Richards jumped away, but too late. The air tanged with the stench of bile, and something else, elemental and metallic, like turned earth. Richards felt the wetness through his pants, his socks. He knew without looking that Sykes’s vomitus was full of blood.

“Fuck!”

He raised his weapon at Sykes.

“Please,” Sykes said, meaning no, or maybe yes, but either way, Richards figured he was doing Sykes a favor when he pointed the barrel at the center of his chest, the sweet spot, and then he squeezed the trigger.

Lacey saw the first one come out an upper window. So quick! Like light itself! How a man would move if he were made of light! It was up and over in an instant, vaulting off the roof into space, sailing through the air above the compound, alighting in a stand of trees a hundred yards away. A man-sized flash of throbbing luminescence, like a shooting star.

She’d heard the alarm as the truck pulled into the compound. The two men in the cab had argued for a minute-should they just drive away?-and Lacey had used this moment to climb out the back and scurry into the woods. That was when she’d seen the demon flying from the window. The treetops where he landed absorbed his weight with a shudder.

Lacey saw what was about to happen.

The driver of the truck was opening the truck’s rear gate. Ordnance, the sentry had said-guns? The truck was full of guns.

The treetops moved again. A streak of green fell toward him.

Oh! Lacey thought. Oh! Oh!

Then there were more of them, pouring out of the building, through its windows and doors, launching themselves into the air. Ten, eleven, twelve. And soldiers too, everywhere, running and yelling and shooting, but their bullets did nothing; the demons were too fast, or else the bullets were harmless against them; one by one the demons fell upon the soldiers and they died.

This was why she had come-to save Amy from the demons.

Quickly, Lacey. Quickly.

She stepped from the edge of the woods.

“Halt!”

Lacey froze. Should she raise her hands? The soldier appeared from the woods where he’d been hiding, too. A good boy, doing what he thought was his duty. Trying not to be afraid, though of course he was; she could feel the fear coming off him, like waves of heat. He didn’t know what was about to happen to him. She felt a tender pity.

“Who are you?”

“I am no one,” Lacey said, and then the demon was upon him-before he could even point his weapon, before he could finish the word he was speaking as he died-and Lacey was running toward the building.

By the time they got to the base of the tube, Wolgast was sweating and breathing hard. A faint light was falling down upon them. Far above, he could see the twin beams of an emergency light and, farther still, the stilled blades of a giant fan. The central ventilation shaft.

“Amy, honey,” he said. “Amy, you have to wake up.”

Her eyes fluttered open and closed again. He guided her arms around his neck and stood, felt her feet clamping around his waist. But he could tell she had no strength.

“You have to hold on, Amy. Please. You have to.”

Her body tightened in reply. But still, he’d have to use one of his arms to support her weight. This would leave only one hand free to pull them up the ladder. Jesus.

He turned and faced the ladder, set his foot onto the first rung. It was like a problem on a standardized test: Brad Wolgast is holding a little girl. He has to climb a ladder, fifty feet, in a poorly lit ventilation shaft. The girl is semiconscious at best. How does Brad Wolgast save both their lives?

Then he saw how he could do it. One rung at a time, he’d use his right hand to pull them up, then hook that same elbow through the ladder, balancing Amy’s weight on his knee while he changed hands and moved up another rung. Then the left hand, then the right, and so on, moving Amy’s weight between them, rung by rung to the top.

How much did she weigh? Fifty pounds? All suspended, at the moment he changed hands, by the strength of a single arm.

Wolgast began to climb.

Richards could tell from the shouts and the shooting that the sticks were outside now.

He’d known what was happening to Sykes. Probably it would happen to him too, since Sykes had puked his goddamn infected blood all over him, but he doubted he’d live long enough for this to matter. Hey, Cole, he thought. Hey, Cole, you weasel, you little shit. Was this what you hand in mind? Is this your Pax Americana? Because there’s only one outcome I can see here.

There was just one thing Richards wanted now. A clean exit, with a good showing at the last.

The front entrance of the Chalet was all broken glass and bullet holes, the doors ripped half off their hinges, hanging kitty-corner. Three soldiers lay dead on the floor; it looked as if they’d been shot by friendly fire in the chaos. Maybe they’d actually shot one another on purpose, just to hustle things along. Richards raised his hand and looked at the Springfield -why would he think this would do any good? The soldiers’ rifles would be no use either. He needed something larger. The armory was across the compound, behind the barracks. He’d have to make a run for it.

He looked out the door, across the open ground of the compound. At least the lights were still on. Well, he thought. Better now than later, since probably there would be no later. He took off at a run.

The soldiers were everywhere, scattered, running, shooting at nothing, at one another. Not even pretending to make an organized defense, let alone an assault on the Chalet. Richards ran full tilt, half-expecting to be hit.

Richards was halfway across the compound when he saw the five-ton. It was parked at the edge of the lot, at a careless angle, its doors open. He knew what was inside it.

Maybe he wouldn’t have to make it across the compound after all.

“Agent Doyle.”

Doyle smiled. “Lacey.”

They were on the first floor of the Chalet, in a small, cramped room of desks and file cabinets. Doyle had been waiting there since the shooting had started, hidden beneath a desk. Waiting for Lacey.

He stood.

“Do you know where they are?”

Lacey paused. There were scratches on her face and neck, and bits of leaves caught in her hair.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“I… heard you,” Doyle said. “All these weeks.” Something huge was breaking open inside him. His throat choked with tears. “I don’t know how I did that.”

She took his hands in hers. “It wasn’t me you heard, Agent Doyle.”

At least Wolgast couldn’t look down. He was sweating hard now, his palms and fingers slick on the rungs as he pulled them farther up. His arms were trembling with exertion; the crooks of his elbows, where he held each rung when he traded hands, felt bruised to the bone. There was a moment, he knew, when the body simply reached its limits, an invisible line that, once crossed, could not be uncrossed. He pushed the thought aside and climbed.

Amy’s arms, crossed behind his neck, held firm. Together they ascended, rung by rung by rung.

The fan was closer now. Wolgast could feel a thin breeze, cool and smelling of night, spilling over his face. He craned his neck to scan the sides of the tube for an opening.

He saw it, ten feet above him: beside the ladder, an open duct.

He’d have to push Amy in first. Somehow he’d have to manage his own weight on the ladder and hers as well, while he swung her out from the ladder and into the duct; then he’d climb in himself.

They reached the opening. The fan was higher than he’d thought, another thirty feet above their heads at least. He guessed they were somewhere on the first floor of the Chalet. Maybe he was supposed to go higher, find another exit. But his strength was nearly gone.

He positioned his right knee to take Amy’s weight and reached his left hand out. A featureless wall of cool metal met his fingertips, smooth as glass, but then he found the edge. He drew his hand back. Three more rungs should do it. He took a deep breath and ascended, positioning the two of them just above the duct.