“They gotta be in range,” Alpha said. And she was right. They got much closer and I’d lose sight of them behind the blades. But I was trembling now, and not out of fear. I told myself it was like the Harvester I’d plugged with the nail gun. But it didn’t feel the same. That was a war zone, and out here was so quiet. Those agents had no idea I was aiming to steal away their last breath.

“Banyan,” Alpha hissed. I clicked the safety off, aimed the gun right at the nearest agent’s chest, my heart pumping cold blood through my veins. I closed my eyes and pictured Pop needing me, his body wound up in chains and cuffed to the trees, and there was a gun at my father’s head and he was starving to death. Just like my mother had starved so many years before.

I squeezed the trigger. I’d barely pulled it tight when the agent slumped forward and hit the ground. The second guy pulled his weapon and took a shot at me, the bullet clanging off the side of the cockpit. Awful damn close.

I ducked back. Alpha was firing at their vehicle and the noise of her gun seemed to shake my brain loose. I needed to get back up. Take another shot. But suddenly I wasn’t real worried about it. Because there, beneath the boom of Alpha’s rifle and the thud of bullets on steel, there was another sound. A terrible sound.

The sound of locusts.

I screamed at Alpha and begged her to move. I grabbed her by the vest and dragged her with me around the side of the cockpit. I stumbled. Slipped. Almost lost it. Hanging on by one arm, my face staring down at the top of the dead field hand’s skull.

The noise was louder now, whining like a broken engine. I pulled myself up as Alpha yanked at the door to the cockpit. But she slipped back as the door flew open. And then she was hanging off the purple tubing below. Ten feet down. Ten feet too far.

The sun went black as locusts swarmed above us, spiraling out of the sky as I scrambled below the cockpit, inching out along a steel pipe, reaching down with my hand.

“Go,” Alpha screamed, but I just kept reaching for her as the swarm closed in above us. And then I saw locusts below, pouring out of the corn and across the service road, rising up the sides of the duster like a flood.

Alpha stretched up with her fingers, high as she could, and the locusts grew louder, wailing and buzzing and filling the air.

I locked my hand on Alpha’s wrist. Dragged her toward me, hauling her up. We slipped back along the pipe as it gave way beneath us, leapt for the cockpit as the locusts hit.

I felt their wings beat the wind through my hair and they bored through my boots as I shoved Alpha into the cab and spun around to seal the door tight behind us.

They hammered at the glass windows. They rattled at the walls. A black cloud. A blur of wings and sharp little mouths. We stamped dead the rogues that had made it inside, and then we pressed together in the middle of the cockpit, arms over our ears as we squeezed our eyes shut.

Then the roar became a buzz and it faded. Light broke back inside the cockpit. Sunlight. I opened my eyes. Stared out the window. I watched as the locusts drifted across the tops of the cornfields then swooped down all at once inside the plants, sinking into the crops like a stone. Gone to feast on some field hand, I guess. Or some other poor struggler who’d strayed into the corn.

“We’re okay?” Alpha whispered, shaking against me.

“Yeah,” I said. “We’re okay.”

I stared down at the service road where the bones of the agents were splayed on the dirt. If there’d been another agent inside the pod, then they’d not made it — Alpha had shot the windshield clean through.

“We should get back,” I said.

“Wait,” she said. “Look.”

I peered west across the top of the cornfields and there, jagged and dark on the horizon, I could see the towering mess of Vega. The bulging skyline of the Electric City.

“We’re getting close,” I said. I turned to Alpha and her eyes were bright. Her lips were just inches from mine.

“You know what we’re supposed to do?” she whispered.

“Just keep on till we get there.”

“No.” She made our noses touch. “I mean now.”

She pulled me to the floor on top of her, and my heart was pounding and my mouth got thick. I felt wired up. Full of juice. And then we were kissing, something inside of me exploding as I felt her lips on mine.

She took my hands and wrapped my fingers beneath her thighs. Her legs were strong. Smooth. And she was so warm. I’d never felt anything near as soft as her skin. I kissed her jaw and her neck and then her mouth again, and kissing that girl was like the whole point of living.

Her eyes were closed and trembling and I closed mine too. Dark now. Like we’d been sucked inside some tunnel leading down through the earth.

“Damn, bud,” she said, when I stopped kissing her.

I just lay there, breathing her in.

She reached to her vest and unclipped it, as if she was unlocking herself for me. I stared into her brown eyes as she took my hand and pressed it on her chest. I felt her heart beat strong. But then Alpha grinned, like being serious had suddenly become foolish.

I went to kiss her again, but she was already grabbing her gun and standing, buttoning back up her vest. “Come on,” she said, pulling me to my feet. “They’ll be worried about us.”

She winked at me as she threw the door open, and then she slid down the ladder, blowing right through the bones of the field hand and kicking his remains into dust. I just stared after her for a moment, my body still hungry and light. Then I shot down the ladder and we hit the ground running, our eyes watching the sky for the darkness, our ears peeled for that horrible sound.

Crow shoved the door open and we dove into the wagon. Ended up in a sweaty pile on the floor by the driver’s seat, Crow just staring down at us, shaking his head.

“Your car’s tougher than it looks,” he said.

I saw Hina and Sal cowered in the back, holding on to each other, and Hina was giving me some new look I’d not seen before.

“What’s left out there?” Crow said.

“Nothing,” I told him. “Just their vehicle.”

He arched his eyebrows. “Their vehicle? Unattended?”

“Right.”

Crow sparked the engine and backed up the wagon, pointing it around the far side of the duster.

“What are you doing?” said Alpha, and Crow laughed out loud.

“I be going to see what Jah has provided for us on this fine morning. A GenTech pod ain’t salvage,” he said. “It’s gold. Solid gold.”

Crow tore through the dirt and plowed the wagon through those three piles of bones, and what was left of the agents just fizzled like smoke. We pulled so close to the GenTech pod that the two vehicles were almost touching. Then Crow cut the engine and waited until everything was silent.

“We leave this door open,” he said, pointing at the passenger side. “We’re quick. And we’re quiet. Anyone hears anything, the door closes in ten seconds. Right?”

“All right,” I said, then I turned to Sal and Hina. “You two stay in here.”

“I want to come,” Sal said.

“You’re too slow, kid.”

“It’s all right,” Hina said, giving me that strange look again, like her eyes were trying to tell me something. “I’ll watch him.”

Alpha popped open the door and we fell into daylight, the sky blue above us and the corn a deep green.

The pod had sunk on busted tires, bullet holes riddled the paint job, and all its glass was shattered. We lifted up the side hatch. And then we dropped down inside a whole different world.

GenTech purple. Everywhere. Everything clean looking, shiny, like it had been snatched from a dream. They had gadgets down in that pod that you could tell were a whole different league. None of it was sprouting wires or had been taped together or was rigged backward and falling apart. These gizmos were tidier than the console in Harvest’s ship. Sleek and small and silent.