Washington, D.C., November 2056

  Jayvin struggled.

  Cover his ears or hold on to his mommy’s arms, which were clutched tightly around his stomach?

  The bus shook, lurching for side to side, while occasionally jolting him forward and then back into his mommy.

  He couldn’t breathe with all the people jammed in the middle aisle pressing into him and his mommy and the old lady next to them in the window seat.

  He wanted to squeeze his nose.

  Everything and everyone smelled.

  The old lady stank of cats and a stale, pungent odor that reminded him of his big kid diapers in the morning right after he woke up.

  It was hot and stifling.

  The bus driver wouldn’t turn on the air conditioner.

  Many windows were open, but that created an even bigger problem.

  Explosions rocked them from side to side.

  He saw bright flashes of light that momentarily turned night into day.

  He worried about his older brother and sister.

  They were somewhere else on the bus and he couldn’t see them.

  He wanted to call out, but his mommy had told him to stay quiet.

  “Move! Move! Move!” a loud voice shouted.

  He gazed up and saw a young man in dark gray armor, face hidden behind a dark, blank faceplate, pushing through the middle of the aisle.

  The young man passed him on the way to the back of the buss.

  “Edalantine!” the young man shouted. “Voom’s in trouble back there! Do something!”

  A young woman near the front of the bus turned her head.

  Jayvin watched in awed horror as the young woman’s helmeted head turned in a complete 180 from front to back.

  He saw her armored back and her dark faceplate.

  It was exactly like the small owl on her shoulder.

  He jolted suddenly.

  Up and back down into his mommy’s lap with a thud.

  She screamed and crushed him tighter.

  Snarls outside turned into pained yelps.

  It almost sounded like that one time he accidentally rode his bike over his dog’s tail.

  Then the high-pitched screech of bare metal on asphalt assaulted his ears.

  “Eda!” the young man roared. “He’s not going to make it!”

  “Shut up, Gobby! I know! We just blew a tire, again!” the young woman swiveled her head back around to yell at the bus driver.

  “I’m out of that Skill!” the bus driver snapped.

  Jayvin could see the old, black man’s lined face in the rear-view mirror.

  Blood ran from eyes, nose and ears.

  “Eda!”

  “We’re all dead if we don’t get back up to speed!”

  “Voom’s dead if you—”

  “I’m low mana!”

  “Do something!”

  The young woman whispered to her owl.

  It launched from her shoulder like a rocket out of a broken window.

  Jayvin lost sight of the bird and hoped that it would be okay out there with all the white-furred monsters.

  It was ever so small like he was and according to his mommy small things were supposed to hide when big monsters were around.

  “Thank you!”

  Jayvin looked back.

  The young man stood at the back of the bus firing quiet bullets from his strange gun that looked like it belonged in the movies.

  Guns were supposed to be loud and scary.

  Passengers cried and screamed as they pushed forward from the back of the bus to get away.

  Through it all, the screech of metal on street rang in his ears.

  Until it stopped.

  He could see it in the mirror.

  The bus driver suddenly slumped over.

  The young woman with the owl-like neck cursed and grabbed the wheel, keeping the bus steady.

  “Sacky! Help!” she snapped.

  Another young man poked his head down from a hole in the roof near the front of the bus.

  “Oh, shit!” He dropped headfirst, flipping to land on his boots.

  Together with the young woman, they pulled the unconscious or dead bus driver out of the driver’s seat to pass to the people crushing up behind them.

  The bus slowed.

  Monsters caught up.

  People screamed.

  Bloody, white-furred faces pressed against the window next to the screaming old lady.

  She leaned away, pushing into him and his mommy.

  The smell grew worse.

  Jayvin didn’t know where to look.

  Those bloody teeth and feral eyes in the window to give him a lifetime of nightmares? The floor where a puddle grew at the old lady’s feet? Or to the rear-view mirrors at the front where the armored young man and woman struggled to get the bus moving fast again while fighting off the crazed rabbit people bashing at the windows and reaching through the broken ones?

  Glass shattered and took away the choice.

  The old lady screamed again.

  White-furred monsters tore at her arm, her clothes, her hair.

  Warm red splattered across his face.

  She yanked at his arm and collar.

  His mommy screamed and squeezed so hard he couldn’t breathe.

  “Let him go!”

  Somehow, the old woman’s bony fingers grasped him tighter than anything he had ever felt before. Not even his mommy or daddy’s hand around his wrist whenever they prepared to cross the street to the park near their house.

  He missed his daddy.

  His daddy was strong and brave.

  His daddy could use magic to turn the very ground itself into walls taller than any building.

  Where was his daddy to save him?

  The old lady screamed.

  He made the mistake of looking at her face.

  The nightmares he would have from seeing the sheer terror on her face and the hunger on the white-furred faces pulling her out the broken window.

  “No! Please don’t!”

  His mommy let go of one arm around his waist to pry the old lady’s fingers from his arm and shirt.

  “Let him go!”

  “Help me!”

  Both women were desperate, but his mommy was younger, stronger.

  The old lady fought to save her life.

  His mommy fought to save his.

  Was it a surprise that his mommy won?

  The old lady vanished screaming through the broken window and into the white-furred horde.

  Relief lasted a second.

  White-furred faces smeared pink and red around their mouths filled with sharp teeth pushed through the broken shards, ignoring the slices to their flesh.

  Passengers that had been pressing in on him and his mommy a few moments ago, pushed in the opposite direction.

  People shouted and screamed, but he only had eyes and ears for the monsters clawing at him and his mommy.

  “Move away from the windows!”

  The young soldier kicked the white-furred monster in the face and sprayed a stream of weird, quiet bullets.

  Just like that the space next to Jayvin cleared.

  “Sorry about that splashback, kid.” He moved into the space where the old woman had been and tossed a small glass ball out the window. “Stun flash out!”

  Jayvin saw the flash and suddenly couldn’t move. Not even his eyes.

  Thus, he had a good look out the window as that cool, huge robot horse thundered past, scything through stunned white-furred monsters with the many blades on its metal body and trampling more with its metal hooves.

  “Gobby! Right side!”

  “On it, Voom! Can you seal this up?”

  “I got it!” Yet another, young soldier, this one bigger than the first, jumped over the seat. He lifted the corpse of the white-furred monster and shoved it out the window. He pressed a small silvery box into the side of the bus, just below the broken window. Blue-white light shimmered, replacing the broken glass. “Sorry about that, ma’am and smol child. The forcefield should hold long enough to get us out of here.”

  “Excuse me?” Jayvin’s mommy said. “My husband… is he—” she smoothed his hair.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t know. I just barely got on board and it’s packed in here. I can’t find your husband right now. Have to plug the holes.”

  “No, he’s… he’s supposed to be outside riding on that golem…”

  “Oh, that special earth mage guy? Yeah, last I saw, he was still fighting.”

  She let out a deep breath.

  “My other children—”

  “Sorry, ma’am. I have to go.”

  With that the young soldier climbed over the seats in front of them.

  Jayvin wanted to ask about his brother and sister, but remembered his mommy had told him to stay quiet and he didn’t want to make trouble for her.

  Things were bad enough already.

  People kept screaming even as they used what weapons they had to fight off the white-furred monsters trying to get inside the bus or pull them out.

  From the sounds of it, a lot of them were ending up like that poor old lady.

  The image of her face just before the monsters ripped her out of the bus flashed across his thoughts.

  The bus lurched again.

  This time it felt like when the roller coaster just hit the bottom part of steep drop and rose.

  The scene outside the window showed him the buildings at a sharp angle before their rooftops appeared.

  The screams died down.

  “Quiet!” one of the young soldiers said.

  The one called ‘Gobby’ if Jayvin remembered right.

  Though it was hard to tell them apart with their identical armor and clothing.

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  Voom was the much larger one.

  “Roll call!”

  One by one the soldiers called out their names.

  “Aimee? Speak up!”

  “Uh, sorry, excuse me, sir?” one of the passengers said. “I think she was, uh, taken by the rabbits…”

  “Fuck!” Gobby snapped. “I need confirmation! Hey, you up on the roof? We’re a woman down. Aimee’s missing. Get eyes on here! Now!” He pushed through the mass of humanity in the aisle and disappeared toward the back of the bus again.

  The young soldier was replaced by a pretty woman.

  A congresswoman.

  He remembered her welcoming them onto the bus.

  “Everyone, please move out of the aisle and into the empty seats!” she clapped her hands like Jayvin’s teachers did whenever they wanted the class’ attention.

  “I ain’t sitting down where those things can grab me!” a middle-aged man said. “They empty for a reason!”

  Many agreed.

  Undeterred the congresswoman spoke calmly and clearly.

  “Please note the forcefields. My Mist Spekters have assured me that the rabbit monsters will not be able to break through them.”

  People grumbled, but they suddenly complied, filling in and clearing more space in the aisle.

  “Thank you!” the congresswoman beamed down at them.

  Jayvin would’ve done whatever she asked of him in that moment.

  That the thought was odd, didn’t cross his mind.

  And it wasn’t because he was a small child that had been taught to obey.

  The congresswoman stopped next to his and his mommy’s seat.

  “May I?” she gestured to the empty seat.

  “Of course, Congresswoman,” his mommy said.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Gartner.”

  “My other children?”

  “They’re okay.” The congresswoman pointed to the front of the bus. “I’ve assigned a bodyguard to each of them.”

  Jayvin leaned over and happily saw his older brother and sister.

  The congresswoman gestured out the blue-white window.

  “We have your husband to thank. He saved our lives.”

  His mommy nodded.

  Two new people came to their seat.

  “Tell me something good, Reg?” the congresswoman said.

  The Black man shook his head.

  He had a helmet on, but Jayvin could see a wet, pink bandage peeking out just above his brows.

  “We lost contact with one of the armored trucks. We lost people. And I was told that the next blown tire isn’t going to be replaced. As in, the bus driver is out and might not make it.”

  The second person was a young woman.

  Very pretty, like a princess.

  Except one wielding the strange, sleek quiet guns like the other soldiers.

  “Congresswoman, my family—”

  “I know and I’m sorry, Milly, but when I hired you they specifically told me to take you with me away from any sort of disaster emergency. Think. How helpful would you searching the city for them be? Your father’s likely with Senator Ocampo and your mother is, in your own words, a ‘murderhobo’.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about, Congresswoman,” Milly said. “Mom’s one of the highest leveled military contractors. She’ll probably be in the worst of the fighting.”

  “Can your mom fight better with or without you?” The congresswoman reached up and touched Milly’s arm. “You know the answer to that. Trust her, trust them.”

  The congresswoman’s bright smile took away his fear.

  She was so pretty!

  The longer she spoke to his mommy and the other passengers the more he forgot about the monsters outside.

  The bright flashes and loud explosions seemed like they were happening faraway to other people, not him and his family and all the people on the bus.

  “It’s quite amazing, Mrs. Gartner!” the congresswoman said. “I had no idea your husband had the power to raise the entire road this high and this far!”

  “We didn’t know either,” his mommy said in a soft voice.

  “Oh? Pardon me.”

  “No. It’s not that. We agreed to keep his work and home life separate. The less we knew about the former the less anyone would think to use us to get at his secrets.”

  “Well, you have nothing to worry about from me.” The congresswoman’s smile was sincere. “As far as I’m concerned he is a hero and we owe him a debt for his actions tonight on top of all he’s done for the nation.” She paused a beat. “And he won’t be charged for destroying the street!”

  “Thank you, Congresswoman.”

  It wasn’t long before Jayvin felt the bus descend like a roller coaster.

  It slowed as it returned to street level.

  Jayvin felt his heart jump.

  Slow meant that the white-furred monsters might catch up!

  He craned his neck back to ask his mommy if that was possible.

  Before she could answer the congresswoman patted him on the head.

  She winked.

  “Don’t worry! I think we’ve left them in the dust!”

  Reg and Milly returned with a Mist Spekter soldier.

  “We’ve got a problem,” Gobby said.

  The congresswoman nodded.

  “We’re coming up on the bridge. There’s a barricade.”

  “Why would we block it off? That’s not in the emergency plans. Reg?”

  “You’re not wrong,” Reg said.

  “You should take a look, Congresswoman,” Gobby said.

  “Lead the way.”

  The Mist Spekter soldier shook his head.

  “Sorry, ma’am, but Edalantine’s taking over tactical command for me. I’m heading back on Razorwind to look for Aimee.”

  “I’m sorry for the loss, but surely she’s—”

  “She’s alive. Her vitals were good before we got out of range. The rabbit people won’t be able to crack her armor quickly, if at all. We don’t leave anyone behind.”

  The congresswoman nodded.

  “Okay. Good luck and bring the both of you back to us!”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Gobby walked out the emergency door at the rear of the bus.

  The congresswoman rose.

  “Let’s see what this is about, shall we?”

  Reg and Milly followed her as she strode imperiously to the front of the bus.

  The Sentinel of Freedom hit the ground running, scattering asphalt in her wake.

  Orders had come in desperately.

  Save the president! Ignore all other concerns!

  The words ran through her thoughts.

  She had already dashed and leapt past her fellow soldiers in trouble.

  Their guns screamed at the rabbit people hordes filling the streets of the nation’s capital.

  Tooth and claw met fire and steel until the guns fell silent and the screaming continued.

  She shut out the noise.

  A good soldier followed orders and that was all she had striven to be.

  Legs pumped like an engine’s pistons as she barreled through a block of buildings.

  Straight lines were quicker and she avoided all the spells and ordinance exploding in the sky.

  The white power within suffused her very being, lending the glow to her tactical armor and making it nearly invulnerable to damage.

  A huge monster, all spikey fur, ripping claws and slicing teeth swallowed her whole.

  She powered through, spraying the entire street with gore.

  Slick red slid off her as she ran until she was as pristine as usual.

  She skidded around the corner of a building at the same time as a battered SUV slid around the corner at the end of the street ahead of her.

  Dead and dying rabbit people clung to the grill and hood, while living ones clung to the roof and sides.

  They stuck clawed hands through broken windows like kids scrambling for Easter candy in a free for all basket.

  She slowed.

  The eyes of the man driving struck her.

  Wide with fear even as a rabbit person ripped at his face and chest.

  Captain Patriot drew twin submachine guns and cleared the rabbit people off the SUV.

  But, not before one ripped the driver’s throat open.

  The SUV surged as the dead man’s foot slammed on the gas.

  She tossed her empty guns and caught the front, shuffling her feet back to save the people inside from a sudden and violent stop.

  Down the street they went as she slowly applied resistance.

  The tires squealed and smoked just like her boots until something in the SUV gave with a loud crack.

  White smoke billowed from underneath the hood.

  She saw the people, her citizens through the cracked and bloody windshield.

  Faces streaked with blood. Theirs, the rabbit people, both.

  Slowly, as if waking from a nightmare, they went from terror and despair to hope.

  Why wouldn’t they?

  The Guardian of Liberty stood before them.

  She who saves them all.

  The greatest hero of the American people in the flesh.

  Close enough to touch when they had ever only seen her on a TV or in a magic orb projection.

  She gazed past the SUV.

  A horde of rabbit people surged down the street like a white, furry wave with crimson foam.

  It was the blood on their faces and heads. On their long ears. Some flopped, some stood straight from the tops of their heads.

  The SUV was dead.

  The people inside were dead.

  She had her orders.

  Save the president! Ignore all other concerns!”

  There were children inside.

  It looked like three separate families had crammed themselves into an SUV that could fit eight.

  Probably, neighbors.

  One kid’s left eye was squeezed shut and leaked a thick stream of crimson.

  She knew battlefield injuries.

  Had seen plenty of those suffered by her fellow soldiers and civilians.

  That was the thing, wasn’t it?

  The battlefield encompassed everything.

  There was no safe space.

  No matter what they said.

  What she said.

  Save the president! Ign—

  She jogged away from the SUV, ignoring the shouts, ignoring the crying kids.

  The horde loomed.

  She kicked a utility pole over, catching it in her arms.

  It glowed white as she infused it with her power.

  Captain Patriot swished the pole like a kid does a thin stick.

  The wooden mass pulped rabbit people by the dozen with each blindingly fast swing across the street.

  Her radio and communications gem were dead.

  She only realized this after she had turned the horde into smears across a wide swathe of street and the destroyed store fronts on both sides.

  She couldn’t make requests for clarifications or orders.

  Command couldn’t give her orders.

  Save the pres—

  The Protector of Independence let out a long breath.

  The burden of her duty pressed down on her shoulders so much that even one with her superhuman strength struggled to lift one boot and place it in front of the other.

  But, she did.

  She returned to the SUV.

  “Stay inside.”

  She opened the front door and took the dead man out.

  The thought crossed her mind to leave him on the street.

  He was just meat after all.

  He wouldn’t care much about his corpse as long as his family got to safety.

  No one left behind, she thought.

  She carried him to the rear of the vehicle and placed him reverently inside the trunk.

  “I need a driver.”

  “But, it’s dead!” a young man said.

  “You just volunteered, citizen.”

  He stammered, but he clambered into the driver’s blood-soaked seat.

  “I push, you steer. I’ll tell you when and where to turn.”

  She imbued the SUV with her power lest she crumple the back with her superhuman strength.

  They went westward.

  It was a quick calculation.

  The president would be headed northeast to New York.

  The call to save him told her that the convoy had run into problems.

  Therefore, the opposite direction was safer for the people in the SUV.

  Beyond that she had no concrete plans.

  Just get across the Potomac and reassess.

  Maybe she could drop them off with other soldiers or take them to one of their bases?

  She ignored the orange glow over the Capitol Lawn.

  The Washington Monument wasn’t as tall is it had been the last time she had seen it and it was burning.

  The interstate was utterly wrecked.

  Fires dotted the landscape.

  Craters everywhere she looked made her imagine that she could be walking on the moon.

  The night sky filled with the fireworks of aerial combat.

  Red rain slid off her white power.

  A behemoth of a flying monster plummeted toward the Lincoln Memorial as an even larger dagger-shaped darkness disappeared up into the clouds like a whale dives into the black depths of the ocean.

  Damn skyships!

  It wasn’t fair.

  She laughed bitterly, supposing that maybe it was fair.

  They had all the aircraft carriers and planes when the terrorists had AK’s and improvised explosives while hiding in caves never knowing when death would strike from above.

  No one ever lasted forever at the top.

  Empires rose and fell with the turning of the tides of history.

  It’s just that no one ever expected that they’d be around to watch the fall.

  She had been watching for over 30 years.

  “This really is the end,” she whispered.

  What was left for her to do?

  The answer lay in the eyes of the children staring at her from inside the vehicle.

  The 66 was out as a route over the river.

  She pushed them north.

  Maybe the Francis Scott Key Bridge?

  If not, then she could try following the river to the 495.

  Sadly, it was not to be.

  They ran into another horde halfway to the bridge.

  America’s last true champion leapt over the SUV, hurling grenades from her bag of holding as she charged until she was out.

  Flamethrower laid down streams of liquid fire and was cast aside empty just as quickly.

  The stench assaulted her nose.

  Then she was in their midst.

  Better her than the citizens under her protection.

  The white glow on her tactical armor and skin shielded her better than thick steel plate from their teeth and claws.

  The rabbit people swarmed her, alternately trying to eat her and rape her or both at the same time.

  Males or females, it made no difference.

  They were maddened beyond anything she had ever witnessed firsthand.

  There was much she had missed concerning what her leaders had been doing while she had been exiled to the edge of the mountain spawn zones.

  Disgust roiled every fiber of her being as the rabbit people tried to assault her in every way possible.

  She pulled out a shotgun and slam-fired a moment’s space. She imbued it, turning it into a nearly-indestructible club with which to bludgeon rabbit people and pulp their heads like overripe tomatoes.

  Alchemical fire in bottles shattered at her boots, washing the waves of white away with waves of orange.

  And, yet the living replaced the dead.

  Rabbit people scampered over the charred corpses of their brethren.

  Those closest to Captain Patriot had been turned to ash such that black clouds swirled around her like a snowstorm as their bodies were dispersed by the onrushing wave of white.

  She sprinted, throwing her arms out to clothesline rabbit people at nearly a hundred miles an hour.

  Bodies broke and burst, showering her in gore that slicked off her white glow, leaving her untouched by their filth.

  She swept through them like an industrial thresher through a wheat field.

  A bloody harvest of white-furred insanity.

  Armed with the shotgun-turned-club in one hand and a heavy, chopping machete in the other, both imbued with her inner light, she carved through the horde.

  In the end, she stood alone, amidst the carnage on the empty street.

  Her citizens in their SUV watching in awed horror in the distance.

  She didn’t know what to do so she raised her shotgun like it was a flag of triumph as the blood dripped off the white glow, leaving it as pristine as when she pulled it out of her bag.