Sure, he could. He’d trained on how to kill people with a knife. A six-inch blade like this, driven up through the base of the skull, would sever the spinal column and scramble the cerebellum in a single stroke. The victim would never know he’d been hit.

“Please, Adam,” Emma pleaded. “This is wrong in so many ways.”

Adam stopped short and turned on her. “He’s my best friend, Em. What’s wrong in so many ways is to let him suffer when there’s no hope for him. I’d want you to do the same for me.”

He spun back to his mission, tears streaming, and breathing coming in gulps. Please, God, give me the strength to do this right.

As it turned out, God did him one better.

Adam was still ten feet away when his best friend heaved a huge breath and then collapsed to his side. It was over.

Rollie was dead.

Adam tried to take it in, even as he tried not to. There were too many to bury, and there was no one to call. Hell, for all he knew, he and Emma were the only people left in the whole world. It was just too much.

Emma put her hand on his shoulder, and this time, he allowed himself to be folded into a hug. They stood there for the better part of a minute. She held him until he relaxed and pushed away. “This is the new way of things, isn’t it?” she asked.

“At least until further notice. What the hell did people do? How did this start?” He knew they were wasted words—posing questions that had no answers—but he needed to speak them aloud.

“I don’t want to go to Joan of Arc,” Emma said. “This is enough. I don’t want to remember my friends like this.”

“Okay.” God knew Adam didn’t want to see any more sights like this one.

“But what do we do?” Emma asked. “Where do we go?”

As they walked back to the Bronco, Adam threaded the KA-BAR’s scabbard onto his belt. “There’s a place about a hundred miles from here,” he explained. “It’s called Top Hat Mountain.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

VICTORIA DID SLEEP, IT TURNED OUT, BECAUSE WHEN MCCREA ANNOUNCED that it was time to get going, she was startled to find that it was already 8:30 a.m. The day dawned dark, a kind of murky twilight that reminded her of sunset on a cloudy day. And as the day progressed, it never got brighter.

“That’s the soot in the air,” Copley explained without having been asked. “Nuclear winter.”

“Must you, Paul?” Victoria scolded.