Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(80)
She unclipped her seat belt, crawled into the backseat as the bullets continued to fly. Lemon was out cold, blood dripping from the reopened split in her brow. Poor kid had been knocked out more times in the last few days than a bush-league pit fighter. Ana laid her bestest down in the footwells, hauled one of the assault rifles from her satchel. The weapon was heavy, the echoes of old gunfire filling her head. The smell of blood. Screams.
“Better to rule in hell,” the beautiful man smiles “than serve in heaven.”
No. That was then. This was now. She wasn’t her past, and her past didn’t define her future. Her friends needed her. She thumbed the safety, switched her optic to thermographic setting and took aim at the heat signatures of the pursuing Freebooters. She could make out a few trucks and buggies, a dozen bikes, swooping closer and blasting at Thundersaurus’s tires.
Ana aimed down the sights, letting off a strobing burst of fire. Lightning the color of flame sizzled overhead as one of the Freebooters wobbled and fell. Ana fired again and again, hitting nothing and using up the rest of the clip. The Freebooters returned fire, forcing her into cover to reload as bullets riddled the truck’s panels. The gunshots echoing inside her head, Lemon lying on the floor at her feet, the image, the noise, the chaos dragging her back to that cell, that day, those final hours …
Red on my hands. Smoke in my lungs. My mother, my father, my sisters and brother, all dead on the floor beside me. Hollow eyes and empty chests.
The lifelikes stand above me. The four of them in their perfect, pretty row.
They have only one thing left to—
An Armada wagon careened out of the glasstorm, sideswiping Thundersaurus. Ana was thrown back against Kaiser as Ezekiel slammed into the attacking truck.
“Ana, come take the wheel!” the lifelike shouted.
“I can’t drive in this!”
“I can shoot better than you, take the damn wheel!”
The driver-side window shattered as one of the Freebooters emptied half a clip into the truck’s flank. Ana hunkered down near Kaiser, feeling bullets spang off his armored shell. Ezekiel snatched up the other assault rifle, one hand holding the wheel steady as he riddled the wagon’s driver and gunner with lead. The wagon crashed into Thundersaurus again and careened away, taking out another motorcycle rider before flipping end over end and exploding in a ball of garish blue methane flame.
“Take the wheel!” Ezekiel roared.
“Okay, okay, no need to get shouty, god!”
Ana rolled over into the front seat as Zeke stood up through the sunroof. The razored fragments began shredding Ezekiel’s unprotected skin, whipping his knuckles and cheeks bloody as he started taking methodical shots at the pursuing Freebooters. Ana gripped the wheel hard, stomped on the gas, Thundersaurus lurching forward with a thundering V-8 roar as bikes and cars closed in from all sides.
The lifelike fired again, again, ghosting half a dozen bikers and three more drivers before his rifle ran dry. A Freebooter leapt from a speeding sand buggy onto Thundersaurus’s trunk, another jumping from an armored 4x4 alongside. They clung to the truck’s flank, one reaching through the shattered window and clutching Ana’s throat. She shrieked, tore the wheel left, colliding with the 4x4 beside them and crushing both men to pulp between the vehicles.
Cricket was in the backseat, reloading Ana’s shotgun and rifle. He handed the latter to Ezekiel, who kept blasting away at the pursuing vehicles. Ana was bent over the steering wheel, squinting through the fog of sweat inside her rad-suit headgear. The road had disappeared entirely, rocky outcroppings rising out of the desert floor ahead. The glasstorm howled on, like some horror from one of Ana’s old myths. Scylla or Charybdis. Fenris or Kali. A thing of hatred and hunger, consuming everything in its path.
The armored 4x4 was still roaring alongside them, its flanks now splashed with red. The driver rammed his ride into Ana’s, trying to drive her into a stone outcropping. Ana rammed the 4x4 back, Thundersaurus grinding against the bigger truck in a hail of sparks. Cricket cursed as he flopped about on the backseat like a ragdoll, Kaiser barking out the broken window. The 4x4 was heavier, and Ana had trouble keeping a straight course, headed now for a huge spur of black rock rising out of the sand in front of them.
“Ezekiel?” she shouted.
Gunfire was the only response, empty shell casings falling through the sunroof like hail.
“EZEKIEL!”
The lifelike finally heard her, turned on the truck beside them and riddled the cabin with bullets. The driver slumped over the wheel, and Ana wrenched her own steering wheel sideways, missing the spur by inches. His gun dry, Ezekiel dropped down into the passenger seat, slamming the sunroof closed.
“Out of ammo,” he wheezed. “But there’s only a few bikers and one truck left. Just plant it, fast as you’re able. I think we’ve knocked the fight out of them.”
“Do you want to take the— Oh my god!” Ana gasped.
Ezekiel was covered in blood. His knuckles had been stripped back to metallic bone by the glasstorm, his beautiful face dripping red. Ana’s goggles had spared his eyes the worst of it, but the exposed skin on the rest of him …
“Zeke, are you all right?”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said.
“You look like someone threw you in a blender!”
“I’ll be fine in a while. Trust me.”