Sarah watched her ambush turn into a rout without really being able to identify the turning point. She only knew she had fucked up. With the mummies crouched behind boulders, with herself on a high crest of rock trying to snipe the enemy with an assault rifle she knew it was going to end badly.
One by one the mummies were picked off. The younger ones, the Roman-era mummies with painted faces went first. One of them was stupid enough to run out into the denied zone, the region too close to the Source where the undead caught fire. He was smoldering before three of the accelerated corpses piled on top of him. All four of them burst into flame at once, a rolling, scrapping funeral pyre. The mummy's arms pinwheeled as he tried to throw the ghouls off of him. He was slowing down as Sarah watched, however, and in moments he had stopped moving altogether.
The other painted mummy had a little more sense, but less luck. He moved steadily from rock to rock, picking off ghouls and then diving back into cover. In the end it wasn't a ghoul that got him at all but something else, some weird magic that turned his linen yellow. His wrappings began to tatter as if they were torn at by dry desert winds and then his bones just seemed to give out and he collapsed in a heap.
Rifle fire picked off one of the older mummies. He had been smart enough to stay put and wait for the ghouls to come to him. Hunkered down between two rocks he kept the barrel of his M1014 high, ready to take opportunistic shots. He was severely outranged, however, by a cultist with a Dragunov sniper rifle. Through the scope of her OICW Sarah saw the sniper line up the perfect bead. He took his shot before she had time to even shout out a warning. The mummy's head popped open like a bag full of freeze-dried meat.
The rest of the mummies died when the Tsarevich decided to stop playing games and sent his whole force into the valley, hundreds of ghouls, at least a hundred living men and women with assault rifles and pistols and machine guns. The enemy just tore her troops to pieces. What had been a battle of attrition turned into a plain old-fashioned defeat as bodies living and dead flung themselves at Sarah's positions. Ptolemy threw away his weapon and threw himself into the melee, grabbing at ghouls and hurling them into the denied zone, turning around to kick in the faces of living zealots, moving so fast Sarah saw him as an off-white blur digging into the enemy's ranks. Then he disappeared.
He was just there one moment and gone the next. 'Magic,' she breathed, but no. She would have seen magic. He had simply been tackled by so many of the Tsarevich's forces that she couldn't see him any more.
There was no more time.
So this is it,she told herself. The moment of truth. The mummies had sacrificed themselves so she could get close enough to finish her mission. Seven mummies had died for this. Two liches. Marisol's son. All so she could fire a single shot. Sarah lifted the OICW to her lips and kissed it. She needed luck. She had the determination.
She looked down from her perch and saw Ayaan standing in the midst of the dead and the living. She was wearing a leather jacket with painted skulls on it, which made her a perfect target. Sarah lifted the scope of her weapon to her eye and centered the crosshairs on Ayaan's forehead. It was a duty, a sacred duty that she carried out. The shot would give away her position. She would have only moments after she killed Ayaan to get the barrel in her own mouth and destroy her own brain. But then it would be over. A cold, almost frozen calm came over her. She'd been taught how to do this by the best. She slipped off the safety. Just one shot. She just needed... she needed something. One shot, right, she just needed one shot.
Sarah blinked but it just made her vision blur. She licked her lips but her tongue was dry. Was she... was she afraid? She just needed the one... the one shot. Silence filled her head'she couldn't hear anything.