Incandescent sleet streaked centimeters overhead. Gravel and coarse pavement flayed the skin of her palms, bruised her arm and shoulder through nested layers of denim and copolymer. Flesh and fur burst into flame close enough to warm her face.

She twisted onto her back. "Three o'clock! Flash wore off!" Lubin turned and sprayed fire across the bearing. Three other dogs were closing from eleven; still on her back, Clarke held the gun two-handed over her head and took them out with three meters to spare.

"Flash!" Lubin shouted again. Clarke rolled and ducked, closing her eyes. Three more pops, three more orange fleshy sunrises. They backlit the memory of that last sighted instant—the instant when Lubin called out and every dog had flinched and turned their heads away...

Smart, smart doggies, giggled some hysterical little girl in her head. They heard FLASH, and they remembered it from the first time, and they closed their eyes...

She opened hers, terrified of what she was about to see.

The trick hadn't worked twice. Lubin was bringing up his weapon, desperately switching modes as some black slavering nemesis launched itself at his throat. There were no stars in its eyes. Lubin fired, blind and point-blank; blood and bone exploded from the back of the creature's skull but the carcass just kept going, a hundred kilograms of gory unstoppable momentum hitting him full in the chest. Lubin went over like a paper doll, gripping his dead attacker as though he could prevail over mass-times-accelleration through sheer bloody-minded determination.

He couldn't, of course. He couldn't prevail over anything. He had only killed one of them. He disappeared beneath a dozen others.

Suddenly Clarke was charging forward, firing and firing and firing. There were screams, but none of them came from anything she might have hit. Something hot and hard slammed into her from the side; something cold and harder slammed against her back. A monster grinned down at her, open-mouthed, drooling. Its forepaws pinned her to the ground like piled cinderblocks. Its breath reeked of meat and petroleum.

She remembered something Ken had said: You may get off easily. I rather suspect they'll be focusing on me. She really should have asked him about that, back when she'd had the chance. Only now it was too late.

They're saving me, she thought distantly. For dessert...

From somewhere nearby, the sound of crunching bones.

#

Jesus God, Ken. What did you think would happen?

The weight on her chest was gone. On all sides she could hear the sound of monsters, breathing.

You thought we had a hope in hell? You were blind, and I—I might as well have been. Were you trying to die, Ken? Did you just think you were indestructible?

I could understand that, maybe. I almost believed it myself, for a while.

Strangely, nothing had torn out her throat. I wonder what's keeping them, she thought.