Monster Planet(100)

The helicopter assault must have targeted them. Smart. Nilla started climbing up, clambering up the side of the boulder but Ayaan pulled her back down. They were only ten feet or so from the roadway, the column. Even if the mummies didn't get them the column might, it had to turn around. It was the only logical move. The column had to turn around.

Where was Erasmus? Where was the truck? She hadn't seen it in days, it had been sent to scout ahead but they needed it now. The column had to turn around. There had been a narrow defile in the side of the mountain maybe a quarter mile back, it wouldn't be easy but the column had to turn around and head for the relative safety of the rock walls. Where was Erasmus? The column could move a lot faster, could get turned around a lot faster with the truck, the straggling cultists could clamber up onto its cargo bed, they could hang on to the outside of the truck.

The Tsarevich wasn't turning the column. The column was still plodding forward, surging ahead at maybe three miles an hour as if there had been no attack, staying its course as if nothing had happened at all.

Another explosion tore through the thin air. Debris and metal fragments like flying daggers and body parts went flying, human body parts and it didn't matter if they'd been alive or dead or undead, human bones and flesh went flying over Ayaan's head like a horizontal rain of gore.

Where was the f*cking truck? She heard it before she saw it, saw it only moments before it went roaring right over her head, its wheels barely gripping the road. Mud and cinders poured down into her defile, splashed against the boulder. The truck roared past'and then she heard the distinctive fizzle and bark of an anti-aircraft missile jumping out of its launcher and she saw the rocket's exhaust, a thin banner of white wind superimposed on the blue sky. She opened her mouth wide in exultation, in excitement, and whooped with joy as the missile bent like a perfectly hit football in the air, bent right for the fleeing helicopter. Something fell out of the side of the helicopter as it banked to try to throw off the pursuit. Something fell out and dangled there on a line like a spider.

It was Sarah.

Ayaan was too far away and the helicopter was moving too fast for her to really get a good look. She didn't use her eyes. She sensed the energy there, as familiar as the hairs on the back of her own arm, an energy she'd lived with for years, since long before she had understood that such energy existed and could be seen with the right eyes. She knew that energy.

It was Sarah.

The whoop died in her throat and she grabbed at her teeth, literally reached into her mouth and grabbed her own lower jaw in terror. At any moment the AA missile was going to collide with the helicopter's airframe, it was going to plow right through the tender aluminum skin of the helicopter, lodge itself inside and the sexual horror of that, the violation of it wasn't lost on her, it would come inside the helicopter and then go off, detonate, its high explosive warhead would burst apart in a million tiny jagged pieces of shrapnel, each with its own trajectory, its own ballistic intent, and there would be enough of them to cut to shreds every person in the helicopter. There would be nothing left but pieces, parcels of flesh raggedly torn apart and bleeding and unrecognizable and falling out of the sky.

'Sarah,' Ayaan croaked.

'You know her?' Nilla asked, her face wide with confusion.

Ayaan got her feet under herself and she climbed back out of the defile, back up onto the roadway. The helicopter had dipped down into the trees and the AA missile followed. Ayaan's chest lurched and a horrible belch came out of her, stinking of dead things. The missile touched the tree line and exploded harmlessly well behind the fleeing helicopter.

Okay. Sarah was safe. Ayaan didn't breathe a sigh of relief. She no longer breathed. But her body sagged. Relaxed a little. Okay.

Except'if Sarah was attacking the Tsarevich, then'then'Sarah was'Sarah had chosen to become'Sarah had unwittingly aligned herself against'against Ayaan, who had'in some noncommittal way'sided with the Russian lich.

She had it an instant later but it didn't help. Sarah had to know, had somehow learned that Ayaan was now a lich herself. Sarah had attacked specifically with the intent of sanitizing Ayaan. Except she had missed.

And except for the fact that Ayaan didn't want to be sanitized. She had always believed that when the moment came she would beg for the bullet in the head. Kneel in the dirt and grovel for it. Only now'now she had something to live for, something bigger than herself. The Tsarevich was going to rebuild the world. Ayaan wanted to help him.

Sarah was fighting against them.