The Hatching (The Hatching #1)(74)

Some prick in a black BMW Roadster three vehicles from the front of the line got out of his car and came to argue with Captain Diggs for what must have been the fifth or six time, and Kim couldn’t help smiling when she saw the man frog-marched back to his car. She kept her hands off the .50 cal. She had wedged an old shell casing under the butterfly trigger as an improvised safety. But still. The Browning M2 could barf out five hundred rounds a minute, and while it was one thing to accidentally punch out somebody overseas in a war zone, she didn’t want to be the one to accidentally light up some civilian.

“Gum?” Elroy stuck his hand up out of the truck. Kim reached down to snag a piece.

“Anything new?”

Elroy popped his head up and showed her his phone. “No signal, and then no battery, so no, no news. Just what you hear on the radio.”

Ten yards in from where her tactical vehicle sat on the outside of the blockade, Kim could see Sue’s Hummer. The Hummers weren’t in the best shape—they’d seen heavy use in the desert, and the army was taking its time with decommissioning—but Kim wasn’t worried about IEDs in Southern California. “Sue,” she called across. “You guys got anything?”

Before Sue could answer, Kim heard the call on the radio.

“White SUV leaving containment. Fire team leader Lance Corporal Bock, on your side. Copy.”

“Copy,” Kim said.

Down the line, maybe five or six hundred yards away, at the edge of where the portable floodlights made themselves felt, she saw a white SUV that had crept out of line and drifted off the highway into the dirt. They were doing that here and there, mostly trucks and SUVs, feeling out the line, trying to see what the holdup was, and then popping back into place as soon as they realized they weren’t going anywhere. Some people still had their cars running, and Kim occasionally caught the sound of music drifting from the distance, but most people had turned off their cars hours ago, which was good. That’s the last thing they needed: cars running out of gas on top of everything else. It seemed that most people had resigned themselves to the wait. Earlier in the night, some people had gotten out of their cars to stretch, to sit on their hoods, and in one case, to toss a Frisbee, but now, at two in the morning, it was quiet. People were sleeping in their cars, seats reclined, a freeway slumber party. But the driver of the white SUV wasn’t sleeping and he wasn’t getting back in line. It was going wide. Fifty yards. Maybe sixty. And it was moving toward them. Fast.

“Fire team leader, if vehicle attempts to pass brigade, you are to engage.”

She keyed her radio. “Sir? It’s a civilian.”

There was a brief pause. “Fire team leader, fire a warning volley in front of the vehicle.”

“Now?”

“Affirmative.”

Kim took a breath and then she tracked the white SUV. It was moving, kicking up dirt and heading at an angle. If it kept going, there was no question it was going to pass her. The SUV was maybe 150 yards in front of her now. She led it by ten yards to be safe, snuck the spent shell out from under the butterfly trigger, and let out a five-round burst. It had been a while since she’d qualified on the .50 cal, and she’d forgotten how loud it was. The flash from the muzzle looked like the sun, and one of the rounds was a tracer, but neither the light nor the sound seemed to matter. The SUV didn’t stop. It didn’t even slow down.

Kim hesitated.

“Fire team leader.”

She had her fingers on the trigger.

“Bock. Take it out.”

Kim didn’t lead the SUV this time. She lined up directly on the engine block and pulled the trigger.





Desperation, California


Accurate facial recognition—picking a moving person out of a crowd—was still only the stuff of movies and television, but detecting the sound of a gunshot was something that had been solved years ago. When Lance Corporal Kim Bock pulled the trigger on her .50 cal, the aboveground audio sensors outside Shotgun’s house sent a notice to the tablet he kept by his bed. Just a small ping. Not enough even to bother Fred on the other side of the bed, but enough to wake Shotgun up. He threw on a T-shirt and jeans and went out to the kitchen. Gordo was sitting at the table, a single light on above him, pooling over him.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

Gordo looked up from his computer. “Not really. This is bad, Shotgun. Seriously bad.”

Shotgun nodded. “Yep.”

Gordo paused, considered it, and then shrugged. “I’ve got to say, I guess I’m glad we did this. Glad Amy and I came over. I think we’re going to be riding this out for a while.”

“Shots outside.”

Gordo sat up straighter. “What? Seriously?”

“Something big. Military.”

“That’s what got you up?”

“Yeah,” Shotgun said, but then he shook his head. “Yes, but not just that. I’m just going to check everything one more time. We’re good down here. Anything other than a direct hit by a bunker buster, but you know.”

Gordo did know, and together they double-checked the blast doors, double-checked that everything was shut down and sealed tight. From the outside, no casual observer—or member of the military thinking of trying to force civilians to evacuate—would realize there was an entire bunker under Shotgun’s house.