Final Assault by Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page B

wait in silence. Let him drive. Let him get here.
    She sat on a rusted swing in Rogers School Park. A breeze from nearby Lake Michigan caught her, bringing the scents of fish and brine. Still, that was better than the smoke she’d been smelling all day.
    The park was mostly empty, although the bundles of garbage and the remains of campfires showed her that a lot of people had slept here the night before. She suspected they would do the same thing tonight.
    She didn’t want to be here when they did.
    Kara had managed to walk here, nearly to Evanston, dodging looters and rioters along the way. The day had been difficult. She was tired and sore from sleeping on the ground; her feet hurt because she was wearing the wrong shoes; and she was incredibly hungry.
    She had found water fountains along the way, especially in the parks near the lake. Fortunately the fountains hadn’t been turned off for the winter yet. At the first one, she drank and drank and drank, thinking she would never get her fill.
    But water wasn’t a great substitute for food, and her stomach ached. She had never gone without eating this long before—and she had certainly never walked this much before.
    She had made it to Rogers Park just south of Evanston before she decided to call her father again. He said that he probably could get that close to the city and that she should stay put and wait for him. Watch the president’s speech, he said.
    Kara hadn’t known the president was going to make a speech. She didn’t know if she cared about it either. But she had a choice between watching the speech and counting the seconds until her father arrived, so she turned on the video/audio on her wrist’puter and watched as best she could.
    A few blocks away where Rogers met Ridge, she could hear screaming and more breaking glass. She had thought all the glass in the city had been destroyed by now, but she had been wrong. Gunshots echoed and she noticed that she had stopped cringing. She was actually getting used to them.
    She noted all of that during the speech, and yet she found herself involved in the president’s words. Not enough to get up and tell those crazy people a few blocks away to settle down. But enough to hope that they would listen and look toward the skies.
    The president believed they could win. He knew more than she did. She hoped he was right.
    When her father picked her up, she really didn’t want to look in his eyes and see that hopelessness, that sorrow that he had even brought her into the world. She couldn’t face any more despair.
    When the president finished, she realized that the entire neighborhood was silent. Did everyone else hear him? Or were other people coming out now, telling the rioters that it was over, that they had a job to do?
    She didn’t know.
    But things were slowing down around her.
    Then she heard some more breaking glass, and a loud male laugh that sounded out of control or drunk and she realized that the people on the street hadn’t all gotten the word.
    With shaking fingers, she had dialed her father again. And this time, she caught him on the road. He was taking back streets, he told her, and it would take longer than usual, but he would be able to pick her up. She warned him about the noises at Rogers and Ridge, assured him that she was safe, and hung up.
    And ever since, she had been rocking back and forth on the swing. She would look at the sky—deceptively blue and pretty above her—and the lake, also blue and pretty on this sunny October evening.
    When she was little, her parents had taken her on a Great Lakes cruise, and they had stayed at a hotel on Mackinac Island. She had taken a bike ride around the island, fascinated that people lived there, stunned that the only way off was by boat or small plane. She had wondered how people had allowed themselves to be trapped like that.
    She hadn’t realized, until yesterday, that Earth was an island, too. If someone wanted to hurt the Earth, she couldn’t leave