Not Against Flesh and Blood (The DX Chronicles Book 1)

by Brian Cody

  David glanced to Shawn, and then looked to the nearing automaton. He inhaled and charged. Shawn watched as David’s form decreased in size, and he looked to his teammates. After turning from Shawn, Turrisi jogged after David with his rifle by his side; after him, Bryen followed. Nate glanced to that rushing machine, looked to Shawn, shrugged, and rushed after Bryen. Shawn then turned to Erik, still gasping and still looking back at him. That sentiment most stertorous in Shawn’s mind was most visible on Erik’s expression—the lack of surety, the cognition of mortality and of the idea that death was sprinting towards them and pursuing them. As Shawn looked, he found Erik, more than any of the rest of his friends, doing little to conceal his terror. “Am I wrong?” Shawn asked.

  “No”, Erik murmured.

  “Then…is Dave wrong?” Shawn asked.

  “I…I don’t think so”, Erik replied, “but…I’ll feel a little better at the end of the day if I’m able to say that…” Erik swallowed and looked aside, stepped after his teammates, then tightened his expression, nodded, and rushed.

  Shawn closed his eyes, with his shoulders rising as he inhaled and squeezed his fists. ‘Here lies Shawn Albert, who, despite several rational fears, still charged headlong at certain death because everyone else was doing it. His parents are not pleased.’ Shawn charged.

  As David knelt, Turrisi fired a short burst at the colossus’s chest; yet, those bullets were repulsed. “Are you kidding me!?” Turrisi groaned as he lowered his rifle, while David pushed off. David slammed into the machine’s head. The machine stumbled before spreading its legs and swiping its mace. David jerked back, with the mace speeding past him and its wielder spiraling in a full revolution. Below David, Erik shot a fiery beam that smacked into the bottom of the machine’s left leg but failed to burn the hollow appendage. Erik pulled back for a second shot, but looked up to the machine bowing towards him, stepping, and swiping its clawed left. Erik pushed off, rocketing into the air as the jagged arm cleaved through road.

  As Erik ascended, David bolted for the bowing machine and jabbed at the automaton’s head. The colossus stumbled backwards, and David rushed while fanning his bruised knuckles. He wound back as the automaton turned to him, and he swung as a scarlet glow reflected against his body. David, in a breakneck seize, stopped his throw and halted his forward motion within the first millisecond; then, he shot upward, while two beams of scarlet energy exploded from the colossus’s eyes and shot across the sky, their parallel forms cleaving into an adjacent building. With a jolting bow, the colossus swung its beams down. The radiant lines gored through the center of the road and cleaved a scorched gape several yards in width that split those groundward four into two groups, with Bryen, Nate, and Turrisi on the right, and Shawn on the left.

  As the beams dissipated, David rushed towards the colossus. He swerved past pillars of smoke and flew beside fiery chunks lining the buildings. He accelerated through a column of smoke in front of the automaton and swung as he plowed through the opposite end, but gasped as he found the road empty before him, and spun as he found that machine in the midst of a sidestep, its form obscured by the same column of smoke, and its right arm speeding into a backhand. David lifted his arms and pushed off to evade with the greatest amount of momentum he could induce; yet, he found the mace a yard away. He blinked. The collision blasted through the air, and a momentary pulse of blue energy flared from the impact, while David was cannoned backwards, a light blue glow surrounding his frame as he hammered into a skyscraper’s apex half of a mile off.

  “Oh shoot!” Erik coughed as he landed in a hard slide. “Oh_” he gasped as that distant crash echoed before him, “Piekarsky!” he wailed before looking to his teammates and then to the colossus illuminating its hollow eyes.

  “Scatter!” Turrisi blared as he bounded towards the roadside. The beams rushed behind him, slicing a diagonal line along the street that stopped at the base of a building and reversed. Erik lunged past the scorching waves and rocketed into the air with Shawn rushing after him. The colossus lifted its head and spun as the two jolted from side to side, but Erik jerked to the right and pitched a cometary barrage. The colossus deactivated its ocular beams and swung its mace, and, as it looked away, Shawn slammed into the side of its head and launched a paper blizzard that enshrouded its eye sockets and drove the machine to swing. Shawn lunged away, forged a paper sphere in his right, and pitched it, while Erik closed in on the colossus from behind, and while their teammates raced towards a structure on their left.

  ***

  Punching his way through the lobby doors, Nate dashed into the open space and then rushed for the far wall of the ground floor, where ‘STAIRS’ was plastered along the ceiling. A few feet behind him and to his right, Bryen ran, his breaths shrieking from his mouth as he looked to the doorman’s desk and then looked to the plastered signs of companies and businesses housed within that building. It was empty then, intact but lifeless; the only sounds present were their stomps across the carpeted floor and their gasps being dragged into their lungs as they fought for more strength. Bryen grunted as he discerned a vacancy. Squinting, he looked back to Turrisi several yards behind them, his bounds, though just as forceful as their own, appearing slower and duller. “Turrisi, come on!” Bryen moaned, while a tremor sounded behind him.

  “I don’t have powers!” Turrisi wailed.

  “Oh, yeah…” Bryen hummed as he turned to Nate. Nate looked back and, with Bryen, stopped in front of the stairway. They then waited for several moments, looking around the empty office space, examining the taupe walls, and kicking their footwear to loose soot and stone from their soles. As Turrisi’s gasps rose in volume, they looked back to him just behind them. They turned. Nate punched the iron doorway off of its hinges and down the steps while he ascended. “How many floors?” Bryen asked as he followed.

  “Fifth floor!” Turrisi gasped as he moved half of a flight below, “that’s where the head will be.”

  “And then what? We just shoot?” Nate asked as he turned past the doorway to the fourth floor.

  “Shoot, throw—anything; we’re flanking it!” Turrisi exclaimed. Nate kicked open the doorway to the fifth floor and lunged into an unlit, cubicle-filled space with a row of panes looking out to the street. He rushed as Bryen ran beside him and Turrisi trailed behind them, and he gathered electric surges around his fists as the colossus lunged into view from his left and continued to his right. The trio accelerated as that shape bounded before them. Turrisi lifted his rifle, Bryen raised his right, and Nate clapped his hands, but, before any could let fly, the machine swayed from side to side and then swatted its left at an object out of view. In the next moment, a pane was shattered as Erik rolled past and plowed through several cubicles before coming to rest against a column. They glanced to their crashed teammate to ensure he still breathed; then, as they looked out to the open pane and the obsidian shape looking away from them, they lifted their weapons.

  Turrisi squeezed the trigger, shattering three more panes as his rounds slapped into the right side of the colossus’s head and neck. The colossus stopped as the gunfire ricocheted off of its flesh, and Bryen and Nate, in retort, wound back. Nate fired an electric blaze that jabbed through two more panes and surged into the giant, and Bryen launched a quartet of jagged, shadowy extensions that slithered around one another, harpooned into the open air, and then lashed at the colossus’s head. The colossus spun to the trio as Nate’s electricity surged through it but was directed groundward; as Bryen’s piceous extensions rushed and swiped at the automaton’s arm and face, but left only miniscule scratches; and as Turrisi’s gunfire was repulsed by the energy field. The colossus then reared its head back, spread its legs, and engulfed its eyes in scarlet.

  “Go!”

  Nate stopped and turned to Bryen, who turned to Turrisi, who looked to Erik. “Go!” Erik repeated as he jumped to his feet and darted to their right. They bolted after him, pushing through cubicles and stumbling over chairs. The beams were loosed. The
concentrated blasts speared through the building, vaporized solid objects, and incinerated surrounding items. With the pops of spontaneous combustion, the four pushed with greater haste, their wails and yells overpowered by the annihilative cacophony—the sounds of not just cleaving energy, but the fiery launches of sundered furniture. The heat increased in singeing force as they moved, and, as they watched cubicles four yards behind them catch aflame, then three yards behind them, and then two, they found those two beams carving a path after them.

  As another line of windowpanes came into view, Erik heaved a fiery shot that forged a circular gape. Bryen jumped first, then Nate, the two lunging across forty feet with their arms swaying and then slapping into an adjacent building, where they fell. Behind them, Turrisi leapt, and, before he could plunge, Erik grabbed him, and, in a conflagrative howl, skyrocketed before the beams sliced out of the building and ascended after them.

  As Erik and Turrisi sped away, Shawn dove behind the turning machine, levelled off in a decelerating twist, and bolted into horizontal flight. Growling, he punched into the machine’s back, launched it from its feet, and rammed it thirty feet through the building. As the machine lay engulfed in an outlining concave, its ocular assailments surceased, and its weaponized right spiraled overhead and pounded along the building’s exterior.

  A reverberation followed as a pulse of the mace’s energy ascended thirty stories and launched tons of debris into the sky. Shawn pulled away from the machine and hovered out of the craggy fissure in which it rested while scanning the unmoving titan and the chunks dissevering and falling from the structure. He looked to the ground and several yards to his left, to Bryen walking up to him, and he then looked to Nate jumping away from a pane of glass that crashed beside him. “Is that it?” Shawn called as he glanced to the machine and looked to Bryen. “Was that all it took?” he asked, the end of his inquiry being overpowered by a fluting screech. Shawn spun to the machine, but his gaze was diverted as he was engulfed in the building’s shadow. Shawn looked up and, gasping, jolted as the top ten floors bowed towards him, swayed back, and then bowed once more. “Stay”, Shawn muttered as he lifted his arms, “no, stay”, he begged as that enormous mass crept further, “No, go back_” he gagged as that gargantuan chunk plunged from the structure’s zenith. “Oh shoot!” he wailed as he shot down the road.

  “Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap!” Bryen howled as he looked onto that plunging mass, spun, and rushed into a sprint.

  “There is no d*** way they’re charging me for that!” Nate bellowed as he ran after Bryen, the two sprinting down the road and grabbing their ears as that mass hammered into the ground and exploded. They cringed as half of a floor jounced beside them and slammed into the side of another building, and they ducked as a cement-speckled girder bounced overhead. The sounds of parted debris and scraping footsteps, however, drove them to look to the colossus rushing through the edge of that composite deluge, lifting its mace, and firing an underhanded swing. In an azure pulse, a wall of debris was enflamed and cannoned towards the two heroes. “Nope”, Nate grunted as he swiped his arms, jumped, and ascended in a fulgurant column.

  “Oh, fricken-thanks, Nate!” Bryen exclaimed before skipping to evade an SUV-sized chunk. He lunged to the side of the road, and, as he landed on a building’s second floor, he pushed off, sprinting alongside that building, jumping, and then running along the next. Behind him, the machine accelerated, pulled back its mace as it came alongside of Bryen, and swung. With a pivoting turn and then a gasping lunge, Bryen jumped past three stories, with the mace swiping behind him and pulverizing two stories of glass. The machine stopped as Bryen fled, and it jumped and swung a second time, then a third, but, in hurried bounds and straining leaps, Bryen evaded the destructive shots and altered his pace to sprint up the building’s face. The colossus, in retort, lowered its mace and, with a hurried sway of its head, fired its scorching beams in a severing turn along the structure’s tenth story. Bryen looked back as he felt the building’s upper half tilt away from the machine, and, with swifter bounds, he cleared the remainder of the skyscraper’s height, lunged over the then-tilting mass of the roof, and, slid to the lower, opposite end.

  He rappelled along the sloping roof as he found its lowest point nearing collision with another building. He came to that point as it accelerated, and he tilted over that ledge with ten feet of open space between the tumbling mass and the standing structure. He inhaled—if ever there were a time for better-than-average hand-eye coordination—and he pushed off, diving inches past the closing gap before the two surfaces collided. Freefalling, Bryen looked groundward as that building’s plunge decelerated by malleating contact. His gaze, however, was redirected to the colossus, which had forced its way through a connecting alley and which, as it stood parallel to Bryen’s falling form, was enflaming its eyes. It was waiting for me to jump since it knows I can’t fly and therefore can’t evade it while falling…? Regardless… “Crap.”

  The beams were loosed. In synchrony, a blur dove from beside the collided structures, latched onto Bryen by his back, and shot away. Bryen looked around as he was pulled, and he looked up to the scuffed and bloodied visage of David. “You owe me one!” David groaned as he faced forward, his squinting eyes being the only signifier of pain from the colossus’s hit.

  “Laser!” Bryen yelped as he pointed past David’s legs.

  “What_?”—David glanced back—”whoa!” He jolted leftward as the beams ascended past him and struck the top of a distant building. “Hang on!” Before Bryen could grab David’s holding arm, David pushed off in a sharp curve, straightening as he tore across the open atmosphere and then descended. The beams followed David even as he flew half of a mile from the automaton, goring through the roof of one structure, severing a third of a second behind it, and then cleaving a hard slant from the top of a third. David swerved past the falling chunk, and, as the beams deactivated, he dove onto a connecting road and slowed to a light hover. He landed in a gradual jog, while plummeting masses pealed behind him and a trio of murky columns ascended. He released Bryen while slowing to a walk, and Bryen, in turn, stumbled to and collapsed along the side of a parked car.

  David, meanwhile, stepped back and looked to the cluster of buildings around him. “We’re near the southeastern end”, he gasped. “It looks like we…at least we kept the robots from getting this far for the most part.” David then looked to the opposite side of the road as Nate touched down in a radiant flash, and he looked back as Shawn landed in a stumbling jog, and as Erik and Turrisi blazed into view and landed in an extended slide.

  “Are you good, Piekarsky?” Erik asked before coughing a sanguinary wad.

  “What? Yeah, yeah; I’m…” David’s words muddled in an extended gasp, and his shoulders slacked as he looked to his friends and teammates struggling to stand, to breathe, and to conceal that brewing hopelessness.

  “Dave.” David turned to Shawn as he stumbled under the charred tail of his cape. “What do we do?” Shawn asked as he reared forward to stabilize his gait, his eyes squinted and his hands opened. “I mean…” Shawn lifted his hands. “I’m not trying to be… We…we’ve never faced anything…we’ve never faced anything close to that_”

  “I know”, David averred as he closed his eyes. “I know; I…” he looked to the others, “I have no idea. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Well, unfortunately, this isn’t one of those moments where ignorance would be bliss”, Nate noted as he slapped his sides and tilted his back; “We have to come up with something—an attack plan, an escape plan, or pens and paper for our wills. We’re going in blind right now.”

  “We fall back”, Turrisi suggested. “I’m with Shawn now. This thing is out of our league. It’s levelled buildings since it started attacking, and, Piekarsky, it shot you half a mile down the road, with one swing. We, unfortunately, don’t know the limits to its firepower. It could keep this up for hours, maybe days. We’re outmatched and outgunned.”

  “Is ev
eryone else with Turrisi and Shawn?” David asked.

  “I would be”, Erik replied, “up until a few minutes ago, I had considered retreating with Turrisi towards civilization, but, then, it donned on me.” Erik looked southward and then back to the group. Simultaneously, Bryen stepped back and knelt. “We caught that thing’s attention”, Erik continued. “As eerie as this sounds, it’s crossed my mind more than once that all of this crap happening to us and the city? What if it’s specifically for us, directed towards us? If it’s pursuing us with the intent of destroying us, what’ll happen if we fall back? Will it search us out like the robots did? In my mind, moving anywhere near populated areas isn’t close to a viable option; too much collateral; too many deaths.”

  “Well, what if we found some way to signal Lamback?” Shawn suggested, “A computer, a payphone, or something? What if we were able to inform the military what we’re up against, and what if we relayed information to them?”

  “Klinge, would you be able to get anything working?” David asked.

  “Huge ‘maybe’; it depends on where we search, and how far we search from the nexus of my EMP”, Nate replied.

  “Regardless of what we do; we should think of something fast. Any ideas you have, just throw them out there”, David replied as he looked around, but then turned to Bryen several feet from the group, kneeling on all fours and with the left side of his head against the ground. “B, you good?” David asked as he stepped towards him. Bryen was silent, his eyes widened, but his mind focusing on the distant and rhythmic tremors too weak for his teammates to perceive; however, the gap in time between those stomps decreased, while the stomps themselves grew louder.