The bus got a second crack at my life, after all.
Olivia threw her body on top of mine and the entire windshield exploded into shards of glass as bullets rained into the front of the bus. I looked up from the floor to see small clouds of pink puff into life with every impact into Grey's chest. He still managed to turn the bus away from the threat and bring it to a stop by the time his head sank down, yet that was as far as he could go. He stopped moving.
Olivia looked down at me once the shooting stopped. “You alright?”
“Grey...” I gently pushed her off of me and stood up to see everything mangled and broken around the front of the bus. Splatters of red dotted the inside. Small streams ran down every surface around his body. It looked like a grenade filled with paint had gone off. “I think he's...” I couldn't even finish it. Of course he was.
“Come on.” Olivia dragged his body outside and leaned it up against a wheel. Whoever had shot at us wouldn't be able to see if there were any survivors or not, at least for a few minutes. I watched as she put a finger underneath Grey's chin and waited a moment, only to confirm the inevitable. “He's gone.”
The empty pit came back in my chest in full force. We weren't done. Death wasn't finished. I barely knew the man, but the familiar knot still found its way up to my throat. I tried to ignore the seemingly innumerable amount of wounds in front of his body and instead stared at his shoulders. Something caught my attention and I pulled on his coat.
“What is it?”
I gently tilted him forward so that she could see. All along his back, small, jagged pieces of torn off finger nails were embedded into his flesh. They poked up through the leather like little broken stumps and the sight of it almost made me gag. Olivia understood what the real meaning was.
“Juno...”
Grey had saved me from the monster once before. I had wondered why she hadn't made an appearance since then. I guessed my answer lay still right in front of me. Grey must have been fighting her for days until he helped us get out of Maryville. And now he was dead because of it.
“Shit.”
Just when I thought we'd been through the worst of it, I had been proven wrong. I looked around and immediately regretted it. We were stuck out in the open. There was no cover. We had no idea who was trying to kill us, but I had a feeling Juno would show up sooner or later to take credit. Maybe I was gonna get that ending after all. Too bad I would need to be alive to write it down.
I looked to Olivia for hope. Anything. “What are we gonna do?”
She pulled a sword out from behind Grey's back and cut it through the air in a fluid, sharp
swoosh.
Any light that managed to make it through the billowing clouds of smoke above us gleamed off the clean blade in a red hue. “
You're
gonna stay alive.”
The way she purposely decided to exclude any mention of herself from that plan didn't exactly make me feel good. “What do you mean?”
The next bus from our group pulled up before she could answer and she directed it to stop near our own, though perpendicular to its length. The next two were parked the same way to form a large box with each bus acting as a side of the shape. If we didn't have any cover out in the open, then she was going to make some.
I nervously took the magazine out of my rifle and put it back in after a quick glance. I was almost out of ammo. I was sure everyone else was as well. Whatever Olivia was planning wouldn't last very long. I watched what was left of our group reassemble and Badger quickly cut off whatever she was going to say.
“Got a problem. Six trucks. And a technical. Hot on our ass. Came out of nowhere.”
Olivia tilted her head. Whatever plan she had was gone. “You're positive?”
He pointed at Nick and the others to take firing positions and came back to her. “I've seen what a goddamm Ma Deuce does to people. And I know what it looks like. They got a fucking technical.”
“
Shit.
”
I didn't know what a technical or a Ma Deuce were, but if it made Olivia and Badger sweat without even firing a shot, then I knew it had to be bad.
Badger still had the experience to keep himself sane, though he bounced like a dog on a leash chomping at the bit, ready to go. Or ready to meet his end head on. “So what's the plan?”
The remainder of Tent City began to slip into our defensive circle. The crowds were filled with unfamiliar faces, all of them scared and exhausted. Martinez was the only one to come up to us directly.
“Hey!” He stopped at the Knight with a rifle in his hand, breathless. He was bleeding from somewhere. “We got a problem.”
The idea was met with the sound of gunfire and everyone instinctively shrunk closer to the ground. The crowd was starting to panic. They should have. We would easily be surrounded out in the open. It would be worse than Maryville. We'd be massacred.
Olivia fought for our attention, struggling to be heard over the sound of increasingly closer gunshots. “Get everyone inside! On the bus! Everyone else with a gun moves outside and draws the fire away from the circle. Move!”
Martinez tried to find his men among the chaos. Armed men I had never seen before began shooting back at nothing. Others helped their families onto the buses. He rotated a complete three-sixty with his heels in the ground by the time Olivia grabbed him by the collar and shoved her face into his.
“Martinez! Get our trucks in here.”
He tried to get a word out to no avail. He was losing it.
“NOW.”
The tension snapped. His breakers reset. He ran off to the side and grabbed someone with a gun before they could follow their family out of sight.
“Badger,” Olivia spat out. “You're on the front contact. Take whoever you need. Draw their fire away from the civvies. Whatever happens—”
“'Ain't necessary, 'cap.” His last remaining team member joined him, both of them already spent and bleeding. “We aren't going anywhere.” He pointed to Nick and Murphy and got anyone else he could grab before moving outside the circle towards the men that had shot at Grey, which meant Olivia wanted to deal with those that had followed.
Behind us, the shooting began to thicken as the quickly grouped force got into position and returned fire. Olivia tried to move but stopped as soon as she spotted Martha trying to load a terrified Amanda into an already packed bus.
“Hey!” Olivia pointed her sword at the pair and they turned to look at the source of the shouting.
The scene made my heart ache. To see someone as worn as Martha and Amanda, just a little girl so vulnerable and frightened in the middle of it all, I wanted nothing more than to face those responsible for putting them in the situation and have them meet their end. They didn't belong. None of us did.
Olivia grabbed Jeremy's arm as he ran by and pointed him towards the pair. “Put 'em on the bus with the kids. Same with the wounded. Have her start treating anyone. Focus on the worst first.”
Jeremy tried to pull back, but she hung on. He peered over her shoulder, outside the circle, towards the sound of gunfire. He wanted to fight.
Olivia wouldn't have any of it. She pulled him closer. “Get the wounded on first. Then leave as soon as you can. Don't wait for us.”
“We can't just—”
“Jeremy!” She quieted down for a moment, and I could barely hear what came next over the firefight. “You're taking Tess with you.”
It was enough to set him over. He ran over to Martha and grabbed Amanda to bring her up into his arms. She was almost too big, but he had her rest her head against his chest. He shouted at a free pair of bodies and they followed to help him out of sight. I met Martha's eyes for a split second before they disappeared behind another crowd, an unspoken word to be careful on either end. It wouldn't be enough.
Now it was Olivia's turn to order me. She turned and I cut her off before she could even get a word out. I tried to look as angry as possible, though I was sure she could easily see into the fear. “I'm not leaving.” Not her. “Not yet. We still have time.”
Olivia was setting up a diversion. Everyone outside the circle wouldn't make it, but hopefully it would buy the helpless enough time to get onto the buses and start moving. She didn't have enough time to argue. She frowned and pointed at a line of armed men that had been grouped up for us. “You guys. You're with me.”
We followed her into a slow trot outside of the defensive circle and into the field. Bright, rigid lines cracked through the air in front of us and overhead, the tracers of bullets fired by those trying to kill us. I strained to make out the contacts in front of the glowing horizon that burned red. The lit embers had already been floating past on a fierce wind. The fire would be too quick for anyone to outrun on their own at this point. Death was only a few minutes away regardless of how it happened.
I got down onto a knee as soon as I spotted the silhouettes of trucks dotted in the distance. I recognized the bright flashes and sudden cracks of air around them as the attackers using the vehicles for cover. For the most part, the tactic had been working. The buses on our end remained mostly bullet free as we drew the enemy's fire. It just had to stay that way.
I brought my gun up and trained the sights onto a target when it all changed. Massive, concussive
booms
flashed towards us in streaks of light as one of the trucks opened up on us with a machine gun almost as long as the entire length of the car it sat on.
The technical.
The high caliber Ma Deuce fired at our group and I watched in horror as one of the men in front of me was immediately torn in half by the sudden energy it set down range at us. I threw myself to the ground and covered my head as the percussive bombardment threw slugs into the ground and kicked up dirt. The machine gun mowed down body after body, leaving nothing in the wake of its tracers except wet, glistening chunks of meat. Around me, the screaming had started in unison with the sight of the dead. The war had come back to find us. All of us.
I watched as our group began to retreat and run back towards the nearest bus. I tried to scream to them from the ground, but I couldn't be heard over the sound of death. The ones who hadn't disappeared from sight were torn up from behind. One of them, a man no older than me, made it to the yellow paint when a round tore his arm off and buried itself into the side of the bus. I splatter of blood hit the window above from inside.
“KEEP SHOOTING!” Olivia shouted. She grabbed a panicked man by the arm and threw him back into the field, all the while bullets flew around her body. “THAT WAY!” She pointed her sword into the bursts of light like a fearless commander in the middle of a war. Those left alive to see it froze at the sight. The heavy
booms
followed by thick, glowing tracers took out a pair of legs next to her. They cut through the dirt and blew out one of the tires on the bus before finally heading towards Olivia. The machine gun opened up on her.
She sliced her sword through the air and connected with a tracer. Then another. And another. Again and again. Streaks of light flew towards her body only to glance off the blade at a hard angle at the last possible second. She was the only thing standing between slugs of metal and hundreds of people.
It shouldn't have been possible.
I got back up onto a knee and decided not to test it. I opened fire on the machine-gunner as fast as I could. I could barely see the silhouette of my target against the backdrop of flames behind him, but I didn't let up. I reloaded my spent magazine as cracks in the air whipped past my face. Some of the men on our side returned fire. An unseen
thump
shot out from behind me and I watched as something small arced through the air. It left a thin wake through the smoke overhead, then crashed into the technical with a satisfying explosion that fireballed up into the sky. The heavy caliber machine gun stopped firing. Goodbye technical.
I looked back to see Grey slump against the bus with a grenade launcher in hand, a waft of smoke emanating from its wide ended barrel. He let go and the accompanying sling swung the gun back underneath his coat. He was still alive.
That shouldn't have been possible either.
A sudden explosion a few feet from my side rattled my bones and threw debris up into the air. I could feel pounds of earth fall back onto me as I brought a hand up to cover my eyes and struggled to find the new threat. A single shaped emerged from in front of the trucks, the fire behind it growing ever closer. It flung small balls of light towards our group every few seconds, detonating as they hit the ground prematurely and threw layers of dirt into the air. I spotted the familiar coat. The crosses of hand guards rising above his back.
Abel.
“Fall back!” yelled Olivia.
The men that had been brave enough to stay were more than willing to follow her new order. I took a few pot shots at the opposing Knight and then ran back towards the bus. Olivia stood in front of Grey as he struggled to stay up right. She still had her sword in front of her and swung it like mad to deflect any lucky bullets before they could meet their mark. The blade looked scorched and twisted. Complete chunks had been torn off from its previous onslaught. It had to have been more than metal, but I quickly understood why I had always seen them in pairs.