Deedee held up the satellite phone as an explanation. “I was talking to Susana. But something happened.” Her eyes were wide, brimming with sympathy. “Kayla, I think she’s in trouble.”
The blood in Kayla’s veins shuddered to a stop. Deedee finally knew the truth. It should have been a relief, but with the crazies attacking outside, Kayla suddenly wished Deedee had never discovered the plight of Hillcrest. Her throat went dry, and she had to pry her tongue away from the roof of her mouth to speak. “Things are…difficult all over. The trouble we have here is affecting people everywhere.”
Deedee frowned. “I tried to call her back, but she didn’t answer. She…she was screaming.”
Kayla took the phone and glanced away, unable to hold Deedee’s questioning gaze. “I’m sure she’ll be fine. Baltimore is very far away, and there are other people who can help her.”
Deedee leaned in. “Maybe I could help her. She sounded scared, and I’m good at making people feel better when they’re scared.”
“No.” The word came out louder than Kayla meant it to, so she lowered her voice and repeated, “No. This is our home. We need to stay here and stay safe. And the children need you to look after them, right?”
Deedee gnawed on one of her fingernails. “Susana said there were children there. And a baby. Maybe we could go get them and bring them back here, where they can be safe.”
“There are hundreds of people with Susana, and we’re already taking care of a lot of people here. We don’t have enough food for everyone there, too.”
“They can have my food. And I’ll go to the grocery store and—”
“You can’t just go to the grocery store anymore, Deedee!”
The young, round-faced woman took a step back, flinching as if she had been struck.
Suddenly Kayla’s words were echoing in her mind, and they made her stomach turn. How could she have been so selfish? And to shout at the most caring, kind, and loving woman she had ever met…
The door a few feet to her right, which had been locked moments ago, burst open. Jarrod stepped through the threshold, his armor covered with rows of sharp spikes and blood dripping from his clawed fingertips. He stepped between Deedee and Kayla, and the muscles in his shoulders quivered with rage.
Kayla took a step back. She had known Jarrod for years and had seen him do terrible things. But she had never seen him this angry before. Not at her. “Jarrod—” The word came out as a squeak. “I—I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay,” Deedee said in a soft, dejected voice. “She didn’t mean to yell.”
It was if a switch had flipped in Jarrod. The spikes and claws vanished, and bright patches of color appeared all over his body. He drew the armor away from his head and turned to face Deedee. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” She was studying her shoes. “I’m just…sad.”
“Why?” He put a hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
Eric’s rifle cracked three times in quick succession. Kayla shifted her weight from one foot to the other. With Jarrod out of the fight, the intruders were probably closing in. But she had no one to blame but herself, so she stayed where she was.
“I talked to a woman on the phone,” Deedee said. “Her name is Susana, and I think she’s in trouble.”
Jarrod froze in place for several moments, and then his head twitched to the left. “You’re…correct. Susana is in danger.”
“You knew? Why didn’t you tell me? You shouldn’t keep secrets, Jarrod.”
“I was concerned that you would…” He didn’t finish his sentence, and his head twitched again.
Deedee took Jarrod’s hand, then she took Kayla’s hand and addressed both of them at once. “What’s right is right. We don’t have to help Susana. We don’t have to save her or her baby. But we have to try. One of us should go to Baltimore, and I think it should be Jarrod.” She squeezed his hand. “Because you’re so strong and so fast.”
“But…I have to stay with you.” Jarrod swallowed. “I want to stay with you.”
A realization hit Kayla like a bolt of lightning. She walked to the door and peered out at the morning twilight. “They’re going to assault Hillcrest today. That’s why they stepped up their attacks here.” She turned toward Jarrod. “Borya wants to make sure you stay here.”
“It’s highly probable. But we have no way of knowing for sure.”
Kayla thought for a long moment. “It’s too much of a coincidence. The phone call from Susana, and then the attack. I think—”
Jarrod stepped forward, putting a hand on her shoulder and pushing her aside. He stepped outside and stared up at the sky.
Kayla followed him out with her hand on her pistol. “What’s the matter?”
But the answer was obvious. The sky, from horizon to horizon, had turned blood-red.
20
Harlem Park
Baltimore, Maryland
Concrete walls rose twenty feet above Highway 40, presumably to shelter the residential lots from the sound of traffic. But there was no traffic on the highway, and the only sounds were the shouts of angry Wardens and the ear-splitting reports of hunting rifles.
Janson’s legs pumped against the road, hurtling her forward beneath a kaleidoscope sky. Either Borya had targeted the east coast with a weapon specifically designed to produce a powerful Electromagnetic Pulse, or he had simply detonated a tremendous number of nuclear warheads in orbit. Either way, the results had been catastrophic, disabling every vehicle on the road, including the police cruiser she had stolen from the Wardens.
She had gravitated toward Highway 40 because it was the most direct route to Hillcrest, and there were surprisingly few roadblocks along its path. Now, she knew why.
The Warden’s had set up a trap, luring vehicles and pedestrians into the artificial canyon and firing down upon them from above. Even an amateur marksman would have no trouble disabling a police cruiser or executing a group of refugees trapped in the confined space.
Janson’s lungs burned, and she glared ahead at an overpass. Eight men were leaning against the guard rail, propping their elbows against the steel and cradling rifles in their hands. And all around Janson, the bodies of men, women, and children littered the street.
She clenched her teeth and began to weave from side to side with every step. She would not be easy prey.
A round zipped past her head, missing by two meters, and another round tore into the pavement by her right foot. A third round zipped past her left hip, cutting a hole through her billowing trench coat, and a fourth struck the road directly in front of her. They were trying to box her in, to get her to break stride. But they had no idea what she was capable of.
Stretching her stride further, she shifted to the right side of the road and leapt upward, mounting the concrete wall. The Wardens shifted their aim in perfect unison and continued firing. One of them landed a glancing blow that struck sparks off her shoulder, but it wasn’t enough to bring her down. With another powerful leap, she landed on the overpass, less than ten feet from the nearest sniper.
Her pistols cleared their holsters in a fraction of a second, and she put a bullet in the man’s eye socket. Before his head even bucked from the impact, she had begun to sidestep. She lined up her sights, tilting her pistol twenty degrees to the left, and squeezed the trigger. Another headshot—another gunman down.