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retinas that she feared permanent damage had been done. She had hoped she might back into the wall and from there find the cave exit, but she bumped into a shaggy fur coat instead. Its owner grabbed for her, but she slipped away before he found a grip.
    “This cesspit for brains hit the bracer,” someone said from across the cave.
    “Mace,” came Mace’s calm voice. He was the first person Andie managed to focus on. He faced one of the other thugs, his mace in one hand and his old-fashioned rifle in the other. The thug faced him back, a modern M-16 in his arms. “I just saved all of your lives.”
    “What are you talking about?” Optimus stalked toward the two men, a hand on a firearm that was holstered at his waist. “Russell, this your new man? Russell? Where—Damn it, we only got half of our people.”
    Andie looked around the cave, searching for Min-ji—and the exit. The Girl Scout troop and everyone else who had been classified as a virgin by that idiot and his device hadn’t made it. Min-ji was there and so were the supplies, including a leaking gas can knocked on its side. Andie had glimpsed the contents burning earlier, thanks to whatever Min-ji had done with the hand warmers, but the flames were out now. Andie shifted toward the exit. All of the people who had been striding in were gone, but a couple of thugs had already moved quickly, blocking the tunnel, a tunnel that was different from what it had been two minutes ago. The entire cave was different— larger . Walls that had been rough before were chiseled now, as if the chamber had been hollowed out by drills and pickaxes. The cave might appear similar to the one they had left, but it couldn’t be the same place. They had been transported somehow. What the hell?
    Min-ji, as naked as Andie, came over to grasp her hand. Optimus wasn’t paying any attention to them, but unfortunately the men who had shifted to guard the exit were keeping an eye on them.
    “I don’t know what happened,” Andie whispered, “but we have to get out of here.” She considered the two men and the weapons they held, wondering if she might surprise them to slip past.
    “And go where?” Min-ji asked, her dark brown eyes haunted.
    “You didn’t see that man who walked into the cave?” Mace demanded, jerking his chin toward the exit tunnel, his tone raised for the first time. “That was Major Rutting General Duckworth. We were all about to get scragged by the damned army.”
    Optimus stared at him as if he was speaking gibberish. As far as Andie was concerned, he was. Nobody had ever accused her of being a genius, but she could usually connect enough dots to track conversations and situations. For the first time that she could remember, she felt utterly lost and helpless.
    “What do you mean?” she whispered back to Min-ji. “We’ll go back to the campground and the car and hope those assholes left us enough dregs of gas to get down to Cle Elum.”
    Min-ji shook her head slowly, the haunted expression still in her eyes. She looked like someone who had just seen both of her parents killed in front of her. “I don’t think the car is going to be there anymore. I’m... not sure about Cle Elum.”
    “What? Talk to me, Min-ji. Help me understand.”
    Min-ji’s gaze shifted toward the dark shadows at the back of the cave, to the area where the Girl Scouts had been hunkering when they first came in. Earlier, there hadn’t been anything back there except for tufts of animal fur and mildew. Now, a complicated-looking machine the size of an old phone booth lurked in the shadows, LEDs or something like them blinking in different colors on one metallic side.
    “Maybe I’m wrong,” she murmured. “Maybe I’ve read too many science fiction novels. Theoretically, it shouldn’t be possible, not with some machine. With a wormhole maybe.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I’ve got a story to tell you, new blood,” Optimus said, stabbing a finger toward Mace.