Written in Fire

CHAPTER 44

In the flare of light from his rifle, the man kneeling in the street looked different from the others. For one thing he was older, fifty or even a very fit sixty. But there was more to it. It seemed to Natalie that he had a serenity about him. He had fired just a single shot, not a screaming burst, and where the others were lit by ferocity or pain, he had a killer’s calm. As if this scene of horror was his home.

It scared her. And so when she lined up her sights on the place he had knelt, she didn’t hold back. She held down the trigger and unloaded the rest of the magazine at him. The bullets ricocheted off the concrete, sparked off his rifle, and though she couldn’t say for sure, she thought she saw his body fall.

She dropped to the floor, removed the magazine from her rifle, and reached for a new one. The bag was empty. She grimaced, said, “Jolene?”

As she looked over, she saw Jolene on the floor, arms outstretched and a strangely placid expression on her face. Staying low, Natalie hurried over. No point in checking for a pulse. There was a neat hole in her forehead.

Something tore in her then. She hadn’t known the woman long, had really only had the one conversation, but they had fought side by side, and that had connected them in a way she’d never understood before. Like her, Jolene wasn’t here for ideology, or Tesla, or even her own survival. She’d fought for a child. Natalie took a trembling breath. Laid a hand on Jolene’s eyes and closed them. Then she grabbed her dead friend’s spare ammunition and moved to the next window.

The moment she popped her head up, there was a fusillade of fire from the street below, flashes from a dozen spots. She dropped, fought the shake in her hands. The street had been filled with attackers, men sprinting across with impunity. For the first time in a long time, Natalie let herself look around.

When the attack started, there had been eight of them spread out across the floor. Eight men and women, including Jolene and Kurt and the pudgy girl with the dog. Jolene was down, Kurt was nowhere to be seen, and the dog was whimpering and pawing at the girl’s body. Best Natalie could tell, she was the only one left.

Their line had failed. The Sons had broken past the building. It was over.

You don’t know that. They’d been hit hard here, but maybe the rest of the city hadn’t taken as much fire. She had to believe that, because otherwise it meant the militia was streaming in everywhere, and how long could it be before they reached the city center and the bunker where her children hid?

She didn’t dare even crouch, instead crawled across the floor, pushing aside broken glass and spent shell casings. Her file cabinet was shredded, the metal punched with scores of holes through which paper scraps bled. The d-pad was already active; she’d left it up so that she could glance at the map as she reloaded, although she had been too focused to actually do it very often.

The city glowed in swirling colors like fire. It wasn’t just their position that had broken. The Sons had gotten in through a dozen spots, and pitched battles raged all over the city. Epstein’s towers still held, but the colors showed the militia drawing closer from every direction.

They’d failed. Somehow everything hadn’t been enough.

Natalie stared. Tried to think what to do. She was low on ammunition and wildly outnumbered. The situation had flip-flopped, and now she was on the outside, and the killers were between her and her children. There was no way she could get through town.

She imagined Nick in this position and knew what he would think. Fight until they kill you. She loaded a fresh magazine, readied herself to face that fire again.

As she was about to stand, the battle map disappeared from her screen. There was a flash of an image, and not only from her d-pad, she saw, but from Jolene’s. Others across the floor lit up too, casting bright lights against the ceiling. A ten-foot wall screen mounted on the opposite building glowed to life. And on all of them, the same image. A surreal, impossible picture.

Her ex-husband.