The ‘homies’ had arrived. And before Maxine, which was bad news. She’d drop right into the thick of it. Damien, Nox, Brisk and I stepped out of the plasma circle in unison as Damien used the button on his remote to activate the controller. This effectively locked Jeremy, Mr. Hansen, Ronnie and Josephine inside of our safedome.
“It worked,” Damien exclaimed, and then we were shooting. I wasn’t about to spend all night cowering in that damn dome, while these bastards waited for Maxine to drop inunaware.
The first line of grunts went down quickly, but the others were being weird, falling back and waiting for thesentry.
“What are they doing?” I asked Brisk. The dumbasses usually plowed ahead to their death, but now they looked to be communicating with the sentry. He stood tall and lean, having clearly lost a ton of muscle mass, which meant his steel armor had a bunch of gaps in it. It hung loosely on his thickframe.
Before Brisk could respond, the ground started shaking. Damien snaked an arm out and caught hold of my bicep to steady me as the dirt beneath us trembled slightly.What the hell?Then the shaking stopped.Since when did the Dream Wars getearthquakes?
The sentry looked fearful for a split second—I saw it in his eyes and the slack gaping mouth. Then it was staring at me. Even from fifty feet away, his eyes were pinned right on me, and my heart picked up a little. He raised his hand, one long clawed finger pointing right at me. “Kit Steele,” he said, in the deepest tone I’d everheard.
My legs went weak as fear rushed through me.They can speak?They fucking speak English, and it knows my name?He turned to the grunt nearest him and grabbed him by the shoulders, then opened his mouth wide and engulfed the grunt’s upper half in one clean bite. The lower half of the grunt’s body fell to the ground in a heap of blood andorgans.
I’m going to besick.
“Uhh, let’s get in the dome,” Damien said besideme.
Brisk swallowed hard. “What thefuckjusthappened?”
“We’re not leaving Maxine to drop in on this shit,” Nox stated, pointing his gun right at the cannibalsentry.
“Kit Steele,” a deep voice said from somewhere far behindme.
I spun, my trigger finger ready to fire away. I was in a living nightmare; there was nothing scarier than hearing a human-eating alien say your namealoud.
Peering toward where I’d heard the voice, I could see Jeremy was in the dome, headphones on and blindfold across his eyes. Behind the dome, about thirty feet, was another sentry, his face mask off and his head cocked to the side. In his arms was a skinny, starved grunt. When he knew I was watching, he opened his terrifying mouth and wrapped his several sets of teeth around the body, taking half of it off in oneswallow.
I felt dizzy.What in God’s name ishappening?
“They’re showing us that they’ll survive. No matter what, they will survive,” Nox saidominously.
Finally our redheaded beauty queen dropped in and spun around just in time to see the two sentries dining on the half-starvedgrunts.
She started shooting at them. Maxine was a ‘shoot first, think, or ask questions later’ kind of person. Which was probably the best way to go, honestly. “What the hell?” she said afterwards,perplexed.
With one click, Damien lowered the plasma shield and then grabbed my upper arm, dragging me inside just as Nox did the same toMaxine.
I didn’t realize the damn sentry in front of us had a gun until he shot at the freshly lowered dome, hitting Maxine right in the shoulder. “No!” I shouted, toolate.
Her body blew backward with the force of the projectile and nearly knocked me over as she crashed into me. I stumbled forward with her half in my arms, half in Nox’s, laying her on the ground inside of ourcircle.
Damien raised the plasma dome around us before any more bullets could get through, but the damage was alreadydone.
Falling to my knees, I ripped Maxine’s black leather jacket off to see that she was wearing her Kevlar tank top, but the bullet had hit just a quarter of an inch outside the safety of thevest.
Goddammit!
“Why did you wear the tank top!” I shouted as my hands shook withadrenaline.
Maxine was staring at the sky, eyes wide in shock. “It makes my cleavage pop,” shedeclared.
I laughed, which turned to tears. I was pressing against her wound, trying to stem the flow, but the blood was coming so fast.Are there arteries in the shoulder? How high do the lungsgo?
Suddenly Ronnie was there, removing my hands and replacing them with her own gauze-ladenones.
“Hey, sugar plum. You got a little gun bite, didn’t you?” Ronnie said to our most treasured member of the team. It was true—ask any of us and Maxine was the favorite. You couldn’t help but love the shit out ofher.
“Flesh-eating asshat,” Maxine mumbled, gaze flicking over to the sentry. Right before my eyes, she was growingpaler.
