The Law of Averages

Book 2: Chapter 192: Skirmish

The hardest part was making space for Edict's wheelchair. They could've carried the man, limp as he was, but dragging around a fully grown adult male was a harder prospect than the movies made it seem. Even with super-strength, which half the agents present had, it was an unwieldy burden at best. Given the imminent threat of zombie assault, it was better to keep everyone as unencumbered as possible. Zachary did his best to hinder them, but he was a skinny teenager, and his strength was nothing special. His aunt womanhandled him through the tunnel Dan carved, no longer inclined to any kind of gentleness.

Priest number two—Dan couldn't remember his name, and didn't particularly care—was cooperative, if only because he was terrified. He remained handcuffed, dutifully shuffling forward through the cramped confines of Dan's excavation. He was flanked by an agent, who was followed in turn by Charleston in his chair, pushed along by their second squad mate. Carver was in the rear, with Dan on point. It was hardly an optimal formation, but needs must, when the Devil drives.

It was approximately two hundred feet, as a crow flies, to the hidden room and stairwell Dan and Carver had found. The two men she'd sent down remained inside, clearing the way forward. Dan carved as direct a path as he could, but was forced to work slowly and carefully. They stuck to the narrow corridors between the walls, filled with crossbeams and packed with old debris and dust. Dan carefully snipped away space for Charleston's bulky chair, while the rest of their small escort ducked and diverted whenever necessary.

Situational awareness was a habit, and Dan had worked very hard to make it one of his (He was still working on social awareness). Even while working to clear a path, he could feel movement and change. Tip tap vibrations against the floor, beating feet down concrete stairs, and a slow, steady march of boots. There were people out there, and they were coming for him. None of the civilians had stirred. They stayed where they were, where they'd been, mostly motionless. These were new bodies, hard soles and thick boots and heavy with purpose.

"We've got incoming," Dan said without preamble. "Thirty seconds."

He felt the small group run into the gym door, and his makeshift barricade. He felt the door splinter at the impact, and the debris he'd stacked against it shivered.

"Twenty seconds," Dan amended his estimate. "Heavies."

The feds tried to fan out into something approximating a shooting formation, but in these narrow confines they weren't having much luck. Dan eyed the ceiling, the supports, the walls. He was no architect, but bringing it all crashing down would be an exercise in brute force, not precision. The problem would be surviving the aftermath.

Carver was shaking her nephew.

It was a fair question. The zombie-like state was obviously meant to be remotely triggered, with an addendum in case of violence against a member of the church. None of the feds could strike a priest in sight of a civilian, but shooting a gun was a different story. Was there enough consciousness left in them to recognize a gun shot, and what it might imply?

Another strike, another impact. The door buckled, blown free of its hinges. The debris atop it trembled. Dan opened a tiny doorway to the outside of the gym, wanting more information on their attackers. He saw the a crowd of civilians, lolling listlessly. He saw the gym door, bent and broken. He saw the lump of sheetrock he'd stacked over it— shifting!

Nobody there, his eyes told him. And debris shifted and shattered, and his veil warned of pounding footsteps through dust-filled cracks.

"Incoming Geists!" Dan bellowed, and vanished into the Gap.

He reappeared in his pantry, startling Abby as she put away groceries. Her own upgrade, intimately familiar with him, alerted her to his identity.

"Danny!? What—?"

"Hey sweetheart." Dan pulled a twenty-five pound bag of flour off the shelf, hefting it on one shoulder. "Back later, love you."

He reappeared in the cramped tunnel he'd created, just in time to hear Carver bellow, "—do you mean Geists!?"

Too late to explain. His veil ripped a gash in the large bag of cooking ingredients, and he willed himself to the back of the formation. He shoved the barrel of Carver's rifle away from himself with one hand, and with the other he hurled the disintegrating sack of flour down the corridor. It struck the leading Geist as he stormed around the nearest corner, exploding into a wall of powder. The impact rocked the spooky soldier back a step, but more importantly, it clearly outlined his shape, and that of his three allies behind him.

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"Geists!" Dan repeated, pointing at the flailing white cloud. Carver stared at them in horror, as Dan gesticulated.

The Geists didn't carry firearms, just various stabbing implements. They were meant for assassination, sabotage, and stealth. Dan figured this gave his side an absolute advantage, though the consequence of gunfire for the civilians was still unanswered. Carver made her decision. Her gun snapped up—Dan blinked out of the way, returning to his place at the front of the formation—and she ordered, "Non-lethals!"

Helmet sound was still muted, but large scale automatic fire in a tight space was incredibly loud. Like, shake the walls, loud. Dan would have felt it, even if he couldn't hear it. Instead, there were only muted puffs of air emerging from the lower barrels of the squad's assault rifles. Needle-like darts peppered the recovering Geists, pinging off of invisible armor.

The lead Geist made a throwing motion, and Carver jerked backwards, a knife skittering off her gauntlet to bury itself in a wooden support. She dropped to one knee, ejecting the magazine from her weapon and slamming in a fresh one. She fired a quick burst, and a trio of brilliant white tracers lanced into the leading Geist. Blue coils of lightning arced off the Geist like he was a plasma globe, charring black lines across the floor. He dropped, and his fellows rushed past his twitching body.

Dan ripped a section of sheetrock away, hurrying the prisoners forward. He willed himself beside Edict's wheelchair, then bumped and rolled the man onwards, following the suddenly-less-than-brave Zachary, and his fellow priest. Dan's shoulder bounced painfully against a wooden strut, and he ducked hurriedly beneath another, moving fast as he dared. He glanced back, watching as his allies filled the narrow corridor with taser rounds.

More movement beyond the walls. Several groups of Geists sprinted down the Evo Church's main corridor, rushing to the gym. They moved in pairs, lockstep and lethal. But Dan's exact location was not certain. They would route themselves through the gym entrance, and the path he'd carved. He ripped another support beam out of the way, ushering the priests forward.

Behind, Carver and her soldiers had dropped the final Geist. The special forces boogeymen were a lot less frightening when covered in flour and herded into a shooting gallery. Their lack of projectile weapons was a nearly insurmountable disadvantage in these conditions. They relied entirely on surprise and stealth to take down their targets. Fantastic assassins, but terrible for security. At least, against someone who could find them, though those were supposedly few and far between.

Yet quantity had a quality all of its own, and ammunition was not unlimited. Specifically, the taser rounds were expensive, single use, and unreliable. It would take three to four solid hits to bring down even an unenhanced adult. Their primary benefit of use was the ability to bypass armor, which every single Geist was apparently wearing. This was not standard kit for the silent assassins, but it was undeniably effective against standard tranquilizer rounds. The squad was already down to half a mag of tasers each, and this was just the first group of enemies.

Nobody wanted to find out what would happen when the non-lethals ran dry, and bullets started to fly.

"Any movement from the civilians?" Carver radioed, after the final Geist slumped into twitchy unconsciousness. She considered the downed bodies for a moment, before swapping mags again and planting a few tranquilizers in the few unarmored sections she could make out through the flour.

"No movement," came the response from the squad channel. The other feds were bunkered down and waiting, none of them eager to trigger the kind of civilian massacre that had occurred in Austin.

"More coming," Dan noted. He could feel the first pair of Geist reinforcements storming up to the gym entrance. They slowed to a cautious walk as they worked their way through the broken entrance.

Carver reacted quickly signaling her men to move forward. She commed to Dan, "Can you make another barrier?"

"Just a moment," Dan said, blinking to her side. He eyed the narrow passage, and sent his veil crawling up the walls. He found a large, flat chunk of wall that didn't seem load bearing, and ripped it right out of its housing. In the same motion, he deposited it in the passageway, where it stayed mostly intact. Then he did it twice more.

"That won't hold long," Dan admitted. He returned to his point position, and carved away another obscuring chunk of wall.

"Move, move, move!" Carver bellowed, and the convoy moved forward.

Two-hundred feet doesn't sound like much. Two-thirds the length of a football field, there are people who could lob a javelin that distance. But in the claustrophobic darkness between the walls of a building, each step was a struggle. Dan's veil felt it when the first pair of Geists reached his makeshift barricade. They stepped over their fallen comrades without so much as a pause, and immediately began breaking through the piled sheetrock. It wouldn't take them long. The Geists did not have increased strength, but Dan wasn't working with steel, here. A sufficiently pissed off tween girl could rip through sheetrock, to say nothing of trained soldiers.

Time, though, was finally on Dan's side. He reached the final stretch, ripping away a clean path to a corner wall. Dan's veil poked a hole in it, and deposited the debris behind them. It was the room adjacent to the hidden stairwell. The soldiers and prisoners filed in with relief, finally able to stand up straight.

"No time for that." Carver bulled forward, shoving her nephew ahead of herself. She kicked open the door to the side room, and entered the tiny confessional booth. She ripped the curtain away, and tore open the door to the stairs. It was dark, down there. Just enough light to see the bottom, and nothing beyond.

"Down," she ordered, and the prisoners complied. The larger of the two soldiers picked up Charleston, chair and all, and eased him down the steps. Dan was last, still monitoring the Geists as they broke through the final barrier in the tunnel. Carver swung the door shut, metal clanging on metal.

They were plunged into darkness, and Dan's helmet automatically switched to night vision. Moments later, light and heat filled the stairwell, as Carver held up a hand glowing with power. She ran it across the seams of the door, and Dan watched the metal heat and distort, melting, fusing, welding itself closed.

"They won't get through that, easily," Carver said with satisfaction. She motioned Dan down the stairs. "Let's find that exit."

Dan obeyed and down they went.