But now, after consuming nearly six thousand calories, she could feel her muscles becoming supple once more. It was time to move.
She planted one foot on the soil, stood, and let the trench coat slide off her body. There was no moonlight to illuminate the field, and the stars were hidden behind a blanket of clouds, but she could see the police cruiser with absolute clarity. It rolled slowly down the road, stabbing into the darkness with its spotlight.
Janson crouched low and moved toward the road. The Wardens, though formidable as a group, became vulnerable when they spread out to search. And whoever was inside the police car didn’t have access to night vision goggles or Forward-Looking Infrared. If he did, he wouldn’t be using the spotlight.
The orb of light swept toward her, and she pulled her armor’s cowl over her face. Dropping to her knees, she stayed completely still and let the light sweep past her. As ruthless as the Wardens were, they were only human. The man with the spotlight would be searching for a roughly-human shape, and at this distance, her black armor would be nearly indistinguishable from the clods of dirt and clumps of grass covering the fallow field. As she expected, the light passed her by without pause, and she jumped to her feet. It would be several seconds before the Warden aimed the light toward her again—plenty of time to close the distance.
She drew one of her pistols and held it at the low-ready as she ran. It would be all too easy to kill the man in the police car. But she couldn’t interrogate a dead man.
When she was twenty meters away from the blue and white vehicle, the spotlight suddenly turned toward her. Cursing, she dropped to the ground, sliding on her thigh and elbow. The beam of light cut through the air above her, missing by inches.
Move, she told herself. Move!
Spinning around, she crawled on her forearms and knees, thrashing across the ground as she tried to close the gap. If the man in the car identified her, it would all be over. He would radio his friends in town and they would swoop in to save him. She would be on the run, or worse—pulverized by a 40mm grenade.
Getting to her hands and knees, she came as close to the nose of the police car as she could without touching it and glanced back at the cone of light.
Not good, she thought. The spotlight was retracing its route slowly and carefully. Something had caught the Warden’s attention.
Her heart pounded against her ribs as the light came to rest on a tiny cloud of dust, directly above the spot where she had hit the ground.
There was a click—the push-to-talk on the vehicle’s radio, and a man’s voice said, “Hold on, I think I see something.” The car door opened, and a leather boot hit the ground. The Warden gripped the door, hoisted himself up, and aimed a black flashlight.
Janson could hear his heartbeat; it was almost as fast as hers. And he was holding his breath, listening.
She stayed completely still, wishing she could freeze every molecule in her body. The Warden carefully aimed his flashlight to the left, and then to the right, but not toward the front of his car. Not yet.
He exhaled, inhaled, and held his breath again. Janson wanted to flatten out on the ground or duck around the other side of the vehicle, but any movement would be as obvious as waving a white flag.
The warden took another step forward and stood directly in front of Janson. He was shining his light on the ground fifteen feet away, examining a disturbed patch of grass.
Without shifting her head, Janson moved her eyes to watch him. His shoulders were shrugged upward and his feet were set apart. He had found something.
The Warden swallowed, grabbed his radio, and held it in front of his mouth. But he didn’t speak, and the beam of his flashlight carved a slow, circuitous path through the darkness.
He took another step forward, and Janson’s muscles instinctively coiled. It would take less than two seconds to jump him from behind and tear the radio from his grasp. But he had already reached out to the other Wardens, and if he didn’t report an “all clear,” then they would be on their way in minutes, maybe less.
The radio squawked in his hand, tearing apart the silence. “Have you found anything?”
The Warden held down the button. “Maybe.” He knelt and ran an open palm over the blades of grass. Then, shifting his weight, he began to turn,
Now, Janson thought, it has to be now!
She could see the edge of his face, read the gangland script tattooed around his right eye socket. The small round beam of his flashlight illuminated the ground three feet away from her legs. Two feet. One foot.
The silence broke as the grass whipped aside. The Warden sucked in a breath, spun around, and aimed his light at the sudden movement. He dropped his radio, drew his sidearm, and fired. The shot hit its mark, cutting through lean flesh and tossing blood into the air.
Janson’s shoulders sagged almost imperceptibly. She watched as the Warden stood and took three steps away from the car, shining his light on the rabbit’s gleaming, twitching body. He exhaled and began to chuckle. Janson seized the opportunity and backed around the corner of the vehicle.
The Warden shuffled back to his radio and squatted to pick it up. “False alarm. It was just a rabbit.”
“Copy that.”
The Warden clipped his radio onto his belt, gripped the door handle, and then paused. He frowned at his dull reflection in the window, and the dark shape beside it.
Janson tore away his radio and pistol, and she tossed them aside. Then she snaked her arm around his neck and began to squeeze.
The man who had once called himself Sonny opened his eyes. He stared through the gently swaying branches of a leafless tree at a bank of clouds. He watched the clouds drift by for several seconds, waiting for his mind to sharpen.
All at once, he remembered what had happened. He saw the shadow in the window, felt the arm around his neck, and a name appeared in his mind—a name that caused every inch of his body to quake in terror.
Jarrod Hawkins.
He sat up and found himself staring into a face with no nose and no eyes. An involuntary grunt escaped his lips, and he pushed himself away from the face, propelling himself through the carpet of leaves with his hands
“Stay away! Stay away from me!” His back slammed into a tree, pinning him in place, and he let out a shriek.
The figure stood, and the Warden who had once been Sonny stopped screaming. He took two deep breaths and wiped the sweat from his forehead. It wasn’t the Hated One after all. It was the woman he’d been searching for.
She pulled the black, form-fitting mask away from her face and let it hang from her collar. “That was quite a reaction. Have you met The Nightmare before?”
The Warden rose to one knee and held the tree stem as he stood. “We’ve been waiting for you, Agent Janson. Waiting and watching. You should have stayed where you were. There is nothing for you here but death.”
She stepped forward, placed a hand on his shoulder, and forced him onto the ground with a flick of her wrist.
Pain flared in the Warden’s ribs when he hit the ground. He coughed and rolled onto his stomach, breathing in the earthy scent of rotting leaves.
“Who’s been watching me? Who are you people?”
“We are the Wardens of the apocalypse. The guardians of the coming order.” He pushed himself up to his hands and knees, but she flattened him against the ground by stepping on his back.
“You know who I am,” she said, gradually increasing the pressure on his spine, “so you must have top-level clearance. But what kind of government agency authorizes the use of grenade launchers against a civilian gas station?”