The Blood of Queens

Chapter 42

Two blocks before the bus stop, Zoe noticed a set of shadows scurrying just behind her. She kept her hands at her sides. Reaching for her gun or grappling gear would do little more than feed irrational fear. She stopped at a red crossing light, keeping her gaze forward while watching the shadows. Once the light turned green, she shot a grappling hook into the roof of a nearby building and launched herself into the air.

As Zoe expected, a half dozen gunshots rang from the women who had been stalking her. She disconnected herself from the building, tumbling toward the ground in freefall while gauging how many enemies she had to contend with. At least three had fired their guns, and two more stood behind them with their own weapons drawn. Zoe grappled onto the farthest building to her right that she could, propelling herself sideways while peppering the ground where her enemies stood with incendiary ammunition. The tracer rounds lit up the air around the women, who were all clad in grappling gear of their own. Though none of her rounds hit- Zoe didn't expect them to with her haphazard and sideways shooting- she could now see there were not five, but a dozen soldiers scattered around the surrounding city blocks.

The first three women to fly up after her fired sloppily, trying to pin Zoe down more with sheer volume than accuracy. She somersaulted onto the rooftop of the building she had latched onto, crouching down using the concrete walls of the building as cover. While her pursuers were chiseling away at the spot she had ducked behind, Zoe leaped to the side and jumped out. She shot a grappling hook into the closest woman's throat while blasting the other two away with an explosive filled shotgun shell. Pulling the corpse of her first victim toward her, Zoe clutched it in front of her as a shield while her enemies fired on her.

Zoe lowered her mutilated shield as it nearly fell apart and jumped off the roof. When she was just a few dozen meters above the ground, she shot another grappling hook into a distant rooftop and yanked herself up while kicking the mangled corpse toward her disoriented enemies on the ground, strapped with an activated incendiary grenade. She counted four more kills in the ensuing explosion.

The six survivors latched onto various surrounding buildings and launched themselves at Zoe, each focusing bursts of submachine gun fire in her direction. They were smarter than the ones she had killed earlier, alternating their bursts of fire to ensure someone kept a stream of bullets flying towards her while the others reloaded. They were corralling her into a tighter and tighter column to kill her. Zoe waited until just two of her six pursuers were firing on her. She switched her own gun to full auto and unloaded it on the two active shooters. By sheer luck, one of the incendiary rounds exploded on one of the shooters' chests, immolating her entire body and sending her plummeting. This gave Zoe the opening she needed to dive down and escape.

One of the women, either out of desperation or rage, launched herself toward Zoe with a shotgun in one hand and a forearm length machete in the other. Were it not for her primal screaming, she may have even been able to overtake her. Even with the loud warning, Zoe wasn't able to avoid her enemy's shotgun blast entirely. A few hot pellets of metal, each no larger than a rice grain, burned their way across Zoe's left cheek. One came within an inch of her eye, though mercifully it tore itself out well below her cheekbone. She bit down an escaping cry of pain and stayed composed long enough to fire back at her combatant. Every shot missed, again, but the volume of burning incendiary bullets headed her way caused the woman to swerve and flail in the air to avoid them. It was just enough time for Zoe to close the gap between them.

Machete in hand, Zoe swung the runesteel edged blade as hard as she could through her enemy's skull, cutting the bone clean off her head and sending her scrambled brains raining onto the ground below. She had no time to exult, though. There were still four highly armed and dangerous women flying after her and the pain from the open wound on her cheek was starting to blur the vision out of her right eye. The blood starting to drip and splash up into her face wasn't helping. She was just barely able to turn her head soon enough to see an enemy aiming an assault rifle at her with predatory focus. Instead of trying to grapple up or tumble down, Zoe opted instead to aim her hook right into the woman's left eye. Her focus had rendered her own flight trajectory far more predictable than it otherwise would have been.

The hook hit its mark, and the woman screamed in pain as the grappling cable pierced through her goggles and eyes, lodging its serrated prongs inside her skull. Zoe yanked on her left hand, ripping the eye and half the woman's skull contents out in the process. The momentum of the pull threw Zoe off balance, sending her spinning toward the ground. She threw her arms out and tried sending her grappling hook into something solid and high enough to stop her free fall. Her dizziness and impaired vision, though, were finally starting to catch up to her.

The first thing her grappling hook hit was a tree in the park below. Yanking on it only sent a few leaves flying and further destabilized her. Her second attempt, luckily, found its way into the solid concrete pillar of a nearby parking garage. Just as she was able to slow her descent, an enemy bullet found its way into her forearm. The sharp pain made her lose her grip. The cable went slack and Zoe once again found herself facing a solid concrete slab that was to be her demise. She could tell right away that the bullet had gone cleanly through, mercifully missing any bones but also leaving her right fingers completely unresponsive. With a hiss, she swung her left arm up to her right wrist and squeezed the trigger that would pull her away from a messy death.

Zoe had miscalculated just how close she had gotten to the ground. The cable tensed just long and hard enough to spare her life and bones, but the concrete still blasted the wind out of her battered lungs as it slammed into her side. The pain made her let go again, effectively grounding her. Her left eye was starting to go blurry as well, and though her ears worked fine, Zoe had a hard time detecting whether her pursuers were drawing closer to finish the job, or whether they were taking their leisurely time taking aim at her helpless, crumpled body from above. All she heard was ringing, and the occasional sound of grappling hooks firing. Then she heard sirens. And though by now her vision was nearly gone, she thought she could see flashes of red and blue.