Watching Over Us Read Free Page B

it, she realized there was no way she could reach that window. She pushed the grenade at Jared, pointed.
    â€œI saw one up there. Can you get this in the window?”
    Jared grabbed the grenade, ran halfway across the street, then stopped, fumbled with the grenade. “How do I work it?”
    Laurel ran out to him, trying to recall the brief tutorial she’d received on activating grenades. She took the grenade from Jared, squeezed the safety lever, thumbed the clip, then twisted the pull pin. Keeping the safety lever tight, she handed it back to Jared.
    â€œThrow.” A good twenty seconds had passed since she’d spotted the Luyten; Laurel knew it must have repositioned long ago.
    Jared wound, whipped the grenade at the window. It struck the brick sill, ricocheted up and to the right, dropped to the sidewalk. Laurel dove just before it exploded.
    â€œ Laurel .”
    Laurel looked toward the tracks. Sergio was racing toward them, dragging his rifle by its strap, his too-big helmet bobbing over one eye.
    The arm holding the rifle blackened and curled. Sergio howled, dropped to one knee, clutching the charred stump.
    â€œ Sergio .” Laurel raced toward him. He was screaming, writhing on the asphalt. There were burned bodies everywhere.
    Laurel grabbed Sergio under the armpits, the left—the burned one—was red-hot, but she ignored the pain. Laurel meant to drag him, but Jared was there, grabbing Sergio’s legs. They trotted back to the doorway of the paint shop, gently set Sergio down on the sidewalk.
    His eyes stared sightlessly up at the store’s awning.
    â€œNo, no, no,” Laurel moaned, pressing her face close to Sergio’s. She knew she had to get up, had to keep fighting, but this little boy with a Hulk sticker on his helmet and comic books in his pack was dead, and Laurel wasn’t sure she had any fight left in her.
    A sharp intake of breath from Jared got Laurel’s attention. She lifted her head. A Luyten was rounding the corner across the street. It was red orange, the size of a minivan, moving on four of its six appendages. It held a mushroom-shaped heater in one of its free appendages.
    Laurel’s rifle was on the sidewalk a few paces away; Jared’s was strapped across his back. Of course, the Luyten already knew that, or it wouldn’t have moved into the open. It pointed the heater in their direction.
    As Laurel tensed, its insides burst out the front of it, an explosion of coal-black entrails and organs. Black blood sprayed halfway across the empty street.
    Stunned, Laurel struggled to her feet, tried to decide whether to make a run for it just as a defender jogged into view.
    It paused at the same corner the Luyten had recently occupied and looked around, its massive rifle pointed at the sky, deep-set eyes hidden in the shadow of its helmet.
    Laurel raised a hand, but it didn’t acknowledge her, or even seem to notice her.
    Four Luyten came galloping down the middle of the street. Laurel dropped to her stomach as half a dozen defenders appeared in pursuit, firing what might have been grenades from launchers that appeared to be built right into their forearms.
    As the Luyten approached, the defender hiding across from Laurel leveled his rifle and fired. Behind her, the façade of the paint store burst inward; in the street the Luyten’s thick, jewel-colored skin blossomed with wounds, and they fell.
    The defenders set upon them, firing point-blank into their eyes, which were set at spoked intervals around the center of their bodies.
    Laurel pressed a hand on Jared’s back. “Are you okay?”
    Jared lifted his head. “Yeah.”
    They trotted back to the tracks. Two of their platoon mates were still alive: Diamond, who was pressed along the steel rail of the track, and a boy named Artey, who’d been hiding in the tobacco field on the far side. If they’d survived, the Luyten would have come back and finished them both