J.B. cursed under his breath as he saw them start to toy with the grens that he had taken from the cases in his search. It wouldn’t take much for them to trigger a frag gren, and the havoc it would wreak could be tremendous. Triggering any grens or plas ex in the room could bring down half the redoubt level. And how would the survivors act toward them then, even assuming that he and Krysty would survive.
But before he had a chance to do anything, and even before he and Krysty had a chance to exchange any kind of word, the creature that they had first seen rose
head and shoulders above the pack, whooping exultantly. He gestured again, yelling as he did, and the two groups swept from the two rooms. As they passed, they swept Krysty and J.B. off their feet, carrying them away from the armory and the route back to the mat-trans unit.
Yelling to try to make themselves heard to each other above the jubilant noises made by the creatures, and fighting against the hands that gripped them, they found themselves being swept away. Time was running out, and they were no nearer achieving their goal. If anything, they were now further than they had been just a few moments before.
And as they were swept toward the upper levels, the stench grew stronger. They were headed into the belly of the beast, and as they fought against the crowd that carried them along, any chance of getting back to their compatriots seemed to be nothing more than a distant dream.
“T
HIS WAITING IS
really starting to piss me off,” McCready said to Ryan, leaning over him. His breath stank of old brew and smoke. His teeth were bared in a mirthless, bloodthirsty grin. “Might just be that I’ll get so pissed off and jumpy that my finger might just get a little itchy on the trigger. You know what I’m saying, Brian?”
Ryan smiled faintly. His head was buzzing from the opiate painkillers that Mildred had administered, and although he was aware of the menace in what the sec chief was saying, somehow it didn’t seem to really register as a threat.
“Big words. But you’re not a big man,” he replied.
Crabbe looked over from where he was standing.
“What’s going on over there?” he snapped. “What are you doing, Nelson?”
“Nothing, Baron. Just having a few quiet and friendly words with Brian here,” he said, ignoring the look of venom he got from Jak. If the albino teen got a chance, then the sec chief would be the first threat he dealt with.
“Good, good,” Crabbe said, nodding to himself. “I’m gonna need them all in good condition.”
He turned to Mildred. “So what do you reckon Brian’s chances are of being right for the next place he has to go to, Millicent?”
Mildred shrugged, keeping her eyes from making contact with the baron, her attention focused on her chron on her wrist.
“I have no idea,” she said at length. “If it was down to me, I wouldn’t let him do anything for a day or two, just to give that injury a chance to heal. But I don’t know why you’re asking me, because there’s no way that you’re going to give him that time. You’re not going to give any of us that time.”
“Then you’d better start hoping that Kirsty and J.T. find what we’re looking for this time out. Then Brian won’t have to go back in there,” he said, gesturing to the mat-trans unit. “Come to that, none of you will. Now, wouldn’t that be just fine?”
“Yeah, sure,” Mildred agreed flatly, knowing but unable to say that such an outcome could never happen.
W
RITHING AND WRIGGLING
beneath them, the creatures made it impossible for either J.B. or Krysty to disen
tangle themselves from the hands that clutched at them. Their own limbs were pinned and made useless by the constantly changing grip of the small muties that pulled at them.
The upper levels were poorly lit in places. Great chunks of wall and ceiling, including the fluorescent lighting that was contained within, had been pulled down or broken away from the surrounding walls. Cables that carried fiber optic and power lines hung free over gaping holes, and were somehow miraculously intact. Independently of each other, Krysty and J.B. both wondered how these holes, and this damage, had been made. There was no obvious explanation, and it was unlikely that these seemingly harmless little creatures could have done it.
But such speculation was soon swept away, much as they themselves had been physically, by the sight and smell that greeted them as the creatures reached the next level, and came into an area leading off the corridor that had once been used for supply storage. It was now nothing more than a large cave for a group of people who had regressed to the level of precivilization.
The cavelike structure was well-lit, but even so it was large enough for the corners to be shrouded in shadows. Whether this was from lack of light or from the dark matter that gathered there was hard to say. There were even more of the creatures here, some of them seeming to be old. They were lying on something that seemed to be half animal and half vegetable matter, like skins covered in the remains of old rotted fabrics. Around them were piles of rotting, stinking matter that
might have been their waste, or may have been their foodstuffs. Again, it was impossible to tell.
As they reached the center of the space, the creatures swarmed over their own bedding as if it wasn’t there. J.B. and Krysty found that they were being put down on the ground. There were so many hands on them that it was hard to find their balance, and both went sprawling on the floor. A sticky, viscous mess that was part urine, part feces, and part rotting meat covered those areas of them that they couldn’t avoid bringing into contact with the ground, sticking to the palms of their hands as they both tried to save themselves.
Distantly, there was a rumbling and a muffled roar that seemed to come from above and reverberate around the cavelike room. It made the creatures jabber excitedly, and they lifted J.B. and Krysty to their feet, as if their descent and the noise were somehow connected.
That was worrying, as was the way in which their precious time was being snatched from them. They were now on a higher level, without the weapons they had sought and then found, and surrounded by muties who were seemingly friendly, but whose behavior was bizarre. There was no way that J.B. or Krysty could tell how the muties would react if an attempt was made to escape.
It was hard for either of them to keep erect and get a good recce of what was happening around them, the creatures weaving in and out and jostling them in a manner that made it hard for them to take stock. They seemed friendly enough, but there was something about the way in which they were poking and prodding at the Armorer and Krysty that made both of them feel
uneasy. The creatures had seemed to be jubilant about the way in which the intruders had unlocked the two rooms that held a deep, primal meaning for them. And yet, now that they had them back in their lair, it was as though the mood was shifting.
Krysty had a nasty feeling that was hardly prescient. Instead, it was based on a memory of something that her mother had once said to her back in Harmony. She had told the young Krysty about the messengers of the gods in predark times—way back before the tech that had come along to wipe out the civilization they had struggled so hard to build—who would be rewarded for their task by being sent to their masters.
She had a feeling that this was what was about to happen to them unless they acted swiftly. She tried to catch J.B.’s eye, but it was impossible under the circumstances. She would have to act independently and hope that he would follow.
She had no idea that he was having more or less the same thoughts. His wasn’t based on stories he’d been told, or knowledge of the times before tech advanced enough to catapult them back to the Dark Ages. His fears were based on nothing more than observation.
As he felt the fingers of the creatures prod, poke and pinch from every angle, making him wince with sharp pains that came from his arms, legs and the flesh of his inner thigh—which really galvanized him with its unexpected intrusion of his privacy—he pieced together something that had been at the back of his mind, bothering him since they had first seen the creatures. The supplies that had been laid in for the military before skydark had to have long since been exhausted, as these
creatures were the end of a long, long line, and one that hadn’t been troubled by outside blood, by the look of it. That meant that the food sustaining them had to come from within. So where did they get it from? And where did they put their dead?
The smell—it had to be that. Shit, blood and rotting meat. The meat had to come from within.
And they were next up on the menu.
“Dark night—Krysty,” he yelled, struggling to pull free his hands, which were being pinned by the grasping, groping paws of the creatures as they milled around.
“I hear you,” she yelled back, relieved that however he had come to same conclusion, J.B. was in tune with her.
The Armorer wasted no more time with words. There were more important matters. He thanked whatever deities he had ever heard of, and didn’t believe in, that the creatures had no idea what blasters were actually for, or what they did. The creature they had initially cornered had been scared, but more of them as people than for the hardware they toted. Or so he hoped.
There was only one way to find out for sure. He wrestled his hands free for long enough to lift the mini-Uzi to the level of his waist. It was still set on rapid-fire. He looked around him desperately, trying to place Krysty so that he wouldn’t blast her when cutting himself a swathe. In the confusion, it was hard to locate her, but he could see her head and her flaming red hair above the level of the creatures, even as some of them leaped up and tried to climb up her arms and tresses.
“Fuck!” he exclaimed as he felt sharp teeth bite into
his forearm. At the same time, he felt a gnawing down on his thigh, through the thick material of his combat pants. Spurred on by the pain and shock, he pulled his arms free and aimed the mini-Uzi down into the crowd that jostled around him.
The sharp, staccato burst of two taps on the trigger exploded in the room. At the same time, he heard the boom of Krysty’s blaster in the cavernous room.
For the briefest of moments there was a stunned silence from the creatures as they tried to understand what had just happened. But almost before either J.B. or Krysty had a chance to take in the silence, the creatures exploded into sound like a flock of startled birds. Yelling and screaming in a way that was, if possible, even more incoherent than they had been before, they scattered away from the intruders, momentarily terrified at what had happened. As they parted like a sea of crazed flesh, it became apparent that the bursts of SMG fire had claimed three chilled and two with ragged wounds, lying whimpering. Another creature with no head bore testimony to Krysty’s own aim. At the far side of the room, two more muties were curiously licking the brain and blood that had splattered on their bodies.
“Come on,” Krysty called as she ran for the entrance to the cavern, cursing inwardly at the way in which the stickiness of the floor frustrated her efforts at flight. She had no need to have said anything, as the Armorer was close on her heels, turning as he ran, pivoting so that he covered their backs. It was only a matter of moments before the creatures would be after them.
Most of them, those who had been experimentally licking at the gore spattered over them, raced to their
fallen comrades, falling on them with a wolfish fervor. As J.B. hit the exit, the last thing he saw was one of the creatures tearing a chunk from the bloodied ribs of a companion who was injured.
They were out into the corridor and sprinting down the corridor, hitting the dogleg bend before any of the creatures emerged from the cavern. Neither wasted breath on words, nor on looking back. They knew that all the creatures had assembled in the cavern with them, so there was no way that they would encounter any in front of them. All they had to do was to use the advantage of their longer limbs, keep on their feet, and they would reach the mat-trans unit before the little bastards could catch up with them.
Two things that would otherwise have bothered J.B. immensely now no longer seemed to matter. The briefest of glances at his wrist chron as he ran revealed that they would have enough time to make it back before their half hour was up. There was no way that they would get the chance to lose track of time with those little critters at their heels. And they wouldn’t be able to stop at the armory and search out the gas grens that he had been so keen to find before they had been interrupted. Vaguely he was aware that this would irritate him later, when he had the chance to reflect on it. Right now, all he wanted to do was to get out. He should have taken the chance, and he would curse himself for it later. Now, survival was all he had on his mind.
Survival that was threatened from another source.
What was that rumbling that he could hear?
“Shit, watch out!” Krysty yelled as she threw herself forward. The rumbling had grown louder as they went
lower, past the area where the walls and ceilings of the tunnels were broken and crumbling.
Now they knew why. And they knew because they were caught in the middle of it.
J.B. skidded to a halt, leaning back to avoid a chunk of concrete that flew past his face, so close that he could feel the rush of air as it passed. Dust choked his nostrils, clouded his glasses and stung his eyes. He tumbled, falling backward. Even as he hit the floor with a jarring thud he tried to scramble to his feet. Tears streamed from his eyes as he attained the level, clearing his vision. Not that it made it any easier to believe what he could see in front of him.
A giant white worm, fat and pulsating obscenely, slithered through the hole it had made in the wall. It dropped onto the floor, its dripping ooze blending with the filth on the floor and making it stickier. Was this how it trapped its victims? Or was it simply that it didn’t have victims, but was oblivious to their presence and there only by chance?
Right now, that didn’t matter; the only thing that was in J.B.’s mind was that the worm stood between Krysty and himself, that he was on the wrong bastard side of the obscenity. On Krysty’s side was a clear run to the mat-trans unit. On his side were the creatures, who he could hear in the distance, gaining on him with every moment that he stood, mesmerised by the worm as it writhed on the floor. It turned what he assumed was its head toward him. Eyeless, it was presumably the head only because a mouth opened and closed, seemingly at random, needle-sharp teeth that dripped mucous showing in the pinched maw.