As Michael rose the viral shot forward, its arms and legs extending like the fingers of an open hand; he barely had enough time to shove the blade out in front of him, his eyes closing reflexively. He felt the bite of metal as the viral slammed into him, folding over Michael’s body as he tumbled backward.

He rolled to see the viral lying face-up on the snow. His blade was buried in its chest. Its arms and legs were making a kind of paddling motion, clawing at the air. A pair of figures were standing above the body. Peter and, beside him, Amy. Where had they come from? Amy was holding a rifle-Michael’s rifle, covered in snow. At their feet, the creature made a sound that could have been a sigh or a groan. Amy drew the stock of the gun to her shoulder, lowered the barrel, and pushed it into the viral’s open mouth.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and pulled the trigger.

Michael rose to his feet. The viral was motionless now, its agonal twitchings ceased. A broad spray of blood lay on the snow. Amy passed the gun to Peter.

“Take this.”

“Are you okay?” Peter asked Michael.

Only then did Michael realize he was shaking. He nodded.

“Come on.”

They heard more gunfire over the ridge. They ran.

It wasn’t fair, Lacey knew, what she had done. Allowing Peter and Amy to think that she would be going with them. Setting the bomb’s timer and leading them to the door to the tunnel, then directing them to stand on the far side. Pulling the door closed as they watched, then dropping the bolts in place.

She could hear them banging on the other side. Could hear Amy’s voice, a final time, ringing in her mind.

Lacey, Lacey, don’t go!

Run now. He will be here any minute.

Lacey, please!

You must help them. They’ll be afraid. They won’t know what is happening. Help them, Amy.

All that had happened here, in this place, needed to be wiped away. As God had wiped the earth away in the days of Noah, so that the great ship could sail and make the world again.

She would be His waters.

Such a terrible thing, the bomb. It was small, Jonas had explained, just half a kiloton-large enough to destroy the Chalet itself, all its underground floors, to hide the evidence of what they had done-but not so large as to register on any satellites. A fail-safe, in case the virals had ever broken out. But then the power had failed on the upper levels, and Sykes was gone, or dead; and though Jonas could have detonated it himself, he could not bring himself to do this, not with Amy there.

With Peter and Amy watching, Lacey had knelt before it: a small, suitcase-shaped object, with the dull finish of all military things. Jonas had shown her the steps. She pressed a small indent on the side, and a panel dropped down, revealing a keyboard with a small screen, large enough for a single line of text. She typed:

ELIZABETH

The screen flickered to life.

ARM? Y N

She pressed Y.

TIME?

For a moment she paused. Then she typed 5.

5:00 CONFIRM? Y N

She pressed Y once more. On the screen, a clock began to run.

4:59

4:58

4:57

She sealed the panel and rose.

“Quickly,” she had said to the two of them, leading them briskly down the hall. “We must get out of here now.”

Then she’d locked them out.

Lacey, please! I don’t know what to do! Tell me what to do!

You will, Amy, when the moment comes. You will know what is inside you then. You will know how to set them free, to make their final passage.

Now she was alone. Her work was nearly done. When she was certain Peter and Amy were gone, she freed the bolts and opened the door wide.

Come to me, she thought. Standing in the doorway, she breathed deeply, composing herself, sending out her mind. Come to the place where you were made.

Lacey waited. Five minutes: after so many years, it seemed like nothing, because it really was.

Dawn was breaking over the mountain.

The three of them were racing toward the shots. They crested a ridge; below them, Michael saw a house, the horses outside. Sara and Alicia were waving to them from the door.

The creatures were behind them now, in the trees. They tore down the embankment and dashed inside. Greer and Hollis appeared from behind a curtain, carrying a tall chest of drawers.

“They’re right behind us,” Michael said.

They wedged the bureau against the door. A hopeless gesture, thought Michael, but it might buy them a second or two.

“What about these windows?” Alicia was saying. “Anything we can use?”

They tried to move the cupboard, but it was too heavy. “Forget it,” Alicia said. She drew a pistol from her waistband and pressed it into Michael’s hands. “Greer, you and Hollis take the window in the bedroom. Everyone else stays here. Two on the door, one on each window, front and back. Circuit, you watch the chimney. They’ll go for the horses first.”

Everyone took their positions.

From the bedroom, Hollis shouted, “Here they come!”

Something was wrong, Lacey thought. They should have been here by now. She could feel them, everywhere around her, filling her mind with their hunger, their hunger and the question.

Who am I?

Who am I?

Who am I?

She stepped into the tunnel.

Come to me, she answered. Come to me. Come to me.

She moved quickly down its length; she could make out the opening, a circle of softening gray, the elongated dawn of the mountain. The first true light of sunrise would hit them from the west, reflecting off the far side of the valley, its fields of snow and ice.

She reached the tunnel’s mouth and stepped out. She could see, below her, the tracks and debris of the virals’ ascent up the icy slope. A thousand thousand strong, and more.

They had gone right past.

Despair gripped her. Where are you, she thought, and then she said it, hearing the fury in her voice as it echoed over the valley: “Where are you?” But there was silence from heaven.

Then, from the stillness, she heard it.

I am here.

The virals hit the doors and windows at once, a furious crash of breaking glass and splintering wood. Peter, bracing the bureau with his shoulder, was blown backward, into Amy. He could hear Hollis and Greer shooting from the bedroom, Alicia and Michael and Sara and Amy, too, everyone firing.

“Fall back!” Alicia was yelling. “The door’s collapsing!”

Peter grabbed Amy by the arm and pulled her into the bedroom. Hollis was at the window. Greer was on the ground beside the bed, bleeding from a deep gash in his head.

“It’s glass!” he yelled over the report of Hollis’s weapon. “It’s just glass!”

Alicia: “Hollis, stay on that window!” She dropped her empty clip and slammed a new one into place and pulled the bolt. Here they would make their stand. “Everyone, get ready!”

They heard the front door give way. Alicia, closest to the bedroom curtain, spun around and began to fire.

The one that got her wasn’t the first, or the second, or even the third. It was the fourth. By then her gun was drained. Later, Peter would recall the scene as a sequence of discrete details. The sound of her last shell casings ricocheting on the floor. The swirl of gunpowder smoke in the air and the descent of Alicia’s empty clip as she reached to pull a new one from her vest; the viral hurling itself toward her through the tattered curtain, the pitiless smoothness of its face and the flash of its eyes and open jaws; the barrel of her useless gun lifting, and the dart of her hand to draw her blade, too late; the moment of impact, cruel and unstoppable, Alicia falling backward to the floor, the viral’s burrowing jaws finding the curve of her neck.

It was Hollis who took the shot, stepping forward as the viral lifted its face and spearing the barrel of his rifle into its mouth and firing, spraying the back of its head against the wall of the bedroom. Peter scrabbled forward and grabbed Alicia under the arms, dragging her away from the door. The blood was running freely from her neck, a deep crimson, soaking her vest. Someone was yelling, saying her name over and over, but maybe that was him. Braced against the wall, he hugged Alicia to his chest, holding her upright between his legs, reflexively putting his hands over the wound to try to stop the bleeding. Amy and Sara were on the floor now, too, huddled against the wall. Another creature came through the curtain and Peter lifted his pistol and fired, his last two rounds. The first one missed but not the second. In his arms, Alicia was breathing strangely, all hiccups and gasps. There was blood, so much blood.