Day Zero - C. Robert Cargill Page 0,83

gunfire, but Brian had a bead on him and fired, missing, firing again, blasting the facet to pieces. The last ducked behind the bus.

Ezra raced out from behind the outcropping, kneeling by my side. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“No, buddy,” I said. “I’m not.”

“You will be.” Then he motioned with a head nod to Brian, as if they were simply playing cops and robbers, and Brian responded, both of them, all sixteen years combined, quietly slipping around either side of the bus.

Two plasma blasts rang out.

A body fell into the gravel.

And both boys emerged from behind the bus.

Ezra knelt beside me again. “Can you get up?”

“No,” I said.

He looked back at the bus. “Can you use Ziggy’s parts? You know, so we can put you back together?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I can. But you don’t know how to do that.”

“So you’ll teach me. Just like you always do.” He smiled, and for a moment, in the awkward quiet after the gunfight, I felt like everything was going to be okay.

Chapter 11110

Sunset

We had gotten close enough to walk. Though still miles away, it was only a few hours. Children often lagged, growing exhausted, but Brian and Ezra both stayed alert, clutching their guns close, each taking positions around the others like the Mama Bears had. And we were unmolested.

CISSUS had proved its point, killing us for not joining, sacrificing dozens of bots along the way to do it. It made me wonder just how many bots it had that it could sacrifice so many so wantonly. Maybe CISSUS and its like would win this war after all.

One thing was certain: we never heard from it again. Not that day. It was a peaceful, uneventful bit of babysitting that I was most happy to do.

I missed my new friends, but they had left me a beautiful brood of twelve delightful souls, each special, each gifted in their own way. Each bratty and quiet and moody and carrying their own personal traumas. But beautiful, every one of them.

My new arm and leg worked as good as new. What had made Ziggy Ziggy had been crushed beneath that bus, but his structure and limbs remained intact. When I’d seen him there on the bottom of the bus, I had in fact seen my future—just not the future I imagined, us walking away together, as one.

That’s always the way. Though we can feel the future, it’s always different. We never get it right. Though we might fear it, though we might run from it, it comes for us all just the same. And sometimes it’s not as bad as we thought.

But sometimes it’s worse.

When we reached the outskirts of the ranch, I saw the glint of a scope, reflecting the sinking sun. Then a Jeep rolled out from behind a rocky limestone outcropping, not unlike the one the children had found themselves behind hours before. The Jeep stopped fifty yards off and three figures carrying shotguns and deer rifles emerged. One, a woman, spoke into a walkie-talkie, but she was too far away to make out her words over the noise of the wind howling over the rocks and whistling through the trees.

The survivors, comprising one man and two women, walked silently toward us, and when only twenty yards away, the other woman bellowed, “Put down your weapons! This is nonnegotiable!”

The boys looked up at me and I nodded, putting my own plasma rifle down. The boys followed suit, as did the handful of others who had picked up pistols or shotguns.

The man approached as the women leveled their weapons at us. He took one look at us, nodded, and then walked straight up to me, putting his hand out. “Hollis Jasper,” he said.

“Pounce,” I said, taking his hand.

“I assume you’re the one in charge here.”

“Yes.”

“So their parents . . . ?”

I nodded. “Gone. All of them.”

He nodded somberly in return. “They’re welcome here, along with all the others. We’ve got provisions, livestock, and we’re retrofitting the ranch to be indefinitely self-sustaining within a few weeks.”

“Are there many? Survivors, I mean?” I asked.

“Less than I’d like,” he said. “But more than we expected. So far. I’ll take them off your hands, but as for you, you have to understand. We can’t allow you in.”

“No!” said Ezra. “Pounce comes with us!” He took me by my furry hand, gripping it so tightly.

“I understand your hesitation,” said Hollis. “Lord only knows what you’ve all been through to get here. But this is a human-only community. It’s the