"You were surprised to see the roadblock there," said Brooks to Captain Daniels as they sped along Maricopa way; the Phoenix name for the road that was known to the rest of the country as Interstate Ten.

  "Yes," the Captain confirmed.

  "It wasn't on the last satellite image you looked at, then."

  "No," the Captain added.

  "When were the last satellite images taken?" asked Jeffcott, leaning forward in his seat.

  "About forty minutes before we set out."

  Brooks swore and Jeffcott felt a cold chill running up his spine. "So they knew exactly when the satellite passed overhear and waited for it to go before setting the roadblock," said Brooks, staring at the Captain as if it was his fault.

  "It means they know about satellites," said Bird, looking scared.

  "No, they can't," said the Captain, though. "How could they know about satellites? And even if they did, how could they know when they'd pass overhead? They were probably watching us from inside the anomaly. They saw us preparing to move out and waited until the last moment before setting the roadblock. There's very likely nothing more to it than that."

  "How did they move those cars anyway?" asked Bird. "Those tiny little creatures. How many people would it take to move a car, and we're twice the size of even the big ones."

  "If they can combine three creatures to make one big creature," said Jeffcott, "maybe they can combine more to make an even bigger creature. There may be no limit to the size of creature they can make if they just keep adding more little ones together."

  Brooks stared at him. "Creaturezilla," he said. "Why didn't they send one of them to attack us?"

  "It would still be made of the same fragile body parts as the small ones," the physicist replied. "Just more of them. Machine guns would probably chew them up quite nicely. I'm guessing they use the big ones for heavy work and use the small ones for fighting. I'm guessing that lots of small enemies scare you, as a soldier, more than one big target. Right?" The military men all nodded.

  "There is one thing that worries me more,"Jeffcott added, though. "They knew exactly which road to block."

  "All you've got to do is look at a map," said Brooks, giving him a look.

  "But they don't have maps," Jeffcott replied. "They've only had a couple of days to look around the city. Think about how many roads there are in Phoenix. They had to know which one we'd be using and they'd have to know the best place to put the roadblock. On an overpass where we couldn't just drive around it. They figured out how a road system works very quickly. If they can do that, how long before they figure out our whole civilisation?"

  "Let them figure out all they want," said Archie confidently. "It won't help them stand up against a hail of hot lead."

  "Right," said the Captain. 'Less than an hour from now they might be nothing more than a bad memory, and the sooner we get to Maricopa, the sooner it'll happen."

  The others nodded and they all returned their attention to their control consoles. All except Jeffcott who had nothing else to do than look out the viewscreens at the scenery passing by outside as they left the city behind and headed out into the desert.

  ☆☆☆

  They began approaching the first escarpment about twenty minutes later.

  "Going off road now," said one of the MCV drivers. Jeffcott didn't know which. His voice came both over the intercom and through a small opening in the bulkhead separating the cab from the rear of the MCV. "Gonna get a bit bumpy I'm afraid. Have to slow down to twenty until we're back on the road."

  "Understood," the Captain replied.

  There was a low wire fence along the side of the road, to keep wanderers and animals off it. The APC's trampled it under their wheels and caterpillar tracks without even noticing. Then the bumping started. The marvellous suspension of the military vehicles took care of most of it but they were still jostled and bumped as the vehicles sped across mounds and hollows and the occasional rock. Jeffcott heard the liquid nitrogen sloshing around in its reservoir and wondered what would happen to him if it suddenly sprang a leak.

  "I hear this is a really good treatment for the lower back," said Archie as a particularly large bump threw them up out of their seats and then dropped them back down into them. The vehicle didn't have seat belts, he'd been surprised to find. Probably for the same reason buses didn't have seat belts, he assumed. In most situations they were too big and heavy to experience the kind of violent motions that made them necessary in small cars.

  "I prefer the other treatment for the lower back," said Brooks with a lewd grin. "And how come we're not playing any music? In the movies they've always got Buddy Holly playing on the ghetto blaster."

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Nah, it's Fortunate Son," said Bird, nodding his head emphatically. "Credence Clearwater Revival."

  "That's helicopters you idiot," Brooks told him.

  "Buddy Holly's also helicopters."

  "No it's not. The Budmeister's tanks. Right, Archie?"

  "Are you talking about Predator?" the other engineer asked. "Arnie Swankyknickers. Carl Weathers. Tell you what, you'd make a great Dutch."

  "Damn right," said Brooks with a wide grin.

  "You British?" Jeffcott asked Archie, intrigued by the Swankyknickers comment.

  "My mum was," Archie replied. "My dad was American, with French roots. She crossed the pond to marry him after he was stationed in Greenham Common in the eighties. She brought a lot of Britishisms with her. Afternoon tea and crumpets. Always calling things smashing and cracking. When we go to a restaurant together she'd say that was a right proper nosh, innit? That kind of thing."

  Jeffcott laughed. "I think she may have exaggerated the Britishness for comic effect."

  "You think? Anyway I sort of grew up a combination of British and French. Franglish, she called it."

  "The best of both," Jeffcott replied.

  "Exactly, but with a solid foundation of good old American underneath it all."

  He began to sing tunelessly. "Some folks are born to wave the flag. They're red, white and blue. And when the band plays Hail to the chief they point the cannon at you."

  "It ain't me, it ain't me," Bird and Brooks joined in. "I ain't no senator's son. It ain't me, it ain't me. I ain't no furtunate one."

  Their voices carried over the radio link to the other vehicles and soon everyone was joining in, creating a cheerful cacophony that filled the air and had everyone laughing and cheering. "Now that's what I'm talking about," said Brooks cheerfully.

  "That's still helicopters, though," said Jeffcott, keen to join in. "If you want a song for the army, the bird is the word."

  "Hell yes!" Brooks agreed and immediately launched into a new melody. "B-b-b bird, bird, bird. The bird's the word. A well a bird, bird, bird, the bird's the word..." Once again everyone in the convoy joined in, and even the Captain smiled as he joined in the fun.

  "Okay men," he said when the song reached its end. "We must be pretty close to the escarpment now. Everyone keep a sharp eye. We don't know what nasty surprises the enemy might have waiting for us."

  The others nodded soberly. The Intelligence had to know that they'd want to keep to the road as much as possible, that they would pass by the escarpment as close to it as possible. Their route was predictable, which made it vulnerable to ambushes. Jeffcott didn't know what the fleshy, fragile creatures could possibly do to an armoured convoy but the soldiers seemed to be sobering up as they took the possibility seriously and so Jeffcott did as well. He looked at the viewscreens, showing views of the desert around them, and immediately saw something that made him tense up nervously.

  "Sentry plants," he said. "They can see us."

  The others had seen them the same time he had, though. Orderly rows of plants lined up across the desert, each one about the size of a rose bush but with green bulbs at the end of stubby tendrils that turned towards them as they passed. The nearest were close enough for him to see tiny pinpricks of darkness at the centre of each bulb.

  "Eyes," he said, his mouth suddenly dry. "Summers was right. They've grown eyes."

  "Those are the plants you said could walk?" said the Captain.

  "I doubt they can walk any more," Jeffcott replied. "I think they just moved to where they were needed and then settled down permanently. Moving takes a lot of energy. More than you can get from photosynthesis."

  "But seeing doesn't?" said Bird. "They say the brain uses more energy than any other part of the body. Just looking around might take a lot of energy."

  "Image processing takes a lot of energy," Jeffcott replied. "Recognising whether an animal is a predator or one of its own kind. Those plants might only be able to see movement. That takes a lot less power."

  "And there are no animals out there any more," Archie agreed. "Anything moving that isn't an anomaly creature must be an enemy." Jeffcott nodded solemnly.

  "So they know exactly where we are," said Bird.

  "So what?" said Brooks. "We've seen what machine gun fire does to them. Let them all come. We'll get this over and done with in one brief blaze of glory."

  "The nitrogen getting warmer," said Archie suddenly. "Minus 305 Fahrenheit. No, make that minus 304. We must have sprung another vacuum leak."

  "At what temperature does the superconductor stop superconducting?" asked Jeffcott.

  "Minus 297," Archie replied. "And the temperature's now minus 303."

  "All this bumping around must have broken one of the repairs we made," said Bird. "Is it just one magnetic panel?"

  "Panel Five is the warmest," Archie replied, staring at his monitor screen. "That must be where the leak is, but the nitrogen circulates around all of them. Soon all the panels will lose their magnetism."

  "We gotta seal it off," said Brooks. "All we gotta do is turn a valve. We'll lose that panel but the others will still be enough to protect us."

  "But the valve is on the outside," Bird pointed out. "Under a sheet of armour. We gotta stop, get out and take some of the armour off."

  Captain Daniels looked grim. "How long will that take?" he asked.

  Bird sucked in through his teeth. "Twenty minutes?" he said.

  "Any chance you can do it in ten?" The Captain stared at the viewscreens, searching for any sign of enemy movement.

  "Whatever you do, you gotta do it now," said Archie urgently. "Temperature's now minus 299."

  "Okay, pull over," the Captain said. He turned on the intercom. "Attention everyone. We have to stop for ten minutes to carry out repairs. We're going to lose our magnetic shield while we do it. Tettermanti, bring your platoon around to our.." He looked across at Archie. "What side?" he asked.

  "Left," the engineer replied.

  "Come around to our left," the Captain continued into the intercom. "Keep us covered while we carry out the repair."

  "Achnowledged," Tettermanti replied from the cab of MCV two. "You hear that lads?" he continued, speaking to the drivers of the other four vehicles connected to his. "When he stops, we come around and stop to his left. All gunners stand by. Prepare to come under attack."

  "Are we going to come under attack?" asked Jeffcott.

  "They'd be mad not to hit us here," Brooks replied. "They were probably planning to ambush us anyway. If I were them I'd have a large force hidden somewhere nearby."

  "And we, and the vehicles around us, will be sitting ducks," said the Captain soberly. He stared into the viewscreens. "Think we can reach that open area over there?" he asked nobody in particular.

  "Losing magnetic shield," said Archie. "We're stopping right here."

  Even as he said it, the engine was already spluttering and coughing. Their momentum carried them a little further forward, but there was a large pile of boulders just a couple of dozen metres to their right. Perfect cover for the anomaly creatures. Then the engine died, and so did all the electronics. The screens went dark one by one, and then the lights went out, plunging the interior of the vehicle into darkness.