The Hatching (The Hatching #1)(79)

“What do you say, Kim?” Elroy pulled his sunglasses off.

“Somebody jumping the line?” she said.

Elroy shrugged. “Maybe. A few rounds on a fitty, if that’s the case.”

He didn’t need to say that it was more than a few rounds out of a .50 caliber. Kim nodded. “Go ahead and pull those shells out from behind the triggers,” she said, and then she walked around the back of the vehicle and over to where Sue’s squad was parked. Sue was outside her Hummer, sitting on the ground and leaning against one of the wheels. She was staring glumly at her cell phone, and when she saw Kim, she held it up. “Shit signal,” she said. “Shit phone. It’s all shit.”

“Could be worse, right?”

“Always,” Sue said, and pushed herself to her feet. “Firing’s stopped, yeah?”

“Yeah, but . . .” Kim trailed off. There was another sound, and it took her a second to figure out what it was. Honking? Down the highway this time. Far away. Far enough that she and Sue had to stand there quietly, straining to hear it. The beginning of a ruckus. Maybe screaming? It was hard to tell. And then whatever sound might have been coming from the highway was washed away by the sound of rotors. A pair of birds, AH-64 Apaches, missiled-up and moving like piss fire, roared overhead and down the straight shot of highway. Kim and Sue looked at each other for a second and then scrambled to get back into their vehicles.

Kim barely had the door closed when the birds started firing. The jackhammer retort of the guns—the AH-64s sported a 30 mm M230 chain gun that could fire three hundred rounds per minute from the chin turret—sounded almost dusty from a mile away.

“All units, all units,” the radio barked. “Prepare for hostilities.”

Kim started the JLTV, the thrum of the engine coming on just as the birds’ chain guns went quiet. She’d seen the ammo the Apaches took: each bullet was about the size of her hand. Behind her, she could hear Mitts scrambling, and in front of her, she could see more cars breaking out of line. There was a column of smoke coming from where the helicopters had been firing, and then there was a small explosion. The birds split, drifting to either side of the road and spinning toward the center, dropping their chins so the pilots had a clear view of the road. And then, from the Apache on the right, there was the vapor trail of a missile and a much larger explosion.

There was a weird vacuum of silence following the missile, broken, a few seconds later, by Duran. “Okay,” he said. “This does not seem good.” He turned to look at Kim. “Well?”

“Holy shit!” From above them, Kim heard Elroy shouting, but she didn’t need to hear him call out “Fast mover” because she saw the jet spear past them. And then. Holy God. The jet launched a missile.

Chaos.

A fireball fifty feet high.

The slow, orderly movement of cars and trucks onto the side road toward Desperation broke down immediately. In front of them, cars and trucks and SUVs pulled into the desert wherever they could, and Kim could see people getting out of their cars and running. A couple hundred yards in front of her, she saw a man running across the dirt get plowed down by a sedan that had left the highway. The sedan didn’t slow down. The helicopters opened fire with their chain guns again. Kim could see more and more people getting out of their cars. They were running from the fury of the helicopters and the burning ash from where the jet had launched its missile. It was a sight she never thought she’d see: American citizens running from the might of the American military.

No. No. That wasn’t right. They weren’t running away from the gunfire and missiles. She grabbed the binoculars from the console and spun the wheel on the dial until the view came into a tight focus. “No,” she said. She could see moving shadows, see the way dark fingers were reaching up and sucking people down into the maw. Men and women and children were running and screaming. The jet and the birds weren’t firing on civilians.

“They’re here,” she said. She didn’t scream it or yell. It was her normal tone of voice. Almost conversational. She felt . . . calm. She was scared. She was willing to admit that. How could she not be scared? But she also understood that she was where she needed to be. She looked at Duran and then at Mitts. She looked up and then at Elroy, standing with his hands on the butterfly triggers of the .50 cal. She’d never thought about deploying on US soil, but she’d wanted to join the Marines her whole life, and she was ready for this. She needed to be ready. Her men trusted her.

The radio crackled. “All units, you are cleared to fire. Do not, repeat, do not allow the quarantine zone to be breached. Fire at will.”

She wanted to ask what the f*ck they were supposed to be firing at, people or spiders, but the Marines had already opened up. She felt the truck shiver from Elroy firing the .50 cal, the dead heavy thump of the gun spitting bullets. A semitruck that had made it off the highway and into the desert exploded and then tipped over. There was a huge mess of cars moving and smashing and trying to get anywhere but where they were. To her right, Kim could see that Sue’s Hummer was firing its .50 cal as well, and one of her crew, maybe Private Goons, was out of the truck and firing his M16. Next to her, she saw Duran reach for the door handle, but she grabbed his arm.

“Stay in the car,” she said. “We can stop cars and we can stop civilians, but what’s the point of shooting at spiders? I want to be ready to roll.”