Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure - By Jeremy Robinson Page 0,137

pain she focused on the one thing lighting her path—Rook’s bare white back.

She saw Rook’s body leap up suddenly. When he came back down, an orange flag came into view between them. Too close to react quickly, Sara stumbled, jumped, and landed in a heap. She looked up and saw King leap over the small mound she’d nearly fallen on top of. He pulled her up and pushed her forward, just as the grass at the back edge of the field burst with the sound of running bodies.

Following Rook and Queen’s plowed path, King, Sara, and Bishop holding Knight moved quickly through the field, though there was no doubt that the hybrids and old mothers were moving even faster. Rook’s white form came into view again as Sara gained on him.

Snarls emerged from the grass around them. The enemy closed in. Hybrid or fully Neanderthal, it was impossible to tell. Until a gentle click to their right signified the triggering of a buried land mine.

King dove on Sara as the mine exploded. A legless hybrid screamed as it was launched overhead. The single explosion seemed to set off a chain reaction. All over the field, as hybrids charged forward without sense of the danger, mines burst, hybrids screamed, and limbs tore away from bodies.

King was up and running again with Sara when the grass behind him collapsed. Red burst out at his heels. Hair raised, teeth bared. She was a creature out of mankind’s past and King wasn’t sure even a mine could stop her.

“King!”

Sara’s voice spun him around and he just barely caught sight of the orange flag before stepping down. He jumped, rolled, and got back to his feet. Looking back, he saw Red jump the flag as well.

Smarter than she looks, King thought.

“They’re all around us!” Sara shouted, feeling the presence of more than fifty individuals closing in from every direction . . . except for straight ahead. As Sara’s attention turned forward, she felt more bodies approaching. They were surrounded. “Up ahead! There are more up ahead!”

A sudden shock wave coupled with a loud whump generated by a hybrid stepping on a nearby land mine sent Sara and King flying. They shot forward, crashing into Rook just as he and Queen exited the field. Bishop and Knight fell behind them. The team climbed to their feet. Sara pulled her knife, as did King and Queen, ready to fight for their lives. Rook, nearly naked and weaponless, clenched his fists. Bishop put Knight down behind the others and then stood on point, ready to let his body take the brunt of the attack.

Then they saw the group waiting for them in the village of Anh Dung. Too many to count and far more deadly than Weston, Red, the hybrids, or the Death Volunteers. They did the only thing they could—dropped to their knees and waited for the end. It came quickly, as the mass of men before them opened fire.

SIXTY-SIX

STACCATO GUNFIRE RIPPED through the air, illuminating Anh Dung and the large field with muzzle flashes and glowing tracer rounds. Sara blocked her ears, though she couldn’t help but watch the tracers soaring over her head, cutting into the field and mowing it down. It was as though they had been transported back in time to when their mission began so badly. Bullets flying. Tracers glowing. People dying. The only difference was that this time she didn’t scream. She barely flinched.

Hybrids and old mothers wailed out as high-powered bullets slashed through their bodies as easily as they did the grass. Land mines exploded as those not cut down by the bullets fled through the field. The fight, if it could be called that, lasted only ten seconds.

King turned from the carnage and looked at the attacking force. Fifty men, dressed head to toe in black, lacking any insignia or marking of any kind. With eyes hidden behind rounded goggles and odd-looking face masks covering noses and mouths, their identities were cloaked. But King knew exactly who they were. He’d worn the very same gear on several missions.

“Cease fire!”

Delta.

And a lot of them.

Floodlights behind the line of soldiers flashed on. The field, now lit as though by the sun, revealed its carnage. Blood and chunks of flesh clung to thick reeds of grass. Depressions in the field marked where bodies had fallen. The Neanderthals, both hybrid and original model, hadn’t stood a chance.

Weston was right, Sara thought, nature selected one of the races to extinction, but it wasn’t humanity