The color red. I close my eyes to picture the sun the way I remember it from six years ago in 1922, before the world turned red. Nearly midday, I’m burning precious heat for my family and myself by remaining in bed. Last night had been my watch, but still, I should have gotten up almost an hour ago. The wind ripples the sheet stapled over the window, reminding me the outside world is always just a membrane’s width away.

Opening my eyes, I prop myself up and stretch for the grab bar above my bed. The electrical tape wrapped around the metallic surface is sticky and comforting. Dangling from the bar, I jerk twice, shifting my weight until I feel the familiar grooves fall in between my fingers.

Each contraction and expansion of my muscles operates like a bilge pump. Daily I awake drowning in a rancid gall—a bitter caldron of regret cooked by the fires of the dust zone and coursing through my veins. Five reps, I gulp down the first fresh breath of the day, but still want to die. Ten reps, I curse the helium plant and the gates of hell they opened on us all.

Fifteen reps, I stop clenching my teeth and cursing under my breath. Twenty five reps, I remember my Rosalyn—asleep before the hearth, Brothers Karamazov open in her lap. Twenty-six reps and I remember her pitching forward into the dirt, blood spatter and brains caught in her fair hair like bracken and foam on a river’s shore. It should have been me that day.

Thirty reps and tears mingle with sweat from my brow. I keep rising and falling. Thirty-five reps, I blame myself for selling out, for accepting handouts from the plant. Forty reps and I feel my heart begin to surface as the poisonous brine dips lower. I keep breathing.

Fifty reps and I know I must keep living for my sons. Their voices carry through the bedroom wall from the kitchen. Fifty-five reps, I worry about my youngest, Mik, remembering the glazed look he gave me the night before. Mykola, always lost in books like his mother, but with a heart so dark and bottomless it’s haunting.

Sixty reps, I hear Pyotr arguing with Leonid about the location of the new hemp field. Sixty-one and my muscles complain. They say they’re finished, like I’m finished—an old cripple pretending he’s still a whole man because he can do chin-ups. Seventy reps, I curse my body and curse my mind, but not before it reminds me today’s my fortieth birthday. Forty. I repeat it until I almost lose count.

Seventy-five reps and for the first time since yesterday morning I imagine the numbing comfort of vodka burning my throat, washing away the red dust. Eighty reps, and there is nothing left but rage and the strength of will. Ninety reps, the poison is gone. Determination replaces thought. Ninety-five reps, courage replaces fear. One hundred reps and I drop from the bar back onto the creaking mattress and roll to the edge. I love my sons.

“The field has been planted. It stays.” I raise my voice before settling into my chair, fair warning for the whelps to sort themselves out quickly. I strap down my withered legs with leather at the ankles, all the hair rubbed off long ago. Two slaps reverberate throughout the sturdy craftsman home as I clamp the .44-40 Mare’s Leg and the 12-gauge shotgun in place. “Straighten up. We’re riding to Bertie’s for supplies in thirty.” I hear dishes dropping into the sink, Mykola preparing to wash.

Disengaging the brake, I test the wheels with a quick forward and back followed by a 360 degree spin before sidling up to my shelf next to the door. Routine guides me. I drop my bandolier over my neck and arm, sheathe my lance over my right shoulder and with two fingers transfer a single kiss from my lips to the photo of Rosalyn holding our baby Katerina in her lap.

After shoveling down what’s left of the morning’s oatmeal with a wooden spoon, I drop the pot into the sink and reach up to slap Mykola on the back. With my legs I would have been taller than him, but he’ll outgrow us all before puberty runs its course.

I turn to Pyotr, my middle-born, sharpening his knife at the table. “The quicksilver lights burned all night this time. Good job, son.”

“It’s kind of a shame. They work so good we haven’t had govno for fun around here—”

“Hey, use English for swearing.” My eldest, Leonid, drops his boots on the floor and sits to put them on. “Don’t tarnish our mother tongue with filth.”

Pyotr stabs his knife into the table. “Roger that, dillweed.”

“Both of you—” A screeching whistle followed by a pop cuts my reprimand short.

“Fireworks.”

“The perimeter!” Pyotr sheathes his knife, flashing a wicked grin.

“Leo, eyes!” I block Pyotr’s attempt to get past me to the back door and wait for Leonid to rush up the stairs to the crow’s nest.

“Come on, Papa. It’s the first time in a week.”

Pulling my middle child close, I growl the words, “We do nothing if—”

“We don’t do it together.” Mykola and Pyotr finish the family mantra in sync.

I release Pyotr’s shirt. “Start the truck, and stick to protocol.”

“For a perimeter alert, in the middle of the day?”

Threatening him with a glare, he finally relents and bolts toward the front, leaving only Mykola and me in the room. “I don’t like the feel of this one. It’s too hot outside. Something isn’t right. Keep an eye on your brother.” He nods and scoops a three-gallon jug of water from under the sink before following Pyotr out the front door. We’re still a family, I remind myself. Function as a family and there’s something worth fighting for.

I rake four survival packs from the bottom shelf into my lap, roll into the entry and flip the lockdown lever. Calculating the remaining daylight in my head, I turn the timer to eight hours and set the cycle to repeat. On cue, the diesel four-stroke in the crawlspace under the floorboards chugs to life, wafting an acrid smoke into the living quarters. Slamming the metal door on the electrical box, I know the house will maintain perimeters whether we return to it or not.

The storm shutters lurch into motion before settling into a gentle crawl downward. Forty seconds and the house will be locked tight. Forty seconds for a forty-year-old cripple to—with a jolt I remember the photo. Nimbly I spin my chair and zip toward the master bedroom. Pocketing the picture, I reach the front door just before the lowering shutters bar the way.

While I don my goggles against the red dust, Leonid drops from the roof to report.

“Station 12 went off, but I can’t see anything.”

Pyotr shouts from the driver’s seat of the truck. “That’s my new trench. We caught one!”

Leonid continues, “Nothing on the horizon. It isn’t a hunt.”

“Good.” I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with sulfur. “Fire sign?”

“None, Papa.”

“I still don’t like it.”

Pyotr guns the engine and slaps the seat beside him. “Jump in Mik. We got us a twitcher to kill.”

Mik lowers himself from the bed of the truck and scoops the survival packs from my lap. “Leviathan’s ready," he nearly whispers the words.

I’m already wheeling toward the tailgate before he finishes. Leonid remains vigilant, scanning the horizon for movement, until the chairlift comes to a stop. Eighteen seconds to load a forty-year-old cripple into the back of a truck.

I roll forward and lock my chair into Leviathan—my personal armored vehicle designed to load into the reenforced truck bed. My passport to the dust zone. As its gears tug me into position atop its two triangular tank treads, Leonid finally steps onto the runner and slaps the door.

Ghosts never sleep in the dust zone, and the living expect each day to be their last. Worse yet, will this day be the day the toxin tips the scales on a loved one? It’s rightfully said that in the dust zone everyone sleeps with a rifle under their bed and a bullet in their brain—God willing someone loves you enough to put it there when the time comes.

Katerina had just celebrated her seventh birthday when she started to turn. The outbreak had been raging for a year, but I hadn’t lifted a finger to move my family to safety. The twitchers crippled me when they took Rosalyn, and for a year I did nothing but drink. Neighbors disappeared. The local government collapsed until only the helium plant remained. Connections there, deals I made with the ones who brought the twitch upon us, made sure my family had food to eat and I had vodka to drink.

One day, watching the skies turn red from the front porch, I heard Leonid’s voice calling me. The vodka had run out, so I cursed and wheeled back indoors. Our porch had a loose floorboard at the threshold. Unable to step over it, too lazy to fix it, the board mocked my laziness and inadequacy every time I entered my own home.

Upset at the floorboard and the lack of vodka, I rolled into the living room to see my gentle Leonid holding the Winchester .44-40, my father’s rifle, with closed eyes and clenched teeth. He shook as he pointed it at the closet door.

“Leo!” I chided him. He startled and dropped the rifle, angering me further. “What are you doing?” I slapped him with the back of my hand, angry the vodka had run out. Angry the board had mocked me and I was sober enough to hear it.

I slapped my eldest in anger, and he looked at me, the same expression as the floorboard, as the bottle—flat, empty eyes. Never, since that moment, have I seen the gentle Leonid, the boy who used to love his father. I killed him with the back of an angry hand.

I mocked him. “Look at me, boy!” Steadily, he shook his head and pointed at the closet. I raised my hand a second time, but he’d finished with me. Fixed on the closet again, he moved quickly for the Winchester, raising it into firing position before I wrested it from his grip. Throwing him against the wall, I charged the closet and swung open the door.

In that moment I knew no judgement of heaven or hell would ever be severe enough for my transgressions. Curled up on the floor, my Katerina hissed at the sudden light flooding into the darkened closet. Scratching at her blind eyes, she pulled the skin from her face in bloody flakes. Spittle dangled from her swollen lips, no longer little-girl-pink.

I slumped to my dead knees. Pulling her against my chest, I propped us up against the closet door. A cold sweat had soaked through her nightgown, the only clothing she’d worn for three days. Her hummingbird heart rattled in its cage. I tried to hug her, but she groaned in pain, slashing my cheek with wicked nails.

There beside us both, unflinching, Leonid, the boy turned man, held the Winchester to me at arm’s length. I placed Katerina back on the floor in the closet, lifted myself into my chair, took the rifle from my son, and buried a bullet into the brain of my only daughter.

I shut the door. We moved eleven miles out of town that day—as far from the hell Amarillo had become as I could manage. We didn’t know then that the plague dwelled in the water, the food, eventually the land itself. We didn’t know every rudder’s days were numbered until the bullet in the brainpan went off.

Every day for nearly 2,000 days since, the four of us, the Founder men, have haunted the dust zone, just as it haunts us.

Jolting across the compound to station 12, dervishes of ruddy dust whip the side of the truck. I pray for one more day as a family, for another chance to bring us together. But I worry the bullet will go off, or worse, my sons will learn the truth about the plant and how their papa is a sellout as well as a cripple.

The wind and constant creep of knee-high dust obscures the opening of the pit as we pull within sight, but clearly something has disturbed it. Splintered wooden lath creates ragged jaws around its edges.

“No one rushes in, Pete!” I yell over the growl of the engine and the constant drowning hush of sand washing past the fenders. I pound the top of the cab three times. Pyotr kills the engine and slams on the brakes twenty-five yards from the pit. “Leo, perimeter. Mik, cover. Pete…” all three boys are out of the truck, crouched and ready.

Pyotr flicks his battle ax from underneath the seat and spins it from hand to hand. I switch the M2 Browning .50 caliber machine gun to single fire and rotate my perch on Leviathan for a clear shot at the pit, over Pyotr’s left shoulder. “Pete, for God’s sake, take it slow. They could be playing us.”

“Or just thirsty.” Pyotr brags, “I doused this one yesterday. Knew those damn twitchers couldn’t resist a little drink.”

Leonid spits. “Ruddy hell, Pete. Now you’re inviting twitchers?”

“Boys! Eyes up.” But I know the conversation is nervous prattle. They’re on game. Mykola shifts deftly to Pyotr’s left with the shotgun. He keeps out of reach and out of my line of fire, while maintaining tight cover. His eyes are on the terrain around him while his aim is on the pit.

Leonid, like a spider with the eyes of an eagle, quickly covers fifty yards to our right, his back turned to the pit. In recent months we’d seen secondary pairings waiting nearby in ambush. The twitchers were getting more sophisticated, and more violent.

I test the gyros on Leviathan 90 degrees in both directions, using my higher vantage to scan the horizon. No other alarms have gone off and nothing stands out. No smoldering plumes of fire sign. Maybe it’s just a wayward pairing or a thirsty loner after all.

“Twitcher!” Pyotr confirms visual contact. Everyone freezes. The gyros come to rest with the barrel of the .50 cal aimed directly at the yawning mouth. At first there is no sound above the wash of rushing sand. I strain my ears. A faint moan curls up from the pit, followed by a nearly fleshless arm, striated red and brown and spasming violently.

“Spouse?” Mykola calls for a confirmation on pairing.

“Negative.” Pyotr maintains an alert crouch, creeping forward, now within five yards.

“Good boy,” I whisper to myself before keeping my eyes vigilant, scanning our broader surroundings. I have to trust Mykola to cover Pyotr now. Everyone does their job and we all survive. Remain a family and there’s something worth fighting for.

“Could be a loner—” Pyotr’s cut off by a gargling scream—blood cry. I tell myself it’s a bluff, keeping my eyes diligent on the horizon. But there’s nothing. Screw it. I focus on the pit in time to see a head lurch upward from its dust enshrouded confines. Dark red and frothing, it's a dominant.

“Where’s the wife?” Mykola dances closer, keeping a clear line of sight.

Pyotr snaps. “Dammit, it’s a loner, and it’s gonna get out! I’m going for the kill.”

“Pete!” I’m too far to stop him. He lunges, spinning the double-sided ax backward and above his head for a quick kill. A cocky move, leaving himself open. But the twitcher doesn’t lurch from the pit. Instead, he crows angrily, struggling as if held back. The ax falls, removing his head cleanly at the neck before burying deep into the edge of the pit.

A volcanic spray pulses twice from the carotid before the twitcher’s tense body sags, its bright red blood slipping silently beneath the dust. “Mik, did you see that? Damn, that one was high strung.” Pyotr laughs as he steps on the twitcher’s shoulders for leverage to pull his ax free.

Mik is frantically wiping the twitcher’s blood from his goggles, his shotgun lowered. Something isn’t right. Why would a dominant be out this far at midday by himself? And why hadn’t he lunged—“He’s not a loner! Pyotr, there’s another—”

In sickening slow motion I watch a second hand clutch Pyotr’s ankle and yank his feet out from under him.

Pyotr’s chest hits the edge of the pit hard, catapulting shattered lath and earth in an explosion of dirt and blood cry. Bouncing backwards into the pit, he’s gone in an instant, taking with him his mother’s fair hair, slight frame and lightning temper.

“Pyotr!” I watch impotently, my twitching finger resting on the trigger of the .50 cal. Mykola rushes the pit, his goggles still half-muddied with twitcher blood and blowing dust. Dear God, I pray I won’t lose two sons today. I flip the machine gun to rapid fire and depress the trigger. In the split second between my body’s ascent and the gunpowder’s explosion in the chamber of the .50 caliber, my mind registers Pyotr's face above the edge of the pit.

I tug the aim high, dirt kicking up immediately behind him. Several thunderous rounds tick off before I can release the trigger. Pyotr’s dagger flashes, the tip facing backwards. He launches his upper body from the side of the pit, bringing his full weight down with the savage blow.

Shrieking in pain, the twitcher’s torso emerges from the pit for the first time, and a chill grips me. So dark red as to nearly be black, the beast’s face is a blur of movements too rapid to discern—it’s physical actions outstripping my racing mind’s ability to interpret them. Twice it slams Pyotr’s body into the side of the pit.

I can’t bear to look at him, so I focus on the beast. Gripping my son from behind with only one hand, a vaporous boil of blood bursts from its injured shoulder with each rapid pulse of its heart.

Dammit, Pyotr. Get out of there. Mykola’s standing only five feet away, already dangerously close. But his shotgun would tear both of them apart. I rest my finger on the trigger. One more second and I’ll have no choice. If the twitcher decides Mik is more of a threat it could be on him before there’s time to respond.

Then the miraculous happens. In the flurry of uncontrollable movement Pyotr guesses right. Grasping his ax with his left he throws a backward jab with his dagger in his right. The thrust, directed originally at thin air, catches the twitcher’s dancing head in its jaw. Spasming in pain, the monster throws Pyotr through the air like a ragdoll, ax and all.

Gunfire explodes as both Mykola and I unleash hell’s fury. But the twitcher’s lightning quickness renders the .50 cal worthless—like trying to shoot quail out of the sky with a pistol. Mykola blasts the animal’s leg off with his first shot—five feet away with the choke set to full spread and he nearly misses.

The twitcher spins and takes a moment to regain balance on one leg, focusing on Mykola now. The trigger still depressed, I sweep the ground aiming for his second leg while battering the desolate plains with the machine gun’s echoing thunder. The recoil starts to tip the truck. I adjust my aim accordingly. Mykola pumps another round into the chamber and fires at the twitcher’s midriff.

Both of us are late as the twitcher leaps toward my youngest. The shotgun blast rips off another leg but fails to stop it. In a desperate effort Mykola grips the shotgun like a bat. Suddenly with a whuffing thud, Pyotr’s ax strikes the twitcher full mast and in mid-flight. Screaming, the beast’s torso knocks Mykola to the ground and falls motionless, bleeding out in the ruddy dirt.

I slam Leviathan’s gyros into a full 360 sweep of the horizon, searching for twitchers who may have heard the gunfire, and come up empty. In the seconds it takes me to remount the machine gun onto the truck and begin lowering the ramps, Leonid lifts Mykola to his feet. Mykola dashes toward Pyotr while Leonid dislodges the ax from the dead twitcher.

All three sons are huddled together by the time I bring Leviathan’s treads to a stop right beside them. “Pete? Dammit, Pete.”

Mykola leans back so I can see my middle born. Leonid has him propped up, and he’s smiling.

“Did you see that?” Pyotr winces as he sits up.

“What the hell was that thing?” Mykola whispers.

“Screw that. Did you see the way I knocked it out of the air with my ax?” Pyotr pokes Mykola in the chest. “I saved your hide.”

“After you put all of us at risk with your impulsive behavior.” I come down hard on him, angry that he behaves irrationally to prove himself. “It takes a man to know the difference between courage and stupidity.” But I vaguely remember what it was like to be fifteen and how a boy needs affirmation from his father, so I smile to soften the rebuke. “It also takes a man to hold his own with a twitcher and keep his wits.”

“Yeah, you did good, dillweed.” Leonid shoves him and they both laugh.

But I can tell he’s still upset. I wish I could embrace him to put force behind my words. Instead I use his Russian name, “Pyotr. Look at me.” I set all joking aside, desperate to hold my struggling family together. “It was an amazing shot. You did good.” He crinkles his eyes with the smallest of smiles and they begin to glisten, so he looks away.

Mykola changes the subject. “Are you alright?”

Pyotr regains himself. “Yeah. That thing scratched me up good, but nothing’s broken.” He gestures to his brothers and they pull him to his feet. “Speaking of the devil. What the hell was that, anyway?”

Leonid returns to his normal dispassionate self, “Boiler. Tar baby.”

“What? That nonsense Bertie’s always prattling on about?” Pyotr objects as he walks toward the remains of the darkest twitcher I’ve ever seen.

“How else do you explain it? We all saw it. I the least, and only right at the end.” Leonid turns toward me as we follow Pyotr to investigate the corpse. “Papa? Have you ever seen a twitcher move like that?”

I shake my head. “No, son.”

“Six years?” Pyotr kicks the body. The whites of the twitcher’s eyes are larger than half-dollars, its pupils gone. “Boilers really exist, and we haven’t seen one for six years?”

“Most people who see one don’t survive,” Leonid says.

Pyotr straightens. “Well, I guess we’re the dust zone’s new elite.”

I reverse the right tread and spin Leviathan toward the pit. The thing unsettling me from the start comes back to roost. “The real question is why. Why today? Pete, you said it yourself. We haven’t even seen a loner in over a week, and today this.” I stop as close to the pit as I can get, stretching over the armrest to see the bottom. “And how come both of you weren’t sliced to mincemeat rolling around in there?”

Pyotr looks over the edge and shakes his head. “It’s all gone. I sharpened two dozen pieces of sheet metal to put in there.”

Leonid stomps his boot, creating a loud clatter. He sweeps away dust revealing a stack of discarded sheet metal just on the other side of the hole.

“They knew about the trap?”

I swivel the gyros to scan the surroundings, suddenly feeling uneasy. “Did you see the way the wife struggled before you killed it?”

Pyotr bends down to take a closer look at the headless twitcher still clinging to the side of the pit. “Yeah, it was stuck on something. That’s why I went for the quick kill.”

“Not something. Someone. Look.” I gesture with a nod and all three boys look further into the pit.

Leonid spots it immediately. “Its legs were bound. They disarmed our trap and tried to use it against us. But if they were coming for us, why not just bring the hunt?”

I finally make the connection myself. “Because we aren’t the prey. This was only an attempt to keep us busy.”

Within the dust zone there is only one way-station known among even outsiders, Bertie’s. When trouble’s coming, Bertha knows about it. Already burning midday heat, I ride the lead in Leviathan while Leonid mans the .50 caliber from the truck bed. He’s a deadlier aim and Leviathan’s undercarriage can withstand improvised explosives better than the truck.

I barrel past a burned-out metal hulk in the road, crushing a ruined door with my treads. The glass shatters and I bounce to a stop, indicating for Pyotr to drive around before I kick Leviathan back up to cruising speed, around 25mph. At top speed she’ll reach 30 plus, fast enough to outrun most twitchers.

Twice in recent months we’ve seen refugees’ rigs smoldering in the road after tripping explosives set by twitchers—nothing left but burnt hulls and melted rubber. And blood, always blood. I’ve never seen one of the explosives and can’t figure how they set them without fine motor skills. Throwing caution to the wind, I trust Pyotr’s additions to Leviathan to keep her intact. Still, the threat lingers in my mind.

What started as territorial attacks and raids for water and food escalated into full-scale war a couple years ago without explanation. Leonid, as good at interpreting twitcher motives and movements as anyone in the dust zone, thinks the twitchers are dying—that desperation is changing their behavior. Maybe so. Unfortunately, a wounded animal often poses greater threat than a healthy one—whatever healthy is for a twitcher.

Massive fire sign plumes a hundred feet into the air less than a mile northeast of our position, close enough for us to taste the crackle. I open Leviathan’s throttle. The hair on my arms raises and I count the seconds. The cinnabar deposits are getting bigger.

By the time I get to forty-five I start to worry. At fifty I crane my neck to witness the final woof of pale blue flame around the edges of the storm, indicating the end of the burn—less than a few hundred yards away. I let up on the throttle as the hair on my arms settles. Mykola had first asked about the blue flame. Once we deduced it was quicksilver, Pyotr adapted it for our lanterns. I’m damn proud of each of them. I love my boys.

Without warning Leviathan bucks as a deafening wind and scorching heat engulfs me. Careening sideways and bouncing on the right tread, I cut the motor and disengage the transmission just in time to keep the machine from toppling forward. A secondary quicksilver burst plumes, crackle thick in my throat. Less than a second before it burns me to death from the inside out, I slam my skull into the crash pad in the head rest, igniting the counter burn and releasing my harness.

A sudden whoosh chokes me and thrusts me from my chair. Blocking my descent with my hands in front of my face, I crash to the asphalt as the pale blue flame licks my back. Just as sudden as it began, the popping ends. Face down in the road, my eyes still closed against the crackle, the first sensation I register is road rash on my right arm—a good sign.

“Papa!”

“Are you okay, Papa?”

Gentle hands roll me over and I open my eyes to see all three of my sons hovering over me. I give them my best smile. “That was a close one.” I see genuine relief in each of their expressions. They still love their old papa, despite his weaknesses.

Mykola leans close. “Happy birthday, Papa.” The intimate words startle me.

“Mik!” Pyotr shoves him, but smiles as the two lug me into a sitting position. “We were going to wait until this evening to surprise you.”

The sentiment, as sudden as the explosion, takes a few seconds to settle in. “I didn’t, but I didn’t think—”

“Of course we remembered.” Pyotr mocks offense. “Now let’s get you in your chair.”

I search for Leonid, but he disengages. Turning his back to us, he fiddles with a few levers on Leviathan, lowering my chair to road level.

“We shouldn’t stay here long. Secondary fire sign is too likely.” Leonid kicks the left tread. “The first storm was too small for complete burn.”

Pyotr grunts. “Not to mention the twitchers that set the explosives. Damn if they aren’t learning my tricks.”

“Papa, your legs.” Mykola gestures with his eyes until the rest of us look down. The backs of my legs are blistered and red. I shrug.

“They’re fine for now. I’ll treat for infection when we get home. Leo’s right. We should keep moving.” I take a moment to inspect Leviathan. “How’s she look?”

Leonid stoops to inspect the transmission box and then swings underneath to check the axle and universals. While Pyotr and Mykola lower me into my chair I praise the three of them. I feel every word of it, struggling to hold back tears. “I’m proud of all of you, the Founder sons. You’ve outdone your old man in almost every way.”

“Almost?” Pyotr grins.

“Your Papa still has a few tricks up his sleeve yet, you whelp.”

Leonid reports, “Solid. The blast might have blown debris into the gear box, but nothing significant. Pete’s blast plate diverted most of it.”

Pyotr swells with pride. “Who’s the dillweed now?”

“You are, dillweed.” Leonid turns toward the truck.

“Load up, boys. With this much twitcher attention in the fringes, I’m worried about Bertie’s. We may have more trouble before sun fall.”

Ten minutes later we roll up to Bertie’s and instantly know something is wrong. Bertha isn’t sitting on the roof to welcome us with her rifle. I stop in front of the place, indicating for the boys to drive the loop around, but quietly. Pyotr eases off the main road and starts around the perimeter fence of Bertie’s junk and swap yard. If this place has been overrun, it’ll be a nightmare of the living dead.

Information is often the hair’s breadth between life and death in the isolation of the dust zone, and no one has more information than Bertha—if she’s still breathing to gather it. I need to think. Leaning back, I find the headrest stripped of padding by the explosive counter measure taken minutes earlier. It's frustrating, but a small price to keep my lungs from melting.

Lifting my goggles onto my forehead, I rub the creases left around my eyes. The ruddy coloring of the skin on the back of my hands, combined with the spiderweb of wrinkles, unsettles me. I secure the goggles and scan the horizon before looking more closely at my immediate surroundings. First rule of the dust zone: What’s over the horizon can put you under the ground. Eye’s up before looking down.

This time looking down pays off first. Twitcher tracks. Dozens of them. Hundreds of them. I clutch my chest and slough a chill. The hunt.

Bertha. Only a few uninfected have been known to survive a hunt. I zip fifty yards down the road westward, toward Amarillo. Most of the tracks kick into a lope moving in that direction, but others scatter northward at top speed, lumbering footfalls landing every several feet.

Back at Bertie’s the tracks grow muddled, but at least a hundred twitchers converged here within the hour. Tracks in the dust zone never last longer. But if Bertha had been the target of a hunt they would have burned the place to the ground. They moved on too fast. They were hitting every known human stronghold in the area, but on the way to what?

Revving the engine, the boys careen around the opposite side of the junk loop and jolt across the ditch before slamming on the brakes a few yards short of Leviathan. “News?”

All three jump out of the truck, but only Leonid speaks. “Fire sign east of Amarillo. Lots of it. More than I’ve ever seen, multiple storms at once.”

“Something strange, Papa.” Mykola speaks.

“Something else?”

“Dust.” Pyotr and Leonid look down as Mykola continues, “hundreds of trailing clouds of dust.”

A tense silence passes, as we pay respects for the soon to be dead. “The hunt.”

Back on ground level, I test my wheels before hitting a button on the end of the armrest. With a metallic fwing, a half-dozen blades protrude from both wheel hubs.

“Papa, you should stay in Leviathan.”

“Leo, you forget yourself.” I growl under my breath, loud enough to be heard over the creaking floorboards of Bertie’s general store. “I’m still in charge here. And I say we don’t do anything—”

“Unless we do it together.” They recite the chorus I’ve beat into them—an empty recitation. For five years I’ve relied on the dust zone to keep my family together. Through discipline and bitter survival I’ve ruled with an iron fist. But we all feel the same need.

Whether forty-years-old or eleven, we need more reason to be together than just to be together. More to fight for than survival. But I don’t know what reason to give them, so I pound my chest and impose my will. It won’t be long though, before the whelps overpower the alpha.

“If Bertha’s still alive we’ve gotta find her. If twitchers are still in here, we gotta kill ‘em. Questions?”

They fan out, leaving the main walkway for me. Bertie’s is always crowded, but now shelves are tipped over and supplies scattered across the floor. Stealth is useless, so I crunch my way across grains of spilt rice mixed with dark blobs that look suspiciously like blood.

The generator, usually a constant droning at Bertie’s, is eerily quiet. With the windows long since replaced by metal sheeting, the store is blacked out, even at midday. Rolling further from the front door, it becomes difficult to tell what my wheels are crushing beneath them. Difficult to discern which noises I and my sons are making and which ones we aren’t.

I hear the rhythmic whirring of Bertha’s windmill built into the back wall. The blades that power her generator are still turning. Then why are the lights off? My wheels bump against something lying across my path, and the scent of rotting flesh swells in my nostrils.

Quickly I draw my lance and flick both blades open, gripping it in the middle. A sudden crack disturbs the silence, followed by blood cry. Like a bursting dam the store reverberates with it as the shadows swarm. “Twitchers!”

A smudge against the blackness lunges from a nearby shelf, crashing into the tip of my lance. Rocking onto my back wheels with the impact, I retract the blade faster than the falling body can smother it. I spin the opposite end with force enough to decapitate the twitcher. Spinning the lance over my head, it slices two more twitchers before rebounding off a tipping shelf about to block my retreat.

I click the lance in place horizontally behind my head and whip the wheels in opposite directions. Spinning 180 degrees, I lunge forward in time to smash into the falling shelves and skitter sideways. Barely clearing the blockage, I manage an open space in the center of the store.

A shotgun roars from less than ten yards away, the flare of the powder revealing a shattered twitcher spraying blood foam. “Mik! Get clear! Find the lights!” Shadows converge on the blast as I force my youngest out of the hot zone.

With blood soaking the floorboards beneath me, I realize it’s time to get dizzy. A quick flick of my wrists and I start the spin. From the depths of my oily soul I dredge the layers of guilt and shame for the bedrock of rage, for the need to destroy everything and everyone who has ruined me, taken my Rosalyn, my Katerina. Anything that threatens the lives of my sons.

In that place, I find my blood cry. Shattering bones with my hate alone, I scream as twitchers seethe from the darkness. And I spin. Impacting twitchers erratically, I wrench my body in an ocean of movement, lurching onto a single wheel before slamming back down onto two. Keep the spin. I surge every ounce of my poisonous strength into my grip on the wheels. Blood trickles down the back of my throat, rage ripping from my lungs. Spinning blades churn the air around me like a blender with my broken body caught in the middle. Keep the spin.

I bounce sideways with a sudden impact and lurch unsteadily up onto a single wheel—the attacker’s eyes close enough for me to see their pupil-less whites. I loop around once, catching the twitcher with a savage headbutt before he can tip my chair the rest of the way over. With a yank, I bring the wheel down on his neck. With a second, I rip out his throat as I keep the spin.

But there are too many shattered bodies, mine about to be one of them. Finally the chair catches in a twitcher’s rib cage and pitches sideways. Out of the darkness a flying demon drives me the rest of the way to the floor, chomping at my throat with his teeth.

It takes too long for me to shift my grip from the wheels to the throwing knives in my bandolier. My fingers refuse to unfurl. I count three beats of the twitcher’s heart, the veins of his neck throbbing faster than the pistons in an auto. He lunges forward to end me.

With a frizzle and jolt the lights burst on. Dazzling bright, they cause the demon to twitch and miss its aim. And instead of my throat in its teeth it finds my blade crunching through the roof of its mouth.

“Back to hell with da lot of ya! When you get t’ere say hello to my husband!” Bertha’s gravely voice reverberates through the store, followed quickly by dancing lead and burning powder. Multiple guns go off at once, and I remember my .44-40 and 12-gauge, sawed-off to fit beneath the armrests of my chair.

I draw them both and join the party. In the searing light the twitchers seize and pitch erratically, and soon the room is filled with blood foam and smoke. With only two ways in or out, Bertie’s quickly becomes a twitcher mass grave. By the time the gunfire stops I’m buried three bodies deep.

After Mykola and Pyotr pull me from the tangle of twitcher bodies, I comprehend the extent of the slaughter. Bertie’s will never be the same. Flies buzz around our heads, entering and exiting at will through the countless bullet holes puncturing the tin siding. Waning afternoon sun completely floods the end of the store closest my position, completely ripped open by fleeing twitchers.

And the bodies—more twitchers than I’ve seen alive all my days in the dust zone—bleed out in heaps.

“This twas only a puncheon of ‘em. Da main column be headed north and west a here more dan tirty beats ago.” In the road Bertha updates the lot of us as Leonid jumps down from the crow’s nest. “I t’ought I was a goner for sure, ‘specially after you guys came along. The twitchers just staked da place out.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Bertha.” Using rags torn from a twitcher’s body, I wipe the stickiest blotches of blood from my chair’s armrests.

“Oh, I gots a bit more confidence in ya now. I ain’t never seen nothing da likes a dat before.” The old, ample lady gives Leonid a squeeze around the shoulder that makes him blush. “Chur boys are something special.” She scowls at me, a look I recognize well from an earlier life. “And you ain’t so bad yourself.” After delivering the nicest words she’s spoken to me since the outbreak, she winks. “Of course I gots to charge ya for the damage you done to my store.”

Leonid cuts to the chase, “Bertie says Frank and her spotted a group of refugees heading their direction from the northeast about the same time she picked up on signs of the hunt. Frank got off in time to give them warning—”

“Told ‘em to turn around and take der worthless butts back to Oklihomie, was what I told Frank to tell ‘em. ‘For dey git us all kilt.”

Leonid nods. “The hunt overtook Bertie’s before she could be sure Frank reached the refugees.”

I interrupt. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

Leonid and Bertha both nod their heads before Leonid sums it up, “The twitchers are after the refugees, but they seem to be herding them rather than hunting them, just yet anyway.”

I look around at my sons faces. Leonid’s use of the word “herding” chills us all, but I know he’s right. “The helium plant.”

Leonid nods. “That only leaves why. Why are the twitchers herding a group of refugees toward the most secure spot in the dust zone?”

“Because they want in.” The truth hits me.

Pyotr speaks for the first time. “I’ve seen enough.”

“Me too,” Leonid adds. “We’ve got time to help Bertie clean up some first.”

“No.” The blinders fall from my eyes. I see my sons for who they are, what they have become—men, battle torn and bleeding. And I know why. I know what will hold us together, the force calling us to something beyond our own survival.

Confusion on their faces, only Bertha knows what’s coming, but even she doesn’t understand it. They all think they know me, and maybe they do. But I remember the me from before, from before the color red.

I take a deep breath. “For six years I’ve refused to say it, but I was wrong. Your mother wanted to leave Amarillo when the twitch began. It was my fault she died. In my weakness…” I take my goggles off and press my puffy eyes with the heels of my hands. “I killed Katerina.”

Mykola tries to soften it, “She caught the twitch—”

“I killed her!” Swallowing my grief, I continue. “I should have taken you, all of you from this hellhole years ago. But I didn’t.” I shake my head.

“We know, Papa.” Leonid speaks, “You work for the plant. We know, all of us. In exchange for supplies, you tell them about the outside.”

I blink with shock, looking at each of them in turn. Only Leonid returns my gaze, cold and unforgiving. Maybe I’ve already lost him. Maybe not.

Bertha spits. “What he means is you spy on us for dem.”

I nod. “This only confirms my decision.” I see it clear as day, as obvious as the sun.

Bertha can’t keep quiet. “You’re still gonna help tose sons a bitches who done dis to us?”

“Maybe. But I don’t work for them anymore. From now on I work only for you.” I roll forward until each of my sons lifts their eyes to look at me. “Men, you’re not boys anymore.” I point to Bertie’s store, blood soaked and battered. “This! This is what we are now. I should have taken you far from this place years ago. There’s no undoing that. This. This is what we are now.”

I unsheathe my lance and flick the blades open, sticky with the coagulating blood of twitchers. “The dust zone is our home. When I cared only about myself, my life was empty. In my fear I’ve taught you to do the same.” I spin the lance over my head before stabbing it deep into the dirt. “It’s time we take our home back. We don’t need the plant. All we need is each other.”

Pyotr is first to follow suit. With a one-sided grin, he backs a few steps from the circle and spins his ax from hand to hand.

Mykola lifts his head. “I want to see the outside world.” His words freeze me. “But not until the twitchers are dead, all of them.” With frightening venom on his lips he steps back and slams the butt of his shotgun on the hard dirt crust.

Leonid shakes his head, staring me down. “After six years you want to fight?” He swallows back tears. “I remember the day you shot her. Do you even remember? Or were you too drunk? I loved her so much.” He removes his goggles to blot muddy tears from his eyes. “You didn’t even know she was turning!” He raises the back of his hand, stopping just short of striking my face. Without blinking I give him permission. 

“Strike me, Leonid. God knows I deserve it.” He begins to shake. Even just the appearance of the twitch in my oldest son shatters the last of my pride. I shove my chair back and lurch forward. Draping my arms over his shoulders, I force him to either support his old man or drop him. His shock turns to strength as his muscles tighten around me. I whisper into his ear, “I’m sorry, son. I’m so sorry.” And I hug my eldest for the first time in six years.

“Ach, cut all da kissy kissy, and let’s kill us some twitchers!” Bertha slaps us on the shoulders and Leonid helps me find my chair.

I start to object, “Bertha, you can’t—”

“Oh can da crap, Georgy. Look what dem animals did to my store. Besides, I’m tired of living witout me Marty.” With a vicious yank she pumps her 12-gauge in one arm. “Payback, she’s a bitch, no?”

We draw out plans to hit hard and fast, to extract as many refugees as possible and let the helium plant take care of itself. Bertha and Leonid agree that once the conflict starts with the plant the twitchers most likely won’t pursue. So we stake everything on it, and end the session with the same old words given new meaning. “We don’t do anything, unless we do it together.”

Wind whipping past us, we approach the outskirts of Amarillo at a 30mph clip. The sun dips low in the western sky. It’s almost six o’clock in the afternoon. The day’s still at its hottest, the twitchers at their slowest. But all that will change soon.

Pyotr and Mykola ride in the cab of the truck with Bertha manning the machine gun, like only a fifty-year-old German woman named Bertha can. Leonid insists on joining me in Leviathan. I’m grateful. I’ll need his marksmanship before this is through. “Bertha knows exactly where the armored Jeffery is and which railway to take.”

“Roger.”

“The trick will be to take the heat off them and make it to the refugees without getting dead.”

“No problem, Papa. You just drive. I’ll keep the twitchers off our ass.”

I reach back and squeeze his shoulder, and feel the roots of a love built on something other than fear for the first time since losing Rosalyn. “I know you will.” We rumble over the ruins of a stick frame house blown into the road. Crushing a path for the truck, we barrel onto Buchanan street—going the wrong way on a one way. Funny how some things stick with you. “Now.”

Leonid waves Pyotr off, and the truck obediently slows and turns right into a quiet neighborhood, one known to be mostly twitcher-free. Each of my boys has the territorial map of twitcher residences in Amarillo memorized. Fortunately, the twitchers who resided in Amarillo long enough before they turned tend to haunt places of familiarity, providing some predictability to navigating the city. Unfortunately, the events of today have flushed much of what we trusted about twitcher behavior.

“Twitchers! Five o’clock. Four o’clock. Eight o’clock. Lots of ‘em.” Leonid levers a bullet into the chamber of his Winchester ’73.

“Damn. I was hoping most of them would be out of town.”

“Maybe they’re covering all the possible retreats.”

“Maybe so.” I shift my grip on the clutch. “Hold on. It looks like there’s new debris in the road.” I throttle down to jump the curb. That’s when I spot several eyes through a department store window only feet away.

“Got ‘em!” Leonid strikes first, shattering the glass with a .44-40 slug. As soon as he does a swarm of twitchers emerge from the jagged mouth, missing the treads by mere feet. At full throttle we bounce around the debris and back into the road, splintering a hitching post along the way. The slower twitchers fall away quickly, but not the faster ones. Round after round Leonid works the Winchester’s lever and burns the afternoon air with powder and lead—every bullet finding its mark.

The rifle’s thunder echoes amidst the tall brick buildings of downtown, drawing even more of a crowd. A block ahead, a half-dozen twitchers lope straight for us. I grip the double-barrel 12-gauge under the armrest, count to three and pull both triggers at once. A blast of exploding blood foam and sinew envelopes us. A tumbling head deflects off my left shoulder, bruising me, but nothing more. Wiping the mist from my goggles, I nearly miss our turn on 3rd Avenue. Instantly I wish I had.

Wrecked autos block our path, new since last week. Railroad tracks hem us in on the right, and besides, we need to keep heading north. “Hold on!”

“I need to reload.”

“Just hold on. I’m going to get some vodka.” We buck the curb onto the sidewalk and I steer directly for the loading bay doors of Hal’s Garage.

“Papa, what are you—”

Leviathan’s treads crash into the bottom of the doors first, buckling the dry boards and popping them from their support irons in a shower of splintered wood. Then suddenly the floor beneath us gives, and there is nothing but dust and darkness and the sensation of flying.

The impact cracks one of my teeth. A rooster-tail of sparks shoots out from underneath Leviathan’s treads as they grab at the abandoned rails beneath us. Steering the beast through the prohibition tunnels in the dark reminds me of ice-skating at night back in Virginia. Traction is horrible, and in a matter of seconds the twitchers follow, gaining on us.

“Papa, I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“For the first time in a long time, I’m certain.” I absolutely know what I’m doing, just not whether it will work. Somehow Leonid manages to reload and begins picking off the front runners. “Save some bullets. We’re almost there.”

“Where?”

“My supply of hooch.” Lord willing it’s still there. Only a handful of my friends knew about it during the years after prohibition and before the twitch, all of them most likely dead. “We’re going to light it, all of it. I’ll make the mess, but I’ll need you to clean it up.”

“No problem.”

We slide around a bend, the right tread chewing into the rock of the tunnel side, bouncing us and spitting gravel. Finally I spot the stash by the glint of sparks bouncing off the glass bottles stacked in wooden crates from floor to ceiling. “Get ready!”

No sooner than the words leave my lips we crash into the wall of vodka and beer, the impact more painful than I had hoped. With nothing to shield the blow, a crate catches me across the forehead. Another smashes into my chest, weighing down Leviathan’s controls. “Now!” I grunt through clenched teeth.

The Winchester barks and a violent woof rushes past us before sucking all the air back toward the fire. I feel the hair on my face shrivel from the sudden heat as hideous howling fills the tunnel.

“Hot damn! I can’t see much, but I think that got ‘em.”

I blink rapidly, trying to bring moisture back to the surface of my eyes and focus on the glint of the rails before us. Only then do I realize I still have a case of vodka in my lap. “Think these might come in handy?”

Leonid shifts to see the bottles. “For once, yes. I do.”

“Under your seat, there should be some matches and an old shop rag. Get ‘em out now, in case we need ‘em.” I finish the thought under my breath, “I have a feeling we might.”

“Where does this tunnel come out?”

Nothing gets past my Leonid. “That’s the problem. It doesn’t really.”

Fear creeps into my eldest’s voice. “What do you mean it doesn’t come out? It has to—”

“The exit’s just like the entrance, son. But it’s a lot easier to get down than to get up. I haven’t been down here since I lost my legs.” For several seconds I hear nothing but the grating of the treads on the steel rails as we draw nearer to the end of the line. “I’m not gonna be able to get back out.”

“Sure you can—”

“Not with Leviathan, not with my chair. Just me, a broken old man.”

“You’re not broken! You’re my Papa.”

Terror tremors in his voice, and it breaks me, but I know I can’t be soft. “And when we get to the top you’re going to carry me? Through throngs of seething twitchers? We’ll both die, and you know it.”

“But we don’t do anything unless we do it together!” He’s screaming now.

“Not dying, son. That’s the one thing I won’t allow. You do that on your own, fifty years from now.”

“You bastard! You make me care for you just to give up and die?”

“Leonid—”

“For five years I’ve wanted nothing more. I longed for the day you would kill yourself and put us all out of your misery, because for five years you were nothing but a broken, old man.”

“Leonid—”

“And today I get my Papa back, just to—” he crumples in a heap.

Leviathan slows to a stop. “We’re here. End of the line.”

After several seconds of rare silence, he lifts his head. “No. If not for me, what about Mik and Pete?” Five pinholes of light hover several feet above our heads—a manhole cover leading to a dead end in the industrial district, near the helium plant. I picture myself crawling down the street on my elbows.

“Son—”

“Let’s just get to the street. We’re in the middle of town still. Industrial district, right? We’ll get to the street and play it by ear.”

“What did you just say?” I can’t believe my ears.

Leonid slaps his hands on the side of Leviathan. “Let’s get to the street. The others will be waiting—”

“No, after that.”

He hesitates, squinting at me through the darkness. “We’ll play it by ear?”

I laugh. The first laugh I can remember for months. “Leonid Founder. Did you just suggest we act without a plan set in advance?”

“I, I…” he stutters.

“If you can be spontaneous, my eldest, then I suppose I can live without my shell.”

“What—”

“But you have to swear one thing to me.”

“Papa?”

“Swear it.” I growl the command, making it unequivocal.

“Okay, I swear.”

“The moment I decide I’m a liability, you leave me.”

“Papa.”

“Do it, or I’ll blow my brains out before I see you come to harm.”

“Okay.

“Now come on. We’re still taking the vodka.” We unload several bottles of Vodka into my duffle and I send Leonid up the metal rungs ahead of me. He heaves the heavy lid aside, slowly allowing the ruddy light to sift into the darkness. Peering upward I wonder briefly where the blue sky has gone and if I’ll ever see it again.

“Clear.” Leonid lifts himself onto the surface before lowering a hand to take the duffle. I hand it up to him and heave myself into a seated position, my dead legs still dangling in the hole.

“These buildings are usually empty.” I adjust the shoulder straps for both my .44-40 and my shotgun and crane my neck for a look around. “We need to get there, the east wing of the plant.” As we watch the eastern sky above an abandoned rail yard, the wind suddenly shifts, rustling our clothing.

“Crackle.” Leonid stands, looking further to the east.

“I taste it.” I check the hair on my arms and count to twenty-five. Finally a light blue flicker dances over the buildings, fading quickly. “The twitchers are using it to herd the refugees.”

“They’re close. About a mile.”

“Son, we won’t make it in time to divert them to the pickup zone, not with me like this.”

“Papa, I’m not leaving—”

“Wait.” I search the area for something I know should be there. “Handcar. Help me up.” He tugs me over his shoulders, and I clasp my arms around him like a kid getting a piggy back ride—like I had done with him six years earlier. “If we can parallel the main track before the Jeffery passes then we can alter the plan, switch the rails so they push north instead of east.”

“Right into the middle—”

“Of hell’s birthplace. Yes. It’ll be messy.”

“But we’ll do it together.”

“Stop.” I crane my neck, more to hear than to see. “Did you hear—”

“Moaning. They’re coming.” Leonid lopes toward the train yard and the nearest handcart, his muscles surging beneath me. I’d never noticed how strong he’d become. Suddenly an explosion ripples the air east of us, followed by scattered gunfire.

Between Leonid’s heavy breathing and the gunfire, I hear nothing and see just as little until he unloads me on the handcart. “Son, we’ve gotta go.” Dozens of twitchers stream between the buildings behind us, heading for the larger fight. But gradually heads turn our direction, and then more than just heads.

Leonid begins pumping up and down on the cart handle, but we’re moving deathly slow while a dozen twitchers lope in our direction. I slump open the duffle and use my knife to punch down the cork on a bottle of vodka. Stuffing a strip of rag into the top I strike a match and light it. The alcohol wicks up the rag until the flame begins to smoke. The lead twitchers clump, clawing at each other less than twenty yards behind us and closing fast. “Fire in the hole!”

The glass bottle shatters one step in front of the three twitchers and blankets them in fire. Sprawling and wailing, the three manage to spread the flames to three others by the time I pack the second bottle and light it up. Leonid has us moving at a fast run now, hopefully fast enough.

I crack the second bottle on the wall of a maintenance shed just as another clump of twitchers round the corner. The burning liquid fans out in a delicate spray, like a phoenix tail, licking the fetid skin of twitchers. Their tortured screams draw more attention. I toss three more and prep the last two bottles, but a quick count identifies three dozen targets, and growing.

“The Jeffery!”

I spin around to see the armored vehicle clacking toward us on a parallel track still three hundred yards away. “The switch. We’ve gotta get there first.”

“Less than a hundred yards. We’ll make it. There’s a smash bar.”

“Got it.” I drag my legs across the handcart platform and yank the heavy bar from its moorings. The Jeffery appears to pick up steam. I look behind us and see why. Twitchers are swarming, maybe fifty of them. Even if we hit the switch we’ll be dead. “Keep going.”

“What—”

“Just do it, dammit!” I light the last two bottles and chuck them in rapid succession, both of them barbecuing twitchers so close I don’t need to aim. Without a second to spare I grasp the smash bar and lunge toward the switch. It connects solidly, sending electric vibrations through my arms and neck, and lifting me from the cart’s platform.

“Papa!”

“I love you!” I speak the words as my shoulder collides with a railroad tie, my limp legs folding over the top of me. With a grunt I right myself and grip the 12-gauge in both hands. A click followed by a roar, and the air bursts into crimson. I pull the second trigger, cutting two twitchers in half. Another lunges head first, forcing me to drop the shotgun and roll to my left. The animal cracks his skull on the base of the rail behind me and falls limp while another bowls me over.

I tug a knife from my bandolier and plunge it into his heart. Before we can stop rolling my legs snag something solid. Heaving the dead twitcher off my chest I find two more, faces buried into my calves, snapping bones with their teeth. I spin the .44-40 still strapped to my shoulder, and scatter their brains amidst the gravel.

I roar into the oncoming ocean of rotten twitcher flesh and spit hot lead as fast as I can roll the lever, parting the onslaught like a lighthouse in a storm. Every devil I drop is one less to haunt my children, one less to threaten my beloved sons.

Until I roll the lever and hear nothing but an empty click. Slow motion overtakes me. In a moment of crystal clarity I see all my strengths and faults meld together into the broken body of a dying forty-year-old man. A man blessed to mend his worst mistakes before his death.

Falling to my back, I feel the ground shake beneath me. And then thunder and lightning crack open the sky above me as the .50 caliber cycles through its ammunition. I feel the concussion of each shell igniting, powder expanding the air around it, buffeting my brain, propelling lead into spoiled bodies, poisoned gradually by a toxin born by man and belched into the soil intentionally. Ridiculous, all of it.

For a split second I swear I see blue, before my view is eclipsed by the flying silhouette of my second son, Pyotr, swinging his ax as if to split the earth.

The metal-on-metal squeal of the Jeffery’s brakes snaps me from my trance. My sons. All I can think of are my sons.

I shake the dead twitchers from my mangled legs and drag my body back toward the discarded shotgun, popping two more shells from my bandolier on the way. I hear Bertha swearing underneath the continual torrent of .50 caliber shells raining down from her perch on the Jeffery.

No sooner than I shove the bullets in the chambers and slap the shotgun shut, I turn to witness a twitcher’s head explode a few feet away.

“Papa!” I hear Mykola chamber another shell and just as quickly spend it. Leonid scoops me over his shoulders, this time like a sack of feed. From my perch I finally witness the carnage in its entirety. We had become the main attraction, twitchers streaming toward us by the hundreds.

Mykola covers our retreat to the Jeffery, firing his 12-gauge faster than I could focus on the spent shells ejecting from the chamber. Writhing limbs surround us on three sides. Finally I spot Pyotr. A whirlwind, he’s standing in the tracks at the head of the Jeffery amidst a stack of dead twitchers three feet high.

“I’m out!” Mykola backs against the armored car scrambling to reload.

“Pete, time to go!” Leonid strains at the hand holds on the Jeffery’s side. “Hold on, Papa. This is going to hurt.” He lunges up the side in two quick motions and hurls us both onto the top. I flop off his shoulders like a dead fish and roll down into the passenger compartment. All I can see now is Bertha straddling the .50 caliber M2 against a red and violet sky.

Pyotr flies over the edge of the Jeffery, followed closely by Mykola and the sound of scratching nails on armor plating. Dizzily, I realize we’re already in motion.

“Papa!” Pyotr scrambles down to my side while Mykola leans over the edge to dispatch the freeloaders.

“I’m fine. I’m fine.” I prop my head up with Pyotr’s help.

“You look like govno.” He smiles.

“Well, I’ll fit right in.” I grip him by both shoulders and smile back. “You’re crazy, my son.” I pull him toward me. “Thank you.”

“Your legs.” Mykola joins us.

“They mean nothing. We’ll cut them off when we get home.” I embrace my youngest as well. “For now let’s stop the bleeding.” I look them both in the eyes. “We’re not home yet.”

By the time I tie off both legs and we reset the M2 so I can operate it, the helium plant looms on our left and the hunt ring just ahead on our right.

“Papa, the gunfire is coming from the refugees, not the plant.” Leonid is right. Other than the blinding floodlights around the perimeter, the plant is asleep.

“Tose ain’t refugees. Dem’s da U.S. army.” Bertha points at the side of a wagon emblazoned with a white star and containing two back-to-back Browning M2s struggling to hold back the breaker of twitchers. A straggling of men rally to the protective bubble the guns temporarily create.

“You mean we risked our lives for a friggin’ war?”

“Pyotr. Whoever they are they don’t deserve to feed the twitchers. The plan hasn’t changed. We’re getting them out.”

“Hold on! Track’s coming to an end.” Leonid yells from the driver’s seat as he engages the Jeffery’s tires. The rubber squeals against the rails until we burst through the deadman and onto a dirt road.

“Alright. Bertha, take the wheel. You’re gonna be my legs.”

“Just so you know, I ain’t got my license renewed in seven years.”

“Just get us to those machine guns.” She cackles as she leaps forward to relieve Leonid.

Seconds later my eldest joins the rest of us. “What’s the plan, Papa?

I look them in the eyes and grin. “The Founder men are gonna tear hell a new corn chute.”

With a string of twitchers still following in our wake, I put Pyotr on the back, giving him firm orders to stay onboard until we stop. Leonid rides on the right, Mykola on the left while I mow a path with the .50 cal.

The darkening sky smells of sulfur and cooked flesh. The only sounds in the air are those of death and a lust for it. My body screams with pain, my legs oozing blood. Yet, sweeping dust zone filth from the back of the Jeffery while fighting side by side with my sons fills me with an emotion I can only describe as peace.

As the sun begins to set we hit the outer ring of the hunt. The writhing wall of twitchers are frenzied beyond normal, continually fortified by newcomers. The rising cacophony of their ungodly shrieks combines with the numbing thunder of the machine gun to arrest my senses and nearly freeze time. The air fills with flying fragments of poisoned bodies once human, and the road beneath us is paved with bones.

With a sharp jerk of the wheel and skidding tires, we lurch to a stop beside the military wagon, forming a triangle of Browning M2 machine guns. Mykola and Pyotr instantly join the defense of the haggard survivors while I cover them from atop the Jeffery. Leonid’s job is to find the leader of the shrinking band and explain our next steps, quickly.

Even with the third machine gun, we’ll run out of ammunition before twitchers. And to get away clean we need to punch a bigger hole than the Jeffery can make.

Leonid grips my shoulder from behind and yells into my ear. “You’re in charge.”

“That was fast!”

“They’re almost out of ammo. Now or never. They’ve got a dozen grenades left.”

“Perfect.” I swing the M2 to cover Mykola while he reloads. “Have ‘em stack all the explosives in the wagon and clear out. Keep one grenade for yourself and join Bertha. We do it now.” The hunt ring slowly closes on us as my belt of ammo shortens. I spin the gun to a temporary stop in order to be heard, “Time to go! Load up! Bertha, get ready to push!”

Pyotr and Mykola grab handholds as Bertha slams the Jeffery into reverse and pops the clutch. I straighten the last few feet of ammunition and pulse the M2 back to life, but the ring of twitchers has pushed so close that I’m nearly aiming straight down. The Jeffery jolts as we bump the wagon, pushing it in front of us.

The remaining survivors clamor around the armored car for handholds. Those with ammunition left join Mykola in keeping the seething ocean of twitchers at bay. Empty clicks replace the jarring pulse of the .50 caliber as the last of the ammunition runs through its chamber. “Bertha, we gotta go!” She guns the engine until we’re bouncing at nearly 30mph. I lean over the driver’s seat and yell, “Do it! Do it!”

Leonid chucks the grenade into the middle of the munitions pile on the wagon. Bertha slams on the brakes, sending the wagon careening into the ring of twitchers by itself. I roar above the fray, “Wait until you see the blue flame and make for the opening!” But things are quickly getting ugly.

Screams crowd me on my perch as I realize we’re completely overtaken. Men are fighting back twitchers with rifle butts and bloodied knuckles. But in a barroom brawl the average twitcher is three times stronger than an uninfected man. Pyotr tucks Mykola in behind him and creates a flashing wall of death, the setting sun glinting off his spinning ax.

Twitchers encase the Jeffery on three sides, and still nothing happens—no fire-storm-causing explosion. Leonid recognizes the problem first, “Dud! It’s not gonna blow.”

Before I can respond Bertha hits the gas, spitting gravel as we close the gap. The wagon itself swarms now with twitchers.

“Bertha, what are you—”

“Shut up, Georgy! You talk too much.” Bertha leans toward Leonid and yells something in his ear, handing him the wheel before he can object. In a flash she launches herself from the cabin and leaps with amazing agility. Clearing the ten foot gap from the front of the Jeffery to the wagon, she crumples and rolls into a mass of twitchers on top the pile of munitions. A split second later we collide with the wagon, knocking everyone from their feet.

“Leo! Reverse, now!” With a few .44-40 rounds remaining, I shoulder my Mare’s Leg in a desperate attempt to cover her. I splinter the skulls of the first two twitchers to stand, but the jarring retreat of the Jeffery on top a pavement of crushed twitchers forces me to hold fire. For a few sickening seconds I watch the old woman. Her hair ripped from her scalp by a twitcher, she manages to duck and shake him off. During a final scramble, she raises her hands over her head in victory before being completely subsumed.

In a frightening burst, a light rips through the swarming clump of rotten flesh on top the wagon, flowering into an explosion of shattered bone and splintered wood. Even as we continue to rumble backwards at full throttle, the shockwave quickly overcomes us. The crackle’s so thick I can barely breathe. “Leo!” But the pedal is already to the metal.

A surreal popping dances in the air all around us. Twitchers begin to bark frantically as the warning spreads through the ring. They crumple away from the Jeffery, pushing and shoving to retreat. The firestorm is going to be bigger than we had hoped. The wind switches direction, suddenly blowing outward rather than drawing in. We aren’t going to make it. “Everyone hit the ground! Faces in the dirt! Face down, now! Go!”

I see Mykola and Pyotr obeying immediately, the other men following suit. With the twitchers still retreating, the area surrounding the Jeffery is abandoned. I drag myself out from behind the M2, lurch and then roll roughly down the side, colliding with the ground as the air liquifies. A searing heat embraces me.

Several seconds pass, but all I can think of is coughing. It feels like a burning lizard has crawled down my throat and begun to chew my gut. Face in the dirt, I swallow a mouthful and gasp. I’m alive.

My next thoughts are for my sons. I prop myself up to scan the surroundings. Leonid is crawling to my left, his skin a bright red. “Mykola, Pyotr.” I croak their names, my voice reduced to the rasp of sandpaper on wood.

“Papa.” I turn to see Mykola bracing Pyotr, both of them standing and alive. “It’s time to go home.” I reach out and my youngest pulls me up. The firestorm radius spread thirty yards past our position, cooking twitchers as it went. But they’ll be back. Mykola boosts me onto the Jeffery.

“Everyone on board.” I growl the command as loudly as I can. I nod to Mykola after he sets Pyotr down beside me. “Help the rest, quickly.” Leonid gingerly crawls up the heated metal of the armored car and nods as he gets behind the wheel. I wrap my arm around my middle child and pull him close. He breaths deep and lays his head on my shoulder.

We wait another twenty, maybe thirty seconds until everyone still moving is helped onboard, less than two dozen of us. Just before we start rolling I recognize Frank among them. The twitchers regather around the rim of the firestorm and cross over after us, but by the time we clear the far side of the burn they turn back to clean the bones of the dead. Frank works his way over to me, his face as bright pink as everyone else's. He grips my shoulder. “The old hag went out the way she wanted, in a blaze of glory.”

I nod. “The same way she lived.”

Frank continues, “I owe you and your boys my life.”

Mykola climbs over to join us, and I give his arm a squeeze.

“Oh, they’re not my boys anymore.” I grin, the most whole I’ve ever felt. “These are the Founder men.”

Mykola smiles. “Happy birthday, Papa.”