-64-

Hannah VanRijn decided the strange men who'd said they weren't insurgents, might have been telling her the truth because since they'd gotten to the roof, militants from two different groups were shooting at them.

The roof had been a terrible place to go. Two insurgent squads had the notion to place a cross or flag on the roof at much the same time and naturally they had disagreements about which would be placed where. The negotiation between the flag-bearing, Muslim, Angels of Badur and the Protestant Angry Angels, with their cross made of zip-tied antennas from the roof, degenerated to a firefight very quickly. They only stopped shooting at each other when the elevator doors opened to reveal a new, third group. The newcomers indefinite and heterogeneous composition surprised and offended both the Muslims and the Protestants.

The golden-robed monks, combined with Hannah's blond, obviously well-cared for mane, and pink stretch sport bra peeking out through the v-neck and arm holes of her kevlar vest, made the group look like a cheap Halloween imitation of an insurgent squad. Casper had stripped kevlar and clothes for Hannah off the nearest dead White Sunday Norcal insurgent who hadn't bled on his outfit too much, and they didn't even come close to fitting Hannah. In the elevator, Casper thought she looked like a hot island castaway from a combat reality game show he'd seen once, but he admitted that she didn't make a very convincing insurgent, and the Muslim and Protestant militants on the rooftop agreed.

The Angry Angels and the Angels of Badur set their firefight aside to simplify the world by eliminating the confusing newcomers.

Everyone in the rooftop elevator pressed themselves against the walls while Casper mashed the button repeatedly, trying to close the doors. Since MUNI 5-7 was actually operating the elevator, Casper's button-mashing did little more than chime a pleasant error message. They had to wait for the AI to close the doors while Otis and Carlos poked their Korean submachine guns out and sprayed blindly, trying to discourage the two insurgent groups from hurling a grenade. Armor piercing rounds zipped into the elevator and made a sound like impacting ball-pein hammers as they hit the rear wall and left neat, disquieting holes. The bullets tore into the closing elevator doors, and as they punched through them, they decelerated to only a hundred feet per second and ricocheted at odd angles, striking everybody in the elevator. This wasn't enough to do any more than cause pain, bruising, increased alarm, and a competing stream of cussing between everyone in the elevator except Caine and Caine who showed off by actually catching a few ricochets in their quicksilver hands.

Casper frantically pushed buttons, trying to get the elevator to descend to the level immediately below or anywhere that wasn't quite so full of ballistic terror, but MUNI 5-7 held the elevator on the roof with closed doors. Then everything was quiet for a very confusing two seconds. Through the plentiful holes in the doors they heard a barely audible hum begin from above and grow within less than a second to a deafening turbine whine and roar with a background rhythm of chopped air like a thousand beat per minute speed metal track. Casper swore he heard the sound of screaming zombies before the explosions began.