"Earth rises!" Addy shouted, and they echoed her cry. "Earth rises! Earth rises!"
And ahead, from the slaughterhouse, the enemy stormed forth to meet them.
The creatures from the darkness. The apex predators from the shadows. The monsters from their deepest nightmares. Creatures of claws, of fangs, of eternal hunger. The marauders.
There were hundreds.
For an instant—an eternal instant that nearly shattered her—terror flowed over Addy.
We're going to die. We're all going to die.
She kept charging forth.
She narrowed her eyes.
She unslung her rifle from across her back and yanked back the cocking handle.
So I die fighting.
"This is Earth, bitches," she whispered and pulled her trigger.
Her bullet blasted out. Across the distance, hundreds of meters away, a marauder screamed and fell down dead, the bullet in his eye.
With deafening sound and furious fire, the wrath of humanity blazed forth.
The missiles from the choppers. The tanks with their cannons. The soldiers, screaming, firing their machine guns. The riders of steel, hot guns in hand. The shells and bullets stormed forth and slammed into the enemy.
The aliens screamed.
The aliens tore apart.
The aliens scattered their blood and organs and jagged limbs across the weeping land.
A missile slammed into a line of marauders, and a dozen of the creatures flew, limbs ripping off. A tank fired into their formation, pulverizing several marauders, burning others. Bullets slammed into the charging beasts, shattering the skulls on their backs, denting their hardened skin, finding eyes and sending the creatures careening across the road and fields.
We can do this, Addy thought. We can win.
"Onward!" She raised her rifle overhead, storming forth on her motorcycle. "To the gates! To the—"
With hundreds of shrieks, the marauders answered the assault.
Their webs shot out, the strands like steel cables. One strand caught a motorcycle at Addy's side, lifted it into the air, and hurled it at a Jeep. The vehicles slammed together, crushing rebels, and blood splattered before the machines exploded. Another web caught a helicopter, yanked it down, and the blades whirred, screeched, cracked, and the helicopter fell and men screamed. The helicopter tried to rise, belched out smoke, and another web pulled it down onto the road. Jeeps and a motorcycle slammed into the helicopter, and blades tore free and lopped the head off a rider and blasted open a truck. Missiles fell from the helicopter's hardpoints, skidded across the road, and one fired, and Addy screamed and ducked as it whizzed over her head. Another missile whizzed across the field, spraying fire, and slammed into a tank. The massive vehicle—all one hundred tons—tore apart, and men crawled out from it, burning, screaming, falling to the road.
"Onward!" Addy cried. "To the gates!"
The marauders raced toward them, howling, casting forth more webs. A web shot toward her, and Addy yanked her handlebars, narrowly dodging it. She loaded another magazine, kept firing. Ahead, a hundred marauders or more rose from the road, flying with mechanical wings of metal, spewing webs and venom at the charging rebels.
Great, Addy thought. So they can fly now.
A web caught another motorcycle near Addy. The driver, a black-haired girl with sleeves of tattoos, screamed as her bike overturned, as her head cracked open on the pavement. Marauders leaped from above, shrieking, claws extended, fangs like swords.
One marauder crashed into a Jeep, shattering the windshield, and tore the driver apart. Another alien landed on a motorcycle, claws lashed, and the rider's limbs scattered on the road behind him, tripping another motorcycle.
Her motorcycle roaring, Addy wove around the creatures. They were everywhere now, racing across the road, leaping from the fields, descending from above. The bullets kept ringing out. Machine guns pounded the enemy, and searing metal flew everywhere. Flamethrowers blasted forth their fury. Another tank fired, and a hole opened on the road. The two remaining helicopters were raining down their vengeance. Corpses piled up on the roadsides, both of marauders and humans. Vehicles burned, another one falling every moment.
Steve never left her side, firing grenades from his launcher, tearing marauders apart. A Humvee shattered, flipped over, and slammed down ahead of Addy in a burning tangle of metal. She scooted around it, burning rubber.
"Keep going forward!" Addy shouted through her megaphone. "Charge to the gate!"
They were close now. Four kilometers away, maybe three. The barbed wire walls rose ahead, the gate between them, topped with skulls. She could smell it now, even through the gunpowder. The stench of it. The slaughter.
If Hell is a real place, we're riding toward it, Addy thought.
A marauder flew toward her on mechanical wings. She fired her rifle, ripping through its engines, and it came crashing down toward her, claws lashing, jaws snapping. Addy veered her motorcycle aside, let a grenade drop, and the marauder tore apart. She ducked and swerved, dodging the flying limbs. A hot piece of shrapnel kissed her leg, cutting and instantly cauterizing the wound. Another scar. Another memento of who she had become.
They were almost at the slaughterhouse. Moments away. The gate rose, and through its bars, Addy could see them. Thousands of them. Human prisoners, naked, beaten, dying. Calling out to her.
I'm coming.
Addy stormed forth, tears in her eyes.
I'm here.
And from beyond the barbed wire and concrete walls, they rose.
Addy stared, her hope vanishing like a candle in a storm.
Ravagers.
Ten ravagers, the fighting starships of the enemy, shaped like clawed hands with the fingertips touching. Slowly, as they hovered skyward, their claws bloomed open. Within, balls of plasma crackled.
"Scatter!" Addy shouted.
The inferno blazed forth.
Streams of fire blasted out from the ravagers.
Around Addy, her comrades burned.
Time seemed to slow as the hellfire spread.
Addy rode in a daze. She looked around. She saw them screaming, the men and women of her uprising. A boy. He couldn't have been old enough to shave. A boy running, the fire consuming him like a demon crawling across his back, finally pulling him down. A figure wandering, a girl, her hair aflame, burning, all burning, woven of fire, stumbling around, silent, almost confused as the fire peeled away her flesh. A man crawling, legless. A woman with no face, with no mouth to scream with, reaching out.
The ravagers hovered above, and it seemed to Addy that they grinned, that they were living creatures, goddesses of space, krakens of the dark seas, spreading out their flaming ink and tentacles. That they could see her. That they mocked her. And above them burned the stars.
Addy.
Their voices thrummed through her chest.
Burn with us.
Join us.
Become one with the fire.
She pushed down on the brakes.
Her motorcycle skidded to a halt.
Around her, the men and women ran, the fire engulfing them. Around her, the corpses and vehicles burned.
Addy stared up at them. They hovered in a ring above her head, ten of these demons of metal claws and flaming hearts.
And she spoke to them.
"No."
She stepped off her motorcycle. She shook her head.
"No."
She attached a grenade to the launcher on her rifle. She stared up at the deities of metal and starfire.
"No!"
And she sent up her answer with a trail of smoke and light.
The grenade flew into the flaming maw of one of the creatures, and the ravager tilted, almost graceful, almost beautiful. From inside the fire spread. The alien ship glided and shoved into one of her sisters. They fell together. And the world shook.
In this field of burning corpses, Addy turned back toward what remained of her army. A couple hundred warrio
rs. A handful of vehicles. The greatest army in the world. The pride of humanity.
She stared at them, and she smiled, and she whispered, "Earth rises."
"Earth rises!" they shouted.
Motorcycles reared and roared and charged around her, leaving trails of fire. Helicopters stormed forth, firing their missiles into the maws of the ravagers. The great bomber dived from the clouds, shrieking, as large as the ravagers, and barreled into them in the sky. Three ravagers and the bomber fell together, and the explosions roared, and a mushroom cloud rose, and Addy covered her ears. Dust flew everywhere. She couldn't see. Only smoke, fire, a storm of earth and metal.
She climbed onto her motorcycle. Blindly, she rode through the inferno. She leaped through fire.
It rose ahead, three stories tall, crowned with skulls. The slaughterhouse gate.
Marauders crawled above the archway, the guard towers, the barbed wire walls. They squealed. They cast down their webs. A hundred men ran up to stand around Addy, raised flamethrowers, and blasted out a tidal wave of fire.
Webs burned.
Marauders shrieked and fell through the flames, crashing into men, ripping them apart.
A tank rolled up and stopped beside Addy on her motorcycle. She turned toward it, and she saw Hunt standing in the open gun turret. He still carried his riot shield, the white lion emblazoned upon it.
"A hand?" she said.
Hunt nodded and slapped the top of his tank. "You heard her, boys! Let's knock on the door!"
Addy covered her ears.
The tank fired.
The shell slammed into the slaughterhouse gate, shattering it.
Hunt gestured at the broken tangle of metal.
"After you, madam."
For a moment, Addy sat still on her bike, hesitating. The battle still raged around her, and yet . . .
"Addy, you ready?" Steve rode up to her side, straddling his own motorcycle.
She stared at the shattered gateway. She stared at the last rebels and marauders battling around her. She watched as a grenade launcher took out the last ravager, as the alien starship slammed down onto a field.
"This is too easy," Addy said. "They should have put up more of a resistance."
"Too easy?" Steve's eyes widened. "Addy! They butchered more than half our people! Hundreds died! And we killed hundreds of them." He tilted his motorcycle, reached out, and touched her arm. "Come on, Ads. Together. Let's roll in. Let's save these people."
She stared through the gateway. Smoke was rising ahead. She couldn't see much else. Even the prisoners were hidden from view.
Run, whispered a voice inside her. Run far from here. Run now.
She inhaled deeply.
No fear. Be strong. Leap of faith.
"Resistance!" she said. "Follow!"
With a deep breath, Addy rode into the slaughterhouse.
Smoke spread ahead. The place was so quiet. Where were the screams, the shrieks of the enemy? Where were the prisoners?
She slowed down. She rolled through the smoke, gun held before her.
She stopped.
She stared.
Her heart shattered.
Tears flowed down her cheeks.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Hundreds of marauders were crawling forth. On their backs, instead of their ceremonial skulls, they wore living humans.
The human shields were bound with webs, slung across the marauders. Some of the aliens carried two, even three adults, the naked prisoners beaten and bleeding. Other marauders carried bound babies. The enemy approached from all sides, hissing, drooling, covered with their living armor.
At their lead walked a twisted marauder with three eyes and a crown of horns. A rotting, quivering wound gaped open on his side where once a parasitic twin had squealed; only a single twitching limb remained of the deformity. On his back, the alien carried three little girls and one man.
"Orcus," Addy whispered.
The marauder who had kidnapped her from Haven. Who had shoved a feeding tube down her throat. Who had tortured her.
She recognized, too, the bleeding man bound on Orcus's back.
Steve did as well.
"Stooge!" Steve cried.
"Wait!" Addy said.
"Stooge, I'm coming!" Steve shouted again.
"Wait!" Addy shouted.
She climbed off her motorcycle. She stood before the enemy. The hundreds of marauders spread before her in a semicircle. Behind them, she could see the rest of the slaughterhouse. The assembly lines were still moving, the meat hooks still carrying humans to be butchered and packaged.
"Hello, Addy," rumbled Orcus, his voice like bones grinding together. "Welcome home."
"Let them go!" she cried. Soldiers advanced behind her. She raised her hand, holding them back.
"Gladly!" said Orcus. "I can always find more meat. Such a lush planet, bountiful with prey." He laughed, revealing severed heads in his mouth. "I can always hunt more. I will release the livestock held in this facility. We will make a swap. Their lives . . . for yours."
"You son of a bitch!" Steve shouted. He leaped off his motorcycle and made to run forward, but Addy held him back.
She stared into Orcus's eyes.
He grinned at her.
She lowered her head, tears burning, fists clenched.
So here it is. I will not die in battle. But I will die in glory. I will die saving thousands.
She looked back up. Her tears flowed.
I'm sorry, Marco. I'm sorry. I wanted to hold you one last time.
"Release them first!" she said to Orcus. "Let them go, and then I'll come to you. My life for theirs."
Orcus barked a laugh. "No, Addy. No. You do not give us your terms. Come to me now. Come be mine. I will deliver you to Lord Malphas myself, as I vowed to him. Perhaps he will allow me to mate with you before he devours your brain. Once you are in my claws, the livestock will go free. You can trust dear Orcus. I always keep my word."
Addy turned toward Steve, eyes damp.
"No," Steve said. He grabbed her. Tears filled his eyes. "Addy, no."
She embraced him. She wept against his chest.
"Goodbye, Steve. I love you."
"Addy, no," he whispered. "No. We'll fight them together. We'll stop them."
She touched Steve's cheek. She gazed into his eyes.
"We can't," she whispered. "Goodbye. Fight on without me. Always fight. Always know that I lo—"
"Fire!" boomed a voice behind her, and engines roared.
Addy spun around to see Hunt charging forward on his tank, standing on its roof, firing a rifle.
"For Earth!" shouted his men, running forward, firing their guns.
Bullets slammed into the marauders ahead.
Bullets tore through the human shields.
Addy's heart shattered like the gate.
"No!" she shouted. "No! Hold your fire! No!"
But they didn't hear her. Their bullets kept flying. The tanks fired shells. The last helicopter rained down bullets and missiles. The Humvees and motorcycles roared forth, and machine guns blazed.
And they died.
Everywhere, the humans on the marauders' backs tore apart.
Elders. Mothers. Babies.
"Stooge!" Steve shouted.
The battle raged across the slaughterhouse. Grenades flew. A missile tore into an assembly line, scattering corpses. Another missile shattered a wall, and some prisoners fled into the countryside. The great webs burned, and hundreds of captives screamed in the holocaust.
Addy tightened her lips.
She walked through the devastation, humans and marauders dying around her.
She reached Hunt's tank.
She leaped onto the caterpillar track, climbed onto the roof, and approached the hatch. Hunt stood there, his legs inside the tank, his body exposed from the waist up.
"Hunt!" she shouted. "Stand down! I banish you from the Resistance. Leave this place now. You are cast out!"
He turne
d around in the hatch.
He stared at her. His lips were bloody. He licked them and grinned.
"I think I'll stay," Hunt said. He raised a gun and fired.
The bullet slammed into Addy's chest.
She fell.
She tumbled off the tank.
She hit the ground.
She couldn't breathe, could barely move. Her armor had stopped the bullet, but she was gasping for air. It felt like that bullet had cracked every rib in her chest.
The tank turned around slowly, then came rolling toward her.
A marauder leaped forth. Addy spun, fired bullets, hit its eyes. She spun back toward the tank.
She leaped aside. Hunt's tank nearly crushed her. She ran, and the tank followed. Hunt fired again, and she jumped aside, narrowly dodging the bullet.
She raised her assault rifle and fired in automatic, emptying a magazine at Hunt. He knelt in the turret until her gun clicked, then rose again, firing.
She rolled aside. A marauder leaped toward her. She had no more bullets in her gun. She grimaced, racing away, as bullets blazed from the tank. The marauder died but the bullets kept chasing Addy.
"It's over for you, Linden!" Hunt cried from the tank, rifle in hand. His overcoat blew in the wind, displaying Nazi runes stitched into the leather. "You've always been weak. This is my rebellion now."
The tank spun toward her. The cannon pointed her way.
Addy found herself staring into the massive muzzle.
The tank fired.
She flattened herself on the ground, and the shell flew above her. It exploded against a wall nearby, showering her with bricks. She screamed in pain.
The tank came charging toward her, prepared to crush her against the pile of bricks.
Addy ran. She saw her motorcycle in the dirt, lying on its side. She lobbed a grenade, knocking a marauder back, then leaped onto the bike.
The tank turned toward her.
Addy shoved down on the throttle. Her bike charged forth, raced up a fallen slab of concrete, and vaulted into the air.
Hunt fired his rifle from atop the tank. His bullets hit the motorcycle, not even slowing it.
As Addy flew, her front tire slammed into Hunt, crushing his face, shattering his skull, and knocking his head so far back his neck snapped.
Addy and her motorcycle tumbled.
The world spun.
Earth Shadows (Earthrise Book 5) Page 29