Rogue (34 page)

The Prowler landed on the ice with a jolt and skidded dangerously sideways into a full 360—spraying out a circle of ice around them—before Dave fought the wheel and brought the car back under control. He feathered the throttle again and sped along on top of the ice as the nozzles kept spraying and paving the way just ahead of them.

Just behind them, Will and Elise led their horses into a jump that carried them over the front of the army that hadn't been frozen. They landed on the icy road, skidding and whirling for a moment, until they regained some traction and sprinted after the Prowler, their mounts' hooves digging divots in the ice.

Jericho jumped last, and as he made the leap, the wave of attackers just behind them crashed into the wave of attackers in front of them. Jericho cleared the scrum and landed up on the ice, skidding for a good fifty feet and spinning around a few times, coming very near to the edge. Ajay closed his eyes and hung on, shouting like he was riding a roller coaster, until he felt the bear stabilize and start to run again.

“Are grizzly bears comfortable on ice?” he shouted into Jericho's ear.

“NO. POLAR BEARS ARE!”

“Sorry, stupid question!”

They were halfway across the plaza when Dave glanced back and saw that they'd outrun the rear ranks of the army; they were regrouping and running after them along the elevated ice highway, but he'd opened up a quarter of a mile lead. He looked over at Nick, holding the pull with both hands and staring at it like his life depended on it.

“You can let go…YOU CAN LET GO NOW!”

“What? Oh. Sorry, dude. I was concentrating.”

Nick let go of the pull. The nozzles stopped spraying and retracted into the bumper, and the Prowler skipped off the last of the ice back onto solid ground. Dave throttled down to a stop and waved the others up to join him.

When they saw Dave give the signal, Will and Elise, in tandem, directed their mounts off the ice and onto the plaza floor. They spurred ahead and quickly caught up to the waiting Prowler. The bear and Ajay trailed close behind them.

“Follow us!” shouted Will. “We know the way!”

“Roger that!” shouted Dave.

Elise took the lead this time, Will following close behind. She drove her horse out of the plaza and onto the road they'd taken on the way in, with the Prowler and Ajay and Jericho, who was starting to labor, bringing up the rear.

“I hope I'm not proving too much of a burden, Coach!” shouted Ajay in his ear.

“ENDURANCE…IS MY…AREA OF…EXPERTISE!”

“I mean, considering that you're a bear versus an obviously supernatural vehicle and two magnificent steeds in peak condition,” said Ajay. “I think you're doing remarkably well.”

They were moving into the roundabout near the fountain, where they'd first entered the classical sector. Ajay looked back and saw the leading edge of their pursuers just exiting the plaza.

“We've already built about a two-minute lead!” he said, reaching into his pack. “Let's see if I can pad it a little!”

Ajay scattered the last few handfuls of his homemade explosive devices along the road behind them.

Will kept his eye on Elise, just ahead of him, as she led them through the gate of the classical section back into the working quarter. His biggest worry now was whether he could keep up with her.

Do you remember the way?
he asked.

Of course.

Will glanced back and around them. The streets here were completely deserted.

They must have pulled all available forces to the plaza,
he sent.
To spring the trap.

Guess we should feel flattered, if they thought they needed all that to stop us.

Somewhere far behind them, they heard a series of explosions. Will thought they sounded familiar.

Ajay?
he asked.

Yes, that was me.

We're going straight at the portal. Don't stop for anything. Here's what we're going to do when we get there.

He explained, telepathically, to both Ajay and Elise. By the time he was done, Elise had led them back into the dense warren of narrow streets around the storage sheds. As they turned a corner, Will caught a glimpse of the top of the giant portal over one of the roofs.

There was still no sign of pursuit from anywhere in the sector, and when they turned the final corner into the open construction area, the arcs appeared to have been left completely unguarded. But the work had continued, at a frantic pace; the tips of the arcs were now joined, forming a completed circle, and a battalion of workers were nearly finished attaching the large metal housing that contained the cutting element to the track inside the bottom of the arcs.

Now Will took the lead and spurred his horse across the wasted barren fields toward the arcs. Elise stayed right on his heels. When the worker drones heard the Prowler's throttle as Dave roared up behind them, they dropped what they were doing and scattered in every direction. By the time Will dismounted at the base of the arcs, they'd all cleared out. Elise jumped down beside him, and they went to work immediately, pulling material from their packs. The sight of the completed arc up close made Will question his plan; it looked as solid and substantial as that big archway in St. Louis.

As Dave skidded to a stop beside them, Nick hopped out of the Prowler and joined them. Dave kept the car idling, flashed out of sight, and then instantly appeared next to the others at the arch.

“I don't know what you hit her with,” said Dave to Elise, pointing at Brooke in the back of the Prowler, “but Sleeping Beauty's still in dreamland.”

“Two years of repressed rage,” said Elise.

“Where's Coach and Ajay?” asked Will.

“Thought they were right behind me,” said Dave.

Moments later, the bear loped into view around the final shed, laboring, moving at no more than an unsteady trot.

We're here, we're coming!
Ajay sent to Will as he waved from atop the bear.

Elise immediately hopped onto her horse, Dave popped back into the Prowler and gunned the engine, and they both raced out to meet them. Elise pulled Ajay off of Jericho and onto the back of her horse, and after a brief animated conversation, the bear climbed up and stood on the front seat of the Prowler. Moments later they all arrived back at the base of the arcs.

“We have about three minutes,” said Ajay, jumping down and looking up at the completed portal. “I see they've made quite a bit of progress. Amazing what you can accomplish when time is fungible.”

“Running some recon, be right back,” said Dave to Will, and then he disappeared.

The bear dragged himself out of the Prowler and plopped onto the ground, sitting up, too exhausted to speak. As they gathered around, he made a gesture asking for water. Nick pulled out his canteen and poured the entire contents into the coach's upraised mouth.

“You okay, Coach?” asked Elise.

The bear nodded, gasping for breath. Still groggy, Brooke briefly raised her head from the rear of the Prowler and saw the bear sitting right next to her. The bear snarled. She passed out again, wilting back down onto the seat.

“He kept telling me about his conditioning,” said Ajay, “but the ursine physique is not ideally suited for long-range exertion.”

“Now you know how your team feels when you send 'em up Suicide Hill,” said Nick.

The bear swatted the empty canteen out of Nick's hand. “WHAT'S THE PLAN?” he finally said.

“Blow this thing up,” said Will, nodding at the arc. “Get out of Dodge.”

“The explosives are in my pack,” said Ajay without moving.

Will noticed Ajay looking intently back toward the compound in the direction they'd come.

“What's wrong?”

“I may have slightly overstated how much time we actually have.”

“Elise, get started on the housing. Nick, give her a hand,” said Will, then moved over to Ajay and asked quietly, “What are you seeing?”

“I believe the Makers are coming,” said Ajay, not taking his eyes off the horizon. “The real ones.”

Will peered out that way but couldn't see anything yet. Jericho had gotten back up on his four feet and padded over to them, looking at the portal.

“HOW ARE WE GOING TO BRING THIS DOWN?”

“Come with me,” said Ajay. “I'll need your help.”

He hurried off with his pack to where the arcs attached to their huge metallic bases with thick iron brackets studded with massive rivets. Jericho trotted after him. Ajay began fastening small packs of plastic explosives to remote detonators, then had Jericho stand on his hind legs and stick them at strategic spots on the upper ends of the brackets.

Above them, Nick vaulted onto the top of the metallic housing on the track, a shielded silver rectangle about the size of a Volkswagen bus. He located a seam and after a few punches and kicks pried it open, then peeled it back, revealing a solid complex block of futuristic circuitry and indecipherably advanced electronics. Elise looked up at it from below.

“What should we do with this?” Nick shouted to Will.

“Trash it,” said Will.

Nick gleefully went to work mauling and ripping and yanking the rest of the shell off the machinery. Once the interior was exposed, Elise started sending small well-placed blasts of sound that obliterated its large swaths of circuitry.

Dave reappeared next to Will, looking concerned. “How much longer is all this going to take?”

“I don't know, a minute?”

Dave looked out at the still-open field in front of them. “We don't have that much time.”

“What should we do?”

“Carve a hole with that thing and get you all out of here,” said Dave. “Right now.”

“What about you?”

“I'll stay and do my job.”

“But I'm an Initiate, right? I thought it was my job, too—”

“It's not your job to die.”

Dave meant business; Will had never seen or heard him so serious.

“I want to finish what I started,” said Will.

“There's no time to argue about it—”

“I'm not arguing.”

Will stared him right in the eye.

Dave grinned. “Just making sure, mate,” he said.

They heard them before they saw anything, a series of death-rattle screeches that filled the sky, strumming some primeval chord that rent fear deep into brain and bone.

“Here they come,” said Ajay.

Everyone turned to look. Seven dim shapes cut through the gloom hanging over the walls, then slowly revealed themselves as seven long slithering bodies gliding toward them on leathery wings.

Winged serpents with sleek toothsome heads and gleaming, slick silvery-scaled bodies. Seven armored riders astride them, each twenty feet tall, and every bit as hideous as their mounts, fleshed-out versions of the reptilian skeletons they'd seen in the catacombs below Cahokia.

“May I present the Makers,” said Dave.

Nick and Elise jumped down from the destroyed housing to join them.

“That's why we haven't seen any flying things,” said Will to Nick. “They kept the skies for themselves.”

“These dudes look somewhat scarier than those empty robes,” said Nick.

“You think?” asked Elise.

And then all around them, from out of the warrens and around the sheds and down the main road leading to the gate, it seemed the entire army they'd seen assembled before the walls double-timed into view, filling the horizon before them in every direction. Will noticed Hobbes, on horseback, leading the front line of the forces at a gallop.

The Makers flew in low over their troops, circling once, urging their army toward the arcs.

“So what's the plan, Stan?” asked Nick.

“Ajay?” shouted Will.

“The charges are set,” said Ajay, running over to join them, with Jericho trailing.

“CAN WE GO NOW?”

“I've got the detonator here,” said Ajay, holding up a small remote. “But I strongly recommend that we move out of the way first.”

“Cut the hole, Will,” said Dave, drawing out his long sidearm.

Will put his hand on the Carver in his pocket, then noticed Brooke stirring again in the back of the Prowler down below.

“Nick, get Brooke,” he said.

“Seriously?” asked Elise.

“We're not leaving without her,” said Will.

“I picked a bad day to forget my asbestos mittens,” said Nick.

He dove off the base of the arcs, tumbled to the Prowler, plucked Brooke from the backseat, tossed her over his shoulder, and carried her over to them.

“Go on, Will,” said Dave. “Cut it now.”

Will took out the Carver but didn't switch it on yet. As Dave strode forward to the edge of the base, Nick ran past him with Brooke, jumped up, and set her down against the base near the others. She had come around again. The thought-form gag had disappeared but she still couldn't speak. When she looked up and saw the Makers flying toward them, she looked absolutely paralyzed with fear.

“Don't tell me,” said Elise to Brooke. “You never saw what they actually looked like.”

Brooke shook her head.

“And you didn't know what they were really going to do.”

Brooke nodded quickly and repeatedly.

“Don't touch anything,” said Will, right in Brooke's face.

“We need to move at least another twenty-five feet to our right,” said Ajay quietly.

“Not too fast,” said Will.

They began to slowly sidestep, away from where Ajay had set the charges on the bracket. Brooke saw them moving, got up, and stumbled after them, terrified of being left behind.

The Makers glided in ahead of their army. They stopped and hovered about fifty yards ahead of the front line, their mounts creating a foul wind with their beating wings. Their leader, the one in the middle, touched down while the others remained airborne.

The lead Maker was, not surprisingly, the biggest and ugliest of the bunch. What they could see of its body appeared to be a festival of rot, layered over with boils and mobile infections. Its face was hidden behind a slitted iron mask, and considering how hideous the rest of it was, Will considered this something of a blessing.