“Trust me,” said the pilot, “I used to live around here. That thing west of us is the Raritan River—this is the Arthur Kill. It’s man-made, and back before the Break they had to dredge it every year to keep it open. Now that it’s not being dredged, I guess it just filled up with silt.”

“Enough to grow reeds on the sides,” said Woolf. “Can we still make it?”

“I can give it a shot,” said the pilot, and cranked the engine into low gear. They putted almost lazily up the narrow passage, marsh birds screeching and singing and hooting back and forth around them, and Marcus felt like he was on a safari through a giant metal canyon. The buildings on both sides were oppressively industrial, not the once-shiny buildings of Manhattan but the weather-beaten processing plants of the Chemical Coast. The water everywhere around here had an oily sheen to it, and Marcus wondered how the birds could survive on it. A giant fish jumped in front of them, snapping at something near the surface, and Marcus couldn’t help but imagine the reeds full of hungry, mutant crocodiles.

The driver took them as far as the Rahway River before making a detour; the Rahway was pumping enough water into the channel to keep the river south of it clear, but the tributaries farther north presumably had better outlets for their water than this artificial ditch, and the span between here and Newark Bay appeared to be sealed tight with sediment and reeds. They turned west up the Rahway, surrounded now on both sides by tall chemical silos, and wound through it until a series of massive bridges passed over them: a railroad and a multilane highway so broad it took four bridges to contain it. “That’s the Jersey Turnpike,” said the pilot, and brought them into shore near the base of the railroad. “I lived off exit 17E.”

Woolf had the pilot steer them toward the coast, and the Gridsmen gathered their equipment and starting wading to shore; Marcus eyed the reeds on the riverbank warily, still half expecting a crocodile, before jumping in after them.

The New Jersey Turnpike plowed straight through the city on the shore, a giant metropolis separated from Manhattan by yet another giant metropolis between them. “Either they’re not watching us this far west,” said Woolf, “or they see us no matter what we do. I say we screw stealth and make the best time we can.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

“Just a few more minutes,” said Haru. “They’ll be here.”

“And the Partials with them,” said Private Kabza.

“We’ll be fine,” said Haru. “How many of these drops have we made, and how many times have you been murdered by Partials?”

“That’s not an entirely fair way to frame it,” said Kabza, but Haru cut him off.

“I said we’ll be fine,” Haru insisted. “Check with the rear guard again.”