Ellen's Arc

Chapter 26 of 45

Ellen led the six women onto the wagon and took the reins. The road ran straight from the hotel across the flat ground. Behind the walls, three enemies fought her fire beast. A month of food sat lashed under the canvas. But she had nowhere to take it. The open plain hid nothing. The only shelter she owned was the hotel, and the hotel was full of fire and armed men. She stopped the wagon two hundred yards out and turned to watch. Smoke poured from the cellar vents. The women watched her, waiting. "We can't run on the flats," Ellen said. "They'll pick us off. That hotel is ours. We take it back or we die out here." A figure dropped from the sky and landed on the road ahead. Stark. His armor smoked at the joints. "Told you to move," he said. "You didn't." "Nowhere to move to," Ellen said. "The hotel's the only wall we have. Is the beast dead?" Stark's helmet turned toward the smoke. "Thor's got it pinned in the cellar. It won't leave the drain now." He paused. "The tunnel's the problem. It came up through there. It'll keep coming." The broad man with the hammer came out the front door. Thorn Odinson. His cape hung in strips. He had vouched for Cade and Stark once, and they had crossed a line, and other people paid for it. He hunted them for that. But not today. He wiped soot from his beard and looked at Ellen. "The thing's blind now," Thorn said. "I broke its jaw. It crawled back down the hole." He pointed the hammer at the cellar. "Seal the tunnel and it starves down there." Ellen thought of the mounted grenade gun sitting inside the lobby. The heavy weapon they had hauled from the army camp. "The drain," she said. "If we drop the ceiling, nothing gets through." "Do it fast," Stark said. He looked up. The bald man in the gold robe stood in the hotel doorway now, rings dull, one hand pressed to his side. The Mandarin. He had sent the beast. He stared at Ellen and said nothing. Then he turned and walked back into the dark. Ellen drove the wagon to the door. She and Cade carried the grenade gun down to the cellar mouth. Below, the beast rasped in the tunnel, jaw hanging wrong. Cade set the weapon on the stone lip and aimed at the tunnel roof. He fired six rounds. Rock cracked, sagged, and fell. Dust rolled up the stairs. When it cleared, the tunnel was gone. A wall of broken stone filled the passage. The beast's roar dropped to a muffled scrape, then stopped. Ellen stood in the quiet cellar. The drain was sealed. The month of food was inside her own walls. She had a home again, one door in, one road out. But the Mandarin still walked the upper floors, and he had not finished with her.