by Rob Horner
“So, let’s go through the back,” Caitlin said, smiling.
I started to protest that Jason just said there was no way in that way.
“I like it,” Iz replied. “Let’s move to the back of the building after this next roadblock.
The second barricade was a rinse and repeat of the first. Joi and James softened them up and Gina provided a little extra protection while I purged them. Then we moved over, and Jeff took them out two by two.
“How many in the building?” Iz asked.
“I can’t see through walls,” Angelica answered, her voice a bit testy. It sounded as though she’d had to explain the limitation before. “There are five…no…six snipers on the second floor, but the rest is just brick and glass.”
“Okay, let’s get over to that wall then,” Iz said. “Caitlin, you and Chris have to move fast. Once those snipers report the breach, they’ll be coming from all directions like cockroaches at a white-trash wake.”
“Aw yeah. Time for Superman’s shadow to shine!”
The twins stopped a few feet shy of the wall, though their bubble continued uninterrupted through the brick, presumably maintaining its shape on the other side. Chris stepped up to the wall and held out a hand. Caitlin accepted it, her face alight with excitement. She clearly enjoyed doing whatever she was about to do.
“All right, turning your baby soft skin into something a whole lot harder,” Chris said.
“Is this what you guys mean when you get your hard on?” she asked.
The soldiers, the twins, just about everyone, including myself, couldn’t help ourselves. We laughed while Chris sputtered, apparently at a loss for words for the first time since I’d met him.
Caitlin smiled at him to remove the sting, then pulled back her right fist and punched the wall.
I didn’t know what to expect. Maybe something like my power. A flash of light or…something. Instead, her fist crashed through the brick, creating a small, hand-sized hole. “Step up, Scotty,” she said, pulling her hand back and dislodging a bit more brick and powdered mortar.
“Gina, you ready?” Scott asked.
“Do it,” she said.
A ball of light appeared in the pimply teenagers’ hands, which he quickly dropped into the hole. As soon as his hand was out of the way, Gina created one of her light barriers, sticking it to the outside of the brick.
“Three…two…one,” Scott said.
An explosion sounded inside the building, and the wall crumbled away, none of the shards able to penetrate Gina’s shield. She did something then, pushing the shield into the building, and suddenly there was a gaping wound in the brick wall.
“Everybody in,” Iz said, waving his arm for us to follow.
We stepped into a wide hallway filled with dust and debris, a couple of office doors blown open on either side with shards of glass littering the floor. Ahead of us the corridor opened into a vast space filled with desks and computers.
“Set up here,” Iz barked. “Gina, cover the front. Twins, see if you can keep your bubble up and protect our backs.”
Gina’s wall appeared again, this time separating the corridor from the bullpen. Voices raised in hoarse shouts reached us, coming from every direction, including above us. Booted feet echoed as the officers on the second floor raced down hallways and metal staircases. Across the wide bullpen was a regular wall dotted with doors which led out into the front halls and the reception area.
Those doors slammed open and hordes of officers streamed through, fanning out to the sides as they came, lining the walls and running into the open area, taking cover behind desks.
The deafening racket of several dozen pistols, shotguns, and semi-automatic rifles would have made normal communication impossible, but I could hear Iz loud and clear through the Port-Comm. “Get ready. They may be learning their bodies, but they won’t think much beyond using what comes easily.”
“What he means,” Fish said, “is that once they run out of ammo, they won’t think to reload. They’ll manifest and rush in.”
“They’ll also send twenty or thirty in a sweep behind us, hoping to catch us off-guard,” Iz added.
“It’s one of the downfalls to a hive-mind,” Fish explained. “No room for improvisation.”
“So, attacking police stations is a regular thing?” I asked, only half-joking.
Chris laughed. “No, but we busted a couple of buildings’ worth since the lights came down.”
“And my people have documented hundreds of combat actions against them over the years,” Fish added. “They rely on numbers and strength, taking over friends and allies so you don’t know who to trust.”
His voice dropped as he finished speaking, and I wondered if he was thinking about what we’d just encountered on the upper floors of Mandatum. His own people were vulnerable, but they’d known that. After all, their world was one of the first conquered by the Dra’gal. They’d thought they were safe here, however. Was he questioning his orders now? Were the Dra’gal in Mandatum the only ones converted? Or did the poison run higher?
“Michael,” Iz said, “wait for them to attack the back, so we know they’re fully engaged. Then start herding the ones in front to the center. Joi and James, once they’re grouped up, do your double-whammy thing. Johnny, you and Bradley watch the back.”
The rest of the soldiers stood with rifles ready. Spinning, taking stock of what he had to work with, Iz added, “Austin and Josh, wait for them to Manifest, then lock down the right side. Bart and Danny, you’ve got the left.”
Bradley and I moved to the rear, near the hole in the wall. The fading sunlight shimmered outside, a result of seeing it through the twins’ bubble.
“How long do you think—” I started to ask, and then they were there, a dozen or more police officers armed with pistols and rifles. The surprise on their faces at seeing us waiting for them would have been comical, if we weren’t also looking into the large bores of their weapons.
They fired at us, and my heart almost stopped. From this close, small spurts of fire were visible accompanying each round. The bullets rebounded off the shield with the same dull poing sound we’d heard when the snipers started shooting. Two of the officers fell immediately, one with a leg torn by a ricochet. A rose stain blossomed in the chest of the second officer. His face was slack, eyes closing, as he toppled forward.
Behind us, Iz yelled, “Now Michael!”
Fire blossomed all around the bull pen, shooting up from the floors or out from the walls. Papers on desks suddenly erupted like butane lighters. The cops behind the desks scooted back. Those on the walls jerked away. And the net result was a large gathering of bodies near the center of the room.
The waterfall returned, a cascading pressure strong enough to drive the massed officers to their knees, hands raised in a feeble and useless effort to hold the water at bay. As soon as there was enough water on the ground to connect them, James sent out his lightning. He kept the bursts short, hopefully not enough to do any serious damage to their human bodies, but more than enough to set their muscles to misfiring.
“More water on each side,” Iz said.
“Uh…Johnny—” Bradley whispered, awed.
I turned back and saw that the police had given up trying to shoot their way through our shield. Guns lowered then fell to the ground as hands grew and fingers elongated. Nails like curved talons grew out of the tips while faces stretched and reformed. Some sprouted horns, others, fins. Their skin took on the hues of fire, earth, and moss, no two the same. A few shrank into their new forms while others grew, stretching out legs and arms that no longer looked human. Extra joints formed on the extremities, though we couldn’t see those through their uniforms.
As one, they shed the remainder of their humanity and stood revealed, two dozen Dra’Gal ready for battle. Their muzzles/snouts/mouths opened, and they gave a cry of rage and hatred that carried into our hallway, causing several people to spin in place, seeking the source.
“N
ow, you two!” Iz yelled, and I didn’t know if he meant Bradley and me, or if he was talking to someone else.
Both Bradley and I went into action. The fox-faced man sent wave after wave of light daggers streaking into our enemies while I slammed my hands together, sending out a wave of force that blew the Dra’Gal back and away from the opening. Bradley danced right, firing diagonally in front of me, driving back the foes on the left, while I spun to the right, sending out a second shockwave. Then I rushed out behind it, ready to fight and not concerned with the consequences. My hands were alight like they were before going nova, but that’s not what was happening.
Being shot at, being in a war, had finally driven my guilt to the side.
This wasn’t about protecting everyone. No one could do that.
This was about protecting my friends and myself.
There were ten demons on the right, trying to orient themselves after my shockwave. I purged three of them before they could recover.
Spinning, I got my glowing arms up to block as first one Dra’Gal, then another, thought to attack from behind. Both blocks connected, the white light strobe-flashing with each one, throwing their arms out wide. A quick right roundhouse kick set one to spinning a cartwheel in mid-air, while a lunge to the left caught the other on its chin, banishing him like the first three.
A sixth demon waded in and met a spinning kick, which might have broken his neck but which I hoped only knocked him unconscious.
Then I rushed the final four, snapping a punch here, a kick there, every attack meeting some part of their anatomy, every strike amplified by my power. Two were banished by my fists while the other two were blasted away by a double-kick, a right roundhouse that dove-tailed into a hook.
Seeing Bradley still inside the shield, sending daggers into the remaining Dra’Gal, making them bleed, I hurried after the three or four that I’d knocked away, gratified to see them already back in human form and unconscious. Moving quickly, I touched them, banishing the demons within, before hurrying back to the hole in the wall.
“Johnny, out here, quickly,” Iz yelled from inside.
There were five more unconscious bodies on Bradley’s side, so I took a moment to cleanse them before running back into the shield.
The officers huddled in the center of the room were still down and still in human form, now held in place by some of the gooey purple goo the soldiers launched from the upper barrels of their rifles. Two more lines of cops ran along each side. Reinforcements must have come in either from the floors above or from the front, though these had avoided the water-logged center, forewarned by their shared mind. The two rows were frozen in human form, their eyes seething with unconcealed hatred. Having been caught up in my own battle, I didn’t know if they’d come in Manifested and forced back to human form by the purple goo, or if they simply hadn’t changed yet.
“Cleanse as many as you can, then reform on the right side,” Iz said. “Gina, go with him. Keep a shield above your heads.”
“I’ve never tried—” Gina protested.
“Then try now. There’s a lot more of them outside, and I don’t know what they’re going to do next.”
“Why not stay here?” Joi asked.
“Because even the dumbest general isn’t insane, and only the insane will repeat a losing tactic over and over. Twins, you’re with us, try to keep up.”
Marcus and Mitchel flashed a smile at each other, apparently enjoying…everything. And, I must admit, there was a certain excitement to being a part of this team. Iz was a confident leader, and his men knew how to follow orders. But more than that, he allowed a freedom among his team members that encouraged them to speak their minds. Everyone was allowed an opinion. Everyone had a chance to offer suggestions. He considered them and adopted them if they made sense, rolling them into his battle plan without a hitch. Little things like that made even the scariest situation manageable.
There were at least forty policemen down in the center of the large room, with half as many more on each side. Running full out, trusting in Gina to keep a roof over my head, it still took almost five minutes to run up to each man and make some sort of contact. My hands retained the glow from outside; it was easier to keep the power at a low boil than it was to constantly summon it. Faster, too.
Aside from the first time I let the power go and purged a roomful of people, I’d never done more than twenty or so at once, and that was back at the carnival. It didn’t seem like much, just touch someone and set them free, but it added up.
The left side of the room went quickly, then we were splashing through the water to the large group in the center. There were so many men here, most of them already unconscious, that just making sure I got them all was taxing. By the thirtieth one, each tap felt like a drain on my body. Each reach for the next guy brought that fleeting weakness you feel when you know you’ve already done a dozen presses with the bar, but you didn’t hang it up and it’s coming back down and you’re going to have to push one more time. I was panting by the time we finished the center group and made our way to the right.
A new noise started up, coming from the front of the building. Something low and loud, revving with a growl.
Then we were passing the right side and my hands were out, touching the snarling faces, watching the hatred melt into unconsciousness through the prism of the flashing lights. I must have staggered at some point, because suddenly Gina was helping me to my feet, and there were waving arms and voices yelling at us to hurry up! Come on! Get over here!
I fell to my knees again as we made it to the safety of the bubble, only managing to turn in place before the impossible happened.
The revving engine sound intensified, growing louder and turning faster as it increased in volume. Then in receded, like an obnoxious motorcycle accelerating away on the Interstate.
“I don’t like this,” Bart mumbled.
“Gina,” Iz said calmly, “put a wall over the men on the floor.”
“A what?”
The revving noise hadn’t gone completely. It seemed to have stopped a set distance away from the front of the building. And it was definitely the sound of an engine. Like a motorcycle rider twisting the throttle, gunning the engine with the clutch engaged, it kept speeding up and slowing down, growling louder then fading slightly.
“Lay your wall flat over those men, in case the wall collapses in on them.”
“I…okay,” she said.
The wall appeared, suspended in mid-air and flat, making a bright roof over the unconscious men about two feet off the floor.
“No, that’s not quite right,” Iz murmured. “Angle it, please. Tilt it down near the front of the building.”
“Like this?” Gina asked. The wall disappeared and reappeared a second later, now angled like a broad bicycle ramp, something we might have fashioned out of cinder blocks and sheets of plywood when we were younger.
“Good. Hold that,” Iz said. He looked around the room, then shifted his eyes to us.
“What’re they doing?” Bart asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s gonna come fast,” Iz said softly.
“What’s that, boss?” Chris asked.
The narrow hallway we’d retreated to, on the west side of the building, featured more offices with windows looking out over Princess Anne Road and back toward Nimmo Parkway.
“Which way?” Iz muttered.
The revving sound intensified, louder and faster, not backing off.
“Chris, get in the office on the left. You too, Michael. Caitlin, I want you on the right. Scott, you’re with her. Johnny, you’re in between the doors. Jump in either side if you’re needed. Joi and James, focus on the left, back where we came in. And try not to fry the guys we’ve already saved—”
“I can start evac’ing them,” Jeff offered.
Bodies shifted as the men and women moved into position.
“Not yet. Danielle, don’t let them know you’re here, yet. Soldiers, I want you to concentrate on t
he entrance, no matter what comes through or where it stops. That’s for the J’s.”
“I’m a J, too,” Jason said softly.
Iz might have replied, but it was lost in the sound of that engine outside, getting louder, coming closer.
Then everything…shifted. The building shook.
And a huge armored vehicle plowed through the front of the building, tearing through sheetrock and glass, heading straight for the bullpen and the defenseless men in the center.
Chapter 22
Why do the big ones always pick on me?
It was a SWAT truck, a reconditioned Humvee, which the Virginia Beach Police Department acquired through some special government grant about a year before. It had been painted black, with the VBPD seal on the front door and To protect and serve stenciled on the back. The only modification done since it was purchased from the military was the removal of the roof-mounted .50 Caliber machine gun, not that it looked any less impressive, with its big tires rolling over everything in its path.
How Iz knew they were going to try something like this, I’ll never understand. But his preparations, in this regard, were flawless. The big vehicle ripped through the wall separating the bullpen from the front lobby like it was tissue paper, then kept rolling, right up onto Gina’s wall—she grunted as though some effort was required to hold the wall in position, like she could feel the weight of the vehicle—and over the defenseless men unconscious on the floor. She’d laid her wall—bridge? —so that it ran longways from the front of the building to the back, but it didn’t extend all the way to the back wall. It was slanted along its length, rising higher with each foot, with the glowing left end approximately six or seven feet off the ground.
All eyes tracked the big truck as it traveled along the wall, racing toward an end the driver might not even be able to see. Physics demanded the wall should tilt the other direction once the truck reached the center, but physics held little sway in the face of these strange, alien abilities. When the truck reached the end it toppled forward, the hood of the expensive vehicle crashing straight down and into the floor.