Extinction Machine

Chapter Sixty-seven

Elk Neck State Park

Cecil County, Maryland

Sunday, October 20, 11:06 a.m.

We slammed into the trees.

A month later and those trees would have been bare sticks and the crooked fingers of the countless branches would have plucked the skin from our bodies. But summer had lingered well into October and the trees were still thick with leaves. If those leaves were not as butter-soft now as they would have been in July, then at least there were a lot of them. Junie and I were curled into balls, arms wrapped around our heads, knees pulled to our chests like kids cannon-balling into a pool.

The blast punched us through the branches and gravity pulled us down to the thick grass. She hit first and then me, landing in a bad heels-first attempt at grace but powered by too much momentum. We tried to turn the landing into a clumsy run, but that was for shit. I lost sight of her as my body pitched forward and suddenly I was a big clunky wheel rolling over and over down a slope and I’m pretty sure I hit every goddamned moss-covered stone and fallen branch. Pain erupted all along my hide like a string of firecrackers. At the bottom of the slope I found a fragment of balance and ran halfway up the next hill to slough off the force. Everything hurt. My muscles hurt, my joints hurt, my teeth hurt, even my hair hurt. The world did a drunken Irish jig around me and my guts wanted to throw up everything I’d eaten since last March.

Instead, I whirled and looked for Junie. She was sprawled in a thick rhododendron. Her wild blond hair covered her face and one hand was flung out onto the grass. It was covered with dirt and ashes and blood.

She wasn’t moving.

“Junie!” I cried and then I was racing down the slope toward her, dropping to my knees, sliding the last yard, reaching for her.

Her fingers closed around my wrist.

“Joe…” Her voice was a faint echo of pain.

I tore leaves and branches out of the way. “Are you hurt?”

“I … don’t think so.”

There was a sound behind me and I whirled, one hand scrabbling for my pistol.

Which wasn’t there. I’d lost it in the trees.

Something moved quickly through the brush and then I saw a flash of white.

Junie looked past me. “Ghost!” she cried, and the fuzz monster came pelting down the slope. He was as much of a mess as we were. Sooty, singed, bleeding from a dozen shallow cuts, but for all that he was full of excitement to see me.

And he rushed right past me and began licking Junie’s face.

With dogs, it’s always an ego boost knowing that you’re the center of their universe.

“Hey,” I said, and Ghost gave me a quick token lick and half a wag.

He does more than that when he smells the neighbor dog’s ass.

Nice.

There was another sound from up the hill. Men shouting, and I realized with a start that the helicopters were no longer overhead. They must have touched down to deploy their crews of killers.

The Closers.

I pulled Junie down behind some wild shrubs.

“Persistent sons of bitches,” I said, then I gave her a shrewd look. “No offense, but this seems like a lot of firepower to kill one woman.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand it. I don’t know how to fight, they could have sent one man with a gun.”

“Why do they want to kill you at all?”

She didn’t answer.

“Junie … really, now’s not the time to be coy.”

“They’re coming!” she said urgently. Indeed they were, a line of men hurrying down into the woods.

We edged away and as soon as we could, we bent low and ran for our lives.