Allie's War Season Three (97 page)

But this time, he let her go only reluctantly.

Since they'd left the house, whatever worry Revik had for Allie only seemed to be making him more aggressive. For the first time he could remember, Jon had been nearly afraid of him. Or maybe
for
him. He was acting just the slightest bit crazy again, at least in terms of his light. On the surface, however, he appeared only to be hyper-focused.

"Move," he sent through a subvocalization via the headset, his voice hard. "Now, Jon...keep your head down, and get the three of them over to that slight overpass..."

Jon didn't wait to pinpoint the exact location with his eyes. Instead, he followed the prod of Revik's mind to the walking path onto the sand, which did leave a shadowed area underneath where they could be protected from view on more sides. Without Jon having to ask them to come along with him, Tina, Jaden and Angeline moved quickly, seemingly with their eyes trained on his feet. Jon had to assume Revik was behind that, too.

They'd made their way to the shore mostly via the park, with Revik in front and Jon right behind him. Neela stayed with Gar and the others, but they'd brought Illeg. She took up the rear position, since Revik wanted Jon next to him at all times.

It seemed like Revik spent every other step telling Jon what he should be doing with his light, or even with his physical eyes. All of them had their guns out by then, but their path had been clear so far, apart from a few buffalos in the north paddock...and more dead bodies, of course.

They'd moved a lot quicker than they had getting from the drop zone to Jaden's house, but Jon understood that, too. Gar and the others left the house at the same time that they did, in an armored SUV with most of the humans in the back, guarded by Jorag, Neela and Poresh holding automatic rifles. Gar drove, of course, with Deklan riding shotgun, both literally and figuratively.

The idea had been to force any watching Lao Hu to split their forces to follow. They also each held cloaks to confuse who traveled with which group, in the hopes that the Lao Hu infiltrators might hesitate before openly attacking one of the telekinetics.

They also hoped that Neela ––

"Quiet, Jon," Revik warned him. "Your thoughts are too loud."

Despite the wind, Revik's subvocalized words were loud in Jon's headset. He glanced at the tall seer, who remained a good thirty feet away, and nodded.

"Remember," Revik added, his voice subdued. "We don't have Allie shielding us anymore."

"I thought she taught you all of that stuff," Jon ventured to ask, glancing back at the other segment of wall, where Revik remained, scouring the nearby buildings with high-powered binoculars.

"She did," Revik said, his eyes still on the horizon with the binoculars. "But I'm not as good at it as she is. And Jon...you need to start acting like an infiltrator. Stop fucking around and watch the ocean...I need you to look for the signal. Use your sight, but don't go outside the shield. And don't
think
about anything, goddamn it. I can't afford to babysit you out here..."

Jon didn't answer, but bit his lip, embarrassed, but also borderline angry. He was tired of reminding them he wasn't like them, though. Hell, he wasn't even a seer. None of them seemed to care anymore, though...and maybe they were right.

"The boat is here," Jon said a few seconds later.

"Where?" Revik glanced at him, but only briefly before his eyes returned to the windows of the nearby buildings.

"Near the baths...they don't want to come in the open until they know we're here."

"Are they in range of the headsets?"

Jon hesitated. "I don't know. The baths are about a half-mile up the shore, if that helps."

Revik nodded. "It does. We'll head to the cliffs."

Jon nodded and within minutes found himself running after Revik, with Illeg controlling the humans to run behind them in a straight line. All six of them ran at a crouch, but Revik moved so quickly that Jon found himself panting in seconds, fighting to keep his breathing quiet when Revik slammed him with his light for making noise. They'd made it most of the way to where the sea wall ended, when Revik came to a sudden stop, once again pressed against the wall. Jon stopped with him...nearly crashed into him, in fact, and might have, if Revik hadn't had a pretty good lead on him already. While he crouched there, Jon fought both to breathe quietly and to get enough air that he would be able to run again, when Revik demanded it.

He was beginning to understand why Wreg laughed at him when Jon told him that training under Revik would be easier.

Jon peered ahead as best as he could, and Revik slammed him again, that time for coming off the wall, especially with his head. Jon looked up, and saw why Revik had hesitated. He hadn't stopped there only because the sea wall had ended, but because above them stood Balboa Park, which housed enough trees to provide cover for anyone with a high-powered rifle. The wall gave way to a slope of gravel, sand and rock that protected them (mostly) from sight from the highway above...but not from that higher hill of the park.

If anyone waited for them there, they'd be walking into a turkey shoot.

Jon still hadn't seen a single car, not since they'd left the park.

He'd heard a few while they were running through the trees of the park itself, and saw one or two going down Fulton, most with radios blaring and enough metal coming out the side that they had to be carrying serious firepower. Revik said they hadn't been Lao Hu, SCARB or one of the other seer factions, so likely human gangs had taken over the area when the military pulled out. Jon even thought he heard a few cars cruising the park roads themselves, either JFK Drive or one of the smaller roads that popped off on the Richmond side, like the one on 43rd Avenue. He watched Revik carefully each time the sound of an engine reached his ears, but apart from a few minor reactions, Revik seemed mostly indifferent to them.

Far more than those few bouts of sub-woofer stereos and trucks crammed with cranked up kids, Jon found himself unnerved by the silence. He'd lived in this city most of his life, and never had he ever heard it as quiet as this. Gunshots sounded in the distance, here and there...in what sounded like the more northern part of the Richmond District, as well as further south in the park itself. He heard the murmur of louder sounds further south, and saw smoke coming from several different directions, including what looked like the Marina, the downtown area and the rough direction of the Mission District.

But the overbearing quiet overlay even those rumblings. Somehow, Jon found that silence more eerie than the few sounds of conflict he could make out. Now, on the beach, the waves created a white noise that somehow deepened that quiet more.

Jon understood why Revik might be nervous.

Hell,
he
was nervous, and he didn't even really know why.

"I'll go first," Revik said through the headset. "If nothing happens, I'll signal for you to follow." He pointed at the cliffs, maybe a hundred yards north of that last segment of wall. "We'll meet up there..."

For the first time, Jon found himself disagreeing, shaking his head.

"No, man."

Revik gave him a hard look.

"As in no, you're not going first," Jon added. "...In case that wasn't clear."

"Someone has to go." Revik's voice grew dismissive. He turned, looking back up at the trees of Balboa Park. "Once we get to the cliffs, we can call the boat in to get us."

"Can't you call them from here?" Jon said. "If they're already there, we can make a run for it...have them cover us."

Revik gave him a half-smile. Clicking softly, he nodded. "All right." He looked at Jon, his eyes narrow. "It's risky though, Jon. It'll make the boat a target. If there's anyone on those cliffs over the water, they could sink our only transport out of here..."

Jon shrugged, his words uncompromising. "So we'll go to the Marina. Find a different boat. We're not using you as shooting gallery bait, man...you're a lot more valuable than the rest of us, and don't pretend you aren't..."

Revik shrugged, one-handed. Jon could tell he didn't fully agree with him by the way he did it, but he seemed willing to compromise, which had been more than Jon expected. He waited while Revik appeared to be contacting the boat.

A few seconds later, he glanced at Jon.

"Okay. They agree...we do it your way." He glanced down the line at Illeg, who seemed to have heard everything, too.

"I agree with Jon," she said, adding, "...For the record, boss."

"Noted," he said.

His eyes were back on the forested cliffs though, and likely his sight as well. Jon kept his own eyes trained on the sandier cliffs over the ocean and the water beyond, looking for the boat.

It seemed like forever that they held in that position, with Revik's focus on the park and the road, and Jon watching the sea. When he first saw the dark shape of the boat, Jon almost didn't make it out from the rocks and the dark water itself.

"It's there," he said, a few seconds later. "I see it." He looked at Revik, then glanced apologetically at Illeg. "Let Illeg go first," he said. "Cover her with the telekinesis..."

Illeg immediately jumped to his defense, before Revik could open his mouth.

"Agreed," she said. "He's right, boss...I'll run scout. You cover me."

Revik looked between the two of them, frowning. After a longish pause where he seemed to be thinking, he nodded, once. "Agreed."

Without waiting, maybe because she worried he'd change his mind, Illeg took off across the sand between the cement wall and the cliffs.

Immediately, shots rang out, kicking up tufts of dirt and sand.

Jon pressed his back into the wall, glancing at Jaden, Angeline and Tina to make sure they were doing the same. He only noticed then that Angeline was wearing sandals, and that her feet looked pretty cut up. But he didn't have time to think about that, either. He heard another pattering of shots, then what sounded like a mini-explosion.

Jon glanced at Revik, his back still crushed against the wall. He half-expected to see Illeg dead, but she seemed to have made it across. He saw her holding her shoulder though, from where she crouched behind the cliff, and she was balancing her weight strangely on one leg. Jon glanced at Revik then, and saw that his eyes were glowing. His irises were bright enough to startle Jon, in fact, and he flinched back involuntarily.

"Relax," Revik said, giving him a warning look. "I got three of them...the ones shooting. No way did they use all of their numbers though..." He paused then, his eyes narrow once more. "...They're moving. Heading to the opposite cliff..."

Jon looked up and realized what Revik meant. If they crossed the road from the park, they would be able to shoot down on Illeg where she stood under the cliffs. Another turkey shoot, but one they wouldn't be able to escape as easily.

"I'm going to send the humans across, Jon," Revik said, giving him a hard look.

Jon hesitated, even as a sick feeling rose in his gut.

He glanced back at Jaden and the others, and the feeling worsened. Even so, he understood the logic, so he only nodded.

Revik appeared relieved that he wasn't going to argue.

Seconds later, presumably from a prompt fed to them by Revik's mind, Jaden, Angeline and Tina burst out of cover in a flat-out run, heading for the cliffs and for Illeg. Jon couldn't tear his eyes off the runners that time, partly because he no longer had anywhere else to look. He heard the guns, the sound coming to his ears seemingly after the puffs of sand rose along the same stretch of beach...and even after the ricochets as bullets hit rock and harder targets.

Then Tina stumbled, thrown face-first into the sand, still about ten yards from the cliffs. From the way she writhed on the ground, holding her leg, she'd apparently been hit in the thigh. Jaden stopped to grab her arm and pull her up...then he got hit somewhere in the upper body, hard enough that he stumbled, falling into her. Angeline, who ran the fastest of the three by far, streaked across the sand and seemed to make it to the cliff on the other side unharmed. She didn't even appear to notice what had happened until Illeg had her under the shadow of the rocks.

Jon found himself staring at Jaden and Tina.

The shots had lessened, enough that Jon knew they probably weren't aiming to kill, or the two of them would be dead already.

Even so, looking at them there, they seemed like animals caught in a snare.

He didn't know he was going to do it until he'd already done it.