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  Marcus clenched his teeth. “It doesn’t change anything.”

  “The hell it doesn’t,” she said. “There’s three of us.”

  “Kill two at the door,” he said. “Three if you have the knives.”

  Lou grimaced. She touched her stomach.

  Marcus looked down and then stole a peek at the front of the building. He swallowed hard. “What?”

  “I just had a baby, Marcus. I lost blood. I’m…”

  “What?” he pressed.

  “Not myself,” she admitted. “I don’t know if I can take out three men. My fingers are stiff. I’m weak. I—”

  “Half of you is better than all of most,” he said. “We can’t risk gunshots at the entrance. If there’s twelve of them now, imagine how many will scurry out of the cracks when they hear rifle fire in the streets. If you want, I can take the door. I understand. You can head upstairs and—”

  Lou sucked in a deep breath and steeled herself. She shot a serious look at the doorway and then at Marcus. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m fine. I’ll do the best I can. I’m not letting you take all the glory.”

  CHAPTER 12

  APRIL 21, 2054, 6:40 AM

  SCOURGE +21 YEARS, 7 MONTHS

  TYLER, TEXAS

  Lou crouched behind a pony wall that hid her from the front door, the wide entry into the library’s first floor behind her. The pony wall, if she stayed low, would provide more than enough cover for her to retreat to her second position, which would form a triangular attack amongst Marcus, Dallas, and her.

  The tinting on the front door glass, though bubbling and cracked, provided her enough cover that she was sure they hadn’t seen her move. None of the men outside had been close enough to the glass to see anything in it other than their own reflections.

  Lou readied herself. She took even breaths in and out, controlling her respiration despite her racing heartbeat. She used her shoulder to wipe sweat from the side of her face and pull back damp strands of hair.

  She knew Marcus was right; opening fire as the men came in would force them to open fire from where they stood outside the building. It would draw too much attention. But expertly thrown blades that silently killed or maimed the first intruders would force the firefight deeper into the building, muffling at least some of the shotguns’ percussive reports.

  She balanced the weight of her knives in her hands, one in each like a juggler preparing to begin her act. They were heavy, forged of steel into one singular piece. The handles were wider than the blades. Opposite the hilt, the blades tapered to fine points. Both sides of the blades were sharpened to a hair’s width.

  The men fumbled outside. She heard them talking. There was laughter, then shouting. A disagreement over something about entry. She made out only every third or fourth word. But she was ready.

  Her chest ached, her lower abdomen was sore, and she was sure there was blood. Yet she shoved those thoughts, those sensations, aside and focused all of her attention on the coming storm.

  When the talking outside stopped, the doors rattled again. Then there was a dull, vibrating thud. Another. And then a crack. A second crack and the crescendo of breaking glass filled the room.

  Lou waited, listening. When soles crunched against glass, she spun, stood, and faced the intruders.

  At the front was the redhead. He held his shotgun backwards, clearly having used the butt of it to smash the front door. The cluster of men behind him was a blur at the fringes of her vision. She waited for the ginger to take two more steps into the space, his eyes not having adjusted yet to the darker interior of what was best described as a small lobby or large vestibule.

  Lou brought back her elbow, the knife loose in her fingers, and stepped into a quick throw. The knife flipped twice, slicing through the air and sticking into the jugular notch, the soft dip between his neck and his collarbones.

  The second the blade sank into his flesh, Lou flipped the second knife from her left to right hand. The redhead dropped the shotgun and stumbled forward two or three more steps. His boots crunched and he grabbed for the knife, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. His eyes widened and narrowed, watering. His brow twitched and his shoulders hunched.

  As he fell face forward onto the blade, Lou unleashed her second throw. Focused on the target directly behind the redhead, she hadn’t identified much about him except the position of his body. He too held a shotgun. His head was turned to one side, exchanging some comment with a tribesman behind him.

  It gave Lou a wider, fleshier target. She overhanded the knife, coming down across her body like an axe-thrower, and buried the blade into the side of the man’s neck beneath his ear.

  He slapped at the blade like it was a bee sting and gripped the handle. With a puzzled look on his narrow, bearded face, he yanked the knife from his neck. That was a mistake that dropped him instantly and painted everything near him in bright red.

  With two men on the floor before the others had even understood what was happening, Lou still had the upper hand. She reached to the small of her back and withdrew the third blade.

  There was screaming and yelling now. Men on their knees. Others searching the relative darkness for the threat that took down two men in less than five seconds.

  Lou used the chaos and took a wide step to her left, free of the pony wall’s protection. Backlit against the light pouring into the space from the glassless doorway, she picked out a shape. The tallest of the men was easiest to spot. Moving left, she sidearmed the blade, flicking with the grace and expertise of someone born to do it. The flat throw spun like a star and found purchase in the gut of the tall man.

  Lou didn’t wait to see if it felled him. Instead, she used her momentum to arc away from the threats and toward the open library behind her. The men hadn’t yet fired a single shot by the time she turned another corner and ducked beyond the opening that led into the first-floor collection of books, magazines, and digital relics of music and film.

  Lou moved quickly to the spot opposite Marcus, where she found a waiting rifle. The first of the shotguns’ blasts thundered through her body. She drew the loaded weapon to her shoulder and leaned against a bookshelf bolted to the floor.

  A second blast sparked a spray of wooden shrapnel that knifed through the air in front of her. Men, one after the other, poured through the narrow opening, like red ants emerging from a disturbed mound.

  There weren’t twelve men; there were twenty or more. And the three she’d taken down had only angered the others. They were swarming now, and Lou was convinced there was no way she and her family would survive this.

  CHAPTER 13

  APRIL 21, 2054, 6:47 AM

  SCOURGE +21 YEARS, 7 MONTHS

  TYLER, TEXAS

  Marcus was ready when Lou bolted past him. He’d heard the screams and the shouts of confusion moments before her sprint. Then came the first shotgun blast. It tore through the wooden trim framing the entry between the lobby and the library’s main floor.

  The second shot did the same, and now men were moving through the opening one after the other.

  Knowing they were vastly outnumbered, Marcus applied pressure to the rifle trigger and fired a three-round burst at the first target he could home in on.

  One down. He scanned left and took down another man. And another. From behind him and to his left, the cracks of identical rifle fire joined his own. Lou and Dallas were joining him in the shooting gallery born from a public library.

  The chaotic symphony of the rifles’ rat-tat-tat-tat and the explosive, bone-rattling blasts from the tribe members’ shotguns was deafening and disorienting. Marcus couldn’t hear himself think. In truth, he wasn’t thinking, he was reacting.

  This was instinctive and primal. It was something he’d done so many times it was like breathing for him. One after the next, he found a target and hit it.

  It was almost as if the tribesmen were unarmed, or so unaccustomed to close-quarter combat that their sheer numbers, whi
ch Marcus now guessed was greater than thirty, didn’t matter.

  Marcus exchanged magazines as a blast rained drywall onto him. He spat the dust from his mouth and leveled his weapon. But the onslaught was over. The remaining tribesmen had retreated. The last of them backed through the entry and fired off one last cover shot before he disappeared.

  His ears ringing, nostrils burning from the acrid odor of spent gunpowder, Marcus surveyed the battlefield in front of him. A quick count told him twenty-three men were dead. Another three were alive, although barely. Their heavy breathing, their pained groans begging for help were the only remnant sounds in the room, muffled by the high-pitched din that made it hard for Marcus to hear anything.

  The adrenaline still surging through him, he stood from his position and ignored the sharp pains in his joints, the pressure in his knee, and moved to the first of the three twitching men.

  Marcus put the muzzle to his forehead and pulled the trigger, fixing the tribesman’s fear-laden eyes. The life gone from them, they still stared at Marcus, asking for mercy.

  Amidst wide steps that avoided outstretched arms and legs, he moved to the second life-clinger. The man was facedown, his fingers scratching at the floor. His back heaved up and down.

  “Lou,” Marcus said, pressing the muzzle against the back of the man’s neck, “you and Dallas head to the second floor. Now.”

  He pulled the trigger. Marcus stood over him, watching the life drain from the tribesman, and on the back of his forearm he spotted a bright red tattoo. It was a blooming rose wrapped in thorns, and across it were the calligraphy-styled words La Rosa.

  The third man had stopped moving by the time Marcus reached him. He poked him with the barrel. No reaction, no breathing. Blood pooled out from under him, spreading into a dark amorphous pool.

  Outside, beyond the entry, Marcus heard more shouting. It was muffled, like everything else, yet he was sure he heard the rumble of an engine, the squeal of brakes slamming hard against rubber tires, the tires sliding across the asphalt.

  More men were coming. That was certain. Marcus fell back between two bookshelves and limped hurriedly toward the stairs at the rear of the space. He hit a lever that released the rifle’s magazine into his hand and tucked the partially emptied mag into his back, pulling a fresh, fully loaded one from the pack that hung from his right shoulder.

  Marcus slapped the new mag into the rifle and reached the stairs. Lou and Dallas had done what he had asked. They were on the second floor now, reinforcing their positions. Marcus stepped onto the spent casings from Dallas’s contribution to their firefight. They crunched and bent under the soles of his heavy boots, and he climbed the stairs without the use of the railing. More were coming. It was the story of Marcus Battle’s life. More were always coming.

  CHAPTER 14

  APRIL 21, 2054, 6:53 AM

  SCOURGE +21 YEARS, 7 MONTHS

  TYLER, TEXAS

  Through one of the open windows at the front of the second floor, Marcus used a broken piece of tinted glass to find the muddied reflection of two pickup trucks parked next to each other in the middle of the street. Around them, clusters of men, twenty or thirty in all, stood together, plotting.

  He considered using this spot like a sniper, picking off a handful of the men before they could reenter the building, but that would give away their position. He didn’t want them knowing yet they were on the second floor. As it was, all hostiles would have to take the stairs. That funneled them into a hallway and created the perfect choke point.

  It was the first time in twenty years Marcus was glad the power was out. It meant the tribesmen couldn’t use the elevator. They’d have to take the stairs. Marcus angled the shard in his hand to count the men on the street below. Satisfied he had a close approximation, he moved into the hallway, where he found Lou and Dallas shoulder to shoulder near the landing at the top of the stairwell. They stopped talking when Marcus approached. He was keenly aware by the way they averted their eyes he was their topic of conversation.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Spill it.”

  “Spill what?” asked Lou.

  “You were talking about me,” Marcus said. “Normally I wouldn’t care. Not a bit. But right now, I gotta know where your head’s at.”

  “Right now, I’m going to chastise you for ending a sentence in a preposition,” said Lou. “That’s horrible grammar, even for you.”

  “I’m flattered,” said Marcus. “But seriously, what’s up?”

  Dallas exchanged a look with Lou and then narrowed his gaze. He took a step toward Marcus. “We should have used this from the beginning,” he said of the landing. “They might never have come upstairs. If they had, we’d have gotten them like fish in a barrel.”

  “Maybe,” said Marcus.

  Dallas’s posture stiffened. He cocked his head to one side. “No maybe about it,” he said. “You put my wife, the mother of my children, in danger. You made her the front line and without a gun.”

  Marcus shrugged. “And?”

  Dallas’s face reddened. “And? And?” His voice grew louder. “You’re going to stand here and act like—”

  Marcus held up a hand to stop him. “I’m not acting like anything. I’m asking why it’s an issue now. First of all, she’s fine. Second, you saw what was happening, and you didn’t do anything to stop me. I didn’t see you volunteering to take the door.”

  Dallas stepped closer to Marcus, his lips curled into a snarl.

  Lou stuck a hand between the two of them. “Now is not the time for this,” she said. “We can talk about it later.”

  “I knew this was a bad idea,” said Dallas, venom oozing. “I knew involving Marcus was wrong. Norma was right. We’re more likely to die with Marcus Battle around us than we would without him. His help is deadly.”

  The words stung. In part because Marcus knew they rang true. He had put Lou in danger. He had ignored her concerns.

  Did it matter that he had valid reasons? He’d done it because he thought she was the best person for the job. He’d kept them on the first floor to keep them as far away from Andrea and the children as possible. He’d done it when they thought there were only four adversaries. And then, when Lou told him there were more, there wasn’t enough time to change the plan. That would have been more dangerous.

  Standing here, all of his justifications were null. Instead of arguing with Dallas, he accepted the charges. Taking a step back, he frowned. He scratched the scruff on his chin, feeling the coarse hair and the wrinkled skin absent its youthful elasticity. He dug the toe of a boot into the floor. “We can do this later,” he said. “In the meantime, we need to be on the same team.”

  They took positions in the wide hallway along the open railing that looked down onto the stairwell. A loud bang echoed from downstairs, followed by the sound of shattering glass.

  “They’re in,” said Marcus. “Heads up.”

  The stairwell was narrow, enough space for two people shoulder to shoulder. It rose from the first floor and turned one hundred and eighty degrees halfway up. From their positions along the railing opposite a wall, they could see clearly from the mid-ascent landing up the length of the flight to their second-floor landing.

  The three of them braced for the advancing tribesmen. Heavy footsteps grew louder. Shouts of disbelief at the first-floor carnage echoed up through the wide well.

  The adrenaline surged and Marcus worked to maintain his steady hands on his rifle. His lower back tensed as he leaned in toward the railing.

  Marcus was closest to the second-floor landing at the top of the stairwell, the most exposed to any return fire. Dallas was to his right, a few steps to the side. At the end, most protected, was Lou.

  Finger on the trigger, Marcus flicked the safety lever into Semi mode. With so many adversaries he knew he had to conserve ammo and make every single shot count. The ringing in his ears had finally diminished. He knew that was short-lived.

  Marcus swallowed hard and tasted the dryness of
his mouth. Thirst consumed him for a brief second before the first of the tribesmen appeared at the landing, turning cautiously toward the second flight of steps.

  Without hesitation, Marcus applied pressure to the trigger. The rifle thumped against his shoulder. He pressed again. Immediately, his weapon drilled twin shots into the target at his rib cage beneath his armpit. The tribesman hadn’t even fully turned the corner when the two rounds punctured him and sent him back down the stairs, grunting and staggering.

  His momentum sounded like it took more men with him. They cursed and shouted at each other. Marcus glanced at Lou and moved closer to the landing. Then he took a step down. Another. And another.

  “Marcus,” Lou called out, “don’t—”

  He ignored her and took another step as two men appeared at the landing. Marcus saw them before they saw him, and he unloaded a half dozen rounds before they’d even pulled the trigger once.

  One of them did get off a shot, but it went wide and high, peppering the drywall to the left of Marcus’s head with buckshot. A cloud of white dust bloomed beside him, and Marcus took another two steps down the stairs.

  Now he could see around the corner, onto the first flight and beyond it onto the first floor. Three men were on the stairs, navigating the dead bodies in their path. Marcus picked them off one at a time. Four shots, three kills. He descended to the landing and kicked aside the arm of a dead man in his way.

  Another man appeared between bookshelves and the bottom of the stairs. He had the drop on Marcus and took a pair of shots with a handgun. They missed, both of them slamming into the wall with thick cracks. Their displacement whizzed past Marcus at his elbow before he returned fire with a single shot to the head.

  As the enemy slinked to the ground like a blow-up doll losing all of its air, two more men took shots at Marcus. At the edge of the nearest bookcase, their line of sight was poor enough that they both missed. One of them hit the railing in front of Marcus, and splinters of wood exploded at him, pieces cutting his left cheek and temple, barely missing his eye.