Defenders (45 page)

Kai smiled sadly. “Everybody’s done their part. There’s no one who’s coming fresh to this fight.”

Lila inhaled to say something, then simply hugged him tighter. “I don’t know what I’ll do if you die out there.”

He didn’t want to make a promise that was outside his control. “Soon we’ll be able to live a normal, boring life. You, me, and Errol.” He lifted the rifle, turned toward the door. “I’ll meet you at Oliver’s apartment.”

“That’s another reason I wanted you to come,” Lila called after him. “They kicked me out. I’m not being a team player.”

“Be a team player. Just go, before things get too bad out there. They love you.”

“Five doesn’t love me.”

Kai laughed. “Well no, Five doesn’t.”

“When will you meet me there?”

He looked back at her. “When I’m too tired to fight. Figure twenty-four hours.”

As soon as Kai was outside, a Luyten was in his head.

Head toward Lester Avenue. Eight blocks.

When Kai reached for his keys, the Luyten added,
We’re setting up roadblocks to slow the defenders’ tanks
.
Go on foot. We can use that assault rifle. And congratulations on your kill. Sometimes Lila’s past blinds her to some harsh realities; put her reaction out of your mind and focus on the fight at hand. She loves you. She’s thinking about how much she loves you right now; she regrets the accusation she made.

Kai was sure the Luyten speaking in his head was neither Five nor the crimson one, yet it spoke as if it were an old friend, or, better yet, his shrink. He hadn’t realized they were offering soldiers psychological services as well as tactical direction.

He also hadn’t realized he was letting the encounter with Lila bother him, but he’d take the Luyten’s word for it. He willed himself to focus on the landscape, the smell of oily smoke, the sound of gunfire and, farther off, artillery fire. A defender fighter jet roared past overhead, flying close to the ground.

The streets were nearly empty. People appeared and disappeared, running bent at the waist, carrying axes or knives. They were men and women, young and old. Occasionally someone passed who looked to be flat-out fleeing. Kai wondered if some were refusing to follow the Luyten’s directions.

Some. About a third, although the number is dropping as they see others fight alongside us. You’re highly social animals. Like us.

As he approached Lester Avenue, the Luyten said,
Change of plans
.
Get inside the copy store up ahead. The red door.

Kai saw the door it was talking about and hurried inside, his bad leg throbbing.

There’s a staircase in the back.

It led him to an upstairs storage room with windows facing the street, instructed him to bust in the window with the nose of his rifle. He pushed a pallet of boxes filled with reams of paper into place to brace the butt of the rifle, got situated just as a defender trotted into view across the street. It was in full body armor.

Several dozen people advanced on it, surging toward cover behind parked vehicles, behind the corners of buildings. The defender raised his rifle, fired, hit a woman square in the chest. She fell backward, lay unmoving.

Kai didn’t notice the Luyten on the roof above the defender until it leaped, dropping three stories, landing right on the defender’s back. Somehow the defender stayed upright. He tried to angle his rifle to get a shot at the Luyten, while struggling to keep the butcher knife the Luyten was gripping away from his throat. The humans used the opportunity to charge. They closed on the defender from both sides, hacked at his thighs and feet with their makeshift weapons.

Howling in pain, the defender lashed out, slashing them with the blades on his legs and arms. Blood sprayed across the pavement as people suffered terrible wounds and dropped like sacks.

A second defender surged into view. Kai didn’t need the Luyten to tell him what to do: He trained his sights on the defender and squeezed a quick burst from the rifle. It bucked violently. He gripped the rifle with his left hand, held it in place with all of his might, and squeezed off another round, then another, hitting the defender squarely in the chest and knocking it to the ground.

The defender’s body armor meant the shots weren’t lethal, but as soon as it was down, people attacked it, aiming for the face with their blades and bats.

A woman showed up holding a handgun like she knew how to use one, probably former police or military. She pushed into the crowd of assailants and put two slugs in the defender’s face, point-blank.

Thirty seconds later, the street was deserted except for the dead. They were listening to the Luyten. And why not? It was working; the Luyten were coordinating them into an incredibly efficient force, using a million sets of eyes and ears to know what was happening everywhere, benefiting from brains that allowed them to think a dozen things at once, able to move their forces with a split second’s notice. Kai hadn’t realized just how lethal the combination of humans and Luyten would be.

The defenders in your area are withdrawing. That means an air strike is coming. Move.

Kai grabbed the rifle and bolted down the stairs and through the store, out into the street, his hip screaming from the exertion.

Head west—to your left. Run. As fast as you can.

Kai ran.

“What are they doing?” Oliver’s heart had been racing for so long, he was sure a heart attack was imminent. He watched as, on a half dozen of the feeds, the defenders hopped into transport vehicles, or ran, away from the fight.

They’re executing a retrograde action. A tactical retreat. We have an overwhelming advantage in troop numbers, so we’re trying to take the fight close-in, to capitalize on that advantage. Their strength is their weaponry. They want to get their troops away from us, into tanks and bombers. This was one of the weaknesses your military strategists identified: The defenders have plenty of weapons, but most of their troops are embedded within human communities. If we can keep them from reaching those weapons, they can’t use them.

“How are we going to stop them?” Vanessa asked, watching the screen from behind Oliver. Oliver was acutely aware of her hand resting on his shoulder. He thought that maybe, finally, Vanessa was back in his life. This time, he wasn’t going to lose her.

Thanks to our defender “spies,” we know most of their rendezvous points. We’ve been sending our troops to those places, to get between them and their weapons.

“Yes, but Oliver said our troops are poorly armed. They’ll be cut to pieces,” Vanessa said.

Remember all of those armed Luyten encampments we discussed? The ones that made Lila so angry?

“Holy shit,” Oliver said. “They’re heading to these rendezvous points.”

Bingo.

It was Armageddon. No one was going to win. There would be nothing left by the time it was over, nothing but piles of rubble, and a few bloodied humans, mangled Luyten, and burned defenders, still fighting.

Lila hurried down Lester Avenue, past people carrying knives and machetes, past burning buildings. The
thump
of rounds hitting targets registered deep in her belly, reminding her of Australia. The rising chaos played out over flashbacks of Kai lifting and plunging that knife while Erik screamed. She would never have believed Kai capable of that kind of violence, even to save his own life.

But she was thinking of the prewar Kai, the one who hadn’t fought the defenders, hadn’t been shredded by their giant bullets. He wasn’t the same Kai; she had to accept that, and love him just the same.

Up ahead, the road was blocked by a semi tipped on its side. It blocked the intersection so perfectly that Lila was sure it had been put there on purpose. She pulled her Lightfoot to the curb and stepped out. It was four blocks to Oliver’s apartment. She took off at a brisk jog, thankful she’d sworn off heels in favor of jogging shoes since that fateful day in Australia.

Defenders are headed your way. Duck inside—the white door just ahead on your left.
It was her old friend, the crimson Luyten. The door opened before Lila reached it; a plump old woman with dyed red hair waved her in.

“Thanks,” Lila gasped as the woman swung the door closed. The apartment was small and cramped, the walls covered by paintings, all in the same style. “Are you an artist?”

“My daughter.”

Lila nodded as she peered out the living room window. A phalanx of defenders rolled by in big, black troop transport vehicles. The streets were left utterly empty in their wake.

All clear.

“Thank you,” Lila said to the woman as she slipped out. She took off at a run. Less than two blocks. She wondered how things were going. Maybe it was too early to tell. One thing was certain: There would be far fewer beings left alive when this was over. It was hard to believe that not long ago, there had been eight or nine billion humans on the planet. Assuming they won, would there be even one billion left?

Lila spotted Oliver’s apartment less than a block away. She wondered if they’d be happy to see her. When she’d left she’d felt like an outsider, a gadfly. Maybe they needed a gadfly to stay on their guard—

An explosion knocked her to the ground. Chunks of stone and wood rained down, most of it landing short of Lila. The air was suddenly choked with gray smoke; some of the buildings ahead were missing, leaving a ragged gap.

A gap where Oliver’s apartment building had been.

“
Oliver. Dominique.
” Lila scrambled to her feet, ran for the place where the bomb had hit, stumbling through increasingly thick rubble. She had to be wrong; the sudden devastation had disoriented her. That couldn’t have been Oliver’s building. Maybe it was the next block …

It was, Lila. I’m sorry.

“
No!
” Lila pushed through the rubble until she couldn’t get any closer. She gripped a two-by-four, pulled it out of her way, trying to identify where she needed to dig, where Oliver’s living room had been.

She stood, raised her arms toward the sky. “Where are you?
Help me. God damn it, help me find them.
”

Dominique and Forrest are safe, at their apartment. But Oliver, I’m sorry, he’s—

“
Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it.
You come here and help me.” She brushed her hair out of her eyes; her fingers came away bloody. “Why didn’t you warn them? Why didn’t you get them out of there? You warned
me
.”

She spotted the crimson Luyten coming around the corner, bolting toward her on all seven limbs.
We didn’t know. Your spies aren’t everywhere; we only hear pieces of their plans. I’m sorry.

“Get Kai. Tell him we need him.”

All right. We’re telling him now.

“Now help me find them.”

The crimson Luyten joined her among the wreckage. It leaned in, grasped what seemed to be an entire wall tented onto a pile of bricks, and pushed it aside.

“Oliver?” Lila called. He couldn’t be gone; Lila’s mind clamped shut on the possibility. He just couldn’t. “How far away is Kai?”

The crimson Luyten had been straining to lift a support beam; it let the beam drop.
They’re going to firebomb the entire downtown.

“What? When?”

Humans and Luyten keep following their troops, staying close so they can’t use their WMDs. They’re not going to wait for the defenders to get out. We have to run.

“Not until we find him.” She dug at the wreckage. The jagged edge of a window frame sliced her palm as she pushed it aside. “
Oliver?
Was Vanessa with him?”

The Luyten rushed at Lila, getting far too close to her for comfort. Adrenaline coursed through her as it gripped her wrist and ankles with its cilia, hoisted her effortlessly.

She shrieked, thrashing with all of her might. Its skin was rough and lumpy, uncomfortably warm.

We have to get out of here. Please stop struggling.
It took off, hurtling down the street, jostling her violently as it dodged and leaped over debris, sometimes moving on three appendages, sometimes four or five. Suddenly it cut toward the sidewalk, cut into a shaded, open-air mall, and ducked against the wall. It went motionless, not even breathing.

Lila heard defenders pass, their boots thumping.

When the noise receded, the Luyten released an enormous puff of air, then rose and bolted.

As the Luyten galloped, its cilia clenched and relaxed, clenched and relaxed, squeezing Lila. She felt like she was being crushed.

Then she suddenly remembered Kai. “Where is Kai? We have to get him.”

He’s on a bicycle. I can’t carry two.

They turned a corner, where dozens of people were running, all in the same direction, away from the heart of the city. If Kai was still near Erik’s house, he wouldn’t have as far to run. If she lost Kai, too, she might as well race back into the heart of the city so she could die quickly.

She couldn’t believe Oliver was gone. How could that be possible?

The streets were teeming with people now, all of them running, many clutching weapons. There was no screaming, though—no panic. Even women carrying children were saving all of their breath to run, to keep running. The crimson Luyten weaved left and right, surging past others.

As they crossed Key Bridge and ran along Lynn Street, the buzz of defender bombers rose. Lila couldn’t see the horizon behind them because the Luyten blocked her view, but she could hear them growing louder. People around her found energy somewhere to run faster.

The sharp boom of explosions began, far off. They were bombing the downtown area into oblivion, although hopefully most of the people had heeded the Luyten call to flee. The old and infirm were probably still there, unable to run fast enough, or at all.