Something about Parker’s attitude, about these men, and about that logo put him on edge. They weren’t military—not that the track record with military remnants had been great, but at least he and Derek had common ground there. No, they were a private group, and that meant their priorities and operational mandates were probably directed by someone rich enough to have survived all this. Maybe someone who’d even known about the meteor far enough in advance to plan for it.

  The thought made him instinctively wary. Parker had almost certainly lied about being a mobile operation already, probably to keep the location of his employer secret. It didn’t bode well.

  “Sorry to hear that.” Parker shifted on the porch. “A lot of people just like you out there. You want my advice, I’d head back the way you came, and take 44 south to Lebanon. They got that place sorted out. You’ll find housing, food, water, medical attention. We can issue you IDs, they’ll get you in.”

  Derek stiffened and the hair on the back of Caleb’s neck stood up, but he managed to keep the concern off his face. “IDs,” he echoed. “We’ve got our IDs from before all this.”

  Parker shook his head and fished something out of his pocket to hold it. It was an ID of a kind Caleb hadn’t seen before, emblazoned with the seal of the United States under the plastic, but embedded with an RF ship on one side.

  “You’ll want one of these. New issue, recently developed.” He shoved the ID back in his pocket. “There’s a whole world moving on out there if you know where to find it. We’ve got a satellite uplink; we can get you registered and have your IDs waiting for you when you reach Lebanon.”

  Satellite uplink? Caleb had tried to reach military satellites from Horse Creek base. It had been impossible. Maybe, if the cloud cover was thinning, that had changed? If so, there should have been more evidence of it. Satcom capability would have drastically improved any attempt to mobilize forces and start moving back toward normal. This encounter was proving instructive, but every part of it gave Caleb a worse and worse feeling.

  “We’ve got family out west.” Caleb repeated. “In Oregon. I’m afraid we can’t settle down in Lebanon. But I appreciate the offer.”

  “Oregon,” Parker said, nodding. “Well, I haven’t got any current information on that area, but I know there’s an ongoing effort to bring some stability back to that region. If your family out there was smart, they’d have headed into eastern Oregon, or up into Washington. Tri-cities made it through in decent shape, so I heard. Of course, St. Helens could be a problem if the quakes pick up again. Don’t worry, though—you’ll come across plenty of Apex hubs on your way west. We’ve pretty much got everything from here to Nevada covered.”

  The way he said it sounded as much like a threat as it did the helpful information the man seemed to offer it as. “Tri-cities.” Caleb nodded as if that were helpful information. “Good to know. Maybe that’ll be a good place to start. We appreciate the heads up. I take it we should steer clear of up north? If you folks haven’t got it locked down like you do out west.”

  Parker studied him for a moment, then gave a cold smile laced with warning. “Well, you’ll want to avoid going too far north,” he said. “There’s a fire spreading. Wouldn’t want you folks getting caught up in it.” He waved the chipped ID again. “In any case, you may find that you need proper identification on the way to Tri-Cities. I still recommend swinging down to Lebanon and getting yourself outfitted. You wouldn’t want to need it and not have it, you see.”

  In other words, refusal wasn’t an option.

  Caleb forced his jaw to relax. “Right. You can get us registered here?”

  “It’ll take half an hour at best. Just a quick questionnaire, then you’re on your way.”

  Refusing might cause more trouble than Caleb was willing to get into with these people. And whatever information they gathered, it wouldn’t matter if they avoided Lebanon and anyone else sporting that Apex logo. “Then... by all means, Captain Parker. Sign us up.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LANA

  Outside St. Clair, MO

  Tuesday, July 17th, 9:13 am CST

  “Where are they going?” Lana’s mother wondered, her fingers gripping the windowsill as Caleb and Derek left the house—unarmed—following one of the men in black toward a vehicle. “Are they taking them away? What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know. But they’re not cuffed or zip-tied. Try to relax. We have to trust that Dad and Derek are handling things. Look,” Lana pointed, “there’s a laptop. Is that an antenna? They must have a connection. Maybe they’re giving him a status update on Springfield, or directions.”

  Elizabeth didn’t look remotely convinced. “Something about all of this feels wrong. These people... don’t you get a bad feeling?”

  Lana snorted. “I get a bad feeling from everyone these days. Hang on... crap, they’re sending people in.”

  Two of the men in black peeled away from the SUVs and headed toward the porch. Her Dad noticed and said something to the man at the laptop. Whatever conversation transpired was terse and short. Derek scratched at the side of his neck, then made a swatting gesture, as if shooing away a fly. He made it again, glanced around, and then up at them, directly, for a second.

  “They don’t know we’re in here,” Lana breathed. “Hide somewhere. Quick.”

  Lana retreated from the window as her mother cast about frantically. No closet, no bathroom attached. But the bed was large, with just enough space beneath for someone to fit, and there was a wardrobe at one end of the room in the corner, beside an old vanity. “You go under the bed,” Lana directed. “I’ll hide in the wardrobe.”

  As she said it, Elizabeth was already moving. Lana opened the wardrobe, but it was sparse inside. She chewed her lip, mind racing. Will they see me in there? She scanned the room again. The bed would probably hide them both, but she couldn’t defend herself sandwiched between dirty floorboards and a sagging mattress.

  She snatched the quilt off the end of the bed and folded it twice to get some height. As her mother slid under the bed, belly-crawling sideways to fit, Lana pushed aside the coats and shirts in the tall wardrobe and slipped between them. When she was in, she put the quilt down in front of her, stacked and plumped as tall as possible to cover her boots and shins, and pulled the clothes close to cover her top half.

  If whoever came upstairs was thorough, it would never work. She gripped the rifle tightly, finger off the trigger, but safety disengaged. Boots moved through the house. Blood whooshed in her ears. She tried to slow her heart, breathing in and out in a steady rhythm, but it didn’t work.

  The stairs creaked as someone climbed. One, two, three. At the landing, silence for a moment. Deciding. Lana held her breath. Hinges whined, low and slow, as the door opened. Another two bootsteps as someone entered. If it was her, she’d have her rifle up, sweeping the room. Would she think to look under beds, in corners, and inside furniture?

  She waited, ears straining to hear the smallest movement. After a moment, the boots retreated, though the door didn’t close. Lana barely breathed. She waited again as the man thudded down the stairs and through the house, as the distant sound of voices carried through the single-pane windows, and finally, as an engine revved to life.

  As the sound of the vehicle faded into the distance, Lana opened the wardrobe and crept across the wood floor to the window to peer outside. Both SUVs were gone. There was no sign of her father or Derek.

  “Are they gone?” Her mother crawled out from under the bed, eyes up in expectation.

  “They’re leaving,” Lana confirmed. “But I don’t see Dad, or Derek. Do you think they took—”

  Before she could finish the sentence, the door downstairs closed. Lana’s heart leaped to her throat, and the arm holding the rifle jerked instinctively, her body acting to raise it on instinct.

  “They’re gone.” Her father’s voice flooded her with relief. “But we’re packing up and moving out. Now.”

  Lana sagged against the window in relief as her shoulders relaxed and she sucked in a full breath. Her mother reached for her and together, they hurried down the stairs.

  One glance at her father, and the tension returned. “Grab a couple of blankets,” he instructed. “They’re better than what we’ve got in the car. The supplies are packed, we need to make sure everything is secure. Let’s be out of here in five.”

  He unfolded the map onto the coffee table in the living room.

  “What happened?” Lana pressed.

  “What did they want with you?” Elizabeth asked, kneeling by Caleb as Derek began collecting their packs from the corner.

  “Nothing good.” He looked up at Lana and Derek. “You two check the supplies on the roof, make sure it’s all tied down. We’ll be out in a moment.”

  Frustrated at being made to wait, Lana grabbed one of the packs that Derek offered her, and they made for the door. Once outside, she wasted no time, grabbing Derek’s arm and turning him to face her. “You were out there for a long time. What’s it all about?”

  “They were getting us registered.” Derek wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Asked a bunch of questions—what we do, where we’re from. Surviving family, ethnicity, education. It was... I don’t know. Not good.”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “They have these new IDs with chips in them, said we’d need them to get into Lebanon. And some other places. If I had to guess, it’s someone’s plan to get everything centralized again. Except these guys weren’t with the US government—they’re with Apex Security Forces.”

  Lana gave a start. “Who the heck are they?”

  Derek opened the back of the SUV and shoved the packs in one at a time, jamming Lana’s into place before shutting the door. “They wouldn’t go into detail. They had satellite comms, though. And I saw some stuff that looked like drone equipment. They’re high-tech. Armored, too, so they’re combat ready. They didn’t threaten us... exactly... but I got the impression they were willing to engage if they needed to.”

  “Apex.” Something about the word triggered a thought, some memory from college, but Lana couldn’t pin it down. “Dad seems like he’s in a hurry, are we not waiting to move at night?”

  Derek didn’t answer until he’d retightened the rope holding the tarp over their gasoline store. When he met her eyes, his expression was dark and full of foreboding. “It was something they said while they were getting us registered.”

  Lana’s parents emerged from the house with the last pack and a stack of blankets. Derek lowered his voice. “They said we should head straight for Lebanon to pick up our IDs. And that if we come across a barricade without them, it could ‘delay’ us. Someone’s locking down the region. The longer we stay here, the tighter it’ll become. And the things they asked... I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like we want to be here when the door closes. Your dad got a look at the screen the guy was working on. The ID system is split into class ratings. That can’t be a good thing.”

  Caleb reached the car. “Let’s move.”

  “All set,” Derek confirmed.

  In a hurry, they piled into the SUV. By the time Lana got settled, that nagging feeling at the back of her brain turned into a sudden realization. It was from an environmental science lecture series on sustainability. That’s where she’d heard the word.

  She leaned forward in her seat. “I remember now. Apex is one of Alan Trusk’s big projects. A sustainable city model, all green tech. You think that could be where they were from?”

  Caleb twisted around to look out the back window as he pulled the SUV out of its parking spot. “Maybe, but I don’t want to find out. Not if they’ve got armed security out here muscling people into signing on.”

  Lana’s lips thinned as she recalled the criticisms students proffered after the presentation. About Trusk’s history of elitism, about the inherent problems the Apex project seemed to raise; namely, the issue of labor and supply of goods. It was, on the surface, a kind of technological ideal city where everything was sustainable, green, and ‘free’.

  But on closer inspection, it looked more like a theme park for the ultra-wealthy, sustained by an indentured workforce that paid their way into it with the promise of labor. And now there were armed ‘Apex’ security agents roaming Missouri, forcing people to register in some system? What the heck was going on?

  And why did it feel like the start of something very, very bad?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Apex Headquarters, CO

  Tuesday, July 17th, 6:36 pm MST

  Alan Trusk always thought scarcity was a thing you could taste. Not in an abstract way; in the literal sense. There was something about the quality of a rare champagne that made it just a bit crisper, sweeter, more vibrant. He savored the last sip of his flute with his eyes closed, letting the complexity of the flavors work their way into his taste buds.

  Twelve years old, from a small batch of four hundred bottles in all. He owned every single one, having purchased the lot in advance. About half of he’d given away as gifts. Now, there were only about ten bottles in the world. The way the climate was now, there would never be another. It might be decades, even centuries, before a new wine or champagne could be bottled, for that matter.

  Scarcity.

  He wondered idly if it was the knowledge of scarcity that sharpened one’s senses to the point that it affected the flavor. If so, maybe the key to full enjoyment of anything was simply a fuller awareness, a more complete knowledge. He plucked his phone from his pocket to record a voice memo. “Greater awareness leads to fuller enjoyment. Deeper knowledge leads to deeper appreciation. Zen Buddhism has something to say about that, I bet. Have Rena upload some books from the archive.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rena said from behind him.

  Trusk ended the recording and glanced back at the woman. “Ah, I’d forgotten you were there. Got distracted. You were about to brief me on our progress in Missouri, though.”

  Rena gave a curt nod, utterly unaffected by his forgetfulness. She was a stunning woman—preternaturally capable, supernaturally organized, and nearly devoid of any overt appearance of ego or desperation. The kind of confidence he wished he could surround himself with at all times, but, again, it was a matter of scarcity.

  Of course, she was beautiful as well, made of a long neck, long legs, and an athletic core, with a face of hard planes and sharp angles that most men would have been intimidated by. There was nothing soft and approachable about Rena McAllister. Which was ideal. Trusk didn’t need soft. He needed brutally efficient and unflinchingly on task.

  “Most recent reports show around a thirty-eight percent uptake of the Dimension IDs.” Rena barely glanced at the tablet in her hand. “I’ve deployed five additional units to the regions. Security grew by three percent after the recruitment drive, all new personnel rated at A-3 and above, with around sixteen percent rated S-1 or above. In raw numbers, that amounts to—”

  “Twenty-six thousand, five hundred and... twelve,” Trusk supplied.

  Rena didn’t confirm or deny it, but he knew he was right. He’d been on a talk show once, when he was six, memorizing and spitting out sums and products for viewers fascinated by the child prodigy. It was a talent that had never left him.

  Instead, she continued apace. “Current estimates suggest that we’ll have Missouri at eighty-three percent compliance within the next thirty days.”

  “Military presence?” he asked, wandering across the vast open space of his private office to the wall of windows overlooking the Rocky Mountains. A bit of sun shone through the particulate here, and the cloud cover parted enough to glimpse Mount Harvard. At twelve thousand feet, the air was so thin that the ash and vapor had nothing to support them, and ultimately sank for hours at a time. Once or twice in the last week, he’d even seen a patch of blue.

  “Decreasing gradually.” Rena followed him to the windows, keeping herself in his peripheral vision to accommodate his frequently wandering attention. “We aren’t getting regular numbers from the Defense Department on that, but anecdotal reports suggest the decrease is steady.”

  He gave a slow nod and glanced down at his empty flute with a bit of regret. There it was again. Scarcity. Nothing lasted. But, then again, that was the only reason anything had value. Once something was unlimited, it was worthless.

  Gaining ground in Missouri was good; it was a region that had given President Welcher a lot of trouble since all this started. Demonstrating that Apex could bring the state to heel would give the president confidence going forward. But if she was withdrawing the military from Missouri, they were going somewhere. And he was pretty sure he knew where. “Springfield?”

  Rena swiped at her tablet. “Last drone scans suggest a population growth of two percent. Around one thousand and fifty unique residents observed. Crop yields are estimated to be less than previously estimated, but still within acceptable margins. I haven’t identified a more promising food supply source. You’re wondering whether the military is being moved to striking distance.”

  “Is it?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “There is a higher density of military activity there, an increase of around point-oh-eight percent in the last three days, but Welcher’s profile from before the fall suggests she won’t commit to an offensive operation before the end of the month. Her recorded decision window is between twenty-six to thirty-four days, with a margin of around two days.”

  She paused and tapped her tablet a few times. “Based on her disaster response profile... we can assume that window has narrowed slightly, but not to less than twenty days.”

  “Narrow that to sixteen,” Trusk suggested. “If I recall, her profile suggests a tendency to make erratic decisions under moments of intense duress. I doubt that our disaster profiles have anything compared to a collapse of the world’s infrastructures in the face of a cosmic event.”