Children of a Lesser God

Chapter 199: Pursuit

Although Laz was surrounded, he wasn't overly worried. The main problem he had was the air support as that was going to be an issue.

Since he already said what needed to be said, it was time for action.

Laz put his hands up as though he was surrendering, causing all of the guardsmen to feel a bit confused. After all, why escape if you were going to give up so quickly without a fight. Little did they know that Laz actually had no plans to surrender.

Instead, as his hands were above his head, he lowered the front of his body like he was about to lay on the ground. Just as it looked like he was going to tip over, he brought his hands down and propped himself up before bending his knees and squatting.

It took only a moment for the guardsmen to understand that Laz had taken a runner's starting pose, but it was way to late to react.

Boom, swoosh.

Laz exploded with his strength, shooting off like a bullet in the opposite direction from where the girls were parked. Before anyone could even pull a trigger, Laz was off the edge of the road and running through the tall grass. Sadly, the area he was near wasn't forested or he would have been more confident in his ability to escape.

Now, Laz's speed wasn't so extreme that the guardsmen who had taken aim at him couldn't see him. The reason he was able to disappear from their view so quickly is because of tricking their kinetic vision. In other words, Laz went from a speed of zero to a speed of almost one hundred miles per hour, or around one hundred and sixty one kilometres per hour. As such, Laz escape from their range of vision even before they noticed he moved. In the same way that it is impossible to watch a bullet shot from a gun with your normal vision, Laz was able to disappear.

His speed and strength were both a blessing brought from his new realm.

But he had made a mistake as well.

Having grown more powerful, Laz felt like he could do these things without a problem, but what he didn't expect was that his body wasn't exactly up to the task.

Having used his muscles in a way that they weren't used too, Laz could feel his legs burning as he continued to run. Despite having just started the escape, he had already hurt his legs by putting too much pressure on them. Sadly, there was no time to stop and relax them. The injury wasn't severe, but if he didn't let it rest, it would get worse.

Just as Laz was trying to adjust his speed to relax his legs slightly, he heard the sounds of the copter coming up from behind him.

'DAMN IT.'

Despite the pain he felt, Laz kept running.

The copters were more than able to keep up with Laz's speed as the trucks and various armored cars on the highway sped off, looking to loop around to where Laz was headed.

Although Laz didn't know it, at the moment, they were actually in West Virginia as they had crossed into the state to cut over into Pennsylvania. Due to the short path through, the guardsmen of Virginia were allowed to continue the transport without needed to switch guards.

Of course, this wouldn't have matter to Laz anyway as all he could see at the moment were open fields.

The copters had closed in while Laz was making his way through the grass and started blaring their speakers.

"STOP RUNNING AND GIVE UP."

"IF YOU DON'T STOP, WE WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO OPEN FIRE.".

"THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING..."

Despite hearing this, Laz wasn't going to stop moving. Instead, Laz ended up focusing a bit on the copters that were following him as opposed to the land in front of him.

Bam, Bam.

Shots rang out from the aircraft as the snipers on board took aim. In this instance though, since they weren't able to stay stationary, it would have been more appropriate to call them sharpshooters as they wouldn't be able to use a normal sniper rifle and scope. Despite this, the shots were aimed with precision and would have been able to take down a normal person in one shot. Things weren't about to go that easy.

Seeing were the shots were aimed, Laz made a few quick course changes and managed to avoid them. But all that earned him was more fire at him.

Thanks to leaping, jumping, making crazy turns and adjustments, Laz was able to avoid each shot by quickly figuring out where they were coming form and where they were going to go, leaving the ones doing the shooting to wonder if Laz was psychic.

More than once, the crazy movements caused Laz to fall and wear him out even more. Despite breaking into the Foundation realm, Laz hadn't had a chance to rest in a few days. Even though his injuries were healed, the process of both the break through and the healing had taken a lot out of him and he was finding it harder and harder to dodge. But Laz refused to give up.

1 mile.

10 miles.

25 miles.

No one had any clue as the extent of Laz's endurance, but it almost seemed like it could go on forever.

On top of that, Laz finally found what he was looking for: a wooded area. The copters wouldn't be able to track him if they couldn't see him.

As Laz approached while still avoiding the suppression fire from above, he noticed that a road ran along the edge of the treeline and it was crawling with guardsmen from both states and all forms of law enforcement.

Every single one of them had a gun pointed at the direction Laz was coming from.

"IF YOU REFUSE TO SURRENDER, WE WILL OPEN FIRE THE MOMENT YOU ARE VISIBLE. THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE." Another message came down from one of the chasing helicopters, just as Laz noticed this death line in front of him. It seemed like they had guessed that he would want to make for the woods and decided to stop him at any cost.

...

At the death line, various members of law enforcement and guardsmen had their weapons drawn and were pointing at the field around were the helicopters were coming from. They all knew the fugitive was going to be somewhere underneath and in front of the air pursuit so they had a good estimate as to where Laz was.

Of course there was more than one confused person present.

"Hey captain, why the hell do we have to stop this guy from getting past us. I mean sure, the woods are good for hiding, but the memo said shoot to kill?" One of the younger guys asked his captain in confusion.

"If he gets into the woods, we can't follow," the captain replied while taking a look back in thought.

"Why not? I mean, sure, it will be difficult. But we've got a ton of local guys who hunt these woods all the time. They'll be able to find him in no time."

"I swear to god son, you've got to start paying attention a bit more. We've lost over twenty local boys in these woods in the past month. Hell, we even started sending in search parties that ended up separated. And only half of them made it back. I don't know what's going on in there, but no matter what, we ain't going in there. If the feds want a crack at it, more power to 'em. But we ain't going in there fer nothing, got it? He get's past us though and hes considered dead. The feds don't want to see good material wasted or sum shit so we just got to take him down. Even if he's dead, I guess his body is still useful or something. But he gets in there and he's gone for good."

It was only now that the young officer noticed the look of fear on his captain's face. It seemed as though he knew more than he was letting on, but he was only saying that they were not allowed in there under any circumstances. This could only mean that it was something that the young officer shouldn't know or ask about.

"HE'S COMING!" The shout went up along the line and everyone snapped to attention taking aim.

Laz knew what was ahead, but he wasn't going to stop. He could only charge forward while gritting his teeth against the pain. He knew that it was about to get sticky.

Just when he broke the line of tall grass, he was able to clearly see what he could sense before. All up and down the road, paced at intervals, was a whole mess of military and local police, all when guns pointed right at him. Of course there was no place to hide or even to stop and Laz could only charge forward.

That was when the hail of bullets came raining down on him.

Laz had two choices, try to dodge them or run right through them. Dodging with this much gun fire was impossible, even for him. So he could only hope his body held up.

Of course he wasn't just going to rely on his body for this. Seeing things get about as bad as they could be, Laz could feel every cell in his body scream out and erupt with energy as his entire being was covered with the black flames. Before, he was only able to cover himself with a rather thin layer of flames. But now, having broken through, the flames that covered him were ten times as dense. Not only that, but they also burned a lot hotter than ever before. As such, a good portion of the bullets that came flying at him were melted into scrap before they could even reach him. Despite the constant barrage of gunfire, Laz continued to run like a maniac towards the line of cars. The crazy use of his energy was quickly depleting even his now massive store of energy, so much so that Laz couldn't help but wonder if he would be able to even make the treeline before he ran out of juice.

But he had no choice.

His only saving grace at this moment was that a lot of shots were going off target or missing all together. As was normal for Laz, as he circulated his technique while pumping out the energy, his eye were burning with a blood red fire of their own. As far as the ones who were shooting at him could see, there was a devil with red eyes and covered with black flames charging at them. For these country boys, although they had seen their fair share of crazy, this wasn't something they had any experience with. Be it the police of the guardsmen, they were hard pressed to even look at Laz, much less trying their best to aim.

The same couldn't be said for the ones in the copter. Both sharpshooters had steadied themselves and took aim, wanting to make these shots count since Laz could no longer evade them.

Bang, Bang.

Both copter's rang out with accurate aim, hitting Laz in the shoulder and thigh from behind. Even with his flames raging, he couldn't melt the shots fast enough before they hit him.

"FUCK," Laz yelled as he faltered for just a moment. But with a will that was way more than something a man of Laz's age should be capable of, he held on and ran.

Las was withing yards of the car line now and didn't both to slow down in the slightest. Instead, he brace himself and plowed into a police cruiser, causing the car to go flying as it crashed into the several cars around it.

Seeing that Laz entered the line, the ground units quit firing and started to run, looking to put distance between themselves as this demon. On the other hand, the copters tried to slow down, seeing that Laz had stopped moving for a moment but ended up over shooting the line.

The better of the two sharp shooters used this moment to fire again, this time hitting Laz in his arm as they passed by to turn around.

Laz was in tons of pain at the moment. The bullets had hit but didn't pass through, instead lodging themselves in his strengthened body. He was now bleeding from three holes and finding it hard to stand. But since he had a moment, he figured he would use it.

Laz ripped off the car door of two of the cruisers that were closest to him and waited. As the copters came back around, he ducked down and cut off the black flames around him. As a couple of the cars has been engulfed in his flames, there was a trail of smoke that made it hard to see from the air, causing the copters to come in blind.

As soon as they got close enough, Laz jumped up from cover and smiled.

He then flung out the doors like a disc, hitting them both head on. They didn't burst into flames, but the doors sliced through the front panels, killing the pilots on contact and causing both helicopters to spin and free fall out of control. One ended up going towards the grassland Laz had just run out of while the other one went down on top of a group of unlucky solders who were trying to get out of the way. There was no way of knowing just how many were now injured or dead.

After seeing the results of his throws, Laz didn't hesitate to run forward, disappearing into the woods while leaving the scene of chaos behind him.