Zhukov's Dogs (41 page)

I wanted to kick him for his cowardice. If he’d been one of my dogs back in D.C., I’d have thrown him against the wall and beat the nerves out of him. Instead, I just grabbed his rifle and slung it over my shoulder.

“Fine. Direct Gemma, Benji, Val, and anyone else who shows up to fight toward the pillars. Can you at least do that?” I asked.

Finn sniffled. He couldn’t even lift his head to look at me. I hoped he knew how pathetic he was at that moment. I barked down at him an unforgiving, “Answer me!” It startled enough sense into Finn to make him nod. Then, giving up on him altogether, I took off to find a pillar to protect.

The hole left in the ceiling from the second pillar splintered as the first one had, but nothing was falling, not yet. That wouldn’t last long. Running with my eyes upward, I didn’t notice the five Grey Men rounding the corner in front of me until I slammed into one of the giants. The Grey Man threw his arms around me, but before he could snap me in two, I fired a bullet into his foot.

As soon as I broke free, there were others trying to pin me down again. A sea of arms and snarls closed around me as a low rumble came from above. It put a bad feeling in my gut, the kind which kicked in the innate instincts of a soldier. I dove through an opening between two Grey Men and ran for cover as a large chunk of the ceiling crashed down on our street. Not a single Grey Man managed to get out of the way, and they were crushed or trapped half-underneath the slab of cement. I vaulted the cement barricade and ran for the pillar, keeping my eyes peeled for more Grey Men.

Hurry up, Val
. I reached the pillar. No Grey Men in sight. Not yet, at least. I circled the pillar, pointing my gun at anything that moved and waiting with bated breath for the scream of one of my friends, followed by the fall of a third pillar.

Something was wrong. Something I was an idiot for not picking up on sooner. If tonight was when the city was coming down, then the streets should have been swarming with Grey Men. Grey Men subduing the masses and warding off anyone who tried to prevent them from detonating explosives around the pillars. I circled the sturdy structure again. A quick scan over its sides revealed no sign of explosives or tampering at all.

My phone rang, and I was relieved to see it was Val calling. I answered with an exasperated, “Hey, are you on your way back?”

“They’re up here!”

The city became ten times colder.

“The Grey Men!” he continued. “They’re all up here! They’re blowing the pillars from up here!”

I looked up the pillar to where it met the ceiling. Every muscle in my body pulled tight. Something more chilling than the morphine already in my veins flooded through me.

“Nik, get up here! Fast!”

My protective boyfriend gene was overpowered by a sense of utter helplessness, draining and dizzying. Val needed me. He was in danger, and I wasn’t there. My stomach knotted, tight. Futilely trying to swallow the heart lodged in my throat, I ran a hand over the back of my neck. The grip of my gun scratched into my scalp and helped coax the words out of me. “I’ll be right there. Hold them off, and I’ll be right there.”

As I ran to find the others and tell them what was going on, Gemma and Benji rushed down the street with at least forty men and women behind them. They were armed with everything from shotguns to gardening shears, and the sight gave me a surge of hope. I hastily explained what was happening topside, and they led their followers to the elevators while I continued my search for the others. Fritzi was the first I found, and when I told her, she urged me to go join the fight.

“I have to get you out,” I insisted, not wanting to even think about what would happen if she or any of my friends were left in the underground.

“No, you don’t. I can get myself out just fine, thanks. You’re more use up there than down here.” She shoved me in the direction of the elevators. “Get! I’ll find the others and meet you up there.”

She didn’t need to tell me twice. I ran as fast as I could to catch up with Gemma, Benji, and the reinforcements. As we piled into one of the elevators, I checked my gun again.
Fully loaded. Safety off. Extra ammunition in my pocket. Finn’s rifle slung over my shoulder.
I ran through it all again to be sure, and then I held my breath, not because of the smell, but because of what I knew came next. Everything had led up to this moment.

Joseph M. Florence Lower Dock Yard—Seattle, WA
Sunday, November 22nd, 2076—10:57 p.m.

ne short, noisy elevator ride was all that stood between us and an army of Grey Men. Benji estimated there would be anywhere from eighty-five to a hundred of them. We could handle that. We were prepared for it. What we weren’t prepared for were the three-hundred Grey Men waiting for us on the surface. The reinforcements Gemma and Benji rallied charged to join the battle, but I couldn’t move. I stood there in the mouth of the elevator, stunned by the bloodbath we were unprepared for.

A wisp of blond in the distance snapped me out of it. I took off down the hill to where Val and a dozen dockworkers defended a large circle of snow outlined in black paint. Grey Men were everywhere, and I fired off a full clip of bullets as I ran, taking care to drop ten Grey Men with ten bullets.

Just as I ejected the empty cartridge, a fist landed across the side of my face. Pain shot through my teeth and far up into my head. The gun was knocked from my hand and lost somewhere in the red snow. I staggered, caught myself on a fallen dockworker, and shrugged the rifle off my shoulder to fire.

A mill worker beat me to the Grey Man, running him through the middle with a pitchfork. A second mill worker, armed with a bat, knocked the Grey Man across the head. Bones snapped, and the Grey Men fell to the ground.

As the bat-wielding worker gave a rooting holler, another Grey Man charged up behind him. I raised the rifle, and shot the giant between his eyes. “Thanks, bro! Two down!” cheered the young man, flashing me a thumbs up before chasing after his partner with the pitchfork.
Two down
, I thought as I got to my feet.
Two down and two-hundred and ninety-eight to go.

“Nik!”

A set of arms latched onto me from behind. I couldn’t see who it was, but the embrace was all too familiar. No time to return the display of affection just yet. “Hi, honey,” I said, doing my best to sound nonchalant, even with the rifle raised and firing into the sea of Grey Men around us.

“Honey?” Val scoffed. His arms fell, and I heard him reload a gun behind me. A moment later, he was shooting at the Grey Men approaching from his side. “We’re doing pet names now?”

The banter kept me from getting caught up in the chaos around us, and yet, somehow it didn’t manage to throw off my aim, so I worked to keep it up. “What you don’t like it?”

“Sounds a bit girly.”

“Eh, well, you’d beat up anyone who made fun of you for it. By the way, Fritzi says we’re cute.”

“We kind of are.”

“Yeah. Back-to-back shooting Grey Men in the head. Super cute.”

Val chuckled behind me, and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling at the sound. It was all a bit ridiculous, but I didn’t care. I could have kept it up for hours, until every last Grey Man fell dead in the snow. I would have, too, if I hadn’t heard him suddenly swear. Val fell heavy against my back. I planted my feet in the snow to keep us from going down and tried my best to stay focused on the fight, even as I feared the worst.

“Where?” I asked.

“It’s not bad,” Val insisted. He shifted against me like he was trying to get up, wincing and cursing only to slump most of his weight against me. I had to give him credit for managing to keep shooting, but I couldn’t resist the urge to look over my shoulder.

Before I could see what happened, the sound of chopping helicopter blades pulled my attention skyward. We both looked up in time to see a large, white helicopter hover low overhead. It lingered ten yards away to drop something before taking off again. A scream echoed over the icy battlefield.

“GET BACK!”

It was Gemma’s voice. Everyone ran past us in frenzy, even the Grey Men, and as the crowd thinned, I saw a dozen black orbs the helicopter had scattered around one of the black circles in the snow. I hadn’t put it together when Tibbs charged at us out of nowhere and tackled both me and Val to the ground, my ribs aching under his weight. An earth-shaking explosion ripped through the night air. I stared up through the thick clouds of my own breath and watched as the sky was eclipsed by snow, debris, and bodies.

The ground shook again as a pillar fell. I climbed out from underneath Tibbs, cursing the stabbing pain in my ribs as I stumbled to my feet. Warmth seeped along the left side of my face, and I ran a hand carefully through the blood leaking from my ear. My vision rocked in and out of focus as I stared at the enormous hole in the earth.

Tibbs was on his feet again, but he looked terrible—one eye swollen shut and blood oozing from a broken nose. He held his right arm with his left, which looked like it had been stepped on by four Grey Men at once.

Injuries proved to be the least of our troubles. Cracks formed around the crater in the ground, and soon everything would fall again. Only this time, instead of watching it fall, I risked being caught in it. Though I couldn’t hear him, I made out the words Tibbs mouthed, “Oy! Gotta get away from here!”

I nodded and helped Val up, doing my best not to fall over in the process. He looked just as disoriented, and I immediately noticed him favoring his right side. As I’d expected, he’d taken a bullet. Nasty looking shot right above his hipbone with no exit wound in sight, indicating he’d suffered serious internal damage.

Now wasn’t the time to dote on him, not with the ground ready to fall out from underneath us. I snatched him up in my arms and fled for safety. The battle had already resumed, but my focus wasn’t on the hundreds of Grey Men anymore; it was on the helicopter circling back around.

“Nik?”

My hearing must’ve been returning, because I could faintly make out Val trying to get my attention. He saw my eyes follow the helicopter and figured out the rest for himself, urging me to put him down. I let him go once we were far enough away from the crater that we wouldn’t get sucked in.

Val kept one hand pressed over the hole in his side and wrenched the pistol out from under my belt with the other. He provided cover fire while I shrugged the rifle off my shoulder and scanned the skies for the helicopter. I followed the shadow it cast on the snow, looking along its path to figure out which black circle it was heading for.

“Think you can make it?” Val asked.

I nodded, refusing to take my eyes off the helicopter. I knew I could make it. I had to. There were only three pillars left. If one more came down, the entire city beneath us would be crushed. I took a deep breath and raised the rifle. The world went silent. I trained my aim on the shadowy outline of a pilot through the cockpit window and pulled the trigger.

The bullet left the barrel, and I could almost see it jet through the air and strike the metal panel above the cockpit, a mere four inches shy of where I’d aimed. Four damn inches too many. I fired again, my aim even worse.

“Nik, come on,” Val urged.