“Fairy, back this way,” Hayden jerked his chin toward the alley.

  “Wait.” She grasped his arm as he started to turn, pointing with her other hand toward the market and the hotel. A huge dark shape smashed through the closed up stalls on its way toward them, moving recklessly fast.

  El Monstro. Paul was on his way.

  “Let’s just keep them honest til he gets here,” Hayden said, he and Fairy leaning out past the corner of the building and sending a half-dozen more rounds at the Custodians. Two more suffered horrifying wounds, the severity causing the advance to slow, the militants becoming more guarded. They shot back at Hayden and Fairy, bullets spitting mortar from the walls of the buildings but not coming close to connecting with either of them.

  El Monstro’s huge diesel engine rumbled like rolling thunder, the roar reaching the Custodians. Some of them redirected their firepower at it. Their conventional rounds pinged ineffectively off the steel frame, unable to reach the driver.

  The low, whining thwump thwump of a helicopter joined the chaos, a spotlight shooting out from the front of the machine as it flew over the wall of buildings in front of Hayden and Fairy. The light slid along the side of the buildings in search of them. It paused on El Monstro, lighting up the modbox and likely blinding Paul. A moment later, heavy caliber fire thunked from the open side of the chopper, sending large sparks careening off the vehicle’s protective armor. Hayden knew it wouldn’t hold out long against the assault.

  “Fairy, give me your rifle,” Hayden said, turning to her. She passed over the plasma rifle, and he moved to the corner of the building again, taking a knee to help steady his aim with Marcus’ weight over his shoulders. He targeted the helicopter. It was a long shot for the plasma rifle, but the chopper continued drifting toward them, closing the distance. Hayden turned the switch on the rifle to auto and set his imaginary reticle on the cockpit. “Come on,” he mouthed, aware that every hit El Monstro took might be the one that either disabled the modbox or killed Paul.

  The vehicle had nearly reached them, the helicopter slowing overhead. Hayden narrowed his left eye, shifting his aim slightly and squeezing the trigger. The plasma rifle belched bolts one after another, a pew-pew-pew of superheated gas streaking upward. The pilot saw the blasts at the last second, and he tried to pull back and get out of harm’s way. Too late. The rounds smashed through the cockpit in a diagonal line, melting through the glass and sinking into him. The helicopter jerked sideways as the pilot died, the shooter falling from the open side door. He hit the ground a dozen meters behind El Monstro, which came to a quick stop beside Hayden and Fairy. The chopper slammed into the side of a building and exploded, raining glass and debris between them and the Custodians.

  “Get in!” Paul shouted, leaning back to kick open the heavy passenger door. Fairy scrambled in first, while Hayden climbed up and rolled Marcus off his shoulders and into the seat. “Him?” Paul asked, unpleasantly surprised.

  “They have Maya. Where’s Thomas?”

  “Dead.”

  Hayden growled under his breath. “Head toward the gate, we can cut them off before they get her inside.”

  “You want me to drive toward the bad guys?”

  “We can’t let them take Maya. Far as they’re concerned, she committed treason.”

  “She did commit treason,” Fairy said.

  “Pozz. Because she knows the Custodians are following blindly and it’s going to get us all killed. Exactly why we need to help her now.”

  “Sheriff,” Fairy said, finding his revolvers in the back seat and passing them forward. Hayden took one of them and tucked it into his pants before slamming the passenger door closed. He stood on the running board, clinging to El Monstro’s roll cage as the heavy modbox lurched forward harder than gravity should have allowed. They raced down the street, through the broken glass and other debris of the helicopter crash, heading for the Custodians dug in behind the still smoking aircraft.

  Climbing to the top of the modbox, Hayden dropped belly down, wrapping his feet beneath the cage to hold himself to the vehicle. He held the Axon gun in one hand and drew his revolver in the other, while the barrel of Fairy’s plasma rifle appeared from the rifle slit where there had once been a full size passenger window.

  The Custodians on either side of the street opened fire, bullets ricocheting off the steel frame and zipping past Hayden. A few hit him, the bodysuit beneath his Custodian utilities able to shield him from their kinetic energy. He shot back. A dozen rounds from the Axon gun connected with four Custodians, detonating and dropping them where they stood. Fairy’s rifle, still on auto, laid down a line of solid cover fire.

  The remaining Custodians continued firing sporadically at them as they drove past, headed for the base. Hayden spotted a group of six Custodians almost to the gate. One of them had a bound Vazquez over his shoulder.

  The gate opened, and a fresh line of Custodians moved into the gap ahead of them—an entire platoon of fifteen militants in full combat armor—all of them carrying Centurion assault rifles. Hayden gritted his teeth and put the Axon gun away. It would be too hard to find the vulnerable spaces between the plates in the Custodian’s armor while riding atop of the modbox. Besides, a barrage of fire might hit Vazquez by mistake.

  He had a better idea.

  40

  Hayden

  Hayden poked his head down over the driver’s side of the modbox and shouted Paul’s name into the narrow slit serving as a window. “Get within fifteen meters of the reinforcements and then slam on the brakes.”

  “Fifteen meters?”

  “Fifty feet,” Hayden shouted back, correcting himself to a distance the kid would understand.

  “Then what?”

  “Turn this beast around and be ready to make a run for it.”

  “If you say so. What are you going to do?”

  “Just do it.”

  ‘Yes, sir.”

  As El Monstro roared toward them, the clones, unable to reach the gate before the onrushing modbox got there, rushed for cover outside it. The armored Custodians held their ground and opened fire on them. Their bullets smacked against the cage ahead of the windshield, a few pushing through and lodging in the glass, sending out a spiderweb of cracks that wouldn’t hold against a continued assault.

  “Now!” Hayden snapped just as Paul hit the brakes. The heavy machine jerked forward, the big tires gripping with too much purchase to skid. It didn’t matter. It did exactly what Hayden wanted.

  The sudden change in inertia launched him from the roof like a human cannonball. He stretched out, his arms in front of him, guns blazing at the Custodians. The rounds smashed into their helmets and cracked against their body armor, forcing them to flee his line of fire. The last one to do so moved a little too late. Hayden tucked his shoulder and hit him squarely in the back, knocking him into the man who had Vazquez. The clone had made the mistake of choosing the moment when Hayden quit firing to jump up and make a run for the gate.

  All four of them went down in a heap on the ground.

  Hayden rolled off the clone to his knees. As the man tried to turn over, pulling a sidearm from his gunbelt and aiming it at Hayden, Vazquez kicked the gun out of his hand. At the same time Hayden planted the last round from his revolver in the man’s head, ending him.

  Around them, the armored Custodians couldn't use their rifles at such close range without the risk of hitting one another. It forced them into close combat.

  Just what Hayden wanted.

  He holstered his revolver and drew the microspear. He lunged at the nearest Custodian, shoving the barrel of the gun under his helmet and pulled the trigger, the Custodian’s head exploding inside his headgear.

  Hayden twisted around him as he fell, jumping at a second Custodian to shove the microspear through his visor and into his eye. A knife slashed him from behind, the blade failing to pierce the bodysuit beneath his clothing. Hayden spun around, pressing the Axon gun into the armpit of his attacker and firing. The resulting explosion took the Custodian’s arm and half his chest.

  Hayden took a punch to the ribs that would have knocked the wind out of him if he hadn’t seen it coming and tightened the torso muscles. He rounded on the clone who’d hit him, catching sight from the corner of his eye of one of the Custodians willing to risk using his rifle. Hayden threw himself backward to the ground, underneath the man’s spray of bullets. He turned the Axon gun on the Custodian and fired upward through the joints at the man’s groin. Rolling sideways, he avoided the rounds from the other fighter’s sidearm as it chewed the ground up he’d just vacated. He threw the microspear at the Custodian, the Axon weapon sinking through the armored plate and into the man’s heart, extending and killing him instantly.

  Hayden jumped to his feet, lifting the body of the man he’d just killed as a shield for the rounds still coming at him. He locked eyes with Vazquez in the process. She was still on the ground less than a meter away, still awake and alert, her eyes filled with surprise as he dropped three more targets with the Axon gun.

  “Sheriff!” Vazquez shouted, her eyes diverting to obvious danger behind him. He caught sight of the Custodian from the corner of his eye.

  Captain Rogers.

  Hayden pivoted, reaching around to recover the microspear from the body of its last victim. He was a split-second too slow. Rogers slammed into him hard, and Hayden fell beneath him, their eyes meeting in challenge.

  If he were the only Custodian left he wouldn’t have been a big problem.

  But he wasn’t.

  There were still three more, all poised over them, rifles aimed down at him.

  Instead of using the microspear on Rogers, Hayden surreptitiously slid it into Vazquez’s reaching hand. She turned it around, quickly severing the binding around her wrist.

  “Got you, you son of a bitch!” Rogers growled. “This is where you die.”

  Hayden smirked. “Is it?”

  Vazquez moved like lightning, jumping on the first Custodian she could reach. She stabbed the microspear into the back of his neck and shoved him into Rogers. The other two militants turned on Vazquez, the second winding up with the microspear in his mouth. She charged the other one, swatting his rifle away before he could fire it at her. Delivering a rapid series of kicks and punches that threw him off-balance, she wrapped her arm around his neck and brought her body weight to bear in taking him to the ground. She held him in the chokehold until he stopped moving.

  Meanwhile, Hayden used the momentary distraction to throw a hard punch into Rogers’ jaw before throwing him off to the side. He still had the Axon gun in his left hand, and he turned it on the pilot, sending a round into the man’s face, kicking him away before it exploded.

  Breathing hard, Hayden returned to his feet, quickly taking stock of the array of dead and disabled Custodians around him and Vazquez. She pulled the microspear from the fighter’s mouth before glancing over at him.

  “You came back for me.”

  “I owed you one.”

  “No you didn’t.”

  The sound of running footsteps reached from inside the gate. More Custodians rounded the corner, and the whine of an engine signaled that the APC Hayden had seen earlier was on its way. El Monstro waited a dozen meters ahead. They looked at each other for a moment and broke for it at the same time.

  As Custodian bullets whipped past Hayden and Vazquez, Fairy leaned out of the rear driver’s side window, laying down cover fire with her plasma rifle. They were halfway to the modbox when another shooter appeared out of the front passenger side window.

  Marcus.

  Hayden nearly froze as their eyes met. Marcus offered a slight smirk as he pulled his arm out and began shooting, the blasts sizzling past Hayden, missing him by centimeters.

  Hayden knew Marcus wasn’t shooting at him. He was too good to miss. He glanced back over his shoulder in time to see the rounds hit the Custodians behind them, Marcus’ blasts disrupting their attack.

  Hayden and Vazquez reached the rear of the modbox, jumping on and grabbing the frame.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Marcus screamed.

  Paul put El Monstro in motion, tearing away from the scene. The modbox began to accelerate as the APC moved into view, turning and accelerating after them, the gun turret on top swiveling to get a bead on the modbox.

  “Maya, cut the frame,” Hayden said, pointing to the steel weld. She didn’t hesitate, using the alien weapon to slice through the metal as though it were balsa wood. “There too.” He pointed again, and she cut it.

  Hayden climbed up to the rear of the chassis, bracing himself against the armor plating as he planted his feet against one of the oil drums. He grunted as he kicked it, hard enough for the cut section of the cage to break free, cage and oil drum tumbling into the road behind them.

  “Marcus!” Hayden shouted, his former adversary swinging one of his handguns around to aim at the oil drum just as the APC turret brought its turret to bear. A single plasma blast sizzled across the night, hitting the drum, the diesel fuel inside igniting as it sprayed out across the front of the APC and up over the vehicle.

  Another blast ignited the fuel, blinding both the driver and the turret’s sensors. The APC came to a stop while El Monstro pulled away.

  They had made it.

  41

  Hayden

  They spent the next twenty minutes on the highway headed east, El Monstro’s engine rumbling loudly as it put as much distance as possible between them and the city full of Custodians. The first few minutes out of Haven were the most tense, as Hayden kept a sharp eye on both the road and the horizon for signs of pursuit. Even now, he wasn’t fully convinced they weren’t being followed, but he needed a minute to regroup and figure out what came next. While his efforts to gather intel from the Custodians, and more specifically Captain Rogers, had come to nothing, he had inadvertently captured a potentially more valuable prize.

  “Paul,” Hayden shouted out, “stop under that overpass up ahead.” The young man responded by flashing a thumbs-up through the driver’s side window, the modbox immediately beginning to slow.

  Hayden jumped off the back of the modbox as it came to a stop beneath the same overpass where the raiders had tried to blockade them. The outlaws were gone, of course, but the evidence of their effort remained in the burned out shells of the four cars that lined the road, two of which had been thrown violently aside by El Monstro’s plow hours earlier.

  Vazquez followed him off the rear of the modbox, joining him as they circled to the passenger side of the vehicle. Marcus climbed out first, struggling a bit to open the door with only one arm, and he avoided making eye contact with either Hayden or Vazquez as he hopped to the pavement. Fairy scampered out right behind him, while Paul moved around from the far side of the modbox.

  “Marcus,” Fairy said, going to him and throwing her arms around him before any of them could react. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “Am I?” Marcus asked, not responding to Fairy’s hug, his expression tense. His eyes danced everywhere but at them, like a caged animal desperate to escape.

  Fairy backed up. “You’re here. That’s something, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He spoke with a detachment Hayden recognized. Whatever Iagorth had done to Marcus, he was still in shock from the experience. “Marcus, I know what happened to you,” he said. “Whatever you’ve done since Iagorth got into your head, it wasn’t your fault.”

  Marcus stared straight ahead for a moment, taking in the words. He finally glanced at Hayden, meeting his eyes for only a second. “You have no idea,” he said. He exhaled sharply, the strength draining out of him. He dropped to his knees, tears beginning to run down his cheeks. “It is my fault. I went along with it. I didn’t resist.” He looked up at Hayden again. “He wanted you dead. And I wanted to kill you. Part of me still does. I don’t know how you got him out of me, but thank you. I think.”

  Hayden took the microspear from his pocket and showed it to Marcus. “This is an Axon weapon, designed specifically to kill Relyeh parasites. No matter what form they take or how they get into your head, that’s what they are. Nothing but parasites.” He wasn’t about to tell Marcus he should be dead right now. That the microspear hadn’t killed him was much less important than being sure Iagorth’s hold on him was truly broken.

  “No. He…he’s more than that. He’s different. What got into my head was only a small piece of him. He called it a moiety. He’s getting stronger, Sheriff.”

  “I know,” Hayden replied. “I know all about him.”

  “And he knows all about you. He knows you’re coming for him.” Marcus smiled. “For all his power, he’s afraid of you.”

  “He should be. I came out here looking for the rock the Custodians pulled from the ocean. Iagorth’s pod. You know where it is, don’t you?”

  Marcus nodded, finally looking Hayden in the eye. “Yeah. It’s in Sansico. In the loading dock at the base of the tower.”

  Hayden’s gut clenched at the mention of the tower. Of all the places on Earth, why did it have to be there?

  “Sheriff, are you okay?” Fairy asked, noticing his face pale.

  Hayden looked over at her. “I don’t know. I haven’t gone back to Sanisco, to the tower, since Natalia…” He trailed off, clenching his jaw to keep from tearing up. “She died there. My whole family died there.”

  “I’m sorry, Sheriff Duke,” Fairy said.

  Hayden nodded, looking back at Marcus. “Why there?”

  “A xaxkluth got trapped inside the loading dock,” Marcus answered. “Don’t ask me how. The Custodians brought the pod to it, and somehow it fed on the creature’s life force. Did you really kill more than one of those monsters on your own?”