Panic laced through his pain and confusion. He tried to push himself to his feet, only to fall back onto his hands. The world was strangely muted. His shoulder was screaming, the pain radiating into his collarbone. Tucking his arm close, he got onto his knees, nearly toppling over when the backpack shifted. Something tickled at his cheek, and he rubbed his shoulder against it, smearing blood across his shirt.
Beaumont had fallen into the cabinets. His head had broken through a lower cabinet, and he was blinking up at the ceilingwith the same confusion as Blake. Dragging himself forward, Blake jerked Beaumont’s ankle.
“Hey! Hey, can you stand?” Blake couldn’t hear his voice. He shook himself. “I can’t hear you!”
Beaumont stirred, pulling himself up. His eyes were dazed, and he was covered in plaster, but he was looking at Blake. He said something, and Blake shook his head.
He didn’t try again, folding his thin legs under himself and retrieving the gun that had rolled away from him. The building shook again, not quite as violently, and Beaumont’s head jerked toward the lobby.
“—attack. We’ve got to go!”
Blake blinked as he processed what he was hearing. It was faint, like trying to talk on an airplane, but it was there.
Beaumont shakily moved toward the lobby, but Blake looked back at the surgery suite. His legs felt like jelly, and his vision danced. His right arm ached with every step, pain radiating up to his jaw. But he didn’t follow Beaumont.
He was breaking his promise to Alvarez, but he’d seen something. Stumbling through the open doorway, he swiped at his eyes. Blood streaked through the dust on his fingertips. Surgical monitors had fallen into the room, breaking open and spilling their electronic guts all over the floor. The table was still upright, bolted in place, but the wire shelving on the other side of the room had toppled over. Baskets of wire and plastic-wrapped instruments crunched under his boots as he stepped forward.
Blake bent to look through the shelves. “Are you okay?”
A terrified woman stared back at him. Her dark hair was matted to her head, and her gaunt face was dirty with more than just the dust in the air. She shifted back against the wall as he spoke, baring her teeth. They were white against her dirty face.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Beaumont shouted; his voice sounded far away.
Gunfire erupted from the open sides of the building. It sounded louder than before. Blake had to bite his cheek to keep from shaking.
Turning back to the woman, Blake saw she was clutching a child. The kid had her face buried in the woman’s arm. She was wearing a dingy doctor’s coat; the sleeves rolled over her hands.
“C’mon. I’ll get you out of here. We have a place where you’ll be safe.”
Blake didn’t know how long they’d been here, and he realized when he looked like to them—a strange man coming to loot their safe place. He didn’t need training to recognize the wild fear in her eyes. But he didn’t have time to earn their trust.
“Listen, I know what this looks like, and I know you don’t trust me. I’ll leave you here if you want. But I’d really, really like it if you came with me.”
The woman’s eyes flicked from him toward the gunfire. Blake’s hearing had cleared up enough that he could hear the clicking.FUDs.His chest squeezed, and a cold sweat dripped down his spine, cutting through the dust. It had been months since he’d seen one of those bastards, and the idea of coming face to face with one again had him ready to bolt.
Blake held out his trembling, bloody hand. “Please.”
Indecision flickered on the woman’s face. Another massive explosion rocked the room. Another wall crumbled, and more dust spewed into the air. Blake could smell ozone and gunpowder.
A thin hand reached through the toppled shelves and took his. Blake pulled, his bad shoulder screaming as he used it to wedge the shelves open enough for the woman and child to slide free.
The woman’s fingers were surprisingly strong for such a small person. She clung to Blake as he hobbled from the surgery suite, her nails digging into his skin.
Beaumont was braced against a doorway, shouting something toward the front. He did a double-take when he saw Blake, his pale eyebrows shooting up. He might have said something, but Alvarez’s scream cut through the static, and he spun around the doorway, his gun leveled.
Blake tugged the woman close as he took up Beaumont’s vacated position.
The front office of the vet clinic was gone. What once was a solid wall of brick and plaster was now a crumpled heap of drywall and rubble, rebar sticking up like fingers reaching for the sky. Insulation floated in the dusty air, rocked on currents from the ordinance slamming into the strip mall.
Alvarez darted across the street, nothing more than a smudge of black as he dove between two cars, a FUD hot on his heels. Beaumont shot at it, the bullets pinging off its angular head. The bullets didn’t do anything, but they distracted the FUD long enough for Alvarez to switch course, rolling over the hood of a car to get out of sight.
The car alarm shrieked as the FUD stumbled into it, the wicked pincers cutting through the car’s shell like butter. Alvarez got to his feet, staying low as he ran back toward the vet clinic.
Just as Blake locked eyes with him, the street exploded out from under him. Alvarez cartwheeled through the air, landing hard. Beaumont shouted, racing forward, leveling his gun toward the Handler.
It clicked and whirred as it unlocked and began stalking forward. The twin-mounted guns tracked Beaumont, locking in on him standing over Alvarez. The downed man was on his forearms, desperately trying to get his wits about him.Beaumont opened fire at the Handler, shouting for Alvarez to“get the fuck up, NOW!”
The kid squeaked in terror, prompting her mother to let go of Blake to grab her. He looked back at them—the mother was squatting, holding the girl to her chest, covering her face. Her eyes were wide as she watched the battle unfolding on the street.
