J. Mitchell - Midnight City

Three Forsaken rushed for them madly, screeching and hissing.

Holt fired, got two shots off, dropped one of the savages… and then the gun clicked empty.

“Back!” Holt yelled. “Back, move back!” In one smooth motion, he shouldered the rifle, drew the shotgun, and fired.

The blast flattened one of the crazies.

The other one was on him before he could fire again, driving him to the ground. Zoey screamed; Mira grabbed her.

Max growled and slammed into the thing with all his weight. The dog knocked it off Holt, and it screeched as Max bit down on its arm, shaking it back and forth.

Holt jumped up, flipped the shotgun around, gripped it like a baseball bat, and swung.

The gun’s wooden stock connected with the thing’s head, hard. It slumped to the ground, out cold or dead. Either way was fine with Holt.

Max kept right on attacking the thing.

“Max! Come on!” Holt shouted, moving for—

The Forsaken swarmed over every ruined building visible around theirs. Groceries, gas stations, liquor stores, flower shops—they were everywhere, chanting and gurgling loudly in the night air. The sound was overwhelming.

Even more were climbing onto the roof of their building, an unending assault, pulling themselves up, eager to get to the four survivors on top.

There was nowhere to go. They were surrounded.

Holt looked desperately around, spotted a bank of four large, rusting air-conditioning units on the roof near them. “There!” he yelled, rushing for what was left of the machines. They were old and in disrepair, but they were still thick and big: they’d provide cover. For a little while.

As he moved, Holt blasted two more Forsaken to the ground, but more were coming.

The others ran after him. When they reached the air conditioners, they crouched down behind them.

Holt dropped his shotgun, grabbed his rifle, and started reloading it.

Mira grabbed the shotgun, and Holt tossed her shells. She started stuffing them into the barrel.

“We’re, um…” Mira looked down at Zoey before she continued, who was staring at both of them with fear in her eyes. “We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” She knew they were in more than trouble.

Holt knew it, too, knew what she really meant. “Yeah,” he said. “We got real problems.”

They looked at each other, loading the guns, the sounds of a thousand crazed, incomprehensible yells echoing off the buildings around them. More and more Forsaken were climbing onto their roof, dozens and dozens, soon to be hundreds. They could hold them off a few minutes with the guns, but they would run out of ammo long before the Forsaken ran out of insane cannon fodder.

They were going to die. It was just that simple.

“Mira, I’m sorry, I…,” Holt started but trailed off. Why was it so hard? “I’m sorry… I got you into this,” he said.

Mira smiled. “Technically, you could say I’m the one who got you into this.”

Holt almost laughed. He liked Mira. More than he should. A part of him wanted to tell her that. Especially now. But… even given the finality of their situation, the words seemed pointless.

Forsaken climbed onto the roof, rushed toward them, moaning and jabbering.

Holt took the shotgun from Mira, gripped the rifle. Max growled with anticipation. Mira pulled Zoey close to her.

“Mira…,” Zoey moaned into her chest. “They found us.”

“Ssshhh, honey,” she said, never taking her eyes off Holt. “I know they did. Close your eyes.”

Holt raised the rifle up and over the air conditioner, sighted down it. Dozens of Forsaken, rushing for them, more climbing up every second. God, they had maybe a minute left. Maybe two, if his aim was good. His finger tensed on the trigger….

“Not the scary men, I mean,” Zoey said. “Them.”

Holt moved to fire—

—and then flinched violently as the first volley of plasma fire ripped past them, burning the air, incinerating a dozen of the Forsaken where they stood.

Holt quickly ducked back down behind the rusted machine, eyes wide.

More plasma fire flared in the night, lighting everything yellow. It slammed into the Forsaken on their building, decimating them, blowing away the ones climbing up the walls, knocking huge chunks out of the edifice.

Holt watched in shock as the Forsaken were mowed down left and right by the yellow bolts.

It took a moment for his mind to process what it meant.

Zoey was right. They had found them. The Assembly were here, had somehow tracked them all the way into the Drowning Plains.

Holt stood up, looked past the edge of the roof. In the dark, under the moonlight, illuminated by the flashes of their plasma cannons, Holt could see ten Assembly walkers.

They had taken up positions all around the city, on the rooftops, all along the perimeter.

And they were unlike anything Holt had ever seen.

Tripods, three legs, maybe seven feet tall, lithe, agile… and, most strikingly, they were green and orange !

If he hadn’t seen it for himself, he wouldn’t have believed it. How many different Assembly factions were there? And why the hell were they all hunting Zoey?

Holt looked at Mira. She looked back at him, stunned.

“I have a very specific policy about these things,” Holt said. “Never refuse a rescue.”

“That’s pretty similar to my policy,” Mira replied.

They all made ready to move, while the yellow bolts burned the air around them, blowing to pieces anything they touched. Holt had never been so happy to see plasma fire.

THE TOP OF THE OFFICE BUILDING was chaos. Dozens of Forsaken littered the roof, but they were being ripped apart by flying plasma bolts. Explosions flared up all around them, and Holt watched the drugstore he’d looted collapse in flames.

The Forsaken were torn between pursuing their original prey, and attacking the new, much more potent threat of the strange green and orange walkers.

Holt was glad for the confusion.

He looked over the roof, out into the sunken ruins and saw that they were at the edge of the city. Only a few more buildings lay between them and the open water, and the water appeared to be growing shallow just on the other side.

If they could make it to the waterline, they might have a chance. But jumping between buildings wasn’t an option anymore. They needed something faster.

Mira screamed and covered Zoey as plasma bolts incinerated two nearby Forsaken. More of the yellow bolts slapped into the roof right next to them, barely missing them.

Between the two attacking groups, if they didn’t get out of here fast, they’d be lucky to join the Succumbed in the Presidiums. More likely, they’d all be dead.

Holt saw something on the next building over. The faded letters of a radio station, KCLE, half sunk in the floodwaters. On top of it was a giant rusting radio tower.

As he considered it, a plan began to form. A crazy one. But it was all he had.

“We need to reach that tower,” he announced, then promptly ducked as more plasma bolts burned past.

“We’re not going to take two steps in this!” Mira yelled at him. She flinched as explosions blossomed in the distance. Holt blasted two Forsaken as they rushed toward the air conditioners.

“Got anything that can help?” he asked Mira as he reloaded the shotgun. “It’s just one building over.”

Mira thought about it a second. “Maybe,” she finally said, digging through her pack. “Gotta buy me some time, though.”

“Let me see what I can do.” He lifted back up over the AC. “Zoey, stay down!” he shouted when he saw her trying to peer over the old machine with him.

His rifle flashed, dropped two Forsaken rushing them. He fired again, and a third fell.