Chapter 39 The Cavalry
The Cavalry
Dark shapes flickered in Cass’s peripheral vision.
She lunged to hands and knees, scrambling over rough creosote-soaked wood, and the thrumming all through the bridge was not just footsteps but rotors.
Vast shadows lingered above her, the thwop-thwop-thwop and bright stabbing white lights belonging to, of all things, helicopters.
Did someone call out the National Guard?
It didn’t matter. She managed to get upright and fling herself toward Nigel, the bright warm well inside her sputtering.
That energy, natural and normal as breathing, was so deeply familiar its sudden lack provoked fresh terror along with that peculiar sense of being transparent, all the world’s color and solidity draining away.
She would be a ghost soon, a scrap of plastic bag floating on the wind. That didn’t matter either; her instincts shouted something was very, very wrong with her fellow soldier.
Cass reached Nigel just as he crumpled bonelessly amid stacks of dead-quick-rotting bogeys.
The pale blue-eyed monsters hissed gleefully, shaking their skinny, discolored ivory spears, strings of reddish jewels dripping from the hafts jangling discordantly, lost under all the other noise.
Someone was shouting hoarsely, a human voice amid the ruckus, but it didn’t matter.
No, no no. Don’t give up, big guy. She grabbed for his arm and fell once more, her right ankle twisting with an ignored wrench, and the maggot-white bogey who had just stabbed Nigel raised its spear, staring right at her.
The hateful glee in its glowing eyes dilated; for a moment something old and terrible peered through one of its servants.
Oh, hell. Cass barely realized she was screaming in defiance, a last long trailing cry.
A wall of warm, fragrant air passed overhead, swirling and swishing.
The sound was like a coked-up composer hitting every chord on a massive pipe organ, running them through a wall of amplifiers, then bouncing the result through a cathedral’s throat.
It spilled into her, lighting up all the broken, strained places, and she struggled to fold protectively over Nigel’s slack body.
His left hand fell, sidearm still clutched and reflexively pointed downrange, his ring dead and dark.
More shapes poured past, leaping over the rotting wall of bogey corpses.
Bright dots were muzzle flashes, the sound of gunfire lost in general pandemonium.
One of the forms stopped next to Edward, bending to offer a hand—a heavily muscled man with a crewcut, a jacket, a giant sword, and a ring just like Nigel’s, his dark eyes showing foxfire specks in the pupils.
They were everywhere, pouring past Cass, crashing into the massed bogeys at the end of the bridge, shooting and leaping and a few swiping with swords, all moving with that eerie flickering speed. The helicopters held steady, downdrafts roaring against the bridge.
All we need now is a train to come along. The thought flashed and was gone, because Nigel sagged in her arms, his head lolling drunkenly and the rest of him muscle-loose in the worst way.
“Don’t give up, dammit!” The words ripped themselves loose, Cass couldn’t even shake him.
He was too heavy and she was so tired, even as the strange warm energy spilled along the bridge, trickled into her.
The iron rails were lit up, golden glow with rainbow coruscations casting leaping shadows.
Smoke shredded, a far cleaner breeze rippling through mechanical-spurred downdrafts.
“Don’t you dare, Nigel! Don’t you fucking dare! ”
Another knot of heavily armored men in Nigel-type uniforms skidded to a stop next to her, clearly visible in the glow from the rails plus backwash from helicopter searchlights.
One of the big guys was carrying something—that was even more exotic than the rest of all this nonsense, because he was hauling along a teenager in a flak jacket, jeans, and heavy combat boots, the boy’s mop of blond hair rising on the heli-hurricane.
Was this the cavalry?
None of it mattered. Cass hunched over Nigel, vaguely surprised her cheeks were wet—she was too thirsty to cry, wasn’t she? And over and over, the words spilled from her, frantic and ragged.
Don’t you leave me. Oh, God, Nigel, I’ve lost everything else, don’t you dare leave me too…
* * *
She fought when they peeled her off his body, though it did precisely zero good.
They were strong as bogeys, oddly gentle, and they took little notice of her struggles as they hauled her across the bridge to a helicopter perched at the far end, its rotors still going as it trembled, yearning for flight.
The platinum-haired kid vanished into another metal bird, and Cass glimpsed more chaos on the side Nigel had held, a real light show with bogey-moving soldiers firing, another bright warm golden glow spreading and pulsing.
Bundled in like so much laundry, she was buckled onto a seat and crowded by breathing bodies, men in dark jackets with guns, swords, and those strange blue pinpricks in their pupils. Acceleration pressed against her tired flesh as the ’copter rose, and she had to hope these were the good guys.
If they were, the cavalry had indeed arrived. But it hardly mattered. She sobbed and screamed until merciful grey numbness fell over her, then she fled into something that was neither sleep nor unconsciousness.
Thankfully, there were no dreams.