She swallowed around the thickness in her throat. “Got it.”
Bishop nodded and turned back to scanning the road through his NVGs.
There weren’t enough NVGs for her. The skilled shooters got them—Bishop, Hayes, Reynoso and Perez. Corinne Marshall was an excellent shot, too.
Quinn studied the night. On the horizon, the faintest gray threaded the darkness. Her eyes burned, but adrenaline-soaked fear kept her alert.
They’d taken their first defensive position outside of town with the bridge at their backs. A hundred yards to her right, the river twisted like a great black serpent, moonlight glinting on dark water. It flowed beneath the bridge and curved into a C behind them, hugging the eastern side of town. Several miles to the south, the dam separated Fall Creek from Lake Chapin.
Ahead and to her left, unkept grassy fields led to the Estates Trailer Park, where she’d once lived in a crappy derelict trailer with Octavia and Ray Shultz.
For a second she imagined artillery fire shredding the crumbling drywall, tearing through mildewing aluminum and decaying wood, stained carpet and tattered furniture, erasing its very existence.
Past the river and the trailer park were scattered homes, farms, and family-owned businesses—a custom cabinet-making shop, a U-Pick farm, a convenience store.
They had created various choke points—a labyrinthine maze of vehicles, massive felled trees, and concertina-wire obstacles. Scattered foxholes and urban sniper hides were placed throughout the area. They had several fallback positions past the bridge in town, where doorways, roofs, and windows had been shored up with sandbags.
Liam had described their tactics as defense-in-depth, and he’d placed the bulk of their fortifications and security teams behind the front line.
The Syndicate would breach their front line more easily, but as they advanced, they would continue to meet resistance—their flanks becoming vulnerable to constant attack from both sides.
As Poe’s army pushed forward, the Fall Creek defenders would fall back to a succession of prepared positions. Bishop planned to exact a high price from the advancing enemy while avoiding the danger of being overrun or outflanked themselves.
That was the plan, anyway.
They had established a similar defense at the northern barricade, where Reynoso led the townspeople against the General’s men.
Corrine Marshall and Whitney were stationed with him, along with Dave Farris, Principal King, Flynn, and dozens of others.
Bishop’s radio spat static. Dave Farris’s voice broke through: “We have eyes on the General’s army. They halted south of the bypass just out of range. They’ve got plenty of guns bigger than I am. But they haven’t fired on us. They haven’t attacked. They’re just waiting.”
Dread scrabbled up her spine. “For what?”
Bishop pressed transmit and echoed her question.
“Guess we’re about to find out,” Dave said soberly.
Quinn’s nerves felt raw, every cell in her body on edge. The waiting was the hardest. She just wanted it to start, for the adrenaline to take over.
The waiting let the doubt worm its way in. Misgivings, apprehension, fear. All the horrible ways to die. All the terrible things that could happen to your loved ones.
Gran’s face flashed in her mind’s eye. Sorrow surged within her but so did the anger. She did not fight it down or pretend it away. She was angry, furious, outraged.
She let it burn through her, energize her, drive every beat of her heart.
She planned to eradicate every fake-soldier Syndicate scumbag that she could.
The Syndicate was like a wart on the butt of the apocalypse. They were evil personified. Madness and destruction and death.
“No pressure,” she said through gritted teeth. “Just saving the world over here. Don’t mind us.”
“What?” Jonas asked.
“Never mind.”
Bishop’s radio beeped. “This is Echo Three,” a female voice said. “We have movement. Dozens of trucks and military vehicles approaching via Old 31. Ten miles out.”
A terrible anticipation gripped her. Her tongue tasted coppery. Her heart beat so loud, it was difficult to hear anything beyond the roar of her pulse.
Endless minutes passed.
The second scout radioed in. “Attack imminent. Five miles to intercept.”
And then she could hear it. The low buzz like a thousand bees. A growing, intensifying rumble like a great beast waking beneath the earth, roaring as it reared its head to devour them.
Everything slowed. Her vision narrowed and crystalized.
Eyes straining, she peered into the darkness.
A pair of headlights appeared in the distance. Two tiny pinpricks of light.
And then another. And another. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Even more.
They blurred together, amplifying and expanding until it felt like a giant searchlight pinning her in place.
Poe was coming.
66
Liam
Day One Hundred and Fifteen
“How many hostiles?” Liam asked in a terse voice.
He was clad in nothing but his underwear, bruised, beaten, and freezing cold. None of it mattered. He was absolutely focused.
“At least seven in the elevator alcove outside the kitchen,” Luther said. “I don’t see anyone in the kitchen itself, but I can’t be certain. The guardsmen are gone. It’s the General’s contractors we have to worry about.”
“Exits?”
“The main one straight ahead. A service entrance to the west. Ah, at our three o’clock. They’ll use it to flank us. But we’re not receiving fire from that direction yet. I don’t see any movement.”
Liam grabbed a spare M4 from a dead bodyguard, examined it—full magazine, locked and loaded—and slung it over his bare shoulder. “Then we need to get there first.”
Luther nodded.
Weapon in hand, Liam stacked up behind him. His thoughts crystallized. His senses bright and sharp, every synapse firing.
Luther knelt in the freezer doorway and fired on full-auto, suppressing the hostiles attempting to burst through the kitchen entrance. He bled off an entire magazine.