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“I heard you fine.” She swallowed then looked around at the others. “These three are just kids. Heather, she’s … ” She looked at Heather, who said nothing. “Well, the kids need her. Especially Lila.” The woman pointed at the teen girl, and Morgan thought she might be trying to humanize her in his eyes — to give her a name and a personality so she’d be harder to think of as chattel. That kind of thing didn’t work on Morgan Matthews, but he admired her trying.
 

“And who are you, other than this man’s wife?”
 

“Piper. Piper Dempsey.” Then she went on. “Lila is pregnant. Just three months along. She’s going to have to have a baby six months from now, when who knows what might be happening. That’s Raj, her boyfriend. Her baby’s father.”
 

Morgan watched Piper Dempsey’s big, blue liquid eyes.
 

“But me?” She seemed to blink back fear. “I can stay if you need insurance.”

Morgan shook his head. “No deal.”

“The others won’t say anything to get you in trouble. Not if I’m here.” She looked at Heather again, but instead of protesting, the older woman held the girl to her chest. Whether she was being practical or a coward, Morgan couldn’t decide.
 

“You’re a liability,” Morgan told her.

Piper looked at the boy, finally sitting up, his face painted in blood. He wiped it away. His eyes were hard as he listened to their sordid negotiation, but he didn’t seem quite dumb enough to try anything.
 

“Maybe I’m not a liability.” She came forward and, seeming to summon intense will, reached up to straighten Morgan’s lapel. “Maybe, if you let them go, I can make it worth your while.”
 

Morgan watched Piper’s big, blue eyes. She was gorgeous but not soft. Hard and determined. Fiercer, perhaps, than she herself realized. She might intend to honor her words. But she also might take it upon herself, if he agreed, to do something rash and deadly.
 

He watched her, weighing his options.
 

If she stayed, there would be seven people in their group: himself, five other men, and this woman. He was willing to share, but they’d have to keep her restrained like an animal. It was fine; the alternative was death. But whenever she was out, they’d need to watch themselves. Watch their guns. Watch their
backs
. She might try anything.
 

But it could work. Maybe.

He’d already planned to thin their numbers anyway. Vincent clearly had to go. Maybe Dan, too. Accidents could be arranged. Duly trimmed, after things eventually got messy topside, their little group would be well positioned.
Oh, yes
. He who owns the guns owns the land. He who owns the land controls the people. And he who controls the people can have whatever he wants.
 

And what’s more, the bunker had plenty of weapons. Not just handguns. Some of what he’d seen in the armory appeared to be well beyond what an ordinary citizen was permitted to have. Assault rifles, full-auto machine guns, grenades, maybe even fucking
C-4
if his eyes hadn’t deceived him. Plenty of muscle. Plenty of security. Plenty of all they’d ever need to

CHAPTER NINE

Piper’s ears echoed with the gunshot’s ringing echo. Gore was suddenly everywhere.
 

Lila was covered in blood, screaming so shrilly that Piper almost wanted to plug her ears to stop the noise. Her face was dripping, her shirt red and spattered like a Rorschach.
 

Piper, not far from Lila, was battling shock, fighting ringing ears that nearly muted the girl’s shrieks. But even in her shock Piper thought that Lila looked like Carrie, the girl from that old movie Meyer liked so much. The girl who’d finally had enough, and decided to fight back.
 

Morgan’s body fell to the ground and slumped without ceremony. He didn’t bend his knees or announce his reasons. He simply folded and hit the carpet like meat, a golf ball-sized hole raining red from his forehead.
 

Behind the body — at just enough of an angle for the bullet to miss Piper on its way out — was the young man Morgan had called Christopher, holding a gun with its barrel smoking.

Piper looked down, finding herself more gore soaked than Lila. Her entire front had been painted as if by a harried modern artist. Lumps of matter clotted the goo. She looked down and a snot-like clump of something fell to the floor. She didn’t hear it land. Her ears were baffled by the gunshot in the concrete bunker, and Lila was still holding her hands up and screaming.
 

Piper was startled to realize that she was screaming too.
 

“Calm down,” Christopher said.
 

His gun was still up, but he was no longer pointing it. His wrist had bent, the smoking barrel now aimed at the ceiling. His other hand was out, palm toward Piper, pacifying. But she could only look down at her bare arms and hands, at the collapsed corpse at her feet. Morgan had rolled on landing and was now looking up at her, seeming to ask why this had happened. With one eye anyway. Most of the other was elsewhere — maybe in her hair.
 

Piper screamed. Looked around. Screamed some more.
 

Part of her expected Morgan’s other men to swarm, but they were slipping their own weapons into holsters or under waistbands. One of them — the big-armed black man — was helping Trevor to his feet. Trevor looked confounded and angry (an interesting blend) but took the man’s assistance without protest. He held himself at arm’s length, looking up at Christopher, looking at Piper, looking at Lila.
 

The big man reached into his pocket and pulled out a tissue and handed it to Trevor. He looked at the tissue as if he’d never seen one before.
 

Raj was up much faster, pedaling backward, his gas mask still on despite the takedown. The back of his calves struck an end table, and he tripped sideways, his hip catching the corner and knocking an errant deck of cards to the floor. He crab-shuffled away, and the man with the curly hair moved toward him, hands empty and out, seeming to offer help. But Raj was kicking, looking like a ninja knocked flat on his ass.
 

Heather was still with Lila, not screaming and somehow seeming above it. She must have seen what was coming and flinched — or had used Lila as a shield, which was possible — because she showed only a few specks of blood. Now, trying to comfort Lila and not knowing how, Heather looked split: she could let Lila keep screaming, or she could embrace her and have to touch all those wet pieces of Morgan’s brains.
 

“It’s okay,” said Christopher, focusing on Piper, side-stepping to match her as her knees unhinged. He held Piper’s eyes. His were brown. His hair was black and short under a stocking cap, and he had a square jaw adorned with a jet-black goatee. It occurred to Piper that if he hadn’t just blown someone’s head off, she’d probably be attracted to him.
 

“I told you, no hollow points!” said a voice.
 

Piper felt her mouth open, wondered if she was still screaming, and decided she wasn’t. She closed her mouth, tasting unwanted moisture, wondering if she was swallowing Morgan in a different way than she’d so recently offered. She managed to turn and saw the kid — the one with the long hair on top that swung in his face. He wasn’t really a kid, she realized. He might be around her age. And now that he wasn’t affecting his earlier vacant, crazy expression, he looked more seasoned, less insane.

“It’s fine,” Christopher told him.
 

“Jesus
Christ
, Christopher. You’re cleaning this up since you insisted on fucking hollow points. You hear me? Every fucking drop.
And
you’re dragging his ass outside.”
 

Christopher looked over. “Bullshit! I kill him, you guys haul him! That was the deal!”
 

“If you’d used a normal slug maybe! Half his fucking head is gone, Christopher! You think I want that shit all over me?”

“Look,” Christopher continued in an eminently reasonable tone of voice, “I’ll clean up the blood. But I’m
not
dragging the body.”

“You’re doing it all!”
 

“How is
that
fair, Cameron?”
 

“How is you
using
fucking hollow points
fair, Christopher?”
 

“That’s just what I had!”
 

“Nobody just
has
those!”
 

“Well, I did,” Christopher said, crossing his arms.
 

Across the room, Lila slipped in a puddle of blood and almost struck the ground. The big-armed man caught her. Raj came at him, apparently meaning to protect his woman, but the big man cuffed him away. He set Lila down and turned toward Raj instantly, apologizing, mumbling that the strike had been force of habit.
 

“Okay, everyone.
Calm down!
” Cameron said, raising his arms.
 

Lila was ranting and screaming, not hearing at all. Heather was mumbling.
 

Cameron put his fingers in his mouth and loudly whistled. Lila shrieked one last time and fell silent. All eyes turned to the group’s new leader.
 

“It’s over,” Cameron said. “
Over.
Okay?”
 

He looked around the room to make sure everyone planned to remain quiet then continued.
 

“I’m sorry to have put you through that little bit of drama and violence, but it’s over now, okay? It was an unfortunate consequence of how we found things when we arrived.”
 

Piper found her speech. It was, apparently, right where she’d left it: under her terror.

“Who
are
you?” she asked.

Cameron put his right hand on his chest, fingers splayed.
 

“My name is Cameron Bannister.” He pointed around the room at each of the new arrivals in turn. “And as Morgan kindly informed you before losing his mind, that’s Vincent, Terrence, Christopher, and Dan.”

Piper blinked. Her eyes wanted to water, but at least she’d stopped screaming.

“It’s okay,” said Cameron, giving her a too-big smile. “We’re the good guys.”

CHAPTER TEN

The Dempseys were upset. Cameron could understand.
 

Until a few months ago, he’d never seen a dead body — not even at a funeral, because he’d assiduously avoided them. He always gave spiritual excuses (“we should celebrate her life, not remember her earthly remains”) that hid his own fear of death. Until two months ago, he’d never seen a body in plain sight, discarded like litter. Even during the first weeks of occupation, Cameron had stayed in America’s guts, keeping to the little villages where drinking and music made people forget the skies, despite the ships. It had been easier to find those places than he’d thought. At first, there had been nothing but fear. And after a few weeks of nothing, burgs with only clouds above almost seemed to forget.
 

No ships. No abductions. Might as well get back to our business.
 

In retrospect, Cameron supposed he’d been rationalizing. The bands of people he’d found those first weeks — those who sometimes knew his music and always enjoyed it once he started to play — were more huddles than towns. And really, those who “got back to business” did so by living in their houses and settling into daily routines. Living and shopping, even if so many of the stores became free-for-alls. But at the time, it had seemed to Cameron that he’d found a way to stay normal. To rise above it all. To see the ships in the sky and pretend they didn’t mean what they did.
 

And as he’d continued his backwater tour during those first weeks — never playing the venues Dan had booked him into but finding a park or a garage where people wanted to hear him play acoustic — Cameron told himself he was living life on his terms, refusing to be defined by events that didn’t touch him. Then he’d realized that just because there were no ships above Shepherd’s Bend, Iowa, that didn’t mean the people there weren’t vulnerable to global events. It definitely didn’t mean that Cameron Bannister was immune.
 

He was human, same as anyone. And he had his own cross to bear — most of it back in Utah, from where he’d been diverted to come here — same as the Dempseys.

Cameron looked around the room as the family settled. The teen girl — that would be Lila; she looked just like the photos in his mobile folio, taken at her father’s side — was covered in spatter. Piper (she looked much
better
than the photos Cameron had found) looked almost as bad. That was unfortunate. Even after traveling with Vincent, Dan, and Terrence, he himself was still new to gore. If he’d been painted with another man’s brains, he’d find it hard to trust, too. But he supposed he should take it easy on Christopher. The original plan had called for
Cameron
to kill Morgan, and he still wasn’t entirely sure he could have done it. Just too damn human, apparently.

“Will … ” Piper swallowed, then tried again. “Will
you
let us go?”
 

Cameron held up a hand. “You misunderstand. You’re not captives. Not anymore.”