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herself. She lifted her gun.
    A woman sitting in the front row grabbed at Miriam’s arm as she fired at Kemp. The blast was deafening in the enclosed space. The shot went wild and smashed into the windshield. A snowflake pattern showed where it had hit.
    A teenage boy tackled Miriam. Moments later, she was mobbed by the refugees. They dragged Grover back too, but Eliza broke free before they could get her. She drew her own gun. They stopped, and she held them off as she stood in front of the door.
    “Stop the bus,” Eliza said. “The missile was a warning shot. They’re going to kill us if we run.”
    Kemp ignored her. Free of his attackers, he mashed his foot on the pedal. His free hand pointed the gun at Eliza. She aimed her own weapon back at him.
    From the road behind them came the telltale thump of the .50-caliber machine gun. What were they thinking? Was Bill Smoot shooting at the bus? But when Eliza glanced out the open door to see, tracer bullets were flashing skyward. Bill was trying to shoot down the drone. A terrible mistake.
    Before she could snap her gaze back to Kemp, the image of destruction on the road burned into her mind like a photograph of a single, awful moment of time. Jacob and Lillian were dragging Stephen Paul from the road, Smoot crawling after them on hands and knees. A mule with an open belly staggered down the center line, its guts spilling almost to the ground. Other animals fought to free themselves from the two remaining wagons to which they were yoked.
    Bill kept firing.
    She didn’t spot the second missile, only a flash of light followed an instant later by a concussive boom. She looked back again in time to see a fireball rolling from the bunker. When it dissipated, the bunker lay in smoking ruins.
    Bill Smoot.
    Eliza faced Kemp again. “Stop the bus,” she said. “It’s our only chance. Please, for mercy’s sake.”
    “The hell I will.”
    The bus was gaining speed. The carnage disappeared behind them, until she could see nothing of the attack or its survivors, only a column of smoke still drifting higher.
    The drone was still circling, she knew. Some carried two missiles. Others an array of missiles and guns. And it could always call backup. If another drone lurked over the reservoir on the north end of the valley it would reach them in moments. Eliza braced herself.
    But still the desert rolled by. A minute passed, then two. Five minutes, ten. Twenty. Still they cut south along Highway 89 at speeds Eliza hadn’t traveled in over a year. She glanced at the speedometer. Only fifty miles per hour. It felt much faster.
    “Put down the gun,” Kemp told her.
    “Put yours down. Let my friends go.”
    “No. You first.”
    “Why, so you can shoot me?”
    “Believe what you want,” he said. “But sooner or later, one of us is going to grow tired and that’s how accidents happen.”
    “Don’t do it, Eliza,” Miriam said from the floor, where refugees kept her pinned. “He’s driving. You’re not.”
    The implication was clear: shoot him. Wait until his attention was diverted, then put a hole in his head.
    Eliza couldn’t do that. And so she handed over the gun to one of the men holding Trost on the floor. She prepared to be swarmed, but nobody moved against her. Kemp set the gun on his lap and drove. They traveled for nearly an hour before he stopped the bus in the middle of the road.
    “Get out.”
    “What, here?” Eliza asked.
    “This is it. Forty miles. What I promised your brother.”
    “What about my companions? The other two are still back in the valley.”
    “Now you have three to keep you company.”
    “They’re not the same people. And we don’t have our horses.”
    “Not my problem. Walk back to Blister Creek and get them.”
    The refugees released Miriam, Grover, and Trost. The former police officer sported a darkening goose egg in the middle of his forehead. Grover was pale and shaking. Miriam looked ready to tear out someone’s throat with her bare