_2016_05_13_16_27_46_462

And so she had tried to do that. To prepare herself for the fact that she might—would—have to point a gun at a human being and pull the trigger. She made herself picture it, over and over and over, all while staring out the window as the city of mirrors transformed itself into a battlefield.

She watched as a crew hitched a bulldozer to a bus and toppled it, the bus drifting and hanging and then crunching down, blocking the width of a street.

Felt the gut-rumble of chainsaws cutting down the gene-modified trees so every window had a clear line of sight.

Watched bartenders nail tables across doors. Teenagers haul floodlights. Cyclists distribute ammunition.

Smelled the smoke as outlying buildings were burned to deny the invaders cover.

Listened to:

Jackhammers.

Siren wails.

Gunfire.

And when her van started to slow, she took in the battlefield, the patch of earth she would be defending with her life. A complex of low-rise buildings, perhaps ten in all. The corporate headquarters of a firm called Magellan Designs. Atop the tallest building was a wireframe globe thirty feet across and glowing, a pulse of light circling it slowly. Magellan made expensive electronics; she remembered Nick drooling over one of their tri-ds, a sleek projector with sound that made her rib cage rattle. They hadn’t bought it, of course—it cost a month of his government salary—but now she wished they had. Wished they hadn’t been practical. They should have taken it home and watched movies all day long, then made love on the floor in front of it.

A long time ago, in a lost world.

The man with thinning hair turned out to be named Kurt, and he was the one who suggested they use the basement as a shooting range.

“Won’t the bullets ricochet?”

“We’ll stand here”—he gestured to one side—“and shoot at an oblique.”

“But—”

“Do you usually wear your hair back like that?”

“Huh?”

“Given gravity as a constant and variable values for flexibility and curl, I can generate a fourth-order nonlinear differential equation to describe the shape of your ponytail.”

“Right,” she said. “You’re gifted.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Standing here, you said?” She handed him the rifle. “No, not sideways. Face forward. One foot a little in front of the other. Brace the butt against your body, and press your cheek against the stock. Okay. Now—”

Five o’clock, and the sun was nearly touching the horizon. Cold whiskey light glinted on mirrored glass, battling with the pale glow of the corporate logo atop the neighboring building. The ring around it pulsed slowly, tracing, she assumed, Ferdinand Magellan’s course circumnavigating the earth. Every time his “ship” was in the Pacific, it turned her whole world violet.

Natalie could see a dozen other defenders up in other buildings. Like hers, their windows had been broken out, with desks and filing cabinets piled up to block incoming bullets. In one of the neighboring buildings, a handsome man in his fifties was doing the same thing she was, and for a moment their eyes met. He smiled and raised a closed fist. She returned the salute.

The complex was near the edge of the city, but the buildings beyond were all squat things, single story. A charging station. A restaurant. An empty parking lot beside the last stop of the light rail train. Cars had been towed and stacked in rough barricades of jagged metal and broken glass.

In the distance, out of range of her rifle, the enemy moved. Thousands of them. At this distance, she couldn’t make out any details, and that was somehow more menacing. Like it was a single formless creature out there, stretching across her entire field of view, a shapeless, ruthless beast waiting only for darkness to fall. Her belly spasmed and her hands shook.

Use the fear.

She tried to think what Nick would do if he were here. Plan his reaction when the attack started? Well, keep low. Aim carefully. Don’t waste ammunition. She practiced releasing the magazine from her rifle, grabbing a fresh one from the bag at her feet, and slapping it in. Squatting, she raised the rifle and sighted on the edge of a drugstore down the block, imagined a man stepping out from behind it. Kept her breathing easy, paused between exhales, visualized steadily pressing the trigger.

“Damn, girl, you look fierce.”

Natalie turned. “Hey, Jolene.”

“Brought you some food. Some firebombs. And this.” She held up a bucket.

“What’s that for?”

“Well, gonna be a long night. Not like you can head off to the ladies’.”

“Wonderful.” The sky was saddening, the shadows growing deep. “Hey, you should probably take that off,” she said, gesturing to the woman’s gold-and-scarlet headscarf.

“Huh? Why?”

“Too easy to see.”

Jolene laughed, a warm, throaty sound, then unwrapped the cloth. “How do you know all this stuff?”

“My husband. Ex. He’s . . . he was an agent with the DAR.”

“DAR? What you doing here, then?”