“Sorry, stupid question!”
They were halfway across the plaza when Dave glanced back and saw that they’d outrun the rear ranks of the army; they were regrouping and running after them along the elevated ice highway, but he’d opened up a quarter of a mile lead. He looked over at Nick, holding the pull with both hands and staring at it like his life depended on it.
“You can let go…YOU CAN LET GO NOW!”
“What? Oh. Sorry, dude. I was concentrating.”
Nick let go of the pull. The nozzles stopped spraying and retracted into the bumper, and the Prowler skipped off the last of the ice back onto solid ground. Dave throttled down to a stop and waved the others up to join him.
When they saw Dave give the signal, Will and Elise, in tandem, directed their mounts off the ice and onto the plaza floor. They spurred ahead and quickly caught up to the waiting Prowler. The bear and Ajay trailed close behind them.
“Follow us!” shouted Will. “We know the way!”
“Roger that!” shouted Dave.
Elise took the lead this time, Will following close behind. She drove her horse out of the plaza and onto the road they’d taken on the way in, with the Prowler and Ajay and Jericho, who was starting to labor, bringing up the rear.
“I hope I’m not proving too much of a burden, Coach!” shouted Ajay in his ear.
“ENDURANCE…IS MY…AREA OF…EXPERTISE!”
“I mean, considering that you’re a bear versus an obviously supernatural vehicle and two magnificent steeds in peak condition,” said Ajay. “I think you’re doing remarkably well.”
They were moving into the roundabout near the fountain, where they’d first entered the classical sector. Ajay looked back and saw the leading edge of their pursuers just exiting the plaza.
“We’ve already built about a two-minute lead!” he said, reaching into his pack. “Let’s see if I can pad it a little!”
Ajay scattered the last few handfuls of his homemade explosive devices along the road behind them.
Will kept his eye on Elise, just ahead of him, as she led them through the gate of the classical section back into the working quarter. His biggest worry now was whether he could keep up with her.
Do you remember the way? he asked.
Of course.
Will glanced back and around them. The streets here were completely deserted.
They must have pulled all available forces to the plaza, he sent. To spring the trap.
Guess we should feel flattered, if they thought they needed all that to stop us.
Somewhere far behind them, they heard a series of explosions. Will thought they sounded familiar.
Ajay? he asked.
Yes, that was me.
We’re going straight at the portal. Don’t stop for anything. Here’s what we’re going to do when we get there.
He explained, telepathically, to both Ajay and Elise. By the time he was done, Elise had led them back into the dense warren of narrow streets around the storage sheds. As they turned a corner, Will caught a glimpse of the top of the giant portal over one of the roofs.
There was still no sign of pursuit from anywhere in the sector, and when they turned the final corner into the open construction area, the arcs appeared to have been left completely unguarded. But the work had continued, at a frantic pace; the tips of the arcs were now joined, forming a completed circle, and a battalion of workers were nearly finished attaching the large metal housing that contained the cutting element to the track inside the bottom of the arcs.
Now Will took the lead and spurred his horse across the wasted barren fields toward the arcs. Elise stayed right on his heels. When the worker drones heard the Prowler’s throttle as Dave roared up behind them, they dropped what they were doing and scattered in every direction. By the time Will dismounted at the base of the arcs, they’d all cleared out. Elise jumped down beside him, and they went to work immediately, pulling material from their packs. The sight of the completed arc up close made Will question his plan; it looked as solid and substantial as that big archway in St. Louis.
As Dave skidded to a stop beside them, Nick hopped out of the Prowler and joined them. Dave kept the car idling, flashed out of sight, and then instantly appeared next to the others at the arch.
“I don’t know what you hit her with,” said Dave to Elise, pointing at Brooke in the back of the Prowler, “but Sleeping Beauty’s still in dreamland.”
“Two years of repressed rage,” said Elise.
“Where’s Coach and Ajay?” asked Will.
“Thought they were right behind me,” said Dave.
Moments later, the bear loped into view around the final shed, laboring, moving at no more than an unsteady trot.
We’re here, we’re coming! Ajay sent to Will as he waved from atop the bear.
Elise immediately hopped onto her horse, Dave popped back into the Prowler and gunned the engine, and they both raced out to meet them. Elise pulled Ajay off of Jericho and onto the back of her horse, and after a brief animated conversation, the bear climbed up and stood on the front seat of the Prowler. Moments later they all arrived back at the base of the arcs.
“We have about three minutes,” said Ajay, jumping down and looking up at the completed portal. “I see they’ve made quite a bit of progress. Amazing what you can accomplish when time is fungible.”
“Running some recon, be right back,” said Dave to Will, and then he disappeared.
The bear dragged himself out of the Prowler and plopped onto the ground, sitting up, too exhausted to speak. As they gathered around, he made a gesture asking for water. Nick pulled out his canteen and poured the entire contents into the coach’s upraised mouth.
“You okay, Coach?” asked Elise.
The bear nodded, gasping for breath. Still groggy, Brooke briefly raised her head from the rear of the Prowler and saw the bear sitting right next to her. The bear snarled. She passed out again, wilting back down onto the seat.
“He kept telling me about his conditioning,” said Ajay, “but the ursine physique is not ideally suited for long-range exertion.”
“Now you know how your team feels when you send ’em up Suicide Hill,” said Nick.
The bear swatted the empty canteen out of Nick’s hand. “WHAT’S THE PLAN?” he finally said.
“Blow this thing up,” said Will, nodding at the arc. “Get out of Dodge.”
“The explosives are in my pack,” said Ajay without moving.
Will noticed Ajay looking intently back toward the compound in the direction they’d come.
“What’s wrong?”
“I may have slightly overstated how much time we actually have.”
“Elise, get started on the housing. Nick, give her a hand,” said Will, then moved over to Ajay and asked quietly, “What are you seeing?”
“I believe the Makers are coming,” said Ajay, not taking his eyes off the horizon. “The real ones.”
Will peered out that way but couldn’t see anything yet. Jericho had gotten back up on his four feet and padded over to them, looking at the portal.
“HOW ARE WE GOING TO BRING THIS DOWN?”
“Come with me,” said Ajay. “I’ll need your help.”
He hurried off with his pack to where the arcs attached to their huge metallic bases with thick iron brackets studded with massive rivets. Jericho trotted after him. Ajay began fastening small packs of plastic explosives to remote detonators, then had Jericho stand on his hind legs and stick them at strategic spots on the upper ends of the brackets.
Above them, Nick vaulted onto the top of the metallic housing on the track, a shielded silver rectangle about the size of a Volkswagen bus. He located a seam and after a few punches and kicks pried it open, then peeled it back, revealing a solid complex block of futuristic circuitry and indecipherably advanced electronics. Elise looked up at it from below.
“What should we do with this?” Nick shouted to Will.
“Trash it,” said Will.
> Nick gleefully went to work mauling and ripping and yanking the rest of the shell off the machinery. Once the interior was exposed, Elise started sending small well-placed blasts of sound that obliterated its large swaths of circuitry.
Dave reappeared next to Will, looking concerned. “How much longer is all this going to take?”
“I don’t know, a minute?”
Dave looked out at the still-open field in front of them. “We don’t have that much time.”
“What should we do?”
“Carve a hole with that thing and get you all out of here,” said Dave. “Right now.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll stay and do my job.”
“But I’m an Initiate, right? I thought it was my job, too—”
“It’s not your job to die.”
Dave meant business; Will had never seen or heard him so serious.
“I want to finish what I started,” said Will.
“There’s no time to argue about it—”
“I’m not arguing.”
Will stared him right in the eye.
Dave grinned. “Just making sure, mate,” he said.
They heard them before they saw anything, a series of death-rattle screeches that filled the sky, strumming some primeval chord that rent fear deep into brain and bone.
“Here they come,” said Ajay.
Everyone turned to look. Seven dim shapes cut through the gloom hanging over the walls, then slowly revealed themselves as seven long slithering bodies gliding toward them on leathery wings.
Winged serpents with sleek toothsome heads and gleaming, slick silvery-scaled bodies. Seven armored riders astride them, each twenty feet tall, and every bit as hideous as their mounts, fleshed-out versions of the reptilian skeletons they’d seen in the catacombs below Cahokia.
“May I present the Makers,” said Dave.
Nick and Elise jumped down from the destroyed housing to join them.
“That’s why we haven’t seen any flying things,” said Will to Nick. “They kept the skies for themselves.”
“These dudes look somewhat scarier than those empty robes,” said Nick.
“You think?” asked Elise.
And then all around them, from out of the warrens and around the sheds and down the main road leading to the gate, it seemed the entire army they’d seen assembled before the walls double-timed into view, filling the horizon before them in every direction. Will noticed Hobbes, on horseback, leading the front line of the forces at a gallop.
The Makers flew in low over their troops, circling once, urging their army toward the arcs.
“So what’s the plan, Stan?” asked Nick.
“Ajay?” shouted Will.
“The charges are set,” said Ajay, running over to join them, with Jericho trailing.
“CAN WE GO NOW?”
“I’ve got the detonator here,” said Ajay, holding up a small remote. “But I strongly recommend that we move out of the way first.”
“Cut the hole, Will,” said Dave, drawing out his long sidearm.
Will put his hand on the Carver in his pocket, then noticed Brooke stirring again in the back of the Prowler down below.
“Nick, get Brooke,” he said.
“Seriously?” asked Elise.
“We’re not leaving without her,” said Will.
“I picked a bad day to forget my asbestos mittens,” said Nick.
He dove off the base of the arcs, tumbled to the Prowler, plucked Brooke from the backseat, tossed her over his shoulder, and carried her over to them.
“Go on, Will,” said Dave. “Cut it now.”
Will took out the Carver but didn’t switch it on yet. As Dave strode forward to the edge of the base, Nick ran past him with Brooke, jumped up, and set her down against the base near the others. She had come around again. The thought-form gag had disappeared but she still couldn’t speak. When she looked up and saw the Makers flying toward them, she looked absolutely paralyzed with fear.
“Don’t tell me,” said Elise to Brooke. “You never saw what they actually looked like.”
Brooke shook her head.
“And you didn’t know what they were really going to do.”
Brooke nodded quickly and repeatedly.
“Don’t touch anything,” said Will, right in Brooke’s face.
“We need to move at least another twenty-five feet to our right,” said Ajay quietly.
“Not too fast,” said Will.
They began to slowly sidestep, away from where Ajay had set the charges on the bracket. Brooke saw them moving, got up, and stumbled after them, terrified of being left behind.
The Makers glided in ahead of their army. They stopped and hovered about fifty yards ahead of the front line, their mounts creating a foul wind with their beating wings. Their leader, the one in the middle, touched down while the others remained airborne.
The lead Maker was, not surprisingly, the biggest and ugliest of the bunch. What they could see of its body appeared to be a festival of rot, layered over with boils and mobile infections. Its face was hidden behind a slitted iron mask, and considering how hideous the rest of it was, Will considered this something of a blessing.
The lead Maker pointed a hand at them and spoke in a grinding, completely indecipherable tongue. Its voice was punishingly loud, like a dinosaur scratching its talons on a blackboard, echoing off all the surfaces around them. The roommates covered their ears as they moved. The Maker finished its threat and waited for a reaction—presumably groveling and abject surrender. Instead Nick stepped forward, grinned, and gave it a friendly wave.
“And a very pleasant BUENOS NACHOS to you, too, lady!”
The Maker seemed baffled by this response, tilting its head to look at him like a dog hearing an unfamiliar sound. Nick turned a few somersaults to catch up with the others, while Dave walked straight to the edge of the base and shouted, “Remember me?”
He raised his sidearm and fired a beam of light that hit the Maker’s iron mask and pinged off. Enraged, the Maker raised the crooked metallic stick it was carrying, pointed it at him, and fired a blue ball of blindingly fast energy from its tip.
Dave instantly transformed into his twenty-foot angelic self, raised his gleaming gold-white sword, and deflected the blue ball of energy away harmlessly. The Maker stared at him, furious.
“Get a load of him,” said Nick, staring at Dave.
Will and Ajay pulled Nick around the back edge of the right arc.
“I’m cutting the hole now,” said Will, flicking on the Carver. “Ajay, blow the charges.”
“What about Dave?” he asked.
“Don’t worry about him,” said Will. “He’s dead.”
All seven Makers simultaneously raised staves and sticks and fired various kinds and colors of vicious charges at Dave. He held up his sword, shouted something, and a bubble of light appeared all around him. All their energy bolts ricocheted off the bubble and blew up wherever they landed, including a yellow one that hit the base and sent the roommates ducking for cover.
Will pointed the Carver at the air: Ajay pushed the plunger. The charges all around the bracket at the bottom of the left arc detonated—not an overly impressive explosion, given the size of the arcs—but one that sent a hail of rivets and shrapnel at the Makers, plunking a few of them, which irritated them further.
A moment later the thick plate of the bracket fell off and hit the metal base with a resounding clang. The entire left arc wobbled, ever so slightly.
Will took his finger off the trigger of the Carver and stopped to look at the arc. They waited. The archway continued to wobble, swaying a little bit more forward and backward each time, which slowly pried apart the rivets joining the arcs up top. They heard the metal groaning but the arc still didn’t topple.
“Come on,” said Ajay. “I worked out all the physics. That should have supplied more than enough propulsive force.”
Another wobble back and forth but the arc st
ill didn’t fall. Will switched off the Carver.
“Give it a push,” he said to Elise. “Forward.”
Elise and Ajay ran around the back of the arcs into position. He pointed out the precise spot on the arc that she needed to hit. She took in a series of deep breaths, getting ready to unleash a blast.
“You’ll have to time it just right,” said Ajay, looking up at the swaying structure. “At the apex of the forward lean. I’ll say when.”
The lead Maker raised its metallic stick again and gave an order in that terrible voice to the forces behind him. As one, the entire army started running forward across the fields toward the arcs, raising their voices in a single deafening shout.
“There they go again,” said Nick.
“WHAT A BUNCH OF IDIOTS,” said Jericho.
Dave jumped down from the base to the ground in front of the Makers—who all raised their sticks again to attack him—but before they could get off another round, he plunged his sword into the ground, creating a massive shock wave that sent out lines of explosive force in every direction. The ground erupted along every one of those lines, under the Makers and their army, blowing massive numbers of them up into the air.
“Now!” shouted Ajay.
Elise let loose a concentrated blast of sound at the wobbling arc as it teetered forward, applying just enough power to push it past the tipping point.
At that moment, one of the lines of force from Dave’s sword slammed into the base of the left arc, nudging it backward. That countered the vector forces pushing the arc forward and kicked the bottom of its base backward as the top tumbled. The left side pulled the right side along with it and now they both cascaded down, the entire structure coming apart at its seams as gravity applied an accelerator.
The arcs crashed down into the field, falling past the Makers and dropping onto the heart of the advancing army. Will saw the largest intact section of the arc fall directly onto Hobbes, who stopped just long enough to look up and register what was about to happen. The concussion as the arcs hit the ground created a shock wave that sent the Makers and their serpent mounts tumbling into the air again. Dust, dirt, debris rose up and obliterated Will’s view of the field with a massive plume. Everything in the field—including Dave—disappeared.