He stopped halfway up the pile to check the sky again. The higher vantage point gave him a good view of the scrapers near the ocean. The flashing glow in his night-vision optics seemed weaker. Each green pulse illuminated the skyline, and by its light he saw a flurry of motion.
“I think I see them,” Rodger said. He took another step and stopped to focus on the spot where he had seen movement. He shut off his optics, expecting to see the blue glow of battery packs, but there was only darkness.
“What the hell?” he whispered.
He bumped the optics back on. There to the east, just over the scrapers, something was moving just below the clouds. Rodger reached for his rifle and pushed the scope to his visor.
A transmission fired over the open channel as he zoomed in.
“Apollo One, this is Angel One. Do you copy?
“Roger, Angel One,” Andrew replied.
“Have you found the crate yet?” Weaver asked.
“Negative. We’re still looking.”
Weaver’s voice cracked, and not from static. “Find shelter immediately, Apollo One. I repeat, find shelter!”
Rodger bumped off his NVGs again and zoomed in on the dots he had mistaken for Weaver and Magnolia. He flinched as the red light of the towers backlit a sky full of winged creatures.
The otherworldly wail of Sirens sounded in the distance.
Rodger lost his footing, and his boots slid.
“No, no, no,” he moaned. After regaining his balance, he pushed the scope back to his eye and saw just one sparkling blue dot.
His heart stuttered at the sight. Where was…?
He zoomed in again on Magnolia and Weaver, sailing away from the beasts flapping after them. Now he knew why the commander had asked for the supply crate. They were going to need heavier weapons.
“Move your skinny buns, Rodger Dodger!” Andrew shouted. He looked up at Rodger from the street. “We need to find a place to hide.”
“No, we have to help them!”
Rodger turned and loped down the hillside. The grit gave way under his boots, but he broke the slide with his heels. He leaped onto a hunk of concrete, then onto another. He jumped down onto the street and ran out his momentum. Halfway down the street, Andrew was already rounding the first corner of debris.
“Get back here!” Rodger shouted. “We have to help!”
Andrew yelled something in reply that was more profanity than anything else.
Rodger chambered a round in his hunting rifle and swung it up to the skyline.
“Don’t worry, Mags, Rodger Dodger’s got you.”
He got the creatures in his scope. They were about a quarter-mile behind Magnolia and Weaver. It was a near-impossible shot from here, and Rodger knew better than to waste precious ammunition.
But Andrew must have had other plans. The crack of his gun sounded, and Rodger turned just as Andrew opened fire. He wasn’t aiming at the sky.
Andrew shouldered his rifle and squeezed the trigger. The muzzle flashes silhouetted his broad shoulders as he fired at targets coming from the opposite direction.
Another round of swearing came over the channel. Andrew was calling for help, but Rodger needed to protect Magnolia and Weaver. Bringing the scope back up to his visor, he followed their progress. The chute was lowering them toward the city streets. Sirens, with their eerie high-pitched wails, were sailing in a V formation. And they were closing the gap.
“Rodger!” Andrew shouted. Through the incoherent streak of curse words that followed, Rodger heard a sentence that chilled him to the core.
“We’re being flanked on all sides!”
The experience from eighty-nine dives kicked in as soon as Weaver heard the monsters’ electronic discords. The alien shrieks echoed over the devastated city like an emergency siren on an airship. The sound of the alarms had paralyzed him as a child, but now it forced him to action.
“Hang on tight, Mags!” he shouted.
Sirens—at least a dozen, judging by the racket—were trailing him and Magnolia. The creatures were gaining on them, but Weaver didn’t risk a glance to see just how much trouble they were in. He could already hear their leathery wings beating the air.
To the north, a road twisted like a river through a canyon of debris. Trash and blackened metal formed a skirt at the bottom of the heaps of destroyed buildings. The shells of old-world vehicles protruded out of the scrap yard.
At the end of the path was salvation. The Hilltop Bastion, now nothing more than a concrete bunker at the top of a dirt hill, enticed Weaver with its promise of safety.
About halfway there, standing on top of a mountain of rubble, was a lone figure. Weaver saw the muzzle flash, then heard the gunshot ring out half a second later. An enraged shriek followed as one of the beasts plummeted to the street below.
Farther north, behind the domes of rubble, came a flurry of gunshots. Weaver couldn’t see who was who down there, but judging by the high rate of fire, it was Rodger. He never conserved the precious bullets.
Another flash from the crest of the eastward mound, and a second Siren spun down. The shrieks of rage rose into a cacophony that pricked up the hair on Weaver’s neck. He turned his head to look at the beasts, but he couldn’t see past Magnolia’s helmet.
“How many are there? And how close?”
“Ten!” she yelled. “They’re closing in!”
“Well, make yourself useful, princess,” Weaver said.
“How? I don’t have a gun!” she shouted into her mike.
Her voice hurt Weaver’s ears almost as much as the screech of the monsters.
“Use my blaster. And don’t hit the shroud lines!”
Weaver felt the gun being pulled from the holster on his thigh. Magnolia had clipped her locking carabiner to Weaver’s armor, allowing her to let go of him with one arm and turn to fire. He pulled on his left toggle and steered the canopy toward the road curving between the mountains of destruction.
He heard the blast, and the recoil from the gun sent the canopy banking right. The blaster’s barrel hit Weaver in the shoulder.
“Son of a…”
“I got one!” she yelled.
“Great. Now kill the other nine!”
Three rounds in rapid succession came from the pile of scree below. The flashes lit up the slope, and in their light Weaver saw skeletal figures scaling the sides toward the diver at the top.
“Pipe, you got contacts on your six!” Weaver shouted.
“They’re everywhere!” Andrew replied. Gunfire sounded over the channel as he fired another burst. More Sirens crashed to the ground or rolled downhill. Piercing screeches, angry and desperate, filled the city.
Andrew did not relent. His muzzle flashes backlit the tower as the beasts scrambled upward, forsaking the easier prey in the sky to deal with the threat on the ground.
He’s going to sacrifice himself to save us, Weaver realized.
A shot zipped toward Weaver, so close he could hear it rip through the air. In his peripheral vision, the round punched through the chest of a Siren swooping in with claws extended. It flapped backward into the sky, its wings buffeting the canopy with a gust of wind.
Weaver checked the ground as he fought with the toggles. They were now a hundred feet from the road, passing over the twisted hull of a long vehicle with a strip of yellow paint still visible along the top. The sides were flayed open, and the jagged metal reached up like teeth at his boots.
He steered away from the vehicle and brought his knees up to clear the wreckage, then prepared to flare his chute.
“They’re almost on us!” Magnolia shouted. She fired off another shotgun blast. The recoil knocked them off course. Now they were headed straight toward the swarming Sirens.