The next wave of cousins came from the trees. It hit the south mouth with horns screaming impatience.
Two trucks abreast tried to force the lane, metal screaming against railings.
Elias clipped a tire, then a radiator.
Steam billowed and turned the air into a white wall. Alexei sent cold into the cloud and made a screen the sun couldn't punch through. Shapes stumbled on the far side, coughing on their own bad timing.
Sera dropped back to the lane and looked up at Zubair.
He had learned the meaning of that look.
He put both hands to the barricade and bled heat down through the bus skin and into the stack of welded junk beneath.
Rust went orange to white and steel groaned as old fractures widened under stress.
The whole front of the blockade slumped like a rotten tooth giving up.
He pushed forward again. The bus frame sighed and folded inward. The lane opened enough for a truck to nose through, theirs, not theirs, didn't matter.
