SMOKE AND DUST

WRATH & RIGHTEOUSNESS

[Episode Six]

CHRIS STEWART

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used factiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locals or persona, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Mercury Radio Arts, Inc.

1133 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10036

www.glennbeck.com

www.mercuryink.com

Original Edition © The Shipley Group Inc. (Published by Deseret Book Company)
Condensed Edition © 2012 The Shipley Group Inc. (Published by Mercury Radio Arts, Inc. under license from Deseret Book Company)

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Cover design by Richard Yoo

ISBN: 978-0-9854619-5-9 (ePub)

QED stands for Quality, Excellence and Design. The QED seal of approval shown here verifies that this eBook has passed a rigorous quality assurance process and will render well in most eBook reading platforms.

For more information please click here.

Contents

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

“If it were not for hopes, the heart would break.”

Thomas Fuller

ONE

Metro Blue Line, Twenty-One Miles Northwest of Washington, D.C.

Sam Brighton stood in the aisle of the D.C. Metro, holding the overhead bar that ran down the middle of the car. Bono stood beside him, his head down, completely lost in thought. Every few minutes, Bono glanced at his watch.

Sam watched him. “Dude, you really didn’t need to do this,” he said for the third or fourth time. “Go on. Go home to your family. They need you a lot more than I do.”

Bono looked up and forced himself to smile. “This won’t take much time,” he said.

“You’re crazy, man. Stupid of you to stay here when you could be on your way home to your wife.”

Bono didn’t answer.

The Metro train hummed along, sixty feet under the ground, heading to the northwestern suburbs. The two men were quiet. Sam read the advertisements above the seats. Wicked was scheduled at the Kennedy Center downtown. The Washington Wizards were playing at home for the weekend. Not anymore, he frowned to himself.

Upon their return to the United States just a few hours before, the two men had been given seven days’ leave. Sam needed the time to try to find his family. Bono planned to hop the train up to Baltimore (the closest place he could find where he could still rent a car), then drive like a madman to his in-laws’ place in Memphis, where his wife had taken their little girl after the explosion in Washington, D.C. He glanced at his watch again and calculated in his mind. A three-hour train ride to Baltimore. A fifteen-hour drive from there. Eighteen hours to get to his family if he didn’t run into problems and if he could find the gas.

Eighteen hours to get home, leaving a little less than six days to be together with his beautiful wife and the little girl who was the spitting image of her mom.

Sam read his friend’s thoughts by the faraway look in his eye. “Listen, dude, I don’t need you to babysit me,” he said. “Go on. Your wife is waiting!”

“She understands,” Bono said.

“You’ve been gone for months! You’ve only got a few days to be with her. What are you doing here?”

Bono lowered his head and didn’t answer.

Sam tried a final time. “I really don’t need you—”

Bono cut him off with a sudden lift of his eyes. “Listen, man, you don’t know anything about your family. You don’t know if they’re alive or if they’re dead. Now, do you really think I’m going to leave you here to do this alone? Do you think I could do that? Come on, give me a little credit. My wife’s OK. She’s alive, man, I know that, same for my little girl. You don’t know about your mom or your brothers. Do you really think I’m going to take off and leave until we know if they’re OK? I’m not like that.”

Bono’s voice was firm, almost hard, and Sam knew it was time to back off.

The two men rode in silence. The train was quiet and smooth, and it was easy for Sam to lower his head and lose himself in his thoughts.

Half a minute passed.

Bono kept his head low. “She understands,” he said again.

Sam looked up but didn’t say anything.

“My wife understands I have to help you.” Bono seemed to be talking to himself. “She wouldn’t leave you to do this alone. Neither one of us would.”

Sam looked away and swallowed as he watched the passing subway tunnel’s cement walls and flashing blocks of yellow light.

“Thanks, Bono,” he whispered after a minute had passed.

“Sure thing, dude.”

Sam glanced at the rows of multicolored plastic benches on his left and right. The subway car was clean and almost completely deserted. Most of the outlying Metro lines that ran around Washington, D.C. were still operating—only the lines that ran to or through what used to be downtown had been destroyed—but few people had the guts or a reason to ride the subway anymore. Sam shook his head, amazed at the fact that the Metro ran at all. Mussolini would have been proud: The downtown district was destroyed, a quarter of a million people had died, the government was hardly working, but the trains were running and were running on time. He laughed at what he considered a fairly pointless gesture of public relations, knowing it was a fabrication mostly for the benefit of the citizens who lived outside of Washington, D.C.

Give us a few weeks and we’ll have everything back in order. Things will be the same soon. Just give us a little time. That was the government’s line.

But no one was buying it.

Everyone knew things would never be the same anymore.

He shifted his eyes to the back of the Metro. A large black woman sat near the door, her dark eyes closed, her hands clutching a leather handbag. Sam could see a bulge from the inside of the handbag and guessed what it was—many of the people who dared to venture out now were armed—and he touched the 9 mm Glock® strapped under his military jacket. A black man stood on the other end of the Metro car, his dark suit a striking contrast to the dirty running shoes on his feet. Walking had become the norm for the survivors of Washington, D.C. and no one wanted to hike for miles in dress shoes.

So it seemed that the people were adjusting—walking shoes or boots with suits, backpacks and briefcases with food and water instead of laptops and business reports, cash in their pockets, white masks across their faces to keep back the smoke and dust.

The train rolled gently into a turn, the underground tunnel lights slipping by. Although the car was nearly empty, Sam was happy to stand; he’d been sitting for most of the past fifty hours, in military terminals, onboard crowded aircraft, inside military vans. The last thing he wanted to do was sit.

Bono looked up and asked, “How far is it from the Metro station to your home?”

“Couple of miles.” Sam nudged the military backpack at his feet. “Nothing but a brisk walk through the park.”

An identical backpack rested against Bono’s knee. Sam and Bono were prepared for pretty much anything. They had food, water, guns, passports, military orders, nightsticks, a change of clothes; they could get by on their own. At the next Metro stop they would hoist the backpacks, start out at a gentle jog, and be at Sam’s parents’ house within sixteen minutes. An eight-minute-a-mile pace, loaded with guns and backpacks. No problem for either one.

Sam adjusted his combat fatigues. The camouflage design was tight, small and much greener than the pattern on the camouflage uniforms that the soldiers used to wear.

The train pitched suddenly and the locomotive engine rolled back. The cars decelerated, and the men had to grab the handhold to brace themselves.

The train continued slowing.

Then the lights went out.

It grew very quiet.

Pitch dark spread around them as the train rolled to a complete stop.

TWO

East Side, Chicago, Illinois

It was early evening and the sun had just set outside.

Azadeh walked into the living room. She turned toward the television, but couldn’t figure out how to turn it on, the remote control far more complicated than anything she had ever worked before. She sat down and read through the remains of the newspaper, reading aloud to practice, pronouncing every word as carefully and correctly as she could. From time to time she came upon a word she didn’t know and pulled out an English-Farsi dictionary to look it up. Legislator. She didn’t know that one. She turned for her dictionary again . . . .

The lights went out suddenly.

She sat without moving at the kitchen table. The apartment was dark. Completely dark. No light bled in from the streetlights outside.

She waited, unsure of what to do.

Five minutes passed.

She heard voices in the hallway. Angry voices. Shouting voices. Somewhere in the rooms above her, she heard the pounding of heavy footsteps running back and forth.

Still no lights. The room was quiet.

She stood up and moved toward the window that looked out on the city.

She saw the brick-and-mortar wall before her. Standing to the side, she looked from the corner of the window past the brick wall to the city streets below.

All she saw was utter darkness. No streetlights. No car lights. No light at all.

Everything around her, as far as she could see, was an absolute black hole.

THREE

Metro Blue Line, Twenty-One Miles Northwest of Washington, D.C.

The emergency lights kicked on, illuminating the Metro car in yellow light. Sixty feet underground, the electrical circuits on the train had been protected from the enormously powerful surge of deadly power that had just burst down from the upper atmosphere, leaving the Metro’s batteries and emergency lighting circuits intact to illuminate the cars.

For a moment, no one moved. The train was still as stone. The black woman kept her seat, looking around in bewilderment. She clasped her bag even tighter, and Sam wondered briefly what precious thing she kept inside. The black man at the back of the Metro car turned toward them. Sam and Bono stood in place.

Five, ten, twenty seconds of silence. Everyone expected the normal car lights to come up and the train to lurch forward and resume traveling again at any moment.

A full minute of silence passed before Bono turned to Sam and asked, “How often does this happen?”

Sam shook his head. “Never,” he answered quickly, nodding toward the emergency lights. “This isn’t a delay or traffic problem. This train shut down completely.”

A recording started playing through the speakers over their heads. “We are experiencing a momentary delay. Please remain in your seats. DO NOT EXIT FROM THE TRAIN. We will be moving shortly. If necessary, there is an emergency telephone to the conductor at the back of the car.”

The black man swore and thrust his hands into his pockets. Sam turned to him. “You from around here?” he asked.

The man hesitated, then nodded.

“You always ride the Metro?”

“Every day until the big one.”

“You ever had this thing shut down like this before?”

The man shook his head.

Sam turned to Bono, then moved toward the emergency telephone at the back of the car. Bono followed him and listened as he spoke. The conversation was very short.

“What’s up?” Bono asked when Sam replaced the red handset.

“Conductor says it’s just a momentary delay.”

Bono shook his head and looked at the dim emergency lighting around him. “I don’t think so,” he said.

Pushing by Sam, he picked up the phone receiver. No numbers or buttons to push, just a direct line to the conductor’s station at the front of the train. “This is Lieutenant Calton,” he said, his voice commanding, “United States Army Special Forces. You’ve got two soldiers back here on official leave and we need to know what’s going on.”

Sam turned away and pulled out his cell phone. Flipping it open, he saw there was no signal. He turned to the black man, who had pulled out his phone too. “Can you usually get a signal here?”

“Yeah,” the man grunted. “They put cell relays through most of the Metro tunnels. Some of the tunnels out in Maryland, you can’t get a signal, but here in Virginia you always could.”

Sam looked at his cell phone again. Searching for signal flashed across his screen.

Bono hung up the phone, moved toward him, and lowered his voice. “Conductor says they’ve lost all electrical power.”

“On just this train?”

“No. The entire grid.” Bono looked around. “The whole system has shut down.” He leaned a little closer. “He says he can’t get a hold of anyone upstairs—”

Sam shook his head in rage. “Another nuclear detonation!”

Bono caught Sam’s arm. “I don’t think so. It makes no sense to bomb a bunch of rubble. And we would have felt it, some kind of vibration, a noise, our ears would have popped from the surge of pressure through the tunnel. No, we would have had some indication if there’d been another detonation. This has to be something else.”

Sam was moving to his backpack. Bono turned to the other people in the car. The black woman was standing now, her eyes dark and pleading. “Listen to me,” he started, “I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know what you should do. The conductor told me they have lost all power through the electrical grid. Right now, he can’t get in contact with anyone up top. You probably ought to just stay here. Someone is going to come along eventually. If they can’t get the train moving, they’ll send rescue units down.”

The black man watched Sam hoist his backpack onto his back. “You’re telling us to stay here,” he countered, “yet I see you’re bugging out.”

“I’m not telling you to do anything,” Bono answered. “I don’t know any more than you do, and I don’t have any authority to tell you what to do anyway. I’m just saying if I were you I’d probably stay here.”

The man looked suspicious. “What aren’t you telling us?” he demanded.

Sam slid Bono’s backpack across the floor, and he reached for it. “I’m being straight with you, buddy. I’ve got no reason to lie. And I’m not telling you what to do or even giving you advice. But think about the situation. We’re, what—three or four miles from the next station? We’re underground. It’s going to be dark. I don’t know what the track does up ahead. Does it narrow? Will another train come? If they restore power and we’re touching the third rail, are they going to find us smoking like a barbecue on the Fourth of July? You make your own decision. I’m just saying that if I were you I’d probably stick it out here.”

Sam tightened his backpack and moved toward the door. Prying with his fingers, he forced one of the doors back. A warning chime sounded overhead. He held a flashlight in his hand.

The man’s forehead creased into a scowl. “You say it’s too dangerous out there to make it on our own?”

“I’m saying you should do whatever you think is best.”

“But you’re going out there.”

Bono shrugged. “We’re Special Forces.”

The man stared, but didn’t answer.

Bono didn’t need to say any more.

* * *

Sam held the flashlight, keeping the beam low enough to illuminate the way for both him and Bono, allowing them to move with only one light. They stood on a narrow, blackened, cement walkway that ran parallel to the tracks. They looked left and saw nothing but a black hole as the subway tunnel extended behind them. None of the other passengers had gotten out of the cars. They turned and walked toward the front of the train. The curb was narrow and the wall scraped Sam’s shoulders as he walked. He pointed the flashlight forward. The train extended into the dark, each car illuminated by the emergency lighting. Sam noticed that the boxy lights built into the walls of the cement subway had grown dark. A few of the passengers saw them and pointed as they walked by. Seven cars ahead, they reached the electric locomotive. The engineer sat in a small booth behind a thick window. Sam stopped beside the engineer’s station and the conductor pushed the window back. “Get back inside the cars. Help is on the way,” he said.

“You’ve talked to someone?” Bono asked.

The engineer hesitated. “Not yet. But it’s just a matter of time. And let me tell you something, boys, you don’t want to be in the tunnel when the trains start to run. You know how many idiots get killed like that every year?”

Sam nodded down track. “How far to the next station?”

“Farther than you can walk before the trains start running again.”

“How far might that be, sir?”

“Don’t be stupid,” the train driver shot back. “You go wandering off down the tracks and you screw it up for all of us. If we’ve got people on the tracks I have to report it. That means they shut the whole line down. Which means we’ll all have to sit here until Metro Security runs you two boneheads down and gets you off the tracks. Now go on, get back inside the car, and we’ll be out of here in no time.”

“You really think so?” Bono asked him.

The driver hesitated. “Of course I do.”

“I think you’re kidding yourself,” Bono answered. “I think you know we’re in deep do-do here. I think you know we’re going to have to find our own way out. You just haven’t quite come to grips with that yet. But think about it, sir. No communications with anyone upstairs. No power of any kind anywhere on the grid. Your entire system shut down. This isn’t a matter of changing a circuit breaker and getting back on our way.”

The engineer grunted but didn’t say anything.

“How far to the station?” Sam asked again.

The driver thought, then answered slowly. “Three miles. Maybe a little more. Hope I don’t run you over as I go speeding by.”

“We do, too. Now good luck to you, sir.”

The soldiers turned, tightened the chest straps on their backpacks, and started running. Sam held the single light and they stayed close together, sharing the narrow beam as they ran.

Their breathing was heavy but evenly paced as they settled into stride. Sam checked his watch, estimating the time until they emerged at the station.

FOUR

Interstate 65, Fourteen Miles Southeast of Chicago

Sara moved through the deep darkness toward the black woman and put her arm around her shoulders. The silver beads at the tips of her tightly braided hair glistened in the moonlight. Ammon and Luke stood back. “My name is Sara Brighton,” Sara said, holding the woman’s arm. “Can you tell me who you are?”

The black woman stiffened under Sara’s touch, glanced toward her quickly, but kept her head low. Her guard instinctively up, she took a suspicious step back, aware of Sara’s pale skin shining in the dim light. The black woman’s mother, a good Christian woman, had taught her from the time she was old enough to walk that all were God’s children and she had no room to judge. But a lifetime of hard conditioning and bad experiences had also taught her to be careful when it came to people not of her race.

Then she thought of her sick daughter, and her fear of the strangers was quickly swallowed up. “My name is Mary Dupree,” she answered softly.

Ammon stepped forward and shook hands, introducing himself with a smile, feeling the weak tremble in Mary’s fingers. Luke waved a hello.

Mary studied them: Luke in his baggy shorts, sandals, and T-shirt; Ammon in Levi’s, hiking boots, and dark jacket. Nice-looking boys, she thought, but not city kids, that was certain.

“I was down in Columbus,” Mary explained as she turned back to Sara. “I have a little girl. She’s very sick.”

“Sick? You mean like with the flu or something?”

“No, ma’am.” Mary stopped and cleared her throat. “I wish that’s all it was. You don’t know what I would give—” Her voice was very quiet now. “No, ma’am,” she repeated, straightening her back, “my baby’s suffering with cancer. We were down at a special clinic for her last treatment, but the doctors wouldn’t even do it. They said that it was too—” She stopped once again, looking off. “Too late,” she concluded.

Sara listened, understanding, her mouth hanging open in shock. Ammon turned to Luke and gritted his teeth in sympathy, unsure of what to say.

“Where’s your daughter now?” Sara asked.

Mary pointed behind her. “Back in my car.”

“And your husband? Is he with you?”

“My husband passed away ten years ago last Tuesday.”

Sara noted Mary’s immediate remembrance of the date. She now knew from experience what that meant. “I’m sorry,” she answered quickly before turning to Ammon and Luke. “Guys, we need to help Mrs. Dupree, don’t you think?”

Luke shot an uncomfortable look at Ammon and hesitated before answering, “Of course, Mom.”

“Let’s go check on her daughter. That’s the first thing we need to do.”

“Cool, Mom. For sure.” He turned to Ammon. “I’ll get a flashlight.”

“I doubt it will work now,” Ammon said.

“Why’s that?”

Ammon glanced toward the timid-looking woman at his side. “Later,” he whispered.

Luke hesitated, still not understanding. “Won’t hurt to try,” he said as he moved around the car and reached into the backseat. Working his way in the dark, he found a flashlight and pulled it out. He pressed the switch and got nothing.

“Come on,” Ammon said.

Luke flipped the switch again and again, and then unscrewed the light bulb end of the flashlight.

“Come on,” Ammon repeated and started walking.

The four adults moved through the night, walking slowly, their hands reaching out in front of them as they walked toward Mary’s car.

* * *

Later, they stood in conference outside the car. The moon, bloody and red, had climbed toward its zenith and the wind was picking up. Enough time had passed that their eyes had adjusted to the dark and what before had been only darkness was revealed now in shadows of gray and black.

“All right, what we going to do?” Luke asked. He spoke softly, afraid of waking the little girl who was sleeping in the backseat of the car. Sara looked through the window, a worried expression on her face. The child should have been in an ambulance. It was ridiculous that, weak and sick as she was, she had been transported by private car. Sara raged at the sight of the fragile child hunched against the backseat, her knees pulled up to her chest, her shoulders trembling weakly from the cold. Mary had placed a small sweater over her, but that was all she had.

“She’s a beautiful little girl,” Sara said as she looked at the child.

“She’s an angel,” Mary answered. “You just don’t know what kind of girl she really is.”

Sara nodded to her sons. “My kids are hardly babies, Mary, but I think I understand how you feel about your daughter.”

Mary looked at the young men standing beside their mother. “They look like good boys,” she said.

Sara opened the back door and reached in, tucking the small sweater more closely around the little girl’s shoulders. “What’s her name?” she asked.

“Kelly Beth.”

Sara stood and turned to Luke. “How cold is it right now, do you think?”

“I don’t know, Mom, somewhere in the fifties, I would guess.”

“How cold’s it going to get tonight?”

“Colder. Not too bad, but it won’t be comfortable.”

Sara turned to Mary. “Do you have anything with you, blankets or whatever?”

Mary shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. It isn’t even my car. I had to borrow it from a friend to get down here. My car is such a beater, I didn’t think it would make it. I brought that sweater, but I wasn’t planning on . . . you know . . . I wasn’t thinking we would have to . . . .”

“I understand,” Sara said, placing her hand on Mary’s arm. “Don’t worry, Mary, we’ll work this out.”

Ammon moved toward her. “Have you got the key?”

“It’s in the ignition,” Mary told him. Ammon walked around the side of the car, opened the door, and reached in. He turned the key, getting nothing. He pulled it out and moved around to the trunk. Feeling for the keyhole with his fingers, he inserted the key and turned it, and the trunk lid popped open. Luke pushed it up. They peered in for a moment, but were unable to see anything in the dark. Ammon reached in and felt around, announcing what he touched, “An old tire. What’s this? Feels like a wheelchair. Lots of dirt. A rusted jack, I think. Couple empty grocery sacks. A little garbage.” He stood. “I think that’s it.”

“Nothing we can use?” Sara pressed him.

Luke pushed the trunk closed. “I don’t think so, Mom.”

Sara thought. “OK,” she said. “What does everyone think?” Her two sons huddled close around her. Mary stood apart, but Sara turned to draw her in. “Mary?” she asked.

Mary hesitated, unsure. She didn’t feel like she belonged inside the circle of the family; that was obvious from the uncomfortable expression on her face.

“Mary, listen to me, OK?” Sara said as the small woman held back. “I don’t know what’s going on here. We’re just like you—we were driving down the road when the same thing happened to our car. I think that Ammon,” she nodded toward her son, “has an idea what has happened, but he hasn’t even had time to explain it to us yet. We’ll get to that soon enough. But I want you to know that, no matter what has happened or what’s going to happen after this, we will not leave you alone here. You understand that? We’re not going to leave you alone. We’re not going to leave Kelly Beth. We’re going to stay with you, take you with us—whatever we do, we can stay together as long as you need. I mean that, Mary. We’re not the kind of people who would just leave you and Kelly Beth out here by yourselves.”

Mary stood in the dim moonlight, her face tight, almost stunned. “Do you really mean that?” she asked.

“I really do.”

“You don’t even know me. You don’t know Kelly. Why would you even care?”

Sara shrugged.

Luke patted the dead flashlight against the palm of his hand. “My mom’s the kind of person who’s been dragging lost puppies home all her life.” He shrugged. “She’s just a good person.”

Mary lightened, her face relaxing just a bit. “You a churchgoing family?” she wondered.

“Every week,” Luke smiled. “Rain or shine. Super Bowl, hurricanes, typhoid fever, whatever, Mom’s got us there.”

“You are . . . ?”

“We are Christians, Mary,” Sara answered. “That’s all that matters. We believe in and follow Christ.”

Mary hugged her arms around herself and lifted her eyes toward the stars. “Thank you, Goodly Father,” she said out loud. “Thanks for sending these people here to help me. Thanks for not leaving me and Kelly Beth alone.”

Sara waited a moment, then turned to Ammon. “Tell us about the EMP,” she said.

He hesitated. “I don’t know that much.”

“Then just tell us what you can.”

Ammon shifted from one foot to the other. It was getting late and colder now. As they stood, they heard occasional voices up and down the freeway and saw, or really sensed, faint gray movement against the starlight. Luke kept turning toward the shouting voices, but no one came their way.

Ammon cleared his throat. “OK, it’s called an EMP. Electromagnetic pulse. It’s caused when a nuclear warhead is detonated high in the air, almost out in space, I think. Dad and I talked about it a couple of times. Then I read a little about it. I could tell it was one of the few things that really scared him, so I wanted to know. There’s tons of information on the internet, but I don’t remember all that much. I do remember Dad telling me he thought it was the most likely and most deadly thing that could happen to the United States. Remember last winter when we were skiing up in Vermont, that one night he and I stayed up and talked, looking at the Northern Lights? He told me then that he thought an EMP could kill half of the people in the United States.”

“Half?” Luke answered. “Come on, dude. Really? Half!?”

Ammon shrugged his shoulders. “I’m pretty sure that’s what he said.”

“Are you saying that half of all Americans are dead right now? I mean, what happened to us? Why didn’t any of us die?”

“No, no,” Ammon answered. “That’s not how it works. The nuke goes off in space, really high up there, somewhere over the country. It sends out a powerful force of electrons or protons or magic stuff, I don’t know, all I know is the electromagnetic pulse reaches down to earth and fries all the electrical circuits in everything we have, from toasters to computers to electrical cables, cars,” he nodded to the dead flashlight in Luke’s hand, “pretty much everything is gone.”

“But it doesn’t kill anyone? That seems kind of pointless as a weapon, then.”

“No, dude, think! If that’s what really happened, then we just got sent back to the preindustrial world. Look at us! Is there any better illustration? We’re stuck out here on the freeway. Our cars won’t work. We’ve got no cell phones, no radios. What are we going to eat—I know, I know, we’ve got a little with us, but enough to get us through the winter? I don’t think so. Where we going to go? How we going to get there? Water? Sanitation? At least the pioneers had cows, horses, oxen and stuff. We’ve got nothing, Luke, nothing but what we stuffed in our car. What if this has happened all over the country? Can you see it? You get the picture? How are we, how is America, going to even feed itself?”

Luke swallowed. “No kidding.” He was whispering now.

“Yeah, no kidding.”

Sara put her hand to her mouth. “Is it really that bad, Ammon?”

Ammon shook his head, his blond hair catching the moonlight. Standing beside Sara, he towered over her. “I don’t know, Mom, but it kind of looks that way.”

Mary’s face hadn’t changed. She simply didn’t understand. EMPs? Electrical circuits? It made no sense at all to her.

“What are we going to do, then?” Sara asked.

Ammon looked around. “We’ve got to change our thinking, and we’ve got to change it right away. This isn’t a matter of trying to figure out how to make it through the night. It isn’t going to be any better in the morning. No one’s going to send out the cavalry to help us. We need to plan. We need to think. And we have to realize that we might have to get through this alone.”

Sara walked two steps away and peered into the darkness before turning back. “But it might not be that bad, right? I mean, we don’t know for sure it was an EMP. We don’t know for certain. It could have been something else. It might be something as simple as—”

“What, Mom? What else could it be? The entire countryside is dark.” He gestured toward the glowing lights of Chicago that were no longer there. “Our car, our cell phones, our flashlights. Every car around us—”

“No, Ammon, I’m just not ready to believe that we are completely alone in this. Help will come. There might be other parts of the country that weren’t hit. There are other countries, other nations—”

“Help is months away, Mom. Weeks away, at the very earliest. Consider what we’re asking! It’s an impossible task. How do you feed more than three hundred million people? How do you get them water? How do you even keep them warm? And the truth is that real help might not ever come.

“Think about it, Mom. Think about Hurricane Katrina. That was one city that was hit, a couple hundred thousand people. The rest of the nation was unaffected except for some other areas along the Gulf Coast. The federal government was functioning—it hadn’t just been hit by a nuke over Washington, D.C. Yet look what happened down there. It took days to get even the most basic things, days to provide food and water. Months to bring back power. Years to clean up the mess. That was one city, Mom, helped by the whole rest of the nation, yet look how long it took.

“Reverse that now. We’ve got no national government left to speak of, no state or local people who are going to be able to help. They’re stranded just like we are.

“So let’s say that maybe part of the nation wasn’t hit. Let’s suppose help is coming, and suppose that by some miracle it could get here in a few weeks—which I honestly, no kidding, really doubt is going to happen, but let’s say that it does. That still leaves, what, a third of the country, a hundred million people, fending for themselves for three or four weeks. Winter is coming on. It’s already getting cold at night. No food. No water. No doctors or hospitals. People are, you know, kind of getting weird already after the bomb in D.C. This isn’t going to help that. It will be a crazy four weeks.”

Sara squared her shoulders. “No, Ammon, it can’t be. I just don’t believe it’s going to all come crashing down.”

“Mom, I love you, you know that, and I respect you more than any living person in this world. I love your optimism and faith, the way you carry us and make us press on. But this isn’t something that’s just going to go away. This isn’t something we’re going to be delivered from. We have to get through this, not around it. We’ll get through this—and we will—but the only way to do it is if we’re careful and we think.”

The small group was silent, the four of them lost in thought. “OK, then,” Luke finally said. “What’s the first thing we do?”

Ammon bit his lip and turned to his twin brother. “First thing, we stay together. Second thing, we protect our stuff.” He gestured down the off-ramp toward their car, a hundred yards away. “The equipment in our car is our only lifeline. It’s everything we have, but it might be enough to see us through.”

No one answered.

“OK,” Ammon pressed them. “Everyone cool with that so far?”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Luke replied.

Mary moved toward Ammon, her voice apologetic. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I simply can’t stay here. I’ve got to get my daughter home. I’ve got to get her medications.”

“I understand,” Ammon said. “But we can’t do anything until morning. The last thing we want to do is to go wandering off into the night. Let’s push your car onto the shoulder—maybe someone will come along—then split up our blankets and our sleeping bags.” He turned to Luke. “You and Mom sleep in our Honda. I’ll stay here with Mrs. Dupree.”

Mary hesitated. “But tomorrow, I’ll be home, right? We’ll go to my apartment in the city. It isn’t very far. Someone is waiting for me there. She won’t understand what’s going on. She’s only been here in the country for a few days—”

They heard the sudden crash of breaking glass coming from behind them, farther down the road. The sound was harsh and jarring against the silence of the night.

They stopped talking. No one moved.

Shouting. Cries of laughter. Another crash. The sound of shattering glass.

They turned toward the crashing.

“That’s our car!” Ammon breathed. “Someone’s breaking in!”

Sara’s hands shot to her mouth, her mind racing. All their food! All that money! Their water! Their clothes and sleeping bags! She gasped and took a step back. What if they had a gun? What if they found the gun hidden under the front seat of the car? “Oh no!” she mumbled in horror.

“HEY!” Ammon shouted through the darkness. “HEY THERE! THAT’S MY CAR! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”

Heavy silence for a moment.

They waited and listened.

“HEY!” Ammon shouted again.

Another crashing sound. Another broken window. “Look at all this!” they heard a man say. “Come on. I need some help!”

Sara groaned. All of their work and preparations. Everything might be lost!

Ammon shook, his hands balled into fists. Luke ran toward their car. “Come on, Ammon,” he cried.

“No.” Ammon ran to catch up and pull him back.

Luke pushed his arm away. “We can’t just let them take it. We need it to survive!”

“What are you thinking, Luke?” Sara hissed as she ran toward her sons, fearful the thieves might hear them talking in the dark. “What are you going to do?” She grabbed her son. “Go attack them? Get into a fight? No, we’ll let them take it! You understand me, Luke? Ammon? It’s not worth getting killed for.”

Ammon shook his head in anger. “Yes, Mom, it is. Everything we need to survive is in that car. We live or die over the next few weeks depending on what we do right now.” He stopped, dropping a shoulder toward the sleeping child. “And that little girl,” he whispered, leaning toward his mom, “look at her, Mom. She’s freezing. She’s sick, we can all see that, but I don’t think Mary realizes how really sick she is. We need our blankets, our water, some of the food. If we’re going to help her, we’ve got to have something to take care of her with.”

Luke was glaring toward their car. No more crashing glass and no more laughing. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll rush them together from the darkness. They’ll never see it coming. We can take them, Ammon.”

“No!” Sara cried softly. “What if they have a gun?”

“It’s OK, Mom,” Luke whispered, trying to reassure her. “They’re just a couple goons whose car stopped and they had to walk, just like us. They saw our stuff and decided they’d take it. We can take them, I’m sure.”

“I don’t know,” Ammon countered. “We don’t know that for certain, Luke. Like I said before, things have changed now, and we’ve got to be smart.”

“So?” Luke asked his brother.

Ammon turned to the women. “This is what we’re going to do,” he said.

FIVE

Washington, D.C.

A quarter mile before the station, the Metro tracks began to slope gently upward. Soon they emerged from the tunnel to ground level.

It was dark. Very dark. Not a light could be found anywhere in the city. Sam instinctively glanced up, looking for the North Star. The sky was clear and bright with a hundred million stars. For a moment he thought he was back in the desert, miles from the nearest city, there was so little light around. Then he stopped, his mind racing as a knot of fear began to form inside his gut.

Bono stopped beside him. Sam moved his flashlight left and right. A ten-foot, razor-topped fence ran parallel to the tracks. Beyond the fence, on both sides, there was a freeway. They were in the median. The train station was ahead.

They heard voices all around them. From the station. From the road. But there were no lights, no moving cars, no streetlights, no headlights, no lights in the windows of the buildings that rose up on either side.

“Oh no . . . oh no . . . ,” Bono muttered.

Sam shot him a look of confusion. “It can’t be,” he answered. “There’s no way it’s what you’re thinking!”

Bono stopped and swore. His face was crunched with frustration, his lips tight. “No, no, no!” he repeated, his voice weak. “Do you understand what this means Sam? Do you know what this is?”

Sam thought only a moment. “EMP,” he answered, his voice sick with dread.

Bono turned a slow circle, concentrating on the utter darkness all around him. He checked his cell phone. No signal. He looked down the freeway. Not a single car moved. The moon was a bright red, and his eyes were adjusting to the darkness. Through the fence he saw a stalled ambulance on the eastbound lane. The back door was open and there was movement around it, men in scrubs, and a wheeled gurney on the ground. “Welcome to 1850,” he said.

Sam looked at him. “Can it really be that bad?”

“Look around you.”

“I don’t think—”

“You have no idea,” Bono cut him off tartly. “You have absolutely no idea. None of us do.”

The two men stood in silence. Bono reached into a side pocket on his backpack and pulled out a narrow flashlight.

“Save it,” Sam told him. “Getting batteries is about to become a huge issue. We’ll need to save the light.” He flipped off his own flashlight, letting his eyes get used to the dark.

“I thought the EMP would fry the circuits.”

“We were underground,” Sam explained. “Our gear was protected.”

“So our cell phones will work.”

“Yeah, but all of the cell towers and circuits above ground will be fried. They’ll make good paperweights, but that’s about all they’re worth right now.” He pulled his cell from his pocket and attempted to toss it away, but Bono caught his arm.

“Keep it,” he told him. “For one thing, you’ve got a good battery and good circuits. Who knows what that’s worth? More importantly, they most likely positioned the nuclear detonations to hit the east coast. The interior of the country, the south, out west maybe, it might not be so bad.”

Sam grunted, turned off his phone to save the battery, and shoved it away.

A woman came toward them from the freeway on their right. “Who is that?” she called out desperately. “Where did you get that light? What’s going on here?” She pulled herself over the cement guardrail and moved toward them. “I’ve got my babies in the car with me—we’re trying to make our way up to Philly to my mom’s place.” She got close enough to see their uniforms. “Russian soldiers!” she cried and stepped back, her face tight with fear.

Sam ignored her. What did she think this was, a Hollywood script? “Come on, Bono, let’s go,” he said.

Turning, they ran parallel to the fence, heading toward the station a little more than a thousand feet ahead.

The platforms rose on each side. It was crowded, a hundred people mulling here and there. The two soldiers emerged from the darkness, Sam’s flashlight illuminating the way. They stopped at the cement barricade and climbed onto the platform. Sam stood and looked around. “What do we do?” he asked.

Bono didn’t hesitate. “Your mom’s house,” he said. “That’s why we came here, and that mission hasn’t changed. We go there, see what’s up, and then form a plan.”

Sam didn’t move, his mind racing. EMP. No electrical grid. Every car with electronic ignition, basically everything made after 1978 or so, would be inoperable. No jets. No transportation. No phones. No mail. No gas. No food. Soon no water. No medical equipment that couldn’t be operated by hand. No television, radio, newspapers, internet. Nothing. It was as if the entire nation had been transported back in time. Then he thought of Bono’s wife and little girl, the two of them waiting for him a little more than seven hundred miles to the west.

But now, with all this, how was he going to get to Memphis? Sam shook his head sadly.

Bono wasn’t going to get there. He wasn’t going home.

He swallowed hard, feeling responsible again for keeping Bono away from his family. “Bono, I’m so, so sorry, man.”

Bono knew what Sam was thinking. His mind was on the same thing.

“This is better anyway,” Bono struggled to say. “I would have been out there on my own. Who knows where, who knows under what circumstances? The last place I’d like to be after an EMP is out on the road. It’s better that I’m here.”

Sam shook his head. He didn’t buy it. Every mile, any mile, toward his wife would have been preferable to this. “There’s got to be a way,” he stammered. “There’s got to be a way to get you down to Memphis, Bono. We’re going to get you there. I swear to you, dude, we’re going to get you home.”

Bono shook his head. “It isn’t going to happen.”

“Yes it is, man. There’s got to be a way.”

“I could walk there. That would only take a month.”

“No, Bono, we’re going to get you home.”

“Come on,” Bono said. “We’ll think about that later. Right now, let’s get to your parents’ place.”

He glanced around the platform, the hair rising on his neck. Something about it, something evil, made him shiver as he stood in the middle of the anxious crowd. Living under constant threat to his life had developed his sense of danger, and his senses were screaming now. There was no reason or explanation, but he had learned to trust the quiet voice inside his head. He had felt it and listened to it many times over the previous years, and he knew he was alive now because of it. “It’s a dangerous time right now,” he said, his survival instincts kicking into gear. “None of these people have any idea what is going on, but they’ll expect the worst case and they’ll act accordingly. Everyone goes bonkers when the lights go out, you know what I’m saying, especially after what happened in D.C. It’s every man for himself right now. We’d better get off the streets.”

Sam turned and started walking. “This way,” he said.

Forty feet down the platform, a group of men began moving toward them. The four men approached together, their shoulders touching, their eyes looking straight ahead, dull and lifeless. Two wore shaved heads. Lots of homemade tattoos were scattered over their flesh. One of them was a meth head: his lips were dry and cracked, his front teeth rotting, his face thin and taut, his eye sockets sunk deeply into his skull. His skin, wrinkled as an old man’s, made him look like walking death.

Sam stepped aside to avoid them but the four men adjusted their path, moving to confront the two soldiers. They bumped into Sam with great force, almost knocking him over. He stumbled and caught himself. “Watch it!” Meth Man said.

Sam ignored him and turned to let them pass. Bono quickly moved to stand beside him.

“I said watch it!” Meth Man cried again. His eyes were wild now, burning bright and crazy. Whatever demons were inside him were screaming in his head.

“Take it easy,” Sam replied, his voice soft. “I don’t want any trouble here, OK? It’s cool, man, it’s all good. You guys have a great night.”

One of the skinheads reached into his pocket. “Who the bloody hell are you talking to?” he cried.

“Great,” Sam muttered sarcastically but loudly enough to be heard. “We stinking lose our electricity and all the freaks spill out into the streets.”

“Come on,” Bono answered carefully. Tugging on Sam’s shoulders, he took a wary step back. Sam felt the pressure of Bono’s grip and almost grimaced at the pain. Bono was scared; Sam could feel it in the force of his steely grip.

Meth Man reached under his jacket, apparently for a weapon, but Bono didn’t give him a chance. Half a second later, the soldier’s pearl-handled pistol was in his hand. He took a lightning step forward and shoved it into Meth Man’s face, nudging the cold steel into the fleshy skin between his eyes. One of the skinheads moved and Sam lurched forward, grabbed his arm, twisted, and bent it while jerking his knee up into the attacker’s elbow. The bone snapped with a sickening crunch and the man fell back, screaming in pain. The other men backed up ten steps, removing themselves from the fight. Meth Man screamed while dropping to his knees. “Don’t hurt us, don’t hurt us,” he cried in pretended pain. “U.S. soldiers like to kill us. Please don’t hurt us. We are sorry. Please, do you have to be so mean?”

Sam listened, completely disgusted, as Bono shoved the gun again, forcing the tiny barrel into the man’s skin.

“Stand up. Turn around. Walk away!” Bono commanded in a powerful voice. Something about the way he said it caught Sam’s attention—it was as if another man were speaking—and he shot a glance toward his friend. Bono’s eyes were clear and burning, his face bathed in burnished moonlight. “If you turn around, I will kill you. Do you understand!” he said.

Meth Man nodded, his eyes dull and empty as death.

Bono slowly lowered his weapon, moved it to his left hand, and lifted his right. “I command you now to leave us!” he said in the same powerful voice.

“Bono, what are you doing?” Sam whispered as Bono dropped the handgun to his side. “Keep that weapon on him or he’ll jump you.”

“I command you to leave us!” Bono said again. “Go back now to your hellhole. Go back and grovel with your own.”

The man stood, hesitated, sneered at Bono, then turned and walked away, followed by his friends.

Frightened now, Sam reached for Bono’s left hand, took the handgun, and kept it pointed at the back of the attackers’ heads. “Come on,” he whispered urgently. “Let’s get out of here.”

Bono didn’t move. Sam held the tiny handgun at the ready position, waving it slowly back and forth, aiming at the four men, then turned toward his friend. Bono’s face was ashen. He looked exhausted. Completely drained. Sam glanced down and saw that Bono’s hands were shaking like winter leaves in the wind. He couldn’t have hit anything with those quivering hands.

Something had happened here. Something he didn’t understand. “Are you OK, man?” he whispered slowly.

Bono shook his head, his eyes wide with terror. “That was him,” he whispered back in a fear-choked voice. “I saw it in his eyes. I saw him in his face. That wasn’t just a man there. That was something . . . someone else . . . .”

A terrible shiver ran down the center of Sam’s back. A deep cold seeped inside him—empty, lonely, and terribly sad. The blackness was dark and utterly complete. He swallowed hard, his throat dry, his chest clenched.

He felt it. He knew it. And for the first time in his life he was truly afraid.

Bono took his gun back from Sam and shoved it under his jacket again. “Drugs did that to them,” he whispered. “They have so surrendered their bodies over to the power of the evil one that they don’t control themselves any longer.”

The four men had reached the end of the platform where it met the tracks, their images illuminated by the moon and stars. At the edge of the cement barricade three of them dropped and kept on walking, but the fourth one stopped and turned around.

“My name is Balaam!” he cried. “I remember you, my brothers, and I will see you again.”

The coldness deepened, sinking into Bono’s soul. He lifted his right hand and was about to reply, but the man dropped onto the train tracks and walked into the dark.

The two men stood in silence, unable to speak. The crowd continued to mull around them as if they hadn’t seen anything.

“Come on,” Bono said. “Let’s get to your home.”

The two men began to run.

And they did not look back.

* * *

Behind Sam and Bono, Balaam stood and watched them from the edge of the tracks. He considered what had just happened. Although he was housed inside the mortal’s body, he hadn’t been afraid of being shot. It was only a body, after all, a human form he had taken possession of for a short while. And because the mortal body wasn’t his, he didn’t feel any of its pain or have any fear of having it be destroyed. But it stunned him that Bono had recognized his presence burning from within the mortal’s eyes. It bothered him that the soldier recognized that he didn’t fear his gun. There was only one thing that could control him, and the mortal had called upon that power.

He stood alone and pondered how quickly things had changed.

The veil between the two worlds was already very thin. That was good. But it was also dangerous, for it allowed the good ones to see through their tactics and lies, to see the real danger and what his master had in store.

As he watched the mortal soldiers had merged into the darkness, he turned and ran into the distance as troubled thoughts grew within his mind.

Then he looked at the dark streets and the helpless mortals all around and laughed, taking in the hopelessness and devastation that his master had already caused. The hunger and pain were just beginning. Tens of millions were going to die!

So, despite the lingering doubts inside, he couldn’t help but laugh.

SIX

Interstate 65, Fourteen Miles Southeast of Chicago

Mary Shaye Dupree and Sara Brighton approached Sara’s automobile slowly, calling from the darkness as they walked. “Hey there, that’s my car, what are you doing?” Sara cried.

Walking side by side, the two women emerged from the dark. The moon had risen enough to illuminate the outline of their frames, but the darkness and open country made them seem so very small.

Two men were talking near the back of their car, rummaging through the trunk. Sleeping bags and clothes had been scattered up and down the road. Both of the back passenger windows had been broken, and shattered pieces of glass reflected in the yellow-reddish light. The air was cool now and Sara felt a damp breeze against her neck. She shivered as she placed her hands defiantly on her hips. “What have you done to my car?” she demanded.

The two men froze a moment, then slowly turned, taking the two women in. Sara returned their cold stares, her eyes flashing in the dim light. Cold and hard, she stood her ground, her shoulders firm. Mary glanced in her direction, then turned and squared her small shoulders too.

Inside her stomach, Sara was as taut as piano wire. She forced herself to breathe without screaming, swallowed the enormous knot inside her throat, and fought to keep the panic down. She knew it was ridiculous. She didn’t care how tall she stood, how much she scowled, or how loudly she raised her voice—she and Mary were two small, middle-aged women standing in the dark. No way were they going to intimidate these men.

The strangers glared. They were young, somewhere in their twenties, and dressed in work clothes and boots. One of them laughed, a lusty, ugly sound. “I’m sorry,” he mocked, “is this stuff yours?”

“Yes, of course it’s mine. Now perhaps you could explain what you’re doing rummaging through my clothes!”

The man hesitated, then glanced past her shoulder. “You alone?” he demanded.

“No,” Sara answered far too quickly. “Both of our husbands are back there, just a little way down the road.”

The man smiled, his shoulders relaxing at the obvious fabrication. He glanced toward his buddy, snorted, and turned back. “You got an awful lot of stuff here.” He kicked a loose pile of clothes that had been thrown at his feet. “Looks like you’re pretty much prepared for anything.”

Sara didn’t answer, her eyes still glaring in the night.

“We figure if you got all this stuff, you’re on a long trip. Maybe you’re never going back to where you came from. Which means you got some money—and we want it.”

Sara swallowed. “We’ve got a little. Maybe fifty or sixty dollars.”

The man scoffed and stepped toward her. “I’ll bet you got a whole lot more than that.”

Mary reached for her purse. “I’ve got a little here,” she cut in.

Sara watched, her anger boiling. She simply couldn’t hold back. “Money?!” she shouted at their ignorance. “Are you that stupid? Do you think money has any value now?”

The man stopped, shot another look toward his friend, unsure of what she was saying, then turned and took a long step toward her. “Money! Yeah, I want your money.”

Mary saw his eyes, cold and hungry and slippery in the dark, and shuddered. “It’s OK, I’ve got some money,” she offered again in desperation. “It isn’t much, but you can have it. Whatever I have, it’s yours.”

“No!” Sara shouted. “You put that money back.” She turned toward the young men. “Do you two guys understand? Do you have any idea what has happened here! Haven’t you even looked around?”

The man took another step and glared menacingly into her eyes. “I don’t like you,” he hissed, his breath stale with alcohol and smoke.

Sara glared back at him. Mary shot an elbow to her ribs.

Sara stared a moment longer, then dropped her eyes. “All right,” she whispered. “You can have our money. But that is the only thing that you may take.”

The young man pulled back his hand, telegraphing his intentions with the windup. Sara was prepared. She stepped back and crouched, pulling Mary down with her. Sara cried out, “NOW!”

Luke and Ammon jumped the two men at exactly the same time, emerging from the darkness like two wild animals, screaming and pounding their fists and legs. Ammon hit his mother’s would be attacker at a flat-out run. Lowering his head, Ammon buried his skull into the small of the man’s back. He heard a sudden huuufff as he knocked every ounce of breath out of the attacker, then kept driving, his legs pounding, pushing the man to the ground, Ammon’s shoulders crushing against his attacker’s ribs. Ammon and Luke were holding baseball-sized rocks in their hands and he brought his fist down against the attacker’s head, feeling the man go limp. Beside him, Ammon heard a high-pitched cry as Luke knocked the second man to his knees. Sara jumped into the fight, kicking at her attacker’s legs, the only piece of him she could reach. Ammon held him tight, his arm around his neck, and kept on squeezing until the attacker’s head fell against his chest.

Washington, D.C.

Sam and Bono stood outside the Brighton home. It had been more than a year since Sam had been there, but it all looked the same and for a moment it felt as if he’d never been gone at all. The old southern oaks and sycamores in the front yard whispered to him, their huge branches moving gently with the night wind. The grass was long, longer than Sam had ever seen it, with at least two weeks’ worth of growth. The late summer leaves were beginning to drop, leaving patchy shadows across the walk. The house was dark, the windows blank and expressionless in the moonlight. Although it looked the same, there were a few hints that Sam’s family hadn’t been there for at least several days: the swirl of twigs and dry leaves that cluttered a corner of the porch, a single newspaper on the sidewalk, the utter darkness inside. Sam moved to the front door, tested it, and found it locked. He turned to his right and felt along the wooden railing on the front porch. Under the third rail was a small crack in the wood where his family always hid an extra house key for an emergency.

Searching, Sam suddenly stopped, his mind going back to his first day in the old Brighton home in southern Virginia: Sara showing him his bedroom, his own closet, the shelf where they kept the clean towels, the Ping-Pong® table in the game room. The final stop on the tour had been the front porch. She had given him his own key, urged him not to lose it, then showed him where they hid the spare in case he ever got locked out.

“We don’t want you stranded out here,” she had kidded him as she handed him the key.

His own key. A house he could stay in for as long as he wanted. That was what they had told him. He would soon find out if it was true. Could it be that it might turn out like all the others? Foster homes, he had learned, were as chancy as a game of dice. Still, there was something about this family, something about this home, something different, he could sense it. His new mother had stood beside him, and he remembered staring up, skinny arms, shaggy hair, a healing bruise on his left cheek, his eyes wide in disbelief. She had looked down at him and smiled, and he had decided at that moment that she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

From that day on, all he had ever wanted was to stay in their home. He had tested them. He had rebelled, sometimes fought them, even pushed them away. But they hadn’t given up, they had loved him, and now this was his home.

His mind turned to his father, General Brighton, and he almost shuddered with grief, thinking of the night he had found out about his father’s death.

He remembered it all so clearly. It wasn’t what he wanted, but sometimes he couldn’t stop the memory from playing like a movie in his head.

Late at night. He and Bono flying across the Iraqi desert in the helicopter, the pilots getting an urgent message and setting the powerful helicopter down on the sand. Both of the pilots were crying. Bono moved forward to talk to them. Sam watching, a sickness rising in him. Bono’s face showed confusion and fear. He listened, then hunched over as if someone had punched him in the chest.

He looked up to ask another question, but the pilot shook his head.

“What is it?” Sam demanded after Bono had slid back across the helicopter floor to his side.

“Oh, geez,” was all he’d answered.

“Tell me!” Sam demanded, his voice angry now.

“There was a nuclear detonation. They said that D.C. is gone. They think a quarter of a million people are dead. The president, all his cabinet, the Congress, the Supreme Court . . . everyone . . . all the city . . . everything is gone.”

At first, Sam hadn’t believed it. No way could it be true! Then he thought of his father in the White House, his mother and brothers west of there. “No,” he muttered weakly. “Bono, you have to be wrong.

“Everything . . . ,” Bono stammered. “Everything . . . everybody . . . our government gone . . . .” He turned back to Sam. “I’m so sorry, Sam . . . your family . . . .”

Sam angrily shook his head. “It can’t be!” he almost shouted. Bono just stared at him.

Sam remembered the raw anguish in his friend’s expression, and how he finally understood. He had taken a slow breath and held it, then unbuckled his lap belt and fallen onto the desert sand.

Even now, he could feel it, the sand against his face, his salty teardrops, the bitter grinding of his teeth. The sand had been cool, but as he clenched his fingers, digging deeper, he felt the sand grow warmer underneath. The night was calm, and the ground vibrated gently from the helicopter near his legs. Inside his head, a thought kept screaming, “He might still be alive.”

But as he lay atop the Babylonian desert, he knew his father was dead.

* * *

Sam stood motionless on the porch, lost in thought, looking up at the great old house. Where was his mother? Where were his brothers? This family that had saved him, were any of them still alive? Would he ever see them again?

Bono cleared his throat, bringing him back to the present. Sam shook his head, mumbled something, then bent and moved his fingers carefully along the rough wood where the heavy paint was smooth and thick. He searched quickly along the crooked plank, then stood, studying the front door.

“No key?” Bono asked him.

“Not where it usually is,” he replied.

Bono moved around the corner of the house to the side-entry garage and tested both doors. Locked. Sam followed him, then went to the back of the house. A six-foot fence surrounded the backyard, and he worked the latch through a gap in the top planks, pushed the gate back, stepped to the patio door, and found it locked. Leaning against the glass, he cupped his face with his hands and looked in, but it was far too dark to see anything but a few shadows from the table and kitchen chairs. Bono moved to his side, pulled out his flashlight, and shone the light through the glass. The narrow beam illuminated weakly the kitchen and breakfast nook, making the inside look even more lonely and more eerie than before.

“Should we break the glass?” Bono asked.

Sam thought a moment. “Hate to do that. We won’t be able to repair it, which means the house will be unsecured when we leave; critters, raccoons, robbers, anything could go crawling in. I’d hate to leave the house open like that when it might be weeks, maybe months, before we come back here again.”

Bono nodded, understanding. He also knew it was very likely it would be much longer than a few months before anyone lived here again. Years. Maybe never. Still, he didn’t argue.

Sam thought some more, then turned and trotted around the side of the house to the front porch again. Bending to his knees, he felt along the wooden planks, holding his narrow flashlight in his teeth. He slowly felt along the same crack in the wood on the underside of the railing. This time his finger touched something, and he bent to inspect the crack, holding the light near his face. The tip of a folded piece of paper caught his eye. Picking with his fingernail, he pulled the paper from the crack in the wood. It was folded four times, and he opened it carefully.

Sam:

Remember where we used to hide our firecrackers when we were in 8th grade? Take a look there. You’ll find what you’re looking for.

We really, really miss you!

Ammon and Luke

Sam shoved the paper into his front pocket, thought a moment, almost laughed, then moved. Bono followed him into the backyard. Sam shone his light against the tallest oak tree in the far corner of the backyard, finding the remnants of an old ladder and a tree house. He tested the wooden ladder and started climbing. Six feet up, just above the second branch, a large plywood board was still fastened against the tree. A crack formed between the tree and the plywood, and Sam shoved his fingers between the wood, extracting a key. “Way to go, guys,” he whispered as he dropped to the ground.

“Got it,” Sam said to Bono, holding the house key up against the moonlight.

Bono didn’t answer, not seeming to hear. He looked across the yard to the fence and the house across the way. “Who lives there?” he asked, nodding to the old brick Victorian.

“I don’t know, an older couple, I think. The Hendricks used to live there, but they moved away about the time I joined the army. Don’t remember who lives there now.”

Bono answered slowly. “They’re watching us,” he said. “Top window, on the right side.”

Sam didn’t turn but instead began to pace around the grass, moving toward the tree to position himself on Bono’s other side. Bono turned toward him, allowing Sam to look over his shoulder at the house next door. Sam quickly surveyed the old home, his eyes stopping on the second-floor window. Someone was standing there. She stared down, not moving as she watched them in the moonlight.

Sam shrugged, then turned toward the house. “Come on,” he said.

The key opened the front door. The two soldiers grabbed their backpacks and stepped into the house. It was as cold inside as it was outside. “No one’s been here for a while,” Sam said as he sniffed the air.

Bono nodded, noting the stale air. “Your mom got any candles?” he asked.

“Hundreds,” Sam said as he moved to the kitchen cupboard. “She was a preparedness freak. The entire Russian army could survive here for years on the food and supplies in the basement storage.”

He reached to a second shelf in one of the kitchen cabinets, shifted his flashlight, found a box of eight-inch candles, and pulled it down. Sam fingered the nearly empty box, pulled out his BIC® (every soldier kept at least one lighter in his pocket), and lit one of the two remaining candles. Its soft light filled the room.

The house was empty and dark and lonely. And it seemed so big. Way too big for just the two of them. Way too big in the dark. The soldiers walked from room to room. Everything seemed in perfect condition, nothing out of place. Sam called out occasionally, “Mom? Ammon? Luke?” It was obvious that no one was there, but he wanted to hear the sound of their names. They walked through every room except the basement, finding nothing that would give them any indication of the whereabouts of Sam’s family, then found themselves in the kitchen again.

“So?” Sam asked as he looked around. “What do you think?”

“I think we’ve got some very long days ahead of us and we need to get some sleep,” Bono answered. “There’s nothing we can do now. We need to save the candle. We ought to go to bed.”

Sam suddenly felt exhausted. “Come on,” he said.

He led the way upstairs. His parents’ bedroom was on the left. Ahead of him, at the top of the stairs, was the bedroom he and his brothers had shared since they were teenagers. There was another room to the right, an unused guest room, and he pointed toward it. “There’s a good bed in that bedroom down the hallway. I’ll sleep in here.”

Bono didn’t answer. Instead, he pushed back the door to the boys’ room and saw two beds. “You going to sleep in here?” he asked.

Sam nodded. “That’s my old bed over there.”

Bono walked into the room and dropped his backpack on the other bed. “I’ll sleep here,” he said.

Sam hesitated, then followed, throwing his own backpack at the foot of his bed. He glanced at his watch, the luminescent numbers barely glowing in the dark, but the watch had stopped. “I’d guess it’s almost midnight,” he said.

“We’ll sleep until sunlight. Not much we can do in the dark. Then we’ll take a look around, see what we can find. Your family must have left you something, a message, a letter, something to let you know what happened and what their plan is. We’ll find it in the morning, then decide what to do from there.”

Sam slumped onto his mattress. “Yeah, they surely left me something . . . .”

They lay atop their beds, peering into the dark, the gentle wind blowing through the sycamore trees outside the window. “I wanted to ask you something,” Sam said as he listened to the wind.

“What’s that?”

“We’ve been talking, you know, about all the things that used to happen. Back in the old days, way back in biblical times. It seems there were a lot more—you know—miracles, I guess. Strange things used to happen. People were healed. Amazing revelations. Angels. All sorts of things. You don’t see things like that happen so much anymore. Is there a reason why?”

Bono thought for a long time. When he answered, his voice was tired and he spoke slowly. “I don’t know for certain, Sam. I think there are miracles like in the old days, I know that I have seen some, but people might not talk about them. Freedom itself is a miracle, one we might not appreciate. It also might be that we don’t need the miracles quite as much as they did. Back in the old days, there was more danger. God required much more of a physical sacrifice of His people, so maybe He helped them a little more in that way. Then life got easier, medicine and science grew. We have great doctors and hospitals now. Maybe the Lord expects us to use the tools He has given us, whereas back then they didn’t have anything but faith.”

Sam thought, then rolled over on his bed. “You want to know what I think?” he asked.

Bono barely grunted.

“I think that times have changed now. I think that pretty soon, the only thing we’re going to have is faith. The power of darkness is increasing, but I think God’s power is getting greater, too.”

“I think you’re right,” Bono answered slowly.

Seconds later, he was asleep.

SEVEN

Interstate 65, Fourteen Miles Southeast of Chicago

Luke and Ammon worked together. They were quick and efficient but also panting with exertion, for they were as tense they’d ever been, the adrenaline pumping through them like a stimulant in their veins.

They dragged the two men to their feet, holding them around their necks. The first one, the man who was going to slap their mother, was tall and lanky, but weak and fine-boned. The second man was smaller, with a roll of baby fat still tucked around his middle. They smelled of beer, peppermint and tacos, and their eyes were blurry from the beating they had taken.

Ammon’s man cursed and halfheartedly tried to fight him, swinging slowly through the air, but Ammon squeezed his throat and shook him, and Ammon’s man folded instantly, gasping as he clutched his chest. The broken ribs would heal, but not for a long time, and every breath he took for at least the next six weeks would remind him of this night.

“What are you doing?” Ammon shouted, rage and adrenaline pushing him to the very edge of control. “What are you doing man?”

The man swallowed against the tightening grip against his throat. “We were . . . just . . . you know . . . looking around—”

“You picked the wrong guys to fool with! You picked the wrong woman to try to assault! I’d just as soon kill you now as look at you, you stupid, retching fool!”

“It’s—” the beaten man took a tiny breath and grimaced. “It’s cool, man, we were just—”

“Shut up!” Ammon screamed into his ear.

“Listen, Sergeant Black,” Luke hissed to his brother from the darkness. “We’ve been back from Afghanistan a real long time. I haven’t killed a man in weeks now.”

“Shut up!” Ammon shouted. “Shut up, Sergeant Smith. Shut up and let me think!”

The battered man began to tremble against his arm.

Ammon shot a glance to the inside of their car, thinking of the gold coins and cash hidden there. They hadn’t found it. Not yet. But they surely would have, if Ammon and Luke hadn’t come when they did.

Shoving the attacker, Ammon pushed him toward the shattered window of their car, pointing to the rumpled bedding and scattered clothes. Everything had been dumped out: their suitcases, the food and water, everything searched and thrown about. The two men obviously weren’t thinking of survival—it hadn’t even entered their stupefied minds. Beer and money were the only things they had been considering, that was pretty clear.

Ammon glanced at Luke, barely able to see him in the dark. Luke held the smaller man from behind, his arm around his throat, one hand viciously grabbing his head by a handful of hair. Ammon turned toward his mother. “Are you OK, Mom?” he asked, his voice a growl.

“I’m OK, Ammon,” she answered quietly, seemingly in shock.

Unlike her two sons, she wasn’t pretending. The attacker’s angry words and attempted slap had sucked the life out of her, leaving her weak and helpless. Sara had lived a peaceful life, a quiet life, and the possibility of being attacked in anger had never really crossed her mind. She had never been hit, not so much as a single time in her life, and she felt violated and helpless at what almost had happened to her.

“Let’s just kill them,” Luke sneered again, shaking the stranger he was holding by the hair. “Let’s just kill them and leave them out here. No one’s going to come looking for them. There’ll be no police, no investigation. And we could always claim that we had to kill them in self-defense.”

Ammon felt the man struggle against him and he tightened his grip, squeezing against his neck. The stranger bent his legs, dropping his weight against Ammon’s arms, fighting to get away, but Ammon dropped with him, both of them landing on their knees. He pulled his arm into a death grip and felt the man grow weak. He seemed to think for a moment, then nodded to his mother.

“All right. Get the gun, Mom,” he said in a deadly voice.

Sara hesitated. He sounded so serious, she was starting to believe him. “No, Ammon, you can’t kill them—”

“GET IT, MOM!” Ammon screamed.

Sara didn’t move.

Mary stepped toward Ammon, trying to remember the things he had told her to say. “I know this type,” she said, her voice cold and unfeeling. “I think you ought to kill them. If you don’t do it, they’ll be back. We’ll have to deal with them later. They’ll follow us and give us trouble—or if not us, then someone else. They’ll give the world nothing but trouble now. It’d be better off without them.”

“You got that right,” Ammon hissed. “Go on, Mom, get the gun.”

The man cried again, his ribs on fire, every breath, every movement sending jolts of anguish all through his chest. Ammon squeezed against his back and he went limp. His lips were growing blue now, his broken ribs struggling to give his lungs room to breathe. “No, no, no,” he begged, as if believing for the first that he was just a few seconds from death. “Please, you don’t have to do this.” He started crying, his voice drunk and thick. He took a painful breath and sobbed. “We didn’t mean nothing, OK? We’ll go. We’ll get out of here. I promise you, you’ll never see us again.”

“The only way I’m going to see you again is if I dig you up,” Ammon snarled. He squeezed against the attacker’s neck again and pulled him to his feet. “I could shoot you now or save the bullet and just strangle you.”

Luke almost laughed. That line was just too much. Like something from a Clint Eastwood movie. Ammon was so into this role.

These two men were no threat to them any longer, he could see that. Drunk, defeated, and scared, they were two young bulls who’d just been branded with a very hot iron.

The man stammered in fear, “I swear to you, we’re sorry. I swear it to you, man, you’ll never see us again.

Ammon pulled again. “I hope I do,” he whispered in his ear. “If I see you, I can kill you. I will kill you. Is there any doubt in your mind?”

“No, man. You’re crazy. You’re some crazy, wigged-out soldier. I got no doubt at all.”

Ammon laughed, shrill and unhinged, then shook the man’s head in rage. “Do you believe that I will kill you?”

“Yes, sir, I know you will.”

“Go then!” Ammon cried, throwing the man across the ground. “Get out of here before I kill you and bury you underneath these bloody skies!”

Luke also released his grip on the man that he was holding, then kicked him with his knee.

Both men stumbled, glanced toward the boys, their eyes wild with fear, then turned and ran.

* * *

Sara hurried over to Ammon. “Are you OK?” she asked, her voice worried, almost pleading.

Ammon studied the spot where the strangers had disappeared, not moving. Lukeedged slowly to his side. “That was like, you know, way convincing,” he said.

Ammon shook his head. “I was so scared,” he answered slowly.

“You didn’t sound scared, you sounded crazy. Really crazy, man. I didn’t know whether I should laugh or run. You almost had me convinced.”

“I was scared,” Ammon repeated. He seemed to be talking to himself.

Luke chuckled just a little. “You sounded like you were going to rip that poor guy’s heart out and cook it up for dinner. A regular Hannibal Lector thing going there.”

Ammon moved away. “I didn’t think I could sound like that,” he said. He was clearly shaken up.

Luke reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s OK, dude,” he tried to comfort.

Ammon didn’t answer. “I’m not like that,” he muttered as if trying to convince himself.

“It wasn’t real, Ammon. Remember, it was part of the plan. We knew it wasn’t going to be enough to just stop them. We had to scare them.” He stopped and looked at Mary, her bright eyes shining in the moonlight. “Mary was right,” he nodded to her. “It was a smart thing to do. They would have stuck around. They’d have come back. We had to really scare them so we didn’t have to worry about them again.”

“All I did was scare myself,” Ammon said.

“Yeah, but that’s OK.” Luke watched him a moment, then turned to his mother, walked toward her, and put his arms around her shoulders, pulling her close and not letting go. “Are you OK?” he asked, his voice choking.

“I’m fine, son.” She rested her head on Luke’s shoulder.

He stepped back. “Are you OK?” he repeated.

“Really. I’m OK.”

Ammon turned from the darkness and walked toward his mom. Standing in front of her, he looked into her eyes. He put his arms around her, the three of them holding onto each other in the night.

Mary cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice soft, afraid of intruding. “I’m a little worried about my baby girl.” She nodded toward her car.

“Right, right,” Luke said breaking away from the others. Bending, he began to gather their scattered belongings. “Let’s get this mess picked up. Don’t worry about organizing it, we’ll take care of all that in the morning.”

Ammon seemed to think, then ran to the car, yanked open the front door, and knelt beside the seat. Reaching under, he felt it. The gun was still there.

Sad, Sara thought as she watched him. It wasn’t the money or food that he was worried about, it was the gun.

Had it come to that already?

No, she shook her head. It wouldn’t come to that. Not for them. She and her family would never live that way.

Ammon stood and walked toward them.

“OK, listen,” Luke said, “we’ll get this picked up, but that’s really all we can do tonight. We wait until morning, then see what’s going on. Ammon, you and Mom stay here. Sleep in the car. You keep the sleeping bags. Mrs. Dupree and I will sleep in her car. We’ll take some blankets for us and Shelly Beth—”

“Kelly Beth,” Sara corrected.

“Sorry, Kelly Beth. I’ll stay with her and Mrs. Dupree tonight.”

The group was silent for a moment.

“OK,” Ammon said.

* * *

Morning came. Low rain clouds had gathered again, hanging in the western sky, and a cold wind blew down from the north, sweeping across Canada and Lake Michigan, picking up a dank, fishy smell.

Ammon awoke. The night before, he had unzipped one of the sleeping bags and pulled it around him, then slept in the front seat. Sara had slept in the backseat but was already up. When Ammon didn’t see her, he climbed out of the car. Even the gray, misty morning was welcome after such a dark night. He glanced behind him, up toward the freeway, then down the off-ramp toward Mary Dupree’s car, which was closer than it had seemed the night before. Funny, he thought, how distances seemed so much greater in the dark. Sara and Mary were standing close together outside the black woman’s car. To his left was a thick cluster of trees; to his right, the four-lane freeway was crammed with stalled cars. He could see dozens of people huddled around several cars and, half a mile east of the off-ramp, he could make out the parking lot and buildings of the service stations they had been aiming for last night. Beyond the trees were fields, brown and ready for fall digging. He was surprised at how rural the scenery around him was, being so close to Chicago.

He considered, then stretched. Walking around the Honda, he checked the two broken windows, grabbed a bottled water from the backseat and walked toward his mom.

“Good morning, all,” he said.

Sara turned toward him.

“You sleep OK, Mom?” he asked.

“Pretty well, Ammon. It was colder than I thought it would be.”

Ammon nodded at the sky. “The temperature has dropped quite a lot.” He turned to Mary. “How are you, Mrs. Dupree?”

“I’m fine, honey, fine.”

He glanced to her car. His brother wasn’t there. “Where’s Lukester?”

Sara nodded toward a cluster of trees to her right, a hundred feet or so beyond the road. “There was a man back there, in the trees. He was on an old four-wheeler. Luke thought he was a local. He went to talk to him.”

Ammon moved his eyes to where she was pointing. Luke was just emerging from behind the trees. They waited, watching him walk toward them.

“Anything?” Ammon asked.

Luke shook his head. “There was a guy back there on a four-wheeler. He rode away before I could talk to him.”

“A four-wheeler. It was running? Are you sure?” Ammon asked skeptically.

“Yeah. It was old and pretty beat-up, but it was working. Now, why is that?”

Ammon thought. “Anything built before electronic ignition and all the gee-whiz computers that control everything now, I think will work. You might have to replace some spark plugs or ignition wiring, but that’s pretty easy to do.”

Sara moved back and leaned against the vehicle. “We tried Mary’s car again,” she said, as if offering something important. “It’s still not working.”

Ammon nodded, not surprised.

Mary walked over and looked through the back window at her little girl, then turned toward them. “Sir,” she said to Ammon. “Please, I’ve got to get my little girl home. She needs her medicines—if nothing else, her pain medications.”

Ammon walked toward her and leaned down, looking through the back window of the car. The little girl was still asleep. Small and thin, she looked to be eight or nine years old, but it was hard to tell, she was so slender. Her face was thin and dainty . . . no, that wasn’t right . . . her face was thin and fragile. He watched her sleep and thought what a beautiful little girl she was.

“Did she wake up last night?” he asked Mary.

“A couple times. She sleeps all the time now, but never for more than three or four hours at a time.”

“Did you—you know—tell her anything?”

Mary shook her head. “I told her we were having car trouble.”

Luke came forward and stood next to them, stealing a glance toward Kelly Beth.

“It worried her,” Mary concluded. “She worries way too much for a little girl. She’s got a new sister back in Chicago that she’s worried about now. She is terribly concerned about leaving her alone.”

A gust of wind blew and the trees off in the distance began to sway, creating a muted whisper, a smooth and lonely sound.

“This other daughter, why is it that she is a newcomer to Chicago?” Sara wondered.

Mary hesitated. How much should she explain? How would these people feel about it? She just didn’t know. “She’s not really my daughter,” she started.

They waited patiently.

“She’s an orphan from a refugee camp in southern Iraq. She’s Iranian, not Iraqi, though. She had no family, no one, really. She’d been bought—” Mary hesitated. “There are people who buy and sell young women, I’m sure you know what I mean. There’s an organization in London that works to intercept and save them. My daughter, her name is Azadeh, had been bought, paid for and taken out of the refugee camp. I don’t know if she knows or understands this, but she was on her way to a very bad situation, a very bad place. I don’t know the entire story, but someone, apparently a couple of U.S. soldiers, stepped in and saved her.”

“No kidding,” Luke answered. “Some U.S. soldiers found her and saved her?”

Mary shrugged. “I don’t know the whole story, but yes, apparently.”

“What studs,” Luke smiled. “Good ol’ U.S. soldiers. Gotta love ’em, man.”

Sara watched, then interjected. “We have a son in the Army,” she explained. “My husband is in . . . used to be in the Air Force.”

Mary listened, pulling her shirt collar up around her neck. “I like the Army,” she said. “Lots of my people, most of my neighbors, think it’s a terrible thing to do. I never felt that way. I know what it’s about. Good people. Unselfish people. If you’ve got a son in the Army, you should be proud.”

“Thank you,” Sara said.

“Anyway,” Mary continued, “the London organization worked to place Azadeh somewhere in the West. I agreed to take her. It took months and lots of money to get her here to the States. She got here just a few days ago.

“But that’s not the main reason I need to get home. The biggest reason is Kelly Beth. All of her medicines, her painkillers, her vitamins, everything is back there.”

The other three were quiet. “How far is it to your house?” Luke asked.

Mary nodded to the north. “It’s surprisingly close. Straight up Interstate 65. That takes you almost to the lake. A couple miles before that, you come to Gary and take 90 west. It’s only about four miles from there.”

“So, how far, do you think?” Ammon asked.

“I don’t know—when you’re driving you don’t pay that much attention, you know what I mean. I could drive it in half an hour, twenty minutes if I don’t hit traffic.”

Luke reached down, picked a piece of grass from beside the road, and stuck it in his mouth. “Maybe twenty miles?” he asked.

“That sounds about right,” Mary answered.

“How far is that?” Sara asked. “I mean, could we walk it? How long would it take us? A few hours? A week? A couple of days?”

Ammon smiled at his mom. When it came to such things, she was totally clueless. “I don’t know, Mom, maybe a couple of days,” he said.

“It’s really not that far,” Mary interjected hopefully.

“So what do we do, then?” Luke asked.

Ammon stared at his mother, then turned to the others. “We walk,” he said to Luke.

“That’s a long way, don’t you think?”

“I guess we could stay here and spend the winter.”

Luke looked away, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean that, not the way it sounded.”

Mary put a hand on Luke’s arm. “What about my baby?” she asked, a terrified strain on her face. “We can’t leave her—”

“We’ll carry her,” Luke answered.

“You’ll carry her?”

“Yeah, we’ll carry her, of course.”

“You will do that? You would do that?”

“Of course,” Luke answered, smiling at Mary. “What did you think we’d do?”

Mary hesitated. “Truthfully?” she said. “I thought you’d leave me.”

Sara shook her head. “Did you hear what I said last night?”

Mary kept her head down.

“We meant it, Mary. You’ve got to start trusting us. We’re simply not going to leave you out here by yourself.”

“Isn’t there a wheelchair in the back of the car?” Ammon said.

“Yes,” Mary nodded.

“No problem, then,” he said.

Luke glanced toward their car. “I don’t know how we’re going to carry everything,” he wondered. “All the food and water, our clothes, the sleeping bags and camping gear?” He shot a secretive look toward Sara, thinking of the gold and other valuables hidden throughout the car.

Ammon turned and rubbed his hands through his hair. “I was wondering the same thing,” he said with worry.

“I’m strong,” Mary shot back. “Much stronger than I look. I can carry a lot. You can pack me down like a mule. I’ll carry anything you tell me to. I’ll make three or four trips if I have to. I’ll steal a wagon and drag it, if you’ll please just take my little girl.”

Ammon smiled sadly, realizing the mother’s desperation over her child. “Don’t worry,” he assured her. “We’re going to figure something out.”

Luke hunched his shoulders. “Can I talk to you?” he said, pulling Ammon aside. “We’re going to figure this out,” he assured Mary as he guided his brother away.

Twenty feet from the car, he lowered his voice. “There’s no way we can carry all our gear. One of us to push the wheelchair. Three of us to carry. The water alone would take fully one of us. And think about the money and all that other stuff we’ve got hidden in the car. Are we really going to try to take that with us? That can’t be too smart, walking around with a bunch of cash and gold right now.”

“What’s the option?” Ammon whispered back. “Leave it here? If we do that, we abandon it; I guarantee you none of it will be here by the time we come back.”

They looked at each other for a moment. Ammon reached down and grabbed his own blade of grass. “What do you think about that little girl?”

Luke shook his head sadly. “I don’t know. I’m sure no doctor, but I’m telling you, she looks terrible to me. Thin as a rail. Sleeping all the time. I mean, can you imagine! Can you even begin to fathom what that poor woman and little girl have been going through? What they’re going to go through still? I’m as unfeeling and stupid as the next guy, but man, it tears my heart out just to look at her.”

They were silent another moment. “I think she’s dying,” Ammon said.

Luke bit his lip and didn’t say anything.

“I think poor ol’ Mrs. Dupree was taking her daughter home to die. I think she knows. I think she’s given up any hope. Did you hear what she said about the clinic? She went down for some kind of special treatment but the doctors wouldn’t do it. They said there was no reason. That can’t be good.”

“So what do we do?” Luke asked, his voice beginning to choke.

Ammon studied his brother, the broad-shouldered, high-school fullback, the guy who could pound through any hole in the offensive line no matter the cost to his body. The harder the hit, the more it hurt, the more a man it meant he was and the more he loved the game. Under the sweatshirts and the sandals and the hang-by-the-edge-of-the-cliff-without-any-rope, hard-guy exterior, Luke was at least as soft as any guy he knew. “I don’t know,” he finally answered. “All I know is we can’t leave them here.”

“Of course not. I know that.” Luke considered the darkening sky. “I was thinking maybe we should bury some of the gear, some of the more, you know, precious but dangerous stuff—the gold, maybe some of the cash and canned food. Let’s cram everything we can into our packs. We could jury-rig some pouches around our stomachs, improvise a little in order to take as much we can, then,” he nodded toward the tree line, “bury the rest. We’ll be careful, wipe out our tracks and conceal the hiding place. We’ll wrap the little girl—what’s her name, Kelly Beth?—in a couple blankets and push her home.”

“OK,” Ammon answered. “But one thing we haven’t thought of. Once we get to her place in Chicago, what are we going to do then? What’s our long-term plan?”

Luke shook his head. “I’ve got absolutely no idea.”

“What about Mom? Have you talked to her?”

“We talked a little bit this morning. She has no idea either. Still, it’s kind of funny, she seems in a pretty good mood.”

Ammon glanced back toward their mother. “OK,” he said, “let’s do it. Let’s gather and organize our gear. Take everything we can, conceal or bury the rest. We’ll make Kelly Beth as comfortable as possible and start out walking. The freeway, if you haven’t noticed, is full of people. We won’t be the only ones walking toward the city.”

Luke considered. “Twenty, maybe twenty-five miles. We can do that in a day.”

“I don’t think so,” Ammon countered. “Two days, maybe, with our gear. If we keep going and don’t have any problems, we can be there by tomorrow night.”

Luke looked at him and shuddered. “Listen, dude, I don’t mean to sound pessimistic or overly morbid, but I don’t know if that little girl is going to make it that long.”

“I’ve wondered that,” Ammon said sadly. “But if she doesn’t, then let’s do this. Let’s make certain she is being held by someone who cares about her when she passes from this world. Let’s make certain she can say good-bye to her mother. Let’s keep her safe and warm. That might be all we can do, but let’s make sure we at least do that.”

Luke closed his shiny eyes, a small tear forming on the corner of his eyelid. He lowered his head a long moment. “I wish Dad were here,” he said.

“I know,” Ammon answered. “If not him, I wish we could talk to Sam. I’d give anything to know where he was. Is he OK? Is he back here in the States?”

Luke turned and looked east. “Do you think he’ll try to find us?”

“I don’t know, dude. I mean, he’s in the middle of a war, after all.” Ammon glanced toward the freeway. “I wish he were here,” he repeated. “I wish Dad were here. I feel so uncertain.”

Luke slapped him on the back. “Come on,” he said.

The two brothers turned and walked back toward their mother.

Sara was staring down the road toward the freeway, firm as stone. She lifted her hand to her eyes to shield them against the gusting wind and squinted.

“Mom,” Ammon started, but she quickly held out her hand to cut him off.

“Look at that,” she whispered. Ammon turned, looking into the distance. Crowds of people crammed the freeway, most of them heading north toward Chicago. Some were dragging suitcases, some holding boxes and bags, briefcases and sacks, a great migration of lost and lonely souls.

“That’s an awful lot of people,” Ammon said.

“Shhh,” Sara interrupted again.

Ammon fell silent.

“I thought I heard gunshots,” Sara whispered.

Ammon waited, holding his breath.

Then he heard it, a distant crack!

“Oh no,” was all he said.

EIGHT

Washington, D.C.

Morning came. Sam awoke the moment the sun began to lighten the room. He got up, checked the lights, walked into the bathroom, checked the water, pulled on some pants but no shirt, and walked downstairs.

Bono followed. Sam grabbed a large bowl, went into the basement, and drained some water from the water heater tank. The two men cleaned up and finished dressing. To most people it would have been an inconvenience to wash up from a bowl of barely warm water, but after months in the desert it seemed a luxury to them. They opened a couple of cans of fruit, found some nuts and beef jerky in the basement, and ate until they were full.

After they had eaten, Sam asked tentatively, “What would you think about saying morning prayer together?”

Bono didn’t hesitate to fall to his knees. Sam prayed, his eyes clenched tight. After he said amen, Bono continued kneeling. “That was kind of cool,” he said.

Sam’s face was expressionless. “What’s that?”

“What you said. In your prayer. The thing you asked for.”

Sam thought. He really didn’t know what Bono was talking about.

“That angels would guide and help us.”

Sam blushed. “It wasn’t an original thought. I’m not capable of that. I got it from a Scripture my dad showed me one day. I was just a kid, but you know how some things kind of stick in your mind. Believe me, with my background with my real old man and lady—you know what I’m talking about—fights, beer and drugs were lots more common in my home than any Scriptures, I can promise you that. So it took a while after I came to the Brightons’ before I paid much attention to this whole Scripture thing. There were lots of times when the Scriptures went way over my head. But there was this one time when Dad said something that I remembered: “The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And he will send angels to bear us up.” I’ve always believed that. Don’t know why, it doesn’t make any sense, but sometimes it’s almost like I felt their presence, angels, old friends, standing at my side. So I just figured, you know, if we’re going to find my family, if we’re going to get you home to your wife, we could use a little help.”

Bono was amazed. “I love your faith,” he said.

Sam shrugged. “Is that what that is?”

Sam searched the house. Five minutes later, he found a letter on his father’s desk in the study. Sara had placed it underneath a set of Scriptures with the corner of the paper poking out, his name on it. The note was dated just a few days before.

Dear Sam:

Time is short. We feel a sense of urgency to get moving now that we have decided what to do, so this letter will be not be long. More, the things I really want to tell you, I want to say face-to-face when I can hold you and tell you how much I love you, how proud I am of you, and how much you mean to me, to our entire family. Because of this, and for other reasons I can’t go into right now, this letter will be fairly brief and to the point.

First, I want you to know that we have tried to call you, left you email, messages at the army, everything we could think of to get in touch with you. Having not been able to talk to you since the explosion in the city, I leave you this letter with a prayer that you will find it, that you are OK and healthy, and that we all will very soon see you again.

By now you must know that your father is dead. We know that he was on duty at the White House when the nuclear detonation took place. Although we don’t know for certain, it appears that he didn’t even make it into the underground command post. Most of those who made it didn’t survive anyway—the floors and ceilings collapsed, trapping many inside. There was a fire, it wasn’t pretty, though a few people did escape. Two days after the explosion we got a short letter from our good friend General May. (He had to send it by private messenger.) He said Neil was last seen at his desk, calling the Pentagon to warn them of the impending attack. That was just seconds before the detonation. It appears he waited too late to seek out shelter.

Your father died trying save the lives of others. Tell me, does that surprise you? Frankly, I would have been surprised if it hadn’t ended that way.

He loved you, Sam, I hope you know that. From the first time he saw you, he felt that you were one of his sons. He would often talk about the strange path God took in order to bring you to our family. He also understood that the bonds of family must have started before this life. You have been as much a part of our family as any of our other sons. Ammon and Luke look to you as their older brother, and in many ways, you are now the leader of our family. I know that’s kind of a bummer, putting all that on you right now, but it’s just how it is.

The rest of us are OK. A couple of days before the attack on D.C. we were warned to leave the city. We took what we could and left, and were well clear of danger by the time of the attack. It was a miracle, Sam, it really was, how the Spirit warned us to leave. The afternoon of the explosion, I had scheduled a lunch appointment with a friend at Union Station—Luke and Ammon would have been downtown on the campus—we all would have been in the center of the explosion—I just don’t what know what might have been.

We were saved by the Spirit, and we continue to feel His gentle guidance in our lives and the decisions we must make.

It’s been a week since the explosion. We’ve done all we can do here and have spent the last few days just wondering what to do. Last night I got the answer. We are heading west to Salt Lake City. But the funny thing is—and I haven’t said this to anyone, not even Ammon or Luke—I don’t think we’re going to get there. Something’s going to happen on the way. What it is or what we will do, I don’t know for certain. We’ll take it one step a time and see what happens, always relying on the Lord.

I do know this, however: He didn’t bring us to this point to fail. He didn’t protect us for no purpose. There are great days still ahead.

So, Captain Brighton! (Yes, General May sent us word in the same message that he told us about your dad), don’t lose faith or give up hope. This is not the end, but the beginning. There is so much left to do yet, so many happy days still ahead. I know it won’t be easy. I simply can’t imagine ever being happy without Neil, but that is my challenge now, and I’ll do the best I can. I’ll say the words, even when I don’t see how they could be true. I’ll keep my faith and keep on going, believing there is a purpose and some happiness yet to live.

We will be on the road for six or seven days, depending on how it goes. We have our cell phones. You can call us. If not, try to reach us in SLC. I’m leaving a home phone and address where we’ll be staying at the bottom of this page. Try to reach us there.

In closing, let me tell you what I told Luke and Ammon just a few hours ago. It isn’t fair that your father died. Believe me, no one understands that more than I. But sometimes life isn’t fair. God never promised that only the evil ones would die in these days. Even the good, sometimes especially the good, will be asked to sacrifice. I think there is more to come, maybe much more, a few heartaches, I suppose, but some incredibly good things are coming too. There will be more opportunities to help and teach other people than we’ve ever had before.

Sam, you are the fulfillment of Scripture. I know that might not mean a lot to you, and you may not understand what that means right now, but you were sent into this day for a reason and a purpose. You are a light unto the world. You were sent here to be a savior of men.

It won’t be easy. It never is. But the things you’re going to do, the good you’re going to do, the good you have already done, it staggers me, leaving me weak but so, so proud.

Find us, Sam. Whether in Utah or en route, find us. We will need you. Do for us what you can.

Until that time, know how much I love you. Keep the faith. Say your prayers. NO ONE loves you more than God does, but I love you pretty close.

Mom

Sam sat on the edge of the leather couch and read the letter over again. Bono stood near the doorway, giving him time. After reading it the third time, he passed it to Bono.

While Bono read, Sam found another piece of paper on the neatly tidied desk, a note that Luke had hidden under Sara’s letter, which read:

Sammy, dude, you Cherokees or Sioux or whatever your top-secret, he-man Special Forces unit is called these days are REALLY hard to get a hold of. Like Mom said, we’ve tried everything to get in contact with you, but nothing yet. (By the way, I read her letter. Three-pages long. Good thing she said she’d keep it brief, huh.)

Anyway, it’s been a hard couple days, Sam, and I get the feeling we might not be on the back end of the storm. Things have gotten kind of weird here. Like REALLY kind of weird. As you can see from Mom’s letter, we’re heading west. Try to contact us when you can. I’d really like to talk to you.

By the way, the main reason I am writing is to tell you that I made it over the ledge on that rock down on the Potomac River. You know, the one you couldn’t get over when you tried, the one with the six-foot ledge that juts almost straight out. Yeah, I did it. And I did it without a rope. Let’s see you do that, dude. I’ll tell you the story sometime. It was an interesting experience.

Ammon says to tell you he’s up to 248 in the bench press. I’ve never seen him do it, but that’s what he says.

We miss you and love you. Dad was proud of you. We’re proud of you, too.

Hugs and kisses,

Your studly bros

Sam read the letter, smiled, then read it again. Then he began to chuckle, the laughter building into great, heaving sobs. Tears of relief, joy, and pain combined together and streamed down his face.

“What is it?” Bono asked him, reaching for the note.

Sam passed it to him. “Just my stupid little brothers,” he stuttered with relief. “You said your family has a lot of storage?” Bono asked when Sam had finally stopped laughing.

“Pretty much,” Sam answered.

“They kept it in the basement?”

“Yeah. It’s kind of a dungeon down there. You know these old homes—walk-out, sunlit basements weren’t the norm.”

Bono looked satisfied. “That’s good. It actually gives me some hope.” He stomped his foot on the floor. “Thick walls. Thick foundations. These houses were built to last five hundred years. It might be enough . . . .”

Sam watched him carefully, not sure of what he meant.

“Do you think your parents had an emergency radio in their storage?”

“I’m sure they did. But with the EMP, it won’t matter anyway.”

“Maybe so. But let’s give it a try.”

The two soldiers rooted around the basement. The cement and rock foundation was old and dry and at least two feet thick. The house, built more than a hundred years before, had been designed for a former plantation owner and army officer as his summer home. The labor and materials were meticulous in quality even if growing old. The men found the two-year supply: jugs of water, cans of grain, all the normal stuff. A windup radio was sitting on a shelf at the back of the room. Bono wound it, turned it on, heard the static, and smiled. “Give me a few minutes with this,” he told Sam. “Take a final look around the house to make sure we haven’t missed anything, then we’ll make our plan.”

Sam went through the house, looking for another message from his family, checking for any valuables that might have been left behind, making sure all the windows and doors were locked. Then he sat down on the sofa. Bono had brought the radio upstairs and tinkered with it some more. Now he switched it off and turned to Sam.

“You realize what’s happened, don’t you, Sam?” he started.

“You mean with what . . . my family . . . ?”

“No. I’m talking bigger picture now. Last night, the loss of power.”

“An EMP, I thought we decided.”

“Yeah, that’s right. A world-class blast of destructive electromagnetic power. Anything unprotected that’s electronic, it takes it out. Fries the circuits through and through. It’s a miracle, if you ask me, that this radio is still working, but these thick walls must have been enough to blunt the pulse.

“So far, I’ve only been able to pick up one station, a government emergency broadcast. Right now it’s repeating the same message again and again, nothing live, just the same recording. Yes, it was an EMP. Four nuclear detonations, evenly spaced across the entire United States. They won’t say yet, but I know what that means. A single detonation, at the right altitude, and with enough power, would have been enough to take out most of the country. With four, they would have reached from central Canada to central Mexico, which means that what we see here is pretty much what we’re going to find across the nation.”

Sam didn’t answer. A long silence filled the room.

“They say they’re evaluating the situation and expect to make progress very soon in restoring normal services,” Bono concluded.

Sam watched him carefully. “You surely don’t believe that?”

Bono looked away and thought again. “Electromagnetic pulse isn’t something I know a lot about, other than the basic stuff they teach us. I remember one thing, though: It becomes a vicious cycle of destruction. What few basic capabilities or electro-infrastructure does survive is quickly overwhelmed. It becomes swamped and soon fails. Yes, I think we’ll rebuild, it’s not impossible, but it will take months, likely years, and meanwhile everyone has to rely and live on what they can provide for themselves. Which, if you understand America, isn’t a lot.”

Sam nodded slowly. “So what do we do?”

Bono stood. “First, we’ve got to get in contact with our unit. As you know, a majority of critical military command, control, communications, and computers are hardened against an EMP. The military is the one thing that isn’t going to crumble, at least not right away.”

“So what then?”

“How far is it to Fort Belvoir?”

“I don’t know, maybe eighteen miles.”

“Is that the closest army installation?”

“Yeah, probably.”

Bono reached for his backpack. “All right, Cherokee, that’s where we’re heading. We gear up, take what we’ll need from your house, then head out. Eighteen miles. We can be there by late afternoon if we run.”

Sam stood and looked around the empty house. “I guess we don’t see our families, then.” He said it as a statement, but he meant it as a question, though he pretty much knew what Bono was going to say.

“I don’t know,” Bono surprised him. “Everything is suddenly pretty crazy. I don’t really know what to expect now. But I do know this. I’ve been away from my family for more than a year. I’ve been home a total of three weeks in twenty-two months. So I’d better have a chance to go home and check on them or I’m going to be one unhappy soldier. Low morale isn’t even going to begin to describe what I’ll be feeling then.”

“Roger that, dude. Same for me. My family is out there somewhere. I’ve got to find out how they are.”

Bono walked into the kitchen. “Let’s pack up anything we can carry that’s not going to spoil.” He opened the fridge. It was already growing warm. No electricity, no refrigeration, one of the nastiest results of the EMP. He shook his head, knowing that lots of people around the United States were going to be hungry before the day was even through. And what was true in every home was true in every business, from local restaurants to small markets and huge grocery stores. A billion pounds of food was going to spoil in the next few days.

“You got any extra canteens?” he asked Sam as he closed the refrigerator door.

“Downstairs in the storage.”

“Get ’em. Fill ’em from the hot-water tank. No one’s going to have any water and it’s going to be very dear. Any iodine pills?”

“No, but we have portable water filters.”

“Even better. Short of our guns, they’re the things that are likeliest to save our lives. Grab them, anything else you can think of, and let’s head out. We’ll report in at Fort Belvoir, get our orders, then beg them to give us a little time. After all, it’s not like they need two such highly trained combat killers. Snipers, counter-intelligence ops, counter-insurgency ops, those are the things we’re good at, and I don’t think they need that particular field of expertise inside the U.S. right now. Riot control, traffic control, medics, nurses, civil engineers, JAGs, civilian affair officers, those are the specialties that will save us, not combat troops.”

“Kind of nice to let someone else carry the water for a while, isn’t it, Bono?” Sam smiled. “They might need us in a few weeks, but probably not right now.”

Bono hoisted his backpack. “Let’s get going. Eighteen miles to Fort Belvoir, nothing but a gentleman’s hike. No desert. No one shooting at us, at least we hope not. No IEDs or roadside explosions. Like a day in the park.”

NINE

Interstate 65, Fourteen Miles Southeast of Chicago

It began to rain, first a drizzle, then a solid pour.

Before the clouds broke open, Ammon and Luke cut through a barbwire fence and pushed their car and Mary’s a short distance to the cluster of trees that separated the freeway off-ramp from the farmland to the east. Using a hatchet they had packed in the trunk, they cut branches and piled them atop the vehicles to conceal them from the road. Mary and Sara worked together to organize and pack the things they would take with them. While Mary was distracted, Ammon pulled the cash and gold coins from the car, moved farther back into the trees, and dropped the valuables in a hole Luke had dug. The boys buried the money, then covered their tracks and moved back toward the road. The boys then huddled over a map and, with a compass and non-ephemeral points, wrote precise instructions to find their cache in the uncertain future.

When the packing was almost finished, Mary pleaded, “Can we go now? I want to get my little girl home. And I can’t leave Azadeh any longer. She has no idea what’s going on.”

Ammon nodded toward the freeway, looking north toward where they had heard the gunshots, thinking of the two goons they had had the trouble with the night before. “Before we leave, I want to go up there and check it out,” he said.

Mary flinched. “It won’t take long, will it?” she wondered.

“Not too long. But after hearing the gunshots, I want to know what’s up there before we head out.”

He looked at the dark sky. The rain had settled in for the day. Sara pulled out a dry poncho and handed it to him. “You be careful, then,” she said, kissing him on the forehead. She and Ammon had obviously discussed his leaving them to check out what lay ahead—and it was clear that she didn’t like it.

“I won’t be gone long,” he assured her. “A half hour. Maybe an hour. Be back as quickly as I can.”

Ammon hugged his mom, nodded to Luke, and set off through the trees.

An hour passed. Another hour. Luke started pacing. Sara’s face grew more and more tense, her eyes more wide. They had cleared off the brush so that Kelly Beth could rest in the backseat of Mary’s car, and Mary climbed in and sat with her. Luke paced among the trees, feeling worthless, growing more frustrated with each passing minute.

Sometime midmorning, Kelly Beth woke and asked for some water, then complained of the growing pain inside her bones, back and sides. She closed her eyes as Mary held her, clutching her tightly to her chest.

“Mama, is it time to take my medicine?” the small girl asked hopefully.

“Yes, baby, it is. But we don’t have any right now.”

“Can you get some for me, Mama? My body hurts.”

Mary shook her head. “I’m trying, baby.”

Luke and Sara listened, realizing that the child wasn’t even really aware of where she was. Sara turned to Luke and whispered, “She’s in a lot of pain.”

Luke grimaced. “I can see that.”

Sara dropped her voice even lower. “Luke, how are we going to get her to Chicago? She’ll never make it. She can’t even sit up in her wheelchair. She’ll get soaked, sitting in the rain.”

Luke watched Mary through the back window. “I will carry her,” he said.

“It’s a long way, Luke.”

“I know, Mom, but I’ll carry her. What else are we going to do? I mean, this isn’t what we would have asked for, taking responsibility for this little girl, but at least it gives us something, something to work for, something—I don’t know, something worthy. Otherwise, what would we be doing? Sitting here, worrying where to go and what to do. This way, we have a purpose, a goal to work for, a place to go, which might turn out for all our good anyway.”

Sara nodded, understanding. The rain began to fall harder, splattering on their raincoats and running down their cheeks. “I’ll carry her all the way to Chicago if I have to,” Luke assured her.

“I just hope—” she hesitated. “I just hope she makes it home.”

Luke wiped a raindrop clinging to his nose. “I hate it, the thought of her dying out here in this mess.”

Sara looked at him, apparently lost in thought.

Luke pressed his foot against the muddy ground. “We should pray for her,” he offered.

“It’s not enough.”

“I know, Mom, but what else do we have to offer?”

Sara was silent for a few moments longer. Finally she took a deep breath and said, “We keep on praying, then.”

* * *

Forty minutes later, Ammon made his way back through the trees, crouching as he went. The rain had let up, leaving a heavy mist in the air.

Sara and Luke moved toward him, running through the wet leaves and trees to meet him. His face was tight and he was out of breath.

“Are you OK?” Sara asked, rushing toward her son.

“I’m fine, Mom,” he answered quickly.

Luke handed his brother a small towel, and he wiped his face and wet hair. “What’s going on out there?” Luke asked.

Ammon glanced back, his eyes tense. “We can’t go that way, not along the freeway. It’s not safe anymore.”

“What is it?” Sara asked, moving closer to her son.

Ammon wiped his face again and shook his hair. “We’ll have to stay here awhile,” he said. “At least a night, maybe more.”

“What is it?” Sara repeated.

“A couple miles up, there’s a group, I don’t know who they are, they seem like locals. They’ve set up a barricade across a bridge and aren’t letting anyone pass. Only those who are willing to pay are getting by. Some are heading off across the fields. The men at the barricade are chasing after them, but some are getting through. Some are heading for a small river that’s up there and getting across. The river isn’t very wide, but it won’t be easy, and we sure couldn’t carry any of our things if we decided to try to cross it. I’m not a strong enough swimmer to cross a river, even a small one, with a pack on my back. None of us is. And as far as Kelly Beth—” he paused, the problem obvious.

“That’s crazy!” Sara answered. “I mean, they can’t do that. What right do they have to stop people from traveling on the road?”

“They’ve got no right, Mom, but they don’t care right now. There’s a lot of people heading north, toward the city. Everyone who was leaving the city is heading back, and everyone, like us, who was heading toward the city is still trying to get there. With all these stranded travelers, these guys seem to think—and so far they’re right—that no one is going to stop them from doing pretty much whatever they want. The police don’t know about them yet. How are they going to find out? No one can call them. And when they do learn what’s going on, they may try to send someone out, but how are they going to get there? It might take a couple days.”

Luke pressed in anger, “Who are they, Ammon? A handful of goons?”

“I guess that’s a pretty good description. A group of a dozen, maybe fifteen men. They all seemed to know each other. They’re demanding money, watches, cell phones, whatever people are willing to give them in order to pass.”

“OK,” Luke said, “we’ll do what everyone else is doing. We’ll go and pay them to let us pass.”

“That might be a problem,” Ammon answered.

“And why is that?”

Ammon shot a wary glance toward his brother. “Those two guys from last night are up there.”

Luke turned away, gritting his teeth.

Sara drew a quick breath and held it. “Do you think they’ll recognize us?” she pleaded desperately.

“Oh, they’ll recognize us,” Ammon answered. “I’ve already tested them. Believe me, they recognized me.”

Luke turned looked away, holding his hands to his head. “No, no, no,” he repeated, then glanced toward Mary’s car.

“I know,” Ammon said, as if reading his mind. “I understand the situation with Kelly Beth. But we can’t go up that way, not right now, anyway. We need to wait here until morning, give it a day. Maybe the Highway Patrol or National Guard or someone will show up. Until they do, there’s nothing we can do. We simply can’t make it up that road.”

Interstate 495, West of Washington, D.C.

Sometimes they ran, sometimes they walked, and sometimes Sam and Bono stopped to rest while adjusting their backpacks. They stayed on the roads, knowing better than to try to cut through the backyards, fences, highways and barriers that made a cross-country hike through the city virtually impossible.

As they ran, they were shocked at the state of the city. To their left, thin trails of smoke still rose from the downtown area. They knew what it was like down there, the rescue efforts under way, the death and destruction. Both of them shuddered, thinking of the devastation just fifteen miles to the east. The nuclear warhead was small and had been detonated too low to generate an enormous cloud of radiation, and most of the radiated material had already blown away in the wind, but being so close to the detonation still required them to move cautiously.

Once or twice the soldiers stopped while Sam pulled out a portable radiation detector. As he worked, Bono looked up, covering his eyes to protect them from the sun.

“You notice anything?” he asked.

Sam didn’t look up from his work as he answered, “Like the fact there are no airplanes in the sky?”

“Yeah. Like that. Dulles is just west of here. Reagan International and BWI to our east. On a normal day, you’d be able to count dozens of aircraft landing or taking off.”

Sam kept on working, hooking a small wire from a portable battery into his portable radiation detector. “Guess that makes this, what, an ‘un-normal’ day.”

Bono grunted. “Yeah. Pretty much ‘un-normal.’ I mean, how weird is this? Civilian air travel within the United States is a thing of the past. The military birds will keep on flying—I’m guessing most of them were hardwired to protect against EMP—but civilian airliners, they’re all but gone now.”

“I’m just glad I wasn’t in one when the blast hit,” Sam said.

Bono lowered his gaze, looking east. He knew that most of the residents of Washington, D.C. were surprised, even shocked, to discover that, having survived the initial blast, their lives wouldn’t immediately come to an end. It was a common fallacy, the thought that nuclear fallout would kill everything within an enormous radius of the explosion. Bono knew that wasn’t true. Yes, many would die. The total death toll wouldn’t ever be known, because it would take many years as a result of the radiation exposure. But he also knew that most Americans expected downtown Washington, D.C. to be uninhabitable for a thousand years, which wasn’t the case. The half-life of the initial contamination was relatively short, as little as seven hours for the worst of the radiation. The city was located near the eastern coast, where the prevailing winds blew from west to east, which meant that most of the nuclear fallout had already blown out to sea. The area upwind of the explosion received little radiation. Cities west of Washington, D.C.—Fairfax, Falls Church, Arlington—had not received any fallout at all, and wouldn’t, if the west winds kept blowing for another week or so. Areas downwind would surely suffer, but even those would be relatively safe to travel through at some point in the next few months.

Looking skyward, Bono imagined an elongated, cigar-shaped area of nuclear contamination that had spread east. Washington, D.C., was at the tip of the cigar, and the band of fallout, twenty to thirty miles wide, spread eastward for a couple of hundred miles.

He dug into his pocket for the copy of the report that had been given to the U.S. soldiers on the flight back to the United States.

In a nuclear detonation, large amounts of soil or water will be pulled into the radioactive cloud by the fireball. This material becomes radioactive when it joins with radiated contaminants in a process similar to water vapor condensing around dust particles to form rain. This is what is referred to as nuclear contamination, or fallout, when it falls back to earth.

The large particles (larger than 50 millimeters) are too heavy to rise into the stratosphere and will fall back to earth within 18–30 hours. The smaller contaminants (less than 100 millimeters) will remain aloft and be dispersed by stratospheric currents.

The ground track of fallout from an explosion is a long and irregular ellipse that will extend downwind from the location of the explosion. Individuals within this contaminated area are at greatest risk.

Perhaps more than any other variable, meteorological conditions will influence local fallout. A nuclear detonation with a significant body of water nearby (i.e., the explosion that was experienced over Washington, D.C., with the waters of the Chesapeake Bay within range of the fireball) will produce water vapor particles that are lighter and smaller than an explosion over land. This generally creates less contamination in the immediate area but more downwind, covering a greater area.

Effects of fallout vary. Rapid death will follow high doses of radiation. Low exposure to contaminants may not preclude an otherwise normal life, though the development of delayed radiation effects may produce late-term effects.

At the writing of this report, tests indicate significant fallout, with its anticipated effects, over all the eastern portions of the District (Suitland, Clinton, New Carrolton, etc.). This band of fallout extends from roughly Annapolis in the north to the southern Maryland coast along the Potomac River, the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, the eastern shore of Maryland, and the Atlantic Ocean.

Except for the immediate area around Washington, D.C., much of the contaminated area is sparsely populated. Still, some casualties are expected beyond those already killed in the blast.

Bono shrugged. Funny, he thought, as he folded the paper and put it back into his pocket, who would have thought the destruction of the nation’s capital would be the least of their worries now?

The portable radiation detector was clicking at his side. Sam studied the readout, then carefully put the dosimeter back inside its protective cover and tucked it in his backpack.

“Still good?” Bono asked him.

“Kind of amazing,” Sam answered. “I’m not getting anything.”

“Yeah. But remember, we’re upwind. And a long way from the detonation site.”

Sam looked around, his eyes always moving.

They stood on the median of the I-495 Beltway, the twelve-lane freeway that surrounded Washington, D.C. An enormous series of cement overpasses loomed before them where Route 66 merged with I-495. They were halfway to Fort Belvoir Military Reservation. It had been a long day, the traveling much harder and slower than they had hoped it would be.

The freeway was a mass of stalled cars. Virtually nothing moved. Some of the people still waited in their vehicles, convinced the government was going to send someone out to save them—to pick them up and drive them home. Most of the drivers and passengers, however, along with other travelers like Bono and Sam, had finally started walking, and the freeway was crowded with weary people moving along the unending line of cars. Most of them avoided the sides of the road, walking between the stalled cars, realizing that traffic wasn’t going to start anytime soon. As Bono watched, he knew that few of them, if any, had any idea what was going on. The radios inside their automobiles would have been fried along with the electronic ignition, fuel injection, and computer circuits, and without their cell phones they had no way of knowing about the EMP.

He smelled smoke and turned around. They’d been watching the growing flames for the past hour or so. Just outside the Beltway, somewhere south of Route 66, a fire had broken out inside a complex of tightly packed townhouses. What had started as a small fire (Bono suspected from something like some idiot trying to fry a hot dog on a hibachi inside his kitchen) had spread to the entire building, then to the building next to it. With no water pressure and no fire trucks to respond, there was little anyone could do but watch the buildings burn. That was a serious ongoing danger. Because there was no practical way to fight the fire, who knew how far it might spread? The smoke was growing thick, billowing upward in mushrooming clouds that rose several hundred feet before being carried in a long line to the east.

Bono nudged Sam, pointing toward the fire. “How far do you think it might go?” he asked.

Sam shrugged. “A long way, I guess.”

“Think it could burn all the way to 66?”

“Maybe. I mean, how are they going to stop it? No pressure in the city water lines. What are they going to do, beat it back with shovels? If things get bad enough, I guess they could bring in bulldozers, tear down a line of buildings to create a firebreak.” He paused, realizing that wasn’t going to happen either, and then asked, “Do you think the electrical circuits in heavy demolition equipment would be fried as well?”

“The new stuff? Probably. But there’s lots of older equipment, bulldozers and land movers built before the 1980s, that probably doesn’t have electronic ignition and all the modern circuitry the new machinery has. I’m sure they could round up some old stuff. But let me ask you this.” Bono nodded toward the freeway. “How’re they going to get it to the fire? The roads are all impassable. Nothing’s going to move. It could be weeks, maybe months, before these roads are clear. Think about that, Sammy. You start with a single fire. You’ve got no way to fight it. You can’t even get equipment to it, the small amount of equipment that isn’t destroyed by the EMP in the first place . . . .” His voice trailed off. “You could lose an entire city. It could all burn away and there wouldn’t be anything we could do.”

Sam watched the billowing smoke, then looked south again. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got another eight miles. It’s getting late. I want to make the army post before nightfall.” He hoisted his backpack and jogged off.

Bono fell in behind him. They stayed on the embankment of the highway, away from the people as much as possible. Angry, frightened eyes glared at them as they passed. Most everyone called to them, recognizing the uniforms.

“Hey, you! Soldier! What’s happening here?”

“Stop there! Can you help us?”

“Hey, I’ve got a carload of kids with me! I need some help. Why are you running? I demand to know what’s going on!”

The shouting was insistent and angry; the soldiers just ignored it. It would take a month to get to Fort Belvoir if they had to stop and explain what had happened to everyone they passed.

Ten minutes later, Sam saw them. Three men. Two young women. Lots of leather, lots of chains, and a bunch of ugly, moody eyes. They stood around their car, cursing and shoving all the strangers who walked by. He watched them carefully as he and Bono approached, still at a gentle run. One of the men saw the soldiers coming and reached toward his hip. He’s armed, Sam thought, instinctively moving his hand toward the weapon underneath his camouflage uniform. He was in the lead and he turned to the left, moving farther off the road to give the men a wider berth.

A screaming woman ran toward him, her eyes wild, her arms flailing in the air. “He shot someone!” she cried. “There’s a dead body up there! Between those two cars!” She motioned frantically toward the men on the road.

Sam slowed. Bono came up behind him. “Are you certain?” he whispered toward the woman.

She didn’t answer, her hands darting to her mouth.

Sam watched the three men and two women. The girls had backed off. The men turned to face the soldiers, maybe forty feet away. “You got no business here, grunts,” the nearest man shouted to him. “You ain’t the police. You ain’t got nothing. Go on, keep on jogging. You got no business here.”

Sam shot a look at Bono. “What do you think?” he asked.

Bono looked at the mass of empty cars and people walking all around them. “I don’t know. We don’t have time for this. And we don’t really have any authority—”

“But if they’re armed, if they’ve already popped someone . . . .”

Bono nodded slowly. “We ought to do something, I guess.”

“I know the world’s gone crazy, but man, Bono, it’s only been a day. Wouldn’t you think these people could hold off the barbarism for at least a week or two? And murder is probably still illegal. Inadvisable at least.” Sam had a habit of slipping into sarcasm when he was working up to combat mode.

Bono studied the men, who had grouped together now.

“If they’ve hurt someone, I don’t think we can just leave them here, not with a weapon,” Sam said.

“OK,” Bono finally answered. “Check it out. See if it’s true. But we’re not the judge and jury. We don’t want to hurt anyone, you understand. All we want to do is make it impossible for them to intimidate or hurt any of these travelers, OK?”

Sam nodded. “You got me?” he whispered softly.

Neither of the men had pulled their weapons, but Bono nodded slowly. “Left hip for one, right hip for two,” he said.

Sam walked toward the group of hoods.

“Go on, soldier boy,” the first one sneered, waving him back. “You got no business here!”

Twenty feet between them. Two lanes of cars. Sam looked down. Between a set of tires he saw the body. Brown leather shoes. Expensive suit pants. A pool of drying blood beneath the ankles. He quickly moved his eyes, not letting on that he had seen. A young woman hunched in the backseat of a nearby Lexus®: dark hair, lots of makeup, her head slumped against the window, her face stained, bruised and purple beneath her dark eyes. Half a second was all it took him to understand what had happened here.

“No worries, buddy,” Sam shouted back. “I just wanted to ask you something.”

“Stay back!” the man screamed in fury. Pulling out a weapon from under his loose shirt, he aimed at Sam. “Go on, keep on running, you got no business here, soldier boy.” His voice was thick and hopeless. Nothing left to lose. Nothing left to gain. The world was over anyway, why not have some fun, stake your claim while there was something left to stake a claim to.

Sam moved his eyes again, evaluating the threat. Three men. The first one armed. The second one? Almost certainly, from the way he held his hand beside his hip, just a few inches from the small of his back. The last man stayed away, his eyes darting between the soldiers and his friends. He was no threat.

Sam swallowed, moved two steps to his right to allow Bono a clear line of fire, and lifted his hands, palms toward the screaming man to show that he was not holding a weapon.

“Go back or I will kill you!” the man screamed again. He moved his finger to the trigger and squinted down the short barrel of his gun.

Sam slowly dropped his right hand toward his hip.

The bullets passed by his ear. Buzz, buzz. Hot and angry. There is no other sound like a passing 9 mm bullet.

The first man screamed in pain and dropped his gun, the blood already spouting between his fingers as he held his shattered hand. The second man fell back, his shoulder bloody, his right arm hanging uselessly at his side. The window behind him burst as the flattened bullet passed through his shoulder and into the car. The two men screamed and cursed, crying in pain and fear. Their buddy, the oldest of the three, swore, his eyes wide, then turned and ran, sprinting like a rabbit down the line of empty cars. One of the young women screamed, fell to her knees, and threw up, her long hair falling into the mess. The other girl, no more than a teenager, ran toward her boyfriend, bent over him, saw the blood, then stood up and ran, following the other man.

Sam drew his weapon and held it with both hands, his face deadly and intent. He moved toward the hoods with careful steps. “Get down,” he told them, his voice low and calm. Behind him, Bono kept his weapon trained on the attackers. Sam made certain he maintained a line of fire for his friend.

He moved toward the Lexus and pulled open the back door. The woman stared up, her eyes wide with dread and fear. She seemed to be as afraid of him as she was of the other men. “You OK?” he whispered as he pulled her from the car. She felt heavy, fragile, too weak to help herself. “Come on,” he urged, his voice harder now. “Get up. You’ve got to get out of here.”

She stood, brushing her hands across her face. Sam saw the tear in her dress, the bruises and scratches across her cheeks. She had fought them. He was proud of her. She was going to be OK.

Across the highway, among the passing strangers, two older men were hiding behind a nearby car. “Over here!” Sam shouted to them.

The two men hesitated, then came toward him. “Take care of her!” Sam said, gently prodding the battered woman toward the men.

“What?” the first man answered in surprise.

Sam nodded impatiently to the scene of carnage: the dead husband, the bleeding attackers, the injured woman. “Take care of her!” He cocked an eyebrow.

The two men understood. “All right, sir. You got it!” The first man reached out for her hand. She cried, then fell into the stranger’s arms.

Sam turned toward the two young men who were crying on the ground. He moved toward the first one, who sat holding his bleeding hand against his chest. “You’ve been a bad boy,” he muttered, kneeling down by his side.

“He shot me! He shot me in the hand!” The young man cursed and swore at Bono, calling him every foul name that Sam had ever heard.

“He could have shot you through the mouth if you’d prefer that,” Sam said in disgust. “And if you don’t shut up, I still might let him.”

“He shot me, man!” the man screamed. “I’ll get you, you stinking soldier. I’ll kill you!” He swore again.

Sam bent over and looked the young thug in the eyes. “Tell me, what is there in this situation that would lead me to believe that?” he asked.

The man sniffled, then closed his mouth. Sam reached out and took his hand. Examining it carefully, he pulled a thick gauze pad from his first aid kit and compressed it into the man’s palm. “You’d better count your blessings,” he said. “My buddy there is good enough he was able to miss the major tendons and nerves. Believe me, tough guy, that was no accident—he could have destroyed your entire hand. He did you a huge favor: Your hand will heal OK. You’ll be able to stand trial for this murder with no problems, you slimy scum.”

The man shook his head, then turned away.

While Sam was working, Bono had moved toward the other man, kicked away his handgun, and examined his shoulder. It took them a few minutes to administer first aid.

Standing, Sam gathered up their weapons. Bono wiped his hands on the attacker’s pants, then moved and stood at the side of his friend. Sam nodded toward the injured shoulder.

“Just a flesh wound,” he told him. “It’ll be OK.”

Sam tucked their two handguns inside his backpack, then turned toward the men. “You made things a whole lot harder than they needed to be,” he said. “Think about it, guys. Things are going to be tough for everyone right now, but they’re going to be a lot harder for you. How are you going to get to a hospital? What kind of care do you think you’re going to get? I wouldn’t want to be either one of you. But you made your own bed.”

Bono reached into his backpack and pulled out some plastic bands they used as handcuffs to handle captured insurgents when working in Iraq. He dragged the two men together, cuffed them to each other, then ran another cuff around the dead man’s wrist. “A murder was committed here,” he said as he cuffed the men. “It would be a whole lot better if you didn’t leave the scene of the crime.”

Sam wrote a brief note, explaining what had happened, wrote down his name, rank, and contact number, and left it on the windshield of the dead man’s car.

“Come on,” he said to Bono, “we’ve still got a long way to go.”

TEN

Fort Belvoir Military Reservation

“Look, I don’t know what to tell you,” Colonel Parvan said. “I mean it, guys, I’ve got my hands full right up to my elbows, and the last thing I need is a couple of lieutenants asking favors and hanging around my neck.”

“We understand that, sir,” Bono answered respectfully. “But please remember, our Cherokee unit was brought back from overseas just a few days ago. Everyone has already scattered, heading off to see their families. Our unit has been gone for twenty-three of the past twenty-four months and we were all eager to get home. The problem is—”

“The problem is, now that you’re all split up, there’s no way Special Forces Command is going to reconstitute your unit. Not right now. Not under the circumstances we find ourselves in.”

“Exactly, sir.”

“What does your boss want you to do then?” the commander of the helicopter aviation unit at Fort Belvoir demanded.

Bono slid to the edge of his chair. His face was tight and sweaty. And he looked tired. Really tired. Not so much physically—though the hike across Washington, D.C. had worn him out—but there was a much deeper weariness and worry on his face. “He wants us to stay available,” he answered, “but frankly, sir, he knows it’s unlikely our particular unit is going to be called on anytime soon. So he’s giving us two weeks to go home and see our families. Two weeks. Not a lot of time when we’ve been gone for two years, but hey, we’re not complaining; we’re very happy to have any time at all. The problem is, of course, we’ve got no way to get there. We don’t own any horses, which might be the only way to get around right now. So we need a ride, sir. One of your helicopters out there. If we could get out to Andrews Air Force Base or down to Langley, we might be able to catch a hop from there. I’ve got to get to Memphis and Lieutenant Brighton here needs to get to Salt Lake City or,” Bono hesitated, “somewhere in between.”

The gray-haired colonel raised an eyebrow and turned to Sam. “You don’t know where you’re trying to get to?” he asked, his voice tired and sarcastic.

Sam shook his head.

“What, your family lives in a Winnebago or something”

Sam blushed with anger and looked away. Bono huffed as he leaned back against his chair. “Where did that come from, sir?” he demanded, his voice hard.

The colonel blushed. “Sorry,” he said, lifting his hand in apology. “Really. I wasn’t thinking. You know, guys, I’ve been working for weeks on about two hours’ sleep a night. It was a bad joke, a weak attempt at humor, but I meant nothing, OK?”

Sam shrugged. “A joke. Oh, I get it. Funny, sir.”

Bono slumped. He was too tired to really care. “As a matter of interest, you probably knew Lieutenant Brighton’s father,” the colonel’s face began to soften as Bono finished the sentence, “General Brighton at the White House.”

“Of course, of course, I knew your father well.” He turned to Sam. “I hope, you know, I hope he’s OK. Did he, you know . . . .”

“No, sir, he didn’t. He was killed in the explosion.” Sam stared at the colonel, his face blank.

The older officer cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to hear that. I really am. I had the honor to fly your father many, many times. Even got him the front seat in one of those UH-60 helicopters out there. He did a pretty good job for an Air Force guy. Couldn’t ever learn to hover, but he was a right good ol’ pilot. More, he was a really decent fellow. Everyone who knew him liked him. Everyone knew how hard he worked.”

“Thank you, sir,” Sam answered.

Bono watched Sam for a moment, then glanced around the boxy office. Typical army: brown, faux-wood desk, a dozen pictures on the walls, an American flag in one corner, the regiment flag opposite it, a small window where the colonel could stand and count the helicopters—mostly Sikorsky UH-60s and Bell UH-1s—out on the flight line.

They were sitting on the east side of Fort Belvoir, a section of the military installation known as Davidson Army Airfield. A component of the U.S. Army Military District of Washington, Davidson’s most important mission was to provide air transportation for army bigwigs, foreign dignitaries, and senior members of the Department of Defense.

“So, sir, what do you say?” Bono pressed. “Please, it would only take a few minutes to fly us to one of the Air Force bases around Washington, D.C. It would take us a week, maybe longer, to walk, the way things are right now. It’s turning crazy quickly, you surely know that, and this may be our only chance. We’ve been gone an awfully long time, sir.”

The colonel walked to the window and looked out on the flight line as he thought. “Do you have any idea how dear these helicopters are right now? They are literally the only transportation left inside the District. I’ve got my pilots flying twenty hours a day and we’re not even close to keeping up. Now you want me to what, gin up a sortie so a couple Special Forces soldiers can go home and see their families?”

Bono shook his head at Sam and raised an eyebrow. It doesn’t look good, his frown said.

The colonel stood in silence. Sam fidgeted nervously. Bono watched the colonel’s back.

“I’ve been flying some critically important missions,” the colonel continued. He thought another moment and then added, “But some of it is bogus. Yesterday I had to fly some congressional staff out to one of the bunkers in West Virginia. Bunch of snot-nosed college kids. They couldn’t have explained the difference between national security and a security blanket, but they are so critical to the survival of our nation that we had to get them out there. I’ve got senators’ wives demanding to be taken home to mama, some pukes down at the DNC—the Democratic National Committee, for pity’s sake—demanding we get them out of town.”

Bono cracked a smile.

“And you want me to take a couple grunt lieutenants down to Langley just so they can try to hitch a ride. A couple guys whose only excuse is that they’ve been living in the desert for the past twenty-four months, eating snakes and burying themselves in the sand to get away from the heat. Senators’ wives or you two pukes? Now, who do you think I should put as my priority?” The colonel turned around.

Bono looked him in the eye. “Us, sir?” he said.

“Dang straight there, lieutenant. It’d be an honor to help.”

Bono grinned. “Really sir?” he asked.

“Yeah,” the colonel answered indignantly. “After what you guys have been through, it’s the least I can do. Believe me, guys, I would rather fly this mission than almost anything else I’ve done in the past week.”

“Thank you sir,” Sam said.

The colonel turned toward them. “You do realize, I hope, that it’s extremely unlikely it’s going to do you any good anyway. No flights are going in or out of Andrews; the radiation levels are still too high. Now, we can get you down to Langley, but what are the chances the Air Force is going to be able to help you? It’s not like they’re scheduling regular service down to Memphis.” He turned to Sam. “And you don’t even know where you want to go.”

Neither of the younger officers said anything.

“I could make a pretty strong argument that the best thing you could do is stay here. We can take care of you. You could help us,” the colonel said.

The soldiers immediately shook their heads. “No sir,” Bono said. “Thanks for the offer, and it might turn out that you’re right, but we’ve got just two weeks, and this might be our only opportunity. Who knows how long it will be until our unit cuts us loose again? Months? More likely years. We’ve got to try to get there while we have the chance.”

The colonel nodded. “Oh, to be so young,” he muttered wistfully.

Sam cocked his head toward Bono. “If you saw his wife, sir,” he said with a sly grin, “believe me, you’d understand.”

“Got it,” the colonel laughed.

“No, sir, you really have to see her. Go on, Bono, show him some of your pictures.” He smiled teasingly at the colonel. “I’m telling you, sir, he’s got the cutest little kid in the world. Go on and show ’im, Bono.”

“I’m not going to show him—”

“Come on, don’t be humble.”

“There’s no reason,” the colonel broke in. “You don’t have to convince me, OK.”

“Thank you, sir,” Bono said, shooting a deadly look toward Sam. Sam smiled again and shrugged.

The colonel walked back to his desk, calling to his aide. “Specialist Anderson, get in here.”

The office door pulled back.

“What’s the schedule on our Hueys?” the colonel asked.

“We’ve got two birds flying medical and rescue teams back and forth to the mobile hospitals. Four birds have been requested to ferry some surviving congressional staff out to Mount Weather. Our last scheduled sortie before nightfall is a bird heading up to CIA headquarters. Scheduled takeoff is 2000 hours.”

“OK. Tell the pilots I want them to take off early and run these guys down to Langley before they head up to the CIA.”

The army specialist hesitated. “Langley, sir? As in Langley Air Force Base, not CIA headquarters, Langley?”

“Yes, that is right.”

“Sir, that’s a forty-minute flight.”

“I know that, Specialist Anderson.”

“With all the birds we already have committed, not to mention our fuel situation, sir, do you really think that’s wise?”

“I don’t know, Specialist Anderson, I’m not that wise. But wise or not, I think you ought to leave command decisions up to the boss.”

The specialist nodded and left the room. The two young soldiers stood up and thanked the colonel with a shake of their hands.

“Bono?” the colonel questioned as he and Sam moved toward the door. “Like what, the Korean running shoes?”

Bono stopped and turned around. “That’s it, sir. Twenty bucks. They’ll last forever.”

“Sure, sure, I had a pair myself. Picked ’em up at Osan. Not much of a nickname, though. Like being called Nike or Reebok or white-tennis-shoe guy or something.”

“I’ve heard many worse,” Sam broke in.

“How’s that?” the colonel asked.

“Well, sir, for example, roughly translated the Persian word parvân means pretty butterfly. As a call sign, I think that would be a whole lot worse than Bono.”

Colonel Parvan snorted, then laughed, walking them to the door. “Good luck, guys,” he said.

The soldiers walked down the hall.

The colonel watched them and then added quietly, “Get on home and see your families. It might be the last time that you see them in a very long time.”

* * *

Two hours later, Sam and Bono found themselves tucked inside the back of an old Huey UH-1 helicopter. The noise and vibration made it impossible to talk as the helicopter lifted off from Davidson Army Airfield and headed south. Behind them, through the sunset haze and smoke, Sam could see a huge, irregular circle that changed in hue from brown to gray to black as it got closer to the center of the nuclear blast. A mile square, the scene went from broken buildings to torn-up buildings to steel frameworks jutting out of the ground to nothing but a blackened circle of dust and ash. He turned away and closed his eyes, knowing he was looking at his father’s grave.

Forty minutes later, the helicopter set up for its final approach into Langley. As they descended from 500 feet, Bono pushed the cabin doors back.

Langley Air Force Base, Headquarters, Air Combat Command, was situated on a jut of land that extended into the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. The enormous runway ran east and west, with most of the aircraft parking on the south. Two taxiways led north, one to the alert fighter facilities, one extending farther through the trees toward a NASA test facility. Trees, bushes, and several small rivers and inlets from the Chesapeake Bay surrounded the base. As the helicopter slowed, Sam noticed that the main road had been blocked with portable cement barricades. Humvees and guard posts lined both sides of the access road. It looked more like Iraq than America, and he found it hard to draw his eyes away from the soldiers manning the gates, knowing that foreign fighters weren’t the primary security concern anymore. He thought of the scene in Washington, D.C., the chaos they’d experienced back on I-495, then turned in his seat to look down at the center of the base. The aircraft parking ramp was crammed with dozens and dozens of aircraft: air refueling tankers, C-130 tactical freighters, C-141, C-5, and C-17 airlifts, F-15 fighters, contract airline carriers, and white C-21 VIP transports.

Sam nodded toward the crowded parking ramp. “You ever seen so many aircraft?” he shouted above the noise.

Bono shook his head. “Looks like half of our air force.”

“No. Not even close. But that is a bunch of aircraft, lots more than I’ve ever seen here before.”

The helicopter turned east and set down on the VIP helicopter pad outside of Base Operations. A red sidewalk had been painted on the tarmac from the center of the helipad to the front door of Base Ops. The two soldiers stepped out of the old helicopter, grabbed their gear, and walked quickly, heads lowered, toward the building where a large sign was positioned over the door:

“Welcome to Langley Air Force Base Home of the 1st Fighter Wing”

They walked in, dropped their gear against the wall, and looked around. Offices left and right. A flight planning room down the hall, which would contain all the charts, maps, regulations, notices to airmen, and other pilot information required to plan a local or international flight. The weather shop was around the corner; off to the right, farther on, were a crew lounge and small cafeteria. The building was packed. Twenty or thirty pilots moved here and there, intent on their work. Sam noticed the different unit patches on their shoulders: C-141 crews from Washington and Germany; C-17 crews from South Carolina; tanker crews from Oklahoma, Japan, and Maine; aircraft and aircrews from all around the world. The place smelled like sweat and Chinese food, and had a certain sense of urgency that came only with war. The two army soldiers moved toward the crew lounge and stopped.

“OK,” Sam said, “what now?”

“I don’t know,” Bono answered. “Haven’t figured it out yet.”

“My plan is a good one. And it’s really all we have.”

Bono hesitated. He was clearly not convinced.

“What else you going to do?” Sam pressed. “None of these aircrews or airplanes are going to take you down to Memphis. There’s not even an Air Force base down there. And remember, with my plan, we don’t have to ask them to land anywhere—which ain’t going to happen, friend. But get them to divert a little, you know, just turn a couple degrees and fly for thirty minutes, that’s a doable thing. Get us close, just fly over, and we can take it from there.”

Bono turned to him, frustrated. “You don’t even know where you’re going. Your family couldn’t have made it to Salt Lake before the EMP went off. You’ve got the entire country lying there before you. How you going to find them? What is your plan?”

Sam shook his head. He didn’t know. Bono watched him, then turned away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to sound pessimistic, but it’s a real problem, Sam.”

“I know that.”

“What are you going to do, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going to—”

“Look, Bono, I don’t know, OK? I mean, everything has happened pretty quickly. It’s only been a day.”

Bono sucked his teeth, then turned away. “I’m going to talk to the guys at the Operations Center and see what sorties they’ve got heading southwest.” He turned and walked toward the center of the building where an elevated platform had been built.

Sam waited, then went into the mission planning room with its lines of charts and maps, bulletins posted on the walls, notices of airport and airspace closures from all around the world, and a bunch of other things he didn’t understand. He paid it all no attention as he walked to the back of the room where a huge map of the United States had been mounted on the wall. He studied it. Langley Air Force Base was on the tip of Virginia—hard to go farther east without getting wet. The entire nation lay to the west, thousands and thousands of miles. Eight states between Salt Lake City and Langley. A dozen major cities. A thousand smaller towns. Two mountain ranges. The great, barren plains. Half a dozen major rivers.

How would he ever find them? How could he possibly know where they were!

He located I-70, the main highway heading west from Washington, D.C., and traced it with his finger, following its course through Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana—still only a fourth of the way to Utah. Such a long, long way to go.

And just two weeks to find them.

He shivered.

Who was he kidding? His family could be anywhere along a highway that extended for more than two thousand miles. They could have taken I-80 farther north or any one of a dozen highways to the south.

He took a breath and sighed, his shoulders slumping as he thought. Bono was right. He wouldn’t find them. There wasn’t any hope.

* * *

The man entered the room quietly. Sam didn’t notice him until he was standing at his side; then Sam turned, looking at the man’s profile as the stranger also considered the large map on the wall. Sam wanted to turn away but couldn’t, for there was something about the stranger that seemed out of place. For one thing, he wasn’t wearing a uniform, just a white shirt and tan slacks, making him one of the very few civilians in the building. His blond hair was cut short and he was tall and thick-chested. Some kind of security badge hung around his neck and Sam glanced toward it, trying to figure out who he was.

The man turned toward him and smiled so warmly that Sam couldn’t help but smile back. “How you doing?” the stranger asked.

“Pretty good,” Sam replied.

The man nodded, then leaned against a large table in the middle of the room.

Sam watched him a moment before turning back to the wall. They stood in silence as Sam studied the map.

“Are you the fellow who’s looking for his family?” the stranger asked.

Sam looked around, then nodded. “You must have talked to Bono?”

“Bono? I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Lieutenant Calton. The other army officer I came in with.”

The man didn’t answer.

Sam shrugged, his eyebrows furrowing. The stranger looked at him and smiled again. Dark eyes, determined, almost piercing, gracious and comfortable. Sam felt an instant affection, almost a drawing to the stranger. “Sir, how did you know about my family?” he asked respectfully. Something about the stranger seemed to demand his deference.

The man thrust his hands into his pockets. “Go to Chicago, Sam.” He stepped forward and pointed with his finger, tapping the map. “Stay on the south side of the city. You will know what to do.”

Sam’s eyes were drawn to the map. “Sir, what are you talking about?”

“Listen to me, Samuel Brighton.”

Sam hesitated, almost afraid to answer. “Chicago? Why Chicago? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Trust me, Sam. Chicago. They will be waiting. You have to save their lives.”

“I can’t go to Chicago. I have to find my family. I don’t even know what you’re talking—”

He didn’t have time to finish his sentence. Bono burst into the room, running toward him. “Come on,” he almost shouted. “I got us a ride!”

The stranger looked at Sam intently, reached out and patted him on the shoulder, then turned and walked out of the room. Bono paid the man no attention as he ran toward his friend. “Come on, man, we don’t have much time.” He was flushed and excited, his backpack already on his back.

“What is it? What you got?”

“There’s a C-141 heading down to Little Rock. They don’t have much room, but I talked to the loadmaster and he’ll get us on—”

“Little Rock, are you kidding? Man, that’s perfect! You’d only be, what, I don’t know, but not too far from Memphis!”

“Yeah, but it’s leaving right now. I mean right now! The aircraft is out on the ramp, the engines running. They’ve got a hard takeoff time and they can’t let it slip or they’ll be here for six hours waiting for another slot. We’ve got to go. I’ve got to go! I’ve got to take this, Sam!”

Sam hesitated, shooting another glance toward the map. “I understand. This is great. Go on! Go and get it.”

Bono didn’t move. “What about you?”

“I don’t know,” Sam stepped aside, looking toward the doorway, but the stranger was gone.

“Come with me, Sam. Come with me now. Come down, spend some time with my family. My wife would love to have you. And I could use your help.”

Sam slowly shook his head. “I can’t do that, Bono. Dude, I’ve got my own family, my mom and my two brothers.”

“Stick with me, Sam. You’re never going to find them. Not like this! Not the way things are right now. Luke and Ammon, they’re no dummies. They’ll take care of your mom.”

Sam thought, then turned away. He paced, his lips tight with worry, the words echoing in his head. “Go to Chicago. They will be waiting for you. You have to save their lives.”

Bono watched him, confused, then spread his arms toward the map. “Look, Sam, I understand what you’re thinking, but you’ve got to be realistic, OK? You’ve got to consider the very real possibility that you might not be able to find your family right now. I don’t need to remind you what is happening out there. I don’t need to tell you just how difficult, no, Sam, how impossible this is going to be. You can’t travel. You’ve got no transportation. You don’t even know where you’re going!” Bono was almost shouting now, his voice rising with frustration. “Come with me. Come to Memphis. This might be our only chance.”

Sam took a step toward him. “I just can’t do that, Bono.”

Bono took a breath and held it, then slowly let it out. “All right, then.” He glanced down at his watch. “I’ve got to go, Sam. He gave me five minutes, not a second more.”

Sam paced again and then stopped, his face scrunched tight.

“What’s your plan, Sam? I need to know.”

Sam glanced behind him at the map on the wall. “I’m going to Chicago,” he answered softly.

Bono took a step toward him. “Chicago? Are you crazy? Why are you going there? Why, Sam, would you go up to Chicago . . . .” Bono stopped, his voice trailing off. He stood frozen for a moment, the color draining from his face. Ten seconds passed in silence. “Yes,” he mumbled softly, “yes, that’s what you should do.”

Sam nodded to him. “Go now,” he said.

Bono hesitated. “The aircraft won’t wait a second for me.”

“Go, buddy, go!”

Bono raced to Sam, threw his arms around him, and drew him to his chest. “I don’t know, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know why you have to go to Chicago, but yes, I am certain that’s the right thing to do.”

Sam pushed him away. “Don’t you miss that aircraft.”

Bono turned and started running, almost getting to the door. Then he stopped and turned around. “Take care of yourself, Captain Brighton.”

“Roger that. Now go, go, go.”

Bono gave a quick salute, then ran down the hall.

Sam stood a moment, silence and peace settling all around him, then walked to the doorway. Bono was already gone, the door that led toward the flight line swinging shut. Looking out, he could see that it had grown dark outside, the lights from the building casting yellow squares across the tarmac.

Feeling alone, he walked toward the Operations Desk. “You got any flights heading west?” he asked the duty officer.

The sergeant shook his head. “We’re not opening up any spots right now, sir,” he answered curtly.

Sam hesitated, still not used to being called “sir” or “lieutenant,” then leaned toward the sergeant. “Come on,” he pleaded. “There’s got to be something. Can’t we work something out?”

The sergeant stopped his work and looked up. “Are you kidding me, lieutenant? I mean, you’ve got to be kidding me. Look out on the ramp there, look out on the stinking world, then turn back and tell me that you should be my priority right now. The nation has just been kicked in the throat, and you think my most important job is to try to get an aerial taxi for some army puke.”

Sam was taken aback. “Dude, you know I was—”

The sergeant slid a notepad across the counter. “Give me your name and information and I’ll put you on the list.”

Sam glanced toward the notepad, thumbing through it. Five pages long. More than a hundred names already on the list.

He sighed, his shoulders slumping, and reached across the counter for a pen.

* * *

Sam spent the next eight hours stalking up and down the halls of the Base Operations building, talking to every pilot, copilot, or cargo master he could find. He made himself obnoxious, hounding everyone. With each passing minute he grew more desperate to get a flight.

He felt it, deep inside, a growing twist of worry that pulled his stomach into knots.

He didn’t understand it. He’d never felt anything quite like it before. But as in a dream, he sensed there was a monster coming at him and he couldn’t turn to run.

“Come on,” he repeated as he paced up and down the hall. “Come on, come on. I’ve got to find a flight!”

* * *

Flight operations continued on a twenty-four-hour cycle, and every hour that went by, the place became more frantic and intense. Sam kept himself awake for as long as he could, terrified of missing his chance, but sometime after four in the morning he finally fell asleep, crashing across a leather couch in the crew lounge with a couple of pilots just in from Germany. As the sun rose, he forced himself awake, washed up in the bathroom (wondering how the military base maintained its water pressure), and resumed his stalking.

Eight hours later, after hounding, begging and threatening all sorts of things that no one really believed, Sam got the best offer he was going to get. A KC-135 air refueling tanker was heading out to Portland. Yeah, they had some room, and yeah, they’d allow him to take up one of the small seats in the back, but it was a five-hour flight across the States with no stops in between. Sam begged again, but lost the battle. No way were they going make a stop for him

“It’s cool, it’s cool, you don’t need to,” he pulled back. “Just get me close. That’s all I need. I’ll take care of the rest.”

The pilot, a pretty major with short brown hair, camouflage flight suit, and puffy eyes from spending too much time in the air, stared at him, suspicious. “Don’t you go fooling around with my sortie, you hear me, Lieutenant Brighton?”

“No, ma’am. Nothing stupid. But if you’ll just fly a little farther north than you were planning on, it would really help me out.”

“I already told you, we’re not stopping.”

“You won’t have to, major. All you’ve got to do is get me close.”

ELEVEN

Interstate 65, Fourteen Miles Southeast of Chicago

The afternoon passed, rainy and wet, and dark came quickly because of the low clouds.

An hour before nightfall, Ammon and Luke set off, hiking north. This time Luke reluctantly carried the pistol at the small of his back. He also wore a poncho, which concealed his hands, allowing him to reach for the pistol without being detected if he needed to.

He desperately prayed it wouldn’t happen. He had shot a pistol before—their father had insisted on his sons knowing how to handle a pistol—but he was hardly an expert. More, he was completely unprepared to shoot a person. Would he do it? He didn’t think so. When it came right down to pulling the trigger, he simply didn’t think he could. To save his brother’s life? Maybe. But he probably couldn’t shoot to save his own.

The two young men moved quietly and quickly through the growing darkness, staying near the tree line that paralleled the road. A mile passed and their boots became heavy with rain and mud. The rain let up and, to the west, the clouds began to thin. About a hundred yards to their left the freeway had grown less crowded. There were a few people here and there, but most had given up traveling for the night and were hunkering down, setting up camp inside other people’s cars.

Approaching the edge of the trees, Ammon crouched and pointed. “There,” he said.

Luke knelt down at his side. The men were still there, guarding the bridge. They stood together in the rain, baseball hats and wet hair and clinging clothes.

“Who are they?” Luke wondered. “Where do they come from? Why are they doing this? It makes no sense.”

“It’s crazy,” Ammon said, then pointed farther up the freeway. “You see that?” he asked.

Luke strained to see against the growing dark. “Looks like . . . what is that? Is that a car that’s been overturned?”

“It’s a Highway Patrol,” Ammon explained. “It was easier to see it this morning when there was more light.”

Luke sucked in a breath. “You sure?”

“Really sure.”

“What’s it mean?”

“Don’t know. But it leaves a lot of questions. Where’s the patrolman? What happened to his car? You saw what happened—the EMP didn’t cause a big explosion or anything. Everything just quit working, coasting to a stop. That trooper didn’t flip his car. Someone overturned it. Why would they do that?”

“You didn’t tell Mom anything about this?”

“No. I was going to, but I changed my mind. No reason to make her worry more than she already is.”

Luke lifted his hand and pointed to the crowd of men. “Is that the guy I fought last night?”

Ammon squinted. “Yeah, I think that’s him. I got a little closer this morning, but it’s hard to be sure in this light. I tell you this, though, the guy you took last night had a mean gash down the side of his head.”

“I whacked him pretty good,” Luke explained with pride. “I had a fist-sized rock in my hand when I popped him.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think he’s very happy. They sure weren’t happy to see me this morning.”

Ammon’s knees began to cramp from squatting. “There is some good news, I think, in what happened to the trooper’s car,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Maybe I’m wrong, but it just seems to me that sometime the authorities are going to realize they’ve lost a man out here. Sooner or later, apparently later in this case, they’re going to notice they have a man down. When that happens, I have to believe they’d send someone out here to investigate.”

Luke thought, then nodded slowly. “You might be right.”

Ammon studied the group of ill-dressed men, counting them. “There aren’t as many of them as there were this morning.”

“Maybe they’ve figured it’s time to head out? Get home to their families or whatever. Take their share of the cash and run.”

“That’s what I was thinking, especially if they believe the authorities are going to show up.”

Luke moved his eyes up the road, toward the overturned car. “You never saw the trooper? You have no idea where he is?”

“None at all. But he’s got to be around here somewhere. Unless he took off.”

Luke shook his head. “He’s not alive,” he said.

Ammon shivered. “I was wondering about that.”

They crouched another five minutes, watching the men guard the road. They saw a dozen people walk up to the blockade. The negotiations seemed to take a long time and were evidently complicated. Of the dozen who approached them, the outlaws let a few more than half go through.

Ammon shivered again. It was getting cold, but that wasn’t what was driving a chill up and down his spine. “What do you think?” he finally asked.

Luke reached up and pulled his poncho close, feeling the same chill. “I don’t look forward to confronting those guys we met last night.”

Ammon grunted in agreement. “I think we should wait until morning. We’ll leave really early, before the sun comes up. Might be these goobers will have dispersed by then. If so, good enough, we head up the road. If not, we’ll reevaluate then and decide what’s best to do.”

Luke bit his lip, thinking of the little girl huddled in the old car a mile or two behind them. “I heard Mom talking to Mary just before we left,” he said. “Sometime last week, Mary started giving Kelly morphine to control the pain. She doesn’t have any more pain medication with her. Mom thinks Kelly might be going into shock from morphine withdrawal.”

Ammon nodded slowly. “That and the pain.”

Luke peered across the empty fields toward the freeway. “If we don’t get Kelly Beth home pretty soon, I don’t think it’s going to matter.”

“Understood,” Ammon said. He got up. “Come on, let’s go.”

Capri 44, Thirty-Two Thousand Feet over Southern Ohio

The inside of the old KC-135 air refueling tanker was cold, noisy and full of light mist from tiny leaks in the pressure and heating systems. The cabin walls were gray-stitch insulated material with the metal ribs of the fuselage showing through, and the floor was scarred and worn from an untold number of cargo pallets being rolled on and off. The main purpose of the aircraft was to carry and off-load fuel for other aircraft, refueling them while in flight, and its belly was a series of enormous, interconnected fuel cells. Tonight, because the old tanker was not scheduled to air refuel, it didn’t carry as much fuel, and so the loadmaster had loaded up the cargo compartment with military supplies needed in the west. Three dozen tightly packed wooden pallets, double-wrapped in thick plastic, took up the entire cargo compartment.

A row of uncomfortable web and aluminum benches ran down each side of the plane. Sam sat alone, his head resting on his chest, his mind racing behind closed eyes.

The tension had never left him. It was growing worse instead. A deep sense of, he didn’t know, a sense of lateness crept upon him, making him irritable and intense.

Time was slipping away. He was falling behind.

But he didn’t know for what.

Yet he was growing tenser by the minute, his mouth dry, his muscles tight.

He felt a gentle push on his shoulder and looked up. The loadmaster was standing there. “Boss wants to see you in the cockpit,” the master sergeant said.

Sam nodded, stretched to pull the tired muscles in his back, then stood and followed the sergeant to the cockpit. He stepped around the forward bulkhead, between a narrow entry, and through the cockpit door.

The aircraft commander was sitting in the left seat, one foot propped up against the lower portion of the cockpit display panel. Sam moved forward and stood between the two pilot seats. He was stunned as he looked through the cockpit windows. It was like flying through the emptiness of space. A few stars above them. Endless blackness down below—not a single ground light anywhere. Utter darkness straight ahead.

He stared until the pilot interrupted his thoughts. “Kind of strange, isn’t it?”

Sam shuddered at the darkness.

“So you really want to do this?” the pilot asked.

“Absolutely,” Sam replied without hesitation. He thought of the growing tension deep inside him. “I’ve got to do it,” he said.

“You don’t know what you’re jumping into, do you, Brighton? You don’t have any idea what’s going on down there.”

“Doesn’t matter, really, does it, ma’am? It’s going to be the same everywhere. Here. Portland. Everything in between. Everyone’s going through the same thing right now.”

The pilot thought again. “We’ve never done this before, you know. We just don’t do such things from a tanker. C-141, C-17, yeah, any day, but we’re a different kind of aircraft, a different system. We don’t have a ramp that can drop down. And we’re supposed to be trained and qualified before we go tossing people out.”

The radio sounded in her headset, and she paused and listened as the other pilot responded to the radio call.

Turning in her seat, she looked at Sam. “You understand how many rules and regulations we’ll be breaking?” she asked. “Tons. Way too many.”

“I understand,” Sam replied. “But I’m telling you, ma’am, it’s no big thing. Descend as low as you can to equalize the pressure and get a little warmer, slow down as much as you can, and give me a thumbs-up when we’re there. That’s all you’ve got to do.”

The pilot dropped her foot and sipped from a bottle of water. “I don’t suppose too many people are going to be so concerned about peacetime regulations right now,” she concluded, then shrugged and glanced toward the other pilot, who gave her a “whatever” kind of look. “OK,” she said. “If you’re willing to take the chance, who am I to tell you no?”

“Thank you,” Sam said, his face illuminated by the subdued white and green fluorescent lighting in the cockpit.

The pilot checked her NAV readout. “Twenty-one minutes, then,” she said. “Go get your gear on. We won’t delay if you’re not ready.”

Sam nodded, then turned and left the cockpit without saying any more.

Interstate 65, Fourteen Miles Southeast of Chicago

It was very dark. Luke and Ammon moved silently back toward their cars. Sara was waiting for them, standing near the edge of the trees. Hearing movement through the brush, she quietly called their names. Minutes later, they emerged from the darkness.

“What do you think?” she asked them as they approached.

They stopped and explained the situation. While they talked, Mary moved toward them, listening intently.

“We really ought to wait until morning,” Ammon concluded.

Mary’s face sank. “Another day?”

“Another night, Mary. We’ll try to leave for the city in the morning.”

“We’ve got to leave in the morning. I can’t stay here another day. My baby needs her medicines!”

Ammon glanced toward Luke, looking for support. Luke shook his head in sympathy. “I understand,” he said, turning back to Mary. “But Mrs. Dupree, we need to think this through and be careful. It’s dangerous right now. It will get better—I don’t think it’s going to be like this forever—but right now, with those guys out there, we need to wait.”

“But my little girl, my little girl—”

Ammon started to answer her, then fell silent. Mary’s little girl was going to die. He was certain of that now. Kelly hadn’t wakened since midmorning. She didn’t shiver anymore. It seemed she hardly moved. Sometimes she mumbled, but her eyes, when they were open, had taken on an opaque, filmy texture. She hadn’t eaten anything, as far as he knew, and had swallowed only a sip or two of water all day. No, there was nothing they could do now. She was going to pass away. Here. On the road to Chicago. Back at her apartment, maybe, if things went just right, but it was going to happen—that was the dreadful truth.

He sighed, a heavy sadness creeping over him, then turned and walked to Mary, extending his arms. She stepped quickly back. He took another step toward her and paused. Twenty-four hours ago, she had been a stranger. Now he felt a kinship for her that expanded beyond any emotion he had ever felt before. He wanted to help her. He cared for her. He even loved her.

But there was nothing he could do.

He couldn’t help her.

He couldn’t help her daughter.

He couldn’t make it go away.

And he ached, a dull and painful throbbing in his heart.

He lifted his arms again and stepped toward her. Mary held back for a moment, then fell into his chest. He put his arms around her, almost completely supporting her weight. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Dupree, I’m so sorry. If there was something we could do, if there was anything we could do . . . .”

The small black woman started crying, tiny shudders of emotion in his arms. She knew now. They all knew. And as he supported her weight, his arms around her, Ammon thought he actually felt her heart break.

Capri 44, Eighteen Thousand Feet over South Chicago

The aircraft slowed, the engines pulling back to a quiet hum as it descended, gradually slipping out of the dark sky. The loadmaster had already moved to the rear door on the left side of the aircraft reserved exclusively for emergency evacuation situations. The loadmaster had never opened the door even while on the ground, let alone while in flight. In preparation for what he was about to do, he had strapped an oxygen mask with a built-in microphone and headset receiver over his face. He was ready to depressurize.

“Fifteen thousand,” the loadmaster heard the pilot announce.

“What’s the airspeed?” he queried the pilot.

“Slowing through two hundred knots.”

The loadmaster turned to Sam, who was finishing a final check of his equipment. “You want one sixty?” he called above the noise of the aircraft.

“Slow as you can get her.” Sam pulled his leg straps tight.

The loadmaster turned back to the door and spoke into his mask. “He’s looking for one hundred sixty knots. I don’t know, we’re kind of heavy to be going that slow, don’t you think?” The aircraft kept on slowing and descending as they talked.

“OK,” the pilot said after two more minutes had passed. “One seventy now, and ten thousand. We’re on oxygen up here. How about you in the back?”

The loadmaster checked himself and the boom operator, getting a thumbs-up from the young airman who was going to help him with the door. “Two good masks in the rear,” he said.

“Ready to depressurize.”

There was a sudden thump and rush of air as the cabin pressure was released, forming an instant cloud of mist inside the cabin. Bitter cold. Lots of noise. Building pressure in Sam’s ears and gut.

“How’s everything in the back?” the aircraft commander asked after the aircraft had depressurized.

“Good back here. Clear to open the aft emergency hatch?”

“Sergeant, you are cleared.”

The loadmaster gave Sam a quick thumbs-up. Sam moved forward and stood before the door, hands on his chest straps, bracing himself against the bone-chilling cold and blast of wind that would suck the oxygen right out of his lungs. He bent his knees and waited, just two feet from the door, his muscles tense, ready to pull his legs up tight against his body so they didn’t flail around him when he stepped into the night.

He knew that, twenty feet behind him, the enormous tail of the aircraft angled outward from the rear of the fuselage. It was possible the wind would blow him back into the tail before he cleared it, in which case he would be cut in half. Would it happen? It wasn’t supposed to. But he’d never heard of anyone bailing out of a flying KC-135 before, so he really didn’t know.

Seconds passed. The parachute straps cut into his legs. The loadmaster released the latch holding the access door release lever, then turned to Sam. “You ready?” he shouted. Sam nodded and stepped six inches forward. “Keep balled up. It’s going to blow you.” Sam nodded again, wishing he had some goggles.

“Twenty seconds,” the pilot said through the loadmaster’s headset.

He moved toward Sam, slapped his shoulder, and yelled against his ear, “I hope you find your family.” Sam nodded and shouted, “Thank you.” The loadmaster slapped again.

“Doors coming open,” he said into his mask, then pulled the door back six inches and slid it to the side.

Piercing cold. Bone-crushing wind. An unbelievable howling from the four jet engines and the blast of air. The sound filled the entire aircraft and vibrated against the fuselage walls with the force of a tornado.

The sergeant lifted a hand and showed the count with his fingers. Five. Four. Three. Two. He slapped Sam on the shoulder.

Sam tucked his head and stepped into the howling night.

He tumbled head-over-head, the freezing cold around him, feeling as if he couldn’t breathe. Spinning, his arms pulled into his chest, he fell through the darkness toward the even darker earth below.

Interstate 65, Fourteen Miles Southeast of Chicago

The two men stood together at the lip of the bridge. The sun had set and the other thugs had scattered, heading off to their trailers and homes, leaving the two men standing in the misty air alone. The shorter of them pointed, lifting his arm halfway up his side. “He was there again,” he said. “The one you saw this morning.”

The taller man hesitated, gently touching the scab that was forming at the back of his head. His ribs still burned and he walked carefully, every misstep sending bolts of pain through his chest. Worse, he’d been nauseous and weak-kneed all morning, his eyes bleary, his tongue thick. It seemed he could actually feel his skull plates grind together every time he moved his head. He’d suffered concussions a couple of times before, the worst one back in high school after a particularly bitter fight, so he knew the symptoms pretty well. And he knew that, as with the fight in high school, the only thing that would make him feel better was either revenge or the passage of time.

He stared toward the darkness. “You sure it was him?” he demanded of his drinking pal.

“Yeah. It was him. The one who attacked you. The other one was with him, too.”

The taller man snorted. “You really think they’re soldiers?” His voice was cynical. No way was he going to mess with a pair of Army Rangers. His old man had always told him he was stupid, but even he wasn’t that dull.

Baby-fat man shook his head. “No, they ain’t soldiers. They’re just a couple punks who jumped our backs in a chicken of a fight. A couple cowards who had to use rocks and sticks to beat us ’cause they couldn’t take us straight up.”

The leader moved his head and grimaced. “You don’t think that was his mama?”

“I don’t really care.”

The other man considered. “She was a pretty good-looking woman . . . .”

More silence as he thought.

“They’re back there somewhere,” he hissed. “Sitting in their cars, waiting for rescue. But no one’s going to save them. Not tonight anyway.”

His buddy swore. “We could ‘rescue’ them,” he sneered.

“I think we should,” the tall one answered with contempt. “I think it’s time for payback. Only this time, we’ll be the ones who come sneaking up from the dark.”

TWELVE

Interstate 65, Fourteen Miles Southeast of Chicago

They built a fire, more for the light than the heat, because Sara simply couldn’t stand the thought of another dark, empty night. The wood around them was soaking wet and it took a while to get the fire going. When they did, they kept it low, sitting close to the flames, not wanting to broadcast their position in the trees. As they sat, the clouds began to thin and then break up overhead, the moon and starlight shining through the cracks.

“I wonder what time it is,” Sara said, staring quietly at the flames.

None of their battery-operated watches worked anymore, and no one responded for a moment. The dancing fire had cast its spell, pulling them deep into silent thought. “I’m guessing somewhere between ten and twelve,” Luke finally answered.

Mary, a dozen feet away, said, “It’s just after eleven-thirty.”

Sara watched the fire cast yellow shadows across Mary’s face. She looked tired. They were all tired, but Mary was especially so. “How do you know that, Mary?” she asked.

Mary kept her eyes on the flame. “I don’t know, I’ve just always had a sixth sense when it comes to time. I’ve never worn a watch in my life, but I can always tell you within a few minutes of what time it is.”

“That may come in handy,” Ammon laughed.

“Happy to be able to contribute something,” Mary smiled.

“Does your internal clock work while you’re sleeping?” Ammon asked.

“Pretty good,” Mary answered. “Sometimes, if I’m sick or something, I seem to be off, but mostly I can count on it.”

“So you could set your brain alarm for, say, five in the morning? That’d give us time to pack our things and be ready to head out by sunrise.”

Mary seemed to concentrate, rolling back her eyes. “Got it,” she said.

Ammon watched her, then laughed. “Five o’clock, right?”

“Got it,” she repeated.

Ammon nodded, satisfied.

“Of course, you’ll never be able to prove it if I’m wrong,” Mary giggled.

Ammon smiled back at her. “True that,” he said.

Sara held her hand up. “What was that?” she whispered suddenly.

The others fell silent. Ammon stood slowly, moving away from the light of the fire. He listened, his ears straining. Sara also stood up. Luke remained where he was, cocking his head.

A tiny flit of movement behind him. A brush of leaves. The stir of wet grass. Everyone heard it. Ammon tensed. Sara’s eyes grew wide, the whites shining fearfully in the flame.

Ammon shot a deadly look toward their car, thinking of the gun that was hidden in the trunk. He motioned to Luke, then walked slowly toward it. Sara watched him go, then turned back around. “So, Luke,” she said nonchalantly, “do you think it’s going to rain any more tonight?”

“What did you say, Mom?” Luke asked a little too obviously as he stood.

The two men emerged from the darkness, their faces yellow in the firelight, the sockets of their eyes cast in shadows from the flame. “Well, well, well,” the first man drawled, “look what we have here! Our U.S. soldiers and their mamas. What a lovely, lovely sight.”

He wobbled, his eyes unfocused, both hands hidden behind his back. A mean drunk on the best of nights, he’d gotten his initial momentum from the Jack Daniels®, but it was the pain in his head and ribs that drove him now. The more pain he felt—and he felt a lot of pain—the angrier he became. He sneered at Ammon. “Don’t move there, soldier boy!”

Ammon turned toward him. “Listen, pal, we don’t want any problems, OK?” He kept his voice from choking. “We didn’t come looking for trouble. We were just defending ourselves.”

“Defend your . . . shelves,” the drunk man slurred. “That’s a good idea, tough guy.”

Luke’s mind raced. “Come on, boys. Come and stand with us by the fire.”

The first man belched and spit. “I don’t think so,” he said.

Ammon slowly backed toward the car.

The drunk dropped his right arm. The steel tire iron he was holding angled sharply to the right. Ammon’s eyes grew wide, darting back and forth. The adrenaline shot through him, the rage starting to build.

Luke took an angry step toward the man. “I’m not afraid of you!” he snapped. “I took you last night, no problem. Believe me, fat boys, we can take you down again.”

“I don’t think so.” The drunk dropped his other hand. An old Colt .45 shone in the dim light, its barrel glistening like liquid metal. “Not tonight, baby,” he sneered at them again.

Ammon froze. Sara screamed. Mary’s eyes rolled back and she went limp, slumping to the ground, her arms tucked underneath her like a rag doll. The second man looked at her and wobbled. “Look at that,” he laughed, “she’s as drunk as we are!” Mary twitched, then lay motionless, completely unconscious. Ammon moved toward her.

“Get back,” the first man screamed.

“Look at her. She’s—”

“I don’t care about her!” he screamed again.

Baby-Fat Man giggled and pointed. “Good place for her,” he laughed. “Good place for the black mama, down there in the mud.”

Ammon stopped, silent and sweating, even in the cold. There was something about these men, something unstable, unpredictable—something dangerous. He could see nothing but unhinged fire in their eyes.

“Look at her,” the second man continued mocking, his voice thick with bigotry and hate. “This is where all these African mamas belong!” He took two steps and kicked Mary in the ribs, lifting her tiny body off the ground. She didn’t move, absorbing the entire force of the blow, her eyes still closed.

“LEAVE HER ALONE!” Sara screamed.

“Shut up!” the first man hissed.

“She’s done nothing to you! It’s us you’ve got a problem with.”

“Got that right, you wench!” The man took a raging step toward her.

“Stay back!” Luke cried, racing to stand between the stranger and his mom.

The man stopped, then took a step back. He wobbled, smiled, and lifted the barrel of his gun.

Ammon lurched suddenly toward the men.

“Don’t move!” the first man cried, turning the Colt .45 on him. Dropping the tire iron, he shifted the gun into his other hand. “Showtime!” he hissed.

A deadly silence settled over them, full and heavy and not of this world. Evil. Raging evil. The spirit of Satan filled the night.

* * *

They were standing right beside him. They were speaking in his ear. Murder was their greatest pleasure and they shivered with glee.

To the man, it seemed as if time stood still. His heart crashed inside his broken rib cage, his eardrums pounding. Slowly, he lifted the heavy gun, squinted one eye, and aimed at Ammon.

“Do it!” Satan hissed.

He held the gun out, his arm extended, pointing it at Ammon’s heart.

“Kill him!” Satan shouted. “Kill him! Do it now!”

The drunken man took a breath and held it. Time crawled, so warped and slow it seemed a full minute passed with each beat of his raging heart.

“Kill them both! Then kill the women!”

* * *

Ammon stepped back, moving in slow motion. His eyes were focused like a laser, never leaving the barrel of the gun.

Sara screamed, but the man couldn’t hear anything but the hissing voices in his head. His eyesight narrowed, then his vision tunneled as he focused on a two-inch spot on Ammon’s chest. Luke cried and ran toward him, flying through the air. The man jerked the gun around and fired, sending a geyser of mud and dirty water into the air. Luke cried again and fell backward, landing spread-eagled in the mud, his face contorted in pain. Sara screamed and ran toward him, falling on her knees beside her son. The man turned in fury and aimed at Ammon’s head.

“Kill him,” Balaam cried, his voice filled with ice and rage. “You’ve killed one. Your fate is sealed. Might as well kill them all now.”

The drunk moved his finger to the trigger, the flesh pressing against the cold metal.

“WE COMMAND YOU TO KILL THEM!” Balaam and Satan shouted together in his ear.

The man swallowed and looked at Ammon, time flowing back to normal now. Looking down the barrel of the gun, he saw Ammon staring at him in shock. Sara cried again in anguish as she pulled Luke’s body close.

“This is for last night,” the drunk man whispered, pressing the trigger of the gun.

The tire iron came down with sickening force on the back of his head, sending him slumping to the ground.

Mary stood over him, her eyes wild, the tire rod in her hand. The man dropped, completely unconscious, his face pressed into the mud, his eyes open but lifeless, his open mouth gasping in the sludge.

Mary dropped to her knees, pulled the gun from his clenched fingers, held it up in terror, then threw it toward Ammon. He caught it and, with one motion, turned it, pulled the slide, and aimed it at the other man.

The fat one stood there speechless, his eyes wide in shock and fear. Where had she come from? How had she risen like that? One moment he had been the hunter—now the gun was aimed at him!

She had been faking! She had tricked them! Stupid, deceiving liar!

Mary glared at him, her eyes flaming. “I’m not an African,” she sneered.

The man slumped, then turned and ran into the dark.

THIRTEEN

Two Miles North of Demotte, Indiana, Twenty Miles South of Chicago

“Run!” the Spirit whispered to him. “Run, Samuel, run!”

The young soldier stood motionless in the moonlight, unsure of what to do. He looked around him. Where had the voice come from?

“RUN!” the voice seemed to whisper once again, more urgently this time.

He had hit the ground only seconds earlier. The parachute was strung around him, streamer lines tangled underfoot. He pulled the parachute release buckles at his chest and wriggled out of the harness, then bent and grabbed the thin parachute material and wadded it up. Rolling it into a loose ball, he tossed it aside.

“RUN!” the Spirit whispered.

So he ran.

Through the brush, toward the road. Up the embankment, onto the pavement. A small country road. He stopped, jerking his head left and right.

“RUN!”

He looked north. The night was quiet. Several dead cars sat around him. No one was in sight. He bent over, looking inside. The cars were empty.

He turned and ran again.

A mile later, the country road grew narrow. The blacktop ended. The road turned to loose gravel. He stumbled in the dark, rolling onto his shoulders as he fell. His backpack was heavy, loaded with all his gear. He didn’t even come to a stop but kept on rolling until he came to his knees from the inertia, then pushed himself to his feet again and ran.

A line of trees. He kept on running. His lungs began to burn. His legs were loose and in rhythm, his backpack bouncing as he ran.

The road turned east, but he kept north. Through a ditch, half-filled with muddy water, his boots and pants getting wet, up the other side, across a narrow field now, always running toward Polaris, the North Star. Was it the right direction? He didn’t know, but the dread inside him kept him moving as beads of sweat rolled down his face and burned his eyes. His breathing was deep and heavy, but still he didn’t slow down.

The moon broke through the scattered clouds, casting the emptiness around him in dim light. Shadows up ahead of him. A row of houses, dark and empty. He passed a winding driveway and heard a barking dog. He turned right to move around the empty homes and almost crashed into a barbed-wire fence. Bending, he forced his way through. The barking dog was getting closer. He pushed his backpack against the barbed wire, got caught for a second, then squeezed it through and turned and ran.

A freeway up ahead of him. He scrambled up the embankment. Hundreds of abandoned cars. Voices to his right. Movement there. A group of people on the road, to the south. He moved toward them, gasping for breath.

“No,” he heard the whisper.

So he turned north again and ran.

FOURTEEN

Interstate 65, Fourteen Miles Southeast of Chicago

Sara screamed and held her son, cradling his head in her arms. The mud, slippery and wet, was cold against her legs. Luke’s eyes were closed and he lay motionless, his body heavy and lifeless to her touch. His mouth opened and he gasped and closed it again.

It was nearly impossible to see in the dim light, so Sara searched carefully along his chest and abdomen with her fingers. She felt it before she saw it and lifted her hands, holding them against the firelight. Seeing the stains of blood, she sobbed in ripples, unable to control herself.

Ammon watched the fleeing man disappear into the night, then turned away, his face tight with anguish. “Watch him!” he cried to Mary, pointing to the man who had slumped unconscious at her feet. “Smash him if you have to, but DO NOT let him stand again.”

Mary nodded, her trembling hands holding the tire iron in a powerful grip. Ammon rushed to his brother and dropped to his knees. “Luke . . . Luke,” he repeated, whispering his name. “Hang in there, brother, hang in there. You’re going to be OK.”

He shot a look toward his mother, who was staring into her son’s empty eyes. His face was ashen now and lifeless. Ammon gently lifted his mother’s arm, which was draped across Luke’s chest. The bullet wound, a dime-size hole, dark and red, had penetrated his abdomen right beneath the ribs. “Oh Luke, oh Luke,” Ammon repeated in agony, completely unaware that he was saying anything.

Sara continued to cry, overcome with shock. She rocked her wounded son like a baby, cradling his head in her arms. His eyelids fluttered and he murmured, and she pressed her ear against his lips.

“Mom, can you hear me?” he whispered softly.

“Yes, Luke, I’m here.”

He opened his eyes and looked up at her. “Don’t worry about me, Mom. It doesn’t hurt that much.”

He forced a painful smile, then gurgled on his blood.

East Side, Chicago, Illinois

Azadeh walked into the living room, felt her way past the small table to the counter, and looked out the kitchen window. The city had turned black now. Not a streetlight. Not a candle. Not a ray of light anywhere. Although she couldn’t see them, she knew the mob was there. The streets were filled with people and had been all day.

She hadn’t been outside of the apartment since the power had gone off. Throughout the day she had listened to hurried footsteps and calling voices and, more than once, angry fists beating on her door. Huddling in the corner, afraid to even move, she had waited without speaking until the people had gone away.

Afternoon melted into evening and she started pacing, sometimes glancing out the kitchen window to the busy street below. Lots of people. Thousands of people. Where had they all come from? The rain that had been pelting the apartment window finally broke. The night returned, leaving her in the dark once more.

Standing at the window, she looked outside and shivered in the cold air.

With every passing voice and footstep, she turned, hoping desperately that Mary and Kelly would walk through the door. The hours passed. The mob grew louder. She paced the vinyl floor.

She was dreadfully thirsty now, her mouth thick and dry. But there was no water from the tap and nothing else to drink.

The night grew darker. She paced again. A deep feeling of dread began to haunt her, a feeling she’d felt too many times before: the day they had killed her father; the night she had left the village, heading off on her own; the last days at the refugee camp.

Experience and instinct were her teachers, and both were screaming now.

She looked around the dark apartment in desperation, not knowing what to do.

Suddenly, she thought of Pari al-Faruqi, the small Christian woman she had known in the Khorramshahr refugee camp. Why she thought of her at this moment, Azadeh didn’t know, but the memories came back, flooding her mind with incredible detail.

Most of the six hundred refugees in Camp Khorramshahr lived in small, semipermanent plywood structures—bland, one-room huts, barely warm, ugly and inhospitable. But Pari had decorated her small home with a delicate touch: colorful murals on the walls created from pieces of broken chalk and paste, tin cans filled with wild chrysanthemums and croton plants she had gathered along the fence, scraps of abandoned material she collected to sew dresses and colorful quilts for the younger girls in the camp, one of which lay on top of her own cot. The image of Pari’s small home filled Azadeh’s mind and she pictured every detail: the mural, the plants, a half-finished dress, Pari’s bed, the patchwork quilt, the silver cross on the wall at the head of her cot.

The silver cross . . . the silver cross . . . .

A warm shiver ran through Azadeh as Pari’s words filled her mind. “God loves you, Azadeh. He knows you are here. You can talk to Him anytime that you need to. You can pray to Him and He will listen. I swear to you, that is true.”

Azadeh thought of her friend, tears welling in her eyes, then did the only thing she could think of to do. Unsure, but having faith, she knelt on the kitchen floor and began to pray.

* * *

Satan watched her pray and trembled, rage and fury racing through his mind. This was the one great weapon for which he had no response, the greatest tool of the Enemy, which he could simply not destroy.

A humble prayer. Oh, how he loathed it! It gave them such comfort. It gave them such light.

And it was the Light that brought him fury.

So he cursed and raged again.

Interstate 65, Fourteen Miles Southeast of Chicago

Sam was completely exhausted. His lungs burned, his legs were liquid, his calf and thigh muscles were cramped and tight. He slowed to a jog, his arms hanging at his side, then to a walking pace as he gasped.

He couldn’t run another step. It was as far as he could go.

The moon had risen higher and the clouds had parted, providing moonlight and starlight to illuminate the road. He continued north along the freeway, walking between the lines of stalled cars. Passing one, he glanced through the back window, then stopped and slowly turned. Hesitating, he walked back, peered closely at the window, then looked around again. “Hey!” he called out, his voice tight with thirst. “HEY! IS SOMEONE OUT THERE?”

A head bobbed up from the backseat of the car.

Sam sensed the movement and swiftly turned. The stranger reached for the door, pushed it open, and climbed out, his eyes wide in uncertainty and fear. Sam moved toward him quickly. The man was young, maybe thirty, with a bald head and baby-smooth skin. The man eyed Sam’s uniform. “Are you a U.S. soldier?” he asked.

Sam nodded quickly. “I am.”

The man sheepishly eyed the vehicle that was clearly his own. “I mean any harm,” he started to explain. “I was trying to get to my old campus when it got dark and I decided to sleep here for the night.”

“What school are you talking about?”

“Northwestern. I just graduated from their medical school.”

Sam took a step toward him. “You’re a doctor?” he demanded.

“Almost. I still have to finish my internship.”

A tremble ran up and down Sam’s spine, warm and flowing and full of heat. A feeling of certainty and calm. He was on the right track. And he was getting very close.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

The bald man looked around, still uncertain, then answered slowly, “Jerry Woodson.”

“Come with me, Jerry!” Sam shot back, taking a step toward him.

“Come with you? Why? Where’re you going?”

Sam ran forward and grabbed his arm. “Have you got a black bag? Any doctor stuff or gear?”

Jerry didn’t answer. Sam pushed him toward the car. “Come on, we’ve got to hurry.”

“Where are we going?” Jerry asked again.

“I don’t know,” Sam answered quickly as he dragged the man along.

* * *

Sara held onto Luke, cradling his head against her chest. Rocking back and forth, she whispered in his ear. Ammon crawled away, his eyes blank. His hands grew cold and lifeless and he dropped the stranger’s gun into the mud. Looking around in desperation, he fell against a tree. For a moment, he was transported back in time. He was a little boy, small and hopeless. He needed someone’s help. But there was no one to help him. He was completely on his own. No one was going to save him. He felt a crushing weight.

No transportation.

No telephone.

No police or ambulance or rescue.

Miles of walking to the nearest hospital.

Who knew if anyone could help them even if they made it there?

There was nothing he could do now. His brother was going to die. He shivered, thinking of the bleeding hole in Luke’s abdomen. He pictured Luke’s gasping face and pale lips, then dropped his head between his knees.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. He wanted to shake his fist toward the heavens and demand an answer why!

We did everything that You commanded! We did everything You ever asked us! We did our very best, we tried to follow, and this is what we get?!

He raged and cried inside, overwhelmed with grief, helplessness and pain.

Then he turned cold and clammy, beads of icy sweat forming on his brow. His heart was racing and he was panting and his face was growing pale.

He felt a soft touch against his shoulder. It took a moment before he gathered the strength to look up. Through bleary eyes he saw Mary standing there. “Do you have a first aid kit?” she asked him.

Ammon didn’t seem to hear.

“Do you have any medical supplies?” she pressed again, her voice more firm.

He shook the mud from his hands but didn’t answer as he spread his legs across the ground. “Yeah, sure, we’ve got some stuff. It’s there—I don’t know—it’s somewhere in the back of the car.”

“You need to get it,” Mary told him.

“Don’t know where,” he mumbled again.

Mary knelt down and looked him directly in the eye, the fire casting shadows across one side of her face. “Listen to me, baby, I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to stay together, at least for a little while. You need to stand up, find your first aid kit, and help me. You’ve got to help your brother. I’ve got to help your mom. We’ve got to do everything we can to save him until we can get some help.”

Ammon shook his head in rage. “Are you kidding me?!” he shouted. “Do you think it’s going to matter?! Your little girl, my brother, both of them are going to die. Both of them are going to die here! And there is nothing we can do!”

Mary leaned even closer to him and took his face in both of her hands. “Can you hear me, Ammon?” she demanded. Her voice was hard but calm. “Can you hear me, son?”

He nodded but didn’t look at her.

Mary squeezed his face again. “Listen to me, Ammon, this is important. You don’t know what’s going to happen here! It’s not up to you to decide who will live or who will die. It’s not up to you to decide who’s going to suffer or what God has in His plan. It’s not up to you to complain about the situation or feel sorry for yourself.

“Your job is to do everything you can to help your brother! Do you understand what I am saying? I don’t care, it doesn’t matter, if you don’t think it’s going to help. Your brother needs you and so does your mom. You’re going to stand up now and do everything to help them. You understand me, son.”

Ammon stared into her face, his eyes coming into focus once again. “I understand you,” he whispered sadly, his face clouding with embarrassment and shame.

“Good boy. I knew you would. Now, come on, we’ve got to find that first aid kit.”

Mary stood, reached down, took Ammon by the hand, and pulled him to his feet. Turning, Ammon walked toward the cars hidden in the trees. He uncovered the back of the Honda, opened the trunk, and searched through their supplies.

A shadow fell behind him.

Mary gasped, “Who goes there?”

Ammon turned, dropped to his knees, and reached out for the gun.

The sound of heavy breathing. Footsteps running through the trees. Shadows flashing in the darkness.

Ammon turned toward the stranger, lifted the gun, and took a breath.

Sam stepped out from the darkness.

Ammon gaped at him, not believing. He was an angel. He was a vision. There was no way that he was real. Sam turned to him and smiled, and Ammon cried out in relief.

Sara looked up, her eyes wide.

Sam saw his brother lying there.

Sara tried to call his name but her mouth hung open, teardrops rolling down her cheeks.

FIFTEEN

Interstate 65, Fourteen Miles Southeast of Chicago

Sara laid her dying son down gently, then stood and ran to Sam. Grabbing him by the shoulders, she fell into his arms, repeating his name over and over. She leaned back, looked into his face, brushed away her tears, then grabbed his hand and pulled him toward Luke, falling on her knees again. Ammon stood and ran toward him, throwing his arms around his neck. Sam slapped his shoulder, then stepped back and knelt down by Luke. He checked his eyes, looking into the pupils, then moved his flashlight down to see the blood that was soaking through his shirt and jacket. “What happened here?” he demanded.

“Please, Sam, you’ve got to help him,” Sara pled.

Sam turned toward the dark trees and called out, “Come on, Jerry, run!”

* * *

“Look,” Jerry said, “I’m not a doctor. Almost, but not really, and I don’t have any experience with this kind of thing. I’ve done a couple stints at Cook County Emergency Room, but nothing even close to this. And there were always other doctors I could turn to when I didn’t know what to do. I don’t have any light or the right equipment to examine him, and the conditions here aren’t really conducive to—”

“Just tell us!” Sam demanded. “Is he going to live?”

Jerry looked away. How much should he tell them? Did he even know himself? He glanced toward the young man, who was now lying in the backseat of the car. “He’s lost a lot of blood. I can stop most of the external bleeding, but I can’t stop the hemorrhaging that is going on inside. We’ve got to deal with shock, infection, dehydration, hypothermia . . . .” His voice trailed off as he rubbed a vinyl-glove-covered hand against his face, smearing a thin swath of blood across his forehead. “I just don’t know,” he said again. “The thing I’m most worried about is the hemorrhaging. He really needs a transfusion—”

“I’m the same blood type,” Ammon interrupted.

Jerry thought aloud. “I could jury-rig a transfusion. It would take a little time, but it would help.”

“Do it,” Sam commanded. “Whatever it takes to save my brother, you understand? Whatever it takes, we’re going to do it.”

Jerry looked at him and nodded. “I’ll do everything I can. If we can get him through the night, then tomorrow, if we can get him to Chicago—”

“We can’t wait,” Sam shot back. “If I have to, I will carry him, but I’m going to get him there tonight.”

“No. It wouldn’t be smart, Sam, moving him right now. He needs to rest a few hours. He needs the blood transfusion.”

Sam shifted his weight. “I won’t wait—I can’t wait. My brother needs surgery, even I can see that. If we stay here, he’s going to die.”

Jerry shook his head. “You’ll cause more injury if you move him before he’s stabilized a little bit. And how do you propose to transport him in the dark?”

“I’ll figure it out,” Sam said, his voice determined.

Jerry thought quickly. He understood what Sam was feeling. And though he had known him only a few hours, that drag along the road had been enough to show that he was a charge-the-bunker kind of guy. Jerry respected him already. This was a man he wanted for a friend. But Sam was wrong, and Jerry had to convince him before he made matters worse. “I know you want to help your brother,” he answered calmly, “but you need to listen to me, Sam. If you try to move him tonight, he’s going to die. You can’t just reach into the car, throw him over your shoulder, and head off into the night. He couldn’t take the jostling. He couldn’t take the cold. He needs to rest. I need to control the hemorrhaging. I need to get him warm and stable, to treat the shock and get some blood into him. Let me do my job. You figure out how you’re going to move him while keeping him lying down. You’ve got to build some kind of stretcher. I’ll take care of your brother. You take care of the rest.”

Sam stomped his feet in frustration, Ammon and Sara standing at his side. “I want to know the odds,” he demanded, though his voice was much less certain now.

“I’m not an odds maker,” Jerry answered firmly. “Medicine 101: Stay away from fortune telling. It brings heartache to everyone.”

“Please.” Sam glanced toward his mother and lowered his voice to barely a whisper. “Please, I understand why you don’t want to do it, but I’m begging you.”

Sara reached out and placed her hand on Sam’s shoulder, then turned to Jerry. “I want to know,” she said.

Jerry hesitated, staring off into the dark. “My best guess—and it is only a guess—but I think if we move him tonight, he’s going to die. Do I know that for certain? No. Sometimes we’re surprised. But I believe that if you try to move him, there’s maybe a ten percent chance he’s going to live.”

Sara swallowed, looked away, then turned back. “But if we wait, if we stay here until morning and let you do what you can to stabilize him?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. I don’t know what kind of damage has been inflicted by the bullet. Did it hit his spleen? The liver? Did it perforate the large intestine? I’m sorry, I want to give you as much hope as I possibly can, but there’s no way I could even guess.”

“Fifty-fifty?” Sam was pleading.

Jerry thought, then shook his head. “I’m sorry. I really am, but no, I don’t think his chances are that good,” he said.

Sara’s hands shot to her mouth and she quivered. Sam turned and held her, folding the delicate woman into his arms. Ammon moved forward and put his arms around her, too. Mary stood beside the young doctor, staring sadly at the ground.

Jerry watched the family, then touched Ammon’s arm. “We need to start the blood transfusion as quickly as we can.”

Sara closed her eyes, holding onto Sam, then pushed away. “No. Not yet,” she said to Jerry, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “There’s something else we need to do first, something more important.”

She turned to Sam, a great weeping in her heart. He was such a good man, such a strong man. She loved him as much as any soul she’d ever known. But he had never seen the vision. He’d never grasped the plan. He was good enough and worthy, but he had just never been interested. Church. Religion. Things of God, things of the Spirit, he had never understood.

She smiled at him weakly. Even though she loved him, he couldn’t help her now. And the thing that she was asking was the most important thing that they could do. She was as certain of what Luke needed to survive as she was of anything.

She lowered her eyes, then turned to Ammon. “Your brother needs a blessing,” she said. “You need to put your hands on him and pray for him.”

Ammon turned away. “Mom, I don’t have any idea how to do that!” He shook his head and turned away, his shoulders slumping.

The night was silent.

Sam stepped forward with hesitation. “I will do it,” he said.

Sara turned to him, her eyes wide. “What do you mean, Sam?”

Sam looked at her, thinking deeply as a long moment passed, the wind blowing gently through the trees. “I’m not afraid,” he said.

Sara closed her eyes and raised her face toward the heavens, her cheeks stained with tears and mud.

Sam walked to a patch of thick grass under the front bumper of the car where he’d laid his backpack to keep it dry. Lifting it, he pulled out a small chrome container of consecrated oil.

He moved to the other side of the car where he could be close to Luke and knelt down beside him. Sara and Ammon followed and stood nearby, their heads bowed. Mary remained beside Sara, desperately grasping her hand. Jerry stood back but stayed close enough that he could hear what was said.

At that moment, a sweet spirit fell around them, as powerful and overwhelming as a rush of hot wind. They felt it, they all felt it, everyone who was standing there. Poignant and powerful, it filled the dark night with peace and comfort that could not be denied. Sara closed her eyes again, and Mary gasped. Jerry squinted, his forehead creasing in peaceful thought. Sam waited, uncertain, his face stained with tears. Then he felt it. Someone knelt down beside him. Unseen. From the other world. He felt his presence. Then another. He actually felt the heat of their spirits there.

He was not alone.

The Spirit deep inside Sam told him what God needed him to hear.

“Sam, this is my son. I love him more than you could ever comprehend. His work is not finished, so listen and I will tell you what to say.”

Sam took a breath and began to speak. The words came slowly at first, but were full of faith and power. “My brother, Benjamin Luke Brighton,” he started, “in the name of God who loves us, I bless you . . . .”

Sam paused a long moment, then spoke again, his voice confident and assured. “The Spirit whispers to me that your purpose in this life is not yet finished. There is a greater work for you to do. So in the name of Jesus Christ, I command you now to live. You will sleep in peace. You will be stable and in comfort until such time as we can get you to the doctors who will then take care of you.”

Finishing the prayer, Sam continued kneeling, touching his brother’s head. Then he heard his mother weeping. Standing, he turned to her. She stood strong, her shoulders square, her face peaceful now, and calm.

Mary was leaning on Sara’s shoulders, her cheeks completely wet with tears. “There were others there,” she whispered slowly. “A young man. He looked like Ammon. Another man. I don’t know who.”

Sam nodded slowly. “I felt them,” was all he said.

“They were kneeling right beside you.” Mary’s voice was choked with sobs.

Sara held her close. “I saw them, too.”

Mary pulled back and looked pleadingly at Sam. “My little girl . . .” Mary murmured slowly. “Can you do this thing for Kelly? Can you pray and give her a blessing, too?”

Sam looked around, uncertain of who or what she meant.

Then he heard the same Spirit whisper to him what he had heard before.

“There is another child, one of my daughters. Her work has just begun. I have sent you here to save her. Now you must listen once again.”

SIXTEEN

East Side, Chicago, Illinois

By morning, the rain clouds had completely blown away. The sun rose, casting a white beam of light through the small portion of the kitchen window that caught a patch of sky. The warmth fell upon Azadeh’s face where she was sleeping on the kitchen rug.

She lay there, feeling the heat until the sun had passed, then rose and looked around. Stretching, she rubbed her eyes, feeling the empty loneliness return again.

She was so thirsty and hungry now. There was a little food in the pantry, but she was afraid to eat it all. What if Mary and Kelly returned and needed something too?

Looking around, she knew she had to find something to drink. She couldn’t go another day without water.

Then she heard it. Slow. Somewhere in the distance. Droink . . . droink . . . . The sound of dripping water.

She turned, her eyes wild with excitement. A pool of wetness had formed under the refrigerator and she ran toward it.

Opening the door, she traced the dripping water. The upper freezer was closed, and she pulled it open to find a small, swinging, plastic door. She pushed the tiny door back, revealing the automatic ice-maker. Melting chunks of ice floated in the ice container. She almost cried with relief as she gently pulled the plastic container from the freezer, placed it on the kitchen counter, took a cup, and dipped out a drink. Another cup and then another. The cold water washed down her parched throat, giving instant life. Satisfied, she looked around, pulled a kitchen towel from the oven handle, dipped one corner into the water to get it wet, and wiped her face and hands.

A slice of bread and two dilapidated leaves of lettuce for breakfast kept the hunger down.

Walking to the small living room, she sat down on the cloth-covered sofa and thought.

It had been two days now since all the power had gone off, two nights since the mobs had formed out on the streets, three days since she had been outside the apartment, and a day since Mary and Kelly Beth should have been back.

Something had gone wrong. Maybe deathly wrong.

Azadeh realized they might not ever come home again.

She glanced toward the tiny kitchen. There were still some eggs, bread, lettuce and a couple of cans of food in the small cupboard, but that was about all. If America was the land of plenty, it was hard to understand why Mary had so little food around. Azadeh and her father had kept more supplies in their mud and wood home back in Iran than Mary kept in her apartment in Chicago. Still, it was what it was, and the small amount of food would have to do. The bigger worry was the water, of course, and she glanced at the small plastic container she had taken from the freezer. It was enough for two, maybe three days if she was careful, but that was all.

She could survive here for three days. If Mary didn’t come back before that, she would have to venture out of the apartment on her own.

She stood and walked into the kitchen and looked through the window once again, looking out onto the street.

The world outside her apartment was as strange and foreign to her as if she had landed on the moon. The streets were full of angry people. There had been fights, she could see that, and she was shocked to see what looked like a body lying on the street, the mob mulling around it as if it weren’t there. She shivered as she studied the growing crowd of people. There was danger down below.

She did not want to go out there. She knew it would be dangerous. An Iranian girl wouldn’t be welcome on the hard streets of East Chicago.

But what choice did she have?

She would die inside the apartment if she stayed after the water and food were gone. Friendless, without any money or ability to travel, she didn’t know where she would go, but she would have to leave eventually.

She watched a long time, studying the swelling crowd, then walked back and sat on the sofa once again. For at least the hundredth time she picked the phone up and listened, but heard nothing. She punched the buttons on the handset, but the phone was clearly dead. She tried the lights and television but nothing worked.

I’m on my own again, she thought miserably. But that’s OK, I’ll work it out. I’ve been on my own before.

Two more days, maybe three, before she’d have to leave.

Her stomach grew tight at the thought.

Curling on the sofa, she pulled a woolen blanket tight around her neck. The sun was bright now, but it was cool inside the apartment, the cold wind blowing in across Lake Michigan. She shivered, then rolled on her side and stared at the far wall, listening to the sounds drifting up between the buildings from the crowded streets below.

* * *

The day passed. Azadeh walked quietly from room to room, not willing to reveal to those in the apartment below her that she was still there. There were occasional steps in the hallway, and sometimes shouting, but they were growing less frequent now. Sometime in the late afternoon, she ate three more dilapidated leaves of lettuce and a slice of bread, then drank a little water. About half of it was gone.

Night came. Dark. Colder than the night before. She drank half a cup of precious water, then went into her bedroom and curled up into a ball on the bed. The room was too lonely, too dark. She lay there for an hour or so, then walked back into the small living room and settled in on the couch instead.

Time passed. Halfway through the night, she heard some cries and shouts coming from the street. Walking to the window, she looked out, but it was far too dark to see what was going on below. Moving back to the couch, she lay down again.

Morning would come eventually, she knew that, but the night was dragging painfully on.

She drifted to sleep sometime before the sun rose. In her dreams, she heard happy voices from her village from when she was a little girl. She felt the mountain sun on her face and smelled the alpine flowers. Her father was calling her to breakfast, and she pulled a lungful of cool air, smelling the cooking lamb, wheat patties, and hot tea. The faint hint of smoke drifted from the kitchen and she pushed herself out of bed, running from her bedroom. Her father stood beside the stove: thick work clothes, dark skin, and warm eyes. She ran to him, the feel of his closely cut beard upon her face.

His voice was soft, but growing distant now. “Azadeh, can you hear me?”

She looked around the kitchen.

Her father was gone.

“Azadeh, baby, open the door for me.”

She sat up suddenly. She was not back in her village. Her father wasn’t there. Still, the voice was calling.

“Azadeh, are you in there? Azadeh, it’s me. It’s Mary. I don’t have my keys.”

Her eyes darted around in confusion, then, crying with relief, she ran toward the door. “Miss Dupree!” she shouted. “Mary! Kelly Beth! Are you there?”

“Yes, Azadeh. I need you to let us in. I don’t have my keys.”

Two chains and two deadbolts held the door shut. She snapped them back and threw it open.

Mary rushed into her arms. “Azadeh, are you OK?”

Azadeh cried with relief. Mary held her tight, then stepped back.

Azadeh saw it immediately: It was as if a beam of sunshine had been turned on inside Mary’s soul. Her eyes were alive and dancing. Her face was warm and bright. She beamed with joy and pleasure, her smile a brilliant dazzle against the gray morning light. Azadeh watched her, then broke into a smile of her own. She simply couldn’t help it. Mary’s pure joy was infectious. And she was so relieved to see her, it was impossible to hold it back.

The two women looked atone another, each of them holding the other’s shoulders. Then Azadeh looked past Mary, momentarily confused. “Where is Kelly Beth?” she asked with worry, staring at the empty doorway.

Mary turned around, her face still beaming, as Kelly Beth walked into the room. Her tiny frame was weak and fragile, but she was walking still. No wheelchair. No IV drips or medications. Her eyes were lively, dancing and she was smiling, too.

“Kelly Beth, Kelly Beth!” Azadeh quivered with emotion as she peered down at the child. “Kelly, what has happened?” Breaking into tears, she dropped to her knees in front of the little girl.

Kelly looked at her, then motioned to the hallway at her right. Raising a hand, she beckoned to him, and Sam walked into the room.

Azadeh froze, her eyes wide, her face full of wonder, her mouth opened in a silent cry.

The American soldier looked down at her. “Do you remember me?” he asked.

Azadeh didn’t move. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t talk. It took every ounce of energy just to breathe.

Yes, she remembered him. She remembered him from the mountain on the day her father died. She remembered him from the night on the river when he had come to save her life.

She remembered him. She knew his spirit.

She remembered him from long before—before this darkness. Then she sensed it, something further, something longer, something more eternal, long ago.

She knew this was her brother.

And she closed her eyes and cried.

SEVENTEEN

Royal Palace, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

The old man stood near the forty-foot windows that looked out to the east on the blank desert sky. The sun was a few minutes yet from rising, and the moon had set behind them, leaving the desert in the gray and lifeless twilight of predawn.

The king remained behind him, unwilling to interrupt his thoughts.

“You have proven to be reliable,” the old man said without turning around.

Al-Rahman looked past his shoulders to the rising sun. The sky was turning red now, creating a glorious desert dawn. “Every warhead was successful,” he boasted. “The destruction has been carried across the entire country. It was much more powerful than we had even hoped for.” He paused, a shiver of excitement running through him. “I don’t think they’re going to make it,” he concluded. “I actually think we have destroyed them.”

The old man turned. “You are wrong,” he said.

The king waited.

“They will rebuild,” the old man told him. “We hurt them, it is true, but there is still enough light, enough goodness, enough courage and strength inside their people. Yes, millions are going to die, but they will strive to rise again.”

The king looked into his filmy eyes. “You have people, though, friends inside the country, who will see to it that—”

The man cut him off. “Yes, many of our friends inside the United States have already done their work. For years now they have torn at their foundations, destroying the people’s faith in their nation, their God, even in themselves. These friends have been fruitful and creative, but in the end it may not prove to be enough.”

The old man sniffed, then frowned, his bony nose so thin a dozen blood veins showed like spider webs through the skin.

Al-Rahman watched him for a moment. Then he looked away, too pleased with himself to be brought down by the old man’s constant gloom. “Think about it,” he bragged again. “They’re just now beginning to understand how dangerous their situation is. They’re just beginning to get thirsty, just beginning to wrestle with their first hunger pains. They’re just starting to feel the panic. I really think we have destroyed them. Now the world lies in our hands.”

The old man turned and looked blankly to the east, his reaction as vacant as the empty sky. If there was satisfaction in the victory, he certainly didn’t show it. “You know your brother has a son who is still living,” he said.

The king nodded, the young prince the least of his concerns.

The old man surmised his thoughts and shook his head. He knew better. He had seen it too many times before. He thought back to the two thousand years of family strife and fratricide over kingship and power. “He is young now,” he said, taking a step toward the king. “But think, King Abdullah, he will grow into a man. Everyone around him will remind him of who he really is, who his father was, what he has lost. They will tell, even goad him, that one day he must be king. They will remind him of everything that has been stolen from him. No, you cannot let him live, or one day, when he is older, he will come and claim your kingdom for his own.”

Al-Rahman shook his head. “Don’t worry about him,” he sneered. “I have taken steps to find him. It won’t be long until he’s dead.”

The old man compressed his lips and turned back to the rising sun. The two men were silent a long moment.

“Do you remember the first time that I met you?” the old man finally asked.

The king thought back to that distant morning on the beach in France, so far away—another life, another universe, another measure of time ago.

“What did I promise you?” the old man demanded as Al-Rahman thought.

“You promised me many things. You promised me freedom. Power. You promised anything that I could think of. You promised me it all.”

“Have I delivered on my promise?”

“Yes, sir, you have.”

Silence another moment. The sun was just beginning to peek across the distant, flat horizon, sending the first shaft of sunlight to light up the world.

“There was another thing I promised you.”

Al-Rahman thought, but didn’t answer.

The old man waited, then turned. “I promised, King Abdullah, that I would show you the truth.”

The king thought. Yes, he remembered now, those had been the old man’s words.

The old man pulled out a thin cigarette, lit it quickly, and shoved it in his mouth. “Do you want the truth now?” he asked.

“Of course,” Al-Rahman said.

The old man stood before the king, then smiled bitterly. The brilliant sunlight shone behind him, casting his outline in a shadow that spread across the room. “The truth, my King Abdullah.” His voice was wicked and sarcastic now. “The truth is, my King Abdullah, that I was lying to you then. I promised you everything, but none of it is real. None of it will last forever. It will all come crashing down. We can fight, scratch and murder. We can lie, cheat and kill. We can plot and plan and muster, but we are never going to win. The sun will still rise in the morning. Light will always chase the dark. We cannot win. We never could.

“And that, my friend, is the only truth that really matters. You have sold your soul for nothing.” He stopped and put his arms around the king. “You have sold your soul for nothing,” he repeated more softly. “Now, welcome to my world.”

EIGHTEEN

Mount Aatte, North of Peshawar, Pakistan

The storms came, deep and cold, the clouds covering the mountain peaks in crowns of gray and white. The steady rain fell in fat drops before the temperature plunged to almost freezing, turning the cold rain to thick snow, breaking limbs away from the fruit trees and burying the wheat under a heavy blanket of snow.

Then the storm clouds passed just as quickly as they had come, blowing north toward the mountains that towered twenty thousand feet above the fertile valley floor.

The shepherd waited out the storm from a shallow cave in the granite mountain. As the dark clouds bore down, his hot breath turned to mist and he pulled his leather jacket close.

Glancing to the back of the shallow cave, he watched the young boy sleeping. The child was lying on his side, rolled up in a rough, goat-hair blanket, his eyes fluttering lightly as he dreamed. He was a good lad, gracious and accommodating, deferential and bright. But he was strong, the shepherd could see that. There was a sturdy will inside him that was even greater than his own.

Was he going to be a child-warrior? The Pashtun didn’t know.

Eight hundred years before, his people had fought the terrible Genghis Khan when the Mongol and his army had come sweeping from the north, killing, eating or destroying everything in their path. Legend said the Pashtun boy-warrior was only fourteen when he was called to lead their army against the coming hordes. For years the boy had commanded a guerrilla campaign, hitting the Mongol armies in the mountain passes, then disappearing with his soldiers like a ghost into the night.

Some thought the story of the child-leader was just a legend, but the Pashtun shepherd knew that it was real. God could send His warriors. Sometimes He chose the old ones. Sometimes He chose the young.

The tribal leader pulled his worn jacket around his shoulders again, then turned and walked toward the sleeping child. Reaching under the rough blanket, he touched the slender chain on the young boy’s neck. The diamond was pure and perfect, and even in the dim light it reflected a dozen shafts of brilliance. He fingered the diamond slowly, knowing full well its worth.

Kneeling, he lifted the young prince and held him close. The boy squirmed but didn’t waken as the shepherd held him safe against his chest.

COMING IN EPISODE SEVEN...

READ IT NOW: www.mercuryink.com

For more than a hundred years, New York City had it all.

Pulse. Action. Demands and rewards.

The city was as animated as any living thing: breathing, growing, exerting an undeniable force, never sleeping, always moving.

For more than a hundred years, New York City had shone as a jewel in the crown of mortal glitter.

More than a hundred years to reign.

But only two weeks to die. Two weeks to transform into a quivering muddle of death.

* * *

The dark spirit stared at the old man, looking deeply into his eyes. He knew the veil of separation lying between them now was so thin that the mortal could feel him when he was near. He took a small step toward the man and snarled.

The mortal kept on staring, hunching his shoulders against his cold.

* * *

The smoking man, a former U.S. senator, lifted his heavy body from the Chippendale mahogany camelback sofa (circa 1770, $464,800 U.S. dollars) and moved to stand beside the window. For a moment the two of them were silent, looking out. The smoker finally spoke. “They will rebuild.” His voice was tight with impatience, as if he were speaking to a foolish child. “I don’t think that is the question. The question is, will they rebuild on our terms? I am certain that they will. They are pliable and open now. Vulnerable and defeated, beat down to their knees. It is hard, once the top dog, to get knocked off the pile. No, they’ll do anything to get it back, believe me, they will.

* * *

“I’ll try the number for the emergency switchboard at the White House. They might have, they must have transferred that number to a working phone.” She punched the cell phone as she talked, excited once again. She listened, holding her hand up by her face in anxious expectation. “Ringing . . . ringing,” she whispered. “It sounds like . . .” she turned her head suddenly and talked into the phone. “Yes, yes, can you hear me?” She took a step toward the edge of the roof. “Can you hear me? Yes, I can barely hear you. My name is Sara Brighton. My husband was General Neil Brighton, Special Assistant to the President. This is an emergency. I need you to connect me to the Secretary of Defense. Yes, Secretary Marino’s office.”

* * *

READ EPISODE SEVEN NOW...

http://www.mercuryink.com

Contents

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN