“Hold on, baby, hold on,” Fix whispered.
“No, everyone hold on!” Lemon shouted, looking through the windshield.
The first wave of clawthingys reached them, crushed under Trucky McTruckface’s massive wheels. They flowed around the truck like water, swarming back toward the Brotherhood boys. Lemon looked into her rearview mirror, saw the Disciples had scattered for their own rides. But the BioMaas beasts bore down on them, men screaming, weapons blasting, explosions blooming. She saw Brother War roaring as he went down under a wave of teeth and claws, but she had no time to gloat. She had no time for anything.
The second wave of BioMaas beasties hit the truck with a crash. Some were pulverized on the grille, others squashed flat beneath the tires, but dozens more dug their claws into the truck’s panels and scuttled upward toward the shattered windows. Grimm started shooting, but god, there were so many clambering up onto the roof and hacking at the tire guards and battering at the windshield.
Fix had pulled Diesel down into the footwell, one hand pressed to the bubbling wound at her chest, the other blasting away with his pistol. His face was deathly pale, his own belly soaked with blood.
“What’s the p-plan?” he shouted.
“Can’t you transfer from these things?” Lemon roared. “Fix Diesel?”
“Can’t aim it like that!” he yelled. “I’ll drain y’all, too!”
“It’s all up to you, love!” Grimm bellowed over the gunfire.
“What do you want me to do?” she shrieked.
“All living things run on electric current, remember?”
She ducked a claw bursting through the window beside her as Grimm put a shot through the beastie’s head. “We already tried that, I don’t know how!”
“Fry ’em!”
“I might hurt you and—”
“FRY ’EM!” the boy shouted.
Lemon clenched her teeth. The truck was covered in the clawthingys now, their numbers blotting out the sunlight. She only had seconds before they were overwhelmed, before she fell once more into the hands of BioMaas Incorporated, before Diesel and Grimm and Fix were ripped to shreds. They’d helped her when they didn’t have to. Given her a place to belong. A family she’d never known she had. A home she’d never known she’d needed. And now they were gonna get killed because of her?
Hells no.
She could sense the static inside her head. The buzzing, crackling gray behind her eyes. The pulse that had been with her for years. But instead of reaching inside to the place she knew, the self she was, this time, Lemon truly reached out. Past the claws and teeth and eyeless heads, searching for the tiny bursts of current in the minds beyond. That’s all life was, really. Little arcs and sparks of electricity, neurons and electrons, ever changing, always moving. And through the fear, through the anger, through it all, she realized she could feel them. The tiny pulses leaping from synapse to synapse, crackling along nervous systems, transforming will into motion, making hearts beat and claws snatch and jaws snap. It was like reaching into a cloud of angry flies, a storm made out of a million, billion tiny burning sparks.
And stretching out her fingers
she took hold
and she
turned
them
off.
A pulse, rippling from her hands. Silent. Blunt. Leaving the air around her shivering. It felt like the world shifted, like someone had kicked her in the skull. Grimm bucked in his seat, his nose leaking blood. Fix made a choking noise and grabbed at his head. But the clawthingys—the legion of leering grins and lashing tongues and grasping talons—every one of them flinched like she’d punched them right in the brainmeats, and dropped into the dust like stones.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
Lemon could feel blood pouring from her nose, warm on her lips. But with a wince of pain and a red grimace, she managed to keep herself upright. Defying the black swelling around her with everything she had inside her. She stomped the accelerator again, and with a sound like popping corn, the truck surged forward, over the bodies of fallen clawthingys and tearing off across the flats.
Lemon blinked hard, dragged her sleeve across her bloody face. Looking into the rearview mirror, she saw the ruins of the Brotherhood posse, torn to pieces by the BioMaas beasts. Amid the swarm, she saw the Hunter watching them drive away. The woman’s golden eyes were gleaming, desert wind rustling her dreads as she raised her finger and pointed. Lemon could almost hear her whisper.
“A Hunter never misses our mark.”
Her heart was hammering. Her eyes wide.
“That swear jar’s gonna be really full tonight….”
* * *
________
“S-stop…the truck,” Fix whispered.
They’d been driving almost ten minutes, each one ticking by like a year. Over the sound of the motor, Lemon had listened to Diesel’s breathing growing shallower, bubbling in her throat. Grimm had wadded bandages from the field medkit around the sucking wound, but now the gauze was soaked through. Diesel’s face was pale, her eyes closed. Fix wasn’t in much better shape, clutching his bleeding hip, face twisted in agony. The metallic tang of blood hung in the air with the exhaust fumes, making Lemon’s eyes water.
“Stop the t-truck,” Fix repeated.
Grimm looked his friend in the eye. “Fixster, we got med—”
“STOP THE FUNKIN’ TRUCK!”
Lemon looked through the rearview mirror into Grimm’s eyes.
The boy slowly nodded.
With a final check to make sure those BioMaas fliers weren’t still on their tails, Lemon eased on the brakes, pulled their battered rig to a halt. She cracked the driver’s door, almost fell out onto the earth. Her legs were shaking, the whole world spinning. Fix kicked open the rear door, pulled Diesel out of the backseat. He was drenched from the belly down in red—how much of the blood was his and how much was Diesel’s, Lemon couldn’t really tell.
Cradling the girl’s body in his arms, he began limping away from the truck.
“Where you goin’?” Grimm called.
“I can f-fix her,” he whispered.
Lemon watched as the big boy walked twenty or thirty meters away, placed Diesel on a flat outcrop of desert stone, gentle as a sleeping baby. Tears cut tracks down the dust and blood on his face as he smoothed her hair back, whispering words she couldn’t hear.
“Mate, this is a desert,” Grimm called, gesturing about them. “There’s nothing alive around ’ere. What you gonna transfer from?”