ELIZABETH

  Springfield, CO

  Tuesday July 31st, 10:36 pm MST

  “This way,” Elizabeth shouted, waving at the final small groups of children scurrying along the winding evacuation route toward the corn field. “Keep moving! Don’t stop for anything! Help the little ones keep up, pick them up if you need to, just keep moving for—”

  The air shook as an explosion thundered into the night. Toward the west end of town, a pillar of glowing smoke rose into the air like some demon made of shadow and fire, towering with fury for several seconds before dying and sucking the light with it. The burning image of it stayed in her vision, nearly blinding her.

  West. Where Caleb was on the wall. Her chest threatened to cave in with crushing fear that he’d been caught in the explosion. In Apex, breaching the wall. A moment later, the bell atop the courthouse rang twice, confirming that the invasion had started in earnest.

  The screams of panicked children broke the paralysis that kept her eyes glued on the ghost of fire. She blinked away the afterimage as she took a step back and put her focus on the task. Some of the children had stopped moving, and Elizabeth hurried toward them.

  “Let’s go,” she said as calmly as possible, speaking to the oldest boy in the group first, and then the younger children. “We must get to the field. Remember the plan, alright?”

  “What’s happening?” one of the youngest wailed. “Are we gonna die?”

  Elizabeth dropped to a knee beside her, a girl whose name she couldn’t remember, and cupped the child’s face between her hands. “You are not going to die,” she promised. “But you need to follow Topher so that I and the other adults can keep you safe. I know you’re scared, honey. I’m a little scared, too, and it’s okay to be afraid. Being brave just means to keep moving even when you’re scared. I need you to be brave, okay?”

  Topher put a hand on the girl’s shoulder, gently urging her to go with him. “Let’s go, Katie.” He drew her close as Elizabeth released her. “All you have to do is follow me and stay close, alright?”

  Katie gave a tiny, terrified nod, wiping her eyes as the older boy led her away. Elizabeth turned her attention to the next group, identified only by the small, flashing LEDs Diego had rigged up to mark them out in the dark.

  One by one, the group she and Mateo were responsible for passed her checkpoint—all but Sara’s group. Elizabeth waited for a full minute, before the bell rang again, three times. That was the signal that Apex had boots on the ground inside the walls. Her panic grew sharper as she squinted in the dark for another set of LEDs that might show Sara and her group were on the way. Nothing. The sound of gunfire began to fill the air again as the agents now past the gate encountered the interior perimeter of Samuels’ men.

  There was no time to wait for Sara’s group to arrive. Elizabeth checked her sidearm, switched the safety off, and tugged it free. The gun felt heavy in her hand; heavier than it should have. If Caleb and Lana were gone…

  She shook off the feeling of despair that threatened to swallow her up. There were other people here, people relying on her. Children would be terrified as the sound of fighting came closer and closer to the evacuation route that wound through the central parts of town.

  Hardening her resolve against the urge to lay down and give up, she focused on them and took off back along the route she’d drilled with the older children dozens of times until they could walk it in the dark.

  There were no more explosions, at least. A stray bullet could be just as deadly as an aimed one, but most of the evacuation route was designed to keep the children under cover as they moved. Elizabeth counted houses and turns mentally, eyes hunting for the tell-tale flash of tiny lights that might show her where Sara’s group was either lagging behind or hiding in terror.

  Left, left, right, skip two houses, she recited the directions backward from her checkpoint as she raced in the dark and prayed not to trip over something left in the path by accident. As she rounded the second house, she spotted a cluster of twinkling lights further up the path.

  Muzzle fire flashed from around the far corner of the route, briefly illuminating a black-clad, armored figure standing over Sara and her group.

  Whatever numbness and panic had taken over Elizabeth’s body, both were dissolved in a sudden rush of protective rage. She charged forward, drawing her weapon, toward the faint, strobing light of gunfire and the shape of the Apex agent.

  “I said don’t move!” the agent shouted.

  The children screamed. In another strobe of light, she saw Sara spreading her arms wide, her mouth open as she shouted at the agent. In the next flash, his rifle was moving up to his shoulder, taking aim.

  Elizabeth fired on him. Her own sidearm’s flash nearly blinded her, but she saw the agent turning to point his weapon at her instead of Sara and the children. Her first shots went wide, but the third or fourth struck the soldier, jerking him backward. The next staggered him. The last one sent him over his heels and onto his back.

  In another few seconds, she was bearing down on him, screaming as she fired two more shots into his chest as he struggled to recover.

  It took everything she had not to empty the clip, her finger itching to squeeze again, adrenaline hammering in her veins. He was down. That was all that mattered. For the briefest moment, she saw the broken face of Cavalry’s pastor on the ground, bloody and swollen. The agent went still, and Elizabeth staggered back from the body.

  “Mrs. Machert?”

  Behind her, Sara was on her feet again. Elizabeth swallowed and lowered her weapon. More gunfire strobed, and down the street she saw it coming from both sides of the narrow road, where Apex and the security team were exchanging fire. Apex had moved in fast and was spreading out. There was no telling how deep they’d gotten.

  With shaking hands, she put her sidearm away and knelt by the soldier to pry the strap of his compact rifle away from his neck. She stood, slinging it over her shoulder, and hefted it experimentally. She’d held one of the weapons before, but only shot it a few times. That would have to be enough.

  “Follow me,” she told Sara and her group. “Stay close, and do exactly as I say, alright? I’m going to keep you safe, I promise. The rest of the groups are at the field by now, we need to catch up. Is anyone hurt?”

  Sara switched on her flashlight, tuned down to the dimmest setting, and scanned the group. “I don’t think so. Everyone okay?”

  Some of the children squeaked answers and Elizabeth didn’t see any sign they’d been hurt. What kind of people pointed guns at kids? However awful she’d thought Apex was before, there was still room for deeper disgust. “You did good,” she told Sara. “We need to move. Lights off.”

  Sara nodded, and the light of her flashlight vanished, plunging them again into stuttering darkness as Elizabeth headed back down the evacuation route, children in tow.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  LANA

  Springfield, CO

  Tuesday July 31st, 10:43 pm MST

  Lana pressed close to the pulverized rock under the seemingly endless fire of the Apex battalion below. Her face was raw and burning from the barrage of stone chips that had sprayed across her neck, cheeks, and jaw every time someone below nearly made her. At least four of her people were down that she knew of, either injured or killed, and all of them had to be nearly out of ammunition.

  But, finally, there were no more shots coming from the corridor. Whether that meant they’d gunned down the last Apex soldier or not, she couldn’t be certain without checking—and if it was her running Apex’s operation, she’d have had her people lay low and stop firing precisely for that reason. Whether these people would think of something like that, there was no way to know.

  She tugged her radio free and gave the knob two clicks to the left, hopefully to Derek’s channel. “Walker, come in.”

  A moment later he answered. “This is Walker. What do you think?”

  Lana peered out of cover briefly, but it was pointless to try and get a visual like this. “That last signal we heard was three bells,” she replied. “Apex is inside the walls. I’m down to my last magazine.”

  “Me too. Halfway through it. Might be weapons in the box, but might be live fire, as well.”

  “Agreed,” she muttered.

  The last thing she wanted was to risk her people, but even if they did make it the quarter-mile back to Springfield to join the fight there, they wouldn’t be fighting long before they were down to knives and fists and whatever rocks they could pick up and throw. She gritted her teeth, then rose up and fired an experimental shot into the corridor. There was no return fire, still.

  “No sign of movement. It’s a risk either way. What are your orders?”

  There wasn’t a safe plan in a situation like this. But it was a matter of risk and reward, wasn’t it? The risk of going back to town and ending up practically unarmed was high, and if that happened it wouldn’t take long to lose her whole team. She could at least mitigate some of the risk here. “Meet me at Becca’s position. Check in with the others on your way, we need a headcount.”

  “Understood,” he came back.

  She slid the radio away and peeled clear from her position, heading toward the gap in the outcrop and the slope down to the corridor. On her way, she checked in with five of her people. On her side, she had one injured and one dead. She assigned two to tend the wound of the injured woman, which was luckily in the arm and away from the artery, but it had taken her out of the fight. It took a few minutes to meet Derek at the slope.

  “Status?” She slid into place next to him.

  “Two injured. The others are on it.”

  “That’s four down,” Lana breathed. She looked down the slope, trying desperately to see something in the dark that would tell them one way or another if anyone was left. “We’ll go down and check things out. We need any weapons they’ve dropped.”

  “I can go. You stay here.”

  He started to move, but Lana caught him by the arm. “We’re going together.”

  “You’re in command here. You need to stay back and be ready to direct the unit if there’s still someone alive there, or you need to order the retreat. Send a partner with me if you want.”

  Lana’s stomach dropped at the idea of sending anyone with him. No one on her unit had the training or experience the two of them did. She couldn’t possibly trust his life with any of them. They’d done good work so far but getting knee-deep in potential hostiles was a different game entirely. “I’m going with you,” she told him firmly. “That’s an order.”

  She couldn’t see his expression but felt certain it bordered on insubordination. “We don’t have time for—”

  “No,” she agreed, slipping past him and down the slope, “we don’t. All units hold position.”

  She barely heard the acknowledgments over the sound of Derek’s boots crunching up quickly behind her. “If we get shot or stabbed down there,” he warned her, “the rest of the unit is going to be screwed. You know that, right?”

  “Then we won’t get shot or stabbed. Now stay quiet.”

  They descended the slope cautiously and stayed as low as possible on their way to the first SUV. Lana held her breath as they split up and moved around it slowly, until she encountered the first body. She knelt and felt under the soldier’s helmet for a pulse. There was shattered faceplate where a bullet had taken the agent in the face. Dead. The next one was unconscious, pulse weak and irregular.

  She considered taking out her knife and speeding him along. The impulse made her a little sick to her stomach. It was one thing to fire on hostiles when they were able bodied and returning fire. Killing an unconscious soldier in cold blood seemed like a step too far, and she didn’t like that the idea had occurred to her in the first place.

  Instead, she relieved both bodies of their weapons, felt around for the safety switches to secure them, and then slung the straps over her shoulder. She met Derek near the back end of the SUV. “Clear,” he whispered. “Two dead. One rifle, the other was damaged. Any survivors?”

  “Barely. But the other’s unconscious and probably won’t make it. Not a threat.”

  “Good start,” he murmured.

  Lana nodded, then tapped his shoulder and moved toward the next SUV.

  There were six here, all together. Most of the agents were dead or dying. Two turned out to be conscious but badly injured. Those, Lana secured with their own cuffs as they groaned weakly in protest. In total, they counted twenty Apex agents. Far less than the initial count. Whether that meant the others had been knocked out by the IEDs on the east road in, or had split off to go north around the obstacle, she didn’t know.

  By the time they returned, she’d lost another team member. The news sent a cold wave of guilt through her, now that the adrenaline was waning. “We’ll have to come back for them later,” she told the rest of her unit once each of them had an Apex weapon slung across their chest.

  Derek’s flashlight was on but dim, giving them just enough light to see by. “For now, we need to get back to Springfield. They’ve got hostiles inside the walls and will need every bit of help they can get. It… it’s going to be different than it was out here. Once inside, we won’t know which direction shots could be fired from. It will be more dangerous. If anyone wants to stay behind and keep an eye on things here… I’ll understand.”

  “We’re not sitting out the fight,” Hannah volunteered. She was forty-something, and Lana knew she had two surviving children, both of whom would be with her mother, or Mateo, or one of the other people on Amelie’s evacuation detail. Her face was badly scraped on one side, and a gash in one ear had soaked through the layers of bandage she’d managed to wrap over it. “No point in staying safe if we lose this thing, right?”

  The other women agreed, nodding and adding their own voices.

  It should have somehow given Lana confidence, or maybe pride. But all she felt was worry that she was about to walk them into a firefight that would make their children orphans and partners alone. But it was their choice, and staying here wasn’t an option for her.

  “Right,” she said, trying to think what the best use of their backup would be. They could push right into town, join the interior perimeter line. But if Apex was surrounding them now, they’d just end up boxed in as well. No, what they needed was to make things difficult for Apex. “Okay… we double-time it back to the wall. Once we’re inside, we’ll sweep the wall west to the gate, try to flank whoever’s gotten inside. That’ll put them between us and Samuels’ inner perimeter.”

  Derek watched her closely. She met his eyes, looking for any sign he disagreed with her plan and more than willing to take his input. But he just smiled at her and looked around at what remained of their unit. “You heard the Lieutenant. Let’s move out.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CALEB

  Springfield, CO

  Tuesday July 31st, 10:54 pm MST

  “…the battalion was compromised, sir.” A voice squeezed through the hazy, throbbing darkness surrounding Caleb like a vise. “Each unit is following established protocols, but we’ve taken heavy losses and have no means to coordinate efforts. We are inside the settlement, yes. I don’t have an estimate for that, sir. Without live intel from unit commanders, I’m blind here. Reinforcements would… Yes, sir, I’ve gotten the directives but the situation… I… I understand, sir. I’ll continue to send updates as I have them.”

  Caleb inhaled slowly and felt pressure against his chest. Debris from the tower, he realized, as the moments before he’d lost consciousness came back to him. His head pounded, but he could feel his limbs, wiggle his toes and fingers. His lungs burned from smoke and trying to move his left arm a little sent a shockwave of agony through him. He gritted his teeth around to keep from screaming.

  Somewhere past his feet, a new voice joined the first, this one a woman with a vaguely mid-western accent. “We’re not getting reinforcements?”

  “No,” the man answered. “Not in time. Nearest armed unit is more than ten hours away. This is BS. We’re getting slaughtered in the dark. Launch the flares, get this place lit up.”

  “Sir… if we do that,” a woman’s voice said, “there’s a chance the flares come down on a crop. We’ve got clear orders not to damage—”

  “Damn it,” the man snapped. There was a long silence in which Caleb tested what kind of movement he had in his legs. It was tight, but there was something lodged under his calf that he could use to push off. His arm was injured, but it was somewhere on the outer side of it, away from an artery. He’d survive, but getting free would hurt.

  “What does it say?” the woman asked.

  “Area sweeps and engagement directives,” the man said, clearly disgusted. “Useless. Even if it wasn’t, how the heck am I supposed to issue orders?”

  “We could withdraw,” the woman offered. “Regroup, call in an equipment drop. There’s no way these people can hit us with the EMP trick again, surely. Central can deliver an equipment drop in four hours.”

  Caleb set his foot against whatever was under his leg and gave it a tentative push. It held. The piece across his chest was timber, maybe one of the cross braces from the watchtower. He put his right hand against it and pushed. It barely moved, but somewhere else in the pile that must have been on top of him, other debris shifted.

  “What was that?” the man wondered. “Movement, over there. You two, check it out. And… Fire the regroup flare. Away from the crops. TARA says run a sweep and secure operation, so that’s what we do. We’ll lock this place down block by block if we have to. I’m not about to tell Trusk we had to withdraw entirely. Well? Move!”

  “Yes, sir,” the woman said quickly.

  To Caleb’s right, the sounds of shifting debris became more pronounced. Purposeful. He felt around for his rifle, but it was nowhere he could reach. He had a knife at his belt, at least. He got a grip on it and managed to pull it free, but the numbness in his arm was still there, half his fingers thick and weak. It wouldn’t do him much good if they found him pinned down anyway.