The Angel leapt up and over one of the buildings, coming toward him. Not knowing what else to do, he leaned forward and took off, right through the pandemonium. Right toward the Angel.

He wrapped his coils around her, and squeezed.

Barbara swept her gaze from screen to screen. Everywhere she looked, there was destruction and death. The fog had already enveloped Gagarin’s Soyuz and the museum nearest the entrance to the compound; the hell-creatures roamed freely in front of it. Tinker’s robots and drones were all smashed and gone. Snow Blind and Toad Man were retreating together along with most of the remaining NATO and Russian troops toward the Energia launch pads, well to the north. She couldn’t find Wilma Mankiller at all. Earth Witch, looking exhausted and ragged, was erecting a massive rampart around the refugee camp, but Barbara couldn’t imagine it stopping the hordes that were coming.

She toggled the switch to talk to them all. “Hang on,” she said. “A little longer—that’s all we need. A little longer…”

She released the switch. She sobbed, unable to stop the grief, the pain, and the guilt.

My fault. My fault. I’ve killed them all.

The Angel and IBT were locked in an embrace like a statue born out of Greek tragedy, his snake part wrapped around her body, her hands clenched around his throat, preventing him from spitting his venom in her face. Now her weak arm was almost useless. With the length of tail wrapped around her and holding her mostly off the ground, she couldn’t get much in the way of leverage.

She felt her rib cage constrict, press upon her internal organs, and flexed her muscles as best she could to keep the pressure off her dying baby, but still, it was coming down to a test of strength and she knew that she was stronger than the snake. She could see his face darken.

Shrieks of laughter rang from behind them distracted her, though her grip relaxed not one iota. A glance at her foe showed sudden horror on his face as he tried to shrink back from the dozen or so approaching creatures, claws and fangs ready to rend.

The Angel felt her vision darken to black. Unbearable pressure clamped onto her chest. Clarity and coherence returned for a nanosecond.

So this is death, she thought.

Marcus squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. It felt euphoric. Homicidally euphoric. Every muscle in his body was flexed, trembling with the joy of killing. He felt the Angel’s horrid body being crushed. He felt the tremors of ribs snapping, and he knew the moment that the baby’s skull popped. It was all glorious, and would never have stopped if not for the part of his mind that was conscious of the Harvester’s bulk sliding by above him, and of the monsters and walking dead of all kinds moving around him.