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Go. Now!

A nearly synchronous jump. Piper spun to one side and dropped, but Cameron was too hurried; he fell as much backward as sideways and caught a hoof to the chest as the horses ran on, kicking up, fighting the strange new pain under their saddles. Riderless, they might turn and run back the way they’d come, but Cameron didn’t think so. The ravine was narrow. The only way to run from the spikes was forward.
 

Reeling, his breath kicked from his chest, Cameron still managed to drag himself to the small creek’s side. Piper was already there as he wheezed forward, trying not to clutch his chest and what might be a broken rib so he could dig. Piper was already shredding the root-strewn embankment, dragging autumn’s leaves and spring’s moss down in giant disgusting handfuls.
 

They didn’t speak. Time was gone.

With the loose detritus cleared away, they made themselves tiny, tucking legs and arms, retracting their necks like turtles. They dragged the filth back atop themselves, becoming one with the fetid earth.
 

It took too long. Precious seconds. Cameron could hear his own heartbeat in his ears. He dragged in painful fits of breath, feeling suffocated as he melted into his blanket of moist leaves. Then it was done, and they waited. And waited.
 

The sound of engines. ATVs shambling through the creekbed.
 

The engines grew louder.
 

They couldn’t run now if they wanted to. They’d never reach their guns, pressed against the embankment as they were.
 

Waiting was all they had.
 

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Lila hadn’t been sleeping well. She woke from a dream of Piper barely rested, feeling as if she’d been running for hours at Piper’s side instead of sleeping in the middle of …

… but who cared what time it was? Who cared if it was day or night? Who cared if the bunker was real or if that pleasure belonged to her visions? She knew all the answers but didn’t care. Maybe it was all real. Maybe none of it was. Lila wasn’t the only one coming apart. Her mother seemed just as threadbare. Jumping at the same shadows.
 

Trevor had finally grown himself a pair, but he’d become a different person since Piper’s departure. Almost as if he’d been waiting for the cat to go so the mice could play. He spent all his time with Cameron’s men (if they were, indeed, still
Cameron
’
s
men; Lila couldn’t remember if her dream showed Cameron dying or if he’d lived … or if it mattered since that was fake and the bunker was real), playing cards and shooting the shit. Sometimes, Lila wanted to point out that he wasn’t a rough and tough commando but was still a teenage boy.
 

Lila rolled onto her side, head throbbing through a moment of vertigo.

Lila tried to find her center.
 

You
’
re in a concrete box.
 

You
’
re almost halfway through a pregnancy.
 

With some sort of demon baby maybe.
 

You
’
re hearing and seeing things. Oh, and feeling deadly abdominal cramps.

Your baby-daddy has been a drama queen and asshole since he got here.
 

And Christopher
…
 

Oh, right.
 

Lila really shouldn’t have done that. She was eighteen now — officially an adult, old enough to know better. But that, too, was a joke. Her mother still let hormones pull her strings. Their parents didn’t think Trevor or Lila knew they were still hooking up despite Piper, but neither was stupid. Dad talks to Mom on the phone all the time? Dad plans his trips around Mom’s time in LA? Mom seems to know a lot more about this place — about Dad’s so-called Axis Mundi — than an
ex
-wife should? Check, check, and double check. Lila, if she’d been forbidden to see Raj, could have covered her tracks better.
 

But despite being eighteen — despite knowing better — she’d done it anyway. Not
it,
exactly. Not that. The broom closet wasn’t exactly the most romantic spot for that kind of encounter. But they’d made out plenty, and she’d had her top half off with her somewhat-enlarged boobs practically kissing the open air. Anyone could have come in and seen … and when that alarm had gone off, Vincent damned well almost had. She’d still been finagling her bra into place through her shirt by the time Vincent stormed into the living room, then toward the control room. Her nipples ached throughout most of the ensuing discussion. It was odd and inappropriate, and Lila had felt sure she was responding poorly to the situation. She should have been focusing on their air intake problem and whatever Vincent had in mind to “clear the decks.” Maybe she could have managed to be either excited or afraid at the prospect of heading up top, doing exactly what her mother had wanted ever since the ground thumping started.
 

But all she’d been able to think of was how she was still tingling — having some sort of boobs-and-body version of what Raj described as blue balls, when he’d been trying to guilt her into relieving his pressure with “at least a handjob.”

Raj.
 

Yeah, that was a problem times two. First, Raj himself had become a fifth wheel. If they were topside, she’d probably have broken up with him by now. It would be fine; she’d thought she’d loved him, but unity had a way of driving people apart. Maybe it wasn’t a fair test, but three months trapped in a post-apocalyptic bunker had brought out everything about Raj she’d only had a peek at before. He sulked. He complained. He was stubborn to the point of idiocy, like how he obsessed over futilely trying to contact his parents. He was a drama queen and a prima donna. And although Lila knew it was a sexist thought (or maybe a reverse-sexist thought?), she suspected her biggest problem with Raj was simply that he wouldn’t
man up
.

Look at Trevor. Her brother had manned up so much, it was almost embarrassing in the other direction. He practically walked bowlegged now, to allow room for his enormous balls.
 

Vincent, Dan, Terrence, Christopher — those four had come through hell without blinking. And what’s more, they sorta came through it
to save the Dempseys
. It was easy to be impressed.
 

Lila shouldn’t have hooked up with Christopher. But she was pregnant. Her hormones were out of control, and her boyfriend was whining around in prissy little circles. It was hard to blame herself, no matter how guilty she felt.
 

Which, by the way, she felt plenty.
 

Lila sat up on the cot, specifically avoiding a glance at the clock because buying into surface would only raise her hopes. She hadn’t paid attention to the last few attempts to contact Cameron and Piper for the same reason, and would plug her ears and say
LA-LA-LA
this morning if anyone tried. The dream was still too fresh. Probably more of that whole “going crazy” thing. The dream probably didn’t mean she was seeing real things from Piper’s yesterday. The fact that she’d woken around the time Piper and Cameron had—

(Got out of a car? Off horses? It was something like that.)
 

Whatever they’d done anyway. But seeing things didn’t make them real. It wasn’t like Lila could see the future, or already had.
Lucky guesses.
 

And her baby was
not
talking to her. That was some rubber room shit right there.
 

With the last thought circling her mind, Lila looked defiantly down at her midsection, curling her back to properly stare. Lila had been a terror to her mother from time to time, and she supposed her baby would, once it graduated from uterus to diapers to mouthing off, be a terror to Lila. But that was years away, and she’d be damned if this kid would disobey her before it was even born.
 

There were no pains. No strange thoughts. Maybe those things would stay away if she kept her eye on the ball. If they did, Lila thought she might take back what she’d told Mom about the pains. She’d shared out of fear — but rather than getting her some much-needed motherly support, the news frightened Mom, too. Now she was afraid of the pains and terrified that her mother would lose her head and do something stupid, like charging upstairs and demanding to be let outside.
Like she
’
d already done.
 

Lila rubbed her belly. Yes. Maybe things would be quiet. And if they were, maybe she could forget about it. Maybe it had been gas. Or false contractions. She’d heard that could happen.
 

And the voices? The visions? The way she’d felt all caught up and blurted something about “it’s all beginning” without meaning to? The snippets of sound and songs? The expressions she’d never heard that ran around inside her head regardless? The seemingly psychic dreams — especially the one where she was descending a fathomless pit, underwater, headed toward some glowing, warbling light? That one came plenty during daytime.
 

Well, all of those things were signs of being stir-crazy. Perfectly understandable.

Lila stood, wondering if she was rationalizing.
 

Probably. But it might be better to rationalize and deny than admit she was nuts. They needed to get out of the bunker. And maybe, given what Vincent had said
(Yesterday? Earlier today? Before she
’
d slept anyway)
, they finally would.

Lila entered the living room, her feet plodding like a zombie, and saw Raj. He seemed more chipper than he’d been in days. He turned and gave her his old smile — the one he had before all this started. The smile that had made Lila fall in love. Now, it hurt to see. She’d only gone to second base with Christopher, but she’d have gone further. Worse: as her eyes flicked to Christopher, she found that she very much wanted to.
 

She smiled back at Raj as best she could, avoiding Christopher’s gaze on her second sweep of the room, trying to find something else to feign interest in.
 

It wasn’t difficult. Not once she turned her head and saw what was happening in the kitchen. Lila approached the table, eliciting welcoming nods from Terrence, Dan, and her brother, who was basically one of the Big Boys now.

Lila looked down at what Terrence was sketching on a sheet of paper then at the objects on the table. But she had to be seeing this ill-conceived plan all wrong.
Had
to be.

“You’re kidding,” she said.
 

“This is the best way.” Terrence shrugged. “We need a distraction.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Her eyes covered by muck from the embankment, Piper’s world was a curtain of confusing internal images. She seemed to hear more, see more, and lose herself in the unreal desolation.

She could see her own memories.

She could see other memories, from people other than herself.

And she could see what
they
saw, but only in bursts.
 

Piper was blind, and yet it seemed her eyes were open, seeing things she shouldn’t be able to see, ears ringing with things they shouldn’t be able to hear.

Wet soil pressed against the back of her shirt. It had taken a few minutes to soak through, but one minute split into two then expanded to five, and just as the engine noises were almost atop them, she began to feel the press of wetness all the way down to her skin. The leaves and gunk they’d spread on their fronts weren’t as insistent in their filth; Piper really only wanted to cringe from the leaves that touched her face, certain for some reason that it was crawling with maggots and worms.
 

But she’d take maggots and worms from morning to night if this worked.
 

Engines came in bursts. The uneven terrain was strewn with rocks, branches, and other obstacles that the horses were able to surmount at a trot or canter. The ATVs, though (Piper was sure they were on ATVs; she kept seeing flashes from one driver’s point of view, looking down at hands that weren’t hers) weren’t as nimble. They had to throttle up then back off. The going was faster than on foot, but not at full rip.
 

That thought made her wonder if they’d made the right decision. Maybe the horses were faster than the ATVs, given that brains were better than engines; feet could be picked up, but wheels had to roll. Maybe they’d have been able to outrun their pursuers after all.
 

Cameron’s thoughts came at her, strung together in one long, unbroken, runon jumble:
if they see us i
’
ll run the second they do maybe they
’
ll chase me not see her they
’
ll come after me if i just keep running and she can get away yeah that could work we won
’
t both make it but at least one of us can and anyway it
’
s fine i
’
m ready i
’
m ready i
’
m ready
…
 

Piper tried to return a thought, but this was all so strange. First of all, she couldn’t be sure any of it was happening. She’d never had an ounce of psychic inkling. She’d even taken one of those ESP tests once because a college friend had picked up a deck of testing cards somewhere. She’d managed to get fewer correct than dumb luck would have allowed, which led to jokes about how Piper must be psychic after all, to so perfectly avoid the right answers.