No one said a word as we raced up the stairs of the bell tower. Ben told us that we needed to locate the black smoke first, before the sun went down. If it got dark, we would have no chance of seeing it.

We also needed the walkie-talkies that were strapped to the belts of the dead men. We had a total of five. One for each of the guys, one for Ben. And one for me. Maria didn’t get one, but then again, she didn’t want one anyway.

Once we were at the top of the bell tower, Ben wasted no time and fired two harpoons down into the street below. One harpoon on each side of the road. The metal harpoons crunched loudly into the sidewalk, shattering the concrete. The harpoons then extended upwards, telescopically, to a height of about nine feet. At the tip of each harpoon was a flashing green light. This meant that they were armed and ready.

“Now all we need to do is wait for it to come within range,” Ben said. “When that happens, I’ll fire the third harpoon which will activate the EMP field. You have to use the first two harpoons as a gate. Lure it to you. And then run through them. Once it gets close. I’ll fire the third harpoon and activate the EMP field.”

The guys made sure the walkie-talkies were all tuned to the same frequency. Then they gave a nod to each other. Jack was going to take the east. Daniel, the west. Kenji, the north. I had to fight back the urge to hug them all; I had to fight back the feeling that this was the last time I would see them.

The memory of Ed being dragged to his death by the black smoke only hours ago, was still fresh in my mind. His gargling scream kept replaying in my head, over and over. I had to remind myself that these boys were tough. We had been through a lot together. What’s one more roll of the dice?

Daniel led the way, down the stairs, down into the street.

Kenji followed.

Jack was last. Before Jack left, Maria grabbed him and pulled him back. She gave him a hug and a kiss for good luck. She was fighting back tears. Jack was still kinda dopey from the sedatives. He didn’t say anything. He turned and ran down the stairs.

Ben was leaning against the corner of the bell tower, peering over the arched window. He had his spear gun launcher thing resting on the ledge, ready to fire the third and final harpoon. Down below, the guys ran along the main street. And then headed off in different directions.

Our plan was simple and stupid. Not to mention dangerous.

The guys were acting as live bait.

They were going to draw the nano-swarm to them, and then run back towards us. When the black smoke was in range, Ben would fire the third harpoon.

Simple. Dangerous.

The only problem? We had no idea where the nano-swarm was. It seemed to be hiding. The only reason we knew it was still in the town was because every now and then, we could hear the unmistakable hissing sound that it made as it moved through the air.

“How many times have you done this before?” I asked Ben.

“Never.”

“Excuse me?” Maria asked. “Never? How do you know what you’re doing?”

“I’ve seen the recon teams do it.”

“Recon teams?”

“Yeah. Special teams that monitor and track the nano-swarms. The recon teams are messed up dudes. Putting their lives on the line every day.”

“So did you,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, but we would avoid hostile areas. The recon teams would go into the infected towns and the cities on purpose, every single day.”

“Why?”

“Research, I guess. Watch the infected, see how they act. Where they go. What they do. They did the same thing with the mutations and the nano-swarms when they first started to appear. Let me tell you, the aggressive ones, they are absolutely terrifying. I saw one of these things take out a whole team one time. Just tore through them like they were nothing.”

“How did you see it?”

“We went into a town to gather some supplies. The town was empty. Recon team showed up about thirty minutes later. They had tracked a nano-swarm to our location. Damn thing came outta nowhere. Took the whole squad to bring it down. They were firing harpoons everywhere, in all directions. EMP’s were going off one after the other. They finally trapped it. Brought it down. The only reason I survived, along with my scavenger team, was because we stayed down, kept quiet.”

“Um, how many harpoons do we have?” I asked.

“Three.”

“So, three harpoons basically means one chance right?”

He nodded.

“And what if you miss?”

“I won’t miss.”

“But what if you do?”

He paused. Thought about it. “If I miss, run.”