Portland creaked, and rose.
       Mud sluiced off the streets as they split and lifted, water poured onto the ground beneath the city as it hitched itself into the air, concrete cracked and power lines tautened, tensed, and finally snapped. The great flywheels slowly spun, creaking and grunting and roaring. Pylons unfolded themselves, bearing the great weight of the city. And then the myriad wheels arched down, finding their tracks with great clangs and clamors of metal. Portland poised, balancing, finding its equilibrium. Rain dripped off the edges and crackled against the electric snake-heads of severed wires, fire alarms sounded across town, lights flickered and flared, faded and faltered.
       With a miles-long chunk the wheels began to turn, painfully, slowly, effortfully. The city lurched, shuddered, groaned, and inched forward through the rain and the night. It achieved a walking pace, then sped up as its progress got smoother. In a few minutes it was chugging along at about ten miles per, and when it hit the web of tracks over the Columbia it didn't pause for a moment as it swept by above the water, blocks and buildings and sheer star-blackening bulk rolling northward smoothly, humming with power and purpose.
       They'd moved Centralia for the purpose, shunting the town about twenty miles eastward, so when Portland and Seattle drew close there was nothing in their way but a field of green. The cities neared, slowed, loomed and stopped. Towers gleamed in the morning bright. Cars revved. Klaxons sounded. And when the two cities sank back into the ground, clouds of dust whoofing from their impact, it was as though they pawed the earth at each other.
       For long moments there was silence. And then the hordes erupted from the buildings, pouring onto the streets, roaring toward each other onto the dirt and grass. Most of the people were unarmed, but there were a few with handguns, a few with rifles, and many of the others had clubs or batons or baseball bats. Rocks started to fly over the quickly-closing space between the two armies, and screams of pain counterpoised with the thunder of thousands of feet.
       Debbie screamed too, but it was a war cry rather than a howl of agony. She had a chef's knife in her right hand, pistoning up and down as she sprinted toward Seattle and the forces keeping it from her. She leaped over hummocks, splashed through puddles, and had to lunge out of the way when she heard a roaring behind her and a '69 Impala fought its way through the mud, filled with teenagers, clawing its way through the muck toward the ululating mass of Seattle citizens closing in on them.
       The car found its footing and blasted into the oncoming line of people, scattering them broken and bent like bowling pins of flesh. And then Portland's front line met Seattle's, and there was the kind of crashing crescendo you heard in movies, but never quite believed existed in the real world. It was even louder than that, to Debbie's ears--it was like Armageddon, the sound of doom as thousands upon thousands of people slammed into each other with their makeshift shivs and shillelaghs, motorcycles screaming and skidding through the morning mud, and then it was a roiling cauldron of sheer fury and murderous motion as everyone got down to the real work of killing.
       The improvised artillery started soon after, blowing red and black stars into the sky, illuminating the Boschian deathscape below as humans gutted each other with linoleum knives and broke skulls with fireplace fenders. Debbie lay covered with gore, but she exulted as her blade slit open another Seattle throat and she rolled herself over onto the old man, driving her knee down onto his brittle ribcage, sending shards into his heart.
       She looked up, looked north, and saw the buildings of Seattle within distance. They were almost there.

       David blinked sweat out of his eyes as the dust rose before him. Seattle had sent two flanking waves, one on each side of Portland, while the main forces clashed between the cities. He was facing one of them, he and a few dozen other downtown troops, most of them lawyers, and it was going badly. The Washingtonians were swarming down Burnside now. They weren't disciplined, but they were determined. He blinked again, raised the pistol, aimed, and put a bullet into the head of a cheerleader sprinting toward him. She spun, blood flying out in a parabola above her, and took down the two men behind her with her corpse as she died.
       "Come on!" roared a voice behind him. "Fall back to Powell's!"
       David turned and began to sprint. They had lost ground to the encroaching forces, but there was ground to give. As long as they kept the Seattle forces away from the Square, they could trade property for time. He slammed another magazine into his gun as he ran, saying a silent prayer of thanks for the Second Amendment. Half the people he'd started out with had died facing the surprise assault from the West Side, and most of them had died with nothing more than forks or nail clippers in their hands.
       He spun into the doorway of the bookstore, slammed the door open, slid into the shelves. The air rattled around him as some improvised grenade shattered windows along the street, sending volumes cascading down onto him. He snarled and crawled back to the wall, tossing books from his body. He peeked through the shark's teeth of broken glass and saw a Seattle woman dazedly shaking her head against the explosion. He shot her in the guts. A red flower suddenly blossomed beneath her breasts. He watched her lurch backwards, watched her die.
       "We gotta keep them focused here," he yelled.
       "I know!" came a voice from behind him. He risked a glance over his shoulder. Tom Foster, the bartender at the Chinese restaurant on the first floor of the government building most of them worked in, had quickly become their lieutenant. Maybe pouring the perfect Manhattan gave you a grasp of tactics others were denied. In any case, David listened to him.
       "Okay," Tom shouted. "We bring 'em in, then burn the place down around 'em. Anyone got gasoline?"
       "I've got a bottle of lighter fluid!" came another voice from further back in the stacks.
       "Close enough," grinned Tom.
       David grinned too.

       Debbie fought her way into the city proper. The streets bent and meandered and twisted, but the pour of Portlanders filled them, beating staccato on the cobbles with a thousand pairs of Doc Maartens and Nikes and Uggs and hobnails. They pulled people from storefronts and stomped them to death, they tore down flags and street signs, they spat and snarled and surged forward, seeking.
       She stopped. She held up her hands, and the press of people stopped behind her. She'd killed a dozen, if not more, and had become their de facto leader. She looked up.
       She pointed.
       There were nods, and shouts, and rebel yells, and then the mob moved left, toward the Space Needle.

       Most of the West Side was burning now, and half of David's face had been blasted in the cataclysm. One eye had burst under the heat and pressure, and what had been his right cheek was almost completely gone, raw and ragged as a hanging scree of hamburger. His hair was a stinking, smoking lavascape on his scalp. Tom had died in the Burnside blast, and David had led the survivors down Sixth in a straggling line, cringing at every noise, waiting for the next Seattle onslaught