“Lennox!”
Gabriel turned in time to see Alvarez tossing him a long piece of rebar. He caught it at the base, two hands gripping it, so he could swivel on his heel and swing it.
It caught the Monkey Cat on the jaw, knocking its head back with a wet bite. He swung again, burying the rebar deep into the Monkey Cat’s skull. It groaned, swaying, but came back for more. Its jaw wide, looking to snap the weapon from his hand.
Gabriel watched it come. Swinging wouldn’t work. He didn’t back up. Sprinting, he took two steps toward the Monkey Cat before dropping to his knee, rebar planted.
The Monkey Cat’s mouth closed around the tip of the rebar and kept coming. Gabriel braced as the rebar hit some resistance, then exploded out the back of the Monkey Cat’s skull.
Its momentum carried it forward, and Gabriel didn’t have time to move. The alien crushed him. He gasped. The thing waswarm and heavy. Kicking and elbowing, he managed to get out from under him just to hear Alvarez scream.
A Handler was locking down; its dual guns trained on Beaumont. Zoe was twenty feet away, on the ground beside Tyler. Neither was moving.
Beaumont was on his knees, blood pouring down his face, and his arm clutched to his chest. His gun was in pieces next to his mangled hand. They were cornered.
Alvarez had his head down, charging like a bull. He didn’t hesitate to leap onto the Handler’s back, wrenching one of the guns sideways. The Handler seemed surprised, its second gun whizzing. Clutching the gun for support and using the Handler’s head to protect him from the second gun, he pushed the muzzle of his rifle into the Handler’s neck and began firing, teeth bared in a snarl as he unloaded.
The big alien seemed surprised, then alarmed. It shrieked, stumbling backward, swinging its big arms at its head. One hit Alvarez, and he slid forward, straddling the Handler’s shoulder. The thing shuddered, finally falling to its knees and knocking Alvarez loose. He rolled free, chest heaving as he ran toward Beaumont.
Gabriel pushed himself to his feet and limped over to Zoe and Tyler. They were both still breathing. He grabbed their wrists and pulled them from the street, dumping them against a building. It was the closest to safe he could get them.
Alvarez had Beaumont up. They were still fighting. But it was like trying to hold back the ocean. There were too many. Even fighting each other, there were so many aliens that there was always an overwhelming number focused on the humans. They were doomed.
Unless Gabriel could get through to Judd and Tommy.
Leaving the fight felt wrong, but he only had his pistol and a chunk of rebar. He ran back toward the collapsed stationentrance. With the rebar, he began digging again, pulling out pieces he didn’t recognize.
“Move.”
Gabriel barely glanced over his shoulder before a big hand grabbed him by the back of his plate carrier, tossing him to the side. He blinked sweat out of his eyes to see Phin fiddling with something.
The big man was cut to ribbons, bleeding from dozens of little wounds. Sweat and blood congealed in the dust on his skin, but his eyes were bright. Vicious.
He dug out more of the hole Gabriel had been making.
“Phin, what are you—where’s Blake?” Gabriel looked around. “What the?—”
Ignoring him, Phin stuck something into the hole and secured it with a rock. Gabriel got to his feet and looked a little closer. He could just make outconstructionstenciled on the barrel. “Is that dynamite?” he blinked. “Where the hell did you get dynamite?!”
Phin grunted before pulling a match from his chest pocket and striking it on the concrete. He lit the fuse before grabbing Gabriel and dragging him around the corner.
“You can’t light that! We have no idea what the interior looks like, you could destabilize?—”
Phin’s hot eyes bore into Gabriel. “It’s in my way.”
The dynamite detonated. A concussiveboomblew chunks of building across the street again. It was so violent Gabriel nearly fell to his knees, and he was hit with an unpleasant sense of déjà vuas he spat dust out of his mouth.
Without waiting for the dust to clear, Phin charged forward. He lifted a forearm to shield his eyes as he stepped through the gaping hole in the rubble, descending into the dark.
It was hell.
Blake clutched the junk wall, a piece of broken clock digging into his palm. He couldn’t process what he was seeing. He’d seen body parts strewn across railroad tracks. Brains splattered around a shattered skull. Melted bodies. Ripped apart bodies. He thought he’d already seen the worst—he was wrong.
Everywhere he looked was horror. Men and women, people he knew, were being blasted apart or eviscerated by claws. Some were just stepped on, barely a speed bump in the aliens’ conquest.
And it was all his fault.
Blake felt sick. Phin had left him as soon as the dust cleared, sprinting back down the stairs to do…what, Blake wasn’t sure. He wasn’t even surehowPhin was going to get to the other side of the rubble. But Blake hadn’t been able to move. He couldn’t look away either. They were all going to die.
