The conversation ended there. A low, rumbling sound rolled toward them. With each second, it increased in intensity.
“What am I hearing?” Michael said.
It was the sound of feet striking the earth. The mass continued to thicken, its great, heaving volume barreled toward them. In its wake, a cloud of dust boiled high in the air.
“Holy God,” Peter said. “It’s everyone.”
Apgar lifted his voice over the din: “Hold fire till they reach the perimeter!”
The horde was three hundred yards out and closing fast. It seemed less like an army than some great spectacle of nature—an avalanche, a hurricane, a flood. The platform began to hum, its bolts and rivets vibrating in rhythm to the seismic impact of the virals’ charge.
“Will that gate hold?” Peter asked Apgar. He, too, had given up his binoculars for a rifle.
“Against this?”
Two hundred yards. Peter pressed the stock of the weapon against his clavicle.
“Ready!” Apgar bellowed.
One hundred yards.
“Aim!”
Everything stopped.
The virals had halted just beyond the edge of the lights. Not just halted—they were frozen in place, as if a switch had been thrown.
“What the hell…?”
The mass began to divide into halves, creating a corridor. Starting at the rear, it flowed down the middle with a rippling on either side. The motion seemed somehow reverential, as if the virals were making way for a great king to pass among them, bowing as he passed. A dark shape was pushing forward through the heart of the horde. It appeared to be some sort of animal. It approached the city with painstaking slowness, the corridor unfurling before it. All guns were trained on the spot where it would emerge. A hundred feet, fifty, twenty. The front wall of virals separated, opening like a doorway to reveal the shockingly ordinary figure of a person on horseback.
“Is that him?” Apgar said. “Is that Zero?”
The rider moved forward into the lights. Halfway to the gate, he brought his horse to a halt and dismounted. Not “he,” Peter realized. She. The glare of the spotlights ricocheted off the lenses of the dark glasses that obscured the upper half of her face. A scabbard containing some kind of weapon, a sword or long gun, lay slantwise across her back; crisscrossing her upper body, she wore a pair of bandoliers.
Bandoliers.
“Holy goddamn,” Michael breathed.
Peter’s mind was tumbling down a hole in time. “Hold your fire!” He raised his arms high and wide above his head. “Everyone stand down!”
Her back erect, the woman angled her face toward the top of the wall. “I am Alicia Donadio, captain of the Expeditionary! Where is Peter Jaxon?”
* * *
59
Thirty minutes had passed; everyone was in position. Standing back from the portal, Peter nodded at Henneman.
“Open it, Colonel.”
Henneman turned the wheel and backed away. From inside the tunnel came a slow clop of hooves. A frisson of energy rippled through the line of soldiers facing the portal; all guns were raised, all eyes arrowed over the barrels. A shadow elongated across the wall of the tunnel; then Alicia emerged. One hand held a short rope attached to the horse’s bridle; the second lay easily at her side. Her hair, that distinctive red crown, was pulled tight to her scalp, its length corralled into a densely woven braid that fell midway down her back. On her upper body she wore a T-shirt without sleeves, revealing the muscularity of her arms and shoulders; below, loose trousers, cinched at the waist, and a pair of leather boots. A quick scan of the crowd, the lights of the staging area rebounding off the lenses of her goggles like search beams, another step forward, and there she paused, awaiting instructions.
“Move forward,” Peter said. “Slowly.”
She advanced another twenty feet; Peter ordered her to stop.
“Blades first. Toss them forward.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
He had a sudden feeling of unreality; it was as if he were talking to a ghost. “The blades, Lish.”
She glanced to Peter’s right. “Michael. I didn’t notice you standing there.”
“Hello, Lish.”
“And Colonel Apgar.” Alicia gave a quick nod from the chin. “It’s nice to see you, sir.”
“It’s ‘General’ to you, Donadio.” The man’s arms were folded over his chest; his face was a hard scowl. “Mr. President, say the word and this is done.”
“ ‘Mr. President’?” From Alicia, a wry frown. “You’ve come up in the world, Peter.”