She suddenly shivered, from her head down through her spine. And then it became too much once again and she started screaming. She arched her neck and shoved the air from her lungs, past taut vocal cords. “Help! Help!”

But nobody was listening up there because everybody was dead up there. She knew it. She groaned loudly, only it sounded more like a snort. She scrambled to her knees, gathered what strength she had, and launched herself toward the trapdoor again.

Her muscles were already thickening and she slammed into the hard wood like a sack of rocks. Tanya collapsed onto her belly.

Things went dark again.

SHANNON CLEARED the tree line, headed pell-mell for his mother who had just smashed the glass with her elbow in a frenzied attempt to escape the house. She was a bloody mess.

Shannon’s vision blurred and he groaned with panic. His foot caught something—a rock—and he sprawled on the edge of the lawn.

The tree at the forest edge just behind him splintered with a hail of bullets. But it didn’t matter—he was down now and they could pick him off easily.

He clambered to his knees and looked skyward. The helicopter’s cannon was lined up on him, ready to shoot.

But it didn’t shoot. It hung there facing him.

Shannon stood slowly, quaking. Fifty meters to his right, his mom had one leg out the window, but she had stopped dead and was staring at him.

“Shannon!”

Her voice sounded inhuman—half groan, half bawl—and the sound of it sent a chill down Shannon’s back. “Run, Shannon! Run!”

“Mom?”

The helicopter turned slowly in the air, like a spider on a string. Fire filled Shannon’s throat. He’d seen the thing do this trick with his father and uncle. His feet wouldn’t move.

He had to save his mother—pull her from that window, but his feet wouldn’t move.

A streak suddenly left the helicopter. The wall above Mom’s head imploded for a split second. And then the room behind his mother erupted in a thundering ball of flame.

A wave of heat from the detonation struck Shannon broadside. He stared in the face of the blast, unbelieving. The window his mom had been in was gone. Half of the house was gone; the rest of it was on fire.

Shannon whirled around and ran for the jungle, barely aware of his own movement. He ran into a tree and his world spun in lazy circles, but he managed to get back up and run on. This time he made it without a single shot. But this time he didn’t care.

SHANNON RAN under the canopy, his mind numb, every sense tuned to raw instinct now. He leapt over fallen logs, dodging thorn-encrusted vines, planting each foot on the surest available footing despite his pace. He cut sharply to his right within a hundred meters. In his mind’s eye, Tanya called to him from the mission, her lips screaming, stricken and pale.

Behind him, shouts rang through the trees. A sapling suddenly split in two and he jerked to the left, ducking. The staccato reports of automatic-weapon fire echoed through the jungle and he ran forward, toward the south—toward Tanya.