Caris fumbled at her lap belt buckle, jabbing at the button to release it. She did the same to her mother’s before curling her fingers around the door handle and shoving it open. She slammed it into a revenant trying to stand on one leg, pitching it over to the ground. Caris threw herself out of the motor carriage, fingers wrapped tight around her mother’s arm as she hauled Portia out with her.
Breathing rapidly, hands shaking, Caris was reminded of that moment in the wildlands of the Eastern Basin some years back and the horde that had attacked them. That same fiery heat burned in her chest now as it did back then, making it difficult to breathe. Her fingertips stung like when she touched a charged clarion crystal by accident.
Portia’s hand dug into her shoulder, and the hissed, frantic warning from her mother was nearly drowned out by the warning sirens.
“Don’t,” Porta begged. “Don’t let it out.”
Caris swallowed against the pressure in her chest, not knowing where to focus. The pressure made her teeth tingle, made it difficult to breathe. Then Nathaniel was there, yanking both Caris and Portia out of reach of the revenant she’d slammed the door into and which had twisted around to lunge at them.
“Head off the Promenade,” Nathaniel shouted.
The crowd had thinned out, but the revenants weren’t slowing down. Running wasn’t necessarily a way to safety, but it was all they had at the moment. Caris fumbled at the clasp on her graduation robe, slipping free of it as she ran toward the motor carriage with the duchess and her father. They were hemmed in by vehicles behind them, to say nothing of the revenants clawing at the motor carriage.
Someone had dropped a cane in their haste to leave the area. Caris leaned down midstride to retrieve it, gripping it how one would a bat.
“Caris!” Portia shouted behind her.
The revenant blocking the rear door of the motor carriage had cracked the window using its head. The rotten skin had split over the skull, smearing the fractured glass with blood and strips of putrid flesh. Caris raised the cane over her shoulder and swung at the revenant’s head. The force of the blow pushed the revenant back, and she swung again, the cane slamming against its chest to topple it over.
“You should have run!” her father yelled as he shoved the motor carriage door open.
“I wasn’t leaving you behind,” Caris said.
“Infection of spores through a bite isn’t a way I would ever want you to die.”
Emmitt reached behind him without looking, offering the duchess his hand. She took it, moving with a speed someone of her age and rank only achieved through desperation. Caris tightened her grip on the cane, scanning their immediate area with wide eyes.
They no longer had a clear path to the intersection ahead where others had escaped. Half the horde of waterlogged revenants was headed their way, and the street behind them was packed with abandoned vehicles and more revenants.
Caris swallowed thickly, flexing her fingers. “Mother?”
Portia shook her head, her carefully set curls having come undone from their pins. “No, Caris.”
“I can’t—”
“Take cover!” a deep voice shouted.
Caris’ head snapped around, eyes going wide at the sight of a warden riding his velocycle down the street behind them, dodging cars with practiced ease. He flung his arm forward, and something shiny arced through the air.
The sphere hit the ground between their group and the revenants, rolling toward the threat. Mechanical legs sprouted from the grenade, and it scuttled forward to do maximum damage amongst the horde.
Caris grabbed her mother’s arm and dived for cover behind an open motor carriage door. Her father, Nathaniel, and Meleri managed to hunker down next to a vehicle right as the grenade went off with an ear-piercingboom.
The blast tore the revenants apart, shattered bone and ripped-to-pieces limbs careening through the air. Caris threw herself over her mother’s hunched form, doing her best to shield Portia from what rained down around them. The wet sounds of ruined flesh hitting the motor carriages and ground around them made her stomach churn. Something wet hit her back before siding off and landing on the ground with a sickening splat.
She was never wearing this day jacket again.
Caris gagged at the stench wafting around them as she lifted her head to see what was happening. The warden had driven past them and flung himself into the midst of the remaining revenants, firing poison-coated bullets at the walking dead. The toxins on the bullets caused the revenants to collapse, momentarily incapacitated. In that brief lull, the warden drew free a machete strapped to his back, dispensed poison from the hilt so it coated the blade, and started cutting off heads.
Caris looked away from the scene, stomach trying to crawl up her throat. She swallowed back bile as she moved away from her mother, letting go of the cane long enough to hastily shrug out of her stained day jacket.
“We need to find somewhere safe to hunker down in. The inner gates will have closed and won’t reopen until the wardens give the all clear,” her father said as he scrambled over to them.
The warden had the situation well in hand, unbothered by the few revenants left who lunged at him. Emmitt helped Caris and Portia to their feet. Caris retrieved her cane, holding it tight in one hand. Nathaniel carried Meleri in his arms, the duchess pale and grim-faced in the wake of the revenant attack.
They left the warden behind with the revenants, escaping the Promenade and their ruined motor carriages for the questionable safety of Amari’s twisting streets.
As far as graduations went, Caris’ certainly was memorable.
