‘We gotta jump now,’ she said calmly, even though raw fear was blitzing through her veins in icy surges. ‘Rest your chin on my left shoulder so I can see where I’m going.’ Jun obeyed, meek and silent. ‘All right, three, two, one!’
With arms outspread Njinga took a step to the left, over the edge of the cliff, and gravity did the rest, sucking her and Jun earthwards with a ferocious hunger. The aerofoil nature of her suit, however, allowed her to generate lift, and turn her downward plunge into a graceful, if terrifying, arc that began to flatten, in a thrust of furious acceleration, into horizontal flight. With the wind buffeting with vengeful anger against her and Jun, she followed the course of the river a few hundred yards below, gliding like a flying squirrel and tearing through the air at over one hundred miles per hour.
Up on the peak, William and Chloe were now strapped together, ready for flight, and Lightning Bird and Daekwon had just emerged from the forest.
‘I d-, d-, don’t like heights,’ Chloe murmured, her teeth chattering and her whole body trembling with fear as she stared, wide-eyed, over the edge of the yawning maw of the precipice.
‘I’m not too fond of ‘em either, lass,’ William said grimly, ‘but there’s no other way. You have to trust me on this. Just close your eyes and hold on, okay? You’ll be safe and sound before you know it.’ He turned to Lightning Bird and Daekwon. ‘See you two on the other side!’ he yelled, and then he spread his arms out and jumped into the vast abyss.
Daekwon hopped off the grizzly’s back, landing with athletic smoothness, and flung his AK-47 to the ground. There was a dent in his combat helmet from where an M-16 round had hit it, and three large holes in the back of his bulletproof vest. The fabric had been ripped open, but the armour underneath, while dented, was still intact. Daekwon had had the wind knocked out of him by the shots, and had likely cracked a few ribs, but he was otherwise all right.
‘Outta … a-, ammo,’ he croaked, pointing with a trembling finger at the rifle on the ground.
Still high on adrenalin, he was about to draw his pistol, but Lightning Bird, who had just transformed back into his human form, put a gentle hand on his forearm to stop him.
‘No more fighting,’ the shaman groaned, his countenance a contorted grimace of agony. ‘Time to fly.’
Blood was streaming down the outside of Lightning Bird’s left thigh, and he was hobbling with a pronounced limp; he too had been hit by a bullet, but he hadn’t had any armour, besides the naturally thick muscles and dense bones of his grizzly body, to protect him. William pointed at two piles of flight equipment on the rocks near the base of the sphinx-like formation.
‘The one to your right is yours, and the left is Zakaria’s. Hurry brother, get suited up!’
While Lightning Bird was putting on his suit, Zakaria and Paola came charging out of the forest. As they emerged from the forest, Zakaria bellowed out another ear-splitting roar and sprayed the shadowy labyrinth with M60 fire, aiming low in the hope of catching as many of the Huntsmen troops as possible as he spat the last hundred bullets from his ammunition belt into the trees.
When he dropped the machine gun Paola jumped off his back, landing hard and twisting her ankle with a squeal of pain before collapsing onto the stony ground, gasping with such intense panic and fright that she resembled a freshly caught fish drowning in air. Stark white, her eyes were bulging in their sockets to the point of bursting free, her tongue was lolling from her chattering jaw, and her breathing was ragged and shallow. Her soda bottle spectacles had fallen off somewhere along the way, and numerous holes had been ripped in the fabric of her bulletproof vest, but her worst injury drew everyone’s eyes to it with a magnetic pull. Her right hand had been blown apart by a rifle round, and the appendage was now little more than a gruesome tangle of shredded meat, shattered bones and hanging veins and tendons. Wet, slimy hues of red, purple, crimson, grey and white bore brutal testament to the destructive capability of the M-16 bullet. Blood was dripping from the grisly mess in great goops and splattering stark and red on the pale grey stones.
‘Oh sh-, shit,’ Daekwon gasped, staring at the wound with horror writ across his haggard face.
Lightning Bird took one look at the wound and shook his head grimly, with both pity and helplessness flashing alternately in his dark irises; this one was beyond his power to repair, and while he could stop the bleeding and repair some of the damage, the girl would never have a functional right hand again.
There was no time for hesitation or indecision now, though. Already the Huntsmen troops were preparing for their final assault, and when they stormed the peak everyone on it would certainly die.
‘I’ll do what I can for her once we’re safe,’ Lightning Bird said. ‘But now, we have to fly. Put your harness on, Daekwon.’
‘B-, but, her, her hand!’ the teenager protested.
Lightning Bird shook his head.
‘Now, Daekwon, or you, she, my friend and I will all die.’
Daekwon understood the terrible urgency; a shrill, monotonous whine was still screaming in his ears after the running gun-battle he’d just fought, despite having earplugs in, but now an eerie silence had fallen on the forest. All of the wild creatures had long since fled, and the only large organisms for miles were those with guns in their hands and murder in their cold eyes, and they were now advancing through the shadows towards the mountain peak.
Daekwon knelt down next to Paola
