“How many of these fucking things are there?”
“Behind you!”
Odin and Smokey turned to see Foxy pointing at a bedroom door near them. Bullet holes were blasting through near the doorknob, punching out panels in the door. Then the wall.
“Fall back! Smokey, Tin Man, back!”
They ran past the doorway, firing into it, and the swarm surged into the corridor behind them. Flames were visible rising along the foyer walls.
McKinney ducked back into a stone-walled two-car garage where Foxy was busy under the dashboard of a late-model crocus yellow Jeep. It had no roof, just padded roll bars. “You’re kidding me…”
“It’s all we got, Professor. Unless you think we stand a chance reaching the SUVs in the driveway.”
“No, I don’t.” McKinney noticed Hoov’s body bag lying in the small cargo area. She turned to see Ripper sitting in the jeep’s doorway as Mooch examined her calf. He was wrapping it in bandages.
“Small-caliber bullet. It’ll keep.”
“I fucking told you.” She was reloading her weapon.
“Did you see what it was?”
“Looks like a goddamned zip gun. They have rows of them. They try to get you in close. They’ve got these beady insect eyes…”
McKinney sniffed the air again. “Does anyone else smell that?”
Ripper nodded. “Like cayenne pepper?”
Mooch cut the bandage. McKinney ducked her head out to look down the hallway.
Odin glanced back at her. Although his expression was impossible to see behind his asymmetrical mask, his posture indicated they couldn’t hold out long. Behind him all hell was breaking loose, with Tin Man and Smokey spraying machine gun fire and lobbing grenades.
Odin turned forward again, firing at a drone that came in from the side door. One blast from his shotgun caused it to detonate, blasting all three men off their feet and peppering the walls with shrapnel.
McKinney raced forward to grab Odin.
He shoved the auto-shotgun in her hands. “Shoot!” And crawled to assist Smokey, who was tugging at the screaming Tin Man. Blood covered Tin Man’s legs, and a metal spike protruded from his thigh. Smokey was also bleeding in several places.
McKinney raised the heavy combat shotgun as a wave of drones surged forward in a way that was all too familiar from her research. She never thought she’d be facing weavers on their own level, but now that she was, she was really beginning to hate them. She opened up, and the recoil on the auto-shotgun wasn’t as bad as she expected. She kept the trigger down and panned the hallway over the heads of Odin and Smokey, who were dragging the screaming Tin Man back.
Dozens of drones blasted apart as she fell back firing. She was surprised how satisfying it felt.
In a moment Smokey was up again, firing with his HK. “Got it, Professor.”
McKinney lowered the smoking shotgun and reached down to help Odin drag Tin Man into the garage. There, Mooch took over.
Tin Man was cursing. “Motherfucker! I fell on one and a spike went through my leg. Their legs are aluminum spikes or some shit.”
It appeared that the spike had already been pulled from his leg, and Mooch was applying pressure.
McKinney looked up to see that Odin had gone back into the hallway, but now he and Smokey were falling back into the garage again-Smokey spraying with his HK, Odin using a pistol. In a moment they pulled the door closed behind them. Odin pounded it. It sounded solid. “Fire-rated door. Should give us a few minutes.”
They were both bleeding in several places.
Almost immediately the door began to deform in points with a popping sound-bullets being fired into it from the other side.
“Maybe not that long.” Odin looked ahead to the thick wooden gates of the garage door. The sound of bots surging against them rattled the doors.
McKinney held out his shotgun, and Odin grabbed it. “Thanks, Professor. Looks like we’re even.”
“Do you smell that?”
“The pepper?”
“Yeah. I think they’re laying down a pheromone matrix-like weavers. They probably release it as an attack signal.”
Odin nodded. “Interesting.”
Mooch looked up from ministering to Tin Man. “How bad are you, Odin?”
“Bullet fragments. Nothing serious. Foxy!”
“What?”
“If you don’t get that jeep started, we are fucked.”
“I appreciate your encouragement, but the battery was dead. I’m rigging an alternate with the comm set.”
Odin pulled the Rover tablet out of a pouch and looked at a raven’s-eye image of the house-from hundreds of feet above.
McKinney watched over his shoulder. The house was almost lost beneath the black swarm. They hadn’t even made a dent in it.
“What about Huginn and Muninn?”
“Ravens can outfly eagles. I’m betting they can outfly these things.” Odin tapped the screen. “Well, your computer model seems to work, Professor.”
“I’d like to get one. Examine it.”
The team groaned.
Ripper muttered. “You can study it while it’s chewing your fucking eyeballs out.”
The jeep’s ignition suddenly cycled, and the engine roared to life.
The group let up a shout. The hallway door was suddenly penetrated with a bullet hole. The projectile whined off the garage wall.
Odin motioned. “Load up! Professor, you’re a maniac at the wheel. You drive.”
“I don’t know where I’m going-”
“Downhill. We’ll handle defense. Do it! Go!”
McKinney crawled over the side into the driver’s seat, strapping herself in.
Odin grabbed an aluminum baseball bat leaning against the wall. “Everyone grab a club. We can’t use guns if they get in close quarters.”
Smokey grabbed several hammers off a pegboard above a worktable and tossed them to teammates. “Here.” Mooch grabbed a tire iron.
Everyone piled into the jeep, and with seven people it was tight. Foxy sat up front in the passenger seat, with Ripper, Mooch, and Tin Man pressed into the small backseat. Behind them, hanging on to the roll bars, were Odin and Smokey, trying to avoid kneeling on Hoov’s bagged body.
The group with proper seats was fastening and cinching seat belts. Tightening gun slings.
“Don’t take your helmets off. We’ve still got sniper stations out there.” Odin nodded to Smokey and Mooch as he looped his combat harness around the roll bar. “And if you don’t have a seat belt, strap yourself to something-we’re going overland, and it’s going to get rough.”
Bullets blasted the doorknob out of the garage’s interior door.
“You ready, Professor?”
She was examining the controls. Thankfully the jeep had an automatic transmission. One less thing to focus on. “Where am I going?”
“Just head downhill however you can. You can’t miss the landing strip. Then make for the hangar at the south end.”
“Who’s opening these garage doors?”
“Blow through them. And whatever you do: Drive fast, and keep driving fast. Even if we’re on fire and dead, keep driving fast. Do you understand?”
“Those instructions are pretty clear.”
The interior door popped and shuddered.
He slapped her shoulder. “Now! Execute, execute, execute!”
McKinney put the jeep into drive and revved the engine. Apparently this was a six-cylinder, because the acceleration was good as they hurtled toward the green wooden garage doors.
The steel push bar of the jeep blasted back the twin doors, momentarily sweeping aside part of a seething black cloud-even smashing a few drones against the stone walls of the house. It was actually dark out because of the hundreds of drones, buzzing so loudly that the sound entered McKinney’s middle ear-unnerving and terrifying.
She could barely make out the landscape ahead. The two Forest Service SUVs were parked off to the right, blocking the driveway behind a whirl of drones. So McKinney accelerated the jeep straight ahead into the cloud, aiming between two large pine trees at the edge of the gravel driveway.