I’m irritated by that railing. I went right under it. That bottom bar is nowhere near low enough. I mean, what if I’d been a kid?

Irritated?

I’m furious. Not only are they shooting at me and blowing up people. They’ve turned the whole goddamn place into a firebomb and hidden a bunch of children somewhere inside and now a bunch of people I care about are going to get hurt and maybe die, including me, and this is supposed to be a church for the Prince of fucking Peace.

“Ben?” says Tyler. “Are you dead?”

“Somebody should call Dr. Linn,” I say. I pull a throwing knife from my sheath.

“What?”

“All those kids are going to need help when we find them,” I say. “Somebody call Dr. Melanie Linn.”

“We’re on it,” says Amir.

Movement to my left.

I push and throw my knife without looking, concentrating on my grip which is starting to slip. I remember the view of the food court and I know that the drop below me couldn’t be more than twenty feet and it’s probably less, but it feels a lot higher than that just now.

There’s a grunt and the man I hit slumps against the railing.

I pull another knife.

“We found them,” says Monica. “Say forty victims, mostly children, some young adults, one elderly lady. Unconscious and breathing. The air’s not that thin, though it’s getting thinner. Drugged, I think…. Pupils confirm. Pulse is strong. They were placed in the intersection around the corner. They’re all just laying here in the hallway.”

There’s movement below me.

I’m about to fall anyway so I let go and push.

My feet land on his shoulders and he goes one way and I go the other so that my elbow’s in his sternum, my shoulder’s in his gut, and my chin is in his junk when we land. He screams but I feel fine. There’s something hard under my waist. I raise up and see that it’s a hunting rifle. I get up and move, hesitate, then draw my knife across his throat.

Movement to my right.

I fling my bloody knife and leap forward blindly. My shoulder collides with the side of a door. It’s dark to my left and I roll into that.

I’m in a space between the sanctuary doors and a thick barrier that meant to be, I don’t know, a reception desk? It’s cover and I’m happy about that.

“We’re moving the victims over by the door we came in. There’s that space between it and the first classrooms so if one of the other doors open we won’t get cooked. The fire will blow the other way,” says Monica.

Amir says, “How are you moving so many?”

Monica snorts. “Stacking them up like cordwood on these rolling teacher’s chairs.”

I still have my slingshot in my hand. This whole time. Huh. I reach down into a pouch and pull out a rubber ball. I shrug, put it in the pouch, aim it at the wall in front of me, pull and release. I’m rewarded with a yelp from behind me and some cursing.

I reload.

“Uh, guys?” says Amir. “We know anybody in white panel vans?”

“How many?” comes Tyler’s voice. “Also, be advised. I’ve armed myself with an AR-15.”

“Three?” says Amir. “Three. They’re headed for the front of the building.

I can hear the approaching engines growing from a growling rumble to a roar.

“They’re not stopping!” Amir shouts. “They’re —.” But he’s cut off as the noise-canceling function of the ear buds kick in and I’m showered with debris and glass yet again as three huge vans plow into the lobby of the church.

Time to go.

I get up and duck around the door into the sanctuary without a backward glance.

It’s dark inside and I hide behind a row of seats. There aren’t any pews. The whole place is set up more like a movie theater or auditorium. I got a brief glimpse of some candles and some people standing around and now I’m lying on the floor.

“Ben?” It’s Tyler. “Position?”

“Still not dead. Sanctuary,” I say. “First floor. Hiding.”

“I’m in!” yells Amir.

I wince. He’s way too loud. I hope I didn’t grunt or anything. I figure there’s probably Exploder guards down here too, moving toward the lobby, which is eerily quiet for the moment.

“I’m in their systems!” says Amir.

“Great. Grab all their files,” says Monica.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“No, I can turn the vents off,” says Amir.

Tyler says, “What about the smoke?”

Right. Smoke kills more people than the flames do in a fire. It looks like we’ll be trading one problem for another.

“Right now the air’s the problem,” says Monica. I can hear her labored breathing. “This is a big area down here, but I don’t know how much air is left. We’re pretty sure they did something to the bottom of the outside door? There’s no air getting through at all. We can let you know when the smoke gets bad.”

Tyler says, “Amir, do it.”

Gunfire erupts in the lobby and a series of impacts follow that shake the building.

“Ben?” says Tyler.

“That’s not me,” I say, incredulous. She’s giving me way too much credit. “I think the Epsilons are—.”

The stained glass shatters in the sanctuary. Every window, through the rainbow shards creep black shapes that bend and writhe in way my mind doesn’t like and won’t process. The windows are only about a foot wide. Kind of church-minimalist. Nevertheless, these creatures squeeze through. They’re the size of horses but look more like a black grasshopper found impacted on the front of a truck’s grill. They’re all smashed out of round and bits of them move that shouldn’t. I don’t know how I keep from screaming.

Somehow, each one has a man riding on its back in shining breastplate, wielding a sword dripping fire.

Eight of the things swarm down the sides of the walls, their riders somehow able to remain on their backs despite the angle.

You know what? Fair.

If I can fuck with probability maybe it’s apt that others can toss aside the laws of physics.

One of them is scraping down the wall a little too close to me.

I need to move.

I stand. Turn.

There’s a Knight in front of me. I hadn’t heard him. He’s raising a mace.

A bullet pings off his helmet and there’s absolutely no reaction. His head doesn’t move. There’s no mark left by what sounded like a very large bullet. The eyes and mouth slits are expressionless. I feel a sense of unstoppable inevitability and I’m pretty sure I’m about to die.

He laughs. He says, “I—.”

I’ve got my slingshot loaded. Why not? Pushing, I raise it and fire at his face because fuck that guy.

For a second, I have no idea where my rubber ball went. I didn’t see it bounce off him.

Then he drops the mace to clutch at his throat, only he’s encased in armor that’s so thick it makes him look like a pissed off Lego man.

I shot the ball into his mouth as he spoke. He’s choking on it.

The mace is heavy, got to weigh eighty pounds, but the chitinous skittering I hear behind me gives me the motivation I need to haul it around and golf it up through the monster’s head to impact the chest of the rider.

There’s a sound like a metal bat hitting a bowling ball. Blood fountains out of the man as he goes flying back into the wall.

The mace has pulled me off balance and I slip and fall in the gore, the monster twitching beside me.

There’s movement above and to my left. Light.

It’s Tyler. She’s up on the balcony backing up from a Knight in full armor. A dismounted captain is moving up behind her.

The Knight thrusts his over-sized spear and Tyler slips around it to ram the barrel of her rifle into the eye slit of his helmet. There’s a flash, the sound lost in all the other noise, but the Knight falls. The AR-15 goes with it, levered out of her hands because the barrel’s still stuck in the eye hole. She doesn’t miss a beat. Pulls her handgun, turns, and fires into the captain’s head even as he starts his swing.

Globules of napalm fan out into the seating which begins to smoke. The Epsilon falls.

Seats come apart around Tyler as everybody in the world starts shooting at her and she dives for cover, out of my sight.

“STOP!” The voice is not quite loud enough to cut off my hearing. It suffices to bring the gunfire to a halt though. He's either magically enhanced his voice with a rune or he's got drill sergeant level lungs on him.

I peek my head out.

Six of those monsters with men on their backs and four more Knights confront the preacher who is placing a candle on the floor inside his arcane design. Whatever he’s chanting is inaudible and his hands never stop moving. I realize that I’m watching the creation of a complex rune.

One of the Epsilons is standing closer to the preacher than the others. He turns away from the preacher in disgust as the man makes no acknowledgment of his presence.

“He has to complete the rune now. He’s unable to stop,” comes Tyler’s voice.

“You okay?” I say.

“Yes.”

“What kind of rune?” asks Monica. She sounds like she’s been running for hours.

“Summoning,” says Tyler. “I think. It’s more complex than I’ve ever seen.”

The Epsilon commander gestures at one of the Exploders. “You!” he says. “Where are your offerings? We want them.”

“Come no closer,” says the man he’s addressing. He’s tall, wearing a dark and rumpled suit. There’s a shotgun resting on his shoulder.

The Epsilons are thirty feet away from the preacher on the far side of the design. I get the feeling they don’t dare step on it or disrupt it in anyway.

The preacher has picked up another candle. I don’t see any more by him. I wonder if this is his last one.

The Epsilon leader says, “We’ll take them whether you’re alive or not. Give them to us and you’ll live.”

Shotgun Suit says, “Friend, the Lord comes home tonight to us all. Is your soul ready for the Rapture?”

“You'll go first, if we don’t get what we want.”

The preacher places his candle and says, “It’s done.” The big rune flashes as the candles flare. He nods to Shotgun Suit who reaches for a radio clipped to his belt.

“Don’t,” says the Epsilon.

But the preacher’s man doesn’t flinch. I don’t think he’s capable of it. He says into the radio, “Open the door.”

The aethings blacken to the point where I think I’m going blind. I’m certain now there must have been someone else outside. Someone that Monica didn’t see. Someone that’ll open the door and immolate her and Rigby and all those children, but Shotgun Suit frowns and repeats his command looking confused.

He looks at the preacher. “Something’s wrong,” he says.

Epsilon starts saying, “Look—.”

“No!” says the preacher. He points at the Epsilons and walks away, saying, “Send them to God.”

That’s when a woman stands up on the balcony with what can only be a Precision Shoulder-fired Rocket Launcher-1 angled down at the Knights and their captains. There’s a flash, a hiss, and a trail of smoke draws a line from her to the floor.

I push. Hard.

The stage they're standing on blows up, sending the Epsilons flying, but then it sinks for a moment, convulsing like it's taking a quick breath, and then it vomits up a tower of fire as the backdraft that was arranged for the side of the building, comes up through the floor instead. The secondary explosions of Shotgun Suit, the woman with the rocket launcher, and several other Exploders are lost in the inferno. I can’t hear a thing as the ear buds, once more, save my hearing. The building shakes. There’s not a bit of glass left in any of the windows. Where the Epsilons were there's a burning hole.

“—s happening? Are you okay? Guys?” It’s Amir.

I’m about to reassure him but I can’t. The last bit of light among the aethings winks out as the remaining happy outcomes vanish for me. Any hope I have for us all goes with them.

In the air above the rune on the floor, darkness swirls like smoke if you could flush it in a toilet. Those monsters the Epsilons were riding were wrong. It hurt me to see them and what they could do. This… whatever it is? It’s so much worse. I feel sick. I need to look away but I can’t. It pulls at my eyes.

Something within that smoke moves and then steps through.