Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [104]
All we need is a little luck, he thinks.
Then everything goes wrong at once. To his left, past Jena’s tense face and the hurtling bulk of Michael’s vehicle, the truck driven by Wilson misjudges and runs into one of the ditches. Its front wheels catch, its momentum flips it end-over-end, and it explodes. Shards of twisted metal and shattered glass rain down everywhere. Bodies tumble from the truck onto the ground, but only a few.
The rest remain trapped inside.
There is no time for him to think about it because they have reached the fence and are tearing through the heavy wire. The once-men scatter, but only far enough to turn and try to shoot at them through the cab windows. The men hunkered down in the truck bed shoot back, and bodies fall all across the compound yard.
“Logan!” Jena yells in warning.
An explosion rocks their truck, sending Logan sliding into her with such force that she cries out. The gates of the south building loom directly in front of them, and they struggle frantically to untangle as they careen toward a collision. Locked together, they steer the truck into the gap between the heavy doors, and as the ram strikes them the doors explode inward with a shriek of metal tearing free. The truck lurches to a stop, and the attackers tumble out, firing into the defenders that come at them.
Too many and too organized, Logan realizes suddenly. They have been waiting for us. It is a trap.
He fights with a ferocity he does not know he possesses, lost in a haze of smoke and ash, in the staccato rip of automatic weapons fire, and the harsh scream of his own desperation. He shoots at everything that moves and at the same time keeps moving himself. He does not know how long the fighting continues, but it seems endless. Twice he is wounded, but neither injury stops him. At one point a rush of once-men overwhelms him, and he loses losing his grip on the Scattershot as he fights to break free. Someone—he never discovers who—comes to his aid and tears them away. Even so, he is left dazed and battered and weaponless. He scrambles about on his hands and knees, searching for the Scattershot, for any weapon at all. He thinks that this is the end. He thinks that this is the day he will die.
Then suddenly everything quiets. The shooting is all distant now, off in the other buildings and outside. Low moans and cries for help reach out to him from close at hand, but the smoke trapped inside the building is so thick he cannot find anyone. His ears ring from the weapons fire and bomb concussions, and he feels disoriented and weak. He stumbles about, still searching for the Scattershot, needing to feel a weapon in his hands. He finds it finally, lying not five feet away. When he picks it up, the barrel is so hot that the heat radiates down through the wood grips of the stock.
He gropes his way through the smoke. Where is everyone?
Then he trips over Jena, lying face up on the floor, her eyes open and staring. He finds most of the others close by, all dead. There is no one left, he thinks. He has lost them all.
The moans and cries continue, and he makes his way blindly toward the sounds. He comes up against a cage, and inside the cage are dozens of imprisoned humans, a part of Midline’s slave population. Faces press up against the steel mesh, eyes and mouths beseeching, begging. He pulls away from the hands and fingers that seek to hold him and gropes his way along the mesh in search of the cage door. The smoke is beginning to thin now, and outside the shooting has quieted to a few distant discharges punctuated by shouts and cries. The battle is ending. He must hurry.
He finds the door secured with a heavy chain. He looks around for something