The pincer closed fast, the way traps always did when the people setting them had been patient enough to wait for the right moment, and for approximately three seconds, the road dissolved into the particular beautiful chaos of a group of near-level-one-hundreds who had been walking for weeks and were extremely ready to hit something.
Victor moved first. He always moved first; it was a compulsion, it was written into the architecture of him somewhere deep and unalterable, and his wings came down like a judgment, and the nearest truck simply stopped being a truck in any meaningful sense. The shockwave rolled out from the impact, and the scavengers on the heights scrambled for footing they no longer had.
Ivan hit the rear line before they'd taken three steps, and the sound of it carried.
