The virals charged.
The machine guns opened up; Caleb ducked reflexively as bullets whizzed over his head, slicing into the creatures with a wet, slapping pound. Blood splashed; flesh was cleaved from bone; whole pieces of the virals’ bodies winged away. They seemed not merely to die but to disintegrate. The machine guns pounded, round after round. A slaughter, yet always there were more, surging into the lights.
“The portal!” Caleb called. He was running forward at a forty-five-degree angle to the wall, waving above his head. “Head for the portal!”
Caleb dropped to one knee and began to fire. Did his father see him? Did he know who he was? The bolt locked back; thirty rounds, gone in a heartbeat. He dropped the magazine, reached into his chest pack for a fresh one, and shoved it into the receiver.
Something crashed into him from behind. Breath, sight, thought: all left him. He felt himself sailing, almost hovering. This seemed extraordinary. In the midst of his flight, he had just enough time to marvel at the lightness of his body compared to other things. Then his body grew heavy again and he slammed into the ground. He was rolling down the incline, his rifle whipping around on its sling. He tried to control his body, its wild tumble down the hill. His hand found the lower unit of the rifle, but his index finger got tangled in the trigger guard. He rolled again, onto his chest, the rifle wedged between his body and the ground, and there was no stopping it; the gun went off.
Pain! He came to rest on his back, the rifle lying over his chest. Had he shot himself? The ground was spinning under him; it refused to be still. He blinked into the spotlights. He didn’t feel the way he imagined a shot person would. The pain was in two places: his chest, which had received the explosive force of the rifle’s firing, and a spot on his forehead, near the outer edge of his right eyebrow. He reached up, expecting blood; his fingers came away dry. He understood what had happened. The ejecting cartridge, ricocheting off the ground, had pinged upward into his face, narrowly missing his eye. You are fucking lucky, Caleb Jaxon, he thought. I really hope nobody saw that.
A shadow fell across him.
Caleb raised the rifle, but as his left hand reached forward to balance the barrel he realized the mag well was empty; the magazine had been stripped away. He had, at various times of his life, imagined the moment of his own death. These imaginings had not included lying on his back with an empty rifle while a viral tore him to pieces. Perhaps, he considered, that’s the way it was for everybody: Bet you didn’t think of this. Caleb dropped the rifle. His only hope was his sidearm. Had he racked it? Had he remembered to free the safety? Would the gun even be there, or had it, like the rifle’s magazine, been stripped from his person? The shadow had taken the form of a human silhouette, but it wasn’t human, not at all. The head cocked. The claws extended. The lips retreated, revealing a dark cave dripping with teeth. The pistol was in Caleb’s hand and rising.
A burst of blood; the creature curled around the hole at the center of its chest. With an almost tender gesture, it reached up with one clawed hand and touched the wound. It raised its face with a bland expression. Am I dead? Did you do that? But Caleb hadn’t; he hadn’t even pulled the trigger. The shot had come from over Caleb’s shoulder. For a second they studied one another, Caleb and this dying thing; then a second figure stepped from Caleb’s right, shoved the muzzle of a shotgun into the viral’s face, and fired.
It was his father. With him was a woman, barefoot, in a plain frock, the kind the sisters wore. Her hair was the barest patina of darkness on her skull. In her outstretched hand, she held the pistol she had used to fire the first, fatal shot.
Amy.
“Peter …” she said. And melted to her knees.
Then they were running.
No words were passed that Caleb would later recall. His father was carrying Amy over his shoulder; two other men were with them; one of them had the shotgun his father had cast aside. The portal was open; a squad of six soldiers had formed a firing line in front of it.
“Get down!”
The voice was Hollis’s. All of them hit the dirt. Shots screamed past them, then ceased abruptly. Caleb lifted his face. Over the barrel of his rifle, Hollis was waving them on.
“Run your asses off!”
His father and Amy entered first, Caleb following. A barrage of gunfire erupted behind them. The soldiers were shouting to one another—On your left! On your right! Go, go!—firing their rifles as, one by one, they backed through the narrow doorway. Hollis was the last to enter. He dropped his rifle, swung the door around, and began to close it, clutching the wheel that, once turned, would set the bolts. Just as the lip of the door was about to make contact with the frame, it stopped.