The door to the stairwell was unlocked, but blocked by something. Madelyn could only get it to open a few centimeters before it scraped. She heard footsteps coming from around the corner and saw the light bouncing on the wall. Madelyn put her shoulder to the door. It moved a couple more centimeters—still too narrow to slip through.
The man who came around the corner was unarmed. He trained his flashlight on her and Madelyn threw herself into the door again. She wasn’t fast enough. She had her head and shoulders through, but the man caught her by the arm when she was still trying to squeeze her pelvis through the opening.
Madelyn threw herself down on the far side of the door. He lost his grip on her arm.
The new angle allowed her hips to pop through the gap.
The man caught her again by the ankle.
Madelyn kicked at him.
She couldn’t shake his grip. She managed to pull her other foot through and pushed against the frame of the door. He was too strong and wouldn’t let go. In her desperation, Madelyn kicked at the door. It slammed shut on her shin, but also caught one of the man’s fingers. He yelled and she was free.
Madelyn pulled her foot through and climbed through the debris in the stairwell. She glanced back to see him trying to squeeze his head through the gap. He was too big. The debris wouldn’t hold the door shut forever. She had to move fast.
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The guy below her grunted and groaned as he tried to push his way through the door. Madelyn climbed. She turned a corner and kept moving by the door to the next floor. Just as she turned the next flight, the door banged open. She heard that person descend while Madelyn climbed. She reached the next level as the man below yelled to his compatriot.
Madelyn slipped through the door and shut it quietly behind herself. She was on the second floor of a shopping center. A balcony looked down on the floor below. Light filtered in through broken skylights. The shops around her were all dark. Any one of them could make a decent hiding place for the moment. It might be good to wait and then double back behind their pursuit.
Madelyn rejected the idea.
Her instincts told her to find a weapon and stand up to these people. They had no right to capture and imprison her. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Then again, she couldn’t let indignation get her caught again. Madelyn looked for an exit.
She found an escalator and shuffled down it. She paused halfway to listen. All the action was above her. Feet were racing along the shops and she felt completely exposed on the escalator. She hurried down, jumping the divider halfway to change direction away from the sounds above.
She saw an exit sign.
Madelyn sprinted around the corner and ran for the big glass doors. A chain was looped through the handles. She veered left to where broken glass glittered on the floor. Madelyn vaulted over the metal frame of the broken pane. She was in the parking lot.
Madelyn ran for the fuel truck.
She opened the valve just above where the red hose was connected. Inside the rubber hose, liquid gurgled. She had turned it well beyond the helpful arrow that someone had marked on the handle. They had left a welding torch there for convenience. Madelyn ran to the stacked wood, locked the torch on, and dropped it on the pavement next to where the liquid would emerge from the steel burner.
She looked up and saw people bang through the door. One of them raised a gun to his shoulder. Madelyn ran.
Behind her, the propane torch hissed its blue flame at the burner.
A bullet ricocheted off the pavement as the fuel caught. With the valve opened all the way, a wall of fire burst up. It shielded Madelyn from the aim of the gunman, but there were still people running towards her. They were probably younger and faster. Madelyn got her bearings and ran in the direction she knew they would never head. She ran for the other bonfire—the one burning at the airfield.
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Madelyn scooped mud and leaves over herself in the ditch as the explosion tore through the air. They must not have gotten to the truck in time. The fire had worked its way back up the fuel line somehow.
Even as the sound of the blast was still rumbling through the air, Madelyn heard the clicking. The Roamers passed her by. They had bigger prey to stalk.
Madelyn thought about the old woman and the scheduled trial. Now they had a reason to convict her. Even though it was self-defense, Madelyn had to admit that she had now committed legitimate crimes against this group of people. If the roles were reversed, she would hunt down the perpetrator and make them pay.
She didn’t have time to consider the morality of the situation. Madelyn had to get out of town before the locals decided to track her down. They already had a sense of which direction she was headed. Her only hope was to use their fear against them.
The truck was her best bet, even though they knew about it. The vehicle worked and it was supposedly refueled. She had no confidence that she could say that about any of the other cars she might find tucked away.
Madelyn waited another minute to be sure the clicking Roamers were gone. She brushed off the leaves and continued towards the airfield.
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The fire on the runway was still burning. The sound of another minor explosion rolled towards her from the shopping center. Madelyn ran to the fuel truck. She climbed up into the cab, switched on the ignition, and dropped it into gear. She found a clipboard and a book on the passenger’s seat. She used those to put a little pressure on the accelerator and she jumped out before the thing could gather too much speed.
Madelyn stood there as the tanker rolled off. At the end of the supply hose, it dragged the burner behind it. The burner dripped little pools of burning fuel as it bumped across the concrete. The tanker was headed for a collapsed hangar. Madelyn ran for the path through the woods.
With a little luck, she was able to retrace her steps. Her pace was slower, and she wasn’t quite as panicked. Some sort of alarm began to wail from the south. Madelyn wondered if they had some sort of emergency procedure in place. Perhaps there was a third fire that could be activated, just in case. To compete with the exploded tanker at the shopping center, the third fire would have to be mammoth.
Madelyn crossed the field as something exploded from the direction of the airfield. She had intended to create a distraction. Another explosion was a nice bonus. The Roamers would be busy.
Madelyn couldn’t find the hatch to Harper’s underground hiding place. It didn’t matter. She had the general vicinity, and she could find her way back to the streets. She used Harper’s shortcut and found the neighborhood with the tomb room.
She was close to the truck now.
Madelyn dropped into a crouch when she saw movement on the street.
She saw a young man with blond hair jog up to a position near some overgrown bushes, stand there for a second, and then jog away. It was a lucky break. The blond man had given up the sentry’s location.
Madelyn moved through the tall grass of untended lawns and passed behind the houses until she was close enough to the sentry’s bush. She approached from the blind side and managed to sneak up on the sentry. Inside the bushes, someone had thrown together a post that looked down at the truck.
Harper was on her belly under there, keeping watch down the street. With their complicated process to occupy the Roamers, these people had seemingly forgotten some of the basics of surveillance. Harper had an arsenal of weapons stacked behind herself. Madelyn picked up the nearest rifle.
Harper turned at the noise. She was already whispering.
“I told you to hold your…” Harper began. She realized who she was talking to.
“Back out of there,” Madelyn said. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to.”
Harper extracted herself from the bush slowly while Madelyn kept the rifle pointed at the young woman’s guts. As they stood, Madelyn took the revolver from the girl’s holster and executed a pretty slick maneuver. She spun Harper, shouldered the rifle, and had the revolver to Harper’s temple before the young woman could react.
Madelyn had a hostage.
She backed out from the bushes and turned Harper towards the post of the blond man.
He revealed himself quickly, emerging from the side of the building with his own rifle to his shoulder.
Madelyn kept herself hidden behind Harper and pressed to her back.
“How many of you are here?” Madelyn asked. “How many watching the truck?”
“Just us,” Harper said.
“If you’re lying, one of you will die for no reason. Tell the truth.”
Harper didn’t say anything. Madelyn felt her stiffen a tiny bit. The flinch gave Madelyn all the information she needed.
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“Get in,” Madelyn said. She held open the driver’s door and tossed the rifle into the bed.
“I’m not going with you.”
“You get in and tell me what you did to this truck or I’ll shoot you.”
“Go ahead,” Harper said.
Madelyn didn’t hesitate. She moved the revolver a tiny bit and fired twice. Horror spread across Harper’s face. She hadn’t shot the young woman, but they both understood the implication. Fire or not, Roamers would be on them fast.
The blond man understood. He took off at a sprint away from the gunfire.
“Get in and we’ll get this thing up to seventy. That will keep us safe, right?”
“You’ve killed us both,” Harper said. She didn’t waste any time. She dove in through the door and slid across the seat. Madelyn got in and tried to turn the key. It came off in her hand. What was stuck in the ignition was Gabriel’s fob, but only half of a key.
Harper held up the real thing.
Madelyn took it and started the truck. She pressed the accelerator as she pulled down the shift lever with her gun hand. Harper could have attacked and stripped the weapon. For the moment, the two women were on the same team.
At the end of the block, Madelyn slowed and veered to the left in preparation to turn around.
“Don’t slow down. They’ll be coming fast,” Harper said. “Take a right.”
Madelyn glanced at the young woman and decided to trust her. When she swung the truck to the right, Harper began to slide across the seat. She caught herself as Madelyn straightened out the truck.
“Slow a little. There’s debris coming up on your left.”
The road swept into a gentle turn. Harper was right. They avoided the debris and Madelyn began to pour on the speed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Harper look towards the revolver. Madelyn switched it to her left hand. She wasn’t a good shot with that hand, but Harper didn’t need to know that.
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As the road ascended out of the city, Madelyn slowed down.
“No,” Harper said. “Keep going. We’ve got a safe house farther up the hill.”
Madelyn nodded and accelerated. They were going well more than seventy. She hoped the young woman was right about the speed. In the rearview mirror, Madelyn saw a much different picture than when she had come down out of the mountains. Instead of one neat line of smoke from the bonfire, there were three billowing clouds of black over the city. Madelyn hadn’t meant any harm, but she had destroyed their community. If her grandmother had asked, she would have answered, “No, this was not the type of person she wanted to be.”
Harper turned in her seat and sighed when she saw the smoke. She flopped back around.
“You’re still young,” Madelyn said. “You’ll figure something out.”
“We were close to homeostasis,” Harper said. “We had the density figured out. All the results were coming in. We could have isolated them by the end of the year.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It doesn’t involve blowing anything up. You wouldn’t understand.”
Madelyn laughed.
“How do you folks communicate? As soon as I broke out, you must have taken up watch on this truck. How did you know?”
“We have a radio,” Harper said. “It operates below the noise floor of the Hunters. They don’t even know it exists.”
“They’re smarter than you think.”
“No,” Harper said, “they’re not. They’re exactly as smart as we think because we have studied them. That’s how we came up with the isolation plan. They just need to be herded and then isolated and the whole area will be clean. We’re the reason why you’ve been so safe up in your mountains. You can kiss that goodbye.”
“We haven’t exactly been safe,” Madelyn said. “I just ran into Roamers a few days ago out at Coffin Pond.”
She felt Harper’s eyes on her.
“It’s true.”
“The safe house is right up here,” Harper said. “Just pull over and I can walk there.”
Madelyn nodded.
She pulled to the side of the road. Madelyn held the gun across her body as Harper opened the door.
“I didn’t come here to hurt you,” Madelyn said. “I just don’t do well with jail cells or societies, I guess.”
The young woman frowned, nodded, and slammed the door.
Madelyn kept her eye on the rifle in the back while she pulled away. She didn’t want Harper to grab it and start firing after her. When she was a few feet away, she started to think about those people and their inventions. She wondered if maybe they had rigged the truck with some kind of tracking device. Maybe it would communicate below the noise threshold or whatever. It probably didn’t matter. She would be ditching the truck at Circle Poke anyway.