So I bit my lip and blazed away at where Caleb was peeking his stupid head out of the windows about halfway up the building. A few bursts convinced him that it was a bad idea to try to take another shot at us, and I was able to get a look at what Cass’s cannon was accomplishing.
She was laying into that golem, big time. Thump thump thump, the cannon went, over and over again, thump thump thump, and with each burst, big hefty chunks of golem blasted out of the legs on the close side of the creature. Eventually, the damage from the cannon rounds became severe enough to sever first one and then another of the thick, fleshy legs, and the giant crab golem’s body tilted wildly as it struggled to maintain its own massive weight.
“It’s working, Cass!” I said.
Our vehicle continued its tight turn around the golem, bringing us away from the building and towards the onrushing mob of ghouls coming in from every corner of the city. I made an executive decision that Caleb would have to wait his damn turn to get shot at, so that I could try to at least slow the rush of ghouls down.
“Mickey, watch for Caleb!” I said.
The cannon kept going off underneath me, thump thump thump, but I couldn’t spare a moment to look to see if it was working. All my efforts went into shooting burst after burst into the mob of ghouls rushing us. Like golems, you have to get head shots on ghouls to kill them, but that wasn’t likely to happen in this situation, so I borrowed a tactic from Dread’s playbook and aimed low to shoot their legs out from underneath them.
After all, I didn’t need to kill them. Only slow them down long enough to keep them away from the vehicle until Dread did whatever neato maneuver he was planning to do in order to get us out of this pickle.
The ghouls in the front ranks began to fall as I raked them across the legs with machinegun fire, and as they fell, they tripped up the ghouls behind them. I could see that it was having a bit of a domino effect, stumbling the mob as they slowed to clamber over the top of their damaged buddies.
Felt good. Until, my brain started to realize that even slowed down, the mob was going to be on top of us before we finished our pass around the golem and started heading back toward the building. Then, it felt bad.
“Dread,” I said, “you’ve got to speed up that turn or the ghouls will be on us!”
“Can’t,” he said. “We’ll get too close to the golem.”
I stole another glance and saw that the golem was now using its four big stabby limbs to try to drag itself towards us. Most of its legs were blasted away, but the stabby limbs swung downwards and drove maybe a foot deep into the asphalt every time they hit.
Yeah, we definitely didn’t want to get hit by one of those.
Cass’s cannon fire cut through the last of the golem’s legs on the close side, and the bulk of the golem came crashing down with a thud that we could feel even inside the heavy vehicle. The big bastard tried to drag itself after us using only its long stabby limbs, but it didn’t seem to be able to pull all of its weight that way.
Cass didn’t let up; she kept unloading into the thing, but I couldn’t watch to see what happened because the flood of ghouls lapped up against our vehicle as we completed our turn around the golem and started heading back toward the building. A few of them went under the heavy wheels, and the vehicle shook a little as we thumped our way over them.
A few more, though, managed to grab on to the rear of the vehicle and pull themselves up onto the chassis. One of them made the mistake of pulling itself up right in front of the cannon, and with the next thump thump thump, it pretty much blew completely apart, and I have to admit, I had a little giggle inside even as I felt the panic of close contact with the other ghouls on the back of the vehicle.
“Shifty!” Mickey shouted, pointing at them.
“No shit, Mickey, shoot them!” I shouted back.
They were too close for me to point the machinegun at them, three of them crawling up the back of the LAV. Mickey shot the one on the far right… I think she emptied her entire magazine into it in her panic… and reluctantly, I let go of my new favorite gun, so that I could knock the other two off the back of the vehicle with a pressor wave.
“Whoa!” Mickey said. “I didn’t know you could do that!”
I gave her a little smile and blew on my fingers like a gunslinger blowing smoke off the barrel of his gun. We pulled away from the disabled golem and the mass of ghouls rushing us, putting distance between us and them with every second.
Now that the immediate danger was over, I could see that we were making a direct beeline for the front entrance of the Revival Tech building. The entrance jutted out from the front of the building like a little airlock; a one-story roof and walls with a wide set of glass double doors in front, and then another set of glass double doors beyond that, leading into the building.
“What’s the plan here, Dread?” I asked.
“Shifty,” he said, “you and Mickey are going to want to get down out of that turret. Everybody, brace yourselves.”
Brace yourselves? What the hell was that all about? I clearly wasn’t the only one wondering, because as Mickey and I climbed down into the vehicle, Cass left the gunner’s seat and got into the front with Dread.
“Dread?” she said. “What are you doing?”
“I got this,” he said.
She looked through the front viewing port. “I don’t know what that means.”
“I got this.”
Whatever Cass saw through the view port, it made her jump into the passenger seat and brace her legs with a look of terror on her face, and I had just enough time to think well, that’s not good, when there was a loud thump and the vehicle lurched as we vaulted the curb on the sidewalk in front of the building. Too late, I realized that Dread was going to ram the building, and I tried to brace myself into one of the little seats scattered around the back of the vehicle as our fourteen ton LAV crashed through the entranceway of Revival Technologies, Inc., in a shower of glass and steel.
I went flying. We all did. The four of us in the back of the vehicle ricocheted off each other like Ping Pong balls, finally falling to the floor as the vehicle smashed through the front entrance and came to a grinding halt, the LAV half-in, half-out of the building, jammed in the entrance like a finger stuck in a dike.
I pushed Mickey off me and looked around. The four of us were piled up on top of each other in the back of the vehicle in a tangle of awkward limbs, but it didn’t look like anybody was hurt.
“Well,” Dread announced from the driver’s seat. “We’re here.”
***
“You never get to drive again,” Cass said. “Never.”
“We’re in, aren’t we?” Dread said. “The hatches are far enough through the doorway that we can climb out and into the lobby. And, we’ve got fourteen tons of light armored vehicle blocking the entrance, so none of that insanity outside can get in after us. I’d say I nailed it. Is everybody okay back there?”
“Tell me the truth, Dread,” Shifty said. “Are you secretly trying to kill the rest of us?”
“Bunch of nags,” Dread said.
“Let’s get moving,” Cass said. “Up and out of the hatches, fast. Watch out for close contact.”
“Grab those gear bags. Don’t leave anything behind,” Dread said. “And Mickey… try not to lose your weapon this time.”
“That’s not fair!” Mickey said.
Dread stared at her.
“Okay, that’s fair. But it’s not nice. I didn’t say anything about your driving.”
Cass pushed her way up and out of the driver’s hatch as Dread collected his gear. She’d switched on the flashlight mounted on her weapon as a precaution against the building being pitch-black once they were inside, but it turned out to be unnecessary.
“Lights are on. The building still has power. Not sure how,” she said.
“It has its own generators,” Mickey said as she crawled out of the hatch to join Cass on top of the vehicle’s hull. “I used to work here, remembe
r?”
“Hopefully that will work in our… contact left!” Cass said, snapping her weapon up to her shoulder.
A pair of ghouls rushed them from the far side of the lobby. Cass was easily able to shoot both of them before they got anywhere near the vehicle, but she didn’t let her guard down. She knew more would be coming, and soon.
“Hurry up in there!” Cass shouted down into the vehicle, helping to pull Jolly up and out of the hatch.
“Oh! On my side, there’s… I mean, contact right!” Mickey said.
“Handle it,” Cass said, her hands full now with helping Shifty get out of the vehicle.
A few short bursts spat out of Mickey’s weapon, followed by her saying, “I got it! I got it! I think there was only one of them, though.”
“Where are the rest of them?” Shifty asked.
“On the way, don’t you worry,” Cass said. “Kel didn’t need them down here because of that monstrosity in the parking lot. But she can see through the eyes of the ghouls, so those three we just dinged were sent down to scout out what was what in the lobby.”
Lysette pulled herself easily out of the hatch and joined them on top of the vehicle. “And now she’s sending everything she’s got down the stairs after us. Right?”
“Right.”
“Can you fit through that hatch, Beef?” Lysette said into the vehicle.
“If you move your bony ass out of the way,” Dread said, handing up a bag of equipment to her.
“All right, let’s move,” Cass said, once everyone was assembled in front of the vehicle. “Mickey, I take it that big desk on the far side of the lobby is Security?”
“Um, yeah, we always needed to check in with our little badges before they’d let us go up the elevators.”
“Where are the elevators?”
“Past the desk.”
“Right. Everyone move up to that position.”
“Get into formation,” Dread said, working the action on his F-shok. “Watch your sectors as we move.”
The six of them moved across the lobby as one, weapons shouldered and waving slowly back and forth as they scanned the lobby for any threats. Nothing was there to challenge them. Something about not seeing anything made Cass feel worse than if they’d had something to deal with straight away.
Kel’s gathering her troops together right now, she thought. Massing them for a concentrated all-out assault on us. Once they’re all together, then they’ll come. In numbers.
They reached the security desk without incident. Cass looped around behind it, looking over the pair of computers quickly, and let out a grunt of surprise.
“What?” Dread asked.
“One them is logged in,” she said.
“Kel left the security computer logged in?” Mickey said. “So anybody could access it? Why would she do that?”
“It was an oversight,” Cass said.
“What?”
“She screwed up. She didn’t think of it. Don’t get fooled, Mickey. Everybody sees a powerful mage like Kel and thinks she’s omniscient; all knowing, all seeing. She’s not. She’s just a person. Smart, yes. Powerful, yes. But nobody’s perfect.”
“Not yet,” Lysette said. “If she uses that machine…”
“There’s no telling what she’ll become,” Cass said. “So let’s make certain that doesn’t happen.”
“So what does access to that computer do for us?” Jolly asked.
“For starters,” Cass said, tapping on the mouse to navigate through the computer’s options, “I can look at their camera feeds and…”
She stopped short. There, on the camera feeds, she could see ghouls and conjurations of all shapes and sizes rushing down the hallways of every floor above her, sprinting towards the stairwells. Every camera she looked at showed more of the same; an unstoppable, innumerable horde of nightmares pushing out toward either end of the building and pouring down the stairwells like a tidal wave of death.
Holy shit, almost escaped from her lips, but she bit down hard on those words, stomped down hard on those thoughts before they could take hold. Get mean, Cass. Get mean. Fuck it. You’ve seen worse.
She wasn’t sure about that last part, but she knew that if her voice cracked or her façade broke even a hair, her team might lose their nerve and the fight would be over before it began. Cass took a moment to clear her throat, clear her thoughts, nodded to herself as if she were thinking things over.
“Cass?” Dread said.
“Get ready for contact,” Cass said, and her voice was steady. “From both stairwells.”
“How much contact?”
She looked at him. “Contact in force.”
Cass tried to make him see how bad the situation with her eyes, rather than say the bad news out loud. He seemed to get the message; he set his jaw grimly and lowered his shoulders the way he did when he was getting himself ready for a fight.
“Shifty, you’re with me on the right,” he said, his smooth baritone already chasing away the last of Cass’s nerves. “Jolly and Mickey, you’re with Lys on the left.”
“Wait,” Cass said. “Mickey… check the elevators.”
“They’re right here,” Mickey said from the elevator lobby. “I mean, on this floor. Both of them. Why don’t we just go up before anything can come get us?”
“Because if we do that, wherever we get off, they’ll run up to that floor and we’ll have the same problem all over again,” Cass said. “I need to come up with a way to contain them or throw them off or something.”
“All right, guys,” Dread said, “we need to buy her some time. Get ready to fight.”
“Not you, Mickey,” Cass said. “You keep the elevators open.”
“Both of them?”
“Yes.”
The elevators were the only way out, Cass knew that, but the question kept coming back; then what? Then what?
Kel could see through the eyes of her ghouls; she could have one of them watch the console above the elevator and see where they got off, and then the horde would rush them on that floor. Or, she might have left stragglers behind for this very reason, ghouls on each floor to act as scouts to spot which floor they got off on.
Think, Cass, think, she told herself. This is what you do. Remember? Everyone keeps telling you about how you can think around corners, so start thinking around corners.
“Contact!” she heard Dread shout, followed by the rumble of his F-shok rattling out its lethal staccato.
More weapons joined in, but Cass had to tune all of that out, tune out all of the noise, all of the pressure, tune out everything but the problem. Nothing existed but the problem. Nothing mattered but the problem.
“There’s a lot of them!” someone shouted, but Cass was completely absorbed in staring at the computer screen in front of her.
Pouring down the stairs like a waterfall. Emptying a glass of water. Diving into the deep end of the pool. Swimming up from the bottom.
“Frag out!” Shifty said, and a few seconds later, there was the curt crumple of an exploding grenade.
“Forget the grenades,” Dread said. “Use a pressor wave to push them back to the door. We need to bottle them up there.”
She pushed out the noise, focusing back on her problem. The solution was in there somewhere; somewhere in the midst of those images swirling through her mind.
Emptying the glass. Nothing left. An empty glass. Nothing left to drink. Crying over spilled milk. Everything on the floor.
There was something she was missing, something she couldn’t quite grab on to, something important…
Running from the wolves. Climbing up the tree. Getting above the lower branches. Up and out of reach.
There it was. She snapped out of her haze, looking quickly around the lobby to take in the situation.
It wasn’t good.
Ghouls and conjurations were pushing in through the stairway doors on both sides of the lobby. Dread and Shifty were able to hold back the enemy on their side with a combination
of shields and heavy firepower, but on the other side, ghouls and bouda were able to break out of the doorway and slip further and further into the lobby before finally being shot down.
“Dread,” Cass said. “We need to hold this position a little longer.”
He gave her the briefest of looks. “You heard the lady, people. Pour it on!”
“I’m out!” Jolly said on the left flank. “I’m out of ammo! We need to get out of here, now!”
“Not yet,” Cass said, joining Jolly and Lysette on the left. “Lys, we need to hold for a little longer.”
Lysette kept her eyes forward, firing. “This flank won’t hold.”
Cass could see what she meant. Ghouls and conjurations littered the floor in front of the stairwell, but more kept coming in a constant stream, heedless of the hail of gunfire that met them. Cass joined the two of them in firing at the horde, but their submachineguns didn’t seem to have enough firepower to hold them back.
“Lys,” she said. “That machinegun on the turret. On the vehicle. I think you should be able to swing it around and fire on that stairwell door.”
Lysette glanced at the LAV. “On it.”
With that, the Adept lowered her weapon and sprinted across the lobby, her enhanced legs taking her at a speed that seemed to defy the laws of physics. As she approached the huge vehicle thrust halfway through the lobby entrance, she smoothly leapt up onto the hull without so much as breaking stride, as easily as Cass might hop up onto a sidewalk from the street.
Damn, I wish I could do that, Cass thought, before opening up again on the mass of ghouls and bouda bearing down on her.
Seconds later, heavy gunfire rattled from the top of the LAV. Tracer fire lanced across the lobby and into the ghouls and conjurations crowding out of the stairwell, forcing them back with a storm of bullets.
“Good,” Cass said, reloading her weapon. “Good. Jolly, help Dread and Shifty on the right. Tell them Lys is holding the left.”
Mage Hunters Box Set Page 72
