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The intersection confirmed what he already knew, that he was on the western outskirts of Tesla. The buildings were low and spread out. Hawk stood on the corner and thought for a moment. He didn’t have his wallet or any money. Maybe he could sneak onto a bus, or the light rail? It was the kind of thing that worked on tri-d, but it seemed pretty dicey in real life. He could probably steal a bicycle, but what then? Wyoming was a big state.

Finally, he remembered the place he and Mom had crashed when they first got here. A safe house on the northwestern edge of the city. They’d stayed there for like two weeks, bored out of their minds. One day, Mom had said screw it, they needed some air. Wandering around town was too big a risk, but there was a Jeep in the garage, and they’d loaded up a picnic and taken it out into the desert. It had been a joyous, jolting day of loud music and off-roading. She’d even let him drive. Everything had seemed such an adventure back then, such fun.

The house was only about a mile away. A green one-story with an attached garage. He banged on the door, but there was no answer. All the neighboring houses were dark too, and the streets were empty. He went around back, figured screw it, and tossed a paving stone through the patio door.

The interior looked like he remembered, the same ugly carpet, the same outdated tri-d. The lights worked, but he left them off. The fridge was empty, but there were some beans in the cabinet. He ate from the can as he walked around the house, checking the closets and dressers, hoping to find something to change into. No luck. Best he could do was scrub at the pee stains with a wet towel.

The Jeep was in the garage. It was coated in dirt, sprays of it running back from the wheels. Maybe no one had used it since he and Mom. A full tank of gas, which was good news, but no keys in the ignition.

Hawk went back inside. This was a safe house. The keys had to be somewhere. No hooks hanging by the door, so he went into the kitchen, started opening drawers. He found a white envelope with a thick stack of weathered twenty-dollar bills. He tucked it in his pocket, kept looking. Bingo, a ring of three keys, one of them bearing the Jeep logo. He was only fourteen, and hadn’t driven since that day, but he’d figure it out, and besides, the streets were empty—

Outside the kitchen windows a parade was passing.

Hawk froze, glad he’d left the lights off.

It wasn’t a parade.

It was an army.

The men didn’t wear uniforms, but the dust on their clothes and dirt on their faces made them all look the same. They carried guns, mostly rifles and shotguns, but some heavier stuff too, things he recognized from games. There were so many of them, a flood, like a concert letting out, only they walked in silence, their eyes hard. Not more than forty feet away.

One of them looked over, a long-haired scarecrow with an assault rifle in his arms and a huge bowie knife on his hip. The man stared right at him, and Hawk felt his heart bang in his throat and forehead, a wave of panic so hot he thought he’d wet himself again. He wanted to run, but he couldn’t move, just stood rooted at the counter, the keys in one hand. After a moment, the guy’s eyes flicked away and he kept moving. The house was dark, the windows transformed into mirrors. He hadn’t seen Hawk after all. Slowly, he lowered himself to his knees.

The men kept coming. Hundreds. Thousands. The sky was turning red behind them, and he had a sudden flash of something from the graphic novel.

An army of demons marching out of hell.

CHAPTER 34

“Yes, we know, but they are still outside the perimeter defenses . . .”

“Floodlights. Of course they’ll shoot them out. That’s why . . .”

“We’ve got more people than guns, and not enough ammunition, so get a network of runners going to keep it . . .”

“They don’t have vehicles. Horses.”

The room was a cross between a meeting space and an amphitheater, and packed with people jabbering into phones, staring at terminals, bouncing data back and forth. Until recently it had served for corporate meetings and product demos, and in one of those little ironies Cooper was growing tired of, the plaque on the outside of the door labeled it the War Room. A cutesy touch that would have fit in a tech start-up—which, he supposed, the NCH was.

“How should I know when they’ll attack? Sometime after the big bright spot in the sky goes away, and before it comes back . . .”

“Casualty projections are all over the board . . .”

“No, horses . . .”

Cooper imagined bulling through the room, fighting his way to Jakob at the head of the table, offering help. The prospect tired him in every way. This was already a too-many-cooks situation, and while in theory his tactical experience would be valuable, without being plugged into the Holdfast bureaucracy, what was the point?