Chapter 70.
They move tentatively outside onto Church Street.
The damage is somehow even worse now than it had been before.
The ground is cratered like the moon. Glass crunches under their boots.
Smoke curls from a building that used to be a shop, a home, a life.
Bodies lie on rubble across the street where a library must have been. People are screaming somewhere ahead.
For now, the only bombs they hear are being dropped to the east, the sound of them slowly diminishing until the streets around them are again quiet.
For now.
A young soldier—barely older than Rupert—touches his earpiece, listens, then looks at Jack.
“Last night and this morning,” the young soldier says to Jack, “this is the worst day of the war.” He looks back at the street in front of them. “They want to finish us off today.”
In the distance they can see adults frantically using their hands to dig through more debris up ahead, clearly trying to find those who might be buried but still alive.
“I must go now,” the young soldier says to Jack. “Tanks coming now, couple of miles.” Then he nods once and jogs away.
“Hey!” Jack says.
Jack salutes him without thinking.
The kid blinks like he’s not used to being seen as a person.
Jack thinks: I was that kid once.
The kid stops, finger to his earpiece again. “Your boss,” he says, and spits the word like it tastes wrong. “He’s in my radio—rebroadcasting on our frequency. Someone gave him access. Someone high . . . He says your job is getting survivors to the public hospital. Not far.”
He rattles off directions, fast.
They huddle and discuss the strategy. Jack, Tipton, Wyatt, Hannah, Alek, Rupert are still one team, along with Marcelo Oliveira. The other team remains Amos Meyers, Zhi Lin, Carlos Lopez, Gabrielle Fontaine, Fumio Hase.
They agree to split up.
The bombing still has not resumed in the part of the city between the museum and the hospital, half the buildings blackened by fire or already crushed to rubble. No matter which way any of them look, the devastation is so sad.
“Where do we even start?” Alek asks.
“By looking for the living,” Jack says. “You and your mother did that after bombings in your city—”
“—More than I care to remember,” she cuts in.
Jack stares at her for a moment.
“You’re tougher than any of us,” he says.
They turn a corner now and see an apartment building halfway up the block, fire already engulfing the bottom floors. One more place about to come crashing down. And soon.
They are running toward it when they hear the sound of drones above them. Jack’s blood goes cold. These are not part of the war. They’re part of what their sick Host calls a game.
The drones are followed by a thunderclap of noise that Jack and Tipton and Alek recognize all too well, the whistling sound that means more bombs are about to hit.
“COVER!” Jack shouts, trying to be heard over the bombs.
They all dive to the ground, some throwing themselves into the massive craters in the street. Hannah lands on top of Rupert, shielding him the way Conner shielded her.
They stay down, waiting for this latest wave of bombing to be over, looking up enough to see what had been a convenience store, less than fifty yards away, now leveled, completely destroyed in the blink of an eye.
The shockwave slaps them sideways.
Dust fills the air.
And when the noise finally thins, Hannah twists around, wild-eyed, scanning through smoke.
“Where’s Wyatt?!” she screams.