Chapter 65 - Rain of Fire

  I paused while the others retreated, my thoughts racing as my Regeneration finished the job of restoring me to health and my mana ticked steadily back up toward full. They’d bought me some breathing room, some of them with their lives. Now it was up to me to use it, not waste it.

  I had a plan. I had no idea if it was a good plan or not, and there wasn't time to go run it by Alex. It was iffy whether I had time to accomplish it at all, but it was the only idea I could think of which might have a shot at stopping the enemy’s inexorable advance.

  Attacking the crab and its riders head-on would be foolish, and I'd started to finally learn my lesson about that sort of thing. If I went rushing in and one of those big guns riding the thing caught me with a tier six Lightning Bolt, that would be game over. For me, definitely, and by extension probably for everyone else as well.

  Instead of retreating or rushing in to attack, I flew up high enough that I was just above the nearby buildings, well beyond the enemy’s spell range, and then turned east, soaring as fast as I could over the city and then the harbor beyond. My destination was directly ahead in East Boston.

  Even before I hit land again, I saw that things were bad over there. Much worse than they were in the downtown area. Most of the buildings in East Boston were old wooden constructions. Something large had caught fire somewhere in that jumble of houses, and without firefighters or fire trucks to contain it, the result had been a disaster of apocalyptic proportions.

  Half the buildings I saw were on fire. Most of the rest had already burned to the ground. The scene made me think about everything I'd experienced in a new light. As terrible as some of the events I’d experienced had been, there were clearly other people who’d had it worse.

  Fortunately, the destruction seemed to be localized. As I flew over the flames, I saw that the area I was aiming for was still untouched. That wasn't going to last, because the fires were marching steadily in that direction. As soon as they reached the gasoline depot on the north end of the district, things were going to get very messy, very fast. Sure, gasoline couldn't explode anymore, but it still burned. Once those buildings caught fire, the contents within them would ignite as well. That would reinforce and spread all the fires that were already burning in the surrounding area.

  The whole neighborhood was doomed, but there wasn't much I could do about that. Not at the moment, anyway. The good news was that I didn’t see any people hanging about as I did my flyover. I spotted a few monsters making their way through the ruins, but the residents must have evacuated early.

  I scanned the waterfront on the north side. Ships came into port there, dropping off loads of gasoline, which were then picked up by trucks and delivered to their destinations at gas stations all over the eastern part of the state. After about a minute of scanning the ground, I found what I was looking for, a fuel tanker that looked like it had just been pulling out of the lot when the Event struck. If I was lucky, the fact that it was on its way out probably meant that it was full.

  I swooped down and landed on the ground beside the tanker. The flames were getting closer. I felt their heat against my face like a warning that I had to move swiftly. In spite of the risks, I was still careful as I disconnected the hitch connecting the trailer to the truck. My Dad always used to tell me that ‘slow was smooth and smooth is fast,’ and I found myself muttering that old phrase as I worked.

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  Maybe I could have tried lifting the whole thing, but I wasn’t sure I could carry that much weight so far. Unhitching it was the safer bet. Once that was complete, I slid under the trailer and lifted with everything I had. The tank was definitely full. Lifting it up strained all my Strength crystals to their max, but I managed.

  Now for the next step. I activated my Flight power again, slowly boosting myself back into the sky. Each foot of altitude felt like my arms were going to snap off, but I held them steady through force of will as much as anything else. Once I was high enough to begin moving west again, I did. Flying as fast as I could, I kept my unbalanced cargo steady, back over the flaming city and the harbor beyond.

  Finally, I was flying above the streets of downtown again. I pushed for more altitude at that point, straining my Flight power as much as I could. The higher up this thing was when I let it go, the more of an impact it would make when it landed.

  I made sure to pick up an extra hundred feet of elevation because when you're sending a care package like this, I figured it paid to send the recipient the very best. Soon I was back over the battlefield and saw things had changed in the couple of minutes I’d been away.

  The enemy forces had continued their advance, but this time they’d held their forces together. Instead of sending in some of their troops as an advance wave, they'd kept them close to the behemoth crab so that the leaders could cover their troops with their far more effective spells. They were closing on the police defensive line when I arrived. Another two minutes and I would have been too late.

  As it stood, I was just on time.

  The enemy clearly saw me as I glided over to fly directly above them. They knew what I was up to, but I was out of range of their spells, so there was precious little they could do about it. Once I was sure I was directly above the super-crab, I dropped my payload. The tanker plummeted, picking up speed as it fell. The rear end of the thing shifted so that it was aimed directly down, probably because it weighed more.

  I hovered there, exhausted from the workout, but eager to see the results. The crustaceans tried to react as best they could. The titanic crab started to move out of the way immediately, but in the close confines of the streets of Boston, it was nowhere close to quick enough. The smaller crabs scuttled off as fast as they could, as did the individual crustacean infantry, throwing their entire formation into disarray. Humans took advantage of their confusion, firing off spells to strike targets of opportunity as the Karabos ranks fell apart.

  The enemy leadership moved away from where the tanker would strike, but the crab’s shell was large enough that they could stay atop it without taking too much risk of being struck. They scattered to the edges of the shell and responded, as I had hoped they would, by firing spells at my attack.

  The first two spells to strike at the tanker were ice blasts. Those punched straight through the metal exterior, causing gasoline to spill from the holes. It was only a trickle because the gasoline was falling at the same speed as the tanker, so it didn't go gushing out. But I didn't need it to. When the tanker hit the crab’s shell, it was going to break apart anyway. The damage it was going to do on impact was bad enough, but I still had one of those flares I’d found, stuffed into my pocket.

  The plan was, the tank would hit the crab, smash the creature up in the process, and break open, spilling gasoline everywhere. After that, I’d drop the torch and we’d have crab flambé!

  But I hadn’t counted on the Karabos’s lack of familiarity with modern technology. They didn’t know what I’d dropped, couldn’t recognize the danger coming their way. Instead of fleeing, they kept firing spells, and the next spell to hit the tanker was a Lightning Bolt fired by the Karabos leader himself.

  What he’d been trying to do, I don’t know. Maybe he hoped he could shatter the tanker, blast it to smithereens with an energetic enough attack? That wasn’t what happened, though.

  The bolt streaked through the sky, slamming into the back end of the tanker with flawless accuracy.

  I had to admit, I definitely did not want to be on the receiving end of that spell. It hit with enough force to shatter the entire back end of the tanker, exploding bits of metal outward in all directions. This time, the remaining gasoline poured out for real, and the powerful pulse of electricity lit it on fire to boot. Before my eyes, my weapon had turned into a curtain of fire, pouring down toward my adversaries.

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