Rise An Eve Novel

darting across the roof. Both soldiers were standing now, their hands shielding their eyes as they looked out, over the City. A few people at the surrounding tables rose from their chairs, trying to see what they saw.
    I followed their gaze beyond the wall. In the dwindling light it was hard to decipher, but one pointed to an area of sand-covered buildings. The radio at his belt crackled. For the first time I noticed that the top of the Stratosphere tower had changed colors, a red, pulsing light appearing at the tip of the needle.
    Something between the buildings moved. The shadows on the ground changed as the men darted from one building to the next. They couldn’t have been more than a half-mile beyond the City. Maybe less. I leaned in, trying to alert Clara, when the first shots sounded. An explosion went off on the other side of the wall, the smoke black, billowing up in a thick, rippling stream.
    The woman beside us pointed to the southern Outlands. Figures darted down the street, scanning the buildings for soldiers. Even from up high we could see their arms outstretched and hear the popping sound of gunfire as they moved swiftly toward the center of the City. “They are inside the walls,” she said. “They’ve gotten inside.”
    “That’s impossible,” a man behind us responded. Clara turned to me, searching my face. I knew what she was asking. Were there more tunnels like the one Caleb had been working on? Was there a way to get past the wall, despite what everyone thought? I nodded, a barely perceptible yes .
    One soldier moved to the other side of the roof, blocking the exit. The people in the restaurant were eerily still. A woman had frozen in the midst of her conversation, her lips slightly parted, her cup perched in the air.
    “Someone help me,” the soldier said, pointing to the serving carts and tables surrounding the exit. “We have to move these.”
    He dragged a table in front of the stairwell doors, blocking the only entrance. But it wasn’t until the other soldier spoke that anyone moved.
    “Come on, people!” he said, raising his voice to a yell. “Can’t you see what’s happening? The City is under attack.”

nine
    AN HOUR PASSED. THE AIR SMELLED OF SMOKE. FROM THE ROOFTOP we could see a fire spreading in the Outlands, just beyond the old airplane hangars. More rebels had made it into the City, fighting along with the opposition inside. Screams rose up from the main road. I kept my eyes on the streets below, watching people dart into buildings, some trying to make it down the Strip, back to their apartments. Explosions sounded along the wall. The rat-tat-tat of machine guns was so constant I no longer flinched.
    “You said we had time still,” Clara whispered. Her hand was clutching my wrist, her fingers digging in my skin as we looked over the City.
    “I thought we did.” My voice was strangely calm. The soldiers refused to let us move the tables stacked against the stairwell doors, blocking the roof’s only entrance. Most of the people stood at the railing, watching the fighting. Not many spoke. A woman had pulled out a camera and was taking pictures, photographing the flames that consumed a warehouse in the Outlands.
    Gunshots sounded somewhere in the southern part of the City, where fires burned, their flames urged on by the wind. There were hundreds outside the gates now, a great mass of people, firing up at the soldiers stationed along the wall’s watchtowers. From where we were we could see just a sliver of the north gate and the sudden flash of explosions beyond it. The silhouettes blended together in the growing darkness, one indistinguishable from the next.
    The older man with white hair was sitting with his back hunched, his arms folded on the railing. Another man, no more than forty, stood beside us. “They’ll never make it through the gates,” he said. “There was an attack five years ago. A gang made bombs with gasoline. It must’ve burned for an entire day—the whole north end of the wall was consumed. Even they couldn’t get past. Whatever riots are going on in the Outlands should be controlled within a couple of hours. No need to be frightened.” He bowed slightly, his expression so earnest, as if he alone had the power to reassure us.
    I turned back, trying to catch a glimpse of the southern end of the wall, where one of the remaining tunnels lay. The man was wrong—the rebels would make it into the City, if they hadn’t already. Moss had