“Hold on!” Ethan shouted over the roar of the laboring engine. “Unless you want to bite your tongue off!”

  The moment he finished yelling, the battered four-wheel-drive truck—dubbed the Dust Hopper—screamed to life and lunged forward. It tore through the rusted wire fence behind the workshop, tires spitting gravel like shrapnel.

  Behind them, the night air shattered.

  The sharp rattle of machine-gun fire from the Reaper drones slammed into the ground where they had been seconds before. Rat-tat-tat—BOOM! The workshop entrance vanished in a sudden bloom of fire, the shockwave rocking the truck's chassis. Mei narrowed her eyes, white-knuckling the passenger handle as she watched the drones closing in through the side mirror. Their red optic sensors glowed like demonic stars against the dark.

  “They’re heat-seeking!” she yelled. “With this engine output, we’ll be in their precision strike range in thirty seconds!”

  “I know!” Ethan snapped, his teeth clenched. “That’s why I built this!”

  He wrenched a heavy manual lever beside his seat. With a metallic clunk, a thick rubber hose snapped into place, diverting the exhaust pipe into a massive, reinforced plastic water tank bolted to the truck bed.

  It was a makeshift, water-cooled thermal suppressor.

  HISSSSS—!

  Scalding exhaust gases surged into the cold water, erupting into thick clouds of steam. The engine’s roar dropped to a muffled gurgle, but more importantly, the heat signature bled away—absorbed by the latent heat of the water. On the drones’ infrared sensors, the Dust Hopper began to blur and fade into the background noise of the cold Southland night.

  “You’re insane,” Mei hissed, glancing back at the bulging tank. “You’re trapping pressurized exhaust inside a plastic box? That’s a bomb, Ethan!”

  “Five minutes!” Ethan replied, killing the headlights. “That’s all the time we have until the water reaches a rolling boil and the pressure detonates the tank! We have to reach the canyon before that happens!”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  He drove on instinct alone. Overhead, the Silver Veil provided a warped, ghostly visibility—shards of dead satellites scattering reflected sunlight across the wasteland. It helped them navigate, but it also cast long, jagged shadows that hid the dangers of the terrain.

  Suddenly, searchlights flared to life from the ruins around them.

  “Eleven o’clock!” Mei shouted. “Silver Hunters!”

  She reached behind her and pulled out an old composite crossbow. In this lawless corner of New Zealand, the Hunters were the apex scavengers. To them, a truck wasn't a vehicle; it was a moving treasure chest.

  Three modified buggies surged from the darkness, their stripped-down engines howling as they closed in.

  “No guns!” Ethan barked. “The second we show a muzzle flash, the Reapers will re-acquire our lock!”

  “I know,” Mei replied calmly, her breathing slowing as she sighted down the bow. “We do this quietly.”

  THWIP.

  The first bolt, tipped with a sharpened valve stem, punched straight through a buggy’s front tire. The vehicle flipped violently, disintegrating into a cloud of dust and scrap metal.

  The other two didn’t slow down. Clang! Harpoons fired from the lead buggy, their jagged heads biting into the Dust Hopper’s bed. The chains snapped taut, yanking the truck back as its speed plummeted.

  “Ethan! The tank’s hitting critical!” Mei shouted. The plastic container was bulging like a lung about to burst, screaming under the internal pressure.

  Ahead lay the narrow, jagged mouth of the coastal canyon.

  “Cut the chains!” Ethan roared. “Now!”

  He slammed the accelerator to the floor. As Mei slashed through the harpoon cables with a tactical blade, Ethan threw open the exhaust release valve.

  BOOOOM—!

  It wasn't an explosion of fire, but of physics. Boiling water and compressed gas detonated outward, forming a towering, opaque wall of white steam behind them.

  For the Hunters, it was a total whiteout. For the drones above, the sudden, massive thermal spike registered as a direct hit or a catastrophic failure. The Dust Hopper vanished into the canyon’s deep shadows just as the Reapers unleashed their missiles—not at the truck, but at the heat-signatures of the blinded Hunters.

  The explosions echoed through the canyon like dying thunder.

  “…Damn,” Mei breathed, catching her breath as the adrenaline began to recede. “I thought we were dead.”

  Ethan wiped blood-streaked sweat from his brow and tightened his grip on the wheel. His eyes were fixed on the dark horizon.

  “This is just the beginning,” he said grimly. “The harbor is full of things far worse than scavengers.”

  Beyond the canyon, the rusted silhouettes of massive cranes rose from Invercargill Harbor like ghosts waiting in the fog.