Wildfire

I dashed forward, following the line of ex-soldiers. They grabbed the edge of the armored plate on the side of the carrier. Metal clanged, sliding into place. The armored plate split and its bottom half dropped down, forming a platform attached to the carrier’s flank.

“Up!”

I jumped onto the platform and pulled myself up between the other soldiers. Servomotors whined and the platform rose, carrying us up. Rogan’s people grabbed the top half of the armored plate, still attached to the carrier. Metal clanged again, and the armored plate slid up. Heart reached in front of me, yanked on a lever, pulled a rectangular shutter open within the plate, and secured it. I was looking through a window, two feet wide and one foot tall. The top of the armored carrier was right in front of me and I could rest my rifle on it.

A concrete yard stretched in front of us, bathed in bright sunlight. Sheer walls rose on both sides, and ahead, about two hundred yards away, another wall towered. Within it a massive door loomed, painted black, like the door of some giant castle.

Next to me, Heart called out, “Okay boys and girls, weapons ready. Safeties off.”

I slid the selector switch on my rifle to full auto.

A chorus of voices barked back. “Roger, Top.”

“Rodriguez, range to target.”

A male yelled out, “Two hundred and eleven meters.”

“Fire on command.”

Heart leaned next to me. “We work in teams of two. I’m your teammate. When I give command to fire, you fire. When you’re out, say ‘Out!’ and take two steps back. If you jam, say ‘Jam!’ and take two steps back. Understood?”

My heart was beating too fast. “Yes.”

The massive door split in the middle, showing a glimpse of complete darkness.

“Hold your fire,” Heart ordered.

My hands shook. I took a deep breath, all the way to my stomach, held it in for a few seconds and slowly let it out, concentrating only on breathing.

The gap widened. Something stirred in the ink-black darkness.

In . . . and out. In . . . and out. It wasn’t working.

The doors swung open. A pale spindly leg thrust into the sunlight, a sickly mottled grey, the color of old concrete.

“Hold it,” Heart said next to me, his voice echoing in my helmet.

A creature stepped into the open. It stood on four spindly legs, bent backward like those of a grasshopper, its knobby knees protruding up. Its body hung between them, little more than a sack of flesh. There was no head, no eyes, and no nose. Only a mouth, a round cavernous mouth, lined with rows and rows of conical teeth all the way around. It was a monster designed to feed.

The creatures stumbled in the sunlight. Another emerged from the shadows, then another, and another.

We were two hundred yards away. That meant, considering the door, that they were . . . the size of a small car.

The first beast froze. Two long, feathery whips snapped upright from its shoulders, like antennas. They turned toward us. A sea of feathery antennas sprang up. Oh dear God.

“Hold it,” Heart said.

The creatures charged.

They came at us in a ragged pale mob, rushing in a whirlwind of legs, their mouths gaping open.

“Range!” Heart called out.

“Two hundred meters,” a male voice called down from the left.

Sweat sheathed my palms.

“One ninety.”

My mouth went dry. Waiting was torture.

“One eighty.”

I glanced over my shoulder. Behind us, shielded by a blue sphere of Melosa’s magic, Rogan was drawing a complex arcane circle with chalk.

“Eyes front!” Heart barked.

I spun back to the horde. The stench of ozone hit me, the same one that I smelled in Rynda’s house.

“One seventy.”

I sighted the beast directly across from me, a big ugly creature. Shooting it in the wrinkled bag that was its body probably wouldn’t do much good. The skinny legs would be a much better target. I moved the selector to three-round burst.

“One sixty.”

My breathing deepened. I focused on the legs.

“One hundred and fifty meters.”

“Fire!” Heart roared.

I squeezed the trigger. The first burst went wide. I sighted and fired again. The beast’s left leg crunched and broke. I sighted the second front leg and fired. The creature collapsed.

The second beast took its place. I sighted and squeezed the trigger. Screw the Harcourts, their beasts, and Vincent’s threats. I was my mother’s daughter and I did not miss.

Bodies piled in front of me. To the right someone lobbed a grenade. The explosion scattered the bodies. Yellow ichor and pale guts flew.

I switched to full auto. I was in the zone now, and it was faster.

The gun clicked.

“Out!” I took two steps back.

Heart stepped into my place, thrusting a fresh magazine at me. I released the empty one and slapped the new one in. A woman ran up to me, snatched the empty magazine out of my hand, and held out a full one. I took it.

“Out!” Heart barked, and took two steps back.

I shoved the full magazine at him and took his spot.

The creatures kept coming, scuttling over the corpses. The two massive .50 cal guns mounted on top of the carriers came to life and spat thunder and death, chewing through the advancing horde.

More beasts poured out of the gates: smaller yellow creatures that looked like skinny cats with wolf heads; bloodred raptor-like things moving fast on two thick legs; a six-legged horror sheathed in glistening thin tentacles that writhed like earthworms, its top half erect as if it were some nightmarish version of a centaur . . . They came and came and came. Time lost all meaning. Only two things mattered—shooting and calling, “Out!”

The space between the carriers and monsters shrank. Barely thirty feet separated us now.

I unloaded the last of my magazine into a tentacled monstrosity. “Out!” I stepped back, ejected the old magazine . . .

I grabbed the new one from the runner, slid it into the weapon . . .

A huge blue cat that looked just like Cornelius’ Zeus lunged onto the top of the carrier and charged us. Heart fired, point-blank, his rifle spitting a stream of bullets. The cat snarled and rammed the armored plate. It bent. It shoved its massive paws through the window, trying to rake at Heart with its claws.

I threw myself against the armored plate, thrust the rifle through the window, pointing it almost straight up, and sank a stream of bullets into the cat’s throat. Blood splashed on me. The great beast collapsed, the light fading out of its beautiful eyes.

“Out!” Heart and I yelled at the same time.

No runner came. I pulled a spare magazine out of my pocket. Heart did the same.

Creatures piled on top of the carrier, snarling, screeching, clawing, slipping in the blood. We fired point-blank.

A woman screamed on the right.

A tentacle whipped through the window and wrapped around Heart’s arm. He jerked a knife out and hacked it in half.

Last magazine. We were overrun.

Magic moved behind me like a tsunami. The armored carrier under me slid. I grabbed on to the armored plate. The two massive vehicles slid to different sides like the two halves of a door opening wide.

I turned. Rogan stood inside one of the most complicated circles I’d ever seen. It glowed white.

The animal horde abandoned the carriers, streamed toward him, and crashed against the boundary of the circle. Rogan had drawn a high-level spell. The amount of magic he’d fed into the circle was so high, its outer boundary no longer existed in our world.

The green tarp covering the cargo of the truck flew aside. Three long metal cylinders lay in the back of the truck, each thirty feet long and twice as wide as a telephone pole. Rogan raised his arms in a classic mage pose, palms up, elbows bent. The cylinders shot straight up and spun in place. Dozens of blades slid out of the metal shafts. The cylinders turned sideways, forming a triangle, two on the bottom, one on top, rolled over each other and cut into the beasts. Severed limbs flew.

The grinder.

The blades swept through the horde, mincing flesh. Blood drenched the pavement, pooling in puddles under the heaps of cut-up bodies. The air smelled like blood and ozone.

Someone retched. I couldn’t even vomit. I just stared at it, mute. The slaughter was so bright, so vivid, there was no defense against it.