Free Rise Again Below Zero by Ben Tripp Page A

the interceptor off the track and she and Topper got out.
    Kelley followed them. Danny raised a hand.
    “Stay here. He’ll back me up.”
    Kelley filled her empty lungs in order to speak. “I smell blood,” she said.
    Topper shifted on his feet. He was nervous, maybe thinking Kelley meant his blood.
    “This is a fight for the living,” Danny said. “If you catch a bullet or something, you won’t heal. We’ll be back in an hour or so. Just wait. Listen to the radio and honk the horn if anything changes back at the camp.”
    Kelley didn’t respond. She’d told them what she knew. She was done.
    Danny retrieved a cold-weather jacket from the trunk—it was midnight blue, and would hide her better in the dark than the tan windbreaker she was wearing. Besides, Topper was right: Winter had arrived.
    They moved a little way off the shoulder so they weren’t in a clear field of fire down the road, then hiked along parallel to it. There was a lot of tripping and cursing in the blackness, and twice they came up against wire fences that were invisible until they hit them.
    They both carried shotguns and combat knives; Danny also had her sidearm and a hand grenade tucked away in her utility belt. The scouts had found caches of combat-grade hardware at abandoned military bases and at police stations, and there was a general rule that grenades, rocket launchers, and the like were not possessed by anyone except a few security personnel in the Tribe. It kept accidents and arguments from getting out of hand. In the trunk of the interceptor, Danny kept a black nylon backpack containing enough ordnance to sink a destroyer.
    She and Topper stole through the night, getting quieter and more careful as they began to see more man-signs: trash caught in the fences, junked vehicles, wheel ruts going off to various unseen destinations.
    Now they were crouching, breathing carefully, hands on their weapons.
    Anybody who dared to keep a homestead these days put out security perimeters, the more the better. Mostly it was wires with bells attached to them, moats of broken glass and accordion wire, and walls made of assorted junk, but they might even find generator-powered electric fences, motion detectors, and infrared cameras. This one was different. They could see lights up ahead before they came to the first perimeter defense, and it wasn’t much of an obstacle.
    It was an old sheep fence with barbed wire coiled along the top on the inside. The idiots had made it easy to get in—the wire should have been on the outside of the fence. Danny tapped Topper’s arm: stop. The handful of closely placed lights burning at the bottom of the next hill meant a building with windows. They were still a kilometer distant, but in that heavy darkness the lights stood out like beacons.
    “You go around that way, toward the back. I’ll come down the road. If I draw any fire, you rush in behind and get the fuckers while they’re facing the other way.”
    Topper made a noise of disapproval.
    “What?” Danny said.
    “I still think it’s a setup. That driver was trying to lure you down this goddamn road, and you know it. Now they got all the lights on and the windows ain’t even boarded up, and you think you’re just going to draw some blind fire? Hell no. This here is a big old fucking piece of mouse cheese.”
    “If they see me coming, they won’t look for you, that’s the whole point.”
    “I’m just trying to say be careful, Sheriff. Don’t go and get yourself killed.”
    “I hadn’t really planned on it.”

9

    T wo minutes later, Danny had reached the dirt road again. Her boots crunched on the loose grit like it was breakfast cereal. She drew a steadying breath and began her march toward the house.
    She was within rifle shot now, if it had been daylight. But they wouldn’t be able to get a bead on her for a while yet in the dark—even a good nightscope would have trouble picking her out at this distance. She kept on walking, her steps