Page 45 of When Monsters Fight
“So close.”
She sounds worried. Nervous.
I get it. So am I.
This is the first journey where we haven’t been attacked by the monsters, and it feels like our luck should be running out, but we’re almost at base zero, so maybe we’ll make it without mishap.
The people on our bus are silent now. The constant low hum of conversation has died as if they’re also experiencing the same fears and doubts as me.
We’d be delusional not to be worried. Not to doubt. Not to wonder when the sky will open and spit out razor beaks or when crabines might burst out of the ground.
This silence isn’t normal. It feels ominous, like the eerie calm before a vicious storm.
Bee crouches beside me, her hand on the arm of my chair, her eyes on the road ahead, scanning the terrain, always scanning.
“Bee, sit down. The watchers have got this.”
They’re in the air above us and running along the ground ahead and behind us. They have our backs, and there’s no need to worry. Two miles off now.
The ground is flat and dry here, stretching as far as the eye can see either side of us. We’re exposed to attack. I glance in the rear-view at the bus behind us driven by Derry, a guy I’d never spoken to until last night.
Derry is one of the old-timers, in his fifties, and used to drive a lorry. He has all the supplies in his bus along with a handful of passengers.
“We should be coming up on those coordinates any second.”
“I don’t see anything,” she says.
“Gabriel said they’re underground.”
“So we need to look for a hatch? A sewer pipe? What do?—”
“Bee, what is it? What’s…Oh…” The sky ahead is a churning black mass of tendrils like the other day when our bus was upended by monsters that appeared out of nowhere. The same inky shit that misted the skies all day. It’s Gehenna bleeding into our world, which means?—
Tumiel appears in our path, wings beating hard to stay airborne. “Slow it down!” he orders before shooting up to join the other watchers.
I decelerate, and Derry takes his lead from me until we’re moving ten miles an hour. Razor beaks spawn to life inthe sky amidst the black swirly shit, and the watchers and reapers attack them.
“We have eight razor beaks,” Bee says. “Maybe more.”
“They’ve taken down three.” We’re getting too close now, so I slow down even more. “We need to let them handle this.”
“You say that as if I’m begging to go out there and help. Heck, I’m not suicidal.”
Five down. “We have the numbers, so we should?—”
A sound like the crack of lightning cuts the air followed by another and another, and one of the razor beaks falls out of the air.
It takes a moment for my brain to comprehend what’s just happened because it’s been a long time since I’ve heard this sound, and even then, I only ever heard it in movies.
“What is it? What’s happening?” Bee demands.
“Gunfire.” My heart hammers in my throat. “Someone is shooting at the raptors.”
“Base zero?”
“It has to be.” I find the source of bullets a moment later—raised hatches in the ground with the barrels of guns pointed into the air. “There! To the left. Do you see them?”
“They must have eyes on the area,” Bee says. “They know we’re incoming. They’re helping us.”
