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But once it’s in the air, it will take less than a minute to reach the front and infect tens of thousands of people.

And you know for certain what will happen then.

—and had only one.

Cooper shouldered the assault rifle, standing in a bladed stance, the stock braced against his shoulder. The weapon had no scope, but the sights were luminous. He fired three quick bursts.

Two things happened. Sparks flickered off one of the wings where his rounds had hit.

And the slide of his rifle locked back. The magazine was empty.

Beside him, Shannon fired and racked again and again, but Cooper wasn’t surprised to see the drone still rolling, rapidly picking up speed. If his bullets had ricocheted off the skin of the thing, shells would be useless. He thumbed the release and let the magazine fall from his weapon as he reached for his last one. The drone was hauling now, the distance growing rapidly, forty yards, fifty. He considered the fuel tank, but if the wing could take hits, there was no way in hell the fuel tank couldn’t, which left what? The drone wasn’t military, but it was newtech, obviously built to survive small arms under battle conditions.

Battle conditions. Not takeoff.

He primed the rifle and toggled it to full auto, trusting to muscle memory, to basic training. Seventeen years old, allowed to join up with Dad’s consent, a heady, hard time, and he’d done well, this was just another drill, practicing against a moving target, moving fast, he let the sights lead the drone as it gathered speed and he stared down the barrel, unblinking as he aimed at the strut of the rear wheel and fired half the magazine in a go, set up again and loosed the rest.

The retractable strut tore away, the bottom two feet spinning and bouncing ahead of the drone as it rocked back on its hindquarters, the material shearing and tearing, surfing a trail of sparks, and friction took the fuel tank and the liquid hydrogen blew in a dazzling fireball of pale blue flame.

For a moment he just stared at it. Then Cooper threw his head back and roared. Beside him, Shannon was laughing, one hand cupped to her mouth, the shotgun dangling from the other. They had made it, pulled it off, and even as the battle raged behind them, even though the world was far from safe, it would keep turning, there was still time . . .

Is what he was thinking as the second drone left the hangar.

He and Shannon looked at each other. Then she glanced down the runway.

Cooper saw what she was looking at, said, “No.”

“Yes.” She threw him the shotgun. “Get Soren.”

Then she sprinted for the abandoned glider.

CHAPTER 42

Luke Hammond stood in the darkness and watched men burn alive.

He had been a warrior his whole life, and long ago he’d recognized that no good man could have been the places he had been, seen the things he had seen, done the things he had done. It didn’t matter that he had fought for his country, for his children. It didn’t matter that he possessed discipline and restraint. There was a beast, a slavering, rotting, smiling thing that smelled of sex and sweat and shit. Every man sensed it. Most lived and died without spending time in the beast’s company, without tasting that terrible freedom or knowing the beauty that grows in horror. There were no words to convey it, because it came from a place beyond words, before words.

Good men would never acknowledge that fire is most seductive when it is out of control.

But the people in those windows knew that now. Win or lose, live or die, that knowledge would never desert them. It could be ignored, forced down, loathed, but that wouldn’t change its essential truth. The men screaming as they burned knew it too.

It was not romantic. It was not moral. It simply was.

Luke had expected that as soon as the line was broken, as soon as some of the Sons had made it past the defenses and into the city, the will of the defenders would snap. He’d been wrong. Even as scores of his men broke the lines, as the militia penetrated the city and the sounds of battle rose from every block, the people in the windows fought. They fought with the will of people protecting their homes and their children, and Luke honored that in them.

The Sons continued to charge, firing as they ran, leaping the bodies of their comrades. In the windows, rifles flashed, bottles rained down. The street was bright now, and the beast lurched from flame to flame, slavering and laughing.