“What the hell was that?”

She wasn’t expecting Eric Weston to chuckle nervously, looking for all the world like a schoolboy caught doing something he knew he should be punished for.

“Oops?”

“Oops?? Oops??” she demanded, pointing toward the collapsing cloud of dust and smoke, “You did that?”

“Prim guns pack a bigger punch than I thought.”

She stared, wide-eyed, at the weapon he was still holding. “What did you do?”

“Turned up the power,” he said, “about three-quarters to the top.”

Lyssa closed her eyes, her knees feeling weak. She really wanted nothing more than to collapse into a nice comfortable chair somewhere where the world made sense again. She licked her lips slowly, deliberately, and looked at him for a long moment.

“Three-quarters?” she asked, her voice croaking just a tad.

He nodded.

“How much more powerful is full?”

“Don’t know. I thought it was a linear power setting,” he said, “but after that I’m pretty sure it’s logarithmic.”

“Oh God,” she mumbled. “I need a drink.”

“I need more ammo,” he said. “I’m running low.”

She rolled her eyes, remembering what he’d told her the gun fired. “There’s a Tiffany’s down the street.”

“Cute,” he told her dryly, “but I’ll pass.”

She snapped her fingers, looking disappointed, “Damn. I was hoping for an excuse to loot the place.”

“Come on, let’s move. There’s a Guard unit about eight blocks east. I think they’ve got a munitions truck with them.”

“Right behind you.”

Third Platoon consisted of five M7s and a recon APC designed to withstand medium to heavy IEDs, but they were moving very cautiously after getting the news about what happened to First Platoon at the south end of the park. That caution had allowed a resupply group to catch up with them while they moved into position.

The platoon was moving west now, along East 85th and crossing Madison. They’d stopped briefly when the thunderclap of the explosion shook the street and rattled every pane of glass around them, but quickly got under way again when the general’s demand for eyes on scene came through.

It was spooky, moving through the streets and slamming cars out of the road with the makeshift cowcatchers on the front of the lead tanks. Every now and then they saw a person looking out a window or standing on a street corner to watch them go by, but the city felt empty in a way that it never should.

New York may be the city that never slept, but right then it felt like the city that was in a coma, and none of the Guardsmen quite knew how to handle that.

“I see the city Met coming up. The park is right there,” Lieutenant Garibaldi said. “Slow us down and edge us out.”

“You got it, sir,” the driver, Corporal Tate, said from where he was sitting. “Launch drones, sir?”