Chapter Seven

It was soon joined by the echoing boom of the lead vehicle's twenty millimeter cannon and a sparking whoosh as anti drone rockets arched up into the sky. Nuts Reggie yelped as the gunfire jolted him awake. He drifted off a half hour or so into the ride. Mannie grabbed onto him and looped his own legs around the bench for stability. An instant later, the transport veered off of the road and into the high grass surrounding the highway. There was a flash somewhere to the left, followed by

the roar and heat of an explosion. When Mannie looked back, he all the smoldering wreckage of one of their escort vehicles drones. He shouted into the journalist's ear over the blistering gunfire Manny scanned the skies as their transport plowed through the tall grass. Wounded soldier screamed as the vehicle banked and bounced and sent them slamming into each other. He caught sight of a small drone, maybe the size of his torso. It was matt black and an almost

perfect oval. The only break in its seamless form was the bulge of a missile pod on its belly. A red light blinked above the weapon. The drone slowed to a stop, maybe a hundred feet above them. There wasn't time to think. The fixer shoved his journalist hard off the back of the transport and then leaped off himself. He hit the ground with a painful thump that knocked the air out of his lungs and the scents from his mind. For a second, the whole world was stars

and shock. Many rolled to a rough stop against what felt like a large rock. Something cracked inside his chest, and then there was another explosion, this one louder and closer than the last one. The heat hit him like an ocean wave. Many was vaguely aware of the scent of burning hair, his hair. He cried out, but he couldn't hear his own screams. Many's ears rang like the inside of a church bell. It was several moments before the pain and shock subsided enough for him to open

his eyes. He looked down at himself. First, his pajamas were scorched and his arms were scraped and bloody from the fall. His backpack was gone, but there were no signs of serious injury. None of his bones seemed broken. What remained of the transport smoldered half a football field away. He saw a few writhing, burning shapes inside Manny's stomach turned Reggie. The pain of the fall head momentarily wiped

the journalist from his mind. Mannie scanned the field and found the other man curled into a fetal ball a dozen or so feet to his left. He ran over, gave the journalist a quick scan, and determined Reggie wasn't seriously injured either. A small slipper of shrapnel had pierced the other man's bicep. He was just as scraped and bloody as Manny, but also basically intact, except his eyes

didn't quite focus when Mannie looked into them. Maybe a minor head injury, the journalist said something, a lot of somethings in fact, but Andy's hearing was all tenitis. There was no time to talk anyway. He hoisted Reggie up by the armpits, ignored the other man's pained expression, and pulled him along as he beat feet away from the flaming wreckage in the ongoing firefight. Another blast wave of rolled over him, this one more distant, and then another

coming from somewhere above them in the sky. The extent of their injuries meant that their run was more like a hobble. Reggie had dislocated his unshrapneled arm, Manny had fucked his knee up in the fall and done something awful to his ribs. The two stumble staggered as fast as they could manage towards an abandoned gas station by the side of the old highway. They reached their temporary salvation and took cover inside the dusty, cobwebbed building. Cut cut, cut, cut, Cut,

Reggie screamed as he slumped down against the wall. It took Manny a second to process the fact that he could hear again. You're all right, he shouted, You're fine, We're going to be okay. Manny had no idea if that was true, but he knew managing fear would be critical to their survival. The gas station had been abandoned for a decade or more. Most of the glass was gone, but the basic structure of the side counter was still intact. He and Reggie took cover behind it, careful to avoid

the piles of shattered glass and shrapnel. There were old bullet holes in the wall all around them. At one time, there'd been a plexiglass window on the inside wall behind the counter, with a little bucket in it, so the cashier could do business at night without letting customers inside. Most of the plexiglass had been removed, leaving a gaping wound in the building's concrete hide. Manny stuck his head out of the hole and looked out at the sight

of the massacre. Both transports had been hit. Much of the field was a flame. The six sweet smell of burning human flesh wafted over them like a dense fog. Manny saw two of the escort trucks still firing into the sky. There was another flash above as one of them hit a drone. It corkscrewed out of the air, burst on the ground and ignited the dry grass. What

the funk do we do, Reggie shout asked. There was panic in his voice and quite a lot of pain, but the journalist didn't seem to have lost his wits. We need to get out of here, Manny said, Well, those drones are still occupied. The highway was a couple of hundred feet away. The civilian vehicles following them had scattered when the tack began. Some of them had clearly been hit by machine gun fire from one of the drones. Others had crashed, rolled into ditches and been abandoned by

their occupants. Manny spotted one, an ancient white jeep that looked like it had taken around. Through the window. He could see blood inside the vehicle, but the engine and wheels seemed intact. The tree line of a sparse forest was just on the other side of the highway, a half mile away. If they could reach it, Reggie, he put a hand on the journalist's shoulder. The two men locked eyes, and many tried to force all the fear out of his voice. When I say so, run very fast,

straight towards that white jeep. Understood the brit brought a hand to his dislocated shoulder and winced in intense pain, but then looked back to Manny and let out a sharp sigh. Fucking all right, shit yeah. Manny took that as a yes. He glanced back at the firefight in the field. The fire part was literal, now at least a full acre was aflame. The smoke seemed to have interfered with the drone sensors. That was probably the only reason their last two escorts had stayed unfucked for so long.

Manny watched in horror as a large beetle black drone buzzed down low and opened up with a machine gun. He saw bursts of red as the rounds tore into the escorts gunner and flung him off the truck's bed. Time to go. Manny slapped Reggie's uninjured shoulder and sprinted as fast as his jankie ankle could carry him. It was increasingly obvious that his leg was supremely fucked. The middle of Manny's back itched the whole run in anticipation of a bullet that peculiar sense was even louder than

the pain. They reached the jeep, Manny went for the driver's side door, pulled it open, and jerked back as the soupy remains of a pulped human being oozed out onto the asphalt. He heard Reggie start to wretch behind him. It was fucked in there for sure. The man he was sort of sure it had been a man, had taken a couple of rounds from a very large weapon. Many guessed they'd been fifty caliber mass reactive bolts because

the impact had torn the man apart. He wasn't sure if additional rounds or bone shrapnel had hit the two kids in the back seat, but they were all exceptionally dead. Many pulled his shirt off and did his best to wipe the corpse from as much of the seat as possa. He hopped in and glanced over to the journalist. Reggie wretched outside, Hey, get the funk in, We don't got all. A concussive blast echoed from the field. That was one more escort down. The fight was as good as over.

Manny felt a tinge of panic rise up in the base of his spine. Reggie still hesitated. Dude either deal with some gore in your clothes or stay here and die. Your choice. The Brits snapped out of it, went for the passenger door and hopped inside. Manny wasn't a great driver, or even a very good one, but this was a simple vehicle, and he was blessed with the motivation of not wanting to die. He turned the car back on and the engine woke up with a rich electronic hum.

The fixer flipped the vehicle into drive and gunned for the tree line. The jeep bounced and swayed over the lumpy grassland ter rain. Reggie puked out the window. Manny felt nauseous too. He honestly wasn't sure if it was more for the pieces of people scattered inside the vehicle or sheer motion sickness. Fifteen seconds went by, thirty a minute. Manny allowed himself to think they might make it out

of this alive. And then he heard the buzz, that sickening, familiar machine hum that every war zone kid knew, as well as the sound of their own mother's voice. A drone closing in. Manny jerked his head out the window and scanned the sky. The jeep had a pothole, and his head slammed to the top of the window frame. He saw stars and almost lost control of the vehicle entirely. It veered to the right and lifted up on to only two wheels. He righted the jeep, spun it back

to the left, and gunned it again. As he turned the other way, he stuck his head out again and scanned behind them. There it was the black beadily fucker, buzzing towards them. It was close enough that he could see the glint of its camera optics and the barrel of the heavy machine guns slung underneath it. Manny knew it was picking up speed to compensate for the recoil of its weapon. It would be low on ammunition now. It'd probably wait to fire until it was too close

to miss. The tree line was so near he could almost grab it. Another fifteen seconds and they'd be there, But the drone was close. They didn't have that long. He looked over to the journalist, get ready to bail, get ready to what Manny saw the muzzle flash, and in the same instant he spun the wheel hard to the right. The drones first round chunked through the back of the jeep cracked the axle and blew apart the left tire, but the jeep was in the air. An

instant later. It flipped over like a drunken dolphin, and the rest of the drone shots blasted chunks out of the ground where the jeep would have been. By the end of the burst, the recoil had robbed the drone of its momentum and brought it to a spinning halt in the sky. The jeep rolled twice and bounced Manny and Reggie around like rocks in a tumbler. It hurt, it hurt shiploads, but Manny was high enough on adrenaline

in fear that he could almost ignore the pain. Blood streamed from his forehead, something ached terribly between his shoulders. When the jeep came to a stop, he was deeply surprised to be alive. Let's go, he shouted to Reggie, not even a hundred percent sure if the journalist had survived the crash. Manny pulled himself up out of the open window and then reached his hands back blind into the jeep. While he scanned the sky around them. He felt reggie small hands grip his own. They were wet

with sweat, maybe blood probably both. Manny squeezed pulled him up. The too hopped down because they could with their sundry wounds. The drone had probably veered around and started another loop so it could build up the speed for one more accurate burst of fire. Many couldn't quite hear the buzz yet, but he couldn't hear much of anything over the sound of his pounding heart. Reggie pulled ahead of him in a lopsided run. Manny tried to pick up speed, but

his knee just wouldn't let him. Ah, there it was. He had three, maybe four seconds before that big gun opened up again. The tree line was only about a hundred feet away, so close and yet too far for him to possibly make it in time. I really didn't want to die here. I was so close to getting out. He thought of a picture he'd seen of the Bavarian Alps, white snow filled valleys and rich pine forests. I'm never going to see that or anything else. Reggie looked back

as he neared the tree line. Many appreciated the gesture. It was dumb as funk, though idiot to run. The fixer bellowed at the top of his lungs. The journalist didn't hesitate this time. He bolted past the tree line and disappeared into the wooded thicket. Manny felt a weight lift off his shoulders. He was about to be torn apart by some nut fuck martyr with an itchy trigger finger and a joystick. But he'd done his job. He'd gotten his journalists to safety. Well not quite safety, he thought,

but whatever best I could do under the circumstances. The hum grew louder. Manny tried to coax a little more speed out of his wounded leg, even though he knew he was too far away now to make the tree line. Even at a dead sprint. It would have been nice to see Berlin or Paris. Oh well. He heard the thumping sound of heavy gun fire and braced himself for the instant of agony that would precede his end. But instead he heard the sound of impact and crunching metal

behind him, followed by a high pitched mechanical wine. Something heavy and black crashed into the ground ahead of him. He made it to the tree line, pushed through the underbrush, got perhaps twenty feet into the woods, and collapsed against a tree for a few seconds He just let the paine wash over him, his knee, his shoulders. He could feel something stuck deep in his back too, maybe a shard of glass or some shrie apneal. From the start of the firefight, he had quite a few deep cuts.

The trauma nanites in his circulatory system had clotted most of them, but the deeper ones still oozed blood. It was hard to tell just how injured he really was, since his body was also covered in blood and viscerraph from the jeep's previous occupants espera. He thought, how am I alive? His brain gradually spun up to meet his body. Someone had shot that murder beetle out of the sky, But who Reggie? Where would he have gotten a gun? And the man was British. He couldn't shoot Reggie. He

shouted over here. The brit called back. He sounded weirdly cheerful. I'm er think we've made some friends. For the first time in his life, Manny found himself face to face with two post humans. The first appeared to be a lady. She was hunkered up in the branches of a tree, and she cradled a very large gun in her hands. Most of her body sort of faded into the four wrist. She was only easy to see now because of her smile. The shine of her teeth was quite unlike anything else

he'd ever seen. They appeared to be made of some sort of strange, swirling colored metal. Where a normal person would have had incisors, she had long, curved fangs. The other chrombed was a black man. He was of average height, with a muscular body and a wide build. His head was shaved, and he had a plump, friendly face and round cheeks that accentuated his broad smile. He wore a red kilt and a silver breastplate over his muscular chest.

It gleamed in the afternoon sun. His only weapon appeared to be an enormous sledgehammer, larger than Reggie's entire body. He smiled and nodded in Manny. His whole body twitched as he stood there, as if a constant stream of electricity buzzed through him. Reggie stood in front of the man. It looked like the journalist had run into the post humans during his flight from the drone. He looked terrified

in the friendly sort of way. Only the British could manage. Hey, y'all, Manny, said he wasn't sure how nomadic half god warrior people preferred to be addressed. Y'all seemed a safe bet, a guy, said. The woman up in the tree soap said the kilted man um. Can we help you? Manny asked? The man chuckled. He had a deep, throaty laugh that bounced off the trees and seemed to get louder as it reverberated. No, buddy, you guys look pretty near death. I'm gonna GISs. You

don't have anything. I want nice pajamas, though he pointed down to Manny's blood soaked and burned pajama bottoms. The fixer's face turned red with embarrassment. They might have whiskey, said the woman. Ask if they have whiskey. The big man smiled, lowered his mall and spoke the name's schoofucker Mike, he said. The lady who shut down your drone is Topaz McMillan. Do you guys have whiskey? Manny didn't, but Reggie did. Holy fuck, he shouted, I actually do. Somehow,

the journalist hadn't lost his backpack in the chaos. He unzipped the main compartment, dig around for a few seconds and produced a small metal flask. Reggie passed it off to skullfucker Mike, who took a belt of it and let out a dog's bark. He didn't bark like a dog, It was the exact sound of a large pound barking schofucker. Mike passed the flask up to Topaz. She took a poll in coued appreciatively. All right, Scully, I like these guys. They get a ride. A ride, asked Reggie. A ride

to where? Two rolling fuck, she said, to the city of Wheels. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here. I hope you just enjoyed the chapter you listen to. I hope you enjoyed the chapters to come. If you would like to read the text version of this book either on the web or on your e reader as an e pub you can find those on the website a t r book dot com. So again, the free ad free e pub and the text of every chapter will be on a t r book dot com. Thanks