ZerOes (40 page)

Chance shakes free all the windshield glass—a few nicks and cuts here and there, but mostly he's untouched. He tilts the rearview mirror, sees the hunched-over shapes of the others ducking into the cabin. He's about to spring the door and dart in, too, but then he sees the car.

Plymouth Duster. Not quite like his, but close. Thick black band on the hood. Black racing stripes.

He squints, tries to see through the glare on the windshield. Who is coming for them now? Who has Typhon sent?

Then the car takes the last bend in the driveway, and Chance sees just who the hell it is.

Oh shit. He punches the pickup's accelerator.

The Duster's engine growls and grumbles, taking each dip and divot in the dirt road hard—the seats in this thing aren't as comfortable as Hollis Copper remembers, and each bounce rocks his bones like a kick to the tailbone. His injuries have healed—mostly—but the ghost of that misery remains to haunt him. Doubly so in times like this.

He rounds the last bend of the driveway, not sure if this is even the place.

Is that a—? Jesus, that's a body out there.

A pickup truck with a shattered windshield suddenly peels rubber and starts hard-charging toward him, rocking hard on tires flattened on the passenger side. Hollis blinks and sees Chance behind the wheel—he's peering up over it, waving his hands, honking the horn,
wonk, wonk
.

Hollis doesn't have complete situational awareness here, but he knows something bad is going down. He slams on the brakes just as a rifle shot takes off the side mirror of his car.

He tilts sideways, hugging his body hard against the passenger seat. He paws at the door handle, flings it open—

The pickup truck skids, slides, and hits the Duster bumper-to-bumper.
Not enough to do real damage, but enough to slam the door he just opened back on him, closing on his hand. Pain jolts up his arm like an arcing whip.

Cursing Chance Dalton, Hollis shoulders the door open again and crawls out.

Chance shakes with the impact—not too hard a hit, but enough. He throws the truck into reverse just as a bullet clips the top of the pickup. Teeth gritted, he ducks once more, stomps on the accelerator—

And the truck engine dies.

Chance turns the key again.
Whuff, whuff, whuff—
damn thing turns over and over but never catches its spark. “Start, God damn it,
start
,” he says, his voice getting higher and higher pitched. Another bullet punches into the hood of the truck.

There's no time for anything else. Chance throws open the driver's-side door and tumbles out.

The Compiler climbs into the dirt-caked Jeep and tosses the Remington in the back. Then he reaches into the passenger side and grabs a SOCOM special forces rifle—SCAR, 7.62 x 51mm cartridge. He busts out the windshield and props the rifle up over the dashboard. As he drives down off the flat-topped hill, he pulls the trigger: the gun spits suppressing fire.

DeAndre hunkers down. Clamps his hands over his ears as Wade and Reagan throw open the windows and begin firing pistols. He looks over, sees Aleena kneeling there, too, eyes shut like this is all overwhelming her. But then Wade is crawling over to her and handing her his pistol. He says something in her ear and her eyes snap open. Then she goes to the window and starts firing, too.

Wade lifts up the rug on the floor, shouldering aside an old rocking chair. He rolls the rug part of the way, then begins removing boards
and pulling out rifles. He stares at DeAndre. Wordless shouts—just noise over the gunfire. Pointing finger. The message is clear.
Get to the window. Help out
.

DeAndre grits his teeth, grabs a little semiauto rifle, then heads to the window.

A roar of an engine and a chatter of automatic weapons fire. Bullets ping off the two vehicles and pock the ground, kicking up little dust devils and knocking the tops off tall grasses nearby.

Hollis is cradling his hand and wincing. “We're pinned down out here.”

From the cabin, gunfire erupts. That might give them the edge they need.

Chance peeks up over the hood of the Duster. “He's coming,” he says. “Shit.
Shit
. We're gonna have to run for it. You game?”

“Yeah. I think so,” says Hollis.

“On three,” Chance says. “One.”

The gunfire stops.

“Two. Thr—”

Something lands in the grass between the cars and the cabin.

It starts hissing.

Aleena thinks:
This is what it's like. This is what it's like in Damascus. Or Kabul. Or Baghdad. Or Cairo or Beirut or the Gaza Strip or
. . .

She used to sit behind a screen. Sometimes she'd see what would happen via a camera or through audio. The gunshots always sounded so tinny, so fake. Blood was just a black, pixilated blob. But now she's in the middle of it.

The gun is heavy in her hand. It isn't her weapon. Her weapon is a keyboard. A screen. A limitless connection.

She peers out the window. There's Chance and—who is that?

“It's Hollis!” she yells, her voice drowned out by the
pop-pop-pop
of gunfire.

Then a Jeep skids into sight. Tires blown from incoming fire. A dark
shape hops out, disappears on the other side. Something suddenly lobs out of the air—

A canister.

It lands in the grass. Smoke starts hissing out, filling the air with a volcanic plume.

The Compiler likes this hardware. SCAR rifle, pregnant at the front with a grenade launcher. One smoke grenade, and in moments a curtain of fog fills the air—a screen behind which he can move swiftly, almost invisibly. He pops up, darts past the front of the Jeep. Fires rounds into the cabin. Then at the pair of vehicles ahead of him.

Obtaining this hardware is easy now. Typhon controls it all. She's inserted herself into everything—every bolt-hole, every link in the chain. Military supply is easy to come by.

More gunfire through the smoke. None of it hits him.

He runs and guns.
Pop, pop, pop
.

This will all be over soon.

Adrenaline scorches a path through Wade like a trail of jet fuel set aflame. He knows he's going to be paying for this later—his back will hurt, his muscles and joints will ache like real sumbitches. And he knows too that grief will come at him like a black horse. He didn't love Rosa, but he admired her. Her death will hit him worse than any physical pain.