“Fuck no he--”
Her hand shot up, silencing him. Luke looked up from the side of the cab and stopped the two mechanics with their sockets. A moment passed as the steel skull panned to the south. “Can you hear that?”
Luke cupped his ears.
“Something big,” said Cerberus. “Heading this way.”
Jarvis shook his head and then froze. “Wait a sec.”
They could all hear the engines now, and the low cries running alongside them. In the odd acoustics of the dead city, the sounds echoed and growled. Luke stood next to Cerberus, his ears still cupped. The mechanics were spinning the lugs on for the last set of tires. Ty, Billie, and the rest threw the pikes in the truck beds and swung their rifles into their arms.
Inside the battlesuit, she watched long-range sensors begin to light up. Her arms itched with the lack of cannons. “This is Cerberus,” she barked into her microphone. “We have incoming hostiles, request immediate reinforcements. Zzzap, Gorgon, Dragon.” She looked at the mechanics. “Are we going to be done in time?”
“Just need another minute.”
“Everyone mount up! Zzzap!” she shouted into the microphone. “Damn it, Barry, I know you can hear me!”
Luke pulled himself up into the cab and Big Red rumbled to life. “We got another jammer?”
“No.”
“Is he supposed to be flesh?”
“No, of course not.” She thudded back to the lift gate. Mean Green’s engine gunned as the mechanics threw their tools in the back. “You done?”
“It’ll get us home.”
Down Melrose the trucks swung around the corner. There were two oversized pickups and a garbage truck with steel bars across the wide windshield. Something large and purple was stretched across the massive grill. Seventeens swarmed and howled on each vehicle.
“Raise the gate,” Cerberus said.
Billie’s hand froze on the switch as Jarvis swung himself over the side of the truck. “How will you--”
“No time. Raise it and get out of here.”
“You heard her,” bellowed Harry, Mean Green’s overweight driver. “She’ll hold ‘em off. That’s what she does, right?”
The Seventeen vehicles roared closer. The thing chained to the front of the garbage truck moved, thrashing against the bindings. The armor’s lenses punched in, swelling the image in her view. “Shit,” Cerberus hissed, recognizing it. “Go!”
Mean Green dropped into gear and lunged down the street. Big Red was a beat behind it. Bullets pinged off the steel lift gate. One of its new tires blew and the big truck kept going on the dually.
A few rounds bounced off the battlesuit as she thudded over to a phone pole. She grabbed it, yanked, and felt the wood splinter under the armor’s fingers. The thick beam crashed down across the street. She scooped up an Accord near the sidewalk and flipped it out into the street, too.
Mean Green was out of sight. Big Red was just reaching the overpass. The Seventeens were a block away.
She threw her legs forward and ran.
“Why do I need to see this?” asked Stealth.
Gorgon stood by the cell doors. “Because you won’t believe me if I just tell you.”
“What could be so impossible for me to believe?”
“Just come over here.”
Her head tilted to the puddles of blood. “Suicide.”
“Two of them. They smuggled in razors, but only two went through with it.”
“Regrettable. Call a clean-up crew.”
“That’s not the problem.” He gestured her to the last door.
“Did they rise? I am sure you can deal with them one at a time, and Doctor Connolly would probably like to see them. I have things to do.”
“Not more important than this.”
She glared at him. Gorgon unlocked the door and swung the cell open.
The suit could run. It could hit forty-five miles an hour on pavement, less on dirt, gravel, or sand. She hated doing it because she could watch her power levels drop with every stride. It wasn’t cheap to make twelve hundred pounds of armor and electronics move fast.
Behind her there was a crash she could feel. A quick blink shifted her screens to the armor’s rear-view cam. The garbage truck had dropped the two huge arms that caught and flipped dumpsters, battering aside the phone pole. They speared the Acura like a pair of metal tusks, barely slowing the enormous truck at all.
She switched back to the main view. The battlesuit had caught up with Big Red. Forty percent of her power was already gone. She could see abandoned cars shake as she ran by. An ex stumbled into her path and she plowed over it, crushing it to a pulp.
“Turn,” she bellowed to Luke. “North on Western. We can cut across Santa Monica and circle down Gower.”
“What about Harry and Mean Green?”
“Fat bastard’s probably back at the Mount already,” she shouted. “They’re fine.”