So now, kneeling several yards behind them as they struggled to correct the problem from the command station, he knew at once that they were going to fail. There wasn’t enough time for them to do anything from there. Not now. The once-men were coming out from behind the barricades, challenging the cover fire laid down by the retreating defenders, seeing an opportunity to cross the bridge and seize it intact. Even Logan Tom, turning to face this new assault, seemed at a loss.
But Fixit knew what to do. Without stopping to think about the wisdom of it, he came to his feet and charged onto the bridge. Shouts and cries trailed after him, and Logan’s outstretched arm barely missed him. The relay was strapped to a bridge truss fifteen yards away, protected by steel girders and a makeshift steel frame. He raced straight for it, ignoring the ranks of approaching once-men and the stray bullets that whizzed by his head. He threw himself down as the weapons fire increased, crawling and rolling the last several yards until he was behind the steel frame and pressed up against the girders. He raised himself up on his elbows, keeping his head safely behind the steel supports, and snapped open the relay box.
Inside, he found the wires still connected.
He had been wrong.
Furious with himself, he began searching the relay mechanism for other possible failures, convinced that the problem was here, not somewhere else. The weapons fire had grown heavier, and he could sense the steady approach of the once-men. Logan was using his staff to keep them back, aided by the bridge defenders, but the once-men were pressing forward anyway. Even without risking a glance to see how close they were, he knew it wouldn’t be long until they were on top of him.
Then he found it. A tiny bit of debris had wedged itself between the contacts, breaking the circuit and preventing the signal from activating. He blew hard into the mechanism, cleared the contact, jammed the relay box back into place within its protective frame, and was on his feet once more, racing back the way he had come.
His heart was pounding. How long did he have? Didn’t matter. If he was quick, he should still be able to rea
TWENTY-SIX
T HE THIRD DAY OF THEIR MARCH dawned very much the same as the previous two, the sky bright and cloudless, the sun a white-hot ball in the eastern horizon, and the air already heavy and sweltering. All around them, the land spread away in an unchanging landscape of barren earth, wintry scrub, and open plains dotted with clumps of dead grass. Now and then they would cross through a shallow depression or climb a low rise, but most of what they saw was endlessly flat and empty.
Tessa walked with Hawk as he led the way, the caravan still moving north and east, headed for distant mountains that were no more than a faint tracing against the skyline. She had chosen not to ride this day, at least for the first part of it, but to stay by him. He knew she missed their time alone, which had eroded to almost nothing, the demands placed on him as leader taking away what little privacy they might have enjoyed. They talked when they could, they slept together when Hawk slept at all, but mostly they were apart.
Today Panther drove the Lightning AV with Owl and a handful of smaller children as passengers. Panther grumbled at the assignment, mostly because he grumbled at almost everything, but it got him out of Hawk’s hair for a few hours, which was the best he could hope for. Sparrow, River, and even Candle had decided to walk, and they formed a small group with Bear not too far back from Hawk and Tessa, but far enough to give them their privacy.
Strung out behind them, the children from the compounds followed with their caregivers, and farther back still Lizards, Spiders, and a growing handful of others.
Where those other creatures, humans mutating into something new, had come from was something of a mystery. Hawk was aware of them right from the start. Some of them were already in camp when they had departed the bridge and begun the march, but others had joined them since. There was no way of telling how they had found their way to him or knew that it was all right to stay. Perhaps word had gotten around in the camp that he was taking anyone who chose to come along. Perhaps they were just hoping for something better in their lives.
There were even a few children and adults who had arrived from as far away as Portland and Seattle. Strays, they had made their way overland in an effort to escape from places where they were no longer safe. Last night, a skinny girl with lank brown hair and haunted eyes, traveling in the company of several other kids, all just a little younger than she was, had caught up to the caravan. She had been asking about a man carrying a black staff, saying she had done what he had told her and come north along the roads he said to follow and now she was looking for him. Hawk asked her name, but she refused to give it. He left her with Tessa, who spent a long time with her. She didn’t seem to want to talk to him. She just wanted to know what had happened to Logan.
“Are you still thinking about Chalk?” Tessa asked him suddenly.