Like then. Like right then.
Octos from the top of the Evermore leapt out from the canopy of our ship and onto the Heartbreaker. They clung there with their hairy tentacles. We had to go, or our escape route would be cut off.
I turned to Sharlotte.
“You stay, I stay,” I said. “I left you before, and I won’t do it again.”
“You both are leaving!” June Mai screamed.
My G18 was empty, so I dropped it and drew both Colt Terminators, shooting at Octos. One got near, and I put a .45 caliber through an eye hole.
Sharlotte glanced at me. She was so stubborn.
Well, I could be, too.
“Wren!” June Mai thundered. “Get your sisters out here!”
An instant later, despite our best efforts to fight her, Wren left the fight at the front. She came running, scooping up Sharlotte and me, spinning and running toward the back. There was a wider space of platform there under two air cells in the frayed canopy above—that was where Pilate and the others had retreated to. President Jack looked withered, white, and out of his depth.
Wren dumped Sharlotte and me down.
The central swaying walkway finally gave way. The Evermore was split in two as we were thrown around. The Heartbreaker pulled away, heading north, towing our half. The front part of the Evermore stayed leashed to the Cargador below, floating there, with June Mai stuck.
One of the ARK Jimmies fell against the top tier of Coors Field, smoking, burning, breaking through the brick and crumbling against the concrete rows.
Octos screamed from the Bobby above us. However, the Heartbreaker’s gunners took them out. Their skin couldn’t stop a .50 caliber belt fed Triple X. It tore through the monsters, reducing them to butcher’s garbage.
Someone on board the Heartbreaker must’ve seen us and told Sketchy. She took off as fast as her steam engine could go.
We’d lost every Gamma except for Wren. We’d lost every Stanley.
And we were about to lose June Mai Angel, a devil to us for a long time, but an angel in the end. She was still fighting, one hand on the bomb, one hand on her rifle, firing, and keeping the Octos back by will alone it seemed.
We’d sacrificed everything to get to President Jack, who stood by me, gasping, watching the destruction.
We had a destination, what remained of Yellowstone, kilometers of lava fields, and somewhere, the secret ARK research facility.
I blinked, feeling what, I didn’t know. But I wasn’t numb. A great gratitude filled me, and yet, it was tinged with horror. Because of all the innocent Americans who were about to die. Hoyt and the ARK might be behind the secret medical base in New Mexico for the American wounded. Sure. But just killing off the peacekeepers was a lot more efficient though it was maniacally coldhearted.
And I couldn’t do a single thing to stop it.
The Heartbreaker chugged away from Coors Field. The American Blackhawks weren’t following us, but helping June Mai, gunning down the last of the Octos.
We lost sight of June Mai Angel.
Tears tracked down Sharlotte’s face.
Wren stood behind us, breathing hard, not speaking, but watching.
We drifted over North Denver, moving away from the doomed, chipped-toothed skyscrapers.
The last ARK Jimmy chased us, but her engines had been damaged. And though the Heartbreaker was towing us, she had massive steam engines choking out coal smoke. She was losing altitude though, pulling us down with her.
One of the air cells above us hissed out. We were going down and it wasn’t going to be gentle.
(ii)
Houses swept under us and then fields and we were getting closer and closer to the ground as the Heartbreaker lost altitude and the Evermore’s air cells gave up their ghosts.
The Evermore’s ladder hit first, pulling up chunks of sagebrush as the rungs hit gray branches heavy with snow.
I braced for impact. We all did. The ground flashed under us: white snow, gray sage, yellow grass. We were only a few meters above the surface.
“Gonna have to jump for it!” Baptista yelled. She leapt off the platform, struck the earth, and rolled with the impact.
“Oh hell,” President Jack gasped. He went after her. I’d learned that Jack was many things, but he wasn’t a delicate flower, and he wasn’t a coward.
Wren grabbed Pilate. She hauled him off and they smacked the ground in a spray of snow. Other outlaws did the same. Only Sharlotte and I were left. And she wasn’t going to jump, not with her missing leg. So I stayed.
The platform bounced off the field, once, twice. I was jarred loose and then Sharlotte. In an instant, we both were in snow.
We looked up.
The ARK Jimmy barreling down on us, smoke leaking from her engines, a few of her own air cells deflated.
Were we far enough from Coors Field and the floating platform where June Mai still held the lever down? I hoped. I prayed.
All around me was the smell of the freshly destroyed sage mingled with the remnants of the neofiber melting stink.
The Heartbreaker flew on, pulling our platform through a fence, into a lone house, until it anchored the big Bobby there. And the Heartbreaker continued to descend. She had a hole in her.
I knew I should hide—from the oncoming Jimmy, from the nuclear blast—but I couldn’t help myself. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen.
Sharlotte pulled me close to her. We were both prone, the snow chilling our bellies. Wren ran up to us. Her hooded canvas poncho had been torn to ribbons from the spines of the Octo tentacles. In that moment, the world seemed so quiet and strangely calm.
Wren went around and knelt down behind us, getting ready to cover our bodies from the Jimmy’s guns or from the oncoming bomb blast.
Sharlotte spoke. “You think we’re far enough—”
