The corpse-bouncing raced towards them with silver flashes visible under the overcast sky. The familiar grind of tank-treads accompanied a double-breasted bulge near their flank, many of the Dvoraks were knocked clear out of the path. She ducked her face as a rain of gray blood showered their breakout into open street.
Great. She’d need another wash now, and she still wasn’t dry from the first.
“Friendlies?” Jessica shouted, wiping goo off her forehead. Ayla was going absolutely ballistic.
“Unknown!” Nicky shoved a perimeter with his tentacles, their speed unsteady. “But trust Odin and fire not.”
“Fuck it.” Jessica aimed and fired over Mark Three helmets. Between the guards, she saw her twin fireballs combust, stalling the mob around the new threats. She’d only helped unmire them. The bulges burst as flames trailed from blackened balloons and smoldering treads. The modern FireBots, Sixes or Sevens, dragged a quartet of monsters behind them, flinging the bodies at speedier clumps of pursuers. With speed unmatched by the Threes, they caught the group. Jessica bit her lip, searching for a clear shot.
“Valkyrie! No!” Nicky jerked sideways, sending her shot skyward, landing a hundred yards against her aim. Bunny frowned, the combo broken.
“The fuck, Nicky? They’ll—”
The bots fell in line and bolstered the flank, allowing two Mark Threes to help clear the front. Unspoken and smooth, the formation became perfect as far as she could tell. None of the new tentacles reached for her and hers.
“What’s this?” she yelled. “Shannon got the Sixes?”
“So it appears! Our comm-protocol is still broken.”
Free road and well-outpacing the exodus behind them, the column stormed up Lux. The smoke pillar from Lexington was only two blocks ahead.
~ 32 ~
Lux and Lexington — Flood
November 31, 4124 — 11:24 AM
They slowed at an intersection, five lanes wide on both streets. Lux had widened from an apartment alley to a major thoroughfare. Another empty bus careened past. Shannon apologized for his lack of control over the nav system.
Jessica didn’t complain, her eyes searched. Four corners: one a ten-acre cemetery and funeral home; the second a park, its shared terrain with the graveyard only divided by Lux; the third a bakery, now on fire; and the forth, a leveled plot of land, perhaps once a building, now a crater. Beneath the firestorm’s curtain, the Dvorak exodus sprinted up Lux, though now a mile behind, eight minutes or less.
“Are we too late?” she said.
“No. We’re right on time.” Shannon pulsed; the right flank of Threes raised their arms in unison, pointing up Lexington Avenue.
First a splotch, then defined bumps, a line of FireBots drove downhill from the east, a half-mile out. Unharassed, they covered the distance at break-neck speed and passed straight on to the bakery. Eight strong, their bellies varied from puffed-full to withered-dry. The skinny ones plundered street side hydrants, all aiming their tentacles at the inferno. Shannon’s column crossed the intersection and halted at the crater. The stun-globe floated to the new arrivals, shimmering the air around it. After all bellies were filled, the bots abandoned the smoldering building and faced the main group.
“Dolores,” Nicky said, lifting Jessica off her rear with his makeshift bow.
“Nicolosi, never a pleasure,” said the lead FireBot: female, mature, and absolutely mirthless.
“Let me off, the critters too.”
“Of course, Valkyrie, my apologies.” An edge in his voice?
He withdrew his arm from her waist while setting Ayla and Kahn to the ground. She reloaded, her seventy-something kill-combo having drained the battery and fuel. The lovers hopped off their bots, flexing their arms and stretching their legs. Their mounts joined the ranks in a rectangle. Christy hugged Dillon, pressing her face against his chest.
Jessica’s attention was on the new arrivals, wondering what made this location so important. A park, a cemetery, a burnt-out storefront and a hole in the ground. The firepower Shannon gathered made her feel at once secure and worried as hell. For two days, she’d witnessed what one Nicky could do. Now there were twenty-one bots: their twelve oldies from The Spire and nine moderns, including her friend. This was either overkill or imminent disaster.
The eight newbies divided, four of them interspersed with the Threes; the remainder looked more in opposition to Shannon, who again floated about her shoulder. The quartet all flashed blue visors. Neither Nicky nor Shannon responded.
“Understood, but let us speak conventionally,” Nome’s director said. “You may not know it, but she has earned our words and an equal voice.”
“It’s a mistake.” Dolores pointed her axe directly at her. “She’ll succumb to the madness, just like the rest. They are all lost and should be treated as such.”
What the…? This coming from a Seven? Nicky, Spangler, and Holly all seemed devoted to the survivors, but this bitch—
“How can you say that?” Nicky’s axe remained steady, though he shuddered, his treads clicking in place. “As a species, they are why we exist. As our populace, they are our duty to protect. As an individual, she and her comrades are this city’s hope, the reason our lord was released, all through sacrifice and bloodshed.”
“You’re blinded by your own hope, Nicolosi. You always have been. I’ve listened to your every transmission, the pleas and plans. They’re all corpses; they just haven’t died yet. Devote your efforts towards better goals: rectifying the loss.”
“Hey cunt, I ain’t even sick!” She couldn’t decide which gun to draw. “I’m not dead, a giant, or a vanner!”
“What’s she saying? Insane ramblings. Abandon them before you become any more attached.”
“S-Shut up!”
Who? Jessica’s head snapped on a swivel.
“Shut up,” Christy repeated herself, supporting Dillon under his shoulder. “Y-You’ve obviously lost something, someone. We’re not them. And we’re not looking for revenge. We just want to make it out. Alive, together.”
“She’s right,” Shannon said. “I called you here for a fight. You were just plowing the fields anyway. But now you have a chance to protect someone else, or get your vengeance. It’s your choice, but it’s all the same means to an end. Wouldn’t you say their survival is revenge enough for what you’ve suffered, Dolores? To prove you can do your job and win?”
“Humph.” The FireBot turned upstreet, facing the horde. “Fine. But if they make a wrong move, don’t think I won’t respond—for their own sakes.”
Jessica thought it sounded a lot like her introduction to Kahn. Trust and capability—fwhatever—bitch had entered their group, not the other way around. Jessica just wished she had a better argument for her own value. Did the Sevens really see them so weak? Hadn’t she done enough?
The other Sevens, Dani, Marco, and Sven, fell in line after Dolores without a word beyond their spoken introductions. The Mark Threes formed a loose perimeter around the crater, an inverted pile of rubble, while the moderns crowded the Lexington sidewalk, axes raised and tentacles unfurled. Dolores took point. Nicky hung back with Jessica, the lovers, and animals. Shannon still hovered near her shoulder.
“Valkyrie, do not take it personally.” Nicky said. “Her best friends in the world survived the flare, but perished one by one in every situation we’ve endured. While I’ve had you and the Ragnarok to bolster my resolve, she’s lost her own family.”
“I get that, but she shouldn’t threaten us because she wants to whine about it.” Jessica felt a raindrop on her cheek. She looked skyward, the noon glow a mere step above night. “We’ve all lost something.”
“But my kind cannot die unless destroyed. If nothing else, we have been witnesses, unable to share the risk, but all the pain. That ends now, with the Jotuns. Now we can die. Now we can truly fight for this city.”
A deluge of sooty rain cascaded, rinsing her face. The torture of yesterday’s heatwave was replaced by chil
led shudders. The sudden storm summoned ghosts of steam from the crater and bakery.
“Dillon, Christy!” Shannon said. “Here!”
The animals beat them to Nicky as the team curled against the wind. Squatting, she rested one hand on Ayla, the other on Kahn, not arguing when the lovers pressed their shoulders against hers. They all shared the same breath. Curtains of water slapped her face when she braved a glance. Shannon vibrated overhead, a painless yet stomach-churning bass. A bubble formed around them. Now humming, the stun-globe burst the raindrops into a swirling mist.
“You ok?” Shannon shouted—now, that was painful.
“Yeah!” She couldn’t hear her own voice, let alone be sure she was heard. “Do your thing!”
It seemed impossible, but the storm intensified, accented with lightning and thunderclaps. An inch of muddy water, then two inches ran across her bare feet into the crater, the explosion's steam long gone. She sniffled between breaths, making sure to keep a hand on Ayla; the pup was scared of thunder. Dillon growled. After a deafening boom, Christy screamed.
Jessica chanted, “Do your thing. Do your thing.”
With a crackle, a bolt struck the bakery, reigniting it before the rain again subdued it. Four inches, the flashflood pushed her feet. Jessica leaned to Nicky, lifting Ayla against her chest. Tentacles wrapped the entire team. Kahn floated passively, staring her eye to eyeless. She heard blubbering sobs, from which of the lovers, she couldn’t tell.
“Hang in there!” Shannon said. “Thirty seconds!”
Their sanity was the only bit at risk so, sure, why not? Her gray-mucked hair licked the flood, her body horizontal during the strongest gusts. Another bolt blinded her half-open eyes, the boom re-ringing her ears. Debris nicked her shoulders and arms; a boulder bounced off her ass.
“Cut it out!” she screamed.
Eventually, the wind dulled from a roar to a breeze, the rain from stinging to a trickle—the thunder and lightning didn’t return. Thank God. Water rushed down Lux and Lexington, swirling into the crater, a whirlpool to some underground area. Then came the bodies.
One slipped through, thrashing against the current before Nicky flung it back to the front line. Dolores dissected it: drawn, then quartered. Others bounced off the moderns or scrambled against their Mark Three flanks, who were just as unforgiving. Not one entered the whirlpool.
“On the box! Fire, fire!” Nicky yelled, setting her hard on his box.
“But the fuel, it’ll wash back—”
“You won’t miss. Aim far.”
Her jaw dropped, the flurry of tentacles at prone Dvoraks was nothing compared to the scene across the intersection. Fifty of them close, maybe a thousand beyond, the firestorm’s curtain of steam was the horde’s backdrop. Jessica looked to either lover: Dillon’s eyes clenched. Christy finally showed signs of life, her face twisted between suspended bobs.
“Get her a seat, Nicky.” She pulled out the plasma pistol and chucked it to the girl. She just barely caught it. “Arc it high, take a breath between shots.”
He wrapped one tentacle at the waist, the other at her knees; Christy hovered high over the current. The flash flood splashed over his base, soaking Jessica’s feet. Her kill-combo restarted at three, then ten; Bunny looked ecstatic. The brown-skinned beauty squeezed one off, eyes shut. The fireball landed just beyond the row of new Sevens.
“Keep it up, kid, but don’t close your eyes this time; it’s not going to hurt you. Breathe.” Jessica gritted her teeth. “Nicky, what the fuck’s going on?”
“Look at their formation,” Shannon said. “I don’t understand.”
That meant a lot coming from the city’s deity. She peered over her FireBot’s shoulder. The exodus down Lux wasn’t a mob. The second line braced the first with arms at the shoulders, the third, forth and fourteenth, all the same, the rain that extinguished the firestorm wasn't sweeping these off their feet. The oddballs in the ranks who lost their footing were lifted before they could domino their fellows. One of the survivors’ saving graces was the Dvorak’s utter stupidity. What the fuck was this organization about?
She and Christy fired four more volleys into the phalanx by the time the front lines collided.
“Hold strong, Valkyrie. This isn’t even our first concern.”
Well, goddamn—six shots later—what could be worse?
~ 33 ~
Vanners and family
November 31, 4124 — 11:40 AM
While the flood subsided, tentacles and axes created a familiar pile of Dvorak parts, save for the torsos that were chucked deeper into undead ranks. Blades seemed a last resort rather than a first, except for Dolores, who charged into the intersection with a fellow’s axe, stolen. The new point man, Sven, braced all six tentacles, compressing and tripping the horde with a disruptive bludgeoning assault, slapping she shit out of the bodies in a way she hadn't seen before. Jessica made sure to aim deep, wide left, directing Christy to do the same to the right. Those Dvoraks usually burnt out before ever meeting the front line, easily defeated if they did.
A perfect siege, only limited by tireless attackers and tireless defenders. She couldn’t tell if they were winning or losing.
The first true crush of Dvoraks slammed into all flanks, having finally encircled the crater. Jessica swapped her focus to the rear guard, the Threes weren't overwhelmed, but were heavily pushed upon. “Shannon, get a fucking modern back there!”
“You don’t need to tell me,” he said, sending a duo of unnamed Sixes to patrol the back and flanks. They dismantled a curious quartet in passing. “This rabble won’t harm you.”
Easy for him to say. Nicky smacked an errant child at the chest. The pulverized remains coated a nearby bot, the kid limp at every joint. The defensive stand shifted from dominance to ‘bend-don’t-break.’ Jessica felt none too comforted as she blasted a stray corpse back into the horde, the flames harmless against Mark Three metal.
“One yard drop,” Nicky rolled back, setting the animals and Dillon into the shallowed water. The circle collapsed as well, the bots now close enough to touch each other at eight-foot berths.
Jessica stood tall against his back, swiveling for precise shots into key lines of undead flow. Fireballs clipped each mid-stream, helping the bots push back. She witnessed a writhing mound grow at the intersection’s center, as if the bodies were joining into a super-Dvorak, already five-yards or taller. A top-like twirl of spinning blades collapsed the pile from within. Dolores ramped off the gore for clean space. She reminded Jessica of Kali, the multi-armed destroyer who brought death to all, but offered salvation to those in her care—maybe she followed the wrong religion.
Jessica lit the remains, a focused seven rounds and new pillar of smoke. The pressure seemed to relax, the horde stalled at every front. Victory.
“This is all wrong,” Shannon said.
“I’m sorry, were they supposed to eat us?”
“A: it’s been twenty-six minutes; the Jotuns are late. B: look at what they’re doing.”
Jessica tipped aside her targeting screen. She saw hundreds shuffling backwards—silent, leaving their fallen behind. A bisected woman dragged herself away. The exodus up Lux softened the most, the upstreet ranks no longer pressing. Dolores’s flailings now hit marks few and far between as she drove back to the line.
“You’re a glass-is-half-empty kind of guy, I take it.” Bunny tapped his foot, combo-counter blinking in triple digits. Another new rank.
Ayla, soaked fur making her appear half her size, had been content to growl and yip. Now, she arched her back and machine-gunned barks up Lux. Kahn meandered towards the line until Nicky secured the tiger. His legs walked the air.
“A convergence of dark energy approaches, sustained.”
Then she felt it. The same stomach-punch as Marsden and in The Spire. Whoever it was, it got stronger.
The phalanx parted, Dvorak mouths gaping. The bots were given a thirty-foot berth on all flanks, back to front. Dolores spun in place,
her tracks tearing debris, and aimed for the new hole. Shannon pulsed. A dozen Mark Six tentacles wrapped her at every joint, stripping her of her axes and hauling her back behind the line. Her visor flared in rapid bursts until the stun-globe hovered to her head.
“He’s right,” Nicky said.
“I’ll be damned! There’s nothing left to protect. Sven, Marco!”
The Sevens raced into the intersection, mud and vapor in their wake. The Dvoraks didn’t move, a motionless wall at either sidewalk, the street wide-open. Under the black sky, a mist floated towards them, down the street, a moving shadow that blotted out any vestige of light. Shifting violet, crimson, and sapphire, the fog met the FireBots at Lux’s cemetery gates.
The Sevens vanished in the mist, but the sounds were all too clear. Clanks, fooms, and the twisting of metal pierced the silence, only broken by Ayla’s barks between pants. No matter Jessica’s command, the dog wouldn’t stop. Kahn writhed, hissing. Gushes of water joined the curbside flood, hundreds of gallons in a gush.
Twin bursts of rainbow sparks capped the cloud. The moderns on the line backed away—fear? The clamor gone, the cloud floated to the intersection, now it looked like a plaza, as hundreds of sightless eye-sockets were fixed on its progress.
Jessica snarled and fired, though Bunny couldn’t lock-down a target. The blaze bounced off the darkness and enveloped the street. The combo-counter blanked to zero; the rabbit tisk-tisked a paw. “Well, fuck you too,” she mumbled.
Christy followed, her high-arcing round entering straight from above, a damn fine shot. It rebounded, splashing Dani and the remaining front line. Dolores again lurched, held in place by her pair of bodyguards.
“That’s quite enough,” Shannon said, twenty feet above Dani. “Show yourselves!”
Anatali: Ragnarok Page 17