It didn’t last long, but it was enough. Pretty soon, Ghost saw the godboys coming back and he knew it was time to go. It was like pranking his brother, back when he was still around. You could poke at him for a little while, but then he’d get pissed and it was time to get out of the way. When a squad of AOG started swimming the canal, it was time to go.

Ghost scanned the room. They’d been set up for a while. Must have been planning the ambush for days and days. He grabbed his dead opponent’s gun. Ammo…

He couldn’t carry it all. He fumbled through the ammo, trying to match the guns to the ammo. Whole hodgepodge. He pulled a belt of bullets off one boy, and a couple of cartridges off another, scooped them into his shirt. Time to go.

The temptation to stay there, to try to get the rest… In a sudden inspiration, Ghost grabbed the rest of the rifles and flung them out the window, then the ammo he couldn’t carry, and the radio, too, all of it sailing out the window and down, tumbling, into the canal below.

Only then did he run. He went down two flights and this time the raccoons saved him, because they came up ahead with the godboys behind, and Ghost had enough time to slide out of sight. He stealthed down refuse-strewn hallways with mice and rats and raccoons, slipping through the building, keeping the map of the place in his mind, moving and dropping down another stairwell, and then down and down and down again, until he was in the water and swimming back to Dog Squad.

The old boy, Mouse, he would have just swum right out, but Ghost stopped short of the canal, peered out at the water and the canal and the shattered boardwalks.

Boys with guns were all around, but he had a gun, too, now, and the hunt was different. He’d hunted frogs and snakes and crawdads, and if the godboys weren’t snakes, he didn’t know what was, and so he scanned the canal and the buildings up above, peeking out, looking for glints of snipers, for signs of movement, and then he saw Dog Squad running, leapfrogging as they backed themselves out of the skirmish zone, and Van caught sight of him and then Ghost was out in the water, swimming, knowing his warboys had his back and that he had covering fire.

He came out of the water, dripping, trophy rifle held high, his pockets full of bullets and who the hell knew whether they’d shoot, but one thing for sure was that Army of God didn’t have those bullets.

The 999 opened up again, but Dog Squad was out of the kill zone.

Ocho looked at him. “Where’s Pook?”

Ghost pointed up at the building.

“Dead?”

“Yeah. Got it in the face.”