Oh, venomous invasive insects! Several installations just activated. All dimensional travel into the Clothes-Lovers’ system is being prevented now, too. What an expense! That’s not sustainable.

  Plus, dimensional travel is Soundless technology. There’s absolutely no reason for them to disrupt it.

  -Intercepted transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens

  There wasn’t much pushback against my suggestion: it turned out that the Arsenal - and most other groups - had already been considering the same thing.

  The legoliaths were nasty.

  We’d gotten a dense pack of them in our area, and they all seemed unshakably focused on me personally. Elsewhere, they seemed far rarer: Vince’s contacts in New Mexico had reported only one spawn for the entire city of Albuquerque. They’d gotten to it and taken it down fairly quickly, meaning the monster had “only” destroyed one Shop, a dozen homes, a gas station, and three former restaurants. The trouble was, they didn’t think they could improve their response. In fact, they’d gotten lucky with the spawn location, as the legoliath had appeared in range of a park where a group called the “Medieval Militia” had been working on producing low-tech siege weaponry for use against Titans. A ballista didn’t have the same range or power as a high-caliber sniper rifle, but it could hit harder than most abilities without tiring anyone out and was much easier to produce.

  “My friends and I reached Albuquerque on the first day of the D-rexes, and they had some major fires in the first few days. But after they built firebreaks and organized quick-response teams to take down Titans, I don’t think they lost nearly as much,” Vince explained. “They can build more siege weapons, and I’d bet on them to be able to get them around the city pretty quickly… but according to the Ruler Messages I got, they had twenty ballista firing on this first legoliath immediately and it still took way too long to kill.”

  “I can’t believe you can hold this conversation while sprinting and carrying me,” I said.

  He laughed. “I’m not sprinting! This is a jog. I could go twice as fast, easy, but we’ve got to let everyone else keep up.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah!”

  

  “Ariel says you could only keep that speed up for a half-hour,” I told him.

  “Hmph,” he grunted. “Well, we’re moving fast enough that we’re almost to the Arsenal, anyway. Hopefully they have the Jeeps and stuff ready for us by the time we get there.”

  “Marie said they do.”

  The Arsenal had gathered a fleet of vehicles capable of offroading and collecting the drivers needed to keep them running with Animate Machinery. Hopefully, that transportation should be enough to keep these slow behemoths from catching us while we slept.

  Some of the crowd following me would have to stay stationary while they slept, crashing in designated warehouses. There just weren’t enough cars and spare drivers for everyone. We would have to try to circle back around to pick them up in the morning, trying to keep my crowd of defenders large and strong.

  It had to be: even if we could outrun the legoliaths and avoid treezillas, ground-swimmers, twotwos, and all the dinosaur-Titans kept coming for us. Not to mention the smaller monsters.

  Although… at least on the way to the Arsenal, we’d had far less trouble than I’d expected. The military had worked to send word ahead and mobilize anyone in the area willing to help secure our path. Every time we turned a corner, it seemed like we found another stretch of clear road and another cheering crowd shouting encouragement.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  I’d been thinking of heading out of the city and into the countryside, to try to keep the pursuing legoliaths from destroying too much infrastructure, but… the way everyone had come together to keep me safe had been amazing. Risking the lives and homes of the people who’d come out to help us seemed callous, but risking myself and Ariel - and the whole stupid “competition” - to put ourselves out of reach of the same support seemed stupid.

  I’d like some easy dilemmas, please, I thought. Something that only affects me, like… I could decide to eat cheesecake and not exercise and then be sad that I gained more weight. That would be great.

  “Here we are!” said Vince. He skidded a little as he rapidly decelerated into a convoy of over 100 cars parked on the interstate near Redstone Arsenal. He spun around, letting me climb into the open door of a large… SUV… thing.

  Cars are still not my strong suit. Maybe it was a Jeep? I don’t know. It wasn’t yellow or green, and it only looked a little boxy. It certainly didn’t look like it belonged on a safari, which is what I envisioned a Jeep to be, but I chose not to question it. The two drivers in military apparel in the front seats made it clear that this was the vehicle they wanted me to ride in, and I was certain that whoever made that decision knew way more about the choice than I did. Better just to trust their expertise and worry about the 87 million other problems.

  At least my kids were still safe, climbing through the door right behind me to cuddle up in the middle of the jeep floor. Only the front seats still remained: everything else had been removed, leaving a fairly spacious area around me.

  I was surprised for a moment when six of my bodyguards followed us in, taking up the spaces at the edge of the car that would be more vulnerable to stabcrab punctures, but… it made sense. Intellectually, I knew how important I was, but on an emotional level it was hard for me to accept that people were willing to die to protect me.

  Our car was in the middle of the pack. There was a brief delay as people argued over the spots in the other cars, but in less time than I expected, we headed down the road.

  For the first time since I’d laid eyes on a legoliath, I felt myself relax.

  We had stabilized. We were safe, for at least several hours. Could we keep this up forever? Maybe not, but that was a problem to solve eventually, not a crisis that had to be addressed this minute.

  I looked at my kids. Gavin was leaned up against Vince’s side, and looked perfectly happy. His short legs had been pumping hard to keep up with the running adults around him, but he’d managed it without apparent problem and seemed very proud. Cassie’s unicorn-form Summoned transport had also been able to keep up, and it was large and robust enough now for Micah to ride pillion with her. He hadn’t seemed thrilled about that, but it appealed to him more than the offer of a piggy-back ride. He was sitting in between Vince and I now, looking upset but not on the verge of a melt-down.

  That made sense. He was probably the only one of my kids who’d put together the news about the damage to the Quarry with the fact that we might have lost the rest of our worldly possessions. He was probably also the only one who’d realized we were truly homeless now.

  Cassie certainly didn’t. Like Gavin, she seemed to view this whole race to safety as an exciting adventure, and had plonked herself in my lap with great satisfaction. As usual, she held Pointy close.

  I wrapped my arms around my daughter, brushing a finger along the soft surface of Pointy’s shell. “How are you doing, Pointy?”

  The turtle tilted her head to look up at me with a skeptical eye. “Better than you, I suspect. Today’s losses have largely not affected me directly. I am concerned about the increased risk to Cassie, but that is a concern we share.”

  I frowned. “Fair.”

  Pointy smiled. “It’s not all bad news, though. Guess what just went out over the radio?”

  “What?”

  “We found all the linked users! Hamlet may have miscalculated with this one. Ariel didn’t have the authority to share their location with you, but Hamlet knew… and he sent a handful of the legoliaths at each. It practically put billboards over their heads!”

  “And they’re safe now? All four of us?”

  “Yep! Well… I mean, as safe as they can get. But friendlies in their areas got them out of their initial crunch, and they’re on the move and guarded so… better than they were this morning.”

  “That’s amazing!” I breathed, tears prickling the corners of my eyes. “I think we still need to focus on bringing this contest to an end as soon as possible, but… it’s not that hard to keep ahead of these things. Pointy… we could win. There’s really no reason we can’t win!”

  The turtle smiled at me warmly. “That’s my assessment as well. Our odds of-”

  She cut off mid-word, her embroidered eyes going wide and shocked as her tiny mouth fell open. “Oh, fuck.”

  (Up to Bk. 5, Ch. 13) * * * * * * *