She tossed it over the top of the car; Peter yanked her to the ground as the grenade went off with a bang. The lights were closing in. They took off at a hobbling run, Peter’s arm wrapped around Alicia’s waist. Lumbering out of the darkness was a boxy vehicle with a huge plow jutting from the front like a demented smile, the windshield wrapped in a cage of wire; some kind of gun was mounted to the roof, a figure positioned behind it. As Peter watched, the gun sprang to life, shooting a plume of liquid fire over their heads.

They hit the dirt. Peter felt stinging heat on the back of his neck.

“Keep down!” the voice boomed again, and only then did Peter realize the sound was amplified, coming from a horn on the roof of the truck’s cabin. “Move your asses!”

“Well, which is it?” Alicia yelled, her body pressed to the ground. “You can’t have both!”

The truck ground to a halt just a few meters from their heads. Peter pulled Alicia to her feet as the figure on the roof slid down a ladder. A heavy wire mask obscured his face; his body was covered in thick pads. A short-barreled shotgun clung to his leg in a leather holster. Written on the side of the truck were the words NEVADA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS.

“In the back! Move it!”

The voice was a woman’s.

“There are eight of us!” Peter cried. “Our friends are still out here!”

But the woman seemed not to hear him or, if she did, to care. She hustled them to the rear of the truck, her movements surprisingly nimble despite her heavy armor. She turned a handle and flung the door wide.

“Lish! Get in!”

The voice was Caleb’s. Everybody was there, splayed out on the floor of the dark compartment. Peter and Alicia clambered inside; the door clanged shut behind them, sealing them in darkness.

With a lurch, the truck began to move.

Chapter Forty-Six

FORTY-SIX

That awful woman. That awful fat woman in the kitchen, her loose round form spilling over her chair like something melted. The tight, close heat of the room and the taste of her smoke in his nose and mouth and the smell of the woman’s body, the sweat and crumb-filled creases in the rolls of billowing flesh. The smoke curling around her, puffing from her lips as she spoke, as if her words were taking solid form in the air, and his mind telling him, Wake up. You are asleep and dreaming. Wake up, Theo. But the pull of the dream was too strong; the more he struggled, the deeper he was drawn down into it. Like his mind was a well and he was falling, falling into the darkness of his own mind.