The farmer lifted his palms and backed away. Courtnee and Shirly could already be heard stomping their way below to coordinate with the men on the lower landing.
“Let’s go,” Knox said, hitching up his pack.
The men and women of Mechanical and Supply lurched forward once more. They left behind the group of farmers on landing fifty-six, who watched the long column wind its way upward.
Whispers rose as the power cables were lowered. Powerful forces were merging over these people’s heads, bad intentions coming together and heading for something truly awful.
And anyone with eyes and ears could telclass="underline" some kind of reckoning was coming.
There was no warning for Lukas, no countdown. Hours of quiet anticipation, of insufferable nothingness, simply erupted into violence. Even though he had been told to expect the worst, Lukas felt like the waiting so long for something to happen just made it a fiercer surprise when it finally did.
The double doors of landing thirty-four blew open. Solid steel peeled back like curls of paper. The sharp ring made Lukas jump, his hand slip off the stock of his rifle. Gunfire erupted beside him, Bobbie Milner shooting at nothing and screaming in fear. Maybe excitement. Sims was yelling impossibly over the roar. When it died down, something flew through the smoke, a canister, bouncing toward the security gate.
There was a terrible pause—and then another explosion like a blow to the ears. Lukas nearly dropped his gun. The smoke by the security gate couldn’t quite fog the carnage. Pieces of people Lukas had known came to a sick rest in the entrance hall of IT. The people responsible began to surge through before he could take stock, before he could become fearful of another explosion occurring right in front of him.
The rifle beside him barked again, and this time Sims didn’t yell. This time, several other barrels joined in. The people trying to push through the chairs tumbled into them instead, their bodies shaking as if pulled by invisible strings, arcs of red like hurled paint flying from their bodies.
More came. A large man with a throaty roar. Everything moved so slowly. Lukas could see the man’s mouth part, a yell in the center of a burly beard, a chest as wide as two men. He held a rifle at his waist. He fired at the ruined security station. Lukas watched Peter Billings spin to the floor, clutching his shoulder. Bits of glass shivered from the window frame in front of Lukas as barrel after barrel erupted across the conference table, the shattered window seeming insignificant now. A prudent move.
The hail of bullets hit the man unseen. The conference room was an ambush, a side-on attack. The large man shook as some of the wild fire got lucky. His beard sagged open as his mouth parted. His rifle was cracked in half, a shiny bullet between his fingers. He tried to reload.
The guns of IT loosed their own bullets too fast to count. Levers were held, and springs and gunpowder did the rest. The giant man fumbled with his rifle but never got it reloaded. He tumbled into the chairs, sending them crashing across the floor. Another figure appeared through the door, a tiny woman. Lukas watched her down the length of his barrel, saw her turn and look right at him, the smoke from the explosion drifting toward her, white hair flowing about her shoulders as if the smoke were a part of her.
He could see her eyes. He had yet to shoot his gun, had watched, jaw slack, as the fighting took place.
The woman bent her arm back and made to throw something his way.
Lukas pulled the trigger. His rifle flashed and lurched. In the time it took, the long and terrible time it took for the bullet to cross the room, he realized it was just an old woman. Holding something.
A bomb.
Her torso spun and her chest blossomed red. The object fell. There was another awful wait, more attackers appearing, screaming in anger, until an explosion blew the chairs and the people among them apart.
Lukas wept while a second surge made a futile attempt. He wept until his clip was empty, wept as he fumbled for the release, shoved a spare into the butt, the salt bitter on his lips as he drew back that bolt and let loose with another menacing hail of metal—so much stouter and quicker than the flesh it met.
52
Bernard came to at the sound of shouting, his eyes burning from the smoke, his ears ringing with a long-ago blast.
Peter Billings was shaking his shoulders, yelling at him, a look of fright in his wide eyes and on his soot-stained brow. Blood stained his overalls in a wide rust-colored pool.
“Hrm?”
“Sir! Can you hear me?”
Bernard pushed Peter’s hands away and tried to sit up. He groped about his body, looking for anything bleeding or broken. His head throbbed. His hand came away from his nose wet with blood.
“What happened?” he groaned.
Peter crouched by his side. Bernard saw Lukas standing at a distance behind the sheriff, rifle on his shoulder, peering toward the stairwell. There was shouting in the distance, and then the patter of gunfire.
“We’ve got three men dead,” Peter said. “A few wounded. Sims led a half dozen into the stairwell. They got it a lot worse than us. A lot worse.”
Bernard nodded. He checked his ears, was surprised they weren’t bleeding as well. He dotted his sleeve with blood from his nose and patted Peter on the arm. He nodded over his shoulder. “Get Lukas,” he said.
Peter frowned but nodded. He spoke with Lukas, and the young man knelt by Bernard.
“Are you okay?” Lukas asked.
Bernard nodded. “Stupid,” he said. “Didn’t know they’d have guns. Should’ve guessed about the bombs.”
“Take it easy.”
He shook his head. “Shouldn’t have had you here. Dumb. Could have been us both—”
“Well, it was neither of us, sir. We’ve got ’em running down the stairwell. I think it’s over.”
Bernard patted his arm. “Get me to the server,” he said. “We’ll need to report this.”
Lukas nodded. He knew which server Bernard meant. He helped Bernard to his feet, an arm around his back, Peter Billings frowning as the two of them staggered down the smoky hallway together.
“Not good,” Bernard told Lukas, once they were away from the others.
“But we won, right?”
“Not yet. The damage won’t be contained here. Not today. You’ll have to stay below awhile.” Bernard grimaced and tried to walk alone. “Can’t risk something happening to us both.”
Lukas seemed unhappy about this. He entered his code into the great door, pulled out his ID, wiped someone else’s blood off it and his hand, then swiped it through the reader.
“I understand,” he finally said.
Bernard knew he’d picked the right man. He left Lukas to close the heavy door while he made his way to the rearmost server. He staggered once and fell against number eight, catching himself and resting a moment until the wooziness went away. Lukas caught up and was pulling his copy of the master key out of his overalls before Bernard got to the back of the room.
Bernard rested against the wall while Lukas opened the server. He was still too shaken up to notice the flashing code on the server’s front panel. His ears were too full of a false ringing to notice the real one.
“What’s that mean?” Lukas asked. “That noise?”
Bernard looked at him quizzically.
“Fire alarm?” Lukas pointed up at the ceiling. Bernard finally heard it as well. He stumbled toward the back of the server as Lukas opened the last lock, pushed the young man out of the way.