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are they? I know you took them.
That much I got from the rest of your men. Where?”
     
    The man began to sputter, but Howard
could not make out any words.
     
    The woman didn’t give him a second
chance to answer. She hacked the machete across the man’s throat. The man’s
head bent back as a splash of blood splattered at her feet. The woman spit on
the man and then returned to the other. She pulled him up by the back of the
hair, laying the blade across his throat.
     
    Howard wanted nothing more than to slip
back into the night unnoticed. But there was nothing left for him there. He
looked at the woman, at the rage in her eyes. Her lips trembled, brow knotted,
and she raised the machete. Howard set the rifle against his shoulder and
fired.

CHAPTER 4
     
    “It’s the same song every night. Same
time. It’s on a loop,” Jamie said, tapping her fingers along with the upbeat
tempo. “I don’t recognize the song, but it’s strange, don’t you think?”
     
    It had been so long since Bobby last
heard music. He didn’t know what to think. He remembered listening to a man
named Cash that Ol’ Randy really liked, but something about that man’s voice
always scared him, as if Cash were about to walk out of the speakers and judge
him harshly.
     
    “It’s Radio Nowhere , Springsteen,”
Baylor said.
     
    Bobby watched a heavy shelf of terror
weigh Baylor’s face down. Wrinkles ran dark lines into the V of that glistening
brow. Those eyes were no longer wide and crazy. They were tight and sad.
     
    “Baylor, what does it mean?” Jamie
asked, wringing her hands, bits of caked flour falling to the floor with each
twist.
     
    “It means Wyoming Blue was compromised,”
Price said from the shadow of the door. The mountain of a man moved into the
car in a hunched walk, his neck bent at an angle to keep his head from bumping
the ceiling. “It means what I thought, after we fought the crazies dressed as
soldiers. It means my brother is dead and so are a lot of other strong men and
women.”
     
    Bobby tried to move to make room for the
man. He may as well have climbed on the roof. He could feel the heat of the
engine room burning its way out of Price’s golden skin. He could smell the
dragon’s breath—that rich coal smoke.
     
    “How can you be sure, Price? There’s a
chance, right? There’s always a chance,” Jamie said, playing the optimistic
matron.
     
    “Someone’s alive, or they were when they
triggered the repeater. It will loop every night at midnight, and it will
continue until the solar gives out or something breaks in the relays,” Price
said.
     
    “If that’s the case, why haven’t we been
picking it up on the CB in the head of the beast? That fucker has been silent,
just the way I like it, for a very, very long time. Since we started this whole
thing. Since the last time either of us saw your brother and his platoon,”
Baylor said, the worry abundantly clear on his face.
     
    “If those wild people didn’t get the
uniforms from your brother’s men then where did they get them from?” Bobby
said. The open grave of memory had him tossing the barefoot soldier into the
trunk with Ecky.
     
    “I don’t know, Bobby. There are a lot of
abandoned bases out there.”
     
    “None of that matters,” Baylor yelled.
“Who’s in the head of the beast?”
     
    “Hoss is tending our girl for now.
Parker and Cleave are on the perch.”
     
    “Kid, grab your rifle. Jamie, get
everyone up and ready. I want all eyes open and fingers on triggers.” Baylor
drew his revolver and snapped open the drum. He added a shell from his pocket
and flicked the drum closed. “This isn’t good. This is bad, bad shit.”
     
    “But we passed out of Colorado a while back,
Baylor,” Jamie said.
     
    “The relays stretch the length of the
railroad from the east all the way to the end of the line. They stretch into
the areas where we haven’t laid track yet. My brother, Baylor, and myself set
it up as an early