“Yes, ma’am,” Dekka said. “Now get out of here!”
Dekka had last seen Zil off the road to her right, ahead, just out of range.
Dekka dropped her hands.
Thousands of pounds of dirt and debris that had headed skyward fell. Dekka ran straight into the storm, eyes closed, hand over her mouth.
She almost barreled into Zil. She had emerged from the pillar of falling dirt and practically ran him down.
Zil, startled, swung a shotgun barrel toward her, but she was already too close. The barrel hit her like a club, smashing against the side of her head but not hard enough to stun.
Zil tried to back off, the better to take a shot, but Dekka’s hand shot out, grabbed his ear, and yanked him toward her.
Now he managed to jam the barrel up under her chin, hard enough to snap her teeth together. She jerked back and he pulled the trigger. The blast was like a bomb going off in her face.
But she did not lose her grip on him. She yanked him closer still as he whinnied in pain and terror.
Dekka aimed her free hand down at the ground. Gravity simply disappeared.
Locked together now in a frantic, wrestling embrace, Dekka and Zil both floated upward. The dirt and debris came with them. They were the struggling center of a tornado. Zil yanked free at the cost of a ripped, bloody ear.
Dekka punched him. Her knuckles hit him squarely on the nose. She punched again and missed. The first punch had spun her away from Zil. Zil was trying to bring the gun around, but he was having the same problem she was with moving and fighting in zero gravity.
Dekka’s eyes were closing, clotted with flying sand. She couldn’t see for sure how high they had risen. Couldn’t know for sure that it was enough.
Zil twisted and shouted in triumph. The shotgun barrel was inches from her.
Dekka kicked wildly. Her boot connected with Zil’s thigh. The two of them flew apart from the impact, floating now ten feet apart. But still Zil kept the shotgun aimed at her. And the distance wasn’t enough for Dekka to be able to drop him without dropping herself as well. Not yet.
“Look down, genius,” Dekka snarled.
Zil, his own eyes squinting, glanced down.
“Shoot me and you fall,” Dekka yelled.
“Filthy freak!” Zil
shouted.
He pulled the trigger. The blast was deafening. Dekka felt the wind of buckshot flying past her neck. Something hit her, like a punch.
The recoil of the shotgun blew Zil back five feet through the air.
“Yeah. Far enough,” Dekka said.
Zil cried out in terror. A single vowel that went on for the ten seconds it took Zil to fall and smash into the dirt.
Dekka wiped dirt from one eye and squinted down.
“Higher than I thought,” she said.
FORTY-TWO
6 MINUTES
MARY TERRAFINO CHECKED her watch. Minutes.
It was coming. Coming so soon.