. . . Ever Survives Contact With . . .
SHADE DARBY WAS already inside the terminal by the time Cruz arrived. So long as you were careful not to let anyone feel your wake, moving at just under Mach 1 made you damned near invisible. Of course, once you slowed down or stopped, you were quite visible, so she had raced up to the balcony opposite Markovic’s stage. Markovic was bizarrely framed by an Apple store, all glittery and sleek beneath the huge windows.
From the balcony level Shade sprang up to a narrow walkway behind a stone balustrade, nearly missing her landing because of the weight of the flamethrower. The walkway was just below the edge of the Sistine Chapel of a ceiling and ran all the way down the long sides the concourse. From here she could look across to the pillars framing huge chandeliers above the various arched ramps to the platforms, and by leaning out could quite easily see Markovic.
Beautiful place to die, Shade thought mordantly. It would look great if they ever made a movie of this day. Unfortunately moving along the high walkway was not easy; it was not intended for anyone but maintenance workers, and these had left a fair amount of debris behind. There was nowhere near enough room or clearance to get up to practically invisible speed, and at this level, too, there were half-moon windows against which she did not want to be silhouetted. She had to basically crawl and drag herself along the walkway, keeping her head below the balustrade, pulling the flamethrower behind her. And it was thickly dusty, so she had to fight a raging desire to sneeze.
This part won’t look so cool in the movie.
Below and to her left now was the circular information booth. Shade blinked and stared hard, not at first believing what she was seeing. A person in agony, with a comically wrong orange cushion held in place with gray duct tape wrapped repeatedly around his head.
It will be a pleasure killing you, Vector. A pleasure.
From her position at least fifty feet above and to Vector’s right, Shade could see everything, but the acoustics and Markovic’s reedy unnatural voice conspired to make him inaudible. She had seen the “mayor” walk in and had to stop herself from racing down to haul her away to safety, until she remembered that, of course, it was Cruz.
Cruz walking into the jaws of death. She must be terrified. Shade felt competing waves of emotion: pride in her friend’s courage. Guilt for having made that courage necessary.
Shade retrieved the flamethrower she had set down and adjusted the straps, then flicked a Bic to light the pilot.
Then she pulled out her phone and waited.
Waited . . .
Until . . . ding!
Time.
“Time to light up,” Shade said.
Dekka ran flat out up a set of steel steps and found herself in a bewildering maze of pillars wrapped in posters, stainless-steel turnstiles, and signs that told her nothing useful. She’d already become disoriented.
“Dammit!”
Armo caught up to her and stopped short, equally confused, but Simone had been here many times before and led them through ratcheting turnstiles, up another set of stairs, and suddenly they were in a capacious marble-walled hallway. Directly ahead was a posh women’s clothing store that looked as if it had been looted. To Dekka’s left: natural light. Outside! Outside where she could just keep going. And never stop. Find herself some place far away, a beach in Mexico, a jungle, a swamp, anywhere. Anywhere but here.
She turned her back on the light and followed Simone, who was aloft, gliding ahead just a few feet off the ground. They raced along the ramp, footsteps echoing, past shops with broken windows and scattered goods. Past an optometrist with an unbroken window tagged with a big orange “V” and beside it a cartoon drawing of a hornet with a big stinger and a malicious expression.
“Almost there!” Simone cried. “Left here!”
Dekka and Armo scrabbled to keep their footing on the slick floor, with claws not made for marble. Ahead there was an arch through which Dekka could see the main concourse. And between her and that concourse, two men, one in a military uniform, the other in an expensive business suit, both with submachine guns propped on their hips and expressions of smug superiority on their faces.
Dekka ran straight at them, hands raised. The barrels of the machine pistols rose. And suddenly both men shrieked and fell to their knees and writhed in pain.
Malik.
Thank God!
They burst into the vastness of the main concourse and Dekka spotted Vector—not difficult, he was the only insect cloud, after all—and veered right toward him. She raced past Cruz, headed straight up the steps in great, bounding strides, and without a word, let loose a howl and fired.
Shade saw the sudden incapacitation of every unmorphed human in the concourse below. They dropped and bellowed and writhed, and she could not help but see the similarity to what Vector had done to the poor man or woman roped atop the information kiosk.
But Malik’s victims survive.
Mostly.
Shade kicked off from the balustrade and fell at normal gravity speed, almost like slow-motion to her morphed senses. As she fell, knees bent to take the impact, she squeezed the trigger on her flamethrower and watched a jet of liquid fire stab at the monstrous swarm. Where the napalm reached, the bugs stopped, crisped, and fell like propeller seeds from a maple tree.
They burn! Hah! They burn!
Shade landed hard and staggered under the unusual weight, and barreled ahead trying to keep her feet as she ran beneath Oz the Great and Murderous. She tripped and fell and twisted onto one side so that she could, with some difficulty, fire straight up into Vector. Hot, dead insects rained down on her like ash from a volcano.
Every one of Markovic’s human tools was out of commission. Dekka had swung the nozzle of her own flamethrower forward and was firing it with one hand while shredding with the other. Armo was beside her. Three flamethrowers now poured death into Markovic.
It was a massacre. The air stank of gasoline and incinerated insects. Three long light sabers of flame swept back and forth like they were hosing down a car, back and forth, the fiery streams intersecting and sweeping on, and many, many of Markovic’s creatures died.
Dekka quickly took stock of her battlefield. Everywhere rose the screams of those Malik had hit. And he was keeping it up, not letting them even think about recovering. Cruz had sensibly backed away and now cringed beside a pillar, still in her mayoral guise.
Armo had reached the top step and aimed his flame straight at the center of the faux face, playing his flame left and right. The air was choking with a smell like burned hair as bugs died in the thousands.
But then Dekka saw Armo stagger. His flamethrower spray veered wildly, barely missing Dekka herself. He skidded down the marble steps on his back, blistering the air above him, but not hitting the small, iridescent, scaly-fleshed creature that had flown into him and jabbed two Tasers into the sides of his head.
Dekka, still flaming and shredding, took in the situation. Armo sprawled down the marble steps, feet higher than head, with the fish-looking creature beating at his face with a crowbar, spraying red blood over white fur. Armo was down, but he was not in real danger. Yet.
“Simone!” Dekka yelled. “On Armo!”
“On it!” came the reassuring shout.
Shade was up and moving, not at her full speed but still at a velocity a cheetah would envy, running in a blurring circle, directing her flame at the insect mass in the middle.
Simone flew to Armo’s defense, body-slamming the hovering fish creature, who swung the crowbar at Simone but missed. Simone got a grip on the creature and hauled her away, her tiny wings buzzing furiously, and now those two, one armed with a crowbar and one not, were carrying on a bizarre midair wrestling match, punching and grabbing and grunting.
Armo got up, face and neck red with blood, and aimed his flamethrower again, but it would not light. The pilot had gone out, and bear claws do not flick lighters.
“Shade!” Dekka roared. “Light Armo!”
Shade instantly saw the problem and zoomed past Armo, trailing her flame over the end of his flamethrower, lighting it again.
We’re doing okay. We’re doing okay!
Another mutant was charging into the fight, the shaggy monster with the improbable saber-toothed-tiger teeth. It chose Armo as its target and ran straight at him, charging like a bull. Armo stepped nimbly aside but the tiger had anticipated that and twisted to grab Armo and spun him around. Armo’s feet got tangled, and he went down with the beast atop him. The creature’s teeth should never have been useful; it couldn’t possibly open its jaw wide enough . . . but Dekka saw that it had done just that, dislocating its jaw to bring its teeth into play.
Armo swung a frantic paw but missed and left the creature a perfectly exposed upper arm. The saber-toothed jaw widened and the teeth closed, two thick ivory tusks spearing Armo’s flesh.
“What the hell?” Armo let out a roar, but he was on his back again, with something as big as he was lying athwart him and Armo’s arm shish-kebabed.
They were too entwined for Dekka to take out the beast without hitting Armo. But now Francis was running flat out across the floor, arms pumping, sneakers squeaking, running straight at the beast. Running straight into danger.
Like a stab to the heart, Dekka knew where she’d seen something like that before: a wild, slender girl running heedlessly toward destruction.
Brianna.
All the while Vector burned. The bugs that made him up fell in a rain of shriveled bodies, bouncing like hailstones as they hit marble. And Vector did nothing. He did not threaten, he did not try to escape, he just hung there in the air as the flamethrowers burned on and on.
Shade’s flamethrower was the first to run dry. The ring of flame she’d run around Vector sputtered and died.
Francis reached the saber-tooth, tripped and plowed into it, and fell hard, elbows and knees slamming the edges of the stairs. The tiger creature spun around, leaving Armo gushing blood, and reached for Francis. Crawling, then flipping over and scooting back on her rear end, Francis tried to grab the claw that raked inches from her face, but couldn’t get a hold.
But the tiger had made a fatal mistake: in chasing Francis, it had exposed its rear.
Dekka aimed carefully for the creature’s rear end, farthest from both Francis and Armo. There was a feline howl and a noise like a meat grinder, and the creature’s back legs disintegrated. They looked like they’d been jammed into a blender. Flesh and fur, bone and sinew dissolved, fragmented into bloody bits, and now it was the saber-tooth who roared in agony as parts of it slopped down the steps.
The tiger creature crawled away, trying to dig its claws into waxed stone. Blood poured from the stumps of its legs, and it had not yet begun to de-morph, return to its human form.
It doesn’t know!
Francis jumped up, her face a furious mask, and avoiding the desperate, flailing claws of the beast, got behind it and grabbed a handful of fur. Seconds later, she was gone, and so was the beast.
Simone was still having all she could handle with the hovering girl. Neither of them was a boxer or martial artist, and a fistfight in midair was by its very nature a hard way to land a serious blow. They careened together into the black tote board, splintering it.
Oh, God, we’re winning!
Now, though, Dekka’s flamethrower was weakening; the jet that had been a straight line of fire became a downward arc.
“Poison!” Dekka cried, shut down the flame, and shrugged out of her harness.
Cruz and Malik, too, now both armed with insecticide, came at a run, bounding up the stairs trailing clouds of poison from spray cans. Their feet crunched on the dead bugs, lying two inches deep, like the aftermath of a hail storm.
We’re actually winning!
So why don’t I feel . . .
And then, Dekka knew why she didn’t feel victorious. Her folly, her blindness was suddenly horribly clear: Markovic wasn’t trying to get away.
Vector had a plan.