a moth drawn to the flame. Liam…

But he lost her again and again, and every time, he felt himself drifting further from himself…

“Liam,” said an urgent voice. “Liam!”

He jolted awake, his brain scrabbling through layers of darkness as he instinctively reached for his weapon.

He seized his M4 from the seat beside him and struggled to sit up. No longer on the battlefield, ducking mortar fire. Not in the wintry woods, chasing after ghosts.

Pain slashed through his ribs, jerking him into the present.

As the cobwebs cleared from his head, the memories flooded in: his attack on the FEMA camp, the midnight rescue and near-disaster escape. Evelyn and Travis, sick little L.J., the bullet wound to his side.

The truck rattled over potholes, every bump in the asphalt jarring his injury. The pain was incredible. He had no idea how much time had passed.

Across the backseat, Evelyn peered at him. “How do you feel?”

He glanced down at himself. Someone had cut half his shirt off, and fresh bandages wrapped his torso from his belly button to his ribs.

He grimaced. “Still alive.”

“Good enough.” Evelyn pursed her lips. “I cleaned it up as best I could and packed the wound. Without access to modern medicine, things can turn nasty fast. I need to examine you in a sterile environment and get that bullet out, preferably with medical instruments—and not in the backseat of a truck.”

The cab was chilly but not freezing. Khaki fabric had been taped over the broken window with duct tape; Liam recognized the remnants of the patio umbrella from the brick bungalow’s backyard. Travis must have stopped to rig it up.

“I used your knife and duct tape from your pack,” Evelyn said unapologetically. “We had to keep L.J.—and you—from getting too cold.”

He gave a rueful smile. Of course it had been Evelyn. “It worked.”

Evelyn handed him a water bottle. Forcing himself into a seated position with gritted teeth, he drank and scanned their surroundings.

The midmorning sun hung bright in the blue sky. Mud and slushy snow blanketed the ground. Flat farmland pockmarked with occasional farmhouses set far from the road surrounded them on either side.

The tree line was a distant brown smudge. Few vehicles marred the road along this stretch; most of them had made it to the shoulder, yielding few ideal ambush spots.

Still, he didn’t relax. Couldn’t relax.

“What did I miss?”

“You’ve been out for about a hundred miles as the crow flies, though we’ve driven twice as far,” Travis said. “It took us a good eight hours. We bypassed St. Anne’s a bit ago, heading north on 17.”

Liam did the calculations in his head. They were still about a hundred and twenty miles from Fall Creek.

“I had to deviate a bit, but I stayed off the major roads, including I-57. Took forever, but it got us this far without too much trouble. Except for some angry looks from some folks and a few teenagers throwing rocks. Earlier this morning, just after Clifton, several people ran out onto the road trying to wave us down, but we didn’t dare stop.”

“Smart decision.” His stomach lurched. He tried not to think of a dozen atrocities that might’ve befallen them. He couldn’t protect anyone while unconscious, let alone himself. “What happened?”

Evelyn flashed him a look. “Eight or nine people tried to block the road and force us to stop. I borrowed your big gun and had to get stern. It worked.”

He checked the carbine. “Did you fire it?”

“Thankfully, I didn’t have to.” Her expression darkened. “I’m in the business of keeping people alive, not the other way around. I wanted to help them. They looked so desperate. They had kids.

“In Tuscola after the collapse, things were bad, but people still helped each other. Travis’s aunt took us in, even though we were more mouths to feed. One of our neighbors shared the last of her formula to make sure L.J. would survive.”

Travis glanced in the rearview mirror, concern for his wife in his eyes. Lines bracketed his mouth. His hair and beard were almost white, not gray but snow-white, contrasting against his earth-brown skin. “It’s okay, Evelyn.”

“It’s not okay. That’s the point. I wanted to help those people. I would have given them some water, some aspirin, something, but I couldn’t trust that they wouldn’t hurt us. So I had to point a gun at them, even though I hated it.”

“You did the right thing,” Liam said.

She shook her head, her eyes flashing with anger. “It didn’t feel like it.”

A soft coo drew Liam’s attention. L.J. twisted in his car seat, his eyes on Liam, his skinny arms reaching for the buttstock of the M4.

“That is not a chew toy,” Evelyn said.

L.J. let out that wet, croupy cough that sent a shiver of dread down Liam’s spine.

Despite his scrawniness and the sickness that wracked his tiny body, he was a beautiful child. He had Jessa’s honey brown skin and Lincoln’s arresting gray-blue eyes. The same as Liam’s own.

Once in Fall Creek, they would get him the nourishment and medical attention he needed. L.J. would thrive; he would make sure of it.

“We’ll help someone else when it’s not so risky for all of us,” Travis said.

Evelyn brushed the flecks of spittle from L.J.’s chin and gave him an affectionate pat on his curly head. “I know.”

Liam glanced at Travis behind the wheel, then Evelyn. They were good people. He’d saved them, but they’d both picked up the slack when he couldn’t. They’d kept their heads without panicking.

He wasn’t used to feeling beholden to someone or counting on anyone but himself. As a kid, he’d learned not to depend on adults.

Only Lincoln had been there for him. He closed his eyes at the sudden flare of grief. Lincoln was gone.

“Thank you. For driving. For stopping the bleeding.”

“It was Evelyn.” Travis gave a modest shrug. “In all honesty, I nearly pissed my pants.”

“He was just waiting for his moment to shine,” Evelyn said with obvious pride. “He’s always loved cars.”

“Classics. I love classics, like a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado or the 1961 Jaguar E-Type, possibly a 1964 Aston Martin DB5. I’m talking leisurely summer drives, not a lethal race in the dead of night being chased by armored vehicles boasting guns bigger than me.”

Evelyn beamed at him. “We got out, that’s what counts. Thanks to you, Liam.”

Flustered, Liam made a show of studying the scenery outside the window.

He sniffed. Something smelled singed. Ahead and to the west, smoke billowed into the sky above a cluster of distant buildings. “Looks like the entire town is burning.”

“We passed a few others like that,” Evelyn said. “It’s awful.”

Several minutes later, Liam caught sight of something up ahead. He stiffened. “Roadblock.”

Several hundred yards down the road, concrete barriers and spools of concertina wire narrowed the road to a single lane. Several Humvees parked at 45-degree angles and a half-dozen National Guard soldiers dressed in BDUs were stationed at the roadblock just ahead of a blue and red sign emblazoned with the words “Welcome to Indiana: Crossroads of America.”

The soldiers caught sight of them and stood at attention, rifles pointed their way. Liam spotted a female soldier kneeling near the left Humvee, armed with a scoped carbine; another crouched behind the right armored vehicle with an M4.

Travis sucked in his breath as he slowed the truck to a crawl. “What do I do?”

Adrenaline shot through Liam. These days, a uniform didn’t differentiate the good guys from the bad. “Just drive up nice and slow.”

Travis gripped the steering wheel, drumming his fingers with nervous energy. “What do we tell them?”

Liam glanced at his nephew. He was safe, now. Safe to grow up free, not in a cage.

Everyone trapped at FEMA Center #109 deserved the same.

Liam was only one man; he couldn’t save everyone. If any functioning government remained, maybe they could.

He didn’t trust the government, but he still trusted the military, or at least, he wanted to.

“The truth.” Liam lowered the M4 to the floorboard. No use in hiding it, but flaunting it wasn’t the best idea, either. “This could go sideways at the drop of a hat. Whatever you do, stay calm. And if I give the word, hit the gas and drive.”

28

LIAM

DAY EIGHTY-NINE

At the checkpoint, Travis hit the brakes. He rolled down the window, then returned both hands to the steering wheel.

A soldier in his mid-twenties carrying an M4 circled around to the passenger side and peered through the windows. His shaggy acorn-brown hair tickled his collar, long past regulation length.

A Chinese-American soldier approached the driver’s side window and requested their licenses and registration. Her nametape read Chung. “Indiana is closed. No one gets in.”

Evelyn raised her brows. “Closed?”

“Executive order from the governor, ma’am. We must redirect refugees from Illinois to the nearest FEMA emergency center in their home state. The closest one is—”

“Number 109 in Champaign,” Travis said. “We know. We just came from there.”

“You’ve got an injured passenger.” The male soldier narrowed his eyes. His nametape read Collins. “Is that a gunshot wound?”

“Yes,” Liam said. “Sustained during our escape from the camp.”

Collins lifted his rifle a few inches. Two guardsmen came up behind him to offer backup, their weapons in the low ready position. “Escape? What do you mean?”

The Brooks told their story. Travis did most of the talking, as he was the calmer of the two, with Evelyn adding a bit here and there. Altogether, they were incredibly convincing.

The soldiers attempted to remain neutral, but Liam read their dismay, indignation, and growing outrage as the Brooks described the atrocities they’d witnessed and endured, American citizens held against their will, civilians starved and abused.

One guardsman stepped aside and murmured into his radio.

Collins spat on the road. “Illinois is FUBAR.”

Chung grimaced at the crass military term meaning things were screwed up beyond all recognition. “Just about. You wouldn’t believe the things happening all over the country. We’ve heard rumors about shelters being overrun, but we haven’t received confirmation until now.”

“What about this Alexander Poe guy?” Liam asked.

“Poe and his Syndicate took over Chicago within a few weeks of the Collapse,” Collins said. “The federal government ordered the National Guard elsewhere, so there weren’t enough soldiers to protect the city. Some say it was a calculated decision to let Chicago burn to consolidate troops to save New York and D.C. instead. But Poe hasn’t been content with Chicago. He keeps spreading, like the world’s nastiest virus.”

“We’re contacting our commanding officer,” Chung said. “We’ll do something. I don’t know what, but we can’t let this continue. Poe keeps amassing more territory and more men, like he’s intent on taking over Illinois. If he does, I doubt he’ll stop there.”

“Men like that don’t stop,” Liam said.

She nodded, pursing her lips in a way that reminded him a bit of Quinn. “Indiana is a mess, too. If he heads toward us, we’re in trouble.”

Collins swept his gaze over the barren corn field across the road before returning his attention to the truck. “In a nutshell, the feds’ efforts to restore law and order—and power—are concentrated on the coasts. They’ve abandoned the Midwest at this point.”

“But you’re here,” Travis pointed out.

Collins straightened his shoulders. “Lieutenant Governor Wright-Mays—governor now, since Governor Rhyson never made it home—she kept back some Indiana National Guard units. So did Michigan. Illinois sent all their soldiers, believing the feds would provide aid when they needed it. They didn’t.”

“California, Washington, and Oregon have formed a federation,” Chung said. “They’re hoarding local resources and keeping their Guardsmen and military assets for themselves, defying federal regulations. Texas is doing the same. They’ve restored partial power in a few areas since they have their own grid infrastructure. But good luck fleeing to Texas; they’re turning away nonresidents at gunpoint.”

“I can’t believe things are degenerating so fast,” Evelyn said. “I mean, we saw it happen in Venezuela and other countries, but here? I never thought this could happen here.”

A guardsman brought over three water bottles—lukewarm, but that didn’t matter. Travis took them with a nod of gratitude. “Thank you.”

“What was your muster?” Liam asked.

“Fifty percent,” Chung said. “Most of us showed up to the armory with our families. It’s crowded, but we make sure the kids have food and shelter. These days, it’s more than most people have.”

Collins scratched his jaw. “We’re losing people every day, though. Everyone’s having the same problem. The military, first responders, police, doctors and nurses, everyone. When the world’s going to hell, most people care more about helping their loved ones than doing their job. Can’t say I blame them, though it makes our task harder.”

“Thanks for the information,” Travis said.

Chung pursed her lips. “I wish we could do more.” Her gaze flicked from Travis to the baby in the back seat. “I’m sorry for what happened to you, but our orders haven’t changed. We can’t accept refugees from Illinois.”

Evelyn snorted. “Refugees? Seriously?”

“Evelyn,” Travis said, his voice soft.

Evelyn sat back with a huff. “Come on. We’re all Americans. We’re on the same side here.”

“It’s not their fault.” Travis shot the guards an apologetic look. “We get it.”

“Sorry,” Chung said again.

“I’m not from Illinois.” Grimacing at every movement, Liam fumbled in his go-bag and pulled out his driver’s license. “We’re headed to Michigan. I’m a resident. We have no desire to stay in Indiana, we have a safe place to go—Fall Creek. So, if you’ll just let us pass through, we’ll be on our way.”

Chung nodded vigorously, looking relieved. “We can do that.” She narrowed her eyes. “Southwest Michigan, right? You’ve got a nuclear reactor over there?”

“Cook Nuclear in Stevensville,” Liam said. “And the Palisades plant further north near South Haven.”

Chung’s expression turned somber. “Braidwood, one of the plants serving Chicago, melted down.”

Evelyn’s face went ashen. “What?”

“It experienced a core meltdown the day of the EMP. The emergency shut-down sequence is an electronic system, so the pulse fried it before the signal was sent to the generators. Braidwood had just upgraded their generators to an all-new high-tech smart system. It got zapped, too. No one expected the generators to shut down, or the containment structure to fail.”

We don’t have the full story, likely we never will,” Collins said. “Far as we’ve heard, none of the engineers made it out alive.”

Evelyn stifled a gasp. L.J. started coughing again, and she fumbled for a bottle to soothe him. He gave several barking coughs before he settled.

“How many casualties?” Travis asked.

“Hundreds. Could be thousands. Don’t know if anyone has even gone into the hot zone yet,” Collins said grimly. “All I know is, I wouldn’t be caught dead within a twenty-mile radius of that plant. Everyone that could, fled. If you’re heading toward a potential hot zone, take care.”

“Isn’t there a plant near Champaign?” Evelyn asked, her expression strained. “Have we been exposed?”

“That’s Clinton Power Station, right?” Chung asked. “From what we’ve been told, every other plant in Illinois shut down, or if they didn’t, the concrete containment structures contained the radiation.”

Liam nodded, his gut tightening. Dave Farris had mentioned Cook Nuclear Power plant, which was located only fifteen miles from Fall Creek.

He made a mental note to check out the reactors. No one would feel, smell, or see a radioactive leak—until it was too late.

“Thank you for your help,” Travis said. “We don’t want to take up more of your time. If we’re going to reach our destination by dark, we should go.”

Collins and Chung stepped back. “We’ve cleared most of I-94 and have been working with local authorities—those still showing up, anyway—to patrol what we can. Still, keep your eyes open. It’s every man for himself.”

Liam grimaced. The pain was getting worse. What he wouldn’t give for some morphine or even a few shots of whiskey. “Been that way for a while.”

Collins dropped his gaze to the M4 at Liam’s feet and gave a half-smile. “Looks like you can take care of yourselves.”

Chung waved to the National Guardsmen manning the blockade. They moved back, clearing a path for the vehicle to slip through.

Chung looked at L.J. again and frowned. “What happened to you…what’s happening. We won’t let it continue, not while America still has blood running through her veins. And she does, I assure you. Things are hard. They’ll be hard for years. But we are still free.”

“We won’t give up,” Evelyn said.

Chung smiled wearily. “Damn straight.”

29

LIAM

DAY EIGHTY-NINE

Travis drove along I-94 at thirty miles per hour, mindful of ambushes and wary of obstacles in the road that might pop a tire or cause an accident.

This was neither the time nor the place to stop. An hour ago, they’d paused only to refuel from a jerrycan Liam had stashed in the back.

Flat barren fields and scraggly trees shorn of their leaves stretched on either side of the road. The highways of Indiana weren’t clogged like the big cities; it wasn’t difficult to weave between the occasional stalled car.

Despite the cold and the throbbing pain in his side, Liam kept the M4 at the ready, sweeping his gaze across both sides of the highway for threats.

Travis drove, his complete focus on the road ahead. Evelyn entertained L.J., changed his diaper and fed him the last of their thin, watery formula while keeping an eye out.

As they passed through one small town after another, Evelyn and Travis stared in dull, wide-eyed horror. Liam had witnessed the destruction on the way in; it didn’t make the sight any easier.

Streets were strewn with piles of trash, glass, bricks, splinters of wood, and other detritus scattered everywhere. In several towns, buildings were scorched husks; others broken, bullet-scarred, and gutted.

They witnessed more than a few bodies lying untended, left to rot where they’d fallen. Liam grimaced at the stink of decaying corpses, the fetid stench mingling with a stew of excrement and other bodily fluids.

As the warmer weather thawed the frozen ground, it also thawed the corpses of animals and humans alike. Diseases like dysentery and even cholera would spread like wildfire.

The last hundred miles were uneventful. A few stragglers on the road eyed them with desperate greed, but Liam’s M4 dissuaded anyone from attempting an attack.

With every passing mile, Liam’s anxiety and anticipation grew. For days, he’d been cut off from Hannah and Charlotte and the others, from the connection and warmth he craved.

He longed to see her face, to hear her laugh, to feel her warm gentle hands massaging the pain from his back, from his soul. Her presence tugged him back from the abyss.

After a few hours, they crossed the unobstructed border into Michigan, the Indiana guardsmen waving them through without stopping.

An hour after that, they reached the last bend in the road, the bridge over Fall Creek appearing in the distance.

Liam’s heart swelled in his chest. Despite the stab of agony beneath his ribs, he sat up straighter.

Fall Creek was a small town like any other. From the outside, it was nothing special. But within its borders lived the people he cared for.

“This is it.” His voice choked with emotions—relief, impatience, gratitude. And something else, something he hadn’t expected to feel again, but knew was true with every beat of his heart.

This, truly, was where he belonged.

30

HANNAH

DAY EIGHTY-NINE

“That wasn’t us,” Bishop said to Flynn with a calmness that Hannah didn’t feel. “We already told you, it was the militia. We didn’t know what they were doing, and when we found out, we fought them at an incredible cost, including the lives of several of our own people.”

Dallas crossed her arms over her chest. “Convenient excuse, if you ask me.”

Perez took a menacing step forward. “What the hell did you just say?”

“Okay, okay, we came here to discuss terms—” Mick started, attempting to keep the peace among his group, but it wasn’t working.

“We’re not brokering any terms with you people!” a man spat.

Perez looked furious enough to claw someone’s eyes out. “No kidding. And where were you when we fought the militia, huh? We asked for your help, and you were nowhere to be found. Left us high and dry.”

“I tried,” Mick said.

“Tried isn’t good enough—”

“For all we knew, you could’ve been on the militia’s side and ambushed us,” Flynn said. “We protect our own. Why would we risk anything for you?”

“Exactly,” Perez said. “Don’t expect us to help you the next time you come calling, either.”

“We will,” Hannah said, reining in her frustration. “That’s what the Community Alliance is about, isn’t it?” She shot a pointed look at Mick, then Flynn. “Communities coming together to help each other, to defend each other against stronger threats. That’s what we’re interested in. Working with you to form a larger, stronger group. Strength in numbers.”

“No way,” Flynn shot back. “We’re not working with Fall Creek. No way in hell.”

Flynn and his men had arrived with their hackles up, angry and itching for a fight. They were out for blood.

Everyone was on edge, nerves raw.

She was grateful Ghost was with Milo and Quinn. The Pyr would’ve taken a bite out of at least one of them. Perez was bad enough; she was champing at the bit to do the same.

“Give us our supplies!” Dallas said. “You know, all the stuff you stole.”

Bishop’s features went taut, his jaw bulging, though he kept his baritone voice composed. “As we’ve explained, we didn’t steal it.”

“Who says we’re giving you anything?” Perez snapped.

Flynn’s face purpled. “That was the agreement! It’s the reason we came, not to fraternize with thieves and liars. You owe us!”

Perez stiffened. “We don’t owe you a damn thing!”

A distant buzzing filled Hannah’s ears. It felt like watching a slow-motion train wreck the passengers couldn’t see coming. There was nothing she could do to stop it.

It was all going to fall apart. Everything they’d fought and sacrificed for. What Oren Truitt, Wayne Marshall, and even Noah had died for.

They hadn’t overthrown a tyrant only to succumb to infighting, petty disagreements, and mistrust.

They were better than that. Humanity was better than that.

She knew it, felt it deep in her bones. They just needed to open their eyes and see the truth. But how to make them see it? How could she make a difference?

After all, she’d tried and failed with Noah.

A fresh bout of grief savaged her heart. She pushed aside the pain and focused on the present. No matter how they distrusted each other, the way forward was together.

“Stop it!” she yelled.

They didn’t hear her. Flynn continued to shout at Perez, jabbing his finger in her face. Perez shoved him back, fury in her eyes. The men behind Flynn moved forward, hands reaching for the butts of their pistols at their hips.

Perez drew her service pistol. “Don’t you move!”

Flynn raised his shotgun and aimed at Perez. His men pointed weapons at Bishop and Hannah. Bishop’s pistol was drawn but remained low at his side.

“Wait a minute!” Mick cried, but his people weren’t listening to him anymore.

“Weapons down!” Bishop shouted. “Weapons down!”

Hannah’s Ruger remained in her holster. Though her pulse roared in her ears, her palm damp from adrenaline and fear, she refused to draw it. If anyone fired, their chances for peace went down the drain, never to be recovered.

It was now or never.

“We’re on the same side!” Hannah said.

“Are we?” Perez sneered. “Because we came here to talk love and peace and all that crap, and these tools are the ones accusing us of raiding and sabotage. No one comes into our house and disrespects us like that. No one.”

Flynn hurled a string of crass insults.

“You can starve for all we care,” Perez said.

“Then we’ll take what’s ours by force!”

“I’d like to see you try!”

Hannah put two fingers between her lips and gave a loud piercing whistle. “That’s quite enough! All of you!”

She pushed between Perez and Flynn, hands out, separating them, pushing Perez back toward Bishop, who placed a restraining hand on her arm. Perez tried to shake him off, but Bishop was strong.

“Don’t you see what’s happening? What’s at stake? We don’t have a choice. We have to work together.”

Perez shook her head and spat into the straw.

Frustration and fear clawed at her. They were so stubborn, so blinded. “If we rise, we rise together. If we fall, we fall together.”

Flynn’s scowl deepened. “Pretty words. Too bad there’s no substance behind them.”

“There is,” Hannah said. “We brought the supplies in six trailers. They’re out back behind the arena. We can hitch them to your trucks, your horses, whatever you need. You can have them. Right now. Nothing asked in return. No strings.”

“Nothing in return—?” Perez sputtered.

Bishop shot her a hard look, and she quieted.

Flynn raised his bushy red brows. “Why do I not believe that?”

“Believe what you want. The trailers are right there. Go see for yourself.”

“It’s not enough. It won’t make up for—”

“It’s a start,” Bishop broke in, his booming voice echoing through the arena. “And quite a generous one, considering. I’m sure you’d agree, Mick.”

“I do agree.” Mick angled his head at Dallas. “Why don’t you and Ortega get a few folks to load the supplies. And Flynn, get a security team together to see us back safely. We’ve only got a few hours until dark. We need to move.”

The tension stretched as both sides eyed each other—and their guns.

“We’re on the same side,” Hannah repeated, her heart bucking in her chest like a wild thing. “It’s about time we started acting like it. Lower your weapons. All of you. We’re not fighting each other today—or ever.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Bishop’s approving nod. He holstered his pistol and spread his hands, palms out. “If you shoot us, you’ll be shooting unarmed people.”

Flynn’s jaw bunched, his eyes narrowed. “If you think—”

“Flynn,” Mick said, steel in his voice. “It’s done.”

“Mick’s right.” Dallas put her hand on Flynn’s arm. “Come on. We’ve got what we came for.”

Defeated, Flynn’s shoulders slumped, his big body deflating. With another mumbled curse, he lowered his shotgun. His men followed suit.

With a scowl, Perez aimed her service pistol at the ground but didn’t holster it, just in case. Her posture eased.

The threat was over—for the moment.

Hannah let out the breath she didn’t remember holding. “That’s better.”

“This changes nothing,” Flynn growled. “You don’t fool me. We’ll never trust Fall Creek—”

Footsteps pounded outside. As one, everyone turned toward the sound, hands again moving toward weapons.

Dave Farris burst into the arena, panting hard, his face red from exertion. “It’s Liam!”

Pure relief flooded Hannah’s veins. “He’s back.”

Dave glanced at her, dismay in his eyes. “He is. But he’s hurt.”

31

QUINN

DAY EIGHTY-NINE

The feral dogs were gone, but Quinn had no time to feel grateful.

She found herself surrounded by another sort of threat.

At least four dozen people crowded the small clearing, ranging out to form a loose half-ring around her, just like the dogs.

They wore regular clothing—jeans, cargo pants, leather jackets, combat boots—but were all armed, bristling with bizarre weapons: spears, crossbows, scythes, clubs, and axes.

At first, Quinn thought they were adults. Most were older than her, but a few looked her age, like the skinny black guy standing in the center of the group.

They were in their early twenties, a few in their teens. Most of the guys boasted shaved heads, while the girls shaved the sides of their skulls and left the center long, worn either as a thick single braid or several locks that tumbled down their backs.

They’d just rescued her, but their expressions were grim, suspicious, almost outright hostile.

The group watched her, shuffling and murmuring, a strange eager glint in their eyes that took her a second to read—anticipation. But anticipation for what?

She didn’t know why, couldn’t put her finger on it, but warning bells clanged in her head. A sour-sick feeling slicked her insides.

Quinn silently pleaded with Milo to remain hidden in the branches of the oak tree behind her. Whoever these guys were, it was better they didn’t know about Milo.

This far into the woods, the noise from the fairgrounds had faded. Even the distant reports from Reynoso’s range had fallen silent.

Birds trilled in the trees. The wind rustled through the underbrush, shafts of gray light bleeding through the barren branches of the tree canopy.

Heart pounding in her chest, she rose slowly to her feet—damp leaves clinging to her knees, muddy snow caked on her palms and in her fingernails—and raised her arms.

Ghost was on his feet beside her, ears cocked, body quivering. A rumbling snarl vibrated deep in his chest.

“Don’t move!” snapped a big guy carrying a huge spiked mace that looked like a medieval melee weapon stolen out of a museum. Every inch of him bulged with muscles. He had flat features and a broad, misshapen nose.

He looked like a bouncer, or some thug’s righthand man. The guy who did all the dirty work—and relished it.

“I’m not armed,” she said. “Don’t shoot me. Don’t shoot Ghost. He was fighting the other dogs. He’s not—he’s not feral like them.”

“We love dogs,” said a male voice from somewhere in the middle of the group. “Don’t we?”

A guy of about twenty strode forward, a long sword tucked into a scabbard on his right hip, the wicked curved blade of a sickle slung on his left side. He looked strong, wiry rather than big, with elongated features and stringy wheat-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail.

“It’s okay, Jett,” he said to the guy with the mace, who lowered his weapon with reluctance, then he spun toward the skinny, acned kid. “You killed all these dogs, Tyrell? You know how I feel about killing dogs.”

The skinny guy—Tyrell—shifted nervously. He pointed at a dog carcass. “They were fighting each other. We were just breaking it up. That’s all.”

“That’s all?” the blond one said with a sneer, eyes flashing. “Maybe I should beat you with that hatchet of yours like you were beating those innocent dogs. That’s all.”

“They attacked us,” Quinn said. “Ghost fought them off.”

As if on cue, Ghost let out a low warning growl.

The blond guy’s gaze snapped to the dog. His eyes widened as he took in Ghost’s enormous size, his regal head, jaws dripping with red saliva, white chest stained red.

The anger in his face vanished, replaced with something akin to admiration, to awe.

The guy nudged his scabbard aside and dropped to one knee, so he was eye-level with Ghost. “This fine animal took on those dogs?”

“He did.”

“Damn straight. Color me impressed.”

“You should be.”

He glanced up at her as if seeing her for the first time. A smile broke across his face, but it wasn’t entirely friendly.

He rose to his feet, light and graceful, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword. “Pardon my manners. I’m Xander Thorne.”

He hooked a thumb at the two guys on either side of him. “This is Tyrell, and this surly one we call Jett. Dahlia’s around here somewhere. You’d like her.”

Quinn didn’t take her eyes off Xander Thorne.

The others reacted to him with respect, with a sort of thrilled adoration, but she sensed an edginess, a jittery agitation, like maybe he was a bit unpredictable and liked it that way.

This was the leader of the pack.

“How did you find us—me?” she asked.

Xander smiled, his gaze latched onto hers. “We were just driving along Old 31, minding our business, and we heard a commotion. The road is a few hundred yards away. It’s not like we had any pressing destination. That life doesn’t exist anymore, does it?”

“I guess not.”

“We can go where we want, when we want. So, when I heard all the barking, I wanted to check it out. Looks like it’s a good thing I did.”

“You saved us—me and Ghost. Thank you.” He seemed like the type to want admiration—and gratitude. “I owe you one.”

Xander didn’t smile this time, but he didn’t scowl either. He didn’t go for one of those crazy weapons, which was the important thing.

“What do you want us to do, Xander?” asked Jett, the big guy with the mace.

Xander scratched his head and studied her, his gaze roving from her boots to the top of her head and back down again.

The hairs rose on the back of her neck. She stood still and didn’t move. It felt like she was being weighed, or judged; like if she came up wanting, the result wouldn’t be pretty.

These people had just saved her life. That didn’t make them the good guys.

32

QUINN

DAY EIGHTY-NINE

“You alone?” Xander asked.

Quinn hoped the thick boughs of the spruce shielded Milo from their line of sight. If they searched, they’d find him, but if you weren’t looking for a short little kid clinging to a tree above you…

She raised her chin. “It’s just me.”

Xander watched her with suspicion. “You sure?”

She forced herself to meet his gaze. He had a wild, almost unhinged gleam in his eyes. It was unnerving. “I’m sure.”

He visibly relaxed. “Excellent, excellent. Well, then. Since you’re a lover of dogs, as I am, I’m going to give you a pass.”

He didn’t say a pass from what. Quinn knew better than to ask. The group behind him offered a mixture of responses—relief, disappointment, excitement.

Her neck prickled. “Can I lower my hands now? I’ve got a Beretta without ammo and a slingshot in my pocket.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “A slingshot! We don’t have one of those in our arsenal.”

“It’ll take out an eye if you’re good. Or leave a nasty bruise. Not much more than that.” She left out the part about the flechettes.

He grinned and gestured at the various weapons bristling behind him. “We have an affinity for creative weaponry, if you haven’t noticed.”

Swords. Maces. Ancient knives. Spears. A part of her wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of it, but instinct warned her that these people took their whole getup very, very seriously. To mock it would be the wrong move.

“I noticed.”

His grin broadened. “Can I pet your dog?”

She dropped her gaze to Ghost. His body was stiff, his hackles raised.

Though he was injured, his leg leaking blood, he hadn’t moved from his protective position between her and the strange group.

“He’s had a rough day,” Quinn said. “He’s kind of worked up.”

“We all are. I get it.” Xander squatted a couple yards away and stared at Ghost. Ghost stared back. Xander beamed at him, his narrow face lighting up.

For a moment, that wild gleam in his eyes dimmed, and he appeared normal, just a boy enjoying a dog—if not for the medieval weaponry attached to his belt.

Jett cleared his throat. “Xander.”

With a sigh, Xander rose and stepped back. His gaze returned to Quinn, and he tilted his head as he examined her. “What do you think about the state of things? Since the Collapse, I mean.”

Another test. She still didn’t know the consequences of failing, but the way Jett gripped his mace like he couldn’t wait to use it—or maybe expected to—set her on edge.

Apprehension slithered through her, but she couldn’t let the tension show in her face. “The world sucks. Everything sucks. What else is new?”

She could see by his expression that it was the right answer. He rubbed his hands together like he relished this moment, the tension, the test, whatever it meant. “And electricity?”

“I’m doing fine without it.”

“You miss it?”

A subtle intake of breath. The group watched her warily. How she answered this question was important.

She eyed them. They were scruffy, dirty, unwashed. She could smell the stench of B.O. from here. And those primitive, old-school weapons…

There was something different about them, something off.

She gave the unexpected answer. “Not really. No.”

The forest let out its breath. Some in the crowd nodded their heads, others stared at her with blank, mild expressions. The right answer, then.

Still, she didn’t relax, her muscles tense, her nerves strung tight.

Xander’s smile remained fixed, but his eyes went hot and bright. “The world before was a lie. All illusions and denial. Electricity blinded us, technology numbed us. But no longer!” His voice rose with a lyrical, almost mesmerizing cadence, his group nodding, hanging on his every word. “We’re tearing it all down. Brick by brick, light bulb by light bulb.”

“Death to power,” one girl said with a maniacal grin.

“Death to power!” several of them chanted. A few let out eerie howls, raising their battle axes and rifles affixed with bayonets, punching fists high in the air.

Every hair on the back of Quinn’s neck stood on end. Where had she heard that phrase before? Or seen it?

The body, twisting in the wind. The cardboard sign pinned to his dead chest.

Her stomach knotted, a cold sweat breaking out on her brow. As if sensing her fear, Ghost’s hackles raised, and he growled low and deep.

The others were too busy chanting and howling to hear him.

Keeping her expression placid, she put her hand on his flank, calming him. Easy, easy. No sudden moves.

Milo was still hiding away, unseen. They needed to get out of here alive and intact. Right freaking now.

Xander watched her with hawklike intensity. “You got a problem with that?”

“As far as I’m concerned,” she said, “the world can burn.”

It was far too easy to say the words, to feel like she meant it. The darkness inside her burned bright as a lit match.

He scratched at his greasy scalp and nodded to himself. His gaze flicked to Jett on his right and Tyrell to his left. Tyrell gave an enthusiastic nod; Jett could’ve been a statue for how little he moved.

Whatever Xander was looking for, he must have found it. “Congratulations. I like you, and your dog. We’re always looking for new recruits. Like-minded souls and all that. It sucks to be alone out here.”

He gestured to the group behind him. A few raised machetes, crossbows, and daggers. Several gave bright, friendly smiles, but there was an intensity about them, something rabid.

She returned her attention to Xander, cautious and watchful, analyzing his words, his posture, his eyes. It seemed to be an invitation rather than a demand.

She could walk away, and they would let her. Probably.

With a casual shrug, she forced a smile. “Not really a group-type. I prefer being alone.”

Disappointment crossed his face, but he didn’t argue. “You change your mind in the next couple weeks, we’re holed up at the Vortex headquarters in St. Joe.”

Vortex Corporation was a famous, nationwide company that produced appliances—refrigerators, dishwashers and dryers, stoves and microwaves.

“Seems apt, you know? A paradigm of industry and technology—now utterly useless.” His eyes flashed. “We enjoy the irony.”

She nodded, her sense of foreboding increasing. Ghost remained in front of her, a low growl vibrating from his chest.

Xander whistled to his group and pointed back the way they’d come. “Let’s go!”

As the group turned to leave, those at the front spread apart and a momentary space opened, revealing someone standing at the back of the crowd. A man she hadn’t noticed before.

As he turned to follow the others, he glanced over his shoulder at her. A man in his thirties, bald and built like a bulldozer, with broad shoulders and bulging arms, thighs like tree trunks.

It was his dark cunning eyes that drew her, caught her like a fly in a web, her body going stone cold as recognition slammed through her.

Sutter.

33

HANNAH

DAY EIGHTY-NINE

Hannah sat next to Liam, Charlotte in her lap, concern and fear tying knots in her belly.

She’d hardly breathed since Dave had announced Liam’s return—and his injury.

Liam lay in a cot in the center of the room, his back propped with pillows, sleeping restlessly after passing out during the bullet’s removal. The room smelled of Betadine and vinegar. A few kerosene lanterns provided light.

She hadn’t left his side since they’d brought him to the high school where the nurse, Shen Lee, had set up a makeshift medical center in a few former classrooms.

Molly had brought Milo and Quinn in with Ghost, who was on his feet but covered in blood. A dog attack, Quinn had said vaguely. Milo didn’t say much at all.

Reynoso had beefed up security, increasing patrols with Hayes and Perez while Bishop took a team to hunt down the rest of the pack. The Fall Creek police department had escorted the Community Alliance from the premises with their fresh supplies before another fight broke out.

Dave and Annette were busy closing Trading Day and cleaning the fairgrounds with Jonas Marshall and some of the teens.

Hannah’s heart felt torn to pieces. Her beloved dog and Liam were both hurt. She’d wanted to wrap Ghost in an enormous hug but feared hurting him. Liam, too, for that matter.

At least Ghost was stable. Lee had debrided the leg injury, inserted a flexible, sterilized tube for drainage, and applied Neosporin before binding the wound.

He’d instructed Quinn how to clean and disinfect the remaining cuts—which were minor enough to heal on their own if infection didn’t set in.

In one corner of the room next to a stack of unused desks, Ghost lay on his side on a couple of blankets, offering occasional whimpers.

Quinn knelt over him, a bottle of Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar in one hand, a clean cloth in the other, her bluish-black bangs in her eyes and her brow and lip rings glinting in the lantern light.

Milo helped spread Ghost’s fur and keep him calm while Quinn dabbed his cuts with the vinegar, which acted as a natural antiseptic and antimicrobial treatment against infections, bacteria, and fungus.

They tended to Ghost as well as Hannah could herself, though she yearned to be present at both Ghost and Liam’s sides.

She didn’t need to worry; Ghost was in excellent hands.

Molly sat in a metal chair against the wall near the door, leaning on her cane and overseeing the proceedings. “Natural honey and fresh garlic also work well. Garlic is a strong antiseptic with antioxidant, antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, and antiparasitic properties.”

“Is that why it works on vampires?” Milo asked.

“There’s no proof of that,” Molly said with a mischievous grin. “Find me a vampire and we’ll test it out.”

Charlotte gurgled and cooed and wriggled in Hannah’s arms. She was so curious, wanting to touch and taste anything within reach.

With a moan, Liam opened his eyes.

Hannah’s heart gave a little jolt. “How do you feel?”

He grunted. “Like I’ve been shot in the ribs.”

“That good, huh?”

He glanced down. She’d been holding his hand and hadn’t even realized it. Embarrassment shot through her as she quickly withdrew her hand, heat flushing her cheeks.

Liam’s brows narrowed, but he said nothing. He shifted in the cot and sat up straighter, wincing.

He looked thinner from his journey, a bit ragged around the edges, but he was still Liam. Broad shouldered and muscular, rugged features and chestnut stubble filming his jaw. And those arresting gray-blue eyes slicing straight through her.

She cleared her throat. “I can ask Lee for a stronger painkiller.”

“Save it for someone who needs it.”

“You need it.”

“Pain is just a distraction. I’ve learned how to live with it.” He swung his legs around and made to stand.

“Are you sure you should you be—”

“I’m fine.”

“Oh no, you don’t!” A tall, slim woman stalked into the room, a frown on her face. “Liam Coleman, get back in that bed.”

“I was just—”

“Absolutely not. You’re off your feet for at least another day. You need to be monitored for shock, blood loss, and hemodynamic instability.”

Liam’s face fell, but he didn’t argue. With a defeated sigh, he sank back onto the cot. “Hannah, meet Evelyn Brooks.”

“We met while you were unconscious,” Evelyn said, glancing at Hannah.

“It was a pleasure,” Hannah said.

“The pleasure was all mine.” Evelyn gestured toward Liam. “He saved us.”

Hannah smiled. “He has a way of doing that.”

Evelyn was an attractive woman in her mid-fifties, well put-together despite the weariness lining her face. Even dressed in dirty, wrinkled clothes, she exuded elegance and grace.

Her husband, Travis, trailed after her. In his arms, he held Liam’s nephew, who was a few weeks older than Charlotte, though he was smaller, skinnier, and weaker.

Hannah shook hands and made introductions around the room. Molly hid her usual snark and displayed consummate graciousness. Quinn was polite, though she was busy with Ghost. Milo was so intent on helping her, he didn’t look up.

Evelyn and Travis were courteous, warm, and kind. Hannah already knew they would fit in with Fall Creek just fine.

“Make yourselves at home,” Hannah said. “We can’t promise things will be easy, but we’re working hard to build a community here. A place to be safe—and free—no matter what’s happening out there.”

“Thank you,” Travis said, “from the bottom of our hearts.”

Evelyn checked on Liam’s bandages. “I removed the bullet. The wound is clean. Change your dressings once a day if the bleeding remains minimal. If it’s not kept clean, infection can set in rapidly. Puncture wounds breed bacteria.”

“Got it,” Liam said.

“And you need fluids with electrolytes. I’ll ask Lee for something.” Evelyn set a small white bottle with a blue label featuring happy, swimming fish on the cot beside him. “Take these.”

“I’m not a fish.”

“Amoxicillin is amoxicillin. It works on humans, even incredibly stubborn, mulish ones.”

Liam snorted. “Point taken.”

“You’ve put tremendous demands on your body,” she warned him. “You’re in terrific shape, but the body wears down. It’s physics. You need to be careful. Contrary to how you may feel, you aren’t Superman, and now you’re injured. I want to see you taking it very, very easy for the next few weeks.”

Liam grunted in response.

“That’s not a yes,” Molly said. “You’ve got to watch this one. He’s slippery like that.”

Evelyn fisted her hands on her hips. “I suppose I need a written agreement signed in blood, then.”

“Good luck with that,” Hannah murmured.

“Might have to tie him to the bed.” Molly leaned on her cane and flashed him a wicked grin. “I have some zip ties. Or duct tape. Also, paracord works quite well.”

“You have experience tying men to beds?” Hannah asked.

Molly winked. “I sure do. One of the greatest moments of my life, matter-of-fact.”

From the floor, Milo glanced up at them with a confused expression. Fortunately, the reference had gone right over his head.

Quinn gave no sign that she was listening—so focused on Ghost, she didn’t hear them. Or maybe it was something else.

Evelyn shook her finger at Liam. “I mean it. The bullet tore through muscle and fasciae. If you aren’t careful, you can make it worse. Much worse. I don’t have the tools, facilities, or anesthesia to perform emergency surgery on you, at least not one you’d have a decent chance of recovering from. It is imperative that you take care of yourself before we get to that point.”

“Heard you the first time,” Liam grumbled, refusing to meet Evelyn’s gaze.

Evelyn turned to Hannah. “If he won’t listen to me, maybe he’ll listen to you.”

Hannah lifted her chin. “I’ll do my best.”

Ignoring them both, Liam held out his hand to Charlotte, who cooed and batted at his fingers. “She’s already so much bigger.”

“Babies grow fast. She’s doing good. Happy and healthy.”

“May I hold her?”

Hannah’s heart squeezed. “Of course.”

A look of pure joy crossed Liam’s features as he took the baby. Hannah could tell it caused him physical pain to hold her, but he didn’t let it show.

He nestled her in his big arms, and she melted against his chest, nuzzling her little face in the crook of his neck. Liam’s little knit cap looked like it belonged on her, like they went together.

She couldn’t tear her gaze from them. There was something about a powerful man cradling a fragile baby that undid her, heart and soul.

“I miss those long late-night car rides we used to take when Jessa was a baby,” Evelyn said, her voice wistful. “That child never slept more than two hours her first year.”

Hannah caught a flicker of loss in Liam’s eyes. He had loved Jessa. If Jessa’s parents were any measure, she must have been something special.

Evelyn squeezed Hannah’s arm. “It is such a pleasure to meet you. We’re looking forward to settling in, seeing how we can help, and getting to know everyone. I can’t tell you how pleased I am that L.J. will have a playmate.”

Travis’s expression tightened as L.J. broke into another coughing fit. “At the shelter, few babies made it through the winter. I imagine the same story played out in most places.”

“L.J. is a blessing,” Evelyn said. “So is your daughter.”

“I know it.”

L.J. coughed, a horrible rasping bellow that sounded like his little lungs were ripping apart.

Molly frowned. “That’s a nasty cough he’s got there. A teaspoon of fresh garlic juice taken two to three times a day is a potent treatment for respiratory illnesses. I can make him something. Boil cloves of garlic for half a day and sweeten with honey and ginger for a natural cough syrup. He’ll like the taste of that one. Elderberry syrup works, too. They both help break up the congestion with bronchitis.”

“Thank you,” Evelyn said, relief in her voice.

“Do you have formula here, too?” Travis gestured toward L.J. “We’re out. He’s had far too little for weeks.”

Evelyn’s face went hard. “The formula they gave us was terrible. I did my best, but four infants died under my watch, and they wouldn’t give us antibiotics or formula. We would’ve tried cow’s milk, but they didn’t give us any. I mashed what I could, but toward the end, they were barely feeding any of us.”

Molly made a tsk sound with her tongue. “We can fix that problem right as rain. Commercial baby formula wasn’t even a thing before the 1950s. How do you think all those babies survived? Babies can drink evaporated milk. I myself was raised on the stuff, and I am standing here today as a shining example of health and fitness.”

She eyed everyone in the room, daring them to disagree. No one did. “I helped my mother feed my younger siblings. Still remember the recipe, in fact. A thirteen-ounce can of evaporated milk mixed with nineteen ounces of boiled water and two tablespoons of Karo syrup to help with constipation.”

Evelyn glanced from the babe in her husband’s arms to Molly. “Are there any cans available? I can’t pay you, but my medical expertise is all yours—”

“Bah!” Molly waved her hand in dismissal. “Liam Coleman vouches for you, that’s all I need to know. I have some cans I can give you, and I also have a hand-cranked food processor. We can mash fruits and veggies into a puree—even strain the water to feed him liquid vitamins if we need to. Won’t be long before both these kids can start on solids. They’ll be fine.” She nodded her chin in L.J.’s direction. “Just gotta get some fat on this little one’s bones.”

“A low dose of amoxicillin in his bottles will help, too,” Evelyn said.

“L.J. is weak and sick,” Hannah said. “In his case, nothing beats a mother’s milk.” She hesitated for only an instant. “I can feed him. At least until he gets healthy again.”

“Are you sure?” Evelyn whispered.

“Wet nurses have been a thing for thousands of years. And breastmilk would give him my antibodies too, right?”

Evelyn nodded.

“Then, yes. I’m sure.”

“From the bottom of my heart, thank you.” Evelyn looked down at the baby before raising her gaze to Hannah. There was a haunted look in her eyes, but also hope. “I am forever in your debt.”

“You kept Liam alive,” Hannah said, her throat thick. “I believe it’s the other way around.”

Hannah took the baby in her arms and stepped out into the darkened locker-lined hallway for privacy. As long as she ate well, she should have enough supply for both babies until L.J. put on some weight and his health improved.

The baby kept coughing, a wet, sickly sound that sent concern flaring through her. He was so thin compared to Charlotte’s chunky rolls. So light in her arms, like if she didn’t hold on tight, he might float up and disappear.

“We’ll hold on tight, Little Liam,” she whispered into his tiny seashell ear, her heart already going out to him. He was Liam’s nephew. For that alone, she already loved him. “I promise you.”

34

HANNAH

DAY EIGHTY-NINE

Within twenty minutes, L.J. was sated and sleepy.

When Hannah returned to the room, Evelyn was leaning against the cinderblock wall, her eyes closed, her face gray from exhaustion and fatigue. Travis stood beside her, one arm around her shoulder, swaying on his feet.

“Forgive me, you’re exhausted,” Hannah said. “We need to get you guys to a warm bed so you can rest.”

Travis took the infant and patted his back. “It has been a long night.”

“That’s the understatement of the century,” Liam said.

“Dave Farris has a room for you at the Fall Creek Inn. In the next few days, we’ll get you a place to stay where you can settle in.” Hannah glanced at L.J. again, who was sleeping in Travis’s arms, letting out ragged little snorts as his chest rose and fell. “We have a great street; the neighbors take care of each other.”

Molly sniffed. “It was great before the riffraff started moving in.”

“No fair mocking the wounded.” Liam gave a rare half-smile, half-grimace. “Rules of engagement and all that.”

Molly turned her attention to Quinn, who’d finished daubing the apple cider vinegar on Ghost’s cuts and scratches. “Time for us to be getting home, too. We’ve got our new haul to organize.”

Reluctantly, Quinn patted Ghost’s head and rose. There was something in her eyes, a distant, thousand-yard stare.

“You okay, Quinn?” Hannah asked.

Quinn gave a noncommittal shrug, revealing nothing. Hannah wanted to hold the girl down and pry it out of her, but it had been a long and stressful day for everyone. The truth was, her focus was on Liam.

Later, she told herself. She’d check in with Quinn again tomorrow.

Molly flashed Hannah a knowing look and winked. “We’ll bring Milo with us, so you just take all the time you need with Liam, dear.”

Hannah blushed. Quinn, who’d normally roll her eyes to the heavens and heave a dramatic sigh, showed no sign she’d noticed other people in the room.

Five minutes later, Dave swung by to pick up the Brooks and take them to the Inn. Molly, Quinn, and Milo left with great fanfare, after Milo had hugged and kissed Ghost a dozen times. Molly had promised to bring some evaporated milk over for L.J.

Lee stopped in to give Liam some Advil and grab some fresh sheets from the cupboard for another patient. After he’d gone, they were alone but for Charlotte and Ghost, who’d curled up on the blankets Quinn had laid out for him at the foot of the cot.

Liam stroked Charlotte’s silky-fine hair. The baby nuzzled into his neck with satisfied little coos. “What’d I miss? A lot, it seems.”

Hannah sat on the edge of the cot, careful not to disturb him, and told him everything. Trading Day. The town hall meetings degenerating into contentious arguments over the fate of James Luther. The hostilities with the Community Alliance, and the destruction wrought by unseen forces.

“And if that’s not enough, I’m worried about Quinn.”

“She’s getting worse.” A statement, not a question.

“I’ve tried talking to her, but I don’t think she heard a thing I said.”

“Maybe something else will help, something besides talking. I’ll go see her tomorrow.”

“When you’re healthy, and not before. You heard Evelyn.”

He rolled his eyes, but with a long-suffering air. “The world won’t wait.”

“It’ll wait for you.”

“I doubt it.”

Charlotte squirmed and let out a hungry cry. Liam handed her back with a wry grin. “Can’t help with that, little one.”

Hannah nursed Charlotte discreetly as they continued to talk, discussing everything that had happened to Liam on his journey. Liam’s rugged face hardened, his eyes steel. “The things the Syndicate did to those people…”

It took everything in her not to seize his hand again. “You saved your nephew. You brought them home.”

He nodded, his gaze distant as if he were still working on convincing himself. “I did.”

As much as she worried for him, she would never chastise Liam for risking his life for others. He was a soldier, a warrior. A protector. It was in him, a part of him, bred into his bones.

Still, her heart skipped a beat at the thought of how close she’d come to losing him.

In this new world, it was far too easy to die.

“I—I missed this,” he said, studiously looking anywhere but at her. He smoothed the sheets, checked and rechecked the bandage wrapped across his ribs. Finally, he looked up and met her gaze. “I missed you.”

Her body went hot, her heart beating hard. Her face flushed.

Despite everything—the world crumbling around them, Pike and Rosamond, the militia, Noah—her heart whispered a truth she hadn’t been ready to face. Still wasn’t.

All the same, the truth remained.

What she felt for this man—it wasn’t going away. It was growing deeper, stronger, day after day. She’d missed him like she’d missed the sun in her basement prison—like a piece of herself was missing.

Now, gazing into those steel-blue eyes, she felt that missing piece clicking into place.

Instead of joy, a spear of fear plunged into her heart.

“Hannah?”

Pike’s face flashed behind her eyes. The thin red line of his mouth. The click, click, click of that horrible lighter loud in her ears.

“Are you okay?”

She hadn’t realized she’d stood up, that she was backing away, her mouth dry, palms damp, face on fire.

Ghost hobbled to his feet, alert to her distress. She tightened her arms around Charlotte. “I’m sorry, I have to go. I’m sorry.”

Hannah turned and fled, Ghost at her side.

35

SUTTER

DAY NINETY-TWO

Sutter gripped the satellite phone and turned from the bonfire.

It’d taken days before Xander had trusted him enough to return his things, days more before he could drift from the perimeter of the crowd without a dozen suspicious eyes—and weapons—pinning him.

He’d spent the last week as the camp’s requisite servant—cooking meals, cleaning up after the filthy, lazy thugs. They were warming to him, but Xander was bound and determined to keep him in his place.

Once Sutter had exacted his revenge on Fall Creek, Xander Thorne was the next name on his hit list. But first things first.

Sutter didn’t consider himself a sadistic man. He wasn’t a psychopath, not like Rosamond’s firstborn son, Gavin Pike.

He didn’t kill because he enjoyed it; it was a business transaction, a means to an end, the elimination of a problem. When Sutter killed, it was in his own best interest.

However, in Liam Coleman’s case, he would make an exception. He’d imagined it a hundred times in his dreams, down to the last detail.

He planned to relish every second of Coleman’s slow and agonizing death.

If that meant Fall Creek had to burn along with him, then so be it.

A hint of doubt slithered into his mind. He hoped his cover wasn’t blown. The element of surprise was extremely rewarding. He wasn’t sure, but he suspected the blue-haired girl had recognized him.

Why those idiots had to get so close to the fairgrounds was beyond him. And then they’d inserted themselves into the dog fight before Sutter could do anything to stop them.

No matter. It was unfortunate, but it didn’t alter the end game.

Coleman would still die, whether or not he knew Sutter was coming for him. His plan would move forward just as before.

Sutter risked a glance at the dozens of people ringing the massive bonfire.

Dozens of rolling desk chairs surrounded the fire; a bunch of crazy idiots scooting around, bumping into each other and laughing hysterically, the sound high-pitched and grating, like shrieking hyenas. They’d used splintered legs from desks and broken chunks of bookcases as kindling.

He tried and failed to ignore the delicious scent of roasting meat, his empty stomach gnawing at him. They were eating chunks of seared venison with their hands, licking their fingers.

He’d hunted and killed the deer for them. They were worthless for hunting game; they were marginally better at hunting human beings.

At any rate, there was plenty of meat—he’d partake soon, but first, he needed to make contact.

“It’s me,” Sutter said when the connection went through.

A hiss of static and then a voice on the other line, so familiar and similar to his own father’s that a chill scraped down his spine. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Mattias Sutter.”

A pause which lengthened into a tense silence.

Sutter clenched his jaw. “Your nephew.”

“How the hell did you get this number?” With the rasp of a former smoker, gruff and impatient, like every word he spoke was an abysmal waste of his precious time, energy, and focus. “This is a secure line. You don’t have the security clearance—”

A fresh wave of resentment roiled through him. Byron Sinclair, aka, the General, was a Grade A jackass. Always was, always would be.

Sutter had never been one for sentimentality or family ties, but the General took egotistical, miserly narcissism to an entirely new level.

Yet, he was a jackass with the power that Sutter needed, so he swallowed his towering hatred and forced himself to play nice.

“I know what happened to your daughter,” Sutter said.

That stopped the General in his tracks. Sutter doubted he was capable of something as human as love, but blood was blood. It meant something.

That’s what Sutter counted on. The man cared little for his wayward brother or his brother’s son, but his daughter was his bloodline, his legacy.

If there was one thing his uncle cared about beyond power, it was his legacy.

“Where is Rosamond?” the General growled.

A shout went up around the bonfire, more of that damned chanting. Sutter took a few quick steps and rounded the corner of the closest building.

Here the shadows were thick, the cold licking at his exposed face, neck, and hands. He hunched his shoulders, bracing himself. “Your daughter is dead.”

It was quiet on the other end of the sat phone.

“A few weeks ago, she was murdered.”

Silence so thick Sutter felt it oozing through the phone, dense and menacing.

“It happened in Fall Creek. Her people turned on her.”

He imagined the silence like a black smoke curling around his fingers, winding up his arm, encircling his neck. “I thought that you would want to know.”

The General breathing in his ear was the only sound as the laughter and shouts from the bonfire faded away to nothing.

“Tell me what happened.” The man’s cold voice cut through time and space like a scythe. “Leave nothing out.”

Sutter told him a curated version of events with Liam Coleman at the heart of the disaster of Winter Haven. “This ex-soldier orchestrated the massacre of my men. He murdered your grandson, Gavin Pike. And he killed Rosamond. I did everything I could, but I was only one man. There was nothing I could do to stop it.”

Of course, Sutter had flown the coop by the time Rosamond met her demise. He may not have been present at her death, but he knew with certainty that she was gone—and who was responsible.

“I will come,” the General said in a clipped tone. Was his voice raspier? Thick with a rare display of emotion? Sutter couldn’t tell. “My plans have been…delayed. But events are falling into place. A few last boxes to tick, and I will depart soon.

“Until then, continue to harass the town without outright attacking it. When I arrive, I will contact you with further instructions. Send me your current location via GPS coordinates. Do not allow anyone access to this communication device. Do you understand?”

Sutter bristled. The General spoke like he believed Sutter was too stupid to think on his feet. Little did he know. “You got an army with you? You’ll need it.”

“Do not concern yourself with my resources. Rest assured, I will arrive prepared.” A pause. “More prepared than you were.”

Sutter flinched at the insult. Acrid resentment burned through him, a loathing so palpable he could taste its bitterness on his tongue.

He forced himself to focus on the prize—Coleman’s death, the plum of Winter Haven once again in hand, even a possible promotion as the General’s most valuable associate.

“I’m sure you appreciate the crucial intel I’ve just shared,” he said.

Silence again on the other end.

“I expect to be duly rewarded.”

“I reward my men in accordance with their value.”

As if Sutter hadn’t already proved his value a hundred times over. He flexed the thick calloused fingers of his free hand, imagining Coleman caught in his trap, no way out, no escape. He squeezed his hand into a fist until his ragged fingernails bit into his palms.

“Is that all? I’m rather busy.” A curt dismissal, eerily similar to Rosamond’s style.

Sutter gritted his teeth. There was one more thing he needed to know, but Sutter had no intention of telling him, not until the General treated him the way he deserved.

“That’s it,” he lied.

36

QUINN

DAY NINETY-FIVE

Q uinn sighed. “Tell me we’re almost finished.”

“I don’t lie,” Liam said.

For the last hour, they’d built a cinderblock rocket stove on the backyard patio of the Brooks’ new home on Tanglewood Drive. The house had no woodstove, but now they could cook meals outside all season long.

Liam had made a base of pavers scavenged from someone’s shed. Then it was a matter of laying a horizontal block and standing another vertically on the pavers, then using a mix of pavers and cinderblock to form an “H” from above.

“We used a rocket stove for camping,” Quinn said. “Not like this one, though.”

Liam gestured at the different parts. “The design relies on the L-shaped tunnel created in the hollow cinderblocks. The rushing air fans the flames and combusts the fuel, generating an incredibly hot burn.”

Liam bent and pointed. “Stuff the horizontal tube with anything that burns—sticks, grass, even dried dog crap. It creates clean, almost pure heat with little smoke.”

Quinn topped the H with a final cinderblock and placed a grill grate across the top. “And we’re done.”

It was a rare sunny day, though everything was still a dirty mix of mud and snow. The air was brisk, but after hours of manual labor, they’d both shed their jackets and gloves.

Liam winced and stretched, one hand on his lower back.

“You sure you’re okay?”

Liam grimaced. “Not you, too.”

Quinn shrugged. “Hey, not my fault you’re getting old.”

Liam snorted.

In the six days since his return, she hadn’t seen Liam off his feet a single time. He still moved gingerly, but he was up and around, back to his patrols with Ghost and sessions training the townspeople in firearm and defense skills.

Yesterday, he’d directed the collection of fifty-five-gallon barrels confiscated from nearby farms. Today, Jonas and Whitney along with several others were filling the barrels with dirt to fortify the roadblocks and barricades encircling the town’s perimeter.

In the event of another attack, the dirt-filled barrels would provide cover for the town’s defenders.

Ghost’s booming bark shattered the air. He was a few houses away, staying close to Milo.

Evelyn Brooks had stitched his hind leg and two larger bites. The antiseptic properties in the vinegar had worked, the skin around the wounds healing nicely.

The Great Pyrenees was supposed to rest and relax, just like Liam.

Like Liam, he did neither.

The dog returned to his role as guardian and protector of Hannah, Milo, and Charlotte, never leaving their sides unless he was patrolling their house and neighborhood each night.

At least he’d left his stitches alone, so they didn’t have to put him in the cone of shame. No one wanted to see Ghost endure such an indignity.

After the dog attack, Quinn had felt dazed, like she was in a trance. She hadn’t said a thing to anyone about the bizarre strangers they’d encountered. Or who she’d seen with them. She’d told Milo not to tell anyone, either.

Sutter changed everything.

She was still figuring out how—and what she was going to do about it.

Liam wiped sweat from his face with the back of his arm and looked at her. “I have something for you.”

She blinked, surprised. “What is it?”

“You want it or not?”

“I definitely want it.”

He went to the go-bag he’d leaned against a nearby tree and withdrew an object, unwrapped the cloth, then held it out in his palms.

The curved blade of Desoto’s karambit knife glistened in the cold spring sunlight. It looked like the talon of a velociraptor, a weapon created to eviscerate and disembowel enemies.

Quinn sucked in an unsteady breath. She hadn’t seen the karambit since that night in the shed when Desoto had attacked her, when she’d felt it pressed against her soft vulnerable belly.

“Should’ve given this to you a while ago. It’s more yours than mine.”

Quinn took it almost reverently. The weight of it felt right in her hands. She took a swing, watched it scythe through the air, slicing molecules of oxygen, dividing beams of sunlight. So sharp, it could split a human hair.

“You must keep it sharpened.”

“I will.”

“Be careful with it. That’s no toy.”

She glared at him beneath her overgrown bangs. “Don’t plan to use it like a toy.”

The faintest grin tugged at his lips. “Take care of your weapons and they’ll take care of you.”

She nodded, admiring the beauty of it, one hand straying to her throat without conscious thought. The bruises from her fight with Desoto had faded weeks ago. The memories, the nightmares—they lasted much longer.

Still, there was a certain satisfaction, a poetry in owning the knife of the man who’d tried and failed to kill her.

Liam reached into his pocket and withdrew a small hard sunglasses case. He snapped it open, grabbed a couple of aspirin, and swallowed them without water.

She pointed the karambit at the case. “What is that?”

“It’s my everyday carry. It comes with me everywhere, hence the name.” He patted his hip. “And my weapons. I never go anywhere without my Gerber.”

He held out the case so she could look inside. Instead of a pair of sunglasses, it contained a multi-tool, stainless steel tactical pen, a small LED flashlight, two lighters, a folding knife, a handkerchief wound with paracord, and a lock picking set.

Quinn raised her brows. “Lock picks? Were you a thief in your other life?”

“You never know when you’ll need to get into—or out of—a building. Best be prepared for anything.”

She soaked up Liam’s words, memorizing everything in the case. She could gather most of the items herself except for the lock picking set, but she had hair pins and paperclips. Quinn gestured at the multi-tool. “Gramps had one of those in his workshop, in one of his drawers.”

Her heart twinged at a memory of herself at five or six, sitting in the garage workshop on a stool while Gramps showed her each of his tools and how to use them. Light glowed from the single lightbulb above them, the air thick with oil, grease, and dust.

Gramps had spent most of his free time there, working on odds and ends, jimmy-rigging the air conditioner, building a chicken coop, or fixing an oil leak in the truck.

Once she’d hit middle school, she’d lost interest and rarely joined him. She should’ve spent every spare second with him.

Quinn pushed away the memory. As soon as she got back to her house, she was going to make her own everyday carry case. She and Gran already had go-bags—Gramps had always kept one in the Orange Julius—but he’d designed them for a day or two stranded in a snowstorm rather than long-term survival or self-defense.

Liam snapped the case shut and stuck it in his pocket. He turned to face her, an unreadable expression on his face. “So. You ready or not?”

She thought he meant building another rocket stove. Or splitting endless firewood. Or maybe more back-breaking hours digging latrines for the people in town who didn’t have septic systems. “For what?”

He stared at her. “What do you think you’re here for?”

She folded her arms over her chest, on the defensive. “Did you bring me out here to have another talk?”

Like words could fix her. Everyone kept asking her if she was okay—Hannah, Gran, Bishop. Even the principal. They asked her about Noah, about Rosamond.

They looked at her with pity, concern, and more than a little wariness, like something was broken inside her.

The problem was, they were right.

The more they asked, the more Quinn shut down. She felt the tug and pull of their concern, their kindness, their love, but she couldn’t let them in, drawing even further inside herself.

She didn’t want to talk about how it felt to kill Rosamond or how Noah had betrayed her, what it felt like to watch a friend turn against you one moment and then die the next.

Or how she no longer recognized the face she saw in the mirror.

Liam watched her. “I brought you out here to fight. You in or not?”

37

QUINN

DAY NINETY-FIVE

It took Quinn a second to comprehend Liam’s words. Excitement surged in her chest. “Hell yes, I’m interested!”

“Okay, then.”

“You’re going to teach me? You’ll train me? For real?”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

“Yep, absolutely. That’s what I heard.” Inwardly, she cursed herself for sounding like a complete idiot.

He looked at her with those steady, disconcerting eyes that made her feel like he could see every part of her she was desperate to hide—the doubt, the anger, the fear.

She squared her shoulders. “What changed your mind? About me?”

“Figure you earned it. You and Hannah confronted the superintendent. You’re the one who serviced the target.”

Any compliment from Liam Coleman was hard-won, but instead of puffing with pride, sour sickness churned in her belly. Serviced the target. He said it like it was nothing more than taking out the trash.

If only it were that easy.

Liam looked off into the trees for a minute, lips pursed.

Quinn waited.

“Now you have to bear that burden. You need to know how.”

“I will. I can.”

“Figure you’re gonna throw yourself into the next fight whether or not you’ve got permission. Might as well have an inkling of what you’re doing.”

She ignored the implication that she had no clue. Compared to Liam’s lethal skill set, practically everyone on the planet was an amateur. It didn’t dampen her excitement in the least.

“I’m willing to teach you, but you’re the one who needs to put in the time, energy, focus—”

“I am. I will.”

He nodded. “Meet here every day at six. Rain or shine. No excuses.”

“Six p.m.?” That was dinner time, when she had a hundred chores helping Gran—

“A.m. At dawn.”

“No problem.” She’d get up at three a.m. if that’s what it took. She’d give up on sleeping altogether.

“You’ll lose your beauty sleep,” he said as if reading her thoughts.

She flashed him a wicked smile. “Beauty is overrated.”

He frowned at her, as if he disapproved even as he spoke the words. “You’ll be joining the town security team. I train them daily from four to six p.m. at Wolf Prairie Park by the river. Don’t miss a session.

“Also, get on the roster for shift assignments for perimeter patrol and guard duty. That means staying up all night and working the next day. It means long hours and exhaustion. You’ll be part of a team, and everyone on that team will depend on you. The entire town will depend on you.”

He needed to know if she was prepared for the mental and physical demands. She was. She knew she was.

Gramps had taken her hunting since she was a little girl. She could split logs with the best of them—plus, she’d been hauling five-gallon buckets of water from the well every morning for the last three months.

Whatever she still needed to learn, she was more than up to the challenge. Her enthusiasm grew in leaps and bounds. And so did her determination. “I can handle it.”

He studied her for a minute, as if examining her for weaknesses, for cracks in her armor.

Quinn raised her chin and glared right back. She wouldn’t show him any. She was fine. Absolutely 100% fine, fine, fine.

“You certain? There’s no shame in taking more time.”

She yanked her tangled blue-black hair into a ponytail and grinned. “I’m sure.”

He nodded to himself, as if deciding something. “We’ll start with the knife. You already have a satisfactory grasp of firearms and will gain skills in the group training sessions. You need to know how to defend yourself when you’re out of ammo or find yourself in a close combat situation. Given your size and strength disadvantage against your opponents—”

“Hey!”

“Now is not the time to stroke egos. You’re what? Five-foot-two and a buck ten dripping wet? Your likely attackers in any scenario are grown men who outweigh you by a hundred pounds. Their arm-span will be greater than yours, which means you’re in their strike zone before they’re in yours. Bravado will get you shot, gutted, and worse.”

Quinn swallowed. “Yeah, okay.”

“Hand-to-hand combat is a last-ditch defense. If you’re out of ammo or no longer have access to a gun, violence must then become your last resort. Do you understand? I cannot stress this enough. If you can avoid a physical altercation or flee, do so.”

“Got it.”

“I mean it.”

“I got it!”

“The karambit is a longer knife, which will help you. It creates space, though with that curved blade, it’s tough to conceal.” His eyes narrowed as he studied her stance. “Knees bent, shoulder-width apart. Left foot forward, right foot back and angled to the three o’clock position. Keep your weight centered over your hips so you’re balanced, able to strike without being pushed over.”

After an eternity practicing proper form, fighting stance, and how to hold the knife a hundred times each, Liam picked up a stick about a foot long and the width of his wrist. “Raise your left arm, elbow bent, your palm like an edge aimed toward your assailant.” He demonstrated. “Step into your strike, driving off your rear right foot, staying centered and balanced.”

She imitated him, taking it all in, studying his movements, committing his every word to memory. “Got it.”

He wielded the stick like a knife and beckoned her. “Come at me.”

“Really?”

He nodded.

“What if I hurt you?”

The corners of his mouth twitched—the Liam version of a smile. “You’re welcome to try.”

Quinn tightened her grip on her new knife. “Oh, I will.”

38

QUINN

DAY NINETY-FIVE

They fought for hours. Liam said little other than to give grunts of disappointment or affirmation—mostly disappointment.

When he spoke, it was to correct her. “Widen your stance. Stay balanced. Your footwork is half the battle. Hide the blade as long as you can, and when it’s time to strike, don’t hesitate. Speed and surprise are vital.”

Every time she rushed him, he sidestepped or batted her knife harmlessly to the side. He kicked her feet out from under her or knocked her flat on her back with a simple push or sleight of hand she hadn’t seen coming. “Your grip is off. Grip it but not too tight so your hand has flex to slash. Flex!”

Again and again, he struck her lightly in the stomach, the chest, the thighs with the stick, highlighting the vulnerable spots she’d left open to attack.

Each time, he said, “You’re dead.”

She responded with “Again” and clambered to her feet.

As the afternoon wore on, the sunlight faded, slanting across the yard, throwing longer and longer shadows.

“You’re overreaching every time,” Liam said. “When you slash, keep control and don’t overreach. It puts you off balance. You’ll be disarmed as easy as taking candy from a baby.”

Liam might knock her down a hundred times today, but she was bound and determined to get back up a hundred and one times. And eventually, someday, she’d knock him down herself.

“Your elbows are flaring. Remember, when you slash, move your upper body, turning into the movement, keeping your elbows close to your side. Your entire body will generate power through that torque. ‘Swish’ through the first slicing cut, then slash on the return, like an inverted-8 motion.”

She summoned every ounce of her anger, her hurt, her fury, and launched it at Liam. Growling in frustration, she ran at him, slicing and slashing as he’d taught her with every ounce of ferocity she could muster.

“A middling effort.” He shrugged. “Do it again.”

She did. Liam deflected the attack and shoved her to the side, swatting her right bicep with his stick. “You fight like a wildcat, all teeth and claws. No control, no thinking.”

She wheeled around to face him. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“You rush in. You’re reckless. You fight with your heart, not your head.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder.”

She didn’t have the energy to nod.

“Pay attention. See what vital target the assailant leaves open. He’ll always leave something open. He’ll underestimate you; it’s the only advantage you’re gonna get, so you better be cunning enough to use it. Go for the major arteries. Anything less won’t do the damage you need it to.”

He pointed to various points on his own body. “The carotid artery. Due to the tough cartilage in the throat, you must cut deep with a sharp blade. It’s better to stab straight through the neck and yank sideways. The brachial artery is in the upper arm. Shove the knife underneath your assailant’s armpit and angle toward the heart.”

He studied her for a moment, mouth a thin line. “Given your size, your best bet against a larger opponent is the femoral. Aim to slash the top inside of the thigh, here and here. Also, the popliteal artery is an extension of the femoral. Stab into the back of the knees, like this. The popliteal is close to the surface and will cause rapid blood loss.”

And then they were fighting again, her attacking, him defending, and then vice versa.

Training took every ounce of her focus and concentration, and then some. It pushed back the darkness, at least for a little while. For the last few hours, she’d almost felt like herself again. Almost.

After Liam had knocked her on her butt for the two-hundredth time, she didn’t get up as fast. In fact, she didn’t get up at all.

She gasped for air, chest heaving, her lungs on fire, every muscle aching. Bruises already bloomed across her belly, torso, arms, and shoulders.

Liam loomed over her. “Break time.”

She stared up at the rectangle of sky above her, the clouds now white instead of gray and tinged with shades of pink, purple, and apricot as the sun sank below the tree line to the west. The air was growing colder, but she didn’t feel it; she’d stripped to her T-shirt an hour ago.

“You’re losing focus.” Liam sat on the edge of a large stump and checked the bandages beneath his shirt, barely winded. “You’re already forgetting what I taught you.”

“You’re going to let Luther go.” The words burst out of her before she could think better of it. It’d been weighing on her mind since the stupid town hall meeting.

Yesterday, Dave Farris had announced that the council would release James Luther tomorrow afternoon, banishing him from Fall Creek on pain of death.

Hannah and Bishop wouldn’t change their minds. Liam, though, was different. Liam was a soldier, a warrior. He did what needed to be done.

If anyone could alter the vote, it was him.

Liam gazed off into the trees, his expression stony. “That’s not my call.”

“Like hell it’s not. You saved this town. What you say, goes.”

“This isn’t a dictatorship. I’m not even on the town council. For now, the council decides.”

“And you’re just going to stand there and watch a murderer get off scot-free?”

“If that’s how the council votes.”

“That’s a steaming bucket load of crap and you know it.”

Neither spoke for a long moment. The strength returned to her exhausted limbs, even as anger built inside her, hot and dangerous as a live wire. “You should have killed him.”

“I told you, that’s not for me to decide.”

“You should have killed him. You know it’s true!”

“Something’s bothering you.” He said it like a statement, not a question. “Something more than Luther.”

Doubt curdled in her gut. She almost told him. Nearly blurted out what had happened with the dog attack, with the bizarre, menacing strangers.

And Sutter.

Liam’s return had served as the perfect distraction. No one had asked questions about Quinn and Milo’s story. It had been easy to lie. Maybe too easy.

Guilt pricked her as she watched Liam. She wasn’t a liar, and she’d hated asking Milo to play along, but she knew what they would say, knew what Liam would say.

Let the adults deal with Sutter. Someone with more skill, more experience, someone bigger, older, better. Or maybe they wouldn’t do anything with Sutter at all.

The stupid town council wasn’t doing a damn thing about Luther. They were going to let him go.

She couldn’t trust them anymore. She couldn’t trust anyone, not even her own traitorous heart.

But she knew one thing—she could take care of things herself. She’d murdered Rosamond Sinclair with her own two hands, hadn’t she?

Luther was still alive.

Sutter was still out there.

The howling loss inside her, the misery and emptiness and despair—it wouldn’t end until they were six feet under.

Luther was under armed guard; she couldn’t get to him. Once the council released him, he’d be in the wind. Long gone.

Sutter, on the other hand…

Sutter had ruled the militia, had conspired with Rosamond and wreaked havoc on Fall Creek. Sutter had killed her mother.

The terrible images flashed behind her eyelids: Octavia kneeling in the snow in front of the courthouse steps, hands bound, her gaunt jaw set, eyes empty. The bodies falling with each crack of the rifle, Sutter holding the gun, satisfaction curling his lip, his eyes gleaming with violence.

“Quinn,” Liam said.

She felt it—that dangerous undercurrent just beneath her feet, darkness waiting to swallow her whole. That low buzzing beneath her skin, cutting like a thousand paper cuts.

She knew then, what she would do. Why she had resisted telling anyone about what she’d seen.

The beginnings of a plan emerged in her head, rough and formless, shifting like oil on water. A seed of something, shaping itself into life.

It would fix whatever had broken inside her.

“Quinn? You finished for today?”

Quinn blinked, refocusing on Liam, on the blade in her hand, on the trees, the yard, the wood piled against the shed.

She could sleep for a week on the cold hard ground. But she didn’t. She wouldn’t. There was too much to do. She climbed to her feet.

Mattias Sutter was a dead man walking.

And she was the one who would kill him.

Ignoring the agony in her muscles, Quinn adjusted her feet, tensed her thighs, and lowered into a fighting stance. “Again.”

39

LIAM

DAY NINETY-SEVEN

James Luther stood in the center of the empty highway, his hands bound. He wore the same clothes he’d worn for weeks, his gaunt face smeared with sweat and grime.

He faced them, defiant and angry. “You can’t do this to me!”

Hannah stiffened. At her side, Ghost let out a warning growl.

“Consider yourself fortunate that you’re still breathing,” Liam said.

With Luther trussed up in a makeshift cart behind Liam’s bike, he and Hannah had ridden twenty miles north outside of Fall Creek, past the local farms and neighborhoods, out to where Napier Avenue crossed Old 31, near Lake Michigan College.

Liam had urged the council to drop Luther in the middle of nowhere sixty miles away to make it difficult for him to return and wreak havoc, but the council had voted against it.

Their gas reserves were dwindling to critical levels; they needed to save what remained for necessities and emergencies.

Quinn’s words echoed in his mind. You should have killed him. He wasn’t sure that she was wrong—or that their actions today wouldn’t come back to bite them in the butt.

“Where am I gonna go?” Luther said. “No one’s going to take me in!”

Liam withdrew his knife and sliced the zip tie binding the man’s wrists. “Not our problem.”

“You’re sentencing me to die!”

Liam snorted. “If that were true, you’d already be dead.”

“At least you have a chance. I suggest you take it.” Hannah’s voice was firm, her eyes unflinching. “If you come back here, I will kill you myself.”

Liam didn’t doubt she meant every word. She was compassionate, but she was no snowflake.

Luther’s face contorted. “You said you were different from the militia.”

“We are.”

“You’re as faithless, though, aren’t you? A liar and a cheat. You swore to me. You gave your word.”

Hannah winced, but her chin remained lifted. “I’m not a saint. I never said I was.”

Luther glared at Hannah like he trusted her about as far as he could throw her, but he was in no position to argue. He had nothing and he knew it.

He should pray for their mercy, though he didn’t deserve an ounce of Hannah’s kindness.

“Talk to her like that again, and you’ll be walking out of here with a broken arm,” Liam said. A promise, not a warning.

Luther deflated. “Just take care of my father. You promised to do that, too. Or is your word completely worthless?”

“It isn’t worthless,” Hannah said.

“Don’t punish him for my actions. Please.” His voice cracked on the word please, a hint of desperation in his eyes. “I may not be innocent, but he is.”

“I promise I will take care of your father,” Hannah said with a benevolence and grace that surprised Liam, though it shouldn’t have.

He marveled at her generosity. To show kindness in the face of hatred revealed strength and courage, not weakness. Hatred was the easiest path, though it wasn’t a path without great cost, which Hannah understood better than most. So did Liam.

Her compassion was even more admirable considering the hell she’d endured. Most people would’ve cracked in mind, body, and spirit. The few POWs he knew who’d been tortured at the hands of ISIS or Al-Qaeda were shells of their former selves.

This man had set fire to Noah’s house with Milo still inside. Who would have blamed her if she’d hung Luther on the steps of the courthouse and left his body to rot?

Liam had half a mind to do that very thing himself.

Luther started to speak, but Liam had had enough. He’d been far too patient already—for Hannah’s sake, not for this waste of oxygen. “Go while you still have the chance.”

The hardness in Liam’s voice stopped Luther cold. Without another word, he turned and trudged south, shoulders hunched like his blue camo backpack carried the weight of the world rather than the supplies Fall Creek had provided him: two days of food and water, a change of clothes, a tarp, a map, and a small pocketknife buried at the bottom.

The council was far more benevolent than Liam.

Liam and Hannah watched him begin the long journey to wherever he’d end up, his dark form diminishing into the dreary horizon. Their breaths jetted in the early morning air. Fog drifted through the barren trees like ribbons, coating everything in a gray haze.

Ghost, who’d remained at Hannah’s side during the exchange, trotted toward the edge of the highway, sniffing the melting patches of snow, searching for something interesting to hunt for breakfast.

Liam kept his right hand resting on the butt of his Glock until Luther disappeared from sight. More than once, he was tempted to draw his long gun and put an end to this ill-favored experiment before it began.

Instead, he withdrew his binoculars from his go-bag and studied the terrain.

He felt Hannah next to him, as he always felt her, even when she was in the next room, even when she was miles away.

Her shoulders tensed, her spine stiff. He could see the conflict in her face.

His voice softened. “We couldn’t let him stay.”

“I know.” She sighed. “We gave him our word, though.”

“Situations change. We did what we had to do to win.”

“I know that in my head, but it feels like that’s not good enough.”

“And if we’d let him stay in Fall Creek? Given him a house and made him a regular member of the community? What would have happened?”

Even though she understood the stakes, he still asked the question. And she still answered. Saying the words aloud somehow solidified it for them both.

“We could never trust him. His group killed innocent people; whether he pulled the trigger himself is irrelevant. The families of the dead want justice—revenge. As long as he remained here, violence and death would follow him. We’re trying to bring Fall Creek together, and his presence would only divide us.”

“You did the best you could in difficult circumstances. Luther better count his lucky stars that his head is still attached to his body. Far as I’m concerned, he got off easy.”

She turned to face him, doubt lingering in her eyes. “Sometimes I don’t know. If we’re doing the right thing. If we’re sacrificing too much to do the right thing. Or if we’re putting everyone at risk, making a grave mistake in the name of honor.”

“By letting him live.”

She nodded. “And other things.”

He scratched at his jaw and gave a heavy sigh. “That’s the quandary. It’s the balancing act. How to walk the edge of the pit without falling in, without becoming the monsters we’re fighting. Hopefully, we got it right this time.”

“Have we?”

He turned the question back on her. “What do you think?”

“It’s possible.” She squinted, chewed on her lower lip. “I think so. His father is here. He can’t take his father with him because he’s sick and needs oxygen. So, the only way his father lives is if we allow him to stay and take care of him. If Luther returns for any reason, he threatens the well-being of the one person he cares about more than himself.”

Three months ago, Liam would’ve put a bullet in Luther’s skull, no questions asked, no permission granted. Three months later, he was a different man: still a soldier at heart, but he understood Hannah’s desire to be more than violence and retribution.

It was something he wanted, too. To live for something more. To be something more.

“I trust your judgment, Hannah.” He realized that he truly did. Hannah had a keen ability to read people. Maybe a better sense than he did, since he assumed the worst of everyone, saw evil intent where she saw frustration, hurt, mistakes. Relationships—and people—capable of redemption.

“And I trust yours. We have to do hard things, even some things that make us hate ourselves a bit.” She offered a wry smile. “But only a bit.”

She shivered. He resisted the urge to put his arm around her shoulder and draw her against him. Now wasn’t the right time. He wasn’t sure when it would be.

His thoughts strayed to the night he’d returned, when she’d held his hand, her expression strained with worry, panic, and something else—something he’d longed to see but wasn’t sure was real. After all, he’d been disoriented from the pain, bordering on delirious.

Before he could say what was in his heart, she’d fled the room. They still hadn’t spoken of it. Maybe he’d imagined the whole thing.

They headed back toward the bikes leaning against the guard rail. Liam stifled a wince. His lower back was a constant fire, but new pains had joined the old ones.

He’d been shot before, but this wound wasn’t healing as fast.

Maybe it was the lack of first-world healthcare, or maybe he was just getting old, three decades of pushing his body to the limit catching up to him. Eventually, the piper always had to be paid.

Hannah flashed him a concerned look.

“It’s nothing.”

“I know I don’t need to lecture you. Evelyn has slipped into that role nicely, I think.”

He half-smiled, half-grimaced. “She certainly has.”

Evelyn and Travis had settled right into Fall Creek, as he knew they would. They were tough but kind and generous, like Jessa. Evelyn had hit it off with Molly, uncowed by the older woman’s prickly personality. Nor was she intimidated by anyone else, not even Liam.

As an ER nurse, Evelyn took over the medical clinic with Lee acting in a support position. Travis cared for L.J. and was working on a plan with Annette to restart education for the kids, with the usual math, science, and language arts classes bolstered with training on weapons safety, food preparation, and survival skills.

When they reached the bicycles, Hannah hesitated. “If you want a massage tonight, to help with the pain…I’m free after dinner.”

How he’d missed her nearness, her breath on the back of his neck, her strong and capable hands kneading the pain from his battered body in more ways than one. “I do.”

She bit her lower lip. “Okay. Good. This afternoon, Dave, Bishop, and I are helping Albert Edlin and a few other farmers figure out a plan for planting season. I mean, it’s April already. Can you believe it? I know nothing about farming, but I guess we’re all learning. It should be fun.”

“Your definition of ‘fun’ is vastly different than mine.”

She smiled. “Fun is what you make it.”

He didn’t make a move for his bike. He didn’t want to leave her. “Well, in that case. Tomorrow morning, Bishop and I are headed to Stevensville to check on the nuclear power plant. Luther claimed there’s a National Guard unit stationed there. Maybe they have some information for us. At the least, they should know how things stand locally.

“I also want to verify the accounts of the Community Alliance, see this destruction of property for myself. We need to know what we might be up against.” He hesitated. “Do you want to come with us? I’m sure Molly wouldn’t mind watching Charlotte and Milo for a bit.”

Hannah’s smile outshone the sun. “I do.”

40

QUINN

DAY NINETY-NINE

Q uinn crept around the corner of a brick building and peered at the massive warehouse set off the road. It had to be two or three hundred thousand square feet of four-story steel walls with a slate-black metal roof.

Two additional structures flanked the warehouse, a large glass and brick office complex and a manufacturing plant where fridges, stoves, and dishwashers were built. Several semi-trucks littered the vast parking lot, their doors flung open, trash, plastic, and cardboard boxes scattered about. This was Vortex headquarters.

Xander Thorne said he’d be here. Which meant that Sutter was here, too.

It had taken her hours to travel north to the outskirts of St. Joe, near the neighboring city of Benton Harbor. Twenty miles by bicycle but they were hazardous miles, fraught with danger.

She’d run into a few attempted ambushes, but she heeded the warning signs before she got too close. It had snowed a bit last night, and a thin dusting of white powder revealed furtive footsteps along the shoulder, vehicles angled too perfectly across the road.

She kept her eyes open and her ears strained, paying attention to her surroundings the way Liam had instructed. Situational awareness will keep you alive.

Quinn planned to stay alive.

Uneasiness flared through her. Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure how to approach. Just walk right up and announce herself? Shout her presence before anyone shot her, on accident or otherwise?

She shivered and drew her scarf around her neck, flexing her gloved fingers to keep warm.

It was noon by the sun’s placement high in the sky, maybe forty degrees, but the sharp wind cut at her face and tunneled straight through her coat and jeans.

She glimpsed movement in front of the building, but it was still too far to see. What Quinn wouldn’t give for a pair of binoculars.

She’d packed everything she thought she’d need in her own go-bag. She’d used her school backpack, which she’d dumped free of crumpled Algebra II assignments, worn textbooks, pencils and pens, erasers, candy wrappers, and a calculator.

What a difference a few months—and a world-ending EMP—could make.

Now, the backpack was stuffed with an emergency mylar blanket, fresh socks and underwear, extra ammo for the Beretta and slingshot, two days’ worth of food, a Life Straw water filter and water bottle, a compass, and a paper map of Southwest Michigan she’d found in Gramps’ workshop.

She kept the karambit tucked on her belt beneath her two sweaters and navy jacket, the pistol holstered on her hip.

She’d used a sunglasses case for her everyday carry just like Liam had suggested—it was tucked into one zippered pocket of her jacket, her trusty slingshot in the other.

The .22 rifle was part of her cover. She’d told Gran that she was going hunting, staying the night at Whitney’s, then spending the next day with Whitney and Jonas, filling more barrels with dirt. Gran had allowed her to stay two nights at Whitney’s, which was unheard of.

Gran kept looking at her like she might break, like an enigma she had no clue what to do with. Maybe she was glad to be rid of her for a few days.

That gave her forty-eight to seventy-two hours before anyone would miss her.

And anyway, Gran was distracted by the newness of Evelyn and Travis Brooks. Quinn tried not to feel hurt or jealous and failed miserably.

After all, why shouldn’t Gran have friends, a life apart from Quinn? She should. Quinn wanted that for her.

And yet, slipping away had been so easy, too easy, like discarding an old sweater you didn’t like anymore, like an ember winking out—there one second, gone the next.

It shouldn’t be so simple to walk out on your own life.

As she’d shrugged on her coat and backpack and opened the front door, she kept expecting the other shoe to drop, for Gran to see through her ploy and call her back with an abundance of lectures, finger pointing, and salty language—on her part, not Gran’s.

It didn’t happen. Thor and Loki wound around her legs, offering up plaintive meows while Gran muttered curses at the lack of kitty litter, and then Quinn was shutting the door and striding down the steps to where her bike waited for her, leaning against the useless mailbox.

She’d wanted to stop by and see Milo, but she resisted. Milo of all people knew her better than anyone. He also knew her secret.

It wasn’t like she didn’t plan to come back. She did. She would.

A gust of frigid air hit her like a slap. Bracing herself, she sucked in a breath and thrust one hand into her pocket, fingers closing over the familiar, comforting handle of her slingshot.

You can still turn back, a voice whispered in her mind.

Get on the bike and ride the twenty miles back into town, head to Jonas and Whitney’s like she’d claimed. Or maybe she’d go home, the fire on the woodstove, Gran cooking her famous chili and cornbread, the cats lying all over Ghost. Hannah and Milo sitting at the table with Charlotte.

Everything warm and cozy and right, the way it was supposed to be.

No, not everything. Noah wasn’t there.

Because Noah was dead.

She closed her eyes as the contented scene transformed into blood and screaming and death. A dark sucking energy surrounded her, her heart a black hole.

There was no going back. Not until she finished this.

A sound came from her right, footsteps on concrete.

Her eyes snapped open and she whipped around, heart thumping.

Five people stepped out from behind the building to the right. Seven or eight others appeared from the left. Several carried unsheathed swords, spears, and axes.

Two shouldered shotguns aimed straight at her.

On the opposite side, a Japanese-American girl dressed in black with her hair in pigtails pointed an AK-47 at Quinn’s face. An ice pick hung at her hip. “You’ve wandered too far from home, little girl.”

Adrenaline spiking, Quinn reached for her pistol but realized it was too late. Always have a weapon close at hand, Liam had said. Mistake number one.

“Nuh-uh.” The girl clucked her tongue. “Don’t think so. Hands up.”

Obediently, Quinn raised both hands. She willed herself not to show fear, to keep the trembling from her voice. “I’m here for Xander Thorne. He told me this is where you guys are staying.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed. “That so?”

“I want to join you.” Her voice rang out in the silence, echoing off the concrete, steel, and glass. An entire city of abandoned buildings. “I want to be one of you.”

The group didn’t move, didn’t lower their weapons, their expressions grim masks, their eyes blank of anything but wary suspicion.

A tall, rangy guy with an angular face jerked his chin at a sulky teenager carrying a samurai sword. “Go get Xander.”

Several tense moments passed in absolute silence. Wind soughed around the sides of the buildings. Trash skittered across the concrete sidewalks and asphalt parking lot, plastic bags snagging on the once-manicured bushes.

The whole place was empty and desolate—but for the armed killers surrounding her.

Quinn’s palms went damp, her mouth dry. She didn’t break eye contact with the girl in pigtails, her finger massaging the trigger of the AK like she couldn’t wait to squeeze it. “Give me a reason.”

Quinn didn’t.

41

QUINN

DAY NINETY-NINE

More footsteps sounded behind her, but Quinn didn’t dare look.

“You came!” a loud voice shouted.

Xander Thorne appeared in her line of vision. His two cronies, the skinny acne-scarred kid with the crossbow and the giant with the mace, flanked him.

He gestured at her. “Put your hands down. No need for that.”

She lowered her arms and let them hang limp at her sides. Her legs felt like spaghetti. “Thanks.”

Xander wore the same clothes he’d worn a week ago. An unwashed stench filled her nostrils. They were all dirty, greasy, and stinking. She tried not to grimace.

“Took you long enough. I was starting to think you wouldn’t show.”

“I thought I might have missed you,” she forced out. “I was worried I was too late.”

“We were about to head to Stevensville to refuel and move out, but Axel and Max got the runs, so we had to stick around for a few more days. Lucky you.” He glanced behind her, his face falling. “Where’s your dog?”

Quinn swallowed. Mistake number two. One she’d better talk her way out of, and fast. “He didn’t make it. After the feral dogs attacked him, he was weak, and then yesterday, a gang surrounded us, and…” She let her voice trail off, her eyes watering. It was easy enough with the wind in her face.

Xander released a string of curses. “Damn it!”

“I’m here,” she said. “I want to join you.”

He scowled. “I wanted that dog.”

“What do I have to do to get one of those weapons?” she asked, trying to distract him.

His clouded expression cleared, and he gave a sharp laugh. “I like your enthusiasm. I’ve got a good feeling about you. Come on in, and I’ll show you around.” He gestured to the rest of his group, who lowered their weapons. “We’re gonna blow your mind, girl. Blow it wide open.”

She followed Xander as they skirted a couple of small office buildings to reach the giant warehouse.

Inside, it was murky, the huge building dimly lit by high-placed industrial windows. She had a sense of vastness as she glimpsed cavernous aisles and massive shelving units towering two or three stories above her, stretching into the distance.

Piles of scaffolding, bundles of wires, metal brackets, and other crap lined the walls. Forklifts hunched like silent mechanical beasts. Beyond the shelves was a processing facility with loading bays and docks for shipments that would never happen.

The warehouse reeked of something stale, maybe rotting food from the break room fridge. Massive cobwebs gilded the corners, and piles of leaves and trash littered the concrete floor.

It already had a dusty, disused, deserted feel to it, their footsteps and voices echoing like some ancient, abandoned cathedral.

A group of twenty people entered the warehouse through one of the loading bays and headed toward them, followed by another fifteen streaming from a side office. Forty more crowded in the center, leaning on pallets or sitting in rolling chairs they’d confiscated from cubicles and offices.

Everywhere she looked, more of them appeared. Like termites. Or rats. It was disconcerting.

Xander went around the group, introducing them all, but other than Tyrell and Jett, whom she remembered from the first meeting, and Dahlia, the trigger-happy chick in pigtails, she couldn’t keep their names or faces straight in her head.

She only cared about one name. One face.

And there he was. Standing off to the side, the oldest of the group by far, and the biggest. Big and burly, his bald head gleaming, those dark glittering eyes staring straight at her.

Xander’s voice fell away. The guys and girls surrounding her, glowering, armed to the teeth—they dissolved into nothing.

She halted, rooted to the concrete. Fear constricted her chest, and she couldn’t move, his gaze locked on hers, pulling her in like a homing beacon.

Twenty-five feet between them. That was it.

Xander hooked a thumb at Sutter. “This is Teddy, our current chef and general slave. He’s working his way into our good graces.”

“I assume the name is ironic,” she managed.

Xander let out a hard laugh. “You’re quick on your feet. I like that! Everyone here earns their own names. Like the Native Americans used to, right? Until they earn it, they either keep their old names, or we give them whatever names we want. But you’re right. Teddy’s cooking kind of sucks, but he’s surprisingly good at killing people.”

Quinn and Sutter stared at each other. It was how he moved, in his eyes—something calculating. Sinister. Deadly.

Her nerves stretched taut as the seconds passed. For a tense, electric minute, she waited for him to say something, to out her true motives.

These freaks would turn on her in a heartbeat. They’d slice her into a hundred pieces before she got within a yard of Sutter.

He wasn’t stupid; he knew why she was here. But if he hung her out to dry, it’d blow the cover story he must have concocted as well. She knew it was something; he wouldn’t submit to a gang of misfit killers without a reason.

Sutter said nothing, did nothing, his glare and clenched jaw telegraphing his recognition—and his anger. The razor blades in his gaze promised pain.

Quinn returned his gaze without flinching, making her own promise—retribution.

She considered rushing him, going for the Beretta or the hidden karambit blade. Maybe she could reach him before Xander put that sword through her spine. Maybe she could stab him before he strangled her with his bare hands, but she wouldn’t escape with her life.

Quinn had no plans to sacrifice herself for the likes of Mattias Sutter.

She was going to kill him. And then she was getting the hell out.

She would have to be careful. And smart.

It was a dangerous game she was playing, where the prey was also the predator, and they both knew the hunt was on.

Sutter smiled at her, the smile of a cat about to swallow the canary.

Quinn was no canary. She smiled back.

Oblivious, Xander thrust his fist in the air with a victorious hoot. “Welcome, recruit!” He spun around, almost giddy with joy, his arms stretched toward the cavernous ceiling high above them, a long sword in one hand, a medieval hatchet in the other. “Welcome to the new world!”

42

HANNAH

DAY NINETY-NINE

“We’re here,” Bishop said from the backseat.

Hannah tensed as Liam pulled the Orange Julius into the drive leading to Cook Nuclear Power Plant in Stevensville, only fourteen miles from Fall Creek.

Surprisingly, the gatehouse was manned, the gate closed. Several large concrete buildings clustered behind the tall razor-wired fencing. Two enormous concrete cylindrical domes rose above a brown rectangular structure. Behind the plant, a blue sliver of Lake Michigan glinted.

Liam had put his M4 on the seat beside Hannah so as not to present a threat, but his right hand rested on the Glock at his hip. “Eyes open. Stay alert.”

Everyone was tense, jumpy, nerves on edge. Though they hadn’t run into any hazards on the journey here, peril lurked everywhere.

That morning, Flynn had contacted Bishop on the radio, seething with rage. Two greenhouses in Coloma had been destroyed. A vineyard in Dowagiac was mowed down and ripped to shreds, and two farmers who’d attempted to protect their property had paid the ultimate price.

Liam had ordered the townspeople in Fall Creek to remain within the perimeter and organized regular patrols to check in on the farms outside the township limits. Milo and Charlotte were back in Fall Creek at the Brooks’ new home with Molly, while Reynoso and Perez oversaw the town’s security teams. Hannah was safest with Liam at her side.

Now, she watched through the windshield as a soldier dressed in BDUs stepped out of the gatehouse carrying an M4 in the low ready position.

He approached the truck and gestured with the gun. “Everybody out. Show me your hands.”

They exited the vehicle as directed. Liam and Bishop raised their hands, Liam’s long rifle still in the truck. Hannah lifted her arms, forcing herself to unclench her crooked fingers.

A strong breeze tugged at her hair and clothes. This close to Lake Michigan, the air carried the refreshing scents of fresh water, sand, and fish. A few seagulls wheeled overhead, squawking and squealing.

“We’re friendlies!” Bishop said. “Our friend, Dave Farris, spoke to one of the engineers about our visit, Yamini Varma.”

The soldier nodded. “She told us. I still need to see your IDs.”

Hannah no longer had her driver’s license, though Liam and Bishop still carried their useless wallets through sheer force of habit. Hannah held her breath, but the soldier allowed them through on foot. They slipped beneath the gate as he directed them toward the large brown building to the right.

RVs and travel trailers filled the parking lot complexes. Shade tents, outdoor rugs, and picnic tables were everywhere with dozens of camping chairs circling firepits.

Drying clothes hung from clotheslines strung between vehicles. Rain barrels beside several RVs collected water for drinking and bathing.

A short, curvy Indian woman in her late forties strode toward them, flanked by two National Guardsmen who didn’t look a day over twenty. Her hair was scraped into a bun, her movements brisk and confident, her thick brows curving over intelligent eyes.

She thrust out her hand. “I’m Yamini Varma. Thanks for coming.”

“Are you in charge here?” Bishop asked.

She flashed them a tired smile. “As the lead nuclear engineer, I suppose you could say that, though we all answer to our armed forces friends.”

The two guardsmen took a seat on a nearby bench a few yards away, monitoring things while offering privacy.

“Do you live here?” Hannah asked, though the answer was obvious.

Yamini gestured toward the parking lot. “The day of the Collapse, we saw the writing on the wall. Most of the engineers collected their families, brought their RVs, and set up shop. We knew we’d need to work around the clock, and traveling home would use up our fuel, not to mention the dangers of the open road. Once the governor dispatched the Guard unit to secure the plant, we had even more reason to stay. It’s safe here. Or as safe as we’re going to get for a while.”

“How are the reactors?” Liam asked, then described the nuclear hot zone he’d heard about in Illinois.

Hannah gazed up at the twin reactors, acid in the back of her throat. She couldn’t imagine the horrors those poor people had experienced. How close had Southwest Michigan come to the same terrible fate?

Yamini rubbed her eyes, shaking her head. “How tragic. That never should have happened. All U.S. nuclear plants are able to withstand a station blackout with zero core damage. The emergency diesels start automatically, stimulating the automatic safe shutdown of the plant—control rods dropped into the core, water pumped into the reactor to reduce heat. The fuel is encased in a primary and secondary containment structure designed to withstand a potential core melt.”

She waved her hand behind him. “In our case, the automatic safety shutdown—or SCRAM—was activated correctly, though a manual override was required. Each reactor has multiple locomotive-sized diesel engines as backup. Many plants are only required to have enough diesel to run the generators for seven days, believe it or not. Here, we had thirty days. Of course, we’ve needed a continuous supply to continue the cooling operations.”

“So as long as you have fuel, the reactors are safe?” Hannah asked.

She nodded. “Lansing is still keeping us supplied—so far. But even if we run out, the reactors have been cooled long enough to avoid a meltdown. The containment structures will keep any radiation from leaking. We’re primarily concerned with maintaining the plant so it’s ready when the time comes.”

“If the plants are still working, what’s the big holdup?” Bishop asked. “What do we need to get power up and running, at least locally?”

“It’s not the plant itself so much as the transformers. Each transformer weighs four hundred tons, takes two years to build, and costs seven million apiece, give or take a million. So there aren’t a lot of spares lying around.

“Not to mention, they’re almost exclusively made overseas. They require grain-oriented electrical steels—GOES—or electrical steel, which are ferritic alloys of silicon and iron with magnetic properties that increase the electrical resistivity, a critical component in transformers.”

“Why don’t we make that steel here?” Bishop asked.

“Far as I know, there’s only one U.S. manufacturer that even produces the special-grade steel. There’s a lot to it, but basically, we could make enough of the electrical steel ourselves, but it would take a decade just to get the additional steel production plants built. These contracts, they’re going to go to the lowest bidder. Guess who can get aggressive and outbid any U.S. company? In the last decade, eighty-five percent of new utility transformers have come from abroad.”

Hannah and the others were quiet for a minute, letting that sink in.

Yamini waved her hand toward the nuclear plant. “It’s also a matter of scale. The U.S. grid consists of over seven hundred electric power facilities, over seven hundred thousand miles of high-voltage transmission lines, fifty-six thousand substations, and over six and a half million miles of local lines.

“Now imagine the damage the EMP did to every element within that incredibly complex and convoluted network. Without factories and refineries, we can’t manufacture the billions of parts and pieces required to get an entire country back online.”

Hannah nodded, unable to comprehend the enormous, daunting task facing America. It seemed impossible.

Liam’s expression hardened. “So it’s true. We’re talking years.”

Yamini nodded.

“God help us.” Bishop shook his head. “I had no idea. To be honest, I barely knew what an EMP was before the Collapse. I certainly didn’t understand the extent of the destruction. To think, something most people can’t even comprehend brought America to her knees.”

“Not enough officials took the threat of an EMP seriously,” Yamini added. “Some looked at Hiroshima and Nagasaki—both of which experienced electromagnetic pulses because of the nukes—and decided an advanced industrialized country of three hundred and twenty-eight million people could recover as swiftly as two cities in the 1940s.

“The problem is, technology has exploded in leaps and bounds since then. Electricity is crucial to every aspect of our lives—at work, at home, in our cars, computers, and phones. As the use of microelectronics with ever-increasing sensitivity to EMPs became ubiquitous, our vulnerability increased.”

Several crows clustered on a branch, black against the gray sky and brown trees. A few sparrows flitted here and there. A squirrel perched on a mound of snow, chattering to itself.

Hannah shivered and wrapped her arms around her ribcage. What would this country look like when the lights finally came back on? Would anyone even recognize it?

“And now here we are,” Hannah said.

“And now here we are.” Yamini glanced at her watch. “If you’ll excuse me, I have some things to attend to, but I believe the captain of our guard unit wishes to speak to you as well. I’ll give you a tour soon. At any rate, I hope I was helpful.”

She looked up, meeting each of their gazes, her smile genuine. “Thanks again for checking in. It’s been a difficult and lonely time, but it’s good to know that life is continuing beyond these gates. It gives us hope.”

Bishop shook her hand. “Hope is something we’re all sorely in need of.”

43

HANNAH

DAY NINETY-NINE

“Is that the ugly mug I think it is?” someone shouted.

A uniformed man broke apart from a group of National Guardsmen patrolling the perimeter fence and jogged toward them.

Liam frowned as he approached. “Maybe so. But you’re older and uglier than I remember.”

The man threw his head back and gave a hearty laugh. He was in his forties, dressed in fatigues, with gray threaded through his short black hair. Built like a fire hydrant, he was short but brawny, with a large nose, thick brows, and a wide generous smile.

Liam’s eyes brightened, his rugged face pleasantly startled.

Hannah glanced between them. “I take it you know each other.”

“Unfortunately,” Liam said wryly.

“We knew each other when we were young and handsome,” the soldier said.

“Pretty sure you were never handsome.”

The soldier laughed again, warm and gregarious. Hannah liked him. He had an appealing face—tough and weathered, but open and friendly, too.

Liam hooked his thumb at him. “This is Captain Charlie Hamilton with the prestigious Army Rangers. Worked a few missions in-country with him in Syria and Iran. Spent some time training together at Fort Benning.” He eyed the captain up and down, eyes narrowing but without an ounce of malice. “Those Beach Boys had it made.”

“Thought I escaped,” Hamilton said merrily, “but I got pulled back into service after the Collapse to mind these youngsters. Hardly more than boys, if you ask me.” He sighed and wiped a hand across his face. “But we’re managing, considering.”

“How’s the family?” Liam asked.

A shadow crossed his face. “The wife died of cancer two years ago. My son married a French lawyer and lives overseas in Britain, thank God. Though it’s turning into a dumpster fire everywhere, at least they have electricity. And your brother? How’s the look-a-like?”

Liam’s mouth thinned. He gave a single shake of his head.

“A hell of a time,” Hamilton said in a sober voice. Then his expression cleared, and he was grinning again. “Damn, it’s good to see a familiar face—even an ugly one. Hell, even a Delta. You should’ve been a Ranger, you know.”

They chatted and joked for several minutes, asking about various mutual friends in the service, catching up and jawing and insulting each other.

“What are your mission parameters?” Liam asked finally. “How long are you stationed here?”

“Until we hear orders otherwise. We’re here to protect the plant and the engineers, period. We’ve got explicit orders from brass not to engage in local turf wars.”

“Turf wars,” Hannah said, incredulous. “Is that what they’re calling what’s happening here?”

“Does the government have a clue what’s going on?” Bishop asked.

“They do. We do. Civilians are being slaughtered in gang violence, raids by marauders, and starving neighbors are turning on each other. Fields being destroyed, businesses burned to the ground. But we can’t engage.”

He shot Liam a remorseful look. “I hate it, but if something happens to our plant, it won’t matter when we get the transformers. Cook alone provided power to one and a half million people. We’ve got to be ready to rebuild as soon as we can. And our presence is necessary. We’ve already had a few attempted break-ins, people trying to steal our tankers. A few days ago, a gang tried to set fire to one of the buildings.”

“Why would anyone want to damage a power plant?” Bishop asked. “Power is what we need.”

Hamilton shrugged. “People are crazy. I hear there are a few groups going all cultish, drinking the Kool-Aid and claiming electricity and tech destroyed our country in the first place, so they’re going around making a royal mess of things.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of it,” Bishop said.

“With Coleman, you’ve got a shot. You’re damn lucky to have a Spec Ops soldier on your side.”

“We know it,” Bishop said quietly. “God’s watching out for us.”

“Next time you chat with Him, put in a good word for me, would you?”

Bishop nodded. “Of course.”

Hamilton shielded his face with his hand and checked on his men, something pensive in his eyes. “Any chance I can steal you, brother? I could use a man with your elite skill set. The state of Michigan sure could.”

Liam shook his head.

“I figured. You should know the government is calling all retired and former military to join back up to quell unrest at home. They’re desperate for the Corps of Engineers to work on the infrastructure, getting transformers up and running, restoring power to the refineries…there’s plenty to do.”

Liam said, “I belong where I am.”

Hannah bit her lip, her cheeks going hot. She felt Bishop’s eyes on her and studiously avoided his gaze, turning her attention to the civilians huddled in the parking lot.

There had to be over fifty families, with men, women, and children of all ages. A dozen kids dashed here and there playing tag, their clothes ratty, faces thin and smudged with dirt.

“They look hungry,” Bishop said, echoing her thoughts.

Captain Hamilton gave a grim nod. “The last few weeks have been rough. We’ve got fuel, but that’s about it. FEMA was supposed to resupply us last week, but they never showed. We keep getting the runaround. Frankly, I think they’ve run out, but they don’t want to admit that we’re on our own.”

“What are you going to do?” Hannah asked.

“We don’t know,” Hamilton said. “They implied we had the right to take what we needed from the local populace.” He shot them another guilty look—they were the local populace. “But everyone is starving. I couldn’t justify taking a morsel from the mouth of a hungry kid. Yamini’s done a great job with the civilians, keeping them on task, working together, giving them a purpose. We’ve been rationing and making do.”

Bishop gave Hannah a pointed glance; she nodded.

These people were doing good in the world, the engineers and soldiers both. Because of them, power to Southwest Michigan would someday be restored. The power plant hadn’t melted down.

Fall Creek likely owed these people their lives.

“I think we can help you,” Hannah said.

“Oh?”

Liam flashed her a look—we don’t have enough for ourselves.

She gave him a confident smile, maybe more confident than she felt. We’ll make it work.

Hannah pointed back to where they’d parked the Orange Julius. “We’ve got some supplies in the truck bed. If you don’t mind, we’ll feed the kids today and come back tomorrow with more.”

“That—that’d be fine,” Hamilton said.

“It’s not much, mostly rice and beans.”

Hamilton looked like he’d died and gone to heaven. “A meal fit for a prince. Wait until I tell the civilians. They’ll be thrilled.”

Bishop grinned from ear to ear. “Good to hear.”

“Consider this delivery a gift,” Hannah said. “In the future, maybe we could trade for ammo, medicine, or other supplies, if you have them.”

“Absolutely, yes. We’re open to that.” The captain shook his head, his eyes shiny. “Not enough kindness in the world these days. We can’t do much to thank you, but we can top off your truck before you go. FEMA may forget to feed us, but they do make sure we’ve got the fuel to cool the reactors.” He flashed a wry smile. “At least, so far.”

Bishop shook Hamilton’s hand. “Thanks, brother. Nothing we can do about what’s going on out there, but there’s something we can do here. God is in control. We do what we can; that’s all that can be asked of us.”

Captain Hamilton nodded. “Stay frosty.”

“Always,” Liam said.

As they headed back through the gate toward the Orange Julius, Liam scanned the buildings as they walked, taking in the windows, the rooftops, the shadowed doorways, his eyes roving over the clusters of people. She could tell he was checking for weapons, furtive movements, anything out of the ordinary.

The man never relaxed. He was always on guard, always protecting her and everyone else.

Liam slowed his stride to match Hannah’s, allowing Bishop to get ahead of them. “I saw what you did there.”

She gave him her best innocent look. “Whatever do you mean?”

“That wasn’t just altruism back there.”

“It’s good to make friends, Liam. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s like feudal states at the best of times, the wild west at the worst. The more allies we can make, the better. I don’t expect anything from them anytime soon. Maybe never. But they’re doing something good. They’re working to help all of us. A little help in return is the least we could do.”

“Even though it costs us.”

“Yes, even then. Especially then.”

He nodded slowly, his lips curling at the corners.

She turned away to hide the heat in her cheeks and cleared her throat. “Sometimes, the stars align, and the right thing to do is also the smart thing to do.”

For a minute, they didn’t speak. Birds twittered in the trees. Children’s shouts echoed from the parking lot, the charcoal smell of campfires drifting on the breeze.

“Did you know about Hamilton?” Liam asked.

“I had no idea that you knew someone here. That was a happy surprise.”

He flashed her a smile. A real, genuine smile. “Yeah. Yeah, it was.”

44

THE GENERAL

DAY NINETY-NINE

The General turned over a glass tumbler and grabbed a bottle of single-malt scotch from his sideboard. Scotch was getting scarce these days.

A ready supply was yet another perk of the job, and one of the myriad reasons to make sure he held onto it at any cost.

The General poured in three fingers’ worth, and then added a handful of ice from the generator-powered beverage fridge he’d placed in his office the first week.

Once, he’d been an alcoholic. It had been a major cause—though not the only one—of his messy divorce, the forced early retirement from the Army, and the loss of his prestige in highbrow circles in Washington.

He still allowed himself the occasional indulgence, but his will was iron, his ambition immense—though lately he’d accepted a second drink, then a third.

Ever since his enlightening conversation with Mattias Sutter.

Ever since he’d discovered that his only child was dead.

He pushed that awareness down into some dark, cobwebbed corner of his mind. The time would come to acknowledge it; that time was not now.

“A drink, Henry?” The General tipped his glass toward the governor, who’d been wearing a restless line in the carpet in the General’s office for the last forty-five minutes. “It helps with nerves.”

The man shook his head and rubbed at his reddened eyes. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week, his suit and tie wrinkled, his aged skin etched with worry and stress. “I don’t know, I just don’t know.”

Fortunately, it was only the two of them this evening. The noxious Secretary of State was missing. The woman was an incessant pest, undermining him, questioning his motives, whispering in the governor’s ear.

The sooner he got rid of her, the better.

“We’ve received reports that the glorified mob kingpin Alexander Poe has overrun at least four FEMA camps,” Governor Duffield said. “The accounts from escaped citizens are horrific. Murder and rape. Human slavery and trafficking. We have to do something.”

The General sneered. “To rescue Illinois? To send our remaining troops out of state, leaving ourselves naked and vulnerable?”

“We have to do something! He’ll overrun the entire country if we don’t.”

The General took another drink. “Let’s not get hysterical just yet.”

Governor Duffield paced in front of the office windows, wringing his hands. “We have orders from the White House to immediately send everything we have to support Illinois. The Illinois governor is begging for aid while his state goes up in flames. Poe has Chicago. He has Rockford, Peoria, and Springfield.

“The only reason he isn’t controlling all of Illinois is because he’s pushing east. East toward the Indiana line. According to our latest intelligence, he’s amassing north of Chicago Heights and headed toward Gary, Indiana.”

“There will come a time, but it is not now.”

Governor Duffield paused mid-step and stared at him like a deer caught in headlights. “Not now? Then when? What are you saying?”

“Michigan must worry about herself. You’ve already skirted the federal government’s preposterous demands to send our National Guard all over creation, fighting for other states and not our own.”

He gestured with the tumbler. “How long do you think the federal government is going to last? With the breakdown of communication, they can barely reach their governors, let alone lead a country. You see what’s happening, don’t you?”

Governor Duffield stared at him blankly, the fear making him a blind fool.

“The Accord signed by California, Oregon, and Washington State,” the General said with incredible patience he didn’t feel. “They’re protecting each other, they’re consolidating power. Do you think they’ll be eager to give it back? They won’t. When the dust settles, the country that emerges will look nothing like she once did. I doubt the federal government will even exist. And if it does, it will be emasculated. The power will begin and end with the states that have survived.”

Swirling the cubes in the glass, he brought the drink to his lips and took a long pull. He closed his eyes and set the drink down, savoring the taste, swirling the liquid on his tongue.

After a prolonged moment, he opened his eyes and exhaled, relishing the satisfaction. Governor Duffield watched him with quiet panic.

The General set down his glass. “Few, if any, of the power players before the EMP will be the ones holding the reins when it comes back online. The question is, will you continue to be beholden to the feds, a desperate and terrified group of old, doddering, obsolete men grasping for a past that’s long gone? Or do you want to be the one rising from the ashes?”

The governor licked his lips, gave a nervous shudder, and gazed out the window. He rubbed his hands together, warming himself. “I don’t know…”

To conserve energy, the generators were switched off for the evening. Dusk blanketed Lansing, shadows invading the corners of the General’s office.

“Keep your soldiers here. Let Illinois burn. When the time is right, offer your aid. For a price.”

“What about when the chaos in Illinois spills into Michigan? Chicago is right around the corner. All they have to do is—”

“They won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“We will protect Michigan. And when the time is right—and only then, the entire Midwest. But not until we are the ones in a position of power.”

His aim was to keep the mayhem across the border at a controlled boil—a boil that stayed within the pot. An Illinois in turmoil could only benefit Michigan.

The governor of Illinois, Jim Strawn, and the new governor of Indiana, Susan Wright-May, were the only players in the Midwest who posed any kind of threat. The mayor of Chicago was on vacation in Cancun when the EMP struck. He was as good as dead—his city burning.

The General didn’t care about Ohio, Wisconsin, or Missouri; he could deal with them later.

“Sometimes it is better to undermine your enemies covertly rather than hitting them straight on.”

Governor Duffield scratched at his sagging jowls, frowning. “What does Lauren think?”

The General struggled to contain his disgust. He imagined throttling the woman’s pale white neck with his bare hands. Instead, he smiled, immensely pleased the woman was absent, unable to throw a wrench in his machinations.

“The Secretary of State has many strengths. How to navigate this brave new world and come out on top is not one of them.”

“Defying the federal government is a crime. It’s political suicide…isn’t it?”

Governor Duffield wanted to be convinced. So the General would convince him. “The White House doesn’t understand the local forces at play, or the increasing threats facing us. They have their own war overseas to fight. But this fine state will no longer exist if we do not act now to salvage what we can.”

“How?”

“Let me be clear, Poe is coming. And he will bring devastation in his wake. If we go out to meet him under federal or Illinois jurisdiction, we will lose our men—and the advantage. Then Poe will roll over us like a tsunami, and we too shall fall to him.

“However, I propose a different tactic. We shore up our own resources. Strengthen our forces. Choose when and how to meet him when he crosses the Michigan border.”

Let Illinois waste its resources on weakening Poe and his Syndicate—then he and the governor would sweep in and mop up the stragglers and cement their control of the Midwest.

The General took a step toward Governor Duffield and rested a benevolent hand on his forearm. “Don’t worry about this. You have enough to deal with. Give it to me. I will ensure the safety of this state. Give me the authority, and you will not regret it.”

“I can’t do that. Congress would need to—”

“Congress is dead. The old ways of doing things are dead. You have the power. You get to decide.”

A hint of doubt lingered in the spiderwebbed lines of his face. “Tell me you have a plan.”

“Give me soldiers, and I will save Michigan. Be assured, your name will go down in history—how future generations remember it is one hundred percent determined by what you do now.”

Reluctantly, Governor Duffield nodded.

And then it sank in, and his wrinkled lips stretched into a thin garish smile. He was old, but he wasn’t senile. He craved power.

Henry Duffield wanted the promise the General was dangling before him. In exchange, he would give the General whatever he wanted.

“Tell me what you need,” the governor said.

The General thought of his dead daughter. He thought of his legacy. For a little longer, he would keep his cards close to his chest. Then, and only then, would he spring his trap.

He smiled.

45

QUINN

DAY ONE HUNDRED

Things were different than Quinn thought they would be.

They drove in a caravan of twenty-five vehicles, infiltrating the outskirts of St. Joe, stopping at a lighting store to smash ten-thousand-dollar chandeliers with razor-studded maces. Knocking over clothing racks and ripping silk dresses with spears at a boutique clothing store. Smashing computers and laptops with hammers at an electronics store. Shredding paintings in an art gallery.

With each new shop or business, the group worked themselves into a frenzy, inducing themselves into a feverish state. Their eyes glazed, their movements jerky and unhinged, they hollered and shrieked in frenetic glee.

They seemed to love savagely destroying everything within sight for no reason.

Maybe that was the allure of it.

No reason, no meaning, no right or wrong.

It liberated you, Xander had told her. Everything society had taught them was a lie—tear down the lie, and they were free to do and be whoever they wanted.

They slammed through a fancy coffee shop called the Roasted Bean, the kind that offered chai lattes, gluten-free brownies, organic muffins, and fair-trade coffee roasted by hand.

They demolished whatever they could get their hands on, wrenching stainless steel appliances from walls and counters and hurling them through the plate-glass windows before desecrating every wall with graffiti.

“Death to Power” was scribbled and scrawled and painted over and over on every surface.

As she watched them, Quinn couldn’t help but shudder. She remembered the ransacked mansions along the river, the body swinging from the tree, those same words painted on the cardboard sign pinned to the corpse’s chest.

This part was stupid, silly. Pointless and asinine.

They were capable of much, much worse.

Quinn glanced around, feeling jumpy, her nerves on edge. She scanned the entrance to the Roasted Bean for Sutter as she pounded a booth with a sledgehammer.

Last she’d seen him, he’d joined up with Jett and Rocco down the street, shattering the windows of a carpet and tile flooring store.

She had to keep her eyes peeled. Couldn’t let herself get distracted for even a second. At any moment, he might sneak up behind her and slide a blade between her ribs.

If she wasn’t careful, she wouldn’t see him coming.

She gritted her teeth as the Formica table caved beneath her blows, the cheery yellow booth shattering into jagged chunks.

Her arms were shaking, and not from the weight of the sledgehammer.

She thought of Gran, of Milo, Jonas and Whitney, and Hannah, Liam, and Bishop—all the people she cared about back home.

Were they worried about her yet? Had they even noticed that she was missing?

She shoved that thought down deep. They’d get over it. They’d understand when she returned, when she’d accomplished her mission and made Fall Creek that much safer.

Sutter had kept his distance since she’d joined the group. She’d barely had a moment to herself. If Dahlia wasn’t stalking her with a look that implied she’d like to impale Quinn on a spear, Xander was demanding her complete attention.

“Hey.” She stifled a flinch as Xander appeared at her side, materializing out of nowhere as if she’d conjured him up just by thinking of him.

He eyed her up and down with a grin, something maniacal in his gaze. “Just wait until you see what’s next.”

“Xander.” Rocco jogged up to them, exuding a rank stench. Though he was young, he had a brutish look about him, with a wide squat neck and a sloping forehead, his ruddy skin spiderwebbed with capillaries.

Rocco hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “We’ve got movement on the corner of Fifth and Seventeenth. Armed individuals amassing. One of the gangs. The Gangster Disciples, it looks like.”

Despite their brash posturing, even Xander wasn’t insane enough to tangle with the gangs that waged territorial wars over Benton Harbor—which often spilled into the neighboring city of St. Joseph. For that reason, Xander had set up scouts to warn them well in advance.

Xander turned to his people. “Head to the beach!”

They whooped in response, dropped whatever they were doing, and streamed from the coffee shop like ants from a kicked nest.

Rocco spoke into his handheld walkie, and the rest came running, jumping into their trucks and gunning their engines. Xander sent a large contingent to the marina a few blocks away, including Sutter.

“Ride with me,” Xander said to Quinn.

She nodded. The more Xander trusted her, the sooner she’d be able to move among them with ease. Stepping over jagged glass shards as she exited the building, she searched the street for Sutter, but didn’t see him.

Frustration mingled with relief. In his presence, she was all nerves, her senses on high alert, apprehension fraying her concentration. It was necessary but exhausting.

Two minutes later, they headed for Silver Beach in downtown St. Joseph. The beach was nestled between the Lake Michigan shoreline and downtown, with the mouth of the St. Joe River winding like a snake at the north end of the park.

They roared past the quaint downtown with its brick street lined with cute coastal tourist stores, beachy boutiques, and specialty dessert shops like Kilwins, her favorite destination for ice cream—the windows now broken, trash strewn everywhere, the stench of sewage clotting the air.

“You still have gas,” Quinn said, impressed.

“It’s getting harder to get ahold of,” Xander said, his eyes straight ahead. “Teddy told us about the motherlode stored at the power plant. He didn’t tell us about the soldiers stationed there. We keep getting driven back.”

“Oh.”

“There’s another place, too, in case this one doesn’t work out. Teddy’s working a plan. He’s got military experience, you know.”

Quinn said nothing, not trusting her voice.

They passed the children’s museum, the glassed-in carousel, and the famed Silver Beach Pizza, a popular restaurant that was once an old train depot. She’d eaten there a dozen times. Now it was silent and dark.

They took Broad Street to the beachfront parking lot. Jett and three guys remained at the lot, guarding the car, while two trailed behind them, acting as bodyguards.

“Come on.” Xander beckoned to her without bothering to make sure that she would follow. He expected her to. She did.

The wind whipped her hair into her eyes, sand spraying her face as they hiked over a small dune between the parking lot and the north half of the beach. Beach grass swished beneath her boots.

Gulls squawked above her, wheeling into a sky the color of burnt umber. She inhaled deeply, the scent of dead fish and campfire smoke filling her nostrils.

Ugly graffiti defaced the bathrooms, picnic pavilions, and concession stands. People slumped in the bathroom doorways, wrapped in blankets. The women’s entrance was covered with a tarp, “Do not enter” scrawled in red paint across the wrinkled fabric.

People were living inside the bathrooms.

Without speaking, Quinn and Xander crested the dune. Quinn halted, taken aback. She’d visited this beach a hundred times. Never had she seen it like this. Never had it felt so vast, so incredibly beautiful.

Lake Michigan spread before them in all her glory. Blue water stretched to the horizon as far as the eye could see.

To the north, the pier stretched into the lake, a long concrete catwalk ending in two towers, the rear tower a three-story square steel structure with a red pyramid roof, circular lantern room, and a black iron parapet.

Above the lighthouse, the sun was a red ball of fire descending into the great lake, licking the water with flames, streaking the clouds with ribbons of pinks, reds, scarlets, and tangerine.

Her fingers twitched with a sudden desire to paint this, to draw it, to capture some tiny fragment of its majesty. Like attempting to catch a cloud or rainbow in a bottle, an impossible task, but one worth attempting.

Her eyes stung. She blinked, pretending it was the sand in her eyes, pretending her heart didn’t feel like that smoldering sun, igniting, combusting, burning itself into oblivion.

“It’s something, isn’t it?” Xander breathed.

She didn’t trust herself to speak around the lump in her throat.

Xander pointed. “Now look closer.”

Quinn dropped her gaze from the horizon to the shoreline.

A couple hundred tents of various sizes and colors littered the beach. Trash and refuse dotted the sand, plastic bags caught in the sea grass, fluttering in the wind like ugly flags.

Dozens of fishing boats, inflatable rafts, and kayaks bobbed in the shallow waters, tied to either side of the pier. People crowded the concrete catwalk, slouched in camping chairs, five-gallon buckets at their sides, fishing poles in hand.

“They do that all day,” Xander said. “All day, every day, just for a fish or two.”

As the sky darkened, campfires sprang to life, dotting the beach as far as she could see, dark shapes surrounding them, their shoulders drooping, defeated and miserable. The sound of babies and children crying drowned out the seagulls.

Silver Beach looked like the shanty towns from third-world countries she’d read about in social studies class. Depressing as hell.

The sun sank below the horizon, twilight descending. The magic of only moments before faded like a cheap trick.

She felt deflated, cheated somehow.

“Is this it?” she whispered, her throat tight. “Is this all we have to look forward to?”

“You see it, don’t you? You understand. It’s all pointless. It’s all meaningless.” There was such rage in his voice, a bottomless, unquenched fury that mirrored her own.

She met his gaze. There was a haunted quality to his eyes, something unmoored inside him.

Startled, she recognized herself. An emptiness inside her yawned into a deep void. Pain and anger festering in her heart, like something rotting.

Above them, gulls screamed at each other, wheeling and swooping. One fluttered, wings flapping with a frenetic, awkward desperation as it veered to one side. The other birds dove, hurtling straight for it, and attacked it. It tried to escape, but the attempt was futile.

The seagull fell from the sky and crashed to the sand as thirty gulls descended in a frenzy of beating wings and snapping beaks.

Quinn looked away, touched her eyebrow ring, and tried to think of something, anything else.

She felt the pull, the darkness, the utter pointlessness of it all. You worked and fought and struggled only to watch it disintegrate, the people you loved the ones who turned Brutus and tore you to pieces.

Maybe Xander had a point after all.

46

QUINN

DAY ONE HUNDRED

“Do you know why we’re out here? What happened to us?” Xander asked.

He was sober, abruptly serious, with a humming intensity behind his eyes. The jittery, half-unhinged boy had disappeared, replaced by something else, something she couldn’t quite figure out.

“No, I don’t.”

It was all a version of the same story—parents who never came home, family members deceased in plane crashes and car accidents, brothers and sisters and grandparents dead from starvation, dehydration, from disease, from hypothermia. From heart attacks, strokes, and accidents.

And from violence.

Rocco’s parents were killed when they broke into a neighbor’s house to steal a grill. Tyrell’s father was shot six times in the belly when thieves ransacked their home for a case of Ramen noodles. Dahlia lost her brother and mother in a gang fight over control of a Home Depot.

Listening to the individual tragedies, she had a sense of each tale of desperation and heartbreak mingling together, merging into something vast and incalculable, a devastation too large for words, too overwhelming for a single person to comprehend.

But she could feel it, a tremendous pressure, a clot of grief coalescing in her chest. It was gone forever, the life they’d known. The world they’d lived in, dead and gone.

And they weren’t getting it back.

“I had a dog. Ringo,” Xander said. “The best German Shepherd you ever met. Smart as a whip. He could turn off the bedroom light if I told him to. Flicked it on or off with his nose. He went everywhere with me. Would’ve come to college and stayed in my dorm if GVSU had allowed it.”

“You went to Grand Valley?” she asked, meaning the state university in Grand Rapids.

He nodded. “A senior. Studied business and loathed every second. Would’ve been on campus when it happened if it wasn’t Christmas break.”

“What about your family? Where were they?”

“Everyone was home. My parents, my two older brothers. Our phones and the lights switched off, but no one realized what was happening. Dad wanted to run to the grocery store to get some ice for the freezer to keep our Christmas turkey from going bad, but the Camry wouldn’t start.”

His lip curled. “We finally walked to the store, but they wouldn’t take anything but cash. My parents only used credit cards. Only three bucks and some change between us. At the store, someone said FEMA would come by shortly, that they’d take care of us like any natural disaster, that we had to sit tight and wait. After that, my parents did just that. They sat in the house, waiting for the government to come deliver food to their door. For weeks, shivering and freezing, no power, no water, everything frozen.

“They wouldn’t even go to the neighbors or the gas station down the block to take what they needed by force. Kept saying someone would come.” He shook his head in disgust, in bitter indignation. “By the time they woke the hell up, every store had been stripped clean. Hell, there wasn’t even a candy bar left at the movie theater.”

He was breathing hard, nostrils flaring, eyes going distant like he was seeing a scene play out in front of him that had nothing to do with the beach. “We were out of dog food. My mom, she just said, ‘There wasn’t nothing for it.’”

Quinn stared at him, aghast. “What?”

“I knew you’d understand,” he said in a strained voice. “The way you fought right alongside your dog. I saw that bond. That’s what I had with Ringo. I would never have done it. I would rather have died. They knew it, too. That’s why they sent me out to scavenge, even though I knew there wasn’t nothing left to find. I went, and when I came back, they had dinner waiting.”

Her stomach churned, acid rising in her throat. Of course, it would happen. If you were starving, and it was a choice between your family pet and your children…

She set her jaw. She couldn’t imagine sacrificing Ghost. Couldn’t do it. The dog would gladly lay himself down for his family, offering every noble, chivalrous bone in his body. He’d demonstrated his selfless loyalty again and again.

Something like pity sparked in her chest. “What did you do?”

He stared out at the lighthouse, a bright white shape against the dusky water. No lights anywhere, no beacon to guide wayward sailors home. “Something snapped inside me. I had so much anger. I knew if I stayed, I would’ve done something, hurt my own parents maybe, I don’t know. I collected my things and I left. Told them they wouldn’t see me again. They were no longer my family.”

He shuddered as if coming out of a fugue. “They’re dead now, anyway. No way they survived.”

“I’m sorry,” Quinn said, because what else was there to say?

His face hardened. “That time of my life is over. I went to the dorms, found a few of my friends still eking it out, and we left together. Made our way through the city, picking up recruits along the way. The stronger we got, the easier it was. I don’t think about the before. This is how we live now. This is the best way.”

Xander was lost, depressed, and angry. They all were. Hell, so was she. Maybe they weren’t so different from her after all.

She wasn’t crazy, though. Not yet.

“Why?” she asked, genuinely wanting to know.

“Because of what it gives you. You think any government ever had our best interests at heart? Any law? Any agency or company? It was all to keep us down, to make us slaves, to steal the American dream right out from under us. They gave us a form of power but it rendered us powerless!”

His voice rose with impassioned anger as he spoke, flailing his hands to punctuate his words. He seemed eager to explain, to get her on his side. He wanted her to believe. “This is how we take that power back, how we make the world ours!”

“By destroying everything?”

“Not everything—just everything that would enslave us, tempt us, pull us back into servitude. The sheep still cling to the old things, the dead dreams—the corner office, the blind climb of ambition, cushy jobs and fancy houses and weekends on the yacht. They want their phones and tablets and TVs to come back so they can deaden themselves, numb themselves, like a drug addict to their drug.”

She resisted rolling her eyes. “So, you’re trying to help people, then?”

“Nah. It’s not our job to wake them up. We take care of our own, live how we want to live, and spread the message through our work. Those who are like us will come to us of their own accord. Like you.”

He was more than a little insane. She couldn’t decide if he believed the nonsense he was spouting, or if he understood that his followers needed a creed, a dogma, some kind of ideology to cling to as the world they knew disintegrated around them.

Her hands curled into fists at her sides. She didn’t know what to believe anymore. All she knew was that she was angry, so incredibly angry.

She wanted to hit something, to hurt like she’d been hurt, to experience something, anything, as long as it was a release to this bitter, bottomless cup of sorrow.

She motioned to the long sword dragging from his hip. “And the weapons?”

“They’re of the old world. The time before electricity polluted everything and tech took over our lives. They’re a reminder of the warriors we once were. The warriors we are now.”

He grinned as he drew the sword, the metal scraping from the scabbard. He gave a vicious hacking swing, and Quinn stepped out of its deadly arc. Air whooshed by her face.

The thing was enormous and heavy, crafted of solid steel, not a fake replica but the real deal, and Xander wielded it with ease. He was stronger than he looked.

“The people need civilization about as much as they need a bad rash—or a hole in the head.”

“You’re a nihilist, then?”

“Nothing matters. Nothing is real. Not good and evil. Not right and wrong. They’re just constructs to control us.”

She couldn’t help herself. “Except for killing dogs.”

He flashed her a savage grin, his teeth almost glowing in the dim light. “Yeah, except for that.”

As twilight descended, thick dark clouds rolled across the horizon. A wall of storm clouds over the water headed their way.

Xander’s radio crackled. Tyrell’s scratchy voice came over the line. “We need you at the marina. Everything’s ready.”

Xander turned to Quinn, a manic glint barely visible in his eyes as the sky went dark. “We’re not done yet.”

47

QUINN

DAY ONE HUNDRED

The wind kicked up, whipping Quinn’s clothes and pelting her face.

As lightning flashed in the black sky, the distant grumble of thunder grew closer. Waves lashed the dock, the boats rising and falling as water drenched her feet.

Quinn stood on a white steel dock, bracing herself, flashlight in hand as the others ransacked the boats in the marina. As expected, most had been scavenged.

Behind her stood an enormous three or four-story steel building. Inside, rows of boats were stored for the winter, everything from speedboats to massive yachts stacked on huge metal racks and shrink-wrapped in protective material.

Outside, some smaller boats bobbed in the water, tied to the docks. A huge hydraulic lift used to transport the boats from the storage building to the docks sat gathering dust. People must have used some other method to move them.

Xander directed his people to cut the ties and free every boat in the marina, then instructed Jett to torch the storage facility.

Rocco tossed a couple sleeping bags and pillows out of the hold of a sleek white yacht. Xander kicked them into the water. “Someone’s sleeping here. A couple of someones.”

Dahlia cackled. “Not anymore.”

“Why are you doing this?” Quinn asked.

“The storm will beat them against each other and carry them out into the lake.”

“But why?”

Xander shrugged. “You’re asking the wrong questions. Why not?”

“Maybe some of them still work. People depend on those boats.”

“It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.” His eyes hardened, watching her. “Remember?”

Tyrell paused as he sawed through a tether, his gaze on Xander, as if waiting for an order—an order regarding Quinn.

Dahlia watched her too, face lit by a flashlight beam, her smile like a razor blade.

Quinn’s stomach somersaulted. Another test.

Just because she’d passed the first few didn’t mean she was in the clear.

Xander could still turn on her at the drop of a hat. He was capricious and fickle; his gang was equally unpredictable. She needed to be careful.

“I remember.” She gave a forced shrug and turned away—sickened, disgusted with herself, and guilty as hell.

Two docks away, Sutter hacked the rope mooring a sailboat and stood, a dark and menacing shape against the waves hitting the dock. She felt rather than saw his gaze on her, burning into her skin like a brand.

After a tense moment, he turned his back on her and squatted over his task.

Quinn stilled, resisting the urge to fling herself at him and stab him a dozen times.

Why not? It was night. No one would see. No one would know what happened.

Everything was darkness and chaos, flashlights bobbing, people yelling and shouting, shadows bumping into each other. The wind and waves drowned everything out.

Even if he screamed, maybe no one would hear it. He’d fall into the water and sink into the depths. A single splash, a gurgle.

If she could do it stealthily enough. If he didn’t see her coming. Maybe this was her moment. And once it was done, she could disappear into the night.

Waves swelled and spilled across the dock, pulling at her feet and ankles, threatening to seize her and sweep her into the black water. Gingerly, she moved from the dock to dry land.

Sutter was two docks over. Forty feet away, tops. Xander was busy helping Dahlia with something, the others consumed with their own tasks.

Switching her flashlight to her left hand, her right hand strayed beneath her jacket as her fingers closed over the karambit’s handle.

“Hey!” a deep voice bellowed. “Hey! Stop that!”

Quinn froze. Her pulse throbbed against her throat. Was that shout for her? Had she been found out?

“You thieves! Get away from there!”

No. It was someone else.

A dozen flashlights pinned the speaker like a spotlight. A man stood on the concrete parking lot before the large storage building, ten yards from the first dock.

He wore a wrinkled dark coat, boots, and a trucker’s cap pressed low over his eyes. In his forties, maybe. In his arms, he held a shotgun.

He squinted against the glare, his shotgun barrel wavering. “Get the hell away from those boats! I will shoot!”

“NO!” Xander leapt from the speedboat, sprinted across the water-slicked dock, and halted feet from the intruder. “That’s a horrible idea. For you.”

“Those boats don’t belong to you!”

“Who says?” someone in the crowd—Dahlia—shouted. “We say they don’t belong to anyone!”

Quinn stood rooted in place, unsure what to do, fear and dread pounding against her skull in time with the tide.

Thunder crashed. The swell and surge of the waves beating the docks roared in her ears. Needles of hard rain stung her face like shrapnel.

She craned her neck, blinking wetness from her eyes as she searched frantically for Sutter. It was hard to see. Her neck prickled, mouth bone-dry, fully aware that he might sneak up on her, using this distraction to exact a revenge of his own.

Xander stalked toward the intruder. At least forty others closed in around them in a loose horseshoe. Then it was fifty, then sixty.

“I’ll shoot!” the man yelled, a tremor in his voice. “No closer!”

They slunk closer. Heedless of the wind and rain, intent on the prey caught in their net.

Xander drew his sword. “If you had any rounds in that gun, you would’ve fired already.”

Run, she whispered in her mind. If he fled and left them to their own devices, he might have a chance. Run! Her lips moved, raw and chapped, her words caught by the wind and snatched away.

The shotgun barrel wavered as he shifted his aim from person to person. “Stay back! I’m warning you!”

Dahlia laughed and swept her flashlight across the jostling crowd. The beam caught a familiar shape, a hulking shadow near Xander.

Sutter was with the group, then. Not stalking her in the darkness. This time.

“Leave this place!” the man cried.

“It’s ours now,” Xander said evenly. “You don’t need this stuff. It won’t help you.”

Quinn couldn’t make out individual expressions except the man’s—the whites of his eyes wide and round, his mouth hanging open like his jaw had come unhinged. He was utterly terrified.

“What do we do with anyone who isn’t with us? Who fights us?” Xander shouted.

Distraught, the man scanned the crowd, searching for an ally, for someone to help him. He found none. No mercy, no clemency. “Those are our boats! It’s my job to protect this place!”

“Get him.” Quinn barely heard Xander’s words over the thrashing wind and her own throbbing pulse, but the others did. “Get him!”

They pounced like a pack of wolves, shouting and snarling, wielding their melee weapons.

She couldn’t see details; she didn’t want to. Blurred, shifting shapes in the dark and the rain. Grunts, dull wet thuds, shrieks of pain mingled with pleas of mercy that went unanswered.

Stop! Her mind screamed, but no sound came out.

To try to stop this would mean certain death. The pack would smell blood in the water and turn on her as surely as the gulls had turned on their own.

So she did nothing, hating herself, her tongue thick with the metallic taste of fear.

Xander shouted something. The group broke away from the vicious beating. She couldn’t see the victim, though his screams rent the air, like the gull’s. Too many bodies blocked her view, everything indistinct shadows and bleary light through the spitting rain.

Xander gestured to the hulking figure beside him. “Your turn.”

Flashlights swiveled toward the figure, highlighting the familiar bald head, wet and gleaming, and those glittering dark eyes as Sutter prowled into the circle. In one hand, he gripped a knife.

It was over for the man. There was no hope left for him.

She stood drenched and shivering as the heavens opened and the rain poured down. Waves crashed all around her, pounding the sand, each one stronger than the next, the storm descending with a relentless fury.

The scream in her head louder than the thunder and lashing waves, louder even than the screams of the dying man.

48

HANNAH

DAY ONE HUNDRED

Hannah opened the door and let Ghost into the backyard.

It was the middle of the night, maybe two or three a.m. Charlotte had nursed and sunk into a milk-drunken stupor. Still, Hannah couldn’t sleep.

Thick black clouds obscured the stars. She squinted, blinking to adjust her eyes, but cold spitting rain blurred the darkness.

She patted the scruff of Ghost’s neck. “Go ahead, boy.”

While Ghost hobbled down the porch steps to find a spot to do his business, she rubbed her tired eyes with the back of her arm. Sleep hadn’t come easily in years. It was always restless, pockmarked by nightmares and frequent wakings drenched in a cold sweat.

When it wasn’t a nightmare, it was Charlotte hungry for another feeding, or Hannah’s incessant need to check on Milo, though he was always sleeping in his bed, safe and sound.

She scanned the yard, taking everything in by degrees, the way Liam had taught her. Sycamore, maple, and oak trees, their naked branches soughing in the wind. The shed, the doors padlocked shut. Between two pine trees, a chest-high pile of cut firewood blanketed in a blue tarp. Milo’s forgotten bicycle, leaning against a rain barrel.

Something moved in the trees by the shed. A shadow unlike the others; it was darker, deeper, and human-shaped.

Adrenaline shot through her veins, her fear surging. In two seconds flat, she had the Ruger out of her jacket pocket and held in both hands, her bad hand stabilizing the shot, and aimed at the intruder.

With a practiced movement, she flicked the safety off with her thumb. “Don’t make me shoot you. I will do it.”

“I have no doubt,” a familiar voice came from the shadows.

Relief flooded her. She lowered the pistol. “Liam.”

He stepped out of the darkness between the shed and the stack of firewood, wearing a raincoat with a hood covering his face. But she’d recognize his voice anywhere, the familiar tall broad shape of him, the confident way he moved.

“Sorry,” he said, rueful. “Should’ve warned you.”

“Yeah, you should have. What are you doing out here? It’s pouring rain.”

A sheepish shrug. “Couldn’t sleep. Decided to do another patrol around the neighborhood.”

“A stroll through a thunderstorm was a better alternative than a warm bed?”

“Something like that.”

He strode across the yard and paused at the edge of the back porch, hesitating. Oblivious to the rain, Ghost trotted up to him and sniffed his hand.

Liam scratched beneath his chin. The dog let out a gratified chuff, lifting his head for a deeper scratch, and pressed his side against Liam’s thigh.

“You did good,” Liam said. “You didn’t hesitate. You acted on instinct—and training.” Something changed in his voice, a hint of teasing. “Remembered the safety this time, too.”

Her cheeks went hot. She was thankful for the darkness. “I remember it all the time.”

“You had a good teacher.”

“Maybe I’m just an excellent student.” She bit her bottom lip, her stomach fluttering. “You’re getting soaked. Come onto the porch for a few minutes.”

“You sure?”

The thunderstorm had passed, but the rain was relentless. It beat against the house and pounded the ground, small puddles forming in the yard and turning everything to mud.

She inhaled the scent of rainwater and wet earth. The air was cold, sharp—she was wide awake now. The temperature was near freezing. A few degrees colder and it would be snowing. “I could use the company.”

It wasn’t just any company—it was his.

Hannah shoved her pistol back in her pocket and headed to the porch swing, fluffing the pillows and sliding the largest one to the opposite side of the bench for Liam. The support would help his back.

Ghost bounded up the porch steps, favoring his bandaged hind leg, and nuzzled his muzzle against Hannah’s lap. She rubbed his ears for a minute before he rudely shook a spray of rainwater and mud from his fur, splashing both Liam and Hannah.

Liam stepped back. “Hey!”

Ghost tilted his head, as if giving them a cheeky sorry not sorry look, and sank to his belly at their feet with a self-satisfied grunt.

“He has a sense of humor,” Hannah said.

“Apparently.” Liam rubbed mud splatters from his pant legs and sat down beside her. “He’s doing better.”

“He is. Evelyn says his leg should fully heal, but it’s been a bear getting him to rest. Kind of like someone else I know.”

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

“He’s even getting a bit of a self-important attitude.”

“Heroes. They’re so full of themselves.”

“Exactly.” She grinned. “Which brings me to you. How are you feeling?”

“Never better.”

Which she knew was a white lie, but she didn’t press him. He was moving better, with less wincing. He was healing, too.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence. The cushions were damp but neither complained nor made to leave. Rain drummed the roof, dripped from the eaves.

“Was it the nightmares?” she asked.

“Always.”

“Do they ever go away?”

“Not in my experience.” She felt his eyes on her. “They lessen, though, with time.”

“I hope so.” For her sake and his.

They listened to the rain. She chewed her bottom lip, rocking gently. “You’re a good man, you know.”

He snorted.

“You are.”

She’d read once that people could sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men and women stood ready to do violence on their behalf.

Liam was that man for her, for all of them.

He carried the burden of it all so others didn’t have to. He did the hard things, faced the worst demons from the pits of hell. Her heart went out to him.

She wished she could take it all away, ease the pain he carried, somehow lessen the shadows behind his eyes.

She said, “You help keep the wolves away.”

He said nothing for a while. “I worry it’s not enough.”

“It is. It will be.”

“Something else is out there. Something big. I can feel it, sense it. Like a predator stalking us in the dark. But I can’t see it, I can’t stop it, no matter what I do.”

Someone had set fire to a farm near the outskirts of Niles. A woman who owned a homestead off Old 31 between Fall Creek and St. Joe had been found dead in her home. She’d owned over fifty chickens; they had all been slaughtered.

Despite multiple reports of a large gang moving through the area, Flynn and most of the Community Alliance continued to blame Fall Creek. Yesterday, Flynn had called Dave on the radio in a rage, unleashing a hateful diatribe that included threats to raze the town’s greenhouses in retaliation—and worse.

“You want to starve us, then we’ll starve together!” he’d shouted, throwing Hannah’s words back at them.

Even worse, Dave had shared more reports of violence in Illinois. Towns overrun, women and children stolen, thousands of innocent people trapped in camps or murdered.

Poe’s army was growing more powerful. And they were heading south, inching closer to the Indiana and Michigan borders.

A great storm was brewing over their heads, bringing with it a looming sense of doom she couldn’t shake.

“I feel it, too,” she said. “But if we can work together as a community, we can face it, whatever comes next.”

He grunted, not convinced.

“We can, Liam. We will.”

“The community doesn’t seem to want to work together.”

“Then we’ll make them,” she said with a flush of frustration. “We keep trying. It’ll work.”

“Keep believing, Hannah. Maybe by sheer force of will alone, you can make it happen. I don’t see it, though. We’re too splintered, too divided.”

“I have faith. I have to have faith.”

“Flynn and his people are blinded by their grief. I don’t know if they can’t see the truth or they don’t want to, but they seem to want to cling to their anger. They won’t give it up easily.”

“I know that. That doesn’t mean we should give up on them.”

“It might come to violence,” he warned her. “Are you prepared for that?”

She lifted her chin. “I’m prepared for whatever I need to be. That doesn’t mean I accept it, or won’t fight tooth and nail for a different outcome.” She hesitated. “I mean it, Liam. If we can’t come together, we won’t make it.”

Rain drummed the roof. Ghost chuffed and rolled onto his side. She breathed in the sweet damp air, felt Liam’s warmth beside her, his comforting strength.

Liam said, “I know.”

49

HANNAH

DAY ONE HUNDRED

Hannah watched Liam out of the corner of her eye.

He held the bearing of a soldier. Even now in the dark and the rain, sitting on her backyard porch swing, his eyes darted to and fro, never still, his mind processing information, analyzing, reacting, and preparing.

“You’re still worried,” she said.

“There are other threats still out there.”

“You’re thinking about Sutter.”

“Yes.”

“And Luther.”

Liam nodded.

“Luther won’t come back.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” He hesitated. “How was your visit to Luther Senior?”

She let out a hard little laugh.

“That good, huh?”

“They’re cut from the same cloth.”

Determined to keep her promise, Hannah had visited Luther’s father yesterday to check on him and set up a schedule for regular visits. He’d greeted her with bristling anger and resentment, not that it surprised her.

At first, he’d refused the food she brought him.

“I got no need for handouts! I’m doing just fine.” He’d glared at her from his wheelchair. “Leave me alone!”

A quick survey of the empty cabinets revealed the true situation. Without intervention, he’d starve. Wheelchair bound, with no way to leave the house on his own, he needed help.

No matter how much he resented her, once she’d unwrapped the fresh bread, strawberry jam spread, and two boiled eggs, he’d wolfed down the meal like a starving animal.

“This means nothing,” he snapped, his rheumy eyes narrowed. “I don’t owe you people nothing.”

“Of course not.” She hesitated. “I made a promise to your son, sir. I couldn’t keep my promise to Luther to allow him to stay, but I intend to keep this one.”

The old man cursed. “That boy. What the hell was he thinking?”

Hannah said nothing, unsure how to respond.

Luther Senior gestured at the oxygen tank next to his wheelchair and the tubes in his nose. “The oxygen will run out soon. Then what? I’m a dead man walking, anyway.” He sniffed derisively. “I’m not even walking, am I?”

“I’m sorry, sir—”

“Sorry? You’re sorry? What did sorry ever do for anybody? You kicked him out of the only community that can keep him alive—after he gave you the key to save the town. Don’t look like justice, does it?”

“He’s not hanging from a rope, either,” Hannah reminded him.

Luther Senior opened his mouth to argue, gnarled lips pulled back in a sneer, but then something in him sagged. Whether he saw the truth in her words, he didn’t admit it.

“I’ll return tomorrow.”

He glared at her, bitter and resigned. “Like I told you, don’t come back here.”

“And I’ll have Evelyn Brooks check on you as well. She’s an excellent nurse.”

He coughed, a ragged phlegmy sound that set her teeth on edge, looking utterly miserable. “There’s nothing you can do for me. Nothing.”

Though she intended to return as promised, he wasn’t wrong. Nothing she could do could fix him, provide the proper medical care he needed, rend the rift the militia had caused, or bring back his son.

Hannah’s chest had contracted, filling her with pity, with compassion, and more than a bit of guilt.

She’d left feeling worse than when she’d arrived.

“He’s suffering,” she said now. “And he’s angry.”

“There’s a lot of that going around.”

She knew they were both thinking of Quinn. “Yeah, there is.”

The chill sank through her skin, into her bones. Beneath her jacket, she wore only flannel pajamas and a hoodie. She shivered.

“Here.” Liam shrugged off his raincoat and draped it around her shoulders, propping the hood over her head. She couldn’t see his features in the dark, could barely make out the shape of him, but she could feel him.

Even wounded, his every move radiated strength, competence, and power. Her pulse quickened, her stomach doing a strange somersault.

He hesitated, so close his warm breath touched her cheek, sending sparks shooting through her body from her fingers to her toes.

“You do that for me, too,” he said, so quiet the rain nearly drowned him out. “You keep the wolves away.”

She stopped breathing.

Liam reached out and tucked a damp strand of hair behind her ear. He touched her face, his trailing fingers like fire on her skin. “Hannah—”

Pike’s face flashed before her eyes. His red slash of a mouth, his empty eyes. Her bones cracking. The pain.

Fear scythed through her.

Before she could think it, before her brain could sort the myriad thoughts and emotions firing her synapses, instinct took over. She shied away like a frightened horse.

She leapt to her feet, cradling her bad hand. “I…I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to explain it to me. I’ll wait, Hannah. I—”

Hannah didn’t hear the rest. She shrugged off Liam’s raincoat and fled into the house, almost slipping on the wet porch in her haste.

Ghost squeezed in beside her, the screen door rattling in the wind. The door slammed shut.

She collapsed to her knees in the middle of the dark kitchen. Sobs wracked her body.

Ghost licked her face and pressed his great head against her shoulder, offering her comfort as best he could. She leaned into him and wrapped her arms around his barrel chest, burying her cheek into his wet fur, her bad hand clutching at his ruff as she inhaled the damp doggy smell of him.

“What’s wrong with me?” she whispered, afraid she already knew the answer.

She was broken.

No matter how much she cared for Liam, how deep her feelings were growing for him—and they were; she felt it with every beat of her heart.

Pike was not dead—not inside her mind. Far from it. He was gone, but his power remained, like some perverse and sadistic ghost, a malevolent demon from the depths of hell still haunting her.

The damage he had done lived on in the innermost parts of her being. The fear and pain instilled across days, months, and years had invaded her soul, knit itself into her very bones.

She’d fought to kill Pike, to rid the universe of his malignant presence, but that act was only the first step in a journey of healing that would take years, maybe forever.

Fighting that fear. Facing that pain. Again and again and again.

It was overwhelming.

How could she give a man like Liam Coleman a fraction of what he deserved?

She couldn’t. This was the truth she couldn’t bear to face. She couldn’t.

50

LIAM

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND ONE

Liam stood in front of Molly’s fireplace, studying the fire flickering cheerily, feeling anything but cheerful himself.

The living room was redolent with the smells of baking bread and wood smoke. Though it was dark outside, another storm on the way, kerosene lanterns hung on the walls cast a warm glow. Laughter and low voices filled the house.

While endless tasks filled their days, once the sun went down, their little community relaxed and enjoyed each other’s company with games, conversation, and good—if limited—food.

Tonight, everyone had gathered at Molly’s place. Her house was small but cozy, and no one seemed to mind being squeezed into close quarters.

Evelyn helped Molly in the kitchen, joined by Reynoso. It turned out that the big shy cop had a thing for cooking. He crafted a mean pinto bean soup with a side of twice-baked potatoes and green beans.

Bishop made his usual rounds, chatting with everyone, offering generous encouragement and compliments, his frequent booming laugh rising above the buzz of conversation.

Dave and Annette were discussing the next Trade Day and the best methods to expand the community gardens. They sat close to each other on the couch, knees almost touching.

Perez was engaged in an animated game of checkers with Travis. Milo had played a few games, even smiling a little, but he mostly sat in the kitchen by himself.

After being passed around and loved on, the babies played on their bellies on a blanket spread in the center of the living room. Liam had spent a good part of the evening holding them both. They smelled of baby powder and sweet milk, their skin velvet soft.

His heart swelled with fierce affection every time Charlotte wrapped her tiny starfish hand around his finger or L.J. giggled, blowing raspberries from his perfect rosebud mouth.

In the last two weeks, L.J.’s ragged cough had improved. With Hannah’s milk, plus the homemade formula and Molly’s garlic cough syrup, he’d gained a pound and was filling out.

For the first time, he looked healthy. Lincoln’s son was flourishing in Fall Creek.

As Liam had hoped, so were Jessa’s parents. The starved, hollowed look was fading from their faces, replaced with something vibrant and thriving.

Evelyn was brisk and no-nonsense, where her husband was softer, kinder, and gentler. He told marvelous stories with a wry sense of humor that everyone appreciated. Evelyn brought her medical skillset, and Travis added a keen intelligence and willingness to learn.

They helped where needed with enthusiasm and never complained. They were where they belonged.

Watching the three of them, his chest expanded, some broken piece inside him knitting itself back together.

For you, Lincoln, he thought with a pang. I brought them home, Jessa.

Charlotte’s ringing giggle brought him back to the moment. Ghost’s tail swishing just out of their reach utterly fascinated both babies. The mischievous cat Loki was equally fascinated with them and kept batting at their little kicking feet, much to L.J.’s delight.

Thor and Odin slept by the fireplace, while Valkyrie prowled the house, sniffing people’s legs suspiciously. As usual, Hel, the fluffy white Ruler of the Underworld, held court atop the fridge.

Liam enjoyed the company more than he thought he would. Still, something was missing.

His gaze kept straying across the room to Hannah, who flitted among the group much like Bishop, her voice bright and animated, her head tilted as she listened to Travis’s stories or laughed at one of Reynoso’s rare jokes.

They’d hadn’t spoken all night. A few times, he’d caught her tentative, pained glance; the heartache in Hannah’s eyes nearly killed him.

He could take a bullet—hell, he’d taken several—but causing the woman he loved distress was something he could not abide.

Last night, he’d screwed up. Inwardly, he kicked himself for moving too soon, for being an idiot and opening his big damn mouth.

In one fell swoop, Hannah had undone him and knit him back together.

It was a painful thing, coming back to life. Like his frozen, hypothermic limbs thawing, prickling and stinging as the numbness withdrew and sharp glorious warmth pressed in.

The pain was worth it.

She had shown him a glimpse of what a meaningful life could be—what love could be.

He wanted it. Wanted her.

Liam longed for more, but he would accept whatever she gave him. She needed to know that. No matter what, for as long as he lived and breathed, he would be here for her.

Once the guests had departed for the night, he would talk to her. He needed to figure out a way to say it aloud without sounding like a complete idiot. He’d be damned if he lost her to his own knuckleheaded stupidity.

After checking the windows and doors yet again—no movement outside, the sky black as pitch, no stars—he wandered into the kitchen. The delicious smell of fresh baked bread mingled with spicy bean soup.

“Haven’t seen Quinn for a bit. She feeling okay?” he asked Molly, trying to distract himself.

Quinn hadn’t shown up for their training sessions for the last few mornings, which wasn’t like her.

“Where is that child?” Molly muttered, stirring the soup on the woodstove and glancing out the window for the tenth time. “I’ve been expecting her for hours.”

A knock sounded at the door. Liam stiffened, instantly on alert.

Molly glanced around, as if surprised that Quinn still wasn’t home to answer it, set down the wooden spoon, and reached for her cane resting against the kitchen cabinets next to her trusty Mossberg.

“I’ve got it,” Hannah said. “You’re doing enough already, Molly.”

Hannah wiped her hands on a towel and strode across the living room, stepping over the cats attempting to wind around her ankles.

Bishop, already at the living room window monitoring the main approach to the house, glanced back at Liam with a nod of his chin. Whoever approached wasn’t a threat.

Liam kept one hand on his Glock, anyway.

Opening the door, Hannah stepped back with a smile. “Hey, Jonas. Nice to see you.”

From the kitchen, Molly huffed. “Finally! Thought I’d never see my granddaughter again. She’s been shirking chores all weekend. Came just in time for dinner, I see. Hope you brought a deer with you, or at least a wild turkey or two.”

Hannah beckoned Jonas inside and stepped out of the way. Jonas wiped his feet on the welcome mat. He wore an Old Navy hoodie beneath an army green canvas jacket and scruffy jeans. And he was alone.

His gaze darted around the room, a polite smile on his lips. “Hey, Miss Molly, Miss Hannah, Mr. Coleman, Pastor Bishop. Looks like I’m missing out on a party.”

Molly waved her cane. “You two get your butts in here and I’ll show you the party! I’ve got a load of dishes that won’t do themselves.”

Jonas frowned, his brows knitting in confusion. “I stopped by to see if Quinn wanted to hang out and play some Monopoly Deal. I sure won’t say no to dinner, though. If you don’t mind, I’ll take it back to my mom.”

With a peevish grunt, Molly shuffled into the living room. “What the heck are you going on about, boy? Quinn’s been with you and that Whitney girl for three days straight.”

Bewilderment flared across the boy’s face. “What? No, she hasn’t.” He glanced at Liam. “She said she couldn’t go hunting with us because she had too much training to do.”

Liam shook his head. “She hasn’t trained mornings for the last three days. Or the group security sessions in the afternoons.”

Molly went still. “She spent the last few nights at Whitney’s. She needed a break, to be a teenager again. She was supposed to check in, but I thought she was safe. She was with you.”

“No,” Jonas said again, still puzzled. “The last time I saw her was four days ago, when we dug that latrine for the Chilsons on Third Street.”

Molly’s expression went hard, but her eyes revealed her growing concern. “Pardon my French, Pastor Bishop, but where in the hell is Quinn?”

Everyone stared at each other in stunned silence.

“Could she have run away?” Travis asked.

Molly gave an adamant shake of her head. “No. No way. Not my Quinn.”

No one said anything for a long moment.

“What if…what if someone took her?” Evelyn asked.

Perez set her glass of water on the coffee table, leapt to her feet, and reached for her sidearm. “Flynn and his men. They did this.”

Hannah paled. “What? No. No, they wouldn’t.”

Dave wrung his hands in his lap. “Flynn threatened retaliation. He threatened violence. What if this is them?”

Molly stared at them, alarmed. “Are you saying someone kidnapped my granddaughter?”

Tension sucked the oxygen out of the room.

“They wouldn’t,” Hannah said, less assured this time. “This is beyond them. They wouldn’t do something like this.”

“I don’t know,” Reynoso said. “We can’t be certain. We should—”

Perez was on her feet, stalking the living room, her face a livid shade of purple. “Of course, it’s them! They’ve lost people; they blame us. They’re escalating, and if we don’t shut this down now, we’ll have another war on our hands. It’s time to end their stupid Community Alliance, once and for all.”

“Now hang on—” Hannah started.

“We shouldn’t act in haste,” Bishop said. “We don’t know for certain—”

Liam was tired of talking. He wasn’t for going in guns blazing, but he didn’t plan to stand around wringing his hands, either. “There’s only one way to find out.”

“Everyone take a breath.” Bishop spread his considerable arms wide, gesturing for people to remain calm. “If you head out there right now, with folks hot under the collar, who knows what might happen.”

“I guess we’ll just have to figure it out as we go, won’t we?” Perez was at the door, shrugging on her coat, Reynoso at her heels.

Molly leaned on her cane, her entire body trembling with anger—and fear. “If they hurt my granddaughter, eternal damnation will not be punishment enough when I get through with them!”

“Even if they took her, it would be as a bargaining chip,” Annette said. “They wouldn’t hurt her.”

“You don’t know that for certain,” Perez said. “These people are angry, bitter, and desperate. We’ve seen what desperate people are capable of. Don’t think they’ll have honor, just because we do.”

Hannah nodded. “We’re not underestimating anyone, but we need to calm down and think for a second.”

Perez scowled. “No thinking necessary. Where else would she be? Who else would’ve taken her? They’re the only threat out there. And they made their intentions extremely clear. ‘Maybe you need to feel the same pain we have.’” She wheeled on Dave. “Isn’t that what Flynn threatened?”

Dave cleared his throat. “He said that. Yes.”

“Then let’s go!” Perez said.

“Liam,” Reynoso said. “What do you say?”

All eyes in the room turned toward him. Jonas stood rigid at the door, looking terrified. Evelyn and Travis watched, their eyes wide. L.J. had fallen asleep on Travis’s chest. Evelyn bounced Charlotte on her lap.

Through it all, Milo slumped at the kitchen table, his shoulders hunched, his hands clasped in his lap, not saying a word. He stared down at the table, his gaze unfocused.

Hannah had noticed, too. She glanced back at him, concern in her eyes.

Liam held up a hand. “Wait.”

Perez sighed in impatience, but Reynoso shot her a warning look. They waited.

Liam wanted to touch Hannah’s arm but refrained. Still, he didn’t take his eyes off her face. “What is it?”

Biting her lower lip, Hannah turned to her son. “Milo?”

Milo shook his head, black curls falling into his face, and didn’t look up.

The room went silent. Hannah knelt before her son and took his small hands in hers. “Something is wrong.”

Milo hesitated.

“It’s okay, son.”

He shook his head again.

“Is there anything you can tell us about Quinn? Anything that could help her?”

Finally, Milo spoke. “She told me not to tell.”

51

LIAM

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND ONE

Icy dread slid between Liam’s ribs.

“If Quinn might be in danger, you need to tell us,” Hannah said. “You can help her by helping us.”

Milo looked up and met Hannah’s gaze. Liam saw a glimpse of the stubbornness—and determination—that mirrored his mother’s. “I can’t let her down. She’ll get mad at me.”

Molly inhaled a sharp breath.

Hannah squeezed his fingers. Her tone went soft and gentle. “I understand, honey. You’re a good friend. But good friends help each other, even if our friend is in trouble. Especially if they’re in trouble.”

His solemn dark eyes welled with tears. “You think she’s in danger?”

“Yes, I do. And I think you can help us save her.”

“There was a group,” Milo whispered. “At Trade Day. In the woods.”

Molly scowled and started to say something, but Liam shook his head at her. Milo was opening up to Hannah, no one else. If they broke the spell, he might clam up.

“What happened?” Hannah asked.

“When the bad dogs attacked us, Quinn had me climb a tree. She and Ghost held off the dogs, but there were lots of them. They attacked Ghost. They were hurting him. I was so scared for him and Quinn, but I didn’t know what to do, so I stayed in the tree like she told me.”

Hearing his name, Ghost raised his head and let out a curious chuff, his tail thumping the floor.

Hannah stiffened. “That was smart thinking.”

“Then these people showed up. They had these weird old-fashioned knives and clubs and stuff. They scared off the dogs and rescued Ghost. I almost came down from the tree, but I didn’t. If it was safe, Quinn would’ve called me. She didn’t, so I knew she wanted me to keep hiding. I stayed real quiet the whole time.”

Hannah closed her eyes, her head bowed, clasping her son’s hands. “That was brave. I’m so proud of you, honey.”

“You think she might be with them now?” Liam asked.

Milo nodded. “Quinn talked to them for a while. One of them asked her to come with them.” He looked at Hannah with worried eyes. “At first, I didn’t know if they were bad guys or good guys. I’m so sorry.”

Molly made a sound in the back of her throat like an animal caught in a trap. Liam had never seen Molly as anything but calm and collected. Now, she was anything but. Fear contorted every line in her wrinkled face.

Hannah enveloped Milo in her arms. “You did good, honey. You did great.”

Over his mother’s shoulder, Milo met Liam’s gaze. “Is Quinn going to be okay? Are they going to hurt her?”

The question hung for a long moment, unanswered.

“No, of course not,” Evelyn said in a soothing voice.

Milo’s eyes remained on Liam, frightened, beseeching, urgent.

In all honesty, he didn’t know the answer. He didn’t put kidnapping past the Community Alliance, but he doubted they would hurt a teenage girl.

This group, though, was a complete unknown. It was the unknown that scared him.

Molly’s home was suddenly confining, the walls closing in, an immense pressure building in his chest. He’d already lost too much time. Three days gone.

Quinn could be anywhere; he felt her already slipping from his grasp.

Sensing their distress, Ghost clambered to his feet and trotted into the kitchen. He made a beeline for Hannah and Milo, thrusting his big head between them and settling his muzzle in Milo’s lap.

Liam longed to comfort the boy, to promise him that everything would be okay. He couldn’t do that, not with Quinn out there somewhere, lost.

“Do you know where they are?” Liam asked.

Milo shook his head.

Hannah pushed the curls off his forehead. “Take your time.”

“Did they give you any clues? Anything at all?” Liam asked.

“They said something about staying at a warehouse. Like, that it was ironic there was so much electronic stuff inside that didn’t work anymore.”

Liam and Bishop exchanged a wary glance. That wasn’t much to go on. There were several manufacturing districts in the neighboring towns. It would take weeks to search them all, and that was with enough manpower.

Quinn might not have that kind of time.

Milo wrinkled his nose in concentration as he rubbed Ghost’s ears. “The leader made a joke about kitchen appliances. Something about more dishwashers than he could count.”

“Vortex,” Hannah said.

Vortex’s worldwide headquarters were in St. Joseph, Michigan, less than twenty miles from Fall Creek. They built household appliances, and their facilities included a sprawling labyrinth of offices, a manufacturing plant, and warehouses.

The place was likely abandoned. It’d be hellish to defend—and equally hellish to infiltrate.

Molly’s face drained of color. Her eyes were frantic, her liver-spotted hands trembling as she clasped her cane, her shoulders bent like her legs might collapse. In an instant, she’d aged two decades.

An image of Quinn flickered before his eyes—her fading blue hair, piercings glinting, mouth twisting in that sarcastic grin of hers.

How every time he knocked her down, she got up again. Every damned time.

He’d seen grown men cry at the torment inflicted in training. Not her. So young yet fierce, a desperate ferocity in her gaze that tugged at something inside him.

She’d begged him to train her weeks ago. In his own weakness, he’d refused. If he had, she’d be more prepared for whatever threats she faced. That was on him.

Quinn needed him. He would not let her down again.

Molly gazed at Liam with hollow eyes, silently imploring him to save her granddaughter, the one thing she loved more than anything in this world. She didn’t need to say the words aloud—he knew.

Liam was already moving toward the front door. “I’ll find her.”

“You’re in no condition to be fighting, Liam,” Evelyn said. “You could get hurt. You could get yourself killed.”

“You just got shot last week,” Annette said. “You need to rest.”

“I’m fine.” His gunshot wound was healing due to Evelyn’s medical expertise, and it wasn’t even infected. His spine felt better with Hannah’s help. He’d fought wounded before. Hell, he lived with intense pain every day of his life. This was no different. “I’m fine.”

“Liam,” Bishop warned.

Liam hesitated, searched out Hannah, and met her gaze. He felt torn, competing desires shredding his heart.

He cared for Quinn, felt responsible for her. And he loved Hannah, yearned to protect her, to remain by her side no matter what. He’d already left her once. It had nearly killed him.

One word from her, and he would stay.

She saw it in his eyes. The faintest hint of a smile graced her lips. A smile of pain, but also hope. She nodded, granting her permission.

She knew who he was—the sheepdog, the protector.

“Let me go instead,” Bishop offered.

“No!” Liam said. “I’m the best equipped. It needs to be me.”

“Then take me with you.”

He trusted Bishop as much as he trusted any man—granted, that wasn’t much. With Bishop at his side, someone would have his six.

But he hated to leave Hannah yet again. He needed to know that she was safe; he couldn’t focus on the task at hand without that assurance.

Bishop was more valuable to him at home.

“Stay here.” He met Bishop’s gaze. “Protect the people I love.”

Grimly, Bishop nodded.

“You, too,” he said to Perez and Reynoso. “Keep extra watches. Everyone on high alert. Nothing gets in or out until I get back.”

Whatever was out there, it wasn’t a single entity. If they were facing multiple threats, the town’s safety was of utmost importance. He knew it. They knew it.

“Don’t let them hurt her,” Milo said.

“I won’t.” At the door, Liam paused. Something niggled at the edges of his mind. He turned back to Milo. “Why at first?”

“What?”

“You said you couldn’t tell if they were bad guys ‘at first.’ Something changed your mind. What was it?”

All eyes turned to the boy. Hannah hugged him tighter, her face bone-white. Ghost gave a soft whine.

Milo bit his lower lip. “I saw someone I recognized. One of the men in the group. It was Sutter. Mattias Sutter was with them.”

52

QUINN

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND ONE

Q uinn was in over her head.

She knew it, now.

The scent of burning plastic clogged her nostrils, choking her throat. It didn’t seem to faze the others. Dozens of young people crowded around the fire they’d built in the center of the cavernous four-story warehouse.

They’d pulled stuff from the factory—the front of a dishwasher, refrigerator shelves, the innards of a stove, laptops, computers, and phones they’d scavenged from the offices—and piled it into a massive bonfire ten feet across. They added desks, bookcases, and an old rotting Christmas tree.

Every time someone chucked a laptop, microwave, or a circuit board onto the flames, more jeers and hoots erupted.

They danced and cheered, thrusting their fists high in the air, swinging their weapons, leaping around the fire like a savage native trope they’d aped from some stupid movie.

They’d stolen booze from somewhere. Most were drunk, maybe high, too.

She had no idea where they’d found it. Probably the same way they’d gotten the sleeping bags last night—taking what they wanted and killing anyone who protested.

Last night, she’d stayed with Dahlia and a couple of girls in one of the RVs they’d pulled into the huge loading bay.

The mattress was lumpy, and the RV stank of sweat, weed, and unwashed bodies. Her own scalp was greasy, her clothes wrinkled, her skin itchy and gross. No one seemed to notice but her.

She’d hadn’t slept, staring up at the darkened ceiling, a block of ice in her stomach, her body cold and shivering, her mind numb. The karambit clutched in both hands against her chest, ears straining for any sound—a sliding footfall, a breath on her cheek.

Revulsion churned in her gut. A sour sickness clawed at the back of her throat. She couldn’t get that man’s screams out of her head.

Whatever pity and camaraderie she might have felt for Xander, it had been snuffed out last night.

He thought of himself as a renegade, a radical freethinking revolutionary, someone extraordinary. He wasn’t.

Xander Thorne was a low-life scumbag criminal, just like the rest of them. An insignificant thug with delusions of grandeur.

Every fiber of her being thrummed with the desire to get the hell out of here, to go home.

Not yet. Not until she’d finished what she’d set out to do.

She’d spent today trying and failing to get close to Sutter. Xander had kept her with him, babbling his cultish nonsense about the evils of electricity-powered capitalism while destroying everything he could get his hands on.

But now, Sutter was alone. Or as alone as he was going to get.

He sat on a cardboard box across from the bonfire, set back from the others. He’d been drinking. Six or seven empty beer bottles sprawled at his feet.

He leaned back on his forearms, legs splayed, eyes glassy, a dazed, almost entranced expression on his slack face. Too busy leering at the girls dancing to worry himself with operational security or watching his six.

Maybe he’d forgotten about her. Maybe he didn’t think a teenage girl posed a threat to someone like him.

He was a skilled killer. She was a nobody.

Quinn watched him, his hulking form flickering in and out of focus between the bodies crowding and writhing between them. The flames danced higher and higher. The group shrieked louder and louder.

Everyone was distracted. Even Xander. After she’d refused to dance with him, citing a stomachache, he’d taken up with Dahlia.

Quinn rose unsteadily to her feet and began to dance. This close to the fire, heat blasted her, but she didn’t dare remove her coat, her karambit still snug beneath her sweater.

As she swayed, she inched around the bonfire, spinning closer and closer to Sutter.

Bodies bumped into her. The blazing flames licked at her clothes. Shadows quivered across the far walls. She slipped her hand beneath her shirt, and her fingers closed over the grip and slid into the safety ring.

This was it. Time to end it. Time to kill.

Her head buzzed, the roar in her ears like a terrible howling thing, a fury filling up all the spaces inside her head, drumming in her veins, in her blood.

A great rushing blocked out all sound, all senses, all feeling but her anger. Dark and black and raging. She drew the karambit, held it low against her thigh.

Only feet away now. So close, all she had to do was—

“What the hell?” came a voice behind her.

Someone grabbed her arm. She tried to jerk away but someone else slammed against her and she staggered, losing her balance.

Strong hands closed over her biceps and yanked her to her feet.

On either side of her, Jett and Rocco held her fast. Fear lodged in her throat like a stone. “Let me go!”

Xander stomped toward her, his expression furious. “What’s going on?”

The dancing ground to an immediate halt. As one, several dozen bodies stilled and turned toward her, eyes narrowing, hands going toward weapons.

“I told you!” Dahlia marched up beside Xander. “This girl is trouble!”

“It’s true.” Sutter rose swaying to his feet, firelight flickering across his flat features as he loomed over her. He jabbed a thick finger at her chest. “She just tried to kill me.”

“I did not!” Quinn said.

Dahlia crossed her arms over her chest. “She’s an imposter, Xander!”

Xander frowned, glancing from Dahlia to Quinn. “Is that true?”

“No.”

“What about that knife you’ve been hiding under your sweater all this time?” Dahlia asked with a sweetness dripping poison. “You just about stabbed Teddy with it.”

Every eye went to the knife in her hand. Quinn’s face went hot. “I can explain—”

Rocco pried the blade from her fingers and handed it to Xander. “She had this.”

Xander’s expression darkened. “No one kills one of our people.”

“He’s not one of your people! He’s not who you think he is.”

“Neither is she,” Sutter said.

Her mind buzzed. Panic shredded her thoughts. “His name is Mattias Sutter. He led a group of militants who killed a bunch of my people. He’s a murderer!”

“So, you do know each other,” Rocco said.

“She wants revenge,” Sutter said evenly.

“And why would she want that?” Xander asked.

Sutter smiled. “So many possibilities. Maybe because I killed her worthless methhead of a mother.”

Quinn strained against the hands holding her. “You don’t get to talk about her!”

Sutter gave a nonchalant shrug and turned his hard gaze to Xander. “She pretended to join you so she could assassinate me. That’s been her plan all along. She never believed in your cause. It was all a trick.”

Xander blinked. “That hurts me. It truly does.”

Quinn tried to wrench free, but Jett and Rocco gripped her so hard her fingers went tingly, her arms losing their circulation.

Dahlia stared at Quinn with a smirk, like Quinn was a bug she wanted to squish beneath her combat boots.

Xander looked at her with a hurt, angry expression. “I thought you said you were a believer.”

“I am!”

He stared at her, unblinking. His eyes were hard. The softness he’d revealed earlier had vanished. “No, no I don’t think that you are.”

“Look, Xander—”

“Shut up!”

Quinn slumped, defeated. The game was up. Pretending wouldn’t help her anymore. “Sutter’s a liar. Don’t trust him.”

“Teddy has been truthful so far. You, on the other hand, have been anything but.”

“No, he hasn’t!” Quinn shouted, grasping at straws. “Did he tell you we knew each other? He lied, too! What did he promise you? Do you have it yet? He’s just manipulating you. He doesn’t believe in your cause, either! He just wants revenge because we beat him!”

Sutter bared his teeth. “She’s crazy.”

“Stop it!” Xander unsheathed his sword and pointed it at Sutter, then swung toward Quinn. “Both of you, shut up! I’ve had enough!”

Quinn went still, a taste of fear in her mouth, metallic and coppery.

“We’re not one for a lot of rules here.” His gaze swept his group. “We do have one, though. No one leaves. No one lies. And no one betrays us. Especially. Not. You.” He paused in front of her, rage mingled with sorrow crossing his face. “I thought we were friends, Quinn.”

“Then let me go!”

“I can’t do that. And I don’t want to.”

“My people will come for me! You don’t want to mess with them. They’ll find me. You won’t get away with this!”

He shot her another disgusted look. “More lies.”

“I think we should do something special with her,” Jett said. “Make an example.”

A rustling of agreement from the crowd surrounding them. Quinn glimpsed eager, hungry faces, smiles like barracudas.

“Like what?” Dahlia asked, like she’d just been promised cake for dinner.

“We’ll think of something.” Xander motioned to Jett. “Get her out of my sight.”

Sutter stepped back, out of the circle closing in tighter and tighter. His face was flat and empty, devoid of emotion. Only his eyes gave away his delight.

Five dozen of Xander’s minions crowded in. Glee in their faces, the fire glittering in their crazed eyes, their pointed knives and spears and axes.

They looked at her like she was something they wanted to eat, something to be savored.

Quinn trembled, sweating, bracing against a shot of liquid fear that made her scalp tingle. Her bowels loosening, her heart a frantic fluttering thing.

Dahlia punched her in the stomach. Pain exploded beneath her ribs and radiated through her entire body.

Rocco kicked her feet out from beneath her. On her other side, Jett dropped her arm and delivered a strike to the back of her head. Dizziness washed over her as she fell to her hands and knees.

Gasping, she attempted to struggle to her feet, but there were too many of them. She got in a few punches, her fist connecting with someone’s nose, crunching cartilage. She yanked a hank of Dahlia’s hair from her scalp. The girl staggered back with a squeal like a pig.

A rain of kicks and punches poured down on her. Two dozen steel-toed boots striking her ribs, her back, her chest.

She kicked and scratched and screamed. Something smashed into her face. Her teeth loosened in their sockets.

More blows knocked her on her back. Her head thudded against concrete and everything went dark and fuzzy. Pain blinded her.

Instinctively, she curled in on herself like a pill bug, attempting to protect her head and neck with her hands, her knees pulled up to her belly.

Through it all, she dimly heard them chanting something as they kicked her. Hit her. Punched her. Destroyed her, breaking her down with every strike, grinding her bones to dust beneath their heels. “Death to power! Death to power! Death to power!”

53

QUINN

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND ONE

Q uinn opened her eyes to excruciating agony.

At first, she had no inkling where or when she was. Her only companion was pain. Pain in every cell, radiating from her bones and muscles, pain flashing red hot behind her aching eyeballs.

And then, slowly, slowly, it came back to her. The warehouse. The bonfire, the brutal beating. Xander and Sutter standing there, watching.

Xander’s gang had knocked her unconscious. She didn’t remember being dragged to this room. She didn’t remember the zip ties scraping against her wrists.

At first, it was pitch black, but gradually, a sliver of dim gray light appeared through the slits in her swollen eyes.

A narrow window high up. Cold tile floor beneath her. Four square walls, a ten-by-ten room. Trash in the corners. A shelf along the back wall stripped of supplies. A storage closet, maybe.

Gingerly, she took stock of her injuries. One eye swollen half-shut, the other puffy and runny. Cheeks scraped raw, her lip split and bleeding in three places.

Her insides were mush, like a sack of potatoes beaten with lead pipes. Though she couldn’t see them, she imagined the bruises blooming across her back, her shoulders, her arms, her thighs, all radiating fiery agony.

And she’d vomited on herself. Her sweater was stiff and clumpy, the sour stench making her eyes water.

When she attempted to move, daggers of pain spiked up her spine. Her ribs were on fire, a few of them likely cracked. Dizziness spun her like laundry in the wash cycle.

With a groan, she curled into a fetal ball on the floor, a rush of despair threatening to overwhelm her.

They were going to kill her. This was a reprieve while they figured out some grand and ostentatious method of displaying her corpse.

The macabre images flashed through her mind. The grisly body hanging from the tree, spinning slowly in the wind. And the man at the marina, his high frantic screams as the mob converged on him.

Xander had been fascinated by her for a moment, a whim, like a child playing with a shiny new toy who discards it the moment something better comes along.

She had failed, and failed utterly.

Whatever game she’d thought she could play, could win, she was the one who’d been played.

Here she was, locked in a room, captured by a gang of crazed deluded sociopaths, awaiting execution—death by sword, by mace, by spear, it didn’t matter.

Maybe Xander’s insane blathering was right.

Nothing mattered.

What was the point of fighting, of struggling? Of days and weeks and months of backbreaking labor, just to put a little food in the hungry knot of your belly, just to survive one more day while everyone you loved either died or betrayed you?

Gramps, beloved grandfather—dead. Octavia, crappy mother—dead. Juniper and Chloe, her responsibilities—dead. And Noah, her friend, her hero…and the man who’d abandoned her, who’d looked her in the eye as he chose the enemy—dead, dead, dead.

All so absurd, futile, and pointless. So, so stupid.

That black void opened beneath her, swallowing her rage, her hatred, threatening to suck her into senseless oblivion.

She could fall.

She was so close, the pain taking her over. Just close your eyes, just give in.

That’s all it would take. Close your eyes.

“Let me out,” she croaked. She licked her lips, her throat dry and cracking, and tasted coppery blood. “Let me out.”

54

THE GENERAL

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND ONE

The General stood and surveyed his domain at the Fort Custer Training Center in Augusta, Michigan, near Battle Creek.

Built in 1917 for military training during World War I, Fort Custer served the Michigan National Guard and the FBI, the Michigan State Police, and various law enforcement agencies.

In the loading bay, men and women in uniform scurried to and fro, engaged in various tasks as they prepared to ship out. Five hundred National Guardsmen. Twenty armored Humvees equipped with .50 caliber M2 Browning machine guns. Crates of RPGs and automatic weapons.

And the crème de la crème—two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters at his beck and call.

Whether it would be enough to demolish Poe’s Syndicate remained to be seen, though there were other local resources he could commandeer for the mission.

In his abject terror of Poe, Governor Duffield had given the General complete mission control. With the authority and manpower of the state government behind him, he was once again in the driver’s seat.

Soon, he’d regain his seat at the table, too—not merely at the state level, but on the national stage.

If America was going to survive, she needed more men and women like him at the helm. Those few souls ruthless enough to get the job done.

“Sir? You requested me.”

The General turned and eyed a seasoned warrior. His name tape read Gibbs. The man wasn’t one of the governor’s men, but one of the General’s.

He’d found he preferred the paramilitary contacts he’d cultivated through the years, soldiers dishonorably discharged for various vulgar offenses. While SEALS and Rangers were more skilled, they tended to stubbornly adhere to outdated ethical codes.

The corrupted and morally bankrupt were the ones the Governor utilized to great effect.

With a smile, he tugged a slip of paper from the pocket of his slacks and handed it to the soldier. “Here are the GPS coordinates. There’s a gang of one hundred untrained nihilists staying in a warehouse district. Eliminate them all.”

The man nodded. “Understood.”

“Depart immediately. We will be a day or two behind you.”

It took time to ready a small army, to prepare logistics and supplies. His paramilitary team would travel quickly and inconspicuously and would arrive at their destination tonight.

Tomorrow, one less threat would face Michigan. And the General would be one step closer to his ultimate goal.

The General intended to ride into the tiny town of Fall Creek, Michigan as a hero, welcomed by all after slaying the threat of the nihilists. Overwhelmed with gratitude, they would take in the General and his army with open arms.

It was a familiar tactic, and one he’d used to masterful effect multiple times.

People were sheep; they seldom understood that they were under attack from multiple fronts and from multiple enemies.

The threat they didn’t see was the most dangerous.

Of course, there was always the chance that he would meet resistance. If they didn’t welcome him inside their gates, well, there was always plan B.

And he needed to ascertain the facts behind the rumor Sutter had told him. If it were true, it interested him. It interested him a great deal.

“Oh, one more thing,” he said.

The soldier stopped and spun toward him, a question in his eyes. “Sir?”

“There is a man named Mattias Sutter with them.”

“Sir?”

“Bring him to me. Alive.”

The General hadn’t yet decided on Sutter’s fate. He’d despised the weaknesses of his younger brother, and Sutter was cut from the same cloth.

Sutter had allowed the General’s daughter to die on his watch.

For that, the General would not forgive him. But as much as he loathed the idea, he needed Sutter. Sutter had valuable, vital intel. He was a necessary element of the plan. For now.

Once the nihilists were eliminated and he’d taken control of Fall Creek, the General would settle his men in Winter Haven as the staging zone for the next phase of his plan—dealing with Poe.

But first, he had another mission.

The General would kill anyone and everyone responsible for his daughter’s death.

55

LIAM

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

Liam was being followed.

He’d sensed it for the last quarter mile or so. He crouched low beside the brick wall, silenced HK45 pistol in hand, taking measured breaths, slowing his pulse and channeling his adrenaline as he waited.

Liam was in downtown St. Joe near the river, several blocks north of the beach. Three and four-story office buildings surrounded him, a few modern facades of glass and steel, many the same brick exteriors from a hundred and fifty years ago.

The city was eerie and still. Traffic lights and streetlamps were dark, no artificial lights anywhere. The smell of something burning reached him, a fetid, plasticky stench that turned his stomach.

Before he’d left Fall Creek, he’d outfitted himself with his M4, extra magazines, his Glock and tactical knife, and a radio, which was out of range.

His chest rig and plates completed the load out—including his night vision goggles, now perched over his eyes, casting the night in a greenish glow.

For the hundredth time, he longed for logistical support for insertion, evacuation, and air support. Once, he would’ve been provided reconnaissance data derived from drones, satellite imagery, and human intelligence.

Instead, he had nothing but his own skill and wits.

He’d completed the first recon loop around the target when he’d detected the interloper.

Vortex was a matrix of buildings that took up a couple of city blocks. From what he could tell, the main building was a long rectangle built of glass and steel that served as the headquarters—offices, conference rooms, and customer service rep cubicles.

On either side were the manufacturing plant and the warehouse for storage and shipment. Both were enormous, multistory steel structures. All three buildings contained dozens of entry and exit points. Once he’d finished his recon, he planned a roof insertion.

But he was being tracked. Maybe hunted.

Still a block from Vortex headquarters, he’d backtracked behind a brick office building and circled his pursuer. Whoever was following him was no skilled operator. He was noisy, hesitant, lacking finesse; he’d given himself away a dozen different ways.

Liam was careful. Still recovering, he couldn’t afford an error. No mistakes. No surprises.

Pushing down the pain in his spine and side, he listened hard, the footsteps drawing further away as the pursuer approached the far side of the building, headed in the direction Liam had been moments ago.

Liam checked for snipers in windows and rooftops, scanning darkened doorways and spaces between buildings. Plenty of jagged windows. Trash piled against curbs and sidewalks.

No human beings in sight. Nothing moving. Everything dead silent but for the slide of footsteps ahead of him. If people were present, they were well hidden.

Blading his body, he edged around the corner, leading with his pistol, and glimpsed a figure about to round the next corner a hundred feet ahead of him.

Male, shaggy blond hair, six-two or six-three, thin and wiry, with an ill-fitting jacket and a familiar camo backpack. He held a tire iron in one hand but otherwise appeared weaponless.

Liam moved soundlessly behind him, stepping from heel to toe, stalking his prey as silent and lethal as a panther.

He prowled to within six feet without the man suspecting a thing. Liam could’ve shot him or slit his throat before his brain had registered Liam’s presence.

He didn’t, though he wanted to. Whether he serviced this particular target depended on the next thirty seconds.

Pistol aimed at the back of the man’s skull, he said, “On your knees!”

The man flinched but dropped to the asphalt, both hands in the air, still clutching the tire iron. “Don’t shoot!”

Scowling, Liam circled around to face him. “Seriously?”

“Oh, hell.” James Luther gazed up with an equal mix of fear and loathing. “Not like I’m happy to see you, either.”

Liam didn’t lower the HK45. “Stand up. Drop the tire iron and show me both hands. Turn in a circle, nice and slow.”

Luther stood, his knees popping. “You took my weapons, remember? I’m unarmed.”

“Don’t think I’m gonna fall for that.” Liam patted him down, pulled a kitchen knife from inside Luther’s belt and a hammer looped to his waist. He tossed them away with a clatter.

“Those don’t count.”

“Why are you following me?”

“I’m not.”

“B.S.”

Luther gave a churlish shrug. “I was watching the facilities. Then you came along.”

“And why the hell are you hanging around Vortex headquarters?”

Luther’s face reddened. “I had nowhere to go.”

“Hannah said we would kill you if you came back. You remember that little detail?”

He blanched, not taking his eyes from the barrel of the gun three feet from his face. “I didn’t come back to Fall Creek! I swear. I’ve been wandering. No destination. No purpose. Forced to hide from thieves, raiders, thugs, gangs. I’m trying to figure out what I’m up against, who my enemies are, how the hell I’m going to survive. I…I didn’t want to stray too far from my father, okay? I couldn’t do it.” His gaze flicked sideways, evasive, maybe a little guilty. “And then I saw her.”

Liam stiffened. “Who?”

“The one who hates me.”

“We all hate you.”

“I’m well aware.” He grimaced. “The girl with the blue hair.”

“Her name is Quinn.”

A couple of rats skittered from an overflowing dumpster and disappeared inside the missing front door of an office.

Liam scanned their surroundings again, ears and eyes peeled for sound or movement, anything out of place. They were in the shadows between three-story buildings, an empty parking lot behind them. “Keep talking.”

“I don’t know why I followed her. A familiar face, I guess. Boredom, maybe. I just ran across her. Chance, happenstance. Few people moving around these days—they draw attention. And then she met up with that crazy gang.” He shrugged again. “I’ve been watching for a few days from a distance with some binoculars I found in an empty house.”

Liam narrowed his eyes. “Convenient, if you ask me.”

Luther met his gaze without blinking. “Believe me or don’t. That’s your problem.”

“Then what the hell do you want?”

“I told you, I’ve been watching them come and go for a few days. I know which doors they use, where they park their trucks and campers. I also know something big went down last night—lots of screaming and shouting. Thought you might want to know that information.”

“I could ascertain the same with a bit of surveillance.”

“Sure, but it’d take you precious time that you don’t have. A trade. That’s all I’m asking, and I’ll tell you what you want to know right now.”

Disgusted, Liam glared at him. “You want back into Winter Haven.”

“I do. I help you save Quinn, you give me my spot back. Let me take care of my father until he dies; then I’m gone forever.”

“The townspeople will kill you.”

“They won’t, because you won’t let them.”

Liam eyed him, restraining his anger. “I could torture you for the intelligence.”

“You won’t. And you don’t have the time.”

“Why not?”

Luther hesitated, working his jaw as if weighing how much information to provide for free. Finally, he relented. “Because we’re not the only ones here.”

Liam stiffened. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“A force of eight men in black armed with assault rifles showed up in armored vehicles. They looked skilled, like pros.”

His veins went ice cold. “When?”

“About fifteen minutes ago. They’re already inside.”

Adrenaline spiked through him. Liam’s mind spun, his brain churning through the possibilities, none of them good.

He needed to act, now. He was about to break a dozen operation rules, as he hadn’t conducted a reconnaissance of the site ahead of time and had no sniper team providing overwatch.

Liam was on his own and against the clock.

“And Coleman,” Luther said. “I’m fairly certain they’re going to kill everyone inside, including Quinn.”

56

QUINN

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

The door opened.

Quinn cracked one swollen eyelid. She lay on the floor in the corner of the room, stiff and cold.

The air was musty, dank, and smelled of coppery blood—hers. The frigid concrete leached the warmth from her bruised, mangled body. It was hard to lift her head.

Bright light blared into her face. With a yelp, she squeezed her eyes shut. It didn’t help. The harsh glare pierced through her closed eyelids straight into her retinas. Red and white stars burst in her brain.

“Stay back!” someone shouted.

A grunt and a curse and the sound of something heavy dragging, then falling to the concrete floor. A thud like a boot connecting with flesh. Someone groaned.

The door shut again. The click of a lock. A clanging noise, like metal against metal.

Then silence.

The light faded behind her eyes.

A shuffling, scraping noise. Low raspy breaths.

Someone was in here. She wasn’t alone.

A harsh laugh rang out. “He has a twisted sense of humor, I’ll give him that.”

Fear torqued through her, overtaking the pain. She knew that voice. Loathed that voice. “Sutter.”

“In the flesh.”

Shifting her weight, she got her leg under her, straining against the floor until she’d leveraged herself onto her butt, pain lancing her ribs.

With a gasp, she leaned against the wall and peered into the gray murk of her cell. The swelling had gone down some; she could see a little better.

A shadowy figure emerged from the darkness.

Not ten feet away, Mattias Sutter sat across from her. His legs were drawn up, his arms resting on his knees, hands zip-tied at the wrists, like hers.

His face was featureless in the shadows, but his eyes glinted in the moonlight like a cat’s eyes, a predator taking in its prey.

He smiled—a flash of sharp white teeth.

Despite herself, Quinn flinched.

Sutter chuckled darkly and waggled his bound hands at her. “You afraid, little girl? You should be. I can kill you with my little finger.”

“Not afraid,” she mumbled between split lips, a fresh dribble of blood leaking between her teeth.

It was a bald-faced lie, and they both knew it. Without a weapon, she was no match for a man like Sutter, who was twice her size and an experienced fighter.

Even with a weapon, it had only ever been a pipe dream.

She realized that now. Her utter stupidity. The absurd senselessness of it all.

Quinn was trapped in a cell with a stone-cold killer. And she’d brought it upon herself.

“Why?” she forced out.

Sutter grunted. “Why am I in here? Good question. Guess your friend Xander got a little paranoid. Decided he couldn’t trust me after all after your accusations against me. He had his goons use me as a punching bag and threw me in here. Maybe he hopes we’ll kill each other. More like he wants to torment you before he kills you.”

He paused, offering another flash of teeth. “Is it working?”

Quinn struggled to get her brain to work, to process his words. Her palms were damp, mouth dry. Hot panic pounded in her chest, roaring in her ears. “I’m going to kill you.”

“Go ahead.”

“You deserve to die a thousand deaths. Torture by a thousand cuts.”

He snorted. “I’d like to see you try. Maybe it’ll provide an evening of entertainment.”

“Screw you.”

“It wasn’t personal, little girl. It was a job. Rosamond brought me in to get your town under control, and we did it. If you’d just fallen into line, none of this would’ve happened.”

She spat blood out the side of her mouth and licked her lips. “Stop talking.”

“I have nothing against you. Truthfully, I even found it amusing when you joined up with us, like you were some superspy going to infiltrate a terrorist group and bring it down.”

“Xander’s going to kill you, too. It’s what they do.”

“He thinks he will, but he won’t get the chance.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“You’re in over your head. You have no idea what’s going on.”

“I know you’re stuck in here just like me, so I’d say the joke’s on you.”

He chuckled, an ugly raw sound like nails on a chalkboard. “They won’t kill me. Not yet. Besides, Xander Thorne and his deluded little gang of psychos won’t last the week.”

She imagined scratching his eyes out with her fingernails. Cutting off his tongue. Stabbing the solid mass of his chest until there wasn’t an ounce of lifeblood left inside him.

“Whatever. You going to kill them all from in here? With your hands tied and no weapons? Good luck with that.”

That sharp smile again. “You think Xander’s band of crazies are the only threat? You have no idea what’s coming. Not a freaking clue. It’s almost funny, how stupid and deluded you are.”

She lifted her head from the wall. A low buzz started deep in her chest, like a warning. She didn’t want to listen to him, hated his words drilling into her eardrums, sinking their claws inside her, foul and toxic.

“Rosamond called someone before she died.”

“So what?”

“You ever hear about the General? No? You wouldn’t have, I suppose. He’s an incredibly powerful man, but he does his best work behind the scenes, in the shadows. He wants something done, he gets it done. Rumor has it he’s got a proper army behind him now, too. He isn’t someone you’d want to cross.”

“I don’t care about some stupid general.”

“You should.”

She took the bait. “Why?”

“Even Rosamond feared him. So did I, when I was a kid. She hated him. Frankly, I was surprised to discover she’d contacted him. I guess she knew something I didn’t.”

He laughed again. Darkly, bitterly. “Everyone’s willing to make a deal with the devil, if they want what he offers badly enough.”

A trickle of icy dread slicked her spine. “Not everyone.”

“We shall see, won’t we?”

“Who is this guy, if he’s so important?”

After a beat of silence, Sutter said, “The General. He’s Rosamond’s father.”

57

QUINN

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

Q uinn gaped at Sutter, stunned.

“They were estranged, but that doesn’t matter so much when one of them is dead, does it?” Sutter asked.

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.

“He knows about all of you. He knows what happened in Fall Creek, how you people turned on Rosamond, murdered her in cold blood. I told the General everything. All about your super-soldier hero, Coleman, and that whore who killed Gavin Pike, his grandson. Not to mention Julian Sinclair’s untimely demise.

“The General’s entire surviving family murdered in Fall Creek. How do you think he feels about that? What do you think he’s going to do when he comes? And he’s coming. He’s coming with his entire army.”

For a long moment, she sat frozen as the terrible revelation sank in. Rosamond Sinclair’s father coming for revenge, coming for Fall Creek.

“It’s over. The game’s already finished; your people just don’t know it yet. He’ll slaughter them all.”

“No.” Horror filled her. Hannah and Liam. Milo. Charlotte and L.J. Bishop. GRAN. “No, no, no!”

“When he comes, he’ll send his men to collect me. I just gotta wait a few days. And when the General arrives in Fall Creek, I’ll be right by his side. I’ll get to watch it. And I’ll tell you, it’s going to feel damn incredible.”

He paused, gloating, relishing every word, knowing how they were shattering her into pieces. “In fact, I think I’ll perform the executions myself. It will be particularly satisfying to see Liam Coleman on his knees. To hear Sheridan’s wife begging for mercy.”

He leaned forward, the whites of his eyes glinting. “Right in front of the courthouse. Just like before. I’m sure you remember.”

Her mother’s dead body flashed in her mind’s eye. Of course, she remembered.

Quinn’s entire body ran hot, then cold. Pressure built in her chest, behind her eyes.

Everyone she loved. Everything she cared about. They had no idea what was coming, the rain of fire about to descend upon their heads.

They wouldn’t be ready for it—not unless someone warned them.

The cold realization sank into her bones. There was no one else. No heroic knight or superhero riding to the rescue at the last moment.

Quinn was the only thing standing between Fall Creek and utter devastation. But she was locked in a cell with the man she’d come here to kill.

No, not a cell. Not a prison. A room. A supply closet in an enormous warehouse.

There had to be a way to escape.

She’d been stupendously foolish and made a hell of a mistake. Got the snot kicked out of her for it, too. But she wasn’t dead yet.

Either she got the hell out of here and warned her people, or everyone she loved died.

No other option. No way out but through.

Whatever you do, keep your head. Liam’s voice echoed in her mind. She forced herself to focus, clearing the cobwebs from her thoughts. Time to stop feeling sorry for herself and get to work.

Determination filled her, galvanizing her. Clenching her teeth, Quinn lifted her left leg, then her right. Cautiously, she stretched, testing her limbs, her battered body.

She rolled her ankles. Needles of pain spread up her shin. Her left leg might be sprained, but nothing appeared broken.

“What are you doing?” Sutter said.

She ignored him. Shut him out. Shut out the pain.

It was a hell of a lot harder than it looked.

With a grunt, she pushed herself to her hands and knees and paused, panting, sucking in the musty air, adjusting to the fresh eruption of pain.

Put it in a box. That’s what Liam had said. He would know. If he could do it, then it was possible. If it was possible, she could do it. Would do it. Put it in a box.

Using the wall as support, she managed to stand.

Quinn hobbled to the door and tested it. Hands still bound, the plastic digging into her wrists, she yanked the doorhandle with all her might, her bruised biceps aching in protest.

The lock wasn’t just a simple lock. It was a sturdy deadbolt.

She took a step back, swaying on her feet, and forced herself to think. What could she do? What could she use? After a second, she patted herself down.

She still wore her coat, sweater, and undershirt, jeans with a leather belt, combat boots laced with paracord. Her Beretta, slingshot, and the karambit had been confiscated, Xander taking the curved blade for himself.

She was weaponless. Defenseless.

No, not completely. Her fingers skimmed the small hard case tucked into her coat pocket. Whoever had frisked her hadn’t bothered with it.

After all, what harm could a pair of sunglasses cause? What harm indeed.

For the first time, a spark of hope flared in her chest.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sutter asked behind her. “There’s nowhere for you to go. Nothing you can do.”

Quinn smiled in the dark. “Watch me.”

58

QUINN

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

Q uinn twisted the multi-tool and removed the last of the hinge screws.

Stepping back, she thrust the tool into her pocket and seized the door handle. Her ribs screamed in protest as she shoved the door to the side and leaned it against the wall.

A pitch-black hallway beckoned.

“Holy hell,” Sutter breathed.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Gunfire sounded in the distance. Muffled screams and shouts barely reached them.

Quinn flinched. “What was that?”

“Sounds like an internal spat. Or maybe a gang turf war. Either way, it’s an opportunity.”

She didn’t need Sutter to tell her that. Her heart hammered against her ribs, adrenaline spiking her pulse. It masked some of the pain.

She’d used the small folding knife to cut the zip ties binding her wrists. Now she held it in both hands, staring at the blade glinting in the moonlight. A four-inch blade.

Not much, but still a weapon.

Slowly, she turned toward Sutter.

He looked from the knife to her face and back again. “Hey now. What are you doing?”

“What I promised. I’m going to kill you.”

A flicker of doubt entered his voice. “You don’t want to do that. You can’t do that.”

“I can and I will.”

More gunshots blasted. Closer this time. The rat-a-tat of automatic fire. Screams shredded the night.

Quinn pushed away the pain, the panic, the fear. Her heart slipped into coldness, into blackness.

He was right here. Sutter was right in front of her, waiting for her like a trussed turkey.

This was her chance to make things right. To turn this little topsy-turvy part of her world right-side up again. To fix whatever was wrong with her, once and for all.

“I’m unarmed!” Sutter raised his bound hands in front of his chest. “I’m a prisoner!”

She gripped the knife and took a step toward him. Darkness breathed down the back of her neck. The roar in her ears like a terrible howling thing, a fury filling up all the spaces inside her head, drumming in her veins, in her blood.

Sutter rose to his feet—slow, with jerky movements, like they’d hurt him, too—and scooted back against the wall, away from her.

Like he realized she might be a threat. Like he feared her.

“You don’t want to do this.”

“I do.”

“If you kill me now, it’s murder!”

“I don’t care.”

“You’ll be a murderer!”

“I already am.”

“What about your friends?” he snarled. “You think I’m going down quick or easy, even beaten and bound? Even if you murder me, how much will it take from you? I get one good shot in, you’re done. And you know it.”

That reached her. She hesitated, looked at the tiny knife in her hand, at him, back at the knife. Her insides black and trembling.

“Maybe you do manage to kill me. But I’m taking you with me. You’ll die, too.”

“I don’t care,” she whispered, but it was a lie.

“What happens to your people then?”

As much as she hated it, hated him, he was right. The people she loved most in the world were in danger.

Love won.

With a growl, she spun away from him and hobbled toward the opened door.

“It’s dark,” he said from behind her. “This place is a maze. This building alone is two hundred thousand square feet. You have any idea where you’re going? How to get out of here?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“In the middle of a gunfight? A killer around every corner? You need me to get out. There’s a hundred of them, one of you. You need me.”

Acid clawed at the back of her throat. “I don’t need you. You’re a killer!”

“To get out of here, you’re going to need to kill.”

Panic surged through her anger. She spun, her ribs white-hot fire, and pointed the knife at him. “Don’t tell me what to do!”

“Look, I’m not a psychopath. I’m not like Pike or this Xander Thorne hooligan, those crazies out there. I only kill when it’s in my best interest.”

Wrists zip-tied, he splayed his hands, palms out in a conciliatory gesture. “Right now, it’s in both of our best interests to work together.”

“When hell freezes over.”

“For instance, I know there are two armed guards stationed at the end of the corridor. Did you know that? Or would you have walked right into that trap?”

She hesitated for a fraction of a second, doubt gaining a foothold. She was hurting, scared, disoriented, with a cracked rib and concussion to boot.

Unarmed but for a flimsy little knife.

Which you know how to use, Liam’s voice whispered in her head.

No way in hell was she joining forces with Sutter. He’d strangle her without a second thought. Smash her skull against the wall or floor. One punch to her chest would stop her heart.

And yet. A hundred armed, crazy thugs also wanted her dead. She was trapped inside a humongous warren-like complex she had no idea how to escape.

The odds were not in her favor.

Muffled screams echoed. More gunfire sounded, closer this time. Boom! Boom! Boom!

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Sutter said, a shadowy shape in the darkness.

“From the bottom of my heart, go to hell.”

She needed to run, to take her chances and hope—

Through the din outside their cramped room, the sound of approaching footsteps pounded the floor. Two people at least, running straight toward them.

Quinn froze.

“They’re coming,” Sutter hissed, pushing himself off the wall. “They’re coming to kill us.”

“I thought you said they wouldn’t hurt you—”

“I was wrong!” A thread of panic in his voice. Real fear. “They’re going to kill us both right now. Are you in or not?”

She was out of options. Time running out. Her window of opportunity rapidly closing.

The words were like glass shards in her mouth. “I’m in.”

59

QUINN

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

Q uinn pressed her spine against the cinder block wall beside the opened doorway, her body tucked into the sliver of space between the wall and the unhinged door she’d hidden behind.

Though she couldn’t see him, she knew Sutter was a hulking black shape crouched on the other side. Even with his hands bound, he made a formidable opponent.

It was simultaneously terrifying and reassuring. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the absurdity—and utter foolishness—of it. There was no time, anyway.

Gunfire blasted the night. Shouts and screaming. She strained her ears for the oncoming footsteps, timing her move as the two guards entered the room.

“What the—?” one of them said, startled by the lack of a door to unlock.

Quinn launched off the wall and lunged, shoving into the door with every ounce of her weight. It smashed into the two figures, knocking them sideways, right into Sutter.

With a crash, the door fell backward. The first guard staggered beneath it and landed on his back. An object went skittering across the floor—a hatchet.

Sutter seized the second guard by the throat with his bound hands and hurled him into the wall. A wet thud followed the scuffling sounds of a swift violent struggle.

Seconds later, the thug was on the floor, unmoving.

The first guard tried to maneuver his rifle into position to get a shot off, but Quinn was faster. She fell on top of him, knife in hand.

He blocked her with the gun held sideways across his chest, shoving her back. A blur of hands and feet in the dark, elbows and fists, clawing at flesh, at hair, striking at anything she could reach.

An opening appeared and she sank the knife into his belly.

A shriek of agony. Not hers. That’s what mattered. Not hers.

She ripped the knife out, fingers slick, everything turning slippery, and stabbed again and again. Frantic hot tears stinging her eyes, the blade slicing her fingers but she didn’t feel it.

The human being beneath her went limp.

Shaken, she staggered to her feet, breathing hard, hands dripping with blood black like oil. Her stomach roiled.

She never saw his face. Didn’t know who he was, who she’d just murdered.

“Nice kill.” Sutter squatted over the second body, scavenging it for weapons, his movement awkward with his wrists zip-tied. “You’re vicious. You need to be.”

“I hope you choke on your own entrails.”

He grunted. “Get the gun. Search for extra magazines.”

With a shudder, she wiped her hands on her pants and gingerly skimmed the body—a female—with her fingers, searching for something useful while trying not to retch.

She squinted at the corpse’s face in the shadows, making out a pair of pigtails and delicate features twisted in an agonized grimace.

Dahlia. Dahlia had volunteered to march in here and put a bullet through Quinn’s skull. For no reason other than spite.

Her chest went tight, her guts turning watery. No time for that. No time for anything but getting the hell out.

She retrieved the rifle, stuffed a spare magazine in her coat pocket and ejected the magazine to find it fully loaded.

It was an AR-15, the same rifle she’d used to make her first kill the night of the battle with the militia. The night she’d killed Rosamond and Sutter had gotten away.

Biting her tongue so hard she drew blood, she rose to her feet.

“Do you mind?” Sutter said.

She stared at the shadow of him in the dark, caught a quick flash of teeth. He thrust out his arms. “The zip ties.”

“No freaking way.”

“We don’t have time!” he snarled. “Taking that guy by surprise was one thing. I can’t fight like this, can’t shoot. You want to live or die? Make the choice, girl!”

Live. She wanted desperately to live.

For a long tense moment, they stared at each other. Enemies. Nothing but enmity and hatred and cold calculation between them.

She wanted to eviscerate him with a rusty spoon. He wanted to kill her, too. She saw the flicker behind his eyes. The hungry look of a predator examining his prey.

Every cell in her body screamed at her to stab him while she still could. The instant she dropped her guard, she was done for.

Truth was, he needed her to get out of here, just like she needed him. Two were better than one, especially armed with AR-15s.

He was ruthless, but he wasn’t insane. He wanted to live, too.

Which meant he wouldn’t kill her while he needed her.

The second that reality no longer held, she was dead.

Unless she got to him first.

“Deal?” he asked again, a smirk in his voice, like he knew what she was thinking, and why.

With a sinking sensation, she leaned in, sliced the plastic zip tie from his wrists, and scooted back out of his reach, her heart about to jump out of her skin.

Sutter bent over the body at his feet and came up with a rifle and an extra magazine. Cursing, he kicked the mace out of his way.

The second assassin had been Jett, then. Jett used the mace.

The crackle of gunfire outside sounded louder, closer, exploding like fireworks.

Sutter paused at the doorway. “I take right, you take left. I go high, you go low. Follow me, watch my back, shoot anything that moves. You do that, and you get out of here alive.”

Quinn nodded mutely.

They ran headlong into the hornets’ nest.

60

QUINN

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

Down the long narrow hallway, footsteps pounding, Quinn’s pulse a roar in her ears, the adrenaline surge the only thing keeping her upright, dulling the pain, pushing her through.

Get out, get out, get out.

Quinn and Sutter reached the end of the hallway. Muzzle flashes strobed the darkness, flashlight beams flailing. Tipped lanterns threw writhing shadows upon the walls.

Ahead of them loomed row upon row of kitchen appliances wrapped in plastic, stacked on towering pallets. Sleek stainless-steel refrigerators to her right, stoves and ranges ahead, washers and dryers to the left.

Among the maze of appliances, dozens of fighters engaged in a vicious shootout. Bodies lay in the aisles. She couldn’t tell who was fighting whom.

Sutter jutted around the corner and fired a shot. A maelstrom of return fire strafed the corridor all around them.

Ten yards to their left, several thugs turned toward them. Fighting panic, Quinn fired blindly as she darted back behind the cover of the hallway wall.

Sutter brought the rifle around with a precise sweep and fired into three of Xander’s men huddled beside a pallet of wrapped microwaves.

With deafening booms, the rounds tore into their bodies. They dropped like stones.

Sutter laid down cover fire and motioned for her to run to the right, toward a long row of refrigerators. On the opposite side, far down the wall, an abandoned flashlight on the floor highlighted a pair of double doors.

Heart in her throat, she staggered across the expanse of the warehouse, legs pumping through the pain, gun up and shifting back and forth, searching for the next threat to pop out of the shadows and pounce.

Bullet holes peppered the walls. A haze of smoke permeated the air, the dimness thickening like fog. A metallic, sulfuric taste bit at the back of her throat.

At the far end of the warehouse, maybe forty yards away, several dark figures prowled in the shadows.

They wore black fatigues, outfitted in combat gear with helmets configured with night vision goggles. Their high-tech weapons glinted wickedly.

They moved like professionals, real soldiers or close enough. They blended into the darkness like ghosts.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Rounds strafed the metal shelving above her head.

Quinn dove and took cover behind a matte black refrigerator, pain jarring through her, a round pinging off the surface inches from her left leg.

One of Xander’s guys near the dishwashers was caught on open ground. He swung his weapon toward Quinn. Before she could react, he popped off two shots. Both went wide.

Several yards behind her, Sutter fired twice. He didn’t miss.

A second thug huddled behind an extravagant range the size of a steam engine, popping shots at Sutter, who crouched across the aisle. The muzzle of an AR peeked over the top of the range.

Quinn knelt, peeked around the edge of the fridge, and squeezed off three shots. None of them landed near their target. Her hands were shaking.

Damn it! She tucked the stock into the small of her shoulder, pressed her cheek down, and steadied herself. She aimed with care, exhaled, and squeezed.

This time, the top of the range sparked as a round struck inches from the guy’s face; he and the gun disappeared.

She kept her sights locked on the range as Sutter broke cover and ran across open concrete to reach her aisle. He dove next to her as the thug’s head popped up again.

This time she was prepared and took him out.

“Go! Go! Go!” Sutter grabbed her arm and dragged her to her feet.

He pointed for the door, shoving her in the back, and they were up and running. Sutter swung right, Quinn to the left.

She zigzagged through aisle after aisle, crouching to stay low. Going too slow, much too slow. Gunshots and shouting behind her, ahead of her, on all sides.

The inside of her head felt like a struck bell, a ringing reverberating through her bones. Her skull thick, stuffed with rags.

A muzzle flash to her left. She spun and fired, not knowing whether she had hit anything, too terrified to slow even further. Spent cartridges dropped and rolled at her feet.

The men in black appeared and disappeared like wraiths. A muzzle flash and a thug went down. Another muzzle flash and a shriek of agony rang out.

She didn’t know who they were, but they were skilled and dangerous. Far worse than Xander’s misfit group. Better to avoid them altogether.

They reached the metal doors. Sutter yanked them open. They plowed through, Quinn hot on his heels.

Ahead of them, an empty corridor ran the length of the entire building, with several hallways branching off either side.

Sutter sprinted right. She had no choice but to follow him, racing through an office complex. The fetid reek of ammonia—urine—slapped her in the face.

She hobbled down the hall, boots smacking carpet as she passed several glassed-in corner offices, the glass shattered, furniture hacked to pieces.

And then more open spaces crowded with cubicles, laptops, mugs, folders, pens, and picture frames strewn across the carpet.

“Change your magazine,” Sutter hissed, already doing a tactical reload as he jogged ahead of her.

She wasn’t as skilled and had to stop, heart hammering, fingers clumsy as she traded out the spent magazine for the new one.

She kept glancing toward Sutter, distracted, dread a lead balloon in her stomach.

They’d be out of the labyrinth soon.

He’d turn on her any second now. And she didn’t have a plan.

61

QUINN

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

On the move again, Quinn shuffled past an elevator alcove. Then they were through another door, pounding down a set of stairs, exiting into open air.

Moonlight highlighted a brick walkway lined with trees, smaller office buildings to her left and the manufacturing plant looming in front of them.

Sutter turned left, toward a huge parking lot area at the end of the walkway.

Relief shot through her. Were they out? Had they made it—

A barrage of gunfire rang out. Rounds blasted chunks from the wall behind them.

Sutter whirled and returned fire. From the parking lot, two dark shapes collapsed and didn’t get up.

More shots sounded. Figures crouched behind parked cars, the glint of weapons rounding the corner of the building.

Panic twisted her guts. They weren’t clear. Not yet.

“This way!” Sutter gestured toward a side door to the manufacturing plant only a few yards away.

She tightened her grip on the rifle, hands still sticky from Dahlia’s blood, and fired a few times to cover Sutter as he yanked open the side door. They darted inside into pitch blackness.

No light. No windows. Just a sense of enormity, a yawning vastness, a ceiling soaring high above her and walls so distant she had the sensation she was balanced on the brink of a cliff, about to fall.

Gunshots exploded. Jagged flashes of muzzle fire. Smoke drifted, the smell of gunpowder sharp in her nose, spent cartridges flying.

There were no faces. She couldn’t see the enemy, couldn’t see anything at all.

She nearly shot at the muzzle flashes, but to fire would reveal her own position. Quinn ran.

She fled into the blackness, weapon in front of her, sweeping back and forth, praying she wouldn’t run smack into the enemy, either Xander’s thugs or the dangerous soldiers in black.

Instead, she smashed into something cold and hard. Pain burst bright behind her eyes, radiating through her bruised and battered body.

Stumbling back, she realized she’d run straight into a mammoth support column.

In the strobes of muzzle fire, she glimpsed large looming objects—huge mechanical contraptions with metal pieces jutting like octopus arms, like giant robots frozen in place.

In the dark, the manufacturing plant was like a garish haunted house, a death maze of machines.

Terror gripped her. She longed to retreat to the light, though that meant more men with guns.

The only way was forward.

Ducking, half-bent, she staggered deeper into the building, slower now, mindful of all the ways she could run headlong into death.

A muzzle flash lit up feet away from her. Adrenaline surging, she skittered sideways and smacked into something large and metallic.

A second flare and a massive machine vaguely shaped like a dragon towered above her, a mechanical beast poised to strike.

With a shudder, she spun away and kept going. Hoped she was headed the right direction and not about to blunder into the barrel of an enemy’s AK-47.

She couldn’t see Sutter. Didn’t know where he was or what he was doing.

That terrified her more than anything else.

It felt like a horrific game of musical chairs, round and round, a death match the moment the music stopped.

Only she couldn’t see the chairs or hear the music.

“There!” Sutter shouted to her left.

In the next flash, she saw it. A door.

Nearly tripping twice, she smashed into another hard pointy machine before shuffling away and fumbling blindly along the wall for the door with her free hand, her bicep burning from her awkward grip on the AR.

Another corridor, this one dimly lit on one end from a window somewhere she couldn’t see. Bundles of pipes ran along the ceiling. Sutter’s presence like a monster lurking at her exposed back.

Nothing she could do about it, just keep running. Her ribs on fire, lungs burning. Her ears tinny and ringing. Keep running.

Finally, they burst out of a back door into an alley between buildings.

Sutter slammed the door shut. The sound of gunfire faded.

Breathing hard, they backed into the shadows behind an overflowing dumpster. Her boots splashed into rain puddles, the air chilly and damp. The stench of wet garbage burned her nostrils.

On high alert, her nerves thrumming, her eyes swept to either side of the alley, peering at the shadowed corners, probing the darkness.

Nothing moved. No one leapt out to accost them.

“Don’t take your eyes off that door,” Sutter ordered, moving toward the dumpster. “I’ll clear the alley.”

A sensation more than anything else. She felt it—a sudden drop in the temperature, a coolness at the back of her neck.

A whispery feeling, like a ghost walking over her grave.

And she knew.

62

QUINN

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

The tables were turning, the net snapping shut.

The hunter about to be hunted.

Sutter was out of her line of sight, checking the opposite side of the dumpster to clear the area. Every hair on Quinn’s body stood on end.

He was still the prey—as long as she acted first.

She stiffened, pulse jumping, tightening her grip on the AR-15 to swing it toward him, to kill him and get the hell out—

Suddenly he was there, appearing from the opposite side of the dumpster, lunging toward her. Five yards away, rifle lifting, aimed at her chest.

Instinct took over. She dropped to the ground.

Boom! A bullet punched over her head, close enough to stir the fine hairs on her scalp.

Boom! Cement shrapnel burst inches from her face. Shards pierced her cheek and forehead, stinging like fire.

She rolled onto her back, gravel jabbing her spine as she twisted around, fumbling with the trigger. Time slowed.

She fired back. Missed.

Sweat and tears in her eyes. Her heart a frantic flapping thing.

She fired again.

He kept coming.

Terror lanced through her. Her thoughts stuttered, everything jerky and slow motion.

She scrambled backward on her elbows, sloshing through muddy puddles and moldy trash, then hit the wall. She squeezed the trigger once, twice.

His body jerked. She’d nicked his shoulder. He plowed forward like he didn’t even feel it.

She fired again. The click of the slide locked back.

Empty. Out of ammo. Done for.

The barrel of his gun filled her vision.

Ten feet away, Sutter halted. He loomed over her, menacing and deadly. An invincible giant carved out of granite.

Her heart stopped.

He squeezed the trigger. Click.

“Guess we’re both out.” He tossed the rifle away and gave her a pitiless smile. “I’d hoped to take you by surprise. Less painful for you. Guess we’re doing it the hard way.”

She dropped the useless gun and withdrew her folding knife from her mud-splattered coat, flicked it open. “Like you care how much pain you cause.”

Using the wall for support, she scrambled to her feet, crouched and panting, teeth peeled back like a cornered animal.

“Put that little knife away, and I promise I’ll make it quick.”

Her heart pumped so fast her temples throbbed. Sweat slicked her forehead, her palms clammy.

Pure terror had a taste, coppery and cloying, like you could choke on it.

“No? Then I’ll be forced to use this.” Beneath his coat, he withdrew a familiar curved blade. “Recognize it? I got it off a mutual friend of ours.”

She stared at the karambit. She hadn’t seen Sutter kill Xander. Hadn’t seen the boy’s body. In the dark and the chaos, she’d missed it.

She felt no elation at Xander’s death. No sorrow, either. Only a cold emptiness expanding within her ribs—a low pulsing dread.

“Thought it would be apt,” Sutter continued. “This was Sebastian Desoto’s blade. Didn’t he try to gut you with it?”

“Liam stabbed him through the throat. Pinned him like a butterfly.”

Sutter scowled. “Too bad Coleman isn’t here to save you now, isn’t it? Guess Superman can’t be everywhere at once.”

A surge of nausea made her dizzy. Her legs shaking and rubbery. She didn’t know how long she could last. “I’ll kill you myself.”

He lumbered toward her, his free hand pressed to his left shoulder. It came away red. “You actually shot me, you little—”

She didn’t hear the rest, the tinny ringing in her ears loud as a freight train.

“I changed my mind.” Sutter’s mouth contorted into a sneer, an obscene grimace in the watery moonlight. “No mercy for you.”

“That goes both ways, jerkface.”

“Did you know a karambit’s hooked blade is designed like a raptor claw? It’s made for ripping, slicing, and tearing. I’m going to use it to disembowel you. I’m going to spill your guts on the ground and let you watch.”

The short curved blade sliced in back-and-forth X’s. He took his time, advancing slowly, letting that curved blade do the work of instilling terror, panic reducing her to a quivering puddle of despair.

Fleeing was no longer an option. She could barely walk, let alone run. He would hunt her down within twenty yards.

Neither was fighting. Sutter was quick on his feet and outweighed her by a hundred and fifty pounds.

One swipe of that blade, and it was lights out, forever.

Never underestimate the element of surprise.

A wave of fire shot through her ribs. Weakness washed over her, sucking the strength from her limbs. Her back pressed against the wall.

Your action beats his reaction. Every single time.

If she died here, Sutter would win. He would use the General to enact his revenge on the people she loved. That. Could. Not. Happen.

The only way to win is to commit to violence of action, and commit fully.

Outrage kindled a flame somewhere deep inside her, a desperate energy. It drove her to her feet, drove her onward. Just a little more. Just a little longer.

With all her coiled strength, with every ounce of courage she had left, she planted her feet, crouched low, and sprang at Sutter.

Sutter’s synapses couldn’t respond to the new stimulus swiftly enough. His arm was still finishing a wide high arc meant to intimidate and terrify, not attack.

She plunged in below his strike zone. Slashed hard at his upper thigh beneath the groin. A short, savage stroke. Vicious, all her strength and will and fury behind it.

Growling, screaming, crying, her mouth open though she couldn’t hear herself, couldn’t think but for blinding desperation. Hands wet with blood, his and her own, fingers like claws clutching the slippery handle. Again. Again. Again.

It happened so fast, Sutter’s brain still processing the fact that his prey was no longer cowering before he realized she’d stabbed him—and more than once.

With a startled grunt, he faltered. He tried to lunge for her, but her momentum had carried her past him, beneath the swing of his arm.

Then she was behind him, whirling to stab the back of his knee. Ripping through his pant leg into his popliteal artery, relentlessly slashing with that little knife.

Again, he lurched at her, attempting to twist around.

She rolled out of the way, her shoulders striking the pavement. Mud splashed her face. Gravel in her hair, her mouth.

Sutter hacked at her, the curved blade slicing empty air.

She scrambled to her hands and knees, retreating, scrabbling across concrete, damp weeds, and soggy trash, her palms stinging.

She hit the side of the dumpster. Backed against the wall. No escape.

Looming over her, he raised the karambit again. But only halfway. His entire arm quivered. He wobbled on his feet, sagging like a puppet with its strings cut.

Abruptly, his right leg gave out on him.

With a tremendous groan, Sutter dropped to his knees. Dark red liquid spurted from multiple slash and puncture wounds.

A stunned look crossed his granite slab of a face. He’d miscalculated. He’d cornered an animal meaner and more dangerous than he was.

Quinn rose. Hobbling, swaying and dizzy, she circled behind him just out of his reach. Her hair plastered to her scalp, blood oozing from her split lip, the cuts on her hands. Her jaw swollen, ribs bruised, but she was up. She was on her feet.

“Don’t do this!” he gasped. “You don’t have to—”

Quinn bared her teeth. And drove her blade into the back of Sutter’s neck.

63

QUINN

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

The adrenaline dump hit her like a semi-truck.

Quinn collapsed to her knees, the world coming back to her in fits and starts. The night cloaked in darkness, the moon a veiled glow behind the shroud of clouds.

The rusted dumpster in front of her, the stench of rancid trash strong in her nostrils, the brick walls of the buildings closing in on either side.

The crackle of gunfire had slowed. Only sporadic shots boomed here and there, like pops of firecrackers.

Her palms throbbed. She’d cut herself. She didn’t know how bad it was, and she was too exhausted to check.

With trembling fingers, she closed the bloody folding knife and got it into her pocket without dropping it.

Kneeling over Sutter’s corpse, she fumbled for the curved blade in his slack hand. How much smaller he seemed, diminished. The body seemed to collapse in on itself in death.

She curled her thumb through the safety ring. “This is mine, you ugly jerkface.”

The man who’d executed her mother was good and dead. Deader than dead.

It didn’t feel like it was supposed to.

There was no sense of victory, no gloating, no satisfaction. Only a hollow ringing in her chest. An empty finality.

It was done. It was finished.

Climbing to her feet was a towering act of willpower.

Her hands hung at her sides, the karambit dangling from limp, blood-slicked fingers. Her ragged breath felt torn from her lungs. Her ribs on fire, every bruise pulsing its own brand of pain.

More gunshots. From the south. Heading closer—

She never heard the threat coming.

A shadow dropped over her from behind.

Before she could react, powerful arms enfolded her in a viselike grip and struck the knife from her hand. It went spinning into the dark.

She struggled, writhing and flailing, summoning everything she had, but it was gone. She was utterly spent. Finished. Her battered body had nothing left.

Quinn was caught like a fly in a spider’s web.

She was dead. She knew she was dead.

Still, she fought. Screaming, clawing, and scratching with her bloodied fingers.

A firm hand covered her mouth. Then a voice hissed in her ear, “For Pete’s sake, stop trying to kick me in the balls! It’s me. It’s Liam!”

64

LIAM

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

Liam glanced in awe at the body at Quinn’s feet. Sutter was dead.

Damn, but that girl was something else. She’d managed to take out a man twice her size and far more experienced, and lived to tell the tale.

Gunshots exploded in the distance.

He’d praise her later. Right now, they were still in the lion’s den, surrounded by ravenous predators.

By his count, at least four or five of the paramilitary hostiles remained at large. He could sense them, prowling like wolves just outside his line of sight, circling, circling.

They’d scented blood and were closing in.

Quinn stared at him blankly, the whites of her eyes enormous. Her arms cradled her ribs, like she feared moving too fast in case she shattered. She just might.

Liam picked her up, scooping her into his arms like a child. She smacked weakly at his chest, leaving smears of blood across his chest rig. “Put me down.”

“You’re hurt.”

“What was your first clue, Sherlock?” She grimaced at him, her teeth streaked with blood. “Put me down.”

At least she’d kept her snark. That boded well for her odds of survival. “How do you feel?”

“About how I look.”

She looked like hell. Even in the darkness, he could see her face was bruised purple and black. Her clothes were ripped, muddy, and stained with blood splatters. And her palms were sliced and bleeding profusely.

Her nose might be broken, and someone had torn out her lip ring; he decided now was not a good time to mention that fact.

It was the injuries he couldn’t see that worried him.

“You look fine,” he lied.

She snorted, then winced. “Save your flattery for Hannah.” She turned her head and spat a glob of phlegm and blood. “Put me down.”

“You’re in no condition to walk.”

“You’re gonna carry me through a hailstorm of bullets without shooting back? Heroes only get away with that in the movies. I didn’t come this far to die tragically in your arms, Wolverine.”

His chest constricted at the use of the nickname. How could he argue with that? “Okay.”

“I can walk. I can do it.”

He set her down gently between the dumpster and the wall to shield them both from potential incoming fire and retrieved his IFAK, his individual first aid kit, from his chest rig.

“We need to go,” she said, shivering. “They’ll come back. They’ll find us.”

“You’re bleeding. Wrap this around your hands, then we go.” He handed her two Quik Clot blood-clotting bandages and flipped down his NVGs, examining their surroundings while she took care of business.

The gun battle was raging, though the rat-a-tat became more sporadic as the fighters in the game dwindled. Cold fog drifted between the buildings, obscuring anything past a hundred feet. At least he had his night vision.

He’d have to figure out another exit route. He’d planned to exfiltrate the way he’d come in, infiltrating through an access hatch in the warehouse roof after taking out the perimeter guards.

There were no snipers on the roof with night vision, so he’d taken the high ground and worked his way down, eliminating targets as he went.

It was like being dropped into the bowels of a great ship. He’d had a hell of a time locating her, despite Luther’s recon advice. In this case, the flawed intelligence wasn’t his fault. Quinn had escaped her captors and done most of the hard part herself.

In his search, Liam had come across two of the paramilitary soldiers. Trained, they were more difficult to dispatch, but he’d managed. They hadn’t expected to deal with ex-special forces on their little night raid.

The roof was the safest and easiest route back to the stashed ATV, but one look at Quinn told him she wasn’t going to be scaling drainpipes anytime soon.

They’d have to fight their way out.

A shuffling sound as Quinn moved, and then she was beside him, fumbling with her sweater and coat as she hooked the karambit blade to her belt.

She reached out a bandaged hand. “I need a gun.”

“Just focus on staying with me—”

“I can help!” She raised her chin defiantly, glaring at him through the slits of her swollen eyes. “Let me help.”

Here she was, beaten, half-dead, still too reckless and stubborn for her own good. Also, not entirely wrong.

He would need to help her walk, though. She was swaying on her feet.

Liam did a tactical reload of both the M4 and the Glock, leaving the M4 on its sling and keeping the Glock for himself for better accuracy one-handed.

He unholstered the HK45 and handed it to her. “The magazine’s full, ten rounds. Point and shoot.”

A barrage of high-caliber ammunition shredded the brick wall to the south. Rounds struck all around them, spitting bits of masonry and dust. More rounds pinged against the dumpster.

Liam pivoted, sweeping with his weapon, and glimpsed a muzzle flash down the end of the sidewalk thirty yards away. He fired and took out the threat.

More gunfire to the south, the direction they needed to go. Green shapes stacking up behind the corners of two buildings, about to launch an attack. A half dozen at least. Probably more.

Too many for him to take on like this. Fear curdled his guts. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

It was far from his first choice, but since Quinn couldn’t run, they’d have to seek shelter in the massive five-block office building between them and the parking lot. He glimpsed a set of shattered glass doors forty yards to the north.

Once through the structure, they’d hit downtown St. Joe and could lose—or eliminate—any pursuers.

It sounded simple enough. In reality, it was anything but.

65

LIAM

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

They headed for the building. Liam half-dragged Quinn, one arm beneath her shoulder, the other firing one-handed at any hostiles who dared to expose themselves.

Quinn fired several times, missing, but she forced a few of them to seek cover behind the wall, giving Liam the precious seconds to get them through the double glass doors and out of the line of fire.

Ahead of them, an enormous atrium lined with glass windows split into various offices, conference rooms, and bathrooms. They hobbled past a row of vending machines along one wall, all scavenged.

Their boots crunched across glass shards on the floor from shot-out windows. The air smelled dank, musty, and unused.

Quinn tripped over her feet, almost falling, but Liam tugged her up. His lower back burned with white-hot pain, his side in agony from the exertion, but he couldn’t afford to relent.

A noise down the hallway. The dull thud of footsteps. It was coming from one of the offices.

Liam halted. Quinn stifled a muffled cry as he dropped his arm from her shoulder and inched forward, then peered around the corner, leading with the Glock.

A hostile stood frozen in the middle of a large conference room. Small and faceless in the dark, outlined in green through Liam’s NVGs. He wasn’t armed with a gun, but he gripped an old-fashioned battleaxe with trembling hands.

The hostile saw Liam coming for him—hulking and dangerous, speckled in the blood of his friends, a specter of fury and vengeance.

With a startled cry, he turned and ran for a door along the opposite wall.

Liam didn’t bother to chase him down or waste ammunition. He motioned to Quinn, who pushed off the desk and hobbled toward him.

Despite her best efforts, she was slowing them both down.

He gritted his teeth, regretting that he didn’t have Bishop here to watch his six. No, it was more important to have Hannah and the others protected in Fall Creek.

He could do this. He was made for this.

A sharp pain in his side made him wince. His bandages were wet. He’d bled through his sweatshirt, too. Damn it!

They were both hurting, both injured.

Without speaking, he returned to Quinn, and they kept going. Down hallways, through doors, past an empty cafeteria missing chairs and tables, another office, and a room that looked like some sort of laboratory. Cables snaked over the carpeted floor, disassembled circuit boards littering countertops, stacks of servers that used to hum and flicker now blank and silent.

Two tense, adrenaline-soaked minutes later, they were at the side entrance. The windows overlooked the parking lot. A crooked painting hung on one side of the wall, a window rimmed with jagged glass on the other.

He leaned Quinn against a leather armchair and held his finger to his lips, gesturing for her to get low and stay there. She nodded, her breathing shallow and frantic.

Taking a concealed position, Liam holstered the Glock and took up the M4. He eased along the brick wall, his weapon leading, his pulse a rush in his ears.

Cautious, he glanced through the broken frame of the door and peered out at the parking lot.

Movement in glowing green amongst the dark shapes of abandoned station wagons, SUVs, and compact cars. Several hostiles crouched behind various vehicles.

Liam squatted and shifted, acquired a target through his sights and found a hostile running around the back of a white Honda hatchback, armed with an M4, and lit him up.

The rounds ripped a zipper of lead from the hostile’s crotch through his ribcage to his head. Blood and gore splattered the side of the Honda.

Two more came from the east. Muzzle flashes to the west. The retort of gunfire blasted, rounds pinging off the building’s steel façade. Three more hostiles.

From the window, Quinn fired at the hostiles creeping on them from the east. It was dark, she couldn’t see. Every shot missed.

Liam spun west, fired, missed, fired again and double-tapped a black-dressed man in the chest and added a head shot as he fell backward.

A burst of firepower drove him back, chunks of masonry and glass exploding.

Quinn let out a startled cry. He couldn’t afford to glance at her, but he felt her eyes on him, her desperation and terror.

There were too many. They were closing in.

His ears went tinny, throat tight, fear throbbing in his chest. He couldn’t fail Quinn. He’d promised to bring her home. He’d promised.

Liam knelt, electric pain in his spine, his re-opened wound like a knife in his side, and fired again and again. He was close to running out of ammo.

Once he ran dry, he’d take the HK45 from Quinn, though she had a few rounds left at best. Then he’d draw his Gerber and fight until he couldn’t fight any longer—

Boom! Boom! Boom!

A green figure hidden behind an SUV to his right dropped like a rock. More shots, and a second figure collapsed. A third went down with a squeal like a stuck pig, stumbling out from behind a dark-colored Chevy Impala.

The rifle slipped from his hands as he curled in on himself, clutching his ruined leg. His screams shattered the chilly air.

Liam put a round in his skull to finish him.

Luther, Liam realized with a jolt like a live wire. Luther was on the roof of the warehouse abutting the parking lot, firing down at the hostiles from above. From his vantage point, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Against his better judgment, Liam had left him a weapon after Luther had promised to provide overwatch. He’d actually come through.

Several sharp cracks ruptured the air. Another hostile fell. The rest of them whipped around, frantically searching for the new threat, but it was too late.

They were already doomed, whether or not they knew it.

With renewed vigor, Liam joined in the slaughter. Within a minute, the hostiles were down. Nothing moved. Eleven bodies littered the parking lot.

For a long minute, he remained crouched, on full alert, waiting for another trap to present itself. It didn’t. He strained to hear over the ringing in his ears, the smell of cordite stinging his nostrils.

The echo of gunshots faded into the stillness of the early morning. The battle was over. They’d made it out.

“Can we go home now?” Quinn asked.

Liam turned back and held out his hand. “Yes, we can.”

66

HANNAH

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

Hannah strode through the woods along the perimeter of the river. Mist sifted with ghostly fingers through the branches. Her flashlight was a hazy funnel in the predawn gloom.

Ghost trotted ahead of her, his plumed tail fluttering in the fog like a flag.

Milo and Charlotte were safe with the Brooks. Unable to sleep, she’d needed to think. She needed a few minutes alone. Ghost must have felt the same way because he was whining at the door before her stockinged feet had hit the floor.

The forest was hushed, as if it were listening, waiting for something with bated breath. No hooting owls or rustling creatures, no insects chirring.

She touched her palms to a nearby pine tree, felt the rough bark, and breathed in the sweet scent of pine sap, the stickiness on her fingers.

Not that long ago, she’d fled through woods like these, spruce and pine boughs burdened with snow, drifts piled high as her waist, the bitter cold nipping at her heels. A monster at her back and nothing but her own wits and determination to keep her alive.

Until Liam. Her hand slipped into her pocket and felt the tiny knit hat she’d borrowed from Charlotte. It comforted her, like she could keep a part of him close.

As she walked, naked branches forming a canopy high overhead, Hannah prayed. Not for the first time, and not for the last. She prayed for Liam, for Quinn, for her little family.

For what they had here, what they were building, what they were fighting for. For trust and faith. For loyalty and love. For community.

It was the people she cared about that mattered, that made the difference. Some things were worth the fight, the pain, the sacrifice. Some things—some people—were worth it all.

She wrapped her arms around her ribcage and shivered, her boots squelching in the damp leaves and snow, her breath unfurling in white puffs. The cloying wet mist pressed against her skin.

Liam was out there somewhere, rescuing Quinn, doing what he did best. A hero, but also a wounded warrior. A human being, flawed, complex, hurting.

She prayed for his and Quinn’s safe return, worried for him, missed him. His comforting warmth, his intelligence and thoughtfulness, the way his mere presence settled her in a way nothing else could.

She missed his wry smile, those blue-gray eyes like the sea before a storm, that beguiling mix of strength and vulnerability that had shattered her barriers, unraveled her defenses, and had completely undone her.

And her heart—a damaged, wild thing, as crippled as her misshapen hand, longing for something she both feared and desperately yearned for.

Hannah broke through the tree line and paused at the lip of the bluff overlooking the St. Joe river. The sun lifted above the horizon, the brilliant rays burning off the ribbons of fog that swirled above the river.

The river was sluggish, a brownish gray like molten iron. From up here, she could see the slabs of ice jutting into the air, grinding against each other like miniature icebergs, cracking and popping as the river below swelled with snowmelt.

The land was still brown and barren beneath the snow. But not for long. Not forever.

No matter how dark and cold it seemed, winter wasn’t forever. The river would flow, the flowers would bud, crops would burst forth.

Spring would not be stopped.

Love was like that, too.

She kept waiting for the fear to dissipate. It didn’t. Maybe it never would.

Maybe the only things worth doing or having in this world were the very things that scared the hell out of you.

She looked down at her hand, the mangled thumb, the crooked fingers she’d worked so hard to make useable, reclaiming what had been stolen, repairing what had been ruined.

Her crippled hand was a part of her, a part of her story. Shame no longer sparked in her chest at the sight. Something else shone bright and hard and fierce. So dazzling she still wasn’t sure she could look at it straight on.

She was broken, but broken wasn’t ugly. Broken wasn’t hopeless.

Maybe, just maybe, broken could even be beautiful.

Like this shattered world they were salvaging, piece by piece. Forging joy, love, and meaning from hardship and suffering. Carving something new out of the old.

Ghost let out a happy bark, and she lifted her head as he bounded into the clearing, his limp hardly visible. He darted to her side, ducking his big shaggy white head beneath her fingers, leaning his barrel torso against her leg so hard that she nearly toppled. Nearly, but didn’t.

She buried her gnarled, knotted fingers into his fur, her heart swelling in her chest. “I love you, you know that?”

Ghost looked up at her, tongue lolling, brown eyes merry, as if to say, Of course. I never doubted it. Never doubted you.

As she’d never doubted him. Not for one second.

So, she was scared to love. She’d learned to fight anyway. To survive anyway. She could learn to love the same way. Despite the fear, to love with every fiber of her being, everything she’d been and ever would be.

Hannah glanced at the winding river one last time, the tall unmoving trees, the sun bright in her eyes.

And she waited for Liam.

67

QUINN

DAY ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

Q uinn barely remembered the escape from Vortex headquarters.

Everything was a blur of gunshots and darkness, fear and pain. Shooting at anything that moved. Staggering, barely able to walk. Sound went distant and tinny, her heart slamming so hard she thought it might break her ribs.

But then they were out. The gunshots ceased. No one pursued them.

Finally, she could breathe again.

The streets were utterly silent but for their own echoing footfalls. The sky was gray, the stars fading—dawn minutes away.

Liam hadn’t let them pause or rest until they were a good quarter mile from the business district.

They hoofed it through the backyards of a residential neighborhood of restored Victorians and beachy cottages until they reached a navy-blue house with shingle siding and white trim, the two-seater ATV he’d hidden tucked into the garage.

The garage was dark and musty, the faded scents of motor oil, exhaust fumes, and car wax still present. Or maybe she was just imagining it. It reminded her of Gramps’ workshop.

The thought made her want to weep.

“You okay enough to ride?” Liam asked her. “You just have to hold on.”

She felt like she’d been holding on for days. For years. Everything hurt. She was so incredibly tired. It took her three tries, but finally, she nodded.

Someone stepped out of the shadows.

Sudden fury streaked through her like a shot of heroin. All her confusion, hurt, and helplessness, wrapped up in cords of blinding rage.

With a strangled cry, Quinn wrenched from Liam’s grasp and hurled herself at Luther.

The karambit blade was pressed to Luther’s throat before he could register what had happened.

He stumbled back against the wall hung with tools on hooks, shovels and rakes clanging. His eyes wide and white, hands open, palms out in surrender.

She moved with him, lurching, but managed to keep the tip of the knife against his Adam’s apple. Pain radiated from every bone and muscle in her body, her head buzzing.

“You!” she hissed through split lips.

Luther went rigid. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry for what happened in Fall Creek. You don’t have to believe me, but I am.”

“I’ll kill you!”

“I just helped save you! Who do you think nailed those guys in the parking lot?”

She barely registered his words. “You need to die!”

“Enough!” Liam said. “That’s enough.”

The darkness surged inside her, a towering hatred blotting out every thought or feeling, even the incredible pain. “He’s a murderer! He needs to die for what he did!”

“No,” Liam said from behind her. “That’s not going to happen. It’s over.”

“It’s not over until he’s dead, too!”

“Killing him isn’t going to fix a damn thing. It’s not going to change anything. I can promise you that.”

She hesitated, trembling, her eyes locked on the blade hooked against Luther’s pale white throat. A drop of dark blood slid down his bobbing Adam’s apple.

“It won’t fix you,” Liam said, pain in his voice.

Quinn wavered, red spots behind her eyes, her mind an urgent howl. She despised the ugliness inside her. Loathed feeling this way. The bitterness like a corrosive cancer eating away at her insides, at her soul. How desperately she wanted it to end.

Killing Sutter was supposed to finish it. He needed to die, but it hadn’t ended what was wrong inside her. Liam was right. It hadn’t fixed her.

“It’s over,” Liam said. “There’s been enough killing for today.”

She felt herself sag, something deflating inside her.

The karambit slipped from her fingers and dropped to the oil-stained concrete with a clatter.

Tears scalded her eyes, a terrible sob starting deep inside her, throbbing in her heart, her ribs, her torso. And then she was weeping, chest heaving, trembling violently.

“Quinn,” Liam said.

He was there behind her, his hand on her shoulder, tentative and cautious but comforting.

The last of her walls crumbled. She turned to him with a primal scream, a cry of despair and anger, so much anger.

She beat at his chest with her bloody fists, desolate and furious, hitting him as hard as she could. Liam didn’t stop her, just took it, let her get it out. All the ugliness, the fear and terror and panic, the grief and loss.

She couldn’t tell him why she was crying but she couldn’t stop, couldn’t control the tsunami of sorrow rolling over her, wave upon wave. Incoherent and inconsolable, snot and tears streaked her face.

Liam’s strong arms enfolded her and pulled her close, wrapping her in warmth and security. His embrace keeping her together, holding the pieces so she didn’t shatter.

Quinn collapsed against him in a heartbroken heap. She didn’t fight against it, couldn’t fight against it. She had no fight left in her.

Liam held her. He held her and didn’t let go.

Time passed. She didn’t know how long. A minute or an hour. Luther remained, but he might as well have been a ghost.

The garage gradually lightened, pale morning light streaking the horizon. The cool dawn air chilled her skin. Dried blood on her hands, her face, her hair. Some of it hers, some of it not.

Slowly, her hiccupping sobs subsided.

She remembered, then.

“Liam.” She pulled back, her cheeks tear-stained, face swollen and bruised, heart on fire. “They’re coming.”

Liam looked down at her. His brows lowered in concern. “Who?”

“The General. Rosamond Sinclair’s father. He’s coming for all of us.”

The End

I hope you enjoyed Edge of Survival! Don’t miss the epic finale in the Collapse series, Edge of Valor!

The final battle for Fall Creek looms…

Not everyone will make it out alive.

Preorder book seven in the Edge of Collapse series on Amazon HERE.

With enemies closing in on every side, the survivors of Fall Creek find themselves facing impossible odds.

Do they flee for their lives? Or do they defend their town and risk losing it all?

Some things are worth fighting for, dying for.

This may be their last stand.

Join my newsletter for first access to exclusive sales, audiobook and ebook freebies, and all my new releases. You’ll also receive two of my books for free!

Join my VIP list HERE to get your free copy of Chaos Rising, the Collapse series prequel.

While you’re waiting, check out my completed Nuclear Dawn series! Keep reading after the “About the Author” section for an exciting preview! For a limited time, get the nuclear terrorism survival series for 60% off or FREE in Kindle Unlimited.

Get it HERE.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

As I write this, I’m listening to Tommee Profitt’s new Christmas album, Birth of a King (I highly recommend it). Soon, I’ll wrap presents and fill stockings.

By the time you read this, Christmas will be over and 2020 will be over or nearly so.

2020 has been quite the year. I have to say, I’d much rather write an apocalyptic scenario than live through it. We have endured sickness and lockdowns, political turmoil and riots, job losses and economic distress.

We will come out stronger on the other side. Like Hannah, I have faith.

In 2021, I wish you joy, fellowship, and the warmth of friends and family to sustain you.

I hope 2021 shines far brighter than 2020, that we come out of this year stronger and wiser, with a hard-won knowledge that connection with our fellow humans is what truly matters in this life.

And I hope you enjoyed Edge of Survival! Quinn was the star of book six. She’s endured hell, but like us, I think she’s ready to emerge from the dark a stronger and better person.

Book seven, Edge of Valor, will be the final book in the Fall Creek saga. Look for it in April 2021.

Until then, stay safe and healthy.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always, a huge thank you to my fabulous BETA readers: Fred Oelrich, Melva Metivier, Wmh Cheryl, Courtnee McGrew, Sally Shupe, Lauren Mae Nikkel, Jenny Avery, and Jose Jaime Reynoso. Your thoughtful critiques and enthusiasm are invaluable.

To Michelle Browne for her line editing skills! Thank you to Cheree Castellanos, Joanna Niederer, and Annette King for proofreading.

Thanks to Albert Moss for his insights into nuclear reactors. And to Angela Martignetti Baez for her medical expertise. All errors are my own.

Once again, a heartfelt thank you to George Hall, a real life Special Forces hero who helps me bring the character of Liam to life. Liam would not be who he is without George.

Thank you to our armed forces who put their lives on the line to keep us safe and protect freedom around the world.

To my husband, who takes care of the house, the kids, and the cooking when I’m under the gun with a writing deadline. To my kids, who show me the true meaning of love every day and continually inspire me.

Thanks to God for His many blessings. He is with us even in the darkest times.

And to my loyal readers, whose support and encouragement mean everything to me. Thank you.

ALSO BY KYLA STONE

The Edge of Collapse Post-Apocalyptic Series (EMP):

Chaos Rising: The Prequel

Edge of Collapse

Edge of Mayhem

Edge of Darkness

Edge of Anarchy

Edge of Defiance

Edge of Survival

Edge of Valor

The Nuclear Dawn Post-Apocalyptic Series (Nuclear Terrorism):

Point of Impact

Fear the Fallout

From the Ashes

Into the Fire

Darkest Night

Nuclear Dawn: The Complete Series Box Set

The Last Sanctuary Post-Apocalyptic Series (Pandemic):

Rising Storm

Falling Stars

Burning Skies

Breaking World

Raging Light

Last Sanctuary: The Complete Series Box Set

No Safe Haven (A post-apocalyptic stand-alone novel):

No Safe Haven

Historical Fantasy:

Labyrinth of Shadows

Contemporary YA:

Beneath the Skin

Before You Break

Audiobooks:

Nuclear Dawn series:

Point of Impact

Fear the Fallout

From the Ashes

Into the Fire

Darkest Night

Edge of Collapse series:

Chaos Rising

Edge of Collapse

Edge of Madness

Edge of Darkness

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I spend my days writing apocalyptic and dystopian fiction novels, exploring all the different ways the world might end.

I love writing stories exploring how ordinary people cope with extraordinary circumstances, especially situations where the normal comforts, conveniences, and rules are stripped away.

My favorite stories to read and write deal with characters struggling with inner demons who learn to face and overcome their fears, launching their transformation into the strong, brave warrior they were meant to become.

Some of my favorite books include The Road, The Passage, Hunger Games, and Ready Player One. My favorite movies are The Lord of the Rings and Gladiator.

Give me a good story in any form and I’m happy.

Oh, and add in a cool fall evening in front of a crackling fire, nestled on the couch with a fuzzy blanket, a book in one hand and a hot mocha latte in the other (or dark chocolate!): that’s my heaven.

I love to hear from my readers! Find my books and chat with me via any of the channels below:

www.KylaStone.com

www.Facebook.com/KylaStoneAuthor

www.Amazon.com/author/KylaStone

Email me at KylaStone@yahoo.com

NUCLEAR DAWN PREVIEW

Dakota Sloane was no stranger to hardship. A born survivor, she’d spent her life waiting for the next calamity, the next disappointment, the next strike from a world intent on breaking her.

But Dakota didn’t break.

She felt close now, though. Her chest tightened as she scanned the street outside the window of the Beer Shack Bar.

A damp rag in one hand, she froze, bent over a yellow table strewn with crumpled napkins and a greasy, half-eaten lunch of twist fries, burgers, and globs of ketchup.

Her gaze locked on a familiar figure striding through the lunchtime crowd strolling along Front Street in Overtown along the outskirts of downtown Miami.

She knew that confident, purposeful walk, the lean, lanky shape of him, sharp as a knife blade. She’d recognize that thin, angular face anywhere, those grim, fevered eyes—the eyes that haunted her nightmares.

He wasn’t supposed to be there.

Dakota didn’t believe in coincidences.

If Maddox Cage was in Miami—in this part of Miami—it was for one reason.

He was here for her. For her and Eden.

She’d made it two years and thirteen days. She wasn’t ready yet, hadn’t saved enough. Six more months and her plan would be in place, ready for execution.

Five grand and her little sister. That was all she needed to start a brand-new life a thousand miles away.

Miami was loud and colorful and always moving, made up of a jumble of Cubans, Haitians, Asians, South Americans, and Anglos, an exuberant smorgasbord of cultures, music, food, and art.

Miami was an easy city to get lost in.

But she hadn’t gotten lost enough.

Sweat prickled along her hairline. She took a step back from the window, hoping the sunlight’s glare on the glass would shield her presence.

Maybe he only had a general idea of their location. If he was still searching, if he didn’t already know exactly where she was…

But maybe he wasn’t coming for her first. The thought sent a cold fission of dread through her gut.

He was going after Eden.

She held her breath until he passed—never turning his head to the left or right, eyes fixed straight ahead as he weaved between the pedestrians thronging the sidewalk.

He always had been single-minded, like a dog with a bone.

She should’ve known he wouldn’t let go. Would never let go.

She leaned over the table to get a better view of the street. Maddox Cage paused at the corner and waved down a taxi. Dakota didn’t move until he slipped inside, shut the door, and the car pulled away from the curb.

“Excuse me, Miss,” said a heavy, middle-aged Indian guy at the next booth.

She didn’t know him. The usual regulars haunted their favorite bar stools, but this close to downtown and Miami International, the bar always served a steady stream of tourists and traveling business types.

People liked the Beer Shack’s funky vibe. The bar was lined with kitschy shiny yellow tables and elephant palms in huge ceramic planters adorned with fairy lights.

Famous locations throughout Miami—South Beach, Freedom Tower, the Coral Castle Museum—were immortalized in bottle cap art hung on the faux brick walls.

The radio was always playing a vibrant mix of rumba, salsa, timba. The mix of authentic Cuban fare and classic American selections was damn good, too.

With his sweating mug of Sam Adams, the man gestured toward the flat-screen against the far wall. He was in his fifties and nearly bald, a neatly combed circle of white hair ringing his shiny brown scalp. “Can you turn that up?”

“Sure thing.” She forced herself to move, to go through the motions, even as her mind spun with jostling, frantic thoughts.

She put the Coke glass down on the dirty table she’d been cleaning, leaving the plastic tub and rag behind. She pulled the remote from her moss-green apron and punched up the volume.

The Marlins’ loss recap had been interrupted. The screen showed an aerial shot of Michigan Avenue in Chicago, completely cleared but for a minivan parked on the street.

Several police cars and SWAT vehicles were stationed a safe distance away, three helicopters hovering overhead.

A breathless, wide-eyed news reporter gesticulated wildly about something. She couldn’t make sense of the woman’s jumble of words.

“I live near the west side of Chi-Town. Heading back tomorrow. Crazy, huh?” the guy said.

“What’s all the excitement about?” Dakota asked distractedly, forcing herself to be polite.

A low, frantic buzz filled her head.

Fear was already forming like ice around her heart.

She couldn’t just leave in the middle of her shift. She couldn’t afford to lose another job, but she had to contact Eden, had to figure out what to do.

“Some kind of bomb. Terrorist wackos, looks like. Probably ISIS. But Chicago PD caught it in time. Disarming it now, thank God.”

“Good thing,” she said.

He held his mug toward her. “Fill ’er up, would you?”

She grabbed the mug, refilled it at the bar, and returned it to the customer. He didn’t acknowledge her. His eyes were glued to the screen.

Her nerves were stretched taut. Anxiety squeezed her lungs. She needed a break. She needed to reach Eden.

She strode across the room and paused, keeping her back to the empty bar-height table behind her, the glass front door on her left, the bar counter several feet to her right.

The bar wasn’t busy yet. A handful of regulars hunched over their drinks, staring glassily at the second screen hung over the bar, showing the same view of the van in Chicago.

The steady buzz of their conversations was a constant hum in the background: Walter Monroe whining about his ex-wife; Jesse Peretti’s grass kept dying from the increased water restrictions due to the drought; Tamara Santos complaining about more forced overtime.

Mendo Del Rio always brought up politics, especially when he was itching for a fight. The Beer Shack owner and current bartender, Julio de la Peña, had been forced to kick him out several times.

Most of the time, the regulars discussed sports and deep-sea fishing plans, crappy boss problems, and the latest indomitable heat wave.

They were all regular people with regular problems. No one was hunting them.

None of them paid any attention to her.

She jerked her cell out of her cargo pocket—an old model Samsung that barely qualified as a smartphone. It was all she could afford, since she put every extra penny toward her bug out fund.

As she tapped the contacts icon, she kept one anxious eye on the street outside, in case Maddox decided to double back. He was cunning like that.

Wanda Simpson, her sister’s social worker, picked up on the fourth ring.

Dakota didn’t waste time on greetings. “I need to see my sister. Now. Today.”

“Well,” the woman huffed. “I don’t have time for this nonsense today, Ms. Sloane. You know as well as I do that you have court-appointed, supervised visits once a month and no more. Your next visit isn’t for a week—”

“I can’t wait that long.”

“Ms. Sloane, your sister is medically fragile. She needs consistency. The judge, the psychologists, and I all agree that disrupting her carefully maintained routine would be detrimental to her well-being.”

“Which is just shrink-speak for trying to keep me from my sister so you can adopt her out—”

Mrs. Simpson sighed heavily into the phone.

Dakota could hear voices in the background. At the bar, someone turned the TV up even louder. She gritted her teeth, repressing everything she longed to say, pressed the cell to her ear, and turned away from the bar. “Look. It’s an emergency.”

The woman gave another imperious sigh, like she was already patting herself on the back for her boundless, saintly patience. “What kind of emergency, Ms. Sloane?”

Dakota couldn’t tell the social worker who she’d seen or what she feared it meant. She’d never explained what she and her sister had escaped from. To bring Maddox up now would expose them both to questions they wouldn’t—couldn’t—answer.

“I just need to see her, okay?”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Frustration bubbled up inside her. She was already doing her best to do everything absolutely right.

First: gain steady employment and stable housing. Second: petition the courts for custody before Eden’s rich, shiny foster parents sank their claws into her permanently and whisked her away with promises of a real family, vacations to the Keys, art and tennis lessons.

Until then, she kept to herself and stayed wary and watchful.

She saved every penny, spending nothing extra on herself other than her sessions three times a week at the gun range off Miami Avenue.

She carefully maintained a low profile—never attracting attention, avoiding conflict, even when she wanted to punch someone in the kidneys.

It was essential to remain under the radar at all times.

In two years, she’d begun to think that they’d escaped the horrors they’d fled, that the past wouldn’t follow them.

But she was dead wrong.

The fragile sense of security she’d built around herself had shattered the moment her gaze snagged on Maddox Cage among the sweating crowds outside the bar windows.

“I’m practically her guardian!” she forced out. “I’ll be ready to petition the court in a few months—”

“It would be foolish to make such an assumption, Ms. Sloane.” Mrs. Simpson sniffed derisively. “It’s not an appropriate—or healthy—frame of mind, especially considering your inability to maintain steady employment, your lack of a G.E.D. or high school diploma, and your…flexible…housing arrangements.”

Dakota could imagine her smug face, her cheap polyester suits, that awful chemical perfume that smelled like burnt rubber. The woman despised Dakota and her “negative influence” over her fifteen-year-old sister.

A helpless fury roiled in her gut. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked. Gotten a job—”

“Bussing tables hardly qualifies as a job—”

“I have an apartment!”

“In a highly dangerous and questionable neighborhood.”

She and Eden had been separated for almost two years, after they’d been caught sleeping on the sidewalks on Southeast First Street in downtown Miami.

With no parents and no family, the Florida Department of Children and Families—a terrible misnomer of a name if she’d ever heard one—had swallowed them up into its bloated, utterly broken foster care system.

After a slew of disastrous foster placements, Dakota was stuck in a group home for unwanted teens until she’d come of age eighteen months ago.

Her younger sister—beautiful, sweet, traumatized Eden—was placed in a specialized foster home for the medically fragile.

She swallowed back a curse. She couldn’t afford to piss off a woman who still held so much power over her life.

“Please,” she said instead, hating herself for begging, but giving it one last shot. If the woman still refused to help, she’d have to take matters into her own hands.

“You know I can’t do that even if I wanted to, dear,” Mrs. Simpson simpered. “And you know I only have your sister’s best interests at heart…”

Behind Dakota, someone at the bar gasped. Dakota glanced back at the flat-screen. Her arm fell limply to her side. Her fingers barely held onto the phone.

The social worker babbled something, but Dakota wasn’t listening anymore.

She could do nothing but watch the screen in stunned disbelief.

Cold went through Dakota all the way to her bones.

The screen was split now—one side displaying the bomb squad descending on the minivan in Chicago; the other side, a shaky cellphone video of a massive cloud rising into the sky over a city so hazy with smoke, she couldn’t tell which it was.

“...We repeat, we’ve just received reports from outside Washington, D.C. that there has been a massive explosion,” the male reporter said, his voice rising in agitation.

The female reporter tapped her earpiece. “Communication is down in the area, but we’ve received information that a fireball at least a half mile wide has been sighted over Capitol Hill. It appears this is—this is an attack, Gerard. An attack on American soil…”

The first reporter’s face drained of color. “It appears to be a bomb. A nuclear bomb.”

The shot cut to the reporter on the street in Chicago. “We also have an unconfirmed report that the Michigan Avenue bomb is likely an improvised nuclear device, Gerard.”

The newsdesk reporters didn’t speak for a moment, the shock and horror on their faces genuine. So often, the media seemed to feed on manufactured outrage or barely disguised gleeful delight in the “next big thing.”

This, though, was beyond imaginable.

Dakota’s own pulse thudded in her throat. Her chest tightened like some invisible hand was squeezing her heart.

“Ah,” Gerard stammered, “so I’m hearing that we have multiple bombs. Multiple nuclear bombs—at least two. One has detonated in D.C. already. We’ve heard nothing definitive yet from official sources.

“Social media is blowing up with reports of a terrible explosion, though all locations are at least a few miles from the blast. We’ve had zero communication from anyone at the White House or Capitol Hill…Massive casualties must be expected…”

The patrons in the bar—five at the bar itself, three more in the booths—sat staring at the screens, frozen, their mouths agape.

Dread coiled in Dakota’s gut. Slowly, she raised the phone to her ear. “Mrs. Simpson, are you watching the news? Check your phone.”

“Really, Ms. Sloane,” Mrs. Simpson huffed, “I don’t have time for your games today. Some of us have actual work to do—”

“Another bomb!” the female reporter gasped. “We’ve just lost contact with large portions of New York. Hundreds—thousands of reports coming in on Twitter and social media. People reporting a massive mushroom cloud seen from miles away, buildings collapsing, massive fires…” Her voice trailed off in disbelief.

The second reporter gestured at someone offscreen before turning back to the cameras, visibly shaken. “We have a video feed. Please brace yourselves. This is live—”

The aerial shot revealed an enormous pillar of smoke larger than Dakota had ever seen, dwarfing the skyscrapers. She could barely see the skyline through all the smoke and fire.

Dakota took a step back, and then another, until her butt pressed against the lip of the bar table.

Three bombs. Not just bombs. Nukes.

Three targeted cities. New York. Washington D.C. Chicago.

Were there only three? Or were there more?

She thought of Ezra. He’d warned her of something like this.

What was it he always said? That smart terrorists would engage in a coordinated and multi-pronged attack. They would simultaneously attack the infrastructure—the electric grid, import hubs, or several cities—all intended to eviscerate American morale.

Just like this.

Dakota was a pessimist by nature. Experience had taught her that. Life always kicked you when you were already down.

Worst case scenario, more bombs were just waiting to be detonated. Miami wasn’t the largest city in the U.S., but the metropolitan area was home to more than five million people. Seventh largest, her boss had said just last week.

Miami International Airport and the Port of Miami were also major hubs of commerce.

If there were more bombs, Miami was just as likely a target as any other.

An image bubbled up from somewhere deep inside her—a glimpse of a memory she’d shoved down deep. Something darkly, horribly familiar about all of this…

That feeling was in her, a cold dread creeping up her spine, tightening her chest, clawing at her throat. The hairs on her arms stood on end.

She’d learned to recognize it for what it was: a warning.

Dakota had to get out of the city. Right now.

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Table of Contents

Full Page Image

Copyright

Contents

Preface

Epigraph

1. Liam

2. Liam

3. Liam

4. Sutter

5. Hannah

6. Hannah

7. Quinn

8. Quinn

9. Liam

10. Hannah

11. Hannah

12. Quinn

13. Quinn

14. Liam

15. Liam

16. Liam

17. Liam

18. Liam

19. Liam

20. Liam

21. The General

22. The General

23. Quinn

24. Quinn

25. Hannah

26. Quinn

27. Liam

28. Liam

29. Liam

30. Hannah

31. Quinn

32. Quinn

33. Hannah

34. Hannah

35. Sutter

36. Quinn

37. Quinn

38. Quinn

39. Liam

40. Quinn

41. Quinn

42. Hannah

43. Hannah

44. The General

45. Quinn

46. Quinn

47. Quinn

48. Hannah

49. Hannah

50. Liam

51. Liam

52. Quinn

53. Quinn

54. The General

55. Liam

56. Quinn

57. Quinn

58. Quinn

59. Quinn

60. Quinn

61. Quinn

62. Quinn

63. Quinn

64. Liam

65. Liam

66. Hannah

67. Quinn

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Also by Kyla Stone

About the Author

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