FORTY-FIVE

They drove in from the south, into the fading day, into a vision of towering ruins.

Peter was at the wheel of the first Humvee, Alicia up top, scanning the terrain with the binoculars; Caleb sat beside him in the passenger seat with the map over his lap. The highway had all but disappeared, its course vanished under waves of cracked, pale earth.

“Caleb, where the hell are we?”

Caleb was twisting the map this way and that. He arched his neck and shouted up to Alicia, “Do you see the 215?”

“What’s the 215?”

“Another highway, like this one! We should be crossing it!”

“I didn’t know we were even on a highway!”

Peter brought the vehicle to a halt and picked up the radio from the floor. “Sara, what’s your fuel gauge say?”

A crackle of static, and then Sara’s voice came through: “A quarter tank. Maybe a little more.”

“Let me talk to Hollis.”

He watched in the rearview as Hollis, his injured arm wrapped in a sling, scrambled down from the gun post and took the radio from Sara. “I think we may have lost the road,” Peter told him. “We both need fuel, too.”

“Is there an airport anywhere?”

Peter took the map from Caleb to examine it. “Yes. If we’re still following Highway 15, it should be ahead of us, to the east.” He shouted up to Alicia: “Do you see anything that looks like an airport?”

“How the hell should I know what an airport looks like?”

Through the radio, Hollis said, “Tell her to look for fuel tanks. Big ones.”

“Lish! Do you see any fuel tanks?”

Alicia dropped down into the cabin. Her face was coated with dust. She rinsed out her mouth from her canteen and spat out the window. “Dead ahead, about five clicks.”

“You’re sure?”

She nodded. “There’s a bridge up ahead. I’m thinking that could be the overpass at Highway 215. If I’m right, the airport is just on the other side.”

Peter picked up the radio again. “Lish says she thinks she sees it. We’re going ahead.”

“All eyes, cuz.”

Peter put the vehicle in gear and drew forward. They were on the city’s southern outskirts, an open plain tufted with weeds. To the west, purpling mountains lifted against the desert sky like the backs of great animals rising from the earth. Peter watched as the cluster of buildings at the heart of the city began to take shape beyond his windshield, resolving into a pattern of discrete structures, bathed in a golden light. It was impossible to tell how big they were or how far away. In the backseat, Amy had removed her glasses and was squinting at the landscape outside her window. Sara had done a thorough job of cutting the mats away; what remained of her hair, that wild tangle, was a trim, dark helmet, tracing the lines of her cheeks.

They came to the overpass; the bridge was gone, collapsed in sheets of broken concrete. The highway below was a choked gulley of cars and debris, completely impassable. There was nothing to do but try to go around. Peter guided the Humvee east, tracing the highway below them. A few minutes later they came to a second bridge, which appeared intact. A gamble, but they were running out of time.

He radioed Sara. “I’m going to try to get across. Wait until we’re over.”

Their luck held; they traversed it without incident. Pausing on the far side for Sara to cross, Peter took the map from Caleb once again. If he was correct, they were on Las Vegas Boulevard South; the airport, with its fuel tanks, would be due east.

They pressed on. The landscape began to change, thickening with structures and abandoned vehicles. Most were pointed south, away from the city.

“Those are Army trucks,” said Caleb.

A minute later they saw the first battle tank. It was resting upside down in the center of the road, like a huge capsized turtle; both of its tracks had been blown off its wheels.

Alicia crouched to peek her head back into the cabin. “Pull forward,” she said. “Slowly.”

He turned the wheel to navigate around the overturned tank. By now it was obvious what lay ahead: the city’s defensive perimeter. They were moving through a vast debris field of tanks and other vehicles. Peter saw, beyond it, a line of sandbags backed against a concrete barrier, topped with coils of wire.

“What do you want to do now?” Sara asked over the radio.

“We’ll have to go around somehow.” He released the Talk button and lifted his voice to Alicia, who was scanning with the binoculars. “Lish! East or west?”

She ducked down again. “West. I think there’s a break in the wall.”

It was getting late; the attack the night before had left them all shaken. The last hands of daylight were like a funnel, drawing them down toward night. With each passing minute, the decisions they made became more irrevocable.

“Alicia says west,” Peter radioed.

“That’ll take us away from the airport.”

“I know. Put Hollis on again.” He waited for Hollis’s acknowledgment, then continued: “I think we have to use the gas we’ve got to find shelter for the night. All those buildings up ahead, there has to be something we can use. We can backtrack to the airport in the morning.”

Hollis’s voice was calm, but Peter could detect the underlying note of worry. “It’s your call.”

He glanced through the rearview at Alicia, who nodded.

“We’re going around,” Peter said.

· · ·

The break in the perimeter was a ragged gap twenty meters across. The remains of a burned-out tanker truck lay on its side near the opening. Probably, Peter thought, the driver had tried to run the blockade.

They continued on. The landscape was changing again, thickening with structures as they moved into the city. No one was talking; the only sounds were the low rumble of the engine and the scrape of weeds on the underside of the Humvee’s carriage. They had somehow gotten on Las Vegas Boulevard again; a creaking sign, still held aloft on its wires above the street, jostled in the wind. The buildings were larger now, monumental in scope, towering above the roadway with their great ruined faces. Some were burned, empty cages of steel girders, others half-collapsed, their facades fallen away to reveal the honeycombed compartments within, dressed with dripping gardens of wire and cable. They passed beneath signs bearing mysterious names: Mandalay Bay. The Luxor. New York New York. Rubble of all kinds littered the spaces between the buildings, forcing Peter to move at a creep. More Humvees and tanks and sandbagged positions; there had been a battle here. Twice he had to stop completely and search for an alternate route around some obstacle.

“This is too dense,” Peter said finally. “We’ll never make it through. Caleb, find me a way out of here.”

Caleb directed him west, onto Tropicana. But a hundred meters later the road disappeared, subsumed once again under a mountain of rubble. Peter reversed direction, returned to the intersection, and fought his way north again. They were stopped this time by a second perimeter of concrete barricades.

“It’s like a maze in here.”

He tried one more route, heading farther east. This, too, was impassable. The shadows were lengthening; they had maybe half a hand of good light left. It had been a mistake, he knew, to head through the heart of the city. Now they were trapped.

He took the radio from the dashboard. “Any ideas, Sara?”

“We can go back the way we came.”

“It’ll be dark by the time we get out of here. We don’t want to be caught out in the open, not with all these high points.”

Alicia dropped down from the roof. “There’s one building that looks tight,” she said quickly. “Back down this road about a hundred meters. We passed it coming in.”

Peter relayed this information to the second Humvee. “I don’t see that we have a lot of options.”

It was Hollis who answered. “Let’s do it.”

They reversed course. Angling his eyes upward through the windshield, Peter identified the structure Alicia had indicated: a white tower, fantastically tall, rising from the lengthening shadows into sunlight. It appeared solid, though of course he couldn’t see the other side; the rear of the building might be completely peeled away, for all they knew. The structure was separated from the roadway by a masonry wall and a broad, bowl-like depression, with pipes extruding from the drifts of sand and debris that littered the bottom. Peter was worried they would have to traverse this somehow, or else leave the Humvees on the street, but then they came to a break in the wall just as Alicia called down, “Turn here.”

He was able to pull the Humvee right up to the base of the tower, parking beneath a kind of portico, wreathed with skeletal vines. Sara pulled in behind him. The front of the building was boarded up, the entrance barricaded by sandbags. Exiting the vehicle, Peter felt a sudden chill; the temperature was dropping.

Alicia had opened the rear compartment and was hurriedly passing out packs and rifles. “Just take what we’ll need for tonight,” she ordered. “Whatever we can carry. Bring as much water as you can.”

“What about the Humvees?” Sara asked.

“They’re not going anywhere on their own.” Alicia, after drawing a belt of grenades over her head, checked the load on her rifle. “Hightop, do you have a way in yet? We’re losing the light here.”

Caleb and Michael were furiously working to pry loose the covering from one of the windows. With a crack of splitting plywood it yanked loose from the frame, revealing the glass behind it, caked with grime. A single stroke from Caleb’s pry bar and the glass shattered.

“Flyers,” he exclaimed, wrinkling his nose, “what’s that stink?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Alicia said. “Okay, everybody, let’s move.”

Peter and Alicia climbed through the window first. Hollis would bring up the rear with Amy and the others in between. Dropping inside, Peter found himself in a dark hallway, running parallel with the front of the building. To his right stood a pair of metal doors, chained shut through the handles. He stepped back to the open window.

“Caleb, pass me a hammer. The pry bar, too.”

He used the sharp end of the pry bar to shatter the chain. The door swung free, revealing a wide, open space, more region than room, remarkably undisturbed. Apart from the smell—a tart chemical scent, vaguely biological—and a heavy layer of dust that coated every surface, the impression it gave was less of ruin than abandonment, as if its inhabitants had departed days ago, not decades. At the center of the space stood a large stone structure, evidently some kind of fountain, and on a raised platform in the corner, a piano, tented with cobwebs. A long counter was positioned to the left.

Peter tilted his gaze upward to the ceiling, which was bisected by elaborately carved molding into discrete, convex panels. Each was ornately painted: winged figures with sad, dewy eyes and plump-cheeked faces, set against a sky of billowing clouds.

Caleb whispered, “Is it … some kind of church?”

Peter didn’t answer; he didn’t know. Something about the winged figures on the ceiling was disquieting, even a little ominous. He turned to see Amy standing by the cobwebbed piano, gazing upward like the rest of them.

Then Hollis was beside him. “We better get to higher ground.” He felt it, too, Peter could tell, this ghostlike presence hovering over them. “Let’s try to find the stairs.”

They advanced into the building’s interior down a second, wider hallway, lined with stores—Prada, Tutto, La Scarpa, Tesorini—the names meaningless but strangely musical. There was more damage here, windows shattered, shards of glinting glass scattered over the stone floor and crunching under the soles of their boots. Many of the stores appeared to have been ransacked—counters smashed, everything overturned—while others seemed untouched, their peculiar, useless wares—shoes no one could actually walk in, bags that were too small to carry anything—still displayed in the windows. They passed signs that said SPA LEVEL and POOL PROMENADE, with arrows pointing down other, adjacent hallways, and banks of elevators, their gleaming doors sealed, but nothing that said STAIRS.

The hallway ended in a second open area, as large as the first, receding into darkness. There was something subterranean about it, as if they had stumbled upon the entrance to an immense cave. The smell was stronger here. They broke their light sticks and moved forward, sweeping the area with their rifles. The room appeared to be filled with long banks of machines, like nothing Peter had ever seen before, with video screens and various buttons and levers and switches. Before each was a stool, presumably where the machines’ operators had sat, performing their unknown function.

Then they saw the slims.

First one and then another and then more and more, their frozen figures resolving out of the gloom. Most were seated around a series of tall tables, their postures grimly comical, as if they’d been overcome in the midst of some desperate, private act.

“What the hell is this place?”

Peter approached the nearest table. Three seated figures occupied it; a fourth lay on the floor beside his overturned stool. Holding up his light stick, Peter bent to the closest body, a woman. She had toppled face-first; her head was turned to the side, her cheekbone resting on the table’s surface. Her hair, bleached of all color, formed a snarl of parched fibers around the knob of her skull. Where her teeth should have been were a pair of dentures, their plastic gums still retaining an incongruously lifelike pinkness. Ropes of golden metal wreathed her neck; the bones of her fingers, where they rested on the tabletop—she seemed to have reached out to stop her fall—were bedecked with rings, fat shining stones of every color. On the table before her was a pair of playing cards, face-up. A six and a jack. It was the same with the others, he saw: each player had two cards showing. There were more cards strewn over the table. Some kind of game, like go-to. In the center lay a heaping mound of more jewelry, rings and watches and bracelets, as well as a pistol and a handful of shells.

“We better keep moving,” Alicia said, coming up beside him.

Something was here, he thought, something he was meant to find.

“It’ll be dark soon, Peter. We have to find those stairs.”

He pulled his gaze away, nodding.

They emerged into an atrium, domed in glass. The sky above was cooling, night falling. Escalators led down to another dark recess; to the right they saw a bank of elevators, and yet another hallway, and more shops.

“Are we going in circles?” This was Michael. “I swear we came right though here.”

Alicia’s face was grave. “Peter—”

“I know, I know.” The moment of decision was upon them: keep looking for the stairs or seek shelter on the ground floor. He turned to face the group, which seemed, suddenly, too small.

“Damnit, not now.”

Mausami pointed toward the windows of the closest shop. “There she is.”

DESERT GIFT EMPORIUM, the sign read. Peter opened the door and moved inside. Amy was facing a wall of shelves by the counter, bearing a display of spherical glass objects. Amy had taken one in her hand. She gave it a hard shake, filling its interior with a flurry of movement.

“Amy, what is that?”

The girl turned, her face bright—I have found something, her eyes seemed to say, something wonderful—and held it out for him to take. An unexpected weight filled his hand: the sphere was full of liquid. Suspended in this fluid, bits of glittering white matter, like flakes of snow, were settling down upon a landscape of tiny buildings. Rising at the center of this miniaturized city was a white tower—the same tower, Peter realized, in which they now stood.

The others had crowded around. “What is it?” Michael asked.

Peter passed it to Sara, who showed it to the others.

“Some kind of model, I think.” Amy’s face was still wearing a look of glowing happiness. “Why did you want us to see this?”

But it was Alicia who provided the answer.

“Peter,” she said, “I think you better look at this.”

She had turned the globe upside down, revealing the words that were printed on its base.

Milagro Hotel and Casino
Las Vegas

The smell had nothing to do with the slims, Michael explained. It was sewer gas. Mostly methane, which was why the place smelled like an outhouse. Somewhere beneath the hotel was a sea of one-hundred-year-old effluent, the pooled waste of an entire city, trapped like a giant fermentation tank.

“We don’t want to be here when that lets go,” he warned. “It’ll be the biggest fart in history. The place will go up like a torch.”

They were on the fifteenth floor of the hotel, watching the night come on. For a few, panicked minutes it had begun to look as if they’d have to take refuge on the hotel’s lower levels. The only stairwell they’d found, on the far side of the casino, was clogged with debris—chairs, tables, mattresses, suitcases, all of it bent and smashed, as if hurled from a great height. It was Hollis who had suggested jimmying open one of the elevators. Assuming the cable was intact, he explained, they could climb a couple of floors, enough to get around the barricade, and take the stairs the rest of the way.

It worked. Then, at the sixteenth floor, they encountered a second barricade. The floor of the stairwell was littered with shell casings. They exited to find themselves in a darkened hallway. Alicia cracked another light stick. The hall was lined with doors; a sign on the wall said AMBASSADOR SUITE LEVEL.

Peter gestured with his rifle to the first door. “Caleb, do your thing.”

The room had two bodies in it, a man and a woman, lying on the bed. They were both wearing bathrobes and slippers; on the table by the bed was an open whiskey bottle, its contents long evaporated to a brown stain, and a plastic syringe. Caleb, voicing the words everyone was thinking, said he wasn’t going to spend the night with a couple of slims, especially slims that had killed themselves. It wasn’t until they had tried five doors that they found one without bodies behind it. Three rooms, two with a pair of beds in each and a third, larger room facing a wall of windows that gazed over the city. Peter stepped to the glass. The last daylight was going, bathing the scene in an orange glow. He wished they were higher, even on the roof, but this would have to do.

“What’s that down there?” Mausami asked. She was pointing across the street, where a massive structure of ribbed steel, four legs that tapered to a narrow tip, rose between the buildings.

“I think it’s the Eiffel Tower,” said Caleb. “I saw a picture of it in a book once.”

Mausami frowned. “Isn’t that in Europe?”

“It’s in Paris.” Michael was kneeling on the floor, unpacking their gear. “Paris, France.”

“So what’s it doing here?”

“How should I know?” Michael shrugged. “Maybe they moved it.”

They watched together as night fell—first the street, then the buildings, then the mountains beyond, all sinking into darkness as if into the waters of a filling tub. The stars were coming out. No one was in the mood to talk; the precariousness of their situation was obvious. Sitting on the sofa, Sara rebandaged Hollis’s wounded arm. Peter could discern, not from anything she said but from what she didn’t, going about her work with tight-lipped efficiency, that she was worried about him.

They divvied up the MREs and lay down to rest. Alicia and Sara volunteered to take first watch. Peter was too exhausted to object. Wake me up when you’re ready, he said. Probably I won’t even sleep.

He didn’t. In the bedroom he lay on the floor, his head propped on his pack, staring at the ceiling. Milagro, he thought. This was Milagro. Amy was sitting in a corner with her back to the wall, holding the glass globe. Every few minutes she would lift it from her lap and give it a shake, holding it close to her face as she watched the snow whirl and settle inside it. At such moments, Peter wondered what he was to her, what all of them were. He had explained to her where they were going and why. But if she knew what was in Colorado, and who had sent the signal, she had made no indication.

At last he gave up trying to sleep and returned to the main room. A wedge of moon had risen over the buildings. Alicia was standing at the window, scanning the street below; Sara was sitting at the small table, playing a hand of solo, her rifle resting across her lap.

“Any sign out there?”

Sara frowned. “Would I be playing cards?”

He took a chair. For a while he said nothing, watching her play.

“Where’d you get the cards?” On the backs was that name, Milagro.

“Lish found them in a drawer.”

“You should rest, Sara,” Peter offered. “I can take over.”

“I’m fine.” Frowning again, she swept the cards into a pile and redealt. “Go back to bed.”

Peter said nothing more. He had the feeling he’d done something wrong, but he didn’t know what.

Alicia turned from the window. “You know, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll take you up on your offer. Put my head down for a few minutes. If it’s okay with you, Sara.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Alicia left them alone. Peter rose and stepped to the window, using the nightscope on his rifle to scan the street: abandoned cars, heaps of rubble and trash, the empty buildings. A world frozen in time, caught at the moment of its abandonment in the last, violent hours of the Time Before.

“You don’t have to pretend, you know.”

He turned. Sara was looking at him coolly, her face bathed in moonlight. “Pretend what?”

“Peter, please. Not now.” Peter could feel her resolve; she had decided something. “You did your best. I know that.” She gave a quiet laugh, looking away. “I’d say I was grateful but I’d sound like an idiot, so I won’t. If we’re all going to die out here, I just wanted you to know it’s all right.”

“No one’s going to die.” It was all he could think to say.

“Well. I hope that’s true.” She paused. “Still, that one night—”

“Look, I’m sorry, Sara.” He took a deep breath. “I should have told you that before. It was my fault.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Peter. Like I said, you tried. It was a good try, too. But the two of you are meant for each other. I think I’ve always known that. It was stupid of me not to accept it.”

He was completely confounded. “Sara, who are you talking about?”

Sara didn’t answer. Her eyes grew suddenly wide. She was looking past him, out the window.

He turned sharply. Sara rose and came to stand beside him.

“What did you see?”

She pointed. “Across the street, up on the tower.”

He pressed the nightscope to his eye. “I don’t see anything.”

“It was there, I know it.”

Then Amy was in the room. She was clutching the globe to her chest. With her other hand she gripped Peter by the arm and began to pull him away from the window.

“Amy, what’s wrong?”

The glass behind them didn’t so much shatter as explode, detonating in a hail of glinting shards. The air blew from his body as he was knocked across the room. It was only later that Peter would realize that the viral had come in right on top of them. He heard Sara scream—not even words, just a cry of terror. He hit the floor, rolling, his limbs tangled with Amy’s, in time to see the creature vaulting back out the window.

Sara was gone.

Alicia and Hollis were in the room now, everyone was there, Hollis was ripping off the sling and taking up his rifle, he was standing at the window, aiming below, sweeping the scene with his barrel. But no shots came.

“Fuck!”

Alicia pulled Peter to his feet. “Are you cut? Did it scratch you?”

His insides were still churning. He shook his head: no.

“What happened?” Michael cried. “Where’s my sister!”

Peter found his voice. “It took her.”

Michael had grabbed Amy roughly by the arms. She was still clutching the globe, which had somehow remained unbroken. “Where is she? Where is she?”

“Stop it, Michael!” Peter yelled. “You’re frightening her!”

The globe fell to the floor with a crash as Alicia yanked Michael away, sending him spilling onto the sofa. Amy stumbled backward, her eyes wide with fear.

“Circuit,” Alicia said, “you have to calm down!”

His eyes were brimming with furious tears. “Don’t fucking call me that!”

A booming voice: “Everyone shut the hell up!”

They turned to where Hollis stood by the open window, his rifle at his hip.

“Just. Shut. Up.” He looked them all over. “I’ll get your sister, Michael.”

Hollis dropped to one knee and began rifling through his pack for extra clips, filling the pockets of his vest. “I saw which way they took her. Three of them.”

“Hollis—” Peter began.

“I’m not asking.” He met Peter’s eyes. “You of all people know I have to go.”

Michael stepped forward. “I’m coming with you.”

“I’m going too,” said Caleb. He raised his eyes to the group, his face suddenly uncertain. “I mean, because we’re all going. Right?”

Peter looked at Amy. She was sitting on the sofa, her knees pressed protectively to her chest. He asked Alicia for her pistol.

“What for?”

“If we’re going out there, Amy needs a weapon.”

She drew it from her waistband. Peter released the clip to check the load, then pushed the clip back into the handle and cocked the slide to put a round in the chamber. He turned it around in his hand and held it out to Amy.

“One shot,” he said. He tapped his breastbone. “That’s all you get. Through here. You know how to do this?”

Amy lifted her eyes from the gun in her hand, nodding.

They were gathering their gear when Alicia pulled Peter aside. “Not that I’m objecting,” she said quietly, “but it could be a trap.”

“I know it’s a trap.” Peter took up his rifle and pack. “I think I’ve known it since we got to this place. All those blocked streets, they led us right here. But Hollis is right. I never should have left Theo behind, and I’m not leaving Sara.”

They cracked their light sticks and stepped into the hall. At the top of the stairwell, Alicia moved to the rail and looked down, sweeping the area with the barrel of her rifle. She gave them the all clear, waving them forward.

They descended in this manner, flight by flight, Alicia and Peter trading the point, Mausami and Hollis guarding the rear. When they reached the third floor they exited the stairwell and moved down the hall, toward the elevators.

The middle elevator stood open, as they’d left it. Peering over the edge, Peter could see the car with its roof hatch standing open below. He swung out onto the cable, his rifle slung across his back, and shimmied to the roof of the car, then dropped inside. The elevator opened on another lobby, two stories tall, with a glass ceiling. The wall facing the open door was mirrored, giving him an angled view of the space beyond. He inched the barrel of his rifle out, holding his breath. But the moonlit space was empty. He whistled up through the hatch to the others.

The rest of the group followed, passing their rifles through the hatch and dropping down. The last was Mausami. She was wearing two packs, Peter saw, one slung from each shoulder.

“Sara’s,” she explained. “I thought she’d want it.”

The casino was to their left, to their right the darkened hall of empty stores. Beyond that lay the main entrance and the Humvees. Hollis had seen the pod taking Sara across the street, to the tower. The plan was to get across the open ground in front of the hotel using the vehicles, with their heavy guns, for cover. Beyond that, Peter didn’t know.

They reached the lobby, with its silent piano. All was quiet, unchanged. In the glow of their light sticks, the painted figures on the ceiling seemed to float freely, suspended over their heads without attachment to any physical plane. When Peter had seen them the first time, they had seemed somehow menacing, but as he looked at them now, this feeling was gone. Those dewy eyes and soft, round faces—Peter realized they were Littles.

They reached the entrance and crouched by the open window. “I’ll go first,” Alicia said. She took a drink from her canteen. “If it’s clear, we get in and go. I don’t want to hang around the base of the building more than about two seconds. Michael, you take Sara’s place at the wheel of the second Humvee; Hollis and Mausami, I want you up on those fifties. Caleb, just run like hell and get inside and make sure Amy’s with you. I’ll cover you while everybody gets aboard.”

“What about you?” Peter asked.

“Don’t worry, I’m not letting you leave without me.”

Then she was up and out the window, dashing for the nearest vehicle. Peter scrambled into position. The darkness beyond was total, the moon obscured by the roof of the portico. He heard a soft impact as Alicia took cover at the base of one of the Humvees. He pressed the stock of his weapon tight against his shoulder, willing Alicia to whistle the all clear.

Beside him, Hollis whispered, “What the hell’s keeping her?”

The lack of light was so complete it felt like a living thing, not an absence but a presence, pulsing all around him. An anxious sweat prickled his hair. He drew a breath and tightened his finger on the trigger of his rifle, ready to fire.

A figure raced toward them out of the darkness.

“Run!”

As Alicia dove headfirst through the window, Peter realized what he was seeing: a roiling mass of pale green light, like a cresting wave, hurtling toward the building.

Virals. The street was full of virals.

Hollis had begun to fire. Peter shouldered his weapon and managed to let off a pair of shots before Alicia seized him by the sleeve and yanked him away from the window.

“There’s too many! Get out of here!”

They had made it less than halfway across the lobby when there came a thundering crash and the sound of splintering wood. The front door was failing; the virals would be streaming in at any second. Up ahead, Caleb and Mausami were sprinting down the hall toward the casino. Alicia was firing in quick bursts behind them, covering their retreat, her spent shell casings pinging across the tiled floor. In the flashing light of her muzzle Peter saw Amy on all fours by the piano, probing the ground as if she’d lost something. Her gun. But there was no point in looking for it now. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her down the hall, chasing the others. His mind was saying: We’re dead. We’re all dead.

Another crash of breaking glass from deep inside the building. They were being flanked. Soon they’d be surrounded, lost in the dark. Like the mall, only worse, because there was no daylight to run to. Hollis was beside him now. Ahead he saw the glow of a light stick and the figure of Michael ducking through the shattered window of a restaurant. As he reached it he saw that Caleb and Mausami were already inside. He yelled to Alicia, “This way! Hurry!” and shoved Amy through, in time to see Michael disappearing through a second door at the rear.

“Just follow them,” he cried. “Go!”

Then Alicia was upon him, yanking him through the window. Without a pause she reached into her pouch and withdrew another light stick and cracked it over her knee. They raced across the room to the rear door, which was still swinging with the force of Michael’s exit.

Another hallway, narrow and low-ceilinged, like a tunnel. Peter saw Hollis and the others up ahead, waving to them, shouting their names. The smell of sewer gas was suddenly stronger, almost dizzying. Peter and Alicia swiveled as the first viral burst through the door behind them. The hallway flashed with the light of their muzzles. Peter was firing blind, aiming at the door. The first one fell and then another and another. And still they kept on coming.

He realized he’d been squeezing the trigger but nothing was happening. His gun was empty; he had fired off his last round. Alicia was pulling him down the hall again. A flight of stairs, leading down to another hall. He bumped against the wall and almost fell but somehow kept going.

The hall ended at a pair of swinging doors that opened on a kitchen. The stairs had taken them below ground level, into the deep inner workings of the hotel. Banks of copper pots hung from the ceiling above a wide steel table that shone with the reflected glow of Alicia’s light stick. His breath felt tight in his chest; the air was dense with fumes. He dropped his empty rifle and seized one of the pots from the ceiling. A wide copper fry pan, heavy in his hands.

Something had followed them through the door.

He turned, swinging the pan as he lurched backward against the stove—a gesture that would have seemed comical if it weren’t so desperate—sheltering Alicia with his body as the viral bounded to the top of the steel table, dropping into a crouch. A female: her fingers were covered in rings like the ones he’d seen on the slims at the card table. She was holding her hands away from her body, the long fingers flexing, shoulders swaying in a liquid motion from side to side. Peter clutched the pan like a shield, Alicia pressed behind him.

Alicia: “She sees herself!”

What was the viral waiting for? Why hadn’t she attacked?

“Her reflection!” Alicia hissed. “She sees her reflection in the pan!”

Peter became aware of a new sound, coming from the viral—a mournful nasal moaning, like the whine of a dog. As if the image of her face, reflected in the pan’s copper bottom, were the source of some deep and melancholy recognition. Peter cautiously moved the pan back and forth, the viral’s eyes following, entranced. How long could he hold her like this, before more virals came through the door? His hands were slick with sweat, the air was so dense with fumes he could scarcely breathe.

This place will go up like a torch.

“Lish, do you see a way out of here?”

Alicia swiveled her head quickly. “A door to your right, five meters.”

“Is it locked?”

“How should I know?”

He spoke through clenched teeth, doing everything he could to hold his body still, to keep the viral’s eyes focused on the pan. “Does it have a lock you can see, damnit?”

The creature startled, a muscular tautness rippling through her. Her jaw fell open, lips withdrawing to reveal the rows of gleaming teeth. She had given up her moaning; she had begun to click.

“No, I don’t see one.”

“Pull a grenade.”

“There’s not enough space in here!”

“Do it. The room is full of gas. Toss it behind her and run like hell for the door.”

Alicia slipped a hand between their bodies to her waist, freeing a grenade from her belt. He felt her pull the pin.

“Here you go,” she said.

A clean arc, up and over the viral’s head. It was as Peter had hoped; the viral’s eyes broke away, her head twisting to follow the airborne parabola of the grenade as it lobbed across the room, clattering on the table behind her before rolling to the floor. Peter and Alicia turned and dashed for the door. Alicia got there first, slamming into the metal bar. Fresh air and a feeling of space—they were on some kind of loading dock. Peter was counting in his head. One second, two seconds, three seconds …

He heard the first report, the concussive spray of the grenade’s detonation, and then a second, deeper boom as the gas in the room ignited. They rolled over the edge of the dock as first the door shot above their heads and then the shock wave, a prow of fire. Peter felt the air being stripped from his lungs. He pressed his face into the earth, his hands held over his head. More explosions as pockets of gas went off, the fire traveling upward through the structure. Debris began to pour down over them, glass falling everywhere, exploding on the pavement in a rain of glinting shards. He breathed in a mouthful of smoke and dust.

“We have to move!” Alicia cried, pulling at him. “The whole thing is going up!”

His hands and face felt wet, but who knew what that was. They were somewhere on the south side of the building. They tore across the street under the light of the burning hotel and took cover behind the rusted hulk of an overturned car.

They were breathing hard, coughing out smoke. Their faces were coated with soot. He looked at Lish and saw a long glistening stain on her upper thigh, soaking the fabric of her pants.

“You’re bleeding.”

She pointed at his head. “So are you.”

Above them, a second series of explosions shook the air. A huge fireball ascended upward through the hotel, bathing the scene in a furious orange light, sending more flaming debris cascading to the street.

“You think the others got out?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Alicia coughed again, then took a mouthful of water from her canteen and spat onto the ground. “Stay put.”

She scooted around the base of the car, returning a moment later. “I count twelve smokes from here.” She made a vague gesture up and away. “More on the tower on the far side of the street. The fires pushed them back, but that won’t last.”

So there it was. Out in the dark, their rifles gone, trapped between a burning building and the virals. They were resting with their shoulders touching, their backs braced against the car.

Alicia rolled her head to look at him. “That was a good idea. Using the pan. How’d you know it’d work?”

“I didn’t.”

She shook her head. “It was still some cool trick, anyway.” She paused, a look of pain skittering across her face. She closed her eyes and breathed, then: “Ready?”

“The Humvees?”

“It’s our best shot, I think. Stay close to the fires, use them for cover.”

Fires or no, they probably wouldn’t make it ten meters once the virals saw them. From the look of Alicia’s leg, he doubted she’d be able to walk at all. All they had were their blades and the five grenades on Alicia’s belt. But Amy and the others were still out here, maybe; they had to at least try.

She clipped off two grenades and placed them in his hands. “Remember our deal,” she said.

She meant would he kill her, if it came to that. The answer came so easily it surprised him. “Me too. I won’t be one of them.”

Alicia nodded. She had removed a grenade and pulled the pin, ready to throw. “I just want to say, before we do this, I’m glad it’s you.”

“Same here.”

She wiped her eyes with her wrist. “Oh fuck, Peter, now you’ve seen me cry twice. You can’t tell anyone, you can’t.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

A blaze of light filled his eyes. For an instant he actually believed something had happened and she’d accidentally released the grenade—that death was, in the end, an affair of light and silence. But then he heard the roar of the engine and knew that it was a vehicle, coming toward them.

“Get in!” a voice boomed. “Get in the truck!”

They froze.

Alicia’s eyes widened at the unpinned grenade in her hand. “Flyers, what do I do with this?”

“Just throw it!”

She tossed it over the top of the car; Peter yanked her to the ground as the grenade went off with a bang. The lights were closing in. They took off at a hobbling run, Peter’s arm wrapped around Alicia’s waist. Lumbering out of the darkness was a boxy vehicle with a huge plow jutting from the front like a demented smile, the windshield wrapped in a cage of wire; some kind of gun was mounted to the roof, a figure positioned behind it. As Peter watched, the gun sprang to life, shooting a plume of liquid fire over their heads.

They hit the dirt. Peter felt stinging heat on the back of his neck.

“Keep down!” the voice boomed again, and only then did Peter realize the sound was amplified, coming from a horn on the roof of the truck’s cabin. “Move your asses!”

“Well, which is it?” Alicia yelled, her body pressed to the ground. “You can’t have both!”

The truck ground to a halt just a few meters from their heads. Peter pulled Alicia to her feet as the figure on the roof slid down a ladder. A heavy wire mask obscured his face; his body was covered in thick pads. A short-barreled shotgun clung to his leg in a leather holster. Written on the side of the truck were the words NEVADA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS.

“In the back! Move it!”

The voice was a woman’s.

“There are eight of us!” Peter cried. “Our friends are still out here!”

But the woman seemed not to hear him or, if she did, to care. She hustled them to the rear of the truck, her movements surprisingly nimble despite her heavy armor. She turned a handle and flung the door wide.

“Lish! Get in!”

The voice was Caleb’s. Everybody was there, splayed out on the floor of the dark compartment. Peter and Alicia clambered inside; the door clanged shut behind them, sealing them in darkness.

With a lurch, the truck began to move.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 505