"Lish? What is it?"

Her lips moved slowly around the words: "They're ... coming."

From the rear of the convoy, the sound of guns.

Shit. Shit shit shit.

Michael took the stairs from the pilothouse three at a time; he raced across the deck, his feet barely touching steel, and down the hatch. He was yelling into his radio, "Rand, get down here right now!"

He hit the engineering catwalk at a sprint, grabbed the poles of the ladder, and slid the rest of the way. The engines were quiet, everything stopped. Rand appeared above him.

"What happened?"

"Something tripped the main!"

Lore, on the radio: "Michael, we're hearing shots up here."

"Say again?"

"Gunshots, Michael. I'm looking down the isthmus now. We've got lights coming this way from the mainland."

"Headlights or virals?"

"I'm not sure."

He needed current to trace the problem. At the electrical panel, he switched diagnostics over to the auxiliary generator. The meters jumped to life.

"Rand!" Michael bellowed. "What are you seeing?"

Rand was positioned at the engine-control array on the far side of the room, checking dials. "Looks like its something in the water jacket pumps."

"That wouldn't trip the main! Look farther up the line!"

A brief silence; then Rand said, "Got it." He tapped a dial. "Pressure's flatlined on the starboard-side charger. Must have shut down the system."

Lore again: "Michael, what's going on down there?"

He was strapping on his tool belt. "Here," he said, tossing Rand the radio, "you talk to her."

Rand looked lost. "What should I say?"

"Tell her to get ready to engage the props straight from the pilothouse."

"Shouldn't she wait for the system to repressurize? We could blow a header."

"Just get on the electrical panel. When I tell you, switch the system back over to the main bus."

"Michael, talk to me," Lore said. "Things are looking very fucking serious up here."

"Go," Michael told Rand.

He raced aft, plugged in his lantern, dropped to his back, and wedged himself under the charger.

This goddamn leak, he thought. It's going to be the death of me.

The convoy hit the isthmus doing sixty miles an hour. Buses were bounding; buses were going airborne. The tanker, last in the line, had failed to keep up. The virals were close behind and massing. The barrier of razor wire appeared in the headlights.

Peter yelled into the radio, "Everyone keep going! Don't stop!"

They careened straight through the barrier. Chase stamped the brakes and pulled to the side as the convoy roared past with inches to spare, pushing a wall of wind that buffeted the vehicle like a howling gale. Peter, Chase and Amy leapt from the cab.

Where was the tanker?

It lumbered into view at the base of the causeway-lamps blazing, engine roaring, traveling toward them like a well-lit rocket in slow motion. Past the turn it began to accelerate. Two virals were crouched on the roof of the cab. Chase raised his rifle and squinted through the scope.

"Ford, don't," Peter warned. "You hit that tank, it could blow."

"Quiet. I can do this."

A bullet split the air. One of the virals tumbled away. Ford was taking aim at the second when it dropped to the hood: no shot.

"Shit!"

From the cab, a pair of shotgun blasts came in rapid succession; the windshield shattered outward into the moonlight. There was a hissing groan of brakes. The viral flopped backward into the conical glare of the truck's headlights and disappeared beneath the front wheels with a wet burst.

Suddenly the cab was at a right angle to the causeway; the tanker was jackknifing. The whole thing began to swing crosswise. As its back wheels touched the water, the rear of the truck abruptly decelerated, swinging the cab in the opposite direction like a weight on a string. The truck was less than a hundred yards away now. Peter could see Greer fighting the wheel for control, but his efforts were now pointless; the vehicle's angular momentum had assumed command.

It flopped onto its side. The cab separated from its cargo, which rammed it from behind in a second crunch of glass and metal. A long, screeching skid, and the whole thing came to rest, lying driver side up at a forty-five-degree angle to the roadway.

Peter dashed toward it, Chase and Amy close behind. Fuel was gushing everywhere; black smoke billowed from the undercarriage. The virals were funneling onto the isthmus; they would arrive within seconds. Patch was dead, his head crushed from behind; what was left of him was spread-eagled over the dashboard. Greer was lying on top of him, soaked in blood. Was it Patch's or his own? He was staring upward.

"Lucius, cover your eyes."

Peter and Chase began to kick the windshield. Three hard blows and the glass caved inward. Amy climbed inside and took the man by the shoulders while Peter took his legs. "I'm okay," Greer muttered, as if to apologize. As they hauled him out, the first fingers of flame appeared.

Chase and Peter each took a side. They ran.

Passengers had massed at the narrow gangway, attempting to shove their way through the bottleneck. Cries of panic stabbed the air. Men were scrambling over the deck of the ship to free the chains that held it in place. Many of the children seemed dazed and uncertain, drifting on the dock like a herd of sheep in the rain.

Pim and the girls were already on the ship. At the top of the gangway, Sara was lifting the smallest children aboard, pulling others by the hand to hasten them; Hollis and Caleb were shepherding the children from the rear. A man charged from behind, nearly knocking Hollis over. Caleb grabbed him, threw him to the pavement, and shoved a finger into his face.

"You wait your goddamn turn!"

They weren't going to make it, Caleb thought. People had resorted to using the chains, attempting to drag themselves hand over hand to the ship. A woman lost her grip; with a cry, she plunged into the water. She came up, her face visible for only a moment, arms waving over her head: she didn't know how to swim. She sank back down.

Where were his father and the others? Why hadn't they come?

From the causeway, an explosion; all faces turned. A ball of fire was rising in the sky.

Wedged under the charger, Michael was trying to trace the faint hiss of leaking gas. Keep cool, he told himself. Do this by the numbers, joint by joint.

"Anything?" Rand was standing at the base of the charger.

"You're not helping."

It was no use. The leak was too small; it must have bled for hours.

"Get me some soapy water," he called. "I need a paintbrush, too."

"Where the hell am I going to get that?"

"I don't care! Figure it out!"

Rand darted away.

The blast hit them like a slap, hurling them forward, off their feet. Debris whizzed past: tires, engine parts, shards of metal sharp as knives. As a wall of heat soared over him, Peter heard a scream and a great crunch of metal and splintering glass.

He was lying facedown in the mud. His thoughts were disordered; none seemed related to any of the others. A raglike bundle lay to his left. It was Chase. The man's clothes and hair were smoking. Peter crawled to him; his friend's eyes stared sightlessly. Cradling the back of the man's head, he felt something soft and damp. He turned Chase onto his side.

The back of the man's skull was gone.

The Humvee was totaled, crushed and burning. Greasy smoke clotted the air. It coated the insides of Peter's mouth and nose with its rancid taste. With every breath it drilled into his lungs, deeper and deeper.

"Amy, where are you?" He staggered toward the Humvee. "Amy, answer me!"

"I'm here!"

She was pulling Greer clear of the water. The two of them emerged covered in gooey mud and collapsed to the ground.

"Where's Chase?" She had pink burns on her face and hands.

"Dead." Crouched, he asked Greer, "Can you walk?"

The man was holding his head in his hands. Then, glancing up: "Where's Patch?"

The burning truck would hold the virals at bay, but once the fires died, the horde would come streaming down the isthmus. The three of them had nothing to fight with except Amy's sword, which still lay in its scabbard over her back.

A harsh white light raked their faces; a pickup was racing down the roadway toward them. Peter hooded his eyes against the glare. The driver skidded to a stop.

"Get in," Caleb said.

Alicia saw only the sky. The sky and the back of a man's head. She sensed the presence of a crowd. Her stretcher jostled beneath her, there were voices, people crying, everything rushing around her.

Don't take me. Her body was broken; she lay loose as a doll. I'm one of them. I don't belong.

Clanging footsteps: they were crossing the gangway. "Put her over there," someone said. The stretcher-bearers lowered her to the deck and hurried away. A woman was sitting beside her, her body curled around a blanketed bundle. She was murmuring into the bundle, some kind of repeated phrase that Alicia could not make out, though it possessed the rote rhythm of prayer.

"You," Alicia said.

One syllable; it felt like lifting a piano. The woman failed to notice her.

"You," she repeated.

The woman looked up. The bundle was a baby. The woman's grip on it was almost ruthless, as if she feared someone might snatch it away at any moment.

"I need you ... to help me."

The woman's face crumpled. "Why aren't we moving?" She bent her face to the baby again, burying it in the cloth. "Oh, God, why are we still here?"

"Please ... listen."

"Why are you talking to me? I don't even know you. I don't know who you are."

"I'm ... Alicia."

"Have you seen my husband? He was here a second ago. Has anybody seen my husband?"

Alicia was losing her. In another moment, she'd be gone. "Tell me ... her name."

"What?"

"Your baby. Her ... name."

It was as if nobody had ever asked her such a question.

"Say it," Alicia said. "Say ... her name."

She shook with a sob. "He's a boy," she moaned. "His name is Carlos."

A moment passed, the woman weeping, Alicia waiting. There was chaos all around, and yet it felt as if they were alone, she and this woman she did not know, who could have been anyone. Rose, my Rose, Alicia thought, how I have failed you. I could not give you life.

"Will you ... help me?"

The woman wiped her nose with the back of a wrist. "What can I do?" Her voice was utterly hopeless. "I can't do anything."

Alicia licked her lips; her tongue was heavy and dry. There would be pain, a lot of it; she would need every ounce of strength.

"I need you ... to untie ... my straps."

Soaring leap after soaring leap, Carter made his way down the channel toward the isthmus. The mushroom shapes of chemical tanks. The rooftops of buildings. The great, forgotten debris fields of industrial America. He moved swiftly, his power inexhaustible, like a huge heaving engine.

A great backlit shape rose before him: the channel bridge. He unleashed his body skyward; up he flew, seizing a handhold just below the bridge's shattered surface. A moment of calibration and he hurled himself upward again, grabbed a guy wire with one hand, and somersaulted to the deck.

Below, the unfolding battle was laid out before him like a model. The ship and the mob of people funneling aboard; the truck roaring down the causeway; the barricade of flames and the virals horde amassed behind it. Carter cocked his head to calculate his arc; he needed more height.

Using one of the support wires, he climbed to the top of the tower. The water shone below him still as glass, like a great smooth mirror to the moon. He felt some uncertainty, even a bit of fear; he pushed it aside. The tiniest fleck of doubt and he would fail, he would plummet into the abyss. To traverse such a distance-to master its breadth-one needed to enter an abstract realm. To become not the jumper but the jump, not an object in space but space itself.

He compressed to a crouch. Energy expanded outward from his core and gushed into his limbs.