The fighting stopped.

  Not all at once but close enough. A coyote had a man pinned against the wall and it just stepped back. A survivor with a bow had an arrow drawn on one and she held it, finger tight on the string, not releasing. People and coyotes both standing still, looking at the same thing.

  The craters in the dirt. The smoke still rising from them. The violet spheres hanging in the air, flattening out.

  Marcus’s people had never seen a portal before. Colt could tell by their faces. The coyotes had. Their lips pulled back and a low sound rolled out of them, not a howl. Something else. Something that made the hair on Colt’s arms stand up.

  A ninja dropped through the nearest portal and hit the ground.

  Then another.

  The first coyote didn’t wait. It launched itself across the compound and hit the ninja before it had both feet under it. They went down in a tangle. More coyotes broke from the group, sprinting hard toward the portals.

  More streaks hit the ground. More portals opened.

  The first ninja was back on its feet but the coyote was already moving. The ninja reached for its sword and the coyote clamped down on its arm before the blade cleared the scabbard. A second coyote hit the ninja from behind and drove it into the ground. Violet light ripped straight up into the sky and the ninja went limp.

  Colt saw another ninja go down under a coyote, followed by more violet light shooting into the sky. Then another, same thing.

  Marcus appeared at Colt’s shoulder. “Who the fuck are these guys.”

  “Ninjas,” Clay said.

  “Ninjas?”

  “We gotta go,” Colt said.

  A group of ninjas landed on the far side of the compound near a cluster of survivors who hadn’t made it to cover. White light flashed where they moved. People dropped.

  Marcus looked at his gun. He turned it over, found the jam, cleared it with two hard motions. He pulled the bolt back and let it slam forward.

  “Dani, get our people to safety, no way we’re holding this.” he said. Then he walked toward the fight and the gun opened up again.

  Clay grabbed Colt’s arm and they ran toward Dani.

  She was moving already, pulling a woman by the hand toward the building. Clay caught up and stepped in front of her.

  “We need to leave,” he said. “Now.”

  She shook her head. “I ain’t leaving these people.”

  “Dani—”

  “My sister’s in that building.” She pointed.

  A violet streak crossed the sky and punched through the roof of the building. The impact shook the ground. Dust billowed from the entry points in the roofline.

  Dani’s face went blank for half a second. Then she ran.

  They all ran.

  Marcus’s gun hammered behind them, covering their backs without being asked. Colt hit the door first and shoved through. The corridor was dark, the lights flickering from the impact above. Dust drifted down from the ceiling.

  “Open the doors,” Colt said. “Get everybody out.”

  He went left. Clay went right. They hit doors and shoved them open, calling in. People came out, some fast, some slow, some having to be pulled. Kids who didn’t understand what was happening. An older man who moved with a bad leg. Two women with a child between them.

  Dani ran past all of them toward room 68.

  She came back out with her sister on her hip, the little girl’s face buried in her neck, arms locked around her. Dani’s jaw was set and she didn’t slow down.

  “This way,” Colt said.

  They moved back through the corridor to the door.

  The compound was different now. Less coyotes standing. More ninjas. The fight had shifted and Marcus was still in the middle of it, sweeping the barrel in short controlled bursts.

  Then he saw him.

  In the gap where the gate used to be. One eye glowing violet, the other socket dark.

  The one-eyed ninja.

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  He was fighting three coyotes at once and he was better than all of them. He moved between them, blade out. A coyote lost a foreleg, another one lunged and he stepped inside it and his blade came up and the head separated from the body before it hit the ground. The third one circled and he let it and when it came he was somewhere else, already clear, already turning.

  Colt had never seen anything move like that.

  He stood in the doorway with the survivors pressed behind him and his hand went to his revolver.

  Colt’s jaw locked.

  DEAD EYE: ACTIVATED

  0:05

  Everything stopped. The coyotes frozen mid-movement. The ninja standing still between them, blade out, one eye burning in the silence.

  Colt raised the revolver and lined up the sight.

  He fired.

  5/6

  The bullet hit center mass.

  4/6

  Second one, same.

  3/6

  He walked the shots up. Third one caught the shoulder.

  2/6

  Fourth hit the neck.

  1/6

  Fifth went wide.

  0/6

  Sixth went wide.

  Time came back.

  The ninja dropped.

  He stood there breathing hard, revolver empty, smoke curling from the barrel.

  The violet light on the ninja’s body moved.

  Colt waited for it to shoot up into the sky.

  It didn’t.

  It gathered at the bullet holes, four of them, and pulled inward. The wounds closed. The light faded.

  The ninja stood up.

  Its head turned toward Colt.

  “Back inside,” he ordered. “Now.”

  Nobody argued. They pushed back through the door and Colt pulled it shut behind him. Clay was already moving, grabbing a crate from the wall and dragging it to the door. Two of the women grabbed another without being asked and stacked it. Then a third.

  The door shook.

  A sword punched through it, blade first, six inches from Colt’s face. He didn’t move. The blade pulled back and punched through again, lower this time, and then it stopped.

  From outside, howling. Close. Then the sound of something heavy hitting something else heavy. Then more of it.

  The sword didn’t come back through.

  Clay looked at Colt. Colt looked at the door.

  They waited.

  The sounds outside changed. Less sharp. Less close. Then further. Then nothing.

  Marcus’s gun stopped.

  Nobody said anything about that.

  It stretched long enough that the little girl stopped crying. Long enough that Colt’s breathing slowed. Long enough that the only sound was the generator somewhere in the building, still running, steady as ever.

  Clay looked at Dani. “Back way out?”

  She shifted her sister to her other hip. “Follow me.”

  She led them down the corridor, past room 68, past the dead server racks, to a door at the far end with a push bar across it. She hit it with her hip and it swung open.

  Outside air came in. No movement anywhere Colt could see. The sounds of the fight were on the other side of the building and even those were fading now.

  Colt went through first, hand on the dagger, and scanned.

  He turned back to the group in the doorway.

  Colt moved them along the back wall, keeping the building between them and whatever was left on the other side. The group stayed tight. Nobody spoke.

  He held his fist up at the corner and they stopped.

  He leaned out and looked.

  Bodies everywhere. Survivors face down in the dirt. Shoshone in human form now, the coyote gone out of them in death, just people lying still in the grass. Dead ninjas scattered between them, black cloth and empty eyes. The compound looked like something had torn through it and kept going.

  “Clear,” Colt said.

  They came around the corner.

  Then he saw Marcus.

  Flat on his back near his gun, one arm stretched out toward it like he’d been reaching for it when he went down. The gun lay on its side in the dirt beside him.

  Dani saw him at the same time.

  She turned and shoved her sister into Clay’s arms. “Here.”

  Clay grabbed the girl on instinct. “Whoa— what—”

  Dani was already running.

  Clay looked down at the little girl looking up at him. “Uh. Hi there.”

  Colt followed Dani across the compound, hand on the dagger, eyes moving. Through the gap where the gate had been he could see open ground beyond. A few shapes moving away in the distance, low to the ground, fast. Coyotes. Running.

  Dani dropped to her knees beside Marcus.

  He opened his eyes. A gash ran across his forehead, one side of his face slick with blood. He looked at her, then past her at Colt.

  “God damn it,” he said. He tried to sit up.

  “Hang on,” Colt said. He crouched and looked him over. Pressed two fingers along his ribs, checked his arms. Marcus winced at the ribs but nothing gave. The gash was bad but the bleeding had slowed.

  “Anything broken?” Colt said.

  “I’m fine.” Marcus’s voice broke when he said it as he saw the carnage.

  From the gate, a moan. Low and directionless.

  Then another.

  Two shamblers pushed through the gap, arms out, violet eyes dim in the daylight. Arrows hit them before Colt could reach for the dagger. They dropped.

  More moans behind them. More shapes in the gap.

  Marcus pushed himself up to sitting. “Secure the gate,” he called out. His voice came out rough but it carried. “Now! All that noise is gonna bring every one of ’em for miles.”

  Colt got a hand under his arm and pulled him to his feet.

  Marcus stood and looked at the compound. His eyes moved across it slow. The bodies. The burned patches of dirt. The gate blown off its hinges. Forty years of work torn apart in twenty minutes.

  “I’m sorry,” Colt said. “I’m sorry this happened.”

  Marcus didn’t answer.

  Colt looked at the bodies too. He knew whose fault it was. He’d picked this Earth because there was no module, no reason for ninjas to come. Except there had been one. On that coyote. He hadn’t known. Couldn’t have known.

  But he’d brought this fight here all the same.

  This place had been dying slow before tonight. Now it was dying fast. He wasn’t sure which was worse.

  one thing he knew for sure was that these people wouldn’t have died today if he hadn’t shown up.

  Survivors moved past them, pulling the dead out of the way, grabbing tools. Two men got behind one of the RVs and started pushing it toward the gate while others pulled from the front. The engine was long dead but the frame was solid and it rolled slow across the dirt and stopped in the gap.

  Others came behind it with sheet metal and debris, stacking it around the sides, filling the gaps. Hands working fast, no orders needed. These people had been doing this kind of work their whole lives.

  Colt watched a piece of sheet metal go up over a gap near the bottom. Before it covered the opening he could see through to the other side. Shamblers packed together out there, bodies pressing against each other, mouths open, the violet in their eyes barely there in the daylight. The moan of them all together was low and constant like something the earth itself was doing.

  The sheet metal dropped into place. Someone hammered it down with a chunk of concrete.

  The sound didn’t stop. But at least he couldn’t see it anymore.

  Marcus turned to Dani. “We can’t stay here anymore.”

  “We have nowhere else to go,” Dani dropped to her knees.

  Colt bent down next to her, “I might know somewhere.”