She fired twice.

Her first shot grazed Parter and whizzed on to strike something behind him with a loud metallic whang. The second bullet struck the coach somewhere in the arm. He threw a hand over the wound and bolted for cover.

Clark readied herself to fire again and saw Mitchell Malacek turn his attention from the orange trailer—Luke Evers, blood smeared over his stomach, was collapsing outside its door—and turn a black Glock in her direction.

Clark fired first. She didn’t hesitate. A warning shot, but good enough to spook Mitchell. The boy took three steps backward and squeezed off a round but Clark had already cleared the short distance to the jaunty green trailer on her left and heard the bullet strike the dirt where she’d just been standing.

She touched her father’s old revolver, felt it tucked tight against her waist, ready and eager.

Anything would help.

Silence fell over the Bright Lands, broken only by a chugging generator.

Clark poked her head around the green trailer to survey the scene. The circle was deserted. No men, no boys, no Bethany. With a stab in her heart, Clark saw Luke Evers lying on the concrete porch of the orange RV ten yards away, on the far side of the circle from her. So much for brotherhood, Clark thought: Mitchell Malacek had shot him in the back.

She heard a faint, high shriek beneath her feet, a sound like a nail dragged across a brick. When the ground shook a moment later the force of the quake was so strong the field lights above the circle trembled on their stalks, threw wild shadows around the trailers. That thing down there was almost here, and Clark had an ugly suspicion it would find a way to get aboveground soon enough. If she didn’t get Joel and the others out of here they might just have to introduce themselves to Bosheth himself.

Luke wasn’t moving. Nothing she could do for him now. Instead, Clark thought of what he’d done earlier, before the shooting had started. Luke’s eyes had gone twice from her face to the black camper trailer and back again. It might have been nothing, or he might have been trying to tell her what she needed to know. It was all she had.

Go.

Hustling through the darkness behind the green trailer, Clark strained to track this place’s geography. From this trailer, moving up her side of the circle should bring her first to the silver Airstream, then to Whiskey Brazos’s truck, then to a long exposed space and then the black camper.

If Joel was still alive, and if he was there in that black camper—so many if’s—then maybe Kimbra was alive and with him as well. Maybe Clark could salvage some of this situation. Maybe she wouldn’t spend a lifetime choked by the shame she already felt for involving KT, Jamal, T-Bay and Whiskey in a firefight.

Go.

As Clark reached the end of the green trailer some strange monster composed of nothing but pale flesh and black leather threw itself across the ground in front of her. She raised her gun to fire, thinking it was the twitchy thing from her nightmares, but no: it was only Mr. Boone, heaving himself along on his elbows with what little life was left in him. Boone turned to look up at her, blood pumping from his nose, a black Glock held loosely in his hand.