“It will kill them,” Trent answers plainly.

“Aim!” Crenshaw shouts to his team.

They move quickly to their places, each of the men taking position around the trebuchet. They roll it over the uneven ground on its large wheels until it’s facing farther inland. They’re aiming closer to the heart of the Colony.

“Load!”

More stones and dark globes are carefully lowered into the waiting bag.

“Fire!”

The trebuchet launches the mix of ammunition toward the center of the peninsula in another high, sweeping arc. I don’t see any of it fly this time. It feels like we wait forever for the impact, but finally it comes. Several small flashes of light explode on the other side of the wall. I can’t see the fires on the ground, but their light flickers against the underside of tree branches, desperate to climb the tall, dry trunks.

The watching crowd of Vashons cheers and shouts across the camp. They’re so loud I can barely hear Crenshaw speak.

“The Page is approaching.”

It’s a girl a few years younger than I am with long, light hair and a very serious expression. She’s panting for breath when she reaches us.

“Master Crenshaw, they’ve given the order!” Her words fly excitedly out of her mouth in one quick rush. She takes a deep breath. “They’re here. The zombies are here. He says to blow the damn gate.”

Cren stares at her, his face pinched with annoyance. “Did he say that word in front of you?”

“Zombies?”

“No, the swear. Did he use that word in front of you?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes.”

“What?”

I smile. This is funny from the outside.

“‘Yes,’ not ‘yeah.’ And I will blow the cursed gate. Please tell him that exactly as I have said it. Do not swear again, young lady. Not until you are older and have a stronger understanding of the weight of the words you use.”

“Yes, sir,” she says meekly.

“Very good. You wil—”

“Return fire!”

I look across the water to see a comet blazing into the sky. It’s a big ball of burning that’s been hurtled into the air, and it’s heading straight for us.

I go to run back, desperate to get out of its way, but suddenly Trent is there. I run smack into him.

“Move!” I shout, struggling with him. “Run!”

“Joss, no!”

“Run toward it!”

Everyone is yelling at once. I can’t understand all of it and I definitely can’t understand why they’d want me to run toward the fireball. I don’t have time to ask or fight about it because Trent easily lifts me up and runs us forward—right into the danger. As he swept me up into his arms I saw Cren take hold of the Page girl. He’s running her right behind us.

The fireball blazes closer to us. It looks large enough to blot out the sky—definitely large enough to crush us all into ash. But just when I think it’s going to drop right on top of us, it soars over our heads and touches down somewhere far behind us. Trent drops to his knees, curling his body over mine to cocoon me between him and the ground. There are screams when it lands, our intentional chaos in the camps suddenly turning very real. I wait, listening to Trent’s breathing against my chest and the sound of dirt and rock raining down around us.

When it stops, I hear fire burning strong and angry. My pulse quickens.

The trebuchet.

“Trent, are you okay?” I whisper.

He nods his head, uncurling from around me. He leaves me sitting on the ground in front of him as he sits up straight on his knees. The fire is burning behind him but I can see the arm of the machine standing up straight into the sky.

“Do you know why you couldn’t run backwards?” he asks seriously.

“Because I’d get smashed by burning death?”

“Because you would have been racing on a path to meet it.”

“It didn’t make sense to run toward danger. I’ve kinda lived my life doing the opposite.”

“We didn’t run toward it. We ran under it.”

“I get that now.”

“Remember it.” He stands, offering me his hand. “The night’s not over.”

I let him help me up. I was right, the machine is still standing, but the fire is dangerously close to it. Crenshaw is watching the Page girl run to the roaring crowd of worried Vashons, shouting for her to get to safety, while the rest of the group is already back at the trebuchet to make sure it doesn’t catch on fire.

“Is it okay?” I ask Ryan.

He looks up from where he’s checking one of the wheels. “I don’t know. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Yeah. Thanks, man,” he says to Trent with a jut of his chin. “I’m glad you were there to stop her.”

“No problem.”

“He’s fine, too, by the way,” I snap, annoyed they’re talking about me like I’m not even here. Let’s move past the fact that I wouldn’t be here if Trent hadn’t stopped me.

Ryan chuckles. “I know he is.”

“We’ve got a problem!” Bray shouts.

Ryan and Trent run around the trebuchet to where Bray is crouched by a rear wheel.

“What is it?” Ryan asks.

“It’s cracked.”

Ryan swears, his hands diving into his hair and rubbing it roughly.

“We can’t reposition it,” Taylor’s stocky twin tells us. “If we move it, that wheel will split in half and it’ll never shoot straight. We’ll have no aim.”

Trent steps up, touching the crack in the wheel. “It’s deep. Almost all the way through. If we fire it at all it’ll snap, most likely while the arm is in motion.”

“Which means our aim is gone anyway,” Ryan says, sounding resigned. Then he swears again and I think he’s lucky Crenshaw is too far away to hear him.

“What do we do?” I ask. No one answers me and I realize that’s my answer. “There’s nothing we can do, is there?”

“No. It’s dead,” Ryan admits.

“But the gate.”

“I know.”

“Maybe the Risen will take it down on their own,” Bray suggests. “There are a lot of them.”

“It’ll take too much time,” Trent tells him.

Ryan nods. “We needed them cruising right through that gate to flush the people out. We can’t give them a chance to defend against the herd.”

“We need to tell Alvarez. He’ll have to send in more people.”

“The tunnels?” I groan.

“Or the water,” one of the Vashons replies. “The cannibals are blowing the sewer tunnel entrance once they’re out. There’s no way to tell them to stop. Tunnels aren’t an option anymore.”

“How long until they do it?”

“Soon,” Bray says.

Ryan looks around urgently. “Where’s the Page? We need to tell Alvarez we can’t blow the gate.”

“She’s gone. Crenshaw told her to go so she ran...” My words taper off as I look around, spinning to search the area. “Where’s Crenshaw?”

“I don’t know,” Ryan answers.

“I don’t see him,” Trent says.

And that’s when I get scared.

“Crenshaw!” I shout, spinning around again.

“Guys,” Bray calls from the explosives table.

“Crenshaw!” Ryan yells.

“Guys.”

“Crenshaw!”

I can’t say exactly why I’m so worried, but something inside me is terrified. It’s the same cold feeling I had when I looked at Ryan and he smiled back at me. It’s that ominous sickness in my gut I’ve had all day. It’s some part of me that knows the world better than I ever could that’s screaming at me to pay attention. To see the signs.

“Crenshaw!”

“Guys!”

“What is it, Bray?” Ryan snaps.

“We’re missing explosives. A lot of them.”

I lock eyes with Ryan.

“He wouldn’t,” I whisper.

“Wouldn’t he?” he challenges.

I wait two beats—two measures in my heart that scream in my ears loud and clear.

Go! Now!

Ryan is half a step behind me when I take off at a sprint toward the gate. He’s fast, faster than Vin is, but he’s not as fast as me. Nothing is as fast as me.

Nothing but fate.

Once we’re away from the camp, I can’t see anything. The lights ahead at the gate are burning bright but they’re not focused out this far. I’m running in a dead zone of darkness where the sound of the crowd behind me is fading and the chorus of zombies rolling down the road right beside us is deafening. We’re stupid if we think the Colonists can’t hear this. They know what’s coming.