Chương 36: Chapter 36: Assault on Precinct 13
Guardian
a Worm/Destiny Crossover
Chapter 36: Assault on Precinct 13
Taylor's legs bunched beneath her and she threw herself forward. Not into battle, but to reach the two officers who had been standing above the newly created hole. Even as she flew through the air she knew that the odds of their survival were low. That if the enemy didn't get them, the wooden shrapnel would. That all she was doing was opening herself to attack with no way to defend herself. But in her haste, impelled forward by instinct, she forgot about something. That is, someone.
Specifically, Narwhal.
Every single screamer boiling up through their dug tunnel exploded . With a wrenching sound of raw meat tearing they were torn to pieces from within by countless shards of blue crystalline energy. Steaming black ichor and long streamers of rough, pebbled skin sprayed in every direction in what could only be described as a storm of viscera and filth. Taylor punched through this storm, feeling both the heated impact of screamer blood on her costume, splattering like rain, and the somewhat weightier impact of two grown men. She hooked her arms around them as best she could, gripping hard as the transfer of momentum doing its level best to rip them from her grasp even as she used her legs to spin them so that she would hit the wall first.
Which she did, ramming a spiderweb crater into the concrete wall with a ferocious crash and rain of gray dust. The two officers hit the ground below her, and she then fell on top of them a fraction of a second later. A groaning pile of aches, bruises and pain they were, only then noticing that they had landed in the neatly swept pile of debris. She rolled away and off the men she'd rescued, struggling with the rising panic and unique sensation of having the wind knocked out of her. She gasped in little breaths, each going no farther than her tongue it seemed, and finally managed to breathe just before Frank and Skjoldur reached them.
"That was very brave," Skjoldur managed to sound chiding as he helped her to her feet, guiding her a little farther away so Frank could check on his men. She let him, largely because the world was spinning and partially because breathing hurt. Quite a bit. Fading fast, and enough to bring tears to her eyes. "I am glad to see you did not hurt yourself too badly."
"Are..." Ow. Breathing deep enough to talk was still out of the question. She waved a hand behind her. He grasped her meaning well enough to answer.
"They're fine." He measured her with a seasoned eye. "Well, no new injuries. Unlike you. Broken ribs, a concussion perhaps?"
Spike wandered over, leaving Narwhal and Foil standing with the other officers around the hole. She gave Taylor the same appraising look her husband had just done. "You okay? Hell of a hit you just took."
"Broken ribs." Skjoldur informed her. Spike clicked her tongue, a curious sound coming from within a metal helm.
"That's rough shit. You a regenerator, or are we going to have to get you to a healer?"
Taylor was experiencing the sensation of her rib putting itself back together. Which was weird enough to be thoroughly distracting. The look on her face, equal parts confused and disturbed – it was very weird – seemed to be answer enough, for Spike turned and went to offer her aid in getting the two dazed officers back upright. 'Aid' here meaning that she seized the pair of them by the belts and lifted them, one in each hand, to their feet.
"Well." Narwhal had an air of invigoration about her after that. "That was certainly bracing. Now, Mr. Frank – "
"Just Frank." He answered with an air of distraction.
She continued around the interruption smoothly. "I think that now would be a very good time to get you and yours to the safe zone. Would you say that ten minutes is enough time to be ready to move?"
"We'll be ready in eight." Frank then turned and began issuing a stream of orders. True to his word, eight minutes later they were ready to move. The officer with the broken leg, now dusted lightly with concrete, had retrieved a crutch from the station's first aid area. So, with Taylor in the lead, Narwhal in the middle with Foil, and Spike and Skjoldur bringing up the rear, they headed out into the city.
=+= Chapter 36: Assault on Precinct 13 =+=
Hampered by their numbers, the one wounded man, and a well-earned sense of paranoia, their progress was slow. Taylor could feel the noose tightening about their throats. She smelled them before she heard them, a sudden thickening of the enemy's uniquely wretched odor. She heard them, the brush of bone claws on concrete and asphalt and the rustle of many bodies moving, and did not wait to see them. Instead she turned on her heel and sprinted back towards the column.
She slid to a halt in front of Frank, who took one look at her expression and demanded only, "How long?"
"Seconds." Her reply had only begun to register in the faces of those before her when a cacophony of screaming, screeching battle cries filled the air. She spun to face the way she'd come, hand falling to her knife, to see a tide of screamers come spilling around the corner.
"Spread out!" Frank's voice rang out, and his men hurried to follow the order. "Cover! Cover!"
Narwhal floated next to the hobbling officer, crutch thumping in one hand while the other held a black service pistol. She scooped him up to stand on her platform with her and carried him to the left side of the street. "Skjoldur!" She called over the din. "Assist the officers over there! Spike, Foil, and Guardian, take them out!"
"They'll be in our lines of fire!" Frank protested. "We won't be able to shoot!"
"Gunfire will only draw more of them! Let my people handle this!"
The tide was nearly upon them, mere dozens of feet and closing fast. Taylor had no intention of waiting for the discussion to end and darted forward, pulling her hand away from her knife and calling upon the black-violet void that lay within. Light coruscated down her arms, forming into a bow and pooling into the open palm of her respective hands. She slowed to create and set arrow to string which allowed Spike to thunder past, boots digging furrows in the asphalt, a berserk howl of gleeful rage echoing from her helm.
Taylor drew back the first arrow as Foil pulled even and loosed it as she passed. It passed over Spike's right shoulder and punched into the oncoming horde of screamers. The arrow detonated in a thick, sticky cloud tangling limbs and bodies and creating a knot of chaotic flailing that the rest of the horde flowed over and around. She formed a second and set it to string, calling out, "Foil, down!", drawing back, and firing. Foil dove into a forward somersault as the arrow darted overhead and created a second such knot.
Around this time, Spike hit the front of the horde like a train. She tore into them in a spray of torn limbs, sprayed blood, and impacts so loud they sounded like cracks of thunder. She spread and swept her arms forward, a wide arcing move that did what the arrows had failed to do and stalled the horde's forward advance. Then she clapped her hands together, scything them through the torso of a trio of screamers who rushed abreast at her. She turned and drove her head through that of another screamer, while she lashed out with her fists and pulverized yet another two. She continued to battle, making wide, staggering blows, aiming to tie up the right flank as much as possible and doing a damned good job of it.
Taylor drew her third and final arrow and launched into the center of the horde a few seconds before Foil turned the left flank into a charnel house. Her blade flickering with whatever energy that rendered it capable to cutting anything, she folded up the front dozen or so screamers by virtue of separating their tops from their bottoms with a quartet of neat, precise, horizontal strikes. Two flicks took the heads of a pair of screamers in front of her, and she turned to the side as they fell, watching them pass by on either side. Her blade came back up and she began to – and here Taylor's vocabulary failed her – dance. It was almost hypnotic, the way Foil twirled and spun, using her legs to fight almost as much as her blade. Where Spike would let strikes bounce or slide off her, Foil dodged, parried, redirected. Under her direction, screamers killed each other nearly as much as she did.
Taylor's bow flickered once and vanished. She drew her knife, feeling the storm's Light rush through her, blinked through the remaining distance between her and the enemy, and struck with a clap of thunder.
=+= Chapter 36: Assault on Precinct 13 =+=
The last screamer, reduced to a gently drifting cloud of ash, had scarcely settled to the ground before one of the officers shouted "Behind us!". Taylor spun around, heart pounding, to see a mob of screamers – this time supported by half a dozen shooters and a pair of the big shooters – come swarming out of a building down the street. They immediately sent a hail of violet plasma arcing over the heads of the charging screamers, forcing all but two of the officers to duck their heads down. The first officer was Frank, who stood in the middle of the street, rifle shouldered, scraping divots into the big ones' thick skulls with his bullets. The other, less fortunate officer was struck full in the chest by a shooter's blast. He had been wearing a vest, and this probably saved his life. The impact threw him back, sliding across asphalt for a few yards before coming to a stop. What followed was a frantic, breathless struggle to get the slowly dissolving vest off before the plasma ate through it and started in on him.
While the broken legged officer hobbled over to drag his fellow wounded into the false-marble alcove of a bank, the rest of the officers opened fire. Narwhal made a gesture, a jerk of her head, and an array of crystalline energy fields appeared in front of the officers in time to intercept a blast of plasma before winking out. Skjoldur stood behind the trio of officers, shield overhead to project a flat field of crimson light, angled down. Any shots that hit bounced off into the knot of oncoming screamers. Taylor looked between her, Spike, and Foil. Then to the approaching enemy.
Even at her fastest, she wouldn't make it in time. But that didn't mean she couldn't contribute. "Go!" she shouted, and Spike took off in great, bounding leaps that covered massive and inadequate lengths. She would get there soon, but not in time. Foil didn't follow, instead sheathing her sword and coming to stand next to Taylor, drawing a pair of short-handled blades. Taylor drew her pistol, funneling solar Light into it and feeling the power infuse every inch of the metal. Fire curled from the barrel. She lifted it, aimed, and fired. The bullet became a drill that cored through a score of screamers before exploding, taking out another six. Foil's blades, which did not waver or drop, simply flowed through screamers as if they were water.
The officers on the left side of the street, the ones under Skjoldur's shield, saw to the shooters attacking them and set about thinning the ranks of screamers. They acted with precision and discipline and damn near folded up the left flank. Before that could happen, and before the screamers could close in and eviscerate them, the field of red fell in front to become a wall. A wall the screamers bounced off of and, like water, were funneled towards the center of the road. Frank swore loud enough to be heard over gunfire, quite an accomplishment, and darted off towards the right side of the road.
Over there was where the two wounded officers were being guarded by Narwhal and the third, healthy man. The difference in firepower was made up for by two things: the arrival of Frank, whose marksmanship seemed to improve the angrier he got, and Narwhal, who killed everything that managed to get within fifteen feet of her.
The second of Taylor's bullets hit the first of the newly redirected screamers, destroying it utterly before going on to hollow out the chest cavity of one of the two big shooters. Foil had another two knives that she used to great effect to separate the remaining smaller shooters from their lives. Around that time Spike landed in the middle of the street like a meteor and commenced mopping up the remaining screamers while the officers used a withering hail of concentrated gunfire to bring down the last big shooter.
Then it was done, and there was a very small, bloodthirsty part of Taylor that regretted it.
=+= Chapter 36: Assault on Precinct 13 =+=
They were only attacked once more during the rest of the journey – when a trio of new forms Taylor had never seen before tore their way out of the ruined shell of a coffee shop. They were like the big shooters, only their arms ended in massive, thick bone blades instead of the cannon. Faster than they looked, and exactly as strong as they appeared, they hit the middle of their little column and almost cut one of the officers in half. He was saved anything worse than a superficial wound by Spike driving her shoulder into its middle, bearing it back into the shop from whence it came, and beating it to death with one of its arms.
Foil saw to another, the size, strength, and the sharpness of their blade irrelevant against someone they couldn't hit and who could cut anything she wanted at will.
Taylor took out the last by opening its spine with her crackling blade, causing the giant thing to fall apart into ash.
After that they proceeded unhindered, reaching the high school some time in the mid-afternoon. The officers had a moment of quiet triumph as they passed into safety; subdued smiles and pats on their fellows' backs. She could see them relax as they passed through the force field, the tension that had been tying them into knots easing. They were met by medics and a quartet of capes with a white sash tied around their arms, presumably denoting some sort of healing ability. Taylor was given to understand those were about as rare as hen's teeth.
"Come," Narwhal said, "we need to make our reports. After, we'll be free to clean up and rest. I could use some food, myself." She led them to the command tent, which had gotten substantially busier since they left. Troopers were coming and going in greater numbers, on occasion with one or more capes in tow. The babble of dozens of conversations drifted out from the open front, and Taylor could see the glow of dozens of computer screens from within the comparatively dim interior.
She smiled to see Lisa surrounded by a pair of screens, fingers flying over a keyboard and an intense look of concentration on her face. She didn't see Taylor, absorbed as she was in her task, and though Taylor felt a need to interrupt her girlfriend for a greatly desired hug, she refrained. There was no way of guessing what Lisa was up to, but if it was happening here it was more than likely to be important.
She didn't pay much attention to Narwhal's report. She was hungry and sweaty and tired. Her rib, though by and large healed, ached and she had bloodstains on her clothes – some of it was the rapidly evaporating black ichor, and some of it was not. From herself, from helping bind a few wounds, there were streaks of rust-red sinking in to the fabric and her skin.
Maybe later she'd think about the bus. About whatever it was that rattled Foil, Skjoldur and Narwhal so deeply. She knew she'd dream about it. But for now...
For now she'd think about a shower, and finding whatever passed for food.
=+= Chapter 36: Assault on Precinct 13 =+=
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