Foxy rushed past them, dragging Hoov’s body bag by a strap, headed down the hall.
As Ripper reached the doorway, one of the wiry drones fell nearby and a shot rang out close in. Ripper grabbed her leg and fell into the doorway, bleeding. “Dammit!”
Mooch grabbed her by the collar, dragging her down the corridor, as Tin Man and Smokey raked the floorboards, shattering the wounded drones moving around there.
“These fucking things . . .”
The team was losing ground. Already hundreds more drones were swarming in from above. The hum was deafening and didn’t seem to get canceled by their headsets.
And then the front doors pushed open and scores more poured in from outside.
Odin’s voice. “Fall back! Fall back! Tin Man, Smokey, cover the rear. I’ll pop smoke.”
McKinney ran down a hallway lined with closed doors just ahead of Odin. She sniffed the air and caught a pervasive peppery scent enveloping them, but she ran on.
Behind him Mooch was dragging the wounded Ripper—who was cursing and flailing.
“Goddammit, Mooch, I can fucking walk! Let me go!”
Foxy stood in a left-side doorway at the end of the hall, motioning for her to enter, his weapon raised. “Go! Go! Go!”
Behind them Smokey and Tin Man were falling back in bounding overwatch, firing madly as they retreated, riddling the walls and doors with bullets, cycling through their big drum clips.
The drones poured through the doorway after them, but the narrow opening made their position more defensible. The devices blasted apart in midair and tumbled across the floor as they came in, their pieces piling up. But their frames seemed to be made of thick metal wire or tubing, because they largely kept their shape even after their core was shot out. They lay like dead insects on their backs, spiky legs pointing upward.
Smokey glanced back, “What the hell’s that smell? You smell that?”
Tin Man nodded. “Like weak pepper spray. It’s burning my eyes.”
Odin tossed a smoke canister into the foyer, and it issued billowing clouds. He called back, “Foxy! How’s our ride?”
A muted voice shouted, “Working on it!”
Smokey dropped his large drum clip and shouted, “Reloading!”
That’s when Odin noticed that the swarm was already surging through the smoke.
Tin Man fell back to another doorway. “Goddammit!”
Odin nodded. “That’s millimeter-wave particle smoke—and it doesn’t even slow them down.” He raised his auto-shotgun and began raking the doorway with buckshot that seemed particularly effective. He shouted at the others, “We won’t have enough ammo to knock down half this swarm.”
Tin Man got in a kneeling position. “Heads up! Forty Mike Mike. Fire in the hole!” He fired the grenade launcher bolted to the underside of his HK out the end of the hall into the smoke-filled foyer. There was a muffled flash and pieces of drones ricocheted everywhere—but the cloud soon swarmed in again through the smoke.
Tin Man pulled the receiver open and slid another forty-millimeter grenade into it while Odin sprayed the doorway with buckshot. FOOM! Another grenade went into the foyer with similar results.
“How many of these fucking things are there?”
“Behind you!”
Odin and Smokey turned to see Foxy pointing at a bedroom door near them. Bullet holes were blasting through near the doorknob, punching out panels in the door. Then the wall.
“Fall back! Smokey, Tin Man, back!”
They ran past the doorway, firing into it, and the swarm surged into the corridor behind them. Flames were visible rising along the foyer walls.
McKinney ducked back into a stone-walled two-car garage where Foxy was busy under the dashboard of a late-model crocus yellow Jeep. It had no roof, just padded roll bars. “You’re kidding me. . . .”
“It’s all we got, Professor. Unless you think we stand a chance reaching the SUVs in the driveway.”
“No, I don’t.” McKinney noticed Hoov’s body bag lying in the small cargo area. She turned to see Ripper sitting in the jeep’s doorway as Mooch examined her calf. He was wrapping it in bandages.
“Small-caliber bullet. It’ll keep.”
“I fucking told you.” She was reloading her weapon.
“Did you see what it was?”
“Looks like a goddamned zip gun. They have rows of them. They try to get you in close. They’ve got these beady insect eyes. . . .”
McKinney sniffed the air again. “Does anyone else smell that?”
Ripper nodded. “Like cayenne pepper?”
Mooch cut the bandage. McKinney ducked her head out to look down the hallway.
Odin glanced back at her. Although his expression was impossible to see behind his asymmetrical mask, his posture indicated they couldn’t hold out long. Behind him all hell was breaking loose, with Tin Man and Smokey spraying machine gun fire and lobbing grenades.