Chapter 14
“Stay behind me,” he orders. We run toward camp, a good half mile away, but when it comes into view, I stop, my feet frozen to the ground. If Bowen wants me to follow him a single step farther, he’ll have to hit me upside the head again and carry me.
Bowen doesn’t notice I’ve frozen in place, or he doesn’t care. He throws himself into the middle of a swarm of brown-clad militia interrupted by patches of bare skin.
I crouch as low to the ground as I can get, an unassuming human rock, and stare.
Young, exceptionally healthy-looking men are tearing at the militia, flinging them, biting them, snapping their bones, splattering blood. They’re like Jonah, these freakishly strong young men—beasts. A gun goes off, and one beast staggers, looks down at its muscular chest, at the gaping bullet wound in it, and then jumps toward the man who shot him. The man shoots again, and the beast jerks to a stop, falling lifeless to the ground.
There are four other beasts. Three are men, dressed in tattered rags, but the fourth is female, wearing torn pants and a thin tank top that hangs to her thighs and barely covers her small breasts and bulging muscles.
The female beast turns her face to the sky, and her eyes slip shut. Her nose wrinkles and her chest expands as she takes a deep breath. And then her eyes pop open and slowly travel to mine. Her lips pull away from her teeth, and above the din of the fighting I can hear the deep, guttural rumble that comes from her throat.
The three male beasts freeze, look at the female, and follow the line of her glare. And then all four are staring at me. As one, they face me, crouch, and balance on the balls of their feet. The militia surrounding them pause, their faces baffled.
The beasts lunge forward and sprint, flinging bodies out of the way to reach their target. I am their target. A target with fettered arms and nowhere to flee. But it doesn’t matter. They move like the wind and whirl around me before I have time to stand. Finally, as if it is a sound I have been waiting my entire life to hear, guns go off, a sudden, deafening explosion of a hundred discharged bullets that topples three bodies to the ground beside me.
The fourth beast, the female, is already on top of me, crouched on my chest, flattening me to the ground, fingers forcing my chin up. She opens her mouth and lunges for my exposed neck. Electricity hums in my electromagnetic cuffs. My forearms grow hot and my body convulses, my jaw rattling with the force of it. The thing on top of me absorbs half of the current boiling through my flesh, leeching the heat away so it’s almost bearable. Her back arches and the grip on my throat loosens. She is yanked from me and the electricity stops. I stare at the blue sky, my body numb.
The cuffs on my wrists separate and release, and my burning arms fall limp to my sides. Bowen is beside me, face freckled with crimson, straddling the female beast, my cuffs in his hands. The female writhes beneath him, and he slams a cuff into her face, making blood splatter from her nose. She growls and lunges at him, her bloody teeth barely missing his chin.
“I could use a little backup here!” he roars, smashing a cuff into her face again. Three more men throw themselves onto the beast, and Bowen secures the cuffs on her arms. They lock into place, and he jumps off the writhing creature. Crouching by my legs, he removes my ankle cuffs, but before he has a chance to put them onto the beast, she throws the three men from her and is back on her feet.
She launches herself at me, mouth open, cuffed and fused hands reaching toward me. I lift my gloriously free arms and, using her momentum, push the female over the top of me.
A lone gun goes off and the beast hits the ground, skidding to a stop in the dirt. She does not move, does not blink her eyes. A pool of red forms beneath her and soaks into the dusty earth.
I look up in time to see Bowen lower his rifle.
“That,” he says, his voice trembling, “was a Level Ten.”