"Take them out!" Ezra motions to the lone vehicle.
Two of our guards rush toward it. The first turns and shrugs at Ezra. "They're trapped in there." He smiles.
Why waste the bullets?
Ezra gets up and stalks toward the road, unholstering her
gun. The three Blue Coats are yelling now. Banging on their windows. One is behind the wheel, the other two in the backseat. Ezra lifts her gun and dispenses five or six bullets into the wrecked car. They go cleanly through the windows, drop two of them immediately. The last man, still sitting in the far side of the backseat, crawls over. He pushes his dead partner out of the way and presses his chest against the window. He's giving Ezra a better target.
"Let him burn!" Aaron is laughing.
Ezra sets her eye behind the rifle's sights and shoots. The man falls away from the burning window. She then turns to the guard, her rifle aimed at his feet.
"You do what I tell you to do, goddamnit! Or you get left behind! Got it?"
Aaron swallows. "Yes, ma'am."
Ezra reholsters her gun and storms back to where Lazarus is still lying in the grass. "Harper, bring me
Noah
. Time to bury the package."
I run over and pass our dictionary to a young guard named David. I'm surprised at what a relief it is to unload the weight of it. David accepts
The Book of Noah
with both hands and holds it tight against his belly while another guard digs a hole in the soft earth. Then, eyes big, fingers careful not to smudge any dirt onto its green velvet wrap, David extracts a piece of something bright and silver from a pocket. He and the second guard work together to wrap our dictionary in a swaddling of moisture-proof aluminum. Then down it goes, into the hole.
"Harper," Lazarus says. "We were hoping you'd be able to use your sight to find it again after it had been buried. Will you remember where we put it?"
"Absolutely."
"Good." Lazarus turns to Ezra, who's made the short trip over and is reloading her gun. "Where's Skinner?"
"Blue squad estimates he's a quarter mile off the main route, east down 2070."
"How will he be coming?"
"How do you think?" Ezra grumbles. "On foot. Straight down the middle."
"Why?" I ask.
Ezra looks at me as if I'm an idiot. "You just stay the fuck out of the way and let me handle it."
"Don't do anything stupid," I say, but Ezra doesn't hear me. She's already off. Making her way up the line to confer with her guards.
I run over to a clump of Queen Anne's lace. Choose one with a dappled, dying plate of yellowish flowers for a head, then watch as
The Book of Noah
disappears. The earth where it's been put looks exactly the same. I lean down and put the flowers in the center of
Noah
's grave. My powers of perception have been well honed over the years. Despite my inability to find
Noah
by its vast glow, I'll be able to recognize its burial place from the fence.
Something buzzes across the tops of our heads. It hums as it splits the air and sends down a slight breeze.
Ezra pushes Lazarus onto his back and me onto my belly. She crawls around and lies down sideways at our front.
"Lieutenant!" Aaron calls. He's standing with his back to us, legs planted. His weapon ready to fire at something over the fence. He's saying something we can't hear.
"Repeat!" Ezra shouts.
The boy shoots, stepping back to absorb the recoil. "Four on the ground! Twelve o'clock!" he yells, eyes swinging to Ezra. Before he can turn back to the front line, he takes a quick, surprised step toward us, as if shoved.
"Aaron?" Ezra asks.
"Four." Aaron takes another involuntary step our way. He inhales sharply. A look of surprise sprouts on his face as he looks down at his chest. A small hole appears equidistant from each breast pocket. The boy blinks. Gurgles for a moment on his own blood, then spits a little of it onto his chin. "Four," he repeats, and the field around him explodes.
Rita's put her long-barreled gun on a short tripod. It swings from one side to the other, emitting shells and small thunderclouds of smoke. She's shooting at the Blue Coats just across the fence. Taking down no one while spraying away our ammunition.
Goddamn her.
She's putting our bullets in the ground.
"Harper!" Lilly shouts from her spot in a clump of overgrowth. She's alone, as Noam's gone back to help Lazarus.
She holds out her drive for me to see. It's housed in a sleek black casing the size of a large tablet. If we're caught like this, we're to swallow them, those of us who were chosen to carry them.
"Aaron!" Lilly points. "Is he wearing his?" The young guard is still sitting up. I can see a chain around his neck, the drive a weight at its end.
Aaron died too fast. Didn't get the chance to swallow his.
Christ, help me.
I barely have enough spit to swallow my own.
I elbow my way across the pockmarked ground. Have to feel around on Aaron's torso before the flash drive comes into contact with my hand. I snatch it loose and begin crawling back to my higher bit of weeds when I see his gun shining a surprising distance away. It's half hidden beneath a patch of high grass close to the fence. Too far for an attempt at retrieval. I'll come back for it if given the opportunity.
Beyond the fence, tall grass is parting. A man is standing up, his face deep brown, eyes black. He has no fear of us. Waves at me and then at Ezra with the small hole at the end of his gun, deciding casually which one of us to shoot first.
"There!" I shout at Ezra, but she's already seen him.
I hear the loud popping of weapon
s
being fired but my twisting head can't see from which way it comes. Then the sickening, hard-soft sound of a bullet ripping flesh and the falling spray of blood. Like a sprinkler passing a large-leaved shrub.
Someone is dead. I don't want to look.
It's the Blue Coat. He's collapsed into a small, neat circle as if his knees have been cut out from beneath him. Rita's taken him down. She looks back, searching for my face. When she finds me, she smiles as if it's been enough to make me think I was wrong. That she's on our side.
"Three!" she says.
"Adams!" Ezra is motioning toward another man who catapults across the fence on a direct course toward me. He hits the ground and raises his gun. I won't be able to get out of the way fast enough. I just start to move when he's made to step sideways and falls heavily into a cross-legged seat. The man looks at me with big eyes.
What just happened?
Then dies where he sits. He never shows a drop of blood. I'll never know where Ezra's hit him.
"Two," she shouts. "Watch your ass, Adams!"
Ezra grabs hold of my shirt and tugs me along to behind the fallen Blue Coat. We use his body as a shield.
"Where's Skinner?" she asks.
"Didn't you see him?"
"No." Ezra pops a new clip into her gun. "That cocky son of a bitch is going to come straight down the middle. You let me know when he does."
I scan the horizon. Stop where Rita is hanging on to her weapon. She's got both arms up and the muzzle lifted, but no finger on the trigger. Fifty feet beyond her, just over the fence, I see Skinner. He's right in the center of the far field. Coming straight down the middle like Ezra said he would.
I point. "There!"
He's with another man. They begin to run. Vault over the fence with long, fast-shooting guns, Jingo first, then the other. Jingo shouts something to his partner. He's to collect our weapons, and us, in whatever order is easiest. There are only three people Skinner wants to keep alive--Ezra James, Harper Adams, and Lazarus Cobb. The rest are to be given one chance to lay down their weapons.
Jingo disappears into the high grass. I can see his shoulders
flexing over a lump of green and brown canvas that's been heavily splattered with blood. It's Aaron, our dead guard. Skinner has removed the boy's boot laces and is using them to tether our guard to his shoulders. When Skinner comes up again, it's with two heads and four arms. Skinner is using Aaron as a shield. Wearing him vestlike on his way to me. As Skinner runs, it's our comrade's body that absorbs the bullets.
It happens fast. I'm putting up my hand to shield myself from his approach, then I'm up in the air as Aaron falls past. His stubbled head soaked with blood and face peppered with shot, the dead guard falls into the space I'd just occupied.
"Come on," Skinner says, grabbing one arm and twisting me painfully off the ground. "You're better cover."
Jingo's wearing a cast on his right arm, from elbow to palm. It pushes painfully against my ribs as I'm yanked in front of him, my arms bound behind me with his belt. He walks us together toward Ezra, who's scrambled away. He sucks in quick breaths as we move. Each step hurts his damaged wrist.
Ezra is standing ten yards away. Her long-barreled gun is in her hand and pointed at Skinner.
"Put down the gun, baby," Jingo says.
"Put down the Monitor."
"Let's not do this. I happen to know you need Harper here as much as you need Lazarus."
Ezra lowers her barrel so it's pointed at one of my legs. She's going to shoot me to prove how little I'm worth. She glances up at my face and I nod.
Okay
.
"Shoot out both kneecaps." Jingo kicks at my shins. Splays me out so both legs are offered up as easy targets. "Long as you keep it below the jugular. We need her alive, don't we?"
I close my eyes. It's a lifetime of waiting before I hear Ezra's gun being tossed into the grass. Skinner doesn't immediately kill her, but it's no surprise. He loves her. Doesn't want to shoot her if he doesn't have to.
"What do you want, Skinner?"
"I think that's my question to you, darling. You have any preference for what numbers I call on you?"
I open my eyes. Ezra's pulled a package of cigarettes from one of her many pockets. "I'll take an eight-aught-five, if you have the energy for it."
"Don't fuck with me, Ezra. Not today."
"Oh. Okay, then how about a straight-up nine-sixteen?" She puts the lit cigarette in her mouth. Offers Skinner one from the held-out box. "Smoke?"
Her nonchalance enrages him. Skinner lifts his gun and sets it atop my shoulder for support. Shoots the offered cigarette away, taking a bit of her finger with it.
Ezra wasn't ready for this. For a terrible second, her facade of calm slips and I see a fear that tells me she knows what's coming. Then she seals herself off. Flips Skinner the bird with what remains of the digit and smiles.
"Put her down, Skinner." Ezra is trying to sound bored and unharmed. But her face betrays her. White cheeks and gray lips are the colors of too much lost blood. She needs to sit down before she falls there.
Skinner reholsters his gun. Behind me comes the sliding friction of a knife being unsheathed, then the cold tip pressed against my neck. "This is what you girls came to do, right? Get rid of your slates? How about we start with this one."
Ezra has retrieved a cloth bandage from a pocket. She uses it to tie off her finger's bleeding stump. "I thought Helen Rumney needed her."
"Maybe not." Jingo looks at the side of my face. Turns it in his hand. "We've got other Sentients coming. Rumney has 'em lined up around the block for that BodySpeak program of hers."
Ezra looks at him as if he was slow. "If you want to kill someone, kill her. But if you want to fight someone, fight me."
"You're about to fall over, darling."
"Then we should be about even." Ezra pulls her shirt over her head and drops it to the ground. Beneath her sports bra,
she's damp and white, and even more muscular than last I saw her.
Our remaining guards march forward slowly. We are greater in number, but Jingo and his partner have better weapons, automatics capable of spraying out hundreds of bullets before their clips run dry. And Jingo has me.
He unleashes my arms and pushes me ahead of him, the hot muzzle of his gun pressed between my shoulder blades. "Hold it there," he says, and our group stops. "Throw 'em down."
The other Blue Coat collects our weapons as Jingo pushes me onto the grass. I'm kicked forward. Yanked up by the other cop and corralled along with the rest of us. Next to me, Rita's hands are empty. Her gun is lying on the wet ground along with the others. I glance quickly at the fence. Aaron's weapon is still there, ten feet behind Jingo's partner.
Jingo points his weapon at us. "I'm going to be needing that book now." The muzzle skips up and down our faces, marking our foreheads with the red sights of his gun.
"Fight me," Ezra says.
Jingo answers with his gun pointed away from her, the muzzle trained on us. "When we're done killing all your friends here, then I'll get to--"
Before the last word is out of his mouth, Ezra crosses the short space.
Snap.
Jingo's head shoots back as she punches him in the face with her good hand. "Are you going to shut up or are you going to fucking fight me?"
Jingo is furious. He catches Ezra with the heft of his cast, the one I all but put on him at the farm, then looks down at where she's fallen into a rumpled pile. Mouth bleeding. "Fine."
He waves over his compatriot and hands the man a second weapon, his own. "Watch the others." Jingo begins to turn away, then stops, his eyes stuck on something beyond us. "Missed one." He points.
Both weapons in hand, the other Blue Coat walks over to Aaron's gun. He bends down and, with the tip of Jingo's rifle, pitches it into the pile containing ours.
"Good eye," he says to Jingo, then plants his feet wide on the ground before us, cocking the barrels of both guns.
I could die from the loss of hope.
Jingo's knife flashes under the rising sun. He circles Ezra, who's pulled herself to her feet. "So this is what you do during the day. And here I thought you were sleeping."