Chapter 32 - Battle of the Greenway

  We pressed on through the heart of Boston’s old North End. As we went, we saw more and more people joining us on the street. Men, women, and children poured from some of the taller buildings, at first. They probably had been high up inside, and saw the invasion force moving in. But they were soon joined by others who just saw huge bands of people running past their building and decided that probably meant it was about time to get out of town.

  Humans act a lot like herd animals in a crisis. When we see some people fleeing, we tend to want to run, too. Before we’d made it another two blocks, the little group Alex and I were escorting had ballooned into over fifty individuals. Some of them were little kids, too, which was slowing us down.

  “Alex, we’re not moving fast enough,” I said, glancing back behind us for what felt like the hundredth time. I couldn’t see the forces pursuing us, but they couldn’t be too far back.

  “I know! Don’t you think I know that?” He shook his head. “What can we do?”

  He was already carrying a preschool-age kid who’d arrived without his parents. The child didn’t know where his parents were, so Alex had just scooped him up to get him to safety. But there were another half dozen young kids in the party now as well.

  “I think I need to go back there and see how bad it is,” I replied. “See how close to us they are.”

  “I can’t defend these people by myself,” Alex warned. “We run into anything, we’re going to be in deep trouble.”

  “I know. But if we just let them come up from behind us, it’ll be worse.”

  He nodded. “You’re right. Go. But make it quick, okay? We need you here, Castle.”

  “I won’t dawdle.”

  With that, I turned and raced back in the direction we’d come from. I poured on the steam, testing my limits to see just how fast I could run in my enhanced state.

  Turned out, I could move fast!

  My sprint turned quickly into a series of bounds, each one carrying me fifteen feet forward. I’d land and immediately launch myself into the air again. Those massive strides carried me over stalled cars, debris in the road, and even more refugees struggling to catch up with the group Alex was leading to safety.

  “Keep going!” I called out as I ran. “There’s help that way! Head toward MGH!”

  That was where we’d decided to bring folks. We didn’t know of anywhere else that there was an organized group of people. Tom would undoubtedly be pissy about us showing up, but I didn’t care. He wasn’t going to turn away desperate people, not when there was literally an invasion force marching its way into the city. If he tried, I’d do what I could to discourage the idea.

  Even MGH wasn’t going to be able to hold forever, though. We needed a way for people to catch their breath and get some stability under them again. Yesterday, our world all but ended when the Event happened. That’s what Alex and I had taken to calling it, anyway, and it seemed to fit. Today, an army of lobsters were trying to take over downtown. At this rate what was going to happen tomorrow?

  We needed breathing room to get more people used to what was happening. I had a hunch that we weren’t going to get that time easily, which meant we’d have to earn it. Fight for it.

  I didn’t even make it back as far as the cemetery. It was clear even from down the street that the lobster forces had it entirely under their control now. They were moving two squads through, with a third in support behind them. I turned south, moving fast, and ran into two more sets of the lobsters coming up Clark Street and Hanover Avenue. Both of those groups were moving inland from the eastern shore, not from the beachhead that we’d seen on the northern shore. That meant the enemy had multiple beachheads, multiple invasion forces. They were coming at us from the whole seafront, and Boston had a lot of water nearby.

  I turned back inland, moving just as fast as before to catch up with Alex and the folks we’d rescued. I broke out into the open area around the Greenway, where I could suddenly see a good distance in every direction, and was astonished to see a pitched battle taking place there!

  The Greenway was built as part of the city’s ‘Big Dig’ a while back. They moved the highway underground, and replaced the area where it used to run with a long chain of parks and green space. It was a nice addition to downtown Boston.

  Now, it was the site of a serious fight. The lobsters had arrived from the east, marching in columns from the water off to the east. But they’d been met by actual uniformed defenders. I’d wondered earlier where all the police had gone. Seemed like someone had gotten the smart idea to bring all the city’s police into one place, because there were over a hundred men and women in uniforms there, fighting to hold the line against the invaders.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  The police had their full riot gear on: helmets, body armor, heavy gloves, riot shields, and big batons. Against the lobsters, those batons were pretty effective. Blunt damage was a good tool against a shelled critter.

  But the tank-size crabs were chewing them up. In one area just fifty yards away from me, one of the crabs scuttled forward toward the fighting line. The lobsters parted to let it pass. Once it reached the police, it used claws the size of a car door to rip shields away from the defenders and then cut them down. The batons simply weren’t enough against a shell as thick as the crabs had. They were working against the lobsters, but… If something didn’t change quickly, the line would falter, then break, and a lot of those police were going to die.

  I didn’t think. I just did what needed to be done.

  With bound, I was flying through the air. This leap carried me over twenty feet, as did the one after it. A few more leaps, and I was almost to the fighting. The two sides were so wrapped up in the battle with one another that I didn’t think any of them even saw my small, fast-moving form coming at them.

  I dropped into the middle of a squad of lobsters, startling them, but jumped again before they could collect themselves. Timing that last leap wasn’t easy, but I managed. I rocketed skyward, gaining as much height as I could, and then dropped out of the sky directly into the middle of the crab’s back.

  My boot slamming home sounded like a gunshot going off, but it didn’t crack the shell! I was shocked—how tough were these things? But I didn’t let it slow me down. I ran forward and grabbed the edge of the shell near the thing’s eyes with both hands, and then twisted with everything I had.

  This time, the shell broke with a cracking sound like thunder. A piece the size of a dinner plate came away in my hands, but that was the least of the damage. I’d also started a long crack running partway down the length of the shell.

  I hammered the crack with a fast blow, then another, and another, smashing my fists against it as quickly and hard as I could. The crab made clicking noises as the first blow hit, then started screeching as the follow-up strikes rained down. My knuckles grew bloody from the repeated blows. The shell was made of tough stuff!

  “Go down!” I shouted, hammering in one last blow with everything I had.

  Finally, the shell just gave out. It shattered. The crack turned into a break running all the way down the middle of the carapace. The two sides were no longer connected at all, so I summoned mana and drove an Ice Blast down through the gap right about where I thought the crab’s brain ought to be. Then I hit it a second time, and a third.

  It staggered another foot forward, and then its legs gave out. The crab collapsed to the ground, tipping me off onto the pavement. A massive cheer rose from the human fighting line, but I was too busy to think about that.

  The lobsters were on me in seconds. They swarmed in, jabbing at me with their spears. Those blows didn’t do much, so they closed the gap and grabbed me with their claws, one after another piling on top of me until I could barely breathe. I struggled, but with each passing moment the weight on top of me just grew, and with my arms and legs all pinned I couldn’t get enough leverage to throw them off.

  I gasped in what air I could, each breath harder than the last. There were so many lobsters on top of me that I couldn’t even see the sky anymore, and my heart was beating so fast I thought it was going to pop out of my chest.

  Invulnerable? What a joke. Their spears might not be able to hurt me, and their claws couldn’t break my skin. But they could still kill me in other ways. I sucked in a breath that barely got any air. More weight piled on, and then I couldn’t inhale at all.

  This was it. I was going to die out there. I’d tried my best to save who I could, and it wasn’t good enough.

  A roaring sound filled my ears as my vision started to grey out around the edges. The roaring got louder, and suddenly I realized the weight had been reduced some. I could breathe again—just barely, just the tiniest bit of air, but I could get some oxygen into me, and I sucked it down greedily.

  The sound of fighting reached my ears, and I was finally able to identify the roar as battle-cries from the human fighters. They’d come to help me! They were plowing into the lobsters pinning me down, smashing one invader after another with their batons.

  They’d done enough. I had an arm free. I planted that against the ground, used it for leverage, and then pushed myself up. The lobsters stacked on top of me couldn’t hold their grip, not now that I had something to push against again. Several of them went flying a few feet back, while the ones still grabbing hold of me with their claws were knocked off balance, becoming easy prey for police batons.

  I was loose!

  “You okay, man?” A woman asked, sheltering me with her riot shield. “That was hella brave, but also goddamn stupid!”

  I laughed. “Yeah, but it worked, right?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Sure. You need medical?”

  I checked myself over. A few of the claw attacks had sliced my skin, but my Regeneration power was already kicking in, closing the wounds so rapidly I could almost see the cuts on my forearms closing in front of my eyes. I shook my head.

  “I’ll be okay, now that I’m not being crushed. Thanks for the save.”

  “After that shit you just pulled, it was the least we could do. That thing was about to cut us all to ribbons. It sliced Johnson in half.” She shuddered.

  Somewhere behind us, a whistle blew three long, loud blasts. Other whistles took up the call, echoing—one, two, three solid blasts of sound. I looked around and saw the police line backing up. Their shields were still up and at the ready, but they were pulling back from the fight.

  Thankfully, the lobsters were letting them. The creatures were using the lull in the fighting to form up their lines and bring more of the tank-like crabs up to their front.

  “Come on, that’s the signal for retreat,” the woman said, tugging at my arm. “We need to withdraw.”

  I’d done what I could here, and Alex was still waiting for me back with the people we’d rescued. He’d be wondering where I was. He must have passed north of the fighting here. I looked that way, but saw no sign of him. I had to hope they’d gotten past in one piece.

  I darted forward and tapped the dead crab’s body, collecting the biggest crystal I’d seen drop from anything yet, and then turned to follow the police as they withdrew toward the line of buildings on the far side of the Greenway. This battle was clearly just beginning, and if the human defenders fell, so too would Boston.