Page 119 of The Gathering
“Move them!” Bishop roared. “Move the refugees!”
Every man on the field hauled up refugees, ordering them to run.
Bishop watched a cluster of them get a few feet then stop. Looking lost, like the ground fucking disappeared at their feet.
“What’s wrong with them!” Bullets yelled, pulling another man up and shoving him. “Go! Run!”
He staggered a few feet and stopped.
Another rumbling came from the school.
Bishop spun.
He made out their convoy of school buses hauling ass toward them.
God fucking bless you, Anvil.
Bishop looked north again, then around. “Hurricane!” he called. “Load ‘em and go!” He faced the rest of their army. “We drive them back!”
The remaining extraction teams ran to meet the incoming flood. His vision spotted the same golden thread that had been in that human. The demonic authority.
Twenty yards out, Bishop slowed. “Stop!” he yelled, throwing up his fist.
The pounding feet behind him gradually slowed to a halt.
He turned to them, lungs burning. “My men—go get our rides and bring them!”
His men tore out.
Bishop pointed to the incoming. “These are under the same authority as the last group. We hit them with everything we’ve got. Zodak, Kaphas, Quantum, and the Triplets—put these fucking soldiers six feet under. That’ll leave the leaders. Handy—you’re with me. We’re getting a piece of one.” He regardedthe rest of them. “Anybody that wasn’t named, you’re on our six however the fuck you can be.”
Kaphas went past Bishop, his backlash crawling over him like wet tar.
The second wave of human demons came at a dead run.
His first step with power changed the field.
Dirt jumped under Bishop’s boots. Grass flattened toward Kaphas, then snapped back as the pressure around him thickened. The air pulled tight against Bishop’s ribs and teeth, squeezing until his upgraded eye pulsed.
The charging soldiers crossed the edge of Kaphas’ field and fed it.
Every pounding foot gave him more. Every body driving forward loaded the pressure tighter. The black tar over Kaphas rippled, drinking it in until the space in front of him bent under it.
His hand lifted.
The front ranks hit the pressure wall.
Kaphas shoved his palm into the air.
The power-field snapped back and blew the first line off its feet. They crashed into the second, folding bodies backward.
Kaphas stepped into the collapse and shoved again.
Bone cracked across the dark as speed and force multiplied back through the bodies that brought it.
The golden thread in the center brightened.
Bishop’s gaze snapped to a crowned figure standing among the fallen. He opened his arms, and the dead at his feet seized. Their backs bowed. Their mouths stretched wide. Gold light ripped through their veins, then tore out of them in thin streams and snapped into his hands, his chest, his open mouth.
