Germ

She kicked out, and a pair of hands seized her foot, wrenching her leg. She was pulled into the darkness. Stephen came behind her, grunting and thrashing. The door shut, and the arms hurled her to a dirt floor she could not see. She felt Stephen land beside her. A click, and light pierced her pupils. Blinded, she heard more clicks, metal sliding on metal, mechanisms locking into place. She knew these sounds. Shielding her eyes, she looked around—

Into the black barrels of a dozen guns.

eighty-four

Julia blinked. A face presented itself over the rifle poised directly in front of her. Crevices exaggerated the contours of the man's mouth and cheeks, the permanent twin furrows between his eyes. A spiderweb of delicate lines fanned out from his eyes, which were red and moist and slightly protuberant. Folds of flesh gave him little jowls that, coupled with an expansive mouth that God surely intended for profound utterances, made him look wise. It was a face at once friendly and sad.

It was the man who had beckoned to them.

The rifle came down—only this one—and the man pressed an index finger to his lips. "Shhhhhhh," he whispered, soft and long, as a mother to a baby. He took one step backward and leaned an ear to the metal door. Gently he laid the fingertips of his empty hand against the door, as though feeling for vibrations.

No one else in the room moved. They stood in a circle around Julia and Stephen, leveling an arsenal of pistols, rifles, and shotguns at them. Water dripped from their clothes. The man at the door cocked his head and raised his rifle like a shaman's staff, a call for silence. Then she heard them: footsteps approaching the door, the scuff of a sole against pavement. The sound moved past without pausing.

Someone behind Julia clicked his tongue, preparing to speak. The man at the door raised the rifle higher, shook his head. The sound outside the door returned, this time stopping directly outside. Silence. There was no noise for so long, Julia wondered if the person outside had moved off undetected. There was an almost imperceptible click. Her eyes fell to the doorknob, which was turning slowly. After the slightest rotation, it stopped. The person outside—certainly one of the Warriors—rattled the handle, shook the door.

"Get down," Julia hissed, trying for both discretion and urgency.

Then it happened: the assailants outside fired into the door. The bullets made convex dents in the door's metal skin but did not penetrate it. Two . . . three . . . four. The man at the door moved to the side, gesturing for the others to do the same. The handle jerked violently, then again, as bullets hit its outside counterpart.

Julia noticed that a heavy bar had been braced horizontally across the door; their safety was not dependent on the handle's integrity. The handle fell away, leaving a three-inch hole straight through to the gray alley. A shadow moved over it, then an eye appeared, rolling to take in the men, locking on Julia.

A rifle cracked behind her, loud. The bullet pinged three inches from the eye, which pulled away. A sound-suppressed barrel slipped into the opening. It spat blindly, hitting the wall behind Julia.

Men yelped and bolted toward an interior exit.

The black man by the door slammed the butt of his rifle against the barrel, which spat another bullet—this one kicking up a chuck of dirt a foot from Julia's knee. She felt hands under her arms, and she rose off the ground at rocket speed. She swung through the air and landed on her feet behind the crush of men leaving the room. She looked back. Stephen's expression was firm, implacable. He pushed her forward.

The man at the door kept striking at the barrel until it retreated. At the edge of the hole, the door's metal skin exploded inward.

The Warriors outside were shooting through without exposing their barrels.

She made it into the next room. The men crowded the back wall, pointing their rifles at the doorway. The black man ran in and slammed the door. He nodded, and someone hefted open a trapdoor in the floor.

The black man walked to the edge. He took in Julia and Stephen. "Come," he said.

Julia hesitated.

His expression softened. "It's not a dungeon. It's an underground passage. To a safer place. It's only a matter of time before those blokes get in." Tinged British, his voice was deep and smooth.

As if to appease her, or to indicate he was out of there, with or without her, he stepped into the hole and descended until he was gone. She peered down. A flashlight flicked on, revealing the man's face at the bottom of steep stairs. She glanced at Stephen and dropped her foot through.