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Panther started toward the doors, turning this way and that as he did, searching the darkness, watching for movement. Overhead, the Croaks had reached the stairs and were coming down, the sounds of grunting and growling clearly audible. Too many of them to be stopped if they attacked, Panther knew. If they trapped Sparrow and him in that lobby…
    He didn’t bother finishing the thought. He gave it another two seconds, measuring their chances, then yelled, “Run!”
    They broke for the doors and almost instantly a Croak appeared right in front of them, seemingly out of nowhere. Panther jammed his prod into the creature’s midsection and gave it a charge that knocked it backward, twitching and writhing. Others were surfacing all around them, come out of the shadows in which they had been hiding, so many of them that Panther felt his courage fail completely. He hated Croaks. He had seen what they could do. He didn’t want to die this way.
    He howled in challenge, a way to hold himself together, and with Sparrow next to him leapt for the double doors that led to the street. The Croaks were too slow to stop them. They gained the doors, and Panther shoved down hard on the handles.
    Locked.
    Without hesitating, he grabbed Sparrow’s arm and pulled her toward the largest of the broken-out windows. Sweeping his prod around the frame to clear out the fragments of glass, he shoved her through to the street, then dove after her without turning to look back at what was breathing down his neck. Claws ripped at his clothing, slowing but not stopping him. Twisting, he broke away and tumbled out onto the concrete.
    He was back on his feet instantly, turning to run. But more Croaks had appeared in front of them, come from inside the hotel or from across the street or maybe from the sky—who knew? He screamed at them, rushing to the attack. What else could he do? Sparrow was next to him, her pale face intense, her prod swinging like a club, electricity leaping off the tip as it raked the Croaks.
    They fought like wild things, but both of them already knew that it wouldn’t be enough.
     

     
    S PIDERS !
    It was Owl’s first thought. An entire community of them, living in those rusted-out vehicle shells. It was an odd choice of habitat. Spiders preferred basements or underground tunnels with a dozen entrances and exits. Shy and reclusive, they mostly kept away from the other denizens of the city. They were not normally a threat to anyone. But she shivered anyway, despite herself. There was something creepy about Spiders—about the way they moved, crouched down on all fours, arms and legs indistinguishable; about their hairy bodies and elongated limbs, disproportionate and crooked; and about their flat faces, which were almost featureless. They were Freaks like the others, mutants born of the world’s destruction, humans made over into something new and unnatural. Rationally, she understood this. Viscerally, she had difficulty accepting it.
    As she watched this bunch creep into view, still nothing more than a featureless cluster of dark shapes in the gloom, she tried to think what the Ghosts should do. They could turn back and seek sanctuary in the buildings at the top of the freeway ramp and wait there for Logan Tom. Or they could continue ahead and try to make their way past the Spiders to where the Knight of the Word’s vehicle was parked. If they kept to the far side of the ramp and managed not to act hostile, perhaps it would be all right. Maybe they could even explain what they—
    She froze. The first of the dark shapes had emerged into the faint glow cast by the distant lights of the compound and the ambient brightness of stars peeking through cloud-concealed sky. As their faces lifted out of the shadows, she saw that these weren’t Spiders, after all.
    They were street kids.
    But they were something else, too.
    While they were still recognizable as human, it was clear that the poisons that had permeated everything had