Day Zero - C. Robert Cargill Page 0,79

barbecue joint, crunching over gravel, making a beeline for the smokehouse.

As I blocked the line of sight across the highway, I threw open the rear emergency door and heard the BRRRRRT of Snugs’s minigun. He stepped out from behind the smokehouse, laying down suppression fire as Ferdinand emerged, covering him from behind with much more precise plasma shots.

“Come on, get in!” called Ferdinand to the kids behind the smokehouse.

At once, the kids filed out, shepherded by Indiana and Benny, both of whom flailed one arm like a windmill, directing the children on board, while clutching a gun steadily in the other.

Ezra hopped on, running over to me. “Nice ride,” he said, beaming.

“Keep your head down.”

He nodded and shrunk down, keeping out of view of the windows.

The kids were aboard in a matter of seconds.

“All aboard that’s coming aboard,” Ferdinand called out into the street before climbing aboard himself. Ziggy walked backward toward the bus, still firing into the scrub along the highway where a few remaining facets took potshots at us. The Bears all boarded the bus, Ziggy being the last of them, and I shut both doors.

“Good thing these guys shoot like shit,” I said.

“They aren’t shooting at us,” said Ferdinand, looking back at the kids. The weight of that clobbered me.

“Ready?” I asked him.

“Punch it.”

I hit the accelerator and wheeled the bus out on the highway, leaving a wake of dust that filled the road behind us.

“You showed up right on time,” said Ferdinand.

“Sorry I wasn’t there earlier,” I said.

“Any earlier and they might have ambushed us while boarding. The main concern is that they know where we are and likely know where we’re going.”

“So what do we do?” I asked. “Calculate a new route?”

“The straightest route.”

“Won’t that be obvious?”

“Very,” he said. “But we have to hope that CISSUS will think it’s obvious, and that that buys us a few minutes, leaving its facets out of position to get in our way.”

“How many facets is CISSUS willing to sacrifice before we become too costly?”

Ferdinand shook his head. “That thing is pot committed. I don’t even know if it’s about us anymore or if, I don’t know . . .”

“You don’t think it’s become personal, do you?”

“I don’t think anything anymore. The whole world stopped making sense.”

“Straight on through till morning then,” I said.

Ferdinand looked out onto the stretch of empty highway ahead of us. “This is going to be a long twenty-six minutes.”

Chapter 11101

Minute Twenty

The first nineteen minutes were a blur of limestone, trees, and lonely buildings. Cars were either abandoned on the side of the road or stranded as burned-out husks filled with the corpses of the unlucky. Otherwise, the roads were clear, a number of wrecks overturned or smashed up, having been run off the road by other escaping motorists. We were six minutes out from our destination when we saw the first drone.

“I got a bird,” said Indiana from the back of the bus, her tail lowering and ears going back.

“I see it,” said Benny, leaning out a window.

He piped his feed to the rest of us. It was a drone all right—military grade, not the cheap plastic kind. Missiles, infrared targeting, jet engine.

“Could be a friendly,” said Ziggy.

“No such thing anymore,” said Ferdinand. “Snugs, you’re up.”

Mister Snuggles nodded and made his way to the back of the bus with his minigun. I opened the back door and he took position dead center. “We got more company,” he said. He piped us his feed and we could see them in the distance, two city buses hot on our heels. There was no way those buses were as fast as this thing. They were larger, heavier, and designed for stop-and-go traffic—not the occasional long-haul field trip like our school model. If we weren’t slowed down, we might outrun them.

If we were, well, there was no telling how many unfriendlies might be on those buses.

“Keep focused on what’s ahead of us,” Ferdinand said to me. “We’ll take care of what’s behind.”

I nodded and looked over at Ezra. He hadn’t taken his eyes off me. They were wide as saucers, the fear of everything really coming down on him. Before, he had taken everything in stride. Of course, I’d been assuring him we’d be okay. Seeing the Mama Bears become concerned clearly scared the shit out of him.

“It’s gonna be okay,” I told him.

“Is it?” he asked. “Is it really?”

“I’m going to do everything that I can to make certain it is.”

“We’ve got a missile,” called Benny.

“Got it,”