“Tom.” At the sound of his name, Tom blinked away from the horror-show of memory to find Wade there in this nightmare of the present. The broken-bone brand was not red-hot the way it was in movies but ashen. Tom felt the heat-shimmers from five feet away. “Time to sit down now,” Wade said.

“You don’t need to do this,” he said, already knowing it was a waste of breath.

“Well, I don’t brand you, I can’t prove I turned you in. Don’t want to get cheated.”

They had the gun, and there was nowhere to run. The one thing survival school had drummed in over and over again was that unless the mission was in jeopardy, choose life.

Another thing he’d learned: eyes always gave you away. Control your eyes, and unless your opponent was a mind reader . . .

Wade was closer. Nikki had the gun.

He looked at Nikki.

He went for Wade.

57

He moved fast, aimed low, his right arm flashing out and sweeping up. He screamed as the metal brand sizzled into skin, a quick lick of fire that seared his flesh and burned hair. But Wade lost his grip. The iron clattered to the floor as Tom drove forward, twisting at the waist, pushing off from his back foot, left elbow cocked. He rammed the bony point into Wade’s gut so hard he felt the impact all the way to his shoulder. Wade let out a breathy, low grunt, and then the old man was staggering, his weight pulling him off-balance. Tom stayed with him, bare feet slapping wood, his hands knotted in Wade’s shirt, driving, driving . . . Out of the corner of his eye, Tom saw Nikki pivot, the shotgun coming up, and then he vaulted around the old man.

The roar was enormous. The room jumped in a brilliant burst of light. At close range, the shot from a twelve-gauge ought to penetrate straight through and tag him, too. But Wade was huge: a three-hundred-pound human shield.

The big man jerked; there was a sound like the burst of a water balloon on cement as Wade’s blood splattered against wood. He felt Wade beginning to crumple, heard Nikki shrieking over the ringing in his ears. He was already moving again, pushing off with his stronger left leg, rounding the body, staying as low as he could. He saw Nikki just ahead, less than ten feet away—eyes wide, mouth open. In her shock, her arms had loosened, and the shotgun was pointing down and away.

Go, go, go, go! He sprang, left hand clawed for a grab, right elbow cocked. One good punch—

His right foot came down on the thick slick of Wade’s blood.

It was like slipping on a patch of glare ice. He felt his balance going, his right foot shooting out. He let out a startled grunt, twisted, tried to break his fall but failed. He crashed down hard, his left hip jamming against the solid wood floor. A rocket of pain exploded into his pelvis, and then he was gasping, rolling, trying to find his footing. On all fours now. Then his eyes jerked to the right, and there, on the floor, six inches away . . .

Above, over his shoulder, he risked a single glance. Nikki’s face twisted in a mask of rage, and then she was dragging the shotgun up, pulling the trigger—

Nothing.

No shot.

Tom saw from her face that she realized her mistake at the same moment he did. In her rush, she’d forgotten to rack the shotgun. Her forearms corded as she fumbled. Her hands were wires. She worked the pump as he darted for the brand . . .

Ka-CHUNK—

. . . already thinking: too slow, too slow, too slow!

CRU—

His right hand snatched at the brand, still incredibly hot, and then he was sweeping around, scything the air in a vicious backhand. He felt the instant the brand connected, cutting her legs out from under. The shotgun boomed again, but the blast was wild, a spurt of fire licking at the ceiling. Nikki tumbled to the floor, and the shotgun clattered away, and she was shrieking: “I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, you little fuck—”

Hand singing with fresh pain, Tom lunged for the shotgun, grabbed it up, and then he was spinning around, racking the pump: ka-CHUNK-crunch—

And stopped dead.

There were two of them: a square woman in winter-weight camo and an even older man with dark eyes and wisps of steam curling from a black watch cap glued down to his skull. Both had rifles.

On the floor, Nikki crabbed back. “No, no, we—”

“Here,” the dark-eyed man said to Tom. “Let me.” His rifle bucked, and Nikki King’s face cratered.

58

No one moved. The Kings couldn’t. Tom didn’t dare. “You okay?” the man said. “They hurt you?”

He was on his back, bare-assed naked in a pool of blood, a shotgun clutched in both hands, and the smell of burned gunpowder and his own crisped skin stinging his nose. “I’m all right,” he said. “Who are you?”

The woman spoke for the first time. Her pale eyes darted toward the kitchen and then fixed on Tom. “Is there a boy here?”

“I think he’s out in the barn, the big one. They have him locked up.”

“Why?” The skin around her lips whitened.

“He’s . . .” Tom swallowed. “You know.”

“Oh God.” She closed her eyes a moment. Her fingers rose to her lips. “Damn it.”

“You don’t know it’s him,” the man said.

“But we know who took him.” She whirled on her heel. “I’m going out there.”

“Mellie,” the man began, “you don’t—”

“He’s mine,” she shot back, and then she was gone.

The dark-eyed man stared after her for a moment and then turned back to Tom. The old man’s gaze clicked to the dog tags dangling on their beaded chain, and then he cocked his head at the litter of Tom’s clothes. “Why’n’t you get dressed, soldier?”

“Who are you people?” Tom asked.

“Get dressed,” the man said, and turned to go. “Then we’ll talk.”

The shot came as he fumbled the buttons of his flannel shirt. He stopped, held his breath, listened for more, but there was only the one. A short time later, he heard footsteps and the murmur of their voices.

His right palm was already blistering, but it hurt. From Afghanistan, he knew that third-degree burns didn’t. He could stand the pain. Been hurt way worse. But he’d need antibiotic salve and bandages pretty soon.

He hefted the shotgun. There was no other way out of this small back room, not even a window, and there were two of them. He could shoot first and ask questions later, but they could have killed him already, twice.

On the other hand, the Kings had said he was worth more alive. When he walked into the kitchen, the woman was sitting at the kitchen table. Her rifle was flat on the floor. The old guy had shouldered his.

“There you go, soldier,” he said, setting a basin of water in front of a third chair. His manner was cowpoke-friendly. “Best you stick that hand in there. It’s cold, but that’s good for burns.”

Tom didn’t move. After what he’d been through, he wasn’t going to make the same mistake of trusting anyone twice. He held the shotgun by his right hip, the business end pointing toward the guy’s center mass. The woman would have to bend, snatch, grab, and aim. He could rack the pump again and get off a round before she knew she was dead. “Are you the bounty hunters?”

The woman let out a watery laugh. “Only in a manner of speaking. That boy out there, Teddy—I’ve been searching . . .” Her voice trembled, and she stopped a moment, swallowed, passed a hand over her face. When she looked back up at Tom, her pale eyes were glazed with tears. “He was in a group of children I’d been taking care of since . . . you know. Hunters took him from me.”

That was plausible. The poor kid had to come from somewhere. “How did you know to come here?” Tom asked.

“You’d be surprised how fast word gets around,” the man said. “There are only so many farms out this way. When we met up”— he nodded at the woman—“I had a pretty good idea where we ought to look.”

Tom thought back to Jed and Grace. They had been careful and isolated, but all it had taken was one very nosy neighbor. Again, plausible. But what were these people doing out here to begin with? Were they working together? The old guy said they’d met up. What did that mean? What were these two old people doing wandering around in the dead of winter to begin with? The woman’s story, he understood. But what was the story with the wannabe cowboy?

“But to tell you the truth,” the old man continued, “I wasn’t sure until I saw the flag. A lot of militia groups use something similar. Played a hunch, that’s all.”

Militia? A small finger of unease nudged his chest. Jed had warned him about this, but Tom had been naïve enough to believe the militias were local to Wisconsin. Of all people, he ought to know better. Wherever there were civilians, there must be militias, some more organized, entrenched, and better prepared than others. Some might even have been expecting and hoping for the world to go ka-boom, and planned accordingly. Surviving members would naturally come together. Sick as the logic was, he understood why he and other, younger survivors might be valuable, if for nothing else than to generate replacements. But why would some want Chuckies?

“The Kings said it was a signal. It’s been up two days,” he said.

The man looked at the woman. “Then we got to move. Sooner we get going, the better.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Tom said.

“It would be safer,” the man said.

“I don’t know who you are.”

“I’m Mellie Bridger,” the woman said. She held out a hand, speckled with age. When Tom didn’t move, she folded her hand back into her lap. “We’re going to our base camp. That’s where I was headed with my group when Teddy was taken ten days ago. The other kids should already be there.”

Uh-oh. A base camp implied a much bigger operation. If these people were scouts for what was left of the military, this could be very bad for him. Might have gotten rescued from the frying pan to land in the fire. “What camp? Where?”