Consequently, Mike stayed behind cover as he stood up and raised his hands. “Okay, I’m coming out.”

He had taken no more than four steps toward the end of the truck’s bare chassis before the gunman pointed his revolver. Mike must have been watching the man’s shoulder because as soon as he twitched, Mike hit the ground.

My first shot hit him in the shoulder, the same one attached to the arm holding the gun. He cried out and fired wildly, the bullet bashing through the wall of the barn beneath me. By its report it was powerful, maybe a .357.

Sophia, clever girl, used the distraction to snap her head savagely backward into the gunman’s nose. From where I stood near the window, it sounded like someone hitting a melon with brick. The gunman cried out in pain, loosening his grip enough for Sophia to fall down and roll away.

I fired seven more times.

The first six riddled the man’s torso, causing him to drop his weapon so he could clutch at his ruined insides. He stumbled backward and fell, a ragged scream escaping his lips.

Once again, I thought of the difference between movies and reality. In the movies, when the hero shoots the bad guy, he jerks to the side and falls down dead. In reality, people rarely die instantly from gunshot wounds. Even with a direct shot to the heart, it takes a few seconds to lose consciousness. During that time, the victim is awake and relatively alert, and can feel the pain of the wound.

I had deliberately missed his heart.

He lay on his side, feet kicking uselessly, mewling, mouth stretched in agony. I watched him suffer for a few seconds, jaw set, a cold flower of hate blooming in my chest. I knew I should feel sorry for him—that would have been the human thing to do—but at the moment, I felt nothing. Just a grim, distant satisfaction he was no longer a threat.

“Caleb,” Mike shouted, looking at me through the window. “What are you waiting for? Finish him off.”

I didn’t want to. I wanted to stand there and listen to him scream, to hear the terror in his voice, to watch the blood pour out, to see the look on his face when the cold grip of oblivion closed around him and squeezed. After what he had done to Sophia, and what he would have done if I hadn’t stopped him, he deserved no better.

“Caleb!”

“All right!”

With my seventh shot, I put him out of his misery.

FORTY-SIX

A search of the semi found the tanks empty, so after dragging the marauders’ dead bodies out of sight, we scoured the rest of the property. The four-car garage attached to the mansion yielded diesel pickup with a full tank, which I assumed belonged to our attackers. Mike volunteered to siphon the fuel and asked me to go check on Sophia.

I found her standing on the metal steps attached to the passenger’s side of the semi, staring at her reflection in the mirror, fingers gently probing her swollen eye. “Those assholes leave us any fuel?”

“Yeah, they did.”

She stepped down and came to me, arms slipping around my waist. I held her gently, careful not to touch her face. “I can’t believe I let that son of a bitch get the drop on me,” she said.

“How did it happen?”

“I turned to look for Dad, just for a few seconds. Next thing I know my rifle is on the ground, there’s an arm around my throat, and everything went black. I woke up while he was tying my hands and tried to scream, but he hit me. That’s all I remember until I saw you shoot from the barn.”

“You remember head-butting the fucker?”

“Yeah. I remember that part. But it shouldn’t have come to that, Caleb. If I had kept my eyes on the house like you told me to, I would have seen him coming.”

Her voice began to break as she spoke, so I held her tighter and kissed the top of her head. “It’s okay now, Sophia. They’re all dead. They won’t be hurting anyone ever again.”

“I could have gotten us all killed.”

“Actually, I had a clean shot at him the whole time.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I know.” I put my hands on her shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “Look at it this way, it’s a lesson learned. Next time, you’ll be more careful.”

She reached up and thumbed a tear out of her good eye. “Yes, I will.”

I heard footsteps approach and turned my head to see Mike rounding the corner, shoulders bent under the weight of two sloshing gerry cans. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “If there are any walkers close by they probably heard the commotion.”

Mike refueled the Humvee, climbed in the driver’s seat, and we got under way. I sat in the back with Sophia, her head in my lap, carefully stroking her soft blond hair. The stress of the last half-hour took its toll and she was soon snoring gently, a small trickle of drool expanding in a warm wet spot on my thigh. I smiled, deciding not to say anything to her about it. She’d been through enough lately.

Leaning back in my seat, I fought against the lead weights pulling down on my eyelids. Sleep had been a bit of a problem lately. Most of my downtime was spent wide-awake, mind racing, hands never far from a weapon. When I did manage to drift off, nightmares I could not remember were never long in waking me up.

I told myself I was going to relax a little while, just long enough to clear my head. The road drifted by outside the window, grassy plains reflecting pale silver under a full moon. Both front windows were down, letting a cool wind dry the sweat on my skin. I closed my eyes, head rocking back and forth as we rode over bumps in the pavement, concentrating on the steady hum of tires speeding over asphalt.

At some point while I was drifting, I heard the sound of gravel crunching and looked out my window. Mike had pulled the Humvee to the side of the road and got out. I opened my door and said, “What’s going on?”

“Don’t worry about it. Get some sleep. We’ll talk when you wake up.”

That sounded like the best advice ever given. I did as he suggested, closing my eyes and letting sleep claim me. Approximately four seconds later, a hand grabbed my arm and shook me.

“Caleb, wake up.” It was Sophia’s voice.

I blinked rapidly and sat up straight, eyes stinging from the bright sunlight streaming in through the windows. “I was barely asleep,” I said. But even to my own ears, my voice sounded groggy.

“Kid, you’ve been out for almost two hours,” Mike said.

I rubbed my eyes and looked around blearily. “Where are we?”

“Where do you think?” Mike turned in the driver’s seat, eyes red with exhaustion but smiling nonetheless. “We made it. Welcome to Colorado Springs.”

*****

It was just after six in the morning.

From the heat of the sun on my back, I knew we were facing west. Ahead of us, a line of vehicles—mostly military by the look of them, but a few civilian ones as well—rose toward a heavily guarded checkpoint at the intersection of highways 24 and 94.

In the distance, the sawblade peaks of the Rocky Mountains soared over hazy rooftops, the city squat and puny by comparison. Smoke from hundreds of fires plumed toward the sky, forming an oblong cloud that stretched flat and gray under a southerly wind. The smell of burning wood stung my nose, along with the scent of diesel fumes and my own unwashed body.

Looking left and right, I saw heavy equipment and construction workers crawling like ants across the landscape, busily erecting a fence with steel I-beam posts and pre-formed slabs of concrete. I had seen a fence like it before and stared, puzzled, until memory pierced the fog of sleep.

“It’s a sound barrier,” I said.

Sophia turned her head, the swollen eye surrounded by an angry purple bruise. “What’s that?”

I pointed. “That fence they’re building. It’s just like the barriers you see along interstates and bypasses near residential neighborhoods. They work like baffles, supposed to reduce road noise.”