Rumble in the Bronx

:: This chapter is from the perspective of Jen::

I watched the celestials carry Tessa and Murphy away to try and stop the hydrogen generator and make sure it didn't become a bomb. Right after Kamaria and Bianca took Matt and flew him in to try and rescue Madison and Mckenzie. We were all praying that they were still alive.

Matt's plan involved keeping my mom, Ashley, and myself with the main police ****, as we had the least to contribute with the generator and had shown the best improvements with rifles out of the group. I also secretly think he wanted us to be the safest, but that was a relative term as bullets whizzed by our heads. 

Murphy hadn't gone cheap with the ordinance for us or the police ****. We had armored vehicles, top-of-the-line body armor, and a huge variety of rifles and rounds. Thankfully, we had been training since the last encounter with this cult in all different ranges and calibers of weapons. 

As promised, we mostly stayed in the armored vehicle, taking shots out of the sniper holes. This left us relatively protected while being able to supply support to our ground forces. 

The guards that came out to attack our forces were fairly easy to take out; honestly, I don't think they were trained particularly well. They did have some level of fortification, which is the only reason we haven't crushed them yet. 

But as we started to whittle away the opposition, a squad of soldiers came from around the building. They were dressed differently and armed differently, being more heavily equipped. Each soldier had a rifle, sidearm, and sword, mace, or bladed weapon on them. Looking through my scope, I also noticed that they were not exactly human, or that they were at least not normal; there were horn-like protrusions on their foreheads, and their ears and eyes were too large to be human; their teeth looked more like a shark's mouth than human. 

I radioed to the squads we had that these were not the normal enemies and that they were likely magical or at the least touched by the Hellscape. 

As we engaged the new enemies, a few were hit and went down. The others were very disciplined and broke into groups to find cover. They were good shots, causing a few injuries on our side. After a couple of minutes of engaging with these troops, I noticed movement from the ones that had been hit in the initial attack. They were getting up and getting to cover. 

I relayed this info to the others, and we focused on trying to see how durable these new threats were. They were bold, often taking risks to get closer to the front line. Taking shots that would kill or incapacitate most normal men. In their case, it seemed they would heal, or after they were down, would revive after a few minutes. 

I turned to Nancy and Ashley, saying, "We have to figure out how to stop these guys, or they will be on us soon! We need to look at some of the bigger ordinances. I am going to set up the mount for the .50 caliber outside. Ashley, I want you on the 40 mm grenade launcher, and Nancy, I want you to use the sniper rifle and the experimental rounds. 

I set up the tripod mount with a bulletproof guard next to the armored car, and Ashley helped me mount the .50 caliber to the tripod. Second, I helped her set up the grenade launcher on her own mount. Nancy was still inside, shooting out the sniper port with the sniper rifle. 

I waited until I had a clean shot at one of the special soldiers advancing. Opening fire, I hit him three times. Once in the torso, one took his left arm off at the elbow, and the third blew most of his leg off. He went down, not moving. I waited, and after three minutes, he started to stir, and with no arm and dragging the severely damaged leg, he attempted to get into a position to still be effective at shooting. 

Ashley fired a round from the 40mm launcher, landing in the middle of 3 of the soldiers with a frag grenade. They were hit by hundreds of fragments each. All three went down like rag dolls. Only to get up after a few minutes like nothing had happened. 

Nancy took a breath and, on her exhale, squeezed the trigger on the sniper rifle. The solid tungsten round went through the eye of the soldier, blowing the whole back of its head out as the bullet exited. The soldier went down and, after a couple of minutes, did not get back up. 

I radioed to our guys that zombie rules were in effect. Anything but a headshot and these guys would come back. Unfortunately, this took long enough that a group of five of the soldiers had broken through the gate and had switched to pistols and close combat weapons. It also seemed they were considerably stronger than a normal man, as they overpowered our soldiers easily in hand-to-hand combat. 

"Nancy, keep trying to take out the soldiers not through the line; I will focus on the ones near us, and Ashley, help where you can without blowing our guys up!" I yelled. 

I leveled the .50 caliber at a devilish troop who had just overpowered a friendly. One shot, and the evil soldier was missing his head. The round disintegrated everything above the shoulders. 

Ashley launched another round at a group moving up. This time, it exploded in an incendiary grenade, causing the two soldiers hit to be lit on fire. Totally disoriented and panicked, they flailed around with little effect. This allowed Nancy to put a bullet through both their brains. 

One of these minions made it past our troops and not had a blade leveled at me. Luckily, I was faster than him, pulling my 10mm sidearm. I put a round into his arm, chest, and leg. That reduced his speed enough for me to keep up. Luckily, we had been equipped with celestial weapons thanks to the four angels. They had enough weapons to equip us all. 

I was able to drop down when meeting this demon head-on. Using a backhanded grip, I was able to slice the tendon on the uninjured leg, slowing the creature even more. He swung wildly, and I was able to deflect while setting myself up for a critical hit between the ribs. The thing went down like a sack of shit. I finished things by plunging my dagger through the skull, piercing the brain deep enough to be sure it was dead. 

Our group slowly started to whittle down the opposition and gain ground. Using the armored vehicles to advance, we moved as quickly as we could. We got to a building that we had guessed could possibly be holding Mckenzie and Madison. We took 20 men with us, and the three of us entered the building. I had a general layout of the building memorized from Tessa's layouts.

Other than the odd guard or two, there was practically no resistance. We headed down; that was the most secure and most likely place they were keeping them if they were here.

Once on the lowest floor, we discovered what could only be described as a putrid tunnel; bio-matter was smashed against the sides of the tunnel, the girth of which was the size of a city bus. The smell and the nastiness we worked through were challenging. We started to notice moisture and fog in the air as well as the temperature increasing. 

Finally we came to a large clearing; we thought we heard voices, then cackling. A few seconds after that we heard a deep noise like the sound of stone grinding and heavy bass. Followed by sounds of swords being drawn.

I told the troops to create a perimeter and defensive line at the mouth of the entrance until we had figured out what was going on. I prayed Matt and the other girls were OK. I set myself up quickly just like Nancy and Ashley and prepared for hell to break loose. Turns out it wasn't too long of a wait...