The sight of a skeletal middle-aged woman burying a hatchet in a young man’s throat reminded Jarek that the hows and whys weren’t exactly important at the moment.
Al guided the ship down to an abandoned, crumbling lot so they could unload without clogging the traffic lane for the Resistance trucks approaching behind them. The soldiers in the cabin shifted uneasily, readying stun guns, batons, and even a few tranquilizers and riot shields.
Jarek couldn’t really blame them for the nerves. Before the ramp had even completed its descent, it seemed like the frantic, slobbering attention of half the berserking civilians in immediate view had snapped their way.
It was creepy as shit.
They piled quickly out of the ship and got organized as the first batch of Resistance transport trucks rolled by and stopped to do the same.
Further down the road, the furor crowd eased out of its self-mutilation and kicked into a full-on charge.
Something was off. Something more than the thunder of hundreds of feet pounding the pavement and the disturbing growls and shrieks that filled the sickly noon air.
This wasn’t like the furor Jarek had witnessed, or like what he’d heard from the accounts of the one they’d missed. He was sure of it, but it took him a long moment to realize why. Finally, though, he saw it.
While there was plenty of wild-eyed madness to go around from one individual to the next, as a whole, the mob’s movements were too focused, too organized.
Now that Resistance forces were rolling in and giving the berserkers something to fixate on, what had first looked like total chaotic madness was suddenly resembling a deliberate, albeit insane, army.
Could Gada pull this kind of operation from afar?
From the immediate looks of it, yes. But Jarek didn’t have much time to worry about it as the leaders of the maddened pack closed the gap between them.
They just had time to fall in with the Resistance troops who’d arrived in the first few trucks, and then the fighting began in proper, more ferocious than anything Jarek had ever witnessed.
It didn’t matter that one side was doing its best to remain non-lethal. The other side more than made up for any lack of violent madness on their behalf.
Civilians crashed into the riot shield line with reckless abandon, swinging and kicking and biting at anything and everything within reach. Terrible cries split the air, many barely recognizable as human, so numerous that they almost seemed to combine into one long, unbroken scream straight from the throat of hell.
The dozen shield-bearers holding the street line shoulder-to-shoulder nearly crumpled under the first surge—would have collapsed completely before the mad tide if not for the strength of their allies filling in behind them and holding them fast in groups of threes, fours, and even more in a few places.
Jarek allowed himself a horrified glance at Rachel, who returned the look just as intently, too startled even to remember to be tense at Drogan’s close proximity. Then the three of them waded into the madness together.
As they went, Jarek caught sight of more than a couple particularly troublesome berserkers taking sudden, inexplicable flights back into the raging ranks—Rachel’s work, no doubt.
Halfway to the front line, Drogan abandoned their steady push and instead leapt high and long from the crowd. He touched down in front of the shield line and wasted no time shoving several frenzied civilians back from the exhausted Resistance troops, who seemed wholly uncertain as to whether this was a welcome change or not.
At the shield line, the chaos was at its peak. The curses and shouts of Resistance troops were nearly as numerous as the wild shrieks from the raging civilians. Those who weren’t too busy actively holding the shield line were reaching in to apply close range stun weapons to any intruding limb or face they could reach. Further back, others were taking what limited shots they could find with ranged stun guns.
A voluminous roar from the right reminded the entire field exactly where Drogan had elected to make his stand.
“You gonna go make sure he doesn’t kill anybody?” Rachel asked at Jarek’s side, half-shouting to be heard over the cacophony.
Before he could answer, one of the troops nearby chucked a small something into the mad mob, and the street thundered with an enormous cracking sound.
The respondent cries from the crowd took on a momentary quality of startlement but clawed quickly back to blind rage with renewed fervor.
Jarek gave Rachel one last look with his own eyes and slid his faceplate closed with a careful thought.
Ready and almost willing, he slipped an arm between the two shield-bearers directly in front of him. “Excuse me, gents.”
The glares they turned his way were almost as frightening as the writhing limbs and gnashing teeth just beyond.
Okay, so maybe those glares weren’t even close on second thought. Especially not as they took on a strong Hey, better him than us quality and the two troops shifted just enough for Jarek to slide through without knocking them over.
“Agh!” Jarek cried as the first pair of teeth chomped down on his left arm hard enough that something—the teeth, probably—cracked.
He drew the chomper closer and planted a hard shove into the man’s chest.
“Why’d it have to be zombies?” he growled to no one in particular.
Past his initial shock and surrounded by a seemingly infinite horde of insane berserkers, he quickly gave up on any hope of doing things neatly and allowed instinct and reflex to take over.
As sturdy as Fela’s armor was, the real threat wasn’t so much in the fists and teeth and occasional club whacks as it was in the very tangible threat of his being overwhelmed and swarmed down to the ground.
How many incoherently bloodlusting humans would it take to literally tear him limb from limb if that happened? He wasn’t sure. But he was guessing the answer wasn’t any higher than the number currently trying. If he went down, he’d find out in short order.
Without the Resistance line at his back, it probably would have been over in less than a minute. The poor raging bastards would have surrounded him and pressed in until no amount of strength and clever wriggling could have freed him. With the Resistance at his back, though, he only had his front to worry about. When he got in trouble on the sides, the troops sprang forward to deal with it—several times before he’d even realized he was in trouble.
And so he fought on in the thick of it, trusting in his overdeveloped battle reflexes and in the men and women at his back.
At some point, Alaric’s voice in his earpiece informed him that the commander had arrived with reinforcements, but that hardly seemed to matter to Jarek in the moment, stuck as he was in the heart of the shit.
Time ceased to have ready meaning as he sank deeper into the violent rhythm of the fight. All he knew was that they were holding, and that was all he had time to know.
At least until a crimson-eyed Drogan bumped into his side and growled, “We have been deceived.”
Jarek wrenched a scraggly-bearded madman from his feet and used him like a long, flailing bowling ball on the scrabbling berserkers behind. “What are you talking ab—”
“This is not Kul’Gada’s doing.”
Not Gada? But then—
“My kin,” Drogan hissed, batting aside a pair of burly berserkers. “We have been betrayed.”
“Jarek!” came Rachel’s voice from somewhere behind.
If there was a follow-up we have a problem, he didn’t hear it as he dodged a berserker’s grab and shoved him back into the encroaching crowd.
What he did hear, though, as he took advantage of Drogan’s momentary cover and focused his attention back Rachel’s way, was a well-tuned rumble he would’ve recognized anywhere. It was the engine of the truck that had saved his life not far from this very street nine years ago, on a cold Newark night.
Pryce’s truck.
“They’re coming out of it!” someone cried.
And, true to their word, while many of t
he crowd were still clawing and biting their way toward anything and everything, others were beginning to look around at their fellow berserkers in varying states of confusion and horror.
“It’s working!” another soldier cried down the line.
A girl that couldn’t have been older than twenty lunged for Jarek, eyes wide. He caught her by the shoulders, preparing to counter her struggling and launch her back into the crowd. Only she didn’t struggle—just sagged in his arms and looked up at him with a whimper and the most piteous expression he’d ever seen.
Around them, the number of civilians coming to similar awakenings seemed to be growing. At a glance, Jarek could glimpse Pryce’s truck inching up into the Resistance ranks on the curb, Pryce at the wheel, Alton in the passenger seat. Faint tendrils of steam drifted up from the truck’s hood, as if the air around it was abnormally cold.
One of the cloaking generators? It had to be.
They must’ve finished the new batch and sent Pryce straight over.
Jarek fought the tired voice whispering it was okay to at least partially unclench. Something was still wrong.
As if in response to the thought, the dark purplish shape of the Enochians’ ship rushed past in the distance, bound northeast from the direction of Pryce’s shop.
Where were they headed in such a hurry? And when there were clearly problems closer to the home front to deal with?
Most of the Resistance ranks didn’t seem to have noticed, but Jarek couldn’t shake it. The cheers were beginning to spread, a twisted contrast to the sinking feeling in Jarek’s gut. Everyone seemed to think the day was won.
Everyone except Rachel and Drogan.
The two of them were looking around in alarm, scanning through the subdued crowd of civilians and across the nearby rooftops. Rachel shook her head as if in response to a question no one seemed to have actually spoken out loud.
Jarek was about to ask Drogan what gave when his earpiece crackled to life, followed by Nelken’s grave tone.
“Attention, all Resistance forces. The rakul known as Kul’Gada has been sighted marching on Central Park with at least a thousand men at his back. I repeat, our New York allies are under imminent attack. Commander Weston will determine what forces are required to stabilize the situation in Newark and send what remains to aid Commander Daniels at the Central Park defenses. God speed, Resistance. Our planet is depending—”
“They come!” Drogan thundered beside Jarek.
For a second, Jarek thought he was referring to Nelken’s broadcast.
Then, somewhere behind, Rachel shouted, “Get those shields back up! The cloak’s not gonna hold once they’re inside!”
Ragged civilians and weary Resistance soldiers all looked at one another uncertainly until Alaric barked, “You heard the lady! Form up!”
Jarek’s mind was still reeling to catch up with all the rapid fire information and connect the dots on who the hell they were when he caught sight of the lone figure dropping from a ruined apartment rooftop toward Pryce’s truck below.
There was a horrible moment of helpless waiting. Then it smashed into the bed of Pryce’s truck with the kind of destructive effect that could only mean one thing.
Raknoth.
The new arrival’s eyes came alive with crimson fire even as Pryce and Alton scrambled to evacuate the truck cab.
Not fast enough.
The raknoth hopped out of the bed holding a cylindrical box under one arm and caught Pryce’s door halfway through Pryce opening it. The raknoth shoved the door shut hard enough to dent it inward.
Jarek gathered himself and leapt over the Resistance line.
Too late. He was too late.
It all seemed to unfold in slow motion as he sailed through the air toward the truck. Alton leapt out of the far side of the truck just as the raknoth got a hand underneath the cab and flipped the entire vehicle Alton’s way. Alton, too surprised or off balance to act, went down under the rolling heap of metal.
Jarek landed just in time to catch one last glimpse of Pryce’s wide-eyed face as the truck’s rotation carried him out of sight with a string of violent, metallic crunching.
“Pryce!”
In front of Jarek, the enemy raknoth raised the cylinder overhead. The cloaking generator, he realized—just a split second before the raknoth slammed the device to the pavement and it came apart in an explosion of bent metal and scattered components.
As the cloak shattered, a roar sounded from somewhere in the line of buildings behind, followed by another further up the street. And another. And another.
His goal accomplished, the raknoth who’d smashed the cloaking generator gathered himself and leapt to the rooftop across the street, followed by a stream of Resistance gun fire.
It was too late.
Fiery red eyes appeared on a rooftop here, in a dirty window there, and all around them, the cries of human madness ripped through the streets once more, doubled or even tripled in volume, and seeming to come from all directions at once.
“This was never Gada,” came Rachel’s voice beside him.
Jarek tore his eyes away from the enemy raknoth gathering on the perimeter to meet her grave gaze.
Drogan slammed down to the pavement beside them. “No. It appears the Kul only wanted his faithful raknoth to draw us out so that he might deconstruct our forces from two sides at once.”
Jarek drew his sword, body swirling from head to toe with combat nerves and dread. By chance, he caught Alaric’s eye for just a second across the ranks.
Screwed. He didn’t need to see it in the commander’s eyes to know that’s what they were.
Surrounded. Cut off from HQ and everywhere else as Gada marched to destroy their only allies without their interference.
Jarek didn’t have time to squeeze a curse from his stunned mind before, with an awful chorus of growls, roars, and shrieks, an army of traitorous raknoth and desperately violent civilians closed in on them from all sides.
Twenty-Three
Rachel allowed herself one last self-directed curse and then gathered her will, preparing to fight on. She should have caught it sooner, could have warned the Resistance that there seemed to be a curious lack of the signature feel of the messengers present here.
It was clear as the stark raving lunacy in the eyes of the approaching horde now, but somehow she’d failed to notice it before—failed to recognize the slightly more tangible net of a single mind, or several minds, rather, casting their will out to the crowd of civilians before them.
If only she’d been paying proper attention. If only she hadn’t been so busy trying to exude calm will and keep an eye on Jarek and Drogan.
“Who the hell are they?” she sent toward the raknoth, who’d already moved to deal with a stream of berserkers flooding in from a side alley.
“Zar’Taga and his clan,” Drogan’s voice growled at the edge of her mind.
“I don’t suppose you have any brilliant idea for stopping them?”
Drogan shoved aside the screaming madman who was currently attempting to strangle him and pointed toward a raknoth perched on a nearby rooftop, surveying the scene below. His green hide was tinged with streaks of gray.
“Help me remove Zar’Taga’s head,” Drogan sent.
She didn’t bother to send the gladly that pulsed through her mind, just checked her six and opened a comm line with Jarek.
“We’ve got a target,” she said before he could drop whatever nugget was no doubt on the edge of his tongue.
“Targets are good,” came his reply. He face-palmed the berserker rushing his way and held the woman at bay as he looked back at Rachel. “Where?”
She pointed. “Salt and Pepper up there. That’s Taga. Drogan says off with his head.”
“Right, then.” Jarek kicked his frothing attacker away, clotheslined another, and pushed his way over to Alaric to point out their new objective.
At a startling growl from behind, Rachel spun to confront a fast-approaching berse
rker. He caught onto her staff, a trace of uncertainty creeping into his eyes—probably thanks to the fact that he’d entered her own little cloaking field.
“What?” he mumbled. “What the …”
He seemed to be regaining control. But it wouldn’t last, not once they parted. So she muttered a quick sorry, slapped a hand to the side of his head, and telepathically pushed him into unconsciousness.
When he was slumped safely against the adjacent brick wall, Rachel turned back and saw Alaric pointing and barking orders. The Resistance soldiers around him sprang to the task of clearing a path to the nearest building across the street.
Jarek looked back at her, and his voice crackled in her earpiece. “Up we go?”
Rachel eyed the rooftop in question. “Not sure I have the legs for that jump.”
“I’ve got faith, Goldilocks. You coming, Stumpy?”
Drogan wasn’t on the comm line, but he appeared to hear Jarek all the same. He gave a curt nod and started pressing his way over.
Rachel plotted a course through the frenzied crowd, gathered a hefty punch of energy, and prepared to do the same.
She’d barely made it five steps when the sound of a young, frightened cry froze her solid.
She whipped around, scanning with both eyes and mind and—
There. A kid no more than nine or ten was scrambling back in a crab walk, a look of terror etched across her face. A pack of six mindless berserkers raced after her, seemingly captivated by the small, helpless life flailing before them.
Rachel leveled her staff and caught half of the girl’s pursuers with a wide telekinetic blast. She was reaching through the channeling fatigue and the urgent clamoring in her head to form another blast when something slammed into her from behind.
She hit the ground hard, her staff pinned beneath her, and gasped for air only to find the unforgiving pavement had shocked her diaphragm into inaction.
Through the shuffling sea of legs and bodies, she caught a glimpse of the girl’s light blond hair and delicate frame. The bastards were closing in on her.
Rachel reached for the energy, ignoring who-or what-the-hell-ever was pulling itself up her back, reaching for her vulnerable throat.
Reaping Day: Book Three of the Harvesters Series Page 25