An adjutant over by the Challenger turns to relay the brigadier’s orders. He dies with his mouth wide open and a spear through his neck cutting off the words he was about to say.
By this time, McQueen and Foss and Sixsmith have shrugged their rifles off their shoulders. Have brought them around and up to the ready. They’re taking aim, as far as they need to. At this distance, the SCAR-H is not a discriminating weapon.
Firing at will, they move forward, away from Rosie and from the attacking children, through the ragged line of Beacon troops and the milling junkers who are in no formation at all. Nothing stands in their way, or at least not for long: they lay down a corridor in the chaos and walk on through it. Carlisle follows them, slower in his gait because of his limp and more deliberate in choosing targets. He shoots junkers, wherever he can, avoids the few uniforms he can see. His sympathies here are for the men and women—surely there must have been some—who thought they were fighting for something real.
Breaking through the line is much easier than he had feared. The junkers have scattered, which is a quick and easy suicide. The Beacon soldiers are doing what their training tells them to do, kneeling or throwing themselves prone to make a smaller target, using the towering weeds for cover. The enemy out in the night, seeing them by their body heat, kills them just the same.
The remnants of Rosie’s military escort break out on the far side of the cordon and leave them to it. Predators and prey can sort it out among themselves. The little group sprints into the denser undergrowth at the edge of the concrete field, Carlisle still bringing up the rear. McQueen staggers, emitting a grunt of pain and surprise. He has taken a hit to the upper body, though it’s impossible in the dark to say exactly where. His rifle clatters from his grip. He draws his pistol clumsily with his left hand and keeps on moving.
Finally they put the two staff cars and the Challenger between themselves and the worst of the gunfire.
The plan now is to carry on in as straight a line as they can manage until they reach the perimeter fence, and then follow it widdershins to the base’s south gate, where Rosie will meet them. It’s a terrible plan, built on the optimistic premise that their two enemies will obligingly break against each other and leave nobody standing to pursue them. It also assumes that they will not lose each other in the dark.
Unfortunately they already have. The colonel slows, realising suddenly that Dr. Khan is no longer with them. He turns and looks back the way they’ve just come, but the headlights of the parked vehicles are the only illumination and they are all pointing at Rosie on the far side of the parade ground. Small, fleet figures race in and out of the beams. Like bats, they’re almost too quick to see at all. When a burst of machine-gun fire rips apart the brambles a few feet away from Carlisle, he is forced to move forward again.
For another fifty yards. This time it’s Sixsmith who stumbles to a halt. She points wordlessly off to the left.
“No way!” Foss exclaims incredulously. “No fucking way!”
The brigadier would surely have left at least a token guard on the copter, but there is no sign of them now. Perhaps they went to join the fight. Perhaps, seeing the way things were going, they scattered and took cover. Whichever decision they went with, it will probably make no difference to their eventual fate.
The copter is a crude, functional thing: a bulbous egg at the end of a fuselage that’s no more than a single steel strut. “What is this piece of shit?” McQueen grunts in disgust. He is bent over like an old man, his right arm folded against his chest. Wherever he was hit, Carlisle does not believe it’s a flesh wound.
“MH-6,” Sixsmith mutters tersely, running past him and vaulting into the pilot seat. “Little Bird. I can fly this. I can fly it all the way to Beacon.”
“Yeah, but we can’t ride it,” Foss protests. “There’s no room.”
“It will take four.”
“There are fucking eight of us!”
“Four on the gun platform, I mean. Plus pilot and co-pilot. Khan can hold her baby and the civilian commander can fucking walk home.”
“Works for me,” McQueen says. He moves forward, but he doesn’t seem able to raise his foot high enough to climb into the copter’s rear. Foss has to lift and manhandle him in, which is a struggle. Then she clambers in after him.
Carlisle hesitates, looking back once more towards the parade ground where bursts of gunfire and screams of despair can still be heard, but at lengthening intervals.
He leaves it too long. And he lets his guard down, like a fool, thinking that the danger has stayed where it was put. Something cold touches his temple.
“You bastard,” Fry hisses into his ear. “This was about our future. You’ve stolen our future!” Her fingers feel down his arm, find his pistol and tug it from his hand. He hears the heavy thud as it falls into the weeds. McQueen and Foss are inside the copter’s passenger space and haven’t realised what’s happening. Sixsmith sees, but she has set her rifle down in the co-pilot seat to get to grips with the copter’s controls. She glances across at it now, but there is no way she can get anywhere near it before Fry fires.
“You did that, Geraldine,” Carlisle says. “When you started this. Nobody forced your hand.”
“I want Beacon to survive. That’s what forced my hand. Tell your people to get out of my copter.”
“No.”
“Tell them, Isaac. Now.”
“No.”
“Fine.” Subconsciously he expects to hear the click of the safety, but why would the safety be on in the middle of a massacre? What he hears is the ringing, echoing roar of the brigadier’s pistol discharging right beside his ear. The shot goes wide, though the range was point blank.
Fry’s legs buckle under her and she folds backwards, her arms windmilling. Samrina Khan’s jaws are locked in her throat. They hit the ground together.
Carlisle kneels quickly and gropes in the long grass for his pistol. Khan is on her knees too, her upper body leaning over the brigadier’s and mostly hiding it from sight. The sounds, though, signal clearly that what is being hidden is extreme and cannibalistic in nature.
Carlisle finds the gun in the same moment that Samrina raises her head. The blood is black in the dim light, smeared across the lower half of the doctor’s face like a highwayman’s mask. Even her teeth are black, so her gaping mouth is just a tunnel.
Sixsmith has grabbed her rifle now: she hugs it to her chest like a comforter. But Foss jumps down from the rear platform with her weapon raised and ready.
Then she sees who it is that’s crouching on her haunches in the grass. “Oh shit!” she whispers.
Carlisle goes down on one knee, his stiff leg protesting at the harsh usage. “Samrina,” he says. “You have to get into the copter. Do you understand me?”
“Sir—” Foss protests.
“Now, Samrina. Quickly.”
“Sir, you can bloody well see she’s turned!”
“Isaac,” Khan croaks. The word is barely audible.