Sunrise

Darla jammed the end of the treated rope—a fuse— into the hole. “Time?” she asked. She meant until they reached us.

“Five minutes,” I guessed. Then the Reds broke into a charge. “Three!”

“Make up your mind!” I held the lamp up, and Darla dangled the other end of the fuse into its flame. The fuse caught, burning fiercely, and the four of us ran for our Bikezilla.

As we started to pull away, I looked back at the U-Haul. The Reds were less than two hundred yards away by then. And the fuse had burned out.

Chapter 68

“Turn back!” I yelled. I tried to wrench the handlebars around, but the front forks were ganged together—I couldn’t steer without Darla’s help or at least acquiescence. “Trust me!”

We swung around, heading straight back toward the U-Haul trailer. Some of the charging Reds lifted their guns. I heard a bullet spanging off metal nearby and, a split second later, the pop-pop-pop of gunfire. I grabbed the hurricane lamp in my right hand, leaving my hook around the handlebars. I lifted the lamp and hurled it. It smacked into the side of the U-Haul in a tinkle of breaking glass. Oil ran down the trailer’s wall, and suddenly it was afire. I had hit the side of the trailer, though, not the back. I wasn’t sure if that would be enough to light it.

We swerved wildly, racing away from the oncoming Reds, who were still shooting at us. Darla veered again, putting the house between us and most of the Reds. I kept my head low, trying to merge it with the handlebars, hoping to give our pursuers a more difficult target. My butt, though, was thrust in the air so I could stand on the pedals, slamming them down in a desperate attempt to coax more speed from the bike.

As we put more distance between ourselves and the Reds, the firing started to slacken and then ceased entirely. I risked a look back over my shoulder. A bunch of the Reds were crowded around the U-Haul. A couple of them were using their coats trying to beat out the flames licking up the U-Haul’s side. One of them reached for the handle that kept the rear door of the U-Haul closed. He turned the handle, pulled, and then vanished in a massive yellow-and-orange fireball. The sound and overpressure wave reached me an instant later, making the bike buck uncomfortably and my ears pop.

Three-quarters of the farmhouse had been blasted away. The roof and remaining wall toppled slowly toward the crater where the U-Haul had been, with a crackle and screech of breaking wood. The snow had melted instantly in a radius of at least fifty feet, revealing ash that looked dirty-gray by comparison to the surrounding snow. The Reds closest to the blast were gone, simply gone. Those farther away were scattered in a welter of limbs, some attached, some not.

The noise of the blast was the signal. Uncle Paul and his forces attacked.

Chapter 69

Most of the Reds ran. A few surrendered, throwing down their weapons and raising their hands. A few fought and died quickly under the combined fire of Uncle Paul’s people and mine. We used the Bikezillas like cavalry, wheeling to attack the Reds in the flanks as they ran. I searched for signs of Ed or the people who had been with him. I also looked for Red—I had a score to settle. My hook clanked against the handlebars as if in agreement. But I didn’t see either of them amid the chaos of fleeing Reds.

When the battle seemed well in hand, Darla and I steered our Bikezilla over to a group of prisoners who were being guarded by a detachment of Uncle Paul’s troops. I swung out of the bicycle seat and approached the closest prisoner, a tall, gaunt man who vaguely reminded me of Abraham Lincoln. “You took a group of our people prisoner two days ago,” I said.

He looked utterly terrified. He nodded, shaking too hard to speak. I noticed his eyes were fixed on the sharpened edge of my hook.

“Nobody’s going to hurt you,” I said as calmly as I could. “Where are those prisoners?”

“S-s-sent to Stockton. With a detachment. Yesterday.” “Thank you. Where’s Red?”

“D-d-don’t know. W-w-was with us.”

“Thank you.” I leapt back onto the Bikezilla, and we took off in search of Uncle Paul. When we found him, I didn’t even take the time to dismount. “Have ninety-six of your men join us—eight in each bike’s load bed. Ed’s in Stockton, we’re going after him. Keep harrying the Reds—keep them from reforming or reaching Stockton.” “Yes, sir,” he replied, turning to give the orders. Within half an hour, we were on the road to Stockton. I pushed the pace as hard as I could with Bikezillas loaded with passengers. As we flew down the road, I worried. Attacking a well-defended wall with fewer than 150 people would be suicidal. There was no chance the wall would be as lightly defended as the last time we attacked. Red was a lot of things—vicious, amoral, and scary as hell— but he wasn’t stupid. But I owed it to Ed to try.

The best plan I could come up with was to attack in a predictable place with a small force while a larger one circled around to come at them from the opposite side. If they overcommitted to defending the first attack, the strategy just might work.

A few miles outside of Stockton, I split our forces. Four Bikezillas, including mine, to make the diversionary attack; eight under Nylce’s command to circle around and make the real attack from the opposite side of the city I waited about an hour—enough time for the larger force to get in place—and then we saddled back up and rode directly for Stockton.

When I caught sight of the gate, my heart sank. There were at least a dozen guards. More people appeared as we approached, dozens of them, maybe hundreds—a throng atop the car wall. Attacking here wouldn’t be a diversion; it would be suicide. As we got close to rifle range, I raised a hand, ready to call a stop. Then I noticed something: nobody was aiming weapons at us.

They were cheering.

Chapter 70

I slowed our advance, letting our Bikezillas drift closer. The cheering swelled. When I got close enough to pick out individual faces, I saw Ed standing atop the log gate, waving. Wasn’t he supposed to be a prisoner? Other familiar faces surrounded him, including Eli who had sheltered me, Alyssa, and Ben more than two years earlier while I was looking for Darla and my parents.

“Ed!” I yelled.

He jumped down on the outside of the gate and came toward us at a run. I dismounted, and we embraced, pounding each other on the back.

“Thought I was going to have to fight through half of Stockton to get to you,” I said.

“How’d you know we were here?”

“Nylce. And when we took out Red’s forces in Stockton, a prisoner told us you’d been moved here. What’s the situation?”

“When Red caught us, I figured we were going to be turned into roasts and ribs,” Ed said. “But he was in the middle of marching on Warren, so he sent a detachment to take us back to Stockton.”

“I knew that much.”

“Red left a big force behind in Stockton—more than fifty men. He learned his lesson the last time you caught him with his pants down. But he took all his most loyal men with him. And so I got to talking to the folks guarding us, telling them a little bit about my history, about Speranta, and well, about you. And I sort of promised them they could move to Speranta.” Ed grimaced, looking at me.

“That’s awesome, Ed.”

“Lots of people have friends and neighbors who’ve disappeared. So we’ve had a bit of a revolution here in Stockton.”

My head was spi