“Milo,” snapped the soldier, “get to cover. BH-2. Go!”
A second later a pulse of blue plasma struck the soldier and sent him flying backward, his rifle twisting into metal slag as it fell.
Milo flung himself sideways and lay behind the cover of the ruined truck, staring in absolute horror.
He had seen death a thousand times in dreams.
Never before in real life.
Not until today.
Not this close.
He tried to remember the soldier’s name.
Farley. Or Fraley.
Something like that. He couldn’t remember exactly, and he couldn’t remember the man’s first name at all.
He wanted—needed—to remember that name. This soldier—this person—had saved his life and then died for it.
Tears burned in Milo’s eyes. The soldier was maybe thirty. He’d had a life. He’d had a full name and maybe family. He’d been part of the camp, one of his mother’s soldiers.
He’d been brave enough to face down a Stinger, to fight it and kill it.
And he’d been snapped out of the world by a single dot of blue light.
Just like that.
Like he didn’t matter. Like his life was of no importance at all.
It shocked Milo.
It hurt him.
And it made him mad.
So incredibly mad.
Was this what happened to his father? Had the Dissosterin insect minds discarded him without thought or feeling? Had they thrown his life away like it didn’t matter?
He snatched up a piece of broken metal and hurled it upward. He threw it with every ounce of strength, aiming for one of the small flying insect machines. The metal chunk clipped one wing, and the teapot-sized flying bug tumbled to the ground. Milo ran to reach it, and as it landed, he stomped it with his heel.
The internal workings exploded, blowing out the lifelight and shooting a spike of fire upward. Milo, luckier than he deserved to be, was knocked backward, but that was all it was. Many of the insect craft were bombs. This one was not. He didn’t know its purpose, but as he fell, his heel throbbing from the shock, he realized how incredibly stupid he’d just been.
“Milo!” called Shark, his voice faint through the din. “Come on!”
Milo wheeled and ran. There was ninety feet of war zone to cross to where Barnaby and Shark crouched at the head of the game trail. They waved him on.
“I’m coming!” he shouted again.
Suddenly, a ship descended through the smoke. It was round, like a drop-ship, but the design was different. The metal was smooth and orderly rather than the ugly patchwork design of the other Bug crafts; and that gleaming metal was painted a bright, bloodred. Unlike every other Dissosterin machine that Milo had ever seen or heard about, this one had a design painted on it: a silhouette of a Stinger rearing onto its back legs so that it could strike with claws, pincers, and barbed tail simultaneously.
As Milo watched the craft descend slowly to the ground, his heart immediately was filled with a superstitious dread. It was as if this craft—and whoever was aboard—was something more terrible and frightening than anything else. More frightening than the shocktroopers. More frightening even than the Stingers. It was a reaction born of total instinct.
It was a reaction fueled by the fact that Milo had seen this very craft in his dreams. It had landed just this way—slowly, as if it didn’t care that there was a battle. As if it feared nothing and no one. As if the world onto which it alit should instead tremble at its coming.
Barnaby and Shark saw it and veered away, and the Cajun turned and fired his weapon at it. It was an act of defiance that did no harm to the machine. As if in response, a wide gun port opened on the rim of the craft, and the blunt snout of a pulse cannon emerged.
Its lens flared with indigo light.
And then that whole side of the camp exploded.
One second there was a wall of green and the hobbling figures of his friends; then there was a whooshing sheet of brilliant flame that engulfed everything.
Everything.
Milo caught one last, despairing glimpse of Shark and Barnaby flying like rag dolls through the burning forest.
Noooooooooooo!”
His cry was lost in the thunder as explosions tore apart the camp. Walls of flame sprang up, creating a labyrinth of destruction all around him. They were like curtains going up on a scene from the end of the world. One minute the swamp foliage stretched before him, offering safety and cool shadows in which to hide; and in the next second there was fire everywhere.
Just like in his dream.
The walls of fire shot upward a hundred feet, and the heat they generated was like a fist that punched Milo off the ground and flat on his back. As the flames rose, he could see it carrying bits and pieces of the things he knew. The food cart rose as if pulled by strings from above, and its doors and windows flew open, spilling sacks of potatoes that instantly burned to coals and cans of soup and beans that swelled and then exploded like grenades. Weeks’ worth of food, some of it scavenged by teams that hiked inland for more than fifty miles—gone in an instant. Tents rose with it, their canvas coverings whipping and turning inside tornadoes of flame. Even vehicles rose up—two Jeeps, an old SUV used for supply runs, and the command Humvee his mother usually drove. They seemed to jump into the air, and as they rose to treetop height, their gas tanks detonated—one, two, three, four.
Milo saw all this with shocked numbness. Then his eyes snapped wide as he saw the burned debris reach the height of its rise, pause, falter, and then succumb to the inexorable pull of gravity. Tons of blackened, twisted metal began plummeting toward where he lay.
The wreck of the SUV whumped down less than two yards behind him, and the shock wave picked him up and hurled him back toward the center of the camp.
He hit, tried to curl and roll like he’d been taught, bungled it, went bumping and thumping sideways, and came to a bruised stop against the burned skeleton of the tent his mother used to manage the resistance. All that remained of it now were charred poles that curled toward one another like the rib cage of some ancient giant. Everything else—the shortwave radio, the chests of arms and ammunition, the personal trunk with family photos and all of the pictures of Dad—was gone. Burned to a pile of ashes atop which small, fading fires danced.
Milo lay there, sprawled, hurting, shocked, and dazed.
And then he heard the roar of heavy engines, and he looked up to see a round drop-ship descending from the smoky sky. It had a glowing green engine core ringed by pads that sprouted like petals from a daisy. On each pad stood an armored shocktrooper. As Milo watched, the pads detached from the hovering landing craft, and the ’troopers began floating downward between the walls of flame, firing blue pulse weapons as they descended.
Milo forced himself to his knees and stared across the camp.
Across what was left of it.
The soldiers and everyone else were gone.
Blackened shapes lay sprawled on the burned grass. There was no sign of Shark or Barnaby. Nothing.
Even so, the Dissosterin hunter-killer devices kept popping explosives, which kept everything burning. There were several barriers of fire, each of varying heights. It wasn’t a complete box, but there were enough of them so that the air inside the camp had become too hot to breathe.
He heard the bays of the Stingers. Very loud and very close.
Milo turned toward the nearest wall of flame—thirty feet away but feeling like it was an inch from his face—and within it, or behind it, something moved.
Once more Milo was trapped in a brain-twisting dilemma. Was this real or was it a dream?
He’d seen this last night.
He’d seen it on other nights.
This is nuts, he told himself. Then he shouted it aloud. “This is nuts! This is only a dream!”
Except that he was positive it wasn’t.
A massive shape, bigger even than the scorpion dogs, moved inside
the flame. Around it, the Stingers clustered like a pack of hunting dogs.
Run, child of the sun, warned the voice of the witch. As before, it was as if she stood just behind him, but this time there was a note of panic in her voice. You cannot face this thing.
“What is it?” Milo asked, aware that he was asking a question of a fantasy from his dreams. The hinges of reality seemed to have fallen off the day, so he figured why not? Nothing else seemed to make sense anymore.
He is what we all fear most. He is the monster that monsters fear.
Those words stabbed Milo through and through.
He stumbled backward, almost falling.
“Wh-why—?” stammered Milo, speaking aloud to a voice in his head.
He is looking for answers, whispered the voice. He can sense that the Nightsiders are near.
“W-who?”
The children of the shadows have accidentally led him here, and now you are all in mortal danger. Run!
The thing came directly toward him, and with each step, it became clearer that it was man-shaped.
Tall, broad-shouldered, with muscles crammed atop muscles so that his torso looked like a deformed ape. Gigantic.
But definitely human. Not a Bug.
Or, that’s what Milo thought as he watched it draw closer.
He didn’t stay to find out.
Run, run, run! shouted all of the voices in his head. The witch, Barnaby, his mom. Everyone.
Run, run, run!
Milo shot to his feet, cast around to find a way out, saw a narrow gap between two of the smaller flame walls, and ran for it as fast as he could run. He’d never run faster in his entire life.
As he reached the gap, he caught movement off to his left and behind him. The shape was about to pass through the wall of flames.
Milo turned away and ran.
“What is he?” Milo begged of his inner voices.
This is the destroyer, cried the Witch of the World. This is the Huntsman who will hang us all like trophies on his wall. Run, child. RUN!
Behind him, the howls of the Stingers tore the air.
Racing down the narrow lane between the fiery walls was like running through a furnace. Steam rose from his clothes. His skin grew red. His eyes dried out and began to ache.
Run, run, run . . .
He had no idea who was yelling at him, urging him on. The witch, his mom, or maybe his own need to survive. It didn’t matter. He ran.
The path between the flames could not have been longer than fifty feet, but it felt like fifty miles.
When he burst out into the clear ground beyond the camp, he staggered and went down onto his knees, gasping and gagging. The grass was damp, and he wished he could lie down in it, roll in it. He gulped lungfuls of cool air into his parched chest, blinking fresh tears into his eyes to moisten them. The tears, though, kept flowing. Two fat ones rolled down his cheeks, and all he wanted to do was curl up and cry.
Behind him, the Stingers bayed. Closer than ever. That terrible sound did not stop his tears, but it got his butt off the ground.
He ran.
Somewhere off to the north, on the far side of the camp, he could hear gunfire and shouts. This wasn’t a slaughter. It was still a fight. He pawed the tears from his face and felt his mouth curve into a rough smile. The thought that his friends were still fighting put iron in his legs.
He ran even faster.
He shot a quick look back to see how close the Stingers were.
They weren’t there.
Had he lost them when he ran between the flames?
He hoped and prayed so.
Be smart. Be safe. This time it was definitely his mom’s voice, echoing in his head. Almost the last thing she’d said to him.
It steadied him. And it made him think. Really think.
The forest was dense, but there were several clear paths used by patrols, hunters, and just about everyone else in the camp. Some of the paths had been so heavily used that the brush was pushed back at and beaten down; others were so infrequently used that they looked like natural game trails.
Milo immediately cut left and ran down one of the well-trodden paths. This was something his mom had taught him: “When you’re in a hurry and you don’t have the time to erase your tracks as you go, then use a trail with so many prints and signs that yours will blend in.”
He didn’t run straight down the center of the path because that would leave too clear a sign. Instead he ran on one side, then the other, then jumped forward and to one side, constantly breaking up his rhythm so that his footprints weren’t obviously the most recent. No one knew if the Dissosterin even understood trail sign, but it was the only skill Milo could think of that might give him a little edge.
The Huntsman can follow any trail, whispered the Witch. He will follow you to the gates of—
“You’re not helping,” Milo snapped irritably, and for a moment the voice in his head fell silent.
He hoped that the smoke and the stink of burning oil from the attack would clog the Stingers’ noses and make it harder for them to track him. If he could shake them for a bit, he knew some ways to hide his scent. Barnaby had taught them all a lot of tricks, but those things would take time.
Time.
It seemed to burn away, too.
He ran on, leaving that trail, taking another, sometimes going through unmarked foliage. He found a stream that trickled down to the bayou, and he splashed through that until he saw a huge, lumpy green shape pretending to be a fallen log. It wasn’t the biggest alligator he’d ever seen, but it was big enough. Ten feet from teeth to tail.
No thanks.
He went up the bank and slipped back into the forest, hoping the Stingers would run into ol’ Mr. Gator.
Then, after he’d run at least a mile and maybe two, Milo stopped to listen. He needed to know how much trouble he was still in.
Listening was something Barnaby taught. The bayou is always noisy, so you have to filter out the sounds that are always there and listen for those sounds that aren’t. They practiced it on every hike. It was a major survival skill.
Milo stood very still, looked at nothing in particular, and listened.
He heard the birds who were all chattering in alarm at what was happening. He heard the normal Earth insects, who didn’t know or care about what their alien counterparts were doing. He heard the rustle of a nutria on the stream banks.
Milo let all of those sounds fade out of his consciousness.
Beyond them, behind them, he heard the other sounds.
The low rumble of the alien craft. It was still up there, but he couldn’t see it through the dense canopy of trees.
The engine sounds of the smaller hunter-killer crafts were so faint now that he wasn’t sure he could actually hear them.
There was no gunfire now. No new explosions.
He did not strain to hear. Barnaby warned against that. If you tried too hard, you sometimes heard things the wrong way.
He wished his mom were there. Not just to hug him and take him somewhere safe. No, he wanted her there because she was the best fighter. She said it herself.
When I lead a team, people usually come back.
Could she have turned this around? Could she have fought off these monsters—the Stingers, the shocktroopers, the grinders and poppers and all of the other alien tech?
Where was she? Where were Mom and her team?
They said she’d be back by morning.
What would she find? Would it be a burned-out shell of a camp and blackened bones? Would she find survivors? Or would the Bugs be waiting for her?
For a wild moment, Milo very nearly turned to run back to the camp, wanting to intercept his mother, to warn her. To save her.
The world needs a hero.
“I’m not a hero,” he growled.
At the same time, he wished with all his might and will that he was the hero this world needed. A hero could save his mom.
A hero could stand up to that cre
ature that came out of the fire.
A hero would have fought off the shocktroopers and . . .
And . . .
You are a dreamer, child of the sun, but it is time to wake up and make your stand.
Tears burned in Milo’s eyes and rolled crooked through the dirty landscape of his cheeks.
He felt very small in a world that was far too big.
The woods were strangely quiet for almost a minute.
“Okay, Miss Witch,” he said softly, “if you’ve got something to say, now’s the time.
The only voice in his head was his own.
“Great,” he said sourly. “Very helpful.”
He pawed away the tears and forced himself to keep going. There was a bolt-hole pretty close. Maybe a mile along the bayou. The question was whether he could he risk heading that way yet. The woods had been on fire over there.
There was something on the trail ahead. Milo paused, afraid that it was a body. But as he crept close to it, he saw that it was a soldier’s gear bag, lying partly hidden by bushes that were withering and steaming from the heat. The canvas was scorched in places, and some of the contents had spilled across the path. There was a rifle with a bent barrel. A shotgun with a splintered stock. A handgun but no bullets. A military combat knife in a durable plastic sheath. A net bag of round metal globes that Milo recognized as S&F grenades. The letters stood for “sound and fury.” They were designed especially for combat with the shocktroopers. Milo had heard about them but had never seen them used. All he knew was that they were very dangerous, and Mom had given him a long lecture about never—ever—touching one.
The rest of the stuff in the bag was either melted or broken. He took the combat knife and began to move off, paused, thought better of it, and snatched up the bag of grenades.
He figured his mom would understand.
Milo headed into the gloom, keeping low, running lightly along the secret paths, using the skills he’d been taught. With every step, though, he felt pain deep in his chest. Not physical pain, but heartache. Shark and Barnaby and Lizabeth and little Killer. The others in the camp. His friends. His extended family made up of a couple hundred survivors. Tough, good-hearted, incredibly brave people. Soldiers and teachers, cooks and scouts, scientists and medics. Everyone doing their part to help the whole community survive. Everyone doing their part to help humanity survive.