They're watching me, but maybe there's not much I can do about that just now.
They're in every detail. Flaws, mainly. Like when you remember something with such crystal-clarity that you know every line, every shape, every resonance…
…and then you look up expecting to see London's grey skies, and there's a face looking down instead.
…and then you shake the blood off a knife, or finish retching with the force of your anger, and the droplets splattered on the floor form eyes, and stare right at you.
These memories, they're full of rage and violence and weirdness. And the thing with weirdness is, there's always room for more.
Things keep changing. Time keeps jumping. There's a roar in my ears like I'm underwater, but I'm not scared. They're watching me – those withered Injun women – but so what? They're talking to me, too, and their voices are pretty, and maybe I'm talking back or maybe I'm not, but either way: they're in here with me. Spying on my past.
Back to the start.
Back to London.
After I got the signal, in the comms room of the old MI6 building at Vauxhall Cross, where I'd whored myself to the SIS for years and years, I sliced up some people good. Clergy. I don't recall how many. I was too focused.
We'd all seen the planes. Every rat-human crawling in the filth of London knew they were there. Blue-painted, marked with the red 'O' of the Church, going up, coming down. Why? Who knew. Who cared.
I went to Heathrow. My mind was a needle. Too angry to speak. Too focused to negotiate.
PANDORA
PANDORA
PANDORA
Like a mantra, see?
Nothing would turn me. I'd impale anything that dared get in my way.
And I waited. Cut and slashed in the night. Hacked open necks. Cut off fingertips. Made grey robes run red.
Not because I hated the Clergy.
Not because they had anything to do with anything.
Not for any reason except they were convenient, and they had something I wanted.
Took me three days of torturing to work my way up to a Clergy-bastard of sufficient hierarchical power to be worth taking hostage. I think – I know – I stopped being me for a bit there. Let the animal thing take over too much. Let the rampage-instincts out of their box.
It was a weird time.
I made sure everything felt significant, everything felt like a step in the right direction, and by god's own piss it felt good. I let everyone I came across seem responsible, took it all out on them, mixed up the anger with the focus, just like they taught me in training:
Made it personal.
So what I did, back at the start, I strolled into the airport as bold as brass, with this pigshit priest under my knife, telling every gun-wielding arsehole who came near to back off or get splashed.
And this guy, this hostage, this high-up canon or whoever he was, he leaned down so the knife was pressed up against his neck… and he shook his head.
Slit-slat-slit.
Faith. That's what. Obvious really. Never take any wanker prisoner who's prepared to die for his beliefs.
So bang went my clever-clever attempt to hijack a plane alone, which is all I ever wanted out of those child-stealing sadistic delusional fucks. Bang went my momentum, bang went my anger, bang went the feeling of progress, of inertia-less drive. The juggernaut rolled to a halt.
Cue running away, hiding, rethinking.
Cue a realisation or two: doing it alone wasn't going to work. Focus wasn't enough.
Enter Bella.
I found her waiting outside the airport, just standing and staring. Like she was shellshocked, maybe, except it looked like she'd been that way for years. Watching every plane, mumbling to herself. Waiting for something to happen.
I happened.
Cut forwards in time.
Bella telling me she knew how to fly.
Recon of the airport.
Preparing. Arming-up.
Getting drunk one night and fucking, and not caring except to feel the guilt, and letting down the shields for five seconds and discovering – holy shit – I'm still human after all.
Telling myself I didn't care what her story was. Listening anyway.
They took her kid.
They took a thousand kids. Every week, another load. Off across the ocean. Off to be with the skeletal bastard Abbot off the TV. Off to a better life, or a worse one, or who knew what, except that it was OFF.
Scared. Crying. Can't you just imagine them?
(The faces in the clouds are watching and nodding, and saying yes we can, and wiping tears and telling me to get on with it.)
And then there was Bella, saying:
"Doesn't matter. Not your problem. But that's why I'm going."
And then the time comes and we make our move, and con our way inside, and kill our way further, and gather guns and steal drugs, and then it's sprinting across tarmac, and guns opening fire, and pain in my shoulder, and Bella dragging me up the steps, and then And then away. Stateside-bound.
And then the story started.
And Bella died in fire and pain and chaos.
And Nate and the city and blah blah blah.
"Doesn't matter," Bella told me, as we clung to each other in the dark. "Not your problem."
After everything she did for me. After she flew me and died for me. After she gave me back my humanity, and stuck a booster up my hope.
"Not your problem."
And all the others. The people of London who bartered and fed me, and said hello every day, and didn't care that I didn't say hello back. The scavs of New York, who died and cried and followed me, despite my lies, into the jaws of hell. The Iroquois, who sent their scared little envoy to watch over me, then saved me themselves on the road.
All of them. Children stolen away. Tears long since run-out. Dead inside, but still fit to help. Still fit to see hope for a better tomorrow. Still fit to smile and think the best, and do something good.
And here's me. Here's me pursuing my own goal and forgetting the rest. Damn the world. Damn every motherfucker alive. Ignore it. Let it happen. Be selfish, why not?
Nothing to do with me.
"Not your problem," she said.
Well shit.
About time I made it my problem.
They were coming. So said the Tadodaho.
(Or, rather, so said the Matriarchs, who whispered and sighed in dark corners then told the Chief what to say and do. It amounted to the same thing.)
I didn't bother asking how they knew. Scouts, surveillance, divine-bloody-intuition, I didn't know. Or care. I'd just taken a lazy stroll through the psychedelic bullshit of my own mind, and if the weirdest thing to greet me on my return was the rock-solid assertion that the Clergy were coming, here, en-masse, then frankly it was a taste of reassuring normality.
They were following me, I guessed. We'd got past their psychotic Collectors, but it didn't matter. Their base in NY was overrun and they'd came pelting out here in my wake. Why?
Revenge?
Maybe. But it sounded like a lot of hard work to go to, just to kick the arse of the guy who'd rattled them up. So why else? Unless…
Unless they were going to the same place as me.
"What's the plan?" Nate said, hours later, when my head stopped spinning from its heavy barrage of hallucinations and synaesthetic memories. We were still sat at the fire between the caravans, watching the evening roll-in, just the two of us. Nike was laid-up in one of the 'vans, dosed out of his skull, and Moto refused to leave his side. Tora… Tora's body had been found near where the Collectors caught-up with us. I didn't like to ask what state it was in. Malice went and oversaw a quiet cremation outside the camp, and I'd figured it would be rude to invite myself along. She hadn't said anything, but there was an unspoken accusation in her eyes as she wandered off:
You brought us out here.
This is your fault.
I told myself I'd imagined it. I told myself they were all mercenaries who'd known the dangers, and it was a little late in the day to start complaining about the risk when two were already dead and one mangled to shit.
It didn't help.
So. Me and Nate. Warm and full of food (still chowing, in fact, on a second portion of everything to make-up for the stuff I puked first time round). And again the old bastard's jaw was lolling, cheeks pinned-back in a rictus-smile, pupils dilated big enough to turn his eyes inside-out.
"What's the plan what's the plan what's the plaaan?" He said, giggling, wobbling around like he was dancing to some silent beat. "Got any more burns? Need a burn? Needaburnneedaburn?"
I stopped chewing. Looked at him and shook my head.
I guessed… oh, sod it. I guessed now was as good a time as any.
I put down my bowl.
"Look at you," I said. "Nate. Seriously. Look at yourself."
"Eh?"
"You're bombed. You're off your face, mate."
It took him a while to react, and his smiling face crumpled like a hollow mountain.
"Am not!" He shouted, far too loud, standing and pointing. "Am fucking not!"
I just stared, getting bored. Eventually he sat down.
"We had a deal." I said quietly, slurping on more of the homebrewed beer. He reacted jerkily, like he couldn't control his own defence.
"Yeah? Yeah, so?"
"So I paid you good scav and I kept you alive. Right? You were in pigshit up to your neck after the airport."
"I know that! Did I say I didn't know it? Fuck you, m…"
"And all you had to do in return was play at being a doctor."
I picked up my bowl again and spooned some potatoes into my mouth. Tasted good. Ignored the old man's rolling eyes and hurt silence.
"And… and I haaaave!" He yelped, like a kicked puppy dog. "Didn't I? Didn't I? I've done good! Patched you up over and over. You know it, you know it, you know it!"
I glared.
"Yeah. And Nike's in a Winnebago over there with his legs shot to shit, and you haven't lifted a hand to help."
Nate's lips moved. Searching for words.
"But… H-hold it, he's… but…"
"But he's not part of the deal? Is that it?"
"No! No, I just… I thought your, your Injuns here would take care and…"
"Some doctor, Nate."
We sat in silence for a long time then; darkness spreading above us, fire drooling embers upwards.
"The Secretariat." I said, eventually.
"Wh… What?"
I sighed, shaking my head. "Oh, nothing. Just thinking. Our little deal. Never seemed quite right to me."
"But… I don't understand. What's…?"
"You didn't seem to get much out of it, I mean. I was wondering why you were sticking with me, to be honest. Now I know."
He looked suddenly angry, thick sarcasm souring his voice. "Oh, you know. You know, do you? The fuck do you know? You gonna make shit up and say you know, then you can kiss m…"
"The Secretariat. I sent you downstairs. Told you to go help the others find the kids."
His eyes went narrow. Chin jutting. "S-so?"
"So that's the only time you could've found that shit." I pointed at the pack next to his knees, unsurprised to see his fingers coiled securely through its handle. "Stole it from the Choirboys, didn't you?"
He almost exploded, hugging the bag to himself as he stood and shrieked, irrational and embarrassing. "The fuck's wrong with that?" He snarled. "The fuck's wrong with thaaaat? You saying, you saying I shouldn't steal from them assholes?"
"Course not. I'm saying don't steal shit that'll turn you into a prick. Sit down."
"Fuck y…"
"Or, don't steal shit that'll bring an army of motherfuckers chasing after you. Sit down, Nate."
"That's not why they're comi…"
"Or even better, don't steal shit when you're an ex-junkie."
Quiet.
He sat.
"Tell you what I think," I said, feeling sharp things moving in my words but not caring. Bella's face was swimming behind my eyelids, and for some reason it made me angry. "I think you never quit."
"What?"
"Back in London. You used to live there, you said. You said you quit, remember?"
He didn't say a word.
"I think maybe you were telling half a truth there, mate. I think what actually happened is, the supply ran out. Tough call, getting smack right after The Cull." His white eyes dipped, firelight reflecting. "But then along comes the Clergy and tells you they can fix you up, sort you out. All you got to do is clear off stateside and look after some kiddies on the way through…"
"That's… wasn't like that…"
"And for a couple of years it's all gravy. Probably wasn't even smack they gave you, right? Some weird new military shit. Am I right? Even better. Double the high.
"Then some dumb English fuck arrives and screws the whole gig, and before you know it you're out on your ear. Right? Am I right?"
He was just staring at the fire, face closed-down. Nothing to say. Nothing to deny.
I noticed a stain on his trousers and wondered if he'd even noticed he'd pissed himself.
He swallowed and looked up at me. "I… I just…"
"Why should you stay with me? Oh, fuck, there was all that shit about me protecting your life, blah blah. Didn't buy it for a second, mate. But then we get to the Secretariat and bang, you've got right what you wanted. That big case right there. And I'm thinking… That's a big place. How did he find it? Unless maybe he knew where to look…"
"J-Jesus…"
"And that makes me wonder how you knew we'd be going to the Secretariat at all."
His eyes gave it away. In the end.
Flicked away from my face. A split second, no more, to the green sack hanging on my shoulder.
The penny dropped.
"The map…" I said, kicking myself. "Fuck. Of course. Of course."
I always knew he looked through my bag, back at the start, as I lay dying on the tarmac. I assumed he'd lusted after the booze, the Bliss…
But no. He went straight to the map. The New York City map, marked with a bloody-red ring around the UN Headquarters.
"So you saw where I was heading… Right? And you thought… Well now… Maybe I'll just… tag along?"
I glanced up.
He stared.
"You didn't even have the guts to tell me the truth, Nate."
I wouldn't have cared, if he'd been honest.
I don't care, even now. Don't give a shit what he does to himself.
I just don't like being wrong.
He opened and closed his mouth like a fish.
"Parasite," I said.
I stood up and walked away.
I went for a walk.
Took a look around. Found Malice and sat down to talk and draw maps in the sand. Scheming. If she was pissed about the Inferno and the others, she didn't show it.
Around midnight I went and fetched Robert Slowbear, and he took me to the Tadodaho. I politely declined anything to eat or drink.
Around four o'clock the camp moved, all at once, across the great concrete bridge spanning the sinuous lake, and by six I was up to my armpits in cold water.
By seven we were ready.
They didn't keep us waiting.
The Meander Reservoir was a twisting strip of spilled water, dividing Youngstown from the green ocean of fields surrounding it. On the Tadodaho's map – an ancient and laminated thing, long-faded and well-worn – the lake was an obvious part of a chain, connected by creeks and ditches, that ran south all the way from Lake Eerie. It wasn't a huge watercourse, I suppose. Maybe five or six miles, tip-to-tip. It wouldn't have taken too long to go around either, if someone'd had to, but what was perfect about it was this:
The I-80, straight from New York, spanned the lake dead across its centre on a single, exposed, vulnerable and oh-so-deliciously-narrow bridge.
If ever there was a better place for an ambush, I would've liked to have seen it.
For the record, somewhere – deep down at the rotten core of my mind – I shouted and cussed at myself, waggling a subconscious finger at this daft display of time wasting.
Not my problem, it kept shouting. Focus on the mission!
And my response, my considered reply to this seemingly watertight argument, went something like this:
Fuck off.
The Clergymen came out of the QuickSmog on the horizon at dawn, and the sound of engines reached us long before we saw them. The air went electric.
There were three other bridges too – two smaller roads, a mile on either side, that forded the water at its narrowest points, and a larger bridge far to the south where the Ohio turnpike turned northwards, with no easy access or turn-ons. We could ignore that, at least.
At about the same time we heard the engines, the Haudenosaunee vanished. All of them, dipping out of sight without so much as a word. It was incredible to watch.
Vehicles bundled off rapidly to the west, to be parked behind knots of trees and dips in the road. Bikes were laid-down on their sides and covered with grass and leaves. Men and women lugging improbably huge weapons squatted on the banks to either side of the central bridge, and simply – disappeared.
One moment there was an army, hundreds strong, arranged silently along the banks of the lake, staring off into the fog. The next: nothing.
Well.
Almost nothing.
The Inferno had been dragged to the centre of the road on our side of the bridge. It was a sad sight, mangled and unsteady, lolling to one side with its cockpit torn open and its sides dented to hell. But the guns still worked, oh yes, and wedged-up on either side of it there stood a pair of Iroquois caravans, untidily blocking the road, holding it upright.
It looked like the world's crappiest blockade.
Rick – Hiawatha, whoever he was – had volunteered to man the Inferno. He'd done so with the chin-jutting defiance of someone too young to know better, trying to prove something; to himself, I guess. If it'd been down to me I would have told him to stop being a macho prick and leave it to someone more capable.
"Good." The Tadodaho had said. "Good."
The youngster opened-fire right on time.
Down in the shade cast by the bridge, covered in a loose mesh of twigs and brambles, I had a perfect view. Malice grinned openly to my left, and even Nike – sprawled in a mess of splints and crutches behind, with Moto mothering him wordlessly – chuckled to himself. Could've just been the painkillers, I suppose.
The bikes came first.
And went down like dominoes.
Outriders; scouting ahead of a far larger convoy that could barely be seen amidst the far fringes of the QuickSmog; Clergy corsairs with white helmets and dark robes, some on military bikes with sidecars containing Uzi-waving idiots, others sprinting ahead on powerbikes re-sprayed grey and white.
Rick exploded them one by one.
The shape of the road funnelled them naturally, drawing them together, bunching them like skittles. As they ripped onto the far span it was to be greeted by a wave – a wall – of lead and fire and shrapnel. They should have been more cautious. They should have looked ahead at the obstruction and taken their time, but no. Straight in. Still accelerating when the ordnance closed on them and the world shook.
Thunder and smoke and muzzle-flare, and two bikes skidding in hot rubber and screaming chrome, and torn leather and blood on the road, and the next idiots flipping head-over-saddle as they smashed into their fallen comrades, and then – only then – did the brakes slam on and the situation slow.
By which time it was far too late.
The kid aimed with only the vaguest accuracy. He simply poked a cautious head through the Inferno's turret, steered the great mass of oiled death mounted there towards the far edge of the bridge, and held down as many triggers as he could.
It was like…
Bonfire Night. Or the Fourth of July, depending.
Or maybe just a war zone. Maybe just a field-spotter's guide to hasty death.
The Mk19 lobbing its tumbling shells, spit-crack-flare-smoke; a brace of machineguns vomiting spent cases and angry tracers; dust and tarmac rising-up; splinters of air and rock tumbling; bikes shivering in haloes of sparks then dissolving – just going away – behind great balls of incandescence. The whole bridge shook with each grenade-flare, and underneath it all came the sharp ring of Rick's voice, shouting and laughing.
On the edge of the bridge, through curtains of hot smoke and fire clinging to shattered bodies and disassembled bikes, the blunt shadows of blockier shapes nudged at the edge of the QuickSmog. Beside me, Malice's face dropped. The rest of the convoy, perhaps.
If Rick had noticed, he didn't care. The Mk19 spat its last grenade then whirred on, empty chambers cycling uselessly, but the rest of the arsenal kept going. Throwing curtains of dust and sparks at the far shore, as if daring the knot of bikes that had turned aside and backed away to come get some…
Nobody seemed keen to oblige.
The blocky shape began to solidify; angular panels and reinforced glass, painted sky-blue in defiance of camouflage. I recognised the boxy nose of an armoured vehicle – some ex-military ground car or other, heavy with ablative plates and sensor-gear – and let my eye wander quickly to the gun in its rear. Autocannon. 25mm, maybe 30. Against a crippled fire truck with armour made of corrugated iron, frankly, it wouldn't make much difference.
The bikes zipped off in either direction, clearing a corridor. Rick's petulant salvo rattled uselessly off the AFV's hull, and after a second or two he allowed the guns to fall silent, uncertain, letting smoke waft across the bridge.
Everyone held their breath.
The autocannon opened fire.
A lot of fire.
Somewhere deep in the tedious equip-details drummed over the years into my mind, I recognised the sound. The angry rattle, the hollow retorts of heavy calibre shells thumping – stamping – against the Inferno.
M242 Bushmaster. 25mm chain cannon, 200 rounds a minute. Probably ripped from some heavy-arsed Bradley tank and installed messily, incongruously, in the rear of that stupid little AFV. The whole thing shuddered and shifted backwards with the recoil, brakes clawing at the earth, but it didn't matter. Didn't make a fucking spot of difference.
The Inferno simply tattered. The shells didn't dent the sides, they ripped them. Metal shredded like cheap fabric, panels peeling back in lacerated strips, exit-wounds worthy of cranial trauma that blasted an organic gore of shrapnel and slag through the blockade's rear quarters.
Only a matter of time before the fuel tanks went up.
And then Rick was running, hopping between geysers of fire and dust, leather trousers ripped and bloody where shards of concrete had jumped up to slash his ankles, and the gunner swept the cannon to find him – thunderous blasts picking apart macadam, drawing close to his heels – and he was gone, diving with a shriek over the edge of the bridge, lost to the waters below. The gunner turned back to his first target with a dogged sort of well-I'll-be-blowed-if-I-don't-get-to-have-some-fun determination, and finally – throbbing at the air like a stuttering bass – found the fuel tanks.
The Inferno tried to fly. A heavy jet of black flame glommed from its belly, blew out its arse, lifted it up in a halo of flapping damage and slammed it down, keening on its side, to creak and vent fire.
"That's coming out of your deposit." Malice whispered. I smirked.
From across the lake came an uproarious cheer, broken and muffled by the fog, but loud. Wide. Spread-out. Hidden there in the fog, waiting to emerge, were a lot of people.
And onwards they came. The AFV jinking to one side, making way for a lumbering colossus that might once have been a truck-cab but now – via the careful application of welds, armour plates and a fucking enormous dozer-scoop – looked a little more like a medieval dragon, lower jaw hanging open.
The Iroquois remained hidden.
Behind the hulking machine came others like it. HGV cabs bristling with guns, AFVs plugging gaps, converted civilian vehicles painted in the Clergy's colours and distorted by weaponry, spikes, ramming-noses. It poured from the QuickSmog like a tide of filth, like an armada emerging from sea fog; robed figures standing at arms on every surface. Behind it came the carriers. Vast lorries, armoured but unarmed. Buses and coaches riding low on their suspension, figures crammed behind mesh windows. Plated limousines and SUVs, blue-and-scarlet flags fluttering like a presidential cavalcade.
I realised, then, why the resistance had been so lacklustre at the Secretariat building. Why so few Clergymen were left to guard the gates, and why so many ran, as we swarmed inside, towards the other parts of the compound.
They'd known we were coming. Cy's timely warning, spies on every street. They'd known we could wash across them despite their sternest defences, and so they'd loaded themselves aboard a long-prepared convoy, and taken the only course open to them:
Exodus.
And now here they were. All of them.
I understood, abruptly, why the Tadodaho had brought me here. Why this moment was so important to him, and Rick, and the rest of the tribe. And more than that: to the scavs in the cities, to the people back home in London, to Bella – if she'd been here to see it…
To me.
A chance to cut the heads off the bloody Hydra, if you like. Not my business, nothing to do with me, not my problem, but still. Something I had to do.
The Iroquois remained hidden.
The dozer-scoop behemoth inched towards the flaming wreck of the Inferno, preparing to shunt it, and the caravans beside it, to one side. I wondered how big a threat the Clergy had estimated this curious little blockade to be, and sincerely hoped the answer was:
Not big enough.
The radio in my pocket hissed.
"…kkk… orth bridge…"
"Go ahead." I whispered, watching the convoy crawl cautiously forwards.
"…ot outriders up here… crossing now. Ten bikes, two AVs…"
A second voice cut in – the thoughtful tones of Slowbear:
"…ame here. South bridge. They've sent a lorry over as well…"
"Standby," I said, feeling the adrenaline coming up, imagining the two groups away through the haze, one on each of the smaller bridges, sneaking round to flank us. I saw them smirking and tittering, feeling oh-so-bloody-clever, mumbling bullshit about classic pincer movements, surprise attacks, blah-blah-blah.
I fished in my other pocket and handed a small black box to Malice, pointing to the top button. "The honours." I said. It seemed only fair.
She smiled, dipped her head with faux graciousness, and stabbed at the button.
The dozer scoop in front and above us hit the Inferno's side and squealed in protest.
And then ceased to be the main event.
The light came first. Obviously. From both directions at once; a sudden flicker of white and yellow, pulsing across the entirety of the QuickSmog like a firework lost in the clouds, then building more focus as the first flash of the explosion gave way to a pair of dancing fireballs; one on each side, great pyrotechnic monsters that clambered into the air and dissipated into the mist.
Then the sound. Almost perfectly synchronised; two rolling thunderbolts that echoed and coalesced in the eerie fog, becoming a single sub-aqueous roar.
And then screams. Even at this distance, even separated by water and haze, the shrieks of the maimed and the groans of the dying. Ghostly. Haunting.
The Collectors had left behind their C4 and their snazzy little detonator when they tried to kill us in the night. It would have been rude to waste them.
"kkk… orth bridge… Got 'em… got the fuckers… bridge is down, bridge is down!"
"…owbear here, same for the south. Hoo-ee! Can't see for smoke yet, but they're not coming any further…"
The dozer-scoop shunted the Inferno like a casual distraction, bashing as it went into the side of the nearest caravan. The driver wasn't watching. I guessed he was staring in shock at the baleful firelight hovering on either side in the distance, or shouting into a radio, or just wondering what the fuck is going on.
Distracted, one way or another. Otherwise he might have noticed the cables. Iron cords, tied-off to the railings at either side of the bridge, each one carefully tensioned, leading in through the shattered windows of the caravans.
Each one holding aloft, in the stripped-out spaces inside, a dangling gallery of jam jars.
Each of which contained a single fragmentation baseball grenade, pin removed, trigger prevented from releasing by the glass of the jars.
Fort Wayne barracks, Slowbear had told me during the night. One of the few armouries that hadn't emptied its supplies into the Clergy's hands. Forget bows and bloody arrows. These Injuns were packing.
The first caravan shifted. Jerked against the other, like marbles colliding.
On both sides of the bridge, the cables went slack. A tinny sound of shattering glass filled the air, and maybe I was imagining it or maybe I suddenly went fucking psychic, but I swear to god I could hear the driver in that colossal sodding rig mutter:
"Aw, piss."
A second or two, with the echoes of the C4-detonations still ringing, and then:
Think Baghdad. Think Hiroshima. Think surface of the fucking sun.
It was big, and flashy, and I could feel the heat from my cover. Frag-shrapnel turning the air to razorwire, men somersaulting out of gunner-mounts on the cusp of the blast, flesh sliding off bone, fingers clutching at air then clutching at nothing. The lorry-rig pelted onto its spine, its nose upright, then crashed down in dust and death on the vehicles behind, bouncing in a way that something that big shouldn't. Driver and gunners alike screamed and died, sliced to ribbons; soot and black smoke washed over the top of the bridge and the tarmac gaped where the explosives had tripped. The caravans were gone. The Inferno's shredded corpse was gone. What remained was modern art.
And finally the Iroquois rose-up from their cover, screamed like an operatic banshee, and let loose.
It would have been a massacre. We had them boxed-in. Exposed on the bridge, unable to back-out at speed. We had machineguns and grenades and autocannons. We had a couple of rusty old mortars that found their range after two watery explosions (by which time Rick had already clambered, panting, ashore, so no damage there) and a crateful of anti-tank rockets which all the Haudenosaunee had been clamouring to play with.
Above all we had surprise and stealth, and well-camouflaged men and women using smoke and shadows and patience. We had so much lead and fire raining down on those pricks that they never realised how much knifework went on, how much scurrying and slicing was taking place in the noxious gaps between packed-in vehicles.
I know. I was there. I was doing it.
It would have been a massacre. It started out just dandy. The Iroquois vehicles came tearing back up, the bikes slipped onto the bridge to sow madness and death, AVs and lorry rigs popped like fiery bubbles with each shrieking mortar-round, and oh god yeah it felt good. Malice and me with pistols and knives, scrambling over bonnets and under tankers, slipping grenades through open windows whilst drivers shouted and raged at the back-up, then scuttled off to listen for the boom…
Great times.
And fine, the convoy just kept getting bigger and bigger. More and more lorries oozing from the haze, trying to back-up, trying to manoeuvre in the madness. Fine, there were a lot more of the bastards than we expected, a lot more guns and psychos slowly getting their act together and returning fire. Fine, it would have been messy. But we had them. We could've taken them.
And then my radio hissed, and everything changed.
Malice and I were holed-up behind the vast tyres of an earthmover, waiting for the wanker in the cab to stop blasting our end of the bridge with whatever fat-shell cannon he was manning for long enough to sneak up there and blow his brains out, when Slowbear's voice broke through the maelstrom; tinny and tense.
"…ou there? Oh shit… oh shit… This is Slowbear! Are you there?"
"Yeah, here. What is it?"
Something bit at the rubber tyre next to me and made the whole vehicle shudder. Malice winced.
"The lorry! The… shit… shit… kkkhh… the lorry on the south bridge!"
"We got it, right?"
"Yes! F-fuck, yes, it's not that, it's…"
"Slowbear?"
"…t's full of children! You hear me?"
Malice's eyes bulged.
"…orries are all full of fucking children!"
It would have been a massacre.
We turned and ran back to our lines without another word, and as we strafed through optimistic fire streams I caught a glimpse of Malice's eyes, and the liquid glistening inside them. She'd left her baby with the Matriarchs in safety but still… it didn't take a genius to figure out what she was thinking.
It'd been her that pressed the button, after all.
A weird noise filled my head. Like an engine, but airier; filtered through the fog and the gunfire, distorted by the screams and shouts all around. I wondered if I'd damaged my ear more badly than I'd thought, then shook my head and stopped worrying. What, exactly, could I do about it anyway? I spotted the incline facing the bridge where we'd left Nike and Moto, and together with Malice I scrambled up the bank, forgetting all about the noise, concentrating on staying alive.
…thrpthrpthrpthrpthrp…
Nike and Moto were hunkered-down with five Iroquois holding shoulder-launchers. Nate was there too, watching, staying apart and looking shifty. I ignored him and he ignored me, making a show of staring directly upwards into the turbulent QuickSmog. It seemed to be getting worse. Odd bursts of fire snapped at the tops of the ridge, off-target but getting closer, and before I could take the time to work out how someone was keeping track with us, at this distance, at this elevation, we threw ourselves down into safety. Rick was standing below the grenadiers; sopping water and trying to catch his breath, dishing out the tank busters.
"Aim for the lorries…" he was saying, unable to keep the twinkle of testosterone-choked-male out of his eye. He'd done his part. He'd lured the fuckers into the trap. No wonder he sounded older.
Nike was already lifting himself gingerly into a sitting position, head above the edge of the ridge, tube to his shoulder, when Malice gathered her breath and shouted:
"No! Stop! Don't fire!"
The older man swivelled his head to look at her, brows furrowing.
"But wh…"
The hesitation almost killed him. A round caromed dustily off the ground beside his face, within inches of splitting his head. He swore out loud and let gravity pull him back down into cover, the rest of us tugging him along in a knot of shouts and grunts. When we'd got him back down to the bottom of the ridge Moto flopped-down next to him and clutched at his arm, horrified.
"Fuck…" Nike said, eyes wide. "Did you… fuck. Did you see that?"
And then his head really did split open.
Suddenly I was wearing him. Bits of blood and brain in my eyes, shards of bone stinging the exposed skin on my face. His body slumped and smoked, and next to it Moto's mouth went up and down like nothing made sense, like everything had gone dark.
How? My brain was screaming. How did someone…?
We're in fucking cover!
Out in the haze, the noise again. An angry dragonfly-throb, cut through with a motorised grind.
…thrpthrpthrpthrp…
Moto's face had gone perfectly slack.
He picked up the rocket launcher. Malice scrabbled against his arm, trying to pull him off, and he hit her – hard – on the cheek. His expression didn't change. She fell; he turned. Rose to the top of the bank. Aimed.
And then everything went white and black, and I realised with a giddy sort of uncertainty that either the rocket had misfired, or someone had shot the launcher, and now – look – I was flying, and my hair was on fire, and everything hurt.
I landed and lay and didn't move. Staring straight up, as fire and smoke and chaos thundered all around me. I wondered if anyone else was still alive.
…thrpthrpthrpthrpthrp…
The QuickSmog billowed. Surged. Boiled.
And finally I recognised the sound. Finally I figured out how the fuckers had shot Nike, I figured out how come they'd been taking potshots at me and Malice ever since we scrambled up here. How they'd blasted Moto's launcher before he could even squeeze the trigger, and blew us all to shit.
Why Nate was staring straight up.
There were lights above me. Rockets zipping down in all directions. Iroquois screaming, vehicles exploding. A sniper rifle krak-krak-kraking from on-high.
And as the pain in my ribs exploded behind my eyes, and I sucked hard to get anything resembling a breath, my last thought was:
Nobody told me the fuckers had helicopters…