Felicity caught the back of Victor's jacket before he stepped into the street. "The one in the helmet saw the food come around the corner. It went inside to wait for us. If we take the side door, we're doing exactly what it wants."
Victor pulled the others back behind the flower shop and lifted her just high enough to see through its cracked front window. From there she could see what the helmet hid at street level. A knot of dead stood in the bank doorway. A second group crouched behind the bus across from it. Several had bone plates thick enough to turn a knife, and one crawled on its belly, dragging an open rib cage full of green spit over the road.
"Three floors, bars on the windows, and you can land on the roof," she whispered. "It had to be the bank, didn't it? The shop next door can't interest you in a lovely carpet?"
"If they come at us as a group, we can shut them in the street." He lowered her behind the wall. "How did you know it was waiting for the people at the back?"
She had worried that he'd tell her she was overthinking it. It was quite a different thing to have him ask her to show him. She pointed at the helmet. It turned toward the supply carriers again. A sharp clicking came from inside it. The two with bone plates shoved a row of slower dead off the curb and stayed exactly where they were while those bodies took the first hits.
Felicity tucked the pencil she'd been chewing behind her ear. "They're letting us do all the tiring work. If we give them one way through, will you trust me to pick which ones we hit?"
Victor cupped his hands for Ash's boot and boosted the jaguar onto the florist's awning. "I'll be at the front when you tell me where you want it." He sounded perfectly serious about taking orders from a woman who'd spent yesterday counting canned fruit. She took a second to kiss him before he got out of reach.
Rose ran a low hedge of vines down one side of the road. Giddy cracked the surface behind the bus with two stamps until there was only a narrow strip of level pavement left. The easy way past both barriers took the dead straight under Ash. He dropped a loop of wire over the route and pulled it tight at ankle height as the first row crossed. Bodies piled up, giving the carriers a clear run to the steps. Instead of trying to strengthen everyone at once, Felicity saved the pull under her ribs for the men still standing in the open.
The creature in the helmet clicked again. Two more answered from behind the bus. Kai, the golden-haired dingo, glanced back at her. Space seemed to pinch around his shoulder when he moved, leaving the place he'd been standing empty a beat before his foot came down somewhere else. "Three making that noise," she called to him. "I'll point if you can get close."
The crawler opened its ribs and spat a stream across the path he would have taken. Green drops burned holes in an abandoned car door. Sarge sent a crackle of current along the wet body and stopped the next mouthful halfway up its throat, but the two armored ones were already dragging it back into cover. Felicity pointed to the strip of road between the bus and Rose's vines. "Voss, can you hit that gap from up high?"
Metal gathered in his hand until he had a spear as long as a parking space. She hadn't seen where he kept it. When he threw it through the first bone plate and another spear took shape in his empty hand, she understood he hadn't been keeping it anywhere. He jumped onto the bus for the next throw, every inch the competent soldier, right up until he looked over his shoulder to see if she'd noticed.
"It's a very impressive spear," she assured him. "The fellow trying to eat my husband would like a closer look."
Victor froze the dead man's armor with the edge of his blade and struck the brittle plates with fire. Voss put his second spear straight through the gap. When it hit, Felicity heard the clickers switch to a faster beat and saw the other dead turn toward the one person who hadn't swung a weapon. For a second she could see all the way into the crawler's open ribs.
Victor caught its spit on a sheet of ice in front of her face. "Please tell me you're through counting teeth, Fel."
She had his jacket clenched tight enough to tear it. She let go with one hand and pointed Kai toward the last two clicks. "I've got their heads turned our way. You can reach them from the back of the bus."
Kai disappeared around the bend in the air. The clicking stopped. The walking dead kept moving, but the next row blundered over the fallen bodies without waiting for the ones with armor. Felicity could see an end to the fight now. She fed a steady bit of light to the arms working at the front. Voss kept the lane open until Victor broke the crawler's spine under the bus, well away from anyone who might step in what spilled out.
Once everybody had made it inside, she sat on the bank steps and let her hands go dark. The muscles in her fingers jumped, and her mouth tasted like she'd been sucking pennies. Voss took the pencil from behind her ear before it fell and set it in her open hand. His hands were trembling a little too.
"Did I ask for one spear too many?" she asked. A woman could enjoy the show and still want an honest answer about how much it had cost him.
"The last one was work. Ask me how many I have left next time, and I'll tell you." He closed her fingers over her pencil. "You look good telling me what you want, by the way. I'd hate for you to save it all for things that are already dead."
She sat there enjoying the blush that finally got him when she held his gaze. Then she heard a quiet scrape from inside the bank. Finch had barred the front. Victor had chains from his space across the side entrance. The sound came from behind the teller counter, where a narrow steel hatch already stood open. There was a third way into their lovely new shelter, and they hadn't a clue where it came out.