Midnight City (17 page)

The little girl opened her mouth to respond … then screamed at something behind Holt.

Holt spun, ripped his rifle loose, and fired.

Two Forsaken took slugs in the chest, shuddered, and fell to the roof. Holt spotted a third, just crawling up and over the edge, aimed, fired, missed, but the bullets sparked near it. The man-thing’s hands lost their grip, and it fell gurgling off the roof into the waters waiting below.

Behind him, Mira and Max landed. Max wasn’t a small dog, almost half Mira’s size. He squirmed in her hands, growling and snapping.

Holt caught her before she crashed on her face.

“Get this disgusting thing off me!” Mira shouted.

Max dropped to the ground, barking furiously at her.

She glared back. “Last time I help
you
!” she yelled down at Max.

“I really think he’s starting to warm to you,” Holt said.

Behind them, the walls of the old hotel were covered in Forsaken: black, dirty shadows that swarmed up its side like giant spiders.

They were running out of time.

Holt ran for the edge of the new roof, scanning the buildings around them, looking for choices, looking for anything that might—

Two more Forsaken appeared in front of them, crawling up the edge, hissing, staring with their sightless, insane white eyes.

Holt fired and dropped them. But he saw the hands of more clawing at the roof, pulling themselves up.

He turned on his heel, ran toward another side of the building. Mira, Zoey, and Max followed after him. They were almost there when more hands appeared, pulling their dirty, less-than-human owners onto the roof.

Three Forsaken rushed for them madly, screeching and hissing.

Holt fired, got two shots off, dropped one of the savages … and then the gun clicked empty.

“Back!” Holt yelled. “Back, move back!” In one smooth motion, he shouldered the rifle, drew the shotgun, and fired.

The blast flattened one of the crazies.

The other one was on him before he could fire again, driving him to the ground. Zoey screamed; Mira grabbed her.

Max growled and slammed into the thing with all his weight. The dog knocked it off Holt, and it screeched as Max bit down on its arm, shaking it back and forth.

Holt jumped up, flipped the shotgun around, gripped it like a baseball bat, and swung.

The gun’s wooden stock connected with the thing’s head, hard. It slumped to the ground, out cold or dead. Either way was fine with Holt.

Max kept right on attacking the thing.

“Max! Come on!” Holt shouted, moving for—

The Forsaken swarmed over every ruined building visible around theirs. Groceries, gas stations, liquor stores, flower shops—they were everywhere, chanting and gurgling loudly in the night air. The sound was overwhelming.

Even more were climbing onto the roof of their building, an unending assault, pulling themselves up, eager to get to the four survivors on top.

There was nowhere to go. They were surrounded.

Holt looked desperately around, spotted a bank of four large, rusting air-conditioning units on the roof near them. “There!” he yelled, rushing for what was left of the machines. They were old and in disrepair, but they were still thick and big: they’d provide cover. For a little while.

As he moved, Holt blasted two more Forsaken to the ground, but more were coming.

The others ran after him. When they reached the air conditioners, they crouched down behind them.

Holt dropped his shotgun, grabbed his rifle, and started reloading it.

Mira grabbed the shotgun, and Holt tossed her shells. She started stuffing them into the barrel.

“We’re, um…” Mira looked down at Zoey before she continued, who was staring at both of them with fear in her eyes. “We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” She knew they were in more than trouble.

Holt knew it, too, knew what she really meant. “Yeah,” he said. “We got real problems.”

They looked at each other, loading the guns, the sounds of a thousand crazed, incomprehensible yells echoing off the buildings around them. More and more Forsaken were climbing onto their roof, dozens and dozens, soon to be hundreds. They could hold them off a few minutes with the guns, but they would run out of ammo long before the Forsaken ran out of insane cannon fodder.

They were going to die. It was just that simple.

“Mira, I’m sorry, I…,” Holt started but trailed off. Why was it so hard? “I’m sorry … I got you into this,” he said.

Mira smiled. “Technically, you could say I’m the one who got
you
into this.”

Holt almost laughed. He liked Mira. More than he should. A part of him wanted to tell her that. Especially now. But … even given the finality of their situation, the words seemed pointless.

Forsaken climbed onto the roof, rushed toward them, moaning and jabbering.

Holt took the shotgun from Mira, gripped the rifle. Max growled with anticipation. Mira pulled Zoey close to her.

“Mira…,” Zoey moaned into her chest. “They found us.”

“Ssshhh, honey,” she said, never taking her eyes off Holt. “I know they did. Close your eyes.”

Holt raised the rifle up and over the air conditioner, sighted down it. Dozens of Forsaken, rushing for them, more climbing up every second. God, they had maybe a minute left. Maybe two, if his aim was good. His finger tensed on the trigger.…

“Not the scary men, I mean,” Zoey said.
“Them.”

Holt moved to fire—

—and then flinched violently as the first volley of plasma fire ripped past them, burning the air, incinerating a dozen of the Forsaken where they stood.

Holt quickly ducked back down behind the rusted machine, eyes wide.

More plasma fire flared in the night, lighting everything yellow. It slammed into the Forsaken on their building, decimating them, blowing away the ones climbing up the walls, knocking huge chunks out of the edifice.

Holt watched in shock as the Forsaken were mowed down left and right by the yellow bolts.

It took a moment for his mind to process what it meant.

Zoey was right.
They
had found them. The Assembly were here, had somehow tracked them all the way into the Drowning Plains.

Holt stood up, looked past the edge of the roof. In the dark, under the moonlight, illuminated by the flashes of their plasma cannons, Holt could see ten Assembly walkers.

They had taken up positions all around the city, on the rooftops, all along the perimeter.

And they were unlike anything Holt had ever seen.

Tripods, three legs, maybe seven feet tall, lithe, agile … and, most strikingly, they were
green and orange
!

If he hadn’t seen it for himself, he wouldn’t have believed it. How many different Assembly factions
were
there? And why the hell were they all hunting Zoey?

Holt looked at Mira. She looked back at him, stunned.

“I have a very specific policy about these things,” Holt said. “Never refuse a rescue.”

“That’s pretty similar to my policy,” Mira replied.

They all made ready to move, while the yellow bolts burned the air around them, blowing to pieces anything they touched. Holt had never been so happy to see plasma fire.

21.
HUNTERS

THE TOP OF THE OFFICE BUILDING
was chaos. Dozens of Forsaken littered the roof, but they were being ripped apart by flying plasma bolts. Explosions flared up all around them, and Holt watched the drugstore he’d looted collapse in flames.

The Forsaken were torn between pursuing their original prey, and attacking the new, much more potent threat of the strange green and orange walkers.

Holt was glad for the confusion.

He looked over the roof, out into the sunken ruins and saw that they were at the edge of the city. Only a few more buildings lay between them and the open water, and the water appeared to be growing shallow just on the other side.

If they could make it to the waterline, they might have a chance. But jumping between buildings wasn’t an option anymore. They needed something faster.

Mira screamed and covered Zoey as plasma bolts incinerated two nearby Forsaken. More of the yellow bolts slapped into the roof right next to them, barely missing them.

Between the two attacking groups, if they didn’t get out of here fast, they’d be lucky to join the Succumbed in the Presidiums. More likely, they’d all be dead.

Holt saw something on the next building over. The faded letters of a radio station,
KCLE
, half sunk in the floodwaters. On top of it was a giant rusting radio tower.

As he considered it, a plan began to form. A crazy one. But it was all he had.

“We need to reach that tower,” he announced, then promptly ducked as more plasma bolts burned past.

“We’re not going to take two steps in this!” Mira yelled at him. She flinched as explosions blossomed in the distance. Holt blasted two Forsaken as they rushed toward the air conditioners.

“Got anything that can help?” he asked Mira as he reloaded the shotgun. “It’s just one building over.”

Mira thought about it a second. “Maybe,” she finally said, digging through her pack. “Gotta buy me some time, though.”

“Let me see what I can do.” He lifted back up over the AC. “Zoey, stay down!” he shouted when he saw her trying to peer over the old machine with him.

His rifle flashed, dropped two Forsaken rushing them. He fired again, and a third fell.

The crazies were adjusting to the distraction of the Assembly. All around them, he saw them pouring off the buildings surrounding theirs, rushing with their insane gurgling in all directions.

They were going after the walkers.

Ten Assembly with plasma cannons versus a thousand psychopaths. Seemed like fair odds to Holt. If he was lucky, they’d all kill each other.

But the Forsaken hadn’t totally forgotten them yet. Holt saw four more of the savages running for them, screeching, their tangled hair flying after them from behind.

Holt dropped two more before the rifle clicked empty.

He shouldered it, drew his Beretta. As he did, he clicked his tongue and whistled.

Max barked when he heard the command and charged forward toward the two Forsaken while Holt calmly ejected a clip from the gun, grabbed a new one, and slammed it in.

Max rammed into and drove one of the things to the ground. The other one shrieked, turned toward the dog …

But then Holt placed a bullet between its eyes. It fell dead to the roof.

Holt put two fingers in his mouth, whistled loudly.

Max reluctantly leapt off the Forsaken and ran back toward Holt. The crazy jumped up, shrieked and hissed, charged after the dog … then rocked back as another shot from Holt dropped it.

Max made it back, tail wagging, tongue lagging out of his mouth. “Good job, pal,” Holt said.

“The Max is tough!” Zoey said, reaching out to pet him. The dog licked her face.

More explosions, more plasma fire, more shrieks …

Holt looked to Mira. “Mira, what do you got?”

“Concentrating,” she replied testily.

She was combining items from her pack. Two dimes, a marble, and another combination she had already wrapped, which looked like it contained more coins, a D battery, and an old bottle cap. She placed the dimes on either end, heads facing out, then quickly wrapped the whole thing in duct tape.

There was a hum, a shimmering … and the air all around them flashed in a bright sphere of light. But only for a second, then it was gone.

“Gotta hurry,” she said, looking at Holt. “I only had dimes left, and they won’t last long.”

Holt wasn’t sure what that meant, but he didn’t feel a pressing need for clarification right then.

“Zoey.” Holt motioned the little girl onto his back. She climbed on, held on tight. He looked up at Mira. “Don’t worry about Max, he’ll jump on his own.”

Mira fixed Holt with an icy stare. “
He’ll jump on his own?
Then why did I
carry
him last time?”

“I thought it would be funny?” he said, smiling and running for the edge of the roof with Zoey. He whistled three notes and Max darted after him.

Mira glared knives after the three of them … then rushed to follow.

As they sprinted across the roof, a new sound overpowered even the mad ramblings of the hundreds of Forsaken. Strange, electronically distorted trumpeting sounds, coming from all directions. The walkers positioned around the sunken ruins had spotted them.

While Holt ran, he watched in awe as the strange walkers leapt toward them in pursuit, closing fast, bounding with agility and speed from roof to roof. Not even Mantises could move that fast and precisely. They’d be on them in seconds.

The nearby Forsaken hissed horribly, lunging after them, too, closing fast. Holt watched them coming closer and closer.

“Mira!” Holt shouted with concern. What was she going to do?

“Just keep going!” Mira yelled back.

The Forsaken rushed toward Holt … then bounced violently backwards as they ran into some kind of invisible force field. Mira’s artifact, whatever it was, was working.

Holt double-timed it, leapt off the edge, and sailed across. Zoey screamed with glee behind him as they hit hard on the roof of the ruined radio station.

Max landed next to them, followed by Mira, who was still glaring at him.

But before she could say anything, something slammed into her force field and bounced off. Not one of the Forsaken, not even a plasma bolt. Something else.

A mass of some kind of metallic netting lay a few feet away.

One of the green and orange tripods was closing the gap between them quickly. Another net launched from under its body and exploded toward them.

It crashed into the shield and bounced harmlessly away just like the first. The walker trumpeted in anger, charged after them.

Holt and Mira looked at each other. They both knew the nets were for Zoey.

They dashed for the radio tower in a mad scramble. Plasma fire lit the air in bright, strobic flashes of yellow as they did. The bolts plowed into their shield, and it flared brightly, spraying sparks everywhere. Bolt after bolt hit as they moved … until the whole thing finally flared out. The air around them shimmered one last time as the force field died.