As they drove, he waited for her to volunteer something about the male hybrid whose voice he’d heard. He watched her in the rearview mirror.

“What happened out there, Gina?” he asked.

“I messed up.”

“I mean, did you see any hybrids?”

“I think so. I’m not very good at it yet.”

She said no more, so he decided to let it ride for a little while longer. She leaned forward and put her hand on his shoulders.

“Helmet her,” he said to Linda, who pulled one out from behind the backseat. They’d gathered what of their old equipment they could scavenge from the town. On it was stenciled the name MASSENGILL. She gave it to Gina, who put it on, but seemed disappointed.

They drove on, passing across the crest of the long hill that separated Willoughby from the next valley. Now a new vista opened up, the vast burn that Gina had created, and he noticed that she cast her eyes down. Smoke drifted up here and there from smoldering stumps. The blackened, naked ruins of the farmhouse slid behind them on the right, and beyond them a rubble of boulders that had been the ridge that contained the cave that had saved Mark from her.

“This is where you tried to kill me,” he said.

“Please don’t bring it up,” she snapped.

“You were doing what you were programmed to do,” he said mildly, “just like me.” He shifted in the too confining seat and again glanced back at her. She’d thrust her hands in her pockets. He decided that he needed to be extremely careful with her. Something was not right.

The Emergency Alert System was on every station they could pick up, warning that the state was under martial law, that it was illegal to drive into the San Francisco Bay Area, that all bridges and tunnels were closed, and advising residents of San Jose on evacuation routes south and east.

A report came in that a large, extremely dangerous aircraft was moving southward from the Bay Area. Anyone who saw it should immediately seek protection.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Mark asked. “Is that what you saw?”

“I just saw smoke in the distance. The city wreathed in smoke. Kelly filled me in on the details. Thousands of people were tossed into the bay. She saw that. She saw—oh, odd, horrible things. People with their brains in their hands.”

After a moment, Linda broke the silence that had followed this statement. “We’re not enough.”

In the privacy of his mind, Mark knew that she was right, but said nothing to encourage bad morale.

As they drove, he returned to the question of Gina’s story. It just did not work. Who had she been talking to? She needed to tell him that or he needed to kill her, and he knew this, but he did not want to know it.