Mamma was no stranger to the dangers of her 'profession'. Her people even less, considering their job was to shield her from them.
As for Viktor, his cowardice would suggest otherwise, but he had been knee-deep in shit more than once, granted, most of it of his own making.
The kind of dangers they were used to were a very specific breed though : they had an address, a face you could punch, a family you could threaten, a pocket you could buy.
It was ugly work, yes, but usually manageable, and the fix rarely changed : make the right person bend to your will… or make them stop breathing if cooperation wasn't an option.
Except this time, they were miles away from the kind of dangers they were used to.
It didn't take them long to all reach the same conclusion : there was no one to shoot, stab, bribe, or intimidate to improve the situation, which made their usual tricks worthless here.
In the end, they were cornered into one 'decision', perfectly rational yet hard to swallow for people like them, taught to ration trust and reserve blind faith for God alone : let Lazar take the wheel. At least he was moving like he knew what he was doing.
So, as Lazar sprang effortlessly from hood to hood of the stalled cars, turning them into makeshift platforms above the street-wide chaos, they followed, hoping he would lead them to a way out of that hell.
Unfortunately, not everyone shared these priorities.
HONK! HONK! HONK!
The moment Mamma's bare feet touched his hood, a driver went feral, pounding his horn with both fists, face going beet-red.
Because of course, while columns of fire clawed at the sky and buildings were folding in around him, what was more important than the state of his car's paint job?
"Hey! That's my car you are putting your dirty feet on right now, not your damn sidewalk, you skanky whore! Go sell your STD-ridden ass somewhere else!" He barked, thrusting his head out the window with his middle finger up.
Right away, the entire group turned to Mamma.
On one hand, she was known to keep her temper in check during a crisis, on the other, they never heard someone creatively call her a street-corner cheap whore before, let alone with that kind of venom.
Considering that, no one felt confident enough to bet a hand on her letting it slide.
And sure enough, she paused, eyes narrowing, looking one impulse away from smashing her fist into the driver's mouth… and maybe follow up, if inspiration struck.
As if that wasn't enough, Viktor was a few cars behind her, and right now she didn't look like she was above using that delay as an additional excuse to do something stupid.
Mamma's grip tightened around her crossbow, and she almost laughed. It was delivered without bolts, might as well be holding a fancy stick.
Give her a gun and that piece of shit would already be drooling blood on his dashboard.
HONK!
She flinched, not because of the honking, but because a bolt just popped into existence in her other hand, thus making her weapon no longer decorative.
HONK!
Viktor landed next to his aunt, much to the displeasure of the driver, "Mamma, move!" He yelled, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her hard.
The driver launched into another tirade, but Mamma barely heard him anymore. Now that her nephew had caught up to her, his voice didn't register as anything but background noise.
TUH
Unwilling to leave without a comeback however, she settled for spitting on his windshield before moving on.
Further ahead, Lazar dropped onto the crumpled hood of a wrecked family sedan, the metal groaning under his weight. Through the cracked windshield, a nightmare unfolded right in front of his eyes.
The driver was slumped on the wheel, his light-green shirt soaked in vivid red.
The passenger was trapped by her crushed legs, and she hadn't been granted the mercy of passing out.
And the two kids in the back, although nearly physically unscathed, were frozen stiff, faces blank with shock as they took in what had happened to their parents.
The passenger reached for Lazar, the tips of her nails stopping a few inches from the windshield.
Seeing the tactical gear, she must have assumed rescue had shown up.
The way she stared at him, wide-eyed, pleading, you would think an angel had landed on the car instead of a man.
For a second it was painful to watch.
"Help us…" She shouted as loud as she could, meaning barely above speaking volume.
Lazar's gaze, which had stayed on the kids until now, slid back to her, just enough to show he had heard.
His voice, when it finally came, sounded nothing like an angel, "No time. Sorry."
He turned his back on her and yelled to his group, "Move faster! We are almost there!"
"Please!" The passenger screamed again, way louder this time, despair overruling her pain and exhaustion.
Lazar definitely heard her, but he had already made the call and didn't acknowledge her. He left, and whatever hope she had pinned on him stayed behind with the wreck.
Perched on a car roof, Viktor caught on to what Lazar was aiming for.
The intersection ahead was nothing more than a boiling mass of people, shoving and cursing as they ran from the danger licking at their backs.
But beyond it, the streets were suprisingly peaceful : no fresh columns of fire, no buildings mid-collapse, just more people fleeing and a handful of curious morons watching from a 'safe' distance what was happening.
An escape route, there and gone in the same breath.
Out of the blue, the asphalt at the intersection started to blister and bulge underfoot, smoke forcing through newborn cracks.
"Wait!" Viktor yelled, "Step back!"
BOUM!
Another pillar of fire punched up through the intersection.
It happened so fast, three seconds, give or take, from the first signs of trouble to the trouble swallowing everything in its path.
The carnage the group had witnessed from the restaurant was replaying itself, only this time it was right in their faces.
Few people had time to react, and for the ones caught dead center in the intersection, reacting didn't change a damn thing. They were reduced to dust.
For the rest, it was a spectrum : from singed hair and blistered hands… all the way to bodies thrown yards away, lit up like torches, like the poor bastard who hit the ground close enough to Lazar for the stench of his burning flesh and clothes to flood his nostrils.
Lazar pinched his nose and turned around, trying to force what he saw at the back of his mind. Fortunately, he hadn't been close enough to get hurt and even through he was the closest of the group from the column, he took the time to check on the others.
Relief hit fast : nobody looked wounded.
However, they were all visibly rattled, because beyond the horrors in front of them, everyone understood the math.
Fire ahead, fire behind, and buildings collapsing on both sides, the street was sealed shut now, turning the whole block into a trap that would ultimately kill them one way or another as the pillars weren't just burning people, but also the oxygen in the air, making it gradually unbreathable.
Lazar dropped from the car he had been perched on, about to tell everyone to regroup and figure out their next move when he noticed something.
One of Mamma's enforcers put words to it immediately, "The pillar on the other side just went out!" He shouted, renewed hope cracking through his voice.
"Let's go!" Mamma snapped, already sprinting toward the gapping crater, which wasn't wide enough to stop people from circling it.
Viktor and her 'employees' followed her without a thought.
As for Lazar, a bad feeling crawled up his spine, "Slow down!" He growled, demanding a little caution.
The warning bounced right off them. If anything, they accelerated.
He didn't keep yelling. Breath was precious, and so was time. He needed more than blind panic, and he couldn't operate with people who heard 'slow down' and translated it as 'run faster'.
He headed for the crater as well, just not with the rush of bodies clustering along it to circle around.
When he was about fifty yards away, he caught sight of a man off by himself, focused more on the crater than fleeing.
Eventually, he understood why the man had been so fixated on it. Lazar questioned his own senses for a beat, then accepted what he was hearing with reluctance.
Sobs, getting louder and louder.
Not from the street. Not from a survivor.
From inside the crater.
They were loud but muffled, human enough on the first listen to fool your brain, different enough the second time to scare you to death.
The man leaned farther over the crater's edge, as far as the molten asphalt in front of him could allow him.
Then he shrieked, dropped like his knees had been cut, and scrambled back on all fours, heels scraping harshly against the road.
The sobbing... shifted.
Laughter replaced it, greasy giggles that made your skin crawl.
A hand grabbed the edge of the crater.
Human in shaped, monstruous in size. Each finger was as thick as a water bottle's circumference, the nails black, split and rotten.
The rest of the creature pulled itself up.
Grotesque. Repulsive. A more favorable description of that creature could only sound wrong.