“What about Los Angeles? Anything new?”
“Nothing. Phones and satellites and all that shit are overwhelmed. I mean, there’s stuff, but it all seems kind of sketchy. Guesses.”
Kim turned to check on Mitts, but he was still sleeping hard, his mouth open and the low whine of a snore coming out. “So, basically, nobody knows what’s going on?”
Duran put his phone on the dashboard. “It’s the military. Somebody probably knows what’s going on, but we’re going to be waiting a long time before anybody shares that information with E-1s.”
“Yeah, well, I’m an E-3. Since I wildly outrank you,” she said, her voice droll, “they’ll clearly tell me first.” She was pleased to see him smile. “So,” she said, “what’s next? We just going to sit here and babysit traffic for the next few days?”
“Honestly? I haven’t really thought about it.”
“How can you not think about it?”
“Well, I figure, as you are so quick to remind me, you’re the fire team leader, Ms. Lance Corporal, so it’s your job to think about stuff. I just follow orders.”
“Go fuck yourself, Duran.” She smiled when she said it, but that didn’t stop Duran from frowning and shaking his head forcefully.
“No, no. I’m not giving you a hard time, Kim. I’m serious. We trust you. There’s a reason you’re the fire team leader instead of one of us. I kind of figured if there was something to worry about, you’d think of it. That’s not what I’m good at.”
“Fine. Okay. But there are some real questions, right? I mean, if these spiders are all over the world, can we really expect them to stay put in Los Angeles? And what happens when the camp fills up?” She gestured out the windshield at the traffic. It was moving slowly, at the pace of a brisk walk, but it was moving. “Because there are a lot of cars out there.”
“Kim, what’s that—”
“No, seriously. We need to worry about—”
“Kim.” He said her name sharply, holding up his hand. “Do you hear that?”
She was quiet, but the pop-pop-pop of a heavy-caliber weapon was easy to hear once she stopped talking. It was coming from her far left, toward the temporary holding area. She turned and gave Mitts a poke, waking him up, before opening her door and stepping out. Even with the heat, it was a relief to be out of the JLTV. The fresh air was good. She saw Elroy looking down at her from where he stood. He had spent shells under the triggers as safeties and his hands at his sides, but he didn’t look relaxed. There was a moment of silence, and then one, two, maybe three of the .50 cals went off, plus small-arms fire. It sounded a ways off. At least a klick. There was nothing on the radio.
“What do you say, Kim?” Elroy pulled his sunglasses off.
“Somebody jumping the line?” she said.
Elroy shrugged. “Maybe. A few rounds on a fitty, if that’s the case.”
He didn’t need to say that it was more than a few rounds out of a .50 caliber. Kim nodded. “Go ahead and pull those shells out from behind the triggers,” she said, and then she walked around the back of the vehicle and over to where Sue’s squad was parked. Sue was outside her Hummer, sitting on the ground and leaning against one of the wheels. She was staring glumly at her cell phone, and when she saw Kim, she held it up. “Shit signal,” she said. “Shit phone. It’s all shit.”
“Could be worse, right?”
“Always,” Sue said, and pushed herself to her feet. “Firing’s stopped, yeah?”
“Yeah, but . . .” Kim trailed off. There was another sound, and it took her a second to figure out what it was. Honking? Down the highway this time. Far away. Far enough that she and Sue had to stand there quietly, straining to hear it. The beginning of a ruckus. Maybe screaming? It was hard to tell. And then whatever sound might have been coming from the highway was washed away by the sound of rotors. A pair of birds, AH-64 Apaches, missiled-up and moving like piss fire, roared overhead and down the straight shot of highway. Kim and Sue looked at each other for a second and then scrambled to get back into their vehicles.
Kim barely had the door closed when the birds started firing. The jackhammer retort of the guns—the AH-64s sported a 30 mm M230 chain gun that could fire three hundred rounds per minute from the chin turret—sounded almost dusty from a mile away.