Evolving Classes In The Apocalypse-Chapter 18: The Ambush [pt 2]

As I raised my hand, I saw what looked like a couple of dogs in the distance. They had the shape of dogs, the low scurrying gait of dogs, but dogs were rare creatures that only the high-ranked Defineds could keep. There was no reason for dogs to be here.

They skittered closer, and the shape of them sharpened.

Not dogs. Each one was a cluster of human hands fused at the wrists into a central mass, scuttling forward on their fingertips. The fingers bent and straightened in awful rhythm, tapping across the ground like rain on a tin roof.

They began to lunge, throwing themselves into the air and landing further ahead each time, covering ground in bursts. More of them crawled out from the grooves in the ground as though the earth itself was reaching up. But those were not even the worst of it.

The worst were the ones that stood up.

They rose slowly, straightening like humans, and they walked like humans, and they wore clothes like humans. Two of them faced us. When I flung my gaze around, three more stood near the armored tank that had taken the dent from the projectile and drifted to a stop.

These standing ones wore different clothes. Some outfits were torn and merging with their bodies, the fabric dissolving into skin. Some wore neat garments that didn’t belong on whatever they were.

A few had plates of armor strapped to them, and their flesh had crawled over the metal and was slowly consuming it, pulling the steel into themselves the way roots swallow a buried stone.

Their eyes were the worst thing about them. The eyes drifted across the face like oil sliding on water, never settling, never still, and they wept constantly.

One of the standing creatures walked toward us. Slow at first, then it broke into a sprint, closing the distance so fast that I barely had time to process what was happening.

I fumbled with the metal pinning my legs and pulled at Ysor, trying to drag her free, trying to move.

Before the thing reached us, someone arrived.

He intercepted it with a curved punch that carved into its face. The impact folded the creature’s body at the neck, and it cartwheeled through the air before slamming down somewhere behind us with a wet, heavy crash.

The man raised his head and clenched his fist. My eyes widened as I realized who it was.

He didn’t see me. He turned to the crowd first.

"Everyone stay calm and help each other out. You’re being transported by three Adept Enforcers. I myself am an Established Adept, so there is nothing you need to fear here. This will be over in a jiffy."

He spoke with such confidence that it was easy to understand why Enforcers were adored, why they always looked so composed from afar. Standing in front of a field of horrors and calling it a minor inconvenience.

Then his gaze fell on me. He frowned, something flickering behind his eyes, but there was no time to process it. He turned sharply, and white sparks of light merged into two sizable hammers that solidified in his hands.

He swung forward and smashed the cluster of hands that flew at him. It hit the ground with a wet sound and did not get up. He struck another, then another. None of them rose.

At the same time, Undefined were pouring across the mountain ground in greater numbers. The tank’s main door, situated at the rear, had flung open and the Enforcers inside had already divided into three groups.

One group covered from behind us. The Defineds with ranged-type Classes stayed at the rear, some loosing arrows that whistled into the air while others fired crimson beams and fireballs from their palms.

The second group pushed forward on foot, all of them wearing black war suits of thick layered material and carrying tall rectangular shields that covered them from shin to shoulder.

They moved cleanly, filing into the battlefield with a practiced formation that slotted between the ranged fire without a single misstep. The clusters of hands threw themselves at the shield line, and the Enforcers cut them down without breaking stride. Vorn’s associate led this group from the front.

The other man, Archer, the honey-skinned one, led a second formation with the same discipline.

The last team reached the overturned transport first. A few of them split off toward us. A young man with wavy black hair and the steady eyes of a trained corporal crouched beside the wreck and spoke quickly.

"If you feel intense pain in your abdomen, your back, or your head, signal first. If you’re stuck, signal."

Ysor was leaning against my shoulder. I shifted her weight and that was when I noticed she had gone limp. Her temple and the hair along the side of her head were slick with blood.

I raised my hand.

"Sir! Here, sir! She’s unconscious!" 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

He climbed into the transport with a swift motion, then carefully lifted Ysor away from me. He paused and gave me a quick look.

"You’re stuck."

"I’ll find a way out. Please tend to her first."

He stared at me for a moment, something quiet passing through his expression. Then he dropped out of the vehicle, landed firmly on his feet, and moved to the other side of the transport, away from the fighting.

He knelt and was already applying first aid to Ysor while the rest of his team pulled survivors from the wreck.

Someone reached me. He bent down and wrenched the metal that hooked my leg with one hand, simply tearing it away like foil.

My leg freed instantly. I climbed down from the transport and limped toward where Ysor was laid on the ground.

Other survivors were being offloaded and brought to the same area. The three vehicles had been positioned to form a curved wall, an improvised fortress.

The medics worked inside it, tending to the wounded or confirming the dead.

The ranged fighters stood close to the transports and fired over them, while the melee combatants held the line at the center where the Undefined kept pressing in.

As quickly as this danger had erupted, things were being handled. The formation was holding. The creatures were falling. There was a rhythm to it now, practiced and controlled, and for the first time since the impact I felt like we might survive this.

Which meant I had to face a different problem. Vorn’s associate had seen me.

But I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t abandon Ysor too.

So I began thinking of a way to pick her up and run.

Her weight and mine together would be difficult to move with, especially on a leg that could barely hold me upright.

But difficulty was not enough to stop me. Carrying her was a better option than betraying someone who would stand for me at any point. It was a better option than being my father.

I exhaled and approached the man tending to Ysor.

In that moment, the ground beneath us split.

Bone spikes tore upward through the dirt and lifted a full headless torso into the open air. It was carried on eight legs that extended from the ribs, each one bending at joints that shouldn’t have existed, and it rose with the slow deliberateness of something that had been waiting.

Then it wrecked the formation from behind.