J. Mitchell - Midnight City

The crazies were adjusting to the distraction of the Assembly. All around them, he saw them pouring off the buildings surrounding theirs, rushing with their insane gurgling in all directions.

They were going after the walkers.

Ten Assembly with plasma cannons versus a thousand psychopaths. Seemed like fair odds to Holt. If he was lucky, they’d all kill each other.

But the Forsaken hadn’t totally forgotten them yet. Holt saw four more of the savages running for them, screeching, their tangled hair flying after them from behind.

Holt dropped two more before the rifle clicked empty.

He shouldered it, drew his Beretta. As he did, he clicked his tongue and whistled.

Max barked when he heard the command and charged forward toward the two Forsaken while Holt calmly ejected a clip from the gun, grabbed a new one, and slammed it in.

Max rammed into and drove one of the things to the ground. The other one shrieked, turned toward the dog…

But then Holt placed a bullet between its eyes. It fell dead to the roof.

Holt put two fingers in his mouth, whistled loudly.

Max reluctantly leapt off the Forsaken and ran back toward Holt. The crazy jumped up, shrieked and hissed, charged after the dog… then rocked back as another shot from Holt dropped it.

Max made it back, tail wagging, tongue lagging out of his mouth. “Good job, pal,” Holt said.

“The Max is tough!” Zoey said, reaching out to pet him. The dog licked her face.

More explosions, more plasma fire, more shrieks…

Holt looked to Mira. “Mira, what do you got?”

“Concentrating,” she replied testily.

She was combining items from her pack. Two dimes, a marble, and another combination she had already wrapped, which looked like it contained more coins, a D battery, and an old bottle cap. She placed the dimes on either end, heads facing out, then quickly wrapped the whole thing in duct tape.

There was a hum, a shimmering… and the air all around them flashed in a bright sphere of light. But only for a second, then it was gone.

“Gotta hurry,” she said, looking at Holt. “I only had dimes left, and they won’t last long.”

Holt wasn’t sure what that meant, but he didn’t feel a pressing need for clarification right then.

“Zoey.” Holt motioned the little girl onto his back. She climbed on, held on tight. He looked up at Mira. “Don’t worry about Max, he’ll jump on his own.”

Mira fixed Holt with an icy stare. “ He’ll jump on his own? Then why did I carry him last time?”

“I thought it would be funny?” he said, smiling and running for the edge of the roof with Zoey. He whistled three notes and Max darted after him.

Mira glared knives after the three of them… then rushed to follow.

As they sprinted across the roof, a new sound overpowered even the mad ramblings of the hundreds of Forsaken. Strange, electronically distorted trumpeting sounds, coming from all directions. The walkers positioned around the sunken ruins had spotted them.

While Holt ran, he watched in awe as the strange walkers leapt toward them in pursuit, closing fast, bounding with agility and speed from roof to roof. Not even Mantises could move that fast and precisely. They’d be on them in seconds.

The nearby Forsaken hissed horribly, lunging after them, too, closing fast. Holt watched them coming closer and closer.

“Mira!” Holt shouted with concern. What was she going to do?

“Just keep going!” Mira yelled back.

The Forsaken rushed toward Holt… then bounced violently backwards as they ran into some kind of invisible force field. Mira’s artifact, whatever it was, was working.

Holt double-timed it, leapt off the edge, and sailed across. Zoey screamed with glee behind him as they hit hard on the roof of the ruined radio station.

Max landed next to them, followed by Mira, who was still glaring at him.

But before she could say anything, something slammed into her force field and bounced off. Not one of the Forsaken, not even a plasma bolt. Something else.

A mass of some kind of metallic netting lay a few feet away.

One of the green and orange tripods was closing the gap between them quickly. Another net launched from under its body and exploded toward them.

It crashed into the shield and bounced harmlessly away just like the first. The walker trumpeted in anger, charged after them.

Holt and Mira looked at each other. They both knew the nets were for Zoey.

They dashed for the radio tower in a mad scramble. Plasma fire lit the air in bright, strobic flashes of yellow as they did. The bolts plowed into their shield, and it flared brightly, spraying sparks everywhere. Bolt after bolt hit as they moved… until the whole thing finally flared out. The air around them shimmered one last time as the force field died.

They all ducked behind the supports of the huge radio tower as more plasma fire burned past. The tower pressed into the night sky far above. It was rusting and aged, and leaned to the right just a little, but it was still holding on.

Holt peered out through the metal rungs of the tower.

He had a good view of the sunken city. The Forsaken were pouring over the buildings: mad, frantic, running shadows in the night, closing in from all directions. Easier to spot were the walkers, also headed for them. But they were now directly fighting the crazed humans.

Individually, the Forsaken were no match for their cannons. But more and more were coming, an unending wave of insanity that didn’t care how many were decimated, only obsessively fixed on reaching the walkers and ripping them to pieces with their bare hands. Or at least trying.

They piled onto one of the machines, a dozen of them, tearing and clawing at it, ripping its cables and hoses.

The tripod trumpeted, stumbled, crashed to the roof. Even more Forsaken leapt onto it, burying it under their dirty weight.

Two or three of the walkers hadn’t made the mistake of stopping to fight the Forsaken; they kept firing and moving, leaping rooftop to rooftop, making a beeline for the radio tower.

Holt guessed they’d be on them in seconds.

“We need to knock this thing over,” Holt said to Mira, rapping his fist on the radio tower’s thick support.

More plasma fire flashed around them, more hissing and jabbering.

Mira stared at Holt like he was crazy. “Knock it over ?” she said, aghast. “ That’s your plan? Knock over the giant metal radio tower? Have you noticed how big it is?”

“I figured you had some crazy Strange Lands thing that—”

“Well, I don’t! I don’t carry around a storehouse of artifacts with me, Holt! There’s only so much I can do with what I—”

More plasma fire ripped into the tower, spraying sparks everywhere. They all ducked. Where the yellow bolts hit, the metal flashed white hot, melted, and crumbled.

Holt stared up at the damage, thoughts swirling in his head. He looked and saw the walkers closing the distance.

With a grimace, he shouldered his rifle and shotgun, drew the Beretta. Holt aimed through the metal rungs of the support tower at the closest green and orange walker… and fired.

The bullet clanged harmlessly off its armor.

“What are you doing?” Mira asked, staring at him.

“Trying to piss them off.” Holt knew the shot wouldn’t hurt the walker; he only wanted to get its attention. And judging by the volley of plasma fire it unleashed in his direction, he guessed he had.

Holt leapt and grabbed the tower support above, pulling himself up and onto it.

“Holt!” Zoey yelled below him.

“Be right back, get ready to move!” he shouted back down.

More plasma fire sparked and flashed around him, cutting into the tower, melting and incinerating whatever it hit.