Book 3 Chapter 33: Countdown

Book 3 Chapter 33: Countdown

I squeezed the cerberus trigger and sent a salvo of red death hurtling toward one of the power armored combatants that had moved ahead of the others. I burned through the remainder of my power pack, popped in a fresh one, and kept firing. By the time that one was through, the figure was hunched and fell forward, putting up a puff of dust with the force of his fall. His allies climbed over him to keep moving toward me. He was number one.

I popped in another pack, and another, repeating this process on two more of them. That brought me to three. I tossed the cerberus to the side, and pulled out my rifle. Several pot shots started to get close to hitting me, so I activated my shield bracelet. It flickered to life just in time for a shell to shatter against it, and a bolt of lasfire to disperse just in front of my face.

I raised my rifle and aimed, not at the power armored figures, but past them. I lined up shots, and fired, one after the other. I didnt need to tag anyone with a headshot, if I created a hole in their suit, that was a death sentence this deep into the dead zone. That may leave them irradiated and mobile though, and I couldnt have that. I emptied two clips, missing only a few shots to the dispersal field of the power armor in the front of the group. That brought my count up to ten.

The ones in power armor began to surge forward. Some of them blasting me with lasguns, and others raising hammers and staves arcing with blue lighting. I tossed my rifle to the side and drew the two laspistols. Without their wall of power armor, the soldiers behind them were vulnerable. I fired with abandon into the now vulnerable group even as I was blinded by the red dispersions across my forcefield, the highlighted forms in my vision allowing me to continue tracking everyone. Fifteen, sixteen, I tagged two at once with one shot, that was eighteen, then nineteen. The ten power armored forms were nearly on me.

I tossed my pistols to the side, took all the grenades out of my pack, yanked the pins out with my teeth, and through them behind the power armored combatants toward the lines theyd given up on protecting, then drew my sword from the ground, squeezing the hilt and activated the vibrating edge. I roared and charged to meet the nearest of them.

For the martyred prophet! For God and country! The nearest of them yelled as he returned my charge with his hammer raised high.Updated from novelbIn.(c)om

I grabbed his arm, flipped him, and forced the arm that the grenade under his chest. With number fifty eight, I was thrown into the air, and landed with a heavy thud onto the ground and stomach full of shrapnel and bone. The forty left surged onto me, and I started to lose myself to the red as they struck me with their guns, risked close range shots, or just tried to immobilize me for the others. Everything up to seventy four was a blur of clawing, biting and rage. The warm taste of blood and radiation overwhelmed my senses.

For a moment they managed to hold me down, I was weakened and crazed, and they continued blowing chunks of flesh off of me between the beatings, and stabbings, pushing the limits of even my healing abilities. I had just enough sense to see one of them approaching with a sword, my sword. He raised it high to drive through my chest.

No mercy for demons. You die as the prophet ordained. Your parents shouldve had the sense to kill you when you were born, as we, the chosen, do. He started to stab downward.

Fuck you! I screamed and I felt all the energy Id pulled into myself explode outward. The sword was blown away, as were all of the soldiers holding me down. Intense heat and percussive force killed most of them instantly.

I felt completely drained, and staggered slightly as I stood. Number eighty-seven was the first to start running. I caught up to him before he could gain any real speed and crushed his head with a hammerblow from my fist. The last thirteen had the good sense to start running, even their fanaticism wearing thin at the pile of bodies that surrounded us. Eighty-eight tripped on a corpse and shot himself in the head. Eighty-nine tried to shoot me down when he realized he couldnt outrun me, and I tore his head apart at the jaw. I threw his corpse to knock down number ninety, whose head I stomped in on the way to number ninety-one. The next eight went down with throats torn out by teeth as I attempted to recover my stamina while finishing them off. Number one hundred fell to his knees and started praying. I could hear him begging for protection up until the moment I snapped his neck.

I fell to my knees after that. I was covered with sweat, blood, and viscera of all kinds, and was panting heavily. My clothes were completely destroyed, and even as I sat there I felt wounds knittingthough more slowly than they had been at the start. I tried to stand, and fell backward, my legs giving out. My eyes felt heavy, and even as I tried to force them to stay open, they fell closed, and then there was only blackness.