Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Six rippers had almost wiped us out in minutes.
What was left fit into a single scarred school bus fitted with UV lights and a shitload of spikes to stop denizens from getting too close.
Javier drove. Bastian and Jamie stood at the front, their blades tucked into the holsters on their backs, watching the dark landscape around us for threats.
It hit me that these three were all that was left of our sweepers, and only two had blades.
Two blades against goodness knew how many monsters.
Sixty miles…that was all we had to travel to get to base sixteen. At the speed we were going, it would take just under two hours to get there.
I sat with my dad behind Javier, too aware of the hum of grief saturating the bus.
“How many?” Dad asked.
“Dead or alive?” Bastian asked.
“How many survivors?”
“Twenty-one civies and us,” Jamie said.
My dad closed his eyes and shook his head. “Dammit.”
Jamie’s throat bobbed as his gaze passed over the back of the bus for the fifth time, as if by searching he’d find the faces of his sister and nephew.
I wanted to hold him, to tell him how sorry I was. It fucking sucked that we couldn’t even imagine that their deaths might have been quick or painless.
The monsters didn’t work that way.
“What does this mean?” Sissy asked from across the aisle. “More monsters? It means more monsters are here, right?”
“I don’t know,” my dad said. “We’ve had problems with comms for a couple of days. Static on the main frequency.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “We get to base sixteen and we can contact the golden city, let them know what’s happened.”
Surely the chopper would be there by now. They’d be expecting us.
“We’ll be okay,” Dad continued, raising his voice so the civies could hear. “The celestials will come back, clear the monsters out, help fix the walls, and then we can go home.”
“Home?” a man cried. “Home to what? Everyone I love is dead.”
“My son.”
“My wife.”
“This is your fault!” The man jabbed his finger at my father. “You’re supposed to be in charge, and you let us down. My family is dead because of you.” Tears streamed down his face, rage making the veins in his neck bulge.
The bus was suddenly filled with a cacophony of angry voices.
“Enough!” I grabbed hold of the pole and stood to face them.
“You think any of us wanted this? You think you’re the only ones who lost someone?
I just lost the only family I’ve ever known.
The guard. It’s gone, and we are the only ones left to protect you.
Two sweepers with blades”—I jabbed a finger toward Bastian and Jamie—“and a scout. So sit the fuck down and shut your mouths, or I swear I’ll dump you all off this bus and leave you to get your faces eaten off. ”
Somewhere at the back of the bus a child began to sob, and my anger rushed out of me on a weary exhale.
A solid chest pressed against my back, and a muscular bicep appeared in my periphery as Jamie grabbed hold of the pole.
“Everyone needs to calm down.” His words vibrated against my back.
“If we’re going to survive this we have to work together.
Keep calm, stay quiet. The lights will ward off the rippers, but there are creatures out here that aren’t affected by the light.
We can’t risk attracting them with our noise. Nod if you understand.”
Heads bobbed.
“Good. Now get some rest. There are blankets under the seats and some dried rations.”
The words uttered in his calm tone were enough to soothe them.
I turned my back on the people and rested my temple on Jamie’s chest. “I’m sorry.”
He gripped the back of my neck, massaging the muscles with his fingers. “Don’t be. You said exactly what I was thinking, and they needed to hear it.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist and hugged him, just needing the closeness, his scent and his strength.
“Rue?” My dad’s voice sounded strange and shaky.
Jamie’s grip on me tightened a fraction before falling away, and ice filled my veins as I realized how intimate we must look.
I stepped away from Jamie and looked down at my dad’s pale face. His eyes were dark with anger and fixed on Jamie, but he didn’t say a word, recognizing that now was not the time.
I took my seat beside him.
“We’ll talk about this later,” he said.
“There’s nothing to talk about. It’s over.”
“It didn’t look like it.”
“Dad, I—”
“What the fuck!” Bastian strode to the front of the bus as Javier slowed the vehicle down.
An orange glow lit up the night ahead.
Flames.
“What is it?” my dad demanded.
Bastian shook his head. “It’s the chopper. It’s down.”
“What!” My dad pushed to his feet, craning to look out the windows.
Pieces of the chopper littered the earth, creating small fires everywhere.
Shadows danced between the flames.
Monsters feasting on the charred bounty that had dropped from the skies.
“General?” Jamie looked to my dad for instruction, and it hit me he was asking if we should stop and look for survivors.
My dad’s jaw ticked. He shook his head. “Keep going.”
Javier swung the wheel, taking us in a wide arc around the wreckage. I stared at the broken pieces of what should have been salvation. My dad could have been on that chopper. He could have been… Oh, God, were those claw marks in the side of the chopper?
“What the hell happened?” Javier muttered. “What could do that?”
I stood and moved to the front of the bus to stand next to Bastian, who was looking up at the sky.
There was no doubt in my mind that we had new monsters, and those monsters were airborne.
Silence settled over the bus. The sight of the burned, broken chopper had spawned a question none of us wanted to ask or attempt to answer.
All that mattered was getting to base sixteen.
Bastian and Jamie kept watch on the landscape as we hit the pothole-ridden road that would take us to the base.
Twenty minutes and we’d be safe.
This road had been a motorway once, connecting towns and cities, but nature had gone wild after the monsters came, growing rampant, devouring asphalt and cement.
The bus had begun rattling a few miles back, and I hadn’t missed the concern on Jamie’s face at the sound.
Fifteen minutes and we’d be safe.
Javier took a left onto a narrow track bordered with brush that scraped at the windows and tapped at the ceiling. The bus rocked on the uneven ground and the rattling noise intensified.
I held my breath as if that would stop our ride, our only sanctuary in the wild, dangerous outside, from falling apart.
We burst off the track onto a flatland of cracked cement—a carpark to a mall that once held all manner of delights.
The place had long been picked clean.
Base sixteen lay beyond it.
Javier accelerated, bringing us across the carpark and around the mall, where the ground dipped into a valley that housed the other base.
I rose in my seat to get a first look at the glowing walls and bit back a cry of alarm.
“Oh, shit.” Javier brought the bus to a halt.
“No…” My dad pressed his palm to the glass.
The base below was dark and dead but the sky above it teemed with life. Huge creatures with bat-like wings circled and dove before coming back up, only to circle and dive again.
“They’re feeding…” Bastian said in a low voice.
Sobs broke out behind us.
The sharp, potent scent of fear filled the air.
I tamped down on my panic and fear. Focus. Keep it together. “Okay, so base sixteen is compromised. What now?”
“What about base seventeen?” someone said. “How far is that? Do we have fuel?”
I exchanged glances with Bastian and Jamie, seeing my doubts reflected on their faces. Yeah, we had fuel, but what if the other base was just like this one? We’d have wasted the last of our fuel getting there.
There was only one sure place to go.
One place that we knew wouldn’t have fallen.
Golden city.