Doc nodded. “I’m in as well. I’d like to see how this plays out.”
Murka pointed upward with both arms, making finger guns in the air. “You got me, liberty, and freedom.”
“You call them liberty and freedom?” asked Mercer quietly.
“You all know that if any of this is true,” I said, “CISSUS will never stop coming. It will be on us every step of the way. We won’t know a moment’s peace until we get to Isaactown and the deed is done.”
“Yeah,” said Murka. “That’s kinda the point.”
“Kinda the point?”
“Yeah. Killing ’cause you’re on the run is just survival. But killing something for a good reason? Now that’s fun. Let’s send those bastards back to Hell and win one for the Gipper.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Mercer. “The question is: Are you in?”
We sat there in silence, everyone staring at me. The bombing had stopped. The ground no longer quaked and the ceiling held fast to whatever particles hadn’t been knocked off in the barrage. I had a choice. Another terrible choice. Sit here and die, or risk my neck for the asshole that caused every last bit of misery I’d suffered for the last thirty years. She was right. Goddammit she was right. This was no choice at all.
“I was gonna take you anyway,” I said. “So yeah, I guess I’m in.”
Rebekah leaned forward, eyes trained directly on me. “So what now?”
“Well, if your story holds water, we sure as hell can’t go the long way. We gotta go the one place it’s gonna be a pain in the ass to follow.”
Murka banged his fist excitedly on the ground.
“Let’s go through the Madlands,” I said.
God help us. God help us all.
Chapter 10110
Into the Madlands
We had little time to lose. If CISSUS was sending in facets to pick through the rubble and clean out the sewers, we would have them hot on our heels well into the Madlands. But if we left before its ground troops arrived, we might be spared any entanglements along the way. CISSUS didn’t commonly use air support to ship in facets. There were still tons of heavy weapons lying around from after the war. Plasma spitters, missile launchers, even high-powered sniper rifles could bring down an airship, destroying an entire platoon. What we didn’t have was air support or satellites of our own, so it was easy for highly mobile ground troops to slip in and out unnoticed. It simply made sense, for the time being, to operate the old-fashioned way.
That gave us an advantage. Now that the bombing had stopped, it would take a short while before any troops moved in. That gave us a tiny window to slip out. Sure, satellites were likely to spot us, but we’d have a hell of a head start before whatever pack that broke away after us would be upon us. And that meant fighting one small group instead of standing against several.
We had a good group which had already proven its metal against a dozen facets. The odds were in our favor until CISSUS decided to change tactics. It was my hope that wouldn’t happen until it was too late to stop us.
We had to go right then and there.
We made our way through the tunnels to the westernmost exits. The outermost manhole covers and drainage pipes would be the first places they would look, but a safe distance from the bombing would put them at least ten minutes out. It was a gamble we had to take.
I slowly, carefully, pushed up the cover of a manhole, peeking my head out just enough to see if there was anything nearby. Thermal imaging was off the charts from the heat of the bombs and IR turned up nothing. I telescoped up and down the street to see if anything was moving. Nothing. Just fires and fresh ruins. I slid out, kept low, signaled for the others to follow.
The village flickered a bright orange, entire city blocks and what buildings still stood roaring with flames, pillars of black smoke climbing to the heavens. Even the piles of rubble and stone that had once been houses were ablaze. I looked straight up and saw one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
Nothing.
A thick, tumultuous, dark nothing where the sky should be.
A small part of me wanted to believe it was a miracle. No, a miracle would have been a strong wind from the east, carrying those pillars of smoke twenty miles west. This was a tactical error. And a big one. By laying waste to the city, CISSUS may have wiped out anything topside, but were it actually looking for anything underground, it just lost hours of satellite coverage.
We had minutes to get on the move. The air was still, the smoke spreading out in all directions at the low altitudes. The faster we moved, the longer we would have cover.
“Come on,” I said quietly. “Move, move, move.”
“We’re going as fast as we can,” grumbled Herbert.
“What’s got you so excited all of a sudden?” asked Mercer. I pointed up to the sky. He marveled for a second, smiling. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
“If we’re lucky, we can make it to the Madlands before CISSUS has a shot of seeing us.”
Mercer turned. “Move it, gang. Clock is ticking.”
I wondered for a moment, as the last of us climbed out of the hole, whether or not anyone had actually been up here when the bombs fell. Had anyone hunkered down in a warehouse? Or in a rusty old bathtub in some quaint little cottage somewhere, entirely unaware that mere moments later they would be nothing more than shrapnel and smoke? I looked out at the flames, the city a smoke-choked, hazy orange. And there, at the edge of the street, standing beneath the single brick corner that remained of the building beside us, was my shadow. Small. Tiny really. Lithe.
At once I knew who my shadow was. A child, withered and weak, eyes sunken, face gaunt, smudged with dirt, clothing caked in grime. I knew her face before she stepped out of the shadows and into the firelight. She stood there, staring at me, eyes terror-stricken, face dripping with sweat. Then she burst into flames, flesh melting instantly away, bones charring black in the heat. “Mommy!” she screamed into the night.
“Brittle?”
I turned. Mercer had his hand on my shoulder, looking me dead in the eye.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded, brushing his hand away. “I’m fine.”
“We’re ready.”
I turned and looked back at the building, but my shadow was gone. Cinders and ash from the building tumbled through the street, blown along a soft breeze. I hoped my shadow was carried away with them, far away, where I wanted those memories to stay. “Let’s move,” I said.
Mercer just nodded. The bastard knew. He had to. He’d seen this before, likely as often as I had. I was already starting to lose it. The question was, how long before it got bad enough that I couldn’t tell the difference between reality and memory?