J. Mitchell - Midnight City

Holt barely dodged two bolts that almost took off his head. Out the corner of his eye, he caught the very visible rapid-fire flashing of the walkers’ cannon again.

Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

More yellow bolts slammed into the metal around him. Holt maneuvered in a circle around the tower, drawing the fire of the walkers. More and more plasma bolts sparked and fizzled into the structure.

The tower began to groan as it weakened. The metal snapped and tore. Its ancient, rusted bolts exploded outward in sheets like gunfire, whizzing through the air.

Below, almost in slow motion, Holt saw Max barking furiously, saw Mira leap and cover Zoey, pulling her down and away.

The tower began to tip, ripping free of its supports, arcing through the air. Holt leapt clear as the whole thing thundered downward and crashed to the sunken ground below in a painful maelstrom of sound.

Holt hit the roof hard, rolled, crashed to a stop with a grunt. He coughed out lungfuls of rust and dust, and painfully pushed himself back to his feet.

The crumpled radio tower now made a bridge over the water, stretching from the radio station to the shallow waters at the other end of the sunken city.

He was glad to see Mira had figured out his intention, and wasn’t wasting any time. She carried Zoey in her arms, rushed onto and down the tower toward the ground as fast as she could manage. Max rushed ahead of her, barking enthusiastically.

Behind them, one of the nets flashed by, just missing them. The walkers were on their tail, leaping from the roof of the building next door and onto the radio station.

And so were the Forsaken. The crazed shadows ran onto the tower in a swarm of dirty claws and teeth and bodies, hissing after Mira and Zoey.

“Hurry!” Holt ran after them, firing the Beretta into the mass of Forsaken until the clip emptied, dropping three or four of them.

But there were more coming. Far too many. The devastation of the tower collapse had stirred them up like a beehive: they were everywhere now.

Holt saw the top of Mira’s head disappear below the roof edge, and he double-timed it.

Behind him came sounds of heavy stomping, the roof shaking with each hit. The sounds were gaining on him fast.

Holt had just enough time to look behind and see a green and orange tripod right behind him. It trumpeted and lashed out with a mechanical leg, tripping him. He went down, hit the roof, rolled.

Up close, he saw more of the walker’s details. Its three pointed legs were triple jointed, the fuselage on top of them round and sleek. It was a Hunter, Holt guessed. Probably designed specifically for speed and tracking, and it had done its job well. The walker leapt for him.

He drew his shotgun, tried to twist back around to his—

The walker knocked the gun away, sent it sliding across the gravel. Holt barely dodged one of the thing’s legs as it trumpeted, puncturing the roof where he’d just been standing.

He dodged again, leapt for the gun, grabbed it, rolled over, aimed.

The walker trumpeted angrily and pounced forward.

The Ithaca was fully loaded, and Holt fired every shell it had right into the thing’s three-optic “eye” in the center of its body. It was the smallest Assembly walker he’d ever seen, and he just hoped he had a chance of hurting it.

Each shot rocked the thing backwards in a plume of sparks, shuddering along the roof… and then fire sprayed out of it in a violent arc, lighting up the night air. The walker collapsed in a whine of dying power and failing mechanics.

Holt groaned, got to his feet. This was quite a week he was—

He shut his eyes as a dazzling field of golden, wavering energy poured into the air from the wrecked green and orange machine.

Holt backed up at the light, it was so intense. His head filled with static, as it had been in Zoey’s crashed ship days earlier. He held his ears, backing up, blinded and deaf.

Screeches filled the air all around him. It must be having the same effect on the Forsaken.

The energy field rose into the air, contorting and forming into a crystalline shape of near impossible geometry. As it did, the static in his head lessened, the brightness faded.

More plasma bolts slapped into the roof all around him. Two more walkers rushed for him.

Holt forgot about the golden light, made a beeline for the collapsed tower. If he could just reach it…

Behind him, he heard another electronic trumpeting from one of the walkers. The Forsaken swarmed it, dozens and dozens of them, pouring onto it, clawing and tearing at it. The thing trumpeted again, loud and angry.

It gave him the delay he needed. Holt reached the fallen tower and dashed down it toward the flood bank. In front of him, he saw that Mira, Zoey, and Max had already made it, were running into the night.

Behind him, the Forsaken continued to pile onto the green and orange walker. There were too many; the thing couldn’t keep moving, couldn’t stay up.

It fell to the side… right off the edge of the roof, tumbling downward with a distorted trumpet that almost sounded frightened. It crashed into the deep, black murk below, sending a giant splash of water everywhere.

As it did, a crackling explosion of energy flared out from it, fire blowing out the walker’s exhaust ports. Holt stopped, stunned, and watched as a black, burned, rustlike substance formed over the walker’s surface, covering it in seconds like some metallic, cancerous mass. The machine shook a few times, contorted… and then went still, frozen like a rusted black statue in the water.

Now it made sense. The black rust happened when the machines were destroyed in water, and when they did, no golden energy lifted up and out of them. It was relevant, Holt was sure… but he just didn’t know why.

Holt looked back toward the ruined city. The Forsaken were coming, rushing after him in a mass of insanity and curled fingernails.

The remaining walkers had their hands full, their plasma bolts flashing everywhere, incinerating the crazies, knocking them back with their legs. But for every one they dispatched, five more took its place.

Holt watched the impossible chaos a moment more, then ran down the fallen tower, navigating its holes and bent metal as fast as he could. He hopped into the water and ran for the shadows of Mira, Zoey, and Max waiting up ahead. They had done it. They were going to make it—they were going to survive the Drowning Plains.

Behind them, the sunken, ruined city burned, lighting up the night in black-tinged orange shadows. Electronic cries and hissing nonsense filled the air long after they had left the flames behind.

A YOUNG HOLT; his sister, Emily; and their mother pushed past the door into the dark farmhouse and ducked inside as the whine of engines outside grew to a fever pitch. Through the house’s windows, Holt saw the lights of the strange ships in the sky painting the ground as they flew over. One of them lighted the house, filling the windows with brightness.

Holt’s mother gasped, pulled her children back against a wall, and Holt shut his eyes tight as the engines roared above. He felt Emily shaking next to him, heard his mother’s whispers that everything was going to be okay.

The searchlight flashed off; the whine of engines, mercifully, began to recede.

The three risked a glance out the window. The night sky was full of the flashing lights of the strange machines. The sight took Holt’s breath away. He could never have imagined that many aircraft in the sky at once. The ground everywhere outside was being hammered by their cannon fire, yellow bolts of light flashing down and incinerating everything beneath them. From the window, Holt saw two houses in flames.