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One thing that had definitely carried over from Chase Graves' leadership into Major's was the late nights in the office. Major arrived early in the morning, and left long after darkness had fallen, pretty much every night, and even that wasn't enough time to stay on top of everything. He was grateful for Justin, who took up as much of the slack as he could.

Tonight's issue was a frequent inbox item—the stack of applications filed by humans who wanted out of New Seattle. Major hated it. He could only let out so many, no matter what their sob stories were. "I should ask Hobbs to do this," he muttered. "Hobbs likes telling people no."

"You brought this on yourself," Justin said. "Chase Graves didn't let people leave the city."

"Ah, but Chase Graves had no interest in being popular, whereas being popular is what I live for."

The office door opened, Jordan popping her head in. "Commander?"

Major and Justin looked up, both relieved at the interruption. "Jordan. Come in."

She came across the office, holding some object in her hands. "Thought you might want to see this."

"What is it?"

"Deck of cards." At Major's questioning look, she explained. "We raided Warmbloods, that human bar on Third?"

"Uh-huh. I know the one."

"People were playing poker with these."

Major gestured for her to take a seat on the couch next to him and reached out his hand for the cards. Turning them over and beginning to fan them out, he understood why she had brought them to his attention. They were zombie cards, with Fillmore Graves as the spades, the police as the clubs, Blaine's people as diamonds, and the rest of the city's zombie population as the hearts. "Ah." Grinning, he handed the deck to Justin. "Well, if they're playing cards, they're not making IEDs."

"Hey, you're the ace of spades," Justin commented. "The Saddam spot."

"Yuck it up, Uday," Major told him.

Jordan was flipping through the folder of applications. "What are these?"

"Applications to leave Seattle."

"Oh. What about this lady?" She pointed to a picture of a smiling woman. "Cynthia Rybnicki. Says here she was visiting Seattle when the wall went up. Her husband and kid are in Chicago."

"Does she require medical assistance only available outside of Seattle?" Justin asked.

"No."

"That's why it's in the reject pile."

Jordan twisted her face, understanding the problem. "Man. Your job sucks."

Justin grinned at her. "Now you're just feeding his self-pity."

"No, seriously. I can't think of anything worse."

Major thought that one over, taking the pack of cards back from Justin and sifting through them. Blaine, naturally, was the ace of diamonds. Don E was the king. "I could be Don E," he said. "That would be worse."

"The man's making himself rich," Justin objected.

"And he still has to deal with Blaine every day."

Jordan and Justin gave that due consideration, deciding that he had a point, after which they ganged up on him and told him he'd stayed late enough at the office for one day and all but forced him at gunpoint to go home.

He went, appreciating their friendship and support, but the cares of the office went with him, dancing in his head all night as he tried to sleep.

The next day, he went out in the streets on patrol. Major considered this an important part of the job, and one of the biggest mistakes Chase Graves had made. If you let other people be the only contact you had with the population at large, you lost the ability to make judgments on what was going on outside the office for yourself. And when you lost that, in Major's opinion, you became vulnerable to manipulation by others.

Justin came with him, the two of them looking in on one of the checkpoints, where all seemed to be going smoothly. As they walked, Justin spoke up. "I got a call from our friend in Tacoma."

"Yeah?"

"He says five of the six border agents who worked the South Bay? Gone off the grid. Snatched up as if by alien abduction."

Major shook his head, knowing just who had decided to resolve his problems in such a hands-on manner. "Blaine."

Before Justin could respond to the speculation, Jordan came rushing up to them at the head of her team. "Major!"

"Commander," Justin said firmly.

She corrected herself without a hint of sarcasm. She'd really come a long way. "Commander, you need to see this."

"See what?"

"There's a brain line a couple blocks that way. Couple of humans are taking pictures of everyone in line, saying they're going to post them online and out them as zombies."

Tader, one of Jordan's team, said, "I'm not saying we shoot them, but I'll bet if we smack them around a bit, we can get them to give up photography."

Another one of her team disagreed. "Technically, they're not breaking any laws. Our new mandates don't allow—"

Major had heard enough. He wanted to see for himself before he decided which side to come down on. "Let's take a look." He and Justin led the team around the corner.

By the time they reached the brain line, there were no humans there. "Photographers must have seen us coming," Jordan said.

"They sure high-tailed it out of there."

"They're going to keep coming back if we don't do something about it," Tader said.

Something felt weird to Major about the whole situation. He was just trying to put his finger on what was bothering him when he heard a squeal of tires and looked up to see an old van come speeding down the road toward them. "What the hell?" It didn't slow as it went past them. In fact, it sped up, heading straight for the checkpoint. Too late, Major realized what must be happening. He broke into a run, trying to get there in time, knowing he couldn't. "Oh, god, no!"

The rest of the team followed him, all of them shouting at the people at the checkpoint, trying to warn them to get out of the way, but they were too far away to be heard or understood. The soldiers at the checkpoint stood their ground, leveling their weapons at the van, but it continued screeching toward them, even in the face of the bullets spattering the front of the van as it got closer.

When it was clear the van wasn't going to stop, the soldiers dove out of its way. But it was too late. The van exploded in a giant ball of flame, taking entirely too many people with it.

Major stared at the carnage, hearing his people scream, wishing he had been just a little bit quicker on the uptake, wishing he knew why a person would crash a van full of explosives at a Fillmore Graves checkpoint … and terribly afraid he was going to find out.