The only thing he could think about was the corpse he had left behind. He was so young and had begged for the help that Karrel should have decisively provided. However, Karrel had hesitated, and it had cost the young boy his life. His first act of selflessness had brought nothing but blood on his hands. He thought he was filling the emptiness inside of him by accompanying the others on this evacuation mission, but the vacant hole had only grown more barren. He punched a nearby wall, and his knuckles bled. Karrel was fighting back tears.
Gunshots erupted once more, in the direction of Dane’s “evac zone.” It was heavier than it had been the entire day. From how loud it was, Karrel could tell he was getting closer. It was only then that Karrel realized he had lost track of the time. How long had he been wandering through Sinwatch? Where was Angel, and would Puck and Johnny have regrouped with him by now? Regardless, Dane was going to be their ride out of this hellhole, so Karrel perked himself up and started toward the gunfire. His failure was still fresh in his mind, but there was no sense in letting himself die because of it. It was time to leave.
The gunshots were getting louder and louder as Karrel progressed to the southern exit of Sinwatch. He had to duck and hide numerous times to avoid the scattered forces that had taken total control of the city. Eventually, he found himself approaching the evacuation zone.
Orders were being shouted and there wasn’t a single gun barrel on the front that wasn’t scorched with gunpowder. The armored convoy had been positioned in a large semicircle around the southern exit of Sinwatch, with the largest of the transport trucks in the back. Soldiers had dug in deep in the surrounding area and were pushing back wave after wave of demons.
At the top of his voice, Dane was shouting commands from the roof of one of the Survivor’s Guild’s armored trucks. “Cover your flanks! Don’t let them break the lines!” He was pointing to every side of the defensive formation. “Just a little bit longer and we can bail!”
The situation was dire for the soldiers fighting against the onslaught that was being thrown at them. None backed down, however. They steadied their rifles and unloaded clip after clip of ammunition into their enemies. It was a miraculous scene, and Karrel had never viewed a civilian force be so successful at fighting back the hellish creatures.
Still, it was not enough. Karrel spotted an opening in the defensive line near him. He was not the only one to notice this, as a group of three pyretiffs charged the forward guards, all of who were unfortunately listening to the empty clicks of their rifles. The four soldiers fumbled with their ammo-clips and desperately tried to reload, as the pyretiffs barreled down upon their would-be meals.
Karrel sprang into action keeping his green book handy. He sprinted after the threesome of demons, readying his attack. The pyretiffs leaped from heaps of debris to broken building walls, bouncing across the terrain before attempting to pounce on the helpless soldiers. Karrel unfurled his attack upon two of the airborne targets. Purple and blue light flashed in front of him, and two streaks of energy blasted their respective targets out of the sky, scorching the life from them. The remaining demon was left unharmed however, and landed on one of the soldiers, taking a mouthful of the poor man’s flesh into its gullet.
One of the fellow fighters tackled the pyretiff off the screaming soldier, wrestling it to her best effort. Her two squad mates finished reloading their weapons and unloaded the entirety of their clips into the back of the wriggling pyretiff. With a howl of anguish the beast plopped to the floor, lying dead next to the other two demons that had been in its pack.
Karrel crossed the defensive perimeter, double-checking that no more attacks would come in the immediate vicinity and ran to the screaming soldier. Blood was oozing from the multiple holes that had been punched through his chest. The creature’s razor-sharp teeth had made short work of his armor and skin.
“Jesus Christ!” the solider who had wrestled the pyretiff screamed. “What do we do!?”
Inspecting the blood-soaked man on the ground one final time, Karrel turned toward the soldier. “He needs medical attention,” he lied. “Bring him back to the trucks.” There was no hope for the dying man; he would be dead in the next few seconds. The soldiers nodded their heads however, and one of them began carrying their terminal friend to the transports in the backline. At least this way they would have a body to bury.
Karrel looked back to the remaining two guards. “Stay here,” he commanded. “I’ll let Dane know that this area needs reinforcing.” They nodded, still disoriented by what had just happened, and faced back to where they had been defending. Apparently, the two streaks of purple and blue death had, at the very least, earned him the right to issue commands to these two soldiers.
Karrel bolted toward Dane’s position, who was smack dab in the middle of the defensive perimeter. It was where the demons were hitting the hardest. A group of zweichars were slowly pushing against the front line, using their wings to shield themselves and other demons from the bullets being rained down upon them. Occasionally, a pyretiff would pop out from the cover of the wings and lob a blistering blob of molten liquid down upon the soldiers. It would melt away the cover and the more experienced Survivor’s Guild soldiers would shift their positions accordingly. It surprised Karrel to see how well-trained some of them were for a full-scale assault.
A single soldier stood out from amongst the masses. Karrel recognized the short brown hair and the worn cargo shorts underneath her all-but-burnt-away armored leg-paddings. Kailey was fighting fiercely, all the while organizing multiple squads amongst the chaos. Dane may have been the one shouting the directions from atop his metal pedestal, but Kailey was the one who was enforcing the orders.
Forcefully pointing in the direction of a small group of riflemen, Kailey barked out her commands, “Fall back! Now!” The soldiers hastily left the flipped over dumpster they had been using as cover. As they dropped back to the broken wreckage of an old automobile, three globs of molten liquid covered the dumpster and its surrounding area. The oversized trashcan dissolved in seconds, and the area the soldiers had recently vacated burst into flames.
A zweichar jumped on the opportunity, picking up a recently snapped girder and chucking it at the repositioning men and women.
Kailey dropped to her stomach, scarcely dodging the frisbeeing scrap of steel. The improvised projectile crashed to a halt, smacking into one of the armored convoy trucks near where the soldiers had just moved. The force of the blow almost flipped the truck. Kailey didn’t waste any time. She waved her arm forward, shouting, “The one that just tried to decapitate me! I want him gone!”
Simultaneously, three small squads unloaded the full force of their weapons upon the single zweichar. It tried to wrap its wings around its body to shield itself from the barrage, but one of the soldiers had fired a rocket. The explosive connected with the zweichar, blowing its wings to pieces and allowing the hail of bullets to find their way into its chest, stomach, legs, and arms.
Once again, Kailey wasted no time as her designated target fell to the ground lifeless. She began firing her dual-pistols at a different target, all the while yelling, “With me! With me!” The other soldiers followed suit and began firing at whichever target Kailey and her bullets had sentenced to death. From what Karrel could tell, this coordinated focus fire was the only thing keeping the swarm of demons at bay.
Karrel sprinted to Dane. The leader of the Survivor’s Guild was multitasking, firing his rifle while organizing the evacuation through a small radio device strapped to his wrist. Karrel could hear him swearing at someone over the radio, hollering that he didn’t care how cramped the trucks were.
“Dane!” Karrel shouted. “Your two o’clock needs reinforcing!”
Dane swiftly commanded three nearby soldiers to advance toward the forward-right position, before glancing upward to see who had given the advice.
A small look of relief snuck its way into Dane’s stern demeanor, as he watched Karrel approach. “Perfect!” he said. He ges
tured to the defensive perimeter opposite to where Karrel was standing. “Our left flank is gone! Johnny is holding it, but he could probably use your help!”
Karrel let out a sigh of relief. At least Johnny was okay. Heading in the direction that Dane had pointed him in, he called out once more, “How much time do you need!?”
Dane picked up a long metal tube that had been sitting next to him. He hit a button on the side of the cylinder, and the back of the device exploded in fire. From the front, a metallic rocket soared out onto the battlefield, connecting with a pack of demons and sending them flying. “Three minutes!” he roared. “That’s it! We just need three more minutes!”
As Karrel ran toward his new goal, he caught a glimpse of the people who had been rescued from Sinwatch. Large groups of citizens were being funneled into the largest of the Survivor’s Guild’s transport vehicles. Crying mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters slumped their way into the backs of the vehicles, tears streaming down their faces as they took in one final view of their city, burning away.
Karrel looked away from the sight. It was sickening to see the number of people who had been ripped from their homes. It was even more sickening when Karrel realized that he was only witnessing hundreds of survivors, when this city had housed thousands.
“Get down!” a familiar voice yelled. A cluster of bricks and stone rained down on top of Karrel. Dodging out of the way and rolling back onto his feet, Karrel jumped into some nearby cover. He peaked his head out to see what had thrown the rubbish at him.
A short distance away a zweichar was facing him with its arm outstretched. Fortunately, this wouldn’t be a problem Karrel would have to deal with, as a blur was shooting toward the exposed demon.
Puck was charging directly at the massive beast. A thick slab of rock was following above him, floating alongside his trajectory. The rock looked like a thick, pointed, triangular stalagmite, as though Puck had telekinetically cut a lump of the earth to form a makeshift spear.
The winged demon’s attention was on Karrel, so Puck had no need for stealth. He jumped over a burning pile of wreckage, the triangular chunk of rock still following him. Punching one of his palms forward, the floating piece of earth rocketed toward the zweichar. It pierced through skin and muscle, pinning the monster to the ground. The thick side of the triangular spear was still protruding out of the zweichar and was now painted with orange blood. The twitching hunk of meat laid on the floor for a few moments, attempting to remove the protrusion, but it quickly lost consciousness.
Puck ducked behind the same piece of cover that was protecting Karrel. “Welcome back to the party!” he exclaimed.
“Yeah…” Karrel groaned. “Dane says he needs three minutes. What’s the situation like?”
Puck peaked out from cover, surveying the landscape. “It aint too bad,” he remarked. “Johnny and his little toys are holding the west side, but most of our backup is dead. We’re stopping anything that’s smart enough to just hop over the wall of trucks.”
Karrel shot his gaze to where Puck had said Johnny was. Sure enough, Karrel could spot Johnny’s figure standing out in the open. He had surrounded himself with what looked like several different variations of the self-building turrets that Karrel had seen him use before. The gun emplacements were rapidly shifting from target to target, firing whenever they felt their aim was sufficient.
Karrel turned back to Puck. “What about Angel?” he asked.
Just then, an incredible gust of wind rushed past both Puck and Karrel. They watched as a humanoid figure, obscured by the sheer speed it had contained, smashed into the rock wall behind them. A small cloud of navy-blue smoke puffed out from the victim.
“Angel!” Karrel shouted as he rushed to help his friend who was now engraved in rock, his limbs spread-eagle.
Puck however, did not seem very worried. “Relax,” he insisted. “He loves making entrances like that.”
Angel’s head lifted. He began prying himself from the human-shaped crater that had been left in the wall. “No…” he grunted painfully. “No, I do not…” Brushing the debris off himself, Angel’s gaze met Karrel’s, and a smile cracked across his face. “Ah! You’re still alive! See, Puck? You have no faith!” Angel extended his hand out to Puck, his palm facing directly upward.
Puck sighed as he muttered out, “Yeah, yeah…” He pulled two cartons of cigarettes from his pocket, placing it into the hand of Angel.
The dark-eyed individual giggled as he opened one of the packs and popped a cig into his mouth, lighting it with his ignitor that had miraculously survived the recent carnage. As he took a quick drag from the cigarette, he inquired about the situation. “How much longer are we going to be here for?” he asked.
Puck started to usher the group closer to where Johnny had been guarding while answering the question. “Dane said three minutes… Knowing him, that means five.”
“Alright then,” Angel chuckled, “let’s see if we can’t give him ten.”
The three of them regrouped with Johnny as fast as they possibly could. Johnny was standing next to a formation of three of his turrets. Two of them were slightly covered in the searing liquid that the pyretiffs loved to fire off, however, it did not seem to be having any effect. All of them were sporadically shifting from aiming at the ground to aiming at the sky as they picked their targets and fired their large slugs accordingly.
One of Johnny’s hands was fully engulfed in the same metallic substance that his weapon emplacements were composed of. The silver substance had taken the shape of a large barrel, and the end of Johnny’s arm almost looked like a cannon now. Every once in a while, Johnny would aim his cannon-arm, a few loud thumping noises would erupt, and a pyretiff would then be erased from existence, its body blasted into pieces.
Angel shot forward with a plume of black smoke following him. He landed next to Johnny, tapping on his shoulder. “Five minutes,” he said, and then propelled himself back into the air shooting a barrage of smoke out into a nearby group of zweichar.
Johnny nodded his head as Angel left. He turned toward Karrel. “New guy!” he commanded. “I require assistance!” He then turned his attention to Puck. “You watch our backs!”
For the next five minutes, the comrades fought with all their dwindling might. Johnny’s turrets seemed to be getting smaller and smaller as they continuously fired into the onslaught that was trying to break through. Angel provided air support, shooting powerful blasts of his shadowy smoke into the charging demons. Karrel blasted everything in sight, exhausting the pages of his green book as variable after variable turned blue from overuse. Anything that could fly or attempted to flank the group was met with a shotgun blast of scattered debris and the whimsical snickers of Puck.
Finally, Dane could be heard shouting at the top of his voice, and through all the radio comms, “Everyone’s in! It’s time to bail, boys and girls!”
Angel, Puck, and Karrel all nodded at each other, and they immediately began to fall back to the evacuation zone. Johnny took a few moments to recapture his gear. His metallic turrets broke themselves down, forming into small puddles of a mercury-like substance before reforming themselves into the small silver shapes that he wore around his belt. Johnny picked them up and followed the other three, keeping pace.
A few soldiers provided covering fire as the rest of the troops packed themselves into the convoy. The wall of armored vehicles, which had made up the defensive perimeter, had begun to mobilize and move back toward the evacuation zone; the trucks near where Johnny had been guarding stayed where they were, however. Karrel wondered how much of a loss that would end up being in the long run.
The four boys threw themselves into the steel-carriage that Dane had reserved, and watched as their transport, along with all the others, accelerated out of the town. Because of the covering fire emitted from the tops of the armored vehicles, the pyretiffs and zweichars were unable to keep pace with the iron-clad convoy, however the umbrabats were taking any chance they could to
dive down on top of the rolling blocks of steel. Their attacks were in vain though, as a section of gunners were focused on making quick work of anything that flew too close. The advantage of mobility that the umbrabats possessed had diminished now that the convoy was moving. Eventually the attacks stopped, and everyone was able to rest a little easier as they were taken away from the fallen city of Sinwatch.
Karrel slumped in his seat, peering out of the open side of the truck. Just a few hours ago he had entered the town that he saw before him. It would not have been amongst his first choices, back when he needed to restock at cities whenever he could. It was no metropolis either. But, its buildings had stood tall, its food was edible, and it had been called home by thousands of residents.
Now it was a smoldering wreck. Its buildings were on fire, the streets were destroyed, and the air around it was thick with smoke and ash. The city was vacant of human life, or soon would be if there were any that had been left behind. A few short hours, and Sinwatch had become indistinguishable from the abandoned ghost towns that Karrel used to scavenge through.
He couldn’t help but notice that there were far fewer trucks with the convoy then had originally been brought. Even so, his vehicle seemed rather empty given that the number of transports had decreased. It was only Johnny, Puck, Angel, Dane, Kailey, and four of Kailey’s squad. No civilians were aboard. Karrel wondered whether the Survivor’s Guild had gained, or lost, more people today.
The vacancy had reminded Karrel of something, and he brought his attention to Kailey. She was checking her gear. It was busy work, to take her mind off the recent events, and Karrel noticed. However, even though he didn’t want to know the answer to his own question, his curiosity took control. He tapped Kailey on the shoulder and quietly asked, “Where’s Samantha?”
Karrel instantly regretted the question. Kailey was fighting back tears. “A zweichar broke through the lines,” she said, misty-eyed. “The new girl… hesitated.” A single tear broke through Kailey’s willpower, and she turned away from Karrel, returning to her busy work.
Kin of Exile Page 15
