know, plus the Defense Grid collapsed this bridge, so there’s no good way across. Obviously there’s nothing south of us but ocean, which means ninety-nine percent of the military is up here, in Queens, where our land and their land are closest. All together, that means the route we’ve planned cuts deep to the south and far around everything we want to avoid.”
Kira nodded, seeing their plan. “So we follow the southern coast, hope all these bridges still work, and then cut up behind the Defense Grid through”—she peered at the map labels—“Brooklyn.”
“Exactly,” said Haru, “and we cross on the Brooklyn Bridge.”
Kira frowned, studying the map. “If this area is so undefended, why aren’t we worried the Partials will sweep across it and kill us? The bombs you were talking about?”
“We’ve filled that area with every explosive we could find,” said Jayden. “There are guard posts and watchtowers all through the area, and mines and traps all over both the city and the bridges. We can avoid them because we know where they are, but an army marching through would get blown up, bogged down, and sniped to death while our own forces march down to flank them.”
“Aren’t the Partials going to have the same defenses in . . . what is it called, the Bronx?”
“Possibly, if that’s where they are, but I honestly don’t think they even care. We’re gnats to them: a few thousand humans against a million-plus Partials. They likely don’t defend as well as we do, because they don’t expect us to be stupid enough to attack.”
Kira snorted. “I don’t know if ‘we’re stupider than they think we are’ is a really great attack strategy.”
“Just trust us,” said Jayden. “We know what we’re doing. We can avoid our own mines—Nick and Steve here set half of them themselves—and we can find theirs before they get us. This will work.”
Kira looked at Skinny and Scruffy again. One of them nodded, the same one as before. His companion again stayed silent. Kira pushed her hair from her face.
“We trust all these people? Nick, Steve, Gabe, Yoon?”
“Haru picked them,” said Jayden. “He trusts them, so I have no reason not to. They know what we’re doing and why, and they agree that it’s worth the risk. I’ve met them before; they won’t turn on us or rat us out, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Just curious,” said Kira. She turned to Skinny. “What do you say? Why are you here?”
“I want a piece of a Partial.”
“Great,” said Kira. “Real upstanding motives.” She looked at Scruffy. “How about you?”
Scruffy smiled, his eyes hidden behind jet-black glasses. “I just want to save the little babies.”
“Awesome,” said Kira. She looked at Jayden and opened her eyes wide. “Awesome.”
“It’s eleven miles to Long Beach,” said Haru, “then we’re going to push west as far as we can before dark. If you need some shut-eye, now’s the time to get it. Vasicek, you got front?”
“Sir,” said Gabe.
“I’ll watch back for now. The rest of you rest up, it’s going to be a long week.”
“It’s a double bridge,” said Yoon, scanning ahead with binoculars. They had reached the small bridge to Long Beach on the southern shore of the island. “Steel and concrete, both sides look pretty good. Better than good, actually, they’re almost clean—there’s debris built up on the edges, but nothing in the center.” She lowered the binoculars. “Those bridges get used, and regularly.”
Kira peered ahead. “Voice?”
“Probably just a fishing community,” said Jayden, “couple of makeshift family groups who use the bridge to sell fish in East Meadow. They’re all over down here.” He clicked his tongue and shrugged. “Doesn’t mean they’re not bandits when the opportunity presents itself.”
“Then we make the opportunity as unappealing as possible,” said Haru. “Vasicek!”
The giant man stirred and woke, moving from wagon-shaking snores to full alertness in a matter of seconds. “Sir?”
“Get back up front with that minigun; try to look scary.”
Gabe shouldered the minigun and climbed forward, shaking the wagon perilously with every step.
“Why on earth is that called a minigun?” asked Kira. “It’s bigger than I am—is it like calling a fat guy Tiny?”
“It’s the same kind of gun they use on tanks,” said Haru, “but small enough for infantry. When you call something mini, you gotta remember the scale of the original.”
“So you’re a walking tank,” said Kira, whistling low as Gabe settled into the seat by Yoon. “Remind me not to call you Tiny.”
“Move out,” said Haru. Yoon whipped the horses, and the wagon lurched into motion. Kira watched the bridge as they approached it, her eyes flicking back and forth to the other buildings they were passing. The street here was wide, lined with parking lots and looted stores, and where it merged with another road, there were triangular patches of grass and trees springing up between the lanes. As they passed the last building on the corner, Kira whipped her head around to look down the other street, expecting an ambush at any minute, but all she saw were broken storefronts and rusted cars.
The wagon rumbled forward, the horses’ hooves clattering on the broken asphalt. They reached the tip of the bridge, and Kira saw the narrow bay stretching out on either side, and then they were on it, out in the open, with hundreds of yards to cross without a tree or a building or any kind of cover. Kira had never felt so exposed. She’d grown up in the center of the island, surrounded by . . . stuff. By everything the old world had built and grown and left behind. It held its own dangers, but she’d learned to deal with them—holes to hide bandits or animals, walls to collapse on you if you weren’t careful, metal spikes and shards of glass and a hundred other threats. She knew them, and she was used to them. To be out here, away from everything, with nothing to hide behind or shelter beneath or even lean against, she felt like the world was empty and alone.
The beach on the far side of the peninsula was, if possible, worse. Gray waves rolled against the shore, topped with white and whipped by a salty wind. Whereas the north shore looked across to the mainland, here the ocean simply continued, flat and featureless as far as Kira could see. She had often dreamed of the world beyond the island, the ruins and wonders, the danger and isolation. Here she saw the world as a great gray nothing—a broken wall, an empty beach, a dull wave slowly grinding it away to nothing. She saw a dead dog half-buried in the sand, brown with old blood and speckled white with maggots. She turned back to the road and kept her eyes from wandering.
If there were people on Long Beach they kept to themselves, and the wagon rumbled along without incident to another bridge on the western tip. Here they crossed back to the main island, circumventing a wide, marshy bay, and then turned west again through another empty city. This shore was much closer to the road than it appeared on the map, which heightened Kira’s unease for reasons she couldn’t explain. All the soldiers were awake now, alert in the fading light, and Jayden whispered at Kira’s side.
“This
