As we passed over the city walls and descended, some of the dragons veered course to come our way. At least three of them were flying toward us at full speed.
Anna rushed back onto the bridge. “You better hurry up!”
“Hold on to your britches, girlie,” Ashton said. “We’re in for a rough landing. You find the flare?”
Anna nodded, holding up a flare gun. My stomach did a flip when the ship suddenly descended. Gilgamesh plopped on the square awkwardly, scuttling a few times before coming to a stop.
“I can lose them in the clouds,” Ashton said. “Get your butts out of here!”
“Follow me,” Julian said.
We ran off the bridge, down the corridor, and out of the ship. As soon as we cleared the boarding ramp, Gilgamesh thundered toward the sky. A roar sounded from above. One of the dragons was diving for Gilgamesh. Ashton, with a slick sideways maneuver, dodged the blow as he blasted for the skies.
But we had our own troubles to deal with. Several guards rushed from the palace gates, staring upward in disbelief as Gilgamesh shot away with several xenodragons in tow.
“Does xenodragon work?” I asked.
“That’s even worse.”
“Come on!” Julian said. “It’s this way!”
Julian’s voice snapped the guards to attention. The lead guard yelled in Spanish, sending his cronies after us. Thankfully, none of them had guns. The Empire was so big that likely not everyone in its army had the privilege of owning a firearm.
We saved our ammo, instead rushing ahead across the square. It had completely emptied. The city was a ghost town with all its inhabitants hiding indoors.
Anna took her handgun, aiming it backward to fire a few times. The guards took the warning, stopping them in their tracks.
“Nos dejen en paz!” Julian shouted. “Guarden sus familias!”
The guards looked at each other, considered, then scattered.
“What did you say, Julian?” I asked.
“I told them to leave us alone and save their families.”
“Good advice,” Anna said.
We exited Central Square, turning down a side street. People watched from the windows as we blazed by. My lungs burned for air, but Makara was in danger. If any of the crawlers had followed their dragon mounts, then…
As if thinking of them was a summons, two crawlers appeared at the intersection ahead. They saw us, and scuttled down the street toward our position.
“This way!” Julian said.
He jumped through an open window, and we followed him in. We found ourselves in a living room, a large family looking at us with wide, surprised eyes. The mother and father looked at our weapons, then at us.
Julian didn’t stay long. We ran out the apartment’s front door, finding ourselves on a staircase. We ran up the steps, even as the monsters began to batter themselves against the door leading into the building.
We reached the top of the stairs, Julian bursting onto the apartment’s rooftop.
“The hospital is just two blocks away,” Julian said.
We were going to have to building hop again. The dragons were nowhere near us, instead circling the city near Central Square, about a half mile away. In the distance came the screams of another victim. More crawlers screeched from the street below. The dragons appeared to be ferrying them inside the city, right over the walls.
I ran after Julian and the others, making the jump to the next building with ease. The buildings were so close together that it would have been hard to fall. We hopped from one, to the other, silently through the night. Finally, reaching the end of the apartment row, we took a ladder down to the bottom. For now, the street was clear.
Once we hit the ground, we ran to the left. Julian was very fast, and hard to keep up with.
He took a right turn. After passing shops, cafes, and more apartments, we came to a large, open area filled with grass. A driveway circled around in front of a large, four story building.
“We’re here,” Julian said.
We ran up the drive and through the hospital’s front doors. The building was one of the few in the city powered with electricity. The glass doors slid open, leading into a lobby. Blood and dead bodies covered the floor. From within the building, I could hear screams of victims and the horrible wails of predators.
“We can only follow the noise,” Samuel said. “Get your weapons ready.”
We ran down the hall, and up a flight of stairs. When we arrived at the door that led to the second floor, a low hiss sounded from the other side, followed by a woman’s scream.
With a shout, Samuel kicked open the door, pointing his gun down the hallway. A crawler leaned over a small woman’s frame, ready to tear her to shreds.
Samuel fired, hitting the creature’s face. As the creature cried out and faced us with its angular head, his former prey forgotten, I realized that these crawlers were different from the ones in the Great Blight. Their armor was thicker, covering nearly every spot on their body. Their bodies were lower to the ground, affording them better speed and balance. Their legs had thickened, and the blades at the end of their tails were longer. The cruel spikes growing from their backs were curved and sharper than ever.
During our two months in Skyhome, it was not only us getting stronger. The virus was evolving its alien army to become more powerful than ever before.
Instead of attacking outright, the creature curled into a ball, its spikes jutting out on all sides. It rolled forward, right toward us.
Our bullets glanced off its armor, doing nothing. We shut the door to the stairwell, backing up the steps. The door burst open, and the monster’s head slithered in. It opened its mouth to give a bloodcurdling shriek. Then, it scuttled up the stairs after us. We could do nothing but back away, run faster…
We exited onto the third floor, and ran down the hallway, passing rows of open doors. Most of the rooms were empty. When we passed the final door, we found a familiar form lying in the bed, her eyes shut.
“Makara!” Samuel said.
The crawler burst into the hallway, slinking low to the ground, its white eyes afire with bloodlust. We faced the crawler. We couldn’t give another inch, or Makara would die. This was where we stood our ground.
The narrow confines meant we couldn’t defeat the creature in our usual way — flanking it and getting a good attack on its soft underbelly. It completely blocked off the hallway, making it impossible to get around it from the front.
“Samuel, you and Julian keep it occupied,” I said. “Back up if you need to.”
I grabbed Anna by the arm, pulling her back.
“What are we doing?” Anna hissed.
“This hallway probably circles all the around,” I said. “If we can get behind it…”
“Hurry!” Samuel said.
The creature charged forward. Samuel and Julian backed up to the corner as Anna and I broke out into a dead run. We had to make it all the way around before the creature could hit Samuel and Julian. Hopefully, the creature would be too distracted to avoid Makara altogether.
We rounded the corner, finding a short hallway that led to the right again. We took the corner. We were now on the opposite side of where we had been.
“Faster,” Anna said.
The monster screeched from behind. I heard Samuel roar out, either from pain or exertion.
We turned another corner, finding ourselves on a short hallway. Just one more turn, and we would be behind the crawler.
But when we made that last turn, we found the hallway completely empty.
“They must have backed up further,” I said. “Keep going!”
We kept running, circling a corner yet again. The hallway was still empty. There were no sounds of struggle, no signs of a fight. I was beginning to wonder if we might have taken a wrong turn somewhere.