“Fuck it!” William launched Jezebel. She spun through the air as the first of the dogs charged into the room. The stutter of bullets followed his projectile while he swung around the balcony, slid down the railings so fast the rust-coated metal burned his palms, and dropped to the balcony on the floor below.
The first of the dogs caught up and leaped for the building opposite. It let out a continuous stream of fire as it spun through the air. The flames caught a drone and sent it into a spin that ended with an explosion against a wall to William’s left. The other dogs halted on the balcony above. They spewed flames, but were unable to angle them down.
William, lighter and more mobile without his weapon, chased after the others.
Chapter 12
The dogs weren’t stupid. Where one of them had jumped and fallen, the others halted and turned around. They’d find another way, and they were fast enough to catch up. William reached the stairwell at the same time as the creatures on the floor above. Were it not for their searing ball of flames, he might have fallen again. But they lit his way, even if he ran with the reek of his own singed hair in his nostrils.
Like the dogs before it, the first of the creatures tripped on the stairs. The stairwell shook from where its heavy steel body stumbled and slammed to an abrupt halt against the wall at the end of the first flight.
Matilda held a door open for William two floors down, the number one just visible on the wall beside her.
Gracie led them along another corridor similar to the others. She took them to yet another room. No balcony this time, but the drop from the window was no more than fifteen feet.
Matilda jumped, and as William leaped from the window, the crash of the steel door leading to the stairwell broke open. The clack-clack of the dogs’ uneven gait swarmed in.
William landed on the hard and unforgiving road with a jolt. Had Gracie not led them, he wouldn’t have chosen this route. But thank the heavens they had because a swarm of drones waited for them on the ground floor. They lit up the inside of the derelict building, the focus of their lights on the doorway exiting the stairwell as they waited for William and his friends.
They were through their second abandoned shop when the crash of a dog slammed down on the road behind them. A whoosh of flames, for what good it did. They were too far back for it to have any effect.
Another wide road separated them from another cluster of towers. The buildings were so close together, they were damn near touching. Even closer than the ones they’d leaped between earlier.
The first of the dogs appeared as William entered the next tower. Its awkward bounding gait, its square head, its glowing red eyes. These things didn’t tire, and they wouldn’t quit. So much for the lead they’d gained.
Gracie took them into another stairwell, the snaking concrete stairs like many of the others. William’s legs burned with the effort of the climb. At some point his body would fail him. Until then, he’d have to keep going. Either that or die.
Gracie’s breathless voice echoed in the dark. “First, we lose the dogs, and then we lose the drones.”
At least she had a plan. She’d done this before, right?
Too dark to see the numbers on the wall, if this building even labelled their floors, so William counted instead. Past the door to the third floor, Gracie three to four floors above him and still climbing.
William reached the sixth floor when Gracie kicked a door open several floors above.
He stumbled into the corridor on the tenth floor. Stairs would only give them an advantage over the dogs as long as he could climb them. Stars swam in his vision, every deep inhale failing to sate his need for air.
Matilda jumped through the window at the end of the hallway, the tock of her feet landing on the metal walkway outside.
More stairs. Like the ones running up the side of the stadium. They clung to the tower and mirrored the internal stairwell in their zigzagging path up or down. They went up. Of course they went up!
Rust had claimed several steps, much like the ones outside the arena. It left a gap of about six feet in the next flight of stairs. Six feet wide and three feet higher up. Horizontal bars ran beneath the stairs directly above them. Matilda copied Gracie, Max, Artan, and Olga. She leaped, caught the bar, and swung across the gap, landing two-footed on the other side. But Dianna had halted, Hawk beside her. “Go! Now!” William screamed as he charged at the girl. “The dogs are coming.”
Dianna screamed, jumped for the horizontal bar, caught it and swung across.
As she let go of the bar, William leaped. Hawk ran back towards the dogs.
William landed on the other side, his stomach lurching as he teetered on the edge of his balance before Max and Artan pulled him towards them. The fall through the gap might have only been ten feet, but it would have been a ten-foot drop onto metal stairs. He’d been lucky so far. No chance he would have managed this fall without breaking something.
Hawk waited by the window they’d escaped from. The first dog jumped out onto the walkway. He caught it and flipped the thing over the railing, his muscles bulging as he launched it away from the stairs. Like the one earlier, it breathed fire as it spun, slamming against the ground over one hundred feet below. Its body lay broken on the asphalt.
The next dog through the window emerged at such a speed it slammed into the railing on the walkway and bent the steel bar. Hawk had already climbed back up the stairs. As he
