Partials series 1-3. Dan Wells

from her grip. “Good-bye, Kira.”

      

      

      The wagon rolled out of town at 12:02, a small group armed for battle. Jayden had found an old salvage report for a southwestern location—a high school on the South Shore that no one had ever followed up on. Schools tended to have well-stocked nurses’ stations, so requesting Kira had been easy; this particular school was also fairly old, which made it easy to request Haru: He’d test the place for stability, and Kira would look for meds. There was nothing out of the ordinary, and Jayden’s superiors had rubber-stamped it without a second glance. The border patrol didn’t even stop them, they just saw the uniforms and waved them through.

      They reached the wilderness. Phase one was a success.

      Kira and Marcus had fought again last night: his final attempt to talk her out of going. It drove Kira mad that he could be so obtuse—that he could misunderstand her so completely—and she was still fuming as she sat in the Grid wagon, trying to think of something else. She looked at the group they’d assembled. Driving the wagon was the same girl they’d had on the last run, a small-framed girl named Yoon-Ji Bak. Next to her at the front of the wagon was Gabriel Vasicek, a battle-scarred mountain of a man who made the phrase “riding shotgun” sound pathetic—he was riding “chain-fed minigun,” a giant metal monstrosity with at least eight barrels. Nobody who saw him wielding it was likely to give them trouble. In the back with Kira were Jayden, Haru, and two soldiers Jayden identified as Nick and Steve—Kira had no idea which was which, and chose to think of them as Skinny and Scruffy. They watched the empty houses roll past without comment.

      Jayden laid out a map of the island. “We head south on Meadowbrook, west on Sunrise, and then south on Long Beach Boulevard to the edge of the island. We’ll actually get pretty close to the school in the salvage report, just a few blocks away, so anyone who sees us and happens to get asked about it will report that we went exactly where we’re supposed to.”

      Kira pointed at the map’s south shore, a rough-edged maze of bays and inlets and narrow islands. “Your path takes us over a bridge—are we sure it’s still up?”

      “You’re thinking of the wooden ones,” said Haru. “These that we’ll be using are steel, and even without maintenance, they can last a lot longer than eleven years.”

      “But why so far south?” asked Kira. “If somebody sees us near the school, hooray, we have a witness, but is that really likely enough to warrant going a day or more out of our way?”

      “We have to head south anyway,” said Jayden, tapping the western half of the map, “for two reasons. First is the airport, the block marked ‘JFK’—it’s big and solid and we don’t use it for anything, which makes it practically the Voice capital of the island. Everyone who doesn’t want to follow the rules ends up there sooner or later.”

      “Everyone but us,” said Kira.

      Jayden smirked. “It’s also perfectly situated between East Meadow and the military base in Queens, which is our other big obstacle. If we travel too far north, we hit the Defense Grid, which is obviously out of the question; if we travel through the middle, we risk Voice raids out of JFK. But if we go all the way south, we avoid them both—we get pretty close to the airport, but our scouts say the Voice don’t tend to patrol that far down.” He gestured to Skinny and Scruffy; one of them nodded once, the other did nothing. “The shore has less loot to steal, and fewer people to rob, and a pretty straight shot here, to Brooklyn.” He tapped the map again, then moved his finger south, to a place called Staten Island. “This is empty as far as we 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