Free Web NovelChapter 245: Chapter 245 - Hunters To the Rescue
Malcolm stepped in front of her.
"No."
The soldier’s rifle stayed on his chest.
All sixteen of them were breathing hard now. No one looked ready to fight. The injured sagged against the people holding them up. The others stood with shaking arms, sweat running through the dust and blood on their faces. Even Arnulf looked spent.
Iyisha looked at the helicopter. Then at the soldiers. Then at the road behind them where the horde would come.
"If I go with you," she said, "they get transported out?"
"Yes," the soldier said at once.
"How?"
That made them pause.
Only for a second.
But she saw it.
There was one helicopter.
One.
No room for all of them. No second team waiting nearby. No rescue in motion. Even if she surrendered, they were not getting saved. Not that anyone believed them the first time.
The soldier recovered fast. "Another helicopter will be sent. Your group only needs to hold position on a rooftop."
Arnulf let out a dry, ugly laugh.
"A rooftop?" he said. "What the hell do you think is coming after us?"
The soldier looked at him.
"You saw it yourself," he said. "The tank is coming. If you don’t give us her, you’re all going to die here."
Tank.
Arnulf stared at him. "Tank?"
His face twisted.
"You’re making monsters now? Instead of finding a cure?"
Iyisha stopped breathing for half a second.
The huge man inside the glass room in the lab. Maybe the monster coming for them was like that.
"Yes," she whispered. The word slipped out before she meant to say it. She looked at Malcolm, then back at the soldier. "Marybeth and I saw one in the lab."
The soldier’s face did not change behind the visor.
"We’re not here to answer questions."
Iyisha looked past him.
Up.
Something flashed on the roofline.
White skin.
Still.
Then another shape on the building across the street.
A hunter.
Then one more.
Her pulse kicked hard.
She did not let her eyes stay there. She looked at Malcolm instead.
He had gone still.
He saw it too.
Or maybe he saw it in her face.
No one else seemed to notice. Not yet. The soldiers kept their rifles up. The man on the mounted gun inside the helicopter kept the barrel on them.
Those hunters might be the only thing between them and the helicopter. But with the movement of the rotor blades and the deafening sound of it, they might be confused. She hoped they are intelligent enough to see what really is a living object.
Iyisha stepped out from behind Malcolm.
His hand caught her wrist for half a second.
"Stop."
She looked at him as she breathed hard. Trust me.
The soldier shifted his rifle toward her.
Iyisha lifted one hand a little, like she was surrendering.
Like she was afraid.
Like she was giving up.
The movement was small, but high enough.
Come on, she thought.
Look here.
"If I come with you," she said, "will you turn me into one of those monsters? Those tanks?"
The soldier shook his head. "No. Every evolved subject is valuable to Dr. Frankenstein. You’ll be treated well."
Iyisha laughed.
Short. Breathless. Ugly.
Her eyes flicked up once.
The hunters were moving now. Dropping lower. Closer to the edge.
"I don’t know," she said. "It looks like the valuable subjects you got in those cells wanted to get out."
The soldier’s rifle came up harder.
"Come with us now, or we kill all of them."
Iyisha smiled.
"That might be impossible."
The first hunter dropped.
It came off the building in a blur and hit the closest soldier hard enough to fold him backward. He screamed once before claws tore through his throat. freeweɓnøvel.com
Everything broke.
The other soldiers whipped around. Rifles cracked. The mounted gun inside the helicopter opened up, bullets chewing the street, the wall, the dead car beside them.
"Down!" Malcolm roared.
Iyisha dropped with the others.
The second hunter hit another soldier from the side and ripped him off his feet. The third came from above and landed on the helicopter skid, then slammed into the open door. The soldier behind the mounted gun shouted and swung the barrel too late.
Gunfire exploded everywhere.
One hunter took rounds to the chest and still kept moving. Another lost half its cheek and lunged again anyway. A soldier emptied his rifle into one at arm’s length, screaming while it climbed over him and opened his face.
Iyisha hit the pavement beside Malcolm. Dust and hot shell fragments stung her skin. Harry fired over the hood of a dead car. Arnulf dragged Jerry behind a concrete block with Aljun helping Lance down beside them. Marybeth flattened herself over Lance’s body. Tilly and Chanse dropped behind a wrecked van.
The machine gun thundered again.
Then stopped.
The hunter that jumped into the helicopter came out red and fast. Behind it, the pilot jerked sideways in his seat.
The helicopter lifted a meter off the ground.
Turned wrong.
Dropped.
It slammed into the street with a violent crack that shook the block.
One rotor clipped the side of a building.
The blade shattered.
Metal screamed through the air.
"Down!" someone shouted.
Iyisha dropped before she even saw where it was going. A chunk of rotor tore over their heads and buried itself into the wall behind them with a sound like an axe hitting bone. Another piece spun across the street, struck a dead car, and ripped through the door.
Someone screamed.
The tail smashed down.
Fire burst from the side door.
For one second, the shooting stopped.
Malcolm was already up.
He fired his shotgun into the hunter that had come off the helicopter. The blast hit center mass and threw it off its feet. It rolled across the street and slammed into a car.
Another hunter came out of the wreck, burning along one shoulder.
It ran straight at Malcolm.
He fired again.
Its head snapped sideways. Flesh tore loose. The head hung wrong, almost off, but the body still came.
"Malcolm!" Iyisha shouted.
He stepped into it and fired one more time into its chest.
That stopped it.
The body flew backward and hit the burning skid.
The first hunter was still moving.
It pushed up with one arm.
Malcolm turned and put a final shot through its chest. A clean hole opened. The thing folded and stayed down.
Iyisha got up fast and looked around.
Two soldiers were dead in the street.
One was half under the helicopter.
Another had been dragged a few feet and left open from chest to stomach.
The last one was crawling, rifle gone, blood pouring from his leg.
"We need to move," Arnulf snapped.
Iyisha looked back down the road.
The horde was still not in sight.
But something else was.
A massive figure came into view between the cars.
Running towards them.
It was covering ground fast, shoulders rolling, one huge arm swinging lower than the other. It hit an abandoned car and shoved it sideways without even stopping.
Iyisha felt the fear hit all over again.
"Run," she shouted.
No one answered.
They were already moving.
