By the time they reached the base of the hill, a crowd of men had gathered. Despite the cold, and now the rain, a pattering drizzle, some were bare-chested, exposing their narrow waists, the densely ribboned muscles of their shoulders and chests. All were smooth-shaven, their heads, too. Everyone was armed; rifles and pistols, even a few crossbows.

“Folks’ll stare,” Greer said quietly. “You better get used to it.”

“How many … strags do you usually bring in?” Peter asked. The term, Greer had explained, was short for stragglers.

Greer frowned. They were moving toward the gate. “None. Farther east you still get some. Up in Oklahoma, Third Battalion once found a whole goddamn town. But way out here? We’re not even looking.”

“Then what was the net for?”

“Sorry,” Greer said, “I thought you understood. That’s for the dracs. What you all call smokes.” He twirled a finger in the air. “That twisting motion messes with their heads. They’re like ducks in a barrel in that thing.”

Peter recalled something Caleb had told him, about why the virals stayed out of the turbine field. Zander always said the movement screwed them up. He related this to Greer.

“Makes sense,” the major agreed. “They don’t like spinning. I haven’t heard that about turbines, though.”

Michael was walking beside them. “So what were those things? Hanging in the trees, with the bad smell.”

“Garlic.” Greer gave a little laugh. “Oldest trick in the book. The fucking dracs love it.”

The conversation was cut short as they stepped through the gate, into a tunnel of waiting men. Greer’s squad had dispersed among the crowd. No one was talking. As Peter passed, he saw their eyes darting quickly over him. That was when he realized what the soldiers were all looking at: they were looking at the women.

“Ten-shun.”

Everyone snapped to. Peter saw a figure stepping briskly toward them from one of the tents. At first glance, he was not what Peter would have expected of a high-ranking military officer: an almost barrel-shaped man, a full head shorter than Greer, with a waddling, round-heeled gate. Under the dome of his shorn head, the features of his face seemed scrunched, as if they had been placed too close together. But as he approached, Peter felt the force of his authority, a mysterious energy, like a zone of static electricity that hovered in the air around him. His eyes, small and dark, possessed a frank, piercing intensity, even if, as it appeared, they had been incongruously set in the wrong face.

He regarded Peter a long moment, his hands on his hips, then looked past him toward the others, holding each briefly with the same evaluating gaze.

“I’ll be goddamned.”

His voice was surprisingly deep. He spoke with the same loose-jawed accent as Greer and his men.

“At ease, all of you.”