The Seventh Pillar by Alex Lukeman

made by the rounds. Carter heard screams. He shoved in another magazine and kept firing. When that one was gone, he reloaded and waited. Selena had stopped shooting.
    The bullets had shattered the lamp on the table and blown flaming kerosene around the room. A broad tongue of yellow fire licked up the inside of the shack.
    "That will bring everyone here in a hurry. Time to haul ass, Selena."
    She hurried to the back of the truck, lifted the canvas. "Nothing there. Okay, let’s go."
    They ran to the Toyota and jumped in. He started the engine, threw it in reverse, turned the wheel, hit first gear and bumped over the track leading away from the burning shack. Dark figures ran toward them and dove out of the way. Someone fired at them. Nick reached the highway, took a hard right and sailed past a pickup truck filled with armed men going the other way. In the glare of headlights he saw them staring as they went by. In the rear view mirror he saw their brake lights come on.
    "They're stopping." Nick looked in the mirror. "Turning around."
    "Go east. Get off the highway." Selena pointed.
    Along this stretch it was flat and level and there wasn’t much difference between the road and the desert. He spun the wheel and turned into the empty land.

 
    CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
     
     
    Carter cut his lights. The moon threw cold, beautiful light over the desert. The random rock outcroppings looked like alien creatures surfacing from a silver, shadowy sea. The headlights behind had turned off the highway, coming after them.
    The wheels whined over the hard packed sand. The ground dipped. They drove into a depression, toward an outcropping of rocks thrust up from the desert floor. For a moment they were out of sight.
    "We have to make a stand." Carter shouted over the noise of the engine. "If they catch us in the open we’re finished."
    Selena inserted fresh magazines into the AKs. Tip to the front, catch the edge. Rock back, lock in place. It felt like it was getting to be second nature.
    Carter slewed to a stop at the rocks. A sudden glare of headlights bounced over the edge of the depression and caught them. He threw open the door and hit the ground.
    Selena emptied a magazine at the truck. It kept coming. Wild bursts of fire came from the back of the pickup. Bullets whined from the rocks and sent sprays of stinging sand into the air. Something cut Nick's cheek. He fired quick bursts at the truck, trying to pick out targets.
    The windshield of the truck shattered. It veered, then straightened and kept coming. Two men fell from the back. The passenger door opened and a man leaned out with a rifle. Selena shot him. Carter jammed in another magazine and concentrated on the truck.
    There was a bright, orange flash and a loud explosion. The truck lifted into the air in a cloud of fire, tossing bodies like a dog shaking fleas. The wreckage came down in pieces on the moonlit sands.
    The crackling sound of flames from the burning vehicle broke the silence of the desert night. They stood up.
    A trickle of blood ran down his cheek. He dabbed at it with his sleeve.
    "They weren’t very smart, were they?" she said.
    "No. Lucky for us." He watched her, calm as if she were at a Sunday outing in the park. She's changing, he thought. She's not the same woman who walked into Harker's office a few months ago. He wasn't sure what to make of it.
    Selena took out her phone, punched buttons and looked at the display. "We’re about eight miles from the pickup point. We need to head south east." She nodded in the general direction.
    They went over to their truck. Two of the tires were flat, the glass was shattered and oil pooled on the ground underneath. Bullet holes riddled the cab. The Toyota was finished.
    "Well," he said. "Let’s hope nobody else comes looking."
    "We’d better start." Selena slung her AK.
    They walked in silence under the moonlight, under the stars.
    After a while she broke the silence. "I was thinking about what you said, about