Derek hesitated. “You sure they’ll do it?”

  “They want in,” he pointed out. “They’re not getting in unless they come through whoever comes out. They don’t really have a choice.”

  Derek moved toward the open door and relayed the order while Caleb knelt by the elevator hatch.

  “Liz!” he called down. “Lana! Can you hear me?”

  “I’m out,” Lana called back. Her voice sounded distant. They were further down than he’d hoped. “I’m getting Mom now.”

  “On the south wall,” he told her, “opposite the door you came in, there will be rungs set into the wall. Use them to climb up.”

  He listened, peering down into the dark, and heard a grunt of effort. “Yeah,” Lana called up. “Got them.”

  “Good. Come up as fast as you can but be careful.”

  “Oh, right! Thanks, I was going to—“ A shock of thunder drowned out his daughter’s last words, but Caleb smiled at the tone. If Lana could be a smart aleck, she wasn’t so panicked that she couldn’t function.

  Liz might be another story, but she was with Lana—she always seemed to find her courage and composure when Lana was in sight.

  “Come on,” Caleb muttered, straining to see any movement in the elevator shaft or hear hands moving over steel rungs.

  Outside, someone fired a shot. Then another. Short bursts of automatic fire.

  “Contact,” Derek called to him.

  “I hear it,” he called back, then leaned into the darkness, one hand gripping the edge of the elevator door. “Lana, how close are you? Can you see me?”

  Her voice came up, much closer now, her breathing labored. “We can see light. Almost there… maybe… another ten yards.”

  Caleb looked back to the door. It was almost pitch dark outside now, making the flashlights mounted to the rifles the general’s men carried stand out. Muzzles flashed in the distance from Ray and his people’s direction. That was a small advantage, but the only place to take reliable cover was in this enclosure.

  He turned to Derek. “Hold the door.”

  Derek didn’t answer and didn’t need to be told. Caleb’s nerves were drawn tight, though, vibrating with adrenaline screaming to do something, to find the threat and neutralize it instead of waiting. But he couldn’t pry himself away from the elevator shaft, either, for fear something would happen, and he wouldn’t be there to prevent it.

  “Incoming.” Derek leaned forward and the room was briefly lit as he fired into the night.

  Caleb inhaled, preparing to leave the elevator shaft and help Derek defend, when Lana’s face came barely into view, a ghost rising from the darkness. He squatted down at the lip of the shaft and leaned to reach a hand out. “Almost there! Take my hand!”

  Another couple of rungs, and Lana reached out and took hold of his wrist. He closed his fingers around hers and pulled as he stood up to lift her out.

  He hugged her briefly, squeezing her tight with a muttered, “Thank God you’re safe,” before she withdrew and gave him space.

  He kneeled and reached for Elizabeth next. His hand closed around her wrist, and her fingers brushed his skin before she managed to grip his arm. With effort, he pulled her out and into his arms.

  “I’ve got you,” he rasped into her ear as he held her against him. “I’ve got you.”

  She trembled in his embrace, entire body shaking and shivering. He held her away from him, hands on her shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  He couldn’t see if she was hurt in the dark. His hands moved over her arms, to her sides, but she took them and held them steady.

  “I’m okay,” she assured him.

  “Dad!” Lana shouted, and he turned to see her withdrawing from the door, a rifle in her hands. “Can we save the reunion?”

  The fog of relief that had gripped Caleb dissipated. They weren’t out of it yet. Not by a long shot. Sharp focus settled back into him, clearer and more intense now that he had his family in sight. He tugged Elizabeth away, and moved her to the wall, then to the corner inside the door. “Stay down and away from the door.”

  Elizabeth nodded as she crouched and pressed herself to the concrete.

  Caleb moved to the edge of the door and knelt at Lana’s side, his rifle up as he tracked the moving lights outside. “We’ve got support. Some locals, out in the woods. They can’t see us, so when they fire, get back behind cover. Derek? Toss me that radio.”

  Caleb caught it and lifted it to his mouth. “Ray, come in. You holding up? Got numbers on these people?”

  It took a moment. “Jake here. Got some empty rifles. Ammo’s not gonna last. Probably another dozen with lights, maybe others we can’t see.”

  In the dark, a muzzle flashed for a full three seconds as someone sprayed fire wildly toward the general’s men.

  “Short bursts,” Caleb shouted into the radio.

  “Who are these people?” Lana asked as she leaned out and took a shot, then pulled back as bullets pinged against the outer wall.

  “Not sure,” Caleb admitted. “But they took out four patrol teams and were planning on invading the base.”

  Lana gave a snort. “And we’re, what, on their team now?”

  “Don’t know that I’d call it that.” Lightning flashed, lighting the open area between the door and the forest, illuminating a soldier without a light mounted to his rifle. Caleb looked down his sight and waited for the next burst of lightning. When it came, he homed in on the man, pulled the trigger twice.

  No fire returned when the darkness swallowed everything again, but he hadn’t seen the soldier go down.

  He waited.

  Derek eased back behind the wall. “They stopped.”

  Caleb frowned, listening to the darkness. There were still shots being fired, but the muzzle flashes from the woods had gone dark. He took the radio up again. “Jake? What’s happening?”

  No answer. “Jake,” he snapped, “respond.”

  Derek hissed a curse. “They took off. I knew they’d screw us. Redneck son of a—“

  “Jake here,” the radio hissed. “Y'all probably wanna take cover right about—“

  Caleb didn’t hear the rest as he yanked Lana back. His shout at Derek was swallowed up as three explosions lit the gloom.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  LANA

  Horse Creek Base, New United States

  Friday, June 18th, 9:45 pm EST

  Lana couldn’t hear her heart beating or feel it in her body. Her bones ached, though, and her limbs felt like every vein had suddenly tried to eject their contents into her skin.

  Something touched her face. Her instinct was to push it away—it was someone’s hand, large enough to grip her entire jaw. There was some muffled sound, a kind of hoarse whuff-whuff that she felt along with a cough of warm air against her eyes.

  Her eyes were closed, she realized. She opened them and her father’s face loomed in her vision.

  “Lana, look at me.” This time she heard him.

  “I’m okay,” she told him, and pushed his hand away.

  There was more light then, strobing in through the door. The air vibrated with thunder that she barely heard but could feel in her chest and in the concrete under her. It lasted long enough that for a moment, she saw the room they were in was small, concrete, and covered in debris.

  Her father’s eyes roved over her face, down her neck, to her arm. Something had him worried, or maybe even terrified.

  Oh, right.

  She was still sticky with blood that had caked her face and arm from the guard at the elevator’s entrance. Distantly, she felt like that should bother her, like she should be more concerned about it. Where that feeling should have been, though, there was only a blank spot—a numbness that refused to give up. She peered over her father’s shoulder as Derek pushed himself to his feet unsteadily.

  She grunted with effort and rolled up, accepting her father’s hand to stand. The world shifted, tilting in an unexpected direction, and she braced herself on him.

  “It’ll pass.” His voice still came muffled as if through wads of cotton in her ears.

  Lana glanced around, found her mother leaning against the wall. She seemed dazed. Out of focus. She motioned toward her. “Help Mom,” she told her father, and pushed past him to get to Derek.

  “You okay?” Her hands searched first his shoulders, then his arms, then finally his hands. She squeezed. “Can you hear me?”

  “All good,” Derek replied. “Not my first concussion wave. You?”

  “Dizzy,” she admitted. “But it’s already passing.”

  He gave her a rueful laugh. “Oh, just wait. It’ll come and go for a few days.”

  Derek sagged against the wall, one hand still on hers. “That get ‘em?”

  She glanced at the darkened doorway and tried to listen for gunfire over the tinny sound in her ears. “Maybe.” She turned back to him, still confused. “You’re… I mean…” She frowned at the floor. “You’re here.”

  His hand twisted beneath her fingers until their palms touched. “Yeah. I’m here. Your Dad… if he hadn’t been there, if he hadn’t fired first, I—“

  She put her fingers over his lips, then leaned in and kissed him. It was brief, like before. But with none of the tension she’d felt that time. When she pulled back, his hand was tighter in hers. “I… there’s blood on my face. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I pissed myself about an hour ago. It’s really cold.”

  A chuckle rose out of her, and she gave him a gentle shove. “Gross.”

  “It really is,” he agreed.

  Behind them, her father hissed for quiet.

  Lana let Derek’s hand go, all the humor of the moment vanishing as she twisted around and dropped to a knee. She didn’t even notice pulling her rifle around, but it was in her hands, aimed at the dull rectangle of the open door that barely stood out in the dark.

  There were footsteps outside, careful and cautious, but still squishing in the soaked earth. She slipped her finger around the trigger and held her breath.

  “Y’all alive in there?” someone whispered.

  “Jake?” Caleb asked.

  “All clear,” Jake reported.

  The rough, metallic rasp of a lighter sounded twice, and then there was an orange glow that lit the doorway. A man stepped through—not a soldier; or at least not one of General Thomas’s people.

  A weaselly looking man, gaunt around the face, with uneven stubble on his jaw and lips, held a zippo in the air. He entered the enclosure and looked around.

  The lighter’s glow illuminated the small space and Lana found her father standing on the opposite side of the door, hood drawn and face grim, in front of her mother. He didn’t look happy, but his rifle was at ease, at least. Lana lowered hers as well as she stood.

  “You get your people?” the man wondered, his eyes tracking first Lana’s mother, then her.

  “Where’s Ray?” Caleb asked, ignoring the question.

  Another man pushed in, thicker in the jaw than the first. His hood was pulled too far forward to see much of him, but the set of his lips made it seem like he wasn’t especially happy to see Caleb, or any of them, as he scanned the room. “So what we doing now? Sir?”

  The way he said sir, thick with sarcasm, told Lana there was dangerous history there. But he did ask a legitimate question.

  Caleb glanced at the elevator shaft. “Don’t think we can get in this way. They cut the power. Brake’s probably engaged. Even if we cut the cables, which we can’t unless you’ve got some bolt cutters, and climbed down, it’s sealed.”

  Lana’s mother made a horrified sound. “Get in?”

  “Dad, we can’t go back in there,” Lana began. “The whole place is on alert. The guys guarding the elevator knew something was up, said the general put an APB on us or something.”

  “Earth to you pansies, it’s freakin’ rainin’ acid out here in case you ain’t noticed. Any chance you wanna make room and let our boys inside?” Ray, probably, Lana thought. The way her father looked at him, she didn’t think there were going to be introductions. The other man must have been Jake.

  Caleb stepped aside to make space and met Lana’s eyes. There was warning in them, and she shifted her grip on the rifle slightly, preparing herself to snap it up if needed, the way she’d practiced with Derek.

  Other than the two she’d seen, six others filed in. It made the space crowded and claustrophobic and didn’t leave any real room for maneuvering.

  “You lost three?” Caleb asked, peering at the ragged group of men in hunting jackets. They ranged from one who was a head taller than him, to one that was barely as big as Lana’s mother.

  “Yeah, we lost three,” Ray growled. “Three friends.”

  “You launched an assault on a military base,” Caleb replied, his tone flat.

  Lana cleared her throat. “And that was the outside. Why do we want to go back in, again? Because that seems like a really bad idea.”

  “The rain,” her mother offered. “Right?”

  Caleb nodded. “We can’t travel in this. The rain’s acidic and freezing. According to sources,” he nodded at Ray, “it can last for days. Without shelter, we’ll freeze and burn all at the same time.”

  Lana thought about Maria back at the research facility, but one glance at the men crowding the room and she kept her mouth shut. If her father wasn’t going to suggest it, he had a good reason.

  The sky flashed, accompanied by thunder so immediately, it must have struck nearby. Lana’s head swam and she blinked away white spots in her vision.

  “How many soldiers were outside?” Derek asked.

  Jake answered him. “Might have counted twelve, at least. Maybe more.”

  “Twelve flashlights?” Caleb asked. Jake gave him a nod, and Caleb considered for a moment. “I saw at least one with no light on… but it’s better to overestimate. There were seven in our unit besides us. Four patrols, each of those were at least seven. Your boys took them all out?”

  “Hell yeah, we did.” Ray spat on the ground. “Fish in a barrel.”

  Derek took a step out from Lana’s side. “All together, that’s about three quarters of Thomas’s military personnel. There are about another ten in civilian staff. Well, minus Lana and Eliz—er, Mrs. Machert. So, eight. All in all… that only leaves maybe twenty armed soldiers inside. Maybe less. The most ever here was eighty-eight.”

  Lana chewed the inside of her lip. Those odds were… better than she’d imagined. Her father seemed to think so as well, because he began to rub his jaw in the way that meant he was putting together a plan instead of deciding whether to go ahead.

  Before Caleb could get his thoughts together, though, an idea blossomed in Lana’s. “What were those explosives?”

  The big man, the tallest of the lot, answered her. “TNT packed with pin nails.”

  Lana looked to Derek. “Any idea if the base’s interior can take something like that?”

  He shook his head. “I… don’t know. Maybe?”

  “Do you have any left?” she asked the big man.

  He unzipped and opened his jacket, showing four white plastic tubes tucked into the inside. “Just a few.”

  Caleb frowned at her. “We can’t use them inside the base. That blast wave from before was out in the open. We wouldn’t survive it in a space that small.”

  Lana’s lip curled at the corner. “I know. But if you’d just sent a bunch of people topside into a combat situation, and there was only one way into the base, you’d probably have it covered. Right?”

  “She’s right.” Derek breathed out in a wave of excitement as he figured out Lana’s line of thought. “The front elevator—it’ll be under guard, probably. Not just outside. Probably… four at the door, four to six in the hall downstairs. But at that range, in that space—it wouldn’t matter how many there were.”

  “How long are the fuses?” Caleb asked.

  The big man glanced at him. “Ten-second burn. I got a little extra, could tie it on, pull the fuse from two of them… maybe thirty seconds? Forty? Hard to say.”

  Caleb nodded, then gave Lana a long, quiet look, his jaw flexing. “Okay. Then… Here's what we do…”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CALEB

  Horse Creek Base, New United States

  Friday, June 18th, 10:17 pm EST

  “I ain’t gettin’ in no elevator with four of you’uns and two of us.” Ray spat a glob of dip spit outside. “Don’t seem fair to me.”

  “There’s only cover for six.” Derek began. “Anyone else will be slaughtered the second the doors open.”

  Ray crossed his arms.

  Caleb’s jaw ached from the tension radiating throughout his entire body. He practically hummed with it. “Liz—”

  “If Lana goes, then I’m going.” Her voice shook, her eyes watered, and she seemed about as confident as a mouse, but she was adamant. Whatever happened while they were escaping the base… It wasn’t good.

  He glanced at Lana and didn’t even ask. My little girl. He’d bounced her on his knee until she doubled over with giggles when she was two and taken on her first camping trip when she was only six. He’d taught her to fish and shoot and catch a baseball because she insisted baseball wasn’t just for boys.

  She’d snuggled up under his arm for twelve years until, one day, she was ‘too old’. Then she’d gone to college, survived the apocalypse, and now stood in a concrete box with a pile of people, armed and covered in someone else’s blood.

  His little girl wasn’t a girl anymore. Even after everything, he’d somehow held onto some feeling that she was still his, in some way. That they’d survive this and go camping again, and she’d make the fire but ask him to clean the fish because guts were gross. Or that she’d need to ask his advice about a boy, maybe.

  But all of that was gone. He cleared his throat. Turned his voice hard. Cold. Unwavering. “We do this my way, or we don’t do it at all.” He stared Ray down. “Y’all can try your luck, blast that door open yourselves and get blown to pieces the second General Thomas’s men catch sight of you, or you and Jake can come with us and have a chance.”