There was an eerie calm hanging over the city as the women scrambled up into the light of day, like the world before a storm.  Lindsay sucked in a breath, her gaze scything across the landscape.

“It’s not as bad as I thought it might be,” Kara said.  “But they’re hitting hard.”

Lindsay’s gaze flicked up toward the sky.  She could see the ships in the distance and she winced.  “Yeah, and there’s some coming around for another pass.  Come on, we’ve got to move quick or else we’re in trouble.”

Kara glanced up at winced.  “How many do you think?”

“Enough that my uncle’s probably scrambling more just because he knows we bailed on safety.”  Assuming he’s even got fighters left to scramble. All of ours are probably in the air already.

            This is bad.  Really bad.

At least it didn’t line up with anything she’d already seen that summer.  Not exactly, anyway.  It was some small measure of comfort that it didn’t.

But I’m not infallible and I don’t always remember what I’ve seen.  Maybe this was something that Brendan would remember but I don’t.

She suppressed a wince at the thought as Kara tugged on her hand.

“Come on.  We have to move, like you said.”

Lindsay sucked in a breath and nodded.  The pair of women moved away from the shelter, thirty yards away from where the Council House stood, eerily untouched by the bombings.  They skirted the edge of the trees to the roadway, catching an eyeful of the devastation below.  Small craters marked the landscape, the telltale signs of precision bombs dropped indiscriminately, as if their attackers weren’t exactly sure where to hit them.

Except for the fact that they knocked out the transformers, took down the power grids.

“Something isn’t right about all of this,” she said quietly.

“We’ll find out what it is,” Kara said as they scrambled across the roadway and started down the hill.  “After we find your husband.”

Ships whined above them, the sound of their engines leaving her ears buzzing with the sound of their passage.  No bombs dropped from this pass; their fighters chased the bombers, engines screaming and lasers firing.  Lindsay watched them soar above, transfixed for a moment, her throat tight.

“Is this our future?” she whispered, half to Kara and half to herself.  “Is this what we’re meant to suffer?”

“I don’t know the answer to that question, Lin,” Kara said quietly.  “Do you?”

“No,” Lindsay said.  “But I’m damned afraid that we’re going to find out.”

With a shudder, she started to run, leaving Kara to trail in her wake.