Damon moved swiftly past the next block of crumbling apartments toward the warehouses at the rear of Vanguard territory, just as Greyson barreled in from the north.

“Visual yet?” Grey snapped into a short-range radio.

“Negative,” Jax Mercury said over the comm. “Almost to the basketball court.”

“We’re right behind you,” Grey said as soldiers poured in from every direction. “Is the front entrance covered?”

Damon leaped over a dried-out pothole, his senses narrowing and focusing. Smoke was billowing up from outside the fence. “I put three men on the kids’ dorms.”

“All points are covered,” Jax yelled from in front of them, not bothering with the radio.

The basketball court was located in an empty, concrete lot at the far southeast corner of Vanguard that also held the only other gate—besides the main front entry—where trucks could pass. It was a weak but necessary point for the territory.

Damon slowed next to Greyson and Jax, soldiers fanning out around them. On the other side of the chain-link fence, a semi-trailer truck on its side burned hot and bright, black smoke billowing into the cloudless day. A bomb of some sort had blown out the front window and crumpled the driver’s side door, bending it nearly in two.

“See anybody?” Jax asked, ducking and moving for the fence.

Damon scanned the area, which was covered by downed trucks and old tires in front of a bunch of railroad tracks with rapidly rusting train cars set haphazardly along its length. “Negative.” The stench of burning rubber filled the hot day. Sweat ran down Damon’s chest, and he moved closer to the fence, trying to see beyond the fire and smoke.

Another smell had him stopping cold. It wasn’t rubber. He pivoted to put his body between Greyson and the fence until he could see what it was.

Grey paused. Soot was already falling to coat his black hair. “Ah, shit.”

“Mierda.” Jax’s jaw tightened, and he tucked his gun into the back of his jeans. “Cover me.” Without waiting for an answer, he unlocked the gate and swung it open. “Mercs go left, I’ll go right.” He launched smoothly into motion.

Damon kept low and went left, trusting Greyson to have his back. The second he made it around the truck, two bodies came into view. Partially burned, still burning, a man and a woman lay face down on the cracked concrete. From their backs, he didn’t recognize them.

Jax came around the other side and rushed the bodies, slapping out the flames. He turned the woman over, and her dark, curly hair spread across the scalded concrete. “Fuck.”

The woman was in her early thirties with a bullet hole in her forehead. Her brown eyes were still open and staring sightlessly at the sky. Damon gingerly reached out and rolled the guy over to reveal a similar wound. But he was younger. Maybe eighteen. “Jax?” he murmured.

“Scouts. Jennifer and Lewis Washington. Mother and son who somehow survived the pandemic,” Jax said, his voice hoarse. “They were out scouting with a larger group early this morning.”

“Where?” Greyson asked grimly, his gaze skirting past the overturned trucks and stacks of tires that protected the outside perimeter of Vanguard territory.

Jax shook his head. “Dunno. I’ll have to check the records.”

Damon crouched down and studied the kid’s body. Muscled and strong. His knuckles were split, and his left wrist looked as if it had been broken. “He put up a good fight.” Damon looked up at Jax. “How many people are in your scouting parties?”

“Four to six,” Jax said, his powerful shoulders down, his accent sharp. In the blazing sun, with the stench of burned flesh all around them, he had gone pale beneath his bronzed skin. “This is the third murder with an explosion around the territory in the last week.” Wiping sweat from his brow, he jerked his head. “Check his pocket.”

Damon gingerly reached past the burned shirt and tugged out a piece of purple bandana from the dead kid’s left pocket. “Twenty gang.” He’d fought the gang before the pandemic, and even then, they were deadly. “Weren’t you a member?” he asked quietly, reaching up to close the eyes of both victims. They didn’t need to watch this world any longer. His chest hurt. Bad.

“Yes,” Jax said. “I was a member until I turned seventeen and entered the service. I’ve been fighting them since creating Vanguard.”

Damon stood, the piece of purple bandana oddly soft in his hand.

The hair on his arms rose. He paused, filtering out the sound of the crackling fire. “Wait.” Slowly, he turned his head, going on full alert.

A glint from a railroad boxcar caught his eye. “Gun!” he yelled, leaping for Greyson and taking him to the ground. Bullets pinged off the burning truck. He jumped up and ran for the nearest stack of tires, leaning around the edge and firing.

Grey reached him in a second. “What the hell are you doing?”

“My job.” Damon reared up and fired again, aiming for the glint he’d seen earlier. He nodded toward Jax and two of his men, all three crouched behind a turned-over SUV, firing in turn.

There was a cleared area of two rows of tracks between them and the old car with the shooter, so heading in that direction would be suicide. “We need to get rid of those old cars,” he yelled to Jax.

Jax cut him a look. “No shit,” he called back. “You have a tractor handy?”

No, actually. But this was a serious threat to security, and they had to figure it out. “I’ll get one to you this week,” he muttered. If he were going to concentrate on the inner territory with the crazy church, he had to know the perimeter was secure. “Any ideas?” he gasped quietly to Greyson.

Grey wiped blood off a cut above his left eye. “It’ll be a huge waste of fuel, but we’ll have to use the trucks. The ones they haven’t turned over, of course.”

A blur of purple caught Damon’s attention. He levered up, aimed, and squeezed the trigger. A cry of pain echoed over the sound of the burning tires. “Got him.” Now, it was time to figure out who was out there. “Cover me.” With that, he launched into motion.

“Damn it, Winter,” Jax bellowed.

Damon crouched and ran in a zigzag pattern, Greyson on his heels. They both fired toward the offending railway car, even as more gunfire exploded all around them. So, two shooters with automatic weapons.

Fuck.

A gun emerged from the opening of the car, discharging with the shooter’s body off to the side. Damon slid left and fired in the direction of the gun.

Blood burst out, and a man screamed in pain.

“Hit the hand,” Grey grunted just as they reached the rusting car. Damon jumped inside, fell to his knees on the rough wood, and slid, turning with his gun ready to fire.

Two men in their early twenties sat on the floor, the first dead from a head shot. The second guy held his bloody hand to his chest, rocking back and forth. Tears and snot slid down his face. His gun had fallen to the scrub grass outside.

Damon angled his body and looked out the opening on the other side. More cars and basic quiet. They had to clear this area, damn it. “Two down in here,” he called out.

Greyson suddenly filled the doorway. Soot and dirt still covered his black hair, and his eyes looked pissed. “Twenty.”

Damon eyed the injured gang member, who hadn’t looked up. “We have doctors.”

“Good for you,” the guy muttered. Dirt matted his dark hair and nearly covered his face. “If you’re going to shoot me, just do it.”

“Haven’t decided yet,” Damon said conversationally. “You’re obviously a member of Twenty.” The purple bandana tied around the guy’s left leg was a bit obvious. “Who’s giving orders these days?”

The guy finally looked up, his eyes blazing. “President Atherton is giving orders, asshole. He’s our Commander in Chief, and Twenty has been subscripted into service as the front line. We’re the Marines, 2.0.”

Damon cocked his head. “Subscripted? That’s not the correct usage of that word, bud.”

The guy shrugged. “Whatever.”

Yeah. Genius material.

Jax appeared next to Greyson. “How many members in Twenty these days?”

The guy shrugged again.

Damon cut Grey a look. They needed those answers, and no doubt, the Vanguard lieutenants had no problem extracting information. He didn’t see the need for torture. Never had. “Listen, buddy. The world has gone to shit, and it’s nice to find a place. But are you really a guy who just blows things up, scares people, and then shoots at folks you don’t know? What did you do before this?”

The guy looked up. “I was serving ten to twenty for drug distribution.” He grinned. “I was a member of Twenty before it became the president’s front line.”

That was unfortunate.

Jax leaned in. “Must’ve been after my time with them.” He shrugged. “Tell us what we want to know, or we’ll take you to the inner territory, and then you’ll tell us what we want to know.”

Damon stood, his body stiffening. The former cop inside him hated this part of survival. The soldier he’d become understood it. “Listen. These guys aren’t kidding, and I’d rather just see you go to the doctor and get that hand fixed. Answer the questions, and we’ll even get you medical help.” He’d make sure of it.

The guy looked up again. “Fuck you.”

“That’s a no,” Greyson said softly. “Plan B it is, then.”

Gravel crunched lightly on the other side of the boxcar. “Unfriendlies,” Damon bellowed, leaping for both Grey and Jax, taking them down to the hard railroad ties as gunfire hit right where he’d been sitting. His elbow hit first, and pain ricocheted up his arm. He was up and moving in unison with the two soldiers in a split second. Grey went left, Jax went right, and Damon pivoted to leap back into the car.

Agony pierced his right shoulder, and he rolled, coming up and tackling the newest shooter center mass, Damon’s head in the guy’s solar plexus. The guy shouted with a shocked “oof” as they flew through the heated air and landed on the railroad ties with a hard thump.

Damon swiped the gun out of the guy’s hand with one quick punch.

Three shots echoed behind him, and he rolled, coming up on his knees.

Jax had taken down two to the right, and Grey had killed one member wearing a lot of purple to the left.

“Scan the area,” Damon muttered as the guy next to him struggled to get up. Enough of this shit. Damon partially turned on the ground and punched the roughly forty-year-old beneath the jaw hard enough to snap his neck back. The guy fell unconscious, his head bouncing twice on a wooden railroad tie.

Damon stood, his gun ready as Jax and Greyson swept the five remaining railroad cars.

Finally, they both called out an “all clear.”

Damon ran back to the original car to see the wounded man flat on the floor, the top half of his head missing. Apparently, his buddy hadn’t aimed very well.

Nausea rolled in Damon’s gut, and he swallowed it down.

Grey jogged up. “You okay?”

Damon glanced down at his bleeding shoulder. “Yeah. Bullet just nicked me.” He jerked his head. “I’ll help carry that guy.”

“No,” Jax said, moving their way. “You’re bleeding, and he might be bleeding. You have to stay away from fluids.”

Man. Sometimes, Damon forgot he was one of the few who hadn’t been infected by Scorpius.

Yet.