Page 77 of Rarely Pure and Never Simple
A strange rumbling began like a heavy-grade ground transport driving over loose gravel. At first, Damien thought the guards were rolling some larger weapon to the front gate. Then the tower directly in front of them shimmied, one of the oddest things he had ever witnessed. The structure appeared to shake itself wet-dog fashion and leaned slowly to the right. Screams and the cracking of splitting masonry joined the rumbling. The leaning tower's guard clung to a support beam and finally fell from the open archway to the ground when part of the tower's base crumbled.
Still moving forward, though the vibrations from Shudder's earthquake began to tremble under their feet as well, Blaze zigged to the left, away from the front gate. He holstered his Sig, shifted his Mannheim to his left hand, and started rubbing the fingers of his right hand together. White sparks flew from his fingertips. He stopped twenty feet from the fence as Damien and Dryad skidded to a stop beside him. Damien watched in fascination as the sparks became a ball of orange fire hovering over Blaze's palm.
The little ball grew while Blaze snorted, breathing hard. When it reached the size of a man's head, Blaze hurled it at the fence. Metal popped and shrieked in protest, though the fireball didn't do much more than heat the wires to glowing before fizzling out. Once begun, though, throwing fireballs apparently became easier for Blaze. The second and third ones followed within seconds, each one eating away at the fence's structure until the wires began to curl and snap.
Chaos had erupted inside the fencing. An attempt to herd detainees to the center of the yard ended in shrieking confusion when a yawning chasm opened in the earth and split the yard in two. The guards who had been gathering near the gate now had their hands full trying to avoid falling masonry, rescuing panicked site employees and keeping track of their charges. The three of them were obviously no longer a priority.
Blaze pulled his coat close, put his head down, and sprinted at the weakened spot in the fence. He bulled straight through, the tortured, heated metal giving easily under his assault. Dryad followed directly in his wake, and Damien stepped through more cautiously, careful of molten bits, batting out the small fire that had started on the back of Blaze's coat.
"Thanks." Blaze crouched, taking in the courtyard with his Mannheim in a two-handed grip. "Lead the way, GPS man. We need to find a secure spot to hole everyone up in."
Damien had spotted the first of his targets already, a tiny blonde girl crouched in the shadow of a skimmer. He checked the distance, didn't see any guards looking his way, and dashed across the open ground to her. He slid to a stop beside her as her eyes went wide in shock.
"You're Alia."
She nodded, suspicious and rabbit-level frightened.
"Not a lot of time to explain. Are you here of your own free will?"
She shook her head, biting her bottom lip.
"Want to get out safely?"
Again, she nodded, perhaps a bit of hope simmering in her eyes.
"All right. Do you see the dark-haired girl and that big man with the gun?" He pointed to where Blaze and Dryad crouched beside what looked like an administrative building. "Run to them. Stay with them."
Her eyes grew even wider when she saw where Damien was pointing. "That's Blaze Emerson," she whispered. "And that's. Oh my god. That's Tara."
"Yes."
Her expression hardened into determined lines, Blaze's reputation and the appearance of a familiar face apparently giving her courage. With a little nod to Damien, she shot from cover and raced to Blaze and Dryad. He pulled her down beside him and spoke to her with spare hand gestures. She said something, and he shot her that scary, fierce grin before he turned and kicked in the door behind him.
Damien had faith that Blaze would clear the building and hold it for them, so he turned back to his own task. The ground had stopped shaking in the yard, but a rumbling from outside the gate had captured the guards' attention. He risked a quick glance in that direction, nearly choking at the sight of Shudder riding a rolling wave of earth right at the front gate, the butt of his rifle tucked into his shoulder as he fired on the guards.
Four more of the kids huddled near a shed with a guard standing over them. Damien grabbed up a piece of skimmer strut broken off by falling debris and rushed the guard from behind. He didn't worry about finesse or the damage he might do, simply swung at the guard's head as hard as he could. The man went down on the second blow.
"Hey," he said to the frightened knot of kids. "Ready to go home?"
Again, he directed them to Dryad. Again, they recognized her and ran to her immediately, and he kept watch while they scurried to the building Blaze had secured. Blaze leaned out the door and pulled the kids in, taking time to give Damien a thumbs-up before he vanished inside again. That was five.
Number six had hidden under a packing crate. Dryad pulled seven from where he cowered inside a truck cab. Eight was a girl with broad shoulders who broke a piece of masonry over a guard's head and headed for Damien herself with six other detainees in tow. These extras weren't the kids he was searching for, but the more prisoners they could keep safe, the better. He sent them all to Blaze, who held his appropriated building so far without challenge.
Shudder provided all the distraction anyone could want, causing random, localized shaking and firing on guards who looked like they were trying to rally. The unarmed employees of this installation were—happily—cringing cowards, and Damien only needed to use his pipe club twice more as he sought his last two kids.
The ninth he found in the shadow of another unmarked institutional-gray building. The boy's ankle had been broken in falling debris, bringing home just how dangerous Shudder's methods could be, despite all protests to the contrary. Damien had to sling him over a shoulder and run him back to Blaze himself.
Blaze let him through and spared a quick glance for the boy as Damien laid him on the floor by the back wall. "Poor kid. Do we have 'em all?"
"One more," Damien panted out, frustrated and bone-weary. "I can't find the last one."
"Take a breath, Hazelwood. Stop running around a second and focus." Blaze shoved Damien behind the door and fired at a guard who had crept too close to their building. The man went down in a spray of blood, clutching a shoulder. "Your cavalry coming? I can't do this forever."
Damien checked his readout. "Seven minutes out. They're coming."
"A lot can happen in seven minutes," Dryad murmured from the other side of the doorway.
"Yes." Damien surveyed the site. Several buildings had crumbled walls. Three of the guard towers had toppled or partially collapsed. Shudder had gone to ground in the ruins of one of these, successfully keeping the guards at bay. They still focused on him, obviously seeing him as the greatest threat. His methods might have been dangerous, but Damien couldn't regret the decision to bring him along. Shudder was damn good in a firefight.
