Free Defenders by Will McIntosh

gearshift to emergency, overriding the governor. They sped off.
    Interstate 16 was packed, with everything from bicycles to militarized land yachts pressed into the six lanes, crawling along. They’d been on the road four or five hours and had gone maybe fifty miles.
    “It’s going to take days to get there at this rate.” Lila peered out the window at a family of four perched on a scooter, bulky packs strapped across their shoulders, even the kids. “How many miles is it to Atlanta?”
    Up ahead, a Luyten stepped out of the trees.
    Lila screamed, the sound bursting from her. The Luyten crossed the high grass along the side of the highway, stopped on the shoulder, and pointed the blue-green, mushroom-shaped head of a heater at the nearest vehicles.
    Through the sealed window Lila heard shrieks of agony as vehicles cooked, the exteriors warping and bubbling, black smoke pouring out at the seams. The air filled with the stench of burning rubber and steel.
    The Luyten swung the heater toward the next cars in line, and the next. Paralyzed, her breath caught like a knot in her throat, Lila stared as the vehicles melted.
    “
Run
,” Dad howled.
    His voice broke the spell. Lila burst from the passenger door and instinctively headed across the highway, in the direction everyone else was running.
    “This way,” Dad called.
    Lila stopped and changed directions, following Dad toward the nearer trees, moving
closer
to the Luyten instead of away. Shoulders knotted, she waited for the Luyten to turn the heater on them, but it went on down the row, focusing on the vehicles, but catching most of the fleeing people as well. The people caught in the path of the heater blackened in seconds, their clothes disintegrating without a flame as they dropped to the ground, writhing and twitching, then going still.
    Bursting into the tree line, Lila was immediately tangled in thick brush. She dropped to her belly and crawled, squeezing beneath vines and clinging branches.
    A few dozen feet to her left, branches snapped and foliage shuddered as a second Luyten pushed toward the highway. Lila froze, head down. It knew she was there—she knew that—but the urge to hide was too powerful to resist. She waited, praying for it not to pause and turn toward her pathetic hiding place.
    It crashed out of the trees, toward the cacophony of screams and the stench of burned bodies.
    Lila’s father called her name, his tone low and urgent. She answered, crawled toward him until she was in his arms, his whiskers scraping her cheek.
    She followed him as he wove through the woods, finally breaking through into the back lawn of a housing complex. The grass was waist-high, the complex deserted. No one had lived there for a year, at least. They were in Luyten-controlled territory.
    They sprinted around to the side window of one of the units; Dad pulled a flagstone off the top of a low landscaping wall and used it to smash out the window.
    In the distance, Lila still heard screaming.
    Her father shimmied inside, then reached out and helped Lila.
    “Look for a vehicle password,” Dad said, out of breath. “People always write them down somewhere. Check in drawers, the insides of kitchen and bathroom cabinets, in notebooks.” He headed into the kitchen.
    Lila wanted to find a heavy blanket and curl into a ball beneath it, try to replace the images of those people dying with something, anything else. Instead she headed upstairs to search for a code. She dug through the dresser, tossing some woman’s socks and panties on the floor, sweeping her costume jewelry off the bathroom counter.
    After ten minutes they gave up and went to try another unit. Across the street, Lila spotted a door standing partially open.
    “Dad.” She pointed at the door.
    “That makes things easier,” Dad said. They headed across the street.
    Lila stood behind him as he pushed the door open.
    The living room walls were draped in thick layers of what looked like brightly colored fabric.