Chapter 22
POP SMOKE
Blake glanced over his shoulder as they turned a corner, nearly running right into an overturned moped.
Cursing under his breath, he adjusted his grip on Phin, and they clambered over the twisted vehicle, desperate to keep pace.
Behind him, Gabriel stopped to listen, cocking his head. There was no change.
The whining was getting closer.
From the moment they stepped out of the convenience store, the aliens had been hot on their ass. Blake had no idea why. He thought they would be disinterested in them if they weren’t shooting. The Monkey Cats should have had their full attention.
Why were they chasing them now?
A bad feeling began nagging at him. It didn’t make any sense.
They were moving slowly, and while Judd was doing his best to lose the Off Formers in the maze of side streets and switch backs, it shouldn’t have mattered.
A Handler or hell, even a FUD, could have blasted through any of the walls and caught up with them in an instant.
Sweat dripped down the back of his neck, and a stitch pulled at his side.
It hurt to breathe, but he couldn’t stop.
Phin had dropped his gun, the barrel bouncing against his leg where it dangled from the strap attached to his plate carrier.
Victoria had even acquiesced to Tommy’s help.
In any other situation, Blake would have laughed at the sight—Tommy looked tiny next to the statuesque pilot.
Gabriel’s boots skidded as he leaned against a wall, sighting down his rifle to scan behind them. His face was grim. The whining and clacking seemed to be getting closer. Blake could already hear the hydraulic hiss of the rail guns aiming.
When the first shot hit over their heads, Blake stumbled.
Crumbling bits of building rained down on them as pain exploded from his chin.
He’d struck it on the asphalt, and now he could feel the hot blood pouring down his neck.
Dazed, he blinked the dust from his eyes and tried to get his legs to work.
They were sluggish, and the urge to just curl up was too great.
A strong hand grabbed him by the belt and jerked him to his feet.
“Blake!” Gabriel’s voice sounded far away, but he tried to find it.
Shaking his head, the dirty street came into focus just as they started running again.
His legs felt heavy, and his chin throbbed with every beat of his heart, but he didn’t have time to check it out.
Gabriel had grabbed Phin when Blake didn’t, and they were limping ahead of him. Shit. That was his job. Gabriel needed to be focusing.
Before he could speed up and take the big grenadier, another shot rang out. Closer this time. Luckily, it was just a drone, so nothing started immolating under them, but he could feel the concussion from where it hit.
The drones don’t have railguns, he thought as he caught sight of one of the ruined pieces of concrete the round had hit. It made sense. They didn’t have the same bracing capabilities as the Handlers.
But that only made him wonder again—why was it chasing them?
A rat-a-tat of gunfire drew Blake’s attention.
Ahead, Judd was firing as he backed up, steps steady as he aimed up at a FUD.
The claws were snapping, the metallic clang echoing in the narrow alley.
Blake grabbed Phin so Gabriel could run forward and help, but it wasn’t doing much.
Their bullets plinked right off the FUD’s matte sides.
Backing up, they hit a wall. Their only way out was a narrow side door to a restaurant. Victoria wrenched it open, the metal door screeching against the narrow frame. She stepped inside on her good foot, scanning with her firearm before waving them in.
The interior was dark, but Blake didn’t have time for his eyes to adjust. With the gunfire behind him, he hauled Phin inside, and they made for the front, looking for an exit.
Stumbling into tables, Phin yelped when a chair hit him right in the knee.
His fingers dug into Blake’s shoulder, but he didn’t say anything else.
Blake caught sight of the front door. The glass had been blown out, but the late afternoon light streamed through clearly. Phin dragged him toward it, but just as he was about to step through, he froze.
This was wrong.
That FUD had been right on Judd, its claws only inches from his face. And the drones hadn’t shot at them since the beginning, preferring to stand back. Judd called them the generals.
Why now? Why was one chasing them for miles, only to let them get away?
His eyes widened. “It’s a trap,” he panted.
Tommy and Victoria slammed into his back. “Go! They’re coming!”
“No wait—” he didn’t have a chance to finish, Phin hauling him out the door and into daylight.
Right out into the open.
Smoke still curled in the air, sluggish in the still afternoon from where fires had burned out. Rubble piled high, bits and pieces of what he could only assume had been homes and buildings were crushed. Some piles were taller than he was.
And in the middle, at the edge of a long cut in the earth, was the wrecked fuselage of a passenger jet.
Broken apart, the intact pieces looked like a crushed soda can.
Insulation from the entire thing sprouted out of cracks.
Passenger seats had ripped free and were littered around the fuselage like breadcrumbs.
One of the wings looked like it had disintegrated, tiny flecks of aluminum glinting in the sun.
The second wing had snapped off a hundred yards or so from the fuselage, lying upright like a ramp, the engine nestled at the base.
They were standing in what was once a shopping district.
Blake had even been here before. He’d responded to a heat stroke call about a year or so ago.
He remembered thinking it looked like a nice place with clean-cut buildings, just a few blocks from the water, and fountains the kids were throwing pennies into.
The plane crash had cratered the entire place. It looked like the plane had originally struck as far as a quarter mile back, its propulsion slowly ebbing before it came to rest here.
“It stalled,” Victoria said grimly.
Which made sense. The pilots probably lost power during the first EMP. They’d glided as far as they could go, desperately trying to find a runway or a clear area to land. The fact that the plane was so intact was a testament to the pilot’s skill.
Blake almost asked if Victoria thought anyone had survived when Gabriel and Judd burst out of the restaurant. “It’s right on our asses!”
“Hold on,” Blake shouted, holding up his hand.
“No time! It’s right on our asses!” Gabriel grabbed for him, but Blake slapped his hand away.
“No! Listen! I think this is a tr—” the rest of his sentence was lost to the restaurant behind them imploding.
The shockwave knocked them all forward, and Tommy cried out as a brick struck him.
Blake found himself on his knees, scrambling to get to his feet.
His balance was still off, body not listening—or maybe he was too tired.
Gritting his teeth, he blinked the sweat out of his eyes to look up and see a swarm of Monkey Cats running into the shopping plaza through the hole the plane had punched.
There were dozens of them, their claws scraping along the cement and asphalt, antennae quivering. It was hard to get a read on just how many there were; their shifting hides made it difficult to discern one from the other.
Behind them, the FUD broke through the metal door, its claws clacking. The whine of the drone mixed in.
It was a trap.
“Oh god,” Blake rasped, his stomach swooping. “We’re bait.”
Gabriel’s helmet had been knocked askew. He righted it as he looked at Blake. “What?”
“The Off Formers,” he whispered, slowly getting to his feet. “They pushed us here. Herded us like cattle…used the gunfire to draw the Monkey Cat’s attention so they’d come here to be…” he looked up at the roof of the closest building. He saw a flash of matte black.
“Slaughtered.”
The plane hadn’t just broken through the buildings; it had made the perfect valley. On all sides, the buildings had crashed into each other, forming a basin. Wherever a hole popped up big enough to slither through, an Off Former had planted itself, weapons at the ready.
The only clear exits were where the Monkey Cats were streaming through…and the restaurant behind them. The one the Off Formers just blew up.
Blake had been right: this was never about them.
Gabriel realized it first. “We’re surrounded.”
He couldn’t say who shot first. But at the first crack of a gun, they were sprinting toward the only shelter in the cratered mall—the broken fuselage.
Chunks of building, dust, dirt, and fire rained down all around them.
Incendiary rounds from the Off Formers burned through everything they touched.
The ground shook under Blake’s feet as he lurched forward.
On the other side of the plane, Off Formers were stepping from the shadows and jumping off buildings.
FUD’s claws clacked moments before a Monkey Cat screeched, its high-pitched death knell so loud it knocked the breath from his lungs.
Tommy and Victoria got to the plane first. They dove through the splintered fuselage, clearing a path through lopsided seats and bent aluminum. The place reeked of fuel and something Blake didn’t recognize.
Gabriel pushed Blake in first, following closely once everyone was inside the plane.
Although, inside was relative. The plane was open on one end, a gaping maw at what would have been the front of the plane.
The cockpit was a dozen yards away, twisted onto its side.
Judd and Gabriel took up defensive positions at the front, getting down on one knee behind the flimsy protection of some overturned seats.
“What do we do?” Tommy asked, his voice barely audible in the cacophony around them.